C. Hardung: Arbeit, Sklaverei und Erinnerung – Gruppen unfreier Herkunft unter den Fulbe Nordbenins [PDF]

2006
503 pp.
1 map, 48 b/w photos, 10 figures, 6 diagrams, 5 tables, glossary, appendix

Text language: German

The present study deals with the social importance of work in the Gannunkeebe society. The Gannunkeebe live in the north of the Republic of Benin and are mainly composed out of Fulbe slaves offspring. Work is understood as a cultural commodity building identity and common identification with own values. The fact that members of this group tie down their work ethos to the slavery past can be understood as a reflexive act of liberation with the media which determined the slaves’ lives: their labour.

Another focus is set on the remembered slave everyday life and its actual reference. The access to commemoration of a society with a highly ambivalent relation to its status and origin is methodologically reflected. Which and why special facets of the slaves’ lives are and stay stored in the collective memory meet the analyses of continuity and transformations of the relation between Gannunkeebe and Fulbe peoples. This study accompanies an examination with subtle processes of power generation and experiences of egality in everyday exchange relations between succession of unfree and free people.

The book is based on long-time fieldwork, evaluations of oral sources, and examinations of archive material from the colonial times. The first part of this work thus contains refurbishments of the conception and attitudes of the colonial administrators according the slavery question in the northern provinces of Dahomey.

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