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'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
80
Sacred void
SACRED VOID
Spatial images of work and
ritual among the Giriama of Kenya
DAVID PARKIN
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© Cambridge University Press 1991
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
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no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
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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