The Power of Animals

An Ethnography

Brian Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000181333
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The multiple ways in which people relate to animals provide a revealing window through which to examine a culture. Western cultures tend to view animals either as pets or food, and often overlook the vast number of roles that they may play within a culture and in social life more generally: their use in medicine, folk traditions and rituals. This comprehensive and very readable study focuses on Malawi people and their rich and varied relationship with animals -- from hunting through to their use as medicine. More broadly, through a rigorous and detailed study the author provides insights which show how the people's relationship to their world manifests itself not strictly in social relations, but just as tellingly in their relatioships with animals -- that, in fact, animals constitute a vital role in social relations. While significantly advancing classic African ethnographic studies, this book also incorporates current debates in a wide range of disciplines -- from anthropology through to gender studies and ecology.

1
Matrilineal Kinship and Subsistence Agriculture

Introduction

In this chapter I present some background material to the study, outlining the importance of matrilineal kinship and the close association of the local kin group, largely focussed around women, with subsistence agriculture. In fact, social life in Malawi is laigely structured around an explicit gender division, with women being the main agriculturists, the men, in rural areas at least, focussing their activities on fishing, hunting or trade, or in employment outside the village community.

The chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, I outline the three main forms of kin group in Malawi, the matriclan (pfuko), the sororate group (mbumba), based on a group of matrilineally-related women which forms the core of many villages, and the family or household (banja). I emphasize that historically matrilineal kinship is typical of a situation where hoe agriculture, largely under the control of women, is combined with the importance of hunting and trade focussed around men and where there was an incipient development of state systems, in the form of chiefdoms, as in Malawi.

In the second section, I describe kinship categories in Malawi, specifically focusing on those of the Nyanja/Chewa, and outline patterns of marriage. I emphasize the importance of affinal ties between village communities and the fact that the in-marrying male affine is essentially seen as an outsider, uxorilocal residence being the norm.

In the third section, I discuss historically the impact of those social factors that have profoundly influenced matrilineal kinship in Malawi, namely, the slave trade and the intrusion of the patrilineal Ngoni in the nineteenth century, the influence of the Christian missionaries and the socio-economic changes that have accompanied the development of capitalism.

In the fourth section, I focus more specifically on gender and after a brief theoretical preamble - in which I question the cultural idealism of much contemporary post-modernist anthropology - I outline agricultural production in Malawi as this relates to subsistence, emphasizing that such production is still largely in the hands of women. I discuss specifically the notion that such agriculture is being ‘feminized’ and undermined by recent socio-political developments, as well as issues relating to gender equality.

Matriliny and Matrifocality

In his classic study of Chewa witchcraft, Marwick suggested that a ‘fundamental social group among the Chewa is the matrilineage’ (1965: 121). And in an important sense all the people of Central and Southern Malawi - Tonga, Mtumba, Chewa, Chipeta, Mang’anja, Nsenga, Yao, Lomwe - are by theory, tradition and custom matrilineal people, for matrilineal descent is an important organizing principle of their social life. Village communities are invariably focussed around a group of matrilineally related women under the guardianship of a senior relative, usually an elder brother (mwini mbumba), and residence is uxorilocal.

Over the past fifty years or so, Islam and Christian missionaries, government and development agencies, and such economic changes as cash crop production, have had a fundamental impact on Malawian kinship patterns, particularly by placing a crucial emphasis on the family household. Nevertheless, as Poewe has described among the Luapula of Zambia (1981), matrilineal ideology and practices still have a strong salience in the rural areas of Malawi.

Among the matrilineal peoples of Malawi, kinship organization essentially relates to three levels, consisting of the clan system (pfuko), the local matrilineage or sororate group (mbumba) and the family household (banja). I shall consider each of these kin groups in turn.

Pfuko (Clan System)

In pre-colonial times the many African countries living north of the Zambezi essentially constituted a clan-based society. Social identity focussed less on local politics - the various Maravi chiefdoms or states - or on ethnic categories than on clan membership.

In the early period, ethnicity was related primarily to language and to bioregional criteria and had little political or even cultural significance. The area was, as many early writers have hinted, characterized by an underlying cultural unity. Antonio Gamitto, who accompanied the 1831–32 expedition from Tete to Chief Kazembe, recorded in his narrative the names of the various people living north of the Zambezi (Chewa, Mang’anja, Makua, Bororo, Nsenga, Yao), but suggested that ‘it is beyond dispute’ that they belong essentially to the same Marave people in having the same habits, customs, and language (1960: 64). Linden’s essay on Nyau societies in the Mua area, which specifically emphasizes ‘Chewa’ identity, nonetheless quoted a local headman named Njoro, who, when asked his tribal affiliation, identified himself not as a Chewa but as belonging to the Banda clan (1975: 36). Cullen Young (1950) emphasized the ‘essential identity’ of the various ethnic communities of Malawi, stressing their linguistic affinities and their common historical and cultural traditions. He noted the widespread occurrence of four basic clans, Phiri, Banda, Nkhoma and Mwale.

