The Circulation of Women and Children in Northern Ghana

Abstract

In this article we consider some interconnected aspects of domestic organisation among the societies of northern Ghana which relate to the circulation (or spatial movement) of women and children. As the result of recent fieldwork among the LoWiili and the Gonja we were led to compare a set of kinship factors. These are: the nature of marriage prestations (bridewealth etc.); the pattern of divorce; the presence of widow inheritance (or levirate); the extent of kinship fostering; the concepts of paternity; the kind of kin groups. We observe that the LoWiili and Gonja display two distinct clusters of these variables, and that the same two clusters are found in all of the societies we discuss with some relatively minor exceptions. We seek to understand why these variables should be grouped in these two ways, what is their influence on residence, and offer an explanation for their occurrence. The discussion of these interrelationships continues our earlier lines of research on fostering (E. Goody I960; I966), divorce (E. Goody I962), descent (J. Goody I962; in press b) and cross-cousin marriage (J. & E. Goody I966). Though it is specific in its ethnographical reference, the analysis relates to the general theme pursued by Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes (1949a; I950), Gluckman (I950), Leach (I957), Fallers (I957), Stephens (I962), Levi-Strauss (I963), Lewis (I962) and many others concerning the relative strength of conjugal and sibling bonds. We are concerned with this problem not in the abstract but in so far as these ties are explicit in patterns of residence. We wish to make the general point that the residence pattern must be viewed not simply in relation to the post-marital residence of women (virilocal, uxorilocal etc.) but as a whole, that is, over the entire life-cycle, so as to include the return to natal kin (by divorce) as well as the earlier separation from them (by marriage). It must also include an analysis of the factors determining the residence of the children of the union; for the bonds between siblings that have been loosened by marriage may be strengthened by bringing up (fostering) one another's children or by arranging marriages between them; indeed, we regard some forms of preferential cross-cousin marriage as just such an attempt to perpetuate the brother-sister tie in the following generation-the compensation for the incest taboo at one remove.' Methodologically we set out to continue the tradition of limited comparisons (using a few societies) that has already proved itself of some value in furthering our understanding of divorce (Gluckman I950; Leach I957), witchcraft (Nadel I952; Wilson 195I), cross-cousin marriage (Radcliffe-Brown 1930; Leach I95I), matrilineal systems (Richards I950), incest (J. Goody i956b) and a number of other topics. We then extend the scope of the essay to consider the other groups in the