African Systems of Kinship and Marriage

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Kinship looms large among peoples who obtain their livelihood in small groups with simple tools. Among such peoples differences of aptitude and special training and duties do not, as in more complex societies, overwhelm the bonds between those who are born together and intermarry. The local groups within which personal relations are developed in work, rite, and recreation are at the same time bodies of relatives who have ancestors in common and among whom a complex web of ties links every person with others throughout the community. The way in which comprehensive obligations of kinship direct the activities and relations which, in our society, are segregated out as more specifically political, economic, and religious is a commonplace of social anthropology. But the detailed operation of particular factors, their relative weight in different circumstances, the principles under which these can be subsumed, and the real character and role of the many patterns of kinship organization that result are less clearly grasped. These are, however, fundamental questions in a scientific sociology. They are also of immediate practical urgency when peoples who have lived in a largely kinbound society are reacting to pressures and incentives from another social world. For those attempting to achieve a smooth transition, and to elicit the energies and loyalties of such peoples, the reason for many intangible obstacles and discords lies in unintended and often avoidable disharmony between the indigenous and the invading social values.<br><br>The concomitant of culture contact is social strain. The International African Institute has sought to promote research in the social anthropology of Africa in the belief that more adequate resources, intellectual and financial, should be devoted to such studies if scientific knowledge is to advance on a scale commensurate with the social problems to which it should be applied. In an earlier volume on African Political Systems some of