Les Fusils jaunes: Générations et politique en pays Nyangatom (Ethiopie)

Serge Tornay. Les Fusils jaunes: Générations et politique en pays Nyangatom (Ethiopie). Nanterre: Société d'Ethnologie, 2001. 363 pp. Figures. Photographs. Eur. 27.44. Paper.

This book is a meticulous anthropological case study of the Nyamgatom peoples, Nilotic-speaking agro-pastoralists who inhabit the border region between Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan. Serge Tornay, formerly a professor at the Université Paris-X (Nanterre) and now Directeur de Service and head of the Africa section at the Museé de l;Homme, calls upon his extended fieldwork during the early 1970s, complemented by return visits in the following two decades, to explicate the social constructioin of a (male)ociety based on generation.

Les Fusils jaunes is deeply influenced by classical social anthropology; the author offerss extensive comparisons to the conclusions-both theoretical and applied-of earlier scholars such as Evanz-Pritchard, who also worked among primarily pastoralist societies northeast Africa. Tornay's approach, however, is nuanced by the self-reflection that has characterized social anthropology during the past generation. In an analytical passage that is characteristically witty as well as insightful, he writes, "Le systéme générational est, en tant qu'objet de penseée. le produit de la rencontré de deux subjectivités, celle des Nyangatom et celle de leur ethnographe unique et préféré." (The generational system as an object of thought is the product of the meeting between two subjectivities, that of the Nyangatom and that of their unique and favorite ethnographer) (304). The ethpgrapher is, in fact, present in an unobtrusive manner throughout the book. The aythor seeks to balance long passages that recount ritual and daily conversations with interpretive chapters that offer both distance from the subject and analysis. Tornay chooses narrative, which incorporates much recorded dialogue, as the best way to convey the tecture of Nyangatom society and its daily life across the twenty-five year that his fieldwork encompasses. This narrative captures the content and quality of conversations-ranging from pathos to the mundane-that attend warfare. Individual members of the community do emerge as personalities for the reader. What also emerges is Tornay's profound respect for his subjects. friends. and fellow members of the genration of the Elephants. Most of the work concentrates on the early 1970s, when a combination of drought and warfare with neighboring groups placed Nyangatom society under significant strain. The author witnessed several tragedies, including one small-scale massacre by a neighboring population. He writes not only as an ethnographer but also as a witness to these events, and as one who directly shared the pain of the community.

Nyangatom society is divided into several generations. At the risk of oversimplifying, one might refer to (1) uninitiated young men, (2) the generation of initiated men, and (3) the elders. The author suggests that the elders, known as "the Fathers of the country," collectively assume a socio-religious role comparable to that of "divine" kings. As a rule, it is by providing sustenance for their elders that young men establish themselves as adult members of the society. That sustenance most frequently takes the form of animal sacrifice. Cattle constitute the base of the Nyangatom economy and, as with the Nuer, all of the cattle are ultimately destined for ritual sacrifice.

At the time of Tornay's fieldwork and through the early 1990s, the elders belonged to the generation of the Elephants. Awaiting, with increasing frustration, the transfer of generational power were the Ostriches. But the symbolic transfer of power could occur only through a sacrifice called asapan. The elder generation must designate one of their members as the asapan who, in turn, must sacrifice one head of cattle. That sacrifice is followed shortly by the derangement and death of the chosen individual (the demise perhaps assured by the prescribed ritual consumption of certain herbs). Clearly this ritual is replete with symbolic significance, including, as the author observes, a (cattle) substitute for human sacrifice. One also perceives the perhaps more-than-symbolic sacrifice of an elder member of society. Understandably, the Elephants were reluctant to pass the torch to the Ostriches. And so, by the 1990s, the expected and necessary ritual had not taken place and the intergenerational passage of power had become blocked. Tornay proposes several sociological factors for this situation, although the Nyangatoms' changing relationship to the (postrevolutionary) Ethiopian state and to impinging economic change is addressed only indirectly. That wider context might have provided broader insight into the sclerosis of local society. One other critique: This reviewer would have preferred that the final chapter, which describes the politico-religious and conceptual foundations of the generational social system, be the introductory chapter. After working my way through the narrative reconstruction of fieldwork, I felt only at the end that I was reading desperately needed basic theoretical and ethnographic information.