While doing field-work among the Fipa of south-west Tanzania between December 1962 and June 1964 I collected evidence about an anti-sorcery cult or movement called Kamcape which was then active in the area. The present article describes this evidence and seeks to assess its sociological significance.

In respect of its social organization and settlement pattern, Nangodi State is typical of extensive areas of northern Ghana. Three forms of authority are recognized: politico-military, kinship (or family) and spiritual. Politico-military authority is exercised through ten chiefdoms which are in turn divided into 28 sections. Kinship authority is represented by 64 agnatic lineages 57 of which are hierarchically grouped into seven major clans. Clan and lineage areas are complexly intermingled. Spiritual authority is wielded by 11 Nangodi earth priests and two outsiders over a total of 43 areas. Each of these three forms of authority in Nangodi State operates within separate and distinct geographical areas which are superposed but not co-terminous.

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.

Although the Nuer are generally described as ‘naked’, the ethnographic literature and photographs suggest that they hold certain notions about ‘nakedness’ and ‘nudity’ which prescribe wearing or not wearing certain garments or ornaments in certain social situations. Some of these notions seem closely related to important Nuer conceptual categories of their social groups and their world, especially those related to sexuality, marriage, and affinity, and the process of changing from one social status or moral state to another. Some of these are considered in this paper.

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.

Like other African peoples, Banyoro have a rich and complex symbolism, and there are numerous references to aspects of this in both older and more recent writings about Nyoro traditional culture. But until the publication in a recent issue of this journal of a paper on the significance of right and left in Nyoro symbolic classification by my colleague Dr. Rodney Needham (Needham, 1967), no systematic analysis of Nyoro symbolic categories, or even of the more important of them, had yet been attempted. I hope myself to take up this theme in a forthcoming monograph on Nyoro ritual, though I believe that to do it justice will require some further detailed inquiry through the Runyoro language in Bunyoro itself. In the meantime Needham's interesting essay, based on most of the available written sources, is a significant contribution to the subject. There is certainly much research to be done on the symbolism of right and left and of other complementary oppositions in African cultures, and it is to be hoped that his pioneering efforts will stimulate further researches in these fields.

In his introductory notes to Bargery's dictionary, Westermann summarizes the early historical records of the Hausa-speaking peoples and, in particular, discusses the name ‘Hausa’ itself, without forming any theory as to its provenance. He points out that, apart from a reference to Ḥauṣiyin by Ibn Sa‘id, an Andalusian Arab writer who died in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the first reference to the word is four centuries later, in the Tarikh-es-Sudan. Ibn Sa‘id incidentally—if we are to believe Ibn Khallikan—got no nearer to the Western Sudan than Tunis, so it seems that his information was as secondhand as that of most of our other Arab authorities for the area. In the interim four centuries, though Ibn Batuta uses such names of individual Hausa chiefdoms as Kūbar (Gobir), the only generic name used was by Al Maqrizi, an Egyptian, whom Hiskett suggests got the name from some Bornu source, without knowing much about the people it referred to. This was Afnū, which is still the name used for the Hausa by the Kanuri and other related peoples of the Chad area. While making no suggestion himself as to a possible source of origin, at the end of the first section of his notes, Westermann makes reference to the conquest of Hausaland by Muhammadu Askia of Songhai, and to his ultimate repulse by Muhammadu Kanta, chief of Kebbi, in 1513.

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).

There are many references to despised groups of artisans in the literature on Ethiopia, but unfortunately they are scattered through travel books which, from the anthropologist's point of view, are too superficial to permit a sustained and rigorous analysis of the variant forms of this phenomenon. Among such works I would include the publications of Jensen and the Frobenius Institute. After only five weeks' stay among the Konso he attempted an ambitious account of their religion and society in Im Lande des Gada that is false or distorted in almost every detail, not excepting matters of elementary observation. Shack's study of the Gurage and the status of craftsmen among them is the only one known to the author which can be considered as the work of a professional anthropologist. This article is therefore intended partly as a contribution to the ethnography of artisan status in Ethiopia. Only when we have many more such studies will we be in a position to appraise the situation properly, and to ascertain the basic characteristics of discrimination against craftsmen in Ethiopia. It may well be that the criteria of discrimination cannot be reduced to a single pattern.

By the middle of the nineteenth century Niumi, a small Mandingo kingdom at the mouth of the Gambia river in West Africa, was on the verge of profound social changes. Until almost the end of the century it was swept by secular and religious warfare, important segments of its population were displaced, many members of its ruling clans were killed or driven into exile, and the state itself was divided to be later reconstituted under European colonial rule. It is the purpose of this paper to describe the social-political organization of Niumi in the 1850s before the traditional political system which had existed for over two centuries was destroyed. Niumi was one of fourteen small river kingdoms, ruled by Mandingo, some more clearly defined and centralized than others, together comprising one of the major areas of Mandingo settlement in West Africa. Although Niumi enjoyed a favoured economic position among these Mandingo states of the Senegambia its institutions were typical of Mandingo organization in the area and its history has proceeded along lines similar to the rest.

