The process by which African peoples come to forsake their traditional religions for Islam or Christianity is among the most significant and the least-studied features of social change in Africa. It is, furthermore, a field to which scholars of different backgrounds, historians and social scientists, may contribute. In spite of a recent drawing together of these disciplines, historians and sociologists may still consider themselves as offering rival explanations of the same phenomena, especially if these are complex. The factors involved in religious change in Africa are very elaborate, but may be reduced to two broad sets—the policies of the missionary societies, the prime agents of change, and the character of the African societies, the arena of change. Above all we need to explain the varied reception of missionary teachings by African peoples.

The article explores the conflictual relationship among the Basotho chieftaincy, state, and nation in historical perspective. That history includes consideration of the recent and still unresolved political crisis in Lesotho. The current meaning of Sesotho, the ‘whole life process’ of the Basotho people, is examined in the context of the divergence between state and nation, between chiefs and people, between region and locality, and between modern and customary institutions and forms of organisation. Lesotho is unusual in Africa as a state attempting to emerge from an existing, monocultural nation rather than to build a not yet existing nation out of cultural plurality. It is this very peculiarity, and the state of seemingly endless political turmoil despite the absence of any ‘ethnic factor’ which provides the most telling commentary on more general relations between cultural and historical forms of political organisation in Africa.

This paper describes the emergence during the 1960s of two forms of neighbourhood organisation, drinking companies and vigilante groups, in Bugisu District in eastern Uganda. The main interest of these groups is that they were both explicit responses to a perceived state of anarchy and lawlessness. The drinking companies evolved to control the most popular, and the most dangerous, social activity: the drinking of beer. They were essentially voluntary associations which developed into forms of rotating credit association. The vigilantes, as a self-appointed police force, tackled the problem of community security in a different way and, patrolling their areas at night, were dedicated to the eradication of thieves and witches. Evolving at the same time and often in consort, both movements were united in their aim to provide a distinctive ‘Gisu Government’.

In this paper I draw together modern reports on various Sotho-speaking peoples and attempt to indicate the relationship between the political arrangements within each ‘tribe’ and certain aspects of its social system—in particular, patterns of marriage preference and residential alignment.

The richest data and some of the most penetrating analysis is to be found in Schapera's writings on the Tswana, and his Tswana material provides my central case-study. The Kgalagari and the Southern Sotho (Basuto) systems are obviously similar in many ways, although I shall point out some interesting variations. In the second part of the paper I attempt to show that the variables abstracted in the first part are related in only slightly different ways in the superficially divergent systems of the Pedi and the Lovedu, and even in some groups whose organization has been fundamentally disrupted by colonial or settler intervention.

The Sotho-speaking peoples have intrigued many anthropologists particularly because of their preference for marriage with close kin, usually including all cousins, and sometimes even closer relatives. It was with this in mind that Radcliffe-Brown (1950: 69) remarked that the Tswana ‘are decidedly exceptional in Africa, and might almost be regarded as an anomaly’. This is a problem which is central to my analysis, and in order to clear the ground something must be said about marriage strategies in general. Broadly speaking, there are three options, which I will now outline.

In this paper I illustrate an objective method for the determination of the meaning and values of social institutions, using data on the custom of praise-singing (roko) among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria. To direct attention to the method of analysis clearly, I shall present the field-data and their examination separately. I concluding, I shall indicate certain problems which seem to arise from this paper.

Since the early 1970s the heavy impact of recurrent drought has given rise to the sense that Sahelian pastoralism is in decline. This is usually attributed to increasing aridity, environmental degradation and the destructive effects of colonial policies on traditional mechanisms to spread risk and promote recovery from drought. These factors clearly contribute to the pastoral sector's apparently increasing difficulties in contending with environmental hardship and variability. However, analysts' strong emphasis on forces exogenous to the sector has created a seriously distorted view of a system in uniform decline. In fact, when changes within the pastoral sector are examined, it becomes clear that the movement of people away from full-time transhumant livestock raising since the 1970s reflects not the decline of pastoralism per se but rather the slipping-out by a stratum of producers for whom the risks associated with this activity were simply too great relative to possible returns. Understanding that drought-induced impoverishment has its roots in differential ability to bear risks linked to environmental variability is especially important in formulating sound policies to ensure present and former pastoralists' continued access to income-generating activities, whether in full-time livestock raising or in other areas.

