It is neither a rat nor a bird: taboos and eco-resilience in Yoruba sacred orature
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2022-05-04

It is neither a rat nor a bird: taboos and eco-resilience in Yoruba sacred orature was recorded on 21st April 2022 with speaker Dr Oluwabunmi Tope Bernard (Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria). Find out more at: https://www.soas.ac.uk/cas/events/21apr2022-it-is-neither-a-rat-nor-a-bird-taboos-and-eco-resilience-in-yoruba-sacred-orature.html

Scholarly debates surrounding the current global crises of environmental degradation are not only epistemological, but also normative. Using an ethnographic lens, this study examines how strict taboos are used as tools for environmental sustainability in Yorùbá sacred orature. This perspective has much to contribute to a core claim of Yorùbá vision of eco-justice, that the imperative of economic development should not obscure the community’s moral responsibilities for conservation and a sustainable environment. Reading the selected sacred orature in light of Buber’s “I and Thou” idea, I argue that Yorùbá sacred orature-inflected morality allows us to regard nature as a living entity that has life, existence, and being. This study concludes that the imposition of taboos on killing or eating certain insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and cutting of certain trees and the consequences of flouting them as contained in the selected sacred orature also ensured the survival of the fauna within this ecological niche.