bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Marriage and the Girl's Puberty Ceremony of the G/wi Bushmen
Authors: Silberbauer G. B. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe G/wi Bushmen referred to in this article live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Although the census of the Reserve is not yet complete, its permanent Bushman population is estimated as being 3,000, plus another 2,000 summer migrants. The Reserve is 20,115 square miles in extent and its Bushman inhabitants enjoy exclusive hunting rights, unrestricted except for a prohibition on the use of firearms and certain types of steel traps. The puberty ceremony described here was performed in the central portion of the Reserve. Although I have not had the fortune of a field-trip coinciding with another ceremony I had previously been told by members of three bands what would happen. This agreed in detail with what I saw. Later descriptions from all five bands of the vicinity do not differ, so this version is presumably representative of the ‘wild’ G/wi of the region. These Bushmen have had almost no contact with Europeans other than the personnel of the Bechuanaland Government Bushman Survey.
Traditional Politics in Nsaw
Authors: Kaberry Phyllis M. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionWhile I was doing fieldwork in the Tikar chiefdom of Nsaw in Bamenda (Southern Cameroons) for short periods during 1945–6, 1947–8, and again in 1958, one of the main topics of conversation was the long-standing dispute between the Fon (Chief) of Nsaw and a succession of men who had held the title of Fai wo Ndzendzef. Fai wo Ndzendzef is the most senior of the state councillors (vibai; sing. kibai), and may be described as the Great Councillor. By virtue of his office he is the most senior man in his own patrilineage and acts as lineage head. His title is vested in his lineage which forms part of a clan said to have originated a number of generations ago from Mbot, in what is now the Nkambe Division to the north of Nsaw.
Language Policy in Tanzania
Authors: Harries Lyndon 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIt is generally understood that Swahili is the official national language of the Republic of Tanzania. Perhaps because the concept of a national language has never been clearly defined within the Tanzanian context, there is some misunderstanding in the minds of many Tanzanian citizens as to the factual linguistic situation in their country. Certainly at the time when the country became independent and Swahili was first proclaimed a national language, it was proclaimed as such in opposition to English. The original intention was eventually to replace the language of the former colonial rulers, English, with Swahili. Comments by responsible African writers support this original intention. For example, Professor Ali Mazrui in an article published as recently as 1967 commented on the comparatively mild and smooth conclusion of British colonial rule and contrasted this with the anti-British language policy in Tanganyika after independence. ‘While Kenya had a violent anti-British insurrection and Uganda had its moments of rioting and boycotting against this or that aspect of British rule, the nationalist movement in colonial Tanganyika sometimes seemed to be almost Anglophile. Yet that old Anglophile Tanganyika has now become, in the area of language policy, anti-English’.
The Financing of the Ashanti Expansion (1700–1820)
Authors: Arhin Kwame 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe arrival of Europeans, and the introduction of guns, first in the coastal areas JL and then into the interior of West Africa, altered the nature of warfare. Already in the seventeenth century, the Akan-Fanti, Akim, Akwamu, and other peoples on the Gold Coast no longer relied entirely on bows and arrows, spears, and javelins which were the traditional weapons but used guns and even a few cannon. Besides the change in weapons, wars were undertaken on a larger scale than ever before—a situation which was aggravated by participation in the slave trade. Among the peoples of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, none excelled the Ashanti in either the scale or intensity of their fighting. From the turn of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, they fought major wars of conquest and minor ones of consolidation throughout the area of present-day Ghana, and after 1820 they were involved in four major clashes with the British until the latter dissolved their kingdom in 1900.
Neighbourhood Organization: A Major Sub-System among the Northern Nyamwezi
Authors: Abrahams R. G. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphRelations between neighbours simply in their capacity as neighbours rather than as kinsfolk, age-mates, or fellow subjects of a chief or headman have received relatively little consideration in the study of African tribal societies. In many cases this has clearly been determined by the nature of the ethnographic data. At least in the East African area, however, a concentration upon other principles of social organization seems occasionally to have diverted attention from neighbourhood relationships, so that we possess comparatively little information on this subject. In his penetrating and well-documented analysis of Soga state and kinship organization Fallers tells us that the Soga ‘peasant's daily interaction is largely carried out with his neighbours and in Busambira few of the latter are lineage-mates or, indeed, kinsmen of any kind’. We are, however, given no detailed account of this aspect of Soga society. In the case of the Toro we are informed that descent groups are generally not localized and that hunting, millet-planting, and beerbrewing were co-operative activities usually organized on a village or neighbourhood level. We are also told that traditional neighbourly values are becoming less important. Further details are, however, not presented.
