Current relevance of ancient rites : The Ngii brotherhood of the Fang of Central Africa – NGII

The NGII project deals with the actual social relevance of the ancient rites in societies of oral tradition and the forced abandonment of their institutions as a result of colonial actions in the 20th century. The subject will be the Ngii brotherhood of the Fang (Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea), which managed the society and its social time. Outlawed in 1940, evidence of its practice has still recently been collected. Hence, the project is rooted in present day fieldwork, taking as its starting point the accounts of Ngii initiates and putting them into perspective with colonial, missionary and ethnological sources.

The project has three objectives:
1) An interdisciplinary description of the brotherhood, its practices and its diversification.
The joint analysis of ethnological, musical, linguistic, administrative and material data is innovative. Permanent interdisciplinary interaction will allow for an adequate global analysis of all relevant aspects.

2) The methodological ambition to provide objectifiable knowledge for the study of ritual practices.
An analytical grid will make it possible to parametrize the key elements of the rituals observed in different places and at different times, and to identify transformations and transfers. This kind of analytical synthesis will later make it possible to model the evolutionary processes and spatio-temporal dissemination of traditional rituals and their contemporary adaptation.

3) The study of the mechanisms of the Ngii's transformation.
The aim is to bring to light the factors that have annihilated the internal dynamics of the Fang ritual system and led to the emergence of other rituals. The impact of the prohibition of the Ngii on present-day society will be highlighted, and we will illustrate how this institution continues to structure thought and behaviour.
The originality of the project also lies in the implementation of a participatory approach, adopting the social behaviour of the Fang as closely as possible.