Man Vol. 16, Number 1, March 1981, pgs. 135-138

CORRESPONDENCE

The authority of ancestors

C.J. Calhoun's criticism (Man (N.S.) 15, 310-13) of myinterpretation of ancestor cults in Africa requires a reply on severalpoints.
First, some matters of ethnography. It is one of Calhoun's strictures that'Fortes also offers a term for ancestor and a distinct one for elder (yaaband kpeem), translations Kopytoff does not consider' (Calhoun 1980:312). In a sense, this sums up a central issue in my disagreement withprevious critics as well as Calhoun: how cavalier can one be with translations?Fortes does not, in fact, offer the translations Calhoun say he does. WhatFortes does at various places is to gloss the English words 'ancestor' and'lineage head' by Tallensi terms. But to gloss is not to translate.
The Tallensi term kpeem does not, pace Calhoun, mean 'elder'.In certain contexts, Fortes glosses it by the following English meanings:lineage head, head of lineage section, senior male member of the lineage andhis age and generational equals, senior, elder (Fortes 1940: 251; 1945: 219,224). In one instance, Fortes ventures to say that 'grandfather' (ba-kpeem;ba = 'father') is 'literally "older father"' (Fortes 1949: 236). However,Fortes states elsewhere: 'Seniority (kpem[partialdiff]t) is defined by fourcriteria, singly or in combination according to the situation and the groupinvolved. These are age, generation, social maturity, and status' (1945: 225).The last two criteria take the term out of the lineage sphere and out of theage and kinship spheres. Indeed, we are told that 'a chief is alwayskpeem irrespective of his age or generation' (1945: 22).
What, then, does kpeem mean? I have no access to a Tallensi dictionary(if one exists). Cognates, however do exist in related languages of theCentral Gur group (see Rapp 1966: 188-90 and Alexandre 1953: ii, 206, 213). Inthe most closely related Gurunsi (so-called Frafra), kpeem means someonewho is stronger, more powerful, greater than oneself; kwenne meansstrong man, a man of power and energy; kpeengo means strength, might,force, authority. In More (Mossi), the radicals kwem and kyem-refer to being solid, hard, larger, more important. In brief, the root termhas to do with power, hierarchy, authority (and it can be applied to one whoseauthority derives from age). Rather than seniority, it denotes superiority byvirtue of status, age, maturity, 		strength, office or whatever. (This conformswith the semantics in Bantu languages which, as my analysis showed, often drawupon a radical best rendered by the French les grands to indicate whatanthropologists call 'ancestors' and 'elders'.) To translate kpeem by'elder' is to mistranslate it and push it into an entirely different semanticfield.
What of the other Tallensi term, yaab, which Calhoun says I ignore andwhich he claims means 'ancestor'? Once again, the translation is careless.Fortes uses yaab at various times to gloss the following: ancestor,founding ancestor, grandparent and grandparent's sibling, any patrilinealancestor beyond and including grandfather (Fortes 1945: 54, 79, 201; 1949:146-7, 236). The semantic range thus includes (in addition to otherextensions, probably) both the living and the dead lineage elders above thefather's generation. This conforms with the meaning of yab in Gurunsiand yâba in More (Rapp 1966: 230; Alexandre 1953: i, 3II; ii,458).
There is another Tallensi term relevant here and which Calhoun does notmention. This is ba-. Fortes uses it to gloss the following: father,founding ancestor, forefathers (1945: 201; 1949: 174, 236, 329; see alsoRattray 1932: 356). The semantic range thus includes one's father and theforefathers beyond. It is not clear whether it extends laterally from thedirect line of ascendants (for example, to father's father's brother) asba- does in More (Alexandre 1953: ii, 10). Two differences between thetwo terms emerge (and there must be others): ba- includes the fatherwhile yaab stops with the grandfather, and yaab includes womenwhile ba- appears to apply only to males.
Tallensi, then, use terms for lineage elders that disregard the dividing linebetween those who are alive and those who are dead. In this, they operate verymuch within the semantic universe of the African societies that I examined inmy article (1971: 134-6). This should lay to rest Calhoun's statement that'Kopytoff's argument is apparently based on the assumption that all Africansare the same, for he continually speaks of 'African ancestor cults' as a unit,while unthinkingly criticising Forte's analysis of the Tallensi on the basis ofhis own material on the Suku' (Calhoun 1980: 311). The semantic are indeedvery much the same across the sub-Saharan continent. As to
my venturing into generalisations, I was indeed extending Fortes's own masterlygeneralisations about 'African ancestor worship' and my references to theTallensi were as peripheral as those of Fortes. Calhoun misunderstands, Ithink, the premisses of my argument. Nowhere, for example, have I said thatliving elders are not different from dead elders. Indeed, I discussed theimplications of this difference for the dominance of formal status in therelationship with dead elders (1971: 138).
