Conclusion

Modern scholars usually dismiss stereotypes as inherently irrational and fallacious bits of self-serving gossip about a given social group. Those working within this tradition are often more disposed to search out the psychological character flaws in the individuals who believe and perpetuate such forms of social gossip than to examine the contents of a particular set of stereotypes, and what these may reveal about the patterned social relationships between an entire group of stereotypers and the group they have stereotyped. More often than not, those within this dominant scholarly tradition seldom pause to ask how particular stereotypes were selected, what their significance might be for those who use them, or whether a given set has any factual basis.

While suspecting that most stereotypes, however misleading or exaggerated, have some factual basis, I do not assume that stereotypes are false by definition. As Michael Banton has suggested, they generally reflect the salient concerns of interacting social groups. Stereotypes 'have critical emotional significance for those who hold them and they fit together in a twisted but ordered pattern of social relations'.^[61]

I have argued that the remarkably similar Belgian and British stereotypes about the northern (Katangan) and southern (Northern Rhodesian) Lamba were no coincidence, but instead represent common European perceptions of the Lamba's response to their incorporation into a common colonial industrial order. Similarly, African stereotypes about the weak and backward Lamba country bumpkins—stereotypes found on both sides of the border—represent generalized urban prejudices against rural folk, these townsfolk's common 'struggle for prestige' in the European-dominated colonial order, and their common perception of the genuine and gradually worsening economic and social conditions among the Lamba villagers.

I do not suggest that all stereotypes at all times and in all places are rational or

factually informed bits of social gossip. Stereotypes, as self-perpetuating, ascriptive mental constructs, are probably used by all peoples everywhere to order and interpret the complexities of social life. As such, they can be either true or false. Here, however, I have demonstrated that there are sound historical reasons why the Lamba acquired their stigmatized reputation and, in the final section of this paper, I have suggested how their enduring sense of grievance and resentment over the circumstances which generated this reputation both informed their relationships with others in the past, and continues to inform social relations on the Zambian Copperbelt today.