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EZI NA ULO:
THE EXTENDED FAMILY IN IGBO CIVILIZATION BY VICTOR
CHIKEZIE UCHENDU (FRAI) B.Sc.
(Hons) Econs., ( Director, Institute of Public Policy & Administration
Ndi isi ala Oha n'eze Ekele
na udo diri unu: Igbo bu Igbo; Igbo buru miri ga ogu kpo ya ijiriji; Kele nu: Igbo na
aru ji, aru Igbo n'azu ahia eke
ukwu, azu eke nta: Kele nu: Igbo n'azu ahia orie
ukwu, azu orie nta: Kele nu: Igbo n'azu ahia afo
ukwu, azu afo nta: Kele nu: Igbo n'azu ahia nkwo
ukwu, azu nkwo nta: Kele nu: (3) INTRODUCTION Thirty
years ago, I faced the challenge of introducing Igbo society and culture to the world. My response was The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (Uchendu, 1965). Today, I face a more formidable challenge: the task of interpreting Igbo society
to its custodians and its culture to its culture-bearers, and through them, to the world. My task is nor, unique.
Since 1979; fourteen Ahiajoku Lecturers, drawn from various disciplines and professions, had faced
this challenge, each lecturer utilizing the most effective tools in his discipline: And they have succeeded in
providing us with differing "windows" to Igbo culture. As
I address you, in the largest "classroom" for Igbo studies anywhere in the world, a Persian folktale
comes to mind. There lived in ”What
are you looking for, Mulla?" "My
key", said the Mulla. The
villager became better focused, went down on his knees and diligently looked for the Mulla's key. After a while,
the villager became curious and asked the Mulla: "Where exactly did you lose the key?" "In my house", the Mulla replied. "Then, why are you 1boking for the key you lost in your house in the village square?", asked the villager. "There is more
light in the village square than inside
my own house", answered the Mulla. Mr. Chairman, this lecture could have been given anywhere: in a classroom; at a symposium or as
an "after-dinner" talk; but I assure you that I find "more light" among you today than I could
have ever found anywhere else in the world. The topic for my lecture is EZI NA ULO: The
Extended Family in Igbo Civilization. In selecting this topic, I was mindful of the limitations which
"generative ideas ---the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences" impose
on human understanding. According to Susanne Langer (1962:19-31), a Harvard philosopher, a generative idea is like ...a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form for us before the light fell on them.
Yet it is the most natural and appropriate thing in the world for a new terminology to have a vogue that crowds
out everything else for a while. It becomes a word that everyone snaps up... the "Open Sesame" of new
positive science. The sudden vogue of such a key-idea is due to the fact that all sensitive and active minds turn
at once to exploit it, we try it in every connection, for every purpose, experiment with possible stretches of
its strict meaning, with generalizations and derivatives. Whether or not EZI NA ULO is, in fact, a centrally important scientific concept for the analysis
of Igbo civilization, I don't know. What I do know is that no single concept can resolve so many fundamental problems
at once and also promise to resolve all fundamental problems, clarify all obscure issues for all times. We are interested in furthering our understanding of Igbo culture through analysis and explanation.
In his The Savage Mind, the French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss (1966) remarks that
scientific explanation does not consist, as we have been taught to accept, in the reduction of the complex to the
simple. Rather, what the analyst seems to confront is the substitution of a complexity more intelligible for one
which is less. With specific reference to the study of man, Clifford Geertz (1975:33) argues that the explanation
of cultural behavior often consists of "substituting complex pictures for simple ones, while striving somehow
to retain the persuasive clarity that went with simple ones". These contrasting positions seem to put Alfred
North Whitehead's advice to natural scientists on its head. Whitehead urged natural scientists that in the process
of understanding they should "seek simplicity and to distrust it". On the other hand, the social scientists
tend to "seek complexity and order it" (Geertz, 1975:34). Our approach would lie mid-way between idiographic and nomothetic, that is, between situation-centered
description and law-seeking global generalizations, without ignoring either. Our analytical strategy is anthropological,
not in terms of techniques and received procedure6 which define the traditional anthropological enterprise, but
in what Clifford Geertz (1975:34), drawing from the collected works of Gilbert Ryle calls "thick description".
