Taboos and the Control of Social Roles and Quality of Owo Ritual Textiles

Abstract

The paper examines the role which taboos play in the production and use of ashigbo funerary fabrics, girijo and igbero eldership ‗graduation‘ cloths senwonsen fabrics among the Owo-Yoruba in the contemporary times. The four had taboo association. Young women must not weave the cloths because they are immature and ill-equipped for ritual processing of the material and thus the elderly women enjoyed monopoly right. Personal hygiene and sexual abstinence taboos were also instituted. All these prohibitions were in order to ensure qualitative fabrics control. Still other taboos forbade non-members of sashere and olowo families from wearing ashigbo cloths while non-ero graduates must not wear igbero fabrics. This avoidance measure ensured the maintenance of social dichotomy between the old and the young as well as between the elite class and the rest of the Owo society. Virtually all the taboos were broken for their inherent contradictions in the contemporary times. The paper posits that the advancing knowledge of the people, the increase in their adherence to Islam and Christian practice, the gradual challenge and erosion of the social roles and power exercised by the traditional chiefs, undermined the basis for, and the established theories on taboos in the contemporary times, and consequently they are just anachronistic.