This article compares indigenous conceptualizations, as expressed in ledgers recording the collection of funeral offerings, with academic knowledge on kinship and value negotiation in the Akan area of West Africa. Donors are inserted in social circuits defining their residential belonging (in villages and households), parental affiliation (with specific offerings for matrilineal kin, patrilateral kin and in-laws), as well as gender and seniority. Funeral offerings, moreover, vary proportionally to value: the amount provided by the donor expresses his/her value and the total cost of the funeral indicates the value of the deceased and of her/his family. The intricacies of mortuary offerings — expressed through elaborate calculations — reveal shared and structured taxonomies that enable affirming and negotiating the value of the deceased and that of the donor as well as the relation between donor and deceased. Anthropological theories and definitions are confronted with these locally elaborated representations.
Akwabi-Ameyaw K. ( 1982) Ashanti social organization: Some ethnographic clarifications . Ethnology21(4): 325-333.
2.
Appadurai A. ( 1986) Is Homo Hierarchicus?American Ethnologist13(4): 745-761.
3.
Appadurai A. ( 1992) Putting hierarchy in its place. In: Marcus G (ed.) Rereading Cultural Anthropology . London: Duke University Press , 34-47.
4.
Arhin K. ( 1981) On Fante death rituals. Current Anthropology . 22: 179.
5.
Arhin K. ( 1994) The economic implications of transformations in Akan funeral rites. Africa64: 307-322.
6.
Basehart HW ( 1961) Ashanti. In: Schneider D, Gough K (eds) Matrilineal Kinship. Berkeley: University of California Press, 270-297.
7.
Berry S. ( 2001) Chiefs know their Boundaries: Essays on Property, Power and the Past in Asante, 1896-1996. Oxford: James Currey.
8.
Bleek W. ( 1975) Parents and children in a Kwahu lineage. Legon Family Research Paper4: 30-38.
9.
Boni S. ( 1998) History and social structure: A study of the Sefwi residential system (Ghana). Ethnology37(3): 239-262.
10.
Boni S. ( 2000) Contents and contexts: The rhetoric of oral traditions in the oman of Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana. Africa70(4): 568-594.
11.
Boni S. ( 2003) Le strutture della disuguaglianza: capi, appartenenze e gerarchie nel mondo akan, Africa occidentale. Milan: Franco Angeli.
12.
Bourdieu P. ( 1977[1997]) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
13.
Busia KA ( 1954) The Ashanti of theGold Coast . In: Forde D (ed.) African Worlds . London: Oxford University Press , 190-209.
14.
Carsten J. ( 1995) The substance of kinship and the heat of the heart: Feeding, person-hood, and relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. American Ethnologist22: 223-241.
15.
Carsten J. ( 2000) Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16.
Chukwukere I. ( 1981) A coffin for the ‘loved one’: The structure of Fante death rituals. Current Anthropology22: 61-68.
17.
Clark G. ( 1994) Onions are My Husband: Survival and Accumulation by West African Market Women. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
18.
Clifford J, Marcus GE (eds) (1986) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
19.
Crentsil P. ( 2007) Death, Ancestors, and HIV/AIDS among the Akan of Ghana . Helsinki: Research Series in Anthropology .
20.
Danquah JB ( 1928) Akan Laws and Customs. London : George Routledge.
21.
de Witte M. ( 2001) Long Live the Dead! Changing Funeral Celebrations in Asante, Ghana. Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers.
22.
de Witte M. ( 2003) Money and death: funeral business in Asante, Ghana . Africa73(4): 531-559.
23.
Eskemose Andersen J., Andreasen J., and Tipple G. ( 2006) The Demise of Compound Houses: Consequences for the Low Income Population of Kumasi, Ghana. London: RICS.
24.
Fortes M. ( 1950) Kinship and marriage among the Ashanti. In: Radcliffe-Brown AR, Forde D (eds) African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. London: Oxford University Press, 252-284.
25.
Fortes M. ( 1953 [1970]) The structure of unilineal descent groups. In: Fortes M (ed.) Time and Social Structure and Other Essays. New York: Athlone Press, 67-95.
26.
Fortes M. ( 1963) The ‘submerged descent line’ in Ashanti . In: Schapera I (ed.) Studies in Kinship and Marriage. London: Royal Anthropological Institute, 58-67.
27.
Fortes M. ( 1969) Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
28.
Franklin S., McKinnon S. ( 2001) Introduction. In: Franklin S, McKinnon S (eds) Relative Values. Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1-25.
29.
Geertz C. ( 1998) The world in pieces: Culture and politics at the end of the century. Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology32: 91-117.
30.
Gilbert M. ( 1988) The sudden death of a millionaire: Conversion and consensus in a Ghanaian kingdom. Africa58(3): 291-304.
31.
Goody J. ( 1965) Death, Property and the Ancestors. London: Tavistock Publications.
