bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Power and Wealth are Cousins: Descent, Class and Marital Strategies among the Kel Ahaggar (Tuareg—Sahara)
Authors: Keenan Jeremy 
Published: April 2006

Marital Strategies: The Manipulation of the RulesThe way in which the class structure is reproduced, and the implications and significance of these various rules for the two classes, can be seen in their marital strategies.Although the tawsatin (descent groups) of both classes exhibit a high rate of endogamy, there is no prescriptive rule of endogamy as such. The rules are defined in terms of incest categories, beyond which the pattern and effect of endogamy is merely the result of the various marital strategies adopted. This ‘incest’ category is very small: the only people a man is forbidden from marrying are his mother, his father's and mother's uterine sisters, and other classificatory mothers (which includes those kinswomen of ascending generations), his uterine sister, his daughter, the daughters of his uterine brothers and sisters, and his mother-in-law, sister-in-law and daughter-in-law. In other words, there is no prohibition on marriage with any type of cousin.
The Yoruba Cult of Twins in Historical Perspective
Authors: Chappel T. J. H. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis article examines the historical development of a particular cultural institution, the Yoruba cult of twins, with a view to providing an added perspective into the working of the institution as it exists today. After a brief reference to some of the evidence supporting the view that the cult represents a reversal of the former practice of twin infanticide I shall consider the possible origins of the cult and attempt to outline the process of reversal leading to its later development.
Political Traditionalism in Nigeria: a Case-Study of Secret Societies and Dance Groups in Local Government
Authors: Magid Alvin 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe notion that rural political life is essentially traditional tribal in Africa and therefore scarcely relevant to modern decision-making at higher echelons of government has had a commanding influence in African studies. Associated with this viewpoint has been a tacit division of labour in the social sciences which emphasizes the pre-eminence of anthropology in the tribal domain and the pre-occupation of political science with macropolitics especially in the urban sphere. Happily, a younger generation of political scientists has emerged in recent years to challenge an essentially artificial arrangement.
Women at Work: Some Changes in Family Structure in Amedzofe-Avatime, Ghana
Authors: Brydon Lynne 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper examines some recent developments in family and residential group structure in the village of Amedzofe-Avatime. The village is one of a group of seven which, with their surrounding farmlands, constitute the Avatime traditional area in the Volta Region of Ghana. The study of Amedzofe (and Avatime) family structure is singled out here as of interest for two reasons. In the first place, a study of current (1977) Avatime family structure indicates that new forms are emerging of patterns of child rearing. Esther Goody's work on both traditional and more recent patterns of fostering in Ghana is particularly relevant here (E. N. and J. R. Goody 1967; Goody 1970; 1975). Secondly such a study provides empirical evidence that Goode's (1963) pattern of change in family structure showing the increasing influence of ‘modernisation’, while it may be pertinent in the long term, is not being realised among Avatime. What is happening, rather, is a drift away from a stable conjugal pattern. Here I am concerned mainly with the first point. As it is elucidated, it will become clear that the incidence of Goode's nuclear family based units is not increasing in modern rural Avatime. A detailed examination of the structure and composition of residential groups and their significance for a modern society is forthcoming.
Migration in central Sierra Leone: the Temne chiefdom of Kolifa Mayoso
Authors: Dorjahn Vernon R. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIn this study I shall utilize data from one Temne chiefdom, Kolifa Mayoso, to illustrate patterns of migration in central Sierra Leone. Of primary concern are the extent of migration in terms of in-migrants and out-migrants and for the latter the relative importance of various destinations both rural and urban, the reasons for migration with special emphasis on patterns of out-marriage and finally, the importance of migration in terms of the adjustments made by in-migrants and by residents who encounter new objects, attitudes, and ideas while incorporating strangers into village life. The emphasis is on rural-rural migration but this is not the exclusive concern.
Kaswa: Oral Tradition of a Fipa Prophet
Authors: Willis R. G. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe oral traditions of the Fipa of south-west Tanzania tell of the advent in their country in pre-colonial times of a prophet called Kaswa. This man is said to have foretold the destruction of the old social order in Ufipa (the name given to the country of the Fipa) and its replacement by the values and technology of a capitalistic society. After making these prophecies Kaswa miraculously disappeared into the ground.
Mirror in the Forest: the Dorobo hunter-gatherers as an image of the other
Authors: Kenny Michael G. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe term ‘Dorobo’ denotes an ethnic category embracing small hunting-and-gathering groups residing on the fringes of various agricultural and pastoral peoples in East Africa. The essence of the Dorobo's position is that they engage in economically symbiotic activities with regard to local farmers and herders, while retaining their social marginality as people of the bush. Much is known of them through the constructs of their neighbours, who assign them attributes commensurate with their marginal social position; the Dorobo are amalgamated with wild amoral creatures, and their ancestors are thought to have been in attendance at the birth of the present world-order. Their marginality therefore has economic, spatial, and temporal dimensions.
The Asantehene-in-Council: Ashanti Politics Under Colonial Rule, 1935–1950
