Review Article

Gender and Transformation in Africa

Sarah C. Brett-Smith. The Making of Bamana Sculpture: Creativity and Gender.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xx + 352 pp. (Honorable Mention,
Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, 1995)

Eugenia Herbert. Iron, Gender and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African

Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. xii + 277 pp.

Peter R. Schmidt, ed. The Culture and Technology of African Iron Production. Gaines-
ville: University Press of Florida, 1996. xvii + 338 pp.

BARBARA G. HOFFMAN
Department of Anthropology
Cleveland State University
Cleveland, OH 44115

It is a comment on the interdisciplinary state of ethnographic studies today that

in this trio of works on African smiths, their art, and societies, the greatest
emphasis on the cultures of smiths is found in the study done by Brett-Smith, an
art historian, while that edited by Schmidt, an anthropologist, provides the most
extensive technical and historical data, and Herbert, the historian, brings up the
center with a synthesis of both historical and symbolic analysis. This division of
labor, the total effect of which is to provide a multifaceted examination of one set
of highly specialized technological practices and their practitioners in numerous
cultures of Africa, brings with it a set of methodological and ethical issues that
humanist anthropologists will find intriguing.
All three works address gender issues in the transformative arts of smiths and
smelters in Africa. Herbert's study focuses on the genderization of smelting
techniques throughout the continent, Brett-Smith's on the implications of that
genderization for the gender roles of the smith in Bamana and Malinke cultures
of Mali, and Schmidt's on the history, technology, and gender symbolism of
smelting and smithing in a number of African cultures. Herbert's comparative
method touches on numerous cultures of Africa, and Brett-Smith's method is
narrowly focused on a small number of Bamana and Malinke informants, while
Schmidf s book is an edited collection of articles investigating the history of the
technology and methods of smithing and smelting in each of the four major
Saharan geographical zones, with a heavier emphasis on East and Central Africa.
The three books were written at roughly the same time, although there is a
three-year span in their publication dates. Brett-Smith's work appears to have
been produced in relative isolation from the others, except for a cursory note
indicating her awareness of Herbert's work. This is particularly striking since
Brett-Smith's premise, that the genderization of the smith's work influences his
social life, finds many parallels in Herbert's study. In addition, Brett-Smith
presents her study as a combination of anthropology and art history, comparing
herself to French anthropologists of the colonial period, Griaule and Dieterlen,
yet in her bibliography she has no references by the most prolific anthropologist

Anthropology and Humanism 22(2):192-197. Copyright © 1997, American Anthropological Association.

Hoffman Gender and Transformation in Africa 193

on this subject, Schmidt. Schmidt and Herbert, despite their different disciplines,
give each other's work substantial consideration.
Each study has many strengths, and offers the reader valuable information on
these artisans whose cultural role is invariably complex. However, there are
interesting methodological issues involved in the production of each of these
works, issues that particularly stand out when one compares their methods and
results. I am reminded of the story of the blind men and the elephant here: each
scholar speaks to us of the portions of the smith's culture he or she is able to grasp
with the methodological tools at hand, but none gives us a complete picture. In
fact, the works raise the question of whether a complete picture will ever be
accessible.
Herbert's comparative historical method relies on data from a wide variety of
sources, many of which have substantial defects, as Herbert notes. These critiques
are taken up by Schmidt, who attempts to balance them with an offering of case
studies of a few cultures, written by reliable scholars with an eye to recording
data of interest for comparative purposes. The number of cultures discussed is
necessarily reduced in Schmidt's collection, especially since the entire second half
of the book is devoted to the arguments for and against one aspect of the
technology historically employed in smelting, preheating.
Herbert's work suggests that the work of smiths and smelters is highly gen-
derized and calls for follow-up research to test the applicability of her thesis, that
"African transformative processes invoke the human model [especially gender
and age] as the measure of all things" (p. 5) in culture-specific, well-constructed
case studies. Herbert's broad comparative method leads to wide generalizations,
which Schmidt characterizes as "homogenized," protesting the loss of distinction
and detail. He argues in turn that little can be gained from such broad compara-
tive studies and echoes Herbert's call for in-depth case studies, but the space
available for such offerings in an edited volume is highly restricted; as a result,
Schmidt's collection provides only a glimpse of what such studies might be. The
constraints imposed by these formats are familiar to most scholars and do not
require further elaboration here.
Brett-Smith's book seems, on the surface, designed to provide just the kind of
study both Herbert and Schmidt demand. It is billed in its title as an examination
of genderization in the creative life of male Bamana smiths (although her princi-
pal smith informant is not Bamana, but Malinke). However, the techniques
employed by the author in conducting and interpreting this study raise more
methodological questions than they answer, and thus merit some probing here.
The Making of Bamana Sculpture gives rise to intriguing, often disquieting,
reflection regarding methodology and its implications, in terms of both content
and ethics. An art historian, Brett-Smith presents her field work as anthropology,
her book as art history, and the analytical content thereof as her intellectual
property, while avowing at the same time that it is a "joint work" (p. 19)
undertaken by her Malian colleague, Adama Mara, and herself in collaboration
with four informants under conditions she discusses at length in her introduc-
tion. In this collaboration, and in Brett-Smith's use of it, lie many of the troubling
aspects of this complex oeuvre. Of these three works, Brett-Smith's provides the
most penetrating cultural examination of the artistic practices of the smith,
deeply contextualized in what appears to be rich ethnographic information about
Bamana and Malinke cultural beliefs on ritual sculpture, gender, the occult, and
the ornately layered relations between sculptors, their clients, and their enabling
spirits. Unfortunately, the methods employed render the analysis, and even the
ethnographic data itself, of indeterminate value. Discerning the useful and
distinguishing it from the doubtful is not a task for the uninitiated in Mande
194 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 22, Number 2

