abenaki a-beh-NAH-kee

Abkhaman ab-KAHZ-ee-en
Aborigine AB-uh-RIJ-uh-nee
PRONUNCIATION Afar AH-far
Algonquian al-GONG-keww-en (variation of Algonkian)
GUIDE Amish AH-mish
Apache uh-PACH-ee
Arapesh AHR-uh-pesh
Arunta ah-RUNT-uh
Ashanti un-SHAHN-tee
Awlad Ali Bedouin Ah-lad AH-lee BED-oo-in or BED-uh-win
Aymara EYE-mah-RAH
Azande eh-ZAHN-dee
Aztec AZ-TEK

Badga beh-DAH-guh
Bakhtiari bok-tee-AHR-ee
Balinese BAH-luh-NEF.Z
Basuto buh-SOOD-oh
Balue BAH-oo-LAY
Bedouin BED-oo-in or BED-uh-win
Bellacoola BEL-uh-KOO-luh
Bushmen
Bosnians

Canary Islanders
Caribou KEH-ruh-BOO
Caribbean KEH-ruh-BEE-en o r kuh-RIB-ee-en
Cayuga kay-YOO-guh or kee-YOO-guh
Chechens CHEN-enz
Chenchu CHEN-choo
Cherokee CHER-ruh-KEE
Cheyenne shy-AN
Chippewa CHIP-uh-WAH
Cinta-Larga Sin-tuh LAHR-guh
Comanche kuh-MAN-chee
Cree kree
Croats kroe
Crow kroh

Dahomey duh-HOH-mee
Dobuan DOH-boo-en

Egba EG-buh
Enga EN-guh
Eskimo ES-kuh-MOH

Fon Fahn

Gros Ventre groh vahnt

Guro GOO-roh
Gusii GOO-see

Had za HAHD-zuh
Hawaiian huh-WAH-yen
Hopi HOH-PEE
Hutu HOO-too

Ibibio i-BIB-ee-oh
Ibo EE-boh
Igbo IG-boh (variation of Ibo)
Inuit IN-oo-it
Iroquoian EAR-uh-KWOY-en
Iroquois EAR-uh-KWOY

Ju/’hoansi zhutwasi

Kapauku Papuan kuh-POW-koo PAP-oo-en

Kayapo KAH-yuh-POH or KEE-uh-POH
Kota KOHD-uh
Kpelle kuh-PEL-uh
"The / refers to a click, made by IKung kung*
pressing the tip of the tongue against Kurumba kuh-ROOM-buh
the roof of the mouth and then
quickly drawing it away. (continued on inside back cover)
 Kwakiutl KWAH-kee-YOO-dl

Maliseet MAHL-uh-SEET
PRONUNCIATION Mande MAHN-DAY
Marquesan mahr-KAY-zen
GUIDE Maya MAH-yuh or MY-yiiJi
Mbuti em-BOO-tee
Melanesians mel-uh-NEE-shun
Melemchi MEL-EM-CHEE
Mende MEND-ee
M i’kmaq MIK-MAK
Minangkabau MIN-ANG-KA-BOW
Mongo MUHN-GOH
Mono MOH-NOH
Montagnais MAHN-tuhn-YAY
Mundugumor men-DOO-guh-mor
Mundurucu MOON-doo-roo-KOO

Nandi NAHN-dee
Naskapi nahs-KAH-pee
Navajo NAV-uh-HOH o r NAHV-uh-HOH
Nayar NIGH-er
Nuer NOO-er

Ojibwa oh-JIB-WAH
Omaha OH-muh-HAH
Oneida oh-NIGH-duh
Onondaga On-en-DAH-guh

Paiutes PIE-YOOT
Papuan PAP-yoo-en
Penobscot puh-NOB-scot
Pequot PEE-KWOT
Porno POH-MOH

Saami SAM-ee
Samoan suh-MOH-en
Scots
Seneca SEN-i-kuh
Serbs
Sherente sheh-REHN-nee
Shoshone shoh-SHOH nee
Shuar shooAH R
Sioux soo
Skolt Lapp skolt lap
Somali
Swazi SWAHZ-ee

Taiwanese TIF.-WAH-NEEZ
Tchambuli cham-BOO-lee
Tegrean TAY-gree-en
Tewa TAY-wuh o r TEE-wuh
Tibetan ti-BET-en
Tiriki TEER-ICK-EE
TIingit TLING-it
Toda TOH-duh
Tory TOR-ee
Trobriand TROH-bree-END
Tesembaga tsem-BAH-guh
Truk truk
Turkana ter-KAHN-uh
Tutsi TOOT-si

Ute yoot

Wape WAH-PAY

Yahgan YAH-gen
Yako YAH-KOH
Yanomami YAHN-oh-MAH-mee
Yaqui YAH-kee
Yorbua YOR-uh-buh

Zapotec ZAH-puh-TEK
Zuni ZOO-nyee nr ZOO-nee
 WILLIAM A . HAVI LAND
UNIVERSITY OF V E R M O N T

NINTH EDITION

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 ABOUT
THE
AUTHOR Dr. William A. Haviland is professor of
anthropology at the University of Vermont,
where he has taught since 1965. He holds a
doctorate degree in anthropology from the
University of Pennsylvania and has pub­
lished widely on archaeological, ethnological,
and physical anthropological research car­
ried out in Guatemala, Maine, and Vermont.
Dr. Plaviland is a member of many profes­
sional societies, including the American
Anthropological Association and the Ameri­
can Association for the Advancement of
Science. In 1988, he participated in the
project on “Gender and the Anthropology
Curriculum,” sponsored by the American
Anthropological Association.

One of Dr, Havhand’s greatest loves is

teaching, which originally prompted him to
write Cultural Anthropology. He says he
learns something new every year from his
students about what they need out of their
first college course in anthropology. In
addition to writing Cultural Anthropology,
Dr. Haviland has authored several other
popular Harcourt Brace works for anthro­
pology students.
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 PREFACE
PURPOSE OF THE BOOK
Cultural Anthropology is designed for introductory
anthropology courses at the college level. The text
deals primarily with cultural anthropology, present­
ing the key concepts and terminology of that branch
of the discipline, but also brings in related material
on physical anthropology and linguistics. Thorough,
current, accurate, and scholarly in its coverage, the
book is nonetheless simply written and attractively
designed to appeal to students. Thus, they will find
that it pleases as it teaches.
Most cultural anthropology instructors have two
goals for their introductory classes: to provide an
overview of principles and processes of cultural an­
thropology, and to plant a seed of cultural awareness
in their students that will continue to grow and to
challenge ethnocentrism long past the end of the se­
mester.
All nine editions of Cultural A nthropology have
tried to support and further these goals. The major­
ity of our students come to class intrigued with an­
thropology but with little more than a vague sense
of the discipline. The first and most obvious aim of
the text, therefore, is to give students a comprehen­
sive introduction to cultural anthropology. Because
the text draws from the research and ideas of a num­
ber of schools of anthropological thought, the text
exposes students to a mix of such approaches as
evolutionism, historical particularism, diffusionism,
functionalism, French structuralism, structural func­
tionalism, and others. This inclusiveness reflects my
conviction that different approaches all have impor­
tant things to say about human behavior. To restrict
oneself to one approach, at the expense of the oth­
ers, is to cut oneself off from significant insights.
If most students have little substantive concept
of cultural anthropology, they often have less clear
— and potentially more destructive — views of the
primacy of their own culture and its place in the
world. A secondary goal of the text, then, is to per­
suade our students to understand the true complex­
ity and breadth of human behavior and the human
condition. Debates in North America and Europe re­
garding the “naturalness” of the nuclear family, the
place of nonstandard English dialects in public edu­
cation, and the fixedness of gender roles all greatly
benefit from the perspectives gained through cultural
anthropology. This questioning aspect of cultural an­
thropology is perhaps the most relevant gift we can
pass on to our students. Indeed, “debunking” is close
to the spirit of cultural anthropology, and question­
ing the superiority of North America and Europe is
something anthropologists have always been good at.
Cultural Anthropology is, in this sense, a tool to en­
able your students to think both in and out of con­
text.
ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
A U n i f y i n g T he me
I have often found in my own teaching that intro­
ductory students lack a sense of the bigger picture in
their studies of human behavior. The best solution
seems to be the use of a theme that allows students
to contextualize each chapter and part introduction,
regardless of the order in which they are read. Ac­
cordingly, each chapter has been developed as a self-
contained unit of study that may be used in any se­
quence by the instructor.
In earlier editions of this book, I referred to this
common theme as one of environmental adaptation,
although I was never very happy with that phrase.
Its principal defect is its implication of fairly straight­
forward behavioral responses to stimuli. Of course,
people do not react to an environment as a given;
rather, they react to an environment as they perceive
it, and different groups of people may perceive the
same environment in radically different ways. People
also react to things other than the environment: their
own biological natures, for one, and their beliefs, at­
titudes, and the consequences of their behavior, for
others. All of these factors present them with prob­
lems, and people maintain cultures to deal with prob­
lems or matters that concern them. To be sure, their
cultures must produce behavior that is generally
adaptive, or at least not maladaptive, but this is not
the same as saying that cultural practices necessarily
arise because they are adaptive in a particular envi­
ronment.
M a n y M e s s a g e s , M any M e d i a
For most of the discipline’s history, anthropologists
have relied upon print resources to share information,
especially the very linear genre of ethnography, occa­
sionally supplemented with photographs and, in fewer
V
vi PREFACE
cases, film and analog recordings. The ethnography in
particular reflects our discipline’s roots in the Western
approach to scholarly work.
However, many of the people anthropologists
have studied and worked with have different “lit­
eracies” that they draw upon. Indeed, cultural an­
thropologists work with numerous guises of human
behavior, ranging from music to oral narrative, rit­
ual dance, weaving, and spray-paint grafitti. An­
thropology is arguably among the most naturally
“multimedia” of all studies.
The ninth edition of Cultural A nthropology rec­
ognizes both the level of comfort with nonprint me­
dia of our students as well as the many potential
paths to exploring the techniques, processes, and
findings of cultural anthropology. The art program,
discussed in more detail below, is an important part
of the text’s narrative. The accompanying videos (dis­
cussed with the rest of the supplements) show cul­
ture in motion and bring action and life into the cir­
cle of ideas. The Web Links, signified by a marginal
icon (also discussed in more detail below) build skills
for analysis and research, move the content of the
text from standard linear textbook formats, and pro­
vide a media database of print and numerous kinds
of nonprint resources. PowerPoint slides and over­
head transparencies (both located on the web site)
bring the ideas and art of the text into the classroom.
And of course the suggested readings and bibliogra­
phy continue to show the rich library of anthropo­
logical texts students can draw upon.
The ninth edition thus allows instructors to draw
upon a broad set of instructional tools to expand
their classrooms. Anthropology has been an archive
of human behavior, and it is important that the dis­
cipline show the richness and diversity of humanity
through the appropriate media.
A 4ft .v. * >■ .i«- ^ ft 4 i. ¿ft .'ft 44 4ft
SPECIAL FEATURES
OF THE BOOK
R eadability
The purpose of a textbook is to transmit and regis­
ter ideas and information, to induce the readers to see
old things in new ways, and then to ask readers to
think about what they see. A book may be the most
elegantly written, most handsomely designed, most
lavishly illutrated text available on the subject, but if
it is not interesting, clear, and comprehensible to the
student, it is valueless as a teaching tool. The trick is
not just to present facts and concepts; the trick is to
make them m em orable.
The readability of the text is enhanced by the
writing style. The book is designed to present even
the most difficult concepts in prose that is clear,
straightforward, and easy for today’s first- and sec­
ond-year students to understand, without feeling that
they are being “spoken down to.” Where technical
terms are necessary, they appear in bold-faced type,
are carefully defined in the text, and defined again
in the running glossary in simple, clear language.
T he S e l e c t i o n of C r o s s -
C ultural E x a m p l e s
Because much learning is based on analogy, numer­
ous and engaging examples have been utilized to il­
lustrate, emphasize, and clarify anthropological con­
cepts. Cross-cultural perspectives infuse the text,
comparing cultural practices in a great variety of so­
cieties, often including the student’s own. But these
examples have been chosen with the knowledge that
while students should be aware that anthropology has
important statements to make about the student’s own
culture and society, the emphasis in introductory cul­
tural anthropology should be on non-Western soci­
eties and cultures for illustrative purposes. Why?
It is a fact of life that North Americans share the
same planet with great numbers of people who are
not only not North American but are non-Western
as well. Moreover, North Americans constitute a mi­
nority, for they account for far less than one-quarter
of the world’s population. Yet traditional school cur­
ricula in North America emphasize their own sur­
roundings and backgrounds, saying little about the
rest of the world. In its March 8, 1976, issue (p. 32),
the Chronicle o f Higher Education documented an
increasing tendency toward cultural insularity and
ethnocentrism in North American higher education.
That the problem persists is clear from a report made
public in 1989 by the National Governors’ Associa­
tion, which warned that the economic well-being of
the United States is in jeopardy because so many of
its citizens are ignorant of the languages and cultures
of other nations. More than ever, college students
need to acquire knowledge about the rest of the
world and its peoples. Such a background gives them
the global perspective they need to better understand
their own culture and society and their place in to­
day’s world. Anthropology, of all disciplines, has a
long-standing commitment to combating ethnocen­
trism, which gives instructors a unique obligation to
provide this perspective.

M ap s, P hotographs, and
O t her I l l u s tr a t i o n s
In this text, numerous four-color photos have been
used to make important anthropological points by
catching the students’ eyes and minds. Many are un­
usual in the sense that they are not “standard” an­
thropological textbook photographs; each has been
chosen because it complements the text in some dis­
tinctive way. And many photographs are shown in
groups to contrast and compare their messages. In the
ninth edition, for instance, Chapter 16 has two pho­
tos that compare colonial and modern violence
against indigenous people in Guatemala. The success
of these photographs can be measured in the number
of comments I have received from students and other
instructors over the years about the vividness of par­
ticular selections.
In addition, the line drawings, maps, charts, and
tables were selected especially for their usefulness in
illustrating, emphasizing, or clarifying certain anthro­
pological concepts and have also proven to be valu­
able and memorable teaching aids.
Maps in particular have proven to be a popular
aid through each edition of Cultural Anthropology,
and the ninth edition builds on this success. Ap­
proximately 70 percent of the marginal locator maps
are new or have been revised. And we have returned
to one feature initially utilized in the first edition:
placing a world map (a Robinson projection) on the
interior of the front cover that shows where all of
the cultures mentioned in the text are located.
O riginal Studies
A special feature of this text is the Original Study
that appears in each chapter. These studies consist of
selections from case studies and other original works
by women and men who have done, or are doing,
important anthropology work. Each study, integrated
within the flow of the text, sheds additional light on
an important anthropological concept or subject area
found in the chapter. Their content is not “extrane­
ous” or supplemental. The Original Studies bring
specific concepts to life through specific examples.
And a number of Original Studies also demonstate
the anthropological tradition of the case study, albeit
in abbreviated form.
The idea behind the Original Studies is to coor­
dinate the two halves of the human brain, which have
different functions. While the left (dominant) hemi­
sphere is “logical” and processes verbal inputs in a
linear manner, the right hemisphere is “creative” and
PREFACE vii
less impressed with linear logic. Psychologist James
V. McConnell has described it as “an analog com­
puter of sorts— a kind of intellectual monitor that
not only handles abstractions, but also organizes and
stores material in terms of Gestalts [that] include the
emotional relevance of the experience.” Logical
thinking, as well as creative problem solving, occurs
when the two sides of the brain cooperate. The im­
plication for textbook writers is obvious: To be truly
effective, they must reach both sides of the brain. The
Original Studies help to do this by conveying some
“feel” for humans and their behavior and how an­
thropologists actually study them. For example, in
Chapter 5 ’s Original Study, an excerpt from The
Blessed Curse by R. K. Williamson, students hear the
author describe growing up as an “intersexed” per­
son and the reaction she receives from her Euro-
American-identified parents and her Cherokee grand­
mother. Her state of existence “between” genders is
considered alternately as a blessing and a curse. As
with other Original Studies, the striking nature of her
experiences drives the discussion of a host of issues
deeply relevant to students and anthropology.
G e n d e r C o ve r a g e
Unlike many introductory texts, the ninth edition of
Cultural A nthropology integrates rather than sepa­
rates gender coverage. This approach gives the ninth
edition a very large amount of gender-related mate­
rial: the equivalent of three full chapters for the ninth
edition. This much content far exceeds the single
chapter most introductory textbooks contain.
Why is the gender-related material integrated?
Cultural anthropology is itself an integrative disci­
pline; concepts and issues surrounding gender are al­
most always too complicated to remove from their
context. Moreover, spreading this material through
all of the chapters emphasizes how considerations of
gender enter into virtually everything people do.
Much of the new content for the ninth edition
(listed below) relates to gender in some way. These
changes generally fall into at least one of three cate­
gories: changes in thinking about gender within the
discipline, examples that have important ramifica­
tions on gender in a particular society or culture, and
cross-cultural implications about gender and gender
relations. Examples of new material range from an
expanded definition of marriage and additional ma­
terial on homosexual identity to current thinking on
the role of Hadza women in food provisioning and
recent news in regard to female genital mutilation.
Through a steady drumbeat of such coverage, the
Vili PREFACE
ninth edition avoids a thunderous crash of relegating
“gender” to a single chapter that is preceded and fol­
lowed by silence.
P reviews and S ummaries
An old and effective pedagogical technique is repeti­
tion: “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, tell ’em,
and then tell ’em what you’ve told ’em.” To do this,
each chapter begins with preview questions that set
up a framework for studying the contents of the
chapter. At the end of the chapter is a summary con­
taining the kernels of the more important ideas pre­
sented in the chapter. The summaries provide handy
reviews for students without being so long and de­
tailed as to seduce students into thinking they can
get by without reading the chapter itself.
W eb L i nk s
The Internet has proven to be an increasingly im­
portant means of communication and will no doubt
continue to grow in relevance and complexity. The
ninth edition draws upon the World Wide Web both
as an instructional tool and as a new set of exam­
ples of culture and cultural change. Every chapter
contains several marginal icons called Web Links,
which refer the student and instructor to additional
content on the marked subject located on the text’s
associated web site, called the Harcourt Brace An­
thropology Exchange (http://www.harbrace.com/an-
thro/). This content ranges from Internet research ac­
tivities to updated annotated links to quizzing
materials for each chapter. Extensive resources for
students and instructors are located at the site (see
Supplements below for more information).
P oints for Consideration
Much of the instruction in introductory cultural an­
thropology classes is geared to stimulate and provoke
how students think about human behavior. And tra­
ditionally instructors try to challenge students to dis­
cuss and consider the issues and implications of each
chapter. Points for Consideration, which are new to
the ninth edition, are discussion questions that have
been added to the end of each chapter. These ques­
tions have been designed to further this technique by
igniting discussion and stretching students inside and
outside of the classroom.
S uggested R ea di ngs an d B ibliography
Each chapter also includes a list of suggested read­
ings that will supply the inquisitive student with fur­
ther information about specific anthropological
points that may be of interest. The books suggested
are oriented toward the general reader and toward
the interested student who wishes to explore further
the more technical aspects of the subject. In addition,
the bibliography at the end of the book contains a
listing of more than 500 books, monographs, and ar­
ticles from scholarly journals and popular magazines
on virtually every topic covered in the text that a stu­
dent might wish to investigate further.
G lossary
The running glossary is designed to catch the stu­
dents’ eyes as they read, reinforcing the meaning of
each newly introduced term. It is also useful for chap­
ter review, as the student may readily isolate those
terms introduced in others. The glossary defines each
term in clear, understandable language. As a result,
less class time is required going over terms, leaving
instructors free to pursue matters of greater impor­
tance.
L ength
Careful consideration has been given to the length of
this book. On the one hand, it had to be of sufficient
length to avoid superficiality or misrepresentation of
the discipline by ignoring or otherwise slighting some
important aspect of cultural anthropology. On the
other hand, it could not be so long as to present more
matieral than can be reasonably dealt with in the
space of a single semester, or to be prohibitively ex­
pensive. Although the text is 20 to 25 percent shorter
than typical introductory texts in the sister disciplines
of economics, psychology, and sociology, it is of suf­
ficient length to provide a substantively sound
overview of a field that has no less to offer than do
these other fields.
THE NINTH EDITION
Every chapter in the ninth edition has been thor­
oughly updated, considered, and fine tuned. Major
changes for the ninth edition include:
CHAPTER I Expanded material on objectivity and
falsification in science, the replication of results in an­
thropology, the methodology of cross-cultural com­
parison and use of tools such as the Human Relations
Area File (HRAF), a new discussion of informants,
and cross-cultural differences in infant sleeping

arrangements and the implication of these differences
for child development.
CHAPTER 2 New material on culture and race.
CHAPTER 3New material on spears used by
H om o erectus in Europe, the Neandertal flute,
and major simplification of the discussion of
Australopithecus.
CHAPTER 4 Information on multilingualism in
general and the Ebonics controversary in particular.
CHAPTER 5 Expanded material on homosexual
identity.
CHAPTER 6 A revised section on horticulture and
a new discussion of the anthropological “myth” of
patrilocality among food foragers (also in Chapter 1).
CHAPTER 7 New material on the role of Hadza
women in child provisioning and an expanded dis­
cussion of child labor in the modern global economy.
CHAPTER 8 A revised definition of marriage, es­
pecially same-sex marriage, and new material on
polyandry.
CHAPTER 9 A revised discussion of residence pat­
terns, with new material on structural problems of
polyandrous families.
CHAPTER 10 An expanded discussion of phra-
tries and moieties.
CHAPTER II A revised section on common-
interest associations and new material on linguistic
markers of class, as well as information on issues sur­
rounding slavery, race, and class in the United States.
CHAPTER 12 New material on the distinction be­
tween social and cultural control, as well as an ex­
panded discussion on the recent trends in the United
States toward negotiation and mediation versus legal
action and the implications of these trends for the
distribution of justice.
CHAPTER 13 A revised discussion of science and re­
ligion, additional information on female genital mu­
tilation, and new material on revitalization move­
ments and the millennium.
CHAPTER 14 A completely revised section on
ethnomusicology.
CHAPTER 15 New material on resistance to
change, the buying and selling of brides in modern
China, and indigenous rights in Brazil.
CHAPTER 16 Expanded material on global cor­
porations, revised discussions of population and con­
PREFACE IX
sequences of reduced growth, and new material on
global warming and the Asian financial crisis.
In addition, six of the sixteen Original Studies are
new to the ninth edition:
Chapter 3 The Intellectual Abilities of Orang­
utans, by H. Lynn White Miles (1993)
Chapter 4 The Great Ebonics Controversy,
by Monoghan, Hinton, and Kephart (1997)
Chapter 5 The Blessed Curse, by R. K.
Williamson (1995)
Chapter 8 Arranging Marriage in India, by
Serena Nanda (1992)
Chapter IS Violence on Indian Day in Brazil,
by Robin M. Wright (1997)
Chapter 16 Standardizing the Body: The
Question of Choice, by Laura Nader (1997)
Moreover, four Anthropology Applied boxes
have been added. These include Anthropology and
the World of Business, with a section by Susan
Squires (Chapter 7), Anthropology and AIDS, writ­
ten specifically for this edition by anthropologist
A. M. Williams (Chapter 8), Federal Recognition
for Native Americans, written specifically for this
edition by anthropologist Harald E. L. Prins (Chap­
ter 10), and Dispute Resolution and the Anthropol­
ogist (Chapter 12).
Four Bio Boxes are new to the ninth edition as
well. Chapter 1 now contains brief biographies of
Frank Hamilton Cushing and Matilda Coxe Steven­
son; Franz Boas, Frederick Ward Putnam, and John
Wesley Powell; and George Peter Murdock. And Chap­
ter 14 includes a Bio Box on Frederica de Laguna.
SUPPLEMENTS TO THE TEXT
In keeping with the ninth edition’s recognition that
the use of many messages requires many media, the
selection of ancillaries accompanying Cultural An­
thropology should meet most instructor’s needs.
P rint S uppl ements
A separate Study Guide is provided to aid compre­
hension of the textbook material. Each chapter
X PREFACE
begins with concise learning objectives, then offers
chapter exercises, review questions, and a glossary
review to help students achieve these objectives. This
supplement also includes hints on reading anthro­
pology texts and studying for tests.
An Instructor’s M anual offers teaching objec­
tives and lecture and class activity suggestions that
correspond to each chapter of the textbook. An ex­
tensive Test Bank, available in both printed and com­
puterized forms, offers more than 1,200 multiple
choice and true/false questions.
Transparency masters and PowerPoint slides will
be available for viewing and downloading on the
Haviland section of the web site.
V i de o S u p p l e m e n t s
There are several videos available to accompany the
text. Millennium: Tribal W isdom and the M odern
World, hosted by anthropologist David Maybury-
Lewis, presents a thoughtful exploration of cultures
across the world. Many issues are covered, including
indigenous rights, definitions of gender and gender
roles, and the construction of the self. Instructors can
choose from ten 60-minute programs.
In addition, Faces o f Culture, prepared by Coast
Telecourses in Fountain Valley, California, through
the Coast Community College District, has been an
important part of Cultural A nthropology since 1983.
Most of the twenty-six half-hour programs focus on
key anthropological concepts, while several episodes
are devoted to presenting rich ethnographic detail on
specific cultures. These videos are available for stand­
alone use or in the context of a telecourse. A Tele­
course Study Guide is also available.
O nline S upp lem en ts
Perhaps the most striking addition to the many sup­
plements options for the ninth edition is the Har-
court Brace Anthropology Exchange, the web site for
Cultural A nthropology located at http://www.har-
brace.com/anthro/. Features of the Anthropology Ex­
change include:
A nthropology in the News. The section pro­
vides current news articles related to all fields
of anthropology, updated weekly by David
Carlson of Texas A&M University.
Quizzing and Testing. Student self-assessment
supplies reinforcement on important concepts.
Testing tools allow the results to be forwarded
to instructors.
Online Case Study Resources. This area of the
Anthropology Exchange supports Harcourt’s
well-known case studies series and provides
additional information on concepts and re­
search covered in the text.
A nthropology in Action. Focused on indige­
nous rights, applied anthropology, and human
rights issues, this area contains a resource
database and bulletin board and acts as a fo­
rum for current news and events.
Media D atabase. The media database has a
substantial body of references — documen­
taries, popular films, ethnographic films,
URLs, Listserv addresses, CD-ROMs, and
books and journals — that provide additional
resources for the student and instructor,
arranged by topic.
D ow nloadable Supplements. Instructors can
download many of the printed ancillaries,
as well as the overhead transparencies and
PowerPoint slide shows.
Professional Contacts Area. As a career center,
students are able to read about and find pro­
fessional opportunities in anthropology and re­
lated fields. Universities and corporations can
post relevant jobs. There is also a bulletin
board for field schools.
CD-ROM S u p p l e m e n t s
The Yqnomamo Interactive: The Ax Fight CD-ROM
has set an award-winning standard in the use of non­
print media in the cultural anthropology classroom.
The CD-ROM begins with complete digital Quick­
Time footage of Chagnon and Asch’s classic ethno­
graphic film The Ax Fight used by numerous in­
structors. And as a digital film, the viewer can fast
forward, reverse, and skip around at will. More­
over, the film itself is extensively supplemented with
transcripts, supporting maps, genealogical tables,
photos, up-to-date biographies of individuals shown
in the film, post-film still photos, and important his­
torical and contemporary analyses of the film and its
events. Even individuals important to the events in
the film but not included in the actual footage are
included in the resource material.
How would the Yqnomamo Interactive CD-
ROM assist in the introductory classroom? Like
many of the best case studies, Yqnomamo Interac­
tive contains layers of meaning, interrelating such
factors as kinship and kinship charts, the role of the

ethnographer, and violence and conflict. But the dig­
ital nature of the medium provides a new way of
exploring these relationships. All of the data on
Ygnomamo Interactive is cross-referenced and hy-
perlinked, allowing the student or instructor to cre­
ate wholly original texts and analyses of the film
and its corrollary parts. For instance, an explana­
tion of the kinship dynamics underlying the conflict
between two men can move from the genealogical
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people assisted in the preparation of this book,
some of them directly, some of them indirectly. In the
latter category are all of the anthropologists under
whom I was privileged to study at the University of
Pennsylvania: Robbins Burling, William R. Coe, Car-
leton S. Coon, Robert Ehrich, Loren Eisley, J. Louis
Giddings, Ward H. Goodenough, A. Irving Hallow-
ell, Alfred V. Kidder II, Wilton M. Krogman, Froelich
Rainey, Ruben Reina, and Linton Satterthwaite. They
may not always recognize the final product, but they
all contributed to it in important ways.
A similar debt is owed to all those anthropolo­
gists with whom I have worked or discussed research
interests and the field in general. There are too many
of them to list here, but surely they have had an im­
portant impact on my own thinking and so on this
book. Finally, the influence of all those who assisted
in the preparation of the first eight editions must
linger on in this new one. They are all listed in the
prefaces to the earlier editions, and the ninth edition
benefits from their past influence.
The ninth edition owes a special debt to sev­
eral contributing writers. Anthropologist Harald E.
L. Prins wrote an Original Study on Federal Recog­
nition for Native Americans specifically for this edi­
tion about his work for the Aroostook Band of the
M i’kmaqs. And anthropologist A. M. Williams also
wrote an original Original Study on Anthropology
and AIDS based on her work in San Francisco. I
am grateful for their expertise, skill, and willing­
ness to share their work. Wallace Haviland, my son
and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Penn­
sylvania, deserves much thanks for his expertise
and depth in his rewrite of Chapter 14, as well as
his assistance with the Points for Consideration.
Anthropologist David Carlson of Texas A& M Uni­
versity and David Houston, who was a student of
mine at the University of Vermont, have supplied
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
chart to the biography of each individual and then
to a listing of each of the men’s “scenes” in the film.
The viewer could then go directly to all of these
scenes to watch these men in action. And unlike a
traditional case study, such nonlinear paths through
the CD-ROM mean that the event in the film— and
the film itself— are open to interpretations that
would be difficult or impossible to achieve in a
nondigital medium.
a great deal of time, originality, and effort for the
Web Links and the book’s other World Wide Web
resources.
This revision also benefits from my continued
association with valued colleagues at the University
of Vermont: Robert Gordon, William E. Mitchell,
Carroll M. P. Lewin, Sarah Mahler, Stephen L. Past-
ner, James Peterson, Marjory Power, Peter A.
Thomas, and A. Peter Woolfson. All have responded
graciously at one time or another to my requests for
sources and advice in their various fields of exper­
tise. We all share freely our successes and failures in
trying to teach anthropology to introductory stu­
dents.
In 1984, I was given the opportunity to partici­
pate in an open discussion between textbook authors
and users at the American Anthropological Assoca-
tion’s Annual Meeting (a session organized and
chaired by Walter Packard and the Council on An­
thropology and Education). From this I got a good
grounding in what instructors at institutions ranging
from community colleges to major universities were
looking for in anthropology texts; subsequent in­
sights have come from a special symposium on the
teaching of anthropology at the University of Ver­
mont in 1986 (organized by A. Peter Woolfson), a
meeting of textbook authors with members of the
Gender and the Anthropology Curriculum Project at
the American Anthropological Association’s Annual
Meeting in 1988, and (most recently) a special ses­
sion on Central Themes in the Teaching of Anthro­
pology at the American Anthropological Associa­
tion’s Annual Meeting in 1990 (organized by Richard
Furlow). To the organizers and sponsors of all these
events, my sincere thanks.
Most recently, I was asked to prepare “Cleans­
ing Young Minds, or What Should We Be Doing in
Introductory Anthropology?” for The Teaching o f
x ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A nthropology: Problem s, Issues, and D ecisions.
This essay is a good summary of why I teach in­
troductory cultural anthropology classes and how
I approach my students. And these ideas are also
very important to understanding how this textbook
is put together. I appreciate the editors of this vol­
ume inviting me to participate on this project.
Thanks are also due the anthropologists who
made suggestions for this edition. They include:
Henry H. Bagish, Santa Barbara City College; Janet
E. Benson, Kansas State University; Janis Binam,
Riverside Community College; James G. Chadney,
University of Northern Iowa; Rebecca Cramer,
Johnson County Community College; James Hamill,
Miami University; Timothy J. Kloberdanz, North
Dakota State University; Susan Lees, Hunter
College, CUNY; James L. Merryman, Wilkes Uni­
versity; Malvin Miranda, University of Nevada, Las
Vegas; C. Roger Nance, University of Alabama,
Birmingham; Steven Reif, Kilgore College; Bruce D.
Roberts, University of Southern Mississippi; Anne C.
Woodrick, University of Northern Iowa.
All of their comments were carefully considered;
how I have responded to them has been determined
by my own perspective of anthropology, as well as
my thirty-six years of experience with undergradu­
ate students. Therefore, neither they nor any of the
other anthropologists mentioned here should be held
responsible for any shortcomings in this book.
I also wish to acknowledge my debt to a num­
ber of nonanthropologists who helped me with this
book. The influence of David Boynton, winner of the
1985 Distinguished Service Award of the American
Anthropological Association and my editor at Holt,
Rinehart and Winston until his retirement in 1983,
I am sure lingers on. Helpful in seeing this edition
through to publication have been my editors Brenda
Weeks and John H. Matthews, as well as Bryan
Leake, Brenda’s assistant. I also wish to thank the
skilled editorial, design, and production team: Elaine
Richards, project editor; Sue Hart, designer; and
Andrea Johnson, production manager.
The greatest debt of all is owed my wife, Anita
de Laguna Haviland, who has had to put up with
my preoccupation with this revision, reminding me
when it is time to feed the livestock or play midwife
to a sheep in the barn. As if that were not enough,
it was she who fed revised text into the word proces­
sor. Finally, she has been a source of endless good
things to include and ways to express things. The
book has benefited enormously from her involve­
ment.
William A. Haviland
May 1998
 CONTENTS
Preface v Characteristics of Culture 36
Culture Is S hared 36
Putting the World in Perspective xx
A n thropology A p p lied : New Houses
PART I for Apache Indians 38
A nthropology and the Study of
C ulture 2 Culture Is L earn ed 42
Culture Is B ased on Sym bols 43
Introduction 3 Culture Is In tegrated 44
Leslie A. White 44
CHAPTER I A. R. Radcliffe-Brown 45
T he Nature of A nthropology 4 Studying Culture in the Lield 46
Bronislaw Malinowski 47
Chapter Preview 5
The Development of Anthropology 6 O rig in al Study: The Im portance of
Frank Hamilton Cushing, Matilda Coxe Trobriand W o m e n 48
Stevenson 7
Culture and Adaptation 50
Anthropology and the Other Sciences 8
Functions o f Culture 51
The Discipline of Anthropology 8
Culture an d C hange 52
Physical A n thropology 8
Culture, Society, and the Individual 53
A n thropology A p p lied : Forensic Evaluation of Culture 53
Anthropology 9
Chapter Su m m ary 56
Cultural A nthropology 10 Points for Consideration 57
A rchaeology 12 Suggested Readings 57
Linguistic A nthropology 14
Ethnology 14 CHAPTER 3
T he B eginnings of Human Culture 58
O riginal Study: Two Tales From the
Trukese Taproom 16 Chapter Preview 59
Humans and the Other Primates 60
Anthropology and Science 22 E volution T hrough A daptation 60
George Peter Murdock 23 A n atom ical A daptation 61
D ifficulties o f the Scientific A pproach 24 Primate Dentition 61
Franz Boas, Fredric Ward Putnam, Sense Organs 62
John Wesley Powell 25 The Primate Brain 63
Anthropology and the Humanities 29 The Primate Skeleton 63
Questions of Ethics 30 A daptation T hrough B ehavior 64
Anthropology and Contemporary Life 31 Chimpanzee Behavior 65
Chapter Sum m ary 32 Jane Goodall 66
Points for Consideration 33 O rig in al Study: The Intellectual
Suggested Readings 33 Abilities of O rangutans 69
Human Ancestors 73
CHAPTER 2
T he First H om inines 74
T he Nature of Culture 34
Homo habilis 77
Chapter Preview 35 Tools, M eat, and Brains 78
The Concept of Culture 36 Homo erectus 81
XIV CONTENTS

H o m o sapien s 84 CHAPTER 5
Archaic Homo sapiens 84 Growing Up H uman 124
A natom ically M odern P eop les an d
Chapter Preview 125
the U pper P aleolith ic 86
The Self and the Behavioral Environment 126
A n throp olog y A p p lied : Stone Tools T he S elf 126
for M o d e m Surgeons 88 T he B eh av ioral E nvironm ent 129
The Penobscot 130
Chapter Su m m a ry 90
Points for Consideration 91 O rigin al Study: The Blessed Curse 132
Suggested Readings 91
Personality 136
T he D evelopm en t o f Personality 136
Dependence Training 138
P A R T II Margaret Mead 139
C ulture and S urvival: Independence Training 141
C ommunicating , R aising Combined Dependence/
C hildren , and S taying A live 92 Independence Training 142
Group Personality 142
Introduction 93
M od al Personality 143
CHAPTER 4 N ation al C haracter 145
Language and Communication 94 Ruth Fulton Benedict 145
The Japanese 146
Chapter Preview 95 Objections to National Character
The Nature of Language 97 Studies 146
T he Sound an d Shape o f L an gu age 98 Normal and Abnormal Personality 148
Phonology 99
Morphology 100 A n thropology A p p lied : Anthropologists
Grammar and Syntax 100 and Mental Health 150
The Gesture-Call System 101
Kinesics 102 Chapter Su m m ary 154
Paralanguage 105 Points for Consideration 155
Voice Qualities 105 Suggested Readings 155
Vocalizations 106
Linguistic Change 106
CHAPTER 6
A n th rop olog y A p p lied : Language
Patterns of S ubsistence 156
Renewal A m o n g the Northern U te 109
Chapter Preview 157
Language In Its Cultural Setting 110
Adaptation 158
L an gu age a n d T h ou ght 111
T he Unit o f A daptation 160
Kinship Terms 113
Evolutionary A daptation 161
L an gu age an d G en d er 114
Culture A reas 163
S ocial D ialects 114
Julian H. Steward 165
O rigin al Study: The G reat Ebonics Culture C ore 165
Controversy 115 The Food-Foraging Way of
Life 166
The Origins of Language 118
Characteristics o f the F ood -
Chapter Su m m a ry 121 Foraging L ife 169
Points for Consideration 122 T he Im p act o f F o o d Foraging on
Suggested Readings 123 H um an Society 170
 C ontents XV

Subsistence and Gender 170 Anthropology Applied: Anthropology

Food Sharing 172 and the W o rld of Business 220
Cultural Adaptations and Material
Chapter Su m m ary 222
Technology 172
Points for Consideration 223
Egalitarian Society 173
Suggested Readings 223
Food-Producing Society 174
T he Settled L ife o f Farm ers 174
P A R T III
Original Study: Gardens of the T he Formation of G roups : S olving the
Mekranoti Kayapo 176 P roblem of C ooperation 224
Pastoralism : T he B akh tiari 180 Introduction 225
Intensive Agriculture an d
N onindustrial Cities 183 CHAPTER 8
Anthropology Applied: Agricultural S ex and M arriage 226
Development and the Anthropologist 184 Chapter Preview 227
Aztec City Life 185 Control of Sexual Relations 229
Nonindustrial Cities in the Modern Anthropology Applied: Anthropology
World 188 and A ID S 230
Chapter Sum m ary 189 Rules o f Sexual A ccess 232
Points for Consideration 190 T he In cest T a b o o 235
Suggested Readings 190 E n dogam y an d E xog am y 237
Claude Lévi-Strauss 238
CHAPTER 7 T he D istinction B etw een M arriage
Economic Systems 192 an d M ating 238
M arriage an d the Fam ily 239
Chapter Preview 193
Forms of Marriage 240
Economic Anthropology 194
T he L evirate an d the S ororate 242
Resources 196
Serial M on ogam y 242
Patterns o f L a b o r 196
C h oice o f Spouse 243
Sexual Division of Labor 196
Age Division of Labor 199 Original Study: A rranging Marriage
Cooperation 2 00 in India 244
Craft Specialization 201
Cousin M arriage 249
C ontrol o f L a n d 201
M arriage E xchan ges 250
Technology 2 02
Sam e-Sex M arriage 252
Leveling M echanism s 203
Divorce 253
Distribution and Exchange 204
R eciprocity 204 Chapter Su m m ary 255
Barter and Trade 207 Points for Consideration 256
T he Kula Ring 208 Suggested Readings 256
R edistribution 209
D istribution o f W ealth 211 CHAPTER 9
Family and Household 258
Original Study: Prestige Econom ics
in Papua N ew Guinea 212 Chapter Preview 259
Family and Society 262
M arket E xchan ge 215
Economics, Culture, and the World of Original Study: The Ephemeral
Business 219 Modern Family 262
XVI Contents

Functions of the Family 265 Kinship Terminology and Kinship

N urturance o f C hildren 266 Groups 306
E co n o m ic C oop eration 266 E skim o System 307
Family and Household 268 H aw aiian System 308
Form of the Family 269 Iroq u ois System 308
T he N u clear Fam ily 269 C row System 309
T he E x ten d ed Fam ily 271 Lewis Henry Morgan 309
R esiden ce Patterns 272 O m aha System 311
Problems of Family and Household Sudanese or D escriptive System 311
Organization 276
Chapter Su m m ary 312
P olygam ou s Fam ilies 276
Points for Consideration 313
E x ten d ed Fam ilies 277
Suggested Readings 313
N u clear Fam ilies 278

Anthropology Applied: Dealing W ith CHAPTER 11

Infant M ortality 279 Grouping by Sex , A ge, Common I nterest,
and Cuss 314
F em ale-H ead ed H ou seh old s 281
Chapter Preview 315
Chapter Su m m a ry 284 Grouping by Gender 316
Points for Consideration 285 Age Grouping 318
Suggested Readingss 285 Institutions o f A ge G rouping 319
Age G rouping in A frican Societies 320
CHAPTER 10 Common-Interest Associations 321
K inship and D escent 286 Kinds o f Common-Interest Associations 322
Chapter Preview 287 M en’s and Women’s Associations 322
Descent Groups 288 Social Stratification 324
U nilineal D escen t 289 Anthropology Applied: Anthropologists
Patrilineal Descent and Organization 290 and Social Im pact Assessm ent 325
T raditional C hina: A Patrilineal
S ociety 290 Class an d Caste 326
M obility 330
Original Study: Coping as a W o m a n G en der Stratification 331
in a M an’s W o rld 2 92 D evelopm en t o f Stratification 332
Matrilineal Descent andOrganization 294 Original Study: Genocide in Rwanda 334
The H opi: A M atrilineal S ociety 295
D o u b le D escen t 291 Chapter Su m m ary 337
A m bilin eal D escen t 291 Points for Consideration 338
Ambilineal Descent Among New York Suggested Readings 338
City Jews 297
Forms and Functions of Descent P A R T IV
Groups 299
T he S earch for O rder : S olving
L in eag e 300
the P roblem of D isorder 340
Clan 300
Introduction 341
Anthropology Applied: Federal
Recognition for Native Am ericans 301 CHAPTER 12
P olitical O rganization and the M aintenance
Phratries an d M oieties 303
of O rder 342
B ilateral D escen t a n d the K in dred 303
E volu tion o f the D escen t G rou p 305 Chapter Preview 343
 C ontents XVII

Kinds of Political Systems 344 Priests and Priestesses 391

U ncentralized P olitical Systems 344 Shamans 391
Band Organization 344
Original Study: Healing A m o n g the
Tribal Organization 346
Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari 393
Kinship Organization 349
Age-Grade Organization 350 Rituals an d C erem onies 395
Association Organization 351 Rites of Passage 395
C entralized P olitical Systems 351 Rites of Intensification 397
Chiefdoms 352 Religion, Magic, and W itchcraft 398
State Systems 353 W itchcraft 400
Political L ead ersh ip an d G en der 356 Ibibio W itchcraft 401
Political Organization and the T he Functions o f W itchcraft 402
Maintenance of Order 358 Psychological Functions of Witchcraft
Internalized C ontrols 358 Among the Navajo 402
E xternalized C ontrols 359
Anthropology Applied: Reconciling
Original Study: Lim its on Power in Modern Medicine W ith Traditional
Bedouin Society 361 Beliefs in Swaziland 403

Social Control Through Law 364 The Functions of Religion 404

D efinition o f L aw 364 Religion and Cultural Change 406
Functions o f L a w 365 R evitalization M ovem ents 40 7
Crime 367
Chapter Su m m ary 409
Anthropology Applied: Dispute Points for Consideration 411
Resolution and the Anthropologist 368 Suggested Readings 411

Political Organization and External

CHAPTER 14
Affairs 370
T he A rts 412
War 370
Political Systems and the Question Chapter Preview 413
of Legitimacy 373 The Anthropological Study of Art 416
Religion and Politics 375
Anthropology Applied: Protecting
Chapter Sum m ary 375 Cultural Heritages 41 7
Points for Consideration 377
Verbal Arts 418
Suggested Readings 378
M yth 419
L eg en d 421
CHAPTER 13
Tale 423
R eligion and the S upernatural 380
O ther Verbal Arts 424
Chapter Preview 381 The Art of Music 426
The Anthropological Approach to Frederica de Laguna 426
Religion 384 Functions o f M usic 429
The Practice of Religion 385 Pictorial Art 431
Supernatural Beings an d P ow ers 386 Southern A frican R o ck A rt 432
Gods and Goddesses 386
Original Study: Bushm an Rock A r t
Ancestral Spirits 387
and Political Power 43 7
Animism 388
Sir Edward B. Tylor 389 Chapter Su m m ary 440
Animitism 390 Points for Consideration 440
Religious Specialists 391 Suggested Readings 441
XVIII C ontents

PART V Points for Consideration 478

C hange and the Future : S olving Suggested Readings 478
the P roblem of A djusting to
CHAPTER 16
C hanged C onditions 442 A nthropology and the Future 480
Introduction 443
Chapter Preview 481
The Cultural Future of Humanity 482
CHAPTER 15 O ne-W orld Culture 483
Cultural Change 444 T he R ise o f the M ultinational
C orporation s 485
Chapter Preview 445
Mechanisms of Change 447 Original Study: Standardizing the
In n ovation 447 Body: The Question of Choice 488
D iffu sion 451
Cultural L o ss 453 O ne-W orld Culture: A G o o d Id ea
Forcible Change 454 o r N o t? 492
A cculturation 454 E thnic R esurgence 492
G en ocid e 456 Cultural Pluralism 494
D irected C hange 458 G uatem alan Cultural Pluralism 494
E thnocentrism 498
Anthropology Applied: Grow ing
Trees in Haiti 459 Anthropology Applied:
Advocacy for the Rights of
Franz Boas 460
Indigenous Peoples 499
Reactions to Forcible Change 461
R evitalization M ovem ents 462 G lo b a l A rpartheid 500
Rebellion and Revolution 464 Problems of Structural Violence 502
Modernization 467 W orld H unger 502
S kolt L ap p s an d the S n ow m obile Pollution 504
R evolu tion 468 P opulation C on trol 508
T he Shuar Solution 4 70 T he Culture o f D iscontent 510
Original Study: Violence on Indian Chapter Su m m ary 511
Day in Brazil 1997 471 Points for Consideration 512
M odern ization an d th e “U n d erd ev elop ed ” Suggested Readings 512
W orld 475
Bibliography B -l
M odern ization : M ust It A lw ays
Index 1-1
B e P ain fu ll 4 76
Photo Permissions P-1
Chapter Su m m a ry 477 Literary Credits L -l
T o M y A n t h r o p o l o g ic a l K in :

F r a n k H a m il t o n C u s h in g
F r e d e r i c a d e La g u n a
 P u t t i n g t h e W o r l d in P e r s p e c t i v e
Although all humans that we know about are ca­
pable of producing accurate sketches o f localities
and regions with which they are familiar, CAR­
TO G RA PH Y (the craft of mapmaking as we know
it today) had its beginnings in 13th century Eu­
rope, and its subsequent development is related to
the expansion of Europeans to all parts of the
globe. From the beginning, there have been two
problems with maps: the technical one of how to
depict on a two-dimensional, flat surface a three-
dimensional spherical object, and the cultural one
of whose worldview they reflect. In fact, the two
issues are inseparable, for the particular projection
one uses inevitably makes a statement about how
one views one’s own people and their place in the
world. Indeed, maps often shape our perception of
reality as much as they reflect it.
In cartography, a PRO JEC TIO N refers to the
system of intersecting lines (of longitude and lati­
tude) by which part or all of the globe is repre­
sented on a flat surface. There are more than 100
different projections in use today, ranging from po­
lar perspectives to interrupted “butterflies” to rec­
tangles to heart shapes. Each projection causes dis­
tortion in size, shape, or distance in some way or
another. A map that shows the shape of land
masses correctly will o f necessity misrepresent the
size. A map that is accurate along the equator will
be deceptive at the poles.
Perhaps no projection has had more influence
on the way we see the world than that of Ger-
hardus Mercator, who devised his map in 1569 as
a navigational aid for mariners. So well suited was
M ercator’s map for this purpose that it continues
to be used for navigational charts today. At the
same time, the M ercator projection became a stan­
dard for depicting land masses, something for
which it was never intended. Although an accu­
rate navigational tool, the M ercator projection
greatly exaggerates the size of land masses in
higher latitudes, giving about two-thirds of the
map’s surface to the northern hemisphere. Thus,
the lands occupied by Europeans and European
descendants appear far larger than those of other
people. For example, North America (19 million
square kilometers) appears almost twice the size
of Africa (30 million square kilometers), while Eu­
rope is shown as equal in size to South America,
which actually has nearly twice the land mass of
Europe.
A map developed in 1805 by Karl B. Moll-
weide was one of the earlier equal-area projections
of the world. Equal-area projections portray land
masses in correct relative size, but, as a result, dis­
tort the shape o f continents more than other pro­
jections. They most often compress and warp
lands in the higher latitudes and vertically stretch
land masses close to the equator. Other equal-area
projections include the Lambert Cylindrical Equal-
Area Projection (1772), the Hammer Equal-Area
Projection (1892), and the Eckert Equal-Area Pro­
jection (1906).
The Van der Grinten Projection (1904) was a
compromise aimed at minimizing both the distor­
tions of size in the M ercator and the distortion of
shape in equal-area maps such as the Mollweide.
Allthough an improvement, the lands of the north­
ern hemisphere are still emphasized at the expense
of the southern. For example, in the Van der Grin-
ten, the Commonwealth of Independent States (the
former Soviet Union) and Canada are shown at
more than twice their relative size.
The Robinson Projection, which was adopted
by the National Geographic Society in 1988 to re­
place the Van der Grinten, is one of the best com­
promises to date between the distortion of size
and shape. Although an improvement over the
Van der Grinten, the Robinson projection still de­
picts lands in the northern latitudes as propor­
tionally larger at the same time that it depicts
lands in the lower latitudes (representing most
third-world nations) as proportionally smaller.
Like European maps before it, the Robinson pro­
jection places Europe at the center of the map with
 Putting the W orld in Perspective XXI

the Atlantic Ocean and the Americas to the left,

emphasizing the cultural connection between Eu­
rope and North America, while neglecting the ge­ &
ographical closeness of northwestern North
America to northeast Asia.
The following pages show four maps that each
W
J'
convey quite different “cultural messages.” In­
cluded among them is the Peters Projection, an
equal-area map that has been adopted as the offi­ MERCATOR i
cial map of UNESCO (the United Nations Educa­
tional, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), and
a map made in Japan, showing us how the world
looks from the other side.
TH E RO BIN SO N PRO JEC TIO N The map above is based on the Robinson Projection, which is used
today by the National Geographic Society and Rand McNally. Although the Robinson Projection distorts
the relative size of land masses, it does so to a much lesser degree than most other projections. Still, it
 1

places Europe at the center of the map. This particular view of the world has been used to identify the
location of many of the cultures discussed in this text.
TH E PETERS PRO JECTIO N The map above is based on the Peters Projection, which has been adopted
as the official map o f UNESCO. While it distorts the shape of continents (countries near the equator are
vertically elongated by a ratio of two to one), the Peters Projection does show all continents according to
their correct relative size. Though Europe is still at the center, it is not shown as larger and more exten­
sive than the third world.
JAPANESE MAP N ot all maps place Europe at the center of the world, as this Japanese map illustrates.
Besides reflecting the importance the Japanese attach to themselves in the world, this map has the virtue
of showing the geographic proximity of North America to Asia, a fact easily overlooked when maps place
Europe at their center.
TH E TURNABO UT MAP The way maps may reflect (and influence) our thinking is exemplified by the
“Turnabout M ap,” which places the South Pole at the top and the North Pole at the bottom. Words and
phrases such as “on top,” “over,” and “above” tend to be equated by some people with superiority.
Turning things upside down may cause us to rethink the way North Americans regard themselves in rela­
tion to the people of Central America. © 1982 by Jesse Levine Turnabout Map™ — Dist. by Laguna Sales, Inc., 7040
Via Valverde, San Jose, CA 95135
I

¡í

L
 P A R T
I
A nthropology and the Study
of C ulture
CltApfe»' 1
T he N ature of A nthropology
C ltApfe*- 2L
T he N ature of C ulture
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T he B eginnings of H uman C ulture
 Ihffodwcfioh
Anthropology is the most liberating of alt the sciences.
N ot only has it exposed the fallacies of racial and cul­
tural superiority, but also its devotion to the study of all
peoples, regardless of where and when they lived, has
cast more light on human nature than all the reflections
of sages or the studies of laboratory scientists. If this
sounds like the assertion of an overly enthusiastic an­
thropologist, it is not; it was said as long ago as 1941 by
the philosopher Grace de Laguna in a presidential ad­
dress to the Eastern Division of the American Philo­
sophical Association.
The subject matter of anthropology is vast, as we
shall see in the first three chapters of this book: It in­
cludes everything that has to do with human beings, past
and present. O f course, many other disciplines are con­
cerned in one way or another with human beings. Some,
such as anatomy and physiology, study humans as bio­
logical organisms.The social sciences are concerned with
the distinctive forms of human relationships, while the
humanities examine the great achievements of human
culture. Anthropologists are interested in all of these as­
pects, too, but they try to deal with them all together,
in all places and times. It is this unique, broad perspec­
tive that equips anthropologists so well to deal with that
elusive thing called human nature.
Needless to say, no single anthropologist is able to
investigate personally everything that has to do with peo­
ple. For practical purposes, the discipline is divided into
various subfields, and individual anthropologists special­
ize in one or more of these. Whatever their specializa­
tion, though, they retain a commitment to a broader,
overall perspective on humankind. For example, cultural
anthropologists specialize in the study of human behav­
ior, while physical anthropologists specialize in the study
of humans as biological organisms.Yet neither can afford
to ignore the work of the other, for human behavior and
biology are inextricably intertwined, with each affecting
the other in important ways. W e can see, for example,
how biology affects a cultural practice such as color­
naming behavior. Human populations differ in the den­
sity of pigmentation within the eye itself, which in turn
affects people's ability to distinguish the color blue from
green, black, or both. Consequently, a number of cultures
identify blue with green, black, or both. W e can see also
how a cultural practice may affect human biology, as ex­
emplified by abnormal forms of hemoglobin, the sub­
stance that transports oxygen in the blood. In certain
parts of Africa and Asia, when humans took up the prac­
tice of farming, they altered the ecology in a way that,
by chance, created ideal conditions for the breeding of
mosquitoes. As a result, malaria became a serious prob­
lem (mosquitoes carry the malarial parasite), and a bio­
logical response to this was the spread of certain genes
that, in those people living in malarial areas who inherit
the gene from one parent, produced a built-in resistance
to the disease. Although those who inherit the gene from
both parents contract a potentially lethal anemia, such
as sickle-cell anemia, those without the gene are apt to
succumb to malaria (we will return to this topic in Part
II).
To introduce the study of cultural anthropology, we
will look closely at the nature of the discipline. In Chap­
ter I we will see how the field of anthropology is sub­
divided, how the subdivisions relate to one another, and
how they relate to the other sciences and humanities.
Following this, we will turn our attention to the core
concept of anthropology, culture. Chapter 2 will discuss
the nature of culture and its significance for human in­
dividuals and societies. W e will conclude this part of the
textbook with a chapter that looks at how human cul­
ture originated and gained primacy over biological
change as the human mechanism for solving the prob­
lems of existence. W e will see, also, how cultural evolu­
tion has its roots in biological evolution and how it has
played a significant role in making humans the kind of
beings they are today.With these topics covered, we will
have set the stage for a detailed look at the subject mat­
ter of cultural anthropology.
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1, What Is Anthropology?
Anthropology, the study o f humankind everywhere, throughout time, seeks to produce reliable
knowledge about people and their behavior, both about what makes them different and what
they all share in common.

2, Wha* Do Anthropologists Do?

Physical anthropologists study humans as biological organisms, tracing the evolutionary devel­
opment of the human animal and looking at biological variations within the species, past and
present. Cultural anthropologists are concerned with human cultures, o r the ways o f life in so­
cieties. W ithin the field o f cultural anthropology are archaeologists, who seek to explain human
behavior by studying material objects, usually from past cultures; linguists, who study languages,
by which cultures are maintained and passed on to succeeding generations; and ethnologists,
who study cultures as they have been observed, experienced, and discussed with persons whose
culture they seek to understand.

3, How Do Anthropologists Do What They Do?

Anthropologists, in common with other scientists, are concerned with the formulation and test­
ing o f hypotheses, o r tentative explanations o f observed phenomena. In so doing, they hope to
develop reliable theories— explanations supported by bodies o f data— although they recognize
that no theory is ever completely beyond challenge. In order to frame hypotheses that are as
objective and free of cultural bias as possible, anthropologists typically develop them through a
kind of total immersion in the field, becoming so familiar with the minute details o f the situa­
tion that they can begin to recognize patterns inherent in the data. It is also through fieldwork
that anthropologists test existing hypotheses.

5
6 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
or as long as they have been on earth, peo­
F ple have needed answers to questions about
who they are, where they came from, and
why they act as they do. Throughout most of their
history, though, people relied on myth and folk­
lore for their answers to these questions, rather
than the systematic testing of data obtained
through careful observation. Anthropology, over
the past 2 00 years, has emerged as a scientific ap­
proach to answering these questions. Simply
stated, anthropology is the study of humankind in
all places and throughout time. The anthropolo­
gist is concerned primarily with a single species—
H o m o sap ien s— the human species, its ancestors,
and its near relatives. Because anthropologists are
members of the species they study, it is difficult
for them to maintain a scientific detachment to ­
ward those they study. This, of course, is part of
a larger problem in science. As one of the leading
U.S. scientists puts it:
Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we
can only view her through a glass darkly—and
many clouds upon our vision are of our own mak­
ing: social and cultural biases, psychological pref­
erences, and mental limitations (in universal modes
of thought, not just human stupidity).
The human contribution to this equation of
difficulty becomes ever greater as the subject under
investigation comes closer to the heart of our prac­
tical and philosophical concerns.1
Since nothing comes closer to the heart of our
practical and philosophical concerns than our­
selves and others of our kind, can we ever hope
to gain truly objective knowledge about peoples’
behavior? Anthropologists worry about this a
great deal but have found that by maintaining a
critical awareness of their assumptions, and con­
stantly testing their conclusions against new
sources of data, they can achieve a useful under­
standing of human behavior. By scientifically ap­
proaching how people live, anthropologists have
'Gould, S. J. (1996). Full house: The spread o f excellence
from Plato to Darwin (p. 8). New York: Harmony Books.
A n th ro po lo g y. The study of humankind in all times and places.
Culture
learned a great deal both about human differences
and about the many things all humans have in
common beneath all these differences.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
Although works of anthropological significance
have a considerable antiquity— two examples are
the accounts o f other peoples by Herodotus the
Greek and by the Arab Ibn Khaldun, written in
the 5th century b .c . and 14th century a .d ., re­
spectively— anthropology as a distinct field of in­
quiry is a relatively recent product of Western
civilization. In the United States, for example, the
first course in general anthropology to carry credit
in a college or university (the University of
Rochester) was not offered until 1879. If people
always have been concerned about themselves and
others and their origins, why then did it take such
a long time for a systematic discipline of anthro­
pology to appear?
The answer to this is as complex as human
history. In part, it relates to the limits of human
technology. Throughout most of history, people
have been restricted in their geographical horizons.
Without the means for one to travel to distant
parts of the world, observation of cultures and
peoples far from one’s own area was a difficult—
if not impossible— venture. Extensive travel was
usually the exclusive prerogative of a few; the
study of foreign peoples and cultures was not
likely to flourish until adequate modes of trans­
portation and communication could be developed.
This is not to say people always have been un­
aware of the existence of others in the world who
look and act differently from themselves. The Old
and New Testaments of the Bible, for example, are
full of references to diverse peoples, among them
Jews, Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians, Ethiopians,
Romans, and so forth. The differences among
these people pale by comparison to those between
any of them and (for example) indigenous people
of Australia, the Amazon forest, or arctic North
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 7

*■ J '« J r * * * * A* Ut+wft .A * #-+* },A+4

Frank H am ilton C u sh ing (I857-1900)

Matilda Coxe Stevenson (I849-191S)

In the United States rights. O ne of these

anthropology began pioneering anthro­
in the 19th century pologists was Matilda
when a number of C oxe Stevenson, who
dedicated amateurs also did fieldwork
went into the field among the Zuni. In
to gain a better un­ 1885, she founded
derstanding of what the W o m e n ’s An­
many European Am er­ thropological Soci­
icans still regarded as ety, the first pro­
“primitive people.” fessional association
Exemplifying their for women scientists.
emphasis on firsthand observation is Frank Hamil­ Three years later, the Bureau of American Eth­
ton Cushing, who lived among the Zuni Indians for nology hired her, making her one of the first
4 years (he is shown here in full dress as a war women in the United States to receive a full­
chief). time position in science. The tradition of women
Am ong these founders of N orth American being active in anthropology continues, and since
anthropology were a number of women whose W o rld W a r II more than half the presidents of
w ork was highly influential among those who the American Anthropological Association have
spoke out in the 19th century in favor of wom en’s been women.

America. With the means to travel to truly far­
away places, people found it possible to meet for
the first time such radically different people. It was
the massive encounter with hitherto unknown peo­
ples, which came as Europeans sought to extend
their trade and political domination to all parts of
the world, that focused attention on human dif­
ferences in all their glory.
Another significant element that contributed
to the slow growth of anthropology was the fail­
ure of Europeans to recognize that beneath all the
differences, they might share a basic “ humanity”
with people everywhere. Societies that did not
share the fundamental cultural values of Euro­
peans were labeled as “savage” or “barbarian.”
Not until the late 18th century did a significant
number of Europeans consider the behavior of
such people at all relevant to an understanding of
themselves. This growing interest in human diver­
sity, coming when efforts to explain reality in
terms of natural laws were increasing, cast doubts
on the traditional biblical mythology, which no
longer adequately “explained” human diversity.
Although anthropology originated within the
context of Western civilization, it has long since
gone global. Today, it is an exciting international
discipline whose practitioners are drawn from di­
verse societies in all parts of the world. Even so­
cieties that long have been studied by European
and North American anthropologists— several
African and Native American societies, for exam­
ple— have produced anthropologists who con­
tinue to make their mark on the discipline. Their
distinctive perspectives help shed new light not
only on their own societies but on others (includ­
ing Western societies) as well.
8 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
Not only are all anthropologists not all male, neither
are they all European or European-American.
Mamphela Ramphele, who is Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Cape Town, is a native South African
anthropologist who has studied the migrant labor
hostels of Cape Town.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE
OTHER SCIENCES
It would be incorrect to infer from the foregoing
that serious attempts were never made to analyze
human diversity before the 18th century. Anthro­
pologists are not the only scholars who study peo­
ple. In this respect they share their objectives with
the other social and natural scientists. Anthropol­
ogists do not think of their findings as something
Physical anthropology. The systematic study of humans as biological organisms. > C u ltu ra l anthropology.
branch of anthropology that focuses on human behavior.
Culture
quite apart from those of psychologists, econo­
mists, sociologists, or biologists; rather, these other
disciplines contribute to the common goal of un­
derstanding humanity, and they gladly offer their
own findings for the benefit of these other disci­
plines. Anthropologists do not expect, for exam­
ple, to know as much about the structure of the
human eye as anatomists or as much about the
perception of color as psychologists. As synthe­
sizers, however, they are better prepared to un­
derstand how these subjects relate to color-nam­
ing behavior in different human societies than any
of their fellow scientists. Because they look for the
broad basis of human behavior without limiting
themselves to any single social or biological aspect
of that behavior, anthropologists can acquire an
especially extensive overview of the complex bio­
logical and cultural organism that is the human
being.
m-V
THE DISCIPLINE OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology is traditionally divided into four
fields: physical anthropology and the three
branches of cultural anthropology, which are ar­
chaeology, linguistic anthropology, and ethnology.
Physical anthropology is concerned primarily with
humans as biological organisms, while cultural an­
thropology deals with humans as cultural animals.
Both, of course, are closely related; we cannot un­
derstand what people do unless we know what
people are. And we want to know how biology
does and does not influence culture, as well as how
culture affects biology.
P hys i cal A nt hrop ology
Physical anthropology (or, alternatively, biological
anthropology) is the branch of anthropology that
focuses on humans as biological organisms, and
one of its many interests is human evolution.
Whatever distinctions people may claim for them-
The
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 9

selves, they are mammals— specifically, primates servation of living primates, physical anthropolo­
— and, as such, they share a common ancestry gists try to trace the ancestry of the human species
with other primates, most specifically apes and in order to understand how, when, and why we
monkeys. Through the analysis of fossils and ob­ became the kind of animal we are today.

Forensic Anthropology
n the public mind, anthropology often is identified
I with the recovery o f the bones o f remote human
ancestors, the unearthing o f ancient campsites and “ lost
cities," or the study o f present-day tribal peoples whose
way o f life is erroneously seen as something “ out o f the
past." People often are unaware o f the many practical
applications o f anthropological knowledge. One field o f
applied anthropology— known as forensic anthro­
pology — specializes in the identification o f human
skeletal remains for legal purposes. Forensic anthropol­
ogists are routinely called upon by police and other au­
thorities to identify the remains o f murder victims, miss­
ing persons, or people who have died in disasters such
as plane crashes. From skeletal remains, the forensic an­
thropologist can establish the age, sex, race, and stature
o f the deceased and often whether the person was
right- or left-handed, exhibited any physical abnormali­
ties, or has evidence o f trauma (broken bones and the
like). In addition, some details o f an individual's health
and nutritional history can be read from the bones.

Physical anthropologists do not just study fossil skulls. Shown here is Clyde Snow,
whose specialty is forensic anthropology and who is widely known for his work
identifying victims of state-sponsored terrorism. In this photo he holds the skull of a
Kurdish youth who was executed by Iraqi security forces.

Forensic A nthropology. A field of applied physical anthropology that specializes in the identification of human skeletal
remains for legal purposes.
10 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
One well-known forensic anthropologist is Clyde
C. Snow, who has been practicing in this field for more
than 35 years, first for the Federal Aviation Adminis­
tration and more recently as a freelance consultant In
addition to the usual police work, Snow has studied the
remains o f General George Armstrong Custer and his
men from the 1876 battlefield at Little Big Horn, and
in 1985 he went to Brazil where he identified the re­
mains o f the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Men-
gele. He also was instrumental in establishing the first
forensic team devoted to documenting cases o f human
rights abuses around the world. This began in 1984,
when he went to Argentina at the request o f a newly
elected civilian government as part o f a team to help
with the identification o f remains o f the desaparecidos,
o r “ disappeared ones," the 9,000 o r more people who
government death squads eliminated during 7 years of
military rule. A year later; he returned to give expert
testimony at the trial o f nine junta members and to
teach Argentineans how to recover; clean, repair; pre­
serve, photograph, x-ray, and analyze bones. Besides
providing factual accounts o f the fate o f victims to their
surviving kin and refuting the assertions o f "revisionists"
that the massacres never happened, the w ork o f Snow
and his Argentinean associates was crucial fo r convict­
Another major concern of physical anthro­
pology is the study of present-day human varia­
tion. Although we are all members of a single
species, we differ from each other in many obvi­
ous and not so obvious ways. We differ not only
in such visible traits as the color of our skins and
the shape of our noses but also in such biochem­
ical factors as our blood types and our suscepti­
bility to certain diseases. The physical anthropol­
ogist applies all the techniques of modern
molecular biology to achieve a fuller understand­
ing of human variation and the ways it relates to
the different environments people have lived in.
C ultural A nt hr op ol og y
Because the capacity for culture is rooted in our
biological natures, the work of the physical an­
thropologist provides a necessary background for
the cultural anthropologist. In order to understand
Culture
ing several military officers o f kidnapping, torture, and
murder
Since Snow's pioneering work, forensic anthropol­
ogists have become increasingly involved in the investi­
gation o f human rights abuses in all parts o f the world,
from Chile to Guatemala to Haiti to the Philippines
to Iraqi Kurdistan to Rwanda and to (most recently)
Bosnia. Meanwhile, they continue to do important work
for regular clients in the United States. Snow, for ex­
ample, is regularly consulted by the medical examiners'
offices o f Oklahoma; Cook County Illinois; and the Fed­
eral Bureau o f Investigation. Although not all cases he
investigates involve abuse o f police powers, when this
is an issue evidence provided by forensic anthropolo­
gists is often crucial for bringing the culprits to justice.
To quote Snow: “ O f all the forms o f murder; none is
more monstrous than that committed by a state against
its own citizens. And o f all murder victims, those o f the
state are the most helpless and vulnerable since the
very entity to which they have entrusted their lives and
safety becomes their killer"* Thus, it is especially im­
portant that states be called to account for their deeds.
“■Joyce, C. (1991). Witnesses from the grave: The stones
bones tell. Boston: Little, Brown.
the work of the cultural anthropologist, we must
clarify what we mean when we refer to culture.
The subject will be covered in more detail in Chap­
ter 2, but for our purposes here, we may think of
culture as the often unconscious standards by
which societies— groups of people— operate.
These standards are learned rather than acquired
through biological inheritance. Since they deter­
mine, or at least guide, the day-to-day behavior of
the members of a society, human behavior is above
all cultural behavior. The manifestations of culture
may vary considerably from place to place, but no
person is “more cultured” in the anthropological
sense than any other.
Just as physical anthropology is closely related
to the other biological sciences, cultural anthro­
pology is closely related to the other social sci­
ences. The one it most often has been compared
to is sociology, since the business of both is the
description and explanation of behavior of people

within a social context. Sociologists, however,
have concentrated heavily on studies of people liv­
ing in modern— or at least recent— North Amer­
ican and European societies, thereby increasing the
probability that their theories of human behavior
will be culture bound: that is, based on assump­
tions about the world and reality that are part of
the sociologists’ Western culture, usually the mid­
dle-class version most typical of professional peo­
ple. Since cultural anthropologists, too, are prod­
ucts of the culture they grew up with, they also
are capable of culture-bound theorizing. However,
they constantly seek to minimize the problem by
studying the whole of humanity in all times and
places, and they do not limit themselves to the
study of recent Western peoples; anthropologists
have found that to fully understand human be­
havior, all humans, past and present, must be stud­
ied. More than any other feature, this unique
cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective distin­
guishes cultural anthropology from the other so­
cial sciences. It provides anthropology with far
richer data than those of any other social science,
and it also can be applied to any current issue. As
a case in point, consider the way infants in the
United States are routinely made to sleep apart
from their parents, their mothers in particular. To
North Americans, this seems normal, but cross-
cultural studies show that “co-sleeping” is the rule.
Sociologists conduct structured interviews and administer questionnaires to respondents, while psychologists
experiment with participants. Anthropologists, by contrast, learn from informants.
C u ltu re bound. Theories about the world and reality based on the assumptions and values of one’s own culture.
T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 11
Only in the past 200 years, generally in Western
industrialized societies has it been considered
proper for mother and infant to sleep apart. In
fact, it amounts to a cultural experiment in child
rearing.
Recent studies have shown that this unusual
degree of separation of mother and infant in West­
ern societies has important consequences. For one,
it increases the length of the infant’s crying bouts,
which may last in excess of 3 hours a day in the
child’s 2nd and 3rd month. Some mothers incor­
rectly interpret the cause as a deficiency in breast
milk and switch to less-healthy bottle-fed formu­
las, and, in extreme cases, the crying may provoke
physical abuse, sometimes with lethal effects. But
the benefits of co-sleeping go beyond significant
reductions in crying: Infants also nurse more of­
ten and three times as long per feeding; they re­
ceive more stimuli (important for neurological de­
velopment); and they are apparently less sus­
ceptible to sudden infant death syndrome (“crib
death”). But the mother benefits as well: Frequent
nursing prevents early ovulation after childbirth,
and she gets at least as much sleep as mothers who
sleep without their infants.2
2Barr, R. G. (1997, October). The crying game. Natural His­
tory, 47. Also McKenna, J. J. (1997, October). Bedtime
story. N atural History, 50.
12 PART I Anthropology and the Study
The emphasis cultural anthropology places on
studies of prehistoric or more recent non-Western
cultures has often led to findings that dispute ex­
isting beliefs derived from Western studies. Thus,
cultural anthropologists were the first to demon­
strate “that the world does not divide into the pi­
ous and the superstitious; that there are sculptures
in jungles and paintings in deserts; that political
order is possible without centralized power and
principled justice without codified rules; that the
norms of reason were not fixed in Greece, the evo­
lution of morality not consummated in England.
. . . We have, with no little success, sought to keep
the world off balance; pulling out rugs, upsetting
tea tables, setting off firecrackers. It has been the
office of others to reassure; ours to unsettle.”3 Al­
though the findings of cultural anthropologists of­
ten have challenged the conclusions of sociologists,
psychologists, and economists, anthropology is ab­
solutely indispensable to them, as it is the only
consistent check against culture-bound assertions.
Anthropology is to these disciplines what the lab­
oratory is to physics and chemistry: the essential
testing ground for their theories.
Cultural anthropology may be divided into the
areas of archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and
ethnology (often called sociocultural anthropol­
ogy; Figure 1.1). Although each has its own spe­
cial interests and methods, all deal with cultural
data. The archaeologist, the linguist, and the eth­
nologist take different approaches to the subject,
but each gathers and analyzes data useful for ex­
plaining similarities and differences among human
cultures, as well as the ways cultures everywhere
develop, adapt, and continue to change.
Archaeology
Archaeology is the branch of cultural anthropol­
ogy that studies material remains in order to de­
scribe and explain human behavior. Traditionally,
it has focused on the human past, for material
products of behavior, rather than behavior itself,
3Geertz, C. (1984). Distinguished lecture: Anti anti-relativism.
American Anthropologist, 86, 275.
Archaeology. The study of material remains, usually from the past, to describe and explain human behavior.
of Culture
A n thro p olo gy
________ 1________
1 1
P h y sica l (biological) Cultural
a n thro po lo gy an thro po lo gy
1
F
A rch a e o lo gy Lin gu istic Ethnology
a n th ro po lo gy (sociocultural
anthropology)
F ig u r e I . I
The subfields of anthropology.
are all that survive of that past. The archaeologist
studies the tools, pottery, and other enduring relics
that remain as the legacy of extinct cultures, some
of them as many as 2.5 million years old. Such ob­
jects, and the way they were left in the ground,
reflect certain aspects of human behavior. For
example, shallow, restricted concentrations of
charcoal that include oxidized earth, bone frag­
ments, and charred plant remains and nearby
pieces of fire-cracked rock, pottery, and tools suit­
able for food preparation are indicative of cook­
ing and associated food processing. From such re­
mains much can be learned about a people’s diet
and subsistence activities. Thus archaeologists can
find out about human behavior in the distant past,
far beyond the mere 5,000 years historians are lim­
ited to by their dependence upon written records.
But archaeologists are not limited to the study of
prehistoric societies; they also may study those
with historic documents available in order to sup­
plement the material remains people left behind.
In most literate societies, written records are as­
sociated with governing elites, rather than with
people at the “grass roots.” Thus, although doc­
uments can tell archaeologists much they might
not know from archaeological evidence alone, it
is equally true that archaeological remains can tell
historians much about a society that is not ap­
parent from its written records.
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 13

While history tells us something of the horrors of slavery in North America, the full
horror is revealed only by archaeological investigation of the African burial ground in
New York. Even young children were worked so far beyond their ability to endure that
their spines actually fractured.

Although archaeologists have concentrated on
the human past, significant numbers of them are
concerned with the study of material objects in
contemporary settings. One example is the Uni­
versity of Arizona’s Garbage Project, which, by a
carefully controlled study of household waste,
continues to produce information about contem­
porary social issues. One aim of this project has
been to test the validity of interview-survey tech­
niques, which sociologists, economists, other so­
cial scientists, and policymakers rely heavily on for
their data. The tests clearly show a significant dif­
ference between what people say they do and what
garbage analysis shows they actually do. For ex­
ample, in 1973, conventional techniques were used
to construct and administer a questionnaire to find
out about the rate of alcohol consumption in Tuc­
son. In one part of town, 15% of respondent
households affirmed consumption of beer, but no
household reported consumption of more than
eight cans a week. Analysis of garbage from the
same area, however, demonstrated that some beer
was consumed in more than 80% of households,
and 50% discarded more than eight empty cans a
week. Another interesting finding of the Garbage
Project is that when beef prices reached an all-time
high in 1973, so did the amount of beef wasted
by households (not just in Tucson, but other parts
of the country as well). Although common sense
would lead us to suppose just the opposite, high
prices and scarcity correlate with more, rather
than less, waste. Obviously, such findings are im­
portant, for they suggest that ideas about human
behavior based on conventional interview-survey
techniques alone can be seriously in error.
In 1987, the Garbage Project began a program
of test excavations in landfills in various parts of
the country. From this work has come the first re­
liable data on what materials actually go into land­
fills and what happens to them once there. And
once again, we are finding that our existing beliefs
are at odds with the actual situation. For exam­
ple, biodegradable materials, such as newspapers,
take a much longer time to decay when buried in
deep compost landfills than anyone previously ex­
pected. Needless to say, this kind of information
14 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
William Rathje, director of the University of Arizona’s
Garbage Project, holds a newspaper retrieved from
deep in a landfill, a vivid demonstration that bio­
dégradables in compacted landfills do not biodegrade
as expected.
is vital if the United States is ever to solve its waste
disposal problems.
Linguistic Anthropology
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of humanity
is the ability to speak. Humans are not alone in
the use of symbolic communication. Studies have
shown that the sounds and gestures some other
animals make— especially apes— may serve func­
tions comparable to those of human speech; yet
no other animal has developed a system of sym­
bolic communication as complex as that of hu­
mans. Ultimately, language is what allows people
to preserve and transmit their culture from gener­
ation to generation.
The branch of cultural anthropology that
studies human languages is called linguistic an­
thropology. Linguists may deal with the descrip­
tion of a language (the way a sentence is formed
or a verb conjugated) or with the history of lan­
guages (the way languages develop and influence
each other with the passage of time). Both ap­
proaches yield valuable information, not only
Linguistic anthropology. The branch of cultural anthropology that studies human language. > Ethnologist. An an­
thropologist who studies cultures from a comparative o r historical point of view using ethnographic accounts. > Ethnog­
raphy. The systematic description of a particular culture based on firsthand observation. > P artic ip a n t observation.
In ethnography, the technique of learning a people’s culture through direct participation in their everyday life for an ex­
tended period.
C ulture
about the ways people communicate but also
about the ways they understand the world around
them. The everyday language of North Americans,
for example, includes a number of slang words,
such as dough, green b ack, dust, loot, cash, bucks,
change, and bread, to identify what an indigenous
native of Papua New Guinea would recognize only
as money. Such phenomena help identify items
considered especially important to a culture.
Through the study of language in its social setting,
anthropologists can understand how people per­
ceive themselves and the world around them.
Anthropological linguists also may make a sig­
nificant contribution to our understanding of the
human past. By working out the genealogical re­
lationships among languages, and examining the
distributions of those languages, they may estimate
how long the speakers of those languages have
lived where they do. By identifying words in re­
lated languages that have survived from an ancient
ancestral tongue, they also can suggest both where
and how the speakers of the ancestral language
lived.
Ethnology
While the archaeologist has traditionally concen­
trated on past cultures, the ethnologist, or socio­
cultural anthropologist, concentrates on present
cultures. And unlike the archaeologist, who fo­
cuses on the study of material objects to learn
about human behavior, the ethnologist concen­
trates on the study of human behavior as it can be
seen, experienced, and even discussed with those
whose culture is to be understood.
Fundamental to the ethnologist’s approach is
descriptive ethnography. Whenever possible, the
ethnologist becomes ethnographer by going to live
among the people under study. Through partici­
pant observation— eating a people’s food, speak­
ing their language, and personally experiencing
their habits and customs— the ethnographer can
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 15

understand their way of life to a far greater extent
than any nonparticipant anthropologist or other
social scientist ever could; one learns a culture best
by learning how to behave acceptably in the soci­
ety where one is doing fieldwork. Participant ob­
servation of the culture under study does not mean
the ethnographer must join in a people’s battles in
order to study a culture where warfare is promi­
nent; but by living among a warlike people, the
ethnographer should be able to understand the
role of warfare in the overall cultural scheme. He
or she must be a meticulous observer to get a broad
overview of a culture without placing undue em­
phasis on one of its parts at the expense of an­
other. Only by discovering how all cultural insti­
tutions— social, political, economic, religious—
relate to one another can ethnographers begin to
understand cultural systems. Anthropologists re­
fer to this as the holistic perspective, and it is one
of the fundamental principles of anthropology.
Robert Gordon, an anthropologist from Namibia,
speaks of it in this way: “Whereas the sociologist
or the political scientist might examine the beauty
of a flower petal by petal, the anthropologist is
the person that stands on the top of the mountain
and looks at the beauty of the field. In other words,
we try and go for the wider perspective.”4
When participating in unfamiliar cultures,
ethnographers do not just blunder about blindly
but enlist the assistance of individual informants.
These are members of the society the anthropolo­
gist as ethnographer is working in, who she or he
develops close relationships with and who help in­
terpret whatever activities are occurring. As a child
learns proper behavior from its parents, so do in­
formants help the anthropologist in the field un­
ravel the “mysteries” of what is, at first, a strange
culture.
So basic is ethnographic fieldwork to ethnol­
ogy that the British anthropologist C. G. Seligman
4Gordon, R. (1981, December). [Interview for Coast Tele­
courses, Inc.]. Los Angeles.

H olistic perspective. A fundamental principle of anthropology, that the various parts of culture must be viewed in the
broadest possible context to understand their interconnections and interdependence. > In fo rm an ts. Members of a so­
ciety the ethnographer works In who help interpret what she or he sees taking place.
16 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

once asserted, “Field research in anthropology is
what the blood of the martyrs is to the church.”5
Something of its flavor is conveyed by the experi­
ence of one young anthropologist working, in this
case, in relatively comfortable conditions on an is-
i Lewis, I. M. (1976). Social anthropology in perspective
(p. 27). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.
land in the western Pacific. In particular, the fol­
lowing Original Study illustrates the impossibility
of going into the field free of all naivete, the im­
portance of “the unexpected” in the field, the
problems of freeing oneself from the assumptions
and biases of one’s own culture, and the necessity
of establishing rapport with people one wishes to
study.

It was nearing sundown in Mwaan Village on Moen Island,Truk, as we bounced

slowly along in the Datsun pickup.The landscape glowed, and the Pacific is­
land blues and greens heightened in intensity as the shadows lengthened.
The village’s daily rhythm slowed, and the moist air was heavy with incom­
patible aromas: acrid smoke from cooking fires, sweet fragrance o f plumeria
Two Tales blossoms, foul stench o f the mangrove swamp, and the pleasant warm earth
smells o f a tropical Island at dusk. All was peaceful, somnolent, even stu­
From the porous. And then the quiet was shattered by an ear-splitting shout out of
nowhere: "Waaaaa Ho!" The horrible roar was repeated, and its source— a
Trukese muscular young man clad only in blue jeans and zoris [a kind o f sandal]—
Taproom6 materialized directly in the path o f our truck, brandishing a two-foot-long
machete.The three o f us In the pickup were all new to Truk. Bill, the driver,
was an American anthropologist in his sixties traveling with his wife through
Micronesia en route home from Asia, and he'd only been in Truk for a cou­
ple o f days. Leslie and I, the passengers, had been there for approximately a
month awaiting a field-trip ship to take us to our outer island research site
on Namoluk Atoll. In the Interim she and I were staying in a small guest fa­
cility on the grounds o f a Protestant church-sponsored high school a cou­
ple miles from the town center. W e had met Bill and his wife by chance the
day before at a local restaurant. The four o f us had spent this day voyaging
by motorboat to another island in Truk Lagoon to explore the ruins o f the
former Japanese headquarters that had been destroyed in W orld W ar II. On
our return we agreed to meet for dinner; and Bill had just come for us in
his rented truck to drive back to town for supper. None o f us had ever be­
fore heard the frightening yell, "Waaaaa Ho!" N o r had any o f us been con­
fronted by a young Trukese man built like a fullback and waving a machete
over his head.
“W hat in the hell?" Bill asked, but before I could respond we were nearly
upon the young man. Fortunately, the bumpiness o f the d irt road limited our
speed to perhaps five miles per hour and Bill avoided hitting our challenger
by swerving to the left just in time. As he did so, the young man brought
the machete down with all the force he could muster on top o f the cab,

6Marshall, M. (1990). Two tales from the Trukese taproom. In P. R. DeVita (Ed.),
The hum bled anthropologist (pp. 12-17). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 17

once again announcing his presence with a loud “Waaaaa H ol'The machete
cut into the edge o f the cab approximately half an inch deep right where I
had been holding on to the door frame a split second before. As steel hit
steel, Bill panicked and floored the truck, but our attacker managed to strike
another powerful blow with the knife on the edge o f the truck bed before
we escaped. W e jolted along at fifteen miles per hour the rest o f the way
to town, the maximum we and the pickup could sustain given road condi­
tions. W e were completely shaken by what had just befallen us.
"W hy in the hell did he do that?” Bill wanted to know. I was new to
Truk, there to study and learn about Trukese society and culture. I had no
answer to Bill's question. W e literally did not know what had hit us, o r more
accurately, why we had been attacked. Over dinner we speculated on the
possibilities.The young man might have been angry with foreigners and de­
cided to take out his bad feelings on us. No, we rejected that hypothesis be­
cause it was clear that the young man would not have been able to tell who
was in the truck when he burst out o f the bushes and lunged at us. It all
happened to o fast. A second thought we had was that the young man had
it in for someone who owned a blue Datsun pickup, saw our truck ap­
proaching, and mistook us for someone else. But this hypothesis failed for
the same reason: Because o f the dwindling light and the thick brush along
the roadside it seemed unlikely our attacker could see the color and make
o f the truck before he leapt into its path. Finally, based on our collective ex­
perience as persons reared in American culture, the four o f us concluded
either that the young man was emotionally distraught over a recent major
trauma In his life o r that he was mentally ill and a clear danger to the gen­
eral public.
W e were puzzled and truly frightened. W hat made the incident all the
more bizarre was that Leslie and I had been treated with unfailing kindness
by all the Trukese we had met from the moment o f our arrival. W e had
walked through Mwaan Village several times daily fo r four weeks many times
after dark, and always we had been greeted by warm smiles and a cheery
“Ran Annim!" W hat could have provoked this attack? W hy in the hell did he
do that? Although I could not know it at the time, this incident presaged
much o f my later research involvement with the people ofTruk and directed
my attention to a series o f questions and puzzles that I continue to pursue.
I can now, with some degree o f confidence, provide an answer to why
the young man did what he did: He was drunkThe fearsome yell announced
that fact immediately to anyone who knew the code surrounding drunken
behavior in Truk, but we were ignorant o f this as outsiders and novices in
the subtleties o f Trukese life. When young Trukese men drink, they are per­
ceived to become dangerous, explosive, unpredictably aggressive. Given the
option, the received wisdom is to avoid Trukese drunks if at all possible. We,
o f course, did not have that option and we became yet one more target o f
the violence associated with alcohol consumption in contemporary Truk. In
fact, we were lucky that no one was hurt. Quite often the aggression o f
Trukese drinkers results in injuries and occasionally deaths.
How long has alcohol been available in the islands? W hy do young men
drink in Truk and why do women almost uniformly abstain? W hy do drinkers
so often become violent after consuming alcohol? W hat happens to the
18 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

perpetrators o f such violence? Questions such as these surrounding the

Trukese encounter with alcoholic beverages are legion, and when pursued
they open myriad windows into Trukese personality, culture, history, and so­
cial organization. Before I came to understand this, however; I had another
traumatic experience involving Trukese and alcohol.
By the time this second incident occurred, Leslie and I had been In Truk
for four months. W e had left the headquarters island o f Moen and sailed
I 30 miles to the southeast to a tiny and remote coral atoll which was to
be the focus o f my dissertation research. Namoluk was idyllic, an emerald
necklace o f land surrounding a turquoise lagoon bounded by the deep sap­
phire blue o f the open ocean. Namoluk was a close-knit kin community of
350 persons where people knew one another in terms o f “total biography” :
All the details o f one's life and the lives o f one’s relatives and ancestors were
part o f local lore and general public knowledge. Everyone had a particular
role to play that in some senses seemed almost predestined from childhood
onward. Namoluk was fascinating, an integrated yet intricate community with
a long history o f its own which had been studied only briefly half a century
before by a German scholar I became totally engrossed in my research and
in trying to master the local language.
W e had taken up residence in a comfortable new cement house with
a corrugated iron roo f located more or less in the center o f the village area.
O u r house sat at the intersection o f tw o main paths and in between the lo­
cations o f tw o o f the island’s three licensed bingo games. Since bingo was
played daily by a large part o f the population, a steady stream o f islanders
strolled past our front door The family on whose homestead we lived slept
in a wooden house next door but members o f the family were in and out
o f our house continually.
Soon after our arrival in Namoluk I learned that alcohol use was the
subject o f considerable controversy. Technically the island was dry by local
consensus, but the legality o f the local prohibition ordinance was question­
able because proper procedures for enacting such a law had not been fol­
lowed. A t the time we came on the scene an intergenerational struggle was
under way between men over roughly the age o f forty or forty-five and
younger men for control o f the elective municipal government. Alcohol be­
came a central issue in this struggle, with older men supporting prohibition
and younger men enthusiastically drinking booze when ever possible. Even
so, drinking was certainly not a regular event on Namoluk and when it did
take place it often led to nothing more than boisterous singing and loud
laughter late at night in the canoe houses. I began to get the impression that
drunkenness on Namoluk was categorically different from what we had ex­
perienced on Truk a few months before.
And then it happened. Late on a Sunday afternoon we were lolling about
our house, just being lazy and chatting with our landlord when suddenly a
huge commotion arose in the distance. Sounds o f anguish, anger and anxi­
ety swirled toward us and then, out o f the milling mob o f men, women, and
noise, came that unforgettable yell:“Waaaaa Ho!”
I sprang to my feet, jumped into my zoris, and dashed out the door
to find a crowd o f twenty to thirty agitated people at the intersection o f
the tw o paths, yelling, shouting at one another and keeping tw o persons
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 19

separated. As I to ok in the pattern o f what was happening, I realized that a

fight was threatening between tw o men who had been drinking. Each was
being upbraided by female relatives to refrain from fighting, while at the same
time men were standing by to make sure that their own male kinsman was
not injured. Before I could stop to coolly assess the situation and record it
objectively in my data notebook I found myself next to the antagonists.The
larger man suddenly jumped on his opponent, wrestling him to the ground.
Instantly he began pummeling and pounding the smaller man with his fists. I
acted almost instinctively. Before I fully realized what I was doing I had a full
nelson on the larger man, had pulled him off o f his victim, and was trying to
convince him to desist from such behavior
Though strong enough to protect myself from harm, it occurred to me
as I stood there that I had made a terrible mistake. All through graduate
school my professors had emphasized the importance o f not taking sides or
getting involved in local political o r interpersonal squabbles in the research
community, lest one make enemies, close off potential sources o f informa­
tion, or even get thrown out o f the research site. All o f those warnings flashed
through my mind as I pressed the full nelson on the struggling man. I was
convinced that I had blown it and that this whole sorry episode would have
nothing but negative repercussions fo r my w ork— and just at a time when
Leslie and I were beginning to feel like we really fit into the community.
But, oh, how wrong I was.
In learning why I was wrong, I also learned an important lesson about
masculinity and how masculinity relates to fighting and to alcohol use in
Trukese culture. And I had taken a major step toward what has become the
central focus o f my research over the past fifteen years: the study o f alco­
hol and culture.
Once tempers calmed and It was clear that the fighting was over I re­
leased my hold and returned to my house, shaken and chagrined. How could
I have been so stupid as to get involved in a silly drunken brawl? As I sat
there feeling sorry for myself, a knock on the door roused me from dejec­
tion. It was tw o o f the teenagers on the island, boys o f about fourteen years
o f age, who were among our most loyal and patient language teachers.They
asked if they could come in and, though I didn’t really feel like company, I
said, “ Sure.” The three o f us sat on the woven pandanus mat on the floor
and one o f them immediately commented, “Wow, you were really strong
out there a few minutes ago!” I wasn’t sure whether I was being flattered or
mocked, but before I gave a snide response I glanced at the boys and rec­
ognized the earnestness in their faces. I made some uncommittal answer and
they elaborated. My behavior had been thought impressive and salutory by
everyone present: They said it demonstrated strength and bravery o r fear­
lessness. If they only knew, I thought, that it actually demonstrated nothing
more than the ignorance o f an interloper endeavoring to keep the peace
according to the inappropriate canons o f his own culture!
Later that evening the man I had restrained, who was among the most
influential and important younger men in the community, and on whose bad
side I could ill afford to be, knocked on my door accompanied by an older
male relative. My landlord was with me and, while he knew what was about
to take place, I was completely in the dark The older man spoke long and
20 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

rapidly in the Namoluk language and I understood only a little o f what he

said. Then the younger man spoke directly to me in English, asking my for­
giveness fo r any problems he may have caused and noting that he would
not have acted the way he had if he hadn’t been drinking. "It was the alco­
hol that made me do It,” he said. “WeTrukese just don't know how to drink
like you Americans. W e drink and drink until our supply is gone and then we
often get into fights." I was enormously relieved that he wasn't angry with
me, and we begged one another's pardon through a mixture o f Trukese apol­
ogy ritual and American-style making up after an unpleasantness.
W hat I didn't recognize at the time, and only later came to fully un­
derstand, was that the incident that upset me so for fear I had botched my
community rapport not only improved my rapport (including with the man
I had restrained!) but also contributed to the development o f my personal
reputation on Namoluk. I noted earlier that Namoluk persons know one an­
other in terms o f total biography. As a foreigner from outside the system, I
was an unknown quantity. Initially, people didn’t know whether I was a good
o r a bad person, whether I would prove disruptive or cooperative, whether
I would flaunt local custom or abide by it. Like every Trukese young adult—
but especially like young men— I had to prove myself by my actions and
deeds. I had to create and sustain an impression, to develop a reputation. A t
the time I didn't know this. Luckily for me, and purely by accident, my ac­
tions that afternoon accorded closely with core Trukese values that con­
tribute to the image o f a good person: respectfulness, bravery, and the hum­
ble demonstration o f nonbullying strength in thought and deed. W hat I first
believed to have been a colossal blunder turned out to be a fortunate co­
incidence o f impulsive action with deep-seated cultural beliefs about desir­
able masculine behavior N ow I, the unknown outsider had begun to develop
a local biography. But this was something I came to understand only after
several more years o f fieldwork in Trukese society.

The popular image of ethnographic fieldwork
is that it takes place among far-off, exotic peoples.
To be sure, much ethnographic work has occurred
in places such as Africa, the islands of the Pacific
Ocean, the deserts of Australia, and so on. One
very good reason for this is that non-Western peo­
ples have been too often ignored by other social
scientists. Still, anthropologists have recognized
from the start that an understanding of human be­
havior depends upon knowledge of all cultures and
peoples, including their own. During the years of
the Great Depression and World War II, for ex­
ample, many anthropologists in the United States
worked in settings ranging from factories to whole
communities. One of the landmark studies of this
period was W. Lloyd Warner’s study of “Yankee
City” (Newburyport, Massachusetts). Less well
known is that it was an anthropologist, Philleo
Nash, working on the White House staffs under
Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, who was in­
strumental in desegregating the armed forces and
moving the federal government into the field of
civil rights. Nash had put his anthropological ex­
pertise to work to accomplish a particular goal—
an example of applied anthropology. Later on, he
served as lieutenant governor of Wisconsin and as
Indian commissioner in President Kennedy’s ad­
ministration. Today, numerous anthropologists
work outside of academic settings as applied an­
thropologists, and we shall see examples of their
work in each of the succeeding chapters of this
book.

In the 1950s, the availability of large amounts
of money for research in foreign lands diverted at­
tention from work at home. Later on, as political
unrest made fieldwork increasingly difficult to
carry out, renewed awareness arose of important
anthropological problems that needed to be dealt
with in North American society. Many of these
problems involve people that anthropologists have
studied in other settings. Thus, as people from
South and Central America have moved into the
cities and suburbs of the United States, or as
refugees have arrived from Haiti, Southeast Asia,
and other places, anthropologists have been there
not just to study them but also to help them ad­
just to their new circumstances. Simultaneously,
anthropologists are applying the same research
techniques that served them so well in the study
of non-Western peoples to the study of such di­
verse subjects as street gangs, corporate bureau­
cracies, religious cults, health care delivery sys­
tems, schools, and how people deal with consumer
complaints.
An important discovery from such research is
it produces knowledge that usually does not
emerge from the kinds of research other social sci­
entists do. For example, the theory of cultural de­
privation arose during the 1960s as a way to ex-
Anthropologists carry out fieldwork at home as well
as abroad. One who is doing this is Dr. Miriam Lee
Kaprow of John Jay College, whose work is with
New York firefighters.
T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 21
plain the educational failure of many children of
minorities. To account for the students’ lack of
achievement, some social scientists proposed that
such children were “culturally deprived.” They
then proceeded to “confirm” this idea by studying
children, mostly from Native American, African
American, and Hispanic populations, interpreting
the results through the protective screen of their
theory. By contrast, ethnographic research on the
cultures of “culturally deprived” children reveals
a different story. Far from being culturally de­
prived, they have elaborate, sophisticated, and
adaptive cultures that are simply different from the
ones espoused by the educational system. Although
some still cling to it, the cultural-deprivation the­
ory is culture bound and is merely a way of say­
ing people are “deprived” of “my culture.” One
cannot argue that such children do not speak ad­
equate Spanish, Ebonics (sometimes called “Black
English” ), or whatever; clearly they do well with
what is considered important in their cultures.
Much though it has to offer, the anthropo­
logical study of one’s own culture is not without
its special problems. Sir Edmund Leach, a major
figure in British anthropology, put it in the fol­
lowing way:
Surprising though it may seem, fieldwork in a cul­
tural context of which you already have intimate
first-hand experience seems to be much more dif­
ficult than fieldwork which is approached from the
naive viewpoint of a total stranger. When anthro­
pologists study facets of their own society their vi­
sion seems to become distorted by prejudices which
derive from private rather than public experience.”7
Although ethnographers strive to get inside views
of other cultures, they do so very self-consciously
as outsiders. And the most successful anthropo­
logical studies of their own culture by North
Americans have been done by those who first
worked in some other culture. Lloyd Warner for
example, had studied the Murngin of Australia be­
fore he tackled Newburyport. The more one learns
of other cultures, the more one gains a different
perspective on one’s own. Put another way, as
7Leach, E. (1982). Social anthropology (p. 124). Glasgow,
Scotland: Fontana Paperbacks.
22 PART I Anthropology and the Study
other cultures are seen as less exotic, the more ex­
otic one’s own seems to become. In addition to
U.S. ethnographers getting themselves outside
their culture before trying to study it themselves
(so that they may see themselves as others see
them), much is to be gained by encouraging an­
thropologists from Africa, Asia, and South Amer­
ica to do fieldwork in North America. From their
outsiders’ perspective come insights all too easily
overlooked by an insider. This does not mean the
special difficulties of studying one’s own culture
cannot be overcome; what is required is an acute
awareness of those difficulties.
Although ethnographic fieldwork is basic to
ethnology, it is not the sole occupation of the eth­
nologist. Largely descriptive in nature, ethnogra­
phy provides the basic data the ethnologist (who
is more theoretically oriented) then may use to
study one particular aspect of a culture by com­
paring it with that same aspect in others. Anthro­
pologists constantly make such cross-cultural com­
parisons, and this is another hallmark of the
discipline. Interesting insights into our own prac­
tices may come from cross-cultural comparisons,
as when one compares the time people devote to
what we consider housework. In North American
society, a widespread belief is that the ever-in­
creasing output of household appliance consumer
goods has resulted in a steady reduction in house­
work, with a consequent increase in leisure time.
Thus, consumer appliances have become principal
indicators of a high standard of living. Anthropo­
logical research among food foragers (people who
rely on wild plant and animal resources for sub­
sistence), however, has shown that they work far
less at household tasks, and indeed less at all sub­
sistence pursuits, than do people in industrialized
societies. Aboriginal Australian women, for ex­
ample, devote an average of approximately 20
hours per week to collecting and preparing food,
as well as other domestic chores. By contrast,
women in the rural United States in the 1920s,
without the benefit of laborsaving appliances, de­
voted approximately 52 hours a week to their
housework. One might suppose this has changed
in the decades since, yet some 50 years later ur­
Fact. An observation verified by several observers skilled in the necessary techniques of observation.
of Culture
ban U.S. women who were not working for wages
outside their homes were putting 55 hours a week
into their housework— this in spite of all their
“laborsaving” dishwashers, washing machines,
clothes dryers, vacuum cleaners, food processors,
and microwave ovens.8
Cross-cultural comparisons highlight alterna­
tive ways of doing things, so they have much to
offer North Americans, large numbers of who,
opinion polls show, continue to doubt the effec­
tiveness of their own ways of doing things. In this
sense, one may think of ethnology as the study of
alternative ways of doing things. Also, by making
systematic cross-cultural comparisons of cultures,
ethnologists seek to arrive at valid conclusions
concerning the nature of culture in all times and
places.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SCIENCE
The primary concern of all anthropologists is the
careful and systematic study of humankind. An­
thropology has been called a social or a behav­
ioral science by some, a natural science by others,
and one of the humanities by still others. Can the
work of anthropologists properly be labeled sci­
entific? W hat exactly do we mean by the term sci­
ence ?
Science is a powerful and elegant way people
have hit upon to understand the workings of the
visible world and universe. Science seeks testable
explanations for observed phenomena, ideally in
terms of the workings of hidden but universal and
immutable principles, or laws. Two basic ingredi­
ents are essential for this: imagination and skepti­
cism. Im agination, though capable of leading us
astray, is required for imagining the ways phe­
nomena might be ordered and for thinking of old
things in new ways. Without it, science cannot ex­
ist. Skepticism is what allows us to distinguish fact
sBodley, J. H. (1985). A nthropology and contem porary hu­
man problem s (2nd ed., p. 69). Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.

G eorge Peter M urdock
Modern cross-cultural studies in
anthropology derive from George
Peter Murdock’s efforts to develop
a rigorous methodology. Educated at
Yale University, he was strongly in­
fluenced by the firm belief of his
mentor, Albert Keller, in history’s
“lawfulness” (in the sense of scien­
tific laws). Influenced as well by
British anthropologist Sir Edward B.
Tylor’s early attempt at statistical
comparison, in 1937 Murdock insti­
tuted the C ro ss Cultural Survey in Yale’s Institute
of Human Relations.This later became the Human
Relations Area File (HRAF), a catalog of cross-in­
dexed ethnographic data filed under uniform head­
ings. In a landmark book, Social Structure (published
in 1949), he demonstrated this tool’s utility for re­
searching how human societies were structured
and changed. Later in life, Murdock used H R A F as
the model for his W o rld E th n o gra p h ic S a m p le ( 1957)
and (after he moved to the University of Pitts­
burgh) A n E th n o gra p h ic Atlas. The latter is a data­
base of more than 100 coded cultural character­
istics in almost 1,200 societies.
The value of H R A F (now available at many col­
leges and universities) and other such research
tools is that they permit a search for causal rela­
tionships by using statistical techniques to provide
testable generalizations. To cite one example, an­
thropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday examined a sam­
ple of 156 societies drawn from H R A F in an at­
tempt to answer questions such as these: W h y do
women play a more dominant role in some soci­
eties than others? Why, and under what circum­
from fancy, to test our speculations, and to pre­
vent our imaginations from running away with us.
In their search for explanations, scientists do
not assume reality is always as it appears on the
surface. After all, what could be more obvious
T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 23
(i897-i985)
stances, do men dominate women?
H er study, published in 1981 (Fe m a le
P ow e r a n d M a l e D o m in a n c e ), besides
disproving the com mon myth that
women are universally subordinate
to men, shed important light on the
ways men and women relate to one
another in human societies and
ranks as a major landmark in gender
study (so important is this topic,
since gender considerations enter
into just about everything people do,
that it is included in every single chapter of this
textbook).
Valuable though H R A F is, the files are not
without their problems. Although they permit blind
searches for correlations between customs, such
correlations say nothing about cause and effect All
to o easily they are rationalized by construction of
elaborate causal chains that may amount to little
more than “just so” stories. Further historical
analysis of particular practices is required. The
strength of Sanday’s study is that she did not ig­
nore the particular historical contexts of the so­
cieties in her sample.
O th e r problems consist of errors in the files
from inadequate ethnographies o r unsystematic
sources; from the nonrandom nature of the sam­
ple (cultures are included o r rejected in accor­
dance with the quality of available literature); and
from the fact items are wrenched out of context
In sh o r t H R A F and similar databases are useful
tools, but they are not foolproof; they can lead to
false conclusions unless carefully (and critically)
used.
than that the earth is a stable entity, around which
the sun travels every day? And yet, it isn’t so. Su­
pernatural explanations are rejected, as are all ex­
planations and appeals to authority not supported
by strong empirical (observational) evidence.
24 PART I Anthropology and the Study
To many people, a scientist is someone (usually a
white male) who works in a laboratory, carrying out
experiments with the aid of specialized equipment.
Contrary to the stereotypical image, not all scientists
work in laboratories, nor is experimentation the only
technique they use (nor are scientists invariably white
males in lab coats).
Because explanations are constantly challenged by
new observations and novel ideas, science is self-
correcting; that is, inadequate explanations are
sooner or later shown as such, to be replaced by
more reliable explanations.
The scientist begins with a hypothesis, or ten­
tative explanation of the relationship between cer­
tain phenomena. By gathering various data that
seem to support such generalizations and, equally
important, by showing why alternative hypothe­
ses may be falsified, or eliminated from consider­
ation, the scientist arrives at a system of validated
hypotheses, or theory. Thus a theory, contrary to
the everyday use of the term, is more than mere
speculation; it is an explanation of natural phe­
nomena. Even so, no theory is ever considered to
be beyond challenge. Truth, in science, is not con­
sidered absolute but, rather, a matter of varying
degrees of probability; what is considered true is
what is most probable. This is just as true in an­
thropology, as it is in biology or physics. But al­
though nothing can be proven to be absolutely
true, incorrect assumptions can be proven false.
H y p o th esis. A tentative explanation of the relations among certain phenomena. > T h e o ry .
tion of natural phenomena supported by reliable data.
of Culture
So it is that, as our knowledge expands, the odds
in favor of some theories over others are generally
increased, even though old “truths” sometimes
must be discarded as alternative theories are
shown to be more probable.
To illustrate, we will compare two competing
theories of biological evolution: that of Charles R.
Darwin and that of his predecessor, Jean Baptiste
Lamarck. The latter’s theory “explained” how
evolution worked through inheritance of acquired
characteristics, as opposed to Darwin’s theory of
natural selection. Experiments such as those of Au­
gust Weismann near the turn of the 20th century
effectively laid to rest Lamarck’s theory. Breeding
20 generations of mice, Weismann cut off the tails
in each generation, only to find them still present
in the 21st. By contrast, not only have countless
attempts to falsify Darwin’s theory failed to do so,
but also as our knowledge of genetics, geology,
and paleontology has improved in the 20th cen­
tury, our understanding of how natural selection
works has advanced accordingly. Thus, while
Lamarck’s theory had to be abandoned, the evi­
dence has increased the probability Darwin’s is
correct.
D i ffi culti es of the S ci enti fi c
A pproach
Straightforward though the scientific approach
may appear, serious difficulties arise in its appli­
cation to anthropology. One is that once re­
searchers have stated a hypothesis, they are
strongly motivated to verify it, and this can cause
them unwittingly to overlook negative evidence,
not to mention all sorts of other unexpected fac­
tors. This is a familiar problem in science; as pa­
leontologist Stephen Jay Gould puts it, “The great­
est impedient to scientific innovation is usually a
conceptual lock, not a factual lock.”9 In the fields
of cultural anthropology a further difficulty arises:
9Gould, S. J. (1989). Wonderful life (p. 226). New York:
Norton.
In science, an explana­

Franz Boas (1858- 1942)
F re d ricW a rd Putnam (I839-1915)
John W esley Powell (1834-1902)
In N orth America, anthropology among the social
sciences has a unique character, owing in large part
to the natural-science (rather than social science)
background of the three men pictured here. Franz
Boas (left), educated in physics, was not the first
to teach anthropology in the United States, but it
was he and his students, with their insistence on
scientific rigor, who made such courses a common
part of college and university curricula. Putnam
(center), a zoologist specializing in the study of
birds and fishes and permanent secretary of the
American Association for the Advancement of Sci­
ence, made a decision in 1875 to devote himself
to the promotion of anthropology. Through his ef­
forts many of the great anthropology museums
In order to arrive at useful theories concerning hu­
man behavior, one must begin with hypotheses
that are as objective and as little culture bound as
possible. And here lies a m ajor— some people
would say insurmountable— problem: It is diffi­
cult for someone who has grown up in one cul­
ture to frame hypotheses about others that are not
culture bound.
As one example of this sort of problem, con­
sider the attempts by archaeologists to understand
T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 25
were established: at the University of California
(now the Phoebe Hearst Museum), at Harvard
University (The Peabody Museum), and the Field
Museum in Chicago, and in N e w York he founded
the anthropology department of the American
Museum of Natural History. Powell (right) was a
geologist and founder of the United States G e o ­
logical Survey, but he also carried out ethnographic
and linguistic research (his classification of Indian
languages north of Mexico is still consulted by
scholars today). In 1879, he founded the Bureau
of American Ethnology (ultimately absorbed by
the Smithsonian Institution), thereby establish­
ing anthropology within the United States
government.
the nature of settlement in the Classic period of
Maya civilization. This civilization flourished be­
tween a . d . 250 and 900 in what is now northern
Guatemala, Belize, and adjacent portions of M ex­
ico and Honduras. Today much of this region is
covered by a dense tropical forest that people of
European background find difficult to deal with.
In recent times this forest has been inhabited by
few people, who sustain themselves through slash-
and-burn farming. (After cutting and burning the
26 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
natural vegetation, they grow crops for 2 years or
so before fertility is exhausted, and a new field
must be cleared.) Yet numerous archaeological
sites, featuring temples sometimes as tall as mod­
ern 20-story buildings; other sorts of monumental
architecture; and carved stone monuments are
found there. Because of their cultural bias against
tropical forests as places to live, and against slash-
and-burn farming as a means of raising food,
North American and European archaeologists
asked this question: How could the Maya have
maintained large, permanent settlements on the
basis of slash-and-burn farming? The answer
seemed self-evident: They could not; therefore, the
great archaeological sites must have been ceremo­
nial centers inhabited by few, if any, people. Peri­
odically a rural peasantry, living scattered in small
hamlets over the countryside, must have gathered
in these centers for rituals, or to provide labor for
their construction and maintenance.
This view dominated for several decades, and
not until 1960 did archaeologists, working at
Tikal, one of the largest of all Maya sites, decide
to ask the simplest and least biased questions they
could think of: Did anyone live at this particular
site on a permanent basis? If so, how many, and
how were they supported? Working intensively for
the next decade, with as few preconceived notions
as possible, the archaeologists were able to estab­
lish that Tikal was a large settlement inhabited on
a permanent basis by tens of thousands of people
who were supported by forms of agriculture more
productive than slash-and-burn agriculture alone.
This work at Tikal falsified the older culture-
bound ideas and paved the way for a new under­
standing of Classic Maya civilization.
By recognizing the potential problems of fram­
ing hypotheses that are not culture bound, an­
thropologists have relied heavily on a technique
that has proved successful in other fields of the
natural sciences. As did the archaeologists work­
ing at Tikal, they immerse themselves in the data
to the fullest extent possible. By doing so, they be­
come so thoroughly familiar with the minute de­
tails that they can begin to see patterns inherent
in the data, many of which might otherwise have
been overlooked. These patterns allow anthropol­
ogists to frame hypotheses, which then may be
subjected to further testing.
Culture
This approach is most easily seen in ethno­
graphic fieldwork, but it is just as important in ar­
chaeology. Unlike many social scientists, the
ethnographer usually does not go into the field
armed with prefigured questionnaires; rather, the
ethnographer recognizes that probably various
unguessed factors exist, to be found out only by
maintaining as open a mind as possible. This does
not mean anthropologists never use question­
naires, for sometimes they do. Generally, though,
they use them as a means of supplementing or clar­
ifying information gained through some other
methods. As the fieldwork proceeds, ethnogra­
phers sort their complex observations into a mean­
ingful whole, sometimes by formulating and test­
ing limited or low-level hypotheses but as often as
not by making use of intuition and playing
hunches. What is important is that the results are
constantly scrutinized for consistency, for if the
parts fail to fit together in an internally consistent
manner, then the ethnographer knows a mistake
has been made and further work is necessary.
The contrast between the anthropological and
other social-science approaches is dramatically il­
lustrated by the following example— one of sev­
eral— presented by Robert Chambers in his book
R ural D evelopm ent. Since Chambers is a highly
respected professional in international develop­
ment, he speaks with a greater degree of detach­
ment than an anthropologist (or sociologist) could.
Sean Conlin lived as a social anthropologist in a
village in Peru. While he was there a sociologist
came and carried out a survey. According to the so­
ciologist’s results, people in the village invariably
worked together on each others’ individually
owned plots of land. That was what they told him.
But in the period of over a year during which Con­
lin lived in the village, he observed the practice only
once. The belief in exchange relations was, he con­
cludes, important for the people’s understanding of
themselves, but it was not an economic fact.”10*
This does not mean all sociological research is bad
and all anthropological research is good; merely,
reliance on questionnaire surveys is a risky busi­
10Chambers, R. (1983). Rural development: Putting the last
first (p. 51). New York: Longman.

ness, no matter who does it. Robert Chambers
sums up the difficulties:
Unless careful appraisal precedes drawing up a
questionnaire, the survey will embody the concepts
and categories of outsiders rather than those of
rural people, and thus impose meanings on the so­
cial reality. The misfit between the concepts of ur­
ban professionals and those of poor rural people is
likely to be substantial, and the questions asked
may construct artificial chunks of “knowledge”
which distort or mutilate the reality which poor
people experience. Nor are questionnaire surveys
on their own good ways of identifying causal rela­
tionships— a correlation alone tells us nothing def­
inite about cause— or of exploring social relation­
ships such as reciprocity, dependence, exploitation
and so on. Their penetration is usually shallow,
concentrating on what is measurable, answerable,
and acceptable as a question, rather than probing
less tangible and more qualitative aspects of soci­
ety. For many reasons— fear, prudence, ignorance,
exhaustion, hostility, hope of benefit— poor people
give information which is slanted or false.11
Chambers then points out that for these and nu­
merous other reasons, conventional questionnaire
surveys have many drawbacks if the aim is to gain
insight into the lives and conditions of poor rural
people. Other methods are required, either alone,
or together with surveys. To the degree extensive
questionnaire surveys preempt resources by cap­
turing staff as well as finances, they prevent other
approaches.
Yet another problem in scientific anthropol­
ogy is the matter of replication. In the other
physical and natural sciences, replication of ob­
servations and/or experiments is a major means
of establishing the reliability of a researcher’s
conclusions. The problem in ethnology is that ob­
servational access is far more limited. As anthro­
pologist Paul Roscoe notes:
In the natural sciences, the ubiquity of the physical
world, coupled with liberal funding, traditionally
has furnished a comparatively democratic access to
observation and representation: the solar spectrum,
“ ibid., p. 51.
T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 27
for example, is accessible to, and describable by, al­
most any astronomer with access to the requisite
equipment.12
Thus, researchers can see for themselves if a col­
league in such fields has “gotten it right.” Access
to a non-Western culture, by contrast, is con­
strained by the difficulty of getting there and be­
ing accepted; by the limited number of ethnogra­
phers; often inadequate funding; by the fact
cultures change, so what is observable at one time
may not be at another; and so on. Thus, re­
searchers cannot easily see for themselves whether
the ethnographer “got it right.” For this reason,
an ethnographer bears a special responsibility for
accurate reporting.
The result of archaeological or ethnographic
fieldwork, if properly carried out, is a coherent ac­
count of a culture, which provides an explanatory
framework for understanding the behavior of the
people who have been studied. And this, in turn,
is what permits the anthropologist to frame
broader hypotheses about human behavior. Plau­
sible though such hypotheses may be, however, the
consideration o f a single society is generally in­
sufficient for their testing. Without some basis for
comparison, the hypothesis grounded in a single
case may be no more than a historical coincidence.
Yet a single case may be enough to cast doubt on,
if not refute, a theory that previously had been
held valid. The discovery in 1948 that Aborigines
living in Australia’s Arnhem Land put in an aver­
age workday of less than 6 hours, while living well
above a level of bare sufficiency, was enough to
call into question the widely accepted notion that
food-foraging peoples are so preoccupied with
finding food that they lack time for any of life’s
more pleasurable activities. Even today, econo­
mists are prone to label such peoples as “back­
ward,” even though the observations made in the
Arnhem Land study since have been confirmed
many times over in various parts of the world.
Hypothetical explanations of cultural phe­
nomena may be tested by the comparison of ar­
chaeological and/or ethnographic data for several
societies found in a particular region. Carefully
12Roscoe, P. B. (1995). The perils of “positivism” in cultural
anthropology. Am erican A nthropologist, 97, 497.
28 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
Development schemes in nonindustrial countries have
traditionally favored projects like dam building that
more often than not fail to deliver the expected bene­
fits, owing to the developers’ lack of understanding of
local peoples’ practices and needs.
controlled comparison provides a broader context
for understanding cultural phenomena than does
the study of a single culture. The anthropologist
who undertakes such a comparison may be more
confident the conditions believed to be related re­
ally are related, at least within the region under
investigation; however, a valid explanation in one
region is not necessarily so in another.
Ideally, theories in cultural anthropology are
generated from worldwide comparisons. The
cross-cultural researcher examines a worldwide
sample of societies in order to discover whether or
not hypotheses proposed to explain cultural phe­
nomena seem to be universally applicable. Ideally,
the sample should be selected at random, thereby
increasing the probability the conclusions of the
cross-cultural researcher will be valid. However,
the greater the number of societies compared, the
less likely the investigator will have a detailed un­
derstanding of all the societies encompassed by the
study. The cross-cultural researcher depends upon
other ethnographers for data. It is impossible for
any individual personally to perform in-depth
analyses of a broad sample of human cultures
throughout the world.
Ethnohistory. The study of cultures of the recent past through oral histories; accounts left by explorers, missionaries,
and traders; and the analysis of data such as land titles, birth and death records, and other archival materials.
Culture
In anthropology, cultural comparisons need
not be restricted to ethnographic data. Anthro­
pologists can, for example, turn to archaeological
data to test hypotheses about cultural change. Cul­
tural characteristics thought to be caused by cer­
tain specified conditions can be tested archaeo-
logically by investigating situations where such
conditions actually occurred. Also useful are data
the ethnohistorian provides. Ethnohistory is a kind
of historic ethnography that studies cultures of the
recent past through oral histories; through the ac­
counts of explorers, missionaries, and traders; and
through the analysis of data such as land titles,
birth and death records, and other archival mate­
rials. The ethnohistorical analysis of cultures, like
archaeology, is a valuable approach to under­
standing change. By examining the conditions be­
lieved to have caused certain phenomena, we can
discover whether or not those conditions truly pre­
cede those phenomena.
Ethnohistoric research is also valuable for as­
sessing the reliability of data used for making
cross-cultural comparisons. For example, anthro­
pologists working with data from resources such
as the Human Relations Area Files (see the biog­
raphy on George Peter Murdock in this chapter)
have sometimes concluded that among food for­
agers it is (and was) the practice for married cou­
ples to live in or near the household of the hus­
band’s parents (known as patrilocal residence). To
be sure, this is what many ethnographers reported.
But what this fails to take into account is the fact
that most such ethnographies were done among
food foragers whose traditional practices had been
severely altered by pressures emanating (usually)
from the expansion of Europeans to all parts of
the globe. For example, the Western Abenaki peo­
ple of northwestern New England are asserted to
have practiced patrilocal residence prior to the ac­
tual invasion of their homeland by English
colonists. Ethnohistoric research shows, however,
that their participation in the fur trade with Eu­
ropeans, coupled with increasing involvement in

warfare to stave off incursions of outsiders, led to
the increased importance of men’s activities and a
change from more flexible to patrilocal residence
patterns.13 Upon close examination, other cases of
patrilocal residence among food foragers turn out
to be similar responses to circumstances associated
with the rise of colonialism. Far from wives regu­
larly going to live with their husbands in proxim­
ity to the latter’s male relations, food-foraging peo­
ples originally seem to have been far more flexible
in their postmarital residence arrangements.
Ethnohistorical research, like the field studies
of archaeologists, is valuable for testing and con­
firming hypotheses about culture. And like much
of anthropology, it has practical utility as well. In
the United States, ethnohistorical research has
flourished, for it often provides the key evidence
necessary for deciding legal cases involving Native
American land claims. And here again is an ex­
ample of a practical application of anthropologi­
cal knowledge.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE
HUMANITIES
Although the sciences and humanities are often
thought of as mutually exclusive approaches to
learning, they both come together in anthropol­
ogy. That is why, for example, anthropological re­
search is funded not only by “hard science” agen­
cies such as the National Science Foundation, but
also by organizations such as the National En­
dowment for the Humanities. As noted by Roy
Rappaport, a past president of the American An­
thropological Association, the amalgamation of
scientific and humanistic approaches
is and always has been a source of tension. It has
been crucial to anthropology because it truly re­
flects the condition of a species that lives and can
only live in terms of meanings that it must con­
struct in a world devoid of intrinsic meaning, yet
subject to natural law. . . . Without the continued
13Havi!and, W. A., & Power, M. W. (1994). The original
Vermonters (Rev. and exp. ed., pp. 1 7 4 -1 7 5 , 2 1 5 -2 1 6 ,
297-299). Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 29
grounding in the empirical that scientific aspects of
our tradition provide, our interpretive efforts may
float off into literary criticism and into particular­
istic forms of history. Without the interpretive tra­
dition, the scientific tradition that grounds us will
never get off the ground.” 14
The humanistic side of anthropology is per­
haps most immediately evident in its concern with
other cultures’ languages, values, and achieve­
ments in the arts and literature (including oral lit­
erature among peoples who lack writing). Beyond
this, anthropologists remain committed to the
proposition that one cannot fully understand an­
other culture by simply observing it; as the term
participan t observation implies, one must ex p eri­
ence it as well. Thus, ethnographers spend pro­
longed periods living with the people they study,
sharing their joys and suffering their deprivations,
including sickness and, sometimes, premature
death. They are not so naive as to believe they can
be, or even should be, dispassionate about the peo­
ple whose trials and tribulations they share. As
Robin Fox puts it, “our hearts, as well as our
brains, should be with our men and women.” 15
Nor are anthropologists so self-deceived as to be­
lieve they can avoid dealing with the moral and
political consequences of their findings. Indeed,
anthropology has a long tradition of advocacy for
the rights o f indigenous peoples, a topic we shall
return to in later chapters of this textbook.
The humanistic side of anthropology is evi­
dent as well in its emphasis on qualitative, as op­
posed to quantitative, research. This does not
mean anthropologists are unaware of the value of
quantification and statistical procedures; they do
make use of them for various purposes. However,
reducing people and what they do to numbers has
a definite “dehumanizing” effect (it is easier to ig­
nore the concerns of “impersonal” numbers than
it is those of flesh-and-blood human beings) and
ignores important issues not susceptible to nu­
meration. For all these reasons, anthropologists
14Rappaport, R. A. (1994). Commentary. A nthropology
Newsletter, 35, 76.
15F o x , R. (1968). Encounter with anthropology (p. 290).
New York: Dell.
 30 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
tend to place less emphasis on numerical data than
do other social scientists.
Given anthropologists’ intense encounters
with other peoples, it should come as no surprise
that they have amassed as much information about
human frailty and nobility— stuff of the humani­
ties— as any other discipline. Small wonder, too,
that above all they intend to avoid allowing a
“coldly” scientific approach to blind them to the
fact that human societies are made up of individ­
uals with rich assortments of emotions and aspi­
rations that demand respect. Anthropology some­
times has been called the most human of the
sciences, a designation anthropologists take con­
siderable pride in.
■ QUESTIONS OF ETHICS
The kinds of research anthropologists carry out
and the settings they work within raise a number
of important questions concerning ethics. Who
will make use of the findings of anthropologists,
and for what purposes? In the case of a militant
minority, for example, will others use anthropo­
logical data to suppress that minority? And what
of traditional communities around the world?
Who is to decide what changes should, or should
not, be introduced for community “betterment” ?
By whose definition is it betterment— the com­
munity’s, some remote national government’s, or
an international agency’s such as the World Bank?
Then consider the problem of privacy. Anthro­
pologists deal with people’s private and sensitive
matters, including things that people would not
care to have generally known about them. How
does one write about such matters and at the same
time protect the privacy of informants? Not sur­
prisingly, because of these and other questions,
much discussion among anthropologists has oc­
curred for the past 2 decades on the subject of
ethics.
Anthropologists recognize they have obliga­
tions to three sets of people: those they study, those
who fund the research, and those in the profes­
sion who expect them to publish their findings so
Culture
that they may be used to further knowledge. Be­
cause fieldwork requires a relationship of trust be­
tween fieldworker and informants, the anthropol­
ogist’s first responsibility clearly is to his or her
informants and their people. Everything possible
must be done to protect their physical, social, and
psychological welfare and to honor their dignity
and privacy. In other words, d o no harm . Although
early ethnographers often provided the kind of in­
formation colonial administrators needed to con­
trol the “natives,” they long since have ceased to
be comfortable with such work and regard as ba­
sic a people’s right to their own culture.
As an example of how the sometimes con­
flicting interests of the people studied, of the pro­
fession, and of funding agencies may be dealt with,
we turn to a 1981 interview Laura Nader gave:
In the case of the Zapotec, I was dealing with very
sensitive materials about law and disputes and con­
flicts and so forth. And I was very sensitive about
how much of that to report while people were still
alive and while things might still be warm, so I
waited on that. . . . I feel comfortable now releas­
ing that information. With regard to a funder in
that case, it was the Mexican government, and I
feel that I have written enough to have paid off the
[money] which they gave me to support that work
for a year. So, I’ve not felt particularly strained for
my Zapotec work in those three areas. On energy
research that I’ve done, it’s been another story.
Much of what people wanted me to do energy re­
search for was . . . to tell people in decision-mak­
ing positions about American consumers in such a
way that they could be manipulated better, and I
didn’t want to do that. So what I said was I would
be willing to study a vertical slice. That is, I would
never study the consumer without studying the pro­
ducer. And once you take a vertical slice like that,
then it’s fair because you’re telling the consumer
about the producer and the producer about the con­
sumer. But just to do a study of consumers for pro­
ducers, I think I would feel uncomfortable.16
léNader, L. (1981, December). [Interview for Coast Tele­
courses, Inc.]. Los Angeles.
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 31

L * *. 1A ? A? A/A* * r a t f AV*V A* A?A »A VA
ANTHROPOLOGY AND
CONTEMPORARY LIFE
Anthropology, with its long-standing commitment
to understanding people in all parts of the world,
coupled with its holistic perspective, is better
equipped than any other discipline to grapple with
a problem of overriding importance for all of hu­
manity at the beginning of the 21st century. An
inescapable fact of life is that North Americans—
a small minority of the world’s people— live in a
global community in which all people are inter­
dependent. Now widespread awareness of this
exists in the business community, which relies on
foreign sources for raw materials, sees the non-
Western world as its major area for market ex­
pansion, and is more frequently maufacturing its
products abroad. Nevertheless, citizens of the
United States are on the whole as ignorant about
the cultures of the rest of the world as they have
ever been. This is true not just of “average citi­
zens” but also of highly educated people. In
Guatemala, for example, where more than half the
population is made up of Maya Indians, U.S. For­
eign Service personnel are largely ignorant of the
literature— most of it by anthropologists— per­
taining to these people.17 As a result, too many of
us are poorly equipped to handle the demands of
living in the modern world.
Anthropologist Dennis Shaw sums up the im­
plications of this state of affairs:
Such provinciality raises questions about the wel­
fare of our nation and the global context in which
it is a major force. We have, as a nation, contin­
ued to interpret the political actions of other na­
tions in terms of the cultural and political norms
of our own culture and have thus made major
misinterpretations of global political affairs. Our
economic interests have been pursued from the
perspective of our own cultural norms, and thus,
we have failed to keep up with other nations that
have shown a sensitivity to cultural differences.
17Nance, C. R. (1997). Review of Haviland’s Cultural an­
thropology (p. 2). (Manuscript in author’s possession.)

Ignorance of other cultures can have serious consequences, as the failed United Nations
intervention in Somalia shows. Blinded by their own cultures’ assumption of the univer­
sality of centralized political structure, the powers intervening in Somalia misunderstood
the nature of that country’s uncentralized, segmentary system.
32 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
Domestically, a serious question can be raised about
the viability of a democracy in which a major por­
tion of the electorate is basically ignorant of the is­
sues which our political leaders must confront. In­
ternationally, one can speculate about the
well-being of a world in which the citizens of one
of the most powerful nations are seriously deficient
in their ability to evaluate global issues.18
18Quoted in Haviland, W. A. (1997). Cleansing young
minds, or what should we be doing in introductory anthro­
pology? In C. P. Kottack, J. J. White, R. H. Furlow, 8c P. C.
Rice (Eds.), The teaching o f anthropology: Problem s, issues
and decisions (p. 35). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
C H A P T E R
Throughout human history, people have needed to
know who they are, where they came from, and
why they behave as they do. Traditionally, myths
and legends provided the answers to these ques­
tions. Anthropology, as it has emerged over the
past 2 00 years, offers another approach to an­
swering the questions people ask about themselves.
Anthropology is the study of humankind. In
employing a scientific approach, anthropologists
seek to produce a reasonably objective under­
standing of both human diversity and aspects all
humans have in common. The two major branches
of anthropology are physical and cultural anthro­
pology. Physical anthropology focuses on humans
as biological organisms. Physical anthropologists
give particular emphasis to tracing the evolution­
ary development of the human animal and to
studying biological variation within the species to­
day. Cultural anthropologists study humans in
terms of their cultures, the often unconscious stan­
dards under which societies operate. Three areas
of cultural anthropology are archaeology, anthro­
pological linguistics, and ethnology. Archaeolo­
gists study material objects usually from past cul­
tures in order to explain human behavior.
Linguists, who study human languages, may deal
with descriptions of languages, with histories of
languages, or with how languages are used in par­
ticular social settings. Ethnologists concentrate on
cultures of the present or recent past; in doing com­
parative studies of culture, they focus on a partic­
ular aspect of culture, such as religious or eco-
Culture
Former ambassador Edwin Reischauer once
put it more tersely: “Education is not moving
rapidly enough in the right directions to produce
the knowledge about the outside world and atti­
tudes toward other peoples that may be essential
for human survival.” 19 W hat anthropology has to
contribute to contemporary life, then, are an un­
derstanding of and a way of looking at the world’s
peoples, or nothing less than basic skills for sur­
vival in the modern world.
19Ibid., p. 35.
S U M M A R Y
nomic practices, or as ethnographers they may go
into the field to observe and describe human be­
havior as it can be seen, experienced, and discussed
with persons whose culture is to be understood.
Anthropology is unique among the social and
natural sciences in that it is concerned with for­
mulating explanations of human diversity based
on a study of all aspects of human biology and be­
havior in all known societies, rather than in Eu­
ropean and North American societies alone. Thus
anthropologists have devoted much attention to
the study of non-Western peoples.
Anthropologists are concerned with the ob­
jective and systematic study of humankind. They
employ the methods of other scientists by devel­
oping a hypothesis, or assumed explanation; by
using other data to test the hypothesis; and by ul­
timately arriving at a theory— an explanation sup­
ported by reliable data. The data cultural anthro­
pologists use may be from a single society or from
numerous societies that are then compared.
In anthropology, the humanities and sciences
come together into a genuinely human science. An­
thropology’s link with the humanities can be seen
in its concern with people’s values, languages, arts,
and literature— oral as well as written— but above
all in its attempt to convey the experience of liv­
ing as other people do. As both a science and a
humanity, anthropology has essential skills to of­
fer the modern world, where understanding the
other people with whom we share the globe has
become a matter of survival.
 T he N ature of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 33

Points for C onsideration

1. Think about movies you have seen and novels you have read that have anthropologists as charac­
ters. How are they portrayed? How do these characterizations contrast with the discipline as pre­
sented in this chapter?
2. In your opinion, is anthropology a science? How does it differ from experimental sciences such as
chemistry and physics? from social and behavioral sciences, such as sociology and psychology?
Are some anthropology fields more scientific than others? If you do consider anthropology a sci­
ence, why would some observers dispute its scientific status? If you do not consider it a science,
what would make its research methods or findings more “scientific” ?
3. How could the kind of information anthropologists gather be useful in resolving contemporary
national political debates? W hat about international political issues? How might this information
change these debates?

Suggested
Lett, J. (1987). T he hum an enterprise: A critical
introduction to a n th rop olog ical theory. Boul­
der, CO: Westview.
Part 1 examines the philosophical foundations
of anthropological theory, paying special at­
tention to the nature of scientific inquiry and
the mechanisms of scientific progress. Part 2
deals with the nature of social science as well
as the particular features of anthropology.
Peacock, J. L. (1986). T he a n th rop olog ical lens:
H arsh light, s o ft focu s. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
This lively and innovative book manages to
give readers a good understanding of the di­
versity of activities anthropologists undertake
while identifying the unifying themes that hold
the discipline together.
Spradley, J. P. (1970). T he ethn ographic interview.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Readings
This contains one of the best discussions to be
found of the nature and value of ethnographic
research. The bulk of the book is devoted to
a step-by-step, easy-to-understand account of
how to conduct ethnographic research with
the assistance of “informants.” Numerous ex­
amples drawn from the author’s own research
in such diverse settings as Skid Row, court­
rooms, and bars make for interesting reading.
A companion volume, Participant Observa­
tion, also is highly recommended.
Vogt, F. W. (1975). A history o f ethnology. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
This history of cultural anthropology attempts
to describe and interpret the major intellectual
strands, in their cultural and historical con­
texts, that influenced the development of the
field. The author tries for a balanced view of
this subject rather than one that would sup­
port a particular theoretical position.
C liA p fe r 2 -
 CliAp-fef Pfet/ieiv
L What Is Culture?
Culture consists o f the abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions o f the w orld th a t lie behind peo­
ple’s behavior and tha t are reflected by th e ir behavior. These are shared by members o f a soci­
ety; and when they are acted upon, these elements produce behavior that is intelligible to o th e r
members o f tha t society. Cultures are learned, ra the r than inherited biologically, and they are
learned largely through the medium o f language.The parts o f a culture function as an integrated
whole.

2« How Is Culture Studied?

Anthropologists, like children, learn about a culture by experiencing it and talking about it w ith
those who live by its rules. O f course, anthropologists have less tim e to learn but are m ore sys­
tem atic in the way they learn.Through careful observation and discussion w ith informants who
are particularly knowledgeable in the ways o f th e ir culture, the anthropologist abstracts a set
o f rules to explain how people behave in a particular society.

3. Why Do Cultures Exist?

People maintain cultures to deal w ith problems o r m atters that concern them.To survive, a cul­
ture must satisfy the basic needs o f those who live by its rules, must provide fo r its own con­
tinuity, and must furnish an orderly existence fo r the members o f its society. In doing so, a cul­
ture must strike a balance between the self-interests o f individuals and the needs o f society as
a whole. And, finally, a culture must have the capacity to change so it can adapt to new circum ­
stances o r to altered perceptions o f existing circumstances.

35
36 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
tudents of anthropology are bound to find
S themselves studying a seemingly endless vari­
ety of human societies, each with its own dis­
tinctive system of politics, economics, and religion.
Yet for all this variation, these societies have one
thing in common. Each is a collection of people
cooperating to ensure their collective survival and
well-being. For this to work, some degree of pre­
dictable behavior is required of each individual
within the society, for group living and coopera­
tion are impossible unless individuals know how
others are likely to behave in any given situation.
For humans, it is culture that sets the limits of be­
havior and guides it along predictable paths.
THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE
The concept of culture was first developed by an­
thropologists toward the end of the 19th century.
The first really clear and comprehensive definition
was that of the British anthropologist Sir Edward
Burnett Tylor. Writing in 1871, Tylor defined cul­
ture as “that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society.” Since Tylor’s time, defi­
nitions of culture have proliferated, so by the early
1950s North American anthropologists A. L.
Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn were able to col­
lect more than a hundred definitions of culture
from the literature. Recent definitions tend to dis­
tinguish more clearly between actual behavior on
the one hand and the abstract values, beliefs, and
perceptions of the world that lie behind that be­
havior on the other. To put it another way, culture
is not observable behavior but, rather, the shared
ideals, values, and beliefs people use to interpret
experience and generate behavior and that are re­
flected by their behavior.
C u ltu re . The ideals, values, and beliefs members of a society share to interpret experience and generate behavior and
that are reflected by their behavior. > Society. A group of people who have a common homeland, are interdependent,
and share a common culture. > Social s tru c tu re . The relationships of groups within a society that hold it together.
Culture
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
Through the comparative study of many different
cultures, anthropologists have arrived at an un­
derstanding of the basic characteristics all cultures
share. A careful study of these helps us to see the
importance of and the function of culture itself.
C ulture I s S hared
As stated earlier, culture is a set of shared ideals,
values, and standards of behavior; it is the com­
mon denominator that makes the actions of indi­
viduals intelligible to other members of their soci­
ety. Because they share a common culture, people
can predict how others are most likely to behave
in a given circumstance and can react accordingly.
A group of people from different cultures,
stranded for a period on a desert island, might ap­
pear to become a society of sorts. They would have
a common interest— survival— and would develop
techniques for living and working together. Each
of the group members, however, would retain his
or her own identity and cultural background, and
the group would disintegrate without further ado
as soon as its members were rescued from the is­
land. The group would have been merely a tem­
porary aggregate and not a cultural entity. Society
may be defined as a group of people who have a
common homeland, who are dependent on each
other for survival, and who share a common cul­
ture. The way these people depend upon each
other can be seen in such things as their economic
systems and their family relationships; moreover,
members of a society are held together by a sense
of common identity. The relationships that hold a
society together are known as its social structure.
Culture and society are two closely related
concepts, and anthropologists study both. Obvi-

ously, no culture can exist without a society, just
as no society can exist without individuals. Con­
versely, no known human societies exist, or have
existed, that do not exhibit culture. Some other
species of animals, however, do lead a social exis­
tence without culture. Ants and bees, for example,
instinctively cooperate in a manner that clearly
indicates a degree of social organization, yet this
instinctual behavior is not a culture. Therefore, a
society (but not a hum an society) can exist with­
out a culture, even though a culture cannot exist
without a society. Whether or not animals other
than humans exist that exhibit cultural beh a v io r
is a question that will be dealt with shortly.
Although a culture is shared by members of a
society, it is important to realize that all is not uni­
formity. For one thing, no member has the exact
same version of his or her culture as another.
Beyond such individual variation, however, some
further variation is bound to occur within a given
culture. At the very least, in any human society
some differences between the roles of men and
women exist. These stem from the facts women
give birth but men do not, and male and female
anatomy and physiology differ in obvious ways.
Every culture gives meaning to these differences
by explaining them and specifying what to do
about them. Every culture, as well, specifies how
the two kinds of people resulting from the differ­
In all human societies, children’s play is used both consciously and unconsciously to teach gender roles.
Gender. The elaborations and meanings cultures assign to the biological differentiation of the sexes.
T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 37
ences should relate to one another and to the world
at large. Since each culture does this in its own
way, tremendous variation occurs from one soci­
ety to another. Anthropologists use the term
gender to refer to the cultural elaborations and
meanings assigned to the biological differentia­
tions between the sexes. Thus, though one’s sex is
biologically determined, one’s sexual identity or
gender is culturally constructed.
The distinction between sex, which is biolog­
ical, and gender, which is cultural, is an important
one. Presumably, gender differences are as old as
human culture— about 2.5 million years— and
arose from the biological differences between early
human males and females. Back then, males were
about twice the size of females, as they are today
among such species as gorillas, orangutans, and
baboons, all of which are closely related to hu­
mans. As humans evolved, however, the biological
differences between the two sexes were radically
reduced. Thus, apart from differences directly re­
lated to reproduction, whatever biological basis
that once existed for gender role differences largely
has disappeared.
Nevertheless, cultures have maintained some
differentiation of gender roles ever since, although
these are far greater in some societies than others.
Paradoxically, gender differences were far more
extreme in late 19th and early 20th century
38 PARTI Anthropology and the Study
Western (European and European derived) soci­
eties, when women were expected to submit un-
questioningly to male authority, than they are
among most historically known food-foraging
peoples whose ways of life, though not unchanged,
are more like those of the late Stone Age ances­
tors of Western peoples. Among food foragers, re­
lations between men and women tend to be rela­
tively egalitarian, and, although the two sexes may
not typically carry out the same tasks, such
arrangements tend to be flexible. In other words,
differences between the behavior of men and of
women in North American and Western societies
today, differences thought by many to be rooted
in human biology, are not so rooted at all. Rather,
they appear to have been elaborated recently in
the course of history.
In addition to cultural variation along lines of
sex, cultural variation related to age occurs. In any
society, children are not expected to behave as
adults, and the reverse is equally true. Also, vari­
ation between subgroups exists in societies. These
may be occupational groups, where a complex di­
vision of labor exists, or social classes in a strati­
fied society, or ethnic groups in some other soci­
eties. When there are such groups within a society,
each functioning by its own distinctive standards
of behavior while at the same time sharing some
standards in common, we speak of subcultures.
The word subculture, it should be noted, carries
no connotation of lesser status relative to the word
cultural.
New Houses for
Apache Indians
he United States, in common with the other in­
T dustrialized countries o f the world, has within it a
number o f more o r less separate subcultures. Those
who live by the standards o f one particular subculture
have their closest relationships with one another; re­
S u b cu ltu re. A distinctive set of standards and behavior patterns that a group within a larger society operates by.
of Culture
One example of a subculture in the United
States can be seen in the Amish.1 The old-order
Amish originated in Austria and Moravia during
the Reformation; today members of this order
number about 60,000 and live mainly in Pennsyl­
vania, Ohio, and Indiana. They are pacifistic,
agrarian people whose lives focus on their religious
beliefs. They value simplicity, hard work, and a
high degree of neighborly cooperation. The Amish
dress in a distinctive plain garb and even today
rely on the horse for transportation as well as agri­
cultural work. They mingle as little as possible
with the non-Amish.
The goal of Amish education is to teach read­
ing, writing, and arithmetic and to instill Amish
values in their children. They reject what they re­
gard as “worldly” knowledge and the idea of
schools producing good citizens for the state. The
Amish insist that their children attend school near
home and that teachers be committed to Amish
values. Their nonconformity to many standards of
the larger culture has caused frequent conflict with
state authorities, as well as legal and personal ha­
rassment. The Amish have resisted all attempts to
force their children to attend regular public
schools. Some compromise has been necessary, and
“vocational training” has been introduced beyond
the elementary school level to fulfill state require­
ments. The Amish have succeeded in gaining con-
'Hosteder, J., & Huntington, G. (1971). Children in Amish
society. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
ceiving constant reassurance that their perceptions of
the world are the only correct ones and taking it for
granted that the whole culture is as they see it. As a
consequence, members o f one subcultural group fre­
quently have trouble understanding the needs and as-

pirations o f other such groups. For this reason anthro­
pologists, with their special understanding o f cultural dif­
ferences, are frequently employed as go-betweens in
situations requiring interaction between peoples o f dif­
fering cultural traditions.
As an example, George S. Esber Jr., while still a
graduate student in anthropology, was hired to w ork
with architects and a band o f Apache Indians on de­
signing a new community for the Apaches* Although
architects began with an awareness that cross-cultural
differences in the use o f space exist, they had no idea
how to get relevant information from the Indians. For
their part, the Apaches had no explicit awareness o f
their needs, for these were based on unconscious pat­
terns o f behavior Moreover; the idea that patterns o f
behavior could be acted out unconsciously was an alien
idea to them.
Esber's task was to persuade the architects to hold
back on their planning long enough for him to gather;
through fieldwork and review o f written records, the
kind o f data needed to abstract Apache housing needs.
A t the same time, he had to overcome Apache anxi­
eties over an outsider coming into their midst to learn
about matters as personal as their daily lives. A fter these
tasks were accomplished, Esber identified and success­
fully communicated to the architects features o f Apache
T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 39
life with important implications fo r community design.
In addition, discussions o f his findings with the Apaches
enhanced their awareness o f their own unique needs.
As a result o f Esber's work, in 1981 the Apaches
could move into houses that had been designed with
their participation fo r their specific needs. Among other
things, account was taken o f the Indians' need to ease
into a social situation, rather than jumping right in.
Apache etiquette requires that all people be in full view
o f one another; so each can assess from a distance the
behavior o f others to act appropriately with them.This
requires a large, open living space. In addition, hosts
must be able to offer food to guests as a prelude to
further social interaction. Thus, cooking and dining ar­
eas cannot be separated from living space. N o r can
standard middle-class Anglo kitchen equipment be in­
stalled; the need fo r handling large quantities o f food
requires large pots and pans, for which extra large sinks
and cupboards are necessary. In such ways the new
houses were made to accommodate long-standing na­
tive traditions.
*See Esber, G. (1987). Designing Apache houses with
Apaches. In R. M. Wulff & S. J. Fiske (Eds.), A nthropologi­
cal praxis-. Translating know ledge into action. Boulder, CO:
Westview.
trol of their schools and maintaining their way of
life, but they are a beleaguered, defensive culture,
more distrustful than ever of the larger culture
around them.
The experience of the Amish is one example
of the way a subculture may be dealt with by the
larger culture it functions within. Different as they
are, the Amish actually practice many values citi­
zens of the United States respect in the abstract:
thrift, hard work, independence, and a close fam­
ily life. The degree of tolerance accorded to them
is also due in part to the fact the Amish are white­
skinned Europeans. American Indian subcultures
have been treated differently by Whites, who came
as conquerors and who defined Indian values as
“savage.” For some 500 years, Europeans and
their descendants in what is now the United States
have generally accepted the notion the Indian cul­
tures were doomed to disappear; yet they are still
very much with us, even if in altered form.
40 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

The Amish people have maintained a distinctive agrarian way of life in the midst of
industrialized North American society. By maintaining their own schools to instill Amish
values in their children, prohibiting mechanized vehicles and equipment, and dressing in
their distinctive plain clothing, the Amish proclaim their own special identity.

Implicit in the discussion thus far is the fact
subcultures may develop in different ways. On the
one hand, the Amish subculture emerged as the
product of the way these people have communi­
cated and interacted in pursuit of their common
goals within the wider society. On the other hand,
American Indian subcultures are the result of once
independent cultures having been forcibly brought
under the control of the United States. Although
all Indian cultures have undergone change as a re­
sult, many of them have remained different enough
from European American culture so that it is dif­
ficult to decide whether they remain as distinct cul­
tures as opposed to subcultures. In this sense, cul­
ture and subculture represent opposite ends of a
continuum, with no clear dividing line in the “gray
area” between.
Raised here is the issue of so-called pluralistic
societies in which cultural variation is especially
marked and few standards, if any, are held in com­
mon. Pluralistic societies are, in effect, multicul­
tural, and could not have existed before the first
politically centralized states arose a mere 5,000
years ago. With the rise of the state, it became pos­
sible to politically unify two or more formerly in­
dependent societies, each with its own culture,
thereby creating what amounts to a higher order
social entity that transcends the theoretical one
culture-one society linkage. Pluralistic societies,
which are common in the world today (Figure
2.1), are characterized by a particular problem:
The groups within them, by virtue of their high
degree of cultural variation, are all essentially op­
erating by different sets of rules. This can create
problems, given that social living demands pre­
dictable behavior. In a culturally plural society, it
may become difficult for the members of any one
subgroup to comprehend the different standards
the others operate under. At the least, this can lead
to major misunderstandings, as in the following
case reported in the Wall Street Jou rn al (May 13,
1983):

Pluralistic societies. Societies that have a diversity of cultural patterns.


Fiawnc 1.1
Shown here are a few of the ethnic groups of the
Russian Federation. Contrary to popular belief, the
ethnic conflicts that have broken out since the col­
lapse of the Soviet Union stem not from a supposedly
conflictive nature of ethnicity but from Stalin’s policy
of emphasizing ethnicity while preventing its expres­
sion and forcibly removing populations from their
homelands to new localities.
The difficulties of making pluralistic societies work is illustrated by the
continuing tragedy of Bosnia. Here, a long tradition of different people
living together peacefully was overwhelmed by the passions of nationalism.
T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 41
Salt Lake City— Police called it a cross-cultural mis­
understanding. When the man showed up to buy
the Shetland pony advertised for sale, the owner
asked what he intended to do with the animal.
“For my son’s birthday,” he replied, and the
deal was closed.
The buyer thereupon clubbed the pony to
death with a two-by-four, dumped the carcass in
his pickup truck and drove away. The horrified
seller called the police, who tracked down the
buyer. At his house they found a birthday party in
progress. The pony was trussed and roasting in a
luau pit.
We don’t ride horses, we eat them, explained
the buyer, a recent immigrant from Tonga.
Members of one subgroup within a pluralis­
tic society may have difficulty understanding the
standards members of others operate under. Un­
fortunately, sometimes this difficulty can go far be­
yond mere misunderstanding, and violence and
bloodshed may result. Many cases might be cited,
but one we shall look at in some detail in a later
chapter (16) is Guatemala, where a government
distrustful of its Indian population unleashed a
reign of terror against it.
In every culture are persons whose idiosyn­
cratic behavior has earned them the label of
42 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

“eccentric,” “crazy,” or “queer.” Such persons are

looked upon with disapproval by most members
of their society, and if their behavior becomes too
idiosyncratic, they are sooner or later excluded
from participating in group activities. Such exclu­
sion acts to keep what is defined as deviant be­
havior outside groups. Yet what is regarded as de­
viant in one society may not be in another. In many
Native American societies, for example, individu­
als were permitted to assume for life the role nor­
mally associated with people of the opposite sex.
Thus, a man could dress as a woman and engage
in what were conventionally defined as “female”
activities; conversely, women could achieve
renown in activities normally in the masculine do­
main. In effect, four different gender identities
were available: masculine men, feminine men, fem­
inine women, and masculine women. Further­
more, masculine women and feminine men were
not merely accepted but were highly respected.
Because individuals who share a culture tend
to marry within their society and thus to share cer­
tain physical characteristics, some people mistak­
enly believe a direct relationship exists between cul­
ture and race. This idea has two problems, one of
them being that the human species cannot be di­
vided into biological races. The reason is that phys­ In the United States, a man dressing as a woman has
ical traits of humans do not co-vary; hence, a clas­ been regarded traditionally as abnormal behavior, but in
sification based on differential skin color, for some other cultures, such behavior is regarded as per­
example, will be quite different from one based on fectly normal. Not only does culture define what is ab­
some other characteristic. The second problem is normal as well as normal, but also such definitions may
that so-called racial characteristics represent bio­ change over time, as when women in the United States
logical adaptations to climate and have nothing to wear men’s clothing without being regarded as at all odd.
do with differences in intelligence or cultural supe­
riority. Some African Americans have argued they
to refer to it as humanity’s “social heredity.” Peo­
have more in common with dark-skinned Africans
ple learn their culture by growing up with it, and
than they do with light-skinned North Americans.
the process whereby culture is transmitted from
Yet if they suddenly had to live in a traditional
one generation to the next is called enculturation.
Bantu society, they would find themselves lacking
M ost animals eat and drink whenever the urge
the cultural knowledge to be successful members of
arises. Humans, however, do most of their eating
this group. The culture they share with White North
and drinking at certain culturally prescribed times
Americans is more significant than the physical
and feel hungry as those times approach. These
traits they share with the Black Africans.
eating times vary from culture to culture, as does
what is eaten and how it is eaten. To add com­
C ulture I s L e a r ne d
plexity, food is used to do more than merely sat­
All culture is learned rather than biologically in­ isfy nutritional requirements. When used to cele­
herited, prompting anthropologist Ralph Linton brate rituals and religious activities, food

E n cu ltu ra tio n . The process that transmits a society's culture from one generation to the n ex t

“establishes relationships of give and take, of co­
operation, of sharing, of an emotional bond that
is universal.”2
Through enculturation one learns the socially
appropriate way to satisfy one’s biologically de­
termined needs. It is important to distinguish be­
tween the needs themselves, which are not learned,
and the learned ways they are satisfied. Thus, a
North American’s idea of a comfortable way to
sleep will vary greatly from that of a Japanese. The
biological needs of humans are the same as those
of other animals: besides food and sleep, they in­
clude shelter, companionship, self-defense, and
sexual gratification. Each culture determines in its
own way how these needs will be met.
Not all learned behavior is cultural. A pigeon
may learn tricks, but this behavior is reflexive, the
result of conditioning by repeated training, not the
product of enculturation. Learned behavior is ex­
hibited to one degree or another by most, if not
all, mammals. Moreover, several species may be
said to have culture, in that local populations share
patterns of behavior that, just like humans, each
generation learns from the one before and that dif­
fer from one population to another. Elizabeth
Marshall Thomas, for example, has described a
distinctive pattern of behavior among lions of
southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert that each gen­
eration passed on to the next and that regulated in­
teraction with the region’s native people.3 She has
shown as well how that culture changed over the
past 30 years in response to new circumstances.
Among nonhuman primates, examples of cul­
tural behavior are particularly evident. A chim­
panzee, for example, will take a twig, strip it of
all leaves, and smooth it down in order to fashion
a tool for extracting termites from their nest. Such
toolmaking, which juveniles learn from their el­
ders, is unquestionably a form of cultural behav­
ior once thought exclusively human. In Japan,
macaques that learned the advantages of washing
sweet potatoes before eating them passed the prac­
tice on to the next generation. And so it goes; it
is interesting that within any given primate species,
the culture of one population often differs from
2Caroulis, J. (1996). Food for thought. Pennsylvania G az­
ette, 95 (3), 16.
3Thomas, E. M. (1994). The tribe o f the tiger (pp. 1 0 9 -
186). New York: Simon and Schuster.
T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 43
that of others, just as it does among humans. Be­
yond this, we have discovered both in captivity
and in the wild that primates in general and apes
in particular “possess a near-human intelligence
generally, including the use of sounds in represen­
tational ways, a rich awareness of the aims and
objectives of others, the ability to engage in tacti­
cal deception, and the ability to use symbols in
communication with humans and each other.”4
Given the degree of biological similarity be­
tween apes and humans (discussed in Chapter 3),
it should come as no surprise to find they are like
us in other ways as well. In all respects the dif­
ferences between apes and humans are differences
of degree, rather than kind (although the degree
does make a difference). This knowledge has
shocked many, as it contradicts a belief deeply em­
bedded in Western cultures: that a deep and un­
bridgeable gap between humans and animals is
supposed to exist. It has not been easy to over­
come this bias, and, indeed, we still have not come
to grips fully with the moral implications with re­
spect to the way we treat primates in research lab­
oratories.
C u l t u r e is B a s e d on S y m b o l s
When anthropologist Leslie White observed that
all human behavior originates in the use of sym­
bols, he expressed an opinion all anthropologists
share. Art, religion, and money involve symbols.
We are all familiar with the fervor and devotion
religion can elicit from a believer. A Christian
cross, an Islamic crescent, a Jewish Star of David,
or any object of worship may bring to mind cen­
turies of struggle and persecution or may stand for
a whole philosophy or creed. The most important
symbolic aspect of culture is language— the sub­
stitution of words for objects.
Through language humans are able to trans­
mit culture from one generation to another. In par­
ticular, language makes it possible to learn from
cumulative shared experience. Without it, one
could not inform others about events they were
not a party to. We shall consider the important re­
lationship between language and culture in greater
detail in Chapter 4.
4Reynolds, V. (1994). Primates in the field, primates in the
lab. A nthropology Today, 10 (2), 4.
44 PART I Anthropology and the Study
Leslie A . W h ite (1 9 0 0 -1 9 7 5 )
Leslie W h ite was a major theoreti­
cian in N o rth American anthropol­
ogy w ho saw culture as consisting of
three essential components, which
he referred to as techno-economic,
the social, and the ideological. W hite
defined the techno-economic aspect
of a culture as the way members of
the culture deal with their environ­
ment, and this aspect then deter­
mines the culture’s social and ideo­
logical aspects.
Although he acknowledged the importance of
symbols, W h ite considered how culture harnessed
energy the m ost significant factor in its develop­
ment. Hence, in his “culturological” approach, he
saw culture (in this case, technology) determining
culture, and extracultural phenomena
deemed irrelevant. In T he Evolution of
C ulture I s I ntegrated
For comparison and analysis, anthropologists cus­
tomarily break a culture down into many seem­
ingly discrete parts, even though such distinctions
are arbitrary. The anthropologist who examines
one aspect of a culture invariably finds it neces­
sary to examine others as well. This tendency for
all aspects of a culture to function as an interre­
lated whole is called integration.
The integration of the economic, political, and
social aspects of a culture can be illustrated by the
Kapauku Papuans, a mountain people of western
New Guinea studied in 1955 by North American
anthropologist Leopold Pospisil.5 The Kapauku
economy relies on plant cultivation, along with pig
5Pospisil, L. (1963). The Kapauku Papuans o f west N ew
Guinea. New York: Holt, Rineharr and Winston.
In te g ra tio n . The tendency for all aspects o f a culture to function as an Interrelated whole.
of C ulture
(1959),W hite stated his basic law of
evolution, that culture evolves in
proportion to the amount of energy
harnessed for each individual, o r to
the increased efficiency with which
that energy is put to work. In other
words, culture develops in direct re­
sponse to technological “progress."
A problem with W h ite ’s posi­
tion is his equation of “evolution”
with “progress,” the latter being a
concept Europeans (and European
Americans) invented in the 18th century to ratio­
nalize the transformation taking place in their so­
cieties with the advent of the industrial revolution.
In this respect, his theories were heavily culture
bound. Yet he did alert anthropologists to the im­
were portance technological changes may have for the
C ulture rest of culture.
breeding, hunting, and fishing. Although plant cul­
tivation provides most of the people’s food, men
achieve political power and positions of legal au­
thority through pig breeding.
Among the Kapauku, pig breeding is a com­
plex business. Raising lots of pigs, obviously, re­
quires a lot of food to feed them. This consists pri­
marily of sweet potatoes grown in garden plots.
Kapauku culture defines some essential gardening
activities as women’s work. Furthermore, pigs
must be cared for by women. So, to raise many
pigs, a man must have many women in the house­
hold. He accomplishes this by marrying them. In
Kapauku society, multiple wives (polygyny) are
not only permitted but are highly desired as well.
For each wife, however, a man must pay a bride
price, which can be expensive. Furthermore, wives
have to be compensated for their care of pigs. Put
simply, it takes pigs, by which wealth is measured,

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (I881-1955)
British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-
Brown was the originator of what has
come to be known as the structural-
functionalist school of thought He
and his followers maintained that
each societal custom and belief has a
specific function that serves to per­
petuate that society’s structure— its
ordered arrangement of parts— so
that the society’s continued existence
is possible. The anthropologist’s job,
therefore, was to study the ways cus­
toms and beliefs function to solve the problem of
maintaining the system. From such studies should
emerge universal laws of human behavior.
The value of the structural-functionalist ap­
to get wives, which are necessary to raise pigs in
the first place. Needless to say, this requires con­
siderable entrepreneurship. It is this ability that
produces leaders in Kapauku society.
The interrelatedness of the various parts of
Kapauku culture is even more complex than this.
For example, one condition conducive to polyg­
yny is a surplus of adult women. In the Kapauku
case, warfare is endemic, regarded as a necessary
evil. By the rules of Kapauku warfare, men get
T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 45
proach is that it caused anthropolo­
gists to analyze societies and their
cultures as systems and to examine
the interconnections between their
various parts. It also gave a new di­
mension to comparative studies, as
present-day societies were com ­
pared in terms of structural-func­
tional similarities and differences
rather than their presumed histori­
cal connections. Radcliffe-Brown’s
universal laws have not emerged,
however, and these questions remain: W h y do par­
ticular customs arise in the first place, and how do
cultures change? To answer these questions, other
approaches are necessary.
killed but women do not. This system works to
promote the kind of imbalance of sexes that fa­
cilitates polygyny. Polygyny also tends to work
best if wives come to live in their husband’s vil­
lage, rather than the other way around, and this
is the case among the Kapauku. Thus, the men of
a village are “blood” relatives of one another.
Given this, a patrilineal (descent reckoned through
men) emphasis in Kapauku culture is not unex­
pected.
These examples by no means exhaust the in­
terrelationships found in Kapauku culture. For ex­
ample, both patrilineality and endemic warfare
tend to promote male dominance, so it is not sur­
prising to find that positions of leadership in Ka­
pauku society are held exclusively by men, who
appropriate the products of women’s labor in or­
der to play their political “games.” Assertions to
the contrary notwithstanding, male dominance is
by no means characteristic of all human societies.
Rather, as with the Kapauku, it arises only under
particular circumstances that, if changed, would
alter the way men and women relate to one an­
other.
46 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

From what has been said so far, one might

suppose the various parts of a culture must oper­
ate in perfect harmony at all times. The analogy
would be that of a machine; all parts must be com­
patible and complementary or it won’t run. Try
putting diesel fuel in the tank of a car that runs
on gasoline and you’ve got a problem; one part of
the system is no longer compatible with the rest.
To a degree, this is true of all cultures. A change
in one part of a culture usually will affect other
parts, sometimes in rather dramatic ways. This
point, which we will return to later in this chap­
ter, is particularly important today as diverse
agents seek to introduce changes of all sorts into
societies around the world.
While we must recognize that a degree of har­
mony is necessary in any properly functioning cul­
ture, we should not assume complete harmony is
required. Because no two individuals experience
the enculturation process in precisely the same
way, no two individuals perceive their culture in
exactly the same way, so always some potential Describing another culture is like trying to describe a
for change exists in any culture. We should speak, new game. The people in this picture look as though
instead, of a strain to consistency in culture. So they are playing baseball, but they are playing cricket.
To describe cricket in the language of baseball would
long as the parts are reasonably consistent, a cul­
be at best a caricature of the game as the British
ture will operate reasonably well. If, however, that
know it. The problem in anthropology is how to de­
strain to consistency breaks down, a situation of
scribe another culture for an audience unfamiliar with
cultural crisis ensues. it, so that the description is not a caricature.

i V ± T A V AY AT ^ i V i V 4 V A ' f A V * . » A Í A ' 4 7 * -
STUDYING CULTURE
IN THE FIELD
Armed, now, with some understanding of what
culture is, we next address this question: How does
an anthropologist study culture in the field? Cul­
ture, being a set of rules or standards, cannot it­
self be directly observed; only actual behavior is
observable. The anthropologist must abstract a set
of rules from what is seen and heard in order to
explain social behavior, much as a linguist, from
the way people speak a language, tries to develop
a set of rules to account for the ways those speak­
ers combine sounds into meaningful phrases.
To pursue this further, consider the following
discussion of exogamy— marriage outside one’s
own group— among the Trobriand Islanders, as
described by Bronislaw Malinowski.
If you were to inquire into the matter among the
Trobrianders, you would find that . . . the natives
show horror at the idea of violating the rules of ex­
ogamy and that they believe that sores, diseases,
even death might follow clan incest. [But] from the
viewpoint of the native libertine, suvasova (the
breach of exogamy) is indeed a specially interest­
ing and spicy form of erotic experience. Most of
my informants would not only admit but did ac­
tually boast about having committed this offense.6
Malinowski himself determined that although
such breaches did occasionally occur, they were
much less frequent than gossip would have it. Had
Malinowski relied solely on what the Trobrianders
told him, his description of their culture would
have been inaccurate. The same sort of discrep-
6Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts o f the western Pacific.
New York: Dutton.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1 8 8 4 -1 9 4 2 )
The Polish-born Bronislaw Mali­
nowski argued that people every­
where share certain biological and
psychological needs and that the ul­
timate function of all cultural insti­
tutions is to fulfill those needs.
Everyone, for example, needs to feel
secure in relation to the physical uni­
verse. Therefore, when science and
technology are inadequate to explain
certain natural phenomena— such as
eclipses o r earthquakes— people de­
velop religion and magic to account for those phe­
nomena and to restore a feeling of security. The
nature of the institution, according to Malinowski,
is determined by its function.
Malinowski outlined three fundamental levels
of needs that he claimed had to be resolved by all
cultures:
I. A culture must provide for biological needs,
such as food and procreation.
ancy between cultural ideals and the way people
really do behave can be found in any culture.
Chapter 1 had an example from contemporary
North America in the Garbage Project discussion.
From these examples, it is obvious anthro­
pologists must be cautious if they are to give a re­
alistic description of a culture. To play it safe, data
drawn in three different ways ought to be consid­
ered. First, the people’s own understanding of the
rules they share— that is, their -notion of the way
their society ought to be— must be examined. Sec­
ond, the extent people believe they are observing
those rules— that is, how they think they actually
do behave— needs to be investigated. Third, the
behavior that can be directly observed should
be considered— in the Trobrianders example,
whether or not the rule of suvasova is actually vi­
olated. As we see here, and as shown in the
T he N ature of C ulture CHAPTER 2 47
A culture must provide for in­
strumental needs, such as law
and education.
A culture must provide for in­
tegrative needs, such as religion
and art.
If anthropologists could analyze the
ways a culture fulfills these needs for
its members, Malinowski believed
they also could deduce the origin of
cultural traits. Although this belief
was never justified, the quality of
data Malinowski’s approach called for set new stan­
dards for ethnographic fieldwork. He himself
showed the way with his w ork in the Trobriand Is­
lands between 1915 and 1918. Never before had
such in-depth fieldwork been done, nor had such
insights been gained into the workings of another
culture. Such was the quality of Malinowski’s Tro­
briand research that with it ethnography can be
said to have come of age as a scientific enterprise.
Garbage Project discussion, the way people think
they sh ou ld behave, the way they think they d o
behave, and the way they actually behave may be
three distinctly different versions. By carefully ex­
amining these elements, anthropologists can draw
up a set of rules that actually may explain the ac­
ceptable behavior within a culture.
O f course, the anthropologist is only human.
As discussed in Chapter 1, it is difficult to com­
pletely cast aside one’s personal feelings and bi­
ases, which have been shaped by one’s own cul­
ture. Yet it is important to make every effort to
do just this, for otherwise anthropologists may se­
riously misinterpret what they see. As a case in
point, consider how the male bias of the European
culture Malinowski came from caused him to miss
important factors in his pioneering study of the
Trobriand Islanders.
 T he N ature of C ulture CHAPTER 2 49

own wealth— bundles o f banana leaves and banana fiber skirts— which they
exchanged with other women in commemoration o f someone who had re­
cently died. Watching that event forced me to take women’s economic roles
more seriously than I would have from reading Malinowski's studies. Although
Malinowski noted the high status ofTrobriand women, he attributed their
importance to the fact that Trobrianders reckon descent through women,
thereby giving them genealogical significance in a matrilineal society. Yet he
never considered that this significance was underwritten by women's own
wealth because he did not systematically investigate the women’s produc­
tive activities. Although in his field notes he mentionsTrobrland women mak­
ing these seemingly useless banana bundles to be exchanged at a death, his
published w ork only deals with men’s wealth.
My taking seriously the Importance o f women’s wealth not only brought
women as the neglected half o f society clearly into the ethnographic picture
but also forced me to revise many o f Malinowski's assumptions about Tro-
briand men. For example, Trobriand kinship as described by Malinowski has
always been a subject o f debate among anthropologists. For Malinowski, the
basic relationships within a Trobriand family were guided by the matrilineal
principle o f "mother-right" and "father-love." A father was called “ stranger"
and had little authority over his own children. A woman's brother was the
commanding figure and exercised control over his sister's sons because they
were members o f his matrilineage rather than their father's matrilineage.
According to Malinowski, this matrilineal drama was played out biolog­
ically by the Trobrianders' belief that a man has no role as genitor. A man’s

In the Trobriand Islands, women’s wealth consists of skirts and banana leaves, large quantities of which must be
given away on the death of a relative.
48 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

& A A ¡1 Mi. h. -A A It. A A A A A. A A A A A. A A A A A A &

Walking into a village at the beginning o f fieldwork is entering a world with­

out cultural guideposts. The task o f learning values that others live by is never
easy. The rigors o f fieldwork involve listening and watching, learning a new
language o f speech and actions, and most o f all, letting go o f one's own cul­
tural assumptions in order to understand the meanings others give to work,
The power; death, family, and friends. As my fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands of
Papua New Guinea was no exception, I wrestled doggedly with each o f these
Importance problems. Doing research in the Trobriand Islands created one additional ob­
stacle. I was working in the footsteps o f a celebrated anthropological an­
of Trobriand cestor; Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski. .. .
Women7 In 1971, before my first trip to the Trobrlands, I thought I understood
many things about Trobriand customs and beliefs from having read Mali­
nowski's exhaustive writings. Once there, however; I found that I had much
more to discover about what I thought I already knew. For many months I
worked with these discordant realities, always conscious o f Malinowski's
shadow, his words, his explanations. Although I found significant differences
in areas o f importance, I gradually came to understand how he reached cer­
tain conclusions. The answers we both received from informants were not
so dissimilar; and I could actually trace how Malinowski had analyzed what
his informants told him in a way that made sense and was scientifically sig­
nificant— given what anthropologists generally then recognized about such
societies. Sixty years separate our fieldwork, and any comparison o f our stud­
ies Illustrates not so much Malinowski's mistaken interpretations but the de­
velopments in anthropological knowledge and inquiry from his time to mine.
This important point has been forgotten by those anthropologists who
today argue that ethnographic writing can never be more than a kind o f fic­
tional account o f an author's experiences. Although Malinowski and I were
In the Trobrlands at vastly different historical moments and there also are
many areas in which our analyses differ; a large part o f what we learned in
the field was similar From the vantage point that time gives to me, I can il­
lustrate how our differences, even those that are major; came to be. Taken
together; our tw o studies profoundly exemplify the scientific basis that un­
derlies the collection o f ethnographic data. Like all such data, however;
whether researched in a laboratory or a village, the more we learn about a
subject, the more we can refine and revise earlier assumptions. This is the
way all sciences create their own historical developments.Therefore, the lack
o f agreement between Malinowski’s ethnography and mine must not be taken
as an adversarial attack against an opponent. N o r should it be read as an
example o f the writing o f ethnography as “fiction" or "partial truths." Each
o f our differences can be traced historically within the discipline o f anthro­
pology.
My most significant point o f departure from Malinowski's analyses was
the attention I gave to women's productive work. In my original research
plans, women were not the central focus o f study, but on the first day I took
up residence in a village I was taken by them to watch a distribution o f their

7Weiner, A. B. (1988). The Trohrianders o f Papua N ew Guinea (pp. 4 -7 ). New

York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
50 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

wife is thought to become pregnant when an ancestral spirit enters her body
and causes conception. Even after a child Is born, Malinowski reported, It Is the
woman’s brother who presents a harvest o f yams to his sister so that her child
will be fed with food from its own matrllineage, rather than its father's matri-
lineage. In this way, Malinowski conceptualized matrilineality as an institution In
which the father o f a child, as a member o f a different matrilineage, was ex­
cluded not only from participating in procreation but also from giving any ob­
jects o f lasting value to his children, thus provisioning them only with love.
In my study ofTrobriand women and men, a different configuration o f
matrilineal descent emerged. A Trobriand father is not a “ stranger” in Mali­
nowski's definition, nor is he a powerless figure as the third party to the re­
lationship between a woman and her brother. The father is one o f the most
important persons in his child's life, and remains so even after his child grows
up and marries. Even a father's procreative importance is incorporated into
his child’s growth and development. A Trobriand man gives his child many
opportunities to gain things from his matrilineage, thereby adding to the avail­
able resources that he o r she can draw upon. A t the same time, this giving
creates obligations on the part o f a man's children toward him that last even
beyond his death. Therefore, the roles that men and their children play in
each other's lives are worked out through extensive cycles o f exchanges,
which define the strength o f their relationships to each other and eventually
benefit the other members o f both their matrilineages. Central to these ex­
changes are women and their wealth.
That Malinowski never gave equal time to the women's side o f things,
given the deep significance o f their role in societal and political life, is not
surprising. Only recently have anthropologists begun to understand the im­
portance o f taking women’s w ork seriously. In some cultures, such as the
Middle East or among Australian aborigines, it is extremely difficult for ethno­
graphers to cross the culturally bounded ritual worlds that separate women
from men. In the past, however; both women and men ethnographers gen­
erally analyzed the societies they studied from a male perspective. The
“women's point o f view” was largely ignored in the study o f gender roles,
since anthropologists generally perceived women as living in the shadows of
men— occupying the private rather than the public sectors o f society, rear­
ing children rather than engaging in economic or political pursuits.

willful) process organisms undergo to achieve a

CULTURE AND ADAPTATION
In the course of their evolution, humans, like all
animals, have been continually faced with the
problem of adapting to their environment. The
term adaptation refers to a natural (rather than
beneficial adjustment to an available environment
and the results of that process— the characteristics
possessed by organisms that permit them to over­
come the hazards of and to secure the resources
they need for the particular environments they live
in. With the exception of humans, organisms have

A d ap tatio n . A process organisms undergo to achieve a beneficial adjustment to an available environment and the
results of that process: characteristics that fit them to the particular conditions of the environment they are generally found in.

generally adapted as natural selection has provided
them with advantageous anatomical and physio­
logical characteristics. For example, a body cov­
ering of hair, coupled with certain other physio­
logical mechanisms, protects mammals from
extremes of temperature; specialized teeth help
them to procure the kinds of food they need; and
so on. Humans, however, have come to depend
more and more on cultural adaptation. For ex­
ample, biology has not provided them with built-
in fur coats to protect them in cold climates, but
it has provided them with the ability to make their
own coats, build fires, and erect shelters to pro­
tect themselves against the cold. More than this,
culture enables people to use a wide diversity of
environments. By manipulating environments
through cultural means, people have been able to
move into the Arctic and the Sahara and have even
set foot on the moon. Through culture the human
species has secured not just its survival but its ex­
pansion as well.
This does not mean humans do everything b e ­
cause it is adaptive to a particular environment.
For one, people do not just react to an environ­
ment as given; rather, they react to it as they per­
ceive it, and different groups of people may per­
ceive the same environment in radically different
ways. They also react to things other than the en­
vironment: their own biological natures, for one,
and their beliefs, attitudes, and the consequences
of their own behavior, for others. All of these pre­
sent them with problems, and people maintain cul­
tures to deal with problems, or matters that con­
cern them. To be sure, their cultures must produce
behavior that is generally adaptive, or at least not
maladaptive, but this is not the same as saying cul­
tural practices necessarily arise because they are
adaptive in a given environment. The fact is, cur­
rent utility of a custom is an unreliable guide to
its origin.
A further complication is the relativity of any
given adaptation: What is adaptive in one context
may be seriously maladaptive in another. For ex­
ample, the sanitation practices of food-foraging
peoples— their toilet habits and methods of
garbage disposal— are appropriate to contexts of
low population levels and some degree of resi­
dential mobility. These same practices, however,
become serious health hazards in the context of
T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 51
What is adaptive at one time may not be at another.
In the United States, the principal source of fruits,
vegetables, and fiber is the Central Valley of Califor­
nia, where irrigation works have made the desert
bloom. As happened in ancient Mesopotamia, evapo­
ration concentrates salts in the water, but here pollu­
tion is made even worse by chemical fertilizers. These
poisons are now accumulating in the soil and threaten
to make the valley a desert again.
large, fully sedentary populations. Similarly, be­
havior that is adaptive in the short run may be
maladaptive in the long run. For example, the de­
velopment of irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia
(modern-day Iraq) made it possible in the short
run to increase food production, but in the long
run it favored the gradual accumulation of salts in
the soils. This, in turn, contributed to the collapse
of civilization there after 2 0 0 0 B.c. Similarly, the
development of prime farmland today in places
such as the eastern United States for purposes
other than food production makes us increasingly
dependent on food raised in marginal environ­
ments. High yields are presently possible through
the application of expensive technology, but con­
tinuing loss of topsoil, increasing salinity of soils
from the evaporation of irrigation waters, and silt­
ing of irrigation works, not to mention impending
shortages of water and fossil fuels, make continu­
ing high yields over the long term unlikely.
F u n c t i ons of C ulture
From what has been said so far, it is clear a cul­
ture cannot survive if it does not successfully deal
with basic problems. A culture must provide for
52 PART I Anthropology and the Study of C ulture

the production and distribution of goods and ser­

vices considered necessary for life. It must provide
for biological continuity through the reproduction
of its members. It must enculturate new members
so that they can become functioning adults. It must
maintain order among its members, as well as be­
tween them and outsiders. It must motivate its
members to survive and to engage in activities nec­
essary for survival. On top of all of these, it must
be able to change if it is to remain adaptive under
changed conditions.

