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and local community,1 a fact of utmost importance for the political organization.
VI. Authority and Responsibility in the Lineage System
The principles of Tale social structure appear most conspicuously in large-scale activities like funeral ceremonies, the Great Festivals, hunting expeditions, &c. Rights and duties, privileges and obligations are vested in corporate units; and any authorized member can act on behalf of the unit. The principle of representation, rooted in the identification of lineage members with one another, is inherent in Tale social structure.
The range of participation determines what units emerge in a particular situation—the maximal lineages in clan activities, the constituent segments in lineage affairs, the clans in activies involving many communities. Concerted action is achieved by a balanced and symmetrical distribution of functions among the units involved. The solidarity of a unit varies accordingly. Segments bitterly opposed over divergent interests unite vigorously on matters of common interest. Co-members of any unit have a common interest in one another's welfare and in safeguarding one another's rights. Any of them will take reprisals for a wrong done against another.
The corporate identity and solidarity of the units thus delimited by agnatic descent and locality are functions of a differentiated constitution sustained by definite sanctions. Every lineage is subject to the authority of its senior male member (kpeem)* In a lineage of narrow span, i.e. with common ancestry placed four or less generations back, he is the most senior by generation; in lineages of wider span, age is the criterion, since generation seniority is no longer determinable. Throughout the social structure seniority confers authority.
The authority wielded by a lineage kpeem varies with its span. In the lineage round which a joint family is built up, the head
1 Chiefs and headmen have become exceptionally wealthy through the exactions now within their power. They remain the individual beneficiaries of the new dispensation. No social cleavages based on differences of wealth have as yet grown out of this, though conflicts due to pecuniary competition are assuming a political complexion in some parts of the country.
2 Wives are never assimilated into their husbands' lineages, though they gradually come to share the loyalties and interests of the latter. They are under the authority of their husbands, and a fortiori under that of any one exercising authority over their husbands.