ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to reassess certain aspects in Eisenstadt's 1956 study, which was the first comprehensive and theoretical formulation of the conditions giving rise to a form of social organization based on the principle of age. It presents some of the principles of cattle pastoralism and livestock exchange in East African societies as well as the structure of relationships in the age systems of these societies. The chapter describes the ways in which these principles and structures are in fact linked, despite their apparent incongruence. Unlike transactional relations between individuals operating within the framework of small family units, relations that are institutionalized along kinship lines in a generalized mode of exchange tend to limit an individual's scope of alternatives. Owing to a combination of ecological and social factors, the emphasis in a pastoral society such as that of the Dassanetch is on the newness of links in successive generations.
