Paper short abstract:

This paper explores, in the Sierra Leonean context, the social ambivalence of an ethnic identity that allows individuals to navigate rural and urban identity registers, especially by performing belonging to specific religious categories.

Paper long abstract:

In Sierra Leone, Sherbro ethnic identity is socially ambivalent, as it relates both to a Krio urban lifestyle and an indigenous rural origin. It allows individuals to employ two identity registers (Krio and kɔntri) and claim an autochthonous status, while displaying the attributes of urban modernity. The ability to use different social fronts, and to display the emblems attached to each, is central to Sherbro social duality. Thus, concealment and disclosure of social ‘fronts’ constitute moments of intense dramatization of a person’s dual identity. Such strategies are highly contextual and depend both on an individual’s ability to use specific emblems (language, clothes, religious signs etc.) and the audience for which social roles are performed. This paper explores how people separate contexts, locations and audiences when using Krio and kɔntri registers, with a particular focus on religion and ritual practices. Ritual practices constitute a privileged space for making statements about social identifications. Claiming an “authentic” indigenous identity requires membership in indigenous religious institutions (secret societies). Membership is important in establishing one’s kɔntri identity. Yet, being ‘Krio’ also entails a commitment to Christian practices. The personal ability of combining two religious registers, and keep them separate in social and semiotic practices, is critical for claiming Sherbro ethnicity and performing social duality. At the same time, it tends to draw a line between “urban” individuals – who tend to reject practices of initiation and stick to Krio religious standards – and “rural” individuals, for whom initiation is a vector of social navigability.