4
Karen A. Porter
Anthropos 99.2004
patrilineal social structure are judged less harshly
than those who cannot. I go on to suggest that
shifts in complementary brother-sister relations in
patrilineal societies have broad implications for
gender relations shaping access to resources and
control over processes of social reproduction.
Pare Society and Social Organization
The Pare are Bantu speakers who reside in the
South Pare Mountains in northeastern Tanzania,
approximately 45 miles southeast of Moshi and
Kilimanjaro. Rugged and steep, the mountains
rise suddenly from the thorn-scrub steppe, stretch
30 miles, and rise 8,000 ft. Most Pare live on
the western slopes between 1,500 ft. and 4,500 ft.
above sea level and in the wetter areas of the
leeward east side. Irrigated agriculture, which has
been practiced for centuries in Gonja Division
where research was conducted, is the primary
livelihood. On multiple plots located at different
elevations, farmers grow coffee, cardamom, and
rice as cash crops, as well as a wide range of
food crops, particularly maize, beans, cassava,
and banana. Cattle continue to be an important
store of value and a medium of exchange, and
occupy a central place in the symbolic system.
They remain especially important in bridewealth
transactions, as a means for wealthy men to obtain
dependents through loans, and as signifiers of key
social relations for both men and women.
The South Pare Mountains are difficult to ac
cess for only a rugged dirt road links them to
the closest lowland town of Same. Life in the
mountains continues without instruments of mo
dernity such as electricity, running water, tele
phones, and tarmac roads. People produce most
of what they consume according to the insistent
seasonal rhythms of agricultural life. And although
people perceive land as scarce, data I collected
over seven seasons suggest that labor rather than
land is the greater constraint. Social relations are
dense and localized. Committed to their land, Pare
rarely leave their mountain communities altogether
though it is much more common for men to travel
than women. Even though the poorly developed in
frastructure and low market prices makes incomes
from cash cropping meager at best and discourages
farmers from elaborating and diversifying, Pare are
players in the global economy. Agriculture simply
cannot generate enough income to meet people’s
needs (Porter 1996; 9) so most people engage in
the market economy in other ways in order to
make money, such as performing casual labor,
apprenticing with a local craftsman, migrating to
work in urban areas, or investing in education.
Casual labor takes many forms - domestic
chores, agricultural tasks, road building, etc. Un
like many areas in East Africa, permanent out
migration of male household heads is relatively
low (5%), according to my survey, but increas
ingly, young men migrate to towns to find work
and later return to build a home, marry, and lay
claim to land still controlled by local social groups.
Many parents invest in the formal education of
both sons and daughters, something they have
done since colonial times (ELMB n. d.), with the
hope that it will lead to salaried employment and
sustainable incomes. In this area, female secondary
school attendance is high, unlike many other parts
of Tanzania and Africa (55% in 1992-93 and
57% in 1999-2000, based on data collected in
the field), though the cost of education and the
need for labor effectively limits children of poorer
families from attending.
The social world of the Pare is organized into
patricians (mbari, sg.) and lineages (lukolo, sg.,
malukolo, pi.). Evidence from the past suggests
that patrilineal descent groups occupied specific
tracts of land (Kimambo 1969), now conceptually
inscribed with rich and deep social histories.
Chiefly lineages dominated rather large geographic
areas, isanga (country), and controlled rainmaking
rituals, an expression of mystical power, though
they shared political power with a council of
elders drawn from each constituent lineage in the
territory. A system of heritable social ranking
and economic differentiation accompanied this
structure. Both male and female elders were
important in kigongo (district) level ritual and
political organization.
The five generation deep lineage, lukolo, is
the most important property holding group. Sons
of the same father build their own homes on
contiguous lineage plots, though this is less the
case now than in the past, due to village reconfi
guration initially instigated during the colonial pe
riod and continued under independent government,
especially during Ujamaa. 2 Reshaped local bound
2 Tanzania gained independence from Great Britain in 1961
and in 1967 implemented a development program known
as the Arusha Declaration, which promoted goals of so
cialism and self-reliance in its effort to restructure the
rural economy. The plan entailed reallocating resources
to minimize regional inequalities, setting price controls,
establishing parastatal organizations to manage key areas
of the economy including cash crop marketing, provision
of basic health services and a universal primary educa
tion program, and promoted an ideology of hard work,