bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gottesvorstellungen in Oberguinea
Authors: Westermann Von Diedrich
Published: April 2006

Westafrika ist das klassische Land des Fetisches. Man will mit diesem Ausdtuck eine besonders niedrige Religionsform bezeichnen, die Verehiung eines beliebigen Gegenstandes. Wir tun damit dem Afrikaner Unrecht. Wohl verwendet er Gegenstände zu religiösen Zwecken, aber sie werden niemals beliebig gewählt, sondern nur sofern sie nach seiner Meinung Träger wertvoller Kräfte sind, Ein Stein verleiht Dauer, weil er selber unvergänglich ist. Der Zahn des Leoparden ist geschätzt, weil er Teil hat an den gefürchteten Eigenschaften dieses Tieres. Zudem wäre es falsch, von einer religiösen Verehrung dieser Gegenstände zu reden, sie sind wirksame Hilfsmittel im Kampf des Lebens, aber sie werden nicht angebetet; und sie sind keineswegs der einzige oder vorherrschende Gegenstand religiöser Betätigung, vielmehr gibt es gerade in Westafrika eine Fülle religiöser Vorstellungen, die zum erheblichen Teil sogar persönlichen Charakter tragen und als Gottheiten zu bezeichnen sind.
The Religions of Nigeria
Authors: Meek C. K.
Published: April 2006

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Most people are aware that Nigeria is named after the river Niger, but many may be surprised to hear that the word Niger is not derived from the Latin adjective niger meaning ‘black’, but from a Libyan and Sudanic root, meaning ‘water“or ‘river’. This word was used by the geographer Ptolemy some 1,800 years ago in the Greek form of ‘Niγɛιρ’, and it is used to-day by the tribes of lake Chad in the form of njer. But Pliny employed the form Nigris, and from very early times the land of the Niger was called Nigritia. The modern name of Nigeria was only invented forty-six years ago by Miss Flora Shaw, who became, quite appropriately, the wife of Lord Lugard, the master-builder of Nigeria. In a letter to The Times, written in 1897, Miss Shaw said, ‘It may be permissible to coin a shorter title for the agglomeration of pagan and Mahomedan States which have been brought, by the exertion of the Royal Niger Company, within the confines of a British Protectorate.’ Her suggestion that the new title should be Nigeria was at once accepted. But it did not receive official recognition until the territories of the Royal Niger Company were formally taken over by the Imperial Government in 1900, and were formed into the two administrations known as Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria. Fourteen years later these two administrations were amalgamated into a single Nigeria, which then became, next to India, the most populous dependency in the British Empire.
The Lingua Franca of the Middle Congo
Authors: Guthrie Malcolm
Published: April 2006

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From time to time there have appeared in this journal notes on the lingua franca spoken along the central section of the River Congo. On the usual principle of discarding the prefix in referring to the names of Bantu languages, this lingua franca has been called Ngala. In this case, however, we are obliged to retain the prefix to avoid confusion, as there exists in this area more than one language whose name is derived from this stem.
Swahili Epic Literature
Authors: Harries Lyndon
Published: April 2006

The Swahili people are unique among the Bantu of East Africa in possessing an heritage of written literature of considerable range and antiquity. The earliest reasonably authentic examples consist of mashairi, song-poems, attributed to Liongo Fumo, prince of Ozi, c. A.D. 1150–1200. Many of the well-known mashairi were impromptu compositions of the minstrels who vied with one another at the songtourneys.
Proverbial Lore and Word-Play of the Fulani
Authors: Arnott D. W.
Published: April 2006

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The wit and wisdom of the Fulani, as of other African peoples, are expressed most characteristically in their proverbs and riddles. Their proverbs are amply illustrated by the collections of H. Gaden and C. E. J. Whitting, and a selection of riddles appeared in a recent article in Africa by M. Dupire and the Marquis de Tressan. But there are other types of oral literature—both light and serious—which various writers have mentioned, without quoting examples. So Mlle Dupire refers to formes litteraires alambiquées and ritournelles des enfants bororo, and G. Pfeffer, in his article on ‘Prose and Poetry of the Fulbe,’ speaks of jokes and tongue-twisters. The aim of this article is to present some examples of these types of proverbial lore and word-play—epigrams, tongue-twisters, and chain-rhymes—which were recorded, along with many more riddles and proverbs, in the course of linguistic research during a recent tour of the Fula-speaking areas of West Africa, and to consider their relation to proverbs and riddles. These types of oral literature are of course by no means peculiar to the Fulani, and a number of the examples here quoted may well have parallels in other languages of West Africa or farther afield. But an examination of such pieces in one language may perhaps contribute something to the general study of this kind of lore.
The Social Context of Cewa Witch Beliefs
Authors: Marwick M. G.
Published: April 2006

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Certain features of Cewa witch beliefs make them well suited to sociological analysis. As this type of analysis has been somewhat neglected by students of witch beliefs, Part I of this paper will be devoted to a brief review of some of the literature (mainly on Bantu) and to an attempt to formulate a serviceable hypothesis. Part II will summarize information about the Cewa essential to an understanding of Part III, in which the hypothesis will be applied to Cewa material. Part III will appear in a subsequent number of Africa.
The Use of Tax Registers to Determine the Population Distribution for Sampling Purposes
Authors: Douglas A. J. A.
Published: April 2006

