Rhetoric and Social Relations: Dialectics of Bonding and Contestation 9781789209785

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Rhetoric and Social Relations

Studies in Rhetoric and Culture Series Editors: Ivo Strecker, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz Robert Hariman, Northwestern University Felix Girke, University of Konstanz Christian Meyer, University of Konstanz

Our minds are filled with images and ideas, but these remain unstable and incomplete as long as we do not manage to persuade both ourselves and others of their meanings. It is this inward and outward rhetoric which allows us to give some kind of shape and structure to our understanding of the world and which becomes central to the formation of individual and collective consciousness. This series is dedicated to the study of the interaction of rhetoric and culture and focuses on the concrete practices of discourse in which and through which the diverse and often also fantastic patterns of culture – including our own – are created, maintained and contested. Volume 8 Rhetoric and Social Relations: Dialectics of Bonding and Contestation Edited by Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky Volume 7 Culture, Catastrophe and Rhetoric: The Texture of Political Action Edited by Robert Hariman and Ralph Cintron Volume 6 Chiasmus and Culture Edited by Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul Volume 5 Astonishment and Evocation: The Spell of Culture in Art and Anthropology Edited by Ivo Strecker and Markus Verne

Volume 4 The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture Edited by Christian Meyer and Felix Girke Volume 3 Economic Persuasions Edited by Stephen Gudeman Volume 2 Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life Edited by Michael Carrithers Volume 1 Culture and Rhetoric Edited by Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler

Rhetoric and Social Relations Dialectics of Bonding and Contestation   

Edited by

Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Abbink, J., editor. | LaTosky, Shauna, editor. Title: Rhetoric and social relations : dialectics of bonding and contestation / edited by Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky. Description: First edition. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Series: Studies in rhetoric and culture ; 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020042370 (print) | LCCN 2020042371 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789209778 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789209785 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Rhetoric—Social aspects. Classification: LCC P301.5.S63 R483 2021 (print) | LCC P301.5.S63 (ebook) | DDC 306.44—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042370 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042371

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-977-8 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-978-5 ebook

Contents       

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface

ix

PART I. Positioning Introduction. Rhetoric in Social Relations Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky 1. Embodied Chiasmus: From Alienation to Participation Jamin Pelkey

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PART II. Bonding 2. Kinship: Mother and Child of Rhetoric Jean Lydall 3. What Do Kinship Terms Do? The Dual Life of Kinship Words in English-Written Hunter-Gatherers’ Ethnography Nurit Bird-David 4. The Rhetoric of Kinship: ‘Doing Kinship’ – Some Mambila Cases David Zeitlyn 5. Establishing Ethos: The Rhetorical Work of Bondfriendship Felix Girke

57

80

98

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6. The Rhetorics of Purging among the Mun (Mursi) of Southern Ethiopia Shauna LaTosky

142

7. The Art of Playing Tuql: How to ‘Make’ Love in Egypt Steffen Strohmenger

168

8. Enculturation as Rhetorical Practice Ivo Strecker

182

PART III. Contestation 9. Sweet Tongues: The Rhetoric of Politeness in Damascus Anke Reichenbach

205

10. Words and Images: A Cross-cultural View on Swearing as a Rhetorical Strategy in Social Relations Susan du Mesnil de Rochemont

233

11. Flavouring the Nation: The Rhetoric of Nutrition Policies in Ethiopia Valentina Peveri

253

12. Power Relations in Suri: Rhetoric in Public Speech and Action Jon Abbink

283

13. Inducement to Action and Change in Attitude: Coaching in the Light of Rhetorical Anthropology Michał Mokrzan

310

Index

335

Illustrations       

Figures 1.1. Spread-eagle figures in traditional contexts

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1.2. Spread-eagle logos and extreme competition

40

1.3. Spread-eagle logos from celebration to agony

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1.4. Spread-eagle logos on the margins

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1.5. Spread-eagle logos from wonder to imagination

43

1.6. Multimodal chiasmus from solipsism to sense-making

47

4.1. Diagram of the relationships involved

103

6.1. Kisinyaholi Gedôw prepares dokay for his wife

150

6.2. Korrari’s daughter refilling the drinking gourd

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6.3. Korrari purging dokay

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10.1. ‘Fick’ picture (2005)

239

10.2. Smoking in public: the taboo of displaying a urinating female

246

10.3. Scenes of mutilation

247

11.1. ‘Ethiopia Profiles 2012’

262

11.2. The 2013 Ethiopian National Consumption Survey cover

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11.3. The 2016 Ethiopian National Micronutrient Survey Report cover

267

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Map 5.1. Map of South Omo with approximate settlement areas

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Tables 1.1. An embodied reframing of chiasmus typology

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4.1. Example One: Tape 9304b recorded on 26 September 1993

102

4.2. Example Two: the presentation of genealogies

105

10.1. Comparison of mean tabooness ranking of English swear words

237

11.1. ‘Type of food to be served’ – from the School Feeding Program Nutritional Assessment Study Report, 2015

265

Preface Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky       

This book on rhetoric and social relations completes the basic edifice of the Rhetoric and Culture series, initiated with I. Strecker and S. Tyler’s volume Culture and Rhetoric (2009). Together, the eight books set in motion a compelling exploration of the complex – and chiasmic – nature of culture and rhetoric. We are grateful to the authors in this volume for their contributions and their patience, and also to the series editors for their inspiration and encouragement. In line with admonitions from various authors within the Rhetoric Culture Project on the importance of ethnography and comparison, this volume contains chapters that are almost all based on serious fieldwork, which they see as crucial to test and extend the scope of the assumptions and hypotheses of the Rhetoric Culture Project. We wholeheartedly agree with Boris Wiseman when he says in his chapter ‘Chiastic Thought and Culture’ in volume 1 of the series (p. 87) that ‘the ethnographic application of rhetoric to non-Western societies places rhetoric in a new set of discursive and social relations. Such a process implies a dissolution of rhetoric (in its familiar guises) and its reassemblage in another context’. This is not to contend that rhetoric in ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ societies is in any essential way different, but that there is a need to thoroughly assess sociocultural contexts and to examine how forms of human sociality are reproduced and impact on rhetoric expression – as a common feature of all humans. As is evident from the two main parts in this book, we frame ‘rhetoric in social relations’ in the double aspect of bonding and contestation, in order to explicate our idea of a dialectic of bonding and contestation as productive tension that sustains and constrains social relations and which is closely linked to chiasmus, a core idea used in the Rhetoric Culture Project. It is a figurative, cognitive and comparative tool as well as a mode of ethnographic reflection (Wiseman, as quoted above), as heuristically and

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theoretically important, as Jamin Pelkey’s chapter in this volume makes abundantly clear. We hope that the rich case studies in this book illustrate the point and provide further food for thought on both empirical variety and theoretical elaboration of the ‘rhetoric culture’ approach. Finally, we are very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, who provided us with pertinent and useful critical comments allowing us to improve the chapters presented here.

Part I

Positioning

INTRODUCTION

Rhetoric in Social Relations Jon Abbink and Shauna LaTosky       

I bless the sacred powers of persuasion That makes calm the storm in the body The presence of God in persuasion Draws the poison fangs of evil Undoes the knotted mess of brooding evil In the gentle combat of persuasion Good wins over good with goodness And none lose. —Athena, in Aeschylus, The Eumenides

This volume presents a series of reflections and empirical case studies on a central, if not the central, domain of rhetoric and culture: human social relations. Indeed, nothing of rhetoric – neither the verbal strategies of persuasion and oratory (in the original Aristotelian view), nor in its wider sense, as a feature of the ‘new rhetoric’, being ‘the effective use of informal reasoning in all fields’1 – is outside the field of social relations as the constitutive dimension, or rather fabric, of human behaviour and culture. In addition, the recent ‘rhetorical turns’ (cf. Simons 1990; Bender and Wellbery 1990; Mokrzan 2014; Meyer, Girke and Mokrzan 2016) show an underlying concern with the multidimensional linguistic, bodily and evolutionary phenomena underlying and associated with the forms and uses of rhetoric, seen as a quintessential human ‘faculty’ for living and surviving in society, as well as shaping, and being shaped by, its culture(s). The present series, Studies in Rhetoric and Culture, initiated by Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler, is a prime example of it.

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As George Kennedy already noted in his inspiring 1998 book Comparative Rhetoric, this faculty of ‘rhetoric’ is found among humans in all societies and is by no means a prerogative or art of literate societies only, although as a phenomenon it was conceptually and reflexively developed in the Western tradition after Isocrates and Plato’s Dialogues. We could also make an argument for extending the study of rhetoric into non-human domains, as in ‘biorhetoric’ (Kull 2001; Pain 2002), akin to evolutionary studies,2 but we will not pursue this issue here. Partly addressed in this volume, however, is the role of non-verbal rhetoric, via sound or images (see du Mesnil’s chapter). The concept of ‘rhetoric’ and its scope are not self-evident. Each of the preceding volumes in the Rhetoric Culture Project (RCP) series had to grapple with definitional issues, the intellectual relevance of which must be included here. Since the first volume in the series, Culture and Rhetoric (Strecker and Tyler 2009a), which proposed the theoretical and methodological foundation for research on the figurative and persuasive dimensions of social relations (Mokrzan 2015: 257), several innovative notions have emerged which demonstrate that the mutually constitutive nature of rhetoric and culture goes hand in hand with social relations, but also ethnography (Meyer, Girke and Mokrzan 2016: 10, 14). Rhetoric culture theory (RCT) insists that an ethnographic approach – following upon Kennedy’s comparative one – is fundamental for recovering multiple rhetorical traditions. Ethnography allows for active and long-term engagement; that is, a scientific rhetoric that begins with mutual respect and a commitment to listening and observing how ‘actors deal with the contingencies in their lives and their own awareness that words, deeds, and ideals do not usually match’ (ibid.: 14). RCT also demands that any understanding of culture and rhetoric must encompass ‘the whole spectrum of human sensibility’ (Streck 2011: 133), as well as the ‘oscillating forces of the cooperative and the confrontational in interaction’ (Girke and Meyer 2011: 9), as ‘dialogue is only one side of the rhetorical medal’ (ibid.). This corroborates our claim that rhetoric helps to make sense of what connects and disconnects people, and thereby must keep track of universals, or in the words of Robling, ‘anthropological invariants’ (Robling 2004: 8), that enable humans to engage at all in socio-culturally embedded rhetorical activity. While a great deal has been learnt in recent years about social relations and discourse, especially from the work of linguistic anthropologists (e.g. Haviland 2010; Irvine 2019; Gal and Irvine 2019; Duranti 1994), and in that of many cognitive anthropologists (e.g. D’Andrade 1995; Hutchins 2006; Bloch 2012, [2013] 2017; Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2007), few frame these issues explicitly in the connection between rhetoric and culture. Judith Irvine (2011: 35) is of course correct when she writes that ‘the moral life of language does not reside in the linguistic properties of utterances alone, nor only in the moment of interaction. The words

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not spoken, the discourse contexts, the interactional and societal histories, the responses by interlocutors, the conventions of genre, the regimes of language, truth, and knowledge that prevail in the interlocutors’ social worlds – all these are relevant as well’. However, according to RCT, what makes them relevant are their rhetorical qualities. Where RCT guides us is in its novel exploration of the emergent qualities of culture (Girke and Meyer 2011), or put differently, how culture emerges out of ‘rhetorical action’ (ibid.: 2). This perspective differs from the predominantly semiotic approach (e.g. Irvine 2019; Gal and Irvine 2019) and linguistic-social pragmatics of much of anthropological linguistics and communication studies (e.g. Duranti 2007). Central to our own idea of a dialectic of bonding and contestation is the ‘constant productive tension’ referred to above, a tension that sustains and constrains social relations and which is closely linked to another genuine innovation of RCT: chiasmus. This figurative, cognitive and comparative tool, as well as a mode of ethnographic reflection (cf. Wiseman 2009: 87), has served to underline the series and RCP. When Tyler and Strecker (2009: 29) refer to the ‘chiastic spin’, what is meant here is not only the rhetorical energy generated and exchanged in social interactions, but also the power of metaphor and other important figures and tropes for stimulating and persuading others to act (Meyer, Girke and Mokrzan 2016: 8). While we build on these and other innovative ideas of the RCP, including a return to embodied rhetoric, as we discuss later in this Introduction, at the same time we push these insights further, as connections to newly evolving domains of research have to be made (see the sections below entitled ‘Contestation’ and ‘Beginning with the End, Ending with the Beginning’). The first challenge for the present volume was to first delineate the two themes, ‘rhetoric’ and ‘social relations’, both very comprehensive concepts. Despite recognizing their relevance and inherently wide scope, the danger is to extend them too much and to lose critical edge.3 We begin by saying that: (a) all human social life is relational and constituted in relationality on various levels, from kinship units to wider, imagined units such as ‘the nation’ or a religious community; and (b) that all rhetoric, as a form of communication, is rooted in the social and has at its core figuration and persuasion strategies (cf. Strecker and Tyler 2009b: 3), although not all persuasion in social life is rhetoric: think of direct physical force and intimidation – when used they are usually quite compelling, not discursively persuasive; (c) these rhetorical persuasion strategies, however, refer to a (partly shared) reality that is explored and tested in supplemental rhetorical operations, that is, they have plausibility claims. This is where the ‘rhetoric-as-epistemic’ – that is, ‘knowledge-forming’ – argument comes back. Even as rhetoric is not to be equated with ‘rational discourse’, it does produce implicit claims to knowledge.4 Persuasiveness in whatever form

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may flout realities beyond rhetoric, and rhetoric’s ‘arguments’ and intended meanings may be challenged. Apart from that, as the ancient Greeks already mused, rhetoric often ‘fails’: it does not always win audiences or redefine social reality. This is in contrast to Athena’s noble words, cited at the beginning of this Introduction. We see social relations as the entire spectrum of engagements that humans enter into as members of a society, relations that by nature are cooperative as well as fractious and competitive. The social relationality of humans – a natural phenomenon – necessitates rhetoric action, both cognitive and expressive. This does not imply that all aspects of social relations (or of culture) are to be studied merely in their verbal-linguistic, discursive dimensions, as quantitative research on descent and kinship, settlement patterns, energy use and so on also has a role to play. The culture concept is ill-defined in the RCP, but we see it here in the standard anthropological sense as the dynamic body of shared and transmitted patterns of behaviour, values and templates marking a human group’s way of life.5 More specifically: culture is a dimension of human functioning, and constitutes ‘repertoires of meaning’, constructed and (re)produced in social interaction. So we follow no essentialist conception of it, because cultural repertoires are open and dynamic.6 Humans are quintessentially verbal-discursive in social relations: ‘culture’ may be a rhetoric construct, but it is embedded, located, within human sociality; that is, social relations are primary in having conditioned culture, as symbolic/ meaning systems composed by rhetoric action. Sociality is our evolutionary past, our kinship, our embodied mimetic practices for survival. In this book we, perhaps obviously, focus chiefly on rhetoric in expressive forms as produced in social relations, primarily but not exclusively verbaldiscursive. We thus see rhetoric as the basic human register of interactive discursive action in society, with inherent dimensions of persuasion and argument directed to an audience, and appealing to a body of shared (social) values or identity. More specifically, we might start with the short definition by Thomas Farrell (1993: 15), seeing rhetoric as ‘the practice of public practical reason’ in human society. Farrell was against the ever-extending definitional scope of rhetoric and chose a more classic position. He described rhetoric as a collaborative art, ‘directed towards making ongoing sense of experiences by expressing them as themes and arguments, inviting decision, action, and judgement’ (ibid.: 25). This is the stuff of social life, and points to both the informal, pragmatic ‘real life’ aspects of human social discourse and to the ongoing efforts people make to influence and convince others, via the entire range of figurative, symbolic and ‘cognitive’ utterances/messages that mark human discursive action (also including ritual). In the current rhetorical turn – perhaps to be called the second one, after that of the 1980s and confirmed by work done in the Rhetoric Culture Project – the concept of rhetoric has reverted to

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its original broader meaning, and escaped its reduction, since the Romantic Age, to (the study of) elocutio, the mere production/delivery of figures of speech (cf. Sperber and Wilson 1990: 140). So rhetoric for us refers to a core characteristic of human functioning, and to the ensemble of discursive utterances and strategies used in social interaction, marked by efforts at persuasiveness, in many registers.7 This is not ‘a Western conception’ of rhetoric, as some critics would have it (Bate 2014: 541–42, 544). The ethnographic examples in this volume are telling in that all of them exhibit (un)conscious strategies of persuasion, this regardless of the wider question that rhetoric may very well be rooted in evolutionary processes of embodied cognition, for example via chiasmic structures. Indeed, as Pelkey demonstrates in Chapter 1, chiasmus is a basic model and structure in social rhetoric, occurring time and again in many domains. We concur with the thesis that rhetoric in the wider sense is thus constitutive of culture, that it calls (or at least affirms) a common, collective cultural identity into existence, and we look at this via the lens of social relational settings that delimit the scope, depth and time frames of rhetorical activities and strategies. Rhetoric, as creative, persuasion-oriented discursive practice in the service of social cognition and symbolic meaning-making, does not proceed from conceptual or ideological blueprints or mind models, but is pragmatic and adaptive – a ‘collaborative art’ (Farrell 1993). It is rooted in ordinary discourse, practice and real communities (White 1985: 701), and speaks to the indeterminacy of social life. Seen in its social settings, however, this does not mean that rhetoric is arbitrary, opportunistic or relativistic in its effects: shared meanings, ‘theories’ and knowledge of the social and of the world are indeed produced, which are ‘tested’ against reality and adjusted. We do not agree with the postmodern notion that reality is (entirely) a rhetorical construct, nor do we see the future of rhetoric studies in a social constructivist approach (cf. Simonson 2014: 107–8). In assessing the settings or context of rhetorical performances/expressions, there is also the issue of whether an ‘identity’ of a social group needs to exist before rhetoric practice can have its effects or impact. The underlying assumption of the Rhetoric Culture Project is posited upon the chiasmic figure that ‘just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric’8 – ‘culture’ is being produced by rhetoric and rhetoric has a cultural basis, that is, it induces members of a society into specific features and figures of speech and into cultural references that create difference, identity and plurality. Surely rhetoric always speaks to notions of the shared ‘background knowledge’ of the interlocutors. Kenneth Burke already tied the exercise of rhetoric to processes of identification (cf. Davis 2008: 128) – otherwise rhetoric would not ‘work’. Important to note, however, is that people are not ‘prisoners’ of the rhetorical

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conventions of their social or cultural group; they argue within it in a dialectical fashion and create new linkages and insights beyond it. This points to the universalist basis that is found in the human rhetorical faculty across cultures and which creates conditions for the apprehension of common truths about reality, for example via science, despite the various rhetorical constructions about it (which may differ).9 In current rhetorical theory, including rhetoric culture theory, we may see a gradual fusion of two of the classic forms of discourse as identified by Aristotle (c. 330 BC [2004]: 1356a): of rhetoric as observation and practice of the available means of persuasion, and of dialectic, the practice of (dialogic) argument and debate to reach shared insights or truths.10 This fusion is a fortuitous development that allows us to stave off the, what we could call, eternal ‘Sophist threat’ of seeing and using rhetoric as only a set of persuasive strategies, as a contentless, ‘non-virtuous’ means (Plato) merely to gain discursive victory, often amounting to deception. This is Plato’s version of it in his dialogue (against) Gorgias. Rhetoric is more than that; it has social and cultural resonance, and usually refers to shared meanings and truths beyond the oratorical constructions of persuasiveness.11 This means: (a) that rhetorical analysis does not necessarily consist of a self-referential description of discourse and does not obviate the need for critical testing of knowledge claims and the growth of knowledge;12 and (b) more specifically relevant for our volume, that rhetoric, in our sense, is also set in relations of power, hierarchy, inequality and gender relations and so on, and should be studied in those settings. Indeed, social relations everywhere are marked by a dialectic between conflict and harmony, tension and resolution (see below), or in the words of our book’s two main sections, contestation and bonding. We here refrain from further theorizing this trait of human society, but would refer to the basic ideas in the comprehensive approach outlined by historian-critic-philosopher René Girard and its relevance for human culture. It is based on the recognition of a universal human disposition towards ‘mimetic rivalry’: imitative relationships and strivings that humans forge in a competitive manner – both negative and positive – whereby the desires that humans experience are formed and shaped in imitation of the desires of others. This is an essential social process that ultimately could be explained in an evolutionary sense.13 The ‘other’, either as a member of the immediate kinship unit or of a wider affinal, occupational, virtual or other human group, is a social partner or competitor (not necessarily ‘aggressor’) that evokes the constant need for rhetorical engagement, thus (re)creating and shaping culture. Rhetoric in this sense – and this also underlies the Rhetoric Culture Project – unites argumentative and emotional aspects.14

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It will be clear that in this Introduction, and equally in most of the chapters in this volume, we of course see the use and analysis of rhetoric as going beyond conceptualism, discourse analysis and cognitive anthropology. Indeed, as we said, the rhetorical faculty is constitutive of human social relations and thereby of culture (cf. White 1984, 1985; Keane 2015), although it is not prior to the latter in an evolutionary sense, because hominins and early humans were social before they were rhetorical in the discursive sense. The subsequent development of (proto)human society in itself has also accelerated the development of the role of rhetoric within it, because in competitive relations, good strategies of persuasion – and frequently, deception – confer more survival value and societal success.15 The discussion of ‘rhetoric as epistemic’, that started with Robert Scott’s 1967 paper, has also shown that rhetoric, as praxis, produces (conditions of) knowledge and is a way of obtaining truth(s). Zhao (1991) has reformulated the argument, defining rhetoric as ‘praxis which integrates both knowing and doing in public discourse’, that is, not factual knowledge but normative knowledge ‘grounded in the life contingencies in which we find ourselves and with which we have to cope’ (Zhao 1991: 255–56; see also note 4). This interesting thought is well reflected in the chapters of this volume. The diversity of cases presented in this volume is indicative of the enormous and utterly fascinating diversity of social relations as ‘settings’ for rhetoric. This puts strain on the ‘cohesiveness’ of the collection but that may be exactly the point: the variability of the social and the multiple modes of power, social tension and hierarchy inevitably and always produce diversity. So we can offer no apology for the wide range of empirical cases here. What unites them is the thorough approach to evaluating the relationality of the social – in both serious and ludic forms – in conditioning and shaping rhetoric in action. In the everyday discursive fusion of allusion, word play, irony, informality, formality and use of tropes, homo ludens (Huizinga [1938] 1949) meets homo rhetoricus.

More on Social Relations: Bonding From the perspective of a comparative and cognitive anthropology, we might say that ‘relation’ occupies a prominent place of relevance in humanity’s conceptual reservoir. Few other concepts are so pervasive and subtly at work in human – conscious and unconscious – experience of life and active involvement therein. Think, for example, of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s seminal Metaphors We Live By (1980). This highly original book is all about relations, analogical relationships that pertain between different domains of

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human experience and allow the rhetorical creation of situationally appropriate meanings in social contexts. Or take Stephen Tyler’s exposition of universal meaning schemata, his ‘pillars of naïve realism’ (1978: 240), of which the fourth – comparison (ibid.: 243) – makes use of relational thinking and thereby allows the growth of knowledge. In other words, it is certainly attractive to thematize, explore and explain relations – cognitive, physical, social or otherwise – that inhere in the many diverse, often surprising ways of human life that rhetoric culture scholars have investigated. Also, ‘relation’ is basically an appealing topic because it evokes feelings of connectedness, mutuality and belonging, the opposite of solitude and alienation. No wonder ‘relation’ is often used as a metonym for sexual intercourse, and the English ‘relation’ is, as the dictionary puts it, a person connected by blood or marriage. The Latin noun relatio and the verb relat – foregrounding acts of bringing back, reconnecting, joining what belongs together – lie at the back of this embodied English meaning of ‘relation’. At the same time, the abstract use of ‘relation’ abounds in human discourse. Again, this does not come as a surprise when we consider how from dawn to dusk we are agents and patients, subject to chains of cause and effect. As individually we ponder and jointly discuss how things have effects on one another, we gradually move into ever more abstract and often also formal modes of studying relationships, as exemplified especially by philosophy and the cognitive and natural sciences. Anthropology has in the past taken different stances on this matter of processes and traditions of knowledge formation regarding sociocultural relations, but structural anthropology as developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and his students (especially Pierre Maranda; e.g. 1972) certainly stood out in the novel study of relations, predominantly kinship. Most importantly, the structuralists cultivated the study not only of relations, but of the relations of relations – of the relations pertaining between different domains of culture and modes of being, be they physical, cognitive or social.16 Structural anthropology was dominant in the 1960s–1970s and brought a wealth of new insights. But criticism of its linguistic-based models and its strict semiotic orientation on formal communication ‘systems’ led to a decline of influence and to a rise of interest in more pragmatic and interactionist theories and new theories of communication, interactionism and postmodern ‘dialogic’ approaches (see the pioneering book by Tedlock and Mannheim [1995]). Other approaches taking a less ‘literalist’ approach to language and utterance emerged as well. While not dominant in anthropology, the poststructuralist ‘relevance theory’ of Sperber and Wilson ([1986] 1995) is important in the field of rhetoric and communication studies.17 These authors made a new start in researching the wide spectrum of communication via an orientation on cognitive psychology and focusing on reasoning and rationality, although less so on rhetoric as only located in natural language. In their work,

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the attention to social relations as a wider context of discourse and rhetoric was not prominent, but their work still has great importance for comparative studies of social relations and culture, and certainly rhetoric is a sub-set of human communication. Interestingly, in his last work The Enigma of Reason (Mercier and Sperber 2017: 9), which is a nuanced plea for an interactionist perspective (ibid.: 9, 11), Sperber ends up with the idea that the ultimate goal of reasoning is persuasion – hence, we are back with … rhetoric. While studies of rhetoric already made a comeback in the fields of literary studies, art studies and history from the mid-1950s (for example with Burke as a pioneer), a new rhetorical approach to the study of social relations and culture emerged roughly in the late 1970s–1980s. The influence of prominent thinkers like Paul Ricoeur on metaphor ([1975] 2012) and Hayden White (1973) was formative, and in anthropology a breakthrough volume was Sapir and Crocker’s The Social Use of Metaphor (1977). Gradually a host of new themes was added in anthropological approaches to rhetoric and social relations, for instance the study by Michael Herzfeld of ‘social poetics’ as ‘the creative presentation of the individual self ’18 and of ‘decorum and style’ (Hariman 1992), that gave social relations their particular character. Three related key terms – formation, articulation, modulation – seemed to be especially useful to explore how rhetoric (among other factors) shapes social relationships, notably in relations of kinship and gender, the third (modulation) used by some authors more generally to refer to aspects of ‘temperament’ and ‘emotional tone’. Previous anthropological research on culture and emotion had tended to divide cognition and emotion. But a rhetorical approach to the study of social relations in their full range might be more suited to refocus on the interplay of thought and feeling, mind and emotion, for example in the study of slang, gossip and insult language and their cultural referents. Other classic themes in anthropology next to kinship, affinal relations, gender and sexual relations might be cast in a new light via a rhetorical approach as well, for instance, rituals, or ‘reciprocity’ – prime mechanisms of bonding.

Contestation The underlying theme of this book was termed ‘dialectics of bonding and contestation’, because we see the tension between them as the engine of social relations: human interaction is rooted in establishing rapport and similarity as well as distance and differentiation at the same time. This is the core of social life and marks the agency of humans, rooted in mimesis and competition, both benevolent and rivalrous. Above, we mentioned the strong case for mimetic rivalry as a human trait fuelling tension and conflict, so persuasively

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argued in René Girard’s work. While the rivalry is for Girard ‘pre-linguistic’ in the evolutionary sense, it is continued with rhetorical means after the development of language. The differential and contrary aims of rhetorical performance of humans in and of social relations are present in kin and age groups, but perhaps shown most clearly in ‘political’ contexts: the play of power and influence within a community, and of a community (constituted by rhetorical conventions) visà-vis other communities.19 In many of the chapters in this volume, we see this ‘political’ dimension at work, even in contexts of kinship (Lydall, Bird-David, Zeitlyn) and rivalrous ‘love talk’ (Reichenbach, Strohmenger). Contestation is at the heart of social life – in view of humanity’s inescapable mimetic rivalries – and communities generate it on the basis of elements like gender, age, ability, wealth or ‘class’, and even if they are politically delineated or ‘cohesive’, they produce it internally, as witnessed already in the polis states of ancient Greece (e.g. in the trial of Socrates). Indeed, Aristotle’s classic distinction of dialectic (as the practice of argument and debate; see above) vs. rhetoric and logic reflects this fact of contestation as inherent in human discourse. Structures of power, ‘ideological’ difference, and the persistence of durable inequality do the rest, and fuel contestation in a material, spatial or discursive sense. In this line, the chapters by Abbink, Peveri and du Mesnil partly address issues of power difference, hegemonism and value inequality.

Structure of the Book: On the Dialectics The structure of the book aims to emphasize the persuasive – and chiastic – ways in which spoken and unspoken forms of language (i.e. rhetoric) are used to bring people closer together, and at the same time how rhetoric can be used – and is used – against social relationships themselves: to create distance or to drive people apart. In the work of the ‘father’ of modern rhetoric studies, Kenneth Burke (notably in A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950), this inherent dialectic based in the very nature of the human process of identification was already extensively commented upon (cf. Davis 2008). It is this constant tension in social relations that the contributors capture in the two parts of this volume, intended to reflect these dialectics of bonding and contestation. Part I presents the first chapter by Jamin Pelkey, which is a theoretical introduction to one of the key human figures/postures underlying a wide range of social relations: the essentially human upright X-position, the ‘embodied chiasmus’. This connects directly to the role that the chiasmus figure has already played in much work on rhetoric, including that of the Rhetoric Culture Project, where its central figurative role was repeatedly emphasized. Chiasmus

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of course comes from the old Greek letter chi (X), and refers to the rhetorical figure of reversal and mirrored repetition of words or sentence elements. Strecker and Tyler (2009b: 9) argued that chiasmus is useful for the discovery and creation of ‘meaningful relationships’, and volume 6 of Studies in Rhetoric and Culture (edited by Wiseman and Paul [2014]) is entirely devoted to it. As to social relations, several of the chapters in the present volume show how people position or distance themselves via upright posturing,20 for instance by sustaining or avoiding the gaze of the other (Lydall, LaTosky, Mokrzan). For example, the feelings that certain bodily movements elicit in social relations (for instance, between husband and wife in Mursi, between daughter and mother-in-law in Hamar, between coach and coachee in Poland, and so on) is a recurring theme worth considering. The ‘upright posture’, as a form of ‘embodied rhetoric’, the walking forward and sustaining the gaze of the other, is one element in constructing the self–other relation, the precarious balance in social relations. We will return to Pelkey’s contribution and its challenge towards the end of this Introduction. The point for now is that chiastic upright postures are embodied in social relations and are recognizable throughout. Part II is about cultivating close and trusting relationships, elucidating and exemplifying rhetorics of ‘bonding’ through kinship, affiliation and bondfriendship. This section begins with the most primal interdependent relationship between mother and child, and continues with five ethnographic case studies from India, Ethiopia, Cameroon and Egypt that illustrate how closeknit relationships are built on rhetorical layers of kinship, friendship, love, commitment, trust and familiarity. The seventh chapter is more concerned with enculturation. However, it is not set off in its own corner; rather it tells us – by way of a case study – how social relations are the work of enculturation practices, that is, they are produced by culture-specific ways of socialization that teach people how to relate to one another. In ‘Kinship: Mother and Child of Rhetoric’, Jean Lydall develops a theory in which the physiologically engendered bond between mother and child is taken as the source of both kinship and rhetoric. She argues that an infant’s ‘cry, driven by a need, is an appeal for care, and the mother responds accordingly, persuaded by the primary bond that the cry invokes. Consciously or unconsciously, the child discovers that transferring its cry, utterance or gesture from one domain to another, for example from hunger to pain, has the effect of persuading its mother, or other carer, to think and act according to its needs. This is the first lesson in rhetoric, by which I mean the art of persuasion, that every child experiences’. Furthermore, Lydall argues that ‘because of their commitment and undying feeling of responsibility towards their dependent offspring, women are highly motivated to engage in creating, recreating,

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maintaining and transforming kinship relations by way of rhetoric’. In the section entitled ‘Singing Kinship’, calling on decades of research and filmmaking, Lydall explores how Hamar women and girls sing ‘kinship into consciousness’ and strategically mould their social world by way of song. The songs include lullabies (laensha), girls’ friendship songs, songs for male initiates (goala for a ‘brother’, ‘clapping the birth path’ for a ‘son’), singing at a bride’s going away party (gaido), a bride’s calming song, and women singing at a funeral. The verses of the songs, which the girls and women compose, are often face anointing, as in the laensha, and in some cases epideictic, as in the songs for a deceased man. Lydall describes the friendship song sung by six-year-old Yayo as ‘a kind of love song, for isn’t kinship all about loving and caring for one another?’ In the section entitled ‘Ritualizing Kinship’, Lydall turns her attention to rituals, and their corresponding rhetoric, to show how they are used to sanction and shape basic kin relationships. Thus, women use the child naming and preconception rituals to rhetorically assert authority over their daughtersin-law, controlling their right to bear legitimate offspring. Likewise, by way of their sons’ initiation rites, parents control their sons’ labour, determining when they can become independent, and have wives, children and livestock of their own; at their brothers’ initiation rites, girls and women go to rhetorical extremes when they demand to be whipped in order to show their love, and thus ensure their brothers’ commitment and support. In the next chapter, Nurit Bird-David continues with this theme of kinship by expanding our appreciation of the complexities of bonding and becoming in ‘immediate’ hunter-gatherer societies such as the Nayaka of South India. The rhetorical dimension of what kinship terms do reveals a tension between the use – or non-use – of kinship terms among some hunter-gatherers and the categorical and logo-centric basis of modern English kinship systems. While the former use such terms to produce ‘a sense of communal belonging, at once plural, diverse and immediate’, the latter tend to refer to dyadic relations, obscuring the plural, interconnected nature of using relation terms in some hunter-gatherer societies. The author argues that ‘sharing life together constitutes the relations’. Bird-David’s ideas are nicely summarized in a quote by Redmond (2005: 234) that also reflects the chiastic nature of social relations in ‘immediate hunter-gatherer’ societies: ‘the kinship web [extends] infinitely outwards towards the boundaries of the known world to make relative strangers into “strange relatives”’. In ‘The Rhetoric of Kinship: “Doing Kinship” – Some Mambila Cases’, David Zeitlyn delves deeper into questions of kinship and rhetoric that have figured so prominently in scholarly debates. According to Zeitlyn, the debates they have stimulated create the necessity to analyse kinship as ‘an emergent aspect of human life’, that is, as ‘part of the process of social existence’. Zeit-

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lyn takes this opportunity to solicit his views on the Rhetoric Culture Project, ethnomethodology and discourse analysis. By analysing the everyday conversations of the Mambila of Cameroon, Zeitlyn argues that it is possible to study how kinship emerges from people’s rhetorical practices, which includes the endless ways in which people contest their own kinship relations. This is because, quoting Carsten, ‘kinship is a process of becoming, not a fixed state … it consists of the many small actions, exchanges, friendships and enmities that peoples themselves create in their everyday lives. For most people it is perhaps the heart of their creativity’. Creating positive alternative social configurations is best exemplified in Felix Girke’s chapter, ‘Establishing Ethos: The Rhetorical Work of Bondfriendship’. Here Girke provides a compelling case for how institutionalized exchange relations, called beltamo (bondfriendship) in Kara (and Hamar) – and found throughout Southern Ethiopia under different names – ‘have a value quite incommensurable with the material benefits accrued’. Without dismissing the economic advantages of such relations, especially risk reduction through livestock dispersion, he claims that one-sided regionalistic arguments have their own shortcomings. Drawing on broader comparisons with Melanesia, Girke acknowledges the performative and persuasive aspects of bondfriendship and builds his argument that such relations allow men ‘to extend their agency beyond their local group, by persuading others to acknowledge the value of their activity’. Put differently, individuals come to be defined by their relationships with others and the complementary networks that emerge from bondfriendships. Cultivating such life-long bonds helps men to establish personal ethos, which is enhanced by convincing their respective communities to appreciate the material benefits and social value that such non-kin relations have to offer. As Girke so aptly puts it: ‘the bond matters, the friends matter, and the –ship, the stabilization of practice, it matters as well and should interest us most’. Whereas Kara men prove their qualities (or ‘ethos’) through the public act of cultivating bondfriendships, Shauna LaTosky’s chapter, ‘The Rhetorics of Purging among the Mun (Mursi) of Southern Ethiopia’, offers a lively discussion of what it takes to prove one’s quality as a good husband, age-mate, cousin, neighbour and so on. For the Mun, an important locus of rhetorical energy is the body. According to LaTosky, the public act of purging strengthens not only the body, but also social bonds between kin and non-kin. Those who can provide the means for others to purge are recognized and appreciated as generous, caring, compassionate, loyal, reliable, strong and/or loving, depending on the context. This is best illustrated through the collective and everyday practice of purging spicy coffee, which helps to create and maintain meaningful and lasting social relations. LaTosky’s detailed ethnographic findings are useful for understanding how social actions operate rhetorically through both material

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things (purgatives) and discourse (talk about purging). She also discusses a new kind of rhetoric (a specialized knowledge of biomedicine) that is outgrowing the ability of (purging) rhetoric to handle such modern issues (cf. Brummett 2014: 34). Steffen Strohmenger’s chapter provides a specific account of what it takes to ‘prove one’s quality as somebody worthy of being loved’. In ‘The Art of Playing Tuql: How to “Make” Love in Egypt’, the author looks at the art of love semantics in Egypt, called tuql. He argues that this rhetorical strategy is aimed at ‘bringing a (potential) love relationship into existence’. The strategy of trying to win the love of another person involves questions of silence and resistance, but also dishonesty and deceit. An important issue raised is the gendered nature of tuql: ‘That is to say, while the man can be “hard to get” to increase his chances of love, the woman faces the problem that she must be “hard to get” to have any chance of love at all’. Strohmenger’s study shows how, and the extent to which, gendered rules of tuql still apply in contemporary Egypt. Although Strohmenger does not situate his study in a historical context, one will no doubt find interesting parallels between tuql and ancient Egyptian rules of rhetoric ‘which specify that knowing when not to speak is essential, and very respected, rhetorical knowledge’ (Hutto 2002: 213). The point of knowing when to use – or not to use – the appropriate language, whether to speak to a child, a husband, an elder or an age-mate, for example, is taken up in the final chapter of Part II. As we have already mentioned, social relations are produced by culturespecific ways of teaching and learning how people should relate to one another. Ivo Strecker’s exposition of ‘enculturation as rhetorical practice’ helps us, theoretically and empirically, to better grasp this important truth. His fine-grained analysis of Hamar thought and expressiveness on the matter is embedded in the presentation of two new developments relevant for rhetoric culture studies. The first is a reappraisal of the ‘science’ of education, which has recently begun to position education as a rhetorical practice (Rutten and Soetaert 2012), and the second is resonance theory (Maranda 2011), which explains transcultural understanding as semantic fields that reverberate against each other. Strecker’s discourse analysis tries to bring out this ‘reverberation’ between the semantic fields of Hamar and those of his own. Before he presents and analyses several texts recorded in Hamar, he mentions a particular characteristic of empirical rhetoric culture studies: the prospective excitement experienced at the very moment of recording. ‘But the relevance of any recording’, Strecker remarks, ‘cannot be anticipated in full, and as the researcher later embarks on analysis, many new surprises will be waiting for him’. The detailed textual analysis is preceded by the observation that ‘education’ is perceived similarly as a ‘leading out’ in Hamar and the West, but the metaphorical repertoires by which this is

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expressed vary. Thus, in Hamar the ‘leading out’ is likened to herding goats. There is no room here to mention all the subtle rhetorical means of enculturation, which Strecker discovers in the texts he has chosen to analyse, but we would like to draw attention to at least the following example where Baldambe (the ethnographer’s host and mentor) says the following: ‘Another child doesn’t know how to speak: “What’s stopping that child from speaking?” So, going down to the waters of Galeba or to the waters of Kara, water is poured into a white gourd: “Let the child drink water from the flowing rivers. Let him know how to speak.” Thus he is given water from the flowing river to drink’. Strecker comments: ‘Could there be a more moving way to speak of the desire for fluent speech and how it might be realized?’ He then points to how for a long time already such metaphorical cum magical action has intrigued Western scholars, for example James Frazer, Roman Jakobson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Kenneth Burke and Stanley Tambiah. Part III of the collection continues to explore the struggles and the play of attraction and repulsion that goes on in social relations, which we have called contestation. Contestation underpins the challenges, obstacles, uncertainty and precarious nature of social relations. As will become clear in the contributions in Part III, the success or failure of individuals, communities and/or institutions to devise persuasive models of social relations, especially in times of changing circumstances, has to do with everything from understanding the appropriate context for using speech repertoires – from politeness speech to swear words – to identifying how relations of power make claims on our attention and confine the reach and impact of rhetoric as dialogic discourse (see especially Abbink and Peveri). The rhetoric of contestation develops in tandem with the rhetoric of bonding, reflecting the contradictions in social processes and the intense rivalries that can build up. The human need for ‘difference’, for identification with one group and not with others, is a given and generates rhetoric energy directed at ‘others’. We see this in all five chapters in Part III. In the first chapter of Part III, on ‘Contestion, Anke Reichenbach’s contribution, ‘Sweet Tongues: The Rhetoric of Politeness in Damascus’, exemplifies the rhetorical role of politeness speech in everyday social relations – but paying attention to tacit contestation. This compassionate and thorough investigation of ‘the preferred strategies of social face-care’ in Damascus draws on Brown and Levison’s classic model of politeness theory and indigenous concepts and stylistic devices of (im)polite discourse. The discursive approach that she takes falls into three categories, commonly distinguished in the literature as ‘the first, second and third waves’ of politeness research (see Grainger 2011). Although Reichenbach herself does not refer to such distinctions, her critical and in-depth analysis of key politeness concepts reveals her awareness of them. The discerning role that local concepts play, particularly in terms of

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making socially acceptable and moral judgements of others (cf. Mitchell and Haugh 2015), is applied to various social politeness encounters. The depth of her empirical analysis can be attributed to her intimate knowledge of Arabic, which helps her to understand the everyday contexts in which politeness terms are applied, but also the tensions created when politeness is used to veil impolite behaviour. While her findings show that positive forms of politeness (i.e. ‘sweet words’) are predominantly used in Damascus (e.g. compliments, greetings, etc.), they can also be – and are – used in negative ways (for instance to mark status difference or to dominate others). While her focus here is on the discursive aspects of politeness, her study nonetheless provokes a certain curiosity about the embodied actions of such performances when she writes: ‘Greeting a visitor in Bab Tuma was – at least in the eyes of a European observer – a loud and long-winded affair involving a lot of kissing, hugging and smiling’. In his seminal book Language and Social Relations, Asif Agha has explained that ‘we cannot understand the variety of social relations enactable in social life without coming to grips with the range of reflexive relationships expressible through speech’ (2007: 17). The vital role of language for reinforcing or sharpening social relationships inspired du Mesnil – and several other authors in Part III – to explore the use of specific speech repertoires, and like the ancient Egyptian rules of rhetoric mentioned in reference to Strohmenger’s chapter, ‘knowledge of when not to use it’ (ibid.). As the first two chapters show, many context-specific registers exist that, like Agha’s understanding of slang (2015) mentioned above, ‘are definable only through relationships’ (cf. Agha 2015: 311). Susan du Mesnil notes that using a specific form of slang – swear words – can be interpreted as an act of social cohesion (cf. Jay 2000). The persuasive impact of swearing has sparked significant debate in sociolinguistics, psychology and other fields of research. Although du Mesnil initially wrote this perceptive text (a lecture) long before it became a popular topic, it has lost none of its originality. In her study of German business and engineering students, du Mesnil measured the use of English swear words in terms of taboo strength, and she provides numerous examples of how ‘taboo strength does not match cross-culturally’. That is, while swearing in a foreign language might be one way to gain social approval, there are also unintended social consequences, as the local connotations of foreign swear words in different (national) contexts can be widely disparate – and deeply embarrassing. The author goes on to infer ‘a relatedness of choice of language and political developments’, which means that ‘socio-political and wider “cultural” conditions have a clear impact on the rhetorics of swearing, and may be related to new, more individualist subjectivities in contemporary post-industrial European society’. Du Mesnil ends with a set of provocative images in order to ask

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the question: Are visual symbols currently replacing the emotional strength of words or texts? Developments in contemporary cyberspace seem to bear this out.21 Valentina Peveri’s chapter is an excellent example of the diverse ways in which rhetoric – in this case, ‘the rhetoric of nutrition policies’ – creates tension in social relations when it challenges ‘traditional’-local practices and national identities. After reading this chapter, the popular expression ‘We are what we eat!’ immediately comes to mind, along with its chiastic equivalent, ‘We eat what we are!’ Within the context of Ethiopian nutrition policies and nation-building, of which schoolchildren and their parents are in part the subject, Hadiyya farmers, who already face, accept and combat conditions of environmental uncertainty by cultivating and storing ensete (a drought-resistant plant), must now live with the added uncertainty as to the meaning of new rhetoric related to national nutrition policies, school programmes and the long-term effects of such policies on their children and communities. Given the rhetorical value – and current devaluing – of ensete, food has become the rhetorical language through which a sense of belonging, ethnic identity and ethnic nationalism are expressed. As Valentina writes: ‘we find a nationally constructed idea of what being a modern citizen should entail – that is, learning a structure of taste which revolves around injera as the common ground for the palate as well as for achieving a full sense of Ethiopianness’. More broadly, the testimonies that she includes ask: ‘how could young people feel that they are part of the nation if the approved type of meal configuration does not capture the story of the ensete – its dignity, salience, resilience, and comforting taste – into the national [food] basket?’ Using detailed ethnographic examples, Valentina positions current education on food and nutrition, especially in the school curriculum, as rhetorical practices of nation/identity-building. This case of ensete growers in Ethiopia ‘offers an alternative narrative framework where ecosystems are densely interconnected with social relationships’. Jon Abbink looks at Suri social life to show how power constrains rhetorical efficiency, showing that traditional means of rhetoric are not always enough to confront issues that are too vast to make sense of. The empirical examples he chooses help to illuminate different rhetorical perspectives found both within and outside of Suri (e.g. Suri rhetoric about the state vs. state rhetoric about the Suri). Under close scrutiny of the political and socio-economic changes taking place in Suri today, such perspectives emerge as highly political. According to Abbink, the rhetorical strength of the Suri to express their position has weakened and, as a result, many young Suri no longer act on the rhetoric used by elders, but are finding their own ways to make sense of modern development rhetoric in their area. As Abbink argues, there are realities that exist ‘beyond their rhetorical construction’. Abbink’s observations of how

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effectively (or ineffectively) rhetoric is translated and its ability (or inability) to capture the imagination of the younger generation lead him to ask how we can ‘go beyond the presentation of rhetorical ingenuities and strategies in various social contexts’. He suggests that an analysis of rhetoric as ideology (or, in a more analytic manner, ‘cognition’ in that specific society) would allow us to better connect to differing interests and inequalities that form the stuff of human social relations. This matter of defining what rhetoric is or can become (e.g. ideology) and what rhetoric actually does for social relations is further examined in the next – and final – chapter. Michał Mokrzan provides a lucid account of the rhetorical strategies of coaching and the ways in which they ‘motivate individuals to become more efficient, be satisfied with their own achievements and feel greater responsibility’ in various areas of social relations. Based on extensive ethnographic research with coaches and coachees, Mokrzan shows that the rapid growth of coaching in Poland, and worldwide, goes hand in hand with the dissemination of neoliberal technologies/ideologies of ‘governmentality’ in the domain of social relations, especially work relations. The explicit use of rhetoric in coach– coachee relations is expressed using different persuasive tools, from inspiring attitudinal change (e.g. through metaphors) to building rapport (e.g. through mirroring), to bypass or neutralize disagreement or contestation in the case of ‘unwilling’ coachees. At the heart of this chapter is again rhetoric culture theory, which provides a useful theoretical backdrop for understanding the persuasive and performative language used by coaches to motivate positive change in their coachees (i.e. as neoliberal ‘subjects’) and to influence spheres of social relations beyond the self (cf. Farrell 1993: 3).

Beginning with the End, Ending with the Beginning Although our treatment of rhetoric in social relations relates primarily to how people communicate, from the parts of speech they use, to the multiple and competing discourses/discursive strategies that shape and are shaped by social relations, we also acknowledge, as previous volumes in the Studies in Rhetoric and Culture series have done, the importance of chiastic relationships (see Strecker and Tyler 2009a: 9; Tyler and Strecker 2009: 21; and especially Paul and Wiseman 2014: 1–2). This is the concern of Jamin Pelkey’s opening chapter on chiasmus that we briefly introduced above. In his recent review of the first Studies in Rhetoric and Culture series books, Pelkey (2016a) wrote that ‘chiasmus is … something of a hermeneutic key or prism’ (Paul and Wiseman 2014: 7, 12), enabling us to identify, perform and better understand reversals in perspective or behaviour (see Bollig 2014: 172; Lewis 2014: 188, 199, 212;

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Strecker 2014: 87) and better enabling us ‘to live in harmony’ (Paul 2014: 42) with people, ideas and other entities that are ‘at once diverse and in relationship’ (see Pelkey 2016a: 31). We take seriously Pelkey’s advice that insights from phenomenologically embodied cognition may be of use to the Rhetoric Culture Project. Chiasmus is one key element in this venture, as it is a remarkably widespread figure of human thought. As Pelkey further suggests (2016b: 32), ‘typologies of chiasmus are … needed; and to this end, Paul’s (2014) thoughtful and richly illustrated proposal of four basic categories of chiasmus patterning (cross, mirror, circle, spiral)’ was adopted in his chapter for this volume. Pelkey’s innovative attempt to refine and ground Paul’s (2014) four chiasmus classifications is done using the phenomenon of chiasmus as of bodily movement and interaction in an upright X-posture (see also Pelkey 2016b, 2017). Such a detailed analysis of the dynamics of X-posed figures, which are found throughout our evolutionary past, provides intriguing evidence that the ubiquitous meanings of ‘spread-eagle logos’ found today ‘are rooted far more deeply in the phenomenology and body memory of kinesthesia than they are in the cultural discourses whose purposes they serve’ (Pelkey, this volume). Pelkey goes so far as to speculate that the upright X-posture is perhaps ‘one of the first meaningful, polysemous gestures’ to influence our social-participatory origins as humans (here referring to recent enactivist theory). For him, the question of how social relations are shaped by physical features as fundamentally human as an upright posture is intended to move us beyond ‘problems of solipsism and alienation … to a space created through dialogue with another’. Turning to some of the latest research on human cognition and linguistic competence (e.g. Zlatev 2017 (inspired by Donald 2012), which argues that both are ‘formed on layered modes of “bodily mimesis” that could only have emerged via social relations’ (Zlatev 2017: 65), analysis of the phenomenology of full body movement through ‘the inverse relationships of arms and legs in motion’ also stimulates further interdisciplinary debate about the embodied origins of social relations and their relevance for understanding rhetoric in social relations today in a comparative, evolutionary sense. It is arguable whether chiasmus – although exceptionally powerful in discourse – is the master figure of a general semiotic of human behaviour and culture, including in the field of rhetorical studies. From a rhetorical point of view, chiasmus, next to being bodily anchored, can also be seen as an actively used discursive feature by speakers to indicate subversion, to uncover absurdities, or to argue a point more forcibly via dramatic inversion (cf. Dombek and Herndon 2004: 23). But Pelkey’s pertinent reflections go beyond the discursive and pragmatic aspects of rhetoric as a cultural phenomenon, and bring us back to the issue we alluded to in the early part of the Introduction – and which was repeatedly stressed in this and preceding volumes of the Rhetoric Culture Project: that

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of interdisciplinary openness and intellectual collaboration across boundaries, also towards linking psycho-dynamics, embodiment, bodily mimesis (Zlatev 2008) and cognition processes. Relevant here perhaps is Bloch’s earlier anthropological work on interpenetration, that is, the internal capacity of humans to ‘read’ the minds of others (Bloch [2013] 2017: 15). As he writes, ‘all social relation[s] implies interpenetration, so the arbitrariness of boundaries within the social fabric applies not just to people who are related but also between all human beings who are in contact’ (ibid.). Bloch in his 2012 book already noted (2012: 63) that ‘the complexity of human social life is … built on this continual imagination of the minds of others’ … ‘In other words, the most basic predisposition for social relations depends on genetically inherited capacities and not on ones which we could learn’ (ibid.). Such insights from the cognitive sciences – and what they omit – have the potential to illuminate some of the key innovations of the Rhetoric Culture Project, including Pelkey’s work on chiasmus and embodied rhetoric as fundamental to the inherited capacities of imagining what goes on in the minds of others. Our evolved human – and culturally varied – capacities to use rhetoric in ways that constitute – and are constituted by – social relations bring us closer to understanding that what we believe others believe and desire and what we believe others believe are our beliefs and desires (to use Bloch’s chiasmus) is, indeed, influenced by figuration and persuasion (cf. Knape 2012: 3). This open approach, necessitating more cross-disciplinary research, promises an ever-richer, more holistic view of rhetoric and social relations in a cognitive-linguistic, evolutionary and cultural perspective (cf. Bloch [2013] 2017, ch. 7), and based on ethnographic examples across time and space. In this spirit, what the contributions in this volume hopefully do is demonstrate the dialectics of rhetoric in and of social relations – rhetoric as both produced by psycho-social and cultural conditions, and creating and shaping human selves and culture in the process. Jon Abbink studied social anthropology, history and philosophy and is a research professor of Politics and Governance in Africa (Political Anthropology) at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University. He did doctoral field research on Ethiopian immigrants in Israel and later mainly worked on Ethiopia and Northeast Africa, focusing on themes like ethno-history, culture and violence, religion and politics, livelihood systems, and culture and environmental management. He was a visiting professor at various universities and has been an elected foreign member of the Ethiopian National Academy of Sciences since 2014. He has published papers/chapters and a dozen books as editor/co-writer on Ethiopian and African Studies. Recent publications include The Anthropology of Elites (co-edited, Palgrave, 2012), Reconfiguring Ethiopia (co-edited,

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Routledge, 2013), a co-authored monograph, Suri Orature, on the Suri people (Köppe Verlag, 2014) and the edited volume The Environmental Crunch in Africa (Palgrave, 2018). Shauna LaTosky is a socio-cultural anthropologist with a PhD (2010) from Gutenberg-University, Mainz. From 2012 to 2015, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Integration and Conflict, investigating comparative customary law and conflict resolution procedures, especially in relation to traditional livestock management, livestock trade, bridewealth exchange, and changing land use practices in Southern Ethiopia. She was Director of the South Omo Research Center (Jinka, Southern Ethiopia) from 2011 to 2013. Her main research work for the past fifteen years has been in Ethiopia, focusing on Mursi women, modernity, gender relations, pastoralism and development-induced change, identity and rhetoric. Her publications include The Predicaments of Mursi (Mun) Women in Ethiopia’s Changing World (Köppe Verlag, 2013), articles on agro-pastoralism, Mursi women and material culture in Southern Ethiopia, and the co-edited volume Writing in the Field: Festschrift for Stephen Tyler (Lit Verlag, 2013). She currently teaches anthropology at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Notes The editors are grateful to Ivo Strecker for constructive comments on and additions to this Introduction. 1. As a feature of the ‘new rhetoric’. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006 (https://www .britannica.com/topic/rhetoric/Scope-and-organization-of-argumentation) (accessed 14 August 2020). See also Enos and Brown 1993, and Flower 1993: 171. 2. Trying to analyse expressive behaviour in terms of primordial (unconscious) rhetoric (Kull 2001: 693). 3. As in the definition in the 1971 book Prospect of Rhetoric, cited in Simonson (2014: 106): ‘Rhetorical studies are properly concerned with the process by which symbols and systems of symbols have influence upon beliefs, values, attitudes, and actions, and they embrace all forms of human communication, not exclusively public address nor communication within any one class or cultural group’. In addition, to say that only rhetoric has the power to produce and reproduce culture and society is a truism (although perhaps not even true). 4. That is, within the social conditions it refers to, and (re)creates some of the accepted canons of social knowledge in that setting. It is ‘a way of knowing’ (Scott 1967: 17) but not to be equated with scientific knowledge. In that sense, ‘epistemic’ might have been a misnomer. Perhaps Scott’s main flaw is not having properly defined the relationship of his argument of ‘rhetoric as epistemic’ to the canons/discourse of scientific knowl-

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5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

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edge claims. Croasmun and Cherwitz (1982) had a good point when they said that Scott’s thesis that ‘rhetoric creates truth’ is insufficient; rhetoric is rather a form of ‘inquiry’, not critically tested as in scientific argument, and creating ‘social truths’ (Izumi 2018: 1491). The too relativist epistemology in Barry Brummett’s (1990) rejection of Scott’s thesis did not bring a solution. Also, the way that ‘culture’ – via French, coming from the Latin colere, meaning ‘to tend to the earth and grow’, or ‘cultivate and nurture’ – is impacted and shaped by rhetoric may need more theorizing. How does rhetoric ‘sediment’ into culture? Compare Bailey in his important study of political rhetoric (1983: 15): ‘one may think of culture as a set of rules for interpreting experience and shaping action’ … ‘all culture grows out of social interaction, out of communication’. Strecker and Tyler (2009b: 3) make the core point, describing rhetoric as ‘the discipline that since antiquity has been concerned with the ubiquity of inward and outward persuasion, and with the hidden agenda of interlocutors’. See http://www.rhetoricculture.org/outline.htm (accessed 6 August 2016). This is not to deny that science, including the so-called hard sciences, also follows rhetorical conventions. See Weimer’s excellent article of 1977. At www.britannica.com/topic/rhetoric/Rhetoric-in-philosophy-the-new-rhetoric (accessed 5 April 2018). White (1985: 687) has argued that rhetoric can also be seen as ‘the art of establishing the probable by arguing from our sense of the probable’, that is, within a specific rhetorical setting. This was the main thrust of Writing Culture, the famous collection edited by James Clifford and George Marcus (1986) on the textual conventions and authorial ‘strategies of authority’ – a book that had such an (over-extended) influence in anthropology. Not only scientific knowledge. For an introduction to this fascinating body of work, see Girard et al. 2007; see also Neufeld Redekop and Ryba 2013. Girard’s theory is tested and corroborated in recent work on human cognition (cf. Zlatev 2017). For a nice application of Girard’s theory in rhetorical studies, see Vandenberg 2006. Aristotle’s concept of rhetoric was also about the issue of integrating reason and emotion! We hereby also refer to the scientific discussions on ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ (cf. Byrne and Whitten 1988, Whitten and Byrne 1997). See also the fascinating case of ‘tactical empathy’ (Bubandt and Willerslev 2015), another rhetorical strategy in social life. A prime example is Lévi-Strauss’s brilliant study Le Totémisme Aujourd’hui (1962). Sperber has continued work on rationality and reason, concluding that the ‘basic functions of reason are social’. See his very interesting 2017 interview at: https://www.edge .org/conversation/dan_sperber-the-function-of-reason. Cf. also Mercier and Sperber 2017. See https://johnshaplin.blogspot.com/2017/05/rhetoric-and-constitution-of-social.html, and his works (e.g. Herzfeld [1997] 2014). We are here reminded of the unique work of Erving Goffman, who in his The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) in fact presented a rhetorical analysis of social interaction driven by individuals’ persuasive self-presentation. See also his last work (1983). The relevance of the hugely influential work of Jürgen Habermas should also be explored here. Cf. Rehg 2013.

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20. Foreshadowed in Straus [1947] 1952, who said that expressions like ‘standing’ or ‘to be upright’ have a double connotation: one physical, the other psychological or moral. He said that to be upright means to rise, to stand on one’s own feet, as well as not to stoop to anything and to stand by one’s convictions [1947] 1952: 530. 21. One example is Huntington 2013.

References Aeschylus. (c. 456 BCE) 1999. The Eumenides, in The Oresteia, trans. T. Hughes. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Agha, Asif. 2015. ‘Tropes of Slang’, Signs and Society 3(2): 306–30. ———. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle. (c. 330 BC) 2004. The Art of Rhetoric, trans. and intro. Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London: Penguin Books. Bailey, Frederick G. 1983. The Tactical Uses of Passion: An Essay on Power, Reason and Reality. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bate, Bernard. 2014. ‘Oratory, Rhetoric, Politics’, in N.J. Enfield, Paul Kockelman and Jack Sidnell (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 537–58. Bender, John E., and David E. Wellbery. 1990. ‘Rhetoricality: On the Modernist Return of Rhetoric’, in John E. Bender and David E. Wellbery (eds), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 3–39. Bloch, Maurice. 2012. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2013) 2017. In and Out of Each Other’s Bodies: Theory of Mind, Evolution, Truth and the Nature of the Social. London: Routledge. Bollig, Ben. 2014. ‘Travestis, Michês and Chiasmus: Crossing and Cross-Dressing in the Work of Néstor Perlongher’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 161–83. Brummett, Barry. 1990. ‘A Eulogy for Epistemic Rhetoric’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 9: 69–72. ———. 2014. Rhetoric in Popular Culture, 4th edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bubandt, Nils, and Rane Willerslev. 2015. ‘The Dark Side of Empathy: Mimesis, Deception, and the Magic of Alterity’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 57(1): 5–34. Burke, Kenneth L. 1950. A Rhetoric of Motives. New York: Prentice Hall. Byrne, Richard W., and Andrew Whitten. 1988. Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes and Humans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus (eds). 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Croasmun, Earl, and Richard A. Cherwitz. 1982. ‘Beyond Rhetorical Relativism’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 68(1): 1–16. D’Andrade, Roy G. 1995. The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, Diane. 2008. ‘Identification: Freud and Burke on Whom You Are’, Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38(2): 123–47.

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Dombek, Kristin, and Scott Herndon. 2004. Critical Passages: Teaching the Transition to College Composition. New York: Teachers College Press. Donald, Merlin. 2012. ‘The Mimetic Origins of Language’, in M. Tallerman and K.R. Gibson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 180–83. Duranti, Alessandro. 1994. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoan Village. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2007. Etnopragmatica: La Forza nel Parlare. Rome: Carocci Editore. ———. 2015. The Anthropology of Intentions: Language in a World of Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Enos, Thomas, and Stuart C. Brown (eds). 1993. Defining the New Rhetorics. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Farrell, Thomas B. 1993. Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Flower, Linda. 1993. ‘Cognitive Rhetoric: Inquiry into the Art of Inquiry’, in Thomas Enos and Stuart C. Brown (eds), Defining the New Rhetorics. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 171–90. Gal, Susan, and Judith K. Irvine. 2019. Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Girard, René, with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha. 2007. Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture. London: Continuum International Publishing. Girke, Felix, and Christian Meyer. 2011 ‘Introduction’, in Christian Meyer and Felix Girke (eds), The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–32. Goffman, Erving L. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books. ———. 1983. ‘The Interaction Order’, American Sociological Review 48: 1–17. Grainger, Karen. 2011. ‘“First Order” and “Second Order” Politeness: Institutional and Intercultural Contexts’, in Linguistic Politeness Research Group (ed.), Discursive Approaches to Politeness. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 167–88. Hariman, Robert. 1992. ‘Decorum, Power and the Courtly Style’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 48: 149–72. Haviland, John B. 2010. ‘Mu xa xtak’av: “He Doesn’t Answer”’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20(1): 195–213. Herzfeld, Michael. (1997) 2014. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge. Huizinga, Johan. (1938) 1949. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. London: Routledge. Huntington, Heidi E. 2013. ‘Subversive Memes: Internet Memes as a Form of Visual Rhetoric’, in Association of Internet Researchers (ed.), Selected Papers of Internet Research 14.0. Denver, CO. Hutchins, Edwin. 2006. ‘The Distributed Cognition Perspective on Human Interaction’, in N. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds), Roots of Human Sociality. New York: Berg, pp. 375–98. Hutto, David. 2002. ‘Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric in the Old and New Kingdoms’, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 20(3): 213–33. Irvine, Judith T. 2011. ‘Leaky Registers and Eight-Hundred-Pound Gorillas’, Anthropological Quarterly 84(1): 15–39. ———. 2019. ‘Regimenting Ideologies’, Language and Communication 66: 67–71.

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Izumi, Mariko. 2017. ‘Rhetoric as Epistemic’, in Mike Allen (ed.), Sage Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 1488–91. Jay, Timothy. 2000. Why We Curse: A Neuro-Psycho-Social Theory of Speech. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Keane, Webb. 2015. ‘Why Cognitive Anthropology Needs to Understand Social Interaction and Its Mediation’, Social Anthropology 23(2): 192–93. Kennedy, George. 1998. Comparative Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press. Knape, Joachim. 2012. Modern Rhetoric in Culture, Arts, and Media. Berlin: De Gruyter. Kull, Kulevi. 2001. ‘A Note on Biorhetorics’, Sign System Studies 29(2): 693–704. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. Le Totémisme Aujourd’hui. Paris: Plon. Lewis, E. Douglas. 2014. ‘Parallelism and Chiasmus in Ritual Oration and Ostension in Tana Wai Brama, Eastern Indonesia’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 187–218. Maranda, Pierre. 1972. ‘Structuralism in Cultural Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 1: 329–48. ———. 2011. ‘Echo Chambers and Rhetoric: Sketch of a Model of Resonance Theory’, in Christian Meyer and Felix Girke (eds), The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 84–100. Mercier, Hugo, and Dan Sperber. 2017. The Enigma of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Meyer, Christian, Felix Girke, and Michał Mokrzan. 2016. ‘Rhetoric Culture Theory’, Oxford Bibliographies. doi: 10-1093/OBO/9780199766567=0157. Mitchell, Nathaniel, and Michael Haugh. 2015. ‘Agency, Accountability and Evaluations of Impoliteness’, Journal of Politeness Research 11(2): 207–38. Mokrzan, Michał. 2014. ‘The Rhetorical Turn in Anthropology’, Český Lid 101(1): 1–18. ———. (trans. Marta Songin-Mokrzan). 2015. ‘Studies in Rhetoric and Culture: A New Berghahn Book Series’. Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 61: 257–74. Neufeld Redekop, Vern, and Thomas Ryba (eds). 2013. René Girard and Creative Mimesis. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Pain, Stephen. 2002. ‘Biorhetorics: An Introduction to Applied Rhetoric’, Sign Systems Studies 30(2): 755–72. Paul, Anthony. 2014. ‘From Stasis to Ékstasis: Four Types of Chiasmus’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 19–44. Paul, Anthony, and Boris Wiseman. 2014, ‘Introduction: Chiasmus in the Drama of Life’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–16. Pelkey, Jamin. 2016a. ‘Symbiotic Modeling: Linguistic Anthropology and the Promise of Chiasmus’, Reviews in Anthropology 45(1): 22–50. ———. 2016b. ‘Analogy Reframed: Markedness, Body Asymmetry and the Semiotic Animal’, The American Journal of Semiotics 32(3): 79–126. ———. 2017. The Semiotics of X: Chiasmus, Cognition and Extreme Body Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Redmond, Anthony. 2005. ‘Strange Relatives: Mutualities and Dependencies between Aborigines and Pastoralists in the Northern Kimberley’, Oceania 75(3): 234–46.

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Rehg, William. 2013. ‘Rhetoric, Cogency, and the Radically Social Character of Persuasion: Habermas’s Argumentation Theory Revisited’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 46(4): 465–92. Ricoeur, Paul. (1975) 2012. The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language, 3rd edn. London: Routledge. Robling, Franz-Hubert. 2004. ‘Was ist rhetorische Anthropologie? Versuch einer disziplinären Definition’, Jahrbuch Rhetorik 23: 1–10. Rutten, Kris, and Ronald Soetaert. 2012. ‘Revisiting the Rhetorical Curriculum’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 44(6): 727–43. Sapir, David J., and Christopher J. Crocker (eds). 1977. The Social Use of Metaphor: Essays in the Anthropology of Rhetoric. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Scott, Robert L. 1967. ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic’, Central States Speech Journal 18: 9–17. ———. 1976. ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic: Ten Years Later’, Central States Speech Journal 27: 258–66. ———. 1990. ‘Epistemic Rhetoric and Criticism: Where Barry Brummett Goes Wrong’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 76(3): 300–303. ———. 1993. ‘Rhetoric Is Epistemic: What Difference Does That Make?’ in Theresa Enos and Stuart C. Brown (eds), Defining the New Rhetorics. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 120–36. Simons, Herbert W. (ed.). 1990. The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Simonson, Peter. 2014. ‘Review Essay: Rhetoric, Culture, Things’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 100(1): 105–25. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1990. ‘Rhetoric and Relevance’, in J. Bender and D.E. Wellbery (eds), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 140–55. ———. (1986) 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Straus, Erwin W. (1947) 1952. ‘The Upright Posture’, The Psychiatric Quarterly 26: 529–561. Streck, Bernhard. 2011. ‘The Spellbinding Aura of Culture: Tracing Its Anthropological Discovery’, in Christian Meyer and Felix Girke (eds), The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 119–36. Strecker, Ivo. 2014. ‘Chiasmus and Metaphor’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 69–88. Strecker, Ivo, and Stephen Tyler (eds). 2009a. Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 2009b. ‘Introduction’, in I. Strecker and S. Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–18. Tedlock, Dennis, and Bruce Mannheim (eds). 1995. The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Tyler, Stephen. 1978. The Said and the Unsaid: Mind, Meaning, and Culture. New York: Academic Press. Tyler, Stephen, and Ivo Strecker. 2009. ‘The Rhetoric Culture Project’, in I. Strecker and S. Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 21–30. Vandenberg, Kathleen. 2006. ‘René Girard and the Rhetoric of Consumption’, Contagion. Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 12–13: 259–72. Weimer, Walter B. 1977. ‘Science as a Rhetoric Construction: Toward a Non-justificational Conception of Rhetoric’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 10(1): 1–19.

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White, Hayden. 1973. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1989. ‘The Rhetoric of Interpretation’, in Paul Hernadi (ed.), The Rhetoric of Interpretation and the Interpretation of Rhetoric. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–22. White, James Boyd. 1984. When Words Lose Their Meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1985. ‘Law as Rhetoric, Rhetoric as Law: The Arts of Cultural and Communal Life’, University of Chicago Law Review 52(3): 684–702. ———. 1987. ‘Rhetoric and Law: The Arts of Cultural and Communal Life’, in John S. Nelson, Allan Megill and Deirdre N. McCloskey (eds), The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 298–318. Whitehouse, Harvey, and James Laidlaw (eds). 2007. Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Whitten, Andrew, and Richard W. Byrne (eds). 2009. Machiavellian Intelligence II: Extensions and Evaluations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiseman, Boris 2009. ‘Chiastic Thought and Culture: A Reading of Claude Lévi-Strauss’, in Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 85–103. Wiseman, Boris, and Anthony Paul (eds). 2014. Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books. Zhao, Shanyang. 1991. ‘Rhetoric as Praxis: An Alternative to the Epistemic Approach’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 24(3): 255–66. Zlatev, Jordan. 2008. ‘The Co-evolution of Intersubjectivity and Bodily Mimesis’, in J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha and E. Itkonen (eds), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 215–44. ———. 2017. ‘The Role of Bodily Mimesis for the Evolution of Human Culture and Language’, in David Dunér and Göran Sonesson (eds), Human Lifeworlds: The Cognitive Semiotics of Cultural Evolution. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, pp. 63–82.

CHAPTER 1

Embodied Chiasmus From Alienation to Participation Jamin Pelkey       

Introduction Habitual upright posture is a hallmark of human evolution, but the roles it has played in the development of human cognition, linguistic modelling and social construction receive little attention. This chapter builds on earlier work in the Rhetoric Culture Project (see esp. Wiseman and Paul 2014) to draw attention to neglected modes of chiasmus (X) patterning that inform fundamental aspects of embodied social cognition – aspects that are themselves potentially derived from upright posture. Others have drawn attention to chiasmus at work in socially symbolic processes and relations such as ethnographic understanding (Strecker 2011) and ritual textuality (Tomlinson 2014; Lewis 2014). Still others have explored Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasm as a mode of embodied rhetoric operating as the very condition of relation, whether social or otherwise (Thomas-Fogiel 2014), or as a phenomenon intrinsic to social tensions between alienation and communication (Pelkey 2017). This chapter furthers these developments by highlighting the neglected relevance of a specific mode of embodied movement in upright posture. The movement, or whole-body gesture, in question is an extreme instance of upright posture known colloquially as ‘spread-eagle’. In what follows, surprising experiential reversals intrinsic to the spread-eagle pose serve to illustrate further ways in

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which chiasmus could prove to be just as vitally and conceptually embodied as metaphor – and just as relevant for understanding the embodied origins of social relations. The outcomes of this exploration have potential for expanding the scope of, and developing theory within, both Cognitive Linguistics and Rhetoric Culture. My argument in this chapter relies on a sampling of evidence drawn from a much larger project devoted to exploring relationships that bodily (a)symmetries seem to share with chiasmus patterning in multiple modalities, ranging from cultural, linguistic and conceptual chiasmus to uses of X-marks and lattice designs in a variety of material domains across cultures.1 In short, then, the chapter provides a brief overview of cross-cultural evidence spanning multiple modalities, with a focus on spread-eagle brand marks, to argue that the patterned functional semantics of chiasmus typology (Paul 2014) and the patterned relations of X-derivative networks (Pelkey 2017) are not only congruent with the patterned typology of spread-eagle phenomenology but also share a gradient experiential cline with embodied movement ranging from socially alienated action to socially participatory interaction. Expanding on a recent argument by Shaun Gallagher (2014), the chapter briefly examines the problem of solipsism in embodied phenomenology with reference to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945 [2002]) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1943 [1956]), both of whom utilize linguistic chiasmi of differing types to frame their arguments. Although Sartre moves beyond Merleau-Ponty’s implicit solipsism, his own account ends in social conflict and alienation. The chapter illustrates ways in which these experiences are congruent with contemporary cultural uses of solitary X-marks and X-iterations, proposing that such instances are helpfully understood with reference to extreme body memory. When iterated X-figures are placed side by side, ‘rhombus’ forms emerge between them as their necessary ground, or opposite. This third space, the space of the inbetween, corresponds with a mode of visual/phenomenological experience represented in a third type of linguistic chiasmus identified with a sense of wonder or self-forgetfulness. Finally, Anthony Paul’s (2014) fourth type of chiasmus patterning is shown to be congruent with ‘participatory sensemaking’ (De Jaegher and di Paolo 2007). Chiasmus in this phase involves a merger between the co-created third space and opposing interlocutors, obsolescing in the process earlier problems of isolation, alienation, domination and submission. I conclude that these aspects of embodied cognition open up fertile territory for further exploration of linguistic and cultural ontology and for better understanding problems of reflexive consciousness in both interand intra-personal modalities.

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Chiasmus Typology in Review Far more than a decorative rhetorical device, chiasmus is recognized within the Rhetoric Culture movement as a ‘pattern of thought’ (Wiseman 2009: 87) and a ‘deep structure of life experience’ (Paul 2014: 42). It is noted to be useful for the discovery and creation of meaningful relationships (Strecker and Tyler 2009: 9), and it is also noted to be useful as a ‘dialectical tool’ (Paul and Wiseman 2014: 3). It is further described as both ‘diagram and force, system and movement’ – a ‘powerful instrument for opposing dogmatism and timehonoured nonsense’ (ibid.: 5), with ‘potential to shatter expectations and conventions (and establish new ones)’ (Strecker 2014: 87), enabling us ‘to embrace oppositions and transcend contradictions’ (Paul 2014: 41). Notably, then, in spite of the movement’s evocative re-evaluation of chiasmus, practitioners still fully acknowledge that the figure frequently functions in ways that are by contrast relatively meaningless: trite, dogmatic, self-serving, alienating and even anxiety-inducing (see, e.g., Paul 2009; Hariman 2014). Thus, the functional semantics of chiasmus are widely diverse. At one extreme we find the glib motivational tokens of the life coach: ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going!’ At the other extreme we find rhetorical marvels like Jason Zinoman’s (2012) description of Stephen Colbert during the latter’s peak years with Comedy Central: ‘Mr. Colbert is a serious performer playing a silly character, while the media and political world are deeply silly but pretending to be serious’. Such intertwining reassessments of formerly stable ideals leave us dizzy with reflection in a world suddenly turned upside down. In between these extremes, others claim that chiasmus patterning is characterized by little more than ‘despair and hopelessness’ (Bronzwaer 1991, qtd in Paul 2014: 32). Faced with such a wide palette of uses, a functional typology of chiasmus patterning – or rather the need for defining such a typology – naturally emerges as a research priority. Anthony Paul (2014) is the first to treat the topic systematically, but Boris Wiseman identifies an earlier implicit awareness of functionally distinct chiastic tensions at work in the thought of Claude Lévi-Strauss. The functional distinction Wiseman (2009) reconstructs hinges on Lévi-Strauss’s own personal development from despair to understanding – moving from disillusionment with a simplistic vision of ethnography at the end of his Tristes Tropiques (1955) to a more mature appreciation of complex cultural dynamics in his later works that were also structurally chiastic. In the former case, he identifies the seemingly endless chiastic cycle of self-becoming-other and other-becoming-self. In his later work, he identifies the ‘reconciliatory function’ of chiasmus (Wiseman 2009: 93) – chiastic patterning serving ‘as a means of bridging seemingly insurmountable differences, of integrating heterogeneous elements’ (2009: 93).

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Although Lévi-Strauss was a structuralist whose life work appears to have been guided by a functional distinction in chiasmus typology, he never attempted an explicit codification of chiasmus typology either functionally or structurally. Even so, structural typologies of linguistic chiasmus have been discussed elsewhere for at least three decades (see, e.g., Welch [1981] 1999; Nänny 1988; Norrman 1998; Douglas 2007), with scholars from a wide range of backgrounds noting the pattern to be in use cross-linguistically throughout several millennia in structural patterns ranging from the phonemic, syllabic and orthographic to the lexical and syntactic, from the production of utterances, lines, stanzas, long passages and chapters to entire books and collections. Formal patterns are often more easily identified than their functional counterparts since the former can be contextually isolated. The latter, by contrast, is contextually bound – both historically and culturally. Identifying a basic functional-semantic typology for chiasmus, then, requires careful discernment. To be ‘discerning’ in Old English was to be scéadwís (cognate with ‘shed’ + ‘wise’) – that is, capable of knowing where and when to make a division between two otherwise closely related phenomena. Anthony Paul (2009) begins his own typological exploration by making a basic division between trivial chiasmi and paralysing chiasmi. The division is not arbitrary; it is motivated by the observation of markedly different uses of chiasmus patterning, and the respective relationships they share with thematic structure, in two of Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet and Macbeth. In the former, Paul observes that empty, fatuous functions of chiasmus – typified in Polonius’s statement ‘’tis true, ’tis true, ’tis pity, / And pity ’tis ’tis true’ (Act 2, Scene 2) – are congruent with the functionally trivial relationships between members of the Danish court. The dynamics of the Danish court, in turn, are congruent with ‘the play’s metaphor for the world, … a place of hollow forms, doubleness, insincere smiling appearances’ (Paul 2009: 107). In Macbeth, by contrast, chiasmus functions in congruence with a distinct modality: ‘a trap – mental, moral and existential’ (2009: 110) – typified in the chiastic words of the twisted sisters stirring their infamous cauldron: ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’. This too serves as a microcosm of the play and its central character. Macbeth finds himself trapped into self-destructive habits conditioned by contradictory social codes or ‘double binds’ (as explored in Bateson [1969] 1972; Bateson et al. 1956). Paul further defines these two modes of chiasmus, along with two additional types, in a later essay entitled ‘From Stasis to Ékstasis: Four Types of Chiasmus’ (2014). In this treatment, he refers to his earlier types, the trivial and the paralysing, as ‘Cross’ chiasmus and ‘Mirror’ chiasmus respectively. The remaining two categories he labels ‘Circle’ chiasmus and ‘Spiral’ chiasmus. It is worth noting that these latter two types correspond with the implicit func-

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tional movement in the career of Lévi-Strauss discussed above. Also notable is the fact that these four modes or types of chiasmus are organized according to a series of concrete metaphors rooted in geometry and movement. They are also related along a cline ranging from least developed to most developed – or from least useful to most useful – for purposes of modelling meaningful relations. Regarding Type 1 ‘cross’ chiasmus, Paul adds that tokens in this category ‘may respond to our desire to see a proper and healthy order of things affirmed or restored, or may help us comprehend available alternatives … or at any rate give us the idea that we have a better grip on [them] since [they are presented] in such a neatly packaged formulation’ (2014: 26). As a result, this mode of chiasmus is not only ‘tritely ornamental’, to quote a similar observation by Toadvine (2012: 336), but also enmeshed in the assertion, acceptance and entrenchment of ideologies as a priori claims that seem merely obvious or unproblematic. When Benjamin Franklin assures us, for instance, in Poor Richard’s Almanack (1733) that ‘A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough’, it hardly seems to matter that the statement makes little sense; the flourish of performance from an honoured statesman is enough – the satisfying semblance of symmetry in the mouth of a wise man prompts us (or manipulates us) to nod in agreement. Here one is simply not free to disagree. Regarding Type 2 ‘mirror’ chiasmus, Paul elaborates that chiasmi in this class present ‘irreconcilable oppositions, bringing about … a sense of life as fate or an insoluble riddle’ (2014: 28). Just as Type 1 chiasmi are logically akin to tautology and stylistically akin to pleonasm, Type 2 chiasmi are logically akin to catch-22 paradoxes and psycho-socially akin to double binds: mental torture – traps on tap. Pace Paul (2014: 32), such dynamics are not uniquely modern. Similar instances can be identified long before the present and far beyond the Western world. In the words of Laozi ([c. 500 BCE] 2016: 58), for instance: zhī zhě bù yán, / yán zhě bù zhī, ‘those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know’ (translation my own). Here the sage lays a chiastic trap by alienating speaking from knowing and knowers from speakers; but he necessarily steps into the trap himself in the process, dragging the reader along with him. Our confidence in the statement is simultaneously absolute and undermined: both-and, either-or, neither-nor. The couplet could even be described as an ancient Chinese version of the ‘liar’s paradox’, and it achieves its effect chiastically not only at the level of thought but also at the level of syntax. Regarding Type 3 ‘circle’ chiasmus, Paul associates this type with melancholy, troubled passages and labyrinthine movements. At the text level, such dynamics are typified in loop narratives such as those found in the works

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of Joyce and Proust – stories that begin where they end and end where they begin. At the syntactic level, Paul cites Petrarch (Canzoniere, number 74) in translation as an exemplar: ‘I am already weary of thinking how / my thoughts of you do not weary me’ (2014: 34). Paul notes that the function of chiasmus in this poem (and perhaps the prototypical function of this type of chiasmus elsewhere) is to ‘present us with the human mind brought up against the mysteries of existence, almost giving way to existential terror but at last surrendering to the insoluble, and letting thought drown in the immensity of the mystery of the universe’ (2014: 36). Whether this is melancholic wandering as Paul suggests or a state of wonder mixed with awe (or potentially some combination of the two) is a question I leave for the penultimate section of this chapter. Regarding Type 4 ‘spiral’ chiasmus, Paul defines the function of this type relative to its alternates in that it is uniquely capable of facilitating the transcendence of oppositions – waking us up to a ‘third possibility’ (2014: 40). Chiasmus in this phase ‘alerts us to the exchanges and interchanging of categories we might have supposed to be far from related’ (Paul 2014: 38). Zinoman’s (2012) observation at the beginning of this section on Stephen Colbert’s former character provides a syntax-level example: ‘a serious performer playing a silly character’ contrasted with those who are ‘deeply silly but pretending to be serious’. Observations of interdependence and symbiosis fit here as well, as do expressions of the unity of oppositions in general. Take Gershon and Manning’s (2014: 562) observation, for instance, on the dynamic interrelationship between text and context, which they also frame using explicitly chiastic syntax: ‘when texts enter into new contexts, they both are transformed and transform the contexts’. The growth of understanding is a feature of this chiastic type, and it is with this in mind that Paul suggests the spiral, as a figure of progressive movement (vs. the circle, which is a figure of open stasis). Whether or not the spiral metaphor is the most apt descriptor for this fourth mode of chiasmus is, once again, a matter I will save for discussion in the penultimate section of this chapter. First a more general question is in order: the question of grounding. Paul’s chiasmus typology has an explanatory power and internal systematicity that is unrivalled by previous attempts to classify chiasmus either semantically or pragmatically. His typology also features a gradient continuity between types, and he manages both to account for earlier efforts and to integrate these efforts into his own model. For these reasons, as I have argued elsewhere, Paul’s proposed typology is ‘likely to serve as a touchstone for further development across the decades to come’ (Pelkey 2016a: 32). The proposal is, nonetheless, preliminary, as he himself explicitly asserts (Paul 2014: 23). With this in mind, in attempting to build on his efforts, I have proposed (Pelkey 2016a, 2017) that questions of grounding should be entertained, not only in

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order to test Paul’s model, but also in order to refine it and, ultimately, to better understand the functional distinctions and relations themselves. What explains the emergence of these types and their interrelationships? Are they potentially embodied? If so, what typology of embodied modelling could possibly be homologous with these four chiastic types? In what follows, I identify a prime candidate grounded in socially embodied cognition – the phenomenology, psychology, logic and pragmatics of bodily movement and interaction in an upright frame.

From Phenomenology to Pragmatics The most neglected, and arguably most salient, affordance of upright posture for the human person is the reorganization of the anatomical planes relative to quadruped mobility. This shift normalizes an orthogonal relationship with the earth and dramatically accelerates limb specialization across the waistline. Because of these dynamics, the transverse plane becomes a conspicuous vector of contrast (see Van Lier 2003, 2010). As I argue elsewhere (Pelkey 2017), this fundamental reorganization of experience enables enactive modelling via three intertwining strands of experience: (1) the phenomenology of movement with its resulting body memories (Sheets-Johnstone 2011; Fuchs 2012); (2) the conceptual identification of inverse structural relations shared between our extremities (Ellen 1977; Pelkey 2016b); and (3) the mimetic schemas these come to entail (Zlatev 2007, 2017). This chapter is primarily focused on the first of these three strands – the phenomenology and memory of arm-leg movement across the transverse anatomical plane. It is unlikely that there was a single motivating factor underlying the development of habitual upright posture as an inherited ontogenetic trait. The suite of adaptive benefits that made the shift worthwhile likely includes body temperature regulation (Wheeler 1991), adaptations in socio-sexual behaviour (Lovejoy 1981), food transport enhancements (Hewes 1961) and improved feeding due to height advantages (Hunt 1996). Of all factors that may be considered, though, a phenomenon known as ‘agonistic exhibitionism’ is arguably the most salient for understanding the evolution of embodied chiasmus. This is a term coined by Roger W. Wescott (1967) to describe ‘the habit of twolegged threat-display under circumstances in which such display had to be both frequent and impressive’ (1967: 738). This is an aposematic theory of the evolution of upright posture. I propose that this theory is more plausible, both functionally and phylogenetically, if we add to the threat display the regular extension of arms raised high above the head. This posture is actually a powerful communication device found in the aposematic repertoire of numerous

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species, from bears to horses to red pandas to numerous primate species both human and non-human. The imposing increase in size that results from suddenly rearing the torso towards a right-angle relationship with the earth and raising forepaws high above the head is understood interspecifically as a threat to be avoided. What sets human beings and their immediate ancestors apart in this regard is our ability to retain the pose for an extended period, even while walking around. In the company of group members who were also capable of doing so simultaneously, it is conceivable that the sight of assuming this imposing posture in unison might clear the area of predators far and wide. It is also conceivable that this might free up the group for other pursuits, allowing for hand/arm specialization, resulting in the creation of new tools, weapons and increasingly complex modelling capacities. Spread-eagle threat displays themselves could have initiated the development of some of our species’ most fundamental semiotic resources, including reflexive pragmatics, reversible reasoning and the emergence of polysemic awareness. To illustrate, consider two pre-human ancestors facing off with a lion or other predator. The hominids assume a sudden spread-eagle stance. The phenomenology of the posture naturally blends with feelings of terror and torrents of adrenaline: flight or fight? But then the lion retreats! Terror reverses into a sense of relief, or release. Adrenaline fuels exhilaration. A sense of triumph naturally emerges. The reversal in feeling strongly associated with the posture also entails an implicit functional reversal: prey becomes predator; predator becomes prey. The situation is extreme, and it hinges on the extension of extremities, thus laying further bodily groundwork for congruent mapping. The inverse relationships formed between extremities above and below the waist also accord with the reversals in affect that accompany the aposematic display and its effects. The remembered feeling of power naturally associated with the posture (Carney, Cuddy and Yap 2015) would naturally have been applied intraspecifically as well to communicate warnings or displays of dominance. Given our species’ singular awareness of the distinction between signs and objects (Deely 2010), early human beings were then perhaps the first to exploit the inherent polysemy of spread-eagle posture even when threat displays served no immediate survival advantage – to communicate a sudden feeling of fear or joy, for instance – to celebrate a successful attempt or even to express a feeling of awe. In this way, a highly salient posture naturally selected for survival value could have evolved into one of the first meaningful, polysemous gestures. Whatever the case may be, this account is plausible, and its explanatory power extends to many other modalities of human expression, including early rock art. Depictions of humanoid forms in archaic rock art are known as ‘anthromorph petroglyphs’, and of all motifs that may be identified, spread-eagle

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Figure 1.1. Spread-eagle figures in traditional contexts: (a) Australia: archaic aboriginal rock art; (b) California: Coso Range archaic petroglyph of shamanic rebirth (published in Grant, Baird and Pringle 1968); (c) Alaska: Inuit shaman mask (c. 1860–1880); (d) France: Renaissance-era interpretation of the Vitruvian man by Geoffroy Tory (1529) (composition by Jamin Pelkey).

anthromorphs form a class of petroglyphs that is among the most common in cave art and cliff art around the world. It may come as a surprise, then, to know that this phenomenon has received little attention. Two spread-eagle anthromorph petroglyphs are provided for illustration in Figure 1.1a–b. In both cases, the figures represent extreme scenarios. The first (Figure 1.1a) represents an aboriginal cave painting located near the town of Laura in Queensland, Australia. The figure dates to the upper Palaeolithic. It is one instance of an extensive series of similar designs in the region known locally as ‘Quinkan’: mythological creatures that blend human attributes with non-human animals – in this case an emu, as evidenced by the three claws at the end of each arm. Half a world away in the Mojave Desert of Southern California, the Coso Range is another site of abundant spread-eagle petroglyphs (as depicted in Grant, Baird and Pringle 1968 and elsewhere). The Coso petroglyph represented in Figure 1.1b depicts a shamanic trance state, potentially as a phase of a traditional vision quest. The image depicts a liminal state, suspended between life and death. Hidden, internal things are exposed to view. Figure 1.1c echoes these extreme reversals in a three-dimensional modality – a carved Inuit shaman mask curated in the late nineteenth century from the lower waters of the Kuskokwim River in southwestern Alaska. The figure represents a fearsome tunghak spirit – a semi-human keeper of animals whose immense power is kept in check due to lacking thumbs. Once again, a liminal suspension between extremes is present in the ritual use of this object, since it belongs to a genre of artifacts known as ‘transformation masks’: shaman as deity; deity as shaman – neither party either alive or dead – entrails and organs exposed to view. Finally, Figure 1.1d represents an additional layer of modelling derivative of spread-eagle posture in yet another modality: print media. The image

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also represents the embodied origins of geometrical and mathematical reasoning (see also Van Lier 2003; Lakoff and Núñez 2001). Although the text from which this illustration is drawn is a study in typography, the image is one among many medieval attempts to represent the ‘Vitruvian man’, based on a famous prose description by Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, in his 25 BCE work, De Architectura. Vitruvius’s account describes a spread-eagle figure and the relationships such a figure shares with proportionate measurements in architecture. As such, the account is the first analytic statement of embodied modelling based on the inverse relationships of arms and legs in spread-eagle formation. Each of these four instances illustrates some of the many ways in which the spread-eagle posture may have evolved from an aposematic survival strategy into a range of pragmatic and rhetorical modelling affordances that share phenomenological continuity. These affordances would have led to the generation of blends, reversals, paradoxes and other robust modelling capacities that could have resulted in mappings that range from the mythological to the psycho-social to the transformational to the mathematical (Figures 1.1a–d, respectively). If so, such phenomena would continue to be tacitly grounded in body memories of spread-eagle posture. Evidence presented in the next three sections suggests that this is just as true in the twenty-first century as it has been for untold millennia.

