Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:41:10.372Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forbidden Fruit in the Compound: A Case Study of Migration, Spousal Separation and Group-Wife Adultery in Northwest Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Isidore Lobnibe
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the anthropological implications of the notion of adultery by showing how it can improve our understanding of a local debate about descent, migration and local responses to it, among communities belonging to the Dagara of northwestern Ghana. Using a case study of group-wife adultery, that is, a sexual affair between a man and the wife of a fellow member of the same patrilineal descent group in the context of male migration, the paper highlights the tension between a husband's sexual rights over his wife and those of his descent group over the wife's procreation. It further examines the rituals surrounding the resolution of the case and the arguments generated by it as a prism through which to view social change and Dagara social organization. An evaluation of the community views about spousal separation, the punishment associated with group-wife adultery and the multiple responses of its members to the offence is presented with ethnographic examples.

Résumé

Cet article s'intéresse aux implications anthropologiques de la notion d'adultère en montrant qu'elle peut nous aider à mieux comprendre un débat local sur la descendance, la migration et les réponses locales y afférents, au sein de communautés dagara du nord-ouest du Ghana. A partir d'une étude de cas d'adultère d'épouse de groupe (autrement dit, une liaison sexuelle entre un homme et l'épouse d'un membre du même groupe de descendance patrilinéaire) dans le contexte d'une migration masculine, l'article met en lumière la tension entre les droits sexuels d'un époux sur sa femme et ceux de son groupe de descendance sur la procréation de cette épouse. Il examine également les rituels qui entourent la résolution de l'affaire et les arguments qu'elle génère en tant que prisme d'observation de l'évolution sociale et de l'organisation sociale des Dagara. L'article présente au moyen d'exemples ethnographiques une évaluation des opinions de la communauté sur la séparation des époux, de la punition associée à l'adultère d'épouse de groupe et des multiples réponses de ses membres au délit.

Type
Articles
Information
Africa , Volume 75 , Issue 4 , November 2005 , pp. 559 - 581
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2005

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

Allman, Jean. 1996. ‘Adultery and the state in Asante: reflections on gender, class and power from 1800 to 1950’, in Hunwick, J. O. and Lawler, N. (eds), The Cloth of Many Colored Silks: papers on history and society. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Bening, B. 1990. A History of Education in Northern Ghana 1907–1976. Accra: University of Ghana Press.Google Scholar
Cordell, D., Gregory, J. W. and Piché, V.. 1996. Hoe and Wage: A social history of a circular migration system in West Africa. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1951. Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer.Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Forde, D. 1950. ‘Double descent among the Yakö’, in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D. (eds), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. 1945. The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. 1949a. The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. 1949b. ‘Time and social structure: an Ashanti case study’, in Fortes, and Evans-Pritchard, (eds), Essays Presented to Radcliffe-Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds). 1940. African Political Systems. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1962. Death, Property and the Ancestors. California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1967. The Social Organization of the LoWiili. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1969. ‘A comparative approach to incest and adultery’, in Goody, (ed.), Comparative Studies in Kinship. Berkeley: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1995. The Expansive Moment: anthropology in Britain and Africa, 1918–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, J. (ed.). 1971. Kinship. Selected readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Hart, K. 1982. The Political Economy ofWest African agriculture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, S. 2002. Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana. The encounter between the LoDagaa and the ‘the world on paper’. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Hill, P. 1963. The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana. A study in rural capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, L. D. 2000. ‘“ My daughter … belongs to the government now”: marriage, Maasai, and the Tanzanian state’, in Hodgson, L. D. and McCurdy, A. (eds), ‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa. Portsmouth: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, S. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with money, war and the state. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ito-Adler, J. 1997. ‘Descent analysis’, in Thomas, Barfield (ed.), The Dictionary of Anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell Press.Google Scholar
Kuper, A. (ed.). 1977. The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown. Boston, Mass: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kuper, A. 1982. ‘Lineage theory: a critical retrospective’, Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 71–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leach, E.R. 1961. Rethinking Anthropology. London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Lentz, C. 1994. ‘A Dagara rebellion against Dagomba rule? Contested stories of origin in north-western Ghana’, Journal of African History 35: 457–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentz, C. 2000. ‘Colonial constructions and African initiatives: the history of ethnicity in Northwestern Ghana’, Ethnos 65: 107–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentz, C. and Veit, E.. 1989. ‘Working class in formation? Economic crisis and strategies ofsurvival among Dagara mine workers in Ghana’, Cahiers d'etudes africaines 113 (XXIX-I): 69–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1929. The Sexual Life of Savages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mitchell, C. J. 1971. ‘Social change and the stability of marriage in Northern Rhodesia’, in Goody, J. (ed.), Kinship. Penguin Books Ltd.Google Scholar
Moore, S. F. 1964. ‘Descent and symbolic filiation’, American Anthropologist 66: 1308–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, S. F. 1978. ‘Descent and legal position’, in Moore, S. F. (ed.), Law as Process: An anthropological approach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Murdock, G. P. 1949. Social Structure. London: Macmillan & Co.Google Scholar
O'Laughlin, B. 1998. ‘Missing men? The debate over rural poverty and women-headed households in Southern Africa’, Journal of Peasant Studies 25: 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peletz, M. G. 1995. ‘Kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology’, Annual Review ofAnthropology 24: 343–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1950. ‘Introduction’, in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, D. (eds), African Systems ofKinship and Marriage.Oxford:Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1929. Ashanti Law and Constitution.Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Saul, M. 1989a. ‘Separateness and relation: autonomous income and negotiation among rural Bobo women’, in Wilk, Richard (ed.), The Household Economy: reconsidering the domestic mode of production. Boulder: West view Press.Google Scholar
Saul, M. 1989b. ‘Corporate authority, exchange and personal opposition in Bobo marriages’, American Ethnologist 16 (1): 58–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saul, M. 1991. ‘The Bobo house and the uses of categories of descent’, Africa 61(1): 71–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheffler, H. 1986. ‘The descent ofrights and the descent ofpersons’, American Anthropologist 88: 339–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, D. A. 1984. A Critique of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seligman, B. 1950. ‘Incest and exogamy: a reconsideration’, American Anthropologist 52: 305–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tengan, A. B. 2000. Hoe-farming and Social Relations among the Dagara of Northwestern Ghana and Southwest Burkina Faso. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar