bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
European and Bantu Languages in South Africa
Authors: Doke C. M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe future of the Bantu languages in South Africa is a question often discussed both by Europeans interested in them and by thinking Natives who use them. The ideas and views expressed on this question are extremely varied, for the subject has its economic and political aspects as well as its natural and cultural aspects, and to-day there is a tendency, particularly among the educated and semi-educated Natives, to stress the economic and political at the expense of the other aspects.
A Reader in the Vernacular for West Africa
Authors: Wiegräbe Paul 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe North German Mission has for several decades had a series of readers in the vernacular for the school-children of the Ewe people (of Togo) among whom it works. The series comprises a primer and four readers of 80-180 pages, containing material suitable for seven consecutive classes. According to the opinion of experts these books are among the best of their kind for their time. However, it is fortunate that the introduction of the new orthography has compelled the issue of a new edition. This gives an opportunity of adapting the books to the demands of modern educational methods. The principles on which the work is being undertaken are here set forth briefly in the hope that they will not only help others, but will also provoke a fruitful discussion on the weighty problem of the creation of African readers.
Languages used in the Congo Basin. A Linguistic Survey
Authors: Laman K. E. 
Published: April 2006

In the following pages an attempt will be made to give a survey of those languages in the Congo basin which are most important and of special value for educational and literary work.As I left the Congo several years ago I have communicated with the Roman Catholic and Protestant missions working there with regard to this subject and I am very grateful for all the replies received.We cannot yet master the facts. The difficulties are many. Several of the important languages are not yet known. The policy of the French, Belgian, and Portuguese governments is at present very divergent in regard to languages and educational and literary work.
The Distribution of Native Population over East Africa
Authors: Baker S. J. K. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe region with which this study is concerned comprises the political units of Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanganyika Territory, and the Belgian mandate of Ruanda and Urundi. (See Map I.) Its total area is some 727,000 square miles, i.e. more than eight times as large as that of Great Britain, though of this total area about 40,000 square miles consists of water surface. In 1931 the native African population totalled about 14,600,000, whilst the figure for the European population stood at 28,223. The European element is thus outnumbered in the proportion of more than 500 to 1, and even the total non-native population, including Europeans, Indians, Goans, and Arabs, is outnumbered in the ratio of 80 to 1. The native population constitutes a vastly preponderant element in the whole, and it is on the salient features of its distribution that the attention of this paper is wholly focused.
Les Groupes de Parenté du Rwanda Ancien
Authors: Maquet Jacques J. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLes trois institutions qui s'appellent en kinyarwanda inzu, ubwoko et umulyango n'ont pas joui, à notre connaissance, d'un traitement définitif et pleinement satisfaisant dans la littérature ethnologique consacrée au Rwanda. D'autre part, les informateurs que nous avons interrogés sur ces institutions de parenté nous ont donné des réponses très divergentes, voire contradictoires. Il est aisé de découvrir la raison de cette confusion. Durant les trois ou quatre siècles d'occupation de ce pays d'agriculteurs bantu—les Hutu—par une minorite dominante de pasteurs — les Tutsi, les groupes de parenté ont subi un lent processus de changement sous divers aspects. L'expansion territoriale progressive sous une dynastie unique et l'intensification du contrôle exercé par l'autorité centrale sur le pays ont eu nécessairement une influence considérable sur l'autonomie, le fondement territorial et les fonctions sociales de ces groupes de parenté tant chez les Tutsi que chez les Hutu. C'est pourquoi il n'est pas étonnant qu'il y a une cinquantaine d'années, alors que cette évolution se poursuivait et au moment où l'influence de la culture et de la puissance d'Occident allait se faire de plus en plus envahissante et permanente, la situation des groupes de parenté n'était pas complètement stabilisée. Dans le présent article nous nous proposons d'indiquer les lignes principales de l'interprétation que nous croyons pouvoir dormer de ces trois institutions et de leurs relations.
A Form of Polyandry among the Lele of the Kasai
Authors: Tew Mary 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe type of village polyandry described in this paper is found among the Lele, and possibly among other peoples, living between the Kwilu and the Kasai in the western Belgian Congo. The Pende, the Bunda, and the Dinga are reported to have a similar custom. There is a government ordinance prohibiting polyandry among these tribes, and I have followed this legal precedent in calling the practice polyandry, for lack of a better title. The Lele call it hohombe, or ngalababola, which means ‘wife of the village’. As the hohombe institution is closely connected with village life and politics, I shall begin by giving an outline of village conditions.
