Fighting of Bulls as Symbolic Expression of Divisions in the Hima Camp

Abstract

Opening ParagraphIn the course of tracing the social aspects of witchcraft and sorcery in East Africa, Middleton and Winter (1963: 11–13) distinguished two types of neighbourhood. In type I neighbours tend to be co-members of a unilineal descent group; type II in terms of descent is heterogeneous.The authors implied that, while tensions existed in both these neighbourhoods, type I was likely to give rise to more acute forms of interpersonal conflict. It is an involuntary association in which relationships are ascribed at birth, being therefore ‘inborn and innate’, i.e. compulsory. By contrast, neighbours of the second type ‘…live together because in the ultimate sense they choose to do so’. This freedom of choice conduces to an easier contact between them as proved by the absence of accusations of withcraft and the prevalence of accusations of sorcery. Accusations of sorcery are viewed by Middeton and Winter as symptoms of milder conflicts.