Beer as a Locus of Value among the West African Kofyar Author(s): Robert McC.

Netting Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 375-384 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/669017 . Accessed: 05/12/2013 03:27
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the Beeras a Locusof Valueamong West AfricanKofyar'

recent growth of interest among anthropologists in primitive drinkTHE has been expressed in accounts of single societies, the assembly and ing classification of cross-cultural data, and the statistical treatment of such information in order to test hypotheses. Investigators characteristically note the interaction of psychological and cultural variables (Washburne 1961:xviii) in analyzing the behavioral effects of alcohol. There has, however, been some tendency to revise earlier formulations relating the degree of drunkenness in a society to the level of anxiety or fear among individual members (Horton 1943) in favor of explanations based on the correlation of sobriety with corporate or formal social organization (Field 1962). The field studies of Sangree (1962) and Heath (1962) stress the functional networks in which alcohol is involved and the social norms and sanctions which condition the responses of individuals in the drinking situation. Less emphasis is placed on the release of aggressive and sexual responses than on the positive aspects of facilitating rapport and social solidarity. It has been suggested that in societies where drinking is an integral part of the culture and only minimally a response to the needs of the individual, the rate of alcoholism will be low (Simmons 1962). I propose to examine a case in which drinking customs are not only well established and consistent with the rest of the culture but in which the alcoholic beverage has become a focus of group interest and the center of a highly ramified functional network. To the extent to which the social values of drinking have proliferated, the potentially disruptive types of behavior have been channeled and controlled. Not only is alcohol addiction absent but the social and personal costs of drunkeness have been significantly limited; there is no drinking problem.
THE KOFYAR

The Kofyar are sedentary subsistence farmers occupying a territory of some 200 square miles of hills and plain fringes along the southern escarpment of the Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria. They are one of the numerous isolated peoples known collectively as hill pagans (Gunn 1953). The Kofyar have little political centralization and do not claim a tribal identity beyond village areas such as Mirriam, Dimmuk, and Kwalla (Ames 1934). They are organized in localized patrilineal lineages with virilocal residence. Compounds inhabited typically by single elementary families are dispersed, each surrounded by its own intensively cultivated farm of sorghum, millet, and beans.2 The 375

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Kofyar received only minor influences from the Jukun empire and were never brought under Hausa-Fulani domination. European contact began in 1909 and sections of the hills were not brought under effective control until the 1930's. In recent years, missions and schools have been established in the plain villages along with markets serviced by dry season roads. Though farming is now being expanded to include cash crops, the Kofyar are still largely self-sufficient and lacking in occupational specialization.
THE ROLE OF BEER IN THE FUNCTIONALNETWORK

The Kofyar make, drink, talk, and think about beer. It is a focus of cultural concern and activity in much the same way as are cows in African pastoral societies. I shall review the complex of Kofyar cultural elements which are integrated around beer and offer some suggestions on the development of values ascribed to it. The cultural emphasis on beer and the lack of negative associations with drinking will be related to the nature of the beverage and to the social sanctions surrounding its use. If we choose to regard social relationships as a series of flows, both material and symbolic, from one individual to another, we can see the overt manifestation and acknowledgement of the most important of these flows among the Kofyar in the giving of beer. Among equals, the presenting of beer is a mark of esteem and affection. A jar will be saved for a close friend, and institutionalized friendship among male contemporaries is by means of a named drinking society. Beer is given during courtship by a man to a woman, and the public exchange of beer is typical of lovers in the licit extra-marital relationship. Friends or lovers frequently drink together simultaneously from the same calabash. Occasions which involve the entire community are difficult to imagine apart from beer. To celebrate the harvest, beer is made by individuals or by popular subscription and distributed freely. It is, as they say, "just for drinking," and it signifies village satisfaction at the successful completion of the farming year. Major entertainment dances such as the great flute chorus, koem,require a large supply of beer. A man who exemplifies the warrior virtues by killing an enemy or bringing down dangerous game on the hunt is honored by a beer feast and the coveted right to drink from a special reserved fermenting jar at funerals for the rest of his life. Socially valued roles may be singled out by a present of beer. A newly married man or one who has just paid his taxes is entitled to a jar from whomever brews that day. A nursing mother is entitled to take extra beer home with her in a gourd bottle. The even more important political and magicoreligious functions of the chief and the diviner merit permanent recognition. Whoever brews beer to sell must set aside a portion, called mwos miskagam, the beer of the chief, for the village head. Even when a traditional chief has been deposed as official government representative and tax collector, he insists on maintaining his prerogatives in regard to beer. Following British conquest, a major source of friction on the local level has been the disputes between government chiefs who claim beer as a reward for administrative labors and

