The Nharo are a Khoe- (‘Hottentot-’) speaking hunting and gathering people of the central-western Kalahari. Linguistically they are closely related to the G/wikhwe and G//anakhwe of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and to several other, lesser-known, central Kalahari and Okavango Bushman peoples of Botswana. They are more distantly related to the extinct Khoekhoe (‘Hottentot’) herding peoples of the Cape Province of South Africa, and more distantly still, to the Nama Khoekhoe of Namibia. Lexicostatistical, cultural and genetic evidence suggests that the Khoe hunter-gatherers in general have lived independently from their herding relatives for some 2000 years, and that the Nharo in particular have lived in close contact with the !Kung and possibly also the !Kõ (both non-Khoe-speaking Bushman peoples) for a considerable part of that time. The primary purpose of this article is to present a description of selected Nharo institutions and customs, with reference to sex differentiation; but first a brief look at the Nharo settlement pattern is necessary.

This 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 class vis-à-vis the 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.

An obvious technique to employ in assessing the age of a non-literate individual among the Atuot is to pose the question, ‘how many years do you have’ (teke yin ruon na di) which invariably results in the simple response, ‘I've really no idea at all’ (cf. also Evans-Pritchard 1939). Age classification in Atuot society as in most others is a matter of social prescription and is evidenced in the course of daily life by divergent economic and symbolic attributes which accrue to distinct age classes. Often in Nilotic societies the factor of physiological maturity is self-evident (see eg Fischer 1964). The literature includes excellent descriptions of the economic tasks which accompany growth toward adulthood in pastoral Nilotic societies of the Southern Sudan (eg Lienhardt 1963; Evans-Pritchard 1936, 1951; see also Santandrea 1977) so it is not the primary concern of this essay to contribute to an already rich body of ethnographic data. Rather, I wish to consider certain aspects of Atuot age categories and how these are related to processes leading to marriage. This discussion is prefaced by some brief comments regarding eastern-African age set systems and a synopsis of the ethnography on this topic for a number of the Nilotic speaking peoples of the Southern Sudan.

Un jour la communauté des bêtes se dispersa, chaque bestiau s'en fut de son côté pour vivre sa vie, l'homme tua la mère de Vache et de Buffle. Buffle dit qu'il vengerait sa mère en attaquant les hommes dans la brousse; mais Vache dit qu'elle resterait dans les demeures des hommes et qu'elle vengerait sa mère en causant d'interminables disputes à propos de dettes, d'épouseurs à doter, d'adultères, toutes sources de conflits et de mises à mort parmi le peuple. Cette longue noise de Vache et d'Homme remonte à des temps immémoriaux, et jour après jour Vache se revanche de la mort de sa mère en provoquant la mort des hommes. D'où vient que les Nuer disent du bétail : ‘Il finira avec l'humanité’ car les hommes mourront tous pour des bêtes, et ils disparaîtront ensemble, eux et leurs bêtes.

Studies 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.

Inequality 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].