C ulture and C hange

All cultures change over time, although not always
as rapidly or as massively as many are doing to­
day. Changes occur in response to events such as
environmental crises, the intrusion of outsiders, or
the modification of behavior and values within the
culture. In North American culture, clothing fash­
ions change frequently. In the past few decades it
has become culturally permissible for men and
women alike to bare more of their bodies not just
in swimming but in dress as well. Along with this
has come greater permissiveness about the body
in photographs and movies. Finally, the sexual at­
titudes and practices of North Americans have be­
come less restrictive. Obviously, these changes are
Though pastoral nomadic peoples are often blamed
interrelated, reflecting an underlying change in at­ for causing the sort of environmental degradation evi­
titudes toward cultural rules regarding sex. dent here, the fault is not theirs. Rather, it lies with
Although cultures must be able to change to the governments of countries that restrict their move­
remain adaptive, culture change also can bring un­ ments, thereby causing overgrazing.
expected and often disastrous results. A case in
point are the droughts that periodically afflict so
many peoples living in Africa just south of the Sa­
hara Desert. Native to this region are some 14 mil­
lion pastoral nomadic peoples whose lives are cen­ authority, these governments have gone all out to
tered on cattle and other livestock, which are convert them into sedentary villagers. Overgraz­
herded from place to place as required for pas­ ing has resulted from this loss of mobility, and the
turage and water. For thousands of years these problem has been compounded by governmental
people went about their business, efficiently using efforts to involve the pastoralists in a market econ­
vast areas of arid lands in ways that allowed them omy by encouraging them to raise many more an­
to survive severe droughts many times in the past. imals than required for their own needs in order
Unfortunately for them, their nomadic lifestyle, to have a surplus to sell. The resultant devasta­
which makes it difficult to impose controls upon tion, where previously no significant overgrazing
them and takes them across international bound­ or erosion had occurred, now makes droughts far
aries at will, makes them a source of annoyance more disastrous than they would otherwise be
to the governments of the postcolonial states of and places the former nomads’ very existence in
the region. Seeing nomads as a challenge to their jeopardy.
 T he N ature of C ulture CHAPTER 2 53

CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND

THE INDIVIDUAL
Ultimately, a society is no more than a union of
individuals, all of whom have their own special
needs and interests. If a society is to survive, it
must succeed in balancing the self-interests of its
members against the demands of the society as a
whole. To accomplish this, a society offers rewards
for adherence to its' cultural standards. In most
cases, these rewards assume the form of social ac­
ceptance. In contemporary North American soci­
ety, a man who holds a good job, is faithful to his
wife, and goes to church, for example, may be
elected “Model Citizen” by his neighbors. In or­
der to ensure the survival of the group, each per­
son must learn to postpone certain immediate sat­ in the United States, the rise of private militia groups
reflects the frustration of people whose needs are
isfactions. Yet the needs of the individual cannot
poorly satisfied by the culture.
be suppressed too far, lest stress levels become too
much to bear. Hence, a delicate balance always ex­
ists between personal interests and the demands uation may seem, nonetheless, strict rules specify
the group makes on each individual. how the system operates.8
Take, for example, the matter of sex, which, Not just in sex, but in all things, cultures must
like anything people do, is shaped by culture. Sex strike a balance between the needs of individuals
is important in any society, for it helps to and those of society. When the needs of society take
strengthen cooperative bonds between men and precedence, people experience excessive stress.
women and ensures the perpetuation of the soci­ Symptomatic of this are increased levels of mental
ety itself. Yet sex can be disruptive to social liv­ illness and behavior regarded as antisocial: violence,
ing; if who has sexual access to whom is not clearly crime, abuse of alcohol and other drugs, suicide,
spelled out, competition for sexual privileges can and simply alienation. If not corrected, the situa­
destroy the cooperative bonds human survival de­ tion can result in cultural breakdown. But just as
pends upon. Uncontrolled sexual activity, too, can problems develop if the needs of society take prece­
result in reproductive rates that cause a society’s dence over those of individuals, so do they develop
population to outstrip its resources. Hence, as they if the balance is upset in the other direction.
shape sexual behavior, every culture must balance
the needs of society against the need for sufficient
individual gratification, lest frustration build un­
til it causes disruption. Of course, cultures vary EVALUATION OF CULTURE
widely in the way they resolve this dilemma. Res­
Humans know of diverse cultural solutions to the
olutions range all the way from the quite restric­
problems of their existence. This question often
tive approach of British and United States society
arises: Which is best? In the 19th century, Euro­
in the late 19th and early 20th century, which spec­
peans (and European Americans) had no doubts
ified no sex out of wedlock, to practices among
the Canela (who live in eastern Brazil) that guar­
antee that, sooner or later, everyone in a given vil­ 8Crocker, W. A., Sc Crocker, J. (1994). The Canela, bonding
lage has had sex with just about everyone of the through kinship, ritual and sex (pp. 143 -1 7 1 ). Forr Worth,
opposite sex. But permissive though the latter sit- T X : Harcourt Brace.
54 PART I Anthropology and the Study
about the answer— they saw their civilization as
the peak of human development. At the same time,
though, anthropologists were intrigued to find that
all cultures they had any familiarity with saw
themselves as the best of all possible worlds. Com­
monly, this was reflected in a name for the soci­
ety that, roughly translated, meant “we human
beings,” as opposed to outsiders as “you subhu­
mans.” Anthropologists now know that any cul­
ture functioning adequately regards itself as the
best, a view reflecting a phenomenon known as
ethnocentrism. Hence, the 19th-century Euro­
peans and European Americans were merely dis­
playing their own ethnocentrism.
Anthropologists have been engaged actively in
the fight against ethnocentrism ever since they
started to live among so-called “savage” peoples
and discovered they were just as human as anyone
else. As a consequence, anthropologists began to
examine each culture on its own terms, asking
whether or not the culture satisfied its people’s
needs and expectations. If a people practiced hu­
man sacrifice, for example, anthropologists asked
about the circumstances that made the taking of
human life acceptable according to native values.
The idea that one must suspend judgment on other
peoples’ practices in order to understand them in
their own cultural terms is called cultural relativism.
Only through such an approach can one gain an
undistorted view of another people’s ways, as well
as insights into the practices of one’s own society.
Take, for example, the 16th-century Aztec
practice of sacrificing humans for ritual purposes.
Few (if any) North Americans today would con­
done such practices, but by suspending judgment
one can get beneath the surface and understand
how it functioned to reassure the populace that the
Aztec state was healthy and that the sun would re­
main in the heavens. Beyond this, one can under­
stand how the death penalty functions in the same
way in the United States today. Numerous studies
by a variety of social scientists have shown clearly
that the death penalty does not deter violent crime,
any more than Aztec sacrifice really provided sus­
tenance for the sun. In fact, cross-cultural studies
E th n o ce n tris m . The belief that one’s own culture is superior to all others. > C u ltu ra l relativism .
one must suspend judgment on other peoples' practices to understand them in their own cultural terms.
of Culture
show that homicide rates mostly decline after its
abolition.9 Just like Aztec human sacrifice, capital
punishment is an institutionalized magical response
to perceived disorder. As anthropologists Anthony
Parades and Elizabeth D. Purdum point out: It “re­
assures many that society is not out of control af­
ter all, that the majesty of the law reigns and that
God is indeed in his heaven.”10
Essential though cultural relativism is as a re­
search tool, it does not require suspension of judg­
ment forever or that we must defend the right of
any people to engage in any practice, no matter
how reprehensible. All that is necessary is that we
avoid prem atu re judgment until we have a proper
understanding of the culture we are interested in.
Then, and only then, may one adopt a critical
stance. As David Maybury-Lewis emphasizes:
“One does not avoid making judgements, but
rather postpones them in order to make informed
judgements later.” 11
While anthropologists avoid the “anything
goes” position of cultural relativism pushed to ab­
surdity, they also must avoid the pitfall of judging
the practices of other cultures in terms of ethno­
centric criteria. A still useful formula for this was
devised more than 40 years ago by anthropologist
Walter Goldschmidt.12 In his view the important
question to ask is: How well does a given culture
satisfy the physical and psychological needs of
those whose behavior it guides? Specific indicators
are found in the nutritional status and general
physical and mental health of its population; the
incidence of violence, crime, and delinquency; the
demographic structure; the stability and tranquil-
9Ember, C. J., 8c Ember, M. (1996). What have we learned
from cross-cultural research? G eneral Anthropology, 2 (2), 5.
10Parades, J. A., & Purdum, E. D. (1990). Bye, bye Ted . . .
A nthropology Today, 6 (2), 9.
''Maybury-Lewis, D. H. P. (1993). A special sort of plead­
ing. In W. A. Haviland & R. J. Gordon (Eds.), Talking
abou t p eop le (2nd ed., p. 17). Mountain View, CA: May-
field.
12Bodley, J. H. (1990). Victims o f progress (3rd ed., p. 138).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
The thesis that
 T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 55

Although citizens of the United States are fond of boasting that theirs is the finest health
care system in the world, they are merely reflecting the ethnocentrism of their own cul­
ture. Objective measures show that, while the U.S. system is better than many, it is far
from being “number one.”

ity of domestic life; and the group’s relationship

to its resource base. The culture of a people who
experience high rates of malnutrition, violence,
crime, delinquency, suicide, emotional disorders
and despair, and environmental degradation may
be said to be operating less well than that of an­
other people who exhibit few such problems. In a
well-working culture, people “can be proud, jeal­
ous, and pugnacious, and live a very satisfactory
life without feeling ‘an gst,’ ‘alienation,’ ‘anomie,’
‘depression,’ or any of the other pervasive ills of
our own inhuman and civilized way of living.” 13
When people feel helpless to effect their own lives
in their own societies and when traditional ways
of coping no longer seem to work, the symptoms
of cultural breakdown become prominent.
A culture is essentially a system to ensure the
continued well-being of a group of people; there­
fore, it may be termed successful so long as it se­ One sign that a culture is not adequately satisfying
cures the survival of a society in a way that its the needs and expectations of those who live by its
members recognize as reasonably fulfilling. What rules is a high incidence of crime and delinquency. It
complicates matters is that any society is made up is, therefore, sobering to note that the United States
has a higher percentage of its population in prison
1 3 F o x , R. (1968). Encounter with anthropology (p . 290). than any other country in the world, yet it still has in­
New York: Dell. sufficient space to hold all those convicted of crimes.
56 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
of groups with different interests, raising the pos­
sibility that some people’s interests may be served
better than others. Therefore, a culture that is
quite fulfilling for one group within a society may
be less so for another. For this reason, anthropol­
C H A P T E R
Culture, to anthropologists, consists of the shared
ideals, values, and beliefs members of a society use
to interpret experience and to generate behavior
and that are reflected by their behavior.
All cultures share certain basic characteristics;
studying these sheds light on culture’s nature and
function. Culture cannot exist without society: a
group of people sharing a common homeland who
are dependent on each other for survival. Society is
held together by relationships determined by social
structure or social organization. It is possible to have
a society, as do creatures such as ants and bees, with­
out culture. All is not uniform within a culture; one
reason is that some differences exist between male
and female roles in any human society. Anthropol­
ogists use the term gen der to refer to the elabora­
tions or meanings cultures assign to the biological
differences between men and women. Age variation
is also universal, and in some cultures other sub­
cultural variations occur as well. A subculture shares
certain overarching assumptions of the larger cul­
ture while observing a distinctively different set of
rules. One example of a subculture in the United
States is that of the Amish. Pluralistic societies are
those with particularly marked cultural variation.
They are characterized by a number of groups op­
erating under different sets of rules.
In addition to being shared, all cultures are
learned. Individual members of a society learn the
accepted norms of social behavior through the
process of enculturation. Another characteristic is
that culture is based on symbols. It is transmitted
through the communication of ideas, emotions,
and desires expressed in language. Finally, culture
is integrated, so all aspects of a culture function
as an integrated whole. In a properly functioning
culture, though, total harmony of all elements is
approximated, rather than completely achieved.
The job of anthropologists is to abstract a set
of rules from what they observe to explain the so-
Culture
ogists always must ask this: Whose needs, and
whose survival, are best served by the culture in
question? Only by examining the overall situation
can a reasonably objective judgment be made as
to how well a culture is working.
S U M M A R Y
cial behavior of a people. To arrive at a realistic
description of a culture free from personal and cul­
tural biases, anthropologists must (1) examine a
people’s notion of the way their society ought to
function; (2) determine how a people think they
behave; and (3) compare these with how a people
actually do behave. Anthropologists also must be
as free as possible of biases of their own culture.
Cultural adaptation has enabled humans, in
the course of evolution, to survive and expand in
a variety of environments. Sometimes, though,
what is adaptive in one set of circumstances, or in
the short run, is maladaptive in another set of cir­
cumstances, or in the long run.
To survive, a culture must satisfy the basic bi­
ological needs of its members, provide for their
continuity, and maintain order among them and
between them and outsiders.
All cultures change over time, sometimes be­
cause the environment they must cope with has
changed, sometimes as the result of the intrusion
of outsiders, or sometimes because values within
the culture have undergone modification. Al­
though cultures must change to adapt to new cir­
cumstances, sometimes the unforeseen conse­
quences of change are disastrous for a society.
A society must strike a balance between the
self-interests of individuals and the needs of the
group. If one or the other becomes paramount, the
result may be cultural breakdown.
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own cul­
ture is superior to all others. To avoid making eth­
nocentric judgments, anthropologists adopt the
approach of cultural relativism, which requires ex­
amination of each culture in its own terms and ac­
cording to its own standards. The least biased
measure of a culture’s success, however, employs
criteria indicative of the culture’s effectiveness at
securing the survival of a society in a way its mem­
bers see as reasonably fulfilling.
 T he N ature of Culture CHAPTER 2 57

Points for C onsideration

1. Have you ever had an experience that made you aware of profound cultural differences? How
did you react? How did any other parties react?
2. Cultural anthropologists generally conduct fieldwork, which is very different from the research meth­
ods of other social and behavioral scientists. Is fieldwork really necessary for the kinds of research
topics anthropologists are interested in? How might other research methods provide different data?
3. Consider the problem of ancient Mesopotamian agriculture mentioned in the text. The same set
of farming practices both led to the rise of a series of civilizations and, in time, helped to under­
mine those cultures. In the past 2 centuries, Europeans and North Americans often have felt ten­
sion between preexisting cultural practices and changes new technology prompts. W hat kinds of
cultural traits seem to have become nonadaptive in recent decades in North America? How do
you know which are now adaptive?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Brown, D. E. (1991). H um an universals. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
The message of this book is that we should
not let our fascination with the diversity of
cultural practices interfere with the study of
human universals: those aspects all cultures
share in spite of their differences. Important
though the differences are, the universals have
special relevance for our understanding of the
nature of all humanity and raise issues that
transcend the boundaries of biological and so­
cial science, as well as the humanities.
Gamst, F. C., & Norbeck, E. (1976). Id eas o f cul­
ture: Sources an d uses. New York: Holt, Rine­
hart and Winston.
This is a book of selected writings, with edi­
torial comments, about the concept of culture.
From these selections one can see how the con­
cept has grown, as well as how it has given rise
to narrow specializations within anthropology.
Goodenough, W. H. (1970). D escription an d co m ­
parison in cultural an thropology. Chicago:
Aldine.
The major question Goodenough addresses is
how anthropologists can avoid ethnocentric
bias when studying culture. His approach re­
lies on models of descriptive linguistics. A
large part of the book covers kinship and ter­
minology, with a discussion of the problems
of a universal definition of marriage and the
family. This is a particularly lucid discussion
of culture, its relation to society, and the prob­
lem of individual variance.
Hatch, E. (1983). Culture an d m orality: T he rel­
ativity o f values in an thropology. New York:
Columbia University Press.
This book is about cultural relativism, often
used as a cover term for the quite different
concepts of relativity of knowledge, historical
relativism, and ethical relativism. It traces the
attempts of anthropologists to grapple with
these concepts, beginning with the rise of the
discipline in the 19th century.
Linton, R. (1963). T he study o f m an: An intro­
duction. New York: Appleton.
Linton wrote this book in 1936 with the in­
tention of providing a general survey of an­
thropology. His study of social structure is still
illuminating today. This book is regarded as a
classic and is an important source historically.
>■
CllApfcl’ 3
The B eginnings
of Human
Culture
F rom s t u d y in g o ther p r im a t e s

R E L A T E D T O U S , W E C A N D IS C O V E R

W H I C H C H A R A C T E R IS T IC S W E S H A R E

A N D W H IC H W E D O N O T . THE
FORMER W E O W E T O A C O M M O N

A N C ESTR Y; T H E LATTER ARE W H A T

M A K E US D IS T IN C T L Y H U M A N .
 %

CnAp-fel" PrcVieiv -i- ■*

I . To What Group of Animals Do Humans Belong?

Humans are classified by biologists as belonging to the Primate O rder, a group tha t also includes
lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes. By studying the anatomy and behavior o f monkeys
and apes, the primates most closely related to us, we draw closer to understanding how and
why humans developed as they did. .« ;
% $

2, When and How Did Humans Evolve?

Present evidence suggests tha t humans evolved from small apelike primates tha t lived between
15 m illion and 8 m illion years ago. By 4.4 m illion years ago, human ancestors had become fully r
adapted fo r moving about on the open savanna on th e ir hind legs in the distinctive human man­
ner. O therwise, the behavior o f these early hominines probably was comparable to th a t o f
%
modern-day chimpanzees.

3. When and How Did Human Culture Evolve?

Human culture appears to have developed as some populations o f early hominines began mak­
ing stone tools they could butcher animals w ith fo r th e ir meat. Actually, the earliest stone tools ■■
and evidence o f significant meat eating date to between 2.5 m illion and 2 m illion years ago, along
w ith the appearance o f the genus Homo, whose brain was significantly enlarged over tha t o f any
other early hominine. From then on the increasing im portance o f culture in human survival fa­ ¡ÍÍ,
vored the evolution o f a better brain, which in tu rn made possible im provem ent in culture as
the vehicle humans used to secure th e ir survival. By about 200,000 years ago, the human brain
had reached its modern size, but culture has continued to evolve and change down to the
present.
4
i
•t

■
,i

59
60 PART I Anthropology and the Study
arly forerunners of humanity, like all other
E creatures, depended a great deal on physical
attributes for survival. Although learned be­
havior was certainly important to them, much of
what they did was still dictated by their biologi­
cal natures. In the course of evolution, however,
humans came to rely increasingly on learned be­
havior as an extremely effective way to adapt to
the environment. They learned to manufacture and
use tools; they organized into social units more
proficient at foraging for food than their ancestors
had been; and at some point they learned to pre­
serve their traditions and knowledge to bridge the
past and present through the use of symbols. In
other words, humans became increasingly com­
mitted to culture as a vehicle for solving the prob­
lems they confronted.
This cultural ability has made humans unusual
among the creatures on this planet. Humans do
not merely adapt to the environment; they attempt
to mold and manipulate it to suit the needs and
desires they themselves define. If they manage to
avoid self-destruction through misuse of their tech­
nology (and it is by no means certain they will),
their medical technology eventually may enable
them to control genetic inheritance and thus the
future course of their biological evolution. Space
technology may enable them to propagate their
species in extraterrestrial environments. And com­
puter technology enables them to correlate and or­
ganize an ever-increasing amount of knowledge as
they themselves attempt to keep pace with the
changes they have wrought.
Humans have gotten where they are today in
an extraordinarily short period; human culture, as
we know it, came into existence a mere 2.5 mil­
lion years ago. By looking backward to see where
we came from and how we became the way we
are today, we may gain insights into how human
culture arose and how it increasingly took on the
job of solving the problems of human existence.
In the process, we gain a fuller understanding of
the nature of culture itself.
P rim a te O rd e r. The group of mammals that includes lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. > N a tu ra l
selection. The evolutionary mechanism by which individuals with characteristics best suited to a particular environment
survive and reproduce with greater frequency than those without them.
of Culture
HUMANS AND THE
OTHER PRIMATES
Biologists classify humans as belonging to the Pri­
mate Order, a group of mammals that also in­
cludes lemurs, lorises, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes.
We might properly question the value of studying
primates other than humans, when humans and
their distinctive cultural capacities are what con­
cern us. Humans, however, did not start out as hu­
mans. Their roots, like those of the other living
primates, lie in ancient times and in less special­
ized biological creatures; their development was
influenced by the same evolutionary processes. By
studying the environment of those times, the
anatomical features that evolved in the context of
that environment, and the rudimentary cultural
adaptations of those primates we are related to,
we may draw closer to an understanding of how
and why humans developed as they did.
The first primates originated at a time when
a new, mild climate favored the spread of dense
tropical and subtropical forests over much of the
earth, including North and South America, South­
east Asia, the Middle East, and most of Africa.
Forestation set the stage for the evolutionary de­
velopment from a relatively inconspicuous ground
existence to tree living.
E voluti on T hrough A daptati on
The term ad aptation refers to both a process or­
ganisms undergo to achieve a beneficial adjust­
ment to an available environment and the results
of that process— the characteristics of organisms
that fit them to the particular set of environmen­
tal conditions they generally are found in. The
process of natural selection favors not just the sur­
vival of well-adapted individuals but also the prop­
agation of their genetic traits. The well-adapted
individuals produce the greater percentage of off-
 T he B eginnings
Modern lemurs represent highly evolved variants of
an early primate model. In them, primate characteris­
tics are not as prominent as they are in monkeys,
apes, and humans.
spring for the next generation. Although some in­
dividuals less suited to the environment may in
fact survive, they often do not reproduce; they may
be incapable of attracting mates, they may be ster­
ile, or they may produce offspring that do not sur­
vive after birth.
By chance, the ancestral primates possessed
certain characteristics that allowed them to adapt
to life in the forests. Their relatively small size al­
lowed them to use the small branches of trees;
larger and heavier competitors and predators
could not follow. The move to the small branches
also opened up an abundant new food supply. The
primates could gather leaves, flowers, fruits, in­
sects, birds’ eggs, and even nesting birds, rather
than having to wait for them to fall to the ground.
The move to an arboreal existence brought a
combination of the problems of earthbound exis­
of H uman C ulture CHAPTER 3 61
tence and flight. In their move into space, birds
developed highly stereotyped behavioral patterns
keyed to the problems of flight. Animals living on
the ground developed a slower-paced, more flexi­
ble relationship to the environment.
The tree-dwelling primates, however, were
obliged to develop both flexible behavior and vir­
tually automatic mechanisms for moving through
the trees; for if they were no longer limited to
roaming on the ground, they also no longer had
the certainty of a substantial surface directly be­
neath their feet. Initial forays into the trees must
have included many errors in judgment and coor­
dination, leading to falls that injured or killed
those who were poorly adapted to arboreal life.
Natural selection favored those who judged depth
correctly and gripped the branches tightly. It is
likely that the early primates who took to the trees
were in some measure p read ap ted , a term that im­
plies no purposeful preparation but merely the
possession of characteristics adaptive to one way
of life that, purely by chance, also are suitable for
a different way of life. Thus, as ground dwellers
they happened to possess features potentially use­
ful to tree dwellers. Nevertheless, the transition to
life in the trees required important physical ad­
justments. The way these early primates adapted
has considerable relevance for their human de­
scendants.
A natomi ca l A daptati on
From the study of both ancient and modern pri­
mates, anthropologists have worked out a list of
characteristics common to them all.
Primate Dentition
The diet available to arboreal primates— shoots,
leaves, insects, and soft fruits— required relatively
unspecialized teeth, compared to those found in
other mammals. Based on the evidence of com­
parative anatomy and the fossil record, the mam­
mals ancestral to the primates possessed 3 incisors,
1 canine, 4 premolars, and 3 molars on each side
of the jaw, top and bottom, for a total of 44 teeth.
The incisors (in the front of the mouth) were used
for gripping and cutting, canines (behind the in­
cisors) were used for tearing and shredding, and
62 PART I A nth ropology and th e St u d y
The ability to judge depth correctly and grasp branches strongly is of obvious utility
to animals as active in the trees as this South American squirrel monkey.
molars and premolars (the “cheek teeth”) were
used for grinding and chewing food.
The evolutionary trend for primate dentition
generally has been toward economy, with fewer
smaller teeth doing more work (Figure 3.1). In the
early stages, one incisor on each side of the upper
and lower jaws was lost, further differentiating
primates from other mammals. The canines of
most of the primates grew longer, forming dag­
gerlike teeth that enabled them to rip open tough
husks of fruit and other foods. Over the millen­
nia, the first and second premolars became smaller
and eventually disappeared altogether; the third
and fourth premolars grew larger and added a sec­
ond pointed projection, or cusp, thus becoming b i­
cuspid. The molars also evolved from a three-cusp
to a four- and even five-cusp pattern. Thus the
functions of grasping, cutting, and grinding were
served by different kinds of teeth.
of C u ltu r e
Sense Organs
The primates’ adaptation to life in the trees in­
volved changes in the form and function of their
sensory apparatus. To mammals living on the
ground, the sense of smell is of great importance,
for it enables them to operate at night, as well as
to sense what is out of sight— to “see around cor­
ners,” as it were. Not only can they sniff out their
food, but also they can be warned of the presence
of hidden predators. Up in the trees, though, pri­
mates are out of the way of most predators, and
good vision is a better guide than smell for judg­
ing correctly where the next branch is. Accord­
ingly, the sense of smell declined in primates, while
that of sight became highly developed.
Traveling through trees demands judgments
concerning depth, direction, distance, and the re­
lationships of objects hanging in space, such as
 T he B eginnings of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 63

F icure 3.1
The fossil ape jaw on the left (A) shows the different kinds of teeth primates possessed: four incisors in front,
two canines behind, followed by two premolars and three molars. B and C show variations on this pattern.
They are the jaws of A u stralopithecu s (C) and a more ancient, ape-like ancestor (B) (see pp. 7 3 -7 4 ).

vines or branches. In tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and
humans, this is achieved through stereoscop ic
color vision. The ability to see the world in the
three dimensions of height, width, and depth re­
quires two eyes set next to each other on the same
plane so that the visual fields of the two eyes over­
lap. Stereoscopic color vision appears to have led
to increased brain size in the visual area in pri­
mates and a greater complexity at nerve connec­
tions.
A more acute sense of touch also character­
ized the arboreal primates. An effective feeling and
grasping mechanism helped prevent them from
falling and tumbling while speeding through the
trees. The early mammals primates evolved from
possessed tiny hairs that gave them extremely sen­
sitive tactile capacities. In primates these hairs
were replaced by sensitive pads backed up by nails
on the tips of the animals’ fingers and toes.
The Primate Brain
The most outstanding characteristic of primate
evolution has been the great increase in brain size.
The cerebral hemispheres— the areas of conscious
thought— have grown dramatically, and in mon­
keys, apes, and humans they completely cover the
cerebellum , the part of the brain that coordinates
the muscles and maintains body equilibrium.
One of the main reasons for this change is
probably the primates’ arboreal existence. An an­
imal living in the trees is constantly acting and re­
acting to the environment. Messages from the
hands, feet, eyes, and ears, as well as from the sen­
sors of balance, movement, heat, touch, and pain,
are simultaneously relayed to the cortex. Obvi­
ously the cortex had to develop considerably to
receive, analyze, and coordinate these impressions
and transmit the appropriate responses back down
the motor nerves to the proper receptors. The en­
larged cortex not only made the primates more ef­
ficient in the daily struggle for survival but also
prepared the way for heightened cerebration, or
thought— an ability that played a decisive role in
humanity’s emergence.
The Primate Skeleton
The skeleton gives a vertebrate animal its basic
shape or silhouette, supports the soft tissues, and
helps protect vital internal organs. The opening of
the skull through which the spinal cord passes and
connects to the brain is an important clue to evo­
lutionary relationships. In primates, the trend is
64 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
for this opening to shift forward, toward the cen­
ter of the skull’s base, so that it faces downward,
rather than directly backward, as in dogs and
other mammals (Figure 3.2). This shift enables the
backbone to join the skull at the center of its base,
a more advantageous arrangement for an animal
that assumes an upright posture at least occasion­
ally. The head thus is balanced on the vertebral
column, instead of projecting forward from it.
For most primates, the snout or muzzle por­
tion of the skull was reduced as the sense of smell
declined. The smaller snout offers less interference
with stereoscopic vision and enables the eyes to be
placed in a more frontal position. A solid wall of
bone surrounds the eye in most primate species,
affording them greater protection than seen in
most mammals.
Below the primate skull and neck is the clav­
icle, or collarbone. It acts as a strut, placing the
arms at the side rather than in front of the body,
thus permitting them to swing sideways and out­
ward from the trunk. Apes and humans especially
can move their arms with great freedom. This en­
ables apes to swing and hang vertically from tree
branches.
F icure 3.1
Skeleton of a bison (left) and gorilla (right), compared. Note where the skulls and vertebral columns are joined;
in the bison (as in most mammals) the skull projects forward from the vertebral column, but in the semierect
gorilla, the vertebral column is well down beneath the skull.
Culture
The limbs end in hands and feet with five ex­
tremely flexible digits, reminiscent of those more
ancient vertebrate ancestors possessed. At the tips
of these are sensitive pads backed up by flat nails,
which provide an excellent grasping device for use
when moving from branch to branch. The thumb
and great toe are opposable to varying degrees
(with full opposability, for example, the thumb tip
can push against any other fingertip) so that food
can be handled easily, branches grasped, and ob­
jects manipulated.
Hindsight shows that retention of the primi­
tive primate hand proved a valuable asset to later
primates. In part, unspecialized hands capable of
grasping enabled our ancestors to manufacture
and use tools and thus alter the course of their
evolution.
A daptati on T hrough B ehavi or
Important though anatomical adaptation has been
to the primates, it has not been the only way of
coping with the environment. Studies of monkeys
and apes living today indicate that learned social
behavior plays an important role in adaptation.
 T he B eginnings
The range of behavior living primates show is
great, but by looking at the behavior of the species
most closely related to humans— chimpanzees in
particular and the other great apes as well— or of
ones such as baboons that have adapted to envi­
ronments somewhat similar to those our own an­
cestors faced millions of years ago, we may
discover clues to patterns that contributed to the
emergence of human cultural behavior. Unfor­
tunately, space does not permit us to survey
the behavior of all these species here. Instead, we
shall look at the behavior of our closest genetic
relative— the chimpanzee— even though we must
realize that no living primate represents a pre­
cise analogue for the behavior of our ancient
ancestors.
Chimpanzee Behavior
Like all primates, chimpanzees are social animals.1
In their native haunts, the largest organizational
unit is the community, composed of 50 or more
individuals. Rarely, however, do all these animals
gather at once. Instead, they usually are found
ranging singly or in small subgroups consisting of
adult males together, females with their young, or
males and females together with young. In their
travels, subgroups may join forces and forage to­
gether, but sooner or later these will break up again
into smaller units. When they do, members are of­
ten exchanged, so the new subunits are composed
differently from those that initially came together.
Although relationships between individuals
within the community are relatively harmonious,
dominance hierarchies, whereby some animals
outrank and can dominate others, do exist. Gen­
erally, males outrank females, although high-rank­
ing females may dominate low-ranking males.
Physical strength and size play a role in deter­
mining an animal’s rank, but what really counts
is its mother’s rank, how effective it is at creating
alliances with other individuals, and, for males,
how motivated they are to achieve high status.
Highly motivated males may bring to bear con­
siderable intelligence and ingenuity in their quest
'Goodall, J. (1986). The chimpanzees o f G om be: Patterns o f
behavior. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 65
for a high rank. For example, one chimp in the
community studied by Jane Goodall, a pioneer in
the study of primate behavior, figured out how to
incorporate noisy kerosene cans into his charging
displays, thereby intimidating all the other males.
As a result, he rose from relatively low status to
the number one (alpha) position.
Grooming, the ritual cleaning of another
chimp’s coat to remove parasites and other mat­
ter, is a common chimpanzee pastime. Besides
being hygienic, it is a gesture of friendliness,
submission, appeasement, or closeness. Group so­
ciability, an important behavioral trait undoubt­
edly found among human precursors, is expressed
by embracing, touching, and joyously welcoming
other chimps. Group protection and coordination
of group efforts are facilitated by visual and vo­
cal communication, including warning, threaten­
ing, and gathering calls.
The sexes intermingle continually, and, as with
humans, no fixed breeding season exists. Sexual
activity, however— initiated by either the male or
the female— occurs only during the period each
month when the female is fertile. Once impreg­
nated, females are not sexually receptive until
their offspring are weaned, at about 4 years of age.
To a degree, chimps are promiscuous in their
sexual behavior, and 12 to 14 males have been
observed to have as many as 50 copulations in
one day with a single female. Thus, not all off­
spring are fathered by dominant males. Neverthe­
less, dominant males try to monopolize females
when the latter are most receptive sexually, al­
though cooperation from the female is usually re­
quired for this to succeed. By making herself
scarce, and even sneaking off to find a male in a
neighboring group, she may exercise some choice
in the matter. An alpha male, however, can mo­
nopolize females to some extent, and some alphas
have been seen to monopolize several females at
the same time.
In most primate species, females and their off­
spring constitute the core of the social system.
Among chimps the mother-infant bond is espe­
cially strong for the first 5 years, but a close as­
sociation commonly continues after this. Although
females sometimes leave the group they were born
into (unlike most other primate species, with males
normally transferring out of their natal group into
66 PART I A nth ropology an d th e St u d y
Jane G oodall (1934-)
In July 1960 Jane Goodall arrived with
her mother at the Gom be Chim ­
panzee Reserve on the shores of Lake
Tanganyika in Tanzania. The first of
three women Kenyan anthropologist
Louis Leakey sent out to study great
apes in the wild (the others were
Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas.who
were to study gorillas and orangutans,
respectively), her task was to begin a
long-term study of chimpanzees. Lit­
tle did she realize that more than 35
years later she would still be at it.
Though born in London, Goodall grew up in
and was schooled in Bournemouth, England. Upon
her graduation at age 18, she enrolled in secretar­
ial school, followed by taking jobs in England be­
fore the opportunity came to go to Africa. A s a
child, she had always dreamed of going there to
live among animals, so when an invitation arrived
to visit a friend in Kenya, she jumped at the op­
portunity. Quitting her regular job, Goodall worked
as a waitress to raise the money for travel and was
then on her way. O nce in Kenya, she met anthro­
pologist Louis Leakey, who gave her a job as an as­
sistant secretary. Before long, she was on her way
to Gombe. W ithin a year, the outside world began
to hear the m ost extraordinary news about this
pioneering woman and her work: tales of tool-m ak­
one they will live in as adults), when they do so
their young sons and daughters accompany them.
Commonly, sons, and often daughters, remain
with their mothers for life. Unlike a human baby,
the young chimp must be ready at birth to go
everywhere with its mother, for its very survival
depends on its ability to remain close to her. Males
are generally attentive to juveniles and may share
in parental responsibilities. However (as among
oh C u ltu r e
ing apes, cooperative hunts by chim­
panzees, and what seemed like ex­
otic chimpanzee rain dances. By the
mid-1960s, her w ork had earned her
a Ph.D. from Cambridge University,
and Gom be was on its way to be­
coming one of the m ost dynamic
field stations for the study of animal
behavior anywhere in the world.
Although some field studies of
primates in their natural habitats had
been undertaken prior to 1960, they
were few in number, and m ost had produced ex­
tremely limited information. It was Goodall’s par­
ticular blend of patience and determination that
showed what could be achieved, and before long
her field station became something of a Mecca for
aspiring young students interested in primate be­
havior. The list of those who have worked with her
at Gombe, many of them women, reads like a W h o ’s
W h o of eminent scholars in primate behavior.
Although Goodall is still very much involved
with her chimpanzees, she spends a good deal of
time these days lecturing, writing, and overseeing
the w ork of others. She also is heavily committed
to primate conservation, and no one is more ded­
icated to efforts to halt the illegal trafficking of cap­
tive chimps nor a more eloquent champion for hu­
mane treatment of captive chimpanzees.
human food foragers), they do wander off to for­
age by themselves. Thus, the females provide the
group’s stability.
Chimpanzees show a remarkable dependence
upon learned cultural behavior. This behavior is to
some extent different from one chimpanzee group
to another. Born without built-in responses that will
dictate its behavior in complex situations, the young
chimp, like the young human, learns how to inter-
 T h e B e g in n in g s
Among chimpanzees, as among most primates, grooming is an important part of
social activity.
act with others, and even to manipulate them for
his or her own benefit, by trial and error, social fa­
cilitation, observation and imitation, and practice.
Mistakes made along the way often result in repri­
mands from other group members.
Among the many things young chimpanzees
learn from adults is how to make and use tools.
Not only do they deliberately modify objects to
make them suitable for particular purposes, but
also chimps can to some extent modify them to
regular and set patterns. They also can pick up,
and even prepare, objects in anticipation of future
use at some other location, and they can use ob­
jects as tools to solve new and novel problems. For
example, chimps have been observed using grass
stalks, twigs they have stripped of leaves, and
sticks up to 3 feet long to “fish” for termites. They
insert the stick into a termite nest, wait a few min­
utes, pull the stick out, and eat the insects cling­
ing to it. One captive bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee)
even has gone so far as to figure out how to make
tools of stone similar to those our own earliest
toolmaking ancestors made.
of H u m a n C u lt u r e CHAPTER 3 67
Other examples of wild chimpanzee use of ob­
jects as tools involve leaves, used as wipes or as
sponges to get water out of a hollow to drink.
Large sticks may serve as clubs or as missiles (as
may stones) in aggressive or defensive displays.
Stones and rocks also are used as hammers and
anvils to open palm nuts and hard fruits. Interest­
ingly, tool use to fish for termites is most often ex­
hibited by females, whereas aimed throwing of rocks
and sticks is most often exhibited by males. Such
tool-using behavior, which young animals learn
from their mothers and other adults in their group,
may reflect one of the preliminary adaptations
that, in the past, led to human cultural behavior.
Although fruits, other plant foods, and inver­
tebrate animals constitute the bulk of the chim­
panzee diet, chimps will kill and eat other small
to medium-sized animals, an unusual behavior
among primates. Although chimpanzee females
sometimes hunt, males do so far more frequently.
When hunting, they may spend up to 2 hours
watching, following, and chasing intended prey.
Moreover, in contrast to the usual primate practice
68 PART I Anthropology and the Study of C ulture

^ 4 *

Chimpanzees are aware of themselves as individuals.

A chimp knows, for example, that the animal he or
she sees in the mirror is himself and not some other
chimp.

This bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) figured out by him­

self how to make stone tools like those our own an­
cestors made 2.5 million years ago.
This chimpanzee is using a tool to fish for termites.
of each animal finding its own food, hunting
among chimpanzees frequently involves teamwork
to trap and kill prey. The most sophisticated ex­
amples of this occur when hunting baboons; once
a potential victim has been partially isolated from
its troop, three or more adults will carefully posi­
tion themselves to block off escape routes while
another climbs toward the prey for the kill. Once
a kill has been made, the meat is shared in a strate­
gic way to support male allies and females. Mod­
ern-day chimps may be recent meat eaters; living
at the edge of the savanna, they may be just start­
ing to use a food source human ancestors tapped
in similar circumstances millions of years earlier.
The more we learn about chimpanzees, the
more we become aware of a degree of intelligence
and capacity for conceptual thought hitherto un­
suspected for any nonhuman primate. That chim­
panzees are not alone in these has been confirmed
by studies of other apes, including orangutans.

The
Intellectual
Abilities of
Orangutans2
Although not identical, the mod­
ern ape most like the last com­
mon ancestor of all apes and hu­
mans is the orangutan. Chim­
panzees and gorillas, like hu­
mans, have come to differ more
from the ancestral condition than
have these Asian apes.
Chantek: An Orangutan
Who Uses Sign Language
T he Beginnings of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 69
Both the fossil data and comparisons o f D N A and other biochemical mea­
sures suggest that the orangutan is the most conservative, or primitive, o f
the great apes.They are most like the ancestral hominold (ape-like primate)
living about twelve million years ago that later gave rise to apes and humans.
Orangutans have retained more o f the characteristics o f this hominoid than
have the African apes. As a result, orangutans have been labelled a "living fos­
sil,” and thus are a kind o f time traveller
Orangutans have amazing abilities that need wider recognition within
both the general population and the scientific community. Cognitive studies
with orangutans have shown that they are at least as intelligent as the African
apes, and have revealed a humanlike insightful thinking style characterized by
longer attention spans and quiet deliberate action. Susan Essock and Duane
Rumbaugh commented: “ Chimpanzees are often reputed to be the 'smartest'
o f the apes, and orangutans have the reputation o f being dull and sluggish.
Such tags are unfortunate and contrary to the results o f studies."
Orangutans make shelters and other tools in their natural setting. In cap­
tivity, they learn to tie knots, recognise themselves In mirrors, use one tool
to make another; and are the most skilled o f the apes in manipulating ob­
jects. They are the escape artists o f zoos because o f their ability to cleverly
manipulate bolts and wires to get out o f their enclosures, a trait with which
I have become very familiar In discussing these tendencies, Benjamin Beck
has compared the probable use o f a screwdriver by chimpanzees, gorillas
and orangutans.The gorilla would largely ignore it, the chimpanzee would try
to use it in a number o f ways other than as a screwdriver and:
The orangutan would notice the tool at once but ignore it lest a keeper dis­
cover the oversight. If a keeper did notice, the ape would rush to the tool and
surrender it only in trade for a quantity o f preferred food. If the keeper did not
notice, the ape would wait until night and then proceed to use the screwdriver
to pick the locks o r dismantle the cage and escape,
W right showed an orangutan named Abang how to strike flakes from
a piece o f flint to make a knife, as our homimd ancestors did tw o million
years ago. After Abang learned to make flakes, he opened a box containing
food by cutting a string that held it closed.
Finding that orangutan and human brains are similar in areas specialised
for language prompted scientists to speculate that orangutans could possi­
bly be taught to use gestural signs. Since 1973, I have been doing just that,
first with chimpanzees, and, more recently, with an orangutan named Chantek.
N ow we do not have to wonder about what might be in the mind o f apes,
o r what emotions they might feel. If we keep our expectations realistic and
use human children as our model, we can just ask them. I have learned much
about these creatures, and like my colleagues doing similar research. I have
found myself unconsciously experiencing them as persons.
2Miles, H. L. W. (1993). Language and the orangutan: The old “person” of the for­
est. Tn P. Cavalieri &i P. Singer (Eds.), The great ape project (pp. 4 5 -5 0 ). New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
70 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

The similarities between apes and humans seemed in conflict with our
behavioral differences, until ape language experiments shifted scientific opin­
ion and began to fill in the gap. Attempts to teach speech to orangutans have
not been very successful because apes lack the flexible right angle bend to
their vocal tract that is necessary to make the range o f human vocal sounds.
A fter researchers began to use American Sign Language for the deaf to com­
municate with chimpanzees and gorillas, I began the first longitudinal study
o f the language ability o f an orangutan named Chantek, who was born at
theYerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. There was criticism that
symbol-using apes might just be imitating their human care-givers, but there
is now growing agreement that orangutans, gorillas, and both chimpanzee
species can develop language skills at the level o f a tw o- to three-year-old
human child.
The goal o f Project Chantek was to investigate the mind o f an orang­
utan through a developmental study o f his cognitive and linguistic skills. It was
a great ethical and emotional responsibility to engage an orangutan in what
anthropologists call “ enculturation,” since I would not only be teaching a form
o f communication, I would be teaching aspects o f the culture upon which
that language was based. If my developmental project was successful, I would
create a symbol-using creature which would be somewhere between an ape
living under natural conditions and an adult human, which threatened to raise
as many questions as I sought to answer
Beginning at nine months o f age, Chantek was raised at the University
ofTennessee at Chattanooga by a small group o f care-givers who commu­
nicated with him by using gestural signs based on the American Sign Lan­
guage for the deaf. Chantek produced his first signs after one month and
eventually learned to use approximately 150 different signs, forming a vo­
cabulary similar to that o f a very young child. Chantek learned names for
people (LYN, JOHN), places (YARD, BROCK-HALL), things to eat (YOGURT
CHOCOLATE), actions (WORK, HUG), objects (SCREWDRIVER, MONEY),
animals (DOG, APE), colors (RED, BLACK), pronouns (YOU, ME), location
(UR POINT), attributes (GOOD, HURT), and emphasis (MORE, TIME-TO-
DO). W e found that Chantek's signing was spontaneous and nonrepetitious.
He did not merely imitate his care-givers as had been claimed for the sign
language trained chimpanzee Nim; rather; Chantek actively used his signs to
initiate communications and meet his needs.
Almost immediately, Chantek began to use his signs in combinations and
modulated their meanings with slight changes in how he articulated and
arranged his signs. He commented "COKE DRINK” after drinking his coke,
“ PULL BEARD" while pulling a care-giver’s hairthrough a fence,"TIME HUG"
while locked in his cage as his care-giver looked at her watch, and “ RED
BLACK POINT" fo r a group o f colored paint jars. A t first he used signs to
manipulate people and objects to meet his needs, rather than to refer to
them. He knew the meaning o f his signs the way a pet might associate a can
o f food o r a word with feeding time. But, could he use these signs as sym­
bols, that Is, more abstractly to represent a person, thing, action or idea, even
apart from its context o r when it was not present?
One indication o f the capacity to use symbolic language in both deaf
and hearing human children is the ability to point, which some researchers
 T he Beginnings of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 71

argued that apes could not do spontaneously. Chantek began to point to

objects when he was tw o years old, somewhat later than human children,
as we might expect. First, he showed and gave us objects, and then he be­
gan pointing to where he wanted to be tickled and to where he wanted to
be carried. Finally he could answer questions like WHERE HAT?, W H IC H
DIFFERENT?, and W H A T WANT? by pointing to the correct object.
As Chantek's vocabulary increased, the ideas that he was expressing be­
came more complex, such as when he signed “ BAD BIRD” at noisy birds
giving alarm calls, and “WHITE CHEESE FOOD-EAT” fo r cottage cheese. He
understood that things had characteristics o r attributes that could be de­
scribed. He also created combinations o f signs that we had never used be­
fore. In the way that a child learns language, Chantek began to over o r un-
der-extend the meaning o f his signs, which gave us insight into his emotions
and how he was beginning to classify his world. For example, he used the
sign “ D O G " for dogs, a picture o f a dog in his viewmaster; orangutans on
television, barking noises on the radio, birds, horses, a tiger at the circus, a
herd o f cows, a picture o f a cheetah, and a noisy helicopter that presumably
sounded like it was barking. For Chantek, the sign BUG included crickets,
cockroaches, a picture o f a cockroach, beetles, slugs, small moths, spiders,
worms, flies, a picture o f a graph shaped like a butterfly, tiny brown pieces
o f cat food, and small bits o f faeces. He signed “ BREAK” before he broke
and shared pieces o f crackers, and after he broke his toilet. He signed "B A D ”
to himself before he grabbed a cat, when he bit into a radish, and for a dead
bird.
W e also discovered that Chantek could comprehend our spoken Eng­
lish (after the first couple o f years we used speech as well as signing). One
day when the radio was on, a children's story about a cat was being broad­
cast. W hen the narrator said “ cat" or made meow sounds, Chantek signed
“ CAT" W e then verbally asked Chantek to sign a number o f the words in
his vocabulary, which he promptly did, showing that he had developed sign-
speech correspondences w ithout intentional training.
Another component o f the capacity to use symbols is displacement: the
ability to refer to things or events not present. It is an important indicator
that symbols are also mental representations that can be held in the mind
when the objects to which they refer are not present.This was an extremely
important development in the evolution o f human language because it freed
individuals from the immediate environment and allowed our ancestors to
talk about distant times and places. When he was tw o years old, Chantek
began to sign for things that were not present. He frequently asked to go
to places in his yard to look for animals, such as his pet squirrel and cat who
served as playmates. He also made requests fo r “ ICE CREAM," signing “ CAR
RIDE" and pulling us toward the parking lot for a trip to a local ice-cream
shop.
W e learned that an orangutan can tell lies. Deception is an important
indicator o f language abilities since it requires a deliberate and intentional
misrepresentation o f reality In order to deceive, you must be able to see
events from the other person's perspective and negate his or her percep­
tion. Chantek began to deceive from a relatively early age, and we caught
him in lies about three times a week. He learned that he could sign DIRTY
72 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

to get into the bathroom to play with the washing machine, dryer; soap, etc.,
instead o f using the toilet. He also used his signs deceptively to gain social
advantage in games, to divert attention in social interactions, and to avoid
testing situations and coming home after walks on campus. On one occa­
sion, Chantek stole food from my pocket while he simultaneously pulled my
hand away in the opposite direction. On another occasion, he stole a pen­
cil eraser; pretended to swallow it and "supported" his case by opening his
mouth and signing “ FOOD-EAT,” as if to say that he had swallowed it. How­
ever; he really held the eraser in his cheek, and later it was found in his bed­
room where he commonly hid objects.
W e carried out tests o f Chantek's mental ability using measures devel­
oped for human children. Chantek reached a mental age equivalent to that
o f a tw o- to three-year-old child, with some skills o f even older children. On
some tasks done readily by children, such as using one object to represent
another and pretend play, Chantek performed as well as children, but less
frequently. He engaged in chase games in which he would look over his shoul­
der as he darted about, although no one was chasing him. He also signed
to his toys and offered them food and drink. Like children, Chantek showed
evidence o f animism, a tendency to endow objects and events with the at­
tributes o f living things. Although none o f these symbolic play behaviors were
as extensive as they would have been in a human child, the difference ap­
pears to be one o f degree, not kind.
Chantek also experimented in play and problem-solving; for example,
he tried vacuuming himself and investigated a number o f clever ways to short
out the electric fence that surrounded his yard. He learned how to use sev­
eral tools, such as hammers, nails, and screwdrivers, and he was able to com­
plete tasks using tools with up to twenty-two problem-solving steps. By the
time he was tw o years old, he was imitating signs and actions. W e would
perform an action and ask him to copy it by signing “ DO SAME." He would
immediately imitate the behavior; sometimes with novel twists, as when he
winked by moving his eyelid up and down with his finger Chantek also liked
to use paints, and his own free-style drawings resembled those o f three-year-
old human children. He learned to copy horizontal lines, vertical lines and
circles. By four and a half years o f age, Chantek could identify himself in the
m irror and use it to groom himself. He showed evidence o f planning, cre­
ative simulation, and the use o f objects in novel relations to one another to
invent new meanings. For example, he simulated the context for food prepa­
ration by giving his care-giver tw o objects needed to prepare his milk for­
mula and staring at the location o f the remaining ingredient.
The above examples show evidence o f intentionally, premeditation, tak­
ing the perspective o f the other; displacement and symbolic use o f language.
These cognitive processes require that some form o f mental image about
the outcome o f events be created. A further indication that Chantek had
mental images is found in his ability to respond to his care-giver's request
that he improve the articulation o f a sign. When his articulation became care­
less, we would ask him to “ SIGN BETTER.” Looking closely at us, he would
sign slowly and emphatically, taking one hand to put the other into the proper
shape. Evidence for mental images also comes from Chantek's spontaneous
execution o f signs with his feet, which we did not teach him to do. Chantek
 T he Beginnings of Human Culture CHAPTER 3 73

even began to use objects in relation to each other to form signs. For ex­
ample, he used the blades o f scissors instead o f his hands to make the sign
for biting.
Chantek was extremely curious and inventive. W hen he wanted to know
the name o f something he offered his hands to be molded into the shape
o f the proper sign. But language is a creative process, so we were pleased
to see that Chantek began to invent his own signs. He invented: NO-TEETH
(to show us that he would not use his teeth during rough play); EYE-DRINK
(for contact lens solution used by his care-givers); DAVE-MISSING-FINGER
(a name for a favourite university employee who had a hand injury); VIEW-
MASTER (a toy that displays small pictures); and BALLOON. Like our an­
cestors, Chantek had become a creator o f language, the criterion that tw o
hundred years earlier Lord Monboddo had said would define orangutans as
persons.
W e had a close relationship with Chantek. He became extremely at­
tached to his care-givers, and began to show empathy and jealousy toward
us. He would quickly “ protect" us from an “attacking” toy animal or other
pretence. He clearly missed favorite care-givers and occasionally asked to
see us. When he was eight years old, he became to o large to live on cam­
pus, and he returned to the Yerkes Center in Atlanta, Georgia, to live. It was
a difficult transition, and he missed his familiar companions and activities. One
day he sat sadly, and signed “ POINT GIVE A N N ” while gesturing toward the
front door He watched the door and the different cars and individuals that
passed by— waiting for Ann. His loneliness was somewhat relieved when he
was introduced to tw o female orangutans at the Yerkes Center Although he
impregnated one o f them, the offspring died shortly after birth. In the fu­
ture, not only is it important that Chantek have an opportunity to continue
to interact with other orangutans, but it is also important that his encultur-
ation not be forgotten. My goal is for our interaction to continue, and for
Chantek to have an opportunity to use his signs not only with other hu­
mans, but with other orangutans as well.
W e have lived day to day with Chantek and have shared common ex­
periences, as if he were a child. W e have healed his hurts, comforted his
fears o f stray cats, played keep-away games, cracked nuts in the woods with
stones, watched him sign to himself, felt fooled by his deceptions, and frus­
trated when he became bored with his tasks. W e have dreamed about him,
had conversations in our imagination with him and loved him.Through these
rare events shared with another species, I have no doubt I was experienc­
ing Chantek as a person.

At the genetic level, humans and chimpanzees are

HUMAN ANCESTORS
Studies in genetics, biochemistry, and anatomy
confirm that chimpanzees and gorillas are our
closest living relatives (Figure 3.3). Both are more
closely related to us than either is to orangutans.
at least 98% identical, so it is estimated that our
evolutionary lines must have separated from a
common ancestral stock somewhere between 5.5
million and 8 million years ago. In addition, fos­
sils tell us humans were going their separate evo­
lutionary way by at least 4.4 million years ago.
74 PART I A nth ropology an d th e St u d y of C u lt u r e

A young baboon clings to its mother’s back. The ability of apes as well as monkeys
to carry their infants is limited by their need to use their arms in locomotion.

The best evidence is that our ancestry lies
among a group of apelike animals living in Africa
that were forced by climatic changes down onto
the ground to get from one stand of trees to an­
other as well as to supplement food that was be-
coming increasingly scarce in the trees. Since they
did not have arms as long as those of modern apes
nor as massive upper bodies, they tended to move
on their hind legs when on the ground, with their
bodies in an upright position. Advantages of this
kind of bipedal locomotion were that the arms and
hands were free to quickly gather food, to trans­
port it to safe places for consumption, and to wield
objects effectively in threat displays to protect
themselves against ground-dwelling predators.
Additionally, they could transport offspring more
effectively than merely allowing the latter to hang
on by themselves. Finally, erect posture on the
ground minimized the body area exposed to the
hot sun, thereby helping to minimize overheating.

F iquke 3 .3
The relationships among the various catarrhine pri­
mates, as revealed by molecular similarities and differ­
ences. It is difficult to take seriously any date in ex­
cess of 8 million years for the origin of the separate
lineages for chimpanzees and humans.
T he Fi rst H o m i n i n e s
The first undoubted hominines (humans or, in this
case, near humans) are represented by fossils from
East Africa that go back 5.6 million to 5.8 million
years. All are extremely fragmentary, although
about 4 5 % of one individual is known from a site
in Ethiopia. Known as Ardipithecus, it is 4.4 mil-

H o m in in e . A subfamily of primates that includes humans and near humans.

 T he B e g in n in g s of H u m a n C u ltu r e CHAPTER 3 75

A u s t r a lo p it h e c in e S i l a s

19

V —

1B3 /
15n
417 y/
1. H ad ar (Afar)
7,5 f
18 /
2. Lae lo lt V 14, (
3. Fejel
4. Lothagam
8 )
5. Tabarln
6. Be io d e lia
(m id d le A w a sh )
7. Kanapei
8. M a la w i
9. Tau ng \ 10.1211 /
ID . Sterklanteln \ 9 13/
11. M a k a p a n sg a t
12. Sw a rtkra ns 16. Om o
13. K rom d raa l 17. Koobl Fora (E a st Turkana)
14. Olduuai 18. Peninj (Lake Natron)
15. W e st Turkana 19. Chad

F i g w r e 3.5
A u stralopithecu s fossils have been found in South
Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Chad.

tion. All others inhabited more open country and

F igure 3 .4
A plausible view of early human evolution (A: Aus­
tralopithecus; H: Homo).
lion years old. Though much smaller than a mod­
ern chimpanzee, it is more chimpanzee-like in its
features than any other hominine. But unlike chim­
panzees, and like all other hominines, it walked in
a fully human manner, that is, bipedally.
Unlike other early hominines, A rdipithecus
lived in a woodland environment, so it may rep­
resent an aberrant side branch of human evolu-
are assigned to one or another species of the genus
A u stralopithecu s (Figure 3.4). Opinions vary on
just how many species existed; for the sake of sim­
plicity, it suffices for our purposes to refer to them
simply as australopithecines. The earliest aus-
tralopithecine fossils date back as many as 4.2 mil­
lion, if not 5.6 million to 5.8 million, years ago,3
whereas the most recent ones are only about 1 mil­
lion years old. They have been found along the
length of eastern Africa from Ethiopia to South
Africa and westward into Chad (Figure 3.5).
3Wolpoff, M. (1996). Australopithecus: A new look at an
old ancestor. G eneral Anthropology, 3 (1), 2.

A u st r a lo p it h e c u s . The earliest well-known hominine, who lived between I million and 4.2 million, if not 5.6 million, years
ago and includes several species.
76 PART I Anthropology and the Sttjdy
Footprints of A ustralopithecu s from Laetoli, Tanzania.
None of these early hominines were as large
as most modern people, although all were more
muscular for their size. The structure and size of
the teeth are more like those of modern people
than those of apes, and the condition of the mo­
lars indicates food was chewed in hominine fash­
ion: that is, with a grinding motion, rather than
simple up and down movement of the jaws. Un­
like the apes, no gap exists between the canines
and the teeth next to them on the lower jaw, ex­
cept in some of the earliest hominines. These re­
tain some other apelike features, but otherwise
australopithecine jaws are very similar to those of
early H om o. The brain/body ratio, which permits
a rough estimate of australopithecine intelligence,
suggests this was comparable to that of modern
chimpanzees or gorillas. Moreover, the outside ap­
pearance of the brain is more apelike than human,
of Culture
Sufficient parts of the skeleton of “ Lucy,” a hominine
that lived between 2.6 million and 3.3 million years
ago, survived to permit this reconstruction. Her hip
and leg bones reveal that she moved around in a fully
human manner.
suggesting that cerebral organization toward a hu­
man condition had not yet occurred.4
Australopithecine fossils also have provided
anthropology with two striking facts. First, by at
least 4.4 million years ago, this hominine was fully
bipedal, walking erect. Second, hominines ac­
quired their erect bipedal posture long before they
acquired their highly developed and enlarged
4Falk, D. (1989). Ape-like endocast of “Ape Man Taung.”
American Journ al o f Physical Anthropology, 80, 339.
 T he Beginnings
brain. Bipedalism was an important adaptive fea­
ture in the savanna environment. A biped could
not run as fast as a quadruped but could travel
long distances in search of food without tiring. It
could carry food to safe places, it could carry in­
fants (rather than relying on them to hang on for
themselves), and it was exposed to less direct heat
from the sun than when in a quadrupedal posi­
tion. Furthermore, it could see farther and spot
both food and predators.
Although these hominines were accomplished
bipeds, evidence from the arm, hand, and foot
skeletons of australopithecines indicates they had
not given up tree climbing altogether. One reason
may be that trees, sparsely distributed though they
were becoming on the savanna, continued to be
important places of refuge in a land teeming with
dangerous predatory animals. Another is that food
was still to be found in trees. Dental and skeletal
evidence suggests that the males, who were about
twice the size of the females, fed more often on
the ground and lower levels of trees than females,
who had a higher proportion of fruit in the diet.5
A similar pattern is seen today among orangutans,
where it is a response to highly dispersed re­
sources. As a consequence, food males have access
to is of lower quality than that eaten by females,
and males must consume more of it. A major dif­
ference, of course, is that orangutan males still for­
age in the forest, whereas australopithecines did
not. In such a situation, these latter may have been
tempted to try out supplementary food sources on
the ground, especially as existing sources became
scarcer. This likely occurred: A cold, dry climate
episode has been identified for the crucial period
between 2.6 million and 2.3 million years ago. The
major new food source was animal flesh, but, as
we shall see, the activities of females were every
bit as important as those of males for increasing
the amount of meat in the hominine diet.
H omo h a b il is
The increased consumption of meat by evolving
hominines is a point of major importance. On the
^Leonard, W. R., & Hegman, M. (1987). Evolution of P3
morphology in Australopithecus afarensis. American Journ al
o f Physical Anthropology, 73, 61.
of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 77
savanna, it is hard for a primate with a digestive
system like that of humans to satisfy its amino-
acid requirements from available plant resources.
Moreover, failure to do so has serious conse­
quences: growth depression, malnutrition, and ul­
timately death. The most readily accessible plant
sources would have been the proteins available in
leaves and legumes (nitrogen-fixing plants; famil­
iar modern examples are beans and peas). The
problem is, these are hard for primates like hu­
mans to digest, unless they are cooked. The leaves
and legumes available contain substances that
cause the proteins to pass right through the gut
without being absorbed.
Chimpanzees have a similar problem when
out on the savanna. In such a setting, they spend
about 37% of their time going after insects such
as ants and termites on a year-round basis while
increasing their predation on eggs and vertebrate
animals. Such animal foods not only are easily di­
gestible, but also they provide high-quality pro­
teins that contain all the essential amino acids in
just the right percentages. No one plant food does
this by itself. Only the right combination of plants
can provide what meat does alone in the way of
amino acids. Moreover, abundant meat can be had
on the savanna. We should not be surprised, then,
if our own ancestors solved their “protein prob­
lem” in much the same way chimps on the savanna
do today.
Much has been written of a popular nature
about the addition of meat to the hominine diet,
often with numerous colorful references to “killer
apes.” Such references are quite misleading, not
only because hominines are not apes but also be­
cause they obtained their meat not by killing live
animals but by scavenging, or even by stealing it
from other predators. It is significant that teeth
like those of australopithecines are poorly suited
for meat eating. Even chimpanzees, whose canine
teeth are far larger and sharper, frequently have
trouble tearing through the skin of other animals.
W hat hominines need for efficient use of meat, in
the absence of teeth like those of carnivorous an­
imals, are sharp tools for butchering. The earliest
tools of this sort, found in Ethiopia, are about 2.5
million years old. The only tools used before this
time were probably heavy sticks to dig up roots
or ward off animals, unshaped stones to use as
78 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
missiles for defense or to crack open nuts, and per­
haps simple carrying devices made of knotted
plant fibers.
The earliest id en tifiable tools consist of a num­
ber of implements made by striking flakes from
the surface of a stone core, leaving either a one-
or two-faced tool. The resultant ch op p ers, flakes
with sharp edges, and ham m erston es were used
for cutting meat and cracking bones to extract
marrow. These, together with the cores they were
struck from, are known as Oldowan tools. Their
appearance marks the beginning of the Paleolithic,
or Old Stone Age.
Since the late 1960s, a number of the deposits
in South and East Africa that have produced
Oldowan tools also have produced the fossil re­
mains of a lightly built hominine with a body all
but indistinguishable from that of the earlier aus-
tralopithecines6 except the teeth are smaller and
the brain is significantly larger, relative to body
size. Furthermore, the inside of the skull shows a
pattern in the left cerebral hemisphere that, in peo­
ple today, is associated with a speech area. Al­
though this does not prove hominines could speak,
it is clear that a marked advance in information­
processing capacity over that of australopithecines
occurred. Since a major brain-size increase and a
tooth-size reduction are important trends in the
evolution of the genus H o m o , but not of any
species of australopithecine, it looks as if these ho­
minines, now known as H o m o h a b ilis (meaning
“handy man” ), were evolving in a more human
direction. It is significant that the earliest fossils
to exhibit this trend appeared by 2.4 million years
ago, soon after the earliest evidence of stone tool­
making and increased meat consumption.
Tools, Meat, and Brains
The significance of stone toolmaking and meat eat­
ing for future human evolution was enormous.
6Lewin, R. (1987). The earliest “humans” were more like
apes. Science, 236, 1062.
O ld o w an tools. The earliest identifiable stone tools that first appeared 2.5 million years ago. > P aleolithic. The Old
Stone Age, characterized by chipped stone tools. > H o m o h a b ilis . The earliest species of the genus H o m o , preceding
and ancestral to H o m o erectus.
Culture
Not only did they provide a secure source of high-
quality protein but also, as an accidental by-prod­
uct, they made possible the development of larger
brains. The nutritive demands of nerve tissue,
which the brain is made of, are high— higher, in
fact, than the demands of the other types of tissue
in the human body. One can meet these demands
on a vegetarian diet, but the overall nutritive value
of a given amount of such food is less than that
of the same amount of meat. Thus, eating meat in
addition to vegetable foods ensured that a reliable
source of high-quality nutrition would be avail­
able to support a more highly developed brain,
once it evolved. But more than this, animals that
live on plant foods must eat large quantities of
vegetation, and this consumes much of their time.
M eat eaters, by contrast, have no need to eat so
much or so often. Consequently, meat-eating ho­
minines may have had more leisure time available
to explore and manipulate their environment; like
lions and leopards, they would have time to lie
around and play.
As already noted, H o m o habilis got meat by
scavenging from carcasses of dead animals, rather
than hunting live ones. We know this because the
marks of stone tools on the bones of butchered
animals commonly overlie marks the teeth of car­
nivores made. Clearly, H o m o habilis did not get
to the prey first. Because carcasses are usually
widely scattered, the only way these early ho­
minines could have obtained a reasonably steady
supply of meat would have been to do on the
ground what vultures do in the air: range over vast
areas in search of dead animals.7 Bipedal locomo­
tion allowed them to do just that, without tiring,
in an energetically efficient way. Thus bipedalism,
which arose for reasons having nothing to do with
scavenging, made it possible for our ancestors to
take up a new mode of life on the savanna.
Although finding carcasses is one thing, it is
quite another to get a portion of the meat. Since
7Lewin, R. (1987). Four legs bad, two legs good. Science,
235, 969.
 T he B eginnings of H uman C ulture CHAPTER 3 79

This leopard has carried part of a Thomson’s gazelle up into a tree to prevent other animals
from eating what is left. Such tree-stored carcasses may have been the principal source of
meat for H o m o habilis.

early hominines lacked the size and strength to
drive off predators, or to compete directly with
such formidable scavengers as hyenas, which are
soon attracted to kills, they must have had to rely
on their wit and cunning for success. One may
imagine them lurking in the vicinity of a kill, siz­
ing up the situation as the predator ate its fill while
hyenas and other scavengers gathered, and devis­
ing strategies to outwit them all to grab a piece of
the carcass. Hominines depending on stereotyped
instinctual behavior in such a situation would have
been at a competitive disadvantage. In fact, their
safest strategy would have been to seek out the
carcasses of leopard kills.8 We know H. h abilis
and leopards shared the same environment and
that leopards, after satisfying their initial hunger,
drag what is left of their kill into a tree where
other predators cannot get at it. Such carcasses
would have been accessible to H. habilis, who was
good at climbing trees and who was active in day-
8Cavallo, J. A. (1990, February). Car in the human cradle.
Natural History, 5 4 -6 0 .
time when leopards are more likely “sleeping it
off” somewhere in the shade.
Several lines of evidence suggest it was prob­
ably males, rather than females, who scavenged
for food. As already noted, somewhat different
foraging patterns by the earlier australopithecines
appear to have predisposed the males more than
the females in this direction. Furthermore, with­
out contraceptive devices and formulas to bottle
feed to infants, females in their prime, when not
pregnant, must have had infants to nurse. Al­
though this would not have restricted their local
mobility, any more than it does a female ape or
monkey, it would have made it less easy for them
than for males to range over the vast distances (on
the order of 32 square miles) necessary to search
out carcasses. Another necessity for the successful
scavenger would have been the ability to mobilize
rapidly high bursts of energy to elude successfully
the carnivorous competitors at the scavenging site.
Although human anatomical and physiological
differences between the sexes today are relatively
insignificant compared to H o m o habilis (whose
males were about twice the size of females), as a
80 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
general rule men can still run faster than women
(even though some women can certainly run faster
than some men). Finally, even for the smartest and
swiftest individuals, scavenging would have been
a risky business. To place H o m o h abilis females
at risk would have been to place their offspring,
actual and potential, at risk as well. Males, how­
ever, would have been relatively expendable, for,
to put the matter bluntly, only a few males would
be required to impregnate a large number of fe­
males. In evolutionary terms, the population that
placed its males at risk was less likely to jeopar­
dize its chances for reproductive success than one
that placed its females at risk.
Although we should not assume H o m o habilis
had meat on a daily basis, a reasonably steady sup­
ply would have required devoting substantial
amounts of time and energy to the search for car­
casses, and food gathered by females and shared
with males could have supplied the latter with
both needs. Among modern apes and monkeys,
food is rarely shared among adults, the one no­
table exception being the chimpanzee. Although
they rarely share other foods, adult chimp males
almost always share meat, frequently with females.
Thus, increased consumption of meat by H o m o
habilis may have promoted the sharing of food be­
tween the sexes, although not necessarily between
mated males and females; it could just as well have
been between brothers and sisters or mothers
and sons. On the other hand, the potential of
females to be constantly receptive sexually may
have promoted sharing between a male and one
or more sex partners, for among most monkeys
and apes, males attempt to monopolize females
when the latter are at the height of sexual recep­
tivity. As discussed in Chapter 8, the human fe­
male’s ability, alone among the primates, to re­
spond sexually at any time probably was an
incidental by-product of bipedal locomotion;
hence, it should have been characteristic of the ear­
liest hominines.
For this new pattern of sharing to work, the
females, no less than the males, had to “sharpen
their wits.” Although they continued to gather the
same kinds of foods their ancestors had been eat­
ing all along, instead of consuming all this food
themselves as they gathered it (as other primates
do) they had to gather enough to share with the
males, from whom they got a portion of the meat.
Culture
To do this, they had to plan ahead to decide where
food would be found in sufficient quantities, they
had to figure out ways to transport it to some pre­
viously agreed-upon location for division, all the
while taking precautions to prevent either spoilage
or loss to animals such as rats and mice. These al­
tered female activities, therefore, played a key role
in the development of better brains.
Finally, toolmaking itself played a role in the
evolution of the human brain, first by putting a
premium on manual dexterity and fine manipula­
tion, as opposed to hand use emphasizing power
rather than precision. This in turn put a premium
on improved organization of the nervous system.
Second, the stone used to make the tools was pro­
cured at some distance from where the tools were
used to process parts of carcasses. This, the fact
tooth marks of carnivores sometimes overlie
butcher marks on bones, the incredible density of
bones at some Oldowan sites, and weathering pat­
terns indicate that, though the sites were repeat­
edly used over a period of years, the refuse from
butchering served to attract other carnivores. Since
they could have made short work of H om o h a ­
bilis, it is unlikely the latter lingered at the site
longer than necessary at any one time.
All of this is quite unlike the behavior of his­
torically known food-foraging peoples, who bring
whole (rather than partial) carcasses back to camp,
where they are completely processed; neither meat
nor marrow is left (as they were at Oldowan sites),
and the bones are broken in ways they were not at
Oldowan sites to get at the marrow and to fabri­
cate tools and other objects. Nor do historically
known food-foragers camp in the midst of so much
garbage. Evidently, the Oldowan sites are places H.
habilis took the spoils of their scavenging to, where
tools and the raw materials for making them had
been stockpiled in advance for butchering. At these
places, the remains were quickly processed so that
those doing the butchering could clear out before
their lives were endangered by carnivores attracted
by the meat. The advanced preparation for meat
processing this implies attests to the growing im­
portance of foresight and the ability to plan ahead.
In sum, a combination of factors, all associ­
ated in one way or another with the addition of
more meat into the human diet, imposed strong
selective pressures for better brains in H om o h a­
bilis for females as well as males. From this point
 T he B eginnings of H uman C ulture CHAPTER 3 81

on, the record shows increasing brain size relative

to body size and increasing cultural development,
each presumably acting to promote the other.
From fossils found in South Africa, Tanzania,
Kenya, and Ethiopia, it is clear H o m o habilis was
widespread in eastern Africa. Fossils almost as old
have been found in south central China and on
the island of Java that do not differ greatly from
H. habilis, indicating that it was not long before
the genus H om o spread widely throughout the Old
World tropics. This spread correlates with the ap­
pearance of a new species, H o m o erectus, whose
remains have been found not only in Africa and
Southeast Asia but well up into China and Europe
as well (Figure 3.6).

H omo erectus
In spite of their broad distribution, fossils of H o m o
erectus reveal no more significant physical varia­
tions than seen in modern human populations.
These fossils indicate that H. erectus had a body
much like our own, though with heavier muscu­
lature and a smaller birth canal. Differences in

Shown here is the oldest and most complete fossil of

H o m o erectus ever found, the so-called “strapping
youth” from Lake Turkana, Kenya. The remains are
of a robust boy who had died by his early teens.

body size between the sexes were considerably re­

o given its larger brain, H. erectus outstripped its
F u iik e I .t t
As the efficiency of cultural adaptation increased,
populations of the genus H o m o were able to expand
from the old Australopithecine homeland (Figure
3.5), first to Southeast Asia and South China (H .
habilis), and ultimately to colder parts of Europe
and China {H. erectus).
duced compared to early H o m o habilis. The brain
size was significantly larger than of H. habilis and
well within the lower range of modern brain size.
The dentition was fully human, though relatively
large by modern standards. As one might expect,
predecessors in cultural development. In Africa,
the Oldowan chopper was transformed into the
more sophisticated hand ax (the Stone Age equiv­
alent of “building a better mousetrap”). In parts
of Europe chopper tools continued to be made,
but, later, in both Africa and Europe, the hand ax
appears further refined and developed.

Homo e r e c t u s . The species of Hom o preceding and ancestral to H o m o sa p ie n s.

82 PART I Anthropology and the Study of C ulture

Experimentation on an elephant that died of natural causes demonstrates the effec­

tiveness of Acheulean tools. Simple flakes of flint easily slice through the thick hide,
while hand axes sever large muscles. With such tools, two men can butcher 100
pounds of meat each in an hour.

During this time, tool kits also began to di­
versify, indicating the increased efficiency of
H. erectus at adapting to diverse environments. At
first the hand axes— shaped by regular blows that
gave them a larger and finer cutting edge than
chopper tools— were probably all-purpose imple­
ments, useful in food processing, hide scraping,
and defense. But H. erectus then developed
cleavers (like hand axes but without points), which
could be used for killing as well as butchering; sev­
eral different types of scrapers for processing hides
for bedding and clothing; and flake tools to cut
meat and process vegetables. Adaptation to the
specific regions H. erectus inhabited is also indi­
cated by different assortments of tools found in
these regions.
The improved technological efficiency of
H. erectus is also evident in the selection of raw
materials. Instead of making a few large tools out
of large pieces of stone, these hominines placed a
new emphasis on smaller tools that were more eco­
nomical with raw materials. Moreover, new tech­
niques were developed to produce thinner,
straighter, and sharper tools. A hard wooden ba­
ton for flaking produced shallow flake scars,
rather than the crushed edge found on the older
tools. By first preparing a flat platform on a core,
from which flakes could be struck off, H. erectus
could make even sharper and thinner implements.
The toolmaker also could shape the core so that
flake points 3 to 6 inches long could be struck off
ready for use.
By 700 ,0 0 0 years ago— as attested by an iden­
tifiable hearth in a rock shelter in Thailand—
H o m o erectus learned how to use fire.9 Studies of
modern humans indicate they can remain reason­
ably comfortable down to 50°F with a minimum
of clothing so long as they are active; below that
temperature, the extremities cool to the point of
pain. Thus, dispersal of early humans into regions
where winter temperatures regularly went below
50°F, as they must have in China and most of Eu­
rope, was probably not possible without fires to
keep warm. As one would expect, evidence does
9Pope, G. (1988, October). Bamboo and human evolution.
Natural History, 98, 56.
 T he B eginnings oh H uman C ulture CHAPTER 3 83

not suggest the presence of H. erectus in northern

China or Europe outside Spain and Italy until ca.
700.000 years ago.
In addition to keeping warm, the use of fire
enabled H. erectus to cook food, a significant step
in human cultural adaptation. This altered the
forces of natural selection, which previously fa­
vored individuals with heavy jaws and large sharp
teeth (food is tougher and needs more chewing
when uncooked), thus paving the way for reduc­
tion in tooth size as well as supportive facial ar­
chitecture. Cooking did more than this, though.
Because it detoxifies a number of otherwise poi­
sonous plants; alters digestion-inhibiting sub­
stances so that important vitamins, minerals, and
proteins can be absorbed while in the gut, rather
than just passing through unused; and makes
complex carbohydrates such as starch— high-
energy foods— digestible, cooking substantially in­
creased and made more secure the basic resources
available to humans.
Like tools, then, fire gave people more con­
trol over their environment. It may have been used
— if not by H om o erectus, then by subsequent ho-
minines— to frighten away cave-dwelling preda­
tors so that the humans might live in the caves;
and it then could be used to provide warmth and
Shown here are wooden spears made by H o m o er ec ­
light in these cold and dark habitations. Even tus 4 0 0 ,0 0 0 years ago. Found in a bog in northern
more, it modified the natural succession of day Germany, they are anything but crude, testifying to
and night, perhaps encouraging H. erectus to stay the sophisticated tool making and hunting skills devel­
up after dark to review the day’s events and plan oped by then.
the next day’s activities. This, of course, implies at
least rudimentary linguistic ability (see Chapter 4
sophisticated spears of this age that had been pre­
for more on language origins). That H. erectus was
served in a bog in northern Germany. The com­
capable of at least some planning is implied by the
plexity of hunting techniques by this time suggests,
existence of populations in temperate climates,
however, more than just greater technological ca­
where the ability to anticipate needs for the win­
pability; it also reflects an increased organizational
ter season by preparing in advance to protect
ability. For example, excavations in Spain at Am-
against the cold would have been crucial for sur­
brona and Torralba indicate that group hunting
vival.10
techniques were used to drive a variety of large
As H. erectus became technologically more
animals (including elephants) into a swamp so that
proficient, hunting began to replace scavenging as
they could be killed easily.11
the means for procuring meat, animal hides, and
With H o m o erectus, then, we find a clearer
sinew. That these hominines were hunters by
manifestation than ever before of the interplay
400.000 years ago is attested by the recovery of

"Freeman, L. G. (1992). Ambrona and Torralba: New evi­

10Goodenough, W. H. (1990). Evolution of the human ca­ dence and interpretation. Paper presented at the 91st Annual
pacity for beliefs. American Anthropologist, 92, 601. Meeting, American Anthropological Association, Chicago, III.
84 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture

among cultural, physical, and environmental fac­ a matter of taste; both labels are in keeping with
tors. Social organization and technology devel­ their apparently transitional status.
oped along with an increase in brain size and com­
plexity. Cultural adaptations such as cooking and Archaic H o m o sa p ien s
more complex tool kits facilitated dental reduc­
The abundance of human fossils more recent than
tion; and dental reduction in turn encouraged an
2 0 0 .0 0 0 years old is in marked contrast to the
even heavier reliance upon tool development and
scarcity of more ancient ones. All of the younger
facilitated language development. The improve­
fossils are assignable to H o m o sapiens, though a
ments in communication and social organization
distinction is made between archaic H. sapiens and
language brought undoubtedly contributed to im­
anatomically modern H. sapiens, which by about
proved methods for food gathering and hunting,
3 0 .0 0 0 years ago had supplanted the former every­
to a population increase, and to territorial expan­
where. Recently, 12 faceless skulls from near the
sion. Evidence from tools and fossils indicates that
Solo River on the island of Java have been cited
just as H. erectus was able to move into areas pre­
as an exception. Just redated to between 27,000
viously uninhabited by hominines (Europe and
and 5 3,000 years ago, they retain features of ear­
Asia), H o m o sapien s— our next subject— could
lier Javanese H. erectus, leading some anthropol­
live in areas previously uninhabited by H. erectus.
ogists to regard them as the same species. Earlier
researchers, however, had labeled them “nean-
Homo sapiens derthaloid,”12 which would imply their inclusion
in archaic H. sapiens. Like the Neanderthals and
At various sites in Europe and Africa, a number
other representatives of archaic H. sapiens, their
of hominine fossils have been found that date be­
brain size falls within the modern range, while the
tween roughly 3 0 0 ,0 0 0 and 2 0 0 ,0 0 0 years ago.
outside of the skull retains a somewhat “primi­
Some of these— most commonly the African fos­
tive” look. Viewing the Solo River skulls as H.
sils but also a skull from southern France— have
erectus reflects a common tendency to think in
been called H o m o erectus; others— most com­
terms of “typical” representatives, forgetting that
monly skulls from Steinheim, Germany; and
a species always displays a range of variation. As
Swanscombe, England— have been called H o m o
paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould notes, “The his­
sapien s. In fact, all show a mixture of character­
tory of any entity (a group, an institution, an evo­
istics of both forms, which is what one would ex­
lutionary lineage) must be tracked by changes in
pect of remains transitional between the two. For
the variation of all components . . . and not epit­
example, skulls from Ethiopia, Steinheim, and
omized as a single item (. . . a supposedly typical
Swanscombe had rather large brains for H o m o
example).”13 Because the Solo River skulls fit
erectus. Their overall appearance, however, is dif­
within the normal range of variation for archaic
ferent from modern human skulls: They are large
H. sapiens, they probably are members of that
and robust, with their maximum breadth lower on
species rather than of H. erectus.
the skull, and they had more prominent brow
No representatives of archaic H. sapiens are
ridges, larger faces, and bigger teeth. Even a skull
better known than the Neanderthals, which are
from M orocco, which had a rather small brain for
H o m o sapiens, looks surprisingly modern from the
back. Finally, the various jaws from M orocco and
12Clark, W. E., LeGros (1955). The fossil evidence fo r hu­
France seem to combine features of H o m o erectus
man evolution (pp. 7 6 -7 9 ). Chicago: University of Chicago
with those of the European N ean derthals. Press.
Whether to call these early humans “primi­ 13Gould, S. J. (1996). Full house: The spread o f excellence
tive” H. sapiens or “advanced” H. erectus seems from Plato to Darwin (p. 72). New York: Crown.

H o m o s a p ie n s . The modern human species. > N e a n d e rth a l. The representative group of archaic H o m o s a p ie n s liv­
ing in Europe, the Middle East, and south central Asia from about 120,000 years ago to about 35,000 years ago.
 T he B eginnings
Skull of archaic H o m o sapiens from Kabwe, Zambia.
represented by numerous fossils from Europe, the
Middle East, and south central Asia. These ex­
tremely muscular people, while having brains of
modern size, possessed faces distinctively different
from those of modern humans. Midfacial projec­
tion of their noses and teeth formed a kind of
prow, at least in part to sustain the large size of
their front teeth. Over the eyes were prominent
brow ridges, and on the back of the skull a bony
mass provided for attachment of powerful neck
muscles.
Living in other parts of the world were vari­
ants of archaic H. sapiens that lacked the extreme
midfacial projection and massive muscle attach­
ments on the back of the skull characteristic of the
Neanderthals. The Solo River skulls from Java are
a prime example. In them, features of H. erectus
are combined with those of archaic, as well as
more modern, H. sapiens. The fossils look like ro­
bust versions of some more recent Southeast Asian
populations or, if one looks backward, somewhat
less primitive versions of the H. erectus popula­
tions that preceded them in this region. Fossils
of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 85
from various parts of Africa, the most famous be­
ing a skull from Kabwe in Zambia, show a simi­
lar combination of ancient and modern traits. Fi­
nally, equivalent remains have been found at
several localities in China.
Adaptations to the environment by archaic
H o m o sapiens were, of course, both physical and
cultural, but the capacity for cultural adaptation
was predictably superior to what it had been. The
Neanderthal’s extensive use of fire, for example,
was essential to survival in an arctic climate such
as that of Europe at the time. They lived in small
bands or single-family units, both in the open and
in caves, and undoubtedly communicated by
speech (see Chapter 4). Evidence of deliberate
burials seems to reflect complex ritual behavior.
Moreover, the remains of an amputee discovered
in Iraq and an arthritic man unearthed in France
imply that Neanderthals took care of the disabled,
an unprecedented example of social concern.
Hunting techniques improved along with social
organization and a more developed weapon and
toolmaking technology. The toolmaking tradition
 T he B eginnings of H uman C ulture CHAPTER 3 87

A natomi cally M od e rn P eo ples
and the U pper P a l e o l i t h i c
Although populations of archaic and anatomically
modern H o m o sapiens managed to coexist for a
time in Europe, by 3 0,000 years ago peoples
whose physical appearance was similar to our own
had the world to themselves. As is usual in human
populations, these Upper Paleolithic peoples reveal
considerable physical variability, but, generally
speaking, they all had characteristically modern­
looking faces. As suggested in our discussion of
H om o erectus, specialized tools and cooking
helped achieve this modernization by gradually as­
suming the chewing and softening functions once
served by large teeth and heavy jaws. Selection
seems to have favored diminished muscles for
chewing, and consequently the bones these mus­
cles were attached to became less massive.
At this point in human evolution, culture had
become a more potent force than biology. As the
smaller features of Upper Paleolithic peoples sug­
gest, physical bulk was no longer required for sur­
vival. New technological developments had con­
tributed to the increasing complexity of the brain
by the time of archaic H. sapiens, and this com­
plexity now enabled people to create a still more
sophisticated technology. Similarly, conceptual
thought and symbolic behavior seem to have de­
veloped beyond those of archaic H. sapiens. More
than ever, intelligence henceforth provides the key
to humanity’s increased reliance on cultural rather
than physical adaptation.
In Upper Paleolithic times, human intelligence
enabled people to manufacture tools that sur­
passed the physical equipment of predators and to
develop more efficient means of social organiza­
tion and cooperation— all of which made them far
more proficient at hunting and fishing as well
as at gathering. Cultural adaptation also became

During the Upper Paleolithic, a new technique was used to manufacture blades. The stone was broken to create
a striking platform, then vertical blades were flaked off the sides to form sharp-edged tools.

U p p e r Paleolithic peoples. The first people of modern appearance, who lived in the last part (Upper Paleolithic) of
the Old Stone Age.
86 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
of all but the latest Neanderthals (whose technol­
ogy was comparable to that of anatomically mod­
ern H. sap ien s),14 is called Mousterian after a site
(Le Moustier) in France. Mousterian tools date
from 10 0 ,0 0 0 to 4 0 ,0 0 0 years ago and character­
ized this period in Europe, North Africa, and
southwestern Asia.
Mousterian tools are generally lighter and
smaller than those of earlier traditions. Whereas
previously only two or three flakes could be ob­
tained from the entire core, Neanderthal tool-
makers obtained many more smaller flakes, which
they skillfully retouched and sharpened. Their tool
kits also contained a greater variety of types than
the earlier ones: hand axes, flakes, scrapers, bor­
ers, notched flakes for shaving wood, and many
types of points that could be attached to wooden
shafts to make spears. This variety of tools facili­
tated more effective use of food resources and en­
hanced the quality of clothing and shelter.
For archaic H. sapiens, improved cultural
adaptation is no doubt related to the fact that the
brain of archaic H. sapien s had achieved modern
size. Such a brain made possible not only sophis­
ticated technology but also conceptual thought of
considerable complexity. Evidence of this is pro­
vided by the ceremonial burial of the dead, as well
as by objects of apparently symbolic significance.
Among the latter are nonutilitarian items, such as
pendants, and carved and engraved markings on
objects that would have required some form of lin­
guistic explanation. Other examples include the
oldest known flute (made of bone) and common
use of red ocher (a red pigment).15
One of the great debates in anthropology to­
day is whether one, some, or all populations of
the archaic species played a role in the evolution
of modern H. sapiens. With the possible exception
14Mellars, P. (1989). M ajor issues in the emergence of mod­
ern humans. Current Anthropology, 30, 3 5 6 -3 5 7 .
15Bednarik, R. G. (1995). Concept-mediated marking in the
Lower Paleolithic. Current Anthropology, 36, 606. Also
Rice, P. C. (1997). Paleoanthropology 1996— Part II. G en­
eral Anthropology, 3 (2), 10.
M o u s terian . A toolmaking tradition of the Neanderthals and their contemporaries of Europe, southwest Asia, and North
Africa.
Culture
of Neanderthals who coexisted between 40,000
and 3 0,000 years ago with anatomically modern
humans in Europe and the Middle East, the fossil
evidence suggests that local populations in eastern
and southern Asia, as well as in Africa, made the
transition from H o m o erectus to modern H om o
sapiens (the “multiregional hypothesis”). In con­
trast, a comparison of molecular data from mod­
ern human populations living in diverse geo­
graphic regions has led some anthropologists to
argue that all modern people are derived from a
single population of archaic H. sapiens that lived
in Africa (although some have argued in favor of
Asia). This “Eve hypothesis” has been criticized
on several grounds; one is that it conflicts with the
fossil evidence for continuity between older and
more recent populations not just in Africa but in
China, Southeast Asia, and parts of the Middle
East, even if not in western Europe. Another is a
lack of archaeological evidence of an invasion of
Asia by people possessing a different technology.
Finally, these molecular data analyses have serious
problems.16 Even a recent analysis of DNA (de­
oxyribonucleic acid) extracted from a Neanderthal
skeleton, said to relegate these hominines to a side
branch of human evolution, is open to different
interpretation.17 Although the “Eve hypothesis”
still has its champions, it has serious problems to
overcome before its acceptance is warranted.
Taking a cautious approach, all that can be
said at the moment is that at least one population
of archaic H o m o sapiens evolved into modern hu­
mans. As noted earlier, the basic difference be­
tween the two types of H. sapiens is that the mod­
ern face is less massive, as is the bony architecture
at the rear of the skull that provided the attach­
ment needed for the neck musculature to com­
pensate for the weight of a massive face.
16Cachel, S. (1997). Dietary shifts and the European Upper
Paleolithic transition. Current Anthropology, 38, 590.
17Cooper, A., Poinar, H. N., Pääbo, S., Radovcic, J., Debe-
nath, A., Caparros, M ., Barroso-Ruiz, C., Bertranpetit, J.,
Nielsen-March, C., Hedges, R. E. M ., & Sykes, B. (1997).
Neanderthal genetics, Science, 277, 1021-1024.
88 PART I Anthropology and the Study of Culture
highly specific and regional, thus increasing human
chances for survival under a variety of environ­
mental conditions. Instead of manufacturing crude
all-purpose tools, Upper Paleolithic populations of
the savanna, forest, and shore all developed spe­
cialized devices suited to the resources of their par­
ticular environment and to the different seasons.
This versatility also permitted human habitation
of new areas, most notably Australia (by 60,000
years ago) and the Americas (by 12 ,5 0 0 years ago
at the very latest).
This degree of specialization naturally re­
quired improved manufacturing techniques. The
blade method of manufacture (Figure 3.7), in­
vented by archaic H. sapiens and later used widely
in Europe and western Asia, required less raw ma­
terial than before and resulted in smaller and
lighter tools with a better ratio between weight of
Stone Tools for Modern
Surgeons
n 1975, Don Crabtree, then at the Idaho State Uni­
I versity Museum, underwent heart surgery; in 1980, an
anonymous patient in Boulder, Colorado, underwent
eye surgery; and in 1986, David Pokotylo o f the Mu­
seum o f Anthropology at the University o f British Co­
lumbia underwent reconstructive surgery on his hand.
W hat these operations had in common was that the
scalpels used were not surgical steel. Instead, they were
made o f obsidian (a naturally occurring volcanic "glass")
by the same technique Upper Paleolithic people used
to make blades. In all three cases, the scalpels were
handmade by archaeologists who specialized in the
study o f ancient stone tool technology: Crabtree him­
self, Payson Sheets at the University o f Colorado, and
Pokotylo with his colleague Len McFarlane (who hafted
the blades) o f the Museum o f Anthropology.
The reason these scalpels were modeled on an­
cient stone tools, rather than made o f modern steel or
even diamond, is because the obsidian is superior in al­
most every way: 2 10 to 1,050 times sharper than sur­
gical steel, 100 to 500 times sharper than a razor blade,
flint and length of cutting edge. The pressure-flak­
ing technique— in which a bone, antler, or a
wooden tool was used to press off small flakes
from a flint core— gave the toolmaker greater con­
trol over the tool’s shape than was possible by sim­
ply striking it directly with another stone or piece
of antler.
The burin— a stone tool with chisel-like edges
— although invented earlier by Mousterian tool-
makers, came into common use in the Upper Pa­
leolithic. The burin provided an excellent means
of carving bone and antler, used for tools such as
fishhooks and harpoons. The atlatl, which con­
sisted of a piece of wood with a groove in it for
holding and throwing a spear, also appeared at this
time. With the atlatl, hunters increased the force
behind the spear throw. The bow and arrow went
even beyond this. The bowstring increased the
and 3 times sharper than a diamond blade (which costs
many times more and cannot be made with more than
3 mm o f cutting edge). Also, obsidian blades are easier
to cut with and do less damage in the process (under
a microscope, incisions made with the sharpest steel
blades show torn, ragged edges and are littered with
bits o f displaced flesh).* As a consequence, the surgeon
has better control over what she or he is doing, and
the incisions heal faster with less scarring and pain.
To develop and market obsidian scalpels, Sheets
formed a corporation in partnership with Boulder Col­
orado, eye surgeon D r Firmon Hardenbergh. Together
they developed a means o f producing cores o f uniform
size from molten glass, as well as a machine to detach
blades from the cores. W ith the advent o f laser surgery,
however the potential market for scapels o f any sort
appears to be shrinking significantly.
'■
‘ Sheets, P. D. (1987). Dawn of a new Stone Age in eye
surgery. In Sharer, R. }., & Ashmore, W. (Eds.), Archaeol­
ogy: Discovering our past (p. 231). Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.
 T he B eginnings oe H uman C ulture CHAPTER 3 89

The intellectual capabilities of Upper Paleolithic peoples, whose skeletons differ in no signifi­
cant way from our own, are reflected in the efficiency with which some of them hunted
game far larger and more powerful than themselves, as well as in the sophistication of their
art. The painting of animals like the ones shown here attests not only to the artist’s technical
skill but also to his or her knowledge of the animals’ anatomy.

force on the arrow, enabling it to travel farther and
with greater effectiveness than a spear thrown with
an atlatl.
One important aspect of Upper Paleolithic cul­
ture is its art. As far as we know, humans had not
produced artwork of this caliber before; therefore,
the level of artistic proficiency is certainly amaz­
ing. In some regions, tools and weapons were dec­
orated with engravings of animal figures; pendants
were made of bone and ivory, as were female fig­
urines; and sculptures were made of clay. More
spectacular, and quite unlike anything the earlier
Neanderthals created, are the cave paintings in
Spain and France and the paintings and engrav­
ings on the walls of rock shelters in southern
Africa. Made with mineral oxide pigments, these
skillfully executed paintings depict humans and
animals that coexisted with Upper Paleolithic peo­
ples. Because the southern African rock art tradi­
tion lasted a full 2 7,000 years into historic times,
we have learned that it depicts visions of the artists
when in trance. Along with the animals, the art
also includes a variety of geometric motifs of a
sort the human nervous system generates spon­
taneously when in trance. Australian rock art,
some of it older than European cave art and
which is also associated with trancing, includes
similar motifs. Since the same geometric designs
occur in the cave art of Europe it seems it, too,
depicted images seen in altered states of con­
sciousness. Just as the rock art of southern Africa
and Australia is related to what we would label
religious experiences, so too was the Stone Age
art of Europe.
With the end of the Upper Paleolithic, with
anatomically modern varieties of humans on the
scene, as well as cultures comparable to those
known for recent food-foraging peoples, we have
reached a logical place to end our examination of
the beginnings of human culture. This closure
should not be taken to mean that human evolu­
tion stopped at the end of the Paleolithic. Since
90 PART I Anthropology and the Study of
then, the human species has continued to change
biologically, even though it remains the same
species now as then. Culture, too, has continued
to change, and revolutionary developments, such
C H A P T E R
Anthropology includes the study of primates other
than humans to explain why and how humans de­
veloped as they did. As the early primates became
tree dwellers, various modifications occurred— in
dental characteristics, sense organs, the brain, and
skeletal structure— that helped them to adapt to
their environment. In addition, learned social be­
havior became increasingly important to them. By
studying the behavior of present-day primates,
anthropologists seek clues for reconstructing be­
havioral patterns that may have characterized the
apelike primates ancestral to both humans and
present-day apes.
Like all monkeys and apes, chimpanzees live
in structured social groups and express their so­
ciability through communication by visual and vo­
cal signals. They also exhibit learning, but unlike
most other primates, they can make and use tools.
The earliest undoubted members of the human
family were living in Africa by 5.6 million years
ago. These hominines were fully bipedal (able to
walk and run erect). Best known are the australo-
pithecines, who were well equipped for generalized
food gathering in a savanna environment. Although
still strikingly apelike from the waist up, australo-
pithecines had a fully human dentition with many
features easily derivable from earlier apelike pri­
mates. Some of these latter lived under conditions
that forced them to spend considerable time on the
ground, and they appear to have had the capacity
for at least occasional bipedal locomotion.
It seems that an early form of australopithecine
gave rise to an early form of the genus H om o. Of
major significance is that members of this new genus
were both meat eaters and makers of stone tools.
Toolmaking enabled H om o habilis to process meat
so that it could be eaten; because making tools from
stone depended on fine manipulation of the hands,
it put a premium on more developed brains. So, too,
did the analytic and planning abilities required to
scavenge meat from the carcasses of dead animals,
Culture
as the development of food production and, later,
civilization, came after the Paleolithic. These de­
velopments will be touched upon in subsequent
chapters, especially Chapters 6 and 15.
S U M M A R Y
to process it, and to gather the surplus of other wild
foods for sharing.
H om o erectus, the next H om o species to de­
velop, exhibited a nearly modern body, a brain
close in size to the modern human brain, and fully
human dental characteristics. This hominine’s abil­
ity to use fire provided a further means of con­
trolling the environment. The technological effi­
ciency of H. erectus is evidenced in a refined
toolmaking, with the development of the hand ax
and, later, specialized tools for hunting, butcher­
ing, food processing, hide scraping, and defense.
In addition, hunting techniques ultimately devel­
oped by H. erectus reflected a considerable ad­
vance in organizational ability.
By 200,000 years ago, hominines possessed the
brain capacity of true H om o sapiens. Apparently
several local variations of archaic H. sapiens, in­
cluding the Neanderthals, existed. Their capacity for
cultural adaptation was considerable, doubtlessly
because their fully modern brains made possible not
only sophisticated technology but complex concep­
tual thought as well. Those who lived in Europe
used fire extensively in their arctic climate, lived in
small bands, and communicated by speech. Remains
indicate the existence of ritual behavior, and the aged
and infirm were cared for.
Evidence indicates that at least one population
of archaic H. sapiens evolved into modern humans.
Upper Paleolithic peoples possessed physical fea­
tures similar to those of present-day human popu­
lations as sheer physical bulk gave way to smaller
features. The artwork of Upper Paleolithic cultures
surpasses any previous humans created. Cave paint­
ings found in Spain and France and rock art from
southern Africa, which served a religious purpose,
attest to a highly sophisticated aesthetic sensibility.
We thus have seen a close interrelation be­
tween developing culture and developing human­
ity. The critical importance of culture as the hu­
man adaptive mechanism is apparent because
 T he Beginnings of H uman Culture CHAPTER 3 91

culture seems to have imposed selective pressures
favoring a better brain, and a better brain, in turn,
made possible improved cultural adaptation. In­
deed, it seems fair to say that modern humans look
the way they do today because cultural adaptation
played such an important role in the survival of
our ancient ancestors. Because cultural adaptation
worked so well, human populations grew, proba­
bly very slowly, causing a gradual expansion into
previously uninhabited parts of the world. And
this, too, affected cultural adaptation, as humans
made adjustments to meet new conditions.

Points for C onsideration

1. How closely related to other primates do humans seem to be? Would humans seem more similar
if you were to observe us 5,0 0 0 years ago? 1 5 ,000 years ago? 3 0,000 years ago? Why or
why not?
2. Should the genetic similarity of humans and chimpanzees lead to legislation to stop chimpanzee
use in biomedical research? Why or why not? W hat about other less closely related primates?
Supposing they possess a degree of self-awareness comparable to that of humans, what are the
ethics of holding chimpanzees captive and carrying out laboratory research on them?
3. Why are the “invention” of human culture and tool use connected? W hat other activities, such as
language or living in groups, could have affected the early evolution of human culture? What
other kinds of tools might our human ancestors have developed that we might be unlikely to find
now? Why wouldn’t we find them today? W hat might such tools have told us about these
peoples?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

de Waal, F. (1996). G o o d natured: the origins o f
right an d w rong in hum ans an d oth er anim als.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Primatologist Frans de Waal, though fully up
on field studies of wild primates, has spent
much of his career studying chimpanzees and
other primates in captivity. In this book he ar­
gues that moral behavior can be found in non­
human animals, most clearly in apes but also
in other primate and even nonprimate species.
Written for a general audience, but with a
strong scientific foundation, the book com­
municates its message in a clear and respon­
sible way.
Johanson, D., & Shreve, J. (1989). L u cy ’s child:
T he discovery o f a hum an ancestor. New
York: Avon.
This book tells the story of the discovery of
the fossils of A ustralopithecus and early
H o m o and what they have to tell us about the
early stages of human evolution. It reads like
a first-rate detective story while giving good
descriptions of the various forms of A ustralo­
pithecus and early H om o, one of the best dis­
cussions of the issues involved in the argu­
ments over when (and why) H o m o appeared,
and one of the best accounts of how pale-
oanthropologists analyze their fossils.

Goodall, J. (1990). Through a w indow . Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
This fascinating book is a personal account of
Goodall’s 30 years of experience studying wild
chimpanzees in Tanzania. A pleasure to read
and a fount of information on the behavior of
these apes, the book is profusely illustrated as
well.
Shreve, J. (1995). T he N ean dertal enigm a: Solving
the m ystery o f hum an origins. New York:
Morrow.
Shreve is a science writer who has written ex­
tensively about human evolution. This book
is engagingly written and covers most of the
major issues in the Neanderthal-Modern de­
bate.
 P A R T
I I

C ulture and S urvival

• •
Communicating , Raising
C hildren , and Staying A live
c liA p + t i' 4

Language and C ommunication

cltApfer 5
G rowing U p H uman
cltApfer 6
Patterns of S ubsistence
d tA p ftr 7

E conomic S ystems
All living creatures face a fundamental problem in com­
mon: Simply put, unless they adapr themselves to some
available environment, they cannot survive. Adaptation
requires the development of behaviors that will help an
organism use the environment to its advantage— to find
food and sustenance, avoid hazards, and (if the species
is to survive) reproduce its own kind. In turn, organisms
need to have the biological equipment that allows de­
velopment of appropriate patterns of behavior. For the
hundreds of millions of years of life on earth, biological
adaptation has been the primary means of solving the
problem of survival. This is accomplished as organisms
of a particular kind whose biological equipment is best
suited to a particular way of life produce more offspring
than those whose equipment is not as well suited. In this
way, advantageous characteristics become more com­
mon in succeeding generations, while less advantageous
ones become less common.
One characteristic that ultimately became common
among mammals, to one degree or another, was the abil­
ity to learn new patterns of behavior to solve at least
limited problems of existence. This problem-solving abil­
ity became particularly well developed among the last
common ancestors of both apes and humans, and by 2.S
million years ago (long after the human and ape lines of
evolution had diverged) early members of the genus
H o m o began to rely increasingly on what their minds
could invent, rather than on what their bodies were ca­
pable of. Although the human species has not freed it­
self entirely, even today, from the forces of biological
adaptation, it has come to rely primarily on culture— a
body of learned traditions that, in essence, tells people
how to live— as the medium for solving the problems
of human existence. The consequences of this reliance
are profound. As the evolving genus H o m o unconsciously
came to depend more on cultural as opposed to bio­
logical solutions to Its problems, its chances of survival
improved. As a consequence, culture became basic to
human survival.
To do its |ob, cultui e must deal successfully with cer­
tain basic problems Because cultui e is teamed and not
nheiiccd biologically its tiansmission fiom one person
to anothei and from one generation to the next, depends
on an effective communication system that must be far
more complex than any other animal's. Thus, a first re­
quirement for any culture is providing a means of com­
munication among individuals. All cultures do this through
some form of language, one of the most distinctive of hu­
man possessions and the subject of Chapter 4.
In human societies each generation must learn its
culture anew. The learning process itself is thus crucial
to a culture's survival. A second requirement of culture,
then, is the development of reliable means for individu­
als to learn the behavior expected of them as members
of their community, and how children learn appears to
be as important as what they learn. Since an adult's per­
sonality is shaped by life experiences, the ways children
are raised and educated play a major part in the shap­
ing of their later selves: The ability of individuals to func­
tion properly as adults depends, to an important degree,
upon how effectively their personalities have been
shaped to fit their culture. A s we will see in Chapter 5,
findings have emerged from anthropological investiga­
tions of these areas that have implications for human be­
havior beyond anthropology.
Important as effective communication and educa­
tion are for the survival of a culture, they are of no avail
unless the culture can satisfy the basic needs of the in­
dividuals who live by its rules. A third requirement of
culture, therefore, is the ability to provide its members
with food, water, and protection from the elements.
Chapter 6 discusses the ways cultures handle people’s
basic needs and the ways societies adapt to the envi­
ronment through culture. Since this leads to the pro­
duction, distribution, and consumption of goods— the
subject matter of economic anthropology— we conclude
this section with a chapter (Chapter 7) on economic
systems.
 r d l A p i e t 4
r r

Language and
Communication
T he r ic h n e s s of h u m a n culture

IS M A D E P O S S IB L E BY L A N G U A G E ,

O N E O F O U R M O S T D IS T IN C T IV E

c h a r a c t e r is t ic s .A lth o u g h w e

AR E G E N E T IC A L L Y P R O G R A M M E D T O

S P E A K , W H A T W E S P E A K IS

D E T E R M IN E D BY O U R C U L T U R E .
 CflApfer Preview
What Is Language?
Language is a system o f sounds o r gestures that, when put together according to certain rules,
results in meanings intelligible to all speakers. Although humans rely prim arily on language to
communicate w ith one another, it is not th e ir sole means o f communication. Language is em­
bedded in a gesture-call system that consists o f paralanguage— extralinguistic noises th a t ac­
company language— and kinesics, body m otions that convey messages.

How Is Language Related to Culture?

Languages are spoken by people, who are members o f societies, which have th e ir own distinc­
tive cultures. Social variables, such as the class, gender, and status o f the speaker, influence peo­
ple’s language use. Moreover, people communicate w hat is meaningful to them , and what is o r
is not meaningful is defined by th e ir particular culture. In fact, o u r language use affects, and is
affected by, our culture.

How Did Language Begin?

Many theories have been proposed to account fo r the origin o f language, several o f them quite
far-fetched. One theory anthropologists today hold is that human language began as a system
o f gestures w ith rudim entary syntax. As such, it represents an outgrow th o f abilities the great
apes also possessed. A key factor in its elaboration may have been the im portance o f planning
ahead fo r future contingencies by o u r ancient ancestors. Since speech, like gestures, is a prod­
uct o f muscular movements, spoken language may have emerged as the muscles o f the mouth
and vocal tra ct were favored so that people could use th e ir hands fo r oth e r things as they talked
and could communicate w ith others w ith o u t having to be in full view.
96 PART 0 C u ltu r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n i c a t i n g , R a is in g C h il d r e n , and S t a y in g A live

ll normal humans have the ability to talk,

A and in many societies they spend a consid­

erable part of each day doing so. Indeed,
language is so much a part of our lives that it per­
meates everything we do, and everything we do
permeates language. No one doubts that our abil­
ity to speak, whether it be through sounds or ges­
tures (sign languages, such as the American Sign
Language the hearing impaired use, are fully de­
veloped languages in their own right), rests
squarely upon our biological organization. We are
“programmed” to speak, although only in a gen­
eral way. Beyond the cries of babies, which are not
learned but which do communicate, humans must
learn how to speak. We must be taught to speak
a particular language, and any normal child from
anywhere in the world readily learns whatever lan­
guage is spoken where she or he happens to be
reared.
Language is a system for the communication,
in symbols, of any kind of information. In the
sense that nonhuman animals also communicate
certain kinds of information systematically, we
may speak of animal language. “Symbol” in our
definition, however, means any kind of sound or
gesture cultural tradition has assigned meaning to
as standing for something, and not a symbol that
has a natural or self-evident meaning, which lan­
guage specialists call a signal. A tear is a signal of
crying, and crying is a signal of some kind of emo­
tional or physical state; the word crying, however,
is a symbol, a group of sounds we have learned
to assign the meaning of a particular action to and
that we can use to communicate that meaning
whether or not anyone around us is actually
crying.
Currently, language experts are not certain
how much credit to give to animals, such as dol­
phins or chimpanzees, for the ability to use sym­
bols as well as signals, even though these animals
and many others have been found to communi­
cate in remarkable ways. Several apes have been
taught American Sign Language, with results such
as those noted in the Original Study for Chapter
This example of animal communication shows a
young polar bear in a submissive posture to the dog.
3. Even among vervet monkeys, at least 10 dif­
ferent calls are used for communication, nor are
these mere indexes of degree of arousal or fear. As
primatologist Allison Jolly notes:
They mean something in the outside world; they
include which direction to look in or where to run.
There is an audience effect: calls are given when
there is someone appropriate to listen . . . monkey
calls are far more than involuntary expressions of
emotion.1
What are the implications of this nonhuman
ability for our understanding of the nature and
evolution of language? No final answer will be ev­
ident until we have a better understanding of an­
imal communication than we now have. What is
clear is that animal communication cannot be dis­
missed as a set of simple reflexes or fixed action
patterns, even though debate continues over just
how human and animal communication relate to
one another.2 The fact is, human culture, as we
'Jolly, A. (1991). Thinking like a vervet. Science, 2S1, 574.
2Armstrong, D. F., Stokoe, W. C., &C Wilcox, S. E. (1994).
Signs of the origin of syntax. Current Anthropology, 35,
3 4 9 -3 6 8 . Burling, R. (1993). Primate calls, human language,
and nonverbal communication. Current Anthropology, 34,
2 5 -5 3 .

Language. A system of communication using sounds o r gestures put together In meaningful ways according to a set of
rules. > Sym bols. Sounds o r gestures that stand for meanings among a group of people. > Signal. A sound o r ges­
ture that has a natural o r self-evident meaning.

Fi« une 4.1
The price humans pay for spoken language is an increased risk of choking to death, caused by a lower position
of larynx and epiglottis.
know it, is ultimately dependent on a system of
communication far more complex than that of any
other animal. The reason is the sheer amount of
what each individual must learn from other indi­
viduals to control the knowledge and rules for be­
havior necessary for full participation in his or her
society. Of course, learning can and does occur in
the absence of language by observation and imi­
tation, guided by a limited number of signs or
symbols. All known cultures, however, are so rich
in content that they require communication sys­
tems that not only can give precise labels to vari­
ous classes of phenomena but also permit people
to think and talk about their own and others’ ex­
periences in the past and future as well as the pres­
ent. The central and most highly developed human
system of communication is language. So impor­
tant to us is spoken language that we have paid a
significant price for it: To speak as we do, our vo­
cal-respiratory tract has been modified in a way
that greatly increases our chances of both choking
to death and having impacted teeth, the latter con­
dition generally being fatal until the 19th century
Language and Communication CHAPTER 4 97
(Figure 4.1). Knowledge of the workings of lan­
guage, then, is essential to a full understanding of
culture.
i i i
THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE
Any human language— English, Chinese, Swahili,
or whatever— is obviously a means of transmit­
ting information and sharing with others both cul­
tural and individual experiences. Because we tend
to take language for granted, it is perhaps not so
obvious that language is also a system that enables
us to translate our concerns, beliefs, and percep­
tions into symbols others can understand and in­
terpret. In spoken language, this is done by tak­
ing a few sounds— no language uses more than
about 5 0 — and developing rules for putting them
together in meaningful ways. Sign languages, such
as American Sign Language, do the same thing but
with gestures rather than sounds. The many lan­
guages presently existing all over the world— some
98 P A R T II C u lt u r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n ,
6.00 0 or so different ones— may well astound and
mystify us by their great variety and complexity;
but this should not blind us to the fact all lan­
guages, as far back as we can trace them, are or­
ganized in the same basic way.
The roots of linguistics, the modern scientific
study of language, go back a long way, to the
works of ancient grammarians in India more than
2.0 0 0 years ago. In the age of exploration and dis­
covery, the scientific study of language was given
impetus by the accumulation of facts: the collec­
tion of sounds, words, and sentences from all sorts
of different languages, chiefly those European ex­
plorers, invaders, and missionaries encountered in
exotic lands. The great contribution of the 19th
century was the discovery of system, regularity,
and relationships in the data and the tentative for­
For the linguist studying another language in the field, the tape recorder has become an
indispensable tool.
Linguistics. .The modern scientific study of all aspects of language.
and St a y in g A live
mulation of some laws and regular principles. In
the 20th century, although researchers are still col­
lecting data, they have made considerable progress
in the reasoning process, testing and working from
new and improved theories. Insofar as language
theories and facts are verifiable by independent re­
searchers looking at the same materials, a science
of linguistics now can be said to exist.
T he S ound and S hape of
L a nguage
How can an anthropologist, a missionary, a social
worker, or a medical worker approach and make
sense of a language that has not already been an­
alyzed and described or that is not covered in im­
mediately available materials? Hundreds of such
 Language and C ommunication CHAPTER 4 99

languages exist in the world; fortunately, some ef­
fective methods have been developed to help with
the task. It is a painstaking process to unravel a
language, but it is ultimately rewarding and often
even fascinating for its own sake.
For a spoken language, the process requires
first a trained ear and a thorough understanding
of the way speech sounds are produced. Other­
wise, it would be extremely difficult to write out
or make intelligent use of any data. To satisfy this
preliminary requirement, most people need special
training in phonetics, or the systematic study of
the production, transmission, and reception of
speech sounds.
Phonology
To analyze and describe any new language, a re­
searcher needs an inventory of all of its sounds
and an accurate way of writing them down. Some
sounds of other languages may be much like the
sounds of English; others (such as the “clicks” in
Bushman languages) may be sounds English speak­
ers have never consciously produced. Yet since all
people have the same vocal equipment, we all can,
with practice, reproduce all the sounds anyone else
makes. Once a researcher knows all the possible
sounds in a language, he or she can study the pat­
terns these sounds take as they are used to form
words. From this, the person can discover the un­
derlying rules that tell which combinations of
sounds are permissible in the language and which
are not.
The first step in studying any language, once
a number of utterances have been collected, is to
isolate the phonemes, or the smallest classes of
sound that make a difference in meaning. This iso­
lation and analysis may be done by a process called
the minimal-pair test: The linguist tries to find two
short words that appear to be exactly alike except
for one sound, such as b i t and p i t in English. If
the substitution of b for p in this minimal pair
makes a difference in meaning, which it does
in English, then those two sounds have been

TABLE 4 .1 Phonetic Vowel Symbols (Sapir System )*

t U t u Î u
(Fr. fini) (Fr. lune) (Swed. bus) (Ger. gut)

i V i V Ï V

(Eng. bit) (Ger. Mütze) (Eng. put)

e ö — Ò Od 0
(Fr. été) (Fr. peu) (Eng. but) (Ger. so)

£ 0 — ö a D
(Eng. men) (Ger. Götter) (Ger. Mann) (Ger. Volk)
— ¿> — <i> — ü)
(Fr. peur) (Eng. law)

ä — à — — —
(Eng. man) (Fr. patte)

*The symbol d is used for an “indeterminate” vowel.

SOURCE: G. L. Träger. (1972). Language and languages (p. 304). San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company.

Phonetics. The study of the production, transmission, and reception of speech sounds. > Phonem es. In linguistics,
the smallest classes of sound that make a difference in meaning.
100 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

identified as distinct phonemes of the language and
will require two different symbols to record. If,
however, the linguist finds two different pronun­
ciations, as when butter is pronounced “budder,”
and then finds that their meaning is the same for
a native speaker, the sounds represented will be
considered variants of the same phoneme. In such
cases, for economy of representation, only one of
the two symbols will be used to record that sound
wherever it is found. For greater accuracy and to
avoid confusion with the various sounds of the re­
searcher’s language, the symbols of a phonetic al­
phabet, such as was developed by Edward Sapir
for the American Anthropological Association
(Table 4.1), can be used to distinguish the sounds
of most languages in a way comprehensible to any­
one who knows the system.
Morphology
The process of making and studying an inventory
of sounds may, of course, be a lengthy task; con­
currently, the linguist may begin to work out all
groups of or combinations of sounds that seem to
have meaning. These are called morphemes, and
they are the smallest units that have meaning in
the language (unlike phonemes, which, while mak­
ing a difference in meaning, have no meaning by
themselves). They may consist of words or parts
of words. A field linguist can abstract morphemes
and their meanings from speakers of a language
by pointing or gesturing to elicit words and their
meanings, but the ideal situation is to have an in­
formant, a person who knows enough of a com­
mon second language to help the linguist make
approximate translations more efficiently and
confidently. It is pointless to write down data with­
out any suggestion of meaning for them. C at and
d o g would, of course, turn out to be morphemes,
or meaningful combinations of phonemes, in Eng­
lish. By pointing to two of either of these animals,
the linguist could elicit cats and dogs. This indi­
cates that another unit carries meaning, an -s, that
may be added to the original morpheme to mean
“plural.” When the linguist finds that this -s can­
not occur in the language unattached, it will be
identified as a bound morpheme; because d og and
cat can occur unattached to anything, they are
called free morphemes. Because the sound repre­
sented in writing as s is actually different in the
two words (s in cats and z in dogs), the linguist
will conclude that the sounds s and z are two
varieties of the same morpheme (even though
they may be two different phonemes) occurring
in different contexts but with no difference in
meaning.
Grammar and Syntax
The next step is to put morphemes together to
form phrases or sentences. This process is known
as identifying the syntactic units of the language,
or the way morphemes are combined into larger
chains or strings that have meaning. One way to
do this is to use a method called frame substitu­
tion. By proceeding slowly at first, and relying on
pointing or gestures, the field linguist can elicit
strings such as my cat, you r cat, or her cat, I see
you r cat and she sees my cat. This begins to es­
tablish the rules or principles of phrase and sen­
tence making, the syntax of the language.
Further success of this sort of linguistic study
depends greatly on individual ingenuity, tact, logic,
and experience with language. A language may
make extensive use of kinds of utterances not
found at all in English and that an English-speak­
ing linguist may not, therefore, even think of ask­
ing for. Furthermore, some speakers may pretend
they cannot say (or may truly not be able to say)
certain words their culture considers impolite,
taboo, or inappropriate for mention to outsiders.
It even may be unacceptable to point, so the lin­
guist may have to devise roundabout ways to elicit
words for objects.

M o rp h e m es . In linguistics, the smallest units of sound that carry a meaning. > Bound m o rp h e m e . A sound that
can occur in a language only in combination with other sounds, as s in English does to signify the plural. > Free m o r­
phem es. Morphemes that can occur unattached in a language; for example, d o g and ca t are free morphemes in English.
> F ra m e substitution. A method used to identify the syntactic units of language. For example, a category called n o u n s
may be established as anything that will fit the substitution frame “I see a . . . ” > Syntax. In linguistics, the rules or
principles of phrase and sentence making.

The grammar of the language ultimately will
consist of all observations about its morphemes
and syntax. Further work may include the estab­
lishment, by substitution frames, of all the form
classes of the language: that is, the parts of speech
or categories of words that work the same way in
any sentence. For example, a linguist may estab­
lish a category called nouns, defined as anything
that will fit the substitution frame “I see a . . . ”
The researcher simply makes the frame, tries out
a number of words in it, and has a native speaker
indicate “yes” or “no” for whether the words
work. In English, the words h ou se and cat will fit
this frame and can be said to belong to the same
form class, but the word think will not. Another
possible substitution frame for nouns might be
“T h e ------------ died,” in which the word cat will
fit, but not the word hou se. Thus the linguist can
identify subclasses of English nouns: in this case,
“animate” or “inanimate” subclasses. The same
procedure can be followed for all the words of the
language, using as many different frames as nec­
essary, until a lexicon, or dictionary, can be cre­
ated that accurately describes the possible uses of
all the words in the language.
One of the strengths of modern descriptive lin­
guistics is the objectivity of its methods. A de­
scriptive linguist does not approach a language
with the idea that it must have nouns, verbs, prepo­
sitions, or any other of the form classes identifi­
able in English. The linguist instead sees what turns
up in the language and makes an attempt to de­
scribe it in terms of its own inner workings. For
convenience, morphemes that behave approxi­
mately like English nouns and verbs may be labeled
as such, but if the terms would be misleading, the
linguist instead might call them “x-words” and “y-
words,” or “form class A ” and “form class B .”
THE GESTURE-CALL SYSTEM
Efficient though languages are at naming and talk­
ing about things, ail are deficient to some degree
G ra m m a r. The entire formal structure of a language consisting of all observations about the morphemes and syntax.
> F orm classes. The parts of speech o r categories of words that work the same way in any sentence.
L anguage and Communication CHAPTER 4 101
in communicating certain kinds of information
people need to know to understand what is being
said. For this reason, human language is always
embedded within a gesture-call system of a type
we share with monkeys and apes. The various
sounds and gestures of this system serve to “key”
speech, providing listeners with the appropriate
frame for interpreting what a speaker is saying.
Through it, we learn information such as the age
and sex of the speaker, as well as his or her indi­
vidual identity if it is someone we already know.
Moreover, subtle messages about emotions and in­
tentions are conveyed. Is the speaker happy, sad,
enthusiastic, tired, or in some other emotional
state? Is he or she requesting information, deny­
ing something, reporting factually, or lying? Very
little of this information is conveyed by spoken
language alone. In English, for example, at least
90% of emotional information is transmitted not
by the words spoken but by “body language” and
tone of voice. One (but not the only) reason Eng­
lish has become the lingua fran ca of business is
because of how easily deception can be carried out
in written English. Not all languages are as rich
in mechanisms for evasion or as impover­
ished in mechanisms for truth as English.3 None,
including English, communicate peoples’ emotions
and intentions as effectively as the gesture-call
system.
As features we have inherited from our pri­
mate ancestors, many sounds and gestures of our
gesture-call system are subject to greater genetic
determination than language. This accounts for
the universality of various cries and facial ex­
pressions, as well as for the great difficulty peo­
ple have bluffing or especially lying through
gesture-calls. This does not mean the system is
entirely immune to deliberate control, for it is
not; it is merely less subject to control than spo­
ken language.
3Elgin, S. H. (1994). I am not scowling fiercely as I write
this. A nthropology Newsletter, 35 (9), 44.
102 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

Humans talk, while much communication among other primates is done through gestures. Still, humans have not
abandoned gestural communication altogether, as we see here.

K inesics Their pelvis is carried in a slightly rolled-back po­

The gestural component of the gesture-call system
consists of postures, facial expressions, and bod­
ily motions that convey messages. The method for
notating and analyzing this body language is
known as kinesics. Kinesic messages may be com­
municated directly, such as gestures do. For ex­
ample, in North America scratching one’s scalp,
biting one’s lip, or knitting one’s brows are ways
of conveying doubt. More complex examples are
the gender signals North American men and
women send. Although some regional and class
variation occurs, women when standing generally
bring their legs together, at times to the point the
upper legs cross, either in a full leg cross with feet
still together, the outer sides of the feet parallel to
each other, or in standing knee over knee. The
pelvis is carried rolled slightly forward. The upper
arms are held close to the body, and in movement
the entire body from neck to ankle is presented as
a moving whole. Men, by contrast, hold their legs
apart, with the upper legs at a 10° or 15° angle.
sition. The arms are held out at 10° to 15° from
the body, and they are moved independently of the
body. Finally, a man may subtly wag his hips with
a slight right and left presentation, with a move­
ment involving a twist at the base of the rib cage
and at the ankles.
Such gender markers should not be mistaken
for invitations to sexual activity. Rather, they are
conventions inscribed on the body through imita­
tion and subtle training. In any culture, as little girls
grow up, they imitate their mothers or other older
women; little boys do the same with their fathers
or other older men. In North American culture, by
the time individuals become adults, they have ac­
quired a host of gender markers that intrude into
every moment of their lives, so much so that they
are literally at a loss if they do not know the sex
of someone they must interact with. This is easily
verified, as the philosopher Marilyn Frye suggests:
To discover the differences in how you greet a
woman and how you greet a man, for instance, just

Kinesics. A system of notating and analyzing postures, facial expressions, and body motions that convey messages.

The body language shown in this photo of Senator Robert Dole and First
Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks volumes about gender relations in the
United States. The senator’s discomfort in the presence of Clinton’s confident
assertiveness is obvious.
observe yourself, paying attention to the following
sorts of things: frequency and duration of eye con­
tact, frequency and type of touch . . . physical dis­
tance maintained between bodies, how and whether
you smile . . . whether your body dips into a
shadow curtsey or bow. That I have two reperto­
ries for handling introductions to people was
vividly confirmed for me when a student introduced
me to his friend, Pat, and I really could not tell
what sex Pat was. For a moment I was stopped
cold, completely incapable of action. I felt myself
helplessly caught between two paths—the one I
would take if Pat were female and the one I would
take if Pat were male. Of course the paralysis does
not last. One is rescued by one’s ingenuity and good
will: one can invent a way to behave as one says
“How do you do?” to a human being. But the ha­
bitual ways are not for humans: they are one way
for women and another for men.4
Often, kinesic messages complement spoken mes­
sages, such as nodding the head while affirming
4Frye, M. (1983). Sexism. The politics o f reality (p. 20).
New York: The Crossing Press.
Language and C ommunication CHAPTER 4 103
something verbally. Other examples are punching
the palm of the hand for emphasis, raising the head
and brows when asking a question, or using the
hands to illustrate the subject being talked about.
Such gestures are rather like bound morphemes;
they have meaning but do not stand alone, except
in particular situations, such as a nodded response
to a question.
Although little scientific notice was taken of
body language prior to the 1950s, since then a
great deal of research, particularly among North
Americans, has occurred. Cross-cultural research
has shown, however, many similarities around the
world for such basic facial expressions as smiling,
laughing, crying, and variations of anger. Such
smirks, frowns, and so forth that we have inher­
ited from our primate ancestry require little learn­
ing and are harder to fake than conventional
gestures. Great similarity, too, exists around the
world in the routine for greeting over a distance.
Europeans, Balinese, Papuans, Samoans, Bush­
men, and at least some South American Indians
all smile and nod, and if the individuals are espe­
cially friendly, they will raise their eyebrows with
a rapid movement, keeping them raised for a
104 PART n Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

There is a great deal of similarity around the world in

such basic expressions as smiling, laughing, crying,
and anger, as one can see from the expressions of
these children from Asia, Africa, and South America.
Basic expressions like these are part of the human in­
heritance from their primate ancestry.

fraction of a second. By doing so, they signal a

readiness for contact. The Japanese, however, sup­
press the eyebrow flash, regarding it as indecent,
which shows that important differences, as well as
similarities, occur cross-culturally. This point can
be further demonstrated by gestural expressions
for “yes” and “no.” In North America, one nods
the head for “yes” or shakes it for “no.” The peo­
ple of Sri Lanka, also, will nod to answer “yes”
to a factual question, but if they are asked to do
something, a slow sideways movement of the head
means “yes.” In Greece, the nodded head means
“yes,” but “no” is indicated by jerking the head
back so as to lift the face, while the eyes are of­
ten closed and the eyebrows lifted. Body move­
ments and gestures such as these, which vary cross-
culturally and have to be learned, are known as
conventional gestures.

Learned gestures different cultures assign different
meanings to are known as conventional gestures. An
example is this sign, which in North America means
“OK.” In Brazil, it is an obscene gesture.
P aralanguage
The second component of the gesture-call system
is paralanguage, consisting of cries and other
sounds that are not part of language but always
accompany it. The importance of paralanguage is
suggested by this remark: “It’s not so much w hat
was said as h o w it was said.” Recent studies have
shown, for example, that subliminal messages
Paralanguage. The extralinguistic noises that accompany language, such as crying or laughing. > Voice qualities.
paralanguage, the background characteristics of a speaker’s voice.
Language and Communication CHAPTER 4 105
communicated by seemingly minor differences in
phraseology, tempo, length of answers and the like
are far more important in courtroom proceedings
than even the most perceptive trial lawyer may
have realized. Among other things, how a witness
gives testimony alters the reception it gets from ju­
rors, and bears on the witness’ credibility where
inconsistencies exist in testimony.5
Voice Qualities
Although it is not always easy for the linguist to
distinguish between the sounds of language and
paralinguistic noises, two different kinds o f the lat­
ter have been identified. The first has to do with
voice qualities, which operate as the background
characteristics of a speaker’s voice. These involve
pitch range (from low to high pitched); lip control
(from closed to open); glottis control (sharp to
smooth transitions in pitch); articulation control
(forceful and relaxed speech); rhythm control
(smooth or jerky setting off of portions of vocal
activity); resonance (from resonant to thin); and
tempo (an increase or decrease from the norm).
Voice qualities are capable of communicating
much about the state of being of the speaker, quite
apart from what is said. An obvious example of
this is slurred speech, which may indicate the
speaker is intoxicated. Or if someone says rather
languidly, coupled with a restricted pitch range,
that she or he is delighted with something, it prob­
ably indicates the person is not delighted at all.
The same words said more rapidly, with increas­
ing pitch, might indicate the speaker is genuinely
excited about the matter. While the speaker’s state
of being is affected by his or her anatomical and
physiological status, it is also markedly affected
by the individual’s overall self-image in the given
situation. If a person is made to feel anxious by
50 ’Barr, W. M., & Conley, J. M. (1993). When a juror
watches a lawyer. In W. A. Haviland &C R. J. Gordon (Eds.),
Talking about people (2nd ed., pp. 4 2 -4 5 ). Mountain View,
CA: Mayfield.
In
106 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

being crowded in some way or by some aspects of

the social situation, for example, this anxiety prob­
ably will be conveyed by certain voice qualities.
Vocalizations
The second kind of paralinguistic noises consists
of vocalizations. Rather than background charac­
teristics, these are actual identifiable noises that,
unlike voice qualities, are turned on and off at per­
ceivable and relatively short intervals. They are,
nonetheless, separate from language sounds. One
category of vocalizations is vocal characterizers:
the sounds of laughing or crying, yelling or whis­
pering, yawning or belching, and the like. Many
combine sounds with gestures. Speakers “talk”
through vocal characterizers, which generally in­
dicate their attitude. If a person yawns while
speaking to someone, for example, this may indi­
cate an attitude of boredom. B reakin g, an inter­
mittent tensing and relaxing of the vocal muscu­
lature that produces a tremulousness while
speaking, may indicate great emotion on the part
of the speaker.
Another category of vocalizations consists of
vocal qualifiers. These are of briefer duration than
vocal characterizers, limited generally to the space
of a single intonation, rather than over whole
phrases. They modify utterances in terms of in­
tensity— loud versus soft; pitch— high versus low;
and extent— drawl versus clipping. These indicate
the speaker’s attitude toward specific phrases, such
as “Get ou t!” The third category consists of vo­
cal segregates. Sometimes called “o h o h expres­
sions,” these are somewhat like the actual sounds
of language, but they do not appear in the kinds
of sequences that can be called words. Examples
of vocal segregates besides oh oh that are familiar
to English-speaking peoples are such substitutes
for language as shh, uh-uh, or uh-huh. Unlike such
paralinguistic sounds as sobs, giggles, and screams,
“oh o h expressions” are conventional, learned,
and far more variable from culture to culture.
LINGUISTIC CHANGE
In our discussion of the sound and shape of lan­
guage, we looked briefly at the internal organiza­
tion of language— its phonology, morphology,
syntax, and grammar. O f various approaches to
linguistics, descriptive linguistics is concerned with
registering and explaining all the features of a par­
ticular language at any one time in its history. This
approach concentrates, for example, on the way
modern French or Spanish functions now, as if it
were a separate system, consistent within itself,
without any reference to historical reasons for its
development. Yet languages, like the rest of cul­
ture, have histories. The Latin Ule (“that” ) is iden­
tifiable as the origin of both the French le (“the”)
and the Spanish el (“the”), even though the de­
scriptive linguist treats le and el only as they func­
tion in the modern language, where the meaning
“that” is no longer relevant and very few native
speakers are aware they are speaking modern de­
rivatives of Latin.
A second approach, historical linguistics, by
contrast, investigates relationships between earlier
and later forms of the same language, antecedents
in older languages for developments in modern
ones, and questions of relationships between older
languages. Historical linguists, for example, at­
tempt to identify and explain the development of
early medieval spoken Latin into later medieval
French and Spanish by investigating both natural
change in the original language and the influence
of contacts with invaders from the north. No con­
flicts exist between historical and descriptive lin­
guists; the two approaches are recognized as
interdependent. Even a modern language is con­
stantly changing; consider, for example, the
changed meaning of the word gay in English,
which today is used to refer to homosexual per­
sons. Its meaning in the title of the 1942 play Our
H earts W ere Young an d G ay illustrates the word’s

V ocalizations. Identifiable paralinguistic noises turned on and off at perceivable and relatively short intervals. > Vocal
c h arac terize rs. In paralanguage, sound productions such as laughing o r crying that humans “speak” through.
> Vocal qualifiers. In paralanguage, sound productions of brief duration that modify utterances in terms of inten­
sity. > Vocal segregates. In paralanguage, sound productions that are similar to the sounds of language but do not ap­
pear in sequences that can be properly called words.
 Language and C ommunication CHAPTER 4 107

different usage as recently as that time. Such

changes occur according to principles that can be
established only historically.
Historical linguists have achieved considerable
success working out the genealogical relationships
between different languages, and these are re­
flected in classification schemes. For example,
English is one of a number of languages classified
in the Indo-European language family (Figure 4.2).
This family is subdivided into 11 subgroups, which
reflect the long period (8,000 years or so) of lin­
guistic divergence from an ancient unified lan­
guage (referred to as Proto-Indo-European) into
separate “daughter” languages. English is one of
a number of languages in the Germanic subgroup
(Figure 4.3); all are more closely related to one an­
other than to the languages of any other subgroup
of the Indo-European family. So, in spite of the
differences among them, the languages of one sub­ F ia v r i

group share certain features when compared to The Indo-European languages.

other subgroups. As an illustration, the word for
fath er in the Germanic languages always starts
with an f or closely related v sound (Dutch vader,
German Vater, Gothic Fadar). Among the R o­
mance languages, by contrast, the comparable
word always starts with a p : French pere, Spanish
and Italian padre, and all derived from the Latin
pater. The original Indo-European word for fath er
was p ’ter, so in this case, the Romance languages
have retained the earlier pronunciation, whereas
the Germanic languages have diverged. Thus many
words that begin with p in the Romance lan­
guages, such as the Latin piscis and p es, become
words like the English fish and fo o t in the Ger­
manic languages.
Historical linguists have successfully described
the changes that have occurred as languages have
diverged from more ancient parent languages.
They also have developed means of estimating
when certain migrations, invasions, and contacts
of peoples have taken place, on the basis of lin­
guistic similarities and differences. The concept of
linguistic divergence, for example, is used to guess
when one group of speakers of a language sepa­
rated from another group. A more complicated
technique, known as glottochronology, was devel­
oped by Swadesh and Lees in the early 1950s to
try to date the divergence of related languages,
such as Latin and Greek, from an earlier common
language. The technique is based on the assump­
tion that changes in a language’s core vocabulary
— pronouns, lower numerals, and names for body
parts and natural objects— change at a more or
less constant rate. By applying a logarithmic for­
mula to two related core vocabularies, linguists
should be able to determine how many years the
languages have been separated. Although not as
precise as this might suggest, glottochronology
provides a useful way to estimate when languages
may have separated.
While many of the changes that have occurred
in the course of linguistic divergence are well

Language fam ily. A group of languages ultimately descended from a single ancestral language. > Linguistic d iv e r­
gence. The development of different languages from a single ancestral language. > G lo tto ch ro no lo g y. In linguistics,
a method of dating divergence in branches of language families. > C o re vocabulary. In language, pronouns, lower nu­
merals, and names for body parts and natural objects.
108 PART II CuLTURK AND SURVIVAL: COMMUNICATING, RAISING CHILDREN, AND STAYING ALIVE
Fiaiine 4.3
English is one of a group of languages in the Ger­
manic subgroup of the Indo-European family. This di­
agram shows its relationship to other languages in the
same subgroup. The root was Proto-Indo-European, a
language spoken by a people who spread westward
over Europe, bringing with them both their customs
and their language.
known, their causes are not. One force for lin­
guistic change is borrowing from another lan­
guage, something speakers readily do when in a
position to do so; but if borrowing were the sole
force for change, linguistic differences would be
expected to become less pronounced through time.
By studying modern languages in their cultural set­
tings, linguists can begin to understand the forces
for change. One such force is novelty, pure and
simple. Humans tend to admire the person who
comes up with a new' and clever idiom, a new and
useful word, or a particularly stylish pronuncia­
tion, so long as these do not seriously interfere
with communication. Indeed, in linguistic matters,
complexity tends to be admired, while simplicity
seems dull. Hence, about as fast as a language is
simplified, purged of needlessly complex con­
structions or phrases, new ones arise.
Group membership also plays a role in lin­
guistic change. Part of this is functional: profes­
sions, sects, or other groups in a society often need
special vocabularies to communicate effectively
about their special interests. Beyond this, special
vocabularies may serve as labeling devices; those
who use such vocabularies are set off as a group
from those who do not. Here, we have the para­
dox of language acting to prevent communication,
in this case between members of different groups.
Such linguistic barriers serve to create a strong
sense of group identity.
When a military officer speaks of “ incontinent
ordinance” and “collateral damage,” a physician
of “exsanguination,” a dentist of the “oral cav­
ity,” or an anthropologist of “the structural im­
plications of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage,”
they express, in part at least, their membership in
a profession and their command of its language.
For insiders, professional terminology reinforces
their sense of belonging to a select in-group; to
outsiders it often seems an unneeded and preten­
tious use of “ bafflegab” where perfectly adequate
and simple words would do as well. Whether
needed or not, professional terminology does serve
to differentiate language and to set the speech of
one group apart from that of others. Therefore, it
is a force for stylistic divergence.
Phonological differences between groups may
be regarded in the same light as vocabulary dif­
ferences. In a class-structured society, for example,
members of the upper class may try to keep their
pronunciation distinct from that of lower classes.
An example of a different sort involves coastal
communities in Maine, in particular, though it may
be seen to varying degrees elsewhere along the
New England coast. In the past, people in these
communities developed a regional dialect with a
pronunciation style quite distinct from those of
“inlanders.” More recently, as outsiders have
moved into these coastal communities, either as
summer people or as permanent residents, the tra­

ditional coastal style has come to identify those
who adhere to traditional coastal values, as op­
posed to those who do not.
One other far-reaching force for linguistic
change is linguistic nationalism, an attempt by
whole countries to proclaim their independence by
purging their vocabularies of “foreign” terms. This
phenomenon is particularly characteristic of the
former colonial countries of Africa and Asia to­
day. It is by no means limited to those countries,
however, as shown by periodic French attempts to
purge their language of such Americanisms as le
hamburger. Also in the category of linguistic na­
iyyLcc-CA Language Renewal Among
the Northern Ute
O n April 10, 1984, the Northern UteTribe became
the first community o f American Indians in the
United States to affirm the right o f its members to re­
gain and maintain fluency in their ancestral language, as
well as their right to communicate in it throughout their
lives. Like many other Native Americans, these people
had experienced a decline in fluency in their native
tongue as they were forced to interact more and more
intensively with outsiders who spoke only English. Once
the on-reservation boarding school was closed in 1953,
Ute children had to attend schools where teachers and
most other students were ignorant o f the Ute language.
Outside the classroom as well, children and adults alike
were increasingly bombarded by English as they sought
employment off the reservation, traded in non-Indian
communities, or were exposed to television and other
popular media. By the late 1960s, although Ute language
fluency was still highly valued, many community mem­
bers could no longer speak it.
Alarmed by this situation, the group o f Ute par­
ents and educators that supervises federally funded tu ­
torial services to Indian students decided action needed
to be taken, lest their native language be lost altogether
Linguistic nationalism . The attempt by ethnic minorities, and even countries, to proclaim independence by purging
their languages of foreign terms or reviving unused languages.
L anguage and C ommunication CHAPTER 4 109
tionalism are revivals of languages long out of
common use, by ethnic minorities and sometimes
even whole countries. In the latter group is the suc­
cessful revival of Hebrew as Israel’s first language,
though not without a bitter campaign against its
competitor, Yiddish. In the former group is the
Ute’s attempt to revive their language, as discussed
in the nearby Anthropology Applied.
For ethnic minorities, the revival of lost lan­
guages or the maintenance of those not lost is im­
portant for their sense of identity and self-worth.
Furthermore, it serves as an effective barrier
to penetration by outsiders, allowing people to
W ith the assistance o f other community leaders, they
launched discussions on what they could do about the
situation and invited anthropologist William L. Leap to
join in these discussions. Previously, Leap had worked
on language education with other tribes, and the Utes
subsequently hired him to assist them In their efforts
at linguistic renewal. One result o f his w ork was the of­
ficial policy statement by the tribe’s governing body,
noted earlier
Leap began w ork for the N orthern Utes in 1978,
and his first task was to carry out a first-ever reserva­
tion-wide language survey." This found, among other
facts, that inability to speak Ute did not automatically
Imply loss o f skill; evidently, many nonspeakers retained
a “ passive fluency" in the language and could under­
stand it, even though they could not speak it. Further­
more (and quite contrary to expectations), children
who still could speak Ute had fewer problems with Eng­
lish in school than did nonspeakers.
For the next few years, Leap helped set up a Ute
language renewal program within the tribe's Division o f
Education, w rote several grants to provide funding, led
staff training workshops in linguistic transcription and
110 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children,
grammatical analysis, provided technical assistance in de­
signing a practical writing system for the language, and
supervised data-gathering sessions with already fluent
speakers o f the language. W ith the establishment in
1980 o f an in-school program to provide develop­
mental Ute and English instruction to Indian and other
interested children, he became staff linguist. In this ca­
pacity he helped train the language teachers (all of
whom were Ute and none o f whom had degrees in
education); carried out research that resulted in nu­
merous technical reports, publications, and in-service
workshops; helped prepare a practical Ute language
handbook for home use so that parents and grand­
parents might enrich the children's language learning ex­
perience; prepared the preliminary text for the tribe's
policy statement on language; and helped persuade the
governing body to accept this policy. By 1984, not only
did this policy become “ official,1' but also several (not
just one) language development projects were in place
on the reservation, all monitored and coordinated by
pursue the livelihoods and interests they choose for
themselves. By the same token, a prime means coun­
tries use to try to assert their dominance over mi­
norities living within their borders is to suppress
their languages. A good illustration of this was the
policy pursued in the United States of taking Indian
children away from their parents and putting them
in boarding schools, where use of Indian languages
was absolutely forbidden and punished with phys­
ical abuse and humiliation. Not until 1934 did the
government begin to ease up on this harsh policy,
but it was only as recently as 1990 that Congress
passed the Native American Languages Act, en­
couraging Indians to use their own languages.
In spite of such changes, the United States re­
mains uneasy about linguistic diversity. This is re­
flected in a reluctance to learn foreign languages.
In many human societies, it is not unusual for peo­
ple to be fluent in two, three, or even four lan­
guages, but to become so it is important to begin
learning them as children— not as high school or
college students, as is traditional in the United
States. M ore dramatically, it is illustrated by efforts
to make “English only” a national policy. Propo­
nents of such a policy argue that multilingualism
is divisive and often cite the example of French sep­
and Staying Alive
a tribally sanctioned language and culture committee.
Supported by both tribal and federal funds, these in­
volved the participation o f persons with varying de­
grees o f familiarity with the language. Although literacy
was not a goal, down-to-earth needs resulted in the
development o f practical writing systems, and a num­
ber o f people in fact became literate in Ute. One im­
portant reason for all this success was the involvement
o f the Ute people in all stages o f development. N ot
only did these projects originate in response to their
own expressed needs, but also they were active par­
ticipants in all discussions and made decisions at each
stage o f the activities, participating not just as individu­
als but also as members o f family, kin, community, and
band.*S
.
’ Leap, W. L. (1987). Tribally controlled culture change: The
Northern Ute language renewal project. In R. M. Wulff &
S. J. Fiske (Eds.), A nthropological praxis: Translating know l­
edge into action. Boulder, CO: Westview.
aratism in Canada. What they do not cite are ex­
amples such as the former Yugoslavia or Northern
Ireland, both instances where speaking a single lan­
guage has not prevented violent fighting between
factions. Nor do they mention countries such as
Finland, where three languages are spoken, or
Switzerland, where four exist without people be­
ing at one another’s throats. The fact is, where lin­
guistic diversity is divisive, it is often because of
official policies in favor of monolingualism.
'h 'A .4 4. :k fe at -r. S
LANGUAGE IN ITS CULTURAL
SETTING
As the preceeding discussion suggests, language is
not simply a matter of combining sounds accord­
ing to certain rules to come up with meaningful
utterances. It is important to remember that lan­
guages are spoken by people, who are members of
societies, each of which has its own distinctive cul­
ture. Individuals tend to vary in the ways they use
language, and influences include social variables
such as class, ethnicity, and status. Moreover, peo­
ple choose words and sentences to communicate
 L anguage and C o m m u n icatio n CHAPTER 4 111

The linguistic nationalism of the United States is reflected by a reluctance to encour­

age bilingualism in Spanish, the language spoken by more people in the Americas
than English or any other language. Some even go so far as to lobby for an “Eng­
lish only” policy.

meaning, and what is meaningful in one culture
may not be in another. In other words, our use of
language affects, and is affected by, the rest of our
culture.
The whole question of the relationships be­
tween language and other aspects of culture is the
province of ethnolinguistics, an outgrowth of both
ethnology and descriptive linguistics, which has
become almost a separate field of inquiry. Ethno­
linguistics is concerned with every aspect of the
structure and use of language that has anything to
do with society, culture, and human behavior.
L anguage and T hought
An important ethnolinguistic concern of the 1930s
and 1940s was the question of whether language
might actually determine other aspects of culture.
Do we see and react differently to the colors blue
and green, with different cultural symbolism for
each color, only because our language has differ­
ent names for these two neighboring parts of the
unbroken color spectrum? When anthropologists
noticed that some cultures lump together blue and
green with one name, they began to wonder about
this question. American linguist Edward Sapir had
earlier formulated the problem, and his student
Benjamin Lee Whorf, drawing on his experience
with the Hopi Indian language, developed a full-
fledged theory, sometimes called the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis. W horf proposed that a language is not
simply an encoding process for voicing our ideas
and needs but, rather, is a shaping force, which,
by providing habitual grooves of expression that
predispose people to see the world in a certain way,
guides their thinking and behavior. The problem

Ethnolinguistics. The study of the relation between language and culture. > S a p ir-W h o rf hypothesis. The hy­
pothesis, proposed by linguist B. L. W horf, that states that language, by providing habitual grooves of expression, predis­
poses people to see the world in a certain way and thus guides their thinking and behavior.
112 PART H Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

is a little like the old question of the chicken or

the egg. Some later formulations of W horf’s the­
ory about which came first, thinking and behav­
ior or language, have since been criticized as both
logically unsound and not amenable to any ex­
perimentation or proof. The idea’s primary value
is that it focused attention on the relationships
between language and the rest of culture.
The opposite point of view is that language
reflects reality. In this view, because language mir­
rors cultural reality, as the latter changes, so too
will language. Some support for this is provided
by studies of blue-green color terms. It has been
shown that eye pigmentation acts to filter out the
shorter wavelengths of solar radiation. Color vi­
sion is thus limited by a reduced sensitivity to blue
and confusion of the short visible wavelengths.
The effect shows up in color-naming behavior,
where green may be identified with blue, blue with
black, or both green and blue with black. The
severity of the visual limitation, as well as the ex­
tent of the lumping of color terms, depends on the
density of eye pigmentation characteristic of the
people in a given society.
These findings do not mean language merely
reflects reality, any more than thinking and
behavior are determined by language. The truth
The ability of language to influence the way we think
is more as anthropologist Peter Woolfson has is illustrated by the bland phrase “collateral damage,”
put it: by which the military in the 1991 Gulf War referred
to civilian casualties from raids on Iraqi cities.
Reality should be the same for us all. Our nervous
systems, however, are being bombarded by a con­
tinual flow of sensations of different kinds, inten­
Linguists have found that although language is
sities, and durations. It is obvious that all of these
generally flexible and adaptable, once a terminol­
sensations do not reach our consciousness; some
ogy is established, it tends to perpetuate itself and
kind of filtering system reduces them to manage­
to reflect and reveal the social structure and a
able propositions. The Whorfian hypothesis sug­
group’s common perceptions and concerns. For
gests that the filtering system is one’s language. Our
example, English is richly endowed with words
language, in effect, provides us with a special pair
having to do with war, the tactics of war, and the
of glasses that heightens certain perceptions and
hierarchy of officers and fighting men. Militaris­
dims others. Thus, while all sensations are received
tic metaphors also abound, as when we speak of
by the nervous system, only some are brought to
“conquering” space, “fighting” the budget “bat­
the level of consciousness.6
tle,” carrying out a “war” on poverty, making a
“killing” on the stockmarket, “shooting down” an
argument, or “ bombing” out on an exam, to men­
6Woolfson, P. (1972). Language, thought, and culture. In
tion just a few. An observer from an entirely dif­
V. P. Clark, P. A. Escholz, & A. F. Rosa (Eds.), Language ferent and perhaps warless culture could under­
(p. 4). New York: St. Martin’s. stand a great deal about the importance of warfare

So important are cattle to the Nuer of southern Sudan that they have more than 4 0 0
words to describe them.
in our lives, as well as how we conduct it, simply
from what we have found necessary to name and
how we talk. Similarly, anthropologists have noted
that the language of the Nuer, a nomadic people
of southern Sudan, is rich in words and expres­
sions having to do with cattle; not only are more
than 400 words used to describe cattle, but also
Nuer boys actually take their names from them.
Thus, by studying the language we can determine
the importance of cattle to Nuer culture, attitudes
toward cattle, and the whole etiquette of human
and cattle relationships.
A people’s language does not, however, pre­
vent them from thinking in new and novel ways.
If this leads to important changes in common per­
ceptions and concerns, then language can be ex­
pected to change accordingly.
Kinship Terms
In the same connection, anthropologists have paid
considerable attention to the way people name
their relatives in various societies, as we will see
in Chapter 10. In English we have terms to iden­
L anguage and C o m m u n icatio n CHAPTER 4 113
tify brother, sister, mother, father, grandmother,
grandfather, granddaughter, grandson, niece,
nephew, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law,
and brother-in-law. Some people also distinguish
first and second cousin and great-aunt and great-
uncle. Is this the only possible system for naming
relatives and identifying relationships? Obviously
not. We could have separate terms, as some cul­
tures do, for younger and older brothers, for
mother’s sister and father’s sister, and so on. What
we can describe in English with a phrase, if pressed
to do so, other languages make explicit from the
outset, and vice versa: A number of languages use
the same word to denote both a brother and a
cousin, and a mother’s sister also may be called by
the same term as the mother.
What do kinship terms reveal? They certainly
can give a good idea of how the family is struc­
tured, what relationships are considered especially
important, and sometimes what attitudes toward
relationships may prevail. Caution is required,
however, in drawing conclusions from kinship
terms. Just because English speakers do not
distinguish linguistically between their mother’s
114 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren,
parents and their father’s parents (both are simply
grandmother and grandfather), does that mean
they do not know or care about which is which?
Certainly not. Nevertheless, nonanthropologists,
when confronted with a kinship system that ap­
plies the same term for father’s brother to father,
frequently make the mistake of assuming “these
people don’t know who their own father is.”
L a ng ua ge a nd G e nd e r
Throughout history, human beings have handled
the relationship between men and women in many
different ways, and here again language can be re­
vealing. In English-speaking societies, for exam­
ple, men and women use the language in different
ways, revealing a deep-seated bias against women.
For example, women frequently use the expression
“I’m sorry” to indicate sympathy and concerns,
rather than apology. Unfortunately, men tend to
accept it in the literal sense, as an apology, instead
of in its intended figurative sense. In so doing,
whether purposeful or not, men place women in
a position of subordination. Similarly, words spo­
ken by or about women imply, sometimes subtly
and sometimes not, a lesser status. For example,
behavior described as “forceful” for a man might
be described as “pushy” for a woman. Or, while
a man “passes out” (falling directly to the ground),
a woman “faints” (as if giving way to weakness).
While a man is “a fighter,” a woman is “spunky”
or “feisty,” words suggestive of lesser power. In
innumerable ways the traditional inequality of
men and women in North American society re­
ceives linguistic expression.
S oci a l D ialects
In our previous discussion of linguistic change,
phonological and vocabulary differences among
groups were noted as important forces for lin­
guistic change. Varying forms of a language simi­
lar enough to be mutually intelligible are known
as dialects, and the study of dialects is a concern
D ialects. Varying forms of a language that reflect particular regions o r social classes and that are similar enough to be
mutually intelligible. > Sociolinguistics. The study of the structure and use of language as it relates to its social
setting.
and Staying Alive
of sociolinguistics. Technically, all dialects are lan­
guages— they have nothing partial or sublinguis-
tic about them— and at the point two dialects be­
come distinctly different languages is roughly
where speakers of one are almost totally unable
to communicate with speakers of the other. Bound­
aries may be psychological, geographic, social, or
economic, and they are not always very clear. Re­
gional dialects frequently have a transitional ter­
ritory, or perhaps a buffer zone, where features of
both are found and understood, as between cen­
tral and southern China. But if you learn the Chi­
nese of Beijing, you cannot communicate with
someone who comes from Canton or Hong Kong,
although both languages— or dialects— are con­
ventionally called Chinese.
A classic example of the kind of dialect that
may set one group apart from others within a sin­
gle society is one spoken by many inner-city African
Americans. Technically known as African Ameri­
can Vernacular English, it often has been referred
to as Black English and (more recently) as Ebonics.
Unfortunately, a widespread perception
among upper- and middle-class Whites and Blacks
alike is that this dialect is somehow substandard
or defective, which it is not. A basic principle of
linguistics is that the selection of a prestige dialect
— in this case, what we may call Standard English
as opposed to Ebonics— is determined by acci­
dental extralinguistic forces and is not dependent
on indirect virtues of the dialects themselves. In
fact, African American Vernacular English is a
highly structured mode of speech, capable of ex­
pressing anything its speakers care to express, of­
ten in extremely creative ways (as in “rapping”).
Many of its distinctive features stem from the re­
tention of sound patterns, grammatical devices,
and even words of the West African languages spo­
ken by the ancestors of today’s African Americans.
Compared to the richness of Black English, the
Standard English dialect lacks certain sounds; con­
tains some unnecessary sounds that others may
serve for just as well; doubles and drawls some of
its vowel sounds in unusual sequences that are dif-
 L anguage and C ommunication CHAPTER 4 115

ficult to imitate; lacks a method of forming an im­
portant tense (the habitual); requires more ways
than necessary to indicate tense, plurality, and gen­
der; and does not mark negatives so as to make a
strong negative statement.
Because their dialect differs so much from
Standard English and has been stigmatized so of­
ten, speakers of African American Vernacular Eng­
lish frequently find themselves at a disadvantage
outside their communities. In schools, for exam­
ple, African American children often have been
judged by teachers as deficient in verbal skills and
even have been diagnosed— quite wrongly— as
“learning impaired.” The great challenge for U.S.
schools is to find ways to teach these children how
to use Standard English in situations where it is to
their advantage to do so, without denigrating them
or affecting their ability to use their community
dialect. Unfortunately, the general public’s misun­
derstandings and prejudices are so great that a re­
cent attempt by the school board of Oakland, Cal­
ifornia, to deal with the problem stirred up a
firestorm of criticism. In the accompanying Orig­
inal Study, anthropologist Leila Monaghan and
two colleagues discuss the controversy and the
Oakland School Board’s proposal.

