| Social exclusion and Africa south of the Sahara: A review of the literature |
| Chapter 1: CONCEPTS OF EXCLUSION |
  
In recent years notions of social exclusion have been increasingly used in discussions of poverty, inequality and justice. This is apparent in both political philosophy and sociology.
In the former domain, Michael Walzer (1983) has argued that concepts of distributive justice assume (usually silently) the existence of a community within which rights are held and goods shared. Logically the rights to membership of a group is thus the most basic right, which depends on the admission policies (exclusionary and inclusionary practices) of the group. More critically, it has been suggested that liberalism, which is supposedly founded on ideas of equal treatment and universality, has, inherent within its foundations, exclusionary, discriminatory practices (see Mehta 1993). Pateman's discussion of the gender biases of classic and modern liberal texts powerfully illustrates this point (Pateman 1988).
Within sociology, processes of exclusion have been used to understand on-going changes in (post-)industrial societies (see Silver 1992). In North America, Myrdal's concept of the "underclass", defined as "an unprivileged class of unemployed, unemployables and underemployed who are more and more hopelessly set apart from the nation at large and do not share in its life, its ambitions and its achievements" (Myrdal 1962:10), has received renewed attention through the work of Wilson. In France, debates surrounding citizenship, nationality, racism and immigration have focussed on the bases of entitlement to rights in the modern State. "L'exclusion sociale" has become a major political problem, and paralleling Walzer's discussion, the national construction of rights has been questioned. M. Silverman (1991:333-4) has argued that:
"The demands for a new citizenship based on residence rather than nationality and allowing for a pluralism of identifications rather than symbolic allegiance to a monolithic national identity, today constitute the basis for a re-definition of the social contract for the modern era".
Various features of the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, and of the literature seeking to understand it, render the application of concepts of exclusion fashioned in North America and Western Europe problematic. Firstly, poverty is a mass phenomenon in SSA and not confined to a minority. If "the excluded" is simply used as a synonym for the poor, or those outside the formal economy, the majority in SSA are "excluded". Secondly, States in Africa do not conform to the rational-legal ideal type which (supposedly) has universalistic standards of provision for national citizens. Some authors go as far as to suggest that African States are "States without citizens" or "States without frontiers" (Ayoade 1988; Herbst 1990). This is an exaggeration, but it identifies a tendency. Thirdly, the dominant analytical concepts which have been used to understand what is happening in Africa have been diametrically opposed to any notion of exclusion. In the immediate post-colonial period, key words were national integration and commercial (capitalist) penetration. Some dualist models posited the existence of an excluded sector (traditional, subsistence). But historical research challenged this view effectively and the conventional wisdom which had emerged by the first half of the 1970s was that individuals and communities in Africa had been incorporated into the broader economy and society and that what was problematical was their terms of incorporation. Since the late 1970s, with spiralling crises, key words have been "disengagement" and "withdrawal". People are not suffering from poverty owing to exclusion. Rather they are excluding themselves from the wider economy and society, and from the burdensome and unequal obligations of citizenship, in order to survive (see Rothchild and Chazan 1988).
Against this background, it is not surprising that applications of recent concepts of exclusion, such as "underclass" or "l'exclusion sociale", have been limited. In the English-language literature on Africa, there are scattered references to the existence of an "underclass", but the concept is not analytically specified. There are also passing references to African States being an "underclass of States in the global economic and political system", and the continent being a globally excluded "underworld". Leaving aside material on apartheid South Africa, the literature search on which this review is based found only one analytical application of the ideas from the French literature on nationality and citizenship (Gaidzanwa 1993).
However, this does not mean that the issue of exclusion is not considered in the literature on Africa. Predating the recent interest in social exclusion, there is a small literature which focuses on the concept of the "stranger" in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial African society, and which examines, in particular how this concept changed with the creation of the status of "national citizen" at Independence. This literature developed in the immediate post-colonial period, and a central concern was to understand the dynamics behind the expulsion of "aliens", African and Asian non-nationals, from a number of newly independent countries (see Skinner 1963; Peil 1971; Fortes 1975; and Shack and Skinner 1979). Interestingly, Balibar and Wallerstein (1991) include an early contribution of Wallerstein (1972), which discusses this theme, in their recent collection of essays on race, nation, and class which is part of the debate on "l'exclusion sociale".
