Chapter 6
(Re)constituting the Cosmology and
S ociocultural Institutions of
Ò
· yó· –Yorùb á
A rticu l atin g th e Y o rùb á Wo r l d- S e n s e
Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí
I
ndisputably, gender has been a fundamental organizing principle in
Western societies.1 Intrinsic to the conceptualization of gender is a
dichotomy in which male and female, man and woman, are constantly and
binarily ranked, both in relationship to and against each other. It has been
well documented that the categories of male and female in Western social
practice are not free of hierarchical associations and binary oppositions in
which the male implies privilege and the female subordination. It is a duality based on a perception of human sexual dimorphism inherent in the
definition of gender. Yorùbá society, like many other societies worldwide, has
been analyzed with Western concepts of gender on the assumption that gender is a timeless and universal category. But as Serge Tcherkézoff admonishes, “An analysis that starts from a male/female pairing simply produces
further dichotomies.”2 It is not surprising, then, that researchers always find
gender when they look for it.
Against this background, I will show that despite voluminous scholarship
to the contrary, gender was not an organizing principle in Yorùbá society
prior to colonization by the West. The social categories “men” and
“women” were nonexistent, and hence no gender system3 was in place.
Rather, the primary principle of social organization was seniority, defined by
relative age. The social categories “women” and “men” are social constructs
deriving from the Western assumption that “physical bodies are social bodies,”4 an assumption that in the previous chapter I named “body-reasoning”
and a “bio-logic” interpretation of the social world. The original impulse to
apply this assumption transculturally is rooted in the simplistic notion that
gender is a natural and universal way of organizing society and that male
privilege is its ultimate manifestation. But gender is socially constructed: it is
historical and culture-bound. Consequently, the assumption that a gender
system existed in Nyo society prior to Western colonization is yet another
O. Oyěwùmí (ed.), African Gender Studies A Reader
© Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí 2005
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case of Western dominance in the documentation and interpretation of the
world, one that is facilitated by the West’s global material dominance.
The goal of this chapter is to articulate the Yorùbá world-sense or cultural
logic and to (re)map the Yorùbá social order. It challenges the received
assumption that gender was a fundamental organizing principle in Old Nyo
society. To this effect, there will be an examination of social roles as they were
articulated in a number of institutions, including language, lineage, marriage,
and the market. The social categories of ìyá (mother), bàbá (father), mmm, aya,
mkm, àbúrò (see below on the translation of these terms), egbon (elder sibling
or relation), aláwo (diviner), àgbe (farmer), and onísòwò (trader) are presented
and analyzed. Acknowledging the dangers of mistranslation of key concepts,
I will use Yorùbá terminology as much as possible. Using Yorùbá vocabularies of culture—my knowledge of Yorùbá society acquired through experience
and research—I will interrogate a range of feminist, anthropological, sociological, and historical literatures, and in the process I will critically evaluate the
notion that gender is a timeless and universal category.
Yorùbá language and oral traditions represent major sources of information in constituting world-sense, mapping historical changes, and interpreting the social structure. Documented accounts that I will refer to include
the writings of the Reverend Samuel Johnson, a pioneering Yorùbá historian
and ethnographer, and the memoirs and diaries of European travelers and
missionaries of the nineteenth century. Finally, in conceptualizing the past,
the present is not irrelevant. All of the institutions that I describe are not
archaic—they are living traditions.
Putting Woman in Her Place
Gender as a dichotomous discourse is about two binarily opposed and hierarchical social categories—men and women. Given that, I should immediately point out that the usual gloss of the Yorùbá categories obìnrin and
mkùnrin as “female/woman” and “male/man,” respectively, is a mistranslation. This error occurs because many Western and Western-influenced
Yorùbá thinkers fail to recognize that in Yorùbá practice and thought, these
categories are neither binarily opposed nor hierarchical. The word obìnrin
does not derive etymologically from mkùnrin, as “wo-man” does from
“man.” Rin, the common suffix of mkùnrin and obìnrin, suggests a common
humanity; the prefixes obìn and mkùn specify which variety of anatomy. There
is no conception here of an original human type against which the other variety had to be measured. Ènìyàn is the non-gender-specific word for humans.
In contrast, “man,” the word labeling humans in general in English that supposedly encompasses both males and females, actually privileges males. It has
been well documented that in the West, women/females are the Other,
being defined in antithesis to men/males, who represent the norm.3
Feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye captures the essence of this privileging in
Western thought when she writes, “The word ‘woman’ was supposed to
mean female of the species, but the name of the species was ‘Man.’”6 In the
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Yorùbá conception, mkùnrin is not posited as the norm, the essence of
humanity, against which obìnrin is the Other. Nor is mkùnrin a category of
privilege, Obìnrin is not ranked in relation to mkùnrin; it does not have
negative connotations of subordination and powerlessness, and, above all, it
does not in and of itself constitute any social ranking. Another reason mkùnrin
and obìnrin cannot be translated into the English “male” and “female” is
that the Yorùbá categories only apply to adult human beings and are not normally used for mmmdé (children) or jranko (animals). The terms akm and abo
are used for male and female animals, respectively. They are also applied to
some fruit trees like the papaya and to the abstract idea of a period in time,
that is, the year. Thus akm ìbhpj is a papaya tree that does not bear fruit; and
odún t’ó ya ’bo is a fruitful (good) year. “May your year be fruitful [yabo]”7
is a standard prayer and greeting at the beginning of the Yorùbá new year,
which is signaled by the arrival of the “new yam.” Because akm and abo are
not oppositionally constructed, the opposite of a good (abo) year is not an
akm year. An unproductive year is a year that is not abo. There is no conception of an akm year. A fruitless pawpaw tree is an akm tree. A fruitful pawpaw
tree is not described as abo; rather, a fruitful tree is considered the norm;
therefore, it is, just referred to as a pawpaw tree. I cite these examples to
show that these Yorùbá concepts, just like mkùnrin and obìnrin, which are
used for humans, are not equivalent to the English “male” and “female,”
respectively. Thus, in this study, the basic terms mkùnrin and obìnrin are best
translated as referring to the anatomic male and anatomic female, respectively; they refer only to physiologically marked differences and do not have
hierarchical connotations like the English terms “male/men” and
“female/women.” The distinctions these Yorùbá terms signify are superficial. For ease of deployment, “anatomic” has been shortened to “ana” and
added on to the words “male,” “female,” and “sex” to underscore the fact
that in the Yorùbá world-sense it is possible to acknowledge these physiological distinctions without inherently projecting a hierarchy of the two
social categories. Thus I propose the new concepts anamale, anafemale, and
anasex. The need for a new set of constructs arose from the recognition that
in Western thought, even the so-called biological concepts like male, female,
and sex are not free of hierarchical connotations.8
Indeed, the Yorùbá term obìnrin is not equivalent to “woman” because
the concept of woman or female conjures up a number of images, including
the following:
1. those who do not have a penis (the Freudian concept of penis envy stems
from this notion and has been elucidated at length in Western social
thought and gender studies);9
2. those who do not have power; and
3. those who cannot participate in the public arena.
