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Chisungu x Bemba - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Such complex networks will in turn create certain social rules or norms that a society’s members are expected to adhere to — albeit with certain variations according to the society’s hierarchical positions.
        
        Consequently, social structures will define and outline the different roles that actors will undertake
  - - - Richard explained that the social structure of the Bemba is one that is centred around matrilineality and it is maintained and expressed by the Chisungu ceremony
      - Richard explains how the Chisungu ceremony fits into the whole of the Bemba society
    - - Robbins argued that the Urapmin’s social structure is a product of people acting in both lawful and wilful way.
      - Robbins aims to understand the impact of Christinaity on the Urapmin society
  - - - matrilineal aspect of the society
        
        financial dependency lies on the wife’s family, but men remain dominant — to an extent.
    - - after their conversion to Christianity, they are left to live with two ‘cultures’
        
        their traditional ideas about social structure are in conflict with the newly adopted Christian ideas.
  - - - understand ‘social structure’ as an objective, organism-like reality independent of Bemba people’s concepts or feelings
      - the contradictions are within social structure
    - - sees Urapmin ‘social structure’, such as marriages or group membership, as made in the first place through value structures like their desire for relationships and their dialectical commitment to an interplay of willfulness and lawfulness
      - contradiction between social structure and religion
      - the values of social structure and liking relationships require people to act willfully, but religious values define willfulness as sin.
- - - - the Urapmin do not have a set group but can voluntarily choose who they form a kinship relation with
      - thus belonging to more than one group at the same level of the social structure
      - "in planning social action people do not orient to an image of an ideal social structure or to a set of conscious rules concerning how people in specific ascribed statuses should interact."
    - - ethnographic example in which Big Men — or aspiring ones —jump at the chance to ask a girl’s will, a process which is usually considered as hard work.
      - the Big Men are essential to Urapmin society because they are the ones that arrange people into villages and assign them different tasks
      - BM bind as many people as possible to create a large social unit, they “stabilize Urapmin social arrangement.
    - - since they were originally the ones who allowed the young men to go to Tifalmin — but have also gone so far as to convert neighbouring regions.
  - - - the Bembans are preoccupied mostly by rank determined by age
    - - thus placing the financial dependency on the wife’s family — the conflicts arising from this will be detailed later on
    - - the people with legitimate authority over children in the Bemba society is the mother’s brothers and not the fathers
    - - Richard also noted that a successful Nacimbusa is one that has “unusual intellectual ability as well as leadership and the power to attract women from surrounding villages.”
      - it is still important to note that reputation still comes second to age and descent — as illustrated by the song “the armpit is never higher than the shoulder.”
- - - - social significance because it gives the initiated girl the ‘secret knowledges’ that will define her as a woman and confirms her right as marriageable.
      - By establishing new social relations and boundaries, the ceremony thus contributes to the building, maintaining, and strengthening of the Bemba social structure as a whole.
    - - contradiction between the “masterful male and the submissive son in law and the submissive kneeling wife.”
        
        the patriarchal aspect of the Bemba society wherein a girl is expected to please her husband sexually, greet him by kneeling and she cannot refuse any duties
      - Nevertheless, the importance of female agency in Bemba society
        
        is still highlighted by the fact that it is the groom that is allowed access to the bride to make her fertile.
        
        The Bemba society being of matrilineal descent means that the husband is a procreator first and foremost
        
        “if a Bemba husband fails to give his wife a child, his marriage comes to an end. If he makes her pregnant, but she dies in childbirth, he will be held responsible by the heads of her matrilineage and by her father and mother.”
        
        when compared with other societies and even Western ones — where the blame is put on the wife if she ‘fails’ to produce a male heir — the Bemba are still firmly a matrilineal society.
      - This, in turn, gives men an exaggerated importance in the society
        
        as it was illustrated during the Chisungu when the ceremony depicts the man as a “roaring-lion” or a “lion-killer” to focus on his virility.
      - Richard also noted that there is also a second source of conflict between the father and the mother's brother
        
        “for the control of the former's children and this is a tension inherent in the matrilineal system.”
        
        as it was mentioned previously, this is because “the Bemba father is head of his own extended family and is the chief authority in his children's lives during their early years.
      - The social structure in the Bemba society, then, is a potential source of conflict in a matrilineal society that still retains traces of patriarchy.
  - - - Robbins defined the Upramin social structure as one that is a “product of people acting in both lawful and wilful ways.
      - An ideal social structure or to a set of conscious rules concerning how people in specific ascribed statuses should interact.
      - Prior to Christianity
        
        Robbins argued that wilfulness was at the centre of Upramin social relationships
        
        as it was demonstrated by practices like the “calling of the name” during which a girl would dramatically fall and say the name of a river that runs through a boy’s village to make the choice of who she wants to marry
        
        This example of creative wilfulness — along with gift giving for instance — truly illustrates that the fact that social groups — and by extension the social structure of the Urapmin — is dependent on wilfulness.
      - Arrival Christianity
        
        conflict with Christian beliefs that “condemns the will categorically.”
        
        the traditional social structure of the Urapmin makes it so that they are now equally pre-occupied with morality.
        
        by living in two cultures, the Urapmin are constantly feeling sinful and troubled and often find themselves confessing mundane events.
      - the social structure of the Urapmin makes it so that it is created by their wilfulness but are maintained by their lawfulness — this duality creates a conflict that does tear the society but also helps in preserving it.