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| Title: | Family resemblances, practical interrelations and material extensions: understanding sexual prohibitions, production and consumption in Kilimanjaro |
| Author: | Myhre, Knut Christian |
| Year: | 2007 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
| Volume: | 77 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 307-330 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Tanzania |
| Subjects: | Chaga sexuality popular beliefs |
| External links: | https://doi.org/10.3366/afr.2007.0057 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_the_journal_of_the_international_african_institute/v077/77.3myhre.pdf |
| Abstract: | Through the 'procreative paradigm', sexuality and its relationships to other social practices have recently regained importance in the study of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its apparent novelty, the author argues that this paradigm invokes an anthropological approach that harks back to the discipline's beginnings. In an attempt at a fresh departure, he uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy to investigate the meaning of sexual prohibitions among the Chagga-speaking people of Rombo District, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. Starting from local language usage, he describes the multiple 'language-games' of the vernacular notion of power, 'horu'. In this manner, he demonstrates how production, reproduction and consumption are conceptually, practically and materially intertwined through the 'family resemblances' of this local concept. 'Horu' is expended through productive practices; it is converted, transferred and exchanged between adults and children; and it is replenished through the consumption of specific 'powerful' foods. By means of different objects, the activities of work, sex and feeding enable 'horu' to flow between persons. The multiple vernacular usages of the notion of 'horu', and its practical and material concomitants, interrelate diverse spheres of social life in such a manner that they constitute an overlapping network that extends laterally. The sexual prohibitions in Rombo regulate and channel these flows and conversions, in order to ensure their beneficial effects for the parties concerned. The author argues, therefore, that the sexual prohibitions are not ex post facto interpretations or justifications that explain or control preceding experiences, but rather that they are constitutive of the local mode of life. An appreciation of lateral relationships between concepts, practices and objects enables an evasion of some of the problems that arise from the procreative paradigm. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |
