Anthropological research in Africa has been characterized by an intensive, microethnographic approach, which has stressed the understanding of institutional arrangements and their functioning within a given society; and, exceptionally, the analysis of custom in depth. Comparisons have been eschewed, while the broader distributional studies that played an important role in the earlier researches of anthropologists in North America and Polynesia, in Africa have been all but lacking in the scientific literature. The result has typically been the ethnographic monograph rather than the ethnological or ethnohistorical study.

In this discussion of the forms of Hausa social placement I wish to direct attention to the important sociological problems connected with status distribution. The Hausa afford excellent illustrative material for this purpose since their society, which lays great stress on status, is neither tribal nor modern but roughly midway between these extremes.

Among a number of interlacustrine Bantu languages the nominal prefix is commonly of a shape V1CV2 (vowel, consonant, vowel). It is convenient to refer to V1 as the ‘initial vowel’ of the prefix, even where—as in Class 9—the prefix comprises only a single vowel or a vowel followed by a nasal. In certain contexts the prefix has been noted to occur without this initial vowel, and while no full study of such contexts has yet been made, the recently published Luganda Grammar establishes a number of practical rules for the omission of the ‘Initial Vowel’. Here, there is a reference to the ‘…loss of the I(nitial) V(owel)…to distinguish certain nouns when indicating close personal relationships…’, but there is no further reference to the important series of contexts provided by kinship terminology.

The material for this paper was collected while making a general ethnographic study of the Wolof people in the Saloum districts of the Gambia and neighbouring Senegalese villages in 1950–1. The extraordinary concern of the Gambian Wolof with ‘witches’ soon became evident when discussing and observing many ‘distinct’ aspects of their way of life. The object of this paper is twofold: to describe not only emotional reactions to ‘witches’, but to give an account of the behaviour ascribed to them, and the techniques for coping with their attacks; some functions and dysfunctions of these beliefs and practices will then be discussed.

In this article I analyse Somali political institutions in terms of clanship (tol) and contract (heer). By the latter term I mean the explicit contracts, or treaties of government, which are the foundation of all formal political units among the northern pastoral Somali. In conclusion, I examine the significance of Somali political structure in the light of Maine's celebrated dictum that the ‘movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract’.