あの男は奴隷だ

マリ共和国キタ地方における階層的社会理念の衰退について

抄録

Most of precolonial societies in West Sudan (actually the Republic of Mali) were characterised by their tripartite hierarchical social structure: freemen/artisans and musicians/slaves. But their hierarchical structure dinsintegrated under the colonial rule by France. The French colonial state abolished the slavery and established a highly centralized bureaucratic administrative system. The process of disintegration of hierarchical structure of local societies was finally accomplished, at least on the administrative level, by the independence of the nation-state, the Republic of Mali in 1960. The government provided all the inhabitants in the territory with a single and equal status of “citoyen”.
In the late 1980s, the author undertook research on the oral history in the area of Kita (Région de Kayes). Before the colonization there was a small Malinke tripartite society (kafu) in this area, but it has almost disappeared except for some nominal and symbolic titles like village chiefs. The inhabitants, who include many newcomers since colonization, consider themselves as “kitaka (kitan)” of equal status. But in the course of research the author was told by some old kitans some “secret truths” on the “slave descent” of certain local leaders like village chiefs. They criticized the fact that many descendants of slaves hid their origins and occupied the positions of leaders (nyamogoya) now. But the author found that these “secret truths” were scarcely uncovered, and even if uncovered, they could not maintain their force as criticisms against the occupation of chieftaincies by men of suspicious descent. In this paper the author examines the process of disintegration of the hierarchical social structure and the decline of its ideology in the area of Kita, and considers the meaning of “slave descent” in the present-day Kita.