In Malawi the term mtundu is a general category meaning variety, kind or tribe and is akin to the concept of gulu, which means grouping, assembly or type. These terms are used to refer to different kinds of plants and animals. When people are asked what mtundu they belong to, they will often respond with an ethnic category such as Nyanja, Chipeta, Yao or Chewa. These terms have an essentially geographical connotation or refer to place of origin; they often have pejorative associations and tend to be used more by neighbouring people (Nurse 1978: 16). In the past, however, clan affiliation was of more social significance. Although many people still recognize clan membership and clan names serve as surnames, it is nowadays socially less important. The matrilineal people of Malawi inherit clan membership through the mother. The terms usually employed to describe clan affiliations are pfuko (pi. mafuko) or mfunda (Yao lukosyo); this clan name is distinguished from the praise-name (chiwongo), which is inherited patrilineally (Mwale 1948: 33–4, Nurse 1978: 25).

The matriclans play an important role in historical traditions, as well as in the politics of the various pre-colonial chiefdoms, for the inheritance of the chiefdomship was matrilineal, passing to the sister’s son, and the various chiefdoms which emerged at specific historical periods - Kalonga, Undi, Lundu, Mwase Kasungu, Kaphwiti - were all linked by kinship ties. According to tradition, the Malawi peoples migrated from the Luba country and initially had no clan system. The first clan that became predominant and assumed political control of the country was the Phiri clan, to which the majority of the territorial chiefs belonged. The nominal mother/sister of the Phiri chief was known as Nyangu, who was married, like her brother/son, to a member of the Banda clan. Whereas the Phiri clan is associated with hills (phiri = hill or mountain), with fire and with being outsiders, the Banda clan is seen in oral tradition as the original inhabitants of the country. Associated with the country at the foot of the hill, their name is said to derive from the fact that they had to level the grass (ku-wanda ‘to beat down grass’; Ntara 1973: 6, Hodgson 1933: 144). The Banda clan is closely associated with the land and is credited with rain-making powers (Marwick 1963: 378). The nominal mother/sister of the Banda clan was known as Mangadzi. She was especially recognized in Central Malawi, where she had important rain-making powers as Makewana (the mother of the children), and her sister was the principal wife (mwali) of the territorial chief (kalonga). The Phiri and Banda matriclans were thus related to each other as cross cousins (usuwani), and together they constituted an implicit moiety system that is intrinsic to Maravi culture and to contemporary Malawian kinship. Other important clans such as Mwale, Mbewe, Kwenda, Nkhoma, Dzimbiri, Chulu and many others, are seen as essentially derived from these two original clans (Ntara 1973, Nurse 1978). The moiety system by which the individual clans are linked intrinsically forms a part of a wider cosmological system, a complementary system of polarities that permeates many aspects of Malawian cultural life.

Phiri	Banda
outsiders	autochthones
hunting	agriculture
fire	water
hill woodland	cultivated land

The terms pfuko and mfunda (ku-funda, to warm) are often used interchangeably in the central regions, but Nurse suggests that whereas the latter term signifies a blood relationship, pfuko denotes actually clan membership, matriclans being dispersed over a wide area (1978: 25). The term chiwongo, a term of address or surname, is derived from the clan (pfuko) of a person’s father. There has been some discussion as to the exact nature of the distinction between pfuko and chiwongo and as to whether it constitutes a double-descent system (Rita-Ferreira 1968; Nurse 1978; 25–9). But what is important in the Malawian context is the implicit moiety system of intermarrying kin groups and the close association, even identification, of alternate generations, one’s FF being in fact of the same clan (mfunda) as oneself. Thus, as Nurse indicates, many of the men he questioned gave the same name for chiwongo as for pfuko, stating that the reason for this was chisuwani (cross cousinship) (ibid.: 29).

Clans in Malawi do not have any corporate functions, either economic or ritual, nor do they carry out communal tasks. In the past they were strictly exogamous units, and a person was not allowed to marry (saloledwa kukwatira) anyone of the same clan, since clan members were viewed as kin (mbale wake). Clan exogamy these days seems to be less strictly observed. As one woman said, Masiku ano anthu amangokwatira mfunda uliwonse, ‘These days people may marry [someone] from any clan’. What was important about clan membership in the past was that it enabled people to establish substantive relationships, interpreted as kinship, with people in distant places. It thus facilitated the movement of populations: over a wide area, either clan names are the same or else the clan names of the different ethnic groups are identified or considered to have the same meaning (Soka 1953: 35–6).

