bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Distribution of Sanusi Lodges
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E.
Published: April 2006

This note on the distribution of the Sanusiya order in north Africa and western Arabia is a supplement to the article on the history of the order which appeared recently in Africa (vol. xv, no. 2). Use has been made of earlier efforts to list its lodges. The earliest authorities were mostly relying on hearsay and later writers have sometimes copied their lists without further inquiry. On the whole, however, their records are fairly accurate and, though many of the names they give are so badly transliterated that they would be unrecognizable to anyone dependent on maps alone, they can easily be identified by anyone who knows the countries at first hand. Even when a name cannot be identified it need not be assumed that it is necessarily incorrect, because lodges are often known by more than one name, sometimes, especially in the Marmarica, by the name of their Shaikhs. I have also been able to make use of a list of 128 lodges drawn up for me by al-Sayyid Ibrahim (whose father al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif was the last head of the order), though it contains a number of inaccuracies; and of my own observations and inquiries, which cover Cyrenaica and, more superficially, Tripolitania and Egypt.
African Traditional Thought and Western Science
Authors: Horton Robin
Published: April 2006

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The first part of this paper seeks to develop an approach to traditional African thought already sketched in several previous contributions to this journal. My approach to this topic is strongly influenced by the feeling that social anthropologists have often failed to understand traditional religious thought for two main reasons. First, many of them have been unfamiliar with the theoretical thinking of their own culture. This has deprived them of a vital key to understanding. For certain aspects of such thinking are the counterparts of those very features of traditional thought which they have tended to find most puzzling. Secondly, even those familiar with theoretical thinking in their own culture have failed to recognise its African equivalents, simply because they have been bunded by a difference of idiom. Like Consul Hutchinson wandering among the Bubis of Fernando Po, they have taken a language very remote from their own to be no language at all.
The Social Organization of Credit in a West African Cattle Market
Authors: Cohen Abner
Published: April 2006

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Credit is a vital economic institution without which trade becomes very limited. In the industrial Western societies, where it is highly developed, it operates through formal, standardized arrangements and procedures by which the solvency of the debtor is closely assessed, securities against possible default are provided, and the conditions of the agreement are documented and endorsed by the parties concerned. Ultimately, these arrangements and procedures are upheld by legislated rules and sanctions administered by central, bureaucratized, fairly impartial, efficient, and effective courts and police. In West Africa, on the other hand, where long-distance trade has been fostered by varying ecological circumstances, such organization has not yet evolved, particularly for long-distance trade. Nevertheless extensive systems of credit have been developed.
The Manipulation of Ritual among Plateau Nigerians
Authors: Conant Francis P.
Published: April 2006

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Despite great linguistic and cultural diversity, sustained political relations among the many different groups of the Jos-Bauchi Plateau are a notably regular feature of this area of Northern Nigeria. That these relations are often expressed in a ritual context is an observation frequently made in the literature on the Plateau Pagans. My intention here is to specify some of theregularways in which ritual paraphernalia may be manipulated for a variety of secular purposes (often political) among communities of such very different kinds as those of the Plateau mountain people and neighbouring plainsmen. These manipulative techniques appear to be important in the analysis of such widely different phenomena as the adoption of Islam, technological diffusion, the spread of art styles, and, more generally, the successful persistence, through time, of relations between societies of very different levels of complexity and organization. My data are drawn from field experience among Barawa mountain settlements and the Bankalawa–Jarawa plains communities of Dass Independent District, Bauchi Province, on the east-south-eastern slopes of the Plateau.
Western Education and Rural Productivity in Tropical Africa
Authors: Evans P. C. C.
Published: April 2006

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For many years British administrators and others concerned with the developing countries of tropical Africa have criticized Western-type schooling introduced there for what they believe to have been its bad effects on the life of rural peoples. They have complained that such schooling is prejudicial to rural life, since it produces a distaste for agriculture and leads to a drift from the land. They say it promotes in schoolchildren a desire to be clerks or white-collar workers and, because of their schooling, they develop a strong dislike for manual work and a reluctance to soil their hands with physical labour. They assert that these values inculcated by Western schooling lead finally to an almost complete rejection of rural life, a contempt for agriculture, and therefore to a decrease in rural productivity. Finally, they maintain that this is particularly serious in view of the fact that, as far as we can see at present, many African countries will have to depend on agriculture and the land for a long time to come, for it is only through such dependence that it seems likely that they will achieve economic viability which will be an important factor in making a success of political independence.
Ethnohistory and the Akan of Ghana
Authors: Goody Jack
Published: April 2006