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Certain sampling problems which arose in the design of the Agricultural Survey of Basutoland in 1949-50 were solved by the use of the native tax registers, in conjunction with the rather scanty information provided by the last population census in 1946. As the situation was one which is likely to be found in a number of African Territories, it may be of interest to describe it and to discuss the methods by which our difficulties were overcome.
Native Courts and British Justice in Africa
Authors: Lewin Julius
Published: April 2006

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For many years now Native courts have been a feature of colonial administration in British Africa. They are to be found in almost every district and they hear thousands of cases. Yet such is the confusion of thought that exists about their aims and functions that these courts have not yet made anything like the contribution to our knowledge of Native law that might have been expected.
The Agricultural System of the Manya-Krobo of the Gold Coast
Authors: Field M. J.
Published: April 2006

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The Manya-Krobo are one of the eight groups comprising the Adangme-speaking peoples who inhabit the Shai Plain between the River Volta and the Accra Plain. Until about 1890 the Krobo head-quarters were on the Krobo Hill, a rocky fastness which rises abruptly like a craggy island out of the perfectly flat plain. They have now abandoned this hill and made their head-quarters in the town of Odumase near the foot.
Recent Activities of the Literature Bureau, Zaria, Northern Nigeria
Authors: East R. M.
Published: April 2006

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The Literature Bureau was originally started, in 1930, by the Education Department of Northern Nigeria, as a Translation Bureau. Its main function at first was to produce Hausa text-books for use in schools, but in the years before the war it was trying to lay the foundation of a more general literature for the Hausa-speaking people. In January 1939 a Hausa paper was started with the title Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo, and an Assistant District Officer was attached to the Bureau to supervise its publication and business side. But in 1940, owing to reduction in staff, such a man could no longer be spared, and the paper had to be run without him.
The Modern Evolution of African Populations in the Belgian Congo
Authors: Maquet Jacques J.
Published: April 2006

Since the end of the war, the changes undergone by African society in the Belgian Congo have been a recurrent theme in colonial journals published in Belgium and in the Congo. We shall attempt to give here a brief survey of the present situation and of the problems which arise out of it, as they appear in some of these articles.

We have to start with this question: what are the different social or cultural categories into which the eleven million Africans living in the Belgian Congo can be divided? The main cleavage, which presents itself to any observer, is based on the character—tribal or otherwise—of the political institutions to which the individual is subject.
Marriage Rites among the Aku (Yoruba) of Freetown
Authors: Bassir Olumbe
Published: April 2006

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In the latter half of the eighteenth century, as a result of the British Government's anti-slavery legislation, negroes began to arrive in England in increasing numbers. Although there is no evidence of the operation of an anti-negro colour bar in England in those days it soon appeared desirable to repatriate them. Since it was not possible to return each ex-slave to his own original home, or that of his ancestors, the British Government negotiated with local chiefs the purchase of twenty square miles of coastland in the Sierra Leone peninsula, and in 1787 landed there the first batch of 400 freed slaves accompanied by 9 officials and (according to the records) a number of English prostitutes. Not many of this first group survived, owing to climatic conditions, but a second group of 1,131 Negroes arrived from Nova Scotia in 1792.
A Further Note on Funeral Friendship
Authors: Tew Mary
Published: April 2006

A Detailed description of a kind of joking relationship among the Ambo is welcome for several reasons. The institution of funeral friendship is found in the cultures of a far wider region than that indicated by the writer. Not only do the tribes of the Bemba and Nyanja groups associate partnership in funeral obligations with freedom of mutual abuse, but this is also culturally accepted widely in Tanganyika and Portuguese East Africa. It seems that from the Zambezi in the south to Lake Tanganyika, and from the east coast to the Luangwa river, are to be found the main elements of the institution described for the Ambo. Hitherto they have been known by their vernacular names: banungwe for the Bemba, uzukuru for the Nyanja, Tumbuka and Lake Shore Tonga, mwilo for the Yao, utani for the Ngoni and neighbouring tribes of Tanganyika. In every case funeral obligations mutually accepted are made the basis of an alliance between persons belonging to different clans, or even to different tribes.
Patterns of Authority in West Africa
Authors: Brown Paula
Published: April 2006

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The development of large centralized states in West Africa has long been recognized. The complexity of organization of the few well-known kingdoms, but not their differences in size and structure, is constantly emphasized in the literature. The number and variety of West African groups which have not developed states have, on the other hand, frequently been underestimated. In a comparative review by Professors Fortes and Evans-Pritchard two types of political system, centralized and segmentary, have been described for Africa as a whole, with examples of each in West Africa. A survey of West African societies suggests, however, that finer distinctions are possible and that not all these societies can be placed in one or other of these two categories. In particular, this classification omits consideration of ‘stateless’ societies in which associations, rather than a segmentary lineage system, regulate political relations; and it fails to distinguish different types of authority and political structure in states.
L'Évolution du Schéma Initiatique chez les Femmes Oubi (Région de Taï, Côte d'Ivoire)
Authors: Holas B.
Published: April 2006

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Situation générale du Problème

L'exemple des Oubi que nous avons choisi pour la présente étude n'est que l'illustration d'un problème plus général qui décidera du proche avenir des économies traditionnelles dans les forêts de l'ouest éburnéen.

