ABSTRACT
The discursive field in West Africa is best placed within the continental stream (Harbeson et al. 1994; Monga 1996; Onwudiwe 1998). This is only natural since one is obviously folded into the other, and it also gives us a good backcloth upon which our analysis can be anchored. Since there is little space for an elaborate dissection, I will outline what I consider to be the central problems. Three broad scholarly attitudes to civil society can be identified, ranging from absolute scepticism cum rejection (Callaghy 1994; Mamdani 1997) to conditional acceptance (Blaney and Pasha 1993; Ekeh 1992; Mustapha 1998) and positive affirmation (Chan 2002; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999). The major dilemmas, in my opinion, have invariably centred on civil society’s ‘polysemous elaboration’, its ‘historically specific baggage’, and the recurrent claim that it is not applicable to ‘segmentary non-Western societies…outright dictatorships or patrimonial societies’ (Gellner 1994:43, 103).