Let me briefly restate the argument. In African conception, the 'horizontal'boundary between living and dead kinsmen and particularly between living anddead lineage members is secondary tot he 'vertical' boundary between one'slineage and outsiders, between one's elders (living-and-dead) and the otherliving-and-dead. This conception - so often commented on in ethnographies - isreflected, I argue, in the semantics of the nomenclatures used. In some cases(though not in all), the term for elders actually spans the living-dead divide(as it does with the Suku and the Tallensi). Even more significantly, acomparative linguistic-semantic analysis shows that the terms for what we call'living elders' and 'dead ancestors' are often cognate and belong to the samesemantic field. African languages seem to draw these terms from the samesemantic pool, within which we see evidence of semantic drift as we move fromsociety to society. This is a fact of what might be called pan-Africancultural 'macrosemantics' and I suggest - nay, insist - that we shouldincorporate it into our anthropological theorising rather than cling to thesemantics of Western modern nomenclatures in which the living-dead divide hasfar greater significance than it does in Africa.
What I am saying is, of course, hardly new, and I must confess to certaindiscomfort in having to restate it in 1980. Before the term 'culturalsemantics' was born, Boas was raising a similar issue in 1889, in his 'Onalternating sounds, ' with respect to inter-cultural phonetic apperception -namely, that what is a single sound in one language can be heard as two soundsby a listener whose language makes different phonemic 'cuts'. The point isthat the ethnographer's job is to understand the semantics of the culture athand, as it is the linguist's job to understand the phonemics of the languageat hand. Only secondarily is the ethnographer concerned with whether English(or French or Chinese) words turn out to convey that culture's concepts - moreor less, and by push, pull, and puff. I other words, we try to write aSuku-English or a Tallensi-English dictionary, rather than an English-Suku oran English-Tallensi dictionary.
This is at the heart of the disagreement. Calhoun, for example, approvinglyquotes James Brain's critique of my analysis: 'that 		Bantu languages have noword for ancestral spirit is patently absurd' (Brain 1973: 126). This is thesort of semantic naivete on which abridged dictionaries thrive. Of course onecan find a Bantu word 'for' ancestral spirit, as one can find one 'for' God,cousin, uncle, king, slave, family, and so on. Early explorers had no problemswith this and early anthropologists erected many of their conclusions on suchcommonsensical translations.
But as Evans-Pritchard (1936) showed us long ago, the fact that there is aZande word 'for' God has little to do with what mbori means in Zande,and to render mbori by the English god results in a subtle andradical misunderstanding of Zande thought. I would claim that this also goesfor the English term ancestor, no matter how commonsensical it appearsto be. (Nobody, by now, argues that this does not go for English cousinor uncle!). It should be noted that after his dismissal of the problemas absurd, Brain supplies the Luguru word for 'ancestral spirit'. But alas,the word is also revealed, in the course of his discussion, to stand for thefollowing package: spirits in general, burial and sacrificial places,mysterious and awesome places, high places, and even uncommonly curious baboons(Brain 1973: 131-32).
To be sure, behind my argument there lie some fundamental theoretical issues.Are linguistic and cultural categories important? To take an extra example, ifone subscribes to the position that the reality is in the social structure andthat culture, with its semantic categories, is but a symbolic reflection ofthat reality, then my concerns are indeed irrelevant. Why waste time on whatare in any case imperfect reflections of reality? Ancestors are real, and soare family, descent, slavery and so on. Let us study 'them' and gloss themoccasionally with the imperfect cultural nomenclature. On the other hand, ifone thinks that the social structure is not determinant but is in someinteractive and dialectical relationship with culture, then cultural semanticsare worth more time than Calhoun is willing to give them.
Igor Kopytoff
University of Pennsylvania
Alexandre, R.P. 1953. La langue möré. Dakar: IFAN.
Boas, Franz 1889. On alternating sounds. Am. Anthrop.2,47-53.
Brain, James L. 1973. Ancestors as elders in Africa - further thoughts.Man (N.S.) 43, 122-39.
Calhoun, C.J. 1980. The authority of ancestors: a sociological reconsiderationof Forte's Tallensi in response to Fortes's critics. Man (N.S.)15, 304-19.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1936. Zande theology. Reprinted in Socialanthropology and other essays. New York: Free Press.
Fortes, Meyer 1940. The political system of the Tallensi of the NorthernTerritories of the Gold Coast. In African political systems (eds) M.Fortes & E.E. Evans-Pritchard. London: Oxford Univ. Press.