En accueillant la culture des plantes industrielles: caféier et cacaoyer, comme une forme nouvelle de leurs activités, les petites unités ethniques de cette zone—jusqu'ici matériellement autonomes—doivent faire appel à toutes leurs ressources morales, afin que leur intégration dans un système économique plus vaste, se réalise sans trop de dommages. Les marchés mondiaux du café et du cacao n'étant pas pour l'instant en cause, le problème immédiat reste en général circonscrit dans le cadre de l'Union Française, plus précisément dans des relations Côte d'Ivoire-métropole.
Stabilization in the Manyika Dialect of the Shona Group
Authors: Carter Hazel
Published: April 2006

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A Stable word may be defined as a form which is capable of standing by itself as a complete sentence, other than a free verbal tense. In Manyika the categories of words found stabilized are independent and dependent nominals, proper names and, but rarely, relative verbal tenses.
Le Sens des Masques dans l'Initiation chez les Guerzé de la Guinée Française
Authors: Mengrelis Thanos
Published: April 2006

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L'importance de l'initiation chez les peuples africains a été soulignée par tous les auteurs qui ont étudié leur vie sociale et religieuse. Dr. Harley, pour le Libéria, en a fait une description qui reste un de nos meilleurs documents sur la question. Nous nous proposons, dans cet article, d'exposer quelques observations que nous avons pu faire, sur le même sujet, chez les habitants de la région forestière de la Guinée Française, et notamment du cercle de N'Zérékoré, au cours d''un séjour de plusieurs années.
The Mande Creation Myth
Authors: Dieterlen Germaine
Published: April 2006

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In the course of the investigations carried out by the Missions Griaule in French West Africa during several decades, our attention has been drawn to the fact that numerous populations in the French Sudan and Upper Volta claimed to be descended from a common stock located in Mande. Mande is the traditional centre of the ancient Keita empire (called by the Arabs the Mali empire), which was founded in the thirteenth century by Soundiata Keita. The cultural centre of this area today is Kangaba, which the inhabitants call Kaba. A list of the peoples in West Africa who claim to have come from Mande has been drawn up and published.
Versuch Einer Analyse der Sozialen Struktur der Matakam
Authors: Hinderling Paul
Published: April 2006

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Anmerkung : Nach einem Aufenthalt von nur zweieinhalb Monaten bei einer Kulturgruppe, wobei eine ethnographische Sammlung angelegt und die Gesamtkultur studiert wurde, jedoch ohne die Beherrschung der Eingeborenensprache, ist es nicht möglich, die soziale Struktui vollständig darzustellen. Es scheint dem Verfasser, daβ die vorliegende Studie einmal dadurch ihre Berechtigung hat, daβ die soziale Struktur der Matakam in ihren Hauptzügen immerhin aufgezeigt werden kann und daβ sich das System durch bemerkenswerte Einfachheit und Klarheit auszeichnet.

Die Gliederung der Studie ist der sozialen Struktur angepaβt. Sie soll nicht allgemein verbindlich sein. Gröβte Klarheit der Systematik wurde erstrebt.
A Genealogical Charter
Authors: Bohannan Laura
Published: April 2006

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The Tiv of Northern Nigeria, who number some 800,000, believe that they are all descended from one man, Tiv, through some 14 to 17 generations of known ancestors (Fig. 1). These ancestors are constantly named in casual conversation and in discussion of serious affairs. To understand things Tiv one must know Tiv genealogies. By genealogical reference a Tiv traces ties of kinship and marriage, claims a place to live and farm, argues his case in a moot, conducts matters of magic and ritual, and decides against whom he will fight on any given occasion. Genealogies are the key to Tiv social organization. Tiv political structure is based on a lineage system: a system of segmented groups in which each segment (save the maximal) is included in a segment of a higher order but of the same kind, and each segment (save the minimal) includes segments of a lower order but of the same kind. The Tiv system has an almost one to one correlation between lineage and territorial segments. Both are called ‘those of X’, the eponymous ancestor; thus Mbaduku (those of Aduku) describes both the lineage segment (ipaven, pl. uipaven) and the discrete territory which they inhabit (tar, pl. utar).
Speculative Origins of the Fulani Language
Authors: Jeffreys M. D. W.
Published: April 2006

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The Fulani people extend across Africa, from Senegal to Dafur, but their origin, like the origin of the universe, is unknown. I have drawn attention to the probable origin of the name Fulani. I propose in this article to review some of the suggested origins of the Fulani language and to put forward a suggestion of my own.
Some New Shrines of the Gold Coast and their Significance
Authors: Field M. J.
Published: April 2006

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There is reason to believe that at one time the greater part of the Gold Coast had one simple type of social organization. Where destruction of this took place the disturbing influences spread from the North southwards. On the coastal plains are some areas which, for various reasons, were barely touched. In these areas the aboriginal type of social organization is preserved, more or less intact, to-day.
A Ritual of Kingship among the Swazi
Authors: Kuper Hilda
Published: April 2006

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Towards the end of every year Swazi from the Swaziland Protectorate and from beyond its borders come to the capital, the home of the Indlovukati (Queen-Mother), to take part in the dominant national ceremony, the Incwala. I will analyse this in some detail from the angle of social stratification. Cook, Schoeman, and Marwick have described the Incwala, but their accounts are very incomplete, nor can I accept their interpretations.

