TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hallpike, C. R. (Christopher Robert)
PY  - 1968
DA  - 1968//
TI  - The status of craftsmen among the Konso of south-west Ethiopia
JO  - Africa
SP  - 258
EP  - 269
VL  - Vol. 38
IS  - no. 3
PB  - Oxford University Press
CY  - London
KW  - Konso (African people)
KW  - Konso
KW  - Community structure
KW  - Occupational specialization
KW  - Ceramic technology
KW  - Smiths and their crafts
KW  - Work in skins
KW  - Clothing manufacture
KW  - Tillage
KW  - Real property
KW  - Social personality
KW  - Ethos
KW  - Avoidance and taboo
KW  - Community councils
KW  - Organized ceremonial
KW  - Social control
KW  - Ethics
KW  - Etiquette
KW  - Acculturation and culture contact
AB  - This article discusses the social status in traditional Konso society of a class of artisans, consisting of blacksmiths, weavers, potters, and tanners. It is proposed that the low status of these occupational groups has to do with longstanding and irreconcilable contradictions between craft-making and commodity exchange (believed to be foreign induced) and the value systems of a predominantly agricultural indigenous people. Artisans produce crafts individually and sell them at a price they want, while dominant Konso values demanded that one farms cooperatively and exchanges products among friends and family without assigning values. This has led to the marginalization of artisans into an endogamous, caste-like and landless group, subordinated to the dominant agriculturalist class.
SN  - 0001-9720
UR  - https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=mp17-001
LA  - English
N1  - C. R. Hallpike
ID  - mp17-001
Y1  - 2022-07-03
ER  -