La maison urbaine, cadre de production du statut et du genre à Anjouan (Comores), XVIIe-XIXe siècles
Within the Swahili worlds, the island societies of the Comoros have retained, despite the adoption of Islam, a matrilocal marital residence rule and even, for two of them, matrilineal filiation groups. This is not the case in Anjouan where filiation is undifferentiated. On this island, the regular i...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Institut des Mondes Africains
2022-12-01
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| Series: | Afriques |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/3530 |
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| Summary: | Within the Swahili worlds, the island societies of the Comoros have retained, despite the adoption of Islam, a matrilocal marital residence rule and even, for two of them, matrilineal filiation groups. This is not the case in Anjouan where filiation is undifferentiated. On this island, the regular integration into the dominant families of literate merchants, members of the maritime trade networks of the Indian Ocean, in particular Bā ʿAlawī sharifs, has contributed to the formation of a specific urban category, the makabaila. The stone house, emblematic of Swahili urban culture, played a central role in the processes of distinction of the makabaila in Anjouan. Its evolution can be traced through European sources dating back to the seventeenth century, crossed with oral history and ethnography. The transformations of the house shed light on the historicity of the work of hierarchical construction, one of the instruments of which was the increasing enclosure of women. As a concrete form of the conjugal relationship, the house belongs to the woman but the husband is its master. It reveals the articulation of two alternative perspectives on social organisation: a cognatic native conception centered on descent group, versus a patrilineal network conception. It thus appears to be the site of the joint production of status and gender in Anjouan. |
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| ISSN: | 2108-6796 |