Swahili culture can be roughly defined as the culture of the Swahili-speaking peoples of the East African coast whose activities show features of Perso-Arabian origin, features that are foreign to the culture of other Bantu peoples of East Africa. It cannot be described simply as Bantu culture plus Perso-Arabian elements, for some Swahilis have excluded from their way of life anything that can be labelled as Bantu; they may have Bantu blood, but their whole way of life is Muslim-Arabic.

This paper attempts to comment on the various techniques by which Kano Hausa traders and businessmen raise capital and invest it for diverse economic and social returns. Rather than proposing anything new, I will seek mainly to point to areas of needed future research among the Hausa traders. Moreover, although the paper is primarily concerned with the economic behaviour of a particular people, no clear effort is made at quantification, since very little statistics for Kano trade exist at the time of writing.

A feature of the ethnography of eastern and southern African cattle-keeping peoples is a high level of contradiction in the assessment of the status of women. Better understanding of the house-property complex, the property and inheritance system characteristic of these peoples, can resolve some seeming contradictions. In this system, all property (especially livestock) held by a polygynous family is divided and held separately by the nuclear family of each wife. Sons inherit from the property of their own mother's house rather than from a general pool of their father's property.

The article analyses variations in the norms of the house-property complex from one society to another. The institution is said to be ‘highly developed’ if more cattle are allocated as house property than are retained in men's residual herds, if women's rights in their house property are thought of as inalienable, if wives have some recourse should their husbands appropriate their house property, and if rules preventing redistribution of property or bridewealth between houses are rarely violated.

A frequently overlooked aspect of this property system is that it gives women well denned rights in property, despite public ideologies (often overstated, especially by male informants) that cattle belong to men. There are actually, in at least some societies, several named categories of cattle. In each category, different individuals have predominant rights. Women actively defend their interests in cattle in which their rights predominate, and manipulate those rights to gain their ends in social interaction. These points are illustrated with case material from Nandi District, Kenya.

The degree to which women have some control over property is obscured both by culturally endorsed simplifications and by the ethnographic situation in which male ethnographers historically interviewed male informants about property holding. Nevertheless, clues to women's participation in property management may be found in many classic ethnographies, and are cited in the article.

In this paper I do not propose to try to discuss those contributions made in the name of psychology to anthropological research and explanation which are already well known. Most of these have been made in the interests of some general theory. They involve assumptions concerning which there is legitimate and sharp division of opinion. My task is the less controversial one of attempting a survey of developments of psychological research which have taken place during the last ten or fifteen years, with a view to indicating the ways in which they may be of service to the anthropologist.

This article discusses whether Ethiopia's recent reorganisation into broadly decentralised, ethnically based regions was also accompanied by significant changes in the images and administrative practices through which state powers have been locally understood and experienced by ordinary citizens. Different scholars and politicians have viewed the local effects of these changes differently. Government officials and some scholars report ‘radical reversals’ from decades of monarchial despotism and socialist dictatorship to enhanced local autonomy and self-governance, while others counter this by noting the ‘continuation’ of earlier administrative practices. I draw on ethnographic material from fieldwork in Aba Sälama, a local administrative unit in Amhara, to show that decentralisation has increased the significance of local government as a site for competing interpretations of household autonomy and local-governance. Party members and elected farmer officials used the newly enhanced constitutional powers and funds of the local government to strengthen their own personal standing vis-à-vis their superiors at the district capital and fellow farmers in the community. Farmers for their part seized the rhetoric to demand more autonomy from local government which they still viewed as an extension of central state control over their lives and resources. As a consequence, one observes in Aba Sälama both decentralised and centralised administrative practices as local officials seek to accommodate this tension when performing their governmental duties.

In 1991 in the Republic of Congo, a sovereign national conference in Brazzaville inaugurated a peaceful transition from socialist one‐party government to multi‐party democracy. The pluralization of public voices in the newly liberalized country – in religious movements, political parties and independent presses – expressed new conditions of understanding about the nation and its affairs. At the same time, local networks and categories of perception inflected geopolitical pressures from foreign powers into quasi‐ethnic divisions in competition for power through government representation. Subsequent conflict over contested elections sparked devastating civil war in 1997 and resulted in the return to power of the former socialist leadership.

Given the uncertainties – indeed, the crises of institutions and of knowledge – during these times, how did Congolese diagnose the troubles through which the country passed? This article examines how national and socialist ideals and practices were evoked and reinterpreted to this end in public discourse through idioms of family, affliction, spiritual power and the living body. These modes of speech and action give evidence of longer‐term continuities in the region's political imaginations, as these incorporated changes brought by ongoing involvement in larger modern worlds.

The relationship between land tenure forms and the twentieth-century transformation of agriculture throughout much of Africa from a strong subsistence to a market orientation – and from food crop production to predominantly export crop production – is a topic of great importance both to Africanists and to policy-makers. From a scholarly perspective, contemporary Africa presents an unusual opportunity to study dramatic changes in land use and especially in land tenure, similar to changes which took place in other parts of the world as commercial farming developed. From a policy-maker's point of view, too, the current shift in land tenure has major implications for possible government measures affecting security of tenure and land distribution – and, in turn, patterns of agricultural investment, productivity and output.

