Crafted “Children”: an ethnography of making and collecting dolls in Southwest Angola

238 Pages·2015·6.06 MB·English

Crafted “Children”:
an ethnography of making and collecting dolls in
Southwest Angola

A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of
PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media
in the Faculty of Humanities

2015

Maria Inês Ponte

School of Social Sciences | Social Anthropology
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... 3
List of figures ............................................................................................................................ 5
List of maps .............................................................................................................................. 7
Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 8
Declaration ............................................................................................................................... 9
Copyright Statement ................................................................................................................ 9
Note on Languages and Writing ............................................................................................. 10
Glossary .................................................................................................................................. 11
Acronyms and abbreviations .................................................................................................. 12
Note on citation system ......................................................................................................... 12
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 13
INTRODUCTION: Crafted “children” from Southwest Angola ................................................. 15
Departure point ............................................................................................................................... 15
Materiality, Sociality and Visuality of doll crafting and collecting ....................................................... 17
“Crafted ‘children’” ...................................................................................................................... 19
The contemporary polysemic nature of dolls made in Southwest Angola: the linear and the
simultaneous ............................................................................................................................... 20
Networking dolls: the spatialised sociality of dolls ........................................................................ 28
The making of the field and the methods.......................................................................................... 30
The making of the field ................................................................................................................ 30
Making as method ....................................................................................................................... 34
Making a film about making: Making a living in the dry season ......................................................... 36
Structure of the thesis ...................................................................................................................... 39
1. The materiality of dolls in museums: makers, collectors, curators and museum keepers
from a postcolonial perspective ............................................................................................. 42
Collections of dolls in museums and doll-making in Southwest Angola: an overview ......................... 46
Displaying dolls from private collections: subjects and objects of play and ritual and the double
serious business of African dolls ....................................................................................................... 50
Research and grand exhibitions: curating a-historical displays of African dolls .............................. 54
Different meanings through similar matters? Exhibitions of museum dolls........................................ 59
Searching for corporeal voices of doll-makers: the historical field story of an Ovambo queen in
Northern Namibia and her present-day museum doll ....................................................................... 64
Dolls in ethnographic collections ...................................................................................................... 71
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 73
2. Doll-making and field-collecting in Southwest Angola: a regional approach from a
postcolonial perspective......................................................................................................... 76
Southwest Angola as a regional ethnographic location for dolls, doll-making and doll-makers:
assessing urban-rural linkages .......................................................................................................... 80
Doll-making resources, and crafting for sale and for use in Southwest Angola over time ................... 85

