It has only been in recent years that anthropologists have begun to investigate women as actors with resources important in the political field and to broaden the concept of political system to include the activites of women (see Collier, 1974 and Nelson, 1974 for another statement of the problem). The analysis of the political processes of the nineteenth century Kikuyu (Kenya) presented here lays the framework for the inclusion of women's subsistence activities and domestic decision making with the field of public or political relations.

There is evidence to show that the institution of marriage, particularly customary law marriage, has served as an important framework for the extraction of conjugal labour as a factor in cocoa production since its introduction in the Gold Coast in 1879. This was necessitated by the abolition in 1874 of slavery and pawning, and the consequent need to replace an illegitimate and coercive system with a legitimate one. By virtue of a pre-existing customary obligation placed on women to assist their husbands in their economic pursuits, the marriage institution provided a basis for this transition. It has been argued, however, that some forms of economic relationship in Ghana revolve around expectations of reciprocity, and that human beings are not altogether altruistic in their dispensation of labour. Hence, women who provide labour support to their husbands expect to be rewarded with land or cocoa farms. In this article, I argue that the pivotal role of cocoa in the rural economy intensified the use of conjugal labour and the consequent expectation of land by wives from their husbands, resulting in a situation in which cocoa, marriage, labour and land rights eventually evolved as ‘institutional quadruplets’. Through case studies extracted from field work conducted in six communities in the Brong Ahafo, Western and Volta Regions of Ghana I demonstrate the continued interplay between these forces in modern times, and outline some policy-centred concerns for the future direction of the cocoa industry.

In the protection of their kaya home deep in the forest of the Mombasa hinterland, the Giriama of Kenya developed a non-centralized government based on a council of elders (kambi), and derived from age-sets. They were supported by a special secret society within the kambi whose oath and select membership were used to maintain order and determine guilt in difficult situations. In the period from approximately 1700 until sometime in the nineteenth century, the Giriama developed this form of government by drawing upon their previous experience of life in Singwaya and subsequent southward migration, upon their identification or assimilation of members into six original clans, and upon their unique environment of the kaya neighborhood to become successful cultivators, keeping cattle when circumstances allowed and emerging as the prominent traders of the Mombasa hinterland.

Blood-Brotherhood is a pact of alliance formed between two persons by a ritual act in which each swallows the blood of the other. The pact is one of mutual assistance and is backed by powerful sanctions. It may bind only the two participants to certain obligations, or it may also involve the social groups of which they are members. Alliances based on exchange of blood have been recorded from many parts of the world, especially from Africa where they are exceedingly common. In some tribes the participants drink one another's blood directly from incisions made on their bodies, while in other tribes the blood is swallowed on a piece of meat or ground-nut or coffee-berry. But though the actual method of consumption varies in different cultures the purpose of the rite is always the same, and there is often much similarity between the ways in which it is carried out. Blood-brotherhood is not only widespread throughout Africa but it is also a ceremony which a European may inquire into easily and may even take part in without involving himself in social difficulties. It is the more surprising therefore that descriptive records of the ceremony by which the pact is formed and of the obligations which it entails are so scanty.

This paper presents an analytic description of the principles underlying the traditional kinship system of the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria in the community of Oshogbo. Aggregation into large-scale urban-like communities which are characterized by the close interdependence of their political constitution and their economic and religious systems is a striking feature of Yoruba social organization. In these communities we find that the behaviour of individuals to one another, in the past at least, was very largely regulated on the basis of kinship and it would be accurate, I think, to state that among the Yoruba kinship was the usual means of articulation between the various elements of the social organization. Today, under the influence of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old. New values and attitudes have intruded and there is an increased fluidity in social norms. In the present generation the bonds of kinship have been greatly weakened as a foundation for social organization and as a mechanism for co-ordinating and regulating social behaviour. Yoruba society is indeed transitional in the sense that the old is in the process of disintegration and new forms are rapidly emerging. However, it is the internal and traditional patterns that determine the particular form and direction of the effects which the external alien forces of change exert. Consequently, in this paper, we shall place primary emphasis on the principles of kinship as they emerged as regulative factors in the traditional life of the Yoruba in the belief that, apart from purely ethnographic value, they will provide us with a better understanding of the manifold changes that have become apparent.

