JASO - Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology - University of ...

ii Contents
Book Reviews (continued)
DAVID E. SUTTON, Memories Cast in Stone:
The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life
Reviewed by Penelope Papailias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... .
PAT CAPLAN, African Voices, African Lives:
Personal Narrativesfrom a Swahili Village
Reviewed by Richard Yokes ............................... .
EMMA HELEN BLAIR, The Indian Tribes oflhe Upper Mississippi Valley
and Region of the Great Lakes
Reviewed by R. H. Bames ................................ .
JONATHAN D. HILL (ed.), History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in
the Americas, J 492-1992
Reviewed by R. H. Bames ................................ .
Publications Received ....................................... .
82-84
85-86
86-87
87-88
89-93
Contributors to this Issue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. inside back cover
Copyright © JASO 2002. All rights reserved.
ISSN UK 0044·8370
Typeset in Times New Roman
Printed in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire

JASO 3011 (1999): 1-20
METHODOLOGICAL POINTS OF REFERENCE IN A
LOOSELY STRUCTURED SOCIETY:
FIELDWORK IN ANTIGUA, WEST INDIES
Initial Statement of the Problem
MICHAEL SALTMAN
WHAT might be assumed to be a relatively simple task, that of writing a descriptive
ethnography of the culture and society of the West Indian island of Antigua, has in
fact proved to be not so simple. While contemporary anthropological research is
primarily problem-oriented, it is still incumbent on the fieldworker to delineate
descriptively the overall social and cultural parameters within which the society
operates. My experience in Antigua did not correspond to that of previous work in
East Africa and the Middle East, where institutional structures tend to fall into
neat, orderly patterns. In attempting to detennine the institutional framework of the
community, the usual points of reference-family, wider family units, villages,
wider political and territorial units-appeared to be somewhat fuzzy and indeterminate.
This claim is not an attack on structuralism as a theoretical position in any
of its fonns, but rather a contention that Antiguan society is relatively loosely
structured and, as such, not so amenable to positivistic analysis. At all events, any
endeavour in attacking structural-functionalism today is, surely, passe. Nonethe-
This paper was researched and written during the tenure of a Visiting Fellowship at 8t Antony's
College, Oxford, in 1997-8.

2 Michael Sa/tman
less, the study of Antiguan society poses a methodological problem, the focus of
this paper, which is elaborated partly with reference to the courts in dispute resolution.
Given the above-mentioned difficulty, even at the most basic descriptive level
it should be clear that this same difficulty would impinge on the way that research
questions will be asked and answers supplied. Rather than striving for mechanical
explanations of social behaviour, the alternative may be to seek an understanding
of observed social behaviour on the basis of cognitive categories that are intelligible
to both the observer and the actors being observed.
What this paper proposes to do is to take two such cognitive categories, suggested
by Peter Wilson (1969, 1973) as applicable to the analysis of West Indian
society, and to go a step further by converting them into Weberian 'ideal types'.
Wilson's contention was that much of the behaviour of West Indians is motivated
by considerations of 'respectability' and 'reputation'. One of Wilson's apparent
errors, which earned him much criticism for a basically good idea, was that his
categories were far too 'categorical'. That is to say, he labelled patterns of be ha viour
as exclusively representing either respectability or reputation, without
critically examining the specifics of any given set of circumstances. This led to
sweeping generalizations to the effect that female behaviour is conditioned by notions
of respectability, while male behaviour is governed by considerations of
reputation.
One advantage of employing 'ideal-type' categories is the flexibility afforded
by the recognition of gradations within the category. This allows for a cognitive
map that locates specific and real behaviour on the graduated continuum of the
ideal type. Thus, one may assume that, although in certain types of behaviour
women are striving to achieve respectability in one form or another, this is not allembracing:
in other situations their behaviour may lean towards the 'reputation'
ideal type. This overall theoretical contention will be amplified and exemplified
below.
The Empirical Justification/or Structural Indeterminacy
One of the reasons for seeing Antiguan society as loosely structured is household
composition. In a particular Antiguan village of 133 households, the varying compositions
of households were almost as numerous as their actual number. Of
course, the basic grouping of mothers and their children was the prime common
denominator in all cases. Twenty-one households consisted of a mother and her
children plus a single cohabiting male. Of these 21 households only seven of the
cohabiting partners were married, and of these seven households, only four had
offspring solely from the union of the cohabiting couple. All the remaining 17
households in that group had children from different fathers. In addition, within

4 Michael Saltman
we are interested in knowing, fIrstly, the kind of form taken by these family
units in terms of their internal relationships, and, secondly, their relationship
to other structures in the society. The latter is, in this case, really another way
of asking why the family system takes that particular form. We need not concern
ourselves unduly with the fact that the domestic unit meets certain
'needs'such as the need for shelter, for sexual satisfaction or for nourishment...:
(1971: 146)
The observable units in Antigua are domestic units or households. They mayor
may not be family units, and they are, most certainly, striving to meet 'needs'.
A similar degree of 'loose structure' is evident at a higher level of social organization,
that of the village. There is little sense that an Antiguan village is anything
more than a geographical unit. There is little social cohesiveness: the village
does not function as an economic or political unit, and social interactions are rarely
institutionalized. There are no village functionaries of any description, and only a
church or churches supply any kind of public forum for those people in the village
who choose to belong to a church. Many villagers belong to churches situated outside
the village. Wilson has stated quite categorically that 'throughout the Caribbean,
the church, the school and the political party are institutions external to the
village and not therefore organically a part of the social system of the village. Frequently
their personnel are alien, and certainly their rules are' (1969: 80). Some
solidarity may be expressed for a village cricket or football team. If there is a rum
shop in the village, men will gather there for social interaction. A few women have
also been observed interacting with the men in rum shops. In the village where I
resided, women would gather socially in the few homes that had satellite TV to
watch the ongoing soap operas from the United States. As evening approached and
there was a cooling breeze, they would gather together outside to discuss, analyze
and argue over the latest episode. This was a daily social event.
In the past, villages in Antigua had a formal status, in that a village council
was recognized in law and actually had a number of functions. A law of 1945
enabled the establishment of village councils if the villagers requested one. No
provisions for elections are stipulated in the law. If the council is approved by the
majority of the villagers themselves, and also by the Legislative Council of
Antigua, it becomes a corporate body. Its main functions are detailed as the competence
to enact by-laws 'for the good rule and government of a village, for promoting
and protecting the health of the inhabitants thereof, for the prevention and
suppression of nuisances within and for the imposition and recovery of licences,
rates, taxes, fees and dues within the village'. Although these monies would be
paid into the Treasury, they would 'be placed to the credit of a fund to be called
The Village Fund, and the monies paid into the Treasury by any village council
shall be applied to the use of that village'.
The village councils were little more than the fledgling political organization
established by the indigenous political leadership of the time. The political power

A Loosely Structured Society 5
of V. C. Bird against the white plantocracy was wielded through the Antigua
Trades and Labour Union, in particular through the dock-workers. But the overall
lack of trade skills in the population at large could not result in massive recruitment
to the ATLU. So a system was devised whereby villages constituted sections
within the umbrella union organization, and the village councils were essentially
the representative members of the union establishment. Village councils would
make their demands, usually for public works, in the form of resolutions before the
union's annual conference. These would either be rejected or else be brought before
the Legislative Assembly for potential funding. The records show villages
bringing the same resolution before the union's annual conference year after year,
but to no avaiL When some local village councils balked at this treatment and
showed signs of an incipient political challenge to the centralized union authority
and the associated Antigua Labour Party, the village councils were gradually
phased out.
The political system then moved into a sort of pattern that, in return for the political
patronage that dispensed public monies, the clients, i.e. the villages and the
districts to which they belonged, would provide electoral support for ALP candidates
at elections. Today the situation is such that the village is so insignificant as
a political unit, and the government so centralized as a political unit, that individuals
approach government ministers directly in order to obtain what they require.
This concept of individualism is reflected throughout the contemporary social reality
that is Antigua. Antiguans find it very difficult to cooperate with one other in
joint economic enterprises. In the past there had been traditional mutual cooperative
aid associations, based on the principle of the 'box'. In order to raise capital
for some purpose, a group of people would pay regular sums into the 'box', one of
the members at a time taking the accumulated capitaL All are aware of the local
and oft-cited aphorism that 'partnership is a leaky ship'.
Finally, the departing colonial regime left a legacy of a parliamentary democracy
and a judicial system. There is also a civil service and a school system that
achieves a very high rate of literacy, all of which have to be seen as institutions
that function, with varying degrees of proficiency, on an day-to-day basis. There
are also voluntary associations, such as churches that span virtually the whole
gamut of Christian sectarianism, trade union movements, and political parties. The
specific institutions associated with the three Cs-Cricket, Carnival, and Calypso-bind
Antiguans together in a certain transient sense of solidarity.
Mintz speaks of a 'social detachment that can come from being subjectwhile
recognizing one's own relative lack of power-to rapid, radical, uncontrolled
and ongoing change' (1996: 296). One of Antigua's well-known Calypsonians,
King Obstinate, mocks his fellow countrymen's 'social detachment' and
individualism in bitter terms:

6 Michael Saltman
Too much selfishness and greed,
They don't care about who they bleed,
As long as they can succeed.
They don't give two toots for their brother,
They don't give a damn for their mother.
In this country, Everybody
Is all of self and none of thee.
Nobody really cares for you and me.
A recurrent theme of Antiguan calypso is that of the rampant corruption rife on the
island. Many of the songs depict the economic, political, and social effects of corruption.
Antiguans are the first to recognize how corrupt their society really is.
Jamaica Kincaid has graphically illustrated the phenomenon in her critical essay, A
Small Place (1988). Outside observers, such as Robert Coram (1993), have adequately
documented this facet of Antiguan reality. The effects of endemic corruption
on the social fabric of Antiguan life will be referred to again below, in
discussing the meaning of the term 'class' in Antigua. Suffice it, at this stage, to
state that Antigua's Calypsonians strongly reflect the 'social detachment' of which
Mintz speaks.
The characteristic lack of a well-formed and distinctive social structure is
hardly surprising, given the historical background of Caribbean society. Even
though slavery was abolished in the 1830s, the essential format of the plantation
system remained intact, certainly in Antigua, until the middle of the twentieth century.
And despite the freedoms accorded by emancipation, no significant social
change occurred within the domestic domain: for instance, the vast majority of
people choosing not to enter into permanent marital relationships.
The Theoretical Claim Elaborated and Discussed
The attempts of the structural-functionalists in their time to mould Caribbean society
into their models were neither particularly accurate as a descriptive mechanism,
nor insightful for understanding behaviour patterns. As noted at the start, this
point was made specifically by Peter Wilson as far back as 1973 (Wilson 1973).
He writes quite categorically, 'these groupings and this view of structure prove
quite inadequate in accounting for or interpreting human behaviour' (1973: 3). It is
not a matter here of setting up a 'straw man'. As already suggested, although the
critique of structural-functionalism may be passe, for many societies the institutional
framework of reference used by structural-functionalists still provides useful
reference points for ethnographic description. Other societies are less amenable to
being moulded into this frame of reference. What is being argued here is that there
is something intrinsic in the contemporary reality of Antigua that resists this type

A Loosely Structured Society 7
of description. Beyond that, in attempting to understand the nature of the disputes
that take place between Antiguans, both within and outside the court system, the
present writer found no structural points of reference that proved to be of much
value in comprehending the case material.
Wilson suggests that there are two domains of social behaviour that constitute
broad parameters within which specific acts of behaviour can be plausibly understood.
He defines them as respectability and reputation. While underlying respectability
is the principle of stratification, reputation is based solidly on the principle
of equality. According to Wilson, respectability characterizes the world of women,
as opposed to reputation, which is the hallmark of men's social existence. Besson
(1993, 1998) has challenged this last assertion with much force, pointing out that
the actions of women in both past and present belie Wilson's stereotyping. Many
others have joined Besson in this criticism of Wilson. In a sense, Wilson set himself
up in a trap by emphasizing the polarity, the opposition, the duality between
the two concepts: this seems to be the common denominator underlying the responses
of all his critics, who justifiably seize on this notion of duality as his argument's
main weakness. Thus Sutton (1974), Miller (1994), and Douglass (1992)
all focus on the gender issue, questioning the correlation between the dichotomies
male/female and reputation/respectability. But Sutton raises another point, attacking
Wilson for having made 'values the heart of his analytic model' and for seeing
'value dualism as arising from the bipolar structure that colonialism imposed'.
According to her, by leaning heavily on meanings, Wilson has de-emphasized
structure. This precludes the study of structural variables as factors influencing
changes in 'power and control over economic resources'. Wilson has ignored what
Sutton terms 'the external reality of power'. Yelvington develops this critique even
further (1995).
What is remarkable, however, is that Wilson's critics have returned to attack
him again and again over something like thirty years. Why has so much attention
been given to ideas that evoke such strong critical reactions? Perhaps in reality
something useful might be salvaged from Wilson's ideas. I would like to argue
that if one were to treat Wilson's concepts of respectability and reputation as
Weberian ideal types rather than as a bipolar duality, they may acquire some usefulness
in both describing and interpreting observed behaviour in Antigua. The
fruitlessness of trying to identify nebulous groupings and collectivities in Antigua
leaves the observer little choice but to focus on the behaviour of individuals as a
point of departure. There is an implicit phenomenological streak in Wilson's line
of thought. In referring to the idea of 'community' in his 1969 article, the precursor
to Crab Antics, he cites both Wagley ('there is a weak sense of community
cohesion and local communities are but loosely organized' (1960: 8», and Mintz
('many research workers in Caribbean societies have been struck by the relative
absence of community-based activity in daily life' (1966: 932-3». However, Wilson
is not deterred by this and writes: 'Rather than dismiss the residential commu-

8 Michael Saltman
nity as a unit of no sociological importance, I think we should accept its undoubted
existence but learn to analyse it more in terms of the way it is viewed by its inhabitants'
(1969: 81).
Respectability and reputation, then, will be treated as ideal types reflected in
the behaviour patterns of Antiguans. Weber's definition of the ideal type is as follows:
An ideal type is fonned by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points
of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less
present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged
according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified
analytical construct'. (I949: 90)
Further, Kasler suggests that the 'ideal type serves as a heuristic means to guide
empirical research ... the usefulness of an ideal-type construction is measured by its
"success" in helping understanding' (1988: 183). This is the approach taken by the
present paper, in the light of the facts acquired through fieldwork in Antigua: it is
certainly not an attempt to enter the debate between Weberian and Durkheimian
sociologists.
Wilson thus argues that if there is any structure to Caribbean social Hfe, it is in
the dialectical relation between the two principles, respectability and reputation.
This is what is being expressed by the more observable features of
social relations and social behaviour; but in the end I would argue that all levels
of the structure are explicable as products of reputation, respectability and
the dialectical relation between them. (1973: 9).
He also argues that while the 'equality' of reputation has its origins in the historical
background of slavery, within which male slaves were truly equal in their subordination,
class differentiation was created by women being elevated to positions
of concubinage, and by the privileges accorded to that role.
Respectability has its roots in the external colonizing ... society, though in any
given instance its reality depends on the integral role of the colonizing society
in the social system of the colony. Reputation, on the other hand, is 'indigenous'
to the colony ... and is both an authentic structural principle and a
counter-principle. (Ibid.)
Wilson also drew somewhat contemptuously on V. S. Naipaul's idea of
'mimic men' as characterizing the 'respectable' elite of Caribbean society, the
adoption of alien behaviour patterns from European and American cultures. If
these are the trappings of respectability and the associated stratification, then the
counter-culture of reputation is its opposite. The title of Wilson's book, Crab Antics,
indicates the exact mechanism whereby the equality underlying male reputa-

A Loosely Structured Society 9
tion is maintained. Just as in a barrel full of crabs, all of which are trying to climb
up the sides to get out:, when one approaches the rim all the others will pull it
down, so too any West Indian male who attempts to increase his status vis-a-vis his
peer group will 'meet with their opprobrium and most probably ostracism. But Besson's
critique of Wilson, discussed earlier, is sound: women engage in 'crab antics'
no less than men, and in some instances even more intensely and viciously.
Men, conversely, as they grow older, often look for the trappings of respectability.
It should be becoming clear, therefore, just how Wilson's idea can be given
added impetus by treating the categories of respectability and reputation as Weberian
ideal types. In many situations, different variations of the values expressed in
these categories are brought into play rather than oppositional dualities. These
categories may involve either men or women, exclusively or together, in their interactions
with each other. The nature of certain categories of dispute becomes
understandable when perceived within the parameters of respectability and reputation.
These values are also reflected in differences of income and status. The phenomenon
of 'shadism' in skin colour, relationships with religious associations, and
the extent of relationships with the outside world are just some of the examples in
respect of which the concepts of reputation and respectability can assist our understanding
of observed behaviour.
The emphasis is indeed on the word 'understanding' or Verstehen, as understood
by Weber. Hekman has written:
A number of modem scholars have argued that Weber understood the 'subjective
meanings' of social actions to be publicly available data. They assert
that Weber did not use verstehen to refer to the process of uncovering a hidden
mental operation, but to the intersubjective meanings or socially constituted
rules which define the meaning of action within a given society. (1983:
46)
Wilson's intuition has unwittingly produced two ideal types that not only indicate
the 'socially constituted rules', thus providing us with analytical tools, but also
supply us with the perceptions of the actors themselves in the way they see their
own society.
The Application of the Theoretical Framework of Reference to Case Material
My research interest in Antigua is oriented towards the anthropological study of
law. The study of disputes and their resolution, both within and outside of the
courts' domain, reveals just how relevant these two parameters of Wilson's are in
providing an understanding of such situations. A very high incidence of cases

A Loosely Structured Society 11
and the same time. Reputation, as already mentioned, is closely linked to equality.
In the absence of complaints by the other taxi drivers, the president of the Association
gratuitously took the initiative in berating the errant taxi driver. It was more an
act designed to enhance his status than to maintain order, and it was therefore necessary
to 'pull him down' to the general level of his peer group. The strategy of
attacking him with reference to his relationship with his wife was doubly effective.
First it highlighted the president's aspirations towards upward mobility in so far as
he was married, in contrast to most of his other colleagues. But the second and
more specific insult was directed against the president's reputation-his inability
to keep either his wife or his job under control, in addition to an even more direct
assertion that his 'respectable' wife was cuckolding him. Bringing the case to court
was also a tactical error, since it merely served to publicize the incident, much to
everybody's amusement.
The plethora of cases being brought to the courts under the Small Charges
Act-Abuse and Bad Language, can be well understood in terms of the ideal types
of respectability and reputation. This holds true especially for the fact that no clear
pattern can be discerned as to the actual statuses of the adversaries. What is at issue
are perceived statuses, and these cases cross-cut all levels of the society. No
damages are awarded, since the charge is a criminal one. What characterizes these
cases is that they seem invariably to be prosecuted by the person who considers
that his or her respectability has been impugned by the abusive language.
As I have already remarked, following Besson in her criticism of Wilson, the
domains of reputation and respectability cannot simply be correlated with males
and females respectively. Females are equally involved in disputes that involve
both of these ideal types: indeed, there are probably as many Abuse and Bad Language
cases in the courts involving women as there are involving men.
The Case of the Traded Insults
The following case was heard at the Parham Court on 6 July 1994. It was brought
by Isola Willel against Ashby Benjamin and her daughter Betty Andrews. The
charge was 'using insulting language' and 'causing a breach of the peace'. Isola
was a desk clerk at the Swift Courier Service. She herself had been married for
fifteen years and knew the defendants, who were neighbours of hers in Piggots
village, the distance between the houses being not more than fifty yards. The
events leading up to the case took place on 10 January 1993. According to the
complainant, the second defendant, Betty Andrews, had come to her home and told
her bad things that her mother had been saying against her and her husband.
Among other things, Betty told her that her husband had had sexual relations with
an 'antiman' (homosexual) from Sealy's. She went outside her house, very upset,
and as she stood outside the first defendant, Ashby Benjamin, yelled to her across
the space between the two houses to take down her laundry, because it was 'dirty

12 Michael Saltman
and mildewed', Women regard this as a very direct insult. For good measure, she
also pointedly asked Isola: 'Baby juice tastes good?' and to leave no element of
doubt as to the point of that apparently cryptic remark, she added, 'The pickenee
you have belongs to a married man and looks different' ,
The point underlying these apparently unconnected remarks is the veiled
accusation that Isola has a child from another man. This man provides for the
child, among other things by supplying fruit juice in substantial quantities. Isola
secretly drinks this fruit juice in order that her husband will not become aware of
this other man. In her testimony, the complainant said that not only had these
things shamed her and made her feel bad, but that she also felt that the first
defendant was trying to ruin her marriage. These events were merely the latest in a
series of public insults over time, the defendant having regularly repeated publicly,
'Your mother doesn't love you; you're a whore',
The defendants' lawyer argued that the second defendant was now siding with
her mother. In this case the complainant had usurped the role of the mother. The
daughter, Betty, was constantly at Isola's house, eating there, wearing Isola's
clothes, and doing all the housework. The first defendant, Ashby, was called to
testifY. She denied that she had ever cursed, but told the magistrate that she resented
the influence that her neighbour had over her daughter. In his summing up,
the magistrate indicated that he did not believe everything he had heard from both
sides and that the truth would never be known for lack of any corroborative evidence.
Nonetheless, he bound the defendants over to keep the peace for the next
eighteen months. Discussing this case with informants after its conclusion, I
learned that the fifteen-year-old Betty had a baby and that, in all probability, the
father was Isola's husband. This item of information had not been raised in the
court proceedings, or even alluded to.
This is just a typical example of scores of similar cases that come up before
the magistrates' courts in Antigua every year. As mentioned above, these are
criminal proceedings and the motivation is not to obtain compensatory damages.
Instead, the court becomes an arena for the resolution of a dispute concerning the
impugned respectability of the person bringing the charge. In this particular case,
the lukewarm outcome handed down by the magistrate was interpreted as a minor
victory for the complainant. It is important to note that neither side raised the issue
of the putative father of Betty's baby, even though this must have been a severe
bone of contention between the two households. The whole strategy behind the
abusive language was to bring into question the respectability of a hard-working
married woman, This is different from the case of the men, where the intention is
to bring 'back into line' someone who is adopting a manner or life-style that places
him above the other members of his peer group.

Unmarried Mothers and Putative Fathers
A Loosely Structured Society 13
In the magistrate's court there is a second domain involving the principles ofreputation
and respectability, the domain of the civil actions taken by unmarried mothers
against the putative fathers of their children for maintenance or for arrears in
the payment of maintenance. A study conducted by Lazarus-Black (1991) indicated
that the magistrate's court has become an arena for poor rather than well-off
women. This was a reasonable assumption, given that at the time she collected her
data, the maximum award of maintenance per child was EC$15 per week. Even for
poor women this was a paltry amount and not a very strong incentive for going to
court. Lazarus-Black further argues that, when the maximum award was increased
from EC$7 to EC$15 in 1982, there was no increase in the number of cases
brought to court. In 1993 an amendment to the Magistrate's Code of Procedure
enabled a maximum award of EC$30 to be made, with the added proviso that 'he
[the magistrate] may, having regard to the means of both father and all the circumstances,
order a sum of money more than thirty dollars if he considers such increase
just and reasonable'.
In fact, since 1993 magistrates have been giving awards far in excess of the
stipulated maximum. One lawyer told me that she had achieved a record award for
her client, EC$800 per week for a child. Given this new financial incentive, one
might have expected that there would have been a significant increase in the frequency
of maintenance suits in the courts. But this has not been the case. The
number of maintenance and arrears cases brought before all the magistrates' courts
in 1996 amounted to 1236, in comparison with the figures given by Lazarus-Black
of 1492 in 1984 and 1287 in 1985. This would appear to indicate that the higher
awards are not motivating women to litigate in increasing numbers. Instead, Lazarus-Black
argues that in the absence of financial incentives, women are hauling
men into court to give them a 'ritual shaming'. While this is probably an exaggeration,
there is nonetheless an element of trying to impugn a man's respectability by
dragging him into court. This would be true only for those cases in which a woman
who has children by several men will target a man for court proceedings if he is
holding down a respectable job, as opposed to the other fathers of her children,
who fall short of this degree of respectability. This form of 'targeting' is often motivated
by spite, frequently in response to a man transferring his affections to another
woman. Rarely is the motivation exclusively economic, a contention borne
out by several interviews with both lawyers and magistrates.
The Application of the Categories in Other Domains
As mentioned above, the title of Wilson's book, Crab Antics, is a metaphor derived
from the behaviour of crabs that have been thrown into a barrel: they will all
attempt to climb to the top and escape, but as one shows signs of succeeding, the

14 Michael Saltman
others will pull it down. This reminds one of peasant society behaviour as described
by Foster (1965). Trouillot provides an appropriate definition of peasants:
'Peasants are part-economies not in any empirical sense but inasmuch as the type
of work they engage in characterizes only a distinct level of a socio-economic
structure, that is the labor process' (1988: 288). In his coining of the concept of the
Image of Limited Good, Foster was referring to a world-view that assumes the
scarcity of all that is good in life, as well as a need to ensure that nobody takes a
grossly unfair share of that limited portion of good.
Antigua is not a peasant society in the classic sense of a rural hinterland linked
to a dominant urban elite. There are no more than seven cash-crop farmers on the
island producing a substantial commercial surplus. Henry demonstrates how V. C.
Bird actively discouraged the growth of an agricultural sector in Antigua by stopping
the redistribution of ex-plantation land (1984: 106), since independent farmers
would not nece;;sarily be dependent on the trade union movement of which
Bird was the leader.
Today, Antigua has a 'one-crop' economy based on tourism. With little economic
diversification, Antiguans are subject to the fluctuations of the world tourist
trade. But the availability of jobs is not only a function of the state of the world's
advanced economies: it is also conditioned by the seasonal nature of the tourist
trade. This means that many Antiguans are out of work for several months during
the course of the year. Jobs are intensively sought after, and given the small scale
of Antiguan society (a total population of some 67,000), people are very much
aware of the job statuses of many other people. The competition is severe, and the
sentiments expressed in the stanza from the calypso cited above are rife.
Antiguans, like peasants, are individualistic. Foster could easily be writing
about Antiguans when he states that the struggle over scarce resources 'encourages
suspicion and mutual distrust. .. and it also encourages a male self-image as a valiant
person, one who commands respect, since he will be less attractive as a target
than a weakling' (1965: 302). But there are limits to self-aggrandizement beyond
which society is no longer tolerant. There appears to be a clear linkage between the
equality demanded by the 'limited good' concept and the equality of reputation.
This may be seen, for example, in the marketing practices of women in the St
John's fruit-and-vegetable market.
With some slight variation for quality, fruit and vegetables are sold throughout
the market at the same price. Even towards the end of the day, when vendors are
still left with stock, prices remain the same, and there is no price-cutting in order to
get rid of the produce. Many vendors told me that they would bring the stock back
home and bum it rather than sell it more cheaply. The normal economies of supply
and demand do not operate in this market. Nobody is prepared to compete with
their fellow vendors in order to achieve an advantage over them and make more
money. Anyone doing so would be bad-mouthed and possibly shunned. Reputation

A Loosely Structured Society 15
is inextricably linked with a principle of 'equalizing', as distinct from the more
ideological implications of equality. Nearly all the market vendors are women.
The idea of class distinctions on Antigua is also misleading and constitutes
another pitfall. While there are different socio-economic strata, it is difficult to see
them as classes. Raymond Smith has stressed the difficulty of defining an upper
class in the modem West Indies:
the relative clarity of class relations in colonial society, with Government
House as the centre of social life, where English culture, speech and manners
were a mark of social striving-if not acceptance-has blurred into a pattern
of conflicting claims by different elites, claims increasingly contested in the
political arena. (1988: 166)
The black middle class of the late colonial era and possibly the immediate postcolonial
period was indeed as Smith described it: a conscious effort to emulate
English behaviour patterns and culture. Nostalgic articles occasionally appear in
the newspapers describing this phenomenon, and Jamaica Kincaid's novels also
reflect it. But today this class is no longer an important force, either economically
or culturally. What Lowes (1993) has described for the period between 1834 and
1940 with reference to the Antiguan middle class is not reflected in the contemporary
social reality of Antigua.
Tim Hector, one of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition in Antigua, a
radical and perceptive social commentator and editor of the major opposition
newspaper in the country, stated in an interview with me:
When I was growing up, when I was young, the respectable classes lived
between Long Street and Nevis Street. You had the Macdonalds, the Henrys,
the Langtons ... those were the families. Now it struck me very forcefully that
the Macdonalds still live in St. Mary's Street. But they have reached the stage
where the old colonial mansion they still own couldn't be repaired any more.
They don't have the means to keep it running. And so they have become almost
fuzzy-like, and that's because they didn't have the economic base with
which to provide for their children. And as you know, an elite depends upon
education in a situation like this.
A new well-to-do social stratum has emerged. The Antiguan government has
almost total control over the tourist-based economy. There are no productive industries
in Antigua, and agriculture is minimal, some people growing a small surplus
for the market, and a few farmers cultivating a relatively small acreage of fruit
and vegetables for sale to the hotel sector. The cycle of the tourist season affects
the whole economy, including agricultural production. There is no peasant farming
class in Antigua that forms a constituency in its own right, either economically or
politically. The service industry in tourism is labour-intensive and provides many
jobs, mostly menial, but, to the extent that it is capital-intensive, the profits go

16 Michael Saltman
mainly to foreign investors outside Antigua. The government itself, together with
its allied trade union movement, is the largest single employer in the country, and
the public service sector is disproportionately large. Expatriates or Antiguans close
to governmental circles or Antiguans of foreign origin, such as the Hadeed family
from Syria, own the more profitable ventures in the commercial sector.
In short, the upper-income echelons of Antiguan society have been artificially
created by the government of Antigua over a very short period of time and are not
a function of the slow, normal evolution of a middle class. There are some small,
exclusive enclaves of wealthy white expatriates, some living on the island, others
owning property in which they live for only part of the year. But the indigenous
Antiguans who hav,e become rich overnight are a nouveau riche group, ostentatious
in their patterns of conspicuous consumption, and making no pretence whatsoever
to aspiring to cultural values beyond the objects of material culture. The
behaviour patterns that Smith (1965) found to characterize classes in Grenada are
non-existent in Antigua. Thus, the acquisition of objects of material culture becomes
an important component of behaviour governed by the standards of reputation.
Brand new models of expensive Japanese cars are seen parked outside houses
that range from the very ordinary to the most decrepit shacks. State-of-the-art stereo
electronic equipment, bought more often than not on credit, blare out from
both the cars and the houses. Young men and women dress in expensive designer
clothes, prominently displaying the labels of well-known international firms. Practices
of conspicuous consumption are the main way of acquiring a reputation. Respectability,
on the other hand, is not necessarily the hallmark of behaviour for the
higher-income echelons of Antiguan society.
While reputation seems to be a dominant motivating force for behaviour
among younger males, respectability achieves its most outspoken expression
among middle-aged and older women. Reiterating the main point of this paper,
that Wilson's concepts of respectability and reputation should be treated as ideal
types, it must be stressed that reputation, as a motivating force for behaviour, is not
found exclusively among younger males, nor is respectability the exclusive characteristic
of older women. Rather, we are dealing with the poles of a continuum,
along which there are differential influences of either pole in different real-life
situations.
Age is certainly a factor. Among his peers, a stereotypic younger man will exhibit
boastful behaviour about his sexual prowess, maintain visiting relationships
with several girls, and have a number of children by them. He will attempt to impress
these women by a lavish display of material acquisitions. His ability to
'sweet-talk' women is a talent that accords him reputation, as does his proficiency
in dancing and in sport. As he grows older, he may move on to cohabit with a particular
woman, or successive women, over a period of time. The construction of a
house for a woman and her children is indicative of the man's intention to have a
more permanent and settled relationship with that woman. It is rare for a couple to

A Loosely Structured Society 17
marry until they have a house they can live in. This overall pattern has been observed
in Jamaica and has been commented on by LeFranc (1994). It seems to be
equally applicable to Antigua. This means that the average 'marrying age' in Antigua
and other West Indian societies is quite high. Even the construction of a house
does not automatically involve marriage, and a high percentage of couples continue
to cohabit together, even if they have a house. For women, 'marriage' conveys
the idea of security as much as respectability. Many of the legal squabbles
over property when a cohabiting couple break up become quite complex. The application
of English Common Law accords a distinct advantage to the married
woman in obtaining a financial settlement in comparison with a merely cohabiting
partner.
At this end of the continuum, the 'respectability' pole, married women may
aspire to be even greater pillars of respectability by becoming very active and devout
members ofthe church. This enables them not only to attain a highly respectable
status within the local community, but also to censure others who fall short of
the standards demanded by the church. The public 'reading out' of transgressions
by others, the withdrawal of privileges in performing ritual, liturgical, and musical
functions, and possible relegation to the back pews of the church are sanctions
designed to enforce a high level of compliance to the required standards of moral
respectability. Ghurch congregations are usually seventy to eighty percent female
participants. The church is a location in which mainly women interact with each
other over shared understandings about respectability. The domain of the church is
not exclusive to women of higher socio-economic standing but permeates the
whole society and constitutes an arena for the exercise and display of respectability
at all levels of society. Conversely, the place where men mostly gather to interact
over matters of reputation is the 'rum shop'. These are two very distinct
worlds, although a numerical minority of men participate in church activities, and
individual women can be found in rum shops, vying on equal terms with men in
the macho banter of the place. But there is comparatively little social interaction
between the sexes on what might be termed neutral territory.
Wilson points out many times that another expression of respectability is its
associative links with the British colonial culture of the past. For years, the educational
system was geared towards instilling good manners and well-spoken English
among children. It was forbidden to speak the dialect of creolized English on the
school premises, let alone in the classroom. Until a few years ago, the curriculum
reflected the curricula taught in English schools. The high value placed on everything
'White' in origin has also produced a phenomenon known as 'shadism',
whereby persons with lighter coloured skins attain higher status and regard. Henry
has called shadism 'an elaborate cOQstruction that labelled and attributed social
status to a large number of shades between black and white .. .it oriented them towards
whites and away from blacks' (1984: 66). A person with a lighter skin is not

18 Michael Saltman
only aesthetically more pleasing but also tends to be more socially advanta:ged by
the respectability this accords.
Conclusion
What I am trying to argue, then, is that a standard descriptive technique in anthropology,
describing the institutional structure of the society, proved to be of little
value in Antigua, and even had a negative value in trying to understand behaviour
patterns. Transposing Wilson's concepts of reputation and respectability into categories
of ideal types, they enable behaviour to be seen in meaningful terms. This
could lead to inaccuracies of the sort that Besson has pointed out. But these
inaccuracies were more a product of Wilson's attempt to provide a historical justification
for the categories: they do not detract from the actual usefulness of the
categories themselves. This provides a piecemeal rather than an all-inclusive
model of society. As Parkin has pointed out,
Weber acknowledges that the selection of elements that go to make up idealtypes
is a somewhat arbitrary affair. What is picked out and accentuated, and
what is played down, will to some extent be influenced by the kinds of problems
being investigated and the questions being posed. It would thus not
make much sense to speak of an ideal-type being correct or incorrect. For one
type of enquiry it might be best to select one constellation of elements, for
another type of enquiry a quite different set of elements might be more appropriate.
(1997: 28)
The method takes the behaviour of individuals as a point of departure and tries to
ascribe meaning to these individual behaviours. The meanings are implicitly understood
by the actors themselves. They know the 'rules of the game' that enable
them to sense the situations in which respectability and reputation become relevant
motives for behaviour. The researcher also has an analytical tool at his disposal
that enables him to study systems of concepts, as Weber advocated. Whether this
is case-specific to Antigua and Providencia (where Wilson conducted his fieldwork),
and also reported by Abrahams for St Vincent (1983), or whether it has
wider implications for the Caribbean area as a whole, remains an open question.
REFERENCES
ABRAHAMS, R. D. 1983. The Man-ol-Words in the West Indies: Performance and
Emergence of Creole Culture, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

A Loosely Structured Society 19
BESSON, J. 1993. 'Reputation and Respectability Reconsidered: A New Perspective on
Afro-Caribbean Peasant Women', in J. H. Momsen (ed.), Women and Change in
the Caribbean, London: James Currey.
1998. 'Changing Perceptions of Gender in the Caribbean Region: The Case of the
Jamaican Peasantry', in C. Barrow (ed.), Caribbean Portraits: Essays on Gender
Ideologies and Identities, Kingston: Jan Randle Publishers.
CORAM, R. 1993. Caribbean Time Bomb: The United States' Complicity in the Corruption
of Antigua, New York: William Morrow & Co.
DOUGLAss, L. 1992. The Power of Sentiment: Love, Hierarchy and the Jamaican Family
Elite, Boulder: Westview Press.
FOS1ER, G. 1965. 'Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good', American Anthropologist,
Vol. LXVII, no. 2, pp. 293-315.
GONZALES, N. L. 1970. 'Towards a Definition of Matrifocality', in N. E. Whitten and
J. F. Szwed (eds.), Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives,
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GORDON, S. W. 1996. 'I Go to "Tanties": The Economic Significance of Child-Shifting
in Antigua, West Indies', in C. Barrow (ed.), Family in the Caribbean: Themes
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HEKMAN, S. J. t983. Max Weber and Contemporary Social Theory, Oxford: Martin
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HENRY, P. 1984. Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, New
Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Publications.
KASLER, D. 1988. Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and Work, Oxford: Polity
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KINCAID, J. 1988. A Small Place, New York: Penguin Books.
LAZARUS-BLACK, M. 1991. 'Why Women Take Men to Magistrate's Court: Caribbean
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. .. 1994. Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters: Law and Society in Antigua and
Barbuda, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
LEFRANC, E., M. B. TUCKER, G. WYATT, B. BAIN, and D. T. SIMEON 1994. 'The
Meaning of Sexual Partnerships: Re-Examining the Jamaican Family System',
Bulletin of Eastern Caribbean Affairs, December 1994, pp. 17-30.
LOWES, S. 1993. The Peculiar Class: The Formation, Collapse and Reformation of the
Middle Class in Antigua, West lndies, 1834-1940, Columbia University: Ph.D.
dissertation.
MILLER, D. 1994. Modernity-An Ethnographic Approach: Dualism and Mass Consumption
in Trinidad, Oxford: Berg.
MINTz, S. 1966. The Caribbean as a Socio-cultural Area, Journal of World History,
Vol. IX, pp. 912-37.
1996. 'Enduring Substances, Trying Theories: The Caribbean Region as Oikoumene',
Jo.urnal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. Il, no. 2, pp. 289-
313.
PARKIN, F. 1997. Max Weber, London: Routledge.
SENIOR, O. 1991. Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean,
Bridgetown: University of the West Indies, ISER, and London: James Currey.

20 Michael Saltman
SMITH, M. G. 1965. Stratification in Grenada, Berkeley: University of California
Press.
SMITH, R. T. 1971. The Negro Family in British Guiana: Family Structure and Social
Status in the Villages, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
. .. 1988. Kinship and Class in the West Indies: A Genealogical Study of Jamaica and
Guyana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SUTTON, C. 1974. 'Cultural Duality in the Caribbean', Caribbean Studies, Vol. XIV,
no. 2, pp. 96-101.
TROUILLOT, M-R. 1988. Peasants and Capital: Dominica in the World Economy, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
WAGLEY, C. 1960. 'Plantation America: A Culture Sphere', in V. Rubin (ed.), Caribbean
Studies: A Symposium, Seattle: University of Washington Press.
WEBER, M. 1949. The Methodology of the Social Sciences (ed. and transl. E. Shils and
H. Finch), New York: The Free Press.
WILSON, P. J. 1969. 'Reputation and Respectability: A Suggestion for Caribbean Ethnology',
Man, Vol. IV, pp. 70-84.
. .. 1973. Crab Antics: The Social Anthropology of English-Speaking Negro Societies
of the Caribbean, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
YELVINGTON, K. A. 1994. Producing Power: Ethnicity Gender and Class in a Caribbean
Work place, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

22 Kathleen Thomas
formance is over (1981: 163-81). In her study of the pilgrimage to Lourdes, Andrea
Dahlberg reveals that it represents more than one religious discourse, not only
healing, the best known, but also the affirmation of human disability and a sacrificial
sharing in the Passion of Christ (1991: 20-50). Alphonse Dupont attempts to
find a universal model of pilgrimage, defining it as 'a quest for the sacred', which
echoes Mircea Eliade (in Eade and Sallnow 1991: 27 n.). Individual pilgrims are
found to give different reasons for taking part in the rite, some seeking healing,
some forgiveness, some 'verifYing and materializing the sacred scriptures' by a
visit to the Holy Land (ibid.: 9). Small wonder that the contributors to the conference
on pilgrimage -convened by John Eade in 1991 were found to reveal 'the essential
heterogeneity of the pilgrimage process' (ibid.: 2-3). No one theory applies
to them all, and anyone may exhibit a number of elements, each characteristic of
some other pilgrimage. It is in this multifarious human activity that the Quaker
pilgrimage will be found to take its origin.
Most Quaker pilgrimages are directed to the '1652 Country', that is, the area
between Lancashire in the south and Swarthmore, near Ulverston, in the north, a
region traversed by George Fox in that year. Fox's preaching and his success in
gathering a considerable number of followers led to 1652 being regarded as the
beginning of Quakerism. To mark the tercentenary in 1952, Elfrieda Vipont Foulds
published a short book, The Birthplace of Quakerism, which bore the subtitle A
Handbookfor the 1652 Country, obviously being intended as a guidebook by describing
a large number of sites worthy of a visit, and telling of the activities of
Quakers at each place. This book has proved popUlar: the fifth edition was published
in 1997. A comprehensive history of the interest shown by individuals and
groups over the centuries has been written by Angus Winchester in his article 'The
Discovery of the 1652 Country' (1993b). He shows how a more general interest in
the area arose towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the history of
Quakerism began to be seriously researched. It then gained momentum at the tercentenary
of Fox's birth in 1924 and led to visits being given the appellation of
'pilgrimage' in 1930. Pilgrimages of young people, older pupils from Quaker
schools, were organized from 1930 and, apart from the war years, have continued
until today.
The first striking thing about these pilgrimages is the mUltiplicity of sites.
There is no single shrine, no one outstanding place. There is Pendle Hill, where
Fox had a vision of people needing his message; Firbank Fell, where he preached
to a thousand Westmoreland Seekers; Lancaster Castle, where Fox and several
early Friends were held in jail; a room in a farmhouse at Preston Patrick, which
was used for the trials of many Quakers; Swarthmore Hall, the home of Margaret
Fell, the 'Mother of Quakerism'; and a number of old Meeting Houses and burial
grounds. There are some memorabilia: at Brigflatts, a Meeting House dating from
1675, there is the slice of the yew tree under which Fox preached in Sedbergh,
alongside a copy of Basil Bunting's poem Brigf/atts, presented and signed by the

A Quaker Ritual 23
author. Bunting was a member of the Meeting in his youth and again in later life,
having witnessed to Quaker testimony by being a conscientious objector during the
war. At Swarthmore there is Fox's Bible, and at Preston Patrick, manuscripts relating
to the trials. It is a basic tenet of Quakerism that the Spirit is not found in any
one person, and that God does not dwell in 'steeple-houses', but can be experienced
everywhere and in every age. Friends do not endow these places and objects
with magical qualities, but regard them as an opportunity, a stimulus, for reflection.
For Angus Winchester, an opportunity for reflection is one of the major reasons
for joining a Quaker pilgrimage:
To come on a pilgrimage as a member of a Quaker group involves both an
element of retreat from the cares of everyday life, a concentrated period of reflection
and an experience of fellowship as we live together with our fellow
pilgrims and share the retracing ofFox'sfootsteps. (1993a, my emphasis)
Winchester, a historian, appreciates the separation from his environment to enjoy a
'Iiminoid' period, where he can reflect on the meaning of the past for his life in the
present, and during this period he experiences communitas with other pilgrims,
who are also away from their everyday activities and their local Friends' Meeting.
The 1652 Country is not the only area pilgrims focus on. An international
Quaker Adult Pilgrimage was organized in 1993, beginning in London with a visit
to Friends House and Bunhill Fields, where George Fox is buried. Then the pilgrims
proceeded to Jordans, William Penn's grave and the site of a Quaker village
experiment (see Warner 1921), and then to the Midlands, Fox's birthplace at
Fenny Drayton, Bourneville, and Woodbrooke College; and finally to the 1652
Country, following John Woolman's last journey from Brigflatts to his grave in
York. The information leaflet states: 'It a strenuous programme and parts of it are
physically demanding.' So a period of retreat and reflection is not the only component
of a Quaker pilgrimage. In addition to the exertions of the journey, Friends of
different traditions will worship together and also seek 'to understand how the experiences,
insights and witness of our spiritual forbears relate to us and to the
needs of our own times'.
Young Friends have not been restricted to the pilgrimages arranged by schools
to the 1652 Country. The Friend of 4 October 1996 carried a report of an International
Youth Pilgrimage organized by the Friends World Committee for Consultation
(FWCC), written by a participant. Twenty-four young people from five
different countries and five leaders met in New York. The places of interest were
those connected with the lives of William Penn, John Woolman and Mary Dyer (a
seventeenth-century martyr to the cause). Historic sites and old Meeting Houses
were visited, but in addition the pilgrims learned about the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
'separations' or schisms in American Quakerism. They gained
knowledge of the present-day work of the Quaker United Nations Office and also

24 Kathleen Thomas
spent four days working in soup kitchens and on other Quaker initiatives. Worship
was shared as a group, but also with local Friends of different traditions, that is,
those using programmed worship as distinct from the British silent Meeting. During
a month of varied activity 'we were able', the participant reports, 'to create a
loving, supportive community where every individual was accepted and nurtured'
(ibid.: 21-2).
A participant in a similar Youth Pilgrimage in 1985 recalls, twelve years later,
a similar experience: 'The weeks of the Pilgrimage were filled with pain and testing,
joy and listening and a coming together of understanding and love that I will
never forget' (The Friend, 22 August 1997: 10). The experience of programmed
worship, that is, one including hymns, readings, and prearranged ministry, was one
of 'pain and testing'; the ordeal of the pilgrimage Jay not in the rigours of travel
but in the confrontation of opposing viewpoints and customs.
In both these cases of Youth Pilgrimage, a fellowship resembling the communitas
as discerned by Turner appears to have been achieved. The young people
experienced 'direct, immediate and total confrontation' (Turner and Turner 1978:
133) with Quakers of very different backgrounds, and nevertheless a 'loving, supportive
community' had been formed and a 'feeling of trust and security built up'.
How was this achieved? The young people were temporarily freed from the
constraints of their own traditions, their familiar surroundings, and usual fellow
worshippers-in short, from the environment where habitual behaviour becomes
ingrained and intolerance of difference can be fostered. This freedom can be compared
with freedom 'from hierarchical roles and statuses', which is essential before
communitas can arise spontaneously (Eade and Sallnow 1991: 4).
The young participant on the 1996 pilgrimage records that he found returning
to the world very painful, but goes on to say that he was determined to 'keep a
piece of the pilgrimage living in my life' (The Friend, 4 October 1996: 21). And
one part of his experience that he found particularly significant was that 'understanding
between the different branches of Quakerism was vitally important for the
survival and growth of the Society around the world' (ibid.). The pilgrim had realized
that the world-wide community of Quakers was important for the spiritual and
material life of the individual Meetings and indeed of the individual member.
Curiously, the creation of spontaneous, temporary fellowship between those of
opposing views, Le. communitas, proved to be a means of affirming and strengthening
the already existing structure of global Quakerism, i.e. the community. The
strengthening of the latter was achieved by providing the opportunity, through
study and contact, to understand and accept different traditions.
One activity which plays a prominent part in the Youth Pilgrimages is study,
not only of the historical roots and 'separations', but also of present-day concerns.
Study and the linking of historical with contemporary problems and initiatives is
not a part of traditional pilgrimages.

A Quaker Ritual 25
The study ingredient is also found in adult groups. In Quaker News for Autumn
1997, Tom Taylor reports on the FWCC Triennial held in July at Selly Oak,
Birmingham. Around 600 Friends attended, from 60 Yearly Meetings,2 Le. from
different areas of the world, making it a truly international gathering. Discussion
of contemporary concerns took up most of the time, but as the caption to a photograph
of a group at Firbank Fell states, 'A Pilgrimage to the 1652 Country was
arranged'. The report refers to the whole event as a study tour. A similar photograph
of Quakers at Firbank Fell, this time members ofthe Britain Yearly Meeting
assembled to discuss the current business affairs of the Society, appeared in the
July issue of Quaker News.
Another international gathering, the first International Conference of Quaker
Women at W oodbrooke in 1990 organized to discuss contemporary problems, included
visits to Swarthmore and Lancaster Castle. The Hall, Janet Scott reported,
'gave a sense of family and shared ancestry to the international, polyglot family of
visitors', while 'Lancaster struck other chords'-those heard in nightmares, the
sufferings of early Quakers (Trevett 1997: 113, 114). A feeling of communitas
among strangers is engendered by a journey to places where a common past is
commemorated, giving rise to an emotional experience, which then provides the
basis of inherited values needed for the group to study common concerns.
A pilgrimage of a different kind is described in an article in The Friend entitled
'Pilgrims and Partners' (The Friend, 4 May 1998: 15). It asks, 'Does a pilgrimage
have to focus on traditional 'holy' places?' The fortnight tour of the
Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan by twenty-four Quakers was billed as a 'study tour'.
Their journey included observations of natural history, visits to ancient sites, a
study of peace-making activities, inter-faith dialogue, visits to Quaker schools, and
a garden for children. At one historical site, Qana (Cana) of Galilee, the Friends
found their silent worship imbued with the knowledge of the tragic bombing there
of the United Nations Organization building and a hospitaL At one modern site
they saw a school which was a testimony to faithful Friends who had kept it going
through twenty years of civil war, and the garden in Lebanon which was planned
as a place for children to play safe from land-mines. The final comment in the report
reads: 'Yes, it was a study tour, but also a pilgrimage in which we felt a sense
of awe and wonder' (ibid.). What the Quakers experienced is usual among pilgrims,
but what distinguishes it from Catholic, Islamic, or Hindu pilgrimages is the
linking of the experience with contemporary concerns, events, and activities
around the world, and the direct approach to other faiths.
During the years 1996 to 1998, five advertisements appeared in The Friend
suggesting that Friends might be interested in an 'International Pilgrimage, an op-
2 Each country, or State in the USA, has a Yearly Meeting to discuss the business affairs of
the Society. The Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) is the Yearly Meeting for the whole of the
British Isles. Friends from the local Monthly Meetings (MM) attend in order to raise issues
important for the Society and for the world.

A Quaker Ritual 27
a journey in faith through two dimensions. One, through time, starting at the
sites of the beginning of the Society, passing through other landmarks to
reach the embodiment of present-day Quakerism in the Summer Gathering
... the second through space, visiting as many Meetings as we can on the
route to share the Society's Testimonies, and worshipping with as many people
as possible. We believe that we can create links across the whole of BY M,
to be a spiritual stimulus wherever it goes, and by its presence, reach a wider
public as it progresses. (Evans 1998)
The organizer notes that they will need from BYM or Meeting for Sufferings 5 a
Minute to entitle the walkers to 'Travel in the Ministry'. The theme of the Summer
Gathering is 'A Community on the Move'. Each day is to begin with a 'Tale' by a
speaker telling of his or her spiritual journey or their experience of witnessing to
Quaker testimonies, thus evoking the concept of pilgrimage by recalling Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales.
This description of the proposed pilgrimage exhibits interesting correspondences
with traditional ritual: contacts will be made with the beginnings of the
religious movement, with both places and people; it will be on foot; worship at
special places will form an integral part of the enterprise. Again the concept of a
journey through time and space is basic to much rituaL Present-day Christians
travel to the Holy Land to follow in the footsteps of the Founder from Bethlehem
to GaIilee and then to Jerusalem, finally to walk the Via Dolorosa and on to the
supposed site of the tomb. For those who cannot travel to Israel and Palestine the
journey is followed through the Church calendar, while the walk along the Via
Dolorosa is transformed into the liturgy of the Stations of the Cross. Quakers, on
principle, take no account of 'Times and Seasons' and therefore have no Church
calendar, but here in the proposed pilgrimage they are creating an event which follows
the origins and development of their own religious community. They will
follow the route of the Friends from the north-west 1652 Country, who travelled in
1654 to spread the message to London and the south of England.
Travelling in the Ministry and the development of the Society in the world has
always been the outward, visible part of Quakerism. The invisible part is the spiritual
journey of the individual. Quakers are not the only religious group to regard
life as a pilgrimage, but the word and concept figure largely in their writings and
spoken ministry. The writing of a spiritual journal, taking Fox's Journal as their
inspiration, has always been encouraged and today is becoming popular again, as
is evidenced by the organizing of 'workshops' for 'Spiritual Journalling'. These
journals speak ofthe writer'S spiritual experience and the events which give rise to
them, as well as to the difficulties of witnessing to the Quaker message. A Quaker
life is both a mystical experience, with immediate insights into truth and eternal
values, and also a compUlsion to express this experience to the world. These two
5 Meeting for Sufferings is the standing deliberate and decision-making body ofthe BYM.

28 Kathleen Thomas
elements sit uncomfortably together, since silence, stillness and withdrawal are
essential for the mystical experience, while expression and outreach demand
speech, movement, and contact with the world. Here we find two poles of a dichotomy
with which the movement has struggled in various ways down the centuries.
A Quaker pilgrimage, the expression of each pilgrim's life journey and of the
Quaker community's development and growth, provides an instance of pilgrimage
as 'exteriorized mysticism' (Turner and Turner 1978: 7}-an apt ritual, then, for
such a Society.
The dichotomy between mystical experience and outreach is not the only
paradox in Quakerism. There has also been a tension between the personal and the
corporate. Individual insights, claimed as the unmediated respiration of the Spirit,
led, from the seventeenth until the end of the nineteenth century, to the 'Separations'
or schisms in the movement. Divisions are a feature of American Quakerism
today, and it was only in 1967 that the Fritchley Remnant in England ceased to be
separate. 6 The separations that threatened to divide the movement in the seventeenth
century were in part avoided by Fox's 'Gospel Order', which included the
removal of the hat during vocal prayer in Meetings for worship-in other words, a
ritual action. From the accounts cited above, we see that the pilgrimage is both a
personal experience 'of awe and wonder', 'a retreat from cares', or a 'period of
reflection', and at the same time an experience of fellowship which bridges belief
and custom. In England a journey which includes worship at a number of different
Meetings means that the travellers experience the minor but still significant differences
between them. They still feel able to worship as members of one Society. It
is not just any journey, but one with a religious purpose, a pilgrimage, a ritual,
which helps to alleviate the tension between the personal and the corporate.
In addition, and important in understanding the particular style of Quaker pilgrimage,
there is the conflict between tradition and the reinterpretation of the
Quaker message. The Quaker view of creeds is that they are an attempt to express
the inexpressible in terms limited to a certain time in history, for the Spirit leads on
into a greater understanding of truth. As the Quaker Book of Discipline has developed
over two hundred years, some passages deemed at an earlier date to be important
for Friends' reflection and enlightenment have been erased (see Thomas
1993). Each passage is given its date of composition as a reminder that ideas and
experiences have to be understood in context. This attitude to the past in part
explains Quakers' ambiguous position towards pilgrimage. The traditional
pilgrimage is essentially a veneration of past things, people and events. The
commemorative factor is still much in evidence in Quaker pilgrimages as the participants
'walk in Fox's footsteps' or 'in the footsteps of Gandhi' or follow
'Woolman's last journey'. But all these pilgrims have a purpose for today: they
6 The Fritchley Remnant was a small Meeting which opposed any relaxation of the rules of
the Society as they existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A Quaker Ritual 29
declare it as their intention to apply their experiences and insights to the 'needs of
our times'. For the ritual to be acceptable to friends, it needs not only to be simplified,
shorn of images, crosses, and holy shrines, but also to express their presentday
beliefs and concerns.
In adapting an ancient ritual, Quakers have produced a pilgrimage meaningful
for their religious life in the post-modem age. Charles Jencks, approaching postmodernism
as an architect, considers that it has 'a concern with meaning, continuity
and symbolism' (1996: 46), while multiculturalism and the idea of plurality are
basic features of the movement (ibid.). The weakness of the movement, he notes,
is that it gives rise to social insecurity. The tendency to fragmentation in the Society
in the late twentieth century is a cause for concern among its members and has
led to much self-questioning as to the meaning of the message and the search for a
unifYing principle. There are an astonishing number of groups in so small a Society,
ranging from long-standing committees concerned with the peace testimony,
education, or social concern, to more recent groups such as Quaker Green Concern
and Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship, and to the more theological New Foundation
Fellowship and the Quaker UniversaIist Group-the two extremes of
Quaker belief. In her Swarthmore Lecture of 1997, Christine Trevett presses for a
renewed study of the lives and teaching of the founding members. Dandelion, citing
their way of conducting business-no voting, a nominations committee, use of
special phrases-suggests that 'the only glue left' is 'the Quaker way of doing
things' (The Friend, 26 June 1998: 13). Peter Collins suggests that 'plaining', the
substitution of elaborate ritual by very simple symbols and an unostentatious lifestyle,
is deeply ingrained in Quakerism, and this forms a powerful bond. 'Plaining',
he writes, 'is a polysemic practice through which Quakers with different
theological inclinations can identifY themselves as united' (1996: 287). The
Quaker pilgrimage can be added to Collins' examples of 'plained activity'.
The Quaker pilgrimage can only be a partial answer to the Society's need for a
unifYing activity. Apart from the Youth Pilgrimage, which began as part of young
Friends' education-and leaving aside the residential Summer Gathering-the
pilgrimages attract no crowds, and most participants act on their own initiative.
Nor are pilgrimages the only activity undertaken to revive the memory of early
Quakers and the world in which the movement had its origins. At a 'William Penn
Weekend' in 1996, Quakers rehearsed the 'Penn-Meade Trial', perhaps the first in
England where the jury asserted its right not to convict on the instruction of the
judge. In 1997, the 350th anniversary of the Putney Debates, this event was acted
out with live debates on comparable issues of today, ones of international and
global concern. Some local Meetings celebrate their own tercentenaries or other
anniversaries.
Other Quakers, however, are unhappy about marking any times and seasons.
Complaints were voiced when The Friend produced special articles for the Christmas
issue, whereas others felt that Good Friday and Easter should have been

30 Kathleen Thomas
acknowledged in the periodical. For some Quakers even the general handshake
between worshippers after the elders have signalled the end of the hour of silence
is a creeping-in of ritual to be resisted. This ambiguity in Quaker attitudes is expressed
in a short poem by Kevin Bamford in a booklet entitled Place of Pilgrimage:
A Brigflatts Anthology.
Brigfiatts! Another name to conjure with!
We walked there on a summer's day, that, too,
A kind of pilgrimage, though we would all
Deny the implication of the word.
What present could we take away with us
From such a place as this? No souvenir
No holy relic, image of a saint,
No George Fox bookmark, no Valiant Sixty pen!
A sense of atmosphere perhaps, conferred
By knowledge of the years of worship there.
Yes, that! And an appreciation of
The simple Quaker style. But most of all
An image ofthe dog-pen by the stair.7
Place of Pilgrimage is available to visitors at the Meeting House. This anthology
contains brief accounts, dating from 1684 to 1987, of visits and the feelings
aroused in the visitors, as well as of events and activities taking place at the Meeting
House. Some other Meeting Houses and sites, such as Swarthmore Hall and
Brant Broughton village in Lincolnshire, offer booklets on the history of the place
and picture postcards of the building. But there are no profit-making souvenirs
and, as I have noted above, few memorabilia. Nothing is offered that could be a
keepsake.
In his analysis of tourism, Nelson Graburn suggests: 'Souvenirs are tangible
evidences of travel that are often shared with family and friends, but what one
really brings back are memories and experiences' (1989: 33). The objects are not
just proof of visits but symbols of the emotions aroused and the meaning of travel
for the tourist. In their rejection of souvenirs as symbols of their visits, Quakers are
true to their founder's rejection of symbolic objects to express religious experience:
their memories do not need to be awakened by artefacts. Furthermore, their
emphasis on simplicity would deter Friends from buying unnecessary things which
only help to use up the world's resources.
It might be suggested that, in showing such a growing interest in pilgrimages,
Quakers are just falling in with a contemporary fashion. Adopting something be-
7 This poem, 'Brigflatts', is reprinted here by courtesy of The Friend

32 Kathleen Thomas
and enlightenment, or an attempt to help solve some of the Society's problems.
That some pilgrimages have a considerable effect on the economy of the sites venerated
cannot be denied, at Lourdes or Knock, for example. Little impact has been
made on the places of Quaker pilgrimage because numbers are small. Nor are
Quaker sites tourist attractions, though the Tourist Information Office in Sedbergh
explained how to reach 'Fox's Pulpit' when I enquired. However, the simple
plaque recording Fox's visit there, on the side of a huge boulder at the top of a
windy hill, would hardly attract the ordinary tourist. In contrast, no one at the
tourist office in Hawkshead had any knowledge of the quietly impressive seventeenth-century
Meeting House in Colthouse. Valene Smith speaks of 'the magic of
sharing a tourist activity', which is strong and lasting when 'the participants share
similar value systems': she does not restrict the value systems to religious ones. As
we have seen, 'religious tourism' or pilgrimage creates a strong feeling of fellowship.
She also records that: 'A guide in India expressed the hope that domestic
tourism by Indians -travelling within their own subcontinent will eventually help
break down the language disputes and provincialism that continue to fracture government
efforts towards national consolidation' (1989: 3). Thus one type of tourism
may, it is hoped, promote a kind of unity in the nation similar to that aspired to
by Quakers through their inter-regional and international pilgrimages.
In February 1999, members of a London Meeting organized a historical tour
around Shoreditch, led by a Quaker lecturer in local history who was used to 'taking
Quaker pilgrims around sites in the city of London'. The walkers stopped at
places connected with the lives of Quakers who were active in such causes as temperance,
anti-slavery, poverty, crime, and education, and whose work proved of
enduring benefit to the area. Just two-thirds of the 104 people who took part were
Quakers. One of these wrote: 'The interest in local history shouldn't be underestimated
as a form of outreach, and people who came on the walk from the
Shoreditch Preservation Society care about what goes on here and now in the city,
just as Quakers do, and we're glad of the chance to "net-work'" (The Friend,S
March 1999: 14). The tour finished at Bunhill Fields, where 12,000 Quakers are
buried, as well as Fox himself. Here we have an instance of Quakers using the contemporary
interests of the wider public and linking them with a commemoration of
their own past and their present-day concerns. Historical tourism provides the opportunity
for both Quakers' own religious needs and outreach.
In 1998 the Canadian Government saw that tourism could have desirable
ends-apart from the obvious economic ones-when they organized a conference
announced as 'Tourism: A Vital Force for Peace' (Smith 1989: 4). It is interesting
to note that a Quaker, Valerie Flessati, has devised a 'Peace Trail through London'.
This includes the Gandhi memorial and the Japanese Peace Pagoda, as well
as seven other sites having associations with a variety of people who have furthered
the cause of disarmament, conscientious objection, and opposition to war.
The leaflet produced is intended for tourists and visitors who might otherwise miss

JASO 3011 (1999): 35-50
PLAYING (WITH) THE NUMBERS:
VARIATIONS ON A DUMEZILIAN THEME
DEAN A. MILLER
The Dumezilian TripartitelTrijunctiona/ Theory
THE 'invention' of that symbolic projection found in the Indo-European (lE) traditions,
with its tripartite or trifunctional outline, is customarily-or canonicallyassigned
to Georges Dumezil (1898-1986), though Dumezil's colleague Emile
Benveniste was investigating along much the same lines at about the same time, in
the 1930s (see, for example, Benveniste 1932). Very briefly, Dumezil, drawing on
a Durkheimian suggestion (if not a strictly Durkheimian model), found evidence
that archaic IE-speaking societies were likely to conform their social, as well as
their religious and many other structural aspects of the society, so as to reveal three
fonctions or categorical 'slots', and that in doing so these societies almost certainly
retraced a proto-Indo-European (PIE) master-pattern. Translated from the French,
the three are usually given as the Sovereign or First Function (Fl), the Second
(Warrior or Guardian) Function (F2), and a Third Function compounded of the
socially 'nourishing' areas of health, wealth, increase, and sexuality (F3) (see
Littleton 1982: 58-93). Such was the core of the IE ide%gie, meaning in this case
a strong inclination toward tripartition, almost a habit of mind, apparent especially
in the oldest extant IE data--and thOUght to be intentional and purposive, and not
any sort of accidental 'tic' or automatic, meaningless response.
Over fifty years of an extremely active career, Dumezil explored, expanded,
and modified this theme, finding more data congruent to his theory, as well as 10-

36 Dean A. Miller
eating cultures and societies that, although indubitably lE in linguistic root and
affiliation, resisted 'any easy application of the trifunctional schema: the ancient
Greek (and the continental Gallic/Celtic) were seemingly resistant to a total inclusion
in his theory so far as social divisions and religion were concerned, while
Roman, Scandinavian, Irish Celtic, Perso-Indic, and other lE-speaking traditions
fell into line rather more easily, though hard battles were fought over particular
entries in the trifunctional ledger. But 'Dumezilian trifunctionalism', whether accepted
or not, became almost a theoretical cliche. In this short paper I want to examine
some important numerical (if not numerological) variations on the base
theme, as well as looking at the persistence of the old tripartite theme or design
itself under certain conditions and in certain areal traditions, identified both in
space and in time.
Earlier and Later Reactions
One reaction to the Dumezilian formulation, apparent very early, was what might
politely be called disbelief or at least agnosticism. It was argued either that (a) tripartite
phenemona did not in fact mark the ancient lE traditions, or had no significant
place in them, or (b) that all societies (especially archaic societies), speaking
from within every sort of broad linguistic family, frequently and casually displayed
tripartite div:isions and categories. Thus it was argued early on (for example,
by John Brough) that Judaeo-Christian scriptural sources (the Old Testament
in particular) seemed to show clear 'trifunctional' traces (Brough 1959; see Littleton
1982: 198-200). More recently a Dutch scholar, Jarich Oosten (1985), taking
another line of argument, has declared that there are plenty of important lE-based
schematic formulations, even in ancient Greece, but that Dumezil's tripartitism
explains little of this lE base (Oosten posits a series of 'familial' or kin-group phenomena
generating lE mythic themes, problems, and solutions). Throughout, and
as a kind of minor KulturkampJ, a group of mainly German scholars and their epigones
have set themselves up as what Coutau-Begarie calls 'scientific anti­
Dumezilians' (1998: 200), beginning with Paul Thieme and E. A. Philipsson, and
continuing to Bemfried Schlerath and Schlerath's student Stefan Zimmer (see, for
example, Schlerath 1995-6). This group-in consonance with (a) above-simply
denies the validity of the trifunctional phenomenon tout entiere. Here, with some
qualification, is where I would put Wouter Belier, whose 1991 book concentrates
on details of the Dumezilian 'ideologie tripartie', In my opinion Belier is obsessed
with the undoubted fact that Dumezil changed his mind from time to time; and I
might add that, according to N. J. AlIen, Belier's obsessive probing oftrifunctionality
is significantly vitiated by the fact that he has misread, by excessively limiting,
the meaning of 'function' in the Dumezilian sense, taking the concept to mean
only 'activity' (Allen 1993: 121-2).

Playing (with) the Numbers 37
As to those who follow Dumezil and the trifunctional model 'scientifically', I
note not only figures such as Dumezil's student, Bernard Sergent, but also the outbreak
of civil war between himself and another student of Dumezil's, Daniel Dubuisson.
This scholar has decried the excessive 'congealing' or 'mummifying' of
the Dumezilian system he has laid at Sergent's door, implicitly including the latter's
strict interpretation of what reflects the trifunctional theory and reality (Dubuisson
1996). Joel Grisward (see 1981) has explored and explicated a number of
trifunctional patterns, especially in Western medieval sources. Some others, although
originally open to the attractions of Dumezilian theory, now feel that that
theory may overemphasize or overplay the trifunctional line. Jaan Puhvel, a longtime
collaboratpr with and friend of Dumezil's, has stated that, in his latter-day
opinion, his old friend should best be remembered not for the tripartite theory, but
for the fact that he 'freed comparative mythology from the tyranny of etymology'
(Puhvel 1996: 153). Edgar Polome, another old colleague and the editor of the
Journal of [ndo-European Studies, has said that Dumezil's findings (in terms of
trifunctionality) may refer only to very early lE patterns (personal communication).
Even Dumezil himself, at the very end of his long life, raised doubts about
the lasting validity of his theoretical construct, doubts which probably sprang from
his highly developed sense of irony, but which still pleased-and fuelled the more
or less principled objections of-those others who tried to break down and contradict
the whole system he had described and explored (but for Dumezil's continued
interest in the trifunctional, see below).
Some Modifications
Dumezil never erected a unitary, marmoreal structure and then demanded that it be
worshipped or sacrificed to (though he did insist that it ought to be properly understood).
I myself thought that it might be possible to follow the hint he provided in
his theorized bifurcation of two of his Functions. FI he divided into the Mitraic or
'near', 'light'. and 'ordered' sovereign aspect and the Varunaic or 'far', 'dark', and
'mysterious' aspect. F2, he suggested, might be split into the socially and antisocial
manifestations or exemplifications of the 'guardian' Function, imaged respectively
as the porr warrior in the Old Norse sources and the 06inn warrior in
the same context (Dumezil 1948/88: 19-29; see also Miller 1991, and especially
Polome 1990). I therefore experimentally inserted an interstitial entry (or entity)
between the 'Right Hand' and the 'Left Hand' extremes in each of the three Functions,
thus trisecting the original tripartite organization. I My attempt was soon
1 See Miller 1992. I assigned, not entirely arbitrarily, a Functional 'marker' to each Function:
Ft marked with Time, F2 with Act, F3 with Space. The problematic Third Function
remains the most difficult to deal with in Dumezilian terms.

