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Technology and Morality—Rituals in Iron Working among the Fipa and Pangwa Peoples in Southwestern Tanzania

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the 1990s among the Pangwa and Fipa peoples in southwestern Tanzania, this discussion focuses on the locally constructed collective and individual perceptions of technological processes in iron smelting and how these are connected to imagination. Of particular interest is the largely neglected aspect of morality involved in the rituals surrounding iron working. It is argued that aspects of morality, as well as magic and witchcraft, explain the concerns of the people engaged in the complex technology of making iron far better than does fertility symbolism. [iron working, technology, symbolism, rituals, morality]

The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste

“…(Cohen 2015: 10) Similarly, in relation to metals, their transgressive and risky qualities, the prescriptions for and prohibitions against their use, are documented in literature from the ancient Greeks to accounts of metallurgy and ritual in recent Africa (cf. Blakely 2006Blakely , 2012Barndon 2012;Haaland et al 2002). Below, I will examine the ways in which stone, reconfigured as metal, has challenged -and continues to challenge -the collaboration between humans and lithic matter in the Baucau/Viqueque region of Timor-Leste.…”