Hence, what females are not defines them as women, while the male is
assumed to be the norm. The aforementioned images are derived from the
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Western experience and are not associated with the Yorùbá word obìnrin.
Since the conceptual language of gender theories is derived from the West,
it is necessary to view these theories as vectors of the issue they are designed
to explain. Unlike “male” and “female” in the West, the categories of obìnrin and mkùnrin are primarily categories of anatomy, suggesting no underlying assumptions about the personalities or psychologies deriving from such.
Because they are not elaborated in relation and opposition to each other,
they are not sexually dimorphic and therefore are not gendered. In Old Nyo,
they did not connote social ranking; nor did they express masculinity or femininity, because those categories did not exist in Yorùbá life or thought.
Necessary Distinctions without Difference
The Yorùbá terms obìnrin and mkùnrin do express a distinction.
Reproduction is, obviously, the basis of human existence, and given its
import, and the primacy of anafemale body-type, it is not surprising that the
Yorùbá language describes the two types of anatomy. The terms mkùnrin and
obìnrin, however, merely indicate the physiological differences between the
two anatomies as they have to do with procreation and intercourse. They
refer, then, to the physically marked and physiologically apparent differences
between the two anatomies. They do not refer to gender categories that connote social privileges and disadvantages. Also, they do not express sexual
dimorphism10 because the distinction they indicate is specific to issues of
reproduction. To appreciate this point, it would be necessary to go back to
the fundamental difference between the conception of the Yorùbá social
world and that of Western societies.
In the previous chapter, I argued that the biological determinism in much
of Western thought stems from the application of biological explanations in
accounting for social hierarchies. This in turn has led to the construction of
the social world with biological building blocks. Thus the social and the
biological are thoroughly intertwined. This worldview is manifested in maledominant gender discourses, discourses in which female biological differences are used to explain female sociopolitical disadvantages. The conception
of biology as being “everywhere” makes it possible to use it as an explanation in any realm, whether it is directly implicated or not.11 Whether the
question is why women should not vote or why they breast-feed babies, the
explanation is one and the same: they are biologically predisposed.
The upshot of this cultural logic is that men and women are perceived as
essentially different creatures. Each category is defined by its own essence.
Diane Fuss describes the notion that things have a “true essence . . . as a
belief in the real, the invariable and fixed properties which define the whatness of an eniity.”12 Consequently, whether women are in the labor room or
in the boardroom, their essence is said to determine their behavior. In both
arenas, then, women’s behavior is by definition different from that of men.
Essentialism makes it impossible to confine biology to one realm. The social
world, therefore, cannot truly be socially constructed.
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The reaction of feminists to conservative, male-dominant discourse was to
reject it totally as a vehicle of oppression. Feminists then went on to show
that the existence of two sexes, which has been regarded as an “irreducible
fact,”13 is actually a social construction. In the process of challenging the
essentialism of male-dominant discourses, many feminist writings treated all
distinctions between men and women as fabrications.14 Thus the fact that
women bear children is not given the attention it deserves; instead it is
located on a continuum of what are called “gender differences.” It is given
the same degree of importance as the fact that women have less body
hair than men. Thus despite the relentless feminist assault on mainstream
essentialism, feminist constructionism contains, within it the very problem it
seeks to address. Like the traditional male-dominant discources, feminism
does not entertain the possibility that certain differences are more fundamental than others. That women bear children calls for a distinctive
assessment. If Western conservative discourses collapse the social world into
biology by seeing all observed differences between men and women as natural, feminism maintains this lack of a boundary between the social and the
biological by homogenizing men and women and insisting that all observed
differences are social fabrications. This is the problem.
Undoubtedly, in a postchromosomal and posthormonal world in which
genes are said to determine behavior, and science is the unassailable source
of wisdom on all things, it is difficult to imagine that acceptance of distinctive reproductive roles for men and women would not lead to a creation of
social hierarchies. The challenge that the Yorùbá conception presents is a
social world based on social relations, not the body. It shows that it is possible to acknowledge the distinct reproductive roles for obìrin and mkùnrin
without using them to create social ranking. In the Yorùbá cultural logic,
biology is limited to issues like pregnancy that directly concern reproduction.
The essential biological fact in Yorùbá society is that the obìnrin bears the
baby. It does not lead to an essentializing of obìinrin because they remain
ènìyàn (human beings), just as mkùnrin are human too, in an ungendered
sense.
Thus the distinction between obìnrin and mkùnrin is actually one of reproduction, not one of sexuality or gender, the emphasis being on the fact that
the two categories play distinct roles in the reproductive process. This distinction does not extend beyond issues directly related ro reproduction and
does not overflow to other realms such as the farm or the mba’s (ruler’s)
palace. I have called this a distinction without social difference. The distinction in Yorùbáland between the way in which anatomic females pay obeisance
to their superiors and the way in which anatomic males do is useful in elaborating the distinct but ungendered consideration of pregnancy. Any casual
observer would notice that in the contemporary period, obìnrin usually
kútnle (kneel down, with both knees touching the floor) when greeting a
superior. Mkùnrin are seen to dòbále (prostrate themselves, lying flat on the
ground and then raising their torsos with arms holding them up in a push-up
pose). Some might assume that these two distinct forms of greeting are
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constructions of gender, yielding social valuations and difference. However, a
simple association of anatomic females with kneeling and anatomic males with
prostrating will not elucidate the cultural meanings of these acts. What is
required is a comprehensive examination of all other modes of greeting and
address, how they are represented in a multiplicity of realms, and how they
relate to one another.
When anatomic females pay obeisance to the mba (ruler), they have to
yıîká—in which case they lie on their sides, propping themselves up with
one elbow at a time. In practice, íyıîká looks like an abbreviation of ìdòbále.
