AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 40, no. 1 (Winter 2001)

REVIEWING TWINSHIP IN AFRICA

Elisha P. Renne
University of Michigan

Misty L. Bastian
Franklin and Marshall College

This article serves as an introduction to the existing literature on twinship in African contexts, as well as an introduction to the articles in this special issue of Ethnology. The authors note that the paradoxical nature of twinship for social structure has been a staple of the literature on Africa since the work of Isaac Schapera in the 1920s, but was made more central to the discipline by Evans-Pritchard (1956) and by Turner (1969). The articles in this issue revitalize and resituate the debate about multiple births, bringing to it a social-historical consciousness as well as an understanding of contemporary ritual. This is particularly important since cultural analyses of multiple births now languish in anthropology while multiple births themselves, through new reproductive technologies and media coverage, have become increasingly prominent. (Twinship, literature review, Africa, ritual practice)

“THE DEMON SUPERSTITION”: ABOMINABLE TWINS AND MISSION CULTURE IN ONITSHA HISTORY

Misty L. Bastian
Franklin and Marshall College

The representation of Igbo peoples as practitioners of twin abomination is very much part of a historical process in which missionary and colonial interest in twin killing as a sign of African atavism played a significant role. This article explores the historical record for information about twin abomination and twin murder, taking into account the paradoxical nature of twinship not only for Igbo-speakers but for the missionaries who wished to convert the Igbo and stamp out what they called “the demon superstition.” (Twinship, West Africa, colonialism, missionization, avoidance behaviors)

TWINSHIP AND JUVENILE POWER: THE ORDINARINESS OF THE EXTRAORDINARY

Susan Diduk
Denison University

Much anthropological literature for sub-Saharan Africa has explored twinship as culturally exceptional and paradoxical. This essay suggests that although twins represent a surfeit of fertility and present contradictions for the social structure, their power poses similar problems to that of other juveniles in a gerontocratic system. The Cameroon Grassfields is a region noted for highly stratified societies and the prevalence of double birth and single children who are metaphorically like twins. Any child who exhibits the capricious and extraordinary capacity to transform mystically has marked consequences for the social, economic, and political order. To understand juvenile power requires contextualizing at the local, compound, and family levels, as well as in relation to the highly stratified political order. (Twins, symbols, power, children, Cameroon)

POWERS, PROBLEMS, AND PARADOXES OF TWINSHIP IN NIGER

Adeline Masquelier
Tulane University

Among Hausaphone Mawri communities of Niger, twins are powerful yet dangerous beings endowed from birth with extraordinary abilities. While they are welcomed by parents who interpret multiple births as lucky, twins are feared because they kill offenders and perceive things which normal people cannot see. Twins are also fiercely jealous of each other. Defusing this rivalry entails treating both children identically, lest they hurt each other. This essay explores how the Mawri deal with the paradox of double births through practices that emphasize the magical powers of twins or, conversely, stress their vulnerability. It also discusses how, with the emergence of reformist Islam, the meanings and implications of twin births are being reassessed through debates over morality. (Twinship, West Africa, Islam, reformist movements)

TWINSHIP IN AN EKITI YORUBA TOWN

Elisha P. Renne
University of Michigan

Attitudes toward twins in Ekiti Yoruba society have remained remarkably consistent over the past hundred years even while the outward signs of their treatment have radically changed. Twins were considered to be extraordinary beings in the past and continue to be considered so. However, the markers of this extraordinariness have shifted from open expressions reflected in publicly displayed twin shrines to private, personal shrines kept in individual rooms. This essay examines both the everyday ways by which the special status of twins is muted and the special circumstances in which this tendency is overridden. (Twinship, West Africa, Yoruba, Christianity, ritual)