ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the effects on traditional villages around Blantyre-Limbe of the presence and growth of the urban area and compares the importance of kinship groups in the respective urban centres. Two studies undertaken by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute during 1957 and 1958 offer an opportunity for comparative study. Blantyre-Limbe, Nyasaland, is a commercial area growing in the midst of land held under individual and also communal African. In Blantyre the old methods of kin and village organization persist despite changes occurring within and around them. Blantyre is somewhat more homogeneous than Lusaka in its tribal composition. A tenant anxious to take up permanent residence in the village will attempt to procure his status as a villager through gifts to the headman, by being exemplary in behaviour, and by supporting the headman or matrilineage in his or its disputes.