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Makers and collectors: selling dolls and gathering authentic pieces ............................................. 86
Political economy dimensions of doll-making: trade and log doll-making resources ..................... 90
Southwest Angola, geography and history of doll-makers: the problem of ethnicity ......................... 92
Encountering doll-making practices in Southwest Angola and beyond ......................................... 94
Conclusion: the problem with ethnic mapping in Southwest Angola and other ironies .................... 100
3. Hunger, cattle and dolls in Katuwo: spoken and unspoken issues in conversation and
everyday life ........................................................................................................................ 106
Katuwo: an agro-pastoralist highland village as the ethnographic lens ............................................ 110
Katuwo’s communal infra-structures ......................................................................................... 111
Livelihoods and seasonal ecological conditions: the uncertain annual shortages (and surpluses) in
Katuwo .......................................................................................................................................... 113
Diversified and vulnerable livelihoods: uncertainty in farming, husbandry and charcoal making ..... 116
Silence, sacred and inalienability in Katuwo: the partial sociality of cows and dolls ......................... 119
Secretive cattle ......................................................................................................................... 120
Secretive dolls ........................................................................................................................... 123
The everyday sociability of dolls and cows in the village of Katuwo ................................................ 125
Crafted dolls and their makers................................................................................................... 127
Seasonality and cattle ............................................................................................................... 133
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 136
4. Raising children, crafting baskets and crafted “children” in Katuwo: play and labour in
social and everyday family life ............................................................................................. 139
Raising children and crafting “children”: play, labour and social maturity ....................................... 141
Contextualising collaborative and autonomous practices of doll-making and usage in the village
and in Madukilaxi’s marital household....................................................................................... 145
Kabuka’s corncobs-turned-into-dolls .............................................................................................. 146
Simple corncobs-turned-into-dolls and their social recognition .................................................. 149
Corncob dolls and their making practices in Southwest Angola: the (un)sacredness of play ........ 150
Baskets and basketry in Katuwo ..................................................................................................... 155
The life cycles of baskets: making and using baskets in Katuwo .................................................. 156
Situating the making of a basket: “your mother comes from another land but your grandmother
was from here” ......................................................................................................................... 159
Making and remaking labour-intensive log dolls out of season ....................................................... 161
Choices and decisions in the making of baskets and dolls .......................................................... 163
Norms and tricky practices: household dynamics and doll usage ................................................ 166
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 168
5. The visual in the material of dolls .................................................................................... 170
Archives, access and strategies: (in)visibilities regarding doll-related visual material .................. 173
Visuality and shifting textual reproductions of the visual ................................................................ 175
Playing with science through photographs and drawings................................................................ 179
Passionate engagements and passionate drawings .................................................................... 180
Drawings, photographs and the alterity of scientific mimesis ..................................................... 184
Making and showing photographs in Katuwo ................................................................................. 189
Seeing photographs in Katuwo: recognition and appreciation .................................................... 191
Photographic refusal and openness towards the making of photographs in Katuwo................... 193
Conceptualising the visuality of photographic sequences ........................................................... 196

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Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 203
6. EPILOGUE ......................................................................................................................... 206
Appendix A. Dolls from Southwest Angola housed in museums .......................................... 213
1. Doll collections in museums........................................................................................................ 213
2. Museum doll collections by collectors......................................................................................... 214
3. Collections and Makers............................................................................................................... 216
Appendix B. Dolls from Southwest Angola in private collections ......................................... 217
Appendix C. Diagram of my host household in Katuwo ........................................................ 218
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 219
Archival Material ....................................................................................................................... 237

Word count: 80.436

List of figures

Figure 1 Research. A curator in a western museum. ......................................................................... 48
Figure 2 Display. A keeper at the museum’s permanent display (African dolls such as Turkana from
Kenya, Asante from Ghana, Ovambo, South African, and Yoruba from Nigeria, from the museum
collection appear on the background). .............................................................................................. 51
Figure 3 Label in Cameron, 1997: 97: “128. Mwila peoples (Ambo subgroup), Angola. Plant fiber,
fabric, plastic beads, safety pins. 19.8 cm. Collection of W. and U. Horstmann”. ............................. 54
Figure 4 Label in Cameron, 1997: 98: “131. Ambo peoples, Angola. Gourd, fabric. 16 cm. Collection
of W. and U. Horstmann”. .................................................................................................................. 56
Figure 5 Label in Tönjes, 1996[1911]: 128: “dolls”. Miss Rautanen’s Ondonga doll is on the right (see
below, section “searching for corporeal makers…”, p. 64). ............................................................... 57
Figure 6 Label in Cameron, 1997: 98: “132. Ambo peoples, Angola/Baggara peoples, Sudan. Wood,
fabric, leather, resin, glass beads, metal beads, buttons, plant fiber. 31 cm. Collection of W. and U.
Horstmann”. ....................................................................................................................................... 58
Figure 7 (Displaying) Storage. Curators in the museum. ................................................................... 61
Figure 8 Display. Curators at the museum´s temporary display (Delachaux´s Swiss toy collection on
the background). ................................................................................................................................ 63
Figure 9 Label in Cameron, 1997: 97: “129. Ambo peoples, Angola. Wood, beads, leather, buttons,
metal, plant fiber. 36 cm. Collection of W. and U. Horstmann.” ....................................................... 66
Figure 10 Label in Tönjes, 1996[1911]: 129: “King Kambonde II of Ondonga with his head wife,
Olugondo, to the right and his son left.”............................................................................................ 67
Figure 11 Kabuka and Basukuka during a break in their game, in the rainy season. 23.03.2012. ... 146
Figure 12 Kabuka playing at dolls and houses in the rainy season. 23.03.2012 (I67 and 75). ......... 147
Figure 13 Kabuka playing with a glass bottle. 13.02.2012. .............................................................. 148
Figure 14 Kabuka playing with her shawl, using it as a dress for an older woman. 02.03.2012. ..... 148
Figure 15 Kabuka and Lipuleni playing at mother and daughter. 30.05.2012. ................................ 148
Figure 16 Kabuka and Kaundende attending the cattle. 12.02.2012. .............................................. 154

