ABSTRACT
The preceding parts of this book have dealt in turn with three major sub-systems of Arusha society—the parish and age-group system, the patrilineal descent system, and the modern local government. Although these are not the only coherent subsystems which can be analytically isolated, they are essential to the study of almost any particular field of action and belief among the Arusha. Their especial importance for present purposes lies in three intimately inter-connected features. Firstly, two of them provide a set of corporate groups or established categories of people, which largely determine both the kind and the strength of support and constraint to which men are subject when disputes occur and settlement of them is attempted. Secondly, each of these sub-systems identifies a number of particular roles of influence and leadership, the occupants of which, inter alia, play a permanent part in the arrangement for and the carrying out of dispute procedures as advisors, advocates and conciliators. Thirdly, each sub-system provides regularised means for dealing with overt conflict and dispute between individuals. These means are of two kinds:—a public assembly, at which disputants present their cases before a joint congress of their respective supporters in formal meetings, at which attendance is open to any who care to be present; and a conclave, which comprises either the members of a basic, nuclear group to which both disputants belong, or a few of their closest associates where the disputants are members of different nuclear groups.
