ABSTRACT
An ethnography is a descriptive account of the culture and social institutions of a people. Such a description is doubly difficult in an area like East Africa. In the first place, East Africa is what is called a plural society, being culturally heterogeneous and fragmented. In the second place, it is subject at the present time to processes of rapid and widespread change. An ethnography of East Africa today necessarily entails generalization and comparison; it also demands some attempt to trace the diachronic processes of development and continuity and the ever more important processes of interaction and incorporation. In the past, social anthropologists were notoriously cautious about indulging in such activities, preferring instead to remain at the level of the seemingly homogeneous, self-sufficient and stable ‘tribe’—or to use the modern euphemism ‘ethnic group’. This preference for the microscopic has been highly productive. It has enabled the anthropologist to study whole structures and to penetrate deeply into systems of ideas. The microscopic interest has been further justified by the relative stability of small group relations in times of rapid social change. However, in the final analysis, the social anthropologists’ reluctance to select a broader canvas has encouraged a false picture of East Africa, as a conglomeration of small societies that are static and discrete. Moreover, the illusion of stability that was created has made the phenomenon of social change more dramatic and incomprehensible than it really is.
