bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Sidamo Generational Class Cycles. A Political Gerontocracy
Authors: Hamer John H. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThis paper considers age organization as a political means of dealing with problems arising out of the dispersion of men and wealth in varying ecological zones among the Sidamo of south-west Ethiopia.The Sidamo inhabit an area shaped like a trapezoid beginning 169 miles below Addis Ababa, extending on a north-south axis from Lake Awasa to Lake Abaya, and on the east-west axis from the upper branches of the Loghita River to the Billate River (see Map I). Their cultural boundaries are with the Arusi on the north, Walamo on the west, southward with the Gugi and Darassa, and the Jamjam (Northern Gugi) on the east. On the basis of village census data and registration of the majority of Sidamo household heads for the 1965 parliamentary elections, I would estimate the population to be between 100,000 and 200,000 persons.
The Terminology of Kinship and Marriage among the Yoruba
Authors: Schwab William B. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this paper we shall be concerned with the Yoruba systems of terminology towards kin and affinal relations, as exemplified in the community of Oshogbo. Our main interest will be the extent of the correspondence between the kinship system and the nomenclature and we shall attempt to show that while terminology and behaviour are never incompatible, in certain situations the correspondences are more detailed and precise than in others.
Turu Ecology: Habitat, Mode of Production, and Society
Authors: Schneider Harold K. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe purpose of this paper is to describe the production and settlement system of the Bantu-speaking Turu of central Tanzania and to discuss its effects on the social system. Save for certain other peoples of this area who are historically close to the Turu, the practice of manuring of land and strictly sedentary settlement without slash-and-burn horticultural techniques or bush fallowing (except as ancillary to the main production processes) are an unusual combination in Africa.
Further Adventures of Hyena and Rabbit: The Folktale as a Sociological Model
Authors: Beidelman T. O. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn a previous article published in this journal analysed one East African folktale in terms of its sociological significance. In this article I present a second, similar tale which deals with the same characters and which provides additional illustration of some of the points I tried to make in my earlier work.This folktale is in Chikaguru, the language spoken by the Kaguru, a matrilineal Bantu people living in northern Kilosa and Mpwapwa Districts. The Kaguru have cultural traditions similar to those of other matrilineal peoples in this region of Tanganyika, such as the Luguru, Ngulu, Zigua, Sagara, and others. They are organized into about ioo non-localized, exogamous matri-clans (ikungugo or lukolo), each of which is divided into many matrilineages which cannot actually trace common descent. Traditionally, political rights over land and rights to perform certain ceremonies of rainmaking, purification, and fertility descend to men through women. The traditional system has been greatly disrupted and changed by colonial rule, missionary activity, and the introduction of a market economy, but this has little relevance to the significance of the material discussed in this paper, which is concerned primarily with the traditional system.
Religious Values in Kimbu Historical Charters
Authors: Shorter Aylward 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThe concept of the mythical charter, validating claims to ritual or political authority, is a familiar one to social anthropologists, although, due to a better understanding of the interaction of myth and history, there has been a tendency in recent years to speak of the ‘historical’ rather than the ‘mythical’ charter. Those who use such terms are not primarily interested in the charter as evidence of a system of ideas, worth studying for its own sake. Their emphasis is on the function of the charter, rather than on its meaning. However, a brilliant lead has been given in the exploration of myths as systems of ideas by Claude Lévi-Strauss who places a given text within the whole corpus of oral literature proper to a society. Going, perhaps, further than this, Victor Turner corrects the predominantly literary approach of Lévi-Strauss by his examination of the ‘positional meaning’ of the symbols employed by such texts—a meaning derived from a totality of elements, rites, and institutions within a whole culture.
À Propos de Quelques Ouvrages Récents de Droit Africain
Authors: Vanderlinden J. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphEn 1887, A. H. Post publiait son ouvrage intituléAfrikanische Jurisprudenz—Ethnologisch-juristisch Beiträge zur Kenntniss der einheimischen Rechte Afrikas. L'Afrique semblait ainsi entrer de plein pied dans la science juridique moderne. En réalité, il n'en était rien, car davantage que son titre, le sous-titre de l'œuvre était caractéristique d'une orientation qui devait être celle de la science juridique africaine au cours des décennies ultérieures. Au cours de cette période, qui s'étend jusqu'à l'époque des premières indépendances africaines, ce qui aurait pu être le droit africain sera la juxtaposition de deux systèmes juridiques totalement distincts, celui du colonisé et celui du colonisateur, le premier nommé étant le plus souvent qualifié d'indigène (native) ou de coutumier (customary).
Et Maintenant, Lord Lugard?
