History and Social Structure: A Study of the Sefwi Residential System (Ghana)

Beginning of article

The article reviews studies concerning the Akan (Ghana) residential system with particular reference to Fortes's Time and Social Structure. Fortes's work is criticized for its lack of historical perspective, for assuming the structural identity of kin groups, and for ignoring the political and economic importance of the father-child relationship. The author presents a survey of the Sefwi residential system in which domestic units are differentiated according to their historical role. The economic and political importance of the father-child relationship is acknowledged in the transmission of and rights and in the dynamics of household foundation. (Matrilineal kinship, residential system, history, Akan, Ghana)

The above title, a paraphrase of Fortes's famous Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study, was chosen because it expresses the main purposes of this article. The aim is twofold: to review the literature concerning the residential pattern of the Akan, centered on Fortes's (1949) work and assumptions, and to propose a different framework through the introduction of a historical perspective.

An analysis of Fortes's kinship studies of the Akan, with particular reference to their residential system, enables one to point out certain theoretical shortfalls common to British social anthropology in the 1940s and early 1950s. This is important for several reasons. The accepted theoretical framework in Time and Social Structure is particularly clear and its consequences are symptomatic. Moreover, this article may also be relevant to students of the Akan area since the theoretical assumptions and results of Fortes's work (particularly Time and Social Structure) have often been accepted uncritically in many of the studies which followed. Finally, the principal aim here is to propose a different theoretical framework and offer insights which will shed new light on the residential pattern of the Akan.

The first two parts of this essay analyze Fortes's theoretical framework and his publications on the Asante. In the third section, Fortes's theoretical framework is criticized and a different methodological and theoretical procedure is proposed. Finally, the revised approach will be applied to the study of the residential pattern of the Sefwi.

FORTES'S ASSUMPTIONS

Fortes's theoretical assumptions and methodology have been clearly and repeatedly specified in his work and have been applied in his fieldwork among the Asante. It is therefore essential to examine briefly some of the main features of his kinship theory and methodology to understand his description of the Asante residential system. Fortes's fundamental assumption is that there are a few simple norms on which society is forged. These rules create a structure, a "social structure." The rules derive from the one law which gives society its structure: the principle of descent. Rights regulating access to land, the criterion of political citizenship, the system of inheritance, and everyday social relations all derive from the descent principle (Fortes 1953, 1958, 1959).

The residential pattern is not a direct product of the descent principle. Fortes admits the importance of affinity and time in determining the "form" and "structure" of the residential system.

[T]ies of kinship, marriage, and affinity regulate the structure of domestic and family groups, which have no permanent existence in time. Each domestic group comes into being, grows and expands, and finally dissolves. But the institutions it embodies, and the mode of organization it exhibits, are essential features of the social structure. Domestic organization has two aspects. Its form derives from a paradigm or cultural "norm" sanctioned by law, religion and moral values. Its structure is governed by internal changes as well as by changing relations, from year to year, with society at large. (Fortes 1949:7, cf. 1950:261, 1953:91)

The descent principle also determines the unit of study of the social structure: the lineage. Since society is forged by a sole principle (that of descent) and the units of study are a consequence of this principle, the units of study (lineages and segments of lineages) share identical characteristics. "The general rule is that every segment is, in form, a replica of every other segment and of the whole lineage" (Fortes 1953:85; cf. McCaskie 1995:169). Alongside the line of filiation which the group acknowledges as the descent line, the social recognition of another line, the "complementary line of filiation," is admitted but, according to Fortes, this is of secondary importance as it is not tied to the politico-jural domain.

