Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:14:51.518Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Disguising chiefs and God as history: questions on the acephalousness of LoDagaa politics and religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Résumé

Cet article examine deux périodes dans l'historiographie et l'ethnograhie des LoDagaa du nord du Ghana et analyse les similarités entre ces deux périodes. A la fin des années 20, l'institution de chef de clan a été écrit dans l'histoire des LoDagaa par les administrateurs coloniaux, seulement deux décennies après qu'ils aient euxmêmes créé cette institution dans une société qu'ils avaient une fois considérée comme étant déprivée d'autorité politique. Au début des années 30, les administrateurs coloniaux ont créé une fiction historique, à savoir que les chefs avaient toujours existé parmi les LoDagaa, malgré l'opinion des premiers officiers, qui étaient de l'avis qu'il n'y avait pas eu de chefs avant l'arrivée des Britanniques. Les administrateurs avaient besoin de finasser avec le passé non pas afin de convaincre les LoDagaa de la légitimité des chefs, mais afin de continuer à gouverner par l'intermédiaire des chefs une fois que le pouvoir indirect avait été introduit. Les manoeuvres politiques coloniales avaient été rendues indigoènes afin de survivre sous les termes du pouvoir indirect. Le finassement du passé a légué des ambiguités et contradictions qui sont évidentes dans les attitudes contemporaines envers la position des chefs parmi les LoDagaa.

Parallèlement, dans les années 70 et 80 le clergé indigoène parmi les LoDagaa, qui avait remplacé les missonaires qui lui avait précédé dans les années 60, commença à réexaminer la nature de Dieu dans la pensée religieuse indigène afin de rétrécir la distance entre la culture des LoDagaa et le catholisme. L'idée d'acculturation qui s'était développée après le deuxième Conseil du Vatican fut à la base de cette démarche. Les prêtres LoDagaa ont réexaminé la religion indigoène et découvert l'existence d'une croyance en une divinité unique et de sa vénération, qui avait été négligée par les premiers missionaires et ethnographes. Ces derniers avaient soutenu qu'il n'y avait qu'une notion diffuse et inutile d'un Dieu absolu dans la culture et pensées des LoDagaa.

Le Dieu qui avait été auparavant inutile fut répatrié, comme s'il avait été exilé par des premiers observateurs d'une manière et dans des circonstances similaires à l'invention des chefs en tant que réalité pré-coloniale. Tandis que des revisions politiques ultérieures étaient faites par des officiers coloniaux, avec le consentement de leurs chefs coloniaux, inclinés à changer la culture et l'histoire des LoDagaa par souci de commodité administrative, les révisionistes d'après étaient apparemment plus incliné à défendre et préserver la culture indigoène plutôt que de la changer. Cependant, la notion du culte de Dieu comme ayant existé avant les missionaires est autant une fiction historique que l'idée de l'existence des chefs dans la période précoloniale.

Type
Re-interpreting the past is Ghana
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

