Main description:

Applies new approaches to the study of a small, densely populated region of West Africa, integrating them into a regional history that analyzes interactions between localities and the modern state.

Constructions of Belonging provides a history of local communities living in Southeastern Nigeria since the late nineteenth century, examining the processes that have defined, changed, and re-produced these communities. Harneit-Sievers explores both the meanings and the uses that the community members have given to their particular areas, while also looking at the processes that have shaped local communities, and have made them work and continue tobe relevant, in a world dominated by the modern territorial state and by worldwide flows of people, goods, and ideas.

Axel Harneit-Sievers is a Research Fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies, and Director ofthe Nigeria Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Lagos.

Contents:

Introduction
The Igbo Local Community: Historical and Anthropological Approaches
Trans-local Connections and Precolonial Spheres of Influence: Nri "Hegemony" and Arochukwu
Drawing Boundaries, Making Chiefs: The Colonial State
"Town People" and "Church People": The Impact of Christianity
Making a Larger Community: Igbo Ethnicity
Federalism and Fear: Impact of Postcolonial State and Society since the 1970s
Institutionalizing Community I: Town Unions
Institutionalizing Community II: Traditional Rulers and Autonomous Communit
Reconceptualizing Community: Local Histories
The Politics of Competition and Fragmentation: Umuopara and Ohuhu
"History" as Politics by Other Means: Enugwu-Ukwu in Umunri Clan
Post-slavery and Marginalization: Nike
Conclusion: Making the Igbo "Town" in the Twentieth Century