38 Dean A. Miller
given a further complex turn by William Sayers, who designed a threedimensional
diagram, a globular figure cut horizontally into three unequal
segments (for the visualized Functions, with F3 taken as the largest and Fl as proportionately
the smallest). With each segment then quadrated, the quadrants were
read as Nature opposed to Culture (for my Left and Right bifurcation), and Mediated
activity opposed to Unmediated activity (Sayers 1993). Sayers-who had
once worked on tripartism as it provided a 'narrative tool' in dealing with certain
Irish and Icelandic contexts (1990)-now, with his quadripartate structure, added a
sort of Levi-Straussian colouration, approaching the four divisions (or activities)
posited in the theory advanced by N. J. Allen, whose ideas I will detail shortly.
Emily Lyle has offered her own rendition and rearrangement of the Dumezilian
scheme, expressing an 'expansive' view basically claiming that the presence of
trifunctional (or certainly triplex) phenomena in cultures beyond the lE does not in
fact invalidate Dum6zil's theory, but expands its usefulness (e.g. Lyle 1996: 103).
However, her reading and penetration of the archaic materials (lE and non-lE) has
led her to a type of quadripartite formulation in which three approximately Functional
representations, all male, are accompanied and brought into a final unity by
a dominant female potency (Lyle 1990: 11-25). This part of her theory has been
supported-and specifically in important segments of the lE linguistic-cultural
camp-by the investigations of a Swedish scholar, Britt-Mari NasstrOm (1995),
who found that the Norse goddess FreyalFriggya had an omnifunctional association
or projection (as she was the wife of the chief god, a battle goddess, and a
goddess emblematic and protective of fertility and sexuality), and that this pattern
was not at all uncommon elsewhere in the fund of archaic lE materials. 2 While
maintaining this possibility, Lyle has also advanced the thesis that the Feminine
(which I have capitalized to show the abstraction) may be perceived not as a fourth
entity strictly speaking, but as the 'rope' or whole formed by the three strands of
the Functions. Again, this is not necessarily, in her thinking, a conceptualization
limited only to the archaic lE thought-world (Lyle 1996: 102-3).
Before moving on to other expansions of the original tripartite suggestion, I
ought to refer to Kim McCone's variation on a Dumezilian theory. This Irish
scholar lays out a triplex diagram identifYing material, social, and moral categories
or slots (generally, F3, F2, FI), but-in this reading the Warrior Function is made a
'rank' in society; it:l other words, the aspect of 'warrior violence' (the negative,
anti-social aspect) is subtracted from the original pattern (McCone 1990: 130).
2 Dumezil himself, sketching the pagan pantheon of the Kafirs (an isolated, lE-speaking
people of the Hindu Kush, Islamized only in 1898), notes that it seems to consist of 'quatre
masculins, un feminin' divinities, and that the female, the goddess Dizane, was in fact
'trivalente' (1994: 221-2).

Allen's Fourth Function
Playing (with) the Nwnbers 39
N. J. Alien began his construction of an additional Function, to be added to the
original three, by noting that a quaternary rather than ternary organizational principle
was more likely to emerge as an imaginal pattern in archaic (traditional) societies.
He also underscored the fact that Dumezil himself had experimented with a
fourth category or division (in his predictive IE formulation) as describing better,
for example, caste data in India (AlIen 1985, 1987). Allen sets up his Fourth Function
as 'relational', that is, as pertaining to what, in the IE material located, is
'other, beyond or outside' the three Functional slots (Alien 1987: 28). The new
Function resonates especially in respect to IE kingship or 'sovereignty'. Thus
Allen proceeded to exhume and examine the mythistorical career of Romulus,
finding that the Founder of Rome not only operated in or commanded all three
Functions, but also moved beyond or outside them, being seen as, in one sense,
supernumerary, deploying overarching, exceptional powers that can be identified
either as constructive (F4+) or destructive (F4-) (AlIen 1996, with diagram on p.
27). Now, in any discussion of royal authority, the 'mythic' posture and salience of
the Founding King will almost always be drawn in extraordinary, unbounded, even
semi-divine or divinized terms. I have suggested that such a figure as Constantine
the Great, founder of East Rome and of his own city, is wrapped in a cloak oflegendary
Stojfthat, when closely analyzed, replicates the characteristics of Romulus
as Founding King. 3 Allen also suggests that his theory would remove kingship in
esse from the limits imposed by a strict Dumezilian reading of FI 'sovereignty'
(AlIen 1996: 33). In more recent work, he has used his F4 instrument to lever a
heroic figure like Arjuna out of the usual framework given (in Dumezilian terms)
for the great Indic epic, the Mahiibhiirata: AIjuna had been accepted as one of the
Warrior-figures-F2 actors-of the epic's central Pandavas, but AlIen sees him
rather as F4, modelled after Indra, named as 'King of the Gods' (AlIen 1999: 407lO,412-13).
Lyle has raised at least a definitional cavil in respect to Allen's idea of a
Fourth IE Function, observing that the looser, 'relational' aspect of this new Function
might remove it from the other, or earlier, 'operational' aspect of the three
Functions as strictly defined (and she sees no utility in completely abandoning
triads for tetrads in the IE context; 1996: 102). At this point I might also insert my
own reading of the ultimate meaning and nature of lE 'sovereignty' and the
tensions running within it, for, in reaction to the pressure from the sacral-priestly
aspect of the First Function, certain theories of kingship (I instance the East Roman-Byzantine
and provisionally some Western medieval royalties) devised or
3 See Miller, forthcoming. The principal source for these legends is Gilbert Dagron's Constantinople
imaginaire (1984). The chief (and symmetrically presented) difference between
the cases of Romulus and Constantine is that the former indicates a mythic figure situated
in 'history', the second a historical figure removed or translated into myth or quasi-myth.

40 Dean A. Miller
attempted to devise a distinct imperial mode of supreme governance. By asserting
the emperor's absolute primacy over all we would call the Functions--and, moreover,
by eliminating hierarchy as such-any rival, priestly claim to sovereignty (by
definition signitying the top of a hierarchy) was reduced to a side issue. This idea
is often expressed in legal terms: in medieval France, the king was seen as an emperor
in his own kingdom, especially as he had 'the authority to interpret divine
law' (Swanson 1991: 280-9), and the same was seen when Henry VIII removed
his realm from any form of legal subordination to Rome, declaring that it had always
been an 'empire,.4 In its most thoroughly articulated form (the East Roman­
Byzantine), this imperial power is neither divisible nor sovereignal: it is singular,
monolithic, and, in. theory, eternal. It is possible, of course, that this 'imperial'
concept is subsumable within the Fourth Function rubric as a sort of supreme vision
of the Fourth Function. But, so far as I can see, the concept arises from the old
IE division or tension between sacred and secular (or, loosely, Varunaic and Mitraic)
power which AlIen would like to remove or ignore, and it probably springs
from the royal desire to establish one primary line or connection to the divine, one
that the ruler, king or emperor, monopolized or controlled.
The Persistence ofTrifunctionality
The Functional tripartism devised (or at least recognized) by Dumezil is a highly
seductive construct: at one point, I (and two other scholars) were cited by no less a
figure than Jaan Puhvel for 'foisting the Nessos-shirt of "the sins of the Warrior"',
first on to certain cited warrior figures, mainly Greek, and then on to an innocent
and unwary scholarly public (Miller 1977; Puhvel 1982: 26). Locating these Three
Sins (ofFI king, or ofF2 warrior) in fact remains as one of this system's salient
temptations, not least because it seems to make sense of certain acts and patterns
of act frequently found in the archaic IE materiaL Specifically it shows, in respect
of kingship, how total or 'perfect' royal power ('perfect' kingship being a frequently
encountered mytho-political theme in the traditional sources) can be limited
and ended and succession arranged for, and in respect of the Warrior Function,
how a powerful and fractious entity-perhaps very dangerous to society-could be
reduced and finally brought to heeL 5 Another tripartite phenomenon surfaced in a
Scandinavian source, the RigsPu/a, where the three sons of the god Heimdallr are
given as Jarl ('noble'), Karl ('peasant'), and I>raell ('slave'), which seems to show
a social division without a First Function king or priest. In fact this social division
seems to have removed a category from the upper end of the canonical sequence
4 Cross 1991: 437: 'the King from henceforth would rule England as a new Constantine.'
5 In the ancient Irish context the 'prohibitions' called gessa, set against both king and warrior,
served as limitations: violation ended life or occupation of office.

Playing (with) the Numbers 41
and added a category at the other, lower end. Dumezil (1958) found the missing
First Function figure concealed in the myth in the person of the 'son of Jarl', the
'magician-king', Konr-ungr. Thus the original lE social formation would have
been quadripartite (like the Indic) if the l>raell or slave had not been completely
excluded from the social system, as he usually was. In any event, the idea that in
the north a tripartite social system prevailed, shaped along the lines of this model,
is now firmly established (see Pearson 1973: 155).6
I have no intention of setting out every area of trifunctionally ordered or directed
investigation, but I should point to the persistent scholarly interest in identifYing
lE Functional 'colour coding', continuing from 1942, when de Vries laid out
the symbolic trio 'Rood, wit, zwart'. White and red are usually and firmly (if symbolically)
attached to the first two Functions. The F3 colouration is more problematic:
Grisward (1983-4) has identified and explicated the meanings of the 'trois
arbres' in the Graallegend ('l'arbre blanc, vert, rouge'), while Lyle has rung the
changes on the colour symbolism involved in the (Roman and East Roman) circus
factions and in some other lE contexts first looked over by Dumezil (1990: 8-9,
especially 35-47, 'The Circus as Cosmos'). With Lyle (as with Allen, whom she
cites), the triplex colour code soon moves toward a quadriplex formula, for the
Third Function splits into two moieties or sub-sets represented or symbolized possibly
by yellow and black, possibly by green and blue (ibid.: 8-13). With a recent
article by Claude Sterckx (1997) we move back to tripartism: Sterckx's Three
Kings are 'blanc, rouge, et bleu'. Sterckx makes the valuable observation that the
colour of the Third Function is often simply read as a reversal of the 'noble' Second:
it is 'non-rouge', connoting 'en fait l'impur et le sale' (ibid.: 839). This author
also underscores the importance of the lE colour code itself, for he notes that the
Vedic and Avestan words for 'social class' (varna andpistra respectively) literally
mean 'colour' (ibid.). In leaving the subject, I ought to remark that, to no one's
surprise, the authenticity of the entire lE 'tricolore' phenomenon is observed with
ajaundiced and disbelieving eye by scholars such as Zimmer (see below).
With Sterckx's view of the Three Kings we can recover firmer tripartite
ground, and elsewhere it is clear that a trifunctional set is very often made part of
the descriptive and eulogistic vocabulary attached, most particularly, to kingship.
When it is demanded, What is a King?, the response would likely be that he is one
who is (simultaneously) wise, brave, and generous, thus commanding--operating
effectively in-each of the three Functions. Slightly eccentrically, one Celtic tradition
(investigated by Dumezil himself) defined the king in negative terms, that is,
he should be without 'jealousy, fear, or avarice' (Dumezil 1973: 91-2). Elsewhere,
as in Ptolemaic Egypt, with its Macedonian dynasty, we find piety substituted for
6 The Germanic .area generally remains problematic in respect to these three 'classes',
though the AnglO-Saxon evidence for a tripartite social structure seems quite clear: see, for
example, Pelteret 1995: 29 ff.

42 Dean A. Miller
wisdom, but the First function loading or valence is clear enough. 7 The list goes
on. In Carolingian Frankland the 'honorific designation of kingship' was read as
compounding virtus, magnaminitas, audacitas (Peters 1970: 66). A peculiar variation
on this eulogistic model can be seen in the same context in the epitaph for
Boso, briefly King of Provence, which states: 'Hie pius et largus fuit, audax, ore
facundus' (MGH Poetae, IV: 1027-8). Both Charles the Bald and his brother Lothar,
coevals of Boso, were also given this fourth special talent (see Nelson 1992:
11, citing Nithard, Historiarum Libri IV 111.6). The fourth inscribed excellence,
referring to the king's ability to speak well, raises some fascinating questions and
possibilities of its own, first because the mouth can be taken (as in the Indic context)
as the specific seat of the Fl power (Allen 1999: 410), and secondly because,
in another traditional lE context, the king's voice is said to resonate in three
modes: the voice of justice, the voice of command, and the voice of healing-three
modifying nouns with rather clear trifunctional significances (Bryant 1992: 143;
for other powers and aspects of 'royal speech' , see Miller 1999).
In fact it is not difficult to run up quite a sizeable catalogue of trifunctionally
resonant descriptions of what a good king should be and do in sources ranging
from William of Tyre to William Shakespeare, as well as a concise trifunctional
description, taken from Thomas Aquinas, of how a bad king will act. The Angelic
Doctor defines him as 'enthralled' by cupidity and dominated by anger, and in
addition he hinders' his subjects' spiritual good (De Regno Ill. 26; the pattern of
negative charges ascends from F3 to Fl). Another French medieval source, a fourteenth-century
address to Charles VI made by Gauzelin de Bosquet, seems to
'clericalize' the excellences that supposedly mark the true king: he should show
'good intent, humility, purity of heart' (Swanson 1991: 283). What seems to activate
these descriptions within archaic or traditional lE contexts? I would, if tentatively,
suggest three generative possibilities: the formulaic, the ceremoniaVritual,
and the dramatic.
(a) Formulaic instances of tripartite description might be interpreted as showing
a declension and enfeebling of meaning. These instances would be close to the
'tic' which some anti-Dumezilians see as essentially similar to or resembling all
the other cultural situations where a triplex response is called forth as a sort of
catch-all, or as a banal expression of approximate completion or totality ('morning,
noon, and night', 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite', or for that matter 'Tom, Dick, and
Harry'). There are, however, enough significant variations on the original lE triadic
formula to show that here we have a cluster of ideas, not merely an automatic
and unthinking response. For example, when the king is located in association
with, or over, the Second (Warrior) Function, he may be granted the gage of Vie-
7 See Dunand 1981: 23; according to Diodorus Siculus XL 26. 6, in sixth-century BC Syracuse,
the tyrant Gelon was applauded by his people as 'benefactor, saviour and king',
which parses as a trifunctional set if basileus (king) is taken in this case-for in ancient
Greece the meaning shifts--as an F2 or 'military' occupation.

44 Dean A. Miller
(prosperity and riches). Again, these can be interpreted without difficulty as F2,
F1, and F3 (cited in Bryant 1994: 19-22, quoting John Lydgate). ID
(c) The dramatic trigger of a tripartite sign may best be seen in the following
scenario, and to no particular surprise the Second Function (dramatic almost by
definition) is involved. In the great Old Irish source, the Tain Bo Cualnge, the nonpareil
warrior Ct'i Cbulainn is seized in his terrific Warp Spasm (TBC 61, 201; 11.
2262 ff.). As part of his monstrous transmogrification his hair springs out from his
head, 'dark at the roots, then red, then tipped with gold'. I cited this triplex colouration
as significant in Mallory and Adams (1997: 253), and my reading was criticized
by Zimmer (1999: 124) as 'a void speculation in the style of Dumezil's
epigones. There are so many "tricolores" all over the world'. The last statement is,
of course, true, but Zimmer has, I believe, quite missed the point. Ct'i is referred to
elsewhere in the TBC as 'the dark-haired lad', in the same way that his ordinary
physical stature is given as slight, boyish or adolescent. When his warrior's fury
overtakes him and the wildly dramatic Warp Spasm occurs, ell springs up to a
tremendous height, and his hair is made to take on the tricolouration that signals a
special injection, or projection, of the fiercest energy and power (as if the Warrior
Function had here expanded beyond its set limits to dominate all the Functions).
Dumezil himself continued to explore the possibilities inherent in the tripartite
divisions he had discovered up to-and in fact, one may say, beyond-the end of
his life. Thus in his posthumously published Le roman des jumeaux. Esquisses de
mythologie (Dumezil 1994) there is a section on 'Trifunctionalia', revealing not
only that he had continued to explore such themes as 'the three sins of the warrior'
(here the sins of the Tarquins, father and son, as recorded in Roman mythistory:
ibid.: 271-7), but also that he was still probing the complexities of the three Functions
as they were worked out in various places in Herodotus, specifically in the
latter's description of the Thracian pantheon ('Notes sur la tMologie des Thraces',
ibid.: 231-6). In the latter essay he displays the flexible curiosity which is the
hallmark of his style of thought and research, noting (and here Allen might find
evidence for his interpretation of the separated valences of kingship, since 'Hermes'
is given as the specific Thracian royal god, guarantor of royal oaths) that the
generality of Thracians seem to honour only three gods, trifunctionally ordered, of
whom the last mentioned is feminine (Artemis, equivalent to Thracian Bendis, an
F3 d
· . . ) 11 IVlmty .
10 The Paris Entry (Henry being briefly accepted as king of both realms) presented certain
institutions of the city as, arguably, functional representations: the University (Wisdom),
the Parlement (Justice, the Sword) and the Hotel de Ville (Prosperity: all in Bryant 1994:
24). Nick Allen reminds me that putting an F2 label on the Parlement of Paris may be forcing
or distorting the evidence somewhat (personal communication).
11 See also Dumezil1994: 278ff., for 'Les trois fonctions: entre l'homme et la femme'.

Concluding Remarks
Playing (with) the Numbers 45
I admit to the rather nostalgic attraction of the fact that, in a new world of informational
hypernumeration and gigabytes of proliferated data, I have been concerned
here with divisions of merely two, three, or four. To sum up, as it now stands the
'numerical' situation in terms ofIE patterns seems to be as follows. The triadic lE
Functional structure-a big element in the ideologie originally posited by Dumezil-is
still alive and well. It seems to emerge most strongly and persistently in
descriptions of how lE kingship is constituted. Thus in its early medieval formulation-to
give one more example--it is clearly visible in Alfred the Great's Commentary
on Boethius, stating that a king must be supported by, and should himself
support, gebedmen, fYrdmen, weorcmen, or those who pray, those who fight, and
those who work (Batany 1963: 934; repeated, naturally, in Duby 1980: 99-103).
Of course, more or less pure tripartism need not be limited to the area of the royal,
as we see--if anecdotally-in the Poema del Cid, where El Cid Campeador demands
three things: his swords, his daughters' dowries, and justice for the wrongs
done his daughters by the repulsive Infantes de Carrion. 12
Withal, questions have to be raised in two areas: first, on a possible expansion
of the triadic Functional structure while still staying within an lE frame, and
secondly (certainly a related problem) on the possibilities for variability and flexibility
within the Functions themselves. On the first point, Allen believes that kingship,
at least, ought to be reconstructed to conform to his 'relational' F4 theory
(and Lyle [1996: 104] makes the sensible point that Dumezil, who certainly saw
the operation of the king in all three Functions, really ought to have revised his F I
theory accordingly). I have suggested that a developed 'imperial' theory also sets
the ruler in a separate category, freed both from any 'sacral' specialization that
might intervene in or claim sovereignty, and in fact from the limitations posed by
sovereignty and hierarchy itself (for the East RomanlByzantine construction of
both theory and praxis, see Nicol 1991). On the matter of variability within the
Functions, we have already seen that even in the old (if I may use the term) or
original Dumezilian formula, the First Function was quickly bifurcated into the
Mitraic and Varuniac entities (or operations), while within the archaic lE tradition
dual kingship-not necessarily related at all to the Mitraic-Varunaic types-was
seen, in pure or variously modified and differentiated forms, in ancient Sparta, the
Germanic tribal area, and elsewhere (see Miller 1998). The putative solidity of the
Second (Warrior) Function is also ephemeral: not only do we have the Ooinn Warrior/p6rr
Warrior bifurcation, but (as displayed in various epic contexts) we also
see the pairing or balancing of a warrior type with another, for instance, a 'pure' or
chivalric warrior placed with a specialist in brute force--as AIjuna and Bhima-or
the 'pure' fighter paired with a trickster or magic-worker, witness Diomedes and
12 V. 137. The demand is in fact addressed to the king, but in the event 'justice' is achieved
in a trial by combat in which the Infantes are routed.

46 Dean A, Miller
Odysseos, or Bedwyr and Cei in the old Welsh tales (see Miller 1985, 1989).13
These latter F2 pairings differ from the primary Dumezilian Mitraic-Varunaic division
because, in 'their more or less co-operative relationship, the 'pairs' are
meant to further the action and effectiveness of the Function, which is not at all
clear in the F 1 Mitraic-V arunaic division, a division seemingly dominated by difference
and rivalry,14 There is a temptation, I think, to regard the Second Function
as the core and pivot of the whole Functional idea and structure, yet this Function
can show itself divisible, or be redefined (as McCone did) to make it simply a
sign--a 'function' -of society itself.
Finally, the Third Function remains, as always, a difficult Function to deal
with, containing as it does variable and ambiguously perceived goods and potencies
(sexual passion and its dangers, as well as legitimate generation and necessary
fertility, the deep and dark powers of the earth, wealth and its anti-social temptations,
and so on). How, additionally, will we deal within the lE societal rubric with
the 'mystery of the merchant', a figure mobile, manipulative, providing but not
making anything-save, he hopes, a profit (see Miller 1992: 16, diagram on p.
17)? This Third Function, often signed as it is by the mysterious Twins, seems
rather poorly integrated into an lE system that has often been tempted to snub,
suspect, or derogate it (as we have seen in the colour coding as explained by
Sterckx, above).
The previous pages may be felt to display a situation still caught up in a primitive
arithmetical count, with no advance into mathematics, to say nothing of a
more complex worl,d of calculation. The investigation, however, is ongoing, and
one has hopes. Clearly, the nature and number of these Functions is still a moot
point and unclear. Allen, I think with cause, says that Belier's notion of what a
Function is-simply an 'operation' or activity-is much too limited; Alien's own
Fourth Function may be too broadly defined, or may serve merely as a better way
of viewing the complexities of the Fl category, a sort of Fla-(x). What we do
seem to see, in the ongoing scholarship springing from Georges Dumezil's original
set of IE scenarios and his ideologie, are two counterposed efforts. One, notable in
AlIen's F4 expansion and in the latest work of Lyle, is directed toward the extension
of the original triad. The other appears as a sort of process of distillation,
where a tripartite core is discovered in a larger group of individuals-the five Pandavas,
for example, or the 'sept fils de Aymeri', whose essential tripartism was
decoded by Grisward. In either case the arche was undoubtedly provided by the
13 See also Michael York's essay (1988) on the 'inherent duality' apparent in the ancient
Greek and Roman sources.
14 These F2 pairings seem closer in modality to the 'dual-kingship' type just described, I
ought also to admit that Allen has provisionally removed Arjuna from the Second Function
and therefore out of his partnership with the club-wielding Bhima,

50 Dean A. Miller
SAYERS, WILLlAM 1990. 'Guin agus Crochad agus Golad, The Earliest Irish Threefold
Death', in C. Byme (ed.), Proceedings of the Second North American Congress of
Celtic Studies, Halifax,1989, Halifax: Chair of Irish Studies and st. Mary's University.
1993. 'Charting Conceptual Space: Dumezil's Tripartition and the Fatal Hostel in
Early Irish Literature', The Mankind Quarterly, Vo!. XXXIV, pp. 27-64.
SCHLERATH, BERNFRIED 1995-96. 'Georges Dumezil und die Rekonstruktion der
indogennanischen Kultur', 1 teil, Kratylos, Vo!. XL, pp. 1-48; 2 teil, Kratylos,
VoL XLI, pp. 1-50.
STERCKX, CLAUDE 1997. 'Le roi blanc, le roi rouge, le roi bleu', Zeitschrift zur
Celtische Philologie, Vols. XLlX-L, pp. 837-46.
SWANSON, R. N. 1991. 'The Problem of Subjection: The University of Toulouse,
Royalism, and Papalism in the France of Charles VI', in Diane Wood (ed.), The
Church and Sovereignty, c.590-1918: Essays in Honour of Michael Witks, Oxford:
Basil Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society (Studies in Church
History, no. 9).
TAIN B6 COALGNE 1967. Tain Bo Cualgne from the Book of Leinster (ed. and transL
C. O'Rahilly, Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (Irish Text
Society, Vol. 49).
YORK, MICHAEL 1988. 'Romulus and Remus, Mars and Quirinus', Journal of Indo­
European Studies, Vo!. XVI, nos. 1-2, pp. 153-72.
ZIMMER, STEFAN 1999. 'Comments on a Great Book', The Encyclopedia of Indo­
European Culture, ed. 1. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, Journal of Indo-European
Studies, Vol. XXVII, nos. 1-2, pp. 105--63.

The Internet in the Field 53
There is one aspect of what I discuss here which was a not a feature of my
website but which should be available to the next doctoral candidate to attempt this
way of working. The search and extraction engines have not yet been made available
on-line. There is a good reason for this: I was the guinea pig. We first had to
determine how and what to extract and how to set things up. I include information
about the extraction engine in this paper because, while it was not a part of my
website or my ongoing research, it is a vital component in producing better data
from the field.
The ongoing website was a collection of text documents with some audio and
video material and edited field notes. Every field-note entry included a header indicating
the date, time of day, place, and persons, as well as an abstract for almost
every entry. To compensate for the fact that my personal diary was not being made
available for publication, I wrote a weekly update which resembled a personal diary
in which I included how I felt about much of what happened, as well as giving
a brief summary of the highlights of the week. I tried to write monthly reports
focusing on the ways I did research and some of the major topics. I included a section
in the website for recorded music and some photographs, as well as local people's
writings (sadly, local writing was not tremendously forthcoming). As the
research progressed I found that there were things that simply did not fit into any
of my preconceived categories, so they were simply linked to the front page in a
list with no particular theme. These included things like kinship terms, census
questionnaires, photographs, and party invitations.
Open Ethnography
My doctoral research is an experiment in 'open' ethnographic fieldwork. From the
moment of deciding to do a Ph.D., I intended to have an ongoing website while I
was in the field. There were several reasons for this. First, I like the idea of sharing
knowledge in such a way that mistakes can be made visible. Secondly, I like data,
and the world wide web and CD-ROM are ideal for including large amounts of
data that can be organized in usable and non-cluttering ways. Thirdly, while I prefer
single-authored ethnographies in publication and intend to do my own that
way, I wanted to include some of my informants in the academic side of what I do.
I wanted them to see what I did with the notes I was constantly scribbling onto
little scraps of paper.
Open ethnography does not mean anthropologist-centred ethnography. Reflexive
accounts of anthropologists in the field are useful, and novelized works like
Bowen's Return to Laughter (1956), Barley's The Innocent Anthropologist (1983),
or Watson's more academic edited volume Being There (1999) serve a valuable
role in bringing fieldwork and ethnographic research to life. All these works focus
primarily on the anthropologist, however, and therefore fall into a different cate-

54 Stephen M Lyon
gory than what I am striving for. By open ethnography I mean very specifically
that the process of data collection or production and some of the pre- or semianalysed
data be made available, and made explicit. I hope to achieve a level of
accountability akin to the ideal in the natural sciences whereby external observers
may link arguments to source data and follow the development of the argument at
multiple stages of the analysis. Openness, therefore, has to do with data, and accountability
with what anthropologists do with data.
The mistakes and problems of others provide valuable training cases. Anthropologists
the world over stumble and falter, so there is no reason to hide what I
did. There is a danger that exposure may backfire on the anthropologist, but in the
long run analyses are only as good as the data to which they apply; it is therefore
in every anthropologist's interest to maintain the highest possible standards (accepting
that perfection is non-existent and that all research has flaws). Certainly
not all methods are good, but there are a variety of ways one can do fieldwork.
Exposure has allowed others to criticize what I am doing both face to face and
through e-mail (thanks to the website). I was surprised at the number of comments
I received while in the field. Naturally I reserve the right to carry out the final
analysis, but the comments showed me other ways of looking at things.
Anthropology thrives on data, regardless of the fact that journal publications
limit the amount that can be included in papers. The amount of data that sits and
rots in cardboard boxes and filing cabinets is depressing. Few anthropologists find
a venue for the mass of the data they have produced during their fieldwork, and
they do not have the time to process it all themselves. Publishing some data is
problematic, as the data may be of a sensitive nature. Even when the 'sensitivity'
level is minimal, however, there are problems using other researchers' field notes.
Reading through the late Professor Paul Stirling's field notes on-line (as is possible
at http://lucy.ukc.ac.uklStirling) one quickly realizes the difficulty of making sense
of someone else's idiosyncratic shorthand and sloppy abbreviations. It took me
several days to figure out that 'M.' in many of Stirling's notes referred to his wife
Margaret, not Mohammed. This abbreviation makes absolute sense if one happens
to live with 'M.', but for the rest of us it is confusing.
The Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing at the University of Kent
(CSAC) has been developing tools to overcome these problems. The APFT/CSAC
Content Codes System (Fisc her et al. 1996) provides a means of coding the content
of field notes to render them more easily searchable and usable by other anthropologists,
or indeed anyone interested (see the Appendix for more information
on content codes and meta-Ianguages).
On-line field notes that have been content-coded allow users to make enquiries
on a wider range of topics than simple keyword searches. They also make the data
useful to researchers with radically different agendas. For example, I might ask
about the level of violence associated with land disputes. I would then receive a
summary report based on the data extracted from my own field notes. If my mem-

The Internet in the Field 55
ory and my field notes do not come to the same conclusions, it may suggest areas
where further research is needed. Someone else might enter a query about symbolic
representations ofIslam, something that is not pertinent to my thesis, but ifI
have done a credible job in coding my field notes this may still produce something
of use. The idea is not to let the computer do our thinking for us but to use it to
help point out areas that need further elaboration and or investigation, and/or provide
examples to support or refute work in other places.
Using the internet in the field and publishing data while in the field can pro.
duce better data (field notes, preliminary analyses, graphic images, audio recordings,
interview transcripts, samples of material generated or produced directly
by informants). However, I say this advisedly. A great deal of data is produced in
the field, and in order for it to play a role in improving ongoing research it must be
organized and managed in standardized, systematic ways. If the goal is then to
maximize exposure via the web, then a further set of navigational issues arise.
Banks (1994) and Biella (1994) discussed the varying degrees of 'complexity'
necessary for a web site to avoid it becoming either 'naive' or 'chaotic'. This is an
important concern when one thinks of presenting data from the field when demands
on researchers' time seem endless. Fine-tuning a website to achieve just the
right balance should not be a priority of anthropological field research. Field notes
in particular are difficult to manage and use, so they must not only be maintained
in internet/world wide web-friendly ways, but also organised quasi-automatically
by content. Access must be open enough for outside users to be able to make sense
of what they see while protecting informants from undue embarrassment and
eliminating any possibility of informants being harmed physically or materially.
In all fairness I should indicate here the amount of time and expertise required
to manage field notes in this manner. A template was developed for me to structure
and store my field notes. This template was developed using proprietary software,
Adobe FrameM,aker©, which has the advantage that the application is available for
all platforms and the files are cross-platform compatible. This template can be
used with moderate training, depending on the level of computer competence of
the researcher. The most involved aspect of this task is learning the content codes
themselves. As with other coding systems, this comes with practical application
rather than studying the codes themselves. The technical training and practice
required to incorporate the coding should be minimal for people who are comfortable
using software packages with pop-up menus. Maintaining the website remotely
requires slightly more knowledge about how to access remote servers. This
also means that the researcher must have the correct permissions set on the server
that houses the website so that changes can be made. In brief, this part of the job
requires someone familiar with use of the internet, not just the web. This is not as
onerous or demanding as it might sound, since the software necessary for this, on a
Macintosh at any rate, mostly uses a click and drag interface which can be learned
relatively easily.

56 Stephen M Lyon
Time management is always an issue, so the organization and dissemination of
various field data should be kept as simple as possible. Although coding and organizing
for the web does take time, there is a very clear economy of time over organizing
field data in more traditional ways. Writing up field notes in places like
Pakistan is a question of making use of the little time you are left alone to think
with. In my case this was normally done after midnight when everyone else had
gone to sleep. At that time of night, after long and increasingly hot days, I was not
in a frame of mind to organise my data into sections and subsections: my goal was
to get as much on record as possible. I did this as quickly as possible, and had
someone told me I needed to maintain separate files or use separate font colours
for different types of data it would not have pleased me. Coding can be done later.
I tended to add codes in the morning when I was fresh and to do serious writing up
in the evening while my scratch notes still meant something to me. Using the
search engines, I can now filter through all my notes and create output files that
are the equivalent of maintaining separate field-note files or books or catalogue
cards. This point may be more assertion than anything else, since I have not used a
stopwatch to compare times. In any event the time things take varies according to
individuals and conditions; but there is no reason to assume that adding content
coding to the routine process of organizing field data will significantly increase the
burden of researchers.
Sharing Data: Increased Feedbackfrom Outside the Village
The first thing I did upon arriving in Pakistan was to arrange local internet service.
I was therefore in e-mail contact almost immediately. Apart from the emotional
comfort of not feeling quite so isolated from friends and family, this connection
provided valuable feedback during my research. The majority of e-mails I received
cannot be reproduced because I only received permission from a handful of my
correspondents. I set up several 'mailing lists' of differing levels of formality.
When something humorous or thrilling occurred, I sometimes edited my field-note
entry for an e-mail message to people around the world. Without exception I received
replies to these messages asking pertinent questions about what I had not
said. These comments, embarrassing though they were at times, never failed to
indicate to me that, no matter how thorough I might have thought I was being,
there was a vast amount of information I was missing. The e-mailed comments and
questions did not lead to me 'getting it all', but they helped me get a little bit more.
They also, at times,' forced me to reassess how I had understood events and to go
back to my informants for clarification.
One incident that generated several comments was an interview I conducted
which became side-tracked on to the topic of magic in the village. I rarely pursued
this topic, but my informant's enthusiasm was contagious. The comments from

The Internet in the Field 57
anthropologists who specialize in magic and ritual were revealing. I had been told
that there was little magic in Islam and that people would be very reticent about
discussing it. Furthermore 1 was not terribly interested in magic or religion, but in
politics, power, and agriculture. Consequently I was somewhat unprepared to research
ritual magic, when I realized that not only was it not uncommon, but that
people were quite open about it if they were alone with me. I give this example
only to illustrate how the internet via e-mail may allow researchers more latitude
in following what comes up in the field, regardless of what they went into the field
'prepared' to research. There are times when the informant is willing and the researcher
is eager, but the right questions, for lack of preparation, just do not present
themselves. The internet is not the only way to gain background information
while in the field, but in my case it could be done from the bedroom-curn-office.
Internet communication was not restricted to friends and prior acquaintances
by any means. An e-mail exchange with a sociologist, who kindly commented on
my website, caused me to rethink my village-wide questionnaire. His criticism of
how I conducted the questionnaire and what purpose it served helped clarify what I
hoped to get out of it. Comments like the sociologist's are sure to arise upon returning
to the university setting, but by then it is too late to change the way things
are done. In this case I did not end up changing anything, but I had to justify to
myself why I stuck to the original plan. The experience forced me to be more rigorous
in setting my goals for the questionnaire.
Increased Feedback within the Village
Sharing my data within the village proved extremely fruitfuL Villagers were curious
about why a gora (a generic term for white men) had come to live in their village
for one year. They are used to visitors but not to visitors who stay for such a
long time nor to visitors from European universities. Explaining what I was doing
and what I was investigating was not easy. In the beginning I tended to tell them
what I was researching at that moment (agricultural techniques, Islamic ritual,
marriage choice etc.). They then gave me all the information I could cope with on
that subject. I tried telling them that I was interested in every aspect of their lives,
and then they tried to include me in things they thought were the most important. I
found this less satisfying, since what one person thinks is terribly important may
be quite boring or insignificant to another.
I had the benefit of my weekly updates and monthly reports to share with
those villagers who could read English. They in turn helped to spread the information
to others. It seemed to help them understand several things about my presence:
(1) I was not a development worker come to hand out large surns of money;
(2) I was pretty much interested in everything, but most interested in how landlords
manage to control the village; (3) I wrote down more of what they say and do

58 Stephen M Lyon
than they realized. I tried to be quite obvious about writing down what people told
me and what they did, but they never failed to be surprised when I showed them
my edited notes, updates, and reports. The first reaction was usually to laugh and
exclaim something about how in-depth my study was. The only occasion when
anyone became upset about anything I included involved my failure to refer to
someone as 'my friend'. This was purely unintentional on my part; I had called
several people 'my friend', but that particular man I had only referred to by name,
and he was genuinely hurt by it. This incident drove home the impossibility of
foreseeing all problems. We do the best we can, and then we have to be prepared
to accept that we blunder.
Overall, the villagers were very proud to have an anthropologist in their village
and very pleased to have a website devoted to them. Understanding more
clearly why I was in the village tended to make people more helpful. They understood
that I am human and that I got bored and tired of some of the things they did,
but that I thoroughly enjoyed my stay. It is very important to almost everyone in
the village that guests be happy and enjoy themselves. I confirmed this to them
repeatedly, but seeing it in the website somehow made it more real for them. A
small number of men took it upon themselves to try and make sure that I got to see
everything of importance in the life of a north Punjabi villager, and my notes
helped them identify the gaps in my education. Lest I give the wrong impression,
this really was a small number of men. Most people were not interested in reading
my notes, updates, or reports, and were not very interested in hearing lengthy descriptions
of what I was researching. Once I told people that I was studying aspects
of their lives, that was enough for them and they changed the subject. Thus I did
not magically find myself in a village of amateur anthropologists who had a passion
for looking at social organization and relations.
The local man who, I would say, is something of an amateur anthropologist
and who followed my website the most closely is Malik Amiruddin (I have chosen
to retain Malik Amiruddin's name in this paper. He was not a 'subject' as such,
and his intellectual contribution to my research was important enough that I feel I
owe him the citation). He is not actually a villager but he has a close connection in
being married to a woman from the village, although he comes from a landlord
family of the same caste in a nearby town. His interest in computers and the web
predated my arrival by some time. His first reaction when it all became live was
that it seemed very detailed but that all the interesting bits were cut out. He tried to
persuade me to let him have access to my complete unedited notes. I avoided doing
this, but I have no doubt that he has not forgotten that there may be more scandals
hidden in them. He was very helpful in the particular areas that he found the
most interesting, namely Gujars and Gujarism, agriculture, and disputes with cousins.
When he read a comment on one of these topics that he found skewed or inadequate,
I invariably ended up having a long and instructive conversation about
it. We spent an evening discussing the history of a neighbouring caste (which is

60 Stephen M Lyon
I let this activity slide after the first few weeks because I found I was mostly
getting the same requests over and over again from the same people. After people
had seen their village on the web, they wanted to search for lUxury goods: perfume,
cars, jewellery, watches. Then they wanted to see what information was
available on illicit sites: alcohol, guns, women. The latter category is tricky because
everyone who wanted to do these searches was also adamant that I did not
do these kinds of searches with anyone else. In particular I was asked never to
search illicit subjects for unmarried men. Unmarried men were deemed too immature
and irresponsible to handle the abundance of pornography available on the
web. I should add here that no one was very interested in these illicit sites once
they saw them. I was unwilling to distribute my credit card number, so what we
got was of rather low interest, even to men from a very gender-segregated society.
Over the following months I no longer initiated web searches with people (though
I continued to show them my own website and others that I thought would be of
interest to them). Gradually, men began taking an interest in searching the web
again. This was due in part to Pakistani visitors who actively used the web returning
from the States. At various times throughout the field research I was asked for
specific web searches (watch prices, a specific make and model of car, international
news of Benazir Bhutto's conviction). The landlord family, for the most
part, found the internet very interesting but showed no interest in being able to
navigate around it themselves. Other villagers were very curious, but only for short
periods of time. The one topic that stimulated numerous requests for internet information
was the Kashmir crisis. Many people in the village do not trust the information
they receive from the television news reports, especially as it is often
contradicted in the Urdu daily papers. News from The Times and other British
newspapers was deemed to be significantly more credible than locally available
news. I left days before the October coup, but no doubt had I been in the village I
would have been inundated with requests for international on-line news coverage.
So while I did not find these web interviews to have been the most productive
or valuable use of time in terms of data collection, I found that, at the very least,
they provided an excuse for people to come and spend time with me in the very
early days. It was an immediate way to share some of what I do with people so
they could see how some of the data from my research will be used. I will probably
never know if it' helped to put them more at ease with me or provided more of
a barrier in the beginning. But the web was something from my culture I could
share. It is very difficult to represent one's own culture in circumstances like those
I was in. It often seems easier and less problematic to simplify and skew descriptions.
The web gave my informants an opportunity to see a more first-hand account
of the West, also skewed and simplified without a doubt, but not by me.

Audio/Video Recording Playback
The Internet in the Field 61
Recording events, so far as I can tell, was almost always unproblematic in the village
where I worked. I was asked for religious reasons not to photograph a handful
of people (a request J respected, though these people were criticized by others for
their stand). I avoided photographing or video-taping funerals for personal reasons
(I do not enjoy video-tapes of people crying and suffering), but had politely to refuse
to do so. I attended several funerals where professional cameramen were
brought in to video-tape the event. I asked informants to repeat various common
actions and display items with brief explanations of their use (like praying, toba (a
kind of religious apology), and the tools of a barber's trade etc.). I recorded these
with the intention of using them as aides-memoire, as well as to show them to
other informants in order to obtain more than one explanation about these things. I
also intend to use a portion of this material on the website as part of ongoing dissemination.
I hope that users of the website may have more information on particular
things they see.
Audio recordings of songs and stories were useful for several reasons. They
provided me with examples of natural language to help me improve my language
skills. Although I can easily obtain Urdu language tapes and even eastern Punjabi
language tapes, I have yet to come across a Potohari Punjabi language tape. By
recording these stories I heard typical phrases and accents that I could then try and
imitate to help make myself understood better. These recordings also helped me
learn more about such things as the role of shrines and holy men in the area. People
came to my room and requested particular stories that they knew I had recorded.
Whether they knew the story in advance or not, they enjoyed listening to
the stories repeatedly. While we listened I asked them about the stories. One ofthe
questions I frequently asked about stories regarding holy men is whether people
literally believed the story. Interestingly, the breakdown of people who believe in
the story word for word does not correspond to whether or not someone is literate
or educated.
Placing these materials on the web is technically possible, but there are issues
of quality versus file size to consider. I see little point in making these materials
available via the internet for use in the field. The original tapes or digitized versions
on the researcher's computer are far more practical. The most frequent negative
comment I have received about my website is that I did not include as much of
this material as I could have. In order to contextualize the textual parts of the website,
the video and audio recordings are extremely useful. There is also the question
of making full use of internet capacities. Large bodies of searchable text are
only one feature the internet allows us. It would be foolish not to make use of the
internet for video simply because it is bulky and currently impractical for many
modem connections. The pace of technological improvement is such that there is
every reason to suppose that, within a very short time, acceptable quality video
may be made a,:ailable in small file sizes.

62 Stephen M Lyon
Dangers and Drawbacks to Ongoing Open Ethnography
I am aware, as is my department at the University of Kent, that there are potential
risks involved in this work. My data have undergone only very preliminary processing.
I have not yet had the time to put my observations and experiences together
properly. Things that may potentially embarrass or harm individuals might slip
through in the rush to get things prepared and published on the website. I do not
believe that these dangers are more real for web publication than for other kinds of
publication, and they are more easily corrected in web publications than in hard
copy ones. My website is seen by local people. In the village, I showed it to anyone
who asked and I pushed others into looking so that they could be my guides. If
I inadvertently put something embarrassing or hurtful up, then I wanted to be able
to modifY or remove it. At this stage I am still trying to be more careful about protecting
people's feelings than providing as complete a picture as possible. At a
later stage, when it is possible to disguise individuals and villages and hamlets
more effectively, I can deal with some of the more sensitive material (though as I
said there is not very much of that, given the nature of what I am looking at).
A final danger is that I may have spent too much time preparing and processing
data when I should have been collecting and producing more data. I have a
simple and a complex answer to this question. The simple one is that I just could
not cope with sixteen hours a day collecting and producing data. The more complex
one is still not so difficult. The break from acquiring new data proved invaluable
to me. Going over notes, videos and audio tapes at the end of each week
helped keep me focused on what was most interesting to me. Going back through
all my notes from time to time helped remind me of the things I thought were fascinating
at one point and later hardly noticed. In the beginning I allowed myself to
be guided almost entirely by my hosts and followed their lives as a passive observer/participant.
As time became short I controlled it more strictly and focused
on things that I saw were missing from my notes. The extra time devoted to making
my notes accessible to others has rendered them more accessible to myself as
welL For all their superficial 'lightness', the weekly updates helped me anchor
events so that I can' remember to look for them in my notes when I am ready for
that topic. The monthly reports have not proved as useful, since I found them to be
far more time-consuming and demanding of greater thought. I got around this quite
simply by not doing the analysis that the monthly reports required, but opting for
more superficial and consequently less beneficial reports in the hopes that I might
be able to use them as prompts for papers in the future.
Conclusion
There is a danger that we allow the paraphernalia of the internet and computers to
fool us into thinking that we are being progressive and modernizing ethnography

The Internet in the Field 63
simply by using them. My experience with these tools is that they may be used in
very old-fashioned and traditional ways (which are not all bad: I do not in any way
mean to imply they should be abandoned altogether). The internet and information
technology allowed me to do something with ethnography which I believe nudges
the limits of field research. The ambition of openness and transparency is no
stranger to social scientists and is absolutely crucial to other branches of science,
but using the internet and IT as I and others at Kent have been doing renders the
desire for open ethnography feasible in a way that really did not exist before. Ethnographers
may increasingly choose to expose the process of fieldwork for the
benefit of their subjects, their colleagues, and themselves. Where there are valid
reasons for concealment, then obviously open ethnography is inappropriate, but
ethnographer embarrassment is probably not a valid reason. Ethnographers should
do the best research possible, and when the cracks are revealed, this makes it possible
for them to become better ethnographers. Moreover, access to other people's
source data may prove to be an invaluable resource for future ethnographers, in the
same way that colonial diaries and administrative reports are for us today. We may
end up providing windows on to the past which reveal far more than we imagine.
The technical problems in using IT in the field are rapidly becoming a thing of the
past. In 1982 and 1983, when Michael Fischer dragged his computers to the field
in Pakistan, he had several suitcases and had to deal with frequent losses of data
due to power cuts and surges. When I did my fieldwork I had several times the
computer performance he had and everything fitted into my carry-on luggage, including
laptops with their own uninterrupted power supply. By the time I receive
my doctorate and hopefully get a permanent job, I expect the situation to have improved
yet again. Computers become easier and more user-friendly with every
system upgrade. The internet is expanding rapidly into 'underdeveloped' nations. I
expect that in a very short time the technical objections to using IT in the field will
be completely untenable. At that point the consideration may be a serious weighing-up
of the analytical and theoretical benefits versus the drawbacks.
In this paper I have attempted to discuss some of the benefits of employing IT
to make ethnography more open. I do not claim that openness was necessarily easy
or natural for me, nor do I pretend that it was an automatic process that gave me
more free time. Coding my notes, preparing web documents, enticing informants
into looking at the web and commenting on all this were all time-consuming tasks.
In spite of the added headache and the intrusion into what many anthropologists
seem to consider an almost 'sacred' time, however, I have no regrets at choosing
to disseminate the information while still in the field. The potential for putting myself
or others at risk did not materialize while I was in the field (nor has it since I
returned), and the benefits of the added input contributed enormously to my ability
to integrate myself into the village and to move in the directions that were of most
interest to me.

64 Stephen M Lyon
APPENDIX
Mark-up Languages and Coding Field Notes
In order to incorporate content codes over the internet, I have made use of the
emerging XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) standard. XML is a restricted version
of SGML (Standard Generalised Mark-up Language) designed to be webcompatible.
While current web browsers mostly do not support XML directly,
conversion from XML to HTML is relatively straightforward (see Walsh 1998).
Mark-up languages insert the meta information which allows computers to
process data. Thus when we enter italics into a text we are inserting a meta tag to
the computer which tells it that all text inside the tags should slant. We can use the
same principle for 'tagging' content. If a passage in our field notes is specifically
about a religious ritual, then we can insert the meta tags for religion and ritual. If
we stop there then we are roughly at the same usability as with keyword searches.
Content meta tags or codes allow us to go beyond that and insert meta information
which is not explicitly stated in the text. For example, a religious ritual may be
closely linked to a specific power struggle between individuals or factions. It may
equally be an expression of economic interests. The ritual may reflect a temporal
shift from the traditional ways in which the ritual was performed, but that may be
of secondary importance. If we are rigorous in tagging or coding notes, then they
begin to form a multi-user data set rather than a single-user nightmare.
The following field note has been content-coded. This is an abstract of a note
describing some semi-formal interviews conducted in the tea shop and the barber
shop about help from landlords.
Abstract:
{T:Thread DocProj: { {K:EthnoInt:GoodEx: { {L:MetaCon:Behav:intervu
{{M:Agent:Grp: {{N:Prep:down: {{O:Role:Care:low {{H:Jur:Prot:
{D:Soc:Status: [Down at the hotel and barbershop conducting some semiformal
interviews about when and why people go to zamindars for help. Most
people do go to zamindars (sometimes indirectly through the elder members
of their family) for everything from food to broken tractors to ill children to
enemies who want to beat them up. Not all zamindars help people. Heads of
households seem to take this role more seriously. People from outside Bhalot
reported that they went to Bhaloti Maliks before their own village zamindars.
There were logical reasons for this (neighbouring land, they do most of their
work for Bhaloti Maliks, their dhok is closer to Bhalot than the official village
it is attached to),]} } } } } } }

66 Stephen M Lyon
{H:Jur:Prot:
The Jural (Jur) term is used here because one of the behaviours associated with the
landlord group is protecting the lower status group from the outside (police, other
landlords etc.).
{D:Soc:Status:
Finally, I used the Society term Status. The relationship between landlords and
non-landlords is very hierarchical in the village. This field note provides some examples
of Status differences.
REFERENCES
BANKS, MARcus 1994. 'Interactive Multimedia and Anthropology: A Sceptical View',
Oxford: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Documents on Anthropological
Multimedia).
http://rsl.ox.ac.ukliscalmarcus.banks.Ol.html
BARLEY, NIGEL. 1983. The Innocent Anthropologist, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
BIELLA, P. 1994. 'Codifications of Ethnography: Linear and Nonlinear: A Response to
Banks', Oxford: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Documents on Anthropological
Multimedia).
http://web. usc.edu/ deptJelab/welcome/codifications.html
BOWEN, E. S. 1956. Return to Laughter, London: Union and Victor Gollancz.
FISCHER, M., OUVER KORTENOICK, and DAVID ZEITLYN 1996. The APFT Content
Code System, Canterbury: CSAC Monographs.
READ, D. W. 1990. 'The Utility of Mathematical Constructs in Building Archaeological
Theory', in A. Voorips (ed.), Studies in Modern Archaeology: Mathematics
and Information Science in Archaeology-A Flexible Framework, VoL Ill, pp. 29-
60.
W ALSH, N. 1998. 'What is XML?'
XML.com.http://web.xm1.com/pub/981l O/guide l.html
WATSON, C. W. (ed.) 1999. Being There: Fieldwork in Anthropology (Anthropology,
Culture and Society), London: Pluto Press.

JASO 30/1 (1999): 67-72
EV ANS-PRITCHARD, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND
CATHOLICISM AT OXFORD:
GODFREY LIENHARDT'S VIEW
AHMED AL-SHAHI
As the literary executor of Godfrey Lienhardfs estate, I have had the task of working
through his' papers to see what should be kept and what might be published.
Recently, I was intrigued to fmd two documents that he had kept. The first was a
letter dated 8 December 1988 from a Mr Peter Vi dot, a graduate student and chaplain
at the Australian National University (ANU) who wished to undertake research
for a MA thesis on Catholicism and Oxford anthropologists. The second
was Lienhardt's reply dated 4 January 1989, in the form of a top copy with
amendments in pencil. This brief correspondence is interesting because it deals
with E. E. Evans-Pritchard's supposed influence on the religious beliefs of Oxford
anthropologists and their conversion to Roman Catholicism. Although Lienhardt
only kept copies of a few of his letters, it is clear that this one was intended to be
retained for potential future use. As he writes to Vidot (see below), 'I will ... make
a few comments and keep a copy, in case someone else is led to investigate what
carmot turn out to be a very rewarding topic.' Clearly, then, the text of Lienhardt's
I am grateful to Fr Vidot for permitting me to quote from his letter to Godfrey Lienhardt
and his later letter to me. I am also grateful to Professor James Fox, of the School of Pacific
and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, for tracking down Mr Vidot's address
for me. I would also like to express my gratitude to Jeremy Coote for his invaluable
help to me in drawing up this paper.

68 Ahmed Al-Shahi
letter can be taken to be a definitive statement of his own views on the subject and
his attempt, as he saw it, to set the record straight.
Evans-Pritchard arrived in Oxford in 1946, when he was appointed as RadcUffe-Brown's
successor to the Chair of Social Anthropology. Lienhardt, who had
already been taught anthropology at Cambridge by Evans-Pritchard, arrived in
Oxford as a postgraduate student two years later in 1948, and, apart from periods
of fieldwork and brief appointments in Baghdad and Accra, spent the whole of his
academic career there. 1 Moreover, as is well known, he was very close to Evans­
Pritchard as a friend and a colleague. If anyone was in a position to give an informed
opinion on the matter, it was Lienhardt. Given the significance of his letter
to the history of anthropology in Oxford at the time, it is reproduced in full here.
In searching for a suitable topic for his research, Vidot had consulted Anthony
Forge (at that time, Foundation Professor of Anthropology at ANU), who had suggested
'Catholicism and the Oxford anthropologists, especially Evans-Pritchard',
as a suitable topic. A connection between Catholicism, Oxford anthropology, and
Evans-Pritchard had been claimed to exist fifteen years before by Adam Kuper in
his Anthropology and Anthropologists (1973). In his discussion ofEvans-Pritchard
and 'Oxford anthropology', Kuper stressed Evans-Pritchard's move away from
Radcliffe-Brown's 'dogmas' towards a more humanist and historical perspective,
claiming that, 'These orientations came to dominate the Oxford school which he
built up, and ... the Oxford anthropologists began to develop an idealist position
which marked them off from their colleagues elsewhere in Britain' (ibid.: 157-8).
He continued:
These tendencies may have been related to the odd fact that several members
of the department were converts to Roman Catholicism, including Evans­
Pritchard himself. In many cases students coming to Oxford were converted
first to the vog\le theoretical position, and subsequently to Roman Catholicism;
and the professor [i.e. Evans-Pritchard] acted as godfather at their baptism.
(Ibid.)
In his letter to Lienhardt, Vidot remarks how his initial response to Forge's
proposed title was 'to think of ways of avoiding a direct discussion of Catholicism
in any confessional way'. On reading the works of Oxford anthropologists, Vidot
had found that Kuper's linking of 'Catholicism, the adoption of it, and the adoption
of Evans-Pritchard's historical methodology' did not correspond with reality.
In fact, he had reached a conclusion which 'runs counter to Kuper's suggestion',
He goes on:
From my reading of Evans-Pritchard, Azande, Nuer, Sanusi, and a number of
his papers, as well as the brief autobiographical note published in Blackfriars
1 For an account ofLienhardt's career, see AI-Shahi 1997.

Anthropology and Catholicism at Oiford 69
in 1973, your own obituary note, and J. A. Bames's 'Memoirs' (of which J
read a draft), it seems clear that we are dealing with a complex evolution of a
person's thinking and reflecting. While the immediate focus is on the development
of an anthropologist, it is also, necessarily, the map of a person's constant
coming to grips with the intangibility of human existence. It seems to
me, in the light of the autobiographical note, that Catholicism did not effect a
radical and sudden turn in Evans-Pritchard's thinking. What we are faced with
is the much. more common reality of a person's thinking through various issues,
adapting the approach according to the judgement, so to speak, of actual
• 2
expenence.
Vidot then explains that he would be grateful if Lienhardt would clarity certain
issues, comment on his observations, and infonn him 'how many and who were
the Catholics (and who became Catholics),. Finally, Vidot expresses his own view
that Kuper was incorrect regarding 'Evans-Pritchard's role as godfather to those
who became Catholics'. Vidot wrote that:
From what I have been able to ascertain so far, quite a number of people who
had close dealings with him were obviously not Catholics, e.g. Fortes. It is
also clear from other reading that a number of other principal academic figures
at Oxford were deeply connnitted Christians, and that some of these were
Catholics. Thus it would seem that a 'ghetto' is not as fitting or accurate a description
as Kuper might feel.
In his response to Vidot, Lienhardt dealt directly with these and other questions.
The letter is reproduced in fun here, with the incorporation of the additions and
corrections Lienhardt had made in pencil on a typed top copy:
Dear Fr Vidot,
I am reluctant to become involved in your research into 'Catholicism and the
Oxford Anthropologist, especially Evans-Pritchard', not because it is in any
way a sensitive subject, but because (as J suspect you are beginning to fmd
out), it is scarcely a subject at all. You will be hard pressed in reading E-P's
anthropological work alone to find enough evidence of his Roman Catholicism
to make a thesis. Also, since you are discovering that Adam Kuper's
slight, impressionistic comments are not borne out by your own research so
far, it is surely rather for him to substantiate them than for others (who have
quite rightly dismissed them as bits of London University gossip) to controvert
them. I will, however, make a few comments and keep a copy, in case
2 By 'Azande, Nuer, Sanasi', Vidot meant Evans-Pritchard's major works on these peoples.
For a list of these and his other publications, see Evans-Pritchard 1974. The specific works
Vidot is referring to are Evans-Pritchard 1973 (the 'autobiographical note' in Blaclifriars),
Lienhardt 1974 ('your own obituary note'), and Barnes 1987 ('Memoirs').

70 Ahmed Al-Shahi
someone else is led to investigate what cannot turn out to be a very rewarding
topic. Perhaps you should just make a further study of E-P's work, Catholicism
or no Catholicism.
There is no link between his Catholicism and his historical methodology
(except negatively-he wasn't a Marxist). He was a historian by training before
he became an anthropologist, and the tendency to look to history rather
than to natural sciences in writing about social relations was the beginning of
a more general reaction against the then dominant teachings of Radcliffe­
Brown about a 'natural science of society', which are now for the most part
regarded as part of the history of anthropology, sometimes in my view with
less respect for R-B's work than it deserves.
Evans-Pritchard was brought up in the Anglican church, and his conversion
to Catholicism was regarded as a kind of defection from the mainly rationalist,
agnostic or 'humanist' principles of his pre-war friends at LSE. For
him, it only added to what he already found sympathetic and familiar. I cannot
remember quite which people were together on the staff here in the early
days, but there were then two Catholics beside himself (Mary Douglas briefly
and I), both of whom were Catholics before coming here; and a Hindu and
three Jews, Fortes, Gluckman, and Steiner. 3 We did not enquire, of course,
into the state of each other's active beliefs, if any. Peristiany, who joined
later, was Greek Orthodox by upbringing, and the only other Catholics in the
whole of the rest of the time until now (1949-89) were Pocock, who left for
Sussex, and my brother, who was appointed as an Arabist. 4 There was no
question of Catholic preferences. I have just retired after 40 years here, and in
that time there have only been four Catholics except E-P on the staff, and
those at different times. It is not for me to say how far either pratiquant or
croyant any of them was, but there was certainly not the slightest proselytism,
and indeed of the hundreds of people who have passed through here, scarcely
anyone, I should think, regarded the Institute as a centre of 'Catholicism'. It
attracted missionaries and clergy of various denominations, but because it is
the only entirely postgraduate school in England and they (like you, I imagine)
wanted to complement their theology by anthropology. It was, of course,
known that the Institute was not doctrinally agnostic and rationalist, but people's
religious affiliations or absence of them were not discussed. Adam Kuper
had no experience of either Oxford or Catholicism, and even labelled John
Beattie as a Catholic when a word on the telephone would have taught him
quite otherwise. 5 As far as I know, only two individuals have become Catho-
3 The Hindu was M. N. Srinivas.
4 Godfrey Lienhardt's brother, Peter (1928-1986), was a Faculty Lecturer in Middle Eastern
Sociology at the Institute of Social Anthropology; see AI-Shahi 1996.
5 In the sentence immediately following the passage from Anthropologists and Anthropology
quoted above, Kuper lumps together 'Evans-Pritchard, Pocock, Lienhardt, and Beattie',
not as Catholics but as 'dons' who wrote introductions to social anthropology (Kuper 1973:

Anthropology and Catholicism at Oxford 71
lics while here, one a student, one a teacher, in forty years. Quite a number of
priests have since become laicized, on the other hand, though it must be admitted
that four have become bishops, in Ghana, India, and South Africa. As
far as I know, E-P was not anyone's 'godfather', his children were not
brought up .as Catholics, and he had little time for the academic Catholic
community in Oxford. Our connection with Blackfriars was with friends there
who were interested in anthropology, psychoanalysis etc. Cornelius Ernst, for
example, was a close friend of mine long before he even became a Catholic.
No, I'm afraid Kuper's 'Catholic ghetto' was a figment of his imagination,
and what is meant by 'a vogue theoretical position' I cannot imagine. Perhaps
Antony Forge (to whom my very warm greetings) can tell you!
Yours sincerely,
[Godfrey Lienhardt]
After discovering this letter, I got in touch with Fr Vidot, who kindly allowed
me to quote not only from his original letter to Lienhardt, but also from a further
letter to me of 10 February 1999, in which he reports on the research he actually
carried out for his MA thesis (Vi dot 1991):
Dr Lienhardt was fairly direct in suggesting that the topic was not, in the form
presented initially, a wholly useful one. I found from my own research that
there never was, at least on paper, any discernible evidence to support the
view that there was a distinctly Catholic influence on Oxford anthropology.
This was mainly done in checking through lists of people who were members
of staff with Evans-Pritchard. In E-P's own writing there is no sustainable
evidence to support such an argument either. My thesis became more an examination
of E-P's dialogue with Levy-Bruhl, Durkheim, and Malinowski, as
well as a number of others. It is clear that in Nuer Religion E-P utilizes Christian
theological terminology, but the debate itself is wholly sociological and
frequently a critique of Malinowski's and Durkheim's positions.
It would perhaps be unduly optimistic to hope that the impression created by
Kuper will be totally laid to rest by the publication of Lienhardt's letter. Lienhardt's
statement, however, is authoritative and to the point and, in my opinion,
totally rebuts Kuper's claims. The position is now clear. Let the matter rest.
158). It may be that in writing to Vidot, Lienhardt misremembered this passage and thought
Kuper had lumped them together as Catholics.

72 Ahmed AI-Shahi
REFERENCES
AL-SHAHI, ARMED 1996. 'Peter Lienhardt, 1928-1986: Biographical Notes and Bibliography',
JASO, Vol. XXVII, no. 2, pp. 107-12 .
. .. 1997. 'Rona1d Godfrey Lienhardt, 1921-1993: Biographical Notes and Bibliography',
JASO, Vol. XXVIII, no. 1, pp. 7-24.
BARNES, J. A. 1987. 'Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, 1902-1973', Proceedings of the
British Academy, Vol. LXXIII, pp. 446--89.
EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1956. Nuer Religion, Oxford: Clarendon Press .
. .. 1973. 'Fragments of an Autobiography', New Blackfriars (January), pp. 35-7 .
... 1974. A Bibliography of the Writings ofE. E. Evans-Pritchard(compiled by E. E.
Evans-Pritchard; amended and corrected by T. o. Beidelman), London: Tavistock.
KUPER, ADAM 1973. Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School,
1922-1972, London: Allen Lane.
LIENHARDT, GODFREY 1974. 'E-P, A Personal View: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard,
1902-1973', Man n.s., Vol. IX, no. 2, pp. 299-304.
VIDOT, PETER ALEXANDER 1991. Evans-Pritchard and the Anthropology of Religion,
Australian National University: MA thesis.

JASO 30/1 (199): 73-88
BOOK REVIEWS
JAMES CARRIER (ed.), Meanings of the Market, Oxford: Berg 1997. xvii, 276 pp., References,
Index. £34.95 / £14.95.
In 1992, Roy Dilley edited a collection of papers called Contesting Markets. This was
one of the most important contributions from the discipline to economic theory for
some time, in that, using a series of well-researched case-studies, it backed up a general
scepticism about whether markets really work according to theoretical economic
principles. Nonetheless, it does not appear to have had anything like the impact it deserved.
For this reason it is worth emphasizing as strongly as possible that Carrier's
Meanings of the Market is another major contribution by anthropologists to one of the
most important issues of our time, an effective and scholarly critique of what is becoming
the most powerful institution of our age. It would therefore be a great pity if it did
not achieve a significant influence, not only on anthropology but also in political economy,
sociology, geography, and other disciplines which cannot help but wrestle with
the extraordinary influence of the concept of the market.
There is at least one reason why Carrier might be taken up in a way that Dilley's
book was not, namely that while Dilley concentrated on what might be seen as the
more obvious 'classic' contribution by anthropologists, based on the twin foundations
of relativism and fieldwork, Carrier's collection strikes at the heart of market theory,
its history, and its role as ideology within the major economies. In one sense, merely to
make the point that markets do not actually operate according to market principles
would hardly have much impact on current debates. The question therefore becomes
why, if we all know that market theory does not describe the world of actual markets,
does this not seem to make any difference to the credibility of market theory? This
then becomes a matter of power and ideology-precisely the starting-point of Carrier's
collection.
The volume achieves the rare result of making its disparate parts into more than a
single authored text, since each paper is based on parochial expertise which then serves
to make a scholarly and convincing contribution. The introduction contains a clearly
written argument that touches most of the relevant points, going beyond the strict requirements
of such a piece in addressing the dual problems of whether we can find
institutions in the world that constitute manifestations of markets as they are theorized,
and the growth and influence of market theory per se. It therefore points back to 'classical'
discussions of Polanyi and others, as well as to recent developments in the rise of
market theory in.economics, following the collapse of socialism in the world at large.
There then follow what are, in effect, three pairs of chapters. Those by Kahn and
Brown both dwell on the history of the discourse of the market and its current representations.
Khan's chapter, linking debates during and after the Enlightenment (par-

74 Book Reviews
ticularly the expressivist discussions that influenced Hegel and Marx) with current
discussions about the market in Malaysia, strikes a particular chord in its relevance to
recent clashes between one of his key protagonists, Dr Mahathlr Mohammed, and currency
speculators, the latter being among those who most closely represent a pure
market in contemporary capitalism. Brown provides a well-grounded analysis of the
positions of the more extreme exponents of what she calls the 'anarcho-capitalist'
groups that have arisen in the United States in strident opposition to the federal government.
The next pair of papers deals with the market as encountered in mass movements
and practices. Carrier's neat and effective contribution provides a direct comparison
between the work of Adam Smith and one of the most popular self-help books in the
United States advising people how to establish a successful business. In particular, he
notes the interesting ways in which this popular capitalism differs substantially from
purer market theory in, for example, its emphasis on moral values and sentimentality.
Smart provides a clear and fascinating portrait of one of the most extraordinary phenomena
of our age-the sudden but effective rise of 'communist capitalism' in China.
The viability of this apparent oxymoron is used to demonstrate other problems with a
market theory that could never have envisaged such an ungainly beast, let alone predict
that it would produce the fastest-growing major world economy.
The [mal pair of papers brings us closer to a more precise point-by-point comparison
between aspects of economic and market theory, and the actual workings of the
particular institutions they purport to describe. MacLennan writes about cost-benefit
analysis in the United States, in partiCUlar its importance in effecting the penetration of
market principles into many areas of political life. Chapman and Buckley go still more
deeply into the arguments behind a theory of 'transaction-cost economics' and the
problems that arise on close inspection of it. Although making dryer reading, these two
papers are clearly important within the overall case being made by the volume as a
whole. The collection is rounded off by a succinct and useful conclusion by William
Roseberry relating the theme to wider issues, in particular those raised by Weber.
I have two main criticisms of the volume. First, I feel that it surrenders too much
to its opponents by focusing entirely on the market as opposed to capitalism. Economists
have tended to promote this shift in our discourse partly, one suspects, in the
hope of getting away with a more purely decontextualized concept of the market, while
capitalism pointed back to a larger historical and social context. The collection therefore
appears somewhat sui generis, without sufficient acknowledgement of older
critiques of capitalism that are still pertinent. Secondly, although there are some advantages
in addressing 'Western' economies rather than anthropological ethnographies of
small-scale societies, Carrier tends to a generic 'Western'. The effect is to ignore one
of the most interesting outcomes of this collection, namely that between them, the papers
by Brown, Carrier, and MacLennan provide a fascinating analysis of the specific
nature of capitalism in the United States and its roots in aspects of American society
(and not just individualism) which make it very different from other capitalist regions,
such as western Europe. A bit of traditional relativism would not have done any harm
here.
But notwithstanding these criticisms, this book represents a major achievement.
This critique of the market as ideology and practice is by no means the only contribu-

Book Reviews 75
tion anthropology can make at the present time, but it has to be one of the most urgent
and significant. Carrier's collection provides an ideal starting-point.
DANIEL MILLER
DANIEL MILLER, Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach, Oxford and New York: Berg
1997. x, 357 pp., Bibliography, Index. £39.95 / $17.95.
Daniel Miller's newest book is almost as ambitious as its title suggests. This follow-up
to Modernity: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berg 1994) continues the author's
analysis of commodities and consumerism in Trinidad, this time focusing primarily on
the institutional settings in which commodities are conceived, produced, advertised,
marketed, and distributed. Miller presents this account as a contribution to the 'general
project of de-fetishizing the commodity', highlighting the social contexts from which
commodities emerge (p. 16). Ethnographic material for the book was gathered solely
in Trinidad; yet in examining the operation of capitalist processes within and across
Trinidadian institutions, Miller aims to clarify larger issues in the analysis of global
capitalism.
Indeed, while Miller is dedicated to demonstrating the local specificities of Trinidadian
capitalism, he insists that these practices should not be understood merely as
aberrant, immature, or inefficient versions of the more normative capitalism that is
assumed to exist in metropolitan centres. Nor, he argues, do current developments in
commodity production and consumption in Trinidad represent, in any simple sense, the
accommodation of a pre-existing local culture to inexorable global capitalist forces.
Rather, born as a capitalist periphery, Trinidad still develops 'in tandem with capitalism
and is not separable as a "context" to capitalism' (p. 5). Miller sets out to examine
the nature of that dynamic relationship, using ethnography to get at 'organic capitalism'-

76 Book Reviews
and its workers' motivations and assumptions; and a third describes a thriving
shopping area and its retailers' concerns and strategies. A recurring theme is that of
'localization,' or the formulation of consumer interests and images as understood by
advertisers and retailers (as well as consumers) as representative of Trinidadian practices
and identities.
The content and significance of the 'local' in commodity production and consumption
are not straightforward, however. Miller explains the difficulty involved in
classifYing particular companies as 'local' or 'global': transnational corporations may
be represented by extremely autonomous local subsidiaries with long-standing local
reputations, while some companies founded in Trinidad have moved into transnational
ventures. Goods produced by both types of company can be portrayed in advertising as
either the 'local' or the 'global,' for while the general public often believes foreign
products to be of higher quality, 'local' goods also arouse particular loyalty, and there
is no consensus among executives as to which image is more reliably appealing to consumers.
Challenging 'pure capitalist' assumptions about how business decisions are arrived
at, Miller further observes that profitability is not always the primary goal for
local firms. Subsidiaries often create advertising campaigns locally, at a higher cost to
transnational parent companies and with no proven increase in profits, but increasing
the volume of funds channelled through Trinidadian offices and emphasizing their
expertise and knowledge of the local scene. At the same time, advertisers' creative
decisions are often based more on their fear of competitor firms than any clear conceptualizations
of consumer desires (p. 194). Thus executives' actions are shown as they
emerge from particular institutional contexts as well as more general sociocultural
ones. The executives, like other Trinidadians, are more than anything else simply 'engaged
in the creation of generalized models and normative expectations', and their
models sometimes take cues from, sometimes influence, those of their consumer audience,
either coincidir).g with or departing from them (pp. 151, 240).
This rather benign portrayal of producers' and advertisers' roles is juxtaposed with
attention to the contradictory power available to consumers. Despite the bias towards
industry in the volume, Miller argues that consumption and shopping constitute 'skills
fundamental to modem life' which must be treated as central to the study of capitalism
(p. 301). Consumers themselves do make some appearances in the ethnography, as in a
sample group's reactions to a hundred taped television advertisements. Revisiting
themes introduced in Modernity, Miller argues that a fundamental, culturally specific
dualism structures Trinidadian approaches to consumption, namely the opposition between
'transience' (associated with freedom, fun, and spending) and 'transcendence'
(associated with intergenerational stability, continuity, thrift and/or particular kinds of
purchases). In addition, he highlights the roles of commodity production, advertising,
and consumption in the construction of ethnic categories. Of ultimate importance to
Miller is the fact that contemporary Trinidadians consider access to inexpensive, high
quality foreign goods as their right. For this reason, they in effect vote for the same
free market structural adjustment policies which will oppress them at other levels (pp.
310,333-5). Miller concludes that the examination of such structural contradictions in
consumption should be at the heart of future studies of organic capitalism.

