CONTEXTS OF KEVSHff. AN EASSY IN THE FAMILY SOCIOLOGY OF THE GONJA OF NORTHERN GHANA. E N. GOODY. CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY NO. 7 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1973 PP. 335. PRICE «6 20 ; IN UNITED KINGDOM FT is with much pleasure that we welcome the first of Dr. Esther Goody s Volumes on the Gonja social system. Her previous articles, dealing with Gon- ja marriage and divorce, fostering, witchcraft and so on had already given us a fore-taste of what was to come and now we have another worthy contribu- tion to the sociology of northern Ghana from a Cambridge Anthropologist. This contribution is particularly welcome for it gives us a rich insight into domestic and political institutions in a "bilateral kinship system". The basic problems Dr. Esther Goody sets out to solve are those ot tracing the interrelationships between political and domestic institutions and of documenting the working of a "largely bilateral system." She achieves tier aims by studying the rolies and norms that are the bases of marriage and kin- ship and by examining in some detail four idioms of relationships which are the stuff of everyday life in the Gonja state. These include the complex of greeting and begging behaviour; the sharing of cooked food; the control and direction of mystical forces and the links between man and the supernatural, controlled with the help of diviners, shrines and propitiating acts. The book, which is the result of field work carried out in Central Gonja in 1956 and 1957, supplemented by data collected in the East and West of the state in 1964 and 1965, is divided into four sections. The first deals with the contexts and problems of the study. The second deals with marriage, includ- ing courtship, the conjugal relationship and divorce. The third section is about kinship, in particular filial and sibling ties. Section four looks at resi- dence patterns and the developmental cycle of the domestic group. Four appendices provide rich quantitative evidence supporting the discussions in the text. Much of the data discussed will prove to be extremely important m future comparative studies of partner-choice, marriage, parent-child relations and indeed the whole complex of relations within the conjugal family. For much of what she describes is not "typical" of Africa, at least from what has hitherto besn described in the major descriptive monographs. The marriage tie is based upon a personal relationship formed during courtship (only a minority of marriages are arranged by the parental generation) and there is little stress on intermediaries or extended negotiations- The conjugal rela- tionship is essentially based upon mutual attraction and personal choice. The corollary of this is that divorce is easy and frequent. Given in addition a situation in which a considerable minority of children are reared by kin, we discover that not only are there no distinguishable bounded descent groups in Gonja society (neither unilineal nor non-unillnteal) but the conjugal family itself of husband wife and children is not an enduring coresidential group nor is it a domestic group. We are informed that "there is no single clearly defined group which stays together over time "(p. 169)". We are given a descri- ption of a fluid system characterised by a considerable amount of social and spatial mobility. This is not to say however that kinship ties between parents and children or between siblings or conjugal ties do not persist over space m and through time. In fact they do and it is Dr Esther Goody's accomplishment to describe how and why this continuity occurs- For she states "The fact that people united by these strong primary bonds of siblingship and parenthood are often living in widely separated villages and that such ties tend to be maintained regardless of intervening distances is one of the main features of Gonja social structure" (p. 170). Because of frequent dissolution ol marriage and what she calls terminal separation of marriage many young people must of necessity relate to their parents separately. Indeed many children are fostered by kin as a dircet result of the dissolution of their family of orienta- tion (p. 192)- Another basic question raised by her materials is that of how to define divorce in the Gonja situation (pp. 140-141). The student of comparative family sociology will be compelled by Dr. Esther Goody's material and definitions and analysis to look more closely at his categorizations of kinship and marriage systems and domestic phenomena. And from now onwards, it will be increasingly difficult for anthropology students, lawyers and others to talk as if all Ghanaian social systems had a lineage base! In addition the Ghanaian home scientist, who so far suffers from a lack of basic documentation of Ghanaian home management practices, has been offered a wealth of detail regarding such matters as the sharing ot cooked food, labour between co-wives, and coc- trol and use of basic resources. The specialist in child development has been given an institution in an African context, about which I believe more is to come. fostering, an important child rearing the division of domestic insight into The only thing which one seriously regrets about this important book is its prohibitively high price. A paper-backed student edition at a much iower price would be most welcome! C. Oppong: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon 131