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hereditary priest-chiefs who say that their knowledge of certain ceremonies intimately connected with the earth entitles them to the traditional tribute. One version of the events leading to tribal war and the killing of an assistant district officer in 1930 was that a quarrel arose between the government messenger and the head man over rights to the chiefly beer. Today the outstanding evidence of intravillage factionalism and failure of political cohesion is the decision by a clan segment to withhold its accustomed gift of beer to the chief. Diviners, that is, men whose special knowledge of oracles has been validated by a large beer feast, are also given beer wherever they go. The Kofyar not only award beer to those who perform important civic services, but they also exact it from those who break social rules. The fine for not taking part in communal work, threatened violence, or disrespect for a fellow clansman, abuse, or minor theft is beer. The most severe punishment meted out to a man by his community is exclusion from all occasions for beer drinking. It is the equivalent of social ostracism. Beer flows thus define both the socially valued and the socially censured roles. In economic situations, beer is the most widely used reciprocal for services. Part of the bride prices and later supplementary gifts to the bride's relatives may be in beer. The majority of all voluntary labor is repaid in beer. Hoeing and harvesting, stone corral building, the preparation of building mud, and the gathering of thatching grass are all occasions on which a beer party can mobilize large work groups without reference to kinship or neighborhood affiliation. Though rights in land are concentrated on the individual, a system of leases allows redistribution of arable soil according to need. Rent is invariably paid partly in beer. With the current shift to cash cropping and extensive migrant cultivation in a newly opened area, the beer party makes possible cooperation on a large scale among strangers. The fact that no cash is required is of definite advantage to the beginning farmer. Brewing is also a major source of ready cash. A man can get tax money or a woman buy cloth and animals by making beer and selling it, a process which requires only six days. Even if grain must be bought, there is a small but reasonably certain profit to be made. Unlike most agricultural enterprises, the value of labor devoted to brewing may thus be quickly extracted. Where brewing has recently become an organized business in the large compounds of certain chiefs, wives can support themselves and their children by the proceeds, plus forming a sizable labor pool for the chief's farming. If "malt does more than Milton can/to justify God's ways to man," the Kofyar certainly believe that man's way to god is with beer in hand. Along with blood sacrifices, it is the invariable offering in curing rites, on magical shrines, and to the ancestors. Pains are taken to convince spirits that it is really beer and not gruel which they are receiving. It is blown and poured on the graves of lineage members, and in addition, jars are broken on completion of a grave cairn in the last of four traditional funerary ceremonies. The ancestors, both men and women, gain status in the after-world by dispensing this beer. Large quantities are brewed by relatives of the dead for giving to both patri

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and matri kin at the time of the maap funeral rites. The village earth ceremonies which occur at irregular intervals to restore fertility and repair natural calamities revolve around the pouring of libations on the ground. The brew house is at the innermost extremity of the hut cluster and is regarded as the most sacred spot in the ancestral compound of each lineage. Any stealing from the brew house or quarreling in front of it could bring supernatural punishment and necessitate a costly cleansing rite. The circumlocution used in referring to harming someone by witchcraft is "to dig up the fermenting jar in the brew house and carry it off." Such desecration could not be imagined by normal people, just as they would not think of indulging in witchcraft. This wealth of functional associations of beer is not rare as indicated by Washburne's (1961) summary descriptions of other African societies. Perhaps most striking among the Kofyar, however, is the unique conceptual position which beer occupies. When walking through a village, a large part of greetings and small talk concern the presence of beer, recent beer parties, or apologies for the absence of beer. The only words in the Kofyar language for short periods of time are based on the brewing cycle. A week of six days is shimwos, the time of beer. Markets are scheduled to coincide with this time span. Each of the six days is named, and appointments are made in terms of them, e.g. "I will meet you on Jim" (the second day of malt grinding and thus five days from the present). Selfishness and magnanimity are almost always phrased in terms of withholding or giving beer to guests. Aggression, quarrels, and interpersonal hostility of all sorts appear at beer parties and ostensibly concern the preparation or sharing of the beer. Folklore is full of references to beer: a spurned hare gets revenge by pushing a woman into boiling beer; a greedy bird tries to steal extra grain for brewing and is caught; God is an important farmer who gives beer in exchange for labor and dispenses it at councils. The culture hero fixed the site of some hill villages by stopping at each to brew, and on the top of the highest peak in the country he left behind a great fermenting jar. Beer is both the symbol and the essence of the good life to the Kofyar. A hot day when there is no beer ready and no brewing is expected for some time is an occasion for universal commiseration. Though the old days of feuding war were exciting, no story of them concludes without mention of the increased supplies of beer which people now have because of the larger farms possible during peace time. Though people use their new income from cash crops in part to buy bicycles, and cloth, and to pay bride price, they always speak first of the migrant farms as a place where beer is cheap and abundant. Whereas the European folktale puts gold at the end of the rainbow, and Ali Baba finds jewels in a cave, the Kofyar story tells of Crownbird opening a magic ancestral stone and finding a jar of beer inside.
BENEFITS AND COST OF DRINKING

