Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Zarma Settlements, Kinship
The Zarma are the second-largest ethnic group in the Niger Republic, in West Africa, and they have close cultural affinities with the Songhay. Zarma villages are typically nucleated settlements made up of round mud or thatched dwellings...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Kpelle Kinship
The Kpelle are the largest ethnic group in the West African nation of Liberia and a significant group in neighboring Guinea. They are arguably the most rural and conservative of the major Liberian peoples. The only significant kin group...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tsimihety
The term "Tsimihety" usually refers to one of the eighteen or twenty tribes or ethnic groups of the Republic of Madagascar; however, Tsimihety possess neither political unity nor an ideology of unity. They are best described as an...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: San Speaking Peoples
San-speaking peoples do not constitute an ethnic group in the usual sense. The most widely known are those who call themselves "Zhu I oasi" (!Kung or Juwasi in most ethnographies), although the other peoples mentioned above have also...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Lozi
The Lozi consist of a number of interrelated ethnic groups located along the Zambezi River in Barotse Province of western Zambia. The term "Lozi" refers both to the Lozi proper and to those groups that have become subject to and...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Zaramo
"Wazaramo" is the preferred name for the people who live in the coastal area of Tanzania, in the vicinity of the capital city, Dar es Salaam. "Wazaramo" refers to the ethnic group, "Mzaramo" to an individual, and "Kizaramo" to the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Turkana
"Turkana" is the name given to the pastoral and formerly pastoral people living in the arid and semiarid range lands of northwestern Kenya. The Turkana refer to themselves as "Ngiturkan" and their land as "Eturkan." The Turkana ethnic...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Songhay Marriage and Family
The Songhay are the fourth-largest ethnic group in Niger, West Africa. There are also considerable Songhay populations in Mali and Benin. They are closely related culturally to the Zarma. The Songhay are spread over a large area of...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tigray
The Tigray are the largest ethnic group in the Ethiopian province of Tigray and in the Eritrean nation. The Tigray have not been as thoroughly studied as their culturally similar neighbors, the Amhara, with whom they share an "imperial"...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Luyia
"Abaluyia" refers to the nation, tribe, or ethnic group, Omuluyia" to an individual, and "Luluyia" to the language they speak. There are seventeen Luluyia-speaking sub-nations in Western and Nyanza provinces of Kenya. The Abaluyia are...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Kikuyu
The Kikuyu, a major ethnic group of Kenya, numbered about 4.4 million in 1987, accounting for about 20 percent of Kenya's population of 25 million.The Kikuyu were originally hunter-gatherers, but they gradually adopted horticultural...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Iteso
The Iteso comprise the second-largest ethnic group in Uganda and a significant portion of the non-Bantu-speaking minority in Kenya's Western Province. For the Iteso of Kenya, there are substantial studies of social organization, social...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Hazara
Most Hazara live in central Afghanistan in an area known as the Hazarajat. Others live in areas north of the Hindu Kush. The Hazarajat and other Hazara territories are mountainous. The climate is severe in winter, with heavy snowfall;...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Hausa
The Hausa constitute the largest ethnic group in West Africa. The term "Hausa" actually refers to the language and, by extension, to its native speakers, of whom there are about 25 million. Agriculture is the main economic activity....
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Kanuri
The Kanuri are the dominant ethnic group of Borno Province in northeastern Nigeria. They number over 3 million in Nigeria, about 500,000 in Niger, 100,000 in Chad, and 60,000 in Cameroon. They are called "Beri-beri" by the Hausa, but...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Lango
The Lango are one of the largest of the non-Bantu ethnic groups in Uganda. Since Ugandas independence, the Lango have become integrated into national political life. Music and dance are important aspects of Lango life; the finger piano,...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Mossi
The Mossi are the most prominent ethnic group in the modern nation of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta). They are also well known in the anthropological literature as a society with an especially high rate of labor migration to...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Pashai
The Pashai are an ethnic group located in the northeast corner of Afghanistan. They are estimated to number about 108,000 (1982). "Pashai" is the term used to refer to a specific language, to the speakers of that language, and to the...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Arabs
The Arab world is usually considered to be comprised of the following nineteen countries: Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Chad, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Yoruba Cultural Relations
The name "Yoruba" appears to have been applied by neighbors to the Kingdom of Oyo and adopted by missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century to describe a wider, language-sharing family of peoples. These peoples have gradually accepted...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Sakalava
The Sakalava inhabit an expansive region of Madagascar; their territory today encompasses nearly all of the west coast of this large Indian Ocean island. "Sakalava" is a compound term meaning "the long valleys" or "rivers." A noun as...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Tonga
The Tonga never formed a single political unit. Today they are an ethnic group united by common language and in opposition to other Zambian ethnic groups, with whom they compete. The Tonga speak dialects of ciTonga, a Central Bantu...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Persians
Persians are an ethnic group defined primarily by language and location. The Persian language, also known as Farsi, which linguists classify in the Indo-Iranian Branch of the Indo-European Language Family, had about 23 million speakers...
Countries and Their Cultures
Countries and Their Cultures: Iraqw
The Iraqw are an agrico-pastoral people who live in north-central Tanzania. With the expansion of their territory, the Iraqw have come to interact and coexist with other ethnic groups. Maize is the staple crop of the Iraqw; it is...