Sisters, wives, wards and daughters: a transformational analysis of the political organization of the Tiv and their neighbours.Part I: the Tiv
IntroductionThe re-analysis of classical ethnography has become an anthropological industry Since segmentary lineage models enshrined so many of the assumptions integral to what we have learned to call the structural-functional paradigm, they have been subjected to trial by this form of interrogation particularly often. Africanists will be aware that the statuses of Evans-Pritchard's model of Nuer social organization and of Fortes's of Tallensi remain controversial within anthropological circles long after their publication. Another of the classical analyses of a segmentary lineage organization, that made by Laura and Paul Bohannan of the Tiv, seems to have escaped the same degree of controversy. The reason is not without interest: the Bohannans' analyses have been ensured relative immunity from criticism by the general acceptance that their model of Tiv social organization so evidently corresponds to some of the ways in which indigenous Tiv social theorizing represents Tiv society. In other words, and quite explicitly, the Bohannans' analytic model is also a Tiv folk model.