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Mrs. Eva Meyerowitz's book, entitled The Akan of Ghana, is the third of a four-volume work on the Ashanti and their neighbours. The first to appear was The Sacred State of the Akan (1951), the second Akan Traditions of Origin (1952), and the fourth, not yet published, is to be entitled The Akan Divine Kingship and its Prototype in Ancient Egypt. They are the fruit of Mrs. Meyerowitz's researches in Ghana which began in 1943 when, as Art Supervisor at Achimota College, she was commissioned by the Burlington Magazine to write a series of articles on Ashanti gold ornaments. Since then she has engaged in field research among the Akan-speaking peoples, which has been supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute, by the Colonial Research Council, and, in her latest studies, by the University College of Ghana.
Kinship Terminology and the Initial Vowel
Authors: Whiteley W. H.
Published: April 2006

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Among a number of interlacustrine Bantu languages the nominal prefix is commonly of a shape V1CV2 (vowel, consonant, vowel). It is convenient to refer to V1 as the ‘initial vowel’ of the prefix, even where—as in Class 9—the prefix comprises only a single vowel or a vowel followed by a nasal. In certain contexts the prefix has been noted to occur without this initial vowel, and while no full study of such contexts has yet been made, the recently published Luganda Grammar establishes a number of practical rules for the omission of the ‘Initial Vowel’. Here, there is a reference to the ‘…loss of the I(nitial) V(owel)…to distinguish certain nouns when indicating close personal relationships…’, but there is no further reference to the important series of contexts provided by kinship terminology.
Saving and Indebtedness among Cameroons Plantation Workers
Authors: Warmington W. A.
Published: April 2006

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From 1953 to mid-1955 a team from the West African Institute of Social and Economic Research was investigating various problems caused by the employment of a large labour force in the plantations of the Southern Cameroons. The whole survey, which it is hoped soon to publish, covered a fairly wide field of social and economic studies. The purpose of this paper is to examine only one small aspect, somewhat outside the main field of the investigations.
Types of Urban African Marriage in Kampala
Authors: Parkin David J.
Published: April 2006

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This paper analyses factors affecting the variable character of urban marriage patterns in the predominantly African city ward of Kampala East, Uganda. Kampala city comprises two other wards, both of which accommodate considerable proportions of Asians and Europeans. Skirting the west and south of the city is the Kibuga, meaning capital in the local vernacular, Luganda. The Kibuga, like Kampala East, is also predominantly African. The city and Kibuga are administratively and culturally highly distinct. The city has its own council and is the nation's capital. The Kibuga is the capital of the quasi-autonomous kingdom of Buganda. The latter is alternatively a province of Uganda.
Some Trends in Modern Marriage among West Africans
Authors: Little Kenneth , Price Anne
Published: April 2006

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This article describes and attempts to analyse the nature and content of marital relationships in the ‘modern’ West African family. To an increasing extent educated young people apparently want a companionate marriage on Western lines (Marris, 1961). Evidence comes from interviewing and from studies made of the attitudes of students and of secondary school boys and girls in a number of countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Omari, for example, collected data from 293 students in a sample of eight Secondary and Teacher Training Institutions throughout Ghana. About three-quarters of these subjects said they would like to be married either in church or before a magistrate (1960, pp. 197–210). A statutory marriage of this kind, unlike traditional marriage, makes bigamy a crime, and so we may assume that the young people concerned had monogamy in mind. A group of Nigerian secondary school girls also declared, with a single exception, that monogamy was the ideal form of marriage; they insisted that they wanted to choose their own husbands (Baker, 1957).
Gurage Social Classification: Formal Notes on an Unusual System
Authors: Needham Rodney
Published: April 2006

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The Gurage of south-western Ethiopia possess a form of civilization which is of quite remarkable interest. Their social institutions and modes of livelihood have been well described by Dr. William A. Shack in his workThe Gurage(1966). This admirable monograph has received inThe Times Literary Supplementa long analytical review (Anon., 1966) couched for the most part in highly laudatory terms with which I readily identify myself. The review concentrates on the principles of Gurage mystical ideology, which is a source of great fascination and the discovery of which stands to Dr. Shack's enduring credit, but it also expresses incidentally certain reservations concerning the ethnographer's analysis of the relationship terminology. The purpose of the present notes is to take up these critical points and to isolate in the terms of social classification a formal feature which makes the Gurage of exceptional sociological interest as well.
Matrilineal Kinship among the Kunda
Authors: Bruwer J. P. Van S.
Published: April 2006

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The Kunda, a matrilineal Bantu people numbering about 20,000, occupy part of the Luangwa valley in the Eastern Province of Northern Rhodesia. Their country, located within the administrative district of Fort Jameson, stretches along the east bank of the Luangwa between the Lusangazi in the south and the Lukuzi in the north. Its western boundary is the Luangwa river proper; across the river a game reserve, stretching up from the Muchinga range, forms an uninhabited barrier between them and the tribes beyond the mountains. The eastern boundary is less clearly demarcated, but marches with the territory of the adjacent Cewa. To the south and north live the Nsenga and Bisa respectively. All these adjacent tribes are matrilineal.
Tswana Legal Maxims
Authors: Schapera I.
Published: April 2006

