bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Observations on the Shilluk of the Upper Nile: The Laws of Homicide and the Legal Functions of the Reth
Authors: Howell P. P. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphPublished literature on the subject of the Shilluk is considerable and there are also many interesting accounts of specific subjects buried in the files of the Administration. Nowhere, however, is there a complete account of all aspects of Shilluk life. Moreover, there has been a tendency to concentrate on certain aspects, notably the Divine Kingship, to the exclusion of others. In 1941 Mr. M. E. C. Pumphrey and I published two articles: the first a general summary account of the Shilluk tribe based on Mr. Pumphrey's observations and wide experience; the second a more detailed analysis of one Shilluk settlement, the result of fieldwork carried out in 1937. In 1944 I had the privilege of attending the installation of reth Anei Kur and, together with Mr. W. P. G. Thomson, published a full account. Subsequently Mr. Thomson published his ‘Further Notes on the Death of a Shilluk Reth’, after the death of reth Anei in 1943. This, with Professor Evans-Pritchard's Frazer Lecture, The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan, represents the total of information published on the subject of the Shilluk in recent years.
La Question de l'Ethnique ‘Gourounsi’ en Haute-Volta (A.O.F.)
Authors: Nicolas François J. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphParmi les vœux adoptés à l'unanimité et sans discussion par le Deuxième Congres de toponymie et d'anthroponymie, tenu à Paris du 15 au 17 juillet 1947, il en est un auquel il faut donner la plus large diffusion: ‘Le Congrés . . 'met le vceu que les noms propres de lieux retenus pour les cartes d'Afrique Occidentale Française et d'Afrique Équatoriale soient ceux qu'emploient les Indigènes habitant les lieux, dans leur propre langue, et non les vocables utilisés par les populations voisines, qu'elles emploient ou non une langue vehiculaire . . .’ Ce vœu doit être complété par cet autre qui ne concerne plus les toponymes mais les noms ethniques: que pour désigner une ethnie on n'emploie que le vocable utilisé dans la langue de ce peuple pour se désigner lui-même, à l'exclusion des vocables utilisés par les populations voisines, qu'elles emploient ou non une langue véhiculaire. Salomon Reinach disait que les noms ethniques étaient la peste de l'anthropologie, cette affirmation reste vraie pour l'ethnologie.
Some Features and Forms of Nuer Sacrifices
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this article I give an account of some features and forms of sacrifices among the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It is intended to fill a gap in a series of articles designed to cover various aspects of the religion of this people. The central act of Nuer religious ritual is sacrifice, and all their sacrifices have this in common, that they are a means of making contact with spiritual beings. Those of which I speak more particularly in this article have further in common that they are made when a misfortune has happened or threatens and with the purpose of propitiating whatever spiritual being is responsible for it, though the sense of propitiation may be more marked in some sacrifices than in others and may combine with other elements in various configurations of meaning.
Arts and Crafts of Nigeria: Their Past and Future
Authors: Murray K. C. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe indigenous crafts of West Africa are so primitive in comparison with the mechanized industries of Europe that they may easily be omitted from schemes for future progress. Plans have been suggested for the extensive development of backward areas such as Nigeria as part of the post-war aim of the expansion of world trade. Large measures of social reconstruction, together with the starting of new industries and the improvement of old have been advocated in order that poverty may be lessened and the equipment of public services increased. Of many of these schemes there is no doubt that, if they were possible of achievement, industrial organizations would be set up that would have no relationship to African life as it is now. Experts in materials and industrial processes are not usually interested in sociological questions, nor are they accustomed to take them into account. They are concerned with efficiency, and have only to satisfy themselves that there is a sufficient supply of labour which is capable of manipulating machinery. Experts in the science of economics, for their part, have to decide whether there will be a market for the products of new or improved industries and therefore must necessarily examine some aspects of the life of the people in the area which they are studying. But the predominating factors of advertisement and price enable them to disregard deeper questions of cultural disintegration. Yet thorny questions would eventually arise upon which Africans would have decided opinions: such as the use of land for the exploitation of minerals, and the ownership and control of industries. The supply of labour might at first appear to Africans an innocuous, even a beneficial function, but later it might be discovered that the movement of workers into industrial towns was undermining the whole basis of their society
Some Problems Involved in the Development of Secondary Industries in West Africa
Authors: Stopford R. W. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn recent years increasing attention has been given to the question of developing small-scale industries in the Colonial Dependencies. It is now generally agreed that such a development is essential in the interests of the territories themselves and for the ultimate benefit of Great Britain and, the world. So enthusiastic indeed has been the acceptance of this new policy that there is now a danger that adequate attention may not be given to the needs of the local communities themselves, the service of which is the main justification for the establishment of these industries. However important it may be for world prosperity that the purchasing power of the peoples of Africa should be raised, it is no less important that every scheme of industrialization should be related to the requirements of the peoples of Africa, and the organization of the industries must be in harmony with local traditions. If this is not done the new industries, whether they are built up on local traditional crafts or are completely ‘exotic’, may prove to be socially disruptive. Every development of this kind has social and political consequences which are as important as the economic results, and which may, indeed, override financial and economic considerations. An increase in the material prosperity of Africa would be paid for too highly if the price should prove to be the disintegration of African society.
