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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Oral data are an integral part of the raw material used in anthropological research on social organization. They have also been heavily relied upon in the study of disappearing American Indian societies and, more recently, in the reconstruction of African history. By contrast, with some striking exceptions, they are in danger of being neglected in the anthropological study of law. Oral data have only recently been employed in Frenchsponsored studies in this field. In the English-speaking world, the dominant theme of dispute settlement and its apparent corollary, the case method, may leave little room for the systematic collection and the careful analysis of oral data.
2 Field research was carried out in Senegal from January to August, 1970, with the support of the Foreign Area Fellowship Program and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. During my research in Senegal I worked under the auspices of the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire and benefited from the co-operation of the Archives Culturelles du Sénégal, both in Dakar. My assistant, Leonard Tendeng, was an invaluable aid during my fieldwork and provided the first translations and the initial translations into French of the Diola texts we collected. My sincere thanks are due also to the Diola people who helped me to begin to understand their relationship to land. The first draft of the article was written during a Fellowship in the Program of Law and Modernization at Yale Law School, supported by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Earlier versions of this paper were presented on two occasions at Yale University, at York University, at Syracuse University, and at the Advanced Seminar in African Law, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I am most grateful for the comments of those present in each case and in particular for the written comments of Professor Richard L. Abel of Yale Law School. I wish also to thank my wife, Siân Snyder, for her careful criticism of each draft. This article does not, of course, reflect the opinions of any organization or person besides myself, and I alone am responsible for the interpretation and analysis herein. The informal flavour of the original presentations has largely been retained.
3 See M. Mead, “Native languages as field-work tools” (1939), 41 American Anthropologist, pp. 189—205.
4 See D. P. Abraham, “Maramuca: an exercise in the combined use of Portuguese records and oral tradition”, Journal of African History, 2, 2, 1961, pp. 211–225; Vansina, J., Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, Trans. Wright, H. M. (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965); P. D. Curtin, “Field techniques for collecting and processing oral data’, Journal of African History, 3, 1968, 9, pp. 367–385.Google Scholar
5 E.g., Spradley, J. P., You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads (Boston, Little, Brown, 1970);Google ScholarFrake, C. O., “Struck by speech: the Yakan concept of litigation”, in Nader, L., ed., Law in culture and society (Chicago, Aldina, 1969), 147;Google ScholarBlack, M. B. and Metzger, D., “Ethnographic description and the study of law”, in Tyler, S. A., ed., Cognitive Anthropology (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 137 [orig. pub. in American Anthropologist, 1965, 6, 2 (Special Publication), pp. 141–165].Google Scholar
6 See E. LeRoy, “Réflexions sur une interprétation anthropologique du droit africain: Le Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Juridique”, Revue juridique et politique, Indépendance et Coopération, septembre, 26, 3, 1972 pp. 427–448.
7 See Nader, L., “Introduction”, in Nader, L., ed., Law in Culture and Society (Chicago, Aldine, 1969) at pp. 5, 10; and P. H. Gulliver, “Part 1: Case studies of law in non-Western societies: introduction”, in Id. 11 at p. 13.Google Scholar
page 197 note 1 L.-V. Thomas, Les Diola: Essai d’analyse fonctionnelle sur une population de Basse-Casamance. 2 vols. Dakar, Institut Français d’Afrique Noire, 1958—1959; P. Pélissier, Les Paysans du Sénégal: Les civilisations agraires du Cayor à la Casamance. Saint-Yrieix, Haute-Vienne, Impr. Fabrègue, 1966.
page 197 note 2 Sapir, J. D., A Grammar of Diola-Fogny (West African Language Monographs, 3) (London, Cambridge University Press, 1965) at p. 1; J. D. Sapir, “Diola in the polyglotta Africana”, African Language Review, 1971, 9, in press.Google Scholar
page 198 note 1 Supra, note 6.
page 198 note 2 Hanin, C., “La présence des dieux dans la vie des Diolas de la Casamance”, Outre-Mer, décembre 1933, 4, pp. 259–282;Google Scholar J. Badets, Du problème foncier en pays diola casamançais. Tentative d’application du décret du 8 octobre 1925. Mémoire, Ecole Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, 1954–1955, mimeographed; Diagne, A. M., “Notes sur les coutumes diola du Fogny”, Bulletin de l’Enseignement de l’Afrique occidentale française, avril-juin 1933, 83, pp. 85–100;Google ScholarThomas, L.-V., “Essai sur Quelques Problemes Relatifs au Régime Foncier des Diola de Basse-Casamance (Sénégal)”, in Biebuyck, D., ed., African Agrarian Systems (London, Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, 1963), pp. 314–330.Google Scholar
page 198 note 3 Sapir, O. Linares de, “Agriculture and Diola Society”, in McLoughlin, P. F., ed., African Food Production Systems (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1970), pp. 195–227.Google Scholar
page 198 note 4 Swartz, M. J., Tuden, A. and Turner, V. W., “Introduction”, in Swartz, M. J., Tuden, A. and Turner, V. W., eds., Political Anthropology (Chicago, Aldine, 1966), 1 at pp. 8, 27; M. J. Swartz, “Processual and structural approaches in political anthropology: a commentary”, in N. N. Miller, ed., Research in Rural Africa (East Lansing, Mich., African Studies Center, Michigan State University and the Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1969), p. 53 at p. 57.Google Scholar
page 202 note 1 J. D. Sapir, “Kujaama: symbolic separation among the Diola-Fogny”, American Anthropologist, December 1970, 72, 6, p. 1330 at p. 1346, n. 2.
page 202 note 2 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., “Introduction”, in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D., eds., African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (London, Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, 1950), p. 1 at p. 28.Google Scholar
page 203 note 1 On other areas of the Diola region, see L.-V. Thomas, supra, p. 197, n. 1, vol. 1, at p. 251.
page 203 note 2 This diagram represents local lines, not descent lines. See Leach, E. R., Rethinking Anthropology (London, Athlone Press, revised ed., 1966), at pp. 56–58.Google Scholar
page 205 note 1 F. G. Snyder, “A problem of ritual symbolism and social organisation among the Diola-Bandial”, paper presented at the May 1971 Conference, Program in Law and Modernization, Yale Law School.
page 207 note 1 O. Linares de Sapir, “Shell-Middens of Lower Casamance and Diola protohistory”, West African Journal of Archaeology (University of Ibadan), 1, 1971, in press.
page 207 note 2 See F. G. Snyder, “Bibliographie sur les Diola de la Casamance (Sénégal)”, Bulletin de l’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, avril 1972, XLIV, B, 2.
page 208 note 1 Kin term for child of out-marrying female.
page 214 note 1 Ici signalant du main deux de ses enfants qui sont à côté.