In his essays, Thinking and reflecting" and "The thinking of thoughts", Gilbert Ryle illustrates
the method of inferring cultural behavior from ethnography. Ethnography
is a scientific process of observing and recording field data and also an end result. As an end result, ethnography
is a historical document created by the ethnographer to assist him in cultural comparison and analysis and it serves
others as a source-book for history. It is in "doing ethnography" that the distinction which Ryle makes
between "thick" and "thin” descriptions can be illustrated. Consider
two boys, Okorie and Nwafo, rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In Okorie,
this is an involuntary twitch; in Nwafor, a conspiratorial signal to Mgbokwo
hiding away from the observer. From a phenomenalistic point of view, the two eye movements are, as movements, identical.
The observer could not distinguish which was twitch and which was wink or indeed "whether both or either was
twitch or wink". Yet, in terms of communication and cultural analysis, the difference between a twitch and
a wink is vast. The winker is communicating precise information in a unique medium. His message is deliberate;
it is addressed to someone in particular. The content of the message is specific; and the mode of communication
is through a socially established code; and the message is strictly inter-personal and not public. "Contracting
your eyelids on purpose when there exists a public code in which so doing counts as a conspiratorial signal is
winking" (Geertz, 1975:6). It is a "fleck of culture". The
description "thickens" when a third boy, Okonkwo, enters the picture. Innocently assuming that Okorie
and Nwafor were engaged in a twitching contest, and asking a poor job of it, their efforts appearing amusing,
clumsy and amateurish, Okonkwo began to parody the two boys, laboriously exaggerating their patterns of twitching,
and dramatizing his mimicking abilities. If he does not find his efforts satisfactory, he could practise twitching
.it home before a mirror, in which case his is "not twitching, winking or parodying, but rehearsing". The
point of all this is to re-state the fact that the object of ethnography is to reveal a "stratified hierarchy
of meaningful structures• embedded in simple human acts and social designs. Twitches, winks, fake winks, parodies,
rehearsals of parodies are produced by what appears a single observable human act, the twitching of eyelids. Our
task is to explore the different layers of meanings which are embedded in the concept of ezi na ulo and how these help
to shape our cultural life and civilization. A PROFILE OF CULTURE Ezi and ulo
are two clusters of culture-traits. They are separately identifiable units in Igbo cultural organization, embodying
both material aspects of the environment and the non-material structures of meaning which influence the attitudes
of properly enculturated Igbo 'individuals. On the other hand, ezi n'ulo constitutes a unity,
a single culture-complex, carrying with it a hierarchy of meanings which we will make obvious later Since culture-traits
and culture-complexes do not make much sense outside their relevant contexts, we will begin our exploration by
specifying our notions and conceptions of culture and outlining what we regard as the defining Characteristics
of Igbo culture and civilization. Popular and technical definitions of culture abound, So also do ethnocentric
notions of the concept. In historical perspective, the Enlightenment view of culture predated the Tylorean idea
of culture which is a "trait list" of all man-made aspects of the human environment, including man's
thoughts and worldviews. The Enlightenment view of man, nature and culture was essentially uniformitarian except that the non-western man had no place in it. The Enlightenment constructed a view of culture
inspired by Bacon's idea of natural science as guided by In
popular terms, a man of culture is a person who Can speak languages other than his own, who is familiar with history,
literature, philosophy, politics or the fine arts and especially in the Western tradition of literary scholarship,
the cultured person is one who can talk about James Joyce, Scarlatti and enjoy Picasso but it would not have mattered
if he had not read Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka. At a symposium on Ozo title system hosted by
the Cultural Division of the Ministry of Information, Youth, Sports and Culture, Enugu, in 1977, which I had the
privilege to chair, I was mildly surprised, when a delegate from one of the States in northern Nigeria argued that
"Religion is not a part of culture" (Uchendu, 1988:17-18), Religion is nothing if not an essential part
of culture, What makes aspects of religion so emotionally contentious is that they are eminently cultural, whatever
other elements society and managers of religious organizations attribute to them. On
a more technical level, I agree with Clyde Kluckhohn (1963:24) that "to be human is to be cultured".