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Like many other peoples, the Tswana of Bechuanaland Protectorate often cite proverbs and similar sayings to specify rules of conduct. In this paper I discuss a number of those generally used in the context of litigation; some are statements of general principles, akin to the ‘maxims’ of Roman law, others relate more particularly to judicial procedure. Many were actually quoted at trials witnessed by myself or recorded by clerks of tribal courts, the rest were mentioned incidentally by informants when discussing points of Tswana law. The great majority are classed by the people themselves as ‘proverbs’ (diane, sing. seane), and some of these (though not all) are included in the collections of Tswana proverbs published by Plaatje and Seboni; others were introduced simply by some such phrase as Molao ware, ‘The law says’, or Kamokgwa waSetswana, ‘According to Tswana custom’. Since I am not here concerned with their linguistic aspects, I do not attempt to distinguish recognized proverbs from other kinds of maxim.
Segmentation and Fission in Cape Nguni Political Units
Authors: Hammond-Tooke W. D.
Published: April 2006

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The aim of this paper is to discuss certain aspects of the political organization of the Cape Nguni, with special reference to the formation of political units. Its preparation forms part of a larger study undertaken by the writer on the nature and direction of political development in the Transkeian Territories of the Republic of South Africa, which has culminated in the establishment of a system of what approximates to indirect rule based on indigenous structures, known as Bantu Authorities. It is one of the basic tenets of the study that in a situation in which indigenous populations are subjected to external control, and even more when traditional structures are themselves used as instruments of government, traditional premisses (to use a term of Maquet) must be taken into account. The acceptance, or otherwise, of authority must obviously depend to a large degree on traditional concepts of where authority resides, its sanctions, extent, and limitations. Some attempt at a reconstruction of the pattern of tribal governments as they were immediately before the imposition of White control was therefore necessary: this paper discusses a limited aspect of the problem—the formation of the political units themselves.
A Sorcery Hunt in Dagomba
Authors: Tait David
Published: April 2006

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I do not know what events led up to the sorcery hunt in Savelugu, but in Nanton the sorcerer-finders came on the invitation of the Nantonlana. His invitation was given because, it is said, much sorcery was about. The only certain sign of it that I know is that sorcerer's fire was seen at night. Though I have seen this phenomenon three times I do not know what it is. It travels at thirty to forty feet above the ground at considerable speed, flashing on and off, sometimes as bright as a bicycle lamp. It may be a large firefly, though it does not resemble any firefly I have seen close to. In Konkomba country I thought (though I never saw it there) that it might be an effect of marsh gas. Here in Nanton I do not know what it may be.
Universities and Polytechnics in Africa. The Twelfth Lugard Memorial Lecture
Authors: Pedler Frederick
Published: April 2006

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May I say first how much I appreciate the compliment which you paid me when you invited me to address the International African Institute on this, the occasion of the twelfth Lugard Memorial Lecture. I am proud to be one of those to whom Dame Margery Perham referred in the first Lugard Memorial Lecture, one of those who knew Lord Lugard in his later years. As a young civil servant I was the administrative secretary of the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, of which Lord Lugard was a member. As a kind of extension of my duties, I went to Africa as the secretary of Lord De La Warr's commission on higher education in East Africa. That commission's terms of reference charged it to work out a scheme for setting up a university college in Uganda, and of course Lord Lugard was interested because he had played such a leading part in bringing Uganda into the empire—first in commanding the military expedition and thereafter in conducting the campaign in Britain which persuaded Mr. Gladstone's government to proclaim the protectorate. Shortly after I returned from Uganda to London, I was walking in Whitehall when I saw Lord Lugard coming towards me—walking the length of Whitehall from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square although at that time he was 79 years of age. I wore a hat in those days, and in accordance with the civilized manners which young people then endeavoured to preserve, I raised it. To my surprise Lord Lugard recognized me, stopped me, and asked me to tell him about the commission and what it was likely to recommend. The conversation left me with a lively appreciation of Lord Lugard's great personal interest in education in Africa. If we could evoke, as Hubert Deschamps evoked when he pronounced the eighth Lugard Memorial Lecture, ‘cette ombre auguste qui nous est chère’, I think that the august shade would be very willing that this memorial hour should be devoted to a discussion of educational problems.
Some Zande Texts on Vengeance for Death
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E.
Published: April 2006

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I have sometimes felt that my book on Zande witchcraft beliefs and practices did not finish the story—what happens at death and afterwards. I hope to be able to complete this last chapter in the near future—a chapter to which Fr. Giorgetti (F. Gero) has contributed in his Death among the Azande of the Sudan (1968), a translation from the Italian Morte e religione della morte tragli Azande del Sudan. In the meantime, and because I wish the Azande to speak for themselves, I submit for publication in vernacular and translation a few texts on what I think is a topic of interest.
Le temps dans la culture Komo
Authors: de Mahieu Wauthier
Published: April 2006

