ritual BankRupt

Thus to repudiate the ordained competencies of the Golden Stool was at one level an act of political rebellion; but it was also an act of social marginalisation that diminished the components of the human by placing the individual outside culture (and the implications of being outside culture have already been noted). Most specifically, in terms of this second consequence, to reject the authority of the Golden Stool was a decision that carried for the individual the consciously perceived implication of a severely damaged integrity, a dissolved or wrecked identity. … political rebels throughout Asante history might and did suffer a fate that was deemed to be worse than execution- exile, the expulsion from village to bush, the ejection from culture into nature. … political power and authority were rooted in and rested upon effective controls over the right to amass and to dispose of wealth. Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History. T. C. McCaskie