Symbolic mediation and commoditization: A critical examination of alcohol use among the Haya of Bukoba, Tanzania
Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: Low-alcohol-content fermented beverages are thoroughly enmeshed in the social, economic, commensal, and cosmological spheres of life among most peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper describes and analyzes the role of alcoholic beverages as symbolic mediators and commodities among the Haya of northwest Tanzania. Data gathered during field research in 1985-86 are employed to describe the ways in which the Haya portray excessive drinking and the indigenous strategies they use to address frequent drunkenness when it is perceived as a health problem. A central feature of the paper contrasts the role of a cultural schema of four levels of intoxication in processes of symbolic mediation and commoditization, thereby contributing to critical medical anthropological analysis.
Source: Medical Anthropology
Author: Robert G. Carlson
Institution: Wright State University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1986817026