Introduction
Introduction
The introduction seeks to add to, but also move beyond more sociological analyses of elder authority by reviewing classic works on the eldership complex through the category of sovereignty. The work of scholars like E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer, Monica Wilson, and Paul Spencer constitute a platform for an historical anthropology of elderhood in their mutually supplemental attempts to define elderhood substantively, relationally, and diachronically. The introduction makes a case for the continued relevance of historical and critical approaches to the study of religion and politics. By attending to how Kenyans have popularly understood sovereignty over time, and how different social actors have attempted to exclusively protect, usurp, inhabit, and enact particular forms and processes of power and authority, the book asserts the ethnographic and historical basis for anthropological theory production.
Keywords: E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Monica Wilson, Nuer, Nyakusa, Paul Spencer, Samburu, elderhood, elder authority, acephaly, acephalous societies
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
