One of the outstanding features of Akan social organisation emphasised by ethnographers since Rattray's monograph on the Asante (1923: Chap. 2 esp.) is the interlacement of fundamental matriliny with prominent patrilineal traits. With particular reference to the Fante, on whom this paper is based, Christensen (1954: 5, 107) claims, on some wrong premiss though, that his study of 'the role and importance of the paternal line' leads him to conclude that ‘the Fanti manifest a system of double descent’. My own fieldwork (1966-70) on the Fante asafo – the most distinct social manifestation of their patrilineal tendency– indeed confirms the fact that the Fante still lay strong stress on agnatic descent groups, which in Asante and other Akan sub-groups have become more or less ‘obsolete’ (Fortes 1950: 265f, Busia 1954: 207, with reference to ntoro). This notwithstanding, the combination of patrilineal and matrilineal principles of reckoning descent remains a fundamental attribute of Akan culture as a whole. That is to say, the so-called Fante peculiarity is in fact only a slight variation of a general Akan type.

Les relations agnatiques et uterines chez les Fante - le dualisme male-femelle

Cet essai nous presente une grande série d'oppositions complémentaires mâle-femelle que l'on retrouve dans toute la pensée et toutes les coutumes sociales fante et akan. L'auteur affirme que puisque ce dualisme sexuel est essentiel au comportement fante et akan la notion de la complémentarité mâle-femelle devrait être au centre de l'analyse sociologique-surtout de la combinaison de traits de descendance utérins cardinaux et de traits de descendance agnatiques dans la structure sociale akan.