IN 1944 the International African Institute was consulted on the question of organising
a field study of the peoples of Bamenda with special reference to the position of
women. Its attention had first been drawn to this matter by Dr. Margaret Read, a
former research Fellow of the Institute, following enquiries made of her by the Chief
Commissioner, Eastern Provinces, during her visit to Nigeria as a member of the Commission
on Higher Education in West Africa. The need for such research had been reported
by the Cameroons Development Corporation, and shortly after a despatch was addressed
by the Governor of Nigeria to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in which he
drew attention to conditions in the Bamenda division of the Cameroons under British
mandate, where, despite considerable natural resources, there was underpopulation,
and social obstacles to opportunities for economic development and educational advance
were apparent. Among factors thought to be in part responsible for the situation
were a very high infant mortality rate to which social factors might be contributing,
and a low status of women.
The Governor transmitted with his despatch two reports, one by a lady education officer
and one by the Senior Resident, Cameroons Province, in which the need for appointing
more women educationalists was urged in order to assist the adaptation of a backward
society to changing conditions, and in particular to assist the people in meeting
the new forces which were impinging on them. The Governor pointed out, however, that
educational workers could not hope for even a moderate degree of success without
the assistance of a social anthropologist to provide information which would enable
them to guide and assist the people aright. The first essential, therefore, was a
study of the general social and economic conditions of the people themselves. He
therefore requested that a grant might be made from the Colonial Research Fund to
enable such investigations to be carried out.
The Colonial Social Science Research Council, to which the matter was referred, recommended
after consultation with the International African Institute that direction of the
research should be entrusted to the latter and a grant for this purpose was made
to it from the Colonial Research Fund.
The Institute was fortunate in securing the services of Dr. Phyllis Kaberry, who
had already carried out anthropological field work in North-Western Australia and
in New Guinea, and had given special attention to the status of women among the peoples
studied. She had held research and teaching fellowships in the Universities of Sydney
and Yale and her publications included a book based on her Australian studies entitled
Aboriginal Woman (Routledge, London, 1939). In January 1945 she left for West
Africa and worked for an initial period of 18 months among the Nsaw and other peoples
of Bamenda. Returning to England in July 1946 she presented an interim report on
her findings and in January 1947 resumed her field studies for a further period until
April 1948.
The present work embodies Dr. Kaberry's full report on the particular aspects of
social life which she was invited to study. This is, however, provided within the
framework of a comprehensive account of the social and economic life of the peoples
of Bamenda. One of its most striking contributions at once to the theoretical analysis
of social relations and to the factual knowledge needed by administrators is to be
found in her study of the system of land rights among
the Nsaw and other peoples where the village communities are linked
in a centralised political system. She shows first how the titular ownership of chiefs
is, in the routine of production and consumption, traditionally quite subsidiary
to de facto control by the head of a kin group, and that both are subject
to strong customary obligations, breaches of which evoke opposition, non-co-operation
and defection that are held to be morally justified. She shows too that, though in
relation to the rest of the tribe and the chief, land is regarded as held by the
men of a lineage under the authority of their head, yet in the domestic context women,
as wives of these men, exercise real control over land use by virtue of their rights
as producers over the crops they grow. Any proposals or actions directed towards
changes in the allocation and use of land or in farming techniques must reckon with
this series of rights which are at each level limited by moral standards and practical
restraints.
Dr. Kaberry reaches her more general conclusions, however, after a vivid presentation
of the daily life and manifest attitudes that she observed during her long residence
in Bamenda villages. The reader, whether scholar, administrator or layman, will appreciate
both her account of actualities of life in the Bamenda highlands today and her study
of the cultural forces, traditional and new, that underlie them and are helping to
shape the future.
DARYLL FORDE,
Director, International African Institute.