National Archives of Ghana. [NAG ADM]Google Scholar
Regional Archives, Tamale. [RAT ADM ]Google Scholar
Rapports Annuels. [RA] Algiers: Société des missionaires d'Afrique.Google Scholar
Afigbo, A. E. 1972. The Warrant Chiefs: indirect rule in southeastern Nigeria, 1891–1929. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Angsotinge, G. T. 1986. ‘Wisdom of the Ancestors: an analysis of the oral narratives of the Dagaaba of Northern Ghana. ’ Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Arhin, K. 1974. The Papers of George Ekem Ferguson: a Fanti official of the government of the Gold Coast, 1890–97. Leiden and Cambridge: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
Bekye, P. K. 1991. Divine Revelation and Traditional Religions: with particular reference to the Dagaaba of West Africa. Rome: Leberit Press.Google Scholar
Bongvlaa, R. 1979. ‘Interview [by Father A. Bayo] with Robert Bongvlaa (catechist)’, in Gregoire, Father V. (ed.), That they may have Light: an account of the activities of the Church in north-west Ghana, 1929–79. Wa: Catholic Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chanock, M. 1985. Law, Custom and Social Order: the colonial experience in Malawi and Zambia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. W. 1989. ‘The undefining of oral tradition’, Ethnohistory 36 (1), 918.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dabiré, C. G. 1983. ‘L'Homme comme relation’. Ph.D. thesis, Quebec: Université Laval.Google Scholar
Davis, D. C. 1987. ‘“Then the white man came with his whitish ideas …”: the British and the evolution of traditional government in Mampurugu’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 20 (4), 627–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Der, B. 1974. ‘Church-state relations in northern Ghana, 1906–40’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 15, 4161.Google Scholar
Der, B. 1980. ‘God and sacrifice in the traditional religions of the Kasena and Dagaba of northern Ghana’, Journal of Religion in Africa (11 (3), 172–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Der, B. 1983. ‘Mission Enterprise in Northern Ghana. 1906–75: a study in impact’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Ghana, Legon.Google Scholar
Der, B. 1989. “The origins of the Dagara-Dagaba’, Papers in Dagara Studies 1 (1), 125.Google Scholar
Dorward, D. C. 1974. ‘Ethnography and administration: a study of Anglo-Tiv “working misunderstanding” ’, Journal of African History 15 (3), 457–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eliade, M. 1963. Aspects du mythe. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Fabian, J. 1983. Time and the Other: how anthropology makes its object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Feierman, S. 1990. Peasant Intellectuals: anthropology and history in Tanzania. Madison, Wi. University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, H. J. 1985. ‘The juggernaut's apologia: conversion to Islam in Black Africa’, Africa 55 (2), 153–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Germain, R. 1937. ‘Impressons d'un nouveau-venu’, Les Missions d'Afrique, Québec 33 (3), 80–9.Google Scholar
Girault, L. 1959. ‘Essai sur le religion Dagara’, Bulletin de I'Institut français d'Afrique noire 21, 329–56.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, J. E. 1981. ‘National and Indigenous Constitutional Law in Ghana: their development and their relation to each other’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Leiden.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1956. The Social Organisation of the LoWiili. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1957. ‘Fields of social control among the LoDagaa’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 87, 75104.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1962. Death Property and the Ancestors: a study of the mortuary customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1967. Preface to second edition, in The Social Organisation of the LoWiili, second edition. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1972. The Myth of the Bagre. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1975. ‘Religion, social change and the sociology of conversion’, in Goody, J. (ed.), Changing Social Structure in Ghana: essays in the comparative sociology of a new state and an old tradition. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Goody, J., and Gandah, S. W. D. K. 1980. Une Récitation du Bagré. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. 1989. ‘A Study of Law and Marriage among the LoDagaa of Northern Ghana, 1907–84’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. Forthcoming. ‘To pray or not to pray: politics, medicine, and conversion among the LoDagaa of northern Ghana, 1929–39’, Canadian Journal of African Studies.Google Scholar
Hebert, P., et al. 1975. Esquisse d'une monographic historique du pays Dagara. Diébougou: Diocèse de Diébougou.Google Scholar
Heehs, P. 1994. ‘Myth, history, and theory’, History and Theory 33 (1), 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henige, D. 1974. The Chronology of Oral Tradition: quest for a chimera. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hien, V. M., and Hébert, J. 1968/1969. ‘Prénoms théophores en pays dagara’, Anthropos 63/64, 566–71.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. 1983. ‘Introduction. Inventing tradition’, in Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. O. (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E., and Ranger, T. O. (eds.). 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holden, J. 1965. ‘The Zabarima conquest of north-west Ghana’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 8, 6086.Google Scholar
