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Approaches compared of the division of ritual labour according to sexes in the societies of the "Rivers of the south"
Representative : Odile Journet
Some researchers members or fellows of the team accomplished in the course of the last years important centered inquiries into the modalities of reports between sexes and types in the field of ritual action and of religious practices. Working in various societies of the region said « about Rivers of the South » (the appellation is taken here in its broadest extension), especially to Bijogo, Seereer, Manjak, Joola, Baga, and without preliminary consultation, their attention had been drawn by the peculiar position which occupy the women in ritual exchanges or in religious practices. As soon as they pay that attention on one hand to the way overlap and/or answer rituals or "masculine " or "female" reputed ritual roles and, on the other hand, in the contexts which order in a necessary way the reissue of this trial of differentiation (or, in the opposite, its cancellation), a series of questions indeed comes into sight which an analysis in terms of ultimate domination or of irreducible difference could not exhaust. If the difference of sexes intervenes as symbolic operator, as ritual instrument, as object treated by the ritual, it takes first the face of a division of labour between men and women. In a general way, this one can take the form of a partition of tasks between men and women authorised to fulfil them, within the same ritual, or within a separation between mutually exclusive rituals. They know besides as regards these last, that these visible exclusive rights are often only the mask of a more or less exuberant production of reports between sexes and/or between types.
Other materials, gathered in societies belonging to the same regional group (Balãt notably) allow to take, in this ladder, the measure of the extreme diversity of modes of pronunciation between rituals and "masculine " or "female" roles . Some societies developed a mode of partition generalised by the religious and initiatory space according to sexes, others push aside the women of main functions in collective worship, while reserving for them an inevitable place in individual or family rituals ; elsewhere new worship appears the supporters of which are principally, but seldom, of women. This worship, in strong female valency, maintains an often paradoxical report with ancestral powers or appeal in objects, symbols or of acts inherited from ancient religious practices. They deal with domains which exceed widely those who are generally allocated to the women (procreation, fertility). Finally, whatever are the modalities of division of ritual labour, a fact seems very generally spread : the occasional launching of collective female rituals during calamities which afflict the group entirely. The bet in perspective of these materials would have as first object to specify the terms of a common "entrance « allowing to develop the comparison with more distant fields. One of the first questions, that can be formulated only in a very general way, is that of the pertinence of a bet in report of modes of sexual division of competences and of the ritual roles with the way this or that society articulates religious functions, in the village or territorial ladder, political functions and. Can a division between masculine and female worship or initiatory societies co-exist for example with other ritual modes of partition having duel of competence and of space, than these focus around two institutions (leader / master of the earth for example) even though they are included into the same institution (sacred kingship, initiatory society) ? The frame chosen to be this first exploration - « Rivers of the south » - is not only the fact of an opportunity, but he introduces advantage to give, in this domain, a range particularly rich in shapes inside societies which, moreover, share many affinity in social organisation, in history, of language. He allows especially to question the idea according to which the role played by the women in ritual life would be to bring closer to their position in other domains (to consanguinity, to economy, etc.) . It making, he allows to "convert initial questions into cash " . So, between two societies which developed a mode of partition generalised by the religious space according to sexes (Bijogo and Joola), the report of the one and of other one in different categories of powers hires symmetrical practices (sacrifice for Joola) or compared (maintenance of lucky objects vs possession for Bijogo). Oppositions most commonly linked to the division of sexes - inside / outside ; relation of being / relation of credit ; immanent / mediatize relation, etc. - see themselves there in turn evaded or reduced.
See the column of the workshop accomplished by R. de Selva
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