In earlier articles I have argued the merits of the method of controlled comparison, both for the study of hunter-gatherer social organisation and for the study of Khoisan kinship across the forager/non-forager divide. In this article I put these two interests together to examine specifically the relation between kinship, production and culture contact among the Khoisan, and particularly the Khoe-speaking, peoples. Certain kinship structures and practices are dependent upon the means and methods of subsistence, while others are not. The latter are products of Khoisan history and in general reflect linguistic relationships between economically diverse Khoisan peoples.

The problem of the nature of the blood covenant (also called blood pact or blood brotherhood) still awaits adequate detailed comparative analysis. This is unfortunate since detailed consideration of such practices would be interesting in itself and might also provide valuable means for understanding some of the notions of physiology, kinship, magic, and alliance in the societies in which this institution exists. A blood covenant establishes a close bond between two persons not linked by kinship but who, nevertheless, desire social relations supported by stronger sanctions (physiological and/or magical) than those afforded by mere communal, tribal, or trading connexions. It is clear that blood covenants do not establish conventional kinship relations and that the term ‘blood brotherhood’ is misleading. However, the physiological basis of these covenants and the terminology sometimes employed by the persons involved in them do suggest that some comparison with kinship may be useful if only to indicate the differences between these two institutions. By examining some of the ways in which a people's blood-covenant relations are similar and dissimilar to certain of their kinship relations, and by considering the significance which the people themselves see in the physiological link of common blood, we may gain a clearer understanding of both these types of relations.

Dans les litiges portant sur des terres dans la région de Dori, dans le Nord du Burkina Faso, les actes de corruption de fonctionnaires par l'intermédiate de “courtiers” sont courants. Or, les pots-de-vin versés par les fermiers sont souvent plus élevés que l a valeur des terres en litige. “C'est une question d'honneur”, affirment les intéressés. L'arbitrage des conflits met en concurrence les institutions étatiques. Les “courtiers” monopolisent et manipulent l'accès aux institutions et ont un rôle déterminant sur l'issue juridique. Les citoyens n'attendent pas de l'état qu'il les protège, mais comptent sur leur honneur pour contrer leurs adversaires. Lorsque la seule protection d'un bien est l'honneur du propriétaire, et non l'état, le prix fixé pour la violation doit étre élevé à des fins de dissuasion. Quand bien même les terres en litige ne seraient pas importantes, leur usurpation serait une atteinte à l'honneur et par conséquent à la totalité des biens de la partie lésée. Accepter de céder un champ serait une invitation à envahir le reste. A la concurrence que se livrent les fermiers pour l'accès aux terres correspond la lutte de compétence que se livrent les diverses autorités politiques et juridiques et qui complique la situation à un plus haut niveau.

Existing accounts of the Masai may be broadly grouped under three heads: (1) The popular impressionist accounts of the tribe by travellers in East Africa; the numerous travel works on this part of Africa nearly all contain some mention of the tribe, but in the main, these descriptions are calculated for their dramatic effect, and thus become largely inaccurate and valueless for the serious student. (2) Studies of the tribe such as those contained in the works of N. Leys and W. M. Ross. These authors approach the subject rather from the political angle, and make a study of the tribe largely for the purpose of criticizing Kenya's native policy. (3) The works dealing with the tribe from the ethnographic and anthropological standpoint; of the older works, the most important are those by A. C. Hollis and M. Merker. Among the more recent contributions the most outstanding are those by L. S. B. Leakey and S. Storrs-Fox. Daryll Forde has also given an account of the tribe from the point of view of the social geographer.

Only recently have precolonial African historical studies broken away from their fixation on dynastic histories and trade. In reassessing the dynastic traditions, historians of the African past have increasingly drawn on oral traditions from non-royal sources. In particular they have placed a great deal of emphasis on ‘clan traditions’ and the clan group has consequently served as an important building block in reconstructing the African past. But in Rwandan studies this has often been undertaken in a rather uncritical manner; in fact, historians may have been building on a foundation which is less enduring than they realize. For their new construct is often based on the assumption of ‘primordial’ clan units reaching far back into the past, antedating the dynastic political units of which they came to form a part. It is usually argued that these enduring clan units could absorb individuals from other clans or experience geographical expansion through migration; but the basic structure of clan identities is seen as unchanging.

In the Bampanasi Stool House of the Oyoko royals of Ashanti, now at Breman on the outskirts of Kumasi, ten black stools are preserved, arranged as shown in Fig. 1. There is also a bell representing the famous Golden Stool of Ashanti, which is regarded as the black stool of its first king, Nana Osei Tutu. I am grateful to the Asantehene, Nana Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II for permitting photographs of these stools to be taken, and for the invaluable information he has provided about them. The black stools are of historical importance, in that they commemorate the reigns of several of the Ashanti kings. They are also of great social significance, enshrining the patriotic sentiments of the people and serving as a bond between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. This bond is the very essence of Akan culture.