Believing, that "anthropology holds up a great mirror to man and lets him look at himself in his infinite
variety", Kluckhohn (1963:19, 24, 28, 29, 31-34) goes on to define culture in turn as: that part of the environment
that is the creation of man; a way of thinking, feeling, believing; a theory that helps us to understand a mass
of otherwise chaotic (social) facts; a store-house of the pooled learning of the group found in the memories of
old men and women, in books and material objects created by man; anti the learned experiences by individuals as
the result of belonging to some particular group. Cultures praduce needs as well as
provide a means of fulfilling them; every culture is a precipitate of history; culture throws up to history social
facts which the seive of history can hold, in changed or unchanged form but always with altered meanings, to maintain
the cultural and ideological integrity of a living people. Culture is like a map, an abstract but approximate representation
of a particular cultural entity which enables the young and the stranger to find their way in particular cultures;
and all culture bearers are creators and carriers of culture as well as consumers of culture and its products. Culture
is all these and more. I share with Clifford Geertz the semiotic view of culture. "Believing, with Max Weber,
that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and
the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search
of meaning” (Geertz, 1975:5). Culture is meaning-centred and a public property. It is this public character of
culture that led me to the strategic concept of culture. Permit me to quote from my early work on the subject: Culture is more than just a heritage, a historical product. It is more than the expression of man’s
mode of living, something that individuals in each society must undergo as a kind of fate or rites de passage. Social engineering in society demands a notion of culture as a strategic instrument... as an instrumental
agent, as another mode of intervention in our social and economic life. ...the notion of culture as an interventionist
agent has led man to subsume the roles of nature within normative rules that are subject to cultural direction
(Uchendu, 1988:18-19), 1977:72). Culture is public because meaning is shared. Cultural meaning is not, however, uniformly or equally
shared but every culture-bearer is made to receive enough knowledge to make him or her culturally competent. This
is what Ralph Linton (1936:272-75) implied when he reminded us that every culture embodies three separate but related
spheres, cultural universals, cultural alternatives and cultural specialties. Cultural universals refer to those
elements of a culture open to all and shared by every culture bearer. To be competent in Igbo culture requires
sharing in its cultural universals. We do this through the socialization of the young in our ideal ways and the
resocialization of the way-ward or delinquent adults, including strangers, in Igbo ideals and values. Cultural
transmission, the process of producing Igbo citizens through their participation in our institutions and informal
life, is a never ending process. To ask a person whether he or she is an animal is another way of questioning whether
he has lost all the benefits of his cultural transmission. As we shall see in the discussion of Igbo social structure,
Igbo society is an ideologically open society where equal opportunities are provided for the individual to achieve
his goals. No
individual can master all the aspects of his culture. Individual participation in his culture, therefore, tends
to be highly selective. Society therefore provides cultural alternatives to enable individuals satisfy a given
cultural end. In the domain of religion, we have a great passion to ”find out" the
wishes of the gods or ancestors who have sent us a symbolic message. Consulting a diviner may be one alternative
source of communicating with them; going into a trance, or to one of he major oracles in Igboland may be others.
The marriage institution is an important part of our life and culture. Until the Catholic Christian religion introduced
celibacy as a virtue, an unmarried Igbo male cuts a sad picture of hopeless poverty; and the unmarried female was
a social disaster. Our ancestors in their wisdom provided us cultural alternatives in the form of polygamy and
concubinage which give every adult access to a spouse or consort (Uchendu, 1965:187-97). Our
society provides institutions for specialized training and knowledge needed by our cultural specialists. Membership
of these institutions may be voluntary or ascribed. Ezes, Igwes, Dibia and other classes of medical practitioners; and the Umu ada
in our society are examples of our cultural specialties. It follows therefore that no individual can master all
the knowledge of his culture since part of a culture must be learned by everybody; part may be selected from alternative
institutions; and part is open to only those who perform special roles in society. Culture is not a hodgepot of
traits and ideas; it is relatively integrated and patterned. Margaret Mead (1970) sees cultural integration and
patterning as a matter of cultural transmission and commitment to a given tradition of social heritage. She distinguishes
three possible styles of life which contribute to cultural patterning and she describes these patterns as post-figurative, co-figurative and pre-figurative. A post-figurative, is one in which children learn primarily from their forebears;
the past of the adult is the future of each new generation; and the blue print of Culture is essentially complete
and therefore unchallenged by foreign models. In the absence of a written language for documenting the past, the
perception of the new is denied by the
”elders who edit the version of the culture
that is passed on to the young". Igbo society still embodies aspects of the post-figurative culture. Post