There is also a small literature from the immediate post-colonial period which focuses on the dynamics of incorporation of different ethnic groups, who had been arbitrarily joined together in the territories of colonial States, into nation-States (see, for example, Cohen and Middleton 1969). An important analytical apparatus put forward to understand this process focussed on the concepts of the "plural society" and "structural pluralism" (Kuper and Smith 1969). Social exclusion is a central feature of this analytical apparatus.
Finally there is a voluminous and scattered literature which examines the relationship between social identity and entitlement to resources and other social goods. It is this body of literature, including material on strangers, which is the subject of this literature review.
 1.1 Structures of Exclusion in Post-Colonial Africa: Three Models
In thinking about concepts of exclusion in this literature, it may be useful to begin with a discussion of the structure of exclusion, in the sense of an overall order of social relations, which this literature suggests.
In the colonial period, all the African population were politically and economically excluded in a variety of ways. In the British colonies, they were categorically treated as "subjects" rather than "citizens", whilst in French colonies, they could progress from the status of "indigène" towards citizenship through the assimilation of French culture and civilization (?check). A major aim of African nationalism was to end this exclusion.
The nationalist movements had a particular ideology and identity. According to Mazrui (1967), "the central concept in African nationalist thought is not so much self-determination as self-government, i.e. not simply the desire for the right to choose who to be ruled by, but rather the right to self-rule rather than rule by foreigners. This concept, Mazrui argues, rests on a principle of "racial sovereignty", which meant that government should be "representative" not merely in the liberal sense of institutional accountability, but also in the sense of being ethnically "typical". "in the history of colonial liberation movements it was more often the ethnic conception of 'majority rule', rather than the orthodox liberal one, which had pride of place in African nationalistic thought" (Mazrui 1967:23).
Citizenship laws which were put in place at Independence reflect these ideas, and although there is a general absence of antiwhite racism, formerly dominant groups, Europeans, Asians and Lebanese, were excluded, or, as in the case of the Ugandan Asians, excluded themselves by choice. The citizenship laws are complex, but in former British colonies, they are said to have two key characteristics:
One is that, in a number of countries, including Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia, birth within the borders of the national territory is not enough to guarantee citizenship; a parent or grandparent must either be a citizen (Uganda), an established resident (Zambia), or member of an 'indigenous community'. In Zambia, moreover, only the father qualifies, not a mother or grandparent. Such a parent/grandparent condition disqualifies, for example, people of Ghanaian parentage born in Nigeria.People of Asian, Lebanese, or European descent are also prevented by these clauses from acquiring citizenship, especially if such non-Negroid people are not deemed to be members of and 'indigenous community'. In Sierra Leone, requirements that citizens be of negro African 'descent remove the right of citizenship from any of it Lebanese inhabitants, eve if they, their parents and grandparents were born in the country.... Stringent qualifications are also put on the right to naturalization in Commonwealth Africa. In an individual can be naturalized only if he is 'acceptable to the local community in which he is to live permanently and has been assimilated into the way of life of Nigerians in that part of the Federation' ... In Sierra Leone, the 'anti- discrimination' clause in the constitution does not protect naturalized citizens. In Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda, naturalized citizens may be deprived of their citizenship rights (Howard 1986:100101).
A key question is: What is the structure of exclusion in postcolonial Africa?
Given their citizenship laws, one possible model for the structure of exclusion is the nationalist one, in which rights are attached to citizenship and citizenship to nationality. A central axis of the structure of exclusion in this order of social relations is, as the French literature is pointing out, the status differentiation between national citizens and those who are alien both in the sense of being born outside the national frontiers and of being foreign to the body of the nation. One might discern variations in the theme, based on different classes of alien (e.g. helots, denizens), or on the concept of nationhood (e.g. social contract, community bound by blood ties).
But it is debatable whether this model applies in Africa. Although, as the literature on "strangers" indicates, nationality can be a salient identity, rights based on nationality are weak and the formal equality of citizens is even more tenuous than in Western Europe and North America. If one examines access to land resources, customary law is still important and notions of local citizenship affect how social identities regulate access. The nationalization of land has served as basis for localized appropriation of land and its allocation to a select few. If one examines access to employment, it is apparent that indigenization decrees and alien expulsion orders affect opportunities in labour markets. But the main source of employment outside agriculture is in the informal sector. With regard to education, whose provision is usually closely related to citizenship, both the quality and also quantity of service have been declining in the 1980s, from levels already very low by international standards. The gross enrolment ratio at the primary school level, for example, decreased from 80 to 75 from 1980-87. There are no national systems of social security. A major mode of political representation is access to persons in state offices through clientalistic networks.
