Humans and Things: Mande "Fetishes" as Subjects

The West African Mande use a wide variety of material artifacts ("fetishes") to influence their lives. They conceive of such artifacts as partners with whom their users actively engage in genuine relationship. Thus, they treat these objects as subjects. Yet anthropologists have typically i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnthropological quarterly Vol. 86; no. 4; pp. 1119 - 1151
Main Author Manzon, Agnes Kedzierska
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington, DC George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research 01.10.2013
Washington University Institute for Ethnology Research
Institute for Ethnographic Research
Subjects
Africa
Agency
Alliances
Anthropological research
Anthropologists
Ceremonial objects
Deixis
Ethnology
Fetishes
Fetishism
Generalities
Humans
Hunting
Linguistic anthropology
Mande
Material culture
Mental objects
Mythology and world views
Nuts
Oral literature
Political power
Religion, magic, witchcraft
Semiotic signs
Social power
Social relations
Strathern, Marilyn
Symbolism
West Africa
West Africa
Mali
Mande
Fetishism
Symbolic effectiveness
Artefact
Object
Representation
Power
Subject
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Summary:The West African Mande use a wide variety of material artifacts ("fetishes") to influence their lives. They conceive of such artifacts as partners with whom their users actively engage in genuine relationship. Thus, they treat these objects as subjects. Yet anthropologists have typically interpreted such objects, and similar magical artifacts worldwide, as symbols, that is, material representations reifying social and power structures. This article re-examines the traditional anthropological binary and indexical view of the objects in question while exploring these objects' agency, which I consider as the foundation of their efficacy.
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ISSN:0003-5491
1534-1518
1534-1518
DOI:10.1353/anq.2013.0054