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Hierarchy and the Haya divine kingship: a structural and symbolic reformulation of Frazer's thesis
Author(s) -
CARLSON ROBERT G.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1993.20.2.02a00060
Subject(s) - hierarchy , monarchy , normative , the symbolic , sociology , philosophy , epistemology , law , psychology , political science , psychoanalysis , politics
This article presents a structural and symbolic reformulation of Sir James Frazer's theory of divine kingship. A model of hierarchy derived from formal logic, one that Terence Turner (1977a) applied in his reconceptualization of the structure of rites de passage, is employed to analyze the cosmology of a former Haya kingship of northwest Tanzania. A tripartite model of hierarchy encoded in the ceilings of traditional Haya dwellings is described. Analysis of the model demonstrates how the king's role as a unique mediator symbolically constituted and resolved the problem of the separation and interrelationship between the transcendent and the normative orders. [ Haya, East Africa, kingship, palace architecture, duality, hierarchy ]