AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Book |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Man and beast |
| Author: | Willis, Roy |
| Year: | 1974 |
| Pages: | 143 |
| Language: | English |
| City of publisher: | London |
| Publisher: | Hart-Davis, MacGibbon |
| ISBN: | 0246107812 |
| Geographic terms: | Sudan Congo (Democratic Republic of) Tanzania |
| Subjects: | cosmology Fipa Lele (Democratic Republic of Congo) Nuer fauna |
| Abstract: | In this book the author uses the traditional methods of anthropology to compare man-animal relations in three dissimilar African societies, the Fipa (southwest Tanzania), the Nuer (southern Sudan), and the Lele (Kasai Province, Zaire). He shows how each animal comes to have a special meaning within a cosmos constructed to make sense of the dealings people have with one another. While reptiles, for instance, were reviled by the Ancient Israelites, the Fipa venerate the python, the Lele venerate the scaly ant-eater, and the Nuer venerate the ox. When a human society mediates on its surrounding fauna it has set up a framework for contemplating itself and the book aims to contribute towards an understanding of the animal within us, our biological heritage, and our human nature, defined as it always is, by contrast to animals which are outside and beyond society. This image of the symbolic animal is crucial to man's ideas about himself; and the dualism of the image is at the core of the duality in man. |