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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Todd Sanders
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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

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