Popular Performances: Paying Homage and Gaining Respect

Abstract

Every Sakalava subject is offered a stake in bearing history. Service is acknowledged; individual acts are recognized as making a difference. Subjects participate in the Great Service along all three modes of identity that the previous chapters have described. In the work of the Great Service one can see also the intrinsic relationship of history to renewal, of acknowledging the past to ensure present and future, and of acknowledging present obligations to ensure the continuity of the past.