Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T02:23:50.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agnatic and uterine relations among the Fante:1 male/female dualism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

I. Chukwukere
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the outstanding features of Akan social organisation emphasised by ethnographers since Rattray's monograph on the Asante (1923: Chap. 2 esp.) is the interlacement of fundamental matriliny with prominent patrilineal traits. With particular reference to the Fante, on whom this paper is based, Christensen (1954: 5, 107) claims, on some wrong premiss though, that his study of 'the role and importance of the paternal line' leads him to conclude that ‘the Fanti manifest a system of double descent’. My own fieldwork (1966-70) on the Fante asafo – the most distinct social manifestation of their patrilineal tendency– indeed confirms the fact that the Fante still lay strong stress on agnatic descent groups, which in Asante and other Akan sub-groups have become more or less ‘obsolete’ (Fortes 1950: 265f, Busia 1954: 207, with reference to ntoro). This notwithstanding, the combination of patrilineal and matrilineal principles of reckoning descent remains a fundamental attribute of Akan culture as a whole. That is to say, the so-called Fante peculiarity is in fact only a slight variation of a general Akan type.

Résumé

Les relations agnatiques et uterines chez les Fante - le dualisme male-femelle

Cet essai nous presente une grande série d'oppositions complémentaires mâle-femelle que l'on retrouve dans toute la pensée et toutes les coutumes sociales fante et akan. L'auteur affirme que puisque ce dualisme sexuel est essentiel au comportement fante et akan la notion de la complémentarité mâle-femelle devrait être au centre de l'analyse sociologique-surtout de la combinaison de traits de descendance utérins cardinaux et de traits de descendance agnatiques dans la structure sociale akan.

Type
Dual classification
Information
Africa , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 61 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Busia, K. A. 1954. ‘The Ashanti’ in Forde, D. (ed.) African Worlds. Oxford University Press for IAI.Google Scholar
Christensen, J. B. 1954. Double Descent among the Fanti. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files.Google Scholar
Chukwukere, I. 1978. ‘Akan Theory of Conception - Are the Fante Really Aberrant?’, Africa 48(2): 135–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chukwukere, I. 1981. ‘A Coffin for “the Loved One”: the Structure of Fante Death Rituals’ Current Anthropology 22(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortes, M. 1950. ‘Kinship and Marriage among the Ashanti’, in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D. (eds.) African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Manoukian, M. 1950. Akan and Ga-Adangme Peoples of the Gold Coast. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Minkus, H. K. 1980. ‘The Concept of Spirit in Akwapim Akan Philosophy’, Africa 50(2): 182–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Needham, R. 1973. ‘Introduction’, in Needham, R. (ed.) Left and Right: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification. Chicago.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1923. Ashanti. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar