par Tamari, Tal
Référence Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 131, 2, page (215-243)
Publication Publié, 2006
Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : In social anthropology, joking relationships have generally been interpreted in psychological terms, as means of averting social tension (Radcliffe-Brown and Mauss) or, alternatively, as providing individual psychological release (Griaule). Based on a comprehensive examination of the data from the savannah regions of West Africa, this paper argues that an analytic distinction should be drawn between joking based on relative position in kin and affinal networks, on the one hand, and joking grounded in intergroup (clan and ethnic) relations, on the other hand. Several strands of evidence suggest that the latter are best understood in primarily political terms, as long-term treaties instituting peace or well-defined hierarchical relations among hitherto hostile parties. As the earliest colonial observers noted, members of linked groups were prohibited from making war upon, enslaving or in any way physically harming each other, and also had mutual ritual and economic obligations. A considerable number of recently collected, circumstantially detailed oral traditions indicate that these relationships were inaugurated through ritual exchange of bodily substances, especially blood or milk, after armed territorial conflict. Brief allusions to the ingestion of bodily substances, in what have often been classified as myths or legends, may also refer to the inauguration of such relationships. © 2006 Dietrich Reimer Verlag.