Dietary avoidance among the Aka hunter-gatherers, Northeastern Congo

Bibliographic Data

ID20148613
AuthorsKiyoshi Takeuchi (0000-0002-8392-1029, Kyoto University, corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume1994
Issue44
Pages1-28
Publication date1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of African Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0065-4140 • E-ISSN: 1884-5533
PublisherJapan Association for African Studies (PUBLISHER • JP)
DOI10.11619/africa1964.1994.1
OpenAlexW2334897140
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited2

The Aka are the forest dwelling hunter-gatherers in western Congo Basin. The Aka inhabitting southern part of the Central African Republic, where is the fringe are of the tropical rain forest zone, have been studied by French anthropologists since 1970's. However, the Aka in the Congo Republic, who occupy the main body of the Aka population, have never been researched in terms of intensive survey.This paper is a contribution to the study of food avoidance among the Aka, based on the several months' participant survey in northeastern Congo. The point emphasized in this paper is the personal aspect in the food avoidance in contrast to the social aspect as food restriction or food taboo.The Aka individuals select and avoid many wild food species, especially wild animals, according to their self-consciousness on which stage he/she stands in the Aka life cycle, whereas several kinds of food taboos occasionally forces them not to eat meat of wild animals during the period they belong to youth or ‘woman’. Such double feature in food avoidance can be analyzed as a reflection of the essential character of the Aka society. Namely, the Aka has no rigid ideological constraint on sexes and generations which controls everyday acts of individuals

AKA · Biology · Geography · Population · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Demography · Ecology · French Urban and Social Studies · Indigenous Studies and Ecology

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