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L'homme ne peut se réaliser de manière humaine, dans un milieu naturel donné, s'il ne le rationalise d'une façon ou d'une autre. De plus, sa vie en société exige que cette rationalisation, même si elle émane d'un individu céateur, dépasse le cadre d'une conventionnalité purement individuelle—notion à peine concevable—et s'impose, dans la mesure où elle lui convient—c'est là l'origine du mot conventionnel—au milieu social.
How Real is the Charmed Circle in African and Western Thought?
Authors: Marwick M. G.
Published: April 2006

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This article attempts to carry further the discussion of some aspects of the issues of the analysis of relations between African traditional thought and Western concepts of causation presented by Robin Horton (1967) in earlier articles in this journal. It will also be clear to some readers that its title has been inspired by the theme of Sir Karl Popper's two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which first appeared in 1945. In this work Popper makes a systematic attack on modern totalitarians and their predecessors, and in so doing contrasts two types of societies, ‘the open society’, which is the ideal aspired to by liberal democrats, and ‘the closed society’, which he equates with tribalism; and it is to a form of this tribalism, he contends, that the totalitarians would have us return. Popper belongs to a long line of thinkers, including philosophers, lawyers, economists, and sociologists, who have used tribal or so-called primitive man—or rather their conceptions of him—as a means of illuminating their analysis of the problems of society in general and of modern society in particular, and in so doing have often raised the hackles of social anthropologists, who, by virtue of having lived in non-literate societies, tend to consider themselves the profession most likely to know something about the people whom their social-science colleagues cite with deceptive facility. It so happens, I believe, that Popper's conception of tribal or primitive man implied in his picture of ‘the closed society’ is much nearer the mark than, say, Hobbes's picture of man in ‘the state of nature’ or of Rousseau's idea of ‘the noble savage’.
Youths as Elders and Infants as Ancestors: the Complementarity of Alternate Generations, Both Living and Dead, in Tiriki, Kenya, and Irigwe, Nigeria
Authors: Sangree Walter H.
Published: April 2006

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A recent paper by Igor Kopytoff (Kopytoff, 1971) argues that Africanists have been led by their Western conceptual ethnocentrism into creating a false dichotomy between ‘elders’ and ‘ancestors’ in their descriptions and analyses of African societies. He asserts that this has obscured the fact that ‘elders’ and ‘ancestors’ are conceptually as well as terminologically united in many African cultural and social traditions. There are flaws in his assertion, perhaps the most serious of which has been ably countered by James Brain in a recent article (Brain, 1973) where he demonstrates that many, if not most, African societies make explicit and clear-cut distinctions both linguistically and conceptually between ‘elders’ (both living and dead) and ‘ancestral spirits’. Nevertheless Kopytof's article effectively argues that Western scholars have had a tendency to overlook indigenous conceptual continuities between living and dead elders, and this prompted me to re-examine my data on the Tiriki of Kenya and the Irigwe of Nigeria which deal with the traditional relations of the living and the dead (including the not yet born). I found that these relationships, though strikingly different in the two societies, are nevertheless in each case patterned in ways that are congruent with relationships between both adjacent and alternate generations.
Symbolic dimensions of the Southern Bantu homestead
Authors: Kuper Adam
Published: April 2006

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Some years ago one of the very few structuralist anthropologists to contribute to Southern African studies complained that ‘Aucune étude n'a encore été consacrée à l'organisation spatiale et aux relations qu'elle implique chez les Bantu du Sud-Est’ (Roumeguère- Eberhardt 1963: 77). This was not strictly accurate. For example, Holleman (1940) had provided an important analysis of the Zulu homestead, borrowing something of the methods and concerns of the Leiden school's studies in Indonesia; and one cannot ignore Walton's (1956) wide-ranging if unsystematic treatment of the Southern African village. Yet the topic has been largely neglected despite the highly-ordered nature of the Southern Bantu homestead and the legal and symbolic significance of the traditional homestead plan.
Further considerations of caste in West Africa: The Senufo
Authors: Richter Dolores
Published: April 2006

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The term ‘caste’ has often been applied to Senufo artisan groups. However, an analysis of the social, political and economic relationships of these groups and the farmers amongst whom they live indicates that the characteristics commonly associated with caste systems are often manipulated by the allegedly lower status castes to their benefit, rather than by the majority group of farmers.
The preservation of Yoruba tradition through hunters' funeral dirges
Authors: Ajuwọn Bade
Published: April 2006

