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The article presents an anthropological review of the social processes and the themes of conflict and conflict resolutions taken by the Manchester School in South-Central Africa after the World War II. Anthropologist released different papers that tackled the different aspects of the school which included the social field, situational analysis, perpetual succession, intercalary roles, situational selection, cross-cutting ties, the dominant cleavage, redressive ritual, repetitive and changing social systems, processional form, processual change and much of the rhetoric studied has been concerned in disputes and court arguments.

The paper adopts a social constructionist theoretical framework based on understanding social structures to examine the social and cultural experiences, which might provide the proper context for learning to take place from an African perspective. A sociological approach is used to understand how the cognitive processes and conceptual structures of adolescent learners shape their affinity towards mathematics. A Marxist social theory is called upon to locate tools for advancing this sociological approach. The argument here is that learning, from a Marxist theoretical perspective, is in the conditions that bring people together and organise a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on relevance; without the points of contact, without the relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory (Murphy, 1999). In this sense, learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various discursive interactions of which they are a part. This is to suggest that learning occurs within the structures of a society and should not be measured as on the traditional assumption that it is a possession of individuals that can be found in their heads. Rather, it is the discourses that individuals engage in that provide the opportunity for learning to take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Population & Development Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)