ABSTRACT
Work on small groups has two important aspects. Most obviously, it concerns social groups which are small in size, but also constitutes a special approach to the study of face-to-face relationships in small clusters within larger populations which seem to lack corporate structures except as a wide impersonal framework. There may be ephemeral clusters, perhaps resembling a more stable nucleus round which evanescent particles revolve, there may be cliques, gangs, neighbourhoods, or emergent interest groups which begin to acquire a recognizable associational structure. The informal networks of social relations form the interstitial links between families, kin groups, neighbourhoods, factories, and local authorities. It is at its maximum in many African towns because the formal structure is so wide or alien that it leaves great gaps in the social life of masses of the people. Beer bars are a ubiquitous context of informal networks, assuming various forms depending on the degree of control enforced or the extent of actual suppression.