The Incwala can be abstracted from Swazi culture, in the same way as any other situation—a marriage, a court case, a business agreement, the building of a hut, &c., but it has a wider and more representative personnel, and Swazi recognize it as the most important of all national ceremonies, and the most essential event of the year. Personal joys and tragedies, the birth of a child, or the death of a loved one affect individual men and women, but the Incwala ‘is the heavy play of all the people’.
Alternate Generations among the Lele of the Kasai, South-West Congo
Authors: Douglas Mary
Published: April 2006

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In the last fifty years certain instances of a special privileged relation between grandparents and grandchildren have been quoted so frequently as to have become almost classic cases. The three most important are those reported for the Dieri tribe of SE. Australia (Howitt 1904), the Pentecost Islanders of Melanesia (Rivers 1914), and the Oraons of Chota Nagpur (Sarat Chandra Roy 1915). In all three cases the system of kinship terms treats grandchildren as if they were in the same generation as their grandparents, but in each report slightly different aspects of the relation between grandparents and grandchildren are emphasized. Among the Oraons it is the bantering mode of conversation between a man and his granddaughter or greatniece ‘in which the two parties habitually act the part of man and wife’ to which attention is drawn, leading to the conjecture that there was formerly a system of marriage between grandparents and grandchildren. In Pentecost Island the classing of alternate generations together in kinship terminology is ‘connected with an ancient social condition in which it was the normal occurrence for a man to marry the granddaughter of his brother’. Among the Dieri tribe the custom of marriage with a daughter's daughter of the man's own brother was reported as actually in practice.
Shall We Use the Word ‘Gurunsi’?
Authors: Zwernemann Jürgen
Published: April 2006

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Some years ago the Rev. Fr. Nicolas discussed the problem of the term ‘Gurunsi’ in this journal. He argued that it should be abolished on the grounds that it was inadequate and furthermore derogatory to the tribes in question. He wrote (pp.170-1): ‘Tout un groupe de populations de la Volta Noire est désigné par un ethnique pluriel: Gourounsi, ou son singulier: Gourounga. . . . Et ce qui est le comble de l'anomalie, ces appellations . . . sont unanimement répudiées par toutes les confédérations de ce groupement, parce que toujours perçues par elles comme denigrantes sinon comme injurieuses.) A year later he again discussed the question in the Introduction to his Glossaire L'élé-Français (p. 136) : ‘. . . ce sous-groupe ne devrait pas être dit “gourounsi” car cet ethnique pluriel ne convient qu'à une seule tribu du groupe Moaya qui seule le reconnaît comme sien et le porte donc volontiers . . .’ The tribe referred to is the Nankanse, and the source of his information is Rattray. It may therefore be of some interest to discuss once more the question of the term ‘Gurunsi’ or ‘Grusi’
The Origin of the Name ‘Hausa’
Authors: Skinner Neil
Published: April 2006

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In his introductory notes to Bargery's dictionary, Westermann summarizes the early historical records of the Hausa-speaking peoples and, in particular, discusses the name ‘Hausa’ itself, without forming any theory as to its provenance. He points out that, apart from a reference to Ḥauṣiyin by Ibn Sa‘id, an Andalusian Arab writer who died in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the first reference to the word is four centuries later, in the Tarikh-es-Sudan. Ibn Sa‘id incidentally—if we are to believe Ibn Khallikan—got no nearer to the Western Sudan than Tunis, so it seems that his information was as secondhand as that of most of our other Arab authorities for the area. In the interim four centuries, though Ibn Batuta uses such names of individual Hausa chiefdoms as Kūbar (Gobir), the only generic name used was by Al Maqrizi, an Egyptian, whom Hiskett suggests got the name from some Bornu source, without knowing much about the people it referred to. This was Afnū, which is still the name used for the Hausa by the Kanuri and other related peoples of the Chad area. While making no suggestion himself as to a possible source of origin, at the end of the first section of his notes, Westermann makes reference to the conquest of Hausaland by Muhammadu Askia of Songhai, and to his ultimate repulse by Muhammadu Kanta, chief of Kebbi, in 1513.
Joking Relationships, Kin Categories, and Clanship among the Gogo
Authors: Rigby Peter
Published: April 2006