Why is it that beer is so rich in associations and takes part in such a wide variety of activities? Perhaps we may arrive at some tentative answers by

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examining the values which beer has for the individual and his society and the way in which the dysfunctional elements, the social costs which may accompany drinking, are systematically limited. Kofyar beer is tasty, nutritious, and only weakly alcoholic. The thick, frothy brew is preferred when fermentation has eliminated much of its original sweetness but not advanced to the point of making it sour. The flavor may be rendered more desirable by its contrast with the prevailing bland diet of cereal porridge. Certainly most grain farmers since prehistoric times have turned part of their production into a fermented drink. In one Kofyar village for which I have figures, an average of 83.5 pounds of millet is produced annually for each household member. Millet is seldom consumed except as beer, and the entire amount converted into beverage would yield just over 40 gallons a year per person." Additional brewing is usually done with millet or sorghum purchased in the market. There is little doubt that beer is a valuable addition to the local diet. The loss of energy resulting from the conversion of grain to beer is fairly small, and nutritionists speak about the "biological enoblement" by which fermentation produces ascorbic acid, B-vitamins, and microbial proteins (Platt and Webb 1946; Platt 1955). When consumption of fruit and meat is irregular, these food values become especially important. The Kofyar regard their beer as a superior food.4 They say that if there were enough beer, a man could live on nothing else, though I know of no local cases where this is actually done. On days when drink is plentiful, however, the evening meal is often omitted. Where beer is scarce as with some of the poorer hill villages adjoining Kofyar, porridge is given to work parties. The Kofyar themselves substitute beans and palm oil for beer in rewarding work parties of adolescent boys. Since Moslem and Protestant Christian converts do not drink for religious reasons, the Kofyar are quite aware that beer is not a physiological necessity, yet they attach an affective quality to beer that is not apparent in regard to other more basic foods. Certainly the Kofyar value the mild euphoria, the sense of happy relaxation which accompanies drinking. Yet there appears to be no particular premium placed on increasing either the proportion of alcohol in the brew or the speed of its consumption. The alcohol content of the beer has not been measured, but I would estimate that it averages three to five per cent. Judging from its effects on myself and others, it would seem rather less potent than the Tiriki brew described by Sangree (1962). Distilled liquor is as yet unknown in Kofyar, European beer is a luxury drink enjoyed at rare intervals by teachers and chiefs, and palm wine is only now being introduced. There are perceptible differences in beer strength in various parts of Kofyar, but, although the techniques of increasing alcohol content are known, they have not diffused. Women marrying into a village where beer is brewed more weakly adopt the local pattern regardless of their previous methods. The alcohol content does not appear to be the crucial determinant of beer's value. The Kofyar could probably get more alcohol into their bloodstreams if they increased the speed of drinking. At a drinking party, groups of five to eight people sit together in

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huts or in shaded spots and pour beer into calabashes from a jar holding about five quarts. The actual drinking may be quite rapid but there are often waits of an hour or more between jars. Regardless of whether the beverage is being sold or given away, it is doled out slowly. The guests have ample time for conversation and the host can conserve his supply in order to get the most social mileage out of it. Because of the wide distribution of beer and the size of the average brewing facilities, a single compound can usually make only enough for a single day, and drinking bouts extending through several days are rare. It is my impression that an adult drinks on the average of one to two quarts at a beer party. Though the frequency of opportunities for drinking varies according to season, I would estimate that Kofyar men have beer approximately twice a week while women and children who make fewer trips to market and other villages probably drink less than once a week. In one village of 55 compounds, there were an average of 11 brewings per month during 10 months for which I have adequate records. The individual satisfactions derived from drinking beer form the basis for its economic value. The announcement of brewing is always welcome; the demand for the finished product is uniformly high. Moreover, beer enters easily into an economic network. It may be carried to nearby markets to be sold. It is infinitely divisible, both in brewing when grain and workers may come from many households or a single one, and in consumption, where it may be sold in small or large quantities or shared in varying degrees. A jar bought by the usual group of five costs each participant two pence. In the relatively undifferentiated society of subsistence farmers, everyone has access to the materials and techniques necessary for brewing. Intensive terrace farming and manuring maintains high productivity so that almost every household has a supply of grain from which to make beer. Under these conditions, beer fits well into a society where the political hierarchy is rudimentary, differences in wealth are small, and the family unit is self-sufficient. The means of its production prevent any monopoly of brewing. It is marketable but cannot be stored for any length of time. Since beer is the preeminent sign of hospitality, wealthy men are expected to distribute it liberally to friends and guests. Beer is a completely consumable good, and used in this way, it prevents accumulation and acts as a leveller. Besides meshing easily with the structure of traditional society, beer is proving adaptable to the changing needs of a new economy. It allows rapid conversion of agricultural produce or labor into cash. Within the local community, the price of beer is fixed by common agreement and sellers all charge the same amount for a jar of standard size. In the large, impersonal plains markets which are of recent origin, price varies according to the changing cost of raw materials and is arrived at by bargaining. As the cultivated area of Kofyar expands by addition of distant bush lands without change in tools or farming methods, the beer party proves to be a traditional and yet highly effective way for securing communal participation in agricultural work. It eliminates the need for wage labor at the early stages of cash cropping and gives the