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The performance of Yoruba hunters' funeral dirges is of great human interest. As an indispensable rite at all the major crises that may affect members of the hunters' guild, it is evidently a means of emotional outlet. These dirges are known as irèmòjé, a name which Yoruba mythology claims was coined by Ifá, the god of wisdom and of divination, to denote this type of lament. These songs are credited with a divine origin, and are demanded by the god Ogun to be performed by his followers as part of a rite of passage for deceased hunters from earth to heaven. Ogun himself was said to have set the model of the performance of irèmòjé for his followers to emulate. The observance of the ritual is seen by Ogun devotees as an act of worship, of propitiating their god, of communicating with the departed hunters, and of making a thorough appraisal of the successes and failures of deceased hunters in their professional career on earth. The task of making an oral evaluation of a man's career is always difficult. The device of artists who are vested in Yoruba history and folklore use, however, is to dwell on the lineage salutes — salutes which normally embody significant historical points relating to ancestors of the deceased. It is to be observed, however, that these singers of irèmòjé laments, as is the case with rárà chanters, usually emphasize the victories and heroic deeds of the deceased and carefully gloss over his failures; this is only to be expected since it is his fame that artists are gathered to celebrate. Thus they praise his fine character, his kind heart, his professional skills and techniques, commend his memorable deeds as a hunter, or at least the courage with which he faced ordeals in life.
Fetishism Revisited: Kongo Nkisi in Sociological Perspective
Authors: MacGaffey Wyatt
Published: April 2006

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Fetishism, a word much in vogue in late nineteenth century anthropology, no longer appears in serious scholarly use, except among art historians, psychoanalysts, and Marxist economists. Tylor, the most influential voice in the definition of fetishism, regarded it as a development of animism; fetishism was ‘the doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying influence through, certain material objects. Fetishism will be taken as including the worship of ‘stocks and stones’ and thence it passes by an imperceptible gradation into Idolatry’ (Tylor 1874:II:144). Tylor went on to speculate that primitive man originally imagined the soul of a deceased person to inhabit some relic such as a bone; this idea once established, it evolved into a propensity to associate any unusual object with a spirit. If the spirit, with its capacity for action, were embodied in an object specially made to represent its character, the ethnographer would recognise an Idol.
Writing and Formal Operations: A Case Study among the Vai
Authors: Goody Jack , Cole Michael , Scribner Sylvia
Published: April 2006

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The Islamic brotherhoods common in North Africa take a variety of forms south of the Sahara, but even at the very fringes of Muslim, penetration the great orders such as the Qaddiriyya have a part to play in the lives of the believers. One function they have is to bring adherents back to what members of the order see as the essential tenets of the faith, to purge practice of the inevitable compromises made with local ‘pagan’ cults, and to increase the solidarity of the congregation of the faithful.
Politics of Ritual Syncretism: Islam Among the Non-Muslim Giriama of Kenya
Authors: Parkin David
Published: April 2006

Ritual Syncretism as Cultural Borrowing

Leach in his study of the Kachin interpreted disputes over claims to administer ritual or to recite myths as a means whereby politically opposed factions sought to assert their independence or their dominance (Leach, 1954, p. 278). He also showed that in this competition the Kachin made use of ritual and other cultural elements which they had adopted from the Shans and were using for political ends.
Kinship, Friendship, and Business Failure among Market Sellers in Monrovia, Liberia, 1970
Authors: Handwerker W. Penn
Published: April 2006

Introduction

This paper discusses the intertwining of the obligations among close friends and kin and the firms of market sellers in Monrovia, Liberia. The literature on entrepreneurship in Africa in many respects has been a debate on the relation between kinship obligations and the relative success of entrepreneurs. Based on data gathered during the early 1950s (e.g. Bauer, 1963: 7–8; Dorjahn, 1962), a consensus of sorts was reached by the early 1960s (e.g. Hunter, 1962: 140) holding that kinship obligations were either drains on the capital of entrepreneurs or hindered capital accumulation. At worst, such obligations were regarded as the primary cause of business failure among African entrepreneurs. At best, they were considered to be the main reason for the lack of growth in firms run by African entrepreneurs. Data gathered since the mid 1960s, however, have run counter to these earlier assessments. Rather than suggesting that kinship obligations were threats to entrepreneurs, these studies (e.g. Isaac, 1969,1971; Jones, 1969; Nafziger, 1969) made the points that such obligations had little to do with business failure, and, especially in the early stages of growth (cf. Benedict, 1968), were often critical to the success achieved by an entrepreneur. In making these points, however, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining why kinship and equivalent obligations are, on balance, beneficial for the entrepreneurs investigated. In over-all agreement with these recent studies, the data from Monrovia illustrate procedures through which entrepreneurs achieve the balance between demands and assistance determining the role—beneficial or detrimental—kinship and equivalent obligations play in their businesses.
The Secret of the Men: A Fiction of Chagga Initiation and its Relation to the Logic of Chagga Symbolism
Authors: Moore Sally Falk
Published: April 2006

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In the 19th century, there were Chagga chiefdoms which initiated their young men into adulthood by putting them through an elaborate series of rituals and ordeals. The first was circumcision. No sooner had the young men fully recovered from their circumcision wounds than they had another trial to undergo. They were sent to the forest for a period of seclusion and instruction. Children and young women were told that during this time in the Kilimanjaro forests the newly circumcized youths were subjected to another operation, this one to plug and stitch closed their anuses (Gutmann, Recht: 321–338; HRAF trans.: 289–304).
Dominant Male Ideology and Female Options: Three East African Case Studies
Authors: Obbo Christine
Published: April 2006