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Institutionalized ‘joking relationships’ occur between several different categories of kin and affines, and between groups or categories of varying inclusiveness. Thus brothers-in-law, mother's brothers and sister's sons, and kinsmen of alternate generations are frequent categories between whom joking relationships exist; and localities, villages, clans, and peoples or ‘tribes’ may have joking relationships with one another, variously or simultaneously. Radcliffe-Brown (1952, p. 95) rightly points out that if such behaviour is to be adequately explained, all of the contexts in which it occurs must be taken into account. He also indicates the further ramifications of the problem by placing it in the wider context of ‘alliances’. Thus ‘alliance by the joking relationship may exist separately or combined in several different ways’ with alliances ‘(1) through inter-marriage, (2) by exchange of goods or services, (3) by blood-brotherhood or exchanges of names or sacra’, and so on (1952, p. 102).
Witchcraft and Sorcery: Taxonomy versus Dynamics
Authors: Turner Victor W.
Published: April 2006

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It is greatly to the credit of the editors of Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa that they have made generally available ten systematic accounts of witch beliefs in East and Central African societies. All teachers of anthropology must surely be grateful to them on this account alone. Moreover the book is spiced with many insights into sociocultural problems connected with the main theme. A permissive editorial policy has stimulated a rich diversity of viewpoints and presentations. But one is left with the feeling that Monica Wilson's plea for the comparative analysis of these ‘standardized nightmares’—a plea which forms the book's motto—as one of the ‘keys to the understanding of society’ has not met here with a wholly satisfactory response.
Traditional History and Social Structure in Ufipa
Authors: Willis R. G.
Published: April 2006

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The Fipa of south-western Tanganyika are a Bantu-speaking people numbering 78,000 at the last tribal census in 1948. Most of them live on a high and largely deforested plateau bounded on the west by the southern extremity of Lake Tanganyika and on the east by Lake Rukwa. On the plateau, a corridor of land roughly 140 miles long and varying from 30 to 50 miles in width, the Fipa are agriculturalists and raisers of livestock, particularly cattle, goats, and poultry; their principal crops are millet, maize, and beans. Along the shores of the two lakes the Fipa are also fishermen.
Paramountcy to Partnership: J. H. Oldham and Africa
Authors: Bennett George
Published: April 2006

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The jubilee of the World Missionary Conference, which was held at Edinburgh in June 1910, should be noticed by students of Africa, since it brought into prominence for the first time, as one of its two secretaries, a man who was to have considerable influence on African affairs and was the first Administrative Director of the International African Institute. This was J. H. Oldham who had been briefly a missionary in India and then secretary of the Missionary Study Council of the United Free Church of Scotland. ‘The conspicuous ability’ he showed in the organization and running of the great conference led to his subsequent appointment as full-time secretary of the Continuation Committee, which was set up to maintain the work of the conference and which became in 1921 the International Missionary Council. In this post, and as the first editor of the International Review of Missions, Oldham was in constant and daily touch with mission affairs from the whole world. He was, in fact, beginning a long career as a missionary statesman, with, from the First World War, his headquarters at Edinburgh House in London. In negotiating then with the Government over German missionaries and their property in India and the British African territories, Oldham began to build up a fund of goodwill in the official world.
The Yoruba Ogboni Cult in Oyo
Authors: Morton-Williams Peter
Published: April 2006

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The Yoruba Ogboni cult has been referred to as a typical ‘secret society’ for over fifty years, yet it has never been described in any detail, or analysed in accurate general terms. Frobenius discovered its controlling importance in Yoruba religious organization in 1910 and promptly became initiated into the Ibadan Ogboni, but only to get information from the priests of other Yoruba cults. He made no attempt to study the beliefs of Ogboni members, whom he dismissed as ‘mystery-mongering greybeards’. Two anthropologists have been initiated into the cult in the course of the last twenty-five years, but have declared themselves bound by its oath of secrecy, and so have published nothing about it.
From Kinship to Common Descent: Four-Generation Genealogies among the Gusii
Authors: Mayer Iona
Published: April 2006

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This paper is concerned with the limits to which exact genealogical tracing is JL carried among the Gusii, a Bantu-speaking people of western Kenya.

At the time of field-work (1946–9) the Gusii were a moderately prosperous peasant people subsisting by hoe culture and stock raising. They were isolated between non-Bantu peoples (Luo, Kipsigis, Masai) in mountain country near the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria. They had no central authorities, except those introduced by the British colonial administration, and no central cult; they were not stratified either by rank or by marked differences of wealth. A segmentary descent system, and a common code of law regarding marriage and compensation, held them together as a common society (see P. Mayer, 1949 and 1950).
Social Consequences of Dia among the Berti
Authors: Holý Ladislav
Published: April 2006

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The Berti, numbering about 25,000, inhabit the part of the Northern Darfur district round their traditional centre, Melit, which lies about thirty-five miles north-east of El Fasher, the capital of the Sudanese province of Darfur. Their original language belonged to the Middle Sahara group and was closest to the Zaghawa language, but for several generations now they have been arabized. They form the sedentary population of the dry steppe of Northern Darfur and depend on agriculture with pennisetum as the staple, on animal husbandry and on collecting gum from the Acacia verek, which they sell at the local markets. Another, probably larger, part of the Berti now live in Eastern Darfur, where they migrated during the last century under pressure from the expansion of the neighbouring Meidob into their original territory in Northern Darfur.
The Mäsqal-Pole: Religious Conflict and Social Change in Gurageland
Authors: Shack William A.
Published: April 2006