Book Reviews 77
Read without the companion volume, some of Miller's claims, particularly those
regarding Trinidadian consumer motivations and perceptions, are a little too vaguely
supported and broadly painted to be truly convincing. Miller admits that much of the
detail on the business world is being presented here more for the sake of future comparative
possibilities than in support of any immediate analytical points (pp. 7-8; see
Modernity, also Material Culture and Mass Consumption, New York: Basil Blackwell
1987, for more thorough developments of Miller's theoretical bases). Nevertheless,
Miller's ability to present the semiotic aspects of the representations of commodities in
advertisements, as well as the immediate institutional structures that shape them, is
instructive, even if he accounts less well for consumers' experiences of economic
change and incipient hardship. More importantly, his investigation of a wide range of
settings admirably displays the rich possibilities in store for the ethnography of capitalist
enterprise and consumption. For despite the increased interest in anthropology and
other disciplines, regrettably few precedents have been set for long-term ethnographic
inquiry in this area. This renders Miller's somewhat experimental work particularly
useful for prospective researchers, making this volume an especially important and
welcome contribution to the field.
JENNIFER PA neo
BRUCE KAPFERER, The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power,
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1997. xix, 367 pp., Bibliography,
Indexes, Illustrations, Glossary. £52.00 I £21.95.
This book examines practices of sorcery among Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka, especially
in the southern region of the island. In part, its ethnographic and theoretical
concerns are an extension of the author's earlier project in A Celebration of Demons.
However, whereas the latter work concentrates primarily on demon exorcism (particularly
the ceremony for Mahasona, the great cemetery demon), the main focus of the
former is the anti-sorcery rite known as the Suniyama (the rite for the demon deity
called Suniyam).
The author of The Feast of the Sorcerer states in the Preface that the material on
which the book is based was collected at various times over a period of twenty-five
years and that much of it comes from intensive fieldwork carried out between 1984
and 1991 (p. xvi). Yet, although the book is ethnographically rich, Kapferer gives few
details about the circumstances of alleged victims of sorcery for whom the Suniyama
rite may be performed. The claim that in the anti-sorcery rite the victim or patient is
'turned around and reoriented toward the life world' -a motion in which 'the victim is
progressively imbued with the ordering qualities of the cosmos, his body and mind
harmonized, and ultimately thoroughly reconstituted as a being-consciousness' (p.
131)-is thus difficult to evaluate. Kapferer does provide some case-study material,
but this is often quite sparse. In the second of the two chapters on the Suniyama ritual
itself (chapter 5), for example, the author discusses the case of a seventy-five-year-old
businessman living on the southern coast between Galle and Weligama, a man who

78 Book Reviews
suspected that his business and health (and possibly some of his family members) had
become the object of sorcery attack (pp. 106-7). Kapferer states that he attended the
Suniyama perfonned for the victim but gives no details of how the perfonnance may
have changed the victim's circumstances. No follow-up investigation to ascertain
whether or not the rite had been successful in its purpose in this case (or in any of the
other cases discussed by the author) is mentioned either.
But, although there is a paucity of empirical evidence in the book to support the
claim that the Suniyama has a powerful transfonnative potential, a potential to change
or to reorient the victim and his or her household (as well as the wider social and political
relations in which they are embroiled), the argument that the anti-sorcery rite or
sorcery practices enable human beings to make and break their life world, to create as
well as to destroy their social and political realities, is theoretically appealing.
Kapferer's approach; which combines or draws together phenomenological concepts,
deconstructionist concepts, and concepts culled both from Bourdieu's discourse on
practice and writings of Deleuze and Guattari on power, is skilfully articulated in the
book and provides a new way of investigating, analysing, and understanding sorcery
practices. Indeed, in The Feast o/the Sorcerer, Kapferer not only re-directs the study
of sorcery but the study of ritual too. Common ways of accounting for sorcery or ritual
have focused on representation. Scholars often see sorcery practices as a reflection of
social and political forces or as an expression of inner psychological conflicts. However,
while Kapferer does not dismiss the validity of explaining sorcery in such tenns,
he concentrates on the dynamics of sorcery practices, the dynamics engaged in the
process whereby human beings constitute and reconstitute themselves and their world.
In addition, because Kapferer is fundamentally concerned with the way in which practices
of sorcery open out into wider issues of vital import in the understanding of
human consciousness, action, and society, The Feast 0/ the Sorcerer is not only an
essential book for anthropologists, but for scholars or students of the social sciences
too, as well as South Asianists.
GRAHAM DWYER
IRNA IMRAN and TIM SMITH, Home from Home: British Pakistanis in Mirpur, Bradford:
Bradford Heritage Recording Unit 1997. 64 pp., 59 colour and black and white plates.
£7.50 plus £1.50 p&p from B.H.R.U., Bradford Industrial Museum, Moorside Road,
Bradford BD2 3HP.
When in the beginning our people went to Britain, they were just going to
work there. They were not interested in education, they were not interested in
local politics, they were not even interested in buying homes or staying there.
But now it is a reality that Britain is our home. We have got two homes, one
in Britain and one in Mirpur (p. 63).
A recent statistical survey by the Policy Studies Institute showed that Pakistanis and
Bangladeshis are the most disadvantaged of Britain's South Asian minorities in tenns

Book Reviews 79
of employment, income and housing (Modood et al., Diversity and Disadvantage
1997). The authors explain this primarily in relation to racial exclusion and the class
origins or 'human capital' of these groups of migrants. But while surveys such as these
have their uses, they imply that the groups compared are equally committed to social
mobility as defmed by the criteria of the survey. In so doing, they may obscure some
of the other processes that are involved.
British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who came to Britain forty or so years ago
were concerned initially, at least, with social mobility in terms of the socioeconomic
hierarchy at 'home' rather than in Britain. To this end, they have maintained close
links with their villages of origin and made quite considerable investments there. They
may not have achieved social mobility in 'British' terms, but have been concerned to
divert the resources that could have been used for this purpose to Pakistan and Bangladesh
instead.
What makes Irnran and Smith's book a welcome addition to the literature on British
Pakistanis is that its focus is on precisely these links between Britain and Pakistan.
About three-quarters of British Pakistanis come from Mirpur, an area which, like the
Sylhet district of Bangladesh which is the origin of most British Bangladeshis, has a
long tradition of labour migration. Mirpuri seamen in the British merchant navy who
settled in Britain provided contacts for subsequent Mirpuri migrants to Britain, especially
during the era of post-war reconstruction in that country. Even after the men in
Britain had been joined by wives and children, remittances continued to be sent back to
Mirpur, to be saved in banks there or used to build new pakka (brick) houses.
But have the remittances to Mirpur enabled migrants to achieve social mobility
there? The evidence suggests that they have purchased the outward signs of social mobility:
they have built large pakka houses with amenities such as running water and
toilets, they can show that they are 'good' families by repatriating the dead, often at
quite considerable expense, and they can purchase more gold jewellery than 'locals'
when marrying off their daughters. There is little evidence, however, that they have
made any lasting income-generating investments in Mirpur. Many of the palatial new
houses are empty for much of the time, and most of the business enterprises embarked
upon by returnees to Britain merely service other visitors from there. There are
snooker halls to provide entertainment for young male visitors frustrated by the slow
pace of Mirpuri life, shops selling Weetabix and Cornflakes to cater for British tastes,
and Top Man and London tailors to clothe the returnees. More substantial investments
tend to flounder, for reasons that are historical, political, and bureaucratic: for instance,
it may take six months to obtain a licence to use electricity for a business.
Among the many striking photographs in this book, collected during a four-week
trip to Mirpur, are some which show aspects of the turbulent history of the area. Before
Partition, Old Mirpur city was predominantly Hindu, and the Dadial area of Mirpur
mainly Sikh. Mirpur is now, of course, predominantly Muslim, but photographs of a
derelict gurdwara and a disused Hindu shrine testify to this mixed heritage. Then, in
the 1960s, Old Mirpur and 250 villages in the area were submerged when the Mangla
dam was built, and 110,000 people were displaced in the process, many of whom came
to Britain. There are photographs of Old Mirpur, and of people leaving their homes by
boat when the city was submerged. Today, photographs show, in the main part of the
reservoir, the tower of a Hindu temple and the dome of a Muslim shrine are the only

80 Book Reviews
evidence above the surface of the water of the submerged city, but, eerily, tombs and
other structures appear in the shallows and when the water level falls during the dry
season.
The oral histories and photographs also document the contradictions and frustrations
inherent in maintaining social ties in two countries, as well as the power of these
ties. Marriage is central to sustaining these links. Photographs depict the marriage of a
young man from Walsall to a woman in Mirpur. There are comments from both the
older and younger generations on the advantages and disadvantages of bringing a bride
or groom from Pakistan. Some young British women are being educated in Mirpur
about how to be good wives when they go back to Britain. A young woman from Britain
obliged to stay in Mirpur with her mother-in-law worries that her children will become
sick. A grandmother talks of how she dislikes coming to England, but misses her
children and grandchildren when she stays in Mirpur.
The authors provide no formal analysis and do not pretend to do so, yet there is
plenty of material here which touches on the themes raised by international labour migration.
The book constitutes a valuable social history; perhaps whose who will most
appreciate it are British Mirpuris themselves and their descendants.
ALISONSHAW
BONNIE O'CONNOR, Healing Traditions: Alternative Medicine and the Health Professions,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1995. xxiii, 195pp., Bibliography,
Index, Tables, Appendix, Glossary. £34.95 / £15.95 paper.
[A] person coping with cancer may be following a course of chemotherapy
while simultaneously using prayer for healing, together with the application
of sacred relics to the afflicted partes) of the body; following a natural foods
diet and taking large doses of vitamins and minerals in an effort to eliminate
toxins and bolster the immune system; practizing meditation to reduce stress,
and visualization to mobilize the body's healing forces; using botanical or
homeopathic medicines to combat the side effects of chemotherapy; and seeing
a chiropractor to help restore vitality and proper functioning, or an acupuncturist
for pain control or restoration of critical internal balance. (p. 26)
Depending upon your biases, this text is set to become either an informative key reading
in the anthropology of health, or a controversial example of overstated folklore.
For me, this text has already become the backbone of a new course that I teach, 'Sociological
and Anthropological Perspectives on Health', and it has stimulated me to consider
practising anthropology down some new and different avenues.
As suggested by the quote above, this work examines the US health-care environment,
one which has become more rather than less diverse and pluralistic in practice
in recent times. What is also interesting are the fmdings in this book, which show
that despite all the advances in scientific medicine, the expected decline in nonbiomedical
health-belief systems has not come about: traditional systems such as 'folk

82 Book Reviews
and where one of the body's three spirits resides. Unable to have the operation according
to his Hmong health-belief system, Mr L was eventually discharged as a model
example of an 'uncooperative patient' by doctors who did not appreciate alternative
world-views. As a postscript to plurality, O'Connor notes that Mr L did not die and has
followed a course of out-patient prescriptions, though this has not led to a dilution of
his health-belief system.
For contrast, O'Connor looks at a group who lack the ethnic-based health-belief
system described in chapter four. She turns her attention to AIDS, the gay community,
and the People With Aids (PWA) community. This is a study of the 'cafeteria approach'
to medicine, as consumers search for any cure or effective treatment amont the
kaleidoscopic range of conventional and non-conventional medicines. O'Connor again
demonstrates her thesis about the complementary nature of medicine as vernacular
practices augmenting the standard. This moves the book to its conclusion, where the
author instructively looks at the implications of the previous chapters (followed by
forty pages of glossary and notes, such as how to take a patient's health-belief history).
Rather than do away with standard health care, O'Connor follows the 'augmentation'
approach found among many of her subjects by calling for greater patient consideration
in the realm of health-care delivery-cultural diversity in particular (the problems
of patient expectations and compliance, for instance, can be addressed through medical
training in the ethnographic perspective (p. 187)).
When O'Connor writes about the folklorists' ethnographic perspective, I read anthropology.
Her ethnographies are fascinating and easily grasped, her thesis straightforward
and clear. But when it comes to fitting it all into a theoretical framework,
O'Connor might have benefited from anthropology's comparative strength. O'Connor
cites Berger and Luckmann's social construction of reality thesis in order to bring
socio-cultural world-views into her hospital settings. She also makes an interesting
distinction between belief (the conviction of truth) and knowledge (the apprehension of
truth), both being equally relative and socio-cultural constructs. However, she shies
away from any form of evaluation of specific health-belief systems even in terms of
power or dominance, if not in terms of validity. Reading classic anthropological debates
on rationality by the likes of Horton, Gluckman, and Tambiah might have
allowed her to formulate more practical tests and strategies for diverse health-care delivery
in a plural environment, rather than the bland 'educational implications' of her
conclusion. A follow-up study on precisely this issue is eagerly awaited.
JONATHAN SKINNER
DA YID E. SUTTON, Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday
Life. Oxford: Berg 1998. xi, 241pp., Illustrations, References, Indexes. £39.99/£14.99.
From the start of the war in Kosovo and Serbia, the walls of buildings in central Athens
were marked every morning with the ephemeral signs of its residents' political
dreaming-graffiti condemning the United States, the'S' of the 'U.S.A.' twisted into a
swastika or doubled into an 'SS'. My American students in Athens were stunned by

Book Reviews 83
the radical dissonance between the metaphors invoked in the American press and those
employed by Greeks. One young woman asked, 'Does the swastika mean the same
thing to Greeks as it does to us?' Appearing at the crest of the vogue for studies in
anthropology and history, but also at a moment when the signifier 'history' in the Balkans
could not be more contested, Memories Cast in Stone by the American anthropologist
David Sutton offers ways to transform such a question from a perplexing
dead-end to the opening for a productive cross-cultural dialogue.
Based on the author's fieldwork on Kalymnos, a sleepy Dodecanese island best
known for its sponge-divers, this engaging ethnography addresses the cultural construction
of Greek (and specifically Kalymnian) historicity. Currently, 'anthropology
and history' refers to a variety of trajectories, some contradictory, within anthropological
thought. However, Sutton's research can be situated in a symbolic/interpretative
anthropology paradigm, inspired by the now classic works of Rosaldo, Sahlins, and
Herzfeld in defining different cultures' relationships to, and uses of, their past. In critical
dialogue with nationalism studies, Sutton is not interested in exposing 'invented
traditions' or in providing a 'counter-history' that would illuminate aspects of'specific,
competing,pasts,' but in understanding how the past is used in the present. The
book is composed of two main parts. The first examines the metaphors, practices and
categories ('custom', 'heritage', 'tradition' and 'the old years') in which local history
surfaces in public debate. The second considers how national history and global events
'look' from the vantage point of Europe's periphery.
Feeling their island to be a mere pawn in world politics, the residents ofKalymnos
(which has been occupied by Venetians, Genoese, Ottomans, Italians, and Germans
among others) cannot afford to be indifferent to history. In a society that Sutton finds
to be saturated with historical reference, he seeks especially for stories and practices
that have not been 'cast in stone' in official histories and are not staid rehashings of
folk culture. For instance, he is intrigued by the yearly dynamite-hurling at Easter. The
bombs, made from defused Second World War mines and bombs used in illegal dynamite
fishing, represent dense symbols of the islanders' resistance to harsh Italian rule
(1912-47) and, in general, to meddling by state or international powers. However, an
analogous emblem of resistance, the 'Rock War' of 1935, when women pelted the Italian
authorities with stones to protest at attempts to usurp control of the Orthodox
church administration, has been essentially written out of official histories of the island.
Like memories of matrilocal residence patterns (or 'matriarchy', as the islanders
call it), these stories of the past seem to threaten male privilege in the present. While
Sutton shows an eagerness to examine gender inequalities in these discussions of local
history, he relies on a conception of gender as 'women' rather than as a relationship of
power linked to other asymmetrical social and political relationships. Thus, the family
remains for him prior or distinct from state discourses and international politics instead
of, as others might argue, intertwined and often strategically manipulated by them.
Indeed, Sutton is struck by how talk on the island, far from being limited to local
happenings, is, if anything, more focused on national and international events in which
residents feel themselves thoroughly implicated. One of the most interesting chapters
of the book concerns Kalymnian outrage over the way the Western media stigmatized
Serbia during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sutton finds, for instance, that Kalymnians
cannot turn history into metaphor; the swastika cannot be detached from the

84 Book Reviews
specifics of the history of the Second World War, which scarred Greece so deeply. As
Sutton notes: 'For a Kalymnian to compare present-day Serbs to Hitler would be as
incongruous as comparing Greek revolutionary leaders to Turkish pashas.' It took all
Sutton's powers of anthropological listening to understand the Kalymnian viewpoint,
which he initially fee'ls to be a 'wilful misreading of events', As he watches the unfolding
of events and sees American political interests in the region emerge, he comes to
feel that the 'normally vigilant' and 'reliable' left-wing American press on which he
had depended for his views might also be co-opted by mainstream American politics.
At this point, though, one senses an unresolved tension in Sutton's book between
two ways of explaining the different 'weights' that history possesses in Greek and
American society (in the latter, he suggests, history is more a sign of backwardness, a
drag on progress): these are the different experiences of historical events from the perspective
of a peripheral or dominant geopolitical standpoint or a different logic of history.
Unable to accept the former fully, he sets himself the task of validating the latter,
In the last part of the book, Sutton attempts to understand the deeper existential underpinnings
of Greek historical thinking by mapping 'non-discursive' cultural practices,
like genealogy, naming practices, and reciprocity (though, notably, not religious
conceptions of time and memory). Thus, in the final chapter, Sutton links Greek
outrage over the naming of one of the breakaway states of Yugoslavia, 'Macedonia', to
the significance of Greek family naming practices, which are a critical means of
establishing intergenerational continuity and legitimating property transfers. Is this the
hidden reason for Greeks' passionate 'Battle for the Name' of Macedonia, which is
also the name of one of Greece's northern provinces? While Sutton says that he does
not want to treat Greek and Kalymnian historicity as radically 'other' and, by
extension, 'backward' or 'irrational', this kind of argument sidesteps discussion of the
issue on the level on which Greeks want to discuss it-in other words, in terms of the
geopolitical past, present, and future of the Balkans. One questions whether
anthropology, as it continues to mediate these pressing cross-cultural dialogues, can
afford to overlook the complex array of historical, literary, and anthropological
discourses which circulate so intensely in a place like Greece and are themselves in
critical dialogue with popular media and official histories.
To sum up, Memories Cast in Stone is a neatly presented ethnography. Sutton succeeds
in showing us that anthropology can 'return' to a traditional fieldwork setting,
such as this relatively remote island, but see it in a new way by insisting that the local
be situated within global conversations. The great virtue of this book lies in posing the
ambitious and difficult question of the relevance of the past in everyday life in a remarkably
clear and pointed manner, while also marking out specific ethnographic
strategies with which it can be explored.
PENELOPE PAPAILIAS

Book Reviews 85
PAT CAPLAN, African Voices, African Lives: Personal Narratives from a Swahili Village,
London and New York: Roudedge 1997. xiv, 267 pp., Illustrations, References,
Index. £45.00/£14.99.
As Caplan notes in her introduction to African Voices, African Lives, the emergence of
life histories as a mode of ethnographic writing can be traced back to at least the late
1920s, when writers such as Radin (in his Crashing Thunder, New York and London,
D. Appleton & Co., 1926) flfst advocated the use of 'self-told' biographies as a means
of representing the ethnographic subject. Despite this, it was not until the late 1970s
that the approach was taken up by more than a handful of anthropologists, and the
emergence of 'life histories' as a distinctive sub-genre of ethnography can be traced to
the period of burgeoning production that occurred around this time.
Caplan's presentation of the life history of Mohammed (a pseudonym: p. 4), a
Swahili peasant· from Mafia Island, Tanzania, in this current work can therefore be
seen as a contribution to a relatively new, and growing, genre of ethnographic writing.
The book provides a chronological account of Mohammed's past life, structured
around certain key events, such as his circumcision, his marriage, and his achievement
of parenthood. The event most poignantly described here, however, is the illness and
death of his eldest son, Seleman (p. 52) and Mohammed's subsequent attempts (eventually
realised) to travel to Dar es Salaam to attend the funeral. The description of
these events highlights the specific qualities of the life-history approach, recounting as
it does events which are deeply personal to Mohammed, but in which the reader is
nevertheless able to identify a general predicament; 'what many have termed the "human
condition'" (p. 18).
But to describe this ethnography as simply another contribution to the burgeoning
life-history literature does not do full justice to what Caplan achieves here. In itself,
Mohammed's life history in fact accounts for only the flfst of the book's four parts
(and about one-seventh of its total length), with the remainder of the work seeking to
explore the events that have shaped his life in other ways. And while the second part of
the book can be seen to develop in the generic style of the 'traditional' ethnographic
life history, the later sections subvert its conventions in several interesting ways. The
book's second section (entitled 'Mohammed as ethnographer') contains the actor's
own descriptions of a diverse number of subjects, ranging from the system of land tenure
which operates in his village, to 'ancestor' rites, to parental curses, drawn primarily
from the diary he kept for Caplan during her 1966-7 field trip. Mohammed's words (as
derived from this diary) are here interdigitated with Caplan's own analytical commentaries.
In this way the section can be seen to be constructed of a 'dialogical' perspective
(of a similar type to that flfst developed within the ethnographic life-history genre
by writers such as Oscar Lewis, for example, in his The Children of Sanchez, New
York, 1961).
However, the latter sections of the book move beyond such generic conventions.
To begin with, these sections cannot properly be described as life history, moving forward
as they do from the point at which that part of the book ended (a textual possibility
achievable only through the unusually long time-span of Caplan's field materials).
Drawing on material gathered during her four visits to Mafia Island between 1965 and
1994, Caplan also here 'gives voice' to other actors (most notably Mohammed's wife

86 Book Reviews
Mwahadia and his second daughter Subira) as Mohammed's story is brought up to
date. The inclusion of such alternative voices has the effect of creating an internal dialectic
within the text, so that the previous accounts of events given by Mohammed in
the description of his life history now become opened to challenge. To take one example,
the observations Mohammed makes about married life in the 'history' section of
the book (pp. 39-41) are later contested by the descriptions of his wife (pp. 128-9).
The subjectivity of Caplan herself is also brought to bear here, as she fulfils the request
of Mohammed's elder brother for her to try and effect a reconciliation between the two
protagonists (pp. 131-3). In this way Caplan achieves here a 'suturing' of discourse
and text in a subtle and innovative way, an effect which is further facilitated by her
liberal use of fIrst-person dialogue, which often takes the form of literal translation
from the Swahili.
These subtleties do not, however, detract from the self-confessed aim of the book,
to present 'an essentially humanistic enterprise' (p. 233). The descriptions it presents
of the events which have shaped Mohammed's life do indeed enable the reader to identify
the 'extraordinary' in the life of this 'ordinary' man, as well as presenting her with
a detailed ethnographic account of life on this part of the Swahili coast. Above all,
though, the book demonstrates that life narratives have an increasingly important part
to play in the anthropological enterprise.
RICHARD VOKES
EMMA HELEN BLAIR, The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of
the Great Lakes (two volumes in one), Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press 1996.372 and 412 pp., Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. £23.95.
The original two volumes of this work were published in 1911 (the year of Blair's
death) and 1912. Blair's previous work included editing the Jesuit Relations with R. G.
Thwaites, assisting in editing the works of Father Louis Hennepin and of the journals
of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and editing with James A. Robertson the fifty-five
volumes of The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898. This compendium presented, for the
first time in English, Nicolas Perrot's Memoir on the Manners, Customs, and Religion
of the Savages of North America, written ca. 1680--1718 and first published in French
in 1864, followed by part of volume 2 of Roy de la Potherier's History of the Savage
Peoples Who are Allies of New France (1722) (the other volumes have not been translated).
To these, Blair added memoirs on the Sauk and Foxes by Morrell Marston
(1820) and Thomas Forsyth (1827). There are four appendixes, 'Biographical Sketch
of Ni colas Perrot', 'Notes on Indian Social Organization, Mental and Moral Traits, and
Religious Beliefs', and 'Various letters, etc., describing the ... Sioux, Potawatomi, and
Winnebago'. An obituary ofBlair follows the index.
In his introduction to the present edition, Richard White describes Blair's compilation
as in some ways a flawed piece of scholarship, because of the use of abridgements
and narrowness of interpretations, but defends the present edition as 'a sedimented
piece of scholarship'., essentially a witness to the history of scholarly attitudes in the

Book Reviews 87
same way, as are the components from which it is made. Blair retained the original
editorial comments on Perrot by Fr Jules Tailhan in condensed form. Blair's own attitudes
were anti-racist, but conventionally evolutionist. She regarded Indians as needing
to be subdued and improved. Indian cultures were backward and primitive, though the
Indians themselves were equal to whites in intelligence and ability. As White remarks
in passing, the programmes of the United States government which she supported were
already doing great damage and were to come under harsh attack within twenty years.
Her work made much valuable information available for the flfst time in English. Today
it offers a useful starting-point for readers interested in the early documentation of
the peoples of the upper Mississippi valley, although serious scholars will also wish to
go beyond it to the originals in their complete form.
R.H.BARNES
JONATHAN D. HILL (ed.), History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas,
1492-1992, Iowa City: University ofIowa Press 1996. vi, 277 pp., Figures, Bibliography,
Index. £30.95 / £14.95.
Ethnogenesis is a term introduced by William Sturtevant in 1971 in a study of the origin
of the Seminole through a process of amalgamation of Creeks with other (including
Negro) groups under the pressure of British and United States military activity. Subsequently,
Norman E. Whitten, Jr., argued that a process of ethnocide and ethnogenesis
had taken place in the Americas. Since then there has been considerable discussion of
particular experiences of ethnogenesis there. This discussion has, of course, been influenced
by the debates about ethnicity. This collection begins with a general account,
'Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992' (Jonathan D. Hill). There follow papers on
Native Surinam (Neil Lancelot Whitehead), the Seminole (Richard A. Sattler), Kiowa
(Nancy P. Hickerson), the Northeastern Plains, Plains Assiniboin, Cree and Ojibwa
(Patricia C. Albers), Maroon peoples of the Guianas and Jamaica (Kenneth Bilby),
Northwest Amazonia (Jonathan D. Hill), the Alleluia religion of Guyana (Susan K.
Staats), African festivals of Venezuela (David M. Guss), and an Indigenous movement
in Ecuador (Norman E. Whitten, Jr.).
As indicated by the beginning date of the period covered in the fIrst contribution,
most cases of ethnogenesis were greatly influenced by the presence of and contact with
Europeans, whose illnesses, trade, political ambitions, and military struggles profoundly
influenced indigenous populations. Hill writes that, 'By the end of the colonial
period and the rise of independent states in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries,
indigenous American peoples had been so marginalized and demographically
reduced that they could hardly be seen as a threat to state sovereignty.' I would disagree
with this characterization as applied to, for example, the Spanish in what is now
the American Southwest, the Republic of Texas, and the involvement of the United
States in the Great Plains up to the fInal settling of the plains tribes on reservations in
the Dakotas, Nebraska, and the Indian Territories (Oklahoma) in the 1870s. Recent
discussions, including this one, have stressed the role of the nation-state in ethnogene-

88 Book Reviews
sis but have tended to take it as a given. In fact, it was in particular the process of
fonning nation-states, itself a fonn of ethnogenesis, which set going the dynamics
which led to the consolidating of ethnic identities which have subsequently become
familiar.
Similar patterns of identity change and fonnation are to be found in literature from
other parts of the world that have been influenced by European colonialism. As some
of the authors here show, in circumstances of fluid ethnic identities, persons could participate
in more than one. 'There is compelling evidence to indicate that the Assiniboin
Broken Ann and the Cree Broken Ann of the Wood Mountain area were one and the
same person.' These comments bring to mind Edrnund Leach's description of Kachin
becoming Shan while remaining Kachin in Highland Burma, as well as his comments
on the deleterious effects of the nation-state model on non-European populations.
Some reference to this or similar discussions of instances outside of the Americas
would have been in place. Taken as a whole, the collection presents a reasonably similar
set of cases and usefully assumes a place within a broader literature pertaining to
the Americas, but might have been situated more firmly in an even wider literature.
R.H.BARNES

JASO 30/1 (1999): 89-93
AGBASIERE, JOSEPH THERESE (ed. SHlRLEV
ARnENER), Women in Igbo Life and ThoughJ,
London: Routledge, 2000. XXVIll, 188 p.
Bibliography, Illustrations, Index. £15.99.
AGRAWAL, MUN, Greener Pastures: Politics,
Markets and Community among a Migrant Pastoral
People, Durham, NC and London: Duke University
Press, 1998. xvii, 219 p. Bibliography, Maps, Index.
£34.00/£11.95.
AliMER, GORAN, and 'JON ABBINK (eds.), Meanings of
Violence: A Cross Cultural Perspective, Oxford:
Berg, 2000. xvii, 220 p. Bibliography, lllustrations,
Index. £42.99/ £14.99.
ANDERsON, DA YID G., Identity and Ecology in Arctic
Siberia: The Number One Reindeer Brigade (Oxford
Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology),
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. [xiv), 253 p.
References, Dlustrations, Index. £45.00.
Anthropology and Medicine, vo!. 6, no. 3 ; vo!. 7, no.
1 (Dec. 1999; April 2000).
MCE, ALBERTO. and NoR,\WI loNG (005.),
Anthropology, Development and Modernities:
Exploring Discourses, Counter-Tendencies and
Violence, London: Routledge, 2000. xvi, 232 p.
Bibliography, Index. £16.99.
ARNAIZ-VlLLENA, ANToNIO (ed.), Prehistoric Iberia:
Genetics, Anthropology and Linguistics, New York
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EDGERTON, ROBERT B., Warrior Women: The
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EDWARDS, lEANETTE, Born and Bred: Idioms of
Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies in
England (Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural
Anthropology), Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000. [xiv], 264 p. References, Illustrations, Index.
£45.00.
Ethnos, vo!. 65, no. 1,2(2000).
FABIA"l, JOHANNES, Out of Our Min4s: Reason and
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2000. xv, 320 p. Bibliography, Illustrations, Index.
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FAlST, THOMAS, The Volume and Dynamics of
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FALK, PASI, and PASI MAENPAA, Hitting the Jackpot:
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FARDON, RICHARD, Mary Douglas: an Intellectual
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FELDMAN, BURTON. and ROBERT D. RICHARDSON, JR.,
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FERGUSON, JAMES, Expectations of Modernity: Myths
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FERGUSON, R. BRIAN. and NElL L. WHITEHEAD (eds.),
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2000 [2 00 printing with new preface]. xxxv, 303 p.
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FITZGERALD, TIMOTHY, The Ideology of Religious
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FRANK, GEL Y A, Venus on Wheels: Two Decades of
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GoDDARD, VICTORIA ANA (ed.), Gender, Agency and
Change: Anthropological Perspectives (European
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£16.99.
GooDY, JACK, The Power of the Written Tradition
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Washington and London: Srnithsonian, 2000. viii, 192
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GRlMES, RONALD 1., Deeply Into the Bone: Reinventing
Rites of Passage (Life Passages), Berkeley
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liAMMERLE, JOHANNES MARIA, Nias- Eine Eigene
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HARRISON, THOMAS, Divinity and History: The
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HARROD, HOWARD L., The Animals Came Dancing;
Native American Sacred Ecology and Animal
Kinship, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.
xxv, 170 p. Bibliography, Index. $35.00/$17.95.
HORDEN, PEREGRINE, and NICHOLAS PuRCELL, The
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ISHTIAQ, M., Language Shifts Among the Scheduled
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price given.
JENKINS, TIMOTHY (foreword by DAVID PARKIN),
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KAN, SERGE!, Memory Eternal: 11ingit Culture and
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120FF.
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MOHATT, GERALD, and JOSEPH EAGLE ELK, The
Price of a Gift: A Lakota Healer's Story, Lincoln and
London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. [xvi],
226 p. Bibliography, lllustrations, Index. £20.00.
MONAGHAN, JOHN, and PETER JUST, Social and
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NICHOLs, ROGER L., Indians in the United States and
Canada: A Comparative History, Lincoln and
London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xvii,
383 p. Bibliography, lllustrations, Index. £57.001
$60.00.
NOURSE, JENNIFER W., Conceiving Spirits: Birth
Rituals and Contested Identities among Lauje of
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Inquiry), Washington and London: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1999.. xi, 308 p. References,
ll\ustrations, Index. No price given.
O'REILLY, KAREN, The British on the Costa Del Sol:
Transnational Identities and Local Communities,
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Maps, Index. £16.99.
ORTNER, SHERRY B. (cd.), The Fate of "Culture":
Geertz and Beyond (Representations Books; 8),
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1999. vii, 169 p. References, Index. $45.001 $17.95.
PAPIllA, SURlNDER S. et al. (eds.), Genomic Diversity:
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RAPPORT, NIGEL, and JOANNA OvEIuNG, Social and
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JASO
VoLXXX 1999 No. 2
CONTENTS
Obituary
Abner Cohen (1921-2001)
by Marcus Ban.ks ...................................... .
95-96
LISA R. KAUL-SEIDMAN
Returning Borne, Remaking Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97-117
AKIRA DEGUCHI
Organ Transplantation, Identity, and the Imagined Community. . . 119-130
ROBERT A. SEGAL
Durkheim in Britain: The Work of Radcliffe-Brown . . . . . . . . . . . 131-162
KUNIKO MIYANAGA
Updating the Classics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163-181
Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Abstracts of Theses in Social and Cultural Anthropology for
which Doctorates were A warded by the University of Oxford in
1998. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182-190
Book Reviews
PENNy VAN ESTERIK, Materializing Thailand
Reviewed by Heather Montgomery . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191-192
MUKULIKA BANERJEE, The Pathan Unarmed:
Opposition and Memory in the North-West Frontier
Reviewed by Steven Lyon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192-194
THOMAS BLOM HANSEN, The Saffron Wave:
Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India
Reviewed by Robert Parkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194-196

IV Contents
Book Reviews (continued)
JOHANNES MARIA HAMMERLE, Nias - eine eigene Welt: Sagen, My then,
Oberlieferungen
Reviewed by R. H. Bames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196-197
CHRISTIAN FEEST (ed.), Indians and Europe:
An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays
Reviewed by R. H. Bames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197-198
ROBERT A. SEGAL, Theorizing about Myth
Reviewed byN. 1. Allen...................................... 198-200
JADWIGA PSTRUSrNSKA, Old Celtic Cultures from the
Hindu Kush Perspective
Reviewed byN. J. AlIen...................................... 200-201
ROBERT DESJARLAIS, Shelter Blues:
Sanity and Seljhood Among the Homeless
Reviewed by Damian WaIter. . . . . .. . .. . . . . . .. . . . .. .. . .. . .. . . . . 202-204
TAMARA KOHN and ROSEMARY MCKECHNIE (eds.), Extending the
Boundaries of Care: Medical Ethics and Caring Practices
Reviewed by He1en Sweet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205-207
ROBERT BoYD, The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence:
Introduced Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest
Coast Indians 1774-1874
Reviewed by R. E. S. Tanner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207-208
Publications Received. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 209-212
Contributors to this Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... .
Copyright © JASO 2002. All rights reserved.
ISSN UK 0044-8370
Typeset in Times New Roman
Printed in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wiltshire
inside back cover

JASO 30/2 (1999): 95-96
OBITUARY
ABNERCOHEN
(1921-2001)
Although Professor Abner Cohen, who died in May 2001, moved to Oxford only
after he had retired, he was a stimulating presence on the Oxford anthropological
scene for the fifteen or so years we had the pleasure of his company. A regular
attendee at many seminars, but particularly the ISCA departmental seminar and the
Ethnicity and Identity seminar (organised by Shirley Ardener, lonathan Webber,
and others), he demonstrated acute anthropological insight in his comments and
questions, even in the last year or so, when he was often confined to a wheelchair
and was losing his speech. Together with his wife Gaynor-who tirelessly chauffeured
him from seminar to lecture to seminar-he was also a frequent visitor to
Queen Elizabeth House, the University's development centre and home to the
Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, of which he and Gaynor were
great supporters.
Abner was born in Iraq in 1921 and moved with his family to Israel after the
war, where he became an inspector of Arabic-medium schools. In the 1950s he
came to Manchester, where he met both Max Gluckman, who became his doctoral
supervisor, and Gaynor, who became his wife. In the early 1960s he moved on to
the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and remained there until he
retired, becoming Professor of African Anthropology in 1972. After initial fieldwork
in Israel (Arab Border Villages in Israel, 1965), followed by extended periods
of research in Nigeria (Custom and Politics in Urban Africa, 1996) and Sierra
Leone (The Politics of Elite Culture, 1981), Abner conducted fieldwork on the
Notting Hill carnival (Masquerade Politics, 1993) and finally on Welsh chapels.
Perhaps best known for his work on ethnicity and the cultural dimensions of politi-

96 Abner Cohen (1921-2001)
cal action, in fact his work covered a broad range of themes and topics central to
the discipline; his most challenging theoretical work is perhaps his essay Two Dimensional
Man (1974), in which he reconciled the paradoxical yet observable facts
of social change and social continuity through a theory of the mutual engagement
of power and symbelism. He was rightly suspicious of what he saw as ill-founded
psychologizing, though with his insistence on facts, presented through the extended
case-study, and with his clear and direct writing style, one can see a line of
continuity through Gluckman and back to Malinowski. But he always transcended
the dull solidity of some classic British empiricism with a refreshing and stimulating
intellectual creativity. He also avoided whimsy and the further reaches of linguistically
persuasive but intellectually vacuous speculation. I remember him once
fIxing me with a stern eye and reading out a jokily casual aside in a manuscript I
had given him to comment upon; he neither criticised it nor asked me to explain it,
but I could tell he disapproved (I still retained the remark nonetheless).
Abner died on 13 May 2001; fIve weeks later, on a clear and fresh June day,
his family and friends organised a celebration of his life at the Taylor Institute,
Oxford. Reminiscences and episodes of his personal, family, and professional life
were presented by his friends David Patterson and Humphrey Fischer, and by his
friends and anthropological colleagues Lidia Sciama, Lionel Caplan, and David
Parkin, each speaker introduced by one of Abner and Gaynor's children: Tammy,
Simon, and Sara. The Institute's lecture hall was full to capacity, with many Oxford
and London anthropologists present. Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth House
served as a venue for an excellent and informative photographic exhibition that
documented Abner's life, professional and personal. An obituary by David Parkin
appeared in the Guardian (25 May), and another by Pat Caplan can be found on
the ASA website at .
MARCUS BANKS

JASO 3012 (1999): 97-117
RETURNING HOME, REMAKING PLACE
LISA R. KAUL-SEIDMAN
RECENT anthropological work has suggested that anthropologists can no longer take
the congruence of territory and culture for granted. 1 Not only have anthropologists
begun to re-think the presumption that doing anthropology requires going 'there'
because the existence of a 'there' as a 'bounded territorial entity' has become
strongly suspect; they have also begun to pay increasing attention to the processes
underlying the 'construction' of place. 2 Some, however, have cautioned that anthropologists
should not abandon the task of understanding 'an equally strongly
developed notion of attachment to place' (Olwig 1997: 17).
In this paper I draw, on both of the above viewpoints in order to examine how
a group of Jewish settlers 3 in the occupied territory of the West Bank emplace
I See, for example, Gupta and Ferguson 1992, Appadurai 1991, 1995, Malkki 1992.
2 See, for example, Hirsh and O'Hanlon (eds.) 1995, Auge 1995, Yaeger (ed.) 1996, Olwig
and Hastrup (eds.) 1997, Bender 1993, Ben-Ari and Bilu (eds.) 1996, Paine 1995.
3 The popular English translation glosses over the more varied and specific connotations of
the Hebrew words used to describe these people as well as early Zionists: mitnahel (one
who reclaims his inheritance), mityashev (one who sits in or settles in), and haluts (pioneer;
the common usage has strong Zionist connotations). In my usage here, I am referring to
Jews who have chosen to live in the occupied territories for ideological reasons.

98 Lisa R. Kaul-Seidman
themselves in the 'home' to which they claim they are 'returning,.4 Although these
settlers view the occupied territory of the West Bank as an integral part of the sacred
'Land of Israel', argue that it is their inalienable ancestral inheritance (nahalah),
and claim that it is a place they have always 'known' and to which they are
merely 'returning', they are new immigrants to this territory. One of the prime
challenges of their situation, therefore, is to bridge the hiatus between their status
as new immigrants and their claims to have an organic connection to the territory.5
In what follows, I shall use the settlement of Tekoa in the West Bank as an ethnographic
example. 6 I will suggest that Tekoans meet this challenge to their claims of
an organic connection by re-making the place to which they are 'returning' .
Neither the notion of 'returning' nor the notion of 're-making place' are new
to scholarship on Israe1. 7 Writing in the late 1980s, Robert Paine drew attention to
the issues surrounding both these notions:
4 Throughout this paper I will highlight the SUbjective and contested status of this notion
with the use of inverted commas. Also for the purposes of this paper, I side-step the complexities
of defining 'home' (see, for example, Sarup 1994, Rapport 1995, Rapport and
Dawson 1998). Hence 'home', as used in the title of the paper, works as a rather untidy
shorthand or gloss for the various claims which Jewish settlers make about the occupied
territory of the West Bank.
5 The category 'new immigrant' (oleh had ash) is moored in specific legal and procedural
spaces of the Israeli nation-state and connotes 'alien-ness', which the state seeks to eliminate
through the process of 'absorption' (Jews from Morocco have further to go in becoming
'Israeli' than, say, Jews from Poland; see, for example, Paine 1989, Eisenstadt 1955,
Smooha 1978). By contrast, the category of 'settler' is less bureaucratically circumscribed:
because 'settling' is seen as constitutive of the Zionist process of nation-building, settlers
are not seen as standing in need of 'absorption' in the same way as 'new immigrants'. In
other words, 'settlers' are quintessentially 'local': they absorb, rather than are absorbed. In
choosing to problematize the task of these settlers in terms of their 'immigrant' status, I do
not mean to take on the connotations of the term as it is used in the context of the Israeli
state. My impetus comes from a desire to acknowledge the occupied and thus 'new' status
of these territories to the Israeli state and to problematize the 'natural-ness' of the claims
made by those who 'return'.
6 I conducted fieldwork in Tekoa in 1993 in pursuit of a doctoral dissertation. I have since
visited Tekoa in 1998 and 1999.
7 For the purposes of this paper, I will limit myself to an 'Israeli-Judaic' frame of reference.
Subsumed within what could broadly be termed Israeli literature on 'return migration' are
studies of Israeli citizens who return to the state of Israel, as well as studies of non-Israeli
Jews who 'return' to the state of Israel. See, for example, Avruch 1981, Shokeid 1974,
Eisenstadt 1955, Weingrod 1985, Gitelman 1982. This literature shares with other work on
'return migration' (see, for example, Gmelch 1980) a concern with issues surrounding the
adaptation and readjustment of immigrants and return migrants, and with the impact of
returnees on the home society. There has also been a long-standing interest in the problematics
of 'place' in Israel. See, for example, Kimmerling 1983, Kimmerling 1989, Schweid
1985, and more recently, Boyarin 1996, Gurevitch and Aran 1994, Ben-Ari and Bilu 1996,
Paine 1989, Paine 1995.

Returning Home, Remaking Place 99
The Jews, as a people, are defmed by their religion, which is distinctive
among the world religions in its territorial focus on Eretz Yisrael: the [promised]
Land of IsraeL Yet the people themselves ... have been deterritorialised
through the millennia. Now that they have restored themselves to the primordial
territory (or part of it), the question arises: how are they to behave there?
(Paine 1989: 123; see also Ben-Ari and Bilu 1996)
He suggests that Jews' varying answers to this question depend on what they see
as being restored to them (a national homeland or a land of destiny), as well as on
how they see this restoration as having come about (whether through human or
divine agency). He moves on to argue that, because Jews' understanding of the
Land of Israel and its history reflects different readings of a common text, they
'enact their lives as though they are living in different Israels' (ibid.), each reflecting
its own 'distinctive accounts of time ... and of place' (ibid.: 122). Hence, 'in
constructing behaviour they reconstruct (or "continue") selected Jewish "traditions'"
(ibid.: 124). Furthermore, people 'pull' their 'present day-world .. .into a
measure of consonance with the ideological message from a Jewish tradition that
is being restored' (ibid.: 131) by resorting to an inventive form of behaviour that
resonates closely with what Schecher calls 'restored behaviour' -behaviour which
offers to both individuals and groups the chance to become someone else 'for
the time being' ... or the chance to become what they once were. Or even, and
most often, 'to rebecome what they never were '. (Schecher 1981, cited in
Paine 1989: 124; emphasis in original)
While I find the core of Paine's hypothesis compelling, I am concerned that
his explanation of Jews' behaviour in Israel concentrates on the fact of'restoration'
at the expense of two other salient factors: the 'migrant/immigrant' experience
of those who 'return', and the influence of the dominant nationalist discourse
on place and settlement. 8 These two factors are especially significant for an understanding
of the settlers' 'return' to and behaviour in particular settlements in the
occupied territories. I would therefore like to add two connected suggestions to
Paine's argument that Jews construct their 'Israels', and correspondingly their
behaviour in Israel, on the basis of different views as to what happened there previously,
stemming from different readings of a common text. First, we need to
consider what has happened to them previously (there and elsewhere). I will argue
that rather than re-becoming what they never were, the settlers often become as
8 The dominant discourse on settlement as a practice has come to be crystallised retroactively
around the ideology and activities, and pioneering activity (halutsiyut), of the members
of the Second and Third Aliyah (Le., Jewish settlers who immigrated to Palestine
during the periods 1904-14 and 1919-24 respectively).

·1
100 Lisa R. Kaul-Seidman
they were: individual, often immigrant pasts are lived out in the settlement of Tekoa,
and they give it its form. Secondly, I will argue that what Paine calls the
'common text' and 'Jewish tradition' must be extended to include the Zionist
'practice of settlement' and the dominant nationalist discourse on 'place'. It is not
so much the different readings of the practices of Zionist settlement which are important,
however. Rather, the dominant discourse on place and the practices associated
with settlement dictate the manner in which the settler's return to 'place' is
actualized. Both immigrant pasts and Zionist practices have roles to play in explaining
how Tekmms meet the challenge posed by their immigrant status to their
claims of an organic connection to their 'home' in Tekoa: on the one hand, 'familiar'
life-styles are re-created; on the other hand, familiar or at least institutionalized
practices guide the process of return and emplacement.
To give something of the background, I shall first provide a general overview
of the process of 'return' that led to the creation of Tekoa. I will suggest that the
founders of Tekoa saw the 'place' they were returning to as inherently malleable.
In the following section, I focus on how the Tekoans 'work' this malleability to
emplace themselves in Tekoa. I examine three aspects of their emplacement: the
physical, the structural, and the communal. 9 The structural aspects reveal the influence
of the practice of Zionist settlement, while the spatial and communal aspects
reflect the influence of the immigrant pasts of the settlers. In the conclusion I return
to the original question of whether Tekoans are able to bridge the gap between
their immigrant status to Tekoa and their claims of an organic connection to it.
Tekoa: Creating the Possibility of a 'Place' to Return to
And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked out
of the land that! have given them (Amos 9:14-15)
(Tekoan pamphlet for newcomers, n.d.)
The actual process of 're-claiming' Tekoa, the supposed home of the prophet
Amos, located some twenty kilometres south-east of Jerusalem in the Judean desert,
was prosaic: there was no 'miraculous' intervention of the kind that was credited
with winning Israel the West Bank in 1967. Nor was there any 'stealing out in
the dead of the night and capturing wind-swept hills'-classic settler activity asso-
9 In the interests of brevity, I do not focus here on personal emplacement through language,
dress, occupation, or children's names (see, for example, Rapport 1998, Kaul-Seidman
1999).

Returning Home, Remaking Place 103
Matters improved for the fledgling settlement with the arrival of a garin from
New York called Lev Zion ('the heart ofZion') in 1979. Formed at about the same
time that Doris and her Russian cohorts were attempting to find something meaningful
to do in the state of Israel, this garin of New Yorkers began as a neighbourhood
synagogue movement. I8 Its members had, for varying reasons, felt impelled
to 'return to Zion' and to 'contribute in some way'. The 'best thing', they decided,
would be to 'build in Judea and Samaria ... the heart of the country'. The reasons
behind this impulse to 'return' and 'build' differed for each member. For example,
Michael, one of the leaders of the group, had been raised on a staple diet of revisionist
Zionist ideology19 and believed that:
Every Jewish person who is born in this age has to confront who he is as a
Jew at some point in time. This is the effect of the modem era and the existence
of a Jewish state. Now that there is a Jewish state, one has to decide
whether one' wants to be part of it...whether one wants an active role or a role
as a spectator in this unfolding of Jewish state history.
David, on the other hand, had grown up in a religious Zionist home with the
idea that living in the USA was 'temporary' and that he was 'obligated' to live in
Israel. His adolescent notions were strengthened after a visit to Israel in 1968 when
he was able to 'realize [his] dreams' by visiting Jewish sites in the occupied territories.
He resolved then to 'return' and make his 'contribution'.
United by their 'deeply ideological' personalities, the group had spent countless
hours debating the form, structure, and location of their future settlement.
Among the issues discussed were whether they would 'build their own place', that
is, follow in the footsteps of the original Zionist pioneers (halutsim) and build a
settlement from scratch, or whether they would locate their settlement near a city;
how the settlement would follow the tenets of Orthodox Judaism if it were to have
a swimming pool; and whether the settlers could plant blueberry bushes. Eventually
they agreed on the pragmatic course of moving to an existing settlement and
were accepted as a 'garin for settlement purposes' by the Jewish Agency just two
days before their departure from America.
18 Membership of the garin waxed and waned. Not all the members in New York moved to
Israel.
19 He was a member of Betar, an activist Zionist youth movement founded in Latvia in
1923. Betar encouraged its members to immigrate to PalestinelIsrael and espoused the importance
of personal pioneering to the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the river
Jordan. Many Tekoans, especially those who are immigrants, have belonged to Betar at
some stage in their lives.

Returning Home, Remaking Place 105
any behavioural proscriptions and prescriptions about the manner of their emplacement.
In other words, even though Tekoa was part of a larger 'Jewishly' inscribed
place, it presented itself as a prima materia (Bowmann 1999: 1), or as a
space waiting to be made into a place?5
Emplacement: Closing the Gap between Immigrant Status and Claims of Organic
Connection
Physical-temporal emplacement:
Biblical home, American suburbia, military barracks
Today, Tekoa bears the signs of contented middle age, its houses spilling, like a
corpulent belly; over the hillside. From a distance, the few prefabricated structures
at the top of the hill are barely visible. Instead, one is struck by the slanting red
roofs of the suburban houses that protrude starkly against the barren landscape.
An electronic gate, manned around the clock by Tekoans and Israeli soldiers,
greets one at the entrance to the fenced-in settlement. Just past this security post,
the road splits into three roads; the ones in the centre and on the left loop round to
form a ring road around 'new' Tekoa, while the road to the right leads to 'old' Tekoa
at the top of the hill.
New Tekoa forms a wobbly semi-circle. Along its diameter is the central bus
stop, the local mini-market (makolet), the dispensary, a second-hand clothes store,
a milliner's factory, and the offices of a computer software firm. Near the centre of
new Tekoa is the Ashkenazi synagogue, the kindergarten, the day-care centre, the
men's ritual bath (located in the basement of someone's house), and the library.
Suburban houses are built along tree-lined pathways; a few are hidden behind
dense green shrubbery. Many are completely unfenced, with children's bicycles
and toys littering the pathways.26
The vineyard and the 'parents' park' (complete with a basketball court and
memorial plaques among the swings) separate new Tekoa from old Tekoa. To the
right of the road to new Tekoa is a mushroom farm owned by a local family, which
employs some people from Tekoa. Located right at the top of the hill are the administrative
of :{ices of the settlement, the residents' mailboxes, the community
'dining room' (used today to host visiting tour groups or festive gatherings in Te-
imparting the sense of a 'home' to their children, they are referring to their settlements in
particular, rather than to the West Bank in general.
25 Here I am invoking Tuan's (1977) distinction between space and place.
26 The erection of fences to demarcate individual properties has been contentious. Among
the issues debated have been the suitability of fences to communal living and the permissible
height offences. For details, see Rokeah 1984.

Returning Home, Remaking Place 107
it. This is not to say that Tekoans have been oblivious to the Palestinians or to their
own role as occupiers. Rather, until the intifada, individual Tekoans walked an
unusual path of contradiction: some prided themselves in maintaining 'cordial'
relations with their Palestinian neighbours and expressed this by offering lifts or,
more radically, as in the case of Menahem Fruman, the rabbi of Tekoa, by espousing
a bi-national state. 29 Others saw the Palestinians as 'temporary' dwellers who
would, they hoped, recognize that they had outstayed their welcome and leave.
Since the intifada, this latter view has changed into a more honest militancy, where
Tekoans (whose numbers have been reinforced by an influx of Russian immigrants
and less 'idealistically' motivated Israelis) see room only for themselves. Moreover,
those who had seen themselves as 'moderate' earlier have also come to realize
that their acts of' cordiality' were at best gestures of unreciprocated, righteous,
colonial largesse. Hence the fencing in of Tekoa bespeaks its self-conscious fortification
and acknowledgement of a situation ofwar?O
Despite Tekoans' desire to see the settlement as 'organically' connected to the
landscape, the architecture of the settlement does not do much to further this ambition.
Buildings vary not only in the degree of their permanency, but also in their
style. All the public buildings, save the Ashkenazi synagogue, bear the marks of
standard military structures, with an air of bureaucratic unimaginativeness as well
as dusty impermanence. Some, such as the original school and the secretariat, are
barrack-like, with rooms running off long front verandahs. Others, such as the day
care centre, do not have a verandah, but still have a regimental air. The houses in
new Tekoa, by 'contrast, are far more imaginative, even though some have a standard
appearance because they were built in phases by a contractor. Even among
these there is variation, as they have been altered externally to accommodate growing
families. Needless to say, many have remodelled the interior to suit their
personal tastes. And despite their uniformity, the 'contractor houses' are unlike
general housing in mainstream Israel. To begin with, they are independent bungalows,
while most housing in mainstream Israel is in the form of apartment blocks.
Secondly, unlike a minority of neighbouring Arab independent housing and some
of the newer housing projects in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, these houses are not
ostentatious villas. Rather, they are quintessentially suburban in a way that evokes
American suburbia. And whereas most housing in mainstream Israel and Palestinian
housing in the occupied territories uses stone to blend into the landscape, these
houses, with their slanting red roofs, deliberately protrude out into the landscape.
Houses that have been built privately are imaginative and take cognizance of their
surroundings. Almost all of these, for instance, have large windows that afford a
view of the spectacular scenery. One person has created a top 'deck', where the
29 I cannot comment on how the neighbouring Palestinians saw these 'relations' .
30 The increasingly militant stance adopted by Tekoans has led at least two marriages to
break up, with the 'moderate' partner leaving the settlement.

108 Lisa R. Kaul-Seidman
upper floor of the house has windows on three sides. Another person has built a
windmill on top of his house in order to take advantage of the strong winds that
buffet Tekoa. And a couple of people have adorned the walls of their homes with
photographs of the surrounding scenery. Despite these concessions to the natural
environment, most of the houses do not aim to belong in or to the landscape. The
following sentiment, for example, is typical: 'Nowhere in Israel could I have a
place like this. Perhaps in upstate New York, yes, but not here.'
The settlers' 'foreign-ness' is especially evident in the internal lay-out of their
homes and in the style of decoration. The immigrants to Israel bring with them
their stock of records, books, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other memorabilia,
which are replenished by visitors from their twenty-odd countries of origin.
Similarly, the children of immigrants grow up with toys and books sent from their
parents' country of origin. Those who grew up in mainstream Israel decorate their
homes with artwork done by their children, or with gifts from relatives who have
travelled abroad, notably to India and the Far East. Religious books (sforim) line
the bookshelves of those who are religious, as they would in any religious home.
Computers with no'isy computer games, constantly whirring washing-machines,
beeping microwaves, and television sets tuned either to MTV, American soaps, or
local news programs, and video-cassette recorders playing Disney movies, vie to
dominate the chaos of homes with several young children. There is little in the
decor of the homes to distinguish these as 'biblical/settler' homes, except perhaps
for the odd banner from a demonstration or the presence of an Israeli national flag.
Tekoans emplace themselves in their 'home' spatially by building physical
structures that allow them to replicate a familiar life-style (including the infrastructure
needed to maintain an observant Jewish life) or to attain a life-style to which
they had aspired elsewhere. On the other hand, by retaining 'old Tekoa' as a communal
space whose architecture is transient, run-down and unfamiliar, Tekoans
remind themselves that they have to journey to reach this 'home'.
The manner in which Tekoans emplace themselves temporally is somewhat
similar to that of their spatial emplacement. Tekoans, who are enthusiastic consumers
and producers of information technology, are very much moored in the
temporal present. Moreover, as avid readers of history, they see themselves as active
agents in it, meeting a 'need of the hour'. However, when they are asked to
attribute a precise date of origin to their settlement, Tekoans are deliberately
vague, conflating history with cosmology, and claiming that 'Tekoa' has existed
for 'five thousand' years. When pressed for a precise date, they cite that in the
1970s, with the caveat that it merely signifies the 'building up' of this phase of
'Tekoa'. Understated though it is, the distinction between the mythical 'Tekoa'
and Tekoa, their settlement, is clear to them. Hence, it becomes important for them
to set their actions against the background of a timeless cosmological eternity,
even as they perform them in the temporal present.

Structural emplacement: The community village
Returning Home, Remaking Place 109
While the architecture of Tekoa makes little attempt to reflect the local environment,
its structural organization reflects greater cognizance of local conditions.
Formally organized as a 'community village', Tekoa differs from the more traditional
forms of settlement, the kibbutz and the moshav, in that it makes no attempt
to be an economically self-sustaining industrial or agrarian community. Rather it is
quasi-urban, with its members owning their property and often commuting to
work. In this way the structural organization suits the arid conditions of the Judean
desert, which do not support intensive agriculture. 31
Just as importantly, Tekoa's organization provides enough flexibility to allow
for variety in the economic and social profile of prospective settlers, since Tekoans
can work either in the settlement or outside it. Members of Tekoa are academics,
bureaucrats, artists, entrepreneurs, schoolteachers, journalists, doctors, and farmers,
among other vocations. Many of those who have chosen to work in the settlement
work in agriculture, often because they want to be 'Zionist pioneers' or to be
'one with nature' (or both). For the sixty per cent of Tekoans who commute to
work, on the other hand, the move to Tekoa has not meant any dramatic change in
their professional lives. Rather, it has allowed them to 'kill two birds with one
stone': to be 'Zionist pioneers', even while continuing to pursue their own careers.
Moreover, by limiting the size of its population, Tekoa's organization as a 'community
village' allows it to aspire to idyllic rusticity, even while its members pursue
a cosmopolitan mix of professions.
The population is limited through the process of absorption (kelitah), which is
remarkably similar to the procedure in a kibbutz. Potential settlers are screened
before they are allowed to become members of the settlement. This process, which
is long and drawn out, is initiated outside the physical confines of the settlement.
Normally, when a person, family, or garin 32 decide they would like to move to
Tekoa, they make an enquiry with Amanah, which organizes a meeting for them
with the Tekoa 'absorption department' (va'ad kelitah). Invariably, interested people
are invited to spend a sabbath in Tekoa, as an introduction to the settlement.
During this visit they stay with one or sometimes two families. Frequently, the
host families are friends or relatives, from whom the prospective member has
come to hear of the settlement in the first place. Since the visit is over the sabbath,
the prospective applicants are able to get a feel for communal life, either by attending
synagogue services or Torah classes, or by taking part in other sabbath activities,
such as eating leisurely festive meals and walking around the settlement. If,
31 For details of the 'community village' system, see Newman 1985, Benvenisti 1986.
32 Initially in that order of preference. With the passage of time, 'families' have come to top
the list. Single people have always remained the least favoured. As a stalwart whose own
single status had been cause for concern explained, despite the fact that he belonged to a
garin, 'The mark of a settler was a child and a tree. Anybody lacking both was suspect.'

110 Lisa R. Kaul-Seidman
after this meeting, the prospective applicants want to proceed further, they are required
to submit to various psychological and psychometric tests at the office of
the Jewish Agency in order to prove that they are 'mentally sound' as well as fit
for life in a community. This is followed by a formal interview with a committee
comprising one representative of the Jewish Agency, one from the Tekoa absorption
department, and one from Amanah. If all goes well, the applicants are invited
to live in the settlement for a year, during which 'the settlement tries them out' as
much as 'they try out the settlement'. At the end of this period, the final decision
on whether the applicants can become members is taken by the community, which
votes collectively. In the past, one partner might be accepted, while the other was
not. In such circumstances, the absorption committee could override the decision,
or alternatively the couple could decide to leave. A change has now been made
whereby couples are voted on as a unit, in order to avoid such embarrassing situations.
However, the collective unit has been limited to couples and does not extend
to a garin. During the trial period, people typically inhabit the prefabricated trailers
in 'old Tekoa', moving into their own houses only on acceptance.
The 'process of absorption' reveals that, despite the rhetoric of a 'natural,
normal' emplacement, both 'returning' and belonging in Tekoa have a formal,
procedural side, the structure of which derives from the classic Zionist practice of
settlement. Like Zionist 'pioneers', the settlers are selected to form an 'elite vanguard'.
Just as importantly, kelitah reveals a certain self-consciousness about the
attempt to re-emplace. One New Y orker who recognized the elitism of kelitah
argued that it was a necessary evil for the 'small, isolated, artificially created
community', because 'if [it was] open to everybody it would be a sociological disaster'.
He was quick to remind me, however, that he had felt free to use the word
'artificial' with me because he 'trusted' me and because I, unlike The Times,
would not use this as 'proof of the alien-ness of the settlement in the West Bank.
Now that Tekoa has managed to achieve a level of social stability, many argue that
this process of kelitah is an anachronism.
Other organizational features which Tekoa has as a 'community village' ensure
that Tekoans are involved in and engaged with the communal life of the settlement.
Rather like the kibbutz and moshav, for instance, Tekoa is a co-operative
union, with ultimate authority resting with the forum of all official members of the
settlement, the asefat haverim. Its affairs are administered by officials elected by
and from the asefat haverim. The management committee, va 'ad menahel, which
oversees various sub-committees, meets weekly. It consists of a mayor elected for
a period of five years, and five members elected for periods of two years. Its decisions
are implemented by the secretariat, which is usually staffed by members of
the settlement. At the time of fieldwork, however, the secretary was commuting
from an adjoining settlement. The budget of the settlement is drawn up and administered
by the mayor in conjunction with the secretary. The power of the manage-

Returning Home, Remaking Place III
ment committee is kept in check by the 'standards committee' (va'ad bikoret),
which also receives complaints from the members of the community.
Entertainment and leisure activities are organized and controlled by a special
sub-committee. Provision is made for a wide range of classes for both children and
adults. The classes on offer for children range from karate, ballet, choral singing,
carpentry, football, maths, drawing, electronics, ceramics, and philately to Talmud
and Torah. For adults, the range is considerably narrower and focuses on educational
subjects: thus Jewish philosophy, accounting, and 'the way to early rising'
are offered alongside choral singing, ceramics, and dance. In addition, the settlement
runs Hebrew language classes for new immigrants. Communal life is also
facilitated by the publication of a local fortnightly, which features articles of local
political interest, theological discussions, recipes, and local gossip.
The structural organization of Tekoa reveals its embeddedness in Zionist topography.
Like other forms of Zionist settlement, Tekoa is formally organized and
its 'social balance' carefully constructed. Rather than re-create a structure found in
the common text of' Jewish tradition', Tekoa reproduces earlier prototypes of Zionist
settlement, adapted to meet the requirements of its terrain and of its inhabitants.
Communal emplacement:
Beyond the 'ghetto', cosmopolitanism, and new 'frontiers'
Tekoans boast that there are 'no average Tekoans', but they are proud as a collective
to fly the banner of a 'mixed community settlement' (yishuv me 'urav). The
brainchild of Doris and of several other Gush Emunim activists, the yishuv
me 'urav is unusual among either the Gush Emunim settlements or other forms of
ideological settlement in Israe1. 33 While most of the latter place emphasis on social
homogeneity, Tekoa has chosen to stress heterogeneity (albeit ensuring that 'social
balance is maintained'). Hence it 'welcomes religious and secular Jews, immigrants
as well as native-born Israelis (sabras), professionals, and farmers'. Translated
into practicalities, the fact that the community is 'mixed' means several
things: no discrimination on the basis of religiosity is made for admission to Tekoa;
traffic is allowed on the sabbath on the ring road that circles a part of the
settlement; the settlement welcomes visitors who drive into the settlement on the
sabbath; the school, although supervised by the National Religious Board of Education,
admits children from 'secular' and 'religious' homes and does not 'force'
any male child to don a skullcap on the school premises; and there are no stipula-
33 Other me 'urav settlements associated with Amanah are Har Gilo, Kfar Eldad, and EI­
David.

112 Lisa R. Kaul-Seidman
tions on the kind of dress that can be worn in the settlement. 34 In fact, most of
these principles are modified somewhat to accommodate the 'religious'. Hence,
children are required to bring vegetarian food to the school in Tekoa in order to
avoid any transgression of the dietary laws. Similarly, the single grocery store
stocks only kosher food certified by the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel. And
Tekoa has yet to build a swimming pool, despite longstanding plans to build one
and repeated debates about gender-segregated opening hours to ensure 'modesty'.
Also, even those families who are publicly labelled 'secular' more often than not
maintain a kosher kitchen, or at least a vegetarian one, so that they can have commensal
relations with their neighbours.
When Tekoans describe their settlement as 'mixed' in daily conversation, they
refer, not so much to the above details, as to the various possibilities which the
settlement offers: the possibility of expressing one's religiosity as one wants to; of
exposing one's children to 'difference' in a non-threatening manner; of expressing
individuality; of escaping pigeon-holing; of maintaining a 'mixed' (religioussecular)
marriage; of approximating to the ideal of 'Jewish unity' etc.-in other
words, the possibility of creating the kind of community they would be 'comfortable'
in. These possibilities not only are important to those who are categorised as
'religious' (datij, but also to those who are categorised as 'secular' (hi/oni). Thus,
for example, Israeli-born dati women do not feel the need to express their religiosity
through dress in Tekoa. 35 And many individuals whose level of observance
marks them out as secular, but who consider themselves 'privately religious', are
able to avail themselves of the opportunities for learning afforded by a 'religious'
environment without the attendant proscriptions and prescriptions.
The fact that families from different backgrounds live next to each other enables
parents to expose their children to 'difference' in a non-threatening manner.
Prompted either by their experiences of a multi cultural city in their country of origin,
or by their experiences of being 'ghettoized' in housing colonies in Israel as
children or as new immigrants, Tekoans seek to recreate the best of what they left
behind or to avoid what they hated. Hence several religious Israelis argue that, as
young children, their 'outsider' status was reinforced to them by the housing colonies
within which they lived and through which their parents 'protected' them
from the secular world. Representing a far more confident generation, these religious
Israelis believe that it is 'good' for their children to be exposed to difference
(albeit within Judaism alone). For religious immigrants, the mixed settlement offers
the possibilities of a multicultural city within the 'closed' environment of a
village. Like the religious Israelis, these immigrants are keen to escape 'ghettoiza-
34 At one point one of the residents of Tekoa was a transvestite who wore flamboyant miniskirts.
35 Many dati women wear trousers and do not wear any form of head covering, save on
certain ritual occasions.