Ebonics raised a storm o f protest from around the country. The very names
for this dialect reflect the diversity o f views. W hat the Oakland school board
refers to as Ebonics has also been known over time as Black English Ver­
nacular (BEV), Black English (BE), African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
and African American English (AAE). English used by African Americans ranges
The Great from distinctive styles o f master orators like Martin Luther King and Jesse
Jackson, through urban and rural vernaculars influenced by Southern roots
Ebonics and the language o f recent Caribbean and African immigrants, to standard
and local Englishes identical to those used by members o f other communi­
Controversy7 ties. This diversity also makes us question how to designate what white
Americans speak. In this piece we refer to Standard English (SE), which is
strongly associated with written forms taught in school.There are, o f course,
numerous English vernacular forms, which have received less discussion.

Leanne Hinton The furor over Oakland's recently adopted resolution regarding Ebonics is
(Linguistics, California- based in large part on tw o Issues: ( I) there is a misunderstanding that the
Oakland school system wants to teach BE In the schools; and (2) there is a
Berkeley)
sense o f outrage among some that a stigmatized variety o f English would be
treated as a valid way o f talking.
When I attended the school board meeting at which the Ebonics res­
olution was adopted, all discussion in support o f the resolution by board
members, parents and teachers was centered around the importance o f
teaching SE to children. This resolution is not about teaching BE but about
the best way to teach SE. The children whom the board is concerned about
have learned BE at home, a linguistic variety that has many differences from
SE. To teach SE the board has rightfully concluded that teachers need to
understand BE to teach children the differences between these tw o linguis-

7Monaghan, L., Hinton, L., & Kephart, R. (1997). Can’t teach a dog to be a cat?
The dialogue on Ebonics. A nthropology Newsletter, 38 (3), 1, 8, 9.
116 PART U C u lt u r e and S u r v i v a l : C o m m u n i c a t i n g , R ai sin g C h i l d r e n , and St a y i n g A live

The passions aroused by peoples’ ideas about language are illustrated by

the protests for and against the Oakland, California, School Board’s recog­
nition of “Ebonics” for what it is: a rich and complex language spoken by
many inner-city African Americans.

tic varieties. It has also rightfully concluded that BE is not just some random
form o f "broken-down English" intrinsically inferior to SE but is a speech va­
riety with its own long history, logical rules o f grammar, discourse practices
traceable to West African languages and a vibrant oral literature w orthy of
respect. BE has also been one o f the major contributors o f vocabulary to
American English in general.
W hether Ebonics is a separate language in any technical sense is not
what I think educators are concerned with here. W hat they are after is el­
evating the status o f African American English (AAE). While from a linguis­
tic point o f view, these notions are being carried to an unscientific extreme,
proponents o f Ebonics are battling an even more unscientific set o f extreme
prejudices against AAE. The Oakland board is trying to promulgate a new
set o f political ideas about AAE as a legitimate form o f speech, partly for the
sake o f African American pride but mainly for the sake o f teaching SE in an
emotionally positive way.
The notion that there is something just plain "bad" about nonstandard
varieties o f English is so deeply imbedded in the minds o f many people that
they tend to believe that children speak BE out o f contrariness and need to
be corrected by punishment. Educators have known better for a long time
and don't want to be disrespectful o f African American children's ways of
speech, but that very respect has left them without a way o f teaching SE.
The method being embraced by the Oakland school board fills that void. By
escaping the trap o f thinking o f nonstandard BE as a set o f “errors” and in­
stead treating it as it really is— a different system, not a wrong one— SE can
be taught by helping children develop an awareness o f the contrast between
their tw o speech varieties and learning to use one without losing pride in
the other
 L anguage and Communication CHAPTER 4 117

Ron Kephart (Linguistic My take on the Ebonics issue has to do with being a linguistic anthropolo­
Anthropology and English, gist and having conducted research on reading in Creole English on Carria-
cou, Grenada. In both cases, one o f the hardest problems seems to be mak­
U North Florida)
ing people understand what you are doing.
A major criticism o f the Oakland proposal which I have heard is that
teachers will be wasting time “teaching” AAVE when the kids should be learn­
ing SE. On Carriacou I often found it necessary to explain that I didn't have
to "teach" children Creole; they were already native speakers when they got
to school. I was giving them access to literacy through Creole and then at­
tempting to test the extent this helped them acquire literacy in SE.
On Carriacou, “ educational experts” claimed that taking children out o f
their SE classes and working with them in Creole would slow them down
and confuse them. I found neither to be the case: working In Creole they
continued to improve in reading SE as fast as others working entirely in
SE and never seemed to confuse the two. (It helped, no doubt, that I
w rote Creole with a broadly phonemic spelling system that made it look
different.)
My research was interrupted by the coup and subsequent US invasion
o f Grenada and Carriacou in 1983. As a result, I was unable to draw the
strong conclusions I would have liked. Still, I showed that working on
Creole did not slow down or confuse the children and was able to pre­
sent some evidence that reading Creole helped their reading o f SE. On a
more qualitative note, they enjoyed it. O ther teachers told me they had
never seen children fight over who was going to read to the class. And they
had rarely taken schoolbooks home to read before getting the little book­
lets in Creole we produced. Even children not in the Creole class asked for
booklets.
Ultimately, this is a political issue. My experience on Grenada suggests
that recognition o f AAVE in Oakland can't hurt. Surely it can’t hurt children
to discover that what they bring with them to school— as a realization o f
the universal human potential for language and culture— is w orthy o f re­
spect, w orthy enough to be valued and used in their formal education. And
it can't hurt teachers to learn this either How much will it help? W e have
research from all over the world on the positive effects o f native-language
first-literacy acquisition and early schooling. Since it can’t hurt, it seems w orth
finding out whether these results can be replicated In Oakland, and else­
where, for AAVE.
W e must also remain aware that simply gaining greater command o f
the standard language will not help unless society is willing to adjust its atti­
tudes toward those involved. Otherwise, discrimination and exploitation will
continue as before; racists will have one less justification to tro t out, that’s
all. Perhaps this is where anthropologists and linguists have their most im­
portant w ork to do: raising public awareness and understanding o f what lin­
guistic, cultural and biological differences mean and, most importantly, what
they don't mean.
118 PART II C ult ur e and S u r v i v a l : C o m m u n i c a t i n g , R ai sin g C h i l d r e n ,
Beneath all the rhetoric, the Oakland School
Board proposal is no different from what several
other countries are doing with considerable suc­
cess. In Scotland, for example, Scots English is rec­
ognized in the schools as a valid and valued way
of speaking, and it is used in teaching Standard
English. As a consequence, individuals become
skilled at switching back and forth between the
two dialects, depending on the situation. Without
being conscious of it, we all do something similar
when we switch from formality to informality in
our speech, depending upon where we are and
whom we are talking to. The process of changing
from one level of language to another as the
situation demands, whether from one language to
another or from one dialect of a language to
another, is known as code switching, and it has
been the subject of a number of sociolinguistic
studies.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Part of his effectiveness as a
civil rights leader was his skill at code switching
between Standard and African American Vernacular
English.
C o d e sw itch in g . The process of changing from one level of language to another.
and S t a y i n g A live
■» i » i _ * A V - 'A'* * A i A -
THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
Realization of language’s central importance to
human culture leads inevitably to speculation
about how language might have started. The ques­
tion of the origin of language has long been a pop­
ular subject, and some reasonable and many
not-so-reasonable ideas have been proposed: Ex­
clamations became words, sounds in nature were
imitated, or people simply got together and as­
signed sounds to objects and actions. The main
trouble with past ideas about language origins is
that so little evidence existed that attempts to ex­
plain them often amounted to not much more than
wild speculation. The result was a reaction against
such speculation, exemplified by the ban the So­
ciété de Linguistique de Paris imposed in 1866
against papers on linguistic origins. Now re­
searchers have more evidence to work with— bet­
ter knowledge of primate brains, new studies of
primate communication, more information on the
development of linguistic competence in children,
more human fossils that can be used to tentatively
reconstruct what ancient brains and vocal tracts
were like, and a better understanding of early ho-
minine ways of life. They still cannot prove how
and when human language developed, but they
can speculate much less wildly than was once the
case.
Attempts to teach other primates to talk like
humans have not been successful. In one famous
experiment in communication that went on for 7
years, for example, the chimpanzee Viki learned
to voice only a few words, such as up, m am a, and
papa. This inability to speak is not the result of
any obvious sensory or perceptual deficit, and apes
can in fact produce many of the sounds used in
speech. Evidently, their failure to speak has to do
with either a lack of motor control mechanisms to
articulate speech or the virtually complete preoc­
cupation of their vocal apparatus for expressing
emotional states.
Better results have been achieved through non­
vocal methods. Chimpanzees and gorillas in the
wild make a variety of vocalizations, but these are

Owing to our common ancestry, some of the gestures humans use are shared with other
primates.
often emotional, rather than propositional. In this
sense, they are equivalent to human paralanguage.
Much of their communication occurs by kinesics
— specific gestures and postures. Indeed, some of
these, such as grimacing, kissing, and embracing,
are in virtually universal use today among humans
as well as apes. Recognizing the importance of ges­
tural communication to apes, psychologists Allen
and Beatrice Gardner began teaching the Ameri­
can Sign Language, used by the deaf, to their
young chimpanzee Washoe, the first of several who
have since learned to sign. (See the Original Study
in Chapter 3.) With vocabularies of more than 400
signs, chimps have shown they can transfer each
sign from its original referent to other appropri­
ate objects and even pictures of objects. Their vo­
cabularies include verbs, adjectives, and words
such as sorry and p lease. Furthermore, they can
string signs together properly to produce original
sentences, even inflecting their signs to indicate
person, place, and instrument. More impressive
still, Washoe has been observed spontaneously
teaching her adopted offspring Loulis how to sign
by deliberately manipulating his hand. For 5 years,
humans refrained from signing when in sight of
Language and C o m m u n icatio n CHAPTER 4 119
Loulis, while he learned no fewer than 50 signs.
Today, Loulis and Washoe live with three other
signing chimpanzees, all of whom have shown via
remote videotaping they use signs to communicate
among themselves when no humans are present.
Other chimpanzees have been taught to com­
municate by other means. One named Sarah
learned to converse using pictographs— designs
such as squares and triangles— on brightly colored
plastic chips. Each pictograph stands for a noun
or a verb. Sarah also can produce new sentences
of her own. Another chimpanzee, Lana, learned to
converse via a computer with a keyboard some­
what like that of a typewriter, but with symbols
rather than letters. One of the most adept with
this system is a bonobo named Kanzi who, rather
than being taught by a human, learned it as an in­
fant from its mother and soon went on to surpass
her abilities.
Chimps have not been the only subjects of ape
language experiments. Gorillas and orangutans
also have been taught American Sign Language
with results that replicate those obtained with
chimps. As a consequence, there is now a grow­
ing consensus that all of the great apes can
120 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive
develop language skills at least to the level of a 2-
to 3-year-old human.8 Not only are comprehen­
sion skills similar, but so is acquisition order: What
and where, what-to-do and who, as well as how
questions are acquired in that order by both apes
and humans. Like humans, apes are capable of re­
ferring to events removed in time and space, a phe­
nomenon known as displacement and one of the
distinctive features of human language.
In view of apes’ demonstrated abilities in sign
language, it is not surprising that a number of an­
thropologists, psychologists, and other linguists
have shown new interest in an old hypothesis, that
human language began as a gestural, rather than
vocal, system. Certainly, the potential to commu­
nicate through gestures must have been as well de­
veloped among the earliest hominines as it is
among today’s apes, since they share it as a con­
sequence of a common ancestry that predates the
divergence of human evolution. Moreover, the
bipedalism of our earliest ancestors would have
enabled them to use their hands more freely to ges­
ture. Now, human manual signing and gesturing
are skilled activities with hand preference playing
a major role, and evidence for the pronounced
“handedness” found only among humans is pro­
vided by the external configuration of the H o m o
habilis brain, as well as by the stone tools this ho-
minine made. Furthermore, among modern chil­
dren learning American Sign Language, hand pref­
erence appears in signing b e fo r e it does in object
manipulation. Thus, not only is it likely that
H o m o h abilis used gestures to communicate, but
this may have played a role in the development of
the manual dexterity involved in early stone tool­
making.
One of the most difficult problems for stu­
dents dealing with the origin of language is the
origin of syntax, which was necessary to enable
our ancestors to articulate and communicate com­
plex thought. Here, a look at the physical nature
of gestures is helpful, for, in fact, they can be con­
8Miles, H. L. W. (1993). Language and the orang-utan: The
old ‘person’ of the forest. In P. Cavalieri & P. Singer (Eds.),
The G reat A pe P roject (p. 46). New York: St. Martin’s Press,
Displacement. The ability to refer to objects and events removed in time and space.
strued not just as words but also as sentences. This
is illustrated with the modern gesture meaning
seize: The hand begins fully open or slightly bent,
the elbow is slightly flexed, and the upper arm ro­
tates at the shoulder to bring the forearm and hand
across the body until the moving hand closes
around the upright forefinger of the other hand.
This is not just the word seize but also a complete
transitive sentence with a verb and a direct object
or, in semantic terms, an agent, an action, and a
patient.9 In this case, the sign and what is signi­
fied are clearly related, suggesting that syntax
could have its origin in signs that mimic what they
stand for.
Another conceptual problem involves the shift
from manual gestures to spoken language. Two
facts to keep in mind here are that (a) the manual
signs of a sign language are typically accompanied
by facial gestures, and (b) just as a sign is the out­
come of a particular motor act, so is speech the
outcome of a series of motor acts, in this case con­
centrated in the mouth and throat. In other words,
all language, signed or spoken, can be analyzed
as gesture. Furthermore, research on hearing-
impaired users of American Sign Language sug­
gests that the brain areas critical for speech may
be critical to signing as well. Thus, continuity ex­
ists between gestural and spoken language, and the
latter could have emerged from the former through
increasing emphasis on finely controlled move­
ments of the mouth and throat. This scenario is
consistent with the appearance of neurological
structures underlying language in the earliest rep­
resentatives of the genus H o m o and the steady en­
largement of the human brain b efo re the vocal
tract alteration that allows us to speak the way
we do.
The advantage of spoken over gestural lan­
guage to a species increasingly dependent on tool
use for survival is obvious. To talk with their
hands, people must stop whatever else they are do­
ing with them; speech does not interfere with that.
9Armstrong, D. F., Stokoe, W. C., & Wilcox, S. E. (1994).
Signs of the origin of syntax. Current Anthropology, 35,
355.

Other benefits include ability to talk in the dark,
past opaque objects, or among speakers whose at­
tention is diverted. Just when the changeover to
spoken language occurred is not known, though
all would agree that spoken languages are at least
as old as anatomically modern H o m o sapiens.
W hat’s more, no anatomical evidence exists to
support arguments that Neanderthals and other
representatives of archaic H. sapiens were inca­
pable of speech. Perhaps its emergence began with
H om o erectus, the first hominine to live in regions
with cold climates. The ability to plan ahead for
changes in seasonal conditions was crucial for sur­
vival and would not have been possible without a
grammatically structured language, either gestural
or vocal. We do know that having the use of fire,
H. erectus would not have had to cease all activ­
ity when darkness fell. We also know that the vo­
cal tract and brain of H. erectus were intermedi­
ate between that of H. sapiens and earlier
A ustralopithecus. It may be that the changeover
from gestural to spoken language was a driving
force in these evolutionary changes.
The once popular search for a truly primitive
language spoken by a living people that might
show the processes of language just beginning or
developing now has been abandoned. The reason
is that no such thing as a primitive language ex­
ists in the world today, or even in the recent past.
So far, all human languages that have been de­
scribed and studied, even among people with
something approximating a Stone Age technology,
C H A P T S R
Anthropologists need to understand the workings
of language, because it is language that enables
people in every society to share their experiences,
concerns, and beliefs, in the past and in the pre­
sent, and communicate these to the next genera­
tion. Language makes communication of infinite
meanings possible by employing a few sounds
or gestures that, when combined according to cer­
tain rules, result in meanings intelligible to all
speakers.
Linguistics is the modern scientific study of all
aspects of language. Phonetics focuses on the pro­
duction, transmission, and reception of speech
Language and Communication CHAPTER 4 121
are highly developed, complex, and capable of ex­
pressing infinite meanings. The truth is, people
have been talking in this world for an extremely
long time, and every known language, wherever it
is, now has a long history and has developed sub­
tleties and complexities that do not permit any la­
bel of “primitivism.” W hat a language may or may
not express is not a measure of its age but of its
speakers’ way of life, reflecting what they want or
need to share and communicate with others.
Far from being “simple” or “primitive,” the languages
of non-literate people are often the opposite. For ex­
ample, in World War II, the complexity of Navajo
was such that, when used for a code by U.S. Marines
in the Pacific, it defied all attempts by the Japanese to
decipher it.
SüMMARY
sounds, or phonemes. Phonology studies the sound
patterns of language to extract the rules that gov­
ern the way sounds are combined. Morphology is
concerned with the smallest units of meaningful
combinations of sounds— morphemes— in a lan­
guage. Syntax refers to the principles phrases and
sentences are built with. The entire formal struc­
ture of a language, consisting of all observations
about its morphemes and syntax, constitutes its
grammar.
Human language is embedded in a gesture-call
system inherited from our primate ancestors that
serves to “key” speech, providing the appropriate
122 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

frame for interpreting linguistic form. The gestural
component of this system consists of body motions
used to convey messages; the system of notating and
recording these motions is known as kinesics. The
call component is represented by paralanguage,
consisting of extralinguistic noises involving vari­
ous voice qualities and vocalizations.
Descriptive linguistics registers and explains the
features of a language at a particular time in its his­
tory. Historical linguistics investigates relationships
between earlier and later forms of the same lan­
guage. A major concern of historical linguists is to
identify the forces behind the changes that have oc­
curred in languages in the course of linguistic di­
vergence. Historical linguistics also provides a
means of roughly dating certain human migrations,
invasions, and contacts with other people.
Ethnolinguistics deals with language as it re­
lates to society, the rest of culture, and human be­
havior. Some linguists, following Benjamin Lee
Whorf, have proposed that language shapes the way
people think and behave. Others have argued that
language reflects reality. Although linguists find lan­
guage flexible and adaptable, they have found that
once a terminology is established, it tends to per­
petuate itself and to reflect much about the speak­
ers’ beliefs and social relationships. Kinship terms,
for example, help reveal how a family is structured,
what relationships are considered close or distant,
and what attitudes are held toward relationships.
Similarly, gender language reveals how the men and
women in a society relate to one another.
A social dialect is the language of a group of
people within a larger group, all of whom may
speak more or less the same language. Sociolin­
guists are concerned with whether dialect differ­
ences reflect cultural differences. They also study
code switching— the process of changing from one
level of language to another as the situation de­
mands— for much the same reason.
One theory of language origins is that early
hominines, by developing potentials exhibited also
by apes and monkeys, with their hands freed by
their bipedalism, began using gestures as a tool to
communicate and implement intentions within a
social setting. With the movement of H o m o erec-
tus out of the tropics, the need to plan for future
needs in order to survive seasons of cold temper­
atures required grammar and syntax to commu­
nicate information about events removed in time
and space. By the time archaic H o m o sapiens ap­
peared, emphasis on finely controlled movements
of the mouth and throat had probably given rise
to spoken language.
For some time linguists searched for a truly
primitive language spoken by some living group
that would reveal language in its very early state.
This search has been abandoned. All languages
that have been studied, including those of people
with supposedly “primitive” cultures, are com­
plex, highly developed, and able to express a wide
range of experiences. What a language is capable
of expressing is anything its speakers wish to talk
about and has nothing to do with its age.

Points for C onsideration

1. Music and the visual arts often are spoken of as if they have their own “language.” Is this a lan­
guage in the same sense as spoken or written language? Would your interpretation change if you
distinguished between improvised music (such as some jazz) and written and rehearsed music
(such as classical or pop music)? between highly formal, professional painting and a child’s scrib-
blings? W hat do music and the visual arts communicate to an audience?
2. How does your vocabulary reflect your interests? your opinions? the groups and culture you be­
long to? How does your language change in the classroom? when you are shopping or are with
your family? Is your vocabulary larger or smaller than 5 years ago? 15 years ago?
3. Do you know of any new languages? If so, how did they originate? What is new about them—
vocabulary? grammar? syntax? How might they differ from an “older” language such as English?
Can languages die? Are Latin and Sanskrit dead?
4. Consider native Spanish or Chinese speakers. W hat is the difference between language and cul­
ture? How can language and culture be confused?

Suggested
Birdwhistell, R. L. (1970). K inesics an d con text:
Essays in b o d y m otion com m unication .
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kinesics was first delineated as an area for an­
thropological research by Birdwhistell, so this
book is particularly appropriate for those who
wish to know more about the phenomenon.
Crane, L. B., Yeager, E. & Whitman, R. L. (1981).
An introduction to linguistics. Boston: Little,
Brown.
This book gives balanced coverage to all sub­
fields of linguistics, including topics tradition­
ally ignored in textbooks.
Eastman, C. M. (1990). A spects o f language an d
culture (2nd ed.). Novato, CA: Chandler and
Sharp.
The bulk of this book is devoted to the subjects
of worldview, ethnography of communication,
nonverbal behavior, animal communication,
discourse pragmatics, conversational analysis,
semiotics, and ethnicity. A single chapter deals
with linguistics as a field tool.
Gardner, R A., Gardner, B. T., & Van Cantfort,
T. E. (Eds.). (1989). Teaching sign language to
chim panzees. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
In 10 jargon-free chapters, easily accessible to
the interested layperson as well as profession­
als, the methods and results of the Gardners
L anguage and Communication CHAPTER 4 123
Readings
and their students are laid out in great detail.
Psychologists and anthropologists who re­
viewed the book agree it represents a mile­
stone in ape language research and, as one put
it, should be read by all interested in the evo­
lution of human behavior.
Hickerson, N. P. (1980). Linguistic an thropology.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
A description and explanation of what an­
thropological linguistics is all about, written
so beginning students understand it.
Ruhlen, M . (1994). T he origin o f language: Trac­
ing the evolu tion o f the m oth er tongue. New
York: John Wiley and Sons.
Scholarly in substance but written for a
popular audience, this book makes a good in­
troduction to comparative linguistics for be­
ginning anthropology students. With an evo­
lutionary theme, it cuts through the difficult
problems of our linguistic ancestors with plau­
sible though still controversial results.
Trager, G. L. (1964). Paralanguage: A first ap­
proximation. In D. Hymes (Ed.), L anguage in
culture an d society (pp. 2 7 4 -2 7 9 ). New York:
Harper & Row.
The author was the pioneer in paralinguistic
research, and in this article he discusses what
paralanguage is, why it should be studied, and
how.
 CllApfer ?K V \tw
1. What Is Enculturation?
Enculturation is the process by which culture is passed from one generation to the next. It be­
gins soon after birth, as self-awareness— the ability to perceive oneself as an object in tim e and
space and to judge one’s actions— starts to develop. For self-awareness to function, the indi­
vidual must be provided w ith a behavioral environment. First, one learns about a w orld o f ob­
jects other than the self, and these always are perceived in term s the culture he o r she grows
up in specifies. Along w ith this, one is provided w ith spatial, tem poral and normative orienta­
tions,

2. What Is the Effect of Enculturation on Adult Personality?

Studies have shown some kind o f nonrandom relationship between enculturation and person­
ality development, although it is also clear th a t each individual begins w ith certain genetically in­
herited broad potentials and lim itations. In some cultures specific child-rearing practices
seem to prom ote the development o f com pliant personalities, while in others different prac­
tices seem to prom ote more independent, self-reliant personalities.

3. Ire Different Personalities Characteristic of Different

Cultures? :■

Although cultures vary a great deal in term s o f the personality tra its tha t are looked upon w ith
admiration o r disapproval, it is difficult to characterize cultures in term s o f particular personal­
ities. O f the several attempts made, the modal personality concept is the m ost satisfactory.This
recognizes that any human society has a range o f individual personalities but some w ill be more
“ typical” than others.

4. Do Cultures Differ in What They Regard as Abnormal

Personalities?
A normal personality may be thought o f as one th a t approximates the modal personality o f a
particular culture. Since modal personalities may differ from one culture to another and since
cultures may differ in the range o f variation they w ill accept, it is clear abnormal personality is
a relative concept. A particular personality regarded as abnormal in one culture may not be re­
garded as so in another.

125
126 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children,
n 1690 John Locke presented his tabu la rasa
I theory in his book An Essay C oncerning H u­
m an Understanding. This notion held that the
newborn human was like a blank slate, and what
the individual became in life was written on the
slate by his or her life experiences. The implica­
tion is that all individuals are biologically identi­
cal at birth in their potential for personality de­
velopment and that their adult personalities are
exclusively the products of their postnatal experi­
ences, which differs from culture to culture. Stated
in these terms, the theory is not acceptable, for we
know now that each person is born with unique
inherited tendencies that will help determine his
or her adult personality. It is also known, how­
ever, that genetic inheritance sets certain broad po­
tentials and limitations and that life experiences,
particularly in the early years, are also important
in the shaping of individual personalities. Since dif­
ferent cultures handle the raising and education of
children in varied ways, these practices and their
effects on personalities are important subjects of
anthropological inquiry. Such studies gave rise to
the subfield of psychological anthropology and are
the subjects of this chapter.
A $ A A Jb ife A. A A +* t <, i 4 ¡iik Mk
THE SELF AND THE
BEHAVIORAL ENVIRONMENT
Since culture is created and learned rather than bi­
ologically inherited, ail societies must somehow
ensure that their culture is adequately transmitted
from one generation to the next. This transmis­
sion process is known as enculturation, and it be­
gins soon after birth. The first agents of encultur­
ation in all societies are the members of the
household a person is born into. At first, the most
important member of this household is the new­
born’s mother, but other household members soon
play roles in the process. Just who these others are
depends on how households are structured in the
particular society (Chapter 9). In the United States,
E n cu ltu ra tio n . The process by which a society’s culture is transmitted from one generation to the next. > Self-aw are­
ness. The ability to identify oneself as an object, to react to oneself, and to appraise oneself.
and Staying Alive
they ideally include the father or stepfather and
the child’s siblings. In other societies the father
may seldom have contact with his children in their
early years; indeed, in some societies men do not
even live with the mothers of their children. In
such instances, brothers of the child’s mother usu­
ally have important responsibilities toward their
nieces and nephews. In many societies, grandpar­
ents, other wives of the father, brothers of the fa­
ther or sisters of the mother, not to mention their
children, also are likely key players in the encul­
turation process.
As the young person matures, individuals out­
side the household are brought into the process.
These usually include other kin, and certainly the
individual’s peers. The latter may be included in­
formally in the form of play groups or formally in
age associations, in which children actually teach
other children. In some societies, and that of the
United States is a good example, professionals are
brought into the enculturation process to provide
formal instruction. In many societies, however,
children are pretty much allowed to learn through
observation and participation at their own speed.
T he S elf
Enculturation begins with the development of self-
awareness— the ability to identify oneself as an ob­
ject, to react to oneself, and to appraise or evalu­
ate oneself. People do not have this ability at birth,
even though it is essential for existence in human
societies. Self-awareness permits individuals to as­
sume responsibility for their conduct, to learn how
to react to others, and to assume a variety of roles.
An important aspect of self-awareness is the at­
tachment of positive value to the self. Without this,
individuals cannot be motivated to act to their ad­
vantage rather than disadvantage; self-identifica­
tion alone is not sufficient.
Self-awareness does not come all at once. In
modern North American society, for example, self
and nonself are not clearly distinguished until
about 2 years of age. This development of self-

A chimpanzee mother with her offspring. The basic primate child-rearing unit consists of a mother and
her offspring; to this humans have added an adult male. In some societies, this is the mother’s husband;
in others, it is her brother.
awareness in North American children, however,
may lag somewhat behind other cultures. Self-
awareness develops in concert with neuromotor
development, which is known to proceed at a
slower rate in infants from North America than in
infants in many, perhaps even most, non-Western
societies. The reasons for this slower rate are not
yet clear, although the amount of human contact
and stimulation infants receive seems to play an
important role. In the United States, for example,
infants generally do not sleep with their parents,
most often being put in rooms of their own. This
deprives them of a steady stream of stimuli, in­
cluding touch, smell, movement, and warmth, they
would receive by cosleeping. It also deprives them
of the opportunity for frequent nursing through
the night.
In traditional societies, infants routinely sleep
with their parents, or at least their mothers. W hat’s
more (again unlike practices in the United States),
G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 127
they are carried or held most other times, usually
in an upright position. The mother usually re­
sponds to a cry or “fuss” literally within seconds,
usually offering the infant her breast. Thus, among
traditional Ju/’hoansi (of whom more in a mo­
ment) of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert, infants
are nursed about four times an hour, for 1 or 2
minutes at a time. Overall, a 15-week-old
Ju/’hoansi infant is in close contact with its mother
about 70% of the time, compared to 2 0 % for
home-reared infants in the United States. M ore­
over, their contacts are not usually limited to their
mothers; they include numerous other adults and
children of virtually all ages. In the United States
and Canada, day-care centers now approximate
these same conditions. The catch here is that their
personnel must remain stable and (ideally) be re­
cruited from the same neighborhood as the child
if these centers are to have a positive effect on the
cognitive and social development of the very
128 part n C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

young children enrolled in them. Unfortunately,

these conditions all too often are not met.
From the above it is obvious that infants
in traditional societies are far more constantly
exposed to a variety of stimuli than they are in
North American (and most other industrialized)
societies. This is important, for recent studies show
that stimulation plays a key role in the “hard
wiring” of the brain; stimulation is necessary for
development of the neural circuitry. Nor should
the role of frequent nursing be overlooked, as stud­
ies show that the longer a child is breast-fed, the
higher it will score on cognitive tests and the lower
its risk of attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder.
Furthermore, breast-fed children have fewer aller­
gies, fewer ear infections, less diarrhea, and are at
less risk of sudden infant death syndrome.1
As a child develops self-awareness, perception
— a kind of vague awareness of one’s existence—
precedes conception , or more specific knowledge
of the interrelated needs, attitudes, concerns, and
In traditional societies around the world, infants are
never left by themselves and so receive constant stimu­
lation, an important element in their development. In
the United States, by contrast, infants spend a great derringer, K. A. (1997, October). When to wean. Natural
deal of time in isolation, without such stimulation. History, 49.
 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 129

interests that define what one is. This involves a
cultural definition of self, and in this definition
language plays a crucial role. This is why in all
cultures individuals become competent at using
personal and possessive pronouns at an early age.
Personal names, too, are important devices for
self-identification in all cultures. Then, as infancy
gives way to early childhood, the “I ” or “me” is
increasingly separated from the environment.
T he B eha vi ora l E n v i r o n m e n t
For self-awareness to emerge and function, basic
orientations are necessary to structure the psy-
chological field the self is prepared to act in. Thus,
each individual must learn about a world of ob­
jects other than the self. The basis of this world
of other-than-self is what we would think of as the
physical environment of things. The physical en­
vironment, though, is organized culturally and me­
diated symbolically through language. Putting this
another way, we might say the world around us
is perceived through cultural glasses. Culturally
significant attributes of the environment are sin­
gled out for attention and labeled; those that are
not significant may be ignored or lumped together
in broad categories. Culture, however, also ex ­
plains the perceived environment. This is impor-

The Ituri forest, in the geographical heart of Africa, is viewed in two very different ways by the people who live
there. Mbuti foragers view it with affection; like a benevolent parent, it provides them with all they ask for: sus­
tenance, protection, and security. Village-dwelling farmers, by contrast, view the forest with a mixture of fear,
hostility, and mistrust— something they must constantly struggle to control.
130 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

is the norm ative orientation. Values, ideals, and

standards, which are purely cultural in origin, are
as much a part of an individual’s behavioral envi­
ronment as are trees, rivers, and mountains. With­
out them people would have nothing to judge their
actions or those of others against. In short, the
self-appraisal aspect of self-awareness could not
be made functional.
Like any aspect of culture, conceptions of the
self vary considerably from one society to another.
The Penobscot Indians, a people who at one time
relied on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of
wild plants (food foraging) for subsistence, and
whose descendants still live today in the wood­
lands of northeastern North America, serve as an
example.2

tant, for it provides the individual an orderly,

rather than chaotic, universe in which to act. Be­ The Penobscot
hind this lies a powerful psychological drive to re­
When first encountered by Europeans, the Penob­
duce uncertainty, the product of a universal
scot conceived of each individual as being made of
human need for a balanced and integrated per­
two parts— the body and a personal spirit. The lat­
spective on the relevant universe. When con­
ter was dependent on the body yet could have “out
fronted with ambiguity and uncertainty, people in­
of body” experiences— that is, disengaging itself
variably strive to clarify and give structure to the
from the body and travel about for short periods to
situation; they do this, of course, in ways their par­
perform overt acts and to interact with other spir­
ticular culture tells them are appropriate. Indeed,
its. Such activity by one’s personal spirit was thought
the greater the lack of structure and certainty, the
to occur in dreams or in states of trance. As long as
greater individual suggestibility and persuadabil-
one’s spirit returned to the body before the passage
ity tend to be. Thus, we should not be surprised
of too much time, the individual remained in good
to find that explanations of the universe are never
health; if, however, the spirit was prevented from re­
entirely objective in nature.
turning to the body, then the individual sickened and
The behavioral environment the self acts in in­
died. Along with this dual nature of the self went a
volves more than o b je c t orien tation . Action re­
potential for every person to work magic. Theoret­
quires spatial orien tation , or the ability to get from
ically, it was possible to send one’s personal spirit
one object, or place, to another. In all societies,
out to work mischief on others, just as it was pos­
names and significant features of places are im­
sible for others to lure one’s own spirit away from
portant means of discriminating and representing
the body, resulting in sickness and eventual death.
points of reference for spatial orientation. Indi­
To many people today, the traditional Penob­
viduals must know where they have been and will
scot concept of self may seem strange. The British
be to get from one place to another. They also need
colonists of New England regarded such ideas as
to maintain a sense of self-continuity so that past
false and shot through with superstition, even
actions are connected with those in the present and
though their own concept of self at the time was
future. Hence, temporal orientation is also part of
the behavioral environment. Just as the perceived
environment is organized in cultural terms, so too
are time and space. 2Speck, F. G. (1920). Penobscot shamanism. M emoirs o f the
A final aspect of the behavioral environment American A nthropological Association, 6, 2 3 9 -2 8 8 .

every bit as supernaturalistic. To the Indians their
concept made sense, for it adequately accounted
for their experience, regardless of its rightness or
wrongness in any objective sense. Furthermore, the
Penobscot view of self is relevant for anyone who
wishes to understand Penobscot behavior in the
days when the British and French first tried to set­
tle in North America. For one thing, it was re­
sponsible for an undercurrent of suspicion and dis­
trust of strangers, as well as for the individual
secretiveness that characterized Penobscot society
at the time. This propensity for individual secre­
tiveness made it difficult for a potentially malev­
olent stranger to gain control of an individual’s
spirit. Also, the belief that dreams are real expe­
riences, rather than expressions of unconscious de­
sires, could impose burdens of guilt and anxiety
on individuals who dreamed of doing things not
accepted as proper. Finally, individuals indulged in
acts that would strike many people today as quite
mad. In one case a Penobscot Indian spent the
night literally fighting for his life with a fallen tree.
To the Indian, this was a metamorphosed magi­
cian who was out to get him, and it would have
been madness n ot to try to overcome his adver­
sary.
The behavioral environment the Penobscot
self operated in consisted of a flat world, which
these people believed was surrounded by saltwa­
ter. They could actually see the latter downstream,
where the Penobscot River met the sea. The river
was the spatial reference point and also was the
main artery for canoe travel in the region. The
largest of a number of watercourses, it flowed
through forests abounding with game. Like hu­
mans, each animal also was composed of a body
and a spirit. Along with the animals were various
quasi-human supernatural beings that inhabited
bodies of water and mountains or roamed freely
through the forest. One of these, G lu skabe, cre­
ated the all-important Penobscot River by deceiv­
ing a greedy giant frog that had monopolized the
world’s water supply. Gluskabe also was respon­
Patterns of affect. How people feel about themselves and others.
G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 131
sible for a number of other natural features of the
world, often as a by-product of punishment for
moral-code transgressions such as that of the gi­
ant frog. Indeed, individuals had to be concerned
about their behavior vis-à-vis both the animals and
these quasi-human beings or they, too, would
come to various kinds of grief. Hence, these su­
pernaturals not only explained many otherwise
unexplainable natural phenomena to the Penob­
scot but also were important for structuring the
Penobscot moral order. To the Penobscot, all of
this was quite believable; the lone hunter, for ex­
ample, off for extended periods in the forest,
could hear in the night what sounded like the
cry of P skedem us, the swamp woman. And a
Penobscot accepted as fact that his or her spirit
routinely traveled about while the body slept,
interacting with various of these supernatural
beings.
Penobscot concepts of the self and behavioral
environment have changed considerably since the
17th century, though no less so than those of the
descendants of the Europeans who first came to
New England. Both groups now may be said to
hold more modern beliefs about the nature of their
selves and the world they live in. Still, in both
cases, aspects o f the old beliefs remain. Associated
with them were patterns of affect— how people
fe e l about themselves and others— which differed
considerably in Indian and European cultures. As
Chinese-born anthropologist Francis Hsu has
pointed out, patterns of affect are likely to persist
over thousands of years, even in the face of far-
reaching changes in all other cultural aspects.3 To
illustrate, consider the following Original Study,
written by Rhonda Kay Williamson while an un­
dergraduate student of philosophy at Bryn Mawr
College.
3H s u , F. L. K. (1977). Role, affect, and anthropology. Am eri­
can Anthropologist, 79, 807.
132 PART II C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

One morning not so long ago, a child was born.This birth, however was no
occasion for the customary celebration. Something was wrong: something
very grave, very serious, very sinister This child was born between sexes,
an "intersexed" child. From the day o f its birth, this child would be caught in
a series o f struggles involving virtually every aspect o f its life.Things that re­
The Blessed quired little thought under “ordinary” circumstances were, in this instance,
extraordinarily difficult. Simple questions now had an air o f complexity: “W hat
Curse4 is it, a girl or a boy?” ; “W hat do we name it?” ; “ How shall we raise it?” ; “W ho
(or what) is to blame for this?"

A Foot in Both Worlds The child referred to in the introductory paragraph is myself. As I was
born the great-granddaughter o f a Cherokee woman, I was exposed to the
Native American view o f people who were born intersexed, as I was, and
individuals who exhibited transgendered characteristics.This view, unlike the
Euro-American one, sees such individuals in a very positive and affirming light.
Yet my immediate family (mother; father; and brothers) were firmly fixed
in the Christian Euro-American point o f view. As a result, from a very early
age I was presented with tw o different and conflicting views o f myself. As
might be expected, this resulted in a lot o f confusion within me about what
I was, how I came to be born the way I was, and what my intersexuality
meant in terms o f my spirituality as well as my place in society.
I remember; even as a small child, getting mixed messages about my own
value and w orth as a human being. My grandmother; in keeping with Native
American ways, would tell me stories about my birth. She would tell me
how she knew when I was born that I had a special place in life, given to
me by God, the Great Spirit, and that I had been given “ a great strength that
girls never have, yet a gentle tenderness that boys never know” and that I
was “to o pretty and beautiful to be a boy only and to o strong to be a girl
only.” She rejoiced at this “ special gift” and taught me that it meant that the
Great Spirit had “ something important for me to do in this life." I remem­
ber how good I felt inside when she told me these things and how I soberly
contemplated, even at the young age o f five, that I must be diligent and try
to learn and carry out the purpose designed just for me by the Great Spirit.
My parents, however; had a completely different view o f my birth, o f me
as a human being, and o f the origin o f my intersexuality. My parents were
so repulsed by it that they would never speak o f it directly.They would just
refer to it as “the w ork o f Satan.” To them, I was not at all blessed with a
“ special gift” from some “ Great Spirit,” but was “ cursed and given over to
the Devil” by God. I was treated with contempt by my father; and my mother
wavered between contempt and distant indifference. I was taken from one
charismatic church to another in order to have the “ demon o f mixed sex”
cast out o f me. A t some o f these “ deliverance” services I was even given a
napkin to cough out the demon into!

4Adapted from Williamson, R. K. (1995). The blessed curse: Spirituality and sexual
difference as viewed by Euro-American and Native American cultures. The College
News, 17 (4).
 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 133

In the end, no demon ever popped out o f me. Still, I grew up believing
that there was something Inherent within me that caused God to hate me,
that my intersexuality was a punishment for this something, a mark o f con­
demnation.
There were periods in my life when I stayed at my grandmother’s house
for extensive amounts o f time. During these stays, my fears would be allayed,
for she would once again remind me that I was fortunate to have been given
this special gift. She was distraught that my parents were treating me cruelly
and pleaded with them to let me live with her; but they would not let me
stay at her home permanently.
Nevertheless, they did let me spend a significant portion o f my child­
hood with her Had it not been for that, I might not have been able to sur­
vive the tremendous trials that awaited me in my walk through life.

Blessed Gift: The Native It is now known that most, if not all, o f the Native American societies
American View had certain individuals which fell between the categories o f “ man” and
“woman.“ The various nations had different names for this type o f individ­
ual, but a term broadly used and recognized is “ berdache,” a term o f French
origin that designated a male, passive homosexual. [ The preferred term to ­
day is “two-spirit.”]
Some o f these individuals were born physically intersexed. Others appeared
to be anatomically normal males, who exhibited the character and the man­
ners o f women, and vice versa.The way native people treated such individuals
reveals some interesting insights into the Native American belief system.

The Spirit The extent to which Native Americans see spirituality is reflected in
their belief that all things have a spirit: “ Every object— plants, rocks, water;
air the moon, animals, humans, the earth itself— has a spirit.The spirit o f one
thing (Including a human) Is not superior to the spirit o f any other . . . The
function o f religion Is not to try to condemn or to change what exists, but
to accept the realities o f the w orld and to appreciate their contributions to
life. Everything that exists has a purpose.”
This paradigm is the core o f Native American thought and action. Be­
cause everything has a spirit, and no spirit is superior to that o f another
there is no “ above” or "below,” no "superior” or “ inferior” no “ dominant"
and “ subordinate.” These are only illusions which arise from unclear think­
ing. Thus, an intersexed child is not derided o r viewed as a “freak o f nature”
in traditional Native American culture. Intersexuality (as well as masculinity
In a female o r effeminacy in a male) Is seen as the manifestation o f the spirit
o f the child, so an Intersexed child is respected as much as a girl child or a
boy child.
It is the spirit o f the child which determines what the gender o f the
child will ultimately be. According to a Lakota, Lame Deer "the Great Spirit
made them winktes [two-spirit] and we accepted them as such.” In this sense,
the child has no control over what her or his gender will be. It follows that
where there is no choice, there can be no accountability on the part o f the
child. Indeed, the child who is given the spirit o f a wlnkte is unable to resist
becoming one.
“When an Omaha boy sees the Moon Being [Moon Being Is a femi­
nine Spirit] on his vision quest, the spirit holds in one hand a man’s bow and
134 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

Shown here is the famous Zuni Indian two-spirit

named We’wha, who once had the experience of
meeting President Grover Cleveland. For a man to
assume a feminine identity was not regarded as ab­
normal by the Zuni; in fact, such individuals were
regarded as special in that they bridged the gap be­
tween the purely feminine and purely masculine.
European-Americans, by contrast, regarded such
individuals with aversion.

arrow and in the other a woman’s pack strap. ‘When the youth tried to
grasp the bow and arrows the Moon Being crossed [the boy's] hands very
quickly, and if the youth was not very careful he seized the pack strap in­
stead o f the bow and arrows, thereby fixing his lot in later life. In such a case
he could not help acting [like a] woman, speaking, dressing, and working just
as . . . women . . .d o .” '

Sacred Role The Europeans were not only aghast, but amazed and dumbfounded as
to why two-spirits were considered sacred. In the Native American view, be­
cause two-spirits were considered to have received their intersex spirit from
the Great Spirit, and were different from the norm by the feminine/mascu-
line combination o f their nature, they were considered to be especially
blessed by the Great Spirit. To be a two-spirit was considered to be a spe­
cial gift from the Great Spirit.

The Curse: The Euro-
American View
In contrast to the view o f respect and admiration o f physical intersex-
uality and transgendered behavior held by Native Americans, the Europeans
who came to ‘‘Turtle Island” (the Cherokee name for N orth America)
brought with them their world view, which was shaped primarily by their Ju-
daeo-Christian beliefs. According to this religion, there had to be, by man­
date o f God, a complete dichotomy o f the sexes. The Christian religion was
also to be the basis by which Europeans claimed “divine right" to take from
Native Americans both their home and their culture.
W ill Roscoe, in The Zuni Man-Woman, reports (pp. 17 2 - 173): “ Spanish
oppression o f ‘homosexual' practices in the New W orld took brutal forms.
 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 135

In 1513, the explorer Balboa had some fo rty berdaches thrown to his dogs
[to be eaten alive]— ‘a fine action by an honorable and Catholic Spaniard,'
as one Spanish historian commented. In Peru, the Spaniards burned
‘sodomites,’ ‘and in this way they frightened them in such a manner that they
left this great sin.'”
It is abundantly clear that Christian Euro-Americans exerted every ef­
fo rt to destroy Native American culture: "In 1883, the U.S. Office o f Indian
Affairs issued a set o f regulations that came to be known as the Code o f
Religious Offenses” or Religious Crimes Code. . . . Indians who refused to
adopt the habits o f industry, or to engage in ‘civilized pursuits or employ­
ments' were subject to arrest and punishment. . . . By interfering with na­
tive sexuality [and culture], the agents o f assimilation effectively undermined
the social fabric o f entire tribes.” (Ibid, p. 176).

The Role of Education Any paradigm necessarily involves education. Here we have tw o para­
digms which are based on completely opposed ideologies.The Native Am er­
ican view holds that each thing or person has its own spirit that is not con­
demned nor to be changed, but is respected and even encouraged. This
paradigm has inherent in it an education wherein every part o f the universe,
every star; every tree, every creature, every grain o f sand is considered to
be sacred and holy.
Native Americans learned through stories told to the younger genera­
tion by the older generation. A t first the stories seemed to have different
themes when the telling o f them (the education) began for the child, but in
the end it became clear that the stories had an interdependence on one an­
other Over the years, a great Web o f Life was woven. Each story, o r strand
in the Web, connected to another to make a beautiful weaving o f the na­
ture o f all the world. No part o f the Web was more important or less im­
portant than any other part. In sex and gender roles, man, woman, intersex,
effeminate man and masculine woman were equally valid and necessary.
In contrast is the Christian, Euro-American paradigm within which there
is no flexibility.There is one God and one way, only, to worship the Christ­
ian God (at least in theory). One wise Iroquois leader, Red Jacket, pointed
out the fallacy o f this theory in a speech to the Boston Missionary Society.
In this speech he said: “ Brother! You say there is but one way to worship and
serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people
differ so much about it? W hy do you not all agree, as you can all read the
book?"
The problem Christianity poses for any culture other than its own is the
condemnation and destruction o f it. It seeks to impose the moral and social
ideology o f one culture onto all the other cultures o f the entire world. More­
over; the culture that it sets out to impose is an ancient one that was re­
ported by a handful o f men whose identity is not even known in many cases.
Yet, the words from these unknown men are presented as “the divinely in­
spired word o f God.” Christianity is purportedly the most widespread reli­
gion in the world. Is this a wonder; though, when nearly all who have been
opposed to its self-proclaimed manifest destiny (“ Every knee shall bow and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” — Revelation) have been all
but obliterated in its founder's name?
136 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

A Personal Resolution For me, the resolution to the dual message I was receiving was slow in
coming, largely due to the fear and self-hatred instilled in me by Christian­
ity. Eventually, though, the Spirit wins out. I came to adopt my Grandmother’s
teaching about my intersexuality. Through therapy, and a new, loving home
environment, I was able to shed the constant fear o f eternal punishment I
felt for something I had no control over After all, I did not create myself.
Because o f my own experience, and drawing on the teaching o f my
grandmother; I am now able to see myself as a wondrous creation o f the
Great Spirit— but not only me. All creation is wondrous. There is a pur­
pose for everyone in the gender spectrum. Each person’s spirit is unique in
her o r his or her-his own way. It is only by living true to the nature that was
bestowed upon us by the Great Spirit, in my view, that we are able to be
at peace with ourselves and be in harmony with our neighbor This, to me,
is the Great Meaning and the Great Purpose . . . to be at peace with our­
selves and to live in harmony with our neighbor

that h o w one learns is no less important. Along

PERSONALITY
In the process of enculturation, we have seen that
each individual is introduced to the concepts of
self and the behavioral environment characteristic
of his or her culture. The result is that a kind of
cognitive or mental map of the operating world is
built, in terms of which the individual will think
and act. It is each person’s “m ap” of how to run
the “maze” of life. This cognitive map is an inte­
grated, dynamic system of perceptual assemblages,
including the self and its behavioral environment.
When we speak of an individual’s personality, we
are generalizing about that individual’s cognitive
map over time. Hence, personalities are products
of enculturation, as experienced by individuals,
each with his or her distinctive genetic makeup.
“Personality” does not lend itself to a formal de­
finition, but for our purposes we may take it as
the distinctive way a person thinks, feels, and be­
haves.
T he D e v e l o p m e n t of P e r s onal i t y
Although w h at one learns is important to person­
ality development, most anthropologists assume
with the psychoanalytic theorists, anthropologists
view early childhood experiences as strongly in­
fluencing adult personality. Indeed, many anthro­
pologists have been seriously attracted to Freudian
psychoanalytic theory, but with a critical eye. Psy­
choanalytic literature tends to be long on concepts,
speculation, and clinical data but short on less cul­
ture-bound studies. Anthropologists, for their
part, are most interested in studies that seek to
prove, modify, or at least shed light on the role of
early childhood experiences in shaping personal­
ity. For example, the traditional ideal in Western
societies has been for men to be tough, aggressive,
assertive, dominant, self-reliant, and achievement
oriented, whereas women have been expected to
be passive, obedient, compliant, loyal, and caring.
To many, these perceived personality differences
between the sexes seem so “natural” that they
must be biologically grounded and therefore in­
escapable, unchangeable, and universal. But are
they? Have anthropologists identified any psy­
chological or personality characteristics that uni­
versally differentiate men and women?
As Margaret Mead’s pioneering studies sug­
gested, and subsequent cross-cultural studies have
confirmed, whatever biological differences may
exist between men and women, they are extremely

Personality. The distinctive way a person thinks, feels, and behaves.

 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 137

malleable. Among the Arapesh of New Guinea it

is not just the women but the men, too, who are
gentle and nonaggressive, while among the
Mundugamor (also of New Guinea), both sexes
are angry and aggressive. Although biological dif­
ferences in male-female behavior cannot be en­
tirely ruled out (although debate continues about
the role biology plays), it is nonetheless clear that
each culture has different expectations for male-
female behavior. The criteria of differentiation in
one may bear no relation to those in another and
may in fact be poles apart. From this we may con­
clude that the physical, political, and economic
dominance men have traditionally exerted over
women in Western societies is not inevitable and
that other arrangements are possible.
and planting gardens for their livelihood.6 Among
To understand the importance of child-rear­
those who forage for a living, dominance and ag­
ing practices in the development of gender-related
gressiveness are not tolerated in either sex, men
personality characteristics, we may look briefly at
are as mild mannered as the women, and women
how children grow up among the Ju/’hoansi (pro­
are as energetic and self-reliant as the men. In the
nounced zhutwasi), a people native to the Kala­
villages, by contrast, men and women exhibit per­
hari Desert of Namibia and Botswana. The
sonality characteristics approximating those tra­
Ju/’hoansi are one of a number of people tradi­
ditionally thought of as typically masculine and
tionally referred to as Bushmen who once were
feminine in Western societies. Among the food for­
widespread through much of southern Africa. In
agers, children of both sexes receive lengthy, in­
recent times, anthropologists have referred to these
tensive care from their mother, whose attention is
people as the San, thinking the word B ushm an in­
not diverted by the birth of new offspring until af­
sulting. Unfortunately, San, a Nama word, has
ter the passage of many years. This does not mean
highly pejorative associations. Moreover, anthro­
mothers are constantly with their children, for they
pologists misunderstood the derivation of the
are not; when they go off to gather wild plant
word Bushm an, which comes from the Dutch
foods in the bush, they do not always take their
Bossiesm an, meaning “bandit” or “outlaw.” This
offspring with them. At such times, the children
designation the people earned for their refusal to
are supervised by their fathers or other commu­
knuckle under to colonial domination, so to refer
nity adults, one third to one half of whom are al­
to them as Bushman honors their long and valiant,
ways found in camp on any given day. Because
if costly, record of resistance to colonialization.
these include men as well as women, children are
But most important, Bushman is the term they
as much habituated to the male as to the female
themselves prefer as a generic word covering all
presence.
groups.5
Fathers, too, spend much time with their off­
Traditionally food foragers, in the past 3
spring, interacting with them in nonauthoritarian
decades many Ju/’hoansi have adopted a more
ways. Although they may correct their children’s
sedentary lifestyle, tending small herds of goats
behavior, so may women who neither defer to male
authority nor use the threat of paternal anger.
5Gordon, R. J. (1992). The Bushman myth (p. 6). Boulder,
CO: Westview. Griffin, B. (1994). CHAGS 7. A nthropology
Newsletter, 35, (1), 13. Lewis-Williams, J. D., Dowson, T. ^Draper, P. (1975). !Kung women: Contrasts in sexual egali­
A., & Deacon, J. (1993). Rock art and changing perceptions tarianism in foraging and sedentary contexts. In R. Reiter
of Southern Africa’s past: Ezeljagdspoort reviewed. Antiquity, (Ed.), Tow ard an anthropology o f w om en (pp. 7 7 -109).
67, 273. New York: Monthly Review Press.
138 part n C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren,
In traditional Ju /’hoansi society, children are shown
great indulgence by adults of both sexes and do not
grow up to fear or respect one sex more than the
other.
Thus, among Ju/’hoansi foragers, no one grows up
to respect or fear male authority any more than
that of women. In fact, instead of being punished,
a child who misbehaves will be simply carried
away and interested in some other more inoffen­
sive activity. Nor are boys or girls assigned tasks
to do; both sexes do equally little work, instead
spending much of their time in play groups that
include members of both sexes of widely different
ages. Thus, Ju/’hoansi children have few experi­
ences that set one sex apart from another. Al­
though older ones do amuse and monitor younger
ones, this is done spontaneously rather than as an
assigned chore, and the burden does not fall any
more heavily on girls than boys.
and Staying Auvf.
Among the sedentary villagers, women spend
much of their time in and around the home prepar­
ing food and attending to other domestic chores,
as well as tending the children. The work of men,
by contrast, requires them to spend many hours
outside the household. As a result, children are less
habituated to their presence. This remoteness of
the men, coupled with their more extensive knowl­
edge of the outside world, tends to enhance their
influence within the household.
Within village households, sex role typing be­
gins early as girls, as soon as they are old enough,
are expected to attend to many of the needs of
their younger siblings, thereby allowing the
mother more time to attend to her other domes­
tic tasks. This not only shapes but also limits the
behavior of girls, who cannot range as widely or
explore as freely and independently as they could
without little brothers and sisters in tow. Indeed,
they must stay close to home and be more care­
ful, more obedient, and more sensitive to the
wishes of others than they otherwise might be.
Boys, by contrast, have little to do with the han­
dling of infants, and when they are assigned work,
it generally takes them away from the household.
Thus, the space girls occupy becomes restricted,
and they are trained in behaviors that promote
passivity and nurturance, whereas boys begin to
become the distant, controlling figures they will be
as adults.
From this comparison, we may begin to un­
derstand how a society’s economy helps structure
the way a child is brought up and how this, in
turn, influences the adult personality. It also shows
that alternatives to the way children are raised in
Western societies exist and that by changing the
conditions our children grow up in, we might
make it significantly easier for men and women to
interact on an equal basis than has been the case
so far. Thus, child rearing emerges as not only an
anthropological problem but a practical one as
well.
Dependence Training
Although Margaret Mead compared sex and tem­
perament in three different societies in the early
1930s, most cross-cultural studies of child rearing
 G rowing Up Human CHAPTER 5 139

M argaret Mead (1901-1978)

Although all of the nat­ faults, and C o m in g o f

ural and social sciences Age is no exception.
can look back and pay For one, it is not clear
homage to certain that Mead’s time in the
“founding fathers,” an­ field (9 months) was
thropologists take sufficient for her to un­
pride in the fact they derstand fully the nu­
have a number of ances of native speech
"founding mothers” and body language nec­
they pay homage to. essary to comprehend
O ne is Margaret Mead, the innermost feelings
who was encouraged of her informants. Fur­
by her teacher Franz thermore, her sample
Boas to pursue a career in anthropology when of Samoan adolescents was a mere 50, half of
most other academic disciplines rarely accepted whom had not yet passed puberty. That she exag­
women into their ranks. In 1925, she set out for gerated her findings is suggested by her dismissal
Samoa to test the theory (then widely accepted) of girls who did not fit her ideal as “deviant” and
that the biological changes of adolescence could by inconsistencies with data collated elsewhere in
not be accomplished without a great deal of stress, Polynesia. But despite its faults, Mead’s book stands
both social and psychological. In her book C o m in g as a landmark for several reasons: N o t only was it
o f A g e in S a m o a : A Psychological Stu d y o f Primitive a deliberate test of a W estern psychological hy­
Youth for W e ste rn Civilization, she concluded that pothesis, but it also showed psychologists the value
adolescence does not have to be a time of stress of modifying intelligence tests so that they are ap­
and strain but cultural conditions may make it so. propriate for the population under study. Further­
Published in 1928, this book is generally credited more, by emphasizing the lesson to be drawn for
as marking the beginning of the culture and per­ Mead’s own society, it laid the groundwork for the
sonality field. popularization of anthropology and advanced the
Pioneering works are never without their cause of applied anthropology.

effects on personality have been carried out more
recently by John and Beatrice Whiting and Irving
L. Child or their associates. Their work has
demonstrated a number of apparent regularities.
For example, it is possible to distinguish between
two different patterns of child rearing at a broad
level of generalization, which we may label for
convenience “dependence training” and “inde­
pendence training.”7
Dependence training promotes compliance
in the performance of assigned tasks and favors
7Wolf, E. (1966). Peasants (pp. 6 9 -7 0 ). Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Dependence training. Child-rearing practices that foster compliance in the performance of assigned tasks and depen­
dence on the domestic group, rather than reliance on oneself.
140 PART II Culture and S urvival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

T h e W hite M an ’s B a d M edicine, by American Indian artist Jerome Tiger (1941 —

1967). In the 1950s, in an effort to end its special relationship with the American In­
dians, the federal government terminated its establishment of, and aid to, some In­
dian reservations. This termination policy led many Indians to relocate to urban ar­
eas. Because they were a people whose definition of self springs from the group they
were born into, separation from family and kin led many to severe depression and
related problems.

keeping individuals within the group. This pattern
is typically associated with extended families,
which consist of several husband-wife-children
units within the same household and which are
most apt to be found in societies with an economy
based on subsistence farming. Such families are
important, for they provide the large labor force
necessary to till the soil, tend whatever flocks are
kept, and carry out other part-time economic pur­
suits considered necessary for existence. These
large families, however, have built into them cer­
tain potentially disruptive tensions. For example,
one of the adults typically makes the important
family decisions, which must be followed by all
other family members. In addition, the in-marry­
ing spouses— husbands and/or wives— must sub­
ordinate themselves to the group’s will, which may
not be easy for them.
Dependence training helps to keep these po­
tential problems under control and involves both
supportive and punitive aspects. On the support­
ive side, indulgence is shown to young children,
particularly in the form of prolonged oral gratifi­
cation. Nursing continues for several years and is
virtually on demand. This may be interpreted as
rewarding the child for seeking support within the
family, the main agent in meeting the child’s needs.
Also on the supportive side, children at a relatively
early age are assigned a number of child-care and
domestic tasks, all of which make significant and
obvious contributions to the family’s welfare.
Thus, family members all actively work to help
and support one another. On the punitive side, be­
havior the adults interpret as aggressive or sexual
is apt to be actively discouraged. Moreover, the
adults tend to be quite insistent on overall obedi­
ence, which is seen as rendering the individual sub­
ordinate to the group. This combination of en­
couragement and discouragement ideally produces
individuals who are obedient, supportive, non­
competitive, and generally responsible and who
will stay within the fold and not do anything po­
 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 141

tentially disruptive. Indeed, their very definition of to perform tasks for play, rather than as contri­
s e lf comes from their affiliation with a group, butions to the family’s welfare.
rather than from the mere fact of their individual Displays of aggression and sexuality are en­
existence. couraged or at least tolerated to a greater degree
than where dependence training is the rule. In
Independence Training schools, and even in the family, competition is em­
phasized. In the United States, we have gone to
By contrast, independence training emphasizes in­
dividual independence, self-reliance, and personal the extreme of turning the biological functions of
infancy— eating, sleeping, crying, and elimination
achievement. It is typically associated with soci­
— into contests between parents and offspring. In
eties whose nuclear families, consisting of a hus­
band, wife, and their offspring, are independent our schools, considerable resources are devoted to
rather than a part of a larger household group. In­ competitive sports, but competition is fostered
within the classroom as well: overtly, through de­
dependence training is particularly characteristic
vices such as spelling bees and competition for
of industrial societies such as that of the United
prizes, and covertly, through devices such as grad­
States, where self-reliance and personal achieve­
ing on a curve. The latter practice, widely used,
ment, especially for men, are important traits for
survival. especially for heavily enrolled courses, on some
college campuses, condemns some students to fail­
Again, this pattern of training involves both
ure, irrespective o f how well they actually do, if
encouragement and discouragement. On the neg­
most of the class does better. This puts students in
ative side, little emphasis is placed on prolonged
competition with one another, for they soon learn
oral gratification, and feeding is prompted more
that their chances for a decent grade depend, as
by schedule than demand. In the United States, for
much as anything, on other class members not do­
example, people like to establish a schedule as
ing well. If the stakes are high, students may de­
soon as possible, and it is not long before they
vote considerable effort to placing obstacles in the
start feeding infants baby food and even try to get
way of classmates so that they are prevented from
them to feed themselves. Many parents are de­
lighted if they can prop up their infants in the crib doing too well. Thus, by the time individuals have
grown up in U.S. society, regardless of what they
or playpen so that the infants can hold their own
may think about it, they have received a clear mes­
bottles. Moreover, as soon after birth as possible,
sage: Success comes at someone else’s expense. As
children are given their own private space away
anthropologist Colin Turnbull observed: “Even
from their parents. As already noted, infants do
the team spirit, so loudly touted” in school ath­
not receive the amount of attention they so often
letics (or out of school in Little League baseball
do in nonindustrialized societies. In the United
States a mother may be very affectionate with her and the like), “is merely a more efficient way,
through limited cooperation, to ‘beat’ a greater
15-week-old infant during the 2 0 % of the time she
number of people more efficiently.”8
is in contact with it, but for the other 80% of the
In sum, independence training generally en­
time the infant is more or less on its own. Collec­
courages individuals to seek help and attention,
tive responsibility is not encouraged in children;
rather than to give it, and to try to exert individ­
they are not given responsible tasks to perform un­
ual dominance. Such qualities are useful in soci­
til later in childhood, and these are generally few.
eties with social structures that emphasize personal
Furthermore, the contribution of the tasks to the
family’s welfare is often not immediately apparent
to the child, to whom the tasks appear arbitrary 8Turnbull, C. M. (1983). The human cycle (p. 74). New
as a result. Indeed, children often are encouraged York: Simon & Schuster.

Independence training. Child-rearing practices that prom ote the child's independence, self-reliance, and personal
achievement.
142 PART II C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren,
% Sometimes, however, inconsistencies develop,
* North America. As shown, independence training
In North American society, independence training pits
individuals against one another through games and
other forms of competition.
achievement and where individuals are expected
to look out for their own interests.
Combined Dependence/Independence
Training
In actuality, dependence and independence train­
ing represent extremes along a continuum, and ac­
tual situations may partake of elements of both.
In food-foraging societies, for example, child-rear­
ing practices combine elements of both. “Share
and share alike” is the order of the day, so com­
petitive behavior, which can interfere with the co­
operation all else depends on, is discouraged.
Thus, infants receive much positive, affectionate
attention from adults, along with prolonged oral
gratification. This, as well as low pressure for com­
pliance and a lack of emphasis on competition, en­
courages individuals to be more supportive of one
another than is often the case in modern indus­
trial societies. At the same time, personal achieve­
ment and independence are encouraged, for the in­
dividuals most capable of self-reliance are apt to
be the most successful in the food quest.
In the United States the argument sometimes
has been made (not by anthropologists) that “per­
missive” child rearing produces irresponsible
adults. Yet the practices of food foragers seem to
be about as “permissive” as they can get, and so­
cially responsible adults are produced. The fact is,
no particular system of child rearing is inherently
better or worse than any other; what matters is
whether the system is functional or dysfunctional
and Staying Ai.ivf.
in the context of a particular society. If compliant
adults, who are accepting of authority, are re­
quired, then independence training will not work
well in that society. Nor will dependence training
serve very well a society whose adults are expected
to be independent, self-reliant, and questioning au­
thority.
and here we may look again at the situation in
generally tends to be stressed in the United States,
where people often speak in glowing terms of the
worth of personal independence, the dignity of the
individual, and so on. Their pronouncements,
however, do not always suit their actions. In spite
of the professed desire for personal independence
and emphasis on competition, a strong underlying
desire for compliance seems to exist. This is re­
flected, for example, in decisions handed down
over the past 2 decades or so by the Supreme
Court, which, as observers of the Court have
noted, often have favored the rights of authority
over those of individuals. It is reflected, too, by
the fate of “whistle blowers” in both government
and industry, who if they don’t lose their jobs are
at least shunted to one side and passed by when
the rewards are handed out. In business as well as
in government, the rewards tend to be given to
those who go along with the system, while criti­
cism, no matter how constructive, is a risky busi­
ness. In corporate, as well as government, bu­
reaucracies, the ability to please, not shake up the
system, is required for success. Yet, in spite of pres­
sures for compliance, which would be most effec­
tively served by dependence training, we continue
to raise our children to be independent and then
wonder why they so often refuse to behave in ways
adults would have them behave.
GROUP PERSONALITY
From studies such as those reviewed here, it is clear
that personality, child-rearing practices, and other
aspects of culture are interrelated in a nonrandom
way. Whiting and Child argued that the child-rear­
ing practices of a society originate in basic cus­
toms surrounding nourishment, shelter, and pro­
 Growing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 143

tection and that these child-rearing practices in

turn produce particular kinds of adult personali­
ties.9 The trouble is that correlations do not prove
cause and effect. We still are left with the fact,
however logical it may seem, such a causal chain
remains an unproven hypothesis.
The existence of a close, if not causal, rela­
tionship between child-rearing practices and per­
sonality, coupled with variation in child-rearing
practices from one society to another, have led to
a number of attempts to characterize whole soci­
eties in terms of particular kinds of personalities.
Indeed, common sense suggests that personalities
appropriate for one culture may be less appropri­
ate for others. For example, an egocentric, ag­
gressive personality would be out of place where
cooperation and sharing are the keys to success.
Or, in the context of traditional Penobscot Indian
culture, examined briefly earlier in this chapter, an As an example of the fact individual person­
open and extroverted personality would seem in­ alities in traditional societies are far from uniform,
appropriate, given its inconsistency with the pre­ consider the Yanomami, who live in the forests of
vailing conception of the self. northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. Among
Unfortunately, common sense, like conven­ them, individual men strive to achieve a reputa­
tional wisdom in general, is not always the truth. tion for fierceness and aggressiveness they are will­
A question worth asking is: Can we describe a ing to defend at the risk of serious personal injury
group personality without falling into stereotyp­ and death. And yet some men among the
ing? The answer appears to be a qualified yes; in Yanomami are quiet and somewhat retiring. In any
an abstract way, we may speak of a generalized gathering of these people, the quiet ones are all
“cultural personality” for a society, as long as we too easily overlooked by outsiders, when so many
do not expect to find a uniformity of personalities others are in the front row pushing and demand­
within that society. Put another way, each indi­ ing attention.
vidual develops certain personality characteristics
that, from common experience, resemble those of
other people. Yet, because each individual is ex­
Modal Personality
posed to unique experiences as well, may react to Obviously, any fruitful approach to the problem
common experiences in novel ways, and brings to of group personality must recognize that each in­
these experiences a unique (except for the case of dividual is unique to a degree in both inheritance
identical twins) genetic potential, each also ac­ and life experiences and must expect a range of
quires distinct personality traits. Because individ­ personality types in any society. In addition, per­
ual personalities differ, the organization of diver­ sonality traits that may be regarded as appropri­
sity is important to all cultures. ate in men may not be so regarded in women and
vice versa. Given all this, we may focus our at­
9Whiting, J. W. M., & Child, I. L. (1953). Child training
tention on the modal personality of a group, de­
and personality: A cross-cultural study. New Haven, CT: fined as the personality typical of a culturally
Yale University Press. bounded population, as indicated by the central

Modal personality. The personality typical of a society as indicated by the central tendency of a defined frequency dis­
tribution.
144 PART II Culture and S urvival: C ommunicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

Yanomami men display their fierceness. While flamboyant, belligerent personalities are especially compatible
with the Yanomami ideal that men should be fierce, some are quiet and retiring.

tendency of a defined frequency distribution.
Modal personality is a statistical concept, and, as
such, it opens for investigation the questions of
how societies organize diversity and how diversity
relates to culture change. Such questions are eas­
ily overlooked if one associates a particular per­
sonality type with a particular culture, as older ap­
proaches (like that of Ruth Benedict, described in
the nearby biography) tended to do. Also, modal
personalities of different groups can be compared.
Data on modal personality are best gathered
with psychological tests administered to a sample
of the population in question. Those most often
used include the Rorschach, or inkblot test, and
the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The latter
consists of pictures the individual tested is asked
to explain or describe. Other sorts of projective
tests have been used as well at one time or an­
other; all have in common a purposeful ambigu­
ity so that the individual tested has to structure
the situation before responding. The idea is that
one’s personality is projected into the ambiguous
situation. Along with such tests, observations
recording the frequency of certain behaviors, the
collection and analysis of life histories and dreams,
and the analysis of oral literature are helpful for
eliciting data on modal personality.
While having much to recommend it, the con­
cept of modal personality as a means of dealing
with group personality nevertheless presents cer­
tain difficulties. One of these is the complexity of
the measurement techniques, which may be diffi­
cult to implement in the field. For one, an ade­
quate representative sample of subjects is neces­
sary. The problem here is twofold: making sure
the sample is genuinely representative and having

Ruth Fulton Benedict ( I 8 8 7 - 1947)
Ruth Benedict came late to anthro­
pology; after her graduation from
Vassar College, she taught high
school English, published poetry, and
tried her hand at social work. For an­
thropology, she developed the idea
that culture was a projection of the
personality of those who created it.
In her most famous book, Patterns o f
Culture ( 1934), she compared the cul­
tures of three peoples— the Kwaki-
utl of western Canada, the Zuni of
the southwestern United States, and the Dobuans
of Melanesia. She held that each was comparable
to a great w ork of art, with an internal coherence
and consistency of its own. Seeing the Kwakiutl as
egocentric, individualistic, and ecstatic in their
rituals, she labeled their cultural configuration
“Dionysian"; the Zuni, whom she saw as living by
the golden mean, wanting no part of excess o r dis­
ruptive psychological states, and distrusting of in­
dividualism, she characterized as "Apollonian.” The
the time and personnel necessary to administer the
tests, conduct interviews, and so on, all of which
can be lengthy proceedings. Also, the tests them­
selves constitute a problem, for those devised for
one cultural setting may not be appropriate for an­
other. This is more of a problem with the TAT
than with some other tests, although different pic­
tures have been devised for other cultures. Still, to
minimize any hidden cultural bias, it is best not to
rely on projective tests alone. In addition to all
this, language differences often lead to problems,
such as misinterpretation. Furthermore, the field
investigator may be in conflict with cultural val­
ues. A people such as the Penobscot, whose con­
cept of self we surveyed earlier, would not take
kindly to revealing their dreams to strangers. Fi­
nally, what is being measured must be questioned.
G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 145
Dobuans, whose culture seemed to
her magic ridden, with everyone
fearing and hating everyone else, she
characterized as “paranoid.”
Although Patterns o f C ulture still
enjoys popularity in some nonan-
thropological circles, anthropologists
long since have abandoned its ap­
proach as impressionistic and not
susceptible to replication. To com ­
pound the problem, Benedict’s char­
acterizations of cultures are mis­
leading (the supposedly “Apollonian” Zunis, for
example, indulge in such seemingly “Dionysian”
practices as sword swallowing and walking over
hot coals), and using such value-laden terms as
“paranoid” prejudices others against the culture.
Nonetheless, the book did have an enorm ous and
valuable influence by focusing attention on the
problem of the interrelation between culture and
personality and by popularizing the reality of cul­
tural variation.
Just what, for example, is aggression? Does every­
one define it the same way? Is it a legitimate en­
tity, or does it involve other variables?
N ati onal C haracter
No discussion of group personality would be com­
plete without considering national character,
which popular thought all too often ascribes to
the citizens of various countries. Henry Miller epit­
omizes this view when he says, “Madmen are log­
ical— as are the French,” suggesting that French­
men, in general, are overly rational. A Parisian, in
contrast, might view North Americans as maudlin
and unsophisticated. Similarly, we all have in mind
some image, perhaps not well defined, of the “typ­
ical” Russian or Japanese or English citizen.
146 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children,
Essentially, these are simply stereotypes. We might
well ask, however, if these stereotypes have any
basis in fact. In reality, does such a thing as na­
tional character exist?
Some anthropologists have thought the an­
swer, maybe, is yes. Accordingly, national charac­
ter studies were begun that sought to discover ba­
sic personality traits the majority of the peoples of
modern countries shared. Along with these went
an emphasis on child-rearing practices and educa­
tion as the factors theoretically responsible for
such characteristics. Margaret Mead, Ruth Bene­
dict, Weston LaBarre, and Geoffrey Gorer con­
ducted pioneering studies of national character us­
ing relatively small samples of informants. During
World War II, techniques were developed for
studying “culture at a distance” through the analy­
sis of newspapers, books, photographs, and inter­
views with expatriates from the country in ques­
tion. By investigating memories of childhood and
cultural attitudes and by examining graphic ma­
terial for the appearance of recurrent themes and
values, researchers attempted to portray national
character.
The Japanese
At the height of World War II, Geoffrey Gorer at­
tempted to determine the underlying reasons for
the “contrast between the all-pervasive gentleness
of family life in Japan, which has charmed nearly
every visitor, and the overwhelming brutality and
sadism of the Japanese at War.” Strongly influ­
enced by Freud, Gorer sought his causes in the toi­
let-training practices of the Japanese, which he be­
lieved were severe and threatening. He suggested
that because Japanese infants were forced to con­
trol their sphincters before they had acquired the
necessary muscular or neurological development,
they grew up filled with repressed rage. As adults,
the Japanese could express this rage through their
ruthlessness in war.10
In the midst of war Gorer could not do field­
10Gorer, G. (1943). Themes in Japanese culture. Transactions
o f the N ew York A cadem y o f Sciences, Series II, 5.
C o re values. The values a particular culture especially promotes.
and Staying Alive
work in Japan. After the war was over, though,
the toilet-training hypothesis was tested, and it
was found that the severity of Japanese toilet train­
ing was a myth. Children were not subject to
threats of severe punishment. Nor were all Japan­
ese soldiers brutal and sadistic in war; some were,
but then so were some North Americans. Also, the
participation of many Japanese in postwar peace
movements in the Far East hardly conformed to
the wartime image of brutality.
Gorer’s study, along with others by Benedict
and LaBarre, was most important not for reveal­
ing the importance of Japanese sphincters to the
national character but for pointing out the dan­
gers of generalizing from insufficient evidence and
employing simplistic individual psychology to ex­
plain complex social phenomena.
Objections to National Character Studies
Critics of national character theories have em­
phasized the tendency for such work to be based
on unscientific and overgeneralized data. The con­
cept of modal personality has a certain statistical
validity, they argue, but to generalize the qualities
of a complex country on the basis of such limited
data is to lend insufficient recognition to the
countless individuals who vary from the general­
ization. Further, such studies tend to be highly sub­
jective; for example, the tendency during the late
1930s and 1940s for anthropologists to charac­
terize the German people as aggressive paranoids
was obviously a reflection of wartime hostilities
rather than scientific objectivity. Finally, it has
been pointed out that occupational and social sta­
tus tend to cut across national boundaries. A
French farmer may have less in common with a
French factory worker than with a German farmer.
An alternative approach to national character
— one that allows for the fact not all personalities
conform to cultural ideals— is that of anthropolo­
gist Francis Hsu. His approach was to study the core
values of a country’s culture and related personality
traits. The Chinese, he suggested, value kin ties and
cooperation above all else. To them, mutual depen­
dence is the very essence of personal relationships

The core values of Chinese culture promore the inte­
gration of the individual into a larger group. By con­
trast, the core values of Anglo-American culture pro­
mote the separation of the individual from the group.
and has been for thousands of years. Compliance
and subordination of one’s will to that of family and
kin transcends all else, while self-reliance is neither
promoted nor a source of pride. Following the 1949
revolution, Mao Tse-tung sought to expand the
sphere of affect to the country as a whole, with him­
self as the “father” of all citizens.
G rowing U p Human CHAPTER 5 147
Perhaps the core value North Americans of
European descent hold in highest esteem is
“rugged individualism,” at least for men (only re­
cently has this become recognized as a valid ideal
for women). Each individual is supposed to be able
to achieve anything he or she likes alone, given a
willingness to work hard enough. From their ear­
liest years, individuals are subjected to relentless
pressures to excel, and, as we have already noted,
competition and winning are seen as crucial to
this. Undoubtedly, this value contributes to the
“restlessness” and “drivenness” of North Ameri­
can society, and to the degree it motivates indi­
viduals to work hard and to go where the econ­
omy needs them, it fits well with the needs of an
industrial society. Thus, while individuals in Chi­
nese society are firmly bound into a larger group
they have lifelong obligations to, North Americans
are isolated from all other kin save husband or
wife, and even here commitment to marriage has
lessened.11 More couples live together without ei­
ther marriage or future plans for marriage. When
couples do marry, prenuptial agreements are made
to protect their assets, and something like 50% of
"T h is and most of the following observations on North
American culture are drawn from Naradecha-Sponsal, P.
(1993). The young, the rich and the famous: Individualism
as an American cultural value. In P. R. DeVita & J. D. Arm­
strong (Eds.), Distant mirrors: America as a foreign culture
(pp. 4 6 -5 3 ). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
 148 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children,
marriages do end in divorce. Even parents and
children have no legal obligations to one another,
once the latter have reached the age of majority.
Indeed, many North American parents seem to
“lose” their children in their teenage years. As for
relations with nonkin, these tend to remain at an
abbreviated and superficial level.
NORMAL AND ABNORMAL
B PERSONALITY
The concept of modal personality holds that a
range of personalities exists in any society. The
modal personality itself may be thought of as nor­
mal for that society but in fact may be shared by
less than half the population. W hat of personali­
ties that differ from the norm? The Dobuans of
New Guinea and Indians of the North American
Great Plains furnish examples of abnormal and
normal behavior strikingly different from that of
nonnative North Americans.
The individual in Dobu the other villagers con­
sidered neurotic and thoroughly disoriented was a
man who was naturally friendly and found activ­
ity an end in itself. He was a pleasant person who
did not seek to overthrow his fellows or to pun­
ish them. He worked for anyone who asked him,
and he was tireless in carrying out their com­
mands. In any other Dobuan, this would have been
scandalous behavior, but in him it was regarded
as merely silly. The village treated him in a kindly
fashion, not taking advantage of him nor making
sport of or ridiculing him, but he was definitely
regarded as one who stood outside the normal
conventions of behavior.
To return to the subject of the Original Study
earlier in this chapter, among North American In­
dians, a man, compelled by supernatural spirits,
could assume women’s attire and perform
women’s work; he even could marry another man,
although not all men who adopted a female iden­
tity were homosexuals, nor did all homosexuals
behave in this way (most Indian societies allowed
individuals ways to engage in homosexual behav­
ior without altering their gender status). Under this
institution of the “two-spirit,” an individual could
live in a dramatically different manner from most
and Staying Alive
In the United States, traditional attitudes toward ho­
mosexuality have been largely negative. Paradoxically,
football, a game so loaded with homosexual symbol­
ism that anthropologist/folklorist Alan Dundes has
compared it to homosexual initiation rituals in New
Guinea, has been immensely popular.
men; yet, although the two-spirit was rare among
Indians, it was not looked upon as deviant be­
havior.12 Quite the contrary, for the two-spirit of­
ten was sought out as a curer, artist, matchmaker,
and companion of warriors because of the great
spiritual power he was thought to possess.
In Western societies such as the United States,
behavior like that of the Indian two-spirits tradi­
tionally has been regarded as deviant. If a man
dresses as a woman, it is still widely considered a
cause for concern and is likely to lead to psychi­
atric intervention. Nor have jobs women tradi­
tionally filled been seen as desirable for men. By
contrast, women have more freedom to wear mas­
culine-style clothing and to assume jobs men tra­
ditionally held, even though to do so may cause
others to brand them as somehow “unfeminine.”
Lying behind these views are traditional values
(jobs customarily associated with men have been
more highly valued than those associated with
women) and a pattern of child rearing that creates
gender identity problems for both sexes, although
of a different sort for each sex.
l2Although the European term berdache has been widely
used in the literature, it carries a pejorative connotation, so
it has been abandoned for the term two-spirit favored by
Native Americans. See Jacobs, S. E. (1994). Native American
two-spirits. A nthropology Newsletter, 35 (8), 7.

Nancy Chodorow, a sociologist with a strong
background in anthropology, has argued that in
United States society, girls traditionally have been
raised by women, usually their mothers, and most
still are. Thus, feminine role models are constantly
available and easily understandable. Very early,
girls begin to do what women do and gradually
and continuously acquire the identity deemed ap­
propriate for their sex. Once they enter school,
however, they learn that women are not all-pow­
erful and prestigious and that it is men who gen­
erally are in charge and who are portrayed as the
ones who have most advanced human progress.
As a consequence, a girl finds that the feminine
identity, which has become so easy for her, leaves
much to be desired. Under the circumstances, she
is bound to feel a certain resentment toward it.
Boys have a different problem; like girls they
too begin their lives in a feminine world. With
adult men out of the house working, not only is
a male model rarely present, but also the mother
seems to be all-powerful. Under these conditions,
boys begin to develop a feminine identity with its
expected compliant personality. In keeping with
all this, boys used to be even dressed as girls
(dresses for little boys were not dropped from the
Sears catalog until 1940) until the age thought
proper to “graduate” into less feminine attire ar­
rived. Once out of the house and in school, boys
learn they must switch from a female to male iden­
tity; in a sense, they must renounce femininity and
prove their maleness in a way that girls do not
have to prove their femaleness. Generally speak­
ing, the more distant a boy’s father (or other male
companion of his mother) is, the greater the boy’s
insecurity is in his male identity and the greater
his compulsion is to be seen as really masculine.
To do this, he must strive all the harder to be ag­
gressive and assert his dominance, particularly
over women.
Nancy Chodorow sums up the consequences
of this situation as follows:
Sex-role ideology and socialization for these roles
seem to ensure that neither boys nor girls can at­
tain both stable identity and meaningful roles. The
tragedy of woman’s socialization is not that she is
left unclear, as is the man, about her basic sexual
identity. This identity is ascribed to her, and she
G rowing Up Human CHAPTER 5 149
does not need to prove to herself or to society that
she has earned it or continues to have it. Her prob­
lem is that this identity is clearly devalued in the
society in which she lives. This does not mean that
women too should be required to compete for iden­
tity, to be assertive and to need to achieve— to “do”
like men. Nor does it suggest that it is not crucial
for everyone, men and women alike, to have a sta­
ble sexual identity. But until male “identity” does
not depend upon men’s proving themselves, their
“doing” will be a reaction to insecurity, not a cre­
ative exercise of their humanity, and woman’s “be­
ing,” far from being an easy and positive accep­
tance of self, will be a resignation to inferiority. And
as long as women must live through their children,
and men do not genuinely contribute to socializa­
tion and provide easily accessible role models,
women will continue to bring up sons whose sex­
ual identity depends upon devaluing femininity in­
side and outside themselves, and daughters who
must accept this devalued position and resign them­
selves to producing more men who will perpetuate
the system that devalues them.13
This example shows how a culture itself ac­
tually may induce certain kinds of psychological
conflicts with important consequences for the en­
tire society. Although the conditions children are
raised under in United States society are now
changing, they have a long way to go before the
conflicts just described become part of the past.
Still, what has seemed “normal” in the past could
become “abnormal” in the future.
The standards that define normal behavior for
any culture are determined by that culture itself.
Take, for example, attitudes toward individuals
who enter into altered states of consciousness.
Among the Melemchi of Nepal, to effect a cure
the healer must call the gods into his body to let
them speak through him .14 To do this, he must
ride into their world. Through drumming and
chanting, sometimes accompanied by use of
13Chodorow, N. (1971). Being and doing: A cross-cultural
examination of the socialization of males and females. In V.
Gornick & B. K. Moran (Eds.), Woman in sexist society (p.
193). New York: Basic Books.
14Womack, M. (1994). Program 5: Psychological anthropol­
ogy. Faces o f culture. Fountain Valley, CA: Coast Tele-
courses, Inc.
150 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children,
&&it h w * i
c’L'yzysCc& cC Anthropologists
and Mental Health
O ne consequence o f development in the newly
emerged states o f Africa, Asia, and Central and
South America is a rising Incidence o f mental distur­
bances among their people. Similarly, mental health
problems abound among ethnic minorities living within
Industrialized countries. Unfortunately, orthodox ap­
proaches to mental health have not been successful at
dealing with these problems for a number o f reasons.
For one, the various ethnic groups have different atti­
tudes toward mental disorders than do medical prac­
titioners (who are, after all, products o f Western cul­
ture). For another; the diverse conditions different
ethnic groups live under produce culturally patterned
health conditions, including culture-bound syndromes
the orthodox medical profession does not recognize.
Among Puerto Ricans, for example, a widely held be­
lief is that spirits are active in the world and that they
influence human behavior Thus, for someone with a
psychiatric problem, it makes sense to go to a native
spiritist fo r help, rather than to a psychiatrist. In a Puerto
Rican community, going to a spiritist is "normal.” N ot
only does the client not understand the symbols o f psy­
chiatry, but also going to a psychiatrist implies that he
o r she is “ crazy” and requires restraint o r removal from
the community.
Although practitioners o f Western medicine tradi­
tionally have regarded spiritists and other folk healers
as “ ignorant,” if not “ charlatans,” efforts in the 1950s
began experimentation with community-based treat­
ment in which psychiatrists cooperated with traditional
hallucinogenic drugs and intoxicants, he enters an
altered state of consciousness, or trance. This al­
lows him to see and communicate with the gods.
To outsiders, it appears the curer is hallucinating:
seeing visions, smelling smells, hearing sounds,
and experiencing bodily sensations that seem real
but are not seen, smelled, heard, or felt by others
who are present but have not entered into trance.
In modern North American society, behavior like
that of the Melemchi curer generally is regarded
and Staying Alive
healers. Since then, this approach has gained widespread
acceptance in many parts o f the world, as when (in
1977) the W orld Health Organization advocated co­
operation between health professionals and native spe­
cialists (including herbalists and midwives). As a conse­
quence, many anthropologists have found work as
cultural brokers, studying the cultural system o f the
client population and explaining this to the health pro­
fessionals while also explaining the world o f the psy­
chiatrists to the folk healers and the client population.
To cite one example, as a part o f the Miami Com­
munity Mental Health Program, a field team led by an
anthropologist was set up to work with the Puerto Ri­
can community o f Dade County* Like other ethnic
communities in the area, this one was characterized by
low Incomes, high rents, and a plethora o f health (in­
cluding mental health) problems, yet health facilities and
social service agencies were underused. Working in the
community, the team successfully built support net­
works among the Puerto Ricans, involving extended
families, churches, clubs, and spiritists. A t the same time,
they gathered information about the community, pro­
viding it to the appropriate social service agencies. A t
the Dade County Hospital, team members acted as
brokers between the psychiatric personnel and their
Puerto Rican clients, and a training program was im­
plemented for the mental health staff.
’''See Willigan, J. V. (1986). A pplied anthropology (pp. 1 2 8 -
129, 133-139). South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
as deviant, and the practice of entering altered
states is apt to be seen as a sign of mental insta­
bility, or even unlawful activity if it involves the
use of hallucinogenic substances.
The negative attitude of North American cul­
ture notwithstanding, nothing is abnormal per se
about the ability to enter trancelike states and ex­
perience a wide range of hallucinations. To the
contrary, “The desire to alter consciousness peri­
odically is an innate, normal drive analogous to
 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 151

Although the ability to enter trance is a consequence of having a normal hu­

man nervous system, some societies, such as that of the United States, define
entering trance as abnormal, while many others accept it as normal. Among
the Ju/’hoansi of Namibia, men enter trance in a dance, accompanied by the
rhythmic clapping and singing of women. By entering trance, these men can
summon supernatural power to heal, bring rain, and control animals.

not just human, nervous system.16 Thus, the abil­

hunger or the sexual drive.”15 There is even good
evidence that chimpanzees, baboons, other mon­
keys, cats, dogs, and other animals hallucinate and
that the ability is a function of the mammalian,
15Furst, P. T. (1976). Hallucinogens and culture (p. 7). No­
vato, CA: Chandler and Sharp.
ity to enter altered states and experience visions
and other sensations appears to predate the ap­
pearance of H o m o sapiens, and it is not surpris­
ing that the ability to enter trance is a human uni­
versal. Although some societies try to suppress the
practice, the vast majority (such as the Melemchi)
accept trancing and shape it to their own ends.
One study, for example, found that as many as
43 7 of a sample of 488 historically known soci­
eties had some form of institutionalized altered
states of consciousness.17
Is all this to suggest that “normalcy” is a mean­
ingless concept when applied to personality? Within
the context of a given culture, the concept of nor­
mal personality is quite meaningful. A. I. Hallowell,
16Lewis-Williams, J. D., tic Dowson, T. A. (1988). Signs of
all times: Entoptic phenomena in Upper Paleolithic art. Cur­
rent Anthropology, 29, 202.
l7Lewis-Williams, J. D., &c Dowson, T. A. (1993). On vision
and power in the Neolithic: Evidence from the decorated
monuments. Current Anthropology, 34, 55.
152 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

TABLE 5.1 Ethnic Psychoses and O ther Culture-Bound Psychological Disorders

N am e of
D is o rd e r C u ltu re D escriptio n

Amok Malaya (also observed A disorder characterized by sudden, wild outbursts of homicidal
in Java, Philippines, aggression in which the afflicted person may kill or injure others.
Africa, and Tierra del The rage disorder is usually found in males who are rather
Fuego) withdrawn, quiet, and inoffensive prior to the onset of the
disorder. Stress, sleep deprivation, extreme heat, and alcohol are
among the conditions thought to precipitate the disorder. Several
stages have been observed: Typically in the first stage the person
becomes more withdrawn; then a period of brooding follows in
which a loss of reality contact is evident. Ideas of persecution
and anger predominate. Finally, a phase of automatism, or
amok, occurs, in which the person jumps up, yells, grabs a knife,
and stabs people or objects within reach. Exhaustion and
depression usually follow, with amnesia for the rage.
Anorexia Western countries A disorder occurring most frequently among young women in
nervosa which a preoccupation with thinness produces a refusal to eat.
This condition can result in death.

Latah Malay A fear reaction often occurring in middle-aged women of low

intelligence who are subservient and self-effacing. The disorder is
precipitated by the word snake or by tickling. It is characterized
by echolalia (repetition of the words and sentences of others).
The disturbed individual may also react with negativism and the
compulsive use of obscene language.

a major figure in the development of psychological
anthropology, somewhat ironically observed that it
is normal to share the delusions traditionally ac­
cepted by one’s society. Abnormality involves the de­
velopment of a delusional system the culture does
not sanction. The individual who is disturbed be­
cause he or she cannot adequately measure up to
the norms of society and be happy may be termed
neurotic. When a person’s delusional system is so
different that it in no way reflects his or her soci­
ety’s norms, the individual may be termed psychotic.
Culturally induced conflicts not only can, if se­
vere enough, produce psychosis but can determine
the form of the psychosis as well. To a culture that
encourages aggressiveness and suspicion, the insane
person is the individual who is passive and trusting.
To a culture that encourages passivity and trust, the
insane person is the individual who is aggressive and
suspicious. Just as each society establishes its own
norms, each individual is unique in his or her per­
ceptions. Many anthropologists see the only mean­
ingful criterion for personality evaluation as the cor­
relation between personality and social conformity.
Although it is true that culture defines what is
and is not normal behavior, the situation is compli­
cated by findings suggesting that major categories
of mental disorders may be universal types of hu­
man affliction. Take, for example, schizophrenia,
probably the most common of all psychoses and one
found in any culture, no matter how it manifests it­
self. Individuals afflicted by schizophrenia experi­
ence distortions of reality that impair their ability to
function adequately, so they withdraw from the so­
cial world into their own psychological shell, from
which they do not emerge. Although environmen­
tal factors play a role, evidence exists that schizo­
phrenia is caused by a biochemical disorder for
which there is an inheritable tendency. One of its
 G rowing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 153

N am e of
D iso rd er C u ltu re D escription

Koro Southeast Asia A fear reaction or anxiety state in which the person fears that his
(particularly Malay penis will withdraw into his abdomen and he will die. This reaction
Archipelago) may appear after sexual overindulgence or excessive masturbation.
The anxiety is typically very intense and of sudden onset. The
condition is “treated” by having the penis held firmly by the patient
or by family members or friends. Often the penis is clamped to a
wooden box.

Windigo Algonkian Indians of A fear reaction in which a hunter becomes anxious and agitated,
Canada and northern convinced that he is bewitched. Fears center on his being turned
United States into a cannibal by the power of a monster with an insatiable
craving for human flesh.
Kitsunetsuki Japan A disorder in which victims believe that they are possessed by foxes
and are said to change their facial expressions to resemble foxes.
Entire families are often possessed and banned by the community.
This reaction occurs in rural areas of Japan where people are
relatively uneducated.

Pibloktoq Circumpolar peoples A disorder brought on by fright, which is followed by a short

and other from Lapland eastward period of bizarre behavior; victim may tear clothes off, jump in
arctic across Siberia, water or fire, roll in snow, try to walk on the ceiling, throw things,
hysterias northern Alaska, and thrash about, and “speak in tongues.” Outburst followed by return
Canada to Greenland to normal behavior.

Based on Carson, R. C., Butcher, J. N., & Coleman, J. C. (1990). (8th ed.) (p. 85). Glenview, II: Scott Foresman.

more severe forms is paranoid schizophrenia. Those
suffering from it fear and mistrust almost everyone;
they hear voices that whisper dreadful things to
them, and they are convinced someone is “out to
get them. ” Acting on this conviction, they engage in
bizarre behaviors, which leads to their removal from
society, usually to a mental institution.
A precise image of paranoid schizophrenia is
one of the so-called ethnic psychoses known as
Windigo. Such psychoses involve symptoms of men­
tal disorder specific to particular ethnic groups
(Table 5.1). Windigo psychosis is limited to north­
ern Algonkian Indian groups such as the Chippewa,
Cree, and Ojibwa. In their traditional belief sys­
tems, these northern Indians recognized the exis­
tence of cannibalistic monsters called Windigos. In­
dividuals afflicted by the psychosis developed the
delusion that, falling under control of these mon­
sters, they themselves were being transformed into
Windigos, with a craving for human flesh. Mean­
while, they saw people around them turning into
various edible animals— fat, juicy beavers, for in­
stance. Although no instances where sufferers of
Windigo psychosis actually ate another human be­
ing are known, they nonetheless developed an acute
fear of doing so. Furthermore, other members of
their group genuinely feared they might.
At first, Windigo psychosis seems quite differ­
ent from European-American clinical cases of para­
noid schizophrenia, but a closer look suggests oth­
erwise; the disorder was merely expressed in ways
compatible with traditional northern Algonkian

Ethnic psychoses. Mental disorders specific to particular ethnic groups.

154 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children,
culture. Ideas of persecution, instead of directed to­
ward other humans, are directed toward supernat­
ural beings (the Windigo monsters); cannibalistic
panic replaces homosexual panic; and the like. The
northern Algonkian Indian, like the European-Amer-
ican, expresses his or her problem in terms compat­
ible with the appropriate view of the self and its be­
havioral environment. The northern Algonkian,
though, was removed from society not by commit­
ment to a mental institution but by being killed.
Windigo behavior has seemed exotic and dra­
matic to the European-American. When all is said
CHAPTER
Enculturation, the process by which culture is passed
from one generation to the next, begins soon after
birth. Its first agents are the members of an indi­
vidual’s household, but later, in some societies, this
role is assumed by professionals. For enculturation
to proceed, individuals must possess self-awareness,
or the ability to perceive themselves as objects in
time and space and to judge their own actions. A
major facet of self-awareness is a positive view of
the self, for this is what motivates persons to act to
their advantage rather than disadvantage.
Several requirements involving a person’s be­
havioral environment need to be met for emerg­
ing self-awareness to function. The individual first
needs to learn about a world of objects other than
the self; this environment is perceived in terms
compatible with the values of the culture he or she
is born into. Also required is a sense o f both spa­
tial and temporal orientation. Finally, the growing
individual needs a normative orientation, or an un­
derstanding of the values, ideals, and standards
that constitute the behavioral environment.
Personality is a product of enculturation and
refers to the distinctive ways a person thinks, feels,
and behaves. Along with the psychoanalysts, most
anthropologists believe adult personality is shaped
by early childhood experiences. A prime goal of
anthropologists has been to produce objective
studies that test this theory. Cross-cultural studies
of gender-related personality characteristics, for
example, show that whatever biologically based
personality differences may exist between men and
women are extremely malleable. A society’s econ­
omy helps structure the way children are brought
and Staying Alive
and done, however, the imagery and symbolism a
psychotic person has to draw upon are what his
or her culture has to offer, and in northern Al­
gonkian culture these involve myths in which can­
nibal giants figure prominently. By contrast, the
delusions of Irish schizophrenics draw on the im­
ages and symbols of Irish Catholicism and feature
Virgin and Savior motifs. Anglo-Americans, on the
other hand, tend toward secular or electromag­
netic persecution delusions. The underlying struc­
ture of the mental disorder is the same in all cases,
but its expression is culturally specific.
SUMMARY
up, which in turn influences their adult personal­
ities.
Anthropologists John and Beatrice Whiting and
Irvin Child, on the basis of cross-cultural studies,
have established the interrelation of personality,
child-rearing practices, and other cultural aspects.
One practice, for example, is dependence training.
Usually associated with traditional farming societies,
it tries to ensure that society members will willingly
and routinely work for the benefit of the group by
performing the jobs assigned to them. At the oppo­
site extreme, independence training, typical of soci­
eties characterized by independent nuclear families,
puts a premium on self-reliance and independent be­
havior. Although a society may emphasize one sort
of behavior over the other, it may not emphasize it
to the same degree in both sexes. Whiting and Child
believe that child-rearing practices have their roots
in a society’s customs for meeting the basic physical
needs of its members; these practices, in turn, de­
velop particular kinds of adult personalities.
Anthropologists early on began to work on the
problem of whether it is possible to delineate a group
personality without falling into stereotyping. Each
culture chooses, from the vast array of possibilities,
traits it sees as normative or ideal. Individuals who
conform to these traits are rewarded; the rest are
not. The modal personality of a group is the per­
sonality typical of a culturally bounded population,
as indicated by the central tendency of a defined fre­
quency distribution. As a statistical concept, it opens
for investigation how societies organize the diverse
personalities of their members, some of whom con­
form more than others to the modal “type.”
 Growing Up H uman CHAPTER 5 155

National character studies have focused on the
modal characteristics of modern countries. They
then have attempted to determine the child-rear­
ing practices and education that shape such a
group personality. Investigators during World War
II interviewed foreign-born nationals and analyzed
other sources in an effort to depict national char­
acter. Many anthropologists believe national char­
acter theories are based on unscientific and over­
generalized data. Others have chosen to focus on
the core values promoted in particular societies
while recognizing that success in instilling these
values in individuals may vary considerably.
W hat defines normal behavior in any culture
is determined by the culture itself, and what may
be acceptable, or even admirable, in one may not
be in another. Abnormality involves developing a
delusional system the culture does not accept. Cul­
turally induced conflicts not only can produce psy­
chological disturbance but can determine the form
of the disturbance as well. Similarly, mental dis­
orders that have a biological cause, such as schiz­
ophrenia, will be expressed by symptoms specific
to the culture of the afflicted individual.

Points for C onsideration

1. Why might a clinical psychologist— someone who treats patients or clients directly— value the en-
culturation concept when working with a patient from the same culture as the psychologist? from
a different culture?
2. What cultural forces in your childhood have made you different from your parents? from friends
who grew up in different environments? Were these forces more important than the individual
qualities of your home?
3. Do you believe cultures have different “personalities” ? Why or why not? Does the modal person­
ality concept still have meaning for societies with numerous subcultures, such as those in Canada
or the United States?

Suggested
Barnouw, V. (1985). Culture an d person ality (4th
ed.). Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.
This is a revision of a well-respected text de­
signed to introduce students to psychological
anthropology.
Furst, P. T. (1976). H allucinogens an d culture. N o­
vato, CA: Chandler and Sharp.
For those interested in altered states of
consciousness, this book is the best place to
start. This important cross-cultural study
of mind-altering substances is thorough
yet easily read by those with no previous
knowledge.
Suarez-Orozoco, M. M ., Spindler, G., & Spindler,
L. (1994). The m aking o f psychological an­
thropology II. Fort Worth, T X : Harcourt Brace.
This collection of articles consists of firsthand
accounts of the objectives, accomplishments,
and failures of well-known specialists in psy­
chological anthropology.
Readings
Wallace, A. F. C. (1970). Culture an d person ality
(2nd ed.). New York: Random House.
The logical and methodological foundations
of culture and personality as a science form
the basis of this book. The study is guided by
the assumptions that anthropology should de­
velop a scientific theory about culture and that
a theory pretending to explain or predict cul­
tural phenomena must reckon with noncul-
tural phenomena (such as personality) as well.
Whiting, J. W. M ., &c Child, I. (1953). C hild train­
ing an d personality: A cross-cultural study.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
How culture is integrated though the medium
of personality processes is the main concern
of this classic study. It covers the influence of
both culture on personality and personality on
culture. It is oriented toward testing general
hypotheses about human behavior in any and
all societies, rather than toward a detailed
analysis of a particular society.
 Patterns of
Subsistence
*
# A B u shm a n w o m a n in southern

► A f r ic a gathers fo o d .T he b a s ic

p b u s in e s s of culture is s e c u r i n g

T H E S U R V IV A L O F T H O S E W H O L IV E BY

f? ITS R U LE S , A N D SO T H E S T U D Y O F

v S U B S IS T E N C E IS A N IM P O R T A N T A S P E C T

O F A N T H R O P O L O G IC A L S T U D Y .
 diApfer P u m w
■ r • ■

S. W hat Is Adaptation?
Adaptation refers to the interaction process between changes an organism makes in its envi­
ronm ent and changes the environm ent makes in the organism.This kind o f tw o-w ay adjustment
is necessary fo r the survival o f all life form s, including human beings.

2. How Do Humans Adapt?

Humans adapt through the medium o f culture as they develop ways o f doing things compatible
w ith the resources they have available to them and w ithin the lim itations o f the environm ent
they live in. In a particular region, people living in sim ilar environments tend to b orro w from
one another customs that seem to w o rk well in those environments. Once achieved, adapta­
tions may be remarkably stable fo r long periods, even thousands o f years.

3. What Sorts of Adaptations Have Humans Achieved Through

the Ages?
Food foraging is the oldest and m ost universal type o f human adaptation.To it we owe such im­
portant elements o f social organization as the sexual division o f labor, food sharing, and a home
base as the center o f daily activity and where food sharing is accomplished. Q uite different adap­
tations, involving farming and animal husbandry, began to develop in some parts o f the w orld
between 9,000 and I 1,000 years ago. H orticulture— the cultivation o f domestic plants w ith sim­
ple hand tools— made possible more permanent settlem ents and a reorganization o f the divi­
sion o f labor. Under pastoralism— reliance on raising herds o f domestic animals— -nomadism
continued, but new modes o f interaction w ith o th e r peoples were developed. Urbanism began
to develop as early as 5,000 years ago in some places as intensive agriculture produced suffi­
cient food to support various full-tim e specialists. W ith this w ent a fu rth e r transform ation o f
the social fabric.

157
158 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
everal times today you will interrupt your ac­
S tivities to eat or drink. You may take this very
much for granted, but if you went totally
without food for as long as a day, you would be­
gin to feel the symptoms of hunger: weakness, fa­
tigue, headache. After a month of starvation, your
body would probably never repair the damage. A
mere week to 10 days without water would be
enough to kill you.
All living beings, and people are no exception,
must satisfy certain basic needs in order to stay
alive. Among these needs are food, water, and shel­
ter. Humans may not “live by bread alone,” but
nobody can live for long without any bread at all;
and no creature could survive long if its relations
with its environment were random and chaotic.
Living beings must have regular access to a sup­
ply of food and water and a reliable means of ob­
taining and using it. A lion might die if all its prey
disappeared, if its teeth and claws grew soft, or if
its digestive system failed. Although people face
these same sorts of problems, they have an over­
whelming advantage over other creatures: People
have culture. If our meat supply dwindles, we can
turn to a vegetable, such as the soybean, and
process it to taste like meat. When our tools fail,
we replace them or invent better ones. Even when
our stomachs are incapable of digesting food, we
can predigest food by boiling or pureeing. We are,
however, subject to the same needs and pressures
as all living creatures, and it is important to un­
derstand human behavior from this point of view.
The crucial concept that underlies such a perspec­
tive is ad ap tation , that is, how humans manage to
deal with the contingencies of daily life. Dealing
with these contingencies is the basic business of all
cultures.
& k &. 4 A 4, A Si 4. 4 .4
ADAPTATION
The adaptation process establishes a moving bal­
ance between the needs of a population and the
potential of its environment. This process can be
illustrated by the Tsembaga, New Guinea, high­
Horticulture. Cultivation of crops using hand tools such as digging sticks o r hoes.
landers, who support themselves chiefly through
horticulture— the cultivation of crops carried out
with simple hand tools.1 Although they also raise
pigs, they eat them only under conditions of ill­
ness, injury, warfare, or celebration. At such times
the pigs are sacrificed to ancestral spirits, and their
flesh is ritually consumed by the people involved
in the crisis. (This guarantees a supply of high-
quality protein when it is most needed.)
In precolonial times the Tsembaga and their
neighbors were bound together in a unique cycle
of pig sacrifices that served to mark the end of
hostilities between groups. Frequent hostilities
were set off by a number of ecological pressures,
with pigs playing a significant role. Since very few
pigs normally were slaughtered and their food re­
quirements were great, they could very quickly lit­
erally eat a local group out of house and home.
The need to expand food production to support
the prestigious but hungry pigs put a strain on the
land best suited for farming. Therefore, when one
group had driven another off its land, hostilities
ended, and the new residents celebrated their vic­
tory with a pig festival. Many pigs were slaugh­
tered, and the pork was widely shared among al­
lied groups. Even without hostilities, festivals were
held whenever the pig population became un-
1Rappaport, R. A. (1969). Ritual regulation of environmen­
tal relations among a New Guinea people. In A. P. Vayda
(Ed.), Environment and cultural behavior (pp. 181-201).
Garden City, NY: Natural History Press.
& 4 .4
 Pa t t e r n s oe S u b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 159

manageable, every 5 to 10 years, depending on the
groups’ success at farming. Thus the cycle of fight­
ing and feasting kept the balance among humans,
land, and animals.
The term ad ap tation also refers to the inter­
action process between changes an organism
makes in its environment and changes the envi­
ronment makes in the organism. The spread of the
gene for sickle-cell anemia is a case in point. Long
ago, in the tropics of central Africa, a genetic mu­
tation appeared in human populations, causing the
manufacture of red blood cells that take on a sickle
shape under conditions of low oxygen pressure.
Since persons who receive a gene for this trait from
each parent usually develop severe anemia and die
in childhood, selective pressure was exerted
against the spread of this gene in the local gene
pool. Then slash-and-burn horticulture was intro­
duced into this region, creating a change in the
natural environment by removal— through cutting
(slashing) and burning— of the natural vegetative
cover. This was conducive to the breeding of mos­
quitos that carry the parasite causing falciparum
malaria. When transmitted to humans, the para­
sites live in the red blood cells and cause a disease
that is always debilitating and very often fatal. In­
dividuals who received the gene for the sickle-cell
trait from only one parent, however (receiving one
“normal” gene from the other), turned out to have
a specific natural defense against the parasite. The
gene’s presence caused only some of the cells to
take on a sickle shape; when those cells circulated

Human adaptations impact environments in various ways. In California, native food foragers regularly burned
over vast areas, thereby favoring the growth of oak trees (acorns were a staple food) and deer browse. Once
“White” settlers stopped the practice, highly flammable brush and conifers flourished at the expense of oaks. As
a consequence, disastrous outbreaks of wildfires periodically sweep through parts of the state, causing millions of
dollars in property loss.
160 part n C u lt u r e and S u r v i v a l : C o m m u n i c a t i n g , R ai sin g C h i l d r e n ,
through the spleen, which routinely screens out all
damaged or worn red blood cells, the infected cells
and the parasites along with them were destroyed.
Since these individuals did not succumb to
malaria, they were favored by selection, and the
sickling trait became more and more common in
the population. Thus, while people changed their
environment, their environment also changed
them. Nor is this an isolated example; analogous
forms of heredity anemias that protect against
malaria followed the spread of farming from
southwest Asia and Southeast Asia as well.
Sickle-cell and similar anemias are a neat il­
lustration of the relativity of any adaptation. In
malarial areas, the genes responsible for these con­
ditions are adaptive for human populations, even
though some individuals suffer as a result of their
presence. In nonmalarial regions, however, they
are highly maladaptive, for not only do such genes
confer no advantages at all on human populations
living under such conditions, but some individu­
als die as a result of their presence.
and S t a y i n g A live
Though the Hopi and Navajo share the same environ­
ment, their cultures are quite different. Originally
food foragers, Navajos became pastoral nomads,
while the Hopi are village-dwelling farmers. Environ­
ments do not determine culture but do set certain po­
tentials and limitations.
T he U ni t of A daptati on
The unit of adaptation includes both organisms
and the environment. Organisms exist as members
of populations; populations, in turn, must have the
flexibility to cope with variability and change
within the environment. In biological terms, this
means different organisms within the population
have somewhat differing genetic endowments. In
cultural terms, it means variation occurs among
individual skills, knowledge, and personalities. Or­
ganisms and environments form interacting sys­
tems. People might as easily be farmers as fisher-
folk, but we do not expect to find farmers north
of the Arctic Circle or people who fish for a liv­
ing in the Sahara Desert. In other words, although
environments do not determine culture, they do
present certain possibilities and limitations.
Consider the example of a group of lakeside
people who live off fish. The fish in turn live off
smaller organisms, which in turn consume green
plants; plants liberate minerals from water and mud,
 Patterns of S ubsistence CHAPTER 6 161

and, with energy from sunlight, transform them into
proteins and carbohydrates. Dead plant and animal
matter is decomposed by bacteria, returning chem­
icals to the soil and water. Some energy escapes from
this system in the form of heat. Evaporation and
rainfall constantly recirculate the water. People add
chemicals to the system in the form of their wastes,
and, if they are judicious, they may help to regulate
the balance of animals and plants.
Some anthropologists have borrowed the ecol­
ogists’ concept of ecosystem. An ecosystem is com­
posed of both the physical environment and the
organisms living within it. The system is bound by
the activities of the organisms, as well as by such
physical processes as erosion and evaporation.
Human ecologists generally are concerned
with detailed microstudies of particular human
ecosystems; they emphasize that all aspects of hu­
man culture must be considered, not just the most
obvious technological ones. The Tsembaga’s atti­
tude toward pigs and the cycle of sacrifices have
important economic functions; outsiders may see
them in this way, but the Tsembaga do not. They
are motivated by their belief in the power and
needs of their ancestral spirits. Although the pigs
are consumed by the living, they are sacrificed fo r
ancestors. Human ecosystems often must be in­
terpreted in cultural terms.
E vol uti onar y A daptati on
Adaptation also must be understood from a his­
torical point of view. For organisms to fit into an
ecosystem, they must have the potential to adjust

Shown here are Indians of the North American plains hunting bison they have
driven into the Missouri River. Plains Indians such as the Cheyenne, Coman­
che, Crow, and Sioux developed similar cultures, as they had to adapt to simi­
lar environmental conditions (for a map of Native American culture areas, see
Figure 6.1).

E co s y s te m . A system, or a functioning whole, composed of both the physical environment and the organisms living
within it.
162 part n C u lt ure and S urvival .: C o m m u n ica tin g , R aising C h i l d r e n , and S t a y i n g A live

to or become a part of it. The Comanche, whose

history began in the harsh, arid country of south­
ern Idaho, provide a good example.2 In their orig­
inal home they subsisted on wild plants, small
animals, and occasionally larger game. Their ma­
terial equipment was simple and limited to what
their women could transport. The size of their
groups was restricted, and what little social power
could develop was in the hands of the shaman,
who was a combination of healer and spiritual
guide.
At some point in their nomadic history, the
Comanche moved onto the Great Plains, where
buffalo were abundant and the Indians’ potential
as hunters could be fully developed. As larger
groups could be supported by the new food sup­
ply, the need arose for a more complex political
organization. Hunting ability thus became a
means to acquire political power.
Eventually the Comanche acquired horses and
guns from Whites, which greatly enhanced their
hunting prowess, and the great hunting chiefs be­
came powerful indeed. The Comanche became
raiders in order to get horses, which they did not
breed for themselves, and their hunting chiefs
evolved into war chiefs. The once “poor” and
peaceful hunter-gatherers of the Great Basin be­
came wealthy and warlike, dominating the South­
west from the borders of New Spain (Mexico) in
the south to those of New France (Louisiana) to
the fledgling United States in the east and north.
In moving from one environment to another, and
in evolving from one way of life to a second, the
Comanche were able to capitalize on existing cul­
tural capabilities to flourish in their new situation.
Sometimes societies that have developed in­
dependently find similar solutions to similar prob­
lems. For example, another group that moved
onto the Great Plains and took up a form of Plains
Indian culture, similar in many ways to that of the
Comanche, were the Cheyenne. Yet their cultural
background was quite different; formerly, they
were settled farmers with social, political, and re­
ligious institutions quite unlike those of the Co­
Saying that a society is stable is not saying that it is
manche in their ancestral homeland. This kind of
changeless. These Western Abenakis are descendants
development of similar cultural adaptations to of people who maintained a stable way of life for
5 ,0 0 0 years, even though they frequently incorporated
new elements into their culture. Even today, 40 0 years
2Wallace, E., & Hoebel, E. A. (1952). The Com anches. Nor­ after the Abenakis’ first contact with Europeans,
man: University of Oklahoma Press. many traditional values and practices endure.

similar environmental conditions by peoples
whose ancestral cultures were quite different is
called convergent evolution. Especially interesting
is that the Cheyenne switch was from a farming
to a food-foraging way of life. Contrary to West­
ern notions of “progress,” change in subsistence
practices does not inevitably go from dependence
on wild food to farming; it may go the other way
as well.
Somewhat similar to the phenomenon of con­
vergent evolution is parallel evolution, the differ­
ence being that similar adaptations are achieved
by peoples whose ancestral cultures were already
somewhat similar. For example, the development
of farming in southwest Asia and Mesoamerica
took place independently, as people in both places,
whose ways of life were already alike, became de­
pendent on a narrow range of plant foods that de­
pended upon human intervention for their pro­
tection and reproductive success.
It is important to recognize that stability as
well as change is involved in evolutionary adap­
tation and that once a satisfactory adaptation is
achieved, too much change may cause it to break
down. Thus, episodes of major change may be fol­
lowed by long periods of relative stability. For ex­
ample, by 3500 b . c ., a way of life had evolved in
northwestern New England and southern Quebec
that was well attuned to the environmental con­
ditions of the times.3 Since those conditions re­
mained more or less stable for the next 5 ,0 0 0 years
or so, it is understandable that people’s lifeways
also remained stable. This does not mean change
was entirely absent. (Stable does not mean static.)
Periodically, people refined and enhanced their
way of life— for example, improving hunting
methods by replacing spears and spear throwers
with bows and arrows; improving cooking by sub­
stituting pottery vessels for containers made from
3Haviland, W. A., & Power, M. W. (1994). The original Ver­
monters (Rev. and exp. ed.). Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England.
Convergent evolution. In cultural evolution, the development of similar adaptations to similar environmental condi­
tions by peoples whose ancestral cultures were quite different. > P arallel evolution. In cultural evolution, the devel­
opment of similar adaptations to similar environmental conditions by peoples whose ancestral cultures w ere similar. >
C u ltu re area. A geographic region where numerous different societies follow similar patterns of life.
Patterns of Subsistence CHAPTER 6 163
animal hide, wood, or bark; improving transport
by replacing heavy and cumbersome dugouts with
sturdy yet lightweight birchbark canoes; and im­
proving yields by supplementing the products of
hunting, gathering, and fishing with limited culti­
vation of corn, beans, and squash. In spite of these
changes, however, the native peoples of the region
still retained the basic structure of their culture
and tended toward a balance with their resource
base well into the 17th century, when the culture
had to adjust to pressures associated with the Eu­
ropean invasion of North America. Such long-term
stability by no means implies “stagnation,” “back­
wardness,” or “failure to progress”; rather, it in­
dicates success. Had this culture not effectively sat­
isfied people’s physical and psychological needs, it
never would have endured as it did for thousands
of years.
C ulture A reas
The aboriginal culture area of the Great Plains
(Figure 6.1) was a geographic region where a num­
ber of societies with similar ways of life existed.
Thirty-one politically independent peoples (the
aforementioned Cheyenne and Comanche were
but two of them) faced a common environment,
in which the buffalo was an obvious and practi­
cal source of food as well as materials for cloth­
ing and shelter. Living close by each other, the na­
tions could share new inventions and discoveries.
They reached a common and shared adaptation to
a particular ecological zone.
The Indians of the Great Plains were, at the time
of contact with Europeans, invariably buffalo
hunters, dependent upon this animal for food, cloth­
ing, shelter, and bone tools. Each nation was orga­
nized into a number of warrior societies, and pres­
tige came from hunting and fighting skills. Their
camps typically were arranged in a distinctive cir­
cular pattern. Many religious rituals, such as the Sun
Dance, were practiced throughout the plains region.
Sometimes geographic regions are not uniform
in climate and topography, so new discoveries do
164 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying Alive
F icure 6 . I
The culture-area concept was developed by North
American anthropologists in the early part of the 20th
century. This map shows the culture areas that have
been defined for North and Central America. Within
each, there is an overall similarity of native cultures,
as opposed to the differences that distinguish the
cultures of one area from those of all others.
not always spread from one group to another.
Moreover, within a culture area, variations be­
tween local environments exist, and these favor
variations in adaptation. The Great Basin of the
western United States— an area embracing Nevada
and Utah, with adjacent portions of California,
Oregon, Wyoming, and Idaho— is a case in point.4
4Steward, J. H. (1972). Theory o f culture change: The m eth­
odology o f multilinear evolution. Urbana: University of Illi­
nois Press.
C u ltu re typ e The concept of viewing a culture in term s of the relation of its particular technology to the environment
that technology exploits.
The Great Basin Shoshone Indians were divided
into a northern and a western group, both pri­
marily nomadic hunters and gatherers. In the
north, a relative abundance of game animals pro­
vided for the maintenance of large populations, re­
quiring a great deal of cooperation among local
groups. The western Shoshone, in contrast, were
almost entirely dependent upon the gathering of
wild plants for their subsistence, and as these var­
ied considerably in their seasonal and local avail­
ability, the western Shoshone were forced to cover
vast distances in search of food. Under such con­
ditions, it was most efficient to travel in groups of
but a few families, only occasionally coming to­
gether with other groups, and not always with the
same ones.
The Shoshone were not the only inhabitants
of the Great Basin. To the south lived the closely
related Paiutes. They, too, were hunter-gatherers
living under the same environmental conditions as
the Shoshone, but the Paiutes managed their food
resources more actively by diverting small streams
to irrigate wild crops. They did not plant and cul­
tivate these, but they could secure higher yields
than their northern neighbors. Hence, their popu­
lations were larger than those of the Shoshone,
and they led a less nomadic existence.
To deal with variations within a given region,
anthropologist Julian Steward proposed the con­
cept of culture type, or consideration of a culture
in terms of a particular technology and its rela­
tionship with the environmental features that tech­
nology is equipped to deal with. The example of
the Great Plains shows how technology helps de­
cide just which environmental features will be use­
ful. Those same prairies that once supported buf­
falo hunters now support grain farmers. The
Indians were prevented from farming the plains
not for environmental reasons, nor for lack of
knowledge about farming, since some of them,
such as the Cheyenne, had been farmers before
they moved onto the plains. They did not farm be­
cause the buffalo herds provided abundant food
without farming and because farming would have
been difficult without the steel-tipped plow that

julian H. Stew ard ( 1 9 0 2- 1972)
North American anthropologist Ju­
lian H. Steward developed an ap­
proach he called cultural ecology
— that is, the interaction of specific
cultures with their environments. Ini­
tially, Steward was struck by a num­
ber of similarities in the develop­
ment of urban civilizations in both
Peru and Mesoamerica and noted
that certain developments were par­
alleled in the urban civilizations of
the O ld World. He identified the
constants and abstracted from this his laws of cul­
tural development. Steward proposed three fun­
damental procedures for cultural ecology:
I. The interrelationship of a culture’s technology
and its environment must be analyzed. H o w
was needed to break up the compact prairie sod.
The farming potential of the Great Plains was sim­
ply not a relevant feature of the environment,
given the available resources and technology be­
fore the Europeans arrived.
C ulture C ore
Environment and technology are not the only fac­
tors that determine a society’s way of subsistence;
social and political organization also affect the ap­
plication of technology to the problem of staying
alive. To understand the rise of irrigation agricul­
ture in the great centers of ancient civilization,
such as China, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica,
it is important to note not only the technological
and environmental factors that made the building
of large-scale irrigation works possible but also the
social and political organization that made it pos­
sible to mobilize the many workers necessary to
C u ltu ral ecology. The study of the interaction of specific human cultures with their environment. > C u ltu re core.
The features of a culture that play a part in matters relating to the society’s way of making a living.
Patterns of S ubsistence CHAPTER 6 165
effectively does the culture take
advantage of available resources to
provide food and housing for its
members?
2. The patterns of behavior associ­
ated with a culture’s technology
m ust be analyzed. How do
members of the culture per­
form the w ork necessary for
their survival?
3. The relation between those
behavioral patterns and the rest
of the cultural system must be determined. H o w
does the w ork people do to survive affect their
attitudes and outlooks? How is their survival
behavior linked to their social activities and their
personal relationships?
build and maintain the systems. Researchers must
examine the monarchies and priesthoods that or­
ganized the work and decided where the water
would be used and how the agricultural products
of this collective venture would be distributed.
The cultural features that play a part in the
society’s way of making its living are called its cul­
ture core. This includes the society’s productive
techniques and its knowledge of the resources
available to it. It encompasses the patterns of la­
bor involved in applying those techniques to the
local environment. For example, do people work
every day for a fixed number of hours, or is most
work concentrated during certain times of the
year? The culture core also includes other aspects
of culture that bear on the production and distri­
bution of food. Examples of the way ideology can
indirectly affect subsistence can be seen in a num­
ber of cultures where religion may lead to failure
to use both locally available and nutritionally
166 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying Alive
valuable foods. One example is the taboo of the
Tutchone, a people native to the Yukon territory
of northwestern Canada, against eating otters,
young ravens, or crows, even though their meat is
perfectly edible. In their northern forest homeland,
seasonal food shortages are always a threat, but
even when faced with famine, the Tutchone ad­
here to their taboo. Instead of eating these ani­
mals, they resort to techniques such as lighting a
fire over an area mice previously used to melt the
frozen soil to gain access to bare roots the mice
had stored.5
A number of anthropologists, known as
ethnoscientists, are actively attempting to under­
stand the principles behind folk ideologies and the
way these principles usually help keep a people
alive. The Tsembaga, for example, avoid certain
low-lying, marshy areas, because they believe
those areas are inhabited by red spirits who pun­
ish trespassers. Western science, by contrast, in­
terprets those areas as the home of mosquitos and
the “punishment” as malaria. Whatever Western
people may think of the Tsembaga’s belief in red
spirits, it is a perfectly useful and reasonable one;
it keeps them away from marshy areas just as
surely as does a belief in malaria. To understand
why people in other cultures behave the way they
do, one must understand their system of thought
from their point of view as well as from one’s own.
N ot all such beliefs are as easy to translate as that
of the Tsembaga red spirits.
THE FOOD-FORAGING WAY
OF LIFE
At present, perhaps a quarter of a million people
— less then 0 .0 0 0 0 5 % of a world population of
almost 6 billion— support themselves chiefly
through hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plant
foods. Yet, before the domestication of plants and
animals, which began a mere 10,000 years ago, all
5Legros, D. (1997). Comment. Current Anthropology, 38,
617.
Ethnoscientists. Anthropologists who seek to understand the principles behind folk ideologies and the way these ide­
ologies help a people survive.
people supported themselves through some com­
bination of wild plant collection, hunting, and
fishing. O f all the people who have ever lived, 90%
have been food foragers, and it was as food for­
agers that we became truly human, acquiring the
basic habits of dealing with one another and with
the world around us that still guide the behavior
of individuals, communities, and nations. Thus, if
we want to know who we are and how we came
to be, if we want to understand the relationship
between environment and culture, and if we want
to comprehend the institutions of the food-pro­
ducing societies that have arisen since the devel­
opment of farming and animal husbandry, we
should turn first to the oldest and most universal
of fully human lifestyles, the food-foraging adap­
tation. The beginnings of this were examined in
Chapter 3.
When food foragers had the world to them­
selves some 10,000 years ago, they had their pick
of the best environments. These long since have
been appropriated by farming and, more recently,
by industrial societies. Today, most food foragers
are found only in the world’s marginal areas—
frozen Arctic tundra, deserts, and inaccessible
forests. These habitats, although they may not sup­
port large or dense agricultural societies, provide
a good living for food-foraging peoples.
Until recently it was assumed that a food-for-
aging life in these areas was difficult and that one
had to work hard just to stay alive. Behind this
view lies the Western notion of progress, which,
although widely accepted as a fact of nature, is ac­
tually nothing more than a culturally conditioned
bias. This predisposes one to see what is new as
generally preferable to what is old and to read hu­
man history as a more-or-less steady climb up an
evolutionary ladder of progress. Thus, many as­
sume that because food foraging as a way of life
is much older than industrial civilization, the lat­
ter must be intrinsically better than the former.
Hence, food-foraging societies are referred to as
“primitive,” “backward,” or “undeveloped,” la­
bels economists, politicians, and other members of
industrial or would-be industrial societies use to
express their disapproval. In reality, food-foraging
 Patterns of S ubsistence CHAPTER 6 167

societies are very highly developed, but in a way
quite different from industrial societies.
Detailed studies have revealed that life in food­
foraging societies is far from “solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short,” as philosopher Thomas
Hobbes asserted more than 300 years ago. Rather,
food foragers’ diets are well balanced and ample,
and these people are less likely to experience se­
vere famine than are farmers. While their mater­
ial comforts are limited, so are their desires. They
also have plenty of leisure time for concentrating
on family ties, social life, and spiritual develop­
ment. The Ju/’hoansi, a Bushman people of south­
ern Africa’s Kalahari Desert (see Chapter 5)—
scarcely what one would call a “lush” environ­
ment— obtain a diet in an average workweek of
about 20 hours that surpasses internationally rec­
ommended levels of nutrients. If one adds to this
the time spent making and repairing equipment,
the total rises to just a bit more than 23 hours,
while the equivalent of Western housework adds
another 19 hours. The grand total, just over 42
hours (44.5 for men, 40.1 for women), is still less
than the time spent on the job (currently 41 hours
for manufacturing jobs, just under 44 hours for
white-collar jobs), on maintenance tasks, and on
housework in North America today.6 Their lives
are rich in human warmth and aesthetic experi­
ence, displaying a balance of work and love, rit­
ual, and play many of us might envy. Small won­
der some anthropologists have gone so far as to
label this “the original affluent society.” The
Ju/’hoansi are not exceptional among food for­
agers today; one can only wonder about the level
of affluence their ancient counterparts who lived
in lusher environments achieved with more secure
and plentiful supplies of food.
All modern food foragers have had some de­
gree of interaction with neighbors whose ways of
life often differ radically from their own. Bushman
people such as the Ju/’hoansi, for example, have
interacted for at least 2 ,0 0 0 years with Bantu
farmers who kept cattle and sheep. Likewise, the
food-foraging Mbuti of the Republic of Congo’s
6Cashdan, E. (1989). Hunters and gatherers: Economic be­
havior in bands. In S. Planner (Ed.), E con om ic anthropology
(pp. 2 3 -2 4 ). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Human groups (including food foragers) do not exist in isolation except occa­
sionally, and even then not for long. The bicycle this Bushman of southern
Africa is riding is indicative of his links with the wider world. For 2 ,0 0 0 years,
Bushmen have been interacting regularly with farmers and pastoralists, and
much of the ivory used for the pianos so widely sought in 19th-century North
America came from the Bushmen.
168 part n C ulture and S urvival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying Alive
Ituri rain forest live in a complex patron-client re­
lationship with their neighbors, Bantu- and Su-
danic-speaking peoples who are farmers. They ex­
change meat and other products of the forest for
farm produce and manufactured goods. During
part of the year, they live in their patron’s village
and are incorporated into his kin group, even to
the point of allowing him to initiate their sons.
Although some modern food foragers, such as
the Mbuti, have continued to maintain traditional
ways while adapting to neighbors and traders, var­
ious other groups turned to this way of life after
giving up other modes of subsistence. Some, such
as the Cheyenne of the Great Plains, were once
farmers, while others, such as some of the Bush­
men of southern Africa, have at times been farm­
ers and at others pastoral nomads. Nor are such
transformations only of the past. In the 1980s,
when a world economic recession led to the aban­
donment of many sheep stations in the Australian
outback, a number of Aboriginal peoples returned
to food foraging, thereby emancipating themselves
Food foraging has by no means disappeared, even in
industrial societies such as that of the United States.
Some do it occasionally for pleasure, as the author
and his brother-in-law are shown doing in the top
photo— gathering wild mussels. Some, such as com­
mercial fishers, forage full-time, as do many homeless
people in order to survive.
from a dependency on the government they had
been forced into.
An important point that emerges from the pre­
ceding discussion is this: People in the world to­
day who subsist by hunting, fishing, and gather­
ing wild plants are not following an ancient way
of life because they do not know any better; they
are doing it either because they have been forced
by circumstances into a situation where foraging
is the best means of survival or because they sim­
ply prefer to live this way. In many cases, they find
such satisfaction in living the way they do that,
like the Hadza of northern Tanzania, they go to
great lengths to avoid adopting other ways of life.7
The fact is, foraging constitutes a rational response
to particular ecological, economic, and sociopo­
litical realities. Moreover, for at least 2,000 years,
a need has existed for specialist “commercial”
hunter-gatherers to supply the wild forest com­
modities that have helped feed east-west trade
since ancient times.8
7Hawkes, K., O ’Connell, J. F., & Blurton Jones, N. G.
(1997). Hadza women’s time allocation, offspring provision­
ing, and the evolution of long postmenopausal life spans.
Current Anthropology, 38, 552.
8Stiles, D. (1992). The hunter-gatherer ‘revisionist’ debate.
A nthropology Today, 8 (2), 15.

C haracteri s ti cs of the
Fo o d -F oragi ng L ife
Food foragers are by definition people who do not
farm or practice animal husbandry. Hence, they
must accommodate their places of residence to
naturally available food sources. Thus, it is no
wonder they move about a great deal. Such move­
ment is not aimless wandering but is done within
a fixed territory or home range. Some groups, such
as the Ju/’hoansi, who depend on the reliable and
highly drought-resistant Mongongo nut, may keep
to fairly fixed annual routes and cover only a re­
stricted territory. Others, such as the Great Basin
Shoshone, had to cover a wider territory; their
course was determined by the local availability of
the erratically productive pine nut. A crucial fac­
tor in this mobility is water availability. The dis­
tance between the food supply and water must not
be so great that more energy is required to fetch
water than can be obtained from the food.
Another characteristic of the food-foraging
adaptation is the small size of local groups, which
usually include fewer than 100 people. Although
no completely satisfactory explanation of group
size has yet been offered, it seems certain that both
ecological and social factors are involved. Among
those suggested are the carrying capacity of the
land, or the number of people who the available
resources can support at a given level of food-get-
ting techniques, and the density of social relations,
or roughly the number and intensity of interac­
tions among camp members. More people means
a higher social density, which, in turn, means more
opportunities for conflict.
Both carrying capacity and social density are
complex variables. Carrying capacity involves not
only the immediate presence of food and water but
also the tools and work necessary to secure them,
as well as short- and long-term fluctuations in their
availability. Social density involves not only the
number of people and their interactions but also
the circumstances and quality of those interac­
tions, as well as the mechanisms for regulating
them. A mob of a hundred angry strangers has a
C a rry in g capacity. The number of people the available resources can support at a given technological level. > D e n ­
sity o f social relations. Roughly, the number and intensity of interactions among the members of a camp o r other res­
idential unit.
Patterns of Subsistence CHAPTER 6 169
different social density than the same number of
neighbors enjoying themselves at a block party.
Among food-foraging populations, social den­
sity always seems in a state of flux as people spend
more or less time away from camp and as they
move to other camps, either on visits or more per­
manently. Among the Ju/’hoansi, for example, ex­
haustion of local food resources, conflict within
the group, or the desire to visit friends or relatives
living elsewhere cause people to leave one group
for another. As Richard Lee notes: “Ju love to go
visiting, and the practice acts as a safety valve
when tempers get frayed. In fact, the Ju usually
move, not when their food is exhausted, but rather
when only their patience is exhausted.”9 If a camp
has so many children as to create a burden for the
working adults, some young families may be en­
couraged to join others where fewer children live.
Conversely, groups with few children may actively
recruit families with young children in order to en­
sure the group’s survival. Redistribution of peo­
ple, then, is an important mechanism for regulat­
ing social density, as well as for assuring that the
size and composition of local groups is suited to
local variations in resources. Thus, cultural adap­
tations help transcend the limitations of the phys­
ical environment.
In addition to seasonal or local adjustments,
food foragers must make long-term adjustments
to resources. M ost food-foraging populations
seem to stabilize at numbers well below the car­
rying capacity of their land. In fact, the home
ranges of most food foragers could support from
three to five times as many people as they typi­
cally do. In the long run, it may be more adaptive
for a group to keep its numbers low, rather than
to expand indefinitely and risk destruction by a
sudden and unexpected natural reduction in food
resources. The population density of food-forag­
ing groups rarely exceeds one person per square
9Lee, R. (1993). The D ob e Ju /’hoansi (p. 65). Fort Worth,
T X : Harcourt Brace.
170 PART II C ulture and S urvival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
mile, a very low density, even though their re­
sources could support greater numbers.
How food-foraging peoples regulate popula­
tion size relates to how they care for their chil­
dren. Typically, they nurse their infants several
times each hour, even at night, over a period of as
many as 4 or 5 years. The constant stimulation of
the mothers’ nipples suppresses the hormones that
promote ovulation, making conception unlikely,
especially if their work keeps them physically ac­
tive and they do not have large stores of body fat
to draw on for energy.10 By continuing to nurse
10Small, M. F. (1997). Making connections. American Scien­
tist, 85, 503.
Frequent nursing of children over as many as 4 or 5
years acts to suppress ovulation among food foragers
such as Bushmen. As a consequence, women give
birth to relatively few offspring at widely spaced in­
tervals.
for several years, women give birth only at widely
spaced intervals, and the total number of offspring
remains low.
T he I mpact of Food For a g i ng
on H uman S oci ety
Although much has been written on the theoreti­
cal importance of hunting for shaping the sup­
posedly competitive and aggressive nature of the
human species, most anthropologists are uncon­
vinced by these arguments. To be sure, warlike
food-foraging people are known, but their behav­
ior is most often a response to pressure from ex­
pansionist states, a recent phenomenon in human
history (see Chapter 12). In the absence of such
pressures, food-foraging peoples are remarkably
unaggressive and place more emphasis on cooper­
ation than they do on competition. It does seem
likely, however, that three crucial elements of hu­
man social organization developed with food for­
aging. The first of these is the sexual division of
labor. Some form of this, however modified, has
been observed in all human societies and is prob­
ably as old as human culture (see Chapter 3). Con­
temporary Western society is somewhat tending to
do away with such division, as we shall see in the
next chapter. One may ask what the implications
are for future cooperative relationships between
men and women, a problem we will discuss fur­
ther in Chapters 8 and 9.
Subsistence and Gender
The hunting and butchering of large game as well
as the processing of hard or tough raw materials
are almost universally masculine occupations.
Women’s work, by contrast, usually consists of
gathering and processing a variety of vegetal
foods, as well as other domestic chores. Histori­
cally, this pattern appears to have its origin in an
earlier era, when males, who were twice the size
of females, got meat by scavenging from the car­
casses of dead animals, butchered it with stone
tools, and shared it with females (see Chapter 3).
The latter, for their part, gathered wild plant
foods, probably using digging sticks and carrying
devices made of soft, perishable materials. As the
hunting of live animals replaced scavenging as a

source of meat and the biological differences be­
tween the sexes were reduced to minor propor­
tions, the essence of the original division of labor
was maintained nonetheless.
Among food foragers today, the work of
women is no less arduous than that of men.
Ju/’hoansi women, for example, may walk as
many as 12 miles a day two or three times a week
to gather food, carrying not only their children but
also, on the return home, anywhere from 15 to 33
pounds of food. Still, they do not have to travel
quite so far afield as do men on the hunt, nor is
their work usually quite so dangerous. Finally,
their tasks require less rapid mobility, do not need
complete and undivided attention, and are readily
resumed after interruption. All of this is compat­
ible with the biological differences that remain be­
tween the sexes. Certainly women who are preg­
nant, or have infants to nurse, cannot as easily
travel long distances in pursuit of game as men
can. In addition to wide-ranging mobility, the suc­
cessful hunter also must be able to mobilize rapidly
high bursts of energy. Although some women cer­
tainly can run faster than some men, it is a fact
that in general men can run faster than women,
Patterns of S ubsistence CHAPTER 6 171
even when the latter are not pregnant or encum­
bered with infants. Because human females must
be able to give birth to infants with relatively large
heads, their pelvic structure differs from that of
human males to a greater degree than the male/fe-
male structures differ among most other species of
mammals. As a consequence, the human female is
not as well equipped as the human male for rapid
and prolonged mobility.
To say differing sex roles among food foragers
are compatible with the biological differences be­
tween men and women is not to say they are bio­
logically determined. Among the Great Plains In­
dians of North America, for example, are numerous
reported cases of women who gained fame as
hunters and warriors, both regarded as men’s ac­
tivities. One case even involves a Gros Ventre girl
the Crow captured who became one of their chiefs,
so accomplished was she at what were considered
masculine pursuits. Conversely, any young man
who found masculine pursuits uncongenial could
assume the dress and demeanor of women, pro­
vided he had the necessary skills to achieve success
in feminine activities. Although sexual preference
might enter into the decision to assume a feminine
172 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
identity, not all such individuals were homosexu­
als, nor did all homosexuals assume a female role.
Clearly, sexual preference was less important than
occupation and appearance. In fact, the sexual di­
vision of labor is often far less rigid among food
foragers than it is in most other types of societies.
Thus, Ju/’hoansi men, willingly and without em­
barrassment, as the occasion demands, will gather
wild plant foods, build huts, and collect water, even
though all are regarded as women’s work.
The nature of women’s work in food-foraging
societies is such that women can do it while tak­
ing care of children. They also can do it in com­
pany with other women, which helps alleviate
somewhat the monotony of the work. In the past,
the cultural gender biases of European and North
American anthropologists caused them to under­
estimate the contributions the food-gathering ac­
tivities of women made to the survival of their
group. We now know that modern food foragers
may obtain up to 60 or 7 0 % of their diets from
plant foods, with perhaps some fish and shellfish
women provide (the exceptions tend to be food
foragers living in the far north, where plant foods
are not available for much of the year).
Although women in food-foraging societies
may spend some time each day gathering plant
food, men do not spend all or even the greatest
part of their time hunting. The amount of energy
expended in hunting, especially in hot climates, is
often greater than the energy return from the kill.
Too much time spent searching out game actually
might be counterproductive. Energy itself is derived
primarily from plant carbohydrates, and it is usu­
ally the female gatherer who brings in the bulk of
the calories. A certain amount of meat in the diet,
though, guarantees high-quality protein that is less
easily obtained from plant sources, for meat con­
tains exactly the right balance of all the amino acids
(the building blocks of protein) the human body
requires. No single plant food does this, and in or­
der to get by without meat, people must hit on ex­
actly the right combination of plants to provide the
essential amino acids in the correct proportions.
Food Sharing
A second key feature of human social organiza­
tion associated with food foraging is the sharing
of food between adults, something quite rare
among nonhuman primates. It is easy enough to
see why sharing takes place, with women supply­
ing one kind of food and men another. Among the
Ju/’hoansi, women have control over the food they
collect and can share it with whomever they
choose. Men, by contrast, are constrained by rules
that specify how much meat is to be distributed
and to whom. Thus, a hunter has little effective
control over the meat he brings into camp. For the
individual hunter, meat sharing is really a way of
storing it for the future; his generosity, obligatory
though it might be, gives him a claim on the fu­
ture kills of other hunters. As a cultural trait, food
sharing has the obvious survival value of distrib­
uting resources needed for subsistence.
Although carnivorous animals often share
food, the few examples of food sharing among non­
human primate adults all involve groups of male
chimpanzees cooperating in a hunt and later shar­
ing the spoils, frequently with adult females as well
as juveniles. This suggests that the origins of food
sharing and the division of labor are related to a
shift in food habits from infrequent to more fre­
quent meat eating. This change seems to have oc­
curred with the appearance of the earliest members
of the genus H om o some 2.5 million years ago.
A final distinctive feature of the food-foraging
economy is the importance of the camp as the cen­
ter of daily activity and the place where food shar­
ing actually occurs. Among nonhuman primates,
and probably among human ancestors until they
controlled the use of fire, activities tend to be di­
vided between feeding areas and sleeping areas,
and the latter tend to be shifted each evening. His­
torically known food-foraging people, however,
live in camps of some permanence, ranging from
the dry-season camps of the Ju/’hoansi that serve
for the entire winter to the wet-season camps of
the Hadza, oriented to berry picking and honey
collecting, that serve for a few weeks at most.
Moreover, human camps are more than sleeping
areas; people are in and out all day, eating, work­
ing, and socializing in camps to a greater extent
than any other primates.
Cultural Adaptations and Material
Technology
The mobility of food-foraging groups may depend
on the availability of water, as among the

Ju/’hoansi; of pine nuts, as in the Shoshone ex­
ample; or of game animals and other seasonal re­
sources, as among the Hadza. Hunting styles and
equipment also may play a role in determining
population size and movement. Some M buti hunt
with nets. This requires the cooperation of 7 to 30
families; consequently, their camps are relatively
large. The camps of Mbuti who hunt with bow
and arrow number from 3 to 6 families. Too many
archers in the same locale means each must travel
a great distance daily to keep out of another’s way.
Only during midsummer do the archers collect
into larger camps for religious ceremonies, matri­
monial arrangements, and social exchange. At this
time the bowmen turn to communal beat-hunts.
Without nets they are less effective than their
neighbors, and only when the net hunters are
widely dispersed in the pursuit of honey (and not
competing for meat) can the archers come together
and still hunt.
Egalitarian Society
An important characteristic of the food-foraging
society is its egalitarianism. Food foragers are usu­
ally highly mobile, and, lacking animal or me­
chanical transportation, they must be able to travel
without many encumbrances, especially on food­
getting expeditions. The average weight of an in­
dividual’s personal belongings among the
Ju/’hoansi, for example, is just under 25 pounds.
The material goods of food foragers must be lim­
ited to the barest essentials, which include imple­
ments for hunting, gathering, fishing, building,
and making tools, cooking utensils, traps, and
nets. They have little chance to accumulate luxu­
ries or surplus goods, and the fact no one owns
significantly more than others helps to limit sta­
tus differences. Age and sex are usually the only
sources of significant status differences.
It is important to realize that status differences
by themselves do not imply any necessary in­
equality, a point that all too often has been mis­
understood, especially where relations between
men and women are concerned. In traditional
food-foraging societies, nothing necessitated spe­
cial deference of women to men. To be sure,
women may be excluded from some rituals males
participate in, but the reverse is also true. M ore­
over, the fruits of women’s labor are not controlled
Patterns of S ubsistence CHAPTER 6 173
by men but by the women themselves. Nor do
women sacrifice their autonomy, even in societies
in which male hunting, rather than female gath­
ering, brings in the bulk of the food. Such was the
case, for example, among the Montagnais and
Naskapi people of Labrador. The hunt was over­
whelmingly important in their society. For their
part, women manufactured clothing and other ne­
cessities but provided much less of the food than
is common among food foragers. Until recently,
women as well as men could be shamans. Never­
theless, women were excluded from ritual feasts
having to do with hunting, but men were excluded
from ritual feasts held by women. Basically, each
sex carried out its own activities, with neither med­
dling in those of the other. Early missionaries to
the Montagnais and Naskapi lamented that men
had no inclination to make their wives obey them
and worked long and hard to convince the Indi­
ans that civilization required men to impose their
authority on women. But after 300 years of try­
ing, they still have achieved only limited success.
Food foragers make no attempt to accumulate
surplus foodstuffs, often an important source of
status in agrarian societies. This does not mean,
however, they live constantly on the verge of star­
vation. Their environment is their storehouse, and,
except in the coldest climates (where a surplus
must be stored to see people through the lean sea­
son) or in times of acute ecological disaster, some
food is always to be found in a group’s territory.
174 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
Because food resources are typically distributed
equally throughout the group (share and share
alike is the order of the day), no one achieves the
wealth or status that hoarding might bring. In such
a society, wealth is a sign of deviance rather than
a desirable characteristic.
The food forager’s concept of territory con­
tributes as much to social equality as it does to the
equal distribution of resources. M ost groups use
home ranges where access to resources is open to
all members: What is available to one is available
to all. If a Mbuti hunter discovers a honey tree,
he has first rights; but when he has taken his share,
others have a turn. In the unlikely possibility he
does not take advantage of his discovery, others
will. No one owns the tree; the system is first come,
first served. Therefore, knowledge of the existence
of food resources circulates quickly throughout the
entire group.
Families move easily from one group to an­
other, settling in any group where they have a pre­
vious kinship tie. (Although the idea of food for­
agers being patrilocal— that is, a wife moving to
her husband’s group— is still held by some, as dis­
cussed in Chapter 1, this represents a historic re­
sponse to European exploration and colonization.)
As noted earlier, the composition of groups among
food foragers is always shifting. This loose atti­
tude toward group membership promotes the
widest access to resources while maintaining a bal­
ance between populations and resources.
The food-forager pattern of generalized ex­
change, or sharing without any expectation of a
direct return, also serves the ends of balancing re­
source distribution and social equality. A
Ju/’hoansi man or woman spends as much as two
thirds of his or her day visiting others or receiv­
ing guests; during this time, many exchanges of
gifts occur. Refusing to share— hoarding— would
be morally wrong. By sharing whatever is at hand,
the Ju/’hoansi achieve social leveling and assure
their right to share in others’ windfalls.
FOOD-PRODUCING SOCIETY
As we saw in Chapter 3, it was toolmaking that
allowed humans to consume significant amounts
of meat as well as plant foods. The next truly mo­
mentous event in human history was the domes­
tication of plants and animals (Figure 6.2). The
transition from food forager to food producer (the
available evidence suggests this change began
9,000 to 11,000 years ago) has been termed rev­
olutionary. By changing the way they provided for
their subsistence, people changed the very nature
of human society.
Just why this change occurred is one of the
important questions in anthropology. Since food
production by and large requires more work than
food foraging, is more monotonous, is often a less
secure means of subsistence, and requires people
to eat more of the types of foods foragers eat only
when they have no other choice, it is unlikely peo­
ple voluntarily became food producers. Initially, it
appears food production arose as a largely unin­
tended by-product of existing food-management
practices. By chance, these promoted the develop­
ment of new varieties of particular plants and an­
imals, which came to take on increasing impor­
tance for peoples’ subsistence. Later on, many
populations adopted farming out of necessity in
situations where population growth outstripped
peoples’ ability to sustain themselves through food
foraging. For them, food production became a
subsistence option of last resort.
T he S ettled L ife of Fa rme rs
Whatever the causes, one of the most significant
correlates of this new way of life was the devel­
opment of permanent settlements where families
of farmers lived together. As food foragers stay
close to their food by moving around, farmers stay
close to their food by staying near their gardens.
The task of food production lent itself to a dif­
ferent kind of social organization; the hard work
of some group members could provide food for
all, thus freeing some people to devote their time
to inventing and manufacturing the equipment
needed for a new sedentary way of life. Harvest­
ing and digging tools, pottery for storage and
cooking, clothing made of woven textiles, and
housing made of stone, wood, or sun-dried bricks
were some of the results of this combination of
new sedentary living conditions and altered divi­
sion of labor.
 Pa t t e r n s of S u b s is t e n c e CH APTER 6 175

Fi« * r[ t i l
Early plant and animal domestication occurred in such widely scattered places as southwest Asia (A l), central
Africa (A2), China (B l), Southeast Asia (B2), Mesoamerica (C l), South America (C2), and eastern North
America (C3).

The transition also brought important changes

in social structure. At first, social relations were
egalitarian and hardly different from those that
prevailed among food foragers. As settlements
grew, however, and large numbers of people be­
gan to share the same important resources, such
as land and water, society became more elabo­
rately structured. Multifamily kinship groups such
as lineages, which people belong to by virtue of
descent from a common ancestor but which do not
commonly play a large part in the social order of
food foragers, were probably the organizing units.
As will be discussed in Chapter 10, they provide
While it supports larger and more sedentary popula­
a convenient way to handle the distinctive prob­ tions than food foraging, farming generally requires
lems of land use and ownership that arise in food- longer and more monotonous work.
producing societies.
Humans adapted to this new settled life in a
number of ways. For example, some societies be­ cause these gardeners typically used a given gar­
came horticultural— small communities of gar­ den plot for only a few years before abandoning
deners working with simple hand tools and using it in favor of a new one, horticulture may be said
neither irrigation nor the plow. Horticulturists to constitute an extensive form of agriculture.
usually cultivate several varieties of crops together Production is for subsistence, rather than to pro­
in small gardens they have cleared by hand. Be- duce a surplus for sale; however, the politics of
176 PART II C ulture and Su r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n , and St a y in g A live

horticultural communities commonly involve pe­
riodic feasts, when substantial amounts of produce
and other gifts are given away to gain prestige.
Such prestige is the basis for the political power
of leaders, who play important roles in produc­
tion, exchange, and resource allocation.
One of the most widespread forms of horti­
culture, especially in the tropics, is slash and burn,
or swidden farming. Unfortunately, widespread
use of fire to clear vast tracts of Amazonian or In­
donesian forest for cattle raising and other devel­
opment schemes has led many people to see slash-
and-burn farming in a negative light. In fact, it is
an ecologically sophisticated and sustainable way
of raising food, especially in the tropics, when car­
ried out under the right conditions: low popula­
tion densities and adequate amounts of land. Only
when pursued in the absence of these conditions
does the practice lead to environmental degrada­
tion and destruction. Properly carried out, swid­
den farming mimics the diversity of the natural
ecosystem; moreover, growing several crops to­
gether in the same field makes them less vulnera­
ble to pests and plant diseases than growing sin­
gle crops. Not only is the system ecologically
sound, but also it is far more energy efficient than
farming as carried out in developed countries such
as the United States, which requires the input of
more energy than comes out of the system. By con­
trast, for every unit of energy expended, slash-and-
burn farming produces between 10 and 20 units
in return. A good example of how such a system
works is provided by the Mekranoti Kayapo In­
dians of Brazil’s Amazon forest.

Sw idden farm in g . An extensive form of horticulture in which the natural vegetation is cut, the slash is subsequently
burned, and crops then are planted among the ashes.

^ 4 4 4 4. k 4 i 4 k. 4 a A 4, 4. A. A 4 4 A A .2,. 4,

The planting o f a Mekranoti garden always follows the same sequence. First,
men clear the forest and then burn the debris. In the ashes, both men and
women plant sweet potatoes, manioc, bananas, corn, pumpkins, papaya, sugar
cane, pineapple, cotton, tobacco, and annatto, whose seeds yield achiote.the
red dye used for painting ornaments and people’s bodies. Since the Mekra­
Gardens of noti don't bother with weeding, the forest gradually invades the garden. Af­
te r the second year only manioc, sweet potatoes, and bananas remain. And
the after three years or so there is usually nothing left but bananas. Except for
a few tree species that require hundreds o f years to grow, the area will look
Mekranoti like the original forest twenty-five or thirty years later.
Kayapo11 This gardening technique, known as slash-and-burn agriculture, is one of
the most common in the world.The early European settlers in N orth Amer­
ica adopted the method from the surrounding Indians, although it had been
used in an earlier period in Europe as well. A t one time critics condemned
the technique as wasteful and ecologically destructive, but today we know
that, especially in the humid tropics, slash-and-burn agriculture may be one
o f the best gardening techniques possible.
Anthropologists were among the first to note the possibly disastrous
consequences o f U.S.-style agriculture in the tropics. Continuous high tem­
peratures encourage the growth o f the microorganisms that cause rot, so

“ Adapted from Werner, D. (1990). Am azon journey (pp. 105-112). Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
 Pa t t e r n s of Su b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 177

organic matter quickly breaks down into simple minerals. The heavy rains
dissolve these valuable nutrients and carry them deep into the soils, out o f
the reach o f plants. The tropical forest maintains its richness because the
heavy foliage shades the earth, cooling It and inhibiting the growth o f the
decomposers. A good deal o f the rain is captured by leaves before ever
reaching the ground. When a tree falls in the forest, and begins to rot, other
plants quickly absorb the nutrients that are released. W ith open-field agri­
culture, the sun heats the earth, the decomposers multiply, and the rains
quickly leach the soils o f their nutrients. In a few years a lush forest, if cleared
for open one-crop agriculture, can be transformed into a barren wasteland.
Slash-and-burn agriculture is less o f a problem than open-field agricul­
ture. A few months after planting, banana and papaya trees shade the soil,
just as the larger forest trees do. The mixing o f different kinds o f plants in
the same area means that minerals can be absorbed as soon as they are re­
leased— corn picks up nutrients very fast, while manioc is slow. Also, the
small and temporary clearings mean that the forest can quickly reinvade its
lost territory.
Because decomposers need moisture as well as warmth, the long Mekra-
noti dry season could alter this whole picture o f soil ecology. But soil sam­
ples from recently burned Mekranoti fields and the adjacent forest floor
showed that, as in most o f the humid tropics, the high fertility o f the Indi­
ans' garden plots comes from the trees that are burned there, not from the
soil, as in temperate climes.
Getting a good burn is a tricky operation. Perhaps fo r this reason its
timing was left to the more experienced and knowledgeable members o f
the community. If the burn is too early, the rains will leach out the minerals
in the ash before planting time. If too late, the debris will be too wet to burn
properly. Then, insects and weeds that could plague the plants will not die
and few minerals will be released into the soil. If the winds are too weak,
the burn will not cover the entire plot. If they are to o strong, the fire can
get out o f hand. In the past, the Mekranoti accidentally burned down villages
several times because o f fires that spread too fast.
Ronaldo remembered an incident when a garden fire caught some o f
the houses in the village. Fearing the flames would spread from one rooftop
to the next until the entire village circle was ablaze, the Indians ran inside
their homes and gathered their belongings to set them in the center o f the
village plaza. In the past, this reaction made good sense. Constructions were
simpler; and people had fewer belongings to lose. Since moves were frequent
anyway, destroying a village in smoke was not very serious. A fire could even
get rid o f insect pests that infest villages after many years. But this time peo­
ple were more concerned. Ronaldo finally persuaded some o f the Indians to
chop down some o f the houses next to the burning structures and the vil­
lage was saved.
Shortly after the burning o f the garden plots and the clearing away o f
some o f the charred debris, people began the long job o f planting, which
took up all o f September and lasted into October Takakngo returned in
time to help Kaxti and his wife with their garden. Although he could not walk
well enough to work, Kaxti could accompany his wife, Nhakkamro, to the
garden and take care o f their children, while she did most o f the planting.
178 PART II C u lt u r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n , and St a y in g A liv e

In the center o f the circular garden plot the women dug holes and threw
in a few pieces o f sweet potatoes. A fter covering the tubers with dirt they
usually asked a male— one o f their husbands or anyone else who happened
to be nearby— to stomp on the mound and make a ritual noise resembling
a Bronx cheer This magic would ensure a large crop, I was told. Forming a
large ring around the sweet potatoes, the Indians rapidly thrust pieces of
manioc stems into the ground, one after the other
W hen grown, the manioc stems form a dense barrier to the sweet
potato patch, and some o f the plants must be cut down to gain entrance.
Outside o f the ring o f manioc, the women plant yams, cotton, sugar cane,
and annatto. Banana stalks and papaya trees, planted by simply throwing the
seeds on the ground, form the outermost circle. The Indians also plant corn,
pumpkins, watermelons, and pineapple throughout the garden. These grow
rapidly and are harvested long before the manioc matures. The garden ap­
pears to change magically from corn and pumpkins to sweet potatoes and
manioc w ithout replanting.
Mekranoti gardens grew well. A few Indians complained now and then
about a peccary that had eaten a watermelon they were looking forward
to eating, o r that had reduced their corn harvest. Capybara, large rodents
usually found near the river banks, were known for their love o f sugar cane,
but in general the animals seemed to leave the crops alone. Even the leaf­
cutting ants that are problems in other areas did not bother the Mekranoti.
Occasionally a neighbor who had not planted a new garden would make off
with a prized first-year crop, such as pumpkin, watermelon, or pineapple. But
even these thefts were rare. In general, the Mekranoti could depend on har­
vesting whatever they planted.
Eventually, I wanted to calculate the productivity o f Mekranoti gardens.
Agronomists knew very little about slash-and-burn agriculture.They were ac­
customed to experiments in which a field was given over to one crop only,
and in which the harvest happened all at once. Here, the plants were all
mixed together and people harvested piecemeal whenever they needed
something. The manioc could stay in the ground, growing for several years
before it was dug up.
I began measuring off areas o f gardens to count how many manioc
plants, ears o f corn, or pumpkins were found there. The women thought it
strange to see me struggling through the tangle o f plants to measure off ar­
eas, 10 meters by 10 meters, placing string along the borders, and then count­
ing what was inside. Sometimes I asked a woman to dig up all o f the sweet
potatoes within the marked-off area. The requests were bizarre, but the
women cooperated just the same, holding on to the ends o f the measuring
tapes, or sending their children to help. For some plants, like bananas, I sim­
ply counted the number o f clumps o f stalks in the garden, and the number
o f banana bunches I could see growing in various clumps. By watching how
long it to ok the bananas to grow, from the time I could see them until they
were harvested, I could calculate a garden's total banana yield per year
After returning from the field, I was able to combine the time alloca­
tion data with the garden productivities to get an idea o f how hard the
Mekranoti need to w ork to survive. The data showed that for every hour
o f gardening one Mekranoti adult produces almost 18,000 kilocalories of
 Pa t t e r n s of Su b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 179

food. (As a basis fo r comparison, people in the United States consume ap­
proximately 3,000 kilocalories o f food per day.) As insurance against bad
years, and in case they receive visitors from other villages, they grow far more
produce than they need. But even so, they don't need to w ork very hard to
survive. A look at the average amount o f time adults spend on different tasks
every week shows just how easy going life in horticultural societies can be:

8.5 hours Gardening

6.0 hours Hunting
1.5 hours Fishing
1.0 hour Gathering wild foods
33.5 hours All other jobs

Altogether the Mekranotl need to w ork less than 5 1 hours a week, and
this includes getting to and from work, cooking, repairing broken tools, and
all o f the other things we normally don't count as part o f our w ork week.

