The Prophetess and the Rice Farmer: Innovations in Religion, Agriculture, and Gender in Guinea-Bissau
The Prophetess and the Rice Farmer: Innovations in Religion, Agriculture, and Gender in Guinea-Bissau
One characteristic of the Upper Guinea Coast (the region from Casamance to Liberia), is its ritual pluralism. The coast is populated by a series of overlapping ethno-linguistic groups with a myriad of specialized cults related to agricultural work, fertility and healing. Using R. Fardon's notions (Fardon 1988), P. Richards has referred to this proliferation of cults as a ‘ritual involution' and has placed it in a wider context of ‘maroon' ethnogenesis (Richards 2007). According to this author, mangrove swamp communities (Jola, Balanta, Baga, Temne, Bulom, etc.) can be seen as ‘maroon' because they have been made up of refugees escaping from the hinterland into the mangroves, where they have developed an ingenious rice farming system. This proliferation of cults, however, is only one side of a coin. Its other side is that very often that Coast is scenario of innovative prophetic movements that go in the opposite direction: instead of shattering the community into a mosaic of small, competing cults, they unite it around a cult of the ‘high god' type. In recent times, the most impressive among such cults has been the Kyangyang among the Balanta rice farmers of Guinea Bissau. This movement was born around Ntombikte, a young prophetess (still active today) who in 1984 started to announce commandments she received from God. It was a time of a complex social, political, ecological and food crisis, and her movement tried to help the community overcome the pressures. Yet, because it was politically persecuted and repressed for several years, the movement also created new stress onto the Balanta. Ntombikte's movement falls into the classic paradigm of an ‘African religious movement' as defined by the literature in our state of the art. As in many of the historical, well-know African religious movements, Kyangyang was born around a prophet.
Similarly to what happened in other movements, Kyangyang helped reconstruct an anomic society in the mid 1980s and tried to give self-respect and work incentive to a much demoralized community. This much is common to these movements. Yet, it has some striking peculiarities that set it aside and that fully justify that an in-depth study be undertaken to fully grasp its place in the making of a pubic space in contemporary Guinea-Bissau. Firstly, the fact that it happens among Balanta, the largest ethnic group, the biggest rice producers and the community that contributed the most with soldiers to the liberation and the civil war, but that nevertheless after Independence felt marginalized by the state. It is, besides, a largely understudied community. Secondly, it was started by a woman in a strongly patriarchal religious culture. Prophetic movements initiated by women have been reported in Africa. However it is unusual, even unheard of, for Balanta to let women take on such religious leadership. Unlike other coastal groups, Balanta traditional religion does not have women's ‘secret societies' such as ‘Bondo' or ‘Sende' to be found in similar populations further south. Thirdly, it is a women-initiated religious movement that alters gender relations in an explicit way. It is our aim to place the gender transformation in the religious sphere within the framework of wider changes in gender relations we observed in the agricultural life of the Balanta, not all linked only to the emergence of Kyangyang but to other structural factors too (youth absenteeism, new marriage arrangements, new cash crops, etc.). The way these transformations in gender rights and expectations are interlinked to each other is complex and so far unclear. It is part of what is to be found out. Fourthly, the relationship between prophecy and economic rationalization (already noticed by Max Weber in his studies on ‘charisma') has impinged upon Kyangyang followers a strong ethos of work that has direct and tangible consequences in agriculture performance. In the context of the food crisis of today's Guinea-Bissau, this is very important. Fifthly, this rationalization process leads Kyangyang followers to the ‘will to be modern' common to other Guinea-Bissau peoples (see Gable 1995 for the Manjaco), but that in this particular case brings about a most imaginative religious culture. Kyangyang converts be some authors of a most original ‘prophetic art' (paintings, carvings, narratives, etc.) that we also intend to analyse. Many of the messages this art conveys are about establishing new, ‘modern' gender relations and new, ‘modern' diversified farming systems. Lastly, Kyangyang is a prophetic movement that happens in an independent country, therefore escaping the classic paradigm (Balandier, Peel, Fernandez) which saw the emergence of prophetism almost exclusively as a form of anti-colonial resistance. This will allow us to advance some new theoretical insights about the place of prophetism in today's Africa and its relationship with processes of nation-state making and global crises.
