Stanley R. Barrett
Late Professor of Anthropology
University of Guelph, Canada

Written 2006, published 2023 on kwesthues.com

It is not often that the contemporary anthropologist has an opportunity to describe a culture which has been largely ignored, or at least quite inadequately studied, by previous ethnographers. My initial acquaintance with its inhabitants took place during my adventurous and foolish youth when my motorcycle, meant to carry me to the four corners of the globe, broke down in an arid wasteland at a time when I was already severely dehydrated. A kind and generous lorry driver came to my rescue, depositing both me and my bike in the midst of a remote village. What intrigued me about the residents of the oasis, and the steady stream of nomads coming and going during the month or so that I spent recovering my health and tinkering with the carburetor, was first of all their oral eloquence, and secondly their bellicose nature. From morning to night they sat around volubly discussing and debating. Although I could only fully communicate with those who spoke English or French, it was evident that a high value was placed on intellectual capacity and witty riposte. They also seemed to be remarkably prickly, quick to react to the slightest insult. It did not take long for me to identify some of the feuding parties, and to learn to avoid greeting specific individuals while in the company of their rivals.

Several years later, in the meantime having qualified as a social anthropologist, I began to study Corsican feuds (Barrett 2002: 94-98). For comparative purposes I turned to Albania, but was unsatisfied. This was not because feud in Albania (Cozzi 1980, Durham 1909, 1910 and 1928, and Hasluck 1954) was unlike that in Corsica (Busquet 1920, Wilson 1988), but because it was so remarkably similar. The same more or less held true for Kabylia (Black-Michaud 1975), Scotland (Wormald 1980), and Appalachia (MacClintock 1901). While the classical cases of feud in nomadic societies such as the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940) and the Bedouin (Peters 1967) offered considerably more variation, both ethnographically and theoretically they had been already beaten to death by a host of previous writers, and what I was looking for was a fresh case, virgin territory, an example of feud strikingly different than what had been described to date.

It was then that I began to reflect on the remote village in which I had so fortuitously landed many years before. Although the culture in which the village is located is not totally unknown in the literature—several famous anthropologists including Boas (1963), Malinowski (1944), Radcliffe-Brown (1964) and Lévi-Strauss (1974) have made passing reference to it—it had never been the focus of a full-scale ethnography, and to this day it remains shrouded in mystery, our knowledge of it fragrmentary and incomplete. One reason is that it has lacked the population size and natural resources that might have attracted outside interest. Another reason is that this culture has never constituted a nation state; rather, it extends across several states. Its precise location is to the west of Goa and to the east of Timbuktoo in Mali, and its territory can be found both north and south of the Niger River. A third reason for the relative obscurity is that the name of the culture has changed repeatedly over the centuries, with one colonial power in the past preferring one name and a second power a different name.

While international politics partly explains the confusion over the culture's identity, its fierce internal regional competition, which may well have influenced Gluckman's peace-in-the-feud thesis (1963), may also have been a contributing factor. This was because of the practice of taking the name of its currently dominant region. Since at least the nineteenth century, this culture has been widely known as Médaka, which is how I shall refer to it in this paper.

According to Harris (1968), Médaka first came to the attention of scholars as early as the twelfth century. Certainly it was well known to various European colonial powers from the 1500s onwards. The British called it variably Kulanku and Kukuland, possibly, if Burkhardt (1931) is to be taken seriously, because of a species of bird there somewhat similar to the cuckoo in England. The French names for it were Kulée and Kukaka. Both the British and French terms (see Lowie 1937) may actually have been derived from Kukukuk, which was the Arabic word for the culture, although as Nadel has cautioned (1957), linguistic support for such a link is tenuous.

There is some evidence (Thurnwald 1935) that when early travelers first passed through Médaka, it was an acephalous society. Even today there is a strong belief in egalitarianism. Yet according to archaeological evidence and oral history accounts, it has been a highly stratified society at least since the sixteenth century. Indeed, there existed two quite separate elites, as well as a lower class of workers or servants. The dominant elite originally consisted of priests. Médaka then resembled a theocracy, with religion the key to its worldview. But like so many other features of this culture, the secularization process over the centuries, according to Miner (1965), has almost transformed it into a haven for atheists.

