Introduction: Some notes on “African Customary Law”

Abstract

The papers collected here can safely be left to speak for themselves. Ranging from Abel's map of some ideal types, conceived at a level of abstraction comparable to Weber's typology of authority, to Sachs' account of a day's work in a Mozambique popular tribunal, they represent very fairly the diverse perspectives from which “customary law” is presently being written about. They show that we are dealing here with a number of different phenomena, and that people have seen these phenomena in sometimes radically opposed ways.The very label “African Customary Law” has a flavour of the 1950s and 60s about it, recalling that new and exciting area of study which Allott marked out single handed and then enthusiastically encouraged others to join him in developing. The assumption was then that we were dealing with a living, specifically African repertoire of norms and procedures which could be put to work in helping to shape some African “future”. Since then the nature and provenance of this repertoire and the merits of that ambition have been the subject of a lively re-examination; and that discussion was at the heart of the Lisbon conference where these papers originated.The profitable continuation of that discussion requires that we are clear about the range of meanings which “African customary law” may carry. My own, subjective, marking-out of the field would be along the following lines.