A second possible model of the structure of exclusion is "structural pluralism", a concept elaborated to understand African society. Smith (1969:430) defines this order of social relations as follows:
Structural pluralism consists in the differential incorporation of social aggregates into a common political society. This differential incorporation may be formal and explicit, under the law and constitution, or it may prevail substantively despite them, as for example, among the American Negroes. The system of differential incorporation may institute a total disenfranchisement of a particular section by withholding citizenship from its members, as fro example in South Africa or in seventeenth century France. Alternatively, however variable the system may be in its specific conditions and properties, the collective character and scope of its substantive differentiations, must be sufficiently rigorous and pervasive to establish an effective order of corporate inequalities and subordination by the differential distribution of civil and political rights and the economic, social, and other opportunities that these permit or enjoin.
Kuper (1969) clarifies this idea by suggesting that individuals can be incorporated into political structures on either universalist terms (directly, on identical terms, as citizens), or on particularistic terms (in which individuals are incorporated indirectly through their membership of particular corporate sections - basically racial or ethnic group). In particularistic structures, different groups may be incorporated on equal terms, or unequally. The latter situation is "differential incorporation", a situation of "structural pluralism". In this situation, "Society is constituted as an order of structurally unequal, exclusive, corporate sections" (Kuper 1969:473).
The situation of structural pluralism corresponds to an order of social relations which in literature on other continents is described as "internal colonialism". In such a situation, exclusionary practices are directed at both members of the society (according to the corporate section to which they belong), and also those from outside national frontiers. Significantly the latter category of exclusion may be less significant than in the case of the nation-state, as illustrated by some of the policies of colonial States to migrant workers. Hilda Kuper (1969) captures the essence of structural pluralism when she writes:
Pluralism in the broadest interpretation is a series of confrontations between people perceived (and perhaps perceiving themselves) as strangers. the confrontations may be hostile or friendly, and the label "strangers" has, in English, a wide range of conceptual refinements with guests at one end and enemies at the other ... The socially effective definition of "strangers" is made by an in-group that has assumed the right to exclude. in the political context the in-group is the ruling group which regulates classification and incorporation (p.249).
Structural pluralism was put forward as a refinement of Furnivall's concept of the plural society which was originally devised to analyze multi-ethnic societies under colonial rule. It is certainly applicable to examining the colonial situation, though the somewhat abstract language of the literature is rather obscuring. It is also applicable to the situation in apartheid South Africa, and Ashforth (1990) brilliantly describes how the exclusion of Africans from full citizenship and participation within the central institutions of political power was rationalized in the official discourse of that State. It may also be applicable to a few States where state power is in the hands of specific ethnic or ethno-regional communities - Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan. But although it exists as an ever-present possibility, it does not correspond to the situation in most African States.
Another model of the structure of exclusion is thus required. A critical issue is to understand the structure of exclusion in a situation where rights and obligations have not been nationalized.
An interesting line of argument, which focuses on the relations between citizenship, ethnicity, and the nation-state, is opened up by Ekeh, who is one of the persons who is rehabilitating notions of "tribe" and "tribalism" in scholarly analysis. Ekeh (1975) argues that "there are two public realms in post-colonial Africa, with different types of moral linkages to the private realm" (p.92). These two realms are described as the "primordial public" realm, "which is closely identified with primordial groupings, sentiments and activities" (ethnic group), and the "civic public" realm, "which is historically associated with the colonial administration and which has become identified with popular politics... [and] is based on civil structures: the military, the civil service,the police, etc." (p.92). African politics reflects the fact that:
The primordial public is moral and operates on the same moral imperatives as the private realm ... the civic public in Africa is amoral and lacks the generalized moral imperatives operative in the private and in the primordial realm (p.92).
Ekeh goes on to suggest that the existence of the two public realms implies that African conceptions of citizenship differ from Western conceptions. "Citizenship", he writes, "has acquired a variety of meanings, which depend on whether it is conceived in terms of the primordial public or the civic public" (p.106). In the primordial public realm, "the individual sees his duties as moral obligations to benefit and sustain a primordial public of which he is a member ... He gains back intangible, immaterial bene-fits in the form of identity or psychological security" (p.1067). By contrast, in the civic public realm, the individual seeks to gain in material terms, and "Duties ... are de-emphasized while rights are squeezed out of the civic public with the amorality of an artful dodger" (p.107). "Most educated Africans are citizens of the two publics in the same society", and they are a faced with particular dilemmas by the "dialectic tensions and confrontations between these two publics" which, for Ekeh, "constitute the uniqueness of modern African politics". "The unwritten law of the dialectics is that it is legitimate to rob the civic public in order to strengthen the primordial public" (p.108).
Ekeh's analysis of the morality of ethnicity is echoed in another, independent analysis which, in contrast to Ekeh's view of the primordial nature of ethnic affiliation, emphasizes its situational nature (Lonsdale 1986; 1992). Lonsdale (1986) writes:
In modern Africa ... small political communities with long histories have been engulfed, by conquest, in larger states without memories. But states have some moral force in the modern world and some international standing; they are licensed to use violence against their citizens and to incur debts. Ethnic groups are allowed none of these strengths. Ethnic politics is stigmatized as tribalism...We must recognize first that all political communities are invented, whether tribes or nations. But some are more outrageous inventions than others. In Africa today invented tribes intertwine with still more imaginary nations. Each a moral construct on its own, their conjunction provides the tragic opportunity for political responsibility (p.141).
Moreover, he goes on to suggest, in an original formulation which he develops at length in an analysis of wealth, poverty and civic virtue in Kikuyu political thought, that the impetus behind political tribalism in modern Africa has been class formation. As he puts it,
Found in all economic relations, conflicts over class rarely assume the simple adversarial form we have been taught to expect. The real issue is citizenship: how, within the most pressing community of reputation, civic rights and distributive justice, one may gain or retain the status of moral agent, neither an anti-social swindler on the make nor slavish instrument of stranger men's wills (Lonsdale 1992:352).
The realm of citizenship in which the morality of new forms of social inequality were tested was the "tribe", and in this framework, upwardly mobile persons took on "the duties of patronage", and sought "to justify themselves and become responsible again" "by creating communities in which they had a moral standing and beyond which they acted as brokers of political alliance within the new arena of the state" (Lonsdale 1986: 143)
Ekeh's and Lonsdale's insightful analyses offer one approach to understanding citizenship in Africa and for considering the structure of exclusion. However, I would suggest that this approach overemphasizes the ethnic aspect of inclusionary and exclusionary practices. Instead it may be better to regard the structure of exclusion in Africa to be characterized by multiple sites of inclusion/exclusion. These are based on membership of a variety of shifting groups, categories, and networks. Moreover the institutions in which rules defining exclusionary and inclusionary practices, and sanctions through they are enforced are at different levels, with the key institutions being the household, the local State, the national State and various international regimes (for example, on food aid, refugees, and all aspects of public policy affected by structural adjustment policies).
This third model of the structure of exclusion may have some features of equal national citizenship and some features of structural pluralism. But ultimately this structure of exclusion is different in that hegemony, in the sense of "a relatively stable balance of forces between different dominant groups"; "the arrangement of relationships between this dominant class and the mass of the population";"the ordering or relationships between this dominant class and western economic and political power"; and "the elaboration of an ethnic or common feeling which gives its coherence to the whole and which cements the new system of social inequality and domination, while camouflaging it at the same time", has not been achieved in the national framework fixed by the colonizer and carried on after Independence. Such hegemony, which I have defined using words of Bayart, is a necessary condition for the structure of exclusion in either the national/non-national, or the dominant/dominated corporate group, orderings of social relations.
The relevance of this third structure of exclusion, and also its precise analytical outlines, can be developed through closer attention to the scattered literature which the body of this review covers. A possible distinction which may emerge within this model is between patterns of social exclusion in situations where hegemonic vacancy is manifested in violent civil disorder ("warlordism"), and patterns of social exclusion in situations where civil order is maintained but relations between dominant groups are unstable. For the moment it may be said that the scattered nature of the literature probably accurately reflects the existing structure of exclusion.