Authors: Triulzi Alessandro 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I shall attempt to show how, in the fifteen years after the partial restoration of local authority in 1935, the structure of the reconstituted Ashanti government was modified, in certain significant directions, within the framework of indirect (British) over-rule.
Secret knowledge as property and power in Kpelle society: elders versus youth
Authors: Murphy William P. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphInequality based on privileged knowledge is an old topic in social analysis. It figures prominently, for example, in early works such as Condorcet's study of human progress. Condorcet argues that obstacles to progress arise when society is divided into two categories: ‘the one jealously hiding what it boasts of knowing, the other receiving with respect whatever is condescendingly revealed to it’ [1955 (1795): 17].
Persuasion and Satire in the Malian Theatre
Authors: Hopkins Nicholas S. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphDuring the decade from 1958 to 1968 when Mali was ruled by a socialistically inclined, modernization-oriented party, the Union Soudanaise-Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, the Malian theatre was one of the principal ways in which the ideas and programmes of the government were put forward. The purpose of this article is to explore the relations between the theatre as an art form and as a channel for ideas in Mali, and to evaluate the consequences for action of the ideas contained in the theatre. My data are based on my observations of the theatre in a provincial town; my theme is that the Malian theatre was consciously didactic, reflecting the propaganda ends of the government, but that the tradition of stagecraft on which the theatre was based emphasized satire. The gap between the didactic language sought by exponents of the government and the satirical language favoured by the people in the audience was frequently covered by combining the two, often to the detriment of the theatre itself. To understand this we have to look at the content of the plays, as well as at the social context in which they occurred, and at the form of the vehicle. The processes of combining form and content into a cultural entity that would unify rather than divide are what makes the study of the theatre rewarding for the anthropology of aesthetics and creativity.
Marriage Payments, Household Structure, and Domestic Labour-Supply among the Barma of Chad
Authors: Reyna Stephen 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper investigates the relationship between marriage payments, household structure, and domestic labour-supply among the Barma of the Republic of Chad. Recently, Netting has noted that ‘…household composition among farmers varies with the type and amount of labor required for effective crop production’ (1974: 29). Netting is supported by evidence from Europe (Chayanov: 1966; Symes: 1972); Africa (Jones: 1949; Basehart: 1973; Netting: 1968; Reining: 1970; Udo: 1965); Asia (Barth: 1959; Befu: 1968; Leach: 1961; Moerman: 1968; Yang: 1945); South America (Webster: 1973); North America (Bennett: 1969); and the Pacific (Sahlins: 1957). Implicit in this literature is the realization that the household structural types prevalent in societies are those which provide adequate labour supplies in specific ecosystems with particular agrarian technologies. While this research indicates that differing agrarian societies require varying labour supplies, it does not in general showhowthey achieve these supplies. This paper demonstrates how marriage payments may operate to regulate different aspects of household structure to provide adequate labour to the Barma domestic unit.
The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914
Authors: Betts Raymond F. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphWhile the social history of Dakar, Senegal, exhibits many of the characteristics common to most Eurafrican cities on the West coast, the rather abrupt manner in which the policy of residential segregation replaced the earlier pattern of co-existence, if not integration, of the African and European populations merits particular attention. The establishment of the Medina—the ‘native quarter’, to employ the colonial idiom of the day—was the most decisive and significant action taken by the French authorities in the history of the city. Yet this decision resulted from no carefully considered change in administrative policy, which had been somewhat laissez-faire in residential matters, but rather was hastily urged after the outbreak of a severe epidemic of bubonic plague in 1914. What began medically was to become, however, a major social and urban problem.
A note on the Asante akonkofo: a non-literate Sub-elite, 1900–1930
Authors: Arhin Kwame 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphFollowing the growing interest in recent years in social stratification in Asante in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Arhin, 1983a: 2–22; 1983b: 475; McCaskie, 1983: 23–44; Wilks, 1975: 166–719), this note offers a preliminary study of a body of men who became known in Kumasi and the capital towns of the other Asante chiefdoms – in particular Bekwai, Juaben and Mampon – as the akonkofo in the first phase of colonial rule, 1896–1930. The argument of the paper, written in the light of the views of Daaku (1970, 1971) is that the akonkofo, an intermediary group between office holders and non-holders of office (Arhin, 1983a) could emerge as a distinctive sociopolitical category only in the colonial period. The first section of this article, on the origin of the akonkofo, describes the factors that inhibited the rise of ‘merchant princes’ in Asante before colonial rule; the second, on the akonkofo in Kumasi, offers a kind of social portrait of the akonkofo; and the third section, on the position of the akonkofo in Asante society, examines the relationship of the akonkofo to traditional authority. My sources are archival and written. I have also recorded interviews with Barima Owusu-Ansah, over seventy-five years old, and a leading authority on Asante law and constitution, and with Baffour Osei Akoto, senior spokesman (okyeame) of the Asantehene and just turned seventy, as well as conversations with sundry officials at the Asantehene's court.
