The Lele of the Kasai

Mary Douglas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136488993
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This first volume is a compilation of numerous essays by Douglas on the Lele in the Belgian Congo covering a fifteen year period. There are early indications of Douglas's cultural imagination and written expression that were to make her works accessible and relevant to a western readership of non-anthropologists. The intellectural tools and examples she gained from Africanist ethnography continue to serve her explorations of European and American society.

INDEX

Adultery, 74, 75, 76, 109–10, 111, 122–124, 126, 145, 160, 169, 174, 177, 217–19, 231, 233

Age,

see Old men,

see Age-set,

see Age-mate

— of marriage, 116–18, 145

Age-mate, 73–6, 103–4, 125, 193, 195, 198, 213

Age-set, 38, 70, 76–84, 89–91, 181, 223

— Common-wife of,

see Village-wife,

see Old men

Agriculture, 33, 34, 36–7, 45–6, 51, 260–1

Alternation

— of age-sets, 78, 84

— of generations, 104

Ancestors

— return of, 244

see Baotale, 204

see Ghosts

Anti-Sorcery cults, 7, 99, 244 seq., 256, 257

Aristocrats, 14–15, 129, 160

see Chief, ch. X, 186 seq., 191 seq., 269

Ashanti, 166

Authority

— absence of, 1, 2, 3, 7, 49, 84, 101, 154, 173, 201, 202, 204

— absence of, between women, 126, 224, 270

Avoidance, 80, 103–4, 120, 124, 127, 133–4

Bachelor, 4, 75, 89, 98, 128, 209, 223

Bagehot, 202

Bahaka, officials of, poison ordeal, 242

Baput,

see Bachelor

Baotale,

see Old men, 103, 223

see Ancestors, 204

Barter,

see Trade

Basongo-Meno, 13

Basongo, 17, 176, 194, 201, 260

Belgian administration, 7–8, 13, 137, 148, 152, 200, 201, 257, 259 seq.

see Tribunals

Begetters’ cult...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Maps
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface to New Edition
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I The Lele on the Map
• II The Productive Side of the Economy
• III Distribution of Wealth
• IV The Village: Offices and Age-Sets
• V Clans
• VI Marriage: I. The Private Wife and Private Family
• VII Marriage: II. The Communal Village-Wife and Communal Family
• VIII Blood Debts
• IX The Village: As Creditor and Debtor
• X The Role of the Aristocratic Clan in Relations between Villages
• XI Religious Sanctions on Village Unity and the Organization of Village Cults
• XII Sorcery
• XIII Control of Sorcery
• XIV European Impact on Lele Society
• Appendix A: Documentation of South Homba
• Appendix B: Bibliographic References
• Index