1.2 Alternative Conceptions of Processes of Exclusion
A closer look at this scattered literature suggests that a key problematic of this material is analysis of:
i) the ways in which membership and status within various corporate groups and networks is related to social identity (e.g. gender, ethnicity, age, place of birth);
ii) the ways in which access to resources and other social goods is affected by membership and status within groups and networks (e.g. access to village land, ethnic segmentation in control of trade in particular commodities);
iii) the ways in which changes in the economy and polity (including, for example, increasing resource scarcity and increasing commoditization) affect the content of rules of membership and rules of resource allocation within groups and networks, and also influence the ways in which identities and rules are negotiated; and
iv) the consequences of all these relationships for the subordinate groups who are denied access to particular resources and social goods, for the dominant groups who restrict access to a particular group of eligibles, and for the economy as a whole.
In short, the relationship between social identity and entitlement to resources and other social goods is a central issue in this literature. There is also a concern for the way in which exclusion is related to poverty, both in terms of the way that lack of entitlement engenders poverty, and the way that poverty can lead to lack of entitlement. And, following from this, the interrelationship between poverty and social identity in determining access to, and exclusion from, resources, activities and goods and services is a vital question.
National citizenship is one of the identities affecting entitlement, and it is considered in studies of refugees and international migrant workers in particular. But the literature also includes concepts of citizenship which are not linked to the national State, and it considers a range of other group memberships and social identities in terms of the way they affect entitlements. These include: race, ethnicity, gender, livelihood, religion, age, language, place of origin, region, target-group status.
The key motors within the literature, in terms of social identities, have been analyses of ethnicity, particularly in relation to the State, and analyses of gender relations and the position of women, particularly in relation to access to land, and control of labour resources. Less important, though significant foci of attention have been on: pastoralists, huntergatherers, migrant workers, "strangers", refugees, and (of emerging interest) officially designated target groups.
The literature is scattered partly because different authors tend to focus upon specific social identities amongst the eleven noted above. It is also scattered because different authors focus on entitlement to specific resources or other social goods, and there is very little work which seeks to assess common processes (Elliott, 1975, is an exception). The resources and goods examined include: land, labour, wage employment, informal sector employment, credit, inputs, education, health, social security, development projects, administrative positions, political representation, and political power.
With regard to processes of exclusion (the social and economic mechanisms at work), the literature is characterized by a major divide. Some authors have focussed on the practices by which privileged/powerful groups to seek maximize economic advantage by excluding others from resources and opportunities. Other authors have focussed on the situation of marginalised/weak groups, indicating the negative consequences for them of exclusion from resources.
An interesting example of this bifurcation is the literature on the informal sector. Much of it is concerned with poverty, survival strategies, and ways of increasing productivity and remuneration in marginal jobs. But since the 1980s, another second strand of literature has emerged which focuses on informal activities, such as political corruption smuggling, bribery, theft, and speculation, which offer major possibilities for capital accumulation for politically well-connected people (see MacGaffey 1983; Roitman 1990).
An important conception of processes of exclusion which is used in the literature on the practices of rich groups is the Weberian notion of "social closure", which may be defined as "the process by which social collectivities seek to maximize rewards by restricting access to a limited circle of eligibles" (Parkin 1979:44). This process aims to monopolize specific, usually economic opportunities, and usually entails "the singling out of certain social or physical attributes [e.g. race, language, social origin, religion] as the justificatory basis of exclusion" (p.44). As a process, social closure 'lis a form of collective social action which, intentional or otherwise, gives rise to a social category of ineligibles or outsiders" (p.44). The best examples of this types of analysis of exclusion in the African literature is the work of Abner Cohen (1969; 1981)
The literature on marginalised/weak groups tends to see processes of exclusion in terms of constraints on access to key assets, resources, and other social goods. In analyses with an historical perspective, a pattern of social differentiation at a particular point in time may be analyzed in terms of paths of upward mobility. Excluded groups are those "left behind" as others improve their position.
A further distinction in the literature with regard to conceptions of processes of exclusion is that processes of exclusion are seen both in terms of international/national social relations and national/local social relations.