figuration requires unquestioning commitment to the essentials of culture and is perpetuated because the elders
were needed not only to guide the group but to provide the complete model of what life was. The post figurative
Culture depends upon the actual presence of three generations. Its defining characteristic is that the culture
is taken for granted (Mead, 1970:1-34) On the other hand, a co-figurative
culture is one in which both children and
adults learn from their peers and the prevailing cultural model is the behavior of their contemporaries. Co-figuration
has its beginning iii a breakdown of the post-figurative system. Indiscipline in Our contemporary society is rooted
in the co figurative system of a culture which fosters shared expectation that members of our generation can model
their behavior on the indiscipline of their contemporaries. To change this behavioral orientation is the challenge
to the youth and society (Mead, 1970:25-50). A pre-figurative culture is one in which adults learn from their children. Igbo society is
still far away from pre-figuration, although the generational differences in access to formal education has made
unschooled parents victims of a pre-figurative culture (Mead, 1970:51-76). One of the insights derived from Margaret Mead's figurative thesis is that the youth must make and
occasionally reaffirm their commitment to their culture. The question to every generation remains: to what past,
present or future can the idealistic young commit themselves? This question was not relevant to the youth in most
traditional societies. You will recall Okonkwo, the hero of Chinua Achebe's (1958) Things Fall
Apart His principal commitment to the ideals of traditional Igbo culture arose from the fact that he
could not conceive of or be subjected to co ting styles of life and traditions. Okonkwo was who he was. He suffered
exile, lost friends and property but was never alienated from his culture or his country. He could not change his
commitment because he found no meaningful alternative. A
PROFILE OF IGBO CULTURE Anthropological
theory makes a distinction between culture, the collective achievements and heritage of the human race and
a culture or cultures, the achievements and heritage of an identifiable population or populations. Igbo culture
is rather complex. Its complexity is misunderstood by the foreign scholars who forget that the Igbo utilize a limited
budget of organizational principles for their social system. This apparent paradox creates two problems. First,
the foreign scholar is fascinated and puzzled by an open, decentralized society which exhibits cultural strengths
and resilience under stress but lacks any observable overarching institution to account for this strength. He ends
up asking the wrong question and of course gets the wrong answers. Cultural strength does not lie in a single over-arching
institution. Second, the Igbo student is forced into a defensive position. He goes into a fruitless search for
institutions which the Igbo culture does not need, and if such an institution were to be forced on it, Igbo culture
would lose its integrity. A holistic culture, which Igbo is, cannot just be "part society and part culture"
because it does not draw its cultural wellspring and inspiration from outside. One of the great achievements of
Igbo scholarship in the last three or four decades is the demonstration, further reinforced by the Ahiajoku
Lecture series since 1979, that Igbo society owes no apology for any social institutions it had or did not fully
develop. To have done otherwise would have done' violence to Igbo worldview. Igbo
Worldview A
people's worldview and their social structure are two elements of the socio-cultural system; and they play a pervasive
role in the social system. The worldview shapes the social structure, the body of rules which governs society and
gives direction to its institutions. On the other hand, the social institutions, including ezi na ulo, reinforce the social structure and re-affirm the worldview. As
we shall show, ezi na
ulo makes a statement on the social structure
and aids our understanding of our worldview, that is, the basic notions underlying our cultural activities, the
definition of cultural goals and social relations. Drawing
from my work, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (Uchendu, 1965:11-21) we may summarize Igbo worldview in seven propositions,
as follows: First,
the Igbo world is an integrated one in which all created beings, the living and the dead, are in communion through
symbolic interactions and other communication channels. In Igbo view the world of man is not strictly divorced
from the world of the spirits Lineage continuity is a cooperative enterprise between the world of man and the world
of the spirits. Existence in this world involves interaction between the visible and the invisible, and the living
and the dead, each honouring a contract based on mutual interest and reciprocity. Second,
the Igbo world is a dynamic world which demands that cosmological balance be
maintained at all times to sustain the social structure. When this balance is threatened by evil men, women or
evil spirits, the cause must be ascertained through divination and the appropriate ritual remedy must be put in
place to restore the cosmological balance. Every imbalance has its appropriate ritual remedy. Third,
the Igbo world is conceived in market terms. It is a "market place" involving a bargaining strategy but
guaranteeing only "equality of opportunity" but not "equality of outcome". Individuals as a
party and the spirits as another, are subjected to this bargaining process. The socially deprived
individual is not denied alternative opportunities to demonstrate his talents and abilities. He can still negotiate
a more rewarding social status for himself during the next cycle of reincarnation through the institution of ebibi.
