Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Blanchy, Sophie
• Djabir, Haddad Salim

Titel

Constructing and challenging hierarchy in ceremonial exchanges (Moheli Island, Comoros)

Ist Teil von

• Homme, 2021-04, Vol.2 (238), p.101

Ort / Verlag

Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• ‪Ceremonial exchanges are the main vehicle for constructing and challenging hierarchies in the Comoros. They constitute the framework for the reproduction of descent groups and the age system. On Moheli Island, these groups are considered matrilineal and assert themselves as mutually equivalent. But for their ceremonial exchanges they form two sets named after the gender. What does this distinction mean if these groups follow the same principle of reproduction and if they do not maintain hierarchical relationships? We examine the rules of constitution and recruitment to these groups, the structure of their mutual relations and their articulation to age groups. We also scrutinize the differences in practices between the two sets that they form. We posit that the gendered dualism in which they are grounded reflects the historical and ideological processes of integration, by marriage into the local matrilineages, of Muslim maritime traders, members of regional agnatic networks. This integration took place in various ways throughout the archipelago. The case of Moheli shows how prestigious strangers integrated into the system of exchange have transformed it from the inside, albeit in a limited way, while in the neighboring islands, they either had no access as such to the system, or they almost made it disappear. To this days, the Mohelian exchange system remains a means of maintaining a distinction with the allochthonous communities from the other islands, who have instituted their own ceremonial exchanges. Innovations or transgressions of the rules of exchange delimit the field of transformations and reveal the tensions that act as levers in the dynamics of relations between social units, particularly the dynamics inherent to the system, playing out between collective action and individual action.‪