Status and egalitarianism in traditional communities: An analysis of funeral attendance in six Zimbabwean villages

Abigail Barr and Mattea Stein

No 2008-26, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: This paper explores two hypotheses concerning the role of status in relationships between rich and poor in traditional communities by analyzing who goes to whose funerals in six Zimbabwean villages. Funerals allow status to be observed because non-attendance is a sign of disrespect. We find that the richer a household hosting a funeral, the less likely heads of neighbouring households are to attend. Thus, the status-for-insurance hypothesis – that the poor bestow status upon the rich in return for help in times of need is rejected in favour of the egalitarianism hypothesis – that richer households are denied status.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e15e7ac-96eb-4632-a9a7-6bb6a4041f51 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2008-26

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Coffey ().