Peter Marris - Family and Social Change in an African City

AFRICA

In 26 Volumes

First published in 1961

Reprinted in 2004 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

1961 Institute of Community Studies

Reprinted by kind permission of Northwestern University PressEvanston, Illinois,

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Family and Social Change in an African City

ISBN 0-415-32556-0(set)

ISBN 0-415-32995-7
ISBN 978-1-136-53164-4 (ePub)

Miniset: Africa

Series: Routledge Library Editions Anthropology and Ethnography

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.

First published 1961
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane
London, E.C.4

No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission from
the publisher, except for the quotation
of brief passages in criticism

T HIS study was financed by a grant to the Institute of Community Studies from the Leverhulme Trust. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust met the expenses of a preliminary visit to Africa, when I was preparing the enquiry. The Lagos Executive Development Board and Professor Barback of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research encouraged me to undertake the study in Lagos: J. C. Henderson, the Chief Executive Officer, and the staff of the L.E.D.B. provided many services on which the study depended. They continued to be just as helpful after it became clear that some of my conclusions were unacceptable to them.

Samuel Akinadewo, my assistant research officer, and L. G. Ajayi, Chairman of the Central Lagos Residents Association, interpreted the interviews, and added valuable notes and comments on them. Gilbert Dopemu helped to organise the survey work. Peter Lloyd, Alison Izzett, Mrs. Winifred McEwen and Jean Herskovits gave me much advice and information while I was in Nigeria, and read the book in draft. Dr. Otto Koenigsberger encouraged me to believe that the conclusions of a sociologist could be worth something to architects and town planners, and Professor Daryll Forde that they might not be contemptible to anthropologists.

I received very useful comments on this book in draft from Mrs. Prudence Smith and Professor Richard Titmuss; from members of the Institute of Community Studies Advisory CommitteeDr. John Bowlby, Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, Euan Cooper-Willis, Geoffrey Gorer, Robin Huws Jones, Professor Charles Madge, J. L. Peterson, Peter Townsend, Lewis Waddilove and William Wallace; and from my colleagues at the Institute. The map and diagram were drawn by Colin Mackenzie and Michael Smith.

To all these, and to the people of Lagos whom I interviewed, I am very grateful; I hope the result seems to them to justify their help and encouragement.

PETER MARRIS

March 1961.

E VERY morning, dense files of cars and bicycles, lorries and buses, edge across Denton Causeway and Carter Bridge into Lagos Island. The office worker from the mainland rises at six to fight his way into an overcrowded bus, which, after an hours journey, disgorges him ten minutes late with the lame excuse of another go-slow. A street plan which served a town of thirty thousand, travelling on foot, is now overwhelmed by the tenfold crowd of clerks, administrators, shoppers and traders who struggle to their work on wheels. But it is not only for their sake that the centre of Lagos is under pressure to rebuild. With the approach of independence, the people of Nigeria began to look more critically at their Federal capital, and saw in its congested lanes of ramshackle houses a poor reflection of their aspirations. As the Minister of Lagos Affairs remarked, it is the mirror through which foreigners make their initial appraisal of Nigeria and many regard it as an index of the progress and prosperity of Nigeria. The condition of central Lagos, he said, was humiliating to any person with a sense of national pride.1