In this sophisticated study of power and resistance, Jean Comaroff
analyzes the changing predicament of the Barolong boo Ratshidi, a people
on the margins of the South African state. Like others on the fringes of
the modern world system, the Tshidi struggle to construct a viable order
of signs and practices through which they act upon the forces that
engulf them. Their dissenting Churches of Zion have provided an
effective medium for reconstructing a sense of history and identity, one
that protests the terms of colonial and post-colonial society and
culture.