‘Brothers 30,000, sisters 20,000; nephews 15,000, nieces 10,000’: Akan funeral ledgers’ kinship and value negotiations, and their limits

Abstract

This article compares indigenous conceptualizations, as expressed in ledgers recording the collection of funeral offerings, with academic knowledge on kinship and value negotiation in the Akan area of West Africa. Donors are inserted in social circuits defining their residential belonging (in villages and households), parental affiliation (with specific offerings for matrilineal kin, patrilateral kin and in-laws), as well as gender and seniority. Funeral offerings, moreover, vary proportionally to value: the amount provided by the donor expresses his/her value and the total cost of the funeral indicates the value of the deceased and of her/his family. The intricacies of mortuary offerings — expressed through elaborate calculations — reveal shared and structured taxonomies that enable affirming and negotiating the value of the deceased and that of the donor as well as the relation between donor and deceased. Anthropological theories and definitions are confronted with these locally elaborated representations.