An Anthropological Study of the Uneasy Complicity of Humans and Spotted Hyenas in the Orthodox Ethiopian Context of Tigray

Silke Froyen

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9783668611290
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Sociology - Culture, Technology, Nations, Leuven Catholic University (Social Sciences), course: Master Thesis - Social and Cultural Anthropology, language: English, abstract: This thesis aims to provide an extensive account on the relation and interaction between humans and spotted hyenas in the Tigray Region in northern Ethiopia. Different levels of the human, the animal and the divine aspects of these relations will be considered. Local perceptions and (folk) stories are taking a prominent role in the exploration of the symbiotic, although simultaneously conflictive, cohabitation of people and wildlife. In a second part of the thesis, perspectives on nature, and the role of religion in the conservation of biodiversity will be considered. Special attention will be paid to the environment in which humans and hyenas coexist. In a last chapter, I will try to analyse the spotted hyena's association with evilness, and the various related discourses on disease causation and healing. My aim is to give a holistic interpretation of the Ethiopian belief in buda (evil eye), in which culture, ecology, medicine, psychological conceptions, religion and social relations seem to come together in a complex whole. I will argue that the uneasy complicity of humans and spotted hyenas finds its parallel in similar tensions between majority and minority groups in the Ethiopian context, although buda also appears in other close interpersonal relationships.