Spread-Eagle, Triumph and Torture The brand marks presented in Figures 1.2–1.6 are lightly processed exemplars drawn from an original database of contemporary brand marks and affiliated metadata, dedicated to curating X-mark designs and representations of human figures in spread-eagle formation (the ‘X-pose’). All layers of the database are currently in preliminary phases of development, but the X-pose layer of the database includes (at the time of writing) 240 exemplars. This database layer is described and defined in Pelkey (2017) along with operational criteria governing the inclusion of new cases. Sixteen of the twenty exemplars in Figures 1.2–1.6 are drawn from the X-pose database layer. As Figure 1.2 illustrates, one recurring theme in the database is a conspicuous syncretism between spread-eagle posture and the X-mark (Figures 1.2a–c). Another recurring theme is the use of this posture to represent extreme levels of competition. This can include extreme mixed-martial arts competitions (Figure 1.2a), extreme cheerleading competitions (Figure 1.2c), extreme competitiveness in communications technology (Figure 1.2b) and the most extremely competitive level of gymnastic achievement (Figure 1.2d).

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Figure 1.2. Spread-eagle logos and extreme competition: (a) Xtreme Combat Productions logo (Corpus Christi, Texas); (b) TopX logo (2010–2013) (Groningen, Netherlands); (c) Cheer Extreme Allstars logo (Kernersville, North Carolina); (d) USA Gymnastics logo (United States) (composition by Jamin Pelkey).

Note the congruent pragmatics and phenomenological continuity each of these instances shares with the aposematic origins of the posture in question. In each case agonistic exhibitionism is on display – not only as a threat to dissuade predators (or rivals) but also as a rhetorical performance or spectacle to attract onlookers. In each case the extreme nature of the events and personalities represented are inseparable from the body memories of extremities in extremis, that is, extended at extreme angles relative to each other and relative to both the sagital and transverse midlines of the human body image. Note also the high stakes implicit in each event. Extreme competition determines that one party must win and another party (or, ultimately, all other parties) must lose, but if triumph ensues, the posture doubles as a celebratory stance or an index of joy and relief. This phase of polysemic continuity is illustrated in Figure 1.3 in the form of a celebrating graduate (Figure 1.3a) and a joyful professional (Figure 1.3b). In the former case, an organization named ‘Avid’ promises to enable more underprivileged students to reach this level of celebration. In the latter case, ‘The Happiness Coach for You’ promises to enable more discouraged professionals to reach this level of personal fulfilment or inner joy. In neither case is competitiveness in focus; rather, the fruits of triumph are highlighted. Even so, there remains a fine line between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. This is illustrated in the semiosphere of Figure 1.3c: the ‘Burning Man’ logo, which has become the central figure of a namesake festival, held annually in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Festival attendees, who are known as ‘burners’, congregate from late August to early September to celebrate and recreate around a towering spread-eagle effigy until the final night of the gathering when the festivities culminate in the fiery conflagration of this giant figure, who is known simply as ‘the man’. The supposedly anticorporate motivations of the festival

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Figure 1.3. Spread-eagle logos from celebration to agony: (a) Avid College Readiness System logo: San Diego, California (United States); (b) The Happiness Coach for You logo (United States); (c) Burning Man logo: Nevada (United States); (d) Crohn’s and Colitis Canada logo (Canada) (composition by Jamin Pelkey).

are well known. This instance of spread-eagle posture, then, represents a ritual celebration of the symbolic defeat of oppression. In other words, the tables are turned: victor becomes victim. Triumph reverses into defeat, and thrill reverses into agony. As defined by McLuhan and Nevitt, ‘Every process pushed far enough tends to reverse or flip suddenly. This is the chiasmus pattern’ (1972: 5–6). In other words, not only are such experiential reversals typical of chiastic form, but chiastic form inheres within the lived and remembered experience of our extremities in relation. As I argue in more detail elsewhere (Pelkey 2017: 39–62), the primary differences between spread-eagle victory and spread-eagle defeat are temporal and agentive. In other words, if someone is forced against their will to maintain the spread-eagle pose for a long period of time, a posture that might otherwise be an expression of celebration becomes emblematic of defeated suffering. Triumph reverses into torture. Indeed, one of the most common torture postures across time, space and cultures is the forced spread-eagle pose, which is usually realized by lashing the four limbs at extreme angles either to a rough wooden frame, to stakes in the ground, to chains on a wall, to a network of ropes, to the posts of a bed or to the beams of a tension rack. Such modes of ritual torture have apparently been around since time immemorial, as is evidenced in various classical myths of suffering gods from Procrustes to Prometheus. These dynamics are still immediately accessible today, as is further illustrated in Figure 1.3d. The intestinal pile in this logo represents the excruciating abdominal pain of Crohn’s disease and colitis. Those who must live with this pain on a daily basis are, in a real sense, subjected to torture against their will. It is all the more fitting, then, that the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada selected a spread-eagle figure to represent this level of suffering.

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Figure 1.4. Spread-eagle logos on the margins: (a) Premier Life Chiropractic: St. Paul, Minnesota (United States); (b) Greek Bailout Referendum vote OXI ‘no’ logo (Greece); (c) XO Laptop logo: One Laptop Per Child foundation: Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States); (d) Relief Tents: Cornelia, Georgia (United States) (composition by Jamin Pelkey).

Spread-Eagle, Wonder and Imagination Except in rare cases, such as Figure 1.4d, the depiction of human suffering might seem like an improbable branding strategy. But in the case of spreadeagle logos, it is often impossible to make a clean distinction between the representation of celebration and the representation of suffering. These dynamics are illustrated in the four exemplars listed in Figure 1.4. Figure 1.4a is one of seventy logos in the current database that represent different chiropractic clinics. In other words, one-third of the logos collected so far fall into this category, making chiropractics the single most common profession in the current X-pose database. Normative mimesis is sure to be part of the story here, but it cannot account for the phenomenon entirely. After all, the chiropractor promises a swift reversal, or erasure, of unbearable pain using procedures that are paradoxically painful themselves. The use of an extreme logo to represent the extreme treatment of extreme pain resulting in extreme relief is simply fitting. Figure 1.4a, then, represents both torture and release, agony and relief, with a circular background pattern that further supports this paradoxical polysemy by localizing the tension in the image at a point of rupture between the upper and lower limbs. The remaining three exemplars in this set represent similar dynamics, though the suffering is rather more socio-economically contingent in Figures 1.4b–c and rather more related to natural disaster or political upheaval in Figure 1.4d. In all three cases, populations who are marginalized, targeted and/ or underprivileged are in focus. In all three cases, the product or outcome on offer promises a sudden reversal to (or a dramatic improvement of) these

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Figure 1.5. Spread-eagle logos from wonder to imagination: (a) World Anthropology Day logo: American Anthropology Association (United States); (b) The Great American Backrub logo (Canada); (c) The Play Exchange logo (Canada); (d) The New Yorker dance column logo (United States) (composition by Jamin Pelkey).

conditions as a design element in the rhetorical appeal of the group whose own interests are being represented. Much like the traditional folk depictions in Figure 1.1, then – each of which represent a state of being that is in some sense liminal or radically blended – the Figure 1.4 exemplars are each on the margins between suffering and salvation. And once again, these meanings are rooted far more deeply in the phenomenology and body memory of kinesthesia than they are in the cultural discourses whose purposes they serve. The depiction of the in-between, the awareness of polysemy and the realization of blended forms are part-and-parcel with feelings of bemusement, experiences of wonder and acts of imagination. Utilizing the inherent polysemy of spread-eagle posture, then, to depict liminal statuses or in-betweenness makes for a powerful message rooted in primary modes of kinesthesia. The strategy manages simultaneously to affirm both the present sense of despair and the ultimate promise of fulfilment, better enabling the target audience to imagine a process of transformation that might move beyond the current impasse. The interplay of other design elements in each of the Figure 1.4 exemplars is also notable. In each case, a circular element contributes to the design; and in Figures 1.4b–c this relationship is formalized at the level of orthography. The exemplars in Figure 1.5 take this interaction to the next level by fusing with, or integrating, similar design elements. Consider each in turn. The World Anthropology Day logo (Figure 1.5a) can be considered a stylized representation of the Vitruvian man, but given the semiosphere in which it functions it is not intended to represent architecture and the embodied origins of geometry and mathematics. Rather, the logo represents a day marked off for celebration of the study of human beings and their sociocultural milieu across

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time and space – the situated person, at home in the world, or, to quote the oft-cited mantra of anthropology, a person trained to find the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange: a chiastic quest best celebrated with a chiastic image. The spread-eagle figure featured in the Great American Backrub logo (Figure 1.5b) playfully incorporates a spiral pattern to replace the torso, potentially signifying the movement of a masseuse’s hands and/or a resulting feeling of wellbeing from the same. The Play Exchange logo (Figure 1.5c), by contrast, is formed against the ground of four overlapping talk bubbles representing new perspectives coming in from all corners to achieve a common goal: the enhancement of health and wellbeing. The initiative in question is sponsored by the government of Canada to encourage the innovation and development of programmes enabling active, healthy lifestyles. After receiving proposals for funding, the winning submission is decided by the Canadian public and awarded an investment of one million dollars to put the plan in motion. Thus, the spread-eagle figure mediates diverse perspectives while simultaneously representing a robust figure of fitness. The final logo in this series (Figure 1.5d) represents the New Yorker’s Dance section, where readers can find reports and reviews of recent dance-related events in the city along with announcements for upcoming events. Here, the two spread-eagle dancers become one; and yet, nevertheless, the one remains two. The two are in such sync that they may seem to be thinking with the same mind. It is notable that in each of these four spread-eagle exemplars, the perspectives and skills of another – or others – are relied upon or participated in to such a degree that they become part of the self. And yet the self is also in a position of participation with the other, or in the process of being absorbed into the abilities and/or perspectives of the other, without being assimilated to (or annihilated by) the other. In all cases, then, the additional design element in question might be referred to as representative of the ‘other’ or a merger with the new space created in dialogue with others, while still affirming individual autonomy – a point that will become clearer in the next section.

From Alienation to Participation From traditional folk art to contemporary brand marks, the dynamics of X-posed figures resist definition as a singular type; instead, they are best construed as a range of interrelated types, all of which are grounded in basic modes of kinesthesia and body memory. The phenomenology of movement (Sheets-Johnstone 2011), and the emergent pragmatics involved in the performance of this posture, are themselves polysemous and prone to sudden rever-

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sals – emotionally, intentionally and circumstantially. But whatever this range of spread-eagle types may be, it is clear that the performance of spread-eagle is integrally related with self–other relationships. The relationship between self and other, subject and object, is one of the most distinctively problematic riddles of modernity (and ‘post-’modernity). Generations of moderns and ‘postmoderns’ since Descartes have grappled analytically and imaginatively with solipsism (the problem of the isolated self, cut off from other minds) and cultural/linguistic determinism (the isolated sociolinguistic group cut off from other worldviews). Such problems may seem merely philosophical, but solipsism and cultural-linguistic determinism are problematic for key reasons that are practical, social and psychological as well. Both serve to induce and entrench alienation between individuals, between groups of individuals, between human beings and other species, and between human beings and planetary environments. Unless self–other divides can be reconciled, the fragmentation precipitated by these levels of alienation poses a dual threat: both to immediate quality of life and to long-term survival. The subject–object divide is taken up in the work of Maurice MerleauPonty (e.g. 1945 [2002], c. 1960 [1968]) as one of the prime motivations for developing a theory and praxis of radically embodied phenomenology – a philosophy of the flesh. He seeks to show through his work that the human person acts and thinks via a ‘lived body’. This lived body cannot be misconstrued as a mere living corpse located in space (the animate ‘object’ fallacy) or merely as the haunted shell of a conscious, incorporeal spirit (the lived-in ‘subject’ fallacy). Rather, the lived body is an experience that is irreducible to either. What matters is the emergent experience, and this experience is profoundly chiastic. In his own words, ‘there is a body of the mind and a mind of the body and a chiasm between them’ (c. 1960 [1968]: 259). As Renaud Barbaras notes, the philosophical universe of Merleau-Ponty is ‘a proliferation of chiasms that integrate themselves according to different levels of generality’ (2004: 307, qtd in Toadvine 2012: 339). In Toadvine’s (2012: 339) assessment, this proliferation includes ‘relationships between mind and body, self and world, self and other, fact and idea, silence and speech, imaginary and real, past and present, Being and beings, philosophy and non-philosophy’. Although chiasmus is a unifying conceptual theme that can be traced across Merleau-Ponty’s career (Muller 2017), he ‘concentrates his attention on a few specific cases of chiasmic structure that are key to the goals of his later philosophy’ (Toadvine 2012: 339). He had long recognized the body as a ‘nexus of living meanings’ (Merleau-Ponty 1945 [2002]: 175), but in his later thought, he came to characterize bodily chiasmus as a ‘reciprocal insertion and intertwining’ of sensed and sentient (c. 1960 [1968]: 138). In other words, if some sensory feature of the body, such as touch, sight or sound, is capable of sen-

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sation, that feature must be simultaneously capable of being sensed in turn. The seeing eye is also seen. The touching hand is also touched. These shifts in perspective are crucial steps to take in revising our assumptions about subject and object. And yet, Merleau-Ponty’s account is open to criticism for scarcely moving beyond the experiential realm of the individual person. As a result, some scholars have recently suggested that his chiastic phenomenology does not completely escape the problem of solipsism. Toadvine’s complaint is that MerleauPonty’s sensible-sentient chiasmi remain at the level of ‘auto-affection’, that is, self-touching and self-enfolding. What Merleau-Ponty describes as ‘the simultaneous experience of the holding and the held in all orders’ (c. 1960 [1968]: 266) may not actually progress beyond the self-questioning reflexivity of Western thought in general: ‘an interrogation of being about the being of interrogation’ (Toadvine 2012: 344). Extending this critique, Shaun Gallagher (2014) proposes that it is JeanPaul Sartre who picks up where Merleau-Ponty falls short by introducing an ‘intersubjective turn’. Sartre’s (1943 [1956]) distinction between the ‘body-foritself ’ and the ‘body-for others’ identifies a phenomenological and psychological feedback loop of quite another order. One’s lived body is seen by others as an object, and one’s imagination of self from the perspective of the other comes to be deeply influenced by this alternative perspective: ‘not only is my body seen by the other, it is experienced by me as seen by the other’ (Gallagher 2014: 12). It should be noted, however, that Merleau-Ponty was not entirely unaware of such dynamics. He even frames a similar observation using chiastic syntax (I : you :: you : I [italics added]): You capture my image, my appearance; I capture yours. You are not me, since you see me and I do not see myself. What I lack is this me that you see. And what you lack is the you I see. And no matter how far we advance in our mutual understanding, as much as we reflect, so much will we be different. (c. 1960 [1968]: 231–32)

And yet Gallagher’s point remains: the implications of these reciprocal dynamics are not incorporated into Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the flesh in any systematic way. What Gallagher neglects to mention in this context, however, is that Sartre himself is less than optimistic about his so-called ‘intersubjective turn’ and certainly does not think of it as theoretically progressive. Instead, Sartre is distraught at being unable to escape such dynamics, which seem to him to lead to social manipulation, power struggles and master–slave relationships: ‘While I attempt to free myself from the hold of the Other, the Other is trying to free himself from mine; while I seek to enslave the Other,

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Figure 1.6. Multimodal chiasmus from solipsism to sense-making: (a) Ningbo Victory Fitness Equipment logo (China); (b) House of Bolton skin-flaying torture ensign in HBO’s Game of Thrones (United Kingdom); (c) Dos Equis beer logo: Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, Monterrey (Mexico); (d) Doing Family Right logo: Abbotsford, British Columbia (Canada) (composition by Jamin Pelkey).

the Other seeks to enslave me’ (Sartre 1943 [1956]: 364). Here, once again, the relationships in question are fittingly framed chiastically: Self : Other :: Other : Self ::: Self : Other :: Other : Self. On Sartre’s account, the self is locked in the critical gaze of others just as the self locks others in its own critical gaze. And there is no escape from these constant reciprocal observations, judgements and categorizations, since, according to Sartre, it will not do to seek isolation from others (much less annihilation of the other). After all, if the other ceases to exist, their affirmation of my own existence also ceases since the other’s affirmation of the self ’s existence is something the self cannot generate in isolation. In short, then, Sartre’s intersubjective solution to solipsism results in its own problems that call for solutions of their own. I propose that the dilemmas in question are not only chiastic but also that these chiastic dilemmas are each related via a vitally embodied level of human phenomenology – more vitally embodied than the chiastic relations Merleau-Ponty identifies between sensed and sentient can approximate. In order to do so, the modelling process in question requires an upgrade from the phenomenology of perception to the phenomenology of movement (Sheets-Johnstone 2011). Drawing on evidence presented above, I propose that the dilemmas of solipsism, self-other and master-slave – plus their solutions – can be modelled in the social phenomenology of spread-eagle posture. With reference to the meanings of X-posed brandmarks considered in the previous sections, I present four additional designs in Figure 1.6. Let Figure 1.6a represent the bright side of solipsism: the triumph of individualism and the celebration of personal uniqueness. Let Figure 1.6b rep-

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resent the tortured individual, trapped in oscillating subject-object paradoxes, enslaved to ideology, unable to sustain the impossible absurdities of solipsism or the impossible double binds of social (and linguistic) determinism. Let Figure 1.6c represent the dynamic potential of two mutually defining individuals in interaction. If the foreground is in focus, the two are locked in master–slave manoeuvring, as despair intensifies, potentially becoming a way of life. If the background is in focus, despair dissolves in wonder, and self-forgetfulness ensues as self and other become lost in some more all-encompassing meaning or pursuit. Let Figure 1.6d represent meaningful participatory interaction, an approach to life and social relations in which individuals (or groups) are engaged in open, cooperative and collaborative pursuits with other individuals (or groups). These pursuits both transcend and develop the identities of participants in ways that are further illustrated in the discussion of Figure 1.5 above.2 As I argue in the next section, not only are these meanings implicit in the designs collected in Figure 1.6, they are also congruent with the four main types of chiasmus originally proposed by Anthony Paul (2014).

Chiasmus Typology Embodied Returning to Paul’s (2014) typology introduced near the beginning of this chapter, let me suggest in light of the intervening evidence that mapping his four types of chiasmus onto corresponding X-pose patterns not only provides embodied grounding for the former but also functions to mutually elucidate both. While it is clear from an evolutionary developmental perspective that embodied modelling comes first, it is also clear that our awareness of bodily modelling relies on rhetorical and semiotic analysis for anything approaching conceptual clarity. Thus, our understanding of the functional dimensions of chiasmus typology and the phenomenological pragmatics of X-mark patterning develop interdependently in an advanced chiastic blend or lattice network. The diagrammatic relationships that hold between the bodily schematic set and the rhetorical cultural set also suggest grounds for reconsidering the metaphorical terms used to designate each type. Can a network of more integrated relations be suggested by embodied modelling that could function to transpose ‘Cross’, ‘Mirror’, ‘Circle’ and ‘Spiral’ into a series of relationships that are more vitally derivative of each other? This question is ultimately a call for diagrammatic reasoning. Diagrammatic reasoning, according to Charles S. Peirce, involves modelling processes of thought, feeling and imagination – often via external media – to coalesce shared iconic relationships in such a way that they are systematically grounded in ordinary experience. According to Peirce, diagrams are not

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Table 1.1 An embodied reframing of chiasmus typology. Paul (2014)

General Mood

Embodied Gestalt

Phenomenology of Movement

General Mode

Revised Typology

‘Cross’

Satisfaction

X

spread-eagle gesture

Tautology

‘X’

‘Mirror’

Despair

⧖

spread-eagle torture

Double bind

‘Hourglass’

‘Circle’

Wonder

◊

space between other

Insight

‘Rhombus’

‘Spiral’

Growth

◊ ⧖

blend with third space

Inquiry

‘Lattice’

necessarily visual, but an adequate diagrammatic heuristic ‘should be carried out upon a perfectly consistent system of representation, one founded upon a simple and easily intelligible basic idea’ (Peirce 1903: CP 4.418), and this basic idea should consist of elements ‘which anybody who reasons at all must have an inward acquaintance with’ (Peirce c. 1906 [1976], NEM 4: 316). With these criteria clearly in mind, let me suggest that the four designations Paul recommends for his (2014) typology of chiasmus could be fruitfully transposed from ‘Cross’, ‘Mirror’, ‘Circle’ and ‘Spiral’ types to ‘X’ (X), ‘Hourglass’ (⧖), ‘Rhom⧖) types, respectively. This proposal is summarized bus’ (◊) and ‘Lattice’ (◊ in Table 1.1 (adapted from Pelkey 2017: 215) with reference to evidence presented above. This table is in fact a diagram of diagrams, all levels of which are interrelated at various removes and all of which involve common experiential relations that build on each other incrementally. This is not to say, however, that all columns are equal. The most vitally grounded layers of bodily experience are placed at the centre of the table: that is, the phenomenology of movement and the gestalts representations they form as embodied mimetic schemas or body memories (Fuchs 2012; Zlatev 2017). The descriptive columns ‘mood’ and ‘mode’ are intended to summarize the previous discussion of these distinctions related to circumstantial affect (mood) and psycho-social effect (mode). The two lists of proposed typology titles are placed on the periphery. While it is still possible to use Paul’s terms to refer to their respective embodied gestalts, I propose that the revised typology describes these patterns more adequately.

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The hourglass distinction is introduced partly in order to distinguish between the voluntary, ephemeral gesture marked by glib self-satisfaction on one hand and, on the other, the posture sustained by force and marked by tortured despair. Another motivation for the choice is the fitting logical, psychological and phenomenological nature of hourglass designs (see Tyler 2014; Pelkey 2017: 85–138). Further derivative (or embedded) chiasmus types may also be suggested by this diagrammatic account, but further research and analysis are required to operationalize further distinctions. Multiple X-figures placed side by side, for instance, may be approached either as figure or as ground, as mentioned in the previous section; then, if the ground is in focus, a rhombus pattern emerges, but if the figures remain in focus their general mood or mode is likely to be realized as an intensified version of the prior level (in this case despair and double binds). Similar gradient, processual dynamics are noted in Paul’s discussion as well, albeit without reference to bodily dynamics that ground them.

Conclusion The significance of habitual upright posture for the development of human cognition, linguistic modelling and social construction ranges far beyond the basic-level bid in this chapter to ground chiasmus typology in bodily dynamics. Nevertheless, the yet-untold layers of significance that upright posture holds for a fuller understanding of the evolution and significance of the human person may well prove to be rooted in the same transverse dynamics that give rise to chiastic modelling. In other words, there are reasons to suspect that embodied chiastic dynamics will prove to be far more constitutive of basic human modelling processes than has previously been considered. If so, as Strecker (2014: 69–70) has noted, we might expect chiasmus studies to hold as much promise for the development of twenty-first-century understanding as metaphor studies did for revolutionizing human understanding in the twentieth century. Conceptual, cognitive and embodied chiasmus research are still in their preliminary stages and must always remain open to correction, but the analysis and synthesis presented in this chapter raise the bar to a new level. The evidence presented here, and in the larger project it is drawn from, suggest that upright posture – especially in its most extreme manifestation – shows far more promise for modelling basic cognitive and social processes than MerleauPonty’s more perceptually oriented chiasmi of the flesh. The latter are content to stop at blending sensed with sentient and are ultimately still prone to the stubborn problems of solipsism and alienation. Grounding the study of embodied chiasmus in the phenomenology of movement, instead, can shift the focus to basic modelling activities organized

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around the transverse anatomical plane (the waistline) and the inverse relationships of arms and legs in motion. What may well have started as a threat display for survival, featuring arms and legs extended at extreme angles relative to each other and relative to the bodily midlines, now serves as a polysemous pragmatic device for the communication of complex messages in multiple modalities. What is more, X-posed figures in relation point the way beyond the problem of solipsism inherent in the tortured, solitary X for whom ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’. In collaborative sense-making, the traps of social construction and the despair they engender dissolve, perhaps at first into a state of amusement and wonder over some new possibility in a space created through dialogue with another. Preferably, then, as a more powerful antidote to a solipsistic relapse, the state of wonder spurs the individual into collaborative action, best typified in the lattice phase of the embodied model proposed in this chapter – a vital network of participatory sense-making in which the meaningful growth of some idea or behaviour is vitally interrelated with (and openly corrected by) those of others who find themselves similarly moved. Jamin Pelkey is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Ryerson University, Toronto. He holds a PhD in linguistics from La Trobe University, Melbourne (2009). His areas of specialization include linguistic anthropology, embodied cognition, Tibeto-Burman linguistics, historical linguistics and semiotics. His first two monographs were Dialectology as Dialectic (De Gruyter, 2011) and A Phula Comparative Lexicon (SIL, 2011). His current research focuses on language evolution and embodied cognition (see The Semiotics of X, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). He has (co-)edited ten collections, including Applied Brand Semiotics (TAJS, 2018), Sociohistorical Linguistics in Southeast Asia (Brill, 2017),  Virtual Identities (PDC, 2016) and The Semiotics of Paradox (Legas, 2015). His recent research is published in various collections and international journals. Dr Pelkey is Vice President of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, Executive Member of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, past Editor of the Semiotic Society of America Yearbook series Semiotics, and Managing Associate Editor of The American Journal of Semiotics. Notes This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: SSHRC-IDG #430-2015-01226 ‘Steps to a Grammar of Embodied Symmetry’. 1. For further in-depth argumentation and illustration, see Pelkey (2013a, 2013b, 2016a, 2016b, 2017). 2. As an anonymous peer reviewer of this chapter does well to note, I should also acknowledge the opposite of this scenario, which is just as likely to result when pushed

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to the extreme: that is, the disavowal of the incorporated other, as in Marcel Mauss’s 1920 dictum that all cultures borrow but define themselves by denying it.

References Barbaras, Renaud. 2004. The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, ed. and trans. Ted Toadvine and L. Lawlor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bateson, Gregory. (1969) 1972. ‘Double Bind, 1969’, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. San Francisco: Chandler, pp. 271–78. Bateson, Gregory, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland. 1956. ‘Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia’, Behavioral Science 1(4): 251–64. Bronzwaer, Wim. 1991. ‘Het Chiasme in James Joyce, Ulysses’, De Revisor 18(5): 68–76. Carney, Dana R., Amy J.C. Cuddy, and Andy J. Yap. 2015. ‘Review and Summary of Research on the Embodied Effects of Expansive (vs. Contractive) Nonverbal Displays’, Psychological Science 26(5): 657–63. De Jaegher, Hanne, and Ezequiel di Paolo. 2007. ‘Participatory Sense-Making: An Enactive Approach to Social Cognition’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6(4): 485–507. Deely, John. 2010. Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of Human Being Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press. Douglas, Mary. 2007. Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ellen, Roy F. 1977. ‘Anatomical Classification and the Semiotics of the Body’, in John Blacking (ed.), The Anthropology of the Body. New York: Academic Press, pp. 343–73. Franklin, Benjamin. 1733. Poor Richard’s Almanack, vol. 2. Philadelphia: New PrintingOffice. Fuchs, Thomas. 2012. ‘The Phenomenology of Body Memory’, in Sabine C. Koch et al. (eds), Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 9–22. Gallagher, Shaun. 2014. ‘Phenomenology and Embodied Cognition’, in Lawrence Shapiro (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition. London: Routledge, pp. 9–18. Gershon, Ilana, and Paul Manning. 2014. ‘Language and Media’, in N.J. Enfield, Paul Kockelman, and Jack Sidnell (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 559–76. Grant, Campbell, Jim Baird, and Ken Pringle. 1968. Rock Drawings of the Coso Range. Ridgecrest, CA: Maturango Museum. Hariman, Robert. 2014. ‘What Is a Chiasmus? Or, Why the Abyss Stares Back’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 45–68. Hewes, Gordon W. 1961. ‘Food Transport and the Origin of Hominid Bipedalism’, American Anthropologist 63(4): 687–710. Hunt, Kevin D. 1996. ‘The Postural Feeding Hypothesis: An Ecological Model for the Evolution of Bipedalism’, South African Journal of Science 92: 77–90. Lakoff, George, and Rafael Núñez. 2001. Where Mathematics Come From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books. Laozi. (c. 500 BCE) 2016. 道德經 Daode Jing, trans. Robert Eno. Retrieved 12 August 2019 from http://www.fang.ece.ufl.edu/daodejing.pdf.

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Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1955. Tristes Tropiques. Paris: Plon. Lewis, E. Douglas. 2014. ‘Parallelism and Chiasmus in Ritual Oration and Ostension in Tana Wai Brama, Eastern Indonesia’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 187–218. Lovejoy, C. Owen. 1981. ‘The Origins of Man’, Science 211: 341–50. McLuhan, Marshall, and Barrington Nevitt. 1972. Take Today: The Executive as Dropout. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1945) 2002. Phenomenology of Perception (Phénoménologie de la Perception). Trans. Donald A. Landes. New York: Routledge. ———. (c.1960) 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Muller, Robin M. 2017. ‘The Logic of the Chiasm in Merleau-Ponty’s Early Philosophy’, Ergo 4(7): 181–227. Nänny, Max. 1988. ‘Chiasmus in Literature: Ornament or Function?’ Word and Image 4(1): 51–9. Norrman, Ralf. 1998. Wholeness Restored: Love of Symmetry as a Shaping Force in the Writings of Henry James, Kurt Vonnegut, Samuel Butler and Raymond Chandler. Frankfurt/ Main: Peter Lang. Paul, Anthony. 2009. ‘When Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair: Lessons from Macbeth’, in Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 104–14. ———. 2014. ‘From Stasis to Ékstasis: Four Types of Chiasmus’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 19–44. Paul, Anthony, and Boris Wiseman. 2014. ‘Introduction: Chiasmus in the Drama of Life’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–16. Peirce, Charles S. 1866–1913. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. I–VI, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Cited as CP] ———. 1931–1935, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. VII–VIII ed. Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Cited as CP] ———. (c. 1906) 1976. The New Elements of Mathematics, vol. 4, ed. C. Eisele. 4 vols. The Hague: Mouton Publishers. [Cited as NEM] Pelkey, Jamin. 2013a. ‘Cognitive Chiasmus: Embodied Phenomenology in Dylan Thomas’, Journal of Literary Semantics 42(1): 79–114. ———. 2013b. ‘Chiastic Antisymmetry in Language Evolution’, The American Journal of Semiotics 29(1): 39–68. ———. 2016a. ‘Symbiotic Modelling: Linguistic Anthropology and the Promise of Chiasmus’, Reviews in Anthropology 45(1): 22–50. ———. 2016b. ‘Analogy Reframed: Markedness, Body Asymmetry and the Semiotic Animal’, The American Journal of Semiotics 32(3): 79–126. ———. 2017. The Semiotics of X: Chiasmus, Cognition and Extreme Body Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1943) 1956. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (L’Être et le néant : Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique), trans. Hazel Barnes. London: Routledge. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 2011. The Primacy of Movement, 2nd edn. Advances in Consciousness Research 82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Strecker, Ivo. 2011. Ethnographic Chiasmus: Essays on Culture, Conflict, and Rhetoric. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. ———. 2014. ‘Chiasmus and Metaphor’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 69–88. Strecker, Ivo, and Stephen Tyler. 2009. ‘Introduction’, in Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–18. Thomas-Fogiel, Isabelle. 2014. ‘Chiasm in Merleau-Ponty: Metaphor or Concept?’ in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 91–115. Toadvine, Ted. 2012. ‘The Chiasm’, in Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgard (eds), The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology. London: Routledge, pp. 336–47. Tomlinson, Matt. 2014. Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tory, Geoffroy. 1529. Champ Fleury. Paris: Geoffroy Tory e Gilles de Gourmont. Tyler, Stephen. 2014. ‘Chiasmi Figuring Difference’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 116–23. Van Lier, Henri. 2003. ‘Around Homo in 80 Theses: A Fundamental Anthropogeny’, ed. Micheline Lo, trans. Pierre Lottefier, in Anthropogénie: Un Darwinisme des Sciences Humaines – Homo est le Primate Anguleux. Brussels: anthropogenie.com/anthropogeny/ around.htm (accessed 12 August 2019). ———. 2010. Anthropogénie. Brussels: Les Impressions Nouvelles. Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus. (25 BCE) 1826. De Architectura: The Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Gwilt. London: Priestly & Weale. Welch, John W. (ed.). (1981) 1999. Chiasmus in Antiquity. Provo, UT: Research Press. Wescott, Roger W. 1967. ‘Hominid Uprightness and Primate Display’, American Anthropologist 69(6): 738. Wheeler, Peter E. 1991. ‘The Thermoregulatory Advantages of Hominid Bipedalism in Open Equatorial Environments: The Contribution of Increased Convective Heat Loss and Cutaneous Evaporative Cooling’, Journal of Human Evolution 21: 107–15. Wiseman, Boris. 2009. ‘Chiastic Thought and Culture: A Reading of Claude Lévi-Strauss’, in Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 85–103. ———. 2014. ‘Chiasmus, Mythical Creation, and H.C. Andersen’s “The Shadow”’, in Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul (eds), Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 219–38. Wiseman, Boris, and Anthony Paul (eds). 2014. Chiasmus and Culture. New York: Berghahn Books. Zinoman, Jason. 2012. ‘Beneath a Deeply Silly Campaign, a Deeply Serious Performer’, New York Times, 13 January. Zlatev, Jordan. 2007. ‘Intersubjectivity, Mimetic Schemas and the Emergence of Language’, Intellectica 2(46): 123–51. ———. 2017. ‘The Role of Bodily Mimesis for the Evolution of Human Culture and Language’, in David Dunér and Göran Sonesson (eds), Human Lifeworlds: The Cognitive Semiotics of Cultural Evolution. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, pp. 63–82.

Part II

Bonding

CHAPTER 2

Kinship Mother and Child of Rhetoric Jean Lydall       

The Birth of Rhetoric Although no human relationship is purely determined by physiology, the bonding between mother and child is inherent to us as a species. The maternal bond develops during pregnancy, and when a woman gives birth, the contractions, other physiological changes and the outright exhaustion that she and her baby experience all have the effect of intensifying the emergent bond between them. Once the child is born, breastfeeding strengthens the relationship between mother and infant. As every mother knows, her baby’s cry stimulates her milk to flow, and the baby’s sucking promotes the very production of milk. Skin touch, body warmth, smell, eye contact, tone and rhythm of voice all contribute to enhancing the bond. The infant drinks its fill and, continuing to gently suck, falls into a blissful sleep. The mother may do the same, bound in sensual and emotional harmony with her infant. Mothers often find it difficult to find words to describe this experience. Clearly, however, the mother loves her baby and in most cases is ready and willing to make any sacrifice to protect and nurture her child, while the baby attaches itself to the mother unquestioningly, trusting that she will satisfy all its needs. This subjective portrayal derives from my own knowledge and awareness of giving birth to and breastfeeding three children, and from what friends of

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mine, both in Europe and in Ethiopia, have told me about their experiences. However, there is also a growing literature on ‘natural birthing’ and ‘attachment parenting’, which draws on neurobiological research to reaffirm the intuitive understanding that the mother–child bond is a naturally engendered and enhanced phenomenon. Neurobiological research shows, for example, that this is related to the release of high levels of oxytocin during pregnancy, birthing and breastfeeding. In an article entitled ‘Bonding Matters: The Chemistry of Attachment’, Linda F. Palmer explains: Oxytocin is a chemical messenger released in the brain chiefly in response to social contact, but its release is especially pronounced with skin-to-skin contact. In addition to providing health benefits, this hormone-like substance promotes bonding patterns and creates desire for further contact with the individuals inciting its release … When the process is uninterrupted, oxytocin is one of nature’s chief tools for creating a mother. Roused by the high levels of estrogen (‘female hormone’) during pregnancy, the number of oxytocin receptors in the expecting mother’s brain multiplies dramatically near the end of her pregnancy. This makes the new mother highly responsive to the presence of oxytocin. These receptors increase in the part of her brain that promotes maternal behaviors. (Palmer 2013)

On his website ‘Ask Dr Sears’, paediatrician William Sears writes: A mother is biologically programmed to give a nurturing response to her newborn’s cries and not to restrain herself. Fascinating biological changes take place in a mother’s body in response to her infant’s cry. Upon hearing her baby cry, the blood flow to a mother’s breasts increases, accompanied by a biological urge to ‘pick up and nurse’. The act of breastfeeding itself causes a surge in prolactin, a hormone that we feel forms the biological basis of the term ‘mother’s intuition’. Oxytocin, the hormone that causes a mother’s milk to let down, brings feelings of relaxation and pleasure; a pleasant release from the tension built up by the baby’s cry. These feelings help you love your baby. (Sears 2016)

A mother, however, is not the only woman who can breastfeed her child. In Hamar, for instance, I frequently witnessed how a grandmother, aunt or mother’s co-wife would take turns with the mother in breastfeeding. Typically, a woman’s mother-in-law will claim her firstborn child to bring up. This way she will have help in activities such as chasing birds from her field and keeping an eye on her goat kids and calves. At the same time, the child’s mother will be relieved of childcare and can concentrate on cultivating her field, grinding grain, fetching firewood and water, and cooking food for the extended family. By breastfeeding her daughter-in-law’s child, a woman is able to establish a close bond with her grandchild from infancy onwards.

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Although bonding is enhanced enormously through breastfeeding, it may be promoted in other ways as well. Take, for example, bottle-feeding, which allows other carers besides the birth mother to achieve attachment. Nowadays in the West, it is more common for fathers to take an active role in caring for their new-born children, thereby becoming strongly attached to their infants. In Hamar, by contrast, fathers are deliberately discouraged from bonding too closely with their children. Men are told they should not hold their children and tend to their needs, for otherwise they might become too fond of them, and when they leave to go to the distant grazing areas or to war they would always be thinking of and worrying about their children instead of attending to the difficult and dangerous tasks at hand. Perhaps for this reason, a Hamar man is not supposed to hold his new-born child for one whole month after it is born. Only when the baby is ritually taken out of the house, where it has stayed since birth and has bonded closely with the mother, may the father take the child in his arms and inspect it (this can be seen in the film Duka’s Dilemma [Lydall and Strecker 2001]). An infant quickly learns to use its cry to get attention for other needs than mother’s milk, for example when it is cold, soiled or sick. The cry, driven by a need, is an appeal for care, and the mother responds accordingly, persuaded by the primary bond that the cry invokes. Consciously or unconsciously, the child discovers that transferring its cry, utterance or gesture from one domain to another, for example from hunger to pain, has the effect of persuading its mother, or other carer, to think and act according to its needs. This is the first lesson in rhetoric, by which I mean the art of persuasion, that every child experiences, even those who are not breastfed, but are otherwise attached to a mother or other carer. After a couple of months, an infant begins to smile and soon discovers how to use smiles and scowls, coos and screams, to gain what he or she needs or wants. When the child starts to utter recognizable sounds, one of the first will be a term of address for the mother or mother substitute. Like the cry and smile, the child uses this term rhetorically, in an appeal to the imbedded bond, thus invoking the mother’s love and her desire to fulfil the child’s needs. The mother, however, is not simply persuaded by her infant’s cries and smiles, but in turn tries to persuade her infant to pay attention to her demands and expectations. She has, after all, years of experience both as patient and agent of rhetoric, and has internalized many cultural mores and values, which, in turn, have been shaped and reshaped by the rhetoric of her forebears. In particular, a mother will try to mould the relationship with her child by strategically refusing and offering the nurture and care that her child depends on. The rhetorical threat of losing mother’s love and care is so powerful that a child usually prefers to conform to the mother’s wishes. The emergent mother–child relationship is mutually binding but basically asymmetric, with the child more

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or less dependent on the mother, and the mother demanding more or less compliance from the child. Each of a woman’s children is bonded with their mother, as the mother is bonded with each child. Hence, siblings have a shared interest in the nurture and care that their mother is committed to provide them. How relations between siblings develop depends on the interests and corresponding rhetoric of relevant parties, including not only the mother and each child, but also other relatives such as the father and grandmother. In Hamar, for example, parents give preferential treatment to an older brother or older sister, to whom a younger sibling learns to give way, but at the same time the older brother or older sister is encouraged to be caring and generous towards their younger siblings. A mother in Hamar reinforces her bond with her sons, bringing them up to be devoted to her. Furthermore, by controlling their acquisition of wives, children and livestock, she obliges her sons to stay and look after her interests. Meanwhile, she prepares her daughters for a future when they will leave her to go away in marriage and found their own primary mother–child units in their husbands’ homes. The differential relations that a woman cultivates with her daughters and sons are rhetorically forecast in the way people refer to a new-born child. Birinda demonstrates this in the film The Women Who Smile (Lydall and Head 1990): ‘So-and-so’s wife, what does she hold?’ ‘A guest.’ ‘Eh! Let her be a guest.’ ‘Eh! So-and-so’s wife, what does she hold?’ ‘A person.’ ‘Eh! Let him be a person’.1 A woman who is bonded to her children and dedicated to nurturing and caring for them will prosper more if she and her children have kinsmen and kinswomen who are similarly committed to her and her children’s welfare. Building upon pair bonding and paternal bonding, marriage is a way of tying a man to a woman and her children-to-be. Rules of incest that prohibit marriage within a mother–child unit and between certain kinsmen allow relationships to be traced between elementary mother–child units. Only thus can a woman claim others as in-laws, nephews and nieces, and provide her children with aunts, uncles and cousins. Marriage rules and prohibitions vary enormously from place to place and time to time, being rhetorically emergent inventions. Lévi-Strauss has argued that incest taboos have the purpose of generating alliances between kin groups through the exchange of women (Lévi-Strauss 1969). However, even where such alliance can be inferred, I would argue that this is secondary to the primary purpose of marriage, which is the extension of kinship beyond the mother–child unit in order to provide the latter with a network of support. In the Hamar case, kin groups have no obvious corporate or political function, and the explicit purpose of marriage is to generate a wide flung kin-

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dred (aeda). To this end, a Hamar girl is married to someone who is not related to her (no cousin marriage is allowed), and who preferably lives far away from her parental home. Calling a girl a ‘guest’, therefore, is a rhetorical way of preparing her, her mother, her father, her brothers and sisters to accept her destiny, which is to leave her parental home to join that of her husband, where she will found a new unit of kinship with the children she bears. Calling a girl a ‘guest’ is also a way of persuading her father and brothers to treat her kindly and generously – like a guest. This is particularly important for the cultivation of a strong and binding relationship between a woman and her brothers, whose future commitment to her and her children may be critical for their survival and prosperity. The mutual love and trust, dependency and care that characterize the mother–infant bond provide a paradigm for the rhetorical creation and moulding of kin relations, including the mother–child relationship itself. Because of their commitment and undying feeling of responsibility towards their dependent offspring, women are highly motivated to engage in creating, recreating, maintaining and transforming kinship relations by way of rhetoric. For the same reason, women as mothers and mothers-in-law are particularly interested in arranging and controlling marriage, without which there can be no extended kinship. This is not to say that men are excluded from the process of creating and shaping kinship and marriage. Indeed, it will be men rather than women who manipulate kinship and marriage for wider social and political goals.

Singing Kinship In Hamar, women and girls, as mothers and mothers-to-be, devote a great deal of rhetorical energy to singing songs in which they appeal to feelings of solidarity, and try to muster the support of relatives. They sing these songs in order to create kinship beyond their respective mother–child units, and to bring into consciousness, reinforce and actualize particular or potential kin relations. Let us take a look at these songs in closer detail.

A Mother Sings for Her Child It is 1974 and we are in Dambaiti, the place where my husband, Ivo Strecker, and I came to live while doing ethnographic fieldwork in Hamar. We are sitting in the shade of a small grass-thatched house, and looking out across a wide vista of uninterrupted acacia bush towards the blue-green Hamar mountains that shimmer in the heat of the afternoon sun. We are guests of Gardo, a young

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Hamar woman, who, as ever, is dressed in her hand-cured goatskin skirts that she has decorated attractively with just a few beads. Gardo’s hair, a mass of red buttered ringlets, is done in the style of a married woman. In a makeshift shade area, Gardo is kneeling over her grindstones and grinding sorghum for the evening meal. Next to us, in a pool of shade, a small bundle under a goatskin cape begins to toss and turn, and then lets out a cry. It is Gardo’s baby son, Aike, who has woken up hungry. Gardo leaves off grinding, and coming over, sits down next to her baby, picking him up to breastfeed. After a short while, she lays her baby down again, covers him with the goatskin cape and pats him gently. But Aike is not ready to sleep again; he fidgets and grumbles. Clearly he would much prefer to stay on his mother’s lap and keep on suckling. Gardo, however, ignoring her baby’s pleas, returns to her work, and starts singing in rhythm to her grinding. She sings to her son in sweet, endearing tones, directly and indirectly mentioning many people who are important to her and her son. The song is a laensha, a quieting or calming down song. It is not meant to put Aike to sleep, Gardo explains, but simply to calm his cries by letting him know how many relatives he has to take care of him. Gardo makes up new phrases as she sings, and repeats others she has previously composed. The singing certainly has the effect of quietening Aike, who lies peacefully listening to his mother’s melodious voice and the tranquilizing sound of her steady grinding. Does Gardo sing about Aike’s relatives so that he may get to know who they are? But isn’t he too young to understand? Isn’t it more likely that she sings in order to persuade herself and others that she and her son are not alone, that they have many relatives they can call upon in time of need? By singing about her son’s relatives, Gardo calms herself, dispelling any existential worries she may have by reassuring herself that there are relatives whom she can call upon to help her look after and bring up her son. But to convince herself, she also needs to prevail on the relatives in question, letting them know she is devoted to them, and thereby persuading them to take an interest in her and her son’s wellbeing. Some of those relatives may be in earshot when she sings, while others may hear later on, in a round-about way, how they have been sung about. Singing is a subtle and oblique way of persuading and influencing others, and in this respect it is highly rhetorical. Although seeming to sing for her child, Gardo appeals to others, making them feel well disposed towards her and her child, and act in appropriate ways. A well-sung and well-composed song, with a pleasing melody and rhythm, will be taken notice of, consciously or subconsciously, by those who hear it, especially if they are mentioned or alluded to in the song. To sing, explicitly or implicitly, about someone is a face-anointing act such that the person in question cannot help but feel flattered.

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Before we can understand the verses that Gardo sings, we need to know something about her personal history and current circumstances. Gardo’s mother died in childbirth when Gardo was a young girl. Her older sister died in infancy, and her two younger brothers were twins. Gardo’s father quickly established a relationship with a widow, but this woman did not take good care of Gardo, so her father arranged for her to stay with Wallinda, the wife of the great Hamar spokesman, Berinas, a distant patrilineal kinsman of Gardo’s, and the mother of our great friend, Aike. Wallinda had many sons and no daughters, so she was pleased to have a girl to help her. But Gardo had a hard time with the boys, who teased her dreadfully. After a while, Gardo returned to live with her stepmother, but since this woman neglected her, she eventually became prey to a marriage by theft. Thus, Gardo found herself married to a feeble old man, who failed to take her to his kinsmen in order to collect reproductive livestock to form the basis of their herds, and after fathering their first child, also failed to give her further children. It was not so difficult for Gardo to find lovers to sire her children, but these men were not obliged to her and her children in any binding way. As a consequence, Gardo had to use her wits and a great deal of persuasive rhetoric to create and activate a network of supportive kin. In 1970, Ivo and I moved to Dambaiti, where we attached ourselves to the homestead of our new friend Aike Berinas, whom we called by his adult name Baldambe, and his younger brothers. A couple of years later, Gardo also moved to Dambaiti and built her house next to Baldambe’s homestead. At that time her household consisted of herself, her husband, one daughter and one son. Here she began cultivating relations with Baldambe and his brothers, as well as with us. She would often invite Baldambe, his brothers and Ivo to drink coffee in her flimsy house, and during the day she would ask me and my children to accompany her to her field, where she would cook us delicious food and answer my incessant questions. When Gardo gave birth to her third child, a son, her younger brother, Aike, gave him his name at the gali naming ceremony. The Hamar have a naming tradition that establishes strong bonds between namesakes. When a person gives their name to a child, they say that the child should grow up to be like them. They have a close identity relationship, which is reflected in their use of a reciprocal term of address, mago, and in the sharing of each other’s kin, especially their mothers and fathers. When our daughter was born in 1971, I named her Kaira after one of the first girls who befriended me in Hamar. Baldambe, however, insisted that his daughter, Dambaiti, should also give her name. This meant that our daughter and Baldambe’s daughter became each other’s mago, and their respective parents became the parents of the other. Ideally, the senior namesake takes a keen interest in their mago’s development,

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and helps him or her out whenever possible. The junior namesake should also attend to their mago, for isn’t the health and prosperity of the one reflected in the fate of the other? Let us now look at some of the verses that Gardo sang in her laensha for Aike: Baalo kanno – Baalo’s younger sister Bazin iinder bankinka ki kaalee – at the river he waits with a spear, Lokitchodomoi, Baldambe-ka – Lokitchodomoi, Baldambe with

Commentary: Gardo explained that it is customary to start a child’s laensha by mentioning the child’s father’s sister, who, along with his own older sister and all other senior patrilineal women, is called misha – ‘older sister’. In this case, Baalo is Aike’s father’s ‘older sister’, who is closely bonded to her brother, Aike’s father. This woman is especially interested in her brother’s son’s welfare because he will be important in the future for her own sons. Aike may demand outstanding marriage payments from his misha’s sons, who in turn may bring their brides to Aike in order to collect gifts of reproductive livestock to form the basis of their herds. Although he is male, Gardo addresses her little son in the feminine form; instead of Baalo’s younger brother, she sings Baalo’s younger sister. The feminine form is one of endearment, evoking the child’s dependency and need of support. By calling her son the younger sister of Baalo, Gardo convinces herself and others that he is not alone, but has a relative who will feel and act kindly towards him. The next two lines conjure up Baldambe, who, as we have seen, is the namesake of Aike, once removed. Gardo does this by alluding to a heroic deed, the killing of a deadly enemy down at the River Omo (‘at the river he waits with a spear’), for which Baldambe was honoured with a killer’s name, Lokitchodomoi. Also referring to him by his adult name, Baldambe, Gardo invokes his status as a father/owner of wives, children and livestock. In this way, Gardo uses what Brown and Levinson would call a ‘positive politeness strategy of inclusion, anointment, and appreciation of the other’ (Brown and Levinson 1978: 75). Gardo implicitly identifies Baldambe with her son because they share the same name, Aike, appreciates him by mentioning his heroic deed, and anoints his face by using his killer and adult names. Baldambe, as it happens, is resting in the shade of our house while Gardo is singing, and is, therefore, well in earshot. Could it be that Gardo is trying to win Baldambe’s attention and concern for her son? Is she not singing kinship? Gilo kanno – Gilo’s younger sister Giinan garrima – don’t bow down (and weep)

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Imba Giino nanna, – my father Gino’s sons, Ballanna-ka – the bald heads with

Commentary: Gilo is the son of Gardo’s misha (her FaFaBrZS2). The children of Gardo’s misha are ‘older brothers and sisters’ of her own children, and so Aike is their ‘younger brother’, here called ‘younger sister’. Gardo then sings that Aike should not bow his head and weep, because there are the sons of Gardo’s ‘father’ Gino (the father of Baldambe), the bald-headed ones who, it is implied, will care for him. Here Gardo alludes to Baldambe and his brothers, this time as the sons of Gino, whom she claims as her ‘father’. Thus, Gardo asserts herself as ‘older sister’ of Baldambe and his brothers, and in this role she affectionately refers to their bald heads, a feature they share in common. By employing poetic measures such as alliteration and similar sounding words (Gilo and garrima, giinan and Gino, nanna and ballanna), Gardo makes her verse both appealing and compelling. Hearing her song, how can Baldambe and his brothers resist taking an active interest in Gardo and her son? Hailu nasa, Bata geno, – Hailu’s son, the Ba man’s wife, Bazanda aine? – Baza’s mother, who is she? Ballogeno, Bazanda, – Ballo’s wife, Baza’s mother, baanan garrima! – ‘don’t worry!’ saying

Commentary: In this verse Gardo sings about another ‘older sister’ of hers, Bazanda (mother of Baza), whereby she also invokes Bazanda’s son, Baza, her husband’s father, Hailu and her husband, Ballo. Asking the rhetorical question, ‘who is Bazanda?’, Gardo answers that she is Ballo’s wife, who is telling Aike not to worry, implying that she, her husband and her son are there to look after him. In this verse Gardo skilfully plays with the syllable ‘ba’. Gardo takes pride in her talent as composer of witty and memorable verses. As such, her verses are also more likely to achieve implicit goals such as activating otherwise neglected or dormant kin relations. Oita kanno, – Oita’s younger sister an olen i da oisee! – why do you yell, I’m asking

Commentary: Oita is the son of Baldambe’s father’s older sister, and therefore the son of Gardo’s classificatory ‘older sister’, and the ‘older brother’ of Gardo’s son. Oita is also an important Hamar spokesman. ‘Why do you yell?’ is a rhetorical question for the answer is self-evident: there is nothing to cry about because Oita will look after Aike and provide for him in time of need. Note how Gardo chooses words that echo the ‘o’ and ‘oi’ sounds of Oita’s name. Gardo’s laensha, a recording of which can be heard on Ivo Strecker’s album ‘Musik der Hamar’ (Strecker 1979), was much longer than these few verses,

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but they suffice, I think, to illustrate how she sings kinship into consciousness by including, anointing and appreciating particular relatives, and thereby persuading them to take an interest in her and her son, or at least comforting herself that they might do so. Kinship singing is not restricted to mothers singing calming songs for their infants. It is a feature that pervades Hamar culture, and, curiously enough, is something done almost exclusively by women and girls. Only when they are extremely young will boys join in with the girls in singing friendship songs. Instead, boys and men sing songs for their favourite goat or ox, and glory songs when they successfully kill dangerous wild animals or enemies.

Girls Sing for Their Friends and Relatives When everyone has returned to the homestead, after spending the day working in the fields or herding goats in the bush, a grandmother or older sister will gather the small children to her side and have them sing songs to keep them awake while waiting for the cows to be milked and the evening meal to be served. The songs have simple structures and refrains, and the children sing about each other, their parents, uncles, aunts and anyone else who makes up their social world, calling out their names and kin relationships. On moonlit nights, girls from several homesteads may gather in an open space to sing friendship songs. The older the girls are, the more complicated the verses become, but they all share the same basic format of naming friends and relatives and indicating relationships between them. In 1989 I was in Dambaiti with an all-women film crew to make a film for the BBC about Hamar women (Lydall and Head 1990). One day we were down in Birinda’s field to film an interview with her. Birinda sent her six-yearold daughter, Yayo, off to the watchtower from where she should scare away the birds from the ripening sorghum. After Birinda’s interview, we found Yayo sitting on the watchtower, singing vigorously as she rocked to and fro. Here is her song: Marle ko Dirinda Warro kanno ibel Marle that one (f.) Diri’s mother (namesake), Warro’s younger sister, my dear friend Gado ko Walinda Gari kanno Gado that one (f.) Wali’s mother (namesake), Gari’s younger sister Kanki ko Girmanda Uri kanno ibel Kanki that one (f.) Girma’s mother (namesake), Uri’s younger sister, my dear friend

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Uri ka Bonimba Dolo baisa isa Uri that one (m.) Boni’s father (namesake), Dolo’s in-law, mine Isare Munginda dadonano isa Isare, Mungi’s mother (namesake), mama’s girl (Yayo’s sister), mine Aike ka Baldamba babonasa isa Aike that one (m.) Baldamba (namesake), papa’s boy (Yayo’s brother), mine Biri ka Lalomba Aike kana Biri that one (m.) Lalomba (namesake), Aike’s younger brother (Yayo’s brother)

Yayo identifies each friend and sibling by their childhood name (which they received in their gali naming ritual, see below) and their namesake’s adult name (in the case of a woman, as mother of her eldest son, and in the case of a man, as father of his garo calf, a name he received upon initiation, see below), and then as a brother, sister, in-law, son or daughter of someone else. In other words, she not only names her friends and relatives, but also their relationships to other people, who in turn are identified by their relationships to others. Thus, Yayo summons up a network of friends and relatives, reinforcing her own and her listeners’ awareness of the relationships, and bringing them to life. The song is a kind of love song, for isn’t kinship all about loving and caring for one another?

Sisters Sing for Their Brothers When a youth prepares for his ‘leap across the cattle’ – his initiation into adulthood that allows him to marry and become father/owner of children and livestock – his ‘sisters’ (including classificatory sisters or their daughters) start to compose songs, which they sing every evening and morning inside their respective parent’s cattle enclosure for a number of days leading up to the final day when the leap takes place. The songs are called goala – lyre – which evokes the resounding way in which the songs are rendered, and also the lyre which the girls’ ‘brother’ will strum after he has leapt over the cattle and become a maz (the intermediary ritual status he retains until he gets married), and the accompanying songs he sings about his ‘sisters’, and his longing to marry and assume adult life. The girls charge around the cattle enclosure singing loudly so they can be heard far and wide. Each girl composes her own verses and takes it in turn to sing, the senior-most girl singing first. They sing about their ‘brother’ who is going to leap across the cattle, and they do so in terms of their and other people’s relationships to him. Unlike the laensha, the song is not a calming down song, nor does it evoke the dependency of their brother;

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rather it is a rousing song and evokes the obligations the brother has towards the singer. The verses are far too difficult to translate meaningfully, let alone analyse in this short chapter. But, like in the laensha, the girls use positive politeness strategies of including, anointing and appreciating their brother and others whom they mention. Besides glorifying their brother, they also develop intriguing arguments about how he is indebted to them, and what they expect him to give them. After his initiation, the brother will give, whenever possible, each sister what she has demanded in her goala. The married sisters and cousins, who come to the leap from far away, will arrive singing their goala songs. When a girl gets married and joins her husband’s home, she is separated from her brothers who remain in their parental home. The brothers and cousins, however, are important to her and her children as an extra and alternative source of support. For this reason, both unmarried girls and married women put a great deal of physical and rhetorical energy into singing for their ‘brothers’, that they won’t forget their ‘sisters’ and are persuaded of their obligations towards them.

Women Sing the ‘Birth Path’ An initiate’s classificatory mothers, that is to say his mother’s younger sisters and junior patrilineal kinswomen, also come to his leap singing songs. The ‘mothers’ praise the initiate, invoking many of his relatives thereby, and voice what they demand of him. When they reach his father’s homestead, the ‘mothers’ gather together and clap their hands while singing their song. This is called ‘clapping the birth path’, thereby identifying them with the initiate’s mother. Each woman composes her own verses, extemporizing on the metaphor of birth. Sagonda, for example, when singing for her older sister’s son, sang of the one she had ‘given birth to’ in the field, that he was for the ‘suns’ (many days herding in the sun) and the ‘border region’ (distant grazing areas bordering on enemy territory), and was a ‘Bume’ (neighbours of the Hamar who are famous for herding in the hot sun) of the ‘fleas’ (metonym for goats). In other words, her ‘son’ should herd goats for her in the distant grazing areas. In their songs, the ‘mothers’ also demand compensation from their ‘brotherin-law’ for their ‘giving birth’ to his son, the initiate. The brother-in-law then gives them honey, or a goat, even an ox, or just beer. In this way, good relations are cultivated, to be remembered and sung about on other occasions, and most importantly to be made use of in times of need. The ‘mothers’ develop their relations with the initiate not only for their own sake, but for the sake of their sons and grandsons and their respective wives, who may have reason to turn to their ‘older brother’ for support in the future.

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Girls Sing When a Bride Leaves Home Marriage in Hamar is normally arranged by the parents of the bride and groom. After a marriage has been sealed, a girl may continue to live with her parents for some time until they consider her old enough, and they are satisfied with the gifts they have received. On the eve of her departure, when her parents-inlaw come to take her to their home, the girl will invite her brothers, sisters and neighbourhood friends, with whom she has previously had fun at work parties and dances, to come and stay with her throughout the night, and send her off at dawn. The girls sing and clap, while the boys simply clap, all night long, one girl at a time taking the leading part while the others join in the chorus. The songs, called gaido, are directed at the girl who is leaving, and who is referred to by way of her namesake, parents, brothers, friends and relatives, as in other kinship songs. Members of the family she is about to join are also mentioned. Typically, she is exhorted not to snub her mother-in-law, to make her husband famous, not to cry and weep but think of the children she will bear, and also not to forget she has a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, family and friends. Often the girls poke fun at their friend’s family and the family she is going to join, and sometimes this gets out of hand when their comments are taken as insults, and ill feelings lead to fights, cursing and subsequent misfortune. For this reason, our friend Baldambe forbade the singing of gaido songs when his daughter Duka was taken away.3 In a Channel 4 film about Hamar,4 one fleetingly sees a bride singing at her own farewell party. Dami puts on a great show of resistance to leaving her parental home and sings in anguished protest that she is not ready to give up the friendships and joys of childhood. In this way she rhetorically lets her family and friends, and especially her brothers, know how much she loves them, thereby reinforcing important bonds that will provide her with security in the future.

A Bride’s Laensha When a girl becomes a bride, she is brought into her parents-in-law’s home, where her mother-in-law takes charge of her. All her relatives and friends with whom she has grown up, and for whom she has sung her friendship songs, have now been left behind, and she finds herself alone among strangers. For two or three months she stays in the house, sleeping in the loft. She is not allowed to do any work, except when her mother-in-law tells her to sweep up the goat droppings in the goat enclosure. Duka explained in Two Girls Go Hunting (Lydall and Head 1991): ‘When people come from my father’s home

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to ask about me, and then they return back home, then coming into my heart they stop me from sleeping. I think of them a lot, and when I’m told, “Eat some food!” I say, “Food is not good for me”. Then I sing a laensha, thinking about them. And my mother-in-law gets angry, “Stop it! You are grown up now”. If she keeps on being angry, I will stop’. I asked Duka what the laensha was like, and she said: ‘It’s like weeping! When you weep, you think of them over there: your mother, and your father, and your younger siblings, and thinking of them the tears fall down. Then when you sing a laensha for your mother and a laensha for your younger siblings, it’s as though they have come to you. And then it’s just like your heart goes to sleep a bit. Couldn’t it be like that?’ What Duka tries to describe here is probably what Jean Nienkamp (2001) would call internal rhetorics – by singing about her mother, father and siblings, Duka conjures them up as if they were with her, even though they are far away, and thus she consoles herself. And Duka’s mother-in-law gets angry because she understands the power of such internal rhetorics, and how it works against her own efforts to persuade Duka that she is now her ‘daughter’, and to reconcile her to her new home. I was told, but never witnessed, that a mother will sing a laensha for her departed daughter. I suspect that such a laensha not only comforts the mother, but also keeps the memory of her daughter fresh in the hearts of the remaining brothers and sisters, so that they don’t forget her and will be ready to help her in the future.

Women Sing at a Funeral Women and girls also sing kinship songs at funerals and memorial rites. On 2 July 1972, Ivo wrote in the work journal: ‘Last night Ginonda returned from her mother’s funeral. This morning her voice is rough and heavy when she sticks her head through the door to say nagaia. “It is our habit to cry at a funeral”, she explains to us, “and so my voice got harsh when I walked through the country crying and singing of my sorrow. When I reached my mother’s homestead my voice had become rough and after some days of wailing, I lost it altogether. It came back only yesterday”’ (Lydall and Strecker 1979a: 74). Twenty-three years later, when our dear friend Baldambe died in the Arba Minch hospital, Ivo and I were present, together with his son Awoke. We brought Baldambe’s body back to Hamar to be buried in the mountains next to his wife, father, mothers and brothers. When we reached Dambaiti, there was great consternation and all the women and girls threw themselves first on Awoke and then on me and Ivo, cried and wailed, calling out Baldambe’s names and relationships.

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To reach the mountains, we took Baldambe’s body part of the way by car. We could only take a few people with us while the others set off on foot. Gardo insisted she travel with Baldambe’s body in the car. She fetched a cowbell, one that Baldambe had brought back from Europe at an earlier time, and knocking it with a stick she accompanied her song. She sang loud and strong and with great emotion, calling Baldambe by his different names and relationships to various people, in particular to herself and her sons. She also recalled significant events in Baldambe’s life, such as his visits to Europe with his friend Ivo. As Ivo wrote in his obituary for Baldambe: It was a great comfort to be with you in the hour of your death and later to be present at your burial, surrounded by your friends and relatives. Sarinde (Gardo) was most violent in her wailing and sang most beautifully and persistent, day and night, remembering you: ‘Father of the brown cow, hunting friend of Theo’s father’. Your children and we held each other and cried, but we also felt that life will go on and will draw us together like when you were alive. Perhaps from now on even more so because now that you have gone Jean and I feel more responsible for your children who have come to call us indo and imbo which means ‘mother’ and ‘father’. (Strecker 2010: 14)

When we reached the burial ground, the women moved around in a steady march, clapping sticks and singing their songs. I went to join them, but was turned away. ‘It’s taboo! You are his mother and should not dance and sing for your son.’ I was Baldambe’s ‘mother’ by way of our son Dan, to whom Baldambe had given his name. That Gardo invested so much energy in her singing was proof of her great love for Baldambe, a love she had cultivated over the years, spurred by her need to create a secure network of support for herself and her children. Now that he had died, it was crucial for Gardo to convince Baldambe’s surviving family and friends of her love and affection, not only for Baldambe, but for them as well. After Baldambe’s death, Gardo continued to live in Dambaiti, bringing up her sons and successfully initiating them into adulthood, while giving her married daughter help whenever she was in need. This she achieved through her own inexhaustible effort, cultivating her field, feeding her children, helping her neighbours and friends, and above all cultivating relationships with kinsmen, neighbours and friends. Towards the end of her life, in 2015, Gardo became very ill with cancer. Her sons tried everything they could – slaughtering several oxen to feed her, consulting diviners to find out which forebears needed appeasing, and selling goats to get her medical treatment – to no avail. Gardo waited for me, her yetino – ‘one who holds’ – to arrive, hoping beyond hope that I could find a cure for her illness. Of course I did what I could for my

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special friend who had always looked after me with great sympathy and attention, but the nurse at the clinic told me there was nothing that could be done. I didn’t tell Gardo this diagnosis, but said instead she would recover like she had done many times before. When I took my leave, I kissed her, a thing people do to console others upon the death of a relative. Still full of spirit, Gardo challenged me, asking, if she was going to recover, why was I kissing her? Unfortunately, I was not there when Gardo died, and could not join the others who would have sung her merits and recalled all her kinsmen and friends, relations with whom she had cultivated through song and action throughout her life.

Ritualizing Kinship Becoming a Mother If we take a closer look at Hamar kinship, we discover that a great deal of ritual, and corresponding rhetoric, is employed to sanction motherhood, fatherhood and childhood. Prior to becoming a mother, a Hamar woman has first to be married, brought into her husband’s home, and made into a bride by her mother-in-law. A bride and her mother-in-law, however, are usually total strangers, and their relationship has first to be established. Here ritual and rhetoric come into play. In my film, Two Girls Go Hunting (Lydall and Head 1991), we see how Baldambe’s daughter, Duka, became a bride. Having been escorted to her husband’s home by her mother-in-law, Duka’s head is shaved, and then her motherin-law, Sagonda, rubs her all over with a mixture of butter and red ochre. Sagonda explains to me: ‘I’ve given birth to Duka and buttered her like a baby. Feeding her like a baby, I’ll cook good food for her and I’ll give her milk. I’ll butter her and put her down to sleep. I’ll bring her up like my child. After two or three months I’ll give her to her husband saying, “She’s grown up”’. Quite explicitly, Sagonda likens the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship to that of mother and child. Like generations of women before her, she employs rituals and practices that evoke the inherently most binding of relationships, that of mother and child, to create a tie where none existed before. Furthermore, by invoking the mother–child relationship, Sagonda rhetorically claims dominance over Duka. In Hamar, a woman may find herself in competition with her daughter-inlaw over the attention and economic services of her son and grandchildren – the daughter-in-law’s husband and children. A woman’s son is important both for herself and her daughter-in-law to supervise livestock, clear new fields for

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cultivation and defend the family’s interests in the public sphere. Furthermore, her son’s children are crucial to both herself and her daughter-in-law for helping in the fields, herding goats and caring for younger children. In the event of conflict, the simple evocation of the mother–child bond may not be sufficient for a woman to dominate her daughter-in-law. After all, the motherin-law did not actually give birth to and breastfeed the daughter-in-law; they are not physically and emotionally bonded as a mother and child would be. Because of this discrepancy, and driven by the need and desire to control their daughters-in-law, Hamar women over the ages have developed ritual practices and corresponding rhetorical arguments, by way of which they compel their daughters-in-law to submit to their authority and attend to their wishes. Thus, under her mother-in-law’s supervision, a woman is obliged to perform rituals that prepare her for a ‘pure’ conception. Otherwise her pregnancy will be deemed ‘impure’ and has to be terminated. Elsewhere I have explained how ‘it is by supervising her daughter-in-law’s pre-conception rituals, as well as those involving her children – the naming (gali) ritual, the necklace (katchi) ritual and the band-tying (gor) ritual – that a woman asserts control over her daughter-in-law and her son’ (Lydall 2005: 164). In the film Duka’s Dilemma, Duka explained this to me as follows: If you are angry with her (the mother-in-law), don’t fetch her water or collect wood for her, then she’ll be angry at the ritual, saying: ‘Let her learn something. If the gali ritual is not done, once that child has been weaned, will she give birth to another child?’ If a child’s naming ritual is not done, once the child is weaned, another child shouldn’t be born. For us Hamar such a child would be unclean, and the newly born child as well as the previous one will be thrown away. Because of this trap we attend to the old woman. (Lydall and Strecker 2001)

In the gali ritual, a mother and her new-born child are blessed and thereby sanctioned. In the film Duka’s Dilemma, we see two gali rituals, one for Boro’s son Tammo, the other for Duka’s son Tini. In each case Sagonda, the motherin-law of the two women, first puts four scoops of coffee into a right-handed gourd bowl, on top of four sprigs of gali (Ipomoea spathulata Hall. f.) leaves. Meanwhile the mother in question sits and breastfeeds her baby. Sagonda then takes her ritual headdress, ritual belt and a bead necklace and puts them on her right arm before transferring them onto the right arm of the mother. The mother puts the headdress on her head, the belt around her waist and the beads around her neck. Next Sagonda takes the gali leaves, drenched in the by now cool coffee, and in downward strokes anoints the breast of the mother and the head of the baby four times. Simultaneously, she calls out the name

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of the child. From now on, the name given, known as the gali name, will be inalienably his or hers. As we see, central to the ritual is the mother–child unit, which gains a blessing, and thence legitimacy, from the mother-in-law/grandmother. The transference of the mother-in-law’s ritual headdress and belt evokes a line of such transferences, for the mother-in-law was given the same from her motherin-law before, and so on. Such a sequence implies a rhetorical argument that goes something like this: the woman who blesses her daughter-in-law and grandchild has the right to do so because she herself was blessed at the gali ritual of her son (now husband and father of the mother and child in question) by her mother-in-law, who in turn was blessed, together with her son, by her mother-in-law, and so on, ad infinitum. Having thus claimed her right and power to bless, the mother-in-law then does so by anointing the breast of the mother and the head of the suckling child (thus focusing on the breastfeeding act that epitomizes the primary mother–child bond) with gali leaves and coffee, both of which, in Hamar terms, embody and evoke barjo (wellbeing). The relationship between a mother and her child, being based on the primary mother–child bond, is indisputable, and taken much for granted. Nothing is more devastating for mother and child than to be separated and their bond to be cut. The relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, by contrast, is a purely cultural invention. In Hamar, the mother-in-law plays on the strength of the mother–child bond by inventing a threat to that bond. Hence, a daughter-in-law is told that if she simply gets pregnant the conception will be impure, it will have no barjo (wellbeing) and it must be got rid of, otherwise it will be mingi (impure and polluting) and bring misfortune to all and sundry. The only way her child can gain barjo, a woman is told, is if she observes certain rituals that her mother-in-law is in charge of, and by way of which her mother-in-law calls forth the requisite barjo. But even when a woman observes all ritual requirements, whereby the mother-in-law gives her blessing, and a ‘pure’ child is born, its barjo remains under threat should the mother get pregnant again without having performed the prescribed rituals for the first child. In such a case, not only the new pregnancy, but also the previous child who is now closely bonded to its mother, is declared ‘impure’! As Duka put it, this is a trap which the mother-in-law lays to force her daughter-in-law, and by extension her son, to pay attention to her needs. With the help of rhetoric that draws its persuasive strength from the mother–child bond, a mother-in-law makes herself indispensable to her daughter-in-law becoming a mother and keeping her children, and thereby obliges her daughter-in-law to accept her authority and attend to her demands.

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Becoming a Father Just as a Hamar woman cannot simply become a mother, neither can a Hamar man simply become a father. A man’s parents are keen to keep him bonded to them so that he will take care of their herds, looking after them for months on end in distant grazing areas where they have to be defended from dangerous wild animals and enemy raids. To this end, elaborate initiation rites and rituals concerning the acquisition and use of livestock have been developed over many generations, allowing parents to determine when their sons can become fathers of children and owners of livestock in their own name. Thus, until he is initiated and married, a son is effectively forced to be dependent on his father’s livestock and his mother’s food and personal care, and is, therefore, obliged to work for them. A man’s initiation is a lengthy affair that takes months to complete, and is far too complicated to deal with in detail here. Suffice to say, the rites symbolize his leaving behind of his youth when he was dependent on his mother’s food and his father’s cattle, to his becoming an adult man, who is allowed to marry wives, be the father of children, and own livestock in his own name. He is initiated by a group of maz, those youths who have already been initiated but have not yet married and returned to quotidian life. Since the maz initiate him, it looks as if his parents have little to do with the initiation, concealing the fact that without their consent and their participation at crucial points, the initiation could not take place at all. At the outset, only when a youth’s father has given him a ritual stick is he allowed to proceed with the preparations that lead up to the major ritual event where he (as ukuli) leaps across a row of cattle. Immediately prior to the leap, the youth is symbolically given birth to by a maz. To solve the problem of how a male can give birth to a male, the birth-giving maz, who is called the initiate’s ‘father’, is given the ritual belt of the initiate’s real mother, and thereby becomes his ‘mother’. Also prior to the leap, the father of the initiate provides a female calf, called the garo cow, which is held at the front of the row of cattle over which the initiate leaps. It is after this calf that the initiate gets his adult name, as father of such and such a cow. ‘When you get up tomorrow, if he is father of a white calf call him Silimba or Chailimba, if he is father of a red calf, say Dirimba, if it’s black, say Kalumbe, if it’s spotted say Burdimba, if it’s dark brown say Baldambe. This is his maturity. Don’t call him by his gali name, call him by his gari name’ (Lydall and Strecker 1979b: 93). The word imba embraces the notions of father and owner, and may be derived from the passive form of the verb to give (ima), meaning ‘the one who

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has been given’. Indeed, a man becomes a father and owner only when someone or something has been given to him. Thus, he is said to become father and owner of the garo cow when he steps on her back during his leap across the cattle, but the garo calf itself is provided in the first place by the man’s father. A man’s right to own livestock is symbolically acknowledged once he has been given his gar name. Similarly, a man becomes father and owner of a wife and her children-to-be only when his mother gives him his bride, which is after she completes the bride’s rites. In the evening after his leap, the initiate’s mother discreetly gives him some sorghum food, a bit of which he eats and the rest he leaves at the foot of a gali plant in the bush, telling it to wait for his return. From then on, while he is a maz, he must not touch or eat any sorghum until the sealing of his marriage. Normally it is his parents who seek his wife-to-be and negotiate for her hand. As part of the marriage sealing ritual, his bride hands him four pieces of sorghum, after she herself has bitten from them. Thus, a man’s transition from being dependent on his mother for food to being dependent on his wife for food is symbolized and, as it were, rhetorically ratified. These are the few yet crucial ritual elements that are in the hands of an initiate’s parents, and which symbolize and rhetorically sanction his transition from dependence on his parents to becoming a father and owner of wives, children and livestock.

Strengthening the Brother–Sister Bond We have seen how the sisters and cousins of a youth energetically sing goala songs for several days preceding his leap across the cattle, as well as on the day of this event itself. With their songs, the sisters and cousins demonstrate their love and appreciation for their ‘brother’, and also let him know what they demand and expect of him. The songs are an important way of confirming and reinforcing relations between the girls and their ‘brother’. But on the day of his leap, the sisters and cousins not only sing goala songs, they also aggressively demand to be whipped by the maz. This is an extraordinary spectacle that tourists come in flocks to see, and administrators and do-gooders try their best to ban. The maz act very aloof and disinterested, although they each have a bundle of whipping wands expressly for the purpose of whipping. The girls have to provoke the maz to whip them, only those who are tsangaza, the ones who can marry them if they are not already married. The girls insult the maz, calling them dogs, and challenging them, ‘Don’t you care that your “sister” will be married and beaten by our brother?’ For the film Our Way of Loving (Lydall and Head 1994), Duka explained this ritual whipping as follows:

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If you just watch, it’s as if you’re not related. People will say, ‘Why does she just watch the others being beaten? Why doesn’t she feel any kindred (aeda) pain?’ If you are beaten they’ll say, ‘Her kindred pains her, it pains her heart, that’s why she gets beaten. Because she wants it, she gets beaten’. When I get beaten, my cousin will say, ‘My cousin came, and instead of just looking, she got beaten for me’. And he will give me goats, and he will give me cattle. And he will come to see me wherever I am, to see my children and me. Also, if I bring beer to his gateway saying, ‘I’ve come to collect goats and cattle’, he will give me what I want. Feeling pain for you, that’s what he does in return. Because you suffered for him, he takes that into account and gives you goats and gives you cattle and gives you iron rings, which he will buy and bring you.

Duka uses the notion of pain to express what in English we call caring for and loving someone. Could it be that this idiom derives from the pain of birth, which brings to mind the mother–infant bond that is the epitome of love? If so, this would explain the rhetorical power of ritual whipping. How can a girl more convincingly persuade her brother or cousin of her love than to endure the pain of whipping on the day of his leap and his birth into manhood?

By Way of Conclusion In the mid 1970s, when puzzling over Hamar kinship, I first tried to understand it in terms of Lévi-Strauss’s ideas of ‘elementary structures of kinship’ and the exchange of women through marriage. In Hamar, cousin marriage is prohibited and the husband’s family is obliged to give bridewealth in exchange for his wife. In terms of Lévi-Strauss’s model, this constitutes ‘marriage by purchase’ which ‘allows generalized exchange to break away from its elementary structure, and favours the creation of a growing number of increasingly supple and extended cycles’ (Lévi-Strauss 1969: 471). The clans in Hamar, however, are not in any way corporate groups, and even though I could logically infer, and statistically corroborate, a generalized exchange of women between virtual groups of men, this simply amounted to ‘an accidental realization of an overall structure’ (Lévi-Strauss 1969: 470). Reverting to a more functionalist approach to kinship5 such as I had been taught at the London School of Economics, and bending this to a nascent feminist approach, I recognized that the main function underlying Hamar marriage prescriptions and prohibitions was to provide women and their children with a wide network of support (i.e. kindred) which would give them optimal access to the scarce but unreliable resources that make up the mixed agropastoral economy of the Hamar (see Lydall 2005).

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Now, many years later, inspired by the rhetoric culture approach, which ‘explores the ways in which rhetoric structures culture and culture structures rhetoric’ (Tyler and Strecker 2009: 21), I have tried to look behind and beyond function and structure, in search of rhetoric in the emergence of kinship, and kinship in the emergence of rhetoric. I started from the premise that a primary mother–infant bond and an elementary mother–child unit of kinship constitute the source of, and impetus for, both kinship and rhetoric. The primary purpose of marriage, which is a purely cultural invention, is the extension of kinship beyond the mother–child unit in order to provide the latter with a network of support. Finally, because of the primary mother–infant bond, women are particularly interested and engaged in generating kinship relations, a process that involves a great deal of rhetoric. In the main body of this chapter, I applied this approach to Hamar material in order to demonstrate how Hamar women use rhetoric to cultivate kinship. First, I considered a range of songs by way of which Hamar women and girls sing kinship. Then I looked at how certain crucial kin relations are rhetorically underpinned by ritual. Hence, a mother-in-law uses ritual to assert her influence over her daughter-in-law; a mother and father control their son’s initiation in order to keep him tied to and dependent on them; and women and girls demand ritual whipping to prove their love, thereby making their brothers and cousins feel deeply obliged towards them. Jean Lydall is an independent ethnologist and award-winning ethnographic filmmaker. She studied anthropology at the London School of Economics and from the early 1970s did long-term field research in Southern Ethiopia, notably on social organization, kinship and language of the Hamar people, on which she has published widely. She is co-author of the three-volume The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia (with Ivo Strecker), co-editor of The Perils of Face (2006), author of numerous papers and chapters, and has made six major ethnographic films on the Hamar. She was Assistant Director of the South Omo Research Center, Jinka, Ethiopia, from 2004 to 2009. Recently she co-edited (with Maknun Ashami and Michèle Flood) the book In Pursuit of Afar Nomads: Glynn Flood’s Work Journal and Letters from the Field, 1973–1975 (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 2017). Notes 1. Edi, which I translate as ‘person’, is used here to mean ‘one of us, a member of the homestead and lineage’. 2. I.e. her Father’s Father’s Brother’s Sister’s Son.

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3. See the film Two Girls Go Hunting (Lydall and Head 1991) for one bride’s farewell party without, and one with gaido songs. 4. The Tribe, Episode 2. Renegade Pictures (UK) Ltd. 2015. 5. See, for example, Malinowski 1913; Radcliffe-Brown 1941.

References Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1978. ‘Universals in Language Use: Politeness Phenomena’, in Esther N. Goody (ed.), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56–310. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Lydall, Jean. 2005. ‘The Power of Women in an Ostensibly Male-Dominated Agro-Pastoral Society’, in Thomas Widlok and Tadesse Wolde Gossa (eds), Property and Equality, Volume II: Encapsulation, Commercialization, Discrimination. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 152–72. Lydall, Jean, and Joanna Head. 1990. The Women Who Smile. Ethnographic film. Bristol: BBC. ———. 1991. Two Girls Go Hunting. Ethnographic film. Bristol: BBC. ———. 1994. Our Way of Loving. Ethnographic film. Bristol: BBC. Lydall, Jean, and Ivo Strecker. 1979a. The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia I: Work Journal. Hohenschäftlarn: Klaus Renner Verlag. ———. 1979b. The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia II: Baldambe Explains. Hohenschäftlarn: Klaus Renner Verlag. Lydall, Jean, and Kaira Strecker. 2001. Duka’s Dilemma. Ethnographic film. Cologne/Göttingen: WDR and IWF. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1913. The Family among the Australian Aborigines: A Sociological Study. London: University of London Press. Nienkamp, Jean. 2001. Internal Rhetorics: Towards a History and Theory of Self-Persuasion. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Palmer, L. 2013. ‘Bonding Matters: The Chemistry of Attachment’, Attachment Parenting International 5(2). Retrieved 10 August 2020 from https://www.healthychild.com/ bonding-matters-the-chemistry-of-attachment/. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R. 1941. ‘The Study of Kinship Systems’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 71(1–2): 1–18. Sears, Dr. 2016. ‘Why Do Babies Cry?’ Ask Dr Sears. Retrieved 2 July 2014 from http://www .askdrsears.com/topics/health-concerns/fussy-baby/why-do-babies-cry. Strecker, Ivo. 1979. ‘Musik der Hamar’. Ethnographic record. Berlin-Dahlem: Museum für Völkerkunde, Musikethnologische Abteilung. ———. 2010. Ethnographic Chiasmus: Essays on Culture, Conflict and Rhetoric. Münster: Lit Verlag. Strecker, Ivo, and Stephen Tyler. 2009. ‘Introduction’, in Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–18. Tyler, Stephen, and Ivo Strecker. 2009. ‘The Rhetoric Culture Project’, in Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 21–30.

CHAPTER 3

What Do Kinship Terms Do? The Dual Life of Kinship Words in English-Written Hunter-Gatherers’ Ethnography Nurit Bird-David       

This chapter deals with a twofold kinship rhetoric: (a) hunter-gatherers’ use of relation terms in their everyday talk; and (b) ethnographers’ use of Englishlanguage kinship terms in hunter-gatherers’ ethnographies.1 I focus on the everyday social use of kinship terms in interpersonal interaction, rather than on their classificatory dimension. In alignment with the concerns of this volume, I use the term ‘kinship rhetoric’ in a loose sense to keep in mind this focus, and because I argue that people choose what terms they use, and their usage brings about the kinship relations that the kinship terms they use imply. My twofold question is this: how do hunter-gatherers ‘talk their relations into being’ and, assuming more broadly that kinship rhetoric everywhere partly, at least, creates relationships and not simply describes them, how do ethnographers re-make these relations in writing ethnographies in English? I pursue these questions with specific reference to very small-scale indigenous populations, classically categorized as ‘hunter-gatherers’,2 in particular groups that have been described as ‘hunter-gatherers with immediate return system’ (Woodburn 1980; see also Meillassoux 1973). I refer to them as ‘immediate huntergatherers’ because I argue that ‘immediacy’ captures their mode of social engagement, and their authoritative ways of understanding and enacting their world (Bird-David 1994, 1999; see also Ingold 1999) as well as their economic system (on which Woodburn [1980] has elaborated). Prior to their gradual subjection to administrative regimes of personal names, and nowadays increasingly also surnames, the use of personal names in

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these communities struck observers for its inconsistency, radical instability and plurality. Personal names could frequently change over time, and from user to user, for tactical and other reasons. Instead, kinship terms were the main means of referring to and addressing interlocutors within the community. Kinship terms extended to everybody living within the community, including, among others, long-term visitors (such as anthropologists). The double question now arises: (a) what did this indigenous use of kinship terms do in local social life; and (b) what do ethnographers’ descriptions in the English kinship language do? I pursue these questions through ‘bifocal ethnography’ (Bird-David 2008), which pays ethnographic attention to cultural, historical and ontological antecedents of the language used for analysis as well as to the ethnographic subject of analysis. For clarity, I sometimes use ‘relation terms’ in discussing the hunter-gatherers’ world, rather than ‘kinship terms’ as frequently used in their English-written ethnography. This helps to assert, rhetorically, the space for a bifocal ethnography that pays attention precisely to what is gained and what is lost in describing the indigenous phenomenon by an English term. Occasionally, I use ‘kinship/relation terms’ for the same purpose.

What Do English Kinship Terms Do? Interdigitation of personal names and kinship terms for reference and address is commonplace, not only among immediate hunter-gatherers. It is also conventional among English-speakers within domestic and kinship circles. People in the latter contexts sometimes refer to and address each other by kinship designations (e.g. ‘uncle’), by names (e.g. ‘Bill’), or by their combination (e.g. ‘Uncle Bill’). Fortunately for my present purposes, leading scholars have paid attention to this practice, most notably Marilyn Strathern in her ethnographic study of English kinship (1992: esp. 17–21, 83), and David Schneider and George Homans in their ethnographic study of American kinship (1955). Far from seeing this kinship rhetoric as too trivial for analysis, these scholars saw it as a window to understanding English and American ontological senses of their respective worlds of relatives, persons, individuals and interpersonal relations. Their ethnographic insights can help to fine-tune the analysis – in English – of hunter-gatherers’ use of kinship terms for reference and address by alerting our attention to whatever nuances the English idiom of analysis might superimpose on the local phenomenon under analysis. Paying attention to the native English meanings of this kinship rhetoric can help counteract reading inadvertently and uncritically into hunter-gatherers’ lived experience meanings inherent in the analytical English vocabulary by which we describe and analyse the former.

