West African Urbanization as a Social Process

Abstract

It has been customary, until quite recently, to study the impact of Western civilization upon primitive society as a phenomenon of culture contact. Scholars like Herskovits ans Malinowski, stimulated such research and a large number of studies were made in different parts of the primitive world, including Oceania and North America as well as Africa itself. Broadly, the aim of these investigations was to elucidate the particular Western traits and institutions adopted by the indigenous society concerned and their integration into the patterns of its culture.' Methodologically, there is some justification for this kind of approach when the contacts in question involve no special reordering of social relationships. Thus, until well on in the igth century, the contact that Europeans made with the native people of West Africa was almost entirely commercial. The two groups kept themselves apart and except for a few small Europeanised communities restricted to the coast, African society was not structurally affected to any degree. The contemporary situation, however, is entirely different. As a result of the European colonial powers assuming political control over the hinterland and of the subsequent effects of two world wars, the West African region has undergone a political and economic transformation. It is now a part of an international system of economics and shares the same kind of technical and technological development as the world outside. To a large extent, therefore, Africans and Europeans are involved in the same institutions. In view of this, instead of regarding the social changes taking place