Essai de Synthèse du Système Social des Bamiléké

A Description of the Social System of the Bamiléké. The Bamiléké of the high plateaux of southern Cameroun, numbering over half a million, have elaborate lineage and kinship institutions, and chiefdom and ward organization, which have remained very active in spite of the troubles of the past years. This paper seeks to analyse the basic concepts which govern these. Within each group individuals are divided into three categories: descendants of the chief, servants of the chief, and commoners, but this does not result in a caste system as there is intermarriage between these categories. The status of descent from the chief decreases from generation to generation with the distance from the original source. In each group there are several categories of notables, but there is no nobility as such, since respect is accorded only to the holder of a title, which is transmitted to a single heir. Customary associations exist in the chiefdom mainly to enable the most worthy to take titles carrying access to a higher category of notables, and it may be said that social mobility is the "raison d'être" of all Bamiléké institutions. The patrilineage is characterized by a high degree of segmentation of two distinct types, depending on the tie between the ancestors and the living, and the ties of the living among themselves. In the ancestor cult an individual is fully linked only to those ancestors whose skulls he has inherited and has in his custody. Outside the line of heirs links are cut off beyond the second generation. Each individual who is not an heir is regarded as the founder of a new line. The ties among the living are regulated by another factor: there is segmentation in the lineage when an individual becomes a notable on entering the chiefdom associations at a sufficiently high level. Each person is linked only to a very restricted group, which favours individual initiative. The ward institutions connect him to a more extended social unit capable of affirming his rights and of protecting them. The ward is also the territorial unit in which associations of age mates are formed and the societies which formerly constituted the army. The members of all the three classes participate in these activities on a footing of strict equality. The ceremonies in which age mates join mark their entry into active adult life and forge a ritual link between the inhabitants of the ward which is the spiritual equivalent of a lineage.

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/1157565?origin=JSTOR-pdf

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