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In their pioneering paper, Schneider and Homans (1955) pointed out that kinship terms not only classify but also designate roles and relationships. Furthermore, they argued, there are multiple forms of reference and address in American culture which vary with the situational context. In 1950s (white) America, they posited, the general pattern was for first names to be used downwards (for descending generations, e.g. children), and kinship terms upwards (for ascending generations, e.g. parents). The use of kinship terms from junior to senior affirmed the authority of the elder, and the use of first names from senior to junior emphasized the qualities of the junior as a unique person, as an individual in his/her own right. That the junior was a relative was only one aspect, and not the most important one at that, of his/her personal circumstances and selfhood. The latter was epitomized by addressing him or her by name. Personal names were occasionally used upwards (e.g. ‘Bill’ or ‘Uncle Bill’ rather than ‘Uncle’) for singling out an individual from a class, whenever there was a strong effect, either positive or negative, or when the relationship was special. A person-to-person relationship was perceived to exist between the two in this case, which was not regarded as a usual component of kinship relations. Another distinctive pattern was the general use of the first-person possessive in reference to kin: ‘my’ father, mother, sister and so forth, rather than ‘our’. Schneider and Homans (1955: 1203) concluded that the ‘great concern of the language of American kinship is individual persons’. In 1968, this led Schneider to explore how in American kinship ‘the relative’ is ‘less’ than ‘the person’, in the sense that the former is only one aspect of the conglomerate that constitutes the ‘person’ (Schneider 1968). In the late twentieth century, Strathern (1992) was able to offer a more sophisticated analysis, paying attention to changes over time in address conventions. The bottom-line arguments remained the same. The individuality of persons is the first fact of English kinship. Personal names are held to be more informal and descriptive of the unique individual, while in contrast all kinship terms (despite variations between them) are held as more formal, distant and generic. Shifting from kin term to personal name as a means of address, she suggested, involves ‘down-playing the given role element in a relationship and up-playing the uniqueness of the interpersonal dimension’ (1992: 18). In middle-class England of the 1980s, children were starting to address their parents by personal names. As well as ‘a liberating informality’, this was seen as ‘treating the parents as unique individuals, rather than just relatives’, each ‘in their own right’, ‘as a person rather than as some role player’ (ibid.: 19). Strathern, however, noted that the choice of address term, and what it means, is to some extent a matter of fashion (ibid.: 20). In Henry Morgan’s time, a man of rank could call his servants by their names, and even invent names for them. This practice, which once was definitive of rank, a century later means its ne-

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gation. This cautions us that the meanings of address conventions are relative to other concurrent conventions, and to previous ones. By the late twentieth century, at any rate, using kinship terms instead of names was suggestive of role relationships, and part relations. It involved, furthermore, individual choice as to whom ‘to keep up with’ and recognize as ‘relatives’. The choice can be mitigated by extraneous factors such as similar class and distance. The individual person is seen as a conglomerate of different elements, drawn from different domains, and kinship is only one of them. Not only can kinship terms suggest to English readers a particular understanding of kinship relations, but ‘relation’ itself is a culturally loaded term, far from the neutral analytical term that it may seem to be. A historically situated notion, the term ‘relation’ had variously meant a narrative, a reference back to something, or comparison, before it was applied to kinship ties in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The burst of knowledge that is associated with the new sciences was presumably also refashioning the way people represented their relations to one another (Strathern 1995: 9). ‘Relation’ was simultaneously used in the domains of kinship and knowledge, with meanings transferred from context to context.3 In the two-way traffic of tropes, it seems significant that not only did the domain of knowledge offer abstraction while kinship suggested concreteness, but the new knowledge of the time perhaps gave the logical constructs a concreteness which kinship then borrowed (Strathern 1995). In any case, a logical sense pervades twentieth-century bourgeois anglophone understanding of kinship relations generally. For many middle-class English-speakers, and after them mid-twentieth-century students of kinship, ‘kinsfolk are bound together by the idea of their relationship’ (Strathern 1995: 9, emphasis added). ‘Knowledge’, as Strathern put it, ‘creates relationships: relationships come into being when the knowledge does’ (1995: 37). Different kinds of knowledge underscore and complicate English kinship idioms, and practices of relatedness and personhood, as recently elaborated by Carsten (2007). At the same time, ‘relation’ itself is often reified as a discrete thing, in looking for ‘relations’ between ‘relations’. Given that my concern here is not with conventional English kinship appellation practices as such, but only with their likely effects in the situational conjecture of their use in ethnography of the indigenous ones, I go no further into this vast area of ethnographic investigation. By no stretch of the imagination does the above make big claims on the actual and highly diverse and dynamic American and English kinship rhetoric in lived experiences. These few and limited ethnographic glimpses into English-speakers’ kinship rhetoric serve to alert our attention to logo-centric, individualist, dyadic and role antecedents of the English kinship rhetoric that can bear on understanding immediate hunter-gatherers’ kinship appellation practices. I occasion-

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ally use below the shorthand ‘English kinship terms’ for the above specific English-speakers’ senses of kinship terms, American and English. Although used for brevity, this shorthand should not be understood (in any essentialist sense) as referring to ‘English kinship terms’ as a species.

The Use of Relation Terms among Immediate Hunter-Gatherers The indigenous lived world must be constantly kept in mind for a better appreciation of what relation terms do in everyday indigenous experience. A cardinal factor to remember is that these communities are very small, both in terms of their total population and the size of residential communities. Despite critical problems in their enumeration – in terms of being required for and meaningful to governmental administration – and despite serious logistic and categorical barriers in the field, each group is in the order of several thousand people at most, and in some cases fewer than one thousand. Their members can be widely dispersed, living in small groupings that prior to critical outside political and economic intervention in many cases counted several dozen people each. The so-called ‘magical number’ of about fifty people in each residential grouping (called band in orthodox ethnological discourse) recurred in many ethnographically studied communities in the mid twentieth century (Lee and DeVore 1968). Even in terms of biology, although not the essential determinant of kinship relations among these communities, it is the case for many individuals that most members of the community whom they know and regularly engage with are their relatives. Generally speaking, however, ‘relatives’ are constructed by many immediate hunter-gatherers as not necessarily genetically related others but as others with whom one actually shares life – including, for example, camping together, going hunting and gathering together, engaging in other kinds of paid work together and celebrating together (see Myers 1986; Ingold 1999). ‘Relatives’, in this local sense, ipso facto, constitute the overwhelming part of one’s ‘people’, within which single people often found their partner, yet sometimes marrying neighbouring people. Far from being merely worth noting, this demographic situation carries deep ontological aspects. ‘Relatives’ in the English and American lived experience are in common-sense understanding a small part of one’s world. As Strathern eloquently put it: ‘There are always too many, and other different individuals to think about … one’s kin are part of a wider population, but not part that is in any way equal to it’ (1992: 84). In the immediate hunter-gatherers’ lived experience, on the other hand, the immediate everyday lived world is ‘full’ of relatives. Into this world,

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non-relatives enter, by marrying a community member or otherwise (e.g. the ethnographer), who, should they remain and live with or closely engage with the local ‘relatives’, ipso facto become ‘relatives’ themselves, by the local logic that relatives are constituted by shared living. In this world ‘full’ of relatives, ‘non-relatives’ constitute a marginal and often temporary minority, that is, they are few and often are so for a limited duration until in staying on they are turned into relatives (for more on relations with outsiders, see Bird-David 2017a, ch. 6). Communities with such all-encompassing kinship systems are reported among immediate hunter-gatherers (and not only among them). Already in the 1970s, Alan Barnard suggested that these systems are ‘more widespread in the world than perhaps is generally realized’ (1978: 69), noting as examples the Kalahari Bushmen, Australian Aborigines, the African Hadza, and the South American Shavante, Piaroa and Trio. Barnard named them ‘universal kinship systems’. He defined them as systems in which ‘each member of society stands in a “kin” (or affinal) relationship to every other member of society’ (Barnard 1978: 69), and later as ‘a form of social classification which encompasses the whole of society and which is based on notions of kinship and affinity’ (Barnard 1992: 265–66, emphasis added). Anthropologists widely noted (what they chose to understand as) their ‘adoption’ by the peoples they studied. As early as the 1960s, Elman Service wrote that in ‘the small society of hunter-gatherers … which is based entirely on kinship’, even when a complete stranger, like an anthropologist, comes to have some kind of consistent social relationship with the band, he should be adopted into it by means of a fictional tie of kinship. (Service 1966: 32, emphasis added)

More recently, students working in Native North America have examined their ‘adoption’ and naming in the field (see Kan 2001). Their main concern, though, was how their ‘adoption’ assisted (or limited) the quality and reach of their fieldwork. They did not pay critical attention to the English word ‘adoption’ which they used, and how what it means to English-speakers can diverge from the local concept. In reference to the Australian Ngarinyin, Anthony Redmond (2005) pointed out the systemic dimension of one such system, dwelling on its logic. He described the extension of ‘the kinship web infinitely outwards towards the boundaries of the known world to make relative strangers into strange relatives’ (2005: 234). Not only the classificatory but also the rhetorical dimension of this phenomenon requires attention, more so than has been previously given. ‘Rhetorical’, it should be remembered, is used as mentioned above in a loose sense to

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emphasize focusing on the everyday usage of kinship terms and its effect. The relation terms in these kinship systems were principally approached as indices of the very kinship relations that they describe. The terms were frequently and commonly used by everybody for calling and referring to everybody else. This aspect was mentioned by students of hunter-gatherers. James Woodburn, for example, carefully noted that: it is quite usual in immediate-return systems for kinship terms to be very widely used to address and to refer to other members of the community.

However, he then immediately continued, shifting attention to the classificatory aspect: Indeed, many of these systems are universal kinship systems in which everyone – or at least everyone within the political community – is able to define a kinship or quasi-kinship tie to everyone else. (1980: 105, emphasis added)

In previously approaching relation terms largely as expressions of local systems of classification, their rhetorical use and effect has been left transparent. With Strathern and Homans and Schneider (cited above), I revisit these systems with greater attention to their rhetorical aspects for insight into huntergatherers’ ontological senses of relative, person and relations. But not before paying attention to what the English-language terms of description and analysis ‘do’ to the indigenous terms that they describe and analyse.

The Effect of English Kinship Terms on Hunter-Gatherers’ Relation Terms Focusing on the kinship relations which are supposedly designated by the terms of address creates several problems and distortions worth noting in the present context. One problem relates to the dated English-speaking sense that using kinship terms in such contexts designates particular role relationships, stressing certain hierarchies of rights and obligations specific to particular kinship relations. Among many immediate hunter-gatherers, to the contrary, ethnographers reported (for their respective periods of fieldwork) that, with some exceptions, kinship relations ‘do not carry much weight’ (as Woodburn put it [1980: 105]). That is, with some exceptions, different kinship relations do not imply their own distinguished set of entitlements. The kinship idiom generally implies a sense of being ‘one of us’, and an expectation for civil attitude towards everyone – and no one particularly excluding others. In some cases, for example, the wife’s parents were entitled in the traditional arrangement to a specific or a larger part of meat in sharing large game. But with this exception, every

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other relative, irrespective of the relation category, is entitled to a share. What matters is being a relative, not what kind of relative, for entitlement to share. In some cases, including the one with which I am most familiar, the South Indian Nayaka, the division of meat is even strictly equal, and great effort is made to ensure equality of the portions distributed, not only in the size of the portion, but also the quality of the meat (see more in Bird-David 2005). Furthermore, the meat is shared among relatives in the locally constructed sense thereof, that is, those who live together. Sharing the meat is a major constitutive fact of their recognized relatedness. The intuitive English-speakers’ sense of kinship terms as designating inherent kinship positions unchanging throughout life, or changing only through major life-cycle events (such as marriage and death), conceals the characteristically plural and dynamic use of kinship terms among many immediate hunter-gatherers. These communities, very small in size, are frequently closely intermarried. Everyone is connected to everyone else in diverse relation routes. They can and do choose which kinship term to use, strategically or according to the occasion. To give a Nayaka example, a couple who are ‘parallel cousins’ through some relation routes would choose kinship terms reckoned through other relation routes for their nearest relatives, since marriages between parallel cousins are regionally looked down upon. For example, they may use ‘in-law’ terms, capitalizing on relations reckoned through married siblings or even married cousins. In some groups, such as the Ju/’hoansi, where kinship relations can also be reckoned through name-sake relations (i.e. a name-sake’s relations count in some contexts as one’s own), and personal names are easily changeable, the scope for strategically choosing kinship terms for reference and address is considerable. The dynamic and manipulative dimensions of everyday uses of kinship terms as a means of appellation have been described in some detail in recent years (for example by Bodenhorn [2000] and Nuttall [2000]). Therein lies also their encompassing nature, encompassing those one lives with as one’s own relatives. The English-speaking sense of kinship relations as a means of mapping pedigree connections, and tracing common parentage and ancestry, distracts attention from relatives’ present and direct experience of living with one another, which as we saw is paramount among many immediate hunter-gatherers. In the former case, a present relation can be reckoned in terms of a chain of descent going from one person back to a common ancestor and up again to the second person, connecting the two not directly in terms of what they share but through their respective knowledge of shared ancestors, however far back in the past, whether real or imagined. Among many immediate hunter-gatherers, sharing life together constitutes the relations, not the knowledge of a shared ancestor. Here, there is little interest in kinship relations in and for themselves

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as facts of knowledge, or even as facts worth knowing. Cultural memory often does not extend to relations for more than three generations back. Kinship pedigrees are not narrated in and for themselves. On the contrary, the actual use of relation terms in everyday talk pre-limits the range of relatives known. By and large, you know present relations, relations that are made rhetorically present. A common Nayaka reply to my early fieldwork attempts to trace kinship connections, when I asked about relatives of third ascending generation and beyond, was something to the effect of ‘I do not know. He/she was no longer here when I grew up’. Barbara Bodenhorn (2000) reports a more radical reply of a man who related that so-and-so used to be his ‘relative’, using the past tense not because that ‘relative’ died but because he lived far away, and the speaker no longer experienced sharing life with him. Conversely, an old Nayaka woman, living far away from her relatives, who wanted to impress on me that they were still her kin, told me that she was visiting them often, when at her age and with her frailty she obviously could not make the journeys she was describing. She used ‘visiting’, which implies repeated spells of living together, to assert kinship relations despite the physical distance from her relatives and the fact that they were no longer living together. The English-speakers’ sense of a kinship term as referring to a dyadic relation, and the frequent use of the first-person singular possessive form for relatives (‘my’), obscure the pluralizing nature of using relation terms among many immediate hunter-gatherers. ‘Relation’ lends itself to being perceived as a term that connects or happens between two entities. Kinship relation, accordingly, is similarly perceived a priori as a dyadic matter. A kinship term, such as ‘father’, intuitively evokes if not only the male figure himself, then a father–child dyad, a father–child relation, moreover ‘my father’, even if I have several siblings. Nayaka not only commonly use the first-person plural possessive form for relatives; to the best of my understanding, their relation terms commonly evoke a sense of a plural interconnected network of connections. When one Nayaka refers to another Nayaka as, say, ‘maternal uncle’, what they both have in mind is not the two of them, or how they are linked by logocentric kinship relations they both know of, for example that the latter is the brother of the former’s mother. Rather, as I understand it, what they both have in mind is a plurality of relatives living together, to which they belong, and the history of their shared lives. The term ‘father’, to start with a simple example, brings to mind not only a father–child dyad but a host of other relations inseparable from them, such as mother, another child, grandparent. ‘Maternal uncle’ indicates a whole family grouping: one’s mother who, as a child, lived together with her brother and other siblings, who all lived together then with their parents, who lived together with the parents’ siblings and their spouses, and so on and so forth. A term such as ‘maternal uncle’, in other words, refers

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to the family of kinship terms that in turn evokes the grouping of relatives who have been living together or, at least, keep visiting each other. The Englishlanguage kinship term, in evoking a single role relation or a dyad, conceals the pluralizing effect of each (and every) Nayaka relation term which, in contrast, evokes the plurality of relatives living together (see more on Nayaka kinship logic in Bird-David 2017a, 2017b).

What Do Hunter-Gatherers’ Relation Terms Do? A Nayaka Case Study The complexities of hunter-gatherers’ rhetorical use of relation terms can be exemplified by an ethnographic case. Through this case I hope to throw light on critical aspects of the indigenous use and effects of relation terms within their lived experience, aspects that, to some extent, are blurred by the Englishlanguage use of kinship terms. I draw on fieldwork experience among South Indian Nayaka.4 Besides being the hunter-gatherer group I know best, the case of the Nayaka serves the objective of this chapter particularly well. Among themselves, they use South Dravidian kinship terms, characteristic of the wider cultural region as well. Their use of these terms varies from place to place, and even from person to person, depending on whether they happen to engage more with Tamil-, Kanada- or Malayalam-speaking people (all of whom live around their habitat located where the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala meet). They were always flexible in using these Dravidian kinship terms, sometimes deviating altogether from the terms’ inherent Dravidian ‘logic’ (Bird 1982; see the same for Paliyans and Hill Pandaram, two other forest communities living in South India, in Gardner 2000: 111; Morris 1982: 115). Whatever long-term historical processes may account for how they use these kinship terms at (the ethnographic) present, one should look at the use of these relation terms in Nayaka everyday experiences, more than at the system of relations which these terms originally designated. The Nayaka use of these kinship/relation terms is best considered together with their use of personal terms, and especially (after Strathern and Schneider and Homans) the interdigitation of kinship terms and personal names. My aim is to show how relation/kinship terms are hesitantly used, and even avoided when one does not personally know one’s interlocutors well. The case below helps to demonstrate how an immediate universe of relatives is produced and reproduced by using – or not using – kinship/relation terms for reference and address.5 Kunjan was about thirty years old when I met him. He was a man of small stature and little charisma, and I mistook him at first for a reticent man. I later learnt that in Nayaka terms he was considered defiant and quite unusual, but

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not deviant. He had come to the Gir valley from the Seaforth area in the mid 1970s, leaving there a wife, a child and a whole crowd of relatives. These relatives were living in three hamlets (comprising altogether a dozen huts) within a few hours’ walk of one another. Kunjan had lived in the hamlet closest to the Seaforth plantation, where he had worked occasionally. His parents and younger brother with some other relatives lived in the second hamlet, and his older sister in the third hamlet, which was the furthest away in the interior of the forest, where several Nayaka families lived, foraging for subsistence and for trade, and using a spacious rock-cave for accommodation at the height of the heavy rainy season. A steep footpath wound its way through a thick forest from the first two hamlets to the third one. When Kunjan eventually consented to take me to visit his home place, he thought that it would be too dangerous for me to take this path; we went back to the main regional road, travelled in local buses across to Kerala to a place from which, after crossing a flooded river on a bamboo raft, we climbed up to the foot of the hills, arriving at the third hamlet. But the steep forest path did not prevent Nayaka themselves coming and going between these three hamlets. An intensive traffic of short- and long-term visits kept their inhabitants in close touch with one another, sustaining their sense of themselves as nama sonta (us, the relatives; we, our own, we who are living together). Kunjan’s visits had perhaps extended beyond this local world even before the visit that turned out to be pivotal in his life, and pertinent to our story: a visit to an ‘uncle’ relation, who lived in a small Nayaka hamlet (comprising three huts), within close walking distance of the bustling market village of Devala (serving local tribal people, immigrant Tamil and Malayalam labourers and small entrepreneurs). While ‘close’ to this market village, this Nayaka hamlet was ‘isolated’ in terms of the Nayaka geography of inter-visits. It lay at the far end of the social horizon of the Seaforth area – and, as will be seen below, of the Gir area as well. It was one of those ‘satellite’ hamlets which had been built by Nayaka who moved closer to places of employment and/or market villages. Satellite hamlets, like this one, played an important role in the changing circumstances of the Nayaka, because those who moved away from their original areas and settled in these new places often forged new links between those Nayaka who remained in their respective out-of-the-way areas, as happened in Kunjan’s case. The ‘uncle’ told Kunjan that there were good opportunities for work in the Gir area, also mentioning his pretty unmarried ‘niece’; Kunjan went there, met the girl (Kalliyani) and eventually settled down there with her. He did not subsequently return to visit his relatives in the Seaforth area, until I convinced (and paid) him to take me there. He had ‘forgotten’ all about them, he told me; he could think only about ‘this’ girl, and ‘this’ place where they were living. (Kunjan was still living in the Gir area more than

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two decades later, now with another wife, whom he married after Kalliyani had died in the mid 1990s giving birth to their fifth, still-born, child.) In the Gir area during the mid 1970s, Kunjan found a thriving group of relatives living in five dispersed small hamlets, amidst lush evergreen semideciduous (and, in some parts, bamboo) forest. In its midst was an area of five hundred acres which had been cleared and planted with rubber trees at the beginning of the twentieth century, with a small section replanted later with coffee. The forest had remained practically undisturbed well into the 1990s because of a pending legal resolution regarding its debated status, and the status of the plantation. About seventy Nayaka men, women and children were living in these five hamlets during 1978–79, alongside a small shifting non-Nayaka population of a few dozen immigrant labourers, some of whom were seasonal, some living on the plantation, and a few living in their own houses built in the late 1950s and 1960s, outside the plantation, in the forest, close to one of the Nayaka hamlets. Kalliyani had lived in the largest of the five hamlets (Hamlet 1), then comprising six huts (including the one in which I lived) standing close to one another, on the lower slopes of a steep forested hillside. An intricate tangle of narrow forest paths left this hamlet, and only their frequent use kept them clear from the rapidly growing vegetation in the area. One path twisted its way up the hillside through a thick forest which, in the rainy season, was infested with leeches; it eventually arrived at two huts, close to the top of the summit, commanding a magnificent view over the entire valley (Hamlet 2). Another forest path twisted its way down to a stream, ran parallel to its bank, then crossed the water over protruding rocks, continued on the other bank alongside several houses of non-Nayaka labourers, arriving at one single Nayaka house, comprising three living sections for three families (Hamlet 3). This path continued, past two small tea-stalls run by non-Nayaka labourers on the outskirts of the plantation, taking a short cut through old overgrown rubber trees, climbing up the opposite hillside, through a bamboo forest, and then a rocky stretch up the hill, eventually arriving at two huts clinging onto a large cliff (Hamlet 4). Lastly, another path, diverting from the former amidst the old rubber trees, sloped gently down the valley bed, weaving its way in and out of the plantation, here passing under the heavy shade of large forest trees, there under the canopy of large rubber trees, then, leaving the plantation area altogether, going almost vertically down a large precipice to a fast-flowing river, crossing the gushing water on bamboo poles, laid perilously over protruding river cliffs, and finally arriving at one single hut comprising two living quarters (Hamlet 5).6 In this hamlet lived a Nayaka man who was employed by the rubber plantation to guard the plantation’s lower boundaries. (In the 1990s, when the rubber plantation no longer employed Nayaka, this hamlet was abandoned, and Hamlet 2 grew into the largest one as it was closest to a

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tea plantation spreading down from the summit to the neighbouring valley, which offered Nayaka work.) All these forest paths sustained – and were sustained by – frequent comings and goings between the (then) five hamlets which, in turn, sustained – and were sustained by – the continuous rhetorical use of relation terms by the five hamlets’ inhabitants which constituted and reconstituted them as belonging together, to the same community.7 The use of kinship terms as means of creating and maintaining a community of relatives thus stretched beyond a single hamlet, yet not beyond the horizons of frequent and recurring visits enabling domestic stay-together and recurrent use of kinship terms. In sum, then, constant comings and goings served the recurring rhetorical use of kinship terms, thus performing the community of relatives within a larger but not too large locality. Kalliyani, especially, was well connected with most of the other Nayaka who lived in the Gir valley. She was the oldest daughter of three children born to a man from an unusually large family with five other living siblings, all of whom lived in the Gir valley with their spouses and children. Her mother had three siblings, all of whom were born in the Gir valley, never left it, and lived there with their spouses and children (two of Kalliyani’s mother’s siblings were married to Kalliyani’s father’s siblings). Since alliance is salient in the Dravidian kinship terminology used by Nayaka, appropriate kinship terms for the husband of a close relative were available and known, and also used by Kalliyani’s relatives in other cases. One might therefore reasonably expect that the ‘husband–wife’ relationship between Kalliyani and Kunjan ipso facto entailed a chain of kinship relations and terms by which Kunjan could address, and be addressed by, all of Kalliyani’s relatives. To my surprise, Kalliyani’s relatives usually either approached him directly using no terms of appellation, or they used the name, ‘Kunjan’. In this case, not knowing which kinship term to use was not the reason for not using the terms. When I asked some of Kalliyani’s relatives why they hardly used the respective appropriate ‘kinship terms’ even when they needed an explicit term of address, and instead used the proper name, they explained that they did not know him well as yet. Along with many other manifestations of the same fact, this reply brings to focus the particular intersection between knowledge and kinship relations. They gave special priority not to knowledge of the relation in and for itself but, rather, to the knowledge born from living with him; in other words, there was the familiarity born of ‘navigating’ within their world of relatives, among others, in the rhetorical use of relation terms, rather than knowledge of its map. Far from being an ideological choice, this preference is linked to some predicaments and privileges of social living on a very small scale that have to be spelled out, and to the meanings of kinship terms for these foragers. Firstly,

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as can be understood from the previous sections, Kalliyani’s relatives did not relate to Kunjan in an ordered manner, that is, who is connected to whom, and how. To some extent, they not only would not, but they could not do this, precisely because kinship connections were multiple and intricate. Kunjan had to learn this for himself by living among them, witnessing their engagements and learning who used which kinship term for whom, when and why. He had to become familiar with the whole plurality of relatives, and their diverse and manifold relations with one another, as well as with their changing circumstances, in order to understand from the context to which relative a term referred in a particular dyadic exchange. This took time. Indeed, in such a closely interrelated community there are multiple kinship routes connecting people, and always different kinship terms that one might choose to use. Using kinship terms does not require merely knowing the terms but, furthermore, a familiarity with changing and intricate personal circumstances, and with the broader field of relations, and which terms other Nayaka concurrently use. Thus, because people were related to Kalliyani in multiple ways, through many routes, and just as much among themselves, the ‘husband– wife’ relation with Kalliyani opened a vista of possibilities as to how Kunjan could address and be addressed by her relatives. Tactically shifting between kinship terms in any particular dyadic case predicates and regenerates an intimate knowledge of relations with the entire plurality of immediate relatives. Another issue is that, like many other Nayaka couples I knew, Kunjan and Kalliyani were not married ceremonially; they gradually started to live together as husband and wife. As I have gathered from other couples who had gone through this process during my fieldwork, such a process is often gradual, with its ups and downs, and with fluctuations in the degree to which the couple not only sleep together at night but publicly share everyday domestic work, the latter counting significantly in constituting them as husband and wife in the eyes of others. The fluctuating state of the relationship attracts a great deal of public attention, with retrospective stories about magic potions put in the food of one of the lovers that make him or her think only about the other, and forget all his or her own relatives, and so on (see more in Bird-David 2017a, chs. 3, 4). During this process, opinions keep changing as to whether the relation is already a mave (a regionally used word translatable as ‘marriage’); some relatives think it is, and others think it is not, and some change their assessment from time to time. It takes time for opinions to settle and converge. The birth of a child can often lead to this convergence. In the interval – one that can last even a few years – the use of kinship terms for address is likely to be confusing and unstable, all the more so in this closely related community, where changing a kinship term can have a domino effect by re-shuffling and re-constituting old and new kinship routes within the entire community.

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The Dravidian terminology that Nayaka used compounds the problems. The same set of terms is used in the terminology for those described in English as ‘in-laws’ and cross-relatives (relatives through the opposite-sex siblings of parents). For example, bhava officially describes an older brother-in-law (wife’s brother and sister’s husband) and a cross-cousin (mother’s brother’s son and father’s sister’s son). In the ideal Dravidian marriage, when one marries one’s mother’s brother’s daughter, the bhava is at once both. But this is a Dravidian ideal from which many Nayaka marriages deviated, if only because of severe demographic limits on available marriage partners in a very small-scale society. In the cases that I know of, there have been almost as many instances of marriages between parallel cousins as between cross-cousins. Furthermore, rather than always following the logic of the Dravidian kinship system, with its essential distinction between blood and marriage relations, some Nayaka couples I knew at times practically used the same kinship terms in referring to or addressing the relatives of one of them, achieving in this way a certain convergence of their own kinship worlds. For all these reasons along with others, the use of kinship terms for address required and reproduced familiarity with the whole community. The rhetorical use of relation terms reflected the prior process of living together and growing familiarity. Ironically, the availability of outside names – ‘Kunjan’, in this case – afforded a longer process of familiarization because one could in the meantime use the outside personal names. At the same time, the availability of outside personal terms, even if used inconsistently, started to erode the traditional system. One can draw an analogy between the effect of increasingly using outside personal names and of using in later years buses and hired jeeps. In common, these outside means facilitated broadening the horizons of visiting and thus the scope of a larger community of relatives. Familiarity, plural belonging and the use of kinship terms for address and reference helped to produce and reproduce a familiar universe of relatives, where ideally, and quite commonly, everyone knew everyone else, and how everyone else was related to each and all of the others.

Conclusions This chapter has pointed to the rhetorical aspect of foragers’ kinship terms as an everyday means of reference and address. It highlights the rhetorical tension in the analysis of kinship among immediate hunter-gatherers, more specifically analysis in English, a language which is not God-given but has its own historical and cultural antecedents. This generally known problem in anthropology has been addressed in such fields as economic anthropology,

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where using terms from capitalist economies in the analysis of pre-capitalist economic systems was much debated and effort was made to develop suitable terms. This chapter presses the need to do so in the field of kinship, a field which some might wrongly view as the most conservative because it concerns domestic intimate relations (Strathern 1992). This chapter especially cautions against reading the individual, partial, categorical, dyadic and logo-centric basis of the modern English kinship system into the indigenous world. Rather, my main argument in this chapter is that the use of kinship terms among some hunter-gatherers, to the contrary, produces a sense of communal belonging, at once plural, diverse and immediate. These hunter-gatherers show us an option that is not necessarily unique to them, while being increasingly eroded as they are increasingly subjected to states’ regimes of individuating personal names. In their system, we can say that ‘the person’ is part of ‘the relative’, rather than the reverse. Rather than Schneider’s dictum that ‘the relative is less than the person’, here one can say that ‘the person is less than the relative’. Nurit Bird-David studied social anthropology at Cambridge University (PhD, 1983), and is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel. She previously worked at Tel Aviv University and was a visiting scholar at Cambridge University (1991), Harvard University (2007–8) and University College London (2017). She was president of the Israeli Anthropological Association in 2010–12. Her interests are the study of hunter-gatherer societies, kinship, economic anthropology, reciprocity, and more recently personhood and ‘securitization’. She conducted field research on the Nakaya in India, on which she recently published her monograph Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World (University of California Press, 2017). She has also published many papers in collective volumes and in leading journals, including Current Anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Ethnos and American Ethnologist.

Notes 1. For further elaborations, see my recent book (Bird-David 2017a) which used some of the ideas presented here, developed and broadened them, and provides the broader theoretical context of my thinking about them. On hunter-gatherer kinship, see also Bird-David 2019. 2. Basically a naming which is itself an act of rhetoric. 3. The same holds for a host of other English words that are used in the domains of both kinship and knowledge: for example, ‘affinity’, ‘connection’, ‘generate’, ‘reproduce’, ‘create’, ‘issue’. ‘Affinity’, for example, refers to structural resemblance as well as relationship by marriage, or an alliance between consociates. ‘Connection’ describes the joining of

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words and ideas by a logical process as well as the joining of persons through marriages or (more rarely) consanguinity. My own PhD fieldwork in 1978–79 and return visits in 1989, 2001 and 2012, as well as Daniel Naveh’s and Noa Lavi’s PhD fieldwork, under my supervision, during 2003–4, and four spells during 2010–14, respectively. See discussion of this case also in Bird-David 2017a. The path continued down the steep valley to another community of Nayaka, at the far horizons of the Gir area which, due to limitations of space, I leave out of this story. Nama sonta did not exclude the close non-Nayaka neighbours (see Bird-David 1994: 594).

References Barnard, Alan. 1978. ‘Universal Systems of Kin Categorization’, African Studies 37: 69–81. ———. 1992. Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bird, Nurit (later Bird-David). 1982. ‘“Inside” and “Outside” in Kinship Usage: The HunterGatherer Naiken of South India’, Cambridge Anthropology 7(1–2): 47–57. Bird-David, Nurit. 1994. ‘Sociality and Immediacy: Or Past and Present Conversations on Bands’, Man (N.S.) 29(3): 583–603. ———. 1999. ‘Animism Revisited: Personhood, Environment and Relational Epistemology’, Current Anthropology 40(S1): S67–S91. ———. 2005. ‘The Property of Sharing: Western Analytical Notions, Nayaka Contexts’, in T. Widlok and T. Wolde (eds), Property and Equality: Vol. 1, Ritualization, Sharing, Egalitarianism. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 201–16. 2008. ‘Feeding Nayaka Children and English Readers: A Bifocal Ethnography of Parental Feeding in “The Giving Environment”’, Anthropological Quarterly 81(3): 523–50. ———. 2017a. Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2017b. ‘Before Nation: Scale-Blind Anthropology and Foragers’ Worlds of Relatives’, Current Anthropology 58(2): 209–26. ———. 2019 ‘Where Have All the Kin Gone: On Hunter-Gatherers’ Sharing, Kinship and Scale’, in N. Lavi and D.E. Friesem (eds), Towards a Broader View of Hunter Gatherer Sharing. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University, pp. 15–25. Bodenhorn, Barbara. 2000. ‘“He Used to Be My Relative”: Exploring the Bases of Relatedness among Inupiat of Northern Alaska’, in J. Carsten (ed.), Cultures of Relatedness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 128–48. Carsten, Janet. 2007. ‘Constitutive Knowledge: Tracing Trajectories of Information in New Contexts of Relatedness’, Anthropological Quarterly 80(2): 403–26. Gardner, Peter M. 2000. Bicultural Versatility as a Frontier Adaptation among Paliyan Foragers of South India (Studies in the History and Civilizations of India). Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. Ingold, Tim. 1999. ‘On the Social Relations of the Hunter-Gatherer Band’, in R. Lee and R. Daly (eds), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 399–410.

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Kan, Sergei (ed.). 2001. Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lavi, Noa. 2018. ‘Developing Relations: Rethinking the Experience of Aid and Development Interventions, a Case Study from the Nayaka of South India’, PhD dissertation, University of Haifa. Lee, Richard B., and Irven DeVore (eds). 1968. Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine. Meillassoux, Claude. 1973. ‘On the Mode of Production of the Hunting Band’, in P. Alexandre (ed.), French Perspectives in African Studies. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, pp. 187–203. Morris, Brian. 1982. Forest Traders: A Socio-Economic Study of the Hill Pandaram. London: Athlone. Myers, Fred. 1986. Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press and Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Naveh, Daniel. 2007. ‘Continuity and Change in Nayaka Epistemology and Subsistence Economy: A Hunter Gatherer Case from South India’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Haifa. Nuttall, Mark. 2000. ‘Choosing Kin: Sharing and Subsistence in a Greenlandic Hunting Community’, in P.P. Schweitzer (ed.), Dividends of Kinship: Meanings and Uses of Social Relatedness. London: Routledge, pp. 33–61. Redmond, Anthony. 2005. ‘Strange Relatives: Mutualities and Dependencies between Aborigines and Pastoralists in the Northern Kimberley’, Oceania 75(3): 234–46. Schneider, David M. 1968. American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Schneider, David M., and George C. Homans. 1955. ‘Kinship Terminology and the American Kinship System’, American Anthropologist 57: 1195–208. Service, Elman R. 1966. The Hunters. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1995. The Relation: Issues in Complexity and Scale. Cambridge: Prickly Pear (Pamphlet No. 6). Woodburn, James. 1980. ‘Hunters and Gatherers Today and Reconstruction of the Past’, in E. Gellner (ed.), Soviet and Western Anthropology. London: Duckworth, pp. 95–107.

CHAPTER 4

The Rhetoric of Kinship ‘Doing Kinship’ – Some Mambila Cases David Zeitlyn       

Ethnomethodology and anthropological post-modernism have provoked us to re-examine the anthropological enterprise in strongly contrasting ways. This chapter argues that the rhetoric culture approach (www.rhetoricculture.org) provides a fruitful alternative to anthropological post-modernism and that an ethnomethodological stance provides means to explore rhetoric culture on the ground. Conversation-analytical approaches can help unpack the way different rhetorical tactics are deployed, sometimes as humour, other times as claims to power and influence. I provide some cases that demonstrate this with reference to kinship, discussing three specific instances from continuing fieldwork with Mambila people in Cameroon. In their time, both ethnomethodology and anthropological post-modernism have been seen as heretical. Ethnomethodology sought to change the course of sociology, claiming that sociology had confused its object with its subject: explanans for explanation. It claimed to analyse precisely the unexamined premises of conventional sociological explanation. For example, how is it that I am able to exchange greetings in English, let alone in Mambila, granted both the uncertainties of the world (what Michael Carrithers [2008] terms ‘vicissitudes’) and the limitless expansion of context necessary to comprehend a single utterance? The solution offered by conversation analysis (which was developed as a part of ethnomethodology) provides pointers to key moments in social action when features of a social system are easier to understand. This provides anthropologists with a valuable method to achieve their goal of understanding the outlines of social process.1

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It is a truism within economic anthropology that human actors are not the profit-seeking rational maximizers who populate the idealized world of academic economics (see Davis 1992). To acknowledge this does not render the study of economic activity impossible. Perhaps we should follow the shift of emphasis implicit in the last sentence and talk of the study of ‘kinship activity’ (or the ‘processes of kinship’ following Carsten [1997]), rather than ‘kinship’. A parallel move from ‘Kinship’ to ‘kinship’ is a symbolic gesture to accompany that change in emphasis. What Schneider (1984) finds unacceptable in Kinship studies is little more than the danger of (Whitehead’s notion of) ‘misplaced concretism’, which Gregory Bateson already warned against in Naven, in 1936 ([1936/1958] 1980). Bateson was supremely conscious of the distance between the theoretical apparatus and the phenomena he was using it to understand. Such consciousness must be constantly maintained, but should not paralyse us. The analytic move, the grasp for understanding, is a particularly human ambition. Moreover, we must recognize that although this is not an exclusively anthropological goal, anthropological analysis attempts to make the conceptual process explicit, to reveal the culture-boundedness of analysis itself. In that final step we see both the ultimate challenge to, and the appeal of, anthropology.

From Kinship to Kinship Processes The processual approach, particularly via rhetorical processes, as we shall see, can reinvigorate the study of kinship, freeing it from the doldrums in which it languished since Needham (1971) and Schneider (1984).2 Reification or misplaced concretism is one of the bogeys of anthropology and it is largely responsible for the problems here.

Against Schneider and the Tide of Fashion Schneider argued that kinship as an etic category has no analytic virtue because there are societies with no emic correlates to such a category (1984: 153– 55, especially 154). He often cites the set of economics, politics and kinship as false categories precisely because they lack equivalents in many societies. Yet one of the first things that anthropology undergraduates are taught is that such terms have analytic value, though they must be used with caution. Analytical categories are used to separate intertwined aspects of social life. Someone interested in the economics of western societies may well seek cross-cultural comparisons, for example with the economic aspects of Nuer society. That there are no purely economic institutions anywhere does not prevent the study

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of economic aspects of peoples’ life. It is not iconoclastic to suggest that Wall Street, the Bourse or ‘the City (of London)’ are more than purely economic institutions. Returning to kinship, Schneider argues that an obsession with descent (erroneously bolstered by the discovery of genetics) has been foisted onto an unsuspecting world, much of which has different concerns. His argument, following Bateson’s use of Whitehead’s term, misplaces concretism. It treats kinship as an object, or at least as an either-or quality, whereas I would see it as an aspect of human life which admits of degrees, and which may be defined by indicating some paradigm cases. This is, of course, a Wittgensteinian approach, and Schneider would have disputed my selection of paradigms as being ethnocentric. But I claim them as paradigms only for analysts (I am being analytocentric, not ethnocentric).3 Kinship as an etic category is to be used by anthropologists to approach society, and ultimately to understand the ways in which the members of that society understand and represent themselves to themselves. Naively,4 it remains un-deconstructed that every society must eat (economics), manage interpersonal relationships (politics) and reproduce (kinship). People may not be explicitly concerned with where babies come from or how babies are distributed among available breasts and care-givers, but willynilly these tasks must be done. Anthropologists tend to be interested in how these work out in practice and what local explanations are given (or withheld) for such actions. One of the ultimate goals of social anthropology is to discover how people understand their world. This goal is just as important if a group professes no interest in an aspect of their life as it is when an elaborate explanation is readily offered. Ironically, it is by focusing on reference terminologies that anthropologists become vulnerable to Schneider’s charges of ethnocentrism. If we move from the symbolic ‘cultural’ level on which he concentrates to social structure and look at the wider picture, his arguments lose their force (see Feinberg 1979, 2001 and Kuper 1999 for variations on this argument). Having sketched a set of theoretical concerns, I next consider three examples of talk which implicates kinship. These examples do more than that: they provide small examples of how rhetorical praxis is manifested in mundane interaction.

Introduction to Mambila The Mambila lie on either side of the Nigeria/Cameroon border, mostly living on the Mambila Plateau in Nigeria. A smaller number (c. 12,000) are to be found in Cameroon, especially at the foot of the Mambila Plateau escarpment, on the Tikar Plain. My fieldwork has been largely restricted to these latter

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groups, and in particular to the village of Somié. Somié had a population of approximately one thousand (based on the official 1986 tax census) at the time of original fieldwork starting in 1985. Self-sufficient in food, the villagers have grown coffee as a cash crop since the early 1960s. Cameroonian Mambila on the Tikar Plain have adopted the Tikar institution of the chiefship, yet their social structure otherwise closely resembles that described for the Nigerian village of Warwar by Rehfisch (1972) based on fieldwork in 1953. At that period, Nigerian Mambila did not have the same type of institutionalized chiefship as is found in Cameroon. In Nigeria, villages were organized on gerontocratic principles, and largely lacked political offices. The system of exchange marriage described by Rehfisch (1960) has now vanished, and with it the two sorts of named group which recruited through different combinations of descent, marriage type (exchange or bridewealth) and residence. Marriage is viripatrilocal, and is increasingly on the basis of courtship, although bridewealth is still a major factor. However, since bridewealth may be paid in instalments over a number of years, it is not cited as a reason for the failure of young men to marry. Zeitlyn (1993)5 provides information about the kinship terminology; Zeitlyn (1994) includes a more general ethnographic introduction. I am familiar to everyone in the village, where I have been a regular visitor since 1985. My strange accent, my obsessive questions and my sound recorders are well known to all but recent arrivals in Somié. In the course of previous research, I have undertaken extensive participant observation, focusing initially on traditional religion, and then used census data, genealogies and archival research to examine the demographic history of the village (Zeitlyn and Bagg 2000) as background to a study of family talk (Zeitlyn 2005).

Joking about Proper Usage: ‘He’s Just Like His Father’; Names and Likeness in Mambila Talk This section considers a short extract from a conversation that took place in Somié village in 1993. I hope I can convey some of my pleasure at finding such a wonderful example. It is no small challenge to an ethnographer first to see the jokes at all, and secondly to be able to share them. Among the perennial problems of working with naturally occurring speech is that one is often most interested in some of the relatively rare occurrences of everyday speech. This is, of course, a motive for using elicitation frames and other more or less controlled research techniques. Without reliance on systematic sampling, research such as my own, which eschews the artificiality of asking questions about the small things that fascinate, for the ‘purity’ of naturally occurring conversation (in this case in the absence of the ethnographer), can only hope to collect

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Table 4.1. Example One: Tape 9304b recorded on 26 September 1993. Y:Allah, wo [ŋene ko gi

Y: Allah, you [see it all

W:

W:

Useni ko Monica

Please there Monica

Y: Hən né ŋuna yəə, ne [nguna Tam

Y: this is your child, it’s [Tam’s child

W:

W:

Ne nguna Tam

It’s Tam’s child

mə ŋung yɔr man takpuk kpung

with its black shiny skin like so!

MS; Emile () wò fela mi wa? {Laughter}

MS: Emile () are you identical to me? {Laughter}

W: À we ne ka wò.

W: He’s just like you.

Koke yəə, a wa, à wa də fada wa.

Look you, he’s here, he’s here like what?

De sa wo na ka də yə ŋuna Sondue ne ki cén.

For this one, you can say the children of Sondue are all one.

MS: Hey Sondue ne yili makuú sen. Wò jə ne () Ne jam yə wa?

MS: Hey, Sondue is the name of her makuú. You say () Is that good?

W: Né bɔ` makuú de sa mì lo ko rə ne bu hi wa?

W: Those makuú that I know of, where are they?

Mə mi se nde a bu yili gogo den.

So I can honour their name.

Key:

Speakers:

[ marks the beginning of overlap.

W =Wəkə Donica

Comments are included in {}

MS = Sondue Michel

() is a small pause. (.) a slightly longer one.

Y = Yagatabə

enough data to include some unusual examples. We cast our nets and hope that eventually a different species of fish will be caught. The recording took place at the house of Wəkə Donica, a wife of Nyangi. Previously she had been married to Tanda, a FFZ of Sondue Michel, who was named for Sondue, his paternal grandfather, Wəkə’s first husband’s MB, or, in other words her makuú.6 So Sondue joked that she should avoid his name just as she would avoid those of her senior affines. He aspired to his grandfather’s seniority or status, so Wəkə should not utter his name. Sondue and Wəkə are of approximately the same age, and her marriage to Tanda was long over, so Sondue’s claim was, if taken literally, misplaced. The conclusion, which recalls Sperber’s account of symbolism (1974), is that this is humour. To share the

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Figure 4.1. Diagram of the relationships involved. Figure created by David Zeitlyn.

joke, we must understand the network of both genealogy and social relationships, and the rhetorical play which made the interchange funny at the time for those speakers.7 Mambila people say that children may take after either parent or neither. In abstract discussion, boys are said to tend to resemble their fathers, and girls their mothers. Mambila interlocutors do not connect this with either the matrilateral inheritance of witchcraft (lɔp) or with accounts of procreation. To say that a child resembles a parent, more than a passing similarity is required: the likeness must be immediately apparent, as is the case with Sondue Michel and his children. There is more in the transcript: Yagatabə (his MMZD) and (following her) Wəkə first refer to Sondue as Tam. This is his name8 as used by his maternal kin such as Yagatabə (see the genealogy above), his ‘mother’s-side’ name (to translate the Mambila idiom).

Social Norms and Comments upon Them Not all norms are realized in action, but many are. Grice’s maxims for efficient communication9 have long been recognized as examples of norms honoured in the (implicationally rich) breach rather than being explicitly followed. There is a long-standing, unsatisfactory debate about the status of norms (or social facts) and how they should be recognized or analysed. I wish to avoid direct involvement in the debate on the status of norms, although there are clear connections between my data, my analysis of it, and the terms of the debate.

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Let us start with the use of names and kin terms. It is a norm of English (both American and British) that parents use personal names to address their children but expect to receive kin terms. In another paper, Andrew Wilson and I have shown that in some natural language data from America this is demonstrably the case. Yet the same norms serve to mark as liberal other families in which children use personal names for their parents deliberately and markedly (see Wilson and Zeitlyn 1995; Zeitlyn 2005). To take another case (although one in which I have no data to analyse), mother-in-law avoidance is often manifested by strict avoidance of the mother-in-law’s name (as is the case in the years following marriage in Mambila). This, I imagine, would be reflected in sound recordings of naturally occurring speech made, for example, in Mambila households. There will simply be no (or very few) occurrences in which a junior affine addresses a senior affine by name, whereas mothersin-law will actually address their daughters-in-law by name. I take that simple asymmetry to be, if not a demonstrable ‘fact’, then at least a contested symptom of a particular configuration of social relations, usually summarized as ‘mother-in-law avoidance’. Hence the comments in the transcript, indeed the possibility of joking about this, attest to Mambila speakers having concepts of stable norms, and it is these with which I am concerned. In the conversation from which these extracts are taken, Sondue and Diko were talking about the past, because Diko was one of the senior people in the village, respected widely for her knowledge. They were doing this with an eye on the tape recorder – which in this case was a literal metonym for the researcher. As the first wife of the Chief Konaka (who was chief until his death late in 1949), Diko was at the centre of ritual organization and village politics for at least the last sixty years, until a little before her death late in 2004. The recording was made after I had asked Sondue to talk to Diko to follow up some conversations I had had with her, without the constraints that my linguistic inabilities put on the conversation. The short extracts given here demonstrate the way in which the genealogy is given. The first extract starts with a throwaway comment, ‘my son Ndi’, which Sondue picks up – either because of his ignorance or as a useful lead for the historical researcher. As Diko thought about it, she realized Sondue was too young to have known Ndi as an adult (Ndi died in a road accident in 1953). Hence, ‘Where were you?’ (the implied answer is ‘nowhere’). So she explained that Ndi was her first child and that he was followed by another child called Menandi after an earlier chief who had died shortly before his birth. When that son died, her next was given the same name (it was the second Menandi who was then living in the city of Banyo). There are two further points to note: first, the genealogy she gave does not mention any of her daughters (one of whom also lives in Banyo!). Second, the interactivity of the exchange must not be overlooked. Sondue makes his own

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Table 4.2. Example Two: the presentation of genealogies. Sample data – talking about the arrival of missionaries: T9306A #335 recorded on 15 October 1993. For text and translation, see online appendix at www.mambila.info/rhetoric_ appendix.html. DM: Né ŋuna mò fə to to. Bô Kolaka.

DM: He was my very first child. WithKolaka.

Aa sá bí kɔɔ´ , bí na hi wa?

But then you were nowhere, where were you?

Aa sá bí kɔɔ´ , bí na hi wa?

But then you were nowhere, where were you?

Weeheee, sâ né fə huan mò to.

Weeheee, that was my first child.

contribution – identifying Kuŋ (one of Diko’s sons, already long dead at the time of recording) via his surviving widow, and volunteering that he, Sondue, had seen Kuŋ when he was a child. Few anthropologists working outside of their own community are in a position to make this sort of contribution, let alone while pursuing the ‘genealogical method’. Elsewhere in the same transcript there is a long account of the sequence of gifts and work that ideally accrued during the years of betrothal in the early twentieth century, and the different quantities of oil, beer and chickens that were given to the bride’s parents. If the examples given above are too linguistic for some readers’ taste, then in the arrangement of marriage we find action – the prospective husband farmed the fields of his parents-in-law, working in the fields of both his fiancée’s parents. He and his family laboured to provide the palm oil and beer given in large quantities to their affines. So, too, parents work to raise their children, and benefit from their children’s work. These may be truisms, but they bear repetition in the face of the facile statement that kinship does not exist (Schneider 1984; Needham 1971). It is not just that an individual may benefit from someone else’s labour, as Diko’s mother’s sister Lè did from Diko’s. It is that it was seen as fit and proper that Diko’s mother should send Diko to live with Lè (just as in contemporary Somié one girl has lived for the last decade with her mother’s full sister who has only one son). As Esther Goody (1973, 1982) has so clearly demonstrated, fostering provides a clear demonstration that the complex set of ideas which constitute kinship are an essential part of human ideology and sociality, precisely by removing some of the ‘normal’ correlates of kinship. This manner of phrasing allows for ‘family resemblances’ of different local understandings of kinship, rather than identifying any putatively necessary or essential defining features. I do not accept that it is therefore a less fitting an-

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alytic concept. Similarly, genetic engineering changes some variables, revealing our unstated assumptions about ‘kinship at the core’ (q.v. Strathern 1981, 1992; Edwards 1999).

Clarity and Confusion When Talking about Mambila Genealogy In this section I describe a short piece of conversation about local history in which a genealogy became an issue in the talk of a group of Mambila men. The implications of the rhetoric deployed, of the style of argument, are discussed.

An Incident during Fieldwork: Background A Saturday afternoon, market day in May 1998. People were wandering about, moving from beer drink to beer drink. Some were at meetings of rotating credit societies, others in small shelters in the market place. A group gathered in the palace square at the centre of the village. Unexceptionally, some elders were conversing; a few passers-by stopped to listen. That the anthropologist was among the passers-by was also a commonplace. Fieldnotes 981/26 Mama Simon was standing in middle of a circle of men – on the edge of the palace square. I was talking to Baba Joel some distance away – I realized – half-overhearing that Mama was lecturing them about something. I asked BJ who said it was about the past so I got out my minidisk recorder and we approached the circle. Because of our arrival it got a bit more genealogical than it had been but it was certainly about kin to begin with. But BJ started throwing his weight about and Wg wouldn’t have it. NB all but espy Wg were drunk. Speakers: Mama Simon, Baba J, Wg and Nɔ Mark at the end. Silent were Nyakati, Samuel (Ŋgwa’s son) and 3 others – a tight little circle.

Elaboration written on the following Monday: 6.30 pm Saturday 2 May 1998. End of a long hot Saturday. Market day in Somié. It is early in the rainy season; the rain often threatens but does not fall. It is the time of maximum work in the fields so market day is eagerly looked forward to, and people take every opportunity to relax with the lo-

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cally brewed maize beer that is distributed either for sale or at meetings of rotating credit societies. By the end of the afternoon on most market days many people in the village are feeling the effects of alcohol to a greater or lesser extent. I emerge for a stroll, trying to slip into the bar for my daily bottle of beer without exciting too much comment. On the edge of the Palace square I bump into BJ who had failed to come and see me as promised that afternoon. He apologises loudly, effusively, a little too much. He asks if we should go and talk now, I say ‘no tomorrow will be fine’ (thinking that he will be sober in the morning). I notice a group of men standing not far off clustered around Mama Simon who is lecturing them about something. I ask, what is he talking about and BJ says something in the past so I get out my recorder and go and join them, BJ follows. Mama Simon appears to have been outlining someone’s family history. He carries on despite our arrival but BJ (who is knowledgeable about village genealogies and has conducted several village censuses for me) was moved to intervene. This leads to a heated discussion about the sequence of children and the way that marriage was organized. Wg who is perhaps the most drunk of all those present argued the most loudly, and before I turn off the recorder retreats with someone else to voice his disagreement. At this point most of the audience who had been silently standing around chose to leave, so I leave with them.

The transcript and translation are included as an online appendix at www .mambila.info/rhetoric_appendix.html.

Analytical Remarks The first and perhaps the most important thing to note is the importance of genealogical connection in this conversation. Relationships are described in terms of who bore whom. It should also be noted that in this sense men bear their children. Does that statement presume the importance of genealogical connection? I think not. The main sense of the word ŋar is to give birth. A secondary sense is its application to men. Genealogies are described as sequences of ‘bearings’, for example: À

ŋar

() Tomokeh,

à

ŋar

Ŋgeaá

She

bore

() Tomokeh,

she

bore

Ŋgeaá

This conversation reveals several features of Mambila kinship. Perhaps the most basic is the relative unimportance of genealogies in Mambila social structure. It is not important to maintain them and hence they are not issues of great political dispute as is the case in unilineal societies such as the Lug-

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bara (Middleton 1960). Without pressure to maintain a genealogy, it becomes a matter of casual dispute, as in the conversation here considered. No one is bothered; ultimately no one really is concerned about who married whom or who gave birth to whom two generations ago. Nothing follows from either possibility. Patterns of descent have no major social implications. So genealogies are maintained in a haphazard fashion, and individuals who meet an unfortunate but memorable end, such as falling from a palm tree, are more easily placed. However, as the conversation demonstrates, people tend to remember that someone fell from a palm tree, rather than exactly whose son they were. However, the discussion turned into a clash of wills between several of the speakers (I suspect encouraged by my presence). Issues of authority and influence are created, demonstrated, renewed and developed in small, individually trivial instances such as these. Especially in societies without formal hierarchies of offices, rhetorical achievement through argument and interaction is all there is; there are no titles or positions to compete for (see Zeitlyn 1994, 1992). There are no clear winners and there need be none. The participants leave with the sense of one person having prevailed over another as a rhetorical accomplishment. This contributes to their next interactions with those parties, and hence slowly, incrementally, reputations are won and lost. It is through such incremental interactions that social status is emergent (cf. Girke and Meyer 2011: 2).

A Further Confusion: Accounts and the Fixity of the Past Accounts of actions (and meanings) presented another problem. A misleading impression is given of the fixity of the past.10 Indigenous accounts, our own among them, give a misleading impression of certainty and concreteness. Past actions are described as if they were unambiguous, and planned with a single specifiable goal in mind. Such retrospective definition or post-hoc rationalization typifies the human condition. But because of this, accounts of actions must not be taken at face value. Retrospective accounts are as much a part of the problem of human action as the actions they refer to, and sociological accounts are no different. Suchman (1987) argues that sociology mistakenly aspires to produce ‘scientific’ versions of indigenous accounts. Yet the very terms of these accounts form some of the most interesting and most challenging aspects of human sociality and should therefore be examined rather than taken for granted and used in explanations.11 Just as the past is made and comes to be fixed, for the time being, so meaning is emergent from interaction; it is produced as a joint (social) accomplishment by the ensemble of the speakers and others present. It is a rhetorical accomplishment (Strecker and Tyler 2009: 3) and emphatically not a solitary

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intention, located in an individual’s head, however loudly the western philosophical tradition asserts (or assumes) that it is (see Clark 1996 for a systematic rebuttal of the traditional view). Ethnomethodology can provide great assistance for those studying how humans make meaning. For example, the notion of ‘repairs’ is central to the ethnomethodological research programme: in normal practice meaning is assumed, presumed, taken for granted. We work on that basis until we see reason to doubt. A breakdown in conversation can lead to our addressing each other’s understanding. It is at such points that meaning is explicitly negotiated between co-conversants. From the conversational steps taken to effect repairs following a breakdown in the smooth flow of conversation, those involved acquire further grounds for their assumptions, which might not be questioned at the next conversational round. Those grounds are, in practice, adequate for the task at hand.12 Meaning is emergent from the morass of social activity, and may be examined most effectively when problems (of whatever sort) occur. So anthropologists really are, or should be, looking for trouble (see Moerman 1988: 51–53; Strecker and Tyler 2009: 5). Not just at the extreme end of ‘What do you mean?’ but where disputes arise about the correct course of a ritual, or about who should inherit a field or cow. Trouble spots are points at which meaning is at issue. The resolution of the problem results in some sort of (more or less temporary) consensus, even if it is nothing more than an agreement to disagree. This general perspective is one in which meaning is an emergent property13 of social interaction. On this view it is located not in our heads, but in socially constructed space: in the interactions between social actors. This is a triumph of sociology (in the widest sense of the term) over philosophy. It is a triumph of the Rhetoric Culture project. More importantly, it serves to orient our research practice towards troublesome but mundane interaction. This is more or less where it has always been, but now we can see why it has been so productive. The key term here, along with ‘process’, is ‘emergent’ (see Clark 1996: 22–23 for connections with unintended consequences, and Sawyer 2001, 2002 for parallels with the philosophy of mind). Emergent properties are not consciously strived for and they are often not available to the conscious reflection of the actors concerned, yet they are important features of their lives. Consider Gilbert Lewis’s (1986) transcript of the construction of the Gnau (in Papua New Guinea) Panu’et ritual: there is dissent; conflicting voices give substance to our understanding. The dispute sets limits for the possible local interpretations of the case in point (as illustrated over the longue durée by Bloch’s examination of Merina circumcision ritual in his From Blessing to Violence [1986]). Moreover, it provides a public demonstration of the resolution that was achieved. Life goes on and the talk that is part of it goes on too. There is no time to stop the bus for straw philosophers to catch up.

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Conclusions: Studying Process If kinship is an emergent aspect of human life, then it is part of the process of social existence. A processual anthropology has been announced more times than it has been achieved. A justly celebrated example is the work of Janet Carsten, for whom ‘kinship is a process of becoming, not a fixed state’ (1997: 12). She continues to say that: the approach I have adopted has also involved rethinking what anthropologists mean by kinship. I have tried to capture the texture of relations between those who live together, and to show how kinship, far from being an analytic abstraction, is part of the fabric of people’s lives. Kinship is not a lifeless and pre-given force which in some mysterious way determines the form of people’s relations with each other. On the contrary, it consists of the many small actions, exchanges, friendships and enmities that peoples themselves create in their everyday lives. For most people it is perhaps the heart of their creativity. But the content of these relations is not only continuously created anew; it is also shaped by long-term political processes. And this has also involved rethinking what kinship is – from a different angle. The kinship I describe here cannot be separated off from politics or economics or history but is embedded in them. The meanings of kinship cannot be separately analysed. This of course is another truism – this time of anthropology – but it is more often avowed than actually demonstrated. (Carsten 1997: 22–23)

Some of the methods I have described above provide means by which we can make a long, cool, systematic examination of the processes of kinship. A crucial change is in the primary data to be analysed. Rather than rely exclusively on my own experiences mediated through fieldnotes, bolstered by conversations with informants and the results of questionnaires (all of which I have used more or less exhaustively), the core data analysed are transcripts of recordings of everyday conversations. Neither the presentation of the data in a manner meaningful to non-local readers nor the production and subsequent analysis of the transcripts is straightforward. Here I have attempted both. The study of kinship as it emerges from people’s practice (which includes their conversation) is as important to twenty-first-century anthropology as Rivers’ genealogical method made it central at the beginning of the twentieth century. The theoretical and analytical problem now posed is one of how to use conversational data as we proceed with the analysis. In principle, we can infer intentions in a manner similar to that of co-conversationalists. We, just as participants, can detect snubs, irony, politeness or its absence. The problem is to

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systematize and to make explicit the basis upon which we do this (the debate between Schegloff [1997, 1999a, b, c] and Billig [1999a, b] has clarified some of these issues). Anthropological theory seeks to produce concepts that help us to understand societies around the world, particularly when viewed in a comparative frame. Kinship is one of the analytic terms of art that has been helpful and yet frustrating. The approach I have employed encourages the appreciation of meaning as an emergent phenomenon, and critically for this volume, one emerging from mundane rhetorical practice.14 The meaning of words and of actions (whether ritual or not) results from the use of the words and the social context within which this speech event occurs. This poses problems for the analyst that do not arise for the actors. Only analysts are concerned to seek decontextualized, invariant semiotics – and so much the worse for them. Even self-analysis is impossible if that is the goal. Rather than aim for such impossible abstractions, I have set myself a different task which is, if not impossible, then problematic for different reasons. As an analyst I present an account by which others can understand (however imperfectly) how Mambila actors understand the world. Moreover, I seek to convey this in a way that will facilitate comparison. A tall order, which is of course vulnerable to diverse post-modern challenges: what right have I to say this is how it is? My English words do not carry the same resonances as the original Mambila words, let alone the quiddity of Mambila being, and so on. These are absolutist challenges that only engage if I claim to be saying the last word about Mambila life and experience. I am not that naive. However, I do not believe that it is too naive to claim that I have some understanding (flawed, partial, incomplete as it may be) of Mambila life as I have seen it lived over the last thirty years, and since other anthropologists know less about Mambila there is something to convey in my rhetoric about their rhetoric. David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University and Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College. He received his PhD in Anthropology from Kent University (1990). His research interests are anthropology of religion, visual anthropology (photography), West/Central Africa (especially Cameroon), kinship studies, life writing uses of technology, decision-making processes and futurology, sociolinguistics, visualization, archives, and anthropological studies of ICT and research methods. His main fieldwork since 1985 was in Cameroon (among the Mambila people). Apart from ethnographic work on the Mambila, he has published widely on many other topics in anthropology, most recently in PLOS One, Current Anthropology, History and Anthropology, Digital Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology and Journal on the Internet. Recent books are Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers; Excursions in Realist An-

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thropology: A Merological Approach (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), co-authored with Roger Just; and Visual Methods in Social Research (Sage, 2015, 2nd ed.), co-authored with Marcus Banks. Notes Early drafts of this chapter have been read by Mike Fischer and Bill Watson who have, in different ways, helped me to clarify what I was trying to argue, as has more recent discussion with Peter Parkes. I am very grateful to all for their trouble. Anna Rayne’s editing has contributed to the clarity of presentation and she has suffered far more than just my prose style, for which she is owed my perpetual thanks. 1. I am hardly the first to take this approach. As well as the contributors to Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (Gumperz and Hymes [1972] 1986), other anthropologists have used ideas taken from conversation analysis. We must acknowledge, among others, Goldman’s analysis of Huli disputes (1983), Sherzer’s work on the Kuna (1983), the work of the Tedlocks (B. 1982 and D. 1983), Moerman’s work on Thai conversation and social structure (1988), Bilmes also on Thai (1993), Hanks on Maya deixis (1990) and Duranti on Samoan village politics (1994). 2. For other approaches to the central importance of kinship, see, e.g., Strathern 1992; Bouquet 1993; Carsten 1997. 3. Training as an anthropologist alienates one from one’s fellows if they lack a similar experience of academe. Pace Fabian, it is we who are ‘other’. Anthropologists, whether indigenous or not, use a meta-language to write about ‘their’ society. That is the point of the subject. Even if we use a local language as meta-language it will be foreign and peculiar to the ‘subjects’. The best parallel is with linguistics, not imperialism. To write about experience (I am thinking particularly of the organization of turn-taking in conversation) is to do strange things to that experience. If we think about it, we cannot do it. We should recognize this. Similar kinds of understanding (but unformulated) lie beneath our actions. 4. I risk being accused of reductionism. Without some such basic understanding we are unable to begin to understand how other people conceive of the world in which we all live (see Gellner 1975 on radical translation; and Zeitlyn and Just 2014). 5. A short transcript from that paper and a digitized audio recording are available from the Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies at http://www.mambila.info/1993paper/mambila .html. 6. Women use makuú for a husband’s elder siblings and his parents. See Zeitlyn 2005 for Mambila kinship terminology. 7. Vatuk’s research (1982: 70, 92–93) provides detailed examples of usage which show how cultural values (such as modesty or shame in the presence of affines) lead to systematic departures from the use of kin terms as genealogically understood. 8. The complexity of Mambila naming is further discussed in Zeitlyn 2005. 9. These are described by Levinson (1983: 101) as being ‘guidelines for the efficient and effective use of language in conversation to further co-operative ends’. For further discussion and introduction, see Haviland 1988. 10. I am grateful to Lucy Suchman (1987: 47, 50–51) for clarifying much of this; see also Becker 1995. Symmetries between past and future are explored in Zeitlyn 2015.

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11. See Latour 1996 and review by Zeitlyn 1997 for a technological example of this. 12. That this is far from philosophical adequacy remains a problem for philosophers alone. 13. Some would go so far as to say an epiphenomenon, but I would not agree. 14. As a referee for this chapter pointed out, an implication of this approach is that all such kinship practices are rhetoric (or rhetorical in some sense). Indeed, I assume they are all meaningful and amenable to a rhetorical analysis, as I have undertaken with my examples in this chapter, since they are amenable to ‘repairs’.

References Bateson, Gregory. (1936/1958) 1980. Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View. London: Wildwood House. Becker, Alton L. 1995. Beyond Translation: Essays toward a Modern Philology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Billig, Michael. 1999a. ‘Conversation Analysis and the Claims of Naivety’, Discourse and Society 10(4): 572–76. ———. 1999b. ‘Whose Terms? Whose Ordinariness? Rhetoric and Ideology in Conversation Analysis’, Discourse and Society 10(4): 543–58. Bilmes, Jack. 1993. ‘Ethnomethodology, Culture, and Implicature – Toward an Empirical Pragmatics’, Pragmatics: Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association 3(4): 387–409. Bloch, Maurice. 1986. From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual of the Merina of Madagascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bouquet, Mary. 1993. Reclaiming English Kinship: Portuguese Refractions of British Kinship Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Carrithers, Michael. 2008. ‘Introduction’, in M. Carrithers (ed.), Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–17. Carsten, Janet. 1997. The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clark, Herb H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, John. 1992. Exchange (Concepts in the Social Sciences). Buckingham: Open University Press. Duranti, Alessandro. 1994. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoan Village. London: University of California Press. Edwards, Jeanette. 1999. Technologies of Procreation. London: Routledge. Feinberg, Richard. 1979. ‘Schneider’s Symbolic Culture Theory: An Appraisal’, Current Anthropology 20(3): 541–49. ———. 2001. ‘Introduction: Schneider’s Cultural Analysis of Kinship and Its Implications for Anthropological Relativism’, in R. Feinberg and M. Ottenheimer (eds), The Cultural Analysis of Kinship: The Legacy of David Schneider. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, pp. 1–32. Gellner, Ernest. 1975. ‘Ethnomethodology: The Re-Enchantment Industry or The Californian Way of Subjectivity’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 5(3): 431–50. Girke, Felix, and Christian Meyer. 2011. ‘Introduction’, in C. Meyer and F. Girke (eds), The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–31.

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Goldman, Laurence. 1983. Talk Never Dies: The Language of Huli Disputes. London: Tavistock. Goody, Esther N. 1973. Contexts of Kinship: An Essay in the Family Sociology of the Gonja of Northern Ghana (Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1982. Parenthood and Social Reproduction: Fostering and Occupational Roles in West Africa (Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 35). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gudeman, Stephen, and Alberto Rivera. 1990. Conversations in Colombia: The Domestic Economy in Life and Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J., and Dell Hymes (eds). (1972) 1986. Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hanks, William F. 1990. Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space among the Maya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Haviland, John B. 1988. ‘Minimal Maxims: Cooperation and Natural Conversation in Zinacantan’, Mexican Studies 4(1): 79–114. Kuper, Adam. 1999. Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 1996. Aramis or the Love of Technology. London: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno, and Steven Woolgar. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Leach, Edmund. (1987) 1989. ‘Tribal Ethnography – Past, Present, Future’, Cambridge Anthropology 1(2): 1–14. (Reprinted in E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman [eds], History and Ethnicity. London: Routledge, pp. 34–47.) Levinson, Stephen C. 1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, Gilbert. 1986. ‘The Look of Magic’, Man (N.S.) 21(3): 414–37. Middleton, John. 1960. Lugbara Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moerman, Michael. 1988. Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversational Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Needham, Rodney. 1971. ‘Introduction’, in R. Needham (ed.), Rethinking Kinship and Marriage (Monographs of the ASA). London: Tavistock, pp. xiii–cviii. Rapport, Nigel. 1983. ‘Are Meanings Shared and Communicated? A Study of the Diversity of Worldviews in a Cumbrian Village’, Ph.D. dissertation. Manchester: Manchester University. Rehfisch, Farnham. 1960. ‘The Dynamics of Multilinearity on the Mambila Plateau’, Africa 30: 246–61. ———. 1972. The Social Structure of a Mambila Village. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University, Sociology Department (Occasional Paper 2). Sawyer, R. Keith. 2001. ‘Emergence in Sociology: Contemporary Philosophy of Mind and Some Implications for Sociological Theory’, American Journal of Sociology 107(3): 551–85. ———. 2002. ‘Durkheim’s Dilemma: Toward a Sociology of Emergence’, Sociological Theory 20(2): 227–47. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. 1997. ‘Whose Text? Whose Context?’ Discourse and Society 8(2): 165–87. ———. 1999a. ‘Discourse, Pragmatics, Conversation, Analysis’, Discourse and Society 10(4): 405–35.

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———. 1999b. ‘Naiveté vs Sophistication or Discipline vs Self-Indulgence: A Rejoinder to Billig’, Discourse and Society 10(4): 577–82. ———. 1999c. ‘“Schegloff ’s Texts” as “Billig’s Data”: A Critical Reply’, Discourse and Society 10(4): 558–72. Schneider, David M. 1984. A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sherzer, Joel. 1983. Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective. Austin: University of Texas Press. Sperber, Dan. 1974. Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strathern, Marilyn. 1981. Kinship at the Core: An Anthropology of Elmdon, a Village in North West Essex in the Nineteen-Sixties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1992. Reproducing the Future: Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Strecker, Ivo, and Stephen A. Tyler. 2009. ‘Introduction’, in I. Strecker and S.A. Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–18. Suchman, Lucy A. 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tedlock, Barbara. 1982. Time and the Highland Maya. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Tedlock, Dennis. 1983. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Vatuk, Sylvia. 1982. ‘Forms of Address in the North Indian Family’, in Á. Östör, L. Fruzzetti and S. Barnett (eds), Concepts of Person (Harvard Studies in Cultural Anthropology 5). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 56–98. Watson, C. William. 1999. ‘Introduction: The Quality of Being There’, in C.W. Watson (ed.), Being There: Fieldwork in Anthropology. London: Routledge, pp. 1–24. Wilson, Andrew J., and David Zeitlyn. 1995. ‘The Distribution of Person Referring Terms in Natural Conversation’, Research on Language and Social Interaction 28(1): 61–92. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Zeitlyn, David. 1992. ‘Un Fragment de l’Histoire des Mambilas: un Texte du Duabang’, Journal des Africanistes 62(1): 135–50. ———. 1993. ‘Reconstructing Kinship or the Pragmatics of Kin Talk’, Man 28(2): 199–224. ———. 1994. Sua in Somié: Mambila Traditional Religion (Collectanea Instituti Anthropos 41). Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. ———. 1997. ‘Public Transports of Delight: Review Essay Discussing Bruno Latour “Aramis or the Love of Technology”’, Journal of Material Culture 2(1): 119–22. ———. 2004. ‘The Gift of the Gab: Anthropology and Conversation Analysis’, Anthropos 99(2): 451–68. ———. 2005. Words and Processes in Mambila Kinship: The Theoretical Importance of the Complexity of Everyday Life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield). ———. 2015. ‘Looking Forward, Looking Back’, History and Anthropology 26: 381–407. Zeitlyn, David, and Janet Bagg. 2000. ‘Mambila Demography from Archival Sources’, History in Africa 27: 423–36. Zeitlyn, David, and Roger Just. 2014. Excursions in Realist Anthropology: A Merological Approach. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

CHAPTER 5

Establishing Ethos The Rhetorical Work of Bondfriendship Felix Girke       

In the summer of 2003, I first set out to reach the Kara, a small population of horti-pastoralists in the South Omo region of Southern Ethiopia, among whom I was planning to conduct anthropological field research. One might assume this constellation to be fraught with insecurity. I had no language skills, had never met a Kara, had little to offer in material terms, and no practical skills to speak of when it came to Kara subsistence production. Why would anybody even want to host me? As it turned out, this daunting obstacle was overcome rather casually in practice. My graduate advisor, Ivo Strecker, had suggested that I visit his friend Choke from Hamar for guidance. The Hamar are neighbours to the Kara, and very similar in culture and language – in fact, at that point, Kara was often seen as a ‘variation’ or an offshoot of Hamar. Choke understood immediately what I wanted, and declared that I had to go and stay with the family of his friend. He had had a special friend in Kara, Nukunnu Kete, and while Nukunnu had died, he was survived by his wife and sons. They, declared Choke, would take me in. A day later, I drove to Kara, guided by a younger relative of Choke, and eventually reached the hamlet where this family resided. I met the widow, Mudo, and the two sons, Haila (very close to my own age) and Mulla, and many other people, some part of the household, some not. My guide explained that just as Ivo Strecker had lived among the Hamar, learned their language and ‘studied their rituals’, so did I intend to do among the Kara. This turned out to be quite sufficient – from that day on, I had a family in Kara, and my stay there was adequately justified for everybody around.

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Much hinges on the specific nature of the friendship between Choke and Nukunnu, a friendship so solid that it survived even the death of one of them. This friendship, while between individuals, followed a specific cultural format, being, as it were, one instance of a common institution: I had travelled on the path of beltamo, which I translate as ‘bondfriendship’. Choke and Nukunnu had been bel, which is the term of address as well as the term of reference for the partners, and arguably Choke and Ivo Strecker still were. I (as the academic child of Ivo) was well on my way to becoming Haila’s bel, as I continued to regularly visit and stay in Kara with him and his family over the next years.1 The events of this ‘arrival story’ marked my introduction to bondfriendship. The story also serves to set up a contrast to the way such relations are often characterized in the anthropological literature on East Africa, namely in a way that downplays its affective, amicable and intangible aspects, and instead emphasizes the material and economic side. Exploring this contrast allows me to make some points not just about the Kara and their neighbours, but about rhetorical aspects of social relationships in general (see also Girke 2018). Key to this is a comparative moment that I will introduce a little later: the different lens provided by anthropological work from Melanesia, where arguably similar constellations can be found.

Bondfriendship as a Cultural Model The institution beltamo, as it exists among the Hamar, the Kara and their neighbours, can clearly be linked to similar phenomena from the greater region. From across East and North East Africa, there are numerous reports on institutionalized exchanges that exhibit a strong family resemblance. In South Omo specifically, we can even speak of a shared cultural model. This ideal-type bondfriendship is established between two adult men from different ethnic backgrounds and residing in different places, who voluntarily enter into a relationship marked by mutual visits and gifts of mostly livestock and grain, but also the occasional artefact or tool. Hospitality is a major aspect of this practice, but beltamo, through its egalitarian spirit, is distinctly different from asymmetrical host–guest relationships.2 Such pacts, once established and deliberately cultivated, can become very stable over time, and are often sustained by the widows or sons of the erstwhile partners, as it was in my case.3 The commitment to the bond is expressed through references to mutual trust and obligation, to solidarity, and also through the use of specific terms of address and expected behaviour. The partners do right by each other, in this cultural model, and both are elevated by being bel for each other.

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Map 5.1. Map of South Omo with approximate settlement areas (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany).

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Bondfriendship is thus an eminently social practice, and an arena for men to display their virtues and skills. At the same time, academic treatises commonly reduce it to its utilitarian aspects. My aim is to demonstrate, however, that bondfriendship is more richly understood as a multi-faceted rhetorical practice: everything the bond partners do happens in the public eye. Their actions are performative, at times ostentatious, as they create not only their own public image (which I here call ethos) but also the relation itself, which eventually comes to have a value not easily explained by the material benefits accrued. This model, a prototype really, resonates throughout the South Omo region in variable practical manifestations that cross-cut ethnic boundaries.4 While the practice has different names in different languages, it is understood that these terms translate as each other. To provide some more context: the South Omo region is one of the areas least integrated into the Ethiopian state. It borders both Kenya and the Sudan, which some of the local groups cross in transhumance. Ecologically, it is dominated by several mountain ranges, the Omo River and its tributaries, which flows into Lake Turkana, and the lowlands of the Woyto, north of the ‘salt lake’ Chew Bahir (formerly known as Lake Stephanie). Rainfall is sporadic and unreliable. The surface terrain of the area is highly varied, alternating between cool mountains, hot plains and lush riverine valleys. An important feature of the area is the high diversity of groups living there, at the margins of the space controlled by the state infrastructure. While many cultural and economic features are contiguous across the region’s populations, a shifting set of identities is still found, along with a great variety of languages. Ethnicity does not neatly map onto political organization, which makes for a dynamic field. The constellation of relative proximity (the map section is less than 200 km across) combined with the small size of the ethnic polities (with populations often less than 10,000 people) leads to sometimes fuzzy boundaries and mutually adaptive livelihoods (compare Girke 2016). At the geographical and cultural margins suggested by Map 5.1, the bondfriend-relationship seems to slowly meld into ‘patron–client’, ‘preferred partner’ or ‘host–guest’ relations (Girke 2010).5 In claiming the existence of a conceptual prototype with various manifestations, my approach raises the issue of typology, both on the emic and the etic level. While the second section of my text is dedicated to the exploration of the emic perspective, and then verges into comparison with material from Melanesia, I now turn to the contrast mentioned above – the view that such relationships have one specific purpose, namely risk reduction for people living in disadvantageous natural environments.

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In economic anthropology, there has always been a strong drive towards systematization and categorization, not only of the empirical material under consideration, but also of its own vocabulary. Much effort was invested to assign empirical phenomena to either monetary or commodity exchange, to the enigmatic realm of the gift, or, somewhere in between, to ‘barter’ (e.g. Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1997). This separation was generally discussed with an eye on the evolution of institutions, especially the way monetarized economies came and still come about, as in Karl Polanyi’s seminal contribution (1944). Rather than cleaving to these divisions, I characterize the practice of bondfriendship more inductively. Hence, the discussion is informed by debates on barter and the gift, on ceremonial exchange and ecological adaptation, by big men and social networks, without firmly coming down in any one camp. The ethnography of Melanesia is a valuable contrast for my East African data. This fits with Jane Guyer’s emphasis on the foundational role played by work on both Melanesia and Africa for the economic anthropology tradition. Highlighting the question of regionalistic theorizing, or the ‘academic equivalence of dialect differences’ (1999: 233), Guyer called for attempts to approach given issues not merely from the one established vantage point. She directly contrasts the typical Melanesian(ist) emphasis on exchange and its media with the African(ist) focus on domination and power struggle (1999: 237, 239), a stereotypical dichotomy often reproduced by the respective regional specialists. Guyer encourages us to make use of the strengths of both traditions and at the same time overcome these historical biases: ‘It is useful then, to face the multiplicity of starting points and pathways squarely and directly, to try looking for common or overlooked processes, and to revisit old assumptions … critically’ (1999: 245). In this vein, applying a Melanesianist approach in revisiting African case material helped me step outside the academic dialect that is usually brought to bear on discussions of pastoralism. It is difficult to overstress the significance and the emblematic power of ‘the pastoralist’ for East Africa, as a cultural and historical icon of the greater region, as a target of development and the civilizing mission, as a mainstay of anthropological study, as a reservoir of assumptions and stereotype, and as an unruly obstacle to nation-building. Herskovits’ ‘East African cattle complex’, while quite contested, has taken hold of the global imagination (Herskovits 1926), even as pastoral worlds are beleaguered across the world. The analytic power of this idea of ‘the pastoralist’ is accordingly ambiguous. Few are the ‘pure pastoralists’ whose entire subsistence production depends on herding, especially in South Omo. More commonly, we find agropastoralists.6 Many development programmes still carry the ‘pastoralist’ in their names, and often enough work from the trifecta of assumptions that include a nomadic lifestyle, sole reliance on cattle, and fateful dependence on an unreliable environment.

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Looking at similar institutions in other parts of the world provides a productive irritation in regard to East African bondfriendship. For me, the Melanesian lens has stimulated a reassessment of whether it is sufficient to consider beltamo as just another risk-reducing strategy of the pastoralist. Bondfriendship could also be understood, as is more typical for the Melanesianist approach, as a practice that is first and foremost social, as it entangles people and things. In consequence, my reformulation sees in bondfriendship a crucial means and motivation for a man to assert his competence in herding and cultivating, for the establishment of personal networks and the reinforcement of ‘pastoralist’ ideals that include occasionally distancing oneself from the community at large and one’s own web of kinship. The exchanges taking place are transformations of salient goods into relationships and fame, both individual and communal. Through bondfriendship, I argue, a man can develop his ethos so as to heighten the weight of his words, deeds and opinions in other contexts as well. Here, we are in the realm of social values rather than survival, of imagination rather than herd management, and of rhetoric rather than calculation.

The Phantom of Cultural Ecology Bondfriendship is not the only or even the most common term used for the type of social relation outlined above. At least equally common are ‘stockpartnership’ (or ‘stock exchange contract’ [Dyson-Hudson 1966: 71]) and ‘cattle loan relationship’ (Grätz, Pelican and Meier 2003: 14), which right from the start betray a somewhat narrower focus. There, the emphasis lies on this institution understood as a risk-reducing strategy (see Bollig 1998: 138),7 as bondfriendship is generally found within or between (agro-)pastoralist groups, who a priori putatively live in permanent ecological insecurity. This assumption is held so firmly it overshadows other aspects of their livelihood. But such a monolithic view reduces this practice to its potential to protect herds (that is, a household’s capital) from sudden decimation through drought and disease, by the expedient means of spreading them about. The idea is that especially herders with high numbers of stock do well to disperse surplus heads of cattle, passing them on to poorer friends or relations ‘in marriage alliances, bond friendships, patronage, hospitality and the like’ (Waller 1999: 42). So if a given crisis is ‘local rather than regional’ (1999: 43), they would be better able to restock their herds by calling in such credit. This is not wrong in any sense, and such an interpretation would probably be accepted by the people practising ‘stockpartnership’ as valid. But the approach, grounded in cultural ecology, tempts us to subsume the institution under the assumed need to create net-

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works for the express reason of better stock management, as an adaptation to said unreliable environment. Not being false, though, does not preclude being somewhat skewed or blinkered. So while it is legitimate for cultural ecologists to focus on stock management strategies, one might consider it a distinct shortcoming if the anthropological study of a given subsistence pattern (pastoralism and agropastoralism) in a specific world region (here: East Africa) was dominated by such a particular disciplinary perspective. Institutions usually have no one function, and the ethnographic corpus should reflect this. As it is, it does not reflect the ethnographic richness of the practice: bondfriendship was very rarely put into close focus by ethnographers who were confronted with the phenomenon, as was lamented in the survey of the anthropological approaches to friendship by Grätz, Pelican and Meier (2003). They discuss the phenomenon of bondfriendship in terms of ‘friendship’, and hint at its many facets, coming to the implicit result that much of the material on the subject is lacking. I tend to agree: through the emphases set by employing one micro-paradigm or the other, the topic has been too readily categorized and filed away in East African regional studies. But there are other ways of understanding the practice of bondfriendship, drawing on various strands of economic anthropology, less grounded in the Africanist tradition. So instead of fighting the phantom of cultural ecology, I just note here that some authors were very attentive to matters beyond herd management, and that I add my voice to theirs in exploring other frames rather than interpreting a given regional practice with a well-worn regional template.

Establishing Ethos I suggest that bondfriendship makes a fine case for the rhetoric of social relations, especially of rhetoric that depends on deeds as much as on words, a rhetoric of the ethos rather than the logos. Focused less on verbal expression than might be expected, my material substantiates the idea that rhetoric need not be reduced to (pretty) words. The acts constituting bondfriendship can develop persuasive power through their appreciation by the local community. Thus, they help people establish their personal ethos, a part of their reputation, which in turn is an important factor in other rhetorical arenas. In Aristotelian rhetoric, the ethos of a speaker refers to their (or really: ‘his’) plausibility through expertise, competence and morality, and is generated through the words actually spoken. This is clearly impractical: how can one divide what the speaker says from how one knows the speaker to be? This is a decisive modality of such face-to-face societies as Kara: people know each other intimately, and every speech act can circulate through anecdotes, gossip, or even public

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praise and denigration. In contrast to Aristotle, then, his predecessor Isocrates (a rival to Plato) formulated an approach much better suited to South Omo and, arguably, the Greek polis: [For Isocrates,] it is a person’s character itself, his or her stellar reputation, that anchors the persuasive capacity of rhetoric. Aristotle, on the other hand, associates ethos not primarily with the orator’s reputation for being such a soul, but rather with the actual rhetorical competence displayed in the orator’s discourse. The practice of rhetoric constitutes an active construction of character; ethos takes form as a result of the orator’s abilities to argue and to deliberate, and thereby to inspire trust in an audience. Aristotle thus directs our attention away from an understanding of ethos as a person’s well-lived existence and toward an understanding of ethos as an artistic accomplishment. (Hyde 2008)

The importance of an ethos in Isocrates’ sense for any sort of public life is clear, especially for a public life shaped by intense ‘Vergemeinschaftung’, that is, an intense side-by-side of individuals with low mobility and low status difference in high spatial contiguity: while many words are spoken (and registered) in such a setting, the non-verbal acts of an individual can be taken account of as well, and will factor in future assessments of their virtue and competence. Not many things are ever forgotten. The spectacular aspects of bondfriendship as well as its material and economic components make it a prime arena for the establishment of personal ethos. The Melanesian connection substantiates this approach. It is founded not only on a view of exchange markedly different from what Africanists have been pursuing, but also on the existence of practices at least comparable with the bondfriendship I found in South Omo. Comparison is always problematic, but one needs to start somewhere – this, then, is exploratory in nature. Already Raymond Firth recognized the multiplex nature of such relations, speaking of the ‘psychological, economic and social’ advantages provided by the pursuit of exchange pacts in his field on Tikopia (1936: 269). He was arguing against a ‘hypothesis of degeneration’ as put forward, for example, by A.M. Hocart. The latter saw such institutionalized friendship merely as a deficient relic of formerly ‘proper’ social relations.8 Firth instead pointed the way towards a diversified approach in the interpretation of the practice of bondfriendship, even while still adhering to his functionalist training. This shift in perspective makes it clear how the term ‘stockpartnership’ itself is too reductive. While the transfer of cattle might be the start of a relationship, or an element in its maintenance, it hardly captures the specificity of the phenomenon, its affective, aesthetic, performative and rhetorical aspects – hence my preference to translate the Kara word beltamo as ‘bondfriendship’ rather than

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the available alternatives. The bond matters, the friends matter, and the –ship, the stabilization of practice, it matters as well and should interest us most. Fieldwork in South Omo encouraged me to look at the communicative qualities of this practice, with an emphasis on the bond established, and to seek a frame of analysis that addresses both the economic considerations and the aspect of friendship. Additionally, and this is an aspect not folded into the term, I found that the public reception of the practice provided a key towards unlocking it. In summary, I want to reclaim this web of relationships, acts and things from those who reduce it to yet another element, as Schlee put it, of ‘the wide-spun system of alliance and mutual help typical of pastoral nomads who subsist in harsh and threatening environments’ (1989: 7).

Bondfriendship in Practice The groups dwelling in South Omo are pastoralists, agropastoralists and farmers/horticulturalists, while apiculture, opportunistic hunting and fishing are practised as well. Integration into macroeconomic structures proceeds at pace, tourists arrive in droves, and many young men attend school and even institutions of higher education. Yet the bulk of the various populations still practise subsistence production. Pastoralist, essentially egalitarian ideals are strong, personal independence and collective autonomy are actively pursued (compare Girke 2018). Even though for most of these groups sorghum and maize are the basis of their livelihood, as they simply do not have sufficient cattle for a purely pastoralist subsistence, their ethics and cosmologies are shaped by pastoralist symbolism and ideology. The most widely understood name within the region for the practice of bondfriendship is beltamo, used in the Kara and Hamar languages (the latter being a regional lingua franca). Beltamo is embedded in a wider concept of ädamo, which is usually translated as ‘kinship’, but can signify ‘mutual relevance’. The term of address between bondfriends is bel, a highly emotionally charged term that carries with it a call for solidarity so strong that it is very difficult to ignore (Ayalew 1997: 156). An example from Ivo Strecker’s work illustrates this. He describes a scene where a group of Hamar (including him) is visiting Arbore at a time of crisis, hoping for reconciliation and a settlement of their conflict. We stand in a semi-circle but Surra [an Arbore elder] looks only at me on the left. He does not look at any of my Hamar companions, not even at Baldambe. I take his hand and greet him, but when Wadu puts out his hand, Surra rejects it. Then Baldambe stretches out his hand slowly and in a sweet

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voice addresses Surra as bel. This is the first time that I have seen the term bel (bond-friend) in action. The term is like magic, it appeals to an existing link of friendship which, being personal, cannot be destroyed by public affairs, not even the state of war which currently exists between the Hamar and the Arbore. So Surra takes his hand, saying that he will accept only Baldambe’s hand and no other. (Lydall and Strecker 1979: 105)

What is different here from other cases documented for East Africa is that people can find their bondfriends outside their own ethnic group. Considering the constellation of the cultural neighbourhood in South Omo with its small groups and short distances, this is not too surprising. Populations like the Kara (about 1,400), the Moguji (around 400) and even larger groups like the Arbore/Hoor (around 6,500) are bound to have extensive contacts with their neighbours, and forming a bondfriendship within would very likely duplicate a social relation already established through institutions such as the clan, the age organization, a settlement or affinal ties. My assumption is that population size therefore at least in part accounts for the importance of inter-group bondfriendships in South Omo, which very much is a regional rather than a local practice.9 It could even be argued that rather than the region determining the extent of the practice, the practice determines the extent of the region: people who do not pursue beltamo are by necessity at a certain social and cultural remove, no longer part of the ‘cultural neighbourhood’. The wide variety of ecological backdrops in the region can – in tune with the view from cultural ecology – make it in fact worthwhile to have a bondfriend in the valley or the mountainous region, if the rains fail or the river does not rise as it is expected to. Many goods and commodities are at times available in one place but not another – ‘the rain falls on one horn of the bull’, as the Hamar say. Choke Bajje from Hamar explained to me the prototypical establishment of a bondfriendship between a Hamar, who lives in the mountains and depends on the rains for cultivation, and a Kara, who practises mostly the much more reliable flood-retreat/riverbank cultivation: Our country is hot. Very hot. In Kara, the sorghum grows regularly, and when the sorghum gets ripe, at that time, in our country, in Hamar, we are hungry. And then you bring your goats to Kara. Now when you come with your goats to Kara, and you have no relative, you come on foot, you don’t have a donkey, when you go to visit Kara, to this country, where you hope to get grain, you bring your goat along. … You have slept in the bush last night, hungry, thirsty, but in the morning you reach Kara. So someone comes to you, and says, let me barter or buy your goat, and he takes it. And he makes coffee for you. And he says, he, he has slept in the bush, and he was killed by hunger, saying this, they have given you food, they have put you in the shade,

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and you’ve eaten. And then you say, well, I choose this one as my relative. And thus, having been hosted, this is the beginning of a bondfriendship. He says, you have given me things, I choose you as my bondfriend. Then, the bondfriend comes and visits him in Hamar. So when the bondfriend then comes to the homestead of the Hamar, he will slaughter a goat for him, and whatever he asks, whatever the bond-friend asks, he will be allowed to take with him. And one will be saying, his kin, his relative has arrived. And we call this bel. That’s how it is with us. (Workshop ‘Cultural Neighbourhood, Ecology and Exchange’, Jinka, October 2004)

After this propitiatory exchange of invitations, goods and hospitality, the two bel will develop their relation as they wish. One can assume that sympathy either predates the formal relationship or comes in at some point – but the actual feelings of the partners do not matter so much. It is more important to be a good bel by acting appropriately, by performing beltamo, just as one tries to live up to other social roles as well. The pact is for life, ideally, and can even be passed down through the generations, and there are no express limits for the emerging solidarity between the two partners. By looking at the practice as a wide field of human interaction, we come away with a more nuanced understanding. Two statements, one by Baldambe, a Hamar, and another by the anthropologist Günther Schlee, confirm the importance of protecting the herds against threats from the outside, but – and this gives them relevance for the development of my argument – they also hint at tensions and social processes which are always felt if not seen in the practice of bondfriendship. In explaining bondfriendship, Baldambe explained the strategies of the savvy elder: … by giving away his cattle to his bond-friends, he makes sure that none of his relatives and affines comes and takes them away from him unexpectedly. (Baldambe, in Lydall and Strecker 1979: 221)

Similarly Schlee: If you need brothers to insure yourself against enemies and natural disasters, you will need friends to insure yourself against the brothers. (1984: 69, my translation)

So Baldambe highlights the constant struggle of the individual herdsman against the constraints put upon him by his kin; Schlee suggests a parallel to segmentary mechanisms, and reminds us that – pace Durkheim – not all calls for (segmentary) solidarity are lineage- or even kinship-based.10 The closest allies, such as brothers, can also present the most severe challenges to a man’s autonomy. As bondfriends are deliberately not chosen from among kinfolk,

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I suggest that their selection and the cultivation of these relationships provides an ambitious agropastoralist with a complementary network. Children call the father’s bondfriend ‘my father’ as well; they ‘are one lineage’ is said of two households that have been connected in bondfriendship for a longer time.11 In an environment where kinship and other social relations are commonly characterized through shared or transferred rights in property or potential property such as bridewealth, there is a tension inherent in maintaining a bondfriendship by means of economic investment to the possible detriment of the kin group. So what is the public perception of bondfriendship?

