Seen 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.

Some years ago Madame Dieterlen astonished the anthropology students in London University with the wealth of detail about Dogon culture which was at her command. They were not less impressed when she explained that the first twenty years of field research among the Dogon had been the most arduous and that subsequent work was more and more rewarding. Now the already considerable ethnography of the Dogon is enriched by two major documentations, Le Renardpale by Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, and Ethnologie et langage by Geneviève Calame-Griaule.

The Mau Mau movement used a campaign of ritualised oath-taking to gain the support and co-operation of the Gikuyu masses. The oaths remain a continuing source of controversy in the literature on Mau Mau, little of which is directly anthropological. This article offers a tentative resolution to that controversy through an anthropological analysis of Mau Mau oathing rituals in the light of contemporary theories on the relation of ritual to ideology. I argue that the oathing rituals are to be understood as part of the ideological apparatus of the movement, along with rallies and songs. The effectiveness of the oathing rituals lies not solely in their symbolic reference to 'traditional practice' as Buijtenhuijs (1982: 87) has suggested, nor in some inherent mystifying property of ritual communication (Bloch, 1974: 67–76). Although a continuity between the oathing rituals and those associated with the legitimation of traditional authority is strikingly apparent, the success of the former as a medium for political recruitment is to be explained in its relation to ideology, and in the essential ambiguity of the central tenets of that ideology—‘land’ and ‘freedom’.

I Propose to examine the Uganda secondary boys' boarding-school, in which I teach, as an institution in culture contact; to consider how far its function must be interpreted in terms of its own dynamism and how far in terms of the parent cultures of the Black and White members of the community. The interpretation I make from data gained chiefly within the school is necessarily incomplete, and a complementary study by a field anthropologist, looking at the school from the point of view of outside society, is desirable. But within the limits of the data available to a schoolmaster I here offer a description and an analysis.

Institutionalized ‘joking relationships’ occur between several different categories of kin and affines, and between groups or categories of varying inclusiveness. Thus brothers-in-law, mother's brothers and sister's sons, and kinsmen of alternate generations are frequent categories between whom joking relationships exist; and localities, villages, clans, and peoples or ‘tribes’ may have joking relationships with one another, variously or simultaneously. Radcliffe-Brown (1952, p. 95) rightly points out that if such behaviour is to be adequately explained, all of the contexts in which it occurs must be taken into account. He also indicates the further ramifications of the problem by placing it in the wider context of ‘alliances’. Thus ‘alliance by the joking relationship may exist separately or combined in several different ways’ with alliances ‘(1) through inter-marriage, (2) by exchange of goods or services, (3) by blood-brotherhood or exchanges of names or sacra’, and so on (1952, p. 102).

This paper is concerned with aspects of reproduction and fertility among the Kwahu of southern Ghana, an Akan sub-group, and more particularly among the members of a lineage in one rural town characterised by profound socio-economic change and differentiation. Fragments of the field data presented are taken from a larger corpus of materials focusing on family life, sexuality and birth control collected during the early 1970s.

The data discussed here pertain to people's decisions whether or not to practise contraception, to have abortions, to carry pregnancies to full term – in short, whether or not to regulate their fertility by traditional and modern chemical and mechanical methods. We note as we proceed why some individuals will terminate a pregnancy at all costs, even risking life and health to do so, and why others have a fatalistic or casual approach to the results of their activities and the outcome of their pregnancy. These materials are presented within the context of a brief account of some current problems encountered in micro-economic demographic modelling exercises based on rational decision-making premisses, and of recent attempts to build bridges between ethnographers and economists.

The Kenyan government's long-term development strategy, Vision 2030, has emphasized infrastructural investments, which it believes will lead to sustained economic growth. The government has appealed to China to fund large-scale projects in the transport sector, and as a consequence of this, construction firms from China have emerged as significant employers in the country. While the Kenyan government contends with the ongoing burden of youth unemployment, it must also reconcile the ambiguities of China's role in Africa and its implications for the labour market. This article examines two Chinese-built infrastructure projects in Kenya and their intersection with several issues involving migrant labour and local rumours of Chinese prisoners, as well as the state's vision for industrialization and youth employment. Kenyans utilize both online and interpersonal channels of discourse to critique present-day employment practices in the transport sector, and it is argued that these counter-channels of discourse represent a particular articulation of knowledge used by Kenyans to construct meaning and interpret ambiguous situations. Through a theoretical analysis of rumour, this article illustrates how ordinary Kenyans are pooling their intellectual resources to understand Sino-Kenyan labour relations in the absence of transparency and participatory government processes in the infrastructure sector.