It appears that in the past, ìyıîká was the primary mode of female obeisance
to superiors. But over time, kneeling has become dominant. Thus, it would
seem that the preferred position for paying obeisance for all persons, whether
obìnrin or mkùnrin, is for the “greeter” to prostrate to the “greetee.” I would
assert that the contingencies of pregnancy led to the ìyıîká modification for
anatomic obìnrin. It is obvious that even pregnant obìnrin can yıîká, but they
cannot prostrate easily. Johnson lends historical background to this interpretation. In the late nineteenth century, he observed that the mode of saluting
a superior involved “the men prostrating on the ground, and the women sitting on the ground and reclining on their left elbow.”15 The predominance
of obìnrin kneeling is a more recent development. In fact, female prostration
can be seen even today. I have observed obìnrin prostrating themselves in the
mba’s palace in Ògbomnso. Moreover, a common stance of worship of the
deities is the ìdòbále, irrespective of anatomic type.16 Therefore, the disassociation of obìnrin from prostration is uncalled-for. Similarly, the disassociation of mkùnrin from kneeling is unwarranted.17 In Yorùbá cosmology, there
is the conception of àkúnleyàn, literally “kneeling to choose”—which is the
position that all persons assume in front of E.lfdá (the Maker) when choosing their fate before being born into the world. On closer examination, it is
clear that kneeling is a position used not so much for paying homage as for
addressing one’s superior. All persons who choose to address the mba, for
example, whether mkùnrin or obìnrin, will of necessity end up on their knees.
This is not difficult to understand, given that it is impractical to engage in
long conversations in the ìyûká or ìdnbále positions. In fact, the saying jni
b’oba jiyàn ô yíò ph lórí ìkúnle (someone who would argue with the mba must
be prepared to spend a long time in the kneeling position) alludes to this
fact. Further, we know from Johnson’s writings that the aláàfin (ruler)
of Nyo traditionally had to kneel down for only one person—an obìnrin
official of the palace. In explicating the nature of the office and duties
of this official—the ìyámmdj (a high official who resides in the palace
compound)—Johnson writes:
Her office is to worship the spirits of the departed kings, calling out their
Egúngúns in a room in her apartments set aside for that purpose. . . . The king
looks upon her as his father, and addresses her as such, being the worshipper
of the spirit of his ancestors. He kneels in saluting her, and she also returns the
salutation, kneeling, never reclining, on her elbow as is the custom of the women
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in saluting their superiors. The king kneels for no one else but her, and prostrates before the god Kàngó, and before those possessed with the deity, calling
them “father.”18
The propitiations and thank-offerings to the lineage ancestors during the first
two days of the Egúngún (annual festival of ancestor veneration) are named
ìkúnle.19 Finally, ìkúnle was the preferred position of giving birth in traditional society and is central to the construction of motherhood. This position,
ìkúnle abiyanmm (the kneeling of a mother in labor), is elaborated as the ultimate moment of human submission to the will of the divine. Perhaps the fact
that the mode and manner of acknowledging a superior does not depend on
whether s/he is an anamale or anafemale indicates the nongendered cultural
framework. A superior is a superior regardless of body-type.
It is significant that in Yorùbá cosmology, when a body part is singled out
it is the orí (head), which is elaborated as the seat of individual fate (orí). The
word orí thus has two closely intertwined meanings—fate and head. Orí has
no gender. The preoccupation with choosing one’s orí (fate, destiny) before
one is born into the world is to choose a good one. In Ifá discourse,20 there
is a myth about three friends who went to Àjàlá, the potter, the maker of
heads, to choose their orí (fate, heads) before making their journey to earth.
The anasex of these three friends is not the issue in this myth, and it has
nothing to do with who made a good choice and who did not. What is of
importance is that due to impatience and carelessness, two of the friends
chose a defective orí while only one of them chose a good orí:
They then took them to Àjàlá’s [the Potter’s] store-house of heads.
When Oriseeku entered,
He picked a newly made head
Which Àjàlá had not baked at all.
When Orileemere also entered,
He picked a very big head,
Not knowing it was broken.
The two of them put on their clay heads,
And they hurried off to earth.
They worked and worked, but they had no gain.
If they traded with one half-penny,
It led them
To a loss of one and one-half pennies.
The wise men told them that the fault was in the bad heads they had chosen.
When Afùrwàph arrived on earth,
He started to trade.
And he made plenty of profit.
When Oriseeku and Orileemere saw Afùwàph, they started to weep and said
the following:
“I don’t know where the lucky ones chose their heads;
I would have gone there to choose mine.
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I don’t know where Afùwàph chose his head.
I would have gone there to choose mine.”21
Afùwàph answered them, saying in essence that even though we choose our
heads from the same place, our destinies are not equal. Rowland Abiodun
elaborates this distinction between orí-inú (inner head or destiny) and the
physical orí (head), and in discussing the importance of orí-inú for each
individual he makes a number of telling points:
A person’s Ori-Inu is so crucial to a successful life that it is propitiated frequently, and its support and guidance are sought before undertaking a new task.
For this reason, personal Ori shrines are indispensable and are present in homes,
irrespective of sex, religious belief, or cult affiliation, and in the performance of
virtually all sacrifices, ancestral worship, and major and minor festivals, Ori
features prominently, since it determines their favorable outcoinc.22
The purpose of the foregoing explorations of some apparent distinctions
in Yorùbá social life is to problematize the idea that the distinction between
obìnrin and mkùnrin necessarily concerns gender. Gender is not a property of
an individual or a body in and of itself by itself. Even the notion of a gender
identity as part of the self rests on a cultural understanding. Gender is a construction of two categories in hierarchical relation to each other; and it
is embedded in institutions. Gender is best understood as “an institution
that establishes patterns of expectations for individuals [based on their bodytype], orders the social processes of everyday life, and is built into major
social organizations of society, such as the economy, ideology, the family, and
politics.”23
The frame of reference of any society is a function of the logic of its culture as a whole. It cannot be arrived at piecemeal, by looking at one institutional site or social practice at a time. The limitations of basing interpretations
on observation without probing meanings contextually immediately become
apparent. Next, attention will be turned to specific institutions in Nyo society, explicating them to map cultural meanings and ultimately to understand
the world-sense that emerges from the whole. In the final analysis, comprehension comes from totalizing and situating the particular into its selfreferent context.
Seniority: The Vocabulary of Culture and the
Language of Status
Language is preeminently a social institution, and as such it constitutes and
is constituted by culture. Because of the pervasiveness of language, it is legitimate to ask what a particular language tells us about the culture from which
it derives. Language carries cultural values within it.24 In this study, I am not
so much interested in taking an inventory of words as in teasing out the
world-sense that any particular language projects.