Public Judgement, Value and Validation Most bondfriendships in South Omo are cultivated between members of different ethnic groups, and for an adult married man it is considered a mark of accomplishment to cultivate his bondfriendships. To neglect one’s bondfriends constitutes a slight on one’s character. There do not seem to be many stories of bondfriendship gone bad, but the ones I heard always involved a tremendous threat to face for everybody involved.12 In addition, apparent misfortune coming over a household is at times explained by referring to events that might have tainted a bondfriendship. One particular story from Hamar tells of a young man who repeatedly goes to raid the group of his father’s staunchest bondfriend, and while he always comes back from his inauspicious expeditions, all those who accompany him are injured or killed. While I never heard of direct supernatural sanctions for breaching the good faith of a bondfriendship, there is a sense that practising good beltamo is overall conducive to a good life for entire communities, and to violate or neglect one’s partners is not only foolish and immoral, but can also lead to general hardship.13 So how could a residential community plausibly and publicly object to somebody’s efforts towards a good bondfriendship? We should not of course underestimate what Almagor (1978: 122) has shown for the Dassanech: how intra-group ‘bondfriendships’ serve the purpose of establishing a strong network for individual elders, which can then be mobilized and brought to bear on ritual occasions and marriages, where a man needs support to fulfil demands. It is surely prudent to sustain one’s own exchange network. It can provide cattle when they are needed to make marriage payments, it can deliver maize in times of hunger, and it can bring forth luxuries such as honey, coffee and tobacco for important rituals and everyday creature comforts. No man can aspire to become an influential elder without having established friends everywhere and thus having gained reliable access to all the valued goods coming from the outside.

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But beyond these ostensible reasons for establishing bondfriendships there is the matter of ethos. An individual comes to be known throughout the region for their practice of beltamo, and many people will judge somebody’s character on how well they handle such affairs. Bondfriendship opens up a stage for public negotiations of self, network, kinship and community. ‘Reputation’ does not quite capture this sense, but the notions are clearly linked, as the discussion of Isocrates above indicates.14 It is a mark of social competence or even mastery to have firm bondfriendships. The recurring injections of gifts into these relationships allow the partners to show their accomplishment as cultivators and herders and to establish their autonomy and their personal prowess. Assuming the perspective of the (putatively intended) direct audience, that is, the neighbours of the respective host, we can understand these efforts as displays of virtue and skill. In rhetorical terms, the bondfriends proclaim their personal ethos (their character, literally) through deeds, and others who talk about what they witnessed might back this claim up through words. But it really is no mere display. The bondfriends who visit each other and recognize each other as peer and equal are actively producing their ethos, which they are (often quite persuasively) asking the public to accept as a basis for their future interactions. This is rhetorical work, and character counts for a great deal in the largely egalitarian societies in South Omo. The economist Deirdre McCloskey has described the work of ethos in creating credibility (1998: 7ff.) to clarify its role in persuasive practice. Briefly, no actor can abstain from casting her- or himself as having a specific ‘character’, and such claims are prerequisites for creating a context in which others, a given audience, will be persuaded (or coerced, or tempted) to acknowledge someone’s utterances or behaviour as relevant in the first place. A quick substitution of terms in a quote from McCloskey shows how her argument of the salience of ethos maintenance carries over from the academic discourse she analyses to the social practice of the bondfriends of South Omo: An established ethos is the most persuasive of scientific arguments, and scientists are therefore very busy establishing it. (1998: 7)

~ An established ethos is the most persuasive of social status claims, and elders are therefore very busy establishing it. (Emphasis added)

The public acknowledgement of one’s claims to social status is an efficient and low-cost way to exert soft power. In an acephalous, largely anarchistic social environment, bondfriendship is one of the possible avenues to achieve this without violating the extant norms of egalitarianism so typical for pastoralist societies.

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A network established through bondfriendship (besides kinship and other linkages) is not only useful for the acquisition of goods, but the very activity – epitomized by regular visits from colourful or even exotic guests – already lends support to a man’s claim to accomplishment. The practice produces, as it were, potential social energy (compare Graeber 2001: 25 on ‘creative energies’). This is enhanced again by the aura of the objects that are transferred. Often, goods from afar acquire a certain surplus quality (Helms 1988: 111–30; cf. Streck 2011). In South Omo, coffee from the Aari highlands or cloth from Konso weavers have such an aura. Mary Helms presents a long and eclectic list, compiled from many times and places, of goods that were especially highly valued because of their origin in some other part of the respective cultural cosmos, rather than their function or material value. These objects reflect the experience that distance, and especially the crossing of distance, stands in relation to knowledge and to power. Whoever manages to bring exotic and fabled objects into the (monocultural) ‘heartland’ is sure to gain prestige. Following Sahlins, she notes that long-distance trade combines the reinforcement of separateness and the signification of inclusion: I would suggest that … even in situations where the mechanics of acquiring various types of goods from beyond the borders of the heartland may entail conditions of separateness, … motives inspiring the exchange and/or anticipated results … may be more appropriate to exchanges of inclusion. (Helms 1988: 130)

In South Omo, many gifted goods have exactly this paradoxical attribute: on the one hand, they are specifically ‘of ’ the other. Otherwise there would be no point in trying to acquire them; even in exchange they remain inalienable. On the other hand, they validate the significance of the regional other to the local self, and thus allow people to integrate their cultural neighbours into their lives. The gifts stabilize the cultural neighbourhood as an environment of dissimilar but connected entities. But not only does the specific origin of a good provide it with an intangible aura that often triggers memory and reflection. Just as strongly, the provider of a good is remembered through its continued presence, existence, or even proliferation. The metonymy is most obvious when the donor of a heifer or a cow is in a way embodied in the offspring of the animal that a household received from their bondfriend. So even without invoking the Maori hau (Mauss 1967: 8–12), for which there is no named equivalent in Kara or elsewhere in South Omo, the partners in beltamo are not only providers of goods, but they, and the group or the area they come from, are embodied in the objects they provide. Not in any spiritual or ontological sense, or at least there are no ethnographic indications to that, but the relation between two groups can be symbolically

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manifested in a spear, or an overflowing pot of honey, or a sack of coffee beans, which simply could not have come from any other source but the bondfriend from Nyangatom or Moguji or Aari. This unequivocality derives from the particular mosaic of groups in South Omo. Such items thus become, with Michael Carrithers, ‘story seeds’, as they evoke minimal narratives that explain their presence in a place: ‘When a minimal narrative finds resonance in listeners, it is because it calls up familiar information, familiar motives, familiar storylines’ (Carrithers 2009: 40). The objects speak not only of themselves and the place whence they came, they bespeak also the capability of their current owner in making the connections to other people across culture and against politics to acquire them. The ecology of the region ensures that there are staple goods from each area that are commonly requested from visiting partners in times of need. For example, the harvests on the banks of the Omo and the Woyto take place at diametrically opposite times of the year. Intriguingly, these rather natural patterns are culturally reinforced with prohibitions of certain practices and taboos observed by the different groups. The Arbore long submitted themselves to a taboo: they were not allowed to make honey themselves, but needed it dearly for their marriage transactions. Others, such as the Hamar, prohibit themselves from working clay and making pottery. These prohibitions entail the need for exchange between the groups, even in times of enmity. Bondfriends can bridge these divides, and integrate the various populations through their personal efforts. There is, thus, an ecology-based exchange network in place, which is reinforced by specific taboos in the involved groups. Accordingly, although most bondfriendships are established through initial gifts of grain and livestock, every population has need of some commodity that is available through bondfriend-relationships. As a rule, such things are not essential for survival, but are often – like the dancing bells produced by the Nyangatom – strongly desired among the producers’ cultural neighbours. Much more so than food, these items are durable, and have a ‘capacity to retain history’ (Graeber 2001: 44). David Graeber has posited that exchange is often an ostentatious performance; and differing from other regions, bondfriendships are not secret affairs in South Omo, but are under public scrutiny, and their practitioners can become subject to approval or disapproval by the community. This increases the aspect of ‘rhetoricality’, and in effect raises the stakes for the participants to perform the roles well. The degree of this ‘public scrutiny’ is variable. Kara live in small hamlets during farming season and in larger villages otherwise. Hamar often live in homesteads or compounds miles from their neighbours. In both cases, though, visitors will be noted, their destination asked, and their intentions

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(and possibly the goods they are carrying) will be assessed. Often, the visit of a bondfriend will be an opportunity to invite more neighbours – for surely the bondfriend will be happy to see that one is surrounded by stout allies and entertaining friends. There are, then, witnesses, and even if it takes weeks or longer, stories will be shared about the visit of the bel. However, in some sense the bondfriendship could alienate the partners from their respective communities, as the hosts invest goods (such as livestock) outside their lineage, their affinal kin and their settlement, their ethnic group: they choose to distribute limited resources to a larger set of needs. This could imaginably stir trouble between agnates or between affines, as close bondfriends can even expect to receive shares of the bridewealth when daughters are married off – shares that would otherwise remain within the clan. But in the case of South Omo, it seems to be this very performance of personal independence from the ties of kinship and neighbourhood that draws admiration and respect. To give away food, animals or other practical (and often symbolically charged) goods to outsiders is in effect an extreme display of personal (and in extension household) autonomy, as well as of generosity and hospitality. These principles are thus celebrated and valorized in the practice of bondfriendship (see Robbins 1994: 48). Even in times of war between their respective groups, bel, bondfriends, are expected to keep supporting and protecting one another, and will be respected for embodying (with a nod to the pastoralist ideals) the free agency of an individual who chooses to stand against the war or chaos indulged in by the collective, either openly or clandestinely. Stories abound about bondfriends who were smuggling livestock and food to one another even though their communities at large were in a state of war, who protected one another and denied the presence of the bel in their homestead when the neighbours came to kill the visitor. It is clear how such performances of reliability in the face of adversity speak of a man’s character, thus contributing to his ethos. The local egalitarianism thus reveals itself as a desire for a community of wilful and autonomous (male) actors, rather than some communitarian ‘sharing environment’. The most important element here is the autonomous individual, who makes his decisions against the loud and noisy, easily seduced crowd. The term zersi in Hamar, and zarsi in Kara, indicates in principle the deliberating community of elders, but also hints at the agitated collective that regularly acts imprudently. There is an ambivalence here, which can be exploited for personal benefit: the zarsi are the highest authority, and at the same time everybody knows that one cannot really rely on them to make the right decision. So to stand against the zarsi can pay off afterwards, when the sound and fury have died down. Beyond the stories I have collected of how bondfriends behaved admirably and in accordance with moral ideals (see also Girke 2010), sufficient in-

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stances of this topos have been cited in the ethnography of the area (e.g. Ayalew 1997; Lydall and Strecker 1979; Tadesse 1999) to show its regional resonance.15 So this runs off at a tangent from an argument made by the economic anthropologist Chris Gregory a long time ago, talking about Melanesia: ‘The aim of the capitalist is to accumulate profit while the aim of the “big-man” gift transactor is to acquire a large following of people (gift-debtors) who are obligated to him’ ([1982] 2015: 50). This does not characterize the South Omo case very precisely. Rather than having ‘debtors’ (and being a ‘big man’), one has friends and equal partners who have also invested in the relationship, and the real value to be achieved through these gift transactions is the social relationship and its potential for both partners to celebrate their accomplishment, their autonomy and their (at least temporary) independence from the so natural-seeming local ties of kinship. This is visibly expressed through the act of ‘choosing kin’, as Choke put it above, and in transacting goods with them. I see this as what Stephen Gudeman calls ‘extending the base’ (2001: 86f): first probing social boundaries by gifting, and then opening up one’s sphere of personal significance in a relation aimed at mutuality. Still, the connection of actually transacting goods and establishing one’s personal ethos by embodying a supposed pastoralist ideal is not entirely clear. To explain why people accept a history of successfully performed transactions as constituting a good claim to social prestige (translatable into social capital and rhetorical clout), we require a theory of value that takes account of action, ideology and materiality.

Melanesia Matters I address this question of the linkage between rhetorical display, transaction and ethos by means of comparison, specifically by an analogy from a very different regional and cultural context, but an anthropological mainstay nonetheless: Melanesia. Beyond the earlier references to bondfriendship in Tikopia, my main witness is Nancy Munn’s treatment of kula and associated exchanges on the island of Gawa.16 Shifting the view from the agropastoralists of Southern Ethiopia to Munn’s description of these yam horticulturalists from Papua New Guinea (as in The Fame of Gawa [1986] 1992), it seemed to me as if the Gawan islanders were in a similar situation as the small groups of Southern Ethiopia. This similarity moves into focus if their institutionalized exchange partners are viewed in their regional context. All these groups are fairly small, egalitarian yet individualistic, not powerful in and of themselves; but they provide important stopping points to people

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going from A to B, and these visitors come for various reasons. For Gawa, eminent among these reasons is the kula exchange, as it was on Malinowski’s Trobriand Islands. Much of the drama of Trobriand life revolves around kula expeditions; important men and their followers descend on distant villages in other islands to woo choice heirlooms from their kula partners. (Graeber 2001: 44)

But other attractors, other reasons to visit Gawa can be listed as well: Gawan community entertainments, Gawan gardening produce (carried off in exchange for such comestibles in which the visitors’ homelands specialize), sounding out Gawans regarding possible future kula exchanges, requesting pigs for the visitors’ own kula competition (or to meet other obligations), and mourning the death of kinspeople or kula partners. This list suggests a dynamic community life that is being facilitated by – in this case – the kula exchanges and – in the case of South Omo – the bondfriend relations.17 Rather than considering these social affairs as a reduction of transaction costs, I see this as the aesthetics of social life, a social configuration people actively strive for. Bondfriendship in South Omo can be understood through similar devices to those Nancy Munn brings to bear upon her material of – as a specific example – Gawan overseas food hospitality, which she emphatically says is a persuasive act ([1986] 1992: 19). To share food with non-household members bears value, but to eat produce by yourself does not charge it with value. How is that? Simply put, in the externalization of food by the host, in a public, social environment, others observing the action do not reduce it to just the transfer of a good between unconnected individuals. Instead, they appreciate the importance vested in the act by the participants. The act mediates the will of both participants, but in no way constrains them in their autonomy. From this perspective, social relationships can be seen as engaging the actor’s perspective on an outside other that implies a perception of the other’s perspective on the self. (Munn [1986] 1992: 16)

These initial gifts of food open up the possibility for creating alliances and obligations. Gawans ascribe value to acts according to their ‘essential capacities and key possible outcomes’ ([1986] 1992: 8). As we are talking about the kula here, the ultimate aim of course is to acquire a renowned necklace or armshell, to keep it in possession for a while, and thereby to graft one’s name onto the history of the named piece, which after a while will be returned into circulation. The shift, from the perishable food provided to guests, to the more permanent objects with their history as mediums of exchange, and also to the creation of life-long bonds, on the one hand indicates the powerful potential of

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mere food hospitality, and on the other hand serves to demolish the boundaries between material objects and immaterial states or status: social relations, just as valuable objects, are created and maintained, requiring ‘human time and energy, intelligence, concern’ (Graeber 2001: 45). Men try to extend their ‘control over space-time’ (Munn’s terms), to extend their agency beyond their local group ([1986] 1992: 12), by persuading others to acknowledge the value of their activity. Being generous, being a good host, an attentive guest, a diligent gardener able to feed guests, expending effort to learn about the shells and their locations, talking well in attempts to persuade others to release their shells (‘kula speech’, [1986] 1992: 51) – all these are important for a man to get recognized as guyaw (‘strong kula man’) even by overseas visitors, as a man of consequence. Here, then, is the persuasion: others, guests, are led or even lured to the island. Then, the Gawans indicate the potential of a future relationship (‘applying reason to the imagination for the better moving of the will’, as Francis Bacon says of rhetoric), and each act of food hospitality bears in itself the imaginative story seed of a highly prestigious kula transaction in the future. From this perspective, it is only through an external reflection of the self – what amounts to a favourably appraising ‘look’ coming from the outside … – that Gawans can define their own guyaw. This grounding of self-definition in the appraisal of the other is fundamental to Gawan value transformation. (Munn [1986] 1992: 51)

This is, however, not restricted to the appraisal of the individual; no, the fame of all Gawa is at stake in the appropriate performance of these valued activities. The community asserts its own internal viability through the concept of its positive evaluation by these external others, expressed in the Gawan emphasis on fame (butu-), the renown or good name of Gawa in the island world. (Munn [1986] 1992: 6) … actors create communal value through effecting positive value transformations. ([1986] 1992: 20)

How does this compare to South Omo? Through the pre-existing stereotypes, there is a pattern of expectations inherent in the establishment of every bondfriendship. While an individual is of course concerned to keep up their side of the bargain for sheer expediency, so as to not diminish the potential of the relationship, there is also a communal appreciation if such a duty is well performed. In a discussion, Tofu Alle, an old Arbore woman, and Choke Bajje from Hamar spoke of the communal value of beltamo:

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(TA) My daughters married with [my bondfriend from Hamar’s] honey. I married my daughters, three of my daughters with this honey. (CB) This is a real mulda, a real family lineage. We in Hamar know all about it. We know that we have to help them get their children married, and they need our honey for that. (Workshop ‘Cultural Neighbourhood, Ecology and Exchange’, Jinka, October 2004)

Other Arbore expressed their admiration of the Borana, their eastern neighbours, who even gave cattle to their jala (the Borana term for bondfriend), while the Arbore usually only were able to provide small stock. A good beltamo reflects back on a community, on both specific families and settlements as well as generalized categories such as ‘the Kara’. Bondfriendship as an institutionalized exchange relation also provides a platform for performative and rhetorical acts. To do this well is satisfying. The established ethos of the individual (as an embodiment of their community at this point) is then perpetuated. In a somewhat fetishistic process, interaction partners are persuaded to act upon a self as apparently others have acted before (Graeber 2001: 105).18 By giving, as Nancy Munn argues, the self is extended, its agency and capacity to affect the world. ‘Capacity’ does not mean direct exertion of power, but a more passive agency: an evaluation as consequential by others. Both partners equally prosper, since the central value produced is ethos. The bond can be mutually profitable, especially if you consider inter-ethnic relations between two individuals from two communities: there seems to be no shortage of ethos in the world if you are willing to externalize some internal material objects. With time and effort, people charge social activities, and their manifestations in armshells, honey or friends, with value. This is to say that a social act is not only itself, it is always also a display of itself. The bel are not only hosting their guests and conversing and providing and supporting; with every action they are showing their social world who they claim to be, the ethos they aspire to. They also indicate how they demand the world ought to be more generally.

Conclusion I find these perspectives rather useful in thinking about social action. To not understand rhetoric only as a technique found in certain (classical?) speech genres, but as a constitutive element even of informal everyday interaction, sensitizes us to people’s efforts to establish their ethos, on the one hand, and on the other, it points us to the not so evidently utilitarian aspects of behaviour.

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Besides the fact of its execution, the specific way an act is performed matters, be it as an affective, aesthetic and therefore indirectly persuasive element, or as evidence of a correct calculation of power relations and interests. And again, this is not only true for the immediate reaction of the ‘public’ or the ‘audience’ to the proposed claim, but for a much longer-term alignment of the relations between agents, patients and their audiences, which is what happens in the example of beltamo. To perform one’s bondfriendship well is recognized by the bondfriend, who will likely reciprocate in kind. But a narrow focus on reciprocity might overlook that being a good bondfriend is recognized far more widely than merely within the dyadic relationship, and this seeming side effect is a motivation for joining bondfriendships in the first place. The investment of goods in beltamo is an instance of ‘consumptive production’, of a transformation of things into relationships such as friendship: ‘The consumption of things is a necessary condition for the production of human beings’ (Gregory [1982] 2015: 31; Graeber 2011). The friendship itself is a product just as ethos is established, as it were (compare Gell 1992). Firth uses the image of the host to a bondfriend/stranger as ‘social impresario, to be clothed in the novelty of their presence’ (1936: 267), who can stage the other’s visit; this casting of roles implies that other people are ready and willing to consume the performance. I would have to engage in conjecture to even suggest why this dramaturgic, aesthetic and fundamentally social aspect has been more obvious to the Melanesianists than the Africanists: ‘economic’ actions create not only economic but also social value and relations that entail the potential for even more future value. Of the kula, anthropologists have collected Hero Tales (Young 1983); of East African bondfriendship, statistical analyses of livestock dispersion have been undertaken. The structural homology and the similarities in the value production process of these two institutions expose the fact that regionally cultivated academic dialects have considerable impact on the academic framing of typical phenomena. I suggest that we only have to gain by more generally acknowledging the performative and persuasive aspects of given practices within their cultural contexts. Felix Girke has been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz, Department of Sociology (Fachbereich Geschichte und Soziologie) since 2015. He studied at Mainz University (MA, 2001) and obtained his PhD degree in Social Anthropology in 2009 at the Martin-Luther-Universität HalleWittenberg. From 2010 to 2015 he was Research Coordinator at the Center for Interdisciplinary Regional Studies (ZIRS) at the MLU. He has long-term field research experience in Southern Ethiopia since 2003, and has researched the politics of cultural heritage in Myanmar since 2012. He has published nu-

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merous papers and chapters on Ethiopia, notably on the Kara people, and his monograph The Wheel of Autonomy: Rhetoric and Ethnicity in the Omo Valley was published in 2018 (Berghahn Books). He also edited the book Ethiopian Images of Self and Other (2014, UVHW). He worked prominently on rhetoric culture theory and (with Christian Meyer) edited The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture (2011, volume 4 in the Berghahn Books series Studies in Rhetoric and Culture). Other publications are related to theoretical issues in anthropology. His forthcoming book extends critical heritage studies to processes of subject formation in contemporary Myanmar. He is a board member at the blog portal Allegra Lab, and comments on anthropology on Twitter as @felixgirke.

Notes 1. There are other kinds of friendship with a specific label in Kara – hunting friends, childhood friends, age-mates, initiation partners; there is no term for ‘friend’ or ‘friendship’ as such. 2. See the discussion in Grätz, Pelican and Meier (2003: 7). While Uri Almagor only found intra-ethnic ‘bond partnerships’ among the Dassanech, neighbours of Hamar and Kara (e.g. 1978: 108–21), Sagawa (2010: 106–8) offers some information on interethnic bondfriendships involving Dassanech. 3. Some authors prefer the term ‘covenant’ to emphasize the distinction from ‘contract’: covenants are marked by their voluntary nature in the emic perspective, and by the inherent moral obligation which is less marked in the more legalistic ‘contract’ (e.g. Firth 1936: 259; Shack 1963: 198, fn. 2). Since the term carries a suggestion of supernatural sanction that is only very weakly present in my data, I avoid both contract and covenant. 4. My data were gathered during fieldwork in South Omo between 2003 and 2008, funded by the University of Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. A most insightful event was the workshop ‘Cultural Neighbourhood, Ecology and Exchange’ held in Jinka, October 2004 (with Ivo Strecker), where several Arbore, Hamar and Kara told me about the institution from their points of view. I have also adduced further material on bondfriendship from the perspective of the Hamar (e.g. Lydall and Strecker 1979), of the Arbore/Hoor (Tadesse 1999; Ayalew 1997), the Moguji (Matsuda 2003) and, as mentioned above, the Dassanech (Almagor 1978), and finally my own previous work (Girke 2010). Bondfriendship as described to me then, and as I discuss it here, is less common today than in earlier times. For the future, it has to be seen whether and how the local model is reconfigured under the modern challenges of development, market and money. In the Sudan, this ‘decline’ apparently began much earlier: ‘Blood-brotherhood atrophies as it ceases to carry out its more important social actions, and it becomes more and more a mere formal acknowledgement of friendship between two individuals’ (Evans-Pritchard 1933: 395). As of now, the practice is still alive in Southern Ethiopia. 5. In the North, these margins would be the Gamu highlands; in the East, the Borana mountains; in the South and the East, the boundaries are less clear, because especially historically the connections to Turkana and Samburu were very strong, and many cul-

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tural continuities can be found. My empirical perspective is always Kara-centric, and while the Kara often do look to the outside for inspiration and for comparative assessment, their horizon of relevance does not extend much beyond two adjacent polities’ territory in any direction. This is what has come to be called the perspective of ‘cultural neighbourhood’ in South Omo studies (see Gabbert and Thubauville 2010). I am slowly coming around to considering the Kara ‘horti-pastoralists’, as they use no plough but a digging stick; but it is a term not strongly established at all. Grätz et al. also point to several studies pertaining to West Africa which feature ‘cattle loan relationships’. I restrict myself here to East African pastoralists. For a long list of cases from East Africa, see Spencer (1997: 18, fn. 14), who also mentions ‘prestige’ as one aspect, but subordinates this to ‘credit’, as an ultimately economic category. Clearly, with current approaches extending the realm of kinship beyond any biological basis (e.g. Sahlins 2013), any view that divides too strictly between proper and improper kinship is ever less tenable. As it was for the Jie of northern Uganda. Gulliver also ascribes the existence of their ‘alien bond-friends’ to the small size of their land (1955: 211, fn. 1). As an opposite example, Almagor, on the Dassanech, does not even discuss the possibility of having bondfriends outside one’s own group (1978), even though bondfriendships with the Dassanech are well documented via their neighbours. My assumptions are that in Dassanech (one of the largest populations of South Omo), it is impractical for some sections to find outside partners, or that the anthropologist simply did not come across them – again, a question of size. Sobania (1991: 133) adds some complexity to the issue: ‘The anthropological literature on peoples in the Lake Turkana basin is devoid of reference to the existence of inter-societal bond partnerships (Gulliver 1951, 1955; Dyson-Hudson 1966; Spencer 1965, 1973; Almagor 1971, 1978). However, among the many societies at the north end of Lake Turkana in the last century, the lack of administrative boundaries between them, their proximity, and the similarity, as much as the diversity, of their economic adaptations made possible, just as it did trade, the formation of bond partnerships that cut across societal boundaries and linked neighboring herdsmen’. While the question of the strategical optimization of ‘group size’ (especially in regard to alliances) with its relevance for understanding fusion and fission of acting bodies has been posed by Schlee (2008), there does not seem to be as yet a full understanding of what role population size really plays for group formation in East Africa. See also Evans-Pritchard (1933: 399), on how blood-brothers are ‘better friends’ than real brothers. William Shack notes that among the Gurage of Ethiopia, ‘sibling rivalry tends to increase considerably the need a man has for a dependable ally in times of crises; a need that is fulfilled by establishing a binding non-kin relationship through gurda bond-friendship’ (1963: 201). This is indication of strong solidarity and high interpersonal significance. Another instance in which children call other men ‘my father’ is the case of age-mates, members of the same age-set, the prototypical egalitarian relation of peers among whom there must be no competition. See Girke (2010) for examples. Already Evans-Pritchard points out that considerable shame is involved in failing to live up to a ‘pact’ between individuals (1933: 387), as such behaviour would be a humiliation for one’s neighbours and kin. So apparently, moral communities seem to be capable of being extended in regard to bondfriendships and similar institutionalized partnerships. However, the magical component Evans-Pritchard identifies in the

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15.

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Zande custom, and which really enforces the partners’ fidelity, seems largely absent from beltamo and other bondfriendship-relations in South Omo. Firth calls this a ‘dramatic means’ of setting up the ties (1936: 259), as opposed to other forms of dyadic covenants, which might not even have any witness when first agreed on and still exhibit great solidarity and cooperation. In Tikopia, sanctions on people betraying the bond seem also to have been merely social, not spiritual. There is a wider semantic field that also includes ‘prestige’ and ‘image’. Joachim Knape has helpfully brought some light to the distinctions (2012). In some sense, an established ethos is effectively the same as ‘a good reputation’, but I prefer ethos, the term from the rhetorical tradition, as it best captures the persuasive aspects. Driberg (1935: 102) mentions a similar valorization of institutionalized friendship among the Didinga in neighbouring South Sudan, which is also considered more momentous for a man’s ethos than kinship by blood or in-law relations. Interestingly, here, a man can supposedly mobilize his entire ‘tribe’ in support of his ‘best friend’. Evans-Pritchard (1933: 371), in describing the Zande custom of ‘blood-brotherhood’, informs us that this was the case there as well, as ‘its clauses bound also his kin, who became subject to its sanctions’. For Tikopia, far away from East Africa, Firth asserts that bondfriends often risked their lives to support one another. I was led to her work on Gawa through David Graeber’s book on value (2001: 46). He emphasizes the novelty of her approach to value and complains about its lack of recognition within (general) anthropology. I dedicate this chapter to his memory. To claim that ‘people’ strive towards something runs the constant risk of obscuring power relations and oppression between those ‘people’; indeed, in what way do women benefit, who labour for the production of the food and the hosting of the guests? As members of social environments, they are witnesses of performances enacted in their midst – being an audience might be a benefit. A long answer would have to delve into emic self-understanding and conceptualization of property, which goes beyond the scope of this chapter. Munn ([1986] 1992: 53) notes the division of responsibility between the genders in food-giving to visitors. In public, men have the dramatic role of actually dispensing the food – but it is understood that women prepared it. In South Omo, men can dominate conspicuous consumption even more as they usually slaughter and roast animals for big feasts. In a chapter concerned with rhetoric, it is appropriate to point out the metonymic quality of fetishism, as for example in the ‘conflation of signifier with signified’ (Ellen 1988: 213).

References Almagor, Uri. 1978: Pastoral Partners: Affinity and Bond Partnership among the Dassanetch of South-West Ethiopia. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ayalew, Gebre. 1997. ‘Arbore Inter-Tribal Relations: An Historical Account’, in Richard Hogg (ed.), Pastoralists, Ethnicity and the State in Ethiopia. London: Haan, pp. 143–67. Bollig, Michael. 1998. ‘Moral Economy and Self-Interest: Kinship, Friendship and Exchange among the Pokot (N.W. Kenya)’, in Thomas Schweizer and Douglas R. Whyte (eds), Kinship, Networks and Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 137–57. Carrithers, Michael. 2009. ‘Story Seeds and the Inchoate’, in Michael Carrithers (ed.), Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 34–52.

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Driberg, Jack H. 1935. ‘The “Best Friend” among the Didinga’, Man 35: 101–2. Dyson-Hudson, Neville. 1966. Karimojong Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ellen, Roy. 1988. ‘Fetishism’, Man (N.S.) 23: 213–35. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1933. ‘Zande Blood-Brotherhood’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 6(4): 369–401. Firth, Raymond. 1936. ‘Bondfriendship in Tikopia’, in L.H. Dudley Buxton (ed.), Custom Is King: Essays Presented to R.R. Marett. London: Hutchinson, pp. 259–69. Gabbert, Echi C., and Sophia Thubauville (eds). 2010. To Live with Others: Essays on Cultural Neighborhood in Southern Ethiopia. Cologne: Köppe Verlag. Gell, Alfred. 1992. ‘Inter-Tribal Commodity Barter and Reproductive Gift-Exchange in Old Melanesia’, in Caroline Humphrey and Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds), Barter, Exchange and Value: An Anthropological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 142–86. Girke, Felix. 2010. ‘Bondfriendship in the Cultural Neighborhood: Dyadic Ties and Their Public Appreciation in South Omo’, in Echi C. Gabbert and Sophia Thubauville (eds), To Live with Others: Essays on Cultural Neighborhood in Southern Ethiopia. Cologne: Köppe, pp. 68–98. ———. 2016. ‘The Art of Not Being Governed in Ethiopia: Towards a More Dynamic Approach to the Highlands/Lowlands Academic Divide’, in Éloi Ficquet et al. (eds), Movements in Ethiopia, Ethiopia in Movement: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Ethiopian Studies, vol. 2. Los Angeles: Tsehai Publishers, pp. 13–25. ———. 2018. The Wheel of Autonomy: Rhetoric and Ethnicity in the Omo Valley. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Graeber, David. 2001. Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave. ———. 2011. ‘Consumption [with Commentary]’, Current Anthropology 54(4): 489–511. Grätz, Tilo, Michaela Pelican, and Barbara Meier. 2003: Zur sozialen Konstruktion von Freundschaft: Überlegungen zu einem vernachlässigten Thema der Sozialanthropologie (Schwerpunkt Afrika). Working Paper 53 of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle. https://www.eth.mpg.de/cms/en/publications/working_papers/wp0053. Gregory, Chris. (1982) 2015. Gifts and Commodities. HAU Books. Online. http://haubooks .org/gifts-and-commodities/. Gudeman, Stephen. 2001. The Anthropology of Economy: Community, Market, Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Gulliver, Philip H. 1955. The Family Herds: A Study of Two Pastoral Tribes in East Africa, the Jie and Turkana. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Guyer, Jane I. 1999. ‘Comparisons and Equivalencies in Africa and Melanesia’, in David Akin and Joel Robbins (eds), Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 232–45. Helms, Mary W. 1988. Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Herskovits, Melville J. 1926. ‘The Cattle Complex in East Africa’, American Anthropologist 28(1): 230–72. Humphrey, Caroline, and Stephen Hugh-Jones (eds). 1997. Barter, Exchange and Value: An Anthropological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyde, Kenneth. 2008. ‘Ethos and Rhetoric’, in Wolfgang Donsbach (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Online. http://www.communicationencyclopedia.com/ subscriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781405131995_chunk_g978140513199510_ss43-1.

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Knape, Joachim. 2012. ‘Image, Prestige, Reputation und das Ethos in der aristotelischen Rhetorik’, in B. Christiansen and U. Thaler (eds), Ansehenssache: Formen von Prestige in Kulturen des Altertums. Munich: Herbert Utz, pp. 105–28. Lydall, Jean, and Ivo Strecker. 1979. The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia I. Work Journal. Hohenschaftlärn: Renner. Matsuda, Hiroshi. 2003. ‘The Power of Region and Bond-Partnership in the Lower Omo Valley’. Paper presented to the 15th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES), University of Hamburg, Germany, 20–25 July. Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: Norton. McCloskey, Deirdre. 1998. The Rhetoric of Economics, 2nd ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Munn, Nancy D. (1986) 1992. The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. New York: Farrar and Rinehart. Robbins, Joel. 1994. ‘Equality as a Value: Ideology in Dumont, Melanesia and the West’, Social Analysis 36: 21–70. Sagawa, Toru. 2010. ‘Local Potential for Peace: Trans-ethnic Cross-Cutting Ties among the Daasanech and Their Neighbors’, in E.C. Gabbert and S. Thubauville (eds), To Live with Others: Essays on Cultural Neighborhood in Southern Ethiopia. Cologne: Köppe Verlag, pp. 99–127. Sahlins, Marshall. 2013. What Kinship Is – And Is Not. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schlee, Günther. 1984. ‘Intra- und Interethnische Beziehungsnetze nordkenianischer Wanderhirten’, Paideuma 30: 69–80. ———. 1989. Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ———. 2008. How Enemies Are Made: Towards a Theory of Ethnic and Religious Conflict. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Shack, William. 1963. ‘Religious Ideas and Social Action in Gurage Bond-Friendship’, Africa. Journal of the International African Institute 33(3): 198–208. Sobania, Neil. 1991. ‘Feasts, Famines and Friends: Nineteenth Century Exchange and Ethnicity in the Eastern Lake Turkana Region’, in John G. Galaty and Pierre Bonte (eds), Herders, Warriors, and Traders: Pastoralism in Africa. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 118–42. Spencer, Paul. 1997. The Pastoral Continuum: The Marginalization of Tradition in East Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Streck, Bernhard. 2011. ‘The Spellbinding Aura of Culture: Tracing Its Anthropological Discovery’, in Christian Meyer and Felix Girke (eds), The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 119–36. Tadesse, Wolde Gossa. 1999. ‘Warfare and Fertility: A Study of the Hor (Arbore) of Southern Ethiopia’, PhD thesis. University of London. Waller, Richard D. 1999. ‘Pastoral Poverty in Historical Perspective’, in Vigdis Broch-Due and David M. Anderson (eds), The Poor Are Not Us: Poverty and Pastoralism. Oxford: James Currey, pp. 20–49. Young, Michael. 1983. ‘The Theme of the Resentful Hero: Stasis and Mobility in Goodenough Mythology’, in Jerry W. Leach and Edmund Leach (eds), The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 383–94.

CHAPTER 6

The Rhetorics of Purging among the Mun (Mursi) of Southern Ethiopia Shauna LaTosky       

Vomit the problems onto the ground and all will be well. —Olisirwa Tula, Muni man

Introduction In Maregge, [Northern Mun] Kissinyaholi Gedôw prepares dokay1 for his wife, Korarri, who has been suffering from ill health, especially dizzy spells, for several months. Four of his children take turns holding the ends of the roots, while he scrapes them with his machete, converting the mound of shavings into medicine by mulching them between his fingers in large pots of water. Once his wife finishes the first gourd filled with water and the bitter extracts of the roots, she purges by vomiting. One of her adolescent daughters stands up and walks over to fill the gourd, repeating this procedure six times over the course of an hour and a half. Neighbours come by to check on her. Her brother’s wife sits behind her, cutting circular discs of wood from the lareni tree to prepare new lightweight ear-plates. A young man in a blue uniform – one of the first Mun recruits into the South Omo Police – stands over her while she violently vomits, letting her sickness seep into the ground. She sets the gourd down again and delegates to her two daughters to bring their guest milk and to add water to the boiling leaves that will accompany the evening meal of

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sorghum porridge. Her husband returns twice from the men’s shade to check on her. The second time, he turns to me and playfully boasts about being such a good husband. He then tells me how the two different treatments she had received from a highland ‘doctor’ in Romo – blue pills and penicillin injections – were ineffective and costly. ‘Dokay is what we know. We don’t know this other medicine.’ He continues, ‘After drinking dokay, the next day one must drink milk and blood to “stand up” [here: be strong] again’ (Field journal, Maregge, South Omo, 16 July 2014). For the Mun (Mursi)2 of Southern Ethiopia, purging is common practice, something public, individual and shared, nothing secret. There is a reciprocal understanding of the medicinal efficacy of using purgatives, as well as the social benefits. Purging, whether done individually or collectively, can evoke friendships, loving bonds between husband and wife, rivalries between girls and boys, or can improve one’s reputation among age-mates. One can say that rhetoric is embedded in social life and these shared interactions of how to engage oneself and others to act to make the body well again. While emetics and other purgatives are still central to social life and everyday healing within Mun, they are increasingly challenged as alcohol and modern biomedicine enter Mun. Put differently, although the healing and ritual practice of purging, typically by vomiting, continues to be a socially accepted practice in Mun today, such traditional certainties are being undermined by new forms of rhetoric. Drawing on rhetoric culture theory, I argue that purging is not only about maintaining overall good health (i.e. by cleaning one’s stomach and bowels); it is also linked to the ‘purity’ (i.e. morality) of one’s character, that is, to the implicit rhetoric in social relations. The ground-breaking text that has helped to guide me in my understanding of the constitutive role of rhetoric in sociocultural relations is Strecker and Tyler’s volume Rhetoric and Culture (2009a). They make a strong case that rhetoric and culture lead us to look at the persuasive ways in which ‘rhetoric structures culture and culture structures rhetoric’ (2009b: 21).3 Rhetoric culture theory also engenders an ethos of respect and humility in the analysis of the spoken and unspoken rhetorical practices of women and men, and in the way we apply and value their knowledge and use of rhetoric. This includes alternative forms of rhetoric and a deeper understanding of how the embodied and gendered aspects of rhetoric intersect in social relations, both local and global. The practice of purging is an example of such alternative rhetoric. And, like most rhetoric, purging is often misunderstood across cultural contexts given its context-dependent nature (see Abbink, this volume). My analysis of the culture-specific practice of purging among the Mun is intended, first, to provide an example of how rhetoric in social relations is used and maintained by men and women and, second, to enhance transcultural understanding of purging in Mun (and Southern Ethiopia in general).4

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For many agro-pastoral groups in Southern Ethiopia, purging is practised as a medical treatment.5 However, as far as I know, only the Mun, Suri and Bodi (Mela and Chirim) use coffee as a regular emetic, and other plantbased purgatives during public forums and ritual events. And like their Suri and Bodi neighbours (to the north and northwest), the Mun also differentiate between vomiting that poses infectious disease threats and individual or collective purging that is considered vital to one’s physical and social well-being. A number of purgatives are used by all three groups to prevent and treat illness, from roasted coffee mixed with ground chilli peppers, to the inner bark of the African wild olive tree. In this chapter, I show how the practice of purging in Mun is maintained through rhetorical means as a way to make a statement about one’s health, economic, social and moral status. Contrary to universal notions of disgust, public and collective purging (i.e. vomiting) is not perceived as disgusting among the Mun,6 but rather as an important means of maintaining physical well-being and social solidarity, for example between husbands and wives, parents and children, elders and youth, friends and relatives and so on.

Definitions of Purging Many things come to mind when we think of purging. In the West, this includes everything from philosophical and political purging to religious and medicinal forms of purging. Since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, purgatives were used as both medicines and metaphors to describe argumentation. As Martha Nussbaum writes: Sceptical arguments start by attacking the claim of other arguments, just as purgatives go to work on the antecedent contents of the body. But by the time that process of treatment is complete, the purgative drug itself is gone, eliminated from the system along with the obstacles it opposes. So too the sceptical argument does not really require an extra stage of argument against itself in order to remove itself. (Nussbaum 1994: 551)

In many religions, for instance, hunger or fasting is a means of purging one’s body for spiritual purification. Accordingly, overeating brings torture, while less food can bring happiness. As Hettche writes: ‘The “purgative way” is when the exercitant confronts her own sinful nature and seeks the means to rid herself of fault and weakness’ (2010: 295). Over the centuries, purging (bleeding, vomiting, sweating) was also a standard medical procedure found throughout Europe and North America (Mattern 2008; Shryock 1960). The practice continued well into the nineteenth century when pharmaceuti-

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cal chemistry changed long-established therapeutic regimes. The physician applied purging in order to evacuate the patient’s system to help recover the balance of nature or pave the way for further medication. Preparations for purgatives included, for instance, prescribed treatments for malaria and syphilis for which mercury was the basis used in remedies to treat the symptoms (Edmonds 2012: 125). Within a more contemporary context, purging might be linked to something other than medicinal treatments or preventive cures. Binge-purging has, for example, come to plague the Western world. An estimated ten million adolescent girls in Canada and the United States have an eating disorder of some kind, and a proportionately smaller number of mainly women (an estimated 1–1.5%) have bulimia nervosa (BN) (American Psychiatric Association 2013),7 which is more frequently characterized by binge-purging than anorexia nervosa. The purging subtype of bulimia often involves self-induced vomiting, laxatives, enemas or diuretics. Among the Mun of Southern Ethiopia, women and men purge on average twice a week, usually by vomiting coffee.8 Younger married adults and unmarried girls and boys purge mainly in cases of illness, when participating in playful purging games or in preparation of competitive events. In extreme cases, especially after a prolonged illness, purging can occur over a dozen times in one day, especially when drinking purgatives such as girari (the African wild olive) or dokay.9 As Fayers-Kerr so accurately puts it: ‘vomiting in public is an entirely normal affair…’ (2013: 110). However, missing from the many definitions that I have come across on purging practices, which are generally classified in the medical literature as ‘purging disorder’ (PD),10 is any reference to the specific social and cross-cultural contexts in which people purge. The danger of misrecognizing cultural variations of purging is that this could run the risk of turning such practices into pathological disorders, deviant behaviour or ‘harmful’ cultural practices (HCPs).11 The latter applies, for example, to Southern Ethiopia where local groups like the Mun, Bodi and Suri are being told by state authorities to abandon ‘backward customs’, which includes traditional healing practices and certain emetic, as well as ceremonial stick fighting, female lip-plates and lip-plugs, polygamy and bridewealth, body scarification and animal sacrifices (cf. Abbink, this volume), all of which, to varying degrees, intersect with the social practice of purging. If the medicinal and social significance of purging practices in Southern Ethiopia is not understood, modern biomedical treatments might prove to be ineffective. Like the hard liquor that is flowing into South Omo, it might also prove to be potentially fatal if those distributing or administering the drugs fail to understand the unique role that purgatives play in helping to regulate equilibrium in the body and balance in the community.

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Purging in Traditional African Medicine (TAM) Collecting and applying medicinal plants to purge or clean the body internally is a common health practice among many Africans.12 Purgatives are either taken routinely as a type of preventive health measure, or with the onset of any illness symptoms. This precaution is consistent with the worldview of many Africans that illness is to be attributed to either natural or supernatural causes. The idea is that ‘contamination’ enters from both the physical and the spiritual plane. The rhetorical argument (belief) claims that a cure or relief is only to be found through purging and cleansing the body (Leclerc-Madlala 1994: 3–6). Purging in all its forms is often the first course of action in the quest for a cure for any illness (ibid.). In Mun it is no different; the importance of medicinal plants is crucial because they contain active constituents that are used in the management of various diseases and ailments. Although the scientific basis for the usage of purgatives has not yet been established in Mun,13 the Mun themselves have enough experience to know that purgatives are able to alleviate certain conditions like fever, and to get rid of parasites like tapeworm. Numerous studies prove that purging plants used in Traditional African Medicine (TAM) have important anti-microbial and anti-parasitic properties (see especially Iwu 2014). Few studies exist so far in the literature on the comparative medicinal and social use of purgatives in Southern Ethiopia (see, for example, Abbink 1995, 1997, 2002).

Health and Well-Being among the Mun The Mun are a group of approximately ten thousand agro-pastoralists living along and between the Omo and Mago Rivers in Southern Ethiopia. The Mun diet consists mainly of sorghum and corn, milk, blood, and a variety of edible wild leaves. During the dry season, people move to the river for flood-retreat farming and in the rainy seasons they move inland to practise rain-fed cultivation on higher ground where the rainfall and fresh pasture can be found for their cattle. An age-grade pattern of organization regulates relations between men and boys of different ages, on the one hand, and women and girls on the other. Most decisions are made at the household level, but when collective decision-making is required, ritual specialists (komorenna) and influential men (jalaba) provide advice (see Turton 1973). In Mun, one definition of well-being is ‘baa hola’, lit. ‘white place’ (LaTosky 2013). This refers to the open savannah land, where people can go to sing and dance, but only when there is peace and the crops are plentiful. Members of the community can only go to meet in such open areas when there is no conflict, no drought or illness. Well-being in many Mun contexts is also dependent on something that Thompson (1966), in his work on the Yoruba, refers to

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as ‘an aesthetic of the cool’. The Yoruba notion of a cool, even-tempered stance is also comparable to Mun ideas of a person with a ‘cool stomach’ (kiyongoa lalini), also referred to as a ‘cool person’ (hira lalini; see LaTosky 2013). Such an individual is healthy, balanced, calm, even-tempered, or has regained his/her physical, emotional or personal strength, whether through regular purging, the resolution of a conflict, the sacrifice of livestock, or by visiting a traditional healer. An aesthetic of the cool can be seen most frequently in the everyday use of purgatives in Mun, which typically induce vomiting (harra) (to cleanse the stomach), but also induce diarrhoea (herrta) (to clean the bowels), and other healing options as well. Coffee is the most commonly used emetic, but there is also a variety of purging infusions made from bitter leaves, roots and mulched bark (see also Fayers-Kerr 2013: 110–13). As with coffee, these can be prepared whenever an individual or community experiences a health, social and/or spiritual need. While purging is an important part of maintaining overall good health and for preventing and treating illness, for the Mun, it is also a persuasive performance. People use rhetorical strategies to convince one another, or themselves, that purging is good for one’s health, that it will increase one’s strength, bolster one’s reputation, and create or maintain alliances. Such strategies include everything from public displays of purging during ritual events to the use of metaphorical language when talking about purging and people who purge. That purging is an important part of everyday social relations is indicated in the excerpt below: Ngatui and Luke just finished drinking and vomiting their coffee and are now preparing a collection of leafy greens (kinoi), placing them in a small earthenware pot on the fire. As they remove the veins from the large gungkachuy (pumpkin) leaves, Ngatui casually covers up the vomit in front of her … Nyabissê, who is eight months pregnant, complains of fatigue and severe hip pains. She sits next to us drinking a gourd full of coffee (a mixture of water, roasted and ground coffee, garlic and dried chilli peppers), placing a pinch of coarse salt on her tongue in between gulps. Within a few minutes of finishing the spicy coffee, she tickles the back of her throat with a piece of grass in order to induce vomiting and ‘cool’ her body (and that of the growing foetus). Glancing over at her vomit, her sister-in-law proudly comments on how dêlêley (wealthy) she is: ‘Look, you can see that she is dêlêley; just look at all that milk in her vomit! My brother makes sure to feed her lots of milk so that the baby will be fat and well’ (idibheni na a challi). (LaTosky 2013: 220–21)

From these first observations, made during my doctoral research in 2009, it occurred to me that the practice of purging with coffee in public is an important rhetorical display that implicitly makes a statement about one’s health, economic status, and even the moral status and virtues of others (in this case, Ngatui’s elder brother, Olilori).14

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Purity and Disgust in Relation to Vomiting It was not until 2012, and again in 2014, that I could further my research into the topic of purging. I began by interviewing Milisha Olibui, the only Mun health worker to date, who has been trained by foreign missionaries, and a close friend and informant Olisirwa Tula. I wanted to know if the conversation between Ngatui and Nyabissê was in any way typical of how Mun women and men talk when they collectively and discretely vomit their coffee on a regular basis. Shauna: Do people look at and really talk about each other’s vomit like this? Milisha: You shouldn’t look at someone else’s vomit if it is not nice, but with coffee, you don’t need to cover it up. S: Also milk? If someone drank a lot of milk, would you look or talk about it then? M: If it’s milk, that’s okay; people will say: ‘You drank a lot!’ [Nakirra wang!] ‘You vomited and were eating a lot at someone’s place’ [Taharro wang, wadhoiyaiyn hiri-kono ba!] ‘You were drinking milk over there and it has now turned to beer [fermented]’. People don’t talk about their vomit if they are sick. You cover it if it is bad vomit. Yes, Ngatui might have said something about Nyabissê’s vomit, that she is really drinking lots of milk, but people generally don’t talk about each other’s vomit unless there is milk in it. It’s true that ‘[a] woman’s wealth [here: milk] comes out in her vomit’. They might make a comment like this, but they won’t talk about it if there is sickness in it. Olisirwa: Why would you look at vomit filled with sickness? Bad smells also cause us to vomit. If someone has an open sore or you get a whiff of someone’s vomit or shit, you feel nauseated and want to vomit. If the person sees that you want to throw up, they will be insulted and might try to beat you or even kill you. It is a big insult to vomit in front of the person [whose noxious smell caused you to vomit]. If you do, he can beat you. This is different from vomiting together to keep the body strong. M: Olisirwa is right; vomiting is for [maintaining] health, but is also caused by bad smelling things, which make your heart palpitate [hini woyo]. If someone else makes you sick, you should not vomit in front of that person. (Interview with Milisha Olibui and Olisirwa Tula, Jinka, 7 March 2012)

Among the Mun, vomiting is viewed with varying degrees of disgust, depending on the context in which it occurs. A sick person is expected to cover up his/her vomit and should move away from others, especially if it has a noxious odour. Vomit bears a strong association to morality. If someone’s vomit causes revulsion in another, it is considered a grave insult, especially if it causes

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the person to show disgust or to vomit. Such an act is demoralizing for the person, since it is a way to publicly announce that someone is contaminated and should thus be avoided. As the rhetoric goes, the insulted person would have the licence to beat or threaten to kill the person who vomits in disgust in front of him. This is very different from the kind of public and often audible purging sessions that involve drinking girari and dokay. Both are used as purgatives by men, women and, to a lesser extent, children. They are used to treat everything from dizziness to parasites, and are a general prophylaxis, especially for women in their final stages of pregnancy (LaTosky 2013: 219), but also if they become ill post-partum (Baumann 2001: 52).15 When I witnessed violent public episodes of vomiting for the first time in 2004, men and women sat in separate locations, but within earshot of one another.16 The husband who had collected and prepared girari for his pregnant wife would send his age-mate to check on her and to encourage her to continue drinking gourds full of the bitter drink that he and three other men had prepared for her and several other women. The man would then report back to her husband as to how many gourds she had drunk. I have suggested elsewhere that one important way in which women and men maintain good health is by purging (i.e. vomiting) girari (African wild olive),17 which grows on Mount Atula and in Mago Park (in Northern Mun and Mount Dara in Southern Mun) (see LaTosky 2013: 219–21). Girari is only collected by boys and men and is made into a brackish, bitter drink by pounding, mulching and extracting the aqueous juices from the bark.18 This is done in a rock pool (tawarr) with a wooden mallet (kêya kuicha girari) and is usually prepared and also given by a husband to his pregnant wife during her final months of pregnancy to ensure her and the baby’s overall well-being.19 Collecting girari, as I suggest, is a way in which a man can earn a reputation as a caring and loving husband. According to the rhetoric of Mun men and women, a good husband is expected to collect bark for his pregnant wife. As Milisha Olibui had first explained in 2010: Every husband is expected to go to Mt. Atula to collect girari for his wife when she is around 7 months pregnant. If you do this everyone will see that you take care of your wife. The girari protects the mother and baby against parasites, bacteria, and malaria. I did this for my wife and prepared it (kuicha girari) in the rock pool (tawarr). Other women will later playfully ask her: ‘Did you vomit?’ (Wata harru?) If she drinks too much, she can lose the baby; if she drinks just enough, it will protect her and the baby. (LaTosky 2013: 221)20

As Milisha and I continued to discuss Mun purging practices, I learned that his wife had just given birth to their second child. My first question of course was: ‘Did you collect girari for her?’ His response was: ‘No, it was an easy pregnancy’. Surprised by this, recalling his claim that ‘every good husband will collect girari

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Figure 6.1. Kissinyaholi Gedôw prepares dokay for his wife. (Photo © S. LaTosky 2014).

for his wife’, he explained: ‘Yes, it’s true, we are expected to do this for our wives, but that doesn’t mean we always do what is expected of us! If girari is difficult to collect, there are other options. You can also collect dokay, kamba, kia chaga, ra. There are many things to [induce] vomiting. The husband can also slaughter a goat or a sheep if she is not very ill. If she is really ill, you will slaughter an ox, or two, or maybe even three – even buffalo, warthog, or other wild animals. She will drink the contents of the boiled meat [intestines and stomach] – we call it kangi – and sometimes vomit’. It was at this point in the discussion that Olisirwa, who was sitting next to Milisha, claimed that purging was not only a metaphor of a husband’s love for his wife, but a symbol of solidarity between relatives, especially cousins, but also between clans, age-mates, neighbours and so on. Olisirwa: In Mun we grow up this way. For children it is more play. They don’t know how to vomit [the way adults do], but their mothers will push them to drink, to fatten them up. A chubby child shows that his father is wealthy and that his mother pushes him to drink. Later, when you grow up, [adolescent] boys and girls will push each other in the same way. But vomiting is really for the adults. ‘We vomit our problems onto the ground!’ [Ngameya loginya kataharta ba.] That’s what we say in Mun. If there is an issue, say a problem between a wife and husband that needs to be resolved, [we] ‘spit/vomit it

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Figure 6.2. Korrari’s daughter refilling Figure 6.3. Korrari purging dokay. the drinking gourd. (Photo © S. LaTo- (Photo © S. LaTosky 2014). sky 2014). onto the ground!’ This way it will be resolved for good! Purging [here: vomiting] solves the problem; [it is] thrown into the bushes for good. (Interview with Olisirwa Tula, Jinka, 7 March 2012)

The notion of purity is used metaphorically in Mun to describe the effects of purging. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, in 2014, a man by the name of Kissinyaholi Gedôw insisted that I record and observe him preparing dokay for his wife, who had been complaining of ill health for several months. He explained that only by cleaning her stomach so that it was ‘pure’ (holi) again, could his wife expel the illness from her body. What struck me was how public her purging was and how proud her husband was to prepare dokay for her, together with their children, who took turns holding the ends of the large roots that he scraped with a machete (see Figure 6.1). Her two daughters and sister-in-law looked on, asking her everyday questions in between her violent vomiting episodes. Every so often, one of her daughters would stand up and fill her gourd, while neighbours, relatives and her husband would come by to check on her. Korarri sat in the middle of her homestead for nearly two hours drinking and vomiting gourds filled with the bitter-tasting juices extracted from the bark of the dokay roots (see Figures 6.2 and 6.3).

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That vomiting is a public and socially acceptable practice becomes even more apparent when looking at the playful purging ‘games’ in which young Mun girls and boys participate.

‘Pushing’ Gruel and Blood: Binge-Drinking Games among Mun Youth In Mun, girls and boys like to play drinking games at harvest time when there is an abundance of sorghum, milk and blood. Either the girls will challenge the boys, or the boys will challenge the girls to competitive binge-drinking games that involve, respectively, the vomiting of gruel, called shalu, and cow’s blood (nyowa).21 Milisha Olibui describes such competitions: One challenges the other; this usually happens if there is a good harvest. The boys will drink so much that they will vomit. If they [the boys] vomit they are beaten. They [the girls] will say, ‘Drink, drink! If you don’t drink quickly, I’ll beat you now’. [‘Irre so! Huli ngamatiyoye kadagaino, huli kop kop ngamatey, kadagaino!’] If you want to talk, you will also be beaten. If a girl calls her cousins and other clan members to drink gruel, this is taken as a challenge they cannot refuse. They [the girls] will prepare lots and lots of shalu (gruel) and the boys [here: cousins or age-mates] must drink it. They give shalu to them like a kind of punishment. A boy might challenge a girl by saying, ‘I will finish all of your shalu, no problem!’ To provoke her he will say this: ‘If you give me all of it, I will finish it!’ It’s a kind of competition among age-mates. Girls win if they bring more than they [the boys] can consume. They have to bring more than they can possibly finish … The girls equipped themselves with shalu. We [men] beat them if they only bring a small amount. If they don’t have enough, they are weak. [They will say:] ‘Ane loya!’ (‘You are a weakling!’) or ‘Bassa!’ (‘You won’t beat me!’). That means: you will never beat me! I will not be full! It shows the strength of the girl, who pushes the boys to drink. She must push them to drink until they vomit. If she doesn’t prepare enough gruel, she loses the game. [The boy will say] ‘Ngakachaseyo!’ (‘I’m not full!’) Teri [age-grade for boys] can also push the girls to drink blood. Rori (agegrade for Mun men] can push you and show their power at any time. ‘Nyowa adha’ [is the name of this]. Again [it means] ‘to push blood’ on them. If they [the girls] reject the authority of the teru [age-grade], they can punish the girls by pushing blood on them. The rora and teru can do this. Girls can also push rora. Cousins give to cousins or certain clan members.

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If the girls are the first to call the boys to drink, later on, the boys will challenge the girls to drink blood (nyowa). They will say, ‘I am going to go after her until she vomits’. The girls [also cousins] will have to drink gourds and gourds full of blood. If they refuse, or cannot continue to finish the blood, they will be beaten [with whips]. One is proud to wear the scars from a cousin. It shows that you were pushed [challenged] to be a rival. To challenge him/her again is to cure this rivalry. The scars, maybe one or two, and show a close bond. The girl or boy will be proud of such scars. This is not the same as other scars [inflicted by someone other than a cousin]. These are games played between clan members and [male and female] cousins. We say yanugen for cousins, or yana for cousin. Like competitions: the girls challenge boys and boys challenge girls. You will push your cousin to drink and drink until he vomits. If they vomit and cannot drink anymore, the girl will grab her whip and beat him. She will force them to drink more. We call it ‘shalu adha’ – ‘adha’ means ‘to push’. (Interview with Milisha Olibui, Jinka, 7 March 2012)

Jean Lydall makes the indirect parallel here to Hamar youngsters who go to town and drink so much arake that they have vomiting fits. As she writes, ‘getting into this terrible state … consolidates the friendship between the boys and girls who go on such sprees’ (Jean Lydall, e-mail communication, 10 March 2015). In Mun, such competitive drinking games, which involve plenty of ‘liquid courage’ in the form of gruel or blood,22 become a measurement of the strength of social relations as well. A more direct parallel can also be found in Hamar, where newlywed women are challenged in similar ways when it comes to drinking tobacco water. As Jean Lydall explains: When a girl/woman is brought in to her husband’s home as his bride, his age-mates will come to get to know her and establish good relations with her (they are the ones who then chat and flirt with her while her husband keeps his distance and never even looks her in the eye) – however, the method of doing so involves certain challenges which she needs to rise to with courage and strength. The first and simplest challenge is the whipping wand, as is nicely described by Sagonda in ‘Two Girls Go Hunting’ when she gives Gadi advice. The bride should not flinch but take the lashes with pride, and then the age-mates will approve of her and become her good friends for life. (The age-mates of the father-in-law do not whip her but demand this and that, and then bless her.) Another possible challenge is the one involving getting the bride to drink water with tobacco mixed in it – this makes her vomit of course. I don’t suppose it’s the purging that’s uppermost, rather the hus-

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band’s age-mates want her to demonstrate that she’s prepared to do dangerous things without being afraid. Another challenge is for an age-mate to cut a scar onto the bride’s upper arm – if she takes on the challenge the scar remains as evidence of her fearlessness and the special bond she has with that particular friend of her husband. I think Baldambe mentions the tobacco drinking and whipping in his account. (Jean Lydall, e-mail communication, 15 March 2015; see also Lydall, this volume)

Drinking Dokay before Donga (Stick Duelling Competitions) The common and powerful purging plant called dokay is also used by Mun boys and men before stick duelling competitions called donga.23 Age-mates will collectively drink this bitter root to cleanse their stomachs by purging so they can then drink copious amounts of milk. It is said that one will gain weight faster after drinking dokay.24 Those of the teru and rora age-grades binge-purge dokay on a regular basis, but especially before donga competitions. A fierce fighter is someone who has fattened up on milk and blood before a competition, which involves fast and furious stick fights between villages, age-mates and clansmen. The binge-drinking of mainly milk and blood is also found among Bodi men, who put on significant weight in preparation for the New Year events called ke’el. As Lucie Buffavand explains: What to think of the ke’el then when men go through a fattening process for several months, drinking enormous quantities of sour milk and blood every day? This is again a control of the stomach. They drink to the point of vomiting, and drink again; they work on expanding their stomach so that it tolerates higher quantities of liquids [note: they use a medicinal plant called mumo at regular times during the diet; it helps them to stay healthy and not to vomit the milk and blood]. This is a fight against the feeling of repletion because they must never rest from drinking, even at night. Besides, their bodily appearance is very different from a man who would have put on weight by eating sorghum or maize porridge – the ‘social food’ [note: a person going through the fattening diet for the ke’el is called etidach; those people who are permanently fat simply by eating their daily porridge with milk are called khabio]. Both obtain protuberant bellies and very strong flesh. (Lucie Buffavand, e-mail communication, 11 March 2015)

Among the Mun and Suri (see Abbink 1995), men’s bodies also become noticeably heavier, particularly their stomachs, before stick duelling competitions (donga). Such weight gain is a measure of one’s wealth, strength and courage, and is also associated with friendship, since purging dokay and, sub-

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sequently, drinking milk and blood is done collectively with one’s age-mates. The intersections between bodily strength and social solidarity are rhetorically effective. In the case of dokay, for example, not only does it help a man to quickly gain weight (and bodily fluid), he is also said to become a stronger donga fighter and thus a good age-mate, clansman and potential husband. That is, purging is not only for decorative or aesthetic purposes (i.e. concerns regarding weight and shape by fattening up),25 but also encompasses the more formal achievement of defeating rival age-mates, in particular rival suitors.

Purging Plants as Gifts The offering of purging plants is also a way to show respect. Young Mun men offer purgatives to senior elders (bara), especially during ritual whipping ceremonies, called koma kodha. During such ritual ceremonies, boys (and sometimes girls) kneel before male elders as a form of collective punishment for misbehaving or disobeying age-grade rules.26 Boys in the teru age-grade, who are referred to as the ‘slaves of the elders’ (a shangarainya barruin), just as the younger boys in the donga age-grade are called the ‘slaves of the warriors’ (a shangarainya roruin), are expected to provide offerings of girari, especially if they want to make a special request to hold a donga competition or to ask for forgiveness for misbehaving.27 Girari is still considered one of the most powerful purgatives.28 In the absence of girari, dokay can also be offered. Such gift giving is a way to respect and thus ‘cool’ the elders’ stomachs. It is a way to ask for forgiveness and to symbolically purge the anger or disapproval that the elders hold in their stomachs against the youths. In some cases, depending on the severity of the punishment, elders might refuse the girari.29 In a similar vein, giving someone coffee is also a way to maintain peace and good social relations. As Fayers-Kerr writes, ‘Drinking and purging coffee was a prestigious social way of cleansing the stomach’ (2013: 111). Given the important links between coffee, good health and prestige, not only does such an offering show that the person is generous (since coffee is a valuable commodity that can only be purchased at the local markets),30 but that he/she wants to make others feel well. When Mun talk about drinking coffee, one will frequently hear the following: He’s not a stingy person; he gave me coffee. [Hiri chali kehe kama bunna.] He is a good person. Now [that I drank/vomited coffee] I can eat well! [Hiri chali kehe kama bunna. Hiri chali, na kabag tila wang!] The phlegm is all gone! It’s all gone into the bushes! Gone into the bushes! [Moda garte bhui; ow gasho karre! Ow gasho!]

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My stomach is well now, my heart can move freely. [Kiongo ishe hini ngawoyo.]31

Olisirwa Tula further explains that people who are invited to drink and purge coffee are more likely to defend that person if they hear others speaking ill of him/her. If you are given coffee a person will vomit and feel healthy again. People will not talk badly about someone who makes others feel well. They will praise that person and defend him in front of others by saying: ‘He is not stingy. He is a good man; he gives his guests coffee. I was at his place and he invited me for coffee. He can’t be as bad as you say. He gave me coffee!’ This is the story of vomiting (loga kaharcha). (Interview with Olisirwa Tula, Jinka, 8 March 2012)

In short, the purging (i.e. vomiting) of coffee (bunna) is an important part of maintaining overall good health and good relations, and is commonly linked to the ‘purity’ (i.e. morality) of one’s character. By giving coffee, others will defend you and your reputation. ‘He was the one who gave me coffee’ is a common rhetorical statement. As Milisha Olibui adds: You might make mistakes, but people will be more forgiving; people will defend you. ‘She’s not guilty! She offered me coffee; she can’t be that bad. Don’t take things so seriously. She’s taking care of our well-being!’ If she doesn’t give coffee people might not say such nice things. In Mursi, someone who doesn’t share his/her coffee is called a gongai (stingy person). Even before we had coffee it was like this. Long ago we only had ‘shokor, shokor’. This is what our fathers’ fathers drank; they mixed sorghum, chamocha [a kind of herb] and chilli peppers and vomited. Drinking coffee has always been a way to solve problems. Like today, if there is a feud between a husband and wife, coffee will be prepared and a mediator will help to resolve the issue. Once the issue is resolved, everyone will drink and vomit [coffee]. ‘Vomit the problems onto the ground and everything will be well’ [Logo kahartese ba na te chali]. (Interview with Milisha Olibui, Jinka, 8 March 2012)

Purging coffee, one could say, is part of a ‘rhetoric of responsibility’ (Davis 2010) towards others that intersects with the gift of acknowledgement, and the restoration of peace.

Expunging the Past and Restoring Peaceful Relations In Mun, there are a number of purging metaphors linked to peaceful resolutions. These include, for example:

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Vomit your spit onto the ground! [Kahadessen moda ba!] Nobody is killing each other here; the spit has become good in this place. The problems are finished. [Hiri loga ngameya koneng garra, moda ba te chali. Loga garrai.] Now we want to vomit our problems onto the ground. [Ngameya loginya gersa katahartese ba.] The problems in the past were vomited onto the ground. Now the problem is over for good! [Loga barre koinchinya, katahartese ba. Ngameya nga kokte dhok!] We will slaughter a cow [drink the soup, vomit] and the problems will be resolved forever. Resolved for good! All bad things will disappear! [Kinni bi, na kecheb moorinya, na loga garra dhok! Bhui gersi garra! Gerressin kagarra! Kagarr dhok!]

Just as the metaphors on ‘vomiting spit [i.e. problems] onto the ground’ (katahartese moda ba!) are about expunging the past, in peace-making ceremonies, ritual sacrifice performs the same role of symbolically purging the community of pollutants. The perpetrator, or one who has come into contact with someone or something polluted (a violent act, murder, the faeces of certain birds etc.) must be cleansed of all impurities by slaughtering a cow, goat or sheep. Like vomiting, the ritual sacrifice of an animal, for example following a homicide, is a way of purging the pollution caused by bloodshed (an affliction called nyowa) (LaTosky 2013), but also internal tensions, feuds and pent-up hostilities within the community. While the sacrificial process of animals can treat illness (by drinking and sometimes vomiting a soup made from the contents of an animal’s stomach, called kangi), prevent the spread of contamination, keep vengeance in check or resolve problems, the sacrifice of animals is not always done to purify directly like purging, but to gain blessing from the deceased and/or the elders who receive the sacrificial animal or its meat as a gift.

Modern-Day ‘Purgatives’ and the Misuse of Alcohol and Antibiotics The use of purgatives among the Mun for maintaining good health and social relations has been changing over time. Over the last two decades, hard alcohol like arake has been introduced, along with modern antibiotics, which are sometimes used in a similar way to traditional purgative plants. During discussions with Mun men in 2014, I was told that arake had become popular

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among the Mun because it serves as a powerful stimulant, it makes people feel strong, and can induce vomiting in order to restore one’s equilibrium. ‘When you drink arake, you don’t need a lot to get drunk. It makes your stomach burn and your heart turn. Then you vomit and your stomach is cool again.’ Arake, like other modern drugs, poses serious challenges in Mun and other parts of Southern Ethiopia. In the past, only Mun adults would typically partake in drinking alcoholic beverages,32 which consisted of the locally produced and highly nutritional sorghum beer (geso) and honey wine (from Kwegu). Today, children, adolescents and even pregnant women are invited to drink beer, mead and arake,33 a strong spirit made of corn that is brewed in the nearby towns of Jinka and Hana and illicitly sold in Mun, often by Ari traders. As one Muni man explains, arake has begun to take over the lives of many Mun men and women. Tilama’s son has only one cow left because of arake. He sold his cattle, some to the highlanders in Romo [here: a local Mursi village turned into a residential camp for migrant sugar cane workers] in order to buy arake. His [second] wife still has her [deceased] husband’s cattle, but his [first] wife also drinks. She doesn’t always grind for her children. That’s why you see the children eating boiled corn without milk. Now he is like a Kwegu [without cattle]. This arake is killing young men and elders and should be stopped! Why does the government ignore this problem? Maybe they want the Mun to become stupid drunkards so they will be deaf to what is going on around them … It’s already happening. Our elders are not leading their people anymore in the right direction. How can they if they are drunk. Arake will be the end of us! (Interview with Dorowa Gidanga, Maregge, 12 August, 2014)

Alcohol abuse is not only a major risk factor for inducing poverty and infectious and chronic diseases (Rehm 2006); alcohol turns communities into ‘entrenched sites of social tension’ (Herrick and Parnell 2014: 1). As Lugolinyebanna Biobisenno explains below: People drink arake because it makes them feel strong. We drink it the same way that we drink other things – fast, fast, fast, fast – like sorghum beer, milk and coffee. We are not like the foreigners who only drink like this [taking small sips]. We drink it together, all at once. If there is arake, people get drunk and some lose their minds. They fire bullets and kill each other without reason. Some men sleep with prostitutes in Jinka; some lose their money. Some women threaten to kill themselves. It happens more and more that women hang themselves when they are drunk. I don’t like the feeling of losing control so I don’t drink arake, only beer and honey wine. A year ago, a woman here in Maregge threatened to kill me over a small disagreement. She was really

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drunk on arake. I told her and her husband to leave and they moved to the other side of Maregge, close to the road. They cultivate at Mara so we hardly see each other now. People who disturb others like this should leave. These are the people who scare tourists away and we cannot have that … We need the tourist money because it allows us to buy grain if there is a drought. I tell the people in Maregge not to drink arake,34 otherwise the tour guides will continue to say that we are drunkards, and not bring tourists here. (Interview with Lugolinyebanna Biobisenno, 8 July 2014)

Many Mun today, like Dorowa Gidanga and Lugolinyebanna Biobisenno, have sanctioned calls for greater alcohol control policies and restrictions within their communities, but their pleas to ban the illicit trade of arake in Mun have been met with indifference.35 Strategies to reduce the harmful abuse of alcohol are as urgent as the growing burden of biomedicine. Access to modern healthcare and the ‘powerful pills’ (ziwoi a barari) being administered (in some cases like candy) is also increasing the risk of improper use. In 2014, there were several stories of Mun deaths associated with the health post in Meganto. Many Mun in Maregge boycott the clinic, as they felt mistrustful of the antibiotics that were being sold (pers. comm. Milisha Olibui, Maregge, 22 July 2014). In 2014, for a period of eight weeks, I observed how and when people from Maregge (Northern Mun) were taking drugs prescribed to them by health workers from the health post in Romo (a two-hour walk), which opened in 2013 to serve mainly migrant workers employed by the Ethiopian Sugar Cane Corporation. Most Mun who visited the clinic would be given a combination of drugs to treat malaria, typhoid and typhus (for a flat fee of 100 ETB, approx. 5 USD). Since the majority of Mun are illiterate, and since the health workers in Romo did not yet speak Mun, by the time the patient returned home, he/ she was unsure as to how and when to take the prescribed drugs. As a fall back, many Mun in Maregge would use them as they would emetics, or would stop using them after a few days if there were no observable or immediate results. Given the failed harvests in June 2014 in Maregge, some mothers were more concerned that their children would be worse off without milk and discontinued the antibiotics after a few days.36 One strategy to avoid the perceived milk prohibition associated with antibiotics was to take the whole course of drugs at once. I began to record such events in my field diary after witnessing what could have been a fatal drug overdose: Highland health worker [giving oral and written instructions]: ‘1 capsule three times a day for 7 days’. Lugolinyebanna Biobisenno [instructions to his son]: ‘Don’t drink milk and don’t swallow the plastic capsules. They are bad. Pour the contents [of the

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capsules] from the first [blister package] into a gourd full of water. Mix it, drink it, and then vomit. By tomorrow you can drink milk again’. Within an hour of taking half a course of antibiotics, Oregge, an 8-year old boy, began to violently vomit bright yellow chunks of chalky tetracycline powder. He was febrile, trembling and listless. I was worried that the drug overdose would kill him. After the vomiting bouts, which continued off and on for an hour, he had no strength. I gave him charcoal tablets, electrolytes, and covered him with a thin wet sheet to bring down his fever. When I tried to explain why the drugs would no longer be effective, everyone assured me that the boy would recover since the drugs had made him vomit. This was said to be ‘good’ (challi). He was indeed better the next day. I was surprised how quickly he bounced back. (Field journal, Maregge, 3 July 2014)

Three weeks later, I made the following field diary entry: Oregge’s symptoms have returned, this time with a vengeance. The malaria self-testing kit was positive so I treated him with Coartem. Indeed the tetracycline likely would not have worked. Whenever I gave him the bitter-tasting tablets (that take forever to fully dissolve!) he would gag and vomit them back up. I repeated the dose, this time mixing them with sugar water. After he finished the 3-day course, his father’s deceased half-brother’s wife prepared dokay for him. He refused at first, but eventually drank it and vomited. He was back to herding calves the following day. His father insisted that modern drugs were not all that different from Mun medicine. ‘We vomit and then drink milk and blood. To go without milk is bad … It’s the same with cattle [medicine]: we mix all the medicine in water, put it in a syringe and inject them with it. They recover. That’s the Mun way.’ (Field diary, Maregge, 26 July 2014)

Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have tried to show how the ethno-medicinal value of emetic and purgative substances and purging practices is as important as their social value in Mun. For the Mun, purging the stomach, the heart or the hot phlegm in one’s chest is considered a cure-all. Purging is not only to prevent or cure illness; Mun social life is tinged with purging rhetoric that people ‘bring up’ to solve problems and form public and moral opinions about one another. The act of purging is a way to cure marital problems and cousin rivalry, and to mould and maintain social relations, for example between neighbours, agemates, and across generations.

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The rhetorical act of giving a commonplace purgative like coffee, for example, marks generosity and wealth, nourishes neighbourly relations, encourages bodily or physical well-being (purging harmful things from the physical body) and encourages social well-being (purging problems from social relationships). In short, by focusing on purging and how the act of purging is represented in Mun as a social, that is, rhetorical mechanism, the relationship with purging becomes more complex than pathogen avoidance, since from this point of view people see greater benefits of purging for maintaining and restoring health, social relations and moral obligations. In the future, this study of purging might contribute an interesting example to debates about the evolutionary ‘function’ of disgust. As we see in the example of Mun purging practices, these do not necessarily lead to a behavioural avoidance in the possible presence of pathogens, but play a rhetorical role in moralization, especially in the purity domain, which is equated directly with cleansing the body using purgatives. For the Mun, a sense of disgust is evoked if one does not vomit, does not bring up bile, spit up phlegm, or refuses someone an emetic or purgative.37 The persuasive ways in which people convince each other about questions of purity and morality are overlooked not only in anthropological discussions about disgust sensitivity, but in discussions about rhetoric and culture. Purging has a strong social benefit, perpetuated through the use of various rhetorical strategies, from the performative act of public purging to purging metaphors used to discuss the maintenance of peace in the community. Today, however, these benefits are becoming increasingly compromised, especially as hard alcohol and antibiotics are mistaken as ‘powerful purgatives’ or as replacements for traditional ones. Pointing to the disturbing overlap of purging practices in the present is a rhetorical strategy that I use here with the intention of persuading policy makers and health officials of the pressing need to take more seriously the sociopolitical context in which alcohol abuse and drug misuse is occurring in Mun today. Moreover, since purgative plants are a product of the enduring link between the Mun and their environment, efforts should be made by government health and development planners to increase moral concern for the environment in Mun (and South Omo in general) by including traditional medicinal plants as part of local health policy, resource management strategies and conservation plans. Shauna LaTosky is a socio-cultural anthropologist with a PhD (2010) from Gutenberg-University, Mainz. From 2012 to 2015, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Integration and Conflict, investigating comparative customary law and conflict resolution procedures, especially in relation

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to traditional livestock management, livestock trade, bridewealth exchange, and changing land use practices in Southern Ethiopia. She was Director of the South Omo Research Center (Jinka, Southern Ethiopia) from 2011 to 2013. Her main research work for the past fifteen years has been in Ethiopia, focusing on Mursi women, modernity, gender relations, pastoralism and development-induced change, identity and rhetoric. Her publications include The Predicaments of Mursi (Mun) Women in Ethiopia’s Changing World (Köppe Verlag, 2013), articles on agro-pastoralism, Mursi women and material culture in Southern Ethiopia, and the co-edited volume Writing in the Field. Festschrift for Stephen Tyler (Lit Verlag, 2013). She currently teaches anthropology at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. Notes The author would like to thank the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/ Saale) for supporting the writing of this chapter, and for covering fieldwork on medicinal plants in Ethiopia in 2014 and 2019. I am also grateful to Ivo Strecker for reviewing a final draft, and to James Carrier for helpful feedback on an earlier draft. Jean Lydall and Lucie Buffavand also provided excellent feedback and insightful examples of purging and the use of emetics as an expression of strength and courage in Hamar and Chirim (Bodi). Finally, I would like to say thank you to Milisha and Olisarali Olibui, Olisirwa Tula and Lugolinyebanna Biobisenno for explaining the importance of purging plants in Mun. A special thank you goes to Kissinyaholi Gedôw and his wife Korarri Dorowa for collecting and identifying medicinal plants, and for giving me their permission to include photos of them preparing and purging dokay. 1. Also written dokáy (Harrisonia abyssinica Oliv.; see Abbink 1995: 4). The bark and root extracts of this small tree are known for their anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anthelmintic properties (Baldé et al. 1995: 299–302; Fabry et al. 1996: 67). 2. ‘Mursi’ is a designation used by outsiders. Mun (or Muni, sing.) is a self-designation. The Mun call the place which they inhabit baa Munuin, which can be translated as Munland. 3. For an excellent review of the Studies in Rhetoric and Culture series, see Mokrzan 2015: 257–74. 4. For one of the first studies to bring the Mun into rhetoric culture theory, see LaTosky 2013. 5. Jean Lydall, e-mail communication, 10 March 2015. 6. Vomit and the act of vomiting are generally considered to be high up on the Disgust Scale (DS) (see Tybur et al. 2009). Evolutionary perspectives on emotion show that the development and function of disgust is disease avoidance. Within the social sciences there is also a growing consensus that disgust plays a key role in motivating behaviour that reduces the likelihood of parasitic, bacterial and viral infections (Tybur et al. 2013: 70; Curtis, de Barra and Aunger 2011; Curtis, Aunger and Rabie 2004; Oaten, Stevenson and Case 2009). However, even if evolutionary research has enhanced our understanding of the causes and functions of disgust, the ultimate causes of pronounced

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individual differences in disgust sensitivity remain poorly understood (Al-Shawaf and Lewis 2013: 698). Whereas most evolutionary perspectives predict that disgust sensitivity depends on the costs and benefits of avoiding potential disease agents, they do not account for those individuals or groups motivated by conditions that bring them into contact with possible pathogens that do not evoke a sense of disgust (ibid.), but actually push certain so-called ‘disgust-eliciting’ practices (e.g. vomiting) into the moral domain. An emerging body of literature reveals that in non-Western countries, purging disorder (PD) is ‘associated with cultural transition and globalization, including modernization, urbanization and media-exposure promoting the Western beauty-ideal’ (Smink, van Hoecken and Hoek 2012: 412; see also Pike 2013). None of these reasons apply, however, to traditional purging practices, like those found among the Mun, which are mainly for medicinal and social purposes. It is important to note that emetics and other purgatives have been – and continue to be – used in various parts of Ethiopia (Young 1975). Comparative analysis of different purging traditions is still required, especially the metaphysical dimensions of purging (Mosissa and Reda 2018). Drinking coffee is, as Fayers-Kerr points out, ‘[a] highly sought-after pastime, particularly among middle-aged and older members of the community’ (2013: 110). While coffee is uniquely used as an emetic among the Mun, Suri and Bodi, spitting or spraying coffee during lustration rites is common in all agro-pastoralist societies in Southern Ethiopia, for example after having committed a crime, to bless cattle, to bring forth fertility and good fortune (LaTosky 2013: 47). This is especially true for the Hamar, Kara and Bashada, who will almost always begin a coffee ceremony with spitting/spraying coffee for the purpose of lustration, and not for the purpose of purging. Olea europaea L. (African wild olive). Herrick, Keel and Striegel-Moore (2009) propose five diagnostic criteria for purging disorder: (1) recurrent purging in order to influence weight or shape (e.g. self-induced vomiting); (2) purging occurs, on average, at least once a week for three months; (3) self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape or weight or there is an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat; (4) the purging does not occur exclusively during the course of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa; and (5) the purging is not associated with objectively large binge-episodes. The Mun case does not support all diagnostic criteria, especially the fear of losing weight, or purging in the absence of binge-episodes. Contrary to contemporary purging practices like bulimia nervosa, ‘which are associated with significant medical problems, including metabolic disturbances, electrolyte imbalances, edema, dental problems, esophageal tears, swollen salivary glands, and gastrointestinal reflux’ (Keel 2005, cited in Smith 2014: 2), traditional purging practices in Mun are used to maintain one’s health and well-being. Evidence of selfharm is only found in their association with the abuse of hard alcohol and misuse of antibiotics. This is similar to indigenous peoples of Northwestern North America who have long relied on purging (through sweats, emetics and plant purgatives) as a way to maintain spiritual and physical well-being (Turner 2014). See, for example, Fayers-Kerr 2013 on the importance of clays for healing purposes. Fayers-Kerr describes the stomach as a ‘moral centre’ for the community and explains that ‘communal processes for keeping the stomach clean are also moral affairs’ (2013: 109–10).

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15. A Muni Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA), or nyere, explains that after delivery, ‘Some of them get sick in the stomach and then we might kill a cow and they drink the soup and get healed, some drink “girary” (a herbal mixture which makes one vomit and diarrhate), so they vomit and vomit and then they get healed’ (Baumann 2001: 52). 16. It is strictly forbidden for a girl or woman to observe a man defecating. Since purgatives like girari and dokay also induce diarrhoea, men and women keep a safe distance from each other when drinking them (see also Fayers-Kerr 2013: 112). 17. Olea europaea L. subsp. cuspidate (Wal. ex DC.) Ciffienri (syn. Olea africana Mill.). See Turton, Yigezu and Olibui (2008: 72) and Abbink (1995: 6; 2002: 201). 18. Like the Loita Massai, who use Olea europaea L. (African wild olive) for mouth infections, intestinal worms, diarrhoea and dysentery, emetics and purgatives (Mandu et al. 2001), the Mun and their neighbours, the Suri and Bodi, use girari especially to treat worms (see Turton 1973: 155; Fayers-Kerr 2013: 110) and malaria. The Samburu of Kenya prepare it in a similar manner (by pounding and soaking the bark) in order to expel parasitic worms in livestock (Githiori 2004). In the Kilte Awulaelo District (Tigray Region) of Ethiopia, African wild olive is also used to treat malaria by boiling the bark in water and drinking it (Teklay, Abera and Giday 2013). 19. Whether one can or cannot say that the tree personifies the sacredness of Mount Atula, the bark is considered to be a special purgative that purifies and cools the body and is also served as an offering to elders during important ritual ceremonies for boys (e.g. kôma kôdha and nisa) (cf. Abbink 2002). 20. After drinking girari, a woman will drink milk and blood for her body to feel well again. There are incidences where an unwanted pregnancy can be terminated through the severe purging of girari (interview with Milisha Olibui, Jinka, 7 March 2012). 21. One might even find interesting parallels here to the drinking games among college students as a form of bonding. 22. Girls can also be challenged to binge-eating games, which includes wild game hunted by young men (e.g. buffalo, warthog) (pers. comm. Olisarali Olibui, Maregge, 18 July 2014). 23. Other purging plants include kiyachaga and kamba, especially among the teru age-grade. 24. Dokay is also a common purging plant used to kill parasites and cure malaria. Pregnant women will also drink dokay, but only the bark, not the roots as the latter can harm the foetus (pers. comm. Ngadhole Dorowa, Jinka, 8 March 2012). 25. This contrasts greatly with purging bulimia, which is associated with a morbid fear of becoming fat. 26. Girari is also given as a form of payment to female elders. 27. The request might be to ask for forgiveness or help solving a grievance, or it might be to seek permission to have a stick duelling competition. In the latter case, it is expected that boys will bring girari to the elders as a respectful way to seek their permission. 28. Girls are expected to offer elders sorghum stalks, coffee or alcohol. Sweet sorghum stalks are not used for the purpose of purging. 29. In some cases, girari might be considered an easy payment that the elders can refuse. If they want to make the boys struggle, they might ask for meat or arake (interview with Milisha Olibui, Jinka, 7 March 2012). 30. Wild coffee can also be found at certain times of the year, but is not abundant in Mun. 31. In Mun, spitting is common practice, since it is considered bad to swallow sputum, which is filled with germs. Vomiting, on the other hand, is said to prevent your heart from racing (hini ngawoyo).

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32. Frequently during agricultural work parties, but also ritual ceremonies (e.g. naming ceremony, marriage, etc.), which is similar in Bodi and Suri (see Abbink 1997: 16–17). 33. For a good description of how this homemade distilled drink is made, see Abbink 1997: 13. 34. Most outsiders think that when the Mun drink they do so in an uncontrolled, lawless and immoral manner (cf. Abbink 1997 on the Suri). They are often not aware, however, that binge-drinking is a common social practice. The difference of course is the average alcohol percentage between geso (13%) and arake (35–40%) (Desta 1997: 67, cited in Abbink 1997). 35. Abbink describes the new ‘prestige’ drink arake as something that is ‘given and shared between people as a sign of respect, wealth, or virility among the Suri’ (1997: 20). In Mun, it is also considered a ‘status’ drink, which makes banning it difficult. 36. Due to poor communication between Mun- and non-Mun-speaking health workers, it is commonly understood that one should refrain from drinking milk while taking antibiotics, rather than avoiding milk products a few hours before and after taking antibiotics. 37. This might help to explain why spitting is a common practice in Mun.

References Abbink, Jon. 1995. ‘Medicinal and Ritual Plants of the Ethiopian Southwest: An Account of Recent Research’, Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor 3(2): 1–6. ———. 1997. ‘Competing Practices of Drinking and Power: Alcoholic “Hegemonism” in Southern Ethiopia’, Northeast African Studies 4(3): 7–22. ———. 2002. ‘Plant Use among the Suri People of Southern Ethiopia: A System of Knowledge in Danger?’ Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 70: 199–206. Al-Shawaf, Laith, and David M.G. Lewis. 2013. ‘Exposed Intestines and Contaminated Cooks: Sex, Stress, and Satiation Predict Disgust Sensitivity’, Personality and Individual Differences 54: 698–702. American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Pub. Inc. Baldé, Aliou M., Luc Pieters, Tessa De Bruyne, Stanny Geerts, Dirk Vanden Berghe, Arnold Vlietinck. 1998. ‘Biological Investigations on Harrisonia abyssinica’, Phytomedicine 1(4): 299–302. Baumann, Inge. 2001. ‘Indigenous Childbirth: Towards a Strategy for the Design of Culturally Appropriate Training for Mursi Traditional Birth Attendants in Ethiopia’, MCommH. University of Liverpool. Curtis, Valerie, Mícheál de Barra and Robert Aunger. 2011. ‘Disgust as an Adaptive System for Disease Avoidance Behaviour’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366 (1583): 389–401. Curtis, Valerie, Robert Aunger, and Tamer Rabie. 2004. ‘Evidence that Disgust Evolved to Protect from Risk of Disease’, Proceedings of the Royal Society: Series B: Biological Sciences 271 (Suppl. 4): 131–33. Davis, Diane. 2010. Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Edmonds, Michael. 2012. ‘The Evolution of Chemistry and Medicine in the 18th and 19th Centuries’, Chemistry in New Zealand 76(4): 123–26.

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Fayers-Kerr, Kate Nialla. 2013. ‘Beyond the Social Skin: Healing Arts and Sacred Clays among the Mun (Mursi) of Southwest Ethiopia’, Ph.D. thesis. University of Oxford (Green Templeton College). Fabry, Werner, Paul O. Okemon and Rainer Ansorg. 1996. ‘Fungistatic and Fungicidal Activity of East African Medicinal Plants’, Mycoses 39: 67–70. Githiori, John B. 2004. ‘Evaluation of Anthelmintic Properties of Ethnoveterinary Plant Preparations Used as Livestock Dewormers by Pastoralists and Small Holder Farmers in Kenya’, Ph.D. thesis. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Herrick, Clare, and Susan Parnell. 2014. ‘Alcohol, Poverty and the South African City’, South African Geographical Journal 96(1): 1–14. Herrick, Clare, Pamela Parnel Keel, and Ruth Striegel-Moore. 2009. ‘The Validity and Clinical Utility of Purging Disorder’, International Journal of Eating Disorder 42(8): 706–19. Hettche, Matt. 2010. ‘Descartes and the Augustinian Tradition of Devotional Meditation: Tracing a Minim Connection’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 48(3): 283–311. Iwu, Maurice M. 2014. Handbook of African Medicinal Plants. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. LaTosky, Shauna. 2013. Predicaments of Mursi (Mun) Women in a Changing World. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Leclerc-Madlala, Suzanne. 1994. ‘Zulu Health, Cultural Meanings and the Reinterpretation of Western Pharmaceuticals’, Paper presented at the Association of Anthropology in South Africa Conference, University of Durban Westville, South Africa. Mandu, Patrick, Dhyani Berger, Charles ole Saitabau, Joyce Nasieku, Moses Kipelian, Simone Mathenge, Yasuyuki Morimoto, and Robert Höft. 2001. Ethnobotany of the Loita Maasai: Towards Community Management of the Forest of the Lost Child: Experiences from the Loita Ethnobotany Project. People and Plants Working Paper 8. Paris: UNESCO. Mattern, Susan P. 2008. Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mokrzan, Michał. 2015. ‘Studies in Rhetoric and Culture: A New Berghahn Book Series’, trans. Marta Songin-Mokrzan. Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 61: 257–74. Mosissa, Dereje, and Dejene Reda. 2018. ‘The Currently Increasing Pressure on Biodiversity is Changing the Metaphysical Beliefs on Medicinal Plants Domestication: The Concern of Traditional Healers in Assosa Zone, Bgrs. Western Ethiopia’, American Journal of Life Science Researches 6(3): 139–58. Nussbaum, Martha C. 1994. Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Oaten, Mega, Richard J. Stevenson, and Trevor Case. 2009. ‘Disgust as a Disease-Avoidance Mechanism’, Psychological Bulletin 135(2): 303–21. Pike, Kathleen. 2013. ‘Classification, Culture and Complexity: A Global Look at the Diagnosis of Eating Disorders: Commentary on Wildes and Marcus: Incorporating Dimensions into the Classification of Eating Disorders’, International Journal of Eating Disorders 46: 408–11. Rehm, Jürgen. 2006. ‘The Risks Associated with Alcohol Use and Alcoholism’, Journal of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 34(2): 135–43, http://pubs.niaaa .nih.gov/publications/arh342/135-143.htm (accessed 5 April 2015). Shryock, Richard Harrison. 1960. Medicine and Society in America, 1660–1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Smink, Frédérique R.E., Daphne van Hoecken, and Hans W. Hoek. 2012. ‘Epidemiology of Eating Disorders: Incidence, Prevalence and Mortality Rates’, Current Psychiatry Reports 14: 406–14. Smith, Kathryn E. 2014. ‘The Urge to Purge: An Ecological Momentary Assessment of Purging Disorder and Bulimia Nervosa’, Ph.D. dissertation. Kent State University. Strecker, Ivo, and Stephen Tyler (eds). 2009a. Rhetoric and Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books. ———. 2009b. ‘Introduction’, in I. Strecker and S. Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–18. Teklay, Abraha, Balcha Abera, and Mirutse Giday. 2013. ‘An Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants Used in Kilte Awulaelo District, Tigray Region of Ethiopia’, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 9(65), http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/9/1/65 (accessed 11 March 2015). Turner, Nancy. 2014. Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Turton, David. 1973. ‘The Social Organisation of the Mursi: A Pastoral Tribe of the Lower Omo Valley, South West Ethiopia’, Ph.D. thesis. University of London, LSE. Turton, David, Moges Yigezu, and Olisarali Olibui. 2008. Mursi-English-Amharic Dictionary. Addis Ababa: Culture and Arts Society of Ethiopia (CASE) and Ermias Advertising. Tybur, Joshua M., Debra Lieberman and Vladas Griskevicius. 2009. ‘Microbes, Mating, and Morality: Individual Differences in Three Functional Domains of Disgust’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 103–122. Tybur, Joshua M., Robert Kurzban, Robert Lieberman, and Peter DeScioli. 2013. ‘Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure’, Psychological Review 120(1): 65–84. Young, Allan. 1975. ‘Why Amhara Get kureynya: Sickness and Possession in an Ethiopian zar Cult’, American Ethnologist 2(3): 567–84.

CHAPTER 7

The Art of Playing Tuql How to ‘Make’ Love in Egypt Steffen Strohmenger       

Introduction The rhetorical art I want to discuss in this chapter is the concept of tuql1 – the art of ‘playing hard to get’ in Egypt. While Egypt has gone through dramatic scenes of political and social upheaval in the 2000s, the underlying cultural and rhetorical models of gender and sexual relations, including tuql, are still prevalent today, although under pressure due to the creeping ‘Islamization’ of society. To learn more about this art of tuql, as a cultural repertoire, we will first hear fourteen young Egyptian women and men talking about the issue in a fictitious roundtable discussion. Subsequently, I will comment on the different functional and gendered roles tuql plays in the coming about of mutual love relationships. Constituting a much cherished cultural model of behaviour, which foremost women are expected to perform, tuql will be shown to serve as a rhetorical strategy that makes it possible, for women and men alike, to prove one’s quality as somebody worthy of being loved, or, alternatively, to find out whether love should, or had better, be called off. To introduce the complexity of tuql, I start with a composite dialogue of protagonists, illustrating the nature of tuql as a semi-explicit rhetorical strategy.2

Dialogues Steffen: I have quite often come across the word tuql here in Egypt. What does that word mean?

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1. Laila: The meaning of the word is when you know that someone likes you but you will keep on pretending like you don’t know. Or you pretend that it really doesn’t make a difference to you what that person feels towards you. 2. Djamila: This most often applies to a girl. Well, she realizes that the boy wants to get to know her, and then she acts as if, as if she didn’t see him. Or she walks in front of him and doesn’t look at him. She is playing the snobbish one, you know. 3. Fairuz: Usually the idea behind this story is to show him that it is not easy to get her. Because whenever you work for something precious, you won’t let her go like this that easy. He feels that he didn’t get a person like this. It’s sort of showing you went through a procedure, that you appreciate what you got at the very end. 4. Hamid: For example, I’m in love with one and go ‘tss, tss’ to her. I tease her a little and she looks at me and smiles, once, then I will talk to her but she will not look at me. I will talk to her again, she won’t look at me. I will talk to her again, she won’t look at me. Tuql! I love her, she loves me, but she wants me to love her even more by not reacting right away, and so that I will not say she is madlûqa.3 5. Salwa: Women are not expected to go out and look for men. We just wait. And then he says: ‘I like you very much, you are very attractive’. And she: ‘Hmm, thank you!’ We think it makes the woman more precious, it’s not easy to get her. First move – reject. Second move – reject. Third move – maybe. But not from the first move. What would he think – he thinks I was dying for him? So that’s what we mean by tuql. And we say it-tuql sanaą, which means it’s an art. It’s something that women have to learn. We pass it on from one generation to the other. 6. Mahmud: The Egyptians say it-tuql sanaą – tuql is an art. This means that the Oriental nature forbids the Egyptian woman to show that she loves you. You understand me? She is ashamed to show you that she loves you. And it is not easy for her either, when you come and say ‘I love you’, to then say ‘I love you, too’. This is very difficult, even if she loves you, too. This is tuql, that she won’t show her feelings of love. 7. Mona: Boys are always chasing girls, and girls are pretending that they do not really care. But most of the time they do. It’s just that they enjoy it, they enjoy torturing boys. It makes her more precious, more valuable, more wanted. Well, to play tuql with him means she is giving him a hard time. She starts to pretend that she really doesn’t care. She ignores him although she is maybe dying to get to know him, dying that he sees her and talks to her, but she is playing cool, that she is hard to get. But her feelings are different. Maybe she really likes that guy, but by playing cool she thinks it makes him desire her more, more eager to get to know her.

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8. Aisha: A girl has to cover up her feelings and she has to play ‘hard to get’. She has to offer him a challenge. And most Egyptian women think: ‘Well, if I like someone and I know that he likes me, I still have to prove to him that I’m not that interested. He has to sort of fight for me. I should not make it easy for him’. Steffen: And what about men? Do they play tuql, too? 9. Tarek: Mostly, tuql is for girls. It is not for men because in an Egyptian relationship it’s supposed to be the man who is stepping forward in everything and the girl is either accepting or tiqîla,4 yani [‘it’s like that’] practising tuql. Some girls say that if they agreed from the first time that they would go out with him, that he will think: ‘Oh, what would happen if I were another person, would she go out with him the same she goes out with me?’ 10. Mona: Boys do that too. It’s not only restricted to girls. Because I think that girls like the boy who is not throwing himself on her, not pushing it too hard, not that he is showing her: ‘Ooh, he just can’t live without her, she is his dream and he is following her everywhere’. Girls feel that they are irritated. But when the boy is cool, they like it. They feel he has got a strong character. 11. Laila: I consider it unmanly if a guy does it. Why should a guy pretend he doesn’t care? I mean, women do it because she thinks it is something to raise her value, it makes him love her more. 12. Fatma: It-tuql sanaą, tuql is an art. That, for example, means a boy walks up to a girl and says: ‘I love you, I find you attractive, let’s date’, and God knows what. And she will pretend not to have heard anything. She doesn’t answer him. Once, twice, three times. And if he really loves her, he will go to her family and ask for her hand. Do you understand now why tuql is an art? Because if she is a foolish girl, one that isn’t quite right in the head, then she might go out with him, have fun with him, but at the end of the day, he will not marry her. Steffen: So, for the women among us here, does that mean you would always first play tuql with a man whom you find interesting? 13. Fairuz: For me I wouldn’t do that, no way. If I’m finding someone interested in me and I feel that he is okay, I mean, why would I go through this tuql? 14. Djamila: No, I don’t do that. You know me. I like to get to know people. But I also need to take my time. I can realize that he wants to get to know

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me and then I shake hands with him and say: ‘My name is…’. But that doesn’t mean that I will at once sit down with him and talk. I can greet him and all that, but I take my time, before someone can talk to me at all. But I don’t call that tuql. 15. Nadia: No, I don’t know how to be tiqîla. I don’t know how to do this. And I hate guys doing this, you know, walking like this, proud of themselves. I hate this and I hate the girls like this. 16. Aziza: I hate it and I don’t think I do it. But the problem is I may not do it but the other person, the boy who I love, may do it. I’ll hate him then. I just leave him. I love you and you don’t feel it? Or are you stupid? 17. Nesrin: I did that with Fuad [now her husband]. I played tuql with him. I noticed that he wants to be close to me and that he likes me. Steffen: And the men? What do you do? What do you think about tuql? 18. Sherif: No, I don’t play tuql at all. But I can see my father doing it to my mum. He still plays tuql with her. She is trying to be nice to him and he pretends that he is not really interested. But I can see that he is smiling and laughing. He likes it very, very much. He is a man and he doesn’t want to show his emotions, perhaps because he thinks that this is a kind of weakness. 19. Tarek: Me? No. Because it doesn’t work out with a man. I can’t explain but it doesn’t work out. It would suit a girl more if she is playing tuql, because, as I said, the idea is that the man would always have the initiative. It doesn’t suit a man. 20. Mahmud: Yani, these things are often important only before getting married, because after marriage the relationship is different. As you know, in an Oriental society the man is the stronger part. After marriage, tuql is harâm. Religion tells us it’s harâm.5 Steffen: I would like to ask you once more: would it be better to do without tuql altogether in love? 21. Mona: I wish they would just go to each other and talk frankly, that they tell each other about their feelings openly and frankly. This would be better, no? It would save time, instead of wasting the time. What do you think? 22. Laila: I don’t think it’s a very healthy thing, to just keep on insinuating all the time. It’s kind of adolescent not to go straight to the point. 23. Aziza: Why do we waste time? If he loves me and I love him, let’s just live our lives and our love.

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24. Aisha: If I like somebody, I’d like to be able to approach him. But again, even if I now do think that way, I wouldn’t do it. Because if a girl does that with an Egyptian or an Arab male, no matter how open-minded he is, even if he has lived all his life abroad, he is still basically narrow-minded, or old-fashioned. 25. Salwa: Of course, I tried it with Jim [her US-American husband]. That was the problem with the cultural difference. He took it very seriously. I even tried it after the marriage, within the sexual relation. I never made a move, never to show like I’m really interested. And of course, when I’m like ‘maybe’ he would say: ‘Okay, we will wait until there comes a time when you are really interested’. But the time never comes, because it’s something I learned and I should not show very extreme interest in a man. It is very difficult to get rid of it. You can train yourself that there is nothing wrong with making the first move, there is nothing wrong with asking for emotions, for tenderness, asking to be loved, asking for sex if you need it. You know there is nothing wrong with that. But this is something that was so deep inside me.

Contexts The purpose of this reconstructed round-table discussion was to introduce and develop the concept of tuql within an Egyptian discursive context. I now want to take a closer look at the conditions and the means of its enacting, of its ‘functioning’, discussing the different functional and gendered roles tuql can play. It will be shown that tuql serves as a rhetorical strategy that proves quite indispensable in bringing a (potential) love relationship into existence, and by which – in this sense – love can be ‘made’. It does not presuppose a feeling of love already there: at the most, only a strong interest of one in another, setting in motion rhetorical acts on the basis of infatuation and ‘promise’. Tuql, when started, however, can ‘make’ or produce a relationship that leads to ‘the real thing’. Thereby, tuql can be understood as part of an Egyptian love semantics which provides, in the words of Niklas Luhmann, ‘a model of behaviour that could be acted out and which one had in full view before embarking on the search for love’ (Luhmann [1982] 1986: 20). The concept of tuql relies on the paradoxical expectation that love will not necessarily grow stronger the more it is reciprocated. On the contrary, at times your interest in love may grow precisely when it is not met with too much counter-interest, when love is not ‘easy’ but rather ‘hard’ to get. The rules of the game are simple: you are interested in the other, but you pretend that you are not. Or that you might be, perhaps. In order to gain the love of the other

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person, one acts as if one is not interested, thus deceiving the other about one’s intentions. Further below, we address the question of how this apparent act of dishonesty can be compatible with the idea of love. When looking at the strategic uses of tuql, we first have to determine whether tuql is played inside or outside of an actual love relationship. To employ tuql within a love relationship – to play hard to get when you have already ‘got’ the other – can be seen as a way of refreshing your love, and of making established positions negotiable again. It serves – as Georg Simmel has put it in his work on coquetry ([1911] 1919) – as a means of reigniting ‘the longing of the one who has for the having’. By playing a game of ‘offer and refusal’, of ‘allusive promises and allusive withdrawals’, it allows for the desire, the tingle and the thrill of love to be relived again and again (ibid.: 101, 102, 123; my translation). In Egypt, one may ‘like it very, very much’ (Sherif: 18),6 or be simply of the opinion: ‘After marriage, tuql is harâm’ (Mahmud: 20). However, what I shall focus on here are those instances when tuql is played before a mutual love relationship has been established. This period, in which the beginning of a love relation is yet to be decided, can be understood to represent a specific form of social relationship, characterized by the communication of a ‘maybe’. Things are – already and still – up in the air. You have not agreed with the other on a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, but anticipate that at one point this might occur. In other words, you are living in a phase of ‘getting to know one another’, in which you can learn more about the other person and about yourself, during which love on either side may grow, or which is simply lived and enjoyed as a time of wooing and waiting for each other. ‘The rice has to be boiled on a low flame’, as is said in Egypt, at least until the day when you dare to reveal your love to the other, learning about her or his at least temporarily definite ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And we will have to ask what playing tuql can do until the moment of open admission of love.

Features In order to explore more concretely the possibilities of tuql and its practical uses, let me first summarize some of its features as communicated in the interviews. It-tuql sanaą: tuql is celebrated as an art. But only, it seems, when being practised by women. It is ‘something that women have to learn’, they ‘pass it on from one generation to the other’ (Salwa: 5). For men, however, rather than being a secret stock of knowledge from which they are excluded, the consensus simply seems to read that ‘it doesn’t suit a man’ (Tarek: 19). Indeed, ‘why should a guy pretend he doesn’t care?’ (Laila: 11).

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That especially women are interested in playing tuql, and men hardly at all, seems to be a result of the somewhat different expectations about the ways in which the two genders are supposed to behave when searching for love. A clearly gendered division of labour has been agreed on: ‘Boys are always chasing girls, and girls are pretending that they do not really care’ (Mona: 7). While the man runs a risk of being considered quite ‘unmanly’ when he is too shy in his pursuit of love, a woman should realize that it is considered most inappropriate when she is too active in the chasing. If the woman doesn’t want to risk losing the man’s interest in love by being looked upon as ‘madlûqa’, to ‘ignore’ him seems to be a proper solution, even if she is ‘dying to get to know him’ (Mona: 7). However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he would lose interest in her altogether. Rather, the cultural agreement seems to be: ‘If she is a foolish girl, … she might go out with him, have fun with him, but at the end of the day, he will not marry her’ (Fatma: 12). In order to qualify for an at least ‘marriageable’ love in the eyes of a man, she may be well advised to hide any loving desires from him and, for the time being, resist his pushes for conquest by employing tuql. Even though the various roles – of male chase and female resistance – officially seem to be clearly defined, at times they might be quietly exchanged. That is to say, the art of tuql can also be performed by men, for instance when they face the problem of not being ‘cool’ enough in the eyes of the beloved one. Equally, women might not always refrain from taking the initiative in the pursuit of love: ‘Well, I would think girls are very crafty, they are very cunning, especially in our society. So she is not going to tell him that she likes him. This hardly ever happens. She would probably work it all out, so eventually he would know she likes him, and if he likes her too, he would make the move’ (Laila: Sc3/8).7

Roles Let me come back to the role tuql can play when searching for love in an Egyptian context. We found that at first women seem to hold the better cards. The female side enjoys the privilege of having the official legitimation for playing tuql, and probably of having the greater skills at it as well. Men might also practise tuql, but they are bound to act more secretly under the cultural surface. On the other hand, we can find that the greater possibilities for women to play tuql seem to also evoke a question of greater necessity. That is to say, while the man can be ‘hard to get’ to increase his chances of love, the woman faces the problem that she must be ‘hard to get’ to have any chance of love at all.

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The woman must first remove all doubt that she might be ‘madlûqa’. She has to establish that she is sufficiently ‘hard to get’ in order to be considered suitable for love by the man in general, before his romantic interest can, through additional efforts, be guided towards her case in particular. The man, on the other hand, does not have to carry such a burden of proof. He may even be considered all the more eligible by the woman, the more he knows how to demonstrate his explicit affection. In other words, for men the art of tuql is always a part of their individual style, whereas women have to fulfil their cultural duty. If she gives him, as proof of her virtue, a harder time than required, it will add points to the account of her individual person. Then the woman, too, will profit from tuql, playing on the effect that it ‘makes her more precious, more valuable, more wanted’ (Mona: 7). And remember: ‘Whenever you work for something precious, you won’t let her go like this that easy’ (Fairuz: 3).

Strategies So far, we have looked at the game of tuql mainly as a strategy of trying to win the love of another person. You are making yourself a scarce object of desire to present your own personality as more interesting, to raise your love value in the eyes of the other. Additionally, employing tuql can serve another strategic function, one that does not refer to your own but to the love value of the other person. By using tuql in order to postpone the fulfilment of the other’s desire, one simultaneously has the opportunity to figure out how serious the other actually is: whether her or his interest in love is strong enough and will endure in the future, whether he or she is prepared to fight for this love, or whether one will realize at some point that what can be expected from the other does not deserve one’s own love at all. There is yet another interest to be taken into account, especially on the side of women. It concerns less the question of the durability of love, but rather its overall ‘sincerity’. That is to say, in Egypt, too, men are generally suspected of having other motives different from those they put forth in their courting, and which are related not to the pursuit of love, but to the pursuit of sex. In order to obtain what otherwise would not have been offered, you might be promising love, even when you are not looking for it. This again – just like tuql – constitutes a rhetorical art which attempts to reach its goals by being a little dishonest. It is a strategy of ‘doing-as-if ’, by which only its tokens are exchanged, pretending not ‘less’ but ‘more’ of love than you actually have on your mind. Although these skills do not enjoy the same social reputation as tuql, it doesn’t mean that they cannot prove to be successful.

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That such intentions of deceit are more likely to be found on the side of men – and the protective measures, not to fall for them, on the side of women – can be attributed again to the different expectations about the behaviour of the two genders. Things in Egypt, and not only there, seem to be culturally preconditioned in such a way that a man gains esteem from a greater number of sex partners, but women do not. ‘The boy must always have an experience. He has to have gone out with a girl before, with a second, with a third’ (Fatma: Sc4/26). While here once again the man is expected to ‘lead in all matters’, women are faced with the contrary pressure to enter love and marriage with as little sexual experience as possible. To be sure, there are various ways in which to explain this statistical miracle of experienced men and inexperienced women. ‘Many, many of the young people here have their first sexual experience with a prostitute’ (Salwa: Sc9/45). Another possibility is again to not be entirely honest with everybody. ‘For men, that would be part of their “macho”, their personality, to talk about their so many affairs. Even if he has had only one or none, he might more or less talk about how many he has had’ (Aisha: Sc9/46). And what is right for the man seems to be proper for the woman as well. ‘Right now I’m twenty-six years old. It would be very stupid of him to think that I have not been involved with someone else. But if I tell him “Look, I’ve been involved with someone and maybe we even had sex together”. Can I really tell him that? No, I’d have to keep that from him. It would be unwise to tell him. I know he wouldn’t accept it and the result would be that I would destroy my marriage and my whole family’ (Aisha: Sc4/44). So far, we have found that tuql first of all serves the cultural obligations of women – namely to prove their virtue, as well as to protect them from men’s wrongful intentions. On the other hand, men and women alike can profit from tuql, by being able to raise their own love value as well as the other’s desire, while at the same time testing its quality. From this vantage point, the strategy of prolonging a phase of courtship with tuql looks like a game in which you can only win in matters of love. The only danger is that the other party might lose interest in the meantime, or someone else might step in. But then, in turn, you can still hold the opinion that the other person’s love wasn’t really true love.

Meanings Looking at the passages from the interviews, we might wonder, especially after everybody has so enthusiastically advocated women’s engagement in tuql, why none of them wants to have any part in it. They even vehemently deny having had tuql on their minds at all. Not that this may not have been the particu-

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lar case here, but it does present the opportunity to point out that this denial might itself be part of the rules of the game. Women will be aware that men know that they will fend off the men’s advances with tuql. But that doesn’t mean that they admit doing it. At any rate, tuql would seem to lose its effect at exactly that moment. When you hope to become more interesting by not showing too much interest, it will only work if the other side believes this to truly be so, if the game has come to mean reality to the other and he or she does not realize you are only pretending. The rhetoric of tuql – if it intends to be persuasive – comes with a precondition: one does not disclose one’s knowledge that tuql is in fact played, and keeps it in a state of communicative latency. When communicating by tuql, communication about tuql is inhibited. The art of tuql can be openly discussed, but the art of then practising it is to prevent the other from realizing that tuql is played. Those who hope to have their chances of love raised through tuql may not want to be caught out or, when under suspicion, will know how to deny all accusations.

Interpreting In order to take a glance at a more general and theoretical aspect of tuql, I would like to quote a passage by Immanuel Kant: ‘To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is therefore a sacred unconditional command of reason, and not to be limited by any expediency’ (Kant 1793: 427). However, with regard to the art of tuql, as we have seen, people seem to have the opinion that at least out of the expediency of love it may be rewarding not to be ‘truthful (honest) in all declarations’. Instead, the general cultural esteem in which tuql is held is shown here in relation to a social practice which is governed by a rational principle of insincerity, one that prioritizes not knowing over knowledge. In this sense, the concept of tuql corresponds to what Moore and Tumin – in a classic article (1949) which is still well worth reading – have described as ‘some social functions of ignorance’. The authors argue that, ‘despite the institutionally sanctioned emphasis on education and on “facing the facts”, there is considerable “folk” acceptance of the contrary idea that “where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise”’. Since it involves active play on knowledge and ignorance, the art of tuql constitutes a case in point; as Moore and Tumin write, ‘ignorance must be viewed not simply as a passive or dysfunctional condition, but as an active and often positive element in operating structures and relations’ (Moore and Tumin 1949: 787, 795). For the ‘dysfunctional condition’ of the Kantian imperative of truthfulness, for David Nyberg, too, the question has been ‘whether the love of truth

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is not morally overvalued, while deceit as a means to achieve goals desirable in social life is naively undervalued and underestimated to an equal measure’. With regard to social relations, the author argues that ‘deceit is quite normal, a common attribute of practical intelligence … a substantial part of our ability to organize and shape the world, to solve problems of co-ordination among various individuals, to cope with uncertainty and pain, to be polite, and if needed to ensure privacy’ (Nyberg 1994: 11, 9, 14; my translation).

Precarious Rhetoric There is yet one more question to be answered. What happens to love if one day the truth is discovered? If you learn that tuql was played, and you have been fooled by it? After all, this means that you have given your love for something that was merely enacted, that you loved the other person on the assumption of a reality which now turns out to be a case of deception. And this while love is supposed to be the one emotion where mutual truthfulness is to be expected. Would you, in the face of such a revelation, not be quite disappointed with the other? And need the other not be afraid that you will rethink again and hold back, or would s/he at best be willing to generously overlook such little niceties of the past? Is it therefore not to be expected that the one who has played tuql will, in order not to endanger his or her state of being loved, struggle for the strictest secrecy and continue to deny any suspicion? It might thus be a surprise that actual findings point to the opposite conclusion. At least when love is anchored in marriage, one seems to be willing to risk one’s hand retrospectively: ‘I did that with Fuad. I played tuql with him. I noticed that he wants to be close to me and that he likes me’ (Nesrin: 17). My interviews do not provide me with further material on this question. But my assumption is that in a love relationship, at least in a successful one, you can even find pleasure in telling each other how things really were at the start – when you were still anxious that the other might not want you, because she or he always behaved so ‘cool.’ What we can assume, I think, is that you would be rather disappointed if the other, instead of merely acting that way, had really been ‘hard to get’, in the sense that he or she could not decide, did not know, did not love or was waiting for someone better. You would be far happier to know that the other wanted you from the beginning, that he or she was ‘dying to get to know’ you. The single decisive factor in this, so it seems, is that tuql was played out of love; that in fact the game of tuql itself was truthful, and one did not just act as if one was playing tuql. Having found that the aspect of deceit theoretically goes together quite well with the rationality of love, what then proves to be important about playing

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tuql, especially for women, is that by doing so one has behaved just as one was expected to in the pursuit of love; that one has played tuql and has thus – despite and because of one’s love – proven the reality of what makes one, in the cultural matrix, loveable in the first place: that she, and sometimes he, is just not that easy to get. Tuql, as it were, was the best that could happen. In this sense, the concept of tuql can be understood as a strategy of ‘deparadoxation’ (i.e. the undoing of the paradox between expressed interest in love and ‘denial’ of it when approached by the other), by which you can love and not love at the same time. It constitutes a rhetorical means that allows for resolving the problem that when loving somebody, she or he must not be loved yet. Such a problem seems to arise when entering a love relationship is tied to the cultural recommendation to first pass through a phase of getting to know one another, and when the expectation is to wait before loving each other, even if that love already exists. The game of tuql is, then, the corresponding art – the temporizing mechanism – to align the individual horizon of expectations with the cultural one.

Conclusions From the above, we may conclude that the art of tuql proves to be an indispensable element in bringing a mutual love relationship into existence. However, this does not always imply that tuql is considered ‘a very healthy thing’. You may well think that it is ‘kind of adolescent not to go straight to the point’ (Laila: 22), or wish that ‘they would just go … and tell each other about their feelings openly … It would save time, instead of wasting the time. What do you think?’ (Mona: 21). If criticism of the procedures of tuql comes only from the female side here, that might be – if not simply coincidental – a result of the fact that it is mainly the woman who bears the cultural burden of having to partly or fully hide a possible interest in love. It is mostly women who are permanently under the threat of being declared ‘madlûqa’ and of becoming infected with impurity. Women’s criticism therefore seems aimed at the obligation to play tuql, behind which female desire has to hide itself. It voices a request for greater social ‘legitimacy’ and acceptance. In addition, the wish not to ‘waste time’ seems to imply a more general demand for reform, or perhaps a desire for modernization.8 It aims at shortening the starting-up phase in love relationships, the cultural phase of getting to know one another, to then be able – ‘if he loves me, and I love him’ –to start to ‘just live our lives and our love!’ (Aziza: 23). With regard to the procedures of tuql in Egypt, at times women – and possibly men, too – seem to have at heart certain intentions of change. Nevertheless, as a woman, you might not see too many chances to put them into

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practice: ‘Even if I now do think that way, I wouldn’t do it. Because if a girl does that with an Egyptian or an Arab male, no matter how open-minded he is, even if he has lived all his life abroad, he is still basically narrow-minded, or old-fashioned’ (Aisha: 24). That of course leaves the possibility of trying it with a non-Oriental man. But even then, even when being persuaded that ‘there is nothing wrong with making the first move, there is nothing wrong with asking for emotions, for tenderness, asking to be loved, asking for sex if you need it’, you might still have to realize that it is ‘very difficult to get rid of … something, that was so deep inside me’ (Salwa: 25). Steffen Strohmenger holds a PhD in Ethnology (2004) from the MartinLuther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (thesis: Sachfragen und Glücksfragen: Von der Asymmetrie zur Re-Symmetrisierung ihrer Wahrheitsfähigkeit). His first book, based on long-term field research in Egypt, was Kairo: Gespräche über Liebe: Eine ethnographische Collage in 12 Szenen (Peter Hammer Verlag, 1996). He has taught at different universities in Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt/ Oder, Halle) and is currently an independent scholar. With Anne-Catherine Escher he founded the publishing house Sinnreich & Schweitzer in Berlin, focusing on books on discourse ethnography. One of his recent books is Gespräche mit Lehrern: Eine Collage (Berufswelten) (Sinnreich & Schweitzer, 2016).

Notes This chapter is based on S. Strohmenger, ‘The Art of Playing Tuql’, in C. Fortier, A. Kreil and I. Maffi (eds), Reinventing Love? Gender, Intimacy and Romance in the Arab World (Bern: Lang Verlag, 2018), pp. 33–48. The author and editors are grateful to Peter Lang Verlag for permission to publish it here in a slightly different version. 1. The word tuql is derived from the classical Arabic word thaqîl, meaning heavy, hard. 2. The following passages, here presented as a composite round-table discussion, are taken verbatim from twenty-seven individual interviews I conducted in Cairo in 1992, which I further elaborated in my book (1996). The persons contributing were all Muslims, most of them between twenty and thirty years of age, and from a modern urban background. The statements are partly English in the original, partly translated from Arabic and German. For further reference and more ‘scenes’ about love in Egypt, see Strohmenger 1996. 3. Madlûqa: the opposite of tuql; a woman who ‘throws herself ’ at the man, does not resist him. 4. Tiqîla: the feminine adjective of tuql; a woman who plays tuql. 5. Harâm: forbidden by Islamic rules. 6. The numbers given for my interlocutors refer to the passages in the ‘Dialogues’ section above.

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7. The passages quoted, which were not entailed in the previous discussion round, are marked with ‘Sc’, and refer to the respective scenes in my book (Strohmenger 1996). 8. In my study on contemporary discourses of love in Egypt, I found a general demand for changes, which aimed at a greater autonomy of the pair-relation (or the nuclear family) towards the loyalties to the extended family and cultural traditions; although without that any claims for more individual freedom towards the partner would have been charged. See Strohmenger 1996: 227.

References Kant, Immanuel. 1793. ‘Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen’ [On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives], in Immanuel Kant, Kants Werke, Akademie Ausgabe, Band VIII. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 423–30. Luhmann, Niklas. (1982) 1986. Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Moore, Wilbert E., and Melvin M. Tumin. 1949. ‘Some Social Functions of Ignorance’, American Sociological Review 14(6): 787–95. Nyberg, David. 1994. Lob der Halbwahrheit: Warum Wir so Manches Verschweigen [The Varnished Truth: Truth Telling and Deceiving in Ordinary Life]. Hamburg: Junius. Simmel, Georg. (1911) 1919. ‘Die Koketterie’, in G. Simmel, Philosophische Kultur. Leipzig: Alfred Kröner Verlag (2nd edition), pp. 95–115. Strohmenger, Steffen. 1996. Kairo: Gespräche über Liebe. Eine ethnographische Collage in 12 Szenen. Wuppertal: Edition Trickster im Peter Hammer Verlag.

CHAPTER 8

Enculturation as Rhetorical Practice Ivo Strecker       

The ‘New Rhetoric’ In an article entitled ‘Revisiting the Rhetorical Curriculum’ (2012), Kris Rutten and Ronald Soetaert, inspired by Kenneth Burke and others, but especially by the work of Gert Biesta, argued that ‘New rhetoric’s focus on the role that rhetoric plays in socialization and thus the creation of cultural or social rules and behavioural patterns’ (2012: 734) poses new challenges for the embattled ‘science’ of education. It ‘implies that we do not only look at education in rhetoric, but that we position education also as a rhetorical practice … Approaching the curriculum as rhetoric means that we not only look at the most effective ways of communication in or outside classrooms, but that we position education and the curriculum essentially as a rhetorical practice’ (2012: 736). Interestingly, this approach to education harks back to distant pasts. Biesta, drawing his inspiration from the German Classics (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt), wrote that the concept of Bildung ‘brings together the aspirations of all those who acknowledge – or hope – that education is more than the simple acquisition of knowledge and skills, that is more than simply getting the things “right”, but that it also has to do with nurturing the human person, that it has to do with individuality, subjectivity, in short, with “becoming and being somebody”’ (2012: 343). Rutten and Soetaert, quoting Dillip Gaonkar, doyen of the Rhetoric Culture Project (www.rhetoricculture.org), go even further back in time when they write that ‘new rhetoric’ becomes a constitutive art ‘that not only moulds

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individual personality but creates and sustains culture and community’, and the ideal of a new rhetorical pedagogy can therefore also be seen as ‘the preparation of the citizen and the formation of community [which is] reminiscent of the older sophists and their successors’ (2012: 740). It is from this point that the present chapter departs, providing a series of examples as a further contribution to anthropology’s wide-ranging educational mission. Western education has always stressed the need for an intelligent use of literalness, especially in the fields of natural science. Plain style, clear expressions, transparent meanings, and methods of disambiguation were held in high esteem, while the role of proverbs, tales, parables and so on, and especially the use of tropes and figures like simile, metaphor, hyperbole, irony, chiasmus and so on, were viewed with suspicion and outright discouragement. Yet, as the writings of Kenneth Burke, especially his essay ‘Linguistic Approaches to Problems of Education’ (1955), and subsequently The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences (Nelson, Megill and McCloskey 1990), as well as The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry (Simons 1990), have shown, rhetoric pertains to all domains of education and, more broadly, to enculturation.

The Relish of Recording Ever since the ‘ethnography of speaking’ (Hymes [1962] 1971) got off the ground, anthropologists have experienced the excitement of discourse analysis even already in the field, that is, in the very act of recording. Here are two examples of how I described this in my diary: 1.

‘I have now reached a new stage of fieldwork. The skill consists of choosing the right situations of “live” talk and the right topics for group interviews, each with the aim of getting normative accounts of social phenomena that are still problematic and need more adequate documentation. It is the wealth of information that lies in small linguistic details that excites me and leads me to use the tape recorder so extensively’ (Lydall and Strecker 1979a: 200).

2.

‘In the evening, as Baldambe and I talk and I record his narratives, the project of our first possible Hamar book takes shape in my head: Baldambe describing his country, his people, his family, his father and himself. There is so much poetry and expression in his descriptions. These and the rhythm of his speech should be reproduced in a book: the fast passages and interludes, the accelerations, the lingering of his voice. What a job it would be to translate such tapes! But if we were

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able to manage the translation without losing the quality of the actual speech, then something beautiful could result’ (Lydall and Strecker 1979a: 52–53). The first text analysed below – ‘Listening to Baldambe (1)’ – is in fact derived from the very book I anticipated in the field in 1973. I also wrote an entry in my diary when recording the second text, from which ‘Listening to Baldambe (2)’ is taken. It shows how the anticipatory excitement of recording may affect not only the ethnographer but also his interlocutor. As so often in moments charged with high rhetorical energy, my account of the situation was saturated with tropes: I had not reckoned with the nature of my friend, who likened himself to the whirlwind (saile) and the flood (meri). The whirlwind sweeps across the hard and sun-parched surface of the land, and the flood thunders along the dry riverbeds of Hamar country. They both move irresistibly and take along with them everything they meet on their way. No one can stop them. And so it was with Baldambe’s thought and talk. (Strecker 2013: 1)

Here we can see how the empirical study of discourse may involve exciting anticipations of the relevance of what is being recorded. But the relevance of any recording cannot be anticipated in full, and as the researcher later embarks on analysis, many new surprises will be waiting for him.

Enculturation as a ‘Leading Out’ The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia provide an example of how in our contemporary world there are still people whose lifestyles, mores and cosmologies seemed grounded in millennia-old traditions that had no writing and needed no schools or ‘education’ as we know them. In these societies, the transmission of knowledge was – and is – an integral part of everyday life and closely related to activities characteristic of a particular subsistence economy. How to do things well and how to behave properly are, of course, very important. Therefore, senior persons induce the juniors to behave in ways that conform to the norms and expectations of their community. They engage in the kind of ‘leading’ that underlies the original meaning of ‘to educate’, the Latin educere (to lead out). Among the Hamar, this ‘leading out’ of persons is in turn likened to the herding of goats. Just as goats need to be led in the right direction by whistling, shouting, gesturing and whipping, so children and juniors need to be led in the right – that is culturally appropriate – direction. This may, just as

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with goats, involve shouts, commands and, if need be, the use of the whipping wand. But most important are the more subtle rhetorical means by which the Hamar try to achieve a successful enculturation of their children.

Listening to Baldambe (1): A Girl Grows into a Woman and a Boy into a Man In order to enter the ancient – preliterate and pre-industrial – realm of the Hamar and provide a glimpse of the role of rhetoric in their practice of enculturation, let us now listen to Baldambe (‘Father of the Dark Brown Cow’) as he explains how in Hamar a ‘girl grows into a woman and a boy into a man’.1 The numbers that I have added to the text pertain to the comments that I provide below: (1a) At first the child knows nothing. (2a) If he plays with shit: ‘Leave it, it’s forbidden’. (3a) When he goes towards the fire: ‘Woa! Woa!’ (4a) So the customs are taught. As the child grows up he gets to know language, and fire, and stones, and shit. (5a) To his father he says: ‘Father’, to his mother he says: ‘Mother’, to his older sister: ‘Older sister’, to his older brother: ‘Older brother’, to his mother’s brother: ‘Mother’s brother’, to his father’s younger brother: ‘Father’, to his mother’s younger sister: ‘Mother’. So he gets to know all people. Other people are other, his people are his. (6a) A heart is laid in his eyes. (7a) So he knows, and when he knows: ‘So-and-so’s child, ah, he has grown up, he knows all that has been told’. (8a) Another child doesn’t know how to speak: ‘What’s stopping that child from speaking?’

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So, going down to the waters of Galeba or to the waters of Kara, water is poured into a white gourd: ‘Let the child drink water from the flowing rivers. Let him know how to speak’. Thus he is given water from the flowing river to drink. That is Hamar custom. When a child grows up without learning how to speak, then if he drinks this water, he will get to know. (9a) Another child does not walk soon, and does not stand up: ‘Cut his backside’. So his backside is cut and his knees are cut, and then he stands up and walks. Another man’s child starts getting about when still small. At first he is up and down, then after he can stand he walks. ‘That child is the knee of so-and-so.’ Thus people vary. (10a) Now he has grown up. His eyes have become discerning, he knows all people and he knows how to speak. (11a) Next, the boy collects the yellow garanti fruits and makes a cattle kraal: ‘Korre cattle, kong-kong, kong-kong!’ Another child says: ‘Let’s collect quartz stones’. And then makes a kraal for them: ‘Father’s cattle, Father’s cattle’. He stands the stones up and moves them: ‘kong-kong, kong-kong, kong-kong’. For a girl, barjo tells her about birth, her parents don’t tell her. She collects stones and carries one on her hip: ‘It’s my child’. Arranging other stones, and saying: ‘That’s my sorghum’, she scoops up earth. ‘Woardu woardu, woardu, woardu’ she grinds it on the stone. ‘Grind! That’s how your grandmother grinds, you grind like that.’ (12a) If the girl says: ‘Let’s collect cattle’. ‘It’s forbidden! Don’t collect cattle. You are a woman. You are a girl.’ And so she grinds and prepares her grinding stone, and as she carries her stone she would say: ‘It’s my child’. A boy would say: ‘They are my cattle’. So the child is told to say this and that, this and that. And a girl grows into a woman and a boy into a man.

*

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I now go through Baldambe’s text again to explain details that may not be obvious to someone unfamiliar with Hamar culture. Also, I would like to draw attention to some of the ways in which Baldambe’s thought resonates with Western scholarship, especially rhetoric and educational theory. (1a) Baldambe begins by saying, ‘At first the child knows nothing’. This conviction is akin to educational tabula rasa theory, which understands a child as an empty surface on which its characteristic features will later be inscribed. Like Western scholars, Baldambe is however ambivalent about this, for when he speaks about girls, he says For a girl, barjo tells her about birth, her parents don’t tell her. Barjo (creation, fate, good fortune) can here be understood as ‘instinct’, innate knowledge. But in any case, if one thinks it reasonable to spend rhetorical energy on the enculturation of children – no matter whether in ancient or modern society – it makes sense to adhere to the tabula rasa view. (2a) The first ‘leading’ of a small child that Baldambe mentions is the directive not to play with shit. To understand this, one needs to know that the very small children lie, crawl and crouch on cowhides next to their mother as she attends to the fire, cooks food, makes coffee and serves the guests. Here it often happens that the children pee, vomit, shit or otherwise produce ‘matter out of place’, which can be wiped away when necessary. But in those intervals when the shit has not been removed and is easily available for a small child to play with, the child naturally does so until the moment comes when the mother or anyone else notices this and indignantly shouts, Gara! kais ne! – Stop! It’s forbidden! The word kais, here translated as ‘forbidden’, also has the connotation of ‘taboo’, which gives it additional rhetorical power. (3a) ‘When he goes towards the fire: ‘Woa! Woa!’ ’ is a fine example of the onomatopoeic words that abound in Hamar and are an intrinsic part of the rhetoric of enculturation. Here ‘Woa! Woa!’ imitates the sound of a roaring fire and evokes a sense of danger. (4a) ‘So the customs are taught. As the child grows up he gets to know language, and fire, and stones, and shit’. This way of describing the learning process underscores the rhetorical nature of enculturation by mentioning language first and then enumerating the items that are of greatest significance in the immediate surroundings of the child. (5a) Baldambe emphasizes that children should learn how to address all their relatives, and should know that ‘Other people are other, his people are his’, reflecting the importance of kinship relations which provide a network of support. One example of how the knowledge of such relationships is rhetorically imparted and reconfirmed is the laensha, a lullaby sung to calm a child or oneself. As Lydall suggests about the laensha which Gardo sang for her son: ‘she sings in order to persuade herself and others that she and her son are not

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alone, that they have many relatives they can call upon in time of need’ (Lydall, Chapter 2, this volume; see also Strecker 1979b). (6a) The expression ’A heart is laid into his eyes’ speaks of the fusion of thought and feeling, which is the hallmark of rhetoric. Thus, Baldambe implies that the ultimate aim of enculturation is to produce a homo rhetoricus. The nature of homo rhetoricus has been thoroughly explored by scholars from Tübingen University in a compendium entitled ‘Rhetorische Anthropologie: Studien zum Homo Rhetoricus’ (Kopperschmidt 2000). Here I would like to quote Peter Oesterreich, who summarized homo rhetoricus theory in a way that is especially interesting in the context of the present chapter: Humans are rhetorical beings who use persuasive speech not only to influence others but also to shape themselves. This manifests itself in acts of prophesizing, narrating, proclaiming, questioning, explicating, contradicting and everything that belongs to the domain of teaching (docere), as well as in pleading, requesting, advising, impelling, prescribing, ordering, seducing, that is forms of expression that belong to emotion (movere), and, finally, delighting, amusing, diverting, praising, paying tribute, glorifying and so on which pertain to pleasing (delectare). This interaction of docere, movere and delectare shapes the life of homo rhetoricus. (Oesterreich 2009: 49)

(7a) Baldambe imitates how people applaud the successful enculturation of a child when he says: ‘So-and-so’s child, ah, he has grown up, he knows all that has been told’. The attitude marker ah! can be understood as a rhetorical device that emphasizes the feelings of pride and admiration of people, and the sentence as a whole brings out the fact that enculturation is the subject of attention of a wider network of family, neighbours and friends. (8a) Another child doesn’t know how to speak: ‘What’s stopping that child from speaking?’ So, going down to the waters of Galeba or to the waters of Kara, water is poured into a white gourd: ‘Let the child drink water from the flowing rivers. Let him know how to speak’. Thus he is given water from the flowing river to drink. Could there be a more moving way to speak of the desire for fluent speech and how it might be realized? To fully understand the rhetorical depth of ‘going down to the waters of Galeba and Kara’, one must know, however, that the Hamar have no permanent rivers but live in mountainous areas where they fetch water from holes dug into the ground, or from pools where rainwater has collected. In other words, their sources of water are static and therefore cannot provide the most persuasive simile of verbal fluency: running water. Note also that flowing rivers evokes both visual and auditory elements: if the child

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‘is given water from the flowing river to drink’, its speech will become as swift and as fluent as the moving river. In contrast, the water in the water holes of Hamar country is silent. It does not whisper, gurgle, roar and so on like flowing rivers, and therefore cannot embody fluency, let alone the modulation of thought and feeling which is the subject of rhetoric. And why must the water from the flowing river be poured into a white gourd? Because white means ‘to be pure, true and honest’. So the metaphor for fluent – and persuasive – speech (running water) is here supplemented with a metaphor for mental and ethical soundness (white). The rhetorics of enculturation in Hamar involve not only speech but also action, which in many ways is akin to magic. On the one hand, one can understand the Hamar custom of serving water from a flowing river to a speech-impeded child as simply a symbolic performance, a rhetorical means to express the wish that the child may learn to speak. On the other hand, one may interpret it as sympathetic or contagious magic, which works on principles of similarity and contiguity (Frazer 1890), or, rhetorically speaking, on metaphorical and metonymical associations (Jakobson 1960; Lévi-Strauss 1963; Tambiah 1985). Here it is interesting to note that Kenneth Burke proposed an understanding of magic as rhetorical art, ‘rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic, and is actually born anew; the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols’ (Burke 1969: 43). Following Burke, one can therefore say that rhetoric and magic are bound up in a chiasmus: just as rhetoric provides a means for magic (in our case the use of figuration that associates fluent speech with flowing rivers), so magic provides an incentive for rhetorical imagination (in our case the desire to magically produce fluency of speech inspired the metaphorical association between flowing rivers and the fluency of speech). (9a) Another child does not walk soon, and does not stand up: ‘Cut his backside’. So his backside is cut and his knees are cut, and then he stands up and walks. The cutting of the backside and the knees is not expected to be done literally and can be interpreted rhetorically and magically, like in the instance of feeding a speech-impeded child with water from a flowing river. In both cases the aim is to overcome stagnancy and enhance forms of competence that are essential in Hamar. In addition, it is interesting to note that when Baldambe mentions the need to ensure the ability of children to speak and walk upright, this parallels modern evolutionary theory, which counts speech and upright posture among the most important ‘diagnostic features’ of our species, homo sapiens (Geist 1978). Then Baldambe goes on to say: Another man’s child starts getting about when still small.

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At first he is up and down, then after he can stand he walks. ‘That child is the knee of so-and-so.’ Thus people vary. Here, like in the previous two examples and one mentioned earlier, Baldambe’s innateness view is at odds with the tabula rasa theory of human nature, which, as we have seen, he also holds and proclaims. But the contradiction seems less strong when one takes a closer look at the rhetorical strategies of the Hamar vis-à-vis their ever so varying children, and in the discourse about them. In a nutshell, on one side they use the tabula rasa thesis for children who are evincing an amenable character by conforming to social norms and expectations. On the other side they apply the innateness theory for stubborn and eccentric persons who will simply not bend their behaviour to the will of others. While doing fieldwork, I was initially perplexed and found this practice unjust. But when I witnessed how it helped to preclude conflict within families and neighbourhoods, I gradually began to understand the wisdom of this opportunistic rhetoric. (10a) ‘Now he has grown up. His eyes have become discerning, he knows all people and he knows how to speak.’ This is the second time Baldambe characterizes the developmental stage of a child by reference to the eyes. First, when the child was still very young a heart was laid into his eyes (6a); now, as he has grown older, his eyes have become discerning. While the first expression speaks of emotional faculties, that is, the child’s ability to look inward and evaluate its own and other people’s feelings, the second speaks of the development of cognitive faculties, that is, the propensity to look outward to discover ‘what exists, what it is made of, what it does and is for, and how it relates to other existents’ (Tyler 1978: 240). Expressed in more general terms, the child begins to use the meaning schemata of attribution, existence, function and comparison, which are ‘the pillars of our naïve realism’ (Tyler 1978: 240). (11a) Next, the boy collects the yellow garanti fruits and makes a cattle kraal: ‘Korre cattle, kong-kong, kong-kong!’ Another child says: ‘Let’s collect quartz stones’. And then makes a kraal for them: ‘Father’s cattle, Father’s cattle.’ He stands the stones up and moves them: ‘kong-kong, kong-kong, kong-kong’ For a girl, barjo tells her about birth, her parents don’t tell her. She collects stones and carries one on her hip: ‘It’s my child’.

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Arranging other stones, and saying: ‘That’s my sorghum’, she scoops up earth. ‘Woardu woardu, woardu, woardu’ she grinds it on the stone. ‘Grind! That’s how your grandmother grinds, you grind like that.’ Our species is not only called homo sapiens and homo rhetoricus (see 6a above), it has also been christened homo ludens. Ever since the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga published a study of the creative role of play in human life (Homo Ludens, [1938] 1955), the term – and the ideas behind it – has been indispensable for the study of culture. It is therefore interesting to see how Baldambe, like Huizinga, describes how play helps to mould gender-specific behaviour. Of special interest is how Baldambe mimes the rhetorical imagination of the children, of how they use onomatopoeic sounds and comments to accompany their play. In fact, it seems as if the ideas and verbal sounds matter just as much as the objects that are handled, the kong, kong, kong (imitating the sound of bells) just as much as the quartz stones (representing cattle). But Baldambe does not only let the children speak, sing and utter onomatopoeic sounds. We also hear the voices of seniors, of parents and older siblings who admonish the children and ‘lead’ them in the right direction, which is always in accord with the past: ‘Grind! That’s how your grandmother grinds, you grind like that’. (12a) If the girl says: ‘Let’s collect cattle’. ‘It’s forbidden! Don’t collect cattle. You are a woman. You are a girl.’ And so she grinds and prepares her grinding stone, and as she carries her stone she would say: ‘It’s my child’. A boy would say: ‘They are my cattle’. So the child is told to say this and that, this and that. And a girl grows into a woman and a boy into a man. Here we see once again how enculturation in Hamar is tuned to the prevailing division of labour. Herding cattle, goats and sheep belongs to the domain of men, and tending to the fields and preparing food and drink, as well as caring for children, belong to the domain of women. By pointing to the division of labour as constitutive of society, Baldambe is in accord with the traditions of Western sociological scholarship (Durkheim 1893; Weber [1922] 1947 etc.), and I think his outline of how ‘a girl grows into a woman and a boy into a man’ provides us with valuable insight into the close relationship between the division of labour and the concomitant use of rhetoric in the effort to achieve sound and well-grounded enculturation. But although Baldambe emphasized a neat gender separation and division of labour in Hamar when he

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explains how ‘a girl grows into a woman and a boy into a man’, later, on another occasion, he stresses something rather different, saying: Girls should sweep up the dung and open the gateway. That’s girls’ work. Married women can make coffee, that’s not for girls to do. Girls should de-tick the kids and rouse the calves. That’s girls’ work. Looking them in the eye, she learns about the goats, their work, and the milking. In her future home, she’ll have to tend the goats. So now she’s told to sweep up the dung and open the gateway. The girl who refuses, won’t sweep up the dung and bring in the goats, but only looks at the pot, will be useless. The girl who only grinds won’t learn about the goats. That’s why we put the girls and boys with the animals. So they can get a taste for the cattle, look at their skin and their milk, see if they return well-fed or hungry in the evening. It’s by going with the herds that the child gets smart. (Strecker 1984)

Why did Baldambe not mention this different educational practice in his earlier account but put great emphasis on it in his second statement? The answer seems that in the first instance he thought of the poorer forms of Hamar existence, which elsewhere he laconically characterized, saying: Hamar country is dry, its people are rooks, they are tough. Living between the rocks, and drying up, they dig fields and make beehives. That’s Hamar. (Lydall and Strecker 1979b: 157)

The circumstances under which he spoke to me in the film Father of the Goats induced him, however, to think of more affluent styles of life in Hamar. Proudly he explained his homestead with its inhabitants and its abundance of cattle, goats and sheep, which allow a more thorough education not only for boys but also girls. Thus, although they seem to be contradictory, none of Baldambe’s accounts is ‘wrong’. Rather, they are an example of rhetorical kairos: the choice of the appropriate argument at the right moment.

Listening to Baldambe (2): The Obligation to Speak and to Listen In another text,2 Baldambe has emphasized the authority of parents to tell their children what they need to know, especially what is morally right and wrong, and at the same time he stressed that the children have the obligation to listen and obey. Thus, enculturation is understood in Hamar to involve not only the devotion of parents but also the active participation of their children. As in the

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preceding section, I present here first the text as a whole and then go through it again to provide comments and explanations. * (1b) Well, one tells what one knows. What one doesn’t know one cannot tell. (2b) He, who tells, is the father. The one, who speaks to the children, is the mother. Some have a father, who dies already when the children are small, but then there is the mother who instructs the children. Earlier on, the mother heard the words of the fathers. The fathers said this and that. My father too told me many things a long time ago. (3b) Parents talk to their children. In this way they bring them up. But if the child doesn’t listen, the father and mother will neglect him, and he will not grow up. He will not find anything. He will not collect anything. He will not have children, and will not marry any woman. (4b) ‘Look, earlier on this child didn’t listen to the word of the fathers and the mothers. He didn’t listen to the word of the mother’s brother and to that of the age mates of his father!’ (5b) In this way children grow up. Barjo sits on their shoulders and closes or opens their ears. (6b) These things are told to the children, so that they may know. He, who doesn’t listen to the word of the fathers, will become a thief, and will die with the words of a thief, and will be impoverished with the words of a thief. (7b) These are the teachings of the age mates. (Strecker 2013: 15) * (1b) With these words, Baldambe introduced a donko, a learned, informative talk typically devoted to the past. Such narrations of historical events implicitly carry lessons about right and wrong, wisdom and thoughtlessness, good luck and bad fortune, and so on. Baldambe begins by saying, ‘Well, one tells what one knows. What one doesn’t know one cannot tell’. Here he follows Hamar custom, which demands that a mature and considerate speaker points to the limitations of his or her knowledge. But when Baldambe goes on to point out the morality of speaking and listening, he goes well beyond what is usually said at the beginning of a donko. (2b) When Baldambe says: ‘He, who tells, is the father’, he refers to the father as the head of the homestead, the one who, for example, calls his sons to

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the animal enclosures where, undisturbed by any intruders, he informs them, instructs them and discusses with them serious matters like bridewealth negotiations, theft of animals, the need to go on a trading expedition and so on. Here, to ‘tell’ is often also to ‘order’. After he has put the father at the apex of authority, Baldambe is quick to point to the mother, saying: ‘The one, who speaks to the children, is the mother’. Jean Lydall has explained how important the dialogue between a mother and her children is, and how by speaking to them a mother ‘moulds’ the social world of her children rhetorically: ‘The mutual love and trust, dependency and care that characterize the mother–infant bond’, she writes, ‘provide a paradigm for the rhetorical creation and moulding of kin relations, including the mother–child relationship itself. Because of their binding commitment and undying feeling of responsibility towards their dependent offspring, women are highly motivated to engage in creating, recreating, maintaining and transforming kinship relations by way of rhetoric’. However, while mothers are motivated to bond closely with their children while they are still young, ‘fathers are deliberately discouraged from bonding too closely with their children. Men are told they should not hold their children and tend to their needs, for otherwise they might become too fond of them, and when they leave to go to the distant grazing areas or to war they would always be thinking of and worrying about their children instead of attending to the difficult and dangerous tasks at hand’ (Lydall, this volume). (3b) ‘Parents talk to their children. In this way they bring them up. But if the child doesn’t listen, the father and mother will neglect him, and he will not grow up. He will not find anything. He will not collect anything. He will not have children, and will not marry any woman.’ Several points are of special interest here. First, Baldambe states what seems to be an unquestioned fact: ‘Parents talk to their children. In this way they bring them up’. But then follows the daunting sentence: ‘But if the child doesn’t listen, the father and mother will neglect him’. Here we enter a problematic, which is also all too well known in our modern world. That is, the case is an example of the ‘lose-lose situation’, where indifference (child not listening) begets indifference (parents no longer speaking to them). Mutual indifference, Baldambe seems to say, has catastrophic consequences. Hyperbolically, he enumerates the ill luck that will befall the child who does not listen: He will not find anything pertains to the domain of hunting and gathering. He will not collect anything pertains to the pastoral domain, the collection of animals to build up a herd. He will not have children seems curiously placed before and will not marry any woman, but in the light of the fact that many young men in Hamar may father the children of women – often widows – who are not their wives, the puzzle disappears. On one side Baldambe’s evocation of ill luck may be understood as a kind of lament, but on the other side it may also express a warning. That is, it may be

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an example of one of the most powerful rhetorical tools in the ongoing struggle to ensure optimal enculturation in Hamar: the threat. In the film Father of the Goats, Baldambe also uses the threat of nemesis, the retributive justice that will assert itself if the children don’t follow the words of their parents, when he says: Thus, I told them all (the children): We share hunger and sickness. Our herds and children are one. Don’t quarrel or offend each other. If you care for one another, sickness will pass. If you neglect each other, sickness will come to the people, to the cattle! (Strecker 1984)

(6b) These things are told to the children, so that they may know. He, who doesn’t listen to the word of the fathers, will become a thief, and will die with the words of a thief, and will be impoverished with the words of a thief. This is the climax of Baldambe’s hyperbolic enumeration of forms of ill luck that are bound to follow if a child does not listen to its parents. Or, as explained above, it is a continuation of the earlier threats, yet again strengthened by reference to nemesis. (4b) ‘Look, earlier on this child didn’t listen to the word of the fathers and the mothers. He didn’t listen to the word of the mother’s brother and to that of the age mates of his father!’ This is yet another example of how enculturation in Hamar is understood as involving a wide range of people who occupy a position of authority in relation to a child. (5b) ‘In this way children grow up. Barjo sits on their shoulders and closes or opens their ears.’ Here we are back to the tabula rasa versus innateness view of human nature, which I have already discussed above. Most generally, barjo means fortune, fate, luck, but it may also be the spoken word itself, or some kind of substance. People may be or have barjo; animals and plants may have barjo; things, places, body parts and so on may be barjo. But whatever barjo may mean, Baldambe uses the concept of barjo here metaphorically: fate sits on your shoulders ever ready to open or close your ears, whether you want it to or not. (7b) ‘These are the teachings of the age mates.’ This seems a curious jump from the parent–child relation to that of the age-mates. But in fact it is a rhetorical device, which emphatically closes the introductory remarks of Baldambe’s donko. In Hamar, parents not only speak as individuals but also as members of specific age groups. Behind them lies the weight of a collective of which they are a part. Thus, ‘the teachings of the age mates’ is a stronger expression than ‘the teachings of the parents’.

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Listening to the Hamar: Enculturation in Conversation Enculturation in Hamar also occurs abundantly in conversation. I have explained this in an essay on the ‘Rhetorics of Local Knowledge’ as follows: A Hamar elder comes to my mind as he sits opposite a number of younger men drinking coffee in one of the houses of Dambaiti. A coffee bowl stands on the ground in front of him and he leans across the steaming bowl towards the other men; stretching one arm out in a gesture that seems to take hold of each one of them, he emphatically calls out, ‘Kansé, kate kansé!’ (Listen, listen well!). Then he speaks and the audience listens. The elder may speak for half an hour, for an hour, or even longer, and as he speaks and tells his good story he frequently comes back to the same points, uses similar images and generally covers the same ground, going over it again and again from many different angles as his speech unfolds. In this way he not only informs his listeners but actually influences and moulds their views. Or, to put it differently, the repetitiveness and other redundancies act as a tool of persuasion and instil in the listeners not only details and singular occurrences but also, and more importantly, underlying cultural generalities and structures. Furthermore, the repetitiveness leads, so to speak, to addiction, in that the listeners begin to feel that they have still heard too little, that the speaker has in fact missed certain implications of what he has said; implications which are also true and follow immediately from the premises that made him speak so long in the first place. When the coffee is finished, the youths go down to the dry riverbed and as they wait for the cattle to come to the waterholes, they sit in the shade of a tree and begin to talk again about what was said at the coffee pot. (Strecker 2010: 295–96)

However, not only knowledge as such but also mental alertness, intelligence and a general competence to cope with the demands of life in Hamar are also emphasized and applauded in conversation, as in the following example. One morning, while I was drinking coffee with my friends Baldambe and Choke in the house of Ginonda (Baldambe’s sister-in-law), a conversation developed in which the intelligent actions of Ginonda’s young son Lomoluk were praised. There is no room, and no need, to reproduce here what was said in full, but the most important elements of the conversation are as follows. Baldambe begins by saying, ‘Look at this goat, which once got lost. Our herding boys said, just so: “The fox has eaten it”. Ginonda said to her older son, “Gino, look for the goat”, but he returned saying, “I have searched for it all over the country”. Time passed, and then recently an age-mate of Lomoluk said: “Lomoluk, look at this goat, it has the ear-cut of your goats, the goats of Berinas’ homestead. Take it, it has already been a long while with us”. Now the

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goat has grown up. When it got lost it was small and thin, now it has become big and fat. See, this is the intelligence of Hamar children’. Upon this, Ginonda joins in, imitating the exchange between Lomoluk and his age-mate: Age-mate: ‘One of your goats which went astray is among ours’. Lomoluk: ‘Please let me see it. Where is it? When did it get lost?’ Age-mate: ‘It got lost a long time ago. It came to us a long time ago after it had been licking salt’. Lomoluk: ‘Our goat which got lost was white with grey spots on the neck. Please let me see it!’ (When Lomoluk arrived and saw the goat): ‘Uh! Ours, it’s him! Mother, mother, ours, it’s him!’

Then Ginonda continues to relate how Lomoluk told Laesho’s son, a man who was herding his goats in the area: ‘I am going with my cattle. That one is ours. Please let it go with your goats today’. And Ginonda continues proudly: ‘When Lomoluk returned in the evening with the lost goat I said to myself: “Look here, my small son has grown up, he has returned from the bush with the goat that was lost”. Hahahaha (laughs happily)! He gave the goat to Laesho’s son to herd during the day while he was looking after the cattle’. Baldambe joins in, exclaiming, ‘Look here, my friend, see the intelligence of our Hamar children’, and in the end Ginonda comments: ‘Those who are stupid would not have recognised the goat and would have said “I don’t know”, would arrive and say “I don’t know”’ (Strecker 1979a: 37–38). Thus, little Lomoluk was praised for his mental alertness and intelligent decisions, which are demanded of a herding boy. This competence develops gradually as the child grows up and emerges from the myriad other tasks that children perform, not just because they are told to but because they enjoy and cherish them as part of the drama of life.

Mouse and Fly: How Tropes Are Used to Explain the World Part of the intelligence that is nurtured in conversation pertains to the art of reasoning. Here we encounter a topic of universal relevance: the problematic of how to use tropes to explain the world. In an essay on ‘Mantic and Magical Confidence’, I have addressed this question. First I presented observations that I made in the field, like the one which I called Mouse and Fly: I have killed a mouse in my trap, and thinking I am following the logic of Hamar customs, I am going to throw it ‘away with the sun’, that is towards the West, when Aikenda exclaims: ‘No, no! This is forbidden (kais), throw it

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towards the direction from where the sun rises’. Immediately I understand and ask: ‘Is then the mouse like the fly?’ ‘Yes, it is. Just like the fly arrives with the milk, the mouse arrives with the sorghum. We kill it, but then we throw it towards where the sun rises and from where the rains come, asking it to return with more sorghum.’ Later, Ginonda tells me that mice arrive even before the sorghum gets ripe and in this way forecast a good harvest: ‘This year many grey and white mice turned up. Usually they are busy in the bush, and when they all come to our houses and to the fields, we know that there will be a good crop’. (Strecker 2010: 334)

I interpreted the event as follows: On the one side, one can see here how Aikenda and Ginonda predict from the coming of the mice, an abundance of sorghum, and from the arrival of flies, an abundance of milk. On the other side, one can see how they think that one would cause the future absence of milk if one would senselessly kill the flies which swarm around the milk containers and sit on people’s faces, or if one killed mice and threw them away towards the setting sun. To throw a mouse away towards the setting sun would, in Hamar terms, be a gesture, which would have the effect that one never would see the mouse again, and as the presence of mice is closely associated with the presence of sorghum, the gesture would also cause the sorghum to disappear forever. (Strecker 2010: 334)

After I had presented evidence of the rhetorical practice of reasoning by means of tropes in Hamar, I came up with some thoughts, which, I think, may also serve well to end my present attempt to characterize enculturation in Hamar as a rhetorical practice: At the root of Hamar reasoning lies the all-pervasive practice of thinking and speaking metaphorically. People know from experience that metaphor is a useful cognitive tool. And in my view it makes sense that in societies like Hamar analogical, or rather metonymical and synecdochical thinking should abound. Where cause and effect, whole and part, etc., cannot always be clearly distinguished, where many causal relationships in nature are still an open question, much analogical reasoning should be allowed. But the problem is that analogies often have limits, which are difficult to check. Therefore, even though they lie at the heart of discovery and are essential for an extension of knowledge, they do have their pitfalls and can become an obstruction to objective knowledge. Modern science is an enterprise where in an ideally egalitarian discourse slowly more and more untenable theories are ruled out and reasonably tenable theories are established. No theory will ever have a claim to ultimate truth, but the ground for its tenability will be

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made transparent and would never be based on social authority. In societies like Hamar where no institutionalized science exists, the use of analogy is always inextricably linked to social relations and differences in power. Here the socially powerful determine the meaning of metaphors and the extent to which analogical reasoning, and by extension also analogical action, that is magic, may be employed. (Strecker 2010: 342–43)

By Way of Conclusion To round off this chapter, I would like to point out that my understanding of the aim of ethnography only shaped up long after I had made my initial recordings, that is, only when I came across the essay entitled ‘Theoretical Landscapes: On Cross-Cultural Conceptions of Knowledge’ (1982), in which Anne Salmond introduced the concept of merging horizons to characterize a particular anthropological ‘stance’ where ego and alter – observer and observed – share an ethos of equality. Both are grounded in their own particular cultures, but when they meet, they jointly explore how far their views of the world coincide and how far they differ. Both gain in this exchange and experience a merging of their horizons (Lydall and Strecker 2011). In the present chapter, I have tried to achieve this kind of merging horizons by a method of discourse analysis based on resonance theory, particularly on Pierre Maranda’s essay, ‘Echo Chambers and Rhetoric: Sketch of a Model of Resonance Theory’ where he writes: ‘Culture-specific semantic fields reverberate on each other. They bounce back and forth in the minds and feelings of people that share homologous representational backgrounds’ (Maranda 2011: 84). The discourse analysis that I employed above involved this reverberation between ‘culture-specific semantic fields’; this ‘bouncing back and forth in the minds and feelings’ of the ethnographer and his interlocutors. Ivo Strecker studied ethnology (PhD 1969, Göttingen University) and later anthropology at LSE, London. He did his ‘Habilitation’ in Germany (1983). He is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany, and co-founder of the Rhetoric Culture Project (http://www.rhetoricculture.org/) since 1998. He has over four decades of fieldwork experience in Southern Ethiopia, mainly among the Hamar people, and has published widely on it. This work stimulated him to develop the study of rhetoric and culture. He was a visiting professor at the universities of Addis Ababa (1989–93), Meqelle and Arba Minch (Ethiopia), and was founder of the South Omo Research Centre in Jinka, Southern Ethi-

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opia. He has published numerous articles and the book series The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia (with Jean Lydall; Klaus Renner Verlag, 1979), The Social Practice of Symbolization (Athlone Press, 1988), Ethnographic Chiasmus (Lit Verlag, 2010), Berimba’s Resistance (Lit Verlag, 2013), and co-edited various other books, including The Perils of Face (with Jean Lydall, Lit Verlag, 2006), Writing in the Field: Festschrift for Stephen Tyler (with Shauna LaTosky, Lit Verlag, 2013) and two volumes in the Rhetoric Culture Series (Berghahn, 2009 and 2013). He has also made ethnographic films and produced a collection of music of the Hamar.

Notes 1. The following quote comes from Baldambe Explains, vol. 2 of the series The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia (Lydall and Strecker 1979b: 69–71). As ethnographic research is itself an educational process, which involves many kinds of rhetoric, I quote here from the introduction to Baldambe Explains at some length, telling how it was Baldambe’s amazing power of expression that first led me to record what he said at length. In addition, I also used a rhetorical figure (metaphor) when I asked Baldambe to give us a sustained account of Hamar culture: ‘We realized early on that Baldambe’s interest in us was partly fired by a deep concern for his country’s future, a future which he felt he could best serve by establishing the validity of Hamar culture in the eyes of the rest of the world. This was why he liked to explain things to us, and why we were able to make headway in our research. As we became better listeners Baldambe felt encouraged to reveal more to us, and his explanations gained in coherence and complexity. At some point, when he had once again given us an extremely lively and explanatory description of some Hamar custom, it occurred to us that such well-formulated presentations had a right to be published by themselves as documents of Hamar thought. Thus, on 18 September 1971 Ivo wrote in the work journal: “In the evening, as Baldambe and I talk and I record his narratives, the project of our first possible Hamar book takes shape in my head: Baldambe describing his country, his people, his family, his father and himself. There is so much poetry and expression in his descriptions. These and the rhythm of his speech should be reproduced in a book: the fast passages and interludes, the accelerations, the lingering of his voice. What a job it would be to translate such tapes! But if we were able to manage the translation without losing the quality of the actual speech, then something beautiful could result”’ (Lydall and Strecker 1979b: iv). The metaphorical mode, which I used to formulate our request, was as follows: ‘Misso (hunting friend), we have seen how you Hamar live and what you do. For many months we have talked with you about Hamar customs. Yet our eyes don’t see and our ears don’t hear. We feel as if we have been only handling separate pieces of wood, poles and beams. You know how the poles and beams fit together. Please take them and reconstruct for us the house to which they belong’. Upon which Baldambe answered ‘eh, eh (yes, I will do so)’ (Lydall and Strecker 1979b: x). 2. This quote is derived from Berimba’s Resistance, vol. 4 of the series The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia (Strecker 2013: 15).

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References Biesta, Gert. 2002. ‘Bildung and Modernity: The Future of Bildung in a World of Difference’, Studies in Philosophy and Education 21: 343–51. Burke, Kenneth. 1955. ‘Linguistic Approaches to Problems of Education’, in N.B. Henry (ed.), Modern Philosophies and Education: The Fifty-Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 259–303. ———. 1969. A Grammar of Motives, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Durkheim, Emile. 1893. De la Division du Travail Social: Étude sur l’Organisation des Sociétés Supérieures. Paris: Félix Alcan. Frazer, James W. 1890. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: Macmillan & Co. Geist, Valerius. 1978. Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design: Toward a Biological Theory of Health. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Huizinga, Johan. (1938) 1955. Homo Ludens, a Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Translation of Homo Ludens: Proeve eener Bepaling van het Spel-Element der Cultuur [Groningen: Wolters Noordhoff ]). Hymes, Dell. 1971. ‘The Ethnography of Speaking’, in T. Gladwin and W. Sturtevant (eds), Anthropology and Human Behavior. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington, pp. 13–53. Jakobson, Roman. 1960. ‘Linguistics and Poetics: Closing Statement’, in T. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language. New York and London: The Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, pp. 350–77. Kopperschmidt, Josef (ed.). 2000. Rhetorische Anthropologie: Studien zum Homo Rhetoricus. Munich: Fink. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1962) 1963. Totemism, trans. Roger C. Poole. Boston: Beacon Press. Lydall, Jean, and Ivo Strecker. 1979a. Work Journal: The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia. Vol. 1. Hohenschaeftlarn: Renner Verlag. ———. 1979b. Baldambe Explains: The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia. Vol. 2. Hohenschaeftlarn: Renner Verlag. ———. 2011. ‘Merging Horizons’, Paideuma 57: 1–23. Maranda, Pierre. 2011. ‘Echo Chambers and Rhetoric: Sketch of a Model of Resonance Theory’, in. C. Meyer and F. Girke (eds), The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 84–100. Nelson, John S., Allen Megill, and Deirdre McCloskey (eds). 1990. The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Oesterreich, Peter. 2009. ‘Homo Rhetoricus’, in I. Strecker and S. Tyler (eds), Culture and Rhetoric. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 49–58. Rutten, Kris, and Ronald Soetaert. 2012. ‘Revisiting the Rhetorical Curriculum’, Journal of Curriculum Studies 44(6): 727–43. Salmond, Anne. 1982. ‘Theoretical Landscapes: On Cross-Cultural Conceptions of Knowledge’, in D. Parkin (ed.), Semantic Anthropology. London: Academic Press, pp. 65–87. Simons, Herbert W. (ed.). 1990. The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strecker, Ivo. 1979a. Conversations in Dambaiti: The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia. Vol. 3. Hohenschaeftlarn: Klaus Renner Verlag.

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———. 1979b. Music of the Hamar. Berlin: Völkerkunde Museum Dahlem (Audiorecord). ———. 1984. Father of the Goats: Sacrifice and Divination in Hamar. Film. Goettingen: Institute for Scientific Film. ———. 2010. Ethnographic Chiasmus: Essays on Culture, Conflict and Rhetoric. Berlin: Lit Verlag / East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. ———. 2013. Berimba’s Resistance: The Hamar of Southern Ethiopia. Vol. 4. Berlin: Lit Verlag. ———. 2015. ‘Rhetorical Figures in Education: Kenneth Burke and Maimire Mennasemay’, Kenneth Burke Journal 11(1). http://kbjournal.org/strecker_rhetorical_figures_ education. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1985. Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Tyler, Stephen. 1978. The Said and the Unsaid: Mind, Meaning, and Culture. New York: Academic Press. Weber, Max. (1922) 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Part I of Wirtschaft and Gesellschaft. Trans. A.R. Henderson. Revised and edited with an introduction by Talcott Parsons. London: Hodge.

Part III

Contestation

CHAPTER 9

Sweet Tongues The Rhetoric of Politeness in Damascus Anke Reichenbach       

‘Is your father a thief?’, a female colleague of mine was asked by a young Arab man during her fieldwork in Jordan. She replied, quite surprised: ‘No, of course not’. The young man continued: ‘So your mother is a thief?’ – ‘No, she isn’t!’, my colleague answered, now slightly annoyed. Triumphantly the man asked his last question: ‘Who then has stolen all the stars from the sky and sprinkled them over your eyes?’ When I retold this story to my Arab friends in Damascus, everyone listened in attentive silence, and then a storm of excitement and admiration for the unknown Jordanian broke out. People even repeated the whole sequence as if to memorize it, perhaps in order to use it on an appropriate occasion later on. In the Middle East, elaborate compliments like the one mentioned above are by no means restricted to the special and often delicate field of encounters between women and men. Rhetorical refinement and the art of carefully composing a message are highly valued (see Beeman 1986), and it seems appropriate to compare everyday discourse in the Middle East to verbal play with masterfully woven veils of words. An excellent example of this kind of rhetorical masquerade is politeness, understood as a type of communication where the actors converse with each other by employing various strategies of verbal wrapping and draping in order to maintain a respected and amiable face and at the same time to support the self-presentation of their respective others.

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This chapter explores the rhetoric of politeness in Bab Tuma, one of the traditional Christian quarters in Damascus, Syria. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out intermittently from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s (see Reichenbach 2001). During several stays, I lived with a local family in a small hāra or neighbourhood in Bab Tuma. Thanks to my kind and supportive hosts and other friends I had met while studying at Damascus University in 1993/94, I made the acquaintance of numerous families living in the quarter with whom I visited regularly. My last journey to Damascus took place in the summer of 2005, long before Syria descended into the civil war that has shattered the country. The following portrayal of politeness in Bab Tuma is thus based on my pre-war observations, conversations and interviews. After introducing the quarter as a stage of polite performances, the chapter will first apply Brown and Levinson’s ([1978] 1987) classic model of politeness to this Middle Eastern context, particularly to the everyday interactions among neighbours. Secondly, I will introduce the indigenous concept of politeness, its terminology and some stylistic means that are frequently employed in polite discourse. Thirdly, the interpretations offered by the actors themselves will be discussed. Finally, I intend to add my own interpretation of these interpretations. With the help of Ivo Strecker’s reversal of politeness from a mechanism to anoint the other’s face into a tool of politely destroying it (1988: 171), I will show how status and dominance are negotiated, maintained and re-arranged using apparently polite and amiable verbal masks – in other words, how social realities are constructed and reconstructed by means of rhetoric.

The Stage Bab Tuma and Its Actors The traditional Christian quarter of Bab Tuma is situated in the northeastern part of the Old City of Damascus. According to the local mayor, in the 1990s there were about fifty thousand Christians living in the Old City who belonged to ten different Christian denominations, mainly Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic. Since the late 1800s, many of the affluent old Damascene families (Shuwām, sing. Shāmi) had left Bab Tuma and other parts of the Old City and settled in the newly built, modern quarters outside the ancient walls (see Hudson 2008; Weber 2009), attracted by their more ‘Western’ appearance, comfort and lifestyle that were associated with higher prestige. The elite’s exodus set in motion processes of urban decline in the Old City that continued until the 1990s (Sudermann 2014: 117 passim). The traditional courtyard houses that their wealthy owners had abandoned were frequently subdivided and rented out to migrants from rural areas who had moved into the Old City in several waves during the twentieth century, particularly after the First World War, na-

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tional independence in 1946, the Baa’th party’s rise to power in 1963, and the loss of the Syrian Golan heights to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967. Many Christian migrants from the countryside first settled in Bab Tuma, mainly because they could not afford housing in the modern Christian or mixed quarters of the city. According to residents’ estimates, only 10 per cent of Bab Tuma’s inhabitants before the current civil war were ‘original Damascenes’ – less than in any other quarter of the Old City. At the time of my research, these differences in origin constituted the most important dividing line between individuals and families within Bab Tuma (see Salamandra 2004; Totah 2014a, 2014b). The remaining ‘old’ families looked down upon the ‘peasants’ and complained about the latter’s lack of urban sophistication, about their ‘provincial’ manners and general lack of refinement. The families with rural origins in turn had tried to adapt quickly to urban standards of housing, clothing and behaviour, and in many cases outdistanced the old Damascenes with regard to education and professional careers. In their view, the Shuwām, particularly the wealthy ones, were obsessed with their pedigree, miserly despite their affluence, conceited and haughty, and ‘cold’ in their interactions with others. Economically, the majority of Bab Tuma’s inhabitants belonged to the Syrian middle class: they were small traders, artisans, school teachers, employees of small and middle-sized businesses, or occupied the low and middle ranks of the state bureaucracy, for example the police and army. Differences between the upper and lower ends of income rates could be substantial though. Some families, especially those of Damascene origin, possessed considerable wealth, sometimes combined with a high level of education. Several families with both rural and urban origins followed suit due to their flourishing businesses or professional careers as physicians or lawyers. At the other end of the spectrum, some rural families struggled to make ends meet due to a lack of education, low-wage occupations or a large number of children. New opportunities for acquiring social and economic capital emerged from the 1990s when, facilitated by the government’s economic liberalization policies, the Old City started to undergo processes of gentrification that intensified in the first decade of the twenty-first century (Sudermann 2014; Totah 2014a, 2014b). Syrian and foreign investors began to renovate old courtyard houses and turn them into ‘Old Damascus’-themed restaurants, boutique hotels and art galleries and, to a lesser extent, into elegant private homes. Bab Tuma and the neighbouring Christian quarter Bab Sharqi were at the forefront of these developments due to their location along major thoroughfares and since investors perceived them to be ‘more open-minded’ than Muslim neighbourhoods (Sudermann 2014: 160). Several authors have explored how this commodification of cultural heritage has transformed the Old City’s reputation from being

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a symbol of backwardness to a highly desirable and fashionable location, and how gentrification changed the old neighbourhoods’ demographics and their residents’ practices of sociability, consumption and social distinction (Copertino 2013, 2014; Salamandra 2004; Sudermann 2014; Totah 2014a, 2014b). At the time of my fieldwork, these transformations were in their early stages. They had not yet influenced predominating ideas and perceptions regarding community life and the meaning of neighbourhood ties that shaped everyday interactions in Bab Tuma and thus generated ‘social pressures on grammar’, as Brown and Levinson ([1978] 1987) put it. The social interplay of actors appeared to be guided by three basic notions of the nature and characteristics of their neighbourhood community. The first of these was the prevailing ideology of the equality of all residents. Charles Lindholm wrote in his anthropological history of the Middle East: ‘By considering the ways in which the taken-for-granted faith in equality and individual freedom effect social reality in the political, religious, and personal realms in the Middle East, we can discover how subordination and hierarchy are legitimated, hidden, or denied within a cultural milieu that … assumes the intrinsic equality of all participants’ (1996: 14). Lindholm’s observation held true for Bab Tuma as well: a ‘basic equality’ of its inhabitants was emphasized and often expressed in phrases like ‘Hōn bil-hayy kullna nafs iš-šī!’ – ‘Here in the quarter we are all equal!’ This statement veiled a wide range of differences in status and influence: differences between men and women, old and young, Shuwām and ‘peasants’, rich and poor, Greek Orthodox and Protestant Christians. In everyday discourse, these distinctions had to be carefully taken into consideration when choosing an appropriate politeness strategy. At the same time, it was possible to exploit the ambiguous difference between ideology and reality for one’s own sake, for instance by reminding an aspiring interlocutor of his ‘equal position’, by claiming ‘equal rights’ for oneself, or by denying any hierarchy in decision-making. A second central feature of community life in the quarter was the local concept of face. Since Erving Goffman’s ground-breaking work (1955, [1959] 1980) on face as the public self-image of a person, any investigation about politeness needs to define the constituents of face in a given community. In Arabic, Goffman’s concept finds its equivalent in the term wağh, in the Damascene dialect wišš, which denotes the part of the body as well as the reputation and moral integrity of a person. Thus, the concept of face is closely related to Middle Eastern notions of honour, as discussed by Abu-Lughod ([1986] 1987), Herzfeld (1980) and Wikan (1980, 1984). In Bab Tuma, two distinct terms were used for ‘honour’. The first one, šaraf, was primarily associated with the collective honour of the family, depending mainly on the chastity and modesty of the women (see Salaman-

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dra 2006), and the ability of men to control the former’s behaviour in public. Karāma, the second term for honour, denoted the individual’s dignity and self-esteem, associated, for instance, with hospitality and generosity, friendliness, tact, good manners and supportiveness. Of course, the contents of both terms overlapped, and shortcomings regarding the sexual virtue of one’s wife, sister or daughter as well as a lack of generosity, good manners, and solidarity with kin and neighbours were sanctioned by a loss of face. In commenting on the good or bad moral reputation of themselves or others, Damascenes usually linked the notion of wišš to the colours white or black. Therefore, a person with a morally immaculate reputation was referred to as having a ‘white face’ or as someone who ‘whitened the face of his or her family’ by behaving according to the local moral standards and thus contributing to the respectability of their family. On the other hand, shameless, disrespectful or greedy persons were said to possess a ‘black face’. Misbehaviour not only discredited the offender himself but brought shame upon his kin and company as well, as expressed by the phrase ‘he blackened his face and the face of his family’. The respective ‘colour’ of other people’s faces was assessed by the most intensely feared institution of the quarter: people’s talk, kalām in-nās. In a social milieu like Bab Tuma, where contacts between relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues and schoolmates shaped a dense social network and news spread at an amazing speed, gossip was an efficient tool not only for informally controlling and intimidating others, but for maliciously destroying their ‘white faces’ as well. While direct communication could be characterized as affirmative, benevolent and conflict-avoiding in order to protect each other’s faces (as will be illustrated below), a speaker’s tone could change considerably when his interlocutor had turned his back. The awareness that every word one uttered and every piece of information one delivered could be used against oneself in gossip affected face-to-face encounters to a great extent – everyone strived to display a faultless and pleasant façade, hoping that others would not discover the brittle spots in it. In addition to the prevailing ideology of equality and local notions of face, neighbourhood relations in Bab Tuma were associated with certain rights and responsibilities that had a strong impact on politeness. Dale Eickelman (1974) has analysed the social imperatives connected with neighbourhood relations in Morocco, emphasizing the importance of the key concept of qarāba, which literally means ‘closeness’. According to Eickelman, the social space of a neighbourhood was regarded as an extension of one’s own household: residents exchanged visits on festive occasions, participated in rites de passage of their neighbours, and were collectively held responsible for the reputation of their quarter. In other words, qarāba implied kinship-like rights and obligations towards one’s neighbours.

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Eickelman’s insights were important for analysing social life in urban Middle Eastern neighbourhoods, but he missed one crucial point: the everyday relations between neighbours apart from festive occasions or scandals. As a male researcher, he presumably lacked access to this predominantly female world that was similarly based on fictive kinship relationships, as numerous female ethnographers have convincingly shown for different parts of the Arab world (see Altorki 1986; Dorsky 1986; Early 1993; Eickelman 1984; Hoodfar 1997; Joseph 1978; Nippa 1982; Stolleis 2004; Wikan 1980). In these scholars’ writings, the neighbourhood street was described as a female domain because women’s responsibilities and activities traditionally obliged them to stay close to the home, and women relied on female relatives and neighbours for company, material assistance and moral support. Dorsky pointed out that, ‘despite an ideology of neighborly loyalty and solidarity, most men have little to do with their neighbours except at weddings, funerals, and other irregular and infrequent occasions’ (1986: 171). Nippa, however, added the important observation that women and men were equally involved in neighbourhood relations, although in different spheres: while women interacted intensely with their neighbours at home, men cultivated close contacts with neighbouring artisans and shopkeepers in the markets (1982: 33). A similar situation could be found in Bab Tuma, where neighbourhood relationships played an important part in everyday activities, among women at home as well as among men in neighbouring shops or workshops. They ranged from mutual aid and the reciprocal exchange of goods, services and information to emotional support and regular (sometimes daily) visits and coffeedrinking sessions, which were, especially for women, the social highlight of the day. Visits on festive occasions and participation in the rites de passage of one’s neighbours were expected, and the non-observance of this essential obligation could be regarded as an offence – as it would be among relatives.