Misfortune in this world can only be a temporary setback since ebibi and reincarnation promise
a better chance in the next cycle of life. Fourth,
in a world of status instability, status seeking in Igbo society is cyclical and therefore a never-ending quest.
Every elder tries to live a transparent life to guarantee for himself a place of honour
among the ancestors. The elder "confesses" his transgressions every morning as he breaks the morning
kola-nut and does not spare those who wish him and his ezi na ulo
any evil. On the other hand, the ancestors try to bring prosperity to the living lineage because they have a vested
interest in reincarnating into it. To die young in Igbo society’ is to die unfulfilled and for the ezi
na ulo an unbroken series of such deaths is a corporate disaster. Fifth,
"in a world where life processes are delicately balanced and where individuals enjoy a wide
latitude in manipulating human relationships, it is necessary for individuals to live a
transparent life". To live a secret life from ezi na
ulo, from the kin and social groups, is to court the charge of sorcery or other anti-social activities,
personality traits that spell disorder in Igbo communities. The Igbo say that "a country is spoilt by man,
not by gods" implying that a community is as good as its citizens. Sixth,
although the Igbo seek explanations for social disasters through the medium of divination, they know from life
experiences that their society is not "spoiled" by the spirits but by evil doers in society. They therefore
impose a strict code of conduct with penalty for infraction that may stretch into many generations. In Igbo worldview,
accountability enjoys no time limit or benefit of doubt. The individual is held accountable for his wrongs, moral
and otherwise, and he faces retribution in this life if he can be detected or in any number of his cycles of reincarnations.
It is not uncommon for divination to hold a wrong doer accountable for wrongs committed in his third or fourth
reincarnation, as long as the living memories could recollect the event. The only redeeming feature is that ritual
remedies are available. Seventh,
the Igbo live in a world of constant change and are socialized to adapt to it where possible or take a courageous
exit by suicide where society or the forces do not permit individual dignity. The ethnographic history of Igbo
slaves in the various parts of the Igbo tendency of despondency, noted in many p arts of the New World, and a tradition of suicide
as a way out of difficulties has been remarked, as, for example, in Haiti where the old saying "Ibos pend cor a yo" -- "the lbo hang themselves" is still current (Herskovits 1941:36). This Igbo trait of achieving freedom, liberty and human dignity through suicide, to escape the inhuman
slavery conditions that prevailed in the Igbo Social Structure It is easier to make statements about social structure than to define it. Let me take you back to
village, any Igbo community, for glimpses of cultural statements we make on our social structure. When a guest
visits an Igbo household, there is a compulsive necessity to serve him with kola nuts. The presentation of kolanut,
that ubiquitous symbol of Igbo hospitality, follows a "path" which helps the Igbo to reinforce their
"model" of social structure. The presentation of kola may follow any one of the following principles
depending on the commensal group: it may follow the principle of genealogical distance, the social distance, social differentiation; and of course, status structure (Uchendu, 1964:47-50). If the guests are drawn
from different Igbo communities, an expanded "model" is invented to accommodate the new situation. When
a child is born, the umbilical cord must be buried and this ritual may require the presentation of an economic
plant or a symbolic gift. When a young child brings home his or her first calabash or pot of water, he or she is
directed to present it to the most senior woman having a close genealogical of affinal relationship to the child's
father or mother. This creates a new bond of reciprocity between the two. When a child dies in the village, there
are immediate, uncontrolled bursts of wailing as opposed to the rigid discipline that fosters "business as
usual" when an elder dies. The dignity and the status of the dead elder and the prestige of his living relatives
demand that the elder's death must not be formally announced until there is due consultation with all interested
parties, and even then, there is a compelling necessity to assemble critical items for the "first burial rites"
before any formal announcement is made. A premature wailing would be totally irresponsible in the circumstance.
