In this paper I draw together modern reports on various Sotho-speaking peoples and attempt to indicate the relationship between the political arrangements within each ‘tribe’ and certain aspects of its social system—in particular, patterns of marriage preference and residential alignment.

The richest data and some of the most penetrating analysis is to be found in Schapera's writings on the Tswana, and his Tswana material provides my central case-study. The Kgalagari and the Southern Sotho (Basuto) systems are obviously similar in many ways, although I shall point out some interesting variations. In the second part of the paper I attempt to show that the variables abstracted in the first part are related in only slightly different ways in the superficially divergent systems of the Pedi and the Lovedu, and even in some groups whose organization has been fundamentally disrupted by colonial or settler intervention.

The Sotho-speaking peoples have intrigued many anthropologists particularly because of their preference for marriage with close kin, usually including all cousins, and sometimes even closer relatives. It was with this in mind that Radcliffe-Brown (1950: 69) remarked that the Tswana ‘are decidedly exceptional in Africa, and might almost be regarded as an anomaly’. This is a problem which is central to my analysis, and in order to clear the ground something must be said about marriage strategies in general. Broadly speaking, there are three options, which I will now outline.

This paper attempts to comment on the various techniques by which Kano Hausa traders and businessmen raise capital and invest it for diverse economic and social returns. Rather than proposing anything new, I will seek mainly to point to areas of needed future research among the Hausa traders. Moreover, although the paper is primarily concerned with the economic behaviour of a particular people, no clear effort is made at quantification, since very little statistics for Kano trade exist at the time of writing.

An interesting problem emerging from recent studies in complex societies is that of the relationship between ethnic identity and the interaction between various ethnic groups in a pluralistic society. In much of the sociological and anthropological literature, writers have treated ethnic groups as isolates and ‘givens’. Such categorization dismisses the potential investigation of factors responsible for permanence and change in ethnic groups. This paper will focus on a specific example of ethnic identity change, that of the Gungawa of Yauri Emirate, North-Western State, Nigeria, who have long had a pattern of ‘becoming’ Hausa. The paper will suggest some ways in which the possibility and mechanism for ethnic identity change functions to structure interethnic relationships and ease tensions resulting from such contact.

Definitional questions, such as ‘Who are the Waswahili’, posed by Eastman (1971) in this journal, appear to have been of little interest in the past, as many social anthropologists either ignored the problem or assumed that the answers were self-evident. However, those who have confronted this task have shown that simplicity and self-evidence is rarely a characteristic feature of the inquiry. Even classic ethnographic cases of supposed culturally homogeneous and distinct tribal groups are at present being re-examined in light of the renewed interest in this topic (cf. Helm, 1968). Whether or not the Nuer are the Dinka, or vice versa, it has been minimally established that such questions are legitimate and even fruitful in sharpening our analytical approach to subject populations.

This paper deals with certain metaphorical uses of animals in the folklore of the Kaguru, a Bantu language speaking people of east-central Tanzania, East Africa. I have published elsewhere on Kaguru social structure (Beidelman, 1971b) and discuss this here only as it bears directly on the problems at hand. I have published many Kaguru folk-tales as well as various legends, riddles, and other texts (cf. bibliographies, Beidelman, 1967a, 1969, 1974c); it is difficult to publish textual material so that much of my data is still unavailable. In this paper I use published and unpublished texts.