Woodland and Village: Reflections on the `Animal Estate' in Rural Malawi

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Abstract
Scholars have recently suggested a contrast between the attitude of hunter-gatherers towards the animal world - one of sacramental equality - and that of agricultural peoples, who express an attitude of opposition and control. Reflecting on the symbolic and complementary opposition between the woodland and the village that is pervasive in Malawian culture, I attempt in this article to outline an approach to the woodland domain, and to the mammals associated with it, that seems to combine both these perspectives. I suggest that the Malawian approach to the woodland and its animal life is essentially an ambivalent one. On the one hand, the horticultural focus of the village community underwrites a view of wild animals as fundamentally antagonistic to human well-being. On the other hand, the woodland and the mammals identified with it are seen as a source of materials and of life-generating powers. This 'unity-in-opposition', and the complementary dualism associated with it, express an essentially cyclical conception of life and its continual renewal, a process of ongoing social generation.

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