ANÁLISIS DE LAS OPERACIONES DE ECUADOR CANALIZADAS POR EL SUCRE

Central to knowing who you are (knowing your head) is respect for the rules of conduct in society. If not shown deliberately, such respect can also be enforced through social sanctions. Suleymane offers a clear example of this: He is not as modest and loyal as

most of his peers in the Kau family and on returning from working elsewhere, he adopted his own style of doing things. This was why, earlier in this chapter, we found him wearing a white outfit when, according to his peers, this was too ostentatious for someone in his social position. Suleymane is exceptional in many ways, being the only one in the Kau family to send his daughters to school.

In 2001-2002, I observed how non-compliance with existing rules and expectations was immediately signalled and corrected. There was an incident between Suleymane

and the Dicko family during the annual Tabaski celebrations when they were all taking

pride in the number of sheep they would butcher for their wives and family. I then asked Suleymane how many animals he would slaughter and, to my surprise, the answer was none. It was not because he lacked the money but rather because, according to the Dicko family, his Kau family members were of slave descent and were not supposed to make their own sacrifice due to their status. However he added that when he was in Burkina, he would always butcher a sheep in honour of his freeborn wife Hadriatou.

Some days later, Suleymane informed me that he had decided not to butcher his master’s sacrificial animal anymore and would send his cousin Kodo to do it in his place. This would allow him to butcher his own animal right after morning prayers on

the first day of Tabaski. I still wonder to what extent my conversation with him

influenced his decision: This is a methodological concern that is difficult to answer. When I asked him, he told me our conversations had had nothing to do with it but there were several moments like this during my fieldwork when I sincerely wondered whether it had been my questions that had triggered changes in the behaviour and ideas of informants. My interpreter agreed with me on this point.

On the first day of Tabaski, right after morning prayers, members of the Kau family

walked up to the royal compound. Suleymane however was missing: He had gone home to change his clothes and butcher his own animal. This appeared to cause a lot of discussion between the then chief of the slave descendants, Allay, and the Dicko chief and mayor. In the midst of the consternation, Kodo was sent to find Suleymane, who ended up butchering animals for Mayor Musa Dicko’s family. My interpreter Umu suggested that we leave the Dicko compound once Suleymane arrived to avoid in- creasing his feelings of shame. In the coming days, Suleymane was insulted and re- proached both by his own and Dicko family members for his disrespectful behaviour. In

the end he only sacrificed his own animal on the third day of Tabaski.

Suleymane returns several times in this chapter as his progressive and rather deviant ideas have often caused him trouble. Over the ten years I have known him, I have witnessed how he increasingly started to give in to his co-villagers’ expectations. He became more modest, realizing that the loyalty style would yield more results than sticking to his deviant principles. Not only did he experience pressure from the Dicko family and was reproached for not sticking to the loyalty style, he also experienced constant pressure from his own family and his peers. The most striking example was the recent marriage of his daughter Aafi. Suleymane’s family did not approve of his at- tempts to educate his eldest daughter but, thanks to his close ties with the well-educated mayor of Dalla, Suleymane managed to have her live with the Dicko family in Dou- entza so that she could complete her high-school education. According to traditional

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ideas of marriage, Aafi had been promised to the son of Suleymane’s eldest brother Hama (a parallel cousin) and for years Hama had been insisting on the marriage taking place because he felt the girl was becoming too old to get married. Since Mayor Musa, who had been hosting her, died in 2008, his widowed wife had not been supportive of her education either and in April 2010 Suleymane finally gave in to pressure from his older brother. Aafi married Hama’s son in Dalla in May 2010 and she will now never be able to complete her education even though she was expected to graduate in June 2010.

Suleymane’s case outlines how knowing oneself is not only a matter of personal stylistic competence. Style is performed within the limits of what is socially acceptable and can be reinforced in practice by officious rules of social control and morality. The cultural field of hierarchy incites people to stick to tradition and to know their position in society. Moral rules of behaviour related to the social organization of hierarchy make

it difficult to remove the Riimaayɓe’s stigmatized status. There is a discourse about

respect for ancestors: People are supposed to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors and to respect ‘what is found’, i.e. to respect their ancestors’ example. Most references to

tradition (FF: Tawaangal) underscore the importance of transgenerational continuity.

The son of the chief in Dalla pointed out that not respecting customary rules is ‘like taking off the pants of your old man (father)’. It would dishonour one’s father in front of other family members and be shameful. The best way of avoiding shame is by con- forming. Conformity is enforced through strong social control in both styles, and social control reminds people that being considered pretentious is a social sanction in itself. As Riesman (1992: 200) put it:

It is important to recall, for instance, that not only are Fulɓe and slave descendants aware of differ- ences in what their behavioural patterns express, but also that they are constantly calling attention to them in everyday conversations. These everyday references serve not only to keep certain images constantly in people’s minds, but also have the weight of sanctions: Fulɓe who act like slave des- cendants degrade themselves, while a Diimaajo (singular form of slave descendant) who acts like a Pullo (singular form freeborn Fulɓe) would in many contexts be considered uppity.

Although many informants insist that education and the passage of time have changed many things, it remains difficult for the younger generation to defy the autho- rity of their elders. Their room for manoeuvre is still restricted, as I demonstrate with an incident Musa described. Musa Tambura is a 25-year-old descendant of slaves (FF:

Riimaayɓe Haayre) from the village of Sigiri (Map 5). His father had made a lot of money, set himself up in Douentza and became the neighbour of former mayor, Musa Dicko, in Douentza. When his father died, Musa was adopted by Musa Dicko who en- sured he received an education and he went on to study at university in Bamako. He described the following incident to illustrate how the generational gap is hard to over- come for his generation.

