Choice and Constraint in a Swahili Community: Property, Hierarchy and Cognatic Descent on the East African Coast

by Ann Patricia Caplan

Overview

Originally published in 1975, this book examines property and power relations in a Swahili village on Mafia Island off Tanzania. It focuses on the cognatic descent groups which are important in many areas of village life such as land-holding, marriage, residence, Islamic activities and spirit possession cults. Some anthropologiests have contended taht groups with multiple membership cannot be viable social units, but this book shows that such a system can actually work. In shwoing how the cognatic descent groups actually operate, both an ideology of descent group membership and also numerical material about patterns of choice are presented. This involves the construction of both mechanical and statistical models, as well as a decision model to discuss the constraints governing choices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138493322
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/29/2020
Series:	African Ethnographic Studies of the 20th Century
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ann Patricia Caplan In 1977, joined Goldsmiths College, University of London as a lecturer in anthropology; she was later promoted to senior lecturer.[1] Goldsmiths did not have an Anthropology Department until the 1980s.[2] In 1989, she was appointed Professor of Social Anthropology. From 1998 to 2000, she was also Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Caplan retired in 2003 and was appointed Emeritus Professor.

Table of Contents

1. Ecology, Population and Economy 2. Descent Groups and Personal Networks 3. Residence Patterns 4. Land Tenure 5. The Socio-Religious Hierarchy: Islam 6. The Socio-Religious Hierarchy: Spirit Possession 7. The Hierarchy and Village Politics 8. Conclusion