THE JIE ARE ONE OF SEVEN TRIBES comprising the 'Karamajong Cluster' (Gulliver 1952). They number about 18,ooo, and live in the Karamoja District of north-eastern Uganda. Their country is about go by 70 miles in extent, and most of it is utilized as grazing-grounds, for the permanent settlements are restricted to a rough circle with a six miles radius round Kotido. They have a mixed economy of agriculture and transhumance pastoralism, but with a very strong emotional, ritual, and social emphasis on the ownership and use of stock, chiefly cattle. There are between three and four head of cattle per head of population. The young men and boys spend almost all their time in cattle or goat camps, tending the stock and living on an unvaried diet of mixed milk and blood. The older men and the womenfolk depend more on a cereal diet, supplemented by meat and milk. For these people, the normal inhabitants of the permanent settlements, values and ideas in regard to stock are a constant driving force in the kinship, neighbourhood, and ritual structure of social life. The largest male group amongst whom agnatic ties are claimed to be known forms the core of the extended family, which includes also the mothers and wives as well as the unmarried sisters and daughters of the male members. Normally, the senior adult males are related through a common grandfather, whose herds they have severally inherited via their fathers. The extended family is internally differentiated according to maternal affiliation, the basic unit being a 'house', a set of full-brothers (all of the sons of one woman). The house includes also the brothers' wives, sons, sons' wives and children, and their unmarried sisters and daughters. This group is the unit of stock ownership, and of the closest co-operation and joint development. The extended family is the widest group within which members acknowledge mutual rights and obligations in respect of each other's herds (Gulliver 1954). Wider than the extended family is the clan in which men are supposed to be related agnatically, thov,gh genealogical links cannot be traced. Between one and eight extended families comprise the numerical strength of a clan, which is a residential and ritual group. Formerly a clan occupied a single, large palisaded homestead, and, though some still remain, today a clan is usually divided amongst several homesteads which form a distinct clan-hamlet. Between one and five such hamlets form a geographically disparate settlement, with its own artificial water supplies, ritual groves, and garden lands. Settlements combine into one of seven districts, which make up the whole of the settled area. There is no corresponding organization of the stock camps or grazing grounds. Movements and dispositions of camps are entirely at the discretion of the owner of the stock and his representative, the head of the camp. There are no rights in either grazing land or water. Stock of all clans and districts everywhere intermingle.