Plaisanter sur les inégalités pour bâtir la hiérarchie : le rôle des alliances à plaisanterie dans la formation de la hiérarchie sociale à Madagascar (côte ouest)

Abstract

In Oceanic anthropological literature, the emergence of inequalities has been associated with the shift from warfare to the competitive exchange of “gifts”, establishing a principle of equivalence between human life and material goods. Drawing on Marcel Mauss’s insight that “joking relationships” represent another form of competitive exchange, this article shows how Madagascar’s ziva alliances, based on such joking relationships, have favoured not so much the emergence of wealth inequalities as the formation of a social hierarchy based on existing inequalities. By transforming the debt of life between the takers and givers of wives into a dependency relationship between their offspring, these alliances have effectively consolidated inequalities between brothers-in-law into a hierarchy between their respective groups. This hierarchy was subsequently embraced and transformed by the Sakalava kingship of the West Coast, thanks to the alliances forged between foreign kings and conquered local groups. Thus, rather than tracing the imagined origins of inequalities, this article analyses the process of institutionalising inequalities into a hierarchy through the competitive exchange of goods, jokes, and ritual services.

Keywords

• hierarchy
• inequality
• joking relationships
• exchange theory
• Madagascar