Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:38:45.167Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

William B. Schwab
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This paper presents an analytic description of the principles underlying the traditional kinship system of the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria in the community of Oshogbo. Aggregation into large-scale urban-like communities which are characterized by the close interdependence of their political constitution and their economic and religious systems is a striking feature of Yoruba social organization. In these communities we find that the behaviour of individuals to one another, in the past at least, was very largely regulated on the basis of kinship and it would be accurate, I think, to state that among the Yoruba kinship was the usual means of articulation between the various elements of the social organization. Today, under the influence of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old. New values and attitudes have intruded and there is an increased fluidity in social norms. In the present generation the bonds of kinship have been greatly weakened as a foundation for social organization and as a mechanism for co-ordinating and regulating social behaviour. Yoruba society is indeed transitional in the sense that the old is in the process of disintegration and new forms are rapidly emerging. However, it is the internal and traditional patterns that determine the particular form and direction of the effects which the external alien forces of change exert. Consequently, in this paper, we shall place primary emphasis on the principles of kinship as they emerged as regulative factors in the traditional life of the Yoruba in the belief that, apart from purely ethnographic value, they will provide us with a better understanding of the manifold changes that have become apparent.

Résumé

LA PARENTÉ ET LE LIGNAGE CHEZ LES YORUBA

Des communautés importantes du type urbain, dans lesquelles le comportement est en grande partie contrôlé en rapport avec la parenté, constituent une caractéristique remarquable de l'organisation sociale chez les Yoruba. La descendance suit la ligne agnatique et l'unité la plus importante est un patrilignage localisé, qui se nomme idile. Celui-ci est le groupe agnatique le plus étendu et comprend toutes les personnes susceptibles de faire remonter leur parenté, en ligne masculine, par une série d'échelons généalogiques admis à un ancêtre fondateur connu ou putatif et, théoriquement, de rechercher le lien de parenté entre eux.

Un idile est caractérisé par des segmentations intérieures successives, dont la portée est subordonnée à l'individu qui est choisi comme point de départ pour déterminer l'ascendance. Deux causes principales provoquent la segmentation dans un lignage. La première est basée sur la reconnaissance d'une différence de générations et de descendance agnatique, lorsque les segments sont définis en se rapportant à un ancêtre masculin commun. La deuxième cause est d'avoir en commun des ancêtres par la ligne maternelle dans les cas où les descendants d'un seul homme se distinguent les uns des autres en se rapportant à des ancêtres féminins différents. Les segments d'un lignage qui se rapportent à un ancêtre masculin commun sont appelés isoko. Ceux qui se rapportent à une aïeule commune sont nommés origun.

En dehors des différences de sexe et d'âge, les rôles politique, économique et religieux joués par un individu sont déterminés essentiellement par le fait qu'il est membre d'un idile. Son rang politique, son emploi et son culte sont tributaires du lignage auquel il appartient. La propriété (terres, maisons, etc.) est possédée collectivement par un lignage qui forme le groupe successif le plus étendu. Les membres d'un idile ont le droit de participer dans le culte ancestral qui est le foyer le plus important de la religion des Yoruba. Le mariage et les rapports sexuels entre les membres d'un patrilignage sont défendus. Ses membres demeurent dans un ou plusieurs quartiers d'habitation, et, ordinairement, dans une seule communauté, et sont davantage liés par les attaches provenant d'un contact journalier. Le chef reconnu d'un patrilignage est l'homme le plus âgé, et c'est lui qui exerce l'autorité ultime et qui est responsable de tous les membres du lignage.

Les droits, les devoirs, les avantages et les indulgences qui caractérisent les membres d'un lignage ne sont pas répandus uniformément dans le lignage. Au contraire, ils sont clairement definis d'après la segmentation hiérarchique d'un lignage. De cette façon, chaque segment se distingue des autres par des définitions, tant fonctionnelles que morphologiques. Chaque segment du même ordre a des fonctions analogues et dans diverses situations sociales, des segments d'ordres différents apparaissent comme significatifs.

