ABSTRACT
The collective basis of community authority forms both its strength and its weakness. Living in Banyang communities one is struck by the degree of potential domination which the ‘community’ in its various corporate forms exerts over its individual members. A verbal device which expresses this dilemma of Banyang political processes is that of reification: the community is spoken of as though it had a material form or personality. The associations give precise institutional form to this verbal device: no longer the ‘animal’ which the Tali offender was said to have ‘shot’, the community becomes ‘Ngbe’, the leopard which all should fear. The associations provide, then, a way of answering a central political problem: how to achieve a unity of purpose without relinquishing the collective control which is based upon an ultimate diversity of interest.
