Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T06:21:23.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“We’ve Always Done It Like This …Except for a Few Details”: “Tradition” and “Innovation” in Okiek Ceremonies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Corinne A. Kratz
Corinne A. Kratz
Affiliation:
University of Nairobi and Smithsonian Institution
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

How does any practice become canonized as tradition? What counts as tradition and what does not and to whom? What temporal continuity is required and how is it defined? This essay is about African initiation ceremonies, in particular the practices of the Okiek people in Kenya. Considering the many papers spawned by Hobsbawm and Ranger's book on the “invention of tradition” (1983), it may not be surprising that Okiek also construct their ceremonies as traditional. Despite the attention devoted to the topic, few essays evaluate their own definition of tradition or consider the concept critically and comparatively. An unexamined premise thus incorporated into them takes one of two forms: either the notion of tradition is more or less the same throughout the world, and cross-cultural differences are of no consequence; or some societies (traditional ones) do not have notions of tradition. This essay argues that tradition itself must be explored as an indigenous cultural concept which shapes and is shaped by different perspectives and processes, as shown by the ways Okiek endow their images of tradition on ceremonies to spin their notions of history and identity.

Type
Changing Tradition
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 30 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun. 1981. “The Past as a Scarce Resource.” Man (N.S.), 16:201–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appiah, Anthony. 1991. “Is the ‘Post’ in Post-Modern the ‘Post’ in Post-Colonial?” Critical Inquiry, 17:2, 336–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Assad, Talal. 1989. “Remarks Made During Session on ‘The Categories of Modernity: Anthropological Perspectives.’ ” Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Washington D.C.Google Scholar
D’Azevedo, Warren. 1962. “Uses of the Past in Gola Discourse.” Journal of African History, 3:1, 11–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard. 1977. Verbal Art as Performance. Rowley, Mass.: Newberry aHouse.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard; and Joel, Sherzer, eds. 1974. Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bemsten, John. 1979. “Pastoralism, Raiding, and Prophets: Maasailand in the 19th Century.” Ph.D. disser., History Department. University of Wisconsin, Madison.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi, ed. 1990. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Roderick. 1974. “The Okiek and Their History.” Azania, 9:139–57.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Roderick.1982a. “In the Land of Milk and Honey: Okiek Adaptatioans to Their Forests and Neighbors,” in Politics and History in Band Societies, Leacock, E. and Lee, R., eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Roderick.1982b. Okiek. London: Evans Brothers.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Roderick.1986. “Okiek Resource Tenure and Territoriality as Mechanisms for Social aControl and Allocation of Resources.” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 7:1, 61 -–82.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice. 1986. From Blessing to Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Borges, Jorge Luis. 1976. Doctor Brodie's Report. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Chambers, Robert. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the Last First. Essex: Longman Scientific and Technical.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1989. “Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India.” American Ethnologist, 16:4, 622–33.Google Scholar
Clifford, James; and George, Marcus, eds. 1987. Writing Cultures. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, David William. 1991. “La Fontaine and Wamimbi: The Anthropology of ‘Time-Present’ as the Substructure of Historical Oration,” in Chronotypes: The Construction of Time, Bender, J. and Wellbery, D., eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniel, E. Valentine. 1989. “Three Dispositions Towards the Past: One Sinhala, Two Tamil,” in Identity, Consciousness and the Past: The South Asian Scene, Seneviratne, H. L., ed. Social Analysis, Special Issue no. 25.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1973. Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1971. Jamaa: A Charismatic Movement in Katanga. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes.1991. “Of Dogs Alive, Birds Dead, and Time to Tell a Story,” in Chronotypes, Bender, J. and Wellbery, D., eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1986. Central Problems in Social Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Grandin, Barbara. 1987. “Pastoral Culture and Range Management: Recent lessons from Maasailand.” ILCA Bulletin, 28:7–13.Google Scholar
Guillory, John. 1991. Canon, Syllabus, List.” Transition, 52:36–54.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John; and Dell, Hymes, eds. 1972. New Directions in Sociolinguistics. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Handler, Richard; and Jocelyn, Linnekin. 1984. “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious.” Journal of American Folklore, 97:273–90.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric; and Ranger, T., eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huntingford, G.W.B. 1929. “Modern Hunters: Some Account of the Kamelilo- Kapchepkendi Dorobo (Okiek) of Kenya Colony.”Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 59:333–76.Google Scholar
Huntingford, G.W.B. 1942. “Social Organization of the Dorobo.” African Studies, 1:3, 183–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huntingford, G.W.B. 1951. “Social Institutions of the Dorobo.” Anthropos, 46:1–46.Google Scholar
Huntingford, G.W.B. 1954. “The Political Organization of the Dorobo.” Anthropos, 49:123–48.Google Scholar
Huntingford, G.W.B. 1955. “The Economic Life of the Dorobo.” Anthropos, 50:602“34.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1964. “Introduction: Towards Ethnographies of Communication,” in The Ethnography of Communication, John, Gumperz and Dell, Hymes, eds. American Anthropologist, 66:6, pt. 2:1–34.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell 1981. In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Essays in North American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim; David, Riches; and James, Woodburn, eds. 1988. Hunters and Gatherers: Property, Power and Ideology. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Kasler, Dirk. 1988. Max Weber: An Introduction to his Life and Work. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Karp, Ivan. 1978. Fields of Change Among the Iteso of Kenya. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Kenny, Michael. 1981. “Mirror in the Forest: The Dorobo Hunter-Gatherers as an Image of the Other.” Africa, 51:1, 477–96.Google Scholar