Médaka was highly unusual, at least in comparison to contemporary societies, in that material possessions were not the basis of stratification. Instead it was a matter of "honour." How did people acquire honour? The answer is reflected in their own term for their society, which translates into English as "the Talkers" or "the Dreamers" (these were also the names for the dominant elite). Great honour went to those with the stamina and eloquence to hold an audience entranced for hours on end, especially if the dreams they revealed focused on the abstract, even on the seemingly ridiculous, devoid of pragmatic application. It should be added that the Talkers themselves were divided into three levels, measured by degrees of honour; there also was a bottom level of nomads, or marginal Talkers, few of whom stayed put long enough to become legitimate members of the Talking class. One of the more significant changes during the past century is that women gradually became eligible for Talking status, although apparently few of them have reached the top level.

Those belonging to the secondary, or lower elite were known as "the Runners." Politics and decision making were their responsibility. Although they appear to have been practical men and women, this was only in comparison to the Talkers. Few of the Runners, in Miner's judgment (1965), would have thrived in the world of commerce that operated in the neighbouring societies.

In this society any kind of activity that involved manual labour, or even had obvious practical utility, was despised, at least by the dominant elite. It is understandable, thus, why the workers at the bottom, despite the fact that they tended the gardens, kept the water flowing along the irrigation channels, did all the repairs on the temples and huts, and brought food to the table, barely registered on the consciousness of the elite. Significantly, there was no name for the servant class in Médaka.

There was very little mobility between the two elites; if it happened at all, the direction was from the Talkers to the Runners, almost never the reverse. Individuals who did cross over to the Runners with rare exception never had qualified for the top level of the Talkers, and indeed their decision to change camps was possibly a recognition that they never would be prominent Talkers. Occasionally former Talkers would decide to return to the fold, but this was difficult because they always were greeted with a certain amount of suspicion, as if they were tainted by their association with the Runners.

On an annual basis, normally at the end of the harvest season, talking competitions were held. These were opportunities for the leading Talkers to consolidate their reputations, and for aspiring Talkers to reveal their dreams. These competitions appeared to have another purpose. While the Talkers clearly considered themselves superior to the Runners, the latter had their own ambitions. The talking competitions amounted to a public statement about just who held a monopoly over power. According to my informants in Médaka, the talking competitions were often accompanied by the heavy consumption of locally-brewed beer and readily-available narcotics, and even licentious behaviour. It should be added that a sort of apprentice system operated for neophyte Talkers. Few of them, however, ever became bona fide Talkers. This was partly because the training period was long and arduous, and partly because the instruction they received was such a hit-and-miss affair. The leading Talkers were too occupied building their own reputations to pay much attention to the apprentices; indeed, those Talkers who did take a strong interest in them risked their own reputations. Nevertheless, it was the practice of the Talkers to invite the most promising of the neophytes to assist them in the talking competitions, where they too were expected to indulge in alcohol and other substances.

Writing was invented early on in Médaka, and became another important source of honour. However, it was controlled by the Talkers, originally by the priests, and was used less as a means of communication than as a mechanism to exclude the Runners and the workers. Periodically the Talkers introduced entire new vocabularies, apparently even technical language, in order to keep writing out of the hands of the rest of the society.(1)

There is little solid information in the literature about family and marriage in Médaka. It appears, however, that kinship was not the paramount institution that was characteristic of most cultures in the past, presumably because talking and dreaming overshadowed everything else. Family life almost seemed to be secretive, rarely mentioned in relation to prominent Talkers. Marriage was primarily monogamous, although institutionalized concubinage was widespread among the elite, and divorce was so frequent throughout the society that it might be more appropriate to speak of serial marriage. Like many other societies, elderly men tended to marry or cohabitate with younger women. Homosexuality was not institutionalized as it was in other societies such as the Sambia (Herdt 1981), but neither was it strongly sanctioned. Whether or not there was anything equivalent to a third gender role is not clear. However, the fact that the top Talkers periodically dressed in women's robes is suggestive.

Apparently many of the marital unions were childless, with interesting results. Although Médaka was not a nation state, it assumed the right to monitor its own borders. Functionaries, organized by the Runners, operated as the equivalent of contemporary customs and immigration officers. When the birth rate fell below the level required to sustain the population, outsiders, almost all of them young, were recruited. One man jokingly explained that the birth rate was low because the emphasis on talking left little energy for anything else. A more plausible interpretation is that it merely expressed the well-known inverse correlation between intellectualism and family size.