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prospective entrepreneur an opportunity to raise small amounts of capital. Beer as a valued good is both compatible with the forms of an individualistic, egalitarian society and readily usable as a means for the achievement of economic objectives under the fluid conditions of social change. Perhaps the most striking illustration of the encouraging of some effects of drinking while strictly sanctioning others is seen in group beer parties. The Kofyar value beer as a social lubricant, but not as an explosive. Drinking is understood to be a social act. An individual may have a jar hidden away in his own hut, but when he is ready to drink, he discreetly calls friends or family to share it with him. Drinking is not exclusive. Men and women mingle freely at the compound of beer and sit to drink in mixed groups. Children may be fed beer before they are weaned. The young probably do not consume as much as their elders, but this is due to their lack of money, their home duties, and their lesser participation in work parties rather than to any ambivalence about their right to drink or the effects of alcohol on them. Approved behavior in the drinking group is that which heightens social interchange, and negatively sanctioned activities are those which threaten group cohesion. It is the drinking situation rather than the alcohol per se which affects individual behavior. For example, beer drinks are culturally defined as occasions on which people may talk with animation and freedom. The period when the group has assembled and before the brew has been passed out is characterized by desultory conversation and a general atmosphere of quiet expectancy. As the first calabashes go around, there is a spontaneous bubbling up of chatter and laughter. This takes place before many participants have even tasted the beer, and there is no later heightening of interchange as people begin actually to absorb some alcohol. The drinking of beer appears to be generally connected with increased activity, and such group enjoyments as singing and dancing cannot be imagined apart from it. The beer party also acts as a proper occasion for the discharge of interpersonal tensions in vociferous argument. Large and small areas of friction are exposed for public review and comment in an atmosphere that encourages emotional catharsis. Strict limits are, however, maintained by the practice of submitting quarrels to older men for arbitration and prohibiting physical violence. A clear line is drawn by the Kofyar between verbal aggression which may be expressed freely and potentially dangerous acts. An argument is immediately halted by bystanders if a man touches his knife or if a scuffle results in drawing blood, no matter how small the scratch. A series of later hearings fix blame and decree fines paid by the guilty party to the offended person and often to the entire group in whose presence the quarrel took place. There is never a suggestion that a man is not responsible for his behavior because he has been drinking. Again it happens that some of the fiercest arguments may occur at the place of beer before anyone has drunk. The convivial atmosphere of the beer drink is certainly conducive to sexual approaches, and this is recognized by the Kofyar. As the situation is culturally defined, humorously bawdy talk, the use of a courting language based on in-

