Religion and Social Organization Among a West African Muslim People: the Susu of Sierra Leone.

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between religion and social organization among the Susu of rural Sierra Leone (West Africa). The social organization of the Susu is divided into formal and informal social relations. Formal relations, characterized by asymmetrical (hierarchical) social relations, are further divisible into absolute and relative asymmetrical relations. The former, by ranking certain individuals or groups permanently by the ascribed status of birth, describes the classification and conduct of slaves/freemen and men/women. Relative asymmetrical relations are exemplified by the systems of kinship, politics, law, etc., in which status and role are determined by age, family, or achievement. Informal social relations are those characterized by symmetrical (egalitarian) relations between individuals or a group--examples include friendship, boy/girl friends, voluntary associations and certain types of big man-clients relations. Religion among the Susu may be divided into formal, orthodox Islam and folk Islam. Formal, orthodox Islam is that variety publicly espoused by the members of the religious elite--an emphasis on prayer and ethics, the next life, a remote deity, etc. Folk Islam, by contrast, rests on the relations established between certain religious practitioners (karamakho) and spirits (nyine) who give the karamakho certain powers in exchange for gifts. In short, it can be seen that formal, orthodox Islam among the Susu mirrors, in theology and institutional organization, their asymmetrical system of social relations, while folk Islam, with its emphasis on the contractual relationship between the karamakho and his spirit(s), more closely reflects the system of symmetrical (egalitarian) social relations. There is, then, a bifurcation throughout Susu social and religious organization based on the principles of asymmetry and symmetry. These principles, based as they are on different modes of, and attitudes towards, social relations and interaction, are occasionally in conflict and contradiction. The final part of the dissertation shows that the figures of the big man and the karamakho encompass within their roles patterns of both symmetrical and asymmetrical social relations; their roles thus serve to mediate symbolically the contradictory domains of symmetrical and asymmetrical social relations.