Menstrual blood has proved a popular subject for discussion in the anthropological literature but, surprisingly, only a single theme has emerged: societies either do or do not consider menstrual blood and menstruating women to be polluting. If they are not considered polluting, it is taken as a sign of sex-role egalitarianism; conversely, if they are considered polluting, it is taken as a sign of women's lower status vis-a-vis men and/or of the potential danger or threat that women represent to men (e.g. Kessler, 1976: 72-4; Meggitt, 1964; Ortner, 1974; Sacks, 1974; Young, 1965: 155). Friedl (1975: 29) goes so far as to suggest that menstruating women are viewed as threatening and polluting because menstrual blood is a symbol of death: when a woman menstruates, it is a sign that she has not conceived a child and thus during this time she is ‘the antithesis of life’.

This article deals with the continuous flow of resources, values and goods that takes place within a Cape Verdean institution called tabanca. It examines the effects of some practices of the so-called Cape Verdean diaspora on local forms of sociality in Santiago's tabancas, in order to show that these flows have a remarkable conservative tendency and contribute to the reproduction of traditional forms of social organization. The Cape Verde I present in this article is at variance with the standard image of the country in current anthropological literature, which approaches social life in the archipelago using analytical tools developed in interdisciplinary fields such as globalization theory and post-colonial, transnational or diasporic studies. Through the ethnographic analysis of the flows within the tabanca, I put the Cape Verde case in the general context of West African political culture to argue that some of its attributes, which appear in literature on transnationalism, diaspora and globalization as the outcome of contemporary transformation, can best be explained in terms of a conservative structural continuity with the political culture that evolved in the northern part of West Africa, known as Senegambia.

This article examines well-known facts about Asante trade in the nineteenth century with a view to defining the contribution of trade to accumulation. The question of accumulation becomes significant when considered in relation to recent directions in Asante economic, social and political history. These have featured the role of the precolonial Asante state in the development of its economy (Wilks, 1967; 1975; McCaskie, 1980), stratification (Wilks, 1975; McCaskie, 1980; 1983; 1986; Arhin, 1983a; 1983b; 1986a), and what may be called the paradox of colonial rule, that it liberalised accumulative forces in order to enhance its exploitative opportunities (Arhin, 1974; 1975).

In this article I consider gender as a form of stratification on the coast of East Africa, with specific reference to northern Mafia Island where I have carried out fieldwork between 1965 and 1967, and again in 1976 and 1985. I am interested in the way in which this has changed over the twenty-year period in which I have been observing this area.

One of the most intriguing features of most African languages is that of tone, by which variations in speech tone generate different meanings (Pike, 1948, offers a valuable introduction to this subject and includes an extensive bibliography; Fromkin, 1972, is a comprehensive evaluation of specialised studies). In the Ewe language, for example, the word to [H] pronounced with a high tone means ‘ear’, as in To le venye (HLMM), ‘I have an earache.’ To can also mean ‘through’, Meto akonta me [MHLHML], ‘I have gone through the accounts.’ But as soon as the high tone is replaced by a low one the meaning of the word changes drastically: to [L] means ‘thick’ as in Dzogbo la to [LHHL], ‘The porridge is thick’. Similarly, mi [H] is a pronoun for the first person plural (Mieto adegbe, ‘We are on the way to the hunt’). The same word refers to ‘faeces’ as in [HL], ‘goat's faeces’. A shift of tone from high to low results in a change of meaning. Mi [L] is a pronoun for the second person plural (Mile tsi [LLM], ‘You (should) take a bath’); it also means ‘swallow’ (mi amatsi, ‘swallow [or take] the medicine’). The phenomenon is not restricted to monosyllables. Kuku [HH] refers to a ‘hat’ (Meɖe kuku na wo, ‘I remove your hat,’ which is a figurative way of saying ‘I beg you’). Kuku [LH] on the other hand refers to ‘death’. Asi [LH] is the word for ‘hand’, while asi [LM] denotes ‘market’. Tone is operative on a number of levels within the syntagmatic chain: on the level of syllable, word, phrase and sentence. Furthermore, a number of constraints—syntactic, international or natural factors—influence the disposition of speech tones (consult Ansre, 1961, for information about Ewe tone and Dakubu, 1988, for the most recent study of this and other aspects of Ghanaian languages).

