Intimate Bonds, Healthy Communities: Blood-Brotherhoods as Technologies of Community Building Between the Great Lakes, c. 500 BCE-1500 CE

Posted: 23 Mar 2015 Last revised: 28 May 2015

See all articles by Lindsay Ehrisman

Lindsay Ehrisman

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Date Written: 2015

Abstract

Sometime around the turn of the first century CE, several new words relating to blood-brotherhoods entered the vocabularies of newly forming speech communities living in the Great Lakes region of Central East Africa. Such lexical and semantic innovations illuminate a drastic shift in blood-brotherhood relationships from informal, social ties to institutionalized, intimate and therapeutic bonds between men over time. West Nyanza-speakers settling around the coast and hinterlands of Lake Victoria between c. 0 and 500 CE, for instance, innovated *-kago for "blood pact" from the proto-Bantu verb *-kàg "use charms for protection," as well as new intimate rituals to activate the therapeutic power of the pact. David Schoenbrun has shown, the innovation of *-kago, "clearly reflects the renewed importance of such alliances to West Nyanza community builders," and "made explicit that one of their purposes in making blood brotherhood was protection and that the exchange of blood was also the exchange of a type of medicine." While several scholars have analyzed the words, symbolism, and ritual structure of blood pact ceremonies, few have explored the processes of establishing and maintaining the intimate and affectionate male relationships that both preceded and far outlived the pact ritual. Using historical linguistics, comparative ethnography, and Great Lakes oral traditions, this paper will trace and historicize the shifting meanings of blood-brotherhood from the beginning of the first millennium CE through the early twentieth century, and argue that intimate and affective dimensions of the blood-brotherhood relationships were crucial for activating and sustaining the pact's creative and instrumental power. Perhaps more importantly, I will argue that the ideology of blood-brotherhood serves as a useful microcosm and conceptual bridge for broader intellectual, therapeutic, and affective historical transformations over the longue durée.

Suggested Citation

Ehrisman, Lindsay, Intimate Bonds, Healthy Communities: Blood-Brotherhoods as Technologies of Community Building Between the Great Lakes, c. 500 BCE-1500 CE (2015). ASA 2015 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2581933

Lindsay Ehrisman (Contact Author)

University of Wisconsin - Madison ( email )

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