Ritual as a Social Diagnostic and Lens of Comparison in Mayotte and Its Neighbours

Abstract

Ritual plays a major role in the formation of social persons and relations in the related and overlapping societies of the Mozambique Channel, but can also serve as a useful point of comparison. Ngazidja (Grande Comore), as described and analyzed by Sophie Blanchy, epitomizes the society of the gift as developed by Marcel Mauss. The circulation of the gift – of those things of greatest value in Ngazidja – is articulated through the Grand Mariage, which both reproduces personnages (as materialized in houses) and produces and reproduces distinctions among persons and families. Kibushi speakers in Mayotte, sceptical of Comorian hierarchy, transformed the Grand Mariage into a pattern called shungu, which takes place across a series of rites de passage, not only the achieved status of marriage and circumcision but also the ascriptions of birth and death and in a manner such as to produce equality of distinction rather than inequality. Here the gift is located in the act, i.e. in the reciprocal work of reproducing and recognizing others. By comparison with both Ngazidja and Mayotte, in Madagascar the focus is on mortuary rituals. Here acts of reproduction and witness are again constitutive of hierarchy: among Sakalava, the production of royal ancestors entails the reproduction of social distinctions between royalty and Ancestor People (razan’olo) or Kinded People (karazan’olo).