bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Modern Political Movements in Somaliland. II
Authors: Lewis I. M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn a preceding article I discussed the organization and aims of modern Somali political movements in the light of the traditional political structure. Three types of political organization were distinguished: clan, regional (or tribal), and nationalist. These three types reflect traditional variations in the social structure and culture of different regions of Somaliland and also varying degrees of political evolution. I drew attention to the extent to which all parties—especially those with nationalist aims—have adopted a religious ideology and pointed out that Islam, through the traditional organization and aims of the Sufi Dervish Orders (ṭariiqas), has provided a precedent for pan-Somali solidarity. I now attempt to assess the extent of nationalist feeling in the different Somali territories, and examine the degree to which recent constitutional changes in government and administration have recognized the growth of nationalist aspirations and promoted their extension. I discuss first the present position in the five Somali territories: French and British Somaliland; Harar Province of Ethiopia; Somalia; and the Northern Province of Kenya. Finally, I consider the importance of Islam in furthering nationalism and in helping to overcome the cleavages of clan and Dia-paying group affiliation which oppose the formation of a unified Somali nation.
The Political Function of the Poro. Part I
Authors: Little Kenneth 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphOne of the most interesting problems of pre-colonial history is the relation of so-called secret societies to indigenous government. In West Africa they are concerned mainly with the ownership and use of supposedly supernatural medicines and the propagation of certain cults.These are the functions also of other associations, but what principally distinguishes secret societies from the ordinary medicine society or cult is the esoteric basis of their activities. Not only do the secret societies employ particular rituals, signs, symbols, and forms of knowledge which are withheld from non-initiates, but these things are regarded as a special source of power through being kept private. Associations of this kind are prevalent in southern Nigeria, and are particularly numerous in the coastal area of rain-forest in general, including the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and parts of Ghana and Portuguese Guinea. They are not secret in any other respect. On the contrary, not only is the existence and general purpose of these societies known to every grown-up person, but in many places the wide range of their activities makes them the dominant social force. They are frequently responsible for tribal education, regulate sexual conduct, supervise political and economic affairs, and operate various social services, including entertainment and recreation as well as medical treatment.
Kinship, Emigration, and Trade Partnership among the Lebanese of West Africa
Authors: Khuri Fuad I. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis article describes the kinship structure of some Lebanese communities in West Africa, and the resemblances they bear to the communities from which they originated in Lebanon. It also shows the extent to which kinship ties promote emigration, and the kind of trade partnership normally practised by kinsmen. Two communities are considered: the Greek Orthodox community in Ouagadougou (Upper Volta), and the Shi'ite Muslim community in Magburaka (Sierra Leone).
Labour Emigration among the Moçambique Thonga: Comments on a Study by Marvin Harris
Authors: Rita-Ferreira A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphStudies on the Bantu of south-east Africa by American anthropologists are rare. For this reason visits such as that of Dr. Marvin Harris of Columbia University to Moçambique should be welcomed.However, on reading his paper on the political and cultural factors of the migratory labour of the Thonga his data seem incomplete and the inferences therefrom not altogether correct. He chose a social process of extreme complexity, and for it to be completely understood it is necessary to undertake more research on its correlations and implications, and to observe it in a broader perspective, taking into account geographical, historical, ecological, cultural, political, and economic peculiarities of this whole region of Africa. In the following comments I shall try not to become involved in moral or political issues but to observe the migratory process as objectively as possible.
A Present Day Zulu Philosopher
Authors: Bodenstein W. , Raum O. F. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn February 1957 we visited the homestead of Laduma Madela, member of a small Zulu clan. He belongs to the PondolweNdhlovu regiment, i.e. he was born about 1906. He had been described to us as a somewhat mysterious but particularly knowledgeable person. One of us had established preliminary contacts and gained his confidence. When we visited him for the first time, neither of us anticipated that we should meet in him a unique Zulu personality, a man who, although ‘uneducated’ in the Western sense, possesses a remarkable breadth of vision and grasp of detail concerning his own culture.
On Translating the Homeric Epithet and Simile into Twi
Authors: Ofosu-Appiah L. H. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphI do not know if anyone has ever tried to see if classical Greek poetry can be translated into any African language, but I had always felt that such an experiment would be worth trying. Some years ago, therefore, I made my first attempt by translating the Antigone of Sophocles into Twi, one of the principal languages in Ghana. It was then that I discovered the possibilities of the Twi language as a medium for translating a classical Greek poet. I accordingly decided to embark on a more ambitious enterprise by translating the whole of the Odyssey into Twi prose, with a view to publishing either the whole or part of the translation. I chose for this purpose the story of the wanderings of Odysseus from Book VIII, line 461, to the end of the twelfth book. This was published in 1957, and the rest of the work was completed in 1958.
