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During the early 20th century, a group of ex-slaves established a frontier society in the no-man’s-land of the extreme Southern Highlands of Madagascar.
First settlers skilfully deployed a fluid set of Malagasy customs to implant a myth of themselves as tompon-tany or “masters of the land”. Eventually, they created a land monopoly to reinforce their legitimacy and to exclude later migrants. Some of them were labelled andevo (“slave” or “slave descent”). The tompon-tany prohibited the andevo from owning land, and thereby from having tombs.
This book focuses on the plight of the tombless andevo, and how their ascribed impurity and association with infertility, illness, death and misfortune made them an essential part of the tompon-tany world-view.
First settlers skilfully deployed a fluid set of Malagasy customs to implant a myth of themselves as tompon-tany or “masters of the land”. Eventually, they created a land monopoly to reinforce their legitimacy and to exclude later migrants. Some of them were labelled andevo (“slave” or “slave descent”). The tompon-tany prohibited the andevo from owning land, and thereby from having tombs.
This book focuses on the plight of the tombless andevo, and how their ascribed impurity and association with infertility, illness, death and misfortune made them an essential part of the tompon-tany world-view.
Price: $149.00
Pages: 242
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: African Social Studies Series
Publication Date:
05 July 2002
ISBN: 9789004124608
Format: Paperback
'This is an outstanding book, ethnografically sophisticated as well as theoretically rigorous. Anyone interested in social inequality...absolutely must read this book '.
Lesley Sharp
Lesley Sharp
Sandra J.T.M. Evers, Ph.D. (2001), is a Lecturer of Anthropology at the Free University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Southwest Indian Ocean studies, with a particular focus on Madagascar. Her publications examine frontier societies within the context of globalisation, natural resource management, poverty and sustainable development.