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Segmentation among the Tiv: a reappraisal
Author(s) -
VERDON MICHEL
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1983.10.2.02a00050
Subject(s) - polity , kinship , lineage (genetic) , epistemology , contradiction , politics , sociology , representation (politics) , perspective (graphical) , anthropology , philosophy , biology , political science , law , biochemistry , artificial intelligence , computer science , gene
Theoretical assumptions greatly influence our perception of reality. The representation of the Tiv as a “segmentary lineage system” can be questioned from this perspective. With a different conceptual framework I argue that the Tiv did not have any lineages and, a fortiori, any segmentary lineages. One can picture Tiv society as a social formation poised between a chiefly polity and a polity organized around lineages. One ought further to dismantle the very category of “segmentary lineages” because it is predicated on a definition of descent groups that leads to contradiction and to the inclusion, within the same category, of vastly divergent polities. [politics, segmentary societies, kinship, epistemology]