>this is very true for very many african tribes. there are
>very many differences culturally, but i feel that the core
>of our beliefs are more similar than different. different
>expressions, though. i mean which is why one group would be
>pastoralists or agriculturalists, have totally different
>lifestyles, but share certain common ideologies. and we can
>get into this if you want.


what would you indentify as common ideologies and what is their process of transmission?

i can think of a couple processses off the top: the diffusion of egyptian ideas of kingship and the diffusion of bantu languages with iron technology culture. i suppose i could add the construction of the black race and the the berlin conference, but i won't. these i think i've seen developed in fairly rigorous ways. i've seen other things on okp about modified non-dualism and eco-friendliness and whatnot, but in a style more polemical than peer-reviewed journal.

but beyond that tho, the construction of a "significant" level of commonality is itself not a neutral task. to bring up one example, i've seen quite a bit on locating large parts of africa within the "first world system" of the dar-ul-islam, quite excitingly, and to my uninformed mind, persuasively done, and john hunwick has compared the place of arabic in africa to the place of latin in europe. so there is the question of alternative narratives.



which is why we still call the
>indians in kenya, indians, and not kenyans. at least i
>consider them that way..and that's not academic.


it's def not at all academic, especially after uganda, but this is the gap between a blood-and-soil nation and a rights-based nation-state.