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Seniority is the primary social categorization that is immediately apparent
in Yorùbá language. Seniority is the social ranking of persons based on their
chronological ages. The prevalence of age categorization in Yorùbá language
is the first indication that age relativity is the pivotal principle of social organization. Most names and all pronouns are ungendered. The third-person
pronouns ó and won make a distinction between older and younger in social
interactions. Thus the pronoun won is used to refer to an older person, irrespective of anatomic sex. Like the old English “thou” or the French pronoun
vous, won is the pronoun of respect and formality. Ó is used in situations of
familiarity and intimacy.25
In social interactions and conversations, it is necessary to establish who is
older because that determines which pronoun to use and whether one can
refer to a person by that person’s given name. Only older persons can use
another’s name. It is possible to hold a long and detailed conversation about
a person without indicating the gender of that person, unless the anatomy is
central to the issue under discussion, as with conversations about sexual
intercourse or pregnancy. There is, however, considerable anxiety about
establishing seniority in any social interaction. It is almost sacrilegious to call
someone who is older by name; it is regarded as uncultured. The etiquette is
that in the initial meeting of two people, it is the older person who has the
responsibility and privilege first of asking, K’álàfíà ni? (How are you?).
Because who is older or younger is not always obvious, the pronoun of
choice for all parties meeting for the first time is j, the formal second-person
pronoun, at least until the seniority order has been determined.
Kinship terms are also encoded by age relativity. The word àbúrò refers to
all relatives born after a given person, encompassing sisters, brothers, and
cousins. The distinction indicated is one of relative age. The word egbon performs a similar function. Mmm, the word for “child,” is best understood as
“offspring.” There are no single words for boy or girl. The terms mmmkùnrin (boy) and mmmbìnrin (girl) that have gained currency today indicate anasex for children (deriving from mmm mkùnrin and mmm obìnrin, literally “child,
anatomic male” and “child, anatomic female”); they show that what is privileged socially is the youth of the child, not its anatomy. These words are a
recent attempt at gendering the language and reflect Johnson’s observation
of Yorùbáland in the nineteenth century. Commenting on the new vocabulary of the time, he noted that “our translators, in their desire to find a word
expressing the English idea of sex rather than of age, coined the . . . words
‘arakonrin,’ i.e., the male relative; and ‘arabinrin,’ the female relative; these
words have always to be explained to the pure but illiterate Yoruba man.”26
Ìyá and bàbá can be glossed as the English categories “mother” and
“father,” respectively, and to English speakers they may appear to be gender
categories. But the issue is more complicated. The concept of parenthood is
closely intertwined with adulthood. It is expected that people of a certain age
have had children because procreation is considered the raison d’être of
human existence. It is the way things are and have to be for the group to
survive. Although the uniqueness of the mkùnrin and obìnrin roles in
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reproduction is coded in language, the most important attribute these categories indicate is not gender; rather, it is the expectation that persons of a
certain age should have had children. Unlike the English concepts of mother
and father, bàbá and ìyá are not just categories of parenthood. They are also
categories of adulthood, since they are also used to refer to older people in
general. More importantly, they are not binarily opposed and are not constructed in relation to each other.
The importance of the seniority principle in Yorùbá social organization
has been acknowledged and analyzed variously by interpreters of the society.
It is the cornerstone of social intercourse. The sociologist N. A. Fadipe captures the range and scope of this principle when he writes, “The principle of
seniority applies in all walks of life and in practically all activities in which
men and women are brought together. The custom cuts through the distinctions of wealth, of rank, and of sex,”27 He goes on to show that seniority is not just about civility; it confers some measure of social control and
guarantees obedience to authority, which reinforces the idea of leadership.
It should also be stressed, however, that seniority is not just a matter of
privilege in everyday life. It is also about responsibility. In the socialization
of children, for example, the oldest in a group is the first to be served during meal times and is held responsible in cases of group infraction because
this older child should have known better. The supreme insult is to call a person àgbàyà (senior for nothing). It is used to put people in their place if they
are violating a code of seniority by not behaving as they should or are not
taking responsibility. If a child starts eating from the common bowl first and
fails to leave some of the food for the junior ones, s/he is chided with
àgbà’yà. There is no notion of “sissy” or “tomboy.”
Unlike European languages, Yorùbá does not “do gender”;28 it “does seniority” instead. Thus social categories—familial and nonfamilial—do not call
attention to the body as English personal names, first-person pronouns, and
kinship terms do (the English terms being both gender-specific/bodyspecific). Seniority is highly relational and situational in that no one is permanently in a senior or junior position; it all depends on who is present in any
given situation. Seniority, unlike gender, is only comprehensible as part of
relationships. Thus, it is neither rigidly fixated on the body nor dichotomized.
The importance of gender in English kinship terminology is reflected in
the words “brother” (male sibling) and “sister” (female sibling), categories
that require conscious qualifiers in Yorùbá conceptualization. There are no
single words in Yorùbá denoting the English gendered kinship categories of
son, daughter, brother, sister. Qualifiers have to be added to the primary categories in order to make the anasex of the relation apparent. The absence of
gender-differentiated categories in Yorùbá language underscores the absence
of gender conceptions.
The importance of seniority-ranking has attracted the attention of scholars of Yorùbá culture. American anthropologist William Bascorn, who did
ethnographic work in the 1930s, made the following observation: “Yorùbá
kinship terminology stresses the factor of seniority including relative age as
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109
one of its manifestations, which is so important in relationships between
members of the clan. . . . Sex is of relatively little importance, being used
only to distinguish ‘father’ and ‘mother.’ ”29 Likewise, British ethnographer
J. S. Eades, writing about fifty years later, underlined the importance of age
in social interactions: “Many older Yorùbá do not know when they were
born, but they do know precisely who is senior or junior to themselves
because being older confers respect and deference. The junior members of
the compound are expected to take on the ‘dirtier’ and more onerous
tasks.”30 The absence of gender categories does not mean that the Yorùbá
language cannot describe notions or convey information about male and
female anatomic differences. The critical point is that those differences are
not codified because they did not have much social significance and so do
not project into the social realm.
The differences between the Yorùbá and English conceptualizations can
be understood through the following examples. In English, to the question,
“Who was with you when you went to the market?” one might answer, “My
son.” To the same question in Yorùbá, one would answer, Mmm mìi (My
child or offspring). Only if the anatomy of the child was directly relevant to
the topic at hand would the Yorùbá mother add a qualifier thus, “Mmm mìi
mkùnrin” (My child, the male). Otherwise, birth-order would be the more
socially significant point of reference. In that case, the Yorùbá mother would
say, Mmm mìi àkóbí (My child, the first born). Even when the name of the
child is used, gender is still not indicated because most Yorùbá names are
gender-free.