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nuendo, and such acts as a man sitting across the legs of a woman are all thought to be appropriate. Women do not come to beer parties alone, however, and if they are to stay all night, a husband, father, or brother should also be present. Lovers have a legitimate, regularized relationship, but covert, promiscuous behavior which might be socially disruptive is generally avoided. Interaction in terms of conversation, dancing, verbal conflict, and sexual suggestion are all encouraged in so far as they do not lead to hostile acts. Behavior around the beer jar is of the type which moderate quantities of alcohol may stimulate, but it seems often to be generalized from past experiences of the drinking situation rather than resulting directly from the chemical action of the alcohol itself. The Kofyar are not markedly constrained or reticent in ordinary social intercourse nor are they physically isolated from each other. The interaction level may be affected directly or indirectly by alcohol but is not dependent upon it (cf. Heath 1962). Certainly different people have varying tolerances for alcohol and no system of social sanctions can successfully block all potentially disruptive behavior. Yet even the reaction to the rare evidence of drunkenness is usually one of mild amusement rather than anxiety or censure. A man who customarily shouts and roars on his way home from a beer party is regarded as ludicrous rather than disgraceful. It is funny but not scandalous for a person to carelessly uncover his genitals while drinking. Drunkenness is referred to as mwos tu, "beer kills," just as "hunger kills" and "sleep kills" refer to natural states of hunger and tiredness. I never saw a person intoxicated enough to lose motor control to the point of staggering or to become sick. In Horton's (1943:266) terms, the Kofyar are characterized by slight insobriety in which alcohol is used regularly but with restraint. Stupor is neither the desired goal nor the usual outcome of Kofyar drinking. The drowsiness and eventual sleep that overtake many at the end of a long evening's imbibing are due to a full belly and delayed bedtime as much as to alcohol intake, and no one sees anything wrong with it. The only admonitions dealing with beer drinking have to do with the dangers of remaining away from home rather than with drunkenness. Kofyar men tell each other that they should not stay drinking at night for fear a thief will take their livestock. Women are given supernatural warnings to leave beer parties early in order to prepare the evening meal for their husbands. There are certainly situations of considerable fear and anxiety in Kofyar society, but beer is not a significant factor in their resolution. Personal problems cannot be solved by private escape because drinking is never done alone. When individuals are overtaken by disease or the group is threatened by some natural disaster, recourse is had to divination, confession, magical rites, and religious observances. It is noteworthy that in these situations as well as in the highly charged atmosphere of witchcraft accusations, drinking has no place, and these are among the very few social gatherings where beer is not consumed.
CONCLUSION

I have attempted to indicate the way in which the value of beer for the Kofyar depends on factors other than its ability to intoxicate. In each case the

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value is increased by a limitation of potential costs based on the nature of the beverage and the social definition of the drinking situation. Sanctions to a large degree grow from within the context of drinking rather than from being internalized as feelings of ambivalence or guilt. The Kofyar crave beer as much for its food qualities of taste and nutrition as for the psychological effects of alcohol. The low alcohol content and the deliberate pace of drinking allow the achievement of these ends without intoxication. The nature of beer and home brewing is such that its value may be utilized in a modern economic network while remaining compatible with the forms of an unstratified, unspecialized society. Social interchange in conversation, recreation, argument, and sexual approach is encouraged in the drinking party but is not dependent on alcohol consumption. The emphasis on drinking only in inclusive groups, avoiding physical violence, and checking sexual promiscuity severely restricts the development of personal drinking pathologies and socially disruptive behavior. Beer is thus physically desirable, economically useful, and socially beneficial. It is as a general and unequivocal good that beer can take part in the great variety of social, political, economic, religious, and conceptual relationships detailed in the earlier sections of this paper. As beer becomes increasingly an instrumental entity and a medium which lends itself to the expression of social relationships, the derived values assume a greater importance than the primarily personal satisfactions. The distribution of beer in many ways parallels the flow of money in commercial societies, and beer like money has become through time less dependent on such value as may inhere in its substance and increasingly an accepted symbol of social values and a currency of interpersonal relations. Thus the amount of silver in a dollar or of alcohol in beer are matters of secondary concern. As the functional network of the beer complex expands, the possibilities of using alcohol for private psychological ends are minimized. Beer's value to the individual as nourishment and anxiety reducer is reinforced and ultimately outweighed by a wealth of social values associated with it and by the general absence of personal and societal costs incurred in its use.
NOTES

1The field work spanned 18 months in 1960-1962 and was carried out with the support of a Ford Foreign Area Training Fellowship. This article is a considerably revised version of papers read at the American Anthropological Meeting, November, 1962 in Chicago, Illinois and at a conference on anthropological theory and research related to drinking and alcoholism held by the Cooperative Commission on the Study of Alcoholism at the Institute for the Study of Human Problems, Stanford University, Stanford, California. I benefited from the discussions at the Stanford conference and from the comments of Dr. David M. Schneider on this manuscript. 2 A more complete discussion on the delimitation of the Kofyar as a unit of study and descriptions of their settlement patterns, agriculture, and social structure are contained in my dissertation (Netting 1963). 3 The highest intake of beer per day recorded by Platt (1955) in a Nyasaland hill village was 407 ml./head/day, an annual total of 38.5 gallons. 4 The same attitude has been noted among the Jukun (Meek 1931:390) where beer is purchased and consumed in the household as an essential item of daily diet. Regarding beer as primarily a food is characteristic of relatively sober groups where the anxiety reducing function of alcohol is minimal (Horton 1943:227).

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COPIES OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON METHOD

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