Age, Descent and Elders among the Pokomo
Authors: Townsend Norman 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionA number of writers have noted that for East Africa, age organization and lineage organization are structural alternatives. More precisely, Southall (1970) has argued that the full and dominant development of age organization is incompatible with that of a segmentary lineage structure. Forde (1971) has similarly concluded that the two may be alternatives, and that selection between them may be partly dependent on ecological factors. However, I would like to contend that to write of the elaboration, or non-elaboration, of age structures and descent groups or of a conflict of allegiances, may well be a sterile exercise if it is unrelated to an analysis of the mode of livelihood of the people concerned. Furthermore, in light of the modern view of social structure as the outcome, at any point in time, of continuous processes of destructuring and restructuring, the ceaseless turnover of the membership of society, which age structures attempt to reduce to order, can be seen as one of the major sources of these processes, as Bottomore has recently argued (1975). Thus a source of structural stress, and hence ultimately of change, more important, I would argue, than the conflict between age and descent, is that between the generations.
Gerontocratic Government: Age-Sets in Pre-Colonial Giriama
Authors: Brantley Cynthia 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn the protection of their kaya home deep in the forest of the Mombasa hinterland, the Giriama of Kenya developed a non-centralized government based on a council of elders (kambi), and derived from age-sets. They were supported by a special secret society within the kambi whose oath and select membership were used to maintain order and determine guilt in difficult situations. In the period from approximately 1700 until sometime in the nineteenth century, the Giriama developed this form of government by drawing upon their previous experience of life in Singwaya and subsequent southward migration, upon their identification or assimilation of members into six original clans, and upon their unique environment of the kaya neighborhood to become successful cultivators, keeping cattle when circumstances allowed and emerging as the prominent traders of the Mombasa hinterland.
Woman-Marriage, with Special Reference to the Louedu—its Significance for the Definition of Marriage
Authors: Krige Eileen Jensen 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe marriage of a woman to a woman, found in many African societies, has not been given the attention it warrants, and is still imperfectly understood. Herskovits imputed to it sexual overtones that are foreign to the institution when, after stating quite definitely that such marriage did not imply a homosexual relationship, he went on to add ‘although it is not to be doubted that occasionally homosexual women who have inherited wealth…utilize this relationship to the women they marry to satisfy themselves’ (Herskovits, 1938, 1: 319–20). He made no attempt to substantiate his statement. And Lucy Mair, for all the clarity and grasp displayed in her excellent book on marriage, seems to have failed to appreciate the nature of the institution when she says, ‘According to Evans-Pritchard's account of the Nuer it is usually barren women who make such marriages, and indeed it is hard to imagine a woman who had her own children doing so’ (my italics; Mair, 1971: 60). In actual fact it is usually married women with children of their own who contract such marriages, except, it would appear, among the Nuer. By woman-marriage we mean the institution by which it is possible for a woman to give bridewealth for, and marry, a woman, over whom and whose offspring she has full control, delegating to a male genitor the duties of procreation.
Kinship and Marriage in a Polyethnic Community
Authors: Arens W. , Arens Diana Antos 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionAlthough Redfield's (1947) folk–urban continuum has been subjected to valid theoretical critiques (Miner 1952 and Mintz 1953) the tempting simplistic dichotomy this construct implies is still basic to our view of the social universe. Apparently anthropologists, like many of the groups they study, often prefer to conceptualize in dyadic terms. Thus, in an almost complete disregard for historical processes this proclivity has manifested itself in African studies by a contrast between a static ‘tribal’ hinterland opposed to a more dynamic urban domain. More recently as a mediating agent the tribal notion wound its way into African cities via a theoretical migration and re-emerged somewhat inelegantly as ‘supertribalism’ (Rouch 1956: 60), ‘urban tribalism’ (Gluckman 1960: 55) and ‘retribalization’ (Cohen 1969: 1–6). As a consequence the ‘tribe’ remains a basic conceptual category assumed applicable to both urban and rural Africa.
Marriage, descent and kinship: on the differential primacy of institutions in Luapula (Zambia) and Longana (New Hebrides)
Authors: Poewe Karla O. , Lovell Peter R. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIn this paper we examine the differential implications of kinship practices and, specifically, Crow kinship terminology for two societies, one African, the other Oceanic. The comparison is undertaken for the following reason. Keesing (1970:765) suggested that the gulf between the way he conceptualized the Kwaio system and the way Fortes (1969) and Goody (1973) conceptualized the African systems may well be far wider ‘than the gulf between what the Kwaio and Africans do. And if the gulf is generated more by the models than by the facts, we had better look very carefully at the models.’ The question arises, therefore, whether classic African descent models are different from Oceanic kinship models because the anthropologists are following different intellectual traditions, or whether these two sets of models are different because they reflect a very real difference in the institutional make-up of African and Oceanic societies?
