The 'Miranda' and the 'cultural archive'

From Mun (Mursi) lip-plates, to body painting and back again

Abstract

The Mun, better known as the Mursi, live between the Omo and Mago Rivers in southwest Ethiopia. They depend on cattle herding and cultivating for their livelihood. They have a rich and complex cultural tradition that involves unique ways of engaging with their environment; yet their culture is best recognised by the women's practice of wearing plates in their lower lip, and by the male practice of ceremonial duelling or stick fighting. These well-known practices have been labelled 'harmful traditional practices' in a government campaign, and there is growing pressure for the Mun to abandon them. This paper aims to review this campaign by focusing on the lip-plates' position within the wider cultural practice of body painting. Here, focusing particularly on the materials of clay and earth, body painting is discussed as a unique way of engaging with the environment, for the Mun have an earth-centred habitus which helps to explain the practice of wearing lip-plates, as well as the medicinal role they attribute to the process of body painting. Without understanding this habitus, efforts to force the Mun to modernise by abandoning their 'harmful traditional practices' will have repercussions that are unknown and potentially more damaging than the 'harmful' practices themselves.