%0 Book Section
%T Becoming human in Dogon, Mali
%A Beek, W. E. A. van
%B Coming into existence : birth and metaphors of birth, edited with an introduction by Göran Aijmer
%D 1992
%I Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology
%C Goteborg, Sweden
%@ 9163010410
%G English
%F fa16-028
%O Walter E. A. van Beek
%O ILL 8/13/98; received 9/1/98; copied 9/98; pages:  32; to analysis 12/98; analysis completed 1/99; 32 text pages.
%O Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-159)
%X In this article van Beek discusses women's fertility and Dogon ideas and practices surrounding menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and naming. He then discusses the SIGUI ceremony which happens once every sixty years. The sigui ceremony is a ritual of renewel and initiation in which only men participate. Men are reborn from the bush with a new personhood (INé) and minds (HAKILé), and with enhanced powers and fertility. According to van Beek, the sigui ceremony inverts the rituals associated with pregnancy and childbirth and endow men and the patrilineage with creative powers. The ceremony stresses ‘the fleeting male creation by man of himself against the continuing chain of life generated by the women' (p. 70).
%K Dogons (African people)
%K Dogon
%K Age stratification
%K Gender status
%K Mythology
%K Organized ceremonial
%K Ideas about nature and people
%K Reproduction
%K Puberty and initiation
%U https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fa16-028
%P 47-70, 154-159
%[ 2022-07-03