Actually a collection edited by Hobs. and the unsung hero Terence Ranger.
Ranger, an Africanist who worked with leftish nationalist movements there (and who retired recently from St. Anthony's college) also wrote some smart deconstructions of European anthropology, pointing out that much of the evidence of African 'tribes' was largely an invention. Scholars who discovered 'tribes' on the model of the ancient German institution, were, TR points out often also missionaries, whose formalised the 'tribal' institutions usually by writing a dictionary and a bible in the newly formalised language - making those informally mixed dialects into geographically distinctive and mutually exclusive European style national languages. These European institutions foisted on the Africans would then become the basis of a colonial-style divide and rule policy. The British would imagine distinctive 'national' characteristics into these equally imaginary divisions, characteristics which would happen to match the needs of the Imperially imposed division of labour. Some tribes were fancifully presumed to a special aptitude for one task - say a 'warrior' tribe, pressed into military service - another 'tribe would be discovered to find some other 'natural' affinity. Ranger says that the colonial records even indicate one unfortunate people who were supposed by their colonial masters to have a special disposition to working with 'night soil'. -- Jim heartfield