Les Bamiléké ont élaboré des institutions profondément originales dans des domaines en apparence nettement distincts, lignage et parenté, chefferie, sociétés coutumières, organisation des quartiers. L'organisation sociale qui en résulte est fort complexe et présente des variations notables d'un groupement à l'autre, surtout dans le domaine du fonctionnement de la chefferie. L'édifice apparaît surchargé d'éléments secondaires, au point que ses grandes lignes finissent par se trouver masquées.

In his address at the Memorial Service for Dr. J. H. Oldham on 3 June 1969 Dr. Visser tʼHooft, Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, referred more than once to J. H. Oldham's singular gift of ‘reading the signs of the times ’. This insight into the meaning and implications of events and trends, past, present, and anticipated, is what statesmen in all walks of life desire though few achieve it. In the troubled years after the founding of the International African Institute in 1926, up to the outbreak of war in 1939, the cross currents of events, policies, ideologies rocked even long-established institutions. The steady course held by the young International African Institute, and its progressive development, was due to a remarkable quartet of men: Lord Lugard, Sir Hans Visscher, Professor Malinowski, and Dr. Oldham. Between them they represented the main sources from which the Institute drew its early strength, its supporters, and its research workers: African governments, foundations, anthropologists and linguists, and missionaries with specialized knowledge of African languages and cultures.

In his book on the Arusha, the agricultural Masai of Mount Meru, Professor Gulliver concludes with a general theoretical statement in which he suggests a way of classifying processes of dispute settlement. Gulliver says that there are ‘two polar types of process—judicial and political—between which there is a graduated scale where, ideally, particular systems could be placed according as to whether they were more judicial or more political in their nature’ (Gulliver, 1963, p. 297).

Leach in his study of the Kachin interpreted disputes over claims to administer ritual or to recite myths as a means whereby politically opposed factions sought to assert their independence or their dominance (Leach, 1954, p. 278). He also showed that in this competition the Kachin made use of ritual and other cultural elements which they had adopted from the Shans and were using for political ends.

The northern States of Nigeria have in the past 200 years experienced two great reform movements; both were accompanied by conquest by a distinct minority, and both sought to impose an external, universal culture with its set of written laws and distinct administration. The ideals, and their application by the two groups of reformers, have been strikingly similar, as has been the dissenting response of the disillusioned.

The history of European colonization in Africa is to a large degree a story of Christian missionary penetration. Yet, relatively scant attention has been paid to their political activities and influence, especially during the period following the First World War. This paper is an attempt to deal with this problem as it manifested itself in the former Belgium Congo. For reasons that I hope will become obvious to the reader, the Catholic missions will receive greater attention than the Protestant.

This paper was drafted many years ago and it was against the background of this and other unpublished material that I came to the view about the nature of bride-wealth indicated in my paper ‘Social Character of Bride-Wealth, with Special Reference to the Azande’ (Man, 1934, 194).

The general aim of this paper is to test by quantitative methods Mitchell's statement (Mitchell, 1965, p. 193) that ‘we expect the meaning which people read into misfortunes to change when they become part of an industrial urban community’. Mitchell was commenting (and elaborating) on the demonstration by Marwick (1952) that witchcraft accusations are particularly likely to occur between people who are in competition with one another, but who are prevented by the norms of the society from expressing their hostility openly. He suggests that Africans in town continue to interpret their misfortunes in ‘personal’ terms but that ‘the meaning that they attach to the misfortune must be of a type which will allow them to take effective action’. In the towns of the Copperbelt hostility and opposition may be openly expressed toward strangers, so there is no need for accusations of witchcraft (signalling interpersonal tensions), except where townsfolk are linked in co-operative enterprises in which, nevertheless, there is an element of competition, e.g. as between rival beerbrewers or fellow workers. In such cases open accusation tends to be inhibited and the interpretation recouched in terms of ancestral wrath. Mitchell sees, therefore, an increase in ancestor-centred explanation of misfortune in urban areas and implies a decrease in witch accusations. Marwick has suggested, on the other hand, that ‘the immediate effect of contact with Western influence is not a decrease but an increase in the African's preoccupation with magic, witchcraft and sorcery’, due to new social alignments and social, economic and political changes, which create insecurity, anxiety, and impart a ‘dangerous flexibility’ to human relationships (Marwick, 1958, p. 106).

The 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.

Dr. Jack Goody, in his study of Death, Property, and the Ancestors among the LoDagaa of Northern Ghana, shifts his level of analysis from time to time. On the one hand, in analysing the pattern of sacrifice to the ancestors (i.e. the relationship of donor to recipient in the sacrificial situation), among the two communities of the LoWiili and LoDagaba (collectively referred to as the LoDagaa), he maintains that the crucial variable is the locus of tension in the holder-heir relationship, and the consequent guilt a man feels since he can only inherit the property on the holder's death. Thus individuals sacrifice to those people from whom they also inherit. We are told that sacrifice follows the pattern of inheritance of movable property, which in the case of the LoWiili falls within the patriclan and in the case of the LoDagaba falls within the matriclan. Goody makes much of this holder-heir relationship but does not follow up the implications in his analysis of the cases of sacrifice which he records in Table 12 on p. 398. Rather he shifts his level of analysis and relates the relationship between donor and recipient to the more diffuse level of the relationship existing between members of the corporate descent group, treating all members for these purposes as holders or heirs. In this sense the sacrificial obligations of the heirs are dependent on the continuing interest of the deceased members, together with their rightful expectation to a part of the property which is held by the living members of the corporate descent group in which movable property is inherited. A situation which arises because the descent group is conceived of as being made up of the living and certain dead members, i.e. the ancestors. In the most general sense Goody is maintaining that individuals sacrifice the sacrificial object (cows, goats) to those categories of people from whom they did in fact inherit, or might have inherited, these same objects of sacrifice.

In this paper I shall attempt to set out the ideas of morality and of the structure of society in so far as they can be found reflected in Swahili Islamic literature. This literature is of two kinds. Firstly the didactic literature, mainly in prose, in which rules of conduct are given by Islamic teachers; secondly the narrative, legendary literature, mainly in verse, in which many social and moral concepts may be found, either expressed in a straightforward didactic form, as versified proverbs, or as it were by implication, in which case the underlying ideas can be made explicit by extrapolation.

This paper reports briefly on some oral traditions collected from Yoruba musicians in western Nigeria in 1964-6. These relate mainly to the origins of their musical instruments. The research sought to answer these questions: Do Yoruba musicians have an established body of traditional beliefs with respect to their instruments? If so, how can these beliefs best be collected for collation and comparative study?

Most developing countries are said to have far too few skilled workers. They are certainly limited in the number and size of technical schools they can afford to support. However, technical trainees may be too ‘high-powered’ to be useful in small-scale, indigenous businesses and most holders of technical certificates drift into work quite different from that for which they were trained (Foster, 1965, pp. 294-5; Pfefferman, 1968, p. 113). Alternative and much cheaper sources of skilled workmen are provided by training within industry and apprenticeship to an individual craftsman.

This paper considers age organization as a political means of dealing with problems arising out of the dispersion of men and wealth in varying ecological zones among the Sidamo of south-west Ethiopia.

The Sidamo inhabit an area shaped like a trapezoid beginning 169 miles below Addis Ababa, extending on a north-south axis from Lake Awasa to Lake Abaya, and on the east-west axis from the upper branches of the Loghita River to the Billate River (see Map I). Their cultural boundaries are with the Arusi on the north, Walamo on the west, southward with the Gugi and Darassa, and the Jamjam (Northern Gugi) on the east. On the basis of village census data and registration of the majority of Sidamo household heads for the 1965 parliamentary elections, I would estimate the population to be between 100,000 and 200,000 persons.

I Mean by the Ashanti northern trade Ashanti market exchanges with Hausa, Mande, and Mossi caravan traders at the town of Bonduku (eastern Ivory Coast), Salaga (northern Ghana) before 1874, and at Kintampo (Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana) 1874-92. The main facts relating to this trade are well known to students of Ashanti. This paper attempts (i) to establish the basis of the Ashanti trading relationship with the northern peoples; (ii) to make distinctions between types of Ashanti traders, the scale and results of their operations, and to describe the production and distribution of kola from Ashanti; and (iii) finally to draw attention to those features of the nineteenth-century trade which contribute towards the understanding of what Tordoff(1965: 187) has called ‘the emergence and phenomenal growth of the cocoa industry’ in the early years of this century.