It appears that there is a tendency for interests, rights and loyalties to be divided on broadly complementary lines, into those that have the sanction of law or other public institutions for the enforcement of good conduct, and those that rely on religion, morality, conscience and sentiment for due observance. Where corporate groups exist the former seem to be generally tied to the descent group, the latter to the complementary line of filiation. (Fortes 1953:89, cf. 1963:60-61)

The methodology of Fortes's works is characterized by the lack of a diachronic approach. Historical sources, both oral and written, are considered unreliable and therefore ignored (Fortes 1949:1-2). Fortes identifies three functions of time. Time as continuity "is significant as an index of forces and conditions that remain more or less constant over a stretch of time" (Fortes 1949:2). Time in this first meaning is viewed as static. When time is taken into consideration as a dynamic factor, as is the case in Time and Social Structure, the diachronic analysis is generational or, as Fortes calls it, genetic. It is concerned with the process of change from one point of stability to another. The time span considered is limited to the substitution of one generation with another. It is concerned with "replacement" cycles through a repetition of "stages." "Residence patterns are the crystallization, at a given time, of the development process" (Fortes 1958:1-3, cf. 1974a:8). Time is considered here in its cyclical significance. Nondynamic and cyclical time are introduced in Fortes's theoretical framework to cross out history, the third type of time, which is included by Fortes in the category of "duration time" and is dealt with as "an extrinsic factor having no critical influence on the structure of social events or organization" (1949:1).

ASSUMPTIONS AND RESIDENCE

Fortes's theoretical framework and methodology were applied to the Akan area. Akan are matrilineal and to Fortes this was the key to read their society: political citizenship was a consequence of membership to matrilineal clans and lineages; inheritance was matrilineal; land access was obtained through membership to a uterine group. The complementary line of filiation (in the Akan case the relation between father and son) was excluded from the politico-jural domain and confined to moral and spiritual relationships (Fortes 1963). The residential system was not included in the politico-jural domain. The pattern of residence was partly influenced by the bonds resulting from the complementary line of filiation, but it could not be completely separated from the general norms regulating the social structure (Fortes 1949).

A prevalent virilocal postmarital arrangement or a patrilocal pattern of residence would have contradicted the forging principle of the social structure. It would have been difficult to present as coherent a system which combined a social structure forged by a matrilineal principle and a virilocal-patrilocal residence. Such an arrangement would have led to the "matrilineal puzzle," the problem of combining exogamy and local descent continuity. On the other hand, Fortes could not maintain that the residential pattern was uxorilocal since all evidence contradicted this. He therefore proposed a rather unusual postmarital residential system termed duolocality: man and wife would live in their matrilineal households, children being brought up by their mothers (Fortes 1949:10-11). His data could not fully support this assumption, so a generational cycle was elaborated in Time and Social Structure. He presents a complex system of movements of people who form different kinds of residential units that could, eventually, be considered variations of the prevalent matrilineal household. Fortes's description of the residential system of the Asante is characterized by a combination of two factors: the conflicting claims of the agnatic-affinal bonds and matrilineality; and the time factor.

The first factor is explained as follows: "It can be suggested that the type of residential unit found in a particular case is a result of the balance struck between the obligations of marriage and parenthood on the one hand and those due to matrilineal kin on the other" (Fortes 1949:17, cf. 22-24). This conflict produces three possible forms of domestic units:

A. Households grouped around a husband and wife. In the simplest case this corresponds to the elementary family consisting of a man, his wife, and their children; but other kinsfolk may be included in the group.

B. Households grouped around an effective minimal lineage or part of it, such as a woman, and her sister or daughters, or a man and his sister or sister's son. C. Households made up of combinations of the previous types, e.g. a household consisting of a man and his wife and children as well as his sister's children. (Fortes 1949:16; cf. Fortes, Steel, and Ady 1947:168; Fortes 1950:262)

The existence of miscellaneous dwelling groups is recognized (Fortes 1949:16). Fortes believes that "one's mother's home--that is, by definition, the place where one's matrilineage is domiciled--is one's true home," but one may ask to have a room in the paternal domestic unit (Fortes 1949:17; cf. Fortes, Steel, and Ady 1947:166-67).

The next step of Fortes's analysis is to state that differences in the residential patterns of households are linked to the sex of the head of the domestic unit. Female-headed households will be likely to have a B-type structure, while male-headed households will have a minor share of matrilineal relatives (Fortes 1949:19-22).(2) In this section Fortes presents his data on household composition (Table 1).

Table 1 (Fortes's Table 4): Classification of Members of
Households with Male Heads (Excluding Heads)(3)

A. MALE MEMBERS
                                        Asokore

                                   Number …