Aibu as a Social and Psychological Process

When the concern individuals feel about the arbiters' judgments actually affects what they do, the influence of the arbiters is manifested socially, although this may or may not be known by the actors involved. Both for sanctioners and arbiters, even if their understood or anticipated judgments in particular instances do not affect overt behavior, they may result in anxiety for the actor and affect other instances or different behaviors.

The difference, however, between the influence of understood or anticipated judgments that results in the modification of behavior and the influence that results only in anxiety is considerable. Actors may be willing to suffer anxiety in return for the benefits they derive from the behavior in question. In fact, I know that members of this group do things—and refuse to do things—even though they understand their behavior to be unambiguously disapproved by arbiters and/or by one or more groups of sanctioners. A few group members, for example, do drink alcohol, engage in generally disapproved sex with other group members, and fail to meet obligations to kin or benefactors.

This happens, I hypothesize, more often when whatever psychological costs in the form of anxiety there may be are not augmented by direct social costs in the form of undeniable disapproval from either sanctioners or arbiters. A main way for actors to avoid these social costs once the disapproved act or failure is begun is to limit the availability of information about the act through taking advantage of the general emphasis on secrecy. However, there are two culturally based processes that militate against and limit this means of avoiding the social costs of aibu.

The first of these is that when people quarrel, they are understood to be

fairly likely to use the proclamation of their adversary's aibu as a weapon. Family members may be reluctant to do this, but even they may become sufficiently enraged to forget their duties to their close kin and their own reputations and proclaim aibu that would otherwise never be known beyond the family home. Sanctioners who do not themselves disapprove of an action or failure know that other sanctioners and/or the arbiters do disapprove, and the former may use their knowledge as a weapon in a quarrel.

A second culturally constituted process that limits the assurance that information can be controlled as a means of avoiding or limiting the social consequences of aibu centers on a status whose members are called "fidhuli." A fidhuli is a person understood to be unusually interested in, and well informed about, the aibu of others and to be quite willing to broadcast his information. I know of no gloss for this status in English, so I will retain the Swahili word "fidhuli" to refer to them.

One such man is reported to have become annoyed at another for a fairly minor slight and to have said to the man publicly that the man should not forget that his grandmother always came to the fidhuli's house when she was sick. This allegation means that the man's grandmother was once a slave in the house of the fidhuli since slaves, and no one else, go to others' (i.e., their forebears' masters) houses for medicine and care when they are ill. For a person who claims to be a "noble" (mwungwana) or full member of the group, having a slave ancestor is a serious aibu that throws his whole social standing into doubt.

The fact that aibu can be revealed by fidhuli whenever they find it convenient to do so and that others may reveal it in quarrels limits the ability of actors to avoid the social consequences of their acts through limiting knowledge of them. Neither quarreling nor being a fidhuli is approved, and, as noted, the same is true even for discussing the behavior of others. However, these disapproved activities, somewhat paradoxically, have as one of their consequences the diminution of the judgmental relativity that results from the existence of different sets of sanctioners whose judgments depend, in part, on their own statuses and those of the judged. The disapproved revelation contributes to moral uniformity by making uncertain the actor's control of who will judge his actions.