The Politics of Custom

How are we to explain the resurgence of customary chiefs in contemporary Africa? Rather than disappearing with the tide of modernity, as many expected, indigenous sovereigns are instead a rising force, often wielding substantial power and legitimacy despite major changes in the workings of the global political economy in the postCold War erachanges in which they are themselves deeply implicated. This pathbreaking volume, edited by anthropologists John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, explores the reasons behind the increasingly assertive politics of custom in many corners of Africa. Chiefs come in countless guisesfrom university professors through cosmopolitan businessmen to subsistence farmersbut, whatever else they do, they are a critical key to understanding the tenacious hold that traditional authority enjoys in the late modern world. Together the contributors explore this counterintuitive chapter in Africas history and, in so doing, place it within the broader world-making processes of the twenty-first century.