Perhaps oversimplifying, it is thus possible to see a conceptual map of the scattered literature as follows. Exclusionary practices in international relations are described and analyzed both in material on the ways that powerful elites have monopolized resources through excluding foreign ownership in key sectors of the economy (indigenization decrees), and also in material on the restricted rights and periodic expulsions of international migrant workers. Similarly the literature on exclusionary practices amongst nationals within countries includes both material on the ways in which bureaucratic or business elites monopolize opportunities through the manipulation of identity, and literature on the multiple disadvantages of particular marginal groups - "women", "female-headed household", "pastoralists", "huntergatherers" (indigenous peoples), "internally-displaced", "the rural poor", and, most broadly, "minorities at risk". | |
Exclusion and
Elite Formation |
Exclusion and
Marginalization |
| International |
* Indigenization
* Gatekeeping
* Migrant workers |
* SSA as a global ghetto
* Refugees
* Aliens |
| National |
* Long-distance
traders
* Administrative
elites
* Urban landlords |
* Women
* Female-headed
households
* Pastoralists
* Hunter-gatherers
* Internally-displaced
* Rural poor
* Minorities |
This classification of the literature differentiates separate views of the processes of exclusion within the general perspective on social exclusion which relates social identity to entitlements. It locates the notion of exclusion linked to citizenship rights, immigration and racism which is being elaborated in Western Europe within a wider field. It points towards the idea that sub-Saharan Africa is becoming marginalized in international relations and that States in the region have been defined as a "global underclass" within the international system (a form of exclusion which I think may become increasingly important, though I do not intend to explore it in the literature review). It also indicates disadvantaged groups which are discussed in the literature.
The most important point of the classification is, however, that it suggests that an important aspect of the processes of exclusion has been poorly developed. This is analysis of the links between the exclusionary practices of the powerful and the situation of the excluded. That is to say, there is a divide in the literature between material focussing on elites and the rich, and materials focussing on marginals and the poor. Yet processes of social exclusion involve both groups, or, more strictly, multiple sets of the more and the less powerful.
One study which bridges this divide is an analysis of patterns of poverty based on data from 11 "Third World" countries, including seven in Africa south of the Sahara (Elliott 1975). Elliott explains patterns of poverty as the result of processes of upward and downward mobility to particular positions in society, which are more or less remunerative and rewarding. The rewards of different positions in society are a function of society-wide systems for allocating resources to, and extracting resources from, those positions. Everyone is seeking to achieve upward mobility to more remunerative positions, but access is very competitive and the process of selection are "biased in favour of selected groups (or succeeding generations of selected groups" (p.11). Elliott's analysis of poverty focuses on patterns of access and exclusion in these terms. He argues that:
... both exclusion and downward mobility, which are no more than the processes of relative and absolute impoverishment, are most frequently the reverse image of the enrichment of another group. This may result from direct personal confrontation between individuals with differing bargaining skills and power ( as, for instance, in village monopoly/ monopsony situations), or it may result from structural biases that are introduced and maintained in order to serve a particular common interest of a specific group that has power to impose its own set of preferences upon that structure. Examples of the later would be the education system, the distribution of credit, wage policy, and many aspects of economic policy (p.10).
Moreover he emphasizes that "even the most biassed processes of selection are not entirely closed" (p.11). Some upward mobility is necessary to preserve confidence and legitimacy in the system, and so the exclusion of disfavoured groups cannot be total. As well as Elliott's work, the literature contains some conceptual and methodological insights for linking the exclusionary practices of the powerful with the situation of the excluded and avoiding a one-sided view of processes of social exclusion. An important model is the shift made by feminist theorists from a focus on "women" to a focus on gender relations. Within the Weberian model of social closure, closure strategies of the more powerful are accompanied by countervailing action from excluded groups who seek to break down the monopoly of resources which has been established. This process is described as "usurpation". Also, a particularly important conceptual insight is provided by Bayart (1993) who examines modes of "government" in Africa not in a state-centric sense, but rather in the Foucauldian sense that "to govern" is "to structure the possible field of action of others".
This idea of "government" gets to the heart of the process of social exclusion in Africa (and elsewhere). Exclusion is not something which "just happens". It is a practice of more powerful groups. Moreover, being denied access to particular resources does not completely block any possibility of agency on the part of excluded groups. Rather exclusion structures their field of action. From this perspective, social exclusion is precisely a practice of the more powerful which structures the possible field of action of the less powerful. An old example of this type of analysis, which is placed within the more specific analytical framework of primitive accumulation, is Arrighi's account of labour supplies in colonial Rhodesia. This links the exclusion of Africans from land resources by white European settlers to processes of exploitation, and sees labour supplies as the outcome of a long history of responses to exclusion, a history in which options and opportunities are increasingly narrowed (Arrighi 1970).
