Aka & kung!: different approaches to plant oriented societies

Aka & !Kung:
Different Approaches to Plant Oriented Societies

“Aka are probably as egalitarian as human societies get” - Barry S. Hewlett

“Here, in a society of ancient traditions, men and women live together in a no exploitative manner, displaying a striking degree of equality between the sexes—perhaps a lesson for our own society.” – Marjorie Shostak

Alexandra Casuso
Gender andCulture
Assignment #1
Spring, 2011

Aka & !Kung: Different Approaches to Plant Oriented Societies

African hunting-gathering societies provide a huge insight on how human groups work, and they allow anthropologists to study how different conditions influence the different structures of society and how gender roles are defined. In this report I will show how societies can be influenced bytheir environment, and how this influence determines gender roles within a culture.

Aka Society
Aka society is perceived as a rather egalitarian society; however, if analyzed in detail, there is proof that females dominate their society.

Political Domain

“The Aka are fiercely egalitarian and independent”. With their core values being sharing, cooperation and autonomy, both men andwomen participate equally in the decision-making. The Aka are able to maintain their egalitarianism by practicing prestige avoidance, nobody pays attention to people performing tasks exceptionally; rough joking, people will make fun of a person who brags about doing something better than the rest; and demand sharing, people are expected to share their belongings upon request.
“The political powerand social prestige of Aka women are pronounced but not as structurally salient as those of Aka men”. Only men hold positions of status; however, these positions are just representative, because both men and women know that “men do not hold the absolute power” in the society. Women often joke about how men feel powerful by holding these positions, and how they try to keep power away from them; theyeven have special songs where they ridicule the false sense of power of men.
Susan Carol Rogers calls this phenomenon Mythical Male Dominance: “The myth of male dominance, she says, is expressed in patterns of public deference toward men, as well as their monopolization of positions of power and prestige. She shows, however, that males do not actually dominate, nor do males or females literallybelieve males to be dominant”.

Spiritual Domain

Individuality is a core value in Aka society; religion and spirituality are aspects in which each particular individual, both men and women, has a different stand. People share their beliefs and voice their different opinions through discussions. Same as with religious beliefs, coming of age rites are provided for both boys and girls, and theyget to choose when they want to perform these rituals.

There is a ritual, however, in which we can appreciate inequality in the spiritual domain. When boys reach the adolescent years, they are taken on an elephant hunt to learn the secrets of dzengi, a forest spirit. Women are not allowed to know the secrets of dzengi. Women, though, are not scared of dzengi, nor do they care to know what thesecret is. On the contrary, they secretly mock the men because they know “it is just the way men try to keep power from them”. In addition, only men are allowed to be religious specialists (Ngangas). The spiritual domain, as well as the political domain, shows evidence for Mythical Male Dominance.

Economic/Subsistence Domain

Division of labor in the Aka society is not be ascribed to women’sphysical incapability to perform certain tasks, “The capabilities of men and women are very similar, and therefore tasks can be reversed easily,” says Hewlett; this statement disproves Sanday’s Strength Hypothesis, which suggests that sexual division of labor is due to women’s lack of physical strength. According to Sanday’s Danger Hypothesis, Aka women do not participate in the crossbow hunt,...