It is not surprising that animals have played a significant role in KhoeSān cosmology but identifying exactly what that role is and how it relates to different contexts of belief and action is more challenging. This article identifies a special role for birds in KhoeSān thought and practice, which is tightly bound to matters of spirit and healing, seems relatively cohesive and is distinctive and widespread, both culturally and historically. Working out from a detailed KhoeSān medical ethnography and using bird examples taken from a wide range of KhoeSān, I argue that bird relationships are best understood by re-framing popular ideas of ‘supernatural potency’ within persistent habits of perception and the opportunities or challenges they present. I further highlight how KhoeSān interaction with birds must be linked to particular relationships with knowledge in order to understand why birds are so salient. I conclude by emphasizing the dangers of explaining KhoeSān bird relationships within potentially distorting categories of ‘metaphor’.

A l'encontre de nombreuses entreprises groupées sous l'appellation d'Artisanat indigène où les modèles sont plus ou moins imposés, où les artistes, éloignés de leur milieu originel, se livrent souvent à des activités réservées à des catégories sociales différentes de celles auxquelles ils appartiennent, où l'influence européenne est déterminante, l'École des Peintres de Poto-Poto constitue une expérience rare. Créée à Brazzaville en 1951 sur l'initiative du peintre Pierre Lods, elle fonctionne depuis cette date avec l'appui du Haut-Commissariat de la République en Afrique Équatoriale Française.

Musical instruments are in so far of importance for cultural research as they partake, in an almost unparalleled degree, of the nature of both material and mental culture. They can be seen and handled and, in addition to this advantage, possess many qualities unconnected with their immediate purpose; purity, copiousness, and beauty of sound are historically the latest properties sought after, and aimed at technically. (For purposes of research everything must count as a musical instrument with which sound can be produced intentionally and, for this reason, it is advisable to use the term ‘sound-producing instruments’.) The fact of their giving forth sound classes them at once among ‘live’ objects and lends them an effect akin to that of speech and song. That their sounds are not those of the human voice invests them with a mysterious and superhuman potency. It would be hard to find a sound-instrument which had not originally a ritual or magical significance, and which had not served for an indefinite period as a secular amusement for adults before being finally passed on to the children. Ritual use is always therefore an indication of great antiquity. On the other hand, objects which are indiscriminately used at any time and by any person may be suspected of dating from a later period, or of having been imported from without.

The immigration of food-producing groups into areas occupied by hunters and gatherers must have been a common occurrence in prehistory. How were the hunter-gatherers affected by this? I describe here two groups of Kalahari Basarwa (‘Bushmen’), one living along the flood plain of the lower Botletli river, the other occupying the savanna a short distance away from the river. These two groups differed in subsistence and social organisation and were affected by immigrant herders and farmers in strikingly different ways. Today the Basarwa of the flood plain are wealthy cattle owners, whereas those of the savanna are poor and have few or no cattle. How and why did the two groups respond so differently to the same competitive threat?

The importance of age as a factor of social grouping amongst East African peoples has long been recognized. Amongst the Kuria, a Bantu-speaking people who have been culturally influenced by Nilo-Hamitic neighbours, two distinct forms of age-grouping exist. In one ‘age-sets’ are recruited at regular provincial ceremonies of initiation, the historical sequence of sets then serving to rank their members by age seniority. In the other ‘generation classes’ are recruited according to a fixed cycle of named classes where the children of the men of one class are automatically ascribed membership of the succeeding class and where norms of coevality apply to each class in sequence. These two forms of age-grouping are institutionally distinct (status in one is in no way ‘tied’ to status in the other) and they operate in different ways within the society. Although both belong to what may empirically be called Kuria age-organization, they can conveniently be described separately. The following paper describes the generation classes.

