• Recap
• A Puzzle
• The state and ethnic boundaries
• “Second nature”: naturalizing boundaries

• institutional use
• institutional separation
• social closure
• power disparity
• cultural differentiation
• marking
• performing groupness
• explaining behavior/exemption

1. Encounter: new contact can generate new line (e.g. immigrants)
2. Imposition: state/powerful actor uses categories in new way
3. Borrowing: transposing boundary practices into a new domain
4. Conversation: ordinary interactions
5. Incentive shift: strategic behavior

Ancestral City Identity

Pre-Colonial Origins:

• Oyo Empire (15th-19th Cent.): coalition of cities, each with an identity
• alaafin (king) in Oyo-Ile (dominant city)
• tribute from lesser “kings” in other “ancestral cities”, protecting trade
• basorun (army leaders) acquired wealth through conquest
• shared religious practice legitimized Oyo leadership

Ancestral City Identity

• 19th century: internal war between alaafin and basorun
• alliance between basorun and Islamic armies, challenged traditional Oyo authority
• war led to founding of new city Ibadan, populated by Yoruba from many ancestral cities

Competing identities

at end of 19th century…

• increasing awareness of unified Yoruba identity
• rise of identities tied to military factions
• rapid spread of Christianity and Islam

Even though, at turn of the 20th century

• Oyo political power had disappeared
• War refugees settled outside ancestral cities
• Political mobilization of Yoruba as a group

• Most Yoruba are Christian (40%) or Muslim (40%)

  • divided by religious practice, limited intermarriage
  • Christians more educated, wealthier, politically influential

By late 20th century…

• ancestral cities primary political form of identification
• ancestral city competition informed political parties in Nigeria
• city-specific rituals/festivals, pilgrimages to visit ancestral city
• competition for civil service jobs/university spots by ancestral city
• outright denial/refusal of possibility of politics around religion, despite strategic reasons to do so

What might explain the persistence of ancestral cities as both a ethnic category and as the activated ethnic identity?

British Colonial State intervened, using a system of indirect rule:

• delegated powers to “traditional” political institutions