Social Facts and Fabrications: "Customary" Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980

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CUP Archive, Jun 27, 1986 - Social Science - 416 pages
In this book, Sally Falk Moore examines a hundred years in the history of an African people, the Chagga of Kilimanjaro, in order to understand how their present system of 'customary' laws came to be the way it is, and how the idea of custom was used in Tanzania's experiment with African socialism. She discusses the changes that have occurred in the formal legal system, alongside the vast economic and political transformations that came with cash cropping and colonial rule. She also presents a 'legal' chronicle of the members of one lineage to illustrate its use of the formal legal system. This study of the difference between law in the life of a people and law in the local courts will interest teachers and students of legal anthropology and law and also provides an important contribution to anthropological theory. In addition it has practical relevance for the understanding of the operation of 'traditional' institutions and will appeal to readers interested in African history and African studies.

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Contents

A timeoriented anthropology events processes
1
ivory slaves cattle
15
Practical norms and mystical ideas in Chagga law
38
The powers and obligations of chiefs and commoners
52
Tables
80
chiefs cattle cash and courts
95
an economic
110
Progress of African coffee production on Kilimanjaro page
120
Mwika court records
175
Kilema court records
176
KeniMritiMengwe court records
177
Mamba court records
178
Marangu court cases
179
The localized patriline in the 1960s and 1970s
213
Amounts of land in 1969 in and out of the core area
233
Education occupation house type and circumcision of wives 1969
234

Sources of rural employment in Kilimanjaro district
136
Kilimanjaro population occupations by sex 1978
137
The formal structure of local government and local courts
139
Lutheran church marriages in Mamba
140
Hierarchy of judicial levels mid1970s
159
Judiciary 1973
160
The case reports
168
Civil case records
174
The localism of marriage affinal connections of the
238
The localism of marriagesisters of the men of the
240
The chronicle of the Mlineage
244
The local lineage and the larger setting
298
From types to sequences social change
320
Notes
330
Glossary
373
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