Ashanti Social Organization: Some Ethnographic Clarifications

Abstract

The scientific study of Ashanti began after their defeat and annexation by the British in 1901. Captain R. S. Rattray, the first head of the Anthropological Department of the British colonial administration in the Gold Coast, pioneered Ashanti field work and published his data from 1916 to 1930 (Rattray 1916, 1923, 1927, 1929, and 1930). His monumental ethnographic corpus has been supplemented by the works of other anthropologists, particularly Herskovits (1937); Fortes (1949, 1950, 1969); Basehart (1961); and Murdock (1940* 1959)The issues raised here relate to the problem of ethnographic accuracy on the part of foreign anthropologists and other writers on Ashanti. The problem is reflected in the significant misinterpretation of Ashanti kinship units and concepts; a situation which largely accounts for the confusion over the nature of Ashanti descent, which Rattray (1929:2) initially conceived as bior possibly multi-lateral; Murdock (1940:555), as having both matri-sibs and patri-sibs; Fortes (1950:254), as being matrilineal; and Goody (1961), as double descent.2 The objective of this paper is to examine how the family is conceived in the Ashanti context, and to elucidate the basic but little understood and often misinterpreted Ashanti concepts of abusua, ntqn (nton), and ntrq (ntoro). This reexamination is a prelude to resolving the confusion which also characterizes the analysis of Ashanti kinship structure and terminology in general, as well as residence patterns. Certain points have to be borne in mind in offering this criticism of Ashanti ethnography. First, the lapse of 60 years between Rattray's field work and today has naturally relegated many aspects of his findings to history. Even then, Rattray's research was carried out mostly at Mampon and a few other towns with important chiefdoms, at a time when the King of Ashanti, Agyeman Prempeh I, his loyal Paramount Chiefs and Elders, and some members of their respective royal lineages were interned by the British on the Indian Ocean islands of Seychelles. Meyer Fortes, the next major ethnographer, carried out his field work in 1945. His views on Ashanti are based on the then small, relatively isolated villages of Agogo and Asokore (Fortes, Steel, and Ady 1947)M. J. Herskovits's 1937 work was also in Asokore and was a hurriedly conducted investigation of a specific Ashanti concept, the Ntoro. Basehart (1961) and Murdock (1940, 1959) have not done research in Ashanti; their ideas are derived from Rattray. Notwithstanding these limitations of field work and interpretation, Ashanti is one of the best described of any pre-colonial state in Africa.