Showing papers in "Ethnos in 1987"

Of totemism and ethnicity: Consciousness, practice and the signs of inequality*

Abstract: Is ethnicity an object of analysis, something to be explained? Or is it an explanatory principle capable of accounting for significant aspects of human existence? Because it has been treated in both ways, sometimes simultaneously, there is disagreement over even the most fundamental issues: What is ethnicity, one thing or many? Does it have the capacity to determine social and material life? Or is it determined by other forces and structures? And how does it relate to race, class and nationalism? Drawing examples primarily from Africa, this essay posits five propositions about the nature of ethnicity in an effort to illuminate its historical character and diverse experiential forms.

Women in pastoral production

Abstract: This concluding article aims to review, on a general level, some of the issues relating to the place of women in pastoral production. It begins by a discussion of the extent to which “pastoralism” as such is a valid point of departure for analysis and then proceeds to look at the pastoral working process from the perspective of females. It is argued that a proper understanding of pastoral productive relations must be based on a recognition of the dual nature of productivity—in terms of utilities and in terms of herd generation. The complex intertwining of different labour inputs leaves room for the cultural underevaluation of women's work. Female rights to livestock and the access that women have to other resources that can give them bargaining power are then discussed. The article ends with a consideration of the direction of present changes in the lives of pastoral women.

Women as heads of houses: The organization of production and the role of women among Pastoral Maasai in Kenya*

Abstract: The Maasai are cattle pastoralists, living on the grass savanna in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. This article, which deals with Kenya, describes Maasai women as “heads of houses”. The house as a physical structure shelters and symbolically embodies a matrofocal unit of consumption and resource sharing which is the smallest unit of Maasai society. In terms of livestock property, such units are subordinated to larger, patriarchal units. According to the author, the relative autonomy of Maasai houses, and in particular women's control over food resources is significantly decreasing. The reason for this is the present commercialization of Maasai production.

Economic and political differentiation among Galole Orma women

Abstract: The Orma are cattle‐herders living close to Tana River in Kenya. This paper gives an outline of Orma propertyholding and of women's contributions to production in terms of labor. The relationship between control over resources (either outright ownership, rights over use, or indirect control through children's ownership) is discussed in relation to the influence women wield in issues considering sale of stock, decisions to shift or not, and the use of child labor. Formal and informal positions of power held by Orma women are analysed in relation to the effectiveness of women's influence over production decisions. The access that Orma women have to property varies with the degree of integration into the cash economy and to one's position on the nomadic‐sedentary continuum. With greater sedentarization and integration into cash economy women seem to lose control over economic resources in terms of outright ownership. They participate less in manual tasks of production. However, by a variety of informal and f...

Cattle as capital

Abstract: Livestock have been seen either as a source of subsistence or as commodities in a process of capital accumulation. Is the association of cattle with capital just a poetic metaphor or the grounds for a serious analysis of third world herding communities? Economists are divided between an orthodox notion of capital as physical equipment and a Marxist emphasis on social relations dominated by money. Nevertheless, some anthropologists assert that herders should be conceptualised as capitalists. The key elements in the Western folk concept of capital are: increase, money, physical stock and preoccupation with future time. Despite the plausible link between herding and some of these ideas, we conclude that, as an analytical category, ‘capital’ is too loaded and diffuse for fruitful application to the analysis of pastoralist production.

The reality of anthropology

Abstract: The article concerns the continuity between anthropology and the reality it studies. Discovery and definition merge. This is substantiated by a discussion of ‘events’ and ‘worlds’. While the anthropologist becomes her own informant in the field, in the sense that her experience informs her ethnography, anthropology simultaneously shapes her discoveries. This simultaneity ultimately dissolves the distinction between subject and object, and from this point anthropology may recondition the conditions of science.

Woman as Ol Payian (elder): The status of widows among the Il Chamus (Njemps) of Kenya

Abstract: During the last century the Maa‐speaking Il Chamus of Kenya have gone from irrigation farming to a pastoral economy based on small stock and cattle kept primarily for their milk. The author of this article contributes to a more nuanced picture of the “pastoral woman” by illustrating how widowhood changes those patterns of behaviour that the Il Chamus normally expect of women at particular life‐stages. He also considers the changes that widows are increasingly coming to face due to present‐day increases in non‐pastoral demands for labour, economic diversification, and the formalization of resource control.

Women unveiled: Class and gender among Kel Ferwan Twareg (Niger)

Abstract: The Kel Ferwan Twareg dwell in the Air mountains of Niger, where, they live from camels, cattle, sheep and goats. Like the Kel Ahaggar they have a highly stratified society. The article deals with contemporary conditions, and illustrates how gender inequality has different consequences for high status women and women from the servant groups, even though both these categories lead lives which are in sharp contrast to the mobile life of Twareg men. High status women have only limited independent control of livestock, compared to high status men. However, they as women have a greater control over labour, since they “own” the female servants that give birth to more servants. The servant women, generally of slave descent, are constrained to menial work, while the woman of high status is able to make decisions and organize the work of others for her own profit.

The position of Tubu women in pastoral production: Daza Kesherda, republic of Niger

Abstract: The Tubu live in Northern Chad, eastern Niger and southern Libya. They keep cattle and camels for milk and some goats for their meat. The author offers an account both of women's role in the practical division of tasks and her position in the structure of rights to livestock. She notes that Tubu women's limited stock rights tend overwhelmingly to derive from the relation they have to other people and concludes that these rights to livestock are fundamental for understanding the position of Tubu women in society.