Recently renewed interest in the history and social structures of the Mande-speaking peoples of the West Sudan has brought to attention a problem of both ethnographical and theoretical importance. It is the problem of understanding the structure and functions of clanship in Mande societies, while at the same time interpreting the meanings of clan names, rituals, myths, totemic usages, and inter-clan relationships. In approaching the first aspect of the problem one is faced with questions of definition which have not been satisfactorily resolved; for example, are the nyamakala groups properly defined as ‘castes’, and are the dyamu (or diamu) to be described as ‘clans’ or as ‘patronymic groups’.

Among Mijikenda of the Kenya coast, the male Kaya elders (azhere a Kaya) – custodians of sacred spaces and customary knowledge – traditionally undergo years of secretive ritual training and tribulation in order to accrue both expertise and seniority. Over the past few years, however, a series of scandals have fragmented this group, casting them into the national spotlight while fomenting debates about the nature of elders’ expertise. In the ethnically fraught context of Kenyan politics, politicians of Mijikenda and of other ethnic backgrounds have sought out and paid Kaya elders for ritual ‘anointing’ or ‘blessing’ in order to win Mijikenda allegiance in their political campaigns. As public cynicism toward these events has mounted and elders have traded barbed accusations of fraudulence, much discourse has revolved around an idealized and nostalgic model of the kind of expertise considered to be under threat. I discuss the roles of morality, secrecy and ethnic identity in this model, suggesting that these ways of thinking about expertise are not merely reflections of ‘tradition’ but also emergent from presentist struggles for elders’ personal power and for the collective identity of Mijikenda.

This essay describes the skills of a sand divination expert in Mali through consideration of his expert performance. By relating the description of the expert to Goffman's sociology, it is argued that, in addition to his skilled divination techniques, an expert diviner should be capable of establishing and maintaining the frame of his performance. In the case of the expert described in this essay, it is demonstrated that this frame encompasses a unique and dynamic network of social relations, and comprises a complex set of economic and geographical factors. The historical backdrop to the expert's activities is the ‘occult economy’ (the deployment, real or imagined, of magical means for material ends). It is argued that acquiring the skills needed for managing a frame – and a team of people to support the frame – in the conditions described is a major accomplishment. Study of these skills and processes may provide valuable insight into processes of social change at the micro-level.

The ability of hunting and gathering populations to adopt herding forms of subsistence constitutes the crux of a long-standing debate in southern African archaeological and anthropological scholarship concerning the spread of livestock to the subcontinent. This article takes as a detailed case study the subsistence strategies of the nineteenth-century ǀXam Bushmen of the Northern Cape (South Africa), extracted from a transcription of the entirety of the Bleek–Lloyd Archive. It focuses on ǀXam characterization of and relationships with the various domesticated species that shared their Karoo landscape, and asks whether these relationships differ markedly from their conceptions of non-domesticated animals. Turning to the wider context of hunter-gatherer engagements with domesticates, the article concludes by proposing that, for the ǀXam, domesticated fauna were part of a spectrum of differentiated resources, and did not entail an interaction with a wholly alien suite of new demands.

Contemporary texts on West African crops usually note that rice is grown in areas west of the Tano: southern Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Liberia grow a considerable quantity of rice and in recent years there has been much attention given to improving both crop type and cultivation techniques. Northern Ghana has also seen the introduction of wet rice cultivation on a large scale. But there are areas in eastern Ghana, to the east of the Volta, where rice is grown. The rice is the indigenous glaberrima type; cultivation techniques owe nothing to the developers and rice-growing has a nodal place in local culture.

This paper reports the pattern of concubinage among Ngwa Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria. In this study attention is focused on: (i) the role of concubinage in the disposal of certain rights in women among the Ngwa Igbo, (ii) the folk evaluation of the status of the partners in this institution, and (iii) the strength of concubinage under the impact of acculturation.

Within demography, high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa was considered until recently to reflect a demand for children firmly rooted in indigenous social institutions, which were resistant to external forces of change. On the basis of findings from recent Demographic and Health Surveys, Caldwell et al. (1992) suggest that many of the institutional supports for high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa—such as lineage-based descent systems, polygyny, bridewealth, extended kinship structures, child fostering, and communal land tenure—are being eroded. This article considers changes in the value of children among the Kikuyu of Central Province, Kenya, and the extent to which the social institutions which have traditionally supported high fertility have persisted. Fieldwork undertaken in two ethnically homogenous communities, one rural and one peri-urban, reveals significant variation in the fertility motives and value of children in the two communities. In the rural community many of the indigenous social supports for high fertility, although modified, cohere. In the context of economic insecurity and lack of access to land (especially for women without sons), manipulation of customary kinship and marriage practices (supported by the persistence of many indigenous religious beliefs and ideologies about fertility) has become strategically important for realising fertility desires. There is, however, unmet demand for modern contraception, due largely to lack of access to and the poor quality of family planning services. In contrast, in the peri-urban community, where access to family planning services is relatively good, there has been effective legitimation of fertility regulation and the use of modern contraception is widespread. There is markedly less economic insecurity: wage labour opportunities are available, and some women have successfully challenged male control over land. Consequently, there is reduced demand for children, although a number of the indigenous cultural supports for high : fertility retain residual importance.