ABSTRACT
The phrase 'A Study of Social Control and Social Change among the Ovimbundu' implies an analysis of the working of the social maintenance mechanism in a period of social change. The concept appears almost paradoxical since it seems that effective maintenance machinery would prevent social change, and rapid social change is often associated by anthropologists with a situation of individual and social demoralization and disintegration. The role of the missions in social control is threefold; the establishment of new social groupings and forms of leadership at village level, the decision of disputes and the influencing of the chefe's decisions, and the giving of a feeling of approximation to the 'civilized' population. It has been argued that the range of marriages has not noticeably expanded in recent years, and that the links which orient Gumba to the north and west rather than to the south and east date back to the nineteenth century.
