L'Évolution du Schéma Initiatique chez les Femmes Oubi (Région de Taï, Côte d'Ivoire)

Situation générale du Problème L'exemple des Oubi que nous avons choisi pour la présente étude n'est que l'illustration d'un problème plus général qui décidera du proche avenir des économies traditionnelles dans les forêts de l'ouest éburnéen. En accueillant la culture des plantes industrielles: caféier et cacaoyer, comme une forme nouvelle de leurs activités, les petites unités ethniques de cette zone—jusqu'ici matériellement autonomes—doivent faire appel à toutes leurs ressources morales, afin que leur intégration dans un système économique plus vaste, se réalise sans trop de dommages. Les marchés mondiaux du café et du cacao n'étant pas pour l'instant en cause, le problème immédiat reste en général circonscrit dans le cadre de l'Union Française, plus précisément dans des relations Côte d'Ivoire-métropole. The recent introduction, as a new element in their economy, of cash crops such as coffee and cocoa, has had a number of sociological repercussions on the traditional societies of the Western Ivory Coast. This situation may be illustrated from a study of the Oubi, a forest-dwelling community of the Tai area (subdivision of Guiglo) which, because of its very small size, may be studied as a whole. It is possible here to observe the gradual change-over of a peasant population from a subsistence economy to one based mainly on exchange. At the same time the community is breaking up into a number of independent groups, which are being drawn away from the nuclear society by the ecological requirements of modern plantation economy. The migration of individual planters seeking cultivable land is becoming a permanent feature of the demography. A corresponding change is taking place in the sphere of religious activities: in particular, initiation practices—which are still socially important—are showing the effects of acculturation. Female initiation ceremonies—including the ritual excision which renders nubile women socially acceptable—are not disappearing but are being accommodated to modern conditions by modifications in procedure. Thus there is more elasticity in the regulations concerning the age of initiation, the dates fixed for the ceremonies are adapted both to the administrative calendar and to the exigences of coffee-planting. The period of seclusion is considerably reduced; the regular performance of local cycles of ceremonies is more and more dependent on factors such as the amount of crops produced, coffee prices, returns from trading, &c. Finally the