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Mirror in the Forest: the Dorobo hunter-gatherers as an image of the other1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Michael G. Kenny
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Extract

The term ‘Dorobo’ denotes an ethnic category embracing small hunting-and-gathering groups residing on the fringes of various agricultural and pastoral peoples in East Africa. The essence of the Dorobo's position is that they engage in economically symbiotic activities with regard to local farmers and herders, while retaining their social marginality as people of the bush. Much is known of them through the constructs of their neighbours, who assign them attributes commensurate with their marginal social position; the Dorobo are amalgamated with wild amoral creatures, and their ancestors are thought to have been in attendance at the birth of the present world-order. Their marginality therefore has economic, spatial, and temporal dimensions.

Résumé

Le miroir dans la forêt: les chasseurs-cueilleurs Dorobo ou l'image d'autrui

On examine dans le présent article un ensemble d'idées qui ont cours chez certains des peuples agricoles et pastoraux d'Afrique Orientale et qui ont trait à la nature et aux modes sociaux de leurs voisins chasseurs-cueilleurs, connus génériquement sous l'appellation de ‘Dorobo’. On passe tout d'abord en revue les facteurs économiques et écologiques qui soustendent l'existence d'une adaptation independante à la chasse et à la cueillette: on montre ensuite comment cette adaptation ou ‘mode de production’ entraîne l'apparition d'un ensemble distinct de représentations liees à ceux qui la pratiquent.

Les Dorobo sont isolés socialement de ceux qui entretiennent ces croyances à leur égard et qui peuvent done, sans restriction, concevoir les Dorobo comme les représentants typiques de l'état de désordre, impression renforcée par l'association intime de ces derniers à la brousse et à ses créatures. Ainsi, on attribue aux Dorobo des tendances animates reliées dialectiquement à certains traits que les cultivateurs et les pasteurs estiment être caractéristiques d'eux-mêmes. Si l'individu normal et pondéré fait preuve de respect vis à vis des conventions sociales, le Dorobo, à ses yenx, ne manifeste de respect envers rien. Il apparait donc comme un être incestueux, qui s'adonne à la sorcellerie, à la boisson et aux pitreries.

Mais ces stéréotypes ethniques renferment une ambiguité essentielle: en effet, une autre croyance trés répandue est que les Dorobo ont été les premiers occupants du territoire et qu'ils ont donc des rapports intimes et fructueux avec les forces naturelles et avec Dieu. Les pasteurs et agriculteurs utilisent done l'être “Dorobo” comme médiateur avec ces mêmes forces ou créent symboliquement, au sein de leur propre société, des chefs rituels que l'on croit doués des mêmes capacités. Le présent essai s'attache done à faire ressortir l'idéologie concomittante d'un mode de production dans lequel un processus de symbiose établit des rapports réciproques entre les chasseurs et leurs voisins.

Type
Outsiders: ethnic stereotypes
Information
Africa , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 477 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1981

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