It has long been recognized that there is a distinctive category of African political systems, which is characterized by centralized authority. The preliminary analysis and classification of African kingdoms proposed in this article are based on comparison of most of the States in Central, South, and East Africa. Only a few data on West African kingdoms have been incorporated, but we feel that the classification will prove generally valid for West Africa as well.

By the early twentieth century the ruler of the historic Akan kingdom of Akyem Abuakwa in what is now the Republic of Ghana and his subjects confronted one another over issues of identity and allegiance. The evidence suggests that not only was this debate unprecedented but also that its language was novel. Such divisive issues were forced upon them by a tranche of new factors. These included the ownership of, or rights to, land as farms acquired increasing cash value in the wake of the success of cocoa cultivation. No less important in a jural setting dominated by the institutions of indirect rule was the issue of which chiefly jurisdiction applied to individual communities and even families in a kingdom with a historically varied ethnic population. The article shows how the king gradually elaborated both an ideology and a corpus of regulation which attempted to define citizenship and stranger status. The king and his council's organising principle idealised an ethnically homogeneous state. Many sections of the kingdom's population strongly contested the idea. They did so in part because this agenda potentially disempowered long-settled communities while granting new privileges to those close to the centre of ‘traditional’ power.

During the twentieth century, the ‘death celebration’ became arguably the most important cultural event throughout much of the Western Grassfields of Cameroon. The growth of this ritual festival occurred in the context of major political, economic and religious changes in the Grassfields. This article will focus on how religious changes, particularly the growth of Christianity, contributed to the rise of this event and how it has prompted significant changes in notions and practices concerning the pollution of death, personhood, burial rites and the ancestors. In the traditional hierarchical structure of Grassfields society, only certain titled individuals and chiefs were believed to live on after death and become ancestors. This was reflected in burial rituals. Individuals who became ancestors were buried in family compounds while ‘unimportant’ people were frequently disposed of in the ‘bush’, streams or hurriedly given unmarked burials. Christianity, because of its stress on individual personhood and its message of an afterlife for everyone, became an attractive alternative to established beliefs and practices, especially for young adults, women and those without titles, who were the most disenfranchised in the traditional system. With Christianity, burial rites became standardized and were extended to virtually everyone. Christianity also caused declines in notions of death ‘pollution’ and in beliefs about ‘bad deaths’. Because of continued beliefs in the power of ancestors, the egalitarian notions of personhood stimulated by Christianity have ironically created a ‘proliferation’ of ancestors for whom delayed mortuary rites such as ‘death celebrations’ are owed.

There can be no single right analysis of social change. The data are so complex and our tools as yet so crude that we must expect to work with various hypotheses and many types of abstractions. Some will be better instruments of analysis than others, and we must hope that we shall be able to subsume several of these in more comprehensive and consistent bodies of ordered knowledge. I immediately distrust such works as this latest polemic of the late Professor Malinowski's which is written in the strident terms of the one-and-only orthodoxy.

In the colonial period Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia, was a field for brilliant social research. The social scientists who worked at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (hereafter abbreviated to RLI) in Lusaka produced studies which can be found in libraries throughout the world. Yet the relevance of this literature for understanding present-day Zambia may not be immediately obvious. Our knowledge of society turns into historical knowledge, especially when great social changes such as decolonization take place. Social scientists inevitably capture one particular historical moment. The work of those connected with the RLI can therefore be treated as part of history; Kuper (1973) has characterised its role in the development of British anthropological thought as a part of the history of ideas, and Brown (1973, 1979) has written evocative accounts of the involvement of its members in the country as an example of the white man's presence in Africa.

