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This chapter provides a survey of Benin City and the Edo kingdom to convey some of the local means of social organisation with regard to the rural and urban areas. It underlies the importance of the institutions of the Oba of Benin, and offers a schematic outline with some suggestions as to how the Oba of Benin is situated within these localised social relations.

This chapter looks at various contributions to a history of art. It uses Ryder's conceptual distinctions of the field material available to researchers to explore some of the assumptions upon which research has been based. The chapter broadens this examination to look at various contributions to the art history of the Edo-speaking area, arguing that limitations inherent in theoretical models developed in relation to Benin have become underlying and uncritical assumptions in many studies of Edo society and its art history. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a deeper understanding of the Edo-speaking area will have to explore regional and local histories, to further an understanding of the region and to gain a deeper insight into the historical processes at the urban centre of Benin City. It is by these means that the local and regional art histories can be developed.

This chapter explores the biographies of some artists working in the different art worlds of Benin City, highlighting some of the forms of patronage, the processes of commissioning at urban shrines, and the possibilities available to artists. It discusses some of the strategies they use in the production of their work. They are selected to indicate a diversity of production and use of strategies, as well as to situate the role of each individual artist and the artefacts they produce in local conditions at these urban cult shrines.

This chapter cites a number of biographies of various priests, a sample of those related in conversation with the author and chosen partly to demonstrate the diversity of individuals engaged in this profession. The biographies present salient events selected by the priest as pertinent to his or her situation at the time of the interviews. They are a means of exploring local ideas and practices relevant to these urban shrines, and to understanding local ideas of personhood and possession by the deities which are worshipped at them. In this way, the making of meaning by individuals participating in these institutions can be understood. A further dimension is provided by the many networks of ohens in Benin City, who participate in the round of annual festivals that commemorate the first induction of the celebrating ohen into a formal relationship with his or her deities.

This chapter examines the institution of urban contemporary cult shrines in Benin City, introducing the forms of organisation and strategies used by shrine priests and considering some of the ideas and practices that are integral to this institution. The word ohen is used in the Edo language to describe a priest who worships on behalf of a community or as a Christian minister. The achievement of the privileged relationship to a deity confers power upon the ohen, influence in the spirit world through the intervention of that deity, and thus the ability to shape the outcome of events in agbon (the material world). In some circumstances, it is possible for ohen to acquire shrines through the direct intervention of the deity. In these cases, the deity usually takes the individual to its spiritual domain, often for lengthy periods of time, to be instructed in the required rites.