languages and cultures. This is a book that even Mande specialists will have
difficulty navigating, as it raises issues that few scholars have had the temerity
to confront.
The book is published in the RES Monographs on Anthropology and Aesthet-
ics series of Cambridge University Press. In his preface, the series editor praises
Brett-Smith's "ability to obtain primary information of a largely secret nature,"
accrediting her with "a rare mixture of tenacity and depth of theoretical concerns
that would do honor to any anthropologist" (p. xix). In fact, this work does
anything but honor anthropology, anthropological ethics, or anthropological
methods. In a remarkable introduction, Brett-Smith lays out an apologia for her
methodology, no less than 22 pages devoted to discussing in considerable detail
the choice of informants and interview techniques. In many respects, this is a
laudable and courageous move on her part, since it permits the informed reader
to discern the useful as well as the deleterious aspects of her research design. For
the reader unfamiliar with Mande cultures, and especially Mande languages, the
introduction can be deceptively reassuring, as Brett-Smith raises potential objec-
tions to her methods and responds to them, although to a discerning reader, even
a non-Mande specialist, the author may come across in this section as protesting
too much.
Brett-Smith explains how she was able to obtain the secret information she
discusses: interviews were conducted almost entirely by Mara, her male assis-
tant, in her absence, and he operated under the conceit of presenting himself as
a kind of "student" or "apprentice" to the sculptors, "convincing them that the
tape recordings were really an aside in his own search for ritual knowledge" (p.
2). At times, she states, he deliberately deceived his interlocutors, presenting
"himself as confused and even stupid, despite all his knowledge, in an effort to
provoke [thel informants into speaking frankly" (p. 15). At other times, as will
be discussed below, he suggested wording to the informants, leading them to
make statements that can be construed by a Western scholarly audience in ways
the speakers might never intend them to be.
Brett-Smith's in-depth look at the ritual life of Bamana smiths offers through-
out its entirety information received from one principal informant, two secondary
informants, and a tertiary informant whose relationship with the author was
rather tenuous. The principal informant, Kojugu, is identified as a Malinke smith
although the book title refers only to the Bamana, while the secondary ones are
Bamana, but only one is a smith. These are odd choices of informants; in fact,
Brett-Smith states that two of them were not chosen per se, but rather presented
themselves and requested to be interviewed, albeit in return for compensation,
and in the case of Kojugu, under conditions of personal duress. The author, with
the years of experience of Mande cultures she claims, should know more about
Mande discourse norms than to think that this is a legitimate frame for the
exchange of reliable information.
Brett-Smith presents her analysis on the basis of many passages taken from the
body of interviews conducted by Mara, whose ethnicity and origins are not
revealed, although they are certainly relevant in cross-caste communication. The
transcriptions of cited passages are offered in copious endnotes, overwhelmingly
comprised of quotations from interviews with Kojugu. These transcriptions give
the appearance of transparency to the work, an appearance that is particularly
believable for the reader unfamiliar with Mande languages. The weighted nature
of the data is dear when one examines its distribution: out of 81 pages containing
over 700 notes, there are only two notes with transcriptions of speech by the
secondary male smith informant, Nyamaton, a scattering of transcriptions from
the female informant, Salimata, and none at all, not even notes of recalled Malinke
Hoffman Gender and Transformation in Africa 195

