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| Title: | 'Batetela', 'Baluba', Basonge': Ethnogenesis in Zaire |
| Author: | Turner, Thomas |
| Year: | 1993 |
| Periodical: | Cahiers d'études africaines |
| Volume: | 33 |
| Issue: | 132 |
| Pages: | 587-612 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Congo (Democratic Republic of) |
| Subjects: | ethnic classification Luba Lulua Songe Tetela Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1993.1494 |
| Abstract: | The ethnic labels Luba, Songye, and Tetela all existed in the nineteenth-century Belgian Congo. Yet none of the labels had its present connotation. Luba applied to many peoples scattered across the present Shaba (Katanga), Maniema, and East and West Kasai regions. It has since undergone considerable narrowing so that it now applies only to the large ethnic groups known as Luba-Shaba and Luba-Kasai, respectively. The Lulua, in particular, have become a separate ethnic group. In contrast, the labels Songye and Tetela have acquired much broader currency. Each one used to apply to a subgroup of the people now known as Songye, but today each refers to a large ethnic community. This article shows how Europeans played a large role in defining ethnic groups in Congo, present-day Zaire. In the first decennia after independence, scholarly understanding of ethnicity was dominated by the concept of ethnogenesis. But the cases of ethnogenesis among the Lulua, Luba-Kasai, Tetela and Songye all support the author's view that 'primordialism' is wide of the mark. On the other hand, the 'instrumental' approach in vogue today, which considers ethnicity and nationalism as creations of elites, to be manipulated to their advantage, appears too simple to explain ethnic phenomena. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French (p. 690). |
