Dissertation

Making ethnic tradition in a pre-colonial society: Culture, gender, and protest in the early Merina kingdom, 1750-1822

Larson, Pier Martin

1992

Overview

This dissertation is a history of the making of the Merina ethnic identity through gendered cultural politics. Chapter one explores competing interpretations and experiences of Merina culture and suggests that political culture was the central arena in which Merina ethnicity was created. Chapter two explores the history of oral traditions collected in the Merina kingdom during the 1860s and 1870s. It argues that the Tantara royal traditions are a political mythology first created as an authorized history of the kingdom at the royal court but later appropriated by rural communities and turned against the court as a discursive weapon of community defense. Chapter three demonstrates how kinship structures in central Madagascar were employed by individuals in history to create firenena descent groups and fanjakana kingdoms. The chapter also details the gender division of labor in central Madagascar during the eighteenth century, with men involved heavily in agriculture and women in domestic weaving industries. Chapter four examines the magnitude and impact of the slave trade upon central Madagascar between 1770 and 1800. The slave trade served to impoverish local communities and to foster a transformation in the gender division of labor as women left weaving industries to farm. Chapter five is a study of the politics of king Andrianampoinimerina. The chapter demonstrates that many uniquely \"Merina\" cultural practices emerged during his reign. These practices, such as new forms of domestic unions, were predicated on an increasing subordination of women. Chapter six is a study of the early reign of king Radama, showing how the new king attempted to transform the kingdom's political culture and institutionalize male power through a standing army and a new administrative apparatus. Chapter seven is a study of how several forms of rural social protest by men and women to the political innovations of Radama were central to the creation of the Merina ethnic identity. Special emphasis is placed on struggles over the representation of the source of fertility in rituals and on a women's revolt over hair-cutting in 1822.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: African history / Asian History / Cultural anthropology / History
• ISBN: 9798207358215