This paper had its genesis in an attempt to understand certain aspects of the ancestor cult of the Mpondomise, a Cape Nguni people of the Transkei, South Africa. Like all Southern Bantu, the Mpondomise have only a vague idea of a supreme being and effective ritual behaviour is directed towards the shades of deceased agnatic forebears, the izinyanya. It was immediately obvious that any understanding, particularly of the structural aspects of the cult, depended on a clear picture of the lineage, of what is, in effect, its ‘congregation’ (in the Durkheimian sense). It is an anthropological truism that ancestor cults exhibit to a high degree that congruence between ritual behaviour and social structure emphasized by Durkheim. In strong contrast to the universalistic world religions, recruitment to the cult group is in terms of a kinship idiom, either through birth, marriage, or adoption, the beings to whom worship is directed are highly differentiated and structurally defined, and their sphere of influence is similarly bounded. There is evidence that the ancestor cult is inversely correlated with a highly developed cult of a supreme being and that sacrifice to the manes tends to symbolize commensalism (as one would expect with erstwhile kinsmen) rather than the explicit identification of the worshipper with the offering found, for example, both among the Nuer, with their conceptualization of an omnipotent High God, and, in some of its symbolism at least, in the Christian Eucharist. Be this as it may, ancestor cults have been particularly congenial to the structural interests of modern social anthropologists and the growing number of detailed studies has greatly increased our knowledge of this religious form. It was thus essential, as a preliminary exercise, to define the congregation of the cult, the locus of ritual authority within it, and the relationship of the living members of the group to the dead.

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.

The Northern Gurage subgroup of Ethiopian Semitic consists of three languages, Soddo (also known as Aymälläl), Gogot (or Dobbi), and Muxǝr. Grouping these languages together is contrary to the general classification of Gurage hitherto adopted, which puts Soddo as the unique representative of Northern Gurage, and Masqan, Gogot and Muxǝr as a special branch of Western Gurage. We disagree with this classification, propose a new one with three Northern Gurage languages, and dissociate Mäsqan from Gogot by putting it as the easternmost representative of Western Gurage, the only one of its type. It is considered that the phenomenon to be dealt with—a common feature of Soddo, Gogot, and Muxǝr, and of these three only—is enough to justify this new classification, though there is other evidence.

In An Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Professor Gluckman argued that in situations of conflict, pre-existing groups do not divide neatly into opposing halves, but that groups realign themselves according to the values, motives, and interests governing them at a given time; and that groups who are opposed when facing one situation may find themselves aligned when the nature of the situation differs. Similar studies of social change in Africa and elsewhere have further advanced Gluckman's contention. In all these studies the analytical procedure adopted was to interpret the situational behaviour of the actors in terms of the influence of the wider social system of which they were a part. However, a great deal of the ethnographic data anthropologists gather in the course of field research are derived from chance observations of social phenomena occurring in relatively unstructured situations within which the individuals involved have a wide range of choice in determining the way they interact with others. This paper is based upon just these sorts of ‘imponderable’ facts of Gurage life which, when first recorded in the field, appeared less clearly a part of what Malinowski once called ‘the real substance of the social fabric’ of a changing tribal society than they do now in retrospect. I attempt here to interpret the spontaneous and contradictory behaviour of individual Gurage and groups in the setting of an Ethiopian Christian religious ceremony known as Mäsqal. This analysis of situational behaviour is made in terms of selected aspects of historical or ‘processive’ social change in Gurageland, a tribal district in south-west Ethiopia.

In the tradition of van Gennep anthropologists have studied puberty rites mainly as rites of passage marking changes in status at the crises of life and, more recently, the role which these ceremonies play in the ordering and reordering of social relations. My purpose here is to approach Zulu puberty rites from a different angle: to examine them in the context of a system of beliefs and values underlying a whole group of ritual activities for the welfare of the community—for health, for rain, for fertility in man and beast. This context was suggested to my mind when, a few years ago, I attended a spring ceremonial in the form of hoeing a field in honour of Inkosazana or Nomkhubulwana, a maiden deity. These rites, long thought to have died out, have not only survived in outlying parts of the country, but have lately been revived in many areas, some quite close to Durban. When I heard the songs that were being sung in this ceremony it was suddenly brought home to me that this rite to secure good crops was conceived of in terms of a girl's puberty ceremony. Inkosazana, personification of nature, was symbolized as standing on the threshold of summer like a girl at her puberty ceremony, ready for marriage and procreation. These puberty songs form part also of a number of other rituals associated with Inkosazana rites to combat pests and epidemics and the herding of the cattle for a day by girls, a rite which Gluckman, mistakenly in my opinion, has interpreted as a ritual of rebellion. My main concern in this paper is to present and analyse some of the Zulu girls' puberty songs (reproduced in Appendix II), to show how they are connected with ideas of morality and to indicate briefly the relation of puberty rites to rituals associated with the deity Inkosazana.

One of the most interesting features of the cultural landscape of Sierra Leone is the very large number of settlements which still bear the marks of the long period of anarchy which preceded the colonial era. This is reflected both in the choice of sites and in the internal structures of settlements. Such influences are still to be found despite the impermanence of mud and wattle buildings and the sixty years which have elapsed since pacification. These settlements are interesting not only by the fact of their survival, but also for their wide distribution and their small size. There are probably more than a thousand defensive villages in the country, an average of one for every twenty-eight square miles, and reaching a maximum density of one for every four square miles in parts of Mendeland in the south. Most of them have populations of between two hundred and a thousand inhabitants. It is the aim of this paper to reconstruct the original character of these ‘war-towns’ as they were described by nineteenth- century explorers; to attempt an explanation of their wide distribution; and finally to show how social and economic changes are gradually causing a breakdown of this nucleic and defensive rural settlement pattern.