In contrast, in English-speaking, Euro-American cultures, one can hardly
place any person in social context without first indicating gender. In fact, by
merely mentioning gender, Euro-Americans immediately deduce many other
things about people. In the English language, for example, it is difficult to
keep referring to one’s offspring with the non-gender-specific “child.” It is
not the norm to do this; it may be considered strange or suggest a deliberate withholding of information. Kathy Ferguson, a feminist mother and
scholar, recognized this:
When my son was born I began a determined campaign to speak to him in a
non-stereotypical fashion. I told him often that he is a sweet boy, a gentle boy,
a beautiful boy, as well as a smart and strong boy. The range of adjectives may
have been impressive, but there was a predictability in the nouns: whatever
variation existed, it rotated around that anchor word boy. The substitution of
gender-neutral nouns (“you’re such a terrific infant, such an adorable child,
such a wonderful kid”), was unsustainable.31
A Yorùbá mother does not need to trouble herself about such things. The
problem of constant gendering and gender-stereotyping does not arise in the
Yorùbá language. The anchor word in Yorùbá is mmm, a non-gender-specific
word denoting one’s offspring, irrespective of age or sex. Mmmdé is the more
specific term for young child(ren). Though mmm is often translated as “child,”
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it does not show any age restriction. A seventy-year-old mother would refer
to her forty-year-old as mmm ’mì (my child).
Lineage Hierarchies: The Ilé, Junior Consorts, and
Senior Siblings
The previous sections have focused on the sociocultural meaning of certain
linguistic concepts in order to understand Yorùbá cosmology. In this and the
following sections, my focus shifts somewhat to a number of specific social
institutions and practices, with the purpose of further documenting the
Yorùbá social world and world-sense. Yorùbá have been urbanized for centuries; we live in towns—settlements that are characterized by large populations engaged in farming, trade, and a number of specialized craft
occupations. Individual identity is reckoned in terms of ancestral town of origin. In the 1820s, Hugh Clapperton, a European traveler who passed through
Nyo, identified by name thirty-five towns.32 The Reverend T. J. Bowen,33 an
American Baptist missionary, estimated the population of some towns in
1855: Nyo at eighty thousand; Ibadan at seventy thousand; Ilorin at one
hundred thousand; and Ede at fifty thousand. Until its fall in 1829, Nyo was
dominant, being the center of a thriving empire.34 It is against this
background that the following discussion becomes clearer.
The primary social and political unit in Nyo-Yortùbá towns was the agbo
ilé—a compound housing the group of people who claimed a common
descent from a founding ancestor. It was a landholding and titleholding
sociopolitical unit that in some cases practiced specialized occupations such
as weaving, dyeing, or smithing. These units have been described as corporate patrilineages in the anthropological literature.35 Most of the members of
a lineage, including their conjugal partners and their children, resided in
these large compounds. Because marriage residence was in general patrilocal,
the presence in the compound of anafemale members and some of their children has often been discounted in the literature. The labeling of these compounds as corporate patrilineages is the most obvious example of this lack of
acknowledgment. The implications of this reductionist labeling will be discussed later.
All the members of the ìdílé (lineage) as a group were called mmm-ilé and
were ranked by birth-order. The in-marrying anafemales were as a group
called aya ilé 36 and were ranked by order of marriage. Individually, mmm-ilé
occupied the position of mkm in relation to the in-coming aya. As I noted earlier, the translation of aya as “wife” and mkm as “husband” imposes gender
and sexual constructions that are not part of the Yorùbá conception and
therefore distort these roles. The rationale for the translation of the terms lies
in the distinction between mkm and aya as owner/insider and nonowner/outsider in relation to the ilé as a physical space and the symbol of lineage.37 This
insider–outsider relationship was ranked, with the insider being the privileged
senior. A married anafemale is an abilékm—one who lives in the house of the
conjugal partner. This term shows the centrality of the family compound in
Co sm o lo g y an d S o ci o cu lt u r a l Ins ti tu ti o ns
111
defining the status of residents. The mode of recruitment into the lineage,
not gender, was the crucial difference—birth for the mkm and marriage for the
aya. Since there were no equivalents in the Western cultural logic, I have
chosen to use the Yorùbá terms in most places. Henceforth, the specific sexual mkm of an aya will be called her sexual conjugal partner.
In theory, it was only the sexual conjugal partner of the aya who had sexual access. The rest of the mkm, his siblings and cousins, regardless of anatomic
sex, were also her mkm but did not sexually engage her. Some might claim that
there was a possible gender distinction among mkm since in this heterosexual
world only the anamales could copulate with an aya. Such a reading would
be incorrect because in the universe of mkm, it would have been sacrilegious
for anatomic males older than an aya’s particular conjugal partner to be sexually involved with her—again, the predominant principle at work was seniority, not gender. According to the system of levirate, younger members of
the family upon the death of an aya’s conjugal partner could inherit rights in
and access to the widow if she so consented. An older person could not
inherit from the younger. Anafemale mkm were not left out even in this form
of inheritance; they too could inherit rights to the widow, while the sexual
privileges were then transferred to their own anamale offspring if need be.
Therefore, it is clear that there was no real social distinction between the
anafemale mkm and the anamale mkm. Furthermore, because of the collective
nature of the marriage contract, it was possible to imagine a marital relationship that precluded sex—other rights and responsibilities being paramount.
The hierarchy within the lineage was structured on the concept of seniority. In this context, seniority is best understood as an organization operating
on a first-come-first-served basis. A “priority of claim”38 was established for
each newcomer, whether s/he entered the lineage through birth or through
marriage. Seniority was based on birth-order for mmm-ilé and on marriageorder for aya-ilé. Children born before a particular aya joined the lineage
were ranked higher than she was. Children born after an aya joined the lineage were ranked lower; to this group, she was not an aya but an ìyá (mother).
It is significant to note that the rank of an aya within the lineage was independent of the rank of her conjugal partner. For example, if an old member
married an aya after his own offspring had married, she (the father’s aya)
ranked lower than all the offspring’s aya, because they preceded her in the lineage. This occurred regardless of the fact that he, as an elderly member of the
lineage, might rank higher than everyone else. This fact again shows that each
person’s rank was independently established and underscores my point that
the timing of entry into the clan, not gender, determines ranking.
