Symbols

1
Symbols

• (Continued)

2
Discussion topics

• Anthropological approaches to symbols
• social-structuralist
• Douglas on natural symbols
• Turner on use of symbols in rituals
• Debates on hair symbolism
• Berg, Leach, Hallpike, (Obeyesekere, Synnott)

3
Douglas

• Natural Symbols (1970)
• Concordance between symbolic patterns and social
  structure
• Bodily symbolism a reflection of social
  structure
• Body
• a microcosm of the social body
• a model for any bounded system
• Pollution rules concerning body
• Focus on margins/boundaries, orifices
• symbolic of a general concern with the social
  order
• express danger to community boundaries
• reflect the need to maintain the unity of the
  tribe/groups

4
Douglas

• Symbols
• salient in groups that possess rigid social
  boundaries
• diffuse in groups where social boundaries are
  weak
• Eg. Mbuti vs Hadza
• Mbuti
• fluid social life, in terms of both social
  categories and groups
• gt no conception of pollution
• Diffuse symbols
• Hadza
• a strongly marked sexual division
• gt men fear contact with menstrual blood
• Salient symbols
• gt concordance between the symbolism and the
  social structure

5
Turner

• Various studies of Ndembu in Zambia
• Schism and Continuity in an African Society
  (1957)
• The Forest of Symbols Aspects of Ndembu Ritual
  (1967)
• Drums of Affliction A Study of Religious
  Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia (1968)
• gt Studies of ritual and ritual symbolism
• Symbol
• something that represents something else
• a storage unit
• the basic unit or molecule of ritual behavior

6
Turner

• Symbols gt the property of condensation
• two classes of symbols
• referential symbols
• Eg. ordinary speech and writing, flags, signals
• condensation symbols
• condensed forms with emotional quality
• Multivocal/polysemic
• many meanings in a single form

7
Turner

• Polarization of meaning
• Sensory pole of meaning
• referents of a natural or physiological character
• arouse desires or feelings
• Ideological or normative, pole of meaning
• referents that refer to
• principles of social organization
• norms and values inherent in the social structure

8
Turner

• Three levels of meaning
• exegetical meaning
• the level of indigenous interpretation
• operational meaning
• how the symbol is utilized within the ritual
  context
• positional meaning
• determined by its relationship with other symbols

9
Turner

• Eg. analysis of the nkanga
• girls puberty ceremony
• the initiate is wrapped in a blanket
• placed at the foot of a mudyi tree
• mudyi tree
• Diplorrhyncus mossambicensis
• milktree
• exudes white latex

10
Turner

• The mudyi tree
• dominant symbol
• multivocal
• human milk
• the social tie between mother and child
• matrilineal kinship
• the unity and continuity of Ndembu society
• women as a group
• the novice
• gt expresses both social and organic phenomena

11
Turner

• Colour symbolism
• at the apex of the total symbolic system of the
  Ndembu is the colour triad, white-red-black
• the only colours for which the Ndembu have
  primary terms
• Other colours derivative or consist of a
  metaphorical phrase
• White (dominant)
• health, life, prosperity, purity, authority
• Black
• badness and evil, misfortune, disease, witchcraft
  and sorcery, sexual passion, darkness
• Red
• power, strength, menstrual blood, murder, hunting

12
Turner

• Cross-cultural analysis of colour symbolism
• black, red and white
• frequent ritual significance
• Also yellow
• Eg. the four varnas/classes ( color)
• Explanation
• the emissions of the human body

13
Hair symbolism

• Hair
• Central role in many rituals
• Eg. Cutting of hair in rites of passage
• Berg
• The Unconscious Significance of Hair (1951)
• genitals hair
• cutting of hair castration

14
Hair symbolism

• Leach
• Magical Hair (1958)
• response to Berg
• Hair
• symbolizes ideal social categories
• long hair unrestrained sexuality
• short hair restricted sexuality
• close shaven hair celibacy
• related to social status
• Eg. Burmese hill tribes
• unmarried girls - short hair
• married women long hair

15
Hair symbolism

• Hallpike
• Social Hair (1969)
• Critique of Berg and Leach
• Cutting hair not castration
• cutting hair in case of both sexes
• cutting of beard rituals rare
• Length of hair not symbol of sexuality
• Ascetics have long hair
• Soldiers have short hair

16
Hair symbolism

• Hallpike
• Cutting of hair social control
• long hair
• being outside society
• ascetics, hippies, women
• cutting of hair
• reentering society
• living under a strict code of rules
• monks, school children, soldiers, neophytes
• Various examples from the Bible

17
Hair symbolism

• Obeyesekere Medusas Hair (1984)
• Psychoanalytical study
• of matted snake-like hair of female ascetics in
  Sri Lanka
• Turns Leach upside down
• Matted hair a symbol of Gods penis
• Anthony Synnott The Body Social Symbolism, Self
  and Society (1993)
• Critique of Leach and Hallpike
• "one-on-one equations of symbols and meanings
• hair makes oppositional meanings
• Eg. meanings differentiating men and women

