Kathryn Linn Geurts
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234550
- eISBN:
- 9780520936546
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234550.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
This book investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. It was discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo ...
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This book investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. It was discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an essential component of what it means to be human. Much of perception falls into an Anlo category of seselelame (literally feel-feel-at-flesh-inside), in which what might be considered sensory input, including the Western sixth-sense notion of “intuition,” comes from bodily feeling and the interior milieu. The kind of mind–body dichotomy that pervades Western European–Anglo-American cultural traditions and philosophical thought is absent. The book relates how Anlo society privileges and elaborates what we would call kinesthesia, which most Americans would not even identify as a sense.Less
This book investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. It was discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense, and balancing (in a physical and psychological sense as well as in literal and metaphorical ways) is an essential component of what it means to be human. Much of perception falls into an Anlo category of seselelame (literally feel-feel-at-flesh-inside), in which what might be considered sensory input, including the Western sixth-sense notion of “intuition,” comes from bodily feeling and the interior milieu. The kind of mind–body dichotomy that pervades Western European–Anglo-American cultural traditions and philosophical thought is absent. The book relates how Anlo society privileges and elaborates what we would call kinesthesia, which most Americans would not even identify as a sense.
Michelle Gilbert
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635221
- eISBN:
- 9780748653010
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635221.003.0019
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
In the Akwapim kingdom of southeastern Ghana, clothing is used as a form of communication to make statements about personhood and status; to conceal or reveal identity; or to express desires and ...
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In the Akwapim kingdom of southeastern Ghana, clothing is used as a form of communication to make statements about personhood and status; to conceal or reveal identity; or to express desires and impulses. This chapter first describes the different types of cloth and the various contexts of their use in Akwapim. It then shows how Akwapim people communicate with one another by wearing judiciously chosen wax-print cloth whose named designs are the equivalent of verbal strategies. Finally, the chapter addresses other categories of the Akwapim naming system that are extensions of the individual or corporate personality, and shows how similar proverbs bridge these various genres.Less
In the Akwapim kingdom of southeastern Ghana, clothing is used as a form of communication to make statements about personhood and status; to conceal or reveal identity; or to express desires and impulses. This chapter first describes the different types of cloth and the various contexts of their use in Akwapim. It then shows how Akwapim people communicate with one another by wearing judiciously chosen wax-print cloth whose named designs are the equivalent of verbal strategies. Finally, the chapter addresses other categories of the Akwapim naming system that are extensions of the individual or corporate personality, and shows how similar proverbs bridge these various genres.