Fighting over property: the articulation of dominant and subordinate legal systems governing the inheritance of immovable property among Blacks in Zimbabwe
Authors: Cheater A. P. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLaw, particularly the law of property, may indeed be an instrument of the ruling class for the reproduction of any given social and economic formation, but few anthropologists have pursued this line of argument. Instead of examining how law was actually generated within particular political and economic contexts, anthropologists concerned with property law in colonial Africa tended to take for granted its existence at a particular point in time, and either to emphasise the institutional duality of colonial and indigenous assumptions and procedures concerning property or to stress the universal elements of legal behaviour despite these institutional differences.
Divorce in Abutia
Authors: Verdon Michel 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLike most southern Ghanian populations, the Abutia Ewe – one of the numerous ‘village leagues’ which compose the northern part of Eweland (Volta region)– have experienced far-reaching transformations in the last century, and nowhere more radically than in their matrimonial practices. In this article, I wish to concentrate on two aspects of these practices, namely the definition of marriage and the incidence of divorce.Indeed, an adequate analysis of divorce requires some heuristic tools which enable us to decide whether particular couples are ‘married’ or not, a procedure made extremely difficult in the case of Abutia because of the changes in their definition of marriage. In the first part of the article, I shall briefly survey these changes and discuss the definitional problems they raise and, in the second, present the main findings of a quantitative survey which helps to measure the impact of the changes discussed. It also reveals that divorce was in fact common before 1890, when German colonial rule was imposed. In the third and last part I seek to explain this marital instability in ‘pre-colonial’ Abutia.
Islam in Senegalese literature and film
Authors: Cham Mbye B. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn few other places in the creative traditions of sub-Saharan Africa is the factor of Islam more prominent and influential than in Senegal. Manifested in form and subject matter and spanning a wide cross-section of talent in both the traditional and modern media of creative expression, this prominence and influence can be attributed to a number of factors ranging from the artistic maturity, religious sensibility, intellectual astuteness and ideological orientation of individual artists, to the more general impact that Islam as a dominant religious force is perceived to have had on secular life in Senegal. These factors to a large extent determine the various ways in which individual Senegalese artists define themselves and their art vis-è-vis Islam in particular and society in general. These definitions are creatively translated into choice of form, thematic focus and, to use a cliché, ‘message’.
Breaking up the bottlenecks in food-crop and cotton cultivation in northern Côte d'Ivoire
Authors: Bassett Thomas J. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionIt is widely recognised that seasonal labour bottlenecks present major obstacles to peasant farmers seeking to expand agricultural output in sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, for example, reveals that labour shortages and limited income to hire off-farm labour have historically constrained rural producers from intensifying and enlarging their agricultural operations (Norman et al., 1979: 42–7; Watts, 1983: 202–3; Richards, 1985: 96). Many attempts by colonial and contemporary African States to promote food crop and export crop production failed, in part, because of peasant resistance to the threat of subsistence insecurity associated with labour conflicts in the agricultural calendar. Richards's (1986) study of the failure of a series of labour-intensive wet rice cultivation projects in central Sierra Leone illustrates the degree to which peasant agricultural practices represent adjustments to labour-supply problems. Given the pervasiveness and importance of seasonal labour constraints in African agricultural systems, it is surprising that ‘few studies have provided insights into the adjustment in labor use resulting from the introduction of cash crops and new technologies’ (Eicher and Baker, 1982: 99).
Ethnography and the closing of the frontier in Lower Congo, 1885–1921
Authors: MacGaffey Wyatt 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe research that led to the writing of this paper began with a puzzle. The four volumes of K. E. Laman's Kongo ethnography (1953–68) are based on texts written by BaKongo. Who were these men and why is there no explicit reference to them in the books? The lack of any indication of who wrote what and on what authority deprives this ethnography of much of its potential value (Janzen, 1972). In search of biographical information, I turned to the bulletin Minsamu Miayenge (MM), published by the Swedish Missionary Society (SMF) from 1892 onwards. From its pages emerged a clear sense of a group of men whose position in the nascent colonial order explained both their ethnographic ambitions and their subsequent disappearance from the record.
Cattle raiding and household demography among the Kuria of Tanzania
Authors: Fleisher Michael L. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractAmong the agro-pastoralist Kuria people inhabiting the Tarime District lowlands of northern Tanzania, many young men are engaged in cattle raiding, which constitutes a primary means of generating cash income. Data from a sample of sixty-four Kuria cattle raiders reveal that three-quarters of them grew up in natal households having more sons than daughters, strongly suggesting that it is the need for the sons of a household to acquire their own bridewealth cattle by means other than through sisters' marriages that constitutes the strongest predictor of which young men will opt to become cattle raiders.
Lua-lia, the ‘fresh funeral’: founding a house for the deceased among the Kasena of north-east Ghana
Authors: Abasi Augustine Kututera 
Published: April 2006

