Age Set - A Typical Example

A Typical Example

South-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 do not 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.