Gleaming Like The Sun: Aesthetic Values in Wodaabe Material Culture

Abstract

The Fulbe Wodaabe from Central Niger – like other nomadic pastoralists – seem to be highly resistant to the influence of global consumer goods, the consumption of modern products being more or less confined to satisfying practical needs. The article presents a notable exception to this attitude of abstinence, the domain of female household goods which are procured on seasonal travels to places as distant as Dakar or Freetown.The Wodaabe case is distinctive in that the gift/commodity model does not adequately describe the forms of acquisition in question. The author suggests a third term: ‘booty’, implying that, for the Wodaabe, consumer goods are not part of a genuine transaction. In a further step she analyses the cultural appropriation of newly acquired goods by exploring the parallels between the ceremonial exposition of female household items and male dances, showing that the modern elements incorporated into the expositions exhibit a certain aesthetic quality, namely brightness and radiance, which the Wodaabe regard as a characteristic trait of themselves. Thus, the adoption of new things leads here to an intensification of the original cultural expression.

Wild Silk Textiles of the Dogon of Mali: The Production, Material Efficacy, and Cultural Significance of Sheen

“…The triad sheen, light, and color is embedded into cultural and multisensorial experiences of the social, natural, and spiritual worlds that materialize in what Saunders calls an "aesthetics of brilliance" (Saunders 2002: 209). Boesen (2008) describes Wodaabe cattle herders and traders of Central Niger with their aesthetics of luminosity and luster as a criterion 62 Laurence Douny of cultural self-achievement and so of high value. Luster is expressed in many respects, in the preservation of shiny material elements of a Western origin in their home, the whitening of calabashes used as domestic vessels, or men dancers' "grimaces" that enable them to display the whites of their eyeballs and their impeccable white teeth that are enhanced by face painting and sunset light (Boesen 2008: 595).…”