ABSTRACT
The description of Ibi in Chapter 3 has made it clear that it had little in the way of marketable surpluses and was unimportant in modern regional politics. Nevertheless, like other Igbo communities, Ibi has a well-marked identity which was consciously maintained by oral history, true or fictive. The majority of its inhabitants were resistant to externally imposed changes, in particular to those they labelled and associated with Christianity and education. They expressed identity, women and men alike, by self-conscious adherence to what they held to be appropriate behaviour, compatible with their past, accepting only such changes as could be accommodated within pre-existing value patterns. I hope to show in this chapter that women play a crucial role in maintaining and expressing the values found in Igbo rural society at large, and that they are expected to do so.
