Hakuna Refu Lisilo Ncha : Nothing is So Long that it has No End

There can be no question that the culture of the ancient Swahili community works, even though it has been seen that most of its elements are shared only among various sized parts of the population rather than by all. In asking how this culture works, then, a basic question has been how cultural elements affect those who do not share them.

The main answer to this has been through statuses, with particular importance attributed to the statuses in multiplex relationships and the general expectations that are vital to them. These bundles of understandings are taken to bring culture's guidance to specific issues and situations and, at the same time, to serve as a central part of a variety of processes that make culture's components, or the result of their use, available to community members, including some who do not share them.

If the perspective derived from this study can be summarized in a single statement, it is that culture is a sort of ouroborus, the Greek snake with its tail in its mouth. Social relationships cannot operate without the culturally constituted statuses that guide them, but culture cannot operate without the social relationships that distribute its components and are the main force in organizing them.

Culture is not ineffable; it is a natural phenomenon, though a very complex one, that can be increasingly well understood as more useful concepts and theories are developed. This book has been an attempt to contribute to such concepts and theories and to test them on a body of ethnographic data collected from some of the world's most gracious people.