The Nature and Effects of Differential Access to Education in Ga Society
Authors: Robertson Claire C. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphWhat happens when women are denied access, over a long period of time, to formal education of the type men are given? This paper is a preliminary examination of the effects on Central Accra Ga society of this process, which began in a significant form in the nineteenth century. It posits a detrimental effect, not only on the women but also on the whole society, and on the relation between the sexes, of the systematic channelling of men into Western style education, while women were encouraged to stay in trading and home production, or given the equivalent of ‘home economics’ courses if they were sent to school.
To catch a feastgiver: Redistribution among the Dorze of Ethiopia
Authors: Halperin Rhoda , Olmstead Judith 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe purpose of this paper is to examine in detail a mode of economic integration, redistribution, and its relationship to political power. The redistributive institution studied here involves assumption of the title halak'a by a male citizen. ‘We catch the halak'a!' say the Dorze (halak'a aikos), implying by their choice of verb that candidates show some reluctance to disburse their economic resources upon feasts and fees. During the ceremonies which create a titled incumbent from an initiate, large amounts of goods, services, and money are collected by the halak'a and used in lavish feasting. Pooling of resources and their subsequent reallocation mark as redistributive this prominent institution of Dorze public life.
Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures
Authors: Fabian Johannes 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphOne effect of specialization in the field of African Studies has been to prevent or hinder the study of subjects which, by their very nature, demand interdisciplinary interests and competences. Emerging popular culture is such a field. Division of labor among various social sciences and between the social sciences and the humanities—late-comers to Anglo-American concerns with Africa—have long worked like a conjuring trick: making vast and vigorous expressions of African experiencede factoinvisible, especially to expatriate researchers. African scholars have been slow to denounce this state of affairs, perhaps out of an elitist need to set themselves apart from the loud and colorful bursts of creativity in music, oral lore, and the visual arts emerging from the masses.
From tidal swamp to inland valley: on the social organization of wet rice cultivation among the Diola of Senegal
Authors: Linares Olga F. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionStudents of West African rice agriculture (cf. Dresch 1949, Mohr 1969) often distinguish between the Upper Guinea coast, where wet rice has been grown for centuries in permanent swamp fields recovered from the mangrove, and a more extensive area further inland, where the predominant form has been dry or mountain rice grown by shifting agriculturalists (fig. 1). The Diola of Senegal (Pélissier 1966, Linares 1970), the Balanta of Guinea Bissau (Espírito Santo 1949), and the Baga of coastal Guinea (Paulme 1957), belong to the first category. They transplant rice in inundated fields that are desalinated, diked, ridged and irrigated. In contrast, the Mande-speaking peoples of Sierra Leone and Liberia are mostly ‘upland’ farmers. They broadcast rice on rain-fed fields that are rotated and fallowed.
Misunderstandings Arising from the Use of the Term ‘Creole’ in the Literature on Sierra Leone
Authors: Skinner David , Harrell-Bond Barbara E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThroughout the growing body of literature on Sierra Leone a considerable degree of error has persisted over the use of the term ‘creole’ and the resultant confusion has led to repeated failure to describe accurately the society of the colony. This is not merely an academic problem. The very existence of such literature feeds back into the ‘collective representations’ of the society and has provided a false historical basis for the descriptions of the contemporary culture of the group who are referred to as creoles.
The fighting Nuer: primary sources and the origins of a stereotype
Authors: Johnson Douglas H. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIn the one hundred and forty years that the Nuer have been known to small audiences outside the Sudan they have almost invariably been presented as truculent and aggressive warriors. They appeared in the nineteenth century exploration literature as archetypical ‘savages’: naked, stubborn and warlike men who were compared to monkeys, to the monkeys' advantage (Baker 1867:60). In the early twentieth century they were thought to be an intractable problem that impeded the peaceful establishment and efficient running of a new colonial administration. In Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard's monographs Nuer feuds and raiding are described as central to the structural relations between Nuer sections and between the Nuer and their neighbours.
