Opposing Streams and the Gerontocratic Ladder: Two Models of Age Organisation in East Africa

Ever since Evans-Pritchard's analysis of Nuer age-sets, there has been a tendency to present the age organisations of East Africa as coherent self-explanatory systems that at most contribute diffusely to the integration of the wider society by cutting across the divisive boundaries between lineages, villages, etc. Of the two models presented here, that of the Arusha age organisation is taken as a test case for this type of approach because of the wealth of illustration and insight provided by Philip Gulliver. This model is compared with an alternative approach adopted for the Samburu which has sought to explore a more specific and functional relationship between age organisation and the wider society. The essential question is not whether the two societies, both closely related to the Masai, are merely variants of one system, but whether the approaches are compatible or can be sustained by the material available. I The term age-set is used here to refer to all those men who are initiated in youth during a definite span of time, and as a group share certain constraints and expectations for the remainder of their lives; and age grade is used to refer to a status through which each person passes at some period of his life unless he dies first. Each is an institutionalised arrangement governed by an explicit set of rules. The Nuer have age-sets into which boys are initiated, but beyond this point they have no age grades. In our own society, on the other hand, we have age grades relating to infancy, schooling, adulthood and retirement, but (schools apart) we have no age-sets: members pass through these successive grades of their lives as individuals and alone. In the societies to be discussed here, both institutions exist and members of an age-set pass together through the various age grades, rather as pupils in schools are recruited and promoted in groups. Using a ladder as an analogy for the system of age stratification, each rung would represent an age grade, and successive age-sets would pass up it in procession, with youths climbing onto the lowest rung on initiation.' This procession involves a regulated cycle of promotions with a new age-set formed on the lowest rung once every cycle. Thus there is a changing configuration of roles as members of each age-set mature and step up the ladder. Spacing tends to be uneven with a certain jostling between successive age-sets at one point, and sometimes a vacant rung elsewhere-an intermediate age grade with no incumbent. Changes in this configuration are, however, predictable, and one complete cycle later there will be jostling and unoccupied rungs at precisely the same levels on the ladder, although each age-set meanwhile will have climbed to the position