Tanzania has in the last decade seen a vibrant form of hip-hop emerge that is gaining wide public exposure thanks to its political tenor. First, this article illustrates how rap lyrics reflect Tanzanian political history and in part determine it. Bongo Flava, as the local hip-hop genre is called, has gained credibility by reinterpreting Nyerere's normative legacy and by expanding freedom of expression in the country, while unhampered by factors that normally mitigate the social impact of popular culture. Second, the article explores the global relevance of their social critique. Bongo Flava attempts to outwit the sophisticated indifference and neoliberalism of postcolonial rulers and ruled. Partly inspired by African American popular culture, many songs expose the postcolonial strategy of survival, which is to immunize oneself against the threat of commodification by fully embracing it, the contamination yielding extra power. The lyrics, in their irony and pessimism, exhibit the same immunizing tendency. However, this tendency is curbed by two principles that safeguard streetwise status: the rapper's willingness to ‘duel’ and the Kiswahili credo of activating bongo, ‘the brains’.

Colin M. Turnbull's publications form virtually the only source available on Ik clture and society. His book The Mountain People has found wide distribution, far beyond anthropological circles. The problems it raises have been discussed in a number of reviews (see especially Beidelman, 1973; Spencer, 1973; Barth, 1974; Winter et al., 1975). Through the present article, I wish to show that there is an urgent need for a more comprehensive and less biased study of Ik culture md society.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the ‘Slave Coast’ of West Africa suffered increasingly severe problems of disorder, which seem to have been in large part a consequence of the impact of the Atlantic slave trade. These disorders involved not only wars among the major states but also (in at least some cases) the weakening of political authority within states. The most obvious aspect of this dissolution of authority was the decline in the power of the kingdom of Allada, which had earlier exercised some degree of suzerainty over most if not all of the other states in the area. Among the tributaries of Allada which repudiated its authority was the kingdom of Whydah (Hueda), on the coast to the south-west, which was already effectively independent by the 1680s, and which even went to war with Allada in 1691–92 and again in 1714–17. The kingdom of Fon, or Dahomey, in the interior north of Allada, was originally also a dependency of Allada, but is recorded to have revolted and asserted its independence in 1715.

Analyses of ancestor-related practices were a crucial component of structural-functional models of social organisations in Africa. In the 1970s the theories of lineage and segmentary social organisation upon which these studies depended were called into question. Ethnographic and historical research indicated a preponderance of migratory activities and a high degree of discontinuity and reorganisation in kin relations. As a result most anthropologists turned from lineage-based functional theory to historical models of social organisation. With the waning of lineage theory, studies of ancestors in Africa became a marginal issue for most scholars of African societies. Ancestor-related practices, however, continued to be important in the lives of many African people. On the basis of data from Ohafia, Nigeria, the article suggests that the structural-functional model of social structure and the historical model of social dynamics both have parallels in indigenous representations of the ancestral past. In academic discourse these two models are taken as 'schools of thought' which pro-pound incompatible explanatory arguments. However, these apparently contradic-tory representations unite as an irreducible whole in the lived experience of the people of Ohafia. It is suggested that this indigenous paradigm of knowledge about the past provides valuable insights, not only into how we might productively theorise the social, but also for how we evaluate the contributions of our own intellectual ancestors.

This article contrasts two very different timeframes in the ‘social life’ of the plant stimulant miraa – known elsewhere as khat – in Kenya and beyond. One timeframe is connected with the old miraa trees growing in the Nyambene Hills District of central Kenya: these are known as mbaine, and are greatly respected for their age and link to the past. The miraa from these trees is put to much ceremonial use by the Meru inhabitants of the Nyambenes. The other timeframe is the very different one of the harvested stems. These stems are highly perishable and so must reach the consumer quickly, leading to urgency in their trade and transportation: the ‘need for speed’. The globalization of the miraa trade has intensified this urgency further: the stems are now desired as far away as North America. Miraa trees have not escaped this ‘commercial’ timeframe, and some farmers experiment with chemical sprays to speed up the production rate. The article concludes by arguing that such attempts to speed up the timeframes of the trees are met with resistance, and have not diluted the cultural significance of ancient mbaine trees and their ancestral links.

