Force and Fission in Northern Somali Lineage Structure1

Abstract

AS IS well-known, the term lineage is applied to those societies whose politics are cast in a genealogical idiom and whose dominant political ideology is that political relations are a function of genealogical distance. In such communities political relations diverge or converge according to the genealogical proximity of the persons or groups concerned. Structural relations thus depend upon genealogical position, and groups which through descent from a common ancestor are genealogically equivalent are also, in principle, politically equal. As such a community, divided into a system of descent groups, expands over time all its segments do not necessarily develop in man power or wealth at the same pace. At every point of ramification in the lineage system natural growth does not result in the production of an array of lineages exactly balanced in population, wealth, or in other respects. Thus, two or more segments descended from a common ancestor are not necessarily equivalent in size or resources. And, in societies where such differences are of direct political significance, this means that, as lineages develop historically, discrepancies tend to arise between their genealogical position and their actual political power. The resolution of such discrepancies by genealogical manipulation and by fictions of clanship (in terms of the dominant political ideology) is a well-known feature of segmentary lineage systems and, indeed, has been taken as a general, if not necessary, characteristic of this type of political system (Fortes 1953: 28). This, however, is not true of the segmentary lineage system of the northern Somali where inconsistencies between the genealogical positions of groups and their actual political power are generally not resolved by genealogical manipulation or fictions, but by contractual alliances which leave their genealogies unaltered. In discussing some of the morphological and functional characteristics of northern Somali lineages in this paper, I argue that this feature is consistent with the fact that clanship is not the sole idiom of Somali politics. For in northern Somali society all political units owe their solidarity to explicit contracts of government which define the specific legal and political obligations of their members (see Lewis 1959a). Thus, although society as a whole is structured agnatically, agnation itself is not the sole basis of political unity, and it is through contract that the implicit values of agnation are given effect in the constitution of political groups. And while working generally within the framework of agnation, contract enables agnates (and sometimes non-agnates) to unite in corporate political groups sometimes irrespective of their genealogical proximity.