Age set
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In
While a year group or class in a
Age sets and the systems within which they exist can be regarded as either cyclical or progressive. In a cyclical system there is a finite number of sets and each recurs over the course of a few generations, with new membership. In progressive systems an age set appears once, and when its members have died it ceases to exist. It is often the case that cultures with either cyclical or progressive systems have equivalent ideas about cosmology and the nature of time.
A typical example
South-East African systems provide the classic examples, such as the Zulu impi system of fighting regiments based on age sets.
When most members of a generation set have died off, its surviving age sets are retired and the junior generation set becomes senior. At this point, new initiates become the first members of the next generation set in the sequence. The senior generation set is responsible for initiating new members into the most junior age set of the junior generation set, and each age set is formally subordinate to the one above it. While members of an age set live with their immediate families and local kin groups, and age sets are not tightly organised internally, they serve to apportion roles and status in wider social situations, with senior age sets having a judicial function, for example.[1][2]
The Oromo people and their Gadaa System are also another good example of a society whose social organization resolves around age sets
See also
References
- ISBN 0-03-046296-7.
- ^ Dyson-Hudson, Neville. 1963. "The Karimojong Age System." Ethnology 2: 353-401.