Everything about Age Set totally explained
In
anthropology, an
age set is a
social category or corporate
social group, consisting of people of similar age, who have a common identity, maintain close ties over a prolonged period, and together pass through a series of age-related statuses. This is in contrast to an
age grade, through which people pass individually over time.
While a year group or class in a
school could be regarded as a simple example of an age set (for example 'Class of 2004'), the term is most commonly used to refer to systems in
tribal societies. The phenomenon is most prevalent in
East Africa, central
Brazil and parts of
New Guinea, where in many societies the importance of social groupings based on age eclipses that of social groupings based on
kinship and descent. Age sets in these societies are formed by the periodic grouping together of young people—usually men—into a corporate unit with a name and a collective identity. As its members age the set stays together and increases in seniority as older sets die off and new ones are formed beneath it.
Age sets and the systems within which they exist can be regarded as either
cyclical or
progressive. In a cyclical system there's 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
East African systems provide the classic examples, such as the
Zulu impi system of fighting
regiments based on age sets.
Keesing (1981) gives the example of the
Karimojong of
Uganda, among whom around six age sets are active at any one time, with young adult men being
initiated into the most junior, which is closed after five or six years, and a new one formally opened. As befits the complex nature of many East African systems, Karimojong age sets are themselves grouped into
generation sets consisting of five consecutive age sets. There are four such generation sets in all; each permanently named and recurring cyclically roughly every century. At a given time, two of the generation sets will be active: one junior and one senior. Generation sets are paired in alternate fashion, with two whose members wear
brass ornaments and are symbolically regarded as yellow, alternating with two whose members wear
copper ornaments and are symbolically regarded as red. The names of individual age sets are chosen from a stock associated with each pair of generation sets, but don't have a fixed sequence.
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.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Age Set'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://age_set.totallyexplained.com">Age set Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
