State and Society, Marriage and Adultery: Some Considerations Towards a Social History of Pre-Colonial Asante

Abstract

The present paper is one of a series of essays in the social history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (presently situated in the Republic of Ghana). It concentrates on an examination of the phenomena of marriage and adultery in the Asante past, and it seeks to locate the fundamental subject of relations between the sexes within the broader framework of the superordinate relationship between the state and the social formation. Anthropological and historical work on Asante is reviewed in the light of these concerns, and an attempt is made to identify and to describe some of the crucial concepts and imperatives embedded in the ideology of the state. The argument is adduced throughout that the state was interventionist in relation to the social formation, and that it was the state that simultaneously defined the rules making for differentiation and presided over (and monitored) the rewards and penalties surrounding this process. The accumulation (the consumption) of women is interpreted as being one strand in the economics of power and differentiation; similarly, compensatory damages for adultery (ayɛfere sika) and the phenomenon of ‘child marriage’ (ɔyere akoda) are interpreted as indicators of the relations of power between men. The paper concludes with the presentation of a small sample of career histories; these are intended to convey some idea of the interventionist power of the state in peoples' lives. Underlying and informing the detailed matter of the paper is a general concern with the understanding of ideology and thought – an exercise in reconstruction that is a sine qua non for the writing of Asante (and African) social history.