The symbolism and communicative contents of dreadlocks in Yorubaland

Thisbook offers an interpretation of Yoruba people's affective responses to anadult Yoruba male with a 'deviant' hairstyle. The work, which views hairstylesas a form of symbolic communicative signal that encodes messages that areperceived and interpreted within a culture, provides an ontological andepistemological interpretation of Yoruba beliefs regarding dreadlocks withreal-life illustrations of their treatment of an adult male with what they termirun were (insane person's hairdo). Based on experiential observationsas well as socio-cultural and linguistic analyses, the book explores thedynamism of Yoruba worldview regarding head-hair within contemporary beliefsystems and discusses some of the factors that assure its continuity. Itconcludes with a cross-cultural comparison of the perceptions of dreadlocks,especially between Nigerian Yoruba people and African American Yorubapractitioners.