PTDC/AFR/111546/2009 - Financed by FCT
Religion,
Agriculture,
Gender,
Politics
One characteristic of the Upper Guinea Coast (the region from Casamance to Liberia), is its ritual pluralism. The coast is populated by a series of overlapping ethno-linguistic groups with a myriad of specialized cults related to agricultural work, fertility and healing. Using R. Fardon's notions (Fardon 1988), P. Richards has referred to this proliferation of cults as a ‘ritual involution' and has placed it in a wider context of ‘maroon' ethnogenesis (Richards 2007). According to this author, mangrove swamp communities (Jola, Balanta, Baga, Temne, Bulom, etc.) can be seen as ‘maroon' because they have been made up of refugees escaping from the hinterland into the mangroves, where they have developed an ingenious rice farming system. This proliferation of cults, however, is only one side of a coin. Its other side is that very often that Coast is scenario of innovative prophetic movements that go in the opposite direction: instead of shattering the community into a mosaic of small, competing cults, they unite it around a cult of the ‘high god' type. In recent times, the most impressive among such cults has been the Kyangyang among the Balanta rice farmers of Guinea Bissau. This movement was born around Ntombikte, a young prophetess (still active today) who in 1984 started to announce commandments she received from God. It was a time of a complex social, political, ecological and food crisis, and her movement tried to help the community overcome the pressures. Yet, because it was politically persecuted and repressed for several years, the movement also created new stress onto the Balanta. Ntombikte's movement falls into the classic paradigm of an ‘African religious movement' as defined by the literature in our state of the art. As in many of the historical, well-know African religious movements, Kyangyang was born around a prophet.
Similarly to what happened in other movements, Kyangyang helped reconstruct an anomic society in the mid 1980s and tried to give self-respect and work incentive to a much demoralized community. This much is common to these movements. Yet, it has some striking peculiarities that set it aside and that fully justify that an in-depth study be undertaken to fully grasp its place in the making of a pubic space in contemporary Guinea-Bissau. Firstly, the fact that it happens among Balanta, the largest ethnic group, the biggest rice producers and the community that contributed the most with soldiers to the liberation and the civil war, but that nevertheless after Independence felt marginalized by the state. It is, besides, a largely understudied community. Secondly, it was started by a woman in a strongly patriarchal religious culture. Prophetic movements initiated by women have been reported in Africa. However it is unusual, even unheard of, for Balanta to let women take on such religious leadership. Unlike other coastal groups, Balanta traditional religion does not have women's ‘secret societies' such as ‘Bondo' or ‘Sende' to be found in similar populations further south. Thirdly, it is a women-initiated religious movement that alters gender relations in an explicit way. It is our aim to place the gender transformation in the religious sphere within the framework of wider changes in gender relations we observed in the agricultural life of the Balanta, not all linked only to the emergence of Kyangyang but to other structural factors too (youth absenteeism, new marriage arrangements, new cash crops, etc.). The way these transformations in gender rights and expectations are interlinked to each other is complex and so far unclear. It is part of what is to be found out. Fourthly, the relationship between prophecy and economic rationalization (already noticed by Max Weber in his studies on ‘charisma') has impinged upon Kyangyang followers a strong ethos of work that has direct and tangible consequences in agriculture performance. In the context of the food crisis of today's Guinea-Bissau, this is very important. Fifthly, this rationalization process leads Kyangyang followers to the ‘will to be modern' common to other Guinea-Bissau peoples (see Gable 1995 for the Manjaco), but that in this particular case brings about a most imaginative religious culture. Kyangyang converts be some authors of a most original ‘prophetic art' (paintings, carvings, narratives, etc.) that we also intend to analyse. Many of the messages this art conveys are about establishing new, ‘modern' gender relations and new, ‘modern' diversified farming systems. Lastly, Kyangyang is a prophetic movement that happens in an independent country, therefore escaping the classic paradigm (Balandier, Peel, Fernandez) which saw the emergence of prophetism almost exclusively as a form of anti-colonial resistance. This will allow us to advance some new theoretical insights about the place of prophetism in today's Africa and its relationship with processes of nation-state making and global crises.
PTDC/AFR/111546/2009 - Financed by FCT