I was on a visit to Dalla with Vieux, one of my Dicko friends. We came from Douentza and when we arrived at Vieux’s house (the royal Dicko family compound), Vieux ordered a person of slave descent called Bilal to go and fetch water so that he could wash himself after the journey. Bilal however refused to do so and Vieux decided to get the water himself. On seeing this, Vieux’s uncle got really angry. He told Vieux – in the presence of Musa and Bilal – that, after all, slaves (FF: Maccuɓe) were born to take care of the needs of others. He explained how slaves are like dogs and that you have to train them to obey you. Then he ordered Vieux to hit Bilal. Vieux refused to do so. (Here Musa added that Vieux had refused to do so because he had been to school.) To save his authority, Vieux also

added that if one day Bilal should ever need him, he would not help him. (This was his punishment.) Vieux’s uncle was not satisfied however and ordered Bilal to bring the requested water.

With a deep sigh, Musa added that the man of slave origin did go and get the water. For him, the case demonstrated how in some contexts and with some conservative elders, it is still complex for him and his peers to change the cultural field of hierarchy.

However, not only the loyalty style of slave descendants is controlled by others. Patrons and freeborn noblemen are equally subjected to gossip, insults and sanctions if

they do not respect the cultural field of hierarchy. The expression noblesse oblige seems

accurate in this context.

With the following case of Musa Dicko Jr, I show what repercussions can follow from not respecting differences in behavioural styles. The case demonstrates how the weight of sanctions works. Musa Dicko Jr is a youngster of the royal Dicko family studying in Bamako. While on holiday in his home village Dalla in 2006, he was shown that he had crossed the social boundaries and was reproached for not respecting the moral rules related to his ‘patriarchal’ noble style because he had eaten rabbit meat. He

went out hunting with his slave-descending friends (FF: Maccuɓe Wuro) but because of

his freeborn status, Musa was not allowed to give in to his hunger (a bodily need) and eat rabbit as it is considered impure. Since he was hungry and his friends were eating with relish, Musa decided to taste some. This was much to his regret later on because

the ‘bad mouths’ (FF: Hururuy) gossiped. Musa was insulted by co-villagers, both free-

born and slave descendants, for behaving ‘like a slave’. Gossip sanctioned his mistake, i.e. the non-realization of bodily control. He had crossed the moral boundary of the

ideology of nobility (FF: Ndimu). People insulted him for his ‘slave behaviour’ and

when he walked by people would call him ‘slave’ (FF: Maccuδo) in public and some

even considered Musa to be cursed (FF: Huδaaδo).

Musa was sanctioned for not maintaining the patriarchal ideal. It is not only people of one’s own social status groups who ‘protect’ the social boundaries and sanction each other. Slave descendants can just as easily sanction the freeborn if the expected patriarchal style is not respected. The notion of ‘difficult hands’ directly refers to the threat of social sanctions by clients over their patrons. If a patron is greedy and is not reciprocal in the way clients expect him to be (as related to status, wealth, power,

gender and seniority), people will ‘dirty his name’ (FF: Bonnde inde makko). If a patron

is not as generous as would be expected according to his position, he will be sanctioned with reproaches and social control.

Maintaining a good (moral) reputation in the face of the community is controlled by (mostly discursive) sanctions in the public sphere. A person who crosses the social boundaries (Musa, Suleymane and Bilal in the above-mentioned examples) is insulted

for putting on airs and graces (FF: Maani ada ganda) and not ‘knowing himself’ (FF:

Maani andaa hoore). Sanctions involve gossip and insults, which are sources of shame (Riesman 1977: 77-79; Riesman 1992: 29, 46-49). As described in Chapters 2 and 3, shame is an emotion that needs to be avoided at all costs (de Bruijn & van Dijk 1995a:

212-213). Insults referring to characteristics associated with slaves, non-Muslims22 and

22 _{In the Haayre region, it is especially the Dogon that are referred to as people who do not pray (FF:}

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blacks,23 _{such as impatience, lying, selfishness and ingratitude, are especially powerful}

insults for noble freeborn.

Religious curses (and blessings) also effectively prevent people from crossing certain boundaries (Hardung 2009: 119-123; N’gaide 1999). During interviews, informants started whispering when discussing sensitive issues in the hope of avoiding being cursed for passing on secret information. They thus underlined how God hears every- thing. And finally, repercussions for not respecting tradition and ancestral customs (FF:

Tawaangal) are often expressed by using the powerful idiom of witchcraft (FF: Su- kunya) (Botte 1994: 115-116).

All the above-mentioned forms of social control are common and the effect of dis- cursive sanctions in the form of stereotypes, insulting jokes, pejorative vocabulary and degrading remarks should not be underestimated. Social control and sanctions are an important mechanism for understanding socialization and the internalization of the cultural field of hierarchy. They contribute to social control and the maintenance of the hierarchical status quo, which is reflected in the stereo styles at either end of the spectrum. This section has demonstrated how the cultural field of hierarchy is inter- nalized and maintained through social control by knowing oneself and performing the right stereo styles. The following sections describe how stereo styles have been adapted and manipulated in the practice of affectionate relations between people.