Brown and Levinson in Bab Tuma After having introduced the setting, the actors and the central features of their interplay, this section will apply Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory to social interactions in Bab Tuma. Since Brown and Levinson’s ([1978] 1987) theory is widely known, I will limit my reiteration to a general outline. Brown and Levinson start from the basic assumption that all competent adult members of a society have a public self-image they want to claim for themselves. In line with Goffman’s terminology, the authors call this face. Face consists of two related aspects: firstly, negative face as the basic claim to personal preserves, freedom of action and

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freedom from imposition; and secondly, positive face as the positive, consistent self-image, including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of by others. In general, people cooperate in maintaining face in their interactions since they know about its mutual vulnerability. Some communicative acts like expressions of criticism, orders, excuses, thanks, advice, compliments and so on intrinsically threaten face (such face-threatening acts are abbreviated as FTAs). By employing various strategies of politeness, a speaker may try to minimize or soften the threat inherent in the expression, unless he or she wants to commit an FTA with maximum efficiency. Brown and Levinson name four different types of super strategies for committing face-threatening acts: (1) bald on record; (2) positive politeness; (3) negative politeness; and (4) off record ([1978] 1987: 59 passim). Positive-politeness utterances are directed to the addressee’s positive face. They are meant to demonstrate to one’s interlocutor that he and his desires are appreciated, that both actors share common attitudes to a certain extent, or belong to the same group or category of persons. They are used to minimize social distance; Brown and Levinson regard them as ‘a kind of metaphorical extension of intimacy’ ([1978] 1987: 103). Negative politeness, on the other hand, aims at a listener’s negative face and his desire to have his freedom of action unhindered ([1978] 1987: 129). It displays respect and the desire not to impinge on one’s listener. The choice of an adequate verbal wrapping strategy that mitigates the face-threatening act depends on the speaker’s assessment of the social distance to the addressee, the relative power of speaker and listener, and the social weight of an FTA in a particular culture ([1978] 1987: 74). By using Brown and Levinson’s elaborate model as a tool to systematically examine polite verbal exchanges in Bab Tuma, one could hardly fail to notice an unambiguous preference for positive-politeness strategies. Damascene actors made abundant use of the whole range of face-anointing and distancereducing strategies, while employing only a few negative ones. I will therefore start with presenting examples of the latter. One way of playing down one’s interference in other people’s freedom of action is characterized by Brown and Levinson’s negative-politeness strategy No. 4, ‘minimize the imposition’. For instance, requests of various kinds are wrapped up as apparent trivialities, thus suggesting that the proper distance to one’s interlocutor is observed. Tony, a 44-year-old mosaic trader in Bab Tuma, asked a friend to lend him his car for a trip to the sea: ‘Ah, `ala fikra, mumkin bākhod sayyārtak da’ī’atēn? Biddi rūh ‘a Lad’īye’. – ‘Ah, by the way, could I borrow your car for two minutes? I want to go to Latakiya’. It was at least a four-hour-trip, one way.

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The favour Tony was asking was considerable: cars, especially new ones, were luxury articles par excellence in the Syria of the 1990s, and to lend them to others was a risky matter. Therefore, Tony deemed it necessary to minimize his request quite daringly and drastically, firstly by starting with the premise ‘ah, by the way…’, which made the whole interaction appear to be a trivial matter, and secondly by announcing that he needed the precious vehicle for two minutes only, which was not only a minimization but nearly a ‘nullification’ of the imposition. Thirdly, the immediately following explanation of the reason for his request was important because, by mentioning his motives, Tony included the car owner in his reasoning and claimed his rational cooperation, which corresponds to Brown and Levinson’s positive-politeness strategy No. 13, ‘give reasons’. In addition to the dangerous category of requests and demands that threaten the negative face of the listener as well as the positive face of the speaker, expressions of criticism, complaints or confessions of guilt require minimization because of the general preoccupation with one’s positive face in Bab Tuma. In order to make a criticism appear as a rather minor issue, actors in Bab Tuma frequently used the word šwayy – ‘a bit’. Nadia, the 24-year-old daughter of my host family, reprimanded me for having teased her in the presence of neighbours for her constant quarrels with her younger sister: ‘Ah, wa’t marra ruhnā ‘al-masbah, ana u iyāki u Rim u Mariam, inti ‘ulti kilime ana inza‘ağt šwayy bass mā ‘ult ilik iyāha…’ – ‘Ah, when we went to the swimming pool, me and you and Rim and Mariam, you said something that made me a bit angry but I didn’t tell you…’.

As became obvious in the following conversation, my teasing had made her more than only ‘slightly’ angry because such family affairs should not become public knowledge, and she feared for her reputation: the image of a quarrelsome young lady could severely diminish her chances of getting married. The word šwayy in her criticism was a clear understatement intended to be a concession to my positive face, indicating that she did not want to hurt me. Immediately afterwards she concluded our discussion in a conciliatory fashion, anointing my positive face with the words: ‘You know all these things, you are my sister, living with me’. It seemed that even when applying negativepoliteness strategies that signalled a desire to maintain a certain safe distance, there was always also the simultaneous desire to keep this distance relatively small, to ‘keep in touch’ with one’s interactional partner. Another example of this delicate rhetorical balance between distance and closeness is Brown and Levinson’s negative strategy No. 7, ‘impersonalize speaker and hearer’. Here the speakers avoid the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’ in a variety of ways ([1978] 1987: 190). By not mentioning exactly who is doing the FTA to whom, the speaker leaves a loophole for himself as well as for

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his addressee. The speaker could refuse any responsibility if the FTA is found unacceptable, and the listener is not obliged to apply the FTA to himself, or at least not himself alone. This strategy has the additional advantage that the speaker refers to an unspecified and hidden collective behind him, and to ‘all the customs and moral rules that count in [the speaker’s] society and implicitly support his cause’ (Strecker 1988: 107). The actors in Bab Tuma employed this strategy frequently through their use of proverbs in everyday conversation. Proverbs did not only impersonalize a potentially face-threatening act; in addition, they made the veiled opinion of the speaker appear more significant and harder to attack because of its implicit reference to collective experience and the wisdom of one’s ancestors. During one of my visits to two young women in the neighbourhood, their mother returned from a trip to the sea. The daughters asked their mother how she liked the holiday, and the mother enthused about the beautiful days she spent with her adult sons. She repeatedly emphasized that her sons were pleased they could take their mother on such a nice trip: ‘They were constantly concerned about my well-being, and I prepared tea and coffee for them…’. One of her daughters interrupted her with the sarcastic comment: ‘Of course they were happy to have taken you with them. You know the proverb ‘azamū il-himār ‘a l-‘ars yalhamil il-mai – “they invite the donkey to the wedding for carrying the water”’.

By citing a proverb, the speaker ironically disguised her criticism of her brothers, who took their mother to the sea not only for altruistic reasons. At the same time, she veiled her mocking of her naïve mother because it would have been quite disrespectful to openly ridicule her, especially in the presence of outsiders. The example illustrated how actors in Bab Tuma provided themselves and their addressees with an ‘out’ by abstracting from specific persons in the here and now to more abstract scenarios that transcend time and space. At the same time, however, this strategy of impersonalizing speaker and hearer carried an element of positive politeness as well: it works only when both actors share common ground, or else they would not understand the implicit meanings of the veiled message. Brown and Levinson’s negative strategy No. 8, ‘state the FTA as a general rule’, appears as a further development of the preceding strategy. The FTA at hand is presented as a socially approved, common and necessary act, such as when a mother in Bab Tuma criticized her daughter for wearing a mini-skirt with the words, ‘We live in Bab Tuma, and here nobody walks around wearing clothes like these’. The mother thus signalled that it was not she who limited the freedom of action, that is, the choice of dress of her daughter, but the dressing rules of the quarter that existed independently from both of them.

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The reference to customary behaviour and generally accepted norms is not only made to protect the face of one’s interlocutor but to defend one’s own face as well, sometimes with a twinkle in one’s eye, as the following scene showed: A friend of mine wanted to introduce me to her secret boyfriend. In order to obtain her mother’s permission to go out with me in the evening, she was planning to tell her I needed help with a few purchases. Although she felt sure the plan would work, I refused to play along, explaining that I did not want to lie to her mother, again. My friend replied, apparently surprised: ‘What of it?! Every girl in Syria lies to her mother! Our society is like that!’

By justifying her transgressions with the claim that the whole society, or at least a significant part of it, regularly committed the same offences, the FTA seemed to be less threatening and was backed by the force of circumstances. Some of Brown and Levinson’s negative-politeness strategies appeared to be of minor importance in Bab Tuma. Among these were ‘be conventionally indirect’, ‘question, hedge’, ‘be pessimistic’, or ‘go on record as incurring a debt’. Likewise, during his research among the Hamar of Ethiopia, Strecker found that some negative strategies were employed only rarely. He concluded: ‘This corroborates Brown and Levinson’s finding that negative politeness, at least in its more emphatic forms, is related to systems which are pronouncedly hierarchical … while the strategies of positive politeness are more characteristic of egalitarian societies and social groups’ (1988: 100). This conclusion seemed to be valid for Bab Tuma as well. According to the local ideology of equality, no one had an a priori higher social status than his neighbours. This rendered unnecessary the struggle with long-winded conventional indirectness that carries ‘the burden of social distance, hierarchy, and isolation’, as Strecker put it (1988: 98). In addition, the kinship-like obligations among neighbours would have turned the negative-politeness strategies ‘question’ and ‘be pessimistic’ into impolite presumptions. Why should a speaker assume that his neighbours were – in sharp contrast to existing norms – not willing to cooperate? Turning to positive politeness, I want to single out some significant examples. Brown and Levinson’s first strategy is ‘… notice, attend to the hearer, his interests, wants, needs or goods’, and according to Strecker, many forms of greeting behaviour should be classed under this strategy (1988: 73). Greeting a visitor in Bab Tuma was – at least in the eyes of a European observer – a loud and long-winded affair involving a lot of kissing, hugging and smiling. Verbal greeting exchanges followed the principle ‘the same or more so’ (Ferguson [1976] 1981: 27 passim). Thus, the response to marhaba – ‘hello’ was marhabtēn – ‘two hellos’ or mīt marhaba – ‘a hundred hellos’; for a ‘good morning’ it was a ‘morning of light’, for a ‘morning of roses’ a ‘morning of yasmine’ and

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so on. Among Christian Damascenes, one could also hear ‘bonjour’ – ‘bonjourēn’ (-ēn is the Arabic dual form) or even ‘hi’ – ‘hi-ēn’. In addition, the principle of ‘more give than take’ also held true for compliments, for one proper answer to ‘you are pretty’ was ‘you are prettier’. According to Brown and Levinson’s positive-politeness strategy No. 3, ‘intensify interest to the hearer’, telling a good story enhances the effect on one’s listener, because it pulls the latter right into the middle of the events being discussed ([1978] 1987: 106). In Bab Tuma, this strategy was realized, for example, by tag questions and an affirmative response on the part of the listener(s) – a ‘good story’ was always teamwork – by directly quoted speech and by imitating other people’s voices, typical expressions and gestures. This kind of dramatizing could only be successful in a face-to-face society on the basis of shared knowledge about the other actors. Therefore, such modes of expression contained at the same time elements of the strategies No. 4, ‘use in-group identity markers’, No. 7, ‘presuppose/raise/assert common ground’, and No. 15, ‘give gifts’ – in this case an excellent show. The actors thus created an atmosphere of sometimes carnivalesque amusement and collective laughter that anointed the faces of all participants. Concerning the contents of ‘intensified interest’, a European could easily be irritated or even horrified by the extent of curious questions about herself. In Bab Tuma, however, it was considered a sign of good manners and polite interest to ask questions about one’s interlocutor’s personal situation. Once I witnessed a first encounter between two friends of mine. One of them immediately started to interrogate the other about her divorce, her former love for her husband, her financial situation, the new wife of her ex-husband and the like. I felt embarrassed by her curiosity, but obviously I was the only one who found the situation awkward. My interrogated friend’s family willingly answered every question and in fact, they seemed quite pleased with my friend’s attention and her interest in their affairs.

Such personal questions were again an expression of social closeness as a complement to spatial closeness in a neighbourhood, and it was again the positive face of an interlocutor that was paid attention to, not the desire for freedom from imposition. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that in Bab Tuma as well as anywhere else the access to information was controlled. That one was allowed and even encouraged to politely ask questions about the personal situation of one’s interlocutor did not mean that one was entitled to receive comprehensive and correct answers. The person asked could, for instance, employ euphemisms or white lies as verbal veiling mechanisms to withhold information and to disguise compromising matters for protecting her own face. In this

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way, she appeared to satisfy the questioner’s polite interest without snubbing her with brusque comments like ‘that’s none of your business’. Another variant to anoint the positive face of one’s interlocutor was strategy No. 7, ‘presuppose/raise/assert common ground’, which in Bab Tuma was realized for instance by means of an ‘involuntary complicity’: vis-à-vis a third party, the speaker called on someone to vouch for her words and deeds. The involuntary ‘witness’ had no choice but to confirm everything the speaker had said and even lie on her behalf because of the latter’s apparent confidence in her, which was a face-anointing act. Thus, seeming or real accord created common ground between the two, whereas the third party was excluded. A different way of masking FTAs like criticism, requests or advice is to hide them behind the shield of common interest, according to Brown and Levinson’s strategy No. 9, ‘assert or presuppose the speaker’s knowledge of and concern for the listener’s wants’. In Bab Tuma this was realized by accompanying such delicate expressions with the words mšānik or karamālik – ‘it’s only for your sake’. Nadia asked me to meet her after her English lessons, and of course she wanted me to be as presentable as possible when she introduced me to her friends. So she told me: ‘When you come to the institute, wear your black trousers and your new jumper and the black coat. I mean, I am only telling you for your own sake! In that part of town everybody is dressed very well, and I just want you to feel good about yourself ’.

A further important strategy in Bab Tuma for anointing the other’s face was Brown and Levinson’s strategy No. 10, ‘promise’. Here Stephen Tyler’s (1987) insight about the truth of orality came to mind: it occurs in the moment of expression. Promises were made whenever it seemed appropriate in order to assure a listener of one’s will to cooperate and one’s good intentions towards him. Perhaps later, the promise turned out to be false or impossible to realize, but for polite discourse that was of only minor importance – what counted was the good intention at the moment of its utterance. I went with Tony and his family to Latakiya to spend some days by the sea. On the way there he told us: ‘Hoho, we are going to have a great time, we will drink whiskey and eat fish. Do you like fried fish? Of course you like it. When we arrive in Latakiya, we will rent a car right away, I am thinking of a Mercedes, and we will go to the fish market. We will buy a huuuuuuuge fish, and we will grill it tonight, with salad, chips and onions. And we will drink ‘araq and whiskey all night long, and we will dance and smoke the waterpipe. And you will tell me: “Tony, you are great, you are a king!”’

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To tell the truth, none of these things happened, and no member of our company was so impolite as to remind Tony of his promises or to demand he fulfil them. What was important were not his actual deeds but the implied assurance that Tony knew (or believed to know) our expectations and that he shared them. * By applying Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness to this Middle Eastern context, I have demonstrated that their theory offers a practical and detailed tool for the systematic investigation of the preferred strategies of social facecare in a particular cultural environment. The authors’ fundamental distinction between positive and negative face, the resulting desire to be either liked and appreciated by others or to be unimpeded in one’s freedom of action, and the strategies of positive or negative politeness directed at satisfying these desires, were corroborated by the ethnographic material about polite rhetorics in Bab Tuma. In terms of Brown and Levinson’s model, actors in Bab Tuma showed an overwhelming preference for positive politeness in the context of neighbourhood relations. Some negative strategies seemed to be employed on rare occasions, while others were completely absent. Obviously, needs and desires regarding face differ from one culture to another, but Brown and Levinson have consciously excluded such a different weighing of face wants from their apparatus. They intended to avoid that ‘cultural (emic) explanations of cross-cultural differences would supersede explanation in terms of universal (etic) social dimensions like distance and power’ ([1978] 1987: 244). This exclusion proved useful regarding their intention to explain universals in language usage. However, if one tried to extensively investigate one local masquerade, it constituted a serious limitation by not taking into account local interpretations of face-work. Tamar Katriel therefore critiqued the model’s ‘lack of sensitivity to the level of cultural meanings’ (1986: 47). She suggested that ‘the ethnographic study of ways of speaking must go beyond the study of devices and strategies to acknowledge the role of cultural orientations in the shaping of speech ways. It is only when cultural interpretation becomes an intrinsic part of the study of speech forms and strategies that their significance in particular cultural settings can be more fully appreciated’ (1986: 47 passim). Another frequently raised critique concerns the authors’ restriction of politeness to strategies that are only meant to mitigate potential face-threats. Beatriz Lavandera therefore spoke of a ‘tyranny of conflict’, and stated that the authors failed to see that politeness is a permanent component of all speech acts (1988: 1201).

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Considering these objections, the following section will explore the indigenous concept of politeness, its notions and associations as well as the interpretations local actors themselves provide for their everyday verbal masquerade in the service of protecting one another’s face.

The Indigenous Model of Politeness: Sweet Tongues So far, a distinctive preference for positive politeness in the neighbourly discourse in Bab Tuma was demonstrated. This predilection is reflected perfectly well by the indigenous term for politeness: lisān hilū – ‘sweet tongue’. That the latter’s expressions were regarded as a highly valued ‘delicacy’ as well as a kind of social glue between speaker and listener was illustrated by the joking compliment made in reply to particularly sweet words: lisānik bīna’it ‘asl – ‘your tongue drips with honey’. Two categories played the leading parts within this local concept of politeness: firstly, muğāmala, a concept ranging from kindness to compliments and flattery; and secondly, musāyara, ‘going with’ the other. While explaining the term muğāmala to me, Niqula, the son of my hosts, referred several times to the related word tağmīl, which means embellishment or cosmetics. Mariam, a neighbour, illustrated the close relation between the two notions with the words: ‘Muğāmala is always a kind of embellishment – you say something that is not entirely true, you know? Something is not really beautiful, but you beautify it with your words’. According to its users, muğāmala could thus be understood as the pleasant exchange of sweet words in an endless masquerade of politeness, performed by actors wearing beautifully decorated masks. If, at a certain point, someone wanted to assure their listeners of the true content of their words, they often added the declaration ‘mū muğāmala!’ – ‘no flattery!’ Of course, this could be muğāmala as well, only wrapped in more layers of pleasantries. Muğāmala could be expressed by one sentence – a ready-made phrase or newly created – or by a whole argument. In the broader, non-verbal sense it included touching the other, smiling at her, dressing up and perfuming carefully for a visit or providing a guest with the best food and services as a host. In other words, it was embellishment in every sense of the term. The following examples illustrate how single muğāmala phrases were used to decorate everyday conversations: The son of a neighbour had just gotten married. In the church we met other residents of the quarter who had attended the party the night before. Umm Niqula asked a neighbour: ‘Did you enjoy the party?’ The woman replied: ‘Ē, bi-wuğūdkōn’ – ‘Yes, because of your presence’.

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Nadia, the daughter of my hosts, answered the telephone and after the first hello she exclaimed: ‘Ahlēn, Umm Bashar!’ – ‘Welcome, Umm Bashar!’ Obviously, the neighbour at the other end of the line was pleased that Nadia had recognized her voice and must have stated something like ‘You knew immediately that it was me’, for Nadia answered: ‘Sōtik bi-‘ulūbna!’ – ‘Your voice is in our hearts!’

In the examples cited, muğāmala consisted of single, rather widely used utterances to please one’s interlocutor. In addition, the exchange of flattering words could develop into the leitmotif of whole parts of conversation. In both cases, muğāmala could be used to please and entertain one’s company, to present oneself as a well-mannered member of the community and thus construct a discourse that anointed the faces of all participants. Musāyara, the second category, means literally to ‘go with’ the other, which includes to adapt one’s expressions to the assumed or already stated opinion of one’s listener, to agree with her in words and deeds and to avoid any open contradiction. The following scenes provided typical examples of musāyara: After I had met a friend of Nadia for the first time, Nadia stated: ‘Maiza is really nice, isn’t she?’ I replied: ‘No, not at all. I didn’t like her, she seems to be perfidious like a snake’. My friend agreed immediately: ‘Well done, Anke, you are an impressive judge of human nature’. During our holiday by the sea, Tony and his relatives met some Damascene acquaintances at a dance in a hotel, among them an attractive and ambitious mother who repeatedly encouraged her sixteen-year-old daughter to dance and sing in front of the ‘higher’ families present. Afterwards, Tony’s reports about the evening varied considerably, depending on the presupposed view of his interlocutors. In front of his brothers, who were as fun-loving as he was, he enthused: ‘She danced fantastically! And her voice, just breathtaking! And she is only sixteen!’ One day later, back in Damascus, he told his conservative Muslim shop neighbour: ‘What a shame! Her mother has no self-respect, how could she let her daughter dance in front of those guys! And the girl herself is shameless like her mother!’

In the first example, Nadia’s musāyara was obvious since she had expressed the exact opposite in her previous statement. Tony’s musāyara was more elaborate and professional because instead of provoking any opposition or disapproval he carefully tried to anticipate the opinion of his respective listener. Generally, the application of musāyara aimed at three interconnected effects. Firstly, it protected the face of all participants by avoiding tensions and open conflict – apparently in Bab Tuma it was not part of the communicative ideal to have a

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constructive debate. Secondly, the speaker anointed the face of the listener by skilfully purporting approval of and agreement with the latter’s position. And thirdly, the speaker showed his audience that he knew how to behave properly and therefore enhanced his own reputation. The inhabitants of Bab Tuma used a variety of stylistic tools in their attempts to flatter and ‘go with’ their listeners. One indispensable means for polite exchanges was exaggeration in intonation and emphasis as well as content, as in the admiring exclamation: ‘Šū hilwe hīye, mū ma‘’ūl, bīğanin!’ – ‘How sweet she is, it’s beyond all bearing, enough to drive one crazy!’ If one neighbour wanted to thank another for a favour, instead of choosing more simple expressions of gratitude, she could opt for the more enthusiastic: ‘Mā fīh minnik bi-kill il-‘ālam!’ – ‘There is no one like you in the whole world!’ Speakers in Bab Tuma not only ascribed to each other fantastic attributes but overstated by other means as well, for example by veiling allusions, advice, confessions or delicate issues with whole anecdotes that circle around the crucial point. For instance, in the presence of girls and unmarried young women, the conversation of their mothers dealt quite frequently with stories about Christian girls who married Muslims against the will of their families and who faced a terrible fate – the bottom line of the story needed no further explanation. People did not mind wasting words in order to convey their message. This was also apparent in the strategy of repetition: ‘Enough repetition teaches even the donkey’, an Arab proverb claims optimistically, and thus speakers in Bab Tuma repeated single words, certain arguments or whole stories over and over again ‘in changing cadences of words’ (Koch 1983: 48), in the hope that sooner or later even an unwilling listener could be persuaded. Other tools to embellish a conversation or to ‘go with’ the other were metaphors, humour, white lies or the dramatizing strategy of ‘speaking to the audience’, which meant that in the presence of one’s actual addressee the speaker directed his message towards a third party. A first variant of this strategy served the purposes of muğāmala and musāyara and seemed to occur whenever more than two individuals participated in a conversation. In the presence of her actual addressee, a speaker told a third party how sweet, intelligent, clever, diligent and so on her ‘victim’ is, and how much she liked him or her. The victim could not intervene but had to listen to this song of praise until it came to an end, and had to accept it without an opportunity for displaying apparent modesty. Frequently, this muğāmala unfolded into a hymn of glory for the person concerned, with everyone present outbidding one another with ever more enthusiastic flattery. In this sense, speaking to the audience was an exercise in musāyara as well, because other participants joined the speaker in her praise. Of course, afterwards the whole show could be declared a spoof,

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and the co-authors could have a good laugh at their victim’s naïveté in falling for it. A second version of this technique consisted of conveying criticism, complaints, requests and so on by lamenting the general evils, duplicity and corruption of today’s world in front of third parties. Thus, the smart strategist protected his own face because he could not be held responsible for a direct reproach, and at the same time he at least spared the face of his addressee who may elegantly ignore the hidden attack. The night preceding my departure some friends came over to say goodbye, and some of them knew each other only by sight. When I went to the kitchen Mariam followed me and asked if the gentleman in the corner was Tony, whom I occasionally had mentioned before. Upon my confirmation, she told me with a hint of displeasure in her voice: ‘I know him, I know him. Every time I run into him when I go to work, he is hooting and grinning at me out of his car. Unpleasant guy’. Later on, the conversation in the sitting room turned to the general decline of moral standards, and Tony presented himself as an upright family man who is outraged by men harassing women in the streets. Mariam replied meaningfully that even in one’s own quarter there are a lot of men chasing after every skirt they see and annoying respectable women. Other neighbours agreed and shared their own experiences while remaining unaware of the hidden exchange between Mariam and Tony. Finally Tony declared knowingly: ‘Yes, there are many such men, what a shame!’ Then he smiled roguishly: ‘But what shall we poor men do, seeing such beautiful girls walking around?!’

Tony knew exactly who the target of Mariam’s ‘general remark’ was, and he defended himself in the same manner, by ‘generally stating’ that such undignified behaviour was a real shame. He thus implied that he did not count himself among those immoral beings who disregarded social norms. With the following tongue-in-cheek comment, he tried to neutralize the hidden tensions between him and Mariam and to excuse his moral faux pas as due to his admiration for her – the inconspicuous compliment should pacify her. It was obvious that the strategy of ‘speaking to one’s audience’ kept up the pleasant appearances: a matter of dispute did surface, but no one was explicitly singled out as being a perpetrator. * The tapestry of polite verbal exchange in Bab Tuma that has emerged so far suggests that the residents of the quarter constantly showed smiling faces and that they hid any tensions and conflicts behind gentle words to live up to the

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ideal of neighbourly harmony. But this was not entirely true. Firstly, there were fine nuances in the repertoire of one’s sweet tongue. While an outside observer could be misled by seemingly warm greetings and friendly exchanges from door to door, these could be characterized by the actors themselves as the polite minimum between persons who otherwise had no close relationship to each other or even publicly concealed certain tensions for the sake of protecting their self-images. Early (1993) described a similar situation in Cairo’s baladi quarters: ‘Street scenes present only the public face of sociability. A woman who appears engaged in easy repartee may be solidifying or cooling relations. Greetings and visits are the ritual format for negotiating social boundaries, and there are finely calibrated degrees of sociability along a continuum of “being on speaking terms”…’ (1993: 131 passim). The fine shadings of the sweet tongue’s cadences were employed in Bab Tuma as well in order to convey to the listener how the speaker evaluated the degree of closeness between the two of them, and they were used to re-arrange a relationship during an ongoing interaction. Ideally, minor conflicts or a general dislike of others were masked by a standard repertoire of polite words, but with a certain noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Thus, the actors maintained their faces at least during direct interactions, and they presented themselves as sociable and open-minded persons who, even after quarrels, were willing to forgive and to forget. But the quarter’s actors did not maintain the desired harmony at all costs: when one’s honour and therefore one’s social existence were at stake, only a fool or a coward would still hold on to a smiling mask. If a speaker, for instance, accused another of deficits regarding the moral virtuousness of the latter’s female relatives and therefore his own manliness, of a lack of generosity or the willingness to support his family and friends in case of need, his interlocutor’s sweet tongue would give way to distinctly sharper tones, to loud rage or violent disputes that sometimes resulted in the termination of a friendship. Since the family as a whole was responsible for the maintenance of the spotless façade of their ‘house’, the latter was considered the only legitimate venue for open quarrels. In the privacy of one’s home, the public behaviour of individual family members was constantly commented on, praised or criticized. Equally, future actions or communication strategies towards more distant relatives, neighbours or other persons were planned together in order to present a solid façade and perfect agreement. During such family discussions, violent outbursts, verbal rebellion, offensive laughter or desperate tears were not unusual. However, these turbulent scenes had to be carefully hidden from the curious ears and eyes of outsiders, and the very moment a neighbour turned up during a family crisis, everybody put on the usual smiling mask. In public, sweet tongues dominated the way of speaking, and only the shelter of

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one’s own family allowed for wearing other masks of rage, aggression or indignation without the danger of losing face.

The Sweet Tongue’s Ambiguity Like anywhere else, the actors in Bab Tuma never unwrapped their verbal draping, they only re-arranged it according to the requirements of the moment. Therefore, the actors’ interpretations of their verbal masquerade revealed no hidden ‘substance’ but were themselves masks: there was no fixed meaning of the sweet tongue’s arabesques but endless chains of meanings that were negotiated between the interlocutors at any given moment. In this section, I will present some indigenous interpretations of Bab Tuma’s carnival of sweet words. After having done so, I will add my own – as one version of many. One of the most noble intentions that actors in Bab Tuma associated with the sweet tongue was its power to emphasize or to construct closeness, to highlight one’s sociability and to demonstrate one’s willingness to harmoniously interact with others. Nabil, a 44-year-old shopkeeper, summarized his long explanation on the subject by quoting a proverb: ‘In-nās lin-nās, wal-kill lillāh’ – ‘People are there for people, and all are there for God’. Other actors also emphasized the aspect of mutual dependency, ranging from mutual help and moral support to joint celebrations on festive occasions. Being on one’s own was regarded as a pitiable misfortune, and our neighbour Mariam and her sister illustrated this with a further proverb: ‘Il-ğanna bilā nās mā btindās’ – ‘Paradise without people is a place you would not want to enter’. Moreover, actors in Bab Tuma referred to the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbours like oneself and thus justified even the hypocrisy of sweet words that covered up dislike and conflict. Another openly admitted motive for employing one’s sweet tongue was the pursuit of a concrete goal: muğāmala and musāyara were regarded as perfect tools to make one’s interlocutor compliant by means of ensnaring him or her with one’s sweet tongue. Thus, a shopkeeper or hairdresser in Bab Tuma flattered his clients, a housewife ensnared her neighbour in order to get help for the preparations of a celebration, and a groom employed words as sweet as honey to persuade a potential but so far unwilling bride. Mosaic craftsman and trader Tony considered his skills in flattery as key to his business success: ‘You see, no one here in the market has a lot of business transactions going on at the moment – except me. No one has customers and orders – except me. Everyone comes to me, all the foreigners, the people from the embassies and the United Nations, to me, Tony, Tony, Monsieur

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Tony [he mimics kisses on the cheeks as in a warm welcome]. They buy from no one else but me’. – A.R.: ‘Why do they buy only from you?’ – Tony: ‘Because I have my methods! I am not greedily chasing their dollars, no. I give them sweet words and presents. “Here, take that for your wife.” “There, this is for your girlfriend.” I invite them to parties and dinners; every week some people come to dine at my house. Methods! You always have to be good to people, flatter them, be generous with them! They need to believe that you are interested in them, not in their money. Methods! I am confident, and everyone loves me. “Tony, my friend, Tony!” My workers love me, and the neighbours too’. – A.R.: ‘Well, but the things you produce are beautiful!’ – Tony: ‘Of course, of course, my work is good and my tongue is sweet (šighlī hilū u lisānī hilū), and this is how I bring people round’.

A further interpretation of the pleasant masquerade was associated with the evil eye, in Arabic ‘ayn al-hasad – ‘the eye of envy’. To avoid the impression that one was full of envy and therefore a danger to one’s neighbours, the sweet tongue had to perform an acrobatic balancing act. On the one hand, it was necessary to demonstrate by means of euphonic phrases that the speaker did not begrudge her neighbour’s success, beauty, good health, precious possessions or children. By purporting to be delighted about the good luck of one’s interlocutor, a speaker protected his own face. A person who never made compliments was regarded as jealous and could implicitly be blamed for other people’s misfortunes. Umm Niqula told me about her dislike for one of the neighbours whom she regarded as envious: ‘That woman, she did not even compliment us on the renovation of our house! She did not say a single word! All the other neighbours were delighted, and they were happy for us and admired the new marble floors over there and the restored fountain. “Just like the Azm Palace”, they said! But that woman – not a single word! She cannot accept it when others have something she does not have, or when others are doing better than her; she never wishes others well. She is envious, even though her family is wealthier than all of us here in the hāra! No one loves her, no one, and she is wondering why! She never says sweet words or makes others laugh, no, she is constantly whining and complaining while peeking into every corner so as not to miss a thing. She is jealous, jealous. And no one loves her!’

On the other hand, too forthright an expression of admiration without the addition of protective formulae could also harm the addressee by releasing malicious powers. Therefore it was considered necessary to add formulae like ‘mā šā’ allāh’ – ‘what God wishes’ or ‘yikhzī il-‘ayn’ – ‘may God put the eye to shame’ to repel the evil eye and thereby protect one’s interlocutor. Thus,

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the sweet tongue had to skilfully manoeuvre between exuberance and caution, between fantastic creations of praise and customary protective formulae. But nevertheless, there always remained a certain ambiguity, and the audience could interpret a speaker’s praise to her weal or woe, depending on the present relationship to her. Another aspect frequently mentioned as a driving force behind one’s sweet words was the aesthetic pleasure of creating and receiving elaborate expressions of sympathy and admiration, as expressed in the proverb ‘hilwa al-kalima al-hilwa’ – ‘the sweet word is sweet’. From a Damascene perspective, politeness was not the result of a careful calculation of costs and benefits. Niqula, the son of my hosts, explained enthusiastically: ‘We do love beauty, not only the beauty of nature but also the beauty of words. Of course, I could welcome the customers to my shop by saying “Hello, what can I do for you?”, but something would be missing – the warmth, beauty, opulence…’. His mother, who frequently taught me the correct use of standardized expressions of politeness, usually offered some more elaborate alternatives to simple variants, and she advised me to employ the more decorated ones because they would be ‘ahla’ – ‘nicer’. The Bab Tuma audience clearly preferred eloquence, whereas a more ‘Western’ style of communication appeared deficient in their eyes – the actors in Bab Tuma smiled at its austerity, poverty and apparent unkindness. Maurice, the head of an old Damascene family, remarked laconically: ‘You Westerners do not have enough imagination for verbal elegance’. Nonverbal signs such as careful clothing, perfume or make-up completed the perfect performance, and together all these elements of appearance appealed to one’s interlocutor’s sense of beauty; they honoured him while at the same time the actor himself played effectively to the gallery. By taking a closer look at the above-mentioned motives that Damascene actors associated with their sweet tongues, one important point became evident: all the intentions officially claimed as motives for their sweet words were closely connected to the central values of community life outlined at the beginning of this chapter. Actors in Bab Tuma emphasized the noble intention to construct close social ties; they referred to the commandment of brotherly love and the social imperative to care for one’s neighbours. This at the same time implied fundamental virtues associated with a ‘white face’, such as generosity, hospitality, supportiveness and so on. The aesthetic facet of the sweet tongue was part of the same frame of reference: a speaker delighted his listeners with elaborate expressions and presented himself as a well-mannered, creative member of the community who knew how to behave in public. Because ideologically all actors were to be regarded as equals, they admitted to employing sweet words for ensnaring others. Since the existence of any hierarchy was denied, and thus no one had the right to command or force others to take a

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certain course of action, a speaker had no alternative besides verbal manipulation and persuasion. Likewise, the supposed equality of all actors accounted for the jealous monitoring of one’s neighbour’s wealth, good luck, influence or prestige. This justified the employment of one’s sweet tongue as a means to hide envy, to avoid the suspicion of envy or to repel the disastrous powers associated with the evil eye. Yet, in sharp contrast to all these publicly admitted intentions that were socially approved or at least tolerated, the darker dimensions of politeness remained hidden. The actors gave no indication of the ability of sweet words to disguise attempts to dominate others or to politely damage their faces. As Strecker noted: ‘What works well for ego to save the face of alter, also works well to destroy it’ (1988: 171). In Bab Tuma, two basic tendencies could be identified for using sweet words as concealed weapons. Firstly, the sweet tongue was employed to veil differences in status, for example between old and new Damascenes, and to remind aspiring interlocutors who showed off their newly acquired wealth, education or status of the neighbourly ideology that claims ‘there is no difference between us’. Secondly, apparently sweet words were used to construct momentary hierarchies and to hint at a speaker’s superiority regarding experience, knowledge, or certain abilities and skills. If one reconsiders politeness strategies in Bab Tuma under this aspect of concealed attempts to dominate others, the quarter, which at first seemed to be characterized by exclusively tender and loving ways of speaking, appears in a different light. Brown and Levinson classified the making of a good story as a positivepoliteness strategy as it places one’s listener right in the middle of the events being discussed. Strecker objected to this point insofar as a dramatic performance may also intimidate one’s listener and make him feel small and incompetent compared to the speaker, who might use his perfect performance in order to outdo his listener in the struggle for social recognition (1988: 187 passim). This hidden verbal struggle could also be observed in Bab Tuma, where the audience might have followed an eloquent presentation with mixed feelings: on the one hand, they enjoyed the entertainment, but on the other hand, they might have felt outstripped, observing how somebody else pushed himself to the foreground while relegating his listeners to the role of extras. The sweet revenge often consisted of the resentful comment ‘manfākh!’ – ‘boaster!’ while gossiping later on. It was obvious that the strategy of ‘involuntary complicity’ in cases where someone was called to vouch for the words and deeds of the speaker excluded the third party. But at the same time, the witness herself was pressed into her role and may not have felt comfortable about that. For the moment of interaction, she was defined as the speaker’s sidekick, and she was dragged into a

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dependent position that limited her own freedom of action. In other words, a speaker could employ this strategy not only as flattering proof of confidence but also as a device to push an interlocutor into the subordinate position of a loyal supporter. According to Brown and Levinson’s positive-politeness strategy No. 9, a speaker may politely claim to know and share the desires of her listener. This act of apparent politeness could also be interpreted as an act of dominance when a listener was literally overwhelmed by the ‘care’ of the speaker. I mentioned the phrase ‘mšānik’ – ‘for your own sake’ as a tool to veil advice or criticism. By adding these words when dispensing advice regarding household management or child-rearing practices, the speaker did not necessarily show altruistic concern for a neighbour’s well-being, but also implied: ‘I know better than you do’. Thus, the speaker made her neighbour understand that the latter is inferior to her in terms of knowledge and experience – and her listener was even obliged to appear grateful. The potential to politely damage the faces of others was also contained in the indigenous categories of muğāmala and musāyara. Compliments, for example, were considered a perfect tool to anoint the face of one’s interlocutor, but if the verbal honey became overabundant it could turn into its opposite and could be perceived as irony and mockery. Since the boundaries between flowery but sincere compliments on the one hand and veiled mockery on the other were fluid, a speaker could exploit the ambiguous limits of muğāmala to hurt his interlocutor while pretending to be nothing but an innocent admirer. Wrapping advice or criticism into various layers of verbal silk by means of telling long-winded stories could fascinate one’s listeners and offer them various kinds of wisdom in attractive packaging. But by doing so the speaker demonstrated her own excessive amount of experience or sophistication and drowned every argument of her interlocutor under an endless flood of stories. This could hold many frustrations for the audience that was treated as inexperienced and naïve. An insulting facet was also hidden in the strategy of ‘speaking to the audience’. It has already been mentioned that criticisms may be seemingly addressed to third parties or a wider audience. A variant of this technique was to hide criticism by complimenting bystanders for their diligence, cleverness, generosity, taste and so on, while the actual addressee of the message received no special mention. Thus, third parties were used as a model onto which all those virtues were projected that a speaker missed in his addressee. These examples may suffice to show that the masquerade of sweet tongues in Bab Tuma was not always aimed at carefully maintaining the face of one’s interlocutors. Through the use of gentle and pleasant words, battles for at least momentary superiority were waged, and actors were dominated or belittled.

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Thus, Bab Tuma appeared as a social stage where, according to etiquette, verbal duels were only permitted with one’s blade wrapped in various layers of silk. Sweet words were employed either to affirm the social status quo or to construct new social realities that speakers tried to impose on their listeners by using the rhetorical power of politeness. And, as a reminder of actors’ social vulnerability, the Damocles sword of gossip was poised over the entire spectacle, ready to judge each and every performance.

Epilogue Recent news reports in the international media on the situation in Damascus (2016–17) have frequently featured Bab Tuma – usually as a place of ‘debauchery’ (Schaap and Werner 2016; see also Jarjanazi and Mansour 2016; Karam 2016; Meuse 2016; Saleh 2016) where the city’s nightlife was blossoming and the numerous bars were packed with pro-government militia men and irreverent youth (and, obviously, war correspondents). Some reporters admitted, however, that for the majority of Bab Tuma’s residents, the late-night partying in their neighbourhood was a further source of bitterness and anger (Jarjanazi and Mansour 2016) in addition to the multitude of other problems they had to endure, much like the rest of Damascus, as the war entered its sixth year. Despite attempts by the government to maintain a semblance of normalcy in its capital, people lived under the threat of shelling from rebel-held districts only a few kilometres away. They faced soaring inflation rates and a collapsing economy, long daily power cuts, disruptions to the water supply, and military checkpoints that choked movement within the city and forced young men into hiding in order to avoid conscription. My former hosts and neighbours in Bab Tuma mourned the loss of relatives, friends and colleagues who had been killed in the war or fled the country. But their Facebook postings also displayed images of auspicious occasions like the birth of children or religious celebrations. In 2014, one of the daughters of my former hosts invited me to attend her wedding in Damascus. While analyses of current sociolinguistic practices in Syria are hard to find, a recent paper by Nassima Neggaz (2013) implied that the sweetness of gentle words continues to be appreciated. Her paper argues that innovative transformations of language have taken place since the beginning of the revolution which broke the enforced political silence of the past four decades (2013: 12). As examples of these linguistic transformations of Arabic, Neggaz analysed the creation of new words meant to address a lexical gap in the political vocabulary, semantic changes of existing words, or the transformation of old proverbs into new sayings related to the revolution. Interestingly, much of her material showed the continued use of verbal strategies that were employed

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in polite encounters in Bab Tuma, including metaphors, proverbs, humour and mockery, and poetic embellishments that even graced the exchange of greetings between rebel groups, posted on boards in two Syrian cities: The dialogue is as follows: min tha’irat al-Zabadānī: Dārayyā ibtasimi, ‘unbuki yazdad hala kul yum (From the female rebels of al-Zabadānī: Dārayyā smile, your grapes are getting more beautiful every day). The answer in Dārayyā reads: tansiqqiyat Dārayyā to al-Zabadānī: thuwwar al-Zabadānī, ‘unbuna yastamid halawatahu min tufahukum, was yastamid humrat khududhihi min haya’ikum (the organizing committee of Dārayyā to the rebels of al-Zabadānī, our grapes get their sweetness from your apples, and they get their red cheeks from your timidity). (Neggaz 2013: 28–29)

Neggaz quoted this exchange to illustrate that the revolutionaries’ use of language evoked the unity of the Syrian people. In terms of rhetoric, I found the similarities with everyday polite encounters in Bab Tuma striking. In both spheres, the political and the mundane, sweet words were employed to express or create sentiments of social closeness and communal belonging. Paul Anderson, in his work on everyday Syrian narratives in Aleppo, emphasized the moral ideal of ‘atifiyya, empathy or emotionality, for the properly constituted self (Anderson 2013: 473). Writing on musical practices in Syria, anthropologist Jonathan Shannon has similarly argued that many Syrians embraced emotionality as a positively valued aspect of their heritage and national culture (Shannon 2006: xix passim). Faedah Totah noted that in Damascus, according to local lore, even the traditional courtyard houses were imagined as loving and kind, leaning against one another as if they were feeling hanān ‘umrāni, the ‘compassion of buildings’, which in turn engendered civility and warmth in their inhabitants (Totah 2014a: 129). Totah observed that when Damascenes spoke about their ‘compassionate buildings’, they were talking about themselves, using ‘the same values and morals in the construction of their selves and of their society’ (Totah 2014a: 129 passim). I believe that the rhetoric of politeness in Syria, with its emphasis on kindness and beauty, social intimacy and gentle persuasion, represents another example of how these ideal conceptions of self and community were enacted in everyday life. I hope that resilient ‘sweet tongues’ will have the strength to help recreate feelings of belonging and a sense of community once Syria starts to rebuild itself.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank my friends, former neighbours and interview partners in Damascus for their extraordinary generosity. This research project would not have

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been possible without their willingness to welcome me into their lives. I also thank Julia Droeber for sharing her fieldwork experiences with me, including the anecdote that opened this chapter. For her meticulous reading of earlier drafts and constructive criticism I am deeply grateful to Carla Bethmann. Anke Reichenbach is Associate Professor of Anthropology and teaches at Zayed University, Dubai (College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Social Sciences). She obtained her PhD in anthropology from the University of Leipzig (2000), where she also received her ‘Habilitation’ in 2007 with a study on Arab Muslim women’s culture of laughter in Bahrain. Among her current research interests are ethnography of the Middle East, Gulf ethnography, heritage and identity, popular culture, anthropology of the emotions, and ethno-rhetorics. Her recent publications are on the female construction of urban spaces and on heritage-themed leisure venues in Dubai, with articles in academic journals including Humor and Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, and chapters in various edited collections.

References Abu-Lughod, Lila. (1986) 1987. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Altorki, Soraya. 1986. Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and Behavior among the Elite. New York: Columbia University Press. Anderson, Paul. 2013. ‘The Politics of Scorn in Syria and the Agency of Narrated Involvement’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 19(3): 463–81. Beeman, William O. 1986. Language, Status and Power in Iran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. (1978) 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Copertino, Domenico. 2013. ‘Reinterpreting and Reforming the City: Patrimonialization, Cosmopolitanism, and the Ethnography of the Heritage-scape in Damascus’, Ethnologies 35(2): 101–28. ———. 2014. ‘“Al-Madina al-Qadima” of Damascus: Preservation of the Cultural Heritage, Representations of the Past, and the Production of a Valuable Space’, in Rami Daher and Irene Maffi (eds), The Politics and Practices of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 178–220. Dorsky, Susan. 1986. Women of ‘Amran: A Middle Eastern Ethnographic Study. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Early, Evelyn A. 1993. Baladi Women of Cairo: Playing with an Egg and a Stone. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Eickelman, Christine. 1984. Women and Community in Oman. New York: New York University Press.

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Eickelman, Dale F. 1974. ‘Is There an Islamic City? The Making of a Quarter in a Moroccan Town’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 5(3): 274–94. Ferguson, Charles A. (1976) 1981. ‘The Structure and Use of Politeness Formulas’, in Florian Coulmas (ed.), Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 21–35. Goffman, Erving. 1955. ‘On Face-Work’, Psychiatry 18(3): 213–31. ———. (1959) 1980. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ———. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Herzfeld, Michael. 1980. ‘Honour and Shame: Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Moral Systems’, Man (N.S.) 15(2): 339–51. Hoodfar, Homa. 1997. Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hudson, Leila. 2008. Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City. London: I.B. Tauris. Jarjanazi, Hamza, and Karam Mansour. 2016. ‘Tagsüber Krieg, abends Whiskey [War at Daytime, Whiskey at Night]’, Die Welt, 5 September, https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/ article157945153/Tagsueber-Krieg-abends-Whiskey.html (accessed 16 March 2017). Joseph, Suad. 1978. ‘Women and the Neighborhood Street in Borj Hammoud, Lebanon’, in Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (eds), Women in the Muslim World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 541–57. Karam, Zeina. 2016. ‘In Damascus, an Uneasy Stability Boosts Syria’s Assad’, Associated Press News, 23 April, https://apnews.com/85d177b109cf4941a8943a0a6d77a795/damascusuneasy-stability-boosts-syrias-assad (accessed 14 August 2020). Katriel, Tamar. 1986. Talking Straight: Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koch, Barbara Johnstone. 1983. ‘Presentation as Proof: The Language of Arabic Rhetoric’, Anthropological Linguistics 25(1): 47–60. Lavandera, Beatriz. 1988. ‘The Social Pragmatics of Politeness Forms’, in Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, and Klaus Mattheier (eds), Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, vol. 2. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 1196–205. Lindholm, Charles. 1996. The Islamic Middle East: An Historical Anthropology. Cambridge: Blackwell. Meuse, Alison. 2016. ‘In Damascus, the Bars Are Packed and the Wine is Flowing’, NPR News, 5 November, http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/11/05/500573128/indamascus-the-bars-are-packed-and-the-wine-is-flowing (accessed 16 March 2017). Neggaz, Nassima. 2013. ‘Syria’s Arab Spring: Language Enrichment in the Midst of Revolution’, Language, Discourse and Society 2(2): 11–31. Nippa, Annegret. 1982. Soziale Beziehungen und ihr wirtschaftlicher Ausdruck: Untersuchungen zur städtischen Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens am Beispiel Dair az-Zor/Ostsyrien [Social Relations and Their Economic Expression. Studies on Urban Society in the Middle East: The Case of Dair az-Zor/Eastern Syria]. Berlin: Schwarz. Reichenbach, Anke. 2001. Mit süßer Zunge: Höflichkeit und Nachbarschaft im Damaszener Christenviertel Bāb Tūmā. Gehren: Escher. Salamandra, Christa. 2004. A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2006. ‘Chastity Capital: Hierarchy and Distinction in Damascus’, in Samir Khalaf and John Gagnon (eds), Sexuality in the Arab World. London: Saqi, pp. 152–62.

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Saleh, Heba. 2016. ‘War Exhaustion Engulfs Syria’s Capital’, Financial Times, 7 October, https:// www.ft.com/content/a268c802-a1cd-11e6-aa83-bcb58d1d2193 (accessed 16 March 2017). Schaap, Fritz, and Christian Werner. 2016. ‘Damascus Nights: Despair and Debauchery in Assad’s Capital’, Der Spiegel, 13 December, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ life-in-wartime-damascus-as-syria-collapses-a-1125546.html (accessed 16 March 2017). Shannon, Jonathan Holt. 2006. Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Stolleis, Friederike. 2004. Öffentliches Leben in privaten Räumen: Muslimische Frauen in Damaskus [Public Lives in Private Spaces: Muslim Women in Damascus]. Würzburg: Ergon. Strecker, Ivo. 1988. The Social Practice of Symbolization: An Anthropological Analysis. London: Athlone Press. Sudermann, Yannick. 2014. ‘Gentrification and Urban Heritage under Authoritarian Rule: The Case of Pre-War Damascus, Syria’, Ph.D. diss. University of Edinburgh. Totah, Faedah M. 2014a. Preserving the Old City of Damascus. New York: Syracuse University Press. ———. 2014b. ‘“Nothing Has Changed”: Social Continuity and the Gentrification of the Old City of Damascus’, Anthropological Quarterly 87(4): 1201–27. Tyler, Stephen A. 1987. The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Weber, Stefan. 2009. Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation (1808– 1918), vol. I, Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Wikan, Unni. 1980. Life Among the Poor in Cairo. London: Tavistock. ———. 1984. ‘Shame and Honour: A Contestable Pair’, Man (N.S.) 19(4): 635–52.

CHAPTER 10

Words and Images A Cross-cultural View on Swearing as a Rhetorical Strategy in Social Relations Susan du Mesnil de Rochemont       

Ethnolinguists have always had their eyes and ears open for (verbal) taboos. Other linguists have avoided the subject: as Jay (1992) put it, to talk about taboo language was a taboo. In 2012, Jonathan Hunt (2012: 2) wrote that not much attention had been paid to the analysis of swearing by rhetoricians either. He said, quoting Fleming (1998), that the traditional aim of rhetoric was to teach speaking and writing ‘well’, whereby ‘well’ also meant morally, which excluded bad language. He also noted that rhetoric was more concerned with textual analysis than understanding the persuasive impact of a particular choice of words. When I started work on this subject myself, some dozen years back, the dominant idea in attitudes towards swearing was that it was vulgar, aggressive and harmful. The psycholinguist Jay has done ground-breaking research in the USA (1977, 1992, 2000), and his interest was in obscenity, vulgarity, religious slurs, racial slurs, magic and so on. His concern was with taboos and bad words. But initially one of his aims was to curb swearing among school children. Since then, there has been a paradigm shift away from theories like Dollard and Miller’s frustration-aggression theory, which was also applied to verbal aggression and cursing. Jay (2000) and other researchers began recognizing and analysing impacts of swearing/cursing that were ‘positive’. They discovered that swearing was not only a ‘verbal release’ to ease tension, but could also be interpreted as an act of showing solidarity/commonality with colleagues in the workplace, or a reflection of a relaxed atmosphere where the

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rules and the language are looser, or a form of artistic expression, as in rap music and comedy. In surveys conducted by Cameron back in 1970 (see Jay 2000: 260), profanity accounted for 3.5 per cent of words used in the workplace and 13 per cent for a sample of adults at leisure in the USA; that is, one word in seven. More recently, Melissa Mohr (2013) claimed that about 0.7 per cent of the words a person uses in the course of a day are swear words. This may not sound significant except that, as Mohr notes, we use first-person plural pronouns – words like we, our and ourselves – at about the same rate. The typical range, Mohr says, goes from zero to about 3 per cent. Whether the statistics show frequent or less frequent use, depending on who is questioned, the fact remains that taboo-talk or swearing is omnipresent on the streets and in the media, and that swearing affects social relations (cf. Mohr 2013). In recent years, an abundance of books and articles have appeared on the subject of swearing, popular and serious, in many fields of research1 (and we find ourselves in a world that could be described as ‘post-taboo’; see below). In social anthropology, the subject drew much attention following Leach’s paper on animal categories and verbal abuse (1964), and led to various new theoretical approaches, including a rhetorical one (cf. Conley 2010). Personal experience and some research in recent decades suggest a general growth in the use of swearing in public. Changes in societies and attitudes (that I cannot describe here) began to make it possible to write about morally ‘bad words’. There is also interdependency. The more relaxed attitudes became, the more studies, books and articles were written, and vice versa. This gives us the freedom to question taboos and discover not only the fearful, aggressive and obscene, but also qualities like humour, identity, solidarity and rhythm when swearing. As Hunt noted, scholars ‘discovered it to be a rich and varied practice that is not only expressive, but involves persuasive intent and persuasive impact’ (Hunt 2012: 2), that is, the stuff of rhetoric. Swear words are not to be equated with ‘slang’ as they have a purposive communicative function: to ‘impress’ or intimidate others. Slang is more of a sub-group jargon that does not primarily have similar persuasive aspects. The research presented in this chapter was conducted at a university in Karlsruhe in 1999 and repeated in 2005, during a period when swearing had not yet become a subject of keen interest.2 The questions posed were about the use of swear words in English by non-native speakers of English, in this case German business and engineering students. Besides the use of swear words, what persuasive intent and impact was subconsciously underlying the use of swearing in that context? Are there possible metaphorical and rhetorical reasons for using English swear words in a German context?

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What Is Swearing? Swearing is used here to refer to language that in some way contains or refers to verbal taboos. These include cursing, profanity, blasphemy, expletives, taboo words, obscenities, dirty language, ethnic-racial slurs, vulgarity, verbal aggression, scatology and others. The different words reflect the different functions of swearing. As Hughes says, ‘We swear by, we swear that, we swear to, we swear at…’ (Hughes [1991] 1998: 4), and often we swear simply to let off steam. Whereas Silverton (2009: 234) concluded that swearing was universal, Montague (1973, cited in Hughes [1991] 1998) wrote that some speech communities, including American Indians [sic], the Japanese, the Malayans and most Polynesians, did not swear. Many blame global communications for the spread of swearing in most speech communities. In 2010, Japanese students told me that the Japanese word for shit is kuso, and that it is only fairly recently being used as a swear word and is considered to be very offensive, ‘which is in complete contrast to the elaborate, indirect and often euphemistic forms of insult used in daily speech in Japan’ (Vanderplank 2007: 112). I argue in this chapter that ‘global communications’ as a sole reason for using English swear words is too simple an answer. Brought up in a multilingual culture that included quite high levels of swearing, I noticed that English-speaking colonials tended to swear profusely, as was confirmed by Hughes ([1991] 1998). Hughes also claimed that white, English-speaking South Africans used to swear in Afrikaans as an evasion of what was taboo in English. Jou Suurgat or sour hole; Gaan na die deibel toe! or go to hell! are memorable phrases. Swearing in a language that is not your native language is the particular subject of this chapter.

Who Is Swearing and When? My deeper interest in the contrastive pragmatics of bad language started with a surprising observation that I made when conducting training courses in industry and at a university in Karlsruhe, Germany. I noticed that German businessmen were using English swear words in simulations of real-life negotiations. One student, who was preparing for a negotiation in Saudi Arabia, said to his ‘Saudi’ partner in the simulated meeting, Jesus Christ, this is a bad contract. As a northern Protestant, it would be very unlikely that he would swear in a German negotiation, and even more unlikely that he would say Jesus Christ. In another situation I observed a Human Resources manager. He was negotiating with someone who took on the role of his American counterpart

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in a company in Johnson City, Tennessee, when he said, this goddamn plan. It did not enter his mind during the simulation that cursing in a meeting in the US Bible Belt might be inappropriate. Similarly, I observed that students at a university in Karlsruhe freely used shit and fuck when they were doing simulated problem-solving case studies. In my experience these students would never dare use the equivalent German swear words in a German negotiation or meeting, whether in real life or in a simulated situation. Later I discovered a discussion forum online that was asking the same questions.3 Incidentally, at the same time I found sprayed on university walls and in all the usual places around town the oldest, most versatile English word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary: fuck (noun and verb), but never the German fick (noun) or ficken (verb) or fick dich (expletive with reflexive pronoun). These observations raised critical questions. Did the German speakers know what they were saying? Did they understand how strong the word is? Were they translating bad words and taboos from their own language and using them in English? Why did they use English swear words? Is English used euphemistically to avoid what is taboo in their own language? What rhetorical power do they gain by choosing English swear words? Were they actually swearing?

Do We Know When We Are Swearing? To find answers, I conducted a small research project at the University of Applied Science in Karlsruhe, Germany. The sixty students included in the study were engineering students in four different classes. The majority were male. There was also a control group consisting of native English speakers. The purpose was to compare the relative taboo ratings of swear words used by the German-speaking engineering students, on the one hand, with the English native speakers on the other hand, in order to see if they knew the strength or offensiveness of the words they used. This is what Jay (1977) calls tabooness, and he defines it as a general emotional reaction to a set of words in a certain context that is part of absorbed language culture. The research was done in three steps: firstly, observation of a team-work task to test whether the students did swear in English; secondly, use of an instrument that asked both the control group and the students to rank particular English swear words according to their tabooness; and finally, a questionnaire asking the students why they used English swear words. In the first part, students formed small teams and built a car out of Lego blocks. They had to negotiate with other teams for an exchange of car parts. The atmosphere during the simulation was light-hearted but competitive be-

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Table 10.1. Comparison of mean tabooness ranking of English swear words. German students

English native speakers

Mean dispersion

Rank

Mean dispersion

Rank

Hell

1.23

3

0.59

2

Shit

0.88

2

0.40

3

Damn

0.85

1

0.50

1

Fuck

0.86

4

0.22

5

Asshole

0.61

5

0.40

4

Swear word

Std. Dev. 4.43

Std. Dev. 2.11

tween teams. The instructions, simulation and feedback were conducted in English. The teams were observed and a count was made of swear words used. Shit/bullshit, fuck and damn it were the most common words. In the second part, the students were asked to rank five English words according to tabooness, with ‘1’ being the least offensive and ‘5’ the most offensive. The list had to consist of very common words that any student would know. It had to include mild words as well as more offensive words. It had to include words that would have an equivalent in both languages. Table 10.1 shows the standard deviation of the data. As this is a measure of the dispersion of the scores around the mean, it gives an indication of how much agreement there was in the group about the offensiveness of a word. If dispersion is large, there is less agreement, hence less certainty in the group about the tabooness of a word. In the German group there was less agreement and more uncertainty about the tabooness of the foreign words, as might be expected. The deviation was 4.43. In the English speakers’ group there was more agreement and more certainty about which words were taboo words in their own language. The deviation was 2.11. In both groups, hell caused the most uncertainty, for a few reasons. Damn had the lowest taboo rating in both languages. The German word equivalent, verdammt, is equally as common in German and received an equally low tabooness rating. Students had no difficulty transferring the tabooness of the German verdammt to damn. The fear of damnation did not seem to bother students in either language. This ties in

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with recent research (cf. Caldwell-Harris 2015) suggesting that using foreign swear words in one’s own language is less emotionally charging (for oneself and others).4 In both groups the most offensive word had the least dispersion, or highest agreement about the tabooness: asshole for the German speakers, and fuck for the English speakers. Each group was certain which of their words was the worst, but the two groups differed in their choice of worst word. As indicated, the English native speakers thought that the expletive fuck was worse than asshole. The Germans rated the words exactly the other way around. It is common knowledge that Germans choose scatological words (shit, asshole, piss) where an English native speaker would choose a sexual word (fuck, bugger, cunt). In fact, fuck is translated as Scheisse in German films, which is a taboo equivalent and not a word-for-word translation. In 2005 I did a short re-run. The results were basically the same, but with one big difference: fuck was now seen by the students as a bigger taboo than shit. Within five years there was a shift from scatological to sexual taboos among German students using English swear words. Was this because their native-speaker models were using it more frequently? Oddly enough, about that time I also found the first graffiti using the German word fick (see Figure 10.1).

How Bad Is Swearing? Overall, the results showed that there was significant agreement among the students as to which words were more, or less, taboo. They had an intrinsic feeling, and there was agreement among themselves, that some words were worse than others. However, their ranking is not identical to English native speakers’ ranking. Students transferred the tabooness of a word in their own language to the foreign language. This points to a possibility (if not a likelihood) that German speakers will use words in English which they think are less risky than a native speaker would consider them to be.5 Effectively, the denotation of the word is translated but the connotative meaning is not. It could be problematic in a cross-cultural situation if a speaker said asshole, not realizing that it was a stronger swear word in German than anticipated. Although these words were in a mere list, and not in a context where relationships and power, meaning, intention and location are integral parts of the message conveyed, the relative tabooness of the words was measurable, if not their appropriateness or pragmatic function in any given situation. Countless embarrassing episodes are recounted about situations where taboo strength does not match cross-culturally, and it is perhaps this mix between humour,

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Figure 10.1. ‘Fick’ picture (2005) (photo © S. du Mesnil de Rochemont).

embarrassment and aversion that in some measure defines the dangers of using the swear words from a foreign language. The tabooness of swear words is not constant. In 2009 in a ranking of the top ten swear words by the British public, cunt was the worst word, followed by motherfucker, fuck, wanker and nigger (Silverton 2009: 40). Except for fuck, these are not commonly used in Germany. Germans do not consider Neger (negro) a swear word or an insult,6 and only concede grudgingly that if Africans find it offensive they should not use it.7

How Do Words Become Swear Words? How does the awareness of the tabooness of a word develop? I witnessed a scene in which a twenty-month-old girl said Scheisse! (shit) in a tiny but forceful voice. The ladies sitting around the coffee table collectively drew in their breath, then suppressed a giggle because it sounded so cute. The little girl had her first lesson in the ambivalence and strength of one particular word: shock and giggle, and perhaps an awareness of parental guilt. It is early lingua-cultural learning that makes one word polite and the other vulgar.

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Other researchers find this more complex. As Jay and Janschewitz say: ‘The exact course and nature of how people learn the etiquette of swearing remains to be discovered. We assume that a good deal of this knowledge is acquired early in childhood, at least by the time a child goes to school at age 5’ (Jay and Janschewitz 2008: 285). Knowing cognitively is not the same as growing up feeling the affective strength of a swear word. Knowing that kuso means shit in Japanese, thaka in Xhosa, and merde in French, is not the same as ‘feeling’ the taboo. There is no guilt and no giggle. There is no taboo-breaking or magic-evoking strength in the word. So the students, on the one hand, understood that foreign swear words were taboo, and could also place them on a scale of tabooness, but because they lacked a strong taboo feeling for the foreign words, they went ahead and simply used those English words in their discourse. Was there a deeper rhetorical intent?

Is ‘Swearing’ Just ‘Code Switching’? The uses of English swear words can be contextualized through a broader understanding of the use of all foreign words for special effect in communication. There are a number of examples of such usage which show that it is not a new phenomenon. The first example is English language code switching as a rhetorical strategy. Why, for instance, does the doctor say mucus and not snot? Does she Latinize the bodily fluid to make it sound less personal and less embarrassing for the patient? Do the Latin insider-terms imply that the doctor is superior as only she has access to higher information? Do the strange words imply that medicine is magic and can only be healed by a sangoma or medicine man? As Silverton (2009: 197) says, ‘Shit! piss! fuck! That’s swearing. Excrete! urinate! copulate! That’s not’. Secondly, the nonsense, Latin-sounding rhyme children grow up with is ‘Abra kadabra sim-sala-bim’, or, in German, ‘Hocus pocus fidebus, hax pax max deus adimax’. Children use foreign rhyming words to create magic. Although we rationalize as adults, we do still hanker after a bit of magic, and call it rituals, Holy Mass or child’s play. Thirdly, in Germany it was fashionable in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for upwardly mobile families to Latinize their names. For example, smith/Schmit became Fabricius; shopkeeper/Kaufmann became Mercator; the carpenters/Schreiner became Herr und Frau Sartorius. Latin names sound learned and thus classier than trade names. Then, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when French was the fashionable language in southern Germany, people in Baden walked along the Trottoir; sat on a Chaiselonge; put money in a Portemonnaie; went to the

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Friseur and said ade for adieu. These words and phrases have long been absorbed into the language and are not consciously recognized as foreign. Finally, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, an abundance of pseudo-Anglicisms were used as an instrument of selling, implying that the products or services are grander. Whereas we are led to believe that a sale is positive, Ausverkauf sounds like a loss. Anglicisms, widely used in marketing, reflect the global nature of German business, but they could also be reflecting the wish to appear as sophisticated, global players. Hilgendorf (1996: 13) says: ‘It would be naive to think linguistic influence does not accompany political, financial or technological predominance’. There is a general understanding that words are a reflection of wider power relations as well as being active agents of those relations. Opinions about the use of English in commerce and advertising extend from acceptance to strong rejection. It is considered cool, in, trendy, modern, global, unavoidable language change, but also silly, unnecessary and manipulative. Additionally, it implies a loss of one’s own identity, culture, national pride, and it evokes fears of language imperialism (Hilgendorf 1996; and my own information as gathered from newspaper articles and letters to the editor). Finally, it may be that we use foreign words to heighten our prestige, to mystify others and to show identification with a predominant culture. Ellen Kuzwayo (1998) expressed a similar view that vulgar words in a particular or restricted context (e.g. in an ‘in-group’) were not offensive.8

How Is Swearing ‘Defended’? When the students in my study sample were asked why they used English swear words in their negotiations, they gave responses that can be categorized in six ways. Exposure. Swearing is omnipresent in films, on television, online and in books. You use the language you have heard native speakers using. This is in fact true. Computer language, scientific literature and online communication is predominately in English. English for the students is a ‘foreign’ language, but not a strange language. Proficiency. It is proof of your language abilities and power if you can use swear words like movie stars and singers – or native speakers. Denial. Swear words are just like any other English words. They do not mean much. It is a part of the language. As was seen in the research, the students do not experience tabooness when they use the words. Gamesmanship. One student said explicitly that swearing is like a challenge in a game. Someone who could play the game ‘cool’, go to the limits of

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acceptable behaviour without going too far. If you could swear jokingly, not awkwardly, and with the right timing, you were a ‘cool’ player. Musicality. Students say that the four-letter words damn, shit and fuck sound powerful. It is easy to throw ‘monosyllabic fricatives’ around. Solidarity. One lecturer said he thought the students used English swear words as a weird kind of solidarity with the lecturer. In fact, in the tabooness ratings his group had a lower standard deviation score, demonstrating that they agreed with each other more closely on the tabooness of the five words. It appears that their Scottish lecturer had exposed them to a bit of swearing. To summarize, I do not think that the students in this situation felt that they were in fact swearing. Nor did they make a conscious connection between their choice of language and ‘dominant powers’. I also assume that they would lose face if it was obvious that they were imitating. But dropping an English swear word is a subtle suggestion of a possibility that you will sound more global, informed, savvy and cool. The students were concerned about the impact of their choice of words, but there was a disparity between what they intended the impact to be and how a native speaker would interpret the impact. Besides swearing, native speakers could also feel that foreign speakers were making an effort to force their way into an in-group. A misplaced, mispronounced or overused word would not be ‘cool’. The students had probably not yet tested the impact of their use of swear words in the world at large.

Why Do People Swear? Hirsch and other authors claim that people generally swear in the modern Western world in emotionally charged situations to express anger, frustration, boredom, fear or annoyance (Hirsch 1985). I would also add, to detract from shame. Tyler says, out of ‘disdain for bourgeois conventions’ (Tyler 1978: 414). Others swear to ward off an attack, or as a general release of tension. This is what I would identify as swearing within a negative framework. Swearing can also take place within a positive framework: •

to entertain, as in comedy shows or rap songs

•

to emphasize, using a negative to express a positive: ‘It was so goddam lovely’

•

to draw attention to oneself, to be cool

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to urge on: ‘get that fucking puck outta there’

•

to claim in-group membership and solidarity.9

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The above are examples of a ‘positive’ framework or impact. Researchers Baruch and Jenkins (2007), from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, found that what they called ‘social swearing’ can strengthen bonds between employees, making the workplace more pleasurable. But also swearing out of annoyance was an effective ‘relief mechanism’ for stress, replacing more ‘primitive physical aggression’. In an unusual publication by Stone, McMillan and Hazelton (2015), the authors show that several studies put swearing under the heading of group cohesion. Swearing might be an indication that the speaker was relaxed, and could be used to express sympathy or friendliness (see also Winters and Duck 2001). Similarly, joking establishes group cohesion, which derives from sharing experiences (Fine 1976). Beers Fägersten (2000) found swearing to be a linguistic device to affirm in-group membership and establish boundaries and social norms for language use. Swearing can be a badge of membership (Rudge 2012: 268). Similarly, I maintain that the German students’ and businessmen’s impulse to swear in the observed English context was within a positive framework. But first, a consideration. In real-life situations, they would swear in their own language. There is anecdotal evidence that people, no matter how fluent they are, switch to their mother tongue in extreme emotional situations, when they are furious, giving birth, dying, expressing love, talking to animals or babies, and when counting! An example is the following. The German reporter G. Felsberg was recording a ceremonial dance in isolated countryside in Arizona, USA. It was a healing ceremony for a sick woman. At one stage, women selected men to dance with them and were given some money by the man in exchange. The reporter was approached, and after ‘dancing’ with the woman he gave her some coins. It appears that he gave her too much, whereupon many women approached him. This angered the men. Two men grabbed him, one on each side, in the dark. He was scared, as he was far from anyone who could help him. They squeezed him and in desperation he shouted a string of his vilest German swear words. The attackers quickly let him go and left him standing. He thinks that they let him go because his unidentifiable string of foreign words sounded like a magic curse.10

Were the Students Actually Swearing? Silverton (2009: 291) claims that ‘the common denominator of taboo words is the act of forcing a disagreeable thought on someone’. This was clearly not what the students were aiming at. Neither were they evoking magic, warding off evil spirits or being angry. My assumption is that they were using swear

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words, on a superficial level, to show off their ability to use the native language, copying the cool global language with little consideration of what goes and does not go, what shocks, or where the limits are. On a deeper level, the rhetorical function was an appeal: an appeal for membership of an international in-group community who share the naughty language of the global world. In this context, swearing in English can be seen rhetorically as a metaphor for both belonging and optimism. Swearing in English among young Germans could be seen as a metaphor for their desire not to be seen as ‘the bad guys’ (Nazis), but as part of an international community, their longing to belong. At the time this was originally written, many young German students and businessmen were fast becoming globally mobile. They talked about experiencing resentment due to their being German. They related many examples of being greeted at parties in England with an outstretched Hitler greeting, for them the ultimate insult. The students spoke of their frustration with the fact that Germany had agonised over its evil doings but that the world still held them, the students, personally responsible for the crimes that their grandparents’ generations had committed. They deeply wished to be accepted back into the ‘good world’. This leads me to interpret their use of English swear words as an appeal to be accepted. If they spoke the same language, used the same slang and in-group swear words, they hoped they would be likeable. ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart’ (N. Mandela, quoted in Noah 2016: 236).

Is This the End of ‘Swearing’? At the present time, the use of swear words and abuse has increased markedly, and the fear of the power of magic words has declined. The class-based rigidity about the ‘vulgarity’ of swearing has relaxed. We are now in what I would call a ‘post-taboo’ phase. As swearing became mundane in many contexts of discourse, researchers began to interpret its use as a signal of positive feelings, in positive situations. In 1999, I did not interpret the swearing of my students as ‘bad language’, as was usual at that time, but in a positive way. Seeing swearing in a positive light is no longer novel. What is perhaps still applicable is to infer a relatedness of choice of language and political developments; socio-political and wider ‘cultural’ conditions have a clear impact on the rhetorics of swearing, and may be related to new, more individualist subjectivities in contemporary postindustrial European society that is marked by fragmented social cohesion. It is a platitude to say that a particular socio-political situation conditions the language we use. However, the co-occurrence is not always obvious.

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If we consider swear words ‘post-taboo’, and as the uncertainty about what is considered obscene grows, there is even a possibility that we are moving into an age where the emotional power attached to oral and audio obscenities leaves us unmoved, but that we find visual images very shocking or obscene. Are visual taboos functioning as a replacement or intensifier? As the most traditionally taboo-ed words become more widely used and oral obscenity is becoming so widespread that it is losing its power to represent the obscene in culture, is visual obscenity taking its place? Visual messaging plays an important role in communication in our digital world. The emotional strength of a word or text is displayed in visual symbols, ‘emoticons’ and visual gestures. Video clips and snapshots replace verbal messages. What is the impact when watching, reading and writing becomes as important as seeing, speaking and listening? Is there a rhetoric of TXT messages or video clips? Are we fast seeing disturbing impacts of visual messages that we cannot quite grasp or stop (cf. Huntington 2013)?

Visual Rhetoric I have made sweeping inferences that a choice of language and socio-political developments are related or correspond. Perhaps with visual messages the connection is more plausible, however. This extends the study of rhetoric to the domain of visual images and expression. ‘Visual rhetoric’ is a branch of rhetorical studies that deals with the persuasive use of images, whether on their own or accompanied by words.11 Visual ‘swearing’ or insulting does not replace verbal rhetoric, but gains in importance and cross-cultural impact in a globalizing world rapidly impacted by the traffic of digital images in cyberspace. Below are several examples of pictures, photographs, drawings, paintings and graffiti that seem to me to pose questions about obscenity in ways that are arguably more powerfully ‘taboo’ in their visual rhetoric than mere words. Recent theories of visual rhetoric seem to concur with this view (cf. Smith et al. [2011] 2014; Blair 2012),12 and are in fact a rapidly expanding field of study, relevant in a world where visual imagery and rhetoric are not only ubiquitous but increasingly formative of worldviews and sensibilities. As Foss (2005: 144) said, not all visual objects are rhetorical in intent. But, she continues, ‘what turns a visual object into a communicative artifact – a symbol that communicates and can be studied as rhetoric – is the presence of three characteristics … The image must be symbolic, involve human intervention, and be presented to an audience for the purpose of communicating with that audience’. It is obvious that the contemporary world is replete with visual objects, which are active and potent even across cultural, social and linguistic borders. The images discussed below offer some evidence for this.

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Figure 10.2. Smoking in public: the taboo of displaying a urinating female. Cigarette advertisement: breaking a taboo to ensure that the brand name sinks in. (Translation of slogan: ‘For equal rights. For all’) (photo © S. du Mesnil de Rochemont).

What makes the photograph shown in Figure 10.2 obscene? It is considered ‘indecent’ to urinate in public. It is very dicey to photograph a woman urinating. It is even more dicey to be seen enjoying being photographed while urinating, with a cigarette. It is obscene because a breach of taboos is employed to sell cigarettes. There is also a phallic reference in the cigarette, and the reference to the rights of women is eye-catching but misapplied. Incidentally, the advertisement was quietly removed not long after its appearance. In an abstract way it may be considered obscene because it is amusing and manipulative for a commercial reason. An (in)famous image ‘speaking volumes’ is that of the raised middle finger, a still taboo-ed gesture – but by now widespread – in public life, for example during sports events. Indeed, one of the first public displays of it was in a 1994 football World Cup match in the USA, by Germany’s then star soccer player Stefan Effenberg: the ‘Stinkefinger’ (German for middle finger).13 This ‘upyours’ gesture was clearly taboo-breaking. But like the cigarette advertisement, this ‘Stinkefinger’ gesture is a combination of an ‘indecent’ or obscene ges-

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Figure 10.3. Scenes of mutilation. F. Goya, ‘What more can be done?’ (‘I’ll have your guts for garters’), Los desastres de la guerra, plate no. 33, 1863 (https://art gallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/197904, accessed 14 August 2020).

ture combined with humour. The photograph – a ‘pioneering’ 1990s image – shows Effenberg smiling and enjoying himself. The viewer of the photograph and many of Effenberg’s spectators probably loved his show of daring in the context of an international football stadium. However, others must have found it unacceptable, judging from the discussion in an article in a serious magazine (Der Spiegel),14 and, as far as I know, a Latin-language speaking community would consider the gesture much more offensive. Obscenity is relative, depending on age group, sex, context and culture. A further notorious image displaying taboo and generating much debate was the painting ‘Safe Sex’, by pioneer graffiti artist Keith Haring (1988), showing explicit sexual gestures.15 As in Figures 10.1 to 10.3, it immediately ‘speaks’. It is embarrassing because in its display of mutual male masturbation it is very graphic and up-front. Haring spray-painted ‘Safe Sex’ for a noble cause – to warn people about unsafe sex in an era of expanding HIV-AIDS – which makes it ambivalently obscene. Is it, or isn’t it? As in Figure 10.2, a taboo is used here to shock the audience, and he made his message ‘memorable’, in this case for a non-commercial cause. Graffiti often challenges social norms, using

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bright colours, humour and stereotypical, simplified illustrations, thus making them look childlike and yet potent. I conclude with a discussion of two images displaying brutality. Displaying brutality is horrifying and distasteful, but is not considered a taboo in our world. Figure 10.3 would be seen as a documentation of historical events and not as a breach of taboos. Goya depicts crimes against humanity and his intention is to comment on the evils of warfare, showing that art can also be ‘obscene’. It is a black and white illustration that records an event that took place in history, far away, long ago. Viewers can distance themselves from the event, and agree that it is an anti-warfare appeal. Other brutal images with a purposeful violent rhetoric message abound in cyberspace, many of them video clips. One of the first was by the violent Islamist group Al-Qaeda in 2004 on the beheading of the American Nicholas Berg.16 This video, one of the first of its kind posted by radical Islamists, was intended as a provocation. Many more – and even much more gruesome – have followed in recent years, posted by Al-Qaeda’s ‘rivals’, the ‘Islamic State’, and eagerly referred to by Western media. There is no filter one can employ to make viewing it bearable. It is not art, but real; not historical, but current; not humorous, but deadly serious; this is no place far away, but here, and accessible on our computers, in our cyberspace. It is intended as an insult, not in the abstract, but to me and any other viewer. It is a threat and done with impunity. It is pouring evil on us, the viewers. It is highly obscene because it disregards the highest values that are upheld in (Western) society. Because visuals of all nature and intent are so omnipresent in our digital and real environment, we are forced to react to them, or walk around blind. They have power in our modern societies. In our times, evil visuals take precedence over evil words. If a woman were to be told that she was a ‘whore’, she would probably register the evil intent and be more or less affected. But she could also just brush it off. If she were shown a picture of herself looking like a whore, she would most likely feel physically attacked. I conclude that where swear words no longer have the power of magic, evil pictures still have strong powers of persuasion and can be passed around in original vividness to all and sundry.

Concluding Thoughts This chapter has principally been concerned with oral/aural manifestations of cultural taboos, and I have made arguments that have been contingent – German uses of English swear words. However, it has also raised questions that could be taken up at a wider level, particularly regarding the culturally creative

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and socially positive uses of swearing, as a rhetoric of alienation and distancing in order to catch people’s attention. As a next step, I have queried whether the visual could now be a more active terrain for the development of a rhetoric of ‘tabooness’. Some visual arts may claim what I have argued for aural/oral uses of the taboo – that ‘behind the foul there is fair’. However, I am arguing that it seems easier to access the deep level of taboo meanings through pictures than through words. To pose the question in a form appropriate to this chapter, I am asking if tabooness is captured by the fucking words, or by the bloody images. Susan du Mesnil de Rochemont, MA, is an independent teacher-scholar and lives in Karlsruhe, Germany. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and studied psychology in Hamburg and Tübingen, Germany. She taught English to company employees at IBM, and at Südwestfunk (German Television), and completed an MA(TEFL) in 1999 at the University of Reading, UK. She worked as an independent teacher-consultant (from student days to 2009), including at LinC, Siemens, the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Sefex Export Akademie, Industrie und Handelskammer, the Wirtschaftsministerium, Stuttgart and others, based on the finding that the communication difficulties of international business people were often not language-based, but cultural. She further specialized as an intercultural communications trainer for international companies primarily doing business in South Africa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Stuttgart, Bosch, Daimler, BASF and many others), as well as training the future German Ambassador to South Africa (2000). In recent years, she has given intensive intercultural training workshops for staff and international students at Karlsruhe Institute of Regional Studies.

Notes I would like to thank Prof. Ivo Strecker for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this project. I am also grateful to Ms Jean Lydall for support. For critical comments, corrections, suggestions and encouragement on this chapter, I am much obliged to Jon Abbink. Finally, thanks to Prof. Ingrid Rose-Neiger at the (former) University of Applied Science in Karlsruhe, for permitting me to carry out my research there. 1. See also the pioneering although short-lived Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression (1997–2005) https://web.archive.org/web/20190213051317/http:// aman.members.sonic.net/; accessed 5 January 2020). 2. A first draft of this chapter was delivered at a 2005 conference on Rhetoric in Social Relations and Religion at Mainz University, Germany, and this text aims to retain the same immediacy of that conference by being more concerned with questions than

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answers. Although the actual research was done years ago, this text is included as a marker for the development of the analysis of swearing in recent years. Leo Online Dictionary, Beolingus Technische Universität Chemnitz, ‘Swearing in English’, 2006 (http://dict.leo.org/forum/viewGeneraldiscussion.php?idThread=21301 &idForum=4&lang=de&lp=ende), accessed 5 September 2018. Caldwell Harris made some interesting remarks on the psychology of foreign swearing: ‘When people swear at us in a foreign language, we’re not much troubled by it because the words are not loaded with cultural associations and personal memories. They are just words with little emotional resonance. But when foreigners swear at us in our own language, it can hurt badly because the use of the swear words evokes an emotional response in us. We feel that they are getting away with it, because they aren’t feeling the same emotional resonance’ (https://www.connexionfrance.com/Mag/ Language/Swearing-in-a-second-language-is-easier; accessed 5 January 2020). See also W. Toivo, ‘Bad Language: Why Being Bilingual Makes Swearing Easier’, The Guardian, 27 March 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/mar/27/ bad-language-why-being-bilingual-makes-swearing-easier; accessed 5 April 2018). Taboo misunderstandings even occur between American and British English. Prof. Megan Biesele, an American, recounted the following episode. When she was in South Africa, she was describing her small office kitchen to her English-speaking South African hostess. ‘It’s a one fanny kitchen.’ The hostess was shocked and embarrassed. Fanny in American English is colloquial for bum. In British English it is risqué and means vagina. Julia Grosse, ‘Die Deutschen und das N-Wort’, Die Zeit Online, 21 September 2015, https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2015-09/rassismus-neger-roberto-blanco-10nach8, accessed 10 December 2018 See also the comedian George Carlin’s collection of ‘Filthy Words’ (‘shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits...’). Carlin’s monologue (1972) is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAzf3yw9NAE (accessed 15 December 2016). Ellen Kuzwayo, a now deceased South African freedom fighter and author writing about Setswana proverbs, said: ‘Proverbs use seemingly uncouth language or “vulgar” images. To people foreign to African culture these proverbs may seem obscene, and thus unacceptable, whilst inside the community where they originated, they may carry a totally different message … The circumstances under which a term is used determine whether it is offensive or not. Thus, obscene language used when individuals or groups quarrel is considered offensive, while the same terms used in idiomatic expressions are not’. Her example was: ‘If you don’t heed my advice, you will eat your peer-group’s shit!’ (1998: 17). This has tradition: an ancient practice called ‘Flyting’ (Hughes [1991] 1998) when enemies ‘outswore’ each other before battle. Nowadays teams still chant to build team spirit on their own side and to demotivate or belittle the other side. George Felsberg, personal communication, 2008. Cf. https://www.thoughtco.com/visual-rhetoric-1692596 (accessed 20 January 2017). A pioneer in the study of the rhetoric of images was of course Roland Barthes (1964). See also https://www.thoughtco.com/visual-rhetoric-1692596 (accessed 4 October 2016). Not reproduced here due to copyright issues, but available widely online, for example at https://www.bayernforum.com/injuries-f2/sven-ulreich-t13072-60.html (accessed

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5 February 2020) or https://ligalive.net/en/the-25-biggest-world-cup-scandals-of-alltime/30 (accessed 5 February 2020). 14. See Der Spiegel magazine, no. 44 (1999), p. 263. 15. This image (Keith Haring, ‘Safe Sex’, 1988. Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 120 in., Keith Haring artwork 6) appears on the website https://www.wikiart.org/en/keith-haring/ safe-sex-1988 (© Keith Haring Foundation). 16. IS video online. Murder of Nicholas Even Berg, 11 May 2004, https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Nick_Berg, accessed 20 February 2020

References Barthes, Roland. 1964. ‘Rhétorique de l’image’, Communications 4(1): 40–51 [‘The Rhetoric of the Image’, in R. Barthes. 1977. Image – Music – Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 32-51]. Baruch, Yehuda, and Stuart Jenkins. 2007. ‘Swearing at Work and Permissive Leadership Culture: When Anti-social Becomes Social and Incivility is Acceptable’, Leadership and Organization Development Journal 28(6): 492–507. Beers Fägersten, Kristy. 2000. ‘The Use of English Swear Words in Swedish Media’, in Marianne Rathje (ed.), Swearing in the Nordic Countries. Frederiksberg: Dansk Sprognævn, pp. 63–82. Berkowitz, Leonard. 1989. ‘The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Examination and Reformulation’, Psychological Bulletin 106(1): 59–73. Blair, J. Anthony. 2012. ‘The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments’, in C. Tindale (ed.), Groundwork in the Theory of Argumentation: Selected Papers of J. Anthony Blair. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 261–79. Caldwell-Harris, Catherine L. 2015. ‘Emotionality Differences between a Native and Foreign Language: Implications for Everyday Life’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 24: 214–19. Conley, Thomas. 2010. Toward a Rhetoric of Insult. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fine, Gary A. 1976. ‘Obscene Joking across Cultures’, Journal of Communication 26(3): 134–40. Fleming, David. 1998. ‘Rhetoric as a Course of Study’, College English 61(2): 169–91. Foss, Sonia K. 2005. ‘Theory of Visual Rhetoric’, in Kenneth L. Smith et al. (eds), Handbook of Visual Communication. London: Routledge, pp. 141–52. Hilgendorf, Suzanne K. 1996. ‘The Impact of English in Germany’, English Today 12(3): 3–14. Hirsch, Richard. 1985. ‘Swearing and the Expression of the Emotions’, in L.-G. Andersson and R. Hirsch (eds), Perspectives on Swearing. Göteborg: Department of Linguistics, University of Göteborg, pp. 61–80. Hughes, Geoffrey. (1991) 1998. Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths, and Profanity in English. Revised ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ———. (ed.). 2006. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World. New York: Routledge. Hunt, Jonathan. 2012. ‘From Cademphaton to Cher: Foul Language and Evidence in the Rhetorical Tradition’, Rhetorical Tradition 3, http://relevantrhetoric.com/From%20 Cacemphaton%20to%20Cher.pdf (accessed 20 June 2016).

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Huntington, Heidi E. 2013. ‘Subversive Memes: Internet Memes as a Form of Visual Rhetoric’, in Association of Internet Researchers (eds), Selected Papers of Internet Research 14.0 Denver, CO. Jay, Timothy. 1977. ‘Doing Research with Dirty Words’, International Journal of Verbal Aggression 1(2): 234–56. ———. 1992. Cursing in America. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 2000. Why We Curse: A Neuro-Psycho-Social Theory of Speech. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Jay, Timothy, and Kristin Janschewitz. 2008. ‘The Pragmatics of Swearing’, Journal of Politeness Research 4(2): 267–88. Kuzwayo, Ellen K. 1988. African Wisdom: A Personal Collection of Setswana Proverbs. Cape Town: Kwela Books. Leach, Edmund R. 1964, ‘Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse’, in E.H. Lenneberg (ed.), New Directions in the Study of Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 23–63. Mohr, Melissa. 2013. Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montague, Ashley. 1973. The Anatomy of Swearing. London: Macmillan & Collier. Noah, Trevor. 2016. Born a Crime: Stories from an African Childhood. New York: Spiegel & Grau. Rudge, Trudy. 2012. (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge. Silverton, Peter. 2009. Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing. London: Portobello Books. Smith, Kenneth L., Sandra Moriarty, Keith Kenney, and Gretchen Barbatsis. (2011) 2014. Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. New York: Routledge. Stone, Teresa E., Margaret McMillan, and Mike Hazelton. 2015. ‘Back to Swear One: A Review of English Language Literature on Swearing and Cursing in Western Health Settings’, Aggression and Violent Behavior 25(A): 65–74. Stone, Tessa, and Margaret McMillan. 2012. ‘Warning: This Job Contains Strong Language and Adult Themes: Do Nurses Require Thick Skins and Broad Shoulders with Encounters Involving Swearing?’ in D. Holmes, T. Rudge, and A. Perron (eds), (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge, pp. 259–79. Tyler, Stephen. 1978. The Said and the Unsaid. New York: Academic Press. Vanderplank, Robert. 2007. Uglier than a Monkey’s Armpit: Untranslatable Insults, PutDowns and Curses from Around the World. Basingstoke: Boxtree, Pan Macmillan Ltd. Winters, Alaina M., and Steve Duck. 2001. ‘You ****!: Swearing as an Aversive and a Relational Activity’, in Robin M. Kowalski (ed.), Behaving Badly: Aversive Behaviors in Interpersonal Relationships. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 59–77.

CHAPTER 11

Flavouring the Nation The Rhetoric of Nutrition Policies in Ethiopia Valentina Peveri       

Tasteful Ethnography in a Hungry Nation There is a well-known international narrative on famine in Ethiopia, frequently recalled as the story of a persistent failure attributed to poverty, recurrent drought, and soil and land degradation (von Braun and Olofinbiyi 2007). In the course of my fieldwork among the Hadiyya, Southern Ethiopian growers of ensete (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman), I developed a sceptical attitude towards this narrative. I found that the network of ensete gardens stood out in sharp contrast with the rhetoric of Ethiopia as a recipient of constant food aid and the epitome of hunger and starvation (Clark 2004). Since 2004 I grew up as an ethnographer surrounded by sturdy ensete, the ‘tree against hunger’ (cf. Brandt et al. 1997), a versatile and resilient plant, the products of which could be stored safely underground. People occasionally consume these products immediately after harvest, but fermentation of ensete pulp for months or years is the norm. Behind the house, numerous pits lined with leaf sheaths hold ensete pulp while it ferments. Low-intensity cultivation practices characteristic of ensete mirror those for other tuber crops. In my long and intensive exposure to ensete culture, I have started framing ensete within the broad category of orphan crops, which might be defined as a diverse set of minor crops (such as millet, yam, cassava, cowpea, sorghum, etc.) that are simple and cost-effective for poorer countries. These crops are not traded around the world and also receive little or no attention from researchers, but nonetheless play an important role in regional food security (Adenle et al. 2012: 260).

