INTRODUCTION 3
Each essay furnishes, nevertheless, a useful standard by which the political systems of other peoples in the same area may be classified. No such classification is attempted in this book, but we recognize that a satisfactory comparative study of African political institutions can only be undertaken after a classification of the kind has been made. It would then be possible to study a whole range of adjacent societies in the light of the Ngwato system, the Tale system, the Ankole system, the Bemba system, and so on, and, by analysis, to state the chief characters of series of political systems found in large areas. An analysis of the results obtained by these comparative studies in fields where a whole range of societies display many similar characteristics in their political systems would be more likely to lead to valid scientific generalizations than comparison between particular societies belonging to different areas and political types.
We do not mean to suggest that the political systems of societies which have a high degree of general cultural resemblance are necessarily of the same type, though on the whole they tend to be. However, it is well to bear in mind that within a single linguistic or cultural area we often find political systems which are very unlike one another in many important features. Conversely, the same kind of political structures are found in societies of totally different culture. This can be seen even in the eight societies in this book. Also, there may be a totally different cultural content in social processes with identical functions. The function of ritual ideology in political organization in Africa clearly illustrates this. Mystical values are attached to political office among the Bemba, the Banyankole, the Kede, and the Tallensi, but the symbols and institutions in which these values are expressed are very different in all four societies. A comparative study of political systems has to be on an abstract plane where social processes are stripped of their cultural idiom and are reduced to functional terms. The structural similarities which disparity-of culture conceals are then laid bare and structural dissimilarities are revealed behind a screen of cultural uniformity. There is evidently an intrinsic connexion between a people's culture and their social organization, but the nature of this connexion is a major problem in sociology and we cannot emphasize too much that these two components of social life must not be confused.