32.
Graeber D. ( 2001) Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave .
33.
Guha R. ( 1989) Dominance without hegemony and its historiography . Subaltern Studies6: 210-309.
34.
Hagan G., Odotei IK ( 2002) The King Has Gone to the Village. Death and Burial of Otumfuo Opoku Ware II. Legon: Institute of African Studies.
35.
Hanson KT ( 2004) Rethinking the Akan household: Acknowledging the importance of culturally and linguistically meaningful images. Africa Today51(1): 27-45.
36.
Holy L. ( 1996) Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship. London: Pluto Press.
37.
Jindra M. ( 2005) Christianity and the proliferation of ancestors: Changes in hierarchy and mortuary ritual in the Cameroon grassfields. Africa75(3): 356-377.
38.
Jua N. ( 2005) The mortuary sphere, privilege and the politics of belonging in contemporary Cameroon. Africa75(3): 325-355.
39.
Kronenefeld DB ( 1991) Fanti kinship. Language, inheritance, and kin groups . Anthropos86(1-3): 19-32.
40.
Kuper A. ( 1988) The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion. London: Routledge .
41.
Kyerewaa Opokuwaa N. ( 1997) Akan Protocol: Remembering the Traditions of Our Ancestors . Lincoln, NE: Authors’ Choice Press.
42.
Lanternari V. ( 1974) L’acculturazione fra gli Nzima del Ghana: aspetti economici ed etico-sociali. In: Lanternari V (ed.) Antropologia e imperialismo. Turin: Einaudi, 94-118.
43.
Lorimer L (ed.) (1954) Culture and Human Fertility. New York: United Nations.
44.
Manuh T. ( 1995) Changes in marriages and funeral exchanges among the Asante: A case study from Kona, Afigya-Kwabre. In: Guyer JI (ed.) Money Matters. Oxford: James Currey, 188-201.
45.
McCaskie TC ( 1995) State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
46.
McLeod MD ( 1981) The Asante. London: British Museum.
47.
Middleton J. ( 1979) Home town: A study of an urban center in Southern Ghana . Africa49(3): 246-257.
48.
Mikell G. ( 1984) Filiation, economic crisis, and the status of women in rural Ghana. Canadian Journal of African Studies18: 195-219.
49.
Noret J. ( 2005) Négocier le changement culturelle: L’évolution des funérailles en pays asante (Ghana). L’Homme174: 261-268.
50.
Obeng P. ( 1996) Asante Catholicism. Religious & Cultural Reproduction among the Akan of Ghana. Leiden: Brill.
51.
Owusu-Sarpong C. ( 2000) La mort akan: étude ethno-sémiotique des texts funéraires akan. Paris: L’Harmattan.
52.
Palumbo B. ( 1992) Marriage, land and kinship in a Nzema village. Ethnology31(3): 233-257.
53.
Parish J. ( 2005) Witchcraft, riches and roulette. An ethnography of West African gambling in the UK. Ethnography6(1): 105-122.
54.
Parkin R. ( 2009) What Shapiro and McKinnon are all about, and why kinship still needs anthropologists. Social Anthropology17(2): 158-170.
55.
Pavanello M. ( 2004) Review Le Strutture. Africa74(4): 679-680.
56.
Peletz MG ( 2001) Ambivalence in kinship since the 1940s. In: Franklin S, McKinnon S (eds) Relative Values. Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 413-444.
57.
Rattray RS ( 1929) Ashanti Law and Constitution. Oxford : Clarendon Press.
58.
Schneider DM ( 1984) A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
59.
Scott JC ( 1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance . London: Yale University Press .
60.
Scott JC ( 1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts . London: Yale University Press .
61.
Strathern M. ( 1992) After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
62.
van der Geest S. ( 1997) Money and respect: The changing value of old age in rural Ghana. Africa67(4): 534-559.
63.
van der Geest S. ( 1999) ‘Opanyin’: The ideal of elder in the Akan culture of Ghana. Canadian Journal of African Studies32(3): 449-493.
64.
van der Geest S. ( 2000) Funerals for the living: Conversations with elderly people in Kwahu, Ghana. African Studies Review43(3): 103-129.
65.
van der Geest S. ( 2006) Between death and funeral: Mortuaries and the exploitation of liminality in Kwahu, Ghana. Africa76(4): 485-501.
66.
Viti F., Solinas PG, and Putti R. ( 1992) Yako. I funerali di un re baule: cronache, appunti, interviste sul campo. Siena: LEA .
67.
Vollbrecht JA ( 1978) Structure and communitas in an Ashanti village: The role of funerals. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania , Pittsburgh.
68.
Wiredu K. ( 1992) The moral foundations of African culture. In: Flack HE, Pellegrino ED (eds) African-American Perspectives on Biomedical Ethics . Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 80-93.