Contradictions abound in all cultures and Médaka has been no exception. For example, much emphasis, especially among the Talkers, was placed on "community," the sense that they shared a special relationship, and could count on one another for support. Yet at the same time they were fiercely individualistic and competitive, and so passionately argumentative that one scholarly expert (Foucault 1978) has gone so far as to claim that marginal madness there was a positive personality trait. Certainly marginal madness was consistent with talking at its most feverish pitch, which sometimes resembled glossolalia (speaking in tongues), and occasionally mutated into a catatonic form. It is reasonable to suggest that the consumption of alcohol and narcotics, which occurred even when the talking competitions were not in session, albeit usually confined to quasi-private settings such as isolated water holes on the edge of villages, contributed to the image of marginal madness. During the few weeks that I spent in Médaka, I personally observed that substance abuse was widespread among the neophytes, and this may be another reason why their drop out rate was so high. It was almost as if the neophytes had to first demonstrate a capacity to imbibe before they were schooled in the rituals of dreaming. More than one informant asserted not only that this was the case, but also that it was absolutely justified, because the consumption of substances enhanced the capacity to talk and dream.

One of the more curious features of this culture is that while it was highly competitive, there was considerable tolerance for incompetence, at least among the Talkers. This was to such an extent that incompetence became a badge of honour, not sufficient to elevate a person into the top ranks, but enough to render murky the difference between successful and unsuccessful Talkers at the lower level. Yet this did not generate a crisis in everyday life because talking and dreaming never were intended to have concrete, practical consequences. One plausible interpretation of the tolerance for incompetence is that in such a stratified and competitive society it made room for the ethic of egalitarianism. A more fanciful interpretation is that the parading of incompetence was a form of self-mockery, a scene in which the Talkers observed themselves, so to speak, through a back door, and with their customary wit and verbosity ridiculed what they saw.

Finally, the citizens of Médaka fervently believed that their culture was unique, and absolutely independent from neighbouring cultures. Unique it appears to have been, but the scholarly records show that for all of its known history it has been affected by diffusionism, or the penetration of ideas, customs, and materials from the outside world. Moreover, rather than being splendidly self-sufficient, it has been the regular benefactor of tributes from its neighbours, who apparently were motivated by their recognition of Médaka as an exceptional and superior society. Another factor, I should add, is that these neighbours were eager to have their children accepted as neophyte Talkers. The tributes were mainly material goods, and without them we can only wonder how Médaka, the society of Talkers and Dreamers, could have survived over these past centuries.

As for blood vengeance in Médaka, the literature is largely silent, and I shall have to rely more than I would like on my own observations recorded years ago. The vast majority of cases fell into the category of vendetta; that is, they consisted of enmity between individuals rather than collectivities (2). While matters of honour, as in feuding societies in general, certainly were relevant in Médaka, more often than not the specific basis for enmity seemed to be envy. For example, two minor Talkers fell out when one of them made a splash at the annual talking competition. His rival retaliated by spreading a rumour that the other's genealogical roots were in the Runners, thus effectively disqualifying him from top Talking status. In other cases, vendettas were set in motion for what appeared to be trivial reasons. For example, two individuals whose company I had enjoyed became locked in mutual hostility merely because one of them claimed the other had glanced at him in a peculiar manner.

Sometimes vendettas emerged among the Runners, but they occurred much more frequently among the Talkers. According to informants, vendettas were rare among the workers, but I lack the data to verify this statement. The vast majority of the vendettas among the Talking class involved its lowest level, but this may simply have been because there were so many more of them compared to the two higher levels.

Under certain circumstances, the type of vengeance shifted from vendetta to feud, or from dyads to broader collectivities. There were different and competing rituals or methods involved in the talking enterprise, each with its own committed faction. If a person, usually a member of the lower-level Talking order, did not follow precisely the accepted ritual procedure, he risked being demoted. Every now and again open hostilities broke out between the followers of rival rituals. Because the rituals associated with talking were virtually identical with talking itself, it is understandable why they unleashed such passion. Collective vengeance also surfaced around the personalities of the most powerful Talkers. This was because those at the top always attracted a host of acolytes whose absolute loyalty resembled a family relationship. Often it was these supporters who sustained a feud even when the principals had been eliminated, or simply lost their zeal for battle.

