A Coffin for "The Loved One": The Structure of Fante Death Rituals [and Comments]

The Fante (Akan) people of Ghana and the Southern Californians of North America exhibit basically similar behaviour at funerals: gorgeous and costly ceremonies in proportion to the social status of the deceased, with his bereaved kin responsible for the considerable expense involved. The coffin in which the corpse is interred is of immense significance. Among the matrilineal Fante, however, this means not just the apparent splendour and cost of the object, but-of far greater sociological importance-a revered customary obligation on the part of the children and wife of the dead man to procure it for his matrilineage (abusua). It is on the latter that the major responsibility, especially pecuniary, for the funeral rites falls. The deceased's wife and his children by her together belong to a different abusua, which in the context of this exchange rite stands opposed to his abusua. Considered thus, the sociological essence of the coffin custom lies in its dramatic symbolic statement or restatement of a fundamental principle of Akan social structure-a complementary dualism of broadly "male" and "female" categories. The article demonstrates this by analysing the rite of coffin exchange (nkaansa/esiedze) which takes place between the husband's and wife's matrilineages soon after the man's death.