Horton, R. 1971. African conversion', Africa 41 (2), 85108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horton, R. 1993a. ‘A definition of religion, and its uses’, in Horton, R., Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: essays on magic, religion and science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horton, R. 1993b. ‘Judaeo-Christian spectacles: boon or bane to the study of African religions?’ in Horton, R., Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: essays on magic, religion and science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iliffe, J. 1979. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jewsiewicki, B., and Mudimbe, V. Y. 1993. ‘Africans’ memories and contemporary African history’, History and Theory 32 (4), 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, D. 1986. ‘Judicial regulation and administrative control: customary law and the Nuer, 1898–1954’, Journal of African History 27 (1), 5978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kpiebaya, G. E. 1976. ‘L' Africanisation de l'Eglise: qu'est-ce à dire?Petit Echo 9, 493–8.Google Scholar
Kpiebaya, G. E. 1991. Dagaaba Traditional Marriage and Family Life. Wa: Catholic Press.Google Scholar
Kuklick, H. 1991. The Savage Within: the social history of British anthropology, 1885–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kusiele, S. R. B. 1973. ‘Système de la divination et conceptions religieuses chez les Dagara’, Savanes et forèts 10/11, 158.Google Scholar
Kuukure, E. 1985. The Destiny of Man: Dagaare beliefs in dialogue with Christian eschatology. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Labouret, H. 1931. Les Tribus du rameau lobi. Paris: Université de Paris.Google Scholar
Ladouceur, P. 1979. Chiefs and Politicians: the politics of regionalism in northern Ghana. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lentz, C. 1993. ‘Histories and political conflict: a case study of chieftaincy in Nandom, northwestern Ghana’, Paideuma 39, 177215.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, W. 1970. Custom and Government in the Lower Congo. Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McCoy, R. F. 1988. Great Things Happen: a personal memoir of the first Christian missionary among the Dagaabas and Sissalas of northwest Ghana. Montreal: Society of the Missionaries of Africa.Google Scholar
Mendonsa, E. 1982. The Politics of Divination: a processual view of illness and deviance among the Sisala of northern Ghana. Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mensah-Brown, A. K. 1969. ‘Chiefs and the law in Ghana’, Journal of African Law 13, 5763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, S. F. 1986. Social Facts and Fabrications: ‘customary’ law on Kilimanjaro, 1880–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morin, O. 1909. ‘Les Gourounsi’, Les Missions d'Afrique’ Quebec, 5 (4) 264–70.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V. Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Naameh, P. 1986. “The Christianization of the Dagara within the Horizon of the West European Experience’. Ph.D. thesis, Münster: Westfäliache Wilhelms-Universität.Google Scholar
Paternot, M. 1953. Lumière sur la Volta, chez les Dagara. Paris: Association des Missionaries d'Afrique.Google Scholar
Peel, J. D. Y. 1994. ‘Historicity and pluralism in some recent studies of Yoruba religion’, Africa 64 (1), 150–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Person, Y. 1975. Samori: une révolution dyula 3. Dakar: Institut français d'Afrique noire.Google Scholar
Prins, G. 1980. The Hidden Hippopotamus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. 1983. ‘The invention of tradition in colonial Africa’, In E. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. 1993a. “The invention of tradition revisited: the case of colonial Africa’, in Ranger, T. and Vaughan, O. (eds.), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa. Basingstoke: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ranger, T. 1993b. ‘The local and the global in southern African religious history’, in Hefner, R. W. (ed.), Conversion to Christianity: historical and anthropological perspectives on a great transformation. Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1932. The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schott, R. 1985. ‘A case of living law: traditional and modern jurisdiction among the Bulsa of northern Ghana’, Quaderni Fiorentini 14, 149–72.Google Scholar
Shorter, A. 1988. Toward a Theology of Inculturation. Maryknoll, NY.: Orbis Books.Google Scholar
Somda, M. J. B. 1977. Sagesse dagara I, Anthroponymie dagara. Koumi: Grand séminaire.Google Scholar
Somda, N. C. 1989. ‘Les origines des Dagara’, Papers in Dagara Studies 1 (1), 2645.Google Scholar
Somé, A.-P. 1992. Signifiant et société: le cas du dagara du Burkina Faso. Paris: l'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Somé, B. 1969. ‘Organisation politico-sociale traditionelle des Dagara’, Notes et documents voltaiques, 2 1641.Google Scholar
Somé, R. 1991. ‘La conception dagara de dieu en question’, Papers in Dagara Studies 1 (3), 3043.Google Scholar
Staniland, Martin. 1975. The Lions of Dagbon: political change in northern Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steiner, C. 1994. African Art in Transit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stock, B. 1990. Listening for the Text: on the uses of the past. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Tuurey, G. 1982. An Introduction to the Mole-speaking Community. Wa: Ghana Education Service.Google Scholar
Ubah, C. N. 1982. ‘The supreme being, divinities and ancestors in Igbo traditional religion: evidence from Otanchara and Otanzu’, Africa 52 (2), 90105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ukpong, J. S. 1983. “The problem of God and sacrifice in African traditional religion’, Journal of Religion in Africa 15 (3), 187203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vail, L. (ed.). 1989. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. 1990. Paths in the Rainforest: toward a history of political tradition in equatorial Africa. Madison, Wi.: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. 1994. Living with Africa. Madison, Wi.: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Wilks, Ivor. 1989. Wa and the Wala: Islam and polity in northwestern Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, G., and Wilson, M. 1945. The Analysis of Social Change in Africa: based on observations in central Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yelpaala, K. 1983. ‘Circular arguments and self-fulfilling definitions: “statelessness” and the Dagaaba’, History in Africa 10, 349–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar