The foundation and the broad policies of our Institute emerged from what proved a fortunate conjunction of diverse interests and opportunities that developed after the First World War. The initial phase of modern economic advance in tropical Africa, following the introduction of the telegraph, railways, all-weather roads, was by the twenties making apparent a wide range of needs and opportunities for further progress in Africa—progress in which both the interests of, and contribution by, its peoples would be closely concerned. Within African territories the demand for literacy and training in new skills both more extensive and at higher levels was becoming more and more obvious and pressing. The significance of the increasing and inevitable association of Africans and their communities with a world economy was beginning to be more widely appreciated. With this growing recognition of the need for a more positive and constructive response many questions arose concerning not only the means of fostering such developments, but also their effects on the attitudes, beliefs, and institutions that had hitherto sustained the cultures and the social life of largely autonomous tribes and chiefdoms.

In this paper I isolate for study a particular set of ancestors, the maternal ancestors in patrilineal societies and paternal ancestors in matrilineal societies. I call these the ‘extra-descent group ancestors’, for they are the ancestors of the parent who is residual with reference to the descent group of Ego. Thus among the Tallensi of northern Ghana, since membership of the descent group is traced patrilineally, the mother is the residual parent, and consequently the maternal ancestors are extradescent group ancestors, while the patrilineal ancestors are descent ancestors. Conversely, among the Plateau Tonga of Zambia, where there is a matrilineal system of descent, the father is the residual parent, and therefore the extra-descent group ancestors are the paternal ancestors, while the descent ancestors are matrilineal. It is with the character and actions of the extra-descent group ancestors that I shall be mainly concerned.

When a Bedouin kills another in Cyrenaica, one of a number of consequences ensues. According to the Bedouin, the particular consequence is determined by the genealogical positions of the persons or groups concerned. In the first part of this article an analysis of the disturbances in social relationships precipitated by homicide is made, using a lineage model as a framework. In this part of the discussion the arrangement of the information corresponds closely to the view the Bedouin give of their relationships. Additional information is then presented to show that this lineage model neither covers several important areas of social relationships nor enables an accurate prediction of events to be made. This raises the issue: can the comprehensive power of the model be increased by complicating it, or does complexity destroy its utility? The argument advanced is that the lineage model is not a sociological one, but that it is a frame of reference used by a particular people to give them a common-sense kind of understanding of their social relationships. For sociological purposes this means that the lineage model, with its supporting theoretical presuppositions, must perforce be abandoned. In the latter part of this article some of the implications of adopting this position are discussed.

Though the Tsimihety tribe is the subject of three monographs by Molet (1953, 1956, 1959) and a number of papers by various authors (e.g. Mattei, 1938; Magnes, 1953), its social structure has not yet been adequately described. Indeed, there is no adequate account of the social structure of any Malagasy group, although Ottino's (1963) analysis of aspects of Vezo social structure is very illuminating. The primary aim of this paper therefore is to describe two of the major features of Tsimihety social structure—kinship and descent. As there are facets of Tsimihety kinship and descent that have some bearing on recent discussion of these topics, a secondary aim is to contribute, in a minor way, to that discussion.

The arrival of Europeans, and the introduction of guns, first in the coastal areas JL and then into the interior of West Africa, altered the nature of warfare. Already in the seventeenth century, the Akan-Fanti, Akim, Akwamu, and other peoples on the Gold Coast no longer relied entirely on bows and arrows, spears, and javelins which were the traditional weapons but used guns and even a few cannon. Besides the change in weapons, wars were undertaken on a larger scale than ever before—a situation which was aggravated by participation in the slave trade. Among the peoples of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, none excelled the Ashanti in either the scale or intensity of their fighting. From the turn of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, they fought major wars of conquest and minor ones of consolidation throughout the area of present-day Ghana, and after 1820 they were involved in four major clashes with the British until the latter dissolved their kingdom in 1900.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a change came about in the hereditary régime of the Bemba kingdom during civil strife between members of the kingdom's royal and noble strata. The rulers of the kingdom, who shared in the Central African trade of slaves and ivory for guns and calico, fought to defend their positions and to meet the competition from opponents who could enter into new relations of power. Past conceptions of the kingdom in terms of centralization have obscured this, hindering understanding of the specialized structures of authority among royals and nobles, the differences among the ruling strata, and the variable interlocking of their federal administrations. Richards has argued, in somewhat contradictory fashion, that the kingdom, primarily unified through ritual beliefs, was nevertheless centralized owing to an apparent concentrating of control over territorial administration in the hands of royals:

In Northern Rhodesia the kingdom of the Bemba was kept united by the strong belief of the people in the ritual powers of their king. All district chieftainships were filled by princes of the blood who moved in succession by genealogical seniority from one chieftainship to another. Clan leaders were unimportant politically and the king's favourites never held office. A royal dynasty in control of all territorial posts seem to have been sufficient to achieve centralization of a loose type.

In Part I of this paper, I pushed as far as it would go the thesis that important continuities link the religious thinking of traditional Africa and the theoretical thinking of the modern West. I showed how this view helps us to make sense of many otherwise puzzling features of traditional religious thinking. I also showed how it helps us to avoid certain rather troublesome red herrings which lie across the path towards understanding the crucial differences between the traditional and the scientific outlook.

