Chibale, Zambia: individuality and conformity
Proverb 9
Nawe, kwenu takwali bakulu!
As for you, there were no elders at your home!
Have you not been taught at home?
There are certain manners common to all regions like using both hands when receiving a gift from an older person. Now, if you use only one hand, that is when they will say that you must have grown up in a village without elders. Elders who could have taught you are everywhere else.
See proverb 9 in the book Mu Zambia Amano Mambulwa.
Rules of life
Chibale, Zambia: individuality and conformity. This theme is expressed in the many rules (mushila) stipulating conventional behaviour for almost every circumstance. People say that these rules were followed in the past, and they still play a role, certainly in the spirit possession cults and, in a changed form, for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. See the article Rules of life in an expanding world.
It also finds expression in the ways people deal with conspicuous individuality and individual success. Some groupings explain success and possible consequential conspicuous individuality as the result of hard work. Others see it as the result of malicious intention, or as ishuko, the good fortune resulting from a good relationship with the mpanga (spirit world).
Seur1Seur (1992: 206). reports something similar.
Although I am hesitant to make a clear-cut division, I found that younger people and successful farmers, in particular, tended to explain the economic differentiation among farmers as resulting from the qualities and actions of individuals. Poorer farmers, on the other hand, especially those belonging to the older generation, were often less convinced that their actions could alter the course of events. These farmers often considered economic differentiation as an unjust phenomenon and tended to describe success or failure in farming as being determined by factors lying outside the control of the individual, such as fate, chance, or sorcery.
Finding leeway
Chibale, Zambia: individuality and conformity. In Chibale, considerable attention is paid to various rules of conformity. However, it is also up to the individual to find the ‘performance leeway’ within these constraints. The ways in which the performers found leeway within the structural characteristics and requirements of music or dance were an important factor in the evaluation of singers, and especially dancers, in the 1980s, though this was less so in the 2000s.
Continue to the article about the theme Independence and interdependence.
Footnotes
- 1Seur (1992: 206).