Bamana

The aesthetic qualities of the works produced by the Bamana of Mali (also known as the Bambara) have long attracted the attention of the West. The artistic creation brings into play a network of complex values that are sometimes accessible only to the initiated, but which are always deeply rooted in a system of thought and a way of life that only anthropological research in the field can attempt to approach and study. To put the works in their local context, the book looks at the initiations of young people and at funerals: fundamental rites of passage which cannot be avoided. Outstanding among them is that of the Ntomo, the society of young boys who have not yet been circumcised, and the ones linked to the Kore and the Jo, societies overseeing the passage to adulthood.
Then the functioning of the agricultural mutual aid groups (ton, démè) and the other great initiatory societies reserved for adults (Komo, Kono, Tyiwara, Namakoro, etc.) is analysed in its political, economic and judicial dimensions. Jean-Paul Colleyn anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. Head of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He has also taught at New York University. The author and director of thirty documentary films, several books and many articles on anthropological subjects in Mali (where he has been doing fieldwork since 1972) and on visual anthropology.