Technologically more complex than the horti­

Although we tend to think of people as either food
foragers or food producers, there are numerous exam­
ples of people like the Papago, shown here, who rely
on a mix of wild and domesticated resources.
culturists are intensive agriculturalists, whose
practices usually result in far more modification
of the landscape and ecology than those of horti-
culturalists. Employed are techniques such as irri­
gation, fertilizers, and the wooden or metal plow
harnessed draft animals pull or, in the so-called
developed countries of the world, tractors to pro­
duce food on large plots of land. Such farmers can
grow sufficient food to provide not just for their
own needs but for those of various full-time spe­
cialists as well. This surplus may be sold for cash,
or it may be coerced out of the farmers through
taxes or rent paid to landowners. These landown­
ers and other specialists typically reside in sub­
stantial towns or cities where political power is
centralized in the hands of a socially elite class of
people. The distinction between horticulturalist
and intensive agriculturalist is not always an easy
one to make. For example, the Hopi Indians of
the North American Southwest traditionally em­
ployed irrigation in their farming while using sim­
ple hand tools. Moreover, they produced for their
own immediate needs and lived in towns without
centralized political government.
As food producers, people have developed
several major crop complexes: two adapted to
seasonal uplands and two to tropical wetlands. In
the dry uplands of southwest Asia, for example,
180 part n C u lt u r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n , and St a y in g A live

This swidden plot in Chiapas, Mexico, shows what such gardens look like after
slash has been burned but before the crops have begun to grow. Although it
looks destructive, if properly carried out, swidden farming is an ecologically
sound way of growing crops in the tropics.

they time their agricultural activities with the
rhythm of the changing seasons, cultivating wheat,
barley, flax, rye, and millet. In the tropical wet­
lands of Southeast Asia, rice and tubers such as
yams and taro are cultivated. In the Americas, peo­
ple have adapted to environments similar to those
of the Old World but have cultivated different
plants. Maize, beans, squash, and the potato are
typically grown in drier areas, whereas manioc is
extensively grown in the tropical wetlands.
P a s t o r a l i s m : T he B a k h t i a r i
Before continuing about agriculturalists, we
should examine one of the more striking examples
of human adaptation to the environment, that of
the pastoralist. Pastoralists live in societies that
view animal husbandry as the proper way to make
a living and consider movement of all or part of
the society a normal and natural part of life. This
cultural aspect is vitally important, for although
some (but not all) pastoral nomads are dependent
on nearby farmers for some of their supplies, and
may even earn more from nonpastoral sources
than from their own herds, the concept of nomadic
pastoralism remains central to their identities.
These societies are built around a pastoral eco­
nomic specialization but imbued with values far
beyond just doing a job. This distinguishes them
from American ranchers, who likewise have a pas­
toral economic specialization but identify cultur­
ally with a larger society.12 It also sets them apart
from food foragers, migrant farm workers, cor­
porate executives, and others who are nomadic but
not pastoralists.
Pastoralism is an effective way of living in
places that are too dry, too cold, too steep, or too
rocky for farming, such as the arid grasslands that
stretch eastward from North Africa through the
12Barfield, T. J. (1984). Introduction. Cultural Survival
Quarterly, S, 2.

P a s to ra lis t. Member of a society that regards animal husbandry as the ideal way of making a living and considers move­
ment of all o r part of the society a normal and natural way of life.
 Pa t t e r n s of S u b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 181

Pastoral nomadism is an adaptation that works in many parts of the world that are too
hot, too cold, or too dry for farming. In high elevations in Peru and Bolivia, the Incas and
other native people relied on the herding of llamas and alpacas.

Arabian Desert, across the plateau of Iran and into

Turkestan and Mongolia. In Africa and southwest
Asia alone, more than 21 million people follow
pastoral nomadic ways of life. One group living
in this belt of arid lands is the Bakhtiari, a fiercely
independent people who live in the south Zagros
Mountains of western Iran, where they tend herds
of goats and fat-tailed sheep.13 Although some of
the Bakhtiari own horses and most own donkeys,
they use these only for transport; the animals these
people’s lives revolve around are the sheep and
goat.

u Material on the Bakhtiari is drawn mainly from the fol­

lowing: Barth, F. (1960). Nomadism in the mountain and
plateau areas of south west Asia. The problem s o f the arid
zone (pp. 34 1 -3 5 5 ). Paris: UNESCO. Coon, C. S. (1958).
Caravan: The story o f the Middle East (2nd ed., Chap. 13)
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Salzman, P. C.
(1967). Political organization among nomadic peoples. Pro­
ceedings o f the American P hilosophical Society, III, 115—
131.
The harsh, bleak environment dominates the
lives of the Bakhtiari: It determines when and
where they move their flocks, the clothes they
wear, the food they eat, and even their dispositions
— they have been called “mountain bears” by Iran­
ian townspeople. In the Zagros are ridges that
182 part n C u lt u r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n ,
In East Africa, pastoral peoples are not dependent on
farmers the way that pastoralists of the Middle East
are.
reach altitudes of 1 2,000 to 14,000 feet. Their
steep, rocky trails and escarpments challenge the
hardiest and ablest climbers; jagged peaks, deep
chasms, and watercourses with thunderous tor­
rents also make living and traveling hazardous.
The pastoral life of the Bakhtiari revolves
around two seasonal migrations to find better graz­
ing lands for the flocks. Twice a year the people
move: in the fall from their summer quarters in the
mountains and in the spring from their winter
quarters in the lowlands. This pattern of strict sea­
sonal movement is known as transhumance. In
the fall, before the harsh winter comes to the moun­
tains, the nomads load their tents and other
belongings on donkeys and drive their flocks down
to the warm plains that border Iraq in the west;
grazing land here is excellent and well watered
in the winter. In the spring, when the low-lying
pastures dry up, the Bakhtiari return to the moun­
tain valleys, where a new crop of grass is sprout­
ing. For this trek, they split into five groups, each
T ran sh u m ance. Pattern of strict seasonal movement between different environmental zones.
and S t a y in g A live
containing about 5,000 individuals and 50,000
animals.
The return trip north is the more dangerous
because the mountain snows are melting and the
gorges are full of turbulent, ice-cold water rushing
down from the mountain peaks. This long trek is
further impeded by the kids and lambs born in
the spring, just before migration. Where the wa­
tercourses are not very deep, the nomads ford
them. Deeper channels, including one river a
half-mile wide, are crossed with the help of inflat­
able goatskin rafts, which they place infants, the
elderly and infirm, and lambs and kids on; the
rafts are then pushed by the men swimming along­
side in the icy water. If they work from dawn to
dusk, the nomads can get all of the people and
animals across the river in 5 days. Not surprisingly,
dozens of sheep are drowned each day at the river
crossing.
In the mountain passes, where a biting wind
numbs the skin and brings tears to the eyes, the
Bakhtiari must make their way through slippery
unmelted snow. Climbing the steep escarpments is
dangerous, and the stronger men often must carry
their own children and the newborn animals on
their shoulders as they make their way over the
ice and snow to the lush mountain valley that is
their destination. During each migration the peo­
ple may cover as many as 200 miles, and the trek
can take weeks, because the flocks travel slowly
and require constant attention. The nomads have
fixed routes and a somewhat definite itinerary;
generally, they know where they should be and
when they should be there. On the drive the men
and boys herd the sheep and goats, while the
women and children along with the tents and other
equipment ride the donkeys.
When they reach their destination, the
Bakhtiari live in black tents of goat-hair cloth the
women wove. The tents have sloping tops and
vertical sides held up by wooden poles. Inside,
the furnishings are sparse: Rugs the women wove
or heavy felt pads cover the floor. Against one
side of the tent are blankets; containers made of
goatskin, copper utensils, clay jugs, and bags of

grain line the opposite side. Bakhtiari tents pro­
vide an excellent example of adaptation to a
changing environment. The goat-hair cloth retains
heat and repels water during the winter and
keeps out heat during the summer. These portable
homes are very easy to erect, take down, and
transport.
Sheep and goats are central to Bakhtiari sub­
sistence. The animals provide milk, cheese, butter,
meat, hides, and wool, which is woven into
clothes, tents, storage bags, and other essentials by
the women or sold in towns. The people also en­
gage in very limited horticulture; they own lands
that contain orchards, and the nomads consume
the fruit or sell it to townspeople. The division of
labor is according to sex. The men, who take great
pride in their marksmanship and horsemanship,
engage in a limited amount of hunting on horse­
back, but their chief task is the tending of the
flocks. The women cook, sew, weave, care for the
children, and carry fuel and water.
The Bakhtiari have their own system of jus­
tice, including laws and a penal code. They are
governed by tribal leaders, or khan s, men who are
elected or inherit their office. Because men own
and control the livestock, women lack control of
the economy and are relegated to the domestic
sphere. This prominence of men in both economic
and political affairs is common among pastoral
nomads; theirs is very much a man’s world. Thus,
women typically occupy subordinate positions vis-
à-vis men, even though elderly women eventually
may gain a good deal of power. M ost of the
Bakhtiari khan s grew wealthy when oil was dis­
covered in their homeland around the start of the
20th century, and many of them are well educated,
having attended Iranian or foreign universities.
Despite this, and although some of them own
houses in cities, the khan s spend much of their
lives among their people.
I ntensive Agriculture and
Nonindustrial Cities
With the intensification of agriculture, some farm­
ing communities grew into cities (Figure 6.3),
where individuals who previously had been en­
gaged in farming were freed to specialize in other
Pa tt e r n s of Su b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 183
activities. Thus, craft specialists such as carpen­
ters, blacksmiths, sculptors, basketmakers, and
stonecutters contribute to the vibrant, diversified
life of the city.
Unlike horticulturalists and pastoralists, city
dwellers are only indirectly concerned with adapt­
ing to their natural environment. Far more im­
portant is the need to adapt to living with and get­
ting along with their fellow urbanites. To an
important degree, this is true as well for the farm­
ers who provide the city dwellers with their food.
Under the political control of an urban elite, much
of what the farmers do is governed by economic
forces they have little, if any, control over. Ur­
banization brings with it a new social order:
Marked inequality develops as society becomes
stratified and people are ranked according to their
gender, the kind of work they do, or the family
they are born into. As social institutions cease to
operate in simple, face-to-face groups of relatives,
friends, and acquaintances, they become more for­
mal and bureaucratic, with specialized political in­
stitutions.
With urbanization came a sharp increase in
the tempo of human cultural evolution. Writing
was invented, trade intensified and expanded, the
wheel and the sail were invented, and metallurgy
and other crafts were developed. In many early
cities, monumental buildings, such as royal palaces
and temples, were built by thousands of men, of­
ten slaves taken in war; these feats of engineering
still amaze modern architects and engineers. The
inhabitants of these buildings— the ruling class
184 PART II C ulture and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n ,
A gricultural Development
and the Anthropologist
igh up in the Andes mountains o f South America,
H at an elevation o f 2 miles above sea level, lies the
vast intermontane plain known as the Bolivian Altiplano.
On this plain, not far from where the modern countries
o f Bolivia, Chile, and Peru meet, is Lake Titicaca, the
world's highest navigable body o f water A kilometer or
so from this lake's south end stands the elaborate, mon­
umental architecture o f Tiwanaku, one o f the most im­
pressive archaeological sites in the region that, 500 years
ago, constituted the southern quarter o f the Inca Em­
pire. Today, the region is a bleak and barren landscape,
where some 20,000 Aymara Indians have a hard time
producing enough food for their own survival.
Once thought to be strictly a ceremonial center
with a small resident population, to which pilgrimages
were made periodically from vast distances, we now
know Tiwanaku was a major city, Inhabited during its
Classic Period (a .d . 375 to 725) by between 20,000 and
40,000 people. Another 200,000 or so people inhabited
the surroundingTiticaca basin, all under the political con­
trol o f Tiwanaku, a true imperial city that controlled a
vast empire centuries before the Incas were anything
but a relatively insignificant people living in the moun­
tains some distance north o f Tiwanaku. Its political con­
trol stretched well beyond the Altiplano into northern
Chile and southern Peru, where administrative centers,
satellite cities, and even colonies were established.
To support the huge population o f the Altiplano,
Tiwanaku carried out massive land reclamation, con­
structing an extensive system o f raised and ridged fields
where hardy crops could be intensively grown. These
fields have been studied by anthropologist Alan Kolata
o f the University o f Chicago. Built up to a height o f 3
to 5 feet, the constituent materials o f cobblestones, clay,
gravel, and topsoil were carefully layered to prevent the
buildup o f crop-killing salt that leaches into the ground.
Between the fields ran canals that filled with ground-
water (The water table here is but a few feet beneath
the surface.) These 5-foot-wide trenches were oriented
to soak up the maximum amount o f solar heat during
and St a y in g A liv e
the day, thus acting as a kind o f solar sump. One rea­
son Altiplano agriculture today is so difficult Is because
o f periodic frost; as much as 90% o f a harvest can be
lost as a result. In Tiwanaku times, however the heat
stored In the canals radiated over the fields' surface,
raising the ambient temperatures as much as 2°C or
3°C, which is more than enough to prevent frost. In ad­
dition, the canals functioned as fertilizer factories. O r­
ganic sediments that settled in the canals could be
scooped out at the end o f each growing season and
dumped on the fields, thereby renewing their fertility.
Having figured out how the system worked, in
1988, Kolata began to put his knowledge to work in
the service o f the Aymara farmers living in the region
today* In selected communities, Kolata has secured the
cooperation o f native farmers by guaranteeing a har­
vest, even if their experimental fields fail. Planting onions,
beets, and potatoes, they have increased their yields sig­
nificantly; not only do they get up to twice as many
potatoes per plant, for instance, but also the potatoes
are bigger and o f better quality. Moreover; the farmers
do not have to use scarce funds for fertilizer; since canal
muck is free, and they are not causing pollution through
use o f chemical fertilizer
By reintroducing an ancient technology that was
lost following disintegration o f the Tiwanaku empire
some 1,000 years ago, Kolata is now improving the qual­
ity o f life for countless Aymara Indians, reversing the
poor harvests that have driven many men from the Al­
tiplano to valleys south and east, where coca is grown
to be turned into cocaine. Given the technique’s suc­
cess, Kolata predicts that, by the end o f the 1990s, the
ancient raised-field technology will be widely used not
just in Bolivia but also in many other parts o f South
and Central America where it is suitable.
'"Straughan, B. (1996). The secrets of ancient Tiwanaku are
benefitting today’s Bolivia. In W. A. Haviland & R. J. Gor­
don (Eds.), Talking abou t people (2nd ed., pp. 76-78).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

F igure 6.1
Locations of major early civilizations. Those of North and South America developed wholly independently of
those in Africa and Asia. Chinese civilization may have developed independently of southwest Asian (including
the Nile and Indus) civilization.
composed of nobles and priests— formed a central
government that dictated social and religious rules;
in turn, the merchants, soldiers, artisans, farmers,
and other citizens carried out the rules.
Aztec City Life
The Aztec empire, which flourished in M exico in
the 16th century, is a good example of a highly
developed urban society among non-Western peo­
ples.14 The capital city of the empire, Tenochtitlan
(modern-day Mexico City), was located in a fer­
tile valley 7,000 feet above sea level. Its popula­
tion, along with that of its sister city, Tlatelolco,
was about 2 0 0 ,0 0 0 in 1519, when Cortes first saw
it. This makes it five times more populous than
London at the same time. The Aztec metropolis
14Most of the following information is taken from Berdan,
E F. (1982). The Aztecs o f centrai M exico. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Pa tt e r n s of S u b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 185
sat on an island in the middle of a lake, which has
since dried up, and two aqueducts brought in fresh
water from springs on the mainland. A 10-mile
dike rimmed the eastern end of the city to prevent
nearby salty waters from entering the lake around
Tenochtitlán.
As in the early cities of southwest Asia, the
foundation of Aztec society was intensive agricul­
ture. Corn was the principal crop. Each family,
allotted a plot of land by its lineage, cultivated
any of a number of crops, including beans, squash,
gourds, peppers, tomatoes, cotton, and tobacco.
Unlike Old World societies, however, only a
few animals were domesticated; these included
dogs and turkeys (both for eating). Many of
the crops were grown in around Tenochtitlán
in plots actually constructed artificially in the
shallow waters of the surrounding lake. Canals
between these chin am pas not only facilitated
transport but were also a source of water plants
used for heavy mulching. In addition, muck rich
in fish feces was periodically dredged from the
186 PART II C u lt u r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n ,
One form of intensive agriculture, the chin am pa, was perfected in ancient Mexico. This picture is of a modern
chin am pa garden on the Gulf Coast of Mexico.
canals and spread over the gardens to maintain
their fertility. Because they were incredibly
productive as well as sustainable, chin am pas still
can be found today at Xochimilco on the outskirts
of M exico City.
Aztec agricultural success provided for an in­
creasingly large population and the diversification
of labor. Skilled artisans, such as sculptors, silver­
smiths, stone workers, potters, weavers, feather
workers, and painters, could make good livings
by pursuing these crafts exclusively. Since religion
was central to the Aztec social order, these crafts­
people were engaged continuously in the manu­
facture of religious artifacts, clothing, and de­
corations for buildings and temples. Other nona-
gricultural specialists included some of the war­
riors, the traveling merchants or p och teca,
the priests, and the government bureaucracy of
nobles.
and St a y in g A l w e
As specialization increased, both among indi­
viduals and cities of the Aztec empire, the market
became an extremely important economic and so­
cial institution. In addition to the daily markets in
each city, larger markets were held in the various
cities at different times of year. Buyers and sellers
traveled to these from the far reaches of the em­
pire. The market at Tlatelolco, Tenochtitlan’s sis­
ter city, was so huge that the Spanish compared it
to those of Rome and Constantinople. At the Aztec
markets barter was the primary means of ex­
change. At times, however, cacao beans, gold dust,
crescent-shaped knives, and copper were used as
a kind of currency. In addition to its obvious eco­
nomic use, the market served social functions: Peo­
ple went there not only to buy or to sell but also
to meet other people and to hear the latest news.
A law actually required that each person go to
market at least once within a specified number of

days; this ensured that the citizenry was kept in­
formed of all important news. The other major
economic institution, trade networks between the
Aztec capital and other cities, brought goods such
as chocolate, vanilla beans, and pineapples into
Tenochtitlan.
The Aztec social order was stratified into three
main classes: nobles, commoners, and serfs. The
nobles, among whom gender inequality was most
marked, operated outside the lineage system on
the basis of land and serfs the ruler allotted them
from conquered peoples. The commoners were di­
vided into lineages they were dependent on for
land. Within each of these, individual status de­
pended on the degree of descent from the founder:
Those more closely related to the lineage founder
had higher status than those whose kinship was
more distant. The third class in Aztec society con­
sisted of serfs bound to the land and porters mer­
chants employed as carriers. Lowest of this class
were the slaves. Some voluntarily had sold them­
selves into bondage; others were captives taken in
war.
The Aztecs were governed by a semidivine
king, whom a council of nobles, priests, and lead­
ers chose from among candidates of royal lineage.
Model of the center of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital city.
Pa tt e r n s of S u b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 187
Although the king was an absolute monarch,
the councilors advised him on affairs of state. A
vast number of government officials oversaw var­
ious functions, such as maintenance of the tax sys­
tem and the courts of justice, management of gov­
ernment storehouses, and control of military
training.
The typical Aztec city was rectangular and re­
flected the way the land was divided among the
lineages. In the center was a large plaza contain­
ing the temple and the house of the city’s ruler. At
Tenochtitlan, with a total area of about 20 square
miles, a huge temple and two lavish palaces stood
in the central plaza, also called the Sacred Precinct.
Surrounding this area were other ceremonial
buildings belonging to each lineage.
As in a modern city, housing in Tenochtitlan
ranged from squalid to magnificent. On the out­
skirts of the city, on chinam pas, were the farmers’
huts, built of wooden posts, thatched straw,
and wattle plastered with mud. In the city proper
were the houses of the middle class— graceful,
multiroomed, single- and two-story stone and
mortar buildings, each surrounding a flower-filled
patio and resting on a stone platform for protec­
tion against floods. It is estimated Tenochtitlan
18 8 PART D C u lt u r e and S u r v iv a l : C o m m u n ic a t in g , R a is in g C h il d r e n , and St a y in g A live

The modern industrial city is a very recent human development, although its roots lie in
the so-called preindustrial city. The widespread belief that preindustrial cities are things of
the past and that industrial cities are things of the future is based upon culture-bound as­
sumptions rather than established facts.

had about 6 0 ,0 0 0 houses. The focal points of
the city were the teocallis, or pyramidal temples,
where religious ceremonies, including human
sacrifice, were held. The 100-foot-high double
temple dedicated to the war god and the rain god
was made of stone and featured a steep staircase
leading to a platform with an altar, a chamber con­
taining shrines, and an antechamber for the
priests.
The palace of the emperor Moctezuma boasted
numerous rooms for attendants and concubines, a
menagerie, hanging gardens, and a swimming pool.
Since Tenochtitlán sat in the middle of a lake, it
was unfortified and connected to the mainland by
three causeways. Communication among different
parts of the city was easy, and people could travel
either by land or by water. A series of canals, with
footpaths beside them, ran throughout the city. The
Spaniards who came to the Aztec capital reported
that thousands of canoes plied the canals, carrying
passengers and cargo around the city; these Euro­
peans were so impressed by the communication
network that they called Tenochtitlan the Venice
of the New World.
NONINDUSTRIAL CITIES IN THE I
MODERN WORLD I
Tenochtitlan is a good example of the kind of ur­
ban settlement characteristic of most ancient, non­
industrial civilizations. Commonly termed prein­
dustrial cities, they are apt to be thought of as part
of the past or as little more than stages in some
sort of inevitable progression toward the kinds of
industrial cities found today in places such as Eu­
rope and North America. This essentially ethno­
centric view obscures the fact “preindustrial” cities
are far from uncommon in the world today—

Preindustrial cities. The kinds of urban settlements characteristic of nonindustrial civilizations.


especially in the so-called underdeveloped coun­
tries of the world. Furthermore, industrial cities have
not yet come close to demonstrating they have the
C H A P T E R
To meet their requirements for food, water, and
shelter, people must adjust their behavior to suit
their environment. This adjustment, which in­
volves both change and stability, is a part of adap­
tation. Adaptation means a moving balance exists
between a society’s needs and its environmental
potential. Adaptation also refers to the interaction
between an organism and its environment, with
each causing changes in the other. Adaptation is a
continuing process, and it is essential for survival.
An ecosystem is bound by the activities of organ­
isms and by physical forces such as erosion. Hu­
man ecosystems must be considered in terms of all
aspects of culture.
To fit into an ecosystem an organism must be
able to adapt or become a part of it. Once such a
fit is achieved, stability may serve the organism’s
interest more than change.
A culture area is a geographic region where
various societies follow similar life patterns. Since
geographic regions are not always uniform in
climate and topography, new discoveries do not
always spread to every group. Environmental
variation also favors variation in technology,
since needs may be quite different from area to
area.
Julian Steward used the concept of culture
type to explain variations within geographic re­
gions. In this view a culture is considered in terms
of a particular technology and of the particular
environmental features that technology is best
suited for.
The social and political organization of a so­
ciety are other factors that influence how tech­
nology can be used to ensure survival. The fea­
tures of a culture that play a part in the way the
society makes a living are its culture core. An­
thropologists can trace direct relationships be­
tween types of culture cores and types of envi­
ronments.
Pa t t e r n s of S u b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 189
long-term viability shown by nonindustrial cities,
which in some parts of the world have been around
for not just hundreds but thousands of years.
SUMMARY
The food-foraging way of life, the oldest and
most universal type of human adaptation, requires
that people move their residence according to
changing food sources. For as yet unknown eco­
logical and social factors, local group size is kept
small. One explanation contends that small sizes
fit the land capacity to sustain the groups. Another
states that the fewer the people, the less the chance
of social conflict. The primary mechanism for reg­
ulating population size among food foragers is fre­
quent stimulation of female nipples, which pre­
vents ovulation, as infants nurse several times an
hour for several years.
Three important elements of human social or­
ganization probably developed along with scav­
enging and hunting for meat. These are a sexual
division of labor, food sharing, and the camp as
the center of daily activity and the place where
food sharing occurs.
A characteristic of food-foraging societies is
their egalitarianism. Since this way of life requires
mobility, people accumulate only the material
goods necessary for survival, so status differences
are limited to those based on age and sex. Status
differences associated with sex, however, do not
imply subordination of women to men. Food re­
sources are distributed equally throughout the
groups; thus no individual can achieve the wealth
or status hoarding might bring.
The reason for the transition from food for­
aging to food production, which began about
11,000 to 9,000 years ago, was likely the unfore­
seen result of increased management of wild food
resources. One correlate of the food-producing
revolution was the development of permanent set­
tlements as people practiced horticulture using
simple hand tools. One common form of horti­
culture is slash-and-burn, or swidden, farming. In­
tensive agriculture, a more complex activity, re­
quires irrigation, fertilizers, and draft animals.
190 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live

Pastoralism is a means of subsistence that relies
on raising herds of domesticated animals, such as
cattle, sheep, and goats. Pastoralists are usually
nomads, moving to different pastures as required
for grass and water.
Cities developed as intensified agricultural
techniques created a surplus, freeing individuals to
specialize full-time in other activities. Social struc­
ture becomes increasingly stratified with the de­
velopment of cities, and people are ranked ac­
cording to gender, the work they do, and the family
they are born into. Social relationships grow more
formal, and centralized political institutions are
formed.
One should not conclude that the sequence
from food-foraging to horticultural/pastoral to in­
tensive agricultural to nonindustrial urban and
then industrial societies is inevitable, even though
these did appear in that order. Where older adap­
tations continue to prevail, it is because conditions
are such that they continue to work so well and
provide such satisfaction that the people who
maintain them prefer them to the alternatives,
which they are aware of. It is not because of any
“backwardness” or ignorance. Modern food­
foraging, horticultural, pastoral, nonindustrial,
and industrial urban societies are all highly evolved
adaptations, each in its own particular way.

Points for C onsideration

1. Is change always adapative? W hat are examples of nonadaptive change within North American
culture?
2. The Incas of South America did not have or widely use the wheel or the concept of zero. Does
this mean Incan culture might have been nonadaptive?
3. Is cultural change or increasing technical complexity the same as progress? Why or why not? Do
you believe in human “progress” ? If so, in what sense do we progress?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Bates, D. G., & Plog, F. (1991). H um an adap tive
strategies. New York: McGraw-Hill.
This book takes an ecological approach to
understanding human cultural diversity. A
chapter each is devoted to hunting and
gathering, horticultural, pastoral, intensive
agricultural, and industrial societies, with a fi­
nal chapter devoted to change and develop­
ment. Theoretical issues are made easy to
grasp through use of readable ethnographic
cases.
Lustig-Arecco, V. (1975). T echn ology: Strategies
fo r survival. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Although the early anthropologists devoted a
good deal of attention to technology, the sub­
ject fell into neglect early in the 20th century.
This is one of the few more recent studies of
the subject. The author’s particular interest is
the technoeconomic adaptation of hunters,
pastoralists, and farmers.
Oswalt, W. H. (1972). H abitat an d technology.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
The author develops a taxonomy that permits
precise cross-cultural comparisons of the com­
plexity of manufactures. The research is based
on a systematic analysis of the known manu­
factures of non-Western peoples. Shelters,
tools, clothing, implements, and cultivated
foodstuffs are considered.
Schrire, C. (Ed.). (1984). Past an d present in
hunter gatherer studies. Orlando, FL: Acade­
mic Press.
This collection of papers demolishes many a
myth (including several anthropologists hold)

about food-foraging societies. Especially rec­
ommended is the editor’s introduction, “Wild
Surmises on Savage Thoughts.”
Vayda, A. (Ed.). (1969). E nvironm ent an d cultural
behav ior: E colog ical studies in cultural a n ­
thropology. Garden City, NY: Natural History
Press.
Pa t t e r n s of Su b s is t e n c e CHAPTER 6 19 1
The focus of the studies collected here is
the interrelationship between cultural behav­
ior and environmental phenomena. The writ­
ers attempt to make cultural behavior intelli­
gible by relating it to the material world
it develops in. This volume includes articles
concerning population, divination, ritual, war­
fare, food production; climate, and diseases.
 CrUf-fer Preview
!. How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Systems?
Anthropologists study how goods are produced, distributed, and consumed in the context o f
the total culture o f particular societies. Although they have borrowed theories and concepts
from economists, most anthropologists feel principles derived from the study o f Western mar­
ket economies have limited applicability to economic systems where people do not produce
and exchange goods fo r profit.

2. How Do the Economies of Nonindustiial Peoples Work?

In non-Western, nonindustrial societies, there is always a division o f labor by age and sex, with
some additional craft specialization. Land and other valuable resources usually are controlled by
groups o f relatives, such as bands o r lineages, and individual ownership is rare. Production takes
place in the quantity and at the time required, and most goods are consumed by the group that
produces them. Leveling mechanisms ensure that no one accumulates significantly more goods
than anyone else.

3. How and Why Are Goods Exchanged in Nonindustrial

Societies?
Nonindustrial peoples exchange goods through the processes o f reciprocity, redistribution, and
market exchange. Reciprocity involves the exchange o f goods and services o f roughly equivalent
value, and it is often undertaken fo r ritual purposes o r in order to gain prestige. Redistribution
requires some sort o f government and/or religious elite to collect and then reallocate resources
in the form o f either goods o r services. M arket exchange, which in nonindustrial societies means
going to a specific place fo r direct exchange o f goods, also serves as entertainment and as a
way to exchange im portant information.The latter tw o are frequently primary motivating forces
bringing people into the marketplace.
194 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live

n economic system may be defined as a food-foraging societies often are perceived as

A means of producing, distributing, and con­

suming goods. Since a people, in pursuing
a particular means of subsistence, necessarily pro­
duces, distributes, and consumes goods, it is ob­
vious that our earlier discussion of subsistence pat­
terns (Chapter 6) involved economic matters. Yet
economic systems encompass much more than we
so far have covered. This chapter will look at as­
pects of economic systems— specifically systems of
production, exchange, and redistribution— that
require more discussion than possible in the pre­
vious chapter.
ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY
It is in the study of the economies of nonliterate
peoples that we are perhaps most apt to fall prey
to interpreting anthropological data in terms of
our own technologies, our own values of work and
property, and our own determination of what is
rational. Take, for example, the following state­
ment from just one respected textbook in eco­
nomics: “In all societies, the prevailing reality of
life has been the inadequacy of output to fill the
wants and needs of the people.”1 This ethnocen­
tric assertion fails to realize that in many societies
people’s wants are maintained at levels that can be
fully and continuously satisfied, and without jeop­
ardizing the environment. In such societies, goods
and services are produced in the quantity and at
the time required, and to do more than this makes
no sense at all. Thus, no matter how hard people
may work when hard work is called for, at other
times they will have available hours, days, or even
weeks on end to devote to “unproductive” (in the
economic sense) activities. To Western observers,
such people are apt to appear lazy (Figure 7.1);
“instead of disciplined workers, they are reluctant
and untrained laborers.”2 If the people happen to
be hunters and gatherers, even the hard work is
likely to be misinterpreted. In Western culture
hunting is defined as a “sport”; hence, the men in
1Heilbroner, R. L., & Thurow, L. C. (1981). The econom ic
problem (6th ed., p. 327). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
2Ibid., p. 609.
spending virtually all of their time in “recreational
pursuits,” while the women are seen as working
themselves to the bone.
The point here is that to understand how the
schedule of wants or demands of a given society
is balanced against the supply of goods and ser­
vices available, it is necessary to introduce a
noneconomic variable— the anthropological vari­
able of culture. In any given economic system, eco­
nomic processes cannot be interpreted without cul­
turally defining the demands and understanding
the conventions that dictate how and when they
are satisfied. The fact is, the economic sphere of
behavior is n ot separate from the social, religious,
and political spheres and thus not free to follow
its own purely economic logic. To be sure, eco­
nomic behavior and institutions can be analyzed
in purely economic terms, but to do so is to ig­
nore crucial noneconomic considerations.
As a case in point, we may look briefly at yam
production among the Trobriand Islanders, who
inhabit a group of coral atolls that lie north of
New Guinea’s eastern end.3 Trobriand men spend
a great deal of their time and energy raising yams,
not for themselves or their own households but to
give to others, normally their sisters and married
daughters. The purpose of this yam production is
not to provision the households they are given to,
because most of what people eat they grow for
themselves in gardens where they plant taro, sweet
potatoes, tapioca, greens, beans, and squash, as
well as breadfruit and banana trees. The reason a
man gives yams to a woman is to show his sup­
port for her husband and to enhance his own in­
fluence.
Once received by the woman, they are loaded
into her husband’s yam house, symbolizing his
worth as a man of power and influence in his com­
munity. Some of these yams he may use to pur­
chase a variety of things, including arm shells, shell
necklaces and earrings, betel nuts, pigs, chickens,
and locally produced goods such as wooden
bowls, combs, floor mats, lime pots, and even
magic spells. Some he must use to discharge obli­
gations, as in the presentation of yams to the rel-
3Weiner, A. B. (1988). The Trobrianders o f Papua New
Guinea. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
 E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 195

The Chief Registrar o f Natives, N.A.D. Form No 54/

NAIROBI.
COMPLAINT OF DESERTION OF REGISTERED NATIVE

Native s Certificate N o ._____________________ Name

The above native deserted from my employ__________

(date)

He was engaged____________________ o n ___________ _days verbal contract

(date)
_months written contract

a t_____________________________________________________________________________
(place) (Contract N o.)

I wish to prosecute him for this offence and hereby agree to appear as a witness or
to produce evidence if and when called upon.

Signature o f Em ployer
Address

D ate

F igure 7 .1
People with industrial economies frequently misunderstand the work ethic in so-
called tribal societies. Thus the British in colonial Kenya thought it necessary to
teach natives “the dignity of labor” and made it a crime for a tribal person to quit
work without authorization.

atives of his daughter’s husband when she marries
or making required payments following the death
of a member of his lineage (an organized group of
relatives descended, in this case through women,
from a common ancestor). Finally, any man who
aspires to high status and power is expected to
show his worth by organizing a yam competition,
in the course of which he gives away huge quan­
tities of yams to invited guests. As anthropologist
Annette Weiner explains: “A yam house, then, is
like a bank account; when full, a man is wealthy
and powerful. Until yams are cooked or they rot,
they may circulate as limited currency. That is why,
once harvested, the usage of yams for daily food
is avoided as much as possible.”4
By giving yams to his sister or daughter, a man
not only expresses his confidence in the woman’s
husband, but he also makes the latter indebted to
him. Although the recipient rewards the gardener
4Ibid., p. 86.
and his helpers by throwing a feast, at which they
are fed cooked yams, taro, and— what everyone
especially looks forward to— ample pieces of pork,
this in no way pays off the debt. N or does the gift
of a stone axe blade (another valuable in the Tro-
briand system), which may reward an especially
good harvest. The debt can be repaid only in
women’s wealth, which consists of bundles of ba­
nana leaves and skirts made of the same material
dyed red.
Although the bundles are of no utilitarian
value, extensive labor is invested in their produc­
tion, and large quantities of them, along with
skirts, are regarded as essential for paying off all
the members of other lineages who were close to
a recently deceased relative in life and who assisted
with the funeral. Also, the wealth and vitality of
the dead person’s lineage is measured by the qual­
ity and quantity of the bundles and skirts so dis­
tributed. Because a man has received yams from
his wife’s brother, he is obligated to provide his
wife yams for purchasing the necessary bundles
196 PART II C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren,
Trobriand Island men devote a great deal of time and
energy to raising yams, not for themselves but to give
to others. These yams, which have been raised by
men related through marriage to a chief, are about to
be loaded into the chief’s yam house.
and skirts, beyond those she has produced, to help
with payments following the death of a member
of her lineage. Because deaths are unpredictable,
a man must have yams available for his wife when
she needs them. This, and the fact she may require
all of his yams, acts as an effective check on a
man’s wealth.
Like people the world over, the Trobriand Is­
landers assign meanings to objects that make the
objects worth far more than their cost in labor or
materials. Yams, for example, establish long-term
relationships that lead to other advantages, such
as access to land, protection, assistance, and other
kinds of wealth. Thus, yam exchanges are as much
and Staying Alive
social and political transactions as they are eco­
nomic transactions. Banana leaf bundles and
skirts, for their part, are symbolic of the political
state of lineages and of their immortality. In their
distribution, which is related to rituals associated
with death, we see how men in Trobriand society
are ultimately dependent on women and their
valuables. So important are these matters to the
Trobrianders that even in the face of Western
money, education, religion, and law, these people
remain as committed today as in the past to yam
cultivation and the production of women’s wealth.
Viewed in terms of Western economics, these ac­
tivities appear to make little sense, but viewed in
terms of Trobriand values and concerns, they
make a great deal of sense.
RESOURCES
In every society customs and rules govern the kinds
of work done, who does the work, who controls
the resources and tools, and how the work is ac­
complished. Raw materials, labor, and technology
are the productive resources a social group may
use to produce desired goods and services. The
rules surrounding the use of these resources are
embedded in the culture and determine the way
the economy operates.
P atterns of L abor
Every human society always has a division of la­
bor by both sex and age categories; such division
is an elaboration of patterns found among all
higher primates. Dividing by sex increases the
chances that the learning of necessary skills will
be more efficient, since only half the adult reper­
toire needs to be learned by any individual. Di­
viding by age provides sufficient time for devel­
oping those skills.
Sexual Division of Labor
Anthropologists have studied extensively the sex­
ual division of labor in human societies of all sorts,
and we discussed some aspects of it in Chapter 6,
as well as in Chapter 3. Whether men or women
do a particular job varies from group to group,

Often, work that is considered inappropriate for men (or for women) in one society is performed by them in
another. Here, a laudryman works in Bangalore, India, and Indian women work on construction.
but much work has been set apart as the work of
either one sex or the other. For example, we have
seen that the tasks most often regarded as
“women’s work” tend to be those that can be car­
ried out near home and that are easily resumed af­
ter interruption. The tasks most often regarded as
“men’s work” tend to be those that require phys­
ical strength, rapid mobilization of high bursts of
energy, frequent travel at some distance from
home, and assumption of high levels of risk and
danger. However, plenty of exceptions occur, as in
societies where women regularly carry burden­
some loads or put in long hours of hard work cul­
tivating crops in the fields. In some societies,
women perform almost three quarters of all work,
and there are even societies where women serve as
warriors. In the 19th-century kingdom of Da­
homey, in West Africa, thousands of women served
in the armed forces of the Dahomean king and in
the eyes of some observers were better fighters
than their male counterparts. Also, references to
women warriors in ancient Ireland exist, archae-
Economic Systems CHAPTER 7 197
ological evidence indicates their presence among
the Vikings, and among the Abkhasians of Geor­
gia women were trained in weaponry until quite
recently. In modern guerilla uprisings, women fre­
quently fight. Clearly, the sexual division of labor
cannot be explained simply as a consequence of
male strength, expendability, or female reproduc­
tive biology.
Instead of looking for biological imperatives
to explain the sexual division of labor, a more pro­
ductive strategy is to examine the kinds of work
men and women do in the context of specific so­
cieties to see how the work relates to other cul­
tural and historical factors. Researchers find three
configurations, one featuring flexibility and sex­
ual integration, another involving rigid segrega­
tion by sex, and a third combining elements of the
other two.5 The flexible/integrated pattern is
5Sanday, P. R. (1981). Female pow er and m ale dom inance:
On the origins o f sexual inequality (pp. 7 9 -8 0 ). Cambridge,
England: Cambridge Universiry Press.
198 PART II C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

In nonindustrial societies, households produce much of what they con­

sume. Among the M aya, men work in the fields to produce foods for
the household; women prepare the food and take care of other chores
that can be performed in or near the house.

exemplified by people such as the Ju/’hoansi
(whose practices we examined in Chapters 5 and
6) and is seen most often among food foragers and
subsistence farmers. In such societies, both sexes
perform up to 3 5 % of activities with approxi­
mately equal participation, while tasks deemed ap­
propriate for one sex may be performed by the
other, without loss of face, as the situation war­
rants. Where these practices prevail, boys and girls
grow up in much the same way, learn to value co­
operation over competition, and become equally
habituated to adult men and women, who inter­
act with one another on a relatively equal basis.
Sexually segregated societies rigidly define al­
most all work as either masculine or feminine, so
men and women rarely engage in joint efforts of
any kind. In such societies, it is inconceivable
someone would even think of doing something
considered the work of the opposite sex! This pat­
tern is frequently seen in pastoral nomadic, inten­
sive agricultural, and industrial societies, where
men’s work keeps them outside the home for much
of the time. Thus, boys and girls alike are raised
primarily by women, who encourage compliance
in their charges. At some point, however, boys
must undergo a role reversal to become like men,
who are supposed to be tough, aggressive, and
competitive. To do this they must prove their mas­
culinity in ways women do not to prove their fem­
inine identity. Commonly, this involves assertions
of male superiority, and hence authority, over
women. Historically, sexually segregated societies
often have imposed their control on societies fea­
turing sexual integration, upsetting the egalitarian
nature of the latter.
In the third, or dual sex, configuration, men
and women carry out their work separately, as in
sexually segregated societies, but the relationship
between them is one of balanced complementar­
ity, rather than inequality. Although competition
is a prevailing ethic, each sex manages its own af­
fairs, and the interests of both men and women
are represented at all levels. Thus, as in sexually
integrated societies, neither sex exerts dominance
over the other. The dual sex orientation may be
seen among certain Native American peoples
whose economies were based on subsistence farm­
ing, as well as among several West African king­
doms, including that of the aforementioned Da-
homeans.

Age Division of Labor
Dividing labor according to age is also typical of
human societies. Among the Ju/’hoansi, for ex­
ample, children are not expected to contribute sig­
nificantly to subsistence until they reach their late
teens. Indeed, until they possess adult levels of
strength and endurance, many “bush foods”— ed­
ible tubers, for example— are not readily accessi­
ble to them. The Ju/’hoansi equivalent of “retire­
ment” comes somewhere around the age of 60.
Elderly people, although they usually will do some
foraging for themselves, are not expected to con­
tribute much food. However, older men and
women alike play an essential role in spiritual mat­
ters; freed from food taboos and other restrictions
that apply to younger adults, they may handle rit­
ual substances considered dangerous to those still
involved with hunting or having children. By
virtue of their old age, they also remember things
that happened far in the past. Thus, they are repos­
itories of accumulated wisdom— the “libraries” of
a nonliterate people— and can suggest solutions to
problems younger adults have never before had to
face. Thus, they are far from being unproductive
members of society.
In some food-foraging societies, women do
continue to make a significant contribution to pro­
visioning in their older years. Among the Hadza
of Tanzania, their contribution is critical to their
daughters, whose foraging abilities are signifi­
cantly impaired when they have new infants to
nurse. Lactation is energetically expensive, while
holding, carrying, and nursing an infant interfere
with the mother’s foraging efficiency. Those most
immediately affected by this are a woman’s
weaned children who are not yet old enough to
forage effectively for themselves. The problem is
overcome, however, by the foraging efforts of
grandmothers, whose time spent foraging is great­
est when their infant grandchildren are youngest
and their weaned grandchildren receive the least
food from their mothers.6
6Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J. E, &C Blurton Jones, N. G.
(1997). Hadza women’s time allocation, offspring, provision­
ing, and the evolution of long postmenopausal life spans.
Current Anthropology, 38, 5 5 1 -5 7 7 .
E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 199
In many nonindustrial societies, not just older
people but children as well may make a greater
contribution to the economy in terms of work and
responsibility than is common in modern North
America. For instance, in M aya communities in
southern M exico and Guatemala, young children
not only look after their younger brothers and sis­
ters but help with housework as well. Girls begin
to make a substantial contribution to household
work by age 7 or 8 and by age 11 are constantly
busy grinding corn, making tortillas, fetching
wood and water, sweeping the house, and so forth.
Boys have less to do but are given small tasks, such
as bringing in the chickens or playing with a baby;
by age 12, however, they are carrying toasted tor­
tillas to the men out working in the fields and re­
turning with loads of corn.7
Similar situations are not unknown in indus­
trial societies. In Naples, Italy, children play a sig­
nificant role in the economy. At a very young age,
girls begin to take on responsibilities for house­
work, freeing the labor of their mothers and older
sisters for earning money for the household. Nor
is it long before girls are apprenticed out to neigh­
bors and kin, who teach them skills that enable
them, by age 14, to enter a small factory or work­
shop. The wages earned are typically turned over
to the girls’ mothers. Boys, too, are also appren­
ticed out at an early age, though they may achieve
more freedom from adult control by becoming in­
volved in various street activities not available to
girls.8*
The use of child labor has become a matter of
increasing concern as large corporations rely more
frequently on the manufacture of goods in the
world’s poorer countries. Although reliable figures
are hard to come by, it is estimated that there are
some 15 million indentured child laborers in south
Asia alone, including some as young as 4 years
old. Each year, the United States imports at least
$100 million worth of products children manu­
facture, ranging from rugs and carpets to clothing
7Vogt, E. Z. (1990). The Zinacantecos o f M exico, a modern
M aya way o f life (2nd ed., pp.8 3 -8 7 ). Fort Worth: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
8Goddard, V. (1993). Child labor in Naples. In W. A. Havi-
land & R. J. Gordon (Eds.), Talking abou t people (pp. 1 0 5 -
109). Mountain View CA: Mayfield.
200 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children,
This Thai girl exemplifies the use of child labor in
many parts of the world, often by large corporations.
Even in Western countries, child labor plays a major
economic role.
and soccer balls.9 In 1990, President Clinton
signed into law legislation that would prevent im­
portation of products made by children who are
indentured servants, but how effectively it can be
enforced still remains to be seen.
Cooperation
Cooperative work groups can be found every­
where in nonliterate as well as literate and in non-
industrial as well as industrial societies. Often, if
the effort involves the whole community, a festive
spirit permeates the work. Jom o Kenyatta, the an­
thropologist who later became a respected states­
man and “father” of an independent Kenya, de­
scribed the time of enjoyment after a day’s labor
in his country:
9It’s the law: Child labor protection. (1997, November/
December). Peace and Justice News, 11.
and Staying Alive
If a stranger happens to pass by, he will have no
idea that these people who are singing and danc­
ing have completed their day’s work. This is why
most Europeans have erred by not realizing that the
African in his own environment does not count
hours or work by the movement of the clock, but
works with good spirit and enthusiasm to complete
the tasks before him.10
In some parts of East Africa, work parties begin
with the display of a pot of beer to be consumed
after the tasks have been finished. Yet, the beer is
not payment for the work; indeed, the labor in­
volved is worth far more than the beer consumed.
Rather, the beverage is more of a symbol, whereas
recompense comes as individuals sooner or later
participate in work parties for others.
Among the Ju/’hoansi, women’s work is fre­
quently highly social. About three times a week,
they go out to gather wild plant foods away from
the camp. Although they may do this alone, they
more often go out in groups, talking loudly all the
while. This not only turns what might otherwise
seem a monotonous task into a social occasion,
but it also causes large animals— potential sources
of danger— to move elsewhere.
In most human societies, the basic cooperative
unit is the household. It is both a unit of produc­
tion and consumption; only in industrial societies
have these two activities been separated. The Maya
farmer, for example, unlike his North American
counterpart (but like peasant and subsistence farm­
ers everywhere), is not so much running a com­
mercial enterprise as he is a household. He is mo­
tivated by a desire to provide for the welfare of his
own family; each family, as an economic unit,
works as a group for its own good. Cooperative
work may be undertaken outside the household,
however, for other reasons, though not always vol­
untarily. It may be part of fulfilling duties to in­
laws, or it may be performed for political officials
or priests by command. Thus, institutions of fam­
ily, kinship, religion, and the state all may act as
organizing elements that define the nature and con­
dition of each worker’s cooperative obligations.
10Herskovits, M. (1952). E conom ic anthropology: A study in
com parative econom ics (2nd ed., p.] 03). New York: Knopf.

Craft Specialization
In nonindustrial societies, where division of labor
occurs along lines of age and sex, each person in
the society has knowledge and competence in all
aspects of work appropriate to his or her age and
sex. In modern industrial societies, by contrast, a
greater diversity of more specialized tasks to be
performed exists, and no individual even can be­
gin to know all those appropriate for his or her
age and sex. Yet even in nonindustrial societies
some specialization of craft occurs. This is often
minimal in food-foraging societies, but even here
the arrow points of one man may be in some de­
mand because of his particular skill at making
them. Among people who produce their own food,
specialization is more apt to occur. In the Tro-
briand Islands, for example, if a man wanted stone
In industrial societies, people do not have unrestricted
access to the means of production, nor do they gener­
ally produce directly for their own consumption. In­
stead, they work for strangers, often at monotonous
tasks done in a depersonalized setting. Such condi­
tions contribute ro alienation, a major problem in in­
dustrial societies.
Economic S ystems CHAPTER 7 201
to make axe blades, he had to travel some distance
to a particular island where the appropriate kind
of stone was quarried; clay pots, however, were
made by people living on yet another island.
One example of specialization is afforded by
the Afar people of Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression.
Afar men are miners of salt, which since ancient
times has been widely traded in East Africa. It is
mined from the crust of an extensive salt plain in
the north part of the depression, and to get it is a
risky and difficult business. L. M . Nesbitt, the first
European to successfully traverse the depression,
labeled it “the hell-hole of creation.” 11 The heat
is extreme during the day, with shade temperatures
between 140°F and 156°F not unusual. Shade is
not found on the salt plain, however, unless a shel­
ter of salt blocks is built. Nor is there food or wa­
ter for man or beast. To add to the difficulty, un­
til recently the Muslim Afars and the Christian
Tegreans, highlanders who also mine salt, were
mortal enemies.
Successful mining, then, requires specialized
skills at planning and organization, as well as
physical strength and the will to work under the
most trying conditions.12 Pack animals to carry
the salt have to be fed in advance, for carrying suf­
ficient fodder for them interferes with their abil­
ity to carry out salt. Food and water must be car­
ried for the miners, who usually number 30 to 40
per group. Travel is planned to take place at night
to avoid the intense heat of day. In the past, mea­
sures to protect against attack had to be taken. Fi­
nally, timing is critical; a party has to return to
sources of food and water before these supplies
are too long exhausted and before the animals are
unable to continue farther.
C ontrol of L a nd
All societies have regulations that determine the
way valuable land resources will be allocated.
Food foragers must determine who can hunt game
"N esbitt, L. M. (1935). H ell-hole o f creation. New York:
Knopf.
l2Mesghinua, H. M. (1966). Salt mining in Enderta. Journ al
o f Ethiopian Studies, 4 (2). O ’Mahoney, K. (1970). The salt
trade. Journ al o f Ethiopian Studies, 8 (2).
202 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children,
and gather plants and where these activities take
place. Horticulturists must decide how their farm­
land is to be acquired, worked, and passed on.
Pastoralists require a system that determines rights
to watering places and grazing land, as well as the
right of access to land they move their herds over.
Full-time or intensive agriculturalists must have
some means of determining title to land and ac­
cess to water supplies for irrigation. In industrial­
ized Western societies, a system of private owner­
ship of land and rights to natural resources
generally prevails. Although elaborate laws have
been enacted to regulate the buying, owning, and
selling of land and water resources, if individuals
wish to reallocate valuable farmland, for instance,
to some other purpose, they generally can.
In nonindustrial societies, land is often con­
trolled by kinship groups such as the lineage (dis­
cussed in Chapter 10) or band, rather than by in­
dividuals. For example, among the Ju/’hoansi,
each band of anywhere from 10 to 30 people lives
on roughly 2 5 0 square miles of land, which they
consider their territory— their own country. These
territories are defined not in terms of boundaries
but in terms of water holes located within them.
The land is said to be “owned” by those who have
lived the longest in the band, usually a group of
brothers and sisters or cousins. Their ownership,
however, is more symbolic than real. They cannot
sell (or buy) land, but outsiders must ask their
permission to enter the territory. To refuse such
permission, though, would be unthinkable.
The practice of defining territories on the ba­
sis of core features, be they water holes (as among
the Ju/’hoansi), distinctive landscape features
where ancestral spirits are thought to dwell (as
among Australian Aborigines), watercourses (as
among Indians of the northeastern United States),
or whatever, is typical of food foragers. Territo­
rial boundaries are left vaguely defined at best. The
adaptive value of this is clear: The size of band
territories, as well as the size of the bands, can ad­
just to keep in balance with availability of re­
sources in any given place. Such adjustment would
be more difficult under a system of individual
ownership of clearly bounded land.
Technology. Tools and other material equipment, together with the knowledge of how to make and use them.
and Staying Alive
Among some West African farmers, a feudal
system of land ownership prevails: All land is said
to belong to the head chief. He allocates it to var­
ious subchiefs, who in turn distribute it to lineages;
lineage leaders then assign individual plots to each
farmer. Just as in medieval Europe, these African
people owe allegiance to the subchiefs (or nobles)
and the principal chief (or king). The people who
work the land must pay taxes and fight for the
king when necessary. Yet these people do not re­
ally own the land; rather, it is a form of lease. As
long as the land is kept in use, rights to such use
will pass to their heirs. No user, however, can give
away, sell, or otherwise dispose of a plot of land
without approval from the elder of the lineage.
When an individual no longer uses the allocated
land, it reverts to the lineage head, who reallocates
it to some other member of the lineage. The im­
portant operative principle here is that the system
extends the individual’s right to use land for an in­
definite period, but the land is not “owned” out­
right. This serves to maintain the integrity of valu­
able farmland as such, preventing its loss through
subdivision and conversion to other uses.
T e c hnol og y
All societies have some means of creating and al­
locating the tools and other artifacts used for pro­
ducing goods and passed on to succeeding gener­
ations. The number and kinds of tools a society
uses— which, together with knowledge about how
to make and use them, constitute its technology—
are related to the lifestyles of its members. Food
foragers and pastoral nomads, who are frequently
on the move, are apt to have fewer and simpler
tools than the more sedentary farmer, in part be­
cause a great number of complex tools would de­
crease their mobility.
Food foragers make and use a variety of tools,
and many are ingenious in their effectiveness.
Some of these they make for their individual use,
but codes of generosity are such that a person may
not refuse giving or loaning what is requested.
Thus, tools may be given or loaned to others in
exchange for the products resulting from their use.

Among the Ju/’hoansi, game “ belongs” to the man whose arrow killed it. But
because arrows are freely loaned or given, the man who “owns” the kill may
not even have been present on the hunt.
For example, a Ju/’hoansi who gives his arrow to
another hunter has a right to a share in any ani­
mals the hunter kills. Game is considered to “be­
long” to the man whose arrow killed it, even when
he is not present on the hunt.
Among horticulturists, the axe, machete, and
digging stick or hoe are the primary tools. Since
these are relatively easy to produce, every person
can make them. Although the maker has first rights
to their use, when that person is not using them,
any family member may ask to use them and usu­
ally is granted permission to do so. Refusal would
cause people to treat the tool owner with scorn for
this singular lack of concern for others. If a rela­
tive helps another raise the crop traded for a par­
ticular tool, that relative becomes part owner of
the implement, and it may not be traded or given
away without his or her permission.
In sedentary communities, which farming
makes possible, tools and other productive goods
are more complex and more difficult and costlier
to make. Where this happens, individual owner­
ship usually is more absolute, as are the conditions
Leveling mechanism. A societal obligation compelling a family to distribute goods so that no one accumulates more
wealth than anyone else.
Economic S ystems CHAPTER 7 203
persons may borrow and use such equipment
under. It is easy to replace a knife lost by a rela­
tive during palm cultivation but much more diffi­
cult to replace an iron plow or a power-driven
threshing machine. Rights to the ownership of
complex tools are more rigidly applied; generally,
the person who has funded the purchase of a com­
plex piece of machinery is considered the sole
owner and may decide how and by whom it will
be used.
Leveling M echanisms
In spite of the increased opportunities in sedentary
farming communities for people to accumulate be­
longings, limits on property acquisition may be as
prominent in them as among nomadic peoples. In
such communities, social obligations compel peo­
ple to divest themselves of wealth, and no one is
permitted to accumulate too much more than
others. Greater wealth simply brings greater
obligation to give. Anthropologists refer to such
obligations as leveling mechanisms.
204 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

Leveling mechanisms are found in communi­ sults. Through its system of offices, it ensures that
ties where property must not be allowed to necessary services within the community are per­
threaten a more-or-less egalitarian social order, as formed. It also keeps goods in circulation, rather
in many Maya villages and towns in the highlands than sitting around gathering dust. Moreover,
of M exico and Guatemala. In these communities, members are pressured into investing their re­
cargo system s function to siphon off any excess sources in their own community, rather than else­
wealth people may accumulate. A cargo system is where. Likewise, the costs of holding office require
a civil-religious hierarchy, which, on a revolving participants to produce and sell a surplus or seek
basis, combines most of a community’s civic and work outside the community to secure sufficient
ceremonial offices. All offices are open to all men, funds, thereby benefiting outside interests. To the
and eventually virtually every man has at least one degree outsiders can control the goods and wages
term in office, each term lasting for 1 year. The cargo holders require, the system’s basic function
scale is pyramidal, which means more offices ex­ may be subverted to serve as a means of drawing
ist at the lower levels, with progressively fewer to­ wealth and labor out of the community.
ward the top. For example, a community of about
8,000 people may have four levels of offices, with
32 on the lowest level, 12 on the next one up, 6
on the next, and 2 at the apex. Positions at the DISTRIBUTION AND EXCHANGE
lowest level include those for the performance of
The money economy of industrial societies in­
various menial chores, such as sweeping and car­
volves a two-step process between labor and con­
rying messages. The higher offices are councilmen,
sumption. The money received for labor must be
judges, mayors, and ceremonial positions. All of­
translated into something else before it is directly
fices are regarded as burdens for which the hold­
consumable. In societies with no such medium of
ers are not paid. Instead, the officeholder is ex­
exchange, the rewards for labor are usually direct.
pected to pay for the food, liquor, music,
The workers in a family group consume what they
fireworks, or whatever is required for community
harvest, they eat what the hunter or gatherer
festivals or for banquets associated with the trans­
brings home, and they use the tools they them­
mission of that office. For some cargos, the cost
selves make. But even where no formal exchange
is as much as a man can earn in 4 years! After
medium exists, some distribution of goods occurs.
holding a cargo position, a man usually returns to
Karl Polanyi, an economist, classified the cultural
normal life for a period, when he may accumulate
systems of distributing material goods into three
sufficient resources to campaign for a higher of­
modes: reciprocity, redistribution, and market ex­
fice. Each male citizen of the community is socially
change.13
obligated to serve in the system at least once, and
social pressure to do so is such that it drives indi­
viduals who have once again accumulated excess Reciprocity
wealth to apply for higher offices in order to raise
Reciprocity refers to a transaction between two
their social status. Ideally, although some individ­
parties whereby goods and services of roughly
uals gain appreciably more prestige than others in
equivalent value are exchanged. This may involve
their community, no one has appreciably more
gift giving, but in non-Western societies pure al-
wealth in a material sense than anyone else. In ac­
tuality, the ideal is not always achieved, so service
in the cargo system functions to legitimize wealth
13Polanyi, K. (1968). The economy as instituted process. In
differences, thereby preventing disruptive envy. E. E. LeClair, Jr., & H. K. Schneider (Eds.), E conom ic an­
In addition to equalizing (or legitimizing) thropology: Readings in theory and analysis (pp. 127-138).
wealth, the cargo system accomplishes other re­ New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Reciprocity. The exchange of goods and services of approximately equal value between two parties.
 Economic S ystems CHAPTER 7 205

truism in gift giving is as rare as it is in the United
States or any other Western society. The overrid­
ing motive is to fulfill social obligations and per­
haps to gain a bit of prestige in the process. It might
be best compared in North American society to
someone who gives a party. The person may go to
great lengths to impress others by the excellence of
the food and drink served, not to mention the qual­
ity of wit and conversation of those in attendance.
The expectation is that, sooner or later, the indi­
vidual will be invited to similar parties by some,
although perhaps not all, of the guests.
Social customs dictate the nature and occasion
of exchange. When an animal is killed by a group
of Aboriginal hunters in Australia, the meat is di­
vided among the hunters’ families and other rela­
tives. Each person in the camp gets a share, the size
depending on the nature of the person’s kinship tie
to the hunters. The least desirable parts may be
kept by the hunters themselves. When one hunter
kills a kangaroo, for example, the left hind leg goes
to the brother of the hunter, the tail to his father’s
brother’s son, the loins and the fat to his father-in-
law, the ribs to his mother-in-law, the forelegs to
his father’s younger sister, the head to his wife, and
the entrails and the blood to the hunter. If argu­
ments were to arise over the apportionment, it
would be because the principles of distribution
were not followed properly. The hunter and his
family seem to fare badly in this arrangement, but
they have their turn when another man makes a
kill. The giving and receiving is obligatory, as is the
particularity of the distribution. Such sharing of
food reinforces community bonds and ensures that
everyone eats. It also might be viewed as a way of
saving perishable goods. By giving away part of his
kill, the hunter gets a social IOU for a similar
amount of food in the future. It is a little bit like
putting money in a time-deposit savings account.
The food-distribution practices just described
for Australian Aboriginal hunters constitute an
example of generalized reciprocity. This may be

Ju/’hoansi cutting up meat, which will be shared by others in the camp. The food distri­
bution practices of such food foragers are an example of generalized reciprocity.

G e n e ra liz e d re c ip ro city . A mode of exchange in which the value of the gift is not calculated, nor is the time of re­
payment specified.
206 PART II C ulture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

Political fund-raising in the United States involves elements of both balanced and negative
reciprocity. Large contributors expect that their “generosity” will buy influence with a
candidate, resulting in considerations and benefits of equal value. The recipient of the con­
tribution, however, may seek to do as little as possible in return, but not so little as to
jeopardize future contributions.

defined as an exchange in which the value of what
is given is not calculated, nor is the time of re­
payment specified. Gift giving, in the altruistic
sense, also falls in this category. So, too, does the
act of a Good Samaritan who stops to help a
stranded motorist or someone else in distress and
refuses payment with the admonition “Pass it on
to the next person in need.” Most generalized rec­
iprocity, though, occurs among close kin or peo­
ple who otherwise have very close ties with one
another. Typically, participants will deny that the
exchanges are economic and will couch them ex­
plicitly in terms of kinship and friendship obliga­
tions.
Balanced reciprocity differs in that it is not
part of a long-term process. The giving and re­
ceiving, as well as the time involved, are more spe­
cific; a person has a direct obligation to recipro-
cate promptly in equal value for the social rela­
tionship to continue. Examples of balanced reci­
procity in North American society include prac­
tices such as trading baseball cards or buying
drinks when one’s turn comes at a gathering of
friends or associates. Examples from a non-West­
ern society include those anthropologist Robert
Lowie related in his classic account of the Crow
Indians.14 A woman skilled in the tanning of buf­
falo hides might offer her services to a neighbor
who needed a new cover for her tepee. It took an
expert to design a tepee cover, which required from
14 to 20 skins. The designer might need as many
as 20 collaborators, whom she instructed on the
14Lowie, R. (1956). Crow Indians (p.75). New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston. (Original work published 1935)

Balanced reciprocity. A mode of exchange whereby the giving and the receiving are specific as to the value of the
goods and the time of their delivery.

sewing together of the skins and whom the tepee
owner might remunerate with a feast. The designer
herself would be given some kind of property by
the tepee owner. In another example from the
Crow, Lowie relates that if a married woman
brought her brother a present of food, he might
reciprocate with a present of 10 arrows for her
husband, which rated as the equivalent of a horse.
Giving, receiving, and sharing as so far de­
scribed constitute a form of social security or in­
surance. A family contributes to others when they
have the means and can count on receiving from
others in time of need. A leveling mechanism is at
work in the process of generalized or balanced rec­
iprocity, promoting an egalitarian distribution of
wealth over the long run.
Negative reciprocity is a third form of reci­
procity exchange, in which the giver tries to get
the better end of the deal. The parties involved
have opposing interests, usually are members of
different communities, and are not closely related.
The ultimate form of negative reciprocity is to take
something by force. Less extreme forms involve
guile and deception or, at the least, hard bargain­
ing. In the United States, an example would be the
stereotype of the car salesperson who claims a car
was “driven by a little old lady to church” when
in fact it was not and is likely to develop prob­
lems soon after it leaves the sales lot. Among the
Navajo, according to anthropologist Clyde Kluck-
hohn, “to deceive when trading with foreign peo­
ples is morally accepted.” 15
Barter and Trade
Exchanges that occur within a group of people gen­
erally take the form of generalized or balanced rec­
iprocity. When they occur between two groups, at
least a potential for hostility and competition is apt
to exist. Therefore, such exchanges may well take
the form of negative reciprocity, unless some sort
of arrangement has been made to ensure at least
15Kluckhohn, C. (1972). Quoted in Sahlins, M. (1972).
Stone Age econom ics (p. 200). Chicago: Aldine.
Negative reciprocity. A form of exchange whereby the giver tries to get the better of the exchange. >
A form of barter with no verbal communication.
E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 207
an approach to balance. B arter is one form of neg­
ative reciprocity, involving the exchange of scarce
items from one group for desirable goods from an­
other group. Relative value is calculated, and de­
spite an outward show of indifference, sharp trad­
ing is more the rule, when compared to the more
balanced nature of exchanges within a group.
An arrangement that combined elements of
balanced reciprocity as well as barter existed be­
tween the Kota, in India, and three neighboring
peoples who traded their surplus goods and cer­
tain services with the Kota. The Kota were the mu­
sicians and artisans for the region. They exchanged
their iron tools with the other three groups and
provided the music essential for ceremonial occa­
sions. The Toda furnished to the Kota ghee (a kind
of butter) for certain ceremonies and buffalo for
funerals; relations between the two peoples were
amicable. The Badaga were agricultural and
traded their grain for music and tools. Between the
Kota and Badaga was a feeling of great competi­
tion, which sometimes led to one-sided trading
practices; usually the Kota procured the advan­
tage. The forest-dwelling Kurumba, who were
renowned as sorcerers, had honey, canes, and oc­
casionally fruits to offer, but their main contribu­
tion was protection against the supernatural. The
Kota feared the Kurumba, and the Kurumba took
advantage of this in their trade dealings, so they
always got more than they gave. Thus great latent
hostility existed between these two peoples.
Silent trade is a specialized form of barter with
no verbal communication. In fact, it may involve
no actual face-to-face contact at all. Such cases of­
ten have characterized the dealings between food­
foraging peoples and their food-producing neigh­
bors, as the former have supplied for the past
2 ,0 0 0 or so years various commodities in demand
by the world economy. A classic description of
such trade follows:
The forest people creep through the lianas to the
trading place, and leave a neat pile of jungle prod­
ucts, such as w ax, camphor, monkeys’ gall blad­
ders, birds’ nests for Chinese soup. They creep back
a certain distance, and wait in a safe place. The
Silent trade.
208 PART n C ult ur e and S u r v i v a l : C o m m u n i c a t i n g , R ai s in g C h i l d r e n , and St a y i n g A live

partners to the exchange, who are usually agricul­
turalists with a more elaborate and extensive set of
material possessions but who cannot be bothered
stumbling through the jungle after wax when they
have someone else to do it for them, discover the
little pile, and lay down beside it what they con­
sider its equivalent in metal cutting tools, cheap
cloth, bananas, and the like. They too discreetly re­
tire. The shy folk then reappear, inspect the two
piles, and if they are satisfied, take the second one
away. Then the opposite group comes back and
takes pile number one, and the exchange is com­
pleted. If the forest people are dissatisfied, they can
retire once more, and if the other people want to
increase their offering they may, time and again,
until everyone is happy.16
The reasons for silent trade only can be postulated,
but in some situations trade may be silent for lack
of a common language. More often it may serve
to control situations of distrust so as to keep re­
lations peaceful. In a very real sense, good rela­
tions are maintained by preventing relations. An­
other possibility, which does not exclude the
others, is that it makes exchange possible where
problems of status might make verbal communi­
cation unthinkable. In any event, it provides for
the exchange of goods between groups in spite of
potential barriers.
Kula partners, who live on distant islands. These
voyages take men away from their homes for
weeks, even months, at a time and may expose
them to various hardships along the way. The valu­
ables are red shell necklaces, which always circu­
late in trade in a clockwise direction, and ornate
white arm shells, which move in the opposite di­
rection (Figure 7.2). These objects are ranked ac­
cording to their size, their color, how finely pol­
ished they are, and their particular histories. Such
is the fame of some that, when they appear in a
village, they create a sensation. No one man holds
these valuables for very long— at most, perhaps
10 years. Holding onto an arm shell or necklace
too long risks disrupting the “path” it must fol­
low as it is passed from one partner to another.
Although men on Kula voyages may use the
opportunity to trade for other goods, this is not
the reason for such voyages, nor is the Kula even
necessary for trade to occur. In fact, overseas trade
is regularly undertaken without the exchange of
shell valuables. Instead, Trobriand men seek to
create history through their Kula exchanges. By
circulating armbands and necklaces that accumu­
late the histories of their travels and names of those
who have possessed them, men proclaim their
individual fame and talent, gaining considerable

T he K ula R i ng
Although we tend to think of trade as something
undertaken for purely practical purposes, in order
to gain access to desired goods and services, not
all trade is motivated by economic considerations.
A classic case of this is the Kula ring (also referred
to as the Kula), a Trobriand Island interisland trad­
ing system whereby prestige items are ceremoni­
ously exchanged. Malinowski first described the
Kula in 1920, but it is still going strong today.17
From their coral atolls, men periodically set sail in
their canoes to exchange shell valuables with their

16Coon, C. S. (1948). A reader in generai anthropology

(p. 594). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
l7Weiner, A. B. (1988). The Trobrianders o f Papua New Ftsviu 7>9
Guinea (pp. 13 9 -1 5 7 ). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Win­ The ceremonial trading of necklaces and arm shells in
ston. the Kula ring encourages trade throughout Melanesia.

influence for themselves in the process. Although
the idea is to match the size and value of one shell
for another, men draw on all their negotiating
skills, material resources, and magical expertise to
gain access to the strongest partners and most
valuable shells; thus, an element of negative reci­
procity arises when a man diverts shells from their
proper “paths” or entices others to compete for
whatever necklaces and armbands he may have to
offer. But when all is said and done, success is lim­
ited, for although a man may keep a shell for 5 or
10 years, sooner or later it must be passed on to
others.
The Kula is a most elaborate complex of cer­
emony, political relationships, economic exchange,
travel, magic, and social integration. To see it only
in its economic aspects is to misunderstand it com­
pletely. The Kula demonstrates once more how in­
separable economic matters are from the rest of
culture and shows that economics is not a realm
unto itself. This is just as true in modern indus-
Ec o n o m i c Systems CHAPTER 7 209
These photos show Kula valuables and a canoe used
for Kula voyages.
trial societies as it is in Trobriand society; when
the United States stopped trading with Cuba,
Haiti, Iran, Iraq, and Serbia, for instance, it was
for political rather than economic reasons. Indeed,
economic embargoes are increasingly popular as
political weapons both governments and special
interest groups wield. On a less political note, con­
sider how retail activity in the United States peaks
in December for a combination of religious and
social, rather than purely economic, reasons.
Redistribution
In societies with a sufficient surplus to support
some sort of government, income flows into the
public coffers in the form of gifts, taxes, and the
spoils of war; then it is distributed again. The chief,
king, or whoever the agent of redistribution may
be has three motives for disposing of this income:
The first is to maintain a position of superiority
through a display of wealth; the second is to as­
sure those who support the agent an adequate
standard of living; and the third is to establish al­
liances outside the agent’s territory.
The administration of the Inca empire in Peru
was one of the most efficient the world has ever
known, both in the collection of taxes and meth­
ods of control.18 A census was kept of the
ISMason, J. A. (1957). The ancient civilizations o f Peru. Bal­
timore, MD: Penguin.
210 part n C ult ure and S u r v i v a l : C o m m u n i c a t i n g , R a i s in c C h i l d r e n , and S t a y i n g A live

population and resources. Tributes in goods and,
more important, in services were levied. Each craft
specialist had to produce a specific quota of goods
from materials overseers supplied. Forced labor
was used for some agricultural work or work in
the mines. Forced labor was also employed in a
program of public works, which included a re­
markable system of roads and bridges throughout
the mountainous terrain, aqueducts that guaran­
teed a supply of water, and storehouses that held
surplus food for times of famine. Careful accounts
were kept of income and expenditures. A govern­
mental bureaucracy had the responsibility for en­
suring production was maintained and commodi­
ties were distributed according to the regulations
the ruling powers set forth.
Through the activities of the government, re­
distribution took place. The ruling class lived in
great luxury, but goods were redistributed to the
common people when necessary. Redistribution is
a pattern of distribution in which the exchange is
not between individuals or between groups, but,
rather, a proportion of the products of labor is
funneled into one source and is parceled out again
as directed by a central administration. Com­
monly, it involves an element of coercion. Taxes
are a form of redistribution in the United States.
People pay taxes to the government, some of
which support the government itself while the rest
are redistributed either in cash, such as welfare
payments and government loans or subsidies to
business, or in services, such as food and drug in­
spection, construction of highways, support of the
military, and the like. With the growth of the fed­
eral deficit after 1980, wealth in the United States
increasingly has been redistributed from middle-

In the United States, the progressive income tax acts to redistribute wealth from more- to
less-wealthy people. Some, like presidential candidate Steve Forbes, propose replacing this
with a flat tax. Yet, by favoring accumulation of wealth by the already wealthy, this, too,
would act to redistribute the wealth, as taxes invariably do.

Redistribution. A form of exchange in which goods flow into a central place where they are sorted, counted, and re­
allocated.

income taxpayers to wealthy holders of govern­
ment securities. For redistribution to be possible,
a society must have a centralized system of polit­
ical organization, as well as an economic surplus
beyond people’s immediate needs.
D i s t r i b ut i on of W ealth
In societies where people devote most of their time
to subsistence activities, gradations of wealth are
small, kept that way through leveling mechanisms
and systems of reciprocity that serve to distribute in
a fairly equitable fashion what little wealth exists.
Display for social prestige, what economist
Thorstein Veblen called conspicuous consumption,
is a strong motivating force for the distribution of
wealth in societies where a substantial surplus is
produced. It has, of course, long been recognized
that conspicuous consumption plays a prominent
role in Western societies as individuals compete
with one another for prestige. Indeed, many North
Conspicuous consumption. A term Thorstein Veblen coined to describe the display of wealth for social prestige.
Ec o n o m i c Systkms CHAPTER 7 211
Americans spend much of their lives trying to im­
press others, and this requires the display of items
symbolic of prestigious positions in life. This all
fits very nicely into an economy based on con­
sumer wants:
In an expanding economy based on consumer
wants, every effort must be made to place the stan­
dard of living in the center of public and private
consideration, and every effort must therefore be
lent to remove material and psychological impedi­
ments to consumption. Hence, rather than feelings
of restraint, feelings of letting-go must be in the as­
cendant, and the institutions supporting restraint
must recede into the background and give way to
their opposite.19
19Henry, J. (1974). A theory for an anthropological analysis
of American culture. In J. G. Jorgensen &c M. Truzzi (Eds.),
A nthropology and American life (p. 14). Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.
212 PART II Culture and Survival: Communicating, R aising Children, and Staying Alive

A form of conspicuous consumption also occurs in
some nonindustrial societies, as illustrated by the
potlatches Indians on the Northwest Coast of North
America give or the lavish feasts Big Men in many
societies of Papua New Guinea give. In both cases,
food and various other items of wealth, laboriously
accumulated over several preceding months, are all
given away to others. Western observers are apt to
see such grandiose displays as wasteful in the ex­
treme, which is one reason why the Canadian gov­
ernment sought for many decades to suppress pot­
latches. To the people involved, however, these
giveaways accomplish important social and politi­
cal goals, as the following analysis demonstrates.

The average Enga patrilineage group [people who trace their descent through
men to a particular male ancestor] numbers about 33 and . . . [constitutes
a ] . . . close knit extended family.. . . A t the next level, however; is the Enga
subclan, a [larger order patrilineal descent] group numbering about 90 mem­
bers that owns a sacred dance ground and a sacred grove o f trees. Mem­
Prestige bers o f a subclan are required to pool wealth for bride payments whenever
any o f their members marries and in support o f one o f their members who
Economics in is striving to become a Big Man. A subclan is in competition with other sub­
clans for prestige, which affects its members' ability to obtain wives and their
Papua New desirability as partners in regional alliances. An individual householder is mo­
Guinea20 tivated to contribute to his subclan’s political and economic activities, there­
fore, because his immediate family's self-interest is intimately bound with that
o f the subclan.
The Enga subclan is a unit approximately the size o f the largest corpo­
rate kin groups in societies occupying the less densely populated highland
fringe o f New Guinea, such as theTsembaga [see Chapter 6], But the Enga
are organized into a still higher level grouping [also based on patrilineal de­
scent], the clan, which averages about 350 members and is the ultimate
owner and defender o f the territory o f the clan, from which all clan mem­
bers ultimately derive their subsistence. Clans own carefully defined territo­
ries and defend them both in battle and on ceremonial occasions. They are
led by Big Men who speak for their clans in interclan relations and who work
within their clans to mobilize the separate households for military political,
and ceremonial action.
Like the subclan, the clan is an arena for dramatic public activities.The
clan owns a main dance ground and an ancestral cult house. A t these cere­
monial centers, public gatherings take place that emphasize the unity o f the
group as against other clans. Sackschewsky . . . sees this as an essential tac­
tic to overcome the fierce independence o f Enga households, where “each
man makes his own decisions.” Such familistic independence creates prob­
lems fo r Big Men, who encourage interfamily unity in the effort to enhance
the strength o f their own clans in a fiercely competitive and dangerous so­
cial environment.
Let us imagine the problems faced by the members o f an Enga clan.
They are trying to make an adequate subsistence from small amounts of

20Johnson, A. (1989). Horticulturists: Economic behavior in tribes. In S. Plattner

(Ed.), E con om ic anthropology (pp. 6 3 -6 7 ). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
 E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 213

intensely utilized land. Surrounding them is a world o f enemies ready to drive

them from their land and seize it at the first sign o f weakness. They must
attempt to neutralize this external threat by several means: ( I) by maintain­
ing a large, unified group, they show strength in numbers, making others afraid
to attack them; (2) by collaborating in the accumulation o f food and wealth
to be generously given away at ceremonies, they make themselves attractive
as feasting partners; and (3) by being strong and wealthy, they become at­
tractive as allies for defensive purposes, turning their neighbors either into
friends or into outnumbered enemies. These three goals can be achieved
only if each member o f a clan is willing to fight on behalf o f other members,
to avoid fighting within the clan (even though it is with his clan members
that a man is most directly in competition for land, since they are his most
immediate neighbors), and to give up a share o f his precious household ac­
cumulation o f food and wealth objects in order that his Big Man may host
an impressive feast.
This dependence o f the household on the economic and political suc­
cess o f the clan is the basis o f the Big Man’s power A Big Man is a local
leader who motivates his followers to act in concert. He does not hold of­
fice and has no ultimate institutional power so he must lead by pleading and
bullyragging. His personal characteristics make him a leader . . . He is usu­
ally a good speaker convincing to his listeners; he has an excellent memory
for kinship relations and fo r past transactions in societies where there is no
writing; he is a peacemaker whenever possible, arranging compensatory pay­
ments and fines in order to avoid direct violent retribution from groups who
feel they have been injured; and, when all else fails, he leads his followers
into battle.
O f great importance in this system is the exchange o f brides between
patrilineal groups, for which payments o f food, especially pigs, and wealth ob­
jects are required. An individual's political position— which affects his access
to land, pigs, and other necessities— depends on alliances formed via his own
marriage and those o f his close kin. A Big Man, skilled as a negotiator and
extremely knowledgeable about the delicate web o f alliances created across
the generations by a myriad o f previous marriages and wealth payments, can
help a group to marry well and maintain its competitive edge. By arranging
his own marriages, o f course, the Big Man can not only increase the num­
ber o f alliances in which he is personally involved, but he can also bring more
women, which is to say, more production o f sweet potatoes and pigs, under
his control. Hence, as he strengthens his group, he does not neglect his own
personal power as measured by his control o f women, pigs, and wealth ob­
jects. His efforts both public and personal come together most visibly when
he succeeds in hosting a feast.
Among the most dramatic economic institutions on earth, the Melane­
sian feasts have fascinated economic anthropologists.The Big Man works for
months, painfully acquiring food and wealth from his reluctant followers, only
to present them in spectacular accumulations— as gifts to his allies. But the
generosity has an edge, as the Kawelka Big Man Ongka put it: “ I have won.
I have knocked you down by giving so much . . ."And the Big Man expects
that his turn will come to be hosted by his allies, when they will be morally
bound to return his gift with an equivalent or larger one. The “ conspicuous
214 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live

consumption” and underlying competitiveness o f these displays o f generos­

ity have been regarded as so similar to philanthropy in our own economy
as to seem to close the gap between “ primitive" and “ modern” economies.
But the Big Man feast must be understood in context. Similar to the fa­
mous potlatch o f the Northwest Coast o f North America, these feasts do not
exist merely as arenas for grandiose men to flaunt their ambition. As analyzed
for the Northwest Coast, the competitive feast is the most dramatic event in
a complex o f Interactions that maintain what Newman . . . calls “the inter­
group collectivity." We must remember that, beyond the Enga clan, there is
no group that can guarantee the rights o f the individual, in the sense that the
modern state does for us. Beyond the clan are only allies, strangers, and ene­
mies. Many o f them covet the desirable lands o f other clans, and, if they sense
weakness, they will strike. Small groups— weak in numbers and vulnerable to
attack— must seek to swell their numbers and to attract allies in other clans.
Thus an individual family's access to the means o f subsistence depends on the
success o f its clan in the political arena, ultimately in the size o f fighting force
that can be mounted from within the clan and recruited from allied clans.
In the absence o f courts and constitutions regulating intergroup rela­
tions, the Big Men assume central importance. It is they who maintain and
advertise their group’s attractiveness as allies (hence the bragging and show­
manship that accompany Big Man feasts), who mediate disputes to avoid the
dangerous extremity o f homicidal violence, who remember old alliances and
initiate new ones. Despite the public competitiveness between Big Men as
they attempt to humiliate one another with generosity, over time they de­
velop relationships o f a predictable, even trustworthy, nature with other Big
Men, lending intergroup stability in an unstable world.
A good example o f this stabilizing effect is seen in the Te cycle, a series
o f competitive exchanges that link many Central Enga clans. Starting at one
end o f the chain, initiatory gifts o f pigs, salt, and other valuables are given as
individual exchanges from one partner to the next down the chain o f clans.
Big Men do not have to be directly involved, since such individual exchanges
follow personal lines o f alliance. But because the gifts are flowing in one di­
rection down the chain o f clans, after a time the giving clans begin to de­
mand repayment. As this signal passes through the system, Individuals amass
pigs fo r larger feasts at the opposite, or receiving end, o f the chain. These
larger interclan ceremonies are full o f oratory and display that serve to ad­
vertise the size and wealth o f individual clans. Over a period o f months a
series o f large gifting ceremonies move back up the chain o f clans toward
the beginning. The emphasis on prestige in these ceremonies is certainly
gratifying to the participants, but it serves larger purposes: to maintain peace
by substituting competitive feasting for open warfare, to establish and rein­
force alliances, and to advertise a clan's attractiveness as an ally and fear­
someness as an enemy.
The central points to note from this example are the following:

I. The high population density o f the Enga . . . implies tw o related de­

velopments: First, there is little wild forest left and virtually no supply of
wild foods for the diet; and, second, the best horticultural land is fully
occupied and in permanent use. These tw o primary consequences o f
population growth have further implications.
 E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 215

2. One is an intensive mode o f food production that does not rely so

much on regeneration o f natural soil fertility through fallowing as upon
mounding and the addition o f green manure to soils. Because o f the
Enga’s reliance on pigs, these fields must support not only the human
population but also that o f the pigs, who consume as much garden pro­
duce as humans do.The labor costs o f pigs therefore include both pro­
ducing their food and building fences to control their predation o f gar­
dens. Although the Enga populations are able to provide their basic
nutritional needs in this manner other highland groups with similar
economies do show some signs o f malnutrition, suggesting that overall
production is not much more than adequate.
3. Furthermore, with land scarce, warfare shows a clear emphasis on te r­
ritorial expansion and displacement. In response to this basic threat to
their livelihood, families participate, albeit somewhat reluctantly, in the
political activities o f the lineage and clan. Although these activities of­
ten appear belligerent and can lead to warfare by deflecting hostilities
outside the clan or local alliance o f clans, it remains true that they have
the primary function o f preventing violence and stabilizing access to land.

The three major paths fo r creating alliances are marriage exchanges, sharing
o f food at feasts (commensality), and an intricate web o f debt and credit es­
tablished through exchanges o f food and wealth objects. All o f these to ­
gether constitute the prestige economies for which such groups are famous.
Crucial junctures in the prestige economy are occupied by Big Men, who
earn their status by personally managing the complex alliances that provide
a degree o f security to otherwise vulnerable groups o f closely related kin.

For these Big Man feasts, a surplus is created for
the express purpose of gaining prestige through a
display of wealth and generous giving of gifts. But,
unlike conspicuous consumption in Western soci­
eties, the emphasis is not on the hoarding of goods,
which would make them unavailable to others. In­
stead, the emphasis is on giving away, or at least
getting rid of, one’s wealth goods. Thus, these
feasts serve as a leveling mechanism, preventing
some individuals from accumulating too much
wealth at the expense of other society members.
M arket E x c ha nge
To an economist, market exchange has to do with
the buying and selling of goods and services, with
prices set by the powers of supply and demand.
Loyalties and values are not supposed to play a
role, but they often do. Just where the buying and
selling takes place is largely irrelevant, so we must
distinguish between market exchan ge and the m ar­
ketplace. Although some modern market transac­
tions do occur in a specific identifiable location—
much of the trade in cotton, for example, happens
in the New Orleans Cotton Exchange— it is also
quite possible for North Americans to buy or sell
goods without ever being on the same side of the
continent as the other party. When people talk
about a market in today’s world, the particular
place where something is sold is often not impor­
tant at all. For example, think of the way people
speak of a “market” for certain types of automo­
biles or for mouthwash.
Until well into the 20th century, market ex­
change typically was carried out in specific places,
as it still is in much of the non-Western world. In

Market exchange. The buying and selling of goods and services, with prices set by the powers of supply and demand.
216 PART II C ulture and S urvival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
peasant or agrarian societies, marketplaces over­
seen by a centralized political authority provide
the opportunity for farmers living in rural regions
to exchange some of their livestock and produce
for needed items manufactured in factories or the
workshops of craft specialists living (usually) in
towns and cities. Thus, some sort of complex di­
vision of labor as well as centralized political or­
ganization is necessary for the appearance of
markets. In the marketplace land, labor, and oc­
cupations are not bought and sold as they are
through the Western market economy. In other
words, what happens in these marketplaces has lit­
tle to do with the price of land, the amount paid
for labor, or the cost of services. The market is lo­
cal, specific, and contained. Prices are apt to be
set on the basis of face-to-face bargaining (buy
cheap and sell dear is the order of the day), rather
than by faceless “market forces” wholly removed
from the transaction itself. Nor need some form
of money be involved; instead, goods may be di­
rectly exchanged through some form of reciproc­
ity between the specific individuals involved.
In non-Western societies, marketplaces have
much of the excitement of a fair; they are vibrant
places where one’s senses are assaulted by a host
of colorful sights, sounds, and smells. Indeed,
many of the large urban and suburban malls built
in the United States and other industrialized coun­
tries over the past few decades have tried to re­
create, though in a more contrived manner, some
of the interest and excitement of more traditional
marketplaces. In the latter, noneconomic activities
may even overshadow the economic. Social rela­
tionships are as important there as they are any­
where else. As anthropologist Stuart Plattner
observes, the marketplace is where friendships
are made, love affairs begun, and marriages
arranged.21 Dancers and musicians may perform,
and the end of the day may be marked by drink­
ing, dancing, and fighting. At the market, too, peo­
ple gather to hear news. In ancient Mexico, under
the Aztecs, people were required by law to go to
market at specific intervals to keep informed about
current events. Government officials held court
and settled judicial disputes at the market. Thus,
21 Planner, S. (1989). Markers and market places. In S. Plan­
ner (Ed.), Econom ic anthropology (p. 171). Stanford, CA:
Sranford University Press.
 E c o n o m i c S ystems CHAPTER 7 217

In non-Western societies, the market is an important focus of social as well as

economic activity, as typified by this market in Guatemala.

the market is a gathering place where people re­
new friendships, see relatives, gossip, and keep up
with the world while procuring needed goods they
cannot produce for themselves.
Although marketplaces can exist without
money exchange of any sort, no one doubts that
money facilitates trade. Money may be defined as
something used to make payments for other goods
and services as well as to measure their value. Its
critical attributes are durability, portability, divis­
ibility, recognizability, and fungibility (ability to
substitute any item of money for any other mon­
etary item of the same value, as when four quar­
ters are substituted for a dollar bill). The wide
range of things that have been used as money in
one or another society includes salt, shells, stones,
beads, feathers, fur, bones, teeth, and of course
metals, from iron to gold and silver. Among the
Aztecs of Mexico, both cacao beans and cotton
cloaks served as money. The beans could be used
to purchase merchandise and labor, though usu­
ally as a supplement to barter; if the value of the
items exchanged was not equal, cacao beans could
be used to make up the difference. Cotton cloaks
represented a higher denomination in the mone­
tary system, with 65 to 300 beans equivalent to
one cloak, depending on the latter’s quality. Cloaks
could be used to obtain credit, to purchase land,
as restitution for theft, and to ransom slaves,
whose value in any case was measured in terms of
cloaks. Interestingly, counterfeiting was not un­
known to the Aztecs— unscrupulous people some­
times carefully peeled back the outer skin of ca­
cao beans, removed the contents, and then
substituted packed earth!
Among the Tiv of West Africa, brass rods
might be exchanged for cattle, with the cattle seller
then using the rods to purchase slaves (the eco­
nomic value of the cattle being converted into the
rods and then reconverted into slaves). In both the
Aztec and Tiv cases, the money in question is (or
was) only used for special purposes. To a Tiv, the
idea of exchanging a brass rod for subsistence
foods is repugnant, and most market exchanges
involve direct barter. Special-purpose monies usu­
ally have more moral restrictions on their use than

Money. Anything used to make payments for goods or labor as well as to measure their value; may be special purpose
or multipurpose.
218 PART II Culture and Survival: C ommunicating, R aising C hildren, and Staying Alive

United States it is considered immoral, as well as

Ancient Lydian money: the world’s first coins. Lydia
was located in Anatolia, which is now Turkey.
do general-purpose monies, which can be used to
purchase just about anything. Even the latter cat­
egory, however, has limits. For example, in the
illegal, to exchange money for sexual and politi­
cal favors, even though infractions against these
constraints occur.
The United States, as part of a reaction to the
increasingly “face-to-faceless” nature of the mod­
ern economic system, is having something of a re­
vival and proliferation of “flea markets” (Figure
7.3), where anyone, for a small fee, may display
and sell handicrafts, secondhand items, farm pro­
duce, and paintings in a face-to-face setting. Ex­
citement is felt in the search for bargains and an
opportunity for haggling. A carnival atmosphere
prevails, with eating, laughing, and conversation,
and items even may be bartered without any cash
passing hands. These flea markets, including fairs,
festivals, and farmers’ markets, are similar to the
marketplaces of non-Western societies.
Flea markets also raise the issue of the dis­
tinction between the informal and formal sectors
of the market economy. The informal economy

FORMAL
I II

Stock market Festival marketplace

Factory outlet/Category killer Theme park

Retail shop/Mall Leisure venues

Sidewalk sale Auction

ECONOMIC FLEA M A R K E T FESTIVE
Home shopping Farmers’ market

IV III

Classified ads Art/cralt fair

Underground/Shadow economy County fair

Garage/Rummage sale Local festival

INFORMAL

FiaiiK E 7 .3
Marketplace structure and function may range from formal to informal and from economic to festive, as this
diagram suggests.

In fo rm a l econom y. The production of marketable commodities that for various reasons escape enumeration, regula­
tion, o r any other sort of public monitoring o r auditing.
 E conomic S ystems CHAPTER 7 219

may be defined as the system whereby producers

of goods and services provide marketable com­
modities that for various reasons escape enumera­
tion, regulation, or other type of public monito­
ring or auditing. Such enterprises may encompass
just about anything: market gardening, making
and selling beer or other alcoholic beverages, do­
ing repair or construction work, begging, selling
things on the street, performing ritual services,
lending money, dealing drugs, picking pockets,
and gambling, to mention just a few. These sort
of “off the books” activities have been known for
a long time but generally have been dismissed by
economists as aberrant and therefore more of an
annoyance than anything of importance. It is also
difficult for them to track; yet, in many countries
of the world, the informal economy is, in fact,
more important than the formal economy. In many
places, large numbers of under- and unemployed Steve Barnett, who earned his Ph.D. in anthropology
peoples who have only limited access to the for­ from the University of Chicago, was for several years
mal sector in effect improvise as best they can var­ head of a consulting firm that served several large
ious means of “getting by” on scant resources. corporations. He is now a vice president at Citibank
in Long Island City, New York, where he studies
Meanwhile, more affluent society members may
long-term cultural trends in patterns of consumption
evade various regulations to maximize returns and
worldwide.
to vent their frustrations at their perceived loss of
self-determination in the face of increasing gov­
ernment regulation.
change, peasants were forced into the ranks of the
unemployed. Because the farmers were unable to
* l Jk l 'lVk ' y k.'? » A T A earn enough money to satisfy their minimal nu­
tritional needs, the incidence of malnutrition rose
ECONOMICS, CULTURE, AND THE dramatically. Similarly, development projects in
WORLD OF BUSINESS Africa, designed to initiate changes in local hy­
drology, vegetation, and settlement patterns— and
At the start of this chapter, we noted that when even programs aimed at reducing certain diseases
studying the economies of nonliterate peoples we — frequently have led directly to in creased disease
perhaps are most apt to fall prey to our ethno­ rates.22 Fortunately, now awareness is growing
centric biases. The misunderstandings that result among development officials that future projects
from our failure to overcome these biases are of are unlikely to succeed without the expertise an­
major importance to us in the modern world in at thropologically trained people can bring to bear.
least two ways. For one, they encourage develop­ Secondly, achieving an understanding of the
ment schemes for countries that, by Western eco­ economic systems of other peoples that is not
nomic standards, are regarded as “underdevel­
bound by the hopes and expectations of one’s own
oped” (a comfortably ethnocentric term), schemes culture also has become important for corporate
that all too often result in poverty, poor health, executives in today’s world. At least, recognition
discontent, and a host of other ills. In northeast­ of how embedded such systems are within the
ern Brazil, for example, development of large-scale
plantations to grow sisal for export to the United
States took over numerous small farms where 22Bodley, J. H. (1990). Victims o f progress (3rd ed., p. 141).
peasants grew food to feed themselves. With this Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
220 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
Anthropology and the World
of Business
W hen people hear o f anthropologists working for
and sometimes running, private-sector busi­
nesses ranging from major financial institutions to con­
sulting firms for large corporations, their reaction is usu­
ally surprise. In the public mind, anthropologists are
supposed to work in exotic, faraway places such as remote
islands, deep forests, hostile deserts, o r arctic wastes
— not in the world o f business. After all, when anthro­
pology makes the pages o f the New York Times, is it not
to report the "discovery” o f a "last surviving Stone Age
tribe,” the uncovering o f some ancient “ lost city,” or the
recovery o f bones o f some remote human ancestor
usually in some out-of-the-way part o f the world?
N ot only have anthropologists found niches for
themselves in the business world, but also since 1972
the number o f them going into business has grown five­
fold. The reason fo r their success is they have skills to
offer the corporate world other social and behavioral
scientists do not. One example is the discovery o f an­
thropology by the market-research and product indus­
try, as reported by Susan Squires:*
The October/November 1996 issue o f Fast Com­
pany, a magazine devoted to cutting-edge business
practice, introduced its readers to the newest in­
novation in the market-research and design indus­
try: ethnography. W hat companies in the forefront
o f market research and design are learning is that
“ nearly all the tools o f conventional marketing—
‘'Squires, S. (1997). The market research and product indus­
try discovers anthropology. A nthropology Newsletter, 38 (4),
31.
cultures they are parts of could avoid problems of
the sort a large New York City-based cosmetics
manufacturer experienced. About to release an ad
in Italy featuring a model holding some flowers,
focus groups, customer surveys' segmentation—
are designed to measure what people think. But
the secret to breakthrough innovation . . . Is un­
derstanding how people behave: what they do and
how they live. ”
Companies that are serious about ethnogra­
phy are recruiting and hiring anthropologists like
Christina Wasson, a linguist who received her PhD
from Yale In 1996. Christina Wasson joined E-Lab,
the company featured in the Fast Company article,
after graduation. A t E-Lab, Christina Wasson uses
methods to collect data that include participant
observation, in-depth interviewing, and video­
taping.
While many market-research and design com­
panies are beginning to advertise themselves as
having “ ethnographers" and “ doing ethnography,"
most do not have anthropologists on staff and are
not really "doing ethnography.” Some o f these
companies would like to hire an anthropologist to
legitimize their claims and improve their methods.
This means that there is a potential job market for
anthropologists in the market-research and design
area. But to be considered for available positions,
the successful applicant must have some knowl­
edge o f business.
Christina Wasson is a good example o f the
combination o f skills and knowledge sought. She
was recruited not only for her anthropological
background but also for her business knowledge.
Her dissertation, Covert Causation: Linguistic Traces
of Effective Organizational Control, is based on
lengthy fieldwork conducted at Motorola in
Chicago.
it was discovered the flowers were the kind tradi­
tionally given at Italian funerals. Along the same
lines, the Chevrolet NOVA did not sell well in
Spanish-speaking countries because in Spanish
 E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 221

“No Va” means “No G o .” Anthropologists Ed­
ward and Mildred Hall describe another case of
the same sort:
José Ybarra and Sir Edmund Jones are ar the same
party and ir is important for them to establish a
cordial relationship for business reasons. Each is
trying to be warm and friendly, yet they will part
with mutual distrust and their business transaction
will probably fall through. José, in Latin fashion,
moved closer and closer to Sir Edmund as they
spoke, and this movement was miscommunicated
as pushiness to Sir Edmund, who kept backing
away from this intimacy, and this was miscommu­
nicated to José as coldness.23
When the so-called underdeveloped countries of
Africa, Asia, and South and Central America are
involved, the chances for cross-cultural misunder­
standings increase dramatically. The executives
of major corporations realize their dependency
on these countries for raw materials, they are
increasingly inclined to manufacture their prod­
ucts in them, and they see their best potential
for market expansion as lying outside North
America and Europe. That is why business re­
cruiters on college campuses in the United States
are on the lookout for job candidates with the
kind of understanding of the world anthropology
provides.

21Hall, E. T., & Hall, M. R. (1986). The sounds of silence.

In E. Angeloni (Ed.), Anthropology 86/87 (p. 65). Guilford
CT: Dushkin.

In Africa, much of the farming is the job of women. Failure to accept this fact is responsi­
ble for the failure of many development schemes, since outside experts design projects that
usually assume the men in the society are the farmers.
222 PART II C ulture and Survival: C ommunicating , R aising C hildren , and Staying A live
C H A P T E R
An economic system is a means of producing, dis­
tributing, and consuming goods. Studying the eco­
nomics of nonliterate, nonindustrial societies can
be undertaken only in the context of the total cul­
ture of each society. Each society solves the prob­
lem of subsisting by allocating raw materials, land,
labor, and technology and by distributing goods
according to its own priorities.
The work people do is a major productive re­
source, and the allotment of work is always gov­
erned by rules according to sex and age. Only a
few broad generalizations can be made covering
the kinds of work men and women perform. In­
stead of looking for biological imperatives to ex­
plain the sexual division of labor, a more produc­
tive strategy is to examine the kinds of work men
and women do in the context of specific societies
to see how it relates to other cultural and histor­
ical factors. The cooperation of many people
working together is a typical feature of both non­
literate and literate societies. Specialization of craft
is important even in societies with very simple
technologies.
All societies regulate the allocation of land and
its valuable resources. In nonindustrial societies,
individual ownership of land is rare; generally,
land is controlled by kinship groups, such as the
lineage or band. This system provides greater flex­
ibility of land use, since the size of the bands and
their territories can be adjusted according to the
availability of resources in any particular place.
The technology of a people, in the form of the
tools they use and associated knowledge, is related
to their mode of subsistence. In food-foraging so­
cieties, codes of generosity promote free access to
tools, even though individuals may have made
them for their own use. Sedentary farming com­
munities offer greater opportunities to accumulate
material belongings, and inequalities of wealth
may develop. In many such communities, though,
a relatively egalitarian social order may be main­
tained through leveling mechanisms.
Nonliterate people consume most of what they
produce themselves, but they do exchange goods.
The processes of distribution may be distinguished
as reciprocity, redistribution, and market ex­
change. Reciprocity is a transaction between indi-
S U M M A R Y
viduals or groups, involving the exchange of goods
and services of roughly equivalent value. Usually
it is prescribed by ritual and ceremony.
Barter and trade occur between groups. Trad­
ing exchanges have elements of reciprocity, but
they involve a greater calculation of the relative
value of goods exchanged. Barter is one form of
negative reciprocity, whereby scarce goods from
one group are exchanged for desirable goods from
another group. Silent trade, which need not in­
volve face-to-face contact, is a specialized form of
barter with no verbal communication. It allows
control of the potential dangers of negative reci­
procity. A classic example of exchange between
groups that partakes of both reciprocity and sharp
trading is the Kula ring of the Trobriand Islanders.
Strong, centralized political organization is
necessary for redistribution to occur. The govern­
ment assesses each citizen a tax or tribute, uses the
proceeds to support the governmental and reli­
gious elite, and redistributes the rest, usually in the
form of public services. The collection of taxes and
delivery of government services and subsidies in
the United States is a form of redistribution.
Display for social prestige is a motivating force
in societies that produce some surplus of goods.
In the United States, goods accumulated for dis­
play generally remain in the hands of those who
accumulated them, whereas in other societies they
are generally given away; the prestige comes from
publicly divesting oneself of valuables.
Exchange in the marketplace serves to dis­
tribute goods in a region. In nonindustrial soci­
eties, the marketplace is usually a specific site
where produce, livestock, and material items the
people produce are exchanged. It also functions as
a social gathering place and a news medium. Al­
though market exchanges may occur without
money through bartering and other forms of rec­
iprocity, some form of money at least for special
transactions makes market exchange more effi­
cient.
In market economies, the informal sector may
become more important than the formal sector as
large numbers of under- and unemployed people
with marginal access to the formal economy seek
to survive. The informal economy consists of
 E conomic Systems CHAPTER 7 223

economic activities that escape official scrutiny
and regulation.
The anthropological approach to economics
has taken on new importance in today’s world of
international development and commerce. With­
out it, development schemes for so-called under­
developed countries are prone to failure, and
international trade is handicapped due to cross-
cultural misunderstandings.

Points for C onsideration

1. What parts of North American or European economies are comparable to nonindustrial societies’
economies? Are these parts changing?
2. Imagine you run a word processing service for other students or you work at a fast-food restu-
raunt part-time. How might your personal economic valuation of your labor appear to someone
from another culture with a foraging economic system? to someone from North America with a
foraging economic system, such as a homeless person?
3. Do you see examples of nonindustrial forms of market exchange in your neighborhood? Do
North American consumers or sellers make use of nonindustrial forms? How and why?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Dalton, G. (1971). Traditional tribal an d peasant
econom ies: An introductory survey o f econ om ic
anthropology. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
This is just what the title says it is, by a ma­
jor specialist in economic anthropology.
LeClair, E. E., Jr., & Schneider, H. K. (Eds.).
(1968). E con om ic an th rop olog y : R eadings in
theory an d analysis. New York: Holt, Rine­
hart and Winston.
This book is a selection of significant writings
in economic anthropology from the preceding
50 years. In the first section are theoretical pa­
pers covering major points of view, and in the
second are case materials selected to show the
practical application of the various theoretical
positions.
Nash, M. (1966). Prim itive an d p easan t econ om ic
systems. San Francisco: Chandler.
Heavily theoretical, this book studies the
problems of economic anthropology, espe­
cially the dynamics of social and economic
change in terms of primitive and peasant eco­
nomic systems. It draws on the author’s field­
work in Guatemala, M exico, and Burma.
Plattner, S. (Ed.). (1989). E con om ic an thropology.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
This is the first comprehensive text in eco­
nomic anthropology to appear since the
1970s. Twelve scholars in the field contributed
chapters on a variety of issues ranging from
economic behavior in foraging, horticultural,
preindustrial-state, peasant, and industrial so­
cieties to sex roles, common-property re­
sources, informal economics in industrial so­
cieties, and mass marketing in urban areas.
 III
P A R T

T he Formation of G roups
S olving the P roblem of
C ooperation
CftApfeT &
S ex and M arriage

CllAp-fcY 9
Family and H ousehold
dtAp-fer 1 0
K inship and D escent

CltApfeT 11
G rouping by S ex , A ge,
C ommon I nterest, and C lass
One important Insight to come from anthropological
study is how fundamental cooperation is to human sur­
vival. Through coopeiation, humans handle even the
most baste problems of existence— the need for food
and protection not just from the elements but from
predatory animals and even one another. To some ex­
tent. this is true not only for humans but for othei pri­
mates But what really sets humans apart from other pri­
mates >s some form of regulai cooperation between
adults in subsistence activities A t rhe least this takes the
form of the sexual division of labor as seen among food-
foraging peoples. Such cooperation is not usual among
nonhuman primates; adult chimpanzees, for example,
may cooperate to get meat, and share it when they get
it, but they don’t get meat very often, and they don’t
normally share other kinds of food the way humans reg­
ularly do.
Just as cooperation is basic to human nature, the
organization of groups is basic to cooperation. Humans
form many kinds of groups, each geared toward solving
different kinds of problems people must cope with. So­
cial groups are important to humans also because they
give identity and support to their members. The basic
building block of human societies is the household,
where economic production, consumption, inheritance,
child rearing, and shelter are organized. Usually, the
core of the household consists of some form of
family, a group of relatives that stems from the
parent-child bond and the interdependence of men and
women. Although it may be structured in many differ­
ent ways, the family always provides for economic co­
operation between men and women while furnishing the
kind of setting required for child rearing. Another prob­
lem all human societies face is the need to control sex­
ual activity, and this is the job of marriage. Given the in­
evitable connection between sexual activity and the
production of children, who then must be nurtured, a
close interconnection between marriage and family is to
be expected.
Many different marriage and family patterns exist the
world over, but all societies have some form of marriage,
and most have some form of family organization. As shown
in Chapters 8 and 9, the forms of family and marriage
organization are to a large extent shaped by the specific
kinds of problems people must solve in particular situations.
Solutions to some organizational challenges ate be­
yond the scope of family and household These include
defense, allocation of resources, and provision of iaboi
for tasks coo large for single households Nomndustrial
societies frequently meec these challenges through kin­
ship groups, discussed in Chapter 10 These large, co­
hesive groups of individuals base their loyalty to one an­
other on descent from a common ancestor o r their
relationship to a living individual. In cases where a great
many people are linked by kinship, these groups serve
the important function of precisely defining the social
roles of their members. In this way they reduce the po­
tential for tension that might arise from an individual’s
sudden unexpected behavior. They also provide their
members with material security and moral support
through ritual activities.
Other important forms of human social groups are
the subjects of Chapter 11.W here kinship ties do not
provide for all of a society’s organizational needs, group­
ing by age and sex are forces societies may use to
create groups. In North America, as well as in many non-
Western countries, today and in the past, the organiza­
tion of persons by age is common. In many cases, too,
social groups based on the common interests of their
members serve a vital function. In developing countries,
they may help ease the transition of rural individuals into
urban settings. Finally, groups based on social rank—
social classes— are characteristic of the world’s civiliza­
tions, past and present. Class structure involves inequal­
ities between classes and is the means one group may
use to dominate large numbers of other people. To the
extent social class membership cuts across lines of kin­
ship, residence, age, or other group membership, it may
counteract tendencies for a society to fragment into dis­
crete special-interest groups. Paradoxically, it does so in
a divisive way, in that class distinctions systematically de­
prive people of equal access to important resources.
Thus, class conflict has been a recurrent phenomenon in
class-structured societies, in spite of the existence of po­
litical and religious institutions that function to maintain
the status quo.
 t t
\

S ex and
M arriage
T he W E D D IN G C E R E M O N Y O F N E L S O N

M a n d e l a ’s d a u g h t e r Z in z i. In all

S O C IE T IE S , M A R R IA G E EST A B LIS H E S A

C O N T IN U IN G S E X U A L R E L A T IO N S H IP

B E T W E E N T W O IN D IV ID U A L S , B A C K E D

B Y L E G A L , E C O N O M IC , A N D S O C IA L

F O R C E S .T H U 5 , U N L IK E M A T IN G

( W H I C H IS B IO L O G IC A L ), M A R R IA G E IS

D IS T IN C T L Y C U L T U R A L .

AAa

1
 dlApfcl' Pfcl/ieiv
L What Is Marriage?
Marriage is a relationship between one o r m ore men (male o r female) and one o r m ore women
(female o r male) who are recognized by society as having a continuing claim to the right o f sex­
ual access to one another. Because gender is culturally defined, the “ man” may be a female o r
the "wom an” a male. Although in many societies, husbands and wives live together as members
o f the same household, this is n o t tru e in all societies. And though most marriages around the
w orld tend to involve one spouse, most societies perm it, and regard as m ost desirable, mar­
riage o f an individual to m ultiple spouses.

2. What Is the Difference

A ll animals, including humans, mate— tha t is, they form a sexual bond w ith individuals o f the op­
posite sex. In some species, the bond lasts fo r life, but in some others it lasts no longer than a
single sex act.Thus, some animals mate w ith a single individual, while others mate w ith several.
O nly marriage, however, is backed by social, legal, and economic forces. Consequently, while mat­
ing is biological, marriage is cultural.

3. Why Is Marriage Universal?

A problem universal to all human societies is the need to control sexual relations so tha t com­
petition over sexual access does not introduce a disruptive, combative influence in to society.
Because the problem marriage deals w ith is universal, it follow s that marriage should be uni­
versal. The specific form marriage takes is related to w ho has rights to offspring tha t norm ally
result from sexual intercourse, as well as how property is distributed.
228 PART m T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

mong the Trobriand Islanders, whose yam man’s house as a way of announcing their inten­

A exchanges and Kula voyages we examined

in Chapter 7, children who have reached
age 7 or 8 begin playing erotic games with each
other and imitating adult seductive attitudes.
Within another 4 or 5 years they begin to pursue
sexual partners in earnest, changing partners of­
ten, experimenting sexually first with one and then
another. By the time they are in their midteens,
meetings between lovers take up most of the night,
and affairs between them are apt to last for sev­
eral months. Ultimately, lovers begin to meet the
same partner again and again, rejecting the ad­
vances of others. When the couple is ready, they
appear together one morning outside the young
tion to be married.
For young Trobrianders, attracting sexual
partners is an important business, and they spend
a great deal of time making themselves look as at­
tractive and seductive as possible. Youthful con­
versations during the day are loaded with sexual
innuendos, and magical spells as well as small gifts
are employed to entice a prospective sex partner to
the beach at night or to the house where boys sleep
apart from their parents. Because girls, too, sleep
apart from their parents, youths and adolescents
have considerable freedom to arrange their love af­
fairs. Boys and girls play this game as equals, with
neither sex having an advantage over the other.

To attract lovers, young Trobriand Islanders must look as attractive and seductive as possible. The young men
shown here have decorated themselves with Johnson’s Baby Powder, while the young girl’s beauty has been en­
hanced by decorations given by her father.

As anthropologist Annette Weiner points out,
all of this sexual activity is not a frivolous, ado­
lescent pastime. Attracting lovers:
is the first step toward entering the adult world of
strategies, where the line between influencing oth­
ers while not allowing others to gain control of one­
self must be carefully learned. . . . Sexual liaisons
give adolescents the time and occasion to experi­
ment with all the possibilities and problems that
adults face in creating relationships with those who
are not relatives. Individual wills may clash, and
the achievement of one’s desire takes patience, hard
work, and determination. The adolescent world of
lovernaking has its own dangers and disillusion-
mcnrs. Young people, to the degree they are capa­
ble, must learn to be both careful and fearless.1
The Trobriand attitude toward adolescent sexual­
ity stands in marked contrast to that of North
American society. Theoretically, North Americans
are not supposed to have sexual relations outside
of wedlock, although, as is well known, a consid­
erable discrepancy between theory and practice ex­
ists. Nonetheless, premarital sexual activity in
North American society cannot be conducted with
the openness and approval that characterizes the
Trobriand situation. As a consequence, it is not
subject to the kind of social pressures from the
community at large that prepare traditional Tro­
briand youths for the adult world after marriage.
CONTROL OF SEXUAL
RELATIONS
One distinctively human characteristic is the abil­
ity of the human female, like the human male, to
engage in sexual relations at any time she wants
to or whenever her culture deems it appropriate.
Although this ability to perform at any time when
provided with the appropriate cue is not unusual
for male mammals in general, it is not usual for
females. Female primates, whose offspring are
weaned but who have not yet become pregnant
again, are likely to engage in sexual activity
around the time of ovulation (approximately once
'Weiner, A. B. (1988). The Trobrianders o f Papua New
Guinea (p. 71). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
S ex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 229
Unlike chimpanzees and other female apes that signal
their fertility through highly visible swelling of their
skin, the human female gives no such signal. Thus,
males do not know when females are fertile, an in­
ducement for them to hang around for successful re­
production.
a month), at which time they advertise their avail­
ability through highly visible physical signs. O th­
erwise, they are little interested in such activity. By
contrast, the human female displays no visible sign
of ovulation and may be willing to engage in sex
at any point in her cycle or even when she is preg­
nant. In some societies, intercourse during preg­
nancy is thought to promote the growth of the
fetus. Among Trobriand Islanders, for example, a
child’s identity is thought to come from its mother,
but it is the father’s job to build up and nurture
the child, which he begins to do before birth
through frequent intercourse with its mother.
On the basis of clues from the behavior of
other primates, anthropologists have speculated
about the evolutionary significance of this human
female sexuality. The best current explanation is
that it arose as a side effect of persistent bipedal
locomotion in early hominines.2 The energetic re­
quirements of this form of locomotion are such
that endurance is impossible without a signifi­
cantly greater hormone output than other primates
have. These hormones catalyze the steady release
of muscular energy required for endurance;
2Spuhler, J. N. (1979). Continuities and discontinuities in an-
thropoid-hominid behavioral evolution: Bipedal locomotion
and sexual reception. In N. A. Chagnon & William Irons
(Eds.), Evolutionary biology and human social behavior (pp.
4 5 4 -4 6 1 ). North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press.
230 PART ID T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the P roblem of C ooperation

likewise, they make us the “sexiest” of all species both males and females have voluntary
primates. This does not mean either men or control over sex. People engage in it when it suits
women are simply at the mercy of their hormones them to do so and when it is deemed appro­
where sex is concerned, for in the human priate.

Anthropology and AIDS

A n irony o f human life is that sexual activity, nec­

essary for perpetuation o f the species as well as
a source o f pleasure and fulfillment, also can be a source
o f danger The problem lies in sexually transmitted dis­
eases, which in recent years have been spreading and
increasing in variety. Among these is acquired immune
deficiency syndrome or AIDS, although intravenous
drug use and blood transfusions also contributed to its
spread. Recent reports specify 16,000 new cases of
AIDS arise in the world every day! (See Figure 8.2.)
W hat follows is A. M. Williams's account of what she
and other anthropologists have to contribute to our
understanding and control o f this disease.
After a decade and a half, it is hard to deny that
AIDS is a pandemic experienced in significant ways
at local levels. The W orld Health Organization
(W H O ) estimates I 8.5 million adults are infected
with HIV (the virus present in most people with
AIDS) worldwide, with 4.5 million o f those peo­
ple diagnosed with AIDS. While HIV and AIDS has
hit areas o f Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia
hardest, as o f June 1996, the Centers for Disease
Control report a cumulative total o f 548,102 AIDS
cases in the United States, with 343,000 deaths.
W here I w ork in San Francisco, California, a city of
less than 800,000 people, there have been 24,509

T o ta l infections
Male : (amala
proportion* 1.3 million
l -r' 13.000 Q •
O u
Global total: about 30.6 million
AT
F ia v ftc 8 .1
Estimated global distribution of adult HIV infections, December 1997.

AIDS cases and 16,838 deaths from AIDS reported
since 1980. O f these cases, 22,16 1 are among gay
and bisexual men in the city.*
To grasp the proportions o f the pandemic, pub­
lic health perspectives, epidemiological models, bio­
medical information, and psychological interpreta­
tions are used to help figure out who is infected,
who will become infected, and where these infec­
tions are most likely to occur However; anthropol­
ogy takes a different approach, one that helps to
clarify the dynamic relationship between people,
who are infected or at risk for infection, and their
social, cultural, political and economic surroundings.
Such research is important because it can provide
rich explanations o f why people become infected
or progress rapidly in HIV disease.This in turn can
assist all manner o f institutions in addressing a wide
variety of local issues for those who need their ser­
vices and support. Moreover; anthropological analy­
ses often help describe the dynamic links between
individual practices, social and cultural systems, and
larger structural forces, all o f which may combine in
ways that encourage the problems o f HIV.
Working alone or as part o f teams to collect
and analyze data, most anthropologists enter Into
an extended engagement with groups o f people
who are dealing with numerous aspects o f HIV and
AIDS. Since anthropology begins from the premise
that circumstances and phenomena are complex
within different populations, we employ a variety
o f methods and theoretical frameworks to reach
our understandings. As a result, we do not develop
monolithic models for explaining HIV and AIDS.
For example, anthropologist Richard Parker’s w ork
in Brazil provided the formative research on sex­
ual practices and their relationship to local systems
o f power and inequality needed to create more
appropriate responses to the increasing spread o f
HIV/AIDS there. Others, like Paul Farmer demon­
strate how political economy and constructions o f
sickness among people in Haiti can negatively in­
fluence the quality o f life o f those infected in ways
that encourage the further spread o f the virus. And
some, like Emily Martin, show that within the rela­
tionships between science, clinical research, and
people affected by HIV and AIDS there emerge
new concepts of body and AIDS that can reveal
dynamics about society and the authoritative role
o f experts in shaping public awareness*
S ex and M arriage CH A PTER 8 231
These anthropological studies and many oth­
ers contribute to a very broad research and the­
oretical literature on HIV and AIDS, which can be
drawn upon by community-based organizations,
policy makers, and other researchers. However,
some anthropologists like myself w ork more di­
rectly with groups and organizations on problems
posed by primary prevention (preventing HIV
transmission) and secondary prevention (slowing
the disease's progression). Here anthropology is
well-suited for both formative research and con­
ducting evaluations o f programs and services. As
the anthropologist on a multi-disciplinary research
team at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies,
University o f California San Francisco, I w ork di­
rectly with local gay male populations and such lo­
cal AIDS organizations as the San Francisco AIDS
Foundation and the STOP AIDS Project. W hile the
team uses many strategies o f inquiry, I specifically
employ anthropological methods o f investigation
such as living and participating in the community,
conducting a variety o f in-depth interviews, and
studying archival materials. I also rely on anthro­
pological perspectives that require descriptions o f
the links between historical contexts, larger struc­
tural phenomena, and local practices and under­
standings.
Recently, by examining the relationship be­
tween HIV and drug use in tw o local groups o f
gay men who engage in unprotected sex, I was able
to describe how groups o f poorer gay male drug
users in the city may be subjected to physical vio­
lence from their homophobic peers.This influences
their ability to use condoms o r openly seek HIV
prevention education or support. A t the same
time, groups o f more middle-class gay male drug
users did not seek education o r support because
their social location and values encouraged them
to believe that they did not need these resources
because they had everything under control.* W ith
a greater clarity regarding local social and cultural
barriers to HIV prevention, some local HIV pre­
vention program designers rapidly developed more
culturally appropriate prevention programs for
these groups o f men. Because HIV and AIDS are
a dynamic part o f lived experiences, learning about
how people conceptualize and shape their ideas
and practices around the virus, selfhood, sex prac­
tices, collective life, and institutions is important.
232 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
And when these concepts become part o f a foun­
dation for HIV/AIDS programs, the services are
better able to respond to people's needs since the
programs make better sense within the contexts
o f people's lived realities.
As we head into the next century, bio-tech­
nology’s advances are beginning to reconfigure the
HIV/AIDS pandemic. While this is good news, it
also means the meanings o f HIV and AIDS become
more complex and difficult to navigate. Moreover
while new pharmaceutical therapies are providing
hope for many enfranchised people in the West,
infection rates climb and many more people re­
main unable to access these treatments. For most
o f us, culturally specific education and services will
still be the most effective means to prevent infec­
tion o r stem disease progression in many com­
munities. In this light, the variety o f perspectives of­
fered by anthropology becomes even more crucial.
This is because the foundations o f these preven­
tion efforts and services need to be developed
with considerable understanding o f how HIV and
Although developed as an accidental by-prod­
uct of something else, a common phenomenon in
evolution, the ability of females as well as males
to engage in sex at any time would have been ad­
vantageous to early hominines to the extent that
it acted, not alone but with other factors, to tie
members of both sexes more firmly to the social
groups so crucial to their survival. However, while
sexual activity can reinforce group ties, it also can
be disruptive. This stems from the common pri­
mate characteristic of male dominance. On the av­
erage, males are bigger and more muscular than
females, although this differentiation has become
drastically reduced in modern H o m o sapiens com­
pared to the earliest hominines. Among other pri­
mates, the males’ larger size allows them to try to
dominate females when the latter are at the height
of their sexuality. This trait can be seen among ba­
boons, gorillas, and, though less obviously, chim­
panzees (significantly, the size difference between
male and female chimpanzees is not as great as
among baboons or gorillas, but it is still substan­
tially greater than among modern humans). With
early hominine females potentially ready for sex­
AIDS are constructed and shaped in a dynamic re­
lationship with local complexities and concerns.
* Centers For D isease Control Semi-Annual AIDS Report
(through Jun e 1996). 1997. Centers For Disease Control. At­
lanta, Georgia, and AIDS M onthly Surveillance Summary
(through July 1997). 1997. San Francisco Department of
Public Health AIDS Office, Seroepidemiology and Surveil­
lance Branch. San Francisco, CA. The earliest circumstances
for tracking HIV and AIDS were problematic, and many
people today still do not know their HIV status. Therefore,
the cases reported in San Francisco or anywhere in the world
must be understood to be under counted.
+See for example, Parker, Richard. 1991. Bodies, Pleasures,
and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contem porary Brazil;
Farmer, Paul. 1992. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the G e­
ography o f Blame-, and Martin, Emily. 1994. Flexible Bodies:
Tracking Immunity in American Culture— from the days o f
p olio to the age o f AIDS.
fiScc Williams, A. M. 1996. Sex, Drugs and HIV: A Sociocul­
tural Analysis o f Two Groups o f Gay and Bisexual Male
Substance Users W ho Practice Unprotected Sex. Unpublished
manuscript.
ual intercourse at any time, dominant males may
have attempted to monopolize females; an added
inducement could have been the prowess of the fe­
male at food gathering. (In food-foraging societies,
women usually provide the bulk of the food by
their gathering activities.) In any event, a tendency
to monopolize females would introduce the kind
of competitive, combative element into hominine
groupings seen among many other primate species
— an element that cannot be allowed to disrupt
harmonious social relationships. The solution to
this problem is to bring sexual activity under cul­
tural control. Thus, just as a culture tells people
what, when, and how they should eat, so does it
tell them when, where, how, and with whom they
should have sex.
R ules of S exual A ccess
We find that everywhere societies have cultural
rules that seek to control sexual relations. In the
United States and Canada, the official ideology has
been that all sexual activity outside of wedlock is
taboo. One is supposed to establish a family

Attempts by males to dominate females may introduce
a competitive, combative element into social relations.
Among gorillas, male silverbacks maintain absolute
breeding rights over females in their group. All other
adult males must acknowledge this dominance or
leave the group and attempt to lure females from
other groups.
through marriage. With marriage, a person estab­
lishes a continuing claim to the right of sexual ac­
cess to another person. Actually very few known
societies— only about 5 % — prohibit all sexual in­
volvement outside of marriage, and even North
American society has become less restrictive.
Among other peoples, as we already have seen, prac­
tices are often quite different. As a further example,
we may look at the Nayar peoples of India.3
The Nayar constitute a landowning, warrior
caste (rather than an independent society) from
southwest India. Among them, estates are held by
corporations of sorts made up of kinsmen related
in the female line. These kinsmen all live together
in a large household, with the eldest male serving
as manager.
Three Nayar transactions are of interest here.
The first occurs shortly before a girl undergoes her
3My interpretation of the Nayar follows W. H. Goodenough
(1970), Description and com parison in cultural anthropology
(pp. 6-1 1 ). Chicago: Aldine.
M arriage. A relationship between one o r more men (male or female) and one or more women (female o r male) rec­
ognized by society as having a continuing claim to the right of sexual access to one another.
S ex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 233
first menstruation. It involves a ceremony that
joins together in a temporary union the girl with
a young man. This union, which may or may not
involve sexual relations, lasts for a few days and
then breaks up. Neither individual has any further
obligation, although the woman and her future
children probably will mourn for the man when
he dies. This transaction establishes the girl’s eli­
gibility for sexual activity with men her household
approves. With this, she is officially an adult.
The second transaction occurs when a girl en­
ters into a continuing sexual liaison with an ap­
proved man. This is a formal relationship, which
requires the man to present her with gifts three
times each year until the relationship is terminated.
In return, the man may spend the nights with her.
In spite of continuing sexual privileges, however,
the man has no obligation to support his sex part­
ner economically, nor is her home regarded as his
home. In fact, she may have such an arrangement
with more than one man at the same time. Re­
gardless of how many men are involved with one
woman, this second Nayar transaction, their ver­
sion of marriage, clearly specifies who has sexual
rights to whom so as to avoid conflict. We may
define marriage as a relationship between one or
234 PART in T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
In the United States, gay or lesbian couples who wish
to marry have met with considerable resistance, in
spite of the fact that there is nothing abnormal, in
any scientific sense, about such unions. In a number
of other societies, same-sex marriages are regarded as
perfectly appropriate.
more men (male or female) and one or more
women (female or male) recognized by society as
having a continuing claim to the right of sexual
access to one another.4 Thus defined, marriage is
universal, presumably because the problems it
deals with are universal. As the Nayar case demon­
strates, however, marriage need not have anything
to do with starting a new family or even estab­
lishing a cooperative economic relationship be­
tween people of opposite gender.
4This definition of marriage is adapted from D. Bell (1997),
Defining marriage and legitimacy, Current Anthropology, 38,
241; and R. K. Jain (1997), Comment, Current A nthropol­
ogy, 38, 248.
A ffinal kin. Relatives by marriage. > C onjugal bond.
The qualification in our definition of marriage
— that the man actually may be a female or the
woman actually may be a male— is an important
one. It stems from the fact gender does not auto­
matically follow from biological sex but is cultur­
ally defined (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 5).
Thus we find that, in many societies, same-sex
marriages are regarded as appropriate and normal
in particular circumstances, even though opposite-
sex marriages are far more common. We shall re­
turn to this point later in the chapter.
In the absence of effective birth-control de­
vices, the usual outcome of sexual activity between
individuals of opposite sex is that, sooner or later,
the woman becomes pregnant. When this happens
among the Nayar, some man must formally ac­
knowledge paternity, the third transaction. He
does this by making gifts to the woman and the
midwife. Though he may continue to take much
interest in the child, he has no further obligations,
for the child’s education and support are the re­
sponsibility of the child’s mother’s brothers, whom
the child and its mother live with. This transac­
tion establishes the child’s legitimacy. In this sense,
it is the counterpart of the registration of births in
North American culture that spells out mother­
hood and fatherhood. In Western societies gener­
ally, the father is supposed to be the mother’s hus­
band, but he does not have to be. In the United
States, the child of an unwed mother may be spo­
ken of as “illegitimate,” yet its citizenship rights,
as well as those of inheritance, are not denied. Nor
does legitimacy require the father to be married to
the mother. In numerous other societies— for ex­
ample, among the Pueblo peoples (such as the
Hopi) of the North American Southwest— father­
hood is utterly irrelevant to the child’s legitimacy.
In their societies legitimacy comes automatically
from one’s mother, regardless of whether or not
she is married.
Before we leave the Nayar, it is important to
note that nothing in this society is comparable to
the family as we know it in North America. The
group that forms the household does not include
affinal kin, or individuals joined by a conjugal
bond established by marriage. As will be shown
The bond between a man and a woman who are married.

in Chapter 9, a household group does not have to
be a family as we know it. Among the Nayar the
household is composed wholly of what we often
call “blood” relatives, technically known as con-
sanguineal kin. Sexual relations are with those
who are not consanguineal kin and thus live in
other households. This brings us to another sup­
posed human universal, the incest taboo.
T he I ncest Taboo
A cultural rule that long has fascinated anthro­
pologists as well as other students of human be­
havior is the incest taboo. This prohibits sexual
relations at least between parents and children of
opposite sex and usually siblings as well. Once
thought to be universal, save for a few exceptions
involving siblings, the taboo has became some­
thing of a challenge for anthropologists to explain,
both regarding this supposed universality and why
incest commonly should be regarded as such loath­
some behavior.
Many explanations have been given. O f those
that have gained some popularity at one time or
another, the simplest and least satisfactory is based
on “human nature”— that is, some instinctive hor­
ror of incest. It has been documented that human
beings raised together have less sexual attraction
for one another, but by itself this “familiarity
breeds contempt” argument simply may substitute
the result for the cause. The incest taboo ensures
that children and their parents, who are constantly
in intimate contact, avoid regarding one another
as sexual objects. Besides this, if an instinctive hor­
ror of incest exists, we would be hard pressed to
account for the far from rare violations of the in­
cest taboo, such as occur in North American so­
ciety (an estimated 1 0 % -1 4 % of children under
18 years of age in the United States have been in­
volved in incestuous relations5), or for cases of in­
stitutionalized incest, such as requiring the head
5Whelehan, P. (1985). Review of incest, a biosocial view.
American Anthropologist, 87, 678.
Consanguineal kin. Relatives by birth; that is,“blood” relatives. > Incest taboo.
between specified individuals, usually parent-child and sibling relations at a minimum.
Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 235
of the Inca empire in Peru to marry his own
sister.
Various psychological explanations of the in­
cest taboo have been advanced at one time or an­
other. Sigmund Freud tried to account for it in his
psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious. Ac­
cording to him, the son desires the mother (fa­
miliarity breeds attempt), creating a rivalry with
the father. (Freud called this the Oedipus com­
plex.) The son must suppress these feelings or earn
the wrath of the father, who is far more powerful
than he. Similarly, the attraction of the daughter
to the father (the Electra complex) places her in
rivalry with her mother. From this, we might ex­
pect a same-sex bias in the case of intrafamily
homicides— mother versus daughter or son versus
father— but in fact no such bias exists. Some psy­
chologists have argued that young children can be
emotionally scarred by sexual experiences, which
they may interpret as violent and frightening acts
of aggression. The incest taboo thus protects chil­
dren against sexual advances by older members of
the family. A closely related theory is that the in­
cest taboo helps prevent girls who are socially and
emotionally too young for motherhood from be­
coming pregnant.
Early students of genetics argued that the
incest taboo precluded the harmful effects of in-
breeding. Although this is so, it is also true that,
as with domestic animals, inbreeding can increase
desired characteristics as well as detrimental ones.
Furthermore, undesirable effects show up sooner
than without inbreeding, so whatever genes are re­
sponsible for them are quickly eliminated from the
population. However, a preference for a geneti­
cally different mate does tend to maintain a higher
level of genetic diversity within a population, and
in evolution this generally works to a species’ ad­
vantage. Without genetic diversity a species can­
not adapt biologically to a changed environment
when and if this becomes necessary.
A truly convincing explanation of the incest
taboo has yet to be advanced. Certainly, there are
persistent hints that it may be a cultural elabora­
tion of an underlying biological tendency toward
The prohibition of sexual relations
236 PART ED T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the P roblem of C ooperation

Although children raised together on an Israeli kibbutz rarely marry one another it is not be­
cause of any instinctive desire to avoid mating with people who are close. Rather, they marry
outside their group because service in the military takes them out of their kibbutz, where they
meet new people, precisely when they are most likely to begin thinking about marriage.

avoidance of inbreeding. Studies of animal behav­
ior have shown such a tendency to be common
among relatively large, long-lived, slow-to-mature,
and intelligent species. Humans qualify for mem­
bership in this group on all counts. So do a num­
ber of other primates, including those most closely
related to humans— chimpanzees. Although they
exhibit few sexual inhibitions, chimpanzees do
tend to avoid inbreeding between siblings and be­
tween females and their male offspring. This sug­
gests that the tendency for human children to look
for sexual partners outside the group they have
been raised in is not just the result of a cultural
taboo. Studies that might seem to support this
show that children raised together on an Israeli
kibbutz, although not required or even encouraged
to do so, almost invariably marry outside their
group. In this case, however, appearances seem to
be deceiving. There is hardly a kibbutz, for ex­
ample, without a report of heterosexual relation­
ships between adolescents who have grown up to­
gether since infancy.6 As for actual marriage, most
Israeli youths leave the kibbutz in their late teens
for service in the armed forces. Thus, they are
away from the kibbutz precisely when they are
most ready to consider marriage. Consequently,
those most available as potential spouses are from
other parts of the country.
An even greater challenge to the “ biological
avoidance” theory, however, is raised by detailed
census records made in Roman Egypt that con­
clusively demonstrate that brother-sister marriages
were not only common but also preferred by or­
dinary members of the farming class.7 Moreover,
anthropologist Nancy Thornhill found that, in a
sample of 129 societies, only 57 had specific rules
6Leavitt, G. C. (1990). Sociobiological explanations of incest
avoidance: A critical review of evidential claims. American
A nthropologist, 92, 973.
7Ibid.j p. 982.

against parent-child or sibling incest (so much for
the universality of the incest taboo!). Twice that
number, 114, had explicit rules to control activity
with cousins, in-laws, or both.8
If indeed a biological basis for inbreeding
avoidance exists among humans, it clearly is far
from completely effective in its operation. Nor is
its mechanism understood. Moreover, it still leaves
us with questions such as these: Why do some so­
cieties have an explicit taboo while others do not?
And why do some societies not only condone cer­
tain kinds of incest but also even favor them?
Endogamy and Exogamy
Whatever its cause, the utility of the incest taboo
can be seen by examining its effects on social struc­
ture. Closely related to prohibitions against incest
are rules against endogamy, or marriage within a
particular group of individuals (cousins and in­
laws, for example). If the group is defined as one’s
immediate family alone, then societies generally
prohibit or at least discourage endogamy and prac­
tice or at least encourage exogamy, or marriage
outside the group. Yet a society that practices ex­
ogamy at one level may practice endogamy at an­
other. Among the Trobriand Islanders, for exam­
ple, each individual has to marry outside of his or
her own clan and lineage (exogamy). However,
since eligible sex partners are to be found within
one’s own community, village endogamy, though
not obligatory, is commonly practiced. Interest­
ingly, a wide variety exists among societies as to
which relatives are or are not covered by exogamy
rules. In Europe, for example, the Catholic Church
has long had a prohibition on marriages to first
cousins, and in the 19th century such marriages
were illegal in most of the United States. In nu­
merous other societies, however, first cousins are
preferred spouses.
8Thornhill, N. (1993). Quoted in W. A. Haviland & R. J.
Gordon (Eds.), Talking about people (p. 127). Mountain
View, CA: Mayfield.
Endogamy. Marriage within a particular group o r category of individuals. > Exogamy.
Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 237
In the 19th century, Sir Edward Tylor ad­
vanced a proposition that alternatives to inbreed­
ing were either “marrying out or being killed
out.”9 Our ancestors, he suggested, discovered the
advantage of intermarriage to create bonds of
friendship. Claude Lévi-Strauss elaborated on this
premise. He saw exogamy as the basis of a dis­
tinction between early hominine life in isolated en-
dogamous groups and the life of H o m o sapiens in
a supportive society with an accumulating culture.
Alliances with other groups, established and
strengthened by marriage ties, make possible a
sharing of culture. Building on Lévi Strauss’s work,
anthropologist Yehudi Cohen suggests exogamy
was an important means of promoting trade be­
tween groups, thereby ensuring access to needed
goods and resources not otherwise available. N ot­
ing that incest taboos necessitating exogamy are
generally most widely extended in the least com­
plex of human societies but do not extend beyond
parents and siblings in industrialized societies, he
argues that as formal governments and other in­
stitutions have come to control trade, the need for
extended taboos has been removed. Indeed, he
suggests that this may have reached the point
where the incest taboo is becoming obsolete alto­
gether.
In a roundabout way, exogamy also helps to
explain some exceptions to the incest taboo, such
as that of obligatory brother and sister marriage
within the royal families of ancient Egypt, the Inca
empire, and Hawaii. Members of these royal fam­
ilies were considered semidivine, and their very sa­
credness kept them from marrying mere mortals.
The brother and sister married so as n ot to share
their godliness, thereby maintaining the “purity”
of the royal line, not to mention control of royal
property. By the same token, in Roman Egypt,
where property was inherited by women as well
as men and where the relationship between land
9Quoted in R. M. Keesing (1976), Cultural anthropology: A
contem porary perspective (p. 286). New York: Holt, Rine­
hart and Winston.
Marriage outside the group.
238 PART ra T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
Claude Lévi-Strauss is the leading ex­
ponent of French structuralism, which
sees culture as a surface representa­
tion of underlying mental structures
that have been affected by a group’s
physical and social environment as
well as its history. Thus, cultures may
vary considerably, even though the
structure of the human thought
processes responsible for them is the
same for all people everywhere.
Human thought processes are
structured, according to Lévi-Strauss, into con­
trastive pairs of polar opposites, such as light ver­
and people was particularly tight, brother-sister
marriages among the farming class acted to pre­
vent fragmentation of a family’s holdings.
T he Distinction B etween
Marriage and Mating
Having defined marriage in terms of sexual access,
we must at this point make clear the distinction
between systems of marriage and mating. All an­
imals, including humans, mate— some for life and
some not, some with a single individual of the op­
posite sex, and some with several. Mates are se­
cured and held solely through individual effort, as
opposed to marriage, which is a right society con­
fers. Only marriage is backed by legal, economic,
and social forces. Even among the Nayar, where
marriage seems to involve little else than a sexual
relationship, a woman’s husband is legally oblig­
ated to provide her with gifts at specified inter­
vals. Nor may a woman legally have sex with a
man she is not married to. Thus, while mating is
biological, marriage is cultural.
M onogam y. Marriage in which an individual has one spouse.
sus dark, good versus evil, nature ver­
sus culture, and raw versus cooked.
The ultimate contrastive pair is that
of “self” versus “others,” which is
necessary for true symbolic commu­
nication to occur and which culture
depends on. Communication is a rec­
iprocal exchange, which is extended
to include goods and marital part­
ners. Hence, the incest taboo stems
from this fundamental contrastive
pair of “self” versus “others.” From
this universal taboo are built the many and varied
marriage rules ethnographers have described.
In the United States, as in most Western countries,
monogamy is the only legally recognized form of mar­
riage. Nevertheless, about 50 percent of all marriages
end in divorce, and most divorced people remarry
at least once. Thus, serial monogamy is far from
uncommon.
The distinction between marriage and mating
may be seen by looking, briefly, at practices in con­
temporary North American society, where
monogamy— the taking of a single spouse— is the

only legally recognized form of marriage. Not only
are other forms not legally sanctioned, but also
systems of inheritance, whereby property and
wealth are transferred from one generation to the
next, are predicated upon the institution of
monogamous marriage. Mating patterns, by con­
trast, are frequently n ot monogamous. Not only
is adultery far from rare in the United States and
Canada, but also it has become increasingly ac­
ceptable for individuals of the opposite sex— par­
ticularly young people who have not yet married
— to live together outside of wedlock. None of
these arrangements, however, are legally sanc­
tioned. Frequently, even individuals who do not
engage in sexual activity outside of wedlock mate
with more than one person of the opposite sex in
their lifetime; this follows from the fact that more
than 50% of first marriages in the United States
end in divorce and most divorced people ulti­
mately remarry.
Among primates in general, monogamous
mating patterns are not common. Although some
smaller species of South American monkeys, a few
island-dwelling populations of leaf-eating Old
World monkeys, and all of the smaller apes (gib­
bons and siamangs) do mate for life with but one
individual of the opposite sex, none of these are
closely related to human beings. Nor do “monog­
amous” primates ever display the degree of
anatomical differences between males and females
characteristic of our closest primate relatives or of
our own ancient ancestors. Thus it is not likely the
human species began its career as one with monog­
amous mating patterns. Certainly, we cannot say
(as some have tried to assert) the human species
is, by nature, monogamous in its mating behavior.
M arri age and the Fami ly
Although, as shown in the discussion of the Na-
yar, marriage need not involve establishment of a
new family, it easily can serve this purpose, in ad­
dition to its main function of indicating who has
Family. A residential kin group composed of a woman, her dependent children, and at least one adult male joined through
Consanguine family.
marriage o r blood relationship. >
women’s brothers > Nuclear family. A family unit consisting of husband, wife, and dependent children.
Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 239
continuing sexual access to whom. Creating a fam­
ily through marriage is precisely what most hu­
man societies do. Consequently, some mention
of family organization— otherwise discussed in
Chapter 9— is necessary before we proceed further
with the discussion of marriage. If we were to de­
fine the family in familiar terms, as requiring fa­
thers, mothers, and children, then we would have
to say people like the Nayar (who, as we shall see
in Chapter 9, do not constitute a unique case) do
not have families. We can, however, define the
family in a less ethnocentric way as a group com­
posed of a woman and her dependent children and
at least one adult male joined through marriage or
blood relationship.10 The Nayar form a consan­
guine family, consisting as it does of women, their
dependent offspring, and the women’s brothers. In
such societies, men and women get married but
do not live together as members of one household.
Rather, they spend their lives in the households
they grew up in, with the men “commuting” for
sexual activity with their wives. Economic coop­
eration between men and women occurs between
sisters and brothers, rather than husbands and
wives.
Conjugal, as opposed to consanguine, families
are formed on the basis of marital ties between
husband and wife. Minimally, a conjugal family
consists of a married couple with their dependent
children, otherwise known as the nuclear family;
other forms of conjugal families are polygynous
and polyan drou s families, which may be thought
of as aggregates of nuclear families with one
spouse in common. A polygynous family includes
the multiple wives of a single husband, while a
polyandrous family includes the multiple husbands
of a single wife. Both are often lumped together
under the heading of polygamous families.
10Goodenough, W. H. (1970). D escription and com parison
in cultural anthropology (p. 19). Chicago: Aldine.
A family consisting of related women, their offspring, and the
240 PART 1J3 T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
FORMS OF MARRIAGE
Monogamy is the form of marriage North Amer­
icans are most familiar with. It is also the most
common, but for economic rather than moral rea­
sons. In many polygynous societies, a man must
be fairly wealthy to afford polygyny, or marriage
to more than one wife. Among the Kapauku of
western New Guinea, the ideal is to have as many
wives as possible, and a woman actually urges her
husband to spend money on acquiring additional
wives.11 She even has the legal right to divorce him
if she can prove he has money for bride-prices and
refuses to remarry. As we saw in Chapter 2, wives
are desirable because they work in the fields and
care for pigs, by which wealth is measured, but
“ Pospisil, L. (1963). The Kapauku Papuans o f west New
Guinea. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Polygyny. The marriage custom of a man having two or more wives simultaneously; a form of polygamy.
not all men are wealthy enough to afford bride-
prices for multiple wives.
Among the Turkana, a pastoral nomadic peo­
ple of northern Kenya, the number of animals at
a family’s disposal is directly related to the num­
ber of adult women available to care for them.
The more wives a man has, the more women there
are looking after the livestock and the more sub­
stantial are the family’s holdings. Thus, it is not
uncommon for a man’s existing wife to actively
search for another woman to marry her husband.
Again, however, a substantial bride-price is in­
volved in marriage, and only men of wealth and
prominence can afford large numbers of wives.
Although monogamy may be the commonest
form of marriage around the world, it is not the
most preferred. That distinction goes to polygyny,
which is favored by about 80% to 85% of the
world’s societies. Even in the United States, an es­
timated 50,000 people in the Rocky Mountain
states live in households made up of a man with

two or more wives. In spite of its illegality, regional
law enforcement officials have adopted a “live and
let live” attitude toward polygyny. Nor are those
involved in such marriages uneducated. One
woman— a lawyer and one of nine cowives— ex­
presses her attitude as follows:
I see it as the ideal way for a woman to have a ca­
reer and children. In our family, the women can
help each other care for the children. Women in
monogamous relationships don’t have that luxury.
As I see it, if this life style didn’t already exist, it
would have to be invented to accommodate career
women.12
Polygyny is particularly common in societies that
support themselves by growing crops and where
women do the bulk of the farmwork. Under these
conditions, women are valued both as workers and
as childbearers. Because the labor of wives in polyg-
ynous households generates wealth and little sup­
port is required from husbands, the wives have a
strong bargaining position within the household.
Often, they have considerable freedom of move­
ment and some economic independence from the
sale of crops. Commonly, each wife within the
household lives with her children in her own
dwelling, apart from her cowives and husband who
occupy other houses within some sort of larger
household compound (note that the terms house
and hou seh old need not be synonymous; a house­
hold may consist of several houses together, as
here). Because of this residential autonomy, fathers
are usually remote from their sons, who grow up
among women. As noted in Chapter 5, this is the
sort of setting conducive to the development of ag­
gressiveness in adult males, who must prove their
masculinity. As a consequence, a high value is of­
ten placed on military glory, and one reason for
going to war is to capture women, who then
may become a warrior’s cowives. This wealth-
increasing pattern is found in its fullest elaboration
12Johnson, D. (1996). Polygamists emerge from secrecy, seek­
ing not just peace but respect. In W. A. Haviland & R. J.
Gordon (Eds.), Talking about people (2nd ed., pp. 129—
131). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Polyandry. The marriage custom of a woman having two o r more husbands simultaneously; a form of polygamy.
S ex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 241
in sub-Saharan Africa, though it is known elsewhere
as well (the Kapauku are another case). Moreover,
it is still intact in the world today, because its
wealth-generating properties at the household level
make it an economically productive system.13
In societies practicing wealth-generating polyg­
yny, most men and women do enter into polygy-
nous marriages, although some can do this earlier
in life than others. This practice is made possible
by a female-biased sex ratio and/or by a mean age
at marriage for females significantly below that for
males (this creates a cohort of women looking for
husbands larger than the cohort of men looking for
wives). By contrast, in societies where men are more
heavily involved in productive work, generally only
a small minority of marriages are polygynous. Un­
der these circumstances, women are more depen­
dant on men for support, so they are valued as
childbearers more than for the work they do. This
is commonly the case in pastoral nomadic societies
where men are the primary owners and tenders of
livestock. This makes women especially vulnerable
if they prove incapable of bearing children, which
is one reason a man may seek another wife. An­
other reason for a man to take on secondary wives
is to demonstrate his high position in society. But
where men do most of the productive work, they
must work exceptionally hard to support more than
one wife, and few actually do so. Usually, it is the
exceptional hunter, a male shaman (“medicine
man”) in a food-foraging society, or a particularly
wealthy man in an agricultural or pastoral society
who is most apt to practice polygyny. When he
does, it is usually of the sororal type, with the co­
wives being sisters. Having already lived together
before marriage, the sisters continue to do so with
their husband, instead of occupying separate
dwellings of their own.
Although monogamy and polygyny are the
most common forms of marriage in the world
today, other forms do occur, however rarely.
Polyandry, the marriage of one woman to two or
13White, D. R. (1988). Rethinking polygyny: Co-Wives,
codes and cultural systems. Current A nthropology, 29, 5 2 9 -
572.
242 part in T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
more men simultaneously, is known in only a few
societies, perhaps in part because men’s life ex­
pectancy is shorter than women’s, and male infant
mortality is high, so a surplus of men in a society
is unlikely. Where sex ratios are balanced, as in
Ladakh, many women are likely to remain un­
married. Another reason for polyandry’s rarity is
that it limits a man’s descendants more than any
other pattern. Fewer than a dozen societies are
known to have favored this form of marriage, but
they involve people as widely separated from one
another as the eastern Inuit (Eskimos), Marque-
san Islanders of Polynesia, and Tibetans. In Tibet,
where inheritance is in the male line and arable
land is limited, the marriage of brothers to a sin­
gle woman averts the danger of constantly subdi­
viding farmlands among all the sons of any one
landholder. Unlike monogamy, it also restrains
population growth, thereby avoiding increased
pressures on resources. Finally, it provides the
household with an adequate pool of male labor.
For tripartite economies of farming, herding, and
trading, trifraternal polyandry is highly valued, as
it allows the three brothers who are cohusbands
to pursue all three options at once.14
Group marriage, in which several men and
women have sexual access to one another, also oc­
curs rarely. Even in recent communal groups,
among young people seeking alternatives to mod­
ern marriage forms, group marriage seems a tran­
sitory phenomenon, despite the publicity it some­
times has received.
T he Levirate and the Sororate
If a husband dies, leaving a wife and children, it
is often the custom that the wife marry one of the
brothers of the dead man. This custom, called the
levirate, not only provides social security for the
widow and her children but also is a way for the
14Levine, N. E., 8c Silk, J. B. (1997). Why polyandry fails.
Current Anthropology, 38, 3 7 5 -3 9 8 .
G ro u p m a rria g e . Marriage in which several men and women have sexual access to one another. > L evirate. The
marriage custom whereby a widow marries a brother of her dead husband. > S o ro ra te . The marriage custom whereby
a widower marries his dead wife’s sister. > S erial m onogam y. A marriage form in which a man o r a woman marries
o r lives with a series of partners in succession.
husband’s family to maintain their rights over her
sexuality and her future children: It acts to pre­
serve relationships previously established. When a
man marries the sister of his dead wife, it is called
the sororate; in essence, a family of “wife givers”
supplies one of “wife takers” with another spouse
to take the place of the one who died. In societies
that have the levirate and sororate, the relation­
ship between the two families thus is maintained
even after a spouse’s death; and in such societies,
an adequate supply of brothers and sisters is gen­
erally ensured by the structure of the kinship sys­
tem (discussed in Chapter 10), whereby individu­
als North Americans would call “cousins” are
classified as brothers and sisters.
Serial Monogamy
A form of marriage increasingly common in North
American society today is serial monogamy,
whereby the man or the woman marries or lives
with a series of partners in succession. Currently,
more than 5 0% of first marriages end in divorce,
and some experts project that two thirds of recent
marriages will not last.15 Upon dissolution of a
marriage, the children more often than not remain
with the mother. This pattern is an outgrowth of
one sociologists and anthropologists first de­
scribed among West Indians and lower-class urban
blacks in the United States. Early in life, women
begin to bear children by men who are not mar­
ried to them. To support themselves and their chil­
dren, the women must look for work outside the
household, but to do so they must seek help from
other kin, most commonly their mother. As a con­
sequence, households are frequently headed by
women (on the average, about 32% are so headed
in the West Indies). After a number of years, how­
ever, an unmarried woman usually does marry a
man, who may or may not be the father of some
lsStacey, J. (1990). Brave new fam ilies (pp.15, 286, n. 46).
New York: Basic Books.
 S ex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 243

or all of her children. Under poverty conditions, movies, television, and the recorded-music busi­
where this pattern has been most common, women ness generally do not lag far behind, nor do ad­
are driven to seek this male support, owing to the vertisements for cigarettes, hard and soft drinks,
difficulties of supporting themselves and their chil­ beer, automobiles, and a host of other products
dren while fulfilling their domestic obligations. that make liberal use of young, glamorous women.
In the United States, with the rise of live-in As anthropologist Jules Henry once observed,
premarital arrangements by couples, the increas­ “even men’s wear and toiletries could not be mar­
ing necessity for women to seek work outside the keted as efficiently without an adoring, pretty
home, and rising divorce rates, a similar pattern woman (well under thirty-five years of age) look­
is becoming more common among middle-class ing at a man wearing a stylish shirt or sniffing at
whites. In 90% of divorce cases, it is the women a man wearing a deodorant.”17 By no means are
who assume responsibility for any children; fur­ all North Americans taken in by this, but it does
thermore, of all children born in the United States
today, fully 2 5 % are born out of wedlock. Fre­
quently isolated from kin or other assistance, l7Henry, J. (1966). The meraphysic of youth, beaury, and ro­
women in single-parent households (which now mantic love. In S. Farber 6c R. Wilson (Eds.), The challenge
to wom en. New York: Basic Books.
outnumber nuclear family households) commonly
find it difficult to cope. Within a year following
divorce, the standard of living for women drops
some 7 3 % , whereas that of men increases by
about 4 2 % .16 To be sure, fathers of children are
usually expected to provide child support, but in
50% of the cases of children born out of wedlock,
paternity cannot be established. Furthermore, fail­
ure of fathers to live up to their obligations is far
from rare. One solution for unmarried women is
to marry (often, to remarry) to get the assistance
of another adult.

C hoi ce of S p ouse
The Western egalitarian ideal that an individual
should be free to marry whomever he or she
chooses is an unusual arrangement, certainly not
universally embraced. However desirable such an
ideal may be in the abstract, it is fraught with dif­
ficulties and certainly contributes to the apparent
instability of marital relationships in modern
North American society. Part of the problem is the
great emphasis the culture places on the impor­
tance of youth and glamour— especially of women
— for romantic love. Female youth and beauty are
perhaps most glaringly exploited by the women’s
wear, cosmetics, and beauty parlor industries, but

l6Weitzman, L. J. (1985). The divorce revolution: The unex- The obsession with a particular idea of feminine
pected social and econom ic consequences fo r w om en and beauty in the United States is reflected in the beaury
children in America (p. 338). New York: The Free Press. pageants organized for very young girls.
244 PART IH T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

Marriage is a means of creating alliances between groups of people. Since such alliances have important eco­
nomic and political implications, the decision cannot be left in the hands of the two young and inexperienced
people. At the left is shown a Indian bride, whose marriage has been arranged between her parents and those of
the groom. The picture on the right was taken at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in England.

tend to nudge people in such a way that marriages
all too easily may be based on trivial and transient
characteristics. In no other part of the world are
such chances taken with something as momentous
as marriage.
In many societies, marriage and the establish­
ment of a family are considered far too important
to be left to the whims of young people. The mar­
riage of two individuals expected to spend their
whole lives together and raise their children to­
gether is incidental to the more serious matter of
making allies of two families through the marriage
bond. Marriage involves a transfer of rights be­
tween families, including rights to property and
rights over the children, as well as sexual rights.
Thus, marriages tend to be arranged for the eco­
nomic and political advantage of the family unit.
Arranged marriages, needless to say, are not
commonplace in North American society, but they
do occur. Among ethnic minorities, they may serve
to preserve traditional values people fear might oth­
erwise be lost. Among families of wealth and power,
marriages may be arranged by segregating their
children in private schools and carefully steering
them toward “proper” marriages. A careful read­
ing of announced engagements in the society pages
of the N ew York Times provides clear evidence of
such family alliances. The following Original Study
illustrates how marriages may be arranged in soci­
eties where such practices are commonplace.

L k k i, ^ k
Sister and doctor brother-in-law invite correspondence from North Indian pro­
fessionals only, for a beautiful, talented, sophisticated, intelligent sister, S '3",
slim, A/t.A. in textile design, father a senior civil officer. Would prefer immi­
grant doctors, between 2 6 -2 9 years. Reply with full details and returnable
photo.
Arranging
Marriage in
l8Nanda, S. (1992). Arranging a marriage in India. In P. R. De Vita (Ed.), The
India18 n aked anthropologist (pp. 139-143). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
 Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 245

A well-settled uncle Invites matrimonial correspondence from slim, fair,

educated South Indian girl, for his nephew, 25 years, smart, M.B.A., green
card holder, 5'6". Full particulars with returnable photo appreciated.
— Matrimonial Advertisements, India Abroad

Six years [after my first field trip] I returned to India to again do fieldwork,
this time among the middle class in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), a
modern, sophisticated city. From the experience o f my earlier visit, I decided
to include a study o f arranged marriages in my project. By this time I had
met many Indian couples whose marriages had been arranged and who
seemed very happy. Particularly in contrast to the fate o f many o f my mar­
ried friends in the United States who were already in the process o f divorce
the positive aspects o f arranged marriages appeared to me to outweigh the
negatives. In fact, I thought I might even participate in arranging a marriage
myself. I had been fairly successful in the United States in “fixing up" many
o f my friends, and I was confident that my matchmaking skills could be eas­
ily applied to this new situation, once I learned the basic rules. “After all,” I
thought, “ how complicated can it be? People want pretty much the same
things in a marriage whether it is in India or America.”
An opportunity presented itself almost immediately. A friend from my
previous Indian trip was in the process o f arranging fo r the marriage o th e r
eldest son. In India there is a perceived shortage o f "good boys,” and since
my friend's family was eminently respectable and the boy himself person­
able, well educated, and nice looking, I was sure that by the end o f my year's
fieldwork, we would have found a match.
The basic rule seems to be that a family’s reputation is most important.
It is understood that matches would be arranged only within the same caste
and general social class, although some crossing o f subcastes is permissible
if the class positions o f the bride’s and groom's families are similar Although
dowry is now prohibited by law in India, extensive gift exchanges took place
with every marriage. Even when the boy's family do not “ make demands,”
every girl's family nevertheless feels the obligation to give the traditional gifts,
to the girl, to the boy, and to the boy's family. Particularly when the couple
would be living in the joint family— that is, with the boy’s parents and his
married brothers and their families, as well as with unmarried siblings— which
is still very common even among the urban, upper-middle class in India, the
girl’s parents are anxious to establish smooth relations between their family
and that o f the boy. Offering the proper gifts, even when not called “ dowry,”
is often an important factor in influencing the relationship between the bride's
and groom's families and perhaps, also, the treatment o f the bride in her new
home.
In a society where divorce is still a scandal and where, in fact, the di­
vorce rate is exceedingly low, an arranged marriage is the beginning o f a life­
time relationship not just between the bride and groom but between their
families as well. Thus, while a girl’s looks are important, her character is even
more so, for she is being judged as a prospective daughter-in-law as much
as a prospective bride. Where she would be living in a joint family, as was
the case with my friend, the girl's ability to get along harmoniously in a fam­
ily is perhaps the single most important quality in assessing her suitability.
246 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

My friend is a highly esteemed wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. She is

religious, soft-spoken, modest, and deferential. She rarely gossips and never
quarrels, tw o qualities highly desirable in a woman. A family that has the rep­
utation for gossip and conflict among its womenfolk will not find it easy to
get good wives for their sons. Parents will not want to send their daughter
to a house in which there is conflict.
My friend's family were originally from N orth India. They had lived in
Bombay, where her husband owned a business, for forty years. The family
had delayed in seeking a match for their eldest son because he had been an
A ir Force pilot for several years, stationed in such remote places that it had
seemed fruitless to try to find a girl who would be willing to accompany
him. In their social class, a military career; despite its economic security, has
little prestige and is considered a drawback in finding a suitable bride. Many
families would not allow their daughters to marry a man in an occupation
so potentially dangerous and which requires so much moving around.
The son had recently left the military and joined his father's business.
Since he was a college graduate, modern, and well traveled, from such a
good family, and, I thought, quite handsome, it seemed to me that he, or
rather his family, was in a position to pick and choose. I said as much to my
friend.
While she agreed that there were many advantages on their side, she
also said, “W e must keep in mind that my son is both short and dark; these
are drawbacks in finding the right match.” While the boy's height had not es­
caped my notice, "dark" seemed to me inaccurate; I would have called him
“ wheat” colored perhaps, and in any case, I did not realize that color would
be a consideration. I discovered, however; that while a boy's skin color is a
less important consideration than a girl's, it is still a factor
An important source o f contacts in trying to arrange her son's marriage
was my friend's social club in Bombay. Many o f the women had daughters
o f the right age, and some had already expressed an interest in my friend's
son. I was most enthusiastic about the possibilities o f one particular family
who had five daughters, all o f whom were pretty, demure, and well educated.
Their mother had told my friend, “You can have your pick for your son,
whichever one o f my daughters appeals to you most.”
I saw a match in sight. "Surely," I said to my friend, “ we will find one
there. Let’s go visit and make our choice.” But my friend held back; she did
not seem to share my enthusiasm, for reasons I could not then fathom.
When I kept pressing for an explanation o f her reluctance, she admit­
ted, “ See, Serena, here is the problem. The family has so many daughters,
how will they be able to provide nicely for any o f them? We are not mak­
ing any demands, but still, with so many daughters to marry off, one won­
ders whether she will even be able to make a proper wedding. Since this is
our eldest son, it's best if we marry him to a girl who is the only daughter,
then the wedding will truly be a gala affair” I argued that surely the quality
o f the girls themselves made up for any deficiency in the elaborateness of
the wedding. My friend admitted this point but still seemed reluctant to pro­
ceed.
“ Is there something else,” I asked her; “ some factor I have missed?”
“Well,” she finally said, “there is one other thing. They have one daughter
 Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 247

already married and living in Bombay. The mother is always complaining to

me that the girl's in-laws don't let her visit her own family often enough. So
it makes me wonder; will she be that kind o f mother who always wants her
daughter at her own home? This will prevent the girl from adjusting to our
house. It is not a good thing." And so, this family o f five daughters was dropped
as a possibility.
Somewhat disappointed, I nevertheless respected my friend's reasoning
and geared up for the next prospect.This was also the daughter o f a woman
in my friend's social club.There was clear interest in this family and I could
see why.The family's reputation was excellent; in fact, they came from a sub­
caste slightly higher than my friend’s own.The girl, who was an only daugh­
ter, was pretty and well educated and had a brother studying in the United
States. Yet, after expressing an interest to me in this family, all talk o f them
suddenly died down and the search began elsewhere,
“W hat happened to that girl as a prospect?” I asked one day. “You never
mention her any more. She is so pretty and so educated, what did you find
wrong?”
"She is too educated. We've decided against it. My husband's father saw
the girl on the bus the other day and thought her forward. A girl who 'roams
about' the city by herself is not the girl fo r our family.” My disappointment
this time was even greater as I thought the son would have liked the girl
very much. But then I thought, my friend is right, a girl who is going to live
in a joint family cannot be to o independent or she will make life miserable
for everyone. I also learned that if the family o f the girl has even a slightly
higher social status than the family o f the boy, the bride may think herself
too good for them, and this too will cause problems. Later my friend ad­
mitted to me that this had been an important factor in her decision not to
pursue the match.
The next candidate was the daughter o f a client o f my friend’s husband.
When the client learned that the family was looking for a match fo r their
son, he said,“ Look no further; we have a daughter'This man then invited my
friends to dinner to see the girl. He had already seen their son at the office
and decided that “ he liked the boy.” W e all went together for tea, rather
than dinner— it was less o f a commitment— and while we were there, the
girl's mother showed us around the house.The girl was studying for her ex­
ams and was briefly introduced to us.
After we left, I was anxious to hear my friend’s opinion. W hile her hus­
band liked the family very much and was impressed with his client's business
accomplishments and reputation, the wife didn’t like the girl’s looks. “ She is
short, no doubt, which is an important plus point, but she is also fat and
wears glasses.” My friend obviously thought she could do better for her son
and asked her husband to make his excuses to his client by saying that they
had decided to postpone the boy's marriage indefinitely.
By this time almost six months had passed and I was becoming impa­
tient. W hat I had thought would be an easy matter to arrange was turning
out to be quite complicated. I began to believe that between my friend's de­
sire for a girl who was modest enough to fit into her joint family, yet at­
tractive and educated enough to be an acceptable partner for her son, she
would not find anyone suitable. My friend laughed at my Impatience; “ Don't
248 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

be so much in a hurry,” she said. "You Americans want everything done so

quickly. You get married quickly and then just as quickly get divorced. Here
we take marriage more seriously. W e must take all the factors into account.
It is not enough for us to learn by our mistakes. This is too serious a busi­
ness. If a mistake is made we have not only ruined the life o f our son or
daughter; but we have spoiled the reputation o f our family as well. And that
will make it much harder for their brothers and sisters to get married. So
we must be very careful."
W hat she said was true and I promised myself to be more patient,
though it was not easy. I had really hoped and expected that the match
would be made before my year in India was up. But it was not to be. When
I left India my friend seemed no further along in finding a suitable match for
her son than when I had arrived.
Two years later; I returned to India and still my friend had not found a
girl for her son. By this time, he was close to thirty, and I think she was a lit­
tle worried. Since she knew I had friends all over India, and I was going to be
there for a year she asked me to “ help her in this work" and keep an eye
out for someone suitable. I was flattered that my judgment was respected,
but knowing now how complicated the process was, I had lost my earlier
confidence as a matchmaker Nevertheless, I promised that I would try.
It was almost at the end o f my year's stay in India that I met a family
with a marriageable daughter whom I felt might be a good possibility for my
friend’s son. The girl’s father was related to a good friend o f mine and by
coincidence came from the same village as my friend's husband. This new
family had a successful business in a medium-sized city in central India and
were from the same subcaste as my friend. The daughter was pretty and
chic; in fact, she had studied fashion design in college. Her parents would not
allow her to go off by herself to any o f the major cities in India where she
could make a career, but they had compromised with her wish to work by
allowing her to run a small dress-making boutique from their home. In spite
o f her desire to have a career, the daughter was both modest and home-
loving and had had a traditional, sheltered upbringing. She had only one other
sister, already married, and a brother who was in his father's business.
I mentioned the possibility o f a match with my friend's son. The girl's
parents were most interested. Although their daughter was not eager to
marry just yet, the idea o f living in Bombay— a sophisticated, extremely fash­
ion-conscious city where she could continue her education in clothing de­
sign— was a great inducement. I gave the girl’s father my friend's address and
suggested that when they went to Bombay on some business or whatever,
they look up the boy's family.
Returning to Bombay on my way to New York, I told my friend o f this
newly discovered possibility. She seemed to feel there was potential but, in
spite o f my urging, would not make any moves herself. She rather preferred
to wait for the girl’s family to call upon them. I hoped something would come
o f this introduction, though by now I had learned to rein in my optimism.
A year later I received a letter from my friend. The family had indeed
come to visit Bombay, and their daughter and my friend’s daughter who were
near in age, had become very good friends. During that year the tw o girls
had frequently visited each other I thought things looked promising.
 Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 249

Last week I received an invitation to a wedding: My friend’s son and the

girl were getting married. Since I had found the match, my presence was par­
ticularly requested at the wedding. I was thrilled. Success at last! As I pre­
pared to leave for India, I began thinking, "Now, my friend's younger son, who
do I know who has a nice girl for him . . . ?”