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In An Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Professor Gluckman argued that in situations of conflict, pre-existing groups do not divide neatly into opposing halves, but that groups realign themselves according to the values, motives, and interests governing them at a given time; and that groups who are opposed when facing one situation may find themselves aligned when the nature of the situation differs. Similar studies of social change in Africa and elsewhere have further advanced Gluckman's contention. In all these studies the analytical procedure adopted was to interpret the situational behaviour of the actors in terms of the influence of the wider social system of which they were a part. However, a great deal of the ethnographic data anthropologists gather in the course of field research are derived from chance observations of social phenomena occurring in relatively unstructured situations within which the individuals involved have a wide range of choice in determining the way they interact with others. This paper is based upon just these sorts of ‘imponderable’ facts of Gurage life which, when first recorded in the field, appeared less clearly a part of what Malinowski once called ‘the real substance of the social fabric’ of a changing tribal society than they do now in retrospect. I attempt here to interpret the spontaneous and contradictory behaviour of individual Gurage and groups in the setting of an Ethiopian Christian religious ceremony known as Mäsqal. This analysis of situational behaviour is made in terms of selected aspects of historical or ‘processive’ social change in Gurageland, a tribal district in south-west Ethiopia.
The Royal Stools of Ashanti
Authors: Kyerematen A.
Published: April 2006

Introduction

In the Bampanasi Stool House of the Oyoko royals of Ashanti, now at Breman on the outskirts of Kumasi, ten black stools are preserved, arranged as shown in Fig. 1. There is also a bell representing the famous Golden Stool of Ashanti, which is regarded as the black stool of its first king, Nana Osei Tutu. I am grateful to the Asantehene, Nana Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II for permitting photographs of these stools to be taken, and for the invaluable information he has provided about them. The black stools are of historical importance, in that they commemorate the reigns of several of the Ashanti kings. They are also of great social significance, enshrining the patriotic sentiments of the people and serving as a bond between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. This bond is the very essence of Akan culture.
Ancestor Propitiation Ceremonies in Sukumaland, Tanganyika
Authors: Tanner R. E. S.
Published: April 2006

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The Sukuma, like many other African peoples, believe that the living and the dead are a continuous line, in which death is not an end but only a transformation within the history of the family. The lack of children means physical and spiritual extinction, since the ancestor spirits depend for their survival on remembrance in the minds of their descendants. The unity of the living and the dead is expressed in their ceremonies when ancestors are referred to by kinship terms more appropriate to the living, whereas the word for ancestor spirit (isamva; pl. masamva) is rarely used in propitiation although quite common in everyday conversation.
Le Principe de la Réciprocité dans le Mariage Nyende
Authors: Huber Hugo
Published: April 2006

Introduction

Les Nyende, population agricole au nord-ouest du Dahomey, appartiennent au groupe des langues voltaïques. Leur nombre est d'environ 12.000. Ils sont divisés en dix-neuf clans dont les traditions orales et les coutumes actuelles révèlent des origines assez diverses. Pour des raisons historiques, géographiques ou rituelles certains d'entre eux se sont alliés, de sorte qu'ils se regardent mutuellement comme frères, ce qui, dans l'une ou l'autre de ces alliances, va jusqu'à la reconnaissance de la loi de l'exogamie. Avant le regroupement imposé par le régime Maga (1960), la répartition territoriale correspondait en majeure partie à la division clanique. A côté du chef de terre (uteŋ-yenɔ ou ussɔ-hadɔ) dont l'autorité est pratiquement limitée aujourd'hui au domaine rituel, et du vieux du lignage (ukwiεmɔ), il y a, depuis le temps des Français, le chef de village (ukwatɔ) qui, sous l'autorité du chef d'arrondissement, s'occupe des taxes et d'autres affaires d'administration locale.
The Arabs and Swahili Culture
Authors: Harries Lyndon
Published: April 2006

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Swahili culture can be roughly defined as the culture of the Swahili-speaking peoples of the East African coast whose activities show features of Perso-Arabian origin, features that are foreign to the culture of other Bantu peoples of East Africa. It cannot be described simply as Bantu culture plus Perso-Arabian elements, for some Swahilis have excluded from their way of life anything that can be labelled as Bantu; they may have Bantu blood, but their whole way of life is Muslim-Arabic.
An Outline of the Cosmology and Cult Organization of the Oyo Yoruba
Authors: Morton-Williams Peter
Published: April 2006

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The structure of the Yoruba cosmos is broadly evident in their creation myth and can be discerned as presupposed behind many other myths, praise songs of the gods, and other symbolic utterances. These formulations help us, too, to construct a more detailed model of this cosmos than is available in any single mythical form. A model worked out from these sources is preferable methodologically to one derived from interrogating informants to get at their personal ideas and formulations, because these myths and liturgical expressions are relatively permanent features of Yoruba culture and are the materials for informants' constructs. Furthermore, it is not on intellectual grounds that myths survive and one must therefore beware of jockeying informants into making untypical intellectual abstractions from them and then using these abstractions as one's main primary source material. However interesting in themselves their own attempts at a generalized statement of the cosmos may be, informants can better be used to clarify over-condensed or allusive passages in myths and to check one's own interpretations, and again, to supply evidence for the details of the analysis through, for instance, their assertions about the locations of the various gods, spirits, and the ancestors.
Two Studies of Ifa Divination
Authors: Morton-Williams Peter , Bascom William , McClelland E. M.
Published: April 2006