The Nkumu of the Tumba: Ritual Chieftainship on the Middle Congo
Authors: Brown H. D. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe tribes living round Lake Tumba, a lake some thirty-five miles long by twelve wide lying north of Lake Leopold II (approximately o° 30′ south latitude, and 18° east longitude) and draining into the Congo River at the confluence of the Ubangi, lack cohesion and show a considerable variety of custom and language. But they are known collectively as Tumba, the Government adaptation of the Native term Ntomba. Most of them are found to the east of the lake, the whole group numbering perhaps little more than forty to fifty thousand at the present time, though there is evidence that the last twenty years have seen a great decrease in population. European occupation of this area goes back barely fifty years, Protestant missions having been established for about the same length of time. The first mission post was established at Ikoko on the north-east shore of the lake, one of the villages of a group known as Bonginda. In pursuing this investigation particular attention has been given to the practices of this group, but mention is occasionally made where considerable differences have been found elsewhere.
The Family, Household, and Minor Lineage of the Konkomba
Authors: Tait David 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper first seeks to show how far the actual forms of the Konkomba family and household coincide with their forms as conceived by the people themselves. The second part (which will appear in a later number of this journal) analyses some of the functions of these units of organization. By function, I mean the relation of the household to certain aspects of Konkomba life: namely, the household as a unit of production and consumption, as a unit of social control, as a ritual unit, and so on. The term ‘household’ refers to the total group of persons living together in one compound (letʃeni), which is a cluster of round houses distributed about a central space and linked by a low wall (see Fig. I). The head of a household (letʃendaa) is the senior man, the husband and the father of the family that is the nucleus of the household. This may be an elementary or a polygynous family; or it may be an expanded family consisting of a number of brothers and their wives, sons, and unmarried daughters; or it may be an extended family, consisting of a man, his wives, their sons, sons' wives and children, and their unmarried daughters. To this nucleus other kin are added and it will be shown that these additional members are always either members of the minor lineage group of the household head or wives or widows of members.
Ethnographic and Sociological Research in East Africa: A Review
Authors: Beattie J. H. M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphA good deal of ethnographic and sociological research has recently been undertaken, or is planned or currently in progress, in the four East African Territories of Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya, and Zanzibar. This research is being and has been carried out under a number of different auspices. These include, as well as the East African Institute of Social Research at Kampala (which has organized and directed a large part of the research so far undertaken), universities and other sponsoring bodies in England and the United States (such as the Colonial Social Science Research Council, the ‘Scarbrough’ Committee, and the Goldsmiths' Company in England, and the Ford, Fulbright, and Carnegie foundations in America), Makerere College, the East African Statistical Department, and the territorial Governments themselves.
Batoa, Batwa, Batswa
Authors: Possoz E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLes Bantous n'ont pas envers leurs Pygmées le même mépris que l'Européen moderne professe envers les peuples de couleur. Pourtant, malgré toute l'estime de fait qu'ils manifestent souvent pour eux, les Bantous considèrent les Pygmées comme trop anciens pour valoir les ‘moderns’ qu'ils se croient. Le respect qu'ils témoignent pour les Batwa ne dérive, quant au fond — et au fond institutional de leur vie — que du fait qu'en mentalité clanique on honore toujours ceux qui sont ‘devant’, c'est à dire dans l'ordre chronologique des vies. Et cela parce que la primogéniture est toujours la voie par laquelle on se rapproche de Dieu, premier père, et par laquelle on se raccorde à Lui.
The ‘Descent’ of the Tiv from Ibenda Hill
Authors: Sai B. Akiga , Bohannan Paul 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe Tiv, a semi-Bantu people numbering some 800,000 who live in the middle Benue Valley of Northern Nigeria, have not, according to their tradition, always lived in their present location. They account for their entrance into the territory they now occupy and the disposition of the lineages into which they are organized by means of stories which depict events of their migrations.Tiv from every part of Tivland know bits and pieces of myth, relevant to their own lineages and those nearby, which they consider to be parts of the story of their descent (msen) from the hills. The stories vary from area to area, from individual to individual, and from situation to situation. In spite of the fact that the size of the population and its wide dispersal militate against anyone's knowing all these stories, it is an article of Tiv faith that it would be possible to correlate them all into a narrative.
Malinowski's ‘Functional’ Analysis of Social Change
Authors: Gluckman Max 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThere can be no single right analysis of social change. The data are so complex and our tools as yet so crude that we must expect to work with various hypotheses and many types of abstractions. Some will be better instruments of analysis than others, and we must hope that we shall be able to subsume several of these in more comprehensive and consistent bodies of ordered knowledge. I immediately distrust such works as this latest polemic of the late Professor Malinowski's which is written in the strident terms of the one-and-only orthodoxy.
