Lineage and Locality as Antithetical Principles in East African Systems of Land Tenure

For more than a century anthropologists and other social scientists have drawn a broad distinction between agrarian societies in which political units are constitut? ed on basis of kinship or descent, and those in which they are constituted on basis of residence in a particular locality. Maine's (1861:172) distinction between status and contract as principles of social organization can be interpreted to mean much same thing; so, too, can Morgan's (1877: 6ff., 61) distinction between societas and civitas. The exact idea could be attributed even earlier to Karl Marx, who, in his capacity as classical historian, remarked in 18578 that the tribes of ancient states were constituted in one of two ways, either by kinship or by locality (1964:76-7). Similar divisions appear sometimes in typologies of non-western systems of agrarian land tenure. In a general survey of land rights in rurul areas of British colonies in 1940s, Meek (1945:26) wrote: