Classification and taboo

1
Classification and taboo

• 30.10.2003

2
Pulp Fiction

• JT Want some bacon?
• SJ No, man, I don't eat pork.
• JT Are you Jewish?
• SJ No, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on
  swine, that's all.
• JT Why not?
• SJ Pigs are filthy animals. I don't eat filthy
  animals.
• JT Yes, but bacon tastes good, pork chops taste
  good.
• SJ Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie,
  but I never know because I wouldn't eat the
  filthy mother fucker. I ain't eating nothing that
  ain't got sense enough to disregard it's own
  faeces.
• JT How about a dog? Dog eats his own faeces.
• SJ I don't eat dog either.
• JT But do you consider a dog to be a filthy
  animal?
• SJ I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy
  - but they're definitely dirty. But a dog's got a
  personality. Personality goes a long way.
• JT So by that rationale, if a pig had a better
  personality, he would cease to be a filthy
  animal. Is that true?
• SJ Well, we'd have to be talking about one
  charming mother-fucking pig!
• (both laugh)

3
Israeli - PLO meal

• September 1993
• the signing of the Israeli-PLO agreement
• lunch at the State Department in Washington
• prepared by Movable Feast, a Washington catering
  firm
• Muslims and Jews
• neither eat pork
• Muslims
• do not drink alcohol
• wine or wine vinegar could not be used in the
  preparation of the meal.
• Jews
• kosher meal - to be slaughtered according to
  certain ritual under Rabbinical supervision.
• served glass plates (china plates not acceptable)
• kosher containers to remain sealed until served
• only one guest requested the carefully planned
  kosher meal!

4
Readings

• Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1939. Taboo. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press (Reprinted in Lessa
  and Vogt)
• Douglas, M. 1999. Leviticus as Literature.
  Oxford Oxford University Press, pp. v-viii,
  134-151. (Reprinted as Land Animals, Pure and
  Impure in Lambek)

5
Discussion topics

• Taboo
• Radcliffe-Brown
• Freud vs Westermarck
• Levi-Strauss
• Classification systems
• Durkheim and Mauss
• Douglas
• Leach

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Taboo - Radcliffe-Brown I

• The Fazer Lecture (1939)
• Definition of taboo
• derives from the Polynesian term tapu
• Multiple meanings
• forbidden
• unclean
• sacred
• Implies a connection with gods
• separation from profane things (noa)
• contagious
• Corpses - may not be touched

7
Taboo - Radcliffe-Brown II

• Multiple meanings of tapu
• Prohibition
• Sacredness
• Uncleanness
• Contagion
• Eg. Radcliffe-Brown
• temples and corpses are both tapu
• Durkheim
• sacred as an inclusive term covering both the
  holy and the unclean.
• Robertson-Smith and Frazer
• no distinction made in primitive religion between
  sacred rites and notions of ritual impurity.

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Taboo - Radcliffe-Brown III

• ritual avoidance
• rule of behaviour associated with a belief that
  an infraction will result in misfortune
• Eg. Book of Leviticus
• Prohibitions against touching certain animals.
• offering in order to restore ones status
• ritual value
• negatively expressed - in ritual avoidances
• positively manifested - sacralization

9
Taboo - Freud

• Totem and Taboo (1913)
• Taboo - forbidden activity, that humans
  unconsciously strive for
• Incest
• defined as taboo by the society
• Oedipus complex
• Westermarck effect
• Westermarck, E. A. 1921 The history of human
  marriage
• marriage arrangements in Taiwan, Israeli
  kibbutzes
• no natural lust between the kin
• Incest as norm
• Various heavenly aristocracies

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Taboo - Levi-Strauss

• The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)
• the incest taboo
• Nature culture
• to encourage exogamy
• Developed as a single complex
• To strengthen social solidarity and integration
• Taboos as functional
• Eg. post-partum sex taboos (Harris)

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Early studies of classification

• Durkheim Mauss Primitive classification (1903)
• Zuni Indians of New Mexico.
• most rudimentary classifications made by mankind
• the division of space into seven regions
• north, south, west, east, nadir, zenith, and
  center
• everything in the universe assigned to one of
  these seven regions.
• the world is completely systematized.
• man has always classified the things on which he
  lived
• Eg. animals living in the water, or in the air,
  or on the ground
• earliest classificatory systems
• probably dualistic

12
Mary Douglas
13
Douglas I

• Purity and Danger (1966)
• devoted to the analysis of the concepts of
  pollution and taboo
• Focus on the early Hebrew and the Lele of Zaire
• structuralist approach
• an attempt to understand dietary prohibitions by
  reference to a system of classification
• Study of religion and magic
• should look beyond the spiritual entities
• at mans place in nature
• To understand pollution and taboos
• One should examine the ideas of dirt
• dirt avoidance
• plays a role similar to that of ritual taboos in
  primitive culture
• dirt by-product of systematic ordering and
  classification of matter.

