Abstract
Power and production are the two coordinates of society.1 They determine the parameters of the relations between the economic and political spheres. Within any conceptual framework, production is the economic axis between the individual and society. The modes of production, the forms of production, the means of production, the relations of production and the appropriation of production are at the heart of the political dialectics between state and civil society, in Africa as elsewhere.2 For this reason, an analysis of the concept of production is essential to the understanding of the political history and current politics of any African country. What is at issue here is not just what production is, but how production is political and how best to conceptualise its politics. After a brief discussion of the notion of production, I examine in some detail the productive basis of pre-colonial and colonial economies. I leave until Chapter 9 the discussion of production in the post-colonial context.
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Notes
For definitions, see Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Modern Reader, 1968)
On technology and ecology: J. Goody, Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)
J. Ford, The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African Ecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
D. Seddon (ed.), Relations of Production (London: Cass, 1978)
C. Meillassoux (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (2 vols, London: Collins, 1972 and 1973)
J. Lonsdale, ‘The European Scramble and Conquest in African History’, in R. Oliver and G.N. Sanderson (eds), The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
On labour policies and taxation: B. Fetter, Colonial Rule and Regional Imbalance in Central Africa (Boulder: Westview, 1983).
On this, see Wallerstein, 1974 and 1980. Two cases: A. Latham, Old Calabar, 1600–1891 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973)
R. Law, The Oyo Empire c.1600-c.1836 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
Particularly vis-à-vis their ‘barons’. See L.A. Fallers, The King’s Men (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).
See here Robin Cohen, ‘From Peasants to Workers’, in Gutkind and Wallerstein, (eds), The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1976)
For one example see Colin Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
On Zambia, see D. Philip, Africanisation, Nationalisation and Inequality (Cambridge: Department of Applied Economics, 1979).
Unless, that is, emigration is seen as production. For Mozambique, contrast António Rita-Ferreira, O Movimento Migratório de Trabalhadores entre Moçambique e a África do Sul (Lisbon: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1963)
Ben Turok, Development in Zambia (London: Zed Press, 1979).
Here, Nigeria provides perhaps the most striking example. See, J.K. Onoh, The Nigerian Oil Economy (London: Croom Helm, 1983).
Compare Hopkins, 1973, and Samir Amin, L’Afrique de l’Ouest bloquée (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1971).
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© 1992 Patrick Chabal
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Chabal, P. (1992). Production. In: Power in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12468-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12468-8_6
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