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To the Yoruba, divination is of great concern, as the means by which they discover and hope to influence the changes in their relationships with the gods and ancestors and other spirits in their complex cosmos, and so to gain their aid in their pursuit of health and good fortune. They employ a number of divinatory techniques. The one that yields the fullest information is the system of geomancy known as Ifa, for which there are three procedures of varying complexity, the two most complex being used by professional diviners (babalawo). The Ifa oracle is animated by a deity named Orunmila, but also often called Ifa.
Two Marriage Forms in the Comoro Islands: An Investigation
Authors: Shepherd Gillian M.
Published: April 2006

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Comorian marriage must strike anyone with even the most passing knowledge of the Islands as surprising. All men strive for the lavish, expensive and lengthy marriage form known asndola nkuu(great marriage) orharusi ya ada(customary marriage) even though a perfectly respectable simple form,mna daho(little house), is all that moslem customary law requires.Mna dahomarriages cost almost nothing:adamarriages may cost as much as £5000. Why invest such a large sum in this way? What, in plain anthropological language, are the functions ofadamarriage?
The Interpretation of Symbolism in Wan Female Initiation
Authors: Ravenhill Philip L.
Published: April 2006

The Problem

Anthropological analyses of cultural symbolism have often benefitted fron the commentary of gifted informants who have provided ethnographers with detailed symbolic exegeses of the rites and ceremonies of their societies. Ethnographers have usually signalled with enthusiasm such received help and offered profound thanks to their philosophically reflective friends, but at the same time few, if any, ethnographers have indicated a willingness to restrict their data to those offered by such exegetes. In part this reticence is perhaps due to the fact that reliance upon the knowledge or philosophical reflexions of ritual or religious virtuosi raises the question of a possible disparity between the explicit ‘theological’ or cosmological knowledge controlled by certain experts and the implicit working knowledge of practical religion as understood by the majority of its practitioners (cf. Leach 1968). Thus there arises the problem of the subject matter of investigation: should anthropological analyses of symbolism be directed toward explicit specialized knowledge or implicit common knowledge? Furthermore, is articulated knowledge part of the solution of symbolic analysis or is it more properly part of the data (Sperber 1975:x, passim)?
Savoir voir et savoir vivre: les croyances à la sorcellerie en Côte d'Ivoire
Authors: Augé Marc
Published: April 2006

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On n'est pas toujours certain, en anthropologie, lorsqu'on étudie un secteur de la vie ou de l'activité sociale, d'avoir défini pour autant un objet de recherche. Le phénomène isolé, privilégié, peut n'être qu'un aspect fluctuant ou même éphémère d'une réalité plus vaste. Seule la compréhension de cette réalité permettrait de situer à sa juste place le phénomène privilégié; le trajet inverse est impossible. Cette remarque me paraît rejoindre celles que formule E. Leach dans Rethinking Anthropology lorsqu'il invite ses collègues à ne pas ‘collectionner les papillons’, à ne pas multiplier les typologies—et par exemple (mais ceci est une autre histoire) à ne pas distinguer entre différents types de filiation aux dépens de la seule distinction pertinente, selon lui, qui oppose la filiation a l'alliance.
The staff of life: Food and female fertility in a West African society
Authors: Weil Peter M.
Published: April 2006

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This paper is an examination of the dynamics of the kanyalangkafo, a cross-cultural fertility association. It first examines the changing economic and social environment of the Mandinka to clarify the factors relevant to the spread and acceptance of the fertility association.

The second part of the paper describes the history and organization of the association.

In the last part of the paper, the activities of the association and the ritually inverted sexual behaviour of its members are analyzed. Social integration is shown to be brought about in the presence of and partly because of the association and its activities. The integrative results include the manner in which the association organizes women and the social environment within which associational behaviour occurs. Models stemming from analyses of ritually inverted sexual behaviour are found to be generally supported by data from the Mandinka case.
Power and Wealth are Cousins: Descent, Class and Marital Strategies among the Kel Ahaggar (Tuareg—Sahara)
Authors: Keenan Jeremy
Published: April 2006

The Tuareg are Berber-speaking ‘semi-nomadic pastoralists’. The Northern Tuareg, comprising the Kel Ahaggar and Kel Ajjer, inhabit the Central Saharan massifs of Ahaggar and Ajjer in Southern Algeria. The Southern Tuareg, namely the Kel Adrar, Kel Ayr, Kel Gress, Kel Tadamakat, Iwllemmeden, etc., are found throughout much of Mali and Niger. Each of these groups constitutes a separate, independent federation. This paper is concerned with the Kel Ahaggar who number about 5000–6000.
Atuot ethnicity: an aspect of Nilotic ethnology
Authors: Burton John W.
Published: April 2006