A key methodological insight in the literature, suggesting a way to avoid one-sided analysis, is that processes of social exclusion can be usefully analyzed not through a concentration on the victims of exclusion, but rather through a focus on social institutions. As Sally Falk Moore indicates (with her concept of the semi-autonomous social field) institutions through which rules of entitlement are negotiated include both networks and corporate groups (Moore 1983). Negotiated social identities are involved in both membership of groups and networks, and entitlements within them. Institutions which are important foci of attention in the literature are the household, the State, the village as a corporate land-holding group, and clientalist networks which permeate both bureaucratic and market relations.
1.3 Trajectories of Exclusion
In understanding the structure of exclusion, exclusionary practices, and responses to exclusion in Africa, an important tenet for analysis is that the situation is in flux. An important question is the trajectory (or trajectories) of various African societies in terms of social exclusion.
One possible approach would be to say that in Africa the historical trajectory is towards the nationalization of rights (i.e. their association with nationality). This evolution would follow the pattern observed in some industrialized countries (see M. Silverman 1992).
This may well be happening (see section 4.6). But there is danger in seeing what is happening in Africa in terms of its degree of correspondence and deviation from ideal-typical Western models. The trajectories of exclusion must be understood in relation to the historicity of African societies, in terms of the strategies and practices of Africans themselves and the logics of their actions.
In this regard Bayart's insights are again helpful and provocative. He identifies a key to understanding political action (in the widest sense) in Africa as "the quest for hegemony". Moreover he suggests, with great originality, that the formation of a stable balance of forces between dominant groups, is occurring not at the national level, but rather at a continental scale.
One aspect of the trajectory of exclusion is changes in the dominance of, and also interrelationship between, different dimensions of exclusion. An important thesis which bears on this issue is found in Iliffe's analysis of the history of the African poor (Iliffe 1987).
Iliffe argues that "two levels of want have existed in Africa for several centuries" (p.2). These levels are "the poor" - "the very large numbers - perhaps most Africans at most times - obliged to struggle continuously to preserve themselves and their dependents from physical want"; and "the very poor or destitute" - 'smaller numbers who have permanently or temporarily failed in that struggle and have fallen into physical want" (p.2). His history focusses on the latter level of poverty, and argues that in explaining the situation of the very poor, it is necessary to examine both the "long-term poverty of individuals due to personal and social circumstances" ("structural poverty") and the "temporary poverty in which ordinarily self-sufficient people may be thrown in crisis" ("conjunctural poverty") (p.4).
Using this logical framework, Iliffe puts forward two basic theses on the changing nature of poverty in Africa. The first thesis is that conjunctural poverty (which is most dramatically evident in periodic droughts and famines) has changed its nature more than structural poverty in the twentieth century. His second thesis is that with regard to structural poverty, the continent is going through a transition, which has already taken place in Europe and many parts of Asia, from "land-rich poverty to landscarce poverty" (p.5). As he puts it:
In land-rich societies the very poor are characteristically those who lack access to the labour needed to exploit land both their own labour (perhaps because they are incapacitated, elderly, or young) and the labour of others (because they are bereft of family or other support). In land-scarce societies the very poor continue to include such people, but also include those among the able-bodied who lack access to land (or other resources) and are unable to sell their labour-power at a price sufficient to meet their needs. (p.4)
He argues that southern Africa has, in the second part of the twentieth century, been making the transition from a land-rich society to a land-scarce society. The rest of Africa, he implies, is likely to do so in the future.
This thesis is of great relevance to the trajectory of patterns and processes of social exclusion in Africa. But the present review of the literature suggests that access to agricultural land is not a sufficient condition for access to agricultural livelihood, and important interrelationships between agricultural livelihood and livelihood in other sectors of the economy.
Whatever the merits of Iliffe's thesis, synthesis of the scattered literature on access to resources and other social goods suggests that poverty is becoming more and more closely linked to exclusion. A further key aspect of the trajectory of change could well be change in the relative importance of, and interrelationship between, social identity and poverty as determinants of exclusion.