Many clans have totemic associations, in the sense of being associated with specific mammalian species, after which they are named, and which entail dietary restrictions. I discuss these prohibitions below.

Generally speaking, a person’s name (dzina) consists of three parts: a personal first name, a second name derived from the father’s first name, and an address or surname, the pfuko of one’s father or one’s clan name. In terms of the moiety system, one’s FF and MM are siblings and belong to one’s own matriclan (pfuko). There is no evidence to suggest that the ‘clan system’ in Malawi had any political significance or that it constituted a ‘lineage model’ of political organization - which Adam Kuper has suggested is a ‘myth’ or ‘phantom’ that must be exorcized from anthropological theory (1982: 43–58). Kinship was important: but in the past it functioned mainly with respect to the ruling Phiri dynasty, and at the present time functions mainly at the local level with respect to the sororate group, to which we now turn.

Mbumba (Local matrilineage or sororate group)

Among rural people in Malawi the basic local unit, in terms of both residence and social organization, is the village community (mudzi). Mitchell described the village as the ‘key concept in Yao thought’ and as the fundamental unit in their social structure (1956: 2–3). The term mudzi refers both to the village as a physical entity, consisting of usually between fifteen and sixty huts (households), and as a human community, with a strong sense of social identity. In the past there were elaborate communal rituals which symbolized the unity of the village community; such rituals are now focussed mainly around initiation rites and commemorative ceremonies for the dead. The village headman (mfumu) is a key figure in the community, having both ritual and political authority: ideally he should, as a personality, be a male mother, striving to keep peace and harmony within the village setting. A woman, however, may also be a village headman, and Mitchell remarks that the singwa (the grass ring that women place on their heads when carrying water) symbolically represents the village headman in divination rites (maula) (1956: 113). The headman also represents the village community to external authorities. Large complex villages associated with the territorial chiefs, who have authority over a wide area, are called mzinda.

The nucleus of each village is made up of a group of matrilineally related women, a sibling group of married women and their daughters with their young children. When Lawson suggests (1949: 181) that the ‘relationship of blood’ formed the basis of village life, this is essentially true, for ‘blood’ is the substance which a person inherits from his or her mother, although kin links are usually expressed in terms of the imagery of the breast (here). Members of a local matrilineage are thus seen as belonging to the same breast. The bearing of children, or fruit, is described by the cognate term ku-bereka.

The sororate group(s), which forms the basis of the village, is under the guardianship of the eldest brother, who may or may not be the village headman. He is described as a mwini (Yao asyene) mbumba (owner, or more correctly guardian, of the sororate group). As marriage is uxorilocal, all married men in the village are outsiders or ‘foreigners’, as Mandala describes them (1990: 22), although the headman usually has his wife residing with him. Polygamous husbands often move between villages in order to visit their wives in their natal communities. Mandala describes the mwini-mbumba as a senior woman (1990: 33), and this may be the case, but in all the communities that I knew well - those in the Zomba and Mulanje districts - this role was assumed by the elder brother. In a sense every man is a potential village headman, for the mbumba consists of his sisters and their dependents, while he himself is part of his mother’s brothers’ mbumba. When a young boy is born people may exclaim kwabadwa mfumu (‘a headman is born’), for if of good character and disposition (makhalidwe) he has the potential to be publicly recognized as a headman (Marwick 1965: 118). In essence, however, authority within the village community is shared between the mwini mbumba and one of the older women, usually a grandmother (ambuye), and perhaps the headman’s sister. This person will often play a crucial role, as namk-hungwi, in the initiation rites (chinamwali) of both boys and girls.

The social unity of the village and its underlying matrilineage (sorority group) is premised on the notion that they belong to one breast or one womb (chibaliro). The verb ku-bala also means ‘to b6ar children or fruit’, and chibale (sing, mbale) is a general term for kinship, or a kin relationship in its widest sense. The founding ancestors of the group are known as makolo (sing, kholo; Yao, likolo). Although makolo includes males and females from both lineages and, as Bruwer writes, no differentiation is made as far as gender is concerned (it was always stressed to me that makolo includes both men and women) in fact kholo in the Malawian context always has connotations of ‘mother of the village’ or founding ancestress (Bruwer 1948: 185). But such an ancestress is never named, and the makolo are always conceived of as collective ancestors, as the dead (amanda, of the grave) or as spirits of the ancestors (mizimu ya makolo). Such ancestors are associated with the graveyards (manda) and with the earth, being spoken of as anthaka (nthaka earth, soil). Through sacrifices and offerings, the spirits of the ancestors are kept quiet and content, but they make their presence known especially in dreams and through possession rites. Importantly, there is a reciprocal and on-going relationship between the living community in the village and the dead ancestors (makolo).

The symbolic potency of the mbumba concept was utilized by the President, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, himself a Chewa from Kasungu. He organized women i...