Open AccessJournal Article
The question of caste in West Africa with special reference to Tukulor craftsmen
TLDR
In this paper, a general case is made for a culturological rather than a sociological view of caste; i.e., the consideration of indigenous conceptions of why caste groups are considered different from one another.Abstract:
The A. has two analytical purposes in discussing the question of caste in West Africa. First, a general case is made for a culturological rather than a sociological view of caste; i.e., the consideration of indigenous conceptions of why caste groups are considered different from one another. Second an in-depth ethnographic investigation of local conceptions of caste among Tukulor or Pulaar speakers is presented, and it argues that caste today is better conceived as an indigenous discourse of difference than as a particular type of social organisation. Moreover, this discourse of alterity or difference is symbolically elaborated in terms of bodies of knowledge and competing systems of power, as well as with reference to racial distinction.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Perceptions of Consumption: Constituting Potters, Farmers and Blacksmiths in the Culinary Continuum in Eastern Tigray, Northern Highland Ethiopia
TL;DR: In this article, a study of potters, blacksmiths and farmers in eastern Tigray, Ethiopia is presented, where they transgress normative gender expectations by using technological skills and space differently.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reflections on knowledge practices and the problem of ignorance
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the problematique de lignorance dans theories anthropologiques de la connaissance and illustre son propos par une etude de cases des pratiques du savoir chez les artisans senegalais et les officiers et administrateurs coloniaux francais en Afrique de l'Ouest.
Dissertation
Faith, identity, status and schooling: an ethnography of educational decision-making in northern Senegal
TL;DR: The authors investigates how families in northern Senegal negotiate between state and Islamic schools, and finds that the importance of a caste-like social hierarchy in shaping education strategies is highlighted by both intrinsic and material benefits.
Dissertation
Defying the law, negotiating changeThe Futanke’s opposition to the national ban on FGM in Senegal
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the politics of the preservation and abandonment of female circumcision in Fouta Toro, Senegal, and examine how the female body is located as a site of morality, key to the reproduction of cultural identities.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Race and Reason@@@In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture.
Norman Rush,Kwame Anthony Appiah +1 more
Book
In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
TL;DR: The authors examines the cultural and political dimensions of what it means to be an African today and probes the history of the idea of Africa to illuminate an African identity that extends into the continent's multiple diasporas.
Book
The interpretation of caste
TL;DR: This paper argued that there is a tension between the centralizing forces of kingship, with its associated ritual, and decentralising forces of kinship in a complex agrarian society, rather than Brahminical ideology, which generates the characteristic patterns of hierarchy and the preoccupation with purity and pollution.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Development of Caste Systems in West Africa
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the formation of blacksmith and bard castes among the Manding and Soninke artisans during the Sosso-Malinke war, described in the Sunjata epic, which led to the founding of the Mali empire.