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Figure 17 My expansion of the life cycle of Madukilaxi’s former ombue, ........................................ 158
Figure 18 Madukilaxi’s current ombue, ............................................................................................ 158
Figure 19 My second oxivito, unfinished oximbala, ......................................................................... 158
Figure 20 and 21 Madukilaxi and Kabuka at an evening household gathering in Katuwo. .............. 170
Figure 22 and 23 An example of the recurrent juxtaposition, repeatedly labelled “mwila girl with
doll” and “mwila doll”, with the reference to the source of the field photograph, © Afrika Museum,
Berg-en-Dal, Netherlands; and to the collection to which the doll belongs, in this case © MNE,
Lisbon, Portugal, and authorship of the studio photograph, in this case, António Rento. .............. 175
Figure 24 clockwise: a) Delachaux’s drawings of dolls that he collected in Southwest Angola in 1932,
initially reproduced in Delachaux (1936, plate LIII), with the caption: “1. Doll braided and entwined
whose hairstyle is that of a Humbe young girl. The fringed necklace is characteristic. Height: 29 cm.
Humbe, Capelongo (No. 5765). 2. Doll made of a log enclosed by an array of cords. The hairstyle is
that of Tyinpungu girls. The hands have only four fingers. Height: 26 cm. Tyipungu, Capelongo”. c)
Delauchaux’s drawing, initially reproduced in Delachaux & Thiebaud (1934: 14) without caption,
and slightly differently in Delachaux (1936, plate VIII, 2), with the caption “Humbe hairstyle in-the-
making; the two small braids in the forehead have been made, but the horns are still only twisted.
Kâmba area.” d) Photograph taken by Thiebaud during the 1932 Mission to Southwest Angola,
published in Delachaux & Thiebaud (1936, plate LXX, 4), with the caption: “At the hairdresser’s
home, below a canopy, sheltering from the heat of the sun.” © MEN, Neuchatel, Switzerland.
Juxtapositions reproduced from Gonseth, Knodel, and Reubi (2010: 246–9). All captions are my
translation......................................................................................................................................... 183
Figure 25 Original caption: “Young Kwanyama girl carrying her ‘ocana’, her doll, as women carry
their children; with her ear pierced with the metal pin she received as a present to remain
immobile in front of the lens. Mupanda, July 1933” (Delachaux, 1934: photo 39. Photograph by C.
Thiébaud; my translation). ............................................................................................................... 188
Figure 26 Original caption: “Young Kwanyama girl with her otchana doll (according to Delachaux)”
(Baumann & Westermann 1948: 159, fig. 78). ................................................................................. 188
Figure 27 Madukilaxi looking at studio photographs of museum dolls. 21.09.2012. ....................... 191
Figure 28 Elicitation session in Dindolo's farmstead. Dindolo (right) and Malihumba's son, who was
visiting (in the centre), showed more interest in looking at the photographs than Teresinhha,
Dindolo's wife or their eldest son, who kept working, or their youngest daughter, who kept doing
her school homework (with a pink shirt). Still, they were all active intervenors in discussing with
Dindolo and Malihumba’s son’s their impressions of the photographs. Also Kute and her baby,
neighbours of Dindolo, passed by. 22.09.2012. ............................................................................... 191
Figure 29 Gewissa (left), with her father, Nthahela, his wife, and the couple’s youngest daughter in
the couple´s recent eumbo. Photograph by Enrica Barago, December 2011................................... 193
Figure 30 Gewissa’s doll hidden in the frame, similar to Gewissa, who is hidden inside her mutala.
.......................................................................................................................................................... 196
Figure 31 Plate of photographs kept in the AFM, Berg-en-Dal, Netherlands, taken by Father Koos
Noordermeer (1924-2013) of the Holy Spirit Congregation, while based at Huambo (at the time
Nova Lisboa). The photographs are undated but Noordermeer’s stay occurred between 1954 and
1960. ................................................................................................................................................. 198
Figure 32 Plate of Kabuka playing inside the mutala, in her current eumbo in Katuwo. 27.03.2012.
Alignment: 0161, 0160, 0170, 0169, 0173, 0174, 0168, 0176, 0164. ............................................... 201