La Voyelle des Radicaux CV en Bantou Commun
Authors: Meeussen A. E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLes radicaux du type CV, tels qu'ils ont été donnés par Meinhof pour le bantou commun, se répartissent en cinq groupes vocaliques, la voyelle étant le plus souvent représentée par y ou w devant -a dans chacune des langues:i̧pi̧ (cracher), ni̧ (aller à selle);i pi (brûler), ni (pleuvoir), di (manger), gi (aller), ki (poindre), ti (mettre);a p(a) (donner), b(a) (demeurer);u pu (sécher), gu (tomber), cu (se coucher — soleil), mu (raser), du (se battre), ku (crier);u̧ mu̧ (boire), du̧ (sortir de), ku̧ (mourir).
Nyanja Linguistic Problems
Authors: Price T. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphPredominant in a territory which extends roughly 500 miles north from the lower Zambezi and from the eastern shore of Lake Nyasa to the Luangwa Valley, there is a body of Africans who have for their mother tongue some dialect of the language widely known as ‘Chinyanja’. The chi- (or ci- in modern orthography) is the local form of the usual Bantu prefix to the tribal name, designating the language rather than the district or personnel of the tribe, and may be discarded in English usage. Following a now general convention, the language will be referred to here simply as ‘Nyanja’.
The Gani Ritual of Nupe: A Study in Social Symbiosis
Authors: Nadel S. F. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe gani ceremonial, which I propose to discuss in this paper, is not Nupe by origin but was introduced by a small group of immigrants from Bornu, Mohammedans by religion, who, between 1760 and 1770, settled in Nupe country in and around the village of Kutigi. They still call themselves, after their country of origin, Benú—the Nupe version of the name for Bornu, but are in every other respect completely Nupeized. The historical facts are reasonably certain: moreover, according to two ethnographical accounts, the people of Bornu still practise a ceremonial called gani, though from the reports it is impossible to say how far this ceremonial resembles the Nupe variant. In Nupe the gani is only practised in the few villages where the immigrants now live among the original pagan population, though there it is performed by the whole community together—immigrants and original inhabitants alike. All these facts are important and will receive attention later.
Native Authorities and Education
Authors: Scott H. S. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe student of English education who tries to envisage the development of African education is apt to be misled by the picture he has in his mind of its development in England. It is difficult for one brought up in the British tradition to divest himself of his national prepossessions, and it is hoped that any reader of this article will discount the limitations imposed by what seems to him to be British insularity. None the less, it may not be altogether without interest to readers of an international journal to see how this British tradition affects the approach to African problems. The English student is tempted to think of a vigorous and progressive Local Education Authority as part of the general local government of an area, managing and controlling schools, employing its own staff of administrative officials, building its own schools, and employing its own teachers. That picture is (of course) far from complete, for in England other parties are involved. There is the central government, which supplies from national (as distinct from local) revenue the bulk of the necessary funds. There are, too, the Churches, particularly the Anglican and the Roman Catholic, with their long educational history and their vast contributions to the educational system. Moreover, we have in England the further characteristic complication of a great and powerful body of teachers, who seem to the outsider to be partly state officials protected by the central authority and partly employees of the local authority. It is natural that in considering the supply of educational facilities in Africa we English should be in danger of being misled by our insular prepossessions. We must, therefore, be clear in our own minds as to what we mean when we speak of ‘Native Authorities’ and ‘Central Government’, and Churches, and the place and status of the teaching staffs in Africa.
The Governmental Roles of Associations among the Yakö
Authors: Forde Daryll 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn the study of indigenous African institutions that exercise control while promoting social cohesion and regulating inter-personal and inter-group competition, much attention has been given to the analysis of the governmental functions of kin groups on the one hand and of ritually sanctioned political chiefship on the other. Institutions of these two types, which correspond to the distinction made by Durkheim between segmental and organic solidarity, were the basis of the well-known classification of African Political Systems by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard into two contrasted types labelled lineage or segmentary in one case, and centralized or statelike in the other. In their classification these writers were mainly concerned to distinguish politically centralized chiefdoms from those societies in which the exercise of political authority and social control was confined to recurrent but fluctuating combinations of lineages under their ritual leaders. In this they were led to imply, perhaps as a result of the limited range of societies selected for consideration, that apart from small autonomous bands of kindred, the only alternative to an acephalous and segmentary lineage system was a centralized society in which offices and political powers were hierarchically arranged with definite relations of administrative superiority and subordination holding between offices and councils at different levels. ‘Administrative machinery’ and ‘judicial institutions’ were treated as concomitants of centralized authority.
