system of lineages became the foundation of social life, but that doesn’t mean they were immovable and inflexible. People used lineage and clan membership to pursue their interests. Lineages were described as corporate in that they controlled property, such as lands or herds, as a unit. Though the colonial era eliminated communal ownership among Kuria, lineage membership continues to carry benefits.
When members of a descent group believe that they are in some way connected but cannot specify the precise genealogical links, they compose what anthropologists call a clan. Bwirege is such a unit. Usually, a clan is made up of lineages whose members believe they are related to one another through links that go back to mythical times but cannot be traced exactly. So whereas lineage members can specify the precise genealogical links back to their common ancestor, clan members cannot. The clan is thus larger than any lineage, and more diffuse in terms of both membership and the hold it has over individuals. It is also territorially based.
Early cultural history of East Africa described by Davidson identifies dispersal and migration as the basic characteristic of the spread of indigenous populations in precolonial times (1969, 47). For Abairege, as for other migrants, connection with descent groups provided a source of identity and security, and regulated social relationships with other migrants settling on nearby ridges or lands. Accordingly, members of the same lineages would move to be near each other for mutual assistance and defense, and over time the descent groups became territorially based. So a particular ridge became the land of the Abahirichacha, and members of that descent group would receive land for use from the lineage elders. On the ground, lineage affiliation served as the charter for social relationship, identifying those whom one could marry or rely on for help, as well as those who were outsiders and thus enemies.
Ruel describes traditional Kuria society as composed of four levels of descent groups at the time of the late colonial period. Ikiaro, translated as province or clan, was the most inclusive, followed by egesaku (descent section), irigiha (clan segment), and eeka (lineage). According to Ruel, these units of sociopolitical organization had lost all their relevance by the 1950s, except for the levels most (ikiaro) and least (eeka) inclusive (1959, 56). The characteristics of the segmentary lineage system he describes probably functioned exclusively until the 1920s, when colonial administration reached Bukuria and introduced territorially defined political units, controlled through the colonial administrative structure. As the precolonial lineage structures lost clear definition over time, administrators and anthropologists observing Kuia people and writing about them deemphasized the importance and primacy of the descent system, and focused instead on the forms of colonial administration as the salient pillars of political and social organization in Bukuria during colonial and early postcolonial eras: chiefs and administrative locations. Yet, what becomes clear by focusing on the ritual life of Kuria people today in the performance of circumcision is how descent continues to define identity, social relationships, and the shape of current events. Where the colonial observers saw lineages as principally elements of political organization, their significance persists because they are units governing social life that, in particular circumstances, take on political significance, even in the context of introduced governmental institutions.17
Ruel characterizes an ikiaro as having changing descent composition resulting from the dispersal and reformation of groups within it (1959, 28). As the most inclusive level of the descent system, the ikiaro was defined primarily as territory belonging to specific people with an assumed relationship to a common mythical ancestor rather than any traceable lineage. The people who occupied a common province showed solidarity in shared means of settling disputes, compensation for homicide, and mechanisms for collective labor. The territorial base was the vicinity in which people lived. The occupants shared a sense of common identity and distinctiveness from other groups of the same level. Each ikiaro had its own totem, and its distinct ceremonies, though traditions were shared with other ibiaro. Abairege have the leopard as their totem, as do Abagumbe and Abanyamongo. All ibiaro perform initiations, but each at their own time, following their own sequence and form. Each ikiaro had (and has) its own ritual center and its own inchaama.
According to Ruel, the ibisaku were the most clearly “political” of all descent units because the common ancestor was hypothesized rather than known, and obligations associated with membership had the least to do with kinship duties.18 Fighting between ibisaku was common, as were rivalry and hostility. Starting in colonial times, the allocation of political office was often influenced by descent section solidarities. Moreover, colonial archives from 1931 mention rivalry between the two ibisaku groups in Bwirege, the Abakehenche and the Abarisenye. Political jockeying continues today. Conflict between these two descent sections during the 1998–99 circumcision season and again in 2001–02 highlights the social and political functioning of intermediate levels of segmentary organization, contrary to their believed irrelevance fifty years ago.
In the past, groups based on descent—ibisaku and amagiha—had two primary functions: (1) cooperation in war, defining those who could be called on for support in case of conflict; and (2) cooperation in work groups performing tasks necessary for survival. Pax Britannica was meant to put an end to fighting, but cattle raiding persists even today. Raiding provides a source of bridewealth and is still regarded by some members of the society as a legitimate occupation of youths. Accordingly, people know the ibisaku and the amagiha they belong to because the traditional functions persist. But they often misuse descent group terminology because the groups have become so large, and because the term ikiaro is identified with modern political boundaries more than with traditional descent structure. So the grouping Abahirichacha, a subsegment of the Abakehenche, is regarded by some as an egesaku; by others, an irigiha. In general discourse, people refer to their memberships by their descent group names, not by categorical referents.19
Figure 2. Kuria descent structure
Even though people continue to identify with and shape social behavior around their ikiaro, the traditional social evolution of communities from eeka to irigiha to egesaku to ikiaro is no longer possible because the ibiaro became territorialized with fixed boundaries in the early decades of the twentieth century, as administrative locations were delimited by the colonial government to correspond closely to the territories of the ibiaro. Consequently, the descent structure cannot operate as a segmentary lineage system because there is no longer free and open land available for active segmentation to continue. The ibiaro are fixed and there is no movement within the hierarchy. So, though the designations Abakehenche and Abarisenye no longer fit into a traditionally functioning descent section model using the terminology ikiaro-egesaku-irigiha-eeka, all Abairege affiliate with either the Abakehenche (seen as the larger/senior segment) or the Abarisenye (seen as the smaller/junior segment).
Although today the ibiaro are territorially based rather than descent based, they still constitute the maximal unit to which an individual belongs within Kuria social reckoning. Furthermore, private ownership of land, widely encouraged in the colony under the Swynnerton Plan (1954), created a situation where territory associated with specific descent groups is no longer strictly in the hands of the elders of that descent group. So if the Abarisenye and Abakehenche were to split into two ibiaro, the social and territorial units would no longer be coterminous, since people of each branch live intermingled in the communities of Bwirege. According to my household survey data, this shift in landholding and settlement patterns has taken place increasingly in recently settled communities.
The ikiaro remains the main focus of Kuria identification. Among Kuria, people speak of themselves as members of an ikiaro (e.g., Abairege, Abanyabasi, and so forth), rather than as Abakuria. The relationships between ibiaro are generally hostile, unless (totemic) alliance is shared. Outsiders from other ibiaro are enemies and always potentially dangerous, thus girls and parents alike fear the threat of a pregnant, uncircumcised girl exiled to a neighboring ikiaro. People from other ibiaro are distrusted, and when traveling by road through Bukuria, passengers fear getting stranded by a vehicle breakdown in any of the other ibiaro. This is especially the case at times of heightened ritual activity, such as initiations, when it is believed that misfortune, in the form of death to the initiates, is threatened by contact with members of other ibiaro.