Un idile est souvent lié par la descendance putative à d'autres lignages. Deux ou plusieurs idile ainsi réunis constituent un clan yoruba. Les liens du clan sont fondés sur la croyance dans une ligne agnatique définitive. Un clan ne constitue pas un groupe collectif. Toutefois, les droits, devoirs et privilèges sont opérants parmi ses lignages constituants, mais, à l'exception de la règle de l'exogamie, qui s'applique uniformément à tous ceux ayant une parenté généalogique reconnue, ils sont susceptibles de varier considérablement.

Malgré l'importance attachée à la descendance agnatique, d'autres liens provenant de la parenté par la ligne féminine forment des éléments importants dans le système de parenté, plus particulièrement les liens avec la ligne agnatique de descendance de la mère. Bien que la plupart des droits et privilèges d'une personne tirent leur origine du côté du père, plutôt que de celui de la mère, et sont transmis à des fils plutôt qu'à des filles, des liens de devoirs et de droits réciproques unissent également un Yoruba à la ligne agnatique de descendance de la mère. Plusieurs de ces mêmes droits et devoirs qui caractérisent le groupe patrilinéaire peuvent être accordés à un individu par le patrilignage de sa mère. Cependant, étant donné que les liens de la parenté ne sont efficaces que lorsque des attaches réciproques de sentiment existent, dans la pratique, ces droits et devoirs sont souvent secondaires ou latents.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1955 , pp. 352 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1955

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 352 note 2 This paper presents some of the results of a field study of the Yoruba town of Oshogbo carried out in 1949–51 for the British Colonial Social Science Research Council. The author gratefully acknowledges the financial and other facilities provided by the Council and the Government of Nigeria. In preparation for the study and in the first analysis of the field data the author was associated with the Department of Anthropology, University College, London. His thanks are especially due to Professor Daryll Forde in this connexion and more particularly for a detailed discussion of the analysis given here. Other aspects of Yoruba society have been discussed by the author in two papers: ‘The growth and conflicts of religion in a modern Yoruba community’, Zaïre, vi, 8, Oct. 1952; ‘An experiment in methodology in a West African urban community’, Human Organization (New York), xiii, 1, 1954.

Yoruba are divided into sub-ethnic groups, Oyo, Ijesha, Ekiti, Egba, &c. Apart from slight nuances in social usage which may have their origins in local geography, and despite the fact that the divisions are quite clear to the Yoruba, the separate groups are believed to be united by a substantially homogeneous culture. Oshogbo is an Oyo Yoruba town today although its founders are believed to be of Ijesha descent.

page 352 note 3 The population of Oshogbo, for example, is said to be over 70,000 persons today.

page 353 note 1 The term isori is used in many patts of Yorubaland to denote the same social group as the term isoko in Oshogbo.

page 353 note 2 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., and Forde, D., African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, London, 1950.Google Scholar

page 354 note 1 The unit of residential affiliation is the compound. While the lineage is the basis of the residential group, two or more lineages can be co-resident in a single compound or a single lineage can reside in more than one compound.

page 355 note 1 The date of the founding of Oshogbo is set at about 1800. During the Fulani invasions of Yorubaland, which started about 1835, Oshogbo served as a terminus for refugees fleeing from the north. Later internal struggles among the Yoruba and the strategic location of Oshogbo as a growing economic and political centre caused increased migration to the community.

page 355 note 2 Cicatrization and tattooing of the body are also common but these markings are not always associated with a particular lineage or historical event. Often they are used solely for cosmetic value and the designs vary according to individual taste.

page 355 note 3 The number of names given to a person is in principle unlimited. The name by which an individual is most commonly addressed (oruko) is given by the paternal grandfather or the father. However, each relative and friend is entitled to confer any name that is considered appropriate.

page 356 note 1 Although the house and those who live in it constitute a coherent social entity, Yoruba distinguish by descriptive terms between the buildings and the residents of a compound. For the collection of buildings that compose the compound they use the term agbo-ile (lit. buildings of the house); those who are domiciled in the agbo-ile are the ara-ile (lit. residents of the house).

page 356 note 2 There is a strong centralized administrative organization which serves as the framework for the political organization, which is pyramidal in structure, the apex being a Paramount chief who, in Oshogbo, bears the title of Atoaja and in whom ultimate authority is vested. Subordinate to the Paramount chief is a series of political and religious ‘chiefs’. At the base of the pyramid are the commoners.