The hierarchy within the lineage did not break down along anasex lines.
Although anafemales who joined the lineage as aya were at a disadvantage,
other anafemales who were members of the lineage by birth suffered no such
disadvantage. It would be incorrect to say, then, that anatomic females
within the lineage were subordinate because they were anatomic females.
Only the in-marrying aya were seen as outsiders, and they were subordinate
to mkm as insiders. Mkm comprised all mmm-ilé, both anamales and anafemales,
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including children who were born before the entrance of a particular aya
into the lineage. In a sense, aya lost their chronological age and entered the
lineage as “newborns,” but their ranking improved with time vis-à-vis other
members of the lineage who were born after the aya entered the lineage.
This fact dovetails very nicely with the idea in Yorùbá cosmology that even
actual newborns were already in existence before they decided to be born
into a specified lineage. So the determinant for all individuals in the lineage
was when their presence was recorded. The organization was dynamic, not
frozen in place as gendered organizations are wont to be.
Against this background, the following statement by anthropologist
Michelle Rosaldo is misleading and a distortion of Yorùbá reality: “In certain
African societies like the Yorùbá, women may control a good part of food supply, accumulate cash, and trade in distant and important markets; yet when
approaching their husbands, wives must feign ignorance and obedience,
kneeling to serve the men as they sit.”39 It is clear in this statement that the
word “wives” is automatically universalized to refer to all anafemales, while
the term “men” is used as a synonym for husbands, as in Western societies.
As explained earlier, these are not the meanings of these categories in Yorùbá
language and social structure. What this statement fails to point out is that in
the Yorùbá context, the term mkm (translated here as “husband”) encompasses
both anamale and anafemale. Therefore, the situation described in the quote
cannot be understood in terms of gender hierarchy, as Rosaldo has done.
Indeed, the same courtesies, such as kneeling, referred to in the above passage were accorded by aya to the anafemale mkm, members of their marital lineages, as a matter of course. Another interesting caveat is that mothers used
mkm ’mì (literally, “my mkm”) as a term of endearment for their own children,
signifying that these children, unlike themselves, were insiders and belonged
in their marital lineage.
In a study based in Lagos, anthropologist Sandra T. Barnes, using a feminist framework, assumes that Yorùbá anafemales are subordinate to anamales.
Thus she interprets the observed deferral of obìnrin as a deferral to male
authority figures. She then postulates a contradiction between her observation and the cultural ethos that “women are as capable as men.”40 Barnes misinterprets whatever it was that she observed. The paradox that she articulates
here is of her own making since hierarchy and authority, as I have consistently
shown, to this day do not depend on body-type (more commonly known as
gender). Furthermore, Barnes’s interpretation of the proverb Bokùnrin réjò
tóbìnrin paà kéjò káá ti kú (If a man sees a snake and a woman kills the snake,
what is important is that the snake should be dead), which she cites as proof
of the cultural ethos of gender equality,41 is simplistic because she assumes
the proverb is timeless. A more attentive reading of the proverb suggests the
presence of gender categorization and hints at a contestation, if you will, of
ongoing claims regarding the capabilities of mkùnrin and obìnrin. A more
contextualized reading would place the proverb in the historical context of
the recent colonial transformations in which in certain circles group interests
are being put forward in the idiom of gender.
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113
Inside the lineage, the category of members called mkm were anamales and
anafemales, but the category aya appeared to be limited to just anafemales.
Beyond the lineage, however, this was not the case. Devotees of the òrìsà
(gods/goddesses) were referred to as the aya of the particular òrìsà to whom
they were devoted. The devotees were aya to particular òrìsà because the
latter enjoyed the right of ownership / membership, just like members of a
lineage enjoyed the right of membership vis-à-vis in-marrying aya. The devotees were outsiders to the shrine, which was home to the òrìkà. Indeed,
S. O. Babayemi, a Yorùbá social historian, observing devotees of the deity
Kàngó, notes that male worshipers, “like the female members . . ., are referred
to as wives of Kàngó.”42
The foregoing elucidation of the occurrence of the social category of anamale aya in the religious realm should not be discounted by relegating it
solely to this realm. Yorùbá society was not and is not secular; religion was
and is part of the cultural fabric and therefore cannot be confined to one
social realm. As Jacob K. Olupona, the historian of religion, notes: “African
religion, like other primal religions, expresses itself through all available cultural idioms, such as music, arts, ecology. As such, it cannot be studied in
isolation from its sociocultural context.”43
Within the lineage, authority devolved from senior to junior, the oldest
member of the lineage being at the helm. Because, in general, most of the
adult anafemale mmm-ilé were assumed to be married and resident in their
marital compounds, there is a tendency in the literature to assume that the
oldest and most authoritative member was invariably an mkùnrin. This is not
correct for a number of reasons. The cultural institution of ilémosú referred
to the presence of adult anafemale mmm-ilé in their natal lineages. Ilémosú was
associated with the return to natal lineages of anafemale mmm-ilé after many
years of marriage and sojourn in their marital compounds. The adult obìnrin
members of the lineage were known collectively as the mmm-okú.
If the anafemale member was the oldest person present in the lineage,
then she was at the apex of authority. The presence of anafemale mmm-ilé and
their children in their natal lineages was not uncommon given the fact that
patrilocality was neither universal nor a permanent state in many marriages.
In many status-privileged lineages, female mmm-ilé did not necessarily move
to their marital lineages even after marriage. Samuel Johnson noted that
“some girls of noble birth will marry below their rank, but would have their
children brought up in their own home, and among their father’s children,
and adopt his totem.”44 Similarly, N. A. Fadipe recognized that
if the mother’s family is influential, a child may lean towards the maternal uncle
more than he leans towards his own father. Whether the mother’s family is
influential or not, if at any time a man felt himself being crowded out either
physically or psychologically from his own extended-family, he would find a
welcome in the compound occupied by his mother’s family.45
Although Fadipe went on to argue that a person’s rights in his/her
mother’s family are somewhat more limited than in his/her father’s family,
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the fact that certain lineages trace their ancestry through a founding mother
suggest that there is reason to challenge this claim. Additionally, there are
historical figures like Efúnketán Aníwúrà, the Ìyálóde of Ìbàdàn, who in the
nineteenth century was one of the most powerful chiefs in the polity. She had
risen to this position of preeminence by having claimed the leadership of the
Olúyòlé lineage, which was actually the lineage of her mother’s birth.46 In
the contemporary period, my own personal experience and research corroborate the findings of Niara Sudarkasa, who conducted her study in Aáwh, an
Nyo town, in the early 1960s. Sudarkasa writes:
When a man has been brought up in his mother’s compound, and resides there
with his wives and children, he would usually be regarded as part of the male
core of the house even though he belongs in his father’s lineage. . . . There is
the case of a man in his sixties whose father’s compound is Ile Alaran in the
Odofin quarters but has lived in his mother’s compound (Ile Alagbjdj) since
he was a very young boy. This man is a member of his father’s lineage, he has
property rights which accrue from membership in the idile, and his adult sons
may build houses on the land in Ile Alaran. Nevertheless, this man built a twostory house at Ile Alagbjdj and is the most influential man in that compound.
He is referred to by the members as the Bale. . . . Whenever a member of Ile
Alagbede is involved in a dispute with a person of another compound, it is to
this man that the Bale of the other compound would look for settlement of the
matter.47
Notwithstanding the fact that in the literature the head of the family is
usually described as the baále (the eldest anamale), there are lineages even
today that are led by anafemales. In Ògbomnso in 1996 there were two
female village heads—Baále Máyà and Baále Àrójj—representing their lineages and holding the hereditary titles. These females were first citizens of
both their lineages and the village. It is, then, a gross misrepresentation to
assume that anatomy necessarily defined the line of authority inside the lineage. The oldest residents of the lineage were usually the ìyá—the mothers
of the lineage. These were the old mothers who were usually in a position of
authority over their children, including any baále who was one of their offspring. They were collectively known as àwmn ìyá (the mothers), and no
major collective decisions could be made without their participation individually and as a group. Because they were usually the longest-living residents
of the lineage, they controlled information and carried the lineage memory.
Considering that this was an oral-based society, one can begin to appreciate
the importance of their positions.
The privileged position occupied by àwmn ìyá can be shown by considering the dominant role of the ayaba (palace mothers) in the politics of Old
Nyo. The power associated with longevity was institutionalized in the role of
the ayaba in the political hierarchy of Nyo. I will discuss this in the next
chapter, but it is important to note here that their power derived from experience and memory, “as many of them [had] lived through the reign of two
Co sm o lo g y an d S o ci o cu lt u r a l Ins ti tu ti o ns
115
or more Alaafin.”48 The ayaba were next in line of authority to the aláàfin,
and they wielded the power of the rulership in both the capital and the
provinces. The household head in the Nyo setting should not be interpreted
as some de facto or de jure leader who was in control of all decisions. Since
the lineage was segmented and was a multilayered and multigenerational
group in which a variety of collective, sometimes conflicting and individual,
interests were represented, the notion of an individual head of household is
more misleading than elucidating. In the agbo ilé (compound), power was
located in a multiplicity of sites, and it was tied to social role-identities that
were multiple and shifting for each individual depending on the situation.
Gender as a Theoretical and Ideological
Construct
As I have demonstrated repeatedly above, in Western discourses, gender is
conceived as first and foremost a dichotomous biological category that is
then used as the base for the construction of social hierarchies. The body
is used as a key to situating persons in the Western social system in that the
possession or absence of certain body parts inscribes different social privileges and disadvantages. The male gender is the privileged gender. But these
observations are not true of the Yorùbá frame of reference. Thus gender constructs are not in themselves biological—they are culturally derived, and their
maintenance is a function of cultural systems. Consequently, using Western
gender theories to interpret other societies without recourse to their own
world-sense imposes a Western model.
Edholm, Harris, and Young conclude that “the concepts we employ to
think about women are part of a whole ideological apparatus that in the past
has discouraged us from analyzing women’s work and women’s spheres as an
integrated part of social production.” 65 I could not agree more with the idea
that concepts are part of the ideological apparatus. However, these scholars
fall into the very ideological trap they elucidate—they deploy the concept
“women” as a given rather than as a part of the “whole ideological apparatus.” Woman/women is a social construct, although it is invoked asocially
and ahistorically. There were no women in Yorùbá society until recently.
There were, of course, obìnrin. Obìnrin are anafemales. Their anatomy, just
like that of okùnrin
(anamales), did not privilege them to any social positions
.
and similarly did not jeopardize their access.
The worldwide exportation of feminist theory, for example, is part of the
process of promoting Western norms and values. Taken at its face value, the
feminist charge to make women visible is carried out by submerging many
local and regional categories, which in effect imposes Western cultural values. Global gender-formation is then an imperialistic process enabled by
Western material and intellectual dominance. In effect, one of the most
important recommendations that emerges from my analysis of Yorùbá society is that in any consideration of gender construction, researchers should be
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concerned about not only the “whatness”66 of gender but also the
“whoness”—because one determines the other. That is, when scholars say
that gender is socially constructed, we have to not only locate what it is that
is being constructed but also identify who (singular and plural) is doing the
constructing. To return to the building metaphor used earlier, how many of
the bricks for erecting the edifice come from the society in question? How
many from scholars? And, finally, how many from the audience?
The problem of gender in African studies has generally been posed as the
woman question, that is, in terms of the issue of how much women are
oppressed by patriarchy in any given society. Women and patriarchy are
taken for granted and are therefore left unanalyzed and unaccounted for.
However, in mapping the Yorùbá frame of reference, it became clear that the
social category “woman”—anatomically identified and assumed to be a
victim and socially disadvantaged—did not exist. Assuming the woman question a priori constitutes an unfounded application of the Western model,
privileging the Western way of seeing and thereby erasing the Yorùbá model
of being.
In conclusion, what the Yorùbá case tells us about gender as a category is
that it is not a given. Thus, as an analytic tool, it cannot be invoked in the
same manner and to the same degree in different situations across time and
space. Gender is both a social and historical construct. No doubt gender has
its place and time in scholarly analyses, but its place and its time were not
precolonial Yorùbá society. The time of “gender” was to come during the
colonial period, which will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Even in reference to those periods, gender cannot be theorized in and of itself; it has to
be located within cultural systems—local and global—and its history and
articulations must be critically charted along with other aspects of social
systems.