Politics of the Kola Trade: Some Processes of Tribal Community Formation among Migrants in West African Towns
Authors: Cohen Abner 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIn his important pioneering study of migrations into Ghana, Rouch makes the observation that different tribal groups of migrants organize themselves differently in the foreign towns to which they migrate. The forms of their organization fall into a continuum between two extremes. At the one end are migrants who form only segmental, temporary, tribal groupings. At the other end are migrants who form autonomous, multi-purposive, tribal communities. Banton makes a similar observation in his study of migrants in Freetown. Neither Rouch nor Banton analyses this difference in detail, though both tend to explain it in terms of differences in tribal traditional culture.
Religious Change in Yorubaland
Authors: Peel J. D. Y. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe process by which African peoples come to forsake their traditional religions for Islam or Christianity is among the most significant and the least-studied features of social change in Africa. It is, furthermore, a field to which scholars of different backgrounds, historians and social scientists, may contribute. In spite of a recent drawing together of these disciplines, historians and sociologists may still consider themselves as offering rival explanations of the same phenomena, especially if these are complex. The factors involved in religious change in Africa are very elaborate, but may be reduced to two broad sets—the policies of the missionary societies, the prime agents of change, and the character of the African societies, the arena of change. Above all we need to explain the varied reception of missionary teachings by African peoples.
Time and Village Structure in Northern Unyamwezi: An Examination of Social and Ecological Factors affecting the Development and Decline of Local Communities
Authors: Abrahams R. G. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIn October 1974 I returned to the Kahama District of Tanzania for a further period of research in northern Unyamwezi where I had previously worked between late 1957 and early 1960. The present paper arises from a consideration of the implications of two facts which impressed me strongly on this second visit. The first of these was that a substantial number of the homestead heads who had been my neighbours in the village of Butumwa for the larger part of my first fieldwork were still alive though some of them had moved to other parts of the District and beyond. The second was that those who had remained, along with many others from surrounding villages, had been moved as part of the Tanzanian Government's national resettlement programme into a new large nucleated village shortly before my return there. These two facts have led me to pay further attention to the nature and functions of pre-1974 settlement patterns and to examine the relation between these and the form of the new scheme. One of the main points which will emerge from my discussion is the need, in trying to understand these settlement patterns, to take careful account of how villages change and develop over time as part of a complex combination of social and ecological processes. This processual aspect of village organization in the area has, I may add, not previously received sufficient attention in my own and other accounts of the situation there.
The Fante Asafo: a Re-examination
Authors: Datta Ansu 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphSociological interest, like economic growth, is subject to uneven development. While Asante society has been studied in detail by Rattray (1923, 1927, and 1929), Busia (1949), and Lystad (1958), there has been relatively little research on the Fante of southern Ghana, and even less on the Fante asafo (the traditional military companies to which one belongs through the father's line). Looking back at De Graft Johnson's article on the Fante asafo, published in Africa in 1932, one realizes that even after three decades it remains, with the possible exception of Chapter VI of Christensen's monograph (1954), the only significant study devoted to the asafo. Yet, although valuable, these accounts are unfortunately open to criticism, in terms of both factual description and interpretation. De Graft Johnson's article is not adequate because it omitted some important features of the asafo, not likely to have been incorporated into the system after the author had collected his material. It also lacked balance through over-reliance on information collected from Cape Coast which, according to the author, provided a good model of the asafo (De Graft Johnson, op. cit., p. 307). While it failed to take note of several notable features of the asafo in inland states, it also neglected to underline some important details of the asafo which are observable even in Cape Coast. Christensen, on the other hand, collected his material from three Fante states, Abura, Anomabu, and Esiam, and his treatment of the asafo is, therefore, much more thorough. But he, as will be made clear presently, did not touch upon some salient aspects of the Fante asafo.