These random samples of behaviors are among many that are distinctively Igbo, although the behaviors are neither
limited to Igbo society nor universal in all Igbo villages and communities. They have been selected to illustrate
the proposition that we need not have precise knowledge of our social structure to make cultural statements about
it. In a literal sense, social structure can be regarded as the "building block" of society. But social
structure is not a concrete phenomenon. It is a statement of principles embodied in objective reality. One of those
realities is ezi na ulo. Ezi na
ulo: Founding a new homestead in Igbo society is always a political act, an assertion of independence
from a parental homestead. Expanding an existing homestead is an indication of prosperity and harmony in the domestic
domain; but abandoning a homestead in a hurry is always a response to crisis of monumental proportions - crises
of death, particularly of the young, that defy ritual prescriptions and remedies or man-provoked disasters like
murder or homicide which leave the members of the homestead no option but to seek security in flight. Ezi n'ulo
is more than a homestead. It is a cultural phenomenon of great complexity. A basic spacial unit in Igbo social
organization, analytically ezi precedes ulo in structural time, but ezi loses its functional integrity
once ulo disintegrates. It is the peace of ezi that brings prosperity to ezi n'ulo
and poverty that leads to its fusion. Ezi n'ulo should not be confused with ezi na ulo.
Although in structural time, ezi precedes ulo, both protect ezi n'ulo.
In cultural terms ezi na ulo
constitute a unity. You cannot meaningfully think of the one without thinking of the other. In structural analysis
ezi na
ulo are polar concepts but they are also
complementary. Their complementarity lies in the fact that it is the social life in the ulo
that activates the cultural life of the ezi, the achievements of the ulo that are celebrated in
ezi and vice-versa. Ezi is a complex word, used
in a primary or literal sense and also in its secondary, idiomatic sense. I recall a short discourse between Ogbonna,
my father's eldest brother (FB), and his wife, Ikodiya (FBW) during my "period of innocence", to use
Prof. Adiele Afigbo's (1981) term. I was stroking a fire for my father's brother as he dried some tobacco leaves
in our ezi, preparatory to grinding it into powder. He called out in a loud voice to Ikodiya, who was in her
kitchen, and asked her to bring him a drink of water. Ikodiya replied: Dim, a
nom na ezi wo: As a child I understood the primary meaning ezi,
a courtyard but did not worry about the apparent contradiction in Da-Ikodiya's assertion that she was in ezi
when in fact she was in her usokwu (kitchen). Like a "good child", who enjoys the company
of elders as long as he minds his own business, I asked for no explanation and none was expected of me in the circumstance.
My father's brother understood his wife. I thought that I did; but as it turned out, I did not. This is a communication
environment in which what Paul Bohannan (1964:11) describes as "the principle of the working misunderstanding"
occurs. Bohannan was characterizing communication in a colonial situation but the communication between mp father's
brother and his wife assumed a "cultural", not a colonial environment. My presence introduced a "generational
gap” which made the use of an idiomatic expression necessary. Nwa Disi
and Lamoji Ugoji, in their very highly successful TV situation comedy, called Icheku,
dramatically and effectively illustrated the "principle of working misunderstanding" in a colonial communication.
My case was one of incremental enculturation. It was much later, and under different circumstances, that I learned
what the Igbo mean when they say - na nwanyi no na ezi. More than two hundred years ago, Olaudah Ekwuanu, a young Igbo
caught in the net of the trans-atlantic slavery and who was able to work himself into freedom and wrote about it,
recorded this experience about ino na ezi
nwanyi: Every woman, at certain times, was forbidden to come into a dwelling house or touch any person or
anything we ate. I was so fond of my mother I could not keep from her or avoid touching her at some of those periods,
in consequence of which I was obliged to be kept out with her in a little house made for that purpose till offering
was made and then we were purified (Olaudah Equiano (First Published 1789):1967:12). Ino na ezi nwanyi is a perfectly natural and indispensable process in the perpetuation
of a race. It is a symbol of womanhood; and it is in symbols that cultural meanings are stored. In Igbo worldview,
this symbol of life, which they term ino na nso
is at the same time a threat not only to social and ritual status, but to life itself. It is pollution and a danger;
and lies at the heart of the gender patterning which paradoxically limits the opportunities open to women in a
society that claims to be equalitarian in ideology. Ezi is not just a "purifying
shrine" for the menstruating woman, it is also a social theatre where cultural events are enacted and celebrated.
