Fredagskollokvium: Why use one word for many things? Reflections on persons and houses in Kilimanjaro

In this presentation, I will describe how the Chagga-speaking people on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania use the singular word moongo to mean such different things as the doorway of a house and the backbone of a person or an animal. I will argue that the seemingly very different meanings of the same word pertain to marital and reproductive relationships, which obtain their impetus from specific settlement patterns and ownership relations in this area. Against this background, moongo is shown to operate as relational facility that configures entities of specific kinds and a concept that enunciates and concerns how persons and houses are transformations of each other and effects of particular relationships.