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The aim of the essay is to highlight gaps in existing knowledge of African women and bring to light new queries. The argument being presented is that African women assert their individuality by exploring the options available within their respective societies. While it is unsafe to generalize about Africa, the dominance of men in the public, especially the political and ritual spheres, is well illustrated by ethnographies on Africa. Women are on the whole invisible or shadowy figures except in a handful of ethnographies that take a woman's perspective (for example, Leith-Ross, 1939; Kaberry, 1952; and Paulme (ed.), 1963). The ideology of male dominance is taken for granted as representative of the true state of affairs between men and women in Africa. Whereas every researcher probably knows that ideologies are not realities, somehow that knowledge becomes insignificant when dealing with African societies.
Of souls and bones: the living and the dead among the Rukuba, Benue-Plateau State, Nigeria
Authors: Muller Jean-Claude
Published: April 2006

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The relationship between the living and the dead looms large in Africa, but the study of such interactions is notoriously fraught with pitfalls and perhaps only now are we equipped with a valid conceptual framework to enable us to deal adequately with the problems posed by ancestor worship and by the various spirits of the dead in Africa. Fortes (1965: 16—20; 122—142) first gave us a comparative framework of ancestor worship in Africa but part of his conceptualization has been recently questioned by Kopytoff (1971) who argues that the distinction between elders and ancestors is not as clear cut as our own implicit dichotomy would seem to imply. However, his argument, stressing a continuity between the living and the dead, leaves out the fact that elders, when they die, very often become ancestor spirits and, even if they do not become such, take on new qualities and new powers that are different in nature from those they held when alive (Brain 1973; Sangree 1974).
Aspects of Administration and Dissent in Hausaland, 1800–1968
Authors: Last Murray
Published: April 2006

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The northern States of Nigeria have in the past 200 years experienced two great reform movements; both were accompanied by conquest by a distinct minority, and both sought to impose an external, universal culture with its set of written laws and distinct administration. The ideals, and their application by the two groups of reformers, have been strikingly similar, as has been the dissenting response of the disillusioned.
Decentralization and the Organization of Space in Tanzania
Authors: Maro Paul S. , Mlay Wilfred F. I.
Published: April 2006

Introduction

Most independent nations in Africa believe that the state is ‘the indispensable agency’ for creating the necessary conditions for rapid socio-economic transformation which will bring about a more equitable distribution of the benefits of development, especially in rural areas. But few countries are agreed on the institutional and organizational structures for bringing this about.
Local Adaptation and the Transformation of an Imperial Concession in North-Eastern Botswana
Authors: Werbner Richard P.
Published: April 2006

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The main subject of this paper is the way in which patterns of settlement and modes of working and holding land are transformed and adapted to diverse political and economic relations. The changes discussed occurred in adjustment, under British Imperial rule, between a large-scale, commercial landlord—initially a mining and trading company—and local rulers and residents in the area of the landlord's monopoly in north-eastern Botswana. Ecological conditions in the middle and high veld of Botswana are of crucial importance for the discussion, since these posed various risks and costs for the landlord, the local rulers, and the residents. I examine primarily a sequence of decisions and the locally crucial constraints that prevailed and set a course for further choices. ‘Tribal ruler’ is the generic term which I use for such political offices as ‘paramount chief’, ‘chieftain’, and also the Protectorate Administration's grade of Sub-Chief. A paramount chief or, simply, chief, is a ruler of the highest rank, having a major territory, whose authority extends over a series of subordinates, including some chieftains. Chieftains, in turn, are petty rulers over lesser territories, and in the grades of the Administration, never higher than Sub-Chief, though they may be independent and not under a chief as an administrative superior.
Swahili Mijikenda: facing both ways in Kenya
Authors: Parkin David
Published: April 2006

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I describe a people who, in aspiring to Swahili Islamic values and life style, marginalise themselves economically and politically.

The title of the article both indicates the dilemma of their identity and, for scholars who study Swahili-speaking peoples, is deliberately provocative. How can people whom we call or who call themselves Swahili possibly also be referred to as Mijikenda? After all, these two peoples have in other descriptions been shown to be sharply distinct, either as enemies, as traders in separate goods, or as employers and labourers respectively. Yet, though this is a reasonable characterisation of a difference of great historical significance for the creation of Kenyan coast culture and hegemony, it forgets the areas of overlap between the two peoples, where, in effect, it becomes sometimes impossible to posit consistent differences. The sharp delineation conventionally recorded by writers between the Swahili and the Mijikenda (and the various names by which they have been known before the use of this term in 1945) is as much a result of the conditions under which such writings were produced: they unconsciously reproduce the very distinctions by which pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial authorities administered and ruled the area and its peoples.
Social and cultural integration: a case study of the East African Hadramis
Authors: Le Guennec-Coppens Françoise
Published: April 2006

