ABSTRACT
Social anthropology has undoubtedly made great progress in the past twenty years. The field work of the past two decades has brought into clearer focus the characteristics of African societies which distinguish them from the classical simple societies of, say, Australia, Melanesia or North America; and the mark of this is easily seen in the thought and interests of Africanists. Implicit and sometimes explicit comparison of African cultures with those of other areas is important in the recent history of field research in Africa. Social anthropology has made some advance on this position since the thirties. Most social anthropologists would now agree that people cannot, for analytical purposes, deal exhaustively with our ethnographic observations in a single frame of reference. By social organization or social structure, terms which they used interchangeably, Rivers and Lowie meant primarily the kinship, political and legal institutions of primitive peoples.