Village segmentation and class formation in southern Malaŵi
Authors: Kandaŵire J. A. K. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper is about a problem which arises from James Clyde Mitchell's study of the Yao village in southern Malaŵi. When writing about the Yao, Mitchell drew our attention to their system of group segmentation which he portrayed as though it were perpetual in character (Mitchell 1952: 18-20). Here I analyse the implication of this process of group segmentation in a situation which is governed by administrative regulations that make it difficult for segmenting groups to spread as freely as they used to do before Britain colonised the country in 1891. What I want to argue is that owing to changes in population, against the background of fixed administrative or even political boundaries, group segmentation in southern Malaŵi is bound to throw into the open the old scars of structural inequality. Two types of facts are, therefore, required to carry out this demonstration: demographic and historical. Consequently, I divide this paper into three major sections: one in which I present figures showing population densities in Malaŵi in general, and in southern Malaŵi in particular; one in which I give a brief historical outline of Malaŵi; and one in which I attempt to show that from the available historical information we can discern processes that led to the formation of classes in Malaŵi and how these classes were simplified by the formation of the colonial situation which reduced, at one stroke, all Africans into a dependent classvis-à-visthe European colonisers. But despite this over-simplified picture of the two classes in the colonial situation, there is evidence at the local level which shows that as land is increasingly becoming scarce, relative to population growth, village disputes over land illuminate the traditional structure of inequalities. I hold the view that the inevitable result of the contradiction between population growth and land shortage is class formation.
The concept of spirit in Akwapim Akan philosophy
Authors: Minkus Helaine K. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphStudies of African religions almost invariably include detailed discussions of various categories of spirits. Rarely, however, is spirit considered in the abstract; spirits are described, but not the spiritual. This paper will explore the concept of sunsum, ‘spirit’, as it is employed throughout Akwapim Akan philosophy. Sunsum will be shown to be the central, unifying theme which integrates the various domains of Akwapim Akan thought. The distinction between the exclusively spiritual (ye sunsum) and the inspirited (wo sunsum) figures prominently in the ontology, epistemology and theory of causality and constitutes a major premise of the philosophy. The paper will conclude with the assertion that the universe in traditional Akwapim Akan thought is not divided into separate spiritual and material worlds but is most accurately regarded as one inspirited universe.
Curing what ails them: individual circumstances and religious choice among Zulu-speakers in Durban, South Africa
Authors: Rounds John C. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphMuch attention has been given to the causes accounting for the rise of religious movements: inequality (Linton, 1943), racism (Lea, 1926; Sundkler, 1948), relative deprivation (Barber, 1941; Aberle, 1972), oppression (Lanternari, 1963), the colonial situation (Balandier, 1970), and white power (Ifeka-Moller, 1976) are among the factors which have been given prominence. These and other similarly ‘macro-social’ factors are very visible, especially from a distance. They can be, and often are, imagined to operate with general uniformity across entire social groups. This then invites the use of similarly general demographic measures to prove both the reality of the independent variable and its efficacy in accounting for the dependent variable – the rise of new churches and/or conversion to them.
The Supreme Being, divinities and ancestors in Igbo traditional religion: evidence from Otanchara and Otanzu
Authors: Ubah C. N. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe subject of Igbo traditional religion has aroused a considerable amount of interest among scholars in the past few decades. The works of early ethnographers like Talbot (1926), Meek (1937) and Basden (1938) eloquently spelt out some of its principal themes. Among these are what we may refer to as the three major pillars of Igbo traditional religion, namely the Supreme Being, divinities and ancestors.One of the problems with most of the existing studies is the tendency to generalize for the whole of Igboland on the basis of evidence which is valid for some Igbo areas only. Given the Igbo type of political system which is characterized by the existence of a very large number of autonomous communities, it is not surprising that there is a greater amount of heterogeneity in the religious system than is the case in the centralized kingdoms of pre-colonial Africa. To understand the diversity of Igbo religious beliefs and practices there is an imperative need for the study of the religious systems of specific Igbo communities.
Seasonal Hunger in Tropical Africa as a Cultural Phenomenon
Authors: Ogbu John U. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIn 1961 Marvin Miracle attempted to demonstrate that reports of ‘seasonal hunger’ in tropical Africa were to be discounted and that in fact regular ‘hunger periods’ did not occur. He based his argument on a definition of seasonal hunger which took into account only the calories people consumed. By his definition, ‘seasonal hunger’ can exist only if people consume fewer calories than they need in certain months of each year even though their total calorie intake over the year is adequate (Miracle, 1961: 277–88). He denied that there was sufficient evidence of any such shortfall to justify the F.A.O. statement (1958) that ‘pre-harvest food shortage is still a problem in many of the drier parts (of tropical Africa)’.
Generation Classes among the Mbeere of Central Kenya
Authors: Glazier Jack 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionAge has represented in various ways a significant principle of social organization for the Mbeere of Kenya, one of the peoples of the North-eastern Bantu cluster, just as it has among numerous other peoples of East Africa. Traditionally a formal age organization comprised two groups: age-sets universally recruited from circumcised youth, and generation classes with constituent generation-sets. Informants' explanations of the age organization together with census and genealogical data clearly suggest that the recruitment principles and social processes within age-sets were independent of the recruitment principles and social processes characterizing generation classes and their generation-sets. The distinction between these two subsystems of the age organization is therefore more than an heuristic device.