■ Drawing upon a significant amount of unpublished data which Margaret Read collected as a part of the 1939 Nyasaland Nutrition Survey and her simultaneous study on the impact of migrant labor on village life in Nyasa land, this article argues that her conclusions that matrilineal practices were being taken over by patrilineal ones is not borne out by the evidence she collected. As peoples in the three nutrition survey villages (Yao, Chewa and Ngoni) and in the surrounding areas experienced much interaction and as, especially, patrilineal Ngoni interacted with matrilineal Chewa, practices usually associated with one or another of these descent systems became mutually modified rather than uni directional. Aspects of patriliny actually failed to give advantage to many people, and aspects of matriliny - such as inheritance, rights to land, and control over labor and children - proved to be more durable than her interpretations implied.
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2.
NNS/I-V Archival Listing
3.
2 Margaret Read Papers, London Sclaool of Economics LSE/READ 1/25, 1/27, 1/30, 1/32
4.
1/38 'Preliminary Report: Emigration from Nyasaland: Its Effects on Village Life', presented to the Native Welfare Committee in Nyasaland (nd, but probably 1940)
5.
3 Bronislaw Malinowski Papers, London School of Economics
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LSE/MAL 496 Margaret Read, Correspondence.
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Public Record Office London PRO/CAB
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58/199 #14. International Institute of African Languages and Cultures.'Proposal for a Nutrition Survey of an African Tribe' , September 1936
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58/208 Memorandum 9: Economic Advisory Council. Committee on Nutrition in the Colonial Empire. Research Subcommittee. 8 March 1938
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38.
Read, Margaret (1956) The Ngoni of NyasalandLondon : Oxford University Press.
39.
Read, Margaret (1960) Children of their Fathers: Growing Up Among the Ngoni of NyasalandNew Haven: Yale University Press.
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Richards, Audrey (1934) 'Mother-Right among the Central Bantu', in E.E. Evans Pritchard et al. (eds) Essays Presented to C.G. Seligman, pp. 267-79. London: Kegan Paul.
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