Authors: Deschamps Hubert 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLorsque le Conseil Exécutif de l'Institut International Africain m'a fait l'honneur de me confier cette ‘Lugard Memorial Lecture’, le nom prestigieux de Lugard me frappa comme un éclair et chassa de mon imagination toute possibilité d'autre sujet. Je ne sais si notre Président, lorsqu'il prononça, en 1952, dans cette même ville, son remarquable discours à la mémoire du grand Lord, son prédécesseur, avait été victime d'une crise de possession aussi caractérisée. Quant à moi je découvris brusquement que j'avais depuis longtemps quelque chose à dire à Lord Lugard et que je n'aurais jamais de meilleure occasion. Souffrez done que je lui parle en votre présence.
Destiny and the Unconscious in West Africa
Authors: Horton Robin 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphMany present-day social anthropologists may find Professor Fortes's most recent study the most significant of all his works on the Tallensi. Its main theme is the way in which these people use religious concepts to order and explain certain key aspects of the individual's passage through the social structure, and operate religious cults to facilitate this passage.
The Kalabari Ekine Society: A Borderland of Religion and Art
Authors: Horton Robin 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphOne of the pillars of traditional Kalahari culture is the Ekine Men's Society, otherwise known as Sekiapu—‘The Dancing People’. But although many Kalahari talk of Ekine as ‘one of our highest things’, it is an institution remarkably difficult to pin down and define.On the face of it, Ekine serves many disparate ends. At a superficial glance, it appears as a religious institution, designed to solicit the help of the water spirits1 through invocations and dramatic representations of them by masquerades. A second glance suggests that these masquerades are recreational as much as religious in their intent. Yet again, many of the masquerades seem to be important status-symbols. And finally, Ekine often appears as a significant organ of government. A day-to-day description of the society's activities in any one community would reveal these aspects as tightly woven or tangled together. In this paper, however, it will be our task not only to unravel them, but to attempt a distinction between those which are essential features of the institution, and those which are incidental.
Kinship and Conflict in a Yombe Village: a Genealogical Dispute
Authors: Bond George Clement 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn Myth in Primitive Psychology Malinowski saw in myth an active force which safeguarded and enforced morality and contained precedent, law, and practical rules for the guidance of man (1948, 101). It expressed, enhanced, and codified belief. For Malinowski myth was dominant and he thought that it still ruled Trobriand social life (1948, 126). Myth was an important integrating force and one of its social functions in Trobriand society was to convey, express, and strengthen the unity of the local group and that of the group of people descended from a common ancestress (1948, 116). In a Durkheimian sense, it was a social fact, external to the individual, generalized in society, and imposing constraints on human behaviour (Durkheim, 1958, 3).
Maasai Age-Sets and Prophetic Leadership: 1850–1910
Authors: Berntsen John L. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn their initial interaction with the Colonial powers, several East African peoples such as the Maasai, the Turkana, the Sebei, the Karamojong, and the Nandi—all organized through some type of age-based institution—united around prophetic leaders, diviners, or ritual experts who mobilized men from several territorial sections to confront the intruders. This ad hoc military unity was necessarily short-lived, usually ending with the defeat of the people by the colonial power and see the imprisonment or death of the prophetic leader involved. (See Fosbrooke 1948: 12-19; Merker 1910: 67-105; Jacobs 1965: 20-108; Dyson-Hudson 1966: 15-16; Gulliver 1950: 229, 240; Meinertzhagen 1956: 222 ff; Weatherby 1962: 200-12; 1967: 133-44; Lamphear 1976: 225-43.) While ethnological studies of various age-organizations often mention that diviners or prophets provided professional services for the members of an age-group at their ceremonies, no one has examined the process by which a prophetic leader or diviner established his legitimacy during periods of peace so that he might lead the people during times of crisis. An examination of the prophetic institution among the Maasai and the relationship between the prophets and the members of the age-sets may provide some insight into the process, especially the manner in which prophets emerged as leaders of the people during two major crises in the history of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai: the Ilaikipiak war and the rinderpest pan-zootic.
The Structure of Titled Offices among the Abutia Ewe
Authors: Verdon Michel 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe Abutia Ewe form one of what the British colonial administrators dubbed the ‘traditional areas’, over one hundred of which are said to compose the Ewe people or Eweland. These Ewe traditional areas lie in the southern half of the Volta Region (in Ghana) and in southern Togo. Although much has been written about the Ewe, little is known about the political organisation of the inland areas, north of the coastal savanna. In fact, most authors have treated the Ewe as if they were thoroughly homogeneous and could be analysed as one ethnic group or one society, only acknowledging variations between the north and south, not considered significant enough to make them completely different groups (Spieth 1906; 1911; Westermann 1935; Ward 1949; Manoukian 1952; Nukunya 1969; Friedländer 1962; Asamoa 1971 amongst many others). And yet I contend that the northern areas are as distinct from the southern ones as they are from the Akan populations. As a result, none of the present available literature is particularly useful as a paradigmatic model of the northern areas' political organisation.
Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malaŵi with Special Reference to Chingale
Authors: Kandaŵire J. A. K. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphA contrastive account of pre-colonial and colonial systems of land tenure in Malaŵi cannot avoid adopting thangata as its central concept. The 1921 Land Commission of Nyasaland asserted that the practice of thangata:seems to have had a foundation in the conditions of purely [African] life under which the member of the village community worked for a certain period in the gardens of his chief, the latter assuming towards the former a responsibility which has its parallel in the relations of the best European landlords towards their native tenants today. The practice was known from the beginning by the [Cheŵa] word ‘thangata’ meaning ‘to assist’. In return for his right to occupy certain land the [African] ‘assisted’ his chief or his European landlord in the latter's work upon his own land.There is a whole world of difference between traditional thangata and colonial thangata. The former is nothing other than a social institution which embodies a pre-colonial notion of reciprocal labour. In the colonial situation the term came to mean forced labour. In this paper I analyse the term in its colonial form. My aim is to show that thangata is a colonial institution in that it originated from processes of British colonisation of Malaŵi. This aim requires that the pre-colonial system of land tenure be characterised first before tracing the formation of the colonial system.
Political motivation and oral historical traditions in Africa: The case of Yoruba crowns, 1900-1960
Authors: Asiw Aju A. I. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionRoyal symbols vary from one monarchical culture to another. In Europe, particularly in England, Netherlands and pre-1789 France, royalty was marked by the sovereign's exclusive use of the crown and the sceptre. In Africa, the continent with perhaps the most ancient monarchical traditions, the variation of symbols is especially remarkable. The pharaohs of Egypt, whose model is held by some scholars to have inspired kingly institutions elsewhere in Africa, Europe and Asia, were distinguished by their metal crowns and special sandals. In Ashanti the hene, while he might wear a distinguishing cap, looked more to his ‘stool’, often adorned with beads or (as in the case of the Ashantehene himself) gold, as the most important royal emblem, the seat on which had sat all his predecessors in office. In ancient Dahomey, on the other hand, the king wore no special head dress; and although the throne was an important royal emblem, there was nothing to compare with the rigidly impersonal and ritualistic concept of the throne as found in Ashanti, since every reign usually had its own particular throne dedicated to it. In Fon monarchy, where royal authority was more ideologically conceived, as seen in the perforated pot symbolism, the royal personage was, remarkably, of very ordinary appearance, apart from his large retinue, his aristocratically longish pipe, and a hand-axe across his shoulder.
Colour symbolism and ideology in a Ghanaian healing movement
Authors: Breidenbach Paul S. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn 1970 and 1971 I spent fifteen months studying the ritual gatherings of a syncretistic healing movement popular among the coastal Fante of Ghana. The group is known as the ‘Nakabah people’ (the name of one of the founders) or more generally as The Twelve Apostles Church. On Fridays the Twelve Apostles gather for a healing ritual known to them as edwuma, the work, or sunsum edwuma, the working with spirits. On Sundays a prayer service called kyεpor, a pidgin term for ‘chapel’, is conducted. Both the edwuma and the kyεpor are performed in small communal healing centres of the movement designated as ‘gardens’. Most of these gardens are located in coastal fishing towns or inland agricultural villages up and down the coastline of Ghana's central region.
Migrants or Settlers? the Ibo in London
Authors: Jerrome Dorothy 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThere are almost three thousand Ibo in London, with men outnumbering women in the ratio of three to two. They tend to be between twenty-five and forty years old and to have been in Britain for between five and ten years. The majority came to obtain qualifications which would bring status on their return to Nigeria, but the Nigeria–Biafra war interrupted the process and as a result they are still here. If the defining characteristic of the immigrant is the tendency to remain in the new country, regardless of the intention to return, the Ibo are not immigrants but a migrant community in which departure is the norm although individual migrants make considerable investments in the new environment and some may never realise their ambition to return. In terms of the degree of their economic incorporation, cultural distinctiveness, ideological commitment to a ‘traditional’ way of life and belief in their own superiority in relation to outsiders, the Ibo have much in common with East African Asians; the difference lies in their declared intention to leave Britain and the success of many in achieving this ambition.
Ghost Marriage and the Cattle Trade among the Atuot of the Southern Sudan
Authors: Burton John W. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis essay attempts to interpret the apparent association between participation in the cattle trade of the Southern Sudan and the decreasing frequency of ghost marriage among the Atuot. The commentary on social change is peripheral to the analysis since this phenomenon is a constant rather than extraordinary social process. Arens (1976: 2) has recently emphasized the same point, adding ‘social change by its nature is a broad and ill-defined concept that cannot claim a distinct area of enquiry but rather allows for the choice of an infinite variety of areas for discussion.’ Because societies and cultures are products of historical processes they are likewise open and subject to perpetual change.This study begins with a cursory discussion of recent Nilotic history followed by a summary description of the cattle trade. Certain forms of traditional Atuot marriage are then examined. In the conclusion, reference is drawn to data which support the assertion that involvement in this sector of the Sudanese economy directly influences the frequency of ghost marriage.
