Living in a landscape of scarcity: Materiality and cosmology in WestAfrica

In her close ethnography of a Dogon village of Mali, Laurence Douny shows how a microcosmology develops from people's embodied daily and ritual practise in a landscape of scarcity. Viewed through the lens of containment practise, she describes how they cope with the shortage of material items central to their lives - water, earth and millet. Douny's study is an important addition to ecological anthropology, to the study of West African cultures, to the understanding of material culture and to anthropological theory. Download Link

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