words,fromconversations with her tertiary informant, the tough old male smith
Basi who would not allow his words to be tape-recorded, made the author rise
at dawn every day to make him coffee, and would not allow her to leave his
compound "even to walk through the village" (p. 4).
Nevertheless, we are reassured, the author has taken into consideration in her
analysis many things she learned during her five-week ordeal of staying in his
household. Brett-Smith briefly describes in her introduction her observation of
"tensions generated by polygamy" and "secret vendettas that continue unabated
beneath the superficially calm and united front of the extended family" as an
example of "what family life must have been like before colonization," the
observation of which "permanently altered [herl perspective on the nature of
Mande family life and society" (pp. 4-5). Indeed, the repercussions of that
unhappy experience do make themselves apparent throughout the work, par-
ticularly in the first chapter, where she discusses Bamana culture and the dynam-
ics of kinship that pervade it as being dominated by jealousy andrivalry,a rather
sinister interpretation that is echoed throughout the book.
Through the transcriptions of interviews conducted by the author's associate
in Bamana and Malinke and the translations thereof (one supposes a joint
endeavor, although this is not specified), we are given a glimpse of the process
of data collection, perhaps more of a look than the author would have liked, given
the questions this information raises. While most of the translations appear
plausible, some of the passages on which her most critical analytical points are
made are mistranslated; others appear to show her associate to be leading the
interviewee to certain types of responses. Most disturbing still, at least one
passage unveils the author in the act of revealing information that her informants
explicitly requested to be kept secret. Although it might be offered in defense
that she has kept the identity of her informants confidential through the use of
pseudonyms, it must be kept in mind that many other researchers, as well as her
informants' compatriots, know the true identities of the people she worked with
so closely for so long. What constitutes keeping or revealing secrets in such a set
of circumstances is the subject of a growing anthropological literature; similar
concerns are codified in the American Anthropological Association's Code of
Ethics in the injunction to "do no harm" to one's informants. The reader is left
wondering whether the author considered the consequences Kojugu and the
others might suffer as a result of the publication of their words in this book.
That she deliberately set out to acquire secret knowledge is openly acknowl-
edged by Brett-Smith in her introduction (p. 11), where she offers an intriguing
discussion of Bamana and Malinke conceptions of knowledge and secrecy. The
more secret the knowledge, she states, the more valuable, and secret knowledge
is often "purchased'' within Bamana society itself, so her acquisition of secrets
from her informants through the provision of rice or other goods fits into the
indigenous cultural framework for exchanging secret information. Although the
principal informant gave over that information within the context of interviews
conducted under the circumstances discussed above, Brett-Smith claims that
"neither [Mara] nor [she] ever concealed the fact that [she] would eventually
listen to [the interview] tapes and ultimately produce a book based on them" (p.
2). Any experienced anthropologist would be sensitive to the fact that the
implications of "producing a book" are typically not well understood by elderly
informants whose world is primarily one of orality, and whose familiarity with
the written word may be restricted to the production of an occasional letter or
two by a local scribe's scratching on paper the words they whisper in his ear. It
is never stated in her otherwise detailed discussion of methodology what steps
were taken to ensure her informants' understanding of what she intended to do.
196 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 22, Number 2

