Political Mobility and the Pedestrian Society

Abstract

For many parts of Africa and Asia a rural society is often a pedestrian society. There are limited means of transport; the peasant is largely immobilized and his movement to the outside is a major undertaking. He lives in an economic and political microcosm. Typically his world may be ten miles long and twelve miles wide, bounded by where a road comes through a swamp and ending where it drifts over the hills. It is a world that is effectively cut off from the outside; in his own view the pedestrian lives on an island, surrounded by a vast sea of the uninhabited and the unknown. A majority of Africans are still ruralites; in many regions a man will spend most of his life on foot, encapsulated in his village area, with only occasional access to some conveyance. His relations with a central government will be non-existent, or at best episodic. He is part of the remote periphery, far removed from the centre of government and vastly more numerous than the cadre of elite who make up the centre. Given these conditions it may be asked then, why do so many professional analysts continue to view central-local relations from the myopic vantage-point of the centre only? Aside from the mistakes, distortions, and misadventures in print, we essentially still know very little about the vast majority of African society. In the present period the 'remote' periphery remains remote analytically. More specifically, the nature of the local political and economic systems, and the way they shape the attitudes, perceptions, and motivations of peasant farmers is among the most significant problems of African research. Facts at the empirical level and detailed descriptions of modern peasant life are badly needed. There is also a need for middle range theoretical models that have