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Who are the Kran/Guere and the Gio/Yacouba? Ethnic Identifications Along the Liberia-Ivory Coast Border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Svend E. Holsoe  and
Joseph J. Lauer
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Extract

Scholars working in Africa through the years have been faced with the problem of how to identify and differentiate one group of people from another. One of the bases for classification has been to establish linguistic boundaries, a method which has been part of the traditional anthropological means of distinguishing one “tribe” from the next. Recently others have pointed out the dangers of compartmentalizing peoples purely on linguistic grounds, as many individuals are multilingual.

With scholars even today disagreeing over what constitutes a proper basis for classification (Biebuyck, 1966: 500-515; Helm, 1968), it is not surprising that there remain some areas of the African continent in which a consensus has not yet been achieved. As a case in point, there are two groups of people living in the eastern part of Liberia and the western part of the Ivory Coast who have been referred to in the literature by a variety of names.

It would seem that the problem is particularly acute among African art experts. The terms most commonly observed in English publications for those groups which live in eastern Liberia are Dan and Ngere (Fagg, 1953: 17-18). However, there is no consistency in the names used by other art historians, so that Dan N'gere, referring to a general art style of both of these peoples, is used by Sieber, Rubin (1968: 54), and Bravmann (1970: 32). The names Gio, Yacouba, Kran, and Tien also can be found used by other scholars to refer to the very same peoples (Harley, 1950; Girard, 1967: 7; Bascom, 1967: 78; Himmelheber, 1960: 192).

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1976 , pp. 139 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1976

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