- 1945. The dynamics of clanship among the Tallensi. London: OxfordUniv. Press.
- 1949. The web of kinship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford Univ.Press.
Kopytoff, Igor 1971. Ancestors as elders in Africa. Africa41,129-42.
Rapp, Eugen Ludwig 1966. Die Gurenne-Sprachein Nordghana. Leipzig:Verlag Enzyklopädie. (Lehbücher für das Studium derOrientalischen und Afrikanischen Sprachen. Band XI).
Rattray, R.S. 1932. The tribes of the Ashanti hinteland, Vol. 2.Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Professor Kopytoff offers us a variety of observations in what he calls'pan-African cultural "macrosemantics".' Claiming Boas as a distinguishedancestor, he argues that 'the ethnographer's job is to understand the semanticsof the culture at hand, as it is the linguist's job to understand the phonemicsof the language at hand'. Though Kopytoff devotes most of his letter to thetranslation of specific terms, it is, as I think he knows, in this conceptionof task that we crucially disagree. I hold that ethnographers ought, at leastin part, to study society.
It is the profound importance of the sociological side of Forte's greatethnography of the Tallensi which I sought to demonstrate in my recent article.Fortes's critics, I contended, repeatedly fall into a culturalism whichobscures their vision of key social issues, and which correspondingly preventsthem from understanding the social anthropology they propose to criticise. Ihave little doubt, in any case, that 'social structure ... is in someinteractive and dialectical relationship with culture'. My argument is thatsemantics cannot decide the sociological issues under consideration.
Kopytoff's self-defence is somewhat disingenuous. In restating his earlierargument, he leaves out most of the substance, and thus most of the specificerrors. I shall note here just one part of the crucial difference betweenancestors and elders. Kopytoff writes now: 'In African conception, the"horizontal" boundary between living and dead kinsmen and particularly betweenliving and dead lineage members is secondary to the "vertical" boundary betweenone's lineage and outsiders, between one's elders (living-and-dead) and theother living-and-dead.'		 Let us accept this as plausible, though noting that this does not oblige us toaccept the alleged African conception. Let us also grant, for purposes ofargument, that 'the term for elders' actually spans the living-dead divide.'Now, does this justify Kopytoff's (1971) argument that the category ofancestors can readily be scrapped as ethnocentric, and the social significanceof ancestral authority be understood through the category of elders? I thinknot. Perhaps most obviously, the genealogical specificity of ancestorsdistinguishes them from the continuum of relative age which defines elders. Anancestor can genealogically define a lineage; an elder as suchcannot.
We see the sociological poverty of 'pan-African cultural "macrosemantics"'when we look at empirical cases. He holds the following description of Sukupractice to be 'congruent with most ethnographic descriptions of African"ancestor cults",' including, apparently, the Tallensi: In short, to those onthe outside, a lineage is represented by the eldest member present. Within thelineage, the lineage is represented to any one member by an older memberpresent, and collectively, by all older members living and dead (1971: 133).
The notion that this is true of Forte's description of the Tallensi isnonsense (see 1945: 31; 1965: 129). Genealogical seniority is usuallycorrelated with age, but need not be. More importantly, perhaps, Kopytoff failto grasp that Tale lineages are not static units, but evanescent ones withsegments or wholes called into action by specific events. The definition ofthe relevant lineages among the parties to any interaction depends onestablishing unity (where possible) in the nearest common patrilinealancestors, and/or distinction in the most distant separate patrilineal, or incertain cases matrilateral, ancestors. For such reckoning, ancestors must begenealogically specific. Ancestors must be older than descendants, to be sure,but that is not enough; they must also be at least the putative progenitors ofthose descendants. Because of the importance of descent as such, an olderbrother is a very different sort of elder from a father.
There are a variety of other instances of Kopytoff's inattention to thesociological dimension of analysis, due perhaps to an assumption that semanticanalysis covers the same territory better. In original essay and recent letteralike, he ignores the contrast between matriliny and patriliny, taking theexistence of some cognate terms to justify generalisation. Closer to thepreceding example, Kopytoff thinks that Fortes (1945: 225) means by 'socialmaturity' and 'status' Tale phenomena which have nothing to do with age,kinship or lineages!
I shall not belabour the point. Fortes deserves to be read carefully, andkinship
deserves to be studied as a social, as well as cultural, phenomenon.
C.J. Calhoun
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Fortes, M. 1945. The dynamics of clanship Among the Tallensi. London:Oxford Univ. Press.
- 1965. Some reflections on ancestor worship in Africa. In African systemsof thought (eds) M. Fortes & G. Dieterlen. London: OXford Univ.Press.
Kopytoff, I. 1971. Ancestors as elders in Africa. Africa41,129-42.
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