C ousi n M arri age
In some societies, preferred marriages are a man
marrying his father’s brother’s daughter. This is
known as patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage
(Figure 8.1; a parallel cousin is the child of a fa­
ther’s brother or a mother’s sister). Although not
obligatory, such marriages have been favored his­
torically among Arabs, the ancient Israelites, and
also in ancient Greece and traditional China. All
of these societies are hierarchical in nature— that
is, some people have more property than others—
and although male dominance and descent are em­
phasized, property of interest to men is inherited
by daughters as well as sons. Thus, when a man
marries his father’s brother’s daughter (or from the
woman’s point of view, her father’s brother’s son),
property is retained within the male line of
descent. In these societies, generally speaking,
the greater the property, the more this form of
parallel-cousin marriage is apt to occur.
M atrilateral cross-cousin marriage (Figure
8.1)— that is, of a man to his mother’s brother’s

F ic u r e 8.1
Anthropologists use diagrams of this sort to illustrate kinship relationships. Shown in this one is the distinction
between cross and parallel cousins. In such diagrams, males are always shown as triangles, females as circles,
martial ties by a = , sibling relationships as a horizontal line, and parent-child relationships as a vertical line.
Terms are given from the perspective of the individual labeled ego, who can be female or male.

P atrila tera l parallel-cousin m a rria g e . Marriage of a man to his father’s brother’s daughter o r of a woman to her fa­
ther’s brother’s son (i.e., to a parallel cousin on the paternal side). > M a trila te ra l cross-cousin m a rria g e . Marriage
of a woman to her father’s sister’s son o r of a man to his m other’s brother’s daughter (her cross cousin on the paternal
side, his cross cousin on the maternal side).
250 PART DI T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

daughter or of a woman to her father’s sister’s son

(a cross cousin is the child of a mother’s brother
or a father’s sister)— is a preferred form of mar­
riage in a variety of societies ranging from food
foragers (Australian Aborigines, for example) to
intensive agriculturists (such as among various
peoples of South India). Among food-foraging
peoples, who inherit relatively little property, such
marriages help establish and maintain ties of sol­
idarity between social groups. In agricultural so­
cieties, however, the transmission of property is an
important determinant. Societies that trace descent
exclusively in the female line, for instance, usually
pass property and important rights from a man to
his sister’s son; under cross-cousin marriage, the
sister’s son is also the man’s daughter’s husband.

M a rri age E x c h a n g e s
In the Trobriand Islands, when a young couple de­
cides to get married, they sit in public on the veranda
of the young man’s adolescent retreat, where all may
see them. Here they remain until the bride’s mother
brings the couple cooked yams, which they then eat
together, making their marriage official. This is fol­
lowed a day later by the presentation of three long
skirts to the bride by the husband’s sister, a symbol
of the fact the sexual freedom of adolescence is now
On the day her marriage is announced, the Trobriand
over for the newly wed woman. This is followed up bride must give up the provocative miniskirts she has
by a large presentation of uncooked yams by the worn until then in favor of longer skirts, the first of
bride’s father and her mother’s brother, who repre­ which the groom’s sister provides. This announces
sent both her father’s and her own lineages. that her days of sexual freedom are gone.
Meanwhile, the groom’s father and mother’s
brother— representing his father’s and his own lin­
eages— collect such valuables as stone axe blades,
clay pots, money, and the occasional Kula shell to wife belong to, as well as those of their fathers,
present to the young wife’s maternal kin and fa­ serve to bind the four parties together so that peo­
ther. After the first year of the marriage, during ple respect and honor the marriage and to create
which the bride’s mother continues to provide the obligations for the woman’s kin to take care of her
couple’s meals of cooked yams, each of the young husband in the future.
husband’s relatives who provided valuables for his As among the Trobriand Islanders, marriages
father and mother’s brother to present to the in many human societies are formalized by some
bride’s relatives will receive yams from her mater­ sort of economic exchange. Among the Trobri-
nal relatives and father. All of this gift giving back anders, this takes the form of a gift exchange, as
and forth between the lineages the husband and just described. Far more common is bride-price,

Bride-price. Compensation the groom or his family pays to the bride’s family on marriage.
 S ex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 251

sometimes called bride wealth. This involves pay­

ments of money or other valuables to a bride’s par­
ents or other close kin. This usually happens in so­
cieties where the bride will become a member of
the household where her husband grew up; this
household will benefit from her labor, as well as
the offspring she produces. Thus, her family must
be compensated for their loss.
Not only is bride-price not a simple “ buying
and selling” of women, but also the bride’s par­
ents may use the money to buy jewelry or house­
hold furnishings for her or to finance an elaborate
and costly wedding celebration. It also contributes
to the stability of the marriage, because it usually
must be refunded if the couple separates. Other
forms of compensation are an exchange of women
between families— “my son will marry your
daughter if your son will marry my daughter”—

In many African societies, bride price takes the form

of cattle, which are paid by the groom’s family to the
bride’s family.

In some societies when a woman marries, she receives her share of the family inheritance (her dowry),
which she brings to her new family (unlike bride-price, which passes from the groom’s family to the
bride’s family). Shown here are Slovakian women carrying the objects of a woman’s dowry.
252 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
or bride service, a period of time during which the
groom works for the bride’s family.
In a number of societies more or less restricted
to the western, southern, and eastern margins of
Eurasia, where the economy is based on intensive
agriculture, women often bring a dowry with them
at marriage. A form of dowry in the United States
is the custom of the bride’s family paying the wed­
ding expenses. In effect, a dowry is a woman’s
share of parental property that, instead of passing
to her upon her parents’ death, is distributed to
her at the time of her marriage. This does not mean
she retains control of this property after marriage.
In a number of European countries, for example,
a woman’s property falls exclusively under her
husband’s control. Having benefited by what she
has brought to the marriage, however, he is ob­
ligated to look out for her future well-being, even
after his death. Thus, one of the functions of
dowry is to ensure a woman’s support in widow­
hood (or after divorce), an important considera­
tion in a society where men carry out the bulk of
productive work and women are valued for their
reproductive potential, rather than for the work
they do. In such societies, women incapable of
bearing children are especially vulnerable, but the
dowry they bring with them at marriage helps pro­
tect them against desertion. Another dowry func­
tion is to reflect the economic status of the woman
in societies where differences in wealth are im­
portant. Thus, the property a woman brings with
her at marriage demonstrates that the man is mar­
rying a woman whose standing is on a par with
his own. It also permits women, with the aid of
their parents and kin, to compete through dowries
for desirable (that is, wealthy) husbands.
S a m e - S ex M a rri age
As noted earlier in this chapter, although marriage
is defined in terms of a continuing sexual rela­
tionship between a man and woman, the cultural
nature of gender is such that the “m an” may in
Bride service. A designated period after marriage when the groom works for the bride’s family. >
of a woman’s inheritance at the time of her marriage, either to her o r to her husband.
fact be a female or the “woman” a male. Thus,
marriages between individuals of the same sex may
be regarded as proper and normal. Such marriages
provide a way to deal with problems opposite-sex
marriage offers no satisfactory solution for. This
is true for the woman/woman marriage practice
sanctioned in many societies of sub-Saharan
Africa, although in none does it involve more than
a small minority of all women.
Although details differ from one society to an­
other, woman/woman marriages among the Nandi
of western Kenya may be taken as reasonably rep­
resentative of such practices in Africa.19 The
Nandi are a pastoral people who also do consid­
erable farming. Control of most significant prop­
erty and the primary means of production— live­
stock and land— is exclusively in the hands of men,
and may only be transmitted to their male heirs,
usually their sons. Since polygyny is the preferred
form of marriage, a man’s property is normally di­
vided equally among his wives for their sons to in­
herit. Within the household, each wife has her own
house in which she lives with her children, but all
are under the authority of the woman’s husband,
who is a remote and aloof figure within the house­
hold. In such situations, the position of a woman
who bears no sons is difficult; not only does she
not help perpetuate her husband’s male line— a
major concern among the Nandi— but also she has
no one to inherit the proper share of her husband’s
property.
To get around these problems, a woman of ad­
vanced age who bore no sons may become a female
husband by marrying a young woman. The pur­
pose of this arrangement is for the wife to provide
the male heirs her female husband could not. To
accomplish this, the woman’s wife enters into a sex-
19The following is based on R. S. Obler (1980), Is the female
husband a man? Woman/woman marriage among the Nandi
of Kenya. Ethnology, 19, 6 9 -8 8 .
Dowry. Payment

ual relationship with a man other than her female
husband’s male husband; usually it is one of his
male relatives. No other obligations exist between
this woman and her male sex partner, and her fe­
male husband is recognized as the social and legal
father of any children born under these conditions.
In keeping with her role as female husband,
this woman is expected to abandon her female
gender identity and, ideally, dress and behave as a
man. In practice, the ideal is not completely
achieved, for the habits of a lifetime are difficult
to reverse. Generally, it is in the context of do­
mestic activities, which are most highly symbolic
of female identity, that female husbands most com­
pletely assume a male identity.
The individuals who are parties to
woman/woman marriages enjoy several advan­
tages. By assuming a male identity, a barren or
sonless woman raises her status considerably and
even achieves near equality with men, who other­
wise occupy a far more favored position in Nandi
society than women. A woman who marries a fe­
male husband is usually one who is unable to make
a good marriage, often because she has lost face
as a consequence of premarital pregnancy. By mar­
rying a female husband, she too raises her status
and also secures legitimacy for her children. M ore­
over, a female husband is usually less harsh and
Sex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 253
demanding, spends more time with her, and allows
her a greater say in decision making than a male
husband does. Her one prohibition is engaging in
sexual activity with her marriage partner; in fact,
female husbands are expected to abandon sexual
activity altogether, even with their male husband,
to whom they remain married even though the
women now have their own wives.
DIVORCE
Like marriage, divorce in non-Western societies is
a matter of great concern to the couple’s families.
Since marriage is less often a religious than an eco­
nomic matter, divorce arrangements can be made
for a variety of reasons and with varying degrees
of difficulty.
Among the Gusii of Kenya, sterility or impo­
tence were grounds for a divorce. Among the
Chenchu of Hyderabad and certain Indians of
northern Canada, divorce was discouraged
after children were born, and couples usually
were urged by their families to adjust their differ­
ences. By contrast, in the southwestern United
States, a Hopi woman might divorce her husband
at any time merely by placing his belongings
outside the door to indicate he was no longer
welcome. Divorce was fairly common among
the Yahgan, who lived at the southernmost tip
of South America, and was seen as justified if
the husband was considered cruel or failed as a
provider.
Divorce in these societies seems familiar and
even sensible, and, in one way or another, the
children are taken care of. An adult unmarried
woman is almost unheard of in most non-Western
societies; a divorced woman soon remarries.
In many societies, economic considerations are
often the strongest motivation to marry. On the
island of New Guinea, a man does not marry
because of sexual needs, which he can readily
satisfy out of wedlock, but because he needs
a woman to make pots and cook his meals, to
fabricate nets, and to weed his plantings. A
man without a wife among the Australian Abo­
rigines is in an unsatisfactory position, since he
254 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem oh C ooperation
In Europe, where both men and women inherit family
wealth, the “marriage” of women to the Church as
nuns passed wealth that might otherwise have gone to
husbands and offspring to the Church instead.
has no one to supply him regularly with food or
firewood.
Although divorce may be high in some non-
Western societies, notably matrilineal societies
such as that of the Hopi, they have become so high
in Western societies as to cause many North Amer­
icans to worry about the future of marriage and
the family in the contemporary world. Undoubt­
edly, the causes of divorce in the United States
are many and varied. Among them are the trivial
and transient characteristics we have already
mentioned that marriages may all too easily be
based upon. Beyond this, a U.S. marriage is sup­
posed to involve an enduring, supportive, and
intimate bond between a man and woman, full of
affection and love. In this relationship, people
are supposed to find escape from the pressures
of the competitive workaday world, as well as
from the legal and social constraints that so affect
their behavior outside the family. Yet in a society
where people are brought up to seek individual
gratification, where this often is seen to come
through competition at someone else’s expense
(see Chapter 5), and where women traditionally
have been expected to be submissive to men, it
should not come as a surprise to find that the
reality of marriage does not always live up to the
ideal. Harsh treatment and neglect of spouses—
usually of wives by husbands— in the United States
is neither new nor rare; furthermore, people are
more tolerant of violence directed against spouses
and children than they are against outsiders.
As anthropologists Collier, Rosaldo, and Yanag-
isako have observed: “A smaller percentage of
homicides involving family members are prose­
cuted than those involving strangers. We are
faced with the irony that in our society the place
where nurturance and noncontingent [uncondi­
tional] affection are supposed to be located is
simultaneously the place where violence is most
tolerated.”20 However, what has happened in
recent years is that people have become less in­
clined toward moral censure of those— women
especially— who seek escape from unsatisfactory
marriages. No longer are people as willing to
“stick it out at all costs” no matter how intolera­
ble the situation may be. Thus, divorce is increas­
ingly exercised as a sensible reaction to marriages
that do not work.
20Collier, J., Rosaldo, M. Z., & Yanagisako, S. (1982). Is
rhere a family? New anthropological views. In B. Thorne 8i
M. Yalom (Eds.), Rethinking the fam ily: Som e feminist p rob­
lems (p. 36). New York: Longman.

CHAPTER
Among primates, the human female is unique in
her ability to engage in sexual behavior whenever
she wants to or whenever her culture tells her it
is appropriate, irrespective of whether or not she
is fertile. Although such activity may reinforce so­
cial bonds between men and women, competition
for sexual access also can be disruptive, so every
society has rules that govern such access. The near
universality of the incest taboo, which forbids sex­
ual relations between parents and their children,
and usually between siblings, long has interested
anthropologists, but a truly convincing explana­
tion of the taboo has yet to be advanced. Related
to incest are the practices of endogamy and ex­
ogamy. Endogamy is marriage within a group of
individuals; exogamy is marriage outside the
group. If the group is limited to the immediate
family, almost all societies can be said to prohibit
endogamy and practice exogamy. Likewise, soci­
eties that practice exogamy at one level may prac­
tice endogamy at another. Community endogamy,
for example, is a relatively common practice. In a
few societies, royal families are known to have
practiced endogamy rather than exogamy among
siblings to preserve intact the purity of the royal
line.
Although defined in terms of a continuing sex­
ual relationship between a man and woman, mar­
riage should not be confused with mating. Although
mating occurs within marriage, it often occurs out­
side of it as well. Unlike mating, marriage is backed
by social, legal, and economic forces. In some so­
cieties, new families are formed through marriage,
but this is not true for all societies.
Monogamy, or the taking of a single spouse,
is the most common form of marriage, primarily
for economic reasons. A man must have a certain
amount of wealth to afford polygyny, or marriage
to more than one wife at the same time. Yet in so­
cieties where women do most of the productive
work, polygyny may serve as a means of generat­
ing wealth for a household. Although few mar­
riages in a given society may be polygynous, it is
regarded as an appropriate, and even preferred,
form of marriage in the majority of the world’s so-
S ex and M arriage CHAPTER 8 255
S U M M A R Y
cieties. Since few communities have a surplus of
men, polyandry, or the custom of a woman hav­
ing several husbands, is uncommon. Also rare is
group marriage, in which several men and several
women have sexual access to one another. The
levirate ensures the security of a woman by pro­
viding that a widow marry her husband’s brother;
the sororate provides that a widower marry his
wife’s sister.
Serial monogamy is a form in which a man or
woman marries a series of partners. In recent
decades, this pattern has become increasingly com­
mon among middle-class North Americans as in­
dividuals divorce and remarry.
In the United States and many of the other
industrialized countries of the West, marriages
run the risk of being based on an ideal of ro­
mantic love that emphasizes youthful beauty.
In no other parts of the world would marriages
based on such trivial and transitory characteristics
be expected to work. In non-Western societies
economic considerations are of major concern in
arranging marriages. Love follows rather than pre­
cedes marriage. The family arranges marriages in
societies where it is the most powerful social in­
stitution. Marriage serves to bind two families as
allies.
Preferred marriage partners in many societies
are particular cross cousins (a mother’s brother’s
daughter if a man, a father’s sister’s son if a
woman) or, less commonly, parallel cousins on the
paternal side (a father’s brother’s son or daugh­
ter). Cross-cousin marriage is a means of estab­
lishing and maintaining solidarity between groups.
Marriage to a paternal parallel cousin serves to re­
tain property within a single male line of descent.
In many human societies, marriages are for­
malized by some sort of economic exchange.
Sometimes, this takes the form of reciprocal gift
exchange between the bride’s and groom’s rela­
tives. More common is bride-price, the payment
of money or other valuables from the groom’s to
the bride’s kin; this is characteristic of societies
where the women both work and bear children for
the husband’s family. An alternative arrangement
256 PART HI T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

is for families to exchange daughters. Bride service
occurs when the groom is expected to work for a
period for the bride’s family. A dowry is the pay­
ment of a woman’s inheritance at the time of mar­
riage to her or her husband; its purpose is to en­
sure support for women in societies where men do
most of the productive work and women are val­
ued for their reproductive potential alone.
In some societies, marriage arrangements ex­
ist between individuals of the same sex. An ex­
ample is woman/woman marriage as practiced in
many African societies. Such marriages provide a
socially approved way to deal with problems mar­
riages between individuals of opposite sex offer no
satisfactory solution for.
Divorce is possible in all societies, though rea­
sons for divorce as well as its frequency vary widely
from one society to another. In the United States,
factors contributing to the breakup of marriages in­
clude the trivial and transitory characteristics many
marriages are based on and the difficulty of estab­
lishing a supportive, intimate bond in a society
where people are brought up to seek individual
gratification, often through competition at some­
one else’s expense, and where women traditionally
have been expected to be submissive to men.

Points for C onsideration

1. Why do the forms and rules surrounding marriage vary so much across cultures? Does this varia­
tion weaken or reinforce the anthropological understanding of marriage? Why or why not?
2. Is it possible for humans to develop a culture without marriage? If not, why not? If so, how
could sexual access be governed in other ways?
3. Assuming marriage is a cross-cultural institution, why don’t all humans get married? Why is mar­
riage often prohibited for certain categories of people, as in the case of Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox priests and nuns?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

duToit, B. M . (1991). H um an sexuality: Cross cul­
tural readings. New York: McGraw Hill.
Of the numerous texts that deal with most as­
pects of human sexuality, this is the only one
that gives adequate recognition to the fact
most peoples in the world do things differently
from North Americans. This reader deals
cross-culturally with such topics as menstrual
cycle, pair bonding, sexuality, pregnancy and
childbirth, childhood, puberty, birth control,
sexually transmitted diseases, sex roles, and
the climacteric.
Goodenough, W. H. (1970). D escription an d co m ­
parison in cultural an thropology. Chicago: Al-
dine.
This book illustrates the difficulties anthro­
pologists confront when describing and com­
paring social organization cross-culturally.
The author begins with an examination of
marriage and family, clarifying these and re­
lated concepts in important ways.
Goody, J. (1976). P roduction an d reproduction: A
com parative study o f the dom estic dom ain.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book is especially good in its discussion
of the interrelationship between marriage,
property, and inheritance. Although cross-cul­
tural in its approach, readers will be fascinated
by the many insights into the history of mar­
riage in the Western world.

Mair, L. (1971). M arriage. Baltimore: Penguin.
Dr. Mair traces the evolution of marriage and
such alternative relationships as surrogates
and protectors. Commenting on marriage as
an institution and drawing her examples from
“tribal” cultures, Dr. Mair deals with the func­
S ex and M arriage CH A PTER 8 257
tion, rules, symbolic rituals, and economic fac­
tors of marriage. She also cites the inferior
status of women and discusses the self-deter­
mining behavior of “serious free women” as
an important factor in social change.
 Family and
Household
A F A M IL Y G R O U P IN N O R T H E R N

T h a il a n d . O ne o f the b a s ic

F U N C T IO N S O F T H E F A M IL Y IS R A IS IN G

C H IL D R E N
 CnAjpH* ic iv

1. W hat Is the Family?

The human family is a group composed o f a woman, her dependent children, and a t least one
adult man joined through marriage o r blood relationship. The family may take many form s, rang­
ing all the way from one married couple w ith th e ir children, as in N o rth American society, to a
large group composed o f several brothers and sisters w ith the sisters’ children, as in southwest
India among the Nayar. The specific form the family takes is related to particular social, histor­
ical, and ecological circumstances.

2. W hat Is the Difference Between Family and Household?

Households are task-oriented residential units where economic production, consumption, in­
heritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and implemented. In the vast m ajority o f hu­
man societies, households either consist o f families o r th e ir core members constitute families,
even though some household members may n o t be relatives o f the family the household is built
around. In some societies, although households are present, families are not. Furtherm ore, in
some societies where families are present, they may be less im portant in peoples’ thinking than
the households they are parts of.

3. W hat.Are Some of the Problems of Family and Household

Organization?
Although families and households exist to solve in various ways the problems all peoples must
deal w ith, the different form s families and households may take are all accompanied by th e ir
own characteristic problems. W here families and households are small and relatively indepen­
dent, as they are in N o rth American society, individuals are isolated from the aid and support
o f kin and must fend fo r themselves in many situations. By contrast, families that include several
adults w ithin the same large household must find ways to control various kinds o f tensions that
invariably exist among th e ir members.

259
260 PART ffl T he F ormation of G roups: Solving
he family, long regarded by North Ameri­
T cans as a critically necessary core social in­
stitution, today has become a matter of con­
troversy and discussion. Women taking jobs
outside the home rather than staying home with
children, couples living together without the for­
mality of marriage, soaring divorce rates, and
increasing numbers of households headed by a
single parent have raised questions about the
functions of the family in North American society
and its ability to survive in a period of rapid so­
cial change. Evidence of the widespread interest in
these questions was seen in the convening, in 1980,
of a White House Conference on Families. Since
then, scarcely a political campaign for national of­
fice has passed without frequent reference to what
candidates like to call “traditional family values.”
Does the family, as presently constituted in
North America, offer the best environment for
bringing up children? Does it impose an inferior
status on the woman, confined and isolated in the
home performing household and child-raising
chores? Does the man, locked into an authoritar­
ian role, suffer unduly in his personal development
from bearing the primary responsibility for the
The nuclear family, consisting of a married family and
dependent offspring, is held up as the ideal in the
United States.
the Problem of Cooperation
family’s financial support? Do adequate substi­
tutes exist for people who have no family to care
for them, such as old people and orphans? If the
family as people in the United States know it to­
day is found wanting, what are the alternatives?
Historical and cross-cultural studies of the
family offer as many different family patterns as
the fertile human imagination can invent. The one
considered “normal” or “natural” to most North
Americans— a discrete and independent living unit
consisting of the nuclear family (Figure 9.1)— is in
fact no more normal or natural than any other and
cannot be used as the standard for measuring other
forms. Neither universal nor even common among
human societies, the independent nuclear family
emerged only recently in human history. Its roots
go back to a series of regulations the Roman
Catholic Church imposed in the 4th century a . d .
that prohibited close marriages, discouraged adop­
tion, and condemned polygyny, concubinage, di­
vorce, and remarriage (all of which previously had
been perfectly respectable, as the Old Testament
of the Bible, among other sources, makes clear).
Not only did this prohibition strengthen the con­
jugal tie between one man and one woman, at the
expense of consanguineal or “ blood” ties, but it
also ensured that large numbers of people would
be left with no male heirs. It is a biological fact
that 2 0% of all couples will have only daughters,
and another 2 0% will have no children at all. By
eliminating polygyny, concubinage, divorce, and
remarriage and by discouraging adoption, the
A =o
H u sband / Wife/
Father Mother
Ô
Daughter/
1i
EC¡ 0
ASo n /
Siste r Brother
F iq hre 9 * I
This diagram shows the relationships in a nuclear
family, such as those found in North American
society.

The Holy Family of Christianity. M ary’s husband
Joseph was her father’s brother’s son and was himself
the product of a leviratic marriage. Even though both
kinds of marriage were considered proper in the early
days of Christianity, they were not allowed by the
Church after the 4th century.
Church removed the means for people to over­
come these odds and to make sure they would have
male heirs. The result of all this was to facilitate
the transfer of property from families to the R o­
man Catholic Church, which rapidly became the
largest landowner in most European countries, a
position it has retained to this day. By insinuating
itself into the very fabric of domestic life, heirship,
and marriage, the Church gained tremendous con­
trol over the grass roots of society, enriching itself
in the process.1
With the industrialization of Europe and
North America, the nuclear family became further
isolated from other kin. One reason is that indus­
trial economies require a mobile labor force; peo-
'Goody, J. (1983). The developm ent o f the fam ily and mar-
riage in Europe (pp. 4 4 -4 6 ). Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­
sity Press.
Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 261
pie must be prepared to move where the jobs are,
which they do most easily without excess kin in
tow. Another reason is that the family came to be
seen as a kind of refuge from a public world peo­
ple saw as threatening to their sense of privacy and
self-determination.2 Within the family, relation­
ships were supposed to be enduring and noncon­
tingent, entailing love and affection, based upon
cooperation, and governed by feeling and moral­
ity. Outside the family, where people sold their
work and negotiated contracts, relationships in­
creasingly were seen as competitive, temporary,
and contingent upon performance, requiring but­
tressing by law and legal sanction. Such views were
held most widely in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, and in the United States independent nu­
clear family households reached their highest fre­
quency around 1950, when 60% of all households
conformed to this model.3 Since then, the situa­
tion has changed, and a mere 2 6 % of U.S. house­
holds now conform to the independent nuclear
family ideal. More are now headed by divorced,
separated, and never-married individuals. This sit­
uation has arisen as increasingly large numbers of
people find more intimacy and emotional support
in relationships outside the family and are less in­
clined to tolerate the harsh treatment and neglect
of children and spouses, especially wives, that all
too commonly occur within families. (In the
United States, more than 2 million women expe­
rience abuse from the men in their families, and
at least an equal number of children are also
abused.)
The family as it has emerged in Europe and
North America, then, is the product of particular
historical and social circumstances; where these
have differed, so have family forms. Thus, how
men and women in other societies live together
must be studied, not as bizarre and exotic forms
of human behavior but as logical outcomes of peo­
ples’ experience living in particular times, places,
and social situations.
2Collier, J., Rosaldo, M. Z., & Yanagisako, S. (1982). Is
there a family? New anthropological views. In B. Thorne
and M. Yalom (Eds.), Rethinking the fam ily: Som e fem inist
questions (pp. 3 4 -3 5 ). New York: Longman.
3Stacey, J. (1990). Brave new fam ilies (pp. 5, 10). New York:
Basic Books.
262 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

rest of society, the truth is that they are affected

by, and in turn affect, the values and structure of
FAMILY AND SOCIETY the society they are embedded in. To clarify this,
Although many North Americans continue to we will take a more detailed look at the rise and
think of families as standing in opposition to the fall of nuclear families in the United States.

N ow that the “ modern” [i.e., independent nuclear] family system has almost
exited from its historical stage, we can perceive how peculiar; ephemeral, and
internally contradictory was this once-revolutionary gender and kinship
order Historians place the emergence o f the modern [N orth] American fam­
ily among white middle-class people in the late eighteenth century; they
The depict its flowering in the nineteenth century and chart its decline in the
second half o f the twentieth.Thus, for white Americans, the history o f mod­
Ephemeral ern families traverses the same historical trajectory as that o f modern In­
dustrial society. W hat was modern about upper-middle-class family life in the
Modern half century after the American Revolution was the appearance o f social
Family4 arrangements governing gender and kinship relationships that contrasted
sharply with those o f “traditional,” or premodern, patriarchal corporate units.
The premodern family among white Colonial Americans, an institution
some scholars characterize as “the Godly family" was the constitutive ele­
ment o f Colonial society. This integrated economic, social, and political unit
explicitly subordinated individual to corporate family interests and women
and children to the authority o f the household's patriarchal head. Decisions
regarding the timing and crafting o f premodern marriages served not the
emotional needs o f individuals but the economic, religious, and social
purposes o f larger kin groups, as these were interpreted by patriarchs who
controlled access to land, property, and craft skills. Nostalgic images o f "tra­
ditional” families rarely recall their instability or diversity. Death visited Colo­
nial homes so frequently that second marriages and blended households
composed o f stepkin were commonplace. W ith female submission thought
to be divinely prescribed, conjugal love was a fortuitous bonus, not a
prerequisite o f such marriages. Similarly the doctrine o f innate depravity
demanded authoritarian parenting to break the will and save the souls of
obstinate children, a project that required extensive paternal involvement In
child rearing. Few boundaries between family and work impeded such pa­
triarchal supervision, or segregated the sexes who labored at their arduous
and interdependent tasks in close proximity. Boundaries between public and
private life were equally permeable. Communities regulated proper family
conduct, intervening actively to enforce disciplinary codes, and parents ex­
changed their children as apprentices and servants.
Four radical innovations differentiate modern from premodern family life
among white Americans: ( I ) Family w ork and productive w ork became sep­
arated, rendering women’s w ork invisible as they and their children became

4Ibid., pp. 6 -1 1 .
 Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 263

economically dependent on the earnings o f men. (2) Love and companion­

ship became the ideal purposes o f marriages that were to be freely con­
tracted by individuals. (3) A doctrine o f privacy emerged that attempted to
withdraw middle-class family relationships from public scrutiny. (4) Women
devoted increased attention to nurturing fewer and fewer children as m oth­
ering came to be exalted as both a natural and demanding vocation.
The rise o f the modern American family accompanied the rise o f in­
dustrial capitalist society, with its revolutionary social, spatial, and temporal
reorganization o f w ork and domestic life. The core premises and practices
o f the new family regime were far more contradictory than those o f the
premodern family order Coding w ork as masculine and home as feminine
modern economic arrangements deepened the segregation o f the sexes by
extracting men from, and consigning white married women to, an increas­
ingly privatized domestic domain.The institutionalized subordination o f these
wives to their husbands persisted; indeed, as factory production supplanted
domestic industry, wives became increasingly dependent on their spouse's
earnings. The doctrine o f separate gender spheres governing the modern
family order in the nineteenth century was so potent that few married
women among even the poorest o f native white families dared to venture
outside their homes in search o f income.
The proper sphere o f working-class married white women also was
confined to the home.Yet few working-class families approximated the mod­
ern family ideal before well into the twentieth century. Enduring conditions
o f poverty, squalor; disease, and duress rivaling those in industrializing Eng­
land, most immigrant and native white working-class families in nineteenth-
century America depended on supplementary income. Income from women's
out work, child labor lodgers, and the earnings o f employed unmarried sons
and daughters supplemented the meager and unreliable wages paid to w ork­
ing men. N ot until the post-W orld W ar II era did substantial numbers of
working-class households achieve the “ modern family” pattern.
If the doctrine o f separate, and unequal, gender spheres limited women's
domain and rendered their w ork invisible, it also enhanced their capacity to
formulate potent moral and political challenges to patriarchy. Men ceded the
domains o f child rearing and virtue to “ moral” mothers who made these re­
sponsibilities the basis for expanding their social influence and political rights.
This and the radical ideologies o f individualism, democracy, and conjugal love,
which infused modern family culture, would lead ultimately to Its undoing. It
is no accident, historians suggest, that the first wave o f American feminism
accompanied the rise o f the modern family.
W ith rearview vision one glimpses the structural fragility o f the mod­
ern family system, particularly its premise o f enduring voluntary commitment.
For modern marriages, unlike their predecessors, were properly affairs not
o f the purse but o f the heart. A romantic “ until death do us part" commit­
ment volunteered by tw o young adults acting largely independent o f the
needs, interests, or wishes o f their kin was the vulnerable linchpin o f the
modern family order It seems rather remarkable, looking back, that during
the first century o f the modern family's cultural ascendancy, death did part
the vast majority o f married couples. But an ideology o f conjugal love and
companionship implies access to divorce as a safety valve for failures o f
264 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

youthful judgment o r the vagaries o f adult affective development.Thus, a sta­

tistical omen o f the internal instability o f this form o f marriage lies in the un­
precedented rise o f divorce rates that accompanied the spread o f the mod­
ern family. Despite severe legal and social restrictions, divorce rates began to
climb at least as early as the 1840s. They have continued their ascent ever
since, until by the middle o f the 1970s divorce outstripped death as a source
o f marital dissolution. A crucial component o f the modern family system, di­
vorce would ultimately prove to be its Achilles' heel.
For a century, as the cultural significance o f the modern family grew, the
productive and even the reproductive work performed within its domain
contracted. By the end o f the “ modern” industrial era in the 1950s, virtually
all productive w ork had left the home. While advances In longevity stretched
enduring marriages to unprecedented lengths, the full-time homemaker's
province had been pared to the chores o f housework, consumption, and the
cultivation o f a declining number o f progeny during a shortened span of
years.
Those Americans, like myself, who came o f age at that historic moment
were encouraged to absorb a particularly distorted impression o f the nor­
malcy and timelessness o f the modern family system. The decade between
the late 1940s and the late 1950s represents an aberrant period in the his­
to ry o f this aberrant form o f family life. Fueled in part, as historian Elaine
May has suggested, by the apocalyptic Cold W ar sensibilities o f the post-
W orld W ar II nuclear age, the nation indulged in what would prove to be a
last-gasp orgy o f modern nuclear family domesticity. Three-fifths o f American
households conformed to the celebrated breadwinner-fulltime homemaker
modem form in 1950, as substantial sectors o f working-class men began at
long last to secure access to a family wage. A few years later W alt Disney
opened the nation’s first family theme park in southern California, designed
to please and profit from the socially conservative fantasies o f such Increas­
ingly prosperous families.
The aberrant fifties temporarily reversed the century’s steady decline in
birth rates. The average age o f first-time visitors to the conjugal altar also
dropped to record lows. Higher percentages o f Americans were marrying
than ever before o r since, and even the majority o f white working-class fam­
ilies achieved coveted home ownership status. It was during this time that
Talcott Parsons provided family sociology with its most Influential theoreti­
cal elaboration o f the modern American family, o f how its nuclear house­
hold structure and complementary division o f roles into female "expressive”
and male “ instrumental” domains was sociologically adaptive to the functional
demands o f an industrial society. Rare are the generations, or even the so­
ciologists, who perceive the historical idiosyncrasies o f the normal cultural
arrangements o f their time.
The postwar baby boom was to make the behaviors and beliefs o f that
decade's offspring disproportionately significant for the rest o f their lives.The
media, the market, and all social and political institutions would follow their
development with heightened interest.Thus, a peculiar period in U.S. family
history came to set the terms for the waves o f rebellion against, and nos­
talgia for the passing modern family and gender order that have become
such prominent and disruptive features o f the American political landscape.
 Family and Fîousehold CHAPTER 9 265

The world's first generation o f childhood television viewers grew up, as I did,
inundated by such weekly paeans to the male breadwinner nuclear house­
hold and modern family ideology as Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver,
and Ozzie and Harriet Because unusual numbers o f us later pushed women's
biological “ clock" to its reproductive limits, many now find ourselves parent­
ing (or choosing not to) in the less innocent age o f Thirtysomething, Kate and
Allle, and Who's the Boss? For beneath the sentimental gloss that the fifties
enameled onto its domestic customs, forces undermining the modern fam­
ily o f the 1950s accelerated while those sustaining it eroded. In the midst o f
profamily pageantry, nonfamily households proliferated. As the decade drew
to a close, the nation entered what C. W right Mills, with characteristic
prescience, termed its “ postmodern period." The emergent postindustrial
economy shifted employment from heavy industries to nonunionized cleri­
cal, service, and new industrial sectors. Employers found themselves
irresistibly attracted to the nonunionized, cheaper labor o f women and, thus,
increasingly to that o f married women and mothers.
One glimpses the ironies o f class and gender history here. For decades
industrial unions struggled heroically for a socially recognized male bread­
winner wage that would allow the working class to participate in the mod­
ern gender order These struggles, however contributed to the cheapening
o f female labor that helped gradually to undermine the modern family regime.
Escalating consumption standards, the expansion o f mass collegiate coedu­
cation, and the persistence o f high divorce rates then gave more and more
women ample cause to invest a portion o f their identities in the “ instru­
mental” sphere o f paid labor Thus, middle-class women began to abandon
their confinement in the modern family just as working-class women were
approaching its access ramps.The form er did so, however only after the wives
o f working-class men had pioneered the twentieth-century revolution in
women's paid work. Entering employment during the catastrophic 1930s,
participating in defense industries in the 1940s, and raising their family in­
comes to middle-class standards by returning to the labor force rapidly af­
te r child rearing in the 1950s, working-class women quietly modeled and
normalized the postmodern family standard o f employment for married
mothers. Whereas in 1950 the less a man earned, the more likely his wife
was to be employed, by 1968 wives o f middle-income men were the most
likely to be in the labor force.

life on the ground, as well as among species most

FUNCTIONS OF THE FAMILY
Among humans, reliance on group living for sur­
vival is a basic characteristic. They have inherited
this from their primate ancestors, though they
have developed it in their own distinctively human
ways. Even among monkeys and apes, group liv­
ing requires the participation of adults of both
sexes. Among species that, like us, have taken up
closely related to us, adult males are normally
much larger and stronger than females, and their
teeth are usually more efficient for fighting. Thus,
they are essential for the group’s defense. M ore­
over, the close and prolonged relationship between
infants and their mothers, without which the in­
fants cannot survive, renders the adult primate
females less well suited than the males to handle
defense.
266 PART IE T he Formation of G roups: Solving the Problem of Cooperation

N urturance of C hi l d r e n one thing, they are even more helpless at birth,

Taking care of the young is primarily the job of
the adult primate female. Primate babies are born
relatively helpless and remain dependent upon
their mothers for a longer time than any other an­
imals (a chimpanzee, for example, cannot survive
without its mother until it reaches age 4 or even
5). This dependence is not only for food and phys­
ical care, but also, as numerous studies have
shown, primate infants deprived of normal ma­
ternal attention will not grow and develop nor­
mally, if they survive at all. The protective pres­
ence of adult males shields the mothers from both
danger and harassment from other troop mem­
bers, allowing them to give their infants the at­
tention they require.
Among humans, the sexual division of labor
has developed beyond that of other primates. Un­
til the recent advent of synthetic infant formulas,
human females more often than not had been oc­
cupied much of their adult lives with child rear­
ing. And human infants need no less active “moth­
ering” than do the young of other primates. For
and, for another, the period of infant dependency
is longer in humans. Besides all this, studies have
shown that human infants, no less than other pri­
mates, need more than just food and physical care
if they are to develop normally. But among hu­
mans, unlike other primates, the infant’s biologi­
cal mother does not have to provide all this “moth­
ering.” Not only may other women provide the
child with much of the attention it needs, but so
may men. In many societies children are handled
and fondled as much by men as by women, and
in some societies men are more nurturing to chil­
dren than are women.
E c o n o mi c C ooperati on
In all human societies, even though women may
be the primary providers of child care, women
have other responsibilities as well. Although sev­
eral of the economic activities they traditionally
have engaged in have been compatible with their
child-rearing role and have not placed their off-

A female baboon with her infant and male friend. Baboon males are protective of
their female friends, even though they are not always the fathers of their friends’ in­
fants. Thus shielded from danger and harassment from other troop members, females
can give their infants the attention they require to survive.
 Family and Household CFFAPTER 9 267

spring at risk, this cannot be said of all their ac­

tivities. Consider how the common combination
of child care with food preparation, especially if
cooking is done over an open fire, creates a po­
tentially hazardous situation for children. With the
mother (or other caregiver) distracted by some
other task, the child all too easily may receive a
severe burn or bad cut, with serious consequences.
What can be said is that the economic activities of
women generally have complemented those of
men, even though, in some societies, individuals
may perform tasks normally assigned to the op­
posite sex, as the occasion dictates. Thus, men and
women could share the results of their labors on
a regular basis, as was discussed in Chapters 6
and 7.
An effective way both to facilitate economic
cooperation between the sexes and to provide for
a close bond between mother and child at the same
time is through the establishment of residential residential group provides for this. As defined in
groups that include adults of both sexes. The dif­ Chapter 8, a family is a residential group com­
fering nature of male and female roles, as these posed of a woman, her dependent children, and at
are defined by different cultures, requires a child least one man joined through marriage or con-
to have an adult of the same sex available to serve sanguineal (“blood”) relationship. Again (see
as a proper model for the appropriate adult role. Chapter 8), because gender roles are culturally de­
The presence of adult men and women in the same fined, the man may in some cases be a female.

One alternative to the family as a child-rearing unit is the Israeli kibbutz. Here, children
of a kibbutz are shown in a supervised session of creative play.
268 PART ffl T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of Cooperation

Well suited though the family may be for
these tasks, we should not suppose it is the only
unit capable of providing such conditions. In
fact, other arrangements are possible, such as the
Israeli kibbutz, where paired teams of male and
female specialists raise groups of children. In
many food-foraging societies (the Ju/’hoansi and
M buti, discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, are good
examples), all adult members of a community
share in the responsibilities of child care. Thus,
when parents go off to hunt or to collect plants
and herbs, they may leave their children behind,
secure in the knowledge they will be looked af­
ter by whatever adults remain in the camp. Yet
another arrangement may be seen among the
Mundurucu, a horticultural people of South
America’s Amazon forest. Their children live in
houses with their mothers, apart from all men
until age 13, whereupon the boys leave their
m others’ houses to go live with the village men.
Because Mundurucu men and women do not live
together as members of discrete residential units,
it cannot be said their society has families.
FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD
Although it is often stated that some form of fam­
ily is present in all human societies, the Mun­
durucu case just cited demonstrates this is not so.
In Mundurucu villages, the men all live together
in one house with all boys over age 13; women
live with others of their sex as well as younger
boys in two or three houses grouped around the
men’s house. As among the Nayar (discussed in
Chapter 8), married men and women are members
of separate households, meeting periodically for
sexual activity.
Although the family is not universally present
in human societies, the household, defined as the
basic residential unit where economic production,

A celebration at the palace in the Yoruba city of Oyo, Nigeria. As is usual in societies
where royal households are found, that of the Yoruba includes many individuals not
related to the ruler, as well as the royal family.

H o u se h o ld . The basic residential unit where economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter
are organized and implemented; may o r may not be synonymous with family.

consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shel­
ter are organized and implemented, is universally
present. Among the Mundurucu, the men’s house
constitutes one household, and the women’s
houses constitute others. Although, in this case as
in many, each house is in effect a household, a
number of societies have households made up of
two or more houses together, as we shall see later
in this chapter.
In many human societies, most households in
fact constitute families, although other sorts of
households may be present as well (single-parent
households, for example, in the United States and
many Caribbean countries). Often, a household
may consist of a family along with some more dis­
tant relatives of family members. Or coresidents
may be unrelated, such as the service personnel in
an elaborate royal household, apprentices in the
household of craft specialists, or low-status clients
in the household of rich and powerful patrons. In
such societies, even though people may think in
terms of households, rather than families, the
households are built around the latter. Thus, even
though the family is not universal, in the vast ma­
jority of human societies the family is the basic
core of the household.
FORM OF THE FAMILY
As suggested earlier in this chapter, the family may
take any one of a number of forms in response to
particular social, historical, and ecological cir­
cumstances. At the outset, a distinction must be
made between conjugal families, which are formed
on the basis of marital ties, and consanguineal
families, which are not. As defined in Chapter 8,
consanguineal families consist of related women,
their brothers, and the women’s offspring. Such
families are not common; the classic case is the
Nayar household group. The Nayar are not
unique, however, and consanguineal families are
found elsewhere— for example, among the Tory
Islanders, a Roman Catholic, Gaelic-speaking fish-
Conjugal Family. A family consisting of one (o r more) man (who may be a female) married to one (or more) woman
(who may be a male) and their offspring.
Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 269
erfolk living off the coast of Ireland. These people
do not marry until they are in their late 20s or
early 30s and thus experience tremendous resis­
tance to breaking up existing household arrange­
ments. The Tory Islanders look at it this way: “Oh
well, you get married at that age, it’s too late to
break up arrangements that you have already
known for a long time. . . . You know, I have my
sisters and brothers to look after, why should I
leave home to go live with a husband? After all,
he’s got his sisters and his brothers looking after
him .”5 Because the community numbers only a
few hundred people, husbands and wives are
within easy commuting distance of each other.
T he Nuclear Family
The form of conjugal family most familiar to most
North Americans is the independent nuclear fam­
ily, which in spite of its precipitous decline is still
widely regarded as the “standard” in the United
States and Canada. In these countries it is not con­
sidered desirable for young people to live with
their parents beyond a certain age, nor is it con­
sidered a moral responsibility for a couple to take
their aged parents into their home when the par­
ents no longer can care for themselves. Retirement
communities and nursing homes provide these ser­
vices, and to take aged parents into one’s home is
commonly regarded as not only an economic bur­
den but also a threat to the household’s privacy
and independence.
The nuclear family is also apt to be prominent
in societies such as the Inuit that live in harsh en­
vironments. In the winter the Inuit husband and
wife, with their children, roam the vast Arctic
wilderness in search of food. The husband hunts
and makes shelters. The wife cooks, is responsible
for the children, and makes the clothing and keeps
it in good repair. One of her chores is to chew her
5F o x , R. (1981, December 3). [Interview for Coast Tele­
courses, Inc.]. Los Angeles.
270 PART III T he Formation of G roups: Solving the Problem of Cooperation

Certain parallels can be drawn between the

husband’s boots to soften the leather for the next
day so that he can resume his search for game.
The wife and her children could not survive with­
out the husband, and life for a man is unimagin­
able without a wife.
nuclear family in industrial societies and families
living under especially harsh environmental
conditions. In both cases, the family is an inde­
pendent unit that must be prepared to fend for
itself; this creates for individual members a
strong dependence on one another. Minimal help
is available from outside in the event of emer­
gencies or catastrophes. When their usefulness
ends, the elderly are cared for only if it is feasible.
In the event of the mother or father’s death,
life becomes precarious for the child. Yet this
form of family is well adapted to a life that re­
quires a high degree of geographic mobility. For
the Inuit, this mobility permits the hunt for food;
for North Americans, the hunt for jobs and im­
proved social status requires a mobile form of
family unit.
Not even among the Inuit, however, is the nu­
clear family as isolated from other kin as it has
become among most nonnative North Americans.
When Inuit families are off by themselves, it is re­
garded as a matter of temporary expediency; most
of the time, they are found in groups of at least a
few families together, with members of one group

Among the Inuit, nuclear families such as the one shown here are the norm, although
they are not as isolated from other kin as are nuclear families in the United States.

Extended families like this one are still found in parts of rural North America.
having relatives in all of the others.6 Thus fami­
lies cooperate with one another on a daily basis,
sharing food and other resources, looking out for
the children, and sometimes even eating together.
The sense of shared responsibility for one an­
other’s children and for the general welfare in Inuit
multifamily groups contrasts with families in the
United States, which are basically “on their own.”
Here the state has assigned sole responsibility to
the family for child care and the welfare of fam­
ily members, with relatively little assistance from
outside.7 To be sure, families can and often do help
one another out, but they are under no obligation
6Grabum, N. H. H. (1969). Eskim os without igloos: Social
and econom ic developm ent in Sugluk (pp. 5 6 -5 8 ). Boston:
Little Brown.
'’Collier, R., Rosaldo, M. Z., &c Yanagisako, S. (1982). Is
there a family? Some new anthropological views. In B.
Thorne and M. Yalom (Eds.), Rethinking the fam ily: Some
feminist problem s (pp. 2 8 -2 9 ). New York: Longman.
E x te n d e d fam ily. A collection of nuclear families, related by ties of blood, that live together in one household.
Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 271
to do so. In fact, once children reach the age of
majority (18), parents have no further legal oblig­
ation to them, nor do the children to their par­
ents. When families do have difficulty fulfilling
their assigned functions— as is increasingly the
case— even if it is through no fault of their own,
less support is available to them from the com­
munity at large than in most of the world’s state­
less societies, including that of the Inuit.
T he E x t e n d e d Fami ly
In North America, nuclear families have not al­
ways had the degree of independence they came
to have with the rise of industrialism. In an ear­
lier more agrarian era, the small nuclear family
commonly was part of a larger extended family.
This kind of family, in part conjugal and in part
consanguine, might include grandparents, mother
and father, brothers and sisters, perhaps an uncle
and aunt, and a stray cousin or two. All these peo-
272 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem
pie, some related by blood and some by marriage,
lived and worked together. Because members of
the younger generation brought their spouses (hus­
bands or wives) to live in the family, extended fam­
ilies, like consanguine families, had continuity
through time. As older members died off, new
members were born into the family.
In the United States, such families have sur­
vived until recently in some communities, as along
the Maine coast.8 There they developed in re­
sponse to a unique economy featuring a mix of
farming and seafaring, coupled with an ideal of
self-sufficiency. Because family farms were inca­
pable of providing self-sufficiency, seafaring was
taken up as an economic alternative. Seagoing
commerce, however, was periodically afflicted by
depression, so family farming remained important
as a cushion against economic hard times. The
need for a sufficient labor pool to tend the farm,
while furnishing officers, crew, or (frequently)
both for locally owned vessels, was satisfied by the
practice of a newly married couple settling on the
farm of either the bride’s or the groom’s parents.
Thus, most people spent their lives cooperating on
a day-to-day basis in economic activities with close
relatives, all of whom lived together (even if in sep­
arate houses) on the same farm.
The Maya of Guatemala and southern M ex­
ico also live in extended family households.9 In
many of their communities, sons bring their wives
to live in houses built on the edges of a small open
plaza, where on one edge their father’s house al­
ready stands (Figure 9.2). Numerous household
activities occur on this plaza; here women may
weave, men may receive guests, and children play
together. The head of the family is the sons’ fa­
ther, who makes most of the important decisions.
8Haviland, W. A. (1973). Farming, seafaring and bilocal
residence on the coast of Maine. Man in the N ortheast, 6,
3 1 -4 4 .
9Vogt, E. Z. (1990). The Zinacantecos o f M exico, A m odern
M aya way o f life (2nd ed., pp. 3 0 -3 4 ). Fort Worth, TX:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
P atrilo cal residence. A pattern in which a married couple lives in the locality associated with the husband’s father’s
relatives.
of Cooperation
All family members work together for the com­
mon good and deal with outsiders as a single unit.
Extended families living together in single
households were and often still are important social
units among the Hopi Indians of Arizona.10 Ideally,
the household head was an old woman; her mar­
ried daughters, their husbands, and their children
lived with her. The household women owned land,
but the men (usually their husbands) tilled it. When
extra help was needed during the harvest, for ex­
ample, other male relatives, friends, or persons lo­
cal religious organizations designated formed work
groups and turned the hard work into a festive oc­
casion. The women performed household tasks,
such as processing food or making pottery, together.
The 1960s saw a number of attempts by young
people in the United States to reinvent a form of
extended family living. Their families (often called
communes) were groups of unrelated nuclear fam­
ilies that held property in common and lived to­
gether. It is further noteworthy that the lifestyle of
these modern families often emphasized the kinds
of cooperative ties found in the rural North Amer­
ican extended family of old, which provided a la­
bor pool for the many tasks required for economic
survival. In some of them the members even re­
verted to traditional gender roles; the women took
care of the child rearing and household chores,
while the men took care of tasks that took people
outside of the household itself.
Residence Patterns
Where some form of conjugal or extended family
is the norm, family exogamy requires that either
the husband or wife, if not both, must move to a
new household upon marriage. A newly married
couple may adopt one of five common patterns of
residence whose prime determinants are ecologi­
cal circumstances, although other factors enter in
as well. One option is patrilocal residence; as just
10Forde, C. D. (1950). H abitat, econom y and society (pp.
2 2 5 -2 4 5 ). New York: E. P. Dutton.
 Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 273

Fiawitc 9*1
This diagram shows the living arrangements and relationships in a patrilocal extended family. Deceased
household members are blacked out.

Members of modern Maya extended families carry out various activities on the household plaza; here, for exam­
ple, women weave and family members interact with outsiders.
274 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

described for the Maya, a woman goes to live with

her husband in the household he grew up in. Fa­
voring this arrangement are societies with a pre­
dominant role for men in subsistence, particularly
if they own property that can be accumulated, if
polygyny is customary, if warfare is prominent
enough to make cooperation among men espe­
cially important, and if an elaborate political or­
ganization in which men wield authority exists.
These conditions are most often found together in
societies that rely on animal husbandry and/or in­
tensive agriculture for their subsistence. Where pa­
trilocal residence is customary, the bride often
must move to a different band or community. In
such cases, her parents’ family is not only losing
the services of a useful family member, but they
are losing her potential offspring as well. Hence, This old photo shows members of a Hopi Indian
some kind of compensation to her family, most matrilocal extended family in front of their house.
commonly bride-price, is usual. Traditionally, women who were sisters and daughters
M atrilocal residence, where the man leaves the lived with their husbands in adjacent rooms of a sin­
family he grew up with to go live with his wife in gle tenement.
her parents’ household, is a likely result if eco­
logical circumstances make the women’s role pre­
dominant in subsistence. It is found most often in
horticultural societies, where political organiza­ along the Maine coast, where, as already noted,
tion is relatively uncentralized and where cooper­ extended family households were based upon am­
ation among women is important. The Hopi In­ bilocal residence. The same residential pattern is
dians provide one example; although the men do particularly common among food-foraging peo­
the farming, the women control access to land and ples, as among the Mbuti of Africa’s Ituri forest.
“own” the harvest. Indeed, men are not even al­ Typically, a Mbuti marries someone from another
lowed in the granaries. Under matrilocal residence, band, so one spouse has in-laws who live else­
men usually do not move very far from the fam­ where. Thus, if foraging is bad in their part of the
ily they were raised with, so they are available to forest, the couple has somewhere else to go where
help out there from time to time. Therefore, mar­ food may be more readily available. Ambilocality
riage usually does not involve compensation to the greatly enhances the M butis’ opportunity to find
groom’s family. food. It also provides a place to go if a dispute
Ambilocal residence is particularly well suited breaks out with someone in the band where the
to situations where economic cooperation of more couple is currently living. Consequently, Mbuti
people than are available in the nuclear family is camps are constantly changing their composition
needed but where resources are limited in some as people split off to go live with their in-laws,
way. Because the couple can join either the bride’s while others are joining from other groups. For a
or the groom’s family, family membership is flex­ people like food foragers, who find their food in
ible, and the two can live where the resources look nature and who maintain an egalitarian social or­
best or where their labor is most needed. This was der, ambilocal residence can be a crucial factor in
once the situation on the peninsulas and islands both survival and conflict resolution.

M atrilo ca l residence. A pattern in which a married couple lives in the locality associated with the wife’s relatives
> A m b ilo c a l residence. A pattern in which a married couple may choose either matrilocal o r patrilocal residence.
 F a m il y and H o u seh o ld CHAPTER 9 275

Although Hopi society is matrilocal, it is men’s labor that provides the food. In the past,
however, it is probable that women were the farmers, with men taking over the task as
irrigation became more important.

Under neolocal residence, a married couple
forms a household in an independent location.
This occurs where the independence of the nuclear
family is emphasized. In industrial societies such
as the United States, where most economic activ­
ity occurs outside rather than inside the family and
where it is important for individuals to be able to
move where jobs are found, neolocal residence is
better suited than any of the other patterns.
Avunculocal residence, in which a married
couple goes to live with the groom’s mother’s
brother (Figure 9.3) is favored by the same factors

FiavKE 0 . 1
Under avunculocal residence, a newly married couple goes to live with the husband’s mother’s brother.

Neolocal residence. A pattern in which a married couple establishes their household in a location apart from either
the husband’s o r the wife’s relatives. > A vunculocal residence. A pattern in which a married couple lives with the
husband’s mother’s brother.
276 PART m T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
that promote patrilocal residence, but only in so­
cieties where descent through women is deemed
crucial for the transmission of important rights
and property. Such is the case among the people
of the Trobriand Islands, where each individual is
a member from birth of a group of relatives who
trace their descent back through their mother, their
mother’s mother, and so on to the one woman all
others are descended from. Each of these descent
groups holds property, consisting of hamlet sites,
bush and garden lands, and, in some cases, beach­
fronts members have access rights to. These prop­
erties are controlled each generation by a male
chief or other leader who inherits these rights and
obligations, but because descent is traced exclu­
sively through women, a man cannot inherit these
from his father. Thus, succession to positions of
This Trobriand Island chief, shown in front of his
house, will be succeeded by his sister’s son. Hence,
men who will become chiefs live avunculocally.
leadership passes from a man to his sister’s son.
For this reason, a man who is in line to take con­
trol of his descent group’s assets will take his wife
to live with the one he will succeed— his mother’s
brother. This enables him to observe how the older
man takes care of his hamlet’s affairs, as well as
to learn the oral traditions and magic he will need
to be an effective leader.
Although Trobriand leaders and chiefs live
avunculocally, most married couples in this soci­
ety live patrilocally. This allows sons to fulfill their
obligations to their fathers, who helped build up
and nurture them when they were small; in return,
the sons will inherit personal property such as clay
pots and valuable stone axe blades from their fa­
thers. This also gives men access to land their fa­
ther’s descent groups control in addition to their
own, enabling them to improve their own eco­
nomic and political position in Trobriand society.
In short, here, as in any human society, practical
considerations play a central role in determining
where people will live following marriage.
PROBLEMS OF FAMILY AND
HOUSEHOLD ORGANIZATION
Effective though the family may be at organizing
economic production, consumption, inheritance,
and child rearing, at the household level relation­
ships within the family inevitably involve a certain
amount of conflict and tension. This does not
mean they may not also involve a great deal of
warmth and affection. Nevertheless, at least the
potential for conflict is always there and must be
dealt with lest families become dysfunctional. Dif­
ferent forms of families are associated with dif­
ferent sorts of tensions, and the means employed
to manage these tensions differ accordingly.
P olygamous Fa mi l i e s
A major source of tension within polygamous fam­
ilies is the potential for conflict that exists between
the multiple spouses of the individual they are
married to. For example, under polygyny (the
most common form of polygamy), the several
wives of a man must be able to get along with a

minimum of bickering and jealousy. One way to
handle this is through sororal polygyny, or mar­
riage to women who are sisters. Presumably,
women who have grown up together can get along
as cowives of a man more easily than can women
who grew up in different households and have
never had to live together before. Another mech­
anism is to provide each wife with a separate
apartment or house within a household compound
and perhaps require the husband to adhere to a
system of rotation for sleeping purposes. The lat­
ter at least prevents the husband from playing ob­
vious favorites among his wives. Although polyg­
yny can be difficult for the women involved, this
is not always the case (recall the comments of
women in polygynous marriages in the Rocky
Mountains discussed in the previous chapter). In
some polygynous societies, women enjoy consid­
erable economic autonomy, and in societies where
women’s work is hard and boring, polygyny al­
lows sharing of the workload and alleviating bore­
dom through sociability.
A Bakhtiari m an, his wives, and his children. In
polygamous fam ilies, tensions may arise between
cowives, or (in the case o f polygyny), the man and his
wives.
F a m il y and H o u seh o ld CHAPTER 9 277
In polyandrous families, two distinctive struc­
tural characteristics may cause difficulty. One is
that a woman’s older husbands are apt to domi­
nate the younger ones. The other is that, under
conditions of fraternal polyandry (where cohus­
bands are brothers), the most common kind, the
youngest brothers are likely to be considerably
younger than their wives, whose reproductive
years are limited. Hence, a young husband’s
chances of reproducing successfully are reduced,
compared to older husbands. Not surprisingly,
when polyandrous families in Tibet break up, it is
usually the younger husbands who depart. M ore­
over, large family groups are more prone to dis­
cord than smaller ones.11
E x t e n d e d Fa m i l i e s
Extended families too, no matter how well they
may work, have their own potential areas of stress.
Decision making in such families usually rests with
an older individual, and other family members
must defer to the elder’s decisions. Among a group
of siblings, an older one usually has the authority.
Another possible problem involves in-marrying
spouses, who must adjust their ways to conform
to the expectations of the family they have come
to live with. To combat these problems, cultures
rely on various techniques to enforce harmony, in­
cluding dependence training and the concept of
“face” or “honor.” Dependence training, discussed
in Chapter 5, is typically associated with extended
family organization and involves raising people
who are more inclined to be compliant and accept
their lot in life than are individuals raised to be
independent. One of the many problems young
people in North American society who have ex­
perimented with extended family living face is that
they generally have been raised to be independent,
making it hard to defer to others’ wishes when
they disagree.
The concept of “face” may constitute a partic­
ularly potent check on the power of senior members
of extended families. Among pastoral nomads of
North Africa, for example, young men can escape
"Levine, N. E., 8c Silk, J. B. (1997). Why polyandry fails.
Current Anthropology, 38, 3 8 5 -3 8 7 .
278 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
Some young North Americans have attempted to
re-create the extended family in the formation of com­
munes. These attempts sometimes run into trouble as
members cope with stress associated with extended
family organization they are unprepared for.
from ill treatment by a father or older brother by
leaving the patrilocal extended family to join the
family of his maternal relatives, in-laws, or even
an unrelated family willing to take him in.12 Be­
cause men lose face if their sons or brothers flee
in this way, they are generally at pains to control
their behavior to prevent this from happening.
Women, who are the in-marrying spouses, also
may return to their natal family if they are mis­
treated in their husband’s family. A woman who
does this exposes her husband and his family to
scolding by her kin, again causing loss of face.
u Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments: H onor and
poetry in a Bedouin society (pp. 9 9 -1 0 3 ). Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Effective though such techniques may be in
societies that stress the importance of the group
over the individual, and where loss of face is to
be avoided at almost any cost, not all conflict is
avoided. When all else fails to restore harmony,
siblings may be forced to demand their share of
family assets to set up separate households, and
in this way new families arise. Divorce, too, may
be possible, although how easily this may be ac­
complished varies considerably from one society
to another. In societies that practice matrilocal res­
idence, divorce rates tend to be high, reflecting
how easily unsatisfactory marriages can be termi­
nated. In some (not all) societies with patrilocal
residence, by contrast, divorce may be all but im­
possible, at least for women (the in-marrying
spouses). This was the case in traditional China,
for example, where women were raised to be cast
out of their families.13 When they married, they
exchanged their dependence on fathers and broth­
ers for absolute dependence on husbands and,
later in life, sons. Without divorce as an option,
to protect themselves against ill treatment women
went to great lengths to develop the strongest
bond possible between themselves and their sons
so that the latter would rise to their mother’s de­
fense when necessary. So single-minded were many
women toward developing such relationships with
their sons that they often made life miserable for
their daughters-in-law, who were seen as com­
petitors for their sons’ affections.
N uclear Fa m i l i e s
Just as extended families have built into them par­
ticular sources of stress and tensions, so too do
nuclear families, especially in modern industrial
societies where the family has lost one of its chief
reasons for being: its economic function as a ba­
sic unit of production. Instead of staying within
the fold, working with and for each other, one or
both adults in a marriage must seek work outside
the family. Furthermore, their work may keep
them away for prolonged periods. If both spouses
are employed, (as is increasingly the case, since
couples find it ever more difficult to maintain their
-----------------------------
13Wolf, M. (1972). Women and the fam ily in rural Taiwan
(pp. 3 2 -3 5 ). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

desired standard of living on one income), the re­
quirement for workers to go where their jobs take
them may pull the husband and wife in different
directions. On top of all this, neolocal residence
tends to isolate husbands and wives from both sets
of kin. Because clearly established patterns of re­
sponsibility no longer exist between husbands and
wives, couples must work these out for themselves.
Two factors make this difficult, one being women’s
traditional dependence on men that for so long has
been a feature of Western society. In spite of re­
cent progress toward greater equality between men
W
Dealing With Infant
Mortality
n 1979 D r Margaret Boone, an anthropologist who
I now works as a social science analyst with the Pro­
gram Evaluation and Methodology Division o f the
United States government's General Accounting Office,
began a residency on the staff o f Washington, D.C.'s
only public hospital. Her task was to gain an under­
standing o f the sociocultural basis o f poor maternal and
infant health among inner-city Blacks— something little
was known about at the time— and to communicate
that understanding to the relevant public and private
agencies, as well as to a wider public. As D r Boone
put it:
The problem was death— the highest infant death rate
in the United States. In Washington, D.C., babies were
dying in their first years o f life at the highest rate for any
large American city, and nobody could figure out why.*
In Washington, as in the rest o f the United States, in­
fant mortality is mainly an African American health
problem because o f the large and increasing number
o f disadvantaged Black women; their infants die at al­
most twice the rate o f W hite infants. The hospital
Boone, E. S. (1987). Practicing sociomedicine: Redefining
the problem of infant mortality in Washington, D.C. In
R. M. Wulff & S. J. Fiske (Eds.), A nthropological praxis:
Translating know ledge into action (p. 56). Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 279
and women, all too often the partners to a mar­
riage do not come to it as equals. The other prob­
lem is the great emphasis North American society
places on the pursuit of individual gratification
through competition, often at someone else’s ex­
pense. The problem is especially acute if the hus­
band and wife grew up in households with widely
divergent outlooks on life and ways of operating.
Furthermore, their isolation from kin means no
one is on hand to help stabilize the new marriage;
for that matter, intervention of kin likely would
be regarded as interference.
where Boone worked served an overwhelmingly im­
poverished and African American population.
For the next year and a half, Boone worked in­
tensively reviewing medical, birth, and death records;
doing statistical analyses; and interviewing women
whose infants had died, as well as nurses, physicians, so­
cial workers, and administrators. As she points out, no
matter how important the records review and statisti­
cal analyses were (and they were Important), her basic
understanding o f reproduction in the inner-city Black
community came from the daily experience working in
the "community center” fo r birth and death (the hos­
pital)— classic anthropological participant observation.
Boone found out that infant death and miscarriage
are associated with absence o f prenatal care, smoking,
alcohol consumption, psychological distress during preg­
nancy and hospitalization, evidence o f violence, ineffec­
tive contraception, rapid childbearing in the teens (av­
erage age at first pregnancy was 18), and combining
several harmful drugs. Contrary to everyone's expec­
tations, heroin abuse was less important a factor than
alcohol abuse, and drug abuse in general was no higher
among women whose infants died than among those
whose infants did not. Cultural factors found important
include a belief in a birth for every death, a high value
placed on children, a value on gestation w ithout nec­
essarily any causal or sequential understanding o f the
children it will produce, a lack o f planning ability,
280 PART HI T he F ormation of G roups : S olving the Problem of C ooperation

distrust o f both men and women, and a separation o f
men's roles from family formation (indeed, three quar­
ters o f the women in Boone's study were unmarried
at the time o f delivery). O f course, some o f these fac­
tors already were known to be related to infant mor­
tality, but many were not.
As a consequence o f Boone’s work, important
changes in policies and programs relating to infant mor­
tality have been implemented. It is now widely recog­
nized that the problem goes beyond mere medicine
and that medical solutions have gone about as far as
they can go. Only by dealing with the social and cul­
tural factors connected to the poor health o f inner-city
African Americans will further progress be made, and
new service delivery systems are slowly emerging to
reflect this fact.

Isolation from kin also means that a young

mother-to-be must face pregnancy and childbirth
without the direct aid and support of female kin
she already has a relationship with and who have
been through pregnancy and childbirth them­
selves. Instead, for regular advice and guidance she
must turn to physicians (who are more often men
than women), books, and friends and neighbors
who themselves often are inexperienced. The prob­
lem continues through motherhood, in the absence
of experienced women within the family as well
as a clear model for child rearing. So reliance on
physicians, books, and mostly inexperienced
friends for advice and support continues. The
problems are exacerbated because families differ
widely in how they deal with their children. In the
competitive society of the United States, the chil­
dren themselves recognize this and often use such
differences against their parents to their own ends.
Women who have devoted themselves entirely
to raising children confront a further problem:
What will they do when the children are gone?
One answer to this, of course, is to pursue an out­ Louise Woodward, the au p air found guilty in 1997
side career, but this, too, may present problems. by a Massachusetts jury of causing the death of the
She may have a husband with traditional values child in her care. Her case illustrates the danger inher­
ent in the separation between child and parent in the
who thinks “a woman’s place is in the home.” Or
United States that inevitably results as adults pursue
it may be difficult to begin a career in middle age.
careers or other interests.
To begin a career earlier, though, may involve dif­
ficult choices: Should she have her career at the
expense of having children, or should she have The impermanence of the nuclear family itself
both simultaneously? If the latter, she is not likely may constitute a problem, in the form of anxieties
to find kin available to look after the children, as over old age. Once the children are gone, who will
would be possible in an extended family, so care for the parents in their old age? In North
arrangements must be made with people who are American society, no requirem ent exists for their
not kin. And, of course, all of these thorny deci­ children to do so. The problem does not arise in
sions must be made without nearby aid and sup­ an extended family, where one is cared for from
port of kin. womb to tomb.
 Fa m il y and H o u seh o ld CH APTER 9 281

Fe m a l e - H eaded H ous e hol ds

In North America, as increasing numbers of adults
have sought escape from dysfunctional nuclear
families through divorces and as young adults have
become more sexually active outside of wedlock,
a dramatic rise in the incidence of single-parent
households headed by women has occurred. By the
1990s, twice as many households in the United
States were headed by divorced, separated, and
never-married individuals as those occupied by
supposedly “normal” nuclear families.14 In the
vast majority of cases, as shown in Chapter 8, any
children remain with their mother, who then faces
the problem of having to provide for them as well
as for herself. In divorce cases, fathers are usually
required to pay child support, but they are not al­
ways able or willing to do this, and when they are
the amount is often not sufficient to pay for all
the necessary food, clothes, and medical care, let
alone the cost of child care so that the woman can
seek or continue income-producing work outside
the house to support herself. One of the problems
here is that support payments determined in court In the United States, single mothers who are heads of
are based not so much on the needs of the woman households are often placed in no-win situations: If
and her children as on her “earning potential,” they work to support the household, they are seen as
which, if she has been true to middle-class values unfit mothers; if they stay home with the children,
they are labeled “deadbeats.”
by staying at home rather than going out to earn
money, is seen as low given that she has not
brought income into the family. What is ignored,
of course, is the fact her unpaid work at home Not surprisingly, as the number of female­
contributed to her husband’s ability to pursue a fi­ headed households has increased, so has the num­
nancially rewarding career, but since she is not ber of women (and, of course, their children) who
paid for her work at home, no value is set for it. live below the poverty line. More than one third
As also in the case of working women who of all female-headed households in the United
remain with their husbands, kin may not be avail­ States now fall into this category, and one quar­
able to look after the single mother’s children, so ter of all children are poor (Figure 9.4). Moreover,
outside help must be sought and (usually) paid for, these women and children are the ones most se­
thereupon making it even more difficult for the verely affected by cutbacks made in social welfare
mother to support herself adequately. To com­ programs since 1980. Even before then, the pur­
pound the problem, women frequently lack the chasing power of women was declining, and, ever
skills necessary to secure more than menial and since, the programs that most assisted women and
low-paying jobs, not having acquired such skills children have suffered the deepest cuts. One rea­
earlier due to raising children. Even when they do son for this is a flawed assumption that is nonethe­
have skills, it is still a fact women are not paid as less entrenched in public policy: that the poverty
much as men who hold the same jobs. seen in so many female-headed households is
caused by the supposedly deviant nature of such
l4Sracey, J. (1990). Brave new fam ilies (pp. 5, 15). New households. This deviation is allegedly caused in
York: Basic Books. part by women wanting to go outside the home
282 PART UI T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
Median family income
(in constant 1987 dollars)
All families Married-couple families
1978 1987
Black White Black
-4 .5 % ch an g e + 0 .8 % c h a n g e -1 .9 % ch an g e
Fuaiit 9 .4
Median family income: married-couple families and female-headed families compared. Though the figures have
changed some since 1987, the disparities have not altered significantly.
to earn money instead of finding husbands to sup­
port them so that they can stay home and bring
up the children, as women are “supposed” to do.
In fact, women have participated in the labor force
throughout United States history, whereas only a
limited proportion of the population ever pos­
sessed the resources to support “proper” non­
working “ladies.” 15 Far from “pathological,” fe­
male-headed households are in fact a rational
response to economic constraints in a society that
defines gender roles in ways that put women at a
disadvantage.
Single-parent households headed by women
are neither new nor restricted to industrialized so­
cieties such as the United States. They have been
known and studied for a long time in the coun­
tries of the Caribbean basin, where men histori­
cally have been exploited as a cheap source of la­
bor on plantations. Under such conditions, men
have no power and few economic rewards; hence
they are tenuously attached at best to any partic­
ular household. These are held together by
women, who as producers of subsistence foods
lsMullings, L. (1989). Gender and rhe application of anthro­
pological knowledge to public policy in the United States. In
S. Morgen (Ed.), G ender and anthropology (pp. 36 2 -3 6 5 ).
Washington: American Anthropological Association.
Families headed by women
1978 I 1987 1987
White Black White
+ 3 .2 % ch an ge -5 .3 % ch an ge - 1 .4 % ch ange
provide the means of economic survival for house­
holds. Similar female-headed households are be­
coming increasingly common in other “underde­
veloped” countries, too, as development projects
increasingly restrict women’s ability to earn a liv­
ing wage (reasons for this are discussed in Chap­
ters 15 and 16).
Thus, women constitute the majority of the
poor, the underprivileged, and the economically
and socially disadvantaged in most of the world’s
societies, just as is becoming true in the United
States. In underdeveloped countries, the situation
has been made worse by “reforms” the Interna­
tional Monetary Fund (IMF) requires to renegoti­
ate payment of foreign debts. Cutbacks in gov­
ernment education, health, and social programs
for debt service have their most direct (and nega­
tive) impact on women and children, while further
development designed to increase foreign ex­
change (for debt repayment and the financing of
more industrialization) also comes at women and
children’s expense. Meanwhile, the prices people
must pay for basic life necessities increase (to cut
down on unfavorable trade balances). If a woman
is lucky, the wage she earns to buy bread for her­
self and her children remains constant, even if low,
while the price she must pay for that bread con­
tinues to rise.
 Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 283

In North America, families are widely believed to be places of refuge from the rough-and-
tumble outside world. Yet, domestic violence is far from rare, and women and children
are its usual victims. Shown here is O.J. Simpson and his wife Nicole, whose “wrongful
death” he was found guilty of by a civil court.

At the start of this chapter we posed a num­
ber of questions relating to the effectiveness of the
family, as it is known today in North America, in
meeting human needs. From what we have just
discussed, it is obvious neolocal nuclear families
impose considerable anxiety and stress upon the
individuals in such families. Deprived of the secu­
rity and multiplicity of emotional ties found in
polygamous, extended, or consanguineal families,
these nuclear families find that if something goes
wrong, it is potentially more devastating to the in­
dividuals involved. Yet it is also obvious that al­
ternative forms of family and household organi­
zation come complete with their distinctive stresses
and strains. To the question of which alternative
is preferable, we must answer that it depends on
what problems one wishes to overcome and what
price one is willing to pay.
In the United States, it is clear the problems
inherent in the “traditional” nuclear family have
led to a marked decline in the percentage of house­
holds such families occupy. Meanwhile, the con­
ditions that gave rise to these families in the first
place have changed. So far, no single family struc­
ture or ideology has arisen to supplant the nuclear
family, nor can we predict which (if any) of the
alternatives will gain preeminence in the future.
The only certainty is that family and household
arrangements, not just in the United States but
throughout the world, will continue to evolve, as
they always have, as the conditions they are sen­
sitive to change.
284 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation
C H A P T E R
Dependence on group living for survival is a basic
human characteristic. Nurturing children tradition­
ally has been the adult female’s job, although men
also may play a role, and in some societies men are
even more involved with their children than are
women. In addition to at least some child care,
women also carry out other economic tasks that
complement those of men. The presence of adults
of both sexes in a residential group is advantageous,
in that it provides children with adult models of the
same sex, from whom they can learn the gender-
appropriate roles as defined in that society.
A definition of the family that avoids Western
ethnocentrism sees it as a group composed of a
woman and her dependent children, with at least
one adult man joined through marriage or blood
relationship. In most human societies, families ei­
ther constitute households or households are built
around families. Although families are not uni­
versally present in human societies, households
are. Households are defined as the basic residen­
tial units where economic production, consump­
tion, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are or­
ganized and implemented.
Far from being a stable, unchanging entity, the
family may take any one of a number of forms in
response to particular social, historical, and eco­
logical circumstances. Conjugal families are those
formed on the basis of marital ties. The smallest
conjugal unit of mother, father, and their depen­
dent children is called the nuclear family. Con­
trasting with the conjugal is the consanguineal
family, consisting of women, their dependent chil­
dren, and their brothers. The nuclear family, which
became the ideal in North American society, is also
found in societies that live in harsh environments,
such as the Inuit. In industrial societies as well as
societies in particularly harsh environments, the
nuclear family must be able to look after itself. The
result is that individual members are strongly de­
pendent on very few people. This form of family
is well suited to the mobility required both in food­
foraging groups and in industrial societies where
job changes are frequent. Among food foragers,
however, the nuclear family is not as isolated from
other kin as in modern industrial society.
S U M M A R Y
Characteristic of many nonindustrial societies
is the large extended, or conjugal-consanguineal,
family. Ideally, some of an extended family’s mem­
bers are related by blood, others are related by
marriage, and all live and work together as mem­
bers of one household. Conjugal or extended fam­
ilies are based upon five basic residential patterns:
patrilocal, matrilocal, ambilocal, neolocal, and
avunculocal.
Different forms of family organization are ac­
companied by their distinctive problems. Polyga­
mous families endure the potential for conflict
among the several spouses of the individual they
are married to. One way to ameliorate this prob­
lem is through sororal polygyny or fraternal
polyandry. Under polyandry, an added difficulty
for the youngest husbands is reduced opportunity
for reproduction. In extended families, the matter
of decision making may be the source of stress,
resting as it does with an older individual whose
views may not coincide with those of the younger
family members. In-marrying spouses in particu­
lar may have trouble complying with the demands
of the family they must now live in.
In neolocal nuclear families, individuals are
isolated from the direct aid and support of kin, so
husbands and wives must work out their own
solutions to the problems of living together and
having children. The problems are especially dif­
ficult in North American society, owing to the in­
equality that still persists between men and
women, the great emphasis placed on individual­
ism and competition, and an absence of clearly
understood patterns of responsibility between
husbands and wives, as well as a clear model for
child rearing.
In North America, an alternative to the inde­
pendent nuclear family, and which is now twice as
common, is the single-parent household, usually
headed by a woman. Female-headed households
are also common in underdeveloped countries. Be­
cause the women in such households are hard
pressed to provide adequately for themselves as
well as for their children, more women than ever
in the United States and abroad find themselves
sinking deeply into poverty.
 Family and H ousehold CHAPTER 9 285

Points for C onsideration

1. Why do families take on particular forms?
2. Why might families in a culture stop being households? Why might families evolve into house­
holds? How flexible and diverse have North American families been regarding their roles as
households?
3. Many individuals in North America have strong feelings about families with adult members in­
volved in a homosexual relationship. Indeed, legislation as of yet has not been an adequate solu­
tion in the United States. How can this controversy be resolved? How will its resolution affect
the status of families in North American culture?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Fox, R. (1967). Kinship an d m arriage in an an ­ Written by a sociologist, this book (subtitled

throp olog ical perspective. Baltimore: Penguin.
Fox’s book is a good introduction to older, or­
thodox theories about the family.
Goody, J. (1983). D ev elop m en t o f the fam ily an d
m arriage in E u rope. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
This historical study shows how the nature of
the family changed in Europe in response to
regulations the Catholic Church introduced to
weaken the power of kin groups and gain ac­
cess to property. It explains how European
patterns of kinship and marriage came to dif­
fer from those of the ancient circum-Mediter-
ranean world and from those that succeeded
them in the Middle East and North Africa.
Netting, R. M ., Wilk, R. R ., & Arnold, E. J. (Eds.).
(1984). H ou seh old s: C om parative an d h istor­
ical studies o f the dom estic group. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
This collection of essays by 20 anthropologists
and historians focuses on how and why house­
holds vary within and between societies and
over time within single societies.
Stacey, J. (1990). B rave new fam ilies. New York:
Basic Books.
Stories o f D om estic C on flict in L ate Twenti­
eth Century A m erica) takes an anthropologi­
cal approach to understanding the changes af­
fecting family structure in the United States.
Her conclusion is that “the family” is n ot here
to stay, nor should we wish otherwise. For all
the difficulties attendant to “the family’s
demise,” alternative arrangements do open
hopeful possibilities for the future.
Thorne, B., & Yalom, M. (Eds.). (1982). R e­
thinking the fam ily: Som e fem inist questions.
New York: Longman.
As anthropologists have paid more attention
to how institutions and practices work from
a woman’s perspective, they have had to re­
examine existing assumptions about families
in human societies. The 12 original essays in
this volume, by scholars in economics, history,
law, literature, philosophy, psychology, and
sociology, as well as anthropology, examine
topics such as the idea of the monolithic fam­
ily, the sexual division of labor and inequal­
ity, motherhood, parenting, and mental illness
and relations between family, class, and state.
Especially recommended is the essay “Is There
a Family? New Anthropological Views.”
 CliApfe^ ŸHVitW
I. W hat Are P esctirt
A descent group is a kind o f kinship group whereby being a lineal descendant o f a particular
real o r mythical ancestor is a crite rion o f membership. Descent may be reckoned exclusively
through men, exclusively through women, o r through either at the individual's discretion. In some
cases, tw o different means o f reckoning descent are used at the same tim e to assign individu­
als to different groups fo r different purposes.

2* :WhafeFunctilBi-'W»:;De$ceii#"Groups $#r v e ? , : : ■ ■
Descent groups o f various kinds— lineages, clans, phratries, and m oieties— are convenient de­
vices fo r solving a number o f problems human societies commonly confront: how to maintain
the integrity o f resources that cannot be divided w ith o u t destruction; generating workforces fo r
tasks that require a labor pool larger than households can provide; and allowing members o f
one sovereign local group to claim support and protection from members o f another. N o t all
societies have descent groups; in many food-foraging and industrial societies, some o f these prob­
lems often are handled by the kindred, a group o f people w ith a living relative in common. The
kindred, however, does not exist in perpetuity, as does the descent group, n or is its member­
ship as clearly and explicitly defined. Hence, it is generally a weaker unit than the descent group.

3. How Do Descent Groups Evolve?

Descent groups arise from extended family organization, as long as problems o f organization
exist that such groups help to solve. This is most apt to happen in food-producing as opposed
to food-foraging societies. First to develop are localized lineages, followed by larger, dispersed
groups such as clans and phratries. W ith the passage o f tim e kinship term inology itself is af­
fected by and adjusts to the kinds o f descent o r o ther kinship groups im portant to a society.

287
288 PART DI T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

ll societies have found some form of family in horticultural societies, where division of land is

A and/or household organization a conve­

nient way to deal with problems all human
groups face: how to facilitate economic coopera­
tion between the sexes, how to provide a proper
setting for child rearing, and how to regulate sex­
ual activity. Efficient and flexible though family
and household organization may be in rising to
challenges connected with such problems, the fact
is many societies confront problems beyond the
coping ability of family and household organiza­
tion. For one, members of one sovereign local
group often need some means of claiming support
and protection from individuals in another group.
This can be important for defense against natural
or human-made disasters; if people have the right
of entry into local groups other than their own,
they can secure protection or critical resources
impractical beyond a certain point. The problem
can be avoided if land ownership is vested in a cor­
porate group that exists in perpetuity. Finally, peo­
ple often need some means of providing coopera­
tive workforces for tasks that require more
participants than households alone can provide.
Many ways to deal with these sorts of prob­
lems exist. One is by developing a formal politi­
cal system, with personnel to make and enforce
laws, keep the peace, allocate resources, and per­
form other regulatory and societal functions. A
more common way in nonindustrial societies— es­
pecially horticultural and pastoral societies— is by
developing kinship groups.
A ^ À k a. !\ A A ft * ) A 4 a

when their own group cannot provide them. For

another, a group frequently needs to share rights
DESCENT GROUPS
to some means of production that cannot be di­ A common way of organizing a society along kin­
vided without its destruction. This is often the case ship lines is by creating what anthropologists call

On this altar, King Yax-Pac of the ancient Maya city of Copan portrays himself and his predeces­
sors, thereby tracing his descent back to the founder of the dynasty. In many human societies, such
genealogical connections are used to define each individual’s rights, privileges, and obligations.

descent groups. A descent group is any publicly
recognized social entity requiring lineal descent
from a particular real or mythical ancestor for
membership. Members of a descent group trace
their connections back to a common ancestor
through a chain of parent-child links. This feature
may explain why descent groups are found in so
many human societies. They appear to stem from
the parent-child bond, which is built upon as the
basis for a structured social group. This is a con­
venient relationship to seize upon, and the addi­
tion of a few nonburdensome obligations and
avoidances acts as a kind of glue to help hold the
group together.
To operate most efficiently, descent groups
ought to clearly define membership. Otherwise,
membership overlaps and it is not always clear
where one’s primary loyalty belongs. Membership
can be restricted in a number of ways. It can be
based on where people live; for example, if your
parents live patrilocally, you automatically might
be assigned to your father’s descent group. An­
other way is through choice; each individual might
be presented with a number of options. This,
though, introduces a possibility of competition
and conflict as groups vie for members. The most
common way to restrict membership is by making
sex jurally relevant. Instead of tracing membership
back to the common ancestor, through men and
sometimes through women, a society does it ex­
clusively through one sex. In this way, each indi­
vidual is automatically assigned from the moment
of birth to his or her mother’s or father’s group
and to that group only.
U ni l i ne al D escent
Unilineal descent (sometimes called unilateral d e­
scent) establishes descent group membership exclu­
sively through the male or the female line. In non-
Western societies, unilineal descent groups are quite
common. The individual is assigned at birth to
Descent group. Any publicly recognized social entity requiring lineal descent from a particular real o r mythical ances­
to r for membership. > Unilineal descent. D escent that establishes group membership exclusively through either the
Matrilineal descent.
m other’s o r the father’s line. >
group membership. > Patrilineal descent. D escent traced exclusively through the male line to establish group mem­
bership.
K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 289
membership in a specific descent group, which may
be traced either by matrilineal descent, through the
female line, or by patrilineal descent, through the
male line, depending on the society. In patrilineal
societies the males are far more important than the
females, for they are considered responsible for the
group’s perpetuation. In matrilineal societies, this
responsibility falls on the female group members,
whose importance is thereby enhanced.
A close relation between the descent system
and a society’s economy seems to exist. Generally,
patrilineal descent predominates where the man is
the breadwinner, as among pastoralists and inten­
sive agriculturalists, where male labor is a prime
factor. Matrilineal descent is important mainly
among horticulturists in societies where women
are the breadwinners. Numerous matrilineal soci­
eties are found in south Asia, one of the cradles
of food production in the Old World. These in­
clude societies in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,
Sumatra, Tibet, south China, and many Indone­
sian islands. Matrilineal systems also were promi­
nent in parts of aboriginal North America and still
are in parts of Africa.
It is now recognized that in all societies, the
kin of both mother and father are important com­
ponents of the social structure. Just because de­
scent may be reckoned patrilineally, for example,
does not mean maternal relatives are unimportant.
It simply means that, for purposes of grou p m em ­
bership, the mother’s relatives are excluded. Simi­
larly, under matrilineal descent, the father’s rela­
tives are excluded for purposes of group
membership. For example, we already have seen
in the two preceding chapters how important pa­
ternal relatives are among the matrilineal Tro-
briand Islanders. Although children belong to their
mother’s descent groups, fathers play an important
role in nurturing and building them up. Upon mar­
riage, the bride’s and groom’s paternal relatives
contribute to the required exchange of gifts, and,
throughout life, a man may expect his paternal
D escent traced exclusively through the female line to establish
290 PART m T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

kin to help him improve his economic and politi­ strongly patrilineal. Since then, considerable
cal position in society. Eventually, sons may expect changes have occurred, although vestiges of the
to inherit personal property from their fathers. old system persist to varying degrees in different
regions. Traditionally, the basic unit for economic
Patrilineal Descent and Organization cooperation was the large extended family, typi­
cally including aged parents, their sons, and their
Patrilineal descent (sometimes called agnatic or
sons’ wives and sons’ children.1 Residence, there­
m ale descent) is the more widespread of the two
fore, was patrilocal, as defined in Chapter 9. As
unilineal descent systems. The male members of a
in most patrilocal societies, then, children grew up
patrilineal descent group trace through other
in a household their father and his male relatives
males their descent from a common ancestor (Fig­
dominated. The father was a source of discipline
ure 10.1). Brothers and sisters belong to the de­
a child would maintain a respectful social distance
scent group of their father’s father, their father,
from. Often, the father’s brother and his sons were
their father’s siblings, and their father’s brother’s
members of the same household. Thus, the pater­
children. A m an’s son and daughter also trace their
nal uncle was rather like a second father and was
descent back through the male line to their com­
treated with obedience and respect, while his sons
mon ancestor. In the typical patrilineal group, the
were like one’s brothers. Accordingly, the kinship
responsibility for training the children rests with
term applied to a father was extended to the fa­
the father or his elder brother. A woman belongs
ther’s brother, as the term for a brother was ex­
to the same descent group as her father and his
tended to the father’s brother’s sons. When fami­
brothers, but her children cannot trace their de­
lies became too large and unwieldy, as frequently
scent through them. A person’s paternal aunt’s
children, for example, trace their descent through
the patrilineal group of her husband.
T r a d it io n a l C h in a : A P a t r il in e a l S o c ie t y 'M ost of the following is from F. Hsiaotung (1939), Feasant
Until World War II, rural Chinese society was life in China. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench and Trüber.

GF
=o GM

4 FZ FZH
i fcrC I tO
FB I FBW F 1 M

F igure I O .I
How patrilineal descent is traced. Only the individuals symbolized by a filled-in circle or
triangle are in the same descent group as ego. The abbreviation F stands for father, B for
brother, H for husband, S for son, M for mother, Z for sister, D for daughter, and W for
wife.
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 291

absorbed by that of her husband, whom she went

happened, one or more sons would move else­
where to establish separate households; when a
son did so, however, the tie to his natal household
remained strong.
Important though family membership was for
each individual, it was the tsu that was regarded as
the primary social unit. Each tsu consisted of men
who traced their ancestry back through the male
line to a common ancestor, usually within about
five generations. Although a woman belonged to
her father’s tsu, for all practical purposes she was
to live with after marriage. Nonetheless, members
of her natal tsu retained some interest in her after
her departure. Her mother, for example, would as­
sist her in the birth of her children, and her brother
or some other male relative would look after her
interests, perhaps even intervening if her husband
or other members of his family treated her badly.
The function of the tsu was to assist its mem­
bers economically and to gather on ceremonial oc­
casions such as weddings and funerals or to make
offerings to the ancestors. Recently deceased ances­
tors, up to about three generations back, were given
offerings of food and paper money on the anniver­
saries of their births and deaths, while more distant
ancestors were collectively worshiped five times a
year. Each tsu maintained its own place for storage
of ancestral tablets on which the names of all mem­
bers were recorded. In addition to its economic and
ritual functions, the tsu also functioned as a legal
body, passing judgment on errant members.
Just as families periodically split into new
ones, so would the larger descent groups periodi­
cally splinter along the lines of their main family
branches. Causes included disputes among broth­
ers over management of land holdings and suspi­
cion of unfair division of profits. When such

In patrilineal and other societies that promote the dominance of men over women, this practice
sometimes goes to the extreme of inflicting physical, as well as social, disabilities on women. In
the 19th century, Chinese women had their feet tightly bound, while in North America women
often were tightly corseted. The result in both cases was actual physical impairment.
292 PART m T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

separation occurred, a representative of the new
tsu would return periodically to the ancestral
temple to pay respect to the ancestors and record
recent births and deaths in the official genealogy.
Ultimately, though the tie to the old tsu still would
be recognized, a copy of the old genealogy would
be made and brought home to the younger tsu,
and then only its births and deaths would be
recorded. In this way, for many centuries a whole
hierarchy of descent groups developed, with all
persons having the same surname considering
themselves members of a great patrilineal clan.
With this went surname exogamy, which is still
widely practiced today even though clan members
no longer carry on ceremonial activities together.
The patrilineal system reached throughout
rural Chinese social relations. Children owed obe­
dience and respect to their fathers and older
patrilineal relatives in life and had to marry
whomever their parents chose for them. It was the
duty of sons to care for their parents when they
became old and helpless, and even after death sons
had ceremonial obligations to them. Inheritance
passed from fathers to sons, with an extra share
going to the eldest, since he ordinarily made the
greatest contribution to the household and had the
greatest responsibility toward his parents after
their deaths. Women, by contrast, had no claims
on their families’ heritable property. Once mar­
ried, a woman was in effect cast off by her patri­
lineal kin (even though they might continue to take
an interest in her) to produce children for her hus­
band’s family and tsu.
As the preceding suggests, a patrilineal society
is very much a man’s world; no matter how val­
ued women may be, they inevitably find themselves
in a difficult position. Far from resigning them­
selves to a subordinate position, however, they ac­
tively manipulate the system to their own advan­
tage as best they can. To learn how they may do
so, let us look more closely at the way women re­
late to one another in traditional Chinese society.

Women in rural Taiwan do not live their lives in the walled courtyards of
their husbands' households. If they did, they might be as powerless as their
stereotype. It is in their relations in the outside world (and for women in
rural Taiwan that world consists almost entirely o f the village) that women
develop sufficient backing to maintain some independence under their pow­
Coping as a erful mothers-in-law. A successful venture into the men's world is no small
feat when one recalls that the men o f a village were born there and are of­
Woman in a ten related to one another; whereas the women are unlikely to have either
the ties o f childhood o r the ties o f kinship to unite them. All the same, shared
Man's World2 interests, and common problems o f women are reflected in every village in
a loosely knit society that can when needed be called on to exercise con­
siderable influence.
Women carry on as many o f their activities as possible outside the
house. They wash clothes on the riverbank, clean and pare vegetables at a
communal pump, mend under a tree that is a known meetingplace, and stop
to rest on a bench or group o f stones with other women. There is a con­
tinual moving back and forth between kitchens, and conversations are car­
ried on from open doorways through the long, hot afternoons o f summer
The shy young girl who enters the village as a bride is examined as frankly
and suspiciously by the women as an animal that is up for sale. If she is def­
erential to her elders, does not criticize or compare her new world unfa-

2Wolf, M. (1972). Women and the fam ily in rural Taiwan (pp. 3 7 -4 1 ). Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 293

vorably with the one she has left, the older residents will gradually accept
her presence on the edge o f their conversations and stop changing the topic
to general subjects when she brings the family laundry to scrub on the rocks
near them. As the young bride meets other girls in her position, she makes
allies for the future, but she must also develop relationships with the older
women. She learns to use considerable discretion in making and receiving
confidences, for a girl who gossips freely about the affairs o f her husband’s
household may find herself always on the outside o f the group, on worse
yet, accused o f snobbery. I described in The House of Lim the plight o f Lim
Chui-ieng, who had little village backing in her troubles with her husband and
his family as a result o f her arrogance toward the women's community. In
Peihotien the young wife o f the storekeeper's son suffered a similar lack o f
support. Warned by her husband’s parents not to be too "easy” with the
other villagers lest they try to buy things on credit, she obeyed to the point
o f being considered unfriendly by the women o f the village. When she be­
gan to have serious troubles with her husband and eventually his family, there
was no one in the village she could turn to for solace, advice, and most im­
portant, peacemaking.
Once a young bride has established herself as a member o f the women's
community, she has also established for herself a certain amount o f protec­
tion. If the members o f her husband's family step beyond the limits o f pro­
priety in their treatment o f her— such as refusing to allow her to return to
her natal home for her brother's wedding or beating her w ithout serious
justification— she can complain to a woman friend, preferably older; while
they are washing vegetables at the communal pump. The story will quickly
spread to the other women, and one o f them will take it upon herself to
check the facts with another member o f the girl’s household. For a few days
the matter will be thoroughly discussed whenever a few women gather In
a young wife’s first few years in the community, she can expect to have her
mother-in-laws side o f any disagreement given fuller weight than her own
— her mother-in-law has, after all, been a part o f the community a lot longer
However; the discussion itself will serve to curb many offenses. Even if the
older woman knows that public opinion is falling to her side, she will be
somewhat more judicious about refusing her daughter-in-law’s next request.
Still, the daughter-in-law who hopes to make use o f the village forum to de­
pose her mother-in-law or at least gain herself special privilege will discover
just how important the prerogatives o f age and length o f residence are. A l­
though the women can serve as a powerful protective force for their de­
fenseless younger members, they are also a very conservative force in the
village.
Taiwanese women can and do make use o f their collective power to
lose face for their menfolk in order to influence decisions that are ostensi­
bly not theirs to make. Although young women may have little or no influ­
ence over their husbands and would not dare express an unsolicited opin­
ion (and perhaps not even a solicited one) to their fathers-in-law, older
women who have raised their sons properly retain considerable influence
over their sons' actions, even in activities exclusive to men. Further; older
women who have displayed years o f good judgement are regularly consulted
by their husbands about major as well as minor economic and social pro­
jects. But even men who think themselves free to ignore the opinions o f
294 PART in T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

their women are never free o f their own concept, face. It is much easier to
lose face than to have face. W e once asked a male friend in Peihotien just
what “ having face" amounted to. He replied, “When no one is talking about
a family, you can say it has face." This is precisely where women wield their
power When a man behaves in a way that they consider wrong, they talk
about him— not only among themselves, but to their sons and husbands. No
one “tells him how to mind his own business,” but it becomes abundantly
clear that he is losing face and by continuing in this manner may bring shame
to the family o f his ancestors and descendants. Few men will risk that.
The rules that a Taiwanese man must learn and obey to be a success­
ful member o f his society are well developed, clear, and relatively easy to
stay within. A Taiwanese woman must also learn the rules, but if she is to be
a successful woman, she must learn not to stay within them, but to appear
to stay within them; to manipulate them, but not to appear to be manipu­
lating them; to teach them to her children, but not to depend on her chil­
dren for her protection. A truly successful Taiwanese woman is a rugged in­
dividualist who has learned to depend largely on herself while appearing to
lean on her father; her husband, and her son.The contrast between the ter­
rified young bride and the loud, confident, often lewd old woman who has
outlived her mother-in-law and her husband reflects the tests met and passed
by not strictly following the rules and by making purposeful use o f those
who must. The Chinese male's conception o f women as “ narrow-hearted"
and socially inept may well be his vague recognition o f this facet o f women’s
power and technique.

In the matrilineal system, brothers and sisters

Matrilineal Descent and Organization
In one respect, matrilineal descent is the opposite
of patrilineal: It is reckoned through the female line
(Figure 10.2). The matrilineal pattern differs from
the patrilineal, however, in that descent does not
automatically confer authority. Thus, although pa­
trilineal societies are patriarchal, matrilineal soci­
eties are not matriarchal. Although descent passes
through the female line and women may have con­
siderable power, they do not hold exclusive au­
thority in the descent group: They share it with
men. These are the brothers, rather than the hus­
bands, of the women descent is reckoned through.
Apparently, the adaptive purpose of the matrilin­
eal system is to provide continuous female soli­
darity within the female work group. Matrilineal
systems are usually found in farming societies
where women perform much of the productive
work. Because women’s work is regarded as so im­
portant to the society, matrilineal descent prevails.
belong to the descent group of the mother’s
mother, the mother, the mother’s siblings, and the
mother’s sister’s children. Males belong to the
same descent group as their mother and sister, but
their children cannot trace their descent through
them. For example, the children of a man’s ma­
ternal uncle are considered members of the uncle’s
wife’s matrilineal descent group. Similarly, a man’s
children belong to his wife’s, but not his, descent
group.
Although not true of all matrilineal systems,
a common feature is the weakness of the tie be­
tween husband and wife. The wife’s brother, and
not the husband/father, distributes goods, orga­
nizes work, settles disputes, administers inheri­
tance and succession rules, and supervises rituals.
The husband has legal authority not in his house­
hold but in that of his sister. Furthermore, his
property and status are inherited by his sister’s son,
rather than by his son. Thus, brothers and sisters
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 295

F icure 1 0 .1
This diagram, which traces descent matrilineally, can be compared with that in Figure
10.1, showing patrilineal descent. The two patterns are virtually mirror images. Note that
a man cannot transmit descent to his own children.

maintain lifelong ties with one another, whereas

marital ties are easily severed. In matrilineal soci­
eties, unsatisfactory marriages are more easily
ended than in patrilineal societies.
The H ope-A M a t r il in e a l S o c ie t y
In northeastern Arizona are the villages, or pueb­
los, of the Hopi Indians, a farming people whose
ancestors have lived in the region for at least 2 ,000
years. Their society is divided into a number of
named clans based strictly on matrilineal descent.3
Each individual is assigned from birth to his or her
mother’s clan, and so important is this affiliation
that, in a very real sense, a person has no identity
apart from it. Two or more clans together consti­
tute larger, supraclan units, or phratries, of which
nine exist in Hopi society. Within each of these,
member clans are expected to support one another
and to observe strict exogamy. Because members community. This same dispersal of membership
of all nine phratries live in any given pueblo, mar­ provides individuals with entry rights into villages
riage partners always can be found in one’s home other than their own.
Although clans are the major units in Hopi
thinking, the functional units consist of subclans,
3Most of the following is from J. C. Connelly (1979), Hopi
social organization. In A. Ortiz (Ed.), H an d book o f North
or lineages, and each village has several. Each is
American Indians (Vol. 9, Southwest, pp. 5 3 9 -5 5 3 ). Wash­ headed by a senior woman— usually the eldest, al­
ington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. though it is her brother or maternal uncle who
296 PART in T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the P roblem of C ooperation

keeps the sacred “medicine bundle” and plays an

active role in running lineage affairs. The woman,
however, is not a mere figurehead; she may act as
mediator to help resolve disputes among group
members, nor does she yield any authority to her
brother or uncle. Although these men have the
right to offer her advice and criticism, they are
equally obligated to listen to what she has to say.
M ost female authority, however, is exerted within
the household, and here men clearly take second
place. These households consist of the women of
the lineage with their husbands and unmarried
sons, all of whom used to live in sets of adjacent
rooms in single large tenements. Nowadays, nu­
clear families often live (frequently with a mater­
nal relative or two) in separate houses, but pickup
trucks and other vehicles enable related house­
holds to maintain close contacts and to cooperate
as before.
Lineages function as landholding corpora­
tions, allocating land for the support of member
households. These lands are farmed by “out­ Many of the things that Hopi women do are done in
siders,” the husbands of the women whose lineage the company of other women; thus, they have ample
owns the land, and the harvest belongs to these opportunity to discuss issues of importance to them.
women. Thus, Hopi men spend their lives labor­
ing for alien lineages (their wives’), and in return
they are given food and shelter (by their wives). activity. Although men control most of the asso­
Although sons learn from their fathers how to ciations that do the actual performing, women still
farm, a man has no real authority over his son (the have vital roles to play. For example, they provide
two belong to different lineages). Thus, when par­ the cornmeal, symbolic of natural and spiritual life
ents have difficulty with an unruly child, the that is a necessary ingredient in virtually all cere­
mother’s brother is called upon to mete out disci­ monies.
pline. Male loyalties are therefore divided between Prior to the United States government’s impo­
their wives’ households on the one hand and their sition in 1936 of a different system, each Hopi
sisters’ on the other. If, at any time, a man is per­ pueblo was politically autonomous, with its own
ceived as an unsatisfactory husband, his wife chief and village council. Here again, however, de­
merely has to place his belongings outside the scent group organization made itself felt, for the
door, and the marriage is over. council was made up of men who inherited their
In addition to their economic and legal func­ positions through their clans. Moreover, the pow­
tions, lineages play a role in Hopi ceremonial ac­ ers of the chief and his council were limited; the
tivities. Although membership in the associations chief’s major job was to maintain harmony be­
that actually perform ceremonies is open to all tween his village and the spiritual world, and
who have the proper qualifications, clans own and whatever authority he and his council wielded was
manage all the associations, and in each village a directed at coordination of community effort, not
leading lineage acts as its clan’s representative. enforcement of unilateral decrees. Decisions were
This lineage owns a special house where the clan’s made on a consensual basis, and women’s views
religious paraphernalia are stored and cared for had to be considered, as well as those of men. Once
by the “clan mother.” Together with her brother, again, although men held positions of authority,
the clan’s Big Uncle, she helps manage ceremonial women had considerable control over their deci­

sions in a behind-the-scene way. These men, after
all, lived in households women controlled, and
their position within them depended largely on
how well they got along with the senior women.
Outside the household, women’s refusal to play
their part in the performance of ceremonies gave
them veto power. Small wonder, then, that Hopi
men readily admit that “women usually get their
D ouble D escent
Double descent, or double unilineal descent,
whereby descent is reckoned both patrilineally and
matrilineally at the same time, is very rare. In this
system descent is matrilineal for some purposes
and patrilineal for others. Generally, where dou­
ble descent is reckoned, the matrilineal and patri­
lineal groups take action in different spheres of
society.
For example, among the Yako of eastern Nige­
ria, property is divided into both patrilineal line
possessions and matrilineal line possessions.45 The
patrilineage owns perpetual productive resources,
such as land, whereas the matrilineage owns con­
sumable property, such as livestock. The legally
weaker matrilineal line is somewhat more impor­
tant in religious matters than the patrilineal line.
Through double descent, a Yako might inherit
grazing lands from the father’s patrilineal group
and certain ritual privileges from the mother’s ma­
trilineal line.
A m b i l i n e a l D escent
Unilineal descent provides an easy way of re­
stricting descent group membership to avoid prob­
4Schlegel, A. (1977). Male and female in Hopi thought and
action. In A. Schlegel (Ed.), Sexual stratification (p. 254).
New York: Columbia University Press.
5Forde, C. D. (1968). Double descent among the Yako. In P.
Bohannan and J. Middleton (Eds.), Kinship and social orga­
nization (pp. 179-191). Garden City, NY: Natural History
Press.
Double descent. A system tracing descent matrilineally for some purposes and patrilineally for others. > A m b ilin e a l
descent. Descent in which the individual may affiliate with either the m other’s o r the father’s descent group.
K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 297
lems of divided loyalty and the like. A number of
societies, many of them in the Pacific and in South­
east Asia, accomplish the same task in other ways,
though perhaps not quite so neatly. The resultant
descent groups are known as am bilineal, nonuni­
lineal, or cognatic. Ambilineal descent provides a
measure of flexibility not normally found under
unilineal descent; each individual has the option
of affiliating with either the mother’s or the fa­
ther’s descent group. In many of these societies, an
individual is allowed to belong to only one group
at a time, regardless of how many groups he or
she may be eligible to join. Thus, the society may
be divided into the same sorts of discrete and sep­
arate groups of kin as in a patrilineal or matrilin­
eal society. Other cognatic societies, however, such
as the Samoans of the South Pacific or the Bella
Coola and the southern branch of the Kwakiutl of
the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America, al­
low overlapping membership in a number of de­
scent groups. As anthropologist George Murdock
observed, too great a range of individual choice
interferes with the orderly functioning of any kin-
oriented society:
An individual’s plural membership almost in­
evitably becomes segregated into a primary mem­
bership, strongly activated by residence, and one
or more secondary memberships with only partial
or occasional participation.6
Ambilineal Descent
Among N ew York City Jews
For an example of ambilineal organization, we
easily might turn to a traditional non-Western so­
ciety, as we have for patrilineal and matrilineal or­
ganization. Instead, we shall turn to contemporary
North American society to dispel the common (but
false) notion that descent groups, are necessarily
incompatible in structure and function with the
demands of modern industrial society. In fact,
M urdock, G. P. (1960). Cognatic forms of social organiza­
tion. In G. P. Murdock, Social structure in Southeast Asia
(p. 11). Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
298 PART ID T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
large corporate descent groups that hold assets in
common and exist in perpetuity are found in New
York City, as well as in every large city in the
United States where a substantial Jewish popula­
tion of eastern European background is found.7
Furthermore, these descent groups are not sur­
vivals of an old eastern European descent-based
organization. Rather, they represent a social inno­
vation designed to restructure and preserve the
7Mirchell, W. E. (1978). M ishpokhe: A study o f N ew York
City Jew ish fam ily clubs. The Hague: Mouton.
Close family ties have always been important in eastern European Jewish culture. To
maintain such ties in the United States, the descendants of eastern European Jews devel­
oped ambilineal descent groups.
traditionally close affective family ties of the old
eastern European Jewish culture in the face of con­
tinuing immigration to the United States, subse­
quent dispersal from New York City, and the de­
velopment of significant social and even
temperamental differences among their descen­
dants. The earliest of these descent groups did not
develop until the end of the first decade of the
1900s, some 40 years after the immigration of
eastern European Jews began in earnest. Although
some groups have disbanded, they generally have
remained alive and vital right down to the present.
The original Jewish descent groups in New
York City are known as fam ily circles. The po­
tential members of a family circle consist of all liv­
ing descendants, with their spouses, of an ances­
tral pair. In actuality, not all who are eligible
actually join, so an element of voluntarism exists.
But eligibility is explicitly determined by descent,
using both male and female links, without set or­
der, to establish the connection with the ancestral
pair. Thus, individuals are normally eligible for
membership in more than one group or “circle.”
To activate a membership, one simply pays the re­
quired dues, attends meetings, and participates in
the group’s affairs. Individuals can, and frequently
do, belong at the same time to two or three groups
they are eligible for. Each family circle bears a
name, usually including the surname of the male
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 299

ancestor; each has elected officers; and each meets
regularly throughout the year rather than just once
or twice. At the least, the family circle as a cor­
poration holds funds in common, and some hold
title to burial plots for members. Originally, they
functioned as mutual-aid societies, as well as had
the purpose of maintaining family solidarity. Now,
as the mutual-aid functions have been taken over
by outside agencies, the promotion of solidarity
has become their primary goal. It will be interest­
ing to see if reduced government funding for these
agencies leads to a resurgence of the mutual-aid
function of family circles.
In the years just prior to World War II, an in­
teresting variant of the ambilineal descent group
developed among younger-generation descendants
of east European Jewish immigrants. Being more
assimilated into North American culture, some of
them sought to separate themselves somewhat
from members of older generations, who were per­
ceived as a bit old-fashioned. Yet they still wished
to maintain the traditional Jewish ethic of family
solidarity. The result was the cousins club, which
consists of a group of first cousins who share a
common ancestry, their spouses, and their descen­
dants. Excluded are parents and grandparents of
the cousins, with their older views and lifestyles.
Ambilineal descent remains the primary organiz­
ing principle, but it has been modified by a gen­
erational principle. Otherwise, cousins clubs are
organized and function in many of the same ways
as family circles.
FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF
DESCENT GROUPS
Descent groups with restricted membership, re­
gardless of how descent is reckoned, are usually
more than mere groups of relatives providing
warmth and a sense of belonging; in nonindustrial
societies they are tightly organized working units
providing security and services in what can be a
difficult, uncertain life. The tasks descent groups
perform are manifold. Besides acting as economic

Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday with members of a matrilineal clan among the Mi-
nangkabau of Sumatra gathered for a house-raising ceremony. The one adult male is the
brother of the senior female leader (the woman on Sanday’s left); he is the clan’s male
leader. Absence of other men reflects the predominance of women in this society.
300 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
units providing mutual aid to their members, they
may support the aged and infirm and help with
marriages and deaths. Often, they play a role in
determining who an individual may or may not
marry. The descent group also may act as a repos­
itory of religious traditions. Ancestor worship, for
example, is a powerful force acting to reinforce
group solidarity.
L i neage
A lineage (such as those of the Hopi or the Chi­
nese tsu) is a corporate descent group composed
of consanguineal kin who trace descent genealog­
ically through known links back to a common an­
cestor. The term is usually employed where a form
of unilineal descent is the rule, but some ambilin-
eal groups are similar, such as the Jewish family
circles just discussed.
The lineage is ancestor oriented; membership
in the group is recognized only if relationship to
a common ancestor can be traced and proved. In
many societies an individual has no legal or po­
litical status except as a lineage member. Since “cit­
izenship” is derived from lineage membership and
legal status depends on it, political and religious
power are derived from it as well. Important reli­
gious and magical powers, such as those associ­
ated with the cults of gods and ancestors, also may
be bound to the lineage.
The lineage, like General M otors or IBM , is a
corporate group. Because it endures after the
deaths of members with new members continually
born into it, it has a perpetual existence that en­
ables it to take corporate actions, such as owning
property, organizing productive activities, distrib­
uting goods and labor power, assigning status, and
regulating relations with other groups. The lineage
is a strong, effective base of social organization.
A common feature of lineages is their ex­
ogamy. This means lineage members must find
their marriage partners in other lineages. One ad­
vantage of lineage exogamy is that potential sex­
ual competition within the group is curbed, pro­
Lineage. A corporate descent group whose members trace their genealogical links to a common ancestor. > Fission.
The splitting of a descent group into two o r more new descent groups. > C lan. A noncorporate descent group whose
members claim descent from a common ancestor without actually knowing the genealogical links to that ancestor.
moting the group’s solidarity. Lineage exogamy
also means each marriage is more than an arrange­
ment between two individuals; it amounts as well
to a new alliance between lineages. This helps to
maintain them as components of larger social sys­
tems. Finally, lineage exogamy supports open com­
munication within a society by promoting the dif­
fusion of knowledge from one lineage to another.
C lan
In the course of time, as generation succeeds gen­
eration and new members are born into the lin­
eage, its membership may become unmanageably
large or too much for the lineage’s resources to
support. When this happens, as we have seen with
the Chinese tsu, fission occurs; that is, the lineage
splits into new, smaller lineages. When fission oc­
curs, usually the members of the new lineages con­
tinue to recognize their ultimate relationship to
one another. The result of this process is the ap­
pearance of a second kind of descent group, the
clan. The term clan and its close relative, the term
sib, have been used differently by various anthro­
pologists, and a certain amount of confusion ex­
ists about their meaning. The clan (or sib) will be
defined here as a noncorporate descent group
whose members assume descent from a common
ancestor (who may be real or fictive) but are un­
able to trace the actual genealogical links back to
that ancestor. This stems from the great genealog­
ical depth of the clan, whose founding ancestor
lived so far in the past that the links must be as­
sumed rather than known in detail. A clan differs
from a lineage in another respect: It lacks the res­
idential unity generally— though not invariably—
characteristic of a lineage’s core members. As with
the lineage, descent may be patrilineal, matrilin-
eal, or ambilineal.
Because clan membership is dispersed rather
than localized, it usually does not hold tangible
property corporately. Instead, it tends to be more
a unit for ceremonial matters. Only on special oc­
casions will the membership gather for specific
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 301

c^ y ^ y y Federal Recognition for

Native Americans

soteric though research on kinship organization ment with the US government and the State o f Maine,
E may sometimes seem, it is important for the kind
o f applied anthropology described here by anthropol­
winning federal recognition and money to buy back
about 300,000 acres o f land. Mi'kmaqs had been left
ogist Harald Prins.* out because no one had done the research needed to
In autumn 1981, Dutch anthropologist Harald Prins ensure their inclusion. Worse, Mi'kmaqs had lost the
drove through Maine’s vast woodlands to the small right to put together their own claim because the set­
town o f Houlton near the Canadian border He'd come tlement extinguished all aboriginal titles held by any In­
to check out a job at the Association o f Aroostook In­ dian tribe to all lands in Maine.
dians (AAI), which needed a research and development Since Maliseets had already gained federal status
director Founded by a group o f Indian activists in 1970 as a ''tribe,” Prins helped Mi'kmaqs reorganize based
to deal with a host o f serious problems, AAI served on their ethnic identity. Newly incorporated as the
1,200 off-reservation Mi'kmaqs and Maliseets in Aroos­ Aroostook Band o f Micmacs (ABM), they abandoned
took County. Crushed by chronic poverty and suffer­ the AAI (which then dissolved) and set up new head­
ing from poor health, most resided in shacks or run­ quarters in Presque Isle. As staff anthropologist, Prins
down apartments. Few had more than an eighth-grade sought funding for ABM, worked closely with Mi'kmaq
education, many were alcoholics and almost all felt vic­ leaders to define political strategies and helped gener­
timized by racial discrimination. The AAI tried to ease ate broad popular support for the effort. Considering
their burdens by providing social services. Moreover it
tackled political problems, including reclamation o f tra­
ditional rights to freely hunt, trap, and fish.
Fresh from fieldwork in the Argentine pampas and
frustrated by an anthropology that had little practical
use for the people being studied, Prins welcomed the
opportunity to be an activist n Maine's backlands. The
elders on AAl's Board hired him, saying his main task
was to help Aroostook Mi’kmaqs gain federal recogni­
tion as a tribal community.That would make them eli­
gible for federal assistance (health, housing, education
and child welfare) and loan guarantees for economic
development.
Prins quickly realized the difficulty o f the task. A
year earlier Maine's other three Indian groups (includ­
ing the Maliseet) had negotiated a land claims settle­

The Sanipass-Lafford family cluster in Chapman,

5 By Harald Prins, now a professor of anthropology at
Kansas Stare University who also serves on the land claims
team of Newfoundland’s Miawpukek Band of Mi’kmaqs.
For further information, see his case study (1996), The
Mi'kmaq: Resistance, accom m odation, and cultural survival.
Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.
Maine, represents a traditional M i’kmaq residential
kin-group. Such extended families typically include
grandchildren and bilaterally related family members
such as in-laws, uncles and aunts. Taken from the Sa-
nipass family album, this picture shows a handful of
members in the mid-1980s: Marline Sanipass Morey
with two of her nephews and uncles.
302 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
the importance o f informing the public and politicians
as well as government agencies about their cultural
identity and their struggle for native rights, he copro­
duced a documentary film, Our Lives in Our Hands
(D.E.R. 1986), which aired on television and had dozens
o f public screenings. Most important, he gathered de­
tailed ethnographic and historical documentation to ad­
dress government requirements for federal recognition.
Groups seeking this special status must present an elab­
orate document that includes: (I) Historical and ge­
nealogical records of its existence as a distinct commu­
nity from ancient times to the present, (2) Evidence
that the group has maintained political influence over
its members on a continual basis, (3) Proof that its
members are descendants o f a tribe historically inhab­
iting the area.
Aroostook Mi'kmaqs faced many obstacles in
meeting these requirements: ( I) Band members lived
widely dispersed in small family groups throughout the
huge county, so they didn’t fill the conventional defini­
tion o f community, (2) They didn’t have a clearly de­
fined membership and lacked formally appointed polit­
ical leaders, (3) Scholars had described them as
"Canadian Indians" w ithout historic ties to Maine.They
did this on the basis o f a widely accepted "riverine
model" o f tribal territoriality which tied each tribe to a
particular river This given, Mi'kmaqs dwelling in the St.
John River drainage area in northern Maine were con­
sidered recent interlopers on traditional Maliseet lands.
purposes. Clans, however, may handle important
integrative functions. Like lineages, they may reg­
ulate marriage through exogamy. Because of their
dispersed membership, they give individuals entry
rights into local groups other than their own.
Members usually are expected to give protection
and hospitality to others in the clan. Hence, these
can be expected in any local group that includes
people who belong to a single clan.
Clans, lacking the residential unity of lineages,
frequently depend on symbols— of animals,
plants, natural forces, and objects— to provide
members with solidarity and a ready means of
identification. These symbols, called totem s, are
often associated with the clan’s mythical origin
Totemism. The belief that people are related to particular animals, plants, o r natural objects by virtue of descent from
common ancestral spirits.
Several years o f research yielded the data needed
to counter these problems. Prins (with the help o f oth­
ers) unearthed genealogical documentation showing
that most Mi'kmaq adults were at least “ half-blood”
(having tw o o f their grandparents officially recorded as
Mi’kmaq Indians). He discovered that the loosely-struc­
tured ABM, with its informal system o f political leader­
ship, actually matched that o f traditional Mi'kmaq hunt­
ing bands. And, finding historical evidence that Mi'kmaqs
were no strangers to northern Maine, he showed that
the region fell within the aboriginal range o f their an­
cestors who were historically allied with Maine's other
three tribes in the Wabanaki Confederacy. Based on this
evidence, Mi'kmaqs argued that they would have been
able to claim aboriginal title to jointly used lands in the
region and should not have been left out o f the ear­
lier settlement. Supported by Maine's recognized tribes,
ABM convinced the state's Congressional delegation in
Washington, D.C. to introduce a special bill to ac­
knowledge their tribal status and settle their land claims.
W hen formal hearings were held, Prins testified as ex­
pert witness for the Mi'kmaqs. In 1991 President
George Bush signed the Aroostook Band o f Micmacs
Settlement Act into federal law. Since then, the band
has received assistance available to all federally recog­
nized tribes, plus funding to buy a 5,000-acre tribal land
base. Although their cultural survival is not guaranteed,
Aroostook's Mi'kmaqs have witnessed vital improve­
ments in their community.
and reinforce for clan members an awareness of
their common descent with what the totems rep­
resent. The word totem comes from the Ojibwa
American Indian word ototem an , meaning “he is
a relative of mine.” Totemism was defined by
British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown as a
set of “customs and beliefs by which there is set
up a special system of relations between the soci­
ety and the plants, animals, and other natural ob­
jects that are important in the social life.”8 Hopi
Indian matriclans, for example, bear such totemic
8Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1931). Social organization of Aus­
tralian tribes. O ceania M onographs, 1, 29. Melbourne:
Macmillan.

names as Bear, Bluebird, Butterfly, Lizard, Spider,
and Snake.
Totemism is a changing concept that varies
from clan to clan. A kind of watered-down
totemism may be found even in modern North
American society, where baseball and football
teams are given the names of such powerful wild
animals as bears, tigers, and wildcats. This extends
to the Democratic Party’s donkey and the Repub­
lican Party’s elephant, the Elks, the Lions, and
other fraternal and social organizations. These an­
imal emblems, however, do not involve the same
notions of descent and strong sense of kinship that
clans have toward what the totems represent nor
are they linked with the various ritual observances
associated with clan totems.
Phratries and Moieties
Other kinds of descent group are phratries and
moieties (Figure 10.3). A phratry, such as those of
the Hopi we already have discussed, is a unilineal
descent group composed of at least two clans that
supposedly share a common ancestry, whether or
not they really do. Like clan individuals, phratry
members cannot trace accurately their descent
links to a common ancestor, though they firmly
believe such an ancestor existed.
F icwre 1 0 .1
This diagram shows how lineages, clans, phratries,
and moieties form an organizational hierarchy. Each
moiety is subdivided into phratries, each phratry is
subdivided into clans, and each clan is subdivided
into lineages.
Phratry. A unilineal descent group composed of two o r more clans that claim to be of common ancestry. If only two
such groups exist, each is a moiety. >Moiety. Each group that results from a division of a society into two halves on
the basis of descent.
K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 303
If the entire society is divided into only two
major descent groups, whether they are equivalent
to clans or phratries or involve an even more all-
inclusive level, each group is called a moiety (af­
ter the French word for “half”). Moiety members
also believe they share a common ancestor but
cannot prove it through definite genealogical links.
As a rule, the feelings of kinship among members
of lineages and clans are stronger than those of
members of phratries and moieties. This may be
due to the larger size and more diffuse nature of
the latter groups.
Like clans and lineages, phratries and moieties
are often exogamous and thus are bound together
by marriages between their members. And like
clans, they provide members rights of access to
other communities, as among the Hopi. In a com­
munity that does not include one’s clan members,
one’s phratry members will still be there to turn
to for hospitality. Finally, moieties may perform
reciprocal services for one another, as among the
Mohawks and other Iroquoian nations of what is
now New York State. Among them, individuals
turned to members of the opposite moiety for the
necessary rituals when a member of their own moi­
ety died. Such interdependence between moieties,
again, served to maintain the integrity of the en­
tire society.
Bilateral Descent and the
Kindred
Important though descent groups are in many so­
cieties, they are not found in all societies nor are
they the only kinds of nonfamilial kinship groups
found. B ilateral descent, a characteristic of West­
ern society as well as a number of food-foraging
societies, affiliates a person with close relatives
through both sexes; in other words, the individual
traces descent through both parents, all four
grandparents, and so forth, recognizing multiple
ancestors. Theoretically, a person is associated
equally with all consanguineal relatives on both
the mother’s and father’s sides of the family. Thus,
this principle relates an individual lineally to all
304 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation

F igure I 0.4
The kinship pattern of the kindred. These people are related not to a common ancestor but, rather, to a living
relative, here the sister and brother shown at the center of the bottom row.

eight great-grandparents and laterally to all third
and fourth cousins. Since such a huge group is too
big to be socially practical, it is usually reduced to
a small circle of paternal and maternal relatives,
called the kindred. The kindred may be defined as
a group of people closely related to one living in­
dividual through both parents. Since the kindred
is laterally rather than lineally organized— that is,
ego, or the focal person the degree of each rela­
tionship is reckoned from, is the center of the
group (Figure 10.4)— it really is not a descent
group, even though it occurs in societies with bi­
lateral descent.
North Americans are all familiar with the kin­
dred; those who belong are simply called relatives.
It includes the relatives on both sides of the fam­
ily who are seen on important occasions, such as
family reunions and funerals. M ost people in the
United States can identify the members of their
kindred up to grandparents and first, if not always
second, cousins. The limits of the kindred, how­
ever, are variable and indefinite; no one ever can
be absolutely certain which relatives to invite to
every important function and which to exclude.
Inevitably, situations arise that require some de­
bate about whether to invite particular, usually
distant, relatives. Kindreds are thus not clearly
bounded and lack the discreteness of unilineal or
ambilineal descent groups. (They also are tempo­
rary, lasting only as long as the functions they are
assembled for.)
Because of its bilateral structure, a kindred is
never the same for any two persons except siblings
(brothers and sisters). Thus, no two people (ex­
cept siblings) belong to the same kindred. The kin­
dred of ego’s first cousin on the father’s side, for
example, includes not only the father’s sister (or
brother), as does ego’s, but the father’s sister’s (or
brother’s) spouse, as well as consanguineal rela­
tives of the latter. As for the kindreds of ego’s par­
ents, these range from grandparents lineally to
cousins too distant laterally for ego to know, and
the same is true of ego’s aunts and uncles. Thus,
the kindred is not composed of people with an an­
cestor in common but with a living relative in com­
mon— ego. Furthermore, as ego goes through life,
the kindreds he or she is affiliated with will change.
When young, individuals belong to the kindreds

Kindred. A group of consanguineal kin linked by their relationship to one living individual; includes both maternal and
paternal kin.

of their parents; ultimately, they belong to the kin­
dreds of their sons and daughters as well as their
nieces and nephews.
Thus, because of its vagueness, temporary na­
ture, and changing affiliation, the kindred cannot
function as a group except in relation to ego. Un­
like descent groups, it is not self-perpetuating— it
ceases with ego’s death. It has no constant leader,
nor can it easily hold, administer, or pass on prop­
erty. In most cases, it cannot organize work, nor
can it easily administer justice or assign status. It
can, however, be turned to for aid. In non-West-
ern societies, for example, raiding or trading par­
ties may be composed of kindred groups. The
group is assembled, does what it was gathered to
do, shares the results, and then disbands. It also
can act as a ceremonial group for rites of passage:
initiation ceremonies and the like. Thus, as noted,
kindreds assemble only for specific purposes. Fi­
nally, they too can regulate marriage through ex­
ogamy.
Kindreds are frequently found in industrial so­
cieties such as that of the United States, where mo­
bility weakens contact with relatives. Individual­
ity is emphasized in such societies, and strong
kinship organization is usually not as important
as it is among non-Western peoples. In contrast,
bilateral kindred groups also may be found in so­
K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 305
cieties where kinship ties are important, and in
some instances they even occur alongside descent
groups.
Evolution of the Descent Group
Just as various types of families occur in different
societies, so do various kinds of nonfamilial kin
groups. Descent groups, for example, are n ot a
common feature of food-foraging societies, where
marriage acts as the social mechanism for inte­
grating individuals within communities. In horti­
cultural, pastoral, or many intensive agricultural
societies, however, the descent group usually pro­
vides the structural framework upon which the
fabric of the society rests.
It is generally agreed that lineages arise from
extended-family organization, as long as organi­
zational problems exist that such groups help
solve. All that is required, really, is that as mem­
bers of existing extended families find it necessary
to split off and establish new households else­
where, they not move too far away; that the core
members of such related families (men in patrilo­
cal, women in matrilocal, and members of both
sexes in ambilocal extended families) explicitly ac­
knowledge their descent from a common ancestor;
and that they continue to participate in common
306 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
activities in an organized way. As these divisions
proceed, lineages will develop, and these may with
time give rise to clans and ultimately phratties.
Another way clans may arise is as legal fic­
tions to integrate otherwise autonomous units.
The five Iroquoian Indian nations of what now is
New York State, for example, developed clans by
simply behaving as if lineages of the same name
in different villages were related. Thus, their mem­
bers became fictitious brothers and sisters. By this
device, members of, say, a “Turtle” lineage in one
village could travel to another and be welcomed
in and hosted by members of another “Turtle” lin­
eage. In this way, the “Five Nations” achieved a
wider unity than had previously existed.
j
i; iJ
Iroquoian clans were a legal fiction that allowed peo­
ple to travel back and forth between villages of the
“Five Nations” in what is now New York State. This
portrait, done in 1710, shows a member of the M o­
hawk Nation. Behind him stands a bear, which repre­
sents his clan.
As larger, dispersed descent groups develop,
the conditions that gave rise to extended families
and lineages may change. For example, economic
diversity and the availability of alternative occu­
pations for individuals may conflict with the res­
idential unity of extended families and (usually)
lineages. Or, lineages may lose their economic
bases if developing political institutions take con­
trol of resources. In such circumstances, lineages
would be expected to disappear as important or­
ganizational units. Clans, however, might survive,
if they continue to provide an important integra­
tive function. In this sense, the Jewish family cir­
cles and cousins clubs discussed earlier have be­
come essentially clanlike in their function. This
helps explain their continued strength and vitality
in the United States today: They perform an inte­
grative function among kin who are geographi­
cally dispersed as well as socially diverse but in a
way that does not conflict with the mobility char­
acteristic of North American society.
In societies where the small domestic units—
nuclear families or single-parent households— are
of primary importance, bilateral descent and kin­
dred organization are apt to result. This can be
seen in modern industrial societies, in newly
emerging societies in the underdeveloped world,
and in many food-foraging societies throughout
the world.
* * k * s k 4* K 4 4 4
KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY
AND KINSHIP GROUPS
Any system of organizing people who are relatives
into different kinds of groups, whether descent
based or ego oriented, is bound to have an im­
portant effect upon the ways relatives are labeled
in any given society. The fact is, the kinship ter­
minologies of other peoples are far from what
Western people all too often interpret as arbitrary
and even capricious ways of labeling relatives.
Rather, they reflect the positions individuals oc­
cupy within their society. In particular, kinship ter­
minology is affected by, and adjusts to, the kinds
of kinship groups that exist in a society. However,
other factors also are at work in each system of
kinship terminology that help differentiate one kin
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 307

from another. These factors may be sex, genera­
tional differences, or genealogical differences. In
the various systems of kinship terminology, any
one of these factors may be emphasized at the ex­
pense of others, and sometimes they are qualified
by distinguishing younger from older individuals
in a particular category or by emphasizing the sex
of the person who is referring to a particular rel­
ative. But regardless of the factors emphasized, all
kinship terminologies accomplish two important
tasks. First, they classify similar kinds of persons
into specific categories; second, they separate dif­
ferent kinds of persons into distinct categories.
Generally, two or more kin are merged under the
same term when the individuals share similar sta­
tus, which then emphasizes these similarities.
Six different systems of kinship terminology
result from the application of the principles men­
tioned: the Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Crow,
Omaha, and Sudanese or descriptive systems, each
identified according to the way cousins are classi­
fied.
E s k i mo S ystem
The Eskimo system of kinship terminology, com­
paratively rare among all the world’s systems, is
the one used by Anglo Americans, as well as by a
number of food-foraging peoples (including the
Inuit, once called Eskimos— hence the name). The
Eskimo or lineal system emphasizes the nuclear
family by specifically identifying the mother, fa­
ther, brother, and sister while lumping together all
other relatives into a few gross categories (Figure
10.5). For example, the father is distinguished
from the father’s brother (uncle), but the father’s
brother is not distinguished from the mother’s
brother (both are called uncle). The mother’s sis­
ter and father’s sister are treated similarly, both
called aunt. In addition, all the sons and daugh­
ters of aunts and uncles are called cousin, thereby
making a generational distinction but without in­
dicating the side of the family they belong to or
even their sex.
Unlike other terminologies, the Eskimo system
provides separate and distinct terms for each nu­
clear family member. This is probably because the
Eskimo system generally is found in societies
where the dominant kin group is the bilateral kin­
dred, in which only immediate family members are
important in day-to-day affairs. This is especially
true of modern North American society, where the
family is independent, living apart from, and not
directly involved with, other kin except on cere­
monial occasions. Thus, people in the United
States distinguish between their closest kin

F igure 10.5
The Eskimo system of kinship terminology emphasizes the nuclear family (surrounded by the red line). Ego’s
father and mother are distinguished from ego’s aunts and uncles, and siblings from cousins.

Eskimo system. System of kinship terminology, also called lineal system , that emphasizes the nuclear family by specifi­
cally identifying the mother, father, brother, and sister while lumping together all other relatives into broad categories such
as uncle, aunt, and cousin.
308 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

(parents and siblings) but lump together (as aunts,
uncles, cousins) other kin on both sides of the
family.
H a wa i i an S ystem
The Hawaiian system of kinship terminology,
common (as its name implies) in Hawaii and other
Malayo-Polynesian-speaking areas but found
elsewhere as well, is the least complex system, in
that it uses the fewest terms. The Hawaiian sys­
tem is also called the generational system, since all
relatives of the same generation and sex are re­
ferred to by the same term (Figure 10.6). For
example, in one’s parents’ generation, the term
used to refer to one’s father is used as well for
the father’s brother and mother’s brother. Simi­
larly, one’s mother, her sister, and one’s father’s sis­
ter are all lumped under a single term. In ego’s
generation, male and female cousins are distin­
guished by sex and are equated with brothers and
sisters.
The Hawaiian system reflects the absence of
strong unilineal descent and is usually associated
with ambilineal descent. Because ambilineal rules
allow individuals the option of tracing their an­
cestry back through either side of the family and
members on both the father’s and the mother’s
side are viewed as more-or-less equal, a certain
degree of similarity is created among the father’s
and the mother’s siblings. Thus, they are all
simultaneously recognized as being similar rela­
tions and are merged under a single term appro­
priate for their sex. In like manner, the children
of the mother’s and father’s siblings are related
to ego in the same way brothers and sisters are.
Thus, they are ruled out as potential marriage
partners.
I roquoi s S ystem
In the Iroquois system of kinship terminology, the
father and father’s brother are referred to by a sin­
gle term, as are the mother and mother’s sister;
however, the father’s sister and mother’s brother
are given separate terms (Figure 10.7). In one’s
own generation, brothers, sisters, and parallel
cousins (offspring of parental siblings of the same
sex, that is, the children of the mother’s sister or
father’s brother) of the same sex are referred to by
the same terms, which is logical enough consider­
ing they are the offspring of people who are clas-

F icure I 0.0
The Hawaiian kinship system. The men numbered 2 and 6 are called by the same term as father (3) by ego;
the women numbered 1 and 5 are called by the same term as mother (4). All cousins of ego’s own generation
(7 -1 6 ) are considered brothers and sisters.

Hawaiian system. Kinship reckoning in which all relatives of the same sex and generation are referred to by the same
Iroquois system. Kinship terminology wherein a father and father’s brother are given a single term, as are a
term . >
m other and m other’s sister, but a father's sister and m other’s brother are given separate terms. Parallel cousins are classi­
fied with brothers and sisters, while cross cousins are classified separately but (unlike Crow and Omaha kinship) not equated
with relatives of som e other generation.
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 309

Fi SOHt I S . i?
According to the Iroquois system of kinship terminology, the father’s brother (2) is called by the same term as
the father (3); the mother’s sister (5) is called by the same term as the mother (4); but the people numbered 1
and 6 have separate terms for themselves. Those people numbered 9 - 1 4 are all considered siblings, but 7, 8,
15, and 16 are cousins.

sified in the same category as ego’s actual mother
and father. Cross cousins (offspring of parental
siblings of opposite sex, that is, the children of the
mother’s brother or father’s sister) are distin­
guished by terms that set them apart from all other
kin. In fact, cross cousins are often preferred as
spouses, for marriage to them reaffirms alliances
between related lineages.
Iroquois terminology, named for the Iro-
quoian Indians of northeastern North America
who employ such terminology, is in fact wide­
spread and is usually found with unilineal descent
groups. It was, for example, the terminology in
use until recently in rural Chinese society.
C row S ystem
In the preceding systems of terminology, some rel­
atives were grouped under common terms, while
others of the same generation were separated and

Lewis
Lewis Henry Morgan, a major theo­ Although subsequent research
retician of 19th-century N orth proved Morgan was w rong about
American anthropology, has been re­ this and a number of other ideas, his
garded as the founder of kinship w ork showed the potential value o f
studies. In Sy ste m s o f C o nsan guin ity studying the distribution of different
and Affinity of the Hum an Family kinship systems for framing hy­
(1871), he classified and compared potheses of a developmental o r his­
the kinship systems of peoples torical nature and,by noting the con­
around the world in an attempt to nection between terminology and
prove the Asiatic origin of American behavior; showed the value of kin­
Indians. In doing so, he developed the ship for sociological study. Besides
idea that the human family had his contributions to kinship and evo­
evolved through a series of evolutionary stages, lutionary studies, he produced an ethnography o f
from primitive promiscuity on the one hand to the the Iroquois, which still stands as a major source
monogamous, patriarchal family on the other. of information.
310 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

In matrilinea! societies with Crow kinship, sisters remain close to one another throughout their lives. Such a peo­
ple are the Hopi, in whose traditional housing sisters lived in adjacent rooms. Under these circumstances, very
little differentiates a mother and her sister or siblings and the children of the mother’s sister. The mother’s
brother and his children, however, live elsewhere.

given different labels or terms. In the Crow sys­ The Crow System (named for the Crow Indi­
tem, another variable enters the picture: The ans of Montana), found in many parts of the world,
system ignores the distinction that occurs between is the one used by the Hopi Indians, who were dis­
generations among certain kin. cussed earlier in this chapter. Associated with strong

F igure I 0 .8
The Crow system is the obverse of the Omaha system, shown in Figure 10.9. Those numbered 4 and 5 are
merged under a single term, as are 2 and 3. Ego’s parallel cousins (9, 10, 13, 14) are considered siblings, while
the mother’s brother’s children are equated with the children of a male ego and his brother.

Crow system. Kinship classification usually associated with matrilineal descent in which a father’s sister and father’s sis­
te r’s daughter are called by the same term, a mother and mother's sister are merged under another, and a father and fa­
ther’s brother are given a third. Parallel cousins are equated with brothers and sisters.
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 311

F igure 10.9
In the Omaha system, 2 is called by the same term as father (3); 5 is called by the same term as mother (4); but
1 and 6 have separate terms. In ego’s generation 9 - 1 4 are all considered siblings, but 7 and 8 are equated with
the generation of ego’s children, while 15 and 16 are equated with the generation of ego’s parents.

matrilineal descent organization, it groups differ­
ently the relations on the father’s side and mother’s
side (Figure 10.8). Cross cousins on the father’s side
are equated with relatives of the parental genera­
tion, while those on the mother’s side are equated
with ego’s children’s generation. Otherwise, the sys­
tem is much like Iroquois terminology.
To those unfamiliar with it, the Crow system
seems terribly complex and illogical. Why does it
exist? In societies such as that of the Hopi, where
individual identity is dependent on descent group
affiliation and descent is matrilineal, it makes
sense to merge the father’s sister, her daughter, and
even her mother together under a single term, re­
gardless of generation. These are women descent
is traced through in the lineage that sired ego, just
as a male ego’s children, along with those of his
mother’s brother, were sired by men of ego’s lin­
eage. Thus, it is perfectly logical for ego to equate
his maternal cross cousins with his children’s gen­
eration.
O maha S ystem
The Omaha System (named for the Omaha Indi­
ans of Nebraska) is the patrilineal equivalent of
the matrilineal Crow system. Thus, a mother and
her sister are designated by a single term, the fa­
ther and his brother are merged under another,
and parallel cousins are merged with brothers and
sisters (Figure 10.9). Cross cousins on the mater­
nal side are raised a generation, while those on the
paternal side are equated with ego’s children’s gen­
eration. Thus, children born of women from one
patrilineage for the men of another patrilineage
are lowered by one generation.
S udanes e or D e s c r i p t i v e S ystem
The Sudanese or descriptive system is found among
the peoples of southern Sudan in Africa— hence the
name Sudanese. Otherwise, it is found among few
of the world’s societies, although it has come to re­
place Iroquois terminology among rural Chinese.
In this system, the mother’s brother is distinguished
from the father’s brother, who is distinguished from
the father; the mother’s sister is distinguished from
the mother, as well as from the father’s sister. Each
cousin is distinguished from all others, as well as
from siblings. It is therefore more precise than any
of the other systems (including that used by Anglo
Americans), which may be one reason it is so rare.
In few societies are all aunts, uncles, cousins, and
siblings treated differently from one another.

Omaha system. The patrilineal equivalent of the Crow system; the line of a m other’s patrilineal kin are equated across
Sudanese or descriptive system.
generations. > System of kinship terminology whereby a father, father’s brother,
and mother’s brother are distinguished from one another as are a mother, m other’s sister, and father’s sister; cross and
parallel cousins are distinguished from each other as well as from siblings.
312 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation
C H A P T E R
In nonindustrial societies, kinship groups com­
monly deal with problems families and households
alone cannot handle: problems such as those in­
volving defense, the allocation of property, and the
pooling of other resources. As societies become
larger and more complex, formal political systems
take over many of these matters.
A common form of kinship group is the de­
scent group, which has as its criterion of mem­
bership descent from a common ancestor through
a series of parent-child links. Unilineal descent
establishes kin group membership exclusively
through the male or female line. Matrilineal de­
scent is traced through the female line; patrilineal,
through the male.
The descent system is closely tied to a soci­
ety’s economic base. Generally, patrilineal descent
predominates where the male is the breadwinner
and matrilineal where the female is the bread­
winner. Anthropologists now recognize that in
all societies the kin of both mother and father
are important elements in the social structure,
regardless of how descent group membership is
defined.
The male members of a patrilineage trace their
descent from a common male ancestor. A female
belongs to the same descent group as her father
and his brother, but her children cannot trace their
descent through him. Typically, authority over the
children lies with the father or his elder brother.
The requirement for younger men to defer to older
men and for women to defer to men, as well as
to the women of a household they marry into,
are common sources of tension in a patrilineal
society.
In one respect, matrilineal is the opposite of
patrilineal descent, with descent traced through
the female line. Unlike the patrilineal pattern,
which confers authority on men, matrilineal de­
scent does not necessarily confer authority on
women, although women usually have more of a
say in decision making than they do in patrilineal
societies. The matrilineal system is common in so­
cieties where women perform much of the pro­
ductive work. This system may be a source of fam­
ily tension, since the husband’s authority is not in
his own household but in that of his sister. This
S U M M A R Y
and how easily unsatisfactory marriages may be
ended often result in higher divorce rates in ma­
trilineal than in patrilineal societies.
Double descent is matrilineal for some pur­
poses and patrilineal for others. Ambilineal de­
scent provides a measure of flexibility in that an
individual has the option of affiliating with either
the mother’s or father’s descent group.
Descent groups are often highly structured
economic units that provide aid and security to
their members. They also may be repositories of
religious tradition, with group solidarity enhanced
by worship of a common ancestor. A lineage is a
corporate descent group made up of consanguineal
kin who can trace their genealogical links to a
common ancestor. Since lineages are commonly
exogamous, sexual competition within the group
is largely avoided. In addition, marriage of a group
member represents an alliance of two lineages.
Lineage exogamy also serves to maintain open
communication within a society and fosters the ex­
change of information among lineages.
Fission is the splitting up of a large lineage group
into new, smaller ones, with the original lineage be­
coming a clan. Clan members claim descent from a
common ancestor but without actually knowing the
genealogical links to that ancestor. Unlike lineages,
clan residence is usually dispersed rather than lo­
calized. In the absence of residential unity, clan iden­
tification is often reinforced by totems, usually sym­
bols from nature that remind members of their
common ancestry. A phratry is a unilineal descent
group of two or more clans that supposedly share
a common ancestry. If there are but two such
groups, they are called moieties.
Bilateral descent, characteristic of Western,
modernizing, and many food-foraging societies, is
traced through both parents simultaneously and
recognizes several ancestors. An individual is af­
filiated equally with all relatives on both the
mother’s and father’s sides. Such a large group is
socially impractical and is usually reduced to a
small circle of paternal and maternal relatives
called the kindred. A kindred is never the same for
any two persons except siblings.
Different types of descent systems appear in
different societies. In societies where the nuclear
 K inship and D escent CHAPTER 10 313

family is paramount, bilateral kinship and kindred
organization are likely to prevail.
In any society cultural rules dictate the way
kinship relationships are defined. Factors such as
sex and generational or genealogical differences
help distinguish one kin from another. The Hawai­
ian system is the simplest system of kinship ter­
minology. All relatives of the same generation and
sex are referred to by the same term. The Eskimo
system, used by Anglo Americans, emphasizes the
nuclear family and merges all other relatives in a
given generation into a few large, generally undif­
ferentiated categories. In the Iroquois system, a
single term is used for a father and his brother and
another term for a mother and her sister. Parallel
cousins are equated with brothers and sisters but
distinguished from cross cousins. The same is true
in the Omaha and Crow systems, except they
equate cross cousins with relatives of other gener­
ations. The relatively rare Sudanese or descriptive
system treats all aunts, uncles, cousins, and sib­
lings as different from one another.

Points for C onsideration

1. How do you define your family? Through direct descent? Through “adopted” or fictive descent?
Through some combination?
2. When in your life has the ability to trace your descent been the most important or obvious?
When are you made aware of your kin group? Do you find your kindred or a descent group
more relevant to your daily life? Why?
3. How are changes in North American families altering how North Americans view descent? How
do these changes contrast with those occurring in other cultures?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Fox, R. (1967). Kinship an d m arriage in an a n ­ This is a high-level introduction to kinship the­

th rop olog ical perspective. Baltimore: Penguin.
An excellent introduction to the concepts of
kinship and marriage, this book outlines some
of the methods of analysis used in the an­
thropological treatment of kinship and mar­
riage. It updates Radcliffe-Brown’s A frican
Schusky, E. L. (1975). Variation in kinship. New
Systems o f Kinship an d M arriage and features
a perspective focused on kinship groups and
social organization.
Goodenough, W. H. (1970). D escription an d co m ­
parison in cultural anthropology. Chicago:
Aldine.
This is an important contribution to the study
of social organization that confronts the prob­
lem of describing kinship organization— kin­
dred and clan, sibling and cousin— in such a
Schusky, E. L. (1983). M anual fo r kinship analy­
way that meaningful cross-cultural compar­
isons can be made.
Keesing, R. M. (1975). Kin groups an d social
structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and W in­
ston.
ory suitable for advanced undergraduate stu­
dents. A strong point of the work is the at­
tention given to nonunilineal, as well as
unilineal, systems.
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
This book is an introduction to kinship, de­
scent, and residence for the beginner. A re­
liance on a case-study approach leads the
reader from basic data to generalizations, a
strategy that helps remove some of the ab­
straction students of kinship organization
sometimes find confusing.
sis (2nd ed.). Lanham, M D: University Press
of America.
This useful book discusses the elements of kin­
ship, diagramming, systems classification, and
descent with specific examples.
 CltApfcK ?H V \tW

1. What Principles* Besides Kinship and Marriage* Do People

Use to Organize Societies?
People group themselves by sex, age, common interest, and position within a ranked hierarchy
(class stratification) to deal with problems not conveniently handled by marriage, the family
and/or household, descent groups, o r kindred. In addition, certain groups within society use strat­
ification to enjoy preferential treatment fo r themselves at the expense o f other groups.

2. What Is Age Grading?

Age grading— the formation o f groups on an age basis— is a widely used means o f organizing
people in human societies, including those o f Europe and N o rth America. In industrial societies,
o r nonindustrial societies with relatively large populations, age grades may be broken down into
age sets— people o f approximately the same age who move as groups through the series o f age
grades.

3. What Are Common-Interest Associations?

Common-interest associations are formed to deal with specific problems. They acquire their
members as individuals act to join them. Such actions may range all the way from fully volun­
tary to compulsory. Common-interest associations have been a feature o f human societies since
the advent o f the first farming villages several thousand years ago, but they have become espe­
cially prominent in modern industrial o r industrializing societies.

4. What Is Social Stratification?

Stratification is the division o f society into tw o o r more classes o f people that do not share
equally in basic resources, influence, o r prestige. Such class structure is characteristic of all of
the world’s societies having large and heterogeneous populations with centralized political con­
trol. Among others, these include the ancient civilizations o f the Middle East, Asia, Mexico, and
Peru, as well as modern industrial societies, including the United States.

315
316 part m T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

ocial organization based on kinship and mar­ perform work normally assigned to the opposite

S riage has received an extraordinary amount

of attention from anthropologists, and the
subject usually is quite prominent in anthropo­
logical writing. There are several reasons for this:
In one way or another, kinship and marriage op­
erate as organizing principles in all societies, and
in the small stateless societies anthropologists so
often study, they are usually the most important
organizational principles. There is, too, a certain
fascination in the almost mathematical way kin­
ship systems at least appear to work. To the un­
wary, all this attention to kinship and marriage
may convey the impression that these are the only
principles of social organization that really count.
Yet it is obvious from viewing modern industrial
societies that other principles of social organiza­
tion not only exist but also may be quite impor­
tant. Principles we will examine in this chapter are
the grouping by gender, age, common interest, and
class (stratification).
GROUPING BY GENDER
As shown in preceding chapters, some division of
labor along gender lines is characteristic of all hu­
man societies. Although in some— the Ju/’hoansi,
for example (Chapter 6)— many tasks men and
women undertake may be shared, and people may
sex without loss of face, in some other societies,
men and women are rigidly segregated in what
they do. For instance, among the Mohawk,
Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca Indians
of New York— the famous Five Nations Iroquois
— society was divided into two parts consisting of
sedentary women on the one hand and nomadic
men on the other. Living in villages were the
women, who were “ blood” relatives of one an­
other and whose job was to grow the corn, beans,
and squash the Iroquois relied on for subsistence.
Although houses and the palisades that protected
villages were built by men, who also helped
women clear their fields, the most important of
men’s work was pursued at some distance from
their villages. This consisted of hunting, fishing,
trading, warring, and diplomacy. As a conse­
quence, men were transients in the villages, being
present for only brief periods.
Although masculine activities were considered
more prestigious than those of women, the latter
were explicitly acknowledged by all as the sus­
tained of life. Moreover, women headed the long-
houses (dwellings matrilocal extended families oc­
cupied), descent and inheritance passed through
women, and ceremonial life centered on women’s
activities. Although men held all leadership posi­
tions outside households, on the councils of the
villages, tribes, and the league of Five Nations, the
women of their lineages nominated them for these

Among the Iroquoians of New York, society was divided into sedentary women, whose work was carried out in
or near the village, and nomadic men, whose work was carried out away from the village. This pattern still
holds today, as men leave their villages for extended periods to do much of the high steel work in the cities of
North America.
 G rouping by Sex , A ge , C ommon I nterest, and C lass CHAPTER 11 317

positions and held veto power over them. Thus, Although important differences exist, there
male leadership was balanced by female author­ are nonetheless interesting similarities between
ity. Overall, the phrase “separate but equal” ac­ Mundurucu beliefs and those of traditional Euro­
curately describes relations between the sexes in pean (including European-American) culture. The
Five Nations Iroquoian society, with members of idea of rule by men replacing an earlier state of
neither sex dominant or submissive to the other. matriarchy (rule by women), for example, was
Related to this seems to have been a low incidence held by many 19th-century intellectuals. M ore­
of rape, at least among the Five Nations. Outside over, the idea that men may use force in order to
observers in the 19th century widely commented control women is deeply embedded in both Judaic
upon an apparent absence of rape within Iro­ and Christian traditions (and even today, in spite
quoian communities. Even in warfare, sexual vio­ of changing attitudes, one out of three women
lation of female captives was virtually unheard of; in the United States is sexually assaulted at some
as General James Clinton observed in 1779: “Bad time in her life). A major difference between
as the savages are, they never violate the chastity Mundurucu and traditional European society is
of any women of their prisoners.” 1 that, in the latter, women have not had control of
Although Iroquoian men often were absent their economic activities. Although this is now
from the village, when present they ate and slept
with women. Among the Mundurucu of the Ama­
zon, discussed briefly in Chapter 9, men not only
work apart from women but eat and sleep sepa­
rately as well. All men from age 13 on live in a
large house of their own, while women with their
13IE ©@®[](3]0®OIoooo
young children occupy two or three houses
grouped around that of the men. For all intents
and purposes, men associate with men, and women
with women. The relation between the sexes is,
rather than harmonious, one of opposition. Ac­
cording to Mundurucu belief, sex roles were once
reversed: Women ruled over men and controlled
the sacred trumpets that are the symbols of power
and represent the generative capacities of women.
But because women could not hunt, they could not
supply the meat demanded by the ancient spirits
contained within the trumpets, enabling the men
to take the trumpets from the women, establishing
their dominance in the process. Ever since, the
trumpets have been kept carefully guarded and STOP SEXUAL HARASSMENT
hidden in the men’s house, and no woman can AND DISCRIMINATION
see them under penalty of gang rape. Thus,
Mundurucu men express fear and envy toward SEXUAL HARASSMENT
women, whom they seek to control by force. For INFLUENCING, OFFERING TO INFLUENCE. OB THREATENING THE
CAREER. PAT. OR JOB OF ANOTHER PERSON •WOMAN OR MAN ■
their part, the women neither like nor accept a sub­ IN EXCHANGE FOR SEXUAL FAVORS. DELIBERATE OR REPEATED
missive status, and even though men occupy all for­ OFFENSIVE COMMENTS GESTURES OR PHTBCAI CONTACT OF A
jgyiflflH H*TllCr IN A vrtMIB OR OUTT-RELAIEO ENVIRONMENT.
mal positions of political and religious leadership,
women are autonomous in the economic realm. In the United States, women were long expected to
submit to male authority, but in recent decades, there
has been a major effort to achieve more egalitarian
^olodday, A. (1993, January 31). Among the Indians: The gender relations. That the change has not been com­
uses of captivity. N ew York Times Review o f B ooks, 28. pleted is illustrated by this poster.
318 P A R T IE T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
changing, women in North America and other
Western countries still have a considerable dis­
tance to go before they achieve economic parity
with men.
k r* . ' k '* k T k * k * k * A ' ' k ' r * wL 1l k iri? k '* k T k J k . 'r k
AGE GROUPING
Age grouping is so familiar and so important that
it and sex sometimes have been called the only uni­
versal factors for determining a person’s position
in society. In North America today, one’s first
friends generally are children one’s own age. To­
gether they are sent off to school, where together
they remain until their late teens. At specified ages
they finally are allowed to do things reserved for
adults, such as driving a car, voting, and drinking
alcoholic beverages, and (if they are males) are re­
quired to go off to war if asked to do so. Ulti­
mately, North Americans retire from their jobs at
a specified age and, more than ever, live the final
years of their lives in “retirement communities,”
segregated from the rest of society. As North
Americans age, they are labeled “teen-agers,”
“middle-aged,” and “senior citizens” whether they
like it or not and for no other reason than their
age.
Age grading in modern North American society is ex­
emplified by the educational system, which specifies
that at 6 years of age all children must enter the first
grade.
The pervasiveness of age grouping in North
American society is further illustrated by its effects
on the Jewish descent grdups discussed in Chap­
ter 10. Until well into the l-930s, these always took
on a more-or-less conventional ambilineal struc­
ture, which united relatives of all generations from
the very old to the very young, with no age re­
strictions. By the late 1930s, however, young gen­
erations of Jews of eastern European background
were becoming assimilated into North American
culture to such a degree that some of them began
to form new descent groups that deliberately ex­
cluded any kin of the parental and grandparental
generations. In these new cousins clubs, as they
are called, descendants of the cousins are eligible
for membership, but not until they reach legal ma­
jority or are married, whichever comes first. Here,
again, these new descent groups contrast with the
older family circles, which allowed membership
activation at any age, no matter how young.
Age classification also plays a significant role
in non-Western societies, which at least make a
distinction among the immature, mature, and
older people whose physical powers are waning.
Old age often has profound significance, bringing
with it the period of greatest respect (for women
it may mean the first social equality with men);
rarely are the elderly shunted aside or abandoned.
Even the Inuit, who often are cited as a people
who quite literally abandon their aged relatives,
do so only in truly desperate circumstances, when
the group’s physical survival is at stake. In all non­
literate societies, the elders are the repositories of
accumulated wisdom; they are the “living li­
braries” for their people. In keeping with this, and
given their freedom from many subsistence activ­
ities, they play a major role in passing cultural tra­
ditions to their grandchildren. For a nonliterate
society to cast them aside would be analogous to
closing down all the schools, archives, and li­
braries in a modern industrial state.
In the United States people rely on the writ­
ten word, rather than on their elders, for long­
term memory. Moreover, people have become so
accustomed to rapid change that they tend to as­
sume the experiences of their grandparents and
others of their generation are hardly relevant to
them in “today’s world.” Indeed, retirement from
earning a living implies one has nothing further to
 G rouping by Sex , A ge, C ommon Interest , and C lass
offer society and should stay out of the way of
those who are younger. “The symbolism of the tra­
ditional gold watch is all too plain: you should
have made your money by now, and your time has
run out. The watch will merely tick off the hours
that remain between the end of adulthood and
death.”2 The status of the elderly is even more
problematic because they now constitute so large
(and growing) a part of the overall population.
Thus, the achievement of old age seems less an ac­
complishment than it once did and so commands
less respect. Furthermore, the elderly begin to be
seen as not just unproductive but also as a serious
economic burden. The ultimate irony is that in the
United States all of the ingenuity of modern sci­
ence is used to keep alive the bodies of individu­
als who, in virtually every other way, society has
shunted aside.
In the institutionalization of age, cultural
rather than biological factors are of prime impor­
tance for determining social status. All human so­
cieties recognize a number of life stages; precisely
how they are defined varies from one culture to
another. Out of this recognition they establish pat­
terns of activity, attitudes, prohibitions, and oblig­
ations. In some instances, these are designed to
help the transition from one age to another, to
teach needed skills, or to lend economic assistance.
Often they are taken as the basis for forming or­
ganized groups.
I nsti tuti ons of A ge G r oup i ng
An organized class of people with membership
based on age is known as an age grade. Theoret­
ically speaking, membership in an age grade ought
to be automatic: One reaches the appropriate age
and thus is included, without question, in the par­
ticular age grade. Just such situations exist, for ex­
2Turnbull, C. M. (1983). The human cycle (p. 229). New
York: Simon & Schuster.
A g e grade. An organized category o f people based on age; every individual passes through a series of such categories
during a lifetime. > A g e sets. Groups of persons initiated into age grades simultaneously who move through the series
of categories together.
CHAPTER 11 319
ample, among the East African Tiriki, whose sys­
tem we will examine shortly. Sometimes, though,
individuals have to buy their way into the age
grade they are eligible for. This was the case among
some of the Indians of the North American plains,
who required boys to purchase the appropriate
costumes, dances, and songs for age-grade mem­
bership. In societies where entrance fees are ex­
pensive, not all people eligible for membership in
a particular age grade can actually join.
Entry into and transfer out of age grades may
be accomplished individually, either by a biologi­
cal distinction, such as puberty, or by a socially
recognized status, such as marriage or childbirth.
Whereas age-grade members may have much in
common, may engage in similar activities, may co­
operate with one another, and may share the same
orientation and aspirations, their membership may
not be entirely parallel with physiological age. A
specific time is often ritually established for mov­
ing from a younger to an older grade. Although
members of senior groups commonly expect def­
erence from and acknowledge certain responsibil­
ities to their juniors, this does not necessarily mean
one grade is better or worse or even more impor­
tant than another. Standardized competition (op­
position) between age grades can occur, such as
that traditionally between first-year students and
sophomores on U.S. college campuses. Individuals
can, comparably, accept the realities of being a
teenager without feeling the need to “prove” any­
thing.
In some societies, age grades are subdivided
into age sets. An age set is a group of persons ini­
tiated into an age grade who move through the
system together. For example, among the Tiriki of
East Africa, the age group consisting of those ini­
tiated into an age grade for a 15-year period
amounts to an age set. Age sets, unlike age grades,
do not cease to exist after a specified number of
years; the members of an age set usually remain
closely associated throughout their lives, or at least
through much of their lives.
320 PART ffl T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the P roblem of C ooperation
.» i
JV *
In many societies it is common for children of the same age to play, eat, and learn to­
gether, such as these Masai boys, who are gathering for the first time to receive instruc­
tion for their initiation into an age grade.
A certain amount of controversy has arisen
among anthropologists over the relative strength,
cohesiveness, and stability that subdividing by age
suggests. The age-set notion implies strong feel­
ings of loyalty and mutual support. Because such
groups may possess property, songs, shield de­
signs, and rituals and are internally organized for
collective decision making and leadership, a dis­
tinction is called for between them and simple age
grades. Researchers also may distinguish between
transitory age grades— which initially concern
young men (sometimes women too) but become
less important and disintegrate as the members
grow older— and "the comprehensive age-related
systems that affect people throughout their lives.
A ge G r oup i ng in A fri can
S oc i e t i e s
Although age is a criterion for group membership
in many parts of the world, its most varied and
elaborate use is found in Africa, south of the Sa­
hara. An example may be seen among the Tiriki,
one of several pastoral nomadic groups living in
- r
Kenya.3 In this society, each boy born during a
15-year period becomes a member of a particular
age set then open for membership. Seven of such
named age sets exist, and only one is open for
membership at a time; when membership in one
is closed, the next one is open for a 15-year pe­
riod and so on until the passage of 105 years (7
X 15), when the first set once again takes in new
“recruits.”
Members of Tiriki age sets remain together for
life as they move through four age grades: Ad­
vancement occurs at 15-year intervals at the same
time one age set closes and another opens for
membership. Each age grade has its particular du­
ties and responsibilities. The first, or “Warrior”
age grade, traditionally served as the country’s
guardians, and members gained renown through
fighting. Since colonial times, however, this tradi­
tional function has been lost with cessation of war-
3Sangree, W. H. (1965). The Bantu Tiriki of Western Kenya.
In J. L. Gibbs Jr. (Ed.), Peoples o f Africa (pp. 69-72). New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
 G rouping by Sex , A ge, C ommon Interest , and C lass
fare, and members of this age grade now find ex­
citement and adventure by leaving their commu­
nity for extended employment or study elsewhere.
The next age grade, the “Elder W arriors,” tra­
ditionally had few specialized tasks but learned
skills they would need later on by assuming an in­
creasing share of administrative activities. For ex­
ample, they would chair the postfuneral gather­
ings held to settle property claims after someone’s
death. Elder Warriors also served as envoys be­
tween elders of different communities. Nowadays,
Elder Warriors hold nearly all of the administra­
tive and executive roles opened up by the creation
and growth of a centralized Tiriki administrative
bureaucracy.
“Judicial Elders,” the third age grade, tradi­
tionally handled most tasks connected with the ad­
ministration of and settlement of local disputes.
Today, they still serve as the local judiciary body.
Members of the “Ritual Elders,” the 'senior age
grade, presided over the priestly functions of an­
cestral shrine observances at households, at sub­
clan meetings, at semiannual community appeals,
and at rites of initiation into the various age
grades. They also were credited with access to spe­
cial magical powers. With the decline of ancestor
worship over the past several decades, many of
Com m on-interest associations. Associations not based on age, kinship, marriage, o r territory but that result from
the act of joining.
CHAPTER 11 321
these traditional functions have been lost and no
new ones have arisen to take their places.
Nonetheless, Ritual Elders continue to hold the
most important positions in the initiation cere­
monies, and their power as sorcerers and ex-
pungers of witchcraft are still recognized.
COMMON-INTEREST
ASSOCIATIONS
The proliferation of common-interest associations,
whether out of individual predilection or commu­
nity need, is a theme intimately associated with
world urbanization and its attendant social up­
heavals; the fondness people in modern societies
feel for joining all sorts of organizations is incon­
testably related to these societies’ complexity. This
fondness for joining no doubt reflects the reality
that individuals often are separated by physical
distance from their brothers, sisters, and age
mates. They obviously cannot obtain regular help
from one another in learning to cope with life in
a new and bewildering environment, such as learn­
ing a new language or the mannerisms necessary
for the change from village to city or even from
city to city or from city to different country. But
such needs somehow must be met. Because com­
mon-interest associations are by nature quite flex­
ible, they are increasingly, both in cities and in tra­
ditional villages, filling this gap in the social
structure. Common-interest associations are not,
however, restricted to modernizing societies alone.
They also are found in many traditional societies,
and there is reason to believe they arose with the
emergence of the first horticultural villages. Fur­
thermore, associations in traditional societies may
be just as complex and highly organized as those
of countries such as the United States and Canada.
Common-interest associations often have been
referred to in the anthropological literature as vol­
untary associations, but this term is misleading.
The act of joining may range from a fully volun­
tary act to one required by law. For example, in
322 PART HI T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
The diversity of common-interest association is astounding. Shown here is an environmental activist organization
and an AIDS advocacy group.
the United States, under the draft laws individu­
als often became members of the armed forces
without choosing to join. It is not really compul­
sory to join a labor union, but unless potential em­
ployees do, they cannot work in a union shop. The
term voluntary association really refers to associ­
ations not based on sex, age, kinship, marriage, or
territory that result from the act of joining. There­
fore, the act often may be voluntary, but it does
not have to be.
K i nds of C o m m o n - I nteres t
A s s oc i ati ons
The diversity of common-interest associations is
astonishing. In the United States, they include such
diverse entities as women’s clubs of all sorts, street
gangs, private militias, Kiwanis clubs, Rotary
clubs, Parent Teacher Associations, religious or­
ganizations, political parties, and labor unions—
the list could go on and on. Their goals may in­
clude the pursuit of friendship, recreation, and
promotion of certain values, as well as governing
and the pursuit or defense of economic interests.
Associations also serve to preserve traditional
songs, history, language, and moral beliefs among
various ethnic minorities; the Tribal Unions of
West Africa, for example, continue to serve this
purpose. Similar organizations, often operating
clandestinely, have kept traditions alive among
North American Indians, who are undergoing a
resurgence of ethnic pride despite generations of
schooling designed to stamp out their cultural
identity. Another significant force in the formation
of associations may be a supernatural experience
common to all members; the Crow Indian Tobacco
Society, the secret associations of the Kwakiutl In­
dians of British Columbia with cycles of rituals
known only to initiates, and the Kachina cults of
the Hopi Indians are well-known examples.
Among other traditional forms of association are
military, occupational, political, and entertain­
ment groups that parallel such familiar organiza­
tions as the American Legion, labor unions, block
associations, and college fraternities and sororities,
not to mention co-ops of every kind.
In nonindustrial societies, such organizations
are frequently exclusive, but a prevailing charac­
teristic is their concern for the general well-being
of an entire village or group of villages. The rain
that falls as a result of the work of Hopi rain­
makers nourishes the crops of members and non­
members alike.
M en’s and Women’s Associations
For many years, scholars dismissed women’s con­
tributions to common-interest associations as less
developed than men’s. The reason is that men’s as­
sociations attracted more notice around the world
than did women’s. Heinrich Schurtz’s theory, pub­
lished in 1902, that underlying the differentiation
between kinship and associational groups is a pro­
found difference in the psychology of the sexes,
was widely accepted for years. Schurtz regarded
 G rouping by S ex , Age, C ommon I nterest, and C lass CH APTER 11 323

Non-governmental organizations such as the International Indian Treaty Council are com­
mon-interest associations that have arisen to promote the rights of indigenous peoples.
Shown here are Antonio Gonzales of the Council and Chief Gideon James of Venetie,
Alaska, testifying at the 54th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights at Geneva
in 1998.

women as unsocial beings who preferred remain­
ing in kinship groups based on sexual relations
and the reproductive function rather than forming
units based on commonly held interests. Men, by
contrast, were said to view sexual relations as iso­
lated episodes, an attitude that fostered the purely
social factor that makes “ birds of a feather flock
together. ”
In the past few decades, scholars of both sexes
have shown this kind of thinking to be culture
bound. In some societies women have not formed
associations to the extent men have because the
demands of raising a family and their daily activ­
ities have not permitted it and because men have
not always encouraged them to do so. Given the
plethora of women’s clubs of all kinds in the
United States for several generations, however, one
wonders how this belief in women as unsocial be­
ings survived as long as it did. Earlier in this coun­
try’s history, of course, when women were stuck
at home in rural situations with no near neigh­
bors, they had little chance to participate in com­
mon-interest associations. Moreover, some func­
tions of men’s associations— such as military du­
ties— often are culturally defined as purely for men
or repugnant to women. In a number of the
world’s traditional societies, however, the oppor­
tunities for female sociability are so great that lit­
tle need may exist for women’s associations.
Among the Indians of northeastern North Amer­
ica (including the Five Nations Iroquois discussed
earlier), the men spent extended periods off in the
woods hunting, either by themselves or with a sin­
gle companion. The women, by contrast, spent
most of their time in and around their village, in
close, everyday contact with all the other women
of the community. Not only did they find many
people to talk to, but also they always found some­
one available to help with whatever tasks required
assistance.
Still, as cross-cultural research makes clear,
women do play important roles in associations
of their own and even in those where men pre­
dominate. Among the Crow Indians, women
324 PART ffl T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

Common-interest associations are not limited to modern industrial societies. This 1832
picture shows a Mandan Indian Bull Dance. The Bulls were one of several common-in­
terest groups concerned with both social and military affairs.

participated even in the secret Tobacco Society, as
well as in their own exclusive groups. Throughout
Africa women’s social clubs complement the men’s
and are concerned with educating women, with
crafts, and with charitable activities. In Sierra
Leone, where once-simple dancing societies have
developed under urban conditions into complex
organizations with a set of new objectives, the
dancing com pin is made up of young women as
well as men who together perform plays based on
traditional music and dancing and raise money for
various mutual-benefit causes.
Women’s rights organizations, consciousness-
raising groups, and professional organizations for
women are examples of associations arising di­
rectly or indirectly out of today’s social climate.
These groups cover the entire range of association
formation, from simple friendship and support
groups to political, guildlike, and economic (the
publication of magazines, groups designed to in­
fluence advertising) associations on a national
scale. If an unresolved point does exist in the mat­
ter of women’s participation, it is in determining
why women are excluded from associations in
some societies, while in others their participation
is essentially equal to that of men.
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
The study of social stratification involves the ex­
amination of distinctions that, when we think about
them, impress us as unfair and even outrageous, but
social stratification is a common and powerful phe­
nomenon in some of the world’s societies. Civiliza­
 G rouping by Sex , A ge, C ommon Interest , and C lass CHAPTER 11 325

tions, in particular, with their large and heteroge­
neous populations, are invariably stratified.
Basically, a stratified society is one divided
into two or more categories of people ranked high
and low relative to one another. When the people
in one such stratum are compared with those in
another, marked differences in privileges, rewards,
restrictions, and obligations become apparent.
Members of low ranked strata tend to have fewer
privileges and less power than those in higher
ranked strata. In addition, they tend not to be re­
warded to the same degree and are denied equal
access to basic resources. Their restrictions and
obligations, too, are usually more onerous, al­
though members of high ranked strata usually
have their own distinctive restrictions and obliga­
tions to attend to. In short, social stratification
amounts to institutionalized inequality. Without
ranking— high versus low— no stratification ex­
ists; social differences without this do not consti­
tute stratification.
Stratified societies stand in sharp contrast to
egalitarian societies. As we saw in Chapter 6, so­
cieties of food-foraging peoples are characteristi­
cally egalitarian, although some exceptions occur.
Such societies have as many valued positions as
people capable of filling them. Hence, individuals
depend mostly on their abilities alone for their po­
sitions in society. A poor hunter may become a
good hunter if he has the ability; he is not excluded
from such a prestigious position because he comes
from a group of poor hunters. Poor hunters do
not constitute a social stratum. Furthermore, they
have as much right to their society’s resources as
any other of its members. No one can deny a poor
hunter a fair share of food, the right to be heard
when important decisions are to be made, or any­
thing else a man is entitled to.