Notes
1. Old Nyo refers to Nyo-ile (Nyo “home”), the original space that was settled.
There are many other Nyo that were occupied at different historical time periods
before the establishment of New Nyo in 1837. The distinction I wish to draw,
however, is between New Nyo, which was established in the nineteenth century,
and all the previous Nyo. Nyo was many places, spatially speaking, but my allusion is to one culture and its continuities, despite a lot of movement. This chapter, then, is concerned with the period before die monumental changes of the
nineteenth century. According to Robert Smith, “The Oyo of the alafin are
three: Oyo-ile, Qyo-oro, . . . and lastly New Oyo. Although only these three
bear the name ‘Oyo,’ tradition recounts that, since their dispersion from IleIfe . . ., the Oyo people have settled in sixteen different places” (“Alafin in Exile:
A Study of the Ìgbòho Period in Oyo History,” Journal of African History 1
(1965): 57–77). For the history and social organization of Nyo, see the following: Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas (New York: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1921); S. O. Babayemi, “The Rise and Fall of Oyo c. 1760–1905:
A Study in the Traditional Culture of an African Polity” (Ph.D. diss.,
Co sm o lo g y an d S o ci o cu lt u r a l Ins ti tu ti o ns
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
117
Department of History, University of Birmingham, 1979); J. A. Atanda, The
New Oyo Empire: Indirect Rule and Change in Western Nigeria, 1894–1934
(Bristol, England: Longman, 1973); Robert S. Smith, Kingdoms of the Yoruba
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Robin Law, The Oyo Empire c.
1600–c. 1836 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); Toyin Falola, ed., Yoruba
Historiography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Peter MortonWilliams, “An Outline of the Cosmology and Cult Organization of the Oyo
Yoruba,” Africa 34, no. 3 (1964): 243–61.
As to the term “world-sense”: it is a more holistic term than “worldview”
because it emphasizes the totality and conception of modes of being.
Serge Tcherkézoff, “The Illusion of Dualism in Samoa,” in Gender
Anthropology, ed. Teresa del Valle (New York: Routledge, 1989), 55.
Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” in Toward an Anthropology of Women,
ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).
Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 1952).
Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press,
1983), 165.
In his book Visions and Revisions: Essays on African Literatures and Criticism
(New York: Peter Long, 1991), Oyekan Owomoyela attempts a gendered
reading of this saying. But, in my view, he is just imposing Western gender
thinking on Yorùbá (81).
See, for example, Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the
Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); and
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New
York: Routledge, 1990).
Nancy Chodorow, Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond
(Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994).
For a discussion of sexual dimorphism and the need to integrate biological
and social constructs, see Alice Rossi, “Gender and Parenthood,” American
Sociological Review 49, no. 1 (1984): 73–90.
The title of a recent book is especially appropriate in this regard; see Elizabeth
Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994).
Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism and the Nature of Difference (New
York: Routledge, 1989), xi.
Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological
Approach (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978).
See, for example, Judith Butler’s discussion of sex as fiction in Gender Trouble.
Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 65.
Personal communication with Dr. Jacob K. Olupona, historian of Yorùbá
religion.
Ibid. Johnson claims that during the Egúngún festival, there is an overnight
vigil at the graves of the ancestors; it is called ìkúnle because the whole night
is spent kneeling and praying (31).
Ibid., 65; emphasis added.
Ibid., 31.
Ifá is one of the most important knowledge systems in Yorùbáland, producing a vast storehouse of information on the society in the divination verses.
Ifá is the òrikà (god) of divination.
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21. Wande Abimbola, Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus (Ìbàdàn: Oxford
University Press, 1976), 131–32. It is only in the English translation that the
anasex of the three friends becomes apparent or constructed.
22. Rowland Abiodun, “Verbal and Visual Metaphors: Mythical Allusions in
Yoruba Ritualistic Art of Ori” Word and Image 3, no. 3 (1987): 257; emphasis added.
23. Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender, 1.
24. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in
African Literature (London: James Currey, 1981).
25. Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an
African Society (London: Zed Books, 1987), makes a similar point about the
non-gender-specificity in the Igbó subject pronoun (89).
26. Johnson, History of the Yorubas, xxxvii.
27. N. A. Fadipe, The Sociology of the Yoruba (Ìbàdàn: Ìbàdàn University Press,
1970), 129.
28. Candance West and Don Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” in The Construction
of Gender, ed. Judith Lorber and Susan A. Farrell (Newbury Park, Calif.:
Sage, 1991).
29. William Bascom, The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria (Prospect Heights, Ill.:
Waveland Press, 1969), 54.
30. J. S. Eades, The Yoruba Today (London: Cambridge University Press,
1980), 53.
31. Kathy Ferguson, The Man Question, 128.
32. Hugh Clapperton, Journal of 2nd Expedition into the Interior of Africa
(Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Carey, 1829), 1–59.
33. T. J. Bowen, Central Africa (Charleston: Southern Baptist Publication
Society, 1857), 218.
34. For a discussion of Yorùbá urbanism, see the following: E. Krapf-Askari,
Yoruba Towns and Cities: An Inquiry into the Nature of Urban Social
Phenomena (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969); and Akin Mabogunje Urbanization
in Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1968).
35. For example, Peter C. Lloyd, “The Yoruba Lineage,” Africa 25, no. 3
(1995): 235–51.
36. Today, they are called `ryàwó ile. The term `ryàwó seems to have supplanted
aya. In past usage, `ryàwó meant specifically “bride,” but now it has been,
extended to mean “wife.”
37. Compare Karen Sacks, Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual
Equality (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1982).
38. I borrowed the phrase “priority of claim” from Niara Sudarkasa’s study of the
Awh, a Yorùbá community. My usage differs, however, in that I do not accept
that gender is part of its composition. See Niara Sudarkasa, “In a World of
Women: Fieldwork in a Yoruba Community,” in The Strength of Our Mothers
(n.p., 1996).
39. See Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds., Women, Culture, and
Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), 19–20.
40. Sandra T Barnes, “Women, Property and Power,” in Beyond the Second Sex:
New Directions in the Anthropology of Gender, ed. Peggy Reeves San-day and
Ruth Gallagher Goodenough (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1990).
41. Jacob K. Olupona, African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society
(New York: Paragon House, 1991).
Co sm o lo g y an d S o ci o cu lt u r a l Ins ti tu ti o ns
119
42. S. O. Babayemi, “The Role of Women in Politics and Religion in Oyo” (paper
presented at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ìbàdàn, seminar
entitled “Women’s Studies: The State of the Arts Now in Nigeria,”
November 1937).
43. Olupona, African Traditional Religions, 30.
44. Johnson, History of Yorubas, 86.
45. Fadipe, Sociology of the Yoruba, 126.
46. Bolanle Awe, Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective (Lagos, Nigeria:
Sankore, 1992), 58, 65.
47. Niara Sudarkasa, Where Women Work: A Study of Yoruba Women in the Market
Place and at Home, Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers 53
(Arm Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1973), 100.
48. Babayemi, “Role of Women,” 7.

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