18
Classification and taboo

• 15.11.2006

19
Readings

• Dubisch, J. 2001. You Are What You Eat Religious
  Aspects of the Health Food Movement. (In Lehmann
  and Myers)
• Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1939. Taboo. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press (Reprinted in Lessa
  and Vogt)

20
Discussion topics

• Taboo in general
• Anthropology of classification and taboos
• Early studies
• (Frazer, Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown), Durkheim
  Mauss, Freud
• gt incest taboo (Westermarck, Lévi-Strauss) and
  its cultural variations
• Later studies
• Douglas on dietary rules and pollution
• Leach on animal categories and verbal abuse

21
Taboo

• Originates in Tongan language
• Appears in many Polynesian cultures
• Tabu, tapu or kapu
• first recorded use in English James Cook (1771)
• Ambivalent
• Multiple meanings
• unclean
• contagious
• sacred
• separation from profane things (noa)
• Forbidden
• gt a strong social prohibition

22
Anthropology of classification and taboos

• Earlier studies
• Mainly concerned with characteristics and origin
• Frazer, Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, Durkheim
  Mauss, Freud
• Frazer
• no distinction between sacred / impure in
  primitive religion
• Durkheim (lt Robertson-Smith)
• sacred covers both the holy and the unclean
• Radcliffe-Brown
• ritual value
• positively manifested - gt sacralization
• negatively manifested - gt ritual avoidance

23
Durkheim Mauss

• Primitive Classification (1903)
• cornerstone of French structural anthropology
• Australian Aborigines, Zuni, Sioux, Chinese
  examples
• Eg. Zuni
• the division of space into seven regions
• north, south, west, east, nadir, zenith, and
  centre
• everything in the universe assigned to one of
  these
• classificatory systems
• originate in social organization
• i.e. social classification gt symbolic
  classification

24
Freud

• Totem and Taboo (1913)
• a work that no ethnologist can afford to
  neglect (Kroeber)
• Fiercely criticised
• Subtitled Some Points of Agreement Between the
  Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics
• parallels between taboos and phobias, obsessions
• parallels between totemic beliefs and neuroses
• gt preliterate people think and behave as
  neurotics

25
Freud

• Totemism
• explainable through Oedipus complex
• result of original parricide
• Taboo
• ambivalent term
• associated with things unclean as well as sacred
• a forbidden action for which there exists a
  strong inclination in the unconscious
• Eg. Incest
• vs. Westermarck The History of Human Marriage
  (1921)
• no natural lust between the kin (Westermarck
  effect)
• Eg. arranged marriages - China, Israeli kibbutzes

26
Lévi-Strauss on incest taboo

• The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)
• incest taboo
• nature gt culture
• encourages exogamy
• Exogamy/incest developed as a single complex
• strengthens social solidarity and integration

27
Cultural variations in incest taboo

• Trobriand Islanders
• Matrilinear
• gt marriage between a man and his mother's sister
  
• incestuous
• gt marriage between a man and his father's sister
  
• not incestuous
• 19th century Britain
• marriage with relatives by marriage incestuous
• eg between widower and the deceased wife's
  sister
• Islam
• marriage between "milk siblings incestuous
• i.e. if breast-fed by the same woman during
  infancy

28
Anthropology of classification and taboos

• Later studies
• Functionalist/materialist approact
• Taboos as functional
• Eg. post-partum sex taboos (Harris)
• Taboos as containers of history
• May remain in effect after the original reason
  behind them has expired
• gt reveal the history of societies
• Social-structuralist / symbolic approach
• Taboos linked to symbolic classification
  (Douglas, Leach)

29
Douglas

• Geographical focus
• Early Hebrew and the Lele of Zaire
• Various studies
• The Lele of the Kasai (1963)
• Purity and Danger An Analysis of Concepts of
  Pollution and Taboo (1966)
• Natural Symbols Explorations in Cosmology (1970)
• Implicit Meanings Essays in Anthropology (1975)
• In the Wilderness The Doctrine of Defilement in
  the Book of Numbers (1993)
• Leviticus as Literature (1999)

30
Douglas

• To understand pollution and taboos
• gt One should examine the ideas of dirt
• Dirt
• by-product of systematic ordering and
  classification of matter
• A wrong thing appearing
• in the wrong place
• at the wrong time

31
Douglas

• Lele
• Multiple animal taxonomies
• night animals vs day animals
• animals of the above vs animals of the below
• water animals and land animals
• Inedible animals
• ambiguous according to some system of
  classification
• Eg. pangolin
• scaly, fishlike monster
• does not fear humans
• one offspring at a time
• gt Difficult to categorize

