Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:00:37.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Making children, making chiefs: gender, power and ritual legitimacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Todd Sanders
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article explores indigenous notions of power and chiefly legitimacy among the Ihanzu, a relatively small Bantu-speaking community located in north central Tanzania. Particular attention is paid to local ideas and ideals of gender—that is, the cultural categories ‘male’ and ‘female’, as well as the relationship between them—in an effort to show the complex ways in which gender categories, when combined, are powerful and capable of effecting transformations of different sorts. Men and women, by combining male and female fertilising fluids, create children. Similarly, male and female chiefs, through royal incest, bring forth male and female rains. It is suggested that the strategic combination of the cultural categories ‘male’ and ‘female’ provides the underlying transformative model both for sexual reproduction and for rainmaking. And it is through the combination of gender categories that chiefs legitimise their own positions, first by producing rain and, second, by metaphorically giving birth to all Ihanzu people each season. But whether for chiefs or commoners, it is argued that power frequently comes in gendered pairs.

Résumé

Cet article est consacré aux notions indigènes de pouvoir et de légitimité des chefs au sein de la communauté Ihanzu, une petite communauté de langue bantoue située au nord de la partie centrale de la Tanzanie. II porte une attention particulière aux conceptions locales de distinction des sexes, à savoir les catégories culturelles masculines et féminines, ainsi que les rapports entre ces catégories, pour essayer de montrer comment, de manière complexe, ces catègories exercent un pouvoir et sont capables de produire des transformations de natures diverses. Les hommes et les femmes, par le mélange de substances fécondatrices masculines et féminines, créent des enfants. De la même manière, les chefs hommes et femmes, par inceste royal, produisent des pluies masculines et féminines. L'article suggère que la combinaison stratégique des catégories culturelles masculines et féminines forme le modèle de transformation sous-jacent de la reproduction sexuelle et des rites pratiqués pour faire venir la pluie. C'est aussi à travers la combinaison des catégories hommesfemmes que les chefs légitiment leur propre position, d'une part en faisant venir la pluie, et d'autre part en donnant naissance métaphoriquement à l'ensemble du peuple Ihanzu à chaque saison. Mais qu'il s'agisse des chefs ou des gens du peuple, l'article suggère que le pouvoir se manifeste souvent par un accouplement du masculin et du féminin.

Type
Pairing makes for power, but whence resilience?
Information
Africa , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , April 1998 , pp. 238 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, V. 1963a. Migrant Labour from Ihanzu. Conference proceedings from Makerere College, Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.Google Scholar
Adam, V. 1963b. Rainmaking Rites in Ihanzu. Conference proceedings from Makerere College, Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.Google Scholar
Arens, W., and Karp, I. (eds). 1989a. Creativity of Power: osmology and action in African societies. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Arens, W. 1989b. ‘Introduction’, in Arens, W. and Karp, I. (eds), Creativity of Power: cosmology and action in African societies, pp. xi-xxix. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Avua, L. 1968. ‘Droughtmaking among the Lugbara’, Uganda Journal 32 (1), 29–38.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1964a. ‘Pig (Guluwe): an essay on Ngulu sexual symbolism and ceremony’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 20, 359–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1964b. “Three tales of the living and the dead: the ideology of Kaguru ancestral propitiation’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 94, 109–37.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1966a. ‘Swazi royal ritual’, Africa 36, 373–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1966b. ’Utani: some Kaguru notions of death, sexuality and affinity’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 22, 354–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1971a. ‘Kaguru descent groups (east central Tanzania)’, Anthropos 66, 373–96.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1971b. ‘Nuer priests and prophets: charisma, authority, and power among the Nuer’, in Beidelman, T. O. (ed.), The Translation of Culture: essays presented to E. E. Evans-Pritchard, pp. 375–15. London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1993. Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Beidelman, T. O. 1997. The Cool Knife: imagery of gender, sexuality, and moral education in Kaguru initiation ritual. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Blacking, J. 1969a. ‘Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools’ 1, ‘Vhusha’, African Studies 28 (1), 3–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blacking, J. 1969b. ‘Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools’ 2, ‘Milayo’, African Studies 28 (2), 67–118Google Scholar
