ABSTRACT
The body of literature on the state is as old as the concept of the state, there is a growing movement to analyze how African states, as structures, no longer work to capture society. Illusory, elusive, ineluctable, expandable, contractable, mercurial. What else but power enlivens state, nationalism, and ethnic mobilization, granting each a lifelike beginning (The Birth of the Modern) and end (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers just to cite a few random but popular titles). A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled on the topic of tribalism, which has seemed to mean all things to all Africanists. However despite a resurgence of interest in the topic today it was perhaps most rigorously debated more than two decades ago, as members of the Manchester School strove to cope with issues of social change in the face of rural/urban, traditional/modern transformations primarily in southern Africa but elsewhere too.