Returning Home, Remaking Place 113
tion' because of its diaspora connotations. Surprised by the stringent 'ghettoization'
along lines of class, ethnicity, level of religiosity, etc. within Israeli society,
these immigrants are aiming to break free from the diaspora conditions in which
they lived with their 'noses pressed against a window'. Once again, it is not only
the religious who see this aspect of the mixed settlement as advantageous for their
children, but several secular members. In their case, they want to give their children
an element of Jewish education and some exposure to Jewish tradition, but
are unwilling to be the role models. Here neighbours fill the role. 36
Not only do the Tekoans actively seek to maintain these possibilities, they also
guard them zealously against any encroachment. For example, when a group of
strictly Orthodox Jews sought membership of Tekoa en masse in 1993, after much
acrimonious debate they were allowed in, only because it was deemed politically
necessary in the wake of the Oslo Accords. 37 Even those who voted to accept the
strictly Orthodox Jews expressed reservations about their 'colonizing' tendencies.
By creating a 'mixed' community, Tekoans support their claim to be a 'vanguard'
group, inhabiting not merely a geographical frontier, but also a social one.
Moreover, they are able to create a 'Jewish' space where their own individuality is
neither compromised nor stifled. As with their physical emplacement in Tekoa,
their communal emplacement informs the home they create with the contours of
their past.
Conclusion
If one asks Tekoans to list the key words they associate with Tekoa, one is likely
to hear words such as mixed community, strong winds, goat ranch, and mushroom
farm, and to hear the rabbi's name and the names of individuals. 38 Conspicuous in
its near absence will be 'home to the prophet Amos' .39 Herein lies the distance
36 This rhetoric of multiculturalism weakens considerably when applied to the 'enemy
without' (Palestinian Arabs) and the 'enemy within' (Jewish nationalists who do not view
the 'Land of Israel' as central to the Jewish nation and are willing to 'trade land for peace').
Many Tekoans had fonnerly been more tolerant of Palestinian 'difference' than of the difference
of the 'enemy within', had said that they 'understood' (but did not accept) Palestinian
demands for sovereignty, and acknowledged that they would also 'throw stones' if they
were Palestinian. However, Tekoans have increasingly come to conceive of the situation as
one of 'us against them', and have cast the Palestinian Arabs in the role of antagonists,
whose 'difference' is not to be ignored but rejected.
37

114 Lisa R. Kaul-Seidman
that Tekoans maintain between the biblical place they have 'returned' to and the
individual home it has become. In examining, therefore, whether and how Tekoans
close the hiatus between their status as immigrants to Tekoa and their claims of
organic connection to it, one needs to ask with which Tekoa they aim to close the
gap: the ancestral, biblical home they return to, the Zionist 'fact on the ground', or
the individual home they create.
Since it is their organic connection with the biblical home which Tekoans call
upon to justify their 'return', one might expect that it is the need to bridge the gap
between themselves and their biblical home that is most pressing for them; and
since they actualize their connection to the biblical home through the act of settling,
one might think that the activity of settlement is an attempt to bridge precisely
this gap. But as I have argued, the act of settling is embedded in Zionist
practices, and the home this act creates not only betrays but celebrates their foreign-ness
in the surrounding landscape. Tekoans make no attempt to 'restore' a
biblical home homologous with the one which exists in their reading of 'Jewish
texts' and which they call upon to justify their 'return'; rather, they are content to
re-make the place to which they 'return' as a Zionist fact on the ground, and as an
individual home with which they are both comfortable and familiar, leaving the
gap between themselves and the biblical home that justifies their presence wide
open, and evident for all to see.
How, then, are Tekoans able to live with the evident hiatus between the home
they create and their biblical home? I offer two suggestions. 40 First, returning to
the biblical home is analogous to entering a 'themed' or 'pre-narrated space'
(Yaeger 1996: 17). Even as one claims to 'return' to it, one journeys through it as
one would through a museum or through Disney World: when one is conscious of
having entered a museum or theme park, the fact that one has 'returned' does not
imply that one has closed the option of leaving. Unsurprisingly, some Tekoans
maintain passports of their country of origin and admit that, if political circumstances
'force' them to, they will 'return' to those countries. By maintaining their
status as 'new' and 'immigrant', they are able to relate to the biblical place as it is
for them: a themed space. 41
40 For another, not altogether unrelated suggestion as to why such a gap is inherent, see
Bowman 1999. While Bowman's analysis focuses on the reproduction of antagonistic relations,
which he sees as central to and constitutive of the articulation of identity, my analysis
has focused on structures created in the process of emplacement.
41 The concept of'themed spaces' clearly resonates with Olwig's 'cultural sites'. However,
while the tenn 'cultural sites' highlights the attachment to place in the face of movement
away from 'the local', for example, in the face of de-territorialization, the tenn 'themed
spaces' highlights a 'strategy of re-territorialization' (Yaeger 1996: 17).

Returning Home, Remaking Place 115
Secondly, I draw on Rapport's (1997) argument about the role of the contradictory.
He suggests that the contradictory is a 'cognitive resort, indeed a cognitive
norm. In the contradictory is our evidence of our creativity, our artistry-of the
constructed provisional nature of the social worlds of either/or which we inhabitand
also our inspiration to create further' (ibid.: 671). Hence it is perhaps inevitable
and essential that retumees' efforts only reveal their distance from the ancestral
home they claim: rather than living in a world of 'make-believe', where they
attempt to become something they never were, settlers live with all the contradictions
of being new immigrants to a place to which they claim an organic connection,
but where they can be themselves.
REFERENCES
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Anthropology', in R. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present,
Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press .
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AUGE, M. 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity
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BEN-ARI, E., and Y. BILU 1997. Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary
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BENDER, B. (ed.) 1993. Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, Oxford: Berg.
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BOWMAN, G. 1999. 'The Exilic Imagination: The Construction of the Landscape of
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BOYARIN, J. 1996. Palestine and Jewish History: Criticisms at the Borders of Ethnography,
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EISENSTADT, S. N. 1955. The Absorption of Immigrants, Glencoe: The Free Press.
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GMELCH, G. 1980. 'Return Migration', Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. IX, pp.
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Returning Home, Remaking Place 117
ROKEAH, S. 1984. 'Do "Good Fences Make Good Neighbours"? (Some Comments on
a Poem by Robert Frost and on "Fences" in Tekoa)', Shofar Tekoa, No. 4.
SARUP, M. 1994. 'Home and Identity', in G. Robertson et al. (eds.), Travellers' Tales:
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SCHWEID, E. 1985. The Land of Israel: National Home or Land of Destiny (transl. D.
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SHOKEID, M. (with S. Deshen) 1974. The Predicament of Homecoming, Ithaca, N.Y.:
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SMOOHA, S. 1978. Israel: Pluralism and Conflict, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
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WEINGROD, A. (ed.) 1985. Studies in Israeli Ethnicity: After the Ingathering, New
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YAEGER, P. (ed.) 1996. The Geography of Identity, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
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1996. 'The Strange Effects of Ordinary Space', in P. Yaeger (ed.), The Geography
of Identity, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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120 Akira Deguchi
When brain death and organ transplants were debated in Japan, for a period of
more than ten years, it was frequently said that the 'traditional' definition of death
in Japan was based on the stopping of the heart. Many Japanese were appalled by
the idea of beloved brain-dead members of theIr family being cut up as donors,
even when the heart was still beating and the body still warm. The dead body is
not just a lump of meat, but still a person. The corpse is the locus of affectionate
relationships with the dead person, and the image of post-mortem mutilation providing
a transplant 'harvest; suggests the destruction of that relationship: needless
to say, post-mortull) mutilation also seems like an erasure of the identity of the
dead.
At this time of controversy over 'brain death and transplant', however, a TV
animation programme for children started, which I would claim has been spreading
the idea of transplants, though it has never been regarded as such. 'Anpanman'
(Bean-jam bun man) is one of the most popular animations for small children in
Japan. It started in October 1988, the last year of Emperor Hirohito's reign, though
the original picture book was first published in 1977 (Yanase 1995). Anpanman's
head is made of 'anpan', bean-jam bun. Like so many other 'supermen', he is
kind, honest and powerful. He usually gives a part of his head (mainly the face) to
the hungry, but this causes him to lose his energy. Being moist, his face also
causes him to lose his power. His opponent is Baikinman (Bad germ man). When
Anpanman loses his energy, Baikinman almost defeats him by using scientific
weapons. But then a new head is thrown to him by a comrade, and Anpanman regains
his power and knocks out Baikinman. This sequence is repeated every week,
Anpanman's head being replaced without us knowhig what fate awaits the old
heads.
Anpanman's old head is replaced because it does not function any more. The
useless head must be replaced. This exactly corresponds to the medical idea of
transplants. Malfunctioning and therefore useless body parts must be renewed. In
this idea, the body parts are regarded as if they were the spare parts of a machine.
We should remember that transplant surgery is also called spare-part surgery, especially
in the UK. There also exists the idea that a person's identity does not
change even if their body parts are replaced. Anpanman is still Anpanman even
after acquiring a new head.
But why? Why does Anpanman still exist as himself after such replacement,
and why does such a 'why' question arise? This is because we suppose the head
(including the face and brain) to be the locus of our own personal identities. This
is not only a Western idea but one also shared by contemporary Japanese. In the
case of Anpanman, if the replaced parts were his liver or kidneys, it could be
safely said that his identity would not change. However, only his head is replaced.
What theory, then, can explain his unchanged personal identity?
The idea of the head as the locus of personal identity is not universally encountered
by anthropologists. Among the Uduk of the Sudan, the liver and stom-

Organ Transplantation 121
ach are centres of the passions and of conscious will (James 1988: 74-7); among
the Trio of Surinam, a man has plural souls, many of which permeate the body,
with concentrations in the heart, pulses, and joints (Riviere 1997). In none of these
cases is the physical centre of personal identity the head.
Another possibility can be envisaged: although one's body parts are the loci of
one's own identity, an identity manifested as soul or mind can freely detach itself
from the body. Among the Trio, one's soul will stray away from the body, especially
in the case of infants. Likewise, Anpanman's mind (or soul) becomes detached
from his head and lodges itself in his new head when it is replaced. No
modification or alteration of his identity occurs.
This idea of the relationship between body and soul (or mind) is not that alien
to the Japanese, who have 'traditional' idioms to express a person's character,
such as haraguroi (black stomach, evil-minded) and kimo ga chiisai (small liver,
timid). These are similar to Uduk idioms. Japanese folklorists reported that, in precapitalist
Japanese villages, babies' souls were thought to be unstable, easily straying
away from their bodies, so that many customs and ceremonies arose to
strengthen the bond between body and soul.
Thus by reflecting on Anpanman, in can be suggested that there is continuity
in one sense between former Japanese notions of personal identity and background
medical ideas of transplants. Unlike what many Japanese intellectuals assert, Japanese
ideas are not so unfamiliar with transplants, for the dualism of body and mind
and the view of the body as spare parts represented by Anpanman can in fact be
discerned in Japan.
II
In the medical ideas on which transplantation is implicitly predicated, the relationship
between body and mind is hierarchical. Mind is superior to body and not influenced
directly by the problems of the body. The mind is the master of the body
and owns it. This medical idea is not old but has developed from the end of the
eighteenth century, being related to the 'Western' notion of personhood, which
Geertz describes as:
a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe,
a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgement, and action organized
into a distinctive whole and contrastively both against other such wholes
and against its social and natural background. (1983: 59)
An individual body is the locus and property of such a person. Thus one can dispose
of one's organs or blood as a donor or sometimes sell them, without any alteration
of identity. The body and its parts are alienable. In this sense the body can
be classified as a 'commodity'.

122 Akira Deguchi
However, the body is not just a property or a commodity either, but represents,
and in some cases is, the person him- or herself, because it is regarded as the
locus of its owner's mind. It is sufficient to recall Sir James Frazer's famous contagious
magic (1922): hair or nails, even after their detachment, still contain some
attribute of the owner. And when Levi-Strauss writes that woman is a 'sign'
(signe) in his classic study of kinship (1969: 496), he means that a woman continues
to represent the social and symbolic attributes of her natal kin group even after
she has been exchanged as a bride with another g!oup. She is never sold as a
commodity or as property, but is a sign of her former group, which explains her
ambiguous position in her husband's group. As a sign, and unlike the body as
commodity, a woman continues to have the attributes of her original 'owner'. This
holds true for hair, nails and so on as examples of contagious magic. In this respect,
the body is 'inalienable'.
Unlike alienable commodities, the body as an 'inalienable' sign is a 'gift' in
the Maussian sense (Mauss 1990; cf. Parry 1986, Carrier 1995). The self of the
original holder or the giver is still attached to the gift after it has been exchanged,
and this puts the receiver into the giver's debt. In what follows I shall call this inalienable
aspect of the body a gift, whether it is exchanged or not. In their wellknown
work Spare Parts, Fox and Swazey report that a patient who received a
kidney from her brother strongly resented his donation and suffered tremendous
guilt over it (1992: 35-6). The donated kidney is an inalienable gift of the donor's,
and as a gift, it has the power of putting the recipient into an inferior position, a
state of indebtedness.
The idea of the body (or part) as an individual 'gift' is not restricted to human
body parts. Animal body parts can be regarded in the same way, and the idea of
xenotransplantion or xenografts, Le. animal to human transplants, causes great
concern. Instead of creating the idea of a debt to animals, xenotransplants arouse a
kind of personal identity crisis in the public imagination.
This is well described in a Japanese horror novel, Ninju zaiku (' Artifices of
man and beast, or were-pig') by Yasumi Kobayashi (1998). Yuka Sato, a Japanese
girl, is born with malfunctioning organs and repeatedly has xenotransplant surgery
from the earliest days of her childhood as a consequence. Her father is a pioneering
specialist in this field, and she becomes his 'guinea-pig'. Her transplanted
cells, tissues, and organs come from pigs.
As a schoolgirl, Yuka is teased as a hitobuta (were-pig). Since then she has
worried about her personal identity, whether she is really herself or not, whether
she is truly a human being or a pig. Her close friend tries to console her, saying
that the replacement of useless, malfunctioning organs by new ones through xenotransplantation
is common, and that Yuka is Yuka-she has continuity and integrity
in herself. This attempt to console her has no effect, because of the anomaly
involved in the idea of organs, bones, skin, etc. derived from pigs. Yuka regards

Organ Transplantation 123
pig body parts as 'inalienable gifts', while her friend sees them as 'mere alienable
commodities'. Yuka cannot regard transgenetic pig organs as mere substances.
'Pig-ness' has infiltrated not only into her body but also into her mind or identity.
She cannot fail to look at herself as a hitobuta (were-pig).
Although there have been no cases of xenotransplant surgery in Japan, this
concern for identity or selthood is well understood by modem Japanese and is
caused by seeing the body as a gift. Similar but actual cases are observed in Sweden,
where xenografts of porcine cells for the treatment of diabetes are already
being carried out.
Susanne Lundin, a Swedish anthropologist, has conducted research among
Swedish patients who have had or expect to have a xenotransplant. According to
Lundin, a daughter of Karin, a diabetic woman who received a porcine cell, felt
sceptical because she (the daughter) feared that something animal would become
integrated with her mother. The daughter thought, 'it was a bit disgusting: pigs are
filthy animals, and you can't have that in your body.' It is as if the dirt of the pig
had been transmitted to her mother. Karin herself, however, rejected what her
daughter said. She did not believe that anything animal could be introduced with
pig cells or pig kidneys, since animals cannot think. 'They are not personal, they
mostly follow i!lStincts ... our personality is in the heart and the brain'. But if the
transplanted organ had been a pig's heart, Karin acknowledged that that would be
repulsive (Lundin 1999a: 14,21; 1999b: 129).
What Karin said about personality and organs (the heart) is intriguing, for in
the 'Western' popular imagination an organ (especially heart) transplant is at the
same time a personality transplant. This aspect of transplants is most vividly described
in the form of personal experiences in a book called A Change of Heart
(Sylvia and Novak 1997). Clare Sylvia, the author, received a heart and lung
transplant in 1985 when she was 45 years old. Surgery was a great success and
amazingly she recovered her health, but before long she realized that her appetite
for food had changed, and she became much more energetic. After five months
passed, she had a dream in which an 18-year-old boy called Tim appeared and
started chatting with her. Sylvia was convinced that this boy was the donor and
that his attitudes had been transplanted into her, along with his heart and lung.
Sylvia found out the identity of her donor. His real name was Tim, and she
went to see his family. Tim's family was greatly surprised at what Sylvia told
them, but were convinced that Tim existed inside Sylvia. She also organized a
meeting of heart transplant patients who had had similar experiences of inheriting
donors' memories, recognising places they had never visited, and so on. For them,
although organ transplants entail modifications of their personal identities, they
accept this. The recipient's body now becomes a community, occupied by both
patient and donpr.

124 Akira Deguchi
In these examples, an organ or a body part is not just a substance or alienable
commodity, it 'embodies' the personal identity of the original owner. If this is so,
these experiences present completely different notions of personhood from those
involved in transplant surgery.
It is frequently said that an individual's person or self is homogenous and undifferentiated.
This view is typified by Geertz's definition. I am always '1', never
anyone else. This could be represented by the formula A A. A continues to be A
even if a body part has been replaced. But transplant surgery, which makes bodypart
replacement possible, brings this prerequisite A = A into question. After the
operation, many transplant patients, i.e. the recipients, feel that they are not
'atomic' individuals. The newly acquired heart is 'someone else', and each patient
unconsciously imagines that there exists within him or herself a kind of communication
between the patient and the donor. The donated heart still harbours a relationship
with its original 'owner' within the new 'owner'. After the transplant, the
patient's body and mind can no longer be monopolistic but must be shared with
someone else who is inside it. The individual self can no longer be a kind of substance
or a 'thing' -it is a relationship between self and other. There is a transformation
of the self from substantive individual to relational individual.
Individuals 'do not float as bounded psychic entities, detached from their
backgrounds and singularly named' any more (Geertz 1983: 67), but entail within
themselves relationships with others, sometimes with society. In other words,
through organ transplantation A = A turns into A = A + B. Sinzo Sakai, a Japanese
anthropologist, with reference to his analysis of myths of joking relationships in
West Africa (1988, 1998), calls this the logic of pairity (or contraposition). The
logic of pairity means that 'you are inside of me, at the same time as I am inside of
you', or 'the other exists inside of one's self and self exists inside of the other'. I
am the one who involves you within me, and you are the one who involves me
within you. Both you and I introduce another's life into our own lives.
In the logic of A = A, the plane of the co-existence of self and other is society,
and, of course, society extends beyond each individual. By contrast, in the logic of
pairity, society as well as the relationship with the other are built into (or are inside)
each individual. The logic of pairity explains West African joking relationships,
but it is also applicable to transplant experiences. 1 Claire Sylvia's body is a
lOne may counter that, except in the extreme cases of transplant patients, the application
of the logic of pairity is too narrow to affect the day-to-day British idea of an individual
'core' identity: it is almost absurd that an individual composed of a physical body and a
mind could incorporate another similar individual. This was supported by a psychologist
with whom I discussed the issue, who told me that very few cases of transplant patients had
been reported who had similar experiences to Clare Sylvia's. However, this criticism
misses the point. In spite of the medical policy according to which the relationship between
donor and recipient must be anonymous, sometimes recipients and the bereaved try to
make contact, sometimes successfully, eager to know who the donor or recipient is. From

Organ Transplantation 125
communal body for her and Tim the donor. For Sylvia, Tim as 'you' is inside her,
and since she is surviving thanks to his heart, she feels, 'I am in the heart of you' .
However, there is a modern paradox in this logic to the context of organ transplants.
The prerequisite for a transplant is basically that body parts, except the
brain, are replicable and fungible, and no longer the locus of mind and souls. In
other words, they are 'commodities'. In patients' experiences, however, hearts are
no longer 'commodities', but 'gifts' in the Maussian sense. Transplants based on
the idea of the body as a commodity now opens up the scope for the body as a gift.
However, this might endanger the practice of transplantation, for once the organs
or cells are recognized as gifts, the bereaved family may feel greater pain in donating
their beloved's organs to an unknown person than before. It would not be easy
to maintain the anonymous 'commodity' relationship. At the end of her book, Sylvia
writes, 'Please, please consider signing an organ donor card. And please make
your wishes known to your family. Take it from me, there is no greater gift '(Sylvia
and Novak 1997, page headed 'Dear reader').
In the Japanese edition, 'Take it from me' is translated as tsukaeru mono wa
nandemo tsukatte (Use anything available). This translation makes the background
idea underlying the original expression clearer. Sylvia is identifying the commodity
(property) aspect of the body. What she described in her book, however, is the
body as 'the gift' in the Maussian sense. Her appeals to readers are therefore
highly contradictory, and 'use anything available' will not sound convincing to a
bereaved family who is adhering to the body as a sign: for them, the dead body of
their loved one symbolises the infungible and unforgettable time spent with them
and their relationship with them.
III
In the logic of identity, Le. A = A, no individual can be someone else at the same
time as oneself. This is inextricably related to the national ideology of the modem
nation-state, organ transplant being practised in a nation-state or an 'imagined
community' (Anderson 1983) through which the relationship between donor and
recipient is prescribed. This relationship must be anonymous. To disclose a donor's
identity is prohibited in principle, and it is rare for a patient to visit the donor's
family or vice versa. They are, however, joint members or citizens of a state
that legalizes transplantation. The dead and the bereaved's family are expected to
the bereaved's point of view, the idea that parts of their dead relative's 'identity' survive
and reside in the body of a stranger causes them anxiety. Beneath the undoubted notion of a
core identity, they are eager to discover their relative's identity in another's body (cf. Wilson
2000). In addition, the more firmly the individual core identity is established, the more
serious the trauma or psychiatric disturbances might become if a patient has 'a change of
heart' experience.

126 Akira Deguchi
donate organs to unknown strangers voluntarily (without payment) because of
their common affiliation to the same nation-state. In this imagined community,
one's social identity as a citizen is prescribed unambiguously, and the possibility
-of becoming the other at the same time as being oneself is excluded. Just as a dog
cannot simultaneously be a cat, so a person cannot be allowed to be a member of
plural ethnicities and races. Naoki Sakai calls this type of classification device
'species identity' (Sakai 1996: 174). This logic of identity is peculiar to modernity.
In contrast, outside the world of modernity (pre-modernity), self-prescription may
be determined ad hoc by relationships with others in complex social and cosmological
networks. One can become a Nuer at the same time as being a Dinka, depending
on one's relationships with others in specific social contexts. This can be
called' identity by relationships' (ibid.).
Let me cite the late Godfrey Lienhardt here. He aptly and wittily described
'identity by relationships' in his famous and now classic essay 'Modes of
Thought' (Lienhardt 1954), though, of course, he did not use this term. When he
was in the Sudan, he was often told that some men were able to turn themselves
into lions, indeed lions who also existed in human form:
put thus in English, the statement seems curious and superstitious, because we
think at once of man and lion as necessarily two different beings. [ ... ] The
question arises of whether a creature is 'really' a man, or 'really' a lion, for it
is not usual for us to think: of any creature existing in more than one mode.
(Ibid.: 98)
The question is problematic for so-called modem selves, who are preoccupied
with 'species identity'. In contrast, to accept the proposition that any creature can
exist in more than one mode exemplifies the contrasting notion of 'identity by
relationships'. Of course, people in the Sudan do not confuse men with beasts. The
difference is that 'they merely do not distinguish all men from all beasts in the
same way as we do' (ibid.).
In the world of modernity, 'species identity' becomes the main principle of
social integration. Organ transplantation is practised, and the donor-recipient relationship
anonymously established, in this social context of 'species identity', in
which A is always A and a replacement of body parts cannot affect this identity.
The logic of pairity, however, lurks here, causing social disturbance when it
comes to the surface. In July 1999, a 'racist transplant' controversy occurred in
Britain. The media reported the bereaved donating 'their' kidneys (in fact, their
dead relative's kidneys) for transplants on the condition that they were used for a
white patient. A shortage of donors was involved in this case, but the bereaved
appeared to experience the idea of donation 'to a coloured' to be disgusting. This
disgust was caused by their view of organs as 'gifts', not 'commodities', and the
idea of organs being incorporated into someone else who is 'coloured', or of their
beloved relative being inside a 'coloured' person, horrified them. It is an irony of

Organ Transplantation 127
modernity that the body-part image, which is similar to that based on the logic of
pairity, leads to racism, which is also an invention of the modem nation-state (Sakai
1996).
In The Independent on Sunday, Mary Wamock remarked on this 'racism
transplant': 'only thirty per cent of population carry donor cards, and most people
whose relatives die in circumstances in which their organs could be used refuse
permission'. In this predicament, she advocates following the proposal of the British
Medical Association (BMA) that 'after death the organs of the corpse belong
as property neither to the donor nor to his relatives, but to the National Health Service
or to the Department of Health, to use in the public interest' ('An anatomy of
giving', The Independent on Sunday, 11 July 1999). In this 'opt-out' system, if
refusal is not made explicit, the state or doctors assume the authority to control and
use organs. After the 'owner's' death, organs and other body parts become national
properties or 'commodities'.
Just as racism discriminates and excludes, so might the state-control type of
nationalism. In the BMA proposal, 'opting out' means that one will be a donor
automatically even without a donor card unless one makes a contrary declaration.
One can still refuse to be a donor. But are we sure that such refusals are never disallowed
and such persons never discriminated against because of their choice? A
refusal to carry a donor card means refusing to save the life of someone who is a
citizen of the same nation. Imagine the recent case of a heart transplant for a sixyear-old
girl. Can anyone whose child is brain dead refuse donation without pain
in such circumstances? Taking into consideration the fact that the decision of some
parents to donate the organs of their children has been applauded (for example,
Green 1999), discrimination against those who refuse is never unimaginable. Fox
and Swazey make the point that 'under the circumstances in which the option of
donating a cadaver organ arises, families may feel emotionally and spiritually constrained
to make such a gift of life when this prospect is presented to them by an
organ procurement team' (Fox and Swazey 1992: 34).
IV
This pressure can also be found in the case of live kidney donation, though the
recipient is not a stranger of the same 'imagined community'. According to Fox
and Swazey, the symbolic meaning of this virtually obliges every family member
at least to consider making such a 'gift of life' .
The integrity, intimacy, and generosity of the family and each of its members
are involved in their individual and collective willingness to give of themselves
to a terminally ill relative in this supreme, life-sustaining way. So
compelling is this act, in which so much is at stake, that the 'majority' of live
donors make an 'immediate decision' to offer their kidney. (Ibid.: 33)

128 Aldra Deguchi
Fox and Swazey base their analysis on Marcel Mauss's The Gift. Every act of
gift exchange is governed by and generates sets of obligations, that is, obligations
to offer, receive, and return. In the case of cadaver donation (in the opt-out system),
what the bereaved feel is this obligation to offer, to offer to an unknown
member of the same 'imagined community'.
But an organ, whether it is from a cadaver or a living person, is not a 'gift' in
the Maussian sense, since an organ requested for donation by a (national) medical
transplant team should not carry its former 'owner's' personal identity, otherwise
it may cause distress to the recipient. Imagine what might happen in a recipient's
mind ifaxenografted organ still has 'pig-ness,.2 So although donation is voluntary
and without payment, at least for the team, a donated organ should be a 'commodity'
.
The obligation to offer which the bereaved feel is therefore not caused by the
gift exchange system, but originates in generosity and sympathy to a member of
the same 'imagined community', feelings which are themselves aroused by pressure
from the transplant team or the BMA. The problem of the body is always the
problem of the body social or body politic. 3
For the bereaved, the dead body is still a beloved family member and still
arouses affectionate memories, which the post-mortum mutilation seems to tear
into pieces. In such a case, the obligation to donate and the distress they feel occurs
when they are obliged to convert the meaning of the body from a 'gift' into a
'commodity'. But this sort of conversion was found in the West in the 1970s just
as much as today, so it is not a problem of cultural difference between Japan and
the West (especially the USA) that is involved, but rather a problem of the world
of modernity, where the basic logic of identity is A = A.
2 For some Greeks, animals are 'rather disgusting', and accepting animal organs is considered
'an insult to human nature' (Papagaroufali 1996: 249).
3 Given contemporary ideas about DNA being shared by all living creatures and not being
the monopoly of humans, it may not seem appropriate to discuss the nation-state in molecular
biological or medical terms. One should consider the matter in an opposite way. It is not
so much that the nation-state (politics) is being biologized as molecular biology or that
medicine is being politicized and nationalised. A typical example can be seen in the project
to reconstruct the genealogy of the whole Icelandic nation by DNA analysis (see Palsson
and Rabinow 1999).

REFERENCES
Organ Transplantation 129
ANDERSON, BENEDlCT 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.
CARRIER, JAMES 1995. Gifts and Commodities: Exchange and Western Capitalism
since 1700, London: Routledge.
Fox, R. C., and J. P. SWAZEY 1992. Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American
Society, New York: Oxford University Press.
FRAZER, JAMES 1922. The Golden Bough, London: Macmillan (abridged edition).
GEERTZ, CLIFFORD 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology,
New York: Basic Books.
GREEN, R. 1999. The Nicholas Effect: A Boy's Gift to the World, O'Reilly and Associates.
JAMES, WENDY 1988. The Listening Ebony: Moral Knowledge, Religion, and Power
among the Uduk of Sudan, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
KOBAYASID, Y. 1998. Ninjuzaiku [Artifices of Man and Beast], Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten.
LEVI-STRAUSS, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Boston: Beacon Press.
LIENHARDT, GODFREY 1954. 'Modes of Thought', in E. E. Evans-Pritchard et al., The
Institutions of Primitive SOCiety, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
LOCK, M. 1994. 'Contests with Death: Ideologies of Nationalism and Internationalism
in Japan', in Ian Robinson (ed.), Life and Death under High Technology Medicine,
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
and C. HONDE 1990. 'Reaching Consensus about Death: Heart Transplants and
Cultural Identity in Japan', in G. Weisz (ed.), Social Science Perspectives on
Medical Ethics, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
LUNDIN, S. 1999a. 'The Boundless Body: Cultural Perspectives on Xenotransplantation',
Ethnos,Vol. LXIV, no. 1, pp. 5-31.
1999b. 'Xenotransplantation: Biotechnology and the Representation of Nature', in
S. LUNDIN and L. AKESSON (eds.), Amalgamations: Fusing Technology and Culture,
Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
MAuss, MARCEL 1990. The Gift, London: Routledge.
OHNUKI-TEIRNEY, E. 1994. 'Brain Death and Organ Transplantation', Current Anthropology,
Vol. XXXV, no. 4, pp. 233-54.
PALSSON, G., and P. RABINOW 1999. 'Iceland: The Case ofa National Human Genome
Project', Anthropology Today, Vol. XV, no. 5, pp. 14-18.
PAPAGAROUFALI, E. 1996 'Xenotransplantation and Transgenesis: Im-moral Stories
about Human-Animal Relations in the West', in P. Descola and G. Palsson (eds.),
Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, London: Routledge.
PARRY, JONATHAN 1986. 'The Gift, the Indian Gift and the "Indian Gift''', Man (n.s.),
Vol. XXI, no. 4, pp. 453-73.
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139-48.
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[Representations of Self and Other in West Sudanese Historical Societies], in K.
Komatsu et al. (eds.), Shouchou to Kenryoku [Symbol and Power], Tokyo: Kobundo
.
... 1998. 'Furube to kajiya no setsuwa' [Narratives of Fulani and Smiths], in A. Kaji
et al. (eds.), Shakai to Shouchou [Society and Symbolism], Tokyo: Iwatashoin.
SYLVIA, C., and W. NOVAK 1997. A Change of Heart, Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
WILSON, J. 2000. Substantial Connections: The Transacting of Human Organs as a
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JASO 30/2 (1999): 131-162
Rivers' Historicism
DURKHEIM IN BRITAIN: THE WORK
OF RADCLIFFE-BROWN
ROBERT A. SEGAL
IN 1911, in his presidential address to the Anthropology Section of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, W. H. R. Rivers shocked his audience
by announcing his rejection of evolution in favour of diffusion as the explanation
for similarities among cultures. Rivers' 'conversion' was startling not merely because
of his previous commitment to evolution but also because of the commitment
of British anthropologists generally. Indeed, Rivers began his address by
contrasting the theoretical approaches of British, French, German, and American
anthropologists. Of the British commitment to evolution and, with it, of independent
invention, he wrote:
The efforts of British anthropologists are devoted to tracing out the evolution
of custom and institution. Where similarities are found in different parts of the
world, it is assumed, almost as an axiom, that they are due to independent
origin and development, and this in its turn is ascribed to the fundamental
similarity of the workings of the human mind all over the world, so that,
given similar conditions, similar customs and institutions will come into existence
and develop on the same lines. (Rivers 1926: 121)

132 Robert A. Segal
The French, according to Rivers, are equally sworn to evolution, but they sharply
distinguish the evolution of society, which has its own laws, from the evolution of
individuals. They use sociology rather than, like the British, psychology to account
for similarities in cultures: 'It is held [by the French] that the psychology of the
individual cannot be used as a guide to the collective actions of men in early stages
of social evolution, still less the psychology of the individual whose social ideas
have been moulded by the long ages of evolution which have made our own society
what it is' (ibid.). The figures cited are Emile Durkheim, whose Les Regles de
la methode sociologique appeared in 1895, and Lucien Levy-Bruhl, whose Les
Fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures appeared in 1910. As a leading
psychologist, Rivers held firmly to an individualistic approach to society. His conversion
from evolution to diffusion did not affect that approach. Rivers' inspiration
for his shift came from the Germans, especially Friedrich Ratzel, who 'believed
that the resemblances he found could only be explained by direct transmission
from one people to another' and who dismissed the notion of independent invention
as 'the anthropological equivalent of the spontaneous generation of the biologist'
(ibid.: 123).
Rivers epitomizes the brand of social anthropology that his prize student, A.
R. Radcliffe-Brown, rejected. The British tradition culminating in Rivers was,
thanks to Radcliffe-Brown, rejected altogether by a contraty one coming not from
Germany but from France. Radcliffe-Brown brought Durkheim to Britain and, in
doing so, transformed British anthropology in ways that continued well into the
1960s, if not still today. Radcliffe-Brown made British anthropology French. l Put
summarily, the quest for origin was replaced by the quest for function. Historical
questions were ruled out of court, and the divide between evolutionists and diffusionists
was dismissed as secondaty. Declares Radcliffe-Brown: '1 believe that at
this time the really important conflict in anthropological studies is not that between
the "evolutionists" and the "diffusionists" ... but between conjectural history on the
one side and the functional study of society on the other' (Radcliffe-Brown 1929a:
53). With Radcliffe-Brown, the focus shifted abruptly from a diachronic to a synchronic
approach (see Radcliffe-Brown 1957: 88-9). The question to be asked was
not how an aspect of culture came into being but, whatever its source, what it presently
did. The assumption was that it continued to exist because it continued to
function. Function meant function for society, not for the individual. The social
I Against this undeniably conventional view, see Langham 1981: 271-82, 293-9, who asserts
that Radcliffe-Brown really gets his theory from Rivers rather than from Durkheim,
and even that he gets his Durkheim from Rivers! In defence of the conventional view, see
Stocking 1984a: 106-7; 1984b: 134 n. 1. The 1912-14 correspondence between Radcliffe­
Brown and Rivers suggests that Radcliffe-Brown used Rivers to work out his own position,
which is fundamentally a Durkheimian one: see Kuper 1988.

Durkheim in Britain 133
function of a phenomenon was its contribution to the preservation of society. Psychology
was replaced by sociology, the individual by the group.
It would be silly to claim that, prior to Durkheim, British anthropologists were
oblivious to soc.iological issues. Rivers, for example, devoted whole books to Kinship
and Social Organization (1914) and Social Organization (1924), analysing
the 'social function' of social units like the family and the clan. What, then, is non­
Durkheimian in his approach? In the first place, Rivers seeks to provide both a
historical and a sociological analysis. As he states at the outset of Social Organization,
'social structure' can be studied either sociologically ('statically') or historically
('dynamically'):
It may be our aim merely to describe the various fonns of social structure
found throughout the world, to analyse each into its constituent elements, to
study the relation of these elements to one another, to inquire into the social
functions of their constituent elements, and to discover how these functions
are combined so that they succeed in producing an orderly and consistent
organization. (Rivers 1924: 3-4)
Or 'it may be our aim to discover the processes by which human societies with
their vast variety have come into being' (ibid.: 4). While in Social Organization
Rivers gives a sociological analysis to counterbalance the contemporary focus on
historical analysis, he follows his sociological analysis of each social unit with a
reconstructed histOI), of the unit. The ultimate pay-off for him is historical. But of
course Durkheim himself is concerned with history as well as with sociology, and
unlike some who pit history against function, he enlists the one to abet the other
(see Bellah 1959). The difference may, then, be in the proportion. The ultimate
pay-off for Durkheim is surely sociological, not historical.
In the second place, Rivers' sociological analysis is itself far from Durkheimian.
To begin with, he is concerned with functions that are other than social.
For example, the family unit has an 'economic' function, such as responsibility for
a particular occupation (see Rivers 1924: 26). The 'political' function of the clan is
the election of leaders to rule it (see ibid.: 27). A function of both the clan and the
family 'lying between the political and economic functions' is the determination of
who owns property: 'For instance, .. .in the island of Ambrim in the New Hebrides
property belongs both to the clan and to a group partaking of the nature of a kindred,
consisting of blood relatives on the father's side and the sister's children of a
man' (ibid.: 24-5). The 'religious' function of the totemic clan is the determination
of which animal is one's totem (see ibid.: 26). Far from serving to preserve the
unit, these non-social functions presuppose its preservation. For Rivers, the existence
and stability of the group are unproblematic. He puts the Durkheimian cart
before the Durkheimian horse.
Even when Rivers does turn to 'social' functions, his approach is only superficially
Durkheimian. True, the function itself is social. Marriage, for example, is

Durkheim in Britain 135
theorem, maintained by the new French school of sociologists, that the key to religious
representation lies in the social structure of the community which elaborates
it. To Professor Emile Durkheim and his colleagues of the Annee Sociologique I
owe the solution offered of this fundamental problem of Olympian religion' (Cornford
1912: viii).6 Cornford's analysis, especially in chapter two, is fully Durkheimian
in its emphasis on the social over the individual, its stress on the social
origIn of both categories and religion, and its equation of the earliest religion and
the earliest society with totemism:
We have seen how the social group is the original type on which all other
schemes of classification-at fIrst magical, and later scientific-are modelled.
At a very early stage, the whole of the visible world was parcelled out into an
ordered structure, or cosmos, reflecting, or continuous with, the tribal microcosm,
and so informed with types of representation which are of social origin.
To this fact the order of nature owes its sacred or moral character. It is regarded
as not only necessary but right or just, because it is a projection of the
social constraint imposed by the group upon the individual, and in that constraint
'must' and 'ought' are identical. Such we believe to have been the
process by which Moira came to rule supreme over the Gods, and Justice to
ordain the boundaries of the elements in Anaximander's philosophy. (Ibid.:
71)
Throughout his' book Cornford cites a variety of works by Durkheim. Clearly, he
knew his Durkheim, even if he does take Lucien Levy-Bruhl as an unqualified
Durkheimian.
But Cornford also thanks Harrison for the 'clear advance in the study of the
earlier phases, not only of Greek religion, but of religion in general, ... marked by
the publication of Miss Jane Harrison's Themis' (ibid.: ix). The 'advance' in that
book is exactly the application of Durkheim. Although it was published in the
same year as From Religion to Philosophy, Themis appeared earlier and was read
by Cornford before publication. He himself contributed a chapter, itself non­
Durkheimian. Moreover, Harrison was always the first of the Ritualists to come
upon new ideas and to spread them to the others. 7
In Themis, her main Durkheimian work, Harrison expresses her 'debt' to
Durkheim for one of the central ideas of her book: that 'among primitive peoples,'
with whom she compares pre-Homeric Greeks, 'religion reflects collective feeling
6 See David's review of Comford's From Religion to Philosophy in L 'Annee sociologique
(David 1913a): while appreciative of Comford's commitment to Durkheim, David faults
him for being more extreme than the master. On Comford as a Durkheimian, see Wood
1990: 28-9.
7 As Ackerman, t}1e authority on the Ritualists, puts it, 'it was she who led the others to (at
least) Durkheim, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Freud' (Ackerman 1991a: 10).

136 Robert A. Segal
and collective thinking' (Harrison 1912: ix). The subtitle of Themis is A Study of
the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Harrison credits William Robertson Smith
with showing the social function of ancient religion, which he takes as primitive,
but she credits Durkheim with showing the social origin of religion-all religion.
Rather than originating in the worship of a god, as with Smith, religion for Harrison,
as for Durkheim, originates in the worship of the group itself: 'The worshippers,
or rather the social agents, are prior to the god. The ritual act...is prior to the
divinity' (ibid.: 29). Only gradually does a god distinct from its 'agents' emerge,
and that god is simply a projection of group experience:
The process of severance between god and worshipper .. .is slow. Actual
worship, of prayer and praise and sacrifice, denotes that the severance is
complete; ritual such as that of the [initiated] Kouretes, in which the god
is 'summoned' and bidden to leap, denotes an intennediate stage when he is
merely representative and felt to be of like passions though of higher potency
than his summoner. Gradually the chorus loses all sense that the god is themselves,
he is utterly projected, no longer chief daemon ... but unique and aloof,
a perfected theos. Strong emotion collectively experienced begets this illusion
of objective reality; each worshipper is conscious of something in his emotion
not himself, stronger than himself. He does not know it is the force of collective
suggestion, he calls it a god. (Ibid.: 46-7)
In totemism, which for Harrison, following Durkheim, is the earliest fonn of religion,
the totem is considered the kin of group members rather than a god above
them (see ibid.: 127).
Although Harrison footnotes Durkheim only sporadically, her account of ancient
Greek religion follows his theory of religion almost to a tee. 8 Her focus on
the definition of religion, her definition of the object of religion as the sacred
rather than god, her concern with ritual as much as with belief, her stress on both
belief and ritual as obligatory, her association of the obligatory with the social, her
rooting of religion in group experience, her stress on the emotion stirred by group
experience, her -dismissal of the place of the individual in religion-all of these
points come conspicuously from Durkheim's 'De la definition des phenomenes
religieux' (1899), which she cites above all. 'Les Formes Elementaires de la Pensee
et de la Vie Religieuse' , as sbe titles it, was only forthcoming at the time of the
publication of Themis (see Harrison 1912: 486 n. 3). Harrison goes beyond Durkheim
in characterizing the original group ritual as an initiation ritua1. 9 Here she
8 As with Comford, so with Harrison: see David's review of her Themis in L 'Annee sociologique
(David 1913b), in which Harrison, like Comford, is criticized for being even more
Durkheimian than Durkheim.
9 Elsewhere Harrison criticizes Durkheim for failing to recognize the original ritual as an
initiation ritual: see Harrison 1915b: 63.

Durkheim in Britain 137
follows Amold van Gennep, whose Les Rites de passage appeared in 1909 (see
ibid: 20).
Harrison corresponded with Durkheim (see Stewart 1959: 162) and reviewed
his Elementary Forms with typical effusiveness (see Harrison 1915b). In her 1921
Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion she proclaims Durkheim an outright
'genius' for his 'discovery' of the 'social origin' of religion, and she proclaims that
discovery 'perhaps the greatest advance yet made in the scientific study of religion'
(Harrison 1921: 6 and n. 1).10 Yet nowhere does she say how she came upon
Durkheim. In a footnote in Themis she does refer 'English readers' to 'a short account
of M. Durkheim's position in the last chapter of Mr Marett's Threshold of
Religion' (Marett 1909; Harrison 1912: 486 n. 3).11 That chapter reprints R. R.
Marett's 1908 essay on 'A Sociological View of Comparative Religion', his first
article on Durk;heim. It is, however, most unlikely that Harrison took her Durkheimian
inspiration from that essay. While Marett is eager to recommend Durkheim's
sociological approach to fellow British scholars, he criticizes anyone-sided
concentration on the group as sharply as he does the one-sided focus of British
anthropologists on the individual, rejecting sociological determinism for its denial
of individual free will. True, he notes that the Durkheimians so far 'shew no strong
inclination to do that' (Marett 1908a: 51), but he approves of them only in so far as
they do not. He advocates a combination of sociology with psychology-in his
terms, a combination of the 'social psychology' of the French with the 'individual
psychology' of the British. He insists on allowing for the presence of free-thinking
individuals in even primitive society:
At the level of primitive culture, however, where representative individuals
are not easily met with, where, to our eyes at least, one man is very like an-
10 On Durkheim's impact, see also Harrison 1915a: 50-1; Stewart 1959: 85-6, 87, 91, 162;
Peacock 1988: 195-8. Surprisingly, Harrison never even mentions Durkheim in her autobiography
(Harrison 1925), written only four years after Epilegomena.
11 In his autobiography Marett writes that he himself learned of the Durkheimians between
1904 and 1907, when, in his contribution to the Festschrift for Edward Tylor (reprinted in
Marett 1909: ch. 3), he refers several times to the article on magic by Henri Hubert and
Marcel Mauss in vol. 7 of L 'Anm?e sociologique: see Marett 1941: 161. (By contrast, in the
1908 collection of essays by edited by Marett [1908b] on Anthropology and the Classics,
Durkheim is nowhere mentioned.) How Marett came upon the Durkheimians, he does not
disclose. He writes: 'To return to the Annee Sociologique-when I first heard of it there
was no copy to be found in the Oxford libraries, and I had to buy the set of volumes for
myself. And very glad I was that I had done so' (Marett 1941: 162). Stocking suggests that
perhaps Marett's Channel Islands origins gave him 'a special sensitivity to French thought'
(Stocking 1984a: 109), but Marett writes that at the time 'of the theorists, more especially
those hailing from the Continent, I knew little, perhaps even congratulating myself on the
virgin state of my mind in this respect' (Marett 1941: 162). The earliest reference in a British
publication to the Durkheimians that I have come upon is a laudatory review of Volume
6 of L 'Annee sociologique: see Hartland 1903.

138 Robert A. Segal
other, the social method, the method of the compositive photograph, may and
must have the preference .... [Yet] it will always be wise to make allowance
for the possibility of alternative interpretations in regard to even the most
fIrmly rooted custom, as well as for the possibility of interference on the part
of that bugbear of Social Science, the individual who has a view of his own.
(Ibid.: 58)12
Harrison's indebtedness to Durkheim for revealing to her the primacy of the group
over the individual surely, then, does not come from Marett.13
In Themis Harrison does attribute the notion of a 'pre-totemistic' society-the
one, minor respect in which, knowingly or unknowingly, she breaks with Durkheim-to
'views expressed by Mr A. R. Brown [who later added 'Radcliffe'] in a
course of lectures delivered in 1909 at Trinity College, Cambridge' (Harrison
1912: 125). Presumably, she attended those lectures. Certainly she repeats Radcliffe-Brown's
demographic explanation of the shift from pre-totemic to totemic
society: 'Probably it was due to the merely mechanical cause of pressure of population'
(ibid.). She would scarcely have come up with that explanation on her
own.
There survives a set of notes for Radcliffe-Brown's lectures, actually delivered
in 1910, along with the printed lecture schedule. The subject of the lectures,
'Comparative Sociology', is as Durkheimian as the approach, apart from the identification
of a pre-totemic stage of society. (The Durkheim followed is that of The
Division of Labour 'in Society.) Moreover, in a 1912 letter to Marcel Mauss, Rad-
12 As Marett writes in his autobiography, '[U]p to a point their insistence on the purely social
element involved in the development of human institutions-language being a very
good example-was needed to counteract the opposite tendency running through so much
of British work, Tylor's included .... These French sociologists, then, even if they tended to
bend the stick too far the other way, were, to me at least, very enlightening .... In the Sociological
Review for January, 1908, I defined my attitude towards this school of thought as
carefully as I could, but perhaps failed to indicate the full extent of my debt to their remarkable
labours' (Marett 1941: 163). By 1912, he was even more of a Durkheimian, pitting
religion as social against magic as anti-social: see Marett 1912: 209-10; also Marett
1920: 189; 1941: 163.
13 Stocking's suggestion that 'it may well have been the work of Marett' that 'led Harrison
to Durkheim' (Stocking 1984a: 109) is based on the number of citations to Marett in
Themis. But of the nine references, only the one quoted deals with Durkheim. Undeniably,
Harrison praises Marett on some of the same grounds that she praises Durkheim, above all
for their common conception of primitive religion as the group experience of an awesome,
impersonal force. However, she does not credit Marett with introducing her to Durkheim.
That Durkheim himself cites Marett for independently confirming Durkheim' s conception
of primitive religion reinforces Marett's autonomy: see Durkheim 1912/t. 1965 [1915]:
230-1. At the same time Stocking is well aware of Marett' s distance from the Durkheimians
in the 1908 essay: see Stocking 1995: 168-9.

Durkheim in Britain 139
cliffe-Brown declares himself 'in complete agreement with the view of sociology
put forward in the Annee Sociologique' and with characteristic arrogance takes
credit for being 'the first person to expound those views in England' in lectures on
'Sociology in Cambridge in 1910', where he was a Fellow of Trinity College, and
in 'my lectures at London University [i.e. London School of Economics] in 1909-
10', where he was a Reader in Ethnology (Testart 1979: 4). RadcHffe-Brown's
arrogance aside, it is much more likely that Harrison learned of Durkheim from
him than vice versa (see Stocking 1984b: 108-9).14 Cornford, for his part, credits
Brown with his own functionalist approach to primitive culture (see Cornford
1912: 75 n. 2).
The Andaman Islanders
In 1906 Radcliffe-Brown went to the Andaman Islands, located off the coast of
Burma, as a student of both Rivers and A. C. Haddon. He was under the influence
of Haddon even more than of Rivers when he first wrote up his notes upon his return
from the field in 1908 (see Stocking 1984b: 144). Most likely, Radcliffe­
Brown did not encounter Durkheim until he started lecturing in 1910. Ironically,
Radcliffe-Brown probably learned of Durkheim from Rivers (see Langham 1981:
281). But once he did, he interpreted his Andamanese material accordingly. Even
his account of the development of totemic society out of pre-totemic society, of
which the Andamanese were his sole example, is Durkheimian: an increase in
population led to a division into social groups and in turn to exogamy and then to
totemism (see Stocking 1984a: 122-3; 1984b: 145). Doubtless Radcliffe-Brown
became even more of a Durkheimian from the time he gave the lectures to the time
his fieldwork was finally published in 1922 (see Stocking 1984b: 145--6). Radcliffe-Brown
corresponded with Durkheim but never met him. IS
In the Preface to the 1933 reprint of The Andaman Islanders Radcliffe-Brown
recounts that, when he began writing the book in 1908, he followed Rivers and
Haddon in being concerned with historical questions: 'either with formulating hypotheses
as to the origins of institutions or with attempts to provide hypothetical
reconstructions 'of the details of culture history'. He sought 'to make a hypothetical
reconstruction of the history of the Andamans and of the Negritos in general'. But
14 Ackerman writes that Harrison 'seems to have discovered the Annee group around 1907,
when she was struggling to revise Prolegomena, after the anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe­
Brown had made them known in Britain' (Ackerman 1991a: 11). Of the essays by Durkheim
that Harrison cites in Themis (1912: 486 n. 3), Ackerman states that 'she does not say
when she read them, but it cannot have been before 1907' (Ackerman 1991b: 291 n. 23).
IS On Radcliffe-Brown's correspondence with Durkheim, see Peristiany 1960; Firth 1956:
301; Lukes 1973: 528-9.

140 Robert A. Sega/
in the process he became convinced 'that it is only in extremely rare instances that
we can ever approach demonstrable conclusions and that speculative history cannot
give us results of any real importance for the understanding of human life and
culture' (Radcliffe-Brown 1933: vii). In the Preface Radcliffe-Brown attributes his
change of views to the influence of 'the French sociologists', with their 'different
conception of the utilization of ethnological data for the understanding of human
life' (ibid.: viii). He states that he applied their 'method' to the customs and beliefs
of the Andaman Islanders in Chapters 5 and 6 of his book, where he examines the
'meaning' and 'function' of customs and beliefs.
At the outset of Chapter 5, Radcliffe-Brown states that, having presented the
customs and beliefs of the Andamanese in previous chapters, he now intends to
'interpret' them. By the 'interpretation' of a custom or belief. he means 'the discovery,
not of its origin, but of its meaning' (Radcliffe-Brown 1922: 229). By
'origin' he means historical, one-time origin. He does not mean recurrent origin,
which is tied to function (see Radcliffe-Brown 1923a: 137). Radcliffe-Brown dismisses
the historical question not as inappropriate but as unanswerable, as merely
speculative: 'In the absence of all historical records, the most that we could do
would be to attempt to make a hypothetical reconstruction of the past, which, in
the present state of ethnological science, would be of very doubtful utility' (Radcliffe-Brown
1922: 229).16 He distinguishes social anthropology from ethnology
and leaves to ethnology the task of 'hypothetical reconstructions of the past' (ibid.:
229 n. 1)-a task he dismisses as unscientific.
For Radcliffe-Brown, the historical approach is unscientific because it is 'conjectural':
My objection to conjectural history is not that it is historical, but that it is conjectural.
History shows us how certain events or changes in the past have led
to certain other events or conditions, and thus reveals human life in a particular
region of the world as a chain of connected happenings. But it can do this
only when there is direct evidence for both the preceding and succeeding
events or conditions and also some actual evidence of their interconnection. In
conjectural history we have direct knowledge about a state of affairs existing
at a certain time and place, without any adequate knowledge of the preceding
conditions and events, about which we are therefore reduced to making conjectures.
To establish any probability for such conjectures we should need to
have a knowledge of laws of social development which we certainly do not
16 On Radcliffe-Brown's encouragement of historical reconstruction wherever possible, see
Eggan and Warner 1956: 546.

142 Robert A. Segal
ogy is 'to arrive at valid generalisations about the nature of society and social phenomena'
(ibid.: 165), ineluctably particularistic history is of no help.20
By contrast to the origin-the historical origin-of a custom or belief, the
'meaning' is ascertainable, for by 'meaning' Radcliffe-Brown means 'function' ,21
and by function he means not past but present function. The function is therefore
observable, therefore verifiable, therefore scientific. The function may not be observable
to the participant, but it is observable to the anthropologist. 22
To use Radcliffe-Brown's favourite analogy, which he adopts from Herbert
Spencer but does not press so relentlessly as Spencer, society is like a living body,
with each custom and belief, like each organ, contributing in a distinctive way to
the maintenance of the whole: 'Every custom and belief of a primitive society
plays some determinate part in the social life of the community, just as every organ
of a living body plays some part in the general life of the organism' (Radcliffe­
Brown 1922: 229)?3 Just as 'animal physiology is distinguished from the biology
that deals with the origin of species, the causes of variation, and the general laws
of evolution' (ibid.: 230; see also Radcliffe-Brown 1976-77: 36_7),24 so the study
of the function of society is to be distinguished from the reconstruction of its history.
Again, social anthropology is to be kept distinct from ethnology.
Radcliffe-Brown dismisses the notion of 'survivals', pioneered by Edward Tylor
and promoted by Rivers, on the grounds that phenomena continue to exist only
because they continue to serve a social function. 25 Furthermore, any genuine sur-
20 Radcliffe-Brown juxtaposes a historical approach to North American Indian kinship terminology
with a 'structural' approach: see Radcliffe-Brown 1941. For damning criticisms
of Radcliffe-Brown's own inductive procedures, see Lowie 1937: 224-5; Evans-Pritchard
1981: 200-2.
21 Certainly in the Preface to the reprint of The Andaman Islanders (1933: viii-ix) Radcliffe-Brown
tries to distinguish between 'meaning' and 'function', but it is hardly clear
even there, let alone in the text itself, what the distinction is. See also Radcliffe-Brown
1940: 9-10.
22 On the compatibility of functionalism with history, see Lesser 1935: 388-93. In reply,
Radcliffe-Brown claims to agree with Lesser: see Radcliffe-Brown 1935: 400-1.
23 Unlike Spencer or even Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown is wary of pressing the analogy too
far: see Radcliffe-Brown 1935: 394-7. On the differing uses of the organic analogy by social
theorists, including Spencer, Durkheim, and Radcliffe-Brown, see Levine 1995: especially
247-50.
24 Oddly, Radcliffe-Brown himself breaks the analogy when. he asserts that somehow the
history of societies can never yield 'general laws' , whereas the present existence of societies
can: see Radcliffe-Brown 1922: 229 n. 1. In any case it is laws that he is seeking.
25 Radcliffe-Brown substitutes a functionalist analysis of the relationship between mother's
brother and sister's son for a 'survivalist' one: see Radcliffe-Brown 1924. He does deny
that his functionalism goes as far as to 'require the dogmatic assertion that everything in the
life of every community has a function'. Functionalism makes 'only the assumption that it

144 Robert A. Segal
fonnity with the needs of the society' (Radcliffe-Brown 1922: 233-4). Sentiments
express the 'social value', or effect on society, of those objects. The sentiments
can be negative as well as positive, depending on the social value. Disease has a
negative social value, a bow and arrow a positive one (see ibid.: 264). Customs stir
sentiments and thereby preserve them: 'The ceremonial (Le. collective) expression
of any sentiment serves both to maintain it at the requisite degree of intensity in
the mind of the indiyidual and to transmit it from one generation to another' (ibid.:
234). The function of customs is therefore 'to maintain and to transmit from one
generation to another the emotional dispositions on which the society (as it is constituted)
depends for its existence' (ibid.). Later, Radcliffe-Brown employs the
concept of social 'sanctions', perhaps to make his approach seem less psychological
and more sociological, but he still ties sanctions to sentiments: 'For the
application of any sanction is a direct affinnation of social sentiments by the
community and thereby constitutes an important, possibly essential, mechanism
for maintaining these sentiments' (Radcliffe-Brown 1934: 533).
Radcliffe-Brown argues that the emotions elicited by customs are implanted
rather than innate. Minimally, he is maintaining that without the customs the emotions
would not be expressed, at least pUblicly. So he seems to be saying of wedding
and funeral rituals:
Thus the weeping rite expresses feelings of solidarity, the exchange of presents
expresses good-will. But the ceremonies are not spontaneous expressions
of feeling; they are all customary actions to which the sentiment of
obligation attaches, which it is the duty of persons to perform on certain definite
occasions. It is the duty of everyone in a community to give presents at a
wedding; it is the duty of relatives to weep together when they meet. (Radcliffe-Brown
1922: 245-6)27
Maximally, and more likely, however, Radcliffe-Brown is maintaining that
without the customs the emotions would not even be felt. Thus he calls a peacemaking
ceremony 'a method by which feelings of enmity are exchanged for feelings
of friendship' (ibid.: 246). Even marriage rituals serve 'to arouse in the minds
of the marrying pair a sense of their obligations as married folk, and to bring about
in the minds of the witnesses a change of feelings towards the young people such
as should properly accompany their change of social status' (ibid.). He stresses the
inculcation of feelings even in funeral rituals: 'The customs of burial and mourning
are therefore to be seen [as] not simply the result of natural feelings of fear and
27 Radcliffe-Brown seems to be saying this too of rituals that express the special relationship
between a sister's son and his mother's brother: see Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 28-9. Put
summarily: 'In primitive societies any things that have important effects on the social life
necessarily become the objects of ritual observances (negative or positive), the function of
such ritual being to express, and so to fix and perpetuate, the recognition of the social value
of the objects to which it refers' (Radcliffe-Brown 1923a: 135).

146 Robert A. Segal
To take an example, Radcliffe-Brown maintains that a legend which ascribes
the origin of darkness in the world to the rash killing of a cicada serves to instil the
proper, if negative, social value toward night, when social life, including 'hunting
or making canoes or weapons' (ibid.: 334), must cease:
In the beginning [according to the legend] there was no night, no darkness.
Social life was continuous and was not subject to periods of diminished intensity.
Then one of the ancestors (apparently in a fit of temper owing to his lack
of success in fishing) crushed a cicada, and the cry of the insect brought darkness
upon the world. The darkness, with its inhibition of activity, is clearly
regarded as an evil, i.e., as a manifestation of force hostile to the society, and
this accords with the definition of the social value ofnight. ... (Ibid.: 333)
The story utilizes 'the connection between the song of the cicada and the alternation
of night and day' (ibid.: 332) to make a social point.
As with customs, so with stories: the emotions, or sentiments, stirred are not
innate but implanted. Radcliffe-Brown denies that even fear of the dark is natural,
lest the function of the story be superfluous and his whole theory thereby be undone:
The Andaman Islander, like many other savages, is afraid of the dark. It might
perhaps be thought that this fear is immediate and instinctive, a result of the
physiology of the human nervous system, but that, I think, would be a false
assumption. Many infants would seem not to be at first afraid of darkness, but
to learn to fear it, as they learn to fear many other things. It is not possible
here to enter into a discussion of the matter, but I would hold that in the Andaman
Islanders and probably in other savages, the fear of darkness, of night,
is a secondary or induced feeling, not by any means instinctive, and is in
large part due to the social sentiments, to the fact that at night the social life
ceases. (Ibid.)
Radcliffe-Brown asserts that the story serves to inculcate the right attitude not only
toward night but also toward anger, the social value of which is equally negative:
We shall [md that it is a principle of the Andaman legends that evil results
from evil actions. Night, which by reason of its negative social value, is regarded
as an evil, is shown to be the result of the misbehaviour of one of the
ancestors in giving way to anti-social feelings of anger or annoyance. It is a
case of like producing like. When an individual gives way to such feelings as
anger he becomes a source of danger to the society .... (Ibid.: 337-8)
In contrast to customs, which take the natural world as impersonal, myths and
legends personify it. Phenomena with a negative social value arise as punishment
for unsocial behaviour toward either present-day Andamanese or their ancestors.
When, during the third quarter of the month, the moon 'rises in the evening with a

Durkheim in Britain 147
ruddy hue' and thus provides less light, the Andamanese attribute the darkening to
the anger of the moon god in response to the use of artificial light at night:
The moon gives the light by which fishing and turtle hunting at night are
possible. This light has a positive social value, and its withdrawal is an evil.
They therefore regard the moon as jealous, so jealous that if anyone makes
use of an artificial light, as of a fire or torch or burning resin, the moon immediately
is' consumed with anger and withdraws the light that has been of so
much use and has not been sufficiently appreciated. This belief is a means by
which the value of the moonlight is recognized. (Ibid.: 341)
Not only the positive social value of moonlight but also the negative social value
of anger is being underscored, and the telling of the story arouses the appropriate
sentiments. 3o
Furthermore, myths and legends parallel and even connect the natural world to
the social one. The natural world is inhabited by human-like gods whose actions
have the same kind of impact on humans as the actions of fellow humans have.
The story of the moon god therefore not only warns humans against angering the
moon but simultaneously finds fault with the moon for the consequences of its
anger:
When a man does something that hurts or damages another it is generally (in
Adamanese life) because he is angry. So to say that the moon is angry is
equivalent to saying that he is damaging or hurting someone, as he is indeed
damaging the society by withdrawing the light by which for the past week or
so they have been able to capture fish and turtle. (Ibid.: 340-1)
The natural world is incorporated into the social one.
In his 1945. lecture on 'Religion and Society', delivered almost four decades
after he first worked out the theory that appeared in The Andaman Islanders, Radcliffe-Brown
emphasizes that his views have not changed. Religion still means
rituals more than beliefs. The function rather than the origin or content of religion
is still what counts. The function is still social. The social function is still achieved
by the instilment of the proper sentiments. The prime sentiment instilled is still
that of dependence. And dependence still means both the dependence of society on
natural and social phenomena and, even more, the dependence of members on society:
Thirty-seven years ago (1908), in a fellowship thesis on the Andaman Islanders
(which did not appear in print till 1922), I formulated briefly a general
theory on the social function of rites and ceremonies. It is the same theory that
30 For a rather technical presentation of Radcliffe-Brown's concept of social value, see
Stanner 1956: 120-1, and especially 1985.

148 Robert A. Segal
underlies the remarks I shall offer on this occasion. Stated in the simplest possible
terms[,] the theory is that an orderly social life amongst human beings
depends upon the presence in the minds of the members of a society of certain
sentiments, which control the behaviour of the individual in his relation to
others. Rites can be seen to be the regulated symbolic expressions of certain
sentiments. Rites can therefore be shown to have a specific social function
when, and to the extent that, they have for their effect to regulate, maintain
and transmit from one generation to another sentiments on which the constitution
of the society depends. I ventured to suggest as a general formula that
religion is everywhere an expression in one form or another of a sense of dependence
on a power outside ourselves, a power which we may speak of as a
spiritual or moral power. (Radcliffe-Brown 1945: 35-6)31
Radcliffe-Brown as a Durkheimian
As pedestrian as Radcliffe-Brown's analysis of customs and beliefs seems to be, it
is, or was, radical, and radical because it was Durkheimian. In contrast to, say,
Tylor's view, religion, like any other aspect of culture, is for Radcliffe-Brown a
group rather than an individual activity-the bedrock Durkheimian point. Religion
not only arises socially but also functions socially.32 Rather than a means of linking
humans to the physical world, as for Tylor, religion is a means of linking humans
to one another. What is worshipped is, if not society itself, as for Durkheim,
at least what is of value to society. True, contrary to Durkheim, the line between
the sacred and the profane is thereby almost effaced: what is sacred is what is of
everyday value to society, such as sunlight. Radcliffe-Brown even hesitates to
draw a sharp distinction 'between those beliefs and customs that properly deserve
to be called religious, and others which do not deserve the adjective'. The Andamanese
do not 'separate a definite entity which we can call religion from things
that may more appropriately be regarded as art, morality, play, or social ceremonial'
(Radcliffe-Brown 1922: 405).
31 Radcliffe-Brown insisted that his theory had not changed during his career: see Stocking
1976. See also Urry 1993: 120.
32 Occasionally, Radcliffe-Brown does allow for an individual function. Dancing, for
example, 'affords an opportunity for the individual to exhibit before others his skill and
agility and so to gratify his personal vanity' (Radcliffe-Brown 1922: 251). But that same
gratification also and primarily serves socially to fill the dancer 'with geniality and goodwill
towards his companions' (ibid.). Radcliffe-Brown insists on restricting function to
social function and vigorously objects to Malinowski's appropriation of the term for individual
function: see Radcliffe-Brown 1940: 1, 9-10; 1946; 1949. To distinguish his brand
of functionalism from Malinowski's, he comes to call his own brand 'structuralfunctionalism'.
On the differences between Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, see Stocking
1984b: 156--84.

Durkheim in Britain 149
Radcliffe-Brown's rejection of an individual function for myths and legends is
part of his separation of social anthropology, or sociology, from psychology-that
is, from individual psychology:
The position maintained by the sociologist is (1) that in social institutions and
in the phenomena of culture generally the sociologist has a field of study
which is entirely distinct from that of the psychologist, and that generalisations
made in this field must be sociological and not psychological generalisations;
(2) that therefore any explanation of a particular sociological phenomenon in
terms of psychology, i.e. of processes of individual mental activity, is invalid.
(Radcliffe-Brown 1958: 64)
In A Natural Science o/Society (1957), the formalization of his sociological creed,
Radcliffe-Brown most rigidly distinguishes sociology from psychology. That distinction
echoes the locus classicus, Durkheim's Rules o/Sociological Method:
The determining cause of a social fact should be sought among the social
facts preceding it and not among the states of the individual consciousness.
Moreover, we see quite readily that all the foregoing applies to the determination
of the function as well as the cause of social phenomena. The function of
a social fact cannot but be social, i.e., it consists of the production of socially
useful effects. (Durkheim 1895/t. 1964 [1938]: 110)
Radcliffe-Brown explicitly follows 'Durkheim and others' in his restriction of
'function' to social function (see Radcliffe-Brown 1940: 10).33
Viewed sociologically rather than psychologically, individuals merely play a
social role. Radcliffe-Brown thus distinguishes between a psychological analysis
of a murder trial and the sociological, or social anthropological, one: 34 'A man
commits a murder; the police arrest him; he is brought before a judge and jury and
tried; and is hanged by the hangman' (Radcliffe-Brown I923a: 133). A psychological
approach would seek to determine the 'thoughts, feelings, and actions' of
the various participants. But psychology, by which Radcliffe-Brown means individual
rather than social psychology, 'would not provide us with any explanation
of the whole procedure in which the individuals play their respective parts' (ibid.).
By contrast, a sociological approach would 'study the situation as a whole, considering
it as an aetion carried out by the society, the State, through its specially appointed
representatives, as a collective reaction on the part of the society to the
particular circumstances resulting from the murder' (ibid.). At that point 'the indi-
33 On the separation of anthropology from psychology in British anthropology generally,
see Kuper 1990.
34 On Radcliffe-Brown's preference for the term 'social anthropology' to 'sociology', see
Radcliffe-Brown 1923a: 127 n. On his choice of terms, see Urry 1993: 125.

150 Robert A. Segal
viduals as particular persons, with their particular thoughts and feelings, become of
no interest or importance for our study' (ibid.). Where other 'functionalists', notably
Malinowski, seek the individual as well as the social function of religion and
other cultural phenomena, Radcliffe-Brown restricts himself to the social function.
Whether or not for Durkheim, for Radcliffe-Brown, psychology and history go
hand in hand. What Radcliffe-Brown calls 'the older social anthropology', such as
Tylor's, sought the origin of society and so was historical, and it used psychology
to find the origin. Unlike history, it sought laws of origin rather than the origin of
specific societies, but like history it relied on conjecture: 'Social anthropology frequently
sought the origins of social institutions in purely psychological factors,
i.e., it sought to conjecture the motives in individual minds that would lead them to
invent or accept particular customs and beliefs. Its explanations were frequently, or
even usually, histor.ical in one sense, but psychological in another, almost never
sociological' (Radcliffe-Brown 1958: 49). Radcliffe-Brown rejects psychological
explanations of society not only because they are psychological rather than sociological
but also because they are conjectural rather than factual. 35
Radcliffe-Brown is not making individuals irrelevant. On the contrary, he is
making them indispensable, but indispensable to achieving social ends. As one
commentator aptly puts it, culture for Radcliffe-Brown 'is conceived of as acting
through individuals but for society' (Tax 1955: 480; original emphasis). In response
to the charge that he only belatedly came to recognize the role of the individual,
Radcliffe-Brown states that 'I have always taught (1) that the function of a
social institution can only be seen in its effect in individuals; (2) that the only data
of social anthropology are observations of acts of behaviour (including speech!) of
individuals or products of such acts; and (3) that culture is something that exists
only in an individual' (cited in Stocking 1976: 6). Radcliffe-Brown even defines
'social facts' as 'modes of thinking feeling and acting that are imposed upon the
35 Put another way, Radcliffe-Brown, following Durkheim, subordinates culture to social
structure, where Malinowski, especially after the 1930s, subordinates social structure to
culture. For Radcliffe-Brown, the function of culture is socialization: 'I am assuming that
the function of culture as a whole is to unite individual human beings into more or less stable
social structures, i.e. stable systems of groups determining and regulating the relation of
those individuals to one another, and providing such external adaptation to the physical
environment, and such internal adaptation between the component individuals or groups, as
to make possible an ordered social life' (Radcliffe-Brown 1958: 62). For Radcliffe-Brown,
there cannot be a 'science of culture' because culture is simply part of the 'social system'
(Radc1iffe-Brown 1957: 106). On the place of culture in the 'science of society', see ibid.:
90-109. Where Radcliffe-Brown's emphasis on social structure came to epitomize British
social anthropology, Malinowski's emphasis on culture came to typifY American social
anthropology, though the American emphasis on the autonomy of culture really derived
from Boas: see Eggan 1955a: 490. Murdock went as far as to charge British social anthropology,
led by Radcliffe-Brown, with ignoring culture altogether: see Murdock 1951: 471.
See, in reply, Firth 1951: 482-4.