The Status of Craftsmen among the Konso of South-West Ethiopia
Authors: Hallpike C. R. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThere are many references to despised groups of artisans in the literature on Ethiopia, but unfortunately they are scattered through travel books which, from the anthropologist's point of view, are too superficial to permit a sustained and rigorous analysis of the variant forms of this phenomenon. Among such works I would include the publications of Jensen and the Frobenius Institute. After only five weeks' stay among the Konso he attempted an ambitious account of their religion and society in Im Lande des Gada that is false or distorted in almost every detail, not excepting matters of elementary observation. Shack's study of the Gurage and the status of craftsmen among them is the only one known to the author which can be considered as the work of a professional anthropologist. This article is therefore intended partly as a contribution to the ethnography of artisan status in Ethiopia. Only when we have many more such studies will we be in a position to appraise the situation properly, and to ascertain the basic characteristics of discrimination against craftsmen in Ethiopia. It may well be that the criteria of discrimination cannot be reduced to a single pattern.
African Ethnographic Maps, with a new Example from Northern Nigeria
Authors: Prothero R. Mansell 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThere is little evidence to show that ethnic differences in Africa result in problems of lesser magnitude at the present day than in the past. In recent years the problems of ‘minorities’ have had to be considered in Nigeria, while in the Republic of Congo (Léopoldville) ethnic conflicts and the reappearance of past tribal enmities have produced numerous tragic situations during the last twelve months. The frontiers of Africa were delimited by the European powers half a century or more ago and their absurdity in relation to ethnic groups has been demonstrated recently in papers by Barbour and Prescott. They were drawn in ignorance of the different groups of people through which they passed and have now been inherited by independent African governments who will have to face the problems which have been created. To solve them these African governments will need to know more of ethnic groups and their distributions than did their European predecessors and the need for more adequate ethnographic maps is likely to increase rather than diminish.
Love, Marriage, and Social Change: Letters to the Advice Column of a West African Newspaper
Authors: Jahoda Gustav 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe effects of major changes in the social system on the mental state of individuals have been the subject of a recent controversy. Miss Ward (1956), in a paper discussing the significance of an alleged increase in the number of witch-finding cults in Ashanti, argued that this can be taken as evidence of a widespread rise in the general level of anxiety resulting from rapid structural changes. In a subsequent rejoinder Goody (1957) challenged not only the view that such cults have in fact become more numerous, but also the underlying assumption, shared by many social scientists, that rapid social change produces an emotional malaise in the people caught up in it.
Urbanization and the Interpretation of Misfortune: A Quantitative Analysis
Authors: Hammond-Tooke W. D. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe general aim of this paper is to test by quantitative methods Mitchell's statement (Mitchell, 1965, p. 193) that ‘we expect the meaning which people read into misfortunes to change when they become part of an industrial urban community’. Mitchell was commenting (and elaborating) on the demonstration by Marwick (1952) that witchcraft accusations are particularly likely to occur between people who are in competition with one another, but who are prevented by the norms of the society from expressing their hostility openly. He suggests that Africans in town continue to interpret their misfortunes in ‘personal’ terms but that ‘the meaning that they attach to the misfortune must be of a type which will allow them to take effective action’. In the towns of the Copperbelt hostility and opposition may be openly expressed toward strangers, so there is no need for accusations of witchcraft (signalling interpersonal tensions), except where townsfolk are linked in co-operative enterprises in which, nevertheless, there is an element of competition, e.g. as between rival beerbrewers or fellow workers. In such cases open accusation tends to be inhibited and the interpretation recouched in terms of ancestral wrath. Mitchell sees, therefore, an increase in ancestor-centred explanation of misfortune in urban areas and implies a decrease in witch accusations. Marwick has suggested, on the other hand, that ‘the immediate effect of contact with Western influence is not a decrease but an increase in the African's preoccupation with magic, witchcraft and sorcery’, due to new social alignments and social, economic and political changes, which create insecurity, anxiety, and impart a ‘dangerous flexibility’ to human relationships (Marwick, 1958, p. 106).
Cousin Marriage in the Afro-Arab Community of Mombasa, Kenya
Authors: Tanner R. E. S. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe Afro-Arab community living along the coastal belt of Kenya and Tanganyika contains persons claiming Arab nationality by either patrilineal or matrilineal descent in whom the biological Arab strain may vary between individuals born to pure Arab parents and speaking Arabic and those in whom the Arab strain is unobservable and who speak Swahili. It is not accepted that the term Swahili covers the social interrelationships between these variations. The Swahili-speaking Afro-Arabs can be adequately described as Swahili but they nevertheless wish to be regarded as Arabs by outsiders and to speak as much Arabic as they can learn. The cultural and social interrelationship is so strong that a term must be used which will include the Arabs at one end of the scale and the Swahili at the other.
A Note on Some Central African Forenames
Authors: Chaplin J. H. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionAny associate or employer of Africans is aware of a great diversity of forenames among them; this habit has been discussed by Jackson for Southern Rhodesia, and for Northern Rhodesia in two papers by Munday. It is these last which this note is intended to supplement by giving quantitative examples and drawing attention to one or two further aspects of the subject.