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This article deals with the history and development of sungusungu organisations in Kenyan Kuria from 1998 to the present time and the radical changes it has initiated. Developing out of indigenous organisation, sungusungu arose initially to provide a means of controlling theft, particularly cattle raiding. Operating with the sanction of the district administration, local norms of crime, trial and punishment were developed, distinct from those embodied in the national penal code. Guarding their independence, groups have kept their distance from the police and judiciary to avoid the systemic corruption of those institutions. In distancing themselves from the more corrupt aspects of the state, and acting against it within their areas of operation, these groups have had far-reaching effects on local security, to the extent that their success holds out possibilities for them to extend their activities into other spheres.

The spontaneous development of community-based policing in central Tanzania in the early 1980s in the sungusungu movement & the subsequent incorporation of such groups into administrative structures over wide areas of Tanzania poses problems for how to conceive of the state in East Africa. This article deals with the circumstances which prompted the emergence of the movement & its late development among the Kuria of Mara Region in the 1990s. It argues that in ceding significant powers to local communities a 'quiet revolution' has taken place, reversing the centralism that was a noted aspect of the Tanzanian post-colonial state. In so doing, it has opened up a divide between the different branches of government, with the political & administrative wings supporting the groups & the institutional innovation they represent in the face of opposition by the police & judiciary. In the praxis of government in the rural areas, the anomalous legality of sungusungu groups is by no means to the disadvantage of the administration but raises the issue of how one can harmonize national & local systems of law & justice. References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper traces the development of policies dealing with HIV/AIDS in Botswana from their beginning in the late 1980s to the current programme to provide population-wide anti-retroviral therapy (ARV). Using a variety of source material, including long-term ethnographic research, it seeks to account for the failure of Western-inspired approaches in dealing with the pandemic. It does this by looking at the cultural and institutional features that have created resistance to the message and inhibited effective implementation. The negative response to the first educational campaign stressing condom use is described and contextualized in terms of Tswana ideas of morality and illness. Nor, as was initially expected, did the introduction of free ARV therapy operate to break the silence and stigma that had developed around the disease. Take-up was very slow, and did not operate to encourage widespread testing. In 2003, key policymakers in Botswana began to argue for a break with the AIDS 'exceptionalism' position, with its emphasis on voluntarism, confidentiality and the human rights of patients. This resulted in routine testing being introduced in 2004. This links to a major argument running through the paper which is that the failure of policy cannot be attributed solely to the nature of local populations. Western cultural assumptions about 'good practice' also require critical examination.

Der Beitrag behandelt das Thema der relativen Abwesenheit von Ethnologen bei der Formulierung der HIV/AIDS-Politik und -Forschung in Afrika. Zuerst wird in historischer Perspektive die Entwicklung der wichtigsten politischen Planungsgremien in den USA betrachtet, um sich dann dem rezenteren Aufbau von UNAIDS und dessen dominierender Rolle bei der Formulierung der Agenda für Afrika zu widmen. Danach werden die Implikationen für die ethnologische Forschung untersucht, um die Gründe für das Zögern bezüglich einer Beteiligung an der AIDS-Forschung zu erhellen. Schließlich wendet sich der Artikel spezifischem Fallstudien-Material zu und untersucht Strategien der AIDS-Erziehung in Botswana, um zu illustrieren, welche potenziellen Einsichten die Ethnologie zur Erklärung von Erfolg oder Misserfolg solcher Kampagnen liefern kann. Betont wird die Wichtigkeit der kulturellen Konstruktionen von Krankheit und es wird gezeigt, in welcher Weise die westliche AIDS-Botschaft durch die lokalen Bevölkerungen nicht als neutrales wissenschaftliches "Faktum", sondern als Aspekt von politischer und ideologischer Herrschaft interpretiert wird. Umgekehrt wirft diese Diskussion das Problem der Koexistenz verschiedener Glaubenssysteme, speziell im Bereich der Medizin, ihrer Beziehungen untereinander und der sozialen Kontexte auf, in denen westliche Botschaften als antagonistisch bekämpft werden. (ICA2)

In 1975, the transnational British American Tobacco Company (BAT) set out to rapidly develop tobacco growing in four areas of smallholder production in Kenya. This move, prompted by the Kenyan firm's loss of tobacco leaf supplies from Uganda in 1972 and then Tanzania in 1976, was to prove remarkably successful. Output in the four areas chosen for production of tobacco leaf rose from 209 tons in 1975 to 4,034 tons in 1982, making Kenya self-sufficient in that crop despite a simultaneous sales campaign which doubled the domestic consumption of manufactured cigarettes over the same period. Production has continued to rise since then, with about 8,000 small-holder farmers in the scheme producing 6,000 tons of cured tobacco leaf in 1984.