What is acknowledged is her principal informant's "continual insistence on

secrecy as a condition for the transmission of ritual knowledge" (p. 11). Also
revealed is her refusal to honor that condition: at one point, Kojugu prefaced his
discussion of the kinds of trees used to make a ritual mask with the demand that
the knowledge not be explained to anyone, to which she says her associate replied
that he would not tell other Malinke. In the transcription of this particular
exchange (note 24, p. 258), what Kojugu says is / kan'a nykfb mdgd ye de, "You must
not tell this to anyone!" The word tndgd is the general word for human being, not
restricted to any particular type or ethnicity of human. According to the tran-
scription, the interviewer's response to this interdiction is Eel An, an!, "Eh! No,
no!" He denies that he will tell other mdgd; he does not say, "I won't tell any
other Malinke," as Brett-Smith claims in the text (p. 12).
In another passage discussing ritual uses of women's menstrual blood, in most
societies a very sensitive subject, we find Brett-Smith's research associate putting
words in Kojugu's mouth. The interviewer has asked a question about menstrual
blood which Kojugu refuses to answer. Mara then offers an answer to Kojugu
about how menstrual blood was used to make a ritual object, then asks for a
confirmation of whether that was so. What he gets as a response is a grunt of
assent: Nhun, "Uh-huh." Not satisfied with this, Mara pushes harder, until the
smith says that this did indeed happen. Brett-Smith acknowledges that it looks
like her "colleague's phraseology actually suggested Kojugu's answer to him,"
but explains that the only way to get the man to talk about the subject was to
show that Mara already knew about it. A different explanation, equally common
to the Mande discourse frame, might be that the smith believed that Mara had
access to information from other interviews of a practice that was plausible, and
the smith went along with Mara to avoid demonstrating ignorance of a subject
he was purported to know about.
Through the transcriptions, we see several other examples of Mara leading the
smith to say what Mara says first. The reader is left wondering just how often
Mara's interviewing technique included this style of questioning, a query that
must go unanswered as long as the complete interviews are not accessible for
inspection. Brett-Smith offers the appearance of documentation of the full set of
interviews through citing interview dates, questions, and book numbers in her
notes. Of what use these citations are as long as the transcribed interview books
remain unavailable to the public is never addressed.
Intertwined with questions regarding the conditions and techniques of the
interviewing is the issue of the basic premise of the book and how Brett-Smith
arrived there. The author explains that her hypothesis, that male smiths take on
a female identity through the practice of ritual sculpting, derived from her
previous, still unpublished, work on female mudcloth artists and the ritual uses
of their art. Her arguments in support of this hypothesis are many, complex, and
not entirely without merit. However, their cornerstone, in the form of testimony
from Kojugu regarding the loss of virility associated with the progressive devel-
opment of skills and the deepening relationship with his djinn, or spirit, is based
on a questionable interpretation of the phrase ka bd ctya rb, "to leave manhood,"
and once again on prompting from the interviewer (notes 100 and 102, pp.
280-281). When Kojugu repeatedly states that a sculptor's virility becomes part
of the price of his growing reputation, Mara questions what he means and asks
how it is that he has been made impotent. The smith restates that his virility has
been taken away and that he has become "like a woman." Mara then pushes the
interpretation to suggest that the smith has in fact "become a woman" and leads
the smith to agree that this is so.
Hoffman Gender and Transformation in Africa 197

It is this kind of literal interpretation of metaphor that draws Brett-Smith into

troubled waters. It is highly doubtful that her informants actually believe that
male smiths literally become women through a lifetime of ritual activity. Even if
these particular informants were to hold such beliefs, much more evidence of a
more reliable sort should be offered in support of a general claim based on those
beliefs. Brett-Smith consistently confuses the symbol with the symbolized, the
metaphoric with the literal, and thus presents a picture of Bamana culture, and
the smith's life within it, that is filled with dark forces and morally repellent
actions and beliefs, and that makes the Bamana smith out as an exotic, tantalizing,
Other.
The last two decades of anthropological writing have attempted to correct such
Orientalist tendencies. Writers who claim anthropological status for their analy-
ses should tread carefully, taking those writings into account. The in-depth case
study by a reliable scholar called for by Herbert and Schmidt has yet to appear.
Let us hope such a study on the Bamana smith is forthcoming in the near future;
in the meantime, this study should be looked at by Mande specialists, but given
wide berth by others. Herbert's and Schmidt's works have laid a fine foundation
and offered solid directions for subsequent studies to follow; we can only hope
that another scholar will take up their challenge soon.