Cet article conteste l'usage répandu du concept de “caste” pour décrire des professions minoritaires marginalisées dans le Sud-Ouest de l'Ethiopie. Il aborde trois types d'objections: idéologique, génétique et structurel, se rapportant respectivement aux facteurs culturels, historiques et sociaux. En termes idéologiques, la marginalisation est généralement non justifiée à travers une philosophie religieuse cohérente; les mythes sont souvent absents et rarement élaborés, et n'expliquent pas une hiérarchie différentielle des groupes de professions. Des notions de pollution sont largement répandues et généralement présentées dans l'idiome dominant des transgressions alimentaires; mais la majorité rurale n'est pas considérée pure. En termes génétiques, aucun des modèles existants n'explique les origines de tous les groupes marginalisés. Tandis que le modèle “vestiges” est largement discrédité et le modèle “différenciation interne” actuellement privilégié, cet article souligne l'importance de la migration qui est intimement liéc aux professions non-rurales ainsi qu'à des statuts marginalisés et minoritaires. Une absence de modèle interculturellement valide unique, des explications multiples et des différences parmi divers types de groupes de professions (intragroupes et intergroupes) compromettent l'usage du concept de “caste” pour interpréter les origines des groupes marginalisés dans le Sud-Ouest de l'Ethiopie. En termes structurels, l'usage du terme “caste” ne s'applique pas à la majorité rurale mais uniquement à la minorité des artisans et des chasseurs. Toutefois, l'argument selon lequel les rapports entre les marginalisés et les groupes dominants reposent sur des rapports patron-client dyadiques n'infirme pas la nette marginalisation structurelle politique, économique et sociale. Quant à l'argument selon lequel les marginalisés forment un bloc unique indifférencié, il est suggéré que l'endogamie porte à la différenciation en dépit de la rareté de hiérarchies strictes. Plutôt qu'un manque de hiérarchie, les variations et les changements spatiaux survenus au fil du temps méritent une explication; ceci suggère qu'on ne peut pas parler de principe organisationnel cohérent comparable à celui que l'on peut s'attendre à trouver dans les sociétés de “castes”. L'article en conclut que le manque de fondement culturel idéologique uniforme, les origines et processus de marginalisation complexes et variés, ainsi que les rapports structurels spécifiques entre la majorité et les groupes dominés suggerènt que le concept de “caste” n'a qu'une valeur analytique minimale et qu'il est done préférable de le limiter au contexte indien. Une meilleure compréhension de la marginalisation peut passer initialement par l'analyse des différentes conceptions locales et de la façon dont l'endogamie structure la différenciation et est liée à la profession. Une analyse plus claire des processus de marginalisation impliquerait une étude suivie des migrations, de la concurrence à l'égard des ressources et de l'évolution des rapports technologiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels entre les artisans et les groupes dominants ainsi que des interactions interethniques.

In September 1996 the city of Owerri in south-eastern Nigeria erupted in riots over popular suspicion that the town's nouveaux riches were responsible for a spate of ritual murders allegedly committed in the pursuit of ‘fast wealth’. In addition to destroying the properties of the purported perpetrators, the rioters burned several pentecostal churches. This article examines the place of religion in the Owerri crisis, particularly the central position of pentecostal Christianity in popular interpretations of the riots. While pentecostalism itself fuelled local interpretations that ‘fast wealth’ and inequality were the product of satanic rituals, popular rumours simultaneously accused some pentecostal churches of participating in the very occult practices that created instant prosperity and tremendous inequality. The analysis explores the complex and contradictory place of pentecostalism in the Owerri crisis, looking at the problematic relationship of pentecostalism to structures of inequality rooted in patron-clientism and focusing on the ways in which disparities in wealth and power in Nigeria are interpreted and negotiated through idioms of the supernatural.

Cet article examine l'influence de l'Islam sur la musique populaire du Sénégal et décrit l'émergence d'une ‘nouvelle tradition’ qui adapte les chants de louanges des griots au soufisme. L'étude de cette tradition naissante a pour toile de fond les relations sociales entre les griots et les personnes qu'ils louangent, et entre les marabouts ou chefs religieux soufis et leurs disciples. On peut retrouver des éléments dérivés de ces deux relations dans cette ‘nouvelle tradition’, formant un genre musical hybride qui reflète la réalité sociale et religieuse du Sénégal moderne.

