Knowledge and social change in Samia, Western Kenya.

Cross-cultural studies have demonstrated the significance of control of knowledge for the status and treatment of old people. This paper is a case study of information processing activities of elderly Samia in colonial Kenya and changes in those activities with modernization. Some ways elders controlled knowledge in the traditional context of the past are reconstructed from interviews with older Samia persons. This is compared to the situation in the 1980s as observed during two years' field research. Implications of the changes for the status and treatment of elderly Samia, for intergenerational relations among the Samia, and for gerontological theory are discussed.