caa a22 4500 38803694X CHVBK 20180307125008.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199810 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/1161166 doi S0001972000048828 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/1161166 Fanthorpe Richard Locating the politics of a Sierra Leonean chiefdom [Elektronische Daten] [Richard Fanthorpe] The chiefdoms of Sierra Leone are institutions of colonial origin but nevertheless continue to serve as local government units in the post-colonial state. The prevailing view among scholars is that these institutions have little basis in indigenous political culture, and have furthermore become breeding grounds of political corruption. This view has tended to elide anthropological analysis of internal chiefdom politics. However, it is argued in this article that such conclusions are premature. With reference to the Biriwa Limba chiefdom of northern Sierra Leone, it is shown that historical precedent, in many cases relating to prominent political figures of the late nineteenth century, continues to serve as a primary means of ordering local rights in land, settlement and political representation. This phenomenon is not a product of innate conservatism but emerges rather as a pragmatic response to the persistent failure of successive Sierra Leone administrations to extend modern measures of citizenship to the bulk of the rural populace. Rights and properties have become progressively localised in villages originally registered for tax collection in the early colonial era. Here one finds one of the most telling legacies of the British policy of indirect rule in post-colonial Sierra Leone. Copyright © International African Institute 1998 Africa Cambridge University Press 68/4(1998-10), 558-584 0001-9720 68:4<558 1998 68 AFR https://doi.org/10.2307/1161166 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/1161166 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Fanthorpe Richard NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Africa Cambridge University Press 68/4(1998-10), 558-584 0001-9720 68:4<558 1998 68 AFR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence SWISSBIB 077229096 BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge