In this paper I discuss the mythological and ritual sequences honouring dead elders amongst two descent segments of the Sadama of Southwest Ethiopia. Myth and ritual will be described and an explanation offered regarding the persistence of both under changing conditions.

The participants in these rites are the men of the Holo-Garbičo clans, two of the most esteemed descent groups of the Cushitic speaking Sadama. The Sadama, located approximately 170 miles south of Addis Ababa, are estimated by a 1969 sample survey to number over 600,000 persons (Central Statistical Office 1972: 11). The institutions and culture of the Sadama have been described elsewhere. They have a mixed economy based on the cultivation of such staples as ensete-edulus and maize, cattle herding, and recently the production of coffee as a cash crop. There are a number of clans which are subdivided into patrilineages cross-cut by several generational classes (Hamer 1970).

Dans la société pastorale Fulbe, de la partie centrale du Mali, les femmes avaient, et dans une certaine mesure ont toujours un rôle social et économique important, centré sur l'économie du lait organisée par une unité spéciale dirigée par des femmes et centrée sur les femmes, que les Fulbes ont baptisée fayannde, ou foyer. Dans cette société de pastoralistes semi-nomades qui vivent la plus grande partie de l'année en petites unités sociales, les rapports et les réseaux sociaux sont très importants, voire même plus cruciaux pour le succès de leur principale stratégic de survie, à savoir l'élevage du bétail transhumant. Dans la littérature consacrée aux Fulbes, cette unité sociale n'a recueilli relativement que peu d'attention. Une analyse du point de vue de la fayannde apporte de nouveaux éclaircissements sur la notion de propriété et les rapports entre les sexes au sein de la société Fulbe en général.

La sécheresse a eu un impact énorme sur la situation des Jallubes, étudiés dans cet article. Des changements économiques, à savoir une transition vers l'agriculture et la production destinée à la vente, a déplacé le centre d'intérêt des hommes. Économiquement, le lait n'est plus essentiel pour eux, d'où la perte d'importance de la fayannde; socialement aussi, le rôle de la fayannde, symbolisé par le lait, est en train de changer. Pour les femmes, l'érosion de la fayannde est sérieuse: une analyse des cadeaux de marriage montre que l'importance de la fayannde ne concerne pas seulement l'organisation sociale des Jallubes, mais aussi leur viabilité économique. En période de tension, cette importance peut être plus grande pour les femmes que pour les hommes. Le déclin de la fayannde peut mener à une transformation des rapports entre les sexes, de la cérémonie du marriage et de la sécurité sociale des femmes, changements que le retour des pluies ou le rétablissement des troupeaux ne pourra inverser.

This paper analyses factors affecting the variable character of urban marriage patterns in the predominantly African city ward of Kampala East, Uganda. Kampala city comprises two other wards, both of which accommodate considerable proportions of Asians and Europeans. Skirting the west and south of the city is the Kibuga, meaning capital in the local vernacular, Luganda. The Kibuga, like Kampala East, is also predominantly African. The city and Kibuga are administratively and culturally highly distinct. The city has its own council and is the nation's capital. The Kibuga is the capital of the quasi-autonomous kingdom of Buganda. The latter is alternatively a province of Uganda.

The Beti are a Bantu-speaking people of approximately 500,000 persons, most of whom live between the Nyong and Sanaga rivers in central Cameroon. This article reconstructs aspects of traditional Beti society in the nineteenth century. It is based primarily on German and French archival sources available in Cameroon, German explorer's accounts and numerous oral interviews with Beti elders, some of whom were appointed chiefs, schoolteachers or functionaries under the Germans.

The Yoruba town of Iseyin, 55 miles north-west of the city of Ibadan, is a traditional settlement with little economic specialization or division of labour other than according to sex. There is no factory development or industrial employment in the town. In the local tax returns for 1966, 88 per cent of the male taxpayers recorded farming as their primary occupation and the basis of the town's economy is still agricultural. Iseyin is now influenced by modern media of communication, however—by road, radio and the postal services—and its economy is responding to consumer demands in the large cities of Ibadan, Abeokuta and Lagos, in addition to those of its own locality. This applies also to the hand-weaving products for which Iseyin is well-known throughout Nigeria.

This article represents some of the results of three field research studies of urbanization in the Sudan. The research has focussed on two urban communities in the Khartoum area, those known as Tuti Island1 and Burn al Manas. The first study was conducted as doctoral research in 1970–72; a brief re-study took place in 1975, and most recently research was conducted in 1979–80. This ten-year period was a time during which major economic and demographic change occurred in the urban Sudan. A recent study in the capital city area of the Sudan by urban planners has concluded that ‘any sociologist or social anthropologist who approaches the problems of urbanization in Africa today has the privilege of witnessing a social transformation on a grand scale’ (MEFIT, 1974: I). I have already reported on some aspects of change in class structure, marriage, kinship and the family (Lobban, 1971, 1975, 1979), but these earlier articles have relied chiefly on earlier fieldwork. Among studies of culture change in general, and urbanization in particular, it is unfortunately uncommon to have data from replicated, longitudinal studies. In this respect this article may make an especially useful contribution.

The missionary in South Africa found himself, from the earliest years of the 19th century, in an equivocal position, and the role he actually played was the result of the varied and sometimes conflicting hopes and expectations entertained by the Bantu people, by the white settlers and, not least, by the missionary himself. Though he was at this period usually racially tolerant, the missionary was nevertheless out of sympathy with many aspects of traditional Bantu life. There were in consequence certain social changes which he regarded as a necessary preliminary to the establishment of Christianity on a permanent basis. Many of the modifications in Bantu living which the missionary favoured encouraged the gradual transformation of the Bantu population into a reservoir of labour for the growing European economy; while rudimentary education, European crafts, and Christian (or Protestant) individualism, which the missionary taught, contributed to the same end. For this reason, and because of their pacifying influence upon tribes antagonistic to the Europeans, the missionaries enjoyed the support of colonists urgently in need of an amenable labour force. It was widely believed in the early years of the 19th century that only among those Africans who were under missionary influence was there to be found a strong desire to adopt western habits; and colonists who, for other reasons, were not friendly to the missions, freely admitted that personal safety during an armed raid by Bantu tribesmen could be obtained only in refuge at a mission station.

The Shona-speaking complex of tribes covers most of present day Southern Rhodesia, stretching to the Zambian border along the Zambezi River and into Mozambique in the north and to the Indian Ocean in the east. The Korekore group is the major northern division of the Shona-speaking peoples. The original Korekore appear to have been a band of Karanga invaders from the south who entered the middle Zambezi Valley in the fifteenth century and established the Mwene Mutapa confederacy. Today the Korekore group occupies an area extending south from the Zambezi between longitude 28° and longitude 33° east, including the low-lying valley floor and the middle and high veldt or plains to the south where most of the population is concentrated (Garbett, 1966). The valley floor in this region has been considered a poor habitat by African and White settlers alike. The climate is generally poor, there are few cattle because of the tsetse fly, the area is economically undeveloped, and the population is sparse and scattered. Because of their poorer habitat the valley dwelling Korekore have come to be distinguished from their more fortunate highland neighbours to the south and are disparagingly known as Goba or poor lowlanders. In times past they have also been known as Banyai or vassals to the stronger Shona chiefs on the more populous cattle-rich highlands, and also as Chikunda or followers of the Portuguese and half-caste traders operating along the Zambezi in the nineteenth and earlier centuries. This historical background of changing political relations symbolized by changing ethnic identities will be described elsewhere (Lancaster, n.d.).

Towards the end of 1947 I carried out a public-opinion survey among the Cewa tribe of Fort Jameson district, Northern Rhodesia. Although the survey was a failure, judged by the rigorous standards of public-opinion polling, it nevertheless threw light on some of the problems that arise when public-opinion-polling techniques are adapted for use among preliterate peoples. Research of this kind has a place in assessing general morale, in gauging people's reactions to administrative and development policies, and in supplementing the more intensive, but highly selective, observations of the social anthropologist. Because this is an important but almost untouched field, I am recording the lessons that are to be learned from my experiment.

In this survey of vernacular text-books I am confining my attention to the Union of South Africa and the three High Commission Territories of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland. In this area we have five important literary language forms in use, viz. Xhosa and Zulu (belonging to the Nguni cluster of Bantu), and Southern Sotho, Tšwana, and Northern Sotho (belonging to the Sotho cluster). Reference will be made to two other languages spoken in the northern and eastern Transvaal, Venda and Tonga (commonly written as Thonga, and belonging to the cluster of languages spoken in Portuguese East Africa from Delagoa Bay northwards). I do not intend to deal with the languages spoken in the Mandated Territory of South-west Africa, nor with such intrusions as that of Kalanga into the Bechuanaland Protectorate.

Although the Khoikhoi or so-called Hottentots are still discussed in social anthropological literature, there is relatively little interest in them nowadays in comparison with the San (Bushmen) or various Bantu-speaking peoples. This lack of interest is really quite surprising since Radcliffe-Brown drew heavily on the Nama Khoikhoi material in his essay on the mother's brother in South Africa (Radcliffe-Brown 1924). Radcliffe-Brown, incidentally, based his knowledge of the Nama almost entirely on his interpretation of the field work of Mrs A. W. Hoernlé, using two unpublished papers and personal communication with Mrs Hoernlé as his sources. There is, however, a more important reason why the Khoikhoi are of interest. Many aspects of their way of life, ranging from the status of wives to religious beliefs and practices, are very ‘unAfrican’ if we equate African with Bantu-speaking Africa as is so often done.

This is an examination of the history, characteristics and decline of the making of water coolers, formerly a speciality of Ilorin. In order to place this in context, a brief overview of Ilorin pottery making in general is first essayed, including its derivation, continuing importance and future prospects. The association of water cooler making with particular Ilorin compounds is noted, together with the mode of transmission of this skill. Five types of cooler are described, with a sketch of what can be reconstructed of their history and origins. The decline of Ilorin cooler making and sale is demonstrated, and the factors responsible are examined. In conclusion, an attempt is made to suggest the wider significance of the study.

