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Customary Law in One Area of 20th Century Africa: The Chagga of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Sally Falk Moore
Sally Falk Moore*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, USA
*
Sally Falk Moore, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: smoore@wjh.harvard.edu
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Abstract

The term ‘customary law’ has many layers of meaning when applied to the African experience. This article gives a vivid example of a practice of the Chagga people of Kilimanjaro which they regard as a matter of custom. But the paper also makes clear that the idea of customary law has had changing significance in the British colonial period, in the post-colonial present, and in anthropological theory. The article presents some of the concepts which the author has found useful in analyzing this complex topic.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 60 , Issue 3-4: The Boundaries of Law. Justice, Powers, and Politics , November 2013 , pp. 166 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2015

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