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Evans-Pritchard's assessment of what contemporary social anthropologists might call ‘contextual ethnicity’ has offered many with no first-hand research experience in this region of Africa a prerogative in which some apparently revel: to opine on the bizarre and the obvious. Examples of the former persuasion are typified by articles which, with a passion for ‘theoretical purity’, openly declare an indifference to ethnographic fact (Newcomer 1972). Others attempt to account for the present distribution of pastoral Nilotes in the Southern Sudan as though ‘tribal’ groups and their tract of migration possessed the physical properties of pool balls pelleted across the swampland of the Upper Nile Basin (e.g. Southall 1976). Some must surely have had moment to wonder if the Nuer really exist at all. Of course they do, as even the uninterested tourist could note by observing the ethnic composition of labour groups in Khartoum, but only because so do the Dinka, who live north, south and west of Nuerland.
The origins of the Borana gada system
Authors: Hallpike C. R.
Published: April 2006

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GADA, or generation-grading, systems are found only in a few Cushitic-speaking societies of Ethiopia. Unlike a true age-grading system a gada system is distinguished by the rule that all sons follow their fathers in the sequence of grades at a single fixed interval, irrespective of their actual age. In order to maintain the constancy of this interval, the length of time which a man spends in each grade is fixed at a specific number of years, as is the number of grades separating him from his father. It is evident, therefore, that in such systems the various grades will include at the more senior levels young boys and adolescents together with mature men, a confusion that will not arise in true age-grading systems.
The diffusion of age-group organization in East Africa: a reconsideration
Authors: de Wolf J. J.
Published: April 2006

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In 1962 LeVine and Sangree attempted to answer the question of why some Bantu-speaking peoples in Kenya and Tanzania had adopted the age-group organization and associated rituals of their non-Bantu neighbours, while other Bantu peoples in the same region had not. They examined the Tiriki, who adopted the age-set system of the Kalenjin-speaking Terik, and the Gusii, who are also Bantu and who were also in close contact with the Kalenjin-speaking Kipsigis, but who did not borrow their age-group organization . The authors suppose that the age-group organization of the Kalenjin and Maasai had military functions and that their Bantu neighbours whom they attacked and defeated may have decided to copy this institution, because they would have attributed Kalenjin and Maasai success in warfare to it (LeVine and Sangree 1962:97-8).
Class and kinship in Sudanese urban communities
Authors: Lobban Richard A.
Published: April 2006

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This article represents some of the results of three field research studies of urbanization in the Sudan. The research has focussed on two urban communities in the Khartoum area, those known as Tuti Island1 and Burn al Manas. The first study was conducted as doctoral research in 1970–72; a brief re-study took place in 1975, and most recently research was conducted in 1979–80. This ten-year period was a time during which major economic and demographic change occurred in the urban Sudan. A recent study in the capital city area of the Sudan by urban planners has concluded that ‘any sociologist or social anthropologist who approaches the problems of urbanization in Africa today has the privilege of witnessing a social transformation on a grand scale’ (MEFIT, 1974: I). I have already reported on some aspects of change in class structure, marriage, kinship and the family (Lobban, 1971, 1975, 1979), but these earlier articles have relied chiefly on earlier fieldwork. Among studies of culture change in general, and urbanization in particular, it is unfortunately uncommon to have data from replicated, longitudinal studies. In this respect this article may make an especially useful contribution.
Oedipus Rex and Regina: The Queen Mother in Africa
Authors: Cohen Ronald
Published: April 2006

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The importance of female title holders, especially that of the Queen Mother, is widespread throughout the state systems of Africa. Royal monarchical power and authority is often linked to a senior woman of the royal line, sometimes a real mother, sometimes not, who is the female counterpart to the male royal person. One writer has suggested that in Africa the monarchy itself involves not simply a King but rather a royal couple—the King and his mother—so that centralized authority is in fact inherent in a mother-son ‘royal duo’ (de Heusch, 1962: 145). The Queen Mother in such a view is not simply ‘important’ but an essential ingredient in the nature of royal power and authority, and therefore of centralized government as this has developed historically on the continent.
The Social Structure of the Nyakyusa: a Re-evaluation
Authors: Mckenny Michael G.
Published: April 2006

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The Nyakyusa of south-western Tanzania have received very substantial ethnographic coverage. Nonetheless there remain certain gaps in our knowledge of this society. The field-work by Dr. Godfrey Wilson and Professor Monica Wilson was done largely in the mid 1930s before structural-functional analysis had achieved its present refinement and was evidently influenced by Malinowski who was not himself known for a concern in sociological analysis per se. In these studies of the Nyakyusa, values, beliefs, and ritual were a main object of attention; they present Nyakyusa society as though it were a direct result of the Nyakyusa value system, although the actual workings of the society have been left rather obscure. It is presented as coherent, values and social organization reinforcing each other at every point. But internal evidence contradicts this picture, and on a priori grounds it may also be seen that there were several structural pressures towards incoherence, or rather, conflict between the actual development of social organization through time and those presumably timeless values reputed to maintain it.