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An
example of the wide variety of kin arrangements
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| Canada has immigrants from hundreds
of societies of origin. This is one of several factors contributing
to a huge variety of family forms and functions in Canada. |
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| To demonstrate the variations in
families, we look at the Akan society of West Africa. See Canadian
Immigration (Ghana). |
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| The word “family” is Latin in
origin. It meant domestic slaves. There is no equivalent word
in Akan. Family is not a universal institution. Social scientists
once assumed that the nuclear family was at the central element or building
block of all kin systems. Not so in matrilineal societies.
In Akan society the nuclear family is not the building block: there is
no word; no practice. Akan society has two words that are related.
The word “abusua” is a corporate descent group, while the word
“fifo” (literally house people) means a residential group.
Akan people in Canada speaking English may talk about their "family" back
home. They mean their "abusua." |
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| What is a corporate descent group?
It is like a corporation. Membership is by birth, and it has no affines
(people related by marriage). In a matrilineal society, that means
all members of the group belong because their mothers belong. Your
spouse or your father can not belong to the same abusua as you. |
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| The group has maybe 100 to 200 members
(boundaries are not easy to determine). It is not a communal organisation;
there is division of labour and inequality within it. The descent
group may own land, offices, houses, and gods. |
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| To help you understand the structure,
take a personal view. Your father or spouse cannot belong, but your
mother’s brother belongs. Your mother’s mother’s mother’s
mother’s sister’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s son belongs.
Your sister’s children belong. |
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| A student asked if Akan matriliny
was like that in the West Coast First Nations (aboriginal) societies.
West Coast First Nations are quite varied, with Tlingit and Tsimshian in
the North, Haida on the West, Wakashan south of that, and Salish on the
south coast. There is a range of mixtures from North to South, from
matrilineal to patrilineal. Technically, the Akan have kin terms
classed as "Iroquois" (as in southern Ontario from Montreal to Windsor).
See Govt of BC (BC
First Nations). |
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| Matriliny is not matriarchy.
The suffix, “liny” refers to descent, while the suffix “archy”
means power. The Akan kin system is lineal, and it is not automatically
one which confers power on women. Instead, we use the word “gynocracy”
meaning that some power, wealth and independence is allocated to
women. See my paper, Covert
Gynocracy.” The women had status much more than those in western
societies and patriarchal patrilineal ones. In East Africa, for example,
women are submissive and oppressed in comparison to those in Akan societies.
Matriarchy would imply that women are automatically the recognized leaders;
that is found in no known and studied societies. |
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| Covert means hidden. In Akan
society the higher power, wealth and independence of women is not so evident.
Formal recognition (prestige) of office is not common, except for a few
female chiefs, elders and priestesses; women find it useful to keep this
power hidden. |
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| In a chief’s court, where perhaps
nine out of ten of the elders are men, they may come to a difficult stage
of their case, conflict resolution, or deliberation. They will break
and then each head back to his or her matrilineal house (where the ancestral
stools are kept) to "confer with the ancestors." It turns out that
they are conferring with the older women in the matrilineage. |
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| The matrilineal Akan spread and expanded,
and took over earlier patrilineal Guan areas. Matriliny, based upon
ranked confederations of matrilineages, is the basis for more effective
organisation
for war than is patriliny where the patrilineal corporate descent groups
had no mechanism for confederating. Confederations were structured
as in an army, with one lineage designated for each of four deployment
positions, forward, left, right, and rear, plus interior affairs, and paramount.
Like a football team or hockey team, each have different but complementary
roles which make them stronger overall. |
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| A high divorce rate is functional
in all matrilineal societies. When members do not direct all their
attention and efforts to their spouses, this supports strength of the abusua.
Husbands and wives would live together temporarily, as when they were in
satellite villages farming,
or in cities and towns for employment or trade. Women had power,
wealth, and independence (esp. from fathers and husbands), so they were
not dependent upon staying in a nuclear family for financial security.
Often members of the home town would return home, especially for funerals
and for Easter. The common pattern was for husband and wife to go
and stay in their separate ancestral, matrilineal homes for the duration
of the visit, even if they lived together in their away residence.
This is where a common practice was observed and noted in the literature,
children going from Momma’s house to Daddy’s house every late afternoon
carrying supper on
their heads. |
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| When a man had two or more wives,
they would each stay in their separate lineage houses (a man could not
marry two women from the same lineage, except that female twins became
wives of chiefs). The man would inform which wife had a turn to spend the
night with him. Although permitted, polygyny was and is quite rare,
because most men could not afford to keep more than one wife. If
a wife died, it was the responsibility of her matrilineage to provide a
replacement. The relationship of marriage was the symbol of the confederation
of the matrilineal oman structure. Each matrilineage was considered a wife
of the chief’s lineage. When a chief died, and a new one was elected
by the lineage, he inherited all assets and liabilities, including all
the wives. For many of them this did not involve conjugal
duties, but was a form of old age security. In the town of Obo, where
I did my PhD research, the chief had over thirty “structural” wives,
but in practice lived with only one wife, the woman he had married before
he was selected as chief. |
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| Swiss
missionaries
came to the Gold Coast in the mid 1800s. They introduced much more
than the theology and ritual of Christianity. They sought nothing
less than the complete transformation of Akan society into a system imitating
that of their Swiss origins. |
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| Their support for the ideal of a
nuclear family implied that women should be obedient to their husbands,
stay at home to do domestic chores and raise their children while their
husbands went out to work, and to abolish chieftaincy, matrilineages, ancestors,
gods and the other institutions which supported these ancient notions. |
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| Christian social structure, where
it was adopted, contributed to a decline in women’s status. |
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| Husband and wife residing together
in the same residence, neolocal residence, is not a central element (building
block) or Akan social structure. It does happen, and is correlated
with whether the couple is in the home town or away. The system developed
in the long past, when away meant living in the satellite villages to farm.
When the couple returned to the home town, they would each go to stay in
their separate lineage houses. With urbanization, and Akan people
going to find work in the city, in the country towns, or overseas, the
same pattern has been adapted. Husbands and wives live neolocally
while away, but are likely to live duolocally
when in the home town, temporarily for funerals, festivals and Easter,
and permanently for retirement, especially if one of them succeeds to a
stool office. |
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| This
pattern
of duolocal residence in the home town and neolocal residence while away
produces a household pattern that has been interpreted as social change
that is more apparent than real, as if urban households represent the westernized
pattern. |
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| The verb “to marry” is used differently
in the Akan language than it is used in English. The relationship can be
temporarily discontinued if there is an annoyance between spouses, and
the verb reflects this. |
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| Senior women have huge power in running
abusua
(lineage) affairs. Much of this is not public. It is covert.
Elders (9/10 male) in a chief’s court may break during a case to “consult
the ancestors.” They each go off to their separate lineage houses,
perhaps to have a meal. They consult the old women in the abusua
(matrilineage) house. The facts are known to those old women, who
keep better track of descent lines, and they influence the decision made
in the chief’s court by advising the elders during that break. |
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| Separation and divorce high frequency
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especially after the child bearing and child raising years. This
is seen as a needed element in maintaining the abusua (lineage).
A high divorce rate is common among most matrilineal societies around the
world. |
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| Immigrants to Canada have their feet
in two cultures. This has particular significance for Akan migrants
to Canada. As with most immigrants, Akan people in Canada retain
their links to home, especially to their abusua. Since
neolocal residence is part of their original matrilineal social structure,
they look like they have assimilated, and adopted the mainstream Canadian
model of neolocal residence. |
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| As increasing numbers of immigrants
come to Canada from societies with different structures and functions than
mainstream Canada, our society is becoming increasingly heterogeneous.
Students now contemplating professional careers, for which they are now
studying criminology, social work, early childhood education, and any other
which may require interventions or communications with people from many
cultures, it is useful to look at the Akan system for an idea of just how
different a family pattern may be while sometimes appearing to be more
similar than it is. |
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