Anthropological Models in Yoruba History
Authors: Law R. C. C. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe recent appearance of a monograph by a social anthropologist, Peter Lloyd, on The Political Development of Yoruba Kingdoms in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries is likely to arouse considerable interest among historians of Africa, whose appetites have been whetted by adumbrations of his interpretation in some of his earlier publications. Lloyd traces the political development of the kingdom of Oyo through its period of imperial expansion in the eighteenth century until its collapse in the 1830s, and of five Yoruba states in the nineteenth century—Ibadan, Ado Ekiti, Abeokuta, Iwo, and Ilorin. He seeks to apply to the history of these states a model of the process whereby ‘tribal kingdoms’ develop into ‘highly centralised monarchies’. A ‘tribal kingdom’ is defined as one in which ‘political power…rests with a council of chiefs, each of which is selected by and from among members of a descent group—[and] the king is seen more as an arbiter between the chiefs than as an autocrat’. In a centralized monarchy, on the other hand, power rests with the king, the senior chiefs are appointed by the king, and a concept of ‘citizenship’ develops to replace descent-group loyalties. The Yoruba states discussed in this monograph did not, in fact, develop in this way, and Lloyd's theme is their failure to achieve centralization. The analysis is applied principally to Oyo. Of the nineteenth-century states discussed, relatively little is said of Iwo and Ado Ekiti, while Ibadan, Abeokuta, and Ilorin did not start out as ‘tribal kingdoms’ but as war-camps without kings. Moreover, it is suggested that the failure of Oyo to achieve centralization provided precedents for decentralization which influenced the development of its successors in the nineteenth century.
Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conversion in Black Africa
Authors: Fisher Humphrey J. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper had its genesis in the recent thoughtful and stimulating article by Robin Horton, on African conversion; the core of his argument is summarized below. Horton's evidence is chiefly drawn from Christian African experience, though he seeks to generalize from it for both Islam and Christianity. My specific purpose here is to look more closely at the phenomenon of Muslim conversion, and to see what light this may throw on Horton's argument. In particular, he has, I think, over-estimated the survival, admittedly in considerably developed forms, of original African elements of religion; and more important, has under-estimated the willingness and ability of Africans to make even rigorous Islam and Christianity their own. My other, general, purpose is to suggest that such Muslim/Christian comparisons may considerably enlarge our perspectives upon black Africa. The comparative approach is extended further, I hope not rashly, with brief considerations of conversion in the ancient world, and of the effects of literacy.
Ethnicity in southern Ethiopia: The General and the Particular
Authors: Blackhurst Hector 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe most significant movement of population in Ethiopia within the last 100 years has been the southward advance of northern Christians into areas inhabited predominantly by Muslim or pagan peoples. The initial impetus to this movement was given by the expansion of the Amhara Kingdom of Shoa in the 19th century when officers and men of the conquering armies were given land in the annexed territories. They were followed by a variety of adventurers, merchants and administrators all of whom benefited from their association with the Amhara rulers to carve a niche for themselves in the south. In these circumstances, it is understandable that analyses of inter-ethnic contact in Ethiopia have been dominated by the discussion of the relations between the Amhara and one or the other of the subordinate groups of the Empire.
An Historical Perspective of the Giriama and Witchcraft Control
Authors: Brantley Cynthia 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphWherever belief in witchcraft permeated an African society, fear prevailed and people demanded protection and control. Even though the degree of African concern about witchcraft was not always appreciated by outsiders, it was possible, at least in centralized societies, for such outsiders to discern the processes that were involved in its control. A king or a priest who failed to control the spread of witchcraft and to alleviate the fear was unlikely to maintain his authority for long. In non-centralized societies, the problem of witchcraft and the means of control were less clear-cut. Solutions were rarely obvious and easy.
Matriliny in the Throes of Change: Kinship, Descent and Marriage in Luapula, Zambia
Authors: Poewe Karla O. 
Published: April 2006

Economic Activities and KinshipIn the past there was a tendency to seek economic cooperation among one's local matrilateral and bilateral kindred. Like the Lozi situation described by Gluckman (1941), the economic activities of Luapulans are so varied that a wide deployment of manpower is required. In any one situation there are always some local kinsmen from whom one may choose helpers, and widely dispersed clansmen amongst whom one can travel and live in order to harvest or collect different resources to offset seasonal shortages at home. Permanent residence in one locality is based upon the mobility of kin who can be sent to garner varied resources in different areas. For example, young men may be sent to live in fish camps on islands in the swamps or river during the months of May, June, and July, or November through March. Commercial fishing of the prized pale (Tilapia macrochir) takes place from August through November and, at this time, young men devote their energy to fishing in the main river. Older men, on the other hand, even today usually fish in nearby waters for immediate consumption only (see Figure 3).
