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Caste systems in Africa are a form of social stratification found in numerous ethnic groups, found in over fifteen countries, particularly in the Sahel, West Africa, and North Africa. [1] These caste systems feature endogamy, hierarchical status, inherited occupation, membership by birth, pollution concepts and restraints on commensality. [2]
Folorunsho Alakija, vice-chair of Famfa Oil Limited and Nigeria's richest woman. The social structure in Nigeria is the hierarchical characterization of social status, historically stratified under the Nigerian traditional rulers and their subordinate chiefs, with a focus on tribe and ethnicity which continued with the advent of colonization. [1]
Between brothers and sisters the sex differentiation often dominates the behaviour. Sisterhood and brotherhood most often overrule age differences, and there is a prescribed type of behaviour for a brother towards his sister and vice versa. Outside this intimate circle of the immediate family, the same principles of kinship and seniority hold sway.
Castes are an example of a stratification structure based on ascribed status. [7] Although each caste system works differently, generally everyone is born into a specific caste and the caste of the parents generally determines the status of their children, regardless of ability or merit. The ranks of a caste system might include: priests and ...
Each broad caste level is a hierarchical order that is based on notions of purity, non-purity and impurity. It uses the concepts of defilement to limit contacts between caste categories and to preserve the purity of the upper castes. These caste categories have been exclusionary, endogamous and the social identity inherited. [88]
The middle class is the most contested of the three categories, the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the lower and upper classes. [67] One example of the contest of this term is that in the United States "middle class" is applied very broadly and includes people who would elsewhere be considered ...
British anthropologist John Henry Hutton traced the origin of untouchability to the taboo on accepting food cooked by a person from a different caste. This taboo presumably originated because of cleanliness concerns, and ultimately, led to other prejudices such as the taboo on marrying outside one's caste.
It is used across all the traditional Yoruba lands, as well as by the Edo, throughout Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. Alaafin, or "Man of the Palace" in the Yoruba language, was the title of the ruler of the medieval Oyo Empire in northwestern Yorubaland. He is considered the supreme overlord of the empire and expected to keep tributaries safe from ...