Blacking, J. 1969c. ‘Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools’ 3, ‘Domba’, African Studies 28 (3), 149–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blacking, J. 1969d. ‘Songs, dances, mimes and symbolism of Venda girls' initiation schools’ 4, “The great domba song’, African Studies 28 (4), 215–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleek, D. F. 1933. ‘Beliefs and customs of the /Xam Bushman’ 5, ‘The rain’, Bantu Studies 7, 297–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloch, M. 1971. Placing the Dead: tombs, ancestral villages, and kinship organization in Madagascar. London: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1987. ‘Descent and sources of contradiction in representations of women and kinship’, in Collier, J. F. and Yanagisako, S. J. (eds), Gender and Kinship: essays toward a unified analysis, pp. 324–37. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M., and Parry, J. 1982. ‘Introduction: death and the regeneration of life’, in Bloch, M. and Parry, J. (eds), Death and the Regeneration of Life, pp. 1–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosko, D. 1981. ‘Why Basotho wear blankets’, African Studies 40 (1), 23–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brain, J. L. 1978. ‘Symbolic rebirth: the mwali rite among the Luguru of eastern Tanzania’, Africa 48, 176–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brain, J. L. 1983. ‘Basic concepts of life according to the Luguru of eastern Tanzania’, Ultimate Reality and Meaning 6, 4–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandström, P. 1990. ‘Seeds and soil: the quest for life and the domestication of fertility in Sukuma-Nyamwezi thought and reality’, in Jacobson-Widding, A. and Beek, W. van (eds), The Creative Communion: African folk models of fertility and the regeneration of life, pp. 167–86. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Brooke, C. 1967. “The heritage of famine in central Tanzania’, Tanzania Notes and Records 67, 15–22.Google Scholar
Caldwell, J. C, and Caldwell, P. 1987. ‘The cultural context of high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa’, Population and Development Review 13, 409–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell, J. C 1988. ‘Is the Asian family planning program model suited to Africa?’, Studies in Family Planning 19 (1), 19–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell, A. C. 1968. ‘Some notes on Ngwaketse divination’, Botswana Notes and Records 1, 9–13.Google Scholar
Cohen, R. 1965. ‘Political anthropology: the future of a pioneer’, Anthropological Quarterly 38, 117–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colson, E. 1948. ‘Rain-shrines of the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia’, Africa 18, 272–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooke, R. C, and Beaton, A. C. 1939. ‘Bari rain cults. Fur rain cults and ceremonies’, Sudan Notes and Records 22, 181–203.Google Scholar
Cory, H. 1944. ‘Sukuma twin ceremonies—Mabasa’, Tanganyika Notes and Records 17, 34–43.Google Scholar
Delaney, C. 1991. The Seed and the Soil: gender and cosmology in Turkish village society. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Devisch, R. 1988. ‘From equal to better: investing the chief among the Northern Yaka of Zaïre’, Africa 58 (3), 261–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. Reprinted London: Ark Paperbacks, 1989.Google Scholar
Eiselen, W. M. 1932. “The art of divination as practised by the Bamasemola’, Bantu Studies 6, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenstadt, S. N. 1959. ‘Primitive political systems: a preliminary comparative analysis’, American Anthropologist 61, 200–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emanatian, M. 1996. ‘Everyday metaphors of lust and sex in Chagga’, Ethos 24, 195–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feierman, S. 1974. The Shambaa Kingdom. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Feierman, S. 1990. Peasant Intellectuals: anthropology and history in Tanzania. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Feldman-Savelsberg, P. 1994. ‘Plundered kitchens and empty wombs: fear and infertility in the Cameroonian grassfields’, Social Science and Medicine 39, 463–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman-Savelsberg, P. 1995. ‘Cooking inside: kinship and gender in Bangangte idioms of marriage and procreation’, American Anthropologist 22, 483–501.Google Scholar
Fortes, M., and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. ‘Introduction’, in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds), African Political Systems, pp. 1–23. London: Oxford University Press, for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Fried, M. H. 1967. The Evolution of Political Society: an essay in political anthropology. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Gillison, G. 1980. ‘Images of nature in Gimi thought’, in MacCormack, C. and Strathern, M. (eds), Nature, Culture and Gender, pp. 143–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hartnoll, A. V. 1932. ‘The Gogo mtemi’, South African Journal of Science 29, 737–41.Google Scholar
