The ethnography of Kenya and Tanganyika presents a problem of great significance to the study of culture history and social organization: why have some Bantu-speaking peoples adopted age-group organization and associated rituals from their non-Bantu neighbours, while other Bantu peoples in the same region have not? That this borrowing has occurred in some cases is suggested by the extant ethnographic literature. Wagner states that the age-group organization of the Vugusu of Nyanza ‘corresponds closely to the age-group organization of the Nilo-Hamitic tribes with which it is obviously historically connected’. In discussing the pairing of Vugusu circumcision groups, he says: ‘We have here a case of a formal feature borrowed from a group of neighbouring but structurally quite different tribes which has not been functionally integrated into the structure of the recipient society.’ The Kikuyu, whose age groups are of great importance in their social structure and may antedate their contact with the Nilo-Hamitic Masai, recognize a division among themselves between members of the ‘Kikuyu guild’, who practise one set of age-grade ceremonies, and members of the ‘Masai guild’, most of whom live in south-west Kikuyuland near Masailand and conduct different ceremonies. Lambert states that the Kikuyu age-regiments alternate between those of the right hand (tatane) and those of the left hand (gitienye).

With the publication of Jahoda's (1959) study of letters addressed to the advice column of a Ghanaian newspaper, my plans for a similar study in Northern Rhodesia crystallized into action. Fortunately at about the same time the country's sole independent newspaper aimed at the indigenous population began publication. The paper, which is weekly and is written in English throughout, has a circulation of some 20,000 copies, and with shared readers may be expected to reach a public of about 70,000 all told. (The total African population is somewhat over 2½ million.) Through the kindness of the editor, I have been allowed access to the complete incoming correspondence dealt with in a feature offering advice to inquirers; letters addressed to the editor have been excluded from this survey.

Ideas and behaviour relating to health and disease among the Tiv of Benue Province, Central Nigeria, have been reported in the literature at different times. Most of these studies have focused on the general principles involved as universal features of the Tiv people. The present study is concerned only with the ideas and social background of disease in one particular locality, namely an area within a certain ‘clan’ called Mbara.

On a souvent répété des cultures négro-africaines qu'elles étaient imprégnées de spiritualité sinon de religiosité; pourtant, comme le remarquait dans un récent article Madame Calame-Griaule: ‘il serait faux de croire que le facteur religieux y joue un rôle essentiel’; il se situe en réalité sur le même plan que les autres manifestations de la vie sociale; il concourt à la construction de cet ensemble fonctionnel que constitue toute culture. C'est dans cette perspective que nous voudrions tenter d'examiner comment la religion bwa – dont les manifestations les plus élaborées et les plus valorisées s'expriment dans l'organisation et le fonctionnement de la société du do – s'intègre dans un complexe institutionnel précis dont elle n'est pas seulement, à certains égards, le reflet, mais l'un des rouages essentiels.