In spite of the universality of clientelism, it is often seen as a peculiar aspect of Third World politics, one which inevitably stifles development. This study examines clientelistic relationships in south-western Nigeria and their possible impact on rural development, with a special focus on Ibadan. It finds that rural clients attract the attention of the political class to promote the exchange of goods for loyalty through associations that afford clients a sort of cohesive power and a common front, the basis of their relevance in the political-clientelistic chain. This clientelistic chain also serves as the channel through which development projects are conceived and implemented. But since the projects provided only serve symbolic purposes, they easily collapse: clients may have the opportunity of changing patrons, but they remain subservient to the political/economic elite. Thus rural underdevelopment persists in spite of a continual inflow of development projects (and goods).

This article examines the abandonment of an important food taboo – the prohibition of milk consumption by newly married women – in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s. Offering a detailed exploration of this hlonipha custom in three rural communities, I start from the position that food always reflects the entanglements of its material and symbolic attributes. By tracing health and illness, shifting livelihoods, diets and an important social medicine intervention, this article reveals that in the 1950s milk was a symbolically and materially different food than it had been in the 1930s. I argue that this difference determined whether or not hlonipha would be abandoned. By centring on understandings of food, health and taboos as material and symbolic, this article draws on scholarship on livestock in Southern Africa and contributes to scholarship on food taboos and hlonipha customs, pushing for the incorporation of material aspects of those customs.

This paper concerns the historical and sociological significance of the traditions of certain lineage-groups residing on the eastern fringes of Lake Victoria in Kenya. These traditions have implications about the nature of pre-colonial social structure in the region, and allow the use of anthropological findings in the reconstruction of social forms through the medium of oral history.

The groups in question are to be found on the islands and adjoining southern mainland at the mouth of the Gulf of Kavirondo (see map 1). These lineages, together with others, are collectively known as the Basuba, and they inhabit in whole or in part a number of South Nyanza administrative locations and extend across the Kenyan border into Tanzania; the lineages of immediate interest here are to be found on Rusinga and Mfangano Islands, and in the mainland locations of Gembe, Kaksingiri, and Gwasi. The discussion which follows is largely based on information gathered from selected knowledgeable men on the islands, and supplementary researches conducted by the same means in the mainland areas mentioned above; five months of fieldwork were conducted in two periods in 1969 and 1973 and, unless otherwise indicated, all information below pertaining to South Nyanza is derived from that.

One problem in the rural areas of developing countries is the question of securing new sources of capital as the economy moves from a traditional agrarian system to a more fluid and flexible economic condition. New capital resources seem necessary to ensure this flexibility, to satisfy the needs of individuals in a world where economic achievement is highly stressed whatever its role in the more traditional society. Yet in the absence of banking facilities, or of government-sponsored loan organizations, the sources of funds for expanded or new economic endeavours must arise from the activities of the entrepreneurs themselves.

The debate on the ‘Bantu expansion’ has been notable for the relative absence of contributions by social and cultural anthropologists. Murdock's rather extravagant contribution (1959) has assumed a quite inordinate significance, as the only direct attempt to discuss the sociology of large linguistically defined areas. This anthropological silence is particularly noteworthy in view of the close collaboration between anthropologists, linguists and archaeologists in the Americas. It is fair to say that nothing in the Africanist literature approaches the sophistication of, say, Dyen and Aberle's Lexical reconstruction: the case of the proto-Athapaskan kinship system (1974). Studies like that are the outgrowths of a living tradition stemming from Boas and Kroeber and Sapir. There is nothing comparable in Africa—H. Baumann, the only candidate, lacked sociological interests and did not systematically relate his findings and hypotheses to those of the linguists. Yet it is surely obvious that an anthropological contribution is needed here, if only in a critical role. The present paper outlines a few of the ways in which social and cultural anthropologists might contribute; and begins with a critique of traditional ‘culture area’ approaches, since these are generally thought of as the kind of thing that anthropologists can do, however poorly.

There is reason to believe that at one time the greater part of the Gold Coast had one simple type of social organization. Where destruction of this took place the disturbing influences spread from the North southwards. On the coastal plains are some areas which, for various reasons, were barely touched. In these areas the aboriginal type of social organization is preserved, more or less intact, to-day.

This study sets out to explain the relatively high incidence of Islamic affiliation among traditionally non-Islamic Sisala migrants living in the migrant community of Mamobi in Accra, Ghana. In the course of the presentation, I intend to demonstrate that the migrants' relationship to Islam and the urban Islamic community is directly related to insecurities resulting from leaving one's native area and confronting an alien and often dangerous, urban environment, and that Islam provides the migrant with the instrumental means by which to facilitate his adjustment to urban life.