Heald, S. 1995. ‘The power of sex: some reflections on the Caldwells' “African sexuality” thesis’, Africa 65 (4), 489–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbert, E. W. 1993. Iron, Gender, and Power: rituals of transformation in African societies. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Herdt, G. (ed.). 1994. Third Sex, Third Gender: beyond sexual dimorphism in culture and history. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Holas, B. 1949. ‘Pour faire tomber la pluie (Nord du Togo)’, Notes africaines 41, 13–14.Google Scholar
Holy, L. 1986. Strategies and Norms in a Changing Matrilineal Society: the Toka of Zambia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, M. 1990. ‘De quelques paramètres de la souveraineté’, Systèmes depensée en Afrique noire 10, 69–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson-Widding, A. 1985. ‘Private Spirits and the Ego: a psychological ethnography of ancestor cult and spirit possession among the Manyika of Zimbabwe’. Working Papers in African Studies 24, African Studies Programme, University of Uppsala.Google Scholar
Jacobson-Widding, A. 1990. “The fertility of incest’, in Jacobson-Widding, A. and van Beek, W. (eds), The Creative Communion: African folk models of fertility and the regeneration of life, pp. 47–73. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
James, W. 1972. ‘The politics of rain control among the Uduk’, in Cunnison, I. and James, W. (eds), Essays in Sudan Ethnography presented to Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, pp. 31–57. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Johnson, E. 1954. ‘African harvest dance’, Tanganyika Notes and Records 37, 138–42.Google Scholar
Jonckers, D. 1990. ‘La sacralisation du pouvoir chez les Minyanka du Mali’, Systèmes de pensée en Afrique noire 10, 145–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaspin, D. 1996. ‘A Chewa cosmology of the body’, American Ethnologist 23 (3), 561–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kindness, L. 1996. ‘Witchcraft and the Reproduction of Wealth in southern Zambia’. Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics.Google Scholar
Kohl-Larsen, L. von. 1943. Aufden Spuren des Vormenschen. Stuttgart: Strecher & Schröder.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I. 1980. ‘Revitalization and the genesis of cults in pragmatic religion: the Kita rite of passage among the Suku’, in Karp, I. and Bird, C. S. (eds), Explorations in African Systems of Thought, pp. 183–212. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Krige, E. J. 1968. ‘Girls' puberty songs and their relation to fertility, health, morality and religion among the Zulu’, Africa 38, 173–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lan, D. 1985. Guns and Rain: guerrillas and spirit mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Laqueur, T. 1990. Making Sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laydevant, F. 1933. “The praises of the divining bones among the Basotho’, Bantu Studies 7, 341–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, E. R. 1964. ‘Anthropological aspects of language: animal categories and verbal abuse’, in Lenneberg, E. (ed.), New Directions in the Study of Language, pp. 23–63. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lindström, J. 1988. ‘The monopolization of a spirit: livestock prestations during an Iramba funeral’, in Cederroth, S., Corlin, C. and Lindstrom, J. (eds), On the Meaning of Death: essays on mortuary rituals and eschatological beliefs, pp. 169–83. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Maddox, G. 1988. ‘Leave Wagogo, you have no food: famine and survival in Ugogo, Tanzania, 1916–1961’. Ph.D. thesis, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Marshall, L. 1957. ‘N!ow’ Africa 27, 232–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marwick, M. G. 1968. ‘Notes on some Cewa rituals’, African Studies 27 (1), 3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meigs, A. 1984. Food, Sex, and Pollution: a New Guinea religion. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Meigs, A. 1990. ‘Multiple gender ideologies and statuses’, in Sanday, P. R. and Goodenough, R. G. (eds), Beyond the Second Sex: new directions in the anthropology of gender, pp. 99–112. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Middleton, J. 1971. ‘Prophets and rainmakers: the agents of social change among the Lugbara’, in Beidelman, T. O. (ed.), The Translation of Culture: essays presented to E. E. Evans-Pritchard, pp. 179–201. London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Middleton, J., and Tait, D. (eds). 1958. Tribes without Rulers: studies in African segmentary systems. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. C. 1956. The Yao Village: a study in the social structure of a Malawian people. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, S. F. 1976. ‘The secret of the men: a fiction of Chagga initiation and its relation to the logic of Chagga symbolism’, Africa 46, 357–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, S. F., and Puritt, P. 1977. The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Mosko, M. S. 1995. ‘Rethinking Trobriand chieftainship’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1, 763–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, C. 1975. ‘Sex, smoking and the shades: a Sotho symbolic idiom’, in Whisson, M. G. and West, M. (eds), Religion and Social Change in Southern Africa: anthropological essays in honour of Monica Wilson, pp. 58–77. Cape Town: Philip.Google Scholar
