The Social Structure of the Nyakyusa: a Re-evaluation

THE Nyakyusa of south-western Tanzania have received very substantial ethnographic coverage. Nonetheless there remain certain gaps in our knowledge of this society. The field-work by Dr. Godfrey Wilson and Professor Monica Wilson was done largely in the mid I930s before structural-functional analysis had achieved its present refinement and was evidently influenced by Malinowski who was not himself known for a concern in sociological analysis per se. In these studies of the Nyakyusa, values, beliefs, and ritual were a main object of attention; they present Nyakyusa society as though it were a direct result of the Nyakyusa value system, although the actual workings of the society have been left rather obscure. It is presented as coherent, values and social organization reinforcing each other at every point.2 But internal evidence contradicts this picture, and on a priori grounds it may also be seen that there were several structural pressures towards incoherence, or rather, conflict between the actual development of social organization through time and those presumably timeless values reputed to maintain it. The society of the Nyakyusa was presented in an idealized form.3 I will here attempt to correct this by showing that sociological factors-in a sense the 'unconscious' social product-must have impinged on and even conflicted with what is presented in the literature as, first and foremost, a system of values. By considering the developmental history of Nyakyusa chiefdoms I hope to show that some processes must have been more complex and call attention to matters which have been little studied.