Les mankala africains

A. Popova-African Mankala. 'Mankala' designates a class of mathematical game which is most popular in Africa, with its two main subtypes, viz. the one-cycle wari, found chiefly in the north, and the two-cycle solo of the Bantu. Despite a number of differences in operating rules between these two types, they retain a deep conceptual unity which allows to consider them, anthropologically speaking, as mere variants of a single game. The 'general rule' set forth here aims at providing a global vision of these games, illustrated by a detailed description of four wari, one solo and one mixed game. Finally a correspondence is established between mankala and joking-relation-ship, the latter being designated by the Swahili word utani, derived from a root with the double meaning 'insuit, abuse' and 'contract an alliance', which expresses well enough the ambiguous character of the game both per se and as an institution

Alliance · Bantu languages · Character (mathematics) · Class (philosophy) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Political science · Relation (database) · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Swahili · African history and culture analysis · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy

• Achille et Ajax

  Dasen, Véronique Dasen•Revue du MAUSS•2015

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