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List of maps

Map 1 The regional scale with the geographic and political administrative area of Southwest Angola
and its location at a continental scale. Adapted from Google maps (2014) and United Nations maps
(Angola 2008). .................................................................................................................................... 76
Map 2. Ethnic mapping overlapped with administrative and geographical circumscription. in Areia,
2009, Masques d’Angola, © MEN, Switzerland. .............................................................................. 103

All photographs and drawings are by the author, unless otherwise stated. Images with acknowledged
copyright are reproduced with the copyright holders’ permission.

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Abstract
Crafted “Children”: an ethnography of making and collecting dolls in Southwest Angola
University of Manchester, PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media
Inês Ponte, 2015
Grounded in multi-sited fieldwork within an agro-pastoralist highland village in Southwest
Angola and in ethnology museums in Europe, Angola and Namibia, my research
interweaves an ethnographic and a historical approach to better understand the meanings
and social relationships generated by what I call “elusive dolls”: dolls that are difficult to
find and slippery when encountered. The study explores postcolonial significances of
African dolls, made by agro-pastoralist people, which have been sparsely collected for
display in museums since colonial times. Using multiple field methods such as participant
observation, archival research, photo-elicitation, and filmmaking, I trace the social
relationships involved in the making of dolls in Southwest Angola and in the housing of the
same kind of dolls in ethnology museums, paying particular attention to the material and
social networks established around the practices of making and collecting them.
Following the logic of local languages (olunyaneka, oshikwanyama), I use the notion of
“crafted ‘children’” to define handcrafted dolls made of different materials, and address
the meanings these dolls embody for makers, collectors and museum curators. I take a
historical perspective to examine the dimensions of storage, research and display and
address contrasting curatorial approaches to dolls in museums. While most curators have
tended to focus on dolls and their supposed functions, a few have engaged with dolls in
relation to other domains of the lifeworlds of rural makers and their skilled
practices. Examining the limits of historical ethnographic research about local doll-usage, I
build upon these alternative approaches by curators and ethnographically explore the
relational dimensions of these dolls in two worlds in which they have material and social
lives: Southwest Angola and ethnology museums. Firstly, I examine the regional diversity
of these dolls, as crafted “children”, in the rural context through a situated understanding
of ethnic and ecological diversity and rural-urban relations. Secondly, I explore the twofold
notion of labour – that is, the labour in crafting and the labour in making a living - in the
regional domestic economy of agro-pastoralist populations, showing how a resilient rural
lifestyle, local and urban resources, seasonal demands, and personal skills linked to age
and sociality generate and shape the practices of doll-making. Finally, I examine drawing
and photography in published and unpublished material about dolls and show how the
visual connects the worlds of curators, field-collectors, makers and ethnographers.
A large part of the literature on ethnology museum collections tends to focus on
“repatriation”, discussing relations between museums and “source communities”. By
contrast, an analytical framework connecting doll-making and collecting, the regional
conditions of a crafting practice and its local immersion in rural everyday life, appears only
marginally in the literature - this is where my research makes a significant contribution. My
thesis contributes to critical museology research, Africanist studies, and visual
anthropology and engages with debates on materiality and skill. The film that accompanies
the thesis, Making a Living in the Dry Season, is grounded in a long-term stay in a village,
and examines the twofold notion of labour mentioned above through the practice of doll-
making. I recommend first reading the thesis up until Chapter three, followed by watching
the film, and then turning to the remaining chapters.

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Declaration
No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an
application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute
of learning.

Copyright Statement
i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns
certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of
Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes.
ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may
be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended)
and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing
agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such
copies made.
iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual
property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis,
for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may
not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and
Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written
permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions.
iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and
commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or
Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see
http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487), in any relevant Thesis
restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations
(see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations) and in The University’s policy
on Presentation of Theses

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Note on Languages and Writing
In the course of this thesis I use various languages besides English, such as Portuguese and a
few Bantu languages. I remark that the Portuguese (pt) that appears merges two variants,
Portuguese from Portugal and from Angola, as some of my research collaborators in
Southwest Angola are fluent in the latter, but I am fluent in the former. Olunyaneka (ol) is the
Bantu language most often used throughout the thesis, but Oshikwanyama (Oshikwan,
Angola), Oshiwambo (Oshiwam, Namibia) and Oshidonga (Oshid, Namibia) also appear,
transcribed either from orality or from various written sources. The combination of written
and oral sources, in which different conventions established at different historical times
permeate their written form, and the contemporary debate about the standardization of the
written form of Bantu languages in Angola, requires some remarks on the choices made in this
thesis.
Regarding spelling conventions, the phonetic transcription used in the thesis tends to mimic
Bantu languages into English. The reason behind this decision relates to the difference
between the phonetic conventions of Portuguese and English, in which the English language
has a closer phonetic transcription from orality to writing. With this choice, I partially distance
myself from the National Instituto de Linguas, the Angolan institute which oversees the
contemporary interplay between the Angolan official language, Portuguese, and its formally
recognised 6 national languages (of which Oshikwanyama is one), besides other local
languages which have fewer speakers (of which Olunyaneka is one of them). I follow the
Angolan Institute in some phonetic transcriptions, using “ny” to express what usually in
Portuguese is transcribed as “nh”, but I prefer to use “x” rather than “ty” for the Portuguese
“tch” or to use “dj” rather than “dy”.
Bantu languages have prefixes to refer to people as opposed to language. In the literature
about Bantu speaking peoples, particularly on former Portuguese Overseas territories, the lack
of attention paid to this particularity has often confused the language and the people, and I do
not wish to make that mistake myself. This choice contrasts with Portuguese colonial usage,
which tended to drop the prefixes to designate the different people inhabiting the area of
Southwest Angola, a practice pervading ethnographic work produced at the time and used also
later by a broad range of scholars [see for instance, Murdock (1959) and his use of “Ambo” for
Ovambo]. Furthermore, different researchers writing about Southwest Angola have spelled
ethnic designations in many different ways – which is related to their different language
background in combination with variations in local pronunciations. As a result, most literature
in Portuguese but also some of the literature produced in Namibia, namely in English, uses
Kwanyama (pt) rather than Ovakwanyama (ol) or Oukwanyama (Oshiwam, Namibia). This is a
case in which the word root, in this example, “kwanyama”, without a prefix appears quite
meaningless for monolingual speakers. Following Inverno (2006) and my rural research
collaborators, throughout this thesis, I will keep the distinction between language and people
through the use of the prefixes; exception made for Ndengelengu, in which my collaborators
skipped prefixes as well.
In the following table I exemplify the prefixes used by people speaking different, but related
Bantu languages:

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