Author: Alexis B. Tengan
This study is partly based on the need to return to the
original core fields of anthropology in order to appropriately insert
agricultural practice, and more precisely hoe-farming among the Dagara of Northern
Ghana and Southern Burkina Faso, as a relevant and the most apt subject of study
lending meaning to all other forms of practice and systems of thought peculiar to
the people. Precisely because hoe-farming is an encompassing system, the study presents
a wide and broad view as compared to such anthropological studies as Jack Goody
(1962, 1967, 1972, 1980) already made on the Dagara. However, the none the less,
presenting a unified view based on the presumption that all Dagara thoughts and
practices draw meaning from the context of hoe-farming. Further, the study is outlining
a unified meaning creating system constructed through, and based on, arbitrary but
limited selection of social and cultural spheres defined as fields, habitats,
realms and domains, and considered as a continuous mode of relations and meaningful
correlations
Ph. D. Dissertation, 1998
Depept. Social and Cultural Anthropology, KU Leuven