In their vendettas and occasional feuds, sometimes knives, clubs, firearms and poison were used, but the people of Médaka, being Talkers and Dreamers, preferred a more subtle outcome: the social death. This outcome, however, only materialized under unusual and rare circumstances: when one of the actors locked in enmity successfully recruited leading Talkers and Runners to his side. Via ridicule, ostracization, demonization, and character assassination which challenged an individual's claim to honour, a man backed by powerful allies attempted to eliminate his enemy socially. If the attack was successful, the victim was shunned by his or her peers, denied talking privileges, often physically segregated from others, sometimes banned from the territory, reduced to the status of the walking dead, somewhat similar to the victims of witchcraft in the village in Nigeria where I conducted research (Barrett 1977), or to the individuals identified by the mazzeri (dream hunters) in Corsica, who had the capacity to foretell death (Carrington 1996). The consequences were predictable and almost modern in character: bizarre behaviour, heart attacks, strokes, and nervous breakdowns.

The vast majority of vendettas and feuds did not progress to the state of the social death, nor were there clear-cut victors. The hostilities just rolled on over the years. It was common knowledge that such animosities existed, but neighbours simply ignored or tolerated them. It was not until a team of powerful supporters lined up behind one of the parties, which signalled the inevitable defeat of his enemy, that bystanders became engaged. Curiously, their reaction was not to side with the loser in sympathy. Instead, the victor enjoyed a collective swell of support, constituting the final blow that reduced the victim to a non-person.

There remain many gaps in our ethnographic understanding of Médaka, and this is even more true regarding its forms of feud and vendetta. According to writers such as Peters and Black-Michaud, blood vengeance has been found in societies lacking an efficient judicial system; in this context, blood vengeance constitutes a form of self-help which brings order to society. Whether or not this holds for feud and vendetta in Médaka is simply beyond our current state of knowledge.

Certainly there are good reasons for assuming that in relation to classical blood vengeance, Médaka is a special case. In no other society has the ultimate stage of feud and vendetta been the social death. Curiously, to locate a comparable phenomenon, one would have to turn to the recent literature on mobbing in modern bureaucracies (Leymann 1990 and 1996). Like feud and vendetta in Médaka, mobbing constitutes an attempt of co-workers, via humiliation, character assassination and ostracization, to reduce an individual to the status of a non-person; the victims of mobbing—again remarkably similar to what transpires in Médaka—often suffer severe health problems such as strokes and heart attacks, and occasionally even die. More curious still is Westhues' contention (2004a and 2004b) that mobbing is especially prevalent in the one type of complex organization where rationality presumably would prevent it---the contemporary university.(3)

My interest in Médaka was aroused by my unplanned visit years ago, then sharpened by the existing literature, particularly the insights contained in Miner's (1956) instructive ethnography. My hope is that this short piece will inspire others to give Médaka the attention it deserves, and perhaps even to investigate the tantalizing overlap between beliefs and practices found in this unusual society and those embedded in the academy.

1. Lévi-Strauss' interpretation (1974) of the spread of a writing tradition is noteworthy here. Writing, he argues, is a means of enslaving people. Just at the point where human populations became too large to be monitored and controlled by face-to-face interaction, writing became the bureaucratic tool which did the same job.


2. Three types of blood vengeance have been identified in the literature (Black-Michaud 1975 and Peters 1975), including vendetta and two types of feud. One version of feud occurs in nomadic, herding societies with a lineage organization such as the Nuer, where the feuding unit is the entire corporate group. The other type of feud is found in sedentary, kindred societies based on agriculture and pastoralism such as Corsica, where the feuding unit is the smaller extended family and sometimes the clan. Vendetta emerges in settings such as Lebanon where dense and interdependent social and economic relations dictate that retaliatory murder is restricted to specific individuals, such as the duty of a son to avenge his father's death, rather than mobilizing all the members of a family against another family.


3. It should be added that similar to Médaka, mobbing in bureaucracies, advanced education included, is usually preceded by a history of feud and vendetta.

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