Introduction

The analysis of religion and in particular religious action, or ritual, raises central issues for anthropology. In 1956, British social anthropology had for some decades been focused on the study of social organization, to which the understanding of religion had been subordinated. As a pupil of Malinowski Audrey Richards is working from a basic concept of culture as a tradition that distinguishes a people and which includes the norms and values that constitute the framework of group organization and interpersonal relations. Conclusions about the social significance of the ritual and the objects used in it draw on the interpretations ofinformants, some of whom are specialists; the interpretations are not always consistent or clear. The Bemba village has a core of related women, whose relationships are hierarchically arranged in terms of relative seniority. In chisungu, as Richards herself notes, ‘more rites express the hierarchy of rank than any other form of symbolic behaviour’.