152 Robert A. Segal
the empire which it [society] holds over consciences is due much less to the
physical supremacy of which it has the privilege than to the moral authority
with which it is invested. If we yield to its orders, it is not merely because it is
strong enough to triumph over our resistance; it is primarily because it is the
object ofa venerable respect. (Durkbeim 1912/t. 1965 [1915]: 237)
For Radcliffe-Brown, the moral obligation that members feel to society is
what leads them to sacrifice their own ends for its ends: 'One of the most important
ways in which the individual experiences the moral force of the society of
which he is a member is through the feeling of moral obligation, which gives him
the experience of a power compelling him to subordinate his egoistic desires to the
demands of social custom' (Radcliffe-Brown 1922: 325). Durkheim-here, too,
Radcliffe-Brown's source--makes the point even more strongly: 'at every instant
we are obliged to submit ourselves to rules of conduct and of thought that we have
neither made nor desired, and which are sometimes even contrary to our most fundamental
inclinations and instincts' (Durkheim 1912/t. 1965 [1915]: 237).
For Radcliffe-Brown, the commitment to society that customs and beliefs provide
is not merely helpful but mandatory. Without the customs and beliefs, the
sentiments evoked would not exist, and without the sentiments, society would not
exist: 'I have tried to show that the ceremonial customs are the means by which the
society acts upon its individual members and keeps alive in their minds a certain
system of sentiments. Without the ceremonial those sentiments would not exist,
and without them the social organisation in its actual form could not exist' (Radcliffe-Brown
1922: 324). Yet again, Radcliffe-Brown is repeating Durkheim. For
both, the society that prays together stays together. For both, social order is not
natural. It must be forged, and forged by forging social sentiments and in turn behaviour.
No point is more Durkheimian, or further from Rivers, who takes order
for granted.
Radcliffe-Brown's indebtedness to Durkheim is by no means uncriticaL Even
in the 1913 article on 'Three Tribes of Western Australia' that Radcliffe-Brown
sent to Durkheim, he rejects Durkheim's claim that 'the prohibition of the marriage
of first cousins .. .is due to the change from maternal to paternal descent of the
totem' (Radcliffe-Brown 1913: 193; see also Peristiany 1960). Radcliffe-Brown
presents his fullest criticism of Durkheim' s analysis of totem ism in his 1929 essay
on 'The Sociological Theory of Totemism' (Radcliffe-Brown 1929b).36 Durkheim,
we are told, is wrong to maintain that totems are chosen for their depictability on
emblems:
In Australia no designs are made of the sex totems or of the totems of the
moieties or sections, and even for clan totemism there are many tribes that do
36 See Kuper 1988: especially 60--1; Radc1iffe-Brown 1914: 628; 1957: 78. See also Testart
1979: 3-4; Langham 1981: 259-60,268-71,276; Stocking 1984b: 148.

Durkheim in Britain 153
not make any representation of their totems. Totemic designs, which for
Durkheim are so important or indeed so essential a part of totemism, are
characteristic of central and northern Australia but not of the continent as a
whole. (Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 125)
Moreover, the reason that Durkheim proposes for the choice of something so important
as totemism is for Radcliffe-Brown trivial. Animals and plants are in fact
chosen as totems because of their importance to the group.
At the same time not all animals and plants deemed sacred are totems. Totemism,
far from coextensive with primitive religion, is simply a part of it, and is not
even the original part. Religion is the establishment of 'the ritual attitude' toward
important animals and plants. It is only 'when the society becomes differentiated
into segmentary groups such as clans' that
a process of ritual specialisation takes place by which each segment acquires a
special and particular relation to some one or more of the sacra of the community.
The totem of the clan or group is still sacred in some sense to the
whole community, but is now specially sacred, and in some special way, to
the segment of which it is the totem. (Ibid.: 126-7)
Radcliffe-BTown makes other criticisms as well, but even in the wake of all of
them he states that his theory 'incorporates what I think is the most valuable part
of Durkheim' s analysis, in the recognition that the function of the ritual relation of
the group to its totem is to express and so to maintain in existence the solidarity of
the group' (ibid.: 128).37 It would be unfair to deny Radcliffe-Brown any theoretical
contributions of his own (see especially Radcliffe-Brown 1918, 1923b, 1930-
31, 1931, 1941, 1950), but they tend to be confined to the more technical area of
kinship.38 In his overall theory of society, including his formal statement of'Systematic
Social Science' (see Radcliffe-Brown 1957: 151-6), Radcliffe-Brown remains
an explicit Durkheimian.
37 Similarly, in 'Religion and Society', Radcliffe-Brown states that while 'the account I
have just given of Australian totemism differs considerably from that given by Durkheim,
... far from contradicting, it confirms Durkheim's fundamental general theory as to the
social function of the totemic religion of Australia and its rites' (Radcliffe-Brown 1945:
40). See also Kuper 1988: 62.
38 On Radcliffe-Brown's contributions, see above all Fortes 1955; 1969: Ch. 4. See also
Lowie 1937: 225-6; Kuper 1973: 77-83; Bamard 2000: 73-5.

154 Robert A. Segal
Radcliffe-Brown as less than a Durkheimian
As a theoretician, Radcliffe-Brown is conventionally celebrated for having introduced
Durkheim to Britain. To cite but three examples, Raymond Firth writes:
'Like Malinowski, from whom he increasingly differed, he founded much of his
theory upon Durkheim. But unlike Malinowski, he preserved a great deal of the
Durkheimian apparatus both of concepts and of terminology' (Firth 1956: 301).
According to Meyer Fortes, 'As is well known, his greatest affinity is with Durkheim
and his followers. Some of Radcliffe-Brown's most fruitful hypotheses have
arisen from testing Durkheimian theories in the field' (Fortes 1949: viii). A. R.
Elkin states that 'Academically he was an excellent exponent of Durkheimian
principles, which he has so absorbed that they seemed to be his own' (Elkin 1956:
246). Robert Lowie (1937) even puts the discussion of Radcliffe-Brown in his
chapter on 'French Sociology' .39 The irony is that, for all Radcliffe-Brown's indisputable
beholdenness to Durkheim, he adopts only a part of Durkheim, and by no
means the chief part. Social functionalism is incontestably present in Durkheim,
but so is much else that Radcliffe-Brown, together with his American counterparts
Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton, either misses or ignores (see Pickering 1984:
Ch. 16).
First, Durkheim is as interested in the origins of religion as in its function-a
point that Radcliffe-Brown notes but actually rebukes Durkheim for:
I have chosen the topic of totemism because some of the most important steps
of the passage from the old to the new methods are to be seen in Durkheim's
treatment of this subject in his 'Elementary Forms of the Religious Life', Unfortunately,
Durkheim retained some of the ideas and some of the terminology
of the older social anthropology. He speaks of his study as aiming to determine
the 'origin' of totemism, and although he seeks to give a new meaning
to the word 'origin', yet his use of it misleads most of his readers, and I think
it really misled Durkheim himself and caused him to cast what is really a theory
of the nature and function of totemism into a form which renders it open
to criticism .... (Radcliffe-Brown 1958: 63)
In fact, Durkheim emphatically distinguishes between the recurrent and the historical
origin of religion, and it is not the historical but only the recurrent origin of
religion that he seeks:
The study which we are undertaking is therefore a way of taking up again, but
under new conditions, the old problem of the origin of religion. To be sure, if
by origin we are to understand the very fIrst beginning, the question has nothing
scientific about it, and should be resolutely discarded .... But the problem
39 For a distinction between the varieties of Durkheimian ideas adopted by Radcliffe­
Brown, see Kuper's introduction to Radcliffe-Brown 1977: 2-3.

Durkheim in Britain 155
which we want to raise is quite another one. What we want to do is to find a
means of discerning the ever-present causes upon which the most essential
forms of religious thought and practice depend. (Durkheim 1912/t. 1965
[1915]: 20)
On the one hand Durkheim rejects as uncompromisingly as Radcliffe-Brown
the historical question of when and where religion began. On the other hand he
takes up the non-historical question of how and why religion arises whenever and
wherever it does. He is as concerned with the issue of recurrent origin as with the
issue of function. Society-the amassing of members of society--causes religion.
As he states at the end of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, '[W]e have
seen that this [religious] reality, ... which is the universal and eternal objective cause
of these sensations sui generis out of which religious experience is made, is society'
(ibid.: 465). By contrast, Radcliffe-Brown starts with religion already present
and seeks only the function it serves. While Radcliffe-Brown recognizes the connection
between recurrent origin and function, he limits himself to only the function
of religion. He even castigates Durkheim for not doing the same.
Secondly but more importantly, the function of religion for Durkheim is as
much individualistic as social. Religion does not merely socialize individuals but
also elevates them: 'But a god is not merely an authority upon whom we depend; it
is a force upon which our strength relies. The man who has obeyed his god and
who for this reason believes the god is with him approaches the world with confidence
and with the feeling of an increased energy' (ibid.: 240). The beneficiary
here is surely the individual. Even when Durkheim describes the harmony among
members of society that religion instils, the beneficiary is the individual and not, or
not just, society:
The man who has done his duty finds, in the manifestations of every sort expressing
the sympathy, esteem or affection which his fellows have for him, a
feeling of comfort, of which he does not ordinarily take account, but which
sustains him, none the less. The sentiments which society has for him raise
the sentiments which he has for himself. Because he is in moral harmony with
his comrades, he has more confidence, courage and boldness in action, just
like the believer who thinks that he feels the regard of his god turned graciously
towards him. (Ibid.: 242)
Radcliffe-Brown clearly recognizes what society does for individuals, who for him
no less than for Durkheim are dependent on it. But for Radcliffe-Brown the beneficiary
of that dependence is society alone. Since religion serves to instil the feeling
of dependence, it thereby serves society, not the individual. As he put the point
almost two decades after The Andaman Islanders, 'religion is the cement which
holds society together' (Radcliffe-Brown 1940: 9).
Thirdly and most importantly, the function of religion for Durkheim is not
merely emotional but also cognitive. Where for Radcliffe-Brown religion incul-

156 Robert A. Segal
cates feelings, for Durkheim it also inculcates ideas. Religion provides the first
cosmology: 'For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations
with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were
of religious origin' (Durkheim 1912/t. 1965 [1915]: 21). While the scientific cosmology
comes to replace the religious one, it emerges out of the religious one:
'philosophy and the sciences were born of religion ... because religion began by
taking the place of the sciences and philosophy' (ibid.). Religion also provides a
unity beyond the disparateness of sensory phenomena that science inherits: 'The
essential thing was not to leave the mind enslaved to visible appearances, but to
teach it to dominate them and to connect what the senses separated; for from the
moment when men have an idea that there are internal connections between things,
science and philosophy become possible. Religion opened up the way for them'
(ibid.: 270). Put another way, Durkheim is interested in the content, not merely the
function, of religion.
To be sure, Radcliffe-Brown does not ignore the world beyond society. On the
contrary, as noted, the external world 'comes to be incorporated in the social order
as an essential part of it' (Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 131). Not only is the value of
natural phenomena their social value, but natural phenomena are expected to behave
morally, as if they were obedient members of a cosmic society: 'The suggestion
I put forward, therefore, is that totemism is part of a larger whole, and that one
important way in which we can characterize this whole is that it provides a representation
of the universe as a moral or social order' (ibid.). But even the external
world is of interest only because of its social role: providing phenomena of value
to society and providing a model of a working society. The beneficiary remains
society. Of the content of the religious cosmology, Radcliffe-Brown says nothing.
His indifference is part of his indifference to religious belief. Where for Durkheim
religion consists at least as much of belief as of ritual (see Pickering 1984: Ch. 20),
for Radcliffe-Brown religion is at heart ritual rather than belief (see, e.g., Radcliffe-Brown
1952: 155; see also Rue11998: 105-7).
Religion for Durkheim provides not only ideas but also the categories by
which humans think:
it has been less frequently noticed that religion has not confined itself to enriching
the human intellect, formed beforehand, with a certain number of
ideas [Le., a cosmology]; it has contributed to forming the intellect itself. Men
owe to it not only a good part of the substance of their knowledge, but also
the form in which this knowledge has been elaborated. (Durkheim 1912/t.
1965 [1915]: 21)
Because the specific form that categories take are distinctive to each society, without
them humans would be unable to think. But humans would equally be unable
to socialize: 'If men did not agree upon these essential ideas at every moment, if
they did not have the same conception of time, space, cause, number, etc., all con-

Durkheim in Britain 157
tact between their minds would be impossible, and with that, all life together'
(ibid.: 30). Yet even here Durkheim goes beyond the payofffor society to the payoff
for the individual: 'A man who did not think with concepts would not be a
man, for he would not be a social being' (ibid.: 487). Socialization itself becomes
an individual need as pressing as any other. There is nothing so deep in Radcliffe­
Brown.
Finally, Durkheim considers issues that transcend Radcliffe-Brown's orbit altogether:
religion as true (see ibid.: 14-15, 256-7)40 and religion as eternal (see
ibid.: 474-5). Where Radcliffe-Brown confines himself to the social function of
'primitive' religion, Durkheim contemplates the origin, content, and truth as well
as function of religion -of all religion. The Durkheim that Radcliffe-Brown brings
to Britain is a truncated Durkheim.
40 By contrast, Radcliffe-Brown professes professional neutrality on the issue: see Radcliffe-Brown
1952: 154; 1957: 117-18.
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JASO 30/2 (1999): 163-181
Proposition
UPDATING THE CLASSICS
KUNIKO MIY ANAGA
In the 1970s and the 1980s, under the rubric of postmodernism, one of the major
questions raised in anthropology in particular was the status of Western representation
of other cultures (CIifford 1986: 10). To both Western and native anthropologists,
dialogue appeared to offer a powerful and promising answer to this question.
The active inclusion of native opinions and epistemologies was seen as a way of
filling the gaps experienced in the field between the observer and the observed.
Dialogue was to be 'a communication within and between cultures' (Marcus and
Fischer 1986: 34). Construction of the common ground in dialogue between them
became an ethical issue, especially in liberal, American anthropology. The empha-
This article was initially intended as a translation from my Jijitu to Ninshiki (Facts and
Identification), published in Japanese in 1996. However, some ideas did not translate into
English and had to be freshly interpreted in the perspective of globalization. I owe to Professor
Israel Scheffler my understanding of natural science. I thank Professors Rodney
Needham and David Parkin, who kindly read the translation and drafts of this article, and
gave me their opinions and encouragement. I offer special thanks to Professor Kenelm Burridge,
who read the drafts and advised me especially about Mr X. I would like to thank Dr
Nick Allen for inviting me to a conference on Marcel Mauss, and the late Dr Godfrey Lienhardt
for guiding me more deeply into anthropology. I would also like to thank colleagues
who have kindly sent me their books and articles.

164 Kuniko Miyanaga
sis was on the inclusion of the observed, either 'within' or 'between', through their
participation, cooperation, or even collaboration in producing ethnography. Dialogue
was sought as a method of inclusion (Michrina and Richards 1996: 31). In
doing so, however, it is often forgotten that dialogue is a 'cultural critique' in the
sense discussed by Marcus and Fischer (1986: ix-x). It is an attitude, not a technology.
More precisely, dialogue is a particular mode of engagement with the
Other. It takes its unique strength from going beyond the given through experiencing
the Other. In this effort to reach out of themselves, anthropologists are cultural
mediators; in them, cultures meet and are interpreted. In this context, the reflexiviti
of anthropologists is critical. It is the ability to construct consistency in the 'I',
the subject of this engagement with others. The frequent use of the subjective
voice, the 'I', is indicative of the necessity for consistent engagement in this act of
self-expansion through others.
With respect to this significantly postmodem problem, the present article aims
to show that, among our classic texts, one by E. E. Evans-Pritchard has a particular
relevance. In his Marett lecture in 1950, he implicitly captures the genesis of dialogue
in putting forward his thesis and 'interpreting' his observations in the field:
The thesis I put before you, that social anthropology is a kind of historiography
or art, implies that it studies societies as moral systems and not as natural
systems, that it is interested in design rather than in process, and that it therefore
seeks patterns and not scientific laws, and interprets rather than explains.
(Evans-Pritchard 1962: 26)
By defining anthropology in teTInS of historiography or art, Evans-Pritchard implicitly
captured the importance and the difficulty of identifying exceptions, a task,
in fact, far more valued in natural science 2 than in the social sciences. In anthropology
and in social science in general, this had been overlooked for far too long.
In an attempt to add a new dimension to Evans-Pritchard's historiography, Burridge
proposes a dialectical perspective between events and rationalizations (1979:
32-3). The following experiment with the red spades and the black hearts in a pack
of cards, introduced by Thomas Kuhn, illustrates the same point:
In a psychological experiment that deserves to be far better known outside the
trade, Bruner and Postman asked experimental subjects to identify on short
and controlled exposure a series of playing cards. Many of the cards were
1 Reflexivity here may be considered one of the 'simplest cultural accounts' that James
Clifford attributes to such philosophers as Wilhelm Dilthey, Paul Ricoeur, and Martin Reidegger
(Clifford 1986: 10).
2 Throughout their history, natural scientists have been trying to fill the gap between their
human efforts of obse,rvation and their objects. Vast efforts and reports have been made on
this point, including those by Israel Scheffler (1997: 163-5) and Butterfield (1950: 80),

Updating the Classics 165
nonnal, but some were made anomalous, e.g., a red six of spades and a black
four of hearts. Each experimental run was constituted by the display of a single
card to a single subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After
each exposure the subject was asked what he had seen, and the run was terminated
by two successive correct identifications. (Kuhn 1970: 62-3)
The experiment reveals a common epistemological difficulty in capturing exceptions
or unexpected events, as follows:
Even on the shortest exposures many subjects identified most of the cards,
and after a small increase all the subjects identified them all. For the normal
cards these identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards were
almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as normal.
The black four of hearts might, for example, be identified as the four of
either spades or hearts. Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately
fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience. One
would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from
what they identified. With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous
cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to display awareness of anomaly. Exposed,
for example, to the red six of spades, some would say: 'That's the six
of spades, but there's something wrong with it-the black has a red border'.
Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion
until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the
correct identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing this with two
or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with
the others. (Ibid.: 63)
The experiment continues to show that capturing events is a personal engagement:
A few subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite adjustment of
their categories. Even at forty times the average exposure required to recognize
normal cards for what they were, more than 10 percent of the anomalous
cards were not correctly identified. And the subjects who then failed often experienced
acute personal distress. One of them exclaimed: 'I can't make the
suit out, whatever it is. It didn't even look like a card that time. 1 don't know
what color it is now or whether it's a spade or a heart. I'm not even sure now
what a spade looks like. My God!' (Ibid.: 63-4)
As Kuhn says, natural scientists show the same response to exceptions, although
they have been actively engaged in the search for events that might falsify established
laws. Identifying events depends on the observer's personal effort and ability.
In this effort, postmodern anthropology brought a new epoch with regard to the
affinnation of the presence of the observer and the emphasis on how he reads the
field (Dumont 1986: 3; Turner 1992: 162). The '-graphy' of historiography indicates
the engagement in events. It describes dialectics between events and ration-

Updating the Classics 167
By moving out of his own society into such a new event as the Kula, Malinowski
negated or falsified the existing notion of the 'savage'. He observed and described
a 'savage' trading system that was not in fact primitive or savage or unsophisticated.
Under his meticulous observation, the social organization of the Kula itself
served as hard evidence negating the popular notion of the Kula and other similar
cultures as being made up of 'savages'. Although Malinowski only gave this one
example for the purpose of negation, the effect it had was a wide-ranging and influential
one. 3
Following Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, according to his students and friends
whom I have interviewed, was even more aware of this mission. In spite of some
institutional restrictions, he was aware of his reasons for his choosing specific examples.
They needed to be antithetical to his own society, especially the Nuer, a
society not built on the class system. 4 A common notion in Britain at that time,
although not uncontested, endorsed the class system as, at its worst, a necessary
evil for holding society together. The Nuer example, however, was a powerful one,
because their social system was actually totally different from what was expected
to be found in non-class societies. Examples presented by Evans-Pritchard and
Malinowski served to challenge a popular notion about society. The Kula and the
Nuer represented 'red spades' to Westerners, exemplified by the economists who
at the time were playing a game of West-centrism and who were criticized by Malinowski.
They were being pressed to change the rules of the game.
Postmodern anthropology, if it is meant to be more than a stylistic variant of
earlier anthropological practices, should give credit to such classic figures as Malinowski
and Evans-Pritchard. 5 They 'objectified' themselves by moving out of
their own systems and into other systems. Here, we must note that the anthropologist's
physical presence in another social system does not automatically release
him from his own epistemological system. Nor does active engagement in conversation
with natives ensure dialogue. Some students in postmodern anthropology
claim that they empty their minds before going to the field. Or, knowing that this is
impossible, some attempt to achieve oneness with natives, becoming their selfproclaimed
representatives. Both wish to claim that they would not be biased in
their observation. Neither Malinowski nor Evans-Pritchard claimed to be innocent
3 David Parkin suggested that I expand this point that we are all 'savages' in the sense that
we all begin without knowledge, and that as anthropologists we have to learn new ways of
processing the information that other peoples already do as a matter of fact.
4 As is well known, Evans-Prichard notes that he went to the Nuer because he was given
grants. However, this does not negate his motivation to explicate a society in which the
class system is not found. In fact, we are all more or less in the same situation when we
apply for grants or serve institutions (including colleges and universities) which encourage
us to cooperate in their commercial projects. Often it is etiquette to mention the funding
organization as a reason for the basic choice.
S Peter Riviere emphasizes the importance of this period in anthropology.

168 Kuniko Miyanaga
observers of this sort. They were aware of the falsifiability of their rationalizations
through epistemological confrontations with events in their observations and actively
took advantage of this awareness. Postmodem students today often mistake
this fine point. They assume that, unlike their classic predecessors, they can carry
into the field what they believe they can be, as much as what they believe they
already know about other ethnocentric members of their own society. Such assumptions,
against their expectations, invariably lead them to reproduce the rationalization
of their thinking and, perhaps, to strengthen further theories in today's
anthropology as opposed to truly validating them. Ironically, native anthropologists
today are fmding out, as they move out of their own systems of rationalization,
that they do not always share the views or opinions of those under their
observation in their own society.
A common type of failure is represented in the following example. In his response
to a form of frustration similar to the example quoted by Kuhn, a young
fieldworker refuses to go beyond the given rationalization. The stage is an isolated
village in highland New Guinea. The only communication with the outside world
takes place by way of a small airplane that arrives from the capital, Port Moresby,
once a month or less frequently, delivering mail to the villagers. Besides the main
actor, Mr X, an anthropologist, the other actors are the male and female villagers,
and a Christian missionary who arrives much later than Mr X.
In this village, the men spend their nights in the longhouse at the centre of the
village square, and each member keeps his family in one of the small huts distributed
individually around the square. Mr X is eventually invited to share nights
with the men in the longhouse. There, he finds that the men are so competitive that
they lie as far apart from one another as possible and that they try not to speak to
one another. If one even says hello to another: it is an indication that they are close
friends. Some young men have difficulty in sleeping in the longhouse because of
the tension and, as he observes, they take long naps at their wives' huts in the daytime
to make up for it. Creating a sharp contrast to the men, the women share everything
among themselves. Their primary activities are the nurturing of children
and the raising of pigs, whom they cherish with equal care. Women, children, and
the pigs are all intimate. In spite of this, in this village, women are held to be inferior
to men, because, according to the men, women have no experience or understanding
of friendship.
After Mr X has been in the village for some time, a Christian missionary arrives
at the village on one of the regular air flights. He introduces a 'civilized'
game, basketball, to the villagers. He first tries to organize the men into two teams.
But they are too competitive to absorb the concept of 'team'. Once a man gets the
ball, he refuses to pass it to another. After a good try, the missionary gives up with
the men and goes to the women. Once again, he fails to form them into teams. The
women do not understand why they have to stand against each other. They spontaneously
line up before the goal and take turns in shooting the ball at it. If one per-

Updating the Classics 1.69
son misses, others go and retrieve the ball and return it to her until she succeeds.
This time, the reality is more than obvious to him. But nothing changes for the
villagers. The presentation of a new fact does not falsifY the logic of the given
situation.
This situation makes Mr X, a young liberal from the west coast of North
America, angry. It is obvious to him that the ideology of friendship held by the
villagers serves only to strengthen male supremacy. To him, it is unacceptable that
women are demoted by way of such a false ideology. He protests: 'The pigs are
like their own children to the women. It is as if the men are eating their own children!'
To him, this ideology does not reflect the reality between the men and
women in the Village, as he sees it, and it is impossible for him to accept it.
He incorporated his observations and interviews into such 'conceptual categories
prepared by the prior experience' in his own culture as friendship in his own
North American understanding. The male villagers did not have a further explanation
for him about their institutionalized friendship, except in their practice; as is
actually well known, it is committed loyalty on which a permanent network can be
built between persons from mutually hostile villages. A New Guinea man travels
from his village into a hostile land, trusting in the loyalty of his friends in remote
villages. In contrast, women are intimate among themselves within their village,
sharing a feeling similar to what is commonly experienced in terms of friendship
in North America. Once the difference in the nature of friendship between New
Guinea and North America is understood, the response of the villagers becomes
more comprehensible. But through being entrapped in anger, Mr X's rationalization
of events U;11fortunately dictates a myth in Evans-Pritchard's sense as defined
as a system of thought which is designed to reproduce itself by failing or refusing
to go beyond itself. Mr X's example shows that the issue is not in the inclusion of
native opinions and perspectives, but in how the observer theorizes events under
his observation in relation to their explanations and his own knowledge and rationalization
of them. He became very close to women quite quickly when he arrived
in the village, and then to men when he was invited to their longhouse. He was
certainly open to their opinions and willing to include their perspectives. Several
years later, this time at their invitation, he went back to the village and recorded
their secret rites.
The Grammar of Culture
The failure of Mr X is outstanding. However, similar experiences are more than
common among fieldworkers. In viewing them, the typical postmodem claim of
reaching othemess through establishing communication in dialogue appears to be
meaningless, and the Levi-Straussian scientific explanation appears to gain more
validity. According to Levi-Strauss, the social actor acts unconsciously and does

170 Kuniko Miyanaga
not know the reason for his actions. All that this actor demonstrates is a justification
for his actions (not an explanation). There is a wide gap between his act of
justification at the level of consciousness, and the level of his unconscious that
determines his actions. Only a scientific methodology can provide a structural
analysis by which to reach this unconscious level of determinants. In this account,
interestingly enough, Levi-Straussian structuralism would give equal status to the
anthropological observer (Mr X) and those under his observation (the villagers).
Because they both lack the grasp of a structural methodology, neither can understand
the territory in their minds that determines and produces the social reality
(such as the relationships among the villagers). As a result, the anthropological
observer (Mr X) ends up justifying his own liberal ideology with anger. It is an
attempt to dismiss a social reality that does not fit his given rationalization (Le. his
liberalism). Thus, his further inquiry into the source of what he apparently considers
a false notion of friendship in the village friendship is inhibited.
In the examples of 'Do Dual Organizations Exist?' in Levi-Strauss's Structural
Anthropology, the observed villagers also tend to see what they wish to see.
Uvi-Strauss chooses villages divided into moieties as an example. By their own
villagers, some of those villages are perceived to have a diametric division, while
other villagers perceive a concentric division. Levi-Strauss focuses on one case
(the Winnebago as described by Paul Radin) in which the villagers in the same
village show disagreements among themselves on whether their basic village
structure is diametric or concentric (Levi-Strauss 1963: 133-4) Both plans are
geographically projected on to the village and, in this sense, they are more than
simply imagined; they are actually concrete. The villagers have no answers as to
why the same village appears in two different ways.
Scientific methodology offers structural analysis as an answer. According to
Levi-Strauss (ibid.: 161), such an epistemological discrepancy constitutes 'the apparent
manifestations of dualism as superficial distortions of structures whose real
nature is quite different and vastly more complex'. The answer will be found in
identifying the triadic structure of the village, which is reduced to two kinds of
dualism, each of which appears according to the villagers' own identity within the
village social organization. In this village, dialogue, if it means a method of
including native perspectives, will lead to no answer.
The triadic structure of the village social organization may be understood as a
grammar of culture. Levi-Strauss argues that cultures are structured in the same
way as languages are structured. Just as every language has a grammar, so every
culture has something equivalent to it. Such linguistic grammars and their cultural
equivalents are characterized as possessing within their own contexts a 'zero
value', defined by the fact that 'their presence-in itself devoid of significanceenables
the social system to exist as a whole' (ibid.: 159). Humankind speaks a
language that has a grammar, although the speaker does not consciously recognize
it. In the same way, the actor does not recognize the grammar of culture. Such
recognition may be attained through a dialectical analysis of the surface distortions

Updating the Classics 171
(Rossi 1974: 7-30). Scientific methodology provides the observer and the actor
with a proper procedure (or a process in Evans-Pritchard's sense) by which to
identify the underlying grammar in either a language or a culture. Hence, it appears
that structuralism dissolves the difference between the observer and the actor,
with the latter under the observation of the former. Both of them are actors and
observers at the same time, but are ruled by their unconscious grammar. They are
equally ignorant until they employ the scientific methodology which structuralism
provides.
Although it is not new to say it today, however, this very orientation, in turn,
rather than dissolving the epistemological status difference among actorobservers,
as described above, accentuates such status differences. Through its
very methodology, structuralism positions a social scientist in an absolutely discriminatory
stance against others. In his methodology, the social scientist is the
only one who can understand the basic determinants of the culture. Because the
social scientist alone has access to the methodology, there is no opportunity for
intervention by non-scientists, in the form of events in the process of his analysis,
which might threaten the foundations of the social scientist's methodology (Strenski
1974: 574). Thus the scientist within the structuralism methodology may remain
'tranquil in his axioms' (Needham 1983: 2-3).
It is exactly here, in questioning the tranquillity of axioms, that Evans­
Pritchard's approach to others may gain validity. It is an 'art' to identify a 'red
spade'. And it is another art to question one's own axioms, through which one rationalizes
the world. Yet these two arts are inseparable, because one comes
through the other. However, as Scheffler insists (1997: 110-26), this sense ofart is
profoundly scientific in natural science. Evans-Pritchard mentioned it emphatically
as art, as opposed to the deterministic tradition of the social sciences. Questioning
rationalization necessarily creates a new way of rationalizing the person himself,
although, this time, rationalization is wider, containing 'red spades' (see Butterfield
[1948] 1979: 13-28). In this active recognition of others, Evans-Pritchard
shares his basic stance with postmodem anthropologists. Here, Burridge adds that
such postmodem anthropologists may gain in themselves the momentum to transcend
a given paradigm, through the active recognition of others (1979: 74-5).6
This further suggests that an anthropologist might become a 'red spade' in his or
her own society, being able to see what others do not see, or what they refuse to
see. This epistemological isolation urges the anthropologist to create a new theory
in order to bridge the gap, developing, in this effort, a personality beyond the given
paradigms from his or her own society or field. In this 'transcendental' personality
6 Burridge distinguishes individuals from persons. Individuals are transcendental beings in
his definition. They are creative, can go beyond the given in themselves, may express their
novelty in art or language, and might be able to initiate some social changes.

172 Kuniko Miyanaga
the anthropologist endures observing anomalies, which possibly invalidate his or
her present epistemology, ontology, and ultimately whole being.
Falsifiability in this sense, which is essential to Evans-Prichard's approach, is
contained in his defmition of structure:
He [the social anthropologist] seeks also to discover the structural order of the
society, the patterns which, once established, enable him to see it as a whole,
as a set of interrelated abstractions. (Evans-Pritchard 1964: 22)
Evans-Prichard's 'structure' is not a determinant, but signifies a 'design', or a fact
that 'society' can be understood as 'a set of interrelated abstractions'. In terms of
structure, he simply claims that we may be able to capture our social reality in our
own theories. This defmition of structure is widely shared in the British school of
social anthropology. When Rodney Needham insisted in his Structure and Sentiment
(1962), for example, that the psychological approach of Homans and Schneider
was a kind of reductionism, he pinpointed the lack of falsifiability in their interpretation
of Levi-Strauss. Towards the end of the book, Needham actually
showed how Uvi-Strauss should be falsified, although unfortunately this second
point has been seen as a total denial of Levi-Strauss rather than as a suggestion to
go further into the question of falsifiability.
Globalization
Initially, however, from the end of the Second World War until the 1960s/ the
globalization of today appeared to discredit Evans-Prichard's approach. Until the
1960s, globalization appeared to be a sweeping diffusion of modem Western industrial
society throughout the world. The whole world was thought to be evolving
from various local traditions to modem industrial society, in which language was
more essential for social cohesion than behaviour. Levi-Strauss's structuralism
predicated this global situation in the theory of the linguistic representation of culture.
It proposed that the huge cultural diversity of humankind should cohere in the
'zero value' as a whole. The European Economic Community was forming, and, in
the same rationalization, the world was assumed to be evolving towards the world
community of indiyiduals. Theoretically his structuralism was to sponsor the
global formation of unified civilization under which local varieties were to be certified.
Behaviour was now considered a vague reflection of thought. All of humankind
appeared to be evolving toward this sort of modem person, following the
Western model of social and cultural evolution. Marcel Mauss' classic article, 'A
Category of the Human Mind', published in 1938, represents this view of the mod-
7 I am thinking here of the emergence since 1945 of a number of nation-states in the non­
Western world.

Updating the Classics 173
em person. Human beings have evolved from personages to persons, or from
primitive man to modem man. It is suggested here that their society has also
evolved from sociocentric to egocentric one.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the world began to evolve in an unexpected direction.
In the West, deconstruction, which emerged strongly, especially against Levi­
Straussian structuralism, aimed to deconstruct society by deconstructing a person
through dissolving integration in his language. In the non-West, although the diffusion
of deconstruction was limited, it overlapped with even more complex features
of globalization. In 1997, H. Tomoeda, representing a common feeling of the
time, remarked on his thirty years of fieldwork in the Andes area since 1963 as
follows:
Looking back these thirty years now in this way, after all, I do not think that
the life of the Indio has changed so greatly. However, I still have a feeling
that it has changed drastically. And, various articles written by people at the
Institute of Peruvian Studies report how drastically changes have taken place.
I think that the reason for this feeling of 'change' is not that Indio society itself
has been greatly changed, but that social situations or social environments
surrounding the Indio have very greatly changed.... (Tomoeda 1997: 7, my
translation from the Japanese)
Tomoeda sees that under his observation society has drastically changed and also
remained unchanged at the same time. He captures a two-fold definition imposed
by the nation-state over the Indio, especially since the land reform of 1968. Although
their life-style itself did not change, they, like everyone else in the country,
had to become members of the nation-state of Peru. This situation is also typical of
globalization, under which nation-states play an awkward role. Their legitimacy
depends on the regional tradition, but, at the same time, it is their imperative to
join the world economic integration to improve their domestic economy. Local
traditions must be respected, but must also be redefined in a new economic and
political perspective. The trouble is that world economic integration disembeds
local, traditional cultures, and presents them as a tremendous fragmentation to the
rest of the world. Today's information society generates a multi-dimensional flow
of information worldwide rather than promoting unity or integration. Thus, globalization
is 'fracturing as well as unifying' (Giddens 1994: 81), a process in which
everyone is exposed to a danger of some form of 'double-bind'; the invalidation of
rules may cause severe pain and maladjustment; but it may also promote creativity
(Bateson 1972: 278). Here, every level of society is urged to be dialectically creative,
or to be engaged in 'reflexive modernization,8 towards its own synthesis between
local tradition and world economic integration. In this context, there emerge
8 'Reflexive modernization' is a phrase used by Beck (1986) and Giddens (1994) to identify
the dialectical nature of local reactions to globalization.

174 Kuniko Miyanaga
such social movements that offer a synthesis between them, and, accordingly, provide
their members with self-identity: fundamentalists, either militant or simply
cultural, so-called cults also either militant or cultural, Pentecostal movements,
charismatic revivals in Catholic and Anglican Churches, counter-culture groups
and conscious-raising seminars, either spiritual or secular. In non-Western villages,
numerous cases of such local responses to and against global homogenization
have been reported (Miyanaga 2000: Chapter 1; Miyanaga 1999). As I discuss
later in this article, the prosperity of Japanese business corporations under the nation-state
illustrates this very point (Miyanaga 2000: Chapter 2; Miyanaga 1999).
Although some of them may simply appear weird or may function destructively in
the end, they are intended to be constructive attempts to predicate a chaotic world
situation in their own versions of reflexive modernization.
Postmodern anthropology, in fact, has been an attempt to capture this complex
reality of globalization as experienced by fieldworkers. Efforts to reach Otherness,
a committed encounter with others, an active recognition of 'red spades', and
ultimately a dialogue between the observer and the observed 9 are the major features
of the postmodern attempt. The recognition of 'red spades' urges observers to
renew their theories or methods. Although it is painful to acknowledge the force of
this position, postmodern anthropology has developed the awareness that the application
of a given epistemology simply helps observers to ignore such exceptions.
Seeking a solution, at one extreme some postmodern anthropologists have
sought to eradicate their biases or have even tried to disown their own epistemology
before they enter their fields of inquiry. While the unrealistic claim that one
may hold a disinterested position still persists, realistic anthropologists, in contrast,
have been becoming more aware that they have to begin with their given epistemological
positions, and may then have to identify possible dialectics between events
and rationalizations in their fields that are concretely applicable to others and
themselves. In this view, these dialectics allow them to advance, even if through
possibly painful observations, and let them discover in themselves an epistemological
potential, like certain classic predecessors. Under globalization today,
through a similar process, anthropologists may accomplish more than their predecessors
when they identify some patterns in the apparent chaos of globalization, or
show that painful deuble binds can be turned into a 'creative destruction' in Urich
Beck's sense (1986: 14) by identifying dialectics between others and themselves.
Active risk-taking in such an epistemological endeavor individuates anthropologists,
because they must go out of their own systems. Here the language of an
'elaborated code' in Basil Bernstein's sense (1964= 62-3) contributes to their mission.
9 The collection Observers Observed (Stocking ed. 1983) presents a variety of views on this
point.

176 Kuniko Miyanaga
goods and materials. Rationalization becomes factual. The energy, spontaneity,
and emotional expressiveness. displayed in a Japanese business community come
from the flow of narratives. Members are brought to occasions, such as drinking
parties, in order to deposit their feelings and opinions into the communal consensus
established so far.
The Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyodan, which constitutes a precise case-study of
reflexive modernization in the wider perspective of globalization, illustrates more
clearly how narratives are used to overcome the fracturing effects of globalization.
This is a revivalist movement, or a form of religious entrepreneurship, which
emerged under globalization (Miyanaga 2000: Chapter 3). The ritual space is designed
precisely to allow members to develop narratives through theatrical interaction
with supernatural figures. Developing narratives, members create their own
life stories and identify themselves with the community setting of the movement.
The past and the future are securely interpreted within the ongoing, present activity
of engaging in narratives with other members. Problems are solved by developing
self-identity. In this sense, the movement is therapeutic and basically passive, in
spite of its involvement with spirit possession and hand-healing, unlike the militant
Oumu sect, in which the end justifies the means.
However, there is another problem for business corporations. A sociocentric
society may be well structured yet not rule-oriented. Japanese business communities
functioned positively in the 1970s and the 1980s by successfully overcoming
the fracturing effects of globalization. However, their performance diminished in
the 1990s, as accelerating globalization demanded a more active application of
global standards to business communities. Establishing efficient rules to meet them
became a crucial issue. To maintain a lack of respect for rules in business could be
fatal. Yet the primary concern in bilsiness narratives shows an absence of regard
either for rules or an associated, factual orientation in management. In fact, in
business narratives, there is no testing-ground for the validity of what is said.
'Harmony', the supreme value of naturalism in Japan, prevails over factual orientation.
To be harmo:p.ious, members must actively join in the narratives, manipulate
their content, formation and flow, and submit themselves to the 'consensus', which
is constantly undergoing transformation. Thus, the primary test of members' abilities
depends on how skilfully they manipulate the flow of such narratives and consensus,
and how well they negotiate this process, which includes the invalidation
of given rules, whether formal or informal. Here, language is deliberately reduced
to what Bernstein defines as a 'restricted code' (1964: 57-62). The Japanese form
of this code reinforces the given status differences and directs actions, but it does
not explain their meanings in the same way as an 'elaborated code' (ibid.: 62-3)
permits. Gestures and signs, incorporated into narratives and shared by group
members, become public property. As a result, group members indeed believe that
they can read each other's minds through acts of a mutual reading of gestures and

Updating the Classics 177
signs. The code they adhere to is exclusive, unifonn among the same community
members, and closed against outsiders.
Here is an essential difference between the narratives of the Japanese and the
literary narratives and description of anthropologists. In anthropology, as well as in
the natural sciences, narratives are not goals in themselves, although they may also
be used or even encouraged to capture events. However, they are thought to be the
beginning of a process. With the events captured in narratives, anthropologists try
to identify patterns and extract principles. This shift from the concrete to the abstract
actually takes observers from a particular event to other events outside it.
This shift individuates observers in a discipline such as anthropology, but does not
occur in Japan's sociocentric society. This inability to shift is exactly the problem
Japan has in the 1990s.
Thus, an attempt to go out of the system often ends up with self-destruction in
Japanese society. Shitu-rakuen (paradise Lost), a best-seller novel by Junichi Watanabe,
captures this sanction. In the setting of an erotic love affair, he describes
how socially unfit Japanese exclude themselves from given social contexts. The
novel is about a man who has become tired of his work, lets himself become apathetic,
then falls away from his social group, and ultimately becomes shunned by
his community, his business corporation. He takes refuge in a woman, his sexual
relationship with her being accompanied by her readiness to abandon her social
role as a good and faithful housewife, and by her willingness to explore selffulfillment
outside it. They finally choose to commit a double suicide, a nirvana
for them. The basic plot, in fact, follows Chikamatsu's puppet play in the premodem
era, showing that a traditional theme continues reflexively under
globalization. lo Suicide is a self-fulfilling as well as socially pennitted sanction
given to those who refuse to be integrated into a given community.
Here again, Evans-Pritchard's classic definition of myth becomes more meaningful
to us today. It indicates a sort of reasoning which is designed to reproduce
itself. It often gains its validity based on the exclusion of exceptions or incompatible
events; thus, myth becomes self-validating, since it ignores exceptions to its
own beliefs. It is static and unchallenged by definition. It is tranquil in its own axioms.
The evolutionary theories in the social sciences criticized by Evans-Pritchard
were self-validating and rigid, because they stressed stages of evolution as static
entities and assumed their progress from one to another as a scientific process taking
place automatically. In the name of science, Evans-Pritchard negated this view
of society as an automatic process. Instead, he asserted that society is a construct
made by human beings, a practice enacted by individuals. Accordingly, society is a
moral system. As its design involves a time element, the word 'process' may be
10 This novel has intrigued critics for its explicit description of sexual intercourse and
whether to rate it as 'pure novel' . Rating a cultural product according to authenticity relates
to the discussion of the intellectual contribution to the formation of the national culture
under globalization (Miyanaga 2000: 49-54).

Updating the Classics 181
NAKANE, CHIE 1970 [1967]. Japanese Society, Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1962. Structure and Sentiment, The University of Chicago Press .
. .. 1983. Against the Tranquility of Axioms, Berkeley: The University of California
Press.
ROSSI, INO 1974. 'Intellectual Antecedents of Levi-Strauss' Notion of Unconscious',
in Ino Rossi (ed.), The Unconscious in Culture, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
SCHEFFLER, ISRAEL 1985 [1982]. Science and Subjectivity, Indianapolis, Racket Publishing
Company.
. .. 1997. Symbolic Worlds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
STOCKING, GEORGE W. (ed.) 1983. Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic
Fieldwork. History of Anthropology, Volume 1, Madison: The University of Wisconsin
Press.
STRENSKI,IvAN 1974. 'Falsifying Deep Structure', Man (n.s.), Vol. IX, no. 4, pp. 571-
84.
TOMOEDA, HIROYASU 1997. 'Andesu Chousa no Sanju-yo Nen' [Thirty-some Years in
Research in'the Andes], Minpaku Tushin, no. 76 (March), Osaka: The National
Museum of Ethnology.
TURNER, EDITH 1992. Experiencing Ritual, Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania
Press.

Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology 183
From the 'old houses', I move to the social and moral 'structures of belonging'
that embody history as continuity and transformation. More than in houses or
in physical spaces, transformations take place within people's biographies and genealogies.
The most important structure of historical transformations is marriage.
The Oirata regard marriage as the realm of ritual, symbolic, and political transformations,
in which cosmic principles frame human practice; by creating what I call
a 'stranger mechanism', the Oirata operate structural re-enactments of the mythical
journeys of the past. Nevertheless, every marriage is always a new path which
consummates all powers of repetition. Effectively, the Oirata defy structural prescriptions
and assign unspoken primacy to historical contextuality.
M. BALZANI, Changing Traditions and Rituals of Legitimation: Studies in Kinship
from Jodhpur, Rajasthan. (BLLD 49-10159)
This thesis, based on fieldwork carried out in Jodhpur between 1988 and 1990,
deals with kingship and its relation to authority, legitimation, and power as understood
in contemporary Rajasthan. These issues are approached through various
instances of 'the invention of tradition' and through a multidisciplinary perspective.
Work by historians, ethnohistorians, religious studies specialists and political
economists, as well as anthropologists, inform the ethnography which provides the
descriptive material of the thesis. Data for the thesis came from archival records,
written histories, interviews, and ethnographic observations.
Unlike some recent texts which have documented the continued function of
royalty in South Asia at the levels of village and household, this thesis considers
the position of 'kings' and their courts in modem Rajasthan.
Each chapter is in the form of a case-study which takes a ritual act of the Maharajas
(matarnpursi, royal funeral; darbar, pilgrimage, ritual ploughing), locates it
in historical context, and tries to suggest its contemporary significance.
The first two chapters deal with aspects of death rituals as they pertain to Rajput
royalty. The third describes the darbar, where the Maharaja enacts his role as
central pivot of the state and source of all authority in relation to the elements that
go to make up his domain. The final two chapters examine a well-publicised pilgrimage
and a private ploughing ritual undertaken by H. H. Jodhpur as responses
to recurrent drought. Chapter Four deals with communalism and the nature of a
shrine, associated with Muslims, untouchables, and women. Where Chapter One
considers the manner in which a ritual performed by the rulers of Jodhpur has
altered almost beyond recognition in recent decades, the last chapter examines a
ritual which, although archaic, has, from the perspective of the Jodhpur royal
household, been invented only in the last few years.

186 Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology
these institutions are made to represent and reproduce particular kinds of social
persons in specific relations to one another and to the state. Finally, I trace some
historical conceptions of motherhood, their interrelations with ideas of childhood,
personhood, and family, and relate these to changing social, economic, and political
circumstances. This includes changing uses of women's persons and behaviour
in the process of nation-building.
I argue that partly due to the current socio-economic and demographic 'crisis',
as well as due to external constraints of Germany's attempts to construct a national
identity and to assert its 'national interests', various powerful groups are formulating
political discourse and policies with the implicit and explicit use of women as
mothers and Hausfrauen to represent harmony, stability, orderliness, and the difference
of the German nation. This is accompanying a shifting of responsibility for
what are being redefined as 'private needs' away from the state to 'private families',
and to women . within them.
L. HONEYCHURCH, Carib to Creole: Contact and Culture Exchange in Dominica.
(BLLD 47-10866)
This is an ethnohistorical study of the Carib people who inhabit the Carib Territory
(officially called the Carib Reserve), on the north-eastern coast of Dominica,
which is one of the islands of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean. It
analyses the historical background of the Caribs from the time of their initial contact
with Europeans and Africans through the period of colonisation, and considers
the effects which the centuries of culture exchange have had on the indigenous
societies of Dominica up to the present.
This heritage is considered in relation to the cultural revival movement which
has developed since the 1980s as part of the hemispheric action being initiated by
indigenous peoples of the Americas for greater recognition and rights. Promoting
Carib identity in this context has become important to the community on many
levels. The thesis assesses the manner in which the Caribs are using their history,
material culture, and association with their land to articulate their indigenousness
in the face of the centuries of cultural and biological admixture with people of
European and African descent known as Creoles.
The thesis concludes that although it may be true that these symbols are distorted
and exaggerated, they are not entirely invented, for they originate in the history
and culture of the Carib people. Even if, in many ways, the Caribs have
become as Creole as their fellow countrymen, the social fact is that in the present
circumstances, they see it as important and advantageous to define themselves as
Caribs in their engagement with Creole nationalism and the world beyond. By
promoting their association with the cultural markers of Caribness, their cultural
activists seek to engage with the current international concern and interest in in-

Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology 187
digenous groups in the hope that it might eventually reap some good for their people.
M. KA WHARU, Dimensions of Kaitiakitanga: An Investigation of a Customary
Maori Principle of Resource Management. (BLLD 49-10167)
This thesis is an investigation of kaitiakitanga, a customary Maori principle of
resource management. Despite kaitiakitanga as a concept only recently coming
into common usage, particularly since the Resource Management Act 1991, its
underlying values and practices have always been an integral part of tribal life.
Chapter One explores kaitiakitanga in its customary context. It will be seen that it
meant a wide range of things to Maori people, from trusteeship and guardianship,
to resource management and sustainable development. Furthermore, kaitiakitanga
is a socio-environmental ethic and has an important role in maintaining a triadic
relationship between human beings, the spiritual realm, and the natural environment.
Thus, according to Maori thinking, kaitiakitanga is a holistic concept that
brings together all dimensions of the cosmos. It has continued to be important in
contributing to the sustainability of kin groups. But, in order to understand its relevance
in today's tribal society, it is necessary to explore the constraints and opportunities
for exercising it that have developed over time. Prior to European arrival,
it was mainly environmental factors, such as the health of environmental resources,
kin-group popUlation, and their needs for survival which determined the
ways in which kaitiakitanga would be exercised. However, since contact, and particularly
since the Treaty of Waitangi, Crown policies and programmes have had
the most profound effect on kin groups in maintaining and developing their resource
management practices. Chapter Two, therefore, discusses the transitional
phases of kaitiakitanga since contact. It looks at how it was applied within a
changing environment and what implications the new circumstances brought for
Maori people. Maori society was to undergo even further change after 1840, when
the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between Maori and the Crown. Chapter Three
discusses the relationships between kaitiakitanga and rangatiratanga, the latter
being the pivotal factor of Article Two of the Treaty. It was not, however, until the
Native Land Court system was fmally established in 1865 that its greatest effects
upon Maori society were to be felt, especially as a result of the introduction of the
individualization of title to land.

188 Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology
W. KELLY, Empty Orchestras: An Anthropological Analysis ofKaraoke in Japan.
Karaoke first emerged in the amusement districts of western Japan twenty-five
years ago and has since developed into one of the nation's most popular and lucrative
leisure industries. Based on field research conducted within the karaoke industry
between May 1995 and March 1996, this thesis traces the emergence and
subsequent development of karaoke from an activity initially confined to Japan's
urban amusement quarters, where it was associated with the 'after hours' leisure of
mostly male company employees to one which now caters to every sector of the
popUlation.
The approach is holistic, encompassing economic, technological, musical, and
perfonnance aspects of karaoke-singing which have developed in tandem with one
another. Focusing on the development of what the karaoke industry refers to as its
'day market' and the transformation of karaoke-singing into a manifestation of
youth culture, the thesis examines karaoke with respect to the leisure patterns of
the young, the consumption and production of popular music, and the articulation
of generational and gender differences.
It is argued that in the course of its expansion, karaoke has gradually moved
from the periphery to the mainstream of Japanese life. Promoted by the karaoke
and music industries, the mass media, and even the Japanese government as a forum
which facilitates interpersonal communication within the work-place, the family,
or among peers, and pursued by its core enthusiastic practitioners in the
context of karaoke classes or correspondence courses, karaoke is becoming established
as a 'national culture'.
It is suggested that karaoke's widespread and enduring popularity in Japan can
be explained, at least in part, by its compatibility with established modes and patterns
of social interaction and, in this sense, constitutes an example of what Simmel
refers to as 'sociability'. The broad base of participation in karaoke amongst
diverse sectors of the population raises the wider question of whether a dichotomy
between high (elite) and low (mass) culture is an appropriate or even useful
framework for making sense ofkaraoke-singing in Japan.
S. C. McF ALL, Keeping Identity in its Place: Culture and Politics among the
Mapuche of Chile. (BLLD 49-10169)
The purpose of this thesis is to examine the strategies employed by an indigenous
people in Chile to confront large-scale development projects threatening their territory.
I argue that the different groups involved in the defence of the land use their
own culture as one of their principal strategies, using ritual and symbols, language
and rhetoric, as means of distinguishing themselves from national society. In this
way they hope to prove that these development projects are ethnocidal and that

Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology 189
removing them from the land is tantamount to taking away their culture and thus
transforming them into Chileans.
Through an examination of how the Mapuche define themselves, I will demonstrate
that the relationship with the land is the key element in distinguishing
Mapuche from Chilean. Territory is conceptualised as an interlocking network of
families, communities, and ritual congregations. Moreover, the land is the locus of
communication with the ancestors, the focus of much of Mapuche religious activity;
and thus Mapuche identity is formed through a sense of being in place and
tilne, centred on rural territory.
P. TAPSELL, Taonga: A Tribal Response to Museums. (BLLD 49-10170)
The goal of this thesis is to provide a tribal interpretation of taonga in relation to
their care and management within today's metropolitan museums. It is divided into
five main sections. Each section, comprising a number of chapters, develops an
understanding of taonga from the kin-group perspective of Te Awara, a major
tribe of the Maori people of New Zealand.
The thesis opens with a foreword titled 'Taonga: A Tribal Response to Museums'.
It presents a philosophical discussion revolving around the genealogical
connections Maori tribal identity represents in our late twentieth-century context
of global mobility and communication. It considers the pathways ancestors have
travelled to arrive in Aotearoa-New Zealand and how today's descendants, like
taonga, in museums, can now be found living in metropolitan areas throughout the
world. The introduction concludes with a precis of the upcoming five sections titled:
'Taonga'; 'Marae', 'Tangata Whenua'; 'Mana Taonga'; and 'Mana 0 te
Whenua'.
Section One investigates the concepts of taonga and its associated customary
meanings. According to tradition, taonga can be any item, object, or thing which
recognisably represents a kin group's whakpapa or genealogical identity, in relation
to its estates and tribal resources. Taonga can be tangible, like a cloak, or intangible,
like a song. Taonga are 'performed' during life crises to give descendants
an opportunity to locate themselves genealogically back with their ancestors upon
the surrounding landscape. Essentially, taonga tie people and land together as one.
After the arrival of Pakeha (British descendants), however, the alienation of lands
led to many of these items being released into new spheres of exchange, and they
have since become entangled within a wider context of Western objectification in
private collections and museums.
Section Two examines the ceremonial courtyard called a marae, the quintessential
focus of tribal Maori society, which not only represents customary authority
over surrounding land, but also provides the forum on which taonga are ritually
performed. It begins with a historical investigation of the ancient origins of the

190 Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Polynesian marae and its transformations as it crosses the Pacific to arrive in New
Zealand some twenty generations ago. It then traces the development of marae
within New Zealand before and after nineteenth-century colonisation by Britain,
with specific attention being directed upon the Te Arawa region. After the Second
World War the marae, as a focus of kin-group identity, underwent transformations
as its descendants began migrating from relative rural isolation to metropolitan
areas. Out of this relocation arose new ways of maintaining identity which included
the genesis of the visitor-tribal and the non-tribal, urban marae.
LING-LING WONG, The Post-natal Ritual of Han Chinese Women in Taiwan.
(BLLD 49-10171)
This study examines the Han Chinese Iso yueh-Izu post-natal practice in Taiwan,
analysing it from a ritual perspective, isolating its static and dynamic properties,
and noting the change and continuity in the ways that it is practised today. This
ritual is interpreted in terms of the Han Chinese world-view, social order, symbolic
system, and social network. The aim is to see how a ritual structurally restores and
transmits cultural beliefs and social relations, and practically, how Chinese, particularly
Chinese women, make and remake their world by practising the tso yuehtzu
ritual.
For the Taiwanese people, childbirth constitutes a critical juncture for an individual
and the social group. By practising the Iso yueh-Izu ritual, people help
members pass through this critical time, and more importantly, produce and reproduce
social relations and cultural beliefs, as well as the ritual itself. The Iso yuehtzu
ritual, then, is a process of transformation that involves past experience, present
circumstances, and future intentions. When Chinese, especially Chinese women,
practise the ritual, they embody culture, link the individual and society, and ultimately
fulfil the self.
Structurally, through practising the Iso yueh-Izu ritual, the actors connected
with it communicate with each other within the meaning and value framework of
this system. The dynamic properties of this ritual allow people strategically to utilise
optional ritual acts and symbolic substances to express understanding and intentions
based on their experience. The ritual meaning, then, is more than a passive
explanatory system that only projects a static or institutionalised picture of a social
and cultural system; it is also an interpretative, changeable, and dynamic process,
wherein the discourse of social relations and cultural beliefs are deconstructed and
reconstructed.

JASO 30/2 (1999): 191-208
BOOK REVIEWS
PENNY VAN ESTERIK, Materializing Thailand, Oxford: Berg 2000.274 pp., Illustration,
Bibliography, Index. £42.99/£14.99.
Thailand suffers from a dual image, as the land of smiles and the land of problems. It is
an exotic place,. full of monks, temples, and tradition, and simultaneously a country
with some of the worst social problems in the world. Whether it is AIDS, child prostitution,
uncontrolled and irresponsible tourism, pollution, drug-trafficking, or urbanization,
Thailand serves as useful exemplar, even a warning, of the dangers inherent in
modernization and capitalism.
Despite this enormous scope for research, Thailand has long been an unfashionable
and under-researched country in anthropological terms, especially as far as British
anthropologists are concerned. As van Esterik asks, 'Why have so few works on Thailand
been designated theoretical, and why has Thai ethnography not informed anthropological
theory nor become part of the canon?' (p. 13). Part of the reason is that
although there have been excellent books on Thai village life and the centrality of
Buddhism to Thai society, Thailand is generally better known through campaigning
groups who have emphasised the seedier aspects of Thailand but rarely attempted to
understand its multi-faceted complexity. But although Thailand is a series of problems
and a collection of issues which generate international concern, and much more rarely
a site for anthropological research, the gap between these two positions could be usefully
explored. Thailand is not alone in experiencing rapid modernization with its attendant
industrialisation and change from a rural- to urban-based economy. So why has
Thailand become symbolic of so much that is bad?
This book attempts to answer some of these questions by focusing on the roles and
representations of women in modem Thailand and on the construction of femininity.
She examines how the beauty and sexuality of Thai women have been closely tied to
national pride and social cohesion, and how the importance of beauty, whether as a
reflection of Buadhist merit or of Thai models of femininity, is central to understanding
the contemporary concerns of Thai society. If issues such as AIDS and prostitution
are to be understood from a Thai perspective, they need to be understood in the context
of Buddhism and of the construction of gender in Thailand.
By stressing representations, van Esterik avoids essentialism and simplification.
She emphasizes the complexities of Buddhism and Buddhist teaching. Buddhism is not
a monolithic entity, and the factions within Buddhism and its various interpretations
are discussed at length. Thai Buddhism is not a scripture-based religion, and consequently
there is an enormous variety of interpretation of Buddhist texts and teaching on
gender. Relying solely on the monasteries as the face of authentic Thai Buddhism is
clearly problematic. Yet Buddhism informs and explains women's roles in Thailand,
and the complexity of the links between them is explored at length. In contrast to other
authors, who have either blamed Buddhism for prostitution in Thailand or denied any

192 Book Reviews
link at all, she examines the interplay between Buddhism, the state, and the construction
of gender, and argues convincingly for the need to understand Buddhism in its
many manifestations as an influence on how Thai women see themselves and how they
are perceived by the state and society.
Van Esterik pays particular attention to surfaces and to the importance of what
might be interpreted elsewhere as superficial aspects. The gap between the actual and
the ideal may be great, but this book rightly makes no claim that one of these is any
more authentic or real than the other. Indeed, this work is premised on the importance
of appearances, of 'keeping face' and appropriateness. This is shown most clearly
when looking at representations and constructions of gender, as it is Thai women who
bear the brunt of this social pressure. During the Second World War, therefore, when
Thailand was trying to position itself as closer to the West than to Japan, Thai women
were ordered to wear hats and Western clothing and to kiss their husbands goodbye as
they set off to work ('Wear a hat for your country; hats will lead Thailand to greatness',
quoted p. 103). More recently, the emphasis has been on wearing 'traditional'
Thai outfits, especially in tourist brochures promoting 'exotic', and to tourists presumably
authentic, Thailand under the tourist authority's new slogan of 'Amazing
Thailand'. Thai nationalism has become mapped on to women's bodies and displayed
through their dress and their behaviour. Given this, it is not surprising that the government
has done little to end sex tourism, and has actually encouraged it for the tourist
dollars it brings in and the revenue it earns the country. It is only when an international
outcry was raised over child prostitution that the government made any attempt to end
the use of women's bodies to boost its GNP.
Prostitution is an important aspect of this book, but it is one of van Esterik's
strengths that she does not see prostitution as a straightforward reflection of the role of
women in Thai society. As she points out, 'an analysis of Thai prostitution has often
substituted for analysis of gender relations in Thailand, as if explaining Thai prostitution
were adequate for understanding the position and condition of Thai women. There
is a great danger in using prostitution as a proxy measure of women's status in Thailand.
There is an even greater danger in separating our prostitution as a social problem
or a health problem, and isolating it from other gender issues' (p. 85). Prostitution may
well be one of the most visible roles that Thai women play, especially in the international
tourist market, but it cannot be seen independently from their roles as daughters,
wives, mothers, citizens, and Buddhists. This book is an impressive examination of
gender in contemporary Thailand which avoids either idealizing or pathologizing it.
HEATHER MONTGOMERY
MUKULlKA BANERJEE, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North­
West Frontier, Oxford: James Currey 2000. x, 238 pp., Bibliography, Plates, Index.
£40.00/£16.95.
The Path an Unarmed is an important book for scholars of Path an culture. It is not, by
any means, a replacement for previous ethnographies, since Banerjee focuses on what

Book Reviews 193
is apparently a cultural anomaly. It is interesting precisely because it describes a situation
in which a group of people seemingly violated their own cultural codes. For this
reason, Banerjee's work can only truly be appreciated within the context of earlier
studies of Pathan culture. South Asian scholars whose research is focused elsewhere in
the sub-continent would also be well advised to read this book. Much attention has
been paid to the leaders of the nationalist movement, such as Gandhi, Nehru, or Jinnah,
but Banerjee shows how one successful leader employed pre-existing popular values
and concepts to. serve new purposes. These new purposes, and the values which supported
them, were not incompatible with wider nationalist movements in other parts of
India. This book will hopefully cause South Asianists to reconsider critically certain
implied divisions between so-called tribal and peasant groups. The values held by culture
groups must be treated with considerable care. Banerjee provides an elegant demonstration
of how cultural values may be adapted to a wider variety of expression than
social analysts might otherwise predict.
Banerjee addresses a particularly intriguing puzzle in South Asian history. How
did a group of notoriously aggressive Pathans (or Pukhtuns) create and sustain a nonviolent
nationalist movement? Using a combination of oral histories and archival data,
Banerjee has reconstructed a highly readable accoWlt of the leadership and following
of the Khudai Khidmatgar (the 'Servants of God') movement, which lasted from 1930
to 1947. The KK, or Red Shirt movement as the British referred to it, has been discussed
in some South Asian literature, though up to now the focus has always been on
the fOWlder and leader of the movement, Abdul Gaffar Khan, more popularly known as
Badshah Khan. He has been called the Frontier Gandhi because of his close friendship
with Gandhi and his non-violent nationalist beliefs. Treatment of the KK leader has
invariably centred on his close relationship with Mahatma Gandhi and neglected his
independent conversion to non-violence, which Banerjee tells us occurred well before
he became aware of Gandhi's movement. The Pathan Unarmed examines not only
Badshah Khan's role as a charismatic leader but also the reasons why Pathans were
prepared to redefine longstanding traditional values. Banerjee shows how Badshah
Khan was able to adapt pukhtunwali, the moral code of Pathan culture, to render nonviolent
protest an indigenously approved course of action.
The strength of Banerjee's accoWlt iS'in her use of oral histories collected from
former members of the KK movement. She cites seventy separate interviews with KK
members ranging in age from seventy to 120-130 years. These oral accoWlts are
treated critically and are supported for the most part by relevant archival information
from colonial records. Through these stories, Banerjee builds a picture of Badshah
Khan as a man as well as a leader of a nationalist political movement. Many KK members,
for example, distinctly recall Badshah Khan's speeches and their own feelings
about them. They explain how Badshah Khan taught them that highly prized social
institutions like the blood feud had to be abandoned. Their collective energies had to
be redirected to a different kind ofjihad, or holy war, which was to be fought on the
more demanding spiritual level. It would, of course, have been wholly inadequate simply
to reproduce Badshah Khan's speeches or sections of his autobiography. It is the
sense that his followers gave to these ideas that offers an Wlderstanding of the ways in
which a people may be persuaded to alter radically how they express their own cultural
values.

