Government in Umor: A Study of Social Change and Problems of Indirect Rule in a Nigerian Village Community

Africa ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryll Forde

Opening ParagraphThe policy of adapting ‘for the purposes of local government the tribal institutions which the native people have evolved themselves, so that the latter may develop in a constitutional manner from their own past’ depends for success on more than a general grasp of the outlines of native social organisation. Native standards of value as expressed in individual and collective behaviour, the operation of balances and checks in the social system, current trends which are tending to cause some institutions and customs to lose strength at the expense of others, and the economic forces that have been or are in the future likely to be operative in the society, must all be analysed and assessed in their mutual relations as interrelated elements in a complex process.

Author(s):  
Cristina Mariti

- In Western societies family and work, the two focal subsystems governing individual and social groups' daily life, are undergoing substantial and may be final adjustments. Family dimension is changing in its hierarchical structure, in kinship and ties, in emotional, reproductive and economic organisation and setting up new styles coexisting with traditional standard and gradually corroding its role and constitution. Work, on the other hand, is increasingly connoted by flexibility, mobility and precariousness and it appears as a strongly (may be irreversible) changing element of the social system; several are the social "aggregates" on which these adjustments are active: (self)confidence, planning skills, individual time allocation, emotional and familiar life organisation. The theory of social capital, considered as the knowledge in reciprocity held by an individual and used, together with intellectual and cultural heritage, in social mutual relations, is recently raising in social sciences. The purpose of the survey is to analyse the reciprocal interconnections and the refractive upshots of the process involving these three elements and the set up network.


Africa ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Middleton

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I consider some Lugbara notions about witches, ghosts, and other agents who bring sickness to human beings. I do not discuss the relationship of these notions, and the behaviour associated with them, to the social structure. The two aspects, ideological and structural, are intimately connected, but it is possible to discuss them separately: on the one hand, to present the ideology as a system consistent within itself and, on the other, to show the way in which it is part of the total social system. Here I attempt only the former.


Africa ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. H. Crosby

Opening ParagraphPolygamy is a social system, and is intimately bound up with the subject of property, of labour, and of the difference in status between men and women. If this paper appears to trespass into other fields it is because of the complexity of the subject and because polygamy is not something that can be abstracted from the social organization generally and be examined by itself; it is both symptom and cause of widespread difference in Mende society from that of our own.


Africa ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Krige

Opening ParagraphThe Louedu of the NE. Transvaal are patrilineal and marriage, which is patrilocal, involves (as it does among other S. Bantu tribes) the transfer of munywalo. This,institution has been variously interpreted as the legalization of the marriage, as a guarantee of a wife's status or good behaviour, and in terms of compensation, economic or ritual. But these interpretations are rather like parodies in which the emphasis on the features mentioned is not so much wrong as a caricature. We have, often complacently, projected our own values and motivations as universally valid. Much might be said in favour of such a caricature, if it is infused with the life of a character in Dickens, especially when the purpose has been to ennoble an institution which many regard as degrading. The kindly cartoon is better than the derogatory stereotype. It would, however, be better still if we could accommodate ourselves to a system in which the social arrangements are incommensurable with our own. More specifically, and that is the purpose of this article, we might try to discover the real place of munywalo in the social system. The manner in which we phrase the subject, that is, as the relation of the cattle exchanges to the social structure, is not meant to disguise our approach. It is intended to focus attention on the facts that cattle constitute the essence of munywalo, and that the exchanges of cattle involved are both the basis of important social arrangements and by far the most important use to which cattle are put in the society.


INFERENSI ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
Siswanto Masruri ◽  
R Lukman Fauroni

The economic empowerment of communities often tend  to focus on the aspect of method and program, which is mostly imported and western-minded. Social capital may be opimized to make sure that the economic empowerment achieving its goals. In some conditon, the social capital philosophy of tri tangtu silih asih silih asah and silih asuh plays a significant role in ensuring the success of a community economic empowerment. This paper is a study of social system of community economic empowerment aiming on understanding the background condition of the economic empowerment of a village community with particular case of the village farmer group.


Africa ◽  
1956 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Banton

Opening ParagraphThis paper presents a study of what is sometimes called detribalization—the process by which tribal people, especially those who have left their homeland and obtained paid employment in towns, are separated from the social and cultural heritage of their tribe. But this is too superficial a statement of the matter. It is necessary to define the problem in sociological terms before attempting a systematic analysis of the process. Accordingly I shall start by describing the system of social relations prevailing among Temne in Freetown, and shall examine the forces which, over the past fifty years, have influenced its character. At the beginning of this period relationships among the Temne immigrants appear to have been relatively close and stable, but, from the 1920's, disintegrative tendencies became progressively more marked until, at the end of the 1930's, the young men carried out a series of swift changes which resulted in a more successful adaptation of the system and its closer integration.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azham Md. Ali

This work investigates the role and contribution of external auditing as practiced in Malaysian society in the first 40 years since independence in 1957.It applies the political economic approach, which emphasises the social relations aspects of professional activity rather than economic forces alone.The political economic approach is applied by utilising an enlarged exogenous framework of processual change analysis.This particular interpretive framework views external auditing in Malaysia over the forty year period (1957-1997) as an open, dynamic social system comprising two pattern transformations.The study focuses specifically on the historical development of, and environment influences on the countrys audit practice and provides insights into the operational form of contemporary audit practice and the historical, social, economic and political determinants of that form.The writer extrapolates that in all probability, the future of auditing in Malaysia will continue to be constrained by unresolved problems; audit in Malaysia seems to be case of the triumph of hope over experience.


Africa ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tait

Opening ParagraphIt is useful to review existing ethnographic writings from time to time in the light of advancing theory. The data considered here are contained in an impressive body of first-rate material collected in accordance with the best descriptive methods on which French ethnographers rely. This paper is in no sense a summary of the data collected by the various Missions Griaule; it is an ‘analytical commentary’ dealing only with the social system of the Dogon of Sanga that a structural analysis of the material reveals. Its purpose is to direct attention to some problems of structure for which further investigation is needed. It can most usefully be read side by side with the principal works on this people so far published.


Africa ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold K. Schneider

Opening ParagraphThe purpose of this paper is to describe the production and settlement system of the Bantu-speaking Turu of central Tanzania and to discuss its effects on the social system. Save for certain other peoples of this area who are historically close to the Turu, the practice of manuring of land and strictly sedentary settlement without slash-and-burn horticultural techniques or bush fallowing (except as ancillary to the main production processes) are an unusual combination in Africa.


Africa ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 356-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Goody

Opening ParagraphMiss Ward, in her paper on Some Observations on Religious Cults in Ashanti, maintains that the spread of ‘new witch-finding cults’ in Ashanti results from an emotional malaise deriving from structural changes in the society. The hypothesis is one which has been put forward on other occasions to account for the reported increase in such activities. The basic propositions appear to be four: firstly, that major changes in the social system increase the overall malaise in a society: secondly, that such increased malaise will be reflected in an increase in witchcraft: thirdly, that an increase in witchcraft will be reflected in an increase in witch-finding cults: fourthly, that there has been such an increase in Ashanti.


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