The Dynamics of Multilineality on the Mambila Plateau

Africa ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Rehfisch
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kinship System ◽  
System Changes ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe Mambila social structure, unlike the majority of those studied in West Africa, is characterized by the presence of kinship groups with corporate functions which are not unilineal. All members of these units claim descent from a common male ancestor or his sibling, but descent may be traced through males, females, and in some cases through links including both sexes. A knowledge of the changes in both the traditional and present marriage practices is essential for obtaining an understanding of this kinship system. Changes in the two principal Mambila kinship groups—the memin and the man—over the past three or four decades will also be analysed.

Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba

Africa ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Schwab
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Analytic Description ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kinship System ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThis 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of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old.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.

The Significance of Descent in Tale Social Structure

Africa ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 362-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Fortes
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Analytical Data ◽  
West African ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Field Worker ◽  
Northern Territories ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Coherent Picture

Opening ParagraphThe Tallensi of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast furnish data of special interest for the study of comparative social structure among the peoples of West Africa. Large as the ethnographic literature on West Africa is, it is singularly lacking in analytical data concerning social structure. Some of the most useful collections of ethnographic information on West African peoples thus lack the foundation without which a coherent picture of a society is impossible. Tables of kinship terms, enumerations of kinship usages, catalogues of marriage and inheritance customs, and such-like information are no more than the raw materials for the construction of a systematic representation of social structure. And very often the raw materials are not sufficient. There are plenty of bricks but no mortar. The reasons for such lacunae are obvibys. A sympathetic amateur ethnographer can bring together material of inestimable value; but without a good theoretical grounding in modern social anthropology the field worker will not look for, and even if he stumbles across it, will not recognise the kind of material necessary for an understanding of social structure. He must; first of all, have the concept of a total social structure clearly in his mind; and he must look for the connexions, which are very often implicit, by which ostensibly discrete processes and institutions are related to one another in a meaningful pattern.

Destiny and the Unconscious in West Africa

Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Horton
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Way

Opening ParagraphMany present-day social anthropologists may find Professor Fortes's most recent study the most significant of all his works on the Tallensi. Its main theme is the way in which these people use religious concepts to order and explain certain key aspects of the individual's passage through the social structure, and operate religious cults to facilitate this passage.

Waterlogging and Salinity in the Indus Plain : Some Basic Consideration

1965 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Dorfam
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Water Development ◽  
The Past

It takes more than ordinary population for a group of strangers to recommends changes in the efforts of a great nation to contend with a problem that goes that goes to the very roofs of its social structure and its livelihood. Yet we did just that in our Report on Land and Water Development in the Indus Plain[l]. We hoped our recommendations would be considered sympathetically and debated fully, that our sound suggestions would be adopted and our unsound ones forgiven. All this has been granted us, and more. The months since the Panel's report was prepared have been eventful for the economic development of West Pakistan. It is hard to cast our minds back to the gloom that filled the atmosphere when the Panel was convened. Food production had been stagnant for the past several years, sem and thur were spreading through the most productive portions of the Plain, expensive efforts to control these twin menaces had been baffled. WAPDA knew, of course, that in principle tubswells could do the job, but there were more failures to report than successes

scholarly journals Seeing Children in Prehistory: A View from Bronze Age Ireland

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mark Haughton
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Written Sources

Despite growing strength in recent decades, an archaeology of childhood has often been overlooked by those studying prehistory. This is concerning because communities are enlivened by their children, and conversations with and about children often provide a critical arena for the discussion of aspects of societies which prehistorians are comfortable addressing, such as social structure, identity and personhood. Through an exploration of childhood as expressed in the Earlier Bronze Age burials from Ireland, this article demonstrates that neither written sources, artistic depictions nor toys are necessary to speak of children in the past. Indeed, an approach which tacks between scales reveals subtle trends in the treatment of children which speak to wider shared concerns and allows a reflection on the role of children in prehistory.

1787–1887–1987: reflections on a Sierra Leone bicentenary

Africa ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Forest Belt ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Language Pattern ◽  
Long Time ◽  
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Opening ParagraphSeen in the widest perspective, 1787 is only one date among the uncounted tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years during which the present Sierra Leone has been inhabited. Archaeologists have done disappointingly little work there. But it is clear from their findings (and by implication from findings in the rest of forest-belt West Africa) that people have lived there a very long time. Though traditional historiography always tends to present the peoples of Sierra Leone as immigrants from somewhere else, the language pattern suggests continuous occupation over a very long period. As Paul Hair (1967) has shown, there has been a striking linguistic continuity in coastal West Africa since the fifteenth century. Nor is there evidence to suggest that before that period stability and continuity were not the norm.

