The Social Structure of the Nyakyusa: a Re-evaluation

Africa ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Mckenny
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Value System ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Western Tanzania

Opening ParagraphThe Nyakyusa of south-western Tanzania have received very substantial ethnographic coverage. Nonetheless there remain certain gaps in our knowledge of this society. The field-work by Dr. Godfrey Wilson and Professor Monica Wilson was done largely in the mid 1930s before structural-functional analysis had achieved its present refinement and was evidently influenced by Malinowski who was not himself known for a concern in sociological analysis per se. In these studies of the Nyakyusa, values, beliefs, and ritual were a main object of attention; they present Nyakyusa society as though it were a direct result of the Nyakyusa value system, although the actual workings of the society have been left rather obscure. It is presented as coherent, values and social organization reinforcing each other at every point. But internal evidence contradicts this picture, and on a priori grounds it may also be seen that there were several structural pressures towards incoherence, or rather, conflict between the actual development of social organization through time and those presumably timeless values reputed to maintain it.

Resisting Sex/Gender Conflation: A Rejoinder to John Hood-Williams

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 728-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Willmott
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Per Se

The irony of the rejection of the sex/gender distinction is that it renders sociology per se an impossible enterprise. For it is my submission that, contra Hood-Williams (1996) and others, the biological and the social constitute distinct, irreducible levels of reality: to conflate (in a ‘downwards’ or ‘upwards’ direction) the two levels is immediately to render analysis of their relative interplay at best intractable. It is indeed arguable that Hood-Williams is not so much concerned with (rightly) rejecting the so-called ‘additive’ approach to the biological and the social where the biological base is seen a priori as immutable, but more fundamentally with rejecting the necessary dualism of nature and culture (ie the biological and the social). In contradistinction, a realist defence of the sex/gender distinction will be made, involving critical reference to various major writers in the field and offering a brief but tentative discussion of the provenance of gender.

Land Reform among the Mbeere of Central Kenya

Africa ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brokensha ◽  
Jack Glazier
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
South West ◽  
Tana River ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Central Kenya

Opening ParagraphThe Mbeere live in the area east of Mount Kenya and south-west of the Tana River. Numbering just under 50,000 they are ethnographically much less well known than their related neighbours the Kikuyu, Embu, Meru, and Kamba. In this paper we first outline the social organization, then the system of land rights, continuing to describe the government's programme of land reform, concluding by assessing the probable consequences of changes in land tenure.

Chiefship and Politics in the Mlanje District of Southern Nyasaland

Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
R. L. Wishlade
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Administrative District ◽  
Southern Province ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphMlanje is an Administrative District in the Southern Province of Nyasaland. It is densely populated compared with other parts of Central Africa, having a population of 209,522 in 1945, which represented a density of 138 per square mile. The population is tribally heterogeneous, and was composed, in 1945, of 71 per cent. Nguru, 21 per cent. Nyanja, and 5 per cent. Yao people. The Nguru are the most recent arrivals, having immigrated into Nyasaland mainly during the present century. The term Nguru is used to refer to the representatives in Nyasaland of a number of tribes inhabiting that part of Portuguese East Africa which Lies to the east of Nyasaland; these immigrants call themselves Lomwe and in Mlanje are mainly Mihavani and Kokola. The Nyanja are the indigenous inhabitants of the area, who were living there before the invasion of the Mangoche Yao during the nineteenth century. Although they are linguistically distinct, the social organization of these three groups is markedly similar, and there has been a great deal of intermarriage between them, particularly between the Nyanja and the Nguru. No one of them is in sole occupation of a continuous stretch of territory, even the smallest residential groups are often tribally heterogeneous, the similarity of the social organization enabling Nyanja to be absorbed into Nguru hamlets and vice versa. For this reason it is impossible to use a tribal unit as a unit of reference in a discussion of the political organization of this area.

The Social Organization of Credit in a West African Cattle Market

Africa ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abner Cohen
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
African Cattle ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Cattle Market

Opening ParagraphCredit is a vital economic institution without which trade becomes very limited. In the industrial Western societies, where it is highly developed, it operates through formal, standardized arrangements and procedures by which the solvency of the debtor is closely assessed, securities against possible default are provided, and the conditions of the agreement are documented and endorsed by the parties concerned. Ultimately, these arrangements and procedures are upheld by legislated rules and sanctions administered by central, bureaucratized, fairly impartial, efficient, and effective courts and police. In West Africa, on the other hand, where long-distance trade has been fostered by varying ecological circumstances, such organization has not yet evolved, particularly for long-distance trade. Nevertheless extensive systems of credit have been developed.

Polygamy in Mεnde Country

Africa ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. H. Crosby
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Social System ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Opening Paragraph

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.

The Social Context of Cewa Witch Beliefs

Africa ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. G. Marwick
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Material Part ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphCertain features of Cewa witch beliefs make them well suited to sociological analysis. As this type of analysis has been somewhat neglected by students of witch beliefs, Part I of this paper will be devoted to a brief review of some of the literature (mainly on Bantu) and to an attempt to formulate a serviceable hypothesis. Part II will summarize information about the Cewa essential to an understanding of Part III, in which the hypothesis will be applied to Cewa material. Part III will appear in a subsequent number of Africa.

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 social stuff of revelation: pattern and purpose in Zionist dreams and visions

Africa ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Kiernan
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Purposive Action ◽  
Social Encounters ◽  
Dreams And Visions ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Act

Opening ParagraphAnthropologists are beginning to investigate the sociological dimension of dreams, at least of those purporting to be channels of religious revelation. Two recent examples of this tendency are Charsley (1973) and Curley (1983), each of whom researched dream phenomena in an African independent church. The sociological approach is a firm rejection of earlier and some current attempts to extract patterns of culture and personality from the subjective reconstruction of the dream-as-dreamed, a purely private event. In contrast, the sociological emphasis isolates as its primary datum the dream-as-told to others, an essentially social act, which leads to an analysis of dreams as social assets, which can be manipulated to advantage or disadvantage. Consequently, the method of analysis demands that as much attention be directed to the act of recounting as to the content of the narration, although in practice this seems to mean that content is subordinated to purpose and can be related to social arrangements only indirectly through purposive action. I shall endeavour to correct this latter impression in subsequent argument. The second methodological requirement is to connect narration to social action, social relations and social organization, and to demonstrate the tactical use of dreams in social encounters.

The Missionary's Concern in Sociology and Psychology

Africa ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-434
Author(s):  
Richard Thurnwald
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Mind

Opening ParagraphThe knowledge of the social organization and its changes, of the attitude of the average man towards his daily problems, of the emotional and intellectual background of conduct, must be the starting-point for every effort to influence a man in his particular world. The European missionary or teacher comes from another environment, he is accustomed to social conditions, mental ways, intellectual and emotional responses different from those of his pupils. This divergence in the mind of individuals and in the functioning of society often becomes a stumbling-block to the European, especially to a newcomer. A careful study of the situation he has to deal with is therefore essential for the missionary and teacher.

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