The moonlight plays, folk entertainments, marriages, births and funerals are staged at the ezi.
In many parts of Igboland, ezi serves as the "official" burial ground" for the elder
as the ulo is the "grave yard" for the male home owner. These cultural events and activities create
a deep seated historical sensitivity which strengthens the emotional attachment and interest of the Igbo individual
in his ezi na
ulo as well as in his okpulo
(former homestead). While
ezi and ulo are culturally complementary, ezi and ama
are structurally opposed but functionally interactive. Ama is the path to ezi and it does not discriminate
between the "good and the evil” which it carries to the ezi. It is therefore compelled
to limit "evil traffic" at the onu obu by ritual fortifications. Simon Ottenberg (1968), the American ethnographer
on Afikpo, describes in his provocative essay, "Statement and Reality...”, the role which protective shrines,
egbo, located above the compound entrance, plays in guarding against evil entering ezi.
The antagonism between ezi and ama is further demonstrated by the fact that the path used during the
construction of a compound (ezi) is usually abandoned and a new path (ama) would be constructed,
with a protective shrine in place, therefore the new compound could be occupied by its residents. Ezi
n'ulo is not just a bundle of material cultural traits; it is a people -- people united by a bond of
kin network and interlocking functions and reciprocities. We term this network of people ezi
n'ulo, an extended family. The Extended
Family: To create order out of many competing social facts and to understand at least part of the diverse
cultural forces that shape human behavior, social science teaches us to examine the complicated facts from a particular
point of view and to assume, implicitly or explicitly, that "other things are equal". We can easily see
that "other things" are never equal, even in a shared cultural environment. But the alternatives are
to assume the impossible task of covering all the variables or give up the effort. All
societies, no matter the level of their technological, industrial or socio-cultural achievements, have the same
genealogical capacity to construct and maintain an extended family. Many do; a few don't; and some of those which
developed an extended family network have reversed it because of the hostility of their changing environment. The
common element in all types of extended family systems is marriage; and without marriage, there would be no genealogy.
Marriage creates four kinship matrices: husband-father, wife-mother, brother-brother and 'sister-sister,
which are repackaged into eight basic kinship syndromes: husband-wife, father-son, mother son, mother-daughter,
father-daughter, sister-sister, brother-brother and brother-sister. No society can claim more or less of these
basic structures but each society decides how much importance to attach to each of them. The basic structure that
is attached the most importance gives a focus and direction to a particular culture. For instance, the father-son
and the brother-sister emphases provide these directions in the two contrasting Igbo kinship structures. The Concept of the Extended Family:
What is an extended family? Permit me to answer from a previous work (Uchendu, 1971:183-85). The classic conception
of the extended family is a kinship unit with four major characteristics: a unit marked by geographic propinquity,
of occupational integration, strict authority of the presiding elder or patriarch over the component nuclear families
and stress on extended rather than nuclear family relations. Operationally, we may define the extended family as
a social system lacking a fixed number of specifiable positions (e.g. husband/father, wife-mother, etc.), but consisting
of two or more familiar positions of which one or more resulting dyads is not a nuclear dyad. Implicit in our notion
of the extended family as a social system is the fact that it is marked by persistent- patterns of social relationship
which prevail from generation to generation; and that as an on-going social unit, it commands certain resources
(facilities and a territorial base) and certain integrative mechanisms and sanctions such as norms, power, status
and prestige which facilitate the attainment of its objectives. Theoretically,
the extended family concept may concept at least four different notions. First, it may be used as an ideal type
construct, in the Weberian sense, in formulating family theory. In this sense, the extended family represents the
polar limit of the nuclear or conjugal family system. Characteristics which are associated with the ideal type
extended family system sharpen the contrasts which exist between it and the nuclear family. Second, the extended
family may be viewed as the ideal family culture with a varying range of value characteristics and ideological
patterns exhibited by societies in which this institution is a cherished value. The extended family ideal is shared
world-wide by most cultures, and in the traditional prestige system, it is the ideal that motivated the aspiring
individual to accumulate wealth and use it to build up "social 'power”. Third, we can view the extended family
as a cultural goal realized in a social system. The distinction that anthropologists make between the "real
culture" and the "ideal culture" might be conceptually useful here. The ideal of the extended family
is not attained by every aspirant. The degree to which aspirants achieve an extended family status which their
