Changing the calendar: economics and religious innovation among the Beng of Cote d'Ivoire

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Title:	Changing the calendar: economics and religious innovation among the Beng of Cote d'Ivoire
Author:	Gottlieb, Alma
Year:	1986
Language:	English
City of publisher:	Los Angeles, CA
Publisher:	African Studies Association
Geographic term:	Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire
Subjects:	African religions Beng time
Abstract:	The Beng are a southern Mande-speaking minority group of some 10,000 in east-central Ivory Coast. They practise a local religion whose focus is worship of the Earth. Their response to the introduction of Western technology and exposure to Western values has been on one level to intensify rather than dilute the role of religion and its explanatory power. Rather than making optional a previously mandated day for worship, they have taken the opposite route, in fact trebling the number of days to be devoted to religion. The author explores several dimensions to this phenomenon, explaining how Beng religion has been in one sense strengthened yet in another sense weakened by the recent innovation.