Anthropologists and Social-

Impact Assessment

A kind o f policy research anthropologists frequently

do is a social-impact assessment, which entails col­
lection o f data about a community o r neighborhood
for planners o f development projects. Such an assess­
ment seeks to determine a project's effect by deter­
mining how and upon whom Its impact will fall and
whether the impact is likely to be positive or negative.
In the United States, any project requiring a federal per­
mit or license, or using federal funds, by law must be
preceded by a social Impact assessment as part o f the
environmental review process. Examples o f such pro­
jects include highway construction, urban renewal, wa­
te r diversion schemes, and land reclamation. Often, pro­
jects o f these sorts are sited so that their impact falls
most heavily on neighborhoods or communities inhab­
ited by people o f low socioeconomic strata, sometimes
because the projects are seen as ways o f improving the
lives o f impoverished people and sometimes because
these people are seen as having less political power to
block proposals others conceive as (sometimes rightly,
sometimes wrongly) in “the public interest."
As an illustration o f this kind o f work, consider how
anthropologist Sue Ellen Jacobs was hired to do a so­
cial impact assessment o f a water diversion project in
New Mexico the Bureau o f Land Reclamation planned
in cooperation with the Bureau o f Indian Affairs. This
project proposed construction o f a diversion dam and
an extensive canal system for irrigation on the Rio
Grande River Affected by this would be 22 communi­
ties inhabited primarily by Spanish Americans, as well
as tw o Indian pueblos. In the region, unemployment was
high ( 19 .1% in June 1970), and the project was seen as

Stratified society. The division of society into two or more categories of people who do not share equally in the ba­
Egalitarian societies.
sic resources that support life, influence, and prestige. > Social systems that have as many val­
ued positions as persons capable of filling them.
326 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: Solving the Problem of C ooperation
a way to promote a perceived trend toward urbanism
(which theoretically would be associated with industrial
development) while bringing new land into production
for intensive agriculture.
However; the planners failed to take into account
that both the Hispanic and Indian populations were
heavily committed to farming for household consump­
tion, with some surpluses raised for the market, using
a system o f irrigation canals established as many as 300
years ago. These acequias (aqueducts) are maintained
by elected supervisors who know the communities as
well as the requirements o f the land and crops, water
laws, and ditch management skills. Such individuals can
allocate water equitably in times o f scarcity and can pre­
vent and resolve conflict in the realm o f water and land
use, as well as in community life beyond the ditches.
Under the proposed project, this system was to be
given up in favor o f one in which fewer people would
control larger tracts o f land and water allocation would
be in the hands o f a government technocrat. One o f
the strongest measures o f local government would be
lost.
N o t surprisingly, Jacobs discovered widespread
community opposition to this project, and her report
C lass and C aste
A social class may be defined as a category of in­
dividuals of equal or nearly equal prestige ac­
cording to the system of evaluation. The qualifi­
cation “nearly equal” is important, for a certain
amount of inequality may occur even within a
given class. If this is so, to an outside observer low
ranking individuals in an upper class may not seem
much different from the highest ranking members
of a lower class. Yet marked differences exist when
the classes are compared as wholes with one an­
other. The point here is that class distinctions are
not clear-cut and obvious in societies such as those
of North America that have a continuous range of
differential privileges, for example, from virtually
none to several. Such a continuum can be divided
Social class. A category of individuals who enjoy equal o r nearly equal prestige according to the evaluation
Caste. A special form of social class in which membership is determined by birth and remains fixed for life.
helped convince Congress that any positive impact was
far outweighed by negative effects.
"One o f the major objections to the construction
o f the project is that it would result In the obliteration
o f the three-hundred-year-old irrigation system struc­
tures. Project planners did not seem to recognize the
antiquity and cultural significance o f the traditional irri­
gation system.These were referred to as ‘temporary di­
version structures.'The fact that the old dams associ­
ated with the ditches were attached to local descent
groups was simply not recognized by the official docu­
ments.”*
O ther negative effects o f the project, besides loss
o f local control, would be problems associated with
population growth and relocation, loss o f fishing and
other river-related resources, and new health hazards,
including increased threat o f drowning, insect breeding,
and airborne dust. Finally, physical transformation o f the
communities’ life space was seen likely to result In
changes in the context o f the informal processes o f en-
culturation that occur within the communities.
“■Van Willigen, J. (1986). Applied anthropology (p. 169).
South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
into classes in a variety of ways. If fine distinc­
tions are made, then many classes may be recog­
nized. If, however, only a few gross distinctions
are made, then only a few classes will be recog­
nized. Thus, some speak of North American soci­
ety as divided into three classes: lower, middle, and
upper. Others speak of several classes: lower lower,
middle lower, upper lower, lower middle, and so
forth.
A caste is a particular kind of social class with
a fairly fixed or impermeable membership. Castes
are strongly endogamous, and offspring are auto­
matically members of their parents’ caste. The
classic case is the caste system of India. Coupled
with strict endogamy and membership by descent
in Indian castes is an association of particular
castes with specific occupations and customs, such
system. >
 G rouping by S ex , Age , C ommon I nterest, and C lass
Despite their close association, the clothing worn by
these two individuals and the way they interact clearly
indicate they are of different social classes.
as food habits and styles of dress, along with rit­
uals involving notions of purity and impurity. The
literally thousands of castes are organized into a
hierarchy of four named categories, at the top of
which are the priests or Brahm ans, the bearers of
universal order and values and of highest ritual
purity. Below them are the powerful— though less
pure— warriors. Dominant at the local level, be­
sides fulfilling warrior functions, they control all
village lands. Furnishing services to the landown­
ers, and owning the tools of their trade, are two
lower ranking, landless caste groups of artisans
and laborers. At the bottom of the system, own­
ing neither land nor the tools of their trade, are
the outcasts or “untouchables.” In India, these
considered most impure of all people constitute a
large labor pool at the beck and call of those con­
C H A PTER 11 327
trolling economic and political affairs, the land-
holding warrior caste.
Although some argue that the term caste
should be restricted to the Indian situation, others
find this much too narrow a usage, since castelike
situations are known elsewhere in the world. In
South Africa, for example, although the situation
is now changing, Blacks traditionally were rele­
gated to a low ranking stratum in society, until re­
cently were barred by law from marrying non-
Blacks, and could not hold property except to a
limited degree in specified “ black homelands.”
M ost Blacks still perform menial jobs for Whites,
but even the small cadre of “middle class” Blacks
that existed were until recently prohibited from
living where Whites do, or even swimming in the
same water or holding the hand of someone who
is White. All of this brings to mind the concepts
of ritual purity and pollution so basic to the In­
dian caste system. In South Africa, Whites feared
pollution of their purity through improper contact
with Blacks.
In India and South Africa, untouchables and
Blacks comprised categories of landless or near-
landless people who served as a body of mobile
laborers always available for exploitation by those
in political control. A similar mobile labor force
of landless men at the state’s disposal emerged in
China as many as 2 ,200 years ago (caste, in India,
is at least as old). Paradoxically, at the very same
time South Africa is trying to change its system, a
similar castelike underclass has emerged in United
States society as automation reduces the need for
unskilled workers and downsizing occurs. Its
members consist of unemployed, unemployable, or
drastically underemployed people who own little,
if any, property and who live “out on the streets”
or— at best— in urban or rural slums. Lacking
both economic and political power, they have no
access to the kinds of educational facilities that
would enable them or their children to improve
their lot. Rather than providing a cheap labor pool
for the state, this new underclass has served the
economy by ensuring a significant incidence of
permanent unemployment, thereby making the
employed feel less secure in their jobs. As a con­
sequence, the employed are apt to be less de­
manding of wages and benefits from their em­
ployers.
328 PART in T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

Outcast groups such as India’s untouchables are a common feature of stratified societies; the United States, for
example, has in recent years seen the growth of a castelike underclass.

India, South Africa, China, and the United
States— all very different countries, in different
parts of the world, with different ideologies— and
yet a similar phenomenon has emerged in each.
Does something in the structure of socially strati­
fied states sooner or later produce a sort of ex­
ploitable, impoverished outcast group? The an­
swer to this is clearly unknown, but the question
is deserving of the attention of anthropologists and
other social scientists.
The basis of social class structure is role dif­
ferentiation. Some role differentiation, of course,
exists in any society, at least along the lines of sex
and age. Furthermore, any necessary role always
will be valued to some degree. In a food-foraging
society, the role of “good hunter” will be valued.
The fact one man already may play that role does
not, however, prevent another man from playing
it, too, in an egalitarian society. Therefore, role
differentiation by itself is not sufficient for strati­
fication. Two more ingredients are necessary: for­
malized evaluation of roles, involving attitudes
such as like/dislike, or admiration/revulsion, and
restricted access to the more highly valued roles.
Obviously, the greater the diversity of roles in a
society, the more complex evaluation and restric­
tion can become. Since great role diversity is most
characteristic of civilizations, it is not surprising
they provide the most opportunities for stratifica­
tion. Furthermore, the large size and heterogene­
ity of populations in civilizations create a need for
classifying people into a manageable number of
social categories. Small wonder, then, that social
stratification is one of the defining characteristics
of a true civilization.
Social classes are manifested in several ways.
One is through verbal evaluation— what people
say about others in their own society. For this, any­
thing can be singled out for attention and spoken
of favorably or unfavorably: political, military, re­
ligious, economic, or professional roles; wealth
and property; kinship; personal qualities (skin
color, for example); community activity; linguistic
dialect; and a host of other traits. Cultures do this
differently, and what may be spoken of favorably
in one may be spoken of unfavorably in another
and ignored in a third. Furthermore, cultural val­
ues may change, so something regarded favorably
at one time may not be at another. This is one rea­
son why a researcher may be misled by verbal eval­
uation, for what people say may not correspond
completely with social reality. As an example, the
official language of Egypt is Classical Arabic, the
language of the Qur’an (the most holy of Islamic
texts). Though it is highly valued, no one in Egypt
uses this language in daily interaction; rather, it is
used for official documents or on formal occa­
sions. Those most proficient in it are not of the

Verbal evaluation. The way people in a stratified society evaluate society members.
 G roupinc by S ex , A ge, C ommon Interkst, and C lass CHAPTER 11 329

upper class but, rather, of the lower-middle classes. tion. One reason is that access to wealth may not
These are the people educated in the public schools be wholly restricted to upper classes, so individu­
(where Classical Arabic is the language of school­ als can buy symbols suggestive of upper-class sta­
ing) and who hold jobs in the government bu­ tus whether or not this really is their status. To
reaucracy (which requires the most use of Classi­
cal Arabic). Upper-class Egyptians, by contrast, go
to private schools, where they learn the foreign
languages essential for success in diplomacy and
(in the global economy) business and industry.4
Social classes also are manifested through pat­
terns of association: not just who interacts with
whom but also how and in what context. In West­
ern society, informal, friendly relations take place
mostly within one’s own class. Relations with
members of other classes tend to be less informal
and occur in the context of specific situations. For
example, a corporate executive and a janitor nor­
mally are members of different social classes. They
may have frequent contact with each other, but it
occurs in the setting of the corporate office and
usually requires certain stereotyped behavioral
patterns.
A third way social classes are manifested is
through symbolic indicators. Included here are ac­
tivities and possessions indicative of class. For ex­
ample, in North American society, occupation (a
garbage collector has different class status than a
physician); wealth (rich people generally are in a
higher social class than poor people); dress (we
have all heard the expression “white collar” ver­
sus “blue collar”); form of recreation (upper-class
people are expected to play golf rather than shoot
pool down at the pool hall— but they can shoot
pool at home or in a club); residential location
(upper-class people do not ordinarily live in
slums); kind of car; and so on. The fact is, all sorts
of status symbols indicate class position, includ­
ing such measures as how many bathrooms in an
individual’s house. At the same time, symbolic in­
dicators may be cruder reflections of class posi­
tion than verbal indicators or patterns of associa-

4Haeri, N. (1997). The reproduction of symbolic capital:

Language, state and class in Egypt. Current Anthropology, Symbolic indicators of class or caste include factors of
38, 795-816. lifestyle, such as the kind of housing one lives in.

Symbolic indicators. In a stratified society, activities and possessions indicative of social class.
330 PART m T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation
take an extreme example, the head of an organized
crime ring may display more of the symbols of
high-class status than may some members of old,
established upper-class families. For that matter,
someone from an upper class deliberately may
choose a simpler lifestyle than is customary. In­
stead of driving a Mercedes, he or she may drive
a beat-up Volkswagen.
Symbolic indicators involve factors of lifestyle,
but differences in life chances also may signal dif­
ferences in class standing. Life is apt to be less hard
for members of an upper class as opposed to a
lower class. This shows up in a tendency for lower
infant mortality and longer life expectancy for the
upper class. Another tendency is for greater phys­
ical stature and robustness among upper-class peo­
ple, the result of better diet and protection from
serious illness in their juvenile years.
In the United States, the ability to “ move up” in the system of stratification is increas­
ingly dependent upon access to higher education.
M obility. The ability to change one’s class position.
M obility
All stratified societies offer at least some mobility,
and this helps to ease the strains in any system of
inequality. Even the Indian caste system, with its
guiding ideology that pretends all arrangements
within it are static, has a surprising amount of flex­
ibility and mobility, not all of it associated with
the recent changes “modernization” has brought
to India. As a rather dramatic case in point, in the
state of Rajasthan, those who own and control
most land and who are wealthy and politically
powerful are not of warrior caste, as one would
expect, but are of the lowest caste. Their tenants
and laborers, by contrast, are Brahmans. Thus, the
group ritually superior to all others finds itself in
the same social position as untouchables, whereas
the landowners who are the Brahmans’ ritual in-
 G rouping by Sex , A ge , C ommon Interest , and C lass
feriors are superior in all other ways. Meanwhile,
a group of leather workers in the untouchable cat­
egory, who have gained political power in India’s
new democracy, are trying to better their position
by claiming they are Brahmans who were tricked
in the past into doing defiling work. Although in­
dividuals cannot move up or down the caste hier­
archy, whole groups can do so depending on
claims they can make for higher status and on how
well they can manipulate others into acknowledg­
ing their claims. Interestingly, the people at the
bottom of India’s caste system traditionally have
not questioned the validity of the system itself so
much as their particular position within it.
With their limited mobility, caste-structured
societies exemplify closed-class societies. Those
that permit a great deal of mobility are referred to
as open-class societies. Even here, however, mo­
bility is apt to be more limited than one might sup­
pose. In the United States, in spite of its “rags to
riches” ideology, most mobility involves a move
up or down only a notch, although if this contin­
ues in a family for several generations, it may add
up to a major change. Generally, the culture makes
much of those relatively rare examples of great up­
ward mobility consistent with its cultural values
and does its best to ignore, or at least downplay,
the numerous cases of little or no upward, not to
mention downward, mobility.
The degree of mobility in a stratified society
is related to the prevailing kind of family organi­
zation. In societies where the extended family is
the usual form, mobility is apt to be difficult, be­
cause each individual is strongly tied to the large
family group. Hence, for a person to move up to
a higher social class, his or her family must move
up as well. Mobility is easier for independent nu­
clear families where the individual is closely tied
to fewer persons. Moreover, under neolocal resi­
dence, individuals normally leave the family they
were born into. So it is, then, that through care­
ful marriage, occupational success, and disassoci­
ating themselves from the lower-class family they
grew up in, all of which are made possible by res­
Closed-class societies. Stratified societies that severely restrict social mobility. >
societies that permit a great deal of social mobility.
CHAPTER 11 331
idential mobility, individuals can more easily
“move up” in society.
G e nd e r S trati fi cati on
Closely associated with class and caste stratifica­
tion is the related phenomenon of gender stratifi­
cation. For instance, in our earlier discussion of
sex as an organizing principle, we saw that in some
(but not all) societies, men and women may be re­
garded as unequal, with the former outranking the
latter. Generally speaking, sexual inequality is
characteristic of societies stratified in other ways
as well; thus women historically have occupied a
position of inferiority to men in the class-struc­
tured societies of the Western world. Nevertheless,
sexual inequality sometimes may be seen in soci­
eties not otherwise stratified; in such instances,
men and women are always physically as well as
conceptually separated from one another. Yet, as
the Iroquoian case cited earlier in this chapter
demonstrates, not all societies that separate men
and women exhibit gender stratification.
The rise of gender stratification often seems
to be associated with the development of strongly
centralized states. For example, among the Maya
of Central America the basic social unit in the past
and today is the complementary gender pair. On
the household level, men raise the crops and bring
in the other raw materials the women transform
into food, textiles, and other cultural objects. The
same complementarity existed in public ritual and
politics, but in the last century b . c . at the Maya
city of Tikal, this situation began to change. With
the development of strong dynastic rule by men,
women began to be excluded from favored places
for burial, their graves were not as richly stocked
with material items as were those of important
men, they all but disappeared from public art, and
they were rarely mentioned in inscriptions. When
women were portrayed or mentioned, it was on
account of their relationship to a particular male
ruler. Clearly, women came to hold a lesser place
in Maya society than did men, although gender
Open-class societies. Stratified
332 PART III T he F ormation of G roups : Solving the P roblem of C ooperation
At the ancient Maya city of Tikal, in Central Amer­
ica, one reflection of gender stratification is the rarity
of the portrayals of women, compared to men, in the
city’s public art. The woman shown in this drawing
was portrayed on a wooden lintel only because of her
relationship to the king who commissioned the temple
of which the lintel is a part.
stratification was not nearly as marked at the grass
roots of society as it was among the elite. When
the Tikal state collapsed, as it did in the 9th cen­
tury a . d ., the relationship of equality between men
and women returned to what it had been 8 or 9
centuries before.5
D evelopment of S trati fi cati on
Because social stratification of any kind tends to
make life oppressive for large segments of a pop­
ulation, the lower classes are usually placated with
religion, which promises them a better existence
in the hereafter. If they have this to look forward
to, they are more likely to accept an existing dis­
advantaged position. In India, for example, belief
in reincarnation and in the existence of an incor-
5Haviland, W. A. (1997). The rise and fall of sexual inequal­
ity: Death and gender at Tikal, Guatemala. Ancient
M esoam erica, 8, 1 -1 2 .
ruptible supernatural power that assigns people to
a particular caste position as a reward or punish­
ment for the deeds and misdeeds of past lives jus­
tifies one’s position in this life. If, however, indi­
viduals perform the duties appropriate to their
caste in this lifetime, then they can expect to be
reborn into a higher caste in a future existence.
Truly exemplary performance of their duties may
even release them from the cycle of rebirth, to be
reunited with the divinity all existence springs
from. In the minds of orthodox Hindus, then, one’s
caste position is something earned (an achieved
status), rather than the accident of birth (ascribed)
it appears to outside observers. Thus, although the
caste system explicitly recognizes (and accepts as
legitimate) inequality among people, it is under­
lain by an implicit assumption of ultimate equal­
ity. This contrasts with the situation in the United
States, where the equality of all people is pro­
claimed while various groups are clearly regarded
as unequal.
When considering the origin of social stratifi­
cation, we must reckon with such common ten­
dencies as the human desire for prestige, either for
oneself or one’s group. Although the impulse need
not result inevitably in the ranking of individuals
or groups relative to one another, it sometimes
may. Among the Iroquois and Hopi Indians and
the Sherente and Ugandan peoples, the superior­
ity of some kinship lineages over others is recog­
nized by electing chiefs, performing sacred rituals,
and other special tasks, whether or not member­
ship entails any economic advantages.
This sort of situation easily could develop into
full-fledged stratification. Just such a development
may have arisen among the Maya of Central
America.6 These people began as horticulturists
with a relatively egalitarian, kinship-based orga­
nization. In the last centuries b . c ., elaborate ritu­
als developed for dealing with the very serious
6Haviland, W. A. (1975). The ancient Maya and the evolu-
tion of urban society. University o f C olorado Museum o f
A nthropology M iscellaneous Series, no. 37; and Haviland,
W. A., Sc Moholy-Nagy, H. (1992). Distinguishing the high
and mighty from the hoi polloi at Tikal, Guatemala. In A. F.
Sc D. Z. Chase (Eds.), M esoam erican elites: An archaeologi­
cal assessment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
 G roupinc; by S ex , A ge , C ommon I nterest, and C lass CHAPTER 11 333

The high status of the two Maya kings shown in this painting from a pottery vessel is
revealed by their jewelry, elaborate headdress, and the fact they sit on thrones. Among
these people, stratification arose as certain lineages monopolized important offices.

problems of agriculture, such as uncertain rains,
vulnerability of crops to a variety of pests, and pe­
riodic devastation from hurricanes. As these
changes occurred, a full-time priesthood arose,
along with some craft specialization in the service
of religion. Out of the priesthood developed, in
the last century B.c., the hereditary ruling dynas­
ties mentioned earlier. In this developmental
process, certain lineages seem to have monopo­
lized the important civic and ceremonial positions
and thus came to be ranked above other lineages,
forming the basis of an upper class.
Just as lineages may come to be ranked dif­
ferentially relative to one another, so may ethnic
groups. In South Africa, for example, Europeans
came as conquerors, establishing a social order
whereby they could maintain their favored posi­
tion. In the United States, the importation of
African slaves produced a severely disadvantaged
castelike group at the bottom of the social order.

In South Africa, stratification emerged as conquerors excluded the conquered from po­
sitions of importance and restricted their access to basic resources. Shown here is the
Black township outside the capital of Namibia, until recently ruled from South Africa.
334 PART III T he F ormation of G roups: S olving the Problem of C ooperation

Not only was it nearly impossible for such indi­
viduals to rise above this group, but also down­
ward mobility into it was possible, owing to the
belief that “a single drop of Black blood” was
enough to define one as Black (a belief similar to
South African concepts of purity and pollution).
In the United States, it has taken a long time for
African Americans to move up in the class system,
though the legacy persists, as they are still dis­
proportionately represented in the low ranks of
society. Even without conquest and/or slavery, eth­
nic differences often are a factor in the definition
of social classes and castes, as not only African
Americans but also members of other North
American minorities have experienced through the
racial stereotyping that leads to social and eco­
nomic disadvantages.
Sometimes, rather than providing the basis for
stratification, ethnicity comes to serve as a metaphor
for what began as nothing more than class distinc­
tions. A dramatic example of this can be found in
the African state of Rwanda where what began sim­
ply as class distinctions were misinterpreted by Bel­
gian colonial authorities as differences in ethnicity.
Ultimately, they were magnified until the whole
country erupted in a bloodbath, illustrating how
class systems have built into them the seeds of their
own destruction. In Rwanda, this happened through
an intersection of class differences with the interests
of particular common-interest associations.

k A 4, A A A A i> 4 . A A k * * 4 A A ■& 4 A k k k. 4 .* k.

The genocide in Rwanda is a crime, perpetrated by a known group o f indi­

viduals associated with tw o extremist parties, the National Republican Move­
ment for Development o f Democracy (MRND) and the Coalition for the
Defense o f the Republic (CDR).The first targets were members o f opposi­
tion parties, journalists and human rights activists, both Hutu and Tutsi. As
Genocide in the killing spread to the rural areas, it has become a programme o f geno­
cide specifically targeted at theTutsi, who before the killing represented about
Rwa nda7 ten percent o f Rwanda's seven million people. Over 200,000 have died so
far [June 1994], and the killing continues. [After this piece was written, an
uneasy peace was established under international supervision.]
A crime requires motive, means, and opportunity. The motive o f those
responsible was to continue to monopolize power and to seek a "final so­
lution” to the political opposition, both civilian and armed. Attempts by Pres­
ident Juvenal Habyarimana to stall on the implementation o f agreements for
power sharing were not succeeding, owing to domestic and international
pressure.
The primary means for perpetuating genocide is mobilization o f the mili­
tias that had been established by the MRND and CDR since late 1971. Use
o f the civil administration to encourage ordinary people to participate in
killings is a supplementary strategy. Army units, especially from the Presiden­
tial Guard, and death squads have also helped direct the killings, especially in
the towns. Radio broadcasts have been used to incite the population.
The genocide against rural Tutsi in Rwanda is particularly traumatic be­
cause the killers are largely people from the same community as their vic­
tims. People are murdered by their neighbors, their schoolteachers, their lo­
cal shopkeepers. Such mass mobilization o f killers was necessary because of
the particular nature o f Rwandese society.

de Waal, A. (1994). Genocide in Rwanda. A nthropology Today, 10 (3), 1 -2 .

 G rouping by S f.x , Age, Common I nterest, and C lass CHAPTER 11 335

Although the killing is supposed to have stopped, outbreaks of violence in Rwanda still
occur, as in this 1 9 9 7 massacre.

Rwanda has long been known as a true nation in Africa, containing three
groups: Twa, Hutu and Tutsi. German and Belgian colonists characterized
them as respectively aboriginal Pygmies, Bantu peasants and Nilo-Hamitic
aristocrats. The truth is that they were three different strata o f the same
group, differentiated by occupational and political status.There is some anal­
ogy with the Indian caste system, though individuals could and did move with
difficulty between the categories; and the Twa are victims o f some o f the
worst discrimination in Africa.
The reciprocity in Hutu-Tutsi relations that had diluted the latter's dom­
inance In precolonial days was destroyed by Belgian rule. Instead a rigid sys­
tem o f tribute and exploitation was imposed, creating deep grievances that
underlie today’s violence. In the northwest, formerly an anomalous region o f
Hutu kingdoms, the Belgians dismantled the precolonial political system, and
imposed Tutsi overlords. The modern Hutu extremists— the late President
Habyarimana and his clan- -derive from this area.
The differences in physical stature between the groups have been widely
exaggerated: it is rarely possible to tell whether an individual is a Twa, Hutu
orTutsi from his or her height. Speaking the same language, sharing the same
culture and religion, living in the same places, they are in no sense “tribes,"
nor even distinct "ethnic groups.”
Two things enable one to Identify an individual as Twa, Hutu orTutsi:
knowledge o f the person's ancestry, and the possession o f an identity card
which, since 1926, has by law specified which group he or she belongs to.
The latter is a legacy o f Belgian rule: those with ten or more cows were clas­
sified as Tutsi, those with less as Hutu— and a tiny minority o f those
336 PART III T he F ormation of Groups: Solving the Problem of Cooperation

recognized asTwa has their status as an ethnographic curiosity confirmed in

perpetuity. But checking every identity card is time-consuming, and the killings
needed to be carried out rapidly to be successful, so those planning the
killing needed to mobilize militiamen from every community in the country,
who knew every Tutsi family personally. In 1991, the government began to
implement a system known as“ Nyumba Kumi” (literally “ten houses")— one
man from every ten houses was mobilized and armed. Such are the logisti­
cal challenges facing those who contemplate genocide.
The killers were able to practise their methods on various occasions
since 1990, killing perhaps 3,000 people, mainly Tutsi.This is well-documented
in the 1993 report o f an international human rights commission.
The opportunity was provided by a conjunction o f circumstances, which
allowed the hardliners to confuse the international community for sufficiently
long to be able to perpetuate the crime with extraordinarily little interna­
tional response.The sowing o f confusion was the key to the killers' success.
Because President Habyarimana himself was the first casualty, his acolytes
were able to present themselves as victims o f the plot, rather than the per­
petrators. The deaths o f ten Belgians serving on the UN force focused in­
ternational attention on the plight o f foreigners. The renewed offensive by
the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)— motivated in part by the desire to res­
cue Tutsi civilians from the militias— enabled the government to speak of ag­
gression and the need fo r a ceasefire. But above all, the killers portrayed the
situation as one o f uncontrollable spontaneous ethnic violence.
Prompt international condemnation o f the coup in Burundi in October
1993 prevented political extremists from seizing and holding on to power.
The absence o f such condemnation in Rwanda last month [May 1994] al­
lowed the killers to carry out their task undisturbed.This was largely because
the crime o f genocide was misdiagnosed as a spontaneous ethnic violence.
The Secretary General o f the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, spoke
in late April o f'H u tus killing Tutsi andTutsI killing Hutus” and proposed send­
ing troops to bring about a ceasefire between the (Tutsi-dominated) RPF
and the (Hutu-dominated) army.This was precisely what the militias wanted:
a chance to stop the RPF advance so they could complete the genocide o f
unarmed Tutsi away from the battle lines.

Although the cost is great— social classes do,
after all, make life oppressive for large numbers
of people— classes may nevertheless perform an
integrative function in society. By cutting across
some or all lines of kinship, residence, occupation,
and age group, depending on the particular soci­
ety, they counteract potential tendencies of a so­
ciety to fragment into discrete entities. In India di­
verse national groups were incorporated into the
larger society by certification of their leaders as
warriors and by marriage of their women to Brah­
mans. The problem is that stratification, by its very
nature, provides a means for one, usually small,
group of people to dominate and make life mis­
erable for large numbers of others, as in the just-
cited case of Rwanda or as in South Africa, where
4.5 million Whites dominated 25 million non-
Whites. In India a succession of conquerors was
able to move into the caste hierarchy near its top
as warriors.
In any system of stratification, those who
dominate proclaim their supposedly superior sta­
tus, which they try to convert into respect, or at
least acquiescence, from the lower classes. As an­
 Grouping by
thropologist Laura Nader points out: “Systems of
thought develop over time and reflect the interests
of certain classes or groups in the society who
manage to universalize their beliefs and values.”8
8Nader, L. (1997). Controlling processes: Tracing the dy­
namic components of power. Current Anthropology, 38,
271.
Grouping by sex separates men and women to
varying degrees in different societies; in some they
may be together much of the time, while in oth­
ers they may spend much of their time apart, even
to the extreme of eating and sleeping separately.
Although men perceive women as their inferiors
in some sexually segregated societies, in others
men perceive women as equals.
Age grouping is another form of association
that may augment or replace kinship grouping. An
age grade is a category of persons, usually of the
same sex, organized by age. Age grades in some
societies are broken up into age sets, which include
individuals initiated into an age grade at the same
time who move together through a series of life
stages. A specific time is often ritually established
for moving from a younger to an older age grade.
The most varied use of age grouping is found
in African societies south of the Sahara. Among
the Tiriki of East Africa, for example, seven named
age sets pass through four successive age grades.
Each age set embraces a 15-year age span and thus
opens to accept new initiates every 105 years. In
principle, the system resembles U.S. college classes,
where (say) the “Class of 1 9 9 0 ” (an age set) will
move through the four age grades: first year,
sophomore, junior, senior.
Common-interest associations are linked with
rapid social change and urbanization. They are in­
creasingly assuming the roles kinship or age
groups formerly played. In urban areas they help
new arrivals cope with the changes demanded by
the move from the village or previous city or coun­
try to the new city. Common-interest associations
are also seen in traditional societies, and their
roots are probably found in the first horticultural
Sex , Age, Common Interest, and Class CHAPTER 11 337
One sees this, for example, in religious ideologies
that assert the social order is divinely fixed and
therefore not to be questioned. Thus, they hope
members of the lower classes will thereby “know
their place” and not contest their domination by
the “chosen elite.” If, however, this domination is
contested, the elite usually control the power of
the state, which they use to protect their privileged
position.
villages. Membership may range from voluntary
to legally compulsory.
For a long time social scientists mistakenly
viewed women’s common-interest associations as
less developed than men’s, largely because of cul­
ture-bound assumptions. A question that remains
to be resolved is why women are barred from as­
sociations in some societies, while in others they
participate on an equal basis with men.
A stratified society is divided into two or more
categories of people who do not share equally in
basic resources, influence, and prestige. This form
contrasts with the egalitarian society, which has as
many valued positions as persons capable of fill­
ing them. Societies may be stratified in various
ways, such as by gender, age, social class, or caste.
Members of a class enjoy equal or nearly equal ac­
cess to basic resources and prestige (according to
the way the latter is defined). Class differences are
not always clear and obvious. Where fine distinc­
tions are made in privileges, the result is a multi­
plicity of classes. In societies where only gross dis­
tinctions are made, only a few social classes may
be recognized.
Caste is a special form of social class in which
membership is determined by birth and fixed for
life. Endogamy is particularly marked within
castes, and children automatically belong to their
parents’ caste. Social class structure is based on
role differentiation, although this by itself is not
sufficient for stratification. Also necessary are for­
malized positive and negative attitudes toward
roles and restricted access to the more valued ones.
Social classes are given expression in several
ways. One is through verbal evaluation, or what
people say about other people in their society.
338 PART III T he F ormation of Groups: Solving the Problem of Cooperation

Another is through patterns of association— who
interacts with whom, how, and in what context.
Social classes also are manifest through symbolic
indicators: activities and possessions indicative of
class position. Finally, they are reflected by differ­
ences in life chances, as high-status people gener­
ally live longer and in better health than low-sta­
tus people.
Mobility is present to a greater or lesser ex­
tent in all stratified societies. Open-class societies
are those with the easiest mobility. In most cases,
however, the move is limited to one rung up or
down the social ladder. The degree of mobility is
related to the type of family organization that pre­
vails in a society. Where the extended family is the
norm, mobility tends to be severely limited. The
independent nuclear family provides an easier sit­
uation for mobility.
Social stratification can be based on many cri­
teria, such as wealth, legal status, birth, personal
qualities, and ideology. A rigidly stratified society
with limited mobility normally makes life partic­
ularly oppressive for large segments of a popula­
tion.

Points for C onsideration

1. Are you a part of an ag e grou p as described in this chapter? If so, how does it define itself, and
what are its functions? W hat are the functions of similar such groups in industrial societies? Do
these differ from their functions in other cultures? Explain.
2. Why have specialized formations such as com m on-interest associations and age groups developed
in addition to kinship and marriage groups? What needs do such associations serve? How are
they important in industrial societies? in stratified societies?
3. How might the concept of “race” be reflected in the various groupings discussed in this chapter?
How might race function in an insider’s definition of such categories within a society? in an out­
sider’s definition?
4. Have you had an experience that made you aware of certain behaviors stemming from social
stratification ? Where did this occur? W hat was your role in the encounter? How aware of it were
you at the time? Did it seem out of place, or was it an appropriate interaction?

Suggested
Bernardi, B. (1985). A ge class system s: S ocial in­
stitutions an d p olicies b a sed on age. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
This is a cross-cultural analysis of age as a de­
vice for organizing society and for distribut­
ing and rotating power.
Bradfield, R. M . (1973). A natural history o f as­
sociation s. New York: International Universi­
ties Press.
This two-volume work is the first major an­
thropological study of common-interest asso­
ciations since 1902. It attempts to provide a
comprehensive theory of the origin of associ­
ations and their role in kin-based societies.
R e a d i n g s
Hammond, D. (1972). A ssociations (p. 14). Read­
ing, MA: Addison-Wesley Modular Publica­
tions.
This is a brief first-rate review of anthropo­
logical thinking and of the literature on com­
mon-interest associations and age groups.
Lenski, G. E. (1966). P ow er an d privilege: A the­
ory o f social stratification. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Who gets what and why is explained by the
distributive process and systems of social
stratification in industrial nations: the United
States, Russia, Sweden, and Britain. With a
broadly comparative approach, the author
 G rouping by Sex, Age, C ommon Interest, and Class CHAPTER 11 339

makes heavy use of anthropological and his­ This book is a collection of essays by various
torical materials, as well as the usual socio­ contributors that examines the emergence of
logical materials on modern industrial soci­ social inequality.
eties. The basic approach is theoretical and
Sanday, P. R. (1981). Fem ale p o w er an d m ale d o m ­
analytical; the book builds on certain postu­
inance: On the origins o f sexu al inequality.
lates about the nature of humans and society,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
seeking to develop in a systematic manner an
explanation of a variety of patterns of strati­ In this cross-cultural study, Professor Sanday
fication. The theory presented is a synthesis of reveals the various ways male-female relations
the two dominant theoretical traditions of the are organized in human societies and demon­
past and present, currently represented in both strates that male dominance is not inherent in
Marxist and functionalist theory. those relations. Rather, it appears to emerge
in situations of stress as a result of such things
Price, T. D., & Feinman, G. M . (Eds.). (1995). as chronic food shortages, migration, and
Foundations o f social inequality. New York: colonial domination.
Plenum.
 IV
P A R T

T he S earch for O rder:

S olving the P roblem
of D isorder
c (iA p f< * 12-
P olitical O rganization and the M aintenance
of O rder

CllApfeT
R eligion and the S upernatural
CllApfeT 1 4
T he A rts
 Ift-f-roduc-fion
An irony of human life is that something as fundamen­
tal to our existence as cooperation should contain within
it the seeds of its own destruction. It is nonetheless true
that the groups people form to fulfill important organi­
zational needs do not just facilitate cooperation among
the members of those groups, but they also create con­
ditions that may lead to the disruption of society. A case
in point is the escalating gang violence seen in many
North American cities. The attitude that “my group is
better than your group” is not confined to any one of
the world's cultures and it not infrequently takes the
form of rivalry between groups: descent group against
descent group, men against women, age grade against age
grade, social class against social class, and so forth. This
does not mean such rivalry has to be disruptive; indeed,
it may function to ensure that the members of groups
perform their jobs well so as not to “lose face” or be
subject to ridicule. Rivalry, however, can become a seri­
ous problem if it develops into conflict.
The fact is, social living inevitably entails a certain
amount of friction— not just between groups but be­
tween individual members of groups as well. Thus, any
society can count on a degree of disruptive behavior by
some of its members at one time or another.Yet no one
can know precisely when such outbursts will occur or
what form they will take. N o t only does this uncertainty
go against the predictability social life demands, but it
also goes against the deep-seated psychological need
each individual has for structure and certainty, which we
discussed in Chapter 5. Therefore, every society must
have a means of resolving conflicts and preventing a
breakdown of the social order. Control of peoples’ be­
havior and political systems, which primarily function to
maintain social order, are the subjects of Chapter 12.
Religion and politics may seem like strange bedfel­
lows, but both fulfill the same goal: to protect society
against the unexpected and unwanted. Effective though
a culture may be in equipping, organizing, and control­
ling a society to provide for its members’ needs, certain
problems always defy existing technological or organi­
zational solutions. The response of every culture is to
devise a set of rituals, with a set of beliefs to explain
them, aimed at solving these problems through the ma­
nipulation of supernatural beings and powers. In short,
religion and magic exist to transform the uncertainties
of life into certainties. In addition, they may serve as pow­
erful integrative forces through commonly held values,
beliefs, and practices. Also important is religion’s ratio­
nalization of the existing social order, which thereby be­
comes a moral order as well.Thus, a link exists between
religion and magic on the one hand and political orga­
nization and social control on the other. Religion and
magic are, then, appropriate subjects for discussion in
Chapter 13 of this section on the search for order.
Like religion and magic, the arts also contribute to
human well-being and help give shape and significance to
life. Indeed, the relationship between art and religion goes
deeper than this, for much of what we call art has been
created in the service of religion: myths to explain rit­
ual practices, objects to portray important deities, mu­
sic and dances for ceremonial use, pictorial art to record
religious experiences and/or to serve as objects of su­
pernatural power in their own right, and the like. In a
very real sense, music, dance, and any other form of art,
like magic, exploit psychological predispositions so as to
enchant other people and cause them to perceive social
reality in a way favorable to the interests of the en­
chanter. And, like religion, art of any kind expresses the
human search for order, in that the artist gives form to
some essentially formless raw material. Accordingly, a
chapter on the arts follows that on religion, concluding
this section.
 CliApfer 12.
Political
O rganization
and THE
M aintenance of H
Order
P o l it ic a l o r g a n iz a t io n in h u m a n

S O C IE T IE S T A K E S M A N Y F O R M S , O F

W H I C H T H E STATE IS B U T O N E . O N E

R E A S O N STATES G E N E R A L L Y D O N O T

L A S T VERY L O N G IS T H A T T H E Y ARE

O F T E N C O N T R O L L E D BY M EM BER S O F

O N E N A T IO N A L IT Y W H O T R Y T O

REPRESS (O R E V E N E X T E R M IN A T E )

w O T H E R N A T IO N A L IT IE S W I T H I N T H E

state .T h is is w h a t S erbs t r ie d t o

d o in Bo s n ia , even in t h e face of

U N IN T E R V E N T IO N .

&
 CriApfc^ Pfel/ieiv
1. What Is Political Organization?
Political organization refers to the means a society uses to maintain order internally and man­
age its affairs with other societies externally. Such organization may be relatively uncentralized
and informal, as in bands and tribes, o r centralized and formal, as in chiefdoms and states.

2. How Is Order Maintained Within a Society?

Social controls may be internalized— “ built into” individuals— o r externalized in the form of
sanctions. Built-in controls rely on deterrents such as personal shame and fear o f supernatural
punishment. Sanctions, by contrast, rely on actions other members o f society take toward specif­
ically approved o r disapproved behavior. Positive sanctions encourage approved behavior, while
negative sanctions discourage disapproved behavior. Negative sanctions an authorized political
body formalizes and enforces are called laws. Consequently, we may say laws are sanctions, but
not all sanctions are laws. Similarly, societies do not maintain order through law alone.

3. How Is Order Maintained Between Societies?

Just as the threatened o r actual use o f force may be employed to maintain order within a so­
ciety, it also may be used to manage affairs among bands, lineages, clans, o r whatever the largest
autonomous political units may be. N o t all societies, however, rely on force, because some do
not practice warfare as we know it. Such societies generally have views of themselves and their
place in the world quite different from those characteristic of centrally organized states.

4. How Do Political Systems Obtain People’s Allegiance?

No form o f political organization can function w ithout the loyalty and support o f those it gov­
erns. To a greater o r lesser extent, political organizations the world over use religion to legit­
imize their power. In uncentralized systems people freely give loyalty and cooperation because
everyone participates in making decisions. Centralized systems, by contrast, rely more heavily
on force and coercion, although in the long run these may lessen the system’s effectiveness.

343
344 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

ouis X IV proclaimed, “I am the state.” With ciety’s complexity. Some form of political organi­

L this sweeping statement, the king declared

absolute rule over France; he held himself to
be the law, the lawmaker, the court, the judge,
zation exists in all societies, but it is not always
a government.

jailer, and executioner— in short, the seat of all po­

litical power in France.
Louis X IV took a great deal of responsibility :;y s i t h $
on his royal shoulders; had he actually performed
Political organization is the means a society uses
each of these functions, he would have done the
to maintain social order and reduce social disor­
work of thousands of people, the number required
der. It assumes a variety of forms among the peo­
to keep the machinery of a large political organi­
ples of the world, but scholars have simplified this
zation such as a state running at full steam. As a
complex subject by identifying four basic kinds of
form of political organization, the 17th-century
political systems: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and
French state was not much different from those
states. The first two are uncentralized systems; the
that exist in modern times. All large states require
latter two are centralized.
elaborate centralized structures, involving hierar­
chies of executives, legislators, and judges who ini­
tiate, pass, and enforce laws that affect large num­ U ncentrali zed P olitical S ystems
bers of people.
Until recently, many non-Western peoples have
Such complex structures, however, have not
had neither chiefs with established rights and du­
always been in existence: The oldest European
ties nor any fixed form of government, as the cit­
states, for instance, are not much older than the
izens of modern states understand the term. In­
United States, and many are in fact younger. Even
stead, marriage and kinship form the principal
today some societies depend on far less formal
means of social organization among such peoples.
means of organization. In these societies, flexible
The economies of these societies are of a subsis­
and informal kinship systems with leaders who
tence type, and populations are typically quite
lack real power prevail. Problems, such as homi­
small. Leaders do not have real power to force
cide and theft, are perceived as serious “family
compliance with the society’s customs or laws, but
quarrels,” rather than affairs that affect the entire
if individual members do not conform, they may
community. Between these two polarities of polit­
become the target of scorn and gossip or even os­
ical organization lies a world of variety, including
tracized. Important decisions are usually made in
societies with chiefs, Big Men, or charismatic lead­
a democratic manner by a consensus of adults, of­
ers and segmented tribal societies with multicen­
ten including women as well as men; dissenting
tric authority systems. Such disparity prompts this
members may decide to act with the majority, or
question: W hat is political organization?
they may choose to adopt some other course of
The term p o litica l organ ization refers to the
action, if they are willing to risk the social conse­
way power is distributed and embedded in soci­
quences. This form of political organization pro­
ety, whether in organizing a giraffe hunt or rais­
vides great flexibility, which in many situations
ing an army. In other words, political organiza­
confers an adaptive advantage.
tion has to do with the way power is used to
coordinate and regulate behavior so that order is
Band Organization
maintained. Government, on the other hand, con­
sists of an administrative system having special­ The band is a small group of politically indepen­
ized personnel that may or may not form a part dent, though related, households and is the least
of the political organization, depending on the so­ complicated form of political organization. Bands

Band. A small group of related households occupying a particular region that gather periodically on an ad hoc basis but
that do not yield their sovereignty to the larger collective.
 Political O rganization
usually are found among food foragers and other
nomadic societies where people organize into po­
litically autonomous extended-family groups that
usually camp together, although the members of
such families may frequently split into smaller
groups for periods to forage for food or visit other
relatives. Bands are thus kin groups, composed of
men and/or women who are related (or assumed
to be) and their spouses and unmarried children.
Bands may be characterized as associations of re­
lated families who occupy a common (often
vaguely defined) territory and who live there to­
gether, so long as environmental and subsistence
circumstances are favorable. The band is proba­
bly the oldest form of political organization, since
all humans were once food foragers and remained
so until the development of farming and pastoral-
ism over the past 10,000 years.
Since bands are small, numbering at most a
few hundred people, no real need exists for for­
mal, centralized political systems. In egalitarian
groups, where everyone is related to— and knows
on a personal basis— everyone else with whom
dealings are required and where most everyone
values “getting along” with the natural order of
life, the potential for conflicts to develop is re­
Toma, a Ju/’hoansi headman known to many North Americans through the
documentary film T h e Hunters.
and the M aintenance of O rder CH APTER 12 345
duced in the first place. Many of those that do
arise are settled informally through gossip,
ridicule, direct negotiation, or mediation. In the
latter instances, the emphasis is on achieving a so­
lution considered just by most parties concerned,
rather than conforming to some abstract law or
rule. Where all else fails, disgruntled individuals
have the option of leaving the band to go live in
another where they have relatives.
Decisions affecting a band are made with the
participation of all its adult members, with an em­
phasis on achieving consensus, rather than a sim­
ple majority. Leaders become such by virtue of
their abilities and serve in that capacity only as
long as they retain the community’s confidence.
Thus, they neither have a guaranteed hold on their
position for a specified length of time nor the
power to force people to abide by their decisions.
People will follow them only as long as they con­
sider it in their best interests, and a leader who ex­
ceeds what people are willing to accept quickly
loses followers.
An example of the informal nature of lead­
ership in the band is found among the Ju/’hoansi
Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, whom we met
in Chapters 5 and 6. Each Ju/’hoansi band is
346 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
composed of a group of families who live to ­
gether, linked to one another and to the head­
man or, less often, headwoman through kinship.
Although each band has rights to the territory it
occupies and the resources within it, two or more
bands may range over the same territory. The
head, called the k x a u or “ owner,” is the focal
point for the band’s theoretical ownership of the
territory. The headman or headwoman does not
really own the land or resources but symbolically
personifies the rights of band members to them.
If the head leaves a territory to live elsewhere,
he or she ceases to be the band’s head, and peo­
ple turn to someone else to lead them.
The head coordinates the Ju/’hoansi band’s
movements when resources are no longer adequate
for subsistence in a particular territory. This
leader’s chief duty is to plan when and where the
group will move; when the move begins, his or her
position is at the head of the line. The leader
chooses the site for the new settlement and has the
first choice of a spot for his or her own fire. The
head has no other rewards or duties. For example,
a head does not organize hunting parties, trading
expeditions, the making of artifacts, or gift giving,
nor does this leader make marriage arrangements.
Instead, individuals instigate their own activities.
The headman or headwoman is not a judge and
does not punish other band members. Wrongdoers
are judged and regulated by public opinion, usu­
ally expressed by gossip among band members. A
prime technique for resolving disputes, or even
avoiding them in the first place, is mobility. Those
unable to get along with others of their group sim­
ply move to another group where kinship ties give
them entry rights.
Tribal Organization
The second type of uncentralized or multicentric
authority system is the tribe, a word that, unfor­
tunately, is used in different ways by different peo­
ple. Among the general public, it is used commonly
to label any people who are not organized into
states, irrespective of whether or not they consti­
Tribe. A group of nominally independent communities occupying a specific region and sharing a common language and
culture integrated by som e unifying factor.
the Problem of D isorder
tute what anthropologists would call bands, tribes,
or chiefdoms. Sometimes, the term even is applied
to non-Western peoples who in fact had strongly
centralized states (the Aztecs, for example), a prac­
tice no more warranted than calling the Chinese
people a tribe. Historically, Europeans coined the
term to contrast people they regarded as inferior
with supposedly superior, “civilized” Europeans.
The word often is still used in a derogatory way,
as when political unrest in many parts of the world
is blamed on “tribalism,” which is not accurate
(usually, the strife is the direct consequence of the
creation of multinational states that make it pos­
sible for a governing elite of one nationality to ex­
ploit others for their own benefit).1 To complicate
matters, the term tribe also has a distinct legal
meaning in the United States; it refers to a cen­
tralized political organization imposed upon
American Indian communities that traditionally
were organized in a variety of ways— some as
bands, some as tribes (in the anthropological
sense), and some as chiefdoms.
So what, then, do anthropologists have in
mind when they speak of tribal organization? To
them, a tribal system involves separate bands or
villages integrated by factors such as clans that
unite people in separate communities or age grades
or associations that crosscut kinship or territorial
boundaries. In such cases people sacrifice a degree
of household autonomy to a larger-order group in
return for greater security against enemy attacks
or starvation. Typically, though not invariably, a
tribe has an economy based on some form of farm­
ing or herding. Since these production methods
usually yield more food than those of the food­
foraging band, tribal membership is usually larger
than band membership. Compared to bands,
where population densities are usually less than
1 person per square mile, tribal population densi-
'Whitehead, N. L., & Ferguson, R. B. (1993, November 10).
Deceptive stereotypes about tribal warfare (p. A48). Chroni­
cle o f Higher Education. Van Den Berghe, P. L. (1992). The
modern state: Nation builder or nation killer? International
jou rn a l o f G roup Tensions, 92 (3), 199-200.
 Political O rganization
Shown here is a meeting of the Navajo Tribal Council, a non-traditional governing body
created in response to requirements set by the U.S. government in order for the Navajo
to exercise national sovereignty.
ties always exceed 1 person per square mile and
may be as high as 250 per square mile. Greater
population density in tribes than in bands brings
a new set of problems to be solved as opportuni­
ties for bickering, begging, adultery, and theft in­
crease markedly, especially among people living in
sedentary villages.
Each tribe consists of one or more small, au­
tonomous local communities, which then may
form alliances with one another for various pur­
poses. As in the band, political organization in the
tribe is informal and temporary. Whenever a situ­
ation requiring political integration of all or sev­
eral groups within the tribe arises— perhaps for
defense, to carry out a raid, to pool resources in
times of scarcity, or to capitalize on a windfall that
must be distributed quickly lest it spoil— they join
to deal with the situation in a cooperative man­
ner. When the problem is satisfactorily solved,
each group then returns to its autonomous state.
Leadership among tribes is also informal. The
Navajo Indians, for example, did not think of gov­
ernment as something fixed and all-powerful, and
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 347
leadership was not vested in a central authority. A
local leader was a man respected for his age, in­
tegrity, and wisdom. His advice therefore was
sought frequently, but he had no formal means of
control and could not force any decision on those
who asked for his help. Group decisions were
made by public consensus, although the most in­
fluential man usually played a key role in reach­
ing a decision. Among the social mechanisms that
induced members to abide by group decisions were
withdrawal of cooperation, gossip, criticism, and
the belief antisocial actions caused disease.
Another example of tribal leadership is the
Melanesian Big Man. Such men are leaders of lo­
calized descent groups or of a territorial group.
The Big Man combines a small amount of inter­
est in his tribe’s welfare with a great deal of self-
interested cunning and calculation for his own
gain. His authority is personal; he does not come
to office in any formal sense, nor is he elected. His
status is the result of acts that raise him above
most other tribe members and attract to him a
band of loyal followers.
348 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

Typical of this form of political organization

are the Kapauku of west New Guinea. Among
them, the Big Man is called the tonou/i, or “rich
one.” To achieve this status, one must be male,
wealthy, generous, and eloquent; physical bravery
and skills in dealing with the supernatural also are
frequent characteristics of a ton ow i, but they are
not essential. The ton ow i functions as the head­
man of the village unit.
Kapauku culture places a high value on
wealth, so it is not surprising that a wealthy man
is considered successful and admirable. Yet the
possession of wealth must be coupled with the trait
of generosity, which in this society means not gift
giving but willingness to make loans. Wealthy men
who refuse to lend money to other villagers may
be ostracized, ridiculed, and, in extreme cases, ac­
tually executed by a group of warriors. This so­
leave his household, these men are tied to the
cial pressure ensures that economic wealth is rarely
ton ow i by bonds of affection and gratitude. Polit­
hoarded but instead is distributed throughout the
ical support also comes from the ton ow i’s kins­
group.
men, whose relationship brings with it varying
Through the loans he makes the to n o w i ac­
obligations.
quires his political power. Other villagers comply
The ton ow i functions as a leader in a wide va­
with his requests because they are in his debt (of­
riety of situations. He represents his group when
ten without paying interest), and they do not
dealing with outsiders and other villages; he acts
want to have to repay their loans. Those who
as negotiator and/or judge when disputes break
have not yet borrowed from the to n o w i may wish
out among his followers. Leopold Pospisil, who
to do so in the future, so they, too, want to keep
studied the Kapauku, notes:
his goodwill.
Other sources of support for the ton ow i are The multiple functions of a ton ow i are not limited
apprentices he has taken into his household for to the political and legal fields only. His word also
training. They are fed, housed, given a chance to carries weight in economic and social matters. He
learn the to n o w i’s business wisdom, and given a is especially influential in determining proper dates
loan to get a wife when they leave; in return, they for pig feasts and pig markets, in inducing specific
act as messengers and bodyguards. Even after they individuals to become co-sponsors at feasts, in
 Political O rganization
sponsoring communal dance expeditions to other
villages, and in initiating large projects, such as ex­
tensive drainage ditches and main fences or bridges,
the completion of which requires a joint effort of
the whole community.2
The to n o w i’s wealth comes from his success
at pig breeding (as we discussed in Chapter 2), for
pigs are the focus of the entire Kapauku economy.
Like all kinds of cultivation and domestication,
raising pigs requires a combination of strength,
skill, and luck. It is not uncommon for a ton ow i
to lose his fortune rapidly due to bad management
or bad luck with his pigs. Thus the Kapauku po­
litical structure shifts frequently; as one man loses
wealth and consequently power, another gains it
and becomes a tonow i. These changes confer a de­
gree of flexibility on the political organization and
prevent any one ton ow i from holding political
power for too long.
Kinship Organization
In many tribal societies (as among the Kapauku)
the organizing unit and seat of political authority
is the clan, an association of people who believe
themselves to share a common ancestry. Within
the clan, elders or headmen regulate members’ af­
fairs and represent their clan in relations with
other clans. As a group, the elders of all the clans
may form a council that acts within the commu­
nity or for the community in dealings with out­
siders. Because clan members usually do not all
live together in one community, clan organization
facilitates joint action with members of other com­
munities when necessary.
Another form of tribal kinship bond that pro­
vides political organization is the segmentary lin­
eage system. This system is similar in operation to
the clan, but it is less extensive and is relatively
rare. The best known examples are East African
2Pospisil, L. (1963). The Kapauku Papuans o f west New
Guinea (pp. 5 1 -5 2 ). New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
S e g m e n ta r y lin eag e s y s te m . A form of political organization in which a large group is broken up into clans that are
further divided into lineages.
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 349
societies such as the Somali and the Dinka or Nuer
of the Sudan: pastoral nomads who are highly mo­
bile and widely scattered over large territories. Un­
like other East African pastoralists (the Maasai,
for example), they lack the age grading organiza­
tion that cuts across descent group membership.
The economy of the segmentary tribe is gen­
erally just above subsistence level. Production is
small scale, and the labor pool is just large enough
to provide necessities. Since each lineage in the
tribe produces the same goods, none depends on
another for goods or services. Political organiza­
tion among segmentary lineage societies is usually
informal: They have neither political offices nor
chiefs, although older tribal members may exer­
cise some personal authority. In his classic study
of segmentary lineage organization, Marshall
Sahlins describes how this works among the Nuer.3
According to Sahlins, segmentation is the normal
process of tribal growth. It is also the social means
for temporary unification of a fragmented tribal
society to join in a particular action. The seg­
mentary lineage may be viewed as a substitute for
the fixed political structure, which a tribe cannot
maintain.
Among the Nuer, who number some 2 0 0 ,0 0 0
people living in the swampland and savanna of Su­
dan, at least 20 clans exist. Each is patrilineal and
is segmented into maximal lineages; each of these
is in turn segmented into major lineages, which
are segmented into minor lineages, which in turn
are segmented into minimal lineages. The minimal
lineage is a group descended from one great-grand­
father or great-great-grandfather (Figure 12.1).
The lineage segments among the Nuer are all
equal, and no real leadership or political organi­
zation at all exists above the level of the au­
tonomous minimal or primary segments. The lin­
eage’s entire superstructure is nothing more than
an alliance, active only during conflicts between
3Sahlins, M. (1961). The segmentary lineage: An organiza­
tion of predatory expansion. American A nthropologist, 63,
3 2 2 -3 4 3 .
350 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
F icure I 1 •I
Segmentary lineage organization: a and b represent minimal lineages of 1; 1 and 2 represent minor lineages of
A; A and B represent major lineages of I; and I and II represent maximal lineages of a single clan. In a serious
dispute between (say) a and e, members of b, c, and d will join forces against e because they are more closely
related to a than any are to e.
any of the minimal segments. In any serious dis­
pute between members of different minimal lin­
eage segments, members of all other segments take
the side of the contestant they are most closely re­
lated to, and the issue is then joined between the
higher-order lineages involved to address the issue.
Such a system of political organization is known
as com plem en tary or balan ced op p osition .
the Problem of D isorder
Disputes among the Nuer are frequent, as they
are among other groups with similar organization,
and under the segmentary lineage system, they can
lead to widespread feuds. This possible source of
social disruption is minimized by the actions of
the “leopard-skin chief,” not really a chief but a
holder of a ritual conciliation office. The leopard-
skin chief has no political power and is viewed as
standing outside the lineage network. All he can
do is try to persuade feuding lineages to accept
payment in “blood cattle” rather than taking an­
other life. His mediation gives each side the chance
to back down gracefully before too many people
are killed; but if the participants are for some rea­
son unwilling to compromise, the leopard-skin
chief has no authority to enforce a settlement.
Age-Grade Organization
Age-grade systems provide a tribal society with a
means of political integration beyond the kin
group. Under this system, youths are initiated into
an age grade, and then they pass as sets from one
age grade to another at appropriate ages. Age
grades and sets cut across territorial and kin
groupings and thus may be important means of
political organization. This is the case with the
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 351

ation organization functioned during the 19th cen­

tury among the Plains Indians of the United States,
such as the Cheyenne, whom we will talk about
again later in this chapter. The basic Cheyenne ter­
ritorial and political unit was the band, but seven
military societies, or warriors’ clubs, were com­
mon to the entire tribe; the clubs functioned in
several areas. A boy might be invited to join one
of these societies when he achieved warrior status,
whereupon he became familiar with the society’s
particular insignia, songs, and rituals. In addition
to military functions, the warriors’ societies also
had ceremonial and social functions.
The Cheyenne warriors’ routine daily tasks con­
sisted of overseeing movements in the camp, pro­
tecting a moving column, and enforcing rules
against individual hunting when the whole tribe was
on a buffalo hunt. In addition, each warrior society
had its own repertoire of dances the members per­
formed on special ceremonial occasions. Since each
Cheyenne band had identical military societies bear­
ing identical names, the societies served to integrate
the entire tribe for military and political purposes.4

C e n t r a l i z e d P ol i ti c a l S ystems
Among the Nuer, the leopard-skin chief tries to settle
disputes between lineages. In bands and tribes, authority is uncentralized, and
each group is economically and politically au­
tonomous. Political organization is vested in kin­
ship, age, and common-interest groups. Popula­
Tiriki of East Africa, whose age grades and sets
tions are small and relatively homogeneous, with
we examined in Chapter 11. Among them, the
people engaged mostly in the same sorts of activ­
warrior age grade guards the country, while judi­
ities throughout their lives. As a society’s social life
cial elders resolve disputes. Between these two age
becomes more complex, however, as population
grades are elder warriors, who are in a sense un­
rises and technology becomes more complex, and
derstudies to the judicial elders. The oldest age
as specialization of labor and trade networks pro­
grade, the ritual elders, advise on matters involv­
duce surpluses of goods, the opportunity for some
ing the well-being of all the Tiriki people. Thus,
individuals or groups to exercise control increases.
the tribe’s political affairs are in the hands of the
In such societies, political authority and power are
age grades and their officers. Among East African
concentrated in a single individual— the chief— or
pastoralists, those like the Tiriki with age-grading
in a body of individuals— the state. The state is a
organization generally experience less feuding than
form of organization found in societies where each
those with segmentary lineage organization.
individual must interact on a regular basis with
large numbers of people with diversified interests
Association Organization
who are neither kin nor close acquaintances.
Common-interest associations that function as po­
litically integrative systems within tribes are found
in many areas of the world, including Africa, 4Hoebel, E. A. (I960). The Cheyennes: Indians o f the Great
Melanesia, and India. A good example of associ­ Plains. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
352 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

Chiefdoms Africa.5 Among them is a class of paramount

chiefs, each of whom presides over one of the
A chiefdom is a regional polity in which two or
Kpelle chiefdoms (each of which is now a district
more local groups are organized under a single rul­
of the Liberian state). The paramount chiefs’ tra­
ing individual— the chief— who is at the head of
ditional tasks are hearing disputes, preserving or­
a ranked hierarchy of people. An individual’s sta­
der, seeing to the upkeep of trails, and maintain­
tus in such a polity is determined by his or her
ing “medicines.” In addition, they now are salaried
closeness of relationship to the chief. Those clos­
officials of the Liberian government, mediating
est are officially superior and receive deferential
between it and their people. Other rewards a para­
treatment from those in lower ranks.
mount chief receives include a commission on
The office of the chief is usually hereditary,
taxes collected within his chiefdom, a commission
passing from a man to his own or his sister’s son,
for laborers furnished for the rubber plantations,
depending on whether descent is reckoned patri-
a portion of court fees collected, a stipulated
lineally or matrilineally. Unlike the headmen in
amount of rice from each household, and gifts
bands and lineages, the chief is generally a true
from people who come to request favors and in­
authority figure, and his authority serves to unite
tercessions. In keeping with his exalted station in
his people in all affairs and at all times. For
life, a paramount chief has at his disposal uni­
example, a chief can distribute land among his
formed messengers, a literate clerk, and the sym­
community members and recruit people into his
bols of wealth: many wives, embroidered gowns,
military service. Chiefdoms have a recognized
and freedom from manual labor.
hierarchy consisting of major and minor author­
In a ranked hierarchy beneath each Kpelle para­
ities who control m ajor and minor subdivisions.
mount chief are several lesser chiefs: one for each
Such an arrangement is, in effect, a chain of com­
district within the chiefdom, one for each town
mand, linking leaders at every level. It serves to
bind tribal groups in the heartland to the chief’s
headquarters, be it a mud and dung hut or a mar­
ble palace. 5Gibbs, J. L., Jr. (1965). The Kpelle of Liberia. In J. L. Gibbs
Jr. (Ed.), Peoples o f Africa (pp. 2 1 6 -2 1 8 ). New York: Holt,
The chief controls the economic activities of
Rinehart and Winston.
his people. Chiefdoms are typically redistributive
systems; the chief has control over surplus goods
and perhaps even over the community labor force.
Thus, he may demand a quota of rice from farm­
ers, which he will redistribute to the entire com­
munity. Similarly, he may recruit laborers to build
irrigation works, a palace, or a temple.
The chief also may amass a great amount of
personal wealth and pass it on to his heirs. Land,
cattle, and luxury goods specialists produce can be
collected by the chief and become part of his power
base. Moreover, high-ranking families of the chief­
dom may engage in the same practice and use their
possessions as evidence of status.
An example of people using this form of po­
litical organization is the Kpelle of Liberia in West

Chiefdom . A regional polity in which two o r more local groups are organized under a single chief, who is at the head
of a ranked hierarchy of people.
 Political O rganization
A Kpelle town chief settles a dispute.
within a district, and one for each quarter of all but
the smallest towns. Each acts as a kind of lieutenant
for his chief of the next higher rank and also serves
as a liaison between him and those of lower rank.
Unlike paramount or district chiefs, who are com­
paratively remote, town and quarter chiefs are read­
ily accessible to people at the local level.
Stable though the Kpelle political system may
be today, traditionally chiefdoms in all parts of the
world have been highly unstable. This happens as
lesser chiefs try to take power from higher rank­
ing chiefs or as paramount chiefs vie with one an­
other for supreme power. In precolonial Hawaii,
for example, war was the way to gain territory
and maintain power; great chiefs set out to con­
quer one another in an effort to become para­
mount chief of all the islands. When one chief con­
quered another, the loser and all his nobles were
dispossessed of all property and were lucky if they
escaped alive. The new chief then appointed his
own supporters to positions of political power. As
a consequence, governmental or religious admin­
istration had very little continuity.
S ta te . In anthropology, a centralized political system with the power to coerce.
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 353
State Systems
The state, the most formal of political organiza­
tions, is (like stratification) one of the hallmarks
of civilization. In the state, political power is cen­
tralized in a government, which may legitimately
use force to regulate the affairs of its citizens, as
well as its relations with other states. As anthro­
pologist Bruce Knauft observes:
It is likely . . . that coercion and violence as sys­
tematic means of organizational constraint devel­
oped especially with the increasing socioeconomic
complexity and potential for political hierarchy af­
forded by substantial food surplus and food pro­
duction/
Associated with increased food production is in­
creased population. Together, these lead to a fill­
ing in of the landscape, improvements such as
6Knauft, B. M. (1991). Violence and sociality in human
evolution. Current Anthropology, 32, 391.
354 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

Reflecting the state’s ability to force people to abide by its decisions are insti­
tutions to administer force, like police.

irrigation and terracing, carefully managed rota­
tion cycles, intensive competition for clearly de­
marcated lands, and rural populations large
enough to support market systems and a special­
ized urban sector. Under such conditions, corpo­
rate groups that stress exclusive membership pro­
liferate, ethnic differentiation and ethnocentrism
become more pronounced, and the potential for
social conflict increases dramatically. Given these
circumstances, the state institutions, which mini­
mally involve a bureaucracy, a military, and (usu­
ally) an official religion, provide a means for nu­
merous and diverse groups to function together as
an integrated whole.
Although their guiding ideology pretends they
are permanent and stable, the fact is, since their
first appearance some 5,0 0 0 years ago, states have
been anything but permanent. Whatever stability
they have achieved has been short term at best;
over the long term, they show a clear tendency to­
ward instability and transience. Nowhere have
states even begun to show the staying power ex­
hibited by more uncentralized political systems, the
longest lasting social forms invented by humans.
An important distinction to make at this point
is between nation and state. Today, there are
roughly 181 states in the world, and most did not
exist before the end of World War II. By contrast,
probably about 5,000 nations exist in the world
today. “What makes each a nation is that its peo­
ple share a language, culture, territorial base, and
political organization and history.”7 Today, states
commonly have living within their boundaries
people of more than one nation; for example, the
Yanomami are but one of many nations within
the state of Brazil (other Yanomami live within the
state of Venezuela). Rarely do state and nation co-
7Clay, J. W. (1996). What’s a nation? In W. A. Haviland &
R. J. Gordon (Eds.), Talking about people (2nd ed., p. 188).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

N a tio n . Communities of people who see themselves as "one people" on the basis of common ancestry, history, society,
institutions, ideology, language, territory, and (often) religion.
 Political O rganization
incide, as they do, for example, in Iceland, Japan,
Somalia, and Swaziland. By contrast, some 73%
of the world’s states are multinational.8
An important aspect of the state is its delega­
tion of authority to maintain order within and out­
side its borders. Police, foreign ministries, war
ministries, and other bureaucracies function to
control and punish disruptive acts of crime, ter­
ror, and rebellion. By such agencies the state as­
serts authority impersonally and in a consistent,
predictable manner.
Western forms of government, such as that of
the United States (in reality, a mega state), of
course, are state governments, and their organiza­
tion and workings are undoubtedly familiar to
most everyone. An example of a not-so-familiar
state is that of the Swazi of Swaziland (one of the
world’s few true nation-states), a Bantu-speaking
people who live in southeast Africa.9 They are pri­
marily farmers, but cattle raising is more highly
valued than farming: the ritual, wealth, and power
of their authority system are all intricately linked
with cattle. In addition to farming and cattle rais­
ing, some specialization of labor occurs; certain
people become specialists in ritual, smithing, wood
carving, and pottery. Their goods and services are
traded, although the Swazi do not have elaborate
markets.
The Swazi authority system is characterized
by a highly developed dual monarchy, a hereditary
aristocracy, and elaborate kinship rituals, as well
as by statewide age sets. The king and his mother
are the central figures of all national activity, link­
ing ail the people of the Swazi state: They preside
over higher courts, summon national gatherings,
control age classes, allocate land, disburse national
wealth, take precedence in ritual, and help orga­
nize important social events.
Advising the Swazi king are the senior princes,
who are usually his uncles and half-brothers. Be­
tween the king and the princes are two specially
8Van Den Berghe, P. L. (1992). The modern state: Nation
builder or nation killer? International Journ al o f Group Ten­
sions, 92 (3), 193.
9Kuper, H. (1965). The Swazi of Swaziland. In J. L. Gibbs
Jr. (Ed.), Peoples o f Africa (pp. 4 7 5 -5 1 2 ). New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 355
created tinsila, or “ blood brothers,” who are cho­
sen from certain common clans. These men are
his shields, protecting him from evildoers and
serving him in intimate personal situations. In ad­
dition, the king is guided by two tindvuna, or
counselors, one civil and one military. The peo­
ple of the state make their opinions known
through two councils: the liq o q o , or privy coun­
cil, composed of senior princes, and the libanda,
or council of state, composed of chiefs and head­
men and open to all adult males of the state. The
liq o q o may advise the king, make decisions, and
carry them out. For example, they may rule on
questions about land, education, traditional rit­
ual, court procedure, and transport.
Swazi government extends from the smallest
local unit— the homestead— upward to the central
administration. The head of a homestead has le­
gal and administrative powers; he is responsible
for the crimes of those under him, controls their
property, and speaks for them before his superi­
ors. On the district level, political organization is
similar to that of the central government. The re­
lationship between a district chief, however, and
his subjects is personal and familiar; he knows all
the families in his district. The main check on any
autocratic tendencies he may exhibit rests in his
subjects’ ability to transfer their allegiance to a
more responsive chief. Swazi officials hold their
positions for life and are dismissed only for trea­
son or witchcraft. Incompetence, drunkenness,
and stupidity are frowned upon, but they are not
considered sufficient grounds for dismissal.
356 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving the Problem of D isorder

P ol i t i c a l L e a d e r s h i p
and G ender
Irrespective of cultural configuration, or type of
political organization, women rarely hold impor­
tant positions of political leadership. Furthermore,
when they do occupy publicly recognized offices,
their power and authority rarely exceed those of
men. Nevertheless, exceptions occur, and recent
ones are Corazon Aquino, Sirimavo Badaranaike,
Benazir Bhutto, Gro Ffarlem Brundtland, Indira
Ghandi, Janet Jagan, Golda Meir, and Margaret
Thatcher, who do head or have headed govern­
ments of the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nor­
way, India, Guyana, Israel, and Great Britain, re­
spectively. Historically, one might cite the
occasional “squaw sachems” (woman chiefs) men­
tioned in early accounts of New England Indians,
the last native monarch of Hawaii, and powerful
queens such as Elizabeth I of England or Cather­
ine the Great of Russia. When women do hold
high office, it is often because of their relationship
to men. Thus, a queen is either the wife of a reign­
ing monarch or else the daughter of a king who This Seneca chief, Cornplanter, participated in three
died without a male heir to succeed him. M ore­ treaties with the United States in the late 18th cen­
over, women in focal positions frequently must tury. Although Iroquoian chiefs were always men,
adopt many of the characteristics of temperament they served strictly at the pleasure of women, whose
normally deemed appropriate for men in their so­ position in society was equal to that of men.
cieties. For instance, in her role as prime minister,
Margaret Thatcher displayed the toughness and
assertiveness that, in Western societies, long have and could remove someone from office whenever
been considered desirable masculine qualities, it suited them.
rather than the nurturance and compliance West­ As these cases make clear, low visibility of
erners traditionally have expected of women. women in politics does not necessarily exclude
In spite of all this, in a number of societies, them from the realm of social control nor does it
women regularly enjoy as much political power as mean men have more power in political affairs.
men. In band societies, it is common for them to Sometimes, though, women may play more visi­
have as much of a say in public affairs as men, ble roles, as in the dual-sex systems of West Africa.
even though the latter more often than not are the Among the Igbo of Nigeria, in each political unit,
nominal leaders of their groups. Among the Iro- separate political institutions for men and women
quoian nations of New York State (discussed in give each sex their autonomous spheres of au­
Chapter 11), all leadership positions above the thority, as well as an area of shared responsibil­
household level were, without exception, filled by ity.10 At the head of each was a male obi, consid-
men. Thus they held all positions on the village
and tribal councils, as well as on the great coun­
cil of the league of Five Nations. However, they
lclOkonjo, K. (1976). The dual-sex political system in opera­
were completely beholden to women, for only the tion: Igbo women and community politics in midwestern
latter could appoint men to high office. Moreover, Nigeria. In N. Hafkin 6c E. Bay (Eds.), Women in Africa.
women actively lobbied the men on the councils Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
 Political O rganization
ered the head of government though in fact he
presided over the male community, and a female
om u, the acknowledged mother of the whole com­
munity but in practice concerned with the female
section. Unlike a queen (though both she and the
o b i were crowned), the om u was neither the o b i’s
wife nor the previous o b i ’s daughter.
Just as the Igbo o b i had a council of dignitaries
to advise him and to act as a check against any ar­
bitrary exercise of power, the om u was served by
a council of women in equal number to the o b i’s
male councilors. The duties of the om u and her
councilors involved tasks such as establishing rules
and regulations for the community market (mar­
keting was a women’s activity) and hearing cases
involving women brought to her from throughout
the town or village. If such cases also involved men,
then she and her council would cooperate with the
o b i and his council. Widows also went to the om u
for the final rites required to end their period of
mourning for dead husbands. Since the om u rep­
resented all women, she had to be responsive to
her constituency and would seek their approval
and cooperation in all major decisions.
In addition to the om u and her council, the
Igbo women’s government included a representa­
tive body of women chosen from each quarter or
section of the village or town on the basis of their
ability to think logically and speak well. In addi­
tion, acting at the village or lineage level, were
political-pressure groups of women who acted to
stop quarrels and prevent wars. These were of two
types: women born into a community, most of
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 357
whom lived elsewhere since villages were exoga-
mous and residence was patrilocal, and women
who had married into their community. Their du­
ties included helping companion wives in times of
illness and stress and meting out discipline to lazy
or recalcitrant husbands.
In the Igbo system, then, women managed
their own affairs, and their interests were repre­
sented at all levels of government. Moreover, they
had the right to enforce their decisions and rules
with sanctions similar to those men employed. In­
cluded were strikes, boycotts, and “sitting on a
man” or woman. Political scientist Judith Van
Allen describes the latter:
To “sit on” or “make war on” a man involved gath­
ering at his compound, sometimes late at night,
dancing, singing scurrilous songs which detailed the
women’s grievances against him and often called
his manhood into question, banging on his hut with
the pestles women used for pounding yams, and
perhaps demolishing his hut or plastering it with
mud and roughing him up a bit. A man might be
sanctioned in this way for mistreating his wife, for
violating the women’s market rules, or for letting
his cows eat the women’s crops. The women would
stay at his hut throughout the day, and late into the
night if necessary, until he repented and promised
to mend his ways. . . . Although this could hardly
have been a pleasant experience for the offending
man, it was considered legitimate and no man
would consider intervening.11
Given the high visibility of women in the Igbo
political system, it may come as a surprise to learn
that when the British imposed colonial rule upon
these people, they failed to recognize the auton­
omy and power those women possessed. The rea­
son is the British were blinded by their Victorian
values, which then were at their height. To them,
a woman’s mind was not strong enough for such
supposedly masculine subjects as science, business,
and politics; her place was clearly in the home.
Hence, it was inconceivable women might play im­
portant roles in politics. As a consequence, the
n Van Allen, J. (1979). Sitting on a man: Colonialism and the
lost political institutions of Igbo women. In S. Tiffany (Ed.),
'Women in society (p. 169). St. Albans, VT: Eden Press.
358 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
British introduced “reforms” that destroyed
women’s traditional forms of autonomy and
power without providing alternative forms in ex­
change. Far from enhancing women’s status, as
Western people like to think their influence does,
in this case, women lost their equality and became
subordinate to men. Nor is the Igbo situation
unusual in this regard. Historically, in state-
organized societies, women usually have been sub­
ordinate to men. Hence, when states impose their
control on societies where the sexes are equal to
each other, the situation almost invariably changes
so that women become subordinate to men.
jiv Jj, ¿V Jfc Jfc A Jfe. ih '. & &■- A,
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION AND
THE MAINTENANCE OF ORDER
Whatever form a society’s political organization
may take, and whatever else it may do, it is always
involved in one way or another with maintaining
social order. Always it seeks to ensure that people
behave in acceptable ways and defines the proper
action to take when they do not. In chiefdoms and
states, some sort of authority has the power to reg­
ulate the affairs of society. In bands and tribes, how­
ever, people behave generally as they are expected
to, without the direct intervention of any central­
ized political authority. To a large degree, gossip,
criticism, fear of supernatural forces, and the like
serve as effective deterrents to antisocial behavior.
As an example of how such seemingly infor­
mal considerations serve to keep people in line, we
may look at the Wape people of Papua New
Guinea, who believe the ghosts of dead ancestors
roam lineage lands, protecting them from tres­
passers and helping their hunting descendants by
driving game their way.12 These ghosts also pun­
ish those who have wronged them or their de­
scendants by preventing hunters from finding
12Mitchell, W. E. (1973, December). A new weapon stirs up
old ghosts. Natural History Magazine, 7 7 -8 4 .
C u ltu ra l c o n tro l. Control through beliefs and values deeply internalized in the minds of individuals. > Social con­
tro l. Control over groups through open coercion.
the Problem of D isorder
game or by causing them to miss their shots,
thereby depriving people of much needed meat.
Nowadays, the Wape hunt with shotguns, which
the community purchases for the use of one man,
whose job it is to hunt for all the others. The car­
tridges used in the hunt, however, are invariably
supplied by individual community members. Not
always is the gunman successful; if he shoots and
misses, it is because the owner of the fired shell,
or some close relative, has quarreled or wronged
another person whose ghost relative is securing re­
venge by causing the hunter to miss. Or, if the gun­
man cannot even find game, it is because venge­
ful ghosts have chased the animals away. As a
á 'í
proxy hunter for the villagers, the gunman is po­
tentially subject to ghostly sanctions in response
to collective wrongs by those he hunts for.
For the Wape, then, successful hunting depends
upon avoiding quarrels and maintaining tranquility
within the community so as not to antagonize any­
body’s ghost ancestor. Unfortunately, complete
peace and tranquility are impossible to achieve in
any human community, and the Wape are no ex­
ception. Thus, when hunting is poor, the gunman
must discover what quarrels and wrongs have oc­
curred within his village to identify the proper an­
cestral ghosts to appeal to for renewed success. Usu­
ally, this is done in a special meeting where
confessions of wrongdoing may be forthcoming. If
not, questioning accusations are bandied about un­
til resolution occurs, but even with no resolution,
the meeting must end amicably to prevent new an­
tagonisms. Thus, everyone’s behavior comes under
public scrutiny, reminding everyone of what is ex­
pected of them and encouraging everyone to avoid
acts that will cast them in an unfavorable light.
I n t e r n a l i z e d C ontrols
The Wape concern about ancestral ghosts is a good
example of internalized, or cultural, controls—
beliefs so thoroughly ingrained that each person
becomes personally responsible for his or her own
conduct. Cultural control may be thought of as
control by the mind, as opposed to social control,
 Political O rganization and the Maintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 359

which involves overt coercion. Examples of cul­
tural control also can be found in North Ameri­
can society; for instance, people refrain from com­
mitting incest not so much from fear of legal
punishment as from a sense of deep disgust at the
thought of the act and from the shame they would
feel in performing it. Obviously, not all members
of North American society feel this disgust, or such
a high incidence of incest would not occur, espe­
cially between fathers and daughters, but, then, no
deterrent to misbehavior is ever 100% effective.
Cultural controls are built in, or internalized, and
rely on such deterrents as fear of supernatural pun­
ishment— ancestral ghosts sabotaging the hunting,
for example— and magical retaliation. Like the de­
vout Christian who avoids sinning for fear of hell,
the individual expects some sort of punishment,
even though no one in the community may be
aware of the wrongdoing.
are spontaneously generated among workers on the
factory floor. In small scale communities . . . in­
formal sanctions may become more drastic than the
penalties provided for in the legal code.”14 If, how­
ever, a sanction is to be effective, it cannot be ar­
bitrary. Quite the opposite: Sanctions must be
consistently applied, and the society’s members
must know generally of their existence.
Social sanctions may be categorized as either
positive or negative. Positive sanctions consist of in­
centives to conformity, such as awards, titles, and
recognition by one’s neighbors. Negative sanctions
consist of threats, such as imprisonment, corporal
HEpsrein, A. L. (1968). Sanctions. International Encyclope­
dia o f Social Sciences (Vol. 14, p. 3).

E x t e r n a l i z e d C ontrols
Because internalized controls are not wholly suf­
ficient even in bands and tribes, every society de­
velops customs designed to encourage conformity
to social norms. These institutions are referred to
as sanctions; they are externalized controls and in­
volve varying mixes of cultural and social control.
According to Radcliffe-Brown, “A sanction is a re­
action on the part of a society or of a consider­
able number of its members to a mode of behav­
ior which is thereby approved (positive sanctions)
or disapproved (negative sanctions).”13 Sanctions
also may be either formal or informal and may
vary significantly within a given society.
Sanctions operate within social groups of all
sizes. Moreover, they need not be enacted into law
to play a significant role in regulating peoples’ be­
havior: “They include not only the organized sanc­
tions of the law but also the gossip of neighbors or
the customs regulating norms of production that
Jody Williams, who in 1997 was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize for her work to ban the use of land
mines. Awards such as the Nobel Prize are examples
u Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1952). Structure and function in of positive sanctions, by which societies promote ap­
primitive society (p. 205). New York: Free Press. proved behavior.

Sanctions. Externalized social controls designed to encourage conformity to social norms.

360 PART fV T he Search for O rder: Solving
punishment, or ostracism from the community for
violation of social norms. One example of a nega­
tive sanction discussed earlier is the Igbo practice
of “sitting on a m an.” If some individuals are not
convinced of the advantages of social conformity,
they are still more likely to obey society’s rules than
to accept the consequences of not doing so.
Sanctions also may be categorized as either for­
mal or informal, depending on whether or not a le­
gal statute is involved. In the United States, the man
who wears tennis shorts to a church service may be
subject to a variety of informal sanctions, ranging
from disapproving glances from the clergy to the
chuckling of other parishioners. If, however he were
to show up without any trousers at all, he would
be subject to the formal negative sanction of arrest
for indecent exposure. Only in the second instance
would he have been guilty of breaking the law.
Formal sanctions, such as laws, are always or­
ganized, because they attempt to precisely and ex­
plicitly regulate people’s behavior. Other examples
Negative sanctions may involve some form of regulated combat, seen here as armed dancers
near Mount Hagen in New Guinea demand redress for murder.
Law . Formal negative sanctions.
the Problem of D isorder
of organized sanctions include, on the positive side,
military decorations and monetary rewards. On the
negative side are loss of face, exclusion from so­
cial life and its privileges, seizure of property, im­
prisonment, and even bodily mutilation or death.
Informal sanctions emphasize cultural control
and are diffuse in nature, involving spontaneous ex­
pressions of approval or disapproval by members
of the group or community. They are, nonetheless,
very effective in enforcing a large number of seem­
ingly unimportant customs. Because most people
want to be accepted, they are willing to acquiesce
to the rules that govern dress, eating, and conver­
sation, even in the absence of actual laws.
To show how informal sanctions work, we
will examine them in the context of power rela­
tionships among the Bedouins of Egypt’s western
desert. The example is especially interesting, for it
shows how sanctions not only act to control peo­
ples’ behavior but also act to keep individuals in
their place in a hierarchical society.
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 361

* A li a ,k A i -s k. A A k * * is & A. A A ik A A. A. .}. * A

W here individuals value their independence and believe in equality, those

who exercise authority over others enjoy a precarious status. In Bedouin so­
ciety, social precedence or power depends not on force but on demon­
stration o f the moral virtues that win respect from others. Persons in posi­
tions o f power are said to have social standing (gima), which is recognized
Limits on by the respect paid them.To win the respect o f others, in particular depen­
dents, such persons must adhere to the ideals o f honor provide for and pro­
Power in tect their dependents, and be fair; taking no undue advantage o f their posi­
tions. They must assert their authority gingerly lest it so compromise their
Bedouin dependents' autonomy that it provoke rebellion and be exposed as a sham.
Society16 Because those in authority are expected to treat their dependents, even
children, with some respect, they must draw as little attention as possible to
the inequality o f their relationships. Euphemisms that obscure the nature o f
such relationships abound. For example, Saadi [free tribes] individuals do not
like to call Mrabit [client tribes] associates Mrabtin in their presence. My host
corrected me once when I referred to his shepherds by the technical word
for shepherd, saying, "W e prefer to call them 'people o f the sheep' [hal il-
ghanam]. It sounds nicer'The use o f fictive kin terms serves the same func­
tion o f masking relations o f inequality as fo r example In the case o f patrons
and clients.
Those in authority are also expected to respect their dependents’ dig­
nity by minimizing open assertion o f their power over them. Because the
provider’s position requires dependents, he risks losing his power base if he
alienates them. When a superior publicly orders, insults, or beats a depen­
dent, he invites the rebellion that would undermine his position. Such mo­
ments are fraught with tension, as the dependent might feel the need to re­
spond to a public humiliation to preserve his dignity or honor Indeed, refusal
to comply with an unreasonable order, o r an order given in a compromis­
ing way, reflects well on the dependent and undercuts the authority o f the
person who gave it.
Tyranny is never tolerated for long. Most dependents wield sanctions
that check the power o f their providers. Anyone can appeal to a mediator
to intervene on his or her behalf, and more radical solutions are open to all
but young children. Clients can simply leave an unreasonable patron and at­
tach themselves to a new one.Young men can always escape the tyranny o f
a father or paternal uncle by leaving to join maternal relatives or; if they have
them, affines, or even to become clients to some other family. For the last
LIBYA

twenty years or so, young men could go to Libya to find work.

Younger brothers commonly get out from under difficult elder broth­
ers by splitting off from them, demanding their share o f the patrimony and
setting up separate households.The dynamic is clear in the case o f four broth­
ers who constituted the core o f the camp in which I lived. Two had split off
and lived in separate households. Another tw o still shared property, herds,

15Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments: H on or and poetry in a Bedouin society

(pp. 9 9 -103). Berkeley: University of California Press.
362 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving the Problem of D isorder

and expenses. W hile I was there, tensions began to develop. Although the
elder brother was more important in the community at large, and the younger
brother was slightly irresponsible and less intelligent, for the most part they
worked various enterprises jointly and without friction.The younger brother
deferred to his older brother and usually executed his decisions.
But one day the tensions surfaced. The elder brother came home at
midday in a bad mood only to find that no one had prepared him lunch. He
went to one o f his wives and scolded her for not having prepared any lunch,
asserting that his children had complained that they were hungry. He ac­
cused her o f trying to starve his children and threatened to beat her. His
younger brother tried to intervene, but the elder brother then turned on
him, calling him names. Accusing him o f being lazy (because he had failed to
follow through on a promise involving the care o f the sheep that day), he
then asked why the younger brother let his wife get away with sitting in her
room when there was plenty o f work to be done around the household.
Then he went off toward his other wife carrying a big stick and yelling.
The younger brother was furious and set off to get their mother. The
matriarch, accompanied by another o f her sons, arrived and conferred at
length with the quarreling men.The younger son wished to split off from his
elder brother's household; the other brother scolded him for being so sen­
sitive about a few words, reminding him that this was his elder brother from
whom even a beating should not matter His mother disapproved o f split­
ting up the households. Eventually everyone calmed down. But it is likely that
a few more incidents such as that will eventually lead the younger brother
to demand a separate household.
Even a woman can resist a tyrannical husband by leaving for her natal
home “angry” (mughtaoa). This is the approved response to abuse, and it
forces the husband o r his representatives to face the scolding o f the woman's
kin and, sometimes, to appease her with gifts. Women have less recourse
against tyrannical fathers or guardians, but various informal means to resist
the imposition o f unwanted decisions do exist. As a last resort there is al­
ways suicide, and I heard o f a number o f both young men and women who
committed suicide in desperate resistance to their fathers' decisions, espe­
cially regarding marriage. One old woman's tale illustrates the extent to which
force can be resisted, even by women. Nafla reminisced:

My first marriage was to my paternal cousin [ibn ‘amm]. He was from

the same camp. One day the men came over to our tent. I saw the tent
full o f men and wondered why. I heard they were coming to ask for my
hand [yukhultu fiyya], I went and stood at the edge o f the tent and called
out, “ If you're planning to do anything, stop. I don’t want it.” Well, they
went ahead anyway, and every day I would cry and say that I did not
want to marry him. I was young, perhaps fourteen. When they began
drumming and singing, everyone assured me that it was in celebration
o f another cousin’s wedding, so I sang and danced along with them.This
went on for days.Then on the day o f the wedding my aunt and another
relative caught me in the tent and suddenly closed it and took out the
washbasin. They wanted to bathe me. I screamed. I screamed and
screamed; every time they held a pitcher o f water to wash me with, I
knocked it out o f their hands.
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 363

His relatives came with camels and dragged me into the litter and
took me to his tent. I screamed and screamed when he came into the
tent in the afternoon [for the defloration]. Then at night, I hid among
the blankets. Look as they might, they couldn’t find me. My father was
furious. After a few days he insisted I had to stay in my tent with my
husband. As soon as he left, I ran off and hid behind the tent in which
the groom’s sister stayed. I made her promise not to tell anyone I was
there and slept there.
But they made me go back.That night, my father stood guard nearby
with his gun. Every time I started to leave the tent, he would take a puff
on his cigarette so I could see that he was still there. Finally I rolled my­
self up in the straw mat. When the groom came, he looked and looked
but could not find me.
Finally I went back to my family's household. I pretended to be pos­
sessed. I tensed my body, rolled my eyes, and everyone rushed about,
brought me incense and prayed for me. They brought the healer [or
holyman, fgih], who blamed the unwanted marriage.Then they decided
that perhaps I was too young and that I should not be forced to return
to my husband. I came out o f the seizure, and they were so grateful
that they forced my husband’s family to grant a divorce. My family re­
turned the bride-price, and I stayed at home.

Nafla could not oppose her father’s decision directly, but she was nev­
ertheless able to resist his will through indirect means. Like other options
for resistance by dependents unfairly treated, abused, o r humiliated publicly,
her rebellion served as a check on her father’s and, perhaps, more impor­
tant, her paternal uncle's power
Supernatural sanctions, which seem to be associated with the weak and
with dependents, provide the final check on abuse o f authority. Supernat­
ural retribution is believed to follow when the saintly lineages o f Mrabtin
are mistreated, their curses causing death o r the downfall o f the offender’s
lineage. In one Bedouin tale, when a woman denied food to tw o young girls,
she fell ill, and blood appeared on food she cooked— a punishment fo r mis­
treating the helpless. Possession, as Nafla's tale illustrates, may also be a form
o f resistance.. . .
All these sanctions serve to check the abuse o f power by eminent per­
sons who have the resources to be autonomous and to control those who
are dependent upon them. A t the same time, moreover; figures o f authority
are vulnerable to their dependents because their positions rest on the re­
spect these people are willing to give them.

Another agent of control in societies, whether
or not they possess centralized political systems,
may be witchcraft. An individual naturally would
hesitate to offend a neighbor when that neighbor
might retaliate by resorting to black magic. Simi­
larly, individuals may not wish to be accused of
practicing witchcraft, so they behave with greater
circumspection. Among the Azande of the Sudan,
people who think they have been bewitched may
consult an oracle, who, after performing the
364 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
appropriate mystical rites, then may establish or
confirm the identity of the offending witch.16 Con­
fronted with this evidence, the accused witch usu­
ally will agree to cooperate in order to avoid any
additional trouble. Should the victim die, the rel­
atives of the deceased may choose to make magic
against the witch, ultimately accepting the death
of some villager both as evidence of guilt and of
the efficacy of their magic. For the Azande, witch­
craft provides not only a sanction against antiso­
cial behavior but also a means of dealing with
natural hostilities and death. No one wishes to be
thought of as a witch, and surely no one wishes
to be victimized by one. By institutionalizing their
emotional responses, the Azande successfully
maintain social order. (For more on witchcraft, see
Chapter 13.)
SOCIAL CONTROL THROUGH
LAW
Among the Inuit of northern Canada, all offenses
are considered to involve disputes between indi­
viduals; thus, they must be settled between the dis­
putants themselves. One way they may do so is
through a song duel, in which they heap insults
upon one another in songs specially composed for
the occasion. Although society does not intervene,
its interests are represented by spectators, whose
applause determines the outcome. If, however, so­
cial harmony cannot be restored— and that, rather
than assigning and punishing guilt, is the goal—
one or the other disputant may move to another
band. Among the Inuit, the alternative to peace­
ful settlement is to leave the group. Ultimately, no
binding legal authority exists.
In Western society, by contrast, someone who
commits an offense against another person is sub­
ject to a series of complex legal proceedings. In
criminal cases the primary concern is to assign and
punish guilt, rather than to help out the victim. The
offender will be arrested by the police; tried before
a judge and, perhaps, a jury; and, if the crime is
16Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1937). Witchcraft, oracles and
m agic am ong the Azande. London: Oxford University Press.
the Problem of D isorder
serious enough, may be fined, imprisoned, or even
executed. Rarely does the victim receive restitution
or compensation. Throughout this chain of events,
the accused party is dealt with by (presumably) dis­
interested police, judges, jurors, and jailers, who
may have no personal acquaintance whatsoever
with the plaintiff or the defendant. How strange
this all seems from the standpoint of traditional
Inuit culture! Clearly, the two systems operate un­
der distinctly different assumptions.
D efinition of Law
Once two Inuit settle a dispute by engaging in a
song contest, the affair is considered closed; no
further action is expected. Would we choose to de­
scribe the outcome of such a contest as a legal de­
cision? If every law is a sanction but not every
sanction is a law, how are we to distinguish be­
tween social sanctions in general and those we ap­
ply the label of law to?
The definition of law has been a lively point
of contention among anthropologists in the 20th
century. In 1926, Malinowski argued that the rules
of law are distinguished from the rules of custom
in that “they are regarded as the obligation of one
person and the rightful claim of another, sanc­
tioned not by mere psychological motive, but by
a definite social machinery of binding force based
. . . upon mutual dependence.”17 In other words,
laws exemplify social control because they employ
overt coercion. An example of one rule of custom
in contemporary North American society might be
the dictate that guests at a dinner party should re­
pay the person who gave the party with enter­
tainment in the future. A host or hostess who does
not receive a return invitation may feel cheated of
something thought to be owed but has no legal
claim against the ungrateful guest for the $22.67
spent on food. If, however, an individual was
cheated of the same sum by the grocer when shop­
ping, the law could be invoked. Although M ali­
nowski’s definition introduced several important
elements of law, his failure to distinguish ade­
quately between legal and nonlegal sanctions left
17Malmowski, B. (1951). Crime and custom in savage soci­
ety (p. 55). London: Routledge.
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 365

In Western society, someone who commits an offense against someone else is subject to a
series of complex proceedings, in which the emphasis is on assigning and punishing guilt. In
non-Western societies, by contrast, the emphasis is often on finding a solution that both
parties can live with.

the problem of formulating a workable definition
of law in the hands of later anthropologists.
An important pioneer in the anthropological
study of law was E. Adamson Hoebel, according
to whom “a social norm is legal if its neglect or
infraction is regularly met, in threat or in fact,
by the application of physical force by an indi­
vidual or group possessing the socially recognized
privilege of so acting.” 18 In stressing the legiti­
mate use of physical coercion, Hoebel de-em-
phasized the traditional association of law with
a centralized court system. Although judge and
jury are fundamental features of Western ju ­
risprudence, they are not the universal backbone
of human law. Some anthropologists have pro­
posed that a precise definition of law is an im­
possible— and perhaps even undesirable— under­
taking. When we speak of “the law,” are we not
lsHoebd, E. A. (1954). The law o f primitive man: A study
in comparative legal dynamics (p. 28). Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press.
inclined to fall back on our familiar Western con­
ception of rules enacted by an authorized leg­
islative body and enforced by the judicial mech­
anisms of the state? Can any concept of law be
applied to such societies as the Nuer or the Inuit,
for whom the notion of a centralized judiciary is
virtually meaningless? How shall we categorize
duels, song contests, and other socially condoned
forms of self-help that seem to meet some but not
all of the criteria of law?
Ultimately, it is always of greatest value to
consider each case within its cultural context.
Nonetheless, a working definition of law is useful
for purposes of discussion and cross-cultural com­
parison, and for this law is adequately character­
ized as formal negative sanctions.
Functions of Law
In T he L aw o f Primitive Man (1954), Hoebel writes
of a time when the notion that private property
should be generously shared was a fundamental
precept of Cheyenne Indian life. Subsequently,
366 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

however, some men assumed the privilege of bor­

rowing other men’s horses without bothering to ob­
tain permission. When Wolf Lies Down complained
of such unauthorized borrowing to the members of
the Elk Soldier Society, the ELk Soldiers not only
had his horse returned to him but also secured an
award for damages from the offender. The Elk Sol­
diers then announced that, to avoid such difficul­
ties in the future, horses no longer could be
borrowed without permission. Furthermore, they
declared their intention to retrieve any such prop­
erty and to administer a whipping to anyone who
resisted their efforts to return improperly borrowed
goods.
The case of W olf Lies Down and the Elk Sol­
dier Society clearly illustrates three basic func­
tions of law. First, it defines relationships among
society members, determining proper behavior
under specified circumstances. Knowledge of the
law permits each person to know his or her rights
and duties in respect to every other society mem­
ber. Second, law allocates the authority to em­
ploy coercion in the enforcement of sanctions. In This picture of Timothy McVeigh, convicted of
societies with centralized political systems, such bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City,
authority is generally vested in the government illustrates the role of overt coercion in law.
and its judiciary system. In societies that lack
centralized political control, the authority to
employ force may be allocated directly to the in­ punished by execution of the culprits, and in an­
jured party. Third, law functions to redefine so­ other by severe beating, in the third constituent
cial relations and to ensure social flexibility. As lineage such a relationship was not punishable
new situations arise, law must determine and . . . was not regarded as incest at all. In one
whether old rules and assumptions retain their of the sublineages, it became even a preferred type
validity and the extent to which they must be al­ of marriage.19
tered. Law, if it is to operate efficiently, must al­
Furthermore, the power to employ sanctions
low room for change.
may vary from level to level within a given soci­
In practice, law is rarely the smooth and well-
ety. The head of a Kapauku household may pun­
integrated system described here. In any given so­
ish a household member by slapping or beating,
ciety, various legal sanctions may apply at various
but the authority to confiscate property is vested
levels. Because the people in a society are usually
exclusively in the headman of the lineage. Analo­
members of numerous subgroups, they are subject
gous distinctions exist in the United States among
to the dictates of these diverse groups. For exam­
municipal, state, and federal jurisdictions. The
ple, each Kapauku is simultaneously a member of
complexity of legal jurisdiction within each soci­
a family, a household, a sublineage, and a con­
ety makes any easy generalization about law dif­
federacy and is subject to all their laws. In some
ficult.
cases it may be impossible for an individual to sub­
mit to contradictory legal indications:
In one of the confederacy’s lineages, incestuous re­ l9Pospisil, L. ¡1971). A nthropology o f law: A comparative
lations between members of the same clan were theory (p. 36). New York: Harper & Row.
 Political O rganization
C ri me
As we have observed, an important function of
sanctions, legal or otherwise, is to discourage the
breach of social norms. A person contemplating
theft is aware of the possibility of being caught
and punished. Yet, even in the face of severe sanc­
tions, individuals in every society sometimes vio­
late the norms and subject themselves to the con­
sequences of their behavior. What is the nature of
crime in non-Western societies?
Western society makes a clear distinction be­
tween offenses against the state and offenses against
an individual. B la ck ’s L a w D ictionary tells us:
The distinction between a crime and a tort or civil
injury is that the former is a breach and violation
of the public right and of duties due to the whole
community considered as such, and in its social and
aggregate capacity; whereas the latter is an in­
fringement or privation of the civil rights of indi­
viduals merely.20
Thus, a reckless driver who crashes into an­
other car may be guilty of a crime by endanger­
ing public safety. The same driver also may be
guilty of a tort by causing damages to the other
car, and the other driver can sue for their cost.
Many non-Western societies, however, have no
conception of a central state. Consequently, all of­
fenses are viewed as against individuals, rendering
the distinction between crime and tort of no value.
Indeed, a dispute between individuals may seriously
disrupt the social order, especially in small groups
where the number of disputants, though small in
absolute numbers, may be a large percentage of the
total population. Although the Inuit have no effec­
tive domestic or economic unit beyond the family,
a dispute between two people will interfere with the
ability of members of separate families to come to
20Black, H. C. (1968). B lack’s law dictionary. St. Paul, MN:
West.
N e g o tiation . The use of direct argument and compromise by the parties to a dispute to arrive voluntarily at a mutu­
ally satisfactory agreement. > M e d iatio n . Settlement of a dispute through negotiation assisted by an unbiased third
party. > A d jud icatio n. Mediation with an unbiased third party making the ultimate decision.
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 367
one another’s aid when necessary and is conse­
quently a matter of wider social concern. The goal
of judicial proceedings in most cases is to restore
social harmony, instead of punishing an offender.
When distinguishing between offenses of concern to
the community as a whole and those of concern
only to a few individuals, we may refer to offenses
as public or private, rather than distinguishing be­
tween criminal and civil law. In this way we may
avoid values and assumptions irrelevant to a dis­
cussion of non-Western systems of law.
Basically, disputes are settled in either of two
ways. First, disputing parties may, via argument
and compromise, voluntarily arrive at a mutually
satisfactory agreement. This form of settlement is
referred to as negotiation or, if it involves an un­
biased third party’s assistance, mediation. In bands
and tribes a third-party mediator has no coercive
power and thus cannot force disputants to abide
by such a decision, but as a person who commands
great personal respect, the mediator frequently
may effect a settlement through these judgments.
Second, in chiefdoms and states, an authorized
third party may issue a binding decision the dis­
puting parties will be compelled to respect. This
process is referred to as adjudication. The differ­
ence between mediation and adjudication is basi­
cally a difference in authorization. In a dispute set­
tled by adjudication, the disputing parties present
their positions as convincingly as they can, but they
do not participate in the ultimate decision making.
Although the adjudication process is not uni­
versally characteristic, every society employs some
form of negotiation to settle disputes. Often nego­
tiation acts as a prerequisite or an alternative to ad­
judication. For example, in the resolution of U.S.
labor disputes, striking workers may first negotiate
with management, often with the mediation of a
third party. If the state decides the strike constitutes
a threat to the public welfare, the disputing parties
may be forced to submit to adjudication. In this
case, the responsibility for resolving the dispute is
transferred to a presumably impartial judge.
368 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving the
6 ! i i ä
Dispute Resolution and the
Anthropologist
n an era when the peaceful resolution o f disputes is
I increasingly valued, the field o f dispute management
is one o f growing anthropological involvement (and em­
ployment), One practitioner is William L. Ury, an inde­
pendent negotiations specialist who earned his PhD at
Harvard University. His 1982 dissertation was titled Talk
Out or Walk Out The Role and Control of Conflict in a
Kentucky Coal Mine.
A t Harvard, Ury cofounded— with Roger Fisher of
the law school— the Program on Negotiation.Together
the tw o also authored what has become the negotia­
tor's “ bible": Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement With­
out Giving in (published in 19 8 1, it has been translated
into 21 languages). In 1980, Ury helped the United
States and Soviet Union replace their obsolete “ hot
line" with fully equipped nuclear crisis centers in each
capital.
Ury now runs regular workshops on dealing with
difficult people and situations. Among those who have
enlisted his services is the Ford M otor Company, whose
6,000 top executives worldwide have taken his semi­
nars. As one put it: “ His influence on the company is
incalculable. He inoculated a whole culture with a new
way o f looking at things."* Now, he specializes in eth­
nic and secessionist disputes, including those between
W hite and Black South Africans, Serbs and Croats, and
The judge’s work is difficult and complex. Not
only must the evidence presented be sifted
through, but also the judge must consider a wide
range of norms, values, and earlier rulings to ar­
rive at a decision intended to be considered just
not only by the disputing parties but by the pub­
lic and other judges as well.
In the United States, for the past 3 decades a
significant movement away from the courts in fa­
vor of outside negotiation and mediation to re­
solve a wide variety of disputes has been occur­
ring. Many jurists see this as a means to clear
Problem of D isorder
Turks and Kurds. One o f his toughest jobs has been to
mediate a peace between the Russians and Chechens,
a task that has brought together other adversaries from
the form er Soviet Union as well: Tatars, Crimeans,
Moldovans, and Georgians.
In his most recent book, Getting Past No: Negoti­
ating Your Way From Confrontation, Ury praises the per­
spective o f Japan's “ home-run king” who viewed op­
posing "pitchers” not as enemies trying to do him in
but as partners offering repeated opportunities to hit
another ball out o f the park. In dealing with the
Chechens, one o f his techniques was to have them
imagine the speech Russian President Boris Yeltsin could
give that would help his people accept the Chechens'
goal. The Russians were asked to do the same: What
kind o f speech could the Chechen president give that
would persuade his followers to remain in the Russian
Federation?
Ury and others are helping to create a culture of
negotiation in a world where adversarial, win-lose atti­
tudes are out o f step with the increasingly interdepen­
dent relations among people.
’’'Stewart, D. (1997). Expanding the pie before you divvy it
up. Smithsonian, 28, 82.
overloaded court dockets so as to concentrate on
more important cases. A correlate of this move is
a change in ideology, elevating order and harmony
to positive values and replacing open coercion
(seen as “undemocratic”) with control through
persuasion. In the abstract, this seems like a good
change and suggests a return to a system of cul­
tural control characteristic of band and tribal so­
cieties. However, a crucial difference exists. In
tribal and band societies, consensus is less likely
to be coercive, because all concerned individuals
can negotiate and mediate on relatively equal
 Political O rganization
terms. The United States, by contrast, has great
disparities in power, and evidence indicates that it
is the stronger parties that prefer mediation and
negotiation. As anthropologist Laura Nader points
out, now less emphasis is given on justice and on
concern with the causes of disputes than on
smoothing things over in ways that tend to be paci­
fying and restrictive; an emphasis that produces
order of a repressive sort.21
In many politically centralized societies, in­
corruptible supernatural, or at least nonhuman,
powers are thought to make judgments through
trial by ordeal. Among the Kpelle of Liberia, for
example, when guilt is in doubt an ordeal opera­
tor licensed by the government may apply a hot
knife to a suspect’s leg. If the leg is burned, the
suspect is guilty; if not, innocence is assumed. But
the operator does not merely heat the knife and
apply it. After massaging the suspect’s legs and de­
termining the knife is hot enough, the operator
then strokes his own leg with it without being
burned, demonstrating that the innocent will es­
cape injury. The knife is then applied to the sus­
pect. Up to this point— consciously or uncon­
sciously— the operator has read the suspect’s
21Nader, L. (1997). Controlling processes: Tracing the d
namic components of power. Current Anthropology, 38,
7 1 4-715.
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 369
nonverbal cues: gestures, the degree of muscular
tension, amount of perspiration, and so forth.
From this the operator can judge whether or not
the accused is showing enough anxiety to indicate
probable guilt; in effect, a psychological stress
evaluation has been made. As the knife is applied,
it is manipulated to either burn or not burn the
suspect, once this judgment has been made. The
operator easily does this manipulation by con­
trolling how long the knife is in the fire, as well
as the pressure and angle at which it is pressed
against the leg.22
Similar to this is the use of the lie detector
(polygraph) in the United States, although the
guiding ideology is scientific rather than super-
naturalistic. Nevertheless, an incorruptible non­
human agency is thought to establish who is
lying and who is not, whereas in reality the poly­
graph operator cannot just “read” the needles of
the machine. He or she must judge whether or
not they are registering a high level of anxiety
brought on by the testing situation, as opposed
to the stress of guilt. Thus, the polygraph oper­
ator has much in common with the Kpelle ordeal
operator.
y - --------------- ■-------------
22Gibbs, J. L., Jr. (1983). [Interview.] Faces o f culture: Pro-
gram 18. Fountain Valley, CA: Coast Telecourses.
 370 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem
4 & ,4 ,i 4 *- A. k k *■ A. A. A. k A A &
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION AND
■ EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Although the regulation of internal affairs is an
important function of any political system, it is by
no means the sole function. Another is the man­
agement of external or international affairs—
relations not just between states but also between
different bands, lineages, clans, or whatever the
largest autonomous political unit may be. And just
as threatened or actual force may be used to main­
tain order within a society, it also may be used in
the conduct of external affairs.
W ar
One of the state’s responsibilities is the organiza­
tion and execution of war. Throughout the past
few thousand years of history, people have engaged
in a seemingly endless chain of wars and intergroup
hostilities. Why do wars occur? Is the need to wage
war an instinctive feature of the human personal­
ity? W hat are the alternatives to violence as a
means of settling disputes between societies?
War is not a universal phenomenon, for in var­
ious parts of the world societies do not practice
warfare as we know it. Examples include people
as diverse as the Bushmen of southern Africa, the
Arapesh of New Guinea, and the Hopi of North
America. Among societies that do practice war­
fare, levels of violence may differ dramatically. O f
warfare in New Guinea, for example, anthropol­
ogist Robert Gordon notes:
It’s slightly more “civilized” than the violence of
warfare which we practice insofar as it’s strictly be­
tween two groups. And as an outsider, you can go
up and interview people and talk to them while
they’re fighting and the arrows will miss you. It’s
quite safe and you can take photographs. Now, of
course, the problem with modern warfare is precisely
that it kills indiscriminately and you can’t do much
research on it, but at the same time, you can learn
a lot talking to these people about the dynamics of
how violence escalates into full-blown warfare.23
23Gordon, R. J. (1981, December). [Interview.] Los Angeles:
Coast Telecourses.
of D isorder
k, We have ample reason to suppose war has be­
come a problem only in the past 10,000 years,
since the invention of food-production techniques
and especially centralized states. It has reached cri­
sis proportions in the past 200 years, with the in­
vention of modern weaponry and increased direc­
tion of violence against civilian populations. In
contemporary warfare, we have reached the point
where casualties not just of civilians but also of
children outnumber those of soldiers. Thus, war
is not so much an age-old problem, as some have
supposed, as it is a relatively recent one.
Among food foragers, with their uncentralized
political systems, warfare is all but unknown, al­
though violence emerges sporadically. Because
territorial boundaries and membership of food-for-
aging bands are usually fluid and loosely defined,
a man who hunts with one band today may hunt
with a neighboring band tomorrow. Warfare is fur­
ther rendered impractical by the systematic inter­
change of marriage partners among food-foraging
groups— it is likely someone in each band will have
a sister, a brother, or a cousin in a neighboring
band. Moreover, absence of a food surplus does
not permit prolonged combat. Where populations
are small, food surpluses absent, property owner­
ship minimal, and no state organization exists, the
likelihood of organized violence by one group
against another is minimal.24
Although peaceful farmers exist and despite the
traditional view of the farmer as a gentle tiller of
the soil, it is among such people, along with pas-
toralists, warfare becomes prominent. One reason
may be that food-producing peoples are far more
prone to population growth than are food foragers,
whose numbers generally are maintained well be­
low carrying capacity. This population growth, if
unchecked, can lead to resource depletion, one so­
lution to which may be seizure of some other peo­
ple’s resources. In addition, the commitment to a
fixed piece of land inherent in farming makes such
societies somewhat less fluid in their membership
than those of food foragers. In rigidly matrilocal or
patrilocal societies, each new generation is bound
to the same territory, no matter how small it may
be or how large the group trying to live within it.
24Knauft, B. (1991). Violence and sociality in human evolu-
tion. Current Anthropology, 32, 3 9 1 -4 0 9 .
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 371

In Mexico, as in many countries of the world, armed conflict has become commonplace
as governments controlled by one ethnic group seek to control members of other once
autonomous ethnic groups in order to benefit from their resources and labor. Shown here
are police of the Mexican state of Chiapas, with local Maya Indians and (in the bags) the
bodies of sympathizers of the Zapatista rebel movement, 45 of whom were massacred in
late 1997. The Zapatista movement is a largely Indian uprising following 5 0 0 years of
exploitation by the Spanish and their descendants in Mexico.

The availability of virgin land may not serve
as a sufficient detriment to the outbreak of war.
Among slash-and-burn horticulturists, for exam­
ple, competition for land cleared of virgin forest
frequently leads to hostility and armed conflict.
The centralization of political control and the pos­
session of valuable property among farming peo­
ple provide many more stimuli for warfare. When
such peoples are organized into states, the violence
of warfare is most apt to result in indiscriminate
killing. This development has reached its peak in
modern states. Indeed, much (but not all) of the
warfare observed in stateless societies (so-called
tribal warfare) has been induced by states, as a re­
action to their colonial expansion.25
25Whitehead, N. L , &c Ferguson, R. B. (1993, November).
Deceptive stereotypes about tribal warfare. Chronicle o f
Higher Education, A4 8.
Another difference between food-gathering
and food-producing populations lies in their dif­
ferent worldviews. As a general rule, food for­
agers tend to conceive of themselves as a part of
the natural world and in some sort of balance with
it. This is reflected in their attitudes toward the
animals they kill. Western Abenaki hunters, for
example, thought animals, like humans, were
composed of both a body and a personal spirit.
Although Abenakis hunted and killed animals to
sustain their own lives, they clearly recognized
that animals were entitled to proper respect. Thus,
when beaver, muskrat, or waterfowl were killed,
the hunters could not just toss their bones into
the nearest garbage pit. Proper respect required
that their bones be returned to the water, with a
request that the species be continued. Such atti­
tudes may be referred to as part of a naturalistic
worldview.

Worldviews. The conceptions, explicit and implicit, an individual or a society has of the limits and workings of its world.
372 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving
The Abenaki’s respect for nature contrasts
sharply with the kind of worldview prevalent
among farmers and pastoralists, who do not find
their food in nature but impose their dominance
upon it to produce food for themselves. The atti­
tude that nature exists only for human use may be
referred to as an exploitative worldview. With such
an outlook, it is a small step from dominating the
rest of nature to dominating other societies for the
benefit of one’s own. The exploitative worldview,
prevalent among food-producing peoples, is an im­
portant contributor to intersocietal warfare.
A comparison between the Western Abenakis
and their Iroquoian neighbors to the west is in­
structive. Among the Abenakis warfare was es­
sentially a defensive activity. These food foragers,
with their naturalistic worldview, believed they
could not operate in someone else’s territory, since
they did not control the necessary supernatural
powers. Furthermore, operating far below carry­
ing capacity, they had no need to prey upon the
resources of others. The Iroquois, by contrast,
were slash-and-burn horticulturists who engaged
in predatory warfare. Evidence indicates signifi­
cant environmental degradation around their set­
tlements, suggesting overutilization of resources.
Although the Iroquois went to war to replace men
lost in previous battles, the main motive was to
achieve dominance by making their victims ac­
knowledge Iroquoian superiority. The relation be­
tween victim and victor, however, was subjection,
rather than outright subordination. The payment
of tribute purchased “protection” from the Iro­
quois, no doubt helping to offset the depletion of
resources near the village of the would-be protec­
tors. The price of protection went further than
this, though; it included constant and public cer­
emonial deference to the Iroquois, free passage for
their war parties through the subjugated group’s
country, and the contribution of young men to Iro­
quoian war parties.
A comparison between the Iroquois and Eu­
ropeans is also instructive. Sometime in the 16th
century, five Iroquoian nations— the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—
determined to end warfare among themselves by
the simple device of directing their predatory ac­
tivities against outsiders, rather than each other.
In this way the famous League of the Iroquois
the Problem of D isorder
came into being. Similarly, in the year 1095, Pope
Urban II launched the Crusades with a speech urg­
ing European barons to end their ceaseless wars
against each other by directing their hostilities out­
ward against the Turks and Arabs. In that same
speech he also alluded to the economic benefits to
be realized by seizing the resources of the infidels.
Although rationalized as a “holy war,” the Cru­
sades clearly were motivated by more than reli­
gious ideology.
Although the Europeans never did “liberate”
the Holy Land, at least some of them did benefit
from the booty obtained in battle, lending cre­
dence to the idea people could live better than they
had before by locating and seizing the resources
of others. Thus, the state formation that occurred
in Europe in the centuries after a . d . 1000 was fol­
lowed by colonial expansion into other parts of
the world. Proceeding in concert with this growth
and outward expansion was the development of
the technology and organization of warfare.
The idea that warfare is an acceptable way to
gain economic benefits is still a part of the Euro­
pean cultural tradition, as the following from a quite
serious letter that appeared in New Hampshire’s
largest daily newspaper several years ago illustrates:
“If a war is necessary to stabilize the economy, then
we shall have a war. It affects the everyday lives of
most of us so little that we need hardly acknowl­
edge the fact that it is going on. Surely the sacrifice
of a son, husband or father by a hundred or so of
our citizens every week is not that overwhelming.
They will forget their losses in time.”26 Certainly,
we would like to think this kind of attitude is not
widespread in the United States, and perhaps it is
not, but we do not know this for a fact. Nor do we
really know the extent it is or is not held by mem­
bers of those segments of U.S. society that tend to
influence the setting of public policy. These un­
knowns obviously raise important questions, and
we need to find out more about them.
As the examples show, the causes of warfare
are complex; economic, political, and ideological
factors are all involved. With the emergence of
states (not just in Europe but in other parts of the
“ Quoted in MacNeil, R. (1982). The right place at the right
time (p. 263). Boston: Little, Brown.
 Political O rganization
Shown here are U.S. soldiers in Haiti, where intervention to restore President Aristide to power fortu­
nately turned out to be relatively peaceful. Since World War II, no state has gone to war as often as the
United States.
world as well) has come a dramatic increase in the
scale of warfare. Perhaps this is not surprising,
given the state’s acceptance of force as a legitimate
tool for regulating human affairs and its ability to
organize large numbers of people. In the modern
world, we are as far (and probably further) from
the elimination of war as humanity ever has been,
a fact reflected in the 120-odd shooting wars go­
ing on in the mid-1990s. Moreover, value systems
seem to be as crucial as any element to the con­
tinued existence of warfare.
POLITICAL SYSTEMS AND THE
QUESTION OF LEGITIMACY
Whatever form a society’s political system may
take and however the society may go about its
business, it always must find some way to obtain
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 373
the people’s allegiance. In uncentralized systems,
where every adult participates in all decision mak­
ing, loyalty and cooperation are freely given, since
each person is considered a part of the political
system. As the group grows larger, however, and
the organization becomes more formal, the prob­
lems of obtaining and keeping public support be­
come greater.
In centralized political systems, increased re­
liance is placed upon coercion as a means of social
control. This, however, tends to lessen the effec­
tiveness of a political system. For example, the staff
needed to apply force often must be large and may
itself grow to be a political power. The emphasis on
force also may create resentment from those it is
applied to, which lessens cooperation. Thus, police
states are generally short-lived; most societies choose
less-extreme forms of social coercion. In the United
States, this is reflected in the increasing emphasis
placed on cultural, as opposed to social, control.
374 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving
Also basic to the political process is the con­
cept of legitimacy, or the right of political leaders
to rule. Like force, legitimacy is a form of support
for a political system; unlike force, legitimacy is
based on the values a particular society believes
most important. For example, among the Kapauku
the legitimacy of the to n o w i’s power comes from
his wealth; the kings of Hawaii, and of England
and France before their revolutions, were thought
to have a divine right to rule; and the head of the
Dahomey state of West Africa acquires legitimacy
through his age, as he is always the oldest living
male.
In the United States, in spite of an official separation of church and state, the president is always sworn in over a
Christian Bible.
the Problem of D isorder
Legitimacy grants the right to hold, use, and
allocate power. Power based on legitimacy, a form
of cultural control, may be distinguished from
power based on force alone (social control): Obe­
dience to the former results from the belief obe­
dience is “right”; compliance to power based on
force results from fear of the deprivation of lib­
erty, physical well-being, life, and material prop­
erty. Thus, power based on legitimacy is symbolic
and depends not upon any intrinsic value but upon
the positive expectations of those who recognize
and accede to it. If the expectations are not met
regularly (if the head of state fails to deliver “eco-
 Political O rganization
nomic prosperity” or the leader is continuously
unsuccessful in preventing horse or camel theft),
the legitimacy of the recognized power figure is
minimized and may collapse altogether.
RELIGION AND POLITICS
Religion is intricately connected with politics. Re­
ligious beliefs may influence laws: Acts people be­
lieve to be sinful, such as sodomy and incest, are
often illegal as well. Frequently, it is religion that
legitimizes the political order.
In both industrial and nonindustrial societies,
belief in the supernatural is important and is re­
flected in people’s governments. The effect of re­
ligion on politics was perhaps best exemplified in
medieval Europe. Holy wars were fought over the
smallest matter; labor was mobilized to build im­
mense cathedrals in honor of the Virgin and other
saints; and kings and queens ruled by “divine
right,” pledged allegiance to the pope, and asked
his blessing in all important ventures, were they
marital or martial. In the pre-Columbian Ameri­
cas the Aztec state was a religious state, or theoc­
CHAPTER
Political organization and control are the ways
power is distributed and embedded in society.
Through political organization, societies maintain
social order, manage public affairs, and reduce so­
cial disorder. No group can live together without
persuading or coercing its members to conform to
agreed-upon rules of conduct. To properly under­
stand a society’s political organization, one needs
to view it in the light of its ecological, social, and
ideological context.
Four basic types of political systems may be
identified. In order of complexity, these range from
uncentralized bands and tribes to centralized chief-
doms and states. The band, characteristic of food-
and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 375
racy, that thrived in spite of more-or-less constant
warfare carried out to procure captives for human
sacrifices to assuage or please the gods. In Peru
the Inca emperor proclaimed absolute authority
based on the proposition he was descended from
the sun god. Modern Iran was proclaimed an “Is­
lamic republic,” and its first head of state was the
most holy of all Shiite Muslim holy men.
In the United States the Declaration of Inde­
pendence, which is an expression of the country’s
social and political values, stresses a belief in a
supreme being. The document states that “all men
are created [by God] equal,” a tenet that gave rise
to American democracy, because it implied all peo­
ple should participate in governing themselves.
The fact the president of the United States takes
the oath of office by swearing on the Bible is an­
other instance of the use of religion to legitimize
political power, as is the phrase “one nation, un­
der God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. On U.S.
coins is the phrase “In God We Trust,” many meet­
ings of government bodies begin with a prayer or
invocation, and the phrase “so help me God” is
routinely used in legal proceedings. In spite of an
official separation of church and state, religious
legitimization of government lingers on.
S U M M A R Y
foraging and some other nomadic societies, is an
association of politically independent but related
families or households occupying a common ter­
ritory. Political organization in bands is demo­
cratic, and informal control is exerted by public
opinion in the form of gossip and ridicule. Band
leaders are older men, or sometimes women,
whose personal authority lasts only as long as
members believe they are leading well and mak­
ing the right decisions.
The tribe is composed of separate bands or
other social units tied together by such unifying
factors as descent groups, age grading, or common
interest. With an economy usually based on farm­
376 PART 4 T he Search for O rder Solving
ing or herding, the tribe’s population is larger than
that of the band, although family units within the
tribe are still relatively autonomous and egalitar­
ian. As in the band, political organization is tran­
sitory, and leaders have no formal means of main­
taining authority.
Many tribal societies vest political authority
in the clan, an association of people who consider
themselves descended from a common ancestor. A
group of elders or headmen or headwomen regu­
late the affairs of members and represent their
group in relations with other clans. Another vari­
ant of authority in tribes in Melanesia is the Big
Man, who builds up his wealth and political power
until he must be reckoned with as a leader. The
segmentary lineage system, similar in operation to
the clan, is a rare form of tribal organization based
on kinship bonds.
Tribal age-grade systems cut across territorial
and kin groupings. Leadership is vested in men in
the group who were initiated into the age grade
at the same time and passed as a set from one age
grade to another until reaching the proper age to
become elders. Common-interest associations
wield political authority in some tribes. A boy
joins one club or another when he reaches war­
rior status. These organizations administer the
tribe’s affairs.
As societies include larger numbers of people
and become more heterogeneous socially, politi­
cally, and economically, leadership becomes more
centralized. Chiefdoms are ranked societies in
which every member has a position in the hierar­
chy. Status is determined by the individual’s posi­
tion in a descent group and distance of relation­
ship to the chief. Power is concentrated in a single
chief whose true authority serves to unite his com­
munity in all matters. The chief may accumulate
great personal wealth, which enhances his power
base and which he may pass on to his heirs.
The most centralized of political organizations
is the state. It has a central power that legitimately
can use force to administer a rigid code of laws
and to maintain order, even beyond its borders. A
large bureaucracy functions to uphold the central
power’s authority. The state is found only in soci­
the Problem of D isorder
eties with numerous diverse groups. Typically, it is
a stratified society where economic functions and
wealth are distributed unequally. Although
thought of as stable and permanent, it is, in fact,
inherently unstable and transitory. States differ
from nations, which are communities of people
who see themselves as “one people” with a com­
mon culture but who may or may not have a cen­
tralized form of political organization.
Historically women rarely have held important
positions of political leadership, and when they
have, it sometimes has been for lack of a qualified
man to hold the position. Nonetheless, in a num­
ber of societies, women have enjoyed political equal­
ity with men, as among the Iroquoian tribes of New
York State. In these tribes, all men held office at the
pleasure of women, who not only appointed them
but could remove them as well. Among the Igbo of
midwestern Nigeria, women held positions in an ad­
ministrative hierarchy that paralleled and balanced
that of the men. Under centralized political systems,
women are most apt to be subordinate to men, and
when states impose their control on societies
marked by sexual egalitarianism, the relationship
changes so that men dominate women.
Two kinds of societal control exist: internal­
ized and externalized. Internalized controls are
self-imposed by individuals. These are purely cul­
tural in nature, as they are built into the peoples’
minds. They rely on such deterrents as personal
shame, fear of divine punishment, and magical re­
taliation. Although bands and tribes rely heavily
upon them, internalized controls are generally in­
sufficient by themselves. Every society develops ex­
ternalized controls, called sanctions, that mix cul­
tural and social control. The latter involves overt
coercion. Positive sanctions, in the form of re­
wards or recognition by one’s neighbors, is the po­
sition a society, or a number of its members, takes
toward approved behavior; negative sanctions,
such as threat of imprisonment, corporal punish­
ment, or “loss of face,” reflect societal reactions
to disapproved behavior.
Sanctions also may be classified as either for­
mal, including actual laws, or informal, involving
norms but not legal statutes. Formal sanctions are
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 377

organized and reward or punish behavior through
a rigidly regulated social procedure. Informal sanc­
tions are diffuse, involving immediate reactions of
approval or disapproval by individual community
members to a compatriot’s behavior. Other im­
portant agents of social control are witchcraft be­
liefs and religious sanctions.
Sanctions serve to formalize conformity to
group norms, including actual law, and to main­
tain each social faction in a community in its
“proper” place. An adequate working definition of
law is that it consists of formal negative sanctions.
Law serves several basic functions. First, it de­
fines relationships among a society’s members and
thereby dictates proper behavior under different
circumstances. Second, law allocates authority to
employ coercion to enforce sanctions. In central­
ized political systems, this authority rests with the
government and court system. Uncentralized soci­
eties may give this authority directly to the injured
party. Third, law redefines social relations and aids
its own efficient operation by ensuring it allows
for change.
Western societies clearly distinguish offenses
against the state, called crimes, from offenses
against individuals, called torts. Uncentralized so­
cieties may view all offenses as against individu­
als. One way to understand the nature of law is
to analyze individual dispute cases against their
cultural background. A dispute may be settled in
two ways: negotiation and adjudication. All soci­
eties use negotiation to settle individual disputes.
In negotiation the parties to the dispute reach an
agreement themselves, with or without the help of
a third party. In adjudication, not found in some
societies, an authorized third party issues a bind­
ing decision. The disputing parties present their
petitions but play no part in the decision making.
In addition to regulating internal affairs, po­
litical systems also attempt to regulate external af­
fairs, or relations between politically autonomous
units. In doing so they may resort to the threat or
use of force.
War is not a universal phenomenon, since
some societies do not practice warfare as we know
it. Usually, these are stateless societies that have
some kind of naturalistic worldview, an attitude
that until recently had become nearly extinguished
in modern industrial societies.
A major problem any form of political orga­
nization faces is obtaining and maintaining peo­
ple’s loyalty and support. Reliance on force and
coercion usually tends in the long run to lessen a
political system’s effectiveness. A basic instrument
of political implementation is legitimacy, or the
right of political leaders to exercise authority.
Power based on legitimacy stems from the belief
of a society’s members that obedience is “right”
and therefore stems from the positive expectations
of those who obey. It may be distinguished from
compliance based on force, which stems from fear
and thus from negative expectations.
Religion is so intricately woven into the life of
the people in both industrial and nonindustrial
countries that its presence is inevitably felt in the
political sphere. To a greater or lesser extent, most
governments the world over use religion to legit­
imize political power.

Points for C onsideration

1. In this chapter we read about the use of informal sanctions (as opposed to formalized, codified
laws) to control individual behavior in a group. W hat are examples of such sanctions? How do
they operate in large societies that do have more codified laws? Are the two necessarily in total
accord? In your experience, which takes precedence, and under what circumstances?
2. In many countries the press has taken on the role of watching and reporting on the behavior of
powerful individuals. How can this serve as a sanction? W hat are the potential benefits of such
publications and broadcastings? the potential drawbacks?
378 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
3. Do informal sanctions operate in the political sphere at the state level? Do they operate between
states? How effective are they at these various levels?
Suggested
Cohen, R ., & Middleton, J. (Eds.). (1967). C om ­
parativ e p o litica l system s. Garden City, NY:
Natural History Press.
The editors have selected some 20 studies in
the politics of nonindustrial societies by such
well-known scholars as Lévi-Strauss, S. F.
Nadel, Marshall Sahlins, and S. N. Eisenstadt.
Fried, M . (1967). T he evolu tion o f p olitical s o ci­
ety: An essay in p o litica l an thropology. New
York: Random House.
The author attempts to trace the evolution of
political society through a study of simple egal­
itarian societies. The character of the state and
how this organizational form takes shape are
considered in terms of pristine and secondary
states, formed because preexisting states sup­
plied the stimuli or models for organization.
Gordon, R. J ., & Meggitt, M . J. (1985). L a w an d
ord er in the N ew G uinea highlands. Hanover,
NH: University Press of New England.
This ethnographic study of the resurgence of
tribal fighting among the Mae-Enga addresses
two issues of m ajor importance in today’s
world: the changing nature of law and order
in “underdeveloped” countries and the nature
of violence in human societies.
Johnson, A. W., & Earle, T. (1987). T he evolution
o f hu m an societies, fro m forag in g g rou p to
the Problem of D isorder
R e a d i n g s
agrarian state. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni­
versity Press.
Although written as a synthesis of economic
and ecological anthropology, this is also a
book on the evolution of political organiza­
tion in human societies. Proceeding from
family-level up through state organization, the
authors discuss nine levels, illustrating each
with specific case studies, and specify the con­
ditions that give rise to each level.
Nader, L. (Ed.). (1980). N o A ccess to law: Alter­
natives to the A m erican judicial system. New
York: Academic Press.
This is an eye-opening study of how consumer
complaints are resolved in U.S. society. After
10 years of study, Nader found repeated and
documented offenses by business that cannot
be handled by present complaint mechanisms,
either in or out of court. The high cost ex­
acted includes a terrible sense of apathy and
loss of faith in the system.
Whitehead, N ., & Ferguson, R. B. (Eds.). (1992).
War in the tribal zone. Santa Fe: School of
American Research Press.
The central point of this book is that both the
transformation and intensification of war, as
well as the formation of tribes, result from
complex interaction in the “tribal zone” that
begins where centralized authority makes con­
tact with stateless people it does not rule. In
 Political O rganization and the M aintenance of O rder CHAPTER 12 379

such zones, newly introduced plants, animals, changes disrupt existing social and political re­
diseases, and technologies often spread widely, lationships, fostering new alliances and creat­
even before colonizers appear. These and other ing new kinds of conflicts.
 dlApfcr Preview
1. What Is Religion?
Religion may be regarded as the beliefs and patterns o f behavior by which humans try to deal
with what they view as im portant problems that cannot be solved with known technology o r
organizational techniques.To overcome these limitations, people turn to the manipulation o f su­
pernatural beings and powers.

2. What Are Religion’s Identifying Features?

Religion consists of various rituals— prayers, songs, dances, offerings, and sacrifices— people en­
act to try to manipulate supernatural beings and powers to their advantage. These beings and
powers may consist of gods and goddesses, ancestral and other spirits, o r impersonal powers,
either by themselves o r in various combinations. In all societies certain individuals are especially
skilled at dealing with these beings and powers and assist other society members in their rit­
ual activities. A body of myths rationalizes o r “ explains” the system in a manner consistent with
people’s experience in the world in which they live.

3. What Functions Does Religion Serve?

W hether o r not a particular religion accomplishes what people believe it does, all religions serve
a number of important psychological and social functions. They reduce anxiety by explaining
the unknown and making it understandable, as well as provide com fort with the belief super­
natural aid is available in times of crisis. They sanction a wide range o f human conduct by pro­
viding notions o f right and wrong, setting precedents fo r acceptable behavior, and by transfer­
ring the burden o f decision making from individuals to supernatural powers. Through ritual,
religion may be used to enhance the learning of oral traditions. Finally, religion plays an im por­
tant role in maintaining social solidarity.

381
382 PART IV T he Search for O rder: S olving
ccording to their origin myth, the Tewa In­
A dians of New M exico emerged from a lake
far to the north of where they now live.
Once on dry land, they divided into two groups,
the Summer People and the Winter People, and
migrated south along the Rio Grande. During their
travels they made 12 stops before finally reuniting
into a single community.
For the Tewa all existence is divided into six
categories, three human and three supernatural.
Each of the human categories, which are arranged
in a hierarchy, is matched by a spiritual category
so that when people die, they immediately pass
into their proper spiritual role. N ot only are the
supernatural categories identified with human cat­
egories, but they also correspond to divisions in
the natural world.
To those of some other religious persuasions,
such beliefs may seem, at best, irrational and ar­
bitrary, but in fact they are neither. The late Al­
fonso Ortiz, an anthropologist who was also a
Tewa, showed that his native religion is not only
logical and socially functional but also the very
model of Tewa society.1 These people have a so­
ciety that is divided into two independent moieties,
each with its own economy, rituals, and authority.
The individual is introduced into one of these moi­
eties (which in this case are not based on kinship),
and his or her membership is regularly reinforced
1Ortiz, A. (1969). The Tewa w orld (p.43). Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
the Problem of D isorder
through a series of life-cycle rituals that corre­
spond to the stops on the mythical journey down
the Rio Grande. The rites of birth and death are
shared by the whole community; other rites differ
in the two moieties. The highest status of the hu­
man hierarchy belongs to the priests, who also
help integrate this divided society; they mediate
not only between the human and spiritual world
but between the two moieties as well.
Tewa religion enters into virtually every aspect
of Tewa life and society. It is the basis of the si­
multaneously dualistic and unified worldview of
the individual Tewa. It provides numerous points
of mediation so that the two moieties can continue
to exist together as a single community. It sancti­
fies the community by linking its origin with the
realm of the supernatural, and it offers divine sanc­
tion to rites o f passage that soften life’s major tran­
sitions. By providing an afterworld that is the
mirror image of human society, it answers the
question of death in a manner that reinforces so­
cial structure. In short, Tewa religion, by weaving
all elements of Tewa experience into a single pat­
tern, gives a solid foundation for the stability and
continuity of Tewa society.
All religions fulfill numerous social and psy­
chological needs. Some of these— the need to con­
front and explain death, for example— appear to
be universal; indeed, we know of no group of peo­
ple anywhere on the face of the earth who, at any
time over the past 100,000 years, have been with­
out religion. Unbound by time, religion gives
meaning to individual and group life, drawing
power from “the time of the gods in the Begin­
ning” and offering continuity of existence beyond
death. It can provide the path by which people
transcend their arduous earthly existence and at­
tain, if only momentarily, spiritual selfhood. The
social functions of religion are no less important
than the psychological ones. A traditional religion
reinforces group norms, provides moral sanctions
for individual conduct, and furnishes the substra­
tum of common purpose and values upon which
the equilibrium of the community depends.
In the 19th century, the European intellectual
tradition gave rise to the idea that science ulti­
mately would destroy religion by showing people
the irrationality of their myths and rituals. Indeed,
many still believe that as scientific explanations re­
place those of religion, the latter will wither on
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 383

the vine. Yet an opposite tendency has occurred; some religious leaders even go so far as to flaunt
not only do traditional mainline religions continue luxurious lifestyles as proof they enjoy God’s fa­
to thrive, but also fundamentalist religions are vor. Science has fostered this religious boom by
having a strong resurgence. Examples include Is­
lamic fundamentalism in countries such as
Afghanistan, Algeria, and Iran; Jewish fundamen­
talism in Israel; and Hindu fundamentalism in In­
dia. Christian fundamentalism is represented in the
dramatic growth of evangelical denominations in
the United States (Table 13.1). Often, these have
a strong antiscience bias. Other religions continue
to grow in North America as well, including Is­
lam (at least 3.5 million in the United States, com­
parable to the number of Presbyterians), Buddhism
(750,000 in the United States), Hinduism (800,000
in the United States, up from ca. 70 ,0 0 0 in 1977),
not to mention the various “New Age” options.
Of approximately 1,600 religions and denomina­
tions in the United States, about 800 were founded
after 1965.2
Science, far from destroying religion, may
have contributed to the creation of a veritable re­
ligious boom. In the United States, the latter is
worth billions of tax-free dollars each year, and

2Shorto, R. (1997, December 7). Belief by the numbers. New

York Times Magazine, 60.

TABLE 13.1 Increase or Decrease of

Selected Christian
Denominations for the Past
3 0 Years as a Proportion of
the U.S. Population

Episcopal -4 4 %
Methodist -3 8
Roman Catholic -3
Southern Baptist +8
Mormon +96
Jehovah’s Witnesses + 119
Far from causing the death of religion, the growth of
Assemblies of God + 211
scientific knowledge, by producing new anxieties and
Church of God in Christ + 863 raising new questions about human existence, may
have contributed to the continuing practice of reli­
gion in modern life. North Americans continue to
SOURCE: ’Shorto, R. (1997, December 7). Belief by participate in traditional religions, such as Judaism
the numbers. New York Times Magazine, 60. (top), as well as imported sects, such as the new
Vrindaban (middle) and evangelism (bottom).
384 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem
removing many traditional psychological props
while creating, in its technological applications, a
host of new problems: threat of nuclear catastro­
phe; health threats from pollution; unease about
the consequences of new developments in biotech­
nology, such as the cloning of animals, production
of new strains of genetically engineered organisms,
and ability to store human sperm and eggs for fu­
ture fertilization; fear of loss of economic security
as machines replace workers; and fear of loneli­
ness in a society that isolates us from our kin and
places impediments in the way of establishing deep
and lasting friendships, to list but a few issues peo­
ple now must deal with. In the face of these new
anxieties, religion offers social and psychological
support.
The continuing strength of religion in the face
of Western rationalism clearly reveals it is a pow-
New developments in biotechnology, such as cloning,
which produced the sheep Dolly (shown here) have
been a source of new anxieties. Answers to these
anxieties are often sought in religion.
Religion. A set of rituals, rationalized by myth, that mobilizes supernatural powers to achieve or prevent transforma­
tions of state in people and nature.
of Disorder
erful and dynamic force in society. Although an­
thropologists are not qualified to pass judgment
on the metaphysical truths of any particular reli­
gion, they can show how each religion embodies
a number of “truths” about humans and society.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
APPROACH TO RELIGION
Anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace defined re­
ligion as “a set of rituals, rationalized by myth,
which mobilizes supernatural powers for the pur­
pose of achieving or preventing transformations of
state in man and nature.”3 Behind this definition
is a recognition that people, when they cannot
“fix ” through technological or organizational
means serious problems that cause them anxiety,
try to do so through the manipulation of super­
natural beings and powers. This requires ritual,
which Wallace sees as the primary phenomenon of
religion, or “religion in action.” Its major func­
tions are to reduce anxiety and keep confidence
high, which serve to keep people in some sort of
shape to cope with reality. It is this that gives re­
ligion its survival value.
Religion, then, may be regarded as the beliefs
and patterns of behavior by which people try to
control aspects of the universe otherwise beyond
their control. Since no known culture, including
those of modern industrial societies, has achieved
complete certainty in controlling the universe, re­
ligion is a part of all known cultures. However,
considerable variability exists here. At one end of
the human spectrum are food-foraging peoples,
whose technological ability to manipulate their en­
vironment is limited and who tend to see them­
selves more as part, rather than masters, of
nature. This is what we referred to in Chapter 12
as a naturalistic worldview. Among food foragers
3Wallace, A. F. C. (1966). Religion: An anthropological view
(p. 107). New York: Random House.

religion is apt to be inseparable from the rest of
daily life. It also mirrors and confirms the egali­
tarian nature of social relations in their societies,
in that individuals do not plead for aid to high-
ranking deities the way members of stratified so­
cieties do. At the other end of the human spec­
trum is Western civilization, with its ideological
commitment to overcoming problems through
technological and organizational skills. Here reli­
gion is less a part of daily activities and is restricted
to more specific occasions. Moreover, with its hi­
erarchy of supernatural beings— for instance,
God, the angels, and the saints of Christianity—
it reflects and confirms the stratified nature of the
society in which it is embedded.
Even so, variation exists between these two
extremes. Religious activity may be less prominent
in the lives of social elites, who see themselves as
more in control of their own destinies, than it is
in the lives of peasants or members of lower
classes. Among the latter, religion may afford some
compensation for a subordinate position in soci­
ety. Yet religion is still important to elite members
The huge public participation in the funeral of Princess Diana, as in all collective rituals,
created a sense of communion that encouraged a belief in shared values.
R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 385
of a society, in that it rationalizes the system in
such a way that less advantaged people are not as
likely to question the existing social order as they
might otherwise be. After all, with hope for a bet­
ter existence after death, one may be more willing
to put up with a disadvantaged position in life.
Thus, religious beliefs serve to influence and per­
petuate conceptions, if not actual relations, be­
tween different classes of people.
THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION
Much of religion’s value comes from the activities
its practice calls for. Participation in religious cer­
emonies may bring a sense of personal transcen­
dence— a wave of reassurance, security, and even
ecstasy— or a feeling of closeness to fellow par­
ticipants. Although the rituals and practices of re­
ligions vary considerably, even rites that seem to
us most bizarrely exotic can be shown to serve the
same basic social and psychological functions.
386 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
S up e rna t ura l B ei ngs
and P owers
One of the hallmarks of religion is a belief in su­
pernatural beings and forces. When attempting to
control by religious means what cannot be con­
trolled in other ways, humans turn to prayer, sac­
rifice, and other religious rituals. This presupposes
a world of supernatural beings who have an in­
terest in human affairs and to whom people may
turn for aid. For convenience we may divide these
beings into three categories: major deities (gods and
goddesses), ancestral spirits, and other sorts of
spirit beings. Although the variety of deities and
spirits the world’s cultures recognize is tremendous,
certain generalizations about them are possible.
Gods and Goddesses
Gods and goddesses are the great and more remote
beings. They usually are seen as controlling the uni­
verse, or, if several are recognized (known as poly­
theism), each has charge of a particular part of the
universe. Such was the case of the gods and god­
desses of ancient Greece: Zeus was lord of the sky,
Poseidon was ruler of the sea, and blades was lord
of the underworld and ruler of the dead. Besides
these three brothers were a host of other deities,
female as well as male, each similarly concerned
with specific aspects of life and the universe.
Pantheons, or collections of gods and god­
desses such as those of the Greeks, are common
in non-Western states as well. Since states usually
have grown through conquest, their pantheons of­
ten have developed as local deities of conquered
peoples were incorporated into the official state
pantheon. Although creators of the present world
may be included, this is not always the case; the
Greeks, to cite but one example, did not include
them. Another frequent though not invariable fea­
ture of pantheons is the presence of a supreme de­
ity, who may be all but totally ignored by humans.
The Aztecs of M exico, for instance, recognized a
supreme pair to whom they paid little attention.
After all, being so remote, the deities were unlikely
Polytheism. Belief in several gods and/or goddesses (as contrasted with monotheism— belief in one god). > Pantheon.
The several gods and goddesses of a people.
the Problem of D isorder
to be interested in human affairs. The sensible
practice, then, was to focus attention on less-
remote deities who therefore were more directly
concerned with human matters.
Whether or not a people recognize gods, god­
desses, or both has to do with how men and
women relate to one another in everyday life. Gen­
erally speaking, societies that subordinate women
to men define the godhead in exclusively mascu­
line terms. Such societies are mainly those with
economies based upon the herding of animals or
intensive agriculture carried out by men, who as
fathers are distant and controlling figures to their
children.
Goddesses, by contrast, are apt to be most
prominent in societies where women make a ma­
jor contribution to the economy and enjoy rela­
tive equality with men and where men are more
involved in their children’s lives. Such societies are
most often those that depend upon farming, much
or all of which women do. As an illustration, the
early Hebrews, like other pastoral nomadic tribes
of the Middle East, described their god in mascu­
line, authoritarian terms. By contrast, goddesses
played central roles in religious ritual and the pop­
ular consciousness of the region’s agricultural peo­
ples. Associated with these goddesses were con­
cepts of light, love, fertility, and procreation.
Around 1300 b . c ., the Hebrew tribes entered the
land of Canaan and began to practice agriculture,
requiring them to establish a new kind of rela­
tionship with the soil. As they became dependent
upon rainfall and the rotation of seasons for crops
and concerned about fertility (as the Canaanites
already were), they adopted many of the Canaan-
ite goddess cults. Although diametrically opposed
to the original Hebrew cult, belief in the Canaan-
ite goddesses catered to the human desire for se­
curity by seeking to control the forces of fertility
in the interest of peoples’ well-being.
Later on, when the Israelite tribes sought na­
tional unity in the face of a military threat by the
Philistines and when they strengthened their iden­
tity as a “chosen people,” the goddess cults lost
out to followers of the old masculine tribal god.
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 387

The patriarchal nature of Western society is expressed in its theology, in which a mas­
culine God gives life to the first man, as depicted here on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel. Only after this is the first woman created from the first man.

