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Preconditions and Limits in the Formation of Associations: The Self-Help and Cooperative Movement in Subsaharan Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2016

John H. Hamer
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Extract

Interest in voluntary associations in Subsaharan Africa has risen as disillusionment has increased with massive aid programs for upgrading material standards of living. Increasingly it has become evident that programs planned and executed from the top down seldom result in significant change at the local level. When, however, people participate in the planning and creation of local level norms in voluntary associations, they take responsibility for inaugurating change. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the conditions necessary for establishment and the limits of usefulness of associations. Voluntary associations will be defined and followed by a brief analysis of the historical background of age sets, secret societies, and fraternities as precursors of modern self-help and cooperative movements.

There is a consensus that associations are essentially shared interest groups established independently of ascribed membership in kinship or territorially based groups (Anderson, 1971: 219; Bradfield, 1973: 492; Norbeck, 1967). Hoebel notes that such groups form an exclusive membership in the larger society, are formally structured, and produce a sense of cohesiveness among the members (1972: 468). Indeed, in his pioneer work on secret societies, Webster considered such groups as arising out of a “natural grouping together of men of the same age who have similar duties and interests in life” (1932: 130). Schurtz professed to find the origin of such groups in the antagonism between generations, leading to classification on the basis of age (Lowie, 1947: 298). Though evolutionary schemes such as Schurz's and Webster's have been heavily criticized, these two authors laid the descriptive groundwork for later anthropological studies of age sets, secret societies, and fraternal organizations.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 113 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1981

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