P. H. Gulliver - Social Control in an African Society

SOCIAL CONTROL IN AN AFRICAN SOCIETY

THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT

In 18 Volumes

A Study of the Arusha: Agricultural Masai of Northern Tanganyika

by

P. H. GULLIVER

First published in 1963

by Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2000, 2002

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1963 P. H. Gulliver

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

Social Control in an African Society

ISBN 0-415-17582-8

The Sociology of Development: 18 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17822-3

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

CONTENTS

PART THREE: ROLES AND PROCESSES RESULTING FROM ORGANISED GOVERNMENT

FIGURES

PLATES

(between pages 146 and 147)

PREFACE

IN 1956, as research sociologist for the Government of Tanganyika, I was requested to make an investigation into the economic, social and administrative problems which had arisen in the country of the Arusha people, as the result of an increasingly acute shortage of agricultural land and the comparative slowness of economic development. These matters had come to be a matter of serious concern to the Government because of its general responsibility and the threatening unrest among the people. The Arusha had been protesting to the Government about the great severity of the land shortage, and unverified claims were being made that hundreds of families were without land in this entirely rural society. Not only did the Arusha consider it the duty of the Government to help them in their modern and novel plight; but many of them believed that this duty was imperative because it was the policies of the Government in the past which had prevented their natural expansion of agricultural settlement into the adjacent lands. Those lands were now either controlled forest, or farms occupied by foreigners. It was my task to discover the nature and extent of the land problem, to report on the attitudes and ideas of the Arusha, to relate all this to their social life and traditions, and to suggest steps which would alleviate the situation.

Field-work began in August 1956, and continued with minor breaks until May 1958. The first part of this period was devoted primarily to land and economic matters, including demography, land tenure, agriculture and the recent history of settlement. Necessarily this involved some concern with virtually every aspect of Arusha social life, and therefore a general ethnographic survey was made; but it was possible in the later part of the field-work period to concentrate on certain features of the social system of the Arusha which seemed to be of particular importance and interest, and going beyond purely economic considerations. My account of contemporary conditions in the area, together with some recommendations for future policy, were presented in my Report on Land and Population in the Arusha Chiefdom (1957), and in a number of other official memoranda. The present volume contains some of the results which came from the continuation and specialisation of research in the latter part of my period in the field.

During my enquiries into land tenure and the fairly recent expansion of the Arusha into unoccupied bushlands, I quickly became aware of the large number of disputes occurring over land matterssuch as the ownership of farms and fields, the alignment of boundaries, the rights of tenants, the validity of inheritance settlements or of sales of land. One obvious way to investigate both the norms and practices of land tenure, and to distinguish the particular kind of issues arousing conflict, was to record and analyse as many of these disputes as possibleboth those which came before the local courts, and those more numerous which did not. My enquiries were later widened to take in other kinds of disputes but gradually my interests were drawn beyond the details of the disputes themselves, to the processes involved in achieving and enforcing settlements. Thus I was led to a renewed study of the social contexts in which these disputes and processes occurred, and the nature of the systems of social relationships in which the disputants were involved: i.e. the age-group system and the patrilineal descent system. This patterning of my field research fitted well with another principal interest:the inter-relations between these two major and markedly contrasting types of social systems, based on age and unilineal descent respectively. In addition, because of the Governments request for information, during the course of the reorganisation of the local administration, it was possible to make an examination of the work of the local courts and the influence of the chief, headmen and magistrates.