Ostentatious Funeral Expenses and Identity Reconstruction Among the Gouro Women of Gohitafla(Ivory Coast)

Although the Gouro women producing foodstuffs in the department of Gohitafla claim to be in a double dynamics of precariousness and social weakening,they incur ostentatious expenses during funeral ceremonies.To understand this paradox,this text,based on interviews and participating observation,makes a detailed description of the financial involvement of these women in funeral practices in order to reveal its meaning.The results show that the ostentatious nature of female funeral expenses related to the transfer of the body,compensation and honorary practices are strategies for identity reconstruction and negotiation of political citizenship for those women.

Cultural Practice in Cote d'Ivoire: An Ethnography of the Feminization of Funeral Expenses

The“Letagonins”:a concept socially constructed to designate the“beating”women of Ivorian society,evokes those who have as their leitmotif,a self-realization through work.The purpose lies in their ability to free themselves from male domination.This concept means in one of the local Ivorian languages,notably the Gouro1:female boy.These women of Gouro ethnicity show a deep passion for the marketing of food products in Abidjan.However,behind this passion for food is their commitment to funeral expenses;a cultural activity customary lying with agnatic parentage.The transgression of custom by the latter under the prism of their social repositioning is the symbolic manifestation of the destandardization of the traditional relationship between man and woman in the organization of funerals in Gouro country,in the central West Ivorian.Understanding this relational reconfiguration has fuelled our passion as a researcher.In fact,ethnography has been mobilized as a method of observing the funeral practices of these women.In this regard,the study traces the strategies for negotiating access to the land as well as those used to negotiate access to information.