Some Notions of Witchcraft among the Dinka
Authors: Lienhardt Godfrey 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper is concerned with an examination of the usage of a Dinka word, apeth which may be translated either as ‘witch’ or as ‘witchcraft’. These English words, however, only roughly set the limits of its meaning, which are here more precisely indicated by a consideration of the contexts in which the Dinka use it.
The Village Headman in British Central Africa
Authors: Gluckman Max 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe Rhodes-Livingstone Institute is attempting a comparative study of the tribes of British Central Africa and of the processes of change affecting their lives to-day. Social anthropologists have been sent to tribes selected both for the variety of forms in their indigenous social organization and for the different ways in which they have been absorbed in the modern world-system. Though we, of the Institute's staff, are spread over thousands of square miles, and have had very different trainings, we have tried to collect our data on comparable bases and to study similar problems. This short symposium, which opens what we have come to consider a crucial problem, is the first-fruits of our collaboration.
Le Problème du Mariage Chrétien en Afrique Occidentale Française
Authors: Bertho J. 
Published: April 2006

Pour bien comprendre le problème du mariage chrétien en AOF, il est nécessaire de bien situer la place de l'individu et de la femme, d'une part dans la société païenne, et d'autre part dans la société chrétienne.La société païenne a comme élément fondamental et comme cadre, tout à la fois, la collectivité familiale patriarcale (ou matriarcale). Cette collectivité familiale n'a pas constitué son organisation en vue du bien direct et immédiat de l'individu, c'est au contraire toute l'activité de l'individu qui se trouve ordonnée en vue du bien supérieur de cette collectivité. L'individu adulte ne fonde pas une famille nouvelle qui aura sa vie propre et son indépendance, car la famille patriarcale qui l'englobe, la seule famille qui compte, existait bien avant l'individu. Elle prend son origine dans un passé lointain, plus ou moins mythologique, et son avenir est sans limite. C'est cette collectivité patriarcale qui possède seule une personnalité complète, au point d'absorber largement celle des individus, aussi peut-on dire que les individus ne sont plus que les organes ou les instruments de cette personnalité complexe. Les intérêts de la collectivité dominent les intérêts de l'individu et en cas de conflit, ce sont toujours-les intérêts de ce dernier qui sont écartés.
Lord Lugard: A Preliminary Evaluation
Authors: Perham Margery 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphTo give the first Lugard Memorial Lecture upon Lord Lugard himself is at once a task of great honour and of great difficulty. I need not explain to this audience why it is an honour: we know that we are here to recall the life and work of a great man, who was a creator of our Institute and for nearly nineteen years (1926-45) its Chairman. But the difficulty does need some explanation. I must attempt at least a preliminary evaluation of a life that was immense in the period of time covered and in the range, both in space and in character, of its activities. Yet I cannot assume that you have a full knowledge of that life since its story has yet to be told. Some here knew him in his later years; there are, indeed, some still alive who worked with him in the vigorous days of his prime. There is also his own vivid account of four of his most adventurous early years, and there is the impressive documentation of his governorships. But there are large areas in his youth and even in his manhood which are still quite unknown. And when these have been explored the parts have still to be put together to form a biographical whole. Here is my difficulty: I cannot, in the time we have this evening, attempt both to tell the story, even in outline, and to comment. Yet how can the story and the comment be divorced? I must attempt a compromise. I must offer you something not much more than a chronology of his life, and tell you a little—and how little it must be—of some of his earlier, less known achievements; and then, assuming your knowledge of his later life, offer, in all humility, my first provisional evaluation. I emphasize provisional because my biography is only half drafted and there is much, especially between his leaving Nigeria in 1906 and the latest part of his life when I knew him, that is still, for me, a subject for research.
