New field material should give an opportunity for reappraising old research. Thus Father de Sousberghe's latest report on the Pende (1963) stimulates a radical revision of assumptions about Central African ethnography. Is there a recognizable type of kinship organization which we can call ‘Central African’? The question was first raised by Gluckman in his introduction to The Lamba Village before any intensive field-work had been reported. At that stage his answer was that the typical Central African social system was characterized by lack of corporate lineages such as are found among the southern Bantu. These were the early days of post-war anthropology, and since he was using a negative criterion, he denned the sense in which he used ‘lineage’ as a genealogical structure whose members shared corporate rights and responsibilities. Before the ink was dry, however, Clyde Mitchell was sending in the first reports on the Yao, who are culturally much akin to the Maravi peoples, Nyanja and Cewa, among whom they live. According to Mitchell, the Yao were organized in distinct corporate matrilineal lineages. Gluckman did not tear up his introduction and write a new one. In an addendum he hoped that the unexpected discovery of corporate descent groups among the Yao would stimulate further inquiry.

It is greatly to the credit of the editors of Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa that they have made generally available ten systematic accounts of witch beliefs in East and Central African societies. All teachers of anthropology must surely be grateful to them on this account alone. Moreover the book is spiced with many insights into sociocultural problems connected with the main theme. A permissive editorial policy has stimulated a rich diversity of viewpoints and presentations. But one is left with the feeling that Monica Wilson's plea for the comparative analysis of these ‘standardized nightmares’—a plea which forms the book's motto—as one of the ‘keys to the understanding of society’ has not met here with a wholly satisfactory response.

In Eastern Nigeria today there is a growing movement of people from very densely populated rural districts to those which are sparsely peopled. The movement involves farmers who, because of the increasing pressure on the already overworked and impoverished soils of their village territories, move to districts favoured with abundant and more fertile farmlands. Migration to the farm during the farming season (February-October) may be distinguished from that in which the migrant stays at his place of work for many years before returning to his own village. The former is generally associated with short-distance movement to farmlands rarely more than twenty miles from the natal village. The latter, on the other hand, often involves movement over long distances. The migrant farmer is engaged not only in growing crops but also in harvesting and processing palm fruits. The various economic, demographic, and environmental factors which give rise to this pattern of farming are discussed in this paper, which also reviews the socio-economic implications of migrant tenant farming in Eastern Nigeria.

The Fipa of south-western Tanganyika are a Bantu-speaking people numbering 78,000 at the last tribal census in 1948. Most of them live on a high and largely deforested plateau bounded on the west by the southern extremity of Lake Tanganyika and on the east by Lake Rukwa. On the plateau, a corridor of land roughly 140 miles long and varying from 30 to 50 miles in width, the Fipa are agriculturalists and raisers of livestock, particularly cattle, goats, and poultry; their principal crops are millet, maize, and beans. Along the shores of the two lakes the Fipa are also fishermen.

In much modern West African literature in English and French the authors depict problems concerning the relationship between the socio-cultural background and the particular experiences and behaviour of the characters portrayed. Investigation and analysis of such stories to ascertain the authors' ‘solutions’ of the characters' problems can aid our understanding of values and attitudes among modern Africans and in turn contribute to the growing corpus of knowledge about culture contact. As Cyprian Ekwensi, the Nigerian novelist, has claimed: ‘African writing is writing which reveals the psychology of the African.’ Obviously it reveals the psychology of both the author and the characters whom he portrays, and even though stories are written by individuals who are ‘modern’ Africans, strong opposition to any consideration of African literature as individualistic ‘art for art's sake’ has been manifested by Africans, including the Society of Nigerian Authors in their reply to Martin Tucker's 1962 argument that African novelists are over-communal and insufficiently individualistic in what they portray. In making such a response, the Nigerian authors in effect reasserted a traditional African attitude towards art as socially functional rather than merely aesthetically pleasing. One is thus justified in pursuing the study of modern literary works by Africans as expressions of attitudes and values related to tradition, contact, and change.

L'étude d'un système familial postule l'inventaire et l'analyse des termes par lesquels les personnes apparentées s'appellent ou se désignent. Une investigation de cet ordre engage l'ethnographe (et son lecteur) sur des chemins arides, mais elle a chance d'aboutir aux distinctions pertinentes qu'une société donnée met en œuvre dans son mode de vie familiale. Notre propos se limite ici à rechercher de telles distinctions dans le cadre de Boum Kabir, village tchadien habité par 900 Goula Iro.