Kingston, Maxine Hong. 1977. The Woman Warrior. London: Picador.Google Scholar
Knowles, Joan; and Collect, D. P.. 1989. “Nature as Myth, Symbol, and Action: Notes Towards a Historical Understanding of Development and Conservation in Kenyan Maasailand.” Africa, 59:4, 432–60.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1977. “The Liquors of Forest and Garden: Drinking in Okiek Life.” M.A. Thesis. Wesley an University.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1981. “Are the Okiek Really Maasai? or Kipsigis? or Kikuyu?” Cahiers d’Etudes africaines, no. 79 (20:3), 355–68.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1986. “Ethnic Interaction, Economic Diversification and Language Use: A Report on Research with Kaplelach and Kipchornwonek Okiek.” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 7:2, 189–226.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1987. “Chords of Tradition, Lens of Analogy: Iconic Signs in Okiek Ceremonies.” Journal of Ritual Studies, 1:2, 75–97.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1988a. “Emotional Power and Significant Movement: Womanly Transformation in Okiek Initiation.” Ph.D. Disser., Anthropology Department, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1988b. “The Unending Ceremony and a Warm House: Representations of a Patriarchal Ideal and the Silent Complementarity in Okiek Blessings,” in Hunter-Gatherers: Property, Power and Ideology, James, Woodburn, Tim, Ingold and David, Riches, eds. London: Berg.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1989. “Genres of Power: A Comparative Analysis of Okiek Blessings, Curses and Oaths.” Man (N.S.), 24:299–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1990a. “Persuasive Suggestions and Reassuring Promises: Emergent Parallelism and Dialogic Encouragement in Song.” Journal of American Folklore, 103:42–67.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1990b. “Sexual Solidarity and the Secrets of Sight and Sound: Shifting Gender Relations and their Ceremonial Constitution.” American Ethnologist, 17:3, 31–51.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1991. “Amusement and Absolution: Transforming Narratives During Confession of Social Debts.” American Anthropologist, 93:4, 826–51.Google Scholar
Kratz, Corinne A. 1993. Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement, and Experience in Okiek Women's Initiation. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press (in press).Google Scholar
Landa, Misia. 1987. “Paradise Lost: The Theme of Terrestriality in Human Evolution,” in The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences, Nelson, J. S., McGill, Allan, and McCloskey, Donald, eds. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Langley, Myrtle. 1979. The Nandi of Kenya: Life Crisis Rituals in a Period of Change. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, John. 1988. “Wealth, Poverty, and Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought.” Unpublished seminar paper, History Department, University of Nairobi.Google Scholar
Lord, T. 1960. Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, Lisa. 1991. Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, George; and Michael, Fischer. 1987. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 1990. “Everyday Metaphors of Power.” Theory and Society, 19:545–77.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1978. “Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study,” in Moore, Law as Process, 54–81. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1986. Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro 1889–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, J. B.; McGill, Allen, and McCloskey, Donald, eds. 1987. The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Orchardson, Ian. 1971. The Kipsigis. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau.Google Scholar
Packard, Randall M. 1989. “The ‘Healthy Reserve’ and the ‘Dressed Native’: Discourses on Black Health and the Language of Legitimation in South Africa.” American Ethnologist, 16:4, 686–703.Google Scholar
Parkin, David. 1984. “Political Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 13:345–65.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. 1983. “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Renato. 1980. Ilongot Headhunting 1883–1974. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Roseberry, William; and O’Brien, J.. 1991. “Introduction,” in Golden Ages, Dark Ages, O’Brien, J. and Roseberry, W., eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rushdie, Salman. 1983. Shame. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Sapir, D. 1977. “The Anatomy of Metaphor,” in The Social Use of Metaphor, Sapir, J. D. and Crocker, J. C., eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Strayer, Robert. 1978. The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in Colonial Kenya 1875–1935. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Swedenburg, T. 1991. “Popular Memory and the Palestinian National Past,” in Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History, Roseberry, W. and O’Brien, J., eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, John B. 1984. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traube, Elizabeth G. 1986. Cosmology and Social Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ulin, Robert. 1991. “The Current Tide in American Europeanist Anthropology.” Anthropology Today, 7:6, 8–12.Google Scholar
Volosinov, V. N. 1987. Freudianism: A Critical Sketch. Bloomington: IN: University Press.Google Scholar
Waller, Richard. 1991. Personal Communication (discussion at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago).Google Scholar
Watts, Michael J. 1989. “The Agrarian Question in Africa: Debating the Crisis.” Progress in Human Geography, 13:1, 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Michael J. 1991. ℌVisions of Excess: African Development in an Age of Market Idolatry.” Transition, 51:124–41.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard, ed. 1977. Regional Cults. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. 1973. Metahistory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
White, Luise. 1990. The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Wilmsen, Edwin, ed. 1989. We Are Here: Politics of Aboriginal Land Tenure. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar