Too often accounts of African family life have tended to describe the family in purely static terms. The contributors to this book emphasize the developmental or time dimension of the family, analysing it as a process. In the seven different societies described in East Africa, the Congo and the Transvaal the changing nature of the distribution of rights in the family property and resources is directly linked with the growth and change of the family itself. First published in 1964.

Originally published in 1963, this was the first monograph concerning an African people in which an irrigation-based society was studied in detail and its implications explored. The Sonjo, a Bantu-speaking people isolated among cattle pastoralists of what was Northern Tanganyika, are remarkable for their complex irrigation system and political organization. The inter-connections between the irrigation system, the religious cult of a culture hero, and the special features of their social organization are at the core of this analysis.

Too often accounts of African family life have tended to describe the family in purely static terms. The contributors to this book emphasize the developmental or time dimension of the family, analysing it as a process. In the seven different societies described in East Africa, the Congo and the Transvaal the changing nature of the distribution of rights in the family property and resources is directly linked with the growth and change of the family itself. First published in 1964.

Originally published in 1963, this was the first monograph concerning an African people in which an irrigation-based society was studied in detail and its implications explored. The Sonjo, a Bantu-speaking people isolated among cattle pastoralists of what was Northern Tanganyika, are remarkable for their complex irrigation system and political organization. The inter-connections between the irrigation system, the religious cult of a culture hero, and the special features of their social organization are at the core of this analysis.