The changing context of land use decisions: three family farms in the Yam Cultivation Zone of eastern Nigeria, 1964-1977
Authors: Uzozie L.C. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe area occupied by the Igbo-speaking people of eastern Nigeria ranks high among West Africa's yam producing zones. Whereas the yam is the Igbo food crop par excellence there is nevertheless considerable local variation in local farming practice and land-use systems. This paper describes three farm units in different parts of Igbo country, indicating the role of yam in the cropping system. The material is derived from surveys undertaken in 1977, but in two of the three cases it has been possible to compare the information with similar surveys undertaken by the author in 1964, prior to the Nigerian civil war. Three case-study farms cannot constitute a sample in any statistical sense and no generalization is possible. The material is presented because the profound changes experienced in the last fifteen years ensure that any time series data, however patchy, are of great intrinsic interest, and because it serves to indicate the extent to which land use systems at the micro-level may differ, even though the basic set of crops may be broadly similar. The three farms studied are representative of their ecological zone: the first reflecting conditions in the zone of highest population density and greatest land shortage; the second, in the more open land on the Nsukka plateau, conditions in an area where land shortage is not yet so great as to have obliterated the distinction between intensively farmed compound land and more extensively ‘bush-fallowed’ land; and the third, conditions of relative land-plenty in southern Igboland, where farming systems show marked continuity with conditions before the civil war. The paper stresses the role of yam in the fanning systems concerned, and the subtle interplay of social, economic and ecological factors involved in its continued cultivation.
Ancestors as Elders in Africa—Further Thoughts
Authors: Brain James L. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn the essay which follows an attempt will be made to answer and elaborate on some of the points raised by Kopytoff in his article ‘Ancestors as Elders in Africa’ (Africa, xli, 2 April 1971, pp. 129–42), an article which will, no doubt, stimulate much argument and discussion. To do this I shall utilize both published sources and material collected in Uluguru in Eastern Tanzania.
Animal Marauders and Family Morality in Africa
Authors: Shorter Aylward 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphSurprisingly few Africanists are interpreting the oral literature of Africa using the conceptual tools fashioned by Lévi-Strauss. This article attempts to use some of his ideas in analysing eight etiological stories told by the Kimbu of Tanzania. The aim is not to emulate the master in his search for the innate structuring capacity of the human mind, but rather to set the sights lower, and to decide what is the real value of these stories to the Kimbu themselves. This can be done by distinguishing the various codes which the stories represent, following out their transformations, and discovering what message or messages they communicate. In all of this it has to be understood that we are dealing with what Lévi-Strauss calls ‘objectified thought’ and with empirical categories, and that we are not concerned with how men think in myths but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.
Social and Moral Concepts in Swahili Islamic Literature
Authors: Knappert Jan 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I shall attempt to set out the ideas of morality and of the structure of society in so far as they can be found reflected in Swahili Islamic literature. This literature is of two kinds. Firstly the didactic literature, mainly in prose, in which rules of conduct are given by Islamic teachers; secondly the narrative, legendary literature, mainly in verse, in which many social and moral concepts may be found, either expressed in a straightforward didactic form, as versified proverbs, or as it were by implication, in which case the underlying ideas can be made explicit by extrapolation.
The Apprenticeship System in Accra
Authors: Peil Margaret 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphMost developing countries are said to have far too few skilled workers. They are certainly limited in the number and size of technical schools they can afford to support. However, technical trainees may be too ‘high-powered’ to be useful in small-scale, indigenous businesses and most holders of technical certificates drift into work quite different from that for which they were trained (Foster, 1965, pp. 294-5; Pfefferman, 1968, p. 113). Alternative and much cheaper sources of skilled workmen are provided by training within industry and apprenticeship to an individual craftsman.
Beer, sorghum and women: production for the market in rural Upper Volta
Authors: Saul Mahir 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThe purpose of this study is to draw attention to the large volume of monetary transactions and profits within the traditional sector of a farming community in West Africa. More specifically it deals with the production, distribution and pricing of local brews, points to the effect of beer making on farming, and relates this trade to contemporary developments in other spheres of social and economic life.
The religious significance of women's scarification among the Tiv
Authors: Lincoln Bruce 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphAn elaborate and exceedingly beautiful pattern of scarification is found on the stomachs of Tiv women (see Figs. 1–8). These scars are applied around the time of puberty, and the same basic pattern is placed on the stomach of each girl. Occasionally these scars are referred to as ‘the circumcision of women’, but for the most part they are said to be meaningless, having only an aesthetic significance. Such statements need not necessarily be accepted at face value, though, as deeper meanings may be forgotten, deliberately concealed, or so commonly known as to be thought unworthy of mention. It is the purpose of this paper, written by a historian of religions, rather than an anthropologist or Africanist, to explore the possibility that these patterns carry some greater importance than is commonly recognized.