The ‘Peace of the Market’ in the Midst of Violence: A Symbolic Analysis of Markets and Exchange in Western Guatemala

Abstract: The peasant markets of the western highlands of Guatemala present a field of public solidarity and constitute sources of sociocultural information. The information is expressed in the specific physical arrangements and in the types of interactions carried out in each context. The open, quasi festive plaza presents one model of and for behavior that corresponds to the traditional Indian conceptual framework, the public reunion strengthens the group solidarity and serves as a barrier against external aggression. The compartmentalized enclosed market, instead, follows and serves as a model which corresponds to Ladino conceptual guidelines, one which emphasizes the power of the product over the ethnic category as an organizational parameter. The traditional open plaza constitutes a communitas‐type framework where multiple interactions are peacefully conducted and the ‘Other’ is identified through the practice of bargaining.

Women and property in Guajiro society

Abstract: This paper discusses property‐related issues and concepts among the Guajiro—a matrilineal cattle pastoralist society in Colombia and Venezuela—from a women‐oriented perspective, focusing on types of, acquisition and management of property as well as death‐ and compensation‐linked property transactions. Also considered are questions pertaining to female productivity in pastoral societies and women's significance as resources and potential property.

Lulendo: the recovery of a Kongo nkisi

Abstract: Lulendo was a kind of chiefship intended to control markets. It was developed during the 1880s by BaKongo in the area near modern Luozi in Lower Zaire, in an attempt to resist increasing European pressure on local trade. The central act of Lulendo was the ritualised execution of a criminal in the marketplace. KiKongo texts in the Swedish National Archives enable us to reconstruct and interpret the ritual, and also cast light on the occupation of the area by the forces of the Congo Free State.

Some reflections on ‘entrepreneur‐ship’ and the Chinese community of a west Malaysian market town*

Abstract: Ethnographic and historical data on Chinese in a West Malaysian market town are employed in a critique of conventional views of ‘entrepreneurship’. On the basis of an analysis of operation of family firms and relations between employers and employees in the town's truck transport industry, and in view of the contemporary political economy of Malaysia, it is argued that the reigning concept of ‘entrepreneurship’ should be deconstructed into its constituent elements ‐ risk‐taking, innovation, property ownership, etc. It is concluded that past generalizations about Chinese ‘entrepreneurship’ are anachronous, given the present dominance of oligopoly capitalism in Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Relations between spouses among the Negev Bedouin

Abstract: The Negev Bedouin today are living from a mixed economy, the mainstay of which is cereal farming, but they do regard themselves as primarily camel and sheep raisers and the husbandry of small stock is very important. In this article, the author looks at the relationship between spouses in the context of the domestic developmental cycle and the varying resources available to the spouses as the family cycle changes. In certain conditions one can find that the relative position of the women improves over the years while that of the husband also declines. This is largely due to the close links between a woman and her sons, based on joint interests, often directed against the father‐husband.

Stages of women's life among Tibetan Nomadic Traders: The Humli‐Khyampa of Far Western Nepal*

Abstract: The Humli‐Khyampa are trading pastoralisls in Far Western Nepal using sheep, goats and horses as beasts of burden rather than as food producers. The present paper focusses on the stages of a Humli‐Khyampa woman's life, and the cultural images and expected behaviour patterns linked to each such period. The ultimate aim of each woman's life, argues the author, is to rule over her own household and to control and manage womenpower.

The Twareg Women of Ahaggar and the Creation of Value

Abstract: The Ahaggar Twareg are herders of camels and small‐stock who live in the desert of southern Algeria. Their society is divided into categories of noblemen, tributaries and slaves. This article, which deals with the colonial and pre‐colonial period, demonstrates how among the two first mentioned classes, male supremacy over women builds upon men's control over the process that create exchange‐value rather than use‐value. The author also describes how the gender‐based and class‐based forms of labour division interlock.

Sheikhanzai women: sisters, mothers and wives

Abstract: The Sheikhanzai are goat‐and‐sheep‐herding pastoralists who migrate from winter pastures near the Iranian and Soviet borders of Afghanistan to highland summer pastures in the western Hindu Kush. The article sets out to show that among the Sheikhanzai, women's management of economic resources provides a source of power which is frequently unavailable to women in sedentary communities. The domestic work and productive activities of Sheikhanzai women will be examined in the context of their roles as power‐wielders and power‐brokers. Attention is drawn to intra‐societal variation between different categories of women.

The division of production, distribution and consumption in Saami society

Abstract: The reindeer‐herding Saami, living in the Lapland regions of Sweden, Norway and Finland are an occupational minority within an ethnic one. In this article, the author demonstrates how for the Kautokeino Saami of Norway, the exigencies of contemporary housing, transportation and schooling preclude that the women invest as much time in supervisory herding and in husbandry decisions as was the case a generation ago. However, their rights to individual ownership of reindeer and influence in the management of the household's total resources continue. Despite governmental efforts to transform reindeer herding into a meat‐producing industry integrated with the overarching cash economy, the inputs of women in some families permits it to remain a diversified subsistence economy.