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SITTING AND STANDING: HOW FAMILIES ARE FIXING TRUST IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2012

Elizabeth Cooper
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Abstract

There is widespread apprehension about the resilience of the ‘traditional African’ model of the extended family in maintaining norms and practices of inter-group cooperation and care in conditions of demographic, social and economic change. In Nyanza Province, Kenya, where one of every five children is currently orphaned, and HIV/AIDS and wide-scale poverty continue to render lives and livelihoods insecure, many people are not able to take their families' care for granted. Ideas and practices of kinship have been challenged profoundly by questions regarding who is responsible for the care of orphaned children. This article looks at two complementary practices among Luo families in western Kenya that address such dilemmas: the communal initiative of ‘sitting’ as a family to discuss and resolve issues in a cooperative and consensual manner; and the individualistic initiative of ‘standing’ to represent the interests of another individual. I suggest that while the immediate purposes of sitting and standing are pragmatic in assigning caring responsibilities for specific children, their eventfulness also actualizes something greater: trust, reciprocity and solidarity among extended families.

Il existe une opinion largement répandue concernant la résilience du modèle « africain traditionnel » de la famille élargie à maintenir des normes et des pratiques de soin et de coopération intergroupe dans un contexte démographique, social et économique en mutation. Dans la province de Nyanza au Kenya, où un enfant sur cinq est actuellement orphelin et où le VIH/SIDA et la pauvreté à grande échelle continuent de rendre la vie et les moyens de subsistance précaires, nombreux sont ceux pour qui il ne va pas de soi de s'occuper de sa famille. Les idées et les pratiques de parenté ont été profondément remises en cause par la question de savoir qui est responsable de la garde des enfants orphelins. Cet article s'intéresse à deux pratiques complémentaires, observées dans des familles luo dans l'Ouest du Kenya, qui traitent de ces dilemmes : l'initiative communale qui consiste à s'asseoir en famille pour débattre des problèmes et les résoudre de manière coopérative et consensuelle ; et l'initiative individualiste qui consiste à se tenir debout pour représenter les intérêts d'une autre personne. L'auteur suggère que si l'acte de s'asseoir et l'acte de se tenir debout ont certes une finalité immédiate pragmatique pour assigner la responsabilité de la garde d'enfants spécifiques, leur contenu dramatique traduit plus que cela : la confiance, la réciprocité et la solidarité au sein des familles élargies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , August 2012 , pp. 437 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2012

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