194 Book Reviews
Banerjee builds on the ethnographies of Barth, Ahmed, and Lindholm to show
how violence need not always be considered an integral aspect of pukhtunwali. Contemporary
stereotypes of Pathans in Pakistan continue to reinforce the idea that
Pathans are quick to resort to violence and bloodshed. Pathan masculinity is commonly
thought to demand that a man be prepared to fight. Banerjee, following Lindholm,
shows instead that the willingness to suffer extreme consequences was an indigenously
approved expression of honour and masculinity. Going to jail became a sign of a brave
and honourable person. KK members adopted the idea that one could express greater
courage by facing one's enemy unarmed because it increased the risk of personal injury
to oneself. The KK movement managed to incorporate indigenous values and
show how non-violence was not only a more effective protest, but a more courageous
and noble expression of these values. That the movement endured for seventeen years
suggests that it had indeed tapped into a set of indigenously approved cultural norms.
The one disappointment was Banerjee's brief treatment of the expression of colonialism
through homoerotic sexuality. Unfortunately, she relies on Nandy's critique of
colonialism and expands on notions of the effeminisation of the 'native'. This seems to
rely far too much on giving primacy to an interpreted set of meta messages behind
what people actually said and did. Even if Nandy and Banerjee are correct that British
men secretly desired' Indian men, then I still fail to see the utility of this line of analysis.
No one has effectively demonstrated that homoerotic desire was a primary motivating
factor for British behaviour in India, but perhaps I hold a minority view on this
issue. Happily for me, Banerjee does not dwell on the sexuality of colonialism, and the
rest of the book is an unproblematic pleasure to read.
Methodologically, Banerjee provides a valuable discussion of the ways anthropologists
may effectively employ oral histories. Mainstream historians, she tells us, are
sceptical of personal memories, as they are often highly contextualised in contemporary
situations. Memories are not only about the past but may be reconstructed to suit
the needs of the present. The passages in which she justifies her heavy reliance on informant's
memories and her explanation of the ways she was able to cross-check her
data provide a useful reference for anyone intent on investigating recent historical
events. There are limitations to what may be done with material of this sort, though as
Banerjee's book demonstrates, what one may do is sufficiently worthwhile to justify
the effort.
STEVENLYON
THOMAS BLOM HANSEN, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in
Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999. vi, 293 pp., Glossary, Bibliography,
Index. £29.95/£10.95/$49.50/$17.95.
Hindu nationalism is a key aspect of contemporary Indian political and cultural discourse.
It is not in itself, however, a new phenomenon. Hansen traces its immediate
origins to the foundation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) youth movement
in 1944, which itself drew inspiration from the Aryo Samaj of the late nineteenth cen-

Book Reviews 195
tury. Unlike the Aryo Samaj, the RSS still flourishes as a cultural and educational (or
training) movement promoting the notion of hindutva (roughly, 'Hinduness') as a cultural,
civilizational, and national idea rather than a strictly religious one, at the same
time also seeing itself as apolitical. Only later, in 1964, did the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
arise as an organization seeking to find as much common ground as possible between
the religions 'of Indian soil', including Buddhism and Sikhism-which hardly makes
even this a devotional or confessional movement of Hinduism per se. Later still, in
April 1980, came political organization through the Bharatiya Janata Party, which its
leaders A. B. Vajpayee and L. K. Advani soon expanded away from its middle-class
and upper-caste origins into social space occupied mostly by the lower-status Other
Backward Classes. The party formed two short-lived governments in the late 1990s,
taking advantage of the decline of Congress in the wake of the assassination of Rajiv
Gandhi and the (temporary) eclipse of the Gandhi dynasty.
Hansen's introduction is largely taken up with developing a neo-Lacanian
perspective, with side references to Bourdieu and Foucault. Later chapters are largely
historical, with explanations of the movement's philosophies together with some ethnographic
accounts of particular situations. From them emerge the anti-Christian and
especially anti-Muslim nature of the movement (the latter being seen in terms of historical
conversions of low-caste Hindus, the loss of Pakistan etc.), the development and
focality of the god Ram as a unifying symbol, the movement's balancing act between
demonstrations and processions on the one hand and illegal forms of direct action
(such as the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque) on the other, and the essential modernity
of the movement in respect of its nationalism and belief in economic autarchy
and military prowess (it is noticeable that Hansen nowhere uses the term 'fundamentalist').
In his sixth chapter, Hansen rejects journalistic theses that the popular protests associated
with the movement are simply the mob action of an incorrigible underclass
being manipulated by evil, clever outsiders, which he sees as a hangover of an essentially
colonialist perspective. Instead, he argues that a largely imagined construction of
Muslims as an 'other' enjoying various advantages, not only as a cosseted minority but
also because of their supposed access to wives and progeny through polygyny (now
outlawed for Hindu men) and Middle Eastern wealth. The moral superiority that Hindus
accord themselves is therefore linked to jealousy and a loss of enjoyment in comparison
to Muslims-the immoral accrue advantages that the moral are denied. This
position is reciprocated almost exactly by Muslims and can be traced in other ethnic or
communal conflicts. Particular local issues are significant, but they act more as the
trigger and do not create such 'imaginaries' themselves.
The more theoretical parts of the book suffer from a fashionable impenetrability at
times, and the ethnographic parts are quite thin, forming appendages to the text rather
than being integrated into it (admittedly, Hansen appears professionally to be a geographer
rather than an anthropologist). Nonetheless, on the whole this is a worthwhile
account of a much misunderstood and feared movement, one which may have peaked
temporarily but still aspires to make the twenty-first century 'a Hindu century'. We
now have no excuse for seeing its more violent aspects as one of the occasional but
inexplicable aberrations of life in a hot climate, as the Raj did. Hensen shows them to
be quite normative in some cases and areas, and certainly as being underpinned by a

196 Book Reviews
quite transparent symbolic discourse, which is nationalist and modem rather than religious
or fundamentalist (BJP deputy leader L. K. Advani apparently prides himself on
never going to a temple). Like other so-called 'fundamentalisms', hindutva is forwardlooking
rather than regressive, despite its ideological rooting in a constructed history.
ROBERTPARKIN
JOHANNES MARIA HAMMERLE, Nias - eine eigene Welt: Sagen, My then, Oberlieferungen
(Collectanea Instituti Anthropos 43), Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 1999.407 pp.,
Maps, Tables, Figures, Plates, Bibliography, List of informants. DM 88.00.
This is the first of two planned volumes devoted to myths on the island of Nias, which
lies south-west of Sumatra in Indonesia. The first volume presents material from north
and central Nias, material from south Nias being reserved for the second volume.
These circumstances make difficulties for a reviewer, as some of the author's arguments
are left for completion in the second book. It should be said at once that the author
is a Catholic priest of the Capuchin order who has been a missionary on Nias
since 1972. If I read his foreword correctly, he has had no training in anthropology.
The structure of the book is as follows. The introduction provides geographical
and historical orientation. The second chapter presents myths from north Nias, followed
by a chapter on central Nias myths, and a long concluding chapter which discusses
a series of themes found in the myths. Hammerle reinterprets three previously
published myths and presents thirteen new myths collected by himself, but only in
German translation. A principal ambition is to demythologize Nias myth. By this
phrase, as the author explains, he intends to demythologize the published literature on
Nias myth, because white authors took the figurative and symbolic language of the
myths too literally. 'Too quickly, therefore, were conclusions drawn, a crowd of gods
discovered, and fmally an attempt made to order these in a system.' Further, he wishes
to peel away the outer shell of the myths to reveal the real core, the content, the actual
statement of the myths.
Only an expert on Nias can judge the accuracy of Hammerle's individual arguments.
It may be said, however, that the results are much as one might expect, given
the ambitions. There is not much in the way of an overall argument, nor is there any
reference to any general anthropological literature that might be deemed relevant. Instead,
in addition to the translations, the book proceeds by very detailed factual elucidation
of the ethnogr.aphic content of the myths. Hammerle identifies and characterizes
each of his informants, so that a sense of diversity is preserved, which nevertheless
does not obscure the fact that there are common cultural features. A non-expert can
expect to get only so much out of this book. Despite the wealth of factual detail, he
may feel a lack in terms of sufficient explanations of ethnographic contexts. Above all,
a glossary and an index would have been of great help.
A great deal of care and scholarship has gone into this book, which is very attractively
decorated with numerous drawings. At the end there are fifteen beautiful photographs,
twelve of which are in colour. The majority of the myths are new material and

Book Reviews 197
therefore an important contribution in their own right. Of course, the ethnographic elucidations
are necessary as well. The impression the reader receives, that for the most
part the book consists of a series of sometimes none too closely related topics, may be
corrected by reading of the second volume when it appears. In any case, it is hardly
fair to judge an overall project when one has read only half of the results.
R. H.BARNES
CHRISTIAN FEEST (ed.), Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays,
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1999.643 pp., Plates, Name index.
£19.95.
This collection is a reprint of a book originally published in English in Aachen, Germany,
in 1987. The focus of the book is European interest in and experiences of native
Americans. Although in his preface the editor implies that only North American Indians
are of concern, one contribution deals with the Brazilian Indian Quoniambec and
another is devoted to the Gc-speaking Brazilian Botocudo. Nor are all the authors or
actors citizens of European countries. These circumstances indicate a liberal interpretation
of the question of European relationships with American Indians.
The 33 chapters in this collection cover a correspondingly great diversity of topics.
However, in no sense could this 'book be presented as comprehensive. With the
two exceptions noted above, nothing presented here deals with the Americas south of
the present United States. The Spanish chronicles, French accounts of travel and exploration,
and the Jamestown colonists are all neglected, although Feest lightly touches on
these matters in his concluding chapter. Standard works such as Lafitau on the Iroquois
go unmentioned. The merit of this work, therefore, rests on the originality of the material
in it.
The editor writes, 'A simple explanation for the reasons of the special relationship
between Europeans and the native populations of North America is that no such relationship
exists. Under close scrutiny it becomes apparent that all that interested and
still interests Europeans is "Indians", a wholly fictional population inhabiting the Old
World mind rather than the New World land.' He also comments that much the same is
true of the largely derivative notions of white Americans.
Specific contributions range over quite disparate topics. Among them are wild
men in sixteenth-century book illustrations, the kidnapping of Eskimos for display in
Europe, the legitimate and illegitimate exportation of North American Indians and Eskimos
for touring exhibitions, George Catlin's and Buffalo Bill's tours with Indians
from various tribes, Charles Dickens' fantasies about American Indians he never met,
representations of Indians in central European countries which had even less chance to
encounter them, and genuine encounters by such figures as Jonathan Carver and Wil­
Ham Blackmore. One chapter bravely attempts to describe American Indian perceptions
of Europe, on rather spotty evidence, it must be said. Others deal with attempts to
enlist European interest in Indian political appeals. A very useful chapter establishes
the authorship of an unconscious literary fraud which has been taken up by the eco-

Book Reviews 199
tive' are easily delimited, and the notion tails off in various directions. It is not clear
where myth fades into legend or folk tale, or belief or stereotype, not how to classify
cosmologies (such as a three-level universe) or the corresponding temporal schemata
(like the four ages of Hinduism). The definitional problem attracts little attention here.
Segal sees 'the fundamental questions about myth [as] what is its origin, what is its
function, what is its subject matter' (p. 2). Such formulations seem to presuppose a
unitary concept, untouched by deconstructionist concerns over reification, but it is far
from obvious that any single theory will be equally applicable to everything that people
have labelled 'myth'.
Perhaps the' definitional problem was glossed over by the theorists in question.
For this is very much a book about theories rather than the myths themselves, and it is
essentially about other people's theories. Only one chapter, on the Greek myth of
Adonis, forms an exception on both counts, since it offers the author's own theory
about a particular myth. The result of the concentration on theory is a somewhat rarified
and abstract tone. For instance, we are seldom told how much knowledge the theorisers
possessed of actual myths or from what part of the world those myths came. As
for the choice of theorists, there is no reference to Roland Barthes's Mythologies, nor
to Dumezil, and although Uvi-Strauss is mentioned, he is not treated in depth.
The strength of the book lies in its interrogation of what the selected theorists said,
and failed to say, and in the rich bibliographies provided. At the risk of arbitrariness
and oversimplification, here are some of the points that arise from the complex discussion.
Tylor, the intellectualist, makes a nice clear starting-point with his emphasis on
myth as offering explanations of the course of nature. Frazer is much less clear, implicitly
changing his views as the different editions of the Golden Bough come out. Contrary
to the three-stage model usually ascribed to him, he was primarily concerned with
the mixed magic-religion evolutionary stage located between the purely religious stage
and the later scientific one; this was when the death and rebirth of vegetation became
related to the transmission of kingship. In the history of the tangled debate on the relationship
between myth and ritual, Frazer follows Robertson Smith (who gives priority
to behaviour over belief) and precedes many British theorists, such as J ane Harrison at
Cambridge or Sidney Hooke-who, however, do not necessarily follow or even understand
him closely. An interesting chapter discusses Jessie Weston's Frazerian interpretation
of the Grail legend, which she tried to trace back to gnosticism and ancient
Nature Cults; but perhaps her influence on T. S. Eliot (not noted here) was the most
important outcome of such speculation.
Among the psychoanalysts, Bruno Bettelheim is criticised for his neglect of the
earlier literature written by fellow Freudians and his paradoxical attitude to the relationship
between myths and fairy-tales, while Jung receives respectful treatment in the
longest essay of the book. As might be expected, Jung links myths with processes that
take place in the mind rather than the world: 'Myths are original revelations of the preconscious
psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and
anything but allegories of physical processes'. Full psychic maturity demands reconnecting
oneself to the unconscious and its archetypes. In Detienne's Levi-Straussian
analysis of the Adonis myth, bumt-cooked-raw parallels promiscuity-marriagecelibacy,
and Adonis represents the extremes as against the central element. Segal prefers
a Jungian approach in which the youth expresses the puer archetype: his failure to

200 Book Reviews
grow up-to marry and participate in society-functions as a negative example and a
warning to the citizens of a polis. All this provides a striking contrast to the following
chapter on hero myths, which compares the views of the Freudian Otto Rank, the
eclectic but somewhat Jungian Campbell and the essentially Frazerian Lord Raglan. As
so often, the author here leaves implicit his own views on the category (which appears
to me Euro- or Indo-Europocentric). Moreover, in the next chapter, after listing seven
what might seem fairly devastating criticisms of Campbell, Segal paradoxically ends
by claiming that this widely read author 'merits much praise' and 'offers an important
introduction to the subject'.
Many other theories are briefly surveyed, including those of Eliade, Jonas (the
specialist on gnosticism), and Bultmann (the existentialist demythologiser of the New
Testament), but the reader may well be left wondering whether the time is yet ripe for
satisfactory general theories. Of all the bodies of myth in the world, the most studied
must be that of the Indo-European speakers, but it still requires an immense amount of
comparative work. When such work has been carried further, and when even more
work of a similar type has been done on other groups (Sino-Tibetans, Austronesians,
Australians, Inuit etc:), we shall be in a far stronger position to propose plausible and
empirically adequate theories of myth-assuming the term stands the test of time.
N.J.ALLEN
JADWIGA PSTRUSINSKA, Old Celtic Cultures from the Hindu Kush Perspective, Cracow:
Universitas 1999. 194 pp., Bibliography. No price given.
The intriguing title reflects the author's intellectual history. Originally a specialist in
Afghanistan, she was affiliated to Kabul University during the 1970s and now teaches
at the Jagiellonian University. A visit to the White Horse at Uffmgton during the
summer equinox in 1989 stimulated an interest in Celtic Studies and led to the establishment
of a Celto-Asiatic Seminar in Cracow. It must also have led to a great deal of
reading, or at least consultation, for this relatively short text (say 55,000 words) has a
bibliography of more than 500 entries, mostly books.
A priori one might expect to find certain similarities between the two cultures in
question. The early Celtic world is accessible to us mainly from comparative linguistics,
archaeology, the descriptions of the Greeks and Romans, and then, after the introduction
of Christianity by St Patrick in the fifth century, from the copious literature in
Old Irish, which tells us a good deal about the pagan past. There emerges a picture of
petty kingdoms with strongly patrilineal kin groups, often raiding and fighting each
other, non-literate, but with a massive oral tradition of law and a polytheistic religion.
The Celts, roughly speaking, form the western end of the Indo-European-speaking
domain, while the eastern end is formed by the Indo-Iranians, among whom the linguists
distinguish three branches. Two of them, the Iranian and Indo-Aryan, developed
the major literate traditions of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism, whose comparison is a
long-established undertaking among philologists. But sandwiched between these two
giants, relatively isolated in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, are the Nuristani speak-

Book Reviews 205
T AMARA KOI-IN and ROSEMARY MCKECHNIE (eds.), Extending the Boundaries of Care:
Medical Ethics and Caring Practices, Oxford and New York: Berg 1999. x, 206 pp.,
Introduction, References, Index. £14.99.
This edited book of eight essays evolved mostly from a one-day workshop on 'The
Ethics of Care', held at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, and organized by the editors
together with Shirley Ardener, one of the general editors of this excellent series ofvolumes
entitled 'Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women'. It represents a refreshingly
interdisciplinary, scholarly mix of expertise encompassing law, ethics, nursing theory,
and anthropology, and addressing a diverse range of issues that challenge the boundaries
of care in both conceptualization and practice. Apart from some assumed medical
and anthropological knowledge and background reading, it has an easily accessible,
clearly written style, with several chapters drawing effectively on personal experience
and recent field studies. This suggests a wide potential readership, including not only
students of anthropology and the social sciences, but also nursing and medical professionals,
health-care policy-makers, and administrators.
The concepts of needs, rights, and policy relating to the ethics and practice of
medical and nursing care are addressed thematically under four subheadings: 'Embodying
Care', 'Controlling Care', 'Framing Care', and 'Nursing Care'. Each of these
is preceded by a brief ethnographic overview written by the editors, who also include a
well-balanced introductory chapter setting out a number of traditional assumptions
about the concepts of carers and caring that are challenged in this book. Many of the
chapters focus on the preventative aspects of health-care provision, such as screening,
contraception, and the concept of 'safe sex' in relation to HIV/AIDS discourses.
From an anthropological viewpoint the opening chapter by Judith Okely presents a
particularly compelling and, at times, shocking discussion of her personal experience
of socio-cultural power relationships between formal and informal carers through her
moving account of her mother's misdiagnosis and subsequent terminal illness. Okely
also introduces the deeply worrying possibility that her mother's case may have been
far from unique in failing to recognise the signs and symptoms of CJD in the elderly
patient and wrongfully attributing them to Alzheimer's. The insight and detailed observation
of an experienced anthropologist adds a unique dimension not only to the
experience of the individual, female, informal carer (and later bereaved relative), but
also the individual needs-particularly respect for personal dignity-of the recipient of
that care.
Frances Price examines the inadequacies of contemporary health-care provision
from quite a different perspective, i.e. the dilemmas facing families following mUltiple
births. The results of a national survey conducted by the author clearly demonstrate
where and why the provision of support and care by medical and social services is
found to be seriously wanting. This is a situation arising more frequently as assisted
conception becomes increasingly successful, therefore raising questions of medical
ethics, including biomedical accountability. The multiple medical roles of moral, political,
and therapeutic gatekeeper are explored, together with issues involving the redefmition
of parental roles. However, these discussions deserve greater attention than
they are able to receive in this brief paper, and it is to be hoped that a more substantive
piece will be written in due course.

206 Book Reviews
The following two chapters present a shift from the particular difficulties between
care givers and care recipients to broader debates concerning rights and responsibilities
in controlling care. The first of these chapters, by Andrew Russell, examines the use of
the injectable contraceptive, Depo-Provera, using a combined historical and anthropological
approach to cross-cultural issues surrounding population control and women's
health, and the complexities involved in evaluating and balancing risks and benefits.
Marie-Benedicte Detpbour then looks at the very abstract, culture-ridden nature of the
language of human rights relating to the provision of health and medical care, taking
the UN Declaration of Human Rights as her starting-point. This includes a masterful
analytical critique ofM. Villey's 'Le Droit et les droits de l'homme' (1983) and of the
complex underlying power relationships that underpin the illusory nature of 'rights'.
The third section of the book examines how ideas about care are framed to make
them publicly accessible and acceptable, using interview-based studies of behaviour
and attitudes as their framework. Helen Lambert's study of hereditary conditions, with
its demonstration of the social and ethical implications of pre-clinical screening, provides
an interesting practical application of the ideologies explored in the previous two
chapters. In it she reveals hidden agendas such as the economies of care that are to a
greater or lesser extent determined by therapeutic or technical (commercial) viability,
and the scientific, moral, political, and economic debates that surround 'screening'.
Rosemary McKechnie focuses on the construction of hierarchies and boundaries
within, and between, various interest groups in the world of HIV I AIDS research, highlighting
the need to overcome particular failures in communication or in awareness of
particular interests and sensitivities to enable research to make a positive contribution
to health-care, whilst recognising that 'all research has an impact on the world it objectifies'
.
The fmal section of the book looks at the theory and practice of nursing care.
Vangie Bergum explores ethical issues underlying the informing, decision-making, and
empowering processes in health care. However, despite engaging in some fascinating
discussion, particularly about the theory and philosophy of 'ethics as question', I felt
this to be the least· satisfactory chapter in terms of missed opportunities. Bergum
touches tantalisingly on the contentious aspects of a nurse's role as advocate or mediator
between patient and other health-care professionals, as well as the cultural and gender-based
dilemmas faced in ethical decision-making. In the chapter that follows, Jan
Savage presents some of the fmdings of a fascinating one-year study of British hospital
nurses, using an ethnographic approach to examine the ethic of care and its relationship
to perceptions of nursing as an extension to the private, feminine, domestic
sphere. She tests her findings against an impressive range of published material on
gender and professionalization in nursing, as well as her own previous research concerning
kinship, to reveal the construction of a uniqueness in role and relationship between
nurses and their patients. Savage describes the 'closeness' and the means by
which it is achieved as a 'multilayered abstraction that plays a part across a range of
nursing agendas relating to patient care and professional standing', suggesting that this
is therapeutic in 'uplifting' and empowering the patient both physically and existentially.
However, as with many such studies, the constraints of tightly focusing the
research (this concerned an all-male ward, in which the nursing staffwas almost exclu-

208 Book Reviews
Boyd also discusses the concept of 'epidemic areas', with diseases corresponding
to sub-regional social networks, which would explain in part the difference between 60
and 90 per cent mortality rates and the marked differences between regions affected by
epidemic infections and those where malaria became epidemic. Finally, he suggests
that such horrendous population losses may have caused non-Western cultures to backtrack
or 'devolve' to simpler fonns, enabling them to adapt more easily to changed
circumstances. In short, the volume provides a detailed and fascinating study of value
to any contemporary understanding of the spread of disease and its consequences.
R. E. S. TANNER

JASO 30/2 (1999): 209-212
Anthropology and Medicine, vol. 7, nos. 2 and 3
(Aug., Dec. 2000).
APFEL, ROBERTA 1., and SIMON BENNETI (eels.),
Minefields in their Hearts: The Mental Health of
Children in War and Communal Violence, New
Haven and London: Yale, 1996. xi, 244 pp.
References, Index.
BANERJEE, MUKULIKA, The Pathan Unarmed:
Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier
(World Anthropology), Oxford: James Currey, 2000.
X, 238 pp. Bibliography, llIustrations, Index. £40.001
£16.95.
BECKER,GAY, The Elusive Embryo: How Women and
Men Approach New Reproductive Technologies,
Berkeley and London: University of California Press,
2000. X, 320 pp. References, Index. £28.50/£11.5011
$45.00/$17.95.
BELLIER, IRENE, and THOMAS M. WlLSON (eds.), An
Anthropology of the European Union: BUilding,
Imagining and Experiencing the New Europe,
Oxford: Berg, 2000. References, Index. £42.99/
£14.99.
BETZIG, LAURA (ed.), Human Nature: A Critical
Reader, New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997. xvi, 489 pp. Bibliography, llIustrations,
Index.
BLACK ELK, NICHOLAS, with JOHN G. NEIHARDT,
Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man
of the Oglala Sioux (21 st century edition), Lincoln and
London: Bison Books, 2000. xxix, 230 pp.
Illustrations (some colour), Index. £26.951£6.95.
BURAWOY, MICHAEL et al., Global Etlmography:
Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a
Postmodern World, Berkeley and London: University
of Califurnia Press, 2000. xv, 392 pp. Bibliography,
Portrait, Index. £30.001 £11.5011 $48.00/$17.95.
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
Cambridge Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 3 (1999/2000).
Critique of Anthropology, vot 20, no. 4; voL 21, no. 1
(2000/2001).
CROWN, PATRICIA 1. (ed.), Women and Men in the
Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power & Prestige
(School of American Research Advanced Seminar
Series), Oxford: James Currey, 2000. xi, 503 pp.
Bibliography, Illustrations, Index. £40.00/£16.95.
DAS, VEENA et al. (eds.), Violence and Subjectivity,
Berkeley and London: University of California Press,
2000. X, 379 pp. References, Index. £30.00/£12.50/1
$50.00/$19.95.
DREsrn, PAUL, WENDY JAMES, and DA VID P ARK1N
(eels.), AnthropolOgists in a Wider World: Essays on
Field Research (Methodology and History in
Anthropology; 7), New York and Oxford: Berghahn,
2000. xiv, 310 pp. Bibliography, Illustrations, Index.
£35.00.
EwNGSON, TER, The Myth of the Noble Savage,
Berkeley and London: University of California Press,
2001. xxii, 445 pp. Bibliography, llIustrations, Index.
No price given.
ELM, DEMus, and HARVEY ANTONE (trans.
LoUNSBURY and GICK), The Oneida Creation Story
(Sources of American Indian Oral Literature), Lincoln
and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. X,
172 pp. Bibliography, 1 map. £8.95.
FIsHER, WlLLIAM H., Rainforest Exchanges: Industry
and Community on an Amazonian Frontier
(Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry),
Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 2000. xii, 222 pp. Bibliography, Illustrations,
Index. $45.00/$19.95.

212 Publications Received
VON DIRKE, SABINE, "All Power to the
Imagination! ": The West German Counterculture
from the Student Movement to the Greens (Modern
German Culture and Literature), Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1997. [vii], 270 pp.
Bibliography, Index.
W AGNER, Roy, An Anthr.opology of the Subject:
Holographic Worldview in New Guinea and its
Meaning and Significance for the World of
Anthropology, Berkeley and London: University of
California Press, 2001. xxi, 267 pp. References,
Index. £33.50/£11.95//$48.00/$17.95.
WENZEL, GEORGE W., GRETE HOVFLSRUD-BRODA, and
NOBUHIRO KISHIGAMI (eds.), The SOCial Economy of
Sharing: Resource Allocation and Modern Hunter­
Gatherers (Senri Ethnological Studies; no. 53),
Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2000. ii,215
pp. References, Illustrations.
WILLIAMSON, JUDlTH, Consuming Passions: The
Dynamics of Popular Culture, London: Marion
Boyars, 1995 [1988]. 240 pp. Bibliography,
Illustrations.
Wou, ERIC R., with SYDEL SlLVERMAN, Pathways of
Power: BUilding an Anthropology of the Modem
World, Berkeley and London: University of
California Press, 2001. xx, 463 pp. References,
Portrait, Index. £38.00/£15.95/1 $60.001$24.95.

JASO
VoI.XXX 1999 No. 3
SPECIAL ISSUE IN HONOUR OF PETER RIVIERE
CONTENTS
LAURARIVAL
Peter Riviere's Contributions to Amazonian and
Social Anthropology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213-218
LAURA RIV AL (compiler)
Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 219-232
EITHNE B. CARLIN
WYSIWYG in Trio:
The Grammaticalized Expression of Truth and Knowledge. . . . . . 233-245
H. DIETER HEINEN
Pemon Kinship Revisited:
The Case of the Lost Cross Cousin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247-259
GEORGE MENTORE
Anger in the Forest, Death by Documentation:
Cultural Imaginings of the Taruma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261-287
SCOTT WILLIAM HOEFLE
Colonization and Frontier Violence in the Central Amazon. . . . .. 289-300
JUAN M. OSS10
Mortuary Rituals in the Andes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301-316
Book Reviews
ALFRED GELL, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory
Reviewed by Russell Leigh Sharman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317-318
NORMAN E. WHITTEN and ARLENE TORRES (eds.), Blackness in Latin
America and the Caribbean, Volumes I andIl
Reviewed by Russell Leigh Sharman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318-320

Peter Riviere 's Contributions 215
In Individual and Society in Guiana (1984), he generalized from his own data
and from the ethnographic insights of other specialists to draw a clear and forceful
picture of the kinship logic of Guiana societies, which is that, ideally, a settlement
is composed of a group of bilaterally related kin, with, given the preference for
settlement endogamy, the added fact that affines also form part of co-residential
kin groups. The ideal settlement is composed of a set of siblings co-residing with
their spouses and children who do not differentiate, terminologically or otherwise,
between the fact of consanguinity and the fact of co-residency. Its endogamous
nature is often based on a peculiar combination of polygyny and the brother-sister
relationship. The challenge in writing this sober comparative study outlining the
structural features specific to Amazonian societies was to develop conceptual tools
for the positive characterization of societies which are intrinsically amorphous and
highly individualistic, and lack formal social groupings, such as the clan, moiety,
lineage, or age-set. Riviere's characterization of kinship system and social organisation
in the Guianas illustrates his talent for delineating the field of investigation
in a way that continues to influence the development of social anthropological research
in Amazonia.
Discussions of Amazonian social classifications, in particular the meaning and
practice of affinity, could hardly begin without Riviere's seminal contribution on
the Trio. Both his stress on the fact that 'throughout the region it is the affinal relationships
that are politically important because they contain the potential for
expressing hierarchy' (1984: 73), and his contrast between affinability (i.e. the
potential for becoming an affine) and affinity, or between related and unrelated
affines (ibid.: 56), have directly influenced the current thesis regarding potential
affinity, which detaches the notion of affinity not just from the genealogical referent
of cross-cousin, but from kinship altogether (Viveiros de Castro and Fausto
1993).
His famous Malinowski lecture on the couvade (Riviere 1974), which elaborates
the fundamental Amazonian discontinuity between the body and the soul,
constituted an early attempt to provide a theory of the created person in Amazonia.
While stressing the 'detachability' (or the 'unconfinability') of the soul, it placed
the human body at the very core of a form of politics that renders the management
of social distance extremely difficult in the region, and mediation, or some form of
solidarity with outsiders, hardly possible at all. Furthermore, Riviere's seminal
idea that what he called, for lack of a better sociological term, individualism in the
Guianas resulted from the fact that 'societal and individual relationships remain[ed]
at the same order of complexity' (1984: 98), anticipated Seeger et al.'s
thesis (1979) that Amazonian societies are not structured by sociological units, but
in terms of the circulation of symbols and substances which guarantee social continuity
and reproduction more effectively than the lineal transmission of physical
substances. And when new ethnographic work on the central Ge and Tukanos became
available in the late 1970s to 1980s, he was then able to confirm his intuition

216 Laura Rival
that no distinction can be made in Amazonia between the reproduction of society
and the reproduction of the person, for social structures relate to the construction
of the individual and the fabrication of the body, rather than to the definition of
groups and the transmission of goods, as, for instance, in Africa.
Like other Amazonianists, Riviere has welcomed and fully embraced the major
turn in social anthropology by which people are no longer viewed as recipients
of the environment, culture, social institutions, or past events, but recognised as
active historical agents. He readily and unambiguously traces the move from considering
history as happening to people to fully admitting that people make their
own history back to the influence of feminist theory on anthropological thinking.
This move has made him even keener to establish a clear separation between
Western historiography and indigenous ethnohistories. He therefore accepts that
historical sources on Guyana should not be used as uncritically as he did in his
B.Litt thesis (1963). Names of tribes are not purely objective historiographic data,
and European history is not native history. In the recorded interview conducted
while this introduction was being written, Riviere clearly separated what he writes
as a historian (see Absent-minded Imperialism [1995] and his forthcoming biography
of Schomburgk) from what he writes as an anthropologist.
Whereas Riviere accepts the fundamental shift in anthropology from structure
and meaning to agency and practice, and welcomes the new interest in historical
agency, his ethnohistorical approach does not lead him to attempt to understand
the historical experience of those who have undergone domination and colonization,
or what these historical events mean today. His historical lens is not so much
focused on the colonial encounter, but rather on temporality from a native perspective.
For example, generational continuity, he reminds us (Riviere 1993), is often
articulated with reference to the principles of substitution and replication, and expressed
in botanical metaphors. Rather than a rapprochement with history, which
leads anthropologists either to take a historical perspective or to treat historical
material anthropologically, like Levi-Strauss and all Amazonianists influenced by
French structuralism, Riviere prefers to explore indigenous understandings of time
and space. He has long reflected on Amazonian notions of time, in particular the
ways in which 'time is embedded in and represented by space' (1984: 99). Amazonian
ethnohistories represent the diversity of ways in which, or the degrees to
which, these societies incorporate notions of time and space. In all these cultures,
there is a continuous, non-linear time, which is always there and is indistinguishable
from the cosmos of which it forms a part. This continuous time, he says, is
just like space; temporal discontinuities are located in continuous time just as settlements
are dispersed throughout the forest, for these rather amorphous societies
exist within a narrow time scale. Not only is the settlement formed by co-ordinates
of time and space, it is also constituted by a network of social relationships which
are ordered by a system of classification that is self-perpetuating. It is a system that
not only allocates people in this generation, but also ensures appropriate realloca-

Peter Riviere 's Contributions 217
tion in the next. It is the combination of these factors that gives meaning to the
present and assurance of continuity. It is because many Amazonian societies exist
in a narrow time scale that the present contains proof of the past and promise of
the future, that minimal differences exist between synchronic and diachronic perspectives
(ibid.: 102), and that the settlement (or the house) as a process becomes
the relevant level of social analysis. This also explains why social determinants
and historical factors are more important than ecological ones in explaining the
size of settlements, and why village history is political history (ibid.: 31).
The articles collected here are based on papers that were given at a conference
organized at Linacre College, Oxford, on 17-18 December 1998 to celebrate Peter
Riviere's life-time contribution to anthropology. Carlin's essay discusses from a
linguistic point of view the highly transformational world of the Trio also studied
by Riviere (1994), in which men become jaguars or eagles and vice versa by
changing their skin or clothes. She shows that, linguistically speaking, the relationship
between external appearance and inherent reality is always clearly stated in
Trio by means of morphemes that chart the differences between 'being X', 'being
like X' and 'having the appearance of being X'. Heinen's contribution takes as its
starting-point a remark by Riviere in his 1984 work on Amerindian social organization
on the ambiguity of cross-cousin terms for members of the opposite sex in
the Guiana highlands. By focusing on a single Pemon group, the Kamarakoto,
Heinen endeavours to show that the apparent absence of terms for opposite sex
cross-cousins is not systemic, but an artefact of the dispersed settlement pattern of
the Pemon and the ensuing tendency to redefine some children of opposite-sex
cross-cousins as marriageable 'nephews' and 'nieces'. Mentore engages three
sources (the state documents of Guyana, the scholarly literature on the region and
the oral discourse of the Waiwai) on the interpretation of Amerindian death, and,
in particular, the Taruma/Kuase demise. Hoefle takes inspiration from Riviere's
work on the cattle-ranching cultures that developed during the colonial period on
the frontier between Brazil and the former British Guiana and his early work on
sorcery accusations to analyse the cultural construction of violence among the
ranchers of the Sertao of north-east Brazil. In the final article, Ossio bases his discussion
of Andean pre- and post-Columbian funerary rituals on Riviere's (1974)
analysis of the typically South American trusting of the soul and the body of individuals
to different persons.
These five tributes from colleagues and former students of Peter's who have
worked in the Guiana Shield and Andean Peru areas clearly invoke Peter's considerable
regional expertise and the varied contributions he has made to anthropology.
By locating the analysis of individuals within dynamic regional structures,
and through the range of topics they cover (descent and affinity, death, ritual and
shamanic discourse, the human person, power and reproduction, modernisation
and social transformations), these essays contribute to showing how, in Peter's

218 Laura Rival
own words, 'a society collaborates in the production of a particular type of ethnographic
writing' (Riviere 2000: 42).
REFERENCES
RrVIERE, PETER 1963. An Ethnographic Survey of the Indians on the Divide of the
Guianese and Amazonian River Systems, University of Oxford: B. Litt thesis.
· .. 1969. Marriage among the Trio, Oxford: Clarendon Press .
... 1974. 'The Couvade: A Problem Reborn', Man, Vol. IX, no. 3, pp. 423-35 [Malinowski
Memorial Lecture 1974].
· .. 1984. Individual and Society in GUiana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
· .. 1993. 'The Amerindianization of Descent and Affmity', L 'Homme, Vol. XXXIII,
nos. 2-4 (issues J26-8), pp. 507-16 .
... 1994 [1996]. 'WYSINWYG in Amazonia', JASO, Vol. XXV, no. 3, pp. 255-62.
· .. 1995. Absent-Minded Imperialism: Britain and the Expansion of Empire in Nineteenth-Century
Brazil, London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies.
· .. 2000. 'Indians and Cowboys: Two Fields of Experience" in P. Dresch, W. James,
and D. Parkin (eds.), Anthropologists in a Wider World, Oxford: Berghahn Books.
SEEGER, A., R. DA MATTA, and E. VIVEIROS DE CASTRO 1979. 'A constuao da pes soa
nas sociedades indfgenas brasileiras', Boletim do Museu Nacional de Antopologia,
no. 32, pp. 1-20.
VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, E., and C. FAUSTO 1993. 'La puissance et l'acte: la parente dans
les basses terres d'Amerique du Sud', L'Homme, Vol. XXXIII, nos. 2-4 (126-8),
pp. 141-70.

JASO 30/3 (1999): 219-232
Theses
PETER RIVIERE: COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY
COMPILED BY LAURA RIVAL
1963. B. Litt. An Ethnographic Survey of the Indians on the Divide of the
Guianese and Amazonian River Systems, University of Oxford (unpublished).
1965. D. PhiL The Social Organisation of the Trio Indians of Surinam, University
of Oxford (unpublished).
Authored Books
1969. Marriage among the Trio: A Principle of Social Organization, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
1972. The Forgotten Frontier: Ranchers of North Brazil, New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
1984. Individual and Society in Guiana: A Comparative Study of Amerindian Social
Organization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1987. [with Cees Koelewijn] The Oral Literature of the Trio Indians of Sur in am,
Dordrecht and Providence: Foris Publications (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-,
Land, en Volkenkunde, Caribbean Studies, 6).
1995. Absent-Minded Imperialism: Britain and the Expansion of Empire in Nineteenth-Century
Brazil, London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies.
1998. Christopher Columbus, Stroud: Sutton Publishing.
Edited Books
1970. Primitive Marriage, by 1. F. McLennnan [1865], Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

220 Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography
1978. The Origin of Civilisation, by John Lubbock [1870], Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Translations
1972. Lucien Levy-Bruhl, by Jean Cazeneuve, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1975. The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality of Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
1994. Four Letters to Radcliffe-Brown from Durkheim and Mauss, JASO, Vol.
XXV, no. 2, 169-78 [translation and commentary].
Articles in Journals
1966. 'A Note on Marriage with the Sister's Daughter', Man, Vol. I, no. 4, pp.
550-6.
1966. 'Age: A Determinant of Social Classification', Southwestern Journal of Anthropology,
Vol. XXII, no. 1, pp. 43-60.
1966. 'Oblique Discontinuous Exchange: A New Formal Type of Prescriptive Alliance',
American Anthropologist, Vol. LXVIII, no. 3, pp. 738-40.
1966. 'A Policy for ,the Trio Indians of Surinam', Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, Vol.
XL V, nos. 2-3, pp. 95-120 (including 6 photographs).
1966-67. 'Some Ethnographic Problems of Southern Guyana', Folk 8-9, pp. 301-
12 (Festschrift for Jens Y de).
1967. 'The Caboclo and Brazilian Attitudes', Bulletin of the Society for Latin
American Studies, Vo!. VIII, pp. 18-21.
1967. 'The Honour of Sanchez' ,Man, Vol. II, no. 4, pp. 569-83.
] 974. 'Some Problems in the Comparative Study of Carib Societies', Atti de XL
Congresso Internazionale degli Americanisti, Vo!. 11, pp. 639-43, Genoa: Tilgher.
1974. 'The Couvade: A Problem Reborn', Man, Vo!. IX, no. 3, pp. 423-35 [Malinowski
Memorial Lecture 1974].

222 Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography
Chapters in Edited Volumes
1969. 'Myth and Material Culture: Some Symbolic Interrelations in Forms of
Symbolic Action', in R. F. Spencer (ed.), Annual Spring Meeting of the
American Ethnological Society, Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp.
151-66.
1970. 'Factions and Exclusions in Two South American Village Systems', in Mary
Douglas (ed.), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, London: Tavistock
Publications (ASA Monographs, 9), pp. 245-55.
1971. 'The Political Structure of the Trio Indians as Manifested in a System of
Ceremonial Dialogue', in T. O. Beidelman (ed.), The Translation of Culture,
London: Tavistock Publications, pp. 293-311.
1971. 'Marriage: A Reassessment', in Rodney Needham (ed.), Rethinking Kinship
and Marriage, London: Tavistock Publications (ASA Monographs, 11), pp.
57-74.
1977. 'Some Problems in the Comparative Study of Carib Societies', in Ellen B.
Basso (ed.), Carib-Speaking Indians: Culture, Society and Language, Tucson:
Arizona University Press (Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona,
28), pp. 39-41.
1983-84. 'Aspects of Carib Political Economy', in A. B. Colson and H. D. Heinen
(eds.), Themes in Political Organisation: The Caribs and their Neighbours,
Anthropologica, Vols. LIX-LXII, pp. 349-58.
1987. 'Of Women, Men and Manioc', in H. O. Skar and F. Salomon (eds.), Natives
and Neighbours in South America: Anthropological Essays, Gothenburg:
Gothenburg Ethnographic Museum (Etnologiska Studien, 38), pp. 178-201.
1987. 'South American Indians: Indians of the Tropical Forest', in Mircea Eliade
et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Religion, New York: Macmillan, Vol. XIII, pp.
472-81.
1988. [with B. Dyke] 'The Effect of Preference Rules on Marriage Patterns', in C.
G. N. Mascie-Taylor and A. G. Boyce (eds.), Human Mating Patterns, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 183-90.
1995. 'Ambiguous Environments', in Magnus Morner and M. Rosendall (eds.),
Threatened Peoples and Environments in the Americas, Vol. I, Stockholm: Institute
of Latin American Studies, University of Stockholm (Proceedings of
the 48th International Congress of Americanist Studies), pp. 39-50.

224 Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography
1966. God's People: West Indian Pentecostal Sects in England, by Malcolm J. C.
Calley, Times Literary Supplement, no. 3341 (10 March), p. 207.
1966. The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, edited by Michael Banton,
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. CXXII, no. 1, pp.
173-8.
1966. Hawks of the Sun, by O. L. C. Faron, Sociologus, Vol. XVI, no. 1, pp. 98-9.
1966. Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited by Michael
Banton, Man, Vol. I, no. 3, pp. 406-7.
1967. Akwe-Shavante Society, by David Maybury-Lewis, The Cambridge Review,
Vol. LXXXIX, no. 2146 (29 April), pp. 309-10.
1967. Religions et Magies Indiennes d'Amerique du Sud, by Alfred Metraux,
Times Literary Supplement, no. 3411 (13 July), p. 623.
1969. Los Warao, by Maria Matilde Smirez, American Anthropologist, Vol. LXXI,
no. 1, pp. 113-14.
1970. Levi-Strauss, by Edmund Leach, and Genesis as Myth and Other Essays, by
Edmund Leach, New Society, no. 383 (29 January), p. 188.
1970. Le Massacre des Indians, by Lucien Bodard, and The Abolition of the Brazilian
Slave Trade, by Leslie Bethell, New Society, no. 394 (16 April), pp.
650-1.
1970. The Raw and the Cooked, by C1aude Levi-Strauss, Nature, Vol. 226, no.
5248 (30 May), p. 875.
1970. Kinship and the Social Order, by Meyer Fortes, and Time and Social Structure
and Other Essays, by Meyer Fortes, Times Literary Supplement, no. 3571
(7 August), p. 880.
1970. The Ritual Process, by Victor W. Turner, Times Literary Supplement, no.
3574 (28 August), p. 945.
1970. The Upper Amazon, by Donald Lathrap, Times Literary Supplement, no.
3580 (9 October), p. 1170.
1970. The Negro in,the New World, by Sir Harry Johnston, New Society, no. 431
(31 December), p. 1176.
1971. Crusade for Justice, by Ida B. Wells, New Society, no. 437 (11 February), p.
246.

Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography 225
1971. The Naturalist on the River Amazon, by H. W. Bates, and Henry Waiter
Bates: Naturalist of the Amazons, by G. Woodcock, Journal of Latin American
Studies, Vol. Ill, no. 1, pp. 94-5.
1971. Claude Levi-Strauss, by Octavio Paz, Journal of Latin American Studies,
Vol. Ill, no. 1, pp. 113-14.
1971. The Social Anthropology of Latin America, edited by W. Goldschmidt and
H. Hoijer, Man, Vol. VI, no. 2, pp. 318-19.
1971. In the Eyes of the Ancestors, by June Nash, Journal of Latin American Studies,
Vol. Ill, no. 2, pp. 209-10.
1971. Mato Grosso, by Anthony Smith, Times Literary Supplement, no. 3641 (10
December), p. 1546.
1971. The Bolivian Aymara, by Hans and Judith-Maria Buechler, Man, Vol. VI,
no. 4, pp. 714-15.
1972. Three Styles in the Study of Kinship, by J. A. Barnes, JASO, Vol. Ill, no. 1,
p.52.
1972. Half a Dozen of the Other, by Sebastian Snow, and The Forgotten Tribes of
Guyana, by W. M. Ridgewell, Times Literary Supplement, no. 3676 (11 August),
p. 936.
1972. A General Theory of Magic, by Marcel Mauss (transl. Robert Brain), New
Society, no. 520 (21 September), pp. 565-6.
1972. Les Derniers Adorateurs du Peytol, by Marino Benzi, Times Literary Supplement,
no. 3681 (22 September), p. 1094.
1972. One Father, One Blood: Descent and Group Structure among the Melpa
People, by Andrew Strathem, JASO, Vol. Ill, no. 3, p. 158.
1973. For Better, For Worse, by Marika Hanbury Tenison, Times Literary Supplemen,
no. 3701 (9 February), p. 147.
1973. Indiens de la Renaissance, by Jean de Lery, Times Literary Supplement, no.
3705 (9 March), p. 258.
1973. From Honey to Ashes, by Claude Levi-Strauss, Nature, Vol. CCXLIII, no.
5401 (4 May), pp. 47-8.
1973. Applied Anthropology, by Roger Bastide (transl. Alice L. Morton), New Society,
Vol. XXIV, no. 553 (10 May), p. 316.

226 Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography
1973. A Question of Survival, by Robin Hanburg-Tenison, Times Literary Supple­
. ) ment, no. 3176 (23 May), p. 583.
1973. The Jfvaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls, by Michael J. Harner, Times
Literary Supplement, no. 3729 (23 August), p. 985.
1973. The Maroni River Caribs of Sur in am , by Peter Kloos, Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. CXXIX, no. 2, pp. 359-63.
1973. Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School 1922-1972, by
Adam Kuper, Nature, no. 5425 (19 October), p. 395.
1973. Uncertainties in Peasant Farming: A Colombian Case, by S. R. Ortiz, Man,
Vol. VIII, no. 4, pp. 653-4.
1973. Elementary Structures Reconsidered: Levi-Strauss on Kinship, by Francis
Kom, JASO, Vol. IV, no. 3, pp. 18

Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography 227
1975. Implicit Meanings, by Mary Douglas, New Society, no. 687 (4 December), p.
558.
1976. Navajo Kinship and Marriage, by Gary Witherspoon, Times Literary Supplement,
no. 3861 (12 March), p. 286.
1976. Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Tradition,
by Gary Gossen, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. VIII, no. 1, pp.
174-5.
1976. Under the Rainbow, by Jean-Paul Dumont, Times Literary Supplement, no.
3882 (6 August), p. 992.
1976. The Shaman and the Jaguar, by Reichel-Dolmatoff, In the Magic Land of
Peyote, by Femando Benitez, and The Coca Leaf and Cocaine Papers, edited
by George Andrews and David Solomon, Journal of Latin American Studies,
Vol. VIII, no. 2, pp. 346-8.
1976. The Mexican Kickapoo Indians, by F. A. Latorre and D. L. Latorre, Times
Literary Supplement, no. 3900 (10 December), p. 1540.
1977. The Fate of She ch em, or the Politics of Sex , by Julian Pitt-Rivers, New Society,
no. 760 (28 April), pp. 183-4.
1977. The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown, edited by Adam Kuper, New
Society, no. 768 (23 June), p. 620.
1977. Relationships, Residence and the Individual: A Rural Panamanian Community,
by Stephen Gudeman, Man, Vol. XII, no. 1, p. 194.
1977. Le Cercle des Feux, by Jacques Lizot, Man, Vol. XII, no. 1, p. 196.
1977. Sacha Runa, by Norman Whitten, Man, Vol. XII, no. 1, pp. 208-9.
1977. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, by Margaret Mead, New
Society, no. 733 (28 July), p. 197.
1977. Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Studies, edited by Ernest Gellner and
John Waterbury, New Society, no. 785 (20 October), p. 143.
1977. Life on a Half Share, by Milan Stuchlik, Journal of Latin American Studies,
Vol. IX, no. 2, pp. 376-7.
1978. Un Mundo Dividido, by Roberto da Matta, Man, Vol. XIII, no. 1, pp. 146-7.

228 Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography
1978. Symbols and Sentiments, edited by loan Lewis, New Society, no. 797 (12
January), pp. 84-5.
1978. The Transformation of the Hummingbird, by Eva Hart, Times Literary Supplement,
no. 3966 (7 April), p. 394.
1978. Mehinaku: The Drama of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village, by Thomas
Gregor, Man, Vot. XIII, no. 2, pp. 329-30.
1978. Welcome of Tears: The Tapirape Indians of Central Brazil, by Charles
Wagley, Man, yol. XIII, no. 2, p. 334.
1979. Red Gold, by John Hemming, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. XI,
no. 1, pp. 233-4.
1979. Xingu, by Maureen Bisilliat, Quarto, no. 2, p. 5.
1980. The Headman and I, by Jean-Paul Dumont, American Ethnologist, Vol. VII,
no. 1, p. 213.
1980. The Man-Eating Myth, by W. Arens, Man, Vol. XV, no. 1, pp. 203-5.
1980. The River Amazon, by Alex Shoumatoff, From the Milk River, by C. Hugh­
Jones, and The Palm and the Pleiades, by S. Hugh-Jones, Third World Quarterly,
Vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 809-12.
1982. Why Marry Her?, by Luc de Heusch, Times Literary Supplement, no. 4116
(19 February), p. 195.
1982. The Politics of Reproductive Ritual, by K. and J. Paige, and Emergingfrom
the Chrysalis, by Bruce Lincoln, Times Literary Supplement, no. 4124 (16
April), p. 444.
1982. Brazil: Anthropological Perspectives-Essays in Honor of Charles Wagley,
edited by Maxine L. Margolis and Wil1iam E. Carter, Journal of Latin American
Studies, Vol. XIV, no. 1, pp. 243-4.
1982. Nature and Society in Central Brazil: The Suya Indians of Mato Grosso, by
Anthony Seeger, Man, Vol. XVII, no. 2, pp. 380-1.
1982. Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, edited by
Norman Whitten, JASO, Vol. XIII, no. 2, pp. 198-9.
1982. Makuna Social Organisation, by Kaj Arhem, Man, Vol. XVII, no. 3, pp.
562-3.

Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography 229
1982. Son of Tecun Uman, by J. D. Sexton, The Daykeeper, by B. N. and L. M.
Colby, and The Indian Christ, The Indian King, by V. R. Bricker, Journal of
Latin American Studies, Vol. XIV, no. 2, pp. 480-2.
1982. Icon and Conquest, by Bemadette Bucher, Man, Vol. XVII, no. 4, pp. 808-
9.
1983. Order Without Government, by David J. Thomas, Man, Vol. XVIII, no. 2,
pp. 427-9.
1984. The Ethnography of Cannibalism , edited by PauIa Brown and Donald Tuzin,
JASO, Vol. XV, no. 1, p. 73.
1984. The Cosmic Zygote, by Peter G. Roe, Man, Vol. XIX, no. 2, pp. 347-8.
1985. Ainsi parlaient nos ancetres, by Pierre Grenand, Man, Vol. XX, no. 1, pp.
174-5.
1985. The Fish People, by Jean Jackson, Man, Vol. XX, no. 1, pp. 179-80.
1986. The View from Afar, by Claude Levi-Strauss, JASO, Vol. XVII, no. 1, pp.
63-4.
1986. Vital Souls: Bororo Cosmology, Natural Symbolism and Shamanism, by J.
C. Crocker, Man, Vol. XXI, no. 2, pp. 362-3.
1986. Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians, edited by R. B. Hames and W.
T. Vickers, Man, Vol. XXI, no. 2, pp. 366-7.
1986. Marriage Practices in Lowland South America, edited by K. M. Kensinger,
Man, Vol. XXI, no. 2, pp. 371-2.
1986. Anxious Pleasures, by Thomas Gregor, Man, Vol. XXI, no. 3, pp. 565-6.
1987. La Nature Domestique, by P. Descola, Man, Vol. XXII, no. 4, pp. 754-5.
1988. Amazon Frontier, by John Hemming, Man, Vol. XXIII, no. 1, pp. 186-7.
1989. Contribuciones al Estudio de la Mitologfa y Astronomfa de los Indios de las
Guayanas, by E. Magaiia, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, VoL
CXL V, no. 1, pp. 182-3.
1989. Wora, la .Deesse Cachee, by Jean Monod, American Ethnologist, Vol. XVI,
no. 2, pp. 397-8.

230 Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography
1990. Orion y la Mujer Pleyades, by E. Magafia, American Ethnologist, VoL
XVII, no. 2, pp. 400-1.
1990. Dictionnaire Wayfipi-Fran9ais, by F. Grenand, Man, VoL XXV, no. 2, p.
362.
1991. Alabi's World, by R. Price, Man, Vol. XXVI, no. 2, p. 373.
1991. To Weave and Sing, by D. M. Guss, JASO, Vol. XXII, no. 2, pp. 186-7.
1991. The Power of Love , by F. Santos-Granero, Man, Vol. XXVI, no. 4, p. 777.
1992. Histoire de Lynx, by C. Levi-Strauss, Current Anthropology, Vol. XXXIII,
no. 2, pp. 238-9.
1992. Demystifying Mentalities, by G. E. R. Lloyd, JASO, Vol. XXIII, no. 2, pp.
181-2.
1994. Keepers of the Sacred Chants, by Jonathan Hill, Man, VoL XXIX, no. 4, pp.
1016-17.
1995. The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: A Sense of Space, by Janet
M. Chernela, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. I, no. 1, pp.
206-7.
1995. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia, by P. Descola,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. I, no. 3, pp. 656-7.
1995. The Culture of Flowers, by Jack Goody, JASO, Vol. XXVI, no. 3, pp. 324-
5. .
1996. Yanomami Warfare: A Political History, by Brian Ferguson, Journal of
Latin American Studies, Vol. XXVIII, no. 2, pp. 262-3.
1996. Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present: Anthropological Perspectives,
edited by Anna Roosevelt, Bulletin of Latin American Research,
VoL XV, no. 3, pp. 394-5.
1996. La Paix des Jardins, by Nicolas Journet, Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, Vo!. 11, no. 3, pp. 574-5.
1997. History, Power and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas 1492-1992, edited
by Jonathan D. Hill, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol.
Ill, no. 3, pp. 604-5.

Peter Riviere: Complete Bibliography 231
1998. One River, by Wade Davis, Times Literary Supplement, no. 4952 (27 February),
p. 31. .
1998. A Visit to the Ranquel Indians, by Lucio Mansilla, JASO, Vol. XXIX, no. 1,
pp. 98-100.
2000. Red Rubber, Bleeding Trees, by Michael Stanfield, and Cosmos, Self, and
History in Baniwa Religion, by Robin Wright, Journal of Latin American
Studies, Vol. XXXII, pp. 268-70.
Editorials and Editorial Comments
1977. 'Ethnographic Cuckoos' (Commentary on Vogt's Tortillas for the Gods),
Times Literary Supplement, no. 3908 (4 February), p. 128.
1978. 'The Amerindian Arts', Times Literary Supplement, no. 3983 (4 August), p.
888.
Film Reviews
1989. 'The Kayap6 [Disappearing World]" Visual Anthropology, Vol. II, no. 1,
pp. 213-15.
Newspaper Articles
1972. 'Tribes without Chiefs', The Listener, Vol. LXXXVIII, no. 2269 (21 September),
pp. 365-6 (originally broadcast in the series 'Are Hierarchies Necessary?',
Third Programme, 31 July 1972).
1973. 'Rite to Live' (Observations), New Society, Vol. XXIII, no. 535 (4 January),
p.3.
1973. 'Wed to Science' (Observations), New Society, Vo!. XXIII, no. 539 (1 February),
p. 228.
1981. [with Edmund Leach] 'How Daily Life in Ruritania Affects Us All', Times
Higher Education Supplement, no. 429 (23 January), p. 11.

JASO 30/3 (1999): 233-245
Introduction
WYSIWYG IN TRIO:
THE GRAMMATICALIZED EXPRESSION
OF TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE
EITHNE B. CARLIN
IN his paper of 1994, entitled 'WYSINWYG in Amazonia', Riviere describes the
highly transformational world of, among other peoples, the Trio, in which men
become jaguars or eagles and vice versa by changing their skin or clothes. Trio
oral literature abounds with transformations from one state to another, making it
difficult to determine whether a given character in a myth was in essence a human,
an animal, or a spirit, or alternatively, for example, simply a human 'wearing jaguar's
clothes'. Riviere came to the conclusion that What You See Is Not Necessarily
What You

234 Eithne B. Carlin
social relationship possible-that is, it has to become human-like, taking on the
shape of the human body, speaking a language, and behaving in a human-like way.
In this form, it becomes almost impossible to tell this being apart from a 'real'
human being.
Let us for a moment take a detour through a philosophical exercise and consider
a situation that might occur in modem science fiction, where the world is
taken over by aliens in human fonn who are not recognized as being anything
other than human until it is too late. But perhaps, as usually happens, one bright
human being discovers that the 'humans' he is in contact with are not really humans
but aliens, and he tries to tell this discovery to his fellow humans. How does
he do this? Quite a few eyebrows are raised among his fellow humans when he
says: 'Well, I know these people look like humans and act like humans, but they
are not really humans, they are not exactly humans.' A lively discussion on the
meaning of the word 'human' then ensues, but it is doubtful whether our real human
is able to explain how someone could be very nearly but not quite human.
One reason for this is that our Standard Average European languages are illequipped
to deal with the possibility of different world truths, or with situations
co-existing in our world of (relatively) straightforward truth and knowledge, that
are discernible by either introspection or by means outside ourselves, that is,
through physics or the observation of behaviour. The Trio language, however, has
all the mechanisms necessary for encoding interaction both within our human
world and with other possible worlds. The mechanisms they use both track the
paths between the worlds and are a means of identifying a 'this-world' or alternatively
an other-world protagonist.
The present paper is designed to elucidate the linguistic means used to express
or indicate knowledge, beliefs, and realities as conceived by the Trio. More specifically,
I shall look: at the attitude of the Trio to knowledge as expressed linguistically
by asking the questions: What is truth? What is a state of affairs? In short,
how do the Trio express their awareness of possible conflicting realities in the real
or imagined world(s)?l
To return to our starting-point, we perceive the world around us by using our
senses, forming beliefs and categorizing the world according to, and on the basis
of, the data we receive in doing so. The linguistic structures we use to do so reflect
this categorization and ordering of beliefs and possible truths or realities. We can
start by taking a situation that occurs regularly to all of us, for instance, seeing a
human being in front of us. By means of the visual system, we perceive a human
being. But what is it exactly that we perceive? What we perceive may be a human
being, but it might as well be something else that looks like a human being, per-
I The present research is financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
(NWO). I would like to thank Maarten Mous and Willem Adelaar for their comments and
suggestions. My thanks also go to the organizers and the participants at the Festschrift
meeting for the many stimulating and fruitful discussions we had there.

236 Eithne B. Carlin
also translatable as 'like' but meaning 'like in behaviour'. This I shall discuss
later. The final two elements discussed here are -re, an assertive marker which
could be translated 'as 'really' and which is used to assert one's beliefs; and -re,
which is used in Trio as a corrective expectation marker, that is, to indicate that
one's expectations have not been met. This marker has been labelled 'frustrative'
in the analysis of other Cariban languages. The Trio speak in beliefs and are aware
of the co-existence and interaction of different worlds. Thus when making an assertion
in the form of an indicative sentence, its truth beliefs, and sometimes verifiers,
will necessarily be encoded in that sentence. It should be noted that the
grammatical markers dealt with in this paper do not allow a translation into one of
our Standard Average European languages that would fully capture the concept
involved. Indeed, in works from the early seventeenth century, morphemes with
similar functions, called data-source markers by Hardman (1986: 113), were said
to be 'ornate particles' without which 'the sentence is perfectly fine'.
The Facsimile Marker -me
The facsimile marker -me can be suffixed to nominals, that is, to nouns, demonstrative
pronouns, and nominalized verbs, and also to the particle apo, 'like', when
it is preceded by one of the nominals. Gildea (1998) has referred to this marker as
an 'attributivizer'. However, in this paper I prefer to gloss it as 'facsimile marker'.
What I describe here is a series of uses of -me, showing a development in
meanings and functions from one of marking a noun as not being intrinsically
what is denoted by the noun-that is, as being a 'variable under certain yet-to-bedefined
conditions'-to being an ultimately grammaticalized usage of -me. Under
what conditions is -me required in Trio? For the present I shall restrict myself to its
use with nouns and demonstrative pronouns. There are basically three situations
that require a noun to be marked by -me, with three interrelated functions, namely
one given below under (a) with an indicating function, under (b) with the function
of falsifying a previous belief, and under (c) with the function of an attitudinal
proposition:
(a) when you know that an object is not what it seems (indicating function);
(b) to refer to an object that you took to be something else (falsifier of previous
belief);
(c) to indicate your uncertainty as to the identity of an object (attitudinal
proposition ).
The bottom line is that language categorizes to the extent that features from a
possible but unreal or spirit world are already indicated in the foreground. Anything
that is not apparent or not reliably identifiable by means of sensory intake is
so marked. Thus, for example, if you see figures approaching but you cannot read-

WYSIWYG in Trio 239
leaving open the possibility that it might not coincide with what exists outside of
that sense-datum, that is, in reality. In example 5, we are dealing with a facsimile
marker, not with a change of state or transformation: that is to say, the marker -me
is not only found in myths but in the everyday spoken language.
With the above description in mind, we can now explain example 6:
(6) pijanaroi-reken i-kewei-me tese tuna-hkao
liana.sp-ONLY 3poss-fish.hook-FAcs it.was water-LOC
for fish hooks he only used the liana in the water
In example 6, we discern a slight development in meaning or usage, whereby
the facsimile marker has rather less to do with appearance and more to do with
function: the liana functioned as a fish-hook, it was used to catch fish. 4
Examples from (1) to (6) show the facsimile reading of the marker -me, that
is, the facsimile-marked noun indicates an unreal state of being something one
inherently or possibly is not. We may now look at -me with other nominal categories,
namely with a demonstrative pronoun, as shown in example 7:
(7) ire apo nai, ire-me ti'ware eh-te
DEMPRO LIKE itis, DEMPRO-FACS aware be-IMP
that's the way it is, so (that imagined/supposed state) beware!
The construction ire-me (DEMPRO-FACS) has now become lexicalized to mean
simply 'so', as well as 'being that'. The literal meaning of ire, used here as an
anaphoric demonstrative pronoun, refers back to the preceding statement or statements.
Thus the speaker is saying: 'A state exists with regard to which I have the
belief that it is a state of such and such a kind.' A state is not a universal, at least in
philosophical terms. Rather, it is a temporal process, in linguistic terms a situation,
and the element marked by -me extracts from that state a moment that is taken as a
static picture of that stage. Perhaps the most pertinent context where one can see
the transient nature of a state is in the expression of possession. In Trio, there are
two possibilities for expressing possession or ownership, using -me as in example
8, or a possessive construction with the instrumental marker -ke as in example 9
below:
(8) paruru @-entu-me wae
banana 3poss-owner-FACS Lam
I have bananas
4 Liana species are stamped and beaten, the poisonous fibres then being released into the
water, causing vaso-constriction in the fish, which come to the surface of the water and can
easily be caught in nets or by hand.

240 Eithne B. Carlin
(9) ti-papa-ke nai 5
cOREF-father-INsTR he.is
he has a father (literally, he is fathered, with a father)
At first sight one might think along the lines of inalienable possession. However,
this is only part of the story, since one can also say:
(10) tf-j-aparuru-ke nai
COREF-Eu-banana-INsTR he.is
he has bananas
The alienable/inalienable distinction as an explanation does not work here,
since the ti-O-ke construction can be used with almost any noun. Both constructions
can be translated into English as 'I havelhe has', yet there is a major difference
in meaning between the two. The construction given in (8) is used to indicate
that one has something 'extra', that is, enough to give away to someone else; thus
the object in question can 'change hands', and the ownership is transient. Thus the
meaning of the question paruru entu-me mana-n is not just 'Have you got bananas?';
rather, it is 'Have you got some bananas for me?', in which case, if the
answer is affirmative, the ownership is a changeable state. The possessed item thus
does not inherently belong to the present possessor, since he is about to give it
away: it is simply something that belongs to the owner at the present time. Trio
society demands that those who have something in abundance must share it if
asked. The use of -me indicates a currently existing, but not necessarily constant
state. If we take it that we and life around us are composed of a series of states,
then what we have is a commentary on a momentary stage in the state of owning
as opposed to a universal truth.
Grammaticalized -me
The present section looks at some instances of grammaticalization from a facsimile
(non-inherent) marker to an aspectual one. In the process of language development,
the marker -me has come to take on more grammatical functions. For
instance, it marks a state on modifYing nouns in predicative constructions, as in
5 The grammatical status of the prefix /f- in these examples is that of a semantically
bleached personal prefix that is used to indicate co-referentiality with the subject of the
predication. The same prefix is found in the verbal system filling the personal prefix slot,
the verb then taking the final suffix -se or one of its allomorphs.

242 Eithne B. Carlin
-me versus apo
Finally, before leaving -me as a conceptual category and its grammatical features,
I should like to return to the difference between it and the modal particle apo, both
of which may be translated into English as 'like'. Whereas a noun marked by -me
indicates facsimile or non-inherent, transient state in its original meaning, apo is
used to indicate a resemblance in manner but not in appearance. Many of the occurrences
of apo in texts are with the demonstrative pronouns, e.g. ire/sere apo nai
(that/this like it is), 'that/this is how it is'; or it can modify a noun in a clause of
the form 'he Verb like ... ', where apo refers to the action of the verb, that is, 'to act
like, as if', as in examples 15 and 16 below:
(15) t-ena-se i-ja erukiJ apo
COREF-eat-NF 3-GOAL caterpillar LIKE
he ate like a caterpillar (Le. he ate leaves)
(16) i-ware-to apo tese
3-knoW-PL LIKE it.was
(he acted) as if he knew (these things)
The other markers that we need to look at in order to complete the present picture
of how the Trio use their language to express their attitude to the world they
live in are -re and -re, assertive and frustrative markers respectively. In this paper I
am leaving out of consideration the evidential marking that occurs on finite verbs
in the non-present tenses, indicating knowledge or certainty. Underlying the concept
of this type of evidential marking in Trio, there is the notion of solipsism, that
is, only the self, or only states experienced by the speaker himself, are knowable. 9
States experienced by all other persons can be expressed or indicated, but they can
never be 'known' by another.
9 Note that a first-person conjugated verb of action also expresses the 'state' of a speaker. A
statement such as 'I am going' contains a degree of particular egocentric knowledge for the
speaker that a statement such as 'he is going' does not. Taking as a premise Russe1l's definition
(1995: 204) of the three purposes oflanguage as '(1) to indicate facts, (2) to express
the state of the speaker, (3) to alter the state of the hearer', then a statement of the kind 'he
is going' can only express the state of the speaker in the sense that the speaker is being
affected by an observation, and indicate the state of, in this case, the goer. Thus there is no
overlap of egocentric knowledge, that is, 1 cannot know what state he is in while he is doing
something. This fact is encoded in Trio by means of an evidential marker after the tense
marker, -e for a speech act participant and -n for a third person. The uncertainty of anyone
else's state, and of one's own in interrogative clauses, is always indicated by -n or -ne, as in
antae wi'ten?, 'Which path should I go along?'

WYSIWYG in Trio 245
while both are non-realities, the frustrative marker indicates the unrealized expectations,
hopes, or wishes of the speaker or participants involved as they set these
out in the proposition.
We should be happy that the stories for The X -Files are not written by a Trio,
since the search for the truth would be a short one indeed. For the Trio, the truth is
indeed out there, in all kinds of different possible worlds, encoded in such grammatical
morphemes as -me, -re, and -re.
REFERENCES
GILDEA, SPIKE 1998. On Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Cariban Morphosyntax,
New York: Oxford University Press.
HARDMAN, MARTHA JAMES 1986. 'Data-source Marking in the Jaqi Languages', in
Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols (eds.), Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding
of Epistemology, Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
MCDOWELL, J. 1988. 'Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge', in Ionathan Darcy (ed.),
Perceptual Knowledge: Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
RIVIERE, PETER 1994. 'WYSINWYG in Amazonia', JASO, Vo!. XXV, no. 3, pp. 255-
62.
RUSSELL, BERTRAND 1995. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (revised ed.), London:
Routledge.
WILLIAMS, JAMES (REVD) 1932. Grammar, Notes and Vocabulary of the Language of
the Makuchi Indians of Guiana, St. Gabriel-Ml>dling: Verlag der Internationalen
Zeitschrift 'Anthropos'.

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JASO 30/3 (1999): 247-259
Introduction 1
PEMON KINSHIP REVISITED:
THE CASE OF THE LOST CROSS COUSIN
H. DIETER HEINEN
IN a perceptive observation tucked away in an obscure footnote in his Individual
and Society in Guiana (1984: 112 n. 4), Peter Riviere raised an important problem
in the social organization of the Guiana highlands-the ambiguity of cross-cousin
terms for members of the opposite sex, and the supposed 'Hawaiian' elements of
relationship terminologies in the area .. By focusing on a single Pemon group, the
Kamarakoto, the present paper attempts to show that the apparent absence of terms
for opposite-sex cross cousins is not systemic but an artefact of the dispersed settlement
pattern of the Pemon and the resulting tendency to redefine some children
1 General fieldwork in connection with the present paper has been carried out for some six
to eight months altogether over a number of years. The traditional Kamarakoto tenns were
collected during a two-week visit to Kamarata in 1995, where a colleague from the University
of Freiburg in Gennany, Bruno IIIius, was working on a re-study of George Simpson as
an affiliate of IVle. My sincere thanks go to him for his critical comments and help in
many ways. The Pemon are now increasingly using Spanish kinship tenns, but in an idiosyncratic
way, for example, substituting tio for a:wo and primo for ye:se, a development
deserving a study in its own right. The spelling used here corresponds to the way the
Kamarakoto presently write their language (even though it has not been completely standardized).
The system of abbreviations used for kin types is that in Barnard and Good 1984.

248 H. Dieter Heinen
of opposite-sex cross cousins as 'nephews' and 'nieces' (poitoriilunwanopii and
pa'se) and therefore as marriageable for ego's children.
There is no doubt that the relationship terminology of the Kamarata Pemon 2 in
the western Gran Sabana region of Venezuela conforms closely to ordering principles
that Henley, in a recent publication, called the "'canonical" Dravidianate
ideal-type system' (1996: 5). Earlier, Riviere had referred to 'an ideal type [in the
region] against which to assess the variations that occur', which he called a 'prescriptive
direct-exchange terminology' (1984: 43, 45).
The term Riviere used for what he had formerly called a 'two-line' system is
self-explanatory. Henley put the emphasis on cross-cousin marriage or a 'particular
configuration of relationship categories associated with a positive rule of marriage
which requires an Ego to marry a category of Alter that includes his/her cross
cousin genealogically defined' (1996: 5). The problem was that fieldworkers in the
area had failed to find separate terms for cross cousins of the opposite sex in some
of the ethnic groups or had even declined to consider the respective terms as part
of the relationship terminology (Arvelo-Jimenez 1974:129-37,249; Thomas 1982:
65-8). Having made the point earlier (1971: 7), Thomas wrote an article, the main
purpose of which was to insist that there were no such terms and to explain this
(1978).3
It so happens that the Kamarakoto do have terms for cross cousins of the opposite
sex, even though their status may be a matter of dispute. The terms in question
are woriichi (ms) and waratorii (ws). Already Urbina (Urbina and Heinen
1982: 35-6; Urbina 1983-84: 195-6) had reported wirichi and ukurai as reference
terms for opposite-sex cross cousins among the Arekuna Pemon. The fact that, as
Riviere has pointed out, '[t]hese two words are very close to common Carib terms
for "woman" and "man" respectively' (1984: 112) should not disqualify their use
as kin terms: Simpson (1940: 529) gave them as the Makushi terms for elder
brother (ws) and younger sister (ms) without anybody objecting.
The Ye'kwana case is quite different from the Pemon one, because the reciprocal
term yeeta 'nadii (see also Heinen 1983-84: 227) has clearly sexual connotations
among the Ye'kwana and is therefore used with great hesitation. As regards
the Pemon, there is a greater degree of disagreement among anthropologists as to
whether an existing general term should be recognized as a kin term or not. I will
therefore concentrate here on the latter, and specifically the Kamarata Pemon, a
2 I would agree with Thomas (1982) that by and large affines are a subset of consanguines
in the area, among the Pemon perhaps less so than elsewhere. Earlier, Thomas denied that
the Pemon have a relationship terminology according with 'even a weakened bilateral
cross-cousin marriage system' (1971: 9), even though he admits 'that a single term designation
for the category 'opposite sex cross cousin-eligible spouse' may at one time have existed
in Pemon terminology' (ibid.).
3 This is actually also the gist of Thomas's 1978 article. It is unfortunate that he was not
quite right about the non-existence of the 'eligible spouse' term.