This ancient masculine-authoritarian concept of
god has been perpetuated down to the present,
not just in the Judaic tradition but also by Chris­
tians and Muslims, whose religions stem from the
old Hebrew religion. As a consequence, this mas­
culine-authoritarian model has played an impor­
tant role in perpetuating a relationship between
men and women in which the latter traditionally
have been expected to submit to the “rule” of
men at every level of Jewish, Christian, and Is­
lamic society.
Ancestral Spirits
A belief in ancestral spirits is consistent with the
widespread notion that human beings are made up
of two parts, a body and some kind of vital spirit.
For example, the Penobscot Indians, whom we met
in Chapter 5, maintained that each person had a
personal spirit that could detach itself and travel
about apart from the body, while the latter re­
mained inert. Given such a concept, the idea of
the spirit being freed from the body by death and
having a continued existence seems quite logical.
Where a belief in ancestral spirits exists, these
beings frequently are seen as retaining an active
interest and even membership in society. In Chap­
ter 12, for instance, we saw how ghost ancestors
of the Wape acted to provide or withhold meat
from their living descendants. Like living persons,
ancestral spirits may be benevolent or malevolent,
but no one is ever quite sure what their behavior
will be. The same feeling of uncertainty— “How
will they react to what I have done?”— may be
displayed toward ancestral spirits that tends to be
displayed toward people of a senior generation
who hold authority over individuals. Beyond this,
ancestral spirits closely resemble living humans in
their appetites, feelings, emotions, and behavior.
Thus, they reflect and reinforce social reality.
A belief in ancestral spirits of one sort or an­
other is found in many parts of the world,
388 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem
especially among people with unilineal descent
systems. In several such African societies, the
concept is especially elaborate. Here one fre­
quently finds ancestral spirits behaving just like
humans. They are able to feel hot, cold, and pain,
and they may be capable of dying a second death
by drowning or burning. They even may partic­
ipate in family and lineage affairs, and seats will
be provided for them, even though the spirits are
invisible. If they are annoyed, they may send sick­
ness or even death. Eventually, they are reborn
as new members of their lineage, and, in societies
that hold such beliefs, adults need to observe in­
fants closely to determine just who has been
reborn.
Deceased ancestors were also important in the
patrilineal society of traditional China. For the
gift of life, a boy was forever indebted to his par­
ents, owing them obedience, deference, and a
comfortable old age. Even after their death, he
had to provide for them in the spirit world, of­
fering food, money, and incense to them on the
anniversaries of their births and deaths. In addi­
tion, people collectively worshiped all lineage an­
cestors periodically throughout the year. This so­
ciety even regarded the birth of sons as an
obligation to the ancestors, because this ensured
the latter’s needs would continue to be attended
to even after their own sons’ death. To satisfy an­
cestors’ needs for descendants (and a man’s own
need to be respectable in a culture that demanded
he satisfy his ancestors’ needs), a man would go
so far as to marry a girl who had been adopted
into his family as an infant to be raised as a du­
tiful wife for him, even when this arrangement
went against the wishes of both parties. Further­
more, a man readily would force his daughter to
marry a man against her will. In fact, a female
child was raised to be cast out by her natal fam­
ily yet might not find acceptance in her husband’s
family for years. Not until after death, when her
soul was carried in a tablet and placed in the
shrine of her husband’s family, was she an offi­
cial member of it. As a consequence, once a son
was born to her, a woman worked long and hard
A n im is m . A belief in spirit beings thought to animate nature.
of D isorder
to establish the strongest possible tie between her­
self and her son to ensure she would be looked
after in life.
Strong beliefs in ancestral spirits are particu­
larly appropriate in a society of descent-based
groups with their associated ancestral orientation.
More than this, though, these beliefs provide a
strong sense of continuity that links the past,
present, and future.
Animism
One of the most widespread beliefs about super­
natural beings is animism, which sees nature as
animated by all sorts of spirits. In reality, the term
masks a wide range of variation. Animals and
plants, like humans, all may have their individual
spirits, as may springs, mountains, or other nat­
ural features. So too may stones, weapons, orna­
ments, and so on. In addition, the woods may be
full of a variety of unattached or free-ranging spir­
its. The various spirits involved are a highly di­
verse lot. Generally speaking, though, they are less
remote from people than gods and goddesses and
are more involved in daily affairs. They may be
benevolent, malevolent, or just plain neutral. They
also may be awesome, terrifying, lovable, or even
mischievous. Since they may be pleased or irritated
by human actions, people are obliged to be con­
cerned about them.
Animism is typical of those who see them­
selves as a part of nature rather than superior to
it. This takes in most food foragers, as well as
food-producing peoples who recognize little dif­
ference between a human life and that of any
growing thing. Among such societies, gods and
goddesses are relatively unimportant, but the
woods are full of all sorts of spirits. (For a good
example, see the discussion of the Penobscot be­
havioral environment in Chapter 5.) Gods and
goddesses, if they exist at all, may be seen as hav­
ing created the world and perhaps making it fit to
live in; but it is spirits individuals turn to for cur­
ing, who help or hinder the shaman, and whom
the ordinary hunter may meet when off in the
woods.
 R eligion
Sir Edward B.Tylor (I832-1917)
The concept of animism was first
brought to the attention of anthro­
pologists by the British scholar Sir
Edward B.Tylor.
Though not university educated
himself, Tylor was the first person
to hold a chair in anthropology at a
British university, with his appoint­
ment first as lecturer, then as reader,
and finally (in 1895) as professor at
Oxford. His interest in anthropology
developed from travels that took
him as a young man to the United States (where
he visited an Indian pueblo), Cuba, and Mexico,
where he was especially impressed by the achieve­
ments of the ancient Aztec and the contemporary
blend of Indian and Spanish culture.
Tylor’s numerous publications covered such
diverse topics as the possible historical connection
between the games of pachisi and patolli (played
Native Indians carved these faces into a rock along the Connecticut River to depict spirit beings
they saw here while in states of trance.
and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 389
in India and ancient Mexico); the ori­
gin of games of C a t’s Cradle; and
the structural connections between
postmarital residence, descent, and
certain other customs such as in-law
avoidance and the couvade (the con­
finement of a child’s father following
birth).
Tylor also formulated the first
widely accepted definition of culture
(see Chapter 2). The considerable
attention he paid to religious con­
cepts and practices in his writings stemmed from
a lifelong commitment to combat the idea, still
widely held in his time, that so-called savage peo­
ple had degenerated more than civilized people
from an original state of grace. To Tylor, “savages”
were intellectuals just like anyone else, grappling
with their problems but handicapped (as was Ty­
lor in his intellectual life) by limited information.
390 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving
Animatism
Although supernatural power is often thought of
as being vested in supernatural beings, it does not
have to be. The Melanesians, for example, think
of m an a as a force inherent in all objects. It is not
in itself physical, but it can reveal itself physically.
A warrior’s success in fighting is not attributed to
his own strength but to the m an a contained in an
amulet that hangs around his neck. Similarly, a
farmer may know a great deal about horticulture,
soil conditioning, and the correct time for sowing
and harvesting but nevertheless depends upon
m an a for a successful crop, often building a sim­
ple altar to this power at the end of the field. If
the crop is good, it is a sign the farmer has in some
way appropriated the necessary m ana. Far from
being a personalized force, m an a is abstract in the
extreme, a power lying always just beyond reach
of the senses. As R. H. Codrington described it,
“Virtue, prestige, authority, good fortune, influ­
ence, sanctity, luck are all words which, under cer­
tain conditions, give something near the meaning.
. . . M ana sometimes means a more than natural
virtue or power attaching to some person or
thing.”4 This concept of impersonal power also
was widespread among North American Indians.
The Iroquois called it oren d a, to the Sioux it was
w a k o n d a , and to the Algonquians it was manitu.
Though found on every continent, the concept is
not necessarily universal, however.
R. R. M arett called this concept of impersonal
power animatism. The two concepts, animatism
(which is inanimate) and animism (a belief in spirit
beings), are not mutually exclusive. They often are
found in the same culture, as in Melanesia, and
also in the Indian societies just mentioned.
People trying to comprehend beliefs in the su­
pernatural beings and powers others recognize fre­
quently ask how such beliefs are maintained. In
4Quoted by G. Leinhardt (1960), Religion. In H. Shapiro
(Ed.), Man, culture, and society (p. 368). London: Oxford
University Press.
A n im a tis m . A belief that the world is animated by impersonal supernatural powers.
the Problem of D isorder
part, the answer is through manifestations of
power. This means, given a belief in animatism
and/or the powers of supernatural beings, one is
predisposed to see what appear to be results of the
application of such powers. For example, if a
Melanesian warrior is convinced of his power be­
cause he possesses the necessary m ana and he is
successful, he is likely to interpret this success as
proof of the power of m ana. “After all, I would
have lost had I not possessed it, wouldn’t I?” Be­
yond this, because of his confidence in his m ana,
he may be willing to take more chances in his fight­
ing, and this indeed could mean the difference be­
tween success or failure.
Failures, of course, do occur, but they can be
explained. Perhaps a prayer was not answered be­
cause a deity or spirit was still angry about some
past insult. Or perhaps our Melanesian warrior
lost his battle— the obvious explanation is that he
was not as successful in bringing m ana to bear as
he thought, or else his opponent had more of it.
In any case, humans generally emphasize successes
over failures, and, long after many of the latter
have been forgotten, tales probably still will be
told of striking cases of the workings of super­
natural powers.
Another feature that tends to perpetuate be­
liefs in supernatural beings is that the beings have
attributes people are familiar with. Allowing for
the fact supernatural beings are in a sense larger
than life, they generally are conceived of as living
the way people do and as having the same sorts
of interests. For example, the Penobscot Indians
believed in a quasi-human being called Gluskabe.
Like ordinary mortals, Gluskabe traveled about in
a canoe, used snowshoes, lived in a wigwam, and
made stone arrowheads. The gods and goddesses
of the ancient Greeks had all the familiar human
lusts and jealousies. Such features serve to make
supernatural beings believable.
The role of mythology in maintaining beliefs
should not be overlooked. Myths, which are dis­
cussed in some detail in Chapter 14, are explana­
tory narratives that rationalize religious beliefs and
practices. To European Americans, the word myth
 R eligion
immediately conjures up the idea of a story about
imaginary events, but the people responsible for a
particular myth usually do not see it that way. To
them myths are true stories, analogous to histori­
cal documents in modern North American culture.
Even so, myths exist even in literate societies, as in
the Judaic and Christian account of creation in the
Bible’s Book of Genesis. Myths invariably are full
of accounts of the doings of various supernatural
beings and thus serve to reinforce beliefs in them.
Religious Specialists
Priests and Priestesses
In all human societies there exist individuals whose
job it is to guide and supplement the religious prac­
tices of others. Such individuals are highly skilled
at contacting and influencing supernatural beings
and manipulating supernatural forces. Their qual­
ification for this is that they have undergone spe­
cial training. In addition, they may display certain
distinctive personality traits that particularly suit
them for their job. Societies with the resources to
support full-time occupational specialists give the
role of guiding religious practices and influencing
the supernatural to the priest or priestess. He or
she is the socially initiated, ceremonially inducted
member of a recognized religious organization,
with a rank and function that belongs to him or
her as the tenant of an office others have held be­
fore. The sources of power are the society and the
institution the priest or priestess functions within.
The priest, if not the priestess, is a familiar fig­
ure in Western societies; he is the priest, minister,
pastor, rector, rabbi, or whatever the official title
may be in an organized religion. With the Judaic,
Christian, and Islamic god defined in masculine-
authoritarian terms, it was not surprising that tra­
ditionally men have filled the most important po­
sitions in these religions . Only in societies where
women make a major contribution to the econ­
omy and that recognize goddesses as well as gods
are female religious specialists likely to be found.
Priest o r Priestess. A full-time religious specialist. > S ham an. A part-time religious specialist who has unique power
acquired through his or her initiative; such individuals are thought to possess exceptional abilities for dealing with super­
natural beings and powers.
and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 391
Shamans
Societies that lack full-time occupational special­
ization have existed far longer than those with
such specialization, and the former always have
had individuals who acquired religious power in­
dividually, usually in solitude and isolation, when
the Great Spirit, the Power, the Great Mystery, or
whatever is revealed to them. These persons be­
come the recipients of certain special gifts, such as
healing or divination; when they return to society,
they frequently are given another kind of religious
role, that of the shaman.
In the United States millions of people have
learned something about shamans through read­
ing the popular autobiography of Black Elk, a tra­
ditional Oglala Sioux Indian “medicine m an,” or
Carlos Castaneda’s apparently fictional accounts
of his experiences with Don Juan, the Yaqui In­
dian shaman. Numerous other books have
emerged in the past decade. Few may realize, how­
ever, that the faith healers and many other evan­
gelists in their own society conform in every re­
spect to our definition of the shaman. Thus, one
should not get the idea shamans are not found in
modern, industrial societies, for they are. Shaman­
ism is particularly popular among so-called “New
Age” enthusiasts.
Typically, one becomes a shaman by passing
through difficult stages commonly set forth in
many myths. These stages are often thought to in­
volve torture and violent dismemberment of the
body; scraping away of the flesh until the body is
reduced to a skeleton; substitution of the viscera
and renewal of the blood; a period spent in a
nether region, or land of the dead, during which
the shaman is taught by the souls of dead shamans
and other spirit beings; and an ascent to a sky
realm. Among the Crow Indians, for example, any
man could become a shaman, since no ecclesiasti­
cal organization provided rules and regulations to
guide religious consciousness. The search for
shamanistic visions was pursued by most adult
Crow males, who would engage in bodily
392 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

Two Christian evangelists working to heal an arthritis sufferer. Such faith healers in the
United States and elsewhere correspond in every respect to our definition of the shaman;
hence, shamanism is by no means absent in modern industrial societies.

deprivation, even self-torture, to induce such vi­
sions. Not all seekers were granted a vision, but
failure carried no social stigma. Although those
who claimed supernatural vision would be ex­
pected to manifest some special power in battle or
wealth, the sincerity of the seeker carried the es­
sential truth of the experience.
Many of the elements of shamanism, such as
transvestism, trance states, and speaking in unde­
cipherable languages, just as easily can be regarded
as abnormalities, and it has been frequently
pointed out that those regarded as specially gifted
in some societies would be outcasts or worse in
others. The position of shaman can provide a so­
cially approved role for those who in other cir­
cumstances might be labeled as having unstable
personalities.
The shaman is essentially a religious entre­
preneur who acts on behalf of some human client,
often to effect a cure or foretell some future event.
To do so, the shaman intervenes to influence or
impose his or her will on supernatural powers. The
shaman can be contrasted with the priest or priest­
ess, whose “clients” are the deities. Priests and
priestesses frequently tell people what to do; the
shaman tells the supernatural what to do. In re­
turn for services rendered, the shaman may collect
a fee— fresh meat, yams, or a favorite possession.
In some cases, the added prestige, authority, and
social power attached to the shaman’s status are
reward enough.
When a shaman acts for a client, he or she may
put on something of a show— one that heightens
the basic drama with a sense of danger. Frequently,
the shaman must enter a trancelike state, in which
he or she experiences the sensation of traveling to
the spirit world, seeing and interacting with spirit
beings there. (For more on trance, see Chapters 5
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 393

and 14.) The shaman tries to impose his or her will
upon these spirits, an inherently dangerous contest,
considering the superhuman powers spirits are usu­
ally thought to possess. One example of this is af­
forded by the trance dances of the Ju/’hoansi Bush­
men of Africa’s Kalahari Desert. Among these people
shamans constitute, on average, about half the men
and a third of the older women in any group. The
most common reasons for their going into trance are
to bring rain, control animals, and— as in the pre­
sent example— to heal the sick (always an impor­
tant activity of shamans, wherever they are found).

One way the spirits affect humans is by shooting them with invisible arrows
carrying disease, death, or misfortune. If the arrows can be warded off, ill­
ness will not take hold. If illness has already penetrated, the arrows must be
removed to enable the sick person to recover. An ancestral spirit may ex­
ercise this power against the living if a person is not being treated well by
Healing others. If people argue with her frequently, if her husband shows how little
he values her by carrying on blatant affairs, or if people refuse to cooper­
Among the ate or share with her, the spirit may conclude that no one cares whether or
Ju/'hoansi not she remains alive and may "take her into the sky."
Interceding with the spirits and drawing out their invisible arrows is the
of the task o f (ju/’hoansi) healers, men and women who possess the powerful heal­
ing force called n/um (the Ju/’hoansi equivalent o f mana). N/um generally re­
Kalahari5 mains dormant in a healer until an effort is made to activate it. Although
an occasional healer can accomplish this through solo singing or instrumen­
tal playing, the usual way o f activating n/um is through the medicinal curing
ceremony or trance dance. To the sound o f undulating melodies sung by
women, healers dance around and around the fire, sometimes for hours. The
music, the strenuous dancing, the smoke, the heat o f the fire, and the heal­
ers’ intense concentration cause their n/um to heat up. When it comes to
a boil, trance is achieved.
A t this moment the n/um becomes available as a powerful healing force,
to serve the entire community. In trance, a healer lays hands on and ritually
cures everyone sitting around the fire. His hands flutter lightly beside each
person's head o r chest or wherever illness is evident; his body trembles; his
breathing becomes deep and coarse; and he becomes coated with a thick
sweat— also considered to be imbued with power Whatever “ badness” is
discovered in the person is drawn into the healer’s own body and met by
the n/um coursing up his spinal column. The healer gives a mounting cry
that culminates in a soul-wrenching shriek as the illness is catapulted out o f
his body and into the air
While in trance, many healers see various gods and spirits sitting just
outside the circle o f firelight, enjoying the spectacle o f the dance. Sometimes
the spirits are recognizable— departed relatives and friends— at other times
they are “just people." Whoever these beings are, healers in trance usually

Ju/’hoansi healers, when enter­

ing trance, are assisted by oth­ sShostak, M. (1983). Nisa: The life and w ords o f a IKung w om an (pp. 29 1 -2 9 3 ).
ers among the trance dancers. New York: Vintage.
394 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of Disorder

blame them for whatever misfortune is being experienced by the commu­

nity. They are barraged by hurled objects, shouted at, and aggressively warned
not to take any o f the living back with them to the village o f the spirits.
To cure a very serious illness, the most experienced healers may be
called upon, for only they have enough knowledge to undertake the dan­
gerous spiritual exploration that may be necessary to effect a cure. When
they are in a trance, their souls are said to leave their bodies and to travel
to the spirit world to discover the cause o f the illness or the problem. An
ancestral spirit o r a god is usually found responsible and asked to reconsider.
If the healer is persuasive and the spirit agrees, the sick person recovers. If
the spirit is elusive o r unsympathetic, a cure is not achieved. The healer may
go to the principal god, but even this does not always work. As one healer
put it, "Sometimes, when you speak with God, he says, 1 want this person
to die and w on’t help you make him better' A t other times, God helps; the
next morning, someone who has been lying on the ground, seriously ill, gets
up and walks again.”
These journeys are considered dangerous because while the healer’s
soul is absent his body is in half-death. Akin to loss o f consciousness, this
state has been observed and verified by medical and scientific investigators.
The power o f other healers’ n/um is all that is thought to protect the healer
in this state from actual death. He receives lavish attention and care— his
body is vigorously massaged, his skin is rubbed with sweat, and hands are
laid on him. Only when consciousness returns— the signal that his soul has
been reunited with his body— do the other healers cease their efforts.

In many human societies trancing is accom­
panied by sleight-of-hand tricks and ventrilo­
quism. Among Arctic peoples, for example, a
shaman may summon spirits in the dark and pro­
duce all sorts of flapping noises and strange voices
to impress the audiences. Some Western observers
regard this kind of trickery as evidence of the
fraudulent nature of shamanism, but is this so?
The truth is that shamans know perfectly well they
are pulling the wool over people’s eyes with their
tricks. Yet virtually everyone who has studied them
agrees shamans really believe in their power to
deal with supernatural powers and spirits. It is this
power that gives them the right as well as the abil­
ity to fool people in minor technical matters. In
short, the shaman regards his or her ability to per­
form tricks as proof of effective powers.
The importance of shamanism in a society
should not be underestimated. For individual
members, it promotes, through the drama of per­
formance, a feeling of ecstasy and release of ten­
sion. It provides psychological assurance, through
the manipulation of supernatural powers and spir­
its otherwise beyond human control, of such
things as invulnerability from attack, success at
love, or the return of health. In fact, a frequent
reason for a shamanistic performance is to cure
illness. Although the treatment may not be med­
ically effective, the state of mind induced in the
patient may be critical to his or her recovery.
W hat shamanism provides for society is a fo­
cal point of attention. This is not without danger
to the shaman. Someone with so much skill and
power has the ability to work evil as well as good
and so is potentially dangerous. The group may
interpret too much nonsuccess from a shaman as
evidence of malpractice and may drive out or even
kill the shaman. Likewise, the shaman may help
maintain social control through the ability to de­
tect and punish evildoers.
The benefits of shamanism for the shaman are
that it provides prestige and perhaps even wealth.
It also may be therapeutic, in that it provides an
approved outlet for the outbreaks of what other­
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 395

wise might seem an unstable personality. An indi­
vidual who is psychologically unstable (and not all
shamans are) actually may get better by becoming
intensely involved with the problems of others. In
this respect, shamanism is a bit like self-analysis.
Finally, shamanism is a good outlet for the self-
expression of those who might be described as en­
dowed with an “artistic temperament.”
R ituals and C eremonies
Although not all rituals are religious in nature
(graduation ceremonies in North America, for ex­
ample), those that are play a crucial role in reli­
gious activity. Religious ritual is the means through
which persons relate to the sacred; it is religion in
action. Not only is ritual a means for reinforcing
a group’s social bonds and for relieving tensions,
but it is also one way many important events are
celebrated and crises, such as death, made less so­
cially disruptive and less difficult for individuals
to bear. Anthropologists have classified several dif­
ferent types of ritual, among them rites of passage,
which pertain to stages in the individual’s life cy­
cle, and rites of intensification, which occur dur­
ing a crisis in the life of the group, serving to bind
individuals together.
from the society as a whole, then isolated for a pe­
riod, and finally incorporated back into society in
his or her new status.
Van Gennep described the male initiation rites
of Australian Aborigines. When the elders decide
the time for the initiation, the boys are taken from
the village (separation), while the women cry and
make a ritual show of resistance. At a place dis­
tant from the camp, groups of men from many vil­
lages gather. The elders sing and dance, while the
initiates act as though they are dead. The climax
of this part of the ritual is a bodily operation, such
as circumcision or the knocking out of a tooth.
Anthropologist A. P. Elkin says:
This is partly a continuation of the drama of death.
The tooth-knocking, circumcision or other sym­
bolical act “ killed” the novice; after this he does
not return to the general camp and normally may
not be seen by any woman. He is dead to the or­
dinary life of the tribe.7
7Elkin, A. P. (1964). The Australian Aborigines. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday/Anchor Books.

Rites of Passage
In one of anthropology’s classic works, Arnold
Van Gennep analyzed the rites of passage that help
individuals through the crucial crises of their lives,
such as birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, ad­
vancement to a higher class, occupational special­
ization, and death.6 He found it useful to divide
ceremonies for all of these life crises into three
stages: separation, transition, and incorporation.
The individual first would be ritually removed

6Van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites o f passage. Chicago: Uni­

versity of Chicago Press.

Rites o f passage. Rituals, often religious in nature, marking important stages in the lives of individuals, such as birth,
marriage, and death. > Rites o f intensification. Religious rituals enacted during a group’s real o r potential crisis.
> Separation. In rites of passage, the ritual removal of the individual from society. > Tran sition . In rites of passage,
a stage where the individual is isolated following separation and prior to incorporation into society. > In c o rp o ra tio n .
In rites of passage, reincorporation of the individual into society in his o r her new status.
396 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
In this transitional stage, the novice may be
shown secret ceremonies and receive some in­
struction, but the most significant element is his
complete removal from society. In the course of
these Australian puberty rites, the initiate must
learn the lore all adult men are expected to know;
he is given, in effect, a “cram course.” The trauma
of the occasion is a pedagogical technique that en­
sures he will learn and remember everything; in a
nonliterate society the perpetuation of cultural tra­
ditions requires no less, so effective teaching meth­
ods are necessary.
On his return to society (incorporation) the
novice is welcomed with ceremonies, as though he
had returned from the dead. This alerts the soci­
ety at large to the individual’s new status— that
people can expect him to act in certain ways and
in return they must act in the appropriate ways
toward him. The individual’s new rights and du­
ties are thus clearly defined. He is spared, for ex­
ample, the problems of American teenagers, a time
when an individual is neither adult nor child but
a person whose status is ill defined.
In the Australian case just cited, boys are pre­
pared not just for adulthood but also for m an­
h o o d . In their society, for example, fortitude is
considered an important masculine virtue, and the
pain of tooth-knocking or circumcision helps in­
still this in initiates. In a similar way, female ini­
tiation rites help prepare Mende girls in West
Africa for womanhood. After they have begun to
menstruate, the girls are removed from society to
spend weeks, or even months, in seclusion. There
they discard the clothes of childhood, smear their
bodies with white clay, and dress in brief skirts
and many strands of beads. Shortly after entering
this transitional stage, they undergo surgery that
excises their clitoris and part of the labia minora,
something they believe enhances their procreative
potential. Until their incorporation back into so­
ciety, they are trained in the moral and practical
responsibilities of potential childbearers by expe­
rienced women in the Sande association, an orga­
nization the initiates will belong to once their
training has ended. This training is not all harsh,
however, for it is accompanied by a good deal of
singing, dancing, and storytelling, and the initiates
are very well fed. Thus, they acquire both a posi­
tive image of womanhood and a strong sense of
the Problem of D isorder
sisterhood. Once their training is complete, a med­
icine made by brewing leaves in water is used for
a ritual washing, removing the magical protection
that has shielded them during the period of their
confinement.
Mende women emerge from their initiation,
then, as women in knowledgeable control of their
sexuality, eligible for marriage and childbearing.
The pain and danger of the surgery, endured in the
context of intense social support from other
women, serves as a metaphor for childbirth, which
may well take place in the same place of seclusion,
again with the support of Sande women. It also
has been suggested that, symbolically, excision of
the clitoris (as the female version of the male pe­
nis) removes sexual ambiguity.8 Once it is done, a
woman kn ow s she is “all woman.” Thus we have
symbolic expression of gender as something im­
portant in peoples’ cultural lives.
In the case just cited, the anthropological com­
mitment to cultural relativism permits an under­
standing of the practice of clitoridectomy (removal
of the clitoris) in the Mende female initiation rites.
But as discussed earlier in this book (see Chapter
2), cultural relativism does not preclude the an­
thropologist from criticizing a given practice. In
this case, removal of the clitoris (like male cir­
cumcision) is a form of genital mutilation, and a
particularly dangerous one at that. Some form of
genital mutilation, ranging from the removal of
the clitoris to the removal of the entire external
female genitalia, including the partial closing of
the vaginal opening (surgically opened for inter­
course and closed again after a birth until the male
again desires intercourse), affects an estimated 80
million women in the world today and is particu­
larly widespread in Africa, where it occurs in 28
countries.9 The custom is found also among some
groups outside Africa: in Oman, Yemen, the
United Arab Emirates (but not Iran, Iraq, Jordan,
Libya, or Saudi Arabia), and among some Mus­
lims in Malaya and Indonesia. As this listing sug-
sMacCormack, C. P. (1977). Biological events and cultural
control. Signs, 3, 98.
9Armstrong, S. (1991). Female circumcision: Fighting a cruel
tradition. N ew Scientist, 42.

Soraya Mire, a Somalian film maker who underwent
genital mutilation at age 13, speaks to Nevada law­
makers in support of a bill that would make the prac­
tice a felony.
gests, female genital mutilation is not required by
Islamic religion; where it is practiced by Muslims
(not to mention the occasional Christian and Jew ­
ish group), it functions as a means for men to con­
trol women’s sexuality (unlike among the Mende).
Quite apart from the pain involved, and the op­
eration’s effect on a woman’s future sexual satis­
faction, significant numbers of young women die
from excessive bleeding, shock, or infection or (later
on) when giving birth as scar tissue tears. As a con­
sequence, the practice has been widely condemned
in recent years, and committees to end such prac­
tices have been set up in 22 African countries.
Rites of Intensification
Rites of intensification are rituals that mark occa­
sions of crisis in the life of the group, rather than
an individual. Whatever the precise nature of the
crisis— a severe lack of rain that threatens crops
in the fields, the sudden appearance of an enemy
war party, the onset of an epidemic, or some other
event that disturbs everyone— mass ceremonies
are performed to allay the danger to the group.
R eligion and the S upernatural CHAPTER 13 397
This unites people in a common effort so that fear
and confusion yield to collective action and a de­
gree of optimism. The balance in the relations of
all concerned, which has been upset, is restored to
normal, and the community values are celebrated
and affirmed.
While an individual’s death might be regarded
as the ultimate crisis in that individual’s life, it is,
as well, a crisis for the entire group, particularly
if the group is small. A member of the group has
been removed, so its equilibrium has been upset.
The survivors, therefore, must readjust and restore
balance. They also need to reconcile themselves to
the loss of someone to whom they were emotion­
ally tied. Funerary ceremonies, then, can be re­
garded as rites of intensification that permit the
living to express in nondisruptive ways their up­
set over the death while providing for social read­
justment. A frequent feature of such ceremonies is
an ambivalence toward the dead person. For ex­
ample, one of the parts of the funerary rites of cer­
tain Melanesians was the eating of the dead per­
son’s flesh. This ritual cannibalism, witnessed by
anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, was per­
formed with “extreme repugnance and dread and
usually followed by a violent vomiting fit. At the
same time it is felt to be a supreme act of rever­
ence, love and devotion.”10 This custom and the
emotions accompanying it clearly reveal the am­
biguous attitude toward death: On the one hand,
the survivors desire to maintain the tie to the dead
person, and, on the other hand, they feel disgust
and fear at the transformation wrought by death.
According to Malinowski, funeral ceremonies pro­
vide an approved collective means for individuals
to express these feelings while maintaining social
cohesiveness and preventing disruption of society.
The performance of rites of intensification
does not have to be limited to times of overt cri­
sis. In regions where the seasons differ enough that
human activities must change accordingly, they
take the form of annual ceremonies. These are par­
ticularly common among horticultural and
10Malinowski, B. (1954). M agic, science and religion, and
other essays (p. 50). Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor
Books.
398 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

agricultural people, with their planting, first-fruit,

and harvest ceremonies. For these critical times in
the lives of people in such societies, the ceremonies
express a reverent attitude toward nature’s forces
of generation and fertility that peoples’ very exis­
tence depends on. If all goes well, as it often does
at such times, participation in a happy situation
reinforces group involvement. It also serves as a
kind of dress rehearsal for serious crisis situations;
it promotes a habit of reliance on supernatural
forces through ritual activity, which can be easily
activated under stressful circumstances when it is
important not to give way to fear and despair.

* **4T

RELIGION, MAGIC, AND

Ritual cannibalism appears in various societies in
diverse forms. In Christianity, it is symbolic
rather than actual, although some Christians be­
lieve the communion wafer actually becomes the
body of Christ.
WITCHCRAFT
Among the most fascinating of ritual practices is
application of the belief that supernatural powers
can be compelled to act in certain ways for good
or evil purposes by recourse to particular specified
formulas. This is a classical anthropological no-

f.l ’

Queen Elizabeth II of England presides at the launching of a ship. Magic plays

an important part in British ship-launching ceremonies, involving symbolic
classification of the ship, the reincarnating power of the ship’s name, and the
relationship between women and ships. All play an important role in how
sailors, including their officers, believe and act.
 R eligion and the S upernatural CHAPTER 13 399

tion of magic. Many societies have magical ritu­
als to ensure good crops, the replenishment of
game, the fertility of domestic animals, and the
avoidance or cure of illness in humans.
Although most Western peoples today, seeking
to objectify and demythologize their world, often
have tried to suppress the existence of these fan­
tastic notions in their own consciousness, they con­
tinue to be fascinated by them. Not only are books
and films about demonic possession and witchcraft
avidly devoured and discussed, but also by 1967
(after some 40 years of poor sales) sales of Ouija
boards in the United States passed the 2 million
mark. Thirty years ago about 100 newspapers car­
ried horoscope columns, but by 1970 1,200 of a
total of 1,750 daily newspapers regularly carried
such columns. Anthropologist Lauren Kendall
notes that “Many witches, wizards, druids, Ca-
balists, and shamans . . . practice modern magic
in contemporary England and the United States,
where their ranks are comfortably reckoned in the
tens of thousands.” Furthermore, “The usual ma­
gician is ordinary, generally middle class, and of­
ten highly intelligent— a noticeable number of
them have something to do with computers.”11 Al­
though it is certainly true non-Western and peas­
ant peoples tend to endow their world quite freely
with magical properties, so do many highly edu­
cated Western peoples.
In the 19th century Sir James George Frazer,
author of one of the most widely read anthropo­
logical books of all time, T he G old en B ough, made
a strong distinction between religion and magic.
Religion he saw as “a propitiation or conciliation
of powers superior to man which are believed to
direct and control the course of nature and human
life.”12 Magic, by contrast, he saw as an attempt
to manipulate certain perceived “laws” of nature.
The magician never doubts the same causes always
will produce the same effects. Thus, Frazer saw
magic as a sort of pseudoscience, differing from
modern science only in its misconception of the
"Kendall, L. (1990, October). In the company of witches.
Natural History, 92.
12Frazer, J. G. (1931). Magic and religion. In V. F. Calverton
(Ed.), The m aking o f man: An outline o f anthropology (p.
693). New York: Modern Library.

What these two pictures have in common is that both are examples of institu­
tionalized magical responses to concerns many harbor in their societies. In
death-penalty states, executing criminals does no more to deter violent crimes
than Aztec human sacrifices did to keep the sun in the sky.
400 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

nature of the particular laws that govern the suc­
cession of events.
Useful though Frazer’s characterization of
magic has been, anthropologists no longer accept
his distinction between it and religion. Far from
being separate, magical procedures frequently are
part of religious rituals, and both magic and reli­
gion deal directly with the supernatural. In fact,
Frazer’s distinction seems to be no more than a
bias of Western culture, which regards magic as
quite separate from religion.
Frazer did make a useful distinction between
two fundamental principles of magic. The first
principle, that “like produces like,” he called im­
itative magic. In Burma, for example, a rejected
lover might engage a sorcerer to make an image
of his would-be love. If this image were tossed
into water, to the accompaniment of certain
charms, the hapless girl would go mad. Thus, the
girl would suffer a fate similar to that of her
image.
Frazer’s second principle was called conta­
gious magic— the concept that things or persons
once in contact can afterward influence one an­
other. The most common example of contagious
magic is the permanent relationship between an
individual and any part of his or her body, such
as hair, fingernails, or teeth. Frazer cites the Ba-
sutos of Lesotho, in southern Africa, who were
careful to conceal their extracted teeth, because
these might fall into the hands of certain mythical
beings who could harm the owners of the teeth by
working magic on them. Related to this is the cus­
tom, in Western societies, of treasuring objects that
have been touched by special people.
tims 19 years later, not until 1957 were the last
of the Salem witches exonerated by the Massa­
chusetts legislature. Although many North Amer­
icans suppose witchcraft is something that
belongs to a less enlightened past, in fact, it is
alive and well in the United States today. Indeed,
starting in the 1960s, witchcraft began to un­
dergo something of a boom in this country. North
Americans are by no means alone in this; for ex­
ample, as the Ibibio of Nigeria have become in­
creasingly exposed to modern education and sci­
entific training, their reliance on witchcraft as an
explanation for misfortune has increased.13 Fur­
thermore, it is often the younger, more educated
members of Ibibio society who accuse others of
bewitching them. Frequently, the accused are the
older, more traditional members of society; thus
we have an expression of the intergenerational
hostility that often exists in fast-changing tradi­
tional societies.
13Offiong, D. (1985). Witchcraft among the Ibibio of Nige­
ria. In C. Lehmann and J. E. Myers (Eds.), Magic, witchcraft
and religion (pp. 15 2 -1 6 5 ). Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.

W i tchcraft
In Salem, Massachusetts, 2 0 0 suspected witches
were arrested in 16 9 2 ; of these, 19 were hanged
and 1 was hounded to death. Despite the award­
ing of damages to descendants of some of the vic­

Im ita tiv e m agic. Magic based on the principle that like produces like. > Contagious m agic. Magic based on the
principle that beings once in contact can influence one another after separation. > W itc h c ra ft. An explanation of events
based on the belief certain individuals possess an innate psychic power capable of causing harm, including sickness and
death. Also includes beliefs and practices of benevolent magic.
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 401

Ibibio Witchcraft munity member; taking improper care of one’s

parents, children, or wives; and hardheartedness.
Among the Ibibio, as among most peoples of sub- Witches are apt to look and act mean and to be
Saharan Africa, witchcraft beliefs are highly de­ socially disruptive people in the sense that their
veloped and long standing. A rat that eats up a behavior too far exceeds the range of variance con­
person’s crops is not really a rat but a witch that sidered acceptable.
changed into one; if a young and enterprising man Neither the Ibibio in particular nor Africans
cannot get a job or fails an exam, he has been be­ in general are alone in attributing most malevo­
witched; and if someone’s money is wasted away lent happenings to witchcraft. Similar beliefs can
or if the person becomes sick, is bitten by a snake, be found in any human society, including— as al­
or is struck by lightning, the reason is always the ready noted— that of the United States. As among
same— witchcraft. Indeed, virtually all misfortune, the Ibibio, the powers (however they may be
illness, and death are attributed to the malevolent gained) are generally considered innate and un­
activities of witches. The Ibibio’s modern knowl­ controllable; they result in activities that are the
edge of such discoveries as the role microorgan­ antithesis of proper behavior, and persons dis­
isms play in disease has little impact; after all, it playing undesirable personality characteristics
says nothing about why these were sent to the af­ (however these may be defined) are generally the
flicted individual. Although Ibibio religious beliefs ones accused of being witches.
provide alternative explanations for misfortune,
they carry negative connotations and do not elicit
nearly as much sympathy from others. Thus, if evil
befalls a person, witchcraft is a far more satisfy­
ing explanation than something such as filial dis­
obedience or violation of some taboo.
Who are these Ibibio witches? They are
thought to be males or females who have within
them a special substance acquired from another
established witch. This substance is made up of
red, white, and black threads, needles, and other
ingredients, and one gets it by swallowing it. From
it comes a special power that causes harm, up to
and including death, irrespective of whether its
possessor intends to cause harm or not. The power
is purely psychic, and Ibibio witches do not per­
form rites nor make use of “bad medicine.” It gives
them the ability to change into animals, to travel
any distance at incredible speed to get at their vic­
tims, whom they may torture or kill by transfer­
ring the victim’s soul into an animal, which is then
eaten.
To identify a witch, an Ibibio looks for any
person whose behavior is out of the ordinary.
Specifically, any combination of the following may
cause someone to be labeled a witch: not being
In North America, interest in and practice of witch­
fond of greeting people; living alone in a place craft have grown significantly over the past 30 years,
apart from others; charging too high a price for often among highly educated segments of society.
something; enjoying adultery or committing incest; Contrary to popular belief, witchcraft (sometimes
walking about at night; not showing sufficient called Wicca) is n ot concerned exclusively, or even
grief upon the death of a relative or other com­ primarily, with working evil.
402 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving
The Ibibio make a distinction between “black
witches”— those whose acts are especially diabol­
ical and destructive— and “white witches,” whose
witchcraft is relatively benign, even though their
powers are thought to be greater than those of
their black counterparts. This exemplifies a com­
mon distinction between what Lucy Mair, a British
anthropologist, has dubbed “nightmare witches”
and “everyday witches.”14 The nightmare witch is
the very embodiment of a society’s conception of
evil, a being that flouts the rules of sexual behav­
ior and disregards every standard of decency.
Nightmare witches, being almost literally the
product of dreams and repressed fantasies, have
much in common wherever they appear: The mod­
ern Navajo and the ancient Roman, for example,
like the Ibibio, conceived of witches who could
turn themselves into animals and gather to feast
on their victims. Everyday witches are often the
community’s nonconformists, who are morose,
who eat alone, who are arrogant and unfriendly,
but who otherwise cause little trouble. Such
witches may be dangerous when offended and re­
taliate by causing sickness, death, crop failure, cat­
tle disease, or any number of lesser ills; people
thought to be witches are usually treated very
courteously.
T he Fu nc t i ons of W i tchcraft
Why witchcraft? We might better ask, why not?
As M air aptly observed, in a world where there
are few proven techniques for dealing with every­
day crises, especially sickness, a belief in witches
is not foolish; it is indispensable. No one wants to
resign oneself to illness, and if the malady is caused
by a witch’s hex, then magical countermeasures
should cure it. N ot only does the idea of person­
alized evil answer the problem of unmerited suf­
fering, but it also provides an explanation for
many happenings no cause can be discovered for.
W itchcraft, then, cannot be refuted. Even if we
could convince a person that his or her illness was
due to natural causes, the victim would still ask,
as the Ibibio do, Why me? Why now? Such a view
14Mair, L. (1969). 'Witchcraft (p. 37). New York: McGraw-
Hill.
the Problem of D isorder
leaves no room for pure chance; everything must
be assigned a cause or meaning. Witchcraft pro­
vides the explanation and, in so doing, also
provides both the basis and the means for taking
counteraction.
Nor is witchcraft always malevolent; even
during the Spanish Inquisition, church officials
recognized a benevolent or “white” variety. The
positive functions of even malevolent witchcraft
may be seen in many African societies in which
people believe sickness and death are caused by
witches. The ensuing search for the perpetrator of
the misfortune becomes, in effect, a communal
probe into social behavior.
A witch-hunt is, in fact, a systematic investi­
gation, through a public hearing, into all social re­
lationships involving the victim of the sickness or
death. Was her husband unfaithful or her son lack­
ing in the performance of his duties? Were her
friends uncooperative, or was the victim guilty of
any of these wrongs? Accusations are reciprocal,
and before long just about every unsocial or hos­
tile act that has occurred in that society since the
last outbreak of witchcraft (sickness or death) is
brought into the open.15
Through such periodic public scrutiny of
everyone’s behavior, people are reminded of what
their society regards as both strengths and weak­
nesses of character. This encourages individuals to
suppress as best they can those personality traits
looked upon with disapproval, for if they do not,
they at some time may be accused of being a witch.
A belief in witchcraft thus serves a function of so­
cial control.
Psychological Functions of Witchcraft
Among the Navajo
Widely known among American Indians are the
Navajo, who possess a detailed concept of witch­
craft. Several types of witchcraft are distinguished.
W itchery encompasses the practices of witches,
who are said to meet at night to practice canni­
balism and kill people at a distance. Sorcery is dis­
tinguished from witchery only by the methods
15Turnbull, C. M. (1983). The human cycle (p. 181). New
York: Simon & Schuster.

c^y5 yyL ccci Reconciling Modern Medicine
With Traditional Beliefs
in Swaziland
A lthough the biomedical germ theory is generally
accepted in Western societies today, this is not the
case in many other societies around the world. In south­
ern Africa's Swaziland, for example, all types o f illnesses
are generally thought to be caused by sorcery or by
loss o f ancestral protection. Even where the effective­
ness o f Western medicine is recognized, the ultimate
question remains: W hy was the disease sent in the first
place? Thus, for the treatment o f disease, the Swazi tra­
ditionally have relied upon herbalists, diviner mediums
ancestral spirits are thought to w ork through, and Chris­
tian faith healers. Unfortunately, such individuals usually
have been regarded as quacks and charlatans by the
medical establishment, even though the herbal medi­
cines traditional healers use are effective in several ways,
and the reassurance provided patient and family alike
through rituals that reduce stress and anxiety plays an
Important role in the patient’s recovery. In a country
with I traditional healer for every I 10 people but only
I physician for every 10,000, the potential benefit o f
cooperation between physicians and healers seems self-
evident. Nevertheless, it was unrecognized until pro­
posed by anthropologist Edward C. Green*
Green, who is now senior research associate with a
private firm, went to Swaziland in 1981 as a researcher
for a Rural Water-Borne Disease Control Project, funded
by the United States Agency for International Develop­
ment. Assigned the task of finding out about knowledge,
attitudes, and practices related to water and sanitation,
and aware of the serious deficiencies o f conventional sur­
veys that rely on precoded questionnaires (see Chapter
I), Green used instead the traditional anthropological
techniques o f open-ended interviews with key informants,
along with participant observation. The key informants
were traditional healers, patients, and rural health moti­
vators (individuals communities chose to receive 8 weeks
of training in preventive health care In regional clinics).
W ithout such w ork Green would have found it impos­
sible to design and interpret a reliable survey Instrument,
but the added payoff was that he learned a great deal
about Swazi theories o f disease and its treatment.
R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 403
Disposed at the outset to recognize the positive
value o f many traditional practices, Green also could
see how cooperation with physicians might be achieved.
For example, traditional healers already recognized the
utility o f Western medicines for the treatment o f dis­
eases not indigenous to Africa, and traditional medi­
cines routinely were given to children through inhala­
tion and a kind o f vaccination. Thus, nontraditional
medicines and vaccinations might be accepted, if pre­
sented in traditional terms.
Realizing the suspicion existing on both sides,
Green and his Swazi associate Lydia Makhubu (a
chemist who had studied the properties o f native med­
icines) recommended to the Minister o f Health a co­
operative project focused on a problem o f concern to
health professionals and native healers alike: infant di­
arrheal diseases. These recently had become a health
problem o f high concern to the general public; heal­
ers wanted a way to prevent such diseases, and a
means o f treatment existed— oral rehydration therapy
— that was compatible with traditional treatments for
diarrhea (herbal preparations taken orally fo ra period).
Packets o f oral rehydration salts, along with instruc­
tions, were provided healers in a pilot project, with
positive results. This helped convince health profes­
sionals o f the benefits o f cooperation, while the heal­
ers saw the distribution o f packets to them as a ges­
ture o f trust and cooperation from the Ministry o f
Health.
Since then, further steps toward cooperation have
been taken. All o f this demonstrates the importance
o f finding how to w ork in ways compatible with exist­
ing belief systems. Directly challenging traditional beliefs,
as all to o often happens, does little more than create
stress, confusion, and resentment among a people.
*Green, E. C. (1987). The planning of health education
strategies in Swaziland; and The integration of modern and
traditional health sectors in Swaziland. In R. M. Wulff &
S. J. Fiske (Eds.), A nthropological praxis: Translating know l­
edge into action (pp. 1 5 -2 5 ; 8 7 -97). Boulder, CO: Westview.
404 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving
used by the sorcerer, who casts spells on individ­
uals using the victim’s fingernails, hair, or dis­
carded clothing. W izardry is not distinguished so
much by its effects as by its manner of working:
Wizards kill by injecting a cursed substance, such
as a tooth from a corpse, into the victim’s body.
Whether or not a particular illness results from
Navajo witchcraft is determined by divination, a
magical procedure that also reveals the witch’s
identity. Once a person is charged with witchcraft,
he or she is publicly interrogated, possibly even
tortured, until there is a confession. It is believed
the witch’s own curse will turn against the witch
once this happens, so it is expected the witch will
die within a year. Some confessed witches have
been allowed to live in exile.
According to Clyde Kluckhohn, Navajo witch­
craft served to channel anxieties, tensions, and frus­
trations caused by the pressures from Anglo Amer­
icans.16 The rigid rules of decorum among the
Navajo allow little means for expression of hostil­
ity, except through accusations of witchcraft. Such
accusations funnel pent-up negative emotions
against individuals without upsetting the wider so-
16Kluckhohn, C. (1944). Navajo witchcraft. Papers o f the
P eabody Museum o f American A rchaeology and Ethnology,
22 ( 2 ) .
D ivin atio n . A magical procedure for determining the cause of a particular event, such as illness, or foretelling the future.
the Problem of D isorder
ciety. Another function of witchcraft accusations is
that they permit the direct expression of hostile
feelings against people one ordinarily would be un­
able to express anger or enmity toward. On a more
positive note, individuals strive to behave in ways
that will prevent their being accused of witchcraft.
Since excessive wealth is believed to result from
witchcraft, individuals are encouraged to redis­
tribute their assets among friends and relatives,
thereby leveling economic differences. Similarly,
because Navajos believe uncared-for elders will
turn into witches, people are strongly motivated to
take care of aged relatives. And because leaders are
thought to be witches, people are understandably
reluctant to go against their wishes, lest they suf­
fer supernatural retribution.
Analyses such as these demonstrate that witch­
craft, in spite of its often negative image, fre­
quently functions in a very positive way to man­
age tensions within a society. Nonetheless, events
may get out of hand, particularly in crisis situa­
tions, when widespread accusations may cause
great suffering. This certainly was the case in the
Salem witch trials, but even those pale in com­
parison to the something like half a million indi­
viduals executed as witches in Europe from the
15th through 17th centuries. This was a time of
profound change in European society, marked by
a good deal of political and religious conflict. At
such times, it is all too easy to search out scape­
goats to place the blame on for what people be­
lieve are undesirable changes.
THfc FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION
Just as a belief in witchcraft may serve a variety
of psychological and social functions, so too do
religious beliefs and practices in general. Here we
will summarize these functions in a more system­
atic way. One psychological function is to provide
an orderly model of the universe; its importance
for orderly human behavior is discussed in Chap­
ter 5. Beyond this, by explaining the unknown and
making it understandable, religion reduces the
R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 405

Members of the same religion may

engage in, as well as suffer, persecu­
tion. In the former Yugoslavia, R o­
man Catholic Croats and Eastern Or­
thodox Serbs fought each other,
while both fought Islamic Bosnians.
In the Sudan, Islamic fundamentalists
routinely direct violence against
Christians and Pagans. In the Middle
East, at the same time that Jews are
the victims of violence from Islamic
fundamentalists, fundamentalist Jews
have directed violence against
Muslims.
406 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
fears and anxieties of individuals. As we have seen,
the explanations usually assume the existence of
various sorts of supernatural beings and powers,
which people potentially may appeal to or ma­
nipulate. This being so, a means is provided for
dealing with crises: Divine aid is, theoretically,
available when all else fails.
A social function of religion is to sanction a
wide range of conduct. In this context, religion
plays a role in social control, which, as we saw in
Chapter 12, does not rely on law alone. This is
done through notions of right and wrong. Right
actions earn the approval of whatever supernat­
ural powers a particular culture recognizes. Wrong
actions may cause retribution through supernat­
ural agencies. In short, by deliberately raising peo­
ples’ feelings of guilt and anxiety about their ac­
tions, religion helps keep them in line.
Religion does more than this, though; it sets
precedents for acceptable behavior. We already
have noted the connection between myths and re­
ligion. Usually, myths are full of tales of super­
natural beings that in various ways illustrate the
society’s ethical code in action. So it is that Glus-
kabe, the Penobscot culture hero, is portrayed in
the Penobscot myths as tricking and punishing
those who mock others, lie, are greedy, or go in
for extremes of behavior. Moreover, the specific
situations serve as precedents for human behav­
ior in similar circumstances. The Bible’s Old and
New Testaments are rich in the same sort of ma­
terial. Related to this, by the models religion pre­
sents and the morals it espouses, religion serves
to justify and perpetuate a particular social order.
Thus, in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradi­
tions, a masculine-authoritarian godhead along
with a creation story that portrays a woman as
responsible for a fall from grace serves to justify
a social order where men exercise control over
women.
A psychological function also is tied up in all
this. A society’s moral code, since it is considered
divinely fixed, lifts the burden of responsibility for
conduct from the shoulders of the society’s indi­
vidual members, at least in important situations.
It can be a tremendous relief to individuals to
know that the responsibility for the way things are
rests with the gods, rather than with themselves.
Another social function of religion is its role
the Problem of D isorder
in the maintenance of social solidarity. In our dis­
cussion of shamans, we saw how such individuals
provide focal points of interest, thus supplying one
ingredient of assistance for maintaining group
unity. In addition, common participation in ritu­
als, coupled with a basic uniformity of beliefs,
helps to bind people together and reinforce their
identification with their group. Particularly effec­
tive may be their participation together in rituals,
when the atmosphere is charged with emotion.
The exalted feelings people may experience in such
circumstances serve as a positive reinforcement in
that they feel good as a result. Here, once again,
we find religion providing psychological assurance
while providing for the needs of society.
One other area where religion serves a social
function is education. In our discussion of rites of
passage, we noted that Australian puberty rites
served as a kind of cram course in tribal lore. By
providing a memorable occasion, initiation rites
can enhance learning and thus help ensure the per­
petuation of a nonliterate culture. And as we saw
for the female initiation rites among the Mende,
they can serve to ensure individuals have the
knowledge they will need to fulfill their adult roles
in society. Education also may be served by rites
of intensification. Frequently, such rites involve
dramas that portray matters of cultural impor­
tance. For example, among a food-foraging peo­
ple dances may imitate the movement of game and
techniques of hunting. Among farmers a fixed
round of ceremonies may emphasize the steps nec­
essary for good crops. These rites help preserve
knowledge important to a people’s material well­
being.
RELIGION AND
CULTURAL CHANGE
Although the subject of culture change is taken up
in a later chapter, no anthropological considera­
tion of religion is complete without some mention
of revitalization m ovem ents. In 1931, at Buka in
the Solomon Islands, a native religious cult sud­
denly emerged, its prophets predicting a deluge
would soon engulf all Whites. This would be fol­
lowed by the arrival of a ship laden with Euro­

pean goods. The believers were to construct a
storehouse for the goods and to prepare them­
selves to repulse the colonial police. Because the
ship would arrive only after the natives had used
up all their own supplies, they ceased working in
the fields. Although the cult leaders were arrested,
the movement continued for some years.
This was not an isolated instance. Such “cargo
cults”— and many other movements promising the
resurrection of the dead, the destruction or en­
slavement of Europeans, and the coming of uto­
pian riches— have sporadically appeared through­
out Melanesia ever since the beginning of this
century. Since these cults are widely separated in
space and time, their similarities are apparently the
result of similarities in social conditions. In these
Shown here are members of the Unarias Academy
of Science, a “New Age” Revitalization movement
that believes in the future arrival of wise space be­
ings who will inspire a new spiritual awareness in
human beings.
R e v ita liz a tio n m o v e m e n ts . Social movements, often of a religious nature, with the purpose of totally reforming a
society.
R eligion and the S upernatural CHAPTER 13 407
areas the traditional cultures of the indigenous peo­
ples have been uprooted. Europeans, or European-
influenced natives, hold all political and economic
power. Natives are employed unloading and dis­
tributing Western-made goods but have no practi­
cal knowledge of how to attain these goods. When
cold reality offers no hope from the daily frustra­
tions of cultural deterioration and economic de­
privation, religion offers the solution.
Revitalization Movements
From the 1890 Ghost Dance of many North Amer­
ican Indians to the Mau Mau of Kenya to the
“cargo cults” of Melanesia, extreme and some­
times violent religious reactions to European dom­
ination are so common that anthropologists have
sought to formulate their underlying causes and
general characteristics. Yet revitalization move­
ments, as they are now called, are by no means
restricted to the colonial world, and in the United
States alone hundreds of such movements have
sprung up. Among the more widely known are
Mormonism, which began in the 19th century; the
more recent Unification Church of the Reverend
Sun Myung M oon; the Branch Davidians whose
“prophet” was David Koresh; and the Heaven’s
Gate cult led by Marshall Herf Applewhite and
Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles. As these four ex­
amples suggest, revitalization movements show a
great deal of diversity, and some have been much
more successful than others.
A revitalization movement is a deliberate ef­
fort by members of a society to construct a more
satisfying culture. The emphasis in this definition
is on the reformation not just of the religious
sphere of activity but also of the entire cultural
system. Such a drastic solution is attempted when
a group’s anxiety and frustration have become so
intense that the only way to reduce the stress is to
overturn the entire social system and replace it
with a new one.
Given the numerous sources of anxiety in
North American society today, ranging from those
related to science and technology, noted earlier in
408 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

A fascination with numbers and calendrical calculations is not restricted to North Ameri­
cans and others at the end of the millennium. Shown here are pages from a Maya Indian
book that predates Columbus; they consist of Venus tables that track the movement of
this planet over a period of several centuries. The information was important for deciding
auspicious times to make war.

this chapter, to what many regard as a breakdown
of the family and morality (see Chapters 8 and 9),
coupled with the turn of the millennium in the year
2001 (the year 2 0 0 0 is the last year of the 20th
century), we may expect to see a number of mil-
lenarian revitalization movements for the next few
years. Although periods of 1,000 years (millennia)
have no relationship whatever to any astronomi­
cal cycle, numbers have their own fascination in
the seemingly magical ways they can be manipu­
lated. In this case, the completely arbitrary unit of
1,000 years is fused with apocalyptic Christian be­
liefs to predict an imminent destruction of the
present world. (The same fears occurred before the
previous millennium.) Precisely such a mix of bits
and pieces of Christian belief with folk myths of
contemporary North American culture— UFOlogy
in particular— and the end of the millennium cost
the followers of Heaven’s Gate their lives.17
Anthropologist Anthony Wallace has outlined
a sequence common to all expressions of the re­
vitalization process.18 First is the normal state of
society, in which stress is not too great and suffi­
cient cultural means of satisfying needs exist. Un­
der certain conditions, such as domination by a
more powerful group or severe economic depres­
sion, stress and frustration are steadily amplified;
this ushers in the second phase, or the period of
increased individual stress. If there are no signifi­
cant adaptive changes, a period of cultural distor­
tion follows, in which stress becomes so chronic
that socially approved methods of releasing ten­
sion begin to break down. This steady deteriora­
tion of the culture may be checked by a period of
revitalization, during which a dynamic cult or re­
ligious movement grips a sizable proportion of the
population. Often the movement will be so out of
touch with reality that it is doomed to failure from

17Gould, S. J. (1997). Questioning the millennium. New ISWallace, A. F. CJ. (1970). Culture and personality (2nd ed.,
York: Crown. pp. 191-196). New York: Random House.
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 409

In the United States, Mormonism is an example of a revitalization

movement that is enormously successful in gaining acceptance in
the wider society. By contrast, the Branch Davidians so antago­
nized elements of mainstream society that a confrontation oc­
curred, ending with the mass immolation of many cult members.

the beginning. This was the case with the Heaven’s
Gate cult, because its followers self-destructed
from suicide based on a conviction their spiritual
essences would reunite with extraterrestrial higher
bodies in a spaceship that awaited them behind
the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet to take them
“home.” This self-destruction was the case also
with the Branch Davidians, when the suspicions
of government authorities led to an assault on the
cult’s compound. In reaction, cult members com­
mitted mass suicide by deliberately immolating
themselves in their headquarters.
More rarely, a movement may tap long-
dormant adaptive forces underlying a culture, and
an enduring religion may result. Such is the case
with Mormonism. Though heavily persecuted at
first and hounded from place to place, Mormons
adapted to the point that their religion thrives in
the United States today. Indeed, revitalization
movements lie at the root of all known religions,
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam included. We shall
return to revitalization movements in Chapter 15.

CHAPTER
Religion is a part of all cultures. It consists of be­
liefs and behavior patterns by which people try to
control areas of the universe otherwise beyond
their control. Among food-foraging peoples, reli­
gion is a basic ingredient of everyday life. As so­
cieties become more complex, religion is less a part
of daily activities and tends to be restricted to par­
ticular occasions.
Religion is characterized by a belief in super­
natural beings and forces. Through prayer, sacri-
SUMMARY
fice, and other religious rituals, people appeal to
the supernatural world for aid. Supernatural be­
ings may be grouped into three categories: major
deities (gods and goddesses), ancestral spirits, and
other sorts of spirit beings. Gods and goddesses
are the greatest but most remote beings. They are
usually thought of as controlling the universe or
a specific part of it. Whether or not people rec­
ognize gods, goddesses, or both has to do with
how men and women relate to one another in
410 PART IV T he Search for O rder : S olving the P roblem of D isorder
everyday life. Animism is a belief in spirit beings,
other than ancestors, who are believed to animate
all of nature. These spirit beings are closer to hu­
mans than gods and goddesses and are intimately
concerned with human activities. Animism is typ­
ical of peoples who see themselves as a part of na­
ture rather than as superior to it. A belief in an­
cestral spirits is based on the idea that human
beings are made up of a body and soul. At death
the spirit is freed from the body and continues to
participate in human affairs. Belief in ancestral
spirits is particularly characteristic of descent-
based groups with their associated ancestral ori­
entation. Animatism may be found with animism
in the same culture. Animatism is a force or power
directed to a successful outcome and may make it­
self manifest in any object.
Beliefs in supernatural beings and powers are
maintained, first, through what are interpreted as
manifestations of power. Second, they are perpet­
uated because supernatural beings possess attrib­
utes familiar to people. Finally, myths serve to
rationalize religious beliefs and practices.
Ail human societies have specialists— priests
and priestesses and/or shamans— to guide reli­
gious practices and to intervene with the super­
natural world. Shamanism, with its often dramatic
ritual, promotes a release of tension among indi­
viduals in a society. The shaman provides a focal
point of attention for society and can help to main­
tain social control. The benefits of shamanism for
the shaman are prestige, sometimes wealth, and
an outlet for artistic self-expression.
Religious rituals are religion in action.
Through ritual acts, social bonds are reinforced.
Times of life crises are occasions for ritual. Arnold
Van Gennep divided such rites of passage into rites
of separation, transition, and incorporation. Rites
of intensification are rituals to mark crisis occa­
sions in the life of the group rather than the indi­
vidual. They serve to unite people, allay fear of the
crisis, and prompt collective action. Funerary cer­
emonies are rites of intensification that provide for
social readjustment after the loss of the deceased.
Rites of intensification also may involve annual cer­
emonies to seek favorable conditions surrounding
critical activities such as planting and harvesting.
Ritual practices of peasant and non-Western
peoples are often an expression of the belief they
can make supernatural powers act in certain ways
with certain prescribed formulas. This is the clas­
sic anthropological notion of magic. Sir James
Frazer differentiated two principles of magic—
“like produces like,” or imitative magic, and the
law of contagion.
Witchcraft functions as an effective way for
people to explain away personal misfortune with­
out having to shoulder any of the blame. Even
malevolent witchcraft may function positively in
the realm of social control. It also may provide an
outlet for feelings of hostility and frustration with­
out disturbing the norms of the larger group.
Religion (including magic and witchcraft)
serves several important social functions. First, it
sanctions a wide range of conduct by providing no­
tions of right and wrong. Second, it sets precedents
for acceptable behavior and helps perpetuate an ex­
isting social order. Third, religion serves to lift the
burden of decision making from individuals and
places responsibility with the gods. Fourth, religion
plays a large role in maintaining social solidarity.
Finally, religion serves education. Ritual ceremonies
enhance learning of tribal lore and thus help to en­
sure the perpetuation of a nonliterate culture.
Domination by Western society has been the
cause of revitalization movements in non-West­
ern societies. In the islands of Melanesia, these
take the form of cargo cults that have appeared
spontaneously at different times since the begin­
ning o f the century. Anthony Wallace has inter­
preted revitalization movements as attempts,
sometimes successful, to change the society. Re­
gardless of the society they appear in, revital­
ization movements all follow a common se­
quence, and all religions stem from such
movements.
 R eligion and the Supernatural CHAPTER 13 411

Points for C onsideration

1. Many have felt that with the advance of technology and Western scientific investigation, “irra­
tional” religious beliefs gradually would fade away to be replaced by “logical knowledge.” Has
this been the case? Is it ever likely to occur? Why or why not?
2. Are religion and science necessarily opposed? What is your own experience with these two
worlds?
3. What is the purpose of myths? W hat is their relationship to social organization? How do the
functions of myths compare with those of “history” in various societies?
4. Religion is often called “irrational” or “illogical” in comparison with science. Is this a fair assess­
ment? Why or why not? What is required for an argument to be “logical” and “rational” ? R e­
calling the Anthropology Applied section dealing with Swaziland, what are the potential conse­
quences of such a position? How possible and how rewarding is compromise?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Kalwet, H. (1988). D ream tim e an d inner space:
T he w orld o f the sham an. New York: Ran­
dom House.
Written by an ethnopsychologist, this book
surveys the practices and paranormal experi­
ences of healers and shamans from Africa, the
Americas, Asia, and Australia.
Norbeck, E. (1974). R eligion in hum an life: An­
Lehmann, A. C., & Myers, J. E. (Eds.). (1993).
Magic, w itchcraft an d religion: An a n th ro p o ­
logical study o f the supernatural (3rd ed.).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
This anthology of readings is cross-cultural in
scope, covering traditional as well as nontradi-
tional themes. Well represented are both
“tribal” and “modern” religions. It is a good
Wallace, A. F. C. (1966). R eligion: An a n th ro p o ­
way to discover the relevance and vitality of an­
thropological approaches to the supernatural.
Malinowski, B. (1954). M agic, scien ce an d reli­
gion, an d o th er essays. Garden City, NY: Dou-
bleday/Anchor Books.
The articles collected here provide a discus­
sion of the Trobriand Islanders as illustrative
of conceptual and theoretical knowledge of
humankind. The author covers such diversi­
fied topics as religion, life, death, character of
“primitive” cults, magic, faith, and myth.
th rop olog ical views. New York: Holt, Rine­
hart and Winston.
The author presents a comprehensive view of
religion based on twin themes: the description
of religious events, rituals, and states of mind
and the nature of anthropological aims, views,
procedures, and interpretations.
logical view. New York: Random House.
This is a classic textbook treatment of religion
by an anthropologist who has specialized in
the study of revitalization movements.
 dlAfvfcl' ŸYtVitw

1. What Is Art?
A rt is the creative use of the human imagination to interpret, understand, and enjoy life. A l­
though the idea of art serving nonuseful, nonpractical purposes seems firmly entrenched in the
thinking of modern Western peoples, in other cultures art often serves what are regarded as
important, practical purposes.

2. Why Do Anthropologists Study Art?

Anthropologists have found that art reflects a people’s cultural values and concerns. This is es­
pecially true o f the verbal arts— myths, legends, and tales. From these the anthropologist may
learn how a people order their universe and may discover much about a people’s history as
well. Also, music and the visual arts may provide insights into a people’s worldview and, through
distributional studies, may suggest things about a people’s history.

3. What Are the Functions of the Arts?

Aside from adding pleasure to everyday life, the various arts serve a number o f functions. Myths,
fo r example, set standards fo r orderly behavior, and the verbal arts generally transmit and pre­
serve a culture’s customs and values. Songs, too, may do this within the restrictions musical form
imposes. And any a rt form, to the degree it is characteristic o f a particular society, may con­
tribute to the cohesiveness o r solidarity o f that society.

413
414 PART IV T he S earch for O rder : S olving the Problem of D isorder
n the United States, the arts often are seen as
I something of a frill, something to be engaged
in for personal enjoyment apart from more pro­
ductive pursuits or to provide pleasure for others,
or both. This attitude becomes apparent whenever
public funds are in short supply; on the local level,
for example, in battles over school budgets, art
programs are often the first to be cut. Unlike
sports, which usually are supported more than the
arts because they are perceived as providing skills
thought to be essential to success in a competitive
world, the arts are seen as nonessential: pleasur­
able and worthwhile but expensive, with little
practical payoff. On the national level, fiscal con­
servatives labor to cut back funds for the arts, on
the premise the arts lack the practical importance
of defense, economic, or other governmental ac­
tivities. Indeed, artists and their supporters are
seen as something of an elite, subsidized at the ex­
pense of hard-working “practical” people. Yet one
might ask, why in recent years has the National
Endowment for the Arts so often been the center
of such hot political controversy? If art really is
such an unimportant diversionary activity, why
has so much legislative time and energy been de­
voted to often bitter fights to cut off funding or
at least to impose controls on the kinds of work
artists may engage in?
Perhaps the oldest means of artistic expression is body decoration. Shown here is a
Moroccan woman whose hands and feet are dyed with henna (to celebrate a royal
wedding) and a tattooed Asian man.
The fact is artistic behavior is far from unim­
portant and is as basic to human beings as talking.
Just as speech is used to communicate feelings, to
make statements, so too is artistic expression.
Moreover, it is not simply a special category of per­
sons called “artists” who do this; for example, all
human beings adorn their bodies in certain ways
and by doing so make a statement about who they
are, both as individuals and as members of social
groups of various sorts. Similarly, all people tell sto­
ries, in which they express their values, their hopes,
and their concerns and thus reveal much about
themselves and the nature of the world as they see
it. In short, all peoples engage in artistic behavior
as they use their imagination creatively to interpret,
understand, and even enjoy life. What’s more, they
have been doing this for at least 40,000 years, if
not longer. Far from a luxury afforded or appreci­
ated by a minority of aesthetes or escapists, art is
a necessary kind of social behavior every normal
and active human being participates in.
The idea of art serving nonuseful, nonpracti-
cal purposes seems firmly entrenched in the think­
ing of modern Western peoples. Today, for exam­
ple, the objects from the tomb of the young
Egyptian king Tutankhamen are on display in a mu­
seum, where they may be seen and admired as the
exquisite works of art they are. They were made,
 T he A rts CHAPTER 14 415

however, to be hidden away from human eyes,
where they were to guarantee the eternal life of the
king and to protect him from evil forces that might
enter his body and gain control over it. Or we may
listen to the singing of a sea chantey purely for aes­
thetic pleasure, as a form of entertainment. In fact,
in the days of sail, sea chanteys served very useful
and practical purposes. They set the appropriate
rhythm for performance of specific shipboard tasks,
and the same qualities that make them pleasurable
to listen to today served to relieve the boredom of
those tasks. Such links between art and other as­
pects are common in human societies around the
world. Only in the West— and recently at that— has
fine art become less accessible to members of the
society at large, as wealthy collectors commission
and purchase artworks for their personal enjoy­
ment in the privacy of their homes. Yet p o p art or
fo lk art— call it what you will— continues to thrive.
Because art, like any aspect of culture, is inextri­
cably intertwined with everything else people do, it
affords us glimpses into other aspects of peoples’
lives, including their values and worldview.
To people today, making exquisite objects of
gold and precious stones to place in a tomb might
seem like throwing them away. Yet, something
similar happens when a Navajo Indian creates an
intricate sand painting as part of a ritual act, only
to destroy it once the ritual is over. Johann Se­
bastian Bach did the very same thing when, almost

Much of the world’s art is created for functional rather than aesthetic purposes. Shown here, counterclockwise,
are examples of art used to cure sickness (a Navajo sand painting), to express cultural identity (the Mardi Gras
costume of one of New Orleans’ “Black Indians” ), and for political purposes (graffiti from Katatura, Namibia).
416 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

300 years ago, he composed his cantatas for

church services. These were “throwaway” music,
meant to be discarded after the services they were
written for. That many of them are still performed
today is something of an accident, for Bach did
not compose them for posterity. In many human
societies, creating the art is often of greater im­
portance than the final product itself.
Whether a particular work of art is intended
to be appreciated purely as such or (as in the ex­
amples just noted) to serve some practical purpose,
it will in every case require the same special com­
bination of the symbolic representation of form
and the expression of feeling that constitute the
creative imagination. Insofar as the creative use of
the human ability to symbolize is universal and
both expresses and is shaped by cultural values
and concerns, it is an important subject for an­
thropological study.
As an activity or kind of behavior that con­
tributes to human well-being and that helps give
shape and significance to life, art must be related
to, yet differentiated from, religion. The dividing
line between the two is not distinct: It is not easy
to say, for example, precisely where art stops and
religion begins in an elaborate ceremony involv­
ing ornamentation, masks, costumes, songs,
dances, and effigies. And like magic, music, dance, Use of art to enchant: By singing to her child, this
and other arts may be used to “enchant”— to ex­ mother soothes and at the same time promotes the
ploit the innate or psychological biases of another kind of behavior she wants from her child.
person or group so as to cause them to perceive
social reality in a way favorable to the interests of
the “enchanter.” Indeed, the arts may be used to particular culture. An enormous variety of forms
manipulate a seemingly inexhaustible list of hu­ and modes of artistic expression exist in the world.
man passions, including desire, terror, wonder, cu­ Because people everywhere continue to create and
pidity, fantasy, and vanity.1 develop in new directions, no point of diminish­
ing returns is foreseeable for the interesting process
of collecting and describing the world’s ornaments,
body decorations, variations in clothing, blanket
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL and rug designs, pottery and basket styles, archi­
tectural embellishments, monuments, ceremonial
STUDY OF ART masks, legends, work songs, dances, and other art
When approaching art as a cultural phenomenon, forms. The collecting process, however, eventually
anthropologists have the pleasant task of cata­ must lead to some kind of analysis and general­
loging, photographing, recording, and describing izations about relationships between art and the
all possible forms of imaginative activity in any rest of culture.
A good way to begin a study of the relation­
ships between art and the rest of culture is to
1Gell, A. (1988). Technology and magic. Anthropology examine critically some of the generalizations al­
Today, 4 (2), 7. ready made about specific arts. Since it is impos-

Among the Inuit, the artist does not impose his or her will on the medium, but rather seeks to help
what is already there to emerge from hiding.
C&i Protecting Cultural
Heritages
In these last years o f the 20th century, the time is long
past when the anthropologist could go out and de­
scribe small tribal groups in out-of-the-way places that
had not been ‘'contaminated" by contact with Western
people. N ot only do few such groups exist in the world
today, but also those that do remain face strong pres­
sures to abandon their traditional ways in the name of
“ progress." All too often, tribal peoples are made to for­
feit their indigenous identity and are pressed into a mold
that allows them neither the opportunity nor the mo­
tivation to rise above the lowest rung o f the social lad­
der From an autonomous people able to provide for
their own needs, with pride and a strong sense o f iden­
tity as a people, they are transformed into a deprived
underclass with neither pride nor a sense o f identity,
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 417
often despised by more fortunate members o f some
multinational state in which they live.
The basic rights o f groups o f people to be them­
selves and not to be deprived o f their distinctive cul­
tural identities are and should be our paramount con­
sideration and will be dealt with in the final tw o chapters
o f this book. However, anthropologists have additional
reasons to be concerned about the disappearance of
the societies and traditions they study. For one thing,
the need for information about them has become
steadily more apparent. If we are ever to have a real­
istic understanding o f that elusive thing called human
nature, we need reliable data on all humans. More is
involved than this, though; once a traditional society is
gone, it is lost to humanity, unless an adequate record
 418 PART IV T he Search for O rder : Solving the
o f it exists. W hen a culture is lost without records o f
it, humanity is the poorer for the loss. Hence, anthro­
pologists have in a sense rescued many such societies
from oblivion. This not only helps to preserve the hu­
man heritage, but It also may be important to an eth­
nic group that, having become Westernized, wishes to
rediscover and reassert its past cultural identity. Better
yet, o f course, is to find ways to prevent the loss o f cul­
tural traditions and societies in the first place.
To the Porno Indians o f California, the art o f basket
making has been important for their sense o f who they
are since before the coming o f European settlers. Rec­
ognized for their skilled techniques and aesthetic artistry,
Porno baskets— some o f the finest in the world— are
prized by museums and private collectors alike. Never­
theless, the art o f Porno basket making was threatened
in the 1970s by the impending construction o f the Warm
Springs Dam-Lake Sonoma Project to the north o f San
Francisco. The effect o f this project would be to wipe
out virtually all existing habitat for a particular species o f
sedge essential for the weaving o f Porno baskets.
Accordingly, a coalition o f archaeologists, Native
Americans, and others with objections to the project
brought suit in federal district court. As it happened,
the U.S. Arm y Corps o f Engineers had recently hired
anthropologist Richard N. Lerner fo r its San Francisco
sible to cover all art forms in the space of a sin­
gle chapter, we shall concentrate on just a few: ver­
bal arts, music, and pictorial art. We will start with
the verbal arts, for we have already touched upon
them in earlier discussions of religion (Chapter 13)
and worldview (Chapters 5 and 12).
H VERBAL ARTS
The term folklore was coined in the 19th century
to denote the unwritten stories, beliefs, and cus­
toms of European peasantry, as opposed to the
Folklore. A 19th-century term first used to refer to the traditional oral stories and sayings of the European peasant and
later extended to traditions preserved orally in all societies. > Folkloristics. The study of folklore (as linguistics is the
study of language).
Problem of D isorder
District Office to advise on sociocultural factors asso­
ciated with water resources programs in northwestern
California. One o f Lerner's first tasks, therefore, was to
undertake studies o f the problem and to find ways to
overcome it*
A fter comprehensive archaeological, ethnographic,
and other studies were completed in 1976, Lerner suc­
ceeded in having the Porno basketry materials recog­
nized by the National Register o f Historic Places as “ his­
toric property," requiring the Corps o f Engineers to find
ways to mitigate the adverse impact dam construction
would have. The result was a complex ethnobotanical
project developed and implemented by Lerner W ork­
ing in concert with Porno Indians as well as botanists,
Lerner relocated 48,000 sedge plants onto nearly 3
acres o f suitable lands downstream from the dam. By
the fall o f 1983, the sedge was doing well enough to
be harvested and proved to be o f excellent quality.
Since this initial harvest, groups o f weavers have re­
turned each year and the art o f Porno Indian basket
making appears to be safe for the time being.
“■Lerner, R. N. (1987). Preserving plants for Pomos. In
R. M. Wulff & S. J. Fiske (Eds.), A nthropological praxis:
Translating know ledge into action (pp. 212 -2 2 2 ). Boulder
CO: Westview.
traditions of the literate elite. The subsequent
study of folklore, folkloristics, has become a dis­
cipline allied to but somewhat independent of an­
thropology, working on cross-cultural compar­
isons of themes, motifs, genres, and structures
from a literary as well as ethnological point of
view. Many linguists and anthropologists prefer
to speak of a culture’s oral traditions and verbal
arts rather than its folklore and folktales, recog­
nizing that creative verbal expression takes many
forms and that the implied distinction between
folk and “fine” art is a projection of the recent
attitude of European (and European-derived) cul­
tures onto others.

The verbal arts include narratives, dramas, po­
etry, incantations, proverbs, riddles, word games,
and even naming procedures, compliments, and in­
sults, when these take structured and special
forms. Narratives seem to be one of the easiest
kinds of verbal arts to record or collect. Perhaps
because they also are the most publishable, with
popular appeal in North American culture, they
have received the most study and attention. Gen­
erally, narratives have been divided into three ba­
sic and recurring categories: myth, legend, and
tale.
M yth
The word myth, in popular usage, refers to some­
thing that is widely believed to be true but prob­
ably is not. Actually, a true myth is basically reli­
gious, in that it provides a rationale for religious
beliefs and practices. Its subject matter is the ulti-
mates of human existence: where we and every­
thing in our world came from, why we are here,
and where we are going. As was noted in Chap­
ter 13, the myth has an explanatory function; it
depicts and describes an orderly universe, which
sets the stage for orderly behavior. A typical ori­
gin myth traditional with the Western Abenaki of
northwestern New England and southern Quebec
follows.
In the beginning, T abald ak, “The Owner,” created
all living things but one— the spirit being who was
to accomplish the final transformation of the earth.
Man and woman T ab ald ak made out of a piece of
stone, but he didn’t like the result, their hearts be­
ing cold and hard. This being so, he broke them
up, and their remains today can be seen in the many
stones that litter the landscape of the Abenaki
homeland. But Tabaldak tried again, this time us­
ing living wood, and from them came all later
Abenakis. Like the trees from which the wood
came, these people were rooted in the earth and
(like trees when being blown by the wind) could
dance gracefully. The one living thing not created
by T abald ak was O dzihdzo, “He Makes Himself
from Something.” This being seems to have created
Myth. A sacred narrative explaining how the world came to be in its present form.
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 419
himself out of dust, but since he was more trans­
former than creator, he wasn’t able to accomplish
it all at once. At first, he managed only his head,
body, and arms; the legs came later, growing slowly
as legs do on a tadpole. N ot waiting until his legs
were grown, he set out to change the shape of the
earth. He dragged his body about with his hands,
gouging channels that became the rivers. To make
the mountains, he piled dirt up with his hands.
Once his legs grew, O d z ih n z o ’s task was made eas­
ier; by merely extending his legs, he made the trib­
utaries of the main streams.
O d zih ózo, then, was the Abenaki transformer
who laid out the river channels and lake basins and
shaped the hills and mountains. Just how long he
took is a subject which Abenakis have discussed for
as long as any can remember. Once he was finished,
like Jehovah in Genesis, he surveyed his handiwork
and found it was good. The last work he made was
Lake Champlain and this he found especially good.
He liked it so well that he climbed onto a rock in
Burlington Bay and changed himself into stone so
that he could sit there and enjoy his masterpiece
through the ages. He still likes it, because he is still
there and he is still given offerings of tobacco as
Abenakis pass this way. The Abenaki call the rock
O d z ih ó z o , since it is the Transformer himself.2
Such a myth, insofar as it is believed, accepted,
and perpetuated in a culture, may be said to ex­
press a part of a people’s worldview: the unex­
pressed but implicit conceptions of their place in
nature and of the limits and workings of their
world. (We discussed this concept in Chapters 5
and 12.) Extrapolating from the details of the
Abenaki myth, we might arrive at the conclusion
that these people recognize a kinship among all
living things; after all, they were all part of the
same creation, and humans even were made from
living wood. Moreover, an attempt to make them
2Haviland, W. A., Sc Power, M. W. (1994). The Original
'Vermonters: Native inhabitants, past and present (rev. and
exp. ed., p. 193). Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England.
420 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
To the Abenaki, these rocks in a northern New England blueberry field are the remains of
the first man and woman, who were broken up by the Creator as their hearts were cold
and hard.
of nonliving stone was not satisfactory. This idea
of a closeness among all living things led the
Abenaki to show special respect to the animals
they hunted to sustain themselves. For example,
after killing a beaver, muskrat, or waterfowl, one
could not unceremoniously toss its bones into the
nearest garbage pit. Proper respect required that
the bones be returned to the water, with a request
to continue its kind. Similarly, before eating meat,
an Abenaki placed an offering of grease on the fire
to thank T abald ak. More generally, waste was to
be avoided so as not to offend the animals. Fail­
ure to respect their rights would result in their un­
willingness to continue sacrificing their lives that
people might live.
By transforming himself into stone to enjoy
his work for all eternity, O d zihdzo may be seen as
setting an example for people; they should see the
beauty in things as they are and not seek to alter
what is already so good. To question the goodness
of existing reality would be to question the judg­
ment of a powerful deity. A characteristic of ex­
planatory myths, such as this one, is that the un­
the Problem of D isorder
known is simplified and explained in terms of the
known. This myth, in terms of human experience,
accounts for the existence of rivers, mountains,
lakes, and other features of the landscape, as well
as of humans and all other living things. It also
sanctions particular attitudes and behaviors. It is
a product of creative imagination, and it is a work
of art, as well as a potentially religious statement.
One aspect of mythology that has attracted a
good deal of interest over the years is the similar­
ity of certain themes in the stories of peoples liv­
ing in separate parts of the world. One of these
themes is the myth of matriarchy, or one-time rule
by women. In a number of societies, stories tell
about a time when women ruled over men. Even­
tually, so these stories go, men were forced to rise
up and assert their dominance over women to
combat their tyranny or incompetence (or both).
In the 19th century, a number of European schol­
ars interpreted such myths as evidence of an early
stage of matriarchy in the evolution of human cul­
ture, an idea some feminists recently have revived.
Although a number of societies are known where

the two sexes relate to one another as equals (west­
ern Abenaki society was one), never have anthro­
pologists found one where women rule over or
dominate men. The interesting thing about myths
of matriarchy is that they generally are found in
societies where men dominate women, while the
latter also have considerable autonomy.3 Under
such conditions, male dominance is insecure, and
a rationale is needed to justify it. Thus, myths of
men overthrowing women and taking control mir­
ror an existing paradoxical relationship between
the two sexes.
The analysis and interpretation of myths have
been carried to great lengths, becoming a field of
study almost unto itself. It is certain that myth
making is an extremely important kind of human
creativity, and the study of the myth-making
process and its results can give valuable clues to
the way people perceive and think about their
world. The dangers and problems of interpreta­
tion, however, are great. Several questions arise:
Are myths literally believed or perhaps accepted
symbolically or emotionally as a different kind of
truth? To what extent do myths actually determine
or reflect human behavior? Can an outsider dis­
cover the meaning a myth has in its own culture?
How do we account for contradictory myths in
the same culture? New myths arise and old ones
die. Is it then the myth’s content or structure that
is important? All of these questions deserve, and
currently receive, serious consideration.
Legend
Less problematical, but perhaps more complex,
than the myth is the legend. Legends are stories
told as true and set in the postcreation world. An
example of a modern urban legend in the United
States is one Ronald Reagan often told when he
was president about an African American woman
J Sanday, P. R. (1981). Female pow er and m ale dom inance:
On the origins o f sexual inequality (p. 181). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
L eg en d s. Stories told as true and set in the postcreation world.
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 421
on welfare in Chicago. Supposedly, her ability to
collect something like 103 welfare checks under
different names enabled her to live lavishly. Al­
though proven to be false, the story was told as if
true (by the president even after he was informed
it was not true), as all legends are. This particular
legend illustrates a number of features all such nar­
ratives share: They cannot be attributed to any
known author; they always exist in multiple ver­
sions, but, in spite of variation, they are told with
sufficient detail to be plausible; and they tell us
something about the societies they are found in.
In this case, we learn something about the exis­
tence of racism in U.S. society (the story is told by
Whites, who identify the woman as an African
American), social policy (the existence of govern­
mental policies to help the poor), and attitudes to­
ward the poor (distrust, if not dislike).
As this illustration shows, legends (no more
than myths) are not confined to nonliterate, non-
industrialized societies. Commonly, legends con­
sist of pseudo-historical narratives that account for
the deeds of heroes, the movements of peoples,
and the establishment of local customs, typically
with a mixture of realism and the supernatural or
extraordinary. As stories, they are not necessarily
believed or disbelieved, but they usually serve to
entertain, as well as to instruct and to inspire or
bolster pride in family, community, or nation.
To a degree, in literate states (such as the
United States), the function of legends has been
taken over by history. Yet much of what passes for
history, to paraphrase one historian, consists of
the legends we develop to make ourselves feel bet­
ter about who we are.4 The trouble is that history
does not always tell people what they want to hear
about themselves, or, conversely, it tells them
things that they would prefer not to hear. By pro­
jecting their culture’s hopes and expectations onto
the record of the past, they seize upon and even
4Stoler, M. (1982). To tell the truth. Vermont Visions, 82
(3), 3.
422 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the
Part of an ancient Aztec manuscript. In the reign
of King Itzcoatl, the Aztecs rewrote their history
in a way to better glorify their past. In politically
centralized states, such rewriting of history is a
common practice.
exaggerate some past events while ignoring or giv­
ing scant attention to others. Although this often
occurs unconsciously, so strong is the motivation
to transform history into legend that states often
have gone so far as to deliberately rewrite it, as
when the Aztecs in the reign of their 15th-century
king Itzcoatl rewrote their history in a way more
flattering to their position of dominance in ancient
M exico. An example from the United States may
be seen in the way conventional histories of New
England were written. King Philip’s War, an up­
rising of Indians in 1675, is protrayed as a treach­
erous uprising (rather than the desperate bid for
survival in the face of English provocation it was)
after which Indians disappeared from the region
(in spite of clear evidence to the contrary).5 In
modern times, the Soviet Union was particularly
5Calloway, C. (1997). Introduction: Surviving the Dark Ages.
In C. G. Calloway (Ed.), After King Philip's War: Presence
and persistence in Indian N ew England (pp. 1 -2 8 ). Havover,
NH: University Press of New England.
Epics. Long oral narratives, sometimes in poetry o r rhythmic prose, recounting the glorious events in the life of a real
o r legendary person.
Problem of D isorder
well known for similar practices. Historians, when
attempting to separate fact from fiction, frequently
incur the wrath of people who will not willingly
abandon what they wish to believe is true, whether
or not it really is. This may be seen in recent de­
bates in the United States over the “proper” teach­
ing of history.
Long legends, sometimes in poetry or in rhyth­
mic prose, are known as epics. In parts of West
and central Africa, people hold remarkably elab­
orate and formalized recitations of extremely long
legends, lasting several hours and even days. These
long narratives have been described as veritable
encyclopedias of a culture’s most diverse aspects,
with direct and indirect statements about history,
institutions, relationships, values, and ideas. Epics
typically are found in nonliterate societies with a
form of state political organization; they serve to
transmit and preserve a culture’s legal and politi­
cal precedents and practices.
Legends may incorporate mythological de­
tails, especially when they make an appeal to the
supernatural, and are therefore not always clearly
distinct from myth. The Mwindo epic of the
Nyanga people follows him through the earth, the
atmosphere, the underworld, and the remote sky
and gives a complete picture of the Nyanga peo­
ple’s view of their world’s organization and limits.
Legends also may incorporate proverbs and inci­
dental tales and thus may be related to other forms
of verbal art as well. A recitation of the Kambili
epic of the Mande, for example, has been said to
include as many as 150 proverbs.
An example of a short legend that instructs,
traditional with the Western Abenakis of north­
western New England and southern Quebec,
follows.
This is a story of a lonesome little boy who used
to wander down to the riverbank at Odanak or
downhill toward the two swamps. He used to hear
someone call his name but when he got to the
swamp pond, there was no one to be seen or heard.
But when he went back, he heard his name called
again. As he was sitting by the marshy bank wait-

ing, an old man came and asked him why he was
waiting. When the boy told him, the old man said
that the same thing happened long ago. What he
heard was the Swamp Creature and pointed out the
big tussocks of grass where it hid; having called out
it would sink down behind them. The old man said:
“It just wants to drown you. If you go out there
you will sink in the mud. You better go home!”6
The moral of this story is quite simple: Swamps
are dangerous places; stay away from them. When
told well, the story is a lot more effective in keep­
ing children away from swamps than just telling
them, “Don’t go near swamps.”
For the anthropologist, a major significance
of the secular and apparently realistic portions of
legends, whether long or short, is the clues they
provide to what constitutes a culture’s approved
or ideal ethical behavior. The subject matter of
legends is essentially problem-solving, and the
content is likely to include combat, warfare, con­
frontations, and physical and psychological trials
of many kinds. Certain questions may be an­
swered explicitly or implicitly. Does the culture
justify homicide? W hat kinds of behavior are con­
sidered brave or cowardly? W hat is the etiquette
of combat or warfare? Does the culture honor or
recognize a concept of altruism or self-sacrifice?
Here again, however, pitfalls occur in the process
of interpreting art in relation to life. It is always
possible certain kinds of behavior are acceptable
or even admirable, with the distance or objectiv­
ity art affords, but are not at all approved for
daily life. In European American culture, mur­
derers, charlatans, and rakes sometimes have be­
come popular heroes and the subjects of legends;
North Americans would object, however, to an
outsider’s inference that they necessarily approved
or wanted to emulate the morality of Billy the Kid
or Jesse James.
6Day, G. M. (1972). Quoted in Prehistoric life in the Cham ­
plain Valley [film], by Thomas C. Vogelman (Director) and
others. Burlington, VT: Department of Anthropology (Pro­
ducer), University of Vermont.
Tale. A creative narrative recognized as fiction for entertainm ent > M o tif.
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 423
Tale
The term tale is a nonspecific label for a third cat­
egory of creative narratives: those purely secular,
nonhistorical, and recognized as fiction for enter­
tainment, though they may draw a moral or teach
a practical lesson, as well. Consider this brief sum­
mary of a tale from Ghana, known as “Father,
Son, and Donkey”:
A father and his son farmed their corn, sold it, and
spent part of the profit on a donkey. When the hot
season came, they harvested their yams and pre­
pared to take them to storage using their donkey.
The father mounted the donkey, and they all three
proceeded on their way until they met some peo­
ple. “What? You lazy m an!” the people said to the
father. “ You let your young son walk barefoot on
this hot ground while you ride on a donkey? For
shame!” The father yielded his place to the son,
and they proceeded until they came to an old
woman. “What? You useless boy!” said the old
woman. “ You ride on the donkey and let your poor
father walk barefoot on this hot ground? For
shame!” The son dismounted, and both father and
son walked on the road, leading the donkey behind
them until they came to an old man. “What? You
foolish people!” said the old man. “You have a don­
key and you walk barefoot on the hot ground in­
stead of riding?” And so it goes. Listen: when you
are doing something and other people come along,
just keep on doing what you like.
This is precisely the kind of tale of special inter­
est in traditional folklore studies. It is an interna­
tionally popular “numbskull” tale; versions of it
have been recorded in India, the Middle East, the
Balkans, Italy, Spain, England, and the United
States, as well as in West Africa. It is classified or
cataloged as exhibiting a basic motif or story sit­
uation— father and son trying to please everyone
— one of the many thousands found to recur in
world folktales. Despite variations in detail, every
version has about the same basic structure in the
sequence of events, sometimes called the syntax of
the tale: a peasant father and son work together,
a beast of burden is purchased, the three set out
A story situation in a folktale.
424 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

on a short excursion, the father rides and is criti­ sary degree of self-confidence in the face of arbi­
cized, the son rides and is criticized, both walk and trary social criticism is therefore something that
are criticized, and a conclusion is drawn. can be read into the culture’s values and beliefs.
Tales of this sort with an international distri­
bution sometimes raise more problems than they
O ther V erbal A rts
solve: Which one is the original? W hat is the path
of its diffusion? Could it be sheer coincidence that Myths, legends, and tales, prominent as they are
different cultures have come up with the same mo­ in anthropological studies, in many cultures turn
tif and syntax, or are independent inventions of out to be no more important than the other ver­
similar tales developing in similar situations in re­ bal arts. In the culture of the Awlad ‘All Bedouins
sponse to like causes? A surprisingly large num­ of Egypt’s western desert, for example, poetry is a
ber of motifs in European and African tales are lively and active verbal art, especially as a vehicle
traceable to ancient sources in India. Is this good for personal expression and private communica­
evidence of a spread of culture from a “cradle” of tion. These people use two forms of poetry, one
civilization, or is it an example of diffusion of tales being the elaborately structured and heroic poems
in contiguous areas? O f course, purely local tales men chant or recite only on ceremonial occasions
exist, as well as the tales with such wide distribu­ and in specific public contexts. The other is the
tion. Within any particular culture, anthropolo­ ghinndw a, or “little songs” that punctuate every­
gists probably could categorize local types of tales: day conversations. Simple in structure, these deal
animal, human experience, trickster, dilemma, with personal matters and feelings more appro­
ghost, moral, scatological, and nonsense tales, and priate to informal social situations, and older men
so on. In West Africa there is a remarkable preva­ regard them as the unimportant productions of
lence of animal stories, for example, with creatures women and youths. Despite this official devalua­
such as the spider, the rabbit, and the hyena as the tion in the male-dominated society of the
protagonists. Many were carried to the slave-hold­ Bedouins, however, they play a vital part in peo­
ing areas of the Americas; the Uncle Remus sto­ ples’ daily lives. In their “little songs” individuals
ries about Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and other ani­ are shielded from the consequences of making
mals may be a survival of this tradition. statements and expressing sentiments that contra­
The significance of tales for anthropologists vene the moral system. Paradoxically, by sharing
rests partly in this matter of their distribution. The these “immoral” sentiments only with intimates
tales provide evidence of either cultural contacts
or cultural isolation and of limits of influence and
cultural cohesion. Debated for decades now, for
example, has been the extent to which the culture
of West Africa was transmitted to the southeast­
ern United States. As far as folktales are concerned,
one school of folklorists always has found and in­
sisted on European origins; another school, some­
what more recently, points to African prototypes.
Anthropologists are interested, however, in more
than these questions of distribution. Like legends,
tales very often illustrate local solutions to uni­
versal human ethical problems, and in some sense
they state a moral philosophy. Anthropologists see
that whether the tale of the father, the son, and the
donkey originated in West Africa or arrived there
from Europe or the Middle East, the very fact it is
told in West Africa suggests it states something
valid for that culture. The tale’s lesson of a neces­ SUDAN

The “little songs” of the Awlad ‘AH Bedouins punctuate conversations carried out
while the people perform everyday chores, such as making bread, as these young
women are doing. Through these “little songs,” they can express what otherwise are
taboo topics.
and veiling them in impersonal traditional formu­
las, those who recite them demonstrate they have
a certain control, which actually enhances their
moral standing.
As is often true of folklore in general, the “lit­
tle songs” of the Awlad ‘Ali provide a sanctioned
outlet for otherwise taboo thoughts or opinions.
Disaster jokes are an example of this in contem­
porary North American society. As anthropologist
Lila Abu-Lughod points out:
What may be peculiar to Awlad ‘Ali is that their
discourse of rebellion is both culturally elaborated
and sanctioned. Although poetry refers to personal
life, it is not individual, spontaneous, idiosyncratic,
or unofficial but public, conventional, and formu­
laic— a highly developed art. More important, this
poetic discourse of defiance is not condemned, or
even just tolerated, as well it might be given all the
constraints of rime and place and form that bind
it. Poetry is a privileged discourse in Awlad ‘Ali
society. Like other Arabs, and perhaps like many
oral cultures, the Bedouins cherish poetry and other
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 425
verbal arts. . . . They are drawn to g h in n âw as,
and at the same time they consider them risqué,
against religion, and slightly improper. . . . This
ambivalence about poetry is significant, and it
makes sense only in terms of the cultural meaning
of opposition. Because ordinary discourse is in­
formed by the values of honor and modesty, the
moral correlates of the ideology that upholds the
Awlad ‘Ali social and political system, we would
expect the antistructural poetic discourse, with its
contradictory messages, to be informed by an op­
posing set of values. This is not the case. Poetry as
a discourse of defiance of the system symbolizes
freedom— the ultimate value of the system and the
essential entailment of the honor code.7
In all cultures the words of songs constitute a kind
of poetry. Poetry and stories recited with gesture,
7Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments: H onor and po-
etry in a Bedouin society (p. 252). Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press.
426 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the
movement, and props become drama. Drama com­
bined with dance, music, and spectacle becomes a
public celebration. The more we look at the indi­
vidual arts, the clearer it becomes that they often
are interrelated and interdependent. The verbal
arts are, in fact, simply differing manifestations of
the same creative imagination that produces mu­
sic and the other arts.
Frederica de Laguna (im -)
A concern with the arts of non-W estern people
always has been an important part of anthropol­
ogy, and the w ork of anthropologist Frederica de
Laguna is representative. Educated at Bryn Maw r
College and Colum bia University, where she was
awarded her PhD, she made her first trip into the
field with a Danish expedition to Greenland in
1929. A year later, she began w o rk in southeastern
Alaska, a region she has returned repeatedly to
since. H er first w ork there was archaeological, and
she was the pioneer in southeastern Alaskan pre­
history. But as her interest in native people grew,
she became m ore and more involved with ethno­
graphic w o rk as well. She found out that to un­
derstand the past, one had to know what it led to,
just as to understand the present native people,
one had to know their past.
After many seasons of w o rk in different lo­
calities, de Laguna began in 1949 a project to trace
the beginnings of the way of life of the Tlingit In­
dians of Yakutat through a combination of archae­
ological and ethnographic work. This resulted in a
monumental three-volume work, published in
1972, U n d e r M o u n t St Elias. It amounted to no less
than a holistic picture of Tlingit culture through
their eyes. Since songs and stories are important
Ethnom usicology. The study of a society’s music in term s of its cultural setting.
Problem of D isorder
THE ART OF MUSIC
The study of music in specific cultural settings, be­
ginning in the 19th century with the collection of
folk songs, has developed into a specialized field,
called ethnomusicology. Like the study of folktales
for their own sake, ethnomusicology is both re-
parts of any nonliterate culture, much space was
devoted to their transcriptions just as they were
related and performed by elders now long dead
(one whole volume is devoted to the words and
music of songs).The importance o f this w ork goes
far beyond anthropology and has been enormously
significant to the Tlingit themselves.
W h e n de Laguna began to w ork at Yakutat, the
children were being sent to government boarding
schools, where they were told nothing of their own
culture and were severely punished for even speak­
ing their own language. The aim was to stamp out
native culture to facilitate assimilation into “main­
stream Am erican” culture. Thus, as the elders died
out, many traditions were being lost. But with the
publication of U n d e r M o u n t St. Elias (copies of which
were avidly snapped up by the Tlingit), as well as
“Freddy” de Laguna’s continuing participation in
the community, the people regained much they
were in danger of losing. A s de Laguna says, songs
and stories are for giving back, and in 1997 the
Tlingit of Yakutat honored her for what she gave
back to them .As they acknowledge, the new vigor
shown by Tlingit culture and their renewed pride
in w ho they are owes much to their “Grandmother
Freddy’s” work.

lated to and somewhat independent of anthropol­
ogy. Nevertheless, it is possible to sort out several
concepts of interest to general anthropology from
the field’s various concerns.
To begin, we may ask these questions: How
does a culture conceive of music? What is consid­
ered of primary importance when distinguishing
music from other modes of expression? What is
music to one person is mere noise to another. M u­
sic is a form of communication that includes a non­
verbal component. The information transmitted is
often abstract emotion rather than concrete ideas,
and it is experienced in a variety of ways by dif­
ferent listeners. This, and music’s communication
of something that is verbally incommunicable,
makes it very difficult to discuss music. In fact,
not even a single definition of music can be agreed
upon, because different peoples may include or ex­
clude different ideas within that category. Ethno-
musicologists often must rely upon a working de­
finition as the basis for their investigations and
often distinguish between “music” and that which
is “musical.” The way to approach an unfamiliar
kind of musical expression is to define it either in
indigenous terms or in orthodox musicological
terms such as melody, rhythm, and form.
Much of the historical development of ethno-
musicology has been based upon musicology,
which is primarily the study of Western European
music. One problem has been the tendency to dis­
cuss music in terms of elements considered impor­
tant in European music (tonality, rhythm, melody,
etc.), when these may be of little importance to the
practitioner. European music is defined, primarily,
in terms of the presence of melody and rhythm.
Melody is a function of tonality, and rhythm is an
organizing concept involving tempo, stress, and
measured repetition. Although these can be ad­
dressed in non-European musics, they may not be
the defining characteristics of a performance.
Early investigators of non-European songs
were struck by the apparent simplicity of p en ta­
tonic (five-tone) scales and a seemingly endless
repetition of phrases. They often did not give suf­
ficient credit to the formal function of repetition
Tonality. In music, scale systems and their modifications.
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 427
Even among food-foraging peoples, music plays an
important role. Shown here is a native Australian
playing a digeridoo.
in such music, confusing repetition with lack of
invention. A great deal of complex, sophisticated
non-European music was dismissed as “primitive”
and formless and typically treated as trivial. Rep­
etition, nevertheless, is a fact of music, including
European music, and a basic formal principle.
In general, human music is said to differ from
natural music— the songs of birds, wolves, and
whales, for example— by being almost everywhere
perceived in terms of a repertory of tones at fixed
or regular intervals: in other words, a scale. Scale
systems and their modifications comprise what is
known as tonality in music. Humans make closed
systems out of a formless range of possible sounds
by dividing the distance between a tone and its first
overton e or sympathetic vibration (which always
has exactly twice as many vibrations as the basic
tone) into a series of measured steps. In the West­
ern or European system, the distance between the
basic tone and the first overtone is called the o c ­
tave-, it consists of seven steps: 5 w h ole tones and
2 sem itones. The whole tones are further divided
into semitones for a total working scale of 12 tones.
Western people learn at an early age to recognize
and imitate this arbitrary system and its conven­
tions, and it comes to sound natural (Table 14.1).
428 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem oe D isorder

TABLE 14.1 Two different ways of dividing the octave in to seven steps

Pipe Scale Just Scale

A' A'
Wis
io/9 G#
G
Vs
2% j
F F#
m i%
E E
io/9 %
D
D
2%s
16As
C C#
10/9 io/9
B B
% %
A A

The conventional scale of Western music is represented graphically on the right, that used by
bagpipers on the left. Neither is a variation of the other. All the notes are out of tune, but
only slightly so; once heard often enough, they sound just fine.

Yet the overtone series it is partially based on is
the only part of it that can be considered a wholly
natural phenomenon.
One of the most common alternatives to the
semitonal system is the pentatonic system, which,
as noted, divides the scale into five nearly equidis­
tant tones. Such scales may be found all over the
world, including in much European folk music. In
Java people use scales of both 5 and 7 equal steps,
which have no relation to the intervals Europeans
and European Americans hear as “natural.” Ara­
bic and Persian music have smaller units of a third
of a tone with scales of 17 and 24 steps in the oc­
tave. Even quarter-tone scales are used in India with
subtleties of shading nearly indistinguishable to a
Western ear. Small wonder, then, that even when
Western people can hear what sounds like melody
and rhythm in these systems, the total result may
sound peculiar to them or “out of tune.” Anthro­
pologists need a very practiced ear to learn to ap­
preciate— perhaps even to tolerate— some of the
music they hear, and only some of the most skilled
folk-song collectors have attempted to notate and
analyze the music of nonsemitonal systems.
As another organizing factor in music,
whether regular or irregular, rhythm may be more
important than tonality. Traditional European
music is most often measured into recurrent pat­
terns of 2, 3, and 4 beats, with combinations of
weak and strong beats to mark the division and
form patterns. Non-European music is likely to
move in patterns of 5, 7, or 11 beats, with com­
plex arrangements of internal beats and sometimes
polyrhythms: one instrument or singer going in a
pattern of 3 beats, for example, while another is
in a pattern of 5 or 7. Polyrhythms are frequent
in the drum music of West Africa, which shows
remarkable precision in the overlapping of rhyth­
mic lines. Non-European music also may contain
shifting rhythms: a pattern of 3 beats, for exam­
ple, followed by a pattern of 2 or 5 beats with lit­
tle or no regular recurrence or repetition of any
one pattern, though the patterns are fixed and
identifiable as units.
 T he A rts CHAPTER 14 429

Although anthropologists do not necessarily group. It should be understood, too, that these as­
need to untangle these complicated technical mat­ sociations of music with groups are not dependent
ters, they will want to know enough to be aware upon words alone but also upon particular tonal,
of the degree of skill involved in a performance. rhythmic, and instrumental conventions. For ex­
This allows a measure of the extent people in a cul­ ample, Scottish gatherings would not be “Scot­
ture have learned to practice and respond to this tish” without the sound of the Highland bagpipes
often important creative activity. Moreover, the dis­ and the fiddle.
tribution of musical forms and instruments can re­ This power of music to shape identity has
veal much about cultural contact or isolation. been recognized everywhere, with varying conse­
quences. The English recognized the power of the
bagpipes for creating an esprit de corps among
Functi ons of M usi c the Highland regiments of the British army and
Even without concern for technical matters, an­ encouraged it within certain bounds, even while
thropologists can profitably investigate the func­ surpressing piping in Scotland itself under the Dis­
tion of music in a society. First, rarely has a cul­ arming Act. Over time, the British military pip­
ture been reported to lack any kind of music. Bone ing tradition was assimilated into the Scottish
flutes and whistles as much as 4 0 ,0 0 0 years old
have been found by archaeologists, nor have his­
torically known food-foraging peoples been with­
out their music. In the Kalahari Desert, for ex­
ample, a Ju/’hoansi hunter off by himself would
play a tune on his bow simply to help while away
the time. (Long before anyone thought of beating
swords into plowshares, some genius discovered
— when and where we do not know— that bows
could be used not just to kill but to make music
as well.) In northern New England, Abenaki
shamans used cedar flutes to call game, lure ene­
mies, and attract women. In addition, a drum with
two rawhide strings stretched over it to produce
a buzzing sound, thought to.represent singing,
gave the shaman the power to communicate with
the spirit world.
Music is also a powerful identifier. Many mar­
ginalized groups have used music for purposes of
self-identification, bringing the group together and
in many cases contraposing their own forms
against the onslaught of a dominant culture or
voicing social and political commentary. Examples
of this include so-called punk groups such as Rage
Against the Machine and rap groups such as Pub­
lic Enemy or L. L. Cool J, as well as ethnic groups
sponsoring musical festivals. Potlatches and pow­
wows, among other occasions, allow certain N a­
tive American groups to reaffirm and celebrate
their ethnic identity, as well as fulfilling other func­ Although much music performed by Scottish pipers
tions. Music plays an important part at these is of English origin, it has been so thoroughly
events, thus becoming closely bound to the group absorbed that most people think of it as purely
identity, both from without and from within the Scottish.
430 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
piping tradition, so the blend was accepted and
spread by Scottish pipers. As a result, much of the
supposedly Scottish piping one hears today con­
sists of marches written within the conventions of
the English musical tradition, though shaped to
fit the physical constraints of the instrument. Less
often heard is the “classical” music known as pi­
broch, or c e o l m or. The latter, however, has been
undergoing a series of revivals over the past cen­
tury and is now often associated with rising na­
tionalist sentiments.
The English adoption of the Highland bagpipe
into Scottish regiments is an instance of those in
authority employing music to further a political
agenda. So too in Spain, the dictator Francisco
Franco (who came to power in the 1930s) estab­
lished community choruses in even the smallest
towns to promote the singing of patriotic songs.
Similarly, in Ireland Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann
has promoted the collection and performance of
traditional Irish music; in Brittany and Galicia,
music is playing an important role in attempts to
revive the spirits of the indigenous Celtic cultures
in these regions; and the list goes on. But, how­
ever played or for whatever reason, music (like all
art) is an individual creative skill one can cultivate
and be proud of, whether from a sense of accom­
plishment or from the sheer pleasure of perform­
ing; and it is a form of social behavior promoting
a communication or sharing of feelings and life
experience with other humans. Moreover, because
individual creativity is constrained by the tradi­
tions of a particular culture, each society’s art is
distinctive and helps to define its members’ sense
of identity.
The social function of music is perhaps most
obvious in songs, since these contain verbal text.
This is probably why many earlier studies con­
centrated upon them. Songs, like other verbal
forms, express a group’s values, beliefs, and con­
cerns, but they do so with an increased formalism
resulting from adherence to the restrictions of sys­
tematic “rules,” or conventions, of pitch, rhythm,
timbre, and musical genre.
Songs serve many purposes, entertainment be­
ing only one of these. Work songs long have played
an important part in manual labor, serving to co­
ordinate heavy or dangerous labor, such as weigh­
ing anchor and furling sail on board ships and
the Problem of D isorder
making ax or hammer strokes, and serving to pass
time and relieve tedium, such as with oyster shuck­
ing songs. Songs also have been used to soothe ba­
bies to sleep, to charm animals into giving more
milk or to keep witchcraft at bay, to advertise
goods, and much more. Songs also may serve so­
cial and political purposes, spreading particular
ideas swiftly and effectively by giving them a spe­
cial form involving poetic language and rhythm
and by attaching a pleasing and appropriate tune,
be it solemn or light.
In the United States numerous examples exist
of marginalized social and ethnic groups attempt­
ing to gain a larger audience and more compas­
sion for their plight through song. Perhaps most
familiar are performers such as Joan Baez and Pete
Seeger who gained great visibility when support­
ing civil and human rights causes. Indeed, both
performers’ celebrity status led to the broader dis­
semination of their social and political beliefs.
Such celebrity status comes from skill in perform­
ing and communicating with the intended audi­
ence. So powerful a force was music in the civil
rights and peace movements of the ’50s and ’60s
that Seeger was targeted by Senator Joseph M c­
Carthy and his investigating committee, becoming
one of many performers the entertainment indus­
try blacklisted.
In Australia, traditional Aboriginal songs
have taken on a new legal function, as they are
being introduced into court as evidence of early
settlement patterns. This helps the native peoples
claim more extensive land ownership, thus al­
lowing them greater authority to use the land, as
well as to negotiate and profit from the sale of
natural resources. This had been impossible be­
fore. The British, upon their annexation of Aus­
tralia, declared the land ownerless (Terra Nul-
lius). Although the Aborigines had preserved
their records of ownership in song and story,
these were not admissible in the British courts. In
the early ’70s, however, the Aboriginal peoples
exposed the injustice of the situation, and the
Australian government began responding in a
more favorable, if somewhat limited, fashion,
granting the claims of traditional ownership to
groups in the Northern Territory. In 1992 the
concept of Terra Nullius was overturned, and na­
tive claims are now being presented in the other

Folk singer Pete Seeger sings in celebration of anti-war priest Philip Berrigan’s release
from prison.
territories, as well. These newer claimants are
granted equal partnership with developers and
others. Sacred sites are being recognized, and
profits are being shared with the traditional own­
ers. Proof of native ownership includes record­
ings of traditional songs indicating traditional
settlement and travel patterns and land use.8
Music gives a concrete form, made memo­
rable and attractive with melody and rhythm, to
basic human ideas. Whether the song’s content is
didactic, satirical, inspirational, religious, politi­
cal, or purely emotional, the important thing is
that the formless has been given form and that
feelings hard to express in words alone are com ­
municated in a symbolic and memorable way that
can be repeated and shared. The group is conse­
quently united and has the sense their shared ex­
perience, whatever it may be, has shape and mean­
ing. This, in turn, shapes and gives meaning to
the community.
fiKoch, G. (1997). Songs, land righrs and archives in Aus-
tralia. Cultural Survival Quarterly, 20 (4).
T he Arts CHAPTER 14 431
k A A & ¿s A. 4 ' - A -'A ''A - A'*'*' * ’A * ;A A
PICTORIAL ART
To many Europeans and European Americans, the
first image that springs to mind in connection with
the word art is some sort of picture, be it a paint­
ing, drawing, sketch, or whatever. And indeed, in
many parts of the world, people have been mak­
ing pictures in one way or another for a very long
time— etching them in bone; engraving them in
rock; painting them on cave walls and rock faces;
carving and painting them on wood, gourds, or
pots; or painting them on textiles, bark, bark
cloth, animal hide, or even their own bodies. As
with musical art, some form of pictorial art is a
part of every historically known human culture.
As a type of symbolic expression, pictorial art
may be representational, imitating closely the
forms of nature, or abstract, drawing from nat­
ural forms but representing only their basic pat­
terns or arrangements. Actually, the two categories
are not mutually exclusive, for even the most nat­
uralistic portrayal is partly abstract to the extent
it generalizes from nature and abstracts patterns
of ideal beauty, ugliness, or typical expressions of
432 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

emotion. But between the most naturalistic and

the most schematic or symbolic abstract art lies a
continuum. In some of the Indian art of North
America’s Northwest Coast, for example, animal
figures may be so highly stylized as to be difficult
for an outsider to identify. Although the art is ab­
stract, the artist has drawn on nature, even though
he or she has exaggerated and deliberately trans­
formed some of its shapes to express a particular
feeling toward them. Because the artists do these
exaggerations and transformations according to
the canons of Northwest Coast Indian culture,
their meanings are understood not just by the artist
but by other community members as well.

S outhern A fri can R ock A rt

The rock art of southern Africa, which has been
described and studied in considerable detail, espe­
cially over the past 3 decades, is a rich non-Western
tradition that helps illustrate different ways of ap­
proaching the study of art. This rock art is one of
the world’s oldest traditions, extending unbroken
from at least 2 7 ,0 0 0 years ago until a mere 100
years ago. It came to an end only with the de­
struction of the Bushman people responsible for it,
at the hands of European colonizers. Those (such
as the Ju/’hoansi) who have survived in places such
as Namibia and Botswana did not themselves pro­
duce rock art but do share the same general belief
system the rock art expresses.
Bushman rock art consists of both paintings
and engravings on the faces of rock outcrops as
well as on the walls of rock shelters. Depicted are
a variety of animals as well as humans in highly This stylized painting on a ceremonial shirt represents
sophisticated ways, sometimes in static poses but a bear. Though the art of the Northwest Coast
often in highly animated scenes. Associated with Indians often portrays actual animals, they are not
these figures are a variety of abstract signs, in­ depicted in a naturalistic style. To identify them, one
cluding dots, zigzags, nested curves, and the like. must be familiar with the conventions of this art.
Until fairly recently, the significance of these lat­
ter was not understood by non-Bushmen; equally
puzzling was the frequent presence of new pictures in the aesthetic approach, one also well developed
painted or engraved directly over existing ones. in the study of European and other Western art.
In spite of its puzzling aspects, southern Thus, the art could be studied for its use of pig­
African rock art long has been considered worthy ments: charcoal and specularite for black, silica,
of being viewed and admired. The paintings, es­ china clay and gypsum for white, and ferric oxide
pecially, generally are seen as quite beautiful and for red and reddish-brown hues. These were mixed
a source of pleasure to look at. Consequently, it with fat, blood, and perhaps water and applied to
is not surprising the earliest study of the art was the rough rock with consummate artistry. The
 T he Arts CHAPTER 14 433

Bushman rock paintings and engravings from southern Africa often depict animals
thought to possess great supernatural power. Shamans appear as well: In the painted
example at the top, we see rain shamans with swallowtails acting in the spirit realm to
protect people from the dangers of storms. Like modern Bushman shamans, several of
these hold paired dance sticks. The idea of shamans transforming into birds, as well as
being greatly elongated (note one figure’s long, undulating body above the lower row
of shamans), is based on sensations experienced in trance. Other undulating lines and
dots in the picture are entoptic phenomena.

economy of line and the way shading is used to
mold the contours of animal bodies elicits admi­
ration, as does the rendering of all sorts of realis­
tic details. One of the more popular animals de­
picted was the eland, shown with such details as
the tuft of red hair on its forehead, the black line
running along its back, the darkening of its snout,
its cloven hoofs, the folds of skin on its shoulders,
and the twist of its horns.
Similar anatomical details of humans are
shown, including the details of dress, headgear,
and body ornamentation, including leather bands
434 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
and ostrich eggshell beads. Meanwhile, human fig­
ures appear more as caricatures, rather than as lit­
eral depictions; features such as fatness and thin­
ness may be exaggerated, and the figures are
sometimes elongated and sometimes in positions
suggestive of flying across the rock face. Some­
times, too, the feet take on the appearance of a
swallowtail or a fish tail. Even more puzzling are
figures that appear to be part human/part animal
(therianthropes).
Another obvious approach to studying Bush­
man rock art, the narrative, focuses on w h at it de­
picts, supplementing the focus of the aesthetic ap­
proach on h o w things are depicted. Certainly,
aspects of Bushman life are shown, as in several
hunting scenes depicting men with bows, arrows,
quivers, and hunting bags. Occasional depictions
show nets used in the hunt and also fish traps.
Women are also shown— identifiable by their pri­
mary sexual characteristics and the stone-weighted
digging sticks they carry, but they are rarely shown
gathering food. Considering the importance of
food women gather for the Bushman diet, this
seems rather odd. O f course, it might merely re­
flect the importance Bushmen attach to the hunt,
but the fact is hunting scenes are not at all com­
mon, either. Furthermore, the animals shown in
the art are n ot representative of the meat eaten;
animals commonly depicted (such as the eland) are
not commonly eaten. Thus, a narrative approach
can lead to a distorted view of Bushman life.
Other scenes portrayed in the art clearly re­
late to the trance dance, still the most important
ritual today among Bushmen (see the Original
Study in Chapter 13). This is clearly indicated by
the numbers of people shown, the arrangement of
hand-clapping women surrounding dancing men,
whose bodies are bent forward in the distinctive
posture the cramping of abdominal muscles
causes as they go into trance, whose noses are
shown bleeding (common today when Bushmen
trance), whose arms are stretched behind their
backs (modern Bushmen do this to gather more
of the supernatural potency— n/um ), who are
wearing dance rattles, and who carry fly whisks
(used to extract invisible arrows of sickness). As
it turns out, we have here a significant clue to
what the art is really all about, though we can­
not discern this from the narrative and aesthetic
the Problem of Disorder
approaches alone. For this we need the third, or
interpretive, approach.
The distinctions among the aesthetic, narra­
tive, and interpretive approaches become clear if
we pause for a moment to consider a famous work
of Western art, Feonardo da Vinci’s painting The
L ast Supper.9 A non-Western person viewing this
mural will see what appear to be 13 ordinary men
at a table, apparently enjoying an ordinary meal.
Although one of the men appears a bit clumsy,
knocking over the salt, and clutches a bag of
money, nothing else here indicates the scene is
anything out of the ordinary. Aesthetically, our
non-Western observer may admire the way the
composition fits the space available, the way the at­
titudes of the men are depicted, and the way the
artist conveys a sense of movement. As a narra­
tive, the painting may be seen as a record of cus­
toms, table manners, dress, and architecture. But
to know the real meaning of this picture, the
viewer must be aware that, in Western culture,
spilling the salt is a symbol of impending disaster
and that money symbolizes the root of all evil.
But even this is not enough; for a full under­
standing of this work of art, one must know some­
thing of the beliefs of Christianity. Moving to the
interpretive level, then, requires knowledge of the
symbols and beliefs of the people responsible for
the art.
Applying the interpretive approach to south­
ern African rock art requires knowledge of two
subjects: Bushman ethnography and the nature of
trance. With respect to the latter, a clear under­
standing comes from a combination of ethno­
graphic data and data gained experimentally in
laboratories. Because all human beings have es­
sentially the same nervous system, whether they
are urban dwellers from the United States, food
foragers from southern Africa, horticulturalists
from the Amazon forest, or whoever, they all
progress through the same three stages when go­
ing into trance. In the first stage, the nervous sys­
tem generates a variety of luminous, pulsating, re-
9This example is drawn from J. D. Lewis-Williams (1990),
Discovering southern African rock art (p. 9). Cape Town
and Johannesburg: David Philip.
 T he Arts CHAPTER 14 435

volving, and constantly shifting geometric patterns
known as entoptic phenomena (anyone who has
suffered from migraine headaches is familiar with
these). Typical forms include grids, parallel lines,
zigzags, dots, nested curves, and filigrees, often in
a spiral pattern.
As one goes into deeper trance, the brain tries
to “make sense” of these abstract forms, just as it
does of sensations received when in an unaltered
state of consciousness. This process is known as
construal, and here differences in culture and ex­
perience come into play. Commonly, a Bushman in
trance will construe a grid pattern as the markings
on a giraffe’s skin, nested curves as a honeycomb
(honey is a Bushman delicacy, and the auditory sen­
sation of buzzing that often accompanies trance
promotes the illusion), and dots as nu/m, the po­
tency only shamans in trance see. Obviously, we
would not expect an Inuit or someone from Los
Angeles to construe these patterns in the same way.
In the third and deepest trance stage, subjects
cease to be observers of their hallucinations but
seem to become part of them. As this happens,
they feel themselves passing into a rotating tunnel
or vortex with latticelike sides and on which ap­
pear images of animals, humans, and monsters of
various sorts. In the process, the entoptic forms of
the earlier stages become integrated into these
iconic images, as they are called. The entoptics
may be hard to discern apart from the main im­
age, although sometimes they appear as a kind of
background. Iconic images are culture specific; in­
dividuals “see” what their culture disposes them
to see; often these images have high emotional con­
tent. In the case of Bushmen, they often see the
eland, an animal thought to be imbued with spe­
cially strong potency, particularly for rain making.
Given this, one of the things shamans try to do in
trance is to “capture” elands— “rain animals”—
to make rain.

E ntoptic phenom ena. Bright, pulsating geom etric forms the central nervous system generates and “seen” in trance
states. > C o n stru al. In the second stage of trance, the process the brain uses when trying to “make sense” of entop­
tic images. > Iconic images. Hallucinations of people, animals, and monsters “seen” in the deepest trance stage.
436 PART IV T he S earch for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isordf.r

The zigzags and curves in two of these pictures, drawn by migraine sufferers, are classic entoptic phenomena
seen in early stages of trance. The “tunnel” with lattice walls in the third picture is representative of those
seen when passing from the second to third stage of trance.

From all of this, we begin to understand why
elands are so prominent in the rock art. Moreover,
it reveals the significance of the zigzags, dots,
grids, and so forth that are so often a part of the
compositions. It also leads to an understanding of
other puzzling features of the art. For example,
sensations in the third trance stage include such
feelings as being stretched out or elongated,
weightlessness as in flight or in the water, and dif­
ficulty breathing as when under water. Hence we
find depictions in the art of humans who appear
to be abnormally long, as well as individuals who
appear to be swimming or flying. Another well-
documented trance phenomenon is the sense of be­
ing transformed into some sort of animal. Such
sensations are triggered in the deepest stage of
trance if the individual sees or thinks of an ani­
mal, and the sensation accounts for the part hu-
man/part animal therianthropes in the art. Finally,
the superpositioning of one artwork over another
becomes comprehensible; not only are the visions
seen in trance commonly superimposed on one an­
other as they rotate and move, but if the trancer
stares at a painting or engraving of an earlier vi­
sion, the new one will appear as if projected on
the old.
The interpretive approach makes clear, then,
that the rock art of southern Africa— even com­
positions that otherwise might appear to be scenes
of everyday life— is intimately connected with the
 T he Arts CHAPTER 14 437

This late Stone Age painting from the Peche-Merle cave in France incorporates
dot entoptics over and near the body of a bull, one indication the artist was
painting something seen in a state of trance. An association of rock art with
trance experience has been noted in many parts of the world.

practices and beliefs of shamanism. After shamans
came out of trance and reflected on their visions,
they then proceeded to paint or engrave their rec­
ollections of them on the rock faces. But these
were more than records of important visions; they
had their own innate power, owing to their su­
pernatural origin. This being so, when the need
arose for a new trance experience, it might be held
where the old vision was recorded to draw power
from it.
With the fuller understanding the interpretive
approach provides, we now may look at the
broader significance of what the Bushmen did with
their art. For this, we turn to the writings of the
two South African anthropologists who are the
leading authorities on the rock art.

v * i * * *. i A 1,

Whatever may be said about Bushman rock art, its images are not the "ba­
nal, meaningless artefacts" into which exhibits can so easily transform them.
“ Meaning" is, o f course, an elusive concept. Like all art, the Bushman images
did not have a single, one-to-one “ meaning” that they unequivocally trans­
mitted from maker to viewer “ Meaning" was historically and complexly con­
Bushman stituted; Bushman viewers shared with the makers o f the art in the con­
struction o f “ meaning." Similarly, modern viewers who engage the images will
Rock Art inevitably bring with them their own contribution to their “ meaning.” If all
the original viewers did not "read” the images identically, each viewer having
and
Political
' “Adapted from T. A. Dovvson &C J. D. Lewis-Williams (1993, November), Myths,
Power10 museums, and Southern African rock art. South African H istorical Journal, 29,
5 2 -5 6 .
438 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving the Problem of D isorder

had his or her own socially constituted perspective, how much less likely is
it that modem viewers will share Identical responses? None the less, some
general observations on the a rt’s “ meaning” and its role in Bushman com­
munities can be made in the hope that they will challenge the current triv-
ialising stereotypes.
The "ideas which most deeply moved the Bushman mind" were rooted
in what our reading o f the nineteenth-century accounts suggests was a three­
tiered, though not strictly demarcated, view o f the cosmos: the level o f daily
life, the realm above and the realm below. These levels were mediated by
shamans. Amongst the Kalahari groups o f the 1950s and 1960s, about half
o f the men and a third o f the women were shamans. Entering an altered
state o f consciousness during a communal dance or In more solitary cir­
cumstances, these shamans were believed to activate a supernatural potency
so that they could move between the cosmological levels as they performed
such diverse tasks as curing the sick, making rain and controlling animals.
The making o f rock art was associated with these shamanistic practices
in ways not fully understood. The images comprise: representations o f ani­
mals that were believed to possess supernatural potency; privileged views o f
communal dances that show not only what ordinary people saw but also el­
ements, such as potency, that were seen by shamans only; conflicts in the
spiritual realm between benign shamans and shamans o f illness; rain-animals
that shamans killed so that their blood and milk would fall as rain; theri-
anthropic figures showing the blending o f a shaman with a power-animal;
geometric images derived from entoptic phenomena (bright pulsating forms
"seen” in certain altered states o f consciousness); and a range o f other fan­
tastic experiences.
The images were not, however simply records o f religious experiences.
There is reason to believe that at least some o f them were reservoirs of
potency that could be tapped by trancing shamans.They were not just pic­
tures, but powerful things in themselves that could be implicated in effect­
ing alterations in the shamans' states o f consciousness, that is, in facilitating
the mediation o f the cosmological realms.
Even this brief outline shows that the art can be presented as a chal­
lenge to the popular belief that the making o f art was, for the Bushmen, an
idle pastime. The artists' manipulation o f metaphors and symbols was far
more complex and subtle than many modern viewers realize. The painted
and engraved images explore unknown and unsuspected realms in often idio­
syncratic ways. In the past the images were active; today they are made static
by being separated from their highly charged ritual, social and conceptual
contexts.
The activity o f the images, however; extended beyond the generation of
religious experience to the negotiation o f political power Especially in the
last tw o hundred years o f the Bushmen's occupation o f the south-eastern
part o f the subcontinent, major and escalating changes were taking place.
For many hundreds o f years the Bushmen had interacted in various and
changing ways with Bantu-speaking agropastoralists, but these, for the most
part amicable, exchanges were disrupted by colonial expansion. New social
relations began to develop. Shamans, who were already being paid with cat­
tle and a share o f the crops by the agropastoralists for whom they made
 T he Arts CHAPTER 14 439

rain, found that they had access to new resources. As the colonists shot out
the game and the Bushman territories became more and more restricted,
relations with the agropastoralists increased in importance, and political and
economic struggles developed between competing shamans and between
shamans and ordinary people. The “ egalitarian” values that militated against
development o f political power by shamans were eroded.
Rock painting was implicated in these changes. To illustrate the artistic
dynamics of, largely, the nineteenth century, we mention three types o f paint­
ing. One type shows groups o f people, some o f whom are identifiable by
various features as shamans, In which no one is larger or more elaborately
painted than another A second type shows groups o f people in which tw o
or three shaman figures are more elaborately and individually depicted.The
third type shows an elaborately painted central shaman with sometimes, fa­
cial features, surrounded by “ lesser" figures.The historical record from parts
o f the Kalahari combines with these three types o f paintings to suggest that
the art became a site o f struggle. As social circumstances changed, shamans
translated their supernatural potency into political power and vied with one
another for control o f resources that were, in the final decades, increasingly
derived from rain-making for agropastoralists.
The artists who made these types o f paintings were not merely paint­
ing historical events, chronicling social changes. Such an understanding would
be related to the close-to-nature stereotype— simple people painting what
was happening around them. Rather the making o f each painting was a socio­
political intervention that negotiated the artist's (or artists') political status.
The art did not simply reflect social relations: in some Instances it trans­
formed those relations; in other instances it worked to reproduce them. Each
painting was more than an image o f the way things were, o r even o f the
way artists wished they would become. Because the images were themselves
charged with the supernatural potency that mediated the levels o f the cos­
mos and made shamanistic activity possible, they exercised a coercive, per­
suasive influence that was founded in their factuality.
In specific and diverse historical circumstances, the artists invoked this
coercive function in their responses to the colonial invasion. Unlike the
agropastoralists, the colonists were not intended to be among the viewers
o f the art, but their threatening presence implicated them in the social
production o f the art none the less. As the shamans had, for centuries, bat­
tled in the spiritual realm with marauding shamans o f illness, who often took
feline forms, so, the art suggests, did they battle in the spiritual realm with
the colonists.The shamans tried to deploy their powers In such a way as to
thw art the advance o f the colonists. As we know, their efforts were fruitless;
the colonists' rifles were, in the end, invincible. A t times prosecuting a policy
o f calculated genocide, at other times mounting ad hoc but nevertheless vi­
cious “ retaliatory” commandos, the colonists all but wiped out the Bushman
communities south o f the Orange River Many Bushmen, it is true, intermar­
ried with agropastoralists and others went to live with them, but, all in all,
the unpalatable truth o f the matter Is that genocide was the finality.
440 PART IV T he Search for O rder: Solving
Although southern African rock art is all too
often dismissively labeled as “primitive” or “sim­
ple,” the discussion here shows that it is anything
but. Neither the art itself nor the belief system it
C H A P T E R
Art is the creative use of the human imagination
to interpret, understand, and enjoy life. It stems
from the uniquely human ability to use symbols
to give shape and significance to the physical
world for more than just a utilitarian purpose. An­
thropologists are concerned with art as a reflec­
tion of people’s cultural values and concerns.
Oral traditions denote a culture’s unwritten
stories, beliefs, and customs. Verbal arts include
narratives, dramas, poetry, incantations, proverbs,
riddles, and word games. Narratives, which have
received the most study, have been divided into
three categories: myths, legends, and tales.
Myths are basically sacred narratives that ex­
plain how the world came to be as it is. By de­
scribing an orderly universe, myths function to set
standards for orderly behavior. Legends are sto­
ries told as if true that often recount the exploits
of heroes, the movements of people, and the es­
tablishment of local customs. Epics, which are
long legends in poetry or prose, typically are found
in nonliterate societies with some form of state po­
litical organization. They serve to transmit and
preserve a culture’s legal and political practices. In
literate states, history has taken over these func­
tions to one degree or another. Anthropologists are
interested in legends because they provide clues
about what constitutes model ethical behavior in
a culture. Tales are fictional, secular, and nonhis-
torical narratives that instruct as they entertain.
Anthropological interest in tales centers in part on
the fact their distribution provides evidence of cul­
tural contacts or cultural isolation.
The study of music in specific cultural settings
has developed into the specialized field of ethno-
musicology. Almost everywhere human music is
Points for
1. In this chapter the Navajo tradition of sand painting is used to illustrate how sometimes the
“art” is the process of creation, rather than what is produced. What other traditions stress the
the Problem of Disorder
was embedded in can be described as remotely
“simple.” Understanding such art requires a good
deal more than simply staring at a picture, but the
effort is well worth making.
S U M M A R Y
perceived in terms of a scale. Scale systems and
their modifications comprise tonality in music.
Tonality determines the possibilities and limits of
melody and harmony. Rhythm is an organizing
factor in music. Traditional European music is
measured into recurrent patterns of two, three,
and four beats.
The social function of music is most obvious
in song. Like tales, songs may express a group’s
concerns, but with greater formalism because of
the restrictions closed systems of tonality, rhythm,
and musical form impose. Music also serves as a
powerful way for a social or ethnic group to as­
sert its distinctive identity. As well, it may be used
to advance particular political, economic, and so­
cial agendas or for any one of a number of other
purposes.
Pictorial art may be regarded as either repre­
sentational or abstract, though in truth these cate­
gories represent polar ends of a continuum. The
rock art of southern Africa illustrates three ways
the study of art may be approached. The aesthetic
and narrative approaches focus on h o w and w hat
things are depicted. By themselves they reveal little
about what the art is all about and may convey a
distorted view of the people responsible for it. Only
the interpretive approach can reveal the meaning of
another people’s art. This approach requires draw­
ing on a rich body of ethnography and often other
sets of data. The effort is worthwhile, as it may re­
veal the art to be far more complex than one might
otherwise expect. Applied to southern African rock
art, it shows, among other aspects of the culture,
how paintings and engravings were actually part of
Bushman strategy for negotiating changing power
relations as colonists invaded their lands.
C onsideration
 T he Arts CHAPTER 14 441

act over the product? Why would Western people think more in terms of the resulting object
than the act of creation? W hat does this tell observers about Western values?
2. Why is art perceived as elitist and nonproductive in Western society? Is this a valid viewpoint?
How does it differ from other societies’ opinions, and how might Western culture itself belie such
a statement?
3. How does art participate in politics? Why are various art forms (music, graphic arts, literature,
etc.) so important to nationalist or ethnic groups existing under the influence of foreign dominant
cultures?

Suggested R e a d i n g s

Dundes, A. (1980). Interpreting fo lk lore. Bloom­ M eans,” “The Psychological Perspective,”

ington: Indiana University Press.
A collection of articles that assess the materi­
als folklorists have amassed and classified, this
book seeks to broaden and refine traditional
assumptions about the proper subject matter
and methods of folklore.
Hannah, J. L. (1988). D ance, sex an d gender.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Like other art forms, dances are social acts
that contribute to the continuation and emer­
gence of culture. One of the oldest— if not the
oldest— art forms, dance shares the same in­
strument, the human body, with sexuality.
This book, written for a broad nonspecialist
audience, explicitly examines sexuality and
the construction of gender identities as they
are played out in the production and visual
imagery of dance.
Hatcher, E. P. (1985). Art as culture: An In tro­
duction to the an th rop olog y o f art. New York:
University Press of America.
This handy, clearly written book does a nice
job of relating the visual arts to other aspects
of culture. Topics include “The Technological
“Social Contexts and Social Functions,” “Art
as Communication,” and “The Time Dimen­
sion.” Numerous line drawings help the
reader understand the varied art forms in non-
Western societies.
Layton, R. (1991). T he an th rop olog y o f art (2nd
ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This readable introduction to the diversity of
non-Western art deals with questions of aes­
thetic appreciation, the use of art, and the big
question: What is art?
Merriam, A. P. (1964). T he an th rop olog y o f m u­
sic. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.
This book focuses upon music as a complex
of behavior that resonates throughout all of
culture: social organization, aesthetic activity,
economics, and religion.
Otten, C. M . (1971). A n thropology an d art: R ead ­
ings in cross-cultural aesthetics. Garden City,
NY: Natural History Press.
This is a collection of articles by anthropol­
ogists and art historians with emphasis on
the functional relationships between art and
culture.
 PA R T

i
V
C hange and the Future:
Solving the P roblem of
A djusting to C hanged
C onditions
cJlApfeT 15
C ultural C hange
C(lApfeT 1 6
A nthropology and the Future
Undet standing the processes of change, the sub|ect of
Chapter 15. is one of the most important and funda­
mental of anthropological goals Unfortunately, the task
is made difficult by the cultut al biases of most moder n
North Amei leans, which predispose them to see change
as a progressive process leading in a predictable and de­
termined way to where they arc now, and even beyond
to a future where they lead the way. So pervasive is this
notion of progress that it motivates the thinking of
North Americans in a great many ways they are hardly
aware of. Among other ideas, it leads them to view cul­
tures not like their own as “backward” and "underde­
veloped." O f course, they are no such thing; as we saw
in Chapter 6, no culture is static, and cultures may be
very highly developed in quite different ways.
A simple analogy with the world of nature may be
helpful here. In the course of evolution, simple bacteria
appeared long before vertebrate animals, and land ver­
tebrates such as mammals are relative latecomers in­
deed. Yet bacteria abound in the world today, not as
relics of the past but as organisms highly adapted to sit­
uations mammals are totally unsuited for. Just because
mammals got here late does not mean dogs, for exam­
ple, are “better” or “more progressive” than bacteria.
Belief in “progress” and its inevitability has impor­
tant implications for North Americans as well as others.
For people in the United States, it means change has be­
come necessary for its own sake, for whatever is old is,
by virtue of that fact alone, inadequate and should be
abandoned, no matter how well it seems to be working.
Toward others, the logic runs like this: If the old inevitably
must give way to the new, then societies North Ameri­
cans perceive as “old” or “out of the past” also must
give way to the new. Since the U.S. way of life is a re­
cent development in human history, it must represent
the new. “O ld ” societies therefore must become like
that of the United States, or else it is their fate to dis­
appear altogether. This idea amounts to a charter for
massive intervention into the lives of others, whether
they want this or not; the outcome, more often than
not, is the destabilization and even destruction of other
societies in the world.
A conscious attempt to identify and eliminate the
biases of North American culture allows us to see change
in a very different way. It allows us to recognize that, al­
though people can change their wpys-in response;to par­
ticular problems, much change occurs accidenta ly. The
fact is the historical record is quirky and full o f raadorn ..
events And although it is true that without change cul­
tures could nevei adapt to changed condmons, we also
must recognize that too much hi ge-scale, continuing
change may place a culture in jeopardy It conflicts with
the social need for piedictability discussed in Chapter
2 individuals needs for tegulariry and structure, dis­
cussed in Chipter 5, and a population's need for an adap­
tive fit with its envu onment. discussed in Chapter 6
The more anthropologists study change and learn
about the various ways people solve their problems of
existence, the more aware they become of a great para­
dox of culture. Although the basic business of culture is
to solve problems, in doing so, inevitably, new problems
are created that demand solutions.Throughout this book
we have seen examples of this— the problems of form­
ing groups to cooperate in solving the problems of stay­
ing alive, the problem of overcoming the stresses and
strains on individuals as a consequence of their group
memberships, and the structural problems inherent in
dividing society into a number of smaller groups, to men­
tion a few. It is apparent every solution to a problem has
its price, but as long as culture can keep at least a step
ahead of the problems, all is reasonably well.
W hen we see all the problems the human species
today faces (Chapter 16), most of them the result of cul­
tural practices, we may wonder if we have passed some
critical threshold where culture has begun to fall a step
behind the problems.This does not mean the future nec­
essarily has to be bleak for the generations that follow,
but it would be irresponsible to project a rosy science-
fiction-type of future as inevitable, at least on the basis
of present evidence.
To prevent a bleak future, humans will have to rise
to the challenge of changing their behavior and ideas to
conquer the large problems that threaten to annihilate
them: overpopulation and unequal access to basic re­
sources with their concomitant starvation, poverty, and
squalor; environmental pollution and poisoning; and the
culture of discontent and bitterness that arises from the
widening economic gap separating industrialized from
nonindustrialized countries and the “haves” from the
“have nots” within countries.
 cltApfer ? H V i t w
1. Why Do Cultures Change?
All cultures change at one time o r another fo r a variety o f reasons. Although people deliber­
ately may change their ways in response to some perceived problem, much change is acciden­
tal, including the unforeseen outcome of existing events. O r contact with other peoples may in­
troduce “ foreign” ideas, leading to changes in existing values and behavior.This even may involve
the massive imposition o f foreign ways through conquest o f one group by another. Through
change, cultures can adapt to altered conditions; however, not all change is adaptive.

2. How Do Cultures Change?

The mechanisms of change are innovation, diffusion, cultural loss, and acculturation. Innovation
occurs when someone within a society discovers something new that is then accepted by other
society members. Diffusion is the borrowing o f something from another group, and cultural loss
is the abandonment o f an existing practice o r trait, with o r w ithout replacement. Acculturation
is the massive change that comes about with the sort o f intensive firsthand contact that has oc­
curred under colonialism.

3. What Is Modernization?
Modernization is an ethnocentric term referring to a global process o f change by which tradi­
tional, nonindustrial societies seek to acquire characteristics o f industrially “ advanced” societies.
Although modernization generally has been assumed to be a good thing, and some successes
have occurred, it frequently has led to the development o f a new “ culture o f discontent,” a level
of aspirations far exceeding the bounds o f an individual’s local opportunities. Sometimes it leads
to the destruction of cherished customs and values people had no desire to abandon.

445
 CitApfer 15

I Ì
446 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
C
ulture is the medium through which the hu­
man species solves the problems of exis­
tence, as these are perceived by members of
the species. Various cultural institutions, such as
kinship and marriage, political and economic or­
ganization, and religion, mesh to form an inte­
grated cultural system. Because systems generally
work to maintain stability, cultures are often fairly
stable and remain so unless either the conditions
they are adapted to or human perceptions of those
conditions change. Archaeological studies have re­
vealed how elements of a culture may persist for
long periods. In Chapter 6, for example, we saw
how the culture of the native inhabitants of north­
western New England and southern Quebec re­
mained relatively stable for thousands of years.
Although stability may be a striking feature of
many cultures, none are ever changeless, as the
cultures of food foragers, subsistence farmers, and
pastoralists are all too often assumed to be. In a
stable society, change may occur gently and grad­
ually, without altering in any fundamental way the
culture’s underlying logic. Sometimes, though, the
pace of change may increase dramatically, causing
a radical cultural alteration in a relatively short
period. The modern world is full of examples as
diverse as the disintegration of the Soviet Union
and what is happening to the native peoples of the
Amazon forest as Brazil presses ahead to “de­
velop” this vast region.
The causes of change are many and include
the unexpected outcome of existing activities. To
cite an example from U.S. history, the settlement
of what we now call New England by English-
speaking people had nothing to do with their cul­
ture being “better” or “more advanced” than
those of the region’s native inhabitants (one might
argue it was just the reverse, as, at the time, New
England’s Indians had higher quality diets, enjoyed
better health, and experienced less violence in their
lives than did most Europeans1). Rather, the new
settlement was the outcome of a series of unre­
lated events that happened to coincide at a criti­
cal time. In England, economic and political de­
velopments that drove large numbers of farmers
1Stannard, D. E. (1992). American holocau st (pp. 5 7 -6 7 ).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
off the land, occurring at a time of population
growth, forced an outward migration of people; it
was purely chance that this happened shortly af­
ter the European discovery of the Americas.
Even at that, attempts to establish British
colonies in New England ended in failure, until an
epidemic of unprecedented scope resulted in the
sudden death of about 90% of the native inhabi­
tants of coastal New England. This epidemic did
not occur because the British could not settle un­
less the land were cleared of its original occupants
but, rather, because the Indians had been in regu­
lar contact with European fishermen and fur
traders— whose activities were independent of
British attempts at colonization— from whom they
contracted the disease. For centuries, up to this
time, Europeans had been living under conditions
that were ideal for the incubation and spread of
all sorts of infectious diseases, but the Indians had
not. Consequently, the Europeans had developed
over time a degree of resistance to such diseases,
which Indians lacked altogether. To be sure, the
consequences were inevitable, once direct contact
between these people occurred; nonetheless, dif­
ferential immunity did not occur to clear the coast
of New England for English settlement. And even
once those settlements were established, it is un­
likely the colonists could have dispossessed the
remaining natives from their land had they not
come equipped with the political and military tech­
niques for dominating other peoples, tactics pre­
viously used to impose their control upon the
Scots, Irish, and Welsh.
In sum, had not a number of otherwise unre­
lated phenomena come together by chance at just
the right time, English might very well not be the
language most North Americans speak today.
Not just the unexpected outcome of existing
activities but other sorts of accidents, too, may
bring about changes if people perceive them as use­
ful. Of course, people also may respond deliberately
to altered conditions, thereby correcting the per­
ceived problem that made the cultural modification
seem necessary. Change also may be forced upon
one group by another, as happened in colonial New
England and as is happening in so much of the
world today in the course of especially intense con­
tact between two societies. Progress and adaptation,
by contrast, are not causes of change; the latter is
 C ultural C hange CHAPTER IS 447

a consequence of it that happens to work well for
a population, and the former is a judgment of those
consequences in terms of the group’s cultural val­
ues. Progress is however it is defined.
MECHANISMS OF CHANGE
I nnovati on
The ultimate source of all change is innovation:
any new practice, tool, or principle that gains
widespread acceptance within a group. Those that
involve the chance discovery of a new principle we
refer to as primary innovations; those that result
from the deliberate applications of known princi­
ples are secondary innovations. The latter corre­
sponds most closely to Western culture’s model of
change as predictable and determined, while the
former involves accidents of one sort or another.
An example of a primary innovation is the dis­
covery that the firing of clay makes it permanently
hard. Presumably, accidental firing of clay occurred
frequently in ancient cooking fires. An accidental
occurrence is of no account, however, unless some­
one perceives an application of it. This perception
first took place about 2 5,000 years ago, when peo­
ple began making figurines of fired clay. Pottery
vessels were not made, however, nor did the prac­
tice of making objects of fired clay reach south­
west Asia; at least if it did, it failed to take root.
Not until sometime between 7000 and 6500 B.c.
did people living in southwest Asia recognize a sig­
nificant application of fired clay, when they began
using it to make cheap, durable, and easy-to-
produce containers and cooking vessels.

A Hopi woman firing pottery vessels. The discovery that firing clay vessels makes them in­
destructible (unless they are dropped or otherwise smashed) probably came about when
clay-lined basins next to cooking fires in the Middle East were accidentally fired.

P rim a ry innovation. The chance discovery of a new principle. > Secondary innovation. Something new that re­
sults from the deliberate application of known principles.
448 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving
As nearly as we can reconstruct it, the devel­
opment of the earliest known pottery vessels came
about in the following way.2 By 7 0 0 0 B.c., cook­
ing areas in southwest Asia included clay-lined
basins built into the floor, clay ovens, and hearths,
making the accidental firing of clay inevitable.
Moreover, people were already familiar with the
working of clay, which they used to build houses,
line storage pits, and model figurines. For con­
tainers, however, they still relied upon baskets and
upon bags made of animal hides.
Once the significance of fired clay— the pri­
mary innovation— was perceived, then the appli­
cation of known techniques to it— secondary in­
novation— became possible. Clay could be
modeled in the familiar way but now into the
known shapes of baskets, bags, and stone bowls
and then fired, either in an open fire or in the same
facilities used for cooking food. In fact, the earli­
est known southwest Asian pottery imitates
leather and stone containers, and the decoration
consists of motifs transferred from basketry, even
though they were ill suited to the new medium.
Eventually, potters developed shapes and decora­
tive techniques more suited to the new technology.
Since men are never the potters in traditional
societies unless the craft has become more a com­
mercial operation, women probably made the first
pottery. The vessels they produced were initially
handmade, and the earliest kilns were the same
ovens used for cooking. As people became more
adept at making pottery, they made further tech­
nological refinements. The clay could be modeled
on a mat or other surface, which the woman could
move as work progressed, to aid production.
Hence, she could sit in one place while she worked,
rather than getting up to move around the piece.
A further refinement was to mount the movable
surface on a vertical rotating shaft— an applica­
tion of a known principle used for drills— creat­
ing the potter’s wheel and permitting mass pro­
duction. Kilns, too, were improved for better heat
circulation by separating the firing chamber from
2Amiran, R. (1965). The beginnings of pottery-making in
the Near East. In F. R. Matson (Ed.), Ceramics and man
(pp. 2 4 0 -2 4 7 ). Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology
(No. 41). Chicago: Aldine.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
the fire itself. By chance, these improved kilns pro­
duced enough heat to smelt ores such as copper,
tin, gold, silver, and lead. Presumably, this dis­
covery was made by accident— another primary
innovation— and the stage was set for the even­
tual development of the forced-draft furnace from
the earlier pottery kiln.
The accidents responsible for primary inno­
vations are not generated by environmental change
or some other need, nor are they preferentially ori­
ented in an adaptive direction (see Figure 15.1).
They are, however, given structure by their cul­
tural context. Thus, the outcome of the discovery
of fired clay by mobile food foragers 25,000 years
ago was very different from what it was when dis­
covered later on by more sedentary farmers in
southwest Asia, where it set off a veritable chain
reaction as one invention led to another. Indeed,
given certain sets of cultural goals, values, and
knowledge, particular innovations are almost
bound to be made, such as penicillin. This antibi­
otic was discovered in 1928 when a mold blew in
through the window of Sir Alexander Fleming’s
lab and landed on a microbial colony of staphy­
lococcus, which it then dissolved. Fleming recog-
Fiaufti 15.1
Human practices may or may not be adaptive. In the
United States, for example, it is not adaptive over the
long run to deplete groundwater in regions of fast­
growing populations, yet people do this.
 C u ltural C h a n g e CHAPTER 1 5 449

nized the importance of this accident, because he
was sensitive to the need for more than antisep­
tics and immunization, the mainstays of medicine
at the time, to fight infection. Of course, he was
not alone in his awareness, nor was this accident
at all unusual. Any physician who studied medi­
cine in the early part of this century had stories
about having to scrub down laboratories when
their studies in bacteriology were brought to a halt
by molds that persisted in contaminating cultures
and killing off the bacteria. To them, it was an an­
noyance; to Fleming, it was a “magic bullet” to
fight infection. Under the circumstances, however,
had he not made the discovery, someone else
would have before long.
Although a culture’s internal dynamics may
encourage certain innovative tendencies, they may
discourage others, or even remain neutral with re­
spect to yet others. Indeed, Copernicus’s discovery
of the rotation of the planets around the sun and
Mendel’s discovery of the basic laws of heredity
are instances of genuine creative insights out of
step with the established needs, values, and goals
of their times and places. In fact, Mendel’s work
remained obscure until 16 years after his death,
when three scientists working independently re­
discovered, all in the same year (1900), the same
laws of heredity. Thus, in the context of turn-of-
the-century Western culture, Mendel’s laws were
bound to be discovered, even had Mendel not hit
upon them earlier.
Although an innovation must be reasonably
consistent with a society’s needs, values, and goals
if it is to be accepted, this is not sufficient to as­
sure its acceptance. Force of habit tends to be an
obstacle to acceptance; people generally will tend
to stick with what they are used to, rather than
adopt something new that will require some ad­
justment on their part. An example of this is the
continued use of the Q W ERTY keyboard for type­
writers and computers (named from the starting
arrangement of letters). Devised in 1874, the

In the face of the AIDS epidemic sweeping southern Africa, the beliefs of several million Chris­
tian Zionists, such as the one being baptized here, are highly adaptive in that they militate
against the kind of sexual practices that spread the disease. That these beliefs are adaptive,
however, is a consequence of, rather than reason for, their origin.
450 PART V C hange and th e F u t u r e : S o l v in g th e Problem of A d ju st in g to C h a n g e d C o n d it io n s

arrangement minimized jamming of type bars and

was combined with other desirable mechanical
features to become the first commercially success­
ful typewriter. Yet, the Q W ERTY keyboard has a
number of serious drawbacks. The more typing
one can do in the “home row ” (2nd from bottom)
of keys, the faster one can type, with the fewest
errors and least strain on the fingers. But with
QW ERTY, only 32% of the strokes are done on
the home row, versus 52% on the upper row and
16% on the (hardest) bottom row. W hat’s more,
it requires overuse of the weaker (left) hand (for
the right-handed majority) and the weakest (fifth)
finger. Once one’s reflexes become adjusted to doing some­
In 1932, after extensive study, August Dvorak thing one way, it becomes difficult to do it differently.
developed a keyboard that avoids the defects of Thus, when a North American or European goes to
Q W ERTY (Figure 15.2). Tests consistently show Great Britain, learning to drive on the “wrong” side
that the Dvorak keyboard can be learned in one of the road is difficult.

( DVORAK )

Fi«*nc I $■!
Dvorak and QW ERTY keyboards, compared. Though superior to the latter in virtually every way, Dvorak has
not been adopted owing to the head start enjoyed by QWERTY.

third the time, and, once learned, typists increase
their accuracy by 68% and their speed by 7 4 % ,
and they experience significantly less fatigue. So
why hasn’t Dvorak replaced Q W ERTY? The an­
swer is commitment. Because Q W ERTY had a
head start, by the time Dvorak came along man­
ufacturers, typists, teachers, salespeople, and of­
fice managers were committed to the old key­
board; it was what they were used to.3
Obviously, being markedly better than the
thing or idea an innovation replaces is not neces­
sarily sufficient to ensure its acceptance. Much
may depend on the prestige of the innovator and
potential adopters. If the innovator’s prestige is
high, this will help gain acceptance for the inno­
vation. If it is low, acceptance is less likely, unless
the innovator can attract a sponsor who has high
prestige.
D i ffusi on
When the Pilgrims established their colony of New
Plymouth in North America, they very likely
would have starved to death had the Indian
Squanto not showed them how to grow the native
American crops— corn, beans, and squash. The
borrowing of cultural elements from one society
by members of another is known as diffusion, and
the donor society is, for all intents and purposes,
the “inventor” of that element. So common is bor­
rowing that the late Ralph Linton, a North Amer­
ican anthropologist, suggested that borrowing
accounts for as much as 9 0 % of any culture’s
content. People are creative about their borrow­
ing, however, picking and choosing from multiple
possibilities and sources. Usually their selections
are limited to those compatible with the existing
culture. In modern-day Guatemala, for example,
Maya Indians, who make up more than half of
that country’s population, will adopt Western
ways if the value of what they adopt is self-evident
3Diamond, J. (1997). The curse of QWERTY. Discover, 18
(4), 34 -4 2 .
Diffusion. The spread of customs o r practices from one culture to another.
Cultural Change CHAPTER 15 451
and does not conflict with traditional ways and
values. The use of metal hoes, shovels, and ma­
chetes became standard long ago, for they are
superior to stone tools and yet compatible with
the cultivation of corn in the traditional way by
men using hand tools.
Yet certain other “modern” practices that
might appear advantageous to the Maya tend to
be resisted if they are perceived as running counter
to Indian tradition. Thus, in the early 1960s, a
young man in one community who tried his hand
at truck gardening, using chemical fertilizers and
pesticides to grow cash crops with market value
only in the city— vegetables never eaten by the
Maya— could not secure a “good” woman for a
wife (a “good” woman has never had sex with an­
other man and is skilled at domestic chores, not
lazy, and willing to attend to her husband’s needs).
After he abandoned his unorthodox ways, how­
ever, his community accepted him as a “real” man,
no longer different from the rest of them and there­
fore conspicuous (a “real” man will work steadily
to provide his household with what they need to
live by farming and making charcoal in the tradi­
tional ways). Before long, he was well married.4
Although the tendency toward borrowing is
so great it led Robert Lowie to comment, “Cul­
ture is a thing of shreds and patches,” the bor­
rowed traits usually undergo sufficient modifica­
tions to make this wry comment more colorful
than critical. Moreover, existing cultural traits
may be modified to accommodate a borrowed
one. An awareness of the extent of borrowing can
be eye opening. Take, for example, the numerous
things European Americans have borrowed from
American Indians. Domestic plants developed
(“invented”) by the Indians— “Irish” potatoes,
avocados, corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peanuts,
manioc, chili peppers, chocolate, and sweet pota­
toes, to name a few, furnish a major portion of
the world’s food supply. In fact, American Indians
4Reina, R. E. (1966). The law o f the saints (pp. 65 -6 8 ).
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
452 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving
remain the developers of the world’s largest ar­
ray of nutritious foods and the primary con­
tributors to the world’s varied cuisine.5 Among
drugs and stimulants, tobacco is the best known
(Figure 15.3), but others include coca in cocaine,
ephedra in ephedrine, datura in pain relievers, and
cascara in laxatives. Early on, European physi­
cians recognized that Indians had the world’s most
sophisticated pharmacy, and Indians used all but
a handful of drugs known today made from plants
native to the Americas. More than 2 00 plants and
herbs they used for medicinal purposes have at
one time or another been included in the P har­
m a co p eia o f the U nited States or in the N ation al
Form ulary. Varieties of cotton Indians developed
supply much of the world’s clothing needs, while
the woolen poncho, the parka, and moccasins are
universally familiar items. Not only has Anglo
sWeatherford, J. (1988). Indian givers: H ow the Indians o f
the Americas transform ed the New World (p. 115). New
York: Ballanrine.
F igure 1 5 .3
The diffusion of tobacco. Having spread from the tropics of the Western hemisphere to much of the rest of
North and South America, it rapidly spread after 1492 to the rest of the world.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
American literature been permanently shaped by
such works as Longfellow’s H iaw atha and James
Fenimore Cooper’s L eath erstockin g Tales, but
also American Indian music has contributed to
world music such ultramodern devices as unusual
intervals, arbitrary scales, conflicting rhythms,
and hypnotic monotony. These borrowings are so
well integrated into modern North American cul­
ture that few people are aware of their source.
Despite the obvious importance of diffusion,
accepting an innovation from another culture
probably has more obstacles than accepting a
“homegrown” one. In addition to the same ob­
stacles that stand in the way of homegrown in­
ventions is the fact a borrowed one is, by its very
nature, foreign. In the United States, for exam­
ple, this is one reason why people have been so
reluctant to abandon completely the awkward
and cumbersome old English system of weights
and measures for the far more logical metric sys­
tem, which has been adopted by just about every­
one else on the face of the earth. (The only hold­
outs besides the United States are South Yemen
 C ultural C hange CHAPTER 15 453

and Liberia.) Hence, the ethnocentrism of the po­

tential borrowing culture may act as a barrier to
acceptance.

C ultural L oss
Most often people tend to think of change as an
accumulation of innovations: adding new things
to those already there. They think so because this
seems so much a part of the way they live. A lit­
tle reflection, however, leads to the realization that
frequently the acceptance of a new innovation
leads to the loss of an older one. This sort of re­
placement is not just a feature of Western civi­
lization. For example, back in biblical times, char­
iots and carts were in widespread use in the Middle
East, but by the 6th century a . d . wheeled vehicles
had virtually disappeared from M orocco to
Afghanistan. They were replaced by camels, not
because of some reversion to the past by the re­ Although the wheel has become a symbol of progress
gion’s inhabitants but because camels, used as in Western cultures, wheeled transport is not always
superior to other forms. Such was the case in pre-
pack animals, worked better. By the 6th century
Columbian Mexico, where wheels were used on toys
Roman roads had deteriorated, but camels, as long
but not for transport. The existence of adequate alter­
as they were not used as draft animals, were not
natives made wheeled vehicles unnecessary.
bound to them. Not only that, their longevity, en­
durance, and ability to ford rivers and traverse
rough ground without people having to build
by pack animals strikes us not only as backward
roads in the first place made pack camels ad­
but almost sacrilegious.
mirably suited for the region. Finally, they were
The success of camels reemphasizes a funda­
laborsaving: A wagon required a man for every
mental theme. . . . Adaptation, be it biological or
two draft animals, whereas a single person can
cultural, represents a better fit to specific, local en­
manage from three to six pack camels. Stephen Jay
vironments, not an inevitable stage in a ladder of
Gould comments:
progress. Wheels were a formidable invention, and
We are initially surprised . . . because wheels have their uses are manifold (potters and millers did not
come to symbolize in our culture the sine qua non abandon them, even when Cartwrights were
of intelligent exploitation and technological eclipsed). Bur camels may work better in some cir­
progress. Once invented, their superiority cannot cumstances. Wheels, like wings, fins, and brains,
be gainsaid or superseded. Indeed, “reinventing the are exquisite devices for certain purposes, not signs
wheel” has become our standard metaphor for de­ of intrinsic superiority.4
riding the repetition of such obvious truths. In an
Often overlooked is another facet of losing ap­
earlier era of triumphant social Darwinism, wheels
parently useful traits: loss without replacement. An
stood as an ineluctable stage of human progress.
example of this is the absence of boats among the
The “inferior” cultures of Africa slid to defeat; their
inhabitants of the Canary Islands, an archipelago6
conquerors rolled to victory. The “advanced” cul­
tures of Mexico and Peru might have repulsed
Cortes and Pizarro if only a clever artisan had
thought of turning a calendar stone into a cart­ 6Gould, S. J. (1983). Hens’ teeth and horses' toes (p. 159).
wheel. The notion that carts could ever be replaced New York: Norton.
454 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
isolated in the stormy seas off the coast of West
Africa. The ancestors of these people must have
had boats, for without them they could never have
transported themselves and their domestic live­
stock to the islands in the first place. Later, with­
out boats, they had no way to communicate be­
tween islands. The cause of this loss of something
useful was that the islands contain no stone suit­
able for making polished stone axes, which in turn
limited the islanders’ carpentry.7
FORCIBLE CHANGE
Innovation, diffusion, and cultural loss all may oc­
cur among peoples who are free to decide what
changes they will accept. Not always, however, are
people free to make their own choices; frequently,
changes they would not willingly make themselves
have been forced upon them by some other group,
usually in the course of conquest and colonialism.
A direct outcome in many cases is a phenomenon
anthropologists call acculturation.
A cculturati on
Acculturation occurs when groups having differ­
ent cultures come into intensive firsthand contact,
with subsequent massive changes in the original
cultural patterns of one or both groups. It always
involves an element of force, either directly, as in
conquests, or indirectly, as in the implicit or ex­
plicit threat that force will be used if people refuse
to make the changes those in the other group ex­
pect them to make. Other variables include the de­
gree of cultural difference; circumstances, inten­
sity, frequency, and hostility of contact; relative
status of the agents of contact; who is dominant
and who is submissive; and whether the nature of
the flow is reciprocal or nonreciprocal. It should
7Coon, C. S. (1954). The story o f man (p. 174). New York:
Knopf.
Acculturation. Major cultural changes people are forced to make due to intensive firsthand contact between societies.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
be emphasized that acculturation and diffusion are
not equivalent terms; one culture can borrow from
another without being in the least acculturated.
In the course of acculturation, any one of a
number of things may happen. Merger or fusion
occurs when two cultures lose their separate iden­
tities and form a single culture, as expressed by
the “melting pot” ideology of Anglo American cul­
ture in the United States. Sometimes, though, one
of the cultures loses its autonomy but retains its
identity as a subculture in the form of a caste, class,
or ethnic group; this is typical of conquest or slav­
ery situations, and the United States has examples
despite its melting-pot ideology. One need look no
farther afield than the nearest Indian reservation.
Today, in virtually all parts of the world, people
are faced with the indignity of forced removal
from their traditional homelands as entire com­
munities are uprooted to make way for hydro­
electric projects, grazing lands for cattle, mining
operations, or highway construction. In Brazil’s
rush to develop the Amazon basin, for instance,
whole villages have been relocated to “national
parks,” where resources are inadequate for so
many people and where former enemies are often
forced to live in close proximity.
E xtinction is the phenomenon whereby so
many carriers of a culture die that those who sur­
vive become refugees living among peoples of
other cultures. Examples of this may be seen in
many parts of the world today; the closest exam­
ples are found in many parts of South America,
again as in Brazil’s Amazon basin. One particu­
larly well-documented case occurred in 1968,
when hired killers tried to wipe out several Indian
groups, including the Cinta-Larga. For this they
used arsenic, dynamite, and machine guns from
light planes; in the case of the Cinta-Largas, the
killers chose a time when an important native cer­
emony was taking place to attack a village seen as
an obstacle to development. Violence continues to
be used in Brazil as a means of dealing with na­
tive people. For example, as a conservative esti­
mate, at least 1,500 Yanomami died in the 1980s,
often as victims of deliberate massacres, as cattle
 C ultural Change CHAPTER IS 455

In Namibia, Bushmen from the Kalahari Desert were collected in settlements like
Tsumkwe, shown here. Deprived of the means to secure their own necessities in life, such
people commonly lapse into apathy and depression.

ranchers and miners poured into northern Brazil.
By 1990, 70% of the Yanomami’s land in Brazil
had been unconstitutionally expropriated; their
fish supplies were poisoned by mercury contami­
nation of rivers; and malaria, venereal disease, and
tuberculosis were running rampant. The Yano-
mami were dying at the rate of 10% a year, and
their fertility had dropped off to near zero. Many
villages were left with no children or old people,
and the survivors awaited their fate with a pro­
found terror of extinction.8
The usual Brazilian attitude to such situations
is illustrated by the reaction of their government
when two Kayapo Indians and an anthropologist
traveled to the United States, where they spoke
with members of several congressional commit­
tees, as well as officials of the Department of State,
the Treasury, and the World Bank, about the de­
struction of their land and way of life caused by
internationally financed development projects. All
three were charged with violating Brazil’s Foreign
Sedition Act. Fortunately, international expres­
sions of outrage at these and other atrocities has

^Turner, T. (1991). Major shift in Brazilian Yanomami pol-

icy. Anthropology Newsletter; 32 (5), 1, 46.
456 PART V Change and the Future: Solving
brought positive changes from Brazilian authori­
ties, but whether the Brazilians’ recommendations
will be sufficient, or even acted upon fully, remains
to be seen. We will return to this problem later in
this chapter.
G e noc i d e
The Brazilian Indian case just cited raises the is­
sue of genocide— the extermination of one group
of people by another, often deliberately and in the
name of “progress.” Genocide is not new in the
world, as we need look no farther than North
American history to see. In 1637, for example, a
deliberate attempt was made to destroy the Pequot
Indians by setting afire their village at Mystic,
Connecticut, and then shooting down all those—
primarily women and children— who sought to es­
cape from being burned alive. To try to ensure that
even their very memory would be stamped out,
colonial authorities forbade even the mention of
the Pequot’s name. Several other massacres of In­
dian peoples occurred thereafter, until the last one
at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890. Of
course, such acts were by no means restricted to
North America. One of the most famous 19th-
century acts of genocide was the extermination of
the Aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania, a large is­
land just south of Australia. In this case, the use
of military force failed to achieve the complete
elimination of the Tasmanians, but what the mil­
itary could not achieve, a missionary could.
George Augustus Robinson was able to round up
the surviving natives, and at his mission station
the deadly combination of psychological depres­
sion and European diseases brought about the
demise of the last full-blooded Tasmanians in time
for Robinson to retire to England a moderately
wealthy man.
The most widely known act of genocide in re­
cent history was the Nazi German attempt to wipe
out European Jews and gypsies in the name of
racial superiority. Unfortunately, the common
practice of referring to this as “the holocaust”—
Genocide. The extermination of one people by another, often in the name of “progress,” either as a deliberate act or
as the accidental outcom e of one people’s activities done with little regard for their impact on others.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
as if it were something unique or at least excep­
tional— tends to blind us to the fact this thoroughly
monstrous act is simply one more example of an
all too common phenomenon. From 1945 to 1987,
a minimum of 6.8 million, but perhaps as many as
16.3 million, people were victims of internal
(within state) genocide, as compared to the 3.34
million people who have died in wars between dif­
ferent countries from 1945 to 1980.9 Moreover,
genocide continues to occur in the world today in
places such as Iraq, where in 1988 the government
began to use poison gas against Kurdish villagers,
and (as we will see in Chapter 16) Guatemala, to
mention but two cases.
If such ugly practices are ever to be ended, we
must gain a better understanding of them than cur­
rently exists. Anthropologists are actively engaged
in this, carrying out cross-cultural as well as indi­
vidual case studies. One finding to emerge is the
regularity that religious, economic, and political
interests are allied in cases of genocide. In Tas­
mania, for example, wool growers wanted Abo­
rigines off the land so that they could have it for
their sheep. The government advanced their inter­
ests through its military campaigns against the na­
tives, but it was Robinson’s missionary work that
finally secured Tasmania for the wool interests. In
the 1960s and 1970s, the Ju/’hoansi living in
Namibia found themselves in a situation remark­
ably similar to that the Tasmanians experienced
earlier. A combination of religious (Dutch Re­
formed church), political (Namibia’s Department
of Nature Conservation), and economic (agricul-
tural/pastoral and touristic) interests forced the
people’s confinement to a reserve where disease
and apathy caused death rates to outstrip
birthrates. This case is important for another rea­
son: It clearly illustrates that genocide is not al-
9Van Den Berghe, P. (1992). The modern state: Nation
builder or nation killer? International Journ al o f Group
Tensions, 22 (3), 198.
 Cultural C hange CHAPTER 15 457

Genocide is not new in the world; this 1638 illustration shows English colonists
with their Narragansett allies (the outer ring of bowmen) shooting down Pequot
Indian women, children, and unarmed men attempting to flee their homes, which
have been set afire.

ways a deliberate act. It also occurs as the un- the people whose lives are snuffed out, however,
foreseen outcome of activities carried out with lit- it makes no difference whether the genocide is de-
tie regard for their impact on other peoples. For liberate or not; for them, the outcome is the same.

Two examples (out of many) of attempted genocide in the 20th century: Hitler’s Germany against Jews and
gypsies, during the 1930s and the 1940s; and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq against the Kurds, beginning in the
1980s.
458 PART V C hange and the Future: S olving the Problem of Adjusting to C hanged Conditions

Directed Change tative and depressed, and, as already noted, their

The most extreme cases of acculturation usually
occur as a result of military conquest and dis­
placement of traditional political authority by con­
querors who know or care nothing about the cul­
ture they control. The indigenous people, unable
to resist imposed changes and prevented from car­
rying out many of their traditional social, reli­
gious, and economic activities, may be forced into
new activities that tend to isolate individuals and
tear apart the integration of their societies. Such a
people are the Ju/’hoansi of Namibia, who were
rounded up in the early 1960s and confined to a
reserve where they could not possibly provide for
their own needs. In this situation, the government
provided them with insufficient rations to meet
their nutritional needs. In poor health and pre­
vented from developing meaningful alternatives to
traditional activities, the people became argumen­
death rate came to exceed birthrates. After a visit
to the reserve in 1980, anthropologist Robert J.
Gordon commented: “I had never been in a place
where one could literally smell death and decay,
as in Tsumkwe.”10 In the 1980s, however, the
Juy’hoansi began to take matters into their own
hands, returning to water holes in the back coun­
try, where, assisted by anthropologists and others
concerned with their welfare, they are trying to
sustain themselves by raising livestock. Whether
this will succeed or not remains to be seen, as they
have still many obstacles to success.
One by-product of colonial dealings with in­
digenous peoples has been the growth of applied
anthropology and the use of anthropological tech-
10Gordon, R. J. (1992). The Bushman myth: The making o f
a N amibian underclass (p. 3). Boulder, CO: Westview.