Histoires de riz, histoires d'igname: le cas de la Moyenne Cote d'Ivoire
Authors: Chauveau J. P. , Dozon J. P. , Richard J. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionLes études de cas ont été effectuées par les auteurs de cet article en pays malinke, guro, gbã (ou gagu) et bete à l'ouest du Bandama, baule à l'est. Ces études ne sont pas toujours exhaustives et homogènes eu égard au sujet du présent article, et, de plus, elles concernent essentiellement les parties forestière et préforestière de la vallée du Bandama.
Event and Portent: the Fall of Old Oyo, a Problem in Historical Explanation
Authors: Smith Robert 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphExplanation, or the identification and assessment of the causes of events and situations, occupies the central place in nearly all historical writing in the present century. It is also the aspect of history which is most keenly debated by philosophers, and is the main issue today in the unending, wearisome, but seemingly inescapable controversy as to whether history belongs, or belongs more, with the sciences or with the humanities. The scientific or positivist school, numbering among its recent exponents Popper and Gardiner, emphasizes the extent to which historical explanation attains a regularity akin to, though not identical with, that found in the physical and other sciences, Hempel adding the contention that such explanation can always, and often should, be reduced to a ‘covering law’, or single universal statement subsuming the whole explanation. The idealists, among whom Croce, Collingwood, and most recently Oakeshott are prominent, stress conversely the uniqueness of history, and Dray has reinforced their position by his attack on the covering law thesis. The debate is one in which historians themselves have taken little part, and African historians none at all, despite its crucial importance for almost every aspect of their profession. Yet it is a debate which needs continuous illustration from the historiographical process, a need which historians are best able to meet. The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate by examining as a problem in historical explanation the fall of Oyo, the powerful state of the northern Yoruba, in the early nineteenth century.
Myth, Ritual and the Authority of Elders in an Ethiopian Society
Authors: Hamer John H. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I discuss the mythological and ritual sequences honouring dead elders amongst two descent segments of the Sadama of Southwest Ethiopia. Myth and ritual will be described and an explanation offered regarding the persistence of both under changing conditions.The participants in these rites are the men of the Holo-Garbičo clans, two of the most esteemed descent groups of the Cushitic speaking Sadama. The Sadama, located approximately 170 miles south of Addis Ababa, are estimated by a 1969 sample survey to number over 600,000 persons (Central Statistical Office 1972: 11). The institutions and culture of the Sadama have been described elsewhere. They have a mixed economy based on the cultivation of such staples as ensete-edulus and maize, cattle herding, and recently the production of coffee as a cash crop. There are a number of clans which are subdivided into patrilineages cross-cut by several generational classes (Hamer 1970).
What shall we do with the drunken king?
Authors: de Heusch Luc 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphWestern scientific culture finds itself in a singular position with respect to the magico-religious system embodied in medieval culture from which, after strenuous resistence from the contemporary ecclesiastical authorities, it originally broke free. That is to say, it has still not succeeded in forming a theory concerning that very class of phenomena with which it was sometimes obliged violently to struggle in order to constitute itself as an autonomous discipline. And we, despite the proliferation of ethnographic and historical studies of extremely high quality, are hardly more advanced than in 1902, when Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert (1950: 138) wrote: ‘Until now the history of religions has relied on a rag-bag of vague ideas … the science of religions does not yet possess a scientific nomenclature’.
The Aja-speaking Peoples of Nigeria: A Note on their Origins, Settlement and Cultural Adaptation up to 1945
Authors: Asiwaju A. I. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThe limited objective in this paper is to call attention to the need to bridge an important gap in scholarly literature on the Aja, which so far has focused on the groups within the borders of the present-day Republics of Bénin (formerly Dahomey) and Togo in much the same way as Yoruba studies were once restricted to the groups within the frontiers of Nigeria, particularly the area of it now covered by the States of Ogun, Oyo and Ondo. By drawing attention to the Aja settlements and communities in Nigeria, the present writer hopes to do for this West African group what Geoffrey Parrinder (1947; 1955), Jacques Bertho (1949), Paul Mercier (1950) and Daryll Forde (1951) did in the 1940s and 1950s for the Yoruba-speaking peoples in Bénin and Togo through a series of published studies. There is no doubt that these studies have helped in widening the research horizon of scholars of Yoruba history and culture and have done much to dispel the myth of separation of the Yoruba, as of similarly partitioned groups all over Africa, created by the intercolonial (now international) boundaries, in this case the Nigeria-Bénin boundary.