Tipos de investigación

The Harmattan winds are showing no mercy in Dalla today and are blowing the yellow Saharan sand around. It is January and the harvests are stored safely in the granaries so

the dry season is the ideal period for ritual celebrations. Tabaski, the sacrificial Muslim

feast, has just finished and many other celebrations, such as circumcisions and weddings are still to come. My interpreter Umu and I are to assist in several of these rituals but today Kumba Dicko’s son Nassuru is getting married so the members of the Kau family are helping the Dicko family. I observe how my neighbour Dikoore is bringing buckets of water and her husband Seydu and Kodo are stripping the skin off the bull that has been sacrificed in honour of the young Dicko bride. Seydu’s son Samba is off collecting firewood. Always optimistic, fifty-year-old Pooro is singing and clapping to encourage the young slave-descending girls in her neighbourhood with their millet pounding in the royal compound.

Only women of slave descent pound millet for festivities in the Dicko family and it

has become an ‘identity marker’ connecting someone to his/her slave ancestry.1 In many

ways, ritual assistance symbolizes the continuity of a past relation in the present, a form of commemoration in the present. However not all Kau family members will be

working today as some are in town and others have manumitted2 _{themselves. Various}

other people will also be helping, for example, women of slave descent among Tuareg (FF: Bellaaɓe) are contracted during the dry season as seasonal labourers and engage in domestic activities for the royal family of Dalla and they will also pound millet today. Elder Kau slave descendants who help the royal Dicko family with similar chores are

not rewarded in cash although the seasonal Bellaaɓe immigrants (slave descendants in

Tuareg society) are. Such inequalities in rewards demonstrate the complexity of today’s

1 _{Hardung (2003: 94) made a similar observation during a wedding ceremony in northern Benin.} 2 _{In Chapter 5, I explain how manumission works.}

hierarchical relations. Master-slave relations have never been uniform nor have they evolved unilinearly from slavery through clientelism into contractual relations. Ana- lyzing changing hierarchical relations according to such modernization theories is futile. Instead, relevant questions in relation to legacies of a hierarchical past in the present are those that do justice to the wide variety of responses to their status by people of slave descent and their freeborn former masters. This variety depends on the time, place and the socio-political dynamics: Stigmatized status was forced on to newcomers such as Bella for example, others such as Kau family members managed to opt out by migrating and finally there are those like Pooro who temporarily (re-)engage in and benefit from relations of dependency.

When the guests arrive in the afternoon even the dust cannot hide their bright coloured clothes. Some of the male visitors are wearing spotless white outfits with gold plaited stitching. The contrast with the outfits of the working slave descendants of the Kau family is striking: My neighbour Dikoore is not even wearing sandals, one has to guess the original colour of Seydu’s outfit and young Samba is wearing a T-shirt full of holes. They are clearly not wearing their best garments for work but even when they have finished work and changed for the party, the contrast remains. Differences in status between slave-descending Dikoore and royal Kumba Dicko can be seen from the differences in their dress, haircuts and behaviour. Dikoore’s outfit is of an inferior quality and the design of the cloth and the style of her clothes are somewhat outdated. My host Suleymane is dressed in white, which Dikoore’s husband Seydu describes as ‘putting on airs and graces’ as he himself would never dress so ostentatiously. However, even Suleymane in his flashy white garment lacks the golden stitching that most mem- bers of the Dicko family can afford and the appearance of the slave-descending Kau family is not as impressive as that of the freeborn Dicko family members.

Observing my neighbours in relation to their patrons (their former masters in the Dicko family), I am surprised by their modest appearance but also their humble be- haviour. Instead of their familiar noisy quarrels, I see them as silent observers who only move when asked to render service to a freeborn, for example taking a crying (freeborn) child, serving water or distributing cola nuts among the guests. While my interpreter and I are given a place at the centre of events, my Kau neighbours take seats faraway at the back, echoing the argument that status positions correspond to the places occupied.

Although for me as an outsider it took time to become acquainted with certain sty- listic preferences, once I had more or less mastered them, I realized how ritual cele-

brations3 undeniably underscore difference. They are a magnifying glass through which

the social boundaries between social status groups can be cast. The above observations reveal how activities (work), behaviour, place and appearances are influenced by peo- ple’s relative status in their society.

Central to this chapter is the way status positions come with expectations of style in the cultural field of hierarchy. The preceding chapters have demonstrated how inequal-

ity of status was widely accepted in pre-colonial, colonial and in post-slavery Fulɓe

3 _{I analytically separate ritual contexts from other work contexts realizing that this distinction is not} tenable in practice. Rituals can only be understood as daily lived realities of their actors (performers). Bell (1992) underlines this by taking a processual approach of ritual, which she calls ‘ritualization’.

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society. The introduction to this thesis identified the cultural field of hierarchy as a common ground of belonging and identification for freeborn and slave descendants, and this Chapter discusses how the cultural field of hierarchy generates expectations regard- ing specific styles that people ideally have to abide by in accordance with their ascribed social status.