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As one goes through the numerous publications concerning East Africa, it becomes apparent that certain subjects have rarely been approached, having been neglected or even totally ignored. Such is the case concerning the problems linked with the Hadrami diaspora, the extended study of which—apart from a few notable exceptions—has not yet aroused the interest of historians or the curiosity of anthropologists.
Riddles and the reconstruction of reality
Authors: Chimombo Steve
Published: April 2006

Opening Paragraph

When David Livingstone, the missionary-explorer, pleaded in the Senate House in Cambridge on 4 December 1857:

I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity. Do you carry on the work which I have begun. I leave it with you. [Winspear, 1956: 11]

little did he realise that whereas his compatriots were busily engaged in commercial and evangelical enterprises the local folk artist in Central Africa was also constructing, refashioning or recreating riddles inspired by the white man, his culture and his other activities.
La projection spatiale de la politique togolaise de développement rural dans la préfecture de l'Oti
Authors: Akibode Ayéchoro K.
Published: April 2006

Initiated in 1978 in order to “involve the Oti basin in national development”, the Namiélé project, like any other project, has changed when coming into contact with political realities and (to a lesser extent) with the social and economic context.

Four years after the beginning of the project, events have modified the basin development programme. In 1982, Togo authorities decided to enlarge an animal reserve on both sides of the Oti: the farmers were moved from their villages to be resettled away from the river.

In addition, in the same year, the government, confronted with a difficult economic situation, reduced the investments that had been planned for the fulfilment of the project. As far as the populations profiting from the project are concerned, neither an appropriate ideology wrapped up in generosity nor paternalism are enough to make them accept an innovation: they are sometimes reluctant, sometimes cooperative, exercising an unacknowledged pressure on the project's future.

The state also keeps an eye on its interests (increasing budget revenue, maintaining trade balances, and the like). The project has become an opportunity for conflict where two essentially contrary logics have to coexist: on the one hand the administrative logic of the financiers who initiated the project and on the other hand, the traditional logic of the populations caught up in the project.
‘Music of origin’: class, social category and the performers and audience of kiba, a South African migrant genre
Authors: James Deborah
Published: April 2006

This article uses a case study of the kiba migrant performance genre from the Northern Province of South Africa to illuminate recent theoretical ideas on the role of performers and audiences, and in so doing to offer a critical perspective on the way in which the concept of class has been conceptualised in some southern African studies. While the homogenising and Western-derived concept of class may well be unsuitable in some African and other southern contexts, as certain writers have claimed, migrant northern Sotho communities have developed indigenous notions of social category which combine modern work-related sources of identity with apparently backward-looking celebrations of traditional behaviour. The article examines the contention of performance theory that cultural expression does not merely reflect the predilections of established groupings of people but may provide a focus for the consolidation and identity of new ones.
Luo entrustment: foreign finance and the soil of the spirits in Kenya
Authors: Shipton Parker
Published: April 2006

This article examines the cultural dimensions of financial credit and debt, placing these against a deeper and broader background of entrustments and obligations. A standard response of the largest international aid agencies to African rural poverty has been to set up programmes to lend money and other resources to rural people without understanding what the borrowers already owe to other creditors and claimants, or how strong these competing claims are. The history of credit programmes has been a history of dismal failures and of disappointments for borrowers and lender alike, particularly where land mortgages have been involved. Intensive field research reveals that Luo farmers in Kenya, like other East Africans, already have a broad assortment of borrowings and lendings of their own, some far more meaningful to them than loans from banks, co-operatives, or marketing boards will ever be. Some are only partly economic in nature; some involve sacred trusts or important political contacts. Land, labour, animals, money, and humans themselves are all objects of entrustment and obligation among kin, neighbours, or other familiars. Farmers channel resources from socially distant institutions into uses that are often locally more meaningful than those their lenders intend; and they may not be at liberty to convert them back into liquid forms for repayment. Requirements of land title collateral misfit a cultural context where attachments to land, and to ancestral graves on it, symbolise an individual's or family's social identity. More broadly, the credit strategy of development aid needs rethinking. Rather than continuing to enmesh rural Africans in debts and uncertainties, those who purport to help reduce poverty in rural Africa should shift their strategy from lending to encouraging saving and investment, or to promoting other kinds of locally rooted initiatives not financial in nature.
Elizabeth West and Western Theatre Ballet
Authors: Massie Annette
Published: April 2006