Pemon Kinship Revisited 249
list whose traditional relationship terminology appears in the Appendix below. I
will argue that a case can actually be made for both positions. We shall see, however,
that Pemon behaviour in this matter depends on circumstances, in particular
on there being sufficient genealogical distance from the opposite-sex cross cousin
for his or her offspring to be declared 'nephews' and 'nieces' and therefore marriageable
for ego's children. In practice, this device is used more often by male
than by female egos.
The Case of the Missing Cross Cousin
If it is awkward to refer to somebody as a 'possible spouse', it is even more so to
call somebody such. So it seems quite natural to subsume such people in daily life
under the terms 'brother' and 'sister'. This is even more the case as, in the apt
formulation used by Henley (1996: 8), 'within the canonical Dravidianate, samesex
siblings are-equivalent elements'. In practice this means that parallel first cousins,
second cousins, third cousins and so on will be referred to and called by the
same terms as brothers and sisters.
But other than avoiding embarrassment, the practice has additional advantages
for the speaker. A Pemon is supposed to marry wa 'nin mure, the 'child of a cross
aunt', Le. the child of FZ or her classificatory equivalent. If a male ego called a
given female by a 'sister' term, she would automatically become a wa 'nin to his
children, and therefore ego's children would become marriageable for her children.
However, if he used a possible cross-cousin term, she would then be his potential
spouse and classificatory 'mother' to his children. These children would
have to call her paikoi, even if she was not MZ but only MPssGD. Her children
would not be wa 'nin mure for ego's children.
Riviere observes aptly: 'However, presumably when the female cross cousin is
married to a brother of ego, as she should be according to the logic of the terminology,
her children are classified as a brother's children' (1984: 112). In practice
women, who according to the uxorilocal residence rule stay close to home, follow
the kinship logic more closely than do men, who often range widely and establish
'sibling' ties with genealogically non-related individuals. In a given generation,
therefore, a male ego is able to reduce the 50% of individuals in a Pemon agglomeration
(the term proposed by Riviere for 'sub-tribe') that are not marriageable for
his children to a theoretical 25o/o--no mean feat. It will not work in all cases, because
a closely 'related female cross cousin will consider herself paikoi to his children,
but it opens the door to manipUlations in case of distant kin.

250 H Dieter Heinen
How the System Works-sort of
Tables' 1 and 2 give the Kamarakoto reference terms for male and female ego respectively,
while the Appendix (items 1 to 29) gives the traditional Kamarata
Pemon relationship terminology.
As Thomas himself has pointed out (1971: 7), it would be contradictory for
terms for opposite-sex cross cousins to be missing, though this can obviously be
maintained for a certain period. According to Thomas, F calls the offspring of
na:nai and pa:chi (address terms, NB) poitorU and pa'se, even if the former are
cross cousins, with the exception of WZC, who, of course, is equivalent to 'own
child' here (1982: 68).
But for that man's S, who wants to marry his father's pa 'se, her M in this case
is not wa 'nin but paikoi (in Arekuna amai). Therefore, the union contradicts the
rule, confirmed by Thomas, that one should marry a wa 'nin mure. One could of
course argue that, since F calls the woman 'sister', she should be wa 'nin to his son.
But under wa'nin, Thomas gives only FZ (and MBW), not FMBD and FFZD, because
these are not wa 'nin but paikoi.
This contradiction should really be obvious right away if ego looks at the supposed
wa 'nin, FMBD which, if she is not also MZ, is either MMZD (mother's female
parallel cousin), that is, a classificatory M, or MFBD (also mother's female
parallel cousin) and ego's classificatory M. Consequently, Thomas says (ibid.) that
if ego's M calls somebody pa:chi or yakon, this woman is an amai (Kamarata paikm)
to ego.
However, there are factors in the Pemon settlement pattern that promote marriage
unions with, and the assimilation of, genealogically unrelated individuals, to
which I now turn. Another factor is a certain tendency among the Pemon towards
marriage with (classificatory or real) ZD, so-called adjacent generation marriages
(cf. Henley 1983-84), which I shall briefly mention.
The Gran Sabana Environment and Pemon Kinship Behaviour
The majority of Pemon live in the Gran Sabana area of south-east Venezuela.
Unlike forest-dwelling groups, the Pemon have an extremely dispersed settlement
pattern and live mostly in isolated homesteads; nucleated villages are a recent development,
for example, around missions such as Kamarata and Kavanayen. Even
though most researchers recognize agglomerations variously called 'neighbourhoods'
(Thomas) or vecindades (Urbina), Pemon are indefatigable travellers,
mainly on foot, but also by canoe.
Far-flung trade relations create networks of personal friendships that, according
to Pemon tradition, are expressed in the kinship idiom. Many Pemon call each
other 'elder brother' and 'younger brother' without the existence of concrete genealogical
connections or because their fathers called each other that way. But if

252 H Dieter Heinen
TABLE 1. Kamarakoto Reference Terms for Male Ego

TABLE 2. Kamarakoto Reference Terms for Female Ego
Pemon Kinship Revisited 253

254 H Dieter Heinen
PosGosCC should be classified as sons and daughters by ego and therefore not be
marriageable for his children. But among the Kamarakoto, like apparently the
Arekuna Pemon and the Taurepan Pemon, only the children of same-sex parallel
cousins are unequivocally so. These represent four categories for a male ego and
four for a female ego:
MAN SPEAKING WOMAN SPEAKING
umu ('son') unme ('child')
MZSS MZDS
FBSS FBDS
uyenchi ('daughter') unme ('child')
MZSD MZDD
FBSD FBDD
In practice, the remaining eight categories are ambiguous. If the prospective
wa 'nin is genealogically far enough removed, or if, through a marriage between
adjacent generations of the sort mentioned before (cf. Henley 1983-84) her kin
status is ambiguous, her offspring might be marriageable for ego's children. This
comes about because in daily life she has been addressed by her opposite-sex cross
cousins with a sibling term (as has been her husband, the prospective uno 'puyunl
utamu 'puyun).
Before closing with a few real-life cases, here are the ambiguous categories
that I will call 'manipulated nephews and nieces':
MAN SPEAKING WOMAN SPEAKING
poitorii (manipulated 'nephew') unwanopii (manipulated 'nephew')
MBDS MBSS
FZDS FZSS
pa'se (manipulated 'niece') pa'se (manipulated'niece')
MBDD MBSD
FZDD FZSD

Pemon Kinship Revisited 255
Marriage Behaviour and Relationship System: Some Preliminary Conclusions
There were not as many cases on the ground as had been hoped, but it nonetheless
seems possible to make sense of them. In fact, they turned out more or less as
might be expected after reading Riviere's note (1984: 112). This corresponds exactly
to what informants say. The net result is that a female cross cousin is called
na 'nai or paruchi, but if she marries my brother, she becomes a wirichi to me (in
my mind), and her children become umu and uyenchi.
There was just one significant case for a man: FZDD was originally called
upa'se and FZDS upoitoru. But after the man had married, presumably to his cross
cousin, they became uyenchi and umu. For women there were a few more cases. In
one significant case MBDD was unambiguously upa'se and MBDS upoitoru.
MBSS was potentially uwanopu and open to manipulation, and MBSD was a potential
pa 'se, but they were called unme 'my child' without reservation. The same
went for FZSS and FZSD, both called unambiguously unme. MBDS and MBDD
were called uwanopu and pa 'se, but they should have been anyway.
The preliminary result is that Kamarakoto women seem to stick to the rules,
while their men try to turn a 50150 chance of finding an opposite-sex cross cousin
for their children into a 75/25 chance through the device of looking for their
wa:nin mure and assimilating their own opposite-sex cross cousin to parallel cousins
in everyday life. This is why it is difficult to uncover terms for PosCos that
definitely exist among the Kamarakoto (worichi and wara:toru). The crux of the
matter is that one must distinguish carefully between the structure of the relationship
terminology and marriage behaviour on the ground. 4
I would like to conclude with a remark on specific affinal terms. I would argue
that too much has been made of the supposed absence of specifically affinal terms
among the Pemon. According to Thomas (1982: 61), there is only one such term,
namely payunu for DH, literally 'father of my grandchildren'.
Now, I can agree with Thomas that the Pemon language opens the 'possibility
of a descriptive calculus of relationships' (ibid.). But if we accept a term translatable
as 'father of my grandchildren' as specifically affinal, there seems to be no
reason not to accept other descriptive terms as such, for example, yawoipu 'uncle's
wife' for EM, unmeno 'pu 'wife of my child' for SW (ws), or uno 'pupi 'wife's
brother' for WB. This, of course, could be the topic of another paper based on the
seminal analyses of Peter Riviere.
4 It is true that the last two terms are not used in address, but that seems to be a matter of
degree.

256 H. Dieter Heinen
,ApPENDIX. Kamarata Pemon Relationship Terminology
REFERENCE TERMS ADDRESS TERMS DESCRIPTION
(1) uta:mo ta:mo PF, male ofG+2
pa:pai MF (lit. 'father')
pamu male relative ofG+2 (ms)
recipr. G+2/G-2
(2) unoi' noi' PM, female of G+2
amai PM (Carib root: 'mother')
paikoi female relative of G+ 2 (ms)
recipr. of cho:ko (G+2/G-2)
(lit. 'mother')
(3) uyun pa:pai F, FB, FPssGS, MZH, MPssGDH
[MPosGS]
(4) usan paikoi M, MZ, MPssGD, FBW, FPssGSW
[FPosGD]
(5) unmuy' muy' MB, MPosGS, FZH, FPosGDH (ms)
[MPssGS]
ukOipunukOipunu MB, MPosGS, FZH, FPosGDH (ms)
uno 'puyun muy' WF (ms) (lit. 'wife's father')
(6) uya:wo a:wo MB, MPosGS, FZH, FPosGDH (ws)
utamu 'puyun a:wo HF (ws) (lit. 'husband's father')
[MPssGS]
(7) uwa 'nin wa 'nin FZ, MPosGD, MBW, FPosGSW
[FPssGD]
uyawoipu yawoipu EM (lit. 'uncle's wife')
(8) urui urui(ko) eB, PssGSe (ms)
uwi eB (ms) Arekuna term
often used in Kamarata
(9) upi pipi eB, PGSe, ZHe, HBe (ws)
upi cho: ko, ya'mi yB, PGSy, ZHy, HBy (ws)
uya 'mipo ya 'mipo yB, PGSy (ms, ws, most frequently
used by ws instead of above)

APPENDIX continued
REFERENCE TERMS ADDRESS TERMS DESCRIPTION
(10) uyakon yakon yB, PssGSy (ms)
yZ, PssGDy (ws)
(11) ye:se ye:se PosGS (ms)
ye:se yanoman ye:se ZH (ms)
uno 'pupi ye:se WB (lit. 'wife's brother')
(12) uwaratorii pip; PosGS (ws) (lit.'my man')
(13) uta:miipo H
uta: miiporuf HBe
uta: miipodakoi HBy
Pemon Kinship Revisited 257
descriptive terms (seldom used):
(14) upar(u)chf na:nai eZ, PGDe, BWe (ms)
upar(u)chi par(u)chi yZ, PGDy, BWy (ms)
(15) upa:chi achi eZ, PssGDe (ws)
(16) uye:ruu me:me PosGDe, HZe, BWe (ws)
uye:ruii ye:ruii PosGDy, HZy, BWy (ws)
(17) uworiichi na:nai PosGDe(ms)
uworiichi par(u)chi PosGDy(ms)
(18) (unopu) W (seldom used)
inoro umudan W (lit. 'she')
(19) uno 'piipachf na:nai WeZ(ms)
uno 'piidakon pa:chi WyZ(ms)
(20) unmu unmu S, BS, PssGS (ms)
(21) uyenchi yenchi D, BD, PssGD (ms)
(22) unme unme C, ZC, PssGC (ws)
(23) upoitorii poito poitorii ZS, PosGS (ms)
(24) upayunu payunu DH (lit. 'father of my grandchildren')
(25) unwanopii unwanopii BS, PosGS (ws)

258 H Dieter Heinen
APPENDIX continued
REFERENCE TERMS ADDRESS TERMS DESCRIPTION
(26) upa'se pa'se ZD, PosGD (ms)
BD, PosOD (ws)
(27) unmuno 'pu pa'se SW (ms) (lit. 'wife of my son')
unmupa'se pa'se
(28) unmeno 'pu pa'se SW (ws) (lit. 'wife of my child')
(29) upa upa CC,POCC
pamu male relative of 0-2 (ms)
recipr. 0+2/0-2
cho:ko male relative of 0-2 (ws)
recipr. of paikoi (G-2/0+2)
(lit. 'tender', not a proper kin term)
ma:non female (ms) younger than Ego
(lit. 'pretty', not a proper kin term)
REFERENCES
ARVELO-JIMENEZ, NELLY 1974. Relaciones politicas en una sociedad tribal: estudio
de los Ye 'cuana, indigenas del Amazonas Venezolano, Mexico: Instituto Indigenista
Interamericano.
BARNARD, MAN, and ANTHONY GOOD 1984. Research Practices in the Study of Kinship,
London: Academic Press.
HEINEN, H. DIETER 1983-84. 'Traditional Social Structure and Culture Change among
the Ye'kuana Indians of the Upper Erebato, Venezuela', Antropol6gica, Vol.
LIX-LXII, pp. 263-97 .
. .. and PAUL HENLEY 1998-99. 'History, Kinship and the Ideology of Hierarchy
among the Wanto of the Central Orinoco Delta', Antropol6gica, VoL LXXXIX,
pp. 25-78.
HENLEY, PAUL 1983-84. 'Intergenerational Marriage among the Carib-speaking Peoples
of the Guianas', Antropol6gica, Vol. LIX-LXII, pp. 155-81.

Pemon Kinship Revisited 259
HENLEY, PAUL 1996. South Indian Models in the Amazonian Lowlands, Manchester:
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester (Manchester Papers
in Social Anthropology, no. 1).
RIVIERE, PETER 1984. Individual and Society in Guiana: A Comparative Study of
Amerindian Social Organization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SIMPSON, GEORGE GAYLORD 1940. 'Los Indios Kamarakotos: tribu Caribe de la
Guayana Venezolana', Revista de Fomento, Vol. Ill, pp. 201-660.
THOMAS, DAVlD J. 1971. 'Pemon Kinship Terminology', Antropol6gica, Vol. XXX,
pp. 3-17.
1978. 'Pemt;>n Zero Generation Terminology: Social Correlates', Working Papers
on South American Indians, Vol. I, pp. 63-81.
1982. Order without Government: The Society of the Pemon Indians of Venezuela,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press (Illinois Studies in Anthropology, no. 13).
URBINA, LUIS 1983-84. 'Some Aspects of the Pemon System of Social Relationships',
Antropol6gica, Vol. LIX-LXII, pp.183-98 .
. .. and H. DIETER HEINEN 1982. 'Ecologia, organizaci6n social y distribuci6n
espacial: estudio de caso de dos poblaciones indigenas, Pem6n y Warao', Antropol6gica,
Vol. LVII, pp. 25-54.

262 George Mentore
relying on what the Waiwai have told me and, of course, upon the academic authority
which currently supports what I have come to know about their culture and
society. 1 In the second case, I shall endeavour to present the official documents as
representing a modern Guyana emerging from its colonial history. In the third
case, I shall present the scholarly literature as sharing with the state very similar
notions about identity, which tend to provide them both with their coherence on
the subject of death. The topic on which these sources apparently intersect is the
demise of the Taruma people, a point of intersection where oral and textual discourses
meet in an effort to determine and convey, in some. independence of one
another, the very meaning of human mortality. It will be my task here to demonstrate
how each source produces its own interpretations of human death.
In a country of 84,000 square miles and a population of less than a million
people, about 90% of whom live within the narrow coastal plain that covers an
area of 1,750 square miles, most of Guyana's Amerindians live in the country's
interior. Whenever the state projects an image of the Amerindian in its discursive
forms of national being, it does so with the received wisdom that Guyana has nine
distinct 'tribes' as its constitutive Amerindian presence. However, given the limitations
of the epistemology that projects itself into the Western-influenced documents
and scholarly literature on the region, the Taruma Amerindians do not have
a presence in GUYaIJ.a today. Officially, to all intents and purposes the Taruma are
socially and physically dead. Yet, from the point of view of their neighbours, the
Waiwai, these people remain very much alive, for according to Waiwai forms of
knowledge, the Taruma currently wander about the southern forests, carefully
avoiding the consuming violence of hostile strangers.
Theoretical Preamble
My implied assumption throughout will be that the ideologically induced nature of
each interpretative source affects the different meanings given to death and the
way death is represented. My reference to difference does not mean that the interpretations
of death with which I am dealing are ideologically spurious. 2 I am suggesting
instead that, although there are conflictual social forces at work, and the
interpretations of death could be an epiphenomenon of these forces, the veracity of
1 The Waiwai are Carib-speaking Amerindians who live in the remote forests on the borders
of Guyana and BraziL Their estimated population is between 1,200 to 2,000 people. I
have been carrying out anthropological research with and among them since 1979.
2 I would like to think that in this regard I am close to Althusser's insistence (1969) on not
considering the imaginary lived relation between humankind and their conditions of existence
as being somehow false consciousness.

264 George Mentore
tions about life and death.4 Both foreground the biomedical emphasis on physiology,
so that death, when interpreted, means the cessation of the body's physiological
functions. In contrast, when Waiwai society takes cultural hold of ideas about
death (even though it may use structures similar to those of the literate tradition of
the state and of scholars), it does so by projecting a personalistic notion of human
existence. In this view, the dead are always perceived as victims, that is, as the
consumptive target of an active and intervening agent which does not necessarily
cause a 'physical lesion' to, or 'breakdown' of, bodily functions, but rather effects
a permanent separation between the body's material and spiritual vitalities. 5 By
virtue of the very investments they make in maintaining the veracity of their ideas,
these distinctive ideologies of death both suggest that they are sustaining a precarious
vulnerability and a tension. This, of course, is what allows the cynical
critic to observe and compare the differences between ideological statements.
Anger and Death: The Constraint of Affection and the Denial of Violence
The official documents and academic literature on southern Guyana record a period
when the upper reaches of the Essequibo river were occupied simultaneously
by both the Waiwai and the Taruma (Bridges 1985; Evans and Meggers 1960: 269;
Farabee 1967 [1924]: 176; Roth 1929: v-xi; Schomburgk 1970 [1840]: 50-1). The
Waiwai themselves remember such a period and, indeed, whenever they resettle or
visit an area on the Essequibo once occupied by people of the recent past, they
often confirm a departed sedentary presence. On occasion they give this presence
the title of 'Taruma'. Indeed, given the current hegemonic relations between the
state, scholars, and Amerindians, it should come as no surprise to find that the effects
of the literary discourse about tribal-ness have forcefully encouraged the use
of official tribal rubrics even within and between the different Amerindian communities.
The people currently living on the upper Essequibo river certainly do not have
any objections to being referred to as 'Waiwai'. They have adopted the title and
use it themselves in broad political terms to speak about an interrelatedness experienced
both within their village and between their village and three others in
4 I am being prompted here by Foster's 1976 article, where he draws on two distinct systems
to explain the cause of disease, which he refers to as 'naturalistic' and 'personalistic'.
While agreeing with Butt Colson and De Armellada (1983: 1239) that so rigid a distinction
may not be applied generally to the 'diseased body', I am willing to extend such distinctions
to the 'deceased body', the dead body.
5 In my own explanations of Waiwai mortality, I have been much influenced by Basso's
interpretation of the Kalapalo process of death. I am particularly persuaded by her ideas
about the Kalapalo 'Interactive Self' (Basso 1987: 95), which in description appears so like
the Waiwai idea of ekati".

266 George Mentore
tions, kinship morality binds individuals together as highly valued social persons
and, through the observed credibility of regular exchanges between kinsmen, the
amity of kinship objectifies and thus confirms persons as individuals committed to
wider village relationships.
The extent to which the moral amity of kinship can be seen to flow in order to
bind or to maintain firm ties does have its limits. 6 Often determined by the favourable
network of exchange relations with and surrounding the village leader, the
capacity of village solidarity relies a great deal on the strength of amicable relations
expressed in the reciprocity between the centrally and marginally positioned
members of the local kinship community. It is, in the long run, the susceptibility of
the weaker relations on the margins--often caused by the pressures of greater
moral obligations to closer kin in directions away from the village leader's focal
centre--that allows for the incursion of frayed relations, the lack of congenial reciprocity,
and the transformation of amicability into hostility. Each ultimately contributes
to the dissipation of the village as a political entity. As such, the intimate
on-going prestations and counter-prestations of displayed amity, funnelled as they
are through relations with and surrounding the village leader, all help to produce
and maintain, as ewtopono, the sentient experience of the legitimate political
community. 7
In the strict Waiwai sense of not having solidified the crucial principles of
amicable relations to the ewtopono, the Taruma cannot be included in the same
category of peoples as the' Waiwai'. In the cultural imagination of the Waiwai, the
Taruma disappeared from this class of being when, like roaming peccaries, their
anger kept them and their village constantly on the move.
Waiwai culture places the Taruma in a special social category called Niriwana
('Angry People'). Taken from the verb ri'wo ('to be angry'), the word niriwana
seeks to convey all the Waiwai understand about the Taruma's preference for
wandering the forest rather than settling in villages on the banks of forested rivers.
When referring to the Taruma presence, the word maya ('to be wild') is never
used, not because notions of wildness and pacification do not adequately convey
6 In the Waiwai case, this has a good deal to do with the structural rule and practice of
matrilateral cross-cousin marriage and the preference for uxorilocal residence, both of
which facilitate and set limits to village exchanges (Turner 1979; Riviere 1984).
7 Riviere has recently published a very fme article on Lowland South American 'House
Societies' (1995), where, at least for the Guianas, a useful model has been presented for
thinking anthropologically about residence and community. My only comment here would
be to say that, for the Waiwai, they do not 'use the terms "house" and "village" interchangeably'
(ibid.: 190): for them, miimo ('house') and ewto ('village') are separate terms
referring to empirically different referents. Yet, an additional cognitive meaning can be
determined which does give both terms a similar point of reference. House and village can
indeed be interchangeable, but only at the point where they reference the concept of community,
for whether the Waiwai talk about house or village, they understand these to be
logically occupiable by kinsfolk living together.

268 George Mentore
own empirical knowledge of what takes place when other carnivores kill. 9 The
rationale here is that one kills only to eat. In Waiwai practice, merely to lay an aggressive
hand upon another can be interpreted as an intent to kill and to eat. Death,
however, is not just the result of a body consumed, but rather, and more emphatically,
the result of a permanently dislodged vital essence called ekatf.
For the Waiwai, all death results from the intentional implementation of a hostile
human will. In their ideas, the corporeal body of the victim dies because its
vital life-giving essence (eka!;) has been permanently removed by mystical forces
deliberately set in motion by the enmity of human intent. The victim's body suffers
its loss of life from the actions of a killer, whose identity initially presents itself
as being difficult to ascertain. This is because, in Waiwai society, anyone can
claim access to the death-dealing force of mystical violence. Constantly available,
violence, in this regard, directly contributes to the killer's anonymity. As with
every death, therefore, access to, and the availability of, violence produces the inevitable
question of 'Who done it?'
Whenever someone dies, the immediate response is for the relatives of the deceased
to interrogate the innocence of every village member. Traditionally this
was done through the ritual dialogue of oho, in which each villager would be given
the opportunity to deny formally any accusations of personal guilt. The ideological
Waiwai focus is less here, it seems to me, on a concern for the qualitative nature of
human mortality than on knowing the human character and capacity for violence.
It is knowledge about the emotional disposition of those with whom one mainly
lives that prevails. Locating where bad intentions reside, and making sure when
they erupt to deter them from accessing violence, become the required aspects of
social harmony. When this fails, however, and even without knowing the murderer's
identity, a knowledge of hostile intentions remains the guiding fact toward
exposing the killer.
As already mentioned, the Waiwai configure violence in the same intellectual
frame as eating. In their view, the ultimate rational conclusion of killing has to be
for food. This has social, albeit ambivalent approval when the object of violence
carefully confines itself to vegetable and animal life. In the case of homicide, however,
although the interpretation of killing in order to eat the victim does not alter
significantly, the question of legitimacy makes the victim's death more problematic.
To kill another 'human being illegitimately is likened to the actions of the solitary
anti-social jaguar devouring its prey: the murderer kills and eats the body of
the victim without either cooking or sharing it, the decomposing body disappearing
into the carnivore's mouth like food. Conversely, to kill legitimately-that is,
to hunt or feud in honourable vengeance-is to behave like a proper social being
9 This, of course, is a not uncommon view for lowland South American cultures, but see
Hugh-Jones (1996) for a much more detailed and provocative discussion about Amerindian
sensitivity on this matter.

Cultural Imaginings of the Taruma 269
governed by the moral obligations of society, in which the cooking and sharing of
the victim's body locate the hunter and the warrior firmly in the community. A
successful hunter will not only make sure the animal he has killed is transformed
into cooked meat before it is consumed, he will also go to some lengths (even after
collective hunts and communal meals) to make sure he never eats the meat of an
animal he himself has killed. Also, after the cremation or burial of the deceased,
the avenger of a dead relative will take the remaining bones and place them in a
hollow bamboo in order to 're-cook' them. If the bamboo bursts in the heat of the
fire, the murderer will die. While an illegitimate act of violence therefore tends to
expel the murderer from society and make him or her the target of a legitimate use
of violence, legitimate violence itself succeeds in reaffirming the hunter and the
warrior inside society as beings of esteem and prestige. Nevertheless, in both
cases, it is hostile human intentionality that remains the initial source of violence,
while the mystical force it stimulates is the actual cause of death.
The cannibalism of illegitimate violence expresses itself in what the Waiwai
call tono (,fatal blowing'). The instrumental cause of the ejection of ekatf ('vital
essence') from its corporeal host are the strong persuasive words of tono, select
words obtained from the mystical vocabulary of the speaker's helping spirits. The
prospective murderer sings the song softly, punctuating its lyrics with a blowing or
puffing sound from the lips, which send the words to their target like arrows. The
deadly words either directly force the ekatf of the intended victim out of its corporeal
host or influence some other means of achieving the expulsion. Ekatl is
thought of as a vigorous substance whose ability to influence material life stems
from being, in origin, the source of all living things. Being ejected and unable to
return to the corporeal body of its host, the vital substance of individual life rejoins
its original collective base in the stratified mystical realms of the cosmos. Ideally,
it is here that the distinctive parts of an individual's vitalities roam after death. The
ekatr of the human eye, for example, occupies the area between the earth and the
first stratum (Maratu-yena, 'Guan people') of the celestial realm (kapu). The ekatr
of the human chest, if it is not placated by the vengeance of kinsmen, will angrily
roam the earthly stratum in solitary phantom form. Temporary separation of the
victim's ekati' causes illness; permanent separation results in death. Because the
deadly words of tono, working from a distance, precipitate the separation, they
help to ensure the killer's anonymity. Lethal mystical words, like projectiles from
the mouth, bring about the death of another human, and death, in Waiwai ideas,
can only be initiated by ill will for the explicit purpose of illicit consumption.
Only those people who are motivated by their own ill will actually make use
of deadly mystical force. In such cases, public knowledge and recall about the existing
nature of relations between community members provide the resident community
of the deceased with the identities of possible suspects. In addition, public
perceptions of past events and bodies capable of igniting emotions leading to violence
also helps to establish the identity of the guilty. The shared and unofficial

270 George Mentore
obligations of the living to the recently murdered victim begin with having to locate
and assemble the evidence of the active presence of individual human ill will.
Such evidence can be achieved with relative ease, because the range of expectant
emotions assumed to be felt by people with ill intent are generally known to result
from specific observable actions. The actions producing the felt emotions, which
tend to lead to and govern a matching set of responses, actually expose the presence
of the bad intent that activates and uses violence. For example, recalling and
perceiving that so-and-so had been on the losing side of a dispute allows observers
to assume that the losing individual had felt some anger or emotional turbulence
and became possessed of sufficient ill will to seek retribution against his or her
opponent. The subsequent sickness or death of the offending disputant who caused
the anger confirms both the bad intentions of the shamed person and the actual
effect of the angry person's violent retribution. Taken together, felt emotions of
human ill will and mystical violence cause sickness and death, but they also provide
the very clues to determine the identity of the individual contributing to the
ailment and/or fatality.
In Waiwai moral philosophy, everyone should exercise the social responsibility
to guard against wrongly arousing his or her own destructive desires. The general
availability of violence as a weapon, and the link between ill will and the
actual use of violence, apparently compel collective social harmony to depend
upon the individual's emotional calm and bodily discipline. Here, where violence
can only be accessed through human intention and practice, in an analytical sense
it results from an articulation between the attribute of individual human will and
the resources of mystical energy. In this sense, violence is inalienable to the individual,
because only the individual can transform its force into the product of destruction.
Yet, in being irreducible to the individual, violence is potentially the
culminating sum of a culturally built identity. In becoming a full social person, the
individual consciously ascribes to the body and the self an acquired knowledge of
ownership over the potential use of violence-a knowledge that actually constitutes
the full development of personhood.
Graphically expressed on the adorned body with traditional signs of adulthood
and gender, but also more substantively in the achievement of marriage and the
making of children, the emotional base for the will to violence becomes a known
property, subject to customary displays of control by the individual. Being able to
exhibit constraint over the emotional base of violence expresses both an individual's
commitment to society and the effective means of achieving collective social
harmony. It could be said that society has, in such cases, indirectly persuaded the
individual to perform, on its behalf, the fundamental task of managing social turmoil.
Here the onus for control does not rest in any centralized institution of governing,
but on the overlapping multifaceted realms of complete personhood. In
these social domains, that is, actually through personhood, the individual retains
legitimate access to the use of violence. In other words, the individual uses the

Cultural Imaginings o/the Taruma 271
moral constraints in kinship and marriage to police human intentionality and secure
harmonious residential fellowship. However, it is precisely because morality
becomes meaningful only within these domains that the constant availability of
violence keeps individual control and collective harmony vigilant.
The social and cultural requirement to live together offers an opportunity to
express, monitor, and manage the amicable relations of collective social life.
Without the fact of residence with others, the need for emotional calm, the potential
for violence and the ideal of community fellowship could not find their current
form and meaning. For the effect of residence to perform its task best, however,
the patterned ties of kinship and the institution of marriage must also be active, for
they are the very means through which affection can be shared and violence denied.
The dominant moral obligations to love rather than hate and to be kind rather
than hurtful towards those who are related to you and those with whom you live
have to be constantly practised. Yet each individual's capacity for affection is
counterpoised by his or her known potential for violence. Indeed, as already mentioned,
the very occurrences of sickness and death confirm the deliberate implementation
of violence. Whenever sickness and/or death occur, the veracity of
violence acknowledges itself from within the collective substance of social knowledge
and, at the same time, reaffirms the open character of its accessibility. While
it is, on the one hand, access to and the availability of violence that directly contribute
to the murderer's anonymity and indirectly produce the inevitable demand
for suspects, it is, on the other hand, the murderous ill will of somatic emotions
which exposes itself to the community of the deceased as the incriminating evidence
of guilt and as the definitive means of confirming the murderer's identity.
Among the Waiwai, it is said that anger in the face of death keeps the body
hot. It presumably keeps the individual conscious of the fact that life still exists in
his or her body and that the ekatf or vital essence remains intact in its corporal
hearth. Fear is kept at bay because fear turns the body cold. A cold body signals to
observers an absence of the heat-generating substance of ekatf. The ekatf can leave
its corporal host and wander around. Too long an absence, however, lowers the
temperature of the body, indicating death or a state of near death. When sick, the
body can be subject to uncontrollable pain precisely because its absent ekatf cannot
protect it against the malignancy of its assailant. The strength and vigour associated
with the sentient body under self-control are believed to be produced by the
heat of ekatf in its proper place. Hence no movement of an ekatf outside its original
host is ever accidental: it occurs during either the voluntary process of dreaming
and shamanic journeying, or the involuntary processes of sickness and death.
In the latter cases, it is the hostile actions of an unfriendly assailant that provide
the impetus for the ejection and absence of the ekan". Regardless of whether the
attack on the body was made using an arrow or an axe, or magical 'blowing', the

272 George Mentore
mechanics of death remain the same. lO The dead are always the victims of the intentional
actions of other humans using either spiritual and/or material means to
achieve the permanent separation of the ekati" from its original host.
In Waiwai explanations, therefore, the Taruma wander the forest as a real
physical presence because they have turned their anger against the fear of death.
The pragmatism of such anger functions as part of an intellectual apparatus which
gives meaning to m,oral obligations and social identity. Possessed in concentrated
form by its single owner, but shared in minute particles through sustained reciprocal
prestations with members of the residential group, an ekati", and hence the reticular
community of ekati', can be placed in danger if anger is quelled and dies.
While anger simmers, death is kept at bay. Meta-pragmatically, at least in Waiwai
interpretations, anger has functioned to allow the Taruma to avoid being consumed
by strangers from outside their roaming presence.
The Patron State: Textuality and Death
To expose my own implicit assumptions about the constructive character of ideas,
I am going to offer a rather truncated historical description and critical discussion
of the Guyanese state. My aim is not to privilege the relativity of ideas over the
absolutism or universalism of truth, but rather to emphasis how culture and society
play their part in producing meaning in an ever-changing world.
Let me immediately remark on the potency of the state as an ideological fantasy.
It has been suggested that because only individuals, not the state, possess
power the state cannot exist-that it is, in other words, a cultural fiction (Radcliffe-Brown
1970 [1940]: xxiii). In this view, the empirical individual, a unit of
political society, is, at least in part, a biological organism of energy, and as such, a
source of reactive sanctions (Radcliffe-Brown 1971 [1952]; Fried 1967).11 Hence
the control and regulation of energized sanctions, here construed as physical force,
become the special concerns of political organization (Radcliffe-Brown 1970
[1940]: xxiii). By being the origin and constitutive form of physical power, it is
therefore the individual and not the state that is deemed to be real. According to
this rationale, the state cannot truly exist because it is in reality nothing more than
10 I think it is because of this Waiwai reasoning (which I have found confirmed in the anthropology
on other lowland South American societies) that I have always been intrigued
by the refusal to give as much credibility to Amerindian ideas on death by witchcraft as to
their ideas on death by ballistic warfare (Chagnon 1968; Asch and Chagnon 1975).
11 Radcliffe-Brown was of course seeking to make the perfectly respectable point that social
beings were both individuals and persons, and that the legitimate object of social anthropology
was the person. Nevertheless (and possibly because of his disdain for culture),
he never considered the possibility that even the biology of the individual was subject to
cultural interpretation.

Cultural Imaginings o/the Taruma 273
the totality of the power of individuals. But why would society maintain this illusion
to the point where it is no longer perceived as such, where the fiction appears,
in fact, to be more palpable than the reality?12
Certainly with many modem societies the state has been imbued with the identity
of a tangible phantom: the visible political apparition of abstracted human
force. It has indeed been argued that it is this quality of phantasm, lodged in the
state, which makes it appear so potent (Durkheim 1950; Taussig 1992). Totalized
in society and transferred to the state as an almost sacred force, the energized
power of the individual has been allowed to rise up above all else to serve as representative
polity (that is, not that the state represents the individual but that the
individual represents the state, the state being the 'real' body). The principal tactic
of the state in this regard is to appropriate the 'real' power of the individual and
make it work for society. Being more than the individual, and being reified in the
fiction of its singular presence, the state must constantly verify and represent itself
as an autonomous entity. Beyond the reality of the sentient human body, in the
collectivity of the social the state appears as a potent ideological fantasy capable of
securing and serving society as its limit.
As it rises, turning its phantasmagorical bulk to engage the material presence
of its source-individuals-the modern state perceives its subjects as primarily
corporeal. When it deals with its citizens, it is mainly from the perspective of managing
a biogenetically determined physical body. From this viewpoint (certainly if
we follow the controversial argument that the state is but an epiphenomenon of the
individual in society), the state's form mimics its parent organism. Ideally indivisible,
centric, and autonomous, it sees itself-the body politic-as a real physical
entity with an anatomy of circulatory and respiratory systems maintaining the
supply and flow of social life. It can possess a sovereign 'head', a ministerial
'head', an administrative 'head', it can have 'arms' pertaining to the police and the
military, party 'cells', and legal 'chambers'. And one can often hear it being said
that the state has 'atrophied' or that government has 'decayed'. After a while, discerning
who mimics whom becomes unimportant: in the end, it matters little where
we locate the original. What does remain of consequence, however, is the thorough
belief in the way the mutual bodies work to maintain their respective lives. Reinforcement
from various quarters about how social life should proceed in order to
avoid the irreparable cessation of functioning systems carefully adds veracity to
the prescribed image of the state. It certainly helps to verify, using all kinds of pre-
12 I do not consider it to be an overstatement to say that, when we in our own society think
and speak about the state, it is often as if it were a living thing. This is not just a case of
collapsing the idea of the state into its representative agents or officials, and then confusing
the latter for the former. Indeed, when frustrated by attempts to bring legal proceedings
against the state, many civil litigants frequently direct themselves instead against individual
government representatives to achieve a successful lawsuit.

274 George Mentore
sumed independent sources, that the modem state operates in ways seemingly
similar to biogenetic natural life.
What this has meant for the ways in which the state has operated and still operates
in places like the Antilles has been the sustained presence of a politics of
phantasmagorical physical difference. Articulated historically in terms of race and
ethnicity, physical difference has been the primary constituent factor in the political
configuring of Caribbean societies. The very character of power relations between
'imperial' Europe and Caribbean 'dominions' found expression through the
bodily traits of their participants. Quantitatively construed and highly valued for its
assumed ability to produce effects, particularly those of maintaining order
(Balandier 1972 [1967]), political power concentrated itself in the cosmopolitan
heartlands of 'white' states. It was made to flow through the administrative arteries
of governance out to the colonies, where 'dark' subjects toiled to sustain the
rhythmical beat of a transoceanic capitalism (Mintz 1974; Lewis 1983). In this
way-that is, by continually reasserting a natural tie between power and the systemic
process of colonial governments-white masters assumed possession of
more power than their dark subjects, thus endowing the relationship with its appearance
of asymmetry. With an accumulation and exercise of power, white states
sought to discipline dark bodies into working more efficiently toward sustaining
and replicating the life-force and structure of their existing polities. The differences
in the dissymmetry of power between Europe and the colonies were made to
reflect the physical differences between the racial and ethnic bodies of states and
SUbjects. Conquest, slavery, indentured servitude, manumission, franchise, and
dependency all called forth strategies of engagement which privileged those with
more power concentrated at the pulsing heart of European states (Cesaire 1972;
Patterson 1982; Todorov 1987).13 Carefully and systematically, the commoditization
or objectification of work, liberty, civil rights, and independent statehood
consolidated rather than reduced the differences between white states and dark
sUbjects. 14
13 In case it has not been made clear in the text, let me say here that this idea of quantified
power (which looks so much like productive labour) derives historically from a system that
objectifies force in such a way that it appears that it can be physically possessed.
14 This rather tight argumentation can be loosened up somewhat by explicitly stating that
my view of the historical relations of power between Europe and its colonies has been influenced
by an application of Foucault's proposition that 'truth' is to be understood as a
system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and
operation of statements. 'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power that
produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extends it-a
'regime' of truth (1984: 74). My overview, therefore, sees the sixteenth-century European
conquest of 'dog-headed cannibals' (Leach 1977: 35; Todorov 1987: 15), the New World
enslavement of 'socially dead person[s]' (Patterson 1982: 5), and the dehumanization ofthe
'traitorous creole' (Cesaire 1972) or 'self-mutilated black' (Lamming 1983) as being stated

276 George Mentore
dramatic ways in which this occurred, one only has to consider the various interlocking
cultural strategies of empire, like, for example, annual celebrations of
monarchy, seasonal'sporting rituals, the design and use of a distinct currency, and
the printing and broadcasting of the English language. In the same ways that British
homogeneity was imagined in order to avoid the death of the idea of the imperial
state, so too was Guyanese-ness made to live in its independent filial polity. In
doing so, however, it continued to imagine itself principally in tenus of its recessive
racial and ethnic genes.
When the Guyanese state evokes nation-ness (,One People, One Nation, One
Destiny'), it summons up among a limited and sovereign community of six distinct
racial and ethnic groups an image of 'a deep, horizontal comradeship' (Anderson
1991: 7). The temporal and spatial coincidence of Guyanese-ness simultaneously
brings together an ideologically understood population of divided species. A discourse
borrowed from biology that speaks in terms of populations united and divided
by heredity, differences of race and ethnicity are not necessarily targeted for
nation-ness in order to eradicate the 'natural' boundaries between constituent
groups: in fact, such differences serve specifically to make the agenda of nationbuilding
the principal prerogative of the state. When viewing its community as
AfricanIBlack, East Indian/Coolie, English/White, PortugueselPotugee, Chinese/
Chinee, and AmerindianlBuck, the Guyanese state envisages individual subject
bodies biogenetically joined together in these separate natural groupings (Despres
1975; Drummond 1980; Sanders 1987; Smith 1962). Presumably unable by themselves
to act beyond the boundaries of their own individual and group interests,
these entities must be made to experience a tangible communion of themselves
above their separateness for the independent survival and freedom of the state.
Locating itself in the position of being the only legitimate force capable of organizing
and managing the collective communing, the state evokes Guyanese-ness as
the political panacea against the so-called 'natural' disease of civil conflict-a social
illness so debilitating that it can not only clog the pulmonary arteries of the
body politic leading to a breakdown of its vital functions, but also reduce the protective
properties of the state, making it vulnerable to predation from outside hostile
forces. Racial and ethnic differences ironically function to help maintain the
power of the state and its particular evocation of Guyanese nationalism. 17
Few, I think, would dispute the point that language is possibly the most effective
medium for evoking the simultaneity of national imaginings (Anderson 1991;
Hobsbawm 1990). In Guyana, as in other ex-British colonial states, the English
language has enabled the different so-called natural exclusivities to visualize the
national community. Operating in dominant opposition to the vibrant vernacular of
17 Needless to say, when one or the other racial or ethnic group is perceived to have taken
exclusive command of the state apparatus, the essential aspects of their identity and interests
will be said, rightly or wrongly, to override the legitimate concerns of the state. To all
other groups in such a scenario, the state will of course appear to be acting illegitimately.

278 George Mentore
relationship has changed from one of protection to one of integration (Ministry of
Information and Culture 1970; Sanders 1987).19
Caring more about the monopolization of its sugar industry on the coast than it
did about mineral and rubber extractions from the interior, the colonial government
emphasized 'protection' as an effective political tactic to discourage its precious
labour force from permanently migrating into the interior from the coastal
estates (Rodney 1981). Designated interior zones were legally off-limits to members
of non-Amerindian groups, who required special written permission from
government to enter Amerindian villages and districts. In particular, non­
Amerindian visitors were ordered not to sell or provide Amerindians with intoxicating
drinks. The colonial government had no desire to promote drunken stupors
in an already tenuously responsive subject. As its least sophisticated child--or
perhaps more accurately, the group least affected by the disciplinary techniques of
Western culture-an intoxicated Amerindian community might expose the state's
inability to govern. Being unresponsive to civil obedience, the Amerindian could
not only undermine state authority, but also indirectly curtail the government's
ability to influence a coastal work-force that had been rendered docile to produce
sugar.
An independent post-colonial Guyana has more than just the central concern
of coastal sugar to contend with. Because of the politics it inherited from Britain,
Guyana cannot, for example, ignore the fact it shares and disputes borders with
Venezuela, Brazil, and Surinam. Amerindians and the vast interior they occupy
have become crucial factors in maintaining the territorial integrity of the nationstate.
In 1966, official figures claimed that Amerindians numbered 31,460 individuals,
with an estimated annual rate of increase of 3 .2% (Ministry of Information
and Culture 1970). In 1982, when the national popUlation was recorded to be
803,000 people with an average growth rate of 1 %, Amerindians were said to constitute
5% of the total popUlation (Latin America Bureau 1984), that is, 40,150
people. One more recent estimate gives the Amerindian population as 43,000
(Forte 1990:1). Given that 90% of its less than one million population live on the
coastal plain, the Guyanese government is sometimes accused of being disproportionately
preoccupied with the Amerindians, most of whom live in the interior.
The 'savage' child who was once protected from the capitalist economy of the
coast is now vehemently encouraged to take an active part in the collective national
community. For the very same reason that the other racial and ethnic groups
were mandated to subject themselves to English culture under British rule, Amerindians
are now being persuaded to do the same for the Guyanese national agenda.
To be more literate in the national language, more commercial in the national
19 Having been protected in the past by the agents and agencies of the colonial state, such as
the commissioner, district officers, and the Department of Lands and Mines, on 28 March
1969 Amerindians were declared to be the direct responsibility of the Prime Minister and
the Ministry of Econoinic Development (Interior Development Department 1969).

Cultural Imaginings of the Taruma 281
ties because they rely on technical procedures similar to those adopted by the state.
Their text may perform different roles from the text produced by the state, but each
depends upon very similar literary acts. In addition, in attempting to interpret the
Amerindian presence or absence in the south, the documents of both scholars and
the state have mainly been informed by the predominant biomedical theory of the
body. The southern texts have captured and fixed tribal origins, geographic locations,
and population figures as empirical data, all held together intellectually in
the form of an. anatomically differentiated and biomedicaUy determined body.
These relations between documents and literary acts, texts and bodies have remained
constant in the production of statements on the Taruma Amerindian.
Perhaps more than any other means, literacy and the printed word have had
the most to do with promulgating what we claim to know about the Amerindian
presence in southern Guyana. Textual authority (initiated by the rituals and customs
of formal schooling, and sustained by the supportive enterprises of a literate
tradition) has always be able to generate a link between itself and knowledge
(Bourdieu 1977). The basis of literate power derives from this bond between authority
and knowledge. Presumably because of the high value placed on 'objective'
knowledge, the quality of 'neutrality' texts are endowed with has provided
some genres of writing with greater authority than others. Like legal writing, academic
writing has been identified with seeking the maximum distance and the
most impersonal style of communication between addresser and addressee (Street
1984: 75). This distancing and de-personalizing have, at least in our culture, long
been associated with the representation of objectivity. For us, it seems, objectivity
has acquired the mien of a justice of the peace and the bearing of a truth-sayer.
Avoiding the subjective bias of the author and ensuring the empirical truth of
knowledge appear to be serious concerns of the objectiveness sought after in legal
and academic texts. Certainly, in much of the literature on the southern Amerindians
of Guyana, the agenda has been to provide some honesty and truth to the represented
statements about the Amerindian presence. However, the problem has
been that in doing so-that is, in gaining 'objectivity' for itself-the literature has
also thoroughly objectified Amerindians. Furthermore, as the very object of this
literary knowledge-that is, in being reduced to the known object of a text­
Amerindians have provided the producers of the literary act with substantiating
credentials for the knowledge of these authors themselves, who then become subjects
in the process. In other words, it has never been a matter of rendering truth
and honesty to Amerindian knowledge, but rather of verifying the power of reading
and writing, and confirming the authority of those producing the literary act.
The Taruma first acquired a known literary existence only after Portuguese
slavers and missionaries contacted a group of Amerindians living at the mouth of
the Rio Negro, Brazil, in 1657 (de Barros 1746: 250-2; Reis 1931: 44-8). Between
1657 and 1771 the European literature registers and re-registers the presence of a
people named Taruma living in the vicinity of the Rio Negro (see Butt Colson and

282 George Mentore
Morton 1982; Riviere 1966-67 for an overview of this material). Presumably because
of their proximity to Manao and the Amerindian practice of forming political
alliances with neighbouring communities that had already been studied, it has
been suggested that the registered Rio Negro Taruma were related to the Manaos
of El Dorado fame (Butt Colson and Morton 1982: 214; Whitehead 1990: 25-6).
Any confirmation of this relationship would of course throw the Taruma further
back into the initial history of European contact with Amerindians. It is an appealing
prospect, if for no other reason than it would extend our knowledge about a
people from the past, a knowledge, I should quickly add, that would not only confirm
our all-encompassing literary powers, but also reassert the superiority of our
all-knowing SUbjectivity. Interestingly enough, informed by theories of evolutionary
time and transferable genetic products, such literary knowledge also helps us
satisfy our cultural propensity to invent and establish origins. There is for us, I
think, a tremendous sense of satisfaction in being able to trace a line of evidence
back into the past and to fix it to a point of origin. Knowing when and where
someone or something begins, and for that matter comes to an end, seems to provide
an almost omn!potent sense of control for the knower. Hence, in this particular
case, being able to document the Taruma's physical presence and absence, their
actual life and death, endows the literate knower with an immense sense of empowerment.
20
Consider, then, the literary imagining and knowing about a Manao tribal presence
in southern Guyana around 1722, a 'presence' which presumably did not settle
but returned to Brazil (Butt Colson and Morton 1982: 211; Harris and de
Villiers 1911). Consider also the recordings of a subsequent Taruma tribal presence
in the same zone around 1764 that did stay (Evans and Meggers 1960;
Riviere 1966-67). In doing so, ponder how the literary act exposed the Amerindian
tribal presence to comments in the correspondences between state officials
and traders, scholars, and missionaries, and to the 'totalizing classification'
(Anderson 1991: 173) of national cartographers concerned with mapping state territories.
As the content of these comments, interchanges, and maps, the tribal presence
served the purposes of the literary actors far more than it could ever have
done directly as a literary object. In the literary imagination, the colonial ownership
of forested lands and colonial relationships with indigenous peoples were
codified and given ways of operating which made sure that they were subjected to
the control of the literary actor. For example, when the Europeans established,
fought for, and took possession of the territorial zones, it only needed an extension
of logical argument and the tracing of evidence to establish that 'tribes' like the
20 I have always been fascinated by written accounts of the 'first white man' or 'first European'
to make contact with indigenous peoples, principally because such records invariably
carry the anxious assumption of occidental superiority. Also they often imply that all other
contacts, particularly those with non-occidentals, are somehow less authentic and less legitimate.

Cultural Imaginings o/the Taruma 285
society with a remarkably different kind of authority. As such it lives and dies under
the auspices of its own intellectual logic.
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290 Scoff William Hoefle
Guyana border (1995). As an anthropologist who nonnally studies environment
perception in north-east and south-east Brazil, I freely admit to Amazonian specialists
that this study looks suspiciously like an opportunist sideline. And to make
matters worse, my work is part of a larger Brazilian-French research project which
is operating at the regional level-a scale of analysis usually thought of as 'background'
by most anthropologists.
However, the present study actually builds on previous studies of honour, patronage,
and violence among ranchers of the Sertao of north-east Brazil, in which I
explored research methods which reached up from the local to the regional level
and beyond (Hoefle 1983; Bicalho and Hoefle 1990, 1999). Based on this prior
experience, I developed archival research methods for the Amazon which generate
quantitative and qualitative infonnation in police and judiciary registries, one of
the most challenging areas from which to glean reliable infonnation.
The quality and even availability of data from legal registries in Brazil often
depend almost exclusively on the whims of the local official. Judges in the interior
of the Amazon are young, inexperienced outsiders who are continually being
shifted from place to place until they are eventually promoted to a coveted post in
the state capital. The police keep records only from the last few years, and police
chiefs are also transferred frequently. Serious crimes of the sort I am analysing
here (murder, rape, and drug-trafficking) have to pass through the courts. On their
way there, all cases receive a protocol in the legal registry first so that long-tenn
infonnation is available only from this source. The best infonnation is obtained in
the registry when an official has been in office for a number of decades, is well
organised, and is willing to talk about the cases. Not all officials are so inclined,
and even the most co-operative of them can be stymied by the disorganization of
previous officials or the destruction of documents during moments of popular insurrection
which have the express intention of 'burning the files', as occurred in
Humaita in 1991 and Novo Aripuana in 1992.
However, with great patience, and on occasion resigning oneself to the lack of
infonnation for particular counties, regional patterns can be discerned. The registries
and interviews with police and judicial officials in the Amazon revealed not
only shocking levels of violence but also graphic details that cut to the bone. Photographs
of mutilated and charred corpses of Amerindians, or coming across the
name of an old Ye' cuana acquaintance and his son who were murdered by gold
prospectors, put the issue of frontier violence on a personal basis. The statistical
trends analysed here bleed.

The Beginning of the End?
Colonization and Frontier Violence 291
We are bombarded daily by warnings that the Amazonian rainforest and Amerindian
cultures will be completely destroyed by early in the twenty-first century,
repeating the violent US frontier experience of near species extinctions, environmental
degradation, violence, genocide, and social depravity (cf. Butzer 1994,
Cronin 1983, Crosby 1986, F. Turner 1983, Whitney 1994). The Central Amazon
lies at the heart of the remaining continuous block of rainforest and has thus become
the principal battleground between developmental, environmental, and populist
interest groups over the future of the region.
The Central Amazon is still largely intact, but the frontier is expanding at
various points, northward from Rondonia and Mato Grosso across the Transamazonian
Highway (the BR-232) between Apui and Humaita, westward from Para
along the same highway, and northward from Manaus and southward from Boa
Vista along the BR-174, BR-170 and BR-210. Criss-crossing the Central Amazon,
these expanding fronts have the potential to break up the region into separate
fragments which could then be transformed more rapidly into agrarian and urban
landscapes. These expansion fronts reflect a new emphasis in national planning
with the creation of a north-south axis of regional development along road and
river transport systems from southern Amazonas state to the Brazilian border with
Guyana and Venezuela. This axis in its turn ties into existing and new road systems
being built in the Guyanas, which will connect the East and Central Amazon
to the Caribbean and permit the penetration of colonists and transnationallumber
companies into the interior of these countries, as well as the Brazilian Amazon
(Colchester 1997, Co le 1995). In Brazil, the new axis intersects the older east-west
axis along the Transamazonian Highway at the city of Humaita, so it would seem
that the South American rainforest has its days numbered, or as Brazilians would
say, we are already into overtime. Without the rainforest, Amerindian cultures
would have about as much chance of survival as did the Plains Native North
Americans without the prairie grass and the bison.
In response to this point of view, I would say yes and no. The expansion and
consolidation of frontiers is not the linear temporal and spatial process that biocentric
environmentalists would have it be (cf. Merchant 1992, Pepper 1996). Many
forested areas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America which are thought to be 'natural
environments' in a process of degradation have been used sustainably by humans
over the centuries, and some were actually created artificially by mankind (cf.
Fairhead and Leach 1996, Headland 1997, Posey 1984). Deforestation can be reversed,
and woodland regeneration is common in post-industrial countries. By
1920 nearly all the native forests of the United States had been eliminated, but today
approximately 31 per cent of the country is covered by planted and regenerated
forests (Cole 1995, US Geological Survey 1993, Williams 1994). Even
environmentally devastated European Russia has large tracts of land which have
reverted back to forest (Milanova 1998). Mather and Needle (1998) go so far as to

Colonization and Frontier Violence 293
tively, by the analogy that we are into the second halt: which may still prove to be
less disastrous than the first half was.
After the end of the military regime in 1985, and during the prolonged economic
recession and political turmoil which followed, state-planned colonization
schemes and large subsidized projects diminished substantially, as did spontaneous
migration (Martine 1990). While Rondonia and Para were the object of numerous
'agrarian reform' colonization projects undertaken by INCRA (Instituto Nacional
de Colonizayao e de Reforma Agraria), most of these really only legalized squatting
after the fact and were not like the integrated development projects of the
1970s (Becker 1985, Ianni 1979, Moran 1981).
This policy has continued on a more limited scale into the Central Amazon in
an attempt to consolidate failed small farmer and agribusiness projects between
Apui and Humaita and around the Greater Manuas area. As many of the large projects
in the latter area were often merely fayades for enriching politicians and important
businessmen, many today have been forfeited or only consist of dilapidated
official signs from a long-gone era of overly generous subsidies and are in the
process of being overrun by regenerating forests. INCRA has been more assertive
along the BR-174 and BR-230 between Manaus and Boa Vista, but projects involve
fewer families and less financial assistance than in the heyday of statedirected
colonization. Only 440 families were settled around the Caracarai area in
Roraima during the 1990s, and ,financial support consisted only of about US$2000
per family over a two-year period. Other than opening unpaved feeder roads cofunded
by county governments, little else has been provided in the way of infrastructure.
When modest economic growth returned after 1994, the power relations between
local, regional, and international players .in Amazonian geopolitics had
changed substantially. If previously the Amazon was seen as a source of cheap
food produced by frontier peasants (Oliveira 1975, Sa 1975), as an escape valve
for agrarian problems in regions of old-settlement (Barx 1988, Forman 1975,
Foweraker 1981, Velho 1972), or as a source of speculative profits (Graziano da
Silva 1981, Ianni 1979), by the 1990s it was increasingly being perceived as a reservoir
of bio-technological raw materials and knowledge (Albagli 1998, Becker
1997, Plotkin 1993). Following a world-wide pattern (cf. Friedmann 1992, Giines­
Ayata 1994, Tegegn 1997), alongside the older, top-down, centre-periphery political
hierarchy, local actors who were formerly powerless, such as Amerindians,
rubber-tappers and frontier peasants, have entered into political alliances and patronage
networks with national and transnational environmental, labour, and religious
NGOs, which have pressured the Brazilian state to redraw the regional and
local political map of the Amazon (Bebbington and Thiele 1993, Figueiredo 1998,
Pace 1998).
We may have reservations about the boundaries of the ecological and Amerindian
reserves, but they are often the only thing between the forest and scorched-

294 Scot! William Hoefle
earth farming and mining practices. Similarly, environmental legislation is starting
to be enforced, particularly with regard to deforestation. Forest Rangers of
IBAMA (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente) in the Central Amazon are not all
as corrupt as they are in the East Amazon, where graft permitted large-scale deforestation.
Logging now involves increased administrative expense, and conservation
plans must be drawn up by forestry engineers, which has reduced small-scale
logging. Large operators based in Itacoatiara, like the transnational Carolina, are
being forced to shift progressively from buying logs from others to thirty-year sustainable
forestry projects. Large mining fIrms such as Vale do Rio Doce also execute
forest recovery projects today when they abandon an area.
The neo-liberal turn of the Brazilian state has also contributed to the steps
backward in the process of frontier expansion. The military governments mobilized
enormous funds to build and modernize roads in Brazil, giving particular
attention to the Amazon for geopolitical reasons of national security. Since 1985,
civilian governments have built few new roads and have not been preserving those
that do exist. This is particularly true for the Amazon, where even paved roads
have fallen into disuse because of a lack of repair. The BR-319, which used to
connect Porto Velho (Rondonia) with Manaus (Amazonas) along the Rio da Madeira
valley, is a case in point. By 1988 the asphalt had become so damaged and so
many wooden bridges had collapsed that the road was closed to traffIc from Humaita
north, thus breaking a key link in the north-south axis. TraffIc was diverted
to barges along the Madeira River, and the Manuas industrial zone was negatively
affected. Colonization along the highway was reversed, with about 30 per cent of
settlers abandoning their farms.
Long stretches of the Transamazonian Highway have also been interrupted,
and many parts of what still exists can be used only during the dry season. The
controversial Perimetral Norte West (the BR-210) from Caracarai into the
Yanomamo Reserve is a shadow of what I saw in 1975 when it was new. The only
new road system to be built consists of the BR-174 North, the BR-170 North, and
the BR-210 East, which connect Manaus to Venezuela via Boa Vista. The system
was given priority in national road-building because it links Brazil to its northern
neighbours and the Caribbean. There has been the usual surge of colonization and
deforestation along these highways, and recently the BR-174 and BR-210 have
been completely asphalted, their wooden bridges being replaced by permanent
concrete ones. However, it remains to be seen if these roads will be maintained in
the light of neo-liberal road policy and the current fInancial crisis of the Brazilian
state.

Carnage
Colonization and Frontier Violence 295
The steps forward and backward in frontier consolidation directly interfere with
rates of violence. Violence is worst where urban growth, colonization along the
highways, and the introduction of new economic activities are greatest. When
colonization decreases, so does per capita violence.
The largest cities present high rates of violence. During the 1990s, Manaus
had on average 35 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants annually, Boa Vista 32 and
Itacoatiara 17. The Manaus rate is well below the rate of 56 per 100,000 for Rio de
Janeiro and 72 per 100,000 for Sao Paulo, the two most violent metropolitan areas
in Brazil. However, the homicide rates in the urban areas of the Central Amazon
are still quite high in comparison with other large cities of the world that are noted
for being violent, such as New York and Los Angeles, which have rates of 7 and
11 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants respectively.
The presence of important highways can make counties with small frontier cities,
such as Humaita (urban population of 23,944 in 2000), Presidente Figueiredo
(6,333), and Caracarai (8,215) proportionately more violent. Violence started to
rise in these counties during the road-building phase, peaked at over 50, 104, and
101 homicides per 100,000 respectively when the highways were asphalted, and in
the case of Humaita dropped again when the BR-319 fell into disuse.
At the other extreme are the sleepy riverine communities of Borba, Manicore,
and Nova Aripuana, located in the Madeira Valley. These counties have not yet
suffered intense colonization of the type which creates violence over land-title disputes
and envy'in commercial farming. Consequently, homicide rates rarely pass
10 per year along the Madeira, and when a murder does occur, it is due to drunken
brawls in bars or ambushes calculated to kill someone for a previous affront. Violence
was once worse in Manicore county. When the BR-319 was still in service
before 1988, the murder rate was twice as high, and 35 per cent of murders involved
outsiders killing outsiders or attacking settlers along the highway. In one
case a whole family of settlers was murdered during a robbery on their farm.
The presence of gold prospectors also causes a surge in violence in certain
years, when they are particularly more active in one area than in others. Humaita
suffered a surge in violence between 1981 and 1988, when prospectors were active
locally, as did Borba and Manicore from 1981 to 1985. Similarly, in Caracarai
prospectors were active between 1984 and 1987 and again in the early 1990s.
About half the homicides reported during the 1980s involved conflicts with Amerindians.
As MacMillan argues (1995: 48), there were probably many more murders
than those reported because they occurred in remote areas and because of
Yanomamo name taboos.
Prospectors are usually either single men or married men who have left their
wives behind at home. They end up drinking too much and conspicuously consuming
lUXUry goods when they manage to find gold. This latter habit causes the envy
of the unlucky prospectors and non-prospectors, which can result in bar-room

Colonization and Frontier Violence 297
site occurs: poor parents are said to encourage their daughters to sell themselves in
order to make money for the family.
Immigrants from southern Brazil, collectively called Gauchos, on the other
hand, are considered to be hot-blooded and violently contest affronts in this area of
conduct, as well as any other scratch to their pride. One court officer half jokingly
attributed this difference to diet: Gauchos eat relatively large quantities of meat,
while local people eat mainly fish. This alimentary determinism apart, class position
has a good deal to do with these different attitudes. Gauchos are commercial
farmers and ranchers who arrive with capital, while northeasterners and riverine
local people are poor fishers and subsistence farmers. Within the latter, northeasterners
who are recent immigrants from Maranhao are thought to be more violent
than local people, as they have previous experience of land conflicts in their native
state and in Para. This difference in behaviour according to origin was used by the
police chief responsible for eastern Roraima to explain the different rates of violence
in Bonfim and Canta counties. Bonfim is located in a ranching zone of old
settlement, while the new BR-170 cuts through Canta country, and many Maranhense
squatters have settled there.
The weapons used in violence also reflect origin and class. Revolvers are used
by wealthy ranchers and their hired guns in zones of colonization, where landownership
is contested, as well as by professional thieves attacking lorries, commercial
establishments, and settlers' farms along the highways. Poorer people use
a knife, a machete, or whatever is opportunely at hand. These weapons can be
quite lethaL Twisting a knife stuck into the lower abdomen produces a wound that
cannot be treated medically. A machete was used in one case to ambush and decapitate
the victim as he was walking by. A loose boat-pin or fence-post can serve
as a club, and striking someone's head with such hardwood objects is the equivalent
of using a metal bar.
Conclusion
The main object of this study has been to quantify and qualify violence in the Central
Amazon. If we are going to argue with empiricist- and rationalist-minded social
scientists and economic planners about questions of social sustainability in the
Amazon, we must do so in a way that cannot be dismissed as 'impressionistic' or
'journalistic'. The main stimulus to researching violence in the Amazon using archival
methods was in response to a paper presented by a French statistician in
which he argued that, when measured in absolute number of cases, rural violence
in the Amazon is actually quite low with respect to the industrial cities of Brazil
(Waniez 1997). I have argued here that, on a per capita basis, and proportionately
to the population present in the Amazon, violence on the expanding frontier can be
two to three times higher than in Brazilian metropolitan zones.

JASO 30/3 (1999): 301-316
Introduction
MORTUARY RITUALS IN THE ANDES
JUAN M. OSSIO
My interest in mortuary rituals derives from my studies of the institution of compadrazgo,
which were stimulated in their turn by an article that Peter Riviere wrote
on the couvade (1974). Here the contrast between the ritual attention given to the
father and the lack of attention received by the mother at childbirth were explained
by the different' responsibilities each of them had in the generation of the soul and
body of the new-born child. In other words, greater ritual attention was given to
the father because the soul was entrusted to him as a cultural realm, while the lack
of attention given to the mother was linked with the body as a natural realm with
which she was entrusted.
In addition, Riviere noticed a similar trusting of the soul and the body in different
persons in a brilliant analysis of compadrazgo by the American anthropologist
Stephen Gudeman (1972). In this study Gudeman concluded that essential to
compadrazgo, which was derived from Catholicism, was the trusting of the soul
and body of individuals to different persons-the soul to the godparent and the
body to the parents. From this he suggested that all forms of compadrazgo were
therefore conditioned by Catholicism.
Comparing these two articles made me realize that if, among Amazonian
groups, a non-Catholic practice like the couvade entrusted the soul and body to
different individuals, some types of compadrazgo might not be conditioned by
Catholicism but by pre-conquest types of ceremonial kinship embodying a similar
distribution, which might justifY further investigation.

302 Juan M Ossio
It was with this idea in mind that I have been conducting research on ceremonial
kinship in the Comunidad de Andamarca, located in the Provincia de Lucanas,
Departamento de Ayacucho, Peru. I approach this topic from a number of different
angles. First, it is important to view this institution in relation to the kinship and
alliance system. Secondly, and inspired particularly by Gudeman, is the viewpoint
of baptism and the principal beliefs that surround this sacrament, namely the opposition
between body and soul, and the notions of sin, redemption, and the afterlife.
It is within this last context that my interest in the mortuary rituals of the Andes
should be understood.
Since my aim is to suggest that an alternative cultural tradition to Catholicism
that has been rooted in the Andes since pre-Columbian times might have been responsible
for the form of compadrazgo adopted in the Andes, my analysis rests
heavily on tracing continuities from this period. In this article, therefore, I shall
follow this methodology, concentrating initially on a description of funeral rituals
and beliefs in the afterlife before the arrival of the Spaniards and in the early days
of the colonial period.
Pre-Hispanic Tombs
Tombs in the pre-Hispanic period, although mute remains, provide the most tangible
evidence for the existence of some kind of mortuary ritual among Andean
populations. When it is available, iconography is another important testimony,
especially in this Andean area, which lacked written documents. A third source,
finally, are the colonial documents which recorded Indians' oral narratives about
their past and the activities they continued during the colonial period.
Of these three sources, it is the last that provides the most detailed evidence of
the beliefs and practices associated with mortuary rituals in the Andes. This source
enables one to make sense of the material remains and-when it is available, as in
the Mochica and Chimu cases-of the iconography. It can also act as a linkage to
establish continuities between the past and the contemporary period.
Evidence for the existence of some kind of mortuary rituals in the Andes can
be dated to the pre-ceramic period, about 6,000 BC, which corresponds to the earliest
tombs found by archaeologists (Rivera 1995: 43). It may be possible to extend
this date further into the past, since human remains have been found that date from
10,000 BC. Unfortunately, nothing can be said about funerary practices from this
evidence for lack of preservation.
In both the past and the present, a common trend is that there has been a great
deal of variation in funerary practices. On the one hand, as can be seen specifically
in the Nueva Coronica of the Indian chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala (1968:
287-97), there is regional variation, and on the other local variation corresponding
to differences of status. But together with these variations there are also similari-

Mortuary Rituals in the Andes 303
ties, such as putting certain items next to the body, suggesting a belief in some
kind of existence in the afterlife. Among these items, the most common are food or
drink deposited in containers of different quality (gold, silver, copper, clay, etc.),
depending on the status of the deceased. To these in some cases it is possible to
add human bodies of those who might have been the wives and servants of the
deceased, as well as animals, frequently llamas and dogs.
But while we can be sure, from all this evidence, that a belief in life after
death existed ainong the pre-Hispanic Andean people, the sources are not very
explicit concerning the nature of the entity or entities that survived after death or
the destiny it or they followed.
Soul or Souls
Today the idea that human beings have a multiplicity of souls is widespread in the
Andes. In Andamarca (Lucanas District, Ayacucho Province), a community I studied
intensively in the 1970s, I was told that men had three souls and women seven,
the latter being stronger than the former for this reason. For example, they were
more resistant to pain, as could be seen from the fact that they deliver children. 1
Connected to this belief was the practice of ringing the church bells three times
whenever adult men died and seven times in the case of adult women. In the case
of children no difference was made in the number of rings, the bells tolling intermittently
without making any distinction for either male or female children.
According to Valderrama and Escalante (1980), in the Quechua community of
Aukimarka (Cotabambas District, Cusco Province) people believe that, regardless
of gender, each individual has three souls. One is the kurakaq almanchis or main
soul, another the chaupikaq almanchis or middle soul, and the third the sullkakaq
almanchis or lower soul. The first is thought of as a darker shadow and is the one
that departs for Qoropuna (a volcano located to the south-west in Arequipa Department)
after death. The second is a lighter shadow that remains in the tomb. The
third is an even lighter shadow that joins the first upon its arrival in Qoropuna.
Similarly, writing of the Aymara of southern Peru and Bolivia in his Diccionario
mitol6gico de Bolivia, Paredes cites Maria Luisa Valda de Jaimes to the effect
that: 'The human person is composed of the physical body and the psychic; this
latter is divided into three, which are the jacha ajayu (the great spirit), the jisja
1 According to Juvenal Casaverde, in Kuyo Grande (Cusco) it is thought that the Virgin
'was made by God from Saint Joseph's seventh rib and because of this the Virgin had
seven souls and her husband only one. Corresponding to this, women also have seven souls,
and they are not afraid of performing any act, however risky or fearful it might be'
(Casaverde 1970: 188, my translation).