32
Douglas

• Hebrew dietary rules
• Leviticus
• Deuteronomy
• Unclean animals
• Various scavengers, carrion eaters, predatory
  animals
• Eg. pigs, bears, vultures, wolves, shellfish
• Generally
• eat substances that could be harmful to humans
• can carry diseases

33
Hygiene hypothesis

• Kosher animals healthier than non-kosher animals
• eg. pigs gt trichinosis
• eg. shellfish gt accumulate harmful parasites or
  toxins
• gt Bible provides principles of health and
  cleanliness
• David Meinz (Eating by the Book, 1999)
• "God may simply be telling us that it's better
  for us believers not to consume the meat of these
  trash collectors"
• But
• Eg. cows and sheep - edible but trichinosis
• Eg. horsemeat - inedible but no trichinosis

34
Materialist explanation

• Marvin Harris
• Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches The Riddles of
  Culture (1978)
• Good to Eat Riddles of Food and Culture (1986)
• taboos
• Due to the ecologic and economic conditions
• Eg. taboo on the eating of cows in India
• More useful for agriculture than for food (in
  Indian context)
• Eg. Ban on eating pork
• Raising pigs
• Not practical for nomadic desert tribes

35
Purely symbolic explanation

• Eg. prohibition on combining milk with meat
• symbolizes separation between death and life
• Death
• the flesh of a dead animal
• Life
• the milk required to sustain a newborn creature

36
Douglas

• Dissatisfied with these explanations
• gt Dietary prohibitions / food taboos
• To be understood by reference to a system of
  classification
• Genesis
• three earthly domains
• 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)
• linked with a particular category of moving
  creatures

37
Douglas

• 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. (11 46-7)
• 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

38
Douglas

• 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
• 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

39
Douglas

• gt Normal/edible creatures
• inhabit one sphere only
• Have defining characteristics of their sphere
  only
• two-legged birds flying with wings in the air
• scaled fish swimming in the water with fins
• four-legged animals, hopping, jumping,walking on
  earth
• gt Tabooed/inedible creatures
• live between two spheres
• have defining features of members of another
  sphere
• (lack defining features altogether)
• gt classificatory anomalies are tabooed categories

40
Douglas

• Criticism (Morris)
• Inconclusive evidence
• Most anomalous mammals and birds in the Bible
• Not anomalous according to the outlined
  classification
• Eg. Birds
• Most conform to morphological criteria of
  birdness
• But as scavengers or birds of prey
• invade human sphere
• transgress the nature-culture dichotomy
• Eg. Beasts
• wolf, jackal, pig, hare, hyrax, badger
• not anomalous but still inedible

41
Douglas

• Deciphering meal (1975)
• three Hebrew categories of animals
• edible and fit for the altar (as sacrifices)
• edible in a profane way
• unclean and inedible
• Sacrificial animals
• not injured or diseased
• firstborn generally preferred
• meat from a sacrificial animal
• eaten only by persons who are ceremonially
  clean

42
Leach

• Anthropological Aspects of Language Animal
  Categories and Verbal Abuse (1964)
• structuralist approach
• concerned with human communication
• focus not on what is said and done
• But on what is not said and not done
• Link between linguistic taboos and behavioural
  taboos
• eg. in the 17th c
• God vs devil dog

43
Leach

• Three broad categories of obscene language
• 1) dirty words
• usually referring to sex and excretion
• 2) blasphemy and profanity
• 3) animal abuse
• No sharp historical distinction
• by our lady gt bloody
• gods animal mother gt goddam gt damn

44
Leach

• Particular interest in animal names
• you bitch / you swine
• vs you kangaroo or you polar bear
• close animals
• in English mostly monosyllabic
• Eg. dog, cat, bull, cow, ox

45
Leach

• three main categories of edible substances
• 1) recognized as food and consumed as part of the
  normal diet
• 2) recognized as possible food
• but prohibited or eaten only under special
  (ritual) conditions
• consciously tabooed
• 3) not recognized as food at all

46
Leach

• General focus in anthropology
• the second category (food taboos)
• Eg. Brahmin prohibition against beef
• Eg.Jewish prohibiton against pork
• pork is food, but Jews must not eat it
• Leach
• the third category deserves equal attention
• Why some edible substances not recognized as
  food?
• Eg. dog is not food
• categorical objection in England

47
Leach

• man vs dog in England
• may be thought of as beings of the same kind?
• Horses?
• dogs may be fed horsemeat
• Swans?
• Generally not served
• Exception
• the royal family and St. Johns College in
  Cambridge

48
Leach

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

49
Leach

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

50
Leach

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

51
Leach

• Leach theory of classification
• Newborn
• perceives physical and social environment as a
  continuum
• Growing up
• gt learns to apply a frame on the environment
• gt sees things and phenomena as separate from
  each other
• gt acquires a certain classification system
  (through socialization)

52
Leach

• initial continuum _____________________________
• socialization leads to fragmentation
• _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
• gt language
• not just classifies the world but also shapes our
  environment
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis