The present article is based on a report submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture in Khartoum (Sudan) by an agricultural research officer and an inspector of agriculture and is the result of a preliminary study of the agriculture of a tribe which had been earmarked by the provincial administration for commercial production of sorghum. Most tribes of the Southern Sudan are sorghum cultivators, but none has taken to growing this staple food for sale despite the increasing demand for grain in townships. It was realized that some limitations, possibly of a social or cultural character, stood in the way of such development and therefore it seemed desirable to study the tribal customary agriculture by the methods of social anthropology, instead of approaching it only from the point of view of agronomy.

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of systematic and far-reaching contact with the West, new patterns of behaviour are beginning to or have already superseded the old.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.

Le sens poétique du Peul nomade n'est pas, comme celui de son frère islamisé, orienté vers les formes littéraires alambiquées. Il ignore les poèmes mystiques religieux et n'émaille que rarement sa conversation des proverbes dont les sédentaires aiment faire usage.

Les seuls genres littéraires dont il fasse cas font partie de la littérature orale populaire. Devinette (tâlol), chanson (gimol), histoire vécue et conte (habaru, tâlol) ne sont pas l'apanage de quelques esprits subtils. Tous les connaissent, les racontent, les chantent, les écoutent. Le style, bref et naïf, est loin d'atteindre au raffinement de la littérature arabisée, mais ce genre plonge profondément dans la mentalité traditionnelle et la réalité quotidienne.

1.1. On the structural level, it is usual to consider and write each element (radical, affix, &c.) as it occurs, both in the form quoted and in all other forms, as an abstraction. On the phonological level, we normally discuss and note down each word in terms of relevant sound units, disregarding structural variations if they happen to be neutralized for the hearer. On the phonetic level, we consider and try to write each sentence as it sounds in the particular utterance under examination. The relationship between the phonological and the phonetic levels is simple and clear, though one should not be misled by this clarity into assuming identity.

Anmerkung : Nach einem Aufenthalt von nur zweieinhalb Monaten bei einer Kulturgruppe, wobei eine ethnographische Sammlung angelegt und die Gesamtkultur studiert wurde, jedoch ohne die Beherrschung der Eingeborenensprache, ist es nicht möglich, die soziale Struktui vollständig darzustellen. Es scheint dem Verfasser, daβ die vorliegende Studie einmal dadurch ihre Berechtigung hat, daβ die soziale Struktur der Matakam in ihren Hauptzügen immerhin aufgezeigt werden kann und daβ sich das System durch bemerkenswerte Einfachheit und Klarheit auszeichnet.

Die Gliederung der Studie ist der sozialen Struktur angepaβt. Sie soll nicht allgemein verbindlich sein. Gröβte Klarheit der Systematik wurde erstrebt.

The Luimbi-speaking people occupy a region in the centre of Angola. This area is of a somewhat irregular shape, approximately 200 miles from north to south, between latitudes 10° 30′ and 14° S. and varying from 30 to 100 miles in width roughly between longitudes 17° and 19° E. In general their home thus lies along the Quanza valley from the source of that river to near its confluence with the Luandu river. To the east is the 150-mile stretch of the ‘hungry country’, a sandy but in parts fertile and well-wooded region which is, nevertheless, uninhabited because, by local tradition, it ‘lies under the curse of a king’. This divides the Luimbi from the arrogant, fierce, and once cannibal Chokwe who, however, are tending to infiltrate both south and north.

Under the influence of two important developments of the past few years, studies in Nigerian history may be expected in the future to take on a new focus, using for the first time four categories of material which have been either unavailable or neglected in the past. The establishment of the University College Library at Ibadan, with a policy of making as complete as possible its collections of the indigenous publications of the country, and the appointment in 1951, by the Nigerian Government, of a Supervisor of Public Records for the purpose of surveying and preserving the archives of the country, whether official or unofficial, have already brought to light materials which will challenge the historian for many years to come.