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Ensete also perfectly fits into the category of on-farm crops with famine-food components; these plants are few and are likely to be perennial (Guinand and Lemessa 2000: 8–9).1 The poetry of tuber/perennial/garden crops has gradually risen in intensity and taken shape in my consciousness and writing. Recurrent key words characterize this subject in scholarly literature: complexity (of ecosystems of cultivated plots); diversity (of plants in cultivated plots); and flexibility (both in cropping strategies and culinary practices) (cf. Hildebrand 2010; Altieri, Funes-Monzote and Petersen 2011; Chivenge et al. 2015; Powell et al. 2015). To grasp the thick meaning of traditional vegetables (and of their ‘familiar taste’) in local diets, it is worth recollecting how in agrarian societies food is not purchased but typically produced on a daily basis. People mainly subsist on locally cultivated staples, by carefully planning year-round agricultural labour. Farmers are physically and intimately involved in the precarious processes of cultivation and harvest. In those societies, the highly valued foods in terms of consistency, reliability and symbolic meaning are most likely the ones that are known and trusted locally. The Hadiyya farmers have always described those foods to me using the narrative concepts of warmth, energy, a sense of repletion, and culinary pleasure. Their approach to a ‘perfect meal’ goes far beyond the nutritional gaze – a way of looking at and encountering food as being composed of nutrients, which overwhelms other ways of affectively and sensually experiencing food. The different ensete products are spoken of in terms of smell and taste, hinting at a kind of nourishment that has little to do with nutrients. This is the integrative, humanistic mode within which I learned how to cook and relish ensete, in its innumerable sauce-pairings, and I gained a better understanding of local notions of food and eating in my ethnographic endeavours. A rhetoric centred on nutrients and numbers started nonetheless to percolate into daily conversation and became widespread around 2014. Hadiyya women, who had never used such a vocabulary before, claimed that ‘mixing different ingredients together is good in nutritional terms’; young boys accused the rural diet of being ‘without rules and unbalanced’; and children broadcast to their parents the urgent need for ‘variety’. When asked to itemize the specific nature of this request, for the first time I heard people reciting a memorized list comprised of pasta, rice, fruit juices, eggs and high-quality t’eff for making injera.2 Vegetables that were once described in terms of colour and texture are now praised for containing vitamins. In a further imaginary twist, the children of my Ethiopian foster mother went so far as to equate the standard of a ‘high-quality’ diet with that of an ‘expensive’ diet, and to assert that wealthy people have got whiter skin because they can afford to eat good food. These associations bring to the surface the divide between urban/rural (and

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modern/backward) as people perceive it through food – and indeed, through a nutritional grid which visualizes a ‘superior’ and an ‘inferior’ diet.3 This change of tone in the narratives about food – from being conceived as a life-form to being abstracted and counted into nutrients (carbohydrates, fibres, fats, vitamins, proteins, minerals, etc.) – is striking because of its pervasiveness, and calls for further investigation. Where do these dietary guidelines come from? How have they been created and implemented over the country? From the very beginning of this transition from a local narrative to a reinvigorated national paradigm, it seemed clear that the (regional) crop and food diversity fostered by the ensete system has been increasingly replaced by an emphasis on (national) dietary variety. These two concepts, despite being semantically related, come to envision radically different scenarios. As with other local staple and cultural foods, the tree against hunger makes an ephemeral appearance in the official documents concerning the revised, healthy national diet. The rapid emergence of a nutritional rhetoric in peripheral and otherwise politically marginalized areas of the country raises a number of compelling issues to an anthropologist who has devoted herself to exploring the links between agriculture, natural resources, crop/livelihood choices and food security. From my ethnographic outpost, it was intellectually puzzling to see that surveys fielded in many developing countries, not only in Ethiopia, typically collect data on anthropometry and dietary composition, but do not contain information on agricultural production. In this chapter I raise a contrasting hypothesis: that diets and nutritional status strongly depend on households’ production choices, and that this relationship is particularly strong for households with limited access to food markets. This implies that family and small farmers should be encouraged to produce a diverse basket of foods, based on local innovation and resources, if they are to play the role of active agents in national food production and security. A diverse diet for the insecure and marginal rural poor, and one more likely to result in improved diets and nutritional status, would stem from biodiverse and resilient agroecosystems, not from recommending tablets and supplements. Yet, the link between the most recent nutritional policies and the drivers of agricultural change in Ethiopia has at times gone unexamined. Since the mid 1970s, national and international resources have been transferred to Ethiopia in the form of relief aid, but this has not addressed the problem of food insecurity. The country has remained one of the most foodinsecure in the world, with nearly half of the population being undernourished. In an attempt to address this issue, in 1993 the government adopted an Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy, which outlined a move away from traditional subsistence agriculture towards specialization and market-based agricultural production. In 2005, the Productive Safety

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Net Program (PSNP) and the Other Food Security Programs (OFSPs) were introduced. Such national initiatives have not significantly increased regional food security. This modernizing approach calls for expanded investment in roads and telecommunications, which would in turn create new opportunities for industrial production and modern services; and in productivity-increasing technologies for agriculture, including improved seeds, extension, and the use of chemical fertilizers. This may require, it is widely proclaimed, a greater role for the private sector (Dorosh 2013).4 The Ethiopian case is not isolated. Drawing on lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe, Ian Scoones and John Thompson highlight the concerted efforts of policy and scientific circles in recent years to herald the launch of a new Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa. Such initiatives share a theory of change that may be described as ‘market-led technology adoption’; in examining some of the challenges and prospects for the future, they ask: ‘What interests frame the dominant narratives driving this policy agenda? What alternatives are excluded as a consequence? Who gains and who loses? And what processes of agrarian change are promoted as a result?’ (2011: 4). Government-sponsored programmes are increasingly built around a governance model of public-private partnerships which involves the private sector, philanthropy and donor agencies, and advocates a shift towards ‘creative’ or ‘green’ capitalism in the agricultural sector in the Global South (Patel et al. 2015: 22). What is of even greater concern is the logic of nutritionism that accompanies and backs up this development policy. If the envisioned agriculture is large-scale, export-driven and chemically intensive, would legislation on common dietary standards (promoted by global and national suppliers) be able or willing to exploit the potential of regional specificities (embedded in local production), and patiently read through the (unrecorded) social, economic and nutritional value of orphan crops? This chapter addresses the rhetoric of nutrition policies in Ethiopia and is based on primary sources5 and on a preliminary analysis of policy documents from international organizations and the Ethiopian government regarding feeding and nutritional programmes. I sketch out an analysis of how in Ethiopia the dictates of the Green Revolution – which privilege productivity over justice, and calculation over taste and experience – translate into, and inform, national nutritional guidelines that reveal a policy rhetoric intended to persuade the public and the producers to enter into new modes of diet and technological fixes. My approach is to complement this ‘expert scientific view’ with the voices of charismatic small farmers and useful plants, shifting the focus from nutritional deficits to self-sufficiency in food production; and from nutrition security to food systems that are sympathetic to history, locality and cultural identity. An integration of diversified (cultural and agricultural) re-

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sources into the national basket is advocated as a strategy for broadening the diet as well as a sense of meaningful citizenship of otherwise disenfranchised peripheral communities.

The Poetics of Nutrients Defined as the widespread deficiency of micronutrients essential for human growth and functioning (such as vitamin A, iron, zinc and iodine), rates of ‘hidden hunger’ are indeed alarming worldwide. To ascertain the truth and accuracy of these statistics goes beyond the scope of this chapter, which aims instead at unpacking the rhetoric and politics of nutritionism as it has come to dominate and define the food problem in the developing world. Since the late nineteenth century, nutrition science has been characterized by the attempt to understand foods in terms of their biochemical composition, and to construct ‘nutritionally balanced’ diets on this basis. Nutritionism is characterized by a sustained and confident discourse of precision and control, one that measures, monitors and scientifically manages information. Such discourse has been called ‘the myth of nutritional precision’ (Scrinis 2008: 42). The cultural and ecological contexts in which food, diets and bodily health are situated evaporate when they come into contact with categories and subcategories of nutrients and biomarkers, expressed by numerical indicators such as the daily energy requirements and the body mass index (BMI). The nutritional paradigm represents food as uniform, composed of interchangeable parts, and comparable across time and between nations and places. Foods that are central to traditional cuisines, which have always struggled to select and combine different ingredients and quantities, may be discouraged on the basis of their nutrient profiles, then undermined and finally discarded. Nutritionism swallows up whole systems of knowledge based on useful plants and native diets. Furthermore, by reducing the value of food to its nutrient content, it systematically privileges an expert scientific view while silencing others. The discourse of nutritionism positions one group of people as experts and another – the poor, the peasant, the indigenous, or the woman – as the targets of experts, with planning conceived as a top-down exercise centred on specialist technical knowledge. International standards, which are intended to improve the nutritional base of local populations and their physical/mental capacity, neglect any other meaning of hunger and appetite and trade it for the certainties of ‘quantities of calories’ and ‘body mass’. The underlying tendency of reducing crop and food heterogeneity to numerical classifications has been heavily criticized for not taking into serious consideration the imbricated layers of food consumption, personhood and na-

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tional identity when explaining local responses to agricultural innovation and dietary change (Burg 2008; Ilcan and Phillips 2003; Lappé et al. 2013; Sanabria and Yates-Doerr 2015). These disputed indicators and the avalanche of aggregated data have nonetheless offered to the wider audience the comfort of a world that is easily mappable. Compared to other statistical measurements, however, the calculable domain of nutrients has never been a neutral, objective one: ‘From the first, its purpose was to render food, and the eating habits of populations, politically legible. In this sense it was one of the lesser tools facilitating a widening of the state’s supervision of the welfare and conduct of whole populations that has been referred to in different contexts as state building, modernism, or regulating the social’ (Cullather 2007: 338). Strategies of dissemination of knowledge have become a central mechanism in the governing of countries; in this regard, nutrition relations have taken the lion’s share in underpinning food regime transitions, in undermining old food orders and constructing new ones. The story of the German chemist Von Liebig is exemplary in grasping the role of nutrition science as an instrument of power. In the mid 1800s, Von Liebig made influential contributions to the field by isolating and identifying protein as a master nutrient. He did something else too, equally important to modern food systems: ‘he invented nitrogen-based fertilisers and promoted science-based agriculture. Further, he derived a method for producing beef extract from carcasses: The Liebig Extract of Meat Company sold beef bouillon cubes (becoming the Oxo cube in 1899) as a cheap alternative to meat’ (Dixon 2009: 324). This not unique case speaks loudly, and precociously, of the tandem relationship between nutritional policies, agricultural innovation and corporate strategies. We can learn a great deal about these intricacies by looking at our familiar world. In developed countries nutritionism has been co-opted over past decades by the food industry as a framework to guide both the marketing of foods and diets on the one hand, and the production, processing and re-engineering of foods on the other (e.g. fat-reduced milk, vitamin-fortified breakfast cereals, and betacarotene-enhanced Golden Rice). This nutri-commodification facilitates the concentration of corporate ownership and control of the agrifood system (Scrinis 2008: 46). The narrative of ‘charismatic nutrients’, which have historically emerged as authoritative indicators of nutritional problems and solutions, has led to a subsequent growth of projects to develop nutritional fixes based on ‘fortification’ (nutrients addition to food products) and, later, biofortification (genetic modification of crops to contain more nutrients). Such technologies may be a good fit with market-led development strategies, and an ideal way to involve the corporate sector in public-private partnerships. But they also have real potential to divert attention away from the deeper factors that underpin food insecurity and poverty – such as access to and affordability

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of food, the safety and cultural appropriateness of new technologies, nutrition education and the exclusion of ordinary citizens from the policy discussion (Kimura 2013). A logic of nutritionism – ‘understood as a set of ideas and practices that seek to end hunger not by directly addressing poverty but by prioritizing the delivery of individual molecular components of food to those lacking them’ (Patel et al. 2015: 22) – has penetrated official dietary guidelines in developing countries as well. The kind of agriculture envisioned by such manifestos is easy to guess: ‘a nutritionism focus aligns well with the productivist emphasis in agriculture, which emphasizes food quantity over all other qualities, regardless of concerns about how food is produced, by whom, and who has access to that food – in other words, the ecological implications and the socialpolitical networks surrounding food and agriculture’ (ibid.: 29). Several African governments, in designing and implementing their nutritional policies, follow the uses of the term ‘nutrition’ encouraged by the World Bank when it calls for investment in nutrition – a nutrition for growth which aims at beating hunger through business and science, laying the ground for interventions well matched to the private sector, and which encourages governments to buy, not grow, food sprinkled with charismatic nutrients (ibid.: 30). As paradoxical and disturbing as it might appear, ‘this is the era of poverty with added vitamins’ (ibid.: 31). In most policy documents, nutritionism resurfaces in the recurrence of specific stylistic features: iodine and vitamin A deficiency to be fixed through fortifying salt and fortifying flour; oral treatment for micronutrient deficiencies; weekly iron supplementation; and all this with the aim to drive the younger generation towards ‘better working potential and productivity’.6 This last point brings us back to the birth of the calorie, and to the experiments of scientists to determine a standard value of food that can be tabulated as easily as currency or petroleum: the work of rendering food into hard figures began just after breakfast on Monday 23 March 1896, when Wilbur O. Atwater sealed a graduate student into an airtight chamber in the basement of Judd Hall on the Wesleyan University campus. The apparatus was described by the press as resembling a meat locker, a room ‘about as large as an ordinary convict’s cell’ lined with copper and zinc, its interior visible through a triple-paned glass aperture. Its occupant, A. W. Smith, took measured quantities of bread, baked beans, Hamburg steak, milk, and mashed potatoes through an airlock during rest periods, which alternated with intervals of weight-lifting and mental exertion …. Smith was inside a calorimeter, a device previously used to measure the combustive efficiency of explosives and engines. It recorded his food intake and labor output in units of thermal energy. (Cullather 2007: 340)

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Not much has changed since then in the rhetorical architecture of dietary guidelines. I will now introduce the Ethiopian case and explore how the poetics of nutritionism has been absorbed into national guidelines and school programmes. As a rhetorical genre, nutritional recommendations are persuasive actions that articulate not only the kind of food system to which a nation aspires, but also the kind of agrarian change, economic development, forms of citizenship and social relations that are sustained in the name of public welfare. The nutritional guidelines ratified and disseminated by the Ethiopian government play an important role in constituting a sense of national identity and values. These guidelines simultaneously obscure and reveal ideological tensions and logical incongruities within different visions of food system and agricultural future. In the rhetoric of calories and nutrients lies a subtle and oblique way of confirming and reinforcing certain approved trends in relation to food policy and food security. Yet, diverse and possibly conflicting alternatives still exist in the country. I will offer a small taste of these subaltern appetites using the same rhetorical energy employed by compilers in their master narrative. A number of questions will guide my efforts: Does the nutritional turn supply a seemingly neutral language in which to reassert the claims of national ideology? What progressive narrative and expectations of modernity inform nutritional dietary guidelines? And what role might rural communities play as active agents in national food production and security?

Master Narrative: National Nutritional Guidelines The Nutrition Extension Package, 2004 The first document I had the opportunity to leaf through is this pamphlet released by the Federal Ministry of Health of Ethiopia.7 The introduction refers to malnutrition emanating from a lack of an adequate and balanced diet; in a few steps it connects diet to protein-energy deficiency, and low intake of vitamin A, iron and iodine. Those most affected by deficiency-related diseases live in rural areas, as ‘the knowledge of the rural population about the value and preparation of disease-preventing and body-building foods such as vegetables and fruits, and animal products, is limited’. The society should be enabled to ‘disregard harmful and backward food preparation methods and traditional feeding habits’. In selecting the participating members, a distinction is introduced: ‘The package will have better results if families that have adequate food production or those who have good income to buy food and feed their families are selected as volunteers and models …. Families that have no adequate production can

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be registered as participants and be taught about the proper use of what they have’. Showing sensitivity to the high agroecological diversity of Ethiopian landscapes, the Ministry encourages a context-based implementation of the package, based on the types of agricultural products and food preparation methods and practices which characterize each region and even each district. In line with this sensitivity, recipes follow in order to promote a balanced diet, and specifically to demonstrate how these standards can be achieved by using and mixing local food products. Along with the classical and Northerner misir and shiro wat (lentil and chickpea stews), ensete gains a place in this culinary sample in the form of porridge from its extract. Ensete is praised for providing carbohydrates, and even when it is not explicitly evoked, it seems to fit the requirements for healthy living. The Ministry in fact suggests producing food which can last for at least two years and expanding home gardens. Cassava should equally be promoted because of its significant nutritional value.

National School Health and Nutrition Strategy, 2012 In this document, released by the Federal Ministry of Health, much room is devoted to health, safe water, sanitation and hygiene.8 Recipes and the emphasis on local products have vanished, with food policy restricted to a few selected issues: micronutrient supplementation in school feeding programmes; a selling policy of food and other products in or around schools (with food handlers properly trained in serving quality balanced meals in school canteens); and introducing school gardens (where vitamin A-rich foods should be grown).

A Tool to Support Nutrition Advocacy in Ethiopia: Ethiopia PROFILES 2012 Estimates, 2013 This report – a concerted effort by different institutions including, among others, USAID, Ethiopian government ministries, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – begins with a visionary overture: ‘Imagine Ethiopia free from malnutrition. What will it take to achieve this?’9 It then articulates the answer by first referring to a productivity framework, according to which saving the lives of mothers and children, and improving children’s education outcomes, would in turn boost economic productivity (see Figure 11.1). Investing in nutrition is therefore seen as critical, economically sound and cost-effective to Ethiopia’s future.10 The estimates on health and economic outcomes were calculated from nutrition and anthropometric indicators. These indicators are straightforwardly trusted as their impact is established in the scientific literature. In order to reinforce the Na-

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Figure 11.1. ‘Ethiopia Profiles 2012’ (adapted by V. Peveri).

tional Nutrition Programme, it is recommended that the government commits to promoting micronutrient food fortification and salt iodization; to developing a social and behavioural change communication strategy; and to building a critical mass of nutrition advocates. Desired changes in civil society organizations envisage harmonization of messages on nutrition so that different communities are speaking in ‘one voice’. Lack of private-public partnerships is considered a ‘barrier’, and field visits to other countries that have been successful with private-public partnerships are encouraged in order to co-opt private sector companies willing to invest in food fortification.

Ethiopian National Food Consumption Survey, 2013 The survey was developed by the Ethiopian Public Health Institute in response to a request by the Federal Ministry of Health to obtain evidence to inform the

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Figure 11.2. The 2013 Ethiopian National Consumption Survey cover (photograph by V. Peveri).

National Fortification Strategy.11 The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) provided financial support for preliminary fortification simulations. The cover page (see Figure 11.2) is captivating. It draws the observer’s attention to the diverse ecological and social nature of the ingredients on display: the iconic, quintessentially national colourful woven basket (mesob) where people sit around at mealtimes to enjoy injera and various side dishes; an ensete plant; cereals and pulses; two disproportionately large prickly pears; a compendium of quintessentially First World diet comprised of a chunk of red meat, eggs, milk, cold cuts, raw fish presumably to be baked with rosemary, and two slices of cheese (one of which is undoubtedly Emmental); and finally, an intricate cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. The survey explains

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that in order to address the national nutrition situation, the government of Ethiopia endorsed the country’s first-ever National Nutrition Strategy (NNS) in February 2008. It describes the Ethiopian diet as being mainly composed of cereals (maize, sorghum, t’eff and barley), tubers and roots (ensete, potatoes and sweet potatoes), pulses (peas, chickpeas, beans and lentils) and oil seeds. Food diversification is one of the approaches identified for the control and prevention of micronutrient deficiencies, yet the capacity for dietary diversification efforts is limited in the short term due to issues related to availability, access and behaviours. The document acknowledges that the variety shown on the cover page remains beyond the means of many rural and urban poor. As a result, the Ethiopian government is considering opportunities to fortify widely consumed foods with key micronutrients. The profile of the Southern regions that emerges from this investigation is not one marked by food insecurity and vulnerability. Roots and tubers (ensete and cassava, among others) contribute higher proportions of foods consumed by children and women, particularly in the form of carbohydrates. Vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables are reported in higher proportions here than in other regions. Surprisingly low levels of iron deficiency are found. The variation of intakes across regions indicates that fortification may be a more effective strategy in some regions, particularly urban areas where the population consumes fortifiable wheat and oil, than others. Moreover, the survey provides insight into national food consumption patterns that can be used to stimulate the promotion of food-based approaches, taking into account cultural differences and eating patterns, in order to alleviate existing nutrient deficiencies and inform current and future nutrition-related public health initiatives in Ethiopia. A strong point is made for exploring alternatives based on the local production of nutrient-rich complementary foods.

‘Graduation with Resilience to Achieve Sustainable Development’ (GRAD). Nutrition Baseline Report, 2014 The GRAD Project is funded by USAID and implemented by CARE and other stakeholders. Technical partners include the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University (USA).12 According to this report, the problem of malnutrition is correlated to low agricultural production and low and inadequate food consumption. Knowledge and attitude in relation to recommended nutrition practices were found to be low, and interventions are therefore encouraged that focus on behavioural changes (e.g. providing information to caregivers on the importance of feeding children a diverse diet), and on cooking and vegetable cultivation demonstration. Dietary diversity is a key dimension of a high-quality diet with adequate micronutrient content. To calculate this indi-

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Table 11.1. ‘Type of food to be served’ – from the School Feeding Program Nutritional Assessment Study Report, 2015. Type of food to be served

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Vegetable soup with bread

X

Lentil soup with bread

X

Macaroni soup with bread

X

Rice with bread Spaghetti with bread

Friday

X X

cator, nine food groups are used: (1) grains, roots and tubers; (2) legumes and nuts; (3) dairy products (milk, yoghurt, cheese); (4) organ meat; (5) eggs; (6) flesh foods and other small animal protein; (7) vitamin A dark green leafy vegetables; (8) other vitamin A-rich vegetables and fruits; (9) other fruits and vegetables. The questionnaire explicitly mentions the ensete bread among foods made from roots or tubers.

School Feeding Program Nutritional Assessment Study Report, 2015 This report was produced by Light Ethiopia, a national non-governmental organization that supported the government in reaching the Millennium Development Goals.13 The overall objectives for the assessment were to analyse the status of the school feeding programme, to identify the best possible suppliers and purchasing agreements, to establish calorie-standard recipes, to identify the exact ‘per unit’ meal cost, and to develop recipe options. A qualitative and quantitative data collection method was employed. The cooking process of the meal menu in primary schools in South Wollo (Amhara Region) was documented. The dining space, plates and kitchen utilities were observed. An optimal menu was developed and recommended for the school feeding programme; most of the ingredients (bread, spaghetti, macaroni, rice) are not locally produced, or belong to that ‘imagined’ variety that other reports consider beyond the means of the poor. The report endorses the hypothesis – widely embraced by several developing country governments and international orga-

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nizations – that food fortification with protein and key micronutrients would improve child nutritional status, reduce morbidity and help children achieve better school performance. The economic motivations for investing in the education and nutritional status of primary school-aged children are explicitly mentioned and recognized.

Ethiopian National Micronutrient Survey Report, 2016 In this report, released by the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, it is highlighted how the low bioavailability of key micronutrients from plant-based diets is a major contributing factor for micronutrient deficiencies in the country.14 As a consequence, food fortification and supplementation of micronutrients should be strengthened to overcome this public health programme; ‘moreover, industrialized scale salt processing and iodization should be aggressively promoted along with strong enforcement, monitoring and evaluation to improve Universal Salt Iodization program (USI)’. A section of the questionnaire is devoted to food fortification, and specifically that of wheat flour, salt and oil; questions focus on which biofortified crops households grow and consume (e.g. quality protein maize, or orange flesh sweet potatoes). Another section (‘dietary diversity score questions’) asks all women what they had eaten since the day before (even the group of sugar, honey, sweetened soda or sugary foods such as chocolates, candies, cookies and cakes make an appearance here), while in the category of roots/tubers, white potatoes, taro root, white yams and cassava are listed and only ensete is missing.15 The same crop is also missing in a question on which ‘bio-fortified crops’ the household of the respondent was growing. On the cover page, a bright yellow cob and red bell peppers tower over a background of green vegetables.

Ethiopia’s National Nutrition Programme (2013–2015) The text that exhaustively recapitulates the stylistic canon of this nutritional turn in food policy is the government of Ethiopia’s National Nutrition Programme (2013–2015).16 The document conforms to international directions ‘towards the realization of optimal nutritional status for all Ethiopian citizens’. The rapid population growth is deemed to exacerbate critical gaps in basic health services, and in food and nutrition security. Vital to the attainment of the government’s Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), now in phase II (2015–2020), is the strategy of ‘scaling up’ and intensifying the nutrition strategies. Schools are meant to promote quality health and nutrition services. Nutrition trends are expressed according to the body mass index (BMI) and other performance indicators. Among the key challenges it is reported that, ‘until

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Figure 11.3. The 2016 Ethiopian National Micronutrient Survey Report cover (photograph by V. Peveri).

recently, food fortification programmes had not been given much attention, despite food fortification being one of the sustainable ways of doing micronutrient interventions’, and a National Food Fortification Programme is therefore included among the initiatives to be strategically addressed, along with ‘increasing agriculture productivity’. The programme also details the broad category of ‘nutritious foods’ by referring to ‘orange sweet potatoes and quality protein-rich maize’.17 Agriculture research centres are encouraged to ‘identify seeds of improved nutritional value from other countries and adapt them to the agroecological conditions of Ethiopia’. Apparent from 2004 to 2016 is a pronounced accent on a top-down approach and the invigoration of the technical ‘quick fix’ ideology. The definition

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of health does not contemplate either ecological or social inflections. The rural population appears to be deskilled and disempowered from one document to subsequent ones, thus requiring teaching and information from trained advisors. The original sensitivity towards locally based agricultural products and food practices (as in the 2004 report) has gradually given way to generic, countrywide nutritional measures, which lack the intimacy of local knowledge and might not be appropriate for such a diverse country. The driving message in the dietary guidelines revolves around the ‘variety of foods’ – some of which are so unusual and out of reach of the rural poor as to call for increased reliance on the market to fulfil the household’s dietary needs. No clear solutions are proposed in these official documents as to how agricultural expertise and production of smallholder farmers could be linked to wider markets. The translation of food into numbers has a substantial influence on ‘national’ cuisines. It might indeed reveal an interest in conforming local tastes to a progressive, international standard, typically by enlarging the consumption of crops/ingredients (such as wheat, corn-soy blends and vegetable oil) which are associated with a cosmopolitan, forward-looking identity, and, on the other hand, by neglecting or discouraging local ingredients (such as roots and tubers) which may evoke a vernacular past. The end point of a long trajectory, the National Programme marks a consolidated shift in food policy from food-based solutions towards food fortification. National guidelines say much about nutritional deficits and less about self-sufficiency in food production; or about local wisdom in reinforcing food security; or about the advantage of combining new and different dishes with ecologically rooted and still vital food cultures.

Off-Track Idioms: Orphan Cuisines Ensete is not widely known as a food plant outside of Ethiopia; as a result, the culture of ensete remains obscure internationally relative to the size of the populations that subsist on it. The strengths of ensete-based livelihood systems include storage longevity, multiple uses and high energy productivity per unit area. It has been estimated that ensete yields 1.3 to 3.5 times as much food energy per hectare per year as maize grown under similar management conditions (Kefale and Sandford 1991). For households facing a shortage of land, the higher energy productivity of ensete relative to cereals makes ensete an important food security crop (Rahmato 1995; Tsegaye and Struik 2002). Ensete-based livelihood systems do nonetheless face some fundamental structural weaknesses, and the low protein content of ensete products as compared to cereals leaves individuals vulnerable to protein deficiency as they come to

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rely more heavily on ensete during crisis periods. Like cassava, sago, plantain and some other staples, ensete flour is little more than starch. Ensete-based diets thus need supplementation. People may protect themselves from deficiency through cultural or biological adaptation, and a smart cultural solution may be to combine different ingredients at the same meal to achieve complementarity. Subsistence farmers who grow a root crop in their fields also plant small kitchen gardens with vegetables, fruits and herbs that add interest, and varied nutrients, to otherwise monotonous fare. This silence on ensete – from outside and, more worrying, within national boundaries – clashes with the evidence that today eighteen to twenty million people, 20 per cent of the total population of the country, depend on this plant either as a staple food or as a famine crop. These populations have never starved, even during the tragic droughts of the 1970s and 1980s (Negash and Niehof 2004). The neglect of the ensete food culture certainly points to longstanding nutrition policies that the Ethiopian state has pursued in the making of national cuisine. In the ensete growing areas, which were gradually incorporated into the Ethiopian empire during the last century and a half, the rulers showed a tendency to downgrade root and tuber crops, and to replace them with annual grain crops. The dominant political culture has disseminated itself through the cerealization process, and today this iconic food configuration has set the standard for the country as a whole (McCann 2009: 63–106). Cereals were better for tax collectors since they could be stored, divided and moved, thereby meeting the political needs of an emerging state (McCann 1995: 47). As in the past, in the minds of policy designers the expansion of cereals would allow rapid increase in food production and improve both the quality of nutrition and family income; subsistence root crops, on the contrary, are still thought of as being poor in nutrition, less productive and less responsive to fertilizer applications. In this process of national integration – with native resources appropriated by the state and the growing exclusion from power of societies in the periphery (Markakis 2011: 7) – the Hadiyya zone has accumulated a long history of marginalization. The adoption of plough agriculture and of annual grains has not been smooth and uncontested everywhere. In Hadiyya – and unlike Kaffa, Kambata or Wolayta – there was no structure of nobles, chiefs and kings who could drive the change in food tastes or feel attracted by greater productivity. The Hadiyya, with their legacy of a semi-nomadic lifestyle, were less adaptable to the cerealization process. They were forced to pay taxes for their cattle, and their land was to a large extent designated as owned by the state and administered by the Amhara aristocracy and military. Forced to stop raiding and to adopt sedentary agriculture from neighbouring communities in order to provide the requested tributes, the Hadiyya were looked upon as less depend-

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able by the ruling elites (Braukämper 2012). Cultivating ensete has become, over time, a physical activity that defines a part of who the Hadiyya are and expresses their refusal to submit to simplistic scripts of loyalty and attachment. As with other fringes of the empire, their ‘traditional’ social spaces became the target of top-down approaches to agricultural extension and natural resource management aimed at modernizing as well as redeeming forms conceived of as backward and unruly. These approaches have led to a somewhat tenuous relationship between agricultural extension agents and farmers (Alemu 2011; Berhanu and Poulton 2014). The relationship between peasantry and state has typically been mediated through local officials, and perceived by the people as intrusive, unbalanced and extractive. In particular there has always been little engagement between women and the state (Frank 1999; Pankhurst 1992: 38–49). From an anthropological perspective it is clear that in Ethiopia not all subjects have historically been granted the same ability to articulate a national sense of belonging via food. Marginal groups (and their orphan cuisines) have been ‘invited’ into the nation as long as they comply with highland Ethiopian standards. This trend continues, in revised form, in the National Nutrition Programme where there is no mention of tuber or root crops, let alone of ensete. Researchers are, rather, encouraged to ‘conduct policy and programming related to nutrition, nutrition sensitive value chain and diversification, agricultural technologies on dietary quality of improved seeds, beards and biofortification and laboratory, as well as research on industrial development (food processing, production and fortification)’. But which sort of ‘diversification’ do these guidelines hint at? There are obviously two versions of ‘variety’ at stake here: the indigenous version, which has been experimentative and by its very nature resistant to overspecialization; and the national one, which refers instead to global policies that are increasingly shaped within neoliberal rationalities (Brooks 2014: 17). The National Programme ignores the ingenious garden cultivation which thrives around ensete, wherein the plant is in fact intensively intercropped, especially with pulses, in order to give nutritionally diverse food crops throughout the year; wild foods are gathered; and herbs, vegetables and condiment crops complement grains. Contrary to any rash assumption of an ensete-based diet as being gastronomically stagnant, what I have registered through my ethnographic lens is a cuisine far more colourful and vivid than most outsiders know or acknowledge. From a local point of view, important foods – that is, foods that actually nourish – are ones that provide energy and satisfy taste but also nurture a sense of social coherence and belonging. Good food is an identity-builder that enables growth physiologically and emotionally. The Hadiyya (women) farmers have repeatedly expressed to me the benefits of ensete in their lives.

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They explain that fifty ensete roots, which yield up to forty kilograms of food, could feed a family of five or six for several months. Their devotion to the plant is strong and typically formulated as follows: ‘People here in the village do not eat waasa18 out of necessity, but because they prefer it to other foods, even if the latter are available. If farmers eat waasa it will be digested after a long time, because it gives warmth and energy, and so they will not be hungry. With injera you will be hungry’. And again: ‘the work on ensete is hard, but we women love it more than men do: if there is waasa you can eat for many months; if at home there is t’eff, it soon vanishes. Fifty kilos of t’eff go in just two weeks. Men do not think in these terms; they do not understand the value of ensete. They are interested in the immediate income; the women, on the contrary, have a long-term view’. The consumption of foodstuffs other than ensete is explained not only in terms of a sense of repletion/depletion, but of healthy/unhealthy eating. They feel that injera is not as good as waasa: injer’ nakkohane – that is, injera disturbs (literally ‘touches’) your stomach, while waas’ nakkoyo – you cannot get sick with ensete bread. Despite their creativity in incorporating and reassembling new crops and ingredients into more traditional structures of taste, the Hadiyya seem to constantly look for, and highly praise, repetition and redundancy, whether in cuisine or in their small-scale agricultural choices. Teachers, on the contrary, at school encourage children to eat different foodstuffs in order to achieve, as expressed through a standard scientific agenda, a nutritionally diverse basket of energy, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. These promoted foods are meant to let a gentle national breeze refresh the remote rural areas: meat (possibly chicken) which the poor cannot afford even on a monthly, let alone a weekly basis; lentil sauce, a preferred staple in the North; eggs, which the Hadiyya use to sell in the market; pasta and rice; fruits and fruit juices, which I have never seen in any shop in the nearest town; and high-quality t’eff for making an equally ‘straight’ injera bread. Younger generations, following on from their teachers’ recommendation on the globalized value of variety, are now striving hard to ‘educate’ their parents and grandparents about the benefits of a modern diet. I was told by a young man that the cafeteria of Waachamo University (Hadiyya zone) usually provides students with a breakfast menu comprised of rice, pasta, injera fir-fir,19 and fruit jam or peanut butter with bread. Most of the young people living in the village community where I did my fieldwork cannot afford to enjoy the on-campus cafeterias, be it in Waachamo or in Addis Ababa, where they are typically served ye tsom beyaynetu20 or pasta (spaghetti or macaroni). They therefore bring their lunchbox from home and ask their mothers to fill it up with injera and vegetables wot21 or with injera fir-fir. When they have to stay at school until late in the afternoon, the teachers

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take a close look at the contents of the lunchbox, and if it is found that food is repetitive, they will ask the mother to come in and reprimand her for not cooking in the spirit of variety, or even ask her to move the children to another school.22 As an alternative, to escape the inspection, poorer students walk back home, and in this case, out of judgemental sight, they have ensete bread with vegetables. Several women sighed and explained to me that ‘our children now refuse to bring waasa to school, and they only eat it at home with us’. Yerusalem, the fifteen-year-old daughter of my foster mother Shita, recounts that ‘some of my brothers and sisters go to school with their lunchbox, but it is hard to keep up with the standards. In private schools they have got strict rules, according to which students should bring meat three times a week; lentils once; and then alternate between eggs, cheese, pasta, rice and fruit. But my family cannot afford the expenses. This is why most students choose to go to public schools, where there are two shifts and you can run back home to grab a meal. Only wealthy families can send their children to private schools’. Yerusalem concludes that ‘young people do not want to bring waasa to school because they feel ashamed of it; but they would if the school were in the village, and not in the nearest town’. This story tells us that school meals may become a form of techno-politics. In formal educational institutions, particularly at private schools, students are encouraged to embrace ‘modern’ standards and food habits: on the one side, there is the Western-style modernity flagged by foods coming from abroad, and imaginatively linked with notions of privilege and wealth (macaroni and peanut butter); on the other, we find a nationally constructed idea of what being a modern citizen should entail – that is, learning a structure of taste which revolves around injera as the common ground for the palate as well as for achieving a full sense of Ethiopianness. None of these versions include a public appreciation of ensete food culture as a prized regional variation, or as a local flavour to be preserved and disseminated. More broadly, these testimonies touch upon the issue of self-representation and citizenship: how can young people feel that they are part of the nation if the approved type of meal configuration does not capture the story of the ensete – its dignity, salience, resilience and comforting taste – into the national basket? At present ensete growers remain invisible from the public gaze as innovators in food production/processing. A perceived lack of interest in ensete from agricultural development agencies has fed to these populations a sense of stigma and moral shame, as well as anxiety and discontent. Centuries-old misunderstandings, stereotypes and ideological confusions surrounding ensete need to be tackled head-on to regain the confidence of the ensete producers. For this reason, much public awareness work needs to be done to clearly highlight the archaeological and ethno-historical dimensions of ensete pro-

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duction; the impact of national and international policies (past and present) on ensete production; and the current conditions of ensete-producing peoples. Ensete is a subsistence crop of the poor and one that has been so far severely underutilized. Its flexibility of combined use-value and exchange-value offers a spectrum of possibilities to smallholder economic sustainability. At a slow pace, and against the flow of the dominant narrative of nutrition (and scientific agriculture) as merely ‘progress’, there is growing interest in the potential of ensete as a sustainable food source for Ethiopia, leading to arguments that increased land allocation for the crop would benefit household nutrition (Amede, Stroud and Aune 2004). Ethiopian indigenous plants, wild and famine foods, may indeed represent a valuable and sustainable option to improve domestic food security. Modern agricultural systems that promote cultivation of a very limited number of crop species have relegated key indigenous/ staple crops to the status of neglected and underutilized crop species (NUCS). Staple foods of the wealthy world (wheat, barley, rice, maize and so on) have undergone sophisticated breeding programmes to improve their yields and the convenience of harvesting them. But poor countries often have other staples, and these have not usually been subject to such research interests, investment and funding (Powell et al. 2015: 546). And even though it might be possible to improve underutilized crops significantly through breeding and agronomic research for food security, the question remains: is there a collective will and focus to achieve this (Mayes et al. 2012: 1077)? Research into the hidden world of ensete gardens would most likely contribute to improving the nutritional base of Ethiopians, but would also shed new light on deficiencies that ensete growers have developed not so much in terms of physical health as in terms of self-representation and participation in the national banquet. The case of ensete growers in Ethiopia, similar to the stories of other small farmers in developing countries, offers an alternative narrative framework. Where ecosystems are densely interconnected with social relationships, nutritional health cannot be traded for cuisine and pleasure in food – and belonging remains central for cultural food security (Rocha and Simone Liberato 2013: 590–91).

Do Nations Have Stomachs? Such a question was raised by Paul Nugent (2010) and in turn echoes a rhetorical question posed by Ernest Gellner (1996) as to whether a sense of national identity can be forged through everyday acts of consumption – a perspective that might be defined as nationalism ‘from below’. What does it mean to be a member of the nation? Nation-building has been conventionally described

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as a political project built on symbols and repertoires such as flags, anthems, monuments, sport, education, art and festivals. It has been argued that ‘to make a nation is to make people national. Through the promotion of standardized languages, national (and nationalist) educational curricula, military conscription and taxation … the nation, or people, are made one with their state’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008: 536–37). Educational, media, governmental, cultural, religious and other institutions can be formally or informally arranged according to national logics; ‘these institutions present those who encounter them with a menu of nationally defined options’ (ibid.: 542). The nation, however, is not simply the product of macro-structural forces; people engage and enact (or protest) nationhood and nationalism in the varied contexts of their everyday lives. In Ethiopia, for example, one can legitimately refer to a process of ‘imagining’ the nation through food. Food is readily mobilized by those for whom the creation of narratives is a central focus of their engagement with the political world. Yet, if food plays an important role in imagining and recounting nations, at the same time it may also problematize the ‘national’. The crucial link crafted between diet and nationalism, between taste and power, becomes apparent when considering public nutrition, wherein diets are modelled with the aim of ensuring nutritional efficiency. National authorities shape citizens’ diets by promoting approved forms of eating, market participation, sociality and commensality. In doing so, they set aside the opportunity to propose pluralistic symbols/menus, relevant to all, that could redefine the national imaginaries. This chapter addresses this gap by envisioning an alternative future in which diversity is endorsed and validated through an inclusive education – starting from the appreciation of the nutritional, as well as visual and sensual, characteristics of different culinary traditions. Exploring the role of food in the making of the Ethiopian nation-state, especially in terms of public nutrition, brings to the fore new political possibilities of promotion and distribution of natural resources and repertoires of knowledge. A compelling policy question should be advocated in relation to the role that education (especially in peripheral or marginalized communities) might play in nation-building through more inclusive policies that promote the everyday life dimension, where people strive not only to avoid hunger and disease but also for quality in life, tastes and flavours that do matter to them, and a full sense of belonging. An investigation of nation-building in Ethiopia from the vantage point of educational institutions would let school meals (or even the lunchbox) emerge as dense and complex objects – that is, as an extension of the government’s influence on how children (and ‘good’ citizens) are raised, and therefore as an ideological state apparatus. An important next stage would be to advocate for

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dietary guidelines that not so much contain prescriptive/deliberative instructions, but rather function as an aspirational genre. Nutrition manifestos can be rhetorically well equipped to accommodate the different needs, interests and values of the various eating cultures that produce them and to which they are addressed. A great deal of insight into this poetics of locality can be achieved by collecting food diaries of what students eat at home and at school in order to detect the relevance of local variations; and by eventually designing a holistic food security planning system which strategically integrates ensete or other subsistence crops as regional ‘buffer crops’. Initiatives can be promoted regarding the cultivation of awareness, and expanding the concept of citizenship. For example, students could be introduced to food studies through classroom exercises based on gustatory and olfactory familiarization of different local/regional flavours. Vegetables and different types of grains or tuber crops from various regions could be regularly included as a culinary component in school meals. Through these methods and associations, a comprehensive understanding of the nation as it relates to food would be nurtured, and children would gain a more palatable sense of self, place and belonging within their environment. By consuming products associated with their own or alternative/ unexplored localities, an inherent sense of radically different forms of humanity simmering under the national surface would be fostered through the fundamental act of eating. As significantly pointed out in the National Nutrition Programme, another constructive strategy would consist of increasing the proportion of primary schools with school gardens. Which plants should be grown in the garden remains nonetheless a delicate matter of debate that the official document does not discuss in any detail. If diversity is key to small farmers’ survival, then the issue becomes how to make their native way of life economically viable, that is, how to possibly integrate native crops into the market. Another promising line of research may focus on how to improve the yield and robustness of native crops. The dominant truth of nutritionism is increasingly challenged by critical scholarship which is committed to rehabilitating indigenous, wild and famine foods (particularly the devalued roots and tubers), and which emphasizes the current lack of data on their nutrient composition. If data are available for underutilized crops and traditional foods, they are not always of a high standard (Powell et al. 2015: 544). This agroecological perspective frames underutilized crops as part of a food mix for a particular region, rather than as ‘stand-alone’ crops; combinations of underutilized crops should be envisaged as additions to the existing staples in order to better elucidate connections between biodiversity and nutrition. To legislators, food policy is viewed almost exclusively as a pragmatic matter, yet understanding complex biocultural food systems and landscapes

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will require thinking about food as more than just calories. Nutrition can be taken seriously without devolving into nutritionism. Equally unexplored in literature is the knowledge and use of wild plants, and their role in providing important micronutrients in the diet. Little or nothing is reported about spices, despite the fact that they can be rich in vitamins, antioxidants and carminatives. Also sitting on the border of food and medicine are the various social plants, for example stimulants such as coffee and tea, which are used to cement social relationships, whether or not they are consumed with other foods. Even when a substance is not consumed for its nutritional value, it may have important effects on nutrition; an African millet beer, thick and unclarified, is an inexpensive source of nutrients (calcium, iron, and vitamins B and C). Yet the consumption of alcohol is generally forgotten in research on nutrition. Even items that are chewed, but not normally swallowed, can have an impact on health. The people themselves may recognize these ‘non-food’ items as food. It is also worth noting that some foods may present such a high density of food components as to reduce the required food variety and biodiversity. Ensete can be accounted for as an exquisite social plant with ramifications from alimentary to agricultural to spiritual; and ultimately as a powerful actor exhibiting the ability to influence human society in profound ways (Peveri 2015). Much more than a famine-avoiding plant, it exemplifies the diverse culture of Southern Ethiopia that could never be simplistically co-opted or signified into a unified national identity or monoculture. Monocropping is a choice strongly at odds with Africa’s historical cultivation patterns (McCann 2005: 208), and this is even more true for ensete cultivation, which is a mode of production, and indeed a way of life, imbued with a passion for botanical combination and with experimentation in the social fabric. Having the potential to accommodate new crops and to keep options open, ensete teems with, and disseminates, bio-social diversity, instilling an opportunistic rather than a fundamentalist ethos in agricultural, as well as religious and political, performances.23 The plural forms of attachment instantiated by ensete and its human-plant ecology are best summarized in the oft-heard phrase of farmers when they refer to their ensete gardens as being outstandingly ‘beautiful’. The term unfolds an overall cultural aesthetic. According to older generations in different ensete-growing areas, ensete is the life of the people, a sign of household beauty and a symbol of respect for the family (MacEntee et al. 2013; Quinlan et al. 2015: 331–32). Ensete is harvested in working groups formed along kinship lines; it reinvigorates community feeling by being lent, exchanged or bartered. Such a notion of beauty articulates complementary and inseparable layers of signification: from its aesthetic, to its ethical, agronomic, and even

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philosophical components. For ensete growers, beauty is achieved by cultivating more diversity in their home gardens, but also in their life and within their social networks. In places where humans and plants are mutually constituted and co-evolving, forming part of an animate landscape, the loss of biodiversity can be seen as a loss of potential adaptation to the future as well as social suffering and disruption. Will nationalist imperatives, and a technical vision of agrarian politics, be able to capitalize on this rich and highly integrated way of being-in-the-world? Gendered and intergenerational distinctions, regional varieties and contrasting memories may easily go unrecorded when food is reduced to edible nation branding. This chapter calls for the resolution of the tension between ‘the centre’ and its culinary margins into a creative energy – wherein ‘the concept of “unity in diversity” is reflected in the bowl’ (Nugent 2010: 105). Expanded citizenship and a balance of exogenous and indigenous flavours, of local and improved varieties, might indeed open up new lines of inquiry for breaking cycles of food insecurity, of hidden and chronic hunger. Most importantly, a radical approach to the creation of agroecological resilience, and in turn of a diverse diet, would help develop a taste for genuine diversity at different levels. It would lay the ground for ‘a politics that stands opposed to nutritionism, to technocratic rule, to the discounting of women’s knowledge or peer-to-peer networks, to the questioning of long-held hierarchies of power, a politics in which ideas of nutrition matter, but are subordinate to ideas of equality and democracy’ (Patel et al. 2015: 32). Valentina Peveri is an anthropologist and adjunct professor at The American University of Rome (AUR). She has a PhD (2007) from Bologna University. Since 2004 she has been carrying out fieldwork in Southern Ethiopia. Her research spans the subfields of environmental, gendered and biocultural anthropology. She was lecturer and research fellow at the University of Bologna (2007– 2015); a consultant at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT); and the recipient of a Fulbright Research Scholarship, which she spent at the African Studies Center, Boston University (2015–2016). In 2017, Prof. Peveri was awarded a Hunt Post-Doctoral fellowship by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (2018–2019) for the writing-up of a book entitled The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia: An Ethnographic Journey into Beauty and Hunger (University of Arizona Press, 2020). She has edited and published several other books, among them L’albero delle donne: Etnografia nelle piantagioni e cucine d’Etiopia (I Libri di Emil, 2012), and also many chapters and papers on her Ethiopia research.

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Notes The writing of this chapter was made possible by a Fulbright Fellowship which I spent at the African Studies Center, Boston University, MA, between October 2015 and April 2016. 1. Cassava works the same way, by tilting ‘food intake radically toward protein-poor, vitamin-deficient starch and fiber. But its heavy, bulky tubers provide a long-lasting underground store of calories that is also resistant to drought, locusts, or grasshoppers. (The Luo of Kenya figuratively call it dero oko: the “granary outside” the homestead, for when the real granaries run dry)’ (Shipton 1990: 360). 2. T’eff [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is a fine grain native to Ethiopia. Injera is the thin, round flatbread prepared by fermenting batter made from t’eff flour and cooking it on a griddle. It originates from the North but nowadays is widespread in other areas of the country. Since the beginning it has been considered a sign of assimilation into the national culture. 3. As in most African countries, those foods eaten by the urban rich, including items such as spaghetti and rice, differ to those eaten in rural areas where cereals (such as t’eff, maize, sorghum and millet) or root/tuber crops (such as ensete) predominate. 4. This optimistic and ‘technical’ view of agricultural development is contrasted with a critical literature according to which the pursuit of food security through increased agricultural production may work indeed against the long-term goals of achieving both food production as well as ecosystem integrity and resilience (Brooks 2014; Messer 2001; Peveri 2016). Much agroecological work seeks to bring Western scientific knowledge into respectful dialogue with local/indigenous knowledge that farmers use in managing ecological processes in existing agroecosystems. Recently this hybrid science has evolved to include the social and economic dimensions of food systems. For an overview of the agroecological development paradigm, see Altieri, Funes-Monzote and Petersen 2011. 5. The information is based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region of Ethiopia. Since 2004 I have been conducting research in the Hadiyya zone, paying annual visits of several weeks or months each year up until March 2015. The work has required daily presence in the field for long periods, to build trust with the community; as well as key informant interviews with Ethiopian officials at different levels, including representatives of community elders, k’ebele (municipal) administrators, development agents and district agricultural officials. 6. Nutritional programmes place particular emphasis on their productive effects, and policy documents overflow with dictates of efficiency (Fuster et al. 2013: 309; Hirvonen and Hoddinott 2014). 7. Not available online. 8. https://www.iapb.org/wp-content/uploads/Ethiopia_National-School-Health-Nutri tion-Strategy.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). 9. https://www.fantaproject.org/sites/default/files/resources/Ethiopia-PRO FILES-2012-Estimates-Sep2013.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). 10. Cf. the following citations: ‘It is estimated that investing in nutrition can increase a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by at least 3 percent annually (World Bank 2006). Furthermore, every US$1 spent on reducing malnutrition has at least a US$30 return on investment (World Bank 2006; Copenhagen Consensus 2012)’. And again: ‘If stunting levels remain unchanged during 2012–2025 at the current high level, pro-

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11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

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ductivity losses related to stunting would be around US$25 billion. Productivity losses related to adult iron deficiency anemia would be about US$2 billion if this problem remained unchanged, and if there was no improvement in iodine deficiency there would be related economic productivity losses of US$5 billion’. http://www.ephi.gov.et/images/pictures/National%20Food%20Consumption%20 Survey%20Report_Ethiopia.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). https://prime-ethiopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Nutrition%20Baseline%20 Report_GRAD.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). https://www.globalgiving.org/pfil/20475/projdoc.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). https://www.ephi.gov.et/images/pictures/download2009/National_MNS_report.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). For most reports, families had to provide answers for technical registers to be filled out by home improvement experts detailing information on the family’s consumption of proteins and other nutrients, family illnesses, hygiene and patterns of recreation. The utility or futility of these surveys has yet to be explored in order to determine whether the data collected have ever been processed or analysed to reach any consistent results. https://extranet.who.int/nutrition/gina/sites/default/files/ETH%202013%20Na tional%20Nutrition%20Programme.pdf (accessed 27 February 2020). Research on biofortified varieties of maize began at the Mexico-based CIMMYT in the 1960s, providing the foundation for the Quality Protein Maize (QPM) programme that has continued from the 1970s to the present day (cf. Brooks and Johnson-Beebout 2012). A non-dehydrated fermented product of ensete from mixtures of decorticated pseudostems and pulverised corms; when steam baked, the flat bread is also called waasa. A combination of shredded injera, berbere (hot spice blend), shallots and clarified butter. A mixed vegetarian plate that consist of injera as well as split peas stew, lentil salad, spicy split red lentils stew, fresh collard greens and a blend of potatoes, carrots and ground chickpeas. Stews made with a base of shallots, dry-fried or sautéed in oil. Other studies have underscored the punitive manner of nutrition educators in addressing these issues, ‘telling people they should not eat these “bad” foods. By contrast, the focus group narratives suggest that local individuals hold much more nuanced understandings of “good” versus “bad” foods’ (Fuster et al. 2013: 310). The attitude of the Hadiyya towards formal institutions is tellingly revealed in their religious trajectory. When they were conquered by Emperor Menelik II, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Hadiyya were mostly Fandaano, an autochthonous religion blended with Muslim elements (see Braukämper 2014). Later on, around 1950, a large number of people converted to Orthodox Christianity, which bore the stamp of the conquerors. Since the 1970s, in an act of unspoken criticism, they have massively turned to Neo-Pentecostal churches in search, once more, of resources and alternative routes to modernity.

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Gellner, Ernest. 1996. ‘Do Nations Have Navels?’ Nations and Nationalism 2(3): 366–70. Guinand, Yves, and Dechassa Lemessa. 2000. ‘Wild Food Plants in Southern Ethiopia: Reflections on the Role of “Famine Foods” at a Time of Drought’. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: UNDP-EUE Filed Mission Report. Hildebrand, Elisabeth Anne. 2010. ‘A Tale of Two Tuber Crops: How Attributes of Enset and Yams May Have Shaped Prehistoric Human-Plant Interactions in Southwest Ethiopia’, in Tim Denham, José Iriarte, and Luc Vrydaghs (eds), Rethinking Agriculture: Archeological and Ethnoarcheological Perspectives. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp. 273–98. Hirvonen, Kalle, and John Hoddinott. 2014. Agricultural Production and Children’s Diets: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (Working Paper 69). Ilcan, Suzan, and Lynne Phillips. 2003. ‘Making Food Count: Expert Knowledge and Global Technologies of Government’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 40(4): 441–61. Kefale, Alemu, and Stephen Sandford. 1991. Enset in North Omo Region. Addis Ababa: FARM-Africa (Farmer Participatory Research - Technical Pamphlet No. 1). Kimura, Aya Hirata. 2013. Hidden Hunger: Gender and the Politics of Smarter Foods. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lappé, Frances Moore, Jennifer Clapp, Molly Anderson, Robin Broad, Ellen Messer, Thomas Pogge, and Timothy Wise. 2013. ‘How We Count Hunger Matters’, Ethics and International Affairs 27(3): 251–59. MacEntee, Katie, Jennifer Thompson, Sirawdink Fikreyesus, and Kemeru Jihad. 2013. ‘Enset is a Good Thing: Gender and Enset in Jimma Zone, Ethiopia’, Ethiopian Journal of Applied Sciences and Technology (special issue) 1: 103–9. Markakis, John. 2011. Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers. Oxford: James Currey. Mayes, S., F.J. Massawe, P.G. Alderson, J.A. Roberts, S.N. Azam-Ali, and M. Hermann. 2012. ‘The Potential for Underutilized Crops to Improve Security of Food Production’, Journal of Experimental Botany 63(3): 1075–79. McCann, James. 1995. People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia, 1800–1990. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 2005. Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500–2000. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine. Athens: Ohio University Press. Messer, Ellen. 2001. ‘Food Systems and Dietary Perspectives: Are Genetically Modified Organisms the Best Way to Ensure Nutritionally Adequate Food?’ Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 9(1): 65–90. Negash, Almaz, and Anke Niehof. 2004. ‘The Significance of Enset Culture and Biodiversity for Rural Household Food and Livelihood Security in Southwestern Ethiopia’, Agriculture and Human Values 21(1): 61–71. Nugent, Paul. 2010. ‘Do Nations Have Stomachs? Food, Drink and Imagined Community in Africa’, Africa Spectrum 45(3): 87–113. Pankhurst, Helen. 1992. Gender, Development and Identity: An Ethiopian Study. London: Zed Books. Patel, R., R. Bezner Kerr, L. Shumba, and L. Dakishoni. 2015. ‘Cook, Eat, Man, Woman: Understanding the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, Nutritionism and Its Alternatives from Malawi’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 42(1): 21–44.

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Peveri, Valentina. 2015. ‘The Exquisite Political Fragrance of Enset: Silent Protest in Southern Ethiopia through Culinary Themes and Variations’, PACO. The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies 8(2): 555–84. ———. 2016. ‘Ghosts of Hunger: An Anthropological View of Agricultural Intensification in Southwestern Ethiopia’, Program for the Study of the African Environment (PSAE) Research Series No. 13. Boston, MA: African Studies Center. Powell, Bronwen, Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, Amy Ickowitz, Celine Termote, Terry Sunderland, and Anna Herforth. 2015. ‘Improving Diets with Wild and Cultivated Biodiversity from Across the Landscape’, Food Security 7(3): 535–54. Quinlan, Robert J., Marsha B. Quinlan, Samuel Dira, Mark Caudell, Amalo Sooge, and Awoke Amzaye Assoma. 2015. ‘Vulnerability and Resilience in Sidama Enset and Maize Farms in Southwest Ethiopia’, Journal of Ethnobiology 35(2): 314–36. Rahmato, Dessalegn. 1995. ‘Resilience and Vulnerability: Enset Agriculture in Southern Ethiopia’, Journal of Ethiopian Studies 28(1): 23–51. Rocha, Cecilia, and Rita Simone Liberato. 2013. ‘Food Sovereignty for Cultural Food Security’, Food, Culture and Society 16(4): 589–602. Sanabria, Emilia, and Emily Yates-Doerr. 2015. ‘Alimentary Uncertainties: From Contested Evidence to Policy’, BioSocieties 10(2): 117–24. Scoones, Ian, and John Thompson. 2011. ‘The Politics of Seed in Africa’s Green Revolution: Alternative Narratives and Competing Pathways’, IDS Bulletin 42(4): 1–23. Scrinis, Gyorgy. 2008. ‘On the Ideology of Nutritionism’, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 8(1): 39–48. Shipton, Parker. 1990. ‘African Famines and Food Security: Anthropological Perspectives’, Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 353–94. Tsegaye, Admasu, and P.C. Struik. 2002. ‘Analysis of Enset (Ensete Ventricosum) Indigenous Production Methods and Farm-Based Biodiversity in Major Enset-Growing Regions in Southern Ethiopia’, Experimental Agriculture 38(3): 291–315. Von Braun, Joachim, and Tolulope Olofinbiyi. 2007. ‘Famine and Food Insecurity in Ethiopia’, in Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Fuzhi Cheng (eds), Food Policy for Developing Countries: Case Studies, Case Study #7-4, http://cip.cornell.edu/dns.gfs/1200428184.

CHAPTER 12

Power Relations in Suri Rhetoric in Public Speech and Action Jon Abbink       

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. —John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Introduction In this chapter I explore the relation between rhetoric, power and culture, based on empirical examples taken from Southern Ethiopian agro-pastoralists: the Suri people. The importance of dominance, power inequalities and different cultural repertoires as ‘constraining’ rhetorical efficiency in social life is too obvious to ignore. Examining the unfolding of rhetoric in this highly ritualized, smallscale society1 can contribute to the understanding of the production of rhetoric as a foundational social phenomenon. In general, what does rhetoric, a key human discursive strategy in human interaction, achieve, and what is its scope? It is certainly, as George Kennedy (1998: 4) has suggested, a ‘natural phenomenon’, a universal faculty of humans and even – in non-verbal form – of non-human animals (e.g. apes), and it is partly constitutive of ‘culture’ and social relations. In one powerful interpretation, rhetoric shapes the boundaries of community, of a society’s public consciousness, and also of religious identities. It may be said to be instrumental in the process of acquiring certain kinds of knowledge, of ‘coming to know’, so

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to speak. But is rhetoric an autonomous dimension, and is it epistemic, that is, knowledge-generating, or even creating the conditions of possibility of (truthfully) knowing? This position holds that ‘truth is forged via negotiation, is generated by the transaction among the speaker/writer, the listener/reader, and the constraints of the particular rhetorical situation’.2 The debate on ‘rhetoric as epistemic’, started by Robert Scott in 1967 (see also Scott 1976) and based on the claim that rhetoric is a ‘way of knowing’ in situations of uncertainty, has passed, and opinions still differ (see Schroeder 2001; Harpine 2004). It is important to refer to this point in view of the claim that ‘culture’ is primarily a rhetorical construction. Let me add my modest voice to the chorus and express scepticism on this thesis of rhetoric as being epistemic. When we want to analyse social relations and rhetoric, there is a need to firmly ground our descriptions and analyses of how rhetoric works, via a realist analysis of political and socio-economic settings that condition the appeal or effectiveness of rhetoric and shape the critical claims made by various groups. Descriptive accounts of the manifold aspects of rhetoric as a pan-human activity or capacity surely reveal its versatility as a feature of communication. Indeed, human disputes, differences or consensus are always expressed in spoken, written or gestured rhetoric. But reference should of course be made to those realities that are the issue of dispute, competition and conflicts of interest and in which rhetoric performances are set. Such realities exist beyond their rhetorical construction, although they are contested during the latter. I do not want to offer a full-fledged theory, but only to try and explore ways to go beyond the presentation of rhetorical ingenuities and strategies in various social contexts, and take a more explanatory approach to how rhetoric and (other) social realities interact (for more on this, see our Introduction). First, I briefly explore the key terms in more detail. Rhetoric in the classical Aristotelian sense is the art of identifying and applying (in speech or in writing) the best means of persuasion, indirectly inducing people to action. While rhetoric might have been seen as a conscious application of rhetorical principles or strategies to convince and persuade an audience whatever the cause or purpose – for example by the Sophists, Schopenhauer’s ‘eristische Dialektik’ (1994), and also our modern-day lawyers3 – anthropologically speaking it is recognized that people cross-culturally use conventions and strategies of persuasive discourse as a prime means of communication and community construction. The durability of Aristotle’s definition is remarkable: after centuries of critical debate, most modern authors still uphold the essence of his idea. Rhetoric culture theory wants to widen this conception. Following Humboldt, George Kennedy’s well-known and interesting definition of rhetoric is often referred to, as relating to ‘the energy inherent in communication’ (Kennedy

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1998: 7), or as ‘a form of mental and emotional energy’ (ibid.: 3–4). This view provides a fascinating extension of rhetoric as a social phenomenon, but is perhaps too wide. More often than not, humans use, or are susceptible to, rhetoric in the classic and more limited Aristotelian sense to construct their universe and their social relations with the tactics of persuasion. The wider definitions of rhetoric à la Kennedy lack a critical, cognitive dimension: rhetoric here is not seen as argumentative language/discourse about reality, but holistically, as the expressive, energetic discourse of human social interaction.4 Another definition is that of Cherwitz and Hikins (1986: 62), who say: ‘Rhetoric is the art of describing reality through language’. Here the element of applying persuasive technique, which seems elementary for any definition of the concept, is lacking, and I am not sure if this really is what rhetoric itself is. This is again a very broad, catch-all definition. The only interesting thing they bring is that in their view, ‘the study of rhetoric becomes an effort to understand how humans, in various capacities and in a variety of situations, describe reality through language’ (ibid.). But the point is that what that reality really is, or how it works, is not only determined in rhetoric, unless we identify reality completely with its reflection in human discourse in all its forms. As to the role of ‘culture’, in the above definitions rhetoric is recognized as a human universal because it is naturally given in speech – although it differs in its referential content. Rhetorical styles thus vary with specific cultural traditions or repertoires as to content but not as to form. Rhetorical efficiency is based on shared underlying speech metaphors and discourse techniques across cultures that have some formal properties or recurring structures of expression like analogy, simile, metonymy and metaphor, rooted in the nature of human speech and psychology. Nevertheless, the cultural specificity and context-dependency make transcultural understanding of rhetoric difficult, as Kennedy has demonstrated in his fascinating book Comparative Rhetoric (1998). Communicability and understanding across cultural contexts are usually overestimated. If we see ‘cultures’ (always in quote marks) as distinguishable repertoires of meaning and behaviour with which people have grown up, situating them in place and time, then we may see them as the results of rhetorical competition: ensembles of metaphors and representations that have congealed and inform people’s thought and action. These cultural notions and traditions are reproduced in the actual rhetorical performances by its members – performances that are shaped by speakers’ material and other interests. I will argue that rhetoric, despite its inherent universal nature, functions mainly as ideology – not false consciousness, but interest-led, socio-culturally shaped, mental activity of humans, resulting in problem-solving but sectional views of reality aimed to ‘persuade’ or gain assent – and as having no direct or necessary relation to action. This approach has respectable roots in political

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anthropology (cf. Parkin 1984). Rhetoric dissimulates and hides as much as it reveals. It induces people to think and act in ways suggested and preferred by the speakers – but has only limited success in this. Rhetoric is rarely autonomous and does not, as a rule, proceed in conditions of full dialogic equality. While it has its own persuasive effects, rhetoric often needs to be backed up with threat, intimidation, sanctions or ultimately the use of force to convert persuasion into corresponding action. An analysis of rhetoric as ideology allows us to connect to differing interests and inequalities that form the stuff of human social relations. This view also relates rhetoric to questions of human agency in the wider sense. My simple point is that, apart from describing its manifold properties and workings, we always have to analyse rhetoric as used in conjunction with these inequalities of a political and socio-economic nature, as seen and conceptualized by people as members of society. It is therefore not fully epistemic or ‘knowledge-generating’, but rather validates and reshapes existing ideas, beliefs and representations.5 Human activity and the world in which it is situated cannot be reduced, as the critical rhetoric movement would have it (cf. Hariman 1991), to rhetoric. We need, rather, a social theory of rhetoric as dialectic, seeing it as part of wider societal dialogues and struggles, based on deliberative logic and arguments of different interested parties pursued in other spheres of discourse as well (cf. Myerson’s approach, 1994; also Cherwitz and Hikins 1986: 12). Hereby, analysing the ‘frame’, a Batesonian concept famously developed by Erving Goffman (1974), is all-important. The frame of action and communication consists of elements constituting the ‘definition of the situation’ for the people involved. I would like to illustrate these points with a presentation and analysis of some fragments of local cultural discourse in a small-scale South Ethiopian society traditionally without a written language, the Suri, in its relation to national discourse or socio-political metaphor that the Ethiopian state authorities usually exhibit in relations with subaltern or minority groups. It may be interesting to see these two levels of rhetoric ‘meet’ in political settings where the local society is faced with these representatives of the state, who try to bring in a new mode of modernist and hegemonic discourse. They aim to implant the codes and procedures of the state in local society, but often bypass or ignore local realities in doing so. For instance, the state administration has little esteem for the organizing details of Suri culture, such as homicide compensation rules, initiation ritual or burial rites. I will discuss the rhetoric of daily life in Suri society only in passing, primarily because Suri social relations and self-identity are marked by rapidly intensifying contacts with the wider Ethiopian society and with state representatives that have become dominant and even disturbing. Another aspect

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of change not discussed here is the quite radical change in rhetorical style that is occurring among Suri under the impact of the Christian worldview, introduced since the mid 1990s and modifying ideas of causality, personality, group consciousness and even sociality within Suri society.

The Problematic Insertion of a Minority in a Modernizing State: The Suri People The socio-political situation of the Suri people (locally called ‘Surma’ by neighbours, and consisting of two subgroups, the Tirmaga and the Chai) of Southwestern Ethiopia is as follows. They are a non-literate society of some thirty-four thousand shifting cultivators/cattle herders in the savannah-bush land of Southwestern Ethiopia, around the town of Maji, living in villages ranging in size from a hundred to a few thousand people. Their lowland area has precarious rainfall and livelihood insecurity but rarely famine. Married women, as central to the house- or ‘hearth’ holds, are influential in daily social life, agricultural work, petty trade relations (selling local beer, preparing food items, making pottery), and in beer-drinking gatherings and general socializing. The Suri maintained distinctiveness as a relatively independent sociopolitical unit in a marginal border area. On a micro-political level, the Suri have their own decision-making forums, male-dominated public assemblies (mèzi), although these are under pressure from the Surma District Council, a government organ in place since the mid-1990s. Next to these periodic assemblies there are other forums of major public rhetoric, such as funerals, weddings and initiation ceremonies – for small children getting a ‘cattle name’, for a girl getting a lip plate inserted, at the installation of a ritual chief, or for a new age-grade. Since the late 1980s, state representatives have tried to connect Suri to national life – in a domineering manner. The modernist project of establishing and locally grounding state authority, especially since 1991, emphasizes formal education, a discourse of ‘settlement’ (Suri should be agrarian cultivators instead of ‘roaming’ nomads/pastoralists), villagization, abandonment of ‘backward customs’ (among which the state authorities include ceremonial stick fighting, female lip plates, scarification of the body, and animal sacrifice), disarming of local people, and so-called self-rule under the tutelage of the new federal state. Under the terms of the 1995 Ethiopian Constitution, the Suri are recognized as a separate ethnic group, with ‘its own cultural and linguistic rights’. But this means representation and co-optation in the regional administrative structures and one seat under the ruling party in the 547-seat Federal Parliament of the Ethiopian republic.

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In the 1980s, several dozen Suri young men served in the Derg army of the pre-1991 Mengistu regime and were the first to learn to speak Amharic due to their national army service. Some have had primary and several dozen some secondary education. More and more kids now go to school. Since about 1995–96, a new generation has been making a ‘political career’ under the present ethno-federal regime. The influence of the younger generation on the traditional political and social system of the Suri is growing, as they become agents of the Ethiopian state, tending to reproduce its discourse on ‘development’. The special Surma woreda (district) and the corresponding ‘Surma Council’ were created by the Southern Ethiopian Regional State government, meant to act as a kind of local authority. Council members receive a government salary. In the Maji area of Ethiopia, the Suri nevertheless have long had a ‘bad reputation’. In recent years, they have been involved in numerous violent conflicts with neighbouring ethno-cultural groups (Dizi, Me’en, Anywa, Toposa, Nyangatom and also the people of mixed origin living in the handful of highland villages in this area; cf. Abbink 2009). They were often unilaterally blamed and labelled ‘unruly, ignorant and uncivilized people’, especially by the highland villagers, state administrators and many Dizi who suffered from Suri raids. In this local discourse, ‘cause and effect’ are often confused: either the Suri were said to be uncivilized because ‘they cannot control their aggression and violence’, or they were violent because they are ‘still uncivilized’. These perceptions are still relatively unchanged today, despite a significant change of government in Ethiopia on the federal level since April 2018, and are evident in policy discourse and measures taken towards this community. The examples of rhetoric from Suri society and from the Ethiopian state to be discussed below will show that people, because of their interests and power relations, move within a specific rhetorical community, not immediately accessible or understandable to outsiders. The rhetoric contains a high level of metonymic expression and synecdoche. People also often become prisoners of their own tropes, and fail to see the lack of resonance of these among other communities, especially when they remain enclave-like, ‘closed’ communities. Among the Suri, this feeling is enhanced because of the very low level of bilingualism. On the basis of the empirical examples, it can be shown that however powerful rhetoric may be in the occasions and settings of its utterance, the orators cannot enforce persuasion and induce people to preferred action. The conditions of power difference, dominance or prestige ranking prevent full oratorical control over the (responses of the) audience. That is, rhetoric cannot preclude leeway for agency of the audiences or conversation partners, agency that contravenes or subverts the intended messages of the performance. This holds for mixed cultural settings but also for ‘intra-cultural’ ones.

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Rhetoric Performance: Suri and the State Suri have a keen sense of rhetoric and might be said to adhere to an Aristotelian definition of it (see above). This is shown by the fact that rhetorical performance most often takes place in certain settings which ‘need’ persuasive talk and the exercise of influence: a public debate, a divination session, a funeral ceremony, a wedding, mediation talk or a duelling contest. We may of course for theoretical reasons declare as rhetoric any natural discourse among Suri or other non-literate groups, such as in family settings, common beer drinking, work parties or at other social gatherings, but that would obliterate the Suri awareness of distinction. Their term for public speech to persuade others is lògò, lit. ‘words’ of some more general, public importance. They also have a clear idea of who are good public speakers or orators. It is seen as a gift that some people have, and there is no training to become a good speaker except by observation and imitation of examples through trial and error. In contexts where Suri people meet representatives of the state, which is still relatively rare, communication is usually through translators and proceeds slowly and in a groping manner. State administrators, in an invariably moralistic or hegemonic way, emphasize the need for Suri to ‘civilize’ – to ‘settle’, to start wearing clothes, to stop ‘nomadism’, to pay taxes, to partake of the wider Ethiopian society and its education system, and to stop ritual and other ‘violence’ against people and animals (e.g. those used for sacrifices). This rhetoric is full of standard normative expressions about equality, civilization, productive labour and so on. On one occasion, in a meeting of Suri elders with the non-Suri local district administrator in 1991 in Koroum village, I witnessed a discussion on violence. It was held just before the end of the civil war in Ethiopia. The administrator, with reference to violent incidents in the area over the past year, had given a speech on the need for peace and obedience, restoring friendly relations of Suri with neighbours, and paying taxes so that ‘services’ could come to the area. He stressed that violent practices like raiding cattle, killing travellers, fighting with their Nyangatom (‘Bume’) neighbours, and also stick duelling (between Suri youngsters of different local groups), were reprehensible and should stop. One Suri then said: … but we are giving you our young men for a war you are fighting for which we don’t know the reason and do not like. Is it not also a job for you, for the Ethiopian government, to stop that violence, that war?

The strategy of the administrator in his reply was evasion and rhetorical reaffirmation of the need to keep the local peace and for the Suri to ‘change their behaviour, so that people do not get used to violence’. Some years later, the

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regional government even declared ceremonial duelling – seen basically as a sport – illegal. In another example, Suri made a special appeal to the state authorities for compensation of lost Suri lives in the civil war. In August 1991 for the first time a soldier contingent of the new national army of the party that had taken power, the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had come down to Maji to make contact with local people and to introduce to them the new national power-holders. This was the beginning of state reassertion after six months of ‘freedom’ (from taxation, judicial orders, police control and so on) and absence of any political administration. The contingent went to meet the Suri in the lowlands and introduce them to the new discourse of ‘ethnic equality and self-determination’, which was the ticket under which the movement EPRDF (led by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front or TPLF) came to power (and where they remain in 2016). The commander told the gathering of Suri (very few young men attended) that the war was over, that ‘Amhara oppression’ (in Amharic they said: yëAmara amba-guennen) was gone, and that all ethnic groups (behéreseboch) would be equal and in charge of their own local affairs. After this speech, a Suri elder raised his hand and said: This is all good what you said, we understood your words. We have no more war, and no more of our children shall be taken to be sent to a country we do not know and never have seen. Let those return that can return, and let them raise a family and tend the cattle. We ask of you to give us compensation for the children we have lost, for those who have been killed and did not return. The dead have to be compensated for to make peace, to reconcile, and we want your help.

The appeal was rhetorically powerful for those Suri present: the claim to get compensation (in the form of a ‘replacement’ person and/or in heads of cattle) for a victim killed in a dispute is a prime aim of the kin group (clan) of the deceased to restore peace, but a sensitive point to bring up. The elder in this setting defined the Suri as one unit, one claimant group (like a clan), visà-vis the enemy, hereby not specifying who should compensate, the Ethiopian state or the enemy (the Eritrean insurgents). But for the army commander, this issue was incomprehensible and out of place: there was to be no compensation for anything, he said. The Suri as ‘citizens of the state to which we all belong’ had the duty to protect the country and send men to defend it. If they died, no one could be held to account; if they wanted to try, he said, they should rather ask the new Eritrean state (independent since May 1991), and not the Ethiopian government. He thus deflected the entire discussion and told the Suri to forget the whole idea. He hereby implied that their tradition of, and rhetoric about, asking for compensation in case of homicide was useless and irrelevant.

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However, especially in view of the past practice of involuntary, often forced recruitment of young men as soldiers by the state, the Suri did not accept this answer.

Negotiations in Maji: A Deliberation of Suri, State Soldiers, Dizi and Villagers A good case in which to see socio-political rhetoric in action along the lines above (state authorities vs. Suri) was a big public meeting between Suri, state representatives and other ethnic group spokesmen: a ‘reconciliation meeting’ in December 1991,6 called by the new EPRDF army representatives in Maji. The talks were held to bring peace to the area and settle outstanding communal problems between various local groups. Villagers of mixed background (from Maji village) and representatives from three ethnic groups, the Dizi, Me’en and Suri, were present. For many years, Suri had been at loggerheads with the two other groups. Two EPRDF representatives opened the meeting. Their talk was typical ideological rhetoric on the efforts to create ‘peace and harmony’ in the country after the civil war and ‘to end oppression, respecting the rights and duties of nationalities or ethnic groups’, and redrawing of group boundaries. They stressed the importance of reaching inter-community understanding, peace and cooperation. They said: ‘We will hear the grievances and problems of the various groups presented here, and then determine what to do’. First the Dizi representatives spoke. One man gave a good overview of the plight of the Dizi, and even presented a brief ‘list of main crimes by the Surma’, raising the problem of lost property and of husbands, children, wives killed ‘who will never return. This must stop. All of it is unprovoked. We were hosting them [the Suri] on our land in periods of trouble, and now they usurp it and finish us. This is how they pay us back’. A second Dizi speaker (a teacher, working in the Ministry of Education branch in the district capital) gave a survey of Suri aggression, and talked about their lack of self-control and social disarray. He mentioned that the Suri now allegedly made ritual killing marks on their arms when they killed a Dizi. This was a heavy indictment if true, because in the past this was never done, as the Dizi were ritual allies of the Suri. If markings were now made, it meant that the Suri had ‘declared’ the Dizi to be enemies by definition and a legitimate target for looting and wanton killing. Next, a senior Suri man, Woletula Ngorkana, gave a speech. He talked about the problems of the Suri in the Derg time (oppression, lack of support, neglect in times of trouble), and about the Bume (Nyangatom) who always

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attacked them, robbed their cattle and pushed them up into the Dizi foothills. He agreed that ‘solutions should be found’. The government never helped us. Up to that time [i.e. of increased fighting and raiding with new firearms], there were never any problems with the Dizi. The Bume are the cause of all this, killing Suri up to the Sai area, in Ekkedi’s [= the local Suri chief in Sai] country. Also the attack against the Dizi that was mentioned by you [a notorious big raid on the village of Kärsi in 1989, when some forty Dizi were killed in a one-hour attack] came only when the Dizi had provoked us: the wife of a relative of Bolegid’angi, our leader, was killed. Also, our people were killed on the market in Maji: it was not safe for us.

Another Suri speaker added: ‘we have no problem with the Dizi or the government. The problems come from a foreign country’ (meaning Sudan and the Toposa people). He then tried to stall the discussion, talking about things of no substance, and ended: ‘Tell us what is wrong, and we will try to discuss it and prevent it’. After this, a man called Keni Koloru, son of a local chief of the Me’en people living far to the east of the Suri, gave a calm speech about ‘the Surma problem’. He said the Suri had also come to the fringes of their area three years ago, close to the cultivation sites of the Me’en, northeast of Tum town. Suri were also obstructing people on the road to the Jeba market, he said. ‘How is this related to Bume? We see problems, unnecessary things. On several occasions they [Suri] killed our people unprovoked, for instance, a married couple recently. We have trouble in going to the fields, we cannot work there undisturbed. This situation must stop.’ The EPRDF representatives then said: ‘We heard all that was said, on Surma culture, on the unsolved problems, on the incidents. This should all be settled peacefully. Use of weapons cannot be the solution. And we, we are the army, not just any people. We say this to you. The former good relations between the Surma and Dizi should be restored’. The various groups of participants put in some additional questions and remarks. Dizi: ‘Our mining places, beehives, cattle, fields, etc., should be safe to go to. On our land we should have the right to live and to exploit it. We want agriculture and trade in peace with all. Thus, all these [Suri] weapons should be registered and turned in to the authorities’. The EPRDF people then asked the Suri: ‘Now, why don’t you turn in the weapons, which you cannot legally have?’ A Suri man replied: ‘We bought them to fight the Bume and defend the herds’. EPRDF: ‘Do you want to give them back or not?’ The Suri man was hesitant and evasive: ‘Well … we came here to this place as your relatives, and in good faith … We should be able to defend ourselves if the government cannot protect us…’.

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Here confusion and irritated exclamations arose from among the (Dizi) crowd about what they saw as evasiveness. The EPRDF people then said: ‘We heard the information about the Bume problems, but peace here means that weapons should be handed in’. Then there came a speech by one of the soldiers about the EPRDF policy towards nationalities, reaffirming them as ‘all being equal’ and having their own rights in regard to others, not like the Derg policy of suppression, and so on. He compared the historical Amhara–Oromo relationship (presented as one of inequality or exploitation) with the present situation. Now there were (to be) more chances for both; and ‘also in this area, the Surma, Dizi and others should be treated equally, respect each other, and work towards peace. Reconciliation through the elders to correct the bad policies of the past is now necessary. If the Surma do not want peace, then violence may follow. If more problems for Dizi and Tishana [= Me’en] come, this would be a very problematic development for all’. A Suri spokesman said: ‘We do not want to die, we want to live in peace, in good relations only. Many things were not yet said, and don’t need to be said … If you want reconciliation, we will try your proposal [to turn in the weapons]. If there are problems, just come to us to talk’. The EPRDF representative: ‘There is a simple way to make peace and reconcile. We will continue our discussions later. Consider the present proposal for real reconciliation’. This exchange shows two or three different strands of rhetoric, one of the state representatives, talking in general ideological terms about the need for peace, harmony and group respect, one of the villagers and the Dizi, and one of the Suri, as the main ‘accused’ as disturbers of local peace. The debate was not really what it purported to be: a dialogic and deliberative exchange between interested parties. The representatives of the other two ethnic groups joined the villagers in taking the Suri to account, picturing them as trouble-makers in the eyes of the soldiers who had to decide. The Suri response was a strategy of denial, reformulation of the issue and shifting the blame towards the group making life difficult for them: the Nyangatom. But what in fact was meant by this Suri reply, appealing to common, overarching values of ‘living together’ and conciliation, was to point out to the state soldiers that their programme of bringing stability and peace had failed, because they could not contain the southern Nyangatom, an ethnic group of herders who indeed had expanded significantly on Suri land and were creating a disproportionate number of victims and raiding Suri herds. Nevertheless, for the Dizi and the Maji villagers, often the victims of Suri violence, the Suri response in the debate was additional proof of their unreliability and their reputation as speakers of slippery words. In the end, the meeting yielded no clear results, no formal reconciliation. The various participants went home insecure and dissatisfied. Several similar

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meetings were attempted over the following years, but with little effect. Relations between the various groups in the Maji area remained tense and punctured by violence. The arenas of inter-group debate proved to be politically ineffective in the absence of real policy changes or concrete measures in the domain of security, economic policy and political reform. At the above public meeting, two rhetoric registers clashed because of incongruent scale and different frames of reference without a shared ‘meaningful’ discursive-cultural background, in this case preventing real persuasive effects. Subsequent government plans for large-scale agrarian investment schemes, plantation development and coercive villagization (all intensified after 2008) have aggravated the problems between communities and perpetuated violent conflicts.

Rhetoric Performance: Suri among Themselves There is also substantial violent tension within Suri society itself, regularly leading to fatalities (cf. Abbink 2000b, 2009). But Suri also have a sense of community when faced with outsiders, and group control mechanisms that are lacking in their dealings with others. Neighbouring ethnic groups and highland villagers are, strictly speaking, outside the ritual bounds of Suri society, outside their ‘moral community’. The question of why Suri violence has become so conspicuous in recent years, and whether it is a ‘normal’ feature of their political system, can be answered by referring to both the changing conditions in and around Suri society, alluded to above (ecological and demographic changes, state incorporation, militarization), and the characteristics of their political decision-making process and their norms and representations of violence (Abbink 2000b, 2009). Suri styles of rhetoric were developed in their own society, where egalitarianism reigns. Suri society is highly ritualized, with nearly all social occasions evoking more or less formal discourse and careful negotiation. Among them are divination sessions, weddings, birth rituals, initiation, the installation of a new priest-chief, reconciliation meetings, burial, inauguration of houses or fields, and ceremonial duelling. As mentioned above, one of the main arenas for community rhetoric is a public debate or assembly. In such a debate, no speaker seems to build up authority for himself, that is, there are no claims to ‘leadership’. Some are certainly recognized as being good speakers, but authority – ritual or political – is largely determined by kinship criteria (the ‘right’ descent, network position), size of herd and family, and local leadership. Recently, in relations with nonSuri others, the knowledge of another local language, either that of a neigh-

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bouring group or that of the state (Amharic), was added as a factor producing influence, though not necessarily authority. This allowed people low in personal prestige or rhetorical skills to become influential. George Kennedy (1998: 6) has mentioned the three traditional (Aristotelian) means of persuasion in rhetoric: ethos, reflecting the construction of credibility and character of the speaker; logos, or rational argument; and pathos, an appeal to emotions. Suri public discourse usually reflects a combination of logos and pathos, the ethos of the speakers being taken for granted.

The Discourse of Public Debate A public debate among Suri is almost esoteric to outsiders and children, due to its archaic expressions, allusive and metonymic language, and rhetoric repetition, for example of the expression ‘Now, it is good’ (a stop word in discourse, used for focus; it usually indicates the opposite of good). All expressions and descriptions of actions and events are indirect, veiled, and cannot be understood by a non-Suri audience without clarification. This will be shown in the excerpts below. I give here a brief overview of one political debate, held in the 1990s, called by elders of the then reigning age-grade, the ‘Buffaloes’ (Neebi), and held in the village of the Chai Suri ritual leader (the komoru). A first minor speaker introduces the debate to the assembled men, seated in a semicircle. The issue at hand is what to do about the constant threat from the neighbouring group, the Nyangatom, who have just raided cattle and made victims among the herder-boys. The first speaker’s words call upon those present to present their views and their proposals. After the stage thus being set, a major elder, Woletula Ngorkana, gets up. He is basically the challenger, the major orator. He gives a long speech, in fact one long exhortation of which I present fragments in a rather free translation.7 The speech is not about facts, because these are well known and assumed throughout the debate: recently, on top of other incidents, forty to fifty livestock were robbed, two Suri boys were killed, several others wounded, and the Nyangatom are encroaching upon Suri lands and water sources. My comments appear in parentheses. [Speaker no. 1]: You (previous speaker and those present) all have told your words. You all are saying: ‘Kuritoy (a reference to one of the Suri herding groups threatened by the enemy Bume people raiding them) says he will come’ (meaning: retreating to a safer place in the south, where they are now speaking).

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The cows of Miroma’s village (ancestor of the Suri’s most important clan) were taken by surprise long ago. Long ago, you all moved to the area of Kuritoy so that he may beget children (i.e. when conditions were safe and favourable). Well, it is like that, it is good. Yesterday a friend (the Bume) grabbed some things (meaning: cattle). He took the things and we can’t see it (secretly, at night). He also took antelopes (meaning young female cows). I do not want to hear of this. Who is he? To whom does he belong? (i.e. to what clan, what people. What gives him the right). Well, it is good (meaning the opposite, expressing the fact that all this has happened). Barbi, Barsuyey and Dangadani: these were our children (? perhaps herding boys, victims of the Bume). Now, it is good. Another person wants to enter your mother and lift his body up to me (a grave insult if this would happen, used to defy the audience about the seriousness of the threat of the Bume competitors). I refuse! Now, this all is good. A male person (Bume) lifts his body to me (challenging), and you all just sit here quietly! Look for the person, so that we may hit him. Now, that is what I would like. Then, will he come to the cattle camp nearby? Is he a Jargushi (the dominant territorial cattle-herding unit of Suri), or a person we call ‘who?’ (i.e. a stranger with no business here). He is a person we don’t know that they say we call Dethai (an old name for the Kuritoy). Is he Tirmaga (a fellow Suri group), is he from Chai (the group of the speaker)? Dethai came long ago. They are another group of cattle camps (meaning: the pasture situation for their cattle, their wealth, is becoming precarious). There are two others, there are Debilecho and Gimirey.

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And here it is Jargush (enumerating the cattle herding groups that forcibly had to move already for security reasons). It is enough. And now you are all entering the Tirmaga area, and they will separate the words for you on the path (meaning: creating an argument with them about where to herd the cattle; this expresses the fear that even among the brotherly Tirmaga, herding disputes etc. will arise). Let the ones who are Chai leave from them (Tirmaga), and Olezoghi (a ritual chief of the Tirmaga) will blow his horn for you all. Yes; it is good. They are your neighbours. Now, grab a shoe (a pair of leather sandals are used in divination) for me, then I will look at it. If I exist like this, a viper will attack me. Do you all want me to listen to the words of a meeting like this, or shall I listen to the ones from elsewhere? When we cry at a funeral in our village here (referring to a recent funeral, when a man who died by gunshot was buried), this is the bullet I want to have died of in the forest there! (i.e. in self-defence of the Suri and their cattle). This bullet that sleeps in the person here in the field (one of the Suri victims) is a bullet that I yesterday wanted to have fired, so that he (the Bume enemy) might die. Now you tell me your thoughts, I am going, I will hit (i.e. shoot at the enemy).

A few other Suri men present (of the tègay junior age-grade) rhetorically took up the many challenges contained in this speech and asserted their willingness to engage in defence, in battle. They did this through energetic dancing displays of loyalty in front of the main speaker, by posturing with guns and singing ‘warrior’ praise songs or slogans. One man, Oleb’useni, a brother of the Suri priest and a senior man, then spoke: [Speaker no. 2]: I, Oleb’useni, am looking at it! You all say someone else is looking at it (meaning: giving this matter of Bume enmity and raiding serious thought). I tell you all like this. You all ‘split’ the situation immediately on this bright morning (meaning: let us make a clear decision).

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Then tomorrow the cornflour may be in the bag (food which they take on a long trip or a raiding expedition). … I will make the food and then I will go. You all tell me the situation. The friend (i.e. the Tirmaga) herds his cows (meaning: exposing himself to the danger of raiding), while the women here ridicule me. They ridicule me as if I were a second wife. Yes indeed, I am a ‘second wife’ (meaning: despised, quarrelsome), I am a second wife. Now, I am the father, the father this morning. So speak the things of your father. There is another cattle camp now, and it has entered my village (meaning: another threatened group of Suri herders came to his area, increasing pressure on settlements and resources like pasture and available food). It is something that has come from one person (i.e. one cause, the Bume aggression), and the situation was told. I have never seen this before. Yes. You all reveal the heart of the matter. Tomorrow, people (the Bume) will conquer your wives from you, so that they may give birth to living things (i.e. children) (meaning: the Bume will be competitors, make your life impossible and extinguish your existence as a group).

After this speaker, one of the men of the tègay age-grade got up, with his rifle held high, and gave a speech taking up the challenge of the preceding words. It was clearly a rhetorically less subtle speech, but the speaker also showed his firm commitment to violent struggle to defend his cattle against the enemy: [Speaker no. 3]: ‘I will hit, I will hit. Namesake, you have said it. Over there is what I wanted yesterday. You want me to die in the village here, to be killed in the village here? I will go to die for my grass (i.e. the traditional pastures of the Suri cattle). My grass, my grass, the grass of Are-Tula (the Suri komoru, or ritual leader). Is another group grazing the grass of Are-Tula? The group that hit me long ago?