Some Determinants of Marriage Stability in Busoga: A Reformulation of Gluckman's Hypothesis
Authors: Fallers L. A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn a recent paper Gluckman puts forward a general hypothesis to account for the wide variation in the frequency of divorce among some African societies. Contrasting the bilateral kinship system of the Lozi of Northern Rhodesia with the strongly agnatic one of the Zulu of Natal, he notes that divorce is common among the former, rare among the latter, and suggests the general hypothesis that stable marriage is associated with patriliny. Gluckman tests this hypothesis against a substantial body of comparative data, drawn mainly from trans-Saharan Africa, and concludes that the available evidence seems generally to support it. He notes, however, that data for many areas are inadequate and he is properly cautious in the face of the methodological difficulties involved in putting such hypotheses to decisive test:I am aware of the difficulties of establishing the validity of the hypothesis, but even if it is wrong it may be useful. Some of the difficulties are inherent in sociological analysis, since in this there are always complicating variables. Others arise from the vague and embracing use of categories and concepts (of which I too am guilty) such as patrilineal, lineage, marriage, divorce, &c….I am myself uncertain whether it is the stability of people's attachment to specific areas, or patriliny or father-right itself, or the agnatic lineage, or all of these together, which, whatever the other variables are, tend to be associated with a strong marriage tie.He concludes by inviting further testing and reformulation of the hypothesis.
Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba
Authors: Schwab William B. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper presents an analytic description of the principles underlying the traditional kinship system of the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria in the community of Oshogbo. Aggregation into large-scale urban-like communities which are characterized by the close interdependence of their political constitution and their economic and religious systems is a striking feature of Yoruba social organization. In these communities we find that the behaviour of individuals to one another, in the past at least, was very largely regulated on the basis of kinship and it would be accurate, I think, to state that among the Yoruba kinship was the usual means of articulation between the various elements of the social organization. Today, under the influence of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old. New values and attitudes have intruded and there is an increased fluidity in social norms. In the present generation the bonds of kinship have been greatly weakened as a foundation for social organization and as a mechanism for co-ordinating and regulating social behaviour. Yoruba society is indeed transitional in the sense that the old is in the process of disintegration and new forms are rapidly emerging. However, it is the internal and traditional patterns that determine the particular form and direction of the effects which the external alien forces of change exert. Consequently, in this paper, we shall place primary emphasis on the principles of kinship as they emerged as regulative factors in the traditional life of the Yoruba in the belief that, apart from purely ethnographic value, they will provide us with a better understanding of the manifold changes that have become apparent.
Observations on the Shilluk of the Upper Nile. Customary Law: Marriage and the Violation of Rights in Women
Authors: Howell P. P. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn a previous article on the Shilluk I discussed the laws of homicide and the legal and ritual functions of the reth or King. An interpretation of Shilluk law and authority is not easy because, apart from early contacts with the peoples of the northern Sudan, they have been subjected to external influences and some kind of Government since the early years of the last century. These contacts began with cursory and not altogether happy encounters with the Turco-Egyptian Government which were followed by the establishment of a provincial headquarters at Kodok in 1867 under the authority of a mudir; later came the turbulent and dismal years of the Mahdia and finally the occupation by the present Government in 1898. It would be idle to suppose that the political system of the Shilluk has remained unaffected by these influences. The Shilluk are by reputation an exceptionally conservative people and certainly the effects of their relations with outsiders are, to the casual observer, hard to detect. Profound changes have taken place none the less, especially in the sphere of customary law, and these changes are undoubtedly gathering momentum.
Koena Chieftainship Seniority in Basutoland
Authors: Hamnett Ian 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphBasutoland is administered by a unified and centralized hierarchical chieftainship (borena). At the head of the hierarchy stands the Paramount Chief, whose jurisdiction extends over the whole nation. Under him there are twenty-two Principal and Ward Chiefs, each having jurisdiction over the whole of his ward. In each principality there are a varying number of subordinate chiefs with their own (minor) wards, there being a total of about 460 such chiefs in the territory. The general effect is one of loose-fitting Chinese boxes, the loose fit being due to the fact that a chief (at any level of the hierarchy) does not grant the whole of his ward to subordinate chiefs but retains a part in his own hands, so that the sum of all the subordinate wards in any chiefdom is not as great as the totality of the superior ward of which they are parts.
The Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana
Authors: Hill Polly 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe development of commercial cocoa growing in Ghana is always assumed to be something of a miracle. It evokes the stereotype of the plodding subsistence farmer, eking out a living by a system of shifting cultivation in the forest. This peasant is correctly presumed to have been unfamiliar with the cash economy centred on palm produce for export and deriving mainly from areas south-east of the forest zone, but he is somehow supposed to have desired and contrived to fit a new permanent orchard crop into his ‘traditional system of food farming’, thus creating cocoa farms of from 1 to 3 acres from which were exported 80 lb. of cocoa in 1891, 536 tons in 1900, and 40,000 tons in 1911—since when Ghana has always been the world's largest cocoa producer.