1.4 Paradoxes of the Normativity of Exclusion
Wolfe (1993) refers to the paradoxes of social exclusion. At least two paradoxes are evident in the literature. The first is what may be termed the ambivalence of exclusion. This arises because of the way that inclusion is related to exploitation.
An example of this is found in the work of Berry, who, in a series of publications, examines inclusionary and exclusionary practices mainly with regard to access to the means of agricultural production, but also with regard to the means for artisanal activity (see Berry 1984; Berry 1985; Berry 1988; and Berry 1989). She emphasizes the fact that access to various means of production is based, strongly though not only, on social identity, and she argues that:
If access to the means of production is predicated on social identity, then the definition of property rights hinges on the demarcation of social boundaries, and exploitation operates through the subordination of some people within access-defining groups, rather than on the complete exclusion of people from ownership of the means of production. Subordinates (dependent kin, clients, apprentices, etc.) are induced to work not by the threat of dismissal (which carries disadvantages for the employer-cumpatron as well as for the worker-client), but by the hope of advancing towards full membership or higher status within the group, backed by the ultimate threat of ostracism in extreme circumstances. In such circumstances, both access and exploitation operate through processes of ranking. (Berry 1988:63-4)
Another example of the ambivalence of exclusion is the nature of clientalist politics (see section 5.1). Clientalism is a inclusive form of relationship which is founded on exclusion.
The second type of paradox evident in the literature concerns the way practices of exclusion/inclusion have contributed to the economic crisis in Africa.
The most influential of these has been Bates' analysis of the politics of agricultural policy which argues, with a variant of urban bias logic, that the immediate interests of the majority of farmers have not been represented (Bates 1981). This political exclusion was not, however, sustainable, because farmers could accentuate or precipitate a fiscal crisis by reducing their marketed outputs of food and cash crops.
Other theses, which are potentially paradoxical when it comes to the formulation of policy to combat exclusion, identify a link between inclusionary practices and aggregate economic crisis. One such thesis argues that negative economic consequences arise from managing ethnic conflict by building inclusive coalitions through wide distribution of resources (see Rothchild and Foley 1988). The macro-economic costs, and loss of micro-economic efficiency, associated with the politics of inclusive coalitions is seen in this thesis as both an integral cause of the crisis and a legacy of the colonial construction of multi-ethnic States.
Another such thesis, which has been more fully elaborated and is now the subject of a major cross-national research project, is central to Berry's work. She argues that the agrarian crisis in Africa may have its roots in the fact that surpluses from agricultural production have been used to invest in channels of access rather than in increasing production. As she puts it:
Where access to land and other productive resources depends partly on nonmarket criteria, accumulation of cash and other fungible assets may not be a sufficient condition for secur- ing access to the means of production. If access depends on social identity, producers will use resources to establish or reaffirm advantageous identities and connections for themselves. (Berry 1988:67)
Drawing on data from Nigeria, she suggests that access to productive resources is regulated by a number of social identities based on multiple and overlapping criteria. In these circumstances, "people invest in meanings as well as the means of production - and struggles over meaning are as much part of the process of resource allocation as are struggles over surplus or the labour process" (p.66). Moreover, "the inclusive mode of labour management and recruitment associated with investment in institutions as channels of access may also promote unproductive patterns of resource use - overemployment, overgrazing, inefficient labour effort, accumulation of claims and clients rather than fixed capital" (Berry 1989:51).
In summary, according to Berry, a key current problem is not "social exclusion", but rather the opposite - the fact that "many Africans have become locked into multiple channels of access and strategies of resource management which perpetuate low productivity" (Berry 1989:50). But, partly as a result of low productivity and agrarian crisis, it may be that "in the long run, increasing numbers of impoverished rural people simply divest themselves, intentionally or no, of membership of accesscontrolling institutions", and thereby form "a new category of the dispossessed" (p.51).
Berry's thesis is important in that it affirms the value of a "multiple sites" perspective on social exclusion in Africa; it points to the interplay between social identity/entitlement and wider economic change; and it cautions against the reflex policy conclusion that inclusion is the solution to the problem of exclusion. In this thesis the inclusivity of African society is, on economic grounds, identified as problematical.
The work of both Berry and Rothchild and Foley indicate that any simple association between inclusion ("good") and exclusion("bad") is misdirected.
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