article
Crime or affliction?: rape in an African community
Culture, medicine and psychiatry • 4 (2) • Published In 1980 • Pages: 151-165
By: LeVine, Sarah.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
Amongst the Gusii of southwestern Kenya instances of rape are frequently reported; this was true also in the colonial period and yet it seems that thoses cases which come to the notice of the authorities are few compared with the numbers which actually occur. While certain features of the traditional culture seem to have encouraged violent sexual assault, because in a patrilocal society miscreants are likely to victimize their relatives, that is women who are sexually taboo, the crime is considered a sacrilegious matter to be dealt with in the family, not by secular authorities. Given the sacrilegious nature of the act the Gusii are convinced that such behavior is involuntary and the criminal is not a criminal but an afflicted person, motivated by the malevolence of the ancestral spirits or jealous neighbors and kin. The author uses case material to illustrate various aspects of the Gusii belief system in regard to criminal behavior in general and rape in particular (p. 151).
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Personality disorders
- Life history materials
- Crime
- Sex and marital offenses
- Sorcery
- Eschatology
- Avoidance and taboo
- Revelation and divination
- Magicians and diviners
- Ethnopsychology
- Ethnosociology
- Miscellaneous sex behavior
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Gusii
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2000
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Africa
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Eastern Africa
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 2005
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1972-1976
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1900-1976
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- southwestern Kenya
- NotesAdditional notes
- Sarah LeVine
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 164-165)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 79642232
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Gusii (African people)