Thonga migrant labour has played a strategic role in the development of the Union of South Africa's economy, especially its mining industry. In 1954 there was a known total of 173,433 Moçambique labourers at work in the Union. Of these, 110,716 were employed in the mines, while 62,717 were employed in other industries and services (Anuário Estatistica, 1955, p. 131). This army of workers is drawn almost entirely from the region of Moçambique south of parallel 22° S., from among the Tonga-Shangaan peoples and the ethno-linguistically related Chope, Lenge, and Tonga of Inhambane. Although many of the motives and consequences of the Thonga emigration are shared by the migratory streams which emanate from other areas of Southern Africa and flow to the industrial heart of the Union, there are a number of circumstances connected with the movement of the Thonga which are not duplicated elsewhere.

On 29 March 1978 the Federal Military Government of Nigeria promulgated the Land Use Decree, which, with immediate effect, vested all land in the territory of each state of the Federation in the Governor of that state. The land was to be ‘held in trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians’ in accordance with the provisions of the Decree. This paper considers the origins and effects of this policy of land nationalization.

Readers of Africa will be well aware of population migration as a characteristic feature of a continent where movement between one part and another is largely unrestricted as compared with the more settled parts of the world. There is much evidence of large-scale tribal migrations in the past, of the age-old seasonal wanderings of herders, and of recent labour migration to centres of mineral and industrial production, the last particularly in Central and South Africa. Information is more limited concerning the features of labour migration in West Africa at the present day. In general it is thought that migrants leave their home areas, after the harvest at the commencement of the dry season, to seek work elsewhere for a period of from three to six months and then return to take up farming with the commencement of the next rains. The major source area for these migrants is to the north of the tenth parallel where the wet season is concentrated into a period of about four months, thus severely restricting agricultural activity. Cultivation during the dry season is possible only on a very limited scale. There is thus a considerable period of the year when the primary economic activity of the people is not possible. It is logical that they should seek work elsewhere.

The article describes a new mortuary in Cameroon, which has been constructed in a government hospital by the Bali-Nyonga Development and Cultural Association (BANDECA). The history and character of this hometown association is analysed and the article then argues that the mortuary has changed the temporality of death celebrations, and that this change is largely driven by the needs of national and international migrants. It claims that the association and the traditional authorities are attempting to steer recent changes within a longer historical process of ‘modernizing’ burial. The construction of the mortuary reveals some of the tensions within the community and the challenges these present to the association's leadership. In particular it illustrates the potential conflicts of interest between the hometown association and the national government that result from this form of self-help development project. Finally, the article shows that, despite the increased mobility of the Bali-Nyonga population, it is becoming more important, not less, to be buried at ‘home’, and that the mortuary and remittances are contributing to this process. Since the mortuary enables burials to take place at home, BANDECA is unwittingly reinscribing ethnic territoriality and thereby contributing to a political process of deepening the sense of ethnic belonging in Cameroon.

Avant l'indépendance le PDCI avait eu la considérable expérience de participer aux élections. Même avec la création d'un état de facto à un seul parti, les élections ont continuées à être un mécànisme utile dans les mains de la direction du PDCI pour renouveller la composition de l'èlite au pouvoir, particulièrement après les réformes de 1980. Une combinaison de pressions intérieures et extérieures dans les années 1990 a assuré qu'un système à partis multiples serait adopté mais Houphouet-Boigny a été capable de guider la procédure électorale de façon à s'assurer de la continuité du succés de son parti. Malgré ceci et les nombreuses imperfections de l'administration électorale il y a eu un véritable changement politique. La Côte d'Ivoire s'est embarquée dans un processus de démocratisation qui, par la suite, apportera d'autres avantages sociaux et politiques.

In September 1980 the Government of Zimbabwe embarked upon a programme of agricultural resettlement which is modest in terms of the extent of the problems which it seeks to mitigate, but ambitious in terms of the capacity of a new administration to implement it. The target rates of resettlement designed into the original programme have subsequently been multiplied some ninefold by the addition of a second, parallel programme, which makes resettlement now and in the foreseeable future the major rural development activity in Zimbabwe; indeed, it is currently the only sustained public sector programme with the potential to affect fairly immediately and significantly the economic welfare of large numbers of rural dwellers.