Culture, Tribe, Society

In Nupe the unit of culture is in certain respects smaller than the unit of the tribe. The different &s;countries&s; of Nupe represent different, and differently organized, cultural &s;provinces&s;. Culture varies with environment and the productive organization which it entails; it expresses the changing dominant interests involved in social, political, and economic conditions. The conception of a common tribal culture is kept alive, as part of Nupe tradition, by the transmission of traditional knowledge. It forms part of the general ideological background of all institutionalized behaviour. The sub-tribe is thus not a &s;tribe&s; on a smaller scale; it differs essentially from the wider unit of the tribe. If the Nupe tribe possesses no external symbols, costumes, or body markings, such emblems exist to some extent for the sub-tribe. The two types of integration, uniformity and conformity, do not exhaust the forms of unity of behaviour existing in society.