A common agent of change in many nonindustrial societies is the religious missionary. Al­
though they see themselves as bringing enlightenment to indigenous peoples, such mission­
aries seek to subvert the beliefs that lie at the heart of such cultures and that make life
within them meaningful.

Applied anthropology. The use of anthropological knowledge and techniques for solving “practical” problems, often
for a specific “client.”

Growing Trees in Haiti
W
hen foreigners go to Haiti, one o f the sights
that impresses them is the massive deforesta­
tion. Since colonial times, this country’s population has
swelled from fewer than half a million to more than 6
million— to o many people fo r too little arable land. In
their quest for fields, peasants eventually cut down all
but a few stands o f trees in remote areas. The resul­
tant erosion, coupled with overuse o f cropland, re­
sulted in catastrophic declines in yields, sending many
peasants into the capital, Port au Prince, in search o f
other work. This, in turn, created a growing demand
for construction wood and charcoal in that city, which
the rural poor were all to o happy to satisfy by going
after the country's few remaining trees. Responding to
this crisis, international development organizations
poured millions o f dollars into studies o f the problem,
as well as into reforestation schemes, all to no avail.
N ot only were very few seedlings planted, but also
those that were planted quickly became forage fo r the
goats o f peasants, and these people were reluctant to
devote any o f their scarce landholdings to the grow­
ing o f state-owned trees.
Faced with failure, the United States Agency fo r
International Development (AID) in Haiti invited an­
thropologist Gerald F. Murray to develop an alterna­
tive approach to reforestation and subsequently hired
him as Project Director. Already familiar with peasant
land usage in Haiti, Murray knew that typical refor­
estation projects, such as the planting o f fruit trees by
government agents fo r purposes o f soil conservation,
would not work.To peasants, fruit trees were o f little
commercial or nutritional value, especially if they were
perceived as state owned. They needed a cash crop
that was theirs to do with as they wished. Accord­
ingly, Murray made available, through nongovernmen­
tal organizations rather than state agencies, seedlings
o f leucaena, ocassia, and eucalyptus, fast-growing
wood trees good fo r charcoal and basic construction
material that attracted a ready market. Moreover the
trees could be cut in some instances as early as 4
Cultural Change CHAPTER 15 459
years after planting and could be grown along bor­
ders o f fields o r even intercropped among other
plants, rather than in large, unbroken, uncropped
stands. Thus, their growth was compatible with con­
tinued subsistence farming. Moreover, any potential
loss from decreased food production was far offset
by income the trees would generate.
The idea that trees were meant to be cut, while
heretical to the international development “establish­
ment,” was extremely popular with the peasants. As
Murray observes, "Though it had taken AID tw o years
to decide about the project; it took about twenty min­
utes with any group o f skeptical but economically ra­
tional peasants to generate a list o f enthusiastic poten­
tial tree planters. . . . Cash-flow dialogues and
ownership . . . were a far cry from the finger-wagging
ecological sermons to which many peasant groups had
been subjected on the topic o f trees.” * When first con­
ceived, the planting o f 3 million trees on the land o f
6,000 peasants was set as the project's 4-year goal. In
fact, by the end o f the 4th year 30 million trees had
been planted by 75,000 peasants.
Unlike bureaucratically conceived projects, this an­
thropologically conceived and implemented agro­
forestry project was reasonably successful, until a mili­
tary coup ousted the president. Unfortunately, one o f
the means the military regime used to show the rural
population who was in control was to wantonly cut
down trees. W hat will happen now that civilian power
has been restored still remains to be seen.
* Murray, G. E (1989). The domestication of wood in Haiti:
A case study in applied evolution. In A. Podolefsky & P. J.
Brown (Eds.), Applying anthropology, an introductory reader
(pp. 151 -1 5 2 ). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
460 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving
niques and knowledge for certain “practical” ends.
For example, British anthropology often has been
considered the “ handmaiden” of that country’s
colonial policy, for it typically provided informa­
tion needed for maintaining effective colonial rule.
In the United States, the Bureau of American Eth­
nology was founded toward the end of the 19th
century to gather reliable data the government
might base its Indian policies on. At the time,
North American anthropologists were convinced
of the practicality of their discipline, and many
who did ethnographic work among Indians de­
voted a great deal of time, energy, and even money
toward assisting their informants, whose interests
were frequently threatened from outside.
In the present century, the scope of applied an­
thropology has broadened. Early on, the applied
work of Franz Boas, who almost single-handedly
trained a generation of anthropologists in the
United States, was instrumental in reforming the
country’s immigration policies. In the 1930s, an­
thropologists with avowedly applied goals did a
number of studies in industrial and other institu­
tional settings in the United States. With World
War II came the first efforts at colonial adminis­
tration beyond U.S. borders, especially in the Pa­
cific, by officers trained in anthropology. The rapid
recovery of Japan was due in no small measure to
Franz Boas (isss-mi)
Born in Germany, where he studied
physics and geography, Franz Boas
came to the United States to live in
1888. His interest in anthropology
began a few years earlier with a trip
to Baffinland, where he met his first
so-called primitive people. There­
after, he and his students came to
dominate anthropology in N orth
America for the first 3 decades of
the 1900s.
Through meticulous and detailed fieldwork,
which set new standards for excellence, Boas and
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
the influence of anthropologists on structuring the
U.S. occupation. Anthropologists continue to play
an active role today in administering the U.S. trust
territories in the Pacific.
Today, applied anthropologists are in some de­
mand in international development because of
their specialized knowledge of social structure,
value systems, and the functional interrelatedness
of cultures targeted for development. The role of
the applied anthropologists, however, is far from
easy; as anthropologists, they are bound to respect
other peoples’ dignity and cultural integrity, yet
they are asked for advice on how to change cer­
tain aspects of those cultures. If the request comes
from the people themselves, that is one thing, but
more often than not the request comes from an
outside “expert.” Supposedly, the proposed
change is for the good of the targeted population,
yet the people do not always see it that way. Just
how far applied anthropologists should go when
advising how people— especially ones without the
power to resist— can be made to embrace changes
proposed for them is a serious ethical question.
Despite such difficulties, applied anthropology
is flourishing today as never before. As the several
Anthropology Applied boxes spaced throughout
this book illustrate, anthropologists now practice
their profession in many different nonacademic
his students exposed the short­
com ings of the grandiose, culture-
bound schemes of cultural evolu­
tion earlier social theorists had
proposed. His thesis that a culture
must be understood according to
its own standards and values,
rather than those of the investiga­
tor, represented a tremendously
liberating philosophy in his time.
(The photo show s Boas posing as a Kwakiutl
ha na tsa dancer for a National Museum diorama,
1895).

Applied anthropologist Tekle Haile Selassie of Ethiopia speaks with women of the village
of Mai Misham about water improvement systems.
settings, both at home and abroad, in a wide va­
riety of ways.
REACTIONS TO FORCIBLE
CHANGE
The reactions of indigenous peoples to the changes
outsiders have thrust upon them have varied con­
siderably. Some have responded by moving to the
nearest available forest, desert, or other inhos­
pitable place in hopes of being left alone. In Brazil,
a number of communities once located near the
coast took this option a few hundred years ago
and were successful until the great push to develop
the Amazon forest began in the 1960s. Others,
such as the Indians of North America, tried to fight
back but were ultimately defeated and reduced to
an impoverished underclass in their own land.
Sometimes, though, people have managed to keep
faith with their traditions by inventing creative and
S y n c re tism . In acculturation, the blending of indigenous and foreign traits to form a new system.
C ultural. C hange CHAPTER 15 461
ingenious ways to express them in the face of pow­
erful foreign domination. This blending of indige­
nous and foreign elements into a new system is
known as syncretism, and a fine illustration of it
is the game of cricket as played by the Trobriand
Islanders, some of whose practices we looked at
in Chapters 7, 8, and 9.
Under British rule, the Trobrianders were in­
troduced by missionaries to the rather staid British
game of cricket to replace the erotic dancing and
open sexuality that normally followed yam har­
vests. Traditionally, this was when chiefs sought
to spread their fame by hosting nights of dancing,
providing food for the hundreds of young married
people who participated. For 2 months or so, night
after night of provocative dancing would occur,
accompanied by chanting and shouting full of sex­
ual innuendo, each night ending as couples disap­
peared off into the bush together. Since no chief
wished to be outdone by any other (to be outdone
reflected on the strength of one’s magic), all of this
dancing had a strong competitive element, and
462 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to C hanged Conditions

An example of syncretism. Although the Hopi Indians

have adopted a number of items from European
Americans (note the glasses and electrical outlet), such
“borrowed” things are combined with traditional
ones, as in the ritual use of cornmeal, here being ap­
plied to a young girl as required by ancient tradition.

fighting sometimes erupted. To the missionaries,

cricket seemed a good way to end all of this, en­
couraging conformity to “civilized” comportment
in dress, religion, and “sportsmanship.” The Tro-
brianders, however, were determined to “rubbish”
(throw out) the British game and turned it into the
same kind of distinctly Trobriand event their dance
competitions had once been.
The Trobrianders made cricket their own by
adding battle dress and battle magic and by in­
corporating erotic dancing into the festivities. In­
stead of inviting dancers each night, chiefs now
arrange games of cricket. Pitching has been mod­
ified from the British style to one closer to their
old way of throwing a spear. Following the game,
they hold massive feasts, where wealth is displayed
to enhance their prestige. Cricket, in its altered
form, has been made to serve traditional systems
of prestige and exchange. Neither “primitive” nor
passively accepted in its original form, Trobriand
cricket was thoughtfully and creatively adapted
into a sophisticated activity reflecting the impor­
tance of basic indigenous cultural premises. Exu­
berance and pride are displayed by everyone as­
sociated with the game, and the players are as
much concerned with conveying the full meaning
of who they are as with scoring well. From the
In the past few decades, Western countries have
sent technological “ missionaries” to teach people in
other places new ways of doing old tasks. Unless
they have had anthropological training, however,
such “ missionaries” are apt to be unaware of the
side effects their new ways will have.
sensual dressing in preparation for the game to the
team chanting of songs full of sexual metaphors
to erotic chorus-line dancing between the innings,
observers have little doubt each player is playing
for his own importance, for the fame of his team,
and for the hundreds of attractive young women
who usually watch the game.
R evi tali zati on M ove ments
Another common reaction to forcible change is re­
vitalization, a process already touched upon in
Chapter 13. Revitalization may be looked upon as
a deliberate attempt by some members of a soci­
ety to construct a more satisfactory culture by the
 C ultural C hange CHAPTER 15 463

rapid acceptance of a pattern of multiple innova­

tions. Once primary ties of culture, social rela­
tionships, and activities are broken and meaning­
less activity is imposed by force, individuals and
groups characteristically react with fantasy, with­
drawal, and escape.
Examples of revitalization movements have
been common in the history of the United States
whenever significant population segments have
found their conditions in life to be at odds with
the values of “the American Dream.” For exam­
ple, in the 19th century, periodic depression and
the disillusionment of the decades after the Civil
War produced a host of revitalization movements,
the most successful being that of the Mormons. In
the 20th century, movements repeatedly arose in
the slums of major cities, as well as in depressed
rural areas such as Appalachia. By the 1960s, a
number of movements were less inward looking
and more activist, a good example being the rise
of the Black Muslim movement. The 1960s also
saw the rise of revitalization movements among
the young of middle-class and even upper-class
families. In their case, the professed values of
peace, equality, and individual freedom were seen
to be at odds with the realities of persistent war,
poverty, and constraints on individual action im­
posed by a variety of impersonal institutions. Their
Revitalization movements that attempt to revive tradi­
reactions to these realities were expressed by their
tional ways of the past are not restricted to “ underde­
drug use; in their outlandish or “freaky” clothes, veloped” countries; in the United States, the Reverend
hairstyles, music, and speech; and in their behav­ Pat Robertson is a leader in such a movement.
ior toward authority and authority figures.
By the 1980s revitalization movements were
becoming prominent even among older, more af­ however, resistance may take one of several forms,
fluent segments of society, as in the rise of the so- all of which are varieties of revitalization move­
called religious right. In these cases, the reaction ments. A culture may seek to speed up the accul­
is not so much against a perceived failure of the turation process to share more fully in the supposed
American Dream as it is against perceived threats benefits of the dominant cultures. Melanesian cargo
to that dream by dissenters and activists within cults of the post-World War II era generally have
their society, by foreign governments, by new ideas been of this sort, although earlier ones stressed a
that challenge other ideas they like to believe, and revival of traditional ways. Sometimes, a movement
by the sheer complexity of modern life. tries to reconstitute a destroyed but not forgotten
Clearly, when value systems get out of step with way of life, as did many Plains Indians with the
existing realities, for whatever reason, a condition Ghost Dance in the 19th century and as do move­
of cultural crisis is likely to build up that may breed ments on the “religious right” today. Sometimes, a
some forms of reactive movements. Not all sup­ suppressed pariah group, which long has suffered
pressed, conquered, or colonized people eventually in an inferior social standing and which has its own
rebel against established authority, although why special subcultural ideology, attempts to create a
they do not is still a debated issue. When they do, new social order; the most familiar examples of this
464 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

to Western peoples are prophetic Judaism and early
Christianity. If the movement’s aim is directed from
within primarily at the ideological system and the
attendant social structure of a cultural system, it is
then called revolutionary.
k k k i. k^k k * k - A * * *
REBELLION AND REVOLUTION
When the scale of discontent within a society
reaches a certain level, the possibilities for rebel­
lion and revolution— such as the Iranian Revolu­
tion, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, or
the Zapatista uprising in M exico— are high.
The question of why revolutions erupt, as well
as why they frequently fail to live up to the ex­
pectations of the people initiating them, is a prob­
lem. It is clear, however, that the colonial policies
of countries such as England, France, Spain, Por­
tugal, and the United States during the 19th and
early 20th centuries have created a worldwide sit­
uation in which revolution is nearly inevitable. De­
spite the political independence most colonies have
gained since World War II, more powerful coun­
tries continue to exploit many for their natural re­
sources and cheap labor, causing a deep resent­
- k ment of rulers beholden to foreign powers. Further
discontent has been caused by the governing elite
of newly independent states attempting to assert
their control over peoples living within their
boundaries who, by virtue of a common ancestry,
possession of distinct cultures, persistent occupa­
tion of their own territories, and traditions of self-
determination, identify themselves as distinct na­
tions and refuse to recognize the sovereignty of
what they regard as a foreign government. Thus,
in many a former colony, large numbers of people
have taken up arms to resist annexation and ab­
sorption by imposed state regimes run by people

A leading cause of rebellion and revolution in the world today is the refusal of
governing elites to recognize the cultural, economic, and political rights of people
of other nationalities whom the state has unilaterally asserted its authority over.
A recent illustration is the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in response to continued
repressive control by Ladinos (non-Indians).

Revolutionary. A revitalization movement from within directed primarily at a culture's ideological system and the at­
tendant social structure.

of other nationalities. While attempting to make
their states into nations, governing elites of one
nationality endeavor to strip the peoples of other
nations within their states of their lands, resources,
and sense of identity as a people. The phenome­
non is so common as to lead anthropologist Pierre
Van Den Berghe to label what modern states re­
fer to as “nation building” as, in fact, “nation
killing.”11 One of the most important facts of our
time is that the vast majority of the distinct peo­
ples of the world have never consented to rule by
the governments of states they find themselves liv­
ing within.12 In many a newly emerged country,
such peoples feel they have no other option than
to fight.
On the basis of an examination of four revo­
lutions of the past— English, American, French, and
Bolshevik— the following conditions have been of­
fered as precipitators of rebellion and revolution:
1. Loss of prestige of established authority, of­
ten from the failure of foreign policy, finan­
cial difficulties, dismissals of popular minis­
ters, or alteration of popular policies.
2. Threat to recent economic improvement. In
France and Russia, sections of the population
(professional classes and urban workers)
whose economic fortunes previously had
taken an upward swing were radicalized by
unexpected setbacks, such as steeply rising
food prices and unemployment.
3. Indecisiveness of government, as exemplified
by lack of consistent policy; such govern­
ments appear to be controlled by, rather than
in control of, events.
4. Loss of support of the intellectual class. Such
a loss deprived the prerevolutionary govern­
ments of France and Russia of philosophical
support, thus leading to their lack of popu­
larity with the literate public.
5. A leader or group of leaders with charisma
enough to mobilize a substantial part of the
population against the establishment.
"V an Den Berghe, P. (1992). The modern state: Nation
builder or nation killer? International Journ al o f Group
Tensions, 22 (3), 191-207.
12Nietschmann, B. (1987). The third world war. Cultural
Survival Quarterly, 11 (3), 3.
Cultural Change CHAPTER 15 465
Apart from resistance to internal authority, such
as in the English, French, and Russian Revolu­
tions, many revolutions in modern times have been
struggles against an authority outsiders impose on
them. Such resistance usually takes the form of in­
dependence movements that wage campaigns of
armed defiance against colonial powers. The Al­
gerian struggle for independence from France and
the American Revolution are typical examples. O f
the 120 or so armed conflicts in the world today,
9 8% are in the economically poor countries of
Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, al­
most all of which were at one time under Euro­
pean colonial domination. O f these wars, 75% are
between the state and one or more peoples within
the state’s borders who are seeking to maintain or
regain control of their persons, communities,
lands, and resources in the face of what they re­
gard as subjugation by a foreign power.13
Not all revolts are truly revolutionary in their
consequences. According to M ax Gluckman, re­
bellions
" . . . throw the rascals out” and substitute another
set, but there is no attempt to alter either the cul­
tural ideology or the form of the social structure.
In political revolution, attempts are made to seize
the offices of power in order to change social struc­
ture, belief systems, and their symbolic representa­
tions. Political revolutions are usually turbulent, vi­
olent, and not long-lasting. A successful revolution
soon moves to re-establish a stable, though
changed, social structure; yet it has far-reaching po­
litical, social and sometimes economic and cultural
consequences.14
Not always are revolutions successful about ac­
complishing what they set out to do. One of the
stated goals of the Chinese Revolution, for exam­
ple, was to liberate women from the oppression of
a strongly patriarchal society where a woman owed
lifelong obedience to some man or another— first
her father, later her husband, and, after his death,
13Ibid., 7.
14Hoebel, E. A. (1972). Anthropology: The study o f man
(4th ed., p. 667). New York: McGraw-Hill.
466 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving
her sons. Although some progress has been made,
the effort overall has been frustrated by the cultural
lens the revolutionaries view their work through. A
tradition of extreme patriarchy extending back at
least 22 centuries is not easily overcome and has
unconsciously influenced many of the decisions
China’s leaders since 1949 have made. In rural
China today, as in the past, a woman’s life is still
usually determined by her relationship to some
man, be it her father, husband, or son, rather than
by her own efforts or failures. What’s more, women
are being told more frequently that their primary
roles are as wives and mothers. When they work
outside the house, it is generally at jobs with low
pay, low status, and no benefits. Indeed, the 1990s
have seen a major outbreak of the abduction and
sale of women from rural areas as brides and work­
ers. Their no-wage labor for their husbands’ house­
hold or low-wage labor outside (which goes back
to the household) has been essential to China’s eco­
nomic expansion, which relies on the allocation of
labor by the heads of patrilineal households.15 Thus
despite whatever autonomy women may achieve for
In China, women’s labor has become critical to economic expansion. Much of this labor is
controlled by male heads of families, who act as agents of the state in allocating labor.
the Problem oe Adjusting to Changed Conditions
a while, they become totally dependent in their old
age on their sons.
This situation shows that the subversion of rev­
olutionary goals, if it occurs, is not necessarily by
political opponents. Rather, it may be a consequence
of the revolutionaries’ own cultural background. In
rural China, as long as women marry out and their
labor is controlled by male heads of families, women
always will be seen as something of a commodity.
It should be pointed out that revolution is a
relatively recent phenomenon, occurring only dur­
ing the past 5,000 years or so. The reason is that
political rebellion requires a centralized political
authority (chiefdom or state) to rebel against, and
states (if not chiefdoms) have been in existence for
only 5,000 years. Obviously, then, in societies typ­
ified by tribes and bands, and in other nonindus­
trial societies lacking central authority, rebellion
or political revolution could not have occurred.
15Gates, H. (1996). Buying brides in China— again. Anthro­
pology Today, 12 (4), 10.
 Cultural C hange CHAPTER 15 467

do at the moment is to recognize its inappropri­

MODERNIZATION
One of the most frequently used terms to describe
social and cultural changes as they are occurring
today is modernization. This is most clearly de­
fined as an all-encompassing global process of cul­
tural and socioeconomic change, whereby devel­
oping societies seek to acquire some of the
characteristics common to industrial societies.
Looking closely at this definition’s meaning reveals
that “becoming modern” really means “ becoming
like us” (“us” being the United States and other
industrial societies), with the very clear implica­
tion that not being like us is to be antiquated and
obsolete. Not only is this ethnocentric, but it also
fosters the notion that these other societies must
be changed to be more like us, irrespective of other
considerations. It is unfortunate that the term
m odernization continues to be so widely used.
Since we seem to be stuck with it, the best we can
ateness, even though we continue to use it.
The process of modernization may be best un­
derstood as consisting of four subprocesses, of
which one is tech n olog ical developm en t. In the
course of modernization, traditional knowledge
and techniques give way to the application of sci­
entific knowledge and techniques borrowed
mainly from the West. Another subprocess is agri­
cultural developm en t, represented by a shift in em­
phasis from subsistence farming to commercial
farming. Instead of raising crops and livestock for
their own use, people turn more frequently to the
production of cash crops, with greater reliance on
a cash economy and on markets for selling farm
products and purchasing goods. A third sub­
process is industrialization, with a greater empha­
sis placed on inanimate forms of energy— espe­
cially fossil fuels— to power machines. Human
and animal power become less important, as do
handicrafts in general. The fourth subprocess is
urbanization, marked particularly by population
movements from rural settlements into cities. Al­
though all four subprocesses are interrelated, they
follow no fixed order of appearance.

Structural differentiation. Whereas most items for

daily use were once made at home, such as butter
(left), almost everything we use today is the product
of specialized production, as is the butter we buy in
the food store.

M o dern izatio n . The process of cultural and socioeconomic change, whereby developing societies acquire some of the
characteristics of Western industrialized societies.
468 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
As modernization occurs, other changes are
likely to follow. In the political realm, political par­
ties and some sort of electoral machinery fre­
quently appear, along with the development of a
bureaucracy. In education, learning opportunities
expand, literacy increases, and an indigenous ed­
ucated elite develops. Religion becomes less im­
portant in many areas of thought and behavior as
traditional beliefs and practices are undermined.
The traditional rights and duties connected with
kinship are altered, if not eliminated, especially
where distant kin are concerned. Finally, where
stratification is a factor, mobility increases as as­
cribed status becomes less important and achieve­
ment counts more.
Two other features of modernization go hand
in hand with those already noted. One, structural
differentiation, is the division of single traditional
roles, which embrace two or more functions, into
two or more separate roles, each with a single spe­
cialized function. This represents a kind of frag­
mentation of society, which must be counteracted
by new integrative mechanisms if the society is not
to disintegrate into a number of discrete units.
These new mechanisms take such forms as formal
governmental structures, official state ideologies,
political parties, legal codes, and labor and trade
unions as well as other common-interest associa­
tions. All of these crosscut other societal divisions
and thus serve to oppose differentiating forces.
These two forces, however, are not the only ones
in opposition in a situation of modernization; to
them must be added a third, the force of tradition.
This opposes the new forces of both differentia­
tion and integration. Yet the conflict does not have
to be total. Traditional ways may on occasion fa­
cilitate modernization. For example, traditional
kinship ties may assist rural people as they move
into cities if they have relatives already there they
may turn to for aid. One’s relatives, too, may pro­
vide the financing necessary for business success.
The division of single traditional roles, which embrace two or more functions (for exam­
S tru c tu ra l d iffe ren tiatio n .
ple, political, economic, and religious), into two or more roles, each with a single specialized function. > Integrative
m echanism s. Cultural mechanisms that oppose a society’s differentiation forces; in modernizing societies, they include
formal governmental structures, official state ideologies, political parties, legal codes, and labor and trade unions and other
common-interest associations. > T rad itio n . In a modernizing society, old cultural practices that may oppose new dif­
ferentiation and integration forces.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
One aspect of modernization, the technologi­
cal explosion, has made it possible to transport hu­
man beings and ideas from one place to another
with astounding speed and in great numbers. For­
merly independent cultural systems have been
brought into contact with others. The cultural dif­
ferences between New York and Pukapuka are de­
clining, while the differences between fishers and
physicists are increasing. No one knows whether
this implies a net gain or net loss in cultural diver­
sity, but the worldwide spread of anything, whether
it is DDT (an environmentally toxic insecticide) or
a new idea, should be viewed with at least caution.
That human beings and human cultural systems are
different is the most exciting aspect about them, yet
the destruction of diversity is implicit in the world­
wide spread of rock-and-roll, socialism, capitalism,
or anything else. When a song is forgotten or a cer­
emony ceases to be performed, a part of the human
heritage is destroyed forever.
An examination of two traditional cultures
that have felt the impact of modernization or other
cultural changes will help to pinpoint some of the
problems such cultures have met. The cultures are
the Skolt Lapps, a division of the Saami people
whose homeland straddles the Arctic Circle in
Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and the
Shuar Indians of Ecuador.
S kolt L apps and the
S n o w m o b i l e R evoluti on
The Skolt Lapps, whose homeland is in northern
Finland, traditionally supported themselves by
fishing and herding reindeer.16 Although they de­
pended on the outside world for certain material
goods, the resources crucial for their system were
T e l to, P. J. (1973). The snow m obile revolution: Technology
and social change in the Arctic. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings.

found locally and were for all practical purposes
available to all. No one was denied access to crit­
ical resources, and little social and economic dif­
ferentiation existed among the people. Theirs was
basically an egalitarian society.
Of particular importance to the Skolt Lapps
was reindeer herding. Indeed, herd management is
central to their definition of themselves as a peo­
ple. These animals were a source of meat for home
consumption or for sale to procure outside goods.
They were also a source of hides for shoes and
clothing, sinews for sewing, and antlers and bones
for making certain objects. Finally, reindeer were
used to pull sleds in the winter and as pack ani­
mals when no snow was on the ground. Under­
standably, the animals were the objects of much
attention. The herds were not large, but without
a great deal of attention, productivity suffered.
Hence, most winter activities centered on reindeer.
Men, operating on skis, were closely associated
with their herds, intensively from November to
January and periodically from January to April.
In the early 1960s these reindeer herders speed­
ily adopted snowmobiles on the premise the new
machines would make herding physically easier
and economically more advantageous. The first
machine arrived in Finland in 1962; by 1971 the
Skolt Lapps and non-Lapps in the same area owned
70 operating machines. Although men on skis still
carry out some herding activity, their importance
and prestige are now diminished. As early as 1967
only four people were still using reindeer sleds for
winter travel; most had gotten rid of draft animals.
C ultural C hange CHAPTER 15 469
Those who had not converted to snowmobiles felt
disadvantaged compared to the rest.
The consequences of this mechanization were
extraordinary and far reaching. The need for
snowmobiles, parts and equipment to maintain
them, and a steady supply of gasoline created a
dependency on the outside world unlike anything
that had previously existed. As snowmobile tech­
nology replaced traditional skills, the ability of the
Lapps to determine their own survival without de­
pendence on outsiders, should this be necessary,
was lost. Snowmobiles are also expensive, costing
several thousand dollars in the Arctic. M ainte­
nance and gasoline expenses must be added to this
initial cost. Accordingly, a sharp rise in the need
for cash occurred. To get this, men must go out­
side the Lapp community for wage work more
than just occasionally, as had once been the case,
or else rely on such sources as government pen­
sions or welfare.
The argument may be made that dependency
and the need for cash are prices worth paying for
an improved system of reindeer herding, but has
it improved? In truth, snowmobiles have con­
tributed in a significant way to a disastrous de­
cline in reindeer herding. By 1971 the average size
of the family herd had declined from 50 to 12.
Not only is this too small a number to be eco­
nomically viable, but also it is too small to main­
tain at all. The reason is that the animals in such
small herds will take the first opportunity to run
off to join another larger one. The old close, pro­
longed, and largely peaceful relationship between
A Saami man separating his reindeer from those of
other herds.
470 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
herdsman and beast has changed to a noisy, trau­
matic relationship. Now, when men appear, it is to
come speeding out of the woods on snarling, smelly
machines that invariably chase the animals, often
for long distances. Instead of helping the reindeer
in their winter food quest, helping females with
their calves, and protecting them from predators,
men appear either to slaughter or castrate them.
Naturally enough, the reindeer have become suspi­
cious. The result has been actual de-domestication,
with reindeer scattering and running off to more in­
accessible areas, given the slightest chance. M ore­
over, indications are that snowmobile harassment
has adversely effected the number of viable calves
added to the herds. This is a classic illustration of
the fact change is not always adaptive.
The cost of mechanized herding— and the de­
cline of the herds— has led many Lapps to aban­
don herding altogether. Now, the majority of males
are no longer herders at all. This constitutes a
serious economic problem, since few economic
alternatives are available. The problem is com­
pounded by the fact participation in a cash-credit
economy means most people, employed or not,
have payments to make. This is more than just an
economic problem, for in the traditional culture
of this people, being a herder of reindeer is the
very essence of manhood. Hence, today’s non­
herders are not only poor in a way they could not
be in previous times, but also they are in a sense
inadequate as “men” quite apart from this.
This economic differentiation with its rééval­
uation of roles has led to the development of a
stratified society out of the older egalitarian one.
Differences have arisen in terms of wealth and,
with this, in lifestyles. It is difficult to break into
reindeer herding now, for one needs a substantial
cash outlay. And herding now requires skills and
knowledge that were not a part of traditional cul­
ture. N ot everyone has these, and those without
them are dependent on others if they are to par­
ticipate. Hence, access to critical resources is now
restricted where once it had been open to all.
T he S huar S oluti on
Although the Skolt Lapps have not escaped many
negative aspects of modernization, the choice to
modernize or not was essentially theirs. The Shuar
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
(sometimes called Jivaro) Indians, by contrast, de­
liberately avoided modernization, until they felt
they had no other option if they were to fend off
the same outside forces that elsewhere in the Ama­
zon basin have destroyed whole societies. Threat­
ened with the loss of their land base as more and
more Ecuadoran colonists intruded into their ter­
ritory, the Shuar in 1964 founded a fully inde­
pendent corporate body, the Shuar Federation, to
take control of their own future. Recognized by
Ecuador’s government, albeit grudgingly, the Fed­
eration is officially dedicated to promotion of the
social, economic, and moral advancement of its
members and to coordination of development with
official governmental agencies.
Since its founding, the Federation has secured
title to more than 96,000 hectares of communal
land; has established a cattle herd of more than
15,000 head as the peoples’ primary source of in­
come; has taken control of their education, using
their language and mostly Shuar teachers; and has
established their own bilingual broadcasting station
and a bilingual newspaper. Obviously, all this has
required enormous changes by the Shuar, but they
have been able to maintain a variety of distinctive
cultural markers, including their language, commu­
nal land tenure, cooperative production and distri­
bution, a basically egalitarian economy, and kin-
based communities that retain maximum autonomy.
Thus, for all the changes, they feel they are still
Shuar and quite distinct from other Ecuadorans.17
17Bodley, J. H. (1990). Victims o f progress (3rd ed.,
pp. 160-162). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
 Cultural Change CHAPTER 15 471

The Shuar case shows that Amazonian Indian
nations are capable of taking control of their own
destinies even in the face of intense outside pres­
sures, //allowed to do so. Unfortunately, until re­
cently, few have had that option. Prior to Euro­
pean invasions of the Amazon, more than 700
distinct groups inhabited the region. By 1900 in
Brazil, the number was down to 2 7 0 , and today
something like 180 remain.18 Many of these sur­
vivors find themselves in situations not unlike that
of the Yanomami, described earlier in this chapter.
Nevertheless, many of these peoples are showing a
new resourcefulness in standing up to the forces of
destruction arrayed against them. That these forces
are formidable is illustrated in the following ac­
count by an anthropologist who lives in Brazil and
has done fieldwork in the Amazon since 1976.
18Cultural Survival Quarterly, IS (4), 38. (1991).

4. A A .4 4 A 4 A 4 A A. A 4 a A A. Jk ' A A Jk a A A 4. a A

Sunday evening, April 20, 1997, the Brazilian television network Rede Globo
on its weekly program Fantastico, carried the tragic story o f a Pataxo Indian
o f Bahia who had been brutally murdered.The Pataxo are the same indige­
nous people whom Pedro Alvares Cabral encountered in his “ discovery” o f
Brazil in 1500.
Violence on According to the news story, the 44 year old Pataxo leader Gildino Je­
sus dos Santos, had gone to Brasilia with a number o f his people to discuss
Indian Day their land claims with government officials, to participate in the demonstra­

in B razil tions and festivities held in commemoration o f Indian Day in Brazil, and to
welcome thousands o f landless poor o r Sem Terra, from all over Brazil— a
1 9 9 7 19 historic moment in Brazilian struggles to institute agrarian reform. According
to other Pataxos lodged in a FUNAI boarding house [FUNAI is the Brazil­
ian Indian service], Gildino came back late from the festivities and was barred
entrance to the boarding house by military police. He wandered around the
area for awhile and decided to sleep on a bus stop bench. An eyewitness
report declared that a car with five youths approached, poured flammable
liquid over the body o f the sleeping Indian and set fire to him. It was later
determined that the youths thought the Pataxo was another o f the numer­
ous mendingo or street beggars that wander the streets in all the major cities
o f Brazil. Every month at least one mendingo is killed in this fashion just for
the “fun” o f seeing the beggar run in panic and attempt to extinguish the
fire before it completely burns him.
In the case o f Gildino dos Santos, 95% o f his body was severely burned
and he died the next day in the hospital where he had been taken by one
o f the few witnesses to the crime. Five youths between the ages o f 16 and
19 years old were taken prisoner All are from upper middle class families
(one the son o f a colonel, tw o others the sons o f judges).The crime is pun­
ishable by a sentence o f between I 3 and 30 years o f imprisonment. But will
there be punishment? Certainly, the moment is propitious for an exemplary
punishment since Brazilians are reeling from the recent shock o f scenes o f
police brutality in Diadema, Sao Paulo, and Cidade de Deus, Rio de Janeiro.

19Wright, R. M. (1997). Violence on Indian Day in Brazil 1997: Symbol of the past
and future. Cultural Survival Quarterly, 21 (2), 4 7 -4 9 .
472 PART V C hange and thf. F uture: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Condi lions

Statue “celebrating” gold miner in the main square of Boa Vista in Brazil. Gold miners and
others who have invaded Indian lands have caused massive death and devastation. In 1993,
when a group of Indians succeeded in evicting a rancher from their land, a man phoned one ra­
dio show, identified himself as a professional “hit man” and offered to kill the local Bishop
(who supported the Indians), cut off his head, and display it in the miner’s pan.

But, this threatens to be another horrible death statistic involving the Indi­
ans in Brazil.
When 1 was asked to prepare an article for this issue in commemora­
tion o f Cultural Survival's 25th anniversary— for me an honor considering
Cultural Survival has focused on Brazil from its beginning— I initially intended
to w rite about the political victories and “ conquests" by the Indigenous move­
ment in Brazil, as demonstrated in an exemplary fashion by the Federation
of Indigenous Organizations o f the Rio Negro (FOIRN) in the Northwest
Amazon. Victories which mark significant advances for the approximately
20,000 Indians o f various linguistic families in the region, with the demarca­
tion o f a large and continuous land reserve and the participation o f indige­
nous leadership in key positions o f municipal government. I intended to fo­
cus on this area because it is where I have conducted anthropological and
historical research since 1976 and I have been in contact with the Federa­
tion over the past 12 years since I returned to live in Brazil. A remarkable
 Cultural Change CHAPTER 15 473

situation has changed from complete subordination and dependence on ex­

ternal agents o f contact (the missionaries and military, principally) 20 years
ago, to an effervescence o f local indigenous political associations (over 20),
coordinated by a region-wide indigenous confederation, Cultural traditions
long suppressed by the missionaries to the point where indigenous people
were "embarrassed” with their identity, have evolved in the form o f a bril­
liant leader Baniwa Gersen Luciano Santos, whose intellectual contribution
to the indigenous movement in Amazonia in general will surely have long­
term consequences.
The N orthwest Amazon has become a critical testing ground in Brazil
fo r important questions revolving around sustainable development and how
these models are to be translated into practice. Are such models viable al­
ternatives in the N orthw est Amazon context, o r is there still an enormous
distance between NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and academic
discourses about such models and the specific and immediate needs o f na­
tive peoples? W hat are the effects o f N G O involvement in local-level pol­
itics on Indian/white relations and the indigenous cultural revitalization
movement in general in this area? The immediate problem, which the in­
cident in Brasilia on Indian Day revealed in all its horror, is not the new
models, but the old problems and the old wounds which have never had
sufficient time to heal. Racism and impunity, the tw o principal villains, con­
stantly tear away at the heart o f victories. For those who have short mem­
ories and may have forgotten what these tw o villains have done in recent
years, it may be well w orth a quick review o f other incidents and their
outcomes.
Every year the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI, a branch o f the
Brazilian Catholic Church most directly involved in indigenous affairs) pub­
lishes a report on violence against the indigenous population in Brazil.The
statistics show that not only is there an increase in violence year by year,
but also in the kinds o f aggression committed against indigenous peoples:
murders o f leaders, massacres, epidemic diseases caused by neglect o f of­
ficial health agencies, illegal detentions, and police brutality. One can only
be shocked by the repeated acts o f violence against Indians throughout
the country. Yet how are these cases represented and reported in the na­
tional media and how are they dealt with by authorities? Are there pat­
terns in the violence that characterize Indian/white relations?
Violence Against
Indigenous People The most common pattern characterizing violence against indigenous peo­
in Brazil ple in Brazil is impunity. Violence against the indigenous people in Brazil is
horrible and lamentable, but it is ultimately beyond control. In case after case,
the same scenario is revealed in which violent acts against Indians are never
brought to justice. Conflicts and tensions, particularly over land and resource
rights, build up over the years, and coupled with the inertia o f FUNAI, ex­
plode in traumatic massacres or murders. Investigations are immediately ini­
tiated and the accused are apprehended; in this initial phase, international
pressure has played an important role.The second phase includes a long pe­
riod o f procrastination which takes the steam out o f the initial urgency o f
the case. Next, the accused stall for time to manipulate the proceedings while
474 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

the investigations drag on. When, or if the case is finally brought to the courts,
there is never sufficient evidence to incriminate the accused who are then
absolved o r given light sentences. The consequence o f this scenario is the
reproduction o f violence in interethnic relations.
For example, a well-known Guarani leader; Marpal Tupa-y, was murdered
In 1983 by the hired gunmen o f a local rancher that disputed the lands of
Marqal’s people. An entire decade passed before the perpetrator o f the crime
— known to everyone in the region— was brought to trial in a local court.
In the end, the rancher was absolved o f the crime for "lack o f evidence.” An­
other example is the 1988 massacre o f Ticuna Indians o f the upper Solimoes
that left 14 dead, 23 wounded, and ten "disappeared." The massacre was
perpetrated by 14 gunmen hired by a local lumber businessman in order to
“ settle” a land claim.This claim had dragged on for years because both fed­
eral authorities and local interests wished to suppress the movement. De­
spite the immediate national and international attention, today, nearly a
decade later; news o f the process has virtually disappeared from the press
and the process o f judicial procrastination has not gotten further than de­
termining the jurisdiction for the trial— if there is to be one.
There is yet another scenario in which, through the manipulation o f dis­
course about violence by the mass media, actual victims are transformed
into perpetrators o f violence against themselves or "blaming the victim,” in
which actual physical violence is compounded with symbolic violence against
the victims.The case o f theYanomami in Brazil and Venezuela is certainly the
most dramatic instance o f this process.
In this case, structural amnesia and impunity have not been worse be­
cause the eyes o f the world have focused on theYanomami situation for so
long.This has not immunized theYanomami from physical violence (the 1993
massacre o f 17 Yanomami o f the village o f Haxlmu), or from racist attacks
such as those which characterized the articles published by Janer Cristaldo,
an unknown journalist in the Folha de Sao Paulo, tw o years ago. Cristaldo,
in his initial article titled “ Behind the Scenes o f the Lano-Bluff," not only ques­
tioned the evidence o f the massacre, but also systematically diverted the fo­
cus o f the issue by claiming that numerous aggressions by indigenous peo­
ples against the white man had never been brought to justice. Basing his
characterization o f theYanomami on the "Fierce People” image popularized
by Napoleon Chagnon, Cristaldo argued that Yanomami culture is itself
“ marked by violence” and that the international outrage over the Haxlmu
massacre was nothing more than a conspiracy organized by anthropologists
and indigenous defense organizations. He characterized theYanomami as fod­
der for a supposed campaign to internationalize Amazonia "[ejither the
Armed Forces beware o f this conspiracy by anthropologists," he warned, "or
soon we will have the blue helmets [referring to UN intervention] in Ama­
zonia." In this discourse, Brazilians are the victims while the Yanomami and
their supporters are the aggressor

“Sensationalizing” Violence Numerous other cases could be analyzed to illustrate the kinds o f structural
violence that characterize Indian/white relations in Brazil today and the ways
mass media has represented interethnic violence. In many cases, It Is clear that
 Cultural Change CHAPTER 15 475

media discourse serves the interests o f local, regional and national power
structures. It is also clear that the explanation o f such violence is not suffi­
cient to account for the incidents o f brutality against individuals or whole
groups o f people. Indigenous peoples have shown that they are able to re­
sist, adapt, and change, often in extraordinarily creative ways, to demands im­
posed on them from outside. Brazilian society, however; has repeatedly
demonstrated that it is incapable o f overcoming tw o o f its deepest internal
conflicts: racism and impunity. Governments continue to demonstrate their in­
ability to implement viable political and economic models that could enable
ethnic and social minorities to co-exist and live in dignity in a plural society.
As always, on Indian Day in Brazil, a kind o f macabre ritual takes place.
The mass media talk about the “ inevitable extinction” o f indigenous peoples
as if they were a disappearing species. Ecologists and anthropologists reaf­
firm the vitality o f socio-diversity and the necessity o f indigenous peoples for
the future survival o f the planet. Brazilian consciousness, in relation to Indi­
ans and minorities in general, needs to change, not the Indians who have
shown that they are not merely “ survivors” or "remnants” o f a once great
past, but fully capable o f forging viable models fo r their future.
A t noon on Monday, April 2lst,Tiradentes Day (Tiradentes is a Brazil­
ian national hero), Brasilia declared three days o f mourning fo r the Pataxo
Indian who died. A requiem for the old models o f Brazilian society as well?

M ode rni z a ti on and the
“ U n d e r d e v e l o p e d ” W orld
In the examples we have just examined, we have
seen how modernization has affected indigenous
peoples in otherwise “modern” states. Elsewhere
in the so-called underdeveloped world, whole
countries are in the throes of modernization.
Throughout Africa, Asia, and South and Central
America we are witnessing the widespread re­
moval of economic activities— or at least their
control— from the family-community setting; the
altered structure of the family in the face of the
changing labor market; the increased reliance of
young children on parents alone for affection, in­
stead of on the extended family; the decline of gen­
eral parental authority; schools replacing the fam­
ily as the primary educational unit; the discovery
of a generation gap; and many other changes. The
difficulty is it all happens so fast traditional soci­
eties cannot adapt themselves to it gradually.
Changes that took generations to accomplish in
Europe and North America are attempted within
the span of a single generation in developing coun­
tries. In the process they frequently face the ero­
sion of a number of dearly held values they had
no intention of giving up.
Commonly, the burden of modernization
falls most heavily on women. For example, the
commercialization o f agriculture often involves
land reforms that overlook or ignore women’s
traditional land rights. While this reduces their
control of and access to resources, mechanization
of food production and processing drastically re­
duces their opportunities for employment. As a
consequence, they are confined more and more
to traditional domestic tasks, which, as commer­
cial production becomes peoples’ dominant con­
cern, are increasingly downgraded in value. To
top it all off, the domestic workload tends to in­
crease, because men are less available to help out,
while tasks such as fuel gathering and water col­
lection are made more difficult as common land
and resources become privately owned and as
woodlands are reserved for commercial exploita­
tion. In short, with modernization, women fre­
476 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving
quently find themselves in an increasingly mar­
ginal position. While their workload increases,
the value assigned the work they do declines, as
does their relative and absolute health, nutri­
tional, and educational status.
M o d e r n i z a t i o n : M ust I t A lways
B e Pa i n f u l ?
Although most anthropologists see the changes
affecting traditional non-Western peoples caught
up in the modern technological world as an or­
deal, the more widespread opinion has been that
it is a good process— that however disagreeable
the “medicine” may be, it is worth it for the peo­
ple to become just like “ us” (i.e., the people of
Europe and North America). This view of mod­
ernization, unfortunately, is based more on the
the Problem of Adjusting to C hanged Conditions
hopes and expectations of Western culture than
on reality. No doubt Western peoples would like
to see the non-Western world attain the high lev­
els of development seen in Europe and North
America, as many Japanese, South Koreans, Tai­
wanese, and some other Asians, in fact, have
done. Overlooked is the stark fact the standard
of living in the Western world is based on a rate
of consumption of nonrenewable resources
whereby far less than 50% of the world’s popu­
lation uses a good deal more than 50% of these
resources. By the early 1970s, for example, the
people of the United States— less than 5% (ap­
proximately) of the world’s population— were
consuming more than 50% of all the world’s
resources. Figures such as this suggest it is not
realistic to expect most peoples of the world to
achieve a standard of living comparable to that

of the Western world in the near future, if at all.
At the very least, the countries of the Western
world would have to cut drastically their con­
sumption of resources. So far, they have shown
no willingness to do this, and, if they did, their
living standards would have to change.
Yet more non-Western people than ever, quite
understandably, aspire to a standard of living
Western countries now enjoy, even though the gap
between the rich and poor people of the world is
widening rather than narrowing. This has led to
CHAPTER
Although cultures may be remarkably stable, cul­
ture change is characteristic of all cultures to a
greater or lesser degree. Change is often caused by
accidents, including the unexpected outcome of
existing events. Another cause is people’s deliber­
ate attempt to solve a perceived problem. Finally,
change may be forced upon one group in the
course of especially intense contact between two
societies. Adaptation and progress are conse­
quences rather than causes of change, although not
all changes are necessarily adaptive. Progress is
however a culture defines it.
The mechanisms involved in cultural change
are innovation, diffusion, cultural loss, and accul­
turation. The ultimate source of change is inno­
vation: a new practice, tool, or principle. Other
individuals adopt the innovation, and it becomes
socially shared. Primary innovations are chance
discoveries of new principles— for example, the
discovery that the firing of clay makes the mater­
ial permanently hard. Secondary innovations are
improvements made by applying known principles
— for example, modeling the clay to be fired by
known techniques into familiar objects. Primary
innovations may prompt rapid cultural change and
stimulate other inventions. An innovation’s chance
of acceptance depends partly, but not entirely, on
its perceived superiority to the method or object
it replaces. Its acceptance is also connected with
the prestige of the innovator and recipient groups.
Diffusion is the borrowing by one society of a cul­
tural element from another. Cultural loss involves
the abandonment of some trait or practice with or
Cultural Change CHAPTER IS 477
the development of what anthropologist Paul
Magnarella has called a new “culture of discon­
tent,” a level of aspirations far exceeding the
bounds of local opportunities. No longer satisfied
with traditional values, people all over the world
are fleeing to the cities to find a “better life,” all
too often to live out their days in poor, congested,
and diseased slums in an attempt to achieve what
is usually beyond their reach. Unfortunately, de­
spite all sorts of rosy predictions about a better
future, this basic reality remains.
SUMMARY
without replacement. Anthropologists have given
considerable attention to acculturation. It stems
from intensive firsthand contact of groups with
different cultures and produces major changes in
the cultural patterns of one or both groups. The
actual or threatened use of force is always a fac­
tor in acculturation.
Applied anthropology arose as anthropolo­
gists sought to provide colonial administrators
with a better understanding of native cultures so
as to avoid serious disruption of the cultures or as
anthropologists tried to help indigenous people
cope with outside threats to their interests. A se­
rious ethical issue for applied anthropologists is
how far they should go in trying to change the
ways of other peoples.
Reactions of indigenous peoples to changes
forced upon them vary considerably. Some have
retreated to inaccessible places in hopes of being
left alone, while some others have lapsed into ap­
athy. Some, such as the Trobriand Islanders, re­
assert their traditional culture’s values by modify­
ing foreign practices to conform to indigenous
values, a phenomenon known as syncretism. If a
culture’s values get widely out of step with reality,
revitalization movements may appear. Some revi­
talization movements try to speed up the accul­
turation process to get more of the benefits ex­
pected from the dominant culture. Others try to
reconstitute a gone but not forgotten way of life.
In some cases, a pariah group may try to intro­
duce a new social order based on its ideology. Rev­
olutionary movements try to reform the culture
478 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

from within. Rebellion differs from revolution, in
that the aim is merely to replace one set of of­
ficeholders with another.
Modernization refers to a global process of
cultural and socioeconomic change whereby de­
veloping societies seek to acquire characteristics
of industrially “advanced” societies. The process
consists of four subprocesses: technological de­
velopment, agricultural development, industrial­
ization, and urbanization. Other changes follow
in the areas of political organization, education,
religion, and social organization. Two other ac­
companiments of modernization are structural
differentiation and new forces of social integra­
tion. An example of a modernizing society is the
Skolt Lapps of Finland, whose traditional rein­
deer herding economy was all but destroyed when
snowmobiles were adopted to make herding eas­
ier. In Ecuador, the Shuar Indians modernized to
escape the destruction visited upon many other
Amazonian peoples. So far they have been suc­
cessful, and others are mobilizing their resources
in attempts to achieve similar success. Neverthe­
less, formidable forces are still arrayed against
such cultures, and, on a worldwide basis, it is
probably fair to say modernization has led to a
deterioration, rather than improvement, of peo­
ples’ quality of life.

P oints for C onsideration

1. Is tradition immutable? W hat is the role of tradition in conjunction with the concept of cultural
change discussed in this chapter? Bearing in mind the Finnish and Brazilian examples, how im­
portant are tradition and change to a culture’s health?
2. How might tradition and group identity encourage cultural change? Is this occurring, and, if so,
is it restricted to nonindustrialized societies?
3. W hat areas within industrialized societies might benefit from anthropological investigation? Why?
4. How complete is the assimilation process that occurs with immigration into pluralistic states such
as the United States, Great Britain, the former Soviet Union, and others? What has been the effect
upon the dominant cultures?

Suggested
Barnett, H. G. (1953). In n ovation : T he basis o f
cultural change. New York: McGraw-Hill.
This is the standard work on the subject,
widely quoted by virtually everyone who
writes about change.
Bodley, J. H. (1990). Victims o f progress (3rd ed.).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Few North Americans are aware of the dev­
astation unleashed upon indigenous peoples in
the name of “progress,” nor are they aware
this continues on an unprecedented scale to­
day or of the extent their own society’s insti­
tutions contribute to it. For most, this book
will be a real eye-opener.
Gordon, R. J. (1992). T he B ushm an m yth: T he
m akin g o f a N am ibian underclass. Boulder,
CO: Westview.
R eadings
This is a remarkably enlightening study of
how both Bushman culture and European
myths about the Bushman have changed over
the past 150 years. Not only does it demolish
myths ranging from the “Bushmen as Vermin”
stereotype of the colonial era to the childlike
innocence of the film T he G ods Must Be
Crazy, but also it shows how these people have
been part of the world system since before
their first “discovery” by Europeans. To see
how they have managed their interactions
with outsiders and how outsiders have ma­
nipulated images of the Bushmen for their own
economic, political, and social interests is en­
lightening.
Magnarella, P. J. (1974). Tradition an d change in
a Turkish tow n. New York: Wiley.

This book, one of the best anthropological
community studies of the Middle East, is also
an excellent introduction to the phenomenon
known as modernization. It has none of the
facile generalizations about modernization
one so often finds, and the author’s view of
the phenomenon, which is well documented,
is quite different from what was promoted in
the optimistic days of the 1950s.
Cultural C hange CHAPTER 15 479
Stannard, D. E. (1992). A m erican holocau st. O x­
ford: Oxford University Press.
Stannard deals with 500 years of cultural
change in the Americas related to the contact
of European and native cultures. In doing so,
he focuses on genocide, relates it to “the holo­
caust” of World War II, and demonstrates how
deeply rooted the phenomenon is in Western
culture and Christianity.
 Anthropology
and the Future
If h u m a n it y is t o have a future , it

W IL L H A V E T O SO LVE T H E P O L IT IC A L

A N D E C O N O M IC PR O B LEM S T H A T ARE

R E S P O N S IB LE F O R A W O R L D W ID E

F L O O D O F REFU G EES. W hat DRIVES

T H IS IS T H E IN C R E A S IN G E C O N O M IC

D IS P A R IT Y B E T W E E N T H E

IN D U S T R IA L IZ E D C O U N T R IE S O F

Europe a n d N orth A m e r ic a o n

TH E O N E H A N D A N D MOST OF THE

O T H E R C O U N T R IE S O F T H E W O R L D ,

A N D T H E P O L IT IC A L T U R M O IL C A U S E D

BY STATES C O N T R O L L E D BY PEOPLE

O F O N E N A T IO N A L IT Y W H O TRY T O

REPRESS A T T E M P T S BY PEO PLE O F

O T H E R N A T IO N A L IT IE S T O R E T A IN A N D

A SSER T T H E IR O W N ID E N T IT IE S A N D

T R A D IT IO N S
 ClunpHt PHVitW
1. What Can Anthropologists Tell Us of the Future?
Anthropologists cannot any more accurately predict future cultural form s than biologists can
predict future life forms o r geologists future landforms.They can, though, identify certain trends
we might otherwise be unaware o f and can anticipate some o f the consequences these might
have if they continue. They also can shed light on problems nonanthropoiogists already have
identified by showing how these relate to each o th e r as well as to cultural practices and a tti­
tudes experts in other fields are often unaware of.This ability to place problems in th e ir w ider
context is an anthropological specialty, and it is essential if these problems are ever to be solved.

2. What Are Some Present-Day Trends in Cultural Evolution?

One m ajor trend in present-day cultural evolution is tow ard w orldw ide adoption o f the prod­
ucts, technology, and practices o f the industrialized w orld. This apparent gravitation tow ard a
homogenized one-world culture is, however, opposed by another very strong trend o f ethnic
groups all over the w orld tow ard reasserting th e ir distinctive identities. A th ird trend we are
just becoming aware o f is that the problems cultural practices create seem to be outstripping
the capacity o f cultures to find solutions to such problems.

3. What Problems Will Have to Be Solved if Humanity Is to

Have a Future?
If humanity is to have a future, human cultures w ill have to find solutions to problems posed by
slowed population growth in some areas and rapid grow th in others, food and o th e r resource
shortages, pollution, and a growing culture o f discontent. One difficulty is that, up to now, peo­
ple tend to see these problems as if they were discrete and unrelated. Thus, attempts to deal
w ith one problem, such as food shortages, are often at cross-purposes w ith o th e r problems,
such as an inequitable global system fo r the distribution o f basic resources. Unless humanity has
a more realistic understanding o f the “global society” than presently exists, it cannot solve the
problems whose solutions are crucial fo r its future.

481
482 PART V Change and the
nthropology is often described by those
A who know little about it as a backward­
looking discipline. The most common
stereotype is that anthropologists devote all of
their attention to the interpretation of the past and
the description of present-day “tribal” remnants.
Yet as we saw in Chapter 1, as well as in the An­
thropology Applied boxes for Chapters 3 and 6,
not even archaeologists, the anthropologists most
prone to looking backward, limit their interests to
the past, nor are ethnologists uninterested in their
own cultures. Thus, throughout this book we con­
stantly have made comparisons between “us” and
“others.” Moreover, anthropologists have a spe­
cial concern with the future and the changes it may
bring. Like many members of Western industrial­
ized societies, they wonder what the “postindus­
trial” society now being predicted will hold. They
also wonder what changes the coming years will
bring to non-Western cultures. As we saw in the
preceding chapter, when non-Western peoples are
thrown into contact with Western industrialized
peoples, their culture rapidly changes, often for the
worse, becoming both less supportive and less
adaptive. Since Western people show no inclina­
tion to leave non-Western people alone, we may
ask, How can these threatened cultures adapt to
the future?
‘■’c‘ ;#v. .fii. ,& \ ->■ ' L
THE CULTURAL FUTURE OF
HUMANITY
Whatever the biological future of the human
species, culture remains the mechanism by which
people solve their problems of existence. Yet some
anthropologists have noted with concern— and in­
terpret as a trend— that the problems of human
existence seem to be outstripping any culture’s
ability to find solutions. The main problem seems
to be that while solving existing problems, cultures
inevitably pose new ones. To paraphrase anthro­
pologist Jules Henry, although cultures are “for”
people, they are also “against” them .1 As we shall
'Henry, J. (1965). Culture against m an (p. 12). New York:
Vintage Books.
Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
see, this dilemma is now posing serious new prob­
lems for human beings. W hat can anthropologists
tell us about future cultures?
Anthropologists— like geologists and evolu­
tionary biologists— are historical scientists; as
such, they can identify and understand the
processes that have shaped the past and will shape
the future. They cannot, however, tell us precisely
what these processes will produce in terms of fu­
ture cultures, any more than biologists can predict
future life forms or geologists future landforms.
The cultural future of humanity, though, certainly
will be affected in important ways by decisions we
humans will be making in the immediate future.
This being so, if those decisions are to be made
intelligently, it behooves us to have a clear under­
standing of the world today. Here anthropologists
have something vital to offer.
To comprehend anthropology’s role in under­
standing and solving the future’s problems, we
must look at certain flaws frequently seen in the
enormous body of future-oriented literature that
has appeared over the past few decades, not to
mention the efforts to plan for the future that have
become commonplace at regional, national, and
international levels. For one, rarely do futurist
writers or planners look more than about 50 years
ahead, and the trends they project, more often
than not, are those of recent history. This predis­
.’A . •.*„ .«
poses people to think a trend that seems fine to­
day will always be so and that it may be projected
indefinitely into the future. The danger inherent in
this is neatly captured in anthropologist George
Cowgill’s comment: “It is worth recalling the story
of the person who leaped from a very tall build­
ing and on being asked how things were going as
he passed the 20th floor replied ‘Fine, so far.’”2
Another flaw is a tendency to treat subjects in
isolation, without reference to pertinent trends
outside an expert’s field of competence. For ex­
ample, agricultural planning is often predicated
upon the assumption a certain amount of water is
available for irrigation, whether or not urban plan­
ners or others have designs for that same water.
Thus— as in the southwestern United States, where
2Cowgill, G. L. (1980). Letter, Science, 210, 1305.

more of the Colorado River’s water has been al­
located than actually exists— people may be
counting on resources in the future that will not,
in fact, be available. One would suppose this
would be a cause for concern, but as two well-
known futurists put it, “If you find inconsistencies
the model is better off without them.”3 These same
two authorities, when editing a volume aimed at
refuting the somewhat pessimistic projections of
G lobal 2 0 0 0 (the first U.S. government attempt at
a coordinated analysis of global resources), delib­
erately avoided discussing population growth and
its implications, because they knew that to do so
would lead their contributing authors to disagree
with one another.4 This brings us to yet another
common flaw: A tendency to project the hopes and
expectations of one’s own culture into the future
interferes with the scientific objectivity necessary
to address the problem.
Against this background, anthropology’s con­
tribution to our view of the future is clear. With
their holistic perspective, anthropologists are spe­
cialists at seeing how parts fit together into a larger
whole. With their evolutionary perspective, they
can see short-term trends in longer term perspec­
tive. With more than 100 years of cross-cultural
research behind them, anthropologists can recog­
nize culture-bound assertions when they encounter
them; and, finally, they are familiar with alterna­
tive ways to deal with a wide variety of problems.
O n e - W orld C ulture
A popular belief since the end of World War II has
been that the future world will see the develop­
ment of a single homogeneous world culture. The
idea such a “one-world culture” is emerging is
based largely on the observation that develop­
ments in communication, transportation, and
trade so closely link the peoples of the world that
they are increasingly wearing the same kinds of
clothes, eating the same kinds of food, reading the
same kinds of newspapers, watching the same
3Holden, C. (1983). Simon and Kahn versus G lobal 2000.
Science, 221, 342.
4Ibid., 343.
Anthropology and the Future CHAPTER 16 483
kinds of television programs, communicating di­
rectly with one another via the Internet, and so
on. The continuation of such trends, so this think­
ing goes, should lead North Americans who are
traveling in the year 2100 to Tierra del Fuego,
China, or New Guinea to find the inhabitants liv­
ing in a manner identical or similar to theirs. But
is this so?
Certainly striking is the extent such items as
Western-style clothing, transistor radios, Coca-
Cola, and M cDonald’s hamburgers have spread to
virtually all parts of the world, and many coun­
tries— Japan, for example— have moved a long
way toward becoming “Westernized.” Moreover,
looking back over the past 5,000 years of human
history, one will see a clear-cut trend for political
units to become larger and more all-encompassing
while becoming fewer in number. A logical out­
come of this trend’s continuation into the future
would be the reduction of all autonomous politi­
cal units to one encompassing the entire world. In
fact, by extrapolating this past trend into the fu­
ture, some anthropologists even have predicted the
world will become politically integrated, perhaps
by the 23rd century but no later than 4 8 5 0 .5
One problem with such a prediction is that it
ignores the one thing all large states, past and pres­
ent, irrespective of other differences between them,
share in common: a tendency to come apart. Not
only have the great empires of the past, without
exception, broken up into numbers of smaller in­
dependent states, but also countries in virtually all
parts of the world today are showing a tendency
to fragment. The most dramatic illustrations of
this in recent years have been the breakup of the
Soviet Union into several smaller independent
states and the attempt o f several Yugoslavian re­
publics to regain their independence. It also can
be seen in separatist movements such as that of
French-speaking peoples in Canada; Basque and
Catalonian nationalism in Europe; Scottish, Irish,
and Welsh nationalism in Britain; Tibetan nation­
alism in China; Kurdish nationalism in Turkey,
sEmber, C. R., & Ember, M. (1985). Cultural anthropology
(4th ed., p. 230). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
484 PART V C hange and the F uture : S olving the Problem of Adjusting to C hanged C onditions
Iran, and Iraq; Sikh separatism in India; Tamil sep­
aratism in Sri Lanka; Igbo separatism in Nigeria;
Eritrean and Tigrean secession movements in
Ethiopia; Namibian nationalism; and so on— this
list is far from exhaustive. Nor is the United States
immune, as can be seen from Puerto Rican nation­
alist movements and Native American attempts
to secure greater political self-determination and
autonomy.
These examples all involve peoples who con­
sider themselves members of distinct nations by
virtue of their birth and cultural and territorial
heritage, over whom peoples of some other ethnic
background have tried to assert control. An esti­
mated 5,0 0 0 such national groups exist in the
world today, as opposed to a mere 181 recognized
states (up from fewer than 50 in the 1940s).6 Al­
though some of these national groups are quite
6Cultural Survival Quarterly, IS (4), 38. (1991).
small in population and area— 100 or so people
living on a few acres— some are quite large. The
Karen people of Burma (Figure 16.1), for exam­
ple, number some 4.5 to 5 million, making them
larger than 4 8 % of the United Nations member
states.
Reactions of these peoples to attempts at an­
nexation and absorption by imposed state regimes
other peoples control range all the way from
Bangladesh’s successful fight for independence
from Pakistan (or the Igbos’ unsuccessful fight for
independence from Nigeria) to the nonviolence of
Scottish and Welsh nationalism. Many struggles
for independence have been going on for years,
such as the Karen resistance to the Burmese inva­
sion of their territory in 1948; the takeover of Kur­
distan by Iraq, Iran, and Turkey in 1925; and the
even earlier Russian takeover of Chechnya. Even
in relatively nonviolent cases, the stresses and
strains are obviously there. Similar stresses and
strains even may develop in the absence of ethnic
differences when regional interests within a large
 Anthropology and the F uture CHAPTER 16 485

stack emissions that cause acid rain, which is de­

stroying resources and endangering the health of
people in other states (not to mention other coun­
tries, Canada in particular).
Expansionist attempts by existing states to an­
nex all or parts of other states also seem to be run­
ning into difficulty, as in the Iraqi attempt to take
over Kuwait. It is just possible we are reaching a
point where the old tendency for political units to
increase in size while decreasing in number is be­
ing canceled out by the tendency for such units to
fragment into a greater number of smaller ones.

T he Rise of the M ultinational

Corporations
The world’s resistance to political integration
seems to be offset, at least partially, by the rise of
multinational corporations. Because these cut
across the boundaries between states, they are a
force for global unity despite the political differ­
ences that divide people. Situations such as this
are well known to anthropologists, as illustrated
by this description of Zuni Indian integrative
mechanisms:

Four or five different planes of systemization cross­

cut each other and thus preserve for the whole so­
ciety an integrity that would speedily be lost if the
planes merged and thereby inclined to encourage

Ficvhe I tt.I
Ethnic nationalities of Burma.

country increasingly compete. Again, hints of this

may be seen in the United States: for example, in
arguments over access to Colorado River water, in
attempts by oil- and gas-producing states to get the
most out of their resources at the expense of other
states (“Let the Bastards Freeze in the D ark” pro­ The 1 9 9 7 confrontation between Republic of Texas
claimed bumper stickers in oil- and gas-producing separatists and law enforcement officials is sympto­
states during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s), matic of the stresses and strains that exist in United
and in the refusal by some states to curb smoke- States society.
486 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the
segregation and fission. The clans, the fraternities,
the priesthoods, the kivas, in a measure the gam­
ing parties, are all dividing agencies. If they coin­
cided, the rifts in the social structure would be deep;
by countering each other they cause segmentations
which produce an almost marvelous complexity,
but can never break apart the national entity.7
Multinational corporations are not new in the
world (the Dutch East India Company is a good
example from the 17th century), but they were not
common until the 1950s. Since then they have be­
come a major force in the world. These modern-
day giants are actually clusters of corporations of
diverse nationality joined together by ties of com­
mon ownership and responsive to a common man­
agement strategy. Usually tightly controlled by a
head office in one country, these multinationals or­
ganize and integrate production across the bound­
aries of different countries for interests formulated
in corporate boardrooms, irrespective of whether
or not these are consistent with the interests of
people in the countries where they operate. In a
sense they are products of the technological revo­
lution, for without sophisticated data-processing
equipment, the multinationals could not keep ad­
equate track of their worldwide operations.
Though typically thought of as responding
impersonally to outside market forces, large cor­
porations are in fact controlled by powerful eco­
nomic elites who benefit directly from their oper­
ations. For example, in 1994, just 10 individuals
helped direct 3 7 North American companies
whose combined assets of $2 trillion rival those of
many governments, and this represented nearly
10% of all corporate assets in the United States
“for profit” businesses. Yet, the world’s largest in­
dividual stockholders and most powerful direc­
tors, unlike political leaders, are known to few
people. For that matter, most people cannot even
name the five largest multinational corporations.8
7Kroeber, A. L. (1970). Quoted in Dozier, E., The Pueblo In­
dians o f N orth Am erica (p. 19). New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston.
8Bodley, J. H. (1997). Comment. Current Anthropology,
38, 725.
Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
So great is the power of multinationals that
they increasingly thwart the wishes of govern­
ments. Because the information these corporations
process is kept from flowing in a meaningful way
to the population at large, or even to lower levels
within the organization, it is difficult for govern­
ments to get the information they need for in­
formed policy decisions. Consider how it took
decades for the United States Congress to extract
the information it needed from tobacco companies
to decide what to do about tobacco legislation.
Nor is this an isolated case. Beyond this, though,
the multinationals have shown they can overrule
foreign-policy decisions, as when they got around
a U.S. embargo on pipeline equipment for the So­
viet Union in the 1980s. Although some might see
this as a hopeful augury for the transcendence of
national vices and rivalries, it raises the unsettling
issue as to whether or not the global order should
be determined by corporations interested only in
financial profits.
If the ability of multinational corporations to
ignore the wishes of sovereign governments is cause
for concern, so is their ability to act in concert with
such governments. Here, in fact, is where their worst
excesses have occurred. In Brazil, for example,
where the situation is hardly unique but is especially
well documented, a partnership emerged, after the
military coup of 1964, between a government anx­
ious to proceed as rapidly as possible with devel­
opment of the Amazon basin; a number of multi­
national corporations, such as ALCOA, Borden,
Union Carbide, Swift-Armour, and Volkswagen, to
mention only a very few; and several international
lending institutions, such as the Export-Import
Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and
the World Bank.9 To realize their goals, these allies
introduced inappropriate technology and ecologi­
cally unsound practices into the region, converting
vast tropical areas into semidesert.
Far more shocking, however, has been the
practice of uprooting whole human societies be­
cause they are seen as obstacles to economic
growth. Literally overnight, people are deprived of
9Davis, S. H. (1982). Victims o f the miracle. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 A nthropology and the F uture CHAPTER 16 487

Brazil’s Grand Carajas iron ore mine is an example of the kind of project states favor in their drive to
develop. Not only does this introduce ecologically unsound technologies, but it also commonly has dev­
astating effects on the indigenous people whose land is seized.

the means to provide for their own needs and
forcibly removed to places where they do not
choose to live. Little distinction is made here be­
tween Indians and Brazilian smallholders who
were brought into the region in the first place by
a government anxious to alleviate acute land
shortages in the northeast. Bad as this is for these
Brazilian smallholders, the amount of disease,
death, and human suffering unleashed upon the
Indians can only be described as massive. In the
process, whole peoples have been (and are still be­
ing) destroyed with a thoroughness not achieved
even by Stalin during his “Great Terror” in the So­
viet Union of the 1930s or the Nazis in World War
II. Were it not so well documented, it would be
beyond belief. This is “culture against people”
with a vengeance.
The power of multinational corporations cre­
ates problems on the domestic as well as the in­
ternational scene. Anthropologist Jules Henry, in
his classic study of life in the United States, ob­
served that working for any large corporation—
multinational or not— tends to generate “hostility,
instability, and fear of being obsolete and unpro­
tected. For most people their job was what they
had to do rather than what they wanted to do.
. . . Taking a job, therefore, meant giving up part
of their selves.”10
The power of corporations extends far beyond
governments and workers. Their control of televi­
sion and other media, not to mention the adver­
tising industry, gives them enormous power over
the lives of millions of “ordinary” people in ways
they little suspect. The following is a case in point.
10Henry, J. (1965). Culture against man (p. 127.). New
York: Vintage Books.
488 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

The question o f choice is central to the story o f how medicine and busi­
ness generate controlling processes in the shaping o f women's bodies. Michel
Foucault [in Madness and Civilization] demonstrates how changes in the con­
cept o f madness led to changes in diagnosis and treatment o f the insane and
o f social attitudes toward them. He describes how changing perceptions of
Standard­ madness in parts o f Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of
the 19th century led to the separation o f “ mad” persons from the rest o f
izing the society, their classification as deviants, and finally their subjection to social con­
trol. He focuses on the cultural controls that led to the social controls; ideas
Body: The about madness led to asylums for the mad. A similar incremental process Is
Question of central to discussions o f the commodification o f a woman’s body.
Images o f the body appear natural within their specific cultural milieus.
Choice11 For example, feminist researchers have analyzed the practice o f breast im­
plantation in the United States from the vantage point o f the cultural milieu,
and in the Sudan, female circumcision and infibulation [the most extreme
form o f female genital mutilation] serve to accentuate a feminine appear­
ance. Thus, Sudanese and other African women, N orth American women,
and others experience body mutilation as part o f engendering rites. How­
ever; many writers differentiate infibulation from breast implantation by ar­
guing that N orth American women choose to have breast implants whereas
in Africa women are presumably subject to Indoctrination (and besides, young
girls are to o young to choose). One o f the most heated debates arising from
the public health concern over breast implants Is whether the recipients are
freely situated— that Is, whether their decision is voluntary or whether con­
trol is disguised as free will.
An Informed response to the free-choice argument requires knowing
how the beauty-industrial complex works. It requires sensitive fieldwork In
multiple sites and an understanding o f emergent idea systems in incremen­
tal change. Linda Coco builds upon the insights revealed by Howard Zinn's
The Twentieth Century: A People’s History. Zinn cites a 1930s magazine article
which begins with the statement, “The average American woman has sixteen
square feet o f skin.” This is followed by an Itemized list o f the annual beauty
needs o f every woman. Sixty years later the beauty-industrial complex is a
multibilllon-dollar Industry that segments the female body and manufactures
commodities o f and fo r the body.
As Coco shows, some women get caught in the official beauty ideol­
ogy, and in the case o f silicone-gel breast implants some hundreds o f thou­
sands o f women have been ensnared. But who gets caught and when is im­
portant to an understanding o f the ecology o f power The average age o f a
woman having breast implantation is 36 years, and she has an average of
tw o children. She is the beauty industry's insecure consumer recast as a pa­
tient. She is somehow deviant; her social illness is deformity or hypertrophy
(small breasts). Coco quotes a past president o f the American Society of

“ Adapted from Nader, L. (1997). Controlling processes: Tracing the dynamics of

power. Current Anthropology, 38, 7 1 5 -7 1 7 .
 Anthropology and the Future CHAPTER 16 489

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (ASPRS): “There is substantial and en­

larging medical knowledge to the effect that these deformities [small breasts]
are really a disease which result in the patient's feelings o f inadequacies, lack
o f self-confidence, distortion o f body image, and a total lack o f well-being
due to a lack o f self-perceived femininity. . . . Enlargement. . . is therefore
. . . necessary to ensure the quality o f life for the [female] patient.” In other
words, cosmetic surgery is necessary to the patient's psychological health.
The plastic surgeon regards the construction o f the official breast as art,
the aim being to reform the female body according to the ideals o f classic
Western art. One surgeon pioneering procedures for correcting deformity
took as his ideal female figure that o f ancient Greek statues, which he care­
fully measured, noticing the exact size and shape o f the breasts, their verti­
cal location between the third and seventh ribs, the horizontal between the
line o f the sternal [“ breastbone”] border and the anterior axillary line, and
so forth. In Coco's analysis the exercise o f the plastic surgeon’s techno-art
re-creates a particular static, official breast shape and applies this creation
ostensibly to relieve women’s mental suffering.The surgeon becomes a psy­
chological healer as well as an artist.
Along with art and psychology, there is, o f course, the business o f or­
ganized plastic surgery, which responds to the demands and opportunities
o f market economics. By the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a glut o f
plastic surgeons.The ASPRS began to operate like a commercial enterprise
instead o f a medical society, saturating the media with ads and even provid­
ing low-cost financing. The discourse became a sales pitch. Women “ seek”
breast implants to keep their husbands or their jobs, to attract men, o r to
become socially acceptable. Coco calls this “ patriarchal capitalism” and ques­
tions whether this is free choice or "mind colonization.”
Understanding “ choice" led Coco to an examination o f the power both
in the doctor-patient relationship and in the control o f information. By vari­
ous means certain women— the insecure consumers— are led to trust and
believe in modern medical technology. W hat is most important in being
"caught” is their internalization o f the social message [cultural control]. Coco's
conclusion that N orth American women are subtly indoctrinated to recog­
nize and desire a certain kind o f beauty presents an interesting possibility.
Women “were told by the media, plastic surgeons, women’s magazines, other
women, and the business world that they could enhance their lives by en­
hancing their bust lines. . . .The social imperative for appearance was per­
sonalized, psychologized, and normalized." Social surveys indicate that, to the
extent that women internalize the social imperative, they feel they are mak­
ing the decision on their own.
N ot surprisingly, women whose surgery resulted in medical complica­
tions often came to recognize the external processes o f coercive persuasion
that had led them to seek implants. In some ways, they resembled former
cult members who had been deprogrammed: their disillusionment caused
them to question the system that had encouraged them to make the deci­
sion in the first place.The result was a gradual building o f protest against the
industry, expressed in networks, newsletters, support groups, workshops, and
seminars. As have some form er cult members, women have brought suit,
testified before lawmakers, and challenged in other ways some o f the largest
490 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

corporations and insurance companies in the land. The choice o f implants,

they learn, is part o f a matrix o f controlling processes in which women are
subjects. Given the right circumstances it could happen to anyone. In the Su­
dan, the young girl is told that circumcision and infibulation are done for her
and not to her In the United States the mutilation o f natural breasts is also
done for the re-creation o f femininity. Although power is exercised differ­
ently in these tw o cases, Coco notes the similarity: “The operation on the
female breast in [N o rth ] America holds much o f the same social symbolism
and expression o f cultural mandate as does infibulation in Sudan. Thus, the
question o f why women choose breast augmentation becomes moot.”
Breast implantation is now spreading elsewhere, most notably to China.
W ill it become a functional equivalent to foot-binding in China as part of
the competition between patriarchies East and West? Whatever the answer
many social thinkers agree that people are always more vulnerable to in­
tense persuasion during periods o f historical dislocation— a break with struc­
tures and symbols familiar to the life cycle— in which the media can bring
us images and ideas originating in past, contemporary, or even imaginary
worlds.
Feminist researchers have sought to crack controlling paradigms such as
those that define women’s capacities and those that construct a standard­
ized body shape and determine what is beautiful in women. Our Bodies, Our­
selves (Boston W om en’s Health Book Collective) introduced women to their
own bodies as a site fo r the exercise o f power Works such as Lakoff and
Sherr's Face Value: The Politics of Beauty and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth:
How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women are attempts to free the mind
from the beauty constructions o f cosmetic industries and fashion magazines.
Others have written about how the one model o f Western beauty is af­
fecting members o f ethnic groups who aspire to look the way advertise­
ments say they should. Choice is an illusion, since the restructuring o f taste
is inextricably linked to shifts in the organization o f consumption.

Consumers have other problems with big busi­
ness. After a 10-year intensive study of relations
between producers and consumers of products and
services, anthropologist Laura Nader found re­
peated and documented offenses by business that
cannot be handled by present complaint mecha­
nisms, either in or out of court. Viable alternatives
to a failed judicial system do not seem to be emerg­
ing. Face-to-faceless relations between producers
and consumers, among whom there is a grossly
unequal distribution of power, exact a high cost:
a terrible sense of apathy, even a loss of faith in
the system itself.
These problems are exacerbated and new ones
arise in the “sprawling, anonymous, networks” of
the multinational corporations.12 Not only are cor­
porate decisions made in boardrooms far removed
from where other corporate operations take place,
but also, given corporations’ dependence on ever
more sophisticated data-processing systems to keep
their operations running smoothly, many decisions
can be and are being made by computers pro­
grammed for given contingencies and strategies. As
anthropologist Alvin Wolfe has observed, “A social
actor has been created which is much less under the
control of men than we expected it to be, much less
12Pitt, D. (1977). Comment. Current Anthropology, 18, 628.
 Anthropology and the F uture CHAPTER 16 491

so than many even think it to be.” 13 In the face of

such seemingly mindless systems for making deci­
sions in the corporate interest, employees become
ever more fearful that if they ask too much of the
corporation, it simply may shift its operations to
another part of the globe where it can find cheaper,
more submissive personnel, as has happened with
some frequency to labor forces. Indeed, whole com­
munities become fearful that if they do not acqui­
esce to corporate interests, local operations may be
closed down.
In their never-ending search for cheap labor,
multinational corporations more than ever have
come to favor women for low-skilled assembly
jobs. In so-called “underdeveloped” countries, as
subsistence farming gives way to mechanical agri­
culture for production of crops for export, women
are less able to contribute to their families’ survival.
Together with devaluation of the worth of domes­
tic work, this places pressure on women to seek
jobs outside the household to contribute to its sup­
port. Since most women in these countries do not
have the time or resources to get an education or

The power of corporations over individuals is illus­

trated by their ability to get consumers to pay, by u Wolfe, A. W. (1977). The supranational organization of
purchasing goods such as this T-shirt, to advertise production: An evolutionary perspective. Current A nthropol­
corporate products. ogy, IS, 619.

In so-called “ underdeveloped” countries, women have become a

source of cheap labor for large corporations, as subsistence farming
has given way to mechanized agriculture. Unable to contribute to
their families’ well-being in any other way, they have no choice but
to take on menial jobs for low wages.
492 PART V Change and the Future: Solving the Problem
to develop special job skills, only low-paying jobs
are open to them. Corporate officials, for their part,
assume female workers are strictly temporary, and
high turnover means wages can be kept low. Un­
married women are especially favored for employ­
ment, for it is assumed they are free from family
responsibilities until they marry, whereupon they
will leave the labor force. Thus, the increasing im­
portance of the multinationals in developing coun­
tries is contributing to the emergence of a promi­
nent gender-segregated division of labor. On top of
their housework, women hold low-paying jobs that
require little skill; altogether, they may work as
many as 15 hours a day. Higher paying jobs, or at
least those that require special skills, are generally
held by men, whose workday may be shorter since
they do not have additional domestic tasks to per­
form. Men who lack special skills— and many do
— are often doomed to lives of unemployment.
In sum, multinational corporations have be­
come a major force in the world today, drawing
people more firmly than ever into a truly global
system of relationships. Although this brings with
it potential benefits, it is also clear it poses serious
new problems that now must be addressed.
O n e - W orld C u l t u r e :
A G ood I dea or N ot ?
In the abstract, the idea of a single culture for all
the world’s people has had a degree of popular ap­
peal, in that it might offer fewer chances for the
kinds of misunderstandings to develop that, so of­
ten in the past few hundred years, have led to wars.
Many anthropologists question this, though, in the
face of evidence that traditional ways of thinking
about oneself and the rest of the world may per­
sist, even with massive changes in other aspects of
culture. Indeed, one might argue that the chances
for misunderstandings actually increase; an exam­
ple of this is the Original Study in Chapter 5.
Some have argued that perhaps a generalized
world culture would be desirable in the future, be­
cause certain cultures of today may be too spe­
cialized to survive in a changed environment. Ex­
amples of this situation are sometimes said to
abound in modern anthropology. When a tradi­
tional culture that is highly adapted to a specific
environment— such as that of the Indians of
of Adjusting to Changed C onditions
Brazil, who are well adapted to life in a tropical
rain forest— meets a European-derived culture and
the social environment changes suddenly and dras­
tically, the traditional culture often collapses. The
reason for this, it is argued, is that its traditions
and political and social organizations are not at
all adapted to “modern” ways. Here we have, once
again, the ethnocentric notion (discussed in Chap­
ter 15) that “old” cultures are destined to give way
to the new. Since this is regarded as inevitable, ac­
tions are taken that by their very nature virtually
guarantee the traditional cultures will not survive;
it is a classic case of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
A problem with this argument is that, far from
being unable to adapt, traditional societies in places
such as Brazil’s Amazon forest usually have not
been given a chance to work out their own adap­
tations. It is not any laws of nature that cause the
collapse of traditional cultures but, rather, the po­
litical choices of the powerful, their willingness to
overpower traditional peoples, and their unwill­
ingness to live and let live. That Amazonian Indi­
ans can adapt to the modern world if left alone to
do so, without losing their distinctive ethnic and
cultural identity, is demonstrated by the Shuar case,
noted in the preceding chapter. In Brazil, however,
the pressures to develop the Amazon are so great
that whole groups of people are swept aside so that
multinational corporations and agribusiness can
pursue their particular interests. People do not have
much chance to work out their own adaptations
to the modern world if they are transported en
masse from their homelands and deprived literally
overnight of their means of survival to devote more
acreage to the raising of beef cattle. Few Brazilians
get to eat any of this meat, for the bulk of it is
shipped to Europe; nor do many of the profits stay
in Brazil, since the major ranches are owned and
operated by corporations based elsewhere. The
process continues apace, nonetheless.
An important issue is at stake in such situa­
tions, for what has happened is that some of the
world’s people with the power to do so have de­
fined others— indeed, whole societies— as obso­
lete. This is surely a dangerous precedent, which,
if allowed to stand, means any of the world’s peo­
ple may at some time in the future be declared ob­
solete by others who think they have, and might
really have, the power to back it up.
 Anthropology
Ethnic Resurgence
Despite the worldwide adoption of such items as
Coca-Cola and the “Big M ac” and despite pres­
sure for traditional cultures to disappear, it is clear
cultural differences are still very much with us in
the world today. In fact, a tendency for peoples
around the world to resist modernization, and in
many cases retreat from it, is strengthening. M an­
ifestations of this we have already alluded to are
the worldwide separatist movements, the success
so far of the Shuar in retaining their own ethnic
and cultural identity, and the increasing political
activism of Brazilian Indians— indeed, of native
peoples throughout the world.
During the 1970s the world’s indigenous peo­
ples began to organize self-determination move-
Increasingly, indigenous peoples around the world
are organizing to defend their own interests. Here,
Kaiapo Indians in Brazil protest against planned
hydroelectric dams.
C u ltu ral pluralism . Social and political interaction of people with different ways of living and thinking within the same
society.
and the Future CH APTER 16 493
ments, culminating in the formation of the World
Council of Indigenous Peoples in 1975. This now
has official status as a nongovernmental organi­
zation of the United Nations, which allows it to
present the cases of indigenous people before the
world community. Leaders of this movement see
their own societies as community based, egalitar­
ian, and close to nature and are intent upon main­
taining them that way. Further credibility to their
cause came from the dedication of 1993 as the
Year of Indigenous Peoples.
North Americans often have difficulty adjust­
ing to the fact not everyone wants to be just like
they are. As children, people in the United States
are taught to believe “the American way of life”
is one all other peoples aspire to (and how arro­
gant to appropriate the label “Americans” strictly
to themselves!), but it isn’t only people such as the
Shuar who resist becoming “just like us.” In the
world today whole countries, having striven to em­
ulate Western ways, have become disenchanted
with these ways and suddenly backed off. The
most striking recent case of such a retreat from
modernity is Iran. With the overthrow of the shah,
a policy of deliberate modernization was aban­
doned in favor of a radical attempt to return to
an Islamic republic out of a past “golden age”
(mythical though the latter is). A somewhat simi­
lar, though less radical, retreat from modernity
seems to be under way in the United States, which,
in the 1980s and again in 1994, elected govern­
ments dedicated to a return to certain “traditional
values” from its past. To note just one other par­
allel between the two situations, in the United
States the analogue to a fundamentalist religious
leader controlling the Iranian government is the
strong sympathy Republican Party members show
toward fundamentalist religious views.14
l4Marsella, J. (1982). Pulling it together: Discussion and
comments. In S. Pastner & W. A. Haviland (Eds.), Con­
fronting the Creationists (pp. 79-80). N ortheastern Anthro­
pological Association, O ccasional Proceedings, No. 1.
494 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving
Sometimes, resistance to modernization takes the form of a fundamentalist reac­
tion, as it did in Iran and as is happening today in Algeria. This photo is of an
FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) rally in Algiers.
C ultural P l u r a l i s m
Since a homogeneous world culture is not neces­
sarily the wave of the future, what is? Some see
cultural pluralism, in which more than one culture
exists in a given society, as the future condition of
humanity. Cultural pluralism is the social and po­
litical interaction of people with different ways of
living and thinking within the same society or
multinational state. Ideally, it implies a rejection
of bigotry, bias, and racism in favor of respect for
the cultural traditions of other peoples. In reality,
it has rarely worked out that way.
Elements of pluralism are found in the United
States, despite its melting-pot ideology. For exam­
ple, in New York City neighborhoods of Puerto
Ricans, with their distinctive cultural traditions
and values, exist side by side with other New York­
ers. Besides living in their own barrio, the Puerto
Ricans have their own language, music, religion,
and food. This particular pluralism, however, may
be temporary, a stage in the process of integration
into what is sometimes referred to as “standard
American culture.” Thus, the Puerto Ricans, in
four or five generations, like many Italians, Irish,
and eastern European Jews before them, also may
become (North) Americanized to the point where
the Problem of Adjusting to C hanged Conditions
their lifestyle will be indistinguishable from others
around them. Nevertheless, some Puerto Ricans,
African and Asian Americans, American Indians,
Hispanics, and others strongly have resisted aban­
doning their distinctive cultural identities.
Whether this marks the beginning of a trend away
from the melting-pot philosophy and toward real
pluralism, however, remains to be seen.
Some familiar examples of cultural pluralism
may be seen in Switzerland, where Italian, Ger­
man, and French cultures exist side by side; in Bel­
gium, where the French Walloons and the Flem­
ish have somewhat different cultural heritages; and
in Canada, where French- and English-speaking
Canadians live in a pluralistic society (but where
most native people are not accorded equal recogni­
tion). In none of these cases, though, are the cul­
tural differences (save those of native people in
Canada) of the magnitude seen in many a non-West-
ern pluralistic society. As an example of one such
society— and its attendant problems— we will look
at the Central American country of Guatemala.
Guatemalan Cultural Pluralism
Guatemala, like many other pluralistic countries,
came into being through conquest. In Guatemala’s

case the conquest was about as violent and brutal
as it could be, given the technology of the time
(the 1500s), as a rough gang of Spanish adven­
turers led by a man known even then for his cru­
elty and inhuman treatment of foes defeated a peo­
ple whose civilization was far older than Spain’s.
The conquerors’ aim was quite simply to extract
as much wealth as they could, primarily for them­
selves but also for Spain, by seizing the riches of
those they conquered and by putting the native
population to work extracting the gold and silver
they hoped to find. Although the treasures to be
had did not live up to the conquerors’ expecta­
tions (no rich deposits of ore were found), their
main interest in their new possession continued to
be whatever they could extract from it that could
be turned into wealth for themselves. For the
nearly 500 years since, their L ad in o descendants
have continued to be motivated by the same in­
terests, even after independence from Spain.
Following its conquest, Guatemala never ex­
perienced substantial immigration from Spain or
from anywhere else in Europe. The conquerors
and their descendants, for their part, wished to re­
strict the spoils of victory as much as possible to
themselves, even though those spoils did not live
up to advance expectations. In fact, the country
had little to attract outsiders. Thus, Indians have
always outnumbered non-Indians in Guatemala
and continue to do so today. Nonetheless, Indians
never had been allowed to hold any important po­
litical power; the apparatus of state, with its in­
struments of force (the police and army) remained
firmly in the hands of the L a d in o (non-Indian) mi­
nority. This enabled them to continue exacting
tribute and forced labor from Indian communities.
In the 19th century Guatemala’s L ad in o pop­
ulation saw the export of coffee and cotton as a
new source of wealth for themselves. For this, they
took over huge amounts of Indian lands to create
their plantations while depriving Indians of suffi­
cient land for their own needs. Consequently, the
latter had no option but to work for the planta­
tion owners on their enlarged holdings at wages
cheap beyond belief. Any reluctance on the part of
these native laborers was dealt with by brute force.
In the 1940s democratic reforms occurred in
Guatemala. Although Indians played no role in
originating them, they benefited from them; for
the first time in more than 4 00 years native peo­
Anthropology and the Future CHAPTER 16 495
ples could at least hold municipal offices in their
own communities. In the 1950s the Roman
Catholic Church began to promote agricultural,
consumer, and credit cooperatives in rural areas
(which, in Guatemala, are predominantly Indian).
With the U.S.-engineered military coup of
1954, this brief interlude, when the government
recognized Indians had social, economic, and cul­
tural rights, came to an end. As before, the Indi­
ans stayed out of politics except within their own
villages. And, for the most part, they remained
aloof from the guerrilla activities that soon arose
in reaction to a succession of military regimes. But
because the guerrillas operated in the countryside
and because of 40 0 years of L ad in o distrust of In­
dians, these regimes came to regard all rural peo­
ple, most of them Indian, with ever deeper suspi­
cion. Inevitably, the latter were drawn into the
conflict.
In 1966, the United States Advisory Mission
introduced the use of terrorist tactics to maintain
governmental control of the countryside.15 By
1 9 7 8 , this escalated into a “reign of terror”
known as L a V iolencia: Whole villages were
razed, inhabitants killed, and bodies burnt and
otherwise mutilated by either the army or by un­
official death squads the army turned a blind eye
toward. Whether people were or were not guer­
rillas or guerrilla sympathizers was largely irrel­
evant as repression came to be seen as the most
effective way to maintain order. At the height (be­
tween 1981 and 1983) of L a V iolencia an esti­
mated 1 5 ,0 0 0 people were “disappeared,” at
least 9 0 ,0 0 0 were killed, half a million became
refugees inside Guatemala, and 1 5 0 ,0 0 0 fled to
M exico, while another 2 0 0 ,0 0 0 found their way
to other countries, including the United States. In
the hardest hit areas, the population was reduced
by almost half, and whole towns— some of which
had existed for 1,000 years— were destroyed. The
overwhelming majority of victims of this vio­
lence, which reached genocidal proportions, were
Indians.
In the late 1980s, violence in the Guatemalan
countryside lapsed from acute to merely chronic,
although it began to escalate anew in the early
15Zur, J. (1994). The psychological impact of impunity.
A nthropology Today, 10 (3), 16.
496 PART V C hange and the Future: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

In Guatemala, the military and other groups sanctioned by the government used violence to maintain the control
of one nationality (L ad in o) over another (Maya). As the illustration from a 1552 Spanish source shows, this has
an eerie similarity to the way the Spanish treated the native Maya of Guatemala 4 5 0 years ago. Although the vi­
olence has now subsided, it has not ended completely.

1990s. Nevertheless, despite this and the fear Maya
Indians still felt, political activism among them was
on the rise. And forensic anthropologists, at con­
siderable risk to themselves, were working with lo­
cal communities to exhume victims’ bodies to help
bring the perpetrators to account (see the Anthro­
pology Applied in Chapter 1). In 1992, the award­
ing of the Nobel Peace Prize to Rigoberta Menchu,
the Maya woman who worked tirelessly for in­
digenous rights, focused international attention on
Guatemala, and ultimately peace accords were
signed in late December 1996. A parallel document,

Maya refugees in Mexico prepare to return home to Guatemala after 15 years of fleeing
state-directed violence in their homelands.

“Accord on Identity and the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples,” would establish Guatemala officially as a
multicultural, multilingual country where the cul­
tural rights of all indigenous groups would be con­
stitutionally protected.
How effectively these changes can be imple­
mented remains to be seen. On the hopeful side,
many refugees have begun to return, and Pan-
Mayanists have begun various educational proj­
ects, as well as pressing for legal recognition of
their customary norms, as called for in the accords.
But not all Ladinos are happy with this outcome.
Murders and intimidation have not stopped alto­
gether. Meanwhile, in the neighboring Mexican
state of Chiapas, an outbreak of violence by large
landowners, condoned by local government offi­
cials, against native Maya supporters of the Zap­
atistas and their campaign for indigenous rights
has been occurring. These events are reminiscent
of the previous violence in Guatemala.
Also, in Guatemala, the Ladino elite are talking
more about the need to forge a true national iden-
Although a peace agreement in Guatemala has greatly reduced violence against that country’s Maya population,
anti-Maya violence is on the increase in the neighboring Mexican state of Chiapas. Shown here are coffins with
victims of the December 1997 massacre.
Anthropology and the Future CFLAPTER 16 497
tity for their country, but will this be done in a man­
ner consistent with the “Accord on Identity and the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples” ? We can, of course,
remain hopeful, but we cannot escape that, histori­
cally, what has been called nation building, in all
parts of the world, in most cases involves attempts
to exterminate the cultures of peoples belonging to
nations other than those who control the govern­
ment.16 Even in the 1980s, states were borrowing
more money to fight peoples within their boundaries
than for all other programs combined. Nearly all
state debt in Africa and nearly half of all other debt
in “underdeveloped” countries come from the
weapons states purchase to fight people claimed to
be citizens by those very same states.17 So far, the
situation in the 1990s is no better.
16Van Den Berghe, P. (1992). The modern state: Nation
builder or nation killer? International Jou rn al o f Group Ten­
sions, 22 (3), 1 9 4-198.
>7Cultural Survival Quarterly, 15 (4), 38. (1991).
498 PART V C hange and the F uture: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

O f all the world’s states, Switzerland is one of
the very few where pluralism really has worked
out to the satisfaction of all parties to the arrange­
ment, perhaps because, despite linguistic differ­
ences, they are all heirs to a common European
cultural tradition. In Northern Ireland, by con­
trast, groups being heirs to a common tradition
has not prevented violence and bloodshed. It seems
the more divergent cultural traditions are, the
more difficult it is to make pluralism work.
Given this dismal situation, can anything be
done about it? As anthropologists David Maybury-
Lewis and Pierre Van Den Berghe point out, we
tend to idealize the peace and social order the uni­
tary state maintains and to exaggerate the danger
to this vision the allowance of cultural distinctive­
ness and/or local autonomy to peoples of other na­
tionalities presents.18 The sooner we recognize this
tendency, the better off we will be. After all, states
as cultural constructs are products of human imag­
ination, and nothing prevents us from imagining
in ways more tolerant of pluralism. Obviously, this
will take a good deal of work, but at least the recog­
nition exists that such things as group rights exist.
lsMaybury-Lewis, D. (1993). A new world dilemma: The
Indian question in the Americas. Symbols, 22. Van Den
Berghe, P. (1992). The modern state: Nation builder or
nation killer? International Journ al o f Group Tensions, 22
(3), 1 9 1-192.
Even though it often fails to act on it, the United
Nations General Assembly in its Covenant of Hu­
man Rights, passed in 1966, states unequivocally
that “In those states in which ethnic, religious or
linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to
such minorities shall not be denied the rights, in
community with the other members of their group,
to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice
their own religion or to use their own language.” 19
Besides education, one of the actions that can help
make this acknowledged right a reality is the ad­
vocacy work on behalf of indigenous peoples sub­
stantial numbers of anthropologists engage in (see
Anthropology Applied on the next page).
Ethnocentrism
The major problem associated with cultural plu­
ralism has to do with ethnocentrism, a concept in­
troduced in Chapter 2. To function effectively, a
culture must instill the idea its ways are “best,”
or at least preferable to those of all other cultures.
This provides individuals with a sense of pride in
and loyalty to their traditions, which they derive
psychological support from and which binds them
firmly to their group. In societies where one’s self-
19Quoted in Bodley, J. H. (1990). Victims o f progress (3rd
ed., p. 99). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

These pictures show a Chechen woman in front of her home that has been destroyed by a Russian rocket and
federal marshals at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, where U.S. troops laid siege to the Sioux Indian town in
1973. Both exemplify the willingness of states one nationality controls to use their armies against people of other
nationalities within their borders to promote the state’s interests over those of the other nationality.

Advocacy for the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples
nthropologists are increasingly concerned about
A the rapid disappearance o f the world's remaining
indigenous peoples for a number o f reasons, foremost
among them the basic issue o f human rights.The world
today is rushing to develop parts o f the planet Earth
that have so far escaped industrialization, or the ex­
traction o f resources regarded as vital to the well-being
o f "developed” economies. These development efforts
are planned, financed, and implemented both by gov­
ernments and businesses (generally the huge multina­
tional corporations), as well as by international lending
institutions. Unfortunately, the rights o f native peoples
generally have not been incorporated into the pro­
grams and concerns o f these organizations, even where
laws exist that are supposed to protect the rights o f
such peoples.
For example, the typical pattern for development
o f Brazil’s Amazon basin has been for the government
to build roads, along which It settles Impoverished peo­
ple from other parts o f the country. This brings them
into conflict with Indians already living there, who be­
gin to die off in large numbers from diseases contracted
from the settlers. Before long, the settlers learn the soils
are not suited for their kind o f farming; meanwhile, out­
side logging, mining, and agribusiness interests exert
pressure to get them off the land. Ultimately, the set­
tlers wind up living in disease-ridden slums, while the
Indians are decimated by the diseases and violence un­
leashed upon them by the outsiders. Those who sur­
vive are usually relocated to places where resources
are inadequate to support them.
In an attempt to do what they can to help in­
digenous peoples gain title to their lands and avoid ex­
ploitation by outsiders, anthropologists in various coun­
tries have formed advocacy groups. The major one in
the United States is Cultural Survival, Inc., based in Cam­
bridge, Massachusetts.This organization's interest Is not
in preserving indigenous cultures in some sort o f ro­
Anthropology and the F uture CHAPTER 16 499
mantic, pristine condition so that they will be there to
study or to serve as “ living museum exhibits,” as it were.
Rather, it is to provide the information and support to
help endangered groups assess their situation, maintain
or even strengthen their sense o f self, and adapt to the
changing circumstances. It does not regard assimilation
o f these groups into the mainstream societies o f states
as necessarily desirable; rather; they should be allowed
the freedom to make their own decisions about how
they wish to live. Instead o f designing projects and then
imposing them on endangered societies, Cultural Sur­
vival prefers to respond to the requests and desires of
groups that see a problem and the need to address It.
Cultural Survival can suggest ways to help and can ac­
tivate extensive networks o f anthropologists, o f other
indigenous peoples who already have faced similar
problems, and o f government officials whose support
can be critical to success.
Most projects Cultural Survival funds o r assists
have been focused on securing the land rights o f in­
digenous peoples and organizing native federations. It
also has identified and funded a number o f locally de­
signed experiments In sustainable development, such
as the Turkmen Weaving Project, which helps Afghan
refugees make profitable income from traditional rug
weaving; the Ikwe Marketing Collective, through which
Minnesota Indians market wild rice and crafts; and Cul­
tural Survival Enterprises, which has developed and
expanded markets fo r products such as the nuts used
in the popular Rain Forest Crunch (itself a creation
o f Cultural Survival). O f major importance was the
success o f Cultural Survival in getting the W orld Bank,
in 1982, to require a policy that the rights and au­
tonom y o f tribal peoples and minorities be guaran­
teed in any project the bank is involved in. Despite
such successes, however, much remains to be done
to secure the survival o f indigenous peoples in all
parts o f the world.
500 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
identification derives from the group, ethnocen-
trism is essential to a sense of personal worth. The
problem with ethnocentrism is that it all too eas­
ily can be taken as a charter for manipulating other
cultures for the benefit of one’s own, even though
— as we saw in Chapter 1 2 — this does not have
to be the choice. When it is, however, unrest, hos­
tility, and violence commonly result.
In a typical expression of ethnocentrism, Pres­
ident James Monroe, in 1817, said this of Native
American rights:
The hunter state can exist only in the vast unculti­
vated deserts. It yields to the . . . greater force of
civilized population; and of right, it ought to yield,
for the earth was given to mankind to support the
greater number of which it is capable; and no tribe
or people have a right to withhold from the wants
of others, more than is necessary for their support
and comfort.20
This attitude is, of course, alive and well in
the world today, and governments frequently use
the idea that no group has the right to stand in
the way of “the greater good for the greater num­
ber” to justify the development of resources in re­
gions subsistence farmers, pastoral nomads, and
food foragers occupy— irrespective of the wishes
of those peoples. But is it truly the greater good
for the greater number? A look at the world as it
exists today as a kind of global society, with all
the world’s peoples bound by interdependency,
raises serious questions about such policies.
G lobal A p arthe id
Apartheid, which was until the m id-1990s the of­
ficial governmental policy of South Africa, con­
sists of programs or measures that aim to main­
tain racial segregation.21 Structurally, it served to
perpetuate the dominance of a White minority
20Quoted in Forbes, J. D. (1964). The Indian in A m erica’s
past (p. 103). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
21Material on global apartheid is drawn from G. Kohler
(1996), Global apartheid. Reprinted in W. A. Haviland &
R. J. Gordon (Eds.), Talking abou t peop le: Readings in con­
tem porary cultural anthropology (2nd ed., pp. 2 6 2 -2 6 8 ).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
over a non-White majority through the social, eco­
nomic, political, military, and cultural constitu­
tions of society. Non-Whites were denied effective
participation in political affairs, were restricted in
where they could live and what they could do, and
were denied the right to travel freely. Whites, by
contrast, controlled the government, including, of
course, the military and police. Although 4.7 non-
Whites for every White live there, being White and
belonging to the upper stratum of society have
tended to go together. The richest 20% of South
Africa took 5 8% of the country’s income and en­
joyed a high standard of living, while the poorest
4 0 % of the population received but 6.2% of the
national products. Even with the end of apartheid
and White control of the government, the figures
are not much different today.
What has South Africa to do with a global so­
ciety? Structurally, the latter is very similar—
almost a mirror image of South Africa’s society,
even though no conscious policy of global
apartheid is practiced. In the world society, about
two thirds of the population is non-White and one
third is White. In the world as a whole, being
White and belonging to the upper stratum tend to
go together, even though some exceptions exist
(Japan and Kuwait immediately spring to mind).
Although this largely White upper stratum has not
been a homogeneous group, divided until recently
into communist and noncommunist peoples, nei­
ther was the upper stratum of South African so­
ciety, where friction always has occurred between
the English, who controlled business and industry,
and the Afrikaners, who controlled the govern­
ment and military. In the world today, the poor­
est 75% of the population make do with 30% of
the world’s energy, 2 5% of its metals, 15% of its
wood, and 4 0 % of its food. The greater percent­
age of these and other resources goes to the rich­
est 2 5 % of the population (Figure 16.2). Life ex­
pectancy, as in South Africa, is poorest among
non-Whites. M ost of the world’s weapons of mass
destruction are owned by Whites: The United
States, Russia, France, and Britain. As in South
Africa, death and suffering from war and violence
are distributed unequally; in the world, the poor­
est 70% o f the population suffer more than 90%
of violent deaths in all categories.
One could go on, but enough has been said to
make the point: The parallels between the current
 A nthropology a n d th e . F u tu re CHAPTER 1 6 501

Structural violence in East Timor, where the Indonesian armed forces, trained and
equipped with assistance from the United States, rely on force to maintain control over a
population that has never consented to Indonesian rule.

(Percent distribution, various consumption indicators, developed and developing world situation and that of apartheid South Africa
countries, latest available data)
are striking. To be sure, a number of non-White
3 Developed countries | Developing countries
countries, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia,
Q United States
Thailand, and Indonesia, have shown dramatic eco­
Population
B ä\ nomic growth in recent years. Unfortunately, the
78
economic crash these countries experienced in 1997
has the potential to reduce much, if not all, of this
Hazardous
waste Í nr ~m 1
progress. In any event, the price of obtaining help
from the world’s industrialized (mostly White)
Energy £41 75 countries is to conform to requirements imposed by
consumption |
institutions they control, such as the International
Monetary Fund. Moreover, it has become much eas­
Fossil fuel
consumption
I al ier for interests in the United States and other in­
■K S T
dustrialized countries to buy up enterprises in coun­
Raw materials I BO
Metals
tries in trouble, such as these east Asian countries.
In previous financial bailouts in Latin America, the
33] 751
borrowers were hurt far more than the lenders of
Paper
25 wealthy countries, and the current Asian bailouts
seem headed in the same direction.22
Fisvhi 16.1
Though a minority of the world’s population, people
in the developed countries consume the most 22Avoiding the next crisis. (1998, January 12). Washington
resources and generate the bulk of hazardous wastes. Post N ational Weekly Edition, p. 26.
502 PART V Change and the Future: Solving
We may sum up global apartheid as a de facto
structure of world society that combines socio­
economic and racial antagonisms and that has
these characteristics:
1. A minority of largely White people occupies
the pole of affluence, while a majority com­
posed mostly of other races occupies the pole
of poverty.
2. Social integration of the two groups is made
extremely difficult by barriers of complexion,
economic position, political boundaries, and
other factors.
3. Economic development of the two groups is
interdependent.
4. The largely affluent White minority possesses
a disproportionately large share of the world
society’s political, economic, and military
power.
Global apartheid is thus a structure of extreme in­
equality in cultural, racial, social, political, eco­
nomic, military, and legal terms, as was South
African apartheid.
Around the world, condemnation of South
African apartheid was close to universal, and even
South Africa itself eventually abolished the sys­
tem. Since global apartheid is even more severe
than the South African version was, we ought to
be much more concerned about it than we have
been up to now.
PROBLEMS OF STRUCTURAL
VIOLENCE
One of the consequences of a system of apartheid,
whether official or unofficial and on the state or
global level, is a great deal of structural violence:
violence exerted by situations, institutions, and so­
cial, political, and economic structures. A classic
instance of structural violence is the economic col­
lapse of east Asian countries in 1997. To survive,
these countries will have to make drastic cuts in
social services, while industry downsizing and fail­
Structural violence. Violence that situations, institutions, and social, political, and economic structures exert.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
ures will cause untold numbers of people to lose
their jobs. As far as the victims of this economic
calamity are concerned, the effect is violent, even
though the cause was not the hostile act of a spe­
cific individual. The source of the violence was an
anonymous structure (the economy), and this is
what structural violence is all about.
The remainder of this chapter leaves insuffi­
cient space to cover all aspects of structural vio­
lence, but we can look at some aspects of partic­
ular concern to anthropologists. Other specialists,
too, are concerned, and anthropologists draw on
the work of these specialists as well as their own,
thereby fulfilling their traditional role as synthe­
sizers (discussed in Chapter 1). Moreover, anthro­
pologists are less apt than other specialists to see
these aspects of structural violence as discrete and
unrelated. Thus, they have a key contribution to
make to our understanding of such modern-day
problems as overpopulation, food shortages, pol­
lution, and widespread discontent in the world.
W orld Hunger
As frequently dramatized by events in various
parts of Africa, a major source of structural vio­
lence in the world today is our failure to provide
food for all of its people. Not only is Africa los­
ing the capacity to feed itself, but also 52 coun­
tries worldwide by 1980 were producing less food
per capita than they were 10 years previously, and
in 42 countries available food supplies were not
adequate to provide the caloric requirements of
their populations.23 One factor contributing to
this food crisis is a dramatic growth in the world’s
population.
Population growth is more than a simple ad­
dition of people. If it were just that, the addition
of 20 people a year to a population of 1,000 would
double that population in 50 years; but because
the added people beget more people, the doubling
23Bodley, J. H. (1985). A nthropology and contem porary hu­
man problem s (2nd ed., p. 114). Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield.

time is actually much less than 50 years. Hence,
it took the whole of human history and prehistory
for the world’s population to reach 1 billion peo­
ple, achieved in 1750. By 1950, world population
had reached almost 2.5 billion, representing an an­
nual growth rate of about 0 .8 % . By a . d . 20 0 0 , it
will have increased to 6 billion (Figure 16.3).
The obvious question arising from the bur­
geoning world population is, can we produce
enough food to feed all those people? The major­
ity opinion among agriculturalists is that we can
do so, but how far into the future we can is open
to question. In the 1960s a major effort was
launched to expand food production in the poor
countries of the world by introducing new high-
yield strains of grains. Yet despite some dramatic
gains from this “green revolution”— India, for ex­
ample, doubled its wheat crop in 6 years and was
on the verge of grain self-sufficiency by 1 9 7 0 —
and despite the impressive output of North Amer­
ican agriculture, millions of people on the face of
the globe continue to face malnutrition and star­
vation. In the United States, meanwhile, ed ible
food worth about $85 million is thrown out every
day (far more food than sent out for famine re­
Fi*witt 14*^
Population growth rates around the world.
A nthropology and the Future CHAPTER 16 503
lief), and farms are going out of business in record
numbers.
The immediate cause of world hunger has less
to do with food production than with food dis­
tribution. For example, millions of acres in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America once devoted to subsis­
tence farming have been given over to the raising
of cash export crops to satisfy appetites in the
world’s “developed” countries for food such as
coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas, and beef. Those
who used to farm the land for their own food
needs have been relocated either to urban areas,
where all too often no employment exists for them,
or to other areas ecologically unsuited for farm­
ing. In Africa such lands often are occupied by
pastoral nomads; as farmers encroach upon these,
insufficient pasturage is left for livestock. The re­
sultant overgrazing, coupled with the clearing of
the land for farming, leads to increased loss of
both soil and water, with disastrous consequences
to nomad and farmer alike. In Brazil, which is
highly dependent on outside sources of fossil fu­
els for its energy needs, millions of acres in the
northeast were taken over for sugar production
for making alcohol to fuel the vehicles in Rio. The
504 PART V C hange and the Future: Solving
Hunger stalks much of the world as a result of
a world food system geared to satisfy an affluent
minority in the world’s developed nations.
people displaced by this were given small holdings
in the Amazon, where they now are being up­
rooted to make way for huge ranches for raising
export beef.
One strategy urged upon so-called developing
countries, especially by U.S. government officials
and development advisers, is to adopt the prac­
tices that have made North American agriculture
so incredibly productive. On the face of it, this
seems like a good idea, but it overlooks the fact it
requires investment in expensive seeds and chem­
icals that neither small farmers nor poor countries
can afford. Intensive agriculture by the U.S. model
requires enormous inputs of chemical fertilizers,
pesticides, and herbicides, not to mention the fos­
sil fuels needed to run all the mechanized equip­
ment. Even where high production lowers costs,
the Problem of Adjusting to C hanged Conditions
the price is often beyond the reach of impover­
ished farmers. It also has other problems: Farm­
ing U.S. style is energy inefficient. For every calo­
rie produced, at least 8— some say as many as 20
— calories go into its production and distribu­
tion.24 By contrast, an Asian wet-rice farmer us­
ing traditional methods produces 300 calories for
each 1 expended. North American agriculture is
wasteful of other resources as well: About 30
pounds of fertile topsoil are ruined for every
pound of food produced.25 In the midwestern
United States, about 50% of the topsoil has been
lost over the past 100 years. Meanwhile, toxic sub­
stances from chemical nutrients and pesticides pile
up in unexpected places, poisoning ground and
surface waters; killing fish, birds, and other use­
ful forms of life; upsetting natural ecological cy­
cles; and causing major public-health problems.
Despite its spectacular short-term success, serious
questions arise about whether such a profligate
food production system can be sustained over the
long run, even in North America.
P o llut io n
It is ironic that a life-sustaining activity such as
food production should constitute a health haz­
ard, but that is precisely what it becomes when
agricultural chemicals poison soils and waters and
food additives (more than 2,500 are or have been
in use) expose people to substances that all too of­
ten turn out to be harmful. This, though, is but a
part of a larger problem of environmental pollu­
tion. Industrial activities are producing highly
toxic waste at unprecedented rates, and factory
emissions are poisoning the air. For example,
smokestack gases are clearly implicated in acid
rain, which is causing damage to lakes and forests
all over northeastern North America. Air con­
taining water vapor with a high acid content is, of
course, harmful to the lungs, but the health haz­
ard is greater than this. As surface water and
groundwater become more acidic, the solubility of
24Ibid., 128.
25Chasin, B. H., &c Franke, R. W. (1983). U.S. farming: A
world model? G lobal Reporter, 1 (2), 10.
 Anthropology and the Future CHAPTER 16 505

In Guatemala, where these bananas are grown, agricultural develop­

ment has caused increased malnutrition levels. As in many developing
countries, modernization of agriculture has meant the conversion of
land from subsistence farming to raising crops for export, making it
increasingly difficult for people to satisfy their basic nutritional needs.

lead, cadmium, mercury, and aluminum increases
sharply. The increase of dissolved aluminum, in
particular, is becoming truly massive, and alu­
minum consumption has been associated with se­
nile dementia as well as Alzheimer’s and Parkin­
son’s diseases. Today, these rank as major health
problems in the United States.
Added to this is the global warming problem
— the greenhouse effect— caused by the burning
of fossil fuels. Although much is unknown about
the extent of global warming, climatic scientists
agree it is real and that its long-term effects will
be harmful. Unfortunately, the response from en­
ergy interests has been similar to the campaign to­
bacco companies carried out for so long to con­
vince the public smoking was not hazardous. The
former have launched a massive public relations
campaign to persuade the public global warming
is not real; as a consequence, it becomes very dif­
ficult to do anything about it.
As with world hunger, the structural violence
from pollution tends to be greatest in the poorest
countries of the world, where chemicals banned in
countries such as the United States are still widely
used. Moreover, industrial countries have taken
advantage of the lax environmental regulations of
“underdeveloped” states to get rid of hazardous
wastes. For instance, the president of Benin (in
West Africa) not long ago signed a contract with
a European waste company to dump toxic and
low-grade radioactive waste on the lands of his
political opposition.26 In the United States, both
government and industry have tried to persuade
Indians on reservations experiencing severe eco­
nomic depression that the solution to their prob­
lems lies in allowing disposal of nuclear and other
hazardous waste on their lands.
Meanwhile, as manufacturing shifts from the
developed to the developing countries of the
world, a trend also encouraged by fewer safety and
environmental regulations, lethal accidents such as
the one in 1988 at Chernobyl, Ukraine, may be
expected to increase. Here, a faulty reactor at a
nuclear power plant released radiation, causing
numerous deaths, relocation of 126,000 people,
increased thyroid cancer and damaged immune
systems even 10 years later, increased birth defects,
and economic privation for people living as far
26Cultural Survival Quarterly, IS (4), 5. (1991).
506 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving the
Environmental degradation is dramatically illustrated by the fires that burned out of control
in southeast Asia in 1997, causing widespread health and visibility problems from massive
amounts of smoke and particulate matter in the air.
away (the Arctic Circle) as the Saami, whose rein­
deer herds were contaminated by radioactive fall­
out. Indeed, development itself seems to be a
health hazard; it is well known that indigenous
peoples in Africa, the Pacific Islands, South Amer­
ica, and elsewhere are relatively free from diabetes,
obesity, hypertension, and a variety of circulatory
diseases until they adopt the ways of the devel­
oped countries. Then rates of these “diseases of
development” escalate dramatically.
Modern humanity knows the causes of pollu­
tion and realizes it is a danger to future survival.
Why, then, does not humanity control this evil by
which it fouls its own nest? At least part of the
answer lies in philosophical and theological tradi­
tions. As we saw in Chapter 12, Western indus­
trialized societies accept the biblical assertion they
have dominion over the earth with all that grows
and lives on it, which it is their duty to subdue.
These societies contribute most to global pollu­
tion. One North American, for example, consumes
hundreds of times the resources of a single African,
Problem of Adjusting to C hanged Conditions
with all that implies with respect to waste disposal
and environmental degradation. Moreover, each
person in North America adds, on average, 20 tons
of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) a year to the
atmosphere. In “underdeveloped” countries, less
than 3 tons per person are emitted.27
The exploitative worldview, characteristic of
all civilizations, extends to all natural resources
(Figure 16.4). Only when problems have reached
crisis proportions, such as the destruction of the
earth’s protective ozone layer, have Western peo­
ples protected or replaced what their greed and ac­
quisitiveness have prompted them to take from the
environment. In recent years, recognizing the seri­
ousness of the environmental crisis people were cre­
ating for themselves, various bodies have passed
laws against or restricting such activities as hunt­
ing whales out of existence, dumping toxic wastes
27Broecker, W. S. (1992, April). Global warming on trial.
Natural History, 14.
 Anthropology and thk F uturk CHAPTER 16 507

F iswre 1 0 .4
A high gross national product (tall blocks on map) is sustained in the world’s industrial countries by a flow of
mineral and land wealth from the lands of indigenous peoples.

into streams and rivers, and poisoning the air with
harmful fumes. However, most such laws apply to
the world’s most affluent countries— the very ones
where consumption levels drive the forces of ex­
ploitation responsible for environmental degrada­
tion in the world’s poorer countries.
A large part of the problem in this and sim­
ilar situations is a human reluctance to perceive
as disadvantageous the practices that previously
seemed to work well. Frequently, practices car­
ried out on a particular scale or suited to a par­
ticular context become unsuitable when carried
out on another scale or in another context. Be­
cause they are trained to view customs in their
broader context, anthropologists would seem to
have an important role to play in convincing peo­
ple that solutions to many problems require
changed behavior.
508 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
Indigenous peoples, in particular, also may
play a significant role. They are apt to stand in
awe of natural forces, bestowing on them a spe­
cial place in their religious system. For example,
many people believe rushing rapids, storms, the
mountains, and the jungles possess awesome pow­
ers. This is also true of fire, which both warms
and destroys. For farmers, the sun, rain, and thun­
der are important to their existence and are often
considered divine. Such worldviews are not fool­
proof checks to the kind of environmental ma­
nipulation that causes severe pollution, but they
certainly act as powerful restraining influences.
P o p ul ati on C ontrol
Although the problems we have discussed so far
may not be caused by population growth, they are
certainly made worse by it. For one reason, it in­
creases the scale of the problems; thus, the waste
a small population generates is far easier to deal
with than what a large one generates. For another,
it often nullifies efforts people make to solve the
problems, such as when increased food produc­
tion is offset by increased numbers of people to be
fed. Although solving the population growth prob­
lem does not by itself make the other problems go
away, it is unlikely those problems can be solved
unless population growth is arrested.
As our earlier look at population demon­
strated, the world’s population has grown enor­
mously since the beginning of the industrial age.
With the exception of European and North Amer­
ican populations, where birthrates are significantly
lower than death rates (a balance between the two
is required for replacement reproduction), the
world saw no sign of a significant decline in
birthrates prior to 1976. The reason impoverished
people, in particular, tended to have so many chil­
dren is simple: Children are their main resource.
They provide a needed labor pool to work farms,
and they are the only source of security for the el­
derly; hence, having many offspring makes sense
(especially if infant mortality rates are high). His­
Replacement reproduction. W hen birthrates and death rates are in equilibrium; people produce only enough off­
spring to replace themselves when they die.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
torically, people were apt to limit their family size
only when they became wealthy enough that their
money replaced children as their main resource; at
that point, children actually cost them money.
Given this, we can see why birthrates have for so
long remained high in the world’s poorest coun­
tries. To those who live in poverty, children are
seen as the only hope.
Nevertheless, since 1976 some encouraging
signs have occurred, such as China’s steep decline
in birthrates. China is one of 19 “underdevel­
oped” countries where birthrates actually have
dropped b elo w replacement levels (Chinese
birthrates and death rates balance out at about
2.1 children per woman; the government’s policy
will be discussed later). In Africa, as well as much
of south Asia and much of Central and South
America (again, the world’s poorest countries),
birthrates also have declined, but far less dra­
matically. Examples include Bangladesh, where
the rate has fallen from 6.2 to 3.4 (in just 10
years); Tunisia, where the rate has fallen from 7.2
to 2.9; and M exico, which has moved 80% of the
way to replacement level.28
Still, despite such improvements, fertility rates
remain above replacement, so continual popula­
tion growth makes it difficult for these countries
even to maintain their present per capita share of
food and other resources. Even if they could
achieve immediate replacement reproduction,
their populations would continue to grow for the
next 50 years before the age distribution would
flatten and zero growth could be achieved. The
reason is that even though each woman has fewer
children, more women are having them. This pop­
ulation momentum is exacerbated as life ex­
pectancy is improved. Current projections are that
global population will peak around a . d . 2050 at
about 8.5 billion people.
28Wattenberg, B. J. (1997, November 23). The population
explosion is over. N ew York Times Magazine, 60.
 Anthropology
The problem’s severity becomes clear when it
is realized the present world population of nearly
6 billion people can be sustained only by using up
nonrenewable resources, which is like living off in­
come-producing capital. It works for a time, but
once the capital is gone, so is the possibility of
even having an income to live on.
Desirable though it may be to halt population
growth, programs to do so, and their conse­
quences, pose many new problems. These are well
illustrated by China’s much publicized policy to
promote one-child families. Although this has
slowed the growth rate of China’s population
(birthrates are now below replacement level), it
has given rise to some serious new problems. One
difficulty stems from its basic contradiction to an­
other policy, to raise agricultural productivity by
granting more economic autonomy to rural house­
holds and the continued existence of families,
which (as in old China) are strongly patriarchal.
Within such families, men are responsible for
farmwork, perpetuation of the male line of descent
is considered essential to everyone’s well being,
and postmarital residence is strictly patrilocal. Un­
der these circumstances, the birth of male children
is considered essential; without them, the house­
hold will not have the workforce it needs and will
As birth rates fall around the world, there will be a rise in the percentage
of the elderly, with an attendant rise in health care costs.
and the F uturf. CHAPTER 16 509
suffer economically. Furthermore, the parents will
have no one to support them once they are too
old for physical labor. Daughters are of little use
to them, since they will marry out of the house­
hold and can offer little aid to their parents. Since
married couples are supposed to have only one
child, the birth of a girl is greeted with dismay, for
if the couple tries again for a boy, local state offi­
cials will exert tremendous pressures for the
woman to have an abortion and for her or her
husband to undergo sterilization.
Not surprisingly, in the face of all this, female
infanticide is on the rise in China, and women who
bear daughters are often physically and mentally
abused by their husbands and mothers-in-law,
sometimes to the point of committing suicide. (Al­
though the state teaches that men determine a baby’s
sex, most rural Chinese believe the woman is still
responsible for the outcome of a birth, perhaps
through her diet and behavior.) Women pay in other
ways with their bodies; when a second pregnancy
occurs, the woman must have the abortion, and usu­
ally she is the one sterilized (surgical intervention
for men in their prime is discouraged, owing to the
importance of their agricultural labor). This leaves
the man free to coerce his daughter-bearing wife
into a divorce so that he can try again for a son
510 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving
with a new wife, leaving the old one of no use to
anyone and with no son to care for her in old age.
One means of preventing a married woman’s unau­
thorized pregnancy is by placing an intrauterine de­
vice (IUD) in her womb. This cannot be removed
without official permission, which is hard to get
even in the face of compelling medical reasons, since
removal is contrary to official Chinese policy. Nor
is an attached cord for removal provided, all of
which have led to a proliferation of back-alley prac­
titioners who remove IUDs with improvised hooks,
often leading to infection and death.
If women in China’s rural areas are seen to
have little value, the same is not true where the
manufacture of goods is an option. For this, fe­
male labor is in some demand, and, as a conse­
quence, abduction of young women from rural
communities has risen dramatically. Although firm
figures are hard to get, an estimate for 1993 is that
100 ,0 0 0 women and children were kidnapped in
that year.29 Such women commonly are sold as
brides to men in families who then control their
labor, either sending them out to bring wages to
the family or putting them to work without wages
in family enterprises.
The problem of who will care for the elders
in their old age is not just a problem for the Chi­
nese but also will be a problem for any society
whose birthrates are below replacement level. The
inevitable consequence is the number of old peo­
ple “explodes” relative to the number of produc­
tive people of younger age. Already the United
States is beginning to worry about this. Care of
the elderly is expensive, but fewer young have been
born to assume the costs. Where will the money
come from? As yet, nobody knows.
T he C ulture of D i s co n t e n t
Despite the difficulties, stabilization of the world’s
population appears to be a necessary step if the
future’s problems are ever to be solved. Without
this, whatever else is done, the world’s inability to
provide enough food and distribute it equally
seems inevitable. Up until about 1950, growth in
29Gates, H. (1996). Buying brides in China— again. Anthro­
pology Today, 12 (4), 9.
the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions
the world’s food supply came almost entirely from
expanding the amount of cultivated land. Since
then, it has come increasingly from the high-energy
inputs of chemical fertilizers that new high-yield
varieties of crops depend on, of pesticides and her­
bicides, and of fuel to run tractors and other me­
chanical equipment, including irrigation pumps.
The source of almost all this energy is oil, yet, al­
though the demand for food is projected to rise
until at least the middle of the 21st century, oil
supplies are diminishing and will surely decline
over this same period.
Insufficient food supplies are bound to result
in increased structural violence in the form of
higher death rates in the world’s “underdevel­
oped” countries. This surely will have an impact
on the “developed” countries, with their relatively
stable populations and high living standards. It is
hard to imagine how such countries could exist
peacefully side by side with others experiencing
high death rates and abysmally low living stan­
dards. Already, the combination of overpopulation
and poverty is causing a rising tide of migration
from the impoverished countries to the more af­
fluent ones of Europe and North America, with a
consequent rise of intolerance and antiforeign feel­
ing and general social unrest.
Necessary though birth control may be for
solving the future’s problems, we have no reason
to suppose it will be sufficient by itself. The result
would be only to stabilize situations as they are.
The problem is twofold. For the past several years,
the world’s poor countries have been sold on the
idea they should enjoy a living standard compa­
rable to that of the rich countries. Yet the resources
necessary to maintain such a standard of living,
even at moderate levels, are running out. As we
saw in the last chapter, this situation has led to the
creation of a culture of discontent, whereby peo­
ple’s aspirations far exceed their opportunities.
The problem involves not just population growth
outstripping food supplies, but it is also one of un­
equal access to decent jobs, housing, sanitation,
health care, and adequate police and fire protec­
tion. And it is one of steady deterioration of the
natural environment as a result of increasing in­
dustrialization and overuse of the land.
Some dramatic changes in cultural values and
motivations, as well as in social institutions, are

required. The emphasis on individual self-
interest, materialism, and conspicuous produc­
tion, acquisition, and consumption, characteris­
tic of the world’s richest countries, needs to be
abandoned in favor of a more human self-image
and social ethic. These can be created from val­
ues still found in many of the world’s non-
Western cultures. Such values include a world­
view that sees humanity as part of the natural
world, rather than superior to it. Included, too,
CHAPTER
Since future forms of culture will be shaped by de­
cisions humans have yet to make, they cannot be
predicted with any accuracy. Thus, instead of try­
ing to foretell the future, a number of anthropol­
ogists are attempting to gain a better understand­
ing of the existing world situation so that decisions
may be made intelligently. Anthropologists are es­
pecially well suited for this, owing to their expe­
rience at seeing things in context, their long-term
evolutionary perspective, their ability to recognize
culture-bound biases, and their familiarity with
cultural alternatives.
However humanity changes biologically, cul­
ture remains the chief means by which humans try
to solve their problems of existence. Some an­
thropologists are concerned that there is a trend
for the problems to outstrip any culture’s ability
to find solutions. Rapid developments in commu­
nication, transportation, and world trade, some
believe, will link people together to the point that
a single world culture will result. Their thinking
is that such a homogenized superculture would of­
fer fewer chances for conflict between peoples than
in the past. Most anthropologists are skeptical of
such an argument, in view of the recent tendency
for ethnic groups to reassert their distinctive iden­
tities and in view of the persistence of traditional
ways of thinking about oneself and others, even
in the face of massive changes in other cultural as­
pects. Anthropologists also are concerned about
people’s tendency to treat many of the world’s tra­
ditional societies as obsolete when they appear to
stand in the way of “development.”
Another alternative is for humanity to move
in the direction of cultural pluralism, where more
Anthropology and the Future CHAPTER 16 511
is a sense of social responsibility that recognizes
that no individual, people, or state has the right
to expropriate resources at the expense of oth­
ers. Finally, an awareness is needed of how im­
portant supportive ties are for individuals, such
as seen in kinship or other associations in the
world’s traditional societies. Is humanity up to
the challenge? W ho knows, but it appears sig­
nificant changes are bound to come, one way or
another.
SUMMARY
than one culture exists in a society. To work, cul­
tural pluralism must reject bigotry, bias, and
racism. Some anthropologists maintain that plu­
ralistic arrangements are the only feasible means
of achieving global equilibrium and peace. A prob­
lem associated with cultural pluralism is ethno-
centrism. All too often, in the name of “nation
building,” it has led one group to impose its con­
trol on others. Common consequences are pro­
longed violent and bloody political upheavals, in­
cluding genocide.
Viewing the world today reveals a picture that
is strikingly similar to South Africa’s apartheid sys­
tem. This world system serves to maintain the
dominance of a largely White minority over a non-
White majority through the social, economic, po­
litical, military, and cultural constitution of the
current “global society.”
One consequence of any apartheid system is
a great deal of structural violence exerted by sit­
uations, institutions, and social, political, and eco­
nomic structures. Such violence involves problems
such as overpopulation and food shortages, which
anthropologists are actively working to under­
stand and help alleviate. One challenge the world
over is to provide food resources to keep pace with
the burgeoning population. The immediate prob­
lem, though, is not so much one of producing
enough food as it is an existing food-distribution
system geared to the satisfaction of appetites in the
world’s richest countries at the expense of those
living in poorer countries.
Pollution has become a direct threat to hu­
manity. Western peoples have protected their en­
vironments only when some crisis forces them to
512 PART V Change and the F uture: Solving the Problem of Adjusting to Changed Conditions

do so, and even at that their consumption rates
continue to drive environmental degradation in
other countries. Western societies have felt no
long-term responsibilities toward the earth or its
resources and could learn much from those non-
Western peoples who see themselves as integral
parts of the earth.
Meeting the problems of structural violence
that beset the human species today probably can
be done only if we continue to reduce the birthrate.
Effective birth-control methods are now available.
Whether or not these methods are used on a vast
enough scale depends on their availability and ac­
ceptance. Many of the world’s developing coun­
tries have policies aimed at controlling population
growth, but these sometimes conflict with other
policies, and in any case they give rise to new kinds
of problems. Even if replacement reproduction
were immediately achieved, populations would
continue to grow for another 50 years.
Solving the problems of the global society de­
pends also on lessening the gap between the liv­
ing standards of impoverished and developed
countries. This calls for dramatic changes in the
values of Western societies, with their materialis­
tic consumer orientation. All people need to see
themselves as part of nature, rather than as supe­
rior to it. Also needed are a social responsibility
that recognizes that no people has a right to ex­
propriate important resources at the expense of
others and an awareness of how important sup­
portive ties are between individuals.

Points for C onsideration

1. O f what practical value are the social sciences, particularly anthropology? What services can an­
thropologists provide beyond academics?
2. In your opinion, will continued modernization bring humanity, in the end, into a single homoge­
nous world culture? Does modernization mean absolute assimilation? How might tradition play a
part in this process?
3. Powerful states often feel they have a responsibility to intervene in foreign affairs to speed the de­
velopment of other countries or to calm political and social distress. Is this necessarily a wise
idea? Even when the intentions are good, is the outcome always positive? Explain your answer.

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 INDEX
Abenaki people Ancestral spirits, 387-388 Bagpipes, 429-430
legends of, 422-423 Animatism, 390-391 Bakhtiari people, 181-183
music of, 429 Animism, 388 Balanced reciprocity, 206-207
myth tradition of, 419-421 Anorexia nervosa, 152 Band organization, 344-346
naturalistic worldview of, 371-372 Anthropologists Bangladesh, 508
Abnormal personality, 148-154 function of, 5, 11, 136 Bantu people, 167, 168
Aborigines (Australian) predictions for future by, 481-483 Barfield, T. J., 180n
food distribution practices among, 205 stereotypes of, 482 Barnett, Steve, 219
land ownership and music of, 430-431 Anthropology. See also Cultural Barr, R. G., 1 In
male initiation rites among, 395-396 anthropology Barroso-Ruiz, C., 86n
marriage and, 253-254 AIDS and, 230-232 Barter, 207
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 278n, 361n, 427 applied, 458, 460-461 Barth, E, 181n
Acculturation, 454-456 archaeology as branch of, 12-14 Basutos people, 400
Adaptation contemporary life and, 31-32 Bay, E., 356n
anatomical, 61-64 development of, 6-8 Beauty
cultural areas and, 163-165 economic, 194-196 body decoration and, 414
cultural core and, 165-166 ethics and, 30 breast implantation and, 488-490
culture and, 50-52 explanation of, 5, 6 premium placed on personal, 243-244
evolutionary, 60-61, 161-163 forensic, 9 Beck, Benjamin, 69
explanation of, 50, 60, 158-160 holistic perspective of, 15 Bednarjik, R. G., 86n
through behavior, 64-68 humanities and, 29-30 Bedouins
unit of, 160-161 linguistic, 14 informal sanctions among, 360-362
Adjudication, 367 overview of, 3 poetry as form of expression of, 424-
Adultery, 239 physical, 8-10 425
Afar people, 201 science and, 22-24 Behavior, adaptation through, 64-68
Affinal kin, 234 scientific approach and, 24-29 Behavioral environment
African American Vernacular English. See socio-cultural, 14-16, 20-22. See also basis of, 129-130
Ebonics Ethnology overview of, 126
Age Apache Indian study, 38-39 of Penobscot, 130
division of labor by, 199-200 Apartheid, global, 500-502 self and, 126-129
grouping by, 318-321 Applied anthropology, 458, 460-461 Bell, D., 234n
Age grades Archaeology, 12-14 Benedict, Ruth, 144-146
explanation of, 315, 319 Archaic Homo sapiens, 84-86 Berdan, F. F., 185n
organization of, 350-351 Ardipitbecus, 74-75 Bertranpetit, 86n
Age sets, 319-320 Armstrong, D. F., 96n, 120n Big Man, 212-215, 347, 348
Agnatic descent. See Patrilineal descent Armstrong, J. D., 147n Bilateral descent, 303-305
Agriculture. See also Horticulture; Slash- Armstrong, S., 396n Bilingualism, 111
and-burn horticulture Arnhem Land study, 27 Bipedalism, 77
Aztecs and, 185-186 Aroostook Band of Micmacs, 301 Birth, legitimacy of, 234
females and commercialization of, 475 Arranged marriage, 244-249 Black, H. C., 367n
life-style of, 174-176, 180 Art Black Elk, 391
nonindustrial cities and intensive, 183, 185 anthropological study of, 416-418 Black English. See Ebonics
slash-and-burn, 159, 176-180, 371, 372 body decoration as, 414 Black Muslim movement, 463
technology and, 203, 467 music, 426-431. See also Music Blurton Jones, N. G., 168n
world hunger and, 503-504 overview of, 414-416 Boas, Franz, 25, 460
AIDS/HIV, 230-232 pictorial, 433-442. See also Pictorial arts Bodley, J. H., 22n, 54n, 219n, 470n, 486n,
Algonkian Indians, 153-154 plastic surgery as, 489 498n
Altered states of consciousness, 149-151 Upper Paleolithic, 89 Body language. See Kinesics
Aluminum consumption, 505 verbal, 418-426. See also Verbal arts Bohannan, P., 297n
Alzheimer’s disease, 505 Ashmore, W., 88n Boone, E. S., 280n
Ambilineal descent Association of Aroostook Indians, 301 Boone, Margaret, 279, 280
among New York City Jews, 297-299, Associations. See Common-interest Bosnia, 41
318 associations Bound morphemes, 100
explanation of, 297 Atlatl, 88-89 Brain
Ambilocal residence, 274 Australopitbecines, 70, 75-78 adaptation of primate, 63
American Anthropological Association, 7 Australopithecus, 75, 76 in homo erectus, 81
American Indians. See Native Americans Avunculocal residence, 275-276 nutrients and, 78
American Sign Language Awlad ’Ali Bedouins, 424-425 Branch Davidians, 407
communication via, 96, 97 Aymara Indians, 184 Brazil
primates using, 70-73, 96, 119, 120 Azande people, 363-364 Canela people in, 53
research on, 120 Aztecs development of Amazon basin in, 499
Amiran, R., 448n human sacrifice and, 54 food production in, 503-504
Amish people, 38-40 market exchanges and, 216, 217 Indian Day in, 471
Amok, 152 religion of, 386 multinational corporations and Amazon
Anatomical adaptation urban society of, 185-188 basin in, 486-487, 492
of primate brain, 63 violence against native populations in,
primate dentition and, 61-62 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 415-416 454-456, 471-475, 499
of primate skeleton, 63-64 Badaga, 207 Yanomami people, 354, 454-455
of sense organs, 62-63 Baez, Joan, 430 Breaking, 106
 INDEX 1-2

Breastfeeding, 127, 128 China Cristaldo, Janer, 474

Breast implantation, 488-490 belief in ancestral spirits in, 388 Crocker, J., 53n
Bride-price, 250-251 caste system and, 327, 328 Crocker, W. A., 53n
Bride service, 252 patrilineal descent in, 290-294 Cross-cultural studies
Broecker, W. S., 506n population control in, 508, 509-510 archaeological, 28
Brown, R J., 459n Chinampa, 186, 187 of body language, 103-104
Bureau of American Ethnology, 460 Chinese Revolution, 465-466 of child rearing, 138-139
Bunn, 88 Chodorow, Nancy, 149 function of, 22
Burling, R., 96n Christianity Crow Indians
Bushmen. See also Ju/’hoansi people Native Americans and, 135 association membership and, 323-324
origin of term, 137 ritual cannibalism and, 398 reciprocity among, 206, 207
rock art and, 435-437 U. S. denominations of, 383 Crow system, 309-311
Business, anthropology and, 220 Cinta-Largas, 454 Crusades, 372
Clans Cults, 407
Cachel, S., 86n explanation of, 300, 302-303 Cultural anthropologists, 5
Calloway, C., 422n origins of, 306 Cultural anthropology. See also
Calverton, V. R, 399n Clark, V. R, 112n Anthropology
Canaanites, 386 Clark, W. R., 84n explanation of, 5, 8
Canada, 494 Class. See Social class function of, 10-12
Canela people (Brazil), 53 Clay, J. W., 354n scientific approach and, 25-29
Cannibalism, 298, 397 Cleveland, Grover, 134 Cultural change
Caparros, M., 86n Clinton, James, 317 directed, 458, 460-461
Cargo cults, 407 Clitoridectomy, 396-397 explanation of, 52, 445-447
Cargo system, 204 Closed-class societies, 331 forcible, 454-464. See also Forcible
Caroulis, J., 43n Coco, Linda, 488-489 change
Carriacou, Grenada, 116-117 Code switching, 118 linguistic, 108
Carrying capacity, 169 Codrington, R. H., 390 modernization and, 467-477
Cashdan, R, 167n Cohen, Yehudi, 237 rebellion and revolution and, 464-466
Castaneda, Carlos, 391 Collier, J., 254n, 26 In religion and, 406-410
Caste Collier, R., 271n Cultural control
explanation of, 326-327 Comanche, 161 explanation of, 358, 359
mobility and, 330-331 Common-interest associations in United States, 373-374
Cavalieri, R, 69n, 120n explanation of, 315, 321-322 Cultural deprivation, 21
Cerehellum, 63 for men and women, 322-324 Cultural ecology, 165
Ceremonies. See Rituals organization of, 351 Cultural loss, 453-454
Chagnon, N. A., 229n types of, 322 Cultural pluralism
Chambers, Robert, 26, 27 Communication. See also Language explanation of, 493
Change. See Cultural change language preventing, 108 in Guatemala, 494-497
Change mechanisms overview of, 96-97 in Switzerland, 494, 498
cultural loss as, 453-454 Competition, 141, 279 in United States, 494
diffusion as, 451-453 Conjugal bond, 234 Cultural relativism, 54-55
innovation as, 447-451 Conjugal families, 239, 269 Cultural Survival, Inc., 499
Chase, A. R, 332n Conley, J. M., 105n Culture
Chase, D. Z., 332n Connelly, J. C., 295n adaptation and, 50-52
Chenchu people, 253 Consanguineal kin, 235 art and, 416-418
Chernobyl disaster, 505-506 Consanguine families, 239, 269 as concept, 36
Cheyenne Indians Conspicuous consumption, 211-212 of discontent, 510-511
association organization among, 351 Construal, 435 economics and, 219-221
evolutionary adaptation and, 162-163 Contagious magic, 400 evaluation of, 53-56
as farmers, 168 Control. See Social control explanation of, 10, 35, 36, 446
law among, 365-366 Conventional gestures, 104, 105 integrated nature of, 44-46
Chiefdoms, 352-353 Convergent evolution, 163 language and, 95. See also Language
Child, Irving L., 139, 142, 143n Cooking, 83, 84 as learned, 42-43
Child care Coon, C. S., 181n, 208n, 454, 454n one-world, 483-485, 492
within families, 266 Cooper, A., 86n perceived environment and, 129
in Israeli Kibbutz, 236, 267, 268 Cooperative work groups, 200 protection of, 417-418
Child labor, 199-200 Core values, 146, 147 as shared, 36-42
Child-rearing practices Corporations, multinational, 485-488, 490- societies and, 36-37, 53
among food foragers, 137-138, 142 492 study of, 35, 46-50
combining dependence and independence Cortex, 63 survival of, 35
training, 142 Co-sleeping symbols to express, 43
dependence training as, 139-141 cross-cultural studies in, 11 Culture areas, 163-165
gender-related personality characteristics in traditional societies, 127 Culture bound
and,137 Cousins, marriage between, 237, 249-250 hypotheses, 25, 26
independence training as, 141-142 Cousins club, 299, 306, 318 theories as, 11
personality and, 139, 143 Covenant of Human Rights (U.N.), 498 Culture core, 165-166
Chimpanzees Cowgill, George L., 482n Culture type, 164, 165
avoidance of inbreeding by, 236 Crabtree, Don, 87 Cushing, Frank Hamilton, 7
behavior of, 65-68 Creole English, 116
food sharing among, 80 Crime. See also Violence Dahomeans, 197, 198
as human ancestors, 73-74 death penalty and, 54 Darwin, Charles R., 24
language experiments with, 119-120 procedures for dealing with, 364, 367- Davis, S. H., 488n
protein needs of, 77 369 Day, G. M., 423n
1-3 INDEX

Deacon, J., 137n Economic systems Falciparum malaria, 159

Death penalty, crime and, 54 culture and, 219-221 Falk, D., 76n
Debenath, A., 86n distribution and exchange and, 204-219 Families
Declaration of Independence, 375 resources and, 196-204 economic cooperation and, 266-268
de Laguna, Frederica, 426 study of, 193 explanation of, 239, 259
Density of social relations, 169 Economy, informal, 218-219 extended, 271-272, 277—278
Dentition, primate, 61-62 Ecosystem, 161 female-headed, 281-283
Dependence training Education, 468 households and, 268-269
combined with independence training, 142 Egalitarianism, 173-174 marriage and, 239
explanation of, 139 Egalitarian societies, 325 nuclear, 260, 262-265, 269-271, 278-
in extended families, 277 Egypt, official language in, 328-329 280
function of, 139-141 E-Lab, 220 nurrurance of children by, 266
Descent groups Elderly individuals, 280 overview of, 260-261
ambilineal, 297-299 Electra complex, 235 polygamous, 276-277
bilateral, 303-305 Elgin, S. H., lOln residence patterns and, 272, 274-276
clan and, 300, 302-303 Elkin, A. P., 395n society and, 262
double, 297 Elk Soldier Society, 366 Family circles, 298-299, 306
evolution of, 305-306 Ember, C. J., 54n Father, S., 243n
explanation of, 287-289 Ember, C. R., 483n Farmer, Paul, 231, 232n
forms and functions of, 299 Ember, M., 54n, 483n Farming. See also Agriculture; Horticulture
lineage and, 300 Enculturation life-style of, 174-176, 180
matrilineal, 289, 294-297 effects of, 125 shift from subsistence to commercial,
patrilineal, 289-294 explanation of, 42-43, 125, 126 467, 491
phratries and moieties and, 303 self-awareness and, 126 technology and, 203
unilineal, 289-290 Endogamy, 237 world hunger and, 503-504
Descriptive linguistics, 101, 106 Enga, 212-215 “Father, Son and Donkey,” 423
Descriptive system, 311 Entoptic phenomena, 435 Female-headed households
Dettinger, K. A., 128n Environmental regulations economics and, 281-282
De Vita, P. R., 16n, 147n, 245n in developing countries, 505 overview of, 281
de Waal, A., 334n trends in, 506-508 serial monogamy and, 242-243
Dialects Epics, 422 Female Power and Male Dominance
Ebonics and, 114-115, 117-118 Epstein, A. L., 359n (Sanday), 23
explanation of, 114 Esber, George S., Jr., 39 Females. See also Gender; Gender
Diamond, J., 451n Escholz, P. A., 112n differences; Gender identity
Diana, Princess of Wales, 385 Eskimo system, 307-308 breast implantation in, 488-490
Diffusion, 451-453 An Essay Concerning Human as cheap labor, 491
Dinka people, 349 Understanding (Locke), 126 in China, 466
Directed change, 458, 460-461 Essock, Susan, 69 common-interest associations foi; 322-324
Displacement, 120 Ethics, 30 division of labor and, 196-198
Dispute resolution Ethnocentrism effects of modernization on, 475, 491
anthropologists and, 368 explanation of, 54 genital mutilation of African, 396-397
types of, 367 function of, 498, 500 in nuclear families, 280
in United Srates, 368-369 Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock), 23 as political leaders, 356-358
Distribution and exchange Ethnography, 14-15 in rural Taiwan, 292-294
barter and trade and, 207-208 Ethnohistory, 28-29 sexual activity and, 229, 232
Kula ring and, 208-209 Ethnolinguistics, 111 Trobriand Island, 48-50
market exchange and, 215-219 Ethnologists, 14 Ferguson, R. B., 346n, 371n
overview of, 204 Ethnology Fieldwork
reciprocity and, 204-207 cross-cultural comparisons and, 22 cultural studies and, 46-50
redistribution and, 209-211 explanation of, 14-15 ethnographic, 16-20, 27
wealth and, 211-215 fieldwork and, 16-20 function of, 27
Divination, 404 problems related to, 21-22 political unrest and, 21
Division of labor. See also Labor research in, 21 scientific approach and, 26
age, 199-200 Ethnomusicology, 426-427 Fire, 82-83
sexual, 196-198 Ethnoscientists, 166 Fiske, S. J., 39n, llOn, 280n, 403n, 418n
Divorce Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 364n Fission, 300
overview of, 253-254 Eve hypothesis, 86 Flea markets, 218-219
rate of, 242, 243 Evolution Fleming, Sir Alexander, 448-449
in United States, 254 convergent, 163 Folklore, 418
Dobuans, 145, 148 parallel, 163 Folklorisrics, 418
Double descent, 297 through adaptation, 60-61 Food. See also Meat eating
Dowry, 252 trends in cultural, 383 distribution of, 503-504
Dowson, T. A., 137n, 151n, 438n Evolutionary adaptation learned behavior associated with, 42-43
Draper, P., 137n elements of, 162-163 Food foraging
Dundes, Alan, 148 explanation of, 161-162 as adaptation, 157
Dvorak, August, 450-451 The Evolution o f Culture (White), 44 background of, 166-167
Exogamy hominines and, 79, 80
Ebonics explanation of, 237-238 Food-foraging societies
controversy surrounding, 115-117 Trobriand Islanders and, 46-47 band organization in, 345
explanation of, 114-115 Extended families characteristics of, 27-29, 169-170
schools and, 117-118 explanation of, 271-272 child-rearing practices in, 137-138, 142
Economic anthropology, 194-196 problems of, 277-278 cultural adaptations and material
Economic cooperation, 266-268 Extinction, 454 technology in, 172-173
 INDEX 1-4

egalitarianism and, 173-174 in Rwanda, 334-336 Healing, 393-394

food sharing among, 172 Germans, 146 Heaven’s Gate cult, 407
gender and, 38, 170-172, 199 Gesture-call system Hebrews, ancient, 386
modern, 167-168 explanation of, 101 Hedges, R.E.M., 86n
personality characteristics among, 137-138 kinesics and, 102-104 Heilbroner, R. L., 194n
religion in, 384-385 paralanguage and, 105-106 Henry, Jules, 21 In, 243n, 482, 487n
residence patterns in, 274 Gibbs, J. L., Jr., 320n, 352n, 355n, 369n Herodotus the Greek, 6
role of camp in, 172 Gildino Jesus dos Santos, 471 Herskovits, M., 200n
tool use in, 202-203 Global 2000, 483 Hiawatha (Longfellow), 452
warfare and, 370, 371 Global warming, 505 Hinton, Leanne, 115
Food-producing societies Glottochronology, 107 Historical linguistics, 106-107
background of, 174 Gluckman, Max, 465 HIV. See AIDS/HIV
characteristics of, 174-176, 180 Gluskabe, 131, 390 Hobbes, Thomas, 167
nonindustrial cities and, 183, 185-188 Goddard, V., 199n Hoebel, E. Adamson, 162n, 351n, 365,
pastoralism and, 180-183 Gods/goddesses, 286-287 465n
warfare among, 370-371 Goldschmidt, Walter, 54 Holden, C., 483n
Food sharing Gonzales, Antonio, 323 Holistic perspective, 15
among chimpanzees, 80 Goodall, Jane, 65, 66 Hominines
in food-foraging societies, 172, 174 Goodenough, W. H., 83n, 233n, 239n development of, 74-77
Football, 148n Goody, J., 261n explanation of, 74
Forbes, J. D., 500n Gordon, Robert J., 15, 54n, 105n, 137n, meat eating and, 77-80
Forbes, Steve, 210 184n, 199n, 237, 241n, 354n, 370, Hominoid, 69
Forcible change. See also Change 458n, 500n Homo, 59, 76
acculturation as, 454-456 Gorer, Geoffrey, 146 Homo erectus, 81-84, 121
directed change as, 458, 460-461 Gornick, V., 149n Homo habilis, 77-81, 120
genocide as, 456-457 Gould, Stephen Jay, 6n, 24n, 84, 408n, Homo sapiens. See also Humans
reactions to, 461-464 453n archaic, 84-86
Forde, C. D., 272n, 297n Government. See Political organization study of, 6
Forensic anthropology, 9-10 Graburn, N.H.H., 271n in Upper Paleolithic, 87-90
Form classes, 101 Grammar, 101 Homosexuality. See also Gays; Lesbians
Fossey, Dian, 66 Great Plains Indians AIDS and, 231
Foucault, Michel, 488 culture area of, 163-165 Native Americans and, 148, 172
Fox, Robin, 29, 55n, 269n gender roles and, 171-172 same-sex marriage and, 234, 252-253
Frame substitution, 100 normal and abnormal behavior among, Hopi Indians
Franco, Francisco, 430 148 divorce among, 253, 254
Frazer, Sir James George, 399-400 Green, Edward C., 403 extended families among, 272
Freeman, L. G., 83n Griffin, B , 137n matrilineal descent and, 295-297
Free morphemes, 100 Group marriage, 242 social stratification among, 332
Freud, Sigmund, 235 Group membership, 108 totems used by, 302-303
Frye, Marilyn, 102-103 Group personality Horticulture
Furlow, R. H., 32n Japanese and, 146-148 explanation of, 158, 175
Furst, P. T., 151n modal personality and, 143-145 function of, 157
national character and, 145-146 slash-and-burn, 159, 176-180, 371, 372
Galdikas, Biruce, 66 overview of, 142-143 tool use for, 203
Garbage Project (University of Arizona), Groups Hostetler, J., 38n
13, 47 by age, 318-321 Households
Gardner, Allen, 119 association of music with, 429 as cooperative unit, 200
Gardner, Beatrice, 119 by class. See Social stratification explanation of, 268-269
Gates, FI., 466n, 509n by common interests, 321-324 families vs., 259
Gays by gender, 316-318 Housework, 22
marriage between, 234 Guatemala Hsiaotung, F., 290n
same-sex marriage and, 234, 252-253 cultural pluralism in, 495-497 Hsu, Francis L. K., 131, 146
Geertz, C., 12n historical background of, 494-495 Human ancestors
Gell, A., 416n Gusii people, 253 archaic homo sapiens and, 84-86
Gender. See also Females; Males first hominines and, 74-77
explanation of, 37 Hades, 286 homo erectus and, 81-86
food foraging and, 170-172 Hadza people homo habilis and, 77-81
grouping by, 316-318 division of labor and, 199 overview of, 73-74
political leadership and, 356-358 food foraging and, 168 toolmaking and meat eating by, 78-81
Gender differences. See also Females; Males Haeri, N., 329n Upper Paleolithic peoples and, 87-90
body language and, 102 Hafkin, N., 356n Human body
child-rearing practices and, 137 Hairi, 373 breast implantation and, 488-490
language and, 114 reforestation in, 459 decoration of, 414
origin of, 37-38 Hale-Bopp comet, 409 images of, 488
Gender identity. See also Females; Males Hall, Edward, 221 Humanities, 29-30
cultural differences and, 148-149 Hall, Mildred, 221 Human Relations Area File (HRAF), 23,
role models and, 149 Hallowell, A. I., 151-152 28
Gender stratification, 331-332 Hardenbergh, Firmon, 87 Humans
Generalized reciprocity, 205-206 Haviland, W. A., 29n, 32n, 54n, 105n, basic needs of, 158
Generational system, 308 163n, 184n, 199n, 237n, 241n, 272n, classification of, 59, 60
Genital mutilation, 396-397 332n, 354n, 419, 493n, 500n cultural future of, 482-502
Genocide Hawaiian system, 308 evolution of, 59
overview of, 456-457 Hawkes, K., 168n, 199n Hunger, 502-504, 510
 1-5 INDEX

Hunting Jivaro Indians, 470-471 LaBarre, Wesron, 146

archaic Homo sapiens and, 85-86 Johnson, A., 212n Labor
homo erectus and, 83 Johnson, D., 24ln age division of, 199-200
Huntington, G., 38n Jolly, Allison, 96 cooperation in, 200
Hypotheses Jones, Gideon, 323 craft specialization and, 201
culture bound, 25, 26 Jones, N. G., 199n sexual division of, 196-198
explanation of, 5, 24 Jorgensen, J. G., 21 In Lamarck, Jean Baptiste, 24
framing broad, 27 Joyce, C., 10 Land, 201-202
Ju/’hoansi people (Bushmen) Language
Ibibio people, 401-402 band organization among, 345-346 explanation of, 95-97
Ibn Khaldun, 6 child rearing among, 127 gender and, 114
Iconic images, 435 cooperative work groups and, 200 gesture-call sysrem and, 101-106
Igbo people, 356-357 division of labor and, 198, 199 grammar and syntax of, 100-101
Ikwe Marketing Collective, 499 food foraging among, 137, 138, 167, kinship rerms and, 113-114
Imagination, 22 169, 171, 172 morphology of, 100
Imitative magic, 400 food sharing by, 172 orangutan use of sign, 70-73
Inbreeding, 235-236 genocide against, 456-458 origins of, 95, 118-121
Inca empire, 209-210 land and, 202 phonology of, 99-100
Incest material goods of, 173 social dialects and, 114-11 8
exogamy and, 237-238 music of, 429 spoken vs. gestural, 120-121
internalized controls and, 359 rock art and, 432 thought and, 111-113
taboos regarding, 235-237 shamanism and, 393-394 types of, 97-98
Incorporation, 395 The Last Supper, 434, 435
Independence training Kapauku people Latah, 152
combined with dependence training, 142 culture of, 44-45 Laws
explanation of, 141 law among, 366 definitions for, 364-365
India political organization among, 348-349 to discourage crime, 367-369
arranged marriage in, 244-249 polygyny among, 240 explanation of, 360
social stratification in, 326-327, 332, 336 Kaprow, Miriam Lee, 21 function of, 365-366
Indigenous peoples. See also Cultural Karen people, 484 Leach, Sir Edmund, 21
change; Modernization; specific groups Keesing, R. VI., 237n Leadership
advocacy for, 499 Kendall, Lauren, 399 among Navajos, 347
violence againsr, 454-456, 471-475, Kenyatta, Jomo, 200n gender and political, 356-358
495-497 Kcphart, Ron, 115n, 117 in tribes, 347
worldviews of, 508 Kihbutz, 236 League of the Iroquois, 372
Indo-European languages, 107, 108 Kindred Leakey, Louis, 66
Industrialization bilateral, 307 Leap, W L., 1 lOn
child labor and, 199-200 explanation of, 304-305 Leatherstocking Talcs (Cooper), 452
kindreds and, 305 Kinesics Leavitt, G. C., 236n
modernization resulting from, 467 cultural variations and, 103-104 LcClair, E. E., Jr., 204n
nuclear families and, 261, 263 explanation of, 102-103 Lee, Richard, 169n
Infant mortality, 279-280 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 115 Legends
Infants, 126-128 King Philip's War, 422 elemenrs of, 422-423
Informal economy, 218-219 Kinship explanation of, 421-422
Informants, 15 Crow system of, 309-311 Legitimacy, 373-374
Innovation, 447-451 Eskimo system of, 307-308 Legros, D., 166n
Integration, 44-46 explanation of, 306-307 Lehmann, C., 400n
Integrative mechanisms, 468 Hawaiian system of, 308 Leinhardt, G., 390n
Intelligence, 68 Iroquois system of, 308-309 Leonardo da Vinci, 434
International Indian Treaty Council, 323 language and terms for, 113-114 Leopards, 79
Inuits modernization and, 468 Lerner, R. N., 418n
abandonment of elderly by, 318 Omaha system of, 311 Lesbians
art of, 417 organization of, 349-350 marriage between, 234
nuclear family and, 269-270 Sudanese or descriptive system of, 311 samc-scx marriage and, 234, 252-253
social control among, 364 Kirsunetsuki, 153 Leveling mechanisms, 203-204
Iran, 375 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 36, 207n, 404 Levine, N. E., 242n, 277n
Irons, 'William, 229n Knauft, Bruce M., 353n, 370n Levirate, 242
Iroquois nations Koch, G., 433n Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 237, 238
clans of, 306 Kohler, G., 500n Lewin, R., 78n
gender grouping among, 316-317, 323 Kolata, Alan, 184 Lewis, I. M., 16n
leadership among, 356 Kolodday, A., 317n Lewis-Williams, [. D., 137n, 151n, 434n,
social stratification among, 332 Koro, 153 438n
warfare and, 372 Kota, 207 Lie detector test, 369
Iroquois system, 308-309 Korrack, C. E., 32n Lineage, 300
Kpelle people Linguistic anthropology, 14
Jackson, Jesse, 115 chiefdoms of, 352-353 Linguistic divergence, 107-108
Jacobs, Sue Ellen, 148n, 325, 326 trial by ordeal and, 369 Linguistic nationalism, 109, 111
Jain, R. K., 234n Kroeber, A. L., 36, 486n Linguistics
Japanese, 146-148 Kula ring, 208-209 descriptive, 101, 106
Jews Kuper, H., 355n explanation of, 98
ambilineal descent among New York Kurds, 456, 457 historical, 106-107
City, 297-299, 318 Kurumba, 207 reasons tor change in, 107-109
genocide against, 456, 457 Kwakiutl, 145 Linton, Ralph, 42, 451
 INDEX 1-6

Locke, John, 126 McVeigh, Timothy, 366 social function of, 430-431
Louis XIV, king of France, 344 Mead, Margaret, 136, 146 Mwindo epic, 422
Lowie, Robert, 206, 207, 451 Meat eating Myers, J. E., 400n
hominines and, 77-78 Myths
MacCormack, C. R, 396n toolmaking and, 78-81 explanation of, 390-391
MacNeil, R., 372n Mediation, 367 function of, 419-420
Magic. See also Witchcraft Medicine legends and, 422
contagious, 400 business and, 488-490 religion and, 406
imitative, 400 traditional beliefs vs. modern, 403 similarities in, 420-421
religion and, 398-400 Mekranoti Kayapo Indians, 176-179
Mair, L, 402n Melanesians Nadar, Laura, 30, 337, 369n, 487, 488
Mait, Lucy, 402 animatism and, 390-391 Nance, C. R., 31 n
Makhubu, Lydia, 403 rituals of, 397 Nanda, S., 244n
Malaria, 160 Melemchi, 149-150 Nandi people, 252-253
Male descent. See Patrilineal descent Mellars, P., 86n Nash, Philleo, 20
Males. See also Gender; Gender differences; Men. See Males Naskapi people, 173
Gender identity Menchu, Rigoberta, 496 Natadecha-Sponsal, P., 147n
common-interest associations for, 322- Mende people, 396, 406 National character
324 Mental disorders group personality and, 145-146
division of labor and, 196-198 changing views of, 488 Japanese and, 146-148
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 46-50, 208, 364n, cultural differences in dealing with, 150 National Endowment for the Humanities,
397n culture-bound, 152-153 29
Maliseets, 301 Mer^al Tupa-y, 474 National Endowment for the Arts, 414
Mao Tse-tung, 147 Mesghinua, H. M., 201n Nationalism, 109
Marett, R. R., 390 Mesopotamia, 51 National Science Foundation, 29
Market exchange Mexico, 508 Nations, 354-355
background of, 215-216 Miami Community Mental Health Program, Native American Languages Act, 110
explanation of, 215-216 150 Native Americans. See also specific groups
flea markets and, 218-219 Middleton, J., 297n cultural diffusion and, 452
money and, 217-218 Mi’kmaqs, 301, 302 federal recognition of, 301-302
in nonindustrial societies, 193 Miles, H.L.W., 69n, 120n gender identity and, 42, 148
Marriage. See also Mating; Sexual relations Miller, Henry, 145 patterns of affect and, 132-136
arranged, 244-249 Mills, C. Wright, 265 as subcultures, 39, 40
choice of spouse and, 243-244 Mire, Soraya, 397 two-spirit institution of, 148
commitment to, 147-148 Mