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Sacrifice and Social Structure among the Kuranko

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Michael Jackson
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Extract

In anthropological studies of African societies a recurring problem of analysis centres on the relationship between descent groupings and territorial units. A categorical distinction, such as Maine advanced (1861), between kinds of societies or groups based on either descent or locality is empirically spurious (Gluckman 1971: 85). Fortes has emphasised that the problem is one ‘of assigning an order of relative weight to the various factors involved in culture and in social organization, or alternatively of devising methods for describing and analyzing a configuration of factors so as to show precisely how they interact with one another’ (1953:25). Other writers have favoured this same move from reductionist either-or typologies to relativistic functional propositions, notably in analysing the modalities of descent (Lewis 1968; Goody 1969), of descent and affinity (Schneider 1968; Leach 1971), of kinship – and neighbourship (Gulliver 1971). But despite these developments, comparative analysis is still often based on crude correlations derived from an arbitrary and piecemeal codification of data (Hallpike 1971). My approach in this essay is guided by three structuralist propositions: descent and locality are (1) complementary principles, the significance of one being relative to the significance of the other, (2) mental —representations and tactical signs, rather than institutions sui generis, (3) variables within a transformational system, the system being susceptible to analysis at the level. of both organization and conceptualization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 41 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1977

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References

1 In this paper (Parts I and II of which appear here, Part III in the next issue of Africa) I am primarily concerned with social groupings and I postpone discussion of relationships between territorial contiguity and genealogical proximity in thefieldof interpersonal kinship.

2 Among the Tiv, territory (tar) is the basic referent of politico-jural cohesion, not descent perse; the volatile nature of political allegiances, together with warfare, migration and economic competitiveness, is recognized in the notion of tsav. Ancestor cults are absent.

3 For examples see Ruel (Banyang) 1969: 73; Horton (Kalahari) 1962: 197–8; Forde (Yako) 1950: 267–89; Nadel (Nupe) 1942:393; Ottenberg (Afikpo-Igbo) 1968: 142; Smith (Kagoro and Kadara) 1969: 162; Bascom (Yoruba) 1944: 46; Little (Mende) 1951: m; Hopkins (Mandinka) 1971: 103. In certain East African societies there is no lineage system at all: Willis (Fipa) 1972: 369; Gulliver (Ndendeuli) 1971.

4 See Balandier on ‘mixed villages’ among the Fang (1970: 138) and Hopkins on the Mandinka (1971:99).

5 Adherence to agnatic organization of territorial groupings can also be correlated with the degree of pressure on scarce resources, especially land (see Meggitt 1965: 266–7).

6 As in Gonja (E. Goody 1975: 302–8).

7 See Jackson (1974).

8 In Gonja, occupational groups are classified with the commoner estate and the Muslims comprise a separate estate (E. Goody 1973: 44–6). The ritual status of these non-ruling groups (nyemakale among the Mande, Muslims among the Gonja) is functionally similar.

9 The nyemakale estate among the Kuranko comprises two groups—the fina (chiefs cannot marry them) and the jeli (chiefs can marry them, though this was not the case traditionally). See Jackson (1974).

10 See Weil (1971) on the relationship between ‘founders’ (rulers) and ‘strangers’ (non-ruling lineages) among the Gambia Mandinka.

11 Other important non-lineage persons and roles can be mentioned here: mentors and patrons (yigi), marriage mediators and accountants (furuosinkohn), and initiation ‘nurses’ (seme).