304 Juan M Ossio
Ajayu (little spirit), [and] the Kamasa, called Chichihui, which means "shadow" ... '
(Paredes 1972: 20).
In these two cases, we can see that the trinitarian organization of the souls coincides
with a very traditional Andean hierarchical classificatory pattern, which is
applied to several contexts. Among the most relevant of these is a vertical or concentric
organization of space, and the distinction of divinities such as thunder and,
more commonly, the children of individuals. It seems that, since the colonial period,
this pattern has become identified with those introduced by Catholicism, such
as a scheme used by the Italian Joachim de Fiore, organized into ages of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Blessings and offerings follow a similar pattern.
And the same happen to souls, as Fernandez relates for the Bolivian Aymara. For
him there is an explicit correspondence between the persons of the Holy Trinity
and the souls or human shadows which emphasize the unitarian nature of the individual:
'The main shadow, the ajayu, is linked to the Father; its colour is dark
black ... the second, the animo, with the Son, and the coraje "courage"; also known
as espiritu "spirit") with the Holy Ghost' (Fernandez 2000: 182).
Tschopik also records this belief among the Aymaras they studied, though he
reports 'great confusion concerning the nature and identity of souls and ghosts'
(Tschopik 1968: 158). Nevertheless he adds an important observation, which, as
we shall see, is highly relevant in explaining differences between mortuary rituals
in the Andes that depend on the life stage of the individuals:
the soul is not fmnly fixed in any human body, and may leave it temporarily
on numerous occasions.... Whatever the genesis of the soul may be, its spiritual
essence is very weak at birth, and its strength gradually grows along with
physiological growth, progressively declining in later life. Thus the souls of
children are not so firmly established as those of adults. (Ibid.: 161).
In Andamarca too, I noted the belief that children up to eight years of age
could suffer soul loss or the sickness caused by a susto ('frighf). Later the soul
becomes secure, so that adults very rarely suffer from this condition. This process
of consolidation lasts up until seven years before a person's death, at which time
the soul begins to detach itself at night and roam the sites frequented by its owner,
causing susto to the people it meets.
It is difficult to say whether these beliefs concerning the soul correspond to
those held by pre-Hispanic populations. So far we have no evidence that the idea
of multiple souls might have had originated in the pre-Hispanic period. The nearest
we can come to kn

306 Juan M Ossio
cords a tradition that 'in very ancient times ... when a person died, people laid the
body out until five days had gone by. The dead person's spirit, which is the size of
a fly, would flyaway, saying, "Sio!". When it flew away, people said, "Now he's
going away to see Pariacaca, our maker and sustainer'" (Avila 1991: 129).
In the following chapter the tradition goes on to refer more specifically to the
name of the flies. Here it is said that 'At Yaru Tini, as the sun was rising, the dead
spirit would arrive. In olden times, two or three big flies-people call them llacsa
anapalla-would light on the gannent she brought. She'd sit there for a long while.
As soon as those maggots called huancoy wonns left the corpse, the woman would
say, "Come on, let's go to the village". And as if to say, "This is him", she'd pick
up a small pebble and come back' (ibid.: 130-1).
Further back in the past, the Mochicas of northern Peru have also left some
evidence that a kind of fly was linked to death. Anne Marie Hocquengem tells us
that 'a kind of fly features twice in a corpus over four thousand years old .... ' She
also mentions that 'Schmidt has published the photograph of a vase that belongs to
the collection of the Museum ftir VOlkerkunde in Berlin which represents the
scene of a danse macabre, where skeletons wave to the rhythm of flutes and rattles.
On top of this scene, between the two joins of the vase handle, is a fly ... '
(1981: 63).
In Andamarca, one infonnant, apparently thinking of the soul in tenns of its
denotation as 'shadow', told me that children had souls only from birth, since only
then they could cast a shadow. Another infonnant, thinking of the soul as a principle
of vitality, ass,ured me that the soul was generated together with the body in the
mother's womb. Nevertheless, I have not been able to discover any evidence, either
in Andamarca or in the rest of the Andean world, that pregnant women and
their husbands submit themselves to any particular restrictions to avoid the loss of
the unborn child. The nearest thing I came across is the fact that pregnant women
do not usually attend funeral wakes for fear that their children should be born deaf
(upa). This suggests that the unborn child is thought to have a soul and that the
mother must take precautions against its loss, since for similar reasons it is considered
inadvisable for a young baby to visit a cemetery.
Socialization through the Lenses of Infant Mortuary Rituals and the Afterlife
Up to a certain point there is consensus that children have a soul at birth, but beyond
this its destiny and attributes after death depend on the life-stage at which a
person dies. As I see it, these variations reflect the role exercised by society in the
developmental cycle of the individual. The transfonnation undergone by the soul
may thus be seen as a fairly clear expression of the process of socialization of the
individual. It is within this context that certain stages become significant through
association with three types of mortuary ritual.

Mortuary Rituals in the Andes 307
In Andamarca there is a ritual that is common to both birth and death, suggesting
that the life of an individual is literally conceived as a cycle. The ritual is
called Pichca, which in Quechua means 'five', a reference to the fact that it takes
place five days after the birth of a child and, in the past, five days after the death of
an individual. It consists of washing the clothes used to receive the child at birth or
the clothes the dead person used during his life. The reason given for the initial
ritual is that it prevents the baby from becoming sick and possibly dying. In the
case of death, it is to distance the deceased from the society of the living. Thus
society both incorporates and removes individuals from it through one and the
same ritual.
The rite of passage that follows Pichca is baptism or its provisional extension
known as 'water of succour'. Although its Catholic significance is as a sacrament
that incorporates individuals into the church of God by cleansing them of original
sin, we shall see that for Andeans it is mostly a rite of passage by which individuals
proceed a further step in the socializing process by obtaining a name. This will
become clear from a comparative analysis of the beliefs and funerary practices
concerning respectively babies who died unbaptized and baptized, and adults.
The young child who dies without being baptized is commonly called malpa, a
term for which I was unable to find any other references in either contemporary
Quechua culture or old vocabularies. The nearest to this term in the latter is mapa,
which denotes wax, dirt, or menstruation and is in a sense equivalent to the idea of
miscarried babies. Not being baptized also leads to them being considered dirty,
not worthy of being buried in a socialized space such as a cemetery. Burying them
there would be to risk dangerous storms, hail, and the destruction of crops by frost.
The consequences are similar to the case of an adult being disinterred from the
cemetery. As a protective device, unbaptized children are generally buried at night
beneath the crosses that surround the valley of the community and are intended to
protect crops from frost. Those who bury these children are usually consanguineal
kinsmen, who receive the name of contrapadrinos. According to some informants,
the fate of the soul of the child is either to remain in this world 'suckling on stones
because they never suckled fom their mothers' breast', or to inhabit a place called
Tutaya Ucuman, which is believed to be a dark region where the souls, weeping,
call out for their parents. 2
In view of the fact that a death occurring before baptism entails such negative
consequences for both the deceased and society, it is most important that the newborn
child receives this sacrament as soon as possible. The 'water of succour' or
yacuchan serves this purpose, since usually in these distant communities there is
no priest continuously available. Being a stage in baptism, this ritual consists in
2 According to Oscar Nunez del Prado (1952: 3), the people ofChinchero (Cuzco Province)
believe that the soul of an unbaptized child goes to LHmpu, 'a dark place where they search
for the c1apper of a bell in order to make it ring, and the day they succeed will be the day of
the Last Judgement. .. ' (my translation).

308 Juan M Ossio
the child receiving the name of the saint who is celebrated on the day it was born.
This is done under the sponsorship of a padrino, with whom the child's parents
form a compadrazgo relationship. From this point on, if the child dies its soul becomes
an angelito because, due to his innocence, the only spiritual realm he can go
to is la gloria, where children spend their time tending cultivated fields owned by
God. Given this joyful destiny, wakes for these children must be happy. Their
corpses are dressed in white robes to convey the image of an angel and are lain on
a decorated piece of scenery. To increase the joy associated with this destiny, the
attendants dance to the rhythm of musicians hired by the padrinos. At midnight the
corpse, resting inside a small coffin, is taken by the padrino if male, or the
madrina if female, to the cemetery accompanied by noisy fireworks. Burial takes
place on the eastern'side of the cemetery.
When I asked one informant what the age limit was for this kind of funeral, I
was told that it was up to twelve, after which children would be buried like adults.
Casaverde notes of Kuyo Grande (Cuzco Province) that 'The souls of children
who have not known the world (have not had sexual experiences) have the right to
fly directly to Heaven ... ' (1970: 202). In other words, it would seem that children
are buried as adults once they develop their sexual potential. However, as we shall
see, it would appear that it is not the sexual act itself which is considered significant,
but rather the possibility of incestuous relationships developing.
Throughout the Andes incest is considered to be the most serious offence. It is
widely believed that if somebody commits this fault, different punishments may
fall on him or her and on society. If the members of a community find somebody
guilty of this transgression, the sentence is expUlsion. However, even if those responsible
are not discovered, there is still a belief that supernatural sanctions may
fall upon them. One very widespread belief is that incestuous people turn into qarqachas
while still alive, and into condenados when they die. The term qarqacha .is
an onomatopoeic derivation from qar-qar, the sound emitted by these incestuous
beings, who adopt an animal form as dogs, pigs, llamas, giraffes, etc., all with the
peculiarity of having disproportionately long necks or flying heads. At night they
roam the isolated parts surrounding the villages causing susto to those who meet
them. Since susto may be overcome, it is said that some people take a chance, and
instead of running away from these beings they seek to injure them with a knife, so
that when they return to their normal condition they might be recognized and
possibly blackmailed. Condenados, on the other hand, are unanimously regarded
as being more dangerous because one of their means of obtaining salvation is to
eat three human beings. They are generally thought of as wandering at the edge of
communities wearing iron sandals from which sparks fly. Since no adult is free
from having committed incest, funerals associated with this stage of life have to be
understood in terms of this ideology, which emphasizes the protection of the living
and therefore of society more than the destiny of the deceased's soul.

Mortuary Rituals in the Andes 309
Although, following the conquest, Spanish priests persistently tried to impose
the Catholic ideas of sin, punishment, and reward in the afterlife, and the most basic
notion of Christ's redemption (narrowly associated with baptism) on the Indians
of the Andes, after nearly five hundred years, we can see that none of them has
rooted very deeply. Christ came to be understood more as a divine king like the
Inca than as a redeemer. Sin, on the other hand, was thought of more as a fault
whose consequences were paid for in this life rather than in the afterlife. Hell became
understood as a dangerous non-social realm located underground or on the
edge of the world, and the devil became imagined as a trickster who had the power
to upset order or to entrust creative abilities to those who established pacts with
him. Heaven became the realm of the souls of children, and at the end of the world
eventually of those of all human beings.
In the past the upaimarca or 'silent world' of the Cajatambo Indians (Departament
of Lima) was located in Titicaca or Yarocaca, which also was the place or
pacarina from where they originated. To arrive there, the soul of the deceased had
to cross a bridge made of hair called achacaca (Duviols 1986: 150). In another
part of the same document transcribed by Pierre Duviols, it states that there were
many plots of lands in this place, and that, given that so many Indians had died,
these plots were the size of a fingernail (ibid.: 171). Other final destinations are
mentioned in Avila's traditions (1991). It seems that, in the past as today, each
different group had their own final destinations in the afterlife that coincided with
their pacarina. Today one that is acknowledged in many areas is the volcano of
Coropuna, located in the Departament of Arequipa. In Andamarca people say that
the souls in this place spend their time endlessly building a tower that collapses
when it is about to be finished and has to be begun all over again. The day it is
finished will be the day of the Last Judgement. In other parts, it is said that the
souls endlessly push a snowball up Mount Sallcantay in Cusco Province; once they
are about to reach the very top it falls down, and they have to begin again. This
closely resembles the Sisifo myth.
The itinerary followed by the souls before they arrive at their final destination
is very frequently ascending in direction and at some point includes a bridge or a
river that has to be crossed, as in the document cited above. Francisca Chaqiri of
Tomanga (Ayacucho Province), aged 70, gave Zuidema and Quispe the itinerary
that her soul followed when, at the age of 20, after dying of influenza, God ordered
her to go back. She said that it 'was as if I was sleeping, like when you dream-I
don't know what it was-I died ... '. In her afterlife voyage she first passed a flower
garden, then through a thorny village, and climbing still further she came to a
place with different kinds of dogs; further up still, she passed over a dry and hot
plateau, until finally she arrived to a church where Our Lord was sitting surrounded
by four beautiful girls oriented to his left and four gentlemen to his right
(Zuidema and Quispe 1973: 359).

310 Juan M Ossio
In a version recorded by Ricardo Valderrama and Carmen Escalante (1980) in
Aukimarca (Cotabambas, Apurimac Province), the afterlife is presented in terms
very similar to those ofFrancisca Chaqiri, although instead of having Hanaq Pacha
Dios-ninchis Intitayta (Sun God of Heaven) as the god of our world, they have an
equivalent known as Qepa Dios (God of the Afterworld). In addition, the other
world has a different sun and moon from ours, so that when it is day in this world
it is night in the other world and vice versa. Also, one year for us is equivalent to
one day for the inhabitants of the other world. Once the soul arrives in the dog village,
to continue they have to cross a river known as the • dirty river' (Map' a
Mayu). In other versions it is called Jordan or Yawar Mayu ('blood river'). For the
soul this is a wide and rough river, whereas for the living it is just an small stream.
In order to pass it, they request the help of dogs generally known as Lazaro. White
dogs refuse to assist because they are afraid of becoming dirty. Only those who
have been raised kindly by the soul when alive and are preferably black in colour
offer their help. This belief explains why, in many areas, hanging a dog is a very
important step in the mortuary ritual.
Once on the other side of the river, the soul still needs to pass over the hot plateau
already mentioned and through villages populated by cats, guinea pigs, and
pots. Finally it arrives at Qoropuna, whose doors are guarded by S1. Francis, where
it is greeted by its white or misti compadres.
From these different versions, which are quite representative of the Andean
conception of the afterlife, it is clear that, regardless of their behaviour while living,
all humans have the same destiny after death. Although there are certainly
references to a final judgement and to sins having been weighed by God to determine
the fate of the soul, these statements seem to be merely repetitions of the
preaching of Catholicism, without their conceptual implications being fully absorbed.
Moreover, it is clear that for Andeans the notion of the final judgement
became equivalent to that of the end of the world, and that sins were paid for in
one's earthly existence. However, the condenado seems to be an exception to the
latter, because it represents punishment in the afterlife: ultimately the sanction is
not for the soul, that it might eventually attain salvation, but for living mortals,
who have to suffer the threat of being eaten by this monstrous being, and whose
society, which based on reciprocity, has been endangered by incest or greed.
It is within this ideology, which rests on a social system where kinship and
marriage relationships are extremely important, and where a dialectic between endogamy
and exogamy shapes the world of exchanges (cf. Ossio 1992), that mortuary
rituals attain their meaning.

Adult Mortuary Rituals
Mortuary Rituals in the Andes 311
Corresponding to this ideology, the aim of holding mortuary rituals for adults in
the Andes is to avoid the return of the dead because of the negative consequences
this might produce. Since adulthood presupposes the ability to mate, as we have
seen, a distinction is made for gender when ringing the bells to announce someone's
death. This distinction is pursued further in the fact that, at least in Andamarca,
men dress in a Franciscan robe, women in one associated with the Virgin
of Carmen. Beyond this, everything looks much alike. Corpses are now called almas
('souls') and are washed with water mixed with myrtle flowers and dressed in
these robes. The corpse is then placed in a coffin if one is available or just on top
of a table. Relatives, neighbours, and other visitors start arriving, each carrying a
lit candle that is placed on a box lying at the foot of the deceased. In contrast to the
wake of a baptized child, the atmosphere here is one of sadness, which is increased
by the chants of very sad songs, like the Aya Taquis or the San Gregorio. No one
is allowed to sleep. If anyone fails to resist sleeping, the oldest of the group gently
whips him. Sometimes jokes are played on the son-in-law, who looks after the
visitors. In other areas, as in some communities in Cusco Province, a game is
played with a pre-Hispanic dice called pichca ('five') or chunca ('ten'). Drinks of
sugar-cane alcohol are generously poured, and on occasion some food is also provided.
The following day, generally at noon, the corpse is taken to the cemetery to
be buried. Those in charge of carrying it are the sons-in-law. In Andamarca those
responsible for digging the grave and escorting the corpse were the previstes (ritual
attendants) of the most important saints. In Cotabambas, once the corpse is
buried, each son-in-law must throw a heavy stone known as a jabrica three times
on top of the tomb. The reason for this is to avoid one of the souls coming out.
Later, a meal is served as reciprocity for all those attending.
Washing and burning the clothes of the deceased takes place the day after the
burial in many areas--or five, eight, or ten days later, as is mentioned in old documents.
For this occasion one of the deceased's dogs is also hanged to help the soul
in the afterlife to cross the dirty river and to deal with the dogs that are trying to
harm the soul. 3 In Andamarca the dice game, which consists of saying a prayer
according to the number that is thrown, is reserved for this occasion.
3 In Cotabambas (Apurfmac Province), those who look after the dogs are affinal relatives.
The daughters-in-law feed the animal at the deceased's house with large quantities of food,
making its belly look very swollen. This is because the route in the afterlife is very long.
Afterwards it is taken by other classificatory sons-in-law to where the clothes are being
washed. This place is one of two used by all Cotabambinos, having the peculiarity of being
where two streams meet. Once they have finished washing the clothes and burning those
that are too old to be used further, they proceed to lead the dog over an small symbolic
bridge made from waylla ichu (a grass that grows in the puna) and raki-raki (a type of
bracken that grows in the valley) laid across one of the streams. Building this bridge is also
the responsibility of the sons-in-law. Having been taken across the bridge, the dog is

312 Juan M Ossio
After this, the group that has performed this ceremony returns to the deceased's
home, where a ritual meal will take place in the evening in the room
where the corpse rested. Before entering, a portion of flour or sand that has been
spread at the entrance is examined to see if any traces have been left in it. This is a
kind of reading where, according to what is seen, specialists can predict who might
follow the deceased to the afterlife.
In Cotabambas, at about 8.00 p.m., a gathering is organized in the room where
the wake took place. On top of the table where the corpse had been, different kinds
of food are laid out that the deceased had enjoyed in life. These are distributed by
his daughter-in-law among those attending, starting with those which had a dry
quality and continuing with those of a wetter nature. At a particular moment a pair
of miniature sacks are filled with tiny portions of the different varieties of food.
These are destined to feed the soul on its way to the afterlife. Once this task is
completed, noises are heard at the entrance door, which had been closed. Those
responsible are some of the sons-in-law, who are holding a model llama and imitating
the sounds of this animal attempting to enter. Inside the house, other relatives
of the deceased hold the door to stop them entering. Finally they manage to
enter, and spitting like the llamas (but this time with sugar-cane alcohol) at the
whole audience, they provoke a reaction of hilarity. The model llama is loaded
with the sacks and taken outside to a point where two paths meet. Meanwhile, a
couple of elderly men proceed to whip the air, ordering the soul to go away. The
moment to dispatch the soul has come. Once at the paths' intersection, the sons-inlaw
proceed to bum the model llama. They wait until it is extinguished because,
just before the fire dies out, they can see certain signs indicating the departure of
the soul. If the deceased had been male, the sign is an elongated flame, if female a
sudden blow of air, as if a woman were waving her skirt to extinguish the fire.
From this moment a kind of relief comes over the participants, because the
soul is already on its way to the afterlife. A year later another meal will be prepared
in its honour, on which occasion the mourners remove their black dresses
and return to those of ordinary life. Further on in time, the deceased will be remembered
every November 2nd, which in Catholicism is An Souls' Day, and its
relatives will visit its tomb. In addition to cleaning it and hiring musicians to
please the soul, the latter is made to partake in the food and drinks they consume.
Up to a certain point, this kind of worship is not very far from that dedicated to the
ancestors, either mallqui or camaquen, in the pre-Hispanic period.
hanged from a bush that is near to other bushes where it is possible to see the remains of
other dogs which have been hanged for other funerals. Before this final act the main son-inlaw
gently implores the puppy to lead the soul of the deceased carefully in the afterlife.

Conclusion
Mortuary Rituals in the Andes 313
From all that has been said, it is clear that the sense of individual punishment in
the afterlife and notions of sin in the Catholic sense are quite alien to Andean society.
Moreover, death is not thought of as a permanent state but as a transitory period
that will end on the day of the Last Judgement. Nor is the soul thought of in
terms similar to Christianity. If these ingredients, which are central to baptism,
have been interpreted in a different way, how have Andeans interpreted this sacrament
and those who become responsible for their sponsorship?
To approach this question, we need to return to the variations expressed in the
sequence of funerary practices and beliefs concerning the fate of the soul. Through
this description it becomes apparent that there is a process by which the soul becomes
attached in a stable way to the body. Thus we may say that, just as the individual
is thought to have more than one soul, the soul itself is not conceived of as a
static entity but rather in dynamic terms. I therefore do not believe it is possible to
draw, as Gudeman (1972) does, a radical opposition between birth and baptism
(these being identified with nature and culture respectively), since they are both
merely stages within a single process. Equally, it is not possible to maintain that
the state of nature ends at the very moment of birth, nor that full integration into
culture or society is only achieved through baptism, for as we have seen the soul
acquires new potentiality when the individual becomes capable of sexual activity.
To return to beliefs about the fate of the soul and funerary rites in the three
stages of the developmental cycle, we may say that this material reveals a process
that leads from the asocial or non-social to the more social. Thus it departs from
the pre-baptismal stage, in which babies who die may not be buried in social
places. The cemetery, with its dual division into east and west sides, is such a social
place. Their proper burial ground is beneath the crosses or calvaries, which are
generally to be found on the edges of communities or in high places where,
according to Isbell (1978), they mark the boundaries between different ecological
levels. As we have seen, the peripheral position of these Christian symbols relates
to the protection they are thought to offer crops from hail, frost, etc.
Moreover, like cattle-stealing, witchcraft, and other illegal activities that are
conceived as asocial, the corpses of pre-baptismal children also have to be buried
at night. To mark this situation, the name given to the person in charge of the burial
is contrapadrino.
An infant who dies in the following stage of life, after baptism, will still be
buried at night. The ringing of bells for such an infant is not distinguished for gender,
though the body is still carried by an individual who, as a padrino, enjoys a
recognized social position, and it will be buried in the cemetery, though the appropriate
part is the eastern side. This makes the intermediate position of this state
between the pre-baptismal and adult stages abundantly clear: the corpse is buried
at night, as it would have been before baptism, but in the cemetery, as is appropriate
after baptism, though to the east, not the west.

314 Juan M Ossio
The beginning

Mortuary Rituals in the Andes 315
BERTONIO, LUDOVICO P. 1879 [1612]. Vocabulario de la Lengua Aymara, Leipzig: B.
G. Teubner (2 vols.).
CASAVERDE, JUVENAL 1970. 'El mundo sobrenatural en una comunidad', Allpanchis
[Cusco], Vol. Il, pp. 121-244.
DUVIOLS, PIERRE 1978. 'Camaquen, Upani: un concept animiste des anciens Peru viens',
in Roswith Hartmann and Udo Oberem (eds.), Amerikanistische
StudienlEstudios Americanisticos, Vol. 1, pp. 132-44.
1986. Cultura Andinay RepresiOn, Cusco [Cuzco?]: CBC.
FERNANDEZ, GERARDO 2000. 'La tutela de las 'sombras': enfennedad y cultura en el
altiplano aymara', in Manuel Gutierrez (ed.), Sustentos, aflicciones y postrimerias
de los Indios de America, Madrid: Casa de America.
GONzALEZ HOLGulN, DIEGO 1952. Vocabulario de la Lengua General de todo el Peru
llamada Lengua Quichua 0 del Inca, Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San
Marcos.
GUAMAN POMA DE Ay ALA [FELIPE?] 1968. El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno,
Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.
GUOEMAN, STEPHEN 1972. 'The Compadrazgo as a Reflection of the Natural and Spiritual
Person', in Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1972, pp. 45-
71.
HOCQUENGEM, ANNE MARIE 1981. 'Les mouches et les morts dans l'iconographie
Mochica', in Naupa Machu, Vol. XIX, Berkeley: Institute of Andean Studies, pp.
63-78.
ISBELL, B. J. 1978. To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village,
Austin: University of Texas Press.
LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship, London: Eyre and
Spottiswoode.
NTJNEZ DEL PRADO, OSCAR 1952. La vida i la muerte en Chinchero, Cuzco: Revista
Universitaria del Cuzco.
OSSIO, JUAN 1992. Parentesco, reciprocidad y jerarquia en los Andes, Lima: Fondo
Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Catolica del PerU.
PAREDES, ANTONIO 1972. Diccionario mitologico de Bolivia, La Paz: Biblioteca de
Cultura Breve Boliviana.
RIVERA, MARIO .1995. 'The Preceramic Chinchorro Mummy Complex of Northern
Chile: Context, Style, and Purpose', in Tom D. Dillehay (ed.), Tombsfor the Living:
Andean Mortuary Practices, Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
RMERE, PETER 1974. 'The Couvade: A Problem Reborn', in Man, Vol. IX, no. 3, pp.
423-35.
SANTO TOMAs, FRAY DOMINGO DE 1951 [1560]. Lexicon 0 vocabulario de la lengua
general del Peru, Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
TSCHOPIC, HARRY 1968. Magia en Chucuito, Mexico: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano.
VALDERAMMA, RICARDO, and CARMEN ESCALENTE 1980. 'Apo Qorfuna (Vision del
mundo de los muertos en la comunidad de Awkimarka)" in Debates en antropologia,
Lima: PUCP.

316 Juan M Ossio
ZUIDEMA, TOMA, and ULPIANO QUISPE 1973. 'A Visit to God: The Account of an Interpretation
of a Religious Experience in the Peruvian Community of Choque­
Huarcaya', in Danil R. Gross (ed.), Peoples and Cultures of Native South America,
New York: Doubleday.

JASO 30/3 (1999); 317-332
BOOK REVIEWS
ALFRED GELL, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press
1998. xv, 272 pp., Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. £15.99.
Alfred Gell's latest and unfortunately last attempt to tackle art from an anthropological
perspective deserves careful attention from any serious scholar concerned with the
somewhat tenuous relationship between the arts and anthropology. Art and Agency,
published posthumously, was very much work in progress, as Nick Thomas outlines in
his foreword. This, of course, rings with double meaning (a fact Gell would no doubt
have enjoyed), in that Gell's general approach to art was in continual development, just
as the book itself reads as somewhat incomplete. For obvious reasons, this renders the
book difficult to. review. I will seek to summarize Gell's general argument while not
shying way from areas I feel would have needed more careful thought.
Throughout the work, Gell maintains his discomfort with the notion of aesthetics
as an applicable anthropological concept, but extends his earlier concept of art as technology
into a more generalizable approach to art as an 'index of agency'. In a commendable
shift away from strictly symbolic interpretations of art, Gell moves towards
establishing a connection between art and everyday political and social activity. As he
writes: 'in place of symbolic communication, I place all the emphasis on agency, intention,
causation, result, and transformation. I view art as a system of action, intended to
change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it' (p. 6, emphasis in
original). Situating art in a nexus of human relations, Gell theorizes art objects as extensions
of human agency, which are endowed by their creators with certain amounts
of social power. For Gell this is expressed in his 'rough defmition' of the anthropological
theory of art: 'social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social
agency' (p. 7).
All of this is neatly summed up in the first two chapters devoted to defining the
problem as he sees it and to defming his rather innovative terminology. Chapters three
to five proceed to deconstruct that terminology by creating a complex set of scenarios
for each aspect of interaction between artists, their works, their inspirations, and their
audience (in Gell's terms respectively: Artist, Index, Prototype, and Recipient). These
scenarios, some of which are given greater emphasis than others, support the more
general statements about the process of artistic agency outlined in the first two chapters.
Chapter six,' which deals with decorative art, begins a transition from abstract theory
to more specific areas of application for Gell's ideas by connecting Gell's theory
of agency with the problems of non-representational design in the anthropology of art.
Chapters seven and eight, however, come as more complete breaks from the flow of
the argument, examining idolatry and artistic style respectively. By far the lengthiest
chapters in the work, they are presumably intended to present the ethnographic data to
support the general theory, but unfortunately they do more to distract the reader from

318 Book Reviews
the points Gell is trying to make. This is especially important in light of Gell's numerous
asides to his presumed non-anthropologist readership. But what makes these chapters
and the evidence they put forward more troubling is their overwhelming emphasis
on parts of Asia and the Pacific. No doubt inspired by Gell's own expertise in these
areas, this ethnographic bias and its repeated comparison with the institution of fine art
in the United States and Europe has the unintentional effect of highlighting an
East/West split that detracts from the encompassing anthropological theory of art the
work attempts to provide.
As Gell argues in the conclusion, 'art is a cognitive process writ large' (p. 258),
but one wonders if his anthropological theory is not the product of his own cognitive
process writ over the data presented. Throughout his argument, Gell employs rather
Western, Platonic views of 'prototypes' in the process of art production, leading inevitably
to an emphasis on the art object, which in his formulation can include the human
body. This denies the primacy of the creative process and emphasizes a Cartesian disembodiment
of social actors. This renders the anthropological approach to creative
practice and expressive forms a strictly Western enterprise concerned with strictly
Western categories and analyticaUy inapplicable outside a Western context. But Gell
does apply it outside the 'West', even if that application is restricted to the 'East'. The
thrust of his argument is left curiously silent in regard to those areas (increasingly all
areas) which overlap. As style becomes commodified and distributed in an increasingly
global economy, how do the notions of artist, index, prototype, and recipient
work themselves out? Part of the answer lies in recognizing the autonomy of these
distinct terms in many circumstances, such that the agency of an art product does not
always involve a connection to a human, cognitive progenitor.
Tragically, Gell himself cannot answer these criticisms, and as Nick Thomas
makes clear in the foreword, he would no doubt have refined many of his ideas before
the fmal draft. Nor should these criticisms detract from the importance of GeU's contribution
to the ongoing debate within anthropology concerning the role of art and aesthetics.
Gell has always been integral to this debate, and this fmal work will ensure his
place in the thick of it for some time to come.
RUSSELL LEIGH SHARMAN
NORMAN E. WHITTEN and ARLENE TORRES (eds.), Blackness in Latin America and the
Caribbean, Volumes 1 and 11, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1998. 520 pp.
and 557 pp., Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. $24.95 each volume.
Much has been written recently about the concept of blackness as a category of experience,
and to what extent that experience is universal, or at least circum-Atlantic. Often
this entails little more than a generalized account of popular culture in the United
States or parts of Europe which is then presumed to reflect a universal black consciousness.
A more specifically anthropological approach would recognize the importance
of ethnographic particularity to grasp more fully the difference and sameness of
black experience in various disparate contexts. This is especially important when that

Book Reviews 319
experience is situated in the particular cultural history of Latin America and the Caribbean
as opposed to Anglo-North America or Western Europe. Norman Whitten and
Arlene Torres offer just such an anthropological corrective in their invaluable twovolume
anthology, Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The work is invaluable for bringing together a stunning variety of scholarly contributions
to the study of black experience outside the domain of mainstream popular
culture. Each volume includes a short chapter written by one of the editors introducing
the essays to follow, which are divided between Central America, the northern South
American Lowlands, and the Andes in the fIrst volume, and eastern South America and
the Caribbean in the second. Anyone who has done preliminary reading in the subject
will no doubt question some of the selections, and as reprints from earlier publications,
the essays may provide little new material for the specialist. However, bringing together
Roy Bryce-Laporte, Michael Taussig, Sally Price, M. G. Smith and Kevin Yelvington,
to name just a few, will prove useful to both specialists and non-specialists.
This is especially true in light of essays by Latin American academics like Nina de
Friedemann and Diego Quiroga, whose works are difficult to obtain in translation.
Overall the anthology fulfIls the goal of the editors outlined in the preface: 'to provide
readers with a set of chapters that range from early groundbreaking pieces to exemplars
of contemporary Afro-Americanist scholarship of the late 1990s' (p. viii).
The one original contribution deserves a slightly more detailed review. Both volumes
open with the same introductory chapter co-authored by editors Whitten and Torres.
The introduction, along with the shorter introductory chapters which preview the
essays of each volume, are offered as an 'extended essay on blackness in Latin America
and the Caribbean' (p. ix). Here Whitten and Torres attempt to orient the reader to
the issues involved by situating black experience in a nationalist context and as part of
ethnic blocs. Inherent in these ethnic blocs are the powers of identity and representation
which come into play when non-white, usually indigenous or black people 'are
ethnically disfranchised from full participation in the dominant society' (p. 8). Whitten
and Torres focus on the concept of negritude as 'the positive features of blackness
among people classed as, or self-identifying as, "black'" (p. 7), which, within an ethnic-bloc
context, is 'profoundly populist and rejecting of non-blackness as a criterion
for sophisticated self-awareness' (p. 9). Since its appearance in the literature of Aime
Cesaire, negritude has been deftly aimed at the political arena, where identity is deployed
in the rhetoric of self-identifIcation. This is particularly important in a national
context where identity is created and applied by the elite. The resultant myth of a 'racial
democracy', where all racial distinction is subsumed by the ideology of mestizaje,
or intermixture, denies non-elite, usually non-white groups access to the mechanisms
of self-identifIcation.
Whitten and Torres place the dynamic of blackness, and more specifIcally negritude,
in the context of a socio-political movement toward self-determination. Two
prominent Afro-Latin American proponents of a politicized blackness stated that their
'movements were not "against the state". Rather, they sought to create ethnic space for
blackness as a creative cultural quality within their respective nations' (p. 34). Still,
Whitten and Torres 'anticipate that black-based ethnic-bloc formations will use the
ideology of negritude and, in so doing, will be perceived as a threat to nationalist sovereignty
and nationalist territoriality' (p. 8).

320 Book Reviews
The editors are successful to a certain extent in orientating the reader to the issues
involved, but as one reads through the host of essays to follow, it is apparent that there
is no single way of approaching the material. Whitten and Torres take a decidedly, and
at times appropriately, political stance in regard to black experience in Latin America
and the Caribbean, but other contributors demonstrate the power of alternative avenues
of experience, such as religious performance in David Guss's essay on the Dia de San
Juan or creative expression in Yvonne Daniel's essay on the rumba. Still, the introduction
is a valiant attempt to tackle a complicated subject, and, if nothing else, offers an
excellent short history of black identity politics in the region. In the context of the
essays which make up the rest of the two volumes, Whitten and Torres offer a refreshingly
accessible format for work which has long stood on the sidelines of an increasingly
vociferous debate on the identity politics of the African diaspora.
RUSSELL LEIGH SHARMAN
BARBARABENDER, Stonehenge: Making Space, Oxford: Berg 1998. xiv, 254 pp., Bibliography,
Index, Illustrations. £39.99/ £14.99.
Barbara Bender's book on Stonehenge is billed as 'an imaginative exploration of a
place that has fascinated, intrigued and perplexed visitors for centuries'. It is certainly
the case that imagination is to the fore in this volume. Bender teases us through multiple
readings of Stonehenge, of text, of place and histories, using contrasting styles and
voices to challenge the authorities of various explanatory narratives of the past and
present of Stonehenge. She also charts her own disillusion with the more staid elements
of the archaeological academic world and the politics of heritage, and lays open
her own biography centrally to the text. The resulting book is a complex enquiry into
the significance of the place for different people in different times, which simultaneously
challenges our knowledge about what those significances might be or have been.
Read from the viewpoint of an academic, the book has two focal pillars of argument.
The first, in the form of two papers reprinted from Man, concerns a discussion of
theories of landscape (Hoskins, Williams, etc.), and a comparison of various archaeological
theories about the 'origins' and eras of Stonehenge. The second 'pillar' is a
reprint of a chapter from Bender'S edited collection, Landscape: Politics and Perspectives
(1993), which has a more contemporary concern with the current significances
and politics of management of Stonehenge. Elaborating these more academic chapters
is a series of less didactic texts, including an illustrated self-examination, dialogues
and conversations with other authors, and a multi-vocal account of a travelling exhibition
which Bender curated (collaboratively with various campaigners) concerning issues
of the policing of and access to Stonehenge. In addition to her dialogues with
others, the style of the introduction, for example, is also dialogic, as Bender interrogates
herself on her pwn conclusions, debating with herself as to her versions of her
own past(s). However, it is not until towards the end of the book (pp. 153, 166) that
she makes more explicit her reaction to authority in authoring both exhibition and
book, citing Clifford and Spivak as influences on the styles she has chosen. There are

Book Reviews 321
some disconcerting elements, such as a tendency early on in the volume to cherry-pick
ethnographic material (notable in references to the famous Zafnnanary) to support
archaeological theories (a tendency Bender herself criticizes later, at p. 152), and her
confessed contradictions make for occasionally uneasy reading.
The resulting volume is therefore a curious mix of styles and intentions. As a biography
of over a decade of involvement with Stonehenge's appropriators (of various
kinds) and of changing political sensibilities, the book reflects the multi-faceted life of
an academic whQ uses ethnography as a research method. Although it is not altogether
clear whether the combinations of styles she chooses actually 'work' together as a
book, it is easy to see how this reflects the difficulties any of us face in holding together
all our selves from different contexts. As for many ethnographers, does a life
juggled between academia, field site, home, etc., add up to a cohesive whole? How do
we manage the lack of narrative order in our fieldwork? It is more common to translate
the mess of knowledge into narrative forms, but when those forms of knowledge are
competing with each other for legitimacy (and its powerful consequences), and when
the histories we try to incorporate are also in competition, this becomes more difficult.
Latour, for example, uses a fictional form to create a narrative out of conflicting versions
of histories (in Aramis, 1996), others use extended quotations, and so forth. Contemporary
efforts at de-centring ethnography use the technology of the Internet to
create open, dialogic spaces for the creation of new, unfixed texts, challenging the stability
of standard textual representations. A book, however, is more blatantly authored.
Bender includes a suggestion at the end of the volume that readers contact her through
the publisher to add their comments or enter into dialogue with her. This does make a
point about the closure of the printed text, although I fmd it slightly disingenuous to
imply that this makes the book more dialogic, unless she is hoping to reprint it including
the further dialogues (which one can suppose would present quite a problem of
management in itself). However, Bender presents a welcome challenge to didactic authority,
putting into practice some of the debates over authorship of recent years, and
thus presenting a challenge to academic writers, despite the limits to printed texts that
must be acknowledged. Integral to this approach is a desire to engage with 'the field',
rather than to separate it into a discrete time-space-truly a politically and socially
'committed' (and 'interested') approach to social-science research.
This is a book that can be read in many ways. It is mainly a very accessible read,
with 'something for everyone', including surveys of archaeological debates, political
agit-prop, and lashings of illustrations (cartoons, photographs, maps, etc.). At times,
when the writing seems rather to belabour the point about histories being interpretations
(a point most of my students already seem to take for granted), one remembers
that she is writing for audiences who need to see this written, for the sake of their politics
and/or identities: that is, some of the contributions to the book are there for political
reasons (i.e. the authority that the published text carries for its contents). At other
times, the self-exposure of the criticism that some of her interlocutors have for her
work treads a fme line between bravery and arrogance (Le., she has made the criticism
explicit rather than 'correcting' her work to hide its faults), making explicit the construction
of the text itself, and declaring her loyalties, faults, and beliefs.
The sum of the parts becomes a jumble of styles that create an accessible, entertaining,
and thought-provoking read, but which might also appear to be quite a quick

Book Reviews 323
with often no piped water or sanitation. Wages for women were kept deliberately low
and were easily docked for minor infractions of arbitrary rules laid down by supervisors.
A common thread running through these chapters is the notion of women plantation
workers as 'outsiders' forced by adverse personal circumstances to leave their
homes and migrate in search of work. Sometimes the women were accompanied by
family members, as happened in Sri Lanka, but more often they went alone or as single
mothers, as in Fiji. In the case of Indian women migrants, the majority came from the
lower castes and had been driven to indenture by drought or famine, which were widespread
in India in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Recruiting agents spread
stories of a good life overseas, but only the desperate volunteered, and there were
widely believed accounts of the forcible capture of women in some areas.
Recruitment to the tea estates of Sri Lanka differed from that to other areas in that
often whole families indentured together, under the control of a kangani or recruiting
agent. Once on the estates, Kurian shows that the indentured sought to recreate the
social hierarchy of the villages they came from, but with improved status (pp. 78-79).
The conservative ideology of caste-assisted plantation management in keeping women
workers docile and compliant. On the other hand, the absence of caste restrictions, as
occurred among the largely tribal workers on the Assam tea estates, led to a far more
egalitarian work ethic between women and men. Jain notes that in Assam men would
cook and wash clothes if their wives were incapacitated by illness or pregnancy (p.
123), tasks which other Indian males would have vehemently rejected.
African women in Cameroon adopted gendered strategies of infonnal and collective
action to support demands for increased wages on the tea estates or to protest
against male control and exploitation. In so doing, Konings emphasizes that, in a range
of enterprises ana social contexts, African women have 'persistently shown a capacity
to protect their interests individually and collectively' (p. 158), and in this instance
they have managed to do this, despite poverty, illiteracy, and the recent economic crisis
in Cameroon.
Although indenture was not slavery, conditions on many estates in historical times
approximated to it, especially since women had few alternatives to agricultural work if
they were to survive. However, many of the women described in these essays showed
an astonishing ability to challenge or manipulate the male domination which sought to
exercise an all-embracing control over their lives. The fonn which such challenges
took (or failed to take) often stemmed from the social and cultural roles of women in
the societies they originally came from, and from which the plantations were largely
separate.
GINA BUIJS

324 Book Reviews
JULIE TAYLOR, Paper Tangos, Durham and London: Duke University Press 1998. xxi,
124 pp., Illustrations, References. £37.95/ £12.95.
In this book, Julie Taylor chooses the tango to talk about violence. Her experiences of
dancing in Argentina provide the tools for perceiving the subtleties of violence in her
own life, the delicate traces of absolute exclusion and lack of recourse to any legal,
financial or human support. This book is written for non-Argentines and takes the author's
own story as a case-study. Although intrinsically about the tango, it aims to reveal
the diffuse and rarely spectacular nature of violence 'in everyday particularities
and the routine practice of art' (p. 119).
The contradictory and irrational aspects of violence easily escape analytical explanation.
Paper Tangos is a text which attempts instead to perform the techniques of
terror with which it deals. 'The juxtaposition of heterogeneous fragments within a text
with its own contradictions' (p. 119) turns this book into an interpretative piece of art
seeking to convey a reality perceived through the senses. It takes the reader beyond the
tangible and descriptive aspects of the tango, to show how this dance form 'mines certain
experiences ... in the context of certain lives and certain historical moments' (p. 44).
European tango fans, Taylor writes, could import and style themselves with the tanguero's
characteristic hair pomade, but 'they never got the violence quite right' (p. 67).
They had not lived under thejunta's terror.
Paper Tangos includes a flipbook of photographs-when rolling the pages off the
thumb, three dancing couples perform short sequences of tango steps, and a staircase
appears, from the top of which a huge pile of loose paper flutters on to the viewer.
Taylor's tango is inscribed on paper in two ways: first, as a choreography of words in
her own book which aims to transmit the bodily knowledge of the tango; and, secondly,
metaphorically, in the letters of many Argentines written from war, jail, or exile.
Like letters threatened by censorship, 'tangos are coded messages between two
people with the acute awareness that this message may ... be read by a third' (p. 72).
Inherent in the intimacy enacted in the dancers' embrace or in the lines linking senders
and receivers are expectations that this intimacy will be mediated or violated.
Taylor begins by discussing the world-view that she identifies as being inherent in
the tango-an ethos of melancholy. She goes on to present key elements of the tango
world, including dance halls; dress, music, and dance styles; the participants in tango
events; and ways of learning the tango and the criteria applied to identify the qualities
of performers. The tango is presented as a psychic space for contemplation and selfreflection.
'In Argentina, the tango, with its many exclusions and mirrors of exclusions,
can create a space to reflect on power and on terror ... to demonstrate the nobility
of the human spirit by learning to bear suffering and nevertheless dance' (p. 72). Its
steps embody a culturally specific perspective composed of associations, values,
memories, and feelings which are personally developed by each performer. The dancers'
self-assertive facade confrrms Argentine identity, male dominance, and bodily
control. And yet, learning the tango requires recognizing the many layers of elusive
violence in daily life which render each individual basically vulnerable.
In the chapters that follow, Taylor exposes her own vulnerability in a surprisingly
frank and courageous way. She lived through many years of Argentinian military dictatorships
as a research student, university professor, wife and mother. She considers

Book Reviews 325
moments of political terror with reference to the gendered power-play inherent in the
tango and her personal experiences of violence. An irresistible passion for the tango
constantly confronted her with deep-rooted fears. Submission to a dominant dancing
partner stirred up sensations of panic, re-evoking tyrannical figures in her past life.
In the second half of Paper Tangos, three different dimensions of violence are related
to the enactment and experience of exclusion, oppression, and brutality in the
tango dance. First, a sociopolitical perspective considers how the military regimes of
Argentine history ruptured human lives. 'Disorientation in the face of a savage order'
(p. 63) is linked to the disorientation of lost love expressed in tango words and bodies.
Paradoxically, Taylor adds, the dancer's embrace may act to underline both intimacy
and alienation. Male and female steps are co-ordinated but not identical. Motionless
torsos contrast with dancing legs. Partners and limbs are split and yet perform together.
Secondly, gender inequalities in daily life are underlined by the tango's demand
for women to be nothing but their partner's shadow. The female dancer must learn to
enact her own, more implicit authority: she must fol1ow the music and her partner's
interpretation, but is free to add her own steps and figures of embellishment, thereby
influencing the man's lead. She has to master the rules of the cabeceo, the silent invitation
to a dance negotiated between a man and woman. And she must learn how to hand
herself over into her partner's embrace. This requires abandoning herself to her fellow
dancer and, moreover, to her own body.
This fmal requirement confronts the dancer with a third level of violence, perhaps
the most difficult to identify-the violence imposed by thoughts controlling and limiting
the body. The tango, Taylor confirms, presents a means of coming to know by the
senses. Experiences of violence and danger, initially learnt through bodily sensations,
may be re-evoked while dancing. At the same time, dancing may stir up responses contradicting
past conditioning. The author found herself marvelling at a body which did
not seem her own as it bent backwards, breaking a limit fixed in her mind after years
of ballet training. A recognition that our bodies may know more than we consciously
perceive creates an awareness of a potentially changing and unbounded sense of the
human being which may be violated by the interference of rational thought.
The outstanding feature of this book is its poetical capacity to reveal refmed theoretical
insights through highly subjective examples, images, and anecdotes which
convey the lived and experiental dimension of the tango and its world. This quality,
however, is achieved at the expense of ethnographic and historical details which might
counter the occasional reductiveness of the author's sparse and concise script.
Taylor's choice of using her own encounter with Argentina and the tango as the
basis of her own research may be criticized for defying all attempts at objectivity.
Some sections leave the reader disoriented, and many questions which link the tango to
violence remain untackled. Do modifications of the tango over time show parallel
changes in the degree of violence expressed? How did the military authorities perceive
the tango? Was it censored or used for propaganda or resistance? Nevertheless, Taylor's
contribution is a masterpiece in capturing the intangible, providing a sense of
'how the step feels, not what the step is' (p. 107).
KAREN LUTDKE

Book Reviews 327
Despite some occasional attempts to revive it, the Ghost Dance is currently moribund.
Kehoe tells us that hand games continue, but as secular social occasions rather
than the formal ceremonies characteristic of the Ghost Dance period. This study was
an important contribution to the ethnographic record when it was ftrst published and
deserves to be reissued. It is a shame, though, that no one thought to provide a glossary
or index.
R.H.BARNES
DOUGLAS R PARKS, Myths and Traditions of the Arikara Indians, Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press 1996. xi, 405 pp., Maps, Plates, Tables, Concordance,
Bibliography, Index. £38.00/ £13.95.
This book presents an abridgement of volumes 3 and 4 of Parks's Traditional Narratives
of the Arikara Indians (1991). It begins with a revised version of the introduction
fITst published in volume 3. Because this introduction refers to tales as they are numbered
in the original edition, Parks has included a concordance at the end of the book,
relating these numbers to those the stories bear in the present book. The reader will
need to cope with two difficulties. The fITst is that, oddly, the original edition does not
appear in the bibliography. The second is that in the concordance the present edition is
dated 1995, although it now bears the publication date 1996.
The book divides into two sections, Parks's introduction and the selected tales in
English translation. Parks had the good luck, especially, to have been able to work with
Alfred Morsette, Sr, whose fITst language was Arikara and who had a vast knowledge
of Arikara stories, songs, and culture. The bulk of the material derives from Morsette,
who insisted on narrating each story twice, once in Arikara and once in English. Ten
other Arikara provided stories. An indication of how fortunate we are to have been
presented with this collection, research for which started with a chance encounter in
1969, is that nine of the eleven sources died in the 1970s and 1980s.
The introduction begins with cultural and historical overviews and continues with
an account of previous records, a description of how Parks recorded the present stories,
and sketches of the eleven narrators. He then describes Arikara oral typology, the process
of translation and presentation, style, narrative structure, narrative content, and
performance. Arikara distinguish between true stories and tales. Among true stories,
they distinguish holy stories from non-sacred ones. Sacred stories include genesis accounts
or traditions of the sacred bundles, myths, and accounts of legendary events.
Non-sacred true stories provide accounts of historical events. Tales include humorous
trickster Coyote and similar stories, and more serious tales about human beings. The
introduction's analytic contribution lies primarily in its discussion of style, narrative
structure, narrative content, and performance. Parks concludes that the fundamental
purpose of oral traditions 'is to answer the human quest for knowledge about the world
in which people live'.
Parks has grouped the stories by narrator and then arranged them to reflect the basic
Arakara distinction between true stories and ftctional tales. The section on myths

328 Book Reviews
and traditions begins with a prayer, followed by accounts of ancient times, of power
bestowed, of historical events (such as the Custer expedition), and of mysterious incidents.
The section on tales is divided into tales of human actors and of coyote and
others. There is a fmal concluding song. At the end of many stories, Parks lists
comparative references to similar stories among other tribes.
Parks notes that this collection represents the end of the Arikara oral tradition in
the native language. 'The individuals who contributed the stories here belong to the
last generation who grew up speaking Arikara as their fIrst language and were privileged
to hear tribal traditions recounted as they always had been.' Importantly, this
collection is the fIrst to have been recorded in Arikara rather than just in English. The
stories themselves are interesting and are well presented. Parks gives very a helpful
discussion as to how they should be read by people unused to Arikara narrative conventions.
The collection is to be appreciated on three levels: fIrst, because of the intrinsic
ethnographic and narrative interest of the material; secondly, as a valuable record
preserving an aspect of Arikara culture which otherwise would have been lost; and
thirdly, as a contribution to the general study of narratives.
R.H.BARNES
ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS, Pueblo Indian Religion, Volumes I and 11, Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press 1996. 1275 pp., Maps, Plates, Appendix, Bibliography,
Index. £23.95.
This work is an enormously detailed compendium of information about the various
Pueblo peoples of the Southwest of the United States, compiled by the wealthy sociologist,
philanthropist, and feminist Parsons from information collected by herself and
others. Apart from the record of fact and comparison, there is little analytic discussion
in these volumes. The work has, however, had a signifIcant impact on subsequent,
more analytical studies, and is deemed not to have been superseded by any other book.
For most readers, these volumes are most accessible as reference works. Fortunately,
each volume is preceded by an introduction (by Pauline Turner Strong, vol. 1; Ram6n
A. Gutierrez, vol. 2) which situates the work historically and with respect to the many
controversies it has caused. As a feminist, Parsons is said to have been impressed by
the power exercised by women among the Zuni. However, she was confronted with the
fact that Pueblo Indians did not wish to divulge the kind of information that anthropologists
are interested in. Strong attributes to her what amounts to a modernist, rationalist
contempt for the Pueblo need to keep sacred knowledge secret. Parsons made
only brief trips to the various communities, using single, usually paid informants, normally
away from their communities where they could escape observation. Her principal
informant for the Zuni was a Cherokee schoolteacher married to a man who was
governor of the Pueblo from 1912 to 1917.
Her publications led to reprisals against those deemed to have been her informants.
'In the end, Parsons's "secretive method"-which was adopted by her protege
Leslie White and others--exacerbated factionalism in the Pueblos, reinforced their

Book Reviews 329
self-protective secrecy, and increased their suspicion of anthropologists and other outsiders.'
At Acoma a ritual dance was rescheduled so that she could not see it. At Jemez
Pueblo she was confined indoors and her windows covered so that she could not see
the deer dance .. 'For twenty-five years Parsons laboured under the constant surveillance
of "outside chiefs" and their threats to punish anyone who revealed esoteric
knowledge.' However, she always obtained informants. For her pains, she was banished
from Taos Pueblo and threatened with death. In Gutierrez's interpretation, her
crime was less that she divulged ritual secrets (she claimed that all that she published
was common knowledge) than that she unintentionally privileged the positions of her
informants within the long-standing factional disputes. Her claim was that she was
providing a service for which the grandchildren of the then living Pueblo would be
grateful.
Nine chapters are distributed across the two volumes. They cover ceremonial organization,
spirits, cosmic notions, ritual, calendar, ceremonies, a town-by-town review,
variation and borrowing, and other processes of change. As a record, this study
is undoubtedly to be read with caution. However, such was her concern for the integrity
of detail that she wished to record any item, no matter how apparently insignificant,
on the chance that it might prove to be revealing to subsequent scholars.
R.H. BARNES
JULIE CRUIKSHANK, The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon
Territory, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1998. xxv, 211 pp.,
Plates, Maps, Index. £42.75.
In the early 1970s, Julie Cruikshank began to record the life stories of several Native
women elders in Canada's Yukon Territory. From then until 1984, when she moved
south to pursue an academic career, and as she has been able to since then, Cruikshank
worked collaboratively with these women and their families, producing first a series of
accounts for family and community use, and then, in 1990, the co-authored book Life
Lived Like a Story. As well as thinking deeply about the cultural construction of biography
and the intersection of personal and community histories with mythology,
Cruikshank has provided a most useful example for anthropologists at this point in the
discipline's history by producing work which is deeply relevant to its source community
while also being theoretically engaged. Her latest volume, The Social Life of Stories,
brings together a series of essays in the same tradition which are 'about stories
and about how their meanings shift as tellers address different audiences, situations,
and historical contexts' (p. xi). Typically, chapter 1 begins with two quotes, one by
elder Kitty Smith, the other by Michel de Certeau, and part of Cruikshank's gift is that
she manages to use them equally well and to use each to make sense of the other. The
essays are indeed about stories, both traditional stories told in modem contexts (why
and how their meanings shift with new contexts, and how they are used to 'make
meaningful connections and provide order and continuity in a rapidly changing world')

330 Book Reviews
and the stories that outsiders-museum curators, environmental scholars-tell about
Native cultures in the Yukon.
They range from a consideration of the kinds and uses of narrative practice in the
Yukon, to an exploration of the shifting meanings and uses of a particular mythological
story and associated songs by Angela Sidney (in one case, to welcome her son
home from the Second World War), to thoughts on why certain academic appropriations
and decontextualizations of traditional knowledge are both problematic and powerful
opportunities for indigenous peoples, to explications of the social meanings of
oral narratives about'the Klondike gold rush and prophecy narratives, to an examination
of the only partially intersecting oral and textual narratives about the meaning of
some museum artefacts. Of the elders' words, she concludes that oral narrative 'is better
understood as a social activity than as a reified text, that meanings do not inhere in
a story but are created in the everyday situations in which they are told'. This being so,
she is scornful of a recent genre of scholarship known as TEK or traditional environmental
knowledge, which takes titbits of environmental lore out of cultural context in
an attempt to assemble recipes for environmental management; and rather thoughtful
when considering the stories told in museums about artefacts and cultures, and about
the implications of the traditional ethnographic separation of words and things when
collected from indigenous communities.
This book should be of interest to anyone who thinks about the construction of
narrated histories in any form, is interested in the stories told between indigenous
communities and outsiders, wishes a deeply informed and thoughtful consideration of
the meanings of museum artefacts, or wonders about the future of anthropology. My
only regret is that Cruikshank's essay 'Getting the Words Right: Perspectives on Naming
and Places in Athabaskan Oral History' (1990, Arctic Anthropology) was not included,
so that there would be even more to this richly instructive book.
LAURAPEERS
WA ¥NE W ARRY, Unfinished Dreams: Community Healing and the Reality of Aboriginal
Self-Government, Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press 1998.262 pp,
Index. £30.00/ £12.50.
It is easy for academics to talk about 'postcolonial theory' or to refer breezily to the
'postcolonial era'. In fact and on the ground, few of the indigenous communities which
are engaged in the process of building new relationships with nation-states and attempting
to heal the profound damage caused by colonialism can truly speak of
'post-' colonialism: they are still enmired in it. Wayne Warry's book Unfinished
Dreams is an intriguing look at First Nations communities in Canada which are engaging
in these processes of change. While First Nations people speak of selfdetermination
and strive to make it happen, this is neither the same as nor as simple as
the historical shift implied by the term 'post-colonialism'.
Warry originally trained as a New Guinea specialist, but was unable to fmd work
in this field in Canada. He found himself working on contract for First Nations com-

Book Reviews 331
munities and organizations, initially contributing to the design of a substance-abuse
program for Native prison inmates. Through this and other work, he began to recognize
the centrality of Native cultural identity, self-esteem, and self-determination in the
process of community healing and retrained himself to do what he calls 'advocacy
anthropology', which is related to but rather different from applied anthropology.
Warry is one of the foremost of a new breed of anthropologists in North America,
whose work is primarily responsive to the needs of First Nations communities and is
often done on contract for them. From this perspective, as he states, the so-called 'crisis
of representation' in anthropology is an academic nervous fit: a far more important
crisis is anthropology's general failure to address the needs of the people it has studied,
with the consequence now that many communities are beginning to close their doors to
academic scholars.
Unfinished Dreams begins by painting a picture of the social and political realities
in which First Nations people find themselves today, as well as the recent political
history which has made self-determination a possibility for Native people; it is a chapter
that every student going to do fieldwork in Native communities should read. Drawing
on his work for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Warry wrote a major
submission on aboriginal youth suicide for the enquiry), he goes on to describe the
grim physical, mental, economic, and cultural health of Native peoples in Canada today.
He then turns to aspects of community healing, detailing the development of programmes
of health care, mental health and justice which have been implemented in
some communities. Warry concludes with a chapter which underscores the relationship
between individual and community healing, as well as the bureaucratic and cultural
barriers (some of them within Native organizations) which sometimes still prevent this
healing.
What fascinates me about this book is not only the haunting voices and statistics
that Warry quotes, but the descriptions of the manner in which community healing
programmes alter First Nations communities' relationships with Canadian governments.
Self-determination, it emerges, is not something that is negotiated in a boardroom,
though such developments are crucial: more often, it is the process of enabling
communities to heal themselves, and the resulting crop of initiatives from within the
community to improve conditions further, to take control, to take advantage of renewed
life. The detail in this work is fascinating, tracing differences in approaches
among First Nations communities to self-determination; the complex patterns of continuity
and creative adaptation, and the courage of Native people in facing overwhelming
problems that it outlines, are very powerful.
LAURAPEERS

332 Book Reviews
GERALD SULLIV AN, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and Highland Bali: Fieldwork
Photographs of Bayung Gede, 1936-9, Chicago etc.: The University of Chicago Press
1999.213 pp., Plates. £31.50.
It is an unfortunate fact that, however active anthropologists may be in their fieldwork,
they have eyes and, less often, ears enough to record in writing only a proportion of
what goes on. What goes into print is an extract of such notes, dated in time, and biased
by the inevitably limited perceptions of their writers. Those coming afterwards
read such publications with care as part of historical anthropology and tend to dismiss
both the observations and the conclusions as dated by the time the fieldwork is carried
out. Indeed, well-published anthropologists themselves tend to dismiss their own early
work, even though it may have been adequate enough by the standards of the time in
which they were writing.
Except that the camera is pointed and triggered, photographs record all that the
lens sees, without discrimination. The effect of this suddenly dawned on Mead and
Bateson after he had taken three rolls of film of parents and children in 45 minutes.
'We looked at each other, we looked at the notes, and we looked at the pictures which
Gregory had taken. Clearly we had come to a threshold. We then ordered film in bulk
and the means to develop it ourselves, as we had little money.' Photography gradual1y
developed from being a check on what they had observed to being crucial evidence.
Mead herself makes the point that photography should be 'directed primarily at
recording types of non-verbal behaviour where there existed neither vocabulary nor
conceptualized methods of observation in which observations had to precede the codification'.
They were also used to convince others of what they had seen and give them
a 'visceral sense of the order of events' as well as providing clues for the ideas which
they were formulating much later. The downside was that as the quantity of photographs
increased, so the notes accompanying them became shorter and shorter.
What Mead and Bateson demonstrated so convincingly was that photographs are
static, wide-ranging evidence which will show much more than was physically seen at
the time and can be used later for further research for matters that the original photographers
were not even considering. Whatever may now be the anthropological reputations
of Mead and Bateson, the author's analysis of their working methods and the
increasing importance to them of photography makes salutory reading, particularly the
photograph of them ,typing out their field notes. In an archive of 28,000 still photographs,
there must still be much to be mined. Those published here are a delight and
stimulus to ponder over.
R. E. S. TANNER

JASO 30/3 (1999): 333-334
Mm, VERED (ed.), Realizing Community: Concepts,
Social Relationships and Sentiments, London
and New York: Routledge 2002. X, 173 pp.
References, Index. No price given.
ANDERSON, DAVID G., and KAzUNOBU lKEYA
(eds.), Parks, Property, and Power: Managing
Hunting Practice and Identity within State Policy
Regimes (Senri Ethnological Series no. 59), Osaka:
National Museum of Ethnology 2001. i, 200 pp.
Illustrations, References. No price given.
ARGYROU, V ASSOS, Anthropology and the Will to
Meaning: A Postcolonial Critique, London: Pluto
Press 2002. v, 129 pp. References, Index.
£50.00/£15.00.
Cambridge Anthropology, VoL 22, no. 3 (2000-
2001).
Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 22, no. 2 (June
2002).
Fox, RICHARD G., and BARBARA 1. KING (eds.),
Anthropology Beyond Culture, Oxford and New
York: Berg 2002. xix, 314 pp. References, Illustrations,
Index. £42.99/£14.99.
HElNTZE, BEATRIX, Afrikonische Pioniere:
Tragerkorawanen im westlichen Zentralafriko,
Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck 2002. 319 pp. Bibliography,
Illustrations, Index. € 25IFr44,60.
HERRING, GEORGE, What was the Oxford Movement?,
London and New York: Continuum 2002.
xi, 146 pp. Index. No price given.
BOFFMAN, SUSAN M, and ANTHONY OLIVER-SMITH
(eds.), Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology
of Disaster, Oxford: James Currey 2002. xii, 312
pp. References, Illustrations, Index. £45.00/£16.95.
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
lNHORN, MARcIA c., and FRANK VAN BALEN (eds.),
Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on
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Index. £37.95/£15.95.
JAMES, WENDY, DONALD L. DONHAM, EISEI Kuru­
MOTO, and ALESSANDRO TruuLZI (eds.), Remapping
Ethiopia: Socialism and After (Eastern African
Studies), Oxford: James Currey 2002. xi, 306
pp. Bibliography, Illustrations, Index.
£40.00/£14.95.
KORTI, LAsZLO, Youth and the State in Hungary:
Capitalism, Communism and Class, London: Pluto
Press 2002. xiii, 296 pp. References, Illustrations,
Index. £50.00/£16.99.
LEM, WlNNIE, and BELINDA LEACH (eds.), Culture,
Economy, Power: Anthropology as Critique, Anthropology
as Praxis, Albany: State University of
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Index. $81.501$27.95.
McNIGHT, DAVID, From Hunting to Drinking: The
Devastating Effects of Alcohol on an Australian
Aboriginal Community, London and New York:
Routledge 2002. xii, 239 pp. Bibliography, Illustrations,
Index. No price given.
MOORE, HENruETTA L., and TODD SANDERS (eds.),
Magical Interpretations, Material Realities: Modernity,
Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial
Africa, London and New York: Routledge 2001.
xiii, 253 pp. Bibliography, Illustrations, Index. No
price given.
MoRPHY, F., and W. SANDERS (eds.), The Indigenous
Welfare Economy and the CDEP Scheme,
Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy
Research 2001. xv, 248 pp. References, Index.
Aus$25.00.

334 Publications Received
NAKAMAKI, HIROCffiKA (ed.), The Culture of Association
and Associations in Contemporary Japanese
Society (Semi Ethnological Series no. 62),
Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology 2002. i,
178 pp. References. No price given.
Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, Vol. 48
(2002).
PRICE, SALLY, Primitive Art in Civilized Places
(2nd ed. with a new afterword), Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press 2001. xi, 157 pp.
References, Illustrations. $16.00/£10.50.
RAPPORT, NIGEL (00.), British Subjects: An Anthropology
of Britain, Oxford: Berg 2002. xii, 340
pp. Bibliography, Illustrations, Index.
£42.99/£14.99.
SEKINE, Y ASUMASA, Anthropology of Untouchability:
"Impurity" and "Pollution" in a South
Indian Society (Semi Ethnological Series no.
61), Os aka: National Museum of Ethnology
2002. xxxvii, 385 pp. Illustrations (some colour),
References, Index. No price given.
STEWART, HENRY, ALAN BARNARD, and KEIIcm
OMURA, Self- and Other-Images of Hunter Gatherers
(Semi Ethnological Series no. 60), Osaka:
National Museum of Ethnology 2002. iv, 216 pp.
Illustrations, References. No price given.

336 Index to Vol . .x:x.:¥ (1999)
SEGAL, ROBERT A.
Durkheim in Britain: The Work ofRadcliffe-Brown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131-162
THOMAS, KATHLEEN
Post-Modem Pilgrimage: A Quaker Ritual. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21-34
BOOK REVIEWS
BANERJEE, MUKULIKA, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in
the North-West Frontier
Reviewed by Steven Lyon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192-194
BENDER, BARBARA, Stonehenge: Making Space
Reviewed by Simone Abram. ......... ................. ...... 320-322
BLAIR, EMMA HELEN, The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley
And Region of the Great Lakes
Reviewed by R. H. Barnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86-87
BoYD, ROBERT, The Coming of the Spirit of Pestilence: Introduced
Infectious Diseases and Population Decline among Northwest Coast
Indians 1774-1874
Reviewed by R. E. S. Tanner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207-208
CAPLAN, PAT, African Voices, African Lives: Personal Narrativesfrom a
Swahili Village
Reviewed by Richard Yokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85-86
CARRIER, J AMES (ed.), Meanings of the Market
Reviewed by Daniel Miller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73-75
CRUIKSHANK, JULIE, The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge
in the Yukon Territory
Reviewed by Laura Peers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329-330
DESJARLAIS, ROBERT,'Shelter Blues: Sanity and SeljhoodAmong the
Homeless
Reviewed by Damian Waiter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202-204
FEEST, CHRISTIAN (ed.), Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary collection
of Essays
Reviewed by R. H. Barnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197-198
GELL, ALFRED, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory
Reviewed by Russell Leigh Sharman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317-318
HAMMERLE, JOHANNES MARIA, Nias - eine eigene Welt: Sagen, My then
Oberliejerungen
Reviewed by R. H. Barnes . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196-197
HANSEN, THOMAS BWM, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu
Nationalism in Modern India
Reviewed by Robert Parkin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194-196

Index to Vo!. XXX (1999) 337
HILL, JONATHAN D. (ed.), History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the
Americas, 1492-1992
Reviewed by R. H. Barnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87-88
IMRAN, IRNA, and TIM SMITH, Home from Home: British Pakistanis in
Mirpur
Reviewed by Alison Shaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78-80
JAIN, SHOBHITA, and RHODA REDDOCK (eds.), Women Plantation Workers:
International Experiences
Reviewed by Gina Buijs. . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322-323
KAPFERER, BRUCE, The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness
and Power
Reviewed by Graham Dwyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . 77-78
KOI-lN, TAMARA, and ROSEMARY MCKECHNIE (eds.), Extending the
Boundaries of Care: Medical Ethics and Caring Practices
Reviewed by Helen Sweet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205-207
LESSER, ALEXANDER, The Pawnee Ghost Dance Hand Game
Reviewed by R. H. Barnes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326-327
MILLER, DANIEL, Capitalism: An Ethnographic Approach
Reviewed by Jennifer Patico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75-77
O'CONNOR, BONNIE, Healing Traditions: Alternative Medicine and the
Health Professions
Reviewed by Jonathan Skinner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80-82
PARKS, DOUGLAS R., Myths and Traditions of the Arikara Indians
Reviewed by R. H. Barnes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327-328
PARSONS, ELSIE CLEWS, Pueblo Indian Religion, Volumes I and II
Reviewed byR. H. Barnes. . .. . . . . . . .. ... ... .. •. .... . . . . .. . 328-329
PSTRUSINSKA, JADWIGA, Old Celtic Cultures from the Hindu Kush
Perspective
Reviewed byN. J. Allen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200-201
SEGAL, ROBERT A., Theorizing about Myth
Reviewed byN. J. AlIen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . 198-200
SULLIVAN, GERALD, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and Highland
BaU: Fieldwork Photographs ofBayungGede, 1936-9
Reviewed by R. E. S. Tanner. . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
SUTTON, DAVID Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance o/the Past in
Everyday Life
Reviewed by Penelope Papailias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82-84
TAYLOR, JULIE, Paper Tangos
Reviewed by Karen Lutdke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 324-325
V AN ESTERIK, PENNY, Materializing Thailand
Reviewed by Heather Montgomery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191-192

338 Index to Vol. XXX (1999)
W ARRY, W A YNE, Unfinished Dreams: Community Healing and the Reality
of Aboriginal Self-Government
Reviewed by Laura Peers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330-331
WHITTEN, NORMAN E., and ARLENE TORRES (eds.), Blackness in Latin
America and the Caribbean, Volumes I and II
Reviewed by Russell Leigh Sharman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318-320
OTHER NOTES AND NOTICES
Obituary: Abner Cohen (1921-2001)
by Marcus Banks....... . ............... ............. ...... 95-96
Oxford Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Abstracts of Theses in Social and Cultural Anthropology for which
Doctorates were Awarded by the University of Oxford in 1998 . . . . . . . 182-190