In this paper I shall present some data on the marriage and family organization of an Eastern Ijo town, and shall try to analyse changes in this organization against the background of broader social changes affecting the area.

Okrika is the chief town of the Okrika section of the Ijo-speaking people of Nigeria. The Okrika dialect, with Kalahari and Bonny, falls into the North-Eastern group of dialects which are partially interintelligible with Brass-Nembe but not with the Central-Western dialects. The Ijo occupy the greater part of the Niger Delta. The Okrika section consists of eight towns and dependent villages on the extreme eastern edge of the Delta, where the saltwater creeks and mangrove swamps give place to the extensive dry ground of the mainland. Administratively, Okrika forms part of the Degema Province of the Eastern Region of Nigeria. With three other communities of the section, Okrika itself is sited on an island about half a mile long and a quarter broad.

The Problem of Social Conformity in Action. The functional analysis of social life is concerned with the discovery and elucidation of the inner coherence and living unity of single cultures. The comparative analysis of social life, on the other hand, sets out to explain the similarities and differences which distinguish separate cultures by reference to universal laws which are objectively, that is to say actually, true of all known societies. Separate analysis must necessarily precede detailed comparison, for only so can intelligible units of comparison be discovered. None the less the analysis of a single culture must, right from the beginning, assume a certain general similarity between all cultures if it is to be successful in its own limited field. Intelligibility is nothing else than comparability, and it is only by making explicit the comparability of a Central African culture, for example, with our own and other cultures that we can make its own unity and inner coherence intelligible to ourselves. But, while we are concerned with a single unit only, its comparability with other units can only be made explicit in general terms and not in detail.

This article examines how diverse and contradictory representations of the sisal industry under the British Mandate and independent socialist Tanzania are shaping the process of privatisation. By setting present-day socio-economic realities in the long-term historical context of transformation it dispels some of the assumptions that underlie celebration of market forces and the private sector.

Competition, success and secrecy are fundamental characteristics of the local food economy of Ibadan, Nigeria. With the growth of the processed cassava, or gari, trade throughout this area, these characteristics are revealed in a number of contexts in the food trade. Traders and shopkeepers circulate their wealth and plough profits back into a range of trading items to obscure their exact economic status from other traders and their families. Success in this context entails secrecy in a number of respects. In relation to buyers in the gari trade, secrecy entails the obfuscation of whether the trader deals retail or wholesale, what she is worth in terms of food stocks and her personal wealth. Successful traders also invest their earnings in social celebrations, in their children's education and in personal homes that all work to foster and enhance their social status and validate their wealth.

Based on the contentions that rules cannot determine practice, and that the state is only a composite reality that needs to be analysed as a part of a wider socio-cultural totality, this article investigates how the state, as government and political practice, functions in a village in Botswana. Consequently, lay villagers' attitudes to the state and hence the issue of legitimacy become focal points in the discussion. It is argued that what is conceptualised by most villagers as the state is not co-extensive with its formal boundaries. Rather, it is associated with that which is ‘modern’ or ‘European’ and hence seen to be alien. This means not that the state is conceptualised in merely negative terms but rather that it achieves its legitimacy less on ideological grounds than from its role as a generous patron. This is due to the state's extraordinary wealth. It is argued that this form of legitimacy to some extent defines the roles it can play and makes it in some ways vulnerable but, on the other hand, enables the state to buy time to develop a political and administrative system that steers it clear of the common miseries that most other African states face.

It has been claimed that Zea mays existed in Africa before the discovery of America, but the plant is more generally considered to be a native of America, which could have spread through other continents only in post-Columbian times.

This latter opinion has recently been challenged by several writers. Jeffreys, for instance, has since 1953 consistently maintained that on arrival in Guinea the Portuguese found Zea mays already well established there, as the cereal they called milho zaburro, previously introduced by the Arabs, who would have visited America long before Columbus. On the other hand, V. de Magalhães Godinho, pertinently refuting many of Jeffreys's reasonings and identifications, has put forward the view that, before the Portuguese voyages of discovery, there existed in Africa a variety of Zea mays, which was subsequently replaced by the American variety; the Portuguese would have become familiar with this variety in Morocco, and it would be this plant which they called milho zaburro, or milho maçaroca. To both these authors the designations milho maçaroca and Zea mays are indisputably synonymous.

In this paper the sociological implications of loud argument are considered, by taking a case study from the Mambila in Cameroon. Meetings of rotating credit societies are non-traditional forums where power and status are in dispute. These meetings contrast with both domestic arguments and with disputes held in the Chief's court. Rotating credit society meetings usually include arguments but these are dismissed as being unimportant by local informants. They pose a challenge for anthropological analysis since they are such a regular but disregarded—and disparaged—occurrence. Raised voices increase the range of bystanders as witnesses, so to argue loudly is a very social act.