Inculcation of ideology among the Sidāma of Ethiopia

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John H. Hamer

A moral code as ideology is gradually inculcated at different stages in the male life cycle among the Sidama of Ethiopia. The elders constitute a gerontocracy in control of the code, enabling them to link household and community in perpetuating a system of subsistence production which generates sufficient surplus to support rituals and symbols that maintain the ideology. They encourage oscillation of males between household and community until death, when the authority of the code becomes transcendent.

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Source: Cambridge Journals