Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:38:04.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Spreading the Risk: The Principle of Laterality among the Chopi*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

David Webster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a recent publication, Eleanor Preston-Whyte (1974: 209) has noted the comparative ‘flexibility’ of the Tsonga and Chopi kinship systems, which allow for a greater degree of ‘individuality’ among these peoples as compared with other southern African Bantu-speaking peoples. This paper examines the place of the systems of marriage, divorce, and succession in the socio-cultural matrix which gives rise to an egocentric rather than sociocentric emphasis which is unusual in southern Africa.

Résumé

REDUIRE LES RISQUES: LE PRINCIPE DE LATERALITE CHEZ LES CHOPI

Les Chopi sont une peuplade patrilinéaire qui occupe une partie de la ceinture côtière du Mozambique méridional. Sur le plan ethnique ils se rattachent aux peuplades Tsonga-Shangaan qui les entourent et avec lesquels ils ont en commun un certain nombre de particularités sociales: ces traits sont decrits dans l'ouvrage bien connu de H. A. Junod: La vie d'une tribu d'Afrique du Sud. Les Chopi sont des agriculteurs pratiquant l'agriculture swidden dans un milieu caractérisé par des sols sablonneux et où la forêt occupe une place très importante, et où il y a en ce moment des terres en abondance.

Le présent article examine l'un des traits les plus frappants de la société Chopi, à savoir l'apparente latéralité du système social. Cette latéralité est attribuée à l'action réciproque et complexe d'un certain nombre de caractéristiques de l'organisation sociale qui comprennent le système de parenté dans lequel les lignées ne jouent pas; le système du mariage qui a pour effet d'étendre très largement les alliances à travers la société; et les modes d'héritage et de succession qui sont collatéraux. Ce sont ces facteurs qui, envisagés au sein d'une écologie difficile, de terres en abondance (et qui sont facilement accessibles) donnent au système social un caractère superficiel qui encourage une individualité peu courante dans les sociétés d'Afrique méridionale.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 192 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ackerman, A. 1963 ‘Affiliations: structural determinants of differential divorce rates,’ American journal of Sociology 69, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, F. G. 1972 Gifts and Poison. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Barnes, J. A. 1962 ‘African models in the New Guinea Highlands,’ Man 62 (2), 5–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, J. A. 1967 ‘Genealogies,’ in Epstein, A. L. (ed.) The Craft of Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Clignet, R. 1970 Many Wives, Many Powers. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Conklin, H. C. 1954 ‘An ethnoecological approach to shifting agriculture,’ Transactions ofthe New York Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Eggan, F. 1950 Social Organisation of the Western Pueblos. Chicago: University Press.Google Scholar
Eggan, F. 1974 The Bantu-Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1970 ‘Sideways or downwards? Lateral and vertical succession, inheritance and descent in Africa and Eurasia,’ Man N.S. 5, 627–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gulliver, P. H. 1971 Neighbours and Networks. London: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammond-Tooke, W. D. 1968 ‘The morphology of Mpondomise descent groups,’ Africa 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Junod, H. A. 1924 The Life ofa South African Tribe. London: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Junod, H. P. 1927-1929 ‘Some notes on Tshopi origins,’ Bantu Studies iii, 57–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keesing, R. M. 1970 ‘Kwaio fosterage,’ American Anthropologist 72 (5) 991–1019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, E. R. 1961 Pul Eliya, A Village in Ceylon. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966 ‘The future of kinship studies (Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1965),’ Proc. R. Anthrop. Inst. 1966, 13–22.Google Scholar
Lounsbury, F. G. 1964 ‘A formal account of the Crow- and Omaha-type kinship terminologies,’ in Goodenough, W. H. (ed.) Explorations in Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw, Hill.Google Scholar
Mayer, Iona 1965 The nature of kinship relations: the significance of the use of kinship terms among the Gusii. Rhodes-Livingstone Papers no. 37. Manchester Univ. Press.Google Scholar
McKinley, Robert 1971a ‘A critique of the reflectionist theory of kinship terminology: the Crow/Omaha case,’ Man N.S. 6, 228–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKinley, Robert 1971b ‘Why do Crow and Omaha kinship terminologies exist? A sociology of knowledge interpretation,’ Man N.S. 6 408–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murdock, G. 1949 Social Structure. New York, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Preston-Whyte, E. 1974 ‘Kinship and marriage,’ in Hammond-Tooke, W. D. (ed.), The Bantu-Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa.Google Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. London: Cohen and West.Google Scholar
Sansom, Basil 1974 ‘Traditional Economic Systems,’ in Hammond-Tooke, W. D. (ed.), The Bantu Speaking People of Southern Africa. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Turner, V. W. 1957 Schism and Continuity in an African Society. Manchester Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Vayda, A. P. 1961 ‘Expansion and warfare among swidden agriculturalists,’ American Anthropologist 63, 346–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, D. J. 1973 ‘Chopi classificatory kinship terminology, formal analysis and the sociology of knowledge: a synthetic approach,’ ASS A: Sociology Southern Africa 1973. Durban: Univ. of Natal Multicopy Centre.Google Scholar
Webster, D. J. 1975 Kinship and Cooperation: Agnation. Alternative Structures and the Individual in Chopi Society. Ph.D. thesis, Rhodes University, Grahamstown.Google Scholar