The first part of this paper seeks to develop an approach to traditional African thought already sketched in several previous contributions to this journal. My approach to this topic is strongly influenced by the feeling that social anthropologists have often failed to understand traditional religious thought for two main reasons. First, many of them have been unfamiliar with the theoretical thinking of their own culture. This has deprived them of a vital key to understanding. For certain aspects of such thinking are the counterparts of those very features of traditional thought which they have tended to find most puzzling. Secondly, even those familiar with theoretical thinking in their own culture have failed to recognise its African equivalents, simply because they have been bunded by a difference of idiom. Like Consul Hutchinson wandering among the Bubis of Fernando Po, they have taken a language very remote from their own to be no language at all.

This article describes and attempts to analyse the nature and content of marital relationships in the ‘modern’ West African family. To an increasing extent educated young people apparently want a companionate marriage on Western lines (Marris, 1961). Evidence comes from interviewing and from studies made of the attitudes of students and of secondary school boys and girls in a number of countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Omari, for example, collected data from 293 students in a sample of eight Secondary and Teacher Training Institutions throughout Ghana. About three-quarters of these subjects said they would like to be married either in church or before a magistrate (1960, pp. 197–210). A statutory marriage of this kind, unlike traditional marriage, makes bigamy a crime, and so we may assume that the young people concerned had monogamy in mind. A group of Nigerian secondary school girls also declared, with a single exception, that monogamy was the ideal form of marriage; they insisted that they wanted to choose their own husbands (Baker, 1957).

The process by which African peoples come to forsake their traditional religions for Islam or Christianity is among the most significant and the least-studied features of social change in Africa. It is, furthermore, a field to which scholars of different backgrounds, historians and social scientists, may contribute. In spite of a recent drawing together of these disciplines, historians and sociologists may still consider themselves as offering rival explanations of the same phenomena, especially if these are complex. The factors involved in religious change in Africa are very elaborate, but may be reduced to two broad sets—the policies of the missionary societies, the prime agents of change, and the character of the African societies, the arena of change. Above all we need to explain the varied reception of missionary teachings by African peoples.

Quiconque s'est quelque peu penché sur les sociétés peules ne peut être que frappé par la rareté des traits culturels qui leur sont propres et la quantité considérable d'emprunts que les fulbe ont fait, dans les domaines les plus divers, aux sociétés et aux civilisations avec lesquelles ils se sont trouvés en contact. Cette perméabilité aux influences extérieures a naturellement entrainé l'assimilation au peul d'une grande quantité d'éléments signifiants provenant d'autres langues. Parmi ces apports, les emprunts faits à l'arabe occupent une place particulière tant de par leur mode particulier de transmission que par leur importance numérique et leur présence dans tous les dialectes de la langue.

Professor Marwick's Sorcery in its Social Setting is only the third major J- work to be dedicated to this theme since Evans-Pritchard's publication of Oracles, Witchcraft, and Magic among the Azande in 1937 and Kluckhohn's Navaho Witchcraft in 1944. He has produced a comprehensive and balanced survey of sorcery beliefs and accusations among the Cewa. The study is particularly rich in ethnographic depth. The attitudes of the people to witchcraft are portrayed with a rare sensitivity and warmth.

The aims of this analysis are: (1) to investigate a puzzle in Nyoro ethnography; (2) to support the theme of a forthcoming handbook on the symbolism of right and left; (3) to make a further contribution to the understanding of secular-mystical diarchy or complementary governance; and (4) to carry out a routine exercise in the structural analysis of symbolism, in a continuing attempt to isolate its general principles.

This article deals with the system of beliefs of an Independent African Church, the Apostles, founded in 1932 in the eastern province of Rhodesia by John Maranke. It seeks to define the Apostles' concept of ‘the Holy Spirit’, around which their whole religion centres. An analysis of this concept will make it clear that it has arisen out of a synthesis of elements from two older religions, namely traditional Karanga religion and Christianity as it has been presented to Rhodesian Africans by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

To an outsider the most striking feature of the Konzo circumcision ritual is the songs which can be heard almost constantly from the circumcision lodges. The teaching of songs is an important part of the instruction which takes place during the ritual and in many of them a special language is used which is, to a large extent, unintelligible to a person who has not undergone the rites. In this paper I shall analyse one of the Konzo circumcision songs and try to show how, by its special language, the song conveys to the initiands certain aspects of the circumcision ritual and suggest some of their wider implications on both the social and the individual levels.

In her book, The Akan of Ghana (1958), Eva L. Meyerowitz examines some of the religious beliefs and practices of the Akan in an attempt to show that they are of Libyo-Phoenician origin and that Akan civilization is essentially pre-Arab North African in character. As an example of an Akan New Year festival she describes the annual Aboakyer (lit. ‘the catching of an animal’) ritual of the Effutu people of southern Ghana and interprets it in a manner which supports her theory of Akan origins (Meyerowitz, 1958, pp. 38–42). This research note subjects Meyerowitz's treatment of the Aboakyer to critical analysis. It is concerned with her theory of Akan origins only in so far as it results in misinterpretation of the Aboakyer. The note does not provide a full account of the Aboakyer, but a brief outline showing the sequence of ritual events. The field-work upon which it is based was conducted among the Effutu in 1964 and 1965 and included the study of the Aboakyer rituals of these years.

In present-day Valley Korekore society, new opportunities for achieving status have arisen. Alongside traditional institutions, modern political, economic, and religious institutions have developed and, together, these provide a wider and more complex arena than existed in the past in which ambitious individuals compete with one another for prestige, authority, and power.