Recent rural unrest in Senegal, the malaise paysan and the spreading rejection of commercial agriculture, have focused official and journalistic attention on the predicament of that country's peasantry. This is a predicament in large part defined by nature, which has endowed most of Senegal with soils so poor as to leave little practical alternative to the groundnut as a source of export revenue. Declining world market prices for this staple export have inevitably exacerbated the situation, especially following the final withdrawal of French price subsidies in 1967. Consequent economic difficulties are in turn made no easier by a rapid rise in population (officially estimated at 2·1 per cent per annum): this causes overcrowding on the land, with over-cultivation and soil exhaustion, and thus stimulates migration to towns and cities which can provide few employment outlets.

Within a historical and comparative context, the following paper describes and analyses the role of masked figures in social control among the Mandinka of the Gambia. A direct relationship will be demonstrated between the problems of rule-application in hierarchical communities, where authority for rule-making and rule-application is dispersed, and the presence and behaviour of masked figures. In such communities secular actions taken in the rule-application process by individuals or groups bear a load of potential conflict. Masked figures in this context provide a mechanism through which the probability of sustained, divisive conflict is decreased by converting secular actions of rule-application into sacred, suprasocial actions. The integration of the hierarchically ordered elements of the community is thus accomplished in two ways: (1) through the capacity of the masked figures to apply rules while remaining above all elements of the community and (2) through the organized actions involved in creating and maintaining the masked figures and the ceremonial context in which they operate. It will be shown that the socio-cultural milieu in which sacred masked figures have functioned has changed, and that with the changes masked figures are becoming secularized and are disappearing.

This paper examines the distribution of languages in the Nigerian Middle Belt, draws certain historical inferences from the patterns of distribution, and assesses non-linguistic evidence tending to confirm or refute these inferences. The Middle Belt is taken as an area roughly inscribed by the Hausa-speaking area to the north, and the Yoruba, Edo, and Ibo-speaking areas to the south. Geographically it is an area which has a certain climatic coherence, falling between the sahel to the north and the forest to the south (Pullan, 1962; Buchanan, 1953). It is also an area of much more strikingly broken terrain than those to the north or south, with not only the complex relief of the Jos Plateau, but also many ranges of hills, particularly along its northern frontier and in its eastern half. This terrain appears to have militated against the establishment of large coherent political systems in the past and it is only in the plains of the Niger and Benue valleys that there is a record of extensive state systems in recent history, those of the Nupe and Jukun. On the other hand, archaeological evidence indicates that the Nok culture extended over a very large area of the Middle Belt, not by any means confined to the plains (Fagg, 1959, 1969), and there is evidence of a certain measure of cultural unity today (Murdock, 1959).

More than a generation has passed since the appearance of Professor Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer. The sub-title of this classic work, ‘A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People’ is, I believe, inaccurate. The Nuer is more an interpretation than a description, and it is difficult to isolate the descriptive material, which Evans-Pritchard as a matter of policy (1940a, p. 261) subordinated to theory. Although the theory of the book is an abiding part of anthropological discussion and controversy, having become a model for the study of other societies, we should still return to the facts, asking to what extent the Nuer ‘model’ fits the way of life of the Nuer of the southern Sudan.