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This paper attempts to determine the full significance of labor flows between independent farming units in West Africa in order to evaluate the possibilities of accumulation in traditional African farming and the implications of such accumulation for local‐level stratification. Three forms of agricultural labor–house‐hold, wage, and cooperative‐are compared with respect to their cost to the farmer: (1) Household labor and wage labor may lead to the growth of the farming unit; (2) Cooperative labor, while it allows for a transfer of value in the initial stages of growth, becomes very expensive as the operation of the farmer expands; (3) Farmers from outside the village, operating with more capital, take greater advantage of wage labor and household labor and increase their capacity for wealth accumulation. The mechanism of differential access to the cheaper sources of labor probably existed in the past as well, but the customary landholding system, which ensures a farm to all household heads, has limited the stratifying effects of differential access by preventing the formation of a rural proletariat.[economic anthropology, cooperative labor, agriculture, West Africa, stratification]

This article explores the bases of corporate authority and personal autonomy in marriage decisions among the Bobo, a West African people with a double‐descent system. Elder men and women allocate young women within the uterine descent group, thereby constraining the choices of partners and creating patterns that are consistent with the desire to maintain control over dependents. These practices, however, are continuously challenged by young people who advocate divergent perspectives and whose opposition is facilitated by the support of other types of kin. The emergence of wealth differences and the effect of administration and missionary activity contributed to dissension against the men and women who have positions of authority within lineage segments, at the same time as it reduced the solidarity among them.[kinship, social organization, double descent, rural transformation, West Africa]

A letter to the editor is presented in defense of Mark Engel's objection to Peter Green's practical explanation of the pork taboo in "Leviticus" as a protection against trichinoisis in the July 3, 2008 issue.