HAL Id: hal-00261573
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Submitted on 7 Mar 2008
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Spatial Mobility and Access to Resources among the
African Pygmies
Serge Bahuchet
To cite this version:
Serge Bahuchet. Spatial Mobility and Access to Resources among the African Pygmies. Michael J.
Casimir, Aparna Rao. Mobility and Territoriality: Social and Spatial Boundaries among Foragers, Fishers, Pastoralists and Peripatetics, Berg Publ. (NY, Oxford), pp.205-255, 1991. �hal-00261573�
Spatial Mobility and Access
to Resources among the
African Pygmies
Serge Bahuchet
Introduction
African Pygmies have occupied a prominent place in the debate about mobility and territoriality among hunters and gatherers, being one of the two examples used by Tiirnbull to define the notion of flux (1968). It is well known by now that arnong hunting and gathering societies, the problem of the determination of tenitoriality is linked with the definition of b o t . group structure and spatial mobility (cf. Lee 1972). We cannot forget, however, that the emergence of territonality is sometimes assumed to be connected with agriculture, with sedentarity, or with trade (as the fur-trade in the case of subarctic North American Indians, Leacock 1954). African Pygmies, as a mobile but only semi-nomadic population, also provide us with the example of a hunting and gathenng society strongly linked with agricultural people; we have then to examine the consequences of these relations for the territorial behaviour of the Pygmies.
In this paper 1 wili present data concerning the three major Pygmy groups of Central Africa: the Mbuti Pygmies of eastern Zaïre, the Aka of the Central African Republic, whom 1 studied for several years (Bahuchet 1985) and the Baka of eastern Cameroon, who show many similarities with the Aka although they speak a different language. Before comparing various foraging groups living in very different ecosystems (cf. Kelly 1983), it seems useful to compare populations living in the same environment, the equatorial rain forest, in order to underline similarities, if any. This may help
