Ritual Killing, 419, and Fast Wealth: Inequality and the Popular Imagination in Southeastern Nigeria

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Abstract

In this article, I situate a seemingly fantastic series of events in Nigeria in a context that renders them meaningful and acknowledges their intimate connection to everyday issues of wealth, power, and inequality. Focusing on popular stories of the occult circulating in the wake of a widely publicized case of ritual killing, I argue that these stories depict popular discontent over inequality, but also Nigerians' ambivalence about and critical awareness of their own role in maintaining patron‐clientism. [Nigeria, patronage, inequality, witchcraft]

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Most cited references 44

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Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony

John Comaroff, Jean Comaroff (1999)

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Provisional notes on the postcolony

Achille Mbembe (1992)

The exercise of power in African states since independence—generalised here under the term the ‘postcolony’—has been marked by a liking for ceremonial and by an exhibitionism that is the more remarkable seeing how illusory are the states’ practical achievements. Furthermore, power is exercised with a degree of violence and naked exploitation that has its antecedents in previous colonial regimes. People's response is a ribaldry that revels in the obscene. The general question is why this power, despite its obvious limitations, is seemingly so effective. More specifically, why does the population apparently collude with its government; how can it laugh at the antics of its rulers and yet at the same time join in celebrating them? The argument put forward here along with evidence mainly from Cameroon and Togo is that, if analysis focuses on the detailed processes and rituals of collusion, it becomes clear that there is an intimacy, an almost domestic familiarity, in the relationship between ruler and ruled which effectively disarms both and turns power-play into performance.

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The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly

Bayart Jean-François., J.-F. Bayart, Bayart J.‐F. … (1993)

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Author and article information

Journal

Title: American Ethnologist

Abbreviated Title: American Ethnologist

Publisher: University of California Press

ISSN (Print): 0094-0496

ISSN (Electronic): 1548-1425

Publication date Created: November 2001

Publication date (Electronic): January 07 2008

Publication date (Print): November 2001

Volume: 28

Issue: 4

Pages: 803-826

Article

DOI: 10.1525/ae.2001.28.4.803

SO-VID: e5c47a17-ea1d-4c1c-82d3-dfdbbae5dedb

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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor

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