The first section of this Chapter analyzes how belonging to and partaking in the ‘cultural field of hierarchy’ is done on a continuum of two variable styles: The patri- archal style and the loyalty style. They complement and reinforce each other, which is why I have coined them ‘stereo styles’. The second section describes possibilities for mobility within and between these styles. I use here the typology of social promotion proposed by Kopytoff & Miers (1977: 19) called ‘informal affect’ or ‘affective incor- poration’. Affective incorporation is a change in status that occurs in the personalized sphere of emotions and sentiments as opposed to legal changes in formal status. Af- fective mobility has to do with the esteem and affection in which people are held in practice. Although some slave-descending Kau family members are treated with the greatest respect, they may not be entitled to the basic rights many less-respected com- moners in society enjoy. Their legal incorporation does not correspond to their affective incorporation. Two main aspects of this affective dimension of social mobility for the Kau family in Dalla will be described: Link-up and chiefly positions for slaves. This affective dimension offers social mobility to those who maintain ties with their former master and is the major difference with the dimension of worldly success.

The third section is a form of social promotion that Kopytoff & Miers (1977) called ‘worldly success’. It is the dimension of change that becomes possible outside the direct relationship between the Kau and the Dicko families. In fact, this dimension is composed of those changes in social mobility of slave descendants that are not related to their formal and/or affective incorporation (the two other dimensions). The so-called worldly mobility of the Kau family with case material on floating patrons, the mone- tization of labour and emigration are also described.

‘Stereostyling’ the cultural field of hierarchy:

The internalization of belonging in Ful

e society

It is my second month in Dalla and I am starting to recognize faces and make con- nections between people. At the market, I recognize the butchers who sell meat as the husbands of the slave-descending women I have interviewed in the ward where I am staying. Further down, near the well, I recognize my neighbour Seydu and his son who

are making mud bricks. Later on, I realize that this is quite common: In Fulɓe villages in

the Haayre region, most of the brick makers and butchers are of slave descent (and/or seasonal immigrant workers) and do physically demanding jobs that are looked down on and that the well-off would never engage in. Also, these are activities that are associated with and are overtly qualified by some as ‘slave labour’.

Their work makes arranging interviews with my neighbours of slave descent more difficult than those with members of the royal or imam family. Freeborn Dickos have

their daily activities but always seemed to be able to make time for me. If they felt like it, most of them could arrange for someone else to do what needed doing.

Noble women, like Kumba Dicko, invariably spend their days in their houses en- gaging in tasks that do not involve much physical effort. Kumba Dicko spends most of her time plaiting colourful reed mats, has her millet pounded by a Bella worker and on market days, orders what she needs from one of the slave descendants who come to great her in the mornings. What a contrast from Dikoore and Pooro who are busy pounding millet, grinding peanuts and preparing and selling foodstuffs either at home or at the market.

While butchering and brick making are typical activities among the male members of the Kau family, their women engage in domestic chores and sell prepared foods at the market. The Kau family thus continually engage in labour that links them to their not- too-distant slave past.

To understand how the cultural field of hierarchy was shaped and internalized over time by the Kau and Dicko families, I will briefly describe the history of labour rela- tions during King Yerowal’s reign (1911-1966). Chapter 1 discussed the differences in labour between those slave groups living in Dalla who mainly engage in domestic

labour and the slave-descending Riimaayɓe on the slave estates who are mainly engaged

in cultivation. This is a very general feature of the organization of slave labour in the Sahel (Kopytoff & Miers 1977: 43; Meillassoux 1989; Klein 1989). These two slave groups both belonged to the Dicko family but had different rights and duties. While

most estate slaves (Riimaayɓe Haayre) were allowed to keep their land as first settlers,4

their harvest was taxed by the nobility. Their main occupation was cultivation, although some specialized in cotton weaving or music making.

In contrast, house slaves (FF: Maccuɓe Wuro) had no entitlements to land and rarely

cultivated it either. Their occupations were more geared towards giving personal assist- ance to the ruling family in terms of tax collection and guarding the royal palace, its granaries and the prisons. The royal slaves of the Kau family also took care of the horses, provided water and wood, and maintained the palace buildings. The slave wo- men at the palace were either concubines or domestic workers. The most trusted among them worked as intermediaries and had public functions: They were the king’s mes- sengers and, as such, commanded other (subordinate) slave groups in the kingdom. Many slaves on the estates remember how the royal domestic slaves (Kau family) came to take their property or children on the king’s orders. To date, the relationship between

families of slave descendants on the estates (Riimaayɓe Haayre) and the royal descend-

ants (Maccuɓe Wuro) are tense, a tension that shows in their refusal to intermarry.

