The Sacred Void.pdf

'Traditional religions' have not always yielded to Christianity and Islam, nor become

devalued by modern secular ideas and commoditisation. In describing the shifting

boundaries between these phenomena, David Parkin shows how indigenous African rites

and beliefs may be reworked to accommodate a variety of economic systems, new spatial

and ecological relations between communities, and the locally variable influences of

Islam and Christianity.

Among the Giriama people of Kenya, there are pastoralists living in the hinterland;

farmers, who work land closer to the coast; and migrants, who earn money as labourers or

fishermen on the coast itself. Wherever they live, they revere an ancient and formerly

fortified capital, located in the pastoralist hinterland, which few of them ever see or visit.

Those who live closest to the sacred place - the pastoralists - are commonly believed to

share in its purity, while those engaged in wage labour are often thought to be furthest

removed spiritually from the cultural essence of the Giriama. The idea of the sacred is here

made up of these different spatial perspectives, which sometimes conflict. As the site of

occasional large-scale ceremonies, however, the settlement becomes specially important

at times of national crisis. It then acts as a moral core of Giriama society, and a defence

against total domination and assimilation.

Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Editors: Ernest Gellner, Jack Goody, Stephen Gudeman, Michael Her zf eld,

Jonathan Parry

Sacred void

SACRED VOID

Spatial images of work and

ritual among the Giriama of Kenya

DAVID PARKIN

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This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

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First published 1991

This digitally printed first paperback version 2006

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Parkin, David J.

Sacred void: spatial images of work and ritual among the Giriama of Kenya /

David Parkin.

p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in social and cultural

anthropology: 80)

ISBN 0 521 40466 5

1. Giryama (African people) - Religion. 2. Giryama (African

people) — Social life and customs. I. Title. II. Series.

BL2480.G57P37 1991

299'.68395 - dc20 90-24158 CIP

ISBN-13 978-0-521-40466-2 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-40466-5 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-02498-3 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-02498-6 paperback

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