Pacemaking groups are characterized first by their success with the authorities; second, by their achievements in economic life; and, third, by their efficient mobilization and organization of supporters (Morris, 1968: 34). The existence of such groups tends to inhibit the emergence of occupational or class interests since less successful individuals attribute the success of the pacemaking group to their corporate ethnic solidarity rather than to any organizational skills. This essay explores the characteristics of two such groups, ethnically distinctive pacemakers and the salariat (government paid officials), by presenting the case of an individual who sees both types as his reference groups in the small country town of Gondo in Eastern Uganda in 1966. Because of their marked visibility, both types of pacemaking group are politically vulnerable at times of change, transition, and unrest. They become the object of political scapegoating and, in extreme cases, are subject to ‘cephalicide’. An analysis of the context in which this is likely to occur throws light upon the position and role of pacemakers in the total situation.

In the past anthropology was concerned with alien, exotic societies such as Indians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders. Today it is in vogue to do the anthropology of modern societies. Abroad this is termed the study of nation-building and development; at home it becomes the study of various sub-cultures with attention towards ethnic minorities and deviant groups rather than upon the more powerful and prominent segments of our society. Anthropologists tend to neglect those groups nearest themselves, and in the scurry to conduct relevant research, a broad area of great theoretical interest has been passed by. Almost no attention was ever paid by anthropologists to the study of colonial groups such as administrators, missionaries, or traders. Today we can read anthropological studies of the impact of such groups upon native populations, but the focus of such work dims with the colour line. Thus, an anthropologist has studied the machinations of the members of a Nigerian emirate but not the tactics of the British Resident and his staff. Another applied potted Weberian bureaucratic theory to Soga local government but neglected to discuss the British district officers in the same chiefdom. Another asked how Christian Tswana behaved, but not about those missionaries who had converted them. Anthropologists may have spoken about studying total societies, but they did not seem to consider their compatriots as subjects for wonder and analysis.* In the studies of Christianity in Africa, consideration was mainly in terms of the relations of the convert to his traditional society, to the process of social change, or sometimes to the development of native separatist churches. It never included the missionaries who had made the conversions or described everyday affairs at the mission station, clinic, or school.

This article examines the historical development of a particular cultural institution, the Yoruba cult of twins, with a view to providing an added perspective into the working of the institution as it exists today. After a brief reference to some of the evidence supporting the view that the cult represents a reversal of the former practice of twin infanticide I shall consider the possible origins of the cult and attempt to outline the process of reversal leading to its later development.

As with many other East African peoples, political authority and the control of wealth in So are linked inextricably with age as a determining factor. A close analysis of their age-grading structure is requisite to a complete understanding of the So way of life. Furthermore, because this structure is based upon a recently borrowed model of proper social stratification an examination of the system is instructive to scholars interested in acculturative interaction between societies.

This essay examines anthropology and the work of anthropologists in Nigeria during the colonial period, which, for the sake of convenience, can be taken from 1884 and the establishment of the Colony of Lagos and of the Oil Rivers Protectorate to the end of the Second World War and the introduction of Regional self-government in the 1950s. During the latter part of this period I was a colonial administrator in this colony, and therefore absorbed the administrative bias in regard to anthropology and anthropologists. After the colonial period I became a professional anthropologist and acquired some of the bias of the professional anthropologist towards the colonial bureaucracy and its Nigerian successor. In what follows I am attempting to recapture my original attitudes.