Traditionally stateless African societies were egalitarian yet individually mobile

Evidence

At home these were a traditionally stateless people, huddled together in densely packed egalitarian settlements, millet farmers and raisers of livestock. In 1960 only 1 in 16 was Muslim or Christian; fewer adults had even a modicum of schooling. Their political organization and religion were based on descent ties, neighbourhood (manifested as an earth cult), ritual specialization of clans, and marriage exchange. The largest corporate units (patrilineages) were linked to the constant flux of selfreproducing domestic groups by a common ideology of kinship and the practice of ancestor worship. Age and genealogical seniority conferred office and stewardship of collective assets, principally cattle for bridewealth, on an informal gerontocracy. But individual mobility and small-scale accumulation were widespread; and the frequency of raiding between quite close neighbours lent considerable uncertainty to the social life of these fighting hill tribesmen. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2289

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The apartheid state engineered categories for groups that had no prior bounded identity. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 557