The Lele of the Kasai
Paperback edition
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| Author | Mary Douglas |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Ethnography |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press for International African Institute |
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Publication date
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1963 |
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| Preceded by | Peoples of the Lake Nyasa Region |
| Followed by | Purity and Danger |
The Lele of the Kasai (1963) was the second book by the influential British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the first under her married name. In it she reported on her anthropological fieldwork among the Lele people on the western bank of the Kasai River in the Basongo area of what had at the time been south-western Belgian Congo. The ending of Belgian colonial rule in 1960 was one of the factors that brought her to abandon the usual practice in anthropological field reports of writing in the present tense. The book describes the social, economic and religious life of a large Lele village.
The first chapter, The Lele on the Map, indicates the location of Lele territory, the neighbouring peoples, and the relations between them.
The second chapter, entitled The Productive Side of the Economy, considers the resources available to the Lele, and their exploitation of them through hunting, fishing, slash and burn agriculture, and craftsmanship, primarily the production of raffia cloth.
The third chapter, Distribution of Wealth, describes how durable and perishable goods are distributed in accordance with status, payment of fees and dues, and exchange through trade and barter.
The fourth chapter, The Village: Offices and Age-Sets, sets out how the division of a village by age sets cross-cuts and counterbalances division by kinship.
The fifth chapter, Clans, describes the social functions of matrilineal clans spread out over a number of villages.
The sixth chapter, Marriage: I. The Private Wife and Private Family, discusses the polygynous system of household marriage, concentrating control of marriageable women in the hands of older men, the special status accorded to fathers and grandfathers, the social obligations of sons-in-law, notions of sexual pollution, and mother-daughter relationships.
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