The Mystique of Community

This book takes associations and cult societies in Africa as structural forms, much contrary to claims of super human agency proper to members, promoters and modernists alike. The aim is to understand the underlying principles of operation at work in organization and practices over a wide area (that stands astride the South of Cameroon and South East of Nigeria) and which even take on a universal character over time (with surviving forms in the Americas). The rich repertoire of grand societies, entertainment clubs, governing councils, women’s mobilization movements and mystery manifestations and therapeutic orders are analyzed comparatively in terms of spatial distribution, relationship to social organization/social structure, representations and connectivity/disassociation between persons and communities. This books brings together insights from sociology and anthropology into what is often treated as senselessly exotic by the foreign observer, the relics of a disturbing past for the modernized African, a tradition that must be reproduced mechanically by the African or religious practices that run contrary to the grand world religions with a proselytizing character.