OTHER VIEWS OF THE  VILLAGE/ WILDERNESS DICHOTOMY

“African systems of though tend to show concern for the control of people, not the environment. Africans do not expect to alter the conditions of their lives by changing the environment"

                Prohibitions on certain types of activities in one or the other type of space reinforce the boundaries between these domains. Many of the prohibitions concern activities that are strictly associated with either men or women, in other words they are gender specific. In some societies men are associated with the wild, women with the domestic. Women also are seen as dangerous, men as the guardians of order. In a Fang village, the forest is seen as cold, yet the prime arena of male activity. The village is hot, yet the arena of women’s work. When passing from the village to the forest, one passes through various symbolic zones, each redolent with is particulate set of associations  according to the activities carried out there.   In much of Africa, women's work, such as collecting firewood, carrying water, and farming, involves movement from the village into uncultivated areas normally referred to as bush. Hunting, and warfare, takes me well beyond the borders of the village. The village is seen as safe, as opposed to the forest where accidents occur; the farm, being intermediate in kind, can be a significant mediating zone between the village and the wilderness

The tendency to separate the village from the wilderness is seen not only among sedentary agriculturalists but also among hunter gatherer societies. However, the Mbuti of Zaire, as one example of hunters and gatherers, view their forest home as safe beneficent and civilized, and the nearby Bantu villages as dangerous and uncivilized. To the Mbuti the forest is home of disembodied human and animal spirits; it is also home to a benevolent forest deity, it is not, however, an ambiguous space filled with uncertainty and mystical danger.

Village/ Wilderness • Baule • Baule Village/ wilderness • Intermediate Space • Village/ Wilderness Art

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