Settlement stories: The construction of locality and community. An introduction
##The article introduces the common theme of the following case studies of settlement processes in West Africa: How do highly mobile and expansive societies produce localised communities and how are the various layers of loyalties - to the local settlement, the community of origin and supra-local kin groups - negotiated? Which role do the oral traditions of migration and settlement play in the establishment of a sense of local belonging? The case studies span acephalous and politically centralised societies in both savannah and rain forest environments. The introductory article highlights similarities and differences in the patterns of mobility, the relations between firstcomers and latecomers, the mental maps of the settlers and their narrative strategies as well as the feedback of the larger historiographic environment on the production of local histories.##
Keywords: settlement and oral history, oral history, contest in oral tradition, politics with oral texts, process of settlement, migration and oral history, history, local histories, mental maps
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