Cet article s'appuye sur la croyance que certaines formes d'auto-publicité telles que les nécrologies et felicitations publiées dans les quotidiens du Nigéria ont un nombre de thèmes en commun dans l'imagerie utilisée pour souligner les faits d'accomplissement. De plus il soutient que ces themes du succès reflètent peutêtre un mélange de critères modernes et traditionnels et représentent une tentative par les élites d'énoncer à nouveau leurs attributs de supériorité.

Les données pour cet article furent assemblées à partir du Nigerian Daily Times et du Daily Sketch, d'interviews avec les administrateurs du Daily Sketch et de la société de radiodiffusion de l'état d'Oyo, avec les correspondants du Guardian et Daily Times ainsi qu'avec les distributees de journaux et agences publicitaires bases a Ile-Ife. Une enquête sur l'acceuil réservé à ces publicités et sur les critères implicites du succes fut aussi étudiée. En général on s'accorde à dire que ces annonces augmentent le revenu des medias imprimées et audio-visuelles, que les dispositions envers ces annonces varient suivant les groupes ethniques, religieux ou le classement social, et que la creation d'une identité personelle contenue dans chacune de ces insertions publicitaires n'est qu'un aspect des relations sociales, entremises dans ce cas par la forme du développement économique ou politique au Nigéria.

During the first months of 19811 was in Makoni district, Zimbabwe, carrying out research on its twentieth-century history. I arrived there bearing a powerful letter of credit from the Minister of Local Government and, as a result, the District Commissioner allowed me to see his current files on chiefs and headmen. These files – far fatter than any that had survived from an earlier period in the National Archives – covered the period 1960 to 1980, with a scattering of earlier material. They were full of elaborately researched precolonial histories of the chiefdoms, the more elaborately researched the later in time they were compiled. They were also full of equally elaborate chiefly genealogies, often covering a dozen or so pages. The District Commissioner supposed that his files would be interesting to a historian because of these evidences of the past. But I soon came to realize that they were secondary to, and dependent upon, the relationship which the files really documented.

In the 19th century, there were Chagga chiefdoms which initiated their young men into adulthood by putting them through an elaborate series of rituals and ordeals. The first was circumcision. No sooner had the young men fully recovered from their circumcision wounds than they had another trial to undergo. They were sent to the forest for a period of seclusion and instruction. Children and young women were told that during this time in the Kilimanjaro forests the newly circumcized youths were subjected to another operation, this one to plug and stitch closed their anuses (Gutmann, Recht: 321–338; HRAF trans.: 289–304).

There are many variables which affect nutritional status (Bennett and Stanfield, 1972: 7–8). A number of recent nutritional surveys have tried to assess the influence of polygyny on the incidence of malnutrition, though to date no clear relationship has been found between the two. This may partly reflect a methodological problem: accurate determination of a woman's marital status is not easily achieved by questionnaire, and this is especially true in view of the developmental instability of polygynous households (Muhsam, 1956: 16). Yet questionnaires are frequently used in nutrition surveys and they can generate large quantities of data, although Johnston et al. have urged that studies be simplified in the interests of discovering some underlying structure (1980: 292). As a result of the massive bulk of disparate data, multivariate analysis has come to the fore in an attempt to establish significant correlations among the many variables which can be associated with malnutrition. But, as McDowell and Hoorweg point out (1975: 98), this method requires that an adequate research design be employed: it is not good enough to collect the data first and to seek the associations afterwards. The data to be collected must be carefully chosen so that pre-selected hypotheses can be tested. An anthropological perspective is very important in determining this choice of data. For example, although the term ‘polygynous’ describes a woman's marital status, it gives no indication of her position in a household relative to at least one other wife. For this reason it would be preferable to make the polygynous household, rather than the individual woman, the unit of study. Specific information could then be collected to clarify if there are constraints or advantages experienced by different wives within a polygynous household, or between wives in polygynous and monogamous households, in order to see whether these influence the nutritional status of their children.