The first night of Western Theatre Ballet's tenth anniversary season at Sadler's Wells Theatre was not only a triumph, but a vindication of the policies of the late Elizabeth West and now continued by Peter Darrell. In 1957, West took her tiny troupe, in a bus, dancing to Bartok on tape, to any school or village hall which would pay a few pounds for a performance. Here and now we see a slightly larger company of eighteen, well disciplined by their recently appointed ballet master, Alexander Bennett, and dancing to a small orchestra under their new Musical Director, Kenneth Alwyn, four new (or unfamiliar) ballets by four different choreographers, before a packed and appreciative house … Put out more flags, fling down the ticker tape, sound the ships' sirens, tap your bows on the music stands for the glorious achievement of Elizabeth West.(Richard Buckle in The Sunday Times. June 1967)
Herbivore Optimization and Overcompensation: Does Native Herbivory on Western Rangelands Support These Theories?
Authors: Patten Duncan T.
Published: April 2006

Recent articles in Ecological Applications and a response by Painter and Belsky (this issue) illustrate the controversy over theories of plant response to grazing, such as herbivore optimization and overcompensation. Observations of elk grazing in Yellowstone National Park and mixed cattle and elk grazing in the Southwest are presented as case studies to test these theories. Heavy grazing by elk in Yellowstone caused some areas to be dominated by exotic grasses, while shrubby species were heavily browsed. High—elevation rangeland conditions deteriorated in the Southwest where elk and cattle both grazed. Theories of herbivore optimization and overcompensation do not appear to be supported by the response of western rangelands to grazing by native herbivores.
Spatial and Temporal Variation in Competitive Effects on Soil Moisture and Pine Response
Authors: Mitchell R. J. , Zutter B. R. , Green T. H. , Perry M. A. , Gjerstad D. H.
Published: April 2006

The effects of different plant life—forms, including a bunch grass species, Andropogon virginicus L. (broomsedge), and a sprouting deciduous tree species, Liquidambar styraciflua L. (sweetgum), on soil moisture and competitive responses of a transplanted coniferous tree seedling, Pinus taeda L. (loblolly pine), were investigated. Addition of the bunch grass and/or hardwood sprouts either had no effect or increased soil moisture in the surface soil (0—14 cm) depending on the time, while addition of sweetgum and/or broomsedge (greatest density alone) decreased soil moisture in deeper portions of the solum during the summer months. Soil moisture available to pine seedlings at various points in time was assessed by measuring predawn xylem pressure potential. Temporal variation in predawn xylem pressure potential was accounted for through a water stress integral approach. More than half of the variation in pine size after one growing season could be accounted for by the water stress integral.
Toward an Experimental Basis for Protecting Forest Wildlife
Authors: Irwin Larry L. , Wigley T. Bently
Published: April 2006

Social and economic debates over allocation of old—growth forests have spawned conservation strategies that are aimed at protecting sensitive wildlife species while allowing limited timber harvesting. We are interested in improving the scientific underpinnings for such conservation strategies, because doing so might both minimize costs of resource development and provide more reliable protection. Here, we discuss potential consequences from inductive inferencing systems used to develop technical support for protecting wildlife in temperate forests. For examples, we refer to recent conservation strategies for Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) and Red—cockaded Woodpeckers (Picoides borealis). Soft inferencing systems could result in conservation strategies that fail to meet intended goals, thereby exacerbating forestry—wildlife debates. Greater emphasis should be placed on hypothetico—deductive inferencing processes that vigorously employ adaptive management principles. Such processes simultaneously test alternative landscape patterns and forestry options as rigorous management experiments, and thus could incrementally predicate forest policy upon an experimental basis.
Potential Carbon Losses From Peat Profiles: Effects of Temperature, Drought Cycles, and Fire
Authors: Hogg Edward H. , Lieffers Victor J. , Wein Ross W.
Published: April 2006

Global warming and the resultant increase in evapotranspiration might lead to lowered water tables in peatlands and an increase in fire frequency. The objective of this study was to investigate some of the potential effects of these changes on peat decomposition. Dry mass losses and emissions of CO2 and CH4 from peat samples taken from three depth layers (0—10, 10—20, and 30—40 cm) of a black spruce peatland were measured in the laboratory at 8°, 16°, and 24°C under two moisture treatments. Effects of deep peat fire on decomposition were also simulated by burning the upper layer (0—10 cm) of peat and adding the ash to peat samples from the 10—20 cm layer. CH4 release averaged <1% of total carbon loss in flooded samples. Release of CO2 was 4—9 times greater from the 0—10 cm layer than from the 30—40 cm layer. After 120 d, the 30—40 cm layer had lost <1% of its original dry mass in all treatments. Higher temperatures strongly promoted decomposition of samples exposed to drying cycles but had little effect on decomposition of continuously flooded samples. Ash addition had variable effects on CO2 emissions but may have promoted CH4 production. It is suggested that in certain situations, global warming may not cause appreciable increases in carbon loss from peat deposits. The results indicate that some deeper peats are resistant to decay even when exposed to warm, aerobic conditions. However, further experimental work is needed to predict the long—term response of peat deposits to changes in water levels in different peatland types.