The Kuranko: Dimensions of Social Reality in a West African Society. By Michael Jackson. London: C. Hurst, 1977. Pp. xviii, 256, ill., figs., maps, bibl. £13.00

Africa ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-111
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tonkin
Keyword(s):  
Social Reality ◽  
West African ◽  
African Society ◽  
Michael Jackson

The Kuranko. Dimensions of Social Reality in a West African Society

1982 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Marion Kilson ◽  
Michael Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Reality ◽  
West African ◽  
African Society

A Further Note on Joking Relationships

Africa ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
Keyword(s):  
West African ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
African Society ◽  
The People ◽  
Joking Relationships ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphProfessor Griaule's article on ‘L'Alliance cathartique’ in Africa of October 1948 raises a methodological point of considerable importance. If we wish to understand a custom or institution that we find in a particular society there are two ways of dealing with it. One is to examine the part it plays in the system or complex of customs and institutions in which it is found and the meaning that it has within this complex for the people themselves. Professor Griaule deals in this way with the custom by which the Bozo and the Dogon exchange insults with each other. He considers it as an element in a complex of customs, institutions, myths, and ideas to which the Dogon themselves refer by the term mangou. He shows us also what meaning the natives themselves attribute to this exchange of insults (p. 253). As a piece of analysis the article is admirable, and is a most important contribution to our growing knowledge of West African society.

Islam and Trade in the Bilād AL-Sūdān, Tenth-Eleventh Century A.D.

1983 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
African Society ◽  
Western Sahara ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
The Law ◽  
Muslim Communities

Two fatwā-s or legal opinions of the jurist al-Qābisī at Qayrawān about the year A.D. 1000 show the way in which the Law of Islam was used to protect the Muslim against the hazards of trans-Saharan trade with the Bilād al-Sūdan. Trade was to be conducted as far as possible in accordance with the Law, and approval was given to the establishment of Muslim communities in the Bilād al-Sūdān under the authority of a nāzir or ‘watchman’, with the consent of the pagan king of the country. The formation of Muslim communities on this legal basis, and their incorporation into the pattern of West African society, were important for the subsequent character of Islam in West Africa. Meanwhile, among the ‘stateless’ Berber peoples of the Western Sahara, the doctrines of the Malikite school were subject to a different interpretation by Ibn Yasln, which came into open conflict with the views of al-Qābisī when the Almoravids sacked the Muslim city of Awdaghast for submitting to the pagan king of Ghana. This conflict of attitudes to paganism remained a feature of West African Islam down to the twentieth century.

An Anthropological Case Study on the Relation of Space, Language, and Social Order: The Bisa of Burkina Faso

10.1068/a345 ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (12) ◽  
pp. 2189-2203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Dafinger
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
West African ◽  
African Society ◽  
Spatial Order ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Order Language ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Theoretical Frame

This paper outlines certain benefits that spatial analysis offers to anthropological research, and shows how anthropology and related linguistic research may in turn contribute to the understanding of the social determinants of spatial order. It presents a case study of spatial order in a rural West African society. Although the examples are from a particular setting, the theoretical frame is a general one: the analysis will focus on the connections between social order, language, and the perception of space.

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