fellow culture bearers would recognize as "legitimate", or "proper", is a measure of the existence
of the extended family system in action. Finally, there is-the extended family which can be viewed as a structural
construct – a structure with several central variables. Theoretically, the extension of kin boundaries is potentially
limitless. The structural aspect of the extended family is the most flexible quality of the system. What sets the
boundary is not geography but social frame of reference. Depending on this social frame of reference, African societies
like the Nuer and the Tiv – to cite classic ethonographic examples – have no problem claiming to be members of
the same extended family. However, the amount of resources available to the extended family, the technological
level of the total social system of which it is a part, are two important factors which shape the organizational
form of the extended family, its corporate quality, the degree of interaction among the membership and its general
viability during the industrialising and post industrial periods of development. The
central feature of the extended family is its structural extension. From this, a number of attributes which characterize the ideal
system, and which are the synthesis of our four-fold view of the extended family may be deduced (Goode, 1963:237-255): 1. The extended family includes a wide range of affinal and blood relatives. Some of the relatives
are immediate and interact in the day to day affairs of the extended family; others are remote and are articulated
by family crises. Some are attracted by the improved fortunes of the system, and in contemporary 2. In the African situation, while the husband/wife relation is gaining in importance, it is seldom
the hub of the system. The father/son or mother’s brother/sister's son relationships are the traditional emphases
in Igbo sub-cultures with consequences for the radical adjustment of the nuclear families in the system which face conflicting loyalties. 3. By definition, members of the extended family have many rights with respect to one another, and
at any given time these reciprocal rights may be active or dormant. 4. Following from the reciprocal rights are the moral sanctions and control over one another. 5. Ideally, the interests of the extended family affect the behavior of the nuclear components in
the system. For instance, fertility and residence are influenced by kin consideration. In an industrial system
this raises questions about labour mobility and appropriate family size. 6. In the Umunna belt of Igbo sub-culture, the value attached to lineal continuity creates the need
for androcentric culture and tends to perpetuate widow inheritance and plural marriages. In
a summary of the relevant literature on the extended family, Gelia Castillo et al
(1968:1-40) isolates the following ten elements which in their view characterize the extended family: 1. In an extended family, relatives other than husband, wife and unmarried children share residence
or live adjacent to the nuclear family. 2. There is a pooling or sharing or joint ownership of resources which is usually formalized or
legally recognized and these resources normally include symbolic estates, that is, the inheritance of rights in
relatives. 3. Recognition of kin relations either of a lineal or. of a collateral character
but usually of both. 4. Recognition of common responsibilities. 5. Allegiance to a common ancestor and pts worship. 6. Reciprocal assistance pattern. 7. Joint economic activities either on production or consumption or both. 8. Maintenance of expressive relations among extended family members through visits and support
at crisis periods. 9. The use of the extended family as a reference group in decision-making. 10. Authoritarian control over relationships and decision- making by the elder who has command over
the corporate resources and his house, the centre for all formal activities, both ritual and social. This list
is far from exhaustive and I have added to it in a subsequent publication (Shimkin and Uchendu, 1978:393-94). The Extended
Family Universe: Kinship systems manifest themselves in many areas of social life.
They are involved in domestic activities such as cooking and eating; in sexual activities like sleeping and copulating;
in the transmission of knowledge, values, status and property from one generation to another; in the terms of address
we use; and in how we perpetuate the memory of the dead and of our heroes. Claude Levi-Strauss (1963:46-75) stresses
that all kinship systems are built up out of a single "universe", a single type of what he calls "elementary
structure". He identifies this structure as consisting of a woman, her brother, her husband and their son.
His thesis that "exchange is the universal form of marriage" can be shared by all Igbo elders. Because
of the universally recognized prohibition of incest, a woman cannot find a husband within her family of orientation.
She and her brother have to seek spouses outside this family group. This fact places the destinies of women in
marriage in the control of men. The consequences are many, and one of them is the creation of a diverse extended
family universe, each a corporate group with important role in allocating and guarding the family symbolic estate,
that is, the wealth in their women, who may be daughters or sisters. In
his study of "The kinship terminology of Ezinihitte Mbaise, Edwin Ardener (1954:85-99) provides a chart from
which we recreate Igbo extended family universe. (Figure I) |