During much of the twentieth century, possibilities for social mobility for the king’s

slaves were largely determined by their masters’ social status. The slaves of Jawaanδo

traders were likely to trade for their masters, while the slaves of warriors became sol- diers. As Kopytoff & Miers (1977: 40) put it:

The master sponsors the outsider’s placement in the social structure and the master’s position deter- mines through what gates the outsider may enter it. The outsider’s subsequent status and style of life are a function of this point of entry ... The Kau family entered through the gate of the political repre-

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sentatives of Fulɓe society. This is why they occupied the position of political representatives among slaves.

Different slaves occupied different kinds of jobs in the past depending on the posi- tion and specialization of their masters.

At King Yerowal’s court, the royal Dicko family exploited Kau family labour. They were not rewarded for their work but there were few forms of protest since their masters had the monopoly on violence (beating, resale, rape). In Chapter 1, El Hajj, a freeborn informant pointed out how corporal punishment was the normal way in which his father ‘educated’ his slaves. Most Kau family members recall how their ancestors feared not only their masters’ violence but other threats as well. There was the fear of sale (of relatives) to worse masters and the threat of one’s kin being sold to a master in another country. The option of flight was not a viable alternative for most as running away

resulted in either death or being enslaved by another kingdom.5 In short, many forms of

(symbolic and real) coercion worked because there were not many exit options open to slaves.

French abolitionist policy originally intended to eradicate all forms of slavery but in practice the French rarely intervened in domestic slaves’ problems and focused on abolishing the trading in slaves and having slaves on the estates. In bard Amadu Baa Digi’s memories, the abolition of slavery resulted in a redefinition of work relations. As

Angenent et al. (2003: 101) put it:

The following letter from the French prohibited slavery. People were no longer the slaves of their neighbours. All men are free, which we call a democracy. This troubled the Fulɓe a lot ... because they did not know how to work the land and their wives did not know how to take care of the household: Crushing, cooking and fetching water. Everything was done for them by their slaves. The French repeated that slavery no longer existed.6

Although several Ful_ɓe groups were forced to start working for themselves, the royal

elite kept their domestic workers. French colonizers tolerated domestic slavery among the ruling elites because they needed their cooperation and authority over their citizens. This is the reason why the exploitation of slave labour at the royal court in Dalla maintained the status quo during King Yerowal’s reign. Older informants, born in the

1930s and 1940s,7 _{remember the corporal punishment they received as (child) slaves at}

the royal court. Allay Jangine (†2008) was one of these child slaves at the royal court. Although when I interviewed him in 2001-2002 he took pride in the fact that he was given jobs requiring trusted persons, such as guarding prisoners and the granaries, his memories of being a child slave were less positive and he recalled with indignation how one of Yerowal’s wives once humiliated him by using his back as a board to wash clothes on.

5 _{The region was unstable due to raiding groups. More generally, the Sahel was characterized as a} frontier zone for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was the focus of a paper by Camille Lefèbre, which she presented during a workshop on ‘Slavery and Mobility’ in Liverpool, May 2010.

6 _{This is author’s translation. See for the French text: Angenent et al. 2003: 101.}

7 _{The following of my elder informants have passed away in the meantime: Allay Jangine, Asse Kau,} Kumbaalde. To my knowledge Macca Maiga is still going strong.

It was only after Malian independence in 1960 and the death of King Yerowal in 1966 that the Dicko family started working their own fields themselves. The elite’s perception of the innate impossibility of changing labour roles, as required by the

French, met considerable resistance. Praise singer Baa Digi (in Angenent et al. 2003:

101) used the following metaphor: ‘It is as if one gave a mortar to a European woman and told her to pound millet to prepare a meal. After only a day, her hand will swell and even start to bleed.’8

After independence, Mali’s national government gave people of slave descent the

same rights as any other group in society, at least on paper.9 Slave descendants are

entitled to own their own property, have authority over their own family and if injustice is inflicted upon them, they can turn to the courts. For the Kau family, the main switch from formal slave status to a more clientelist status is only now starting to take shape. With King Yerowal’s death, the power of the royal Dicko family over their domestic workers came under close scrutiny and was increasingly undermined by national admi- nistrators, who were sometimes of slave descent themselves. However, although the Dicko family lost its monopoly on violence to French and national Malian administra- tors, from 1966 onwards the Dicko family replaced this with a monopoly on access to certain ‘goods’ (land, political authority) and continued to institutionalize forms of their former slaves’ marginality.

A youngster from the Kau family10 who is currently studying in Segou confirmed

that his family only started to emancipate slaves after independence. When asked for a concrete example, he describes how his uncle, Saalumaane Adu, was one of the first to

actually take pride (FF: nayiraad) in the fact that they were considered equal to the

Dicko family:

Saalumaane is considered a rebel by many because he was one of the first to refuse to do what the chief asked him to. At a certain point in time, the chief asked his Riimaayɓe (Kau family members) to make bricks for him and repair the entrance to his compound. Saalumaane was the only one who openly refused to do so. All the other Riimaayɓe in Wuro Maccuɓe obeyed.

When I asked Alu why Saalumaane did so, he explained: