Urbanization as a Social Process by Kenneth Little

Author:Kenneth Little [Little, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781136531293
Google: sa75AQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T04:54:37+00:00

7

Conclusions

In the foregoing pages it has been intimated that contemporary urban development results primarily from the expansion of capitalist enterprise in the African continent. We considered some aspects of the social effects and noted among other things that the population growth involved gives rise in present circumstances to two apparently contradictory processes, the one asserting ethnic factors, the other leading in the direction of ‘class’. The result of this dichotomy is, as we have stressed, more marked in some cities than others because the size of the highly educated, more westernized groups tends to be variable. A further, more specific, point has also to be remembered; this is that numerous West African cities continue to contain or have on their periphery what is known in Ghana as the zongo and in Nigeria as the sabon-gari (‘new town’). These places are the customary abode of African ‘strangers’ who in the Ghanaian and West Nigerian towns concerned are mainly Hausa and other islamicized groups, and Yoruba and Ibo in the northern towns of Nigeria. Indeed, sometimes the zongo has more inhabitants than the rest of the township (cf. Steel, 1961, p. 273). Further, the older European-established as well as the traditionally based cities still contain considerable ‘pockets’ of quasi-tribal culture in close proximity both to huge, recently erected buildings of steel and concrete1 and the white-collared class who work in them. Where, however, residential separation has taken place on an extensive scale there are several neighbourhoods, each with its own relatively self-sufficient social life.

As implied, Ibadan tends to show this character; but Stanleyville (now Kinsangani) seemingly provides an even clearer example because, according to Pons (1969, pp. 6–8), the inhabitants of one such area will tend to be members of the same tribe, and the incidence of ‘mixed’ or non-tribal marriage there will be low. Local recreational activities will be organized on a largely exclusive tribal basis, although at least some évolués will take part in them and are also likely to mix with the illiterate section during leisure-time, casually drinking and gossiping with them. Also, in this kind of area people will talk to each other exclusively in their own tribal vernacular. In another part of the town, however, the inhabitants will mostly be heard conversing in one or both of the linguae francae, Swahili and Lingala (and occasionally in French). Here, members of many different tribes will live side by side and commonly share the same dwelling compounds, and the incidence of non-tribal marriage will be high. Also, since informal friendship groups and formal voluntary associations will often consist of members of different tribes, a measure of anti-tribal sentiment may be in evidence. People will be found ready to argue that ‘tribe counts for nothing’; or that, ‘unlike our fathers, we no longer look at tribe nowadays’. In other words, this neighbourhood being occupied largely by the French-speaking évolués, it would be characterized by quite different patterns of culture and be-haviour from places where the uneducated masses of manual workers live.

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