AbstractFor the Kasena, life finds in death both its measure and its renewal. Indeed, the dead survive through their descendants and in the world of ancestors. Funeral practices are very elaborate. They not only reflect the social, cultural, religious and psychological values and preoccupations shared by the group but are also a way of elaborating upon them. Social and cultural life is re-invigorated through a person's death and funerals, while the dead person is himself the foundation of his descendants' life.This article, drawing from fieldwork in the author's native area, focuses, in particular, on first funerals for adults. Detailed description is followed by the analysis of surprising similarities between birth and funeral rites. It then examines the ‘house’ or the ‘bedroom’ built in the ground – either in the maternal bedroom itself, or in a neighbouring field towards the east – in order to welcome death as an extension, as a founder in the depths of the survivors' dwelling.
Pseudo-superstructures as nonstandard universes
Authors: Nasso Mauro Di 
Published: April 2006

AbstractA definition of nonstandard universe which gets over the limitation to the finite levels of the cumulative hierarchy is proposed. Though necessarily nonwellfounded, nonstandard universes are arranged in strata in the likeness of superstructures and allow a rank function taking linearly ordered values. Nonstandard universes are also constructed which model the whole ZFC theory without regularity and satisfy the κ-saturation property.
Upper Mississippi at the Fisher Site
Authors: Griffin John W. 
Published: April 2006

A recent paper by George R. Horner, covering work done by Wheaton College at the Fisher site, Will County, Illinois, contains several statements requiring comment. In order to comment on these points it will be necessary to outline certain material contained in an unpublished manuscript of the writer.The well-known Fisher site, consisting of 12 mounds and over 50 house pits, was initially excavated by George Langford. Later work was conducted by several University of Chicago field parties, and a W.P.A. expedition. The site is located on the point of land formed by the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers as they approach their confluence and unite to form the Illinois. Four cultural horizons can be recognized at the site: (1) long-headed burials without grave goods in the gravel beneath the mounds, (2) three periods of Upper Mississippi occupation, (3) Late Woodland, and (4) Historic. We are only concerned with the Upper Mississippi occupations in the present note.
A Birdstone Fragment from New York City
Authors: Lopez Julius 
Published: April 2006

A few weeks prior to the bulldozing of a segment of the Schurz site (Lopez 1955), in the southeast corner of the Bronx, within the city limits of New York, a salvage dig was conducted by Harry Trowbridge, George Younkheere, Stanley Wisniewski, Theodore Kazimiroff, and Wayne Arnold under the writer's direction.One of the items found was a polished birdstone frag’ ment (Fig. 1) which deserves special mention since so few effigies of this sort have been discovered hereabouts.
Early Paracas Textile Techniques
Authors: Wallace Dwight T. 
Published: April 2006

AbstractA textile recently found undoubtedly relates to an early phase of the Paracas style of the Peruvian south coast. The decorative techniques consist of slit tapestry, brocade, and warp striping. The tapestry design is a complex feline figure with various traits of the Chavin style. The techniques and design are of considerable interest since no Paracas textile of this or earlier date has been previously published.
Archaeology of Far Fan Beach, Panama Canal Zone
Authors: Marshall Donald S. 
Published: April 2006

Peabody Museum, Harvard University, contains two collections of archaeological materials from Far Fan Beach, Panama Canal Zone. The first was given to Mr. Frederick Johnson in 1931 by an army engineer, without any stratigraphic or other data. The collection comprises some ten sherds picked up while excavating a gun position, and correlates exactly with the collection of some thousand specimens obtained by Dr. David B. Stout of Syracuse University during his work with the San Bias Indians in 1941. This second series was discovered in much the same fashion as the first, though fortunately Dr. Stout was able to get to the site while a few pieces remained in situ.Excavation of the site in the midst of war-hastened construction did not permit the detailed work desired by Dr. Stout, but the results are felt to be a step toward piecing together the background of Panamanian archaeology. Present trends of thought see the Isthmus of Panama as the scene of fluctuating migrations of peoples in the past, and an understanding of the archaeology will aid materially in establishing the course of American prehistory.