In pre-British days there were also some slaves. Most of these were held by the Paramount chief and other politically prominent persons. Slaves who were not held by high-ranking chiefs were usually absorbed into the commoners' rank within one or two generations.

page 356 note 3 Access to political office and the rank of a chief is not entirely restricted by birth. On occasion individuals from the commoners' ranks, by virtue of unusual valour or capabilities, have been appointed to the lesser political positions.

page 357 note 1 The economic system of the Yoruba is complex. Superimposed upon a personal economy where relationships between persons are manifold and endure beyond a specific economic transaction, is the existence of a limited external market which operates primarily on the level of economic interest. Space does not permit us to delve into the interconnexions of the impersonal and personal economic relationships.

page 357 note 2 Certain other occupations, such as medicine-making, are not prescribed by lineage affiliation. Qualification for these occupations is usually determined by irregular behaviour or happenings which are interpreted as religious omens.

Lineage affiliation plays little part in determining the occupation of a woman. Most women are petty traders, while a few follow craft occupations such as weaving or dyeing.

page 357 note 3 At marriage, which is a pivotal event in a man's life, a son's work obligations to his father are reduced and he produces mainly for his own consumption. However, he is always obliged to spend some time working with or for his father. Fathers are entitled to reap the benefit of an unmarried son's economic efforts.

page 357 note 4 In the cosmology of the Yoruba, the orisha were descended from heaven at the creation of the earth and are the beings from whom all living Yoruba are descended. While it is believed that the orisha may have lived on earth as mortals, they are often regarded as personifications of natural forces to whom Olorun, the supreme god, delegated the responsibilities for ordering the natural world. They are mythical beings and not ancestors in the same sense as the dead persons commemorated in ancestor worship.

page 358 note 1 See, for example, Bascom, W. R., ‘The Sociological Rôle of the Yoruba Cult-group’, Memoir Series of the A.A.A., No. 64, Jan. 1944Google Scholar, or Parrinder, G., Religion in an African City, Oxford University Press, 1955.Google Scholar

page 364 note 1 One cannot remain among the Yoruba tor very long without becoming cognizant of the fact that a person's attitude and behaviour towards his fellow men are directly affected by the principle of seniority. The Yoruba notions of seniority, whereby each person stands in relation to every other person as a senior, equal, or junior, are so fundamental to their world view that they are manifest in every aspect of organization—social, political, or economic. They provide a set of rules and procedures that apply equally to all members of the society and regulate the social relations that link one person to another or to a corporate group. To the Yoruba, the concept of authority is implicit in seniority, and the distribution of power and prestige is seen to emerge as a consequence of the operation of the seniority principles.

page 365 note 1 But appeal can be made from decisions of the bale and council of elders to a major chief or, in the final resort, to the Atoaja (Paramount chief).

page 366 note 1 Literally, omo iya and iyekan may both be translated as ‘the children of one mother’. However, to the Yoruba iyekan connotes different fathers while omo iya implies identical parenthood.

page 370 note 1 Although space prevents us from discussing it here, it is significant that an omolebi, unless a high chieftaincy or ritual office is vested in it, is not an important factor in the political constitution of the community. This is because the residential unit, which is not coterminous with the lineage, is the basic unit of political administration. The channels of authority are between chief and compound rather than between chief and kin-group, and a commoner asserts his political rights through the medium of the territorial association rather than through the kin-group.

page 371 note 1 Ebi relationships are determined by the lineage system and terminate with it. On the other hand, ibaton relationships are in principle unbounded. It is difficult to gauge the distance or order of relationship at which these cognatic ties lapse. However, since emphasis is placed on the agnatic line, the ibaton relationship survives longer through the male line of the female relatives in question.

page 371 note 2 The parallelism in the rights, duties, and privileges of an individual in relation to his own patrilineage and to his mother's lineage is reflected in the kinship terminology. The Yoruba terminology is broadly classificatory with emphasis on seniority within and between each generation and sex in ascending generations. The terminology is characterized by a general poverty of terms both in the specification of individual kinsfolk and their grouping.It does not distinguish between agnatic kin and relatives through a female.

page 372 note 1 The sale of farm-land which is held corporately by the lineage is forbidden. However, temporary transfer of rights to the use of land is permitted. An obligatory token payment, usually in kind, is paid by the user to the lineage granting the land use in acknowledgement of their continuing over-rights. This payment is known as an ishakole.