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Kinship, Contract, and Trust

This paper is based on fieldwork done 20 years ago in the slums of Accra, Ghana’s capital city. For two and a half years I lived among migrants from north-east Ghana called Frafras who included the Tallensi, the object of a classic study by Meyer Fortes (1945; 1949; see Hart 1978). At home these were a traditionally stateless people, huddled together in densely packed egalitarian settlements, millet farmers and raisers of livestock. In 1960 only 1 in 16 was Muslim or Christian; fewer adults had even a modicum of schooling. Their political organization and religion were based on descent ties, neighbourhood (manifested as an earth cult), ritual specialization of clans, and marriage exchange. The largest corporate units (patrilineages) were linked to the constant flux of self-reproducing domestic groups by a common ideology of kinship and the practice of ancestor worship. Age and genealogical seniority conferred office and stewardship of collective assets, principally cattle for bridewealth, on an informal gerontocracy. But individual mobility and small-scale accumulation were widespread; and the frequency of raiding between quite close neighbours lent considerable uncertainty to the social life of these fighting hill tribesmen.