14
Douglas II

• Why some preliterate cultures are
  pollution-prone?
• primitive vs modern culture
• although aware of the dangers of such distinction
  making preliterate people seem more mystical than
  in fact they are and civilized thought more
  rational than it is.
• The main difference
• West - experience is fragmented,
• conceptual ideas are not unified by an
  all-embracing cosmology
• many different fields of symbolic action.
• preliterate people
• undifferentiated world view
• cultural ideas are unified
• a single, symbolically consistent universe
• Bellah
• evolution of religious system from a compact to a
  differentiated symbol system.

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Douglas III

• Lele
• food taboos
• Multiple animal taxonomies
• night animals vs day animals
• animals of the above (birds, squirrels, and
  monkeys) vs animals of the below
• water animals and land animals.
• Only certain animals edible
• For men, women, children, and pregnant according
  to their scheme of classification
• Inedible animals
• ambiguous according to some system of
  classification
• treated as anomalous

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Douglas IV

• The primary contrasts in Lele symbolic system
• human-animal
• male-female
• forest-village
• mediating elements between the contrasting
  domains.
• Spirits - between man and the animal world
• grassland gardens between the village and the
  forest
• Mediators
• anomalous with regard to these categories
• the pangolin
• occupies a key position in Lele symbolism
• scaly, fishlike monster
• Difficult to categorize
• does not fear humans

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Douglas V

• The Jews
• the dietary rules set forth in the early chapters
  of the Bible
• Leviticus (The Third Book of Moses)
• Deuteronomy (The Fifth Book of Moses)
• Genesis
• three earthly domains created
• the dry land, called Earth (19-10)
• waters, called seas (110)
• a region above the earth in the open firmament
  of heaven, which is henceforth designated air
  (114).

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Douglas VI

• these domains linked with a particular category
  of moving creatures
• brought forth by the creator in chronological
  order
• 3 (4) groups of animals
• 1) in the water
• 2) in the air
• 3) on earth
• subdivided into beasts and creeping things.
• Eating prohibitions
• This is the law of the beasts, and the fowl, and
  of every creature that moveth in the waters and
  of every creature that creepeth upon the earth,
  to make a difference between the unclean and the
  clean. (Lev. 11 46-7)

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Douglas VII

• 1) Fish
• these shall ye eat of all that are in the
  waters whatever hath fins and scales and all
  that have not fins and scales shall be
  abomination unto you.
• 2) Birds
• Douglas ignores this category
• discrepancy between the terms in different
  versions of the Bible

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Douglas VIII

• 3) Beasts
• These are the beasts which ye shall eat among
  all the beasts that are on the earth whatsoever
  porteth the hoof, and is cloven footed, and
  cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye
  eat.
• whatsoever goeth upon his paws among the beasts
  
• Also a prohibited category
• 4) Creeping things.
• These all shall be unclean to you among the
  creeping things that creep upon the earth the
  weasel and the mouse, the tortoise after his
  kind and the ferret, and the chameleon, and the
  lizard, and the snail and the mole. These are
  unclean to you among all that creep.
• most of the lizard family and small rodents

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Douglas IX

• Dissatisfied with medical materialism
• the reduction of religion and symbolism to
  questions of hygiene and material benefits.
• Eg. Marvin Harriss interpretation of the taboo
  on the eating of cows in India.
• Normal animals inhabit one sphere only
• two-legged birds flying with wings in the air
• scaled fish swimming in the water with fins
• four-legged animals, hopping, jumping and walking
  on earth
• Tabooed/inedible creatures
• living between two spheres
• having defining features of members of another
  sphere
• lacking defining features altogether

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Douglas X

• In reality
• Very few mammals and birds named are anomalous
  according to the outlined classification
• Birds
• Most conform to morphological criteria of
  birdness
• But as scavengers or birds of prey invade human
  sphere
• transgress the nature-culture dichotomy.
• Beasts
• wolf, jackal, pig, hare, hyrax, badger not
  anomalous but still inedible
• Morris
• Douglas provides inconclusive evidence to support
  her thesis that classificatory anomalies are
  tabooed categories.

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Douglas XI

• Later essay
• Deciphering meal (1975)
• the Hebrews roughly classed animals into thee
  categories
• those considered edible and fit for the altar (as
  sacrifices)
• those considered edible in a profane way
• those considered unclean and inedible
• Sacrificial animals
• no injured or diseased animal used
• The firstborn generally preferred
• fat and the blood of sacrificial animals
  considered to belong to Yahweh.
• meat from a sacrificial animal considered holy
• eaten only by persons who are ceremonially clean.

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Douglas XII

• Natural Symbols (1970)
• body
• have a symbolic dimension
• pollution rules
• Can be understood if the body seen as a symbol of
  society
• Pollution expresses a general view of the social
  order
• Eg. preoccupations with the boundaries of the
  body express danger to community boundaries.

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Food taboos Judaism

• Usually
• shellfish, pork and pork by-products
• kosher food - ritually clean
• Eg. Kosher meat
• to be slaughtered by a kosher butcher
• to be prepared in a kosher kitchen
• Utensils and containers
• Should not be used for certain foods
• Should not be washed with utensils that were so
  used
• Meat and dairy products cannot be combined at the
  same meal.
• 72 minutes to 6 hours between the consumption of
  the two.
• no desserts with cream or milk if serving meat.
• All fruits and vegetables are considered kosher.
• Wines should be from Israel or a kosher vineyard

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Food taboos Islam

• Koran
• no alcohol and the flesh of scavenger animals
  (ie. pork), birds and fish (ie. shellfish)
• discourages use of caffeine and nicotine
• (although neither are forbidden)
• no foods prepared with pork products like lard
• Zabihah meat
• slaughtered according to special rules
• similar to kosher meat.
• Fast
• until sundown during the month of Ramadam.

27
Food taboos Hinduism

• orthodox Hindus
• avoid all animal and fish products
• except milk and honey
• doctrines of non-violence, karma and rebirth
• no alcohol
• Beef
• A major taboo because the cow is sacred
• milk and butter can be consumed
• Jainism
• No root vegetables
• Eg. onions, carrots, potatoes or beets.

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Food taboos Buddhism

• dietary restrictions not part of Buddhist
  doctrine
• may be self-imposed
• vegetarianism
• Buddhist abhorrence of killing
• Thais, Japanese and Tibetans
• meat
• Chinese, Myanmen and Sri Lankans
• vegetarianism
• alcohol not a taboo

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Food taboos other

• Mormons
• no alcohol, coffee, tea and tobacco.
• colas or chocolate that contain caffeine
• not strictly forbidden
• stress on consumption of grains, vegetables and
  fruits
• only sparing use of meat.
• Catholics
• Ash Wednesday and on Fridays during Lent
• refrain from eating meat
• Vegetarians
• no meat, poultry or fish, but do eat dairy
  products
• Vegans
• stricter form of vegetarianism
• no animal related products

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Edmund Leach (1910-89)
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Leach I

• Anthropological Aspects of Language Animal
  Categories and Verbal Abuse (1964)
• Structuralist approach
• concerned with human communication
• interested in not what is said and done but the
  things that are not said and done.
• Links between linguistic taboos and behavioural
  taboos
• eg. God vs devil dog (in the 17th century)

32
Leach II

• Three broad categories of language of obscenity
• 1) dirty words
• usually referring to sex and excretion
• 2) blasphemy and profanity
• 3) animal abuse
• No sharp historical distinction
• by our lady bloody
• gods animal mother goddam damn
• Leach - particulary interested in animal names
• you bitch / you swine vs you kangaroo or
  you polar bear
• close animals
• in English mostly monosyllabic
• dog, cat, bull, cow, ox

33
Leach III

• three main categories of foods
• 1) edible substances that
• recognized as food and consumed as part of the
  normal diet
• 2) edible substances that
• recognized as possible food
• but prohibited or eaten only under special
  (ritual) conditions.
• consciously tabooed
• 3) edible substances that
• by culture and language not recognized as food at
  all.
• General approach to food taboos - the second
  category
• Jewish prohibiton against pork
• Brahmin prohibition against beef
• Christian attitude to sacramenta bread and wine).
  
• Leach - the third category deserves equal
  attention.

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Leach IV

• Jewish prohibiton against pork
• pork is food, but Jews must not eat it
• English objection to eating dog
• categorical dog is not food.
• man and dog in England
• may be thought of as beings of the same kind
• But
• Dogs may be fed horsemeat
• Swan
• eaten only by the royal family and at St. Johns
  College, Cambridge

35
Leach V

• Structuralism
• human thinking and cosmology are dualistic
• based on binary oppositions.
• the mediating category
• has characteristics of both extremes
• ambiguous and hence a taboo
• MAN ANIMAL opposition
• PET taboo (name, inedible)

36
Leach VI

• boundaries
• loaded with taboos
• exudations of the human body
• often objects of intense taboo
• (including hair, nail clippings and mothers
  milk)
• ambiguous because both of me but not me.
• mediators between this and the other world
• deities, virgin mothers. spirits

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Leach VII

• Taboo
• also related to the distance from the self
• Either too close or too far taboos
• Sexual relationships
• Eating restrictions
• distance from the ego
• self ? sister ? cousin ? neighbour ? acquaintant
  ? stranger
• self ? pet ? cattle ? prey ? zoo

38
Leach VIII

• suggests 'Leach theory of classification.
• Newborn
• perceives physical and social environment as a
  continuum.
• Growing up
• learns to apply a frame on the environment
• This makes him see things and phenomena as
  separate from each other.
• acquires a certain classification system about
  things and phenomena.
• initial continuum _____________________________
• socialization cuts this into pieces
• _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
• language not just classifies the world but
  also shapes our environment,
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
• Leach proves his point in case of Kachin