Animals and Ancestors: An EthnographyEver since the emergence of human culture, people and animals have co-existed in close proximity. Humans have always recognized both their kinship with animals and their fundamental differences, as animals have always been a threat to humans' well-being. The relationship, therefore, has been complex, intimate, reciprocal, personal, and -- crucially -- ambivalent. It is hardly surprising that animals evoke strong emotions in humans, both positive and negative. This companion volume to Morris' important earlier work, The Power of Animals, is a sustained investigation of the Malawi people's sacramental attitude to animals, particularly the role that animals play in life-cycle rituals, their relationship to the divinity and to spirits of the dead. How people relate to and use animals speaks volumes about their culture and beliefs. This book overturns the ingrained prejudice within much ethnographic work, which has often dismissed the pivotal role animals play in culture, and shows that personhood, religion, and a wide range of rituals are informed by, and even dependent upon, human-animal relations. |
Contents
Animals Humans and Personhood | 31 |
Rituals of Childbirth and Womanhood | 69 |
Boys Initiation and the Nyau Fraternities | 113 |
Copyright | |
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affines African ancestral spirits anthropologists associated beer Bimbi blood boys Cambridge ceremony chameleon Chewa chiefs chinamwali chinyago chiputu Chisumphi Chiuta chiwanda close conceptions cool cult cultural dance dead deity described distinction divinity dualism elephant emphasis essentially ethnic expressed fire gender girls human person humans and animals hunter hunter-gatherers hunting hyena important initiation rites interpreted inyago jando Kalonga Kaspin kin group lion living Lomwe London makolo Malawians male mammals Mang'anja mangadzi Mankhamba Maravi masked dancers matrilineal Mbona medicines menstruating mountains Mulungu munthu nantongwe Napolo nature ngaliba Ngoni Nsanje nsato nsembe nyama Nyanja nyau nyau rituals Phiri possession python rain rituals rain shrines Rangeley relations relationship religious role Schoffeleers seen sense sexual snake social society specifically spirit mediums spirits mizimu Stannus suggests symbolic term theriomorphic theriomorphic figures theriomorphic structures thunga traditions Tumbuka University Press usually village vimbuza wild animals witches woman women woodland young Zomba Zomba district