Spatial Mobility and Access to Resources among the African Pygmies

• Main Author: Bahuchet, Serge
• Other Authors: Eco-Anthropologie et Ethnobiologie (EAE), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN)-Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 (UPD7)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Michael J. Casimir, Aparna Rao
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 1991
• Subjects: [SHS.ANTHRO-SE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Social Anthropology and ethnology; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00261573; https://hal.science/hal-00261573/document; https://hal.science/hal-00261573/file/SpatialMobility.pdf

First paragraph of Introduction : African Pygmies have occupied a prominent place in the debate about mobility and territoriality among hunters and gatherers, being one of the two examples used by Tiirnbull to define the notion of flux (1968). It is well known by now that arnong hunting and gathering societies, the problem of the determination of tenitoriality is linked with the definition of bot. group structure and spatial mobility (cf. Lee 1972). We cannot forget, however, that the emergence of territonality is sometimes assumed to be connected with agriculture, with sedentarity, or with trade (as the fur-trade in the case of subarctic North American Indians, Leacock 1954). African Pygmies, as a mobile but only semi-nomadic population, also provide us with the example of a hunting and gathenng society strongly linked with agricultural people; we have then to examine the consequences of these relations for the territorial behaviour of the Pygmies. In this paper 1 will present data concerning the three major Pygmy groups of Central Africa: the Mbuti Pygmies of eastern Zaïre, the Aka of the Central African Republic, whom 1 studied for several years (Bahuchet 1985) and the Baka of eastern Cameroon, who show many similarities with the Aka although they speak a different language.