A Final Contribution to the Study of Zande Culture
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn an article, ‘A Contribution to the Study of Zande Culture’, which appeared in Africa in 1960 (vol. xxx, no. 4), I discussed the certain or probable borrowing by the original Azande, the Ambomu, in the course of their migrations, of their main cultivated plants, e.g. eleusine, maize, ground-nuts, manioc, sweet potatoes, bananas, and tobacco, from assimilated or neighbouring peoples. In a second article, ‘A Further Contribution to the Study of Zande Culture’ (Africa, vol. xxxiii, no. 3, 1963), the discussion of cultural borrowings was taken into the field of artifacts and technology: building, smithery, pot-making, carving, plaiting, oracles, and medicines. In the present and final essay some examples are given of borrowing in areas of the social life other than those of cultivation of plants and the arts and crafts.
The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen
Authors: Marshall Lorna 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe !Kung Bushmen whose medicine dance is described in this paper live in the interior of the Nyae Nyae region in South West Africa. The observations were made in the years 1951–61, in the course of five expeditions. The bands with which expedition members had the closest and most prolonged contact were those that the author numbered 1-7, 9, 10, and 12 on the map (Fig. 1). The present study is concerned principally with the people in those bands, who numbered, in all, 225 persons. The information gathered from informants was obtained for the most part in 1952–3, when twelve consecutive months were spent in the Nyae Nyae region.
Labour Emigration among the Moçambique Thonga: Cultural and Political Factors
Authors: Harris Marvin 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThonga migrant labour has played a strategic role in the development of the Union of South Africa's economy, especially its mining industry. In 1954 there was a known total of 173,433 Moçambique labourers at work in the Union. Of these, 110,716 were employed in the mines, while 62,717 were employed in other industries and services (Anuário Estatistica, 1955, p. 131). This army of workers is drawn almost entirely from the region of Moçambique south of parallel 22° S., from among the Tonga-Shangaan peoples and the ethno-linguistically related Chope, Lenge, and Tonga of Inhambane. Although many of the motives and consequences of the Thonga emigration are shared by the migratory streams which emanate from other areas of Southern Africa and flow to the industrial heart of the Union, there are a number of circumstances connected with the movement of the Thonga which are not duplicated elsewhere.
A Note on the Abomey Protectorate
Authors: Newbury C. W. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn 1894 the military power of one of West Africa's most highly centralized kingdoms was broken. Six years later the last representative of the Fon dynasty which had ruled from Abomey since the early seventeenth century was deposed and exiled. Immediately after the conquest of Abomey by the French, the kingdom, somewhat reduced in area, was administered as a colonial protectorate. Attempts to rule through an indigenous paramountcy were not new in French West Africa: similar experiments were made in Senegal and in the Futa Jallon. But, compared with these better-known examples, Dahomey lacks a detailed account of administrative practice in its protectorates and a treatment of the nature of Abomey kingship at a time when the local authority structure was being reappraised by Europeans. The quick demise of an institution that had flourished for about 300 years and excited the wonder of traders and travellers calls for some explanation. How much of the Fon dynasty's fiscal and religious functions survived its loss of police powers, and by what methods did French administrators take its place?Part of the answer to these questions lies in the decline of Abomey control of coastal trade in the years immediately preceding the conquest—a factor, indeed, which aroused the dynasty to desperate measures and occasioned French military intervention. The rest of the explanation is to be found in the contradiction between ‘protectorate’, as administrative policy, and the administrative practice of French officials at Abomey.
A Contribution to the Study of Zande Culture
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe Azande are a Central African ethnic complex to which some fifty different peoples, speaking Sudanic, Bantu, Nilotic, and Nilo-Hamitic languages, have contributed. This was brought about by the migrations and conquests of the Ambomu people, under their Vongara ruling family, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the course of them the Mbomu clans, including the Avongara, were scattered far and wide, and everywhere they imposed on the subjugated peoples their language and political institutions, so that these peoples, some more quickly, and some more completely, than others, became, or are in the process of becoming, absorbed in the Zande amalgam. Little by little their languages are forgotten and their distinctive customs fall into desuetude. But, as might be supposed, in the process of assimilation to the dominant Ambomu, the foreign peoples, both the subjugated and those bordering Zandeland, contributed much to Zande culture. This paper is designed to give some indication of the extent to which the Ambomu have taken over foreign usages and of the complexity of the cultural amalgam which these borrowings have brought about.