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A small offspring hit me, one that was like you all. Long ago, did one that was old hit me? No, I will hit, I will hit. Now it has become enough. The sky now has become pregnant (i.e. it is about to rain, meaning, the situation is about to explode). I will hit, I will hit. I want it like this. I want it like this. What do you others want to do? Did he (the Tirmaga) come to sing war songs to the leader, or to do what? (i.e. only Chai-Suri, their own people, should show allegiance and readiness to fight; no one will do it for them). I say it is my grazing land. Only I will sing. This is the hole (i.e. the point of the matter).

This kind of reply was what the elder speakers had wanted. Several others added their words to the debate, in the same style. Towards the end of the debate, the first speaker (Woletula) took the floor again and did not show satisfaction with the responses of the other speakers. He continued to express scepticism and hammered the same points. Perhaps he was disappointed at the low number of younger ‘warriors’ present during the debate. He ended the debate with a speech in the same vein as that with which he had started, but ultimately rhetorical consensus appeared to reign in the meeting. When all speakers had had their say, the komoru (the local ritual leader or priest), as is customary, summed up the debate in a kind of epilogue: [Last speaker]: Do not spill your bullets here (meaning against the neighbour Dizi people in the hills), do not shoot here, go and shoot them at the mountain (i.e. Shulugui, epitome of their homeland). … Fighters, fighters: aren’t the new people (the Nyangatom) there our enemy? Is there any fear on your side? Our cattle were being taken all the time – is this to go on? …

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Fear will not grip you, fear will not grip you. The road is there; our weapons are here. They were my enemies, and the enemies of us all. Why, up to now, did we not go? Now, we are like this, ready to go!’

This summing up, again using the familiar topos of ‘homeland’, combined the means of pathos and logos, appealing to reason as well as to emotion about an unjust state of affairs that cannot be tolerated. The priest then initiated a brief protective ritual with certain plant species used and which contained a blessing for those going out, as well as a curse for the enemies. This is called ‘giving dirám’ (or ‘glory’) to the ‘warriors’, who may feel protected by this during their exploits. To be present at such a debate is to feel the energy of the speakers, to get glimpses of the Suri’s deep concerns about the threats to their way of life and their insecurity about the future, even during their displays of force and willingness to do battle. The rhetorical energy is palpable and contagious; it has a ‘physical’ aspect and certainly works as fuel for the people present ‘to do something’. Although the often archaic, symbolic words and phrases used (many I left out) are not immediately accessible to outside observers like me, what is striking in public debates is the clarity and the drama of presentation among the speakers, especially the major orators, who are recognized as such. They display the predicaments of the Suri in indirect but acute terms, defying or provoking those present, and thus speak to core values of Suri society. The elder’s rhetorical strategy in the fragment above also seems to create a sense of dichotomy, of group polarization, out of which those present cannot ‘escape’ without losing face. But what is not said in such speeches – and in many similar ones held since – is that the realities on the ground prevent any foreseeable chance to indeed go back and effectively retake their land. These realities are: the strength of the enemy, the threat of state military action, land access problems due to government action, biodiversity decline, and the reorientation of the Suri way of life that has already taken place in that the young generation, due to their wealth gained by gold trading, their possession of guns and their lessened economic dependence upon the older generation, do not really feel bound by consensus reached in public debates. The rhetoric in many respects no longer resonates among the new generation of Suri.

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Rhetoric and the Reflection of Relations between Suri and Their Neighbours On their eastern flanks, the Suri are bordered by a highland cultivator people, the Dizi. In the past they entertained peaceful trading relations and some intermarriage. The Suri recognized the Dizi as the original inhabitants and lords of the land and no cattle were raided from them. In a period of drought at the end of the nineteenth century, the Suri moved closer to the Dizi highlands. At this time an agreement was made up under which the Suri recognized the rain-making powers of the Dizi chiefs and could call upon their help (for food and sacrificial rites for rain). In this context, a special ritual procedure was designed. Implicitly it also meant that the Dizi permitted the Suri to move into areas nominally theirs (for cattle herding and hunting-gathering). A myth relating the common descent of the chiefly families of the Dizi and the Suri leading clan (from the same mother) was probably also created at that time. Although other elements in the oral tradition of both groups suggest that this was a fictional connection, the important point was that in the myth the two groups were declared kin. Nevertheless, there was an underlying problem in this alliance of Suri and Dizi: it was a shaky treaty, had not received overall recognition and was concluded under certain circumstances of ‘hierarchy’: it thus contrasted with Suri egalitarianism. There was also a discrepancy in the long-term material interests and socio-economic systems of the two groups that hindered full acceptance. Under the impact of developments over the last twenty years, such as ecological crises, the small arms influx and involuntary population movements, the Dizi–Suri relationship broke down. One reason for this is the continued imbalance with the neighbouring Nyangatom, south of the Suri, who acquired the support of the more than 250,000-strong Toposa people encroaching on the Suri eco-niche from the west due to the turmoil of the Southern Sudanese civil war. This meant that the Suri could not regain their erstwhile parity and could not return to areas and pastures from which they had been evicted in the mid 1980s. They also lost their social contacts with the Nyangatom: no more (ritual) bond friendships. The only option for the Suri was to move and slowly expand towards the Dizi highlands. This expansion had violent phases, not only taking over the cultivation sites, beehives, gold-panning areas and hunting grounds of the Dizi, but also stealing livestock, burning villages, killing travellers and elders, and abducting or shooting Dizi girls. When occasionally a Dizi killed a Suri, the retaliatory response of the Suri as a whole was excessive. Competition and rivalry, fuelled by real material concerns, thus shaped the rhetoric of contemporary social relations between the groups. In this mu-

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tual rhetoric of Dizi and Suri, the dominant metaphors centre around birth, (thwarted) reproduction, theft and images of the other as (certain kinds of) ‘animals’. From my early fieldwork among the Dizi and Suri in 1992 I remember the following: when an unprovoked ambush killing near the Dizi village of Kolu village by three Suri young men of four Dizi girls (one of whom survived), the local Dizi chief gave a commemorative speech at the grave-sites. As well as lamenting the general crisis in Suri–Dizi relations, he explicitly referred to these young girls dying before having reached maturity and having become mothers in the following words: The killing was done by animals from the bush…. These young women … imagine how many children they could have carried…. Now they die without children to make their parents rejoice and satisfied. Their names will be lost, and no sons and daughters will live to help the family or to invoke the name of their mother….

This metaphor of the Suri violent youngsters as ‘animals from the bush’ was a repetitive and powerful one: it resonated with the perception of local people that the Suri ‘have no fixed abode and always move about’, that they have ‘no civilized behaviour’, and ‘no inhibitions’ about using violence compared to the other groups in the area. Another favourite metaphor among Dizi and villagers was that the Suri were ‘snakes’: not to be trusted, not accountable, slippery, and appearing when you don’t expect them (cf. Abbink 2006) The part about the female victims dying childless expresses in a clear way the painful awareness among Dizi that the Suri seem to intend to weaken them as a people and undermine their continuity, and this rhetorical theme, as was the ‘animal’ metaphor, was often repeated after violent incidents among the Dizi. The internal reflection on such incidents within Suri society was visible in a meeting about a year later (1994), in the main Suri village of Koroum, a few hours walk away from the place of the killing of the girls. This was during the run-up to the long-delayed age-grade initiation. This initiation is a major social event – about once every twenty years – where social adulthood is conferred upon a generation of (often reluctant) male youngsters by an outgoing age-set of senior elders. It is an occasion where the central tenets and values of Suri political society are reviewed and rehearsed. The preparations can take weeks, and the role of elders is to take the younger ones symbolically to account for their past deeds before granting them social maturity. They give them orders, whip them with plant fibre whips, and haul insults. The initiands

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have to submit to this. This specific initiation – held against the background of the continuing violence and uncontrollable behaviour of the young people – gave rise to many reproaches and much internal debate. Adult women joined in the insulting and whipping of the young generation, often unambiguously condemning them for their socially destructive behaviour. In one of the meetings, one elder said, explicitly speaking to members of the young generation, with the Dizi killing in mind: There used to be days when we hated to kill women and girls … How long will it take for Dizi and Golach [= highland state] soldiers to do the same to us? Didn’t our fathers say so in their days, saying: ‘Is not one woman equal to ten men?’

Suri internal debate shows pathos used as a rhetorical means of persuasion, the usual form by Suri speakers within their own group. It is often aimed directly at the youngsters, who flouted core values of Suri life – for example not killing women and children in a raid, because women and children are wealth, the precondition of the continuation of society and the pride of parents and the kin group. But while powerful in the ritual context, this rhetorical appeal had no noticeable effect on the subsequent behaviour of the youngsters. There was neither a significant contribution to the debate or any opposition to this thought from younger participants, nor a subsequent restraint or decline in violent incidents. This in itself may show that the power of the young, buttressed by factors mentioned earlier, and the change in the social (age group) structure of Suri society has already gone too far to restore it to previous conditions. The epideictic rhetoric of blame and reassertion of the community’s core values has become empty, as other realities have caught up with it. In summary, Suri discourse within their own community is marked by a high degree of pathos and argument (logos). In a non-flowery, deliberative style they identify persistent problems and dangers, draw historical analogies (difficult to fathom for outsiders) and spur people to reflect on courses of action. Especially in view of the generational divide in public debates, with senior people (from the ruling age-grade being most prominent), the exhortative tone is notable: people are confronted with their failures, taunted with their lack of action. But there is no judicial rhetoric: people are not directly reproached or personally accused. The debate cited above comes to focus on values and beliefs that the Suri are felt to share, or have to share in order to continue their way of life as it is. In other words, the rhetoric about relations with the state and with neighbouring ethnic groups is also one about social

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relations within their own community. This is a forceful rhetorical approach, because all Suri, especially the youngsters building up their social position and their own herd of cattle, cherish the Suri way of life and have a stake in defending it. Still, they think they can build more advantages through other behavioural strategies (e.g. collective violent action, independent economic activities such as cattle rustling, trade in bullets and gold panning). Examining Suri rhetoric in conjunction with state rhetoric reveals the intersection of two styles, reflecting or referring to two ‘realities’. They hardly meet, as they use varying frames of reference, their words having different social referents and cultural resonance. In the Maji reconciliation meeting, the authoritarian and normative-ideological style of the state representatives, geared towards imposing norms of debate and their own solutions to the disputes, did not go down well with the Suri. They responded with hedging strategies in return, while appealing to high-level, abstract notions of peace and harmony to which no one could object but that were not helpful in that specific context.

Conclusions: Rhetoric as Reality; Rhetoric against Reality I have offered here only some incomplete glimpses of rhetoric in action and not analysed them to the full. But it is clear that studying the use of rhetoric as public discourse is an indispensable start to understand a cultural group or society and its ethos, its interpretation of meaning and how it deals with concerns of public interest. Culture is partly constituted, and reaffirmed, rhetorically (cf. Tedlock and Mannheim 1995), and specific, local ‘knowledge’, or let’s say cultural beliefs and convictions, are produced or validated by rhetoric. Rhetoric competence, as Ivo Strecker says in his interesting study of Hamar rhetoric in times of war (2002: 1004), contributes to creating conventions, styles of life and patterns of culture. But ‘culture’ itself – as a repertoire of shared and inherited meanings within a collective – is also located in the sphere of actual struggle over resources, in material artefacts, in behavioural and work routines, and in rules (i.e. non-verbal, non-rhetorical domains). To pick up on this last point: people who see themselves as part of an ethno-cultural tradition, like the Suri or Dizi for instance, have rule-governed behaviour, a recognition of normative principles, often ritually affirmed, that characterize them and that they use in interaction with others. These rules or principles are not reconstituted in rhetoric but are assumed basic to any rhetorical exchange. For instance, among the Suri the rule that one must pay a proper amount of bridewealth at marriage is undisputed and inescapable; only the number of animals to be transferred is rhetorically contested in lengthy

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negotiations. The obligations towards certain types of formally identifiable kin are undisputed.8 Another iron rule is that a homicide is to be compensated by ritual cleansing and reconciliation via the transfer of a number of cattle and giving a young girl from the killer’s kin group to that of the victim. (As noted above, this key cultural rule finds no resonance among state authorities, who see it as illegitimate, even illegal.) ‘Culture’ and its discursive reproduction are thus co-determined by environmental problems, economic challenges, tension with rival groups, and state policies that transcend local society: these fuel cultural dynamics and add to the arena of rhetoric in shaping and validating people’s behaviour and commitments. Another small but telling example is this: since the appointment of state-salaried young spokesmen to the local ‘Surma Council’, a new institution planted from above, a new power factor has been created and the expectation is that Suri local politics will no longer be made in the public assemblies. The four or five Council members and the representatives of the Suri district in the regional state administration are taking decisions without reference to what is presented, reflected and decided upon in the periodic public debates. The performance and outcome of these now have more of an advisory function, of which the younger politicians take notice but do not feel bound by. Therefore, public rhetoric is not the sole sphere in which these issues of assessing reality and social relations are played out (and rhetoric cannot be the privileged domain of social study, in the sense that arguments and persuasions about reality and courses of action also take shape beyond rhetoric, in other [informal] discourse and off-stage dealings, such as agreements between parties or persons on how to mutually benefit from a situation or a proposal at the cost of others). Epistemologically speaking, we might say that rhetoric yields suggested reasons or reasonings by the speaker(s) for persuasion purposes, but is in itself part of wider critical assessment and inquiry about reality, pursued by other means as well. Especially in societies where ‘judicial rhetoric’ has not developed or suffers from inhibitions of a political kind, rhetoric often creates shadow realities, semblances of cause and effect, and subversions of desired actions and outcomes. These we have to disentangle to see how rhetoric works as ‘ideology’ or intersects with other human activity. In contrast to ancient Greece (cf. Kennedy 1998: 221), public rhetoric in Suri society is not critical reasoning (logos) and dispute, but epideictic reflection and deliberative, mild challenging rhetoric especially in the form of rhetorical questioning. It is nevertheless notable that in non-formal conversations before a public debate is held, people, especially women, are very vocal, insulting and argumentative. From some of the Suri examples, another matter is significant. It often happens that when rhetoric performance has run its course in the appropriate arena, even the people present, that is, the audience, tend to ‘forget’ it and do

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their own thing, led by other, often competing interests. The example of the Suri public debate (and many others I witnessed), which had followed all traditional criteria and rules, showed that the outcome ‘missed the point’, not because the rhetoric was ‘wrong’ or inappropriate, but simply because of the fact that most of the younger Suri, members of the age-grade that should obey and execute the consensus reached, were absent. They felt that they were not bound by the advice of elders, and that with their guns and economic resources could decide on their own what to do. They tended to place themselves largely outside the Suri political community, forging their own base of power, and following a more direct rhetoric. Indeed, their rhetoric was one of action, of violent response and male autonomy. Often their comments on the consensus decisions of a public debate were quite scathing, giving rise to irony – a new form of rhetoric in Suri society. This shows the paramount importance of changing power relations and ‘realities’ within a community, often undermining the effectiveness of rhetoric. Furthermore, and here I follow Kennedy’s view (1998), rhetoric performance may refer to these realities but is also a form of energy that is spent, and it seems that often its delivery is an end in itself. One notices in political arenas and also on occasions like a Suri public debate that after a rhetorical delivery the speakers are proud and self-satisfied, glowing in their performance, and perhaps not primarily interested in seeing their words or suggestions put into action. What the observation of rhetoric in practice, for example among the Suri, reveals, I think, is that studying rhetoric is a necessary but insufficient condition to understand ‘culture’ or cultural ‘knowledge’, and social realities like power and the clash of interests. Rhetoric is rather in the sphere of exchanges and thought experiments (cf. Crick 2004: 22) about reality, especially due to the high level of enthymemic expressions. The enthymemic nature of much of rhetoric, for example in public debates, allows for multiple interpretations by the audience or the debating partners, and thus for (different perceptions of) ‘reality’ to creep in. Rhetoric performance echoes worldviews and aims for action, but also reflects suggestions, uncertainties and human contingency. Therefore, to understand the interaction of culture, rhetoric and the realities people have to deal with,9 a wider view of human agency and rhetoric in practice is needed. Rhetoric may create realities of a certain kind, but certainly not ‘reality’ as such. The three terms in the title of this chapter – culture, power and rhetoric – should therefore be analysed in their interaction.10 Jon Abbink studied social anthropology, history and philosophy and is a research professor of Politics and Governance in Africa (Political Anthropology) at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University. He did doctoral field research on Ethiopian immigrants in Israel and later mainly worked on Ethiopia and

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Northeast Africa, focusing on themes like ethno-history, culture and violence, religion and politics, livelihood systems, and culture and environmental management. He was a visiting professor at various universities and has been an elected foreign member of the Ethiopian National Academy of Sciences since 2014. He has published papers/chapters and a dozen books as editor/co-writer on Ethiopian and African Studies. Recent publications include The Anthropology of Elites (co-edited, Palgrave, 2012), Reconfiguring Ethiopia (co-edited, Routledge, 2013), a co-authored monograph, Suri Orature, on the Suri people (Köppe Verlag, 2014) and the edited volume The Environmental Crunch in Africa (Palgrave, 2018).

Notes 1. Analysed in earlier works (see, e.g., Abbink 1998, 2000b, 2009, 2015). 2. See Joseph Petraglia, ‘Rhetoric and Epistemology’, at www.lcc.gatech.edu/gallery/rhet oric/terms/epistemology.html (accessed 3 February 2014, link no longer active). 3. Incidentally, Aristotle in his book on rhetoric ([c. 330 BC] 2004) already made a depreciating remark about legal rhetoric, suggesting that it lends itself more easily to abuse and empty words. 4. Perhaps the ‘mistake’ Aristotle made was to discuss rhetoric as rather separate from dialectics (and logic), where the two should have been held together in the search for meaning and explanation of the world. Human discourse, as a complex of expressive and argumentative speech, passion and reason, always has a cognitive and a conative dimension. 5. Addressing the question of rhetoric in action can say much about the dynamics of social interaction in such contexts of inequality and struggle, and this might be a task for the future development of rhetoric culture theory. 6. These mèzi meetings still follow the same format today (2020). I base the following text on fragments taken from an earlier published paper (Abbink 2000a). 7. I gratefully acknowledge the help of linguist Mike Bryant (SIL, Addis Ababa) with the exact translation of this text, recorded by me in 1992 in Makara village. I disagree with him on a few points of detail only. Part of the text appears courtesy of Köppe Verlag, Cologne. 8. Who can be included in certain categories of kin, or designated as ‘father’s brother’s children’, ‘mother’s brother’, ‘cousin’ and so on, is flexible and negotiable up to a certain point, but the terms or categories and their obligations themselves are quite fixed, at least among the ethnic groups in Southern Ethiopia that I know. 9. I mention here as examples of such ‘realities’: the illegal trade in, and use of, small arms in East Africa that ‘democratizes’ low-intensity warfare; sudden cattle epidemics; the spread of AIDS in previously unaffected small-scale groups; violent state army repression; state-induced forced resettlement, or increasing drought causing harvest failure, the causes of which people often do not understand or clothe in rhetorical discourse to give them ‘meaning’ in their lives. 10. An additional dimension might be to integrate non-verbal rhetoric into the analysis, following the pioneering work of Erving Goffman (1959, 1974, 1981). He analysed in a

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strikingly original manner the tactics and procedures of behavioural self-presentation and impression management, both verbal and non-verbal. He grounded this process of self-presentation in human psychology. Connecting to a Goffmanian dramaturgical approach would be particularly relevant in transcultural, trans-group situations of interaction.

References Abbink, Jon. 1998. ‘Violence and Political Discourse among the Chai Suri’, in G.J. Dimmendaal and M. Last (eds), Surmic Languages and Cultures. Cologne: R. Köppe Verlag, pp. 321–44. ———. 2000a. ‘Violence and the Crisis of Conciliation: Suri, Dizi and the State in Southwest Ethiopia’, Africa 70(4): 527–50. ———. 2000b. ‘Restoring the Balance: Violence and Culture among the Suri of Southern Ethiopia’, in G. Aijmer and J. Abbink (eds), Meanings of Violence: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Oxford: Berg, pp. 77–100. ———. 2001. ‘Violence and Culture: Anthropological and Evolutionary-Psychological Reflections on Intergroup Violence in Southwest Ethiopia’, in I.W. Schröder and B.E. Schmidt (eds), Anthropology of Violence and Conflict. London: Routledge, pp. 123–42. ———. 2006. ‘Of Snakes and Cattle: The Dialectics of Group Esteem between Suri and Dizi in Southwest Ethiopia’, in I. Strecker and J. Lydall (eds), Ethiopian Images of Self and Other: Essays on Cultural Contact, Respect and Self-Esteem in Southern Ethiopia. Münster: Lit Verlag, pp. 227–45. ———. 2009. ‘Culture Slipping Away: Violence, Social Tension and Personal Drama in Suri Society, Southern Ethiopia’, in A. Rao, M. Böck, and M. Bollig (eds), The Practice of War. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 321–44. ———. 2015. ‘Menstrual Synchrony Claims among Suri Girls (Southwest Ethiopia): Between Culture and Biology’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines LV(2), no. 218: 279–302. Aristotle. (c. 330 BC) 2004. The Art of Rhetoric, trans. and intro. Hugh Lawson-Tancred. London: Penguin Books. Cherwitz, Richard A., and James A. Hikins. 1986. Communication and Knowledge: An Investigation in Rhetorical Epistemology. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Crick, Nathan. 2004. ‘Conquering Our Imagination: Thought Experiments and Enthymemes in Scientific Argument’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 37(1): 21–41. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. ———. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 1981. Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Hariman, Robert. 1991. ‘Critical Rhetoric and Postmodern Theory’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 77: 67–70. Harpine, William D. 2004. ‘What Do You Mean, Rhetoric is Epistemic?’ Philosophy and Rhetoric 37(4): 335–52. Kennedy, George A. 1998. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Locke, John (1689) 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited with an Introduction by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Myerson, George. 1994. Rhetoric, Reason and Society: Rationality as Dialogue. London: Sage. Parkin, David. 1984. ‘Political Language’, Annual Review of Anthropology 13: 345–65. Schopenhauer, Arthur. (1830–31) 1994. Die Kunst Recht zu Behalten. Ed. F. Volpi. Frankfurt/Main: Insel Verlag. Schroeder, John 2001. ‘On Rhetoric-as-Epistemic: Has the Discussion Died?’ Online at http://www.engl.niu.edu/wac/schrepis.html. Accessed on 15 April 2011 (link no longer active). Scott, Robert L. 1967. ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic’, Central States Speech Journal 18: 9–17. ———. 1976. ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic Ten Years Later’, Central States Speech Journal 27: 258–66. Strecker, Ivo. 2002. ‘Hamar Rhetoric in the Context of War’, in Baye Yimam et al. (eds), Ethiopian Studies at the End of the Millennium, vol. 2. Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, pp. 1004–25 (Reprinted in: I. Strecker. 2010. Ethnographic Chiasmus. Münster: Lit Verlag, pp. 229–56). Tedlock, Dennis, and Bruce Mannheim (eds). 1995. The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

CHAPTER 13

Inducement to Action and Change in Attitude Coaching in the Light of Rhetorical Anthropology Michał Mokrzan       

We create a positive influence on people who have influence. —Julie Starr, The Coaching Manual It’s good when your coaching experience already makes you feel convinced. —Coachee Diane, Interview

The subject of the research presented in this chapter is coaching, which is understood as the process of constructing social subjects. It developed as a consequence of the emergence of a new type of governmentality defined as neoliberal (Binkley 2014; Foucault 2008; Lemke 2001; Lordon 2014). I claim that within this process of subjectification, the key role is played by rhetorically grounded technologies of governmentality (both technologies of power and technologies of the self), that are persuasive practices by which a coached person (coachee) convinces himself or herself, or is being influenced by a coach, to undertake specific actions or to adopt particular attitudes. Viewed through the lens of rhetorical anthropology, these technologies are rhetorical strategies (Du Bois 2011: 75; Nienkamp 2009: 32), which are deployed to motivate individuals to become more efficient, be satisfied with their own achievements and feel greater responsibility in such social relations as:

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employer–employee, manager–subordinate, client–provider, teacher–student, husband–wife, partner–partner, parent–child, coach–athlete, patient–doctor. These strategies consist of the internalization of expert discourses (logos), inducing emotions in oneself (pathos), or referring to the norms and values shared by the community (ethos). The presented case studies are based on the discourse analysis developed in coaching handbooks as well as on the ethnographic research that I conducted in 2015–2017 among coachees and the community of coaches in Poland. The discourse analysis focuses on Kenneth Burke’s (1966: 44) concept of ‘terministic screens’, that is, the set of tropes that form a kind of filter that renders coaching activities meaningful. Sixty in-depth interviews with coachees and professional coaches, as well as participant observation in the workshops and conferences organized by coaching associations, constituted the ethnographical methods that helped me to capture the local and subjective nature of social actors’ experiences. In my research, I follow Alfred Schütz’s (1962: 43) methodological principle, which claims that ‘thought objects of the social sciences have to remain consistent with the thought objects of common sense, formed by men in everyday life in order to come to terms with social reality’. In order to reveal the ways of thinking and acting of coaches and coachees, the discourse analysis found in coaching handbooks is insufficient. As it is required by this type of study, namely, the study of rhetorically determined neoliberal governmentality, to quote Gerard A. Hauser (2011: 169), rhetorical ethnography ‘looks at ongoing exchanges of ordinary people rather than leaders for an understanding of issues … These studies will be concerned with the language, logic of arguments, logics of circulation, modes of evidence, norms of propriety, and stylistic devices that define issues and construct rhetorically salient meanings’. Thus, in order to grasp what coaching is, I intend to elaborate on the ideas proposed within governmentality studies and to supplement them with the perspective offered by rhetorical anthropology developed by the Rhetoric Culture Project.

Raspberry Jam, Neoliberal Governmentality and Bilbo Baggins Coaching is defined by its creators, instructors and coachees who are themselves part of an interactive process oriented towards upgrading skills, overcoming limitations (i.e. gremlins) and changing the professional or personal lives of individuals as well as the ethos of organizations and companies. Used successfully among managers and executives, it has gained the status of a fullyfledged profession offering techniques for supporting individuals or groups

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‘in their quest to have what they really want, whether that is a specific goal or simply a lifestyle they want to create’ (Starr 2008: 17). Activities undertaken within coaching aim at ‘putting together a life plan, understanding our aims and goals … Building a life/work balance that fulfils us’ (ibid.: 14–15). Furthermore, they are oriented towards ‘attracting new customers and improving marketing skills … Emotional balance. The development of femininity or masculinity aspects … The integration of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical aspects, for you to feel like a “complete person”. The ability to manage oneself ’ (Przybysz 2009: 29–30). Coaching is divided into the following types: life coaching (directed towards the improvement of personal relationships), business coaching (focused on the development of economic activity), career coaching (oriented towards career development) and executive coaching (focused on the development of the company’s management). Bernd Birgmeier (2013: 145) notes that, in recent years, ‘newer and more exotic services, such as Self-, Crash-, Zen-, EPD-, SM-, Dance-coaching, esoteric coaching, emigrant coaching, cooking coaching, coaching for fear of flying, astrological coaching, posture coaching, parenthood coaching, or coaching with horses’ have been offered within the coaching industry. This rapid development of coaching summarizes the words of Anne Scoular, expressed in The Financial Times Guide to Business Coaching: ‘As coaching has become a “good thing”, the word has been spread thinly over almost everything, like raspberry jam’ (Scoular 2012). This fact has raised great concern among coaches who advocate the need to professionalize coaching. Furthermore, it has provided arguments for potential critics who accuse coaching of charlatanism. The subject of the analysis offered in this chapter is life, business, executive and career coaching. I have conducted ethnographic research only among accredited coaches or those who had completed coaching schools that provide high educational standards. They define themselves as professional and ethical coaches and distinguish themselves from mentors, motivational speakers, tutors, or, as they called them, ‘self-styled coaches’. With all certainty, coaching has become one of the fastest growing industries in the world. A study based on a survey commissioned by the International Coach Federation and conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP shows that ‘global total revenue from coaching in 2015 was $2.356 billion USD’ (ICF 2016: 10). Over the last few years, the rapid development of coaching was observed in Poland. Various forms of educational coaching have been organized, ranging from a few days of training to academic education and long-term courses. In 2014, in accordance with the Regulation of the Minister of Labour and Social Policy, ‘coach’ was entered in the Polish register of the Classification of Occupations and Specializations for Labour Market Needs.

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Due to the fact that even a one-hour coaching session is expensive, people who use the help of professional coaches are mostly top executives, project managers, entrepreneurs, academics, school teachers, doctors and lawyers, that is, professionals who belong to the upper middle class. When responding to my question of whether or not miners or car mechanics use coaching, one respondent replied that coaching is ‘a luxury service’, while another coach said that this service is for ‘the elites’, and not for ‘the others’. These emic terms illustrate that the distinction between social classes could be reflected not only by the judgement of taste (Bourdieu 1996), but also by the access to different technologies of governmentality (Mokrzan 2019a). Furthermore, although coaching instructors claim that this form of human activity has always existed (Starr 2008: 17) – some coaches go so far as to argue that Socrates was the first coach – it should be noted that the rapid expansion of coaching and other practices based on positive psychology is associated with the dissemination of neoliberal technologies of governmentality in the contemporary capitalist context (Binkley 2011: 94–99; 2014: 167–71; Lordon 2014: 97–100). The key concept of governmentality, which was coined by Michel Foucault, describes the ways to regulate the activities of individuals and groups ‘by the more or less rational application of the appropriate technical means’ (Hindess 1996: 106). Governmentality is not solely constrained to the domain of politics, where the reflections concerning the state, governance and administration are undertaken; it also emerges in medical, philosophical, religious and educational contexts, where it is associated with such issues as: ‘How to govern oneself, how to be governed, how to govern others, by whom the people will accept being governed, how to become the best possible governor’ (Foucault 1991: 87). Governmentality can therefore be conceived as ‘a continuum, which extends from political government right through to forms of self-regulation, namely “technologies of the self ” as Foucault calls them’ (Lemke 2001: 201). In the period that Foucault (1990: 6–11) himself defined as the ‘third shift’ or ‘problematization’, he was most interested in the relation between: technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject … [and] technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (Foucault 1988: 18)

The contact point between these technologies, as Foucault (1988: 19) said, was ‘governmentality’. One of the forms of governmentality explored by Foucault

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(2008) is neoliberalism, defined as a set of reasonable technologies facilitating the government of social subjects, in the fashion of economic entities. Relying on Foucault’s considerations, Sam Binkley acknowledges that the type of governmentality which can be called neoliberal refers to: the ways in which subjects are governed as market agents, encouraged to cultivate themselves as autonomous, self-interested individuals, and to view their resources and aptitudes as human capital for investment and return. Neoliberal governmentality presumes a more or less continuous series that runs from those macro-technologies by which states govern populations, to the micro-technologies by which individuals govern themselves, allowing power to govern individuals ‘at a distance’ as individuals translate and incorporate the rationalities of political rule into their own methods for conducting themselves. (Binkley 2009: 62)

Embedding Foucault’s thought in the context of contemporary capitalist social relations, Maurizio Lazzarato (2009) broadens the understanding of neoliberal governmentality presented above. He shares the belief that in the neoliberal governmentality an individual is encouraged to invest in human capital, but in his opinion this process has two aspects. Lazzarato (2009: 126) argues that ‘the conceptualization of the individual as the “entrepreneur of oneself ” is the end-product of capital as a machine for subjectivation or subjection’. The notion of human capital indicates precisely this double process of transforming an individual into a social entity. On the one hand, human capital has an individualizing function, as the individual makes investments in his or her own affective and cognitive resources. On the other hand, ‘the techniques of “human capital” lead to the identification of individualization with exploitation’ (ibid.: 126). In order to compete in the capitalist labour market, the individual is somehow forced to work on increasing those resources. Therefore, an entrepreneur of oneself becomes not only a ‘capitalist’ but also a ‘proletarian’ (ibid.: 126). The economization of the individual’s relation to oneself contributes to the creation of a new type of ethics, which strongly stresses the necessity of individuals to take responsibility for their actions. As Thomas Lemke points out: The key feature of the neo-liberal rationality is the congruence it endeavours to achieve between a responsible and moral individual and an economicrational actor. It aspires to construct prudent subjects whose moral quality is based on the fact that they rationally assess the costs and benefits of a certain act as opposed to other alternative acts. As the choice of options for action is, or so the neo-liberal notion of rationality would have it, the expression of free will on the basis of a self-determined decision, the consequences of the

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action are borne by the subject alone, who is also solely responsible for them. (Lemke 2001: 201)

This type of ethical work becomes a key issue in coaching. Thus, from the analytical perspective, coaching can be seen as the materialization of a neoliberal dispositif, as noted by Binkley (2011: 94). Coaching is based on the concept of the subject as a market agent who is capable of increasing his or her effectiveness in various spheres of social relations through the use of appropriate techniques. These techniques aim to produce social subjects whose existence is determined by the economy of profit and the care of the self. The neoliberal subject is also an enterprising one. Enterprising selves are ‘expected to calculate the potential outcomes of the choices they make; project the future consequences of current actions; modify their choices accordingly; and make personal provision for the future to reduce their dependence on broader society’ (Ainsworth and Hardy 2008: 394). Undoubtedly, the aim of coaching is to produce an effective, enterprising and responsible self. Therefore, the main conceptual metaphor organizing practices within coaching is the metaphor of life as a ‘labour of self on self ’ (Foucault 1987: 117). In this regard, coaching resembles what Foucault calls ‘ascetical practice, giving the word “ascetical” a very general meaning, that is to say, not in the sense of abnegation but that of an exercise of self upon self by which one tries to work out, to transform one’s self and to attain a certain mode of being’ (ibid.: 113). The discourse analysis of coaching handbooks, as well as ethnography of the everyday practices of coaches and coachees, confirms the abovementioned assumptions of governmentality studies. For example, in the handbook of business coaching, Anne Scoular writes: we see instantly that a core task in business is to help employees, customers, sales prospects, etc. move along the spectrum from left to right, from extrinsic to intrinsic: from, ‘do I have to…?’ to ‘WOW I so want to!’ Especially where the tasks might seem at first glance to be wholly of the outer world – increasing shareholder value, cleaning up that major oil spill, making the quarterly sales target, dealing with the pension fund liability – management would love to know how to have team members seize them as their own, unleashing the full-on dedication and energy of intrinsic motivation! And how is this Holy Grail of management achieved? (Scoular 2012; emphasis in original)

The answer to this question is as follows: a coaching-based management style. In coaching, the willingness and necessity to seek greater efficiency ‘comes from the individual’ rather than being imposed on them. It is the key feature

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that brings coaching closer to neoliberal governmentality. In the neoliberal governmentality logics, responsibility for actions lies with individuals. Frédéric Lordon, in his critique of neoliberal governmentality, defines this attitude by using the metaphor of the auto-mobile: If auto-mobility is the quality of that which moves itself, then the production of employed auto-mobiles – namely, employees who occupy themselves of their own accord in the service of the capitalist organisation – is incontestably the greatest success of the neoliberal co-linearization undertaking, because the first and most patent meaning of the expression ‘of their own accord’ is ‘in the absence of any pressure’, without being forced, by their own movement. (Lordon 2014: 53)

Coaching sessions are supposed to train the coachee in efficient self-management. The coach teaches the coachee how to achieve greater efficiency both in their professional and private life. As coachee Ezra, a sales representative, vividly puts it: I was watching the Hobbit trilogy not long ago and it came to my mind that a coach is just like Bilbo Baggins for the Dwarves: a companion who, when the Dwarves finally get into hot water, may not solve their problem, but will show them a way to get out of trouble. Coaching is a non-directive process; it’s not that a coach doesn’t want to, but they are not allowed to instruct you to do anything. A coach may suggest something, give you a hint, or show you three possible options. It’s like: ‘Do this, this, or that’. Maybe not even ‘Do…’, rather ‘You can do this, this, or that’.

A coach ‘assists, facilitates, provides tools, creates the environment for your development. They do not have your map; they simply help you create your own one. But it is you who creates the map. You find the things to support yourself ’, comments Alice, a coachee and manager. Therefore, coaching is based on the concept of neoliberal governmentality, understood as the conduct of conduct. Coachee Mike, an entrepreneur, puts it this way: ‘Your coach acts as a mentor, saying: “Look, if you cross the line, something like this happens. Look what happens when you cross the line”’. In short, a coach guides the coachee’s conduct. This applies to business and executive coaching as well as life coaching, where individuals acquire skills of more effective self-management in their private lives. The vision of the coaching, in which the individual has become an entrepreneur of oneself, should be adjusted for the fact that the regimes of entrepreneurship created in the contemporary capitalist context are strongly based on the grassroots discourse of frustration and a sense of unfulfillment. The market economy, strengthening competitive attitudes among employers and

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employees, creates a society in which individuals feel under pressure to raise their professional qualifications. Living in a regime of effectiveness, individuals become more prone to negative emotions and feel a need to overcome them. The most common expressions my respondents-coachees used to describe those emotions were ‘frustration’, ‘feeling stuck’, ‘problem’ and ‘lack of fulfilment’. This emotional landscape, which corresponds to the sad affects that Lordon (2014) writes about in the context of contemporary capitalism, provides a sufficient motivation for my respondents-coachees to make decisions to participate in the coaching process. The approach proposed in governmentality studies is extremely valuable in cognitive terms. However, it is not free from certain theoretical and methodological issues which I would like to point out here. Governmentality studies fail to strike a balance between the analysis of macro-technologies (technologies of power), created through institutions and expert discourses, and the analysis of micro-technologies (technologies of the self), applied by social actors in everyday practices. According to Binkley (2011: 84), governmentality studies are characterized by ‘macro-level bias’. Any attempt to combine macro- and micro-perspectives ends up imposing certain ways of self-governance on an individual, which are typical of institutional rationality. As noted by Binkley (2014: 46), ‘the sleight of hand by which governmentality scholarship obscures the temporal contingencies of governmental practice relies on a rhetorical style common to the field, in which institutional rationalities are silently transposed from the halls of policy experts to the private thoughts of subjects themselves’. Binkley (2014: 47) identifies this rhetorical strategy of colonizing the outlooks of real people in Nikolas Rose’s (1999) influential book Governing the Soul: The Shaping of Private Life. The use of this rhetorical device does not help to avoid the ‘macro-level bias’, but merely conceals it. The issue of how individuals incorporate institutional rationalities remains open. I share Binkley’s opinion (2014: 48) that social sciences should grasp the ‘work of governmentality’, which is performed in the gap between the macro- and micro-technologies. Efforts should be made to explain how particular social actors become accountable and effective game changers. How is the neoliberal subject shaped? The key argument promoted in this chapter is that the process of individuals becoming neoliberal involves rhetoric per se. Referring to Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler (2009: 5), who state that ‘by means of rhetoric we conjure up those ideas, values, moral rules, and laws that constitute the basis of culture’, I daresay that it is owing to rhetoric that a link between the technologies of power and technologies of the self is created. The contact point between these technologies, which Foucault called governmentality, is rhetorical in nature. This statement finds its confirmation with reference to coaching. Therefore,

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coaching can be seen as a manifestation of neoliberal governmentality, which aims to produce an accountable and effective subject, and can be analysed through the perspective proposed within rhetorical anthropology. As Michael Herzfeld points out (2005: 183), ‘any symbolic system used as an instrument of persuasion – or, as we might now say, used for performative effect – can be examined under this heading’.

Social Relations and Rhetorical Communication In coaching, we deal with a social bilateral relation between the coach and the coachee (so-called individual coaching) or between the coach and a group of coachees (collegial coaching). Individual coaching is commonly believed to be the most frequent form of coaching. However, it is not always based on a bilateral relation. In business coaching, there is often a trilateral interaction between the coach, the coachee and the employer who, although not participating directly in the coaching sessions, is the one who contracts the coach and expects to get a report on the coaching process. Therefore, we can rightly assume that coaching relations are shaped by, among other things, relations of power and domination. However, the coaches interviewed stressed their independence from the decisions of or possible pressure from the party contracting the coach. In ethical and professional coaching, based on trust between the coach and the coachee, taking the side of the contracting party by the coach is unacceptable. The coach must remain impartial and support the client in his or her own decisions, no matter whether the decision is to look for a new job opportunity or get involved more deeply in the development of the organization. In this respect, social interaction in coaching relations is formal in character. The coach undertakes (often in a written contract) to abide by ethical norms and perform his or her tasks with due diligence. Interestingly, many of my respondent coachees stated that their relations with coaches during sessions were ‘friendly’, especially with coaches exhibiting concern and kindness. Referring to the work of Robert K. Merton (1976: 18), we can assume that social interaction between the coach and the coachee is based on so-called detached concern. The coach is expected to show professional conduct and set aside emotions. According to Merton’s dictionary, the coach belongs to the category of ‘helping professions’, at the same time taking up the role of a friend who supports the client in his or her actions. Notwithstanding the type of coaching – individual, collegial, contracted by an employee or voluntary – the social interaction in the coaching relation can be described with the classic statement by Francis E. Merrill and H. Wentworth Eldredge in Culture and Society: An Introduction to Sociology, supplemented with one word only: ‘social

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interaction is based upon [rhetorical – added by M.M.] communication. … The individual interacts with others through the medium of [rhetorical – added by M.M.] communication. The result of this activity is the broad and inclusive process of social interaction’ (Merrill and Eldredge 1952: 486). Drawing on the results of my own ethnographic studies, my argument here is that the coaching process is a rhetoric form based on the concept of rhetoric as persuasion – inducement to action (ad agendum), established by Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana. Commenting on Augustine’s concept, Kenneth Burke (1969: 50) notes that: ‘Yet often we could with more accuracy speak of persuasion “to attitude”, rather than persuasion to out-and-out action’. The authors of books on coaching, coaches and coachees whom I have interviewed agree that participation in a coaching process can be equated with encouragement to take action and/or change an attitude, habits or patterns of thinking which are considered constraining and undesirable. Coaching assumes the ‘possibility of changing the mindset’ (Szmidt 2012: 42). Therefore, coaching combines the approaches proposed by Augustine and Burke. Let us expand on this notion. Both coaches and coachees define coaching in rhetorical terms. The verbs ‘to persuade’, ‘to encourage’ or ‘to influence’, used by them in the description of the coaching process, all refer to the Greek word peitho, meaning ‘“I urge”, “I impel”, “I convince”, as well as “I beg”, “I win over”, or even “I lure”’ (Ziomek 1990: 8). In her business coaching book, Scoular (2012) instructs coaches: ‘You need to persuade them [coachees] to let go of the past, rouse them to action, inspire, motivate’. According to coach Brian, ‘coaching is a relation in which, through various creative and mind-opening questions, or tricks, the coach provokes the coachee to give their best and make use of the results in the most effective way’. ‘Uplifting’ is the metaphorical expression used by coach Amanda, with reference to coaching. In the book The Coaching Manual, Julie Starr writes that ‘an effective coach will use techniques of enquiry, summary, reflection and feedback to encourage the coachee to improve their ability to relate to and influence others’ (Starr 2008: 300). In Coaching for Breakthrough Success, Jack Canfield and Peter Chee add that, ‘When it comes to creating a successful coaching relationship and enabling a fruitful coaching conversation, the coach uses relational influence to lead rather than positional authority. To influence is to get someone to make decisions or take action because he or she really wants to as a result of their own free will’ (Canfield and Chee 2013: 17). The objective of professional coaching is to influence the coachee through the inspirational actions of the coach. Coachee Ezra puts it this way: ‘In principle, the coach just stands by, accompanies me, but it is me who makes decisions and chooses the path’. A coach supports, inspires or provokes the coachee to attain the goals that they set by themselves. However, an ethical coach should

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refrain from giving clear-cut advice. A coach provides the structure and the process, which are persuasive in their nature. The content should be provided by the coachee. My interlocutors have warned me about confusing coaching with manipulation. Professional coaching is based on encouraging the coachee to create and follow their own vision rather than on persuading the coachee to follow the vision proposed by the coach. Coach Barbra notes that: ‘If someone comes up with an action plan by themselves, they are better motivated to act on it. Before we tell someone what to do, let us motivate them to consider what would be the best action plan from their point of view’. Coachees have a similar view on the matter. Ezra says that ‘coaches do not help others. It’s the clients who help themselves’. Diane, an entrepreneur and coachee herself, claims that coaching ‘is about convincing yourself that you want to change yourself ’. Peter, a student and coachee, admits that in his coaching process, he has been motivated to go through a transformation from a ‘shy’ to a more ‘self-confident’ person. A short statement by coachee and manager Alice can serve as a summary of the opinions referred to above. She says that ‘coaching is the energy that gives you an incentive to self-development. I don’t find any other more adequate word for coaching … Coaching gives you energy, empowers you and provides opportunities for happiness’. In her opinion, coaching is the energy to take action, change your attitude, increase your awareness, become more selfconfident and emotionally mature. Her metaphorical comparison of coaching to energy brings to mind George Kennedy’s broad understanding of rhetoric: Rhetoric, in the most general sense, may thus be identified with the energy inherent in an utterance (or an artistic representation): the mental or emotional energy that impels the speaker to expression, the energy level coded in the message, and the energy received by the recipient who then uses mental energy in decoding and perhaps acting on the message. Rhetorical labor takes place. (Kennedy 1998: 5)

To paraphrase the philosopher’s and coachee’s words, we can say that rhetoric is the mental and emotional energy inherent in the coaching process, understood as ‘an artistic representation’, which stimulates, encourages, impels, motivates and inspires coachees to express themselves through taking action and/ or changing an attitude. The fact that participation in a coaching process brings such benefits as happiness, peace of mind and satisfaction with one’s life and work only confirms the rhetorical character of this form of discourse. Burke (1969: 60–61) pointed out that ‘among the marks of rhetoric is its use to gain advantage, of one sort or another. Indeed, all the sources of “happiness” listed in Aristotle’s “eudaimonist” rhetoric, as topics to be exploited for persuasion and dissuasion, could be lumped under the one general heading of “advantage”’ (empha-

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sis in the original). Thus, the main questions that appear during the analysis devoted to coaching should be: What is the outcome of this rhetorical labour of self on self in coaching? What are the advantages of coaching for coachees? My respondents assumed that coaching leads to happiness and an increased ‘emotional competence’, as it is called (Mokrzan 2019a). For them, coaching is, first of all, ‘a reflexive practice’ that helps to acquire knowledge about themselves, increase self-consciousness, self-awareness and self-control. Owing to what they call emotional competence, coachees can effectively and consciously manage themselves and others. They say that coaching helps them handle both instrumental (manager–direct report; service provider–client; professor– student) and autotelic (husband–wife; partner–partner; parent–child) social relations. On the one hand, participation in a coaching process enables coachees to communicate more effectively with co-workers, managers and clients, establish relations of production, forms of cooperation and modes of exchange and increase the contributed symbolic, social and economic capital. Strong selfesteem, assertiveness and improved efficiency are the desirable characteristics of a neoliberal subject. They can be obtained through participation in a coaching process. As noted by Starr (2008: 297), ‘Our ability to remain self-aware, self-managing and aware of others governs our ability to influence those people around us; whether that’s getting someone to make you a cup of coffee or help you win the hottest deal in town’. On the other hand, however, involvement in a coaching process teaches coachees the competences they need to handle social relations having a purpose in and not apart from themselves, such as marriage, friendship or parenting, in a more efficient manner. Those ‘AHA!’ moments, when they realize that they have been living on autopilot and developed limiting habits, coupled with improved emotion management skills, help them become a ‘better mother’ or ‘better partner’ in their own eyes. Taken at face value, the above findings can lead to the following classification: business and executive coaching equips coachees with the tools to achieve desirable instrumental social relations, while, focused on personal relations and development, life coaching provides them with tools for more efficient handling of autotelic social relations. Certainly, the proposed classification is not disjunctive, as there are coaching processes in which both motivations are utilized. When asked about participation in the coaching process, many coachees stressed the importance of freedom of setting goals, planning and taking action. This fact allows us to relate coaching to rhetoric – understood as persuasion – on one hand, and to neoliberal governmentality on the other. Burke (1969: 50) noted that ‘persuasion involves choice, will; it is directed to a man only insofar as he is free … only insofar as men are potentially free, must the spellbinder seek to persuade them. Insofar as they must do something, rhetoric is unnecessary’ (emphasis in the original). Neoliberal governmentality on

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the other hand consists of, as Nikolas Rose (1999) puts it, ‘government through freedom’. According to neoliberal logic, understood as political rationality, ‘individuals are to become, as it were, entrepreneurs of themselves, shaping their own lives through the choices they make among the forms of life available to them’ (ibid.: 230). Rose claims that the key role in shaping neoliberal subjects is determined by the so-called psy-disciplines, which focus on transforming subjectivity rather than treating disorders. Psychological experts, ‘engineers of the human soul’ (ibid.: 2), offer psychological support through a variety of practices. Apart from counselling and many types of psychotherapy, coaching is one practice that provides an individual with the tools necessary to transform the self in a predefined way. Owing to the strong presence of psydisciplines in various areas of social life, the relation between subjectivity and power has shifted. Rather than means of coercion, coaching – understood as a materialization of neoliberal technologies of governmentality – uses various means of persuasion. Rose points out that the techniques of persuasion applied in psy-disciplines are used both by experts on individuals and by individuals on themselves (ibid.: 251). Although Rose refers to various forms of psychotherapy, the same applies to life and business coaching. On one hand, the coaching process has a persuasive structure; on the other hand, however, both the coach and the coachee use rhetorical measures at each stage of the coaching process. The following extract from Henryk Szmidt’s Coaching Line illustrates the rhetorical and neoliberal character of coaching: Captain Hook’s task is to teach Peter Pan to fly. Captain Hook is the coach … The main difference between Captain Hook and a coach is the negative motivation used by Captain Hook. A coach will not use fear to animate the client. A coach will employ other methods to instil in them faith that their vision of life may become reality. (Szmidt 2012: 14)

‘How does the coach persuade the coachee to change?’ and ‘How do the coachees influence themselves?’ – these are the two most important questions we should seek to answer in the study of the work of neoliberal governmentality that is manifested in a coach–coachee relation. It has been mentioned before that a coach must refrain from giving advice because it ‘leads to dependency – the opposite of what you are trying to achieve as a coach’ (Rogers 2008: 7). Therefore, other tools of persuasion are used, in particular urging one to take action and encouraging one to change an attitude. With reference to the approach proposed by governmentality studies, the means of persuasion used by the coach are the technologies of institutional rationality (technologies of power) represented in the coach–coachee relation, whereas the tools used by the coachee are the technologies of the self. The joint effect of both can be referred to as persuasion of neoliberal governmentality.

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Persuasion of Neoliberal Governmentality All coaching authors unanimously state that one of the basic skills a coach needs to master in order to effectively urge and inspire the client to take action and/or change an attitude is the skill of building rapport. When asked about what builds rapport between a coach and a coachee, they refer to matching, congruence and/or mirroring – processes based on the category of ‘sameness’. Julie Starr concludes that ‘categories of “sameness” can include many different aspects, for example: physical appearance/clothes. Body language/physical gestures. Qualities of voice. Language/words used. Beliefs and values’ (Starr 2008: 63–64). It is difficult to overlook the fact that the category of ‘sameness’ plays an important role in the rhetorical processes of communication. I daresay that the coaching-related process of mirroring is based on the rhetoric of identification, as described by Burke: ‘Here is perhaps the simplest case of persuasion. You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his’ (Burke 1969: 55). Starr’s statement quoted below shows inspiration taken from Burke: One well-known way of increasing rapport is known as matching. This means being literally the same in some way as the person you want to build rapport with. … When I’m coaching and decide that rapport isn’t as good as I need it to be, I’ll first look for mismatches or differences between us. I’ll do a quick check on physical posture, voice qualities, amounts of energy we’re displaying – obvious things that I can easily adapt. If my gestures are more animated than the other person’s, I’ll calm myself down a little. If I’m speaking much more quickly than they are, I’ll begin to decrease my pace. (Starr 2008: 72–73)

Jenny Rogers considers building rapport in almost ontological terms: Rapport, congruence and empathy are not ‘techniques’. They are ways of being with a client. Real rapport is more than copying body posture, though two people who are actually in rapport will indeed mirror each other in how they are sitting or standing. When you are in rapport, you will be matching the other person: body, voice volume, breathing, gesture, space, language, pace and energy. (Rogers 2008: 45–46)

Identification is not merely limited to similarities in behaviour, gestures or clothing styles. It also manifests itself at the language (semantic) level. To boost the effectiveness of a coaching process, coaches are encouraged to mirror the client’s language. Rogers argues that ‘the effective coach notices and picks up on the client’s language. When clients are talking about issues that really touch

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them their language changes: it becomes more vivid, sometimes more direct, sometimes more metaphorical’ (Rogers 2008: 71). The result of semantic identification can be considered in cognitive and performative terms. Coachee Ezra puts it this way: ‘The coach listens to you and then presents a vision of the world with your own words. However, this time the vision is not told – it is listened to. Somebody else shows you your world using your own language, your own words. And then, you go like: “Wait, it seems different when the words come out of my mouth, right?”’. The most widely accepted belief is ‘that the coach not only matches the words the coachee is using, but also the “sense” of the images the coachee is building’ (Starr 2008: 70). A coachee, in an attempt to define a goal or identify a problem that they want to address during a coaching session, often takes recourse to familiar rhetorical figures. Rogers goes even further, stating that a coaching session is in fact leaping ‘from one metaphor to another’ (Rogers 2008: 75). Therefore, a coach must respond properly to the rhetoric used by the coachee. In this sense, the coach is like the anthropologist described by James W. Fernandez (1974: 119), who must be ‘sensitive to local figures of speech, the chief of which is metaphor’. The coach aims to pick up the metaphoric language used by the coachee. However, their rhetorical work goes further – a coach seeks to analyse and clarify the metaphors used by the coachee. Through picking up the metaphors and bringing the coachee’s attention to them, the coach makes the coachee aware of their thinking patterns. This is, without a doubt, cognitive work. However, the process of clarifying the metaphors, initialized by the coach, is to be finished by the coachee and become the driving force of action and/or change of attitude. Then, work with metaphors gains a performative aspect. As an example, let me quote an extract from an interview with a coach, Amanda: Researcher: What type of problems do clients seek your help with at your coaching sessions? Coach: Mostly things that bother them, … impediments to their functioning in daily life … Some clients want to strengthen themselves, get to like and accept themselves. Most of my coaching processes are based on these issues. Even when somebody came to me with a clearly defined goal of changing their job, in the end it turned out that what they really sought was that feeling of uniqueness, recognition and value rather than to change that job. Researcher: What else does the old self come with? Coach: It usually comes with the problem that it doesn’t accept something, with a feeling that it isn’t quite satisfied with itself…

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Researcher: What do clients leave with? What is the new self like? Coach: The new self? It is certainly bolder and more open-minded. Bolder, because the new I takes up new things it has so far been only thinking about, like joining a tango class, travelling to the other side of the world; it does things which before seemed absolutely impossible … What else? Well, it knows itself much better, and accepts itself. … It is much friendlier to itself. … What is the new self like? I think that just like after winter comes spring and everything begins to bloom, it is a similar feeling, suddenly you feel like ‘wow, I am thriving, I am on a roll’ … Here a female client comes to my mind … I ask her how things are at the moment, and I hear: ‘Oh, terrible, I don’t like it … I feel like I’m in a troop of monkeys’. ‘A troop of monkeys?’ I ask. And she says ‘Yes, do you know what I mean? A bunch of monkeys, they throw themselves at me and pull me, each of them in another direction, and I feel so torn inside. What’s more, they heckle me, jump loudly and make a lot of noise. I feel stress, anxiety, and I don’t even have time for myself because they keep me busy all the time’. So I ask her: ‘What would you like to change this troop of monkeys for? What would you like instead?’ And she says that she would like ‘a serene lake with floating swans’. Then we started to work on it … Of course, it turned out that the monkeys were the tasks that other people kept passing onto her, and she accepted them all because everyone was more important than herself.

Due to the participation in the coaching process, a client of coach Amanda proceeds from the initial understanding of herself through the metaphor of the ‘troop of monkeys’ (expression of a sad affect) to the experience of a new self by using the metaphor of ‘a serene lake with floating swans’ (expression of a joyful affect). Adapting the statement by Fernandez (1972: 56) concerning religious experience, it can be stated that coachees take advantage of the coaching process to change the way they perceive themselves and the world they live in. They enter the coaching process with feelings or attitudes – such as regret, sorrow, frustration, poor self-confidence, low self-esteem, lacking motivation to take action, feeling ‘stuck’ – which they want to overcome, and metaphors help them achieve it. Metaphors influence the coachee through persuasion and performance, and enable them to leave the coaching process mentally strengthened and motivated to take action. Using them, coachees put themselves in a better position in the qualitative space. This is undoubtedly the essence of the strategy of emotional movement, employed in coaching. The metaphors and other rhetorical figures that are deployed in the coaching process are not considered in terms of aesthetic, that is, as ornaments or stylistic tricks that adorn and display thoughts of a speaker, but as categories of

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thought that gain a cognitive dimension. Nevertheless, the function of figures is not solely confined to the ideational organization of socio-cultural reality. These categories have also proven to be persuasive, as they affect certain activities of social actors. Coaching is then based on the rhetorical vision of language. Language is not only a tool used to express thoughts, but also a way of acting; it has both persuasive and performative functions. Rogers puts it in a metaphorical way: The best coaches, like the best therapists, are naturally skilled at using language which assumes a positive outcome. In effect it is a hidden order. They consciously slip in the constructions that convey that success will be inevitable. This is the linguistic equivalent of the placebo effect in medicine. (Rogers 2008: 81)

The following extract from Rogers (2008: 74–75), which presents a coaching session with Clive, an employee in a minister’s office, who wants to address the problem of time management, serves as an example of the persuasive function of language in coaching: Coach: So you are finding it difficult to manage your time? Clive: Yes, I did the time management course years ago and I know I should have A, B and C lists and all that stuff, but I still can’t stick to it, which is stupid. I’m working really long hours and getting stressed. Coach: So how does this pattern of long hours and stress feel? Clive: It feels out of control, mad … Coach: Out of control … mad … what does it feel like, being out of control and mad? Clive: Like being in a whirlwind, a tornado, stressed to death, prone to jumping down people’s throats but of course it would be death to do that with my current Minister. He works on such a short fuse himself! Coach: Death – that sounds extreme – say more? Clive: Yeah, death, the end. Driven, helpless, high speed, dangerous, destructive. Too much for me to cope with – I just cut off and that isn’t good. I get paralyzed by fear and stop functioning. Coach: Death, driven, helpless … You stop functioning. What would you like instead? Clive: I’d like to be a more steady cardiograph; calm, peaceful.

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Coach: And how would that feel? Clive: Wonderful. Peaceful, in control. Able to do my job properly.

This dialogue, as well as the extract from an interview with coach Amanda referred to above, illustrates the persuasive dimension of the coach–coachee relation. A coach uses the language to provoke what the coachee wants. By asking an open-ended question, such as ‘What would you like instead?’ and ‘How would that feel?’, the coach encourages, urges and/or inspires the coachee to transform a problem from the past, which has negative emotional implications, into a future goal with positive emotional implications. According to the opinions of some of my coach respondents, this is where the coach plays the key role in the coaching process. Coach Brian argues that: The objective of the first session, the so-called zero session, is to make a client, who came with a problem, go out with a goal … Coaches avoid all negativity in the perception of reality by a client. … If a client complains and presents the reality in a negative way, says ‘I have this problem, this is wrong, that is wrong’, the first thing most coaches ask about is ‘What would you like instead?’ This is a starting point to transform a problem into a goal. … As coaches, we want to guide the client into positive thinking.

To effectively influence coachees, coaches are instructed to never tell their clients ‘that something will be difficult or tricky. Essentially your role is to expect success because this way you will convey it to the client. This increases the chances that this is what will happen. When you label something difficult, you create the expectation of failure’ (Rogers 2008: 82). A coach uses positively valorized vocabulary. The statements referred to above show that the most important tool of influence applied by coaches, and for some of them the only one, is the openended question. In principle, an open-ended question conveys the responsibility for setting a goal and finding ways to achieve it onto the coachee. Questions asked by a coach ‘can be like keys that open doors’ (Starr 2008: 105). This metaphor is very accurate for the effect of question asking. Questions such as ‘What would you like to change?’, ‘What crucial steps could you take?’, ‘What’s your next step?’, not only ask about specific action, but also urge coachees to take action and/or encourage them to change an attitude. According to Starr, an open-ended question ‘can be a really effective way of moving someone forward from a problem, to a solution and action. This is a natural part of the coaching role and can be of great value to the person being coached’ (Starr 2008: 118). An open-ended question hides an underlying belief that the problem which bothers the coachee can be solved by him or herself. It provokes or inspires the

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coachee to consider possible responses or solutions. Asked skilfully, it expands the client’s perspective: ‘the questions explore, clarify, summarize and probe, always extending the client’s thinking and willingness to learn something new’ (Rogers 2008: 51). There is even a set of questions, used in coaching, that apply to any situation, regardless of the context or issue. Rogers refers to them as ‘super-useful (“magic”) questions’ (Rogers 2008: 68). Here are some of them: What’s the issue? … What makes it an issue now? … Who owns this issue/ problem? … How important is it on a 1–10 scale? … Imagine this problem’s been solved. What would you see, hear and feel? What are the options for action here? … So what’s the next/first step? … When will you take it? (Rogers 2008: 69–71)

Open-ended questions have a persuasive function. Coachee Peter, a student, puts it this way: ‘The coach asks questions, partly to guide me into a way of thinking, and partly, maybe, to help me let go of my false beliefs. For example, when I say that “something constrains me”, the coach asks “What constrains you?” Then I begin to explain things, and it turns out later that I am the one who is in charge of these things and can change them’. Coachee Umberto, an academic teacher, reconstructs the dialogue he has had with his coach: Umberto: Nothing can be done about it. Coach: What do you mean, nothing can be done about it? Umberto: Well, actually… Coach: What are the next steps you need to take? Umberto: Well I’d have to write the co-author an email and consult with him what comments should be made. Then how to make my comments, and so on. Coach: Ok. Step one. When will you write the email? Umberto: Well, I will write it. Coach: No. Will you write it today or tomorrow? And it really works, because it boosts your motivation. And motivation is always a problem.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire coach–coachee relation is immersed in rhetoric. To a large degree, the neoliberal subject is shaped through rhetorical discourse. Conversations between the coach and the coachee during coaching sessions, on the one hand, and the self-talk of the coachee, on the

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other hand, are of key importance in the process of changing an attitude and/ or taking some action. The technologies of neoliberal governmentality are not only developed in conversation with a coach, but are also used by individuals during so-called solitary discourse. The most intensive work in which the coachee must engage is, as Jarosław Kordziński puts it, ‘his or her own interior’ (2013: 202). To describe this dimension of the process of subjectivity formation, we should turn to the category of internal rhetoric, coined by Jean Nienkamp (2001, 2009), which applies to the process of self-persuasion. The process relies on exerting an influence on oneself via internal speech. Internal rhetoric involves a continuum of forms, from the most deliberate acts of inducing certain actions, attitudes and feelings, to unconscious persuasion processes. Internal rhetoric involves an internalization of discourses in order to create a so-called rhetorical self. Those discourses ‘are not strictly verbal, but are rich mental representations of the ideologies, subjectivities, roles and expectations that we have been subjected to and have internalized, adjusted and assumed’ (Nienkamp 2009: 20–21). Nienkamp points out that ‘Michel Foucault calls such cultivated internal rhetoric “techniques of the self ”’ (ibid.: 32), ‘which is to say, the producers, which no doubt exist in every civilization, suggested or prescribed to individuals in order to determine their identity, maintain it or transform it in terms of a certain number of ends, through relations of self-mastery or self-knowledge’ (Foucault 1997: 87). In coaching, understood as a materialization of concepts of neoliberal governmentality, the coach initiates the transformation using tools of persuasion (external rhetoric), which may be classified as technologies of institutional rationality (technologies of power). However, in order to be fully convinced, the coachee must run the mechanisms of persuasion (internal rhetoric), which can be considered as technologies of the self. As Foucault reminds us, ‘Governing people is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed or modified by himself ’ (Foucault 1993: 204). The process in which the macroand micro-technologies of neoliberal governmentality merge is referred to by my respondents as ‘installing an internal coach’. In the process, the coachees begin to ask themselves questions based on those questions that they could be asked in a session with a coach. Coach Brian explains it this way: Once a coachee finds themselves an excuse for not doing something, they mentally hear the question a coach would ask, having heard that they did not manage to do something: ‘What did you gain by not having done it?’ This is their internal coach speaking. Any tools that leave the client with some

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real evidence work well. For example, it may be a piece of paper on which the coachee has written, during the session, what he is going to do. After the session, the piece of paper lying on their desk works as an installed internal coach, reminding them of what they have decided to do in the session.

Coachees’ statements confirm Brian’s opinion. When asked about how going through a coaching process contributes to changing an attitude or thinking patterns, coachee Mike, an entrepreneur, says: I don’t know, I don’t remember how the coach talked me out of it, that is, how he helped me talk myself out of it, because, in fact, I talked myself out of it … Anything you do here, in your head, you do it yourself, nobody else can do it … You need to let in what the coach tells you and start to act on it. … ‘Do you think it’s good for you?’ – when you hear this question, first, you need to ask yourself: ‘Do I think it is bad?’ Or ‘How do you think, what does it contribute to your relationship, relation, work, personality?’ You have to ask this question to yourself and find the answer – then the process just goes on. So this is me who talks myself out of something, and the coach only helps me in it.

By asking a question, the coach initiates the process of transformation, while the coachee needs to pick up the question and ask it to themselves. The internal process the coachee goes through is persuasive and interpretative. What happens during the time in between coaching sessions? Coachee Umberto says: ‘I’m trying to interpret, into my own language, different things which have been said during the session in the coaching language, or said vaguely’. The actions which the coachees take on themselves can be explained using a quote from the Introduction to the Studies in Rhetoric and Culture (Strecker and Tyler 2009: frontispiece) series: Our minds are filled with images and ideas, but these remain unstable and incomplete as long as we do not manage to persuade both ourselves and others of their meanings. It is this inward and outward rhetoric which allows us to give some kind of shape and structure to our understanding of the world and which becomes central to the formation of individual and collective consciousness.

The analyses discussed in this chapter do not constitute an exhaustive description of coaching relations. Certainly, open-ended questions are not free of bias and in fact do not always guide the subject to a positive transformation. One of my respondents, coachee Kylie, referred to coaching as a ‘superficial relation’ fraught with frustration. The open-ended questions she was asked did not help her change her attitude but rather triggered annoyance and, as

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she called it, ‘mental resistance’. In consequence, she developed an attitude of disapproval of the coach’s guidance, an ‘oh, give me a break, please’ kind of thing. However, cases of disapproval of the coaching process do not contradict the existence of the rhetorical dimension to this technology of neoliberal governmentality. Obviously, coaching sessions will have a greater impact on coachees who accept the neoliberal logic. The coaching dictionary even features the term ‘coachability’, defined as the willingness of an individual to alter his or her behaviour in a desired direction. It is not an overstatement to say that the term ‘coachability’ is closely related to ‘governability’, defined as capable of being managed and conducted.

Conclusion The processes of subjectification within coaching are formed by means of symbolic actions, which ancient rhetoric catalogued under five canons: invention, disposition, elocution, memory and pronunciation. The social relations in the coaching process are based on rhetorical communication. Coaches as well as coachees use rhetorical tools to achieve established goals, even without being aware of applying the rules of the art of rhetoric. Obviously, in their daily activities they do not employ all rhetorical genres and categories in such a systematic way as observed in the works of rhetoricians. Nevertheless, beyond any doubt, it can be argued that coachees and coaches, in order to give a sense of reality and to influence each other, and thus to be able to act in a responsible and productive way, invent thoughts (invention), organize them (disposition), translate them into words (elocution), invent stories and use enthymemes. Thus, the rhetorical theory of culture and subject proposed by the Rhetoric Culture Project has great potential for explaining how individuals involved in coaching construct, negotiate and challenge their own selves. According to Peter Oesterreich, it can be concluded that coaches and coachees are examples of homo rhetoricus: humans are rhetorical beings who use persuasive speech not only to influence others but also to shape themselves. This manifests itself in acts of prophesizing, narrating, proclaiming, questioning, explicating, contradicting, and everything that belongs to the domain of teaching (docere), as well as in pleading, requesting, advising, impelling, prescribing, ordering, seducing – that is, forms of expression that belong to emotion (movere) – and, finally, delighting, amusing, diverting, praising, paying tribute, glorifying, and so on, which pertain to pleasing (delectare). This interaction of docere, movere and delectare shapes the life of homo rhetoricus. (Oesterreich 2009: 49)

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As I understand rhetoric as a certain skill (used consciously or unconsciously) of employing symbols to render the reality meaningful, to exert an emotive effect and to persuade someone to act or to adopt certain values and attitudes, I have focused on rhetorical labour, which constitutes the work of neoliberal governmentality. By using rhetorical means, individuals interpret their lives and motivate themselves in order to achieve the goals assumed during the coaching process. Going through a coaching process, coachees shape their instrumental and autotelic social relations in a desirable way. My respondent coachees believe that the state of being a ‘better mother’, ‘better scientist’, ‘better partner’, ‘more efficient employee’ or ‘responsible manager’ can be achieved through applying appropriate coaching techniques. These techniques are but rhetorical strategies, as has been shown in this chapter. Rhetoric here turns out to be, in the words of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980), ‘good to think with’, ‘good to live by’ and – as I say – good to govern others and oneself with. Michał Mokrzan is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor at the University of Wrocław, Poland. He received his PhD from the University of Lodz (2010). His research interests focus on rhetoric culture theory and studies in governmentality, particularly on the practices and strategies of constructing middle-class subjectivities. He has been involved in a research project focusing on rhetorical emergence of neoliberal governmentality, anthropology of personal development practices, and rhetoric of expert discourse. Most of his publications are in Polish, among them the book Tropes, Figures, Persuasions: Rhetoric and Cognition in Anthropology (Tropy, Figury, Perswazje: Retoryka a Poznanie w Antropologii (Wydawnictwo Katedry Etnologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2010). In 2014 he published his paper ‘The Rhetorical Turn in Anthropology’ (Český Lid 101(1): 1–18), and in 2016 with C. Meyer and F. Girke the (online) paper ‘Rhetoric Culture Theory’ for the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology.

Note This article presents the results of a study carried out within a research grant funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, Rhetorical Emergence of Neoliberal Subjects. Anthropological Analysis of Coaching (2014/15/D/HS3/00483). Some ideas in this chapter were reproduced and elaborated in my recent book (2019b) Class, Capital and Coaching in Late Capitalism: Persuasion of Neoliberal Governmentality (Klasa, kapitał i coaching w dobie późnego kapitalizmu: Perswazja neoliberalnego urządzania). Certain parts of this paper were translated from Polish by Jarosław A. Szymański. Owing to the confidential character of ethnographic studies, all coaches and coachees quoted in this paper have been given pseudonyms.

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Index       

A Abbink, Jon, 165, 249 Aeschylus, 3 African wild olive, 144–145, 149–150, 155, 163, 164. See also girari; Olea europaea L.; purgative age groups, 12, 195, 247, 303 Agha, Asif, 18 agroecology, 261, 267, 275, 277, 278 agropastoralists, 77, 120, 122, 124, 127, 132 Ainsworth, Susanne, 315 alcohol, 276 abuse, 158–159, 161, 163 (among Mambila people), 107 (among Mun people), 143, 153, 157–159, 161–162, 164–165 See also arake alliance, 60 American kinship, 82, 104 Anderson, Paul, 229 anorexia nervosa, 145, 163 anthropology, 9–10, 44, 94, 99, 120, 139, 183, 234, 286, 310 of East Africa, 117, 120, 123 economic, 94, 99, 120, 122, 132, 136 and ethnographic research, 311 of Melanesia, 117, 120, 123, 132 rhetorical, 310, 311, 318 antibiotics, 143, 157, 159–61, 163. See also biomedicine appeal, 59, 61, 62, 65 arake, 153, 157–159, 164–65 Arbore people, 125, 130–131, 134–135, 137 Aristotle, 8, 12, 24, 123, 284, 290, 307, 320

attachment, 58–59 Augustine, 319 B Bab Tuma (city quarter in Damascus), 206, 207 ‘bad’ foods, 279 Bailey, F.G., 214 Barnard, Alan, 85 Bateson, Gregory, 33, 99, 100, 286 beltamo (Kara bondfriendship), 117, 124–128, 134, 136 Biesta, Gert, 182 binge-drinking games (Mun people), 145, 152–154, 165 binge-eating (Mun people), 164, 165 binge-purging (Mun people) 145, 152–154, 165 Binkley, Sam, 310, 313–315, 317 biomedicine, 143, 159 ‘biorhetoric’, 4 Birgmeier, Bernd, 312 Bodi (Mela and Chirim) people, 144, 154 body mass index (BMI), 257 Bloch, Maurice, 22, 109 blood, 143, 146, 152–55, 157, 160 bondfriendship, 117, 121 as rhetoric, 110, 119, 122, 128, 135 bonding, ix, 5, 8–9, 11, 164, 194 brother-sister (Hamar culture), 60, 64, 69, 76, 77 father-son (Hamar culture), 59, 60 mother-child (Hamar culture), 57–61, 63, 64, 69, 73, 74, 78

336



index

of namesakes (Hamar culture), 63 mother-in-law–daughter-in-law (Hamar culture), 73–74 parent-son, 75 brand marks, 39–44 breast-feeding, 57–59, 62, 73, 74 bridewealth, 77, 101, 127, 131, 145, 194, 304 Brummett, Barry, 24 Buffavand, Lucie, 154, 162 bulimia nervosa, 145, 163, 164 Burke, Kenneth L., 7, 11, 12, 17, 182, 183, 189, 311, 319–321, 323 C Canfield, Jack, 319 capitalism, 313, 316–317 and social relations, 314 care, 59, 60, 62, 65, 69, 70 Carrithers, Michael, 98, 130 Carsten, Janet, 83, 99, 110 cassava, 253, 261, 264, 266, 269, 278 cereals, 258, 263–264, 268–269, 278 Chee, Peter, 319 chiasmus, ix, 5, 7, 12–13, 20–22, 30, 189 ‘circle’, 34 ‘cross’, 34 ‘embodied’, 12 as flesh, 45–46 ‘mirror’, 34 patterning, 32 ‘spiral’, 35 typology of, 32–33, 35–36, 48–50 X, 30–31, 39–44, 47–51 coaching, 310–332 in capitalist context, 313, 316–317, 325 definition, 311–312 as neoliberal technology of governmentality, 310, 315–331 as persuasive practice, 310–311, 317–331 coffee, 129, 144–45, 147–48, 155–56, 158, 161, 163, 164. See also purging cognition, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 20, 21, 22, 285 comparison, 117, 119–120, 123, 132 compliments, 205, 211, 215, 218, 224, 227 coquetry, 173 cultural ecology, 121–122, 125, 130 cultural model, 117, 119, 137

‘cultural neighbourhood’, 125, 129, 138 cultural repertoire, 6, 168, 283, 285 ‘culture’, 6–9, 11, 21, 24, 82, 99, 116–117, 119–120, 125, 129–130, 191, 199, 200, 241, 250, 283, 285, 304–306, 317 D Damascus, 205–206, 219, 228–229 civil war, 206–207, 228 gentrification, 207–208 rural migrants, 206–207 Shāmi/Shuwām, 206–208 Dassanech people, 127, 137, 138 deceit, 176, 178 dialectic, 5, 8, 11–12, 15, 32, 286 ‘dialogic approach’, 8, 10, 17, 27, 286 dialogue, 44, 51 dietary diversity, 264, 266, 270 dietary guidelines, 255–256, 259–60, 268, 275 discourse analysis, 16, 19, 25, 183–184, 193, 199, 257, 285, 311, 315 disgust, 144, 148–49, 162–163 disgust-eliciting practice, 163 division of labour, 174, 191 Dizi people, 292, 293, 301–302 dogma. See ideology dokay (Harrisonia abyssinica Oliv.), 142–143, 145, 149–151, 154–155, 160, 162, 164. See also purgative double binds, 33–34, 48–50 Driberg, Jack, 139 Du Bois, John W., 310 E education, 16, 182, 187, 207, 266, 272, 274, 312 Bildung, 182 and rhetoric, 183 Effenberg, Stefan, 246 egalitarianism, 117, 124, 128, 131–132 Egypt gendered roles, 172, 174 love in, 168, 172 society, 168 Eickelman, Dale, 209–210 Eldredge, Wentworth H., 318–319 embodied cognition, 30–52

index

embodiment, 5–7, 10, 12, 13, 18, 22 ‘emergent properties’, 5, 44, 108–109, 111 emetic, 144–145, 147, 159–160. See also purgative emic – etic categories, 99, 100, 119, 137, 139, 217, 313 emotional competence, 321 emotions, 311 in coaching, 317, 318, 327 ensete (Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman), 253, 261, 268–269, 276 Hadiyya view on, 270–271 ensete food culture, 269, 272 ensete gardens, 254, 273, 276 enthymeme, 306, 331 envy, 224, 226 equality (ideology of), 208–209, 214, 226 ethnic group, 125, 127, 131, 287, 290–294, 303, 307 ethnicity, 119 ethos, 119, 121–123, 128, 135, 139, 143, 199, 295, 311, 321 enculturation, 13, 17, 183–184, 187, 198 Ethiopian National Micronutrient Survey Report, 266 ethnography, 4–5, 7, 13, 15, 19–20, 22, 80–81, 83, 116–117, 122, 199–200, 217, 311 ethnomethodology, 98, 109 Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 138–139 ‘evil eye’, 224, 226 exchange, 77, 120, 123, 126–127, 130, 132–133, 210, 273 F face, concept of, 127, 208–211, 225 Farrell, Thomas, 6 fatherhood, 72, 75–76 Fayers-Kerr, Kate N., 145, 155, 163 Fernandez, James W., 324–325 figure-ground, 44, 48, 50 Firth, Raymond W., 123, 136, 139 ‘fixity of the past’, 108–109 flattery, 218, 220, 223 frustration-aggression theory (DollardMiller), 233 food culture, 268–269, 272 food diversification, 264



337

food diversity, 255 food fortification, 258, 262–64, 266–68, 270 food heterogeneity, 257 food (in)security, 253, 255–256, 258, 260, 268, 273, 275, 278 cultural, 273 food variety, 254–255, 268, 270–272, 276 Foucault, Michel, 310, 313–315, 317, 329 Franklin, Benjamin, 34 friendship, 117, 122–124, 139 G Gallagher, Shaun, 31, 46 Gawa society (Papua New Guinea), 132–134 Gellner, Ernest, 113, 273 gender roles, 139, 168, 174, 176 genealogy, 103, 107–108 genealogical connection, 107 Germany, 235–236, 239–240, 244 gifts in social interaction, 117, 120, 129–130, 132 Girard, René, 8, 12, 24 girari (African wild olive), 144–145, 149–150, 155, 163–164. See also African wild olive; Olea europaea L.; purgative Goffman, Erving, 24, 208, 210 Gorgias (Plato), 8 gossip, 11, 122, 209, 226, 228 governmentality, 313, 317 as the conduct of conduct, 316 neoliberal, 310–316, 318, 321–323, 329, 331–332 Goya, Francisco, 248 Graduation with Resilience to Achieve Sustainable Development programme, 264 Graeber, David, 130, 139 ‘Green revolution’, 256 Greeks, Ancient, 6, 123, 144 Grice’s maxims, 103 Guyer, Jane, 120 H Habermas, Jürgen, 24 Hadiyya society (Ethiopia), 254, 269, 271, 279

338



index

Hamar society (Ethiopia), 72, 77, 125, 184, 187 Hamar songs, 61, 66, 78 gaido, 69, 79 goala, 67, 68, 76 laensha, 62, 64–65, 68–70, 187 ‘happiness’, 144, 313, 320–321 Hardy, Cynthia, 315 Haring, Keith, 247 Harrisonia abyssinica Oliv., 142–143, 145, 149–151, 154–155, 160, 162, 164. See also dokay; purgative Hauser, Gerard A., 311 Helms, Mary, 129 Herzfeld, Michael, 318 ‘hidden hunger’, 257 Hindess, Barry, 313 Hocart, A.M., 123 Homans, George, 81, 82, 86, 89 homo rhetoricus concept, 188 ‘honour’, 208, 209, 222 horti-pastoralists, 116, 138 hospitality, 117, 126, 131, 133–134 Hughes, Geoffrey, 235 Huizinga, Johan, 191 ‘human capital’, 314 human evolution, 30, 36–37, 48, 50 Hunt, Jonathan, 233, 234 hunter-gatherers, 80–81, 84–85 ‘immediate’, 80 I ‘identity’, 6–7, 19, 63, 162, 215, 234, 241, 256, 260, 268, 276, 280, 286, 329 ideology, 32, 48 imagination, 42–43, 46 incest, rules of, 60 initiation in Hamar, 67, 75, 78 in Suri, 302 injera (Ethiopian staple food), 254, 263, 271, 272, 278, 279 insult, 11, 69, 76, 148, 227, 235, 239, 244–245, 248, 302–303, 305 International Coach Federation, 312 Irvine, Judith, 4 Islamists, 248 Isocrates, 4, 123, 128

J Jay, Timothy, 233, 236, 240 Johnson, Mark, 9, 332 joking, 218, 243 about kin, 101–103 K Kant, Immanuel, 177 Kara society, 125 Katriel, Tamar, 217 Kennedy, George, 4, 284–285, 295, 306, 320 Knape, Joachim, 139 Kordziński, Jarosław, 329 kinship, 5–6, 8, 10–15, 77, 80, 124, 126–127, 132, 194 Dravidian terminology, 89, 92, 94 elementary unit, 60–61, 74, 78 English, 72–73, 87 Nayaka society, 89 processes 99, 110 and ritual, 72–77 singing, 64, 66, 67, 69, 78 studies, 99 Kuzwayo, Ellen, 241, 250 L Lakoff, George, 9, 332 Lazzarato, Maurizio, 314 Lavandera, Beatriz, 217 Leach, Edmund, 234 Lemke, Thomas, 310, 313–315 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 10, 17, 24, 32–34, 60, 77 Lewis, Gilbert, 109 Lindholm, Charles, 208 logos, 21, 42, 122, 295, 300, 303, 306, 311 Lordon, Frédéric, 310, 313, 316–317 lustration, 163. See also spitting Lydall, Jean, 153–154, 162, 187, 194, 249 M Macbeth (Shakespeare), 33 ‘madluqa’ (‘to throw oneself ’ at someone), 174, 179, 180 Mambila people, 100–101 Maranda, Pierre, 10, 199 marriage, 60, 61, 63, 64, 69, 76, 77, 78 McCloskey, Deirdre, 128

index

meaning schemata, 190 medicinal plants, 146, 154, 161–162 Melanesia, 123, 132 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 30, 31, 45–47, 50 Merrill, Francis E., 318–319 Merton, Robert K., 318 metaphor, 5, 11, 20, 31, 34–35, 50, 68, 144, 147, 150, 156, 161, 183, 189, 195, 198, 200, 220, 229, 234, 244, 285, 302, 315 of auto-mobile (Lordon), 316 in coaching, 324–326 of life (Foucault), 315 metonym, 10, 68, 104, 129, 139, 189, 198, 285, 288, 295 milk, 143, 146–148, 152, 154–155, 158–160 Millennium Development Goals, 265 millet, 253, 276, 278 mimesis, 11, 21–22, 42 mimetic rivalry, 8, 11–12 ‘misplaced concretism’, 99 Moguji people, 125, 130, 137 Mohr, Melissa, 234 Mokrzan, Michał, 313, 321 Moore, Wilbert E., 177 morality, 122, 137, 143–144, 147–148, 156, 160–161, 163 ‘mundane interaction’, 111 Munn, Nancy, 132–133, 135, 139 muğāmala (‘kindness, compliments’), 218–220, 223, 227. See also flattery, compliments musāyara (‘going with’), 218–220, 223, 227 N nation-building, 273, 274 ‘national cuisine’, 268–269 ‘national diet’, 255 National Nutrition Programme (Ethiopia), 266, 270, 275 Nayaka society, 87, 89–90 Neggaz, Nassima, 228–229 neighborhood relations, 116–117, 125–131, 209–210, 217 nemesis, 195 neoliberalism, 314 neoliberal subject, 314–318, 321, 328 See also neoliberal governmentality



339

neurobiology, 58 Nienkamp, Jean, 310, 329 norms social, 104, 128, 214, 221 Nugent, Paul, 273 Nussbaum, Martha, 144 nutrition policies, 256, 269 Nutrition Extension Package (Ethiopia), 260 nutritional recommendations, 260 nutritionism, 257–259, 275 Nyberg, David, 177 O obscenity, 233, 245, 247 Oesterreich, Peter, 188, 331 Olea europaea L., 163–164. See also African wild olive; girari; purgative onomatopoetic, 187, 191 ‘orphan cuisine’, 270 ‘orphan crops’ (underutilized crops), 253, 256, 268, 270, 273, 275 P pastoralism, 120–121 pathos, 311 Paul, Anthony, 21, 31, 48–50 Pelkey, Jamin, 7, 21, 32–35, 48–50 persuasion, 3–9, 11, 13, 22, 24, 59, 122, 128, 133–136, 177, 196, 229, 319–321, 323, 329 petroglyphs, 37–38 Plato, 4, 8, 123 poetics of locality, 256, 275 Polanyi, Karl, 120 politeness model (Brown and Levinson), 206, 208, 210–217, 226–227 critique, 217 FTA (face-threatening act), 211–14, 216–17 negative-politeness strategies, 211–14, 217 positive-politeness strategies, 211–18, 226–7 proverbs, 213, 228–229 Przybysz, Agnieszka, 312 public debate, 295 public speech, 289

340



index

purgative, 142–164. See also African wild olive; coffee; dokay; girari; Harrisonia abyssinica Oliv.; Olea europaea L.; vomit purging with coffee, 147, 148, 156 cultural variations, 145 and disgust, 148–149, 161 and medicine, 146 metaphors, 156–157 plants, 155 ‘purity’ (Mun people), 143, 148, 151, 161 R reciprocity, 11, 136, 210 ‘relation’, concept of, 5–6, 9–10, 80, 83, 88 ‘relevance theory’, 10 reputation, 122–123, 128, 139 rhetoric ancient, 331 and (visual) brutality, 248 as education, 182–183, 187 embodied, 143 as epistemic, 5, 9, 24, 284 gendered, 143 identification (Burke), 323 and inducement to action (ad agendum) (Augustine) and change in attitude, 310, 319 internal (Nienkamp), 329–330 and kinship, 78 and love-making, 168 of nutrition policies, 255, 256, 257, 260 performance, 289, 294, 305–306 in ritual whipping, 77, 78 of singing, 62, 66. 67, 68 and usage symbols, 332 visual, 245, 248 ‘Rhetoric Culture Project’, 4, 6–8, 12, 15, 21–22, 31, 109, 182, 199, 311, 331 rhetorical energy, 5, 15, 61, 68, 129, 184, 187, 260, 300, 306, 320 ‘rhetorical turn’, 3, 6 rhombus, 31, 49–50 ritual, 6, 42, 67, 72–74, 76, 109, 155, 157, 222, 240, 294, 300, 303 ritual whipping (Hamar culture), 76, 78, 153, 155, 184, 185, 303

Robling, Franz, 4 rock art, 37, 38 Rogers, Jenny, 322–324, 326–328 root crops, see tuber crops Rose, Nikolas, 322 S Salmond, Anne, 199 Sarte, Jean-Paul, 31, 46–47 Schlee, Günther, 124, 126, 138 Schneider, David, 81, 82, 89, 95, 99–100 School Feeding Program Nutritional Assessment Study Report (Ethiopia), 265 school meals, 272, 274–275 school programmes, 260–61, 265–66, 271–72, 274–75 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 284 Schütz, Alfred, 311 Scoones, Ian, 256 Scott, Robert, 9, 284 Scoular, Anne, 312, 315, 319 semiotics, 37, 48, 51 Shakespeare, William, 33 Shannon, Jonathan, 229 Silverton, Peter, 243 Simmel, Georg, 173 ‘slang’, 11, 18, 234, 244 Socrates, 12, 313 social construction, 30, 50–51 social relations, 5–6, 9, 16, 22, 31, 117, 134, 143, 283 in coaching, 318–319, 321, 331 of nutrition policy, 260 sociality, ix, 6, 105, 108, 274, 287 solipsism, 31, 45–47, 50–51 South Omo region (Ethiopia), 116, 118–119, 124, 125, 129–130, 133–134, 145, 161 speech repertoires, 17–18 Sperber, Dan, 10–11, 24, 102 spitting, 157, 163–165. See also lustration ‘spread-eagle’ posture, 30–31, 37–39, 41–42, 44, 47, 49 polysemy of, 43 Starr, Julie, 310, 312–313, 319, 321, 323–324, 327 stick duelling (Mun people), 154 ‘Stinkefinger’ gesture, 246

index

Strathern, Marilyn, 81–84, 86, 89 Strecker, Ivo, 3, 116–117, 124, 137, 143, 162, 206, 214, 226, 249, 317, 330 subsistence, 255, 269, 273, 275 Suchman, Lucy A., 108, 112 Suri society (Ethiopia), 144–145, 154, 163–165, 287–288, 290, 294, 301–2 swear words, 239 swearing as ‘code switching’ definition of, 235 in Germany, 234, 236, 244 in Japan, 235 motives for, 241–242 as rhetoric, 244 in South Africa, 235, 250 synecdoche, 198, 288 Syrian society, 228, 229 Szmidt, Henryk, 319, 322 T taboos, 130 verbal, 233–234, 236–238, 243, 249 tabula rasa concept, 187, 190, 195 technologies of power, 310, 313, 317, 322, 329 technologies of the self, 310, 313, 315, 317, 322, 329 t’eff (Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter), 254, 264, 271, 278 ‘terministic screens’ (K. Burke), 311 Thompson, John, 256 Tikopia society (Melanesia), 123, 132 Toadvine, Ted, 45, 46 torture, 34, 39, 41–42, 47–50



341

Totah, Faeda, 229 Traditional African Medicine (TAM), 146 tropes, 197–198 tuber crops, 253, 254, 264–266, 268–270, 275, 278 Tumin, Melvin M., 177 Tyler, Stephen, 3, 10, 143, 317, 330 U ‘upright posture’, 12–13, 21, 25, 30, 36, 50, 189 urban-rural divide, 254 V value, 128–136 variety, of foods, 254–55, 264–65, 268, 270–72, 276 violence, 289, 294 perception of, 288, 302 Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus, 39 Von Liebig, Justus, 258 W Weimer, Walter B., 24 Wiseman, Boris, ix, 32 wonder, 31, 35, 42–43, 48, 49, 51 World Bank, 259 X X. See chiasmus Y yam, 253, 266 Yoruba, 146–147