The Social Structure of Modern Bamako

Africa ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Meillassoux
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
North Bank ◽  
Niger River ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Town

Opening ParagraphAccording to a partial census taken in 1960, Bamako city has about 130,000 inhabitants. Small by Western standards, it is still by far the largest city in Mali. At the time of the French conquest Bamako had only between 800 and 1,000 inhabitants; it was the capital of a Bambara chiefdom, grouping about thirty villages on the north bank of the Niger river, with a total of about 5,000 people. The ruling dynasty was that of the Niaré, who, according to their traditions, came from the Kingi eleven generations ago (between 1640 and 1700). For defence against the neighbours and armed slave-raiders fortifications were built around the town and a permanent army of so-fa (horsemen) was raised. Soon after its foundation Bamako attracted Moslem Moors from Twat who settled as marabouts and merchants under the protection of the Niaré's warriors. Among them, the Twati (later to be called Touré) and the Dravé became, alongside and sometimes in competition with the Niaré, the leading families.

Social Theory and the Study of Christian Missions in Africa

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. O. Beidelman
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Broad Area ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Impact

Opening ParagraphIn the past anthropology was concerned with alien, exotic societies such as Indians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders. Today it is in vogue to do the anthropology of modern societies. Abroad this is termed the study of nation-building and development; at home it becomes the study of various sub-cultures with attention towards ethnic minorities and deviant groups rather than upon the more powerful and prominent segments of our society. Anthropologists tend to neglect those groups nearest themselves, and in the scurry to conduct relevant research, a broad area of great theoretical interest has been passed by. Almost no attention was ever paid by anthropologists to the study of colonial groups such as administrators, missionaries, or traders. Today we can read anthropological studies of the impact of such groups upon native populations, but the focus of such work dims with the colour line. Thus, an anthropologist has studied the machinations of the members of a Nigerian emirate but not the tactics of the British Resident and his staff. Another applied potted Weberian bureaucratic theory to Soga local government but neglected to discuss the British district officers in the same chiefdom. Another asked how Christian Tswana behaved, but not about those missionaries who had converted them. Anthropologists may have spoken about studying total societies, but they did not seem to consider their compatriots as subjects for wonder and analysis.* In the studies of Christianity in Africa, consideration was mainly in terms of the relations of the convert to his traditional society, to the process of social change, or sometimes to the development of native separatist churches. It never included the missionaries who had made the conversions or described everyday affairs at the mission station, clinic, or school.

The Africa Bureau, London

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-294
Author(s):  
Peter Calvocoressi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
West Africa ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Physical Size ◽  
Informal Group ◽  
The Past ◽  
African People ◽  
South West ◽  
South West Africa

It is not easy to describe the objects, still less the activities, of the Africa Bureau in a few words. It is one of those organisations whose ambitions and influence are much greater than its physical size.If you look at the dominating purpose behind the activities of the past 12 years, you will find it in the Bureau's sympathy with and determination to promote African independence. It was established in 1952 to provide accurate information particularly on the aims and hopes of African nationalism, to oppose unfair discrimination, and to encourage development in Africa. The need for such an organisation in Britain had been recognised primarily by Rev. Michael Scott, who on returning from South Africa sought help from people in Britain for the African people of South West Africa. An informal group advising on the intricate political and constitutional issues involved in bringing South West Africa's plight before the United Nations provided the nucleus from which the Africa Bureau grew, and since 1948, Michael Scott, honorary director of the Bureau, has attended the U.N. and given evidence as personal representative of Chief Hosea Kutako of the Hereros.

The Evolution of Free Standing Risers

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tellier ◽  
Ricky Thethi
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
System Architecture ◽  
Vertical Section ◽  
Single Line ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Dynamic Motion ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Complex Evaluation ◽  
Deepwater Riser

Deepwater riser selection is a complex evaluation of technical and commercial project drivers. The free standing hybrid riser (FSHR) has evolved in the last 10 years through major use in West Africa and is now gaining serious consideration in other deepwater provinces. The key benefit of the free standing riser is that the steel riser vertical section is offset from the vessel using flexible jumpers, thereby decoupling the riser from vessel dynamic motion. Early FSHR configuration took the hybrid bundle tower form. The very first free standing riser system, installed in 1988, consisted of the Placid hybrid bundle in the Gulf of Mexico. In the late nineties, a hybrid bundle tower was chosen for the Girassol development in West Africa. Since then, the industry has sanctioned numerous developments using multiple single line freestanding risers. Optimization of the FSHR is continuing with new concepts such as the Grouped SLOR developed to offer the combined benefits of both the bundle and single line multiple arrangements. This paper will describe how the FSHR configuration has evolved to meet increasing industry demands over the past 10 years and will discuss the future of this type of riser system. Increasing applications in ultra deepwater regions, hurricane prone locations and tiebacks to existing payload limited production vessels will be discussed with riser system architecture described including interfaces with the vessel and seabed.

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