Strategies against time

Abstract

Summary This paper considers the development of one stereotyped illness in Maguzawa (non‐Muslim Hausa) culture of northern Nigeria, and suggests some reasons for its prevalence. The central argument is that the use of stereotyped illness in this case is a strategy (if it is a strategy at all) principally against the process of time and only secondarily against men or kin; but that perhaps most important of all is its use as a cognitive catch‐all, particularly in conditions of uncertainty, to save further thought and discussion. In putting this argument forward we hope to draw attention again to the range of various meanings a stereotyped illness can have for the person concerned and not merely to its strategic use for getting at people.