The Religion of Everyday Life: An Ethnoscience Investigation into the Concepts of Religion and Magic

Beek, W.E.A. van

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-4902-2_5

Cited by 2 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The non-smiths often accuse the rerhe of 'eating anything', an accusation 'eticly' untrue, as the blacksmiths do have their own taboos as well, abstaining from the flesh of dogs, for example, and several kinds of birds. Elsewhere (van Beek, 1982) I argued that the food taboos, so dominant in the Kapsiki definition of what makes a smith, may be read as a culinary definition of the position of the rerhe within Kapsiki society: the blacksmiths consume (and the nonsmiths abstain from) the meat of those animals whose position in the animal realm coincides with that of the blacksmiths in the human sphere. Thus the rerhe eat, grosso modo, animals that are black, odd, carrion-eating and associated with singing and special functions: blacksmiths in short, eat 'themselves'.…”

Section: Being 'Dirty'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I have not been able to find any indication that such is the case. Neither beshengu, the most harmful of magical objects (van Beek, 1975), nor witches (mete), nor for that matter sekwa, a well-known magical means to avenge a wrong or settle a debt, transmit any odour at all. Nor does the sacrificial jar; even the illnesses which result from witchcraft, or those stemming from non-human origins (measles, smallpox) do not smell.…”

Section: The Smell Of Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The reasons for the late burial reside in the whole process of greeting and dancing with the corpse, which forms the core of the burial proceedings. People from neighbouring villages should be able to see the deceased, and to join in his or her last dance; thus on the first day, the day of the death, mourning is for the immediate kinsmen, on the second day it is for the whole village, while on the third day the surrounding villages perform the mourning dances (van Beek, 1978). Throughout, the corpse is decked out with clothing and sashes, adorned with its personal and its lineage's riches for all to see.…”

Section: The Smell Of Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…His in-laws are, in principle, potential enemies whose daughters he managed to marry. Furthermore, given the large number of secondary marriages, due to the astonishingly high instability of marriage (van Beek, 1986), for each man there are a considerable number of men whose former wife he has married. So each Kapsiki man develops a network of quite ambivalent relations around his person, a network that is not dependent on his kinship affiliation, nor on a ; strategic choice of marriages, but results from a haphazard accumulation of ties in which tension and bonding always coincide.…”

Section: The Smell Of Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 The differences in marriages are not all to the disadvantage of blacksmiths. Their marriages, to closer kin and against lower bride prices, tend to be more stable and produce more surviving children (van Beek, 1986).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The dirty smith: smell as a social frontier among the Kapsiki/Higi of north Cameroon and north-eastern Nigeria

Beek¹

1992

Africa

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Among the Kapsiki/Higi of the Mandara mountains the division between black-smith and non-smith pervades society. Blacksmiths dominate technical and ritual specialisations—including the forge—and through their association with death are considered dirty. One way in which this opposition is expressed is through the definition of smell.Using ideophones, the Kapsiki distinguish fourteen types of smell, each associated with specific ‘smelly’ objects, animals or persons (i.e. blacksmiths). The definition of smells by blacksmiths, however, is different from that of non-smiths; also the women of both ‘castes’ define smell differently from the men. Whereas men use the definition of smell to accentuate the gap between smith and non-smith, the women tend to mediate the division.In Kapsiki culture smell is not associated with notions of evil or witchcraft. It is, however, tied in with burial, which in Kapsiki culture entails protracted exposure to a decomposing corpse. The connection smith-corpse may be one reason for the smelly definition of the smith. Another may be the notion of ambivalence and the tendency to draw strict dividing lines between social groups. Smell in Kapsiki seems to stress borderline situations and the mutual dependence of opposing groups.

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Section: Being 'Dirty'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Smell Of Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Smell Of Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Smell Of Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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