when is genealogy history? Wolof genealogies in comparative perspective

The Wolof of Senegal construct genealogies that represent a closer approximation to a historical past than do the genealogies of certain other peoples, notably the Nuer, the Luo, and the Tiv—the classic ethnographic examples of genealogy as projection of present‐day political relationships onto the past. This paper examines the construction and use of Wolof genealogies in the light of these other ethnographic cases, in order to identify social conditions that tend to preserve historical accuracy in an oral tradition. Those conditions concern the relation of the genealogist to his subject matter, the nature of the political climate in which he operates, and the forms of discourse at his disposal. It is suggested that the essential property of Wolof social organization bringing these conditions about is not so much the existence of a centralized state as the caste framework in which the state is embedded.