Nettleton, A. 1992. ‘Ethnic and gender identities in Venda Domba statues’, African Studies 51 (2), 203–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortner, S. 1996. ‘Gender hegemonies’, in Making Gender: the politics and erotics of culture, pp. 35–80. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Packard, R. M. 1981. Chiefship and Cosmology: an historical study of political competition. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Pressy.Google Scholar
Peletz, M. G. 1994. ‘Neither reasonable nor responsible: contrasting representations of masculinity in a Malay society’, Cultural Anthropology 9 (2), 135–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reche, O. 1914. Zur Ethnographie des abfluβlosen Gebietes Deutsch-Ostafrikas. Hamburg: Friederichsen.Google Scholar
Richards, A. 1950. ‘Some types of family structure amongst the Central Bantu’, in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D. (eds), African Systems of kinship and marriage, pp. 207–51. London: Oxford University Press, for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Richards, A. 1956. Chisungu: a girls' initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia. Reprinted London: Routledge, 1982.Google Scholar
Rigby, P. 1968a. ‘Joking relationships, kin categories, and clanship among the Gogo’, Africa 38, 133–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rigby, P. 1968b. ‘Some Gogo rituals of “purification”: an essay on social and moral categories’, in Leach, E. R. (ed.), Dialectic in Practical Religion, pp. 153–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rigby, P. 1969. Cattle and Kinship among the Gogo: a semi-pastoral society of central Tanzania. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rogers, F. H. 1927. ‘Notes on some Madi rain-stones’, Man 27, 81–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, T. 1995. ‘Rains gone bad, women gone mad: a preliminary view of a “ritual of rebellion” in north central Tanzania’. London School of Economics, intercollegiate seminar, 17 November.Google Scholar
Sanders, T. 1997. ‘Rainmaking, Gender and Power in Ihanzu, Tanzania, 1885–1995’. Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics.Google Scholar
Sanderson, G. M. 1955. ‘The use of tail-switches in magic’, Nyasaland Journal 8 (1), 39–56.Google Scholar
Schapera, I. 1971. Rainmaking rites ofTswana Tribes. Cambridge: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardits, C. 1990. ‘A propos du pouvoir sacré: que disent les textes?’ Systèmes de pensée en Afrique noire 10, 35–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Christopher. 1990. ‘Condoms and cosmology: the “fractal” person and sexual risk in Rwanda’, Social Science and Medicine 31 (9), 1023–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ten Raa, E. 1968. ‘Bush foraging and agricultural development: a history of Sandawe famines’, Tanzania Notes and Records 69, 33–40.Google Scholar
Ten Raa, E. 1969. ‘The moon as a symbol of life and fertility in Sandawe thought’, Africa 39, 24–53.Google Scholar
Troy, L. 1986. Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Turner, V. W. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: a study of Ndembu village life. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, V. W. 1969. The Ritual Process: structure and anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Vaughan, J. H. 1980. ‘A reconsideration of divine kinship’, in Karp, I. and Bird, C. S. (eds), Explorations in African Systems of Thought, pp. 120–42. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Vincent, J.-F. 1975. ‘Le chef et la pluie chez les Mofu, montagnards du Nord-Cameroun: contribution à l'étude des formes du pouvoir politique’, Systèmes de pensée en Afrique noire 1, 137–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vincent, J.-F. 1990. ‘Des rois “sacrés” montagnards? Hadjeray du Tchad et Mofu-Diamare du Cameroun’, Systèmes de pensée en Afrique noire 10, 121–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watt, J. M., and Warmelo, N. J. 1930. ‘The medicines and practices of a Sotho doctor’, Bantu Studies 4, 47–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weatherby, J. 1979. ‘Raindrums of the Sor’, in Webster, J. B. (ed.), Chronology, Migration and Drought in Interlacustrine Africa, pp. 317–31’. London: Longman; Halifax, N.S.: Dalhousie University Press.Google Scholar
Werther, C. W. 1898. Die Mittleren Hochländer des nördlichen Deutsch-Ost-Afrika. Berlin: Paetel.Google Scholar
Williams, F. R. J. 1949. ‘The pagan religion of the Madi’, Uganda Journal 13, 202–10.Google Scholar
Yanagisako, S., and Delaney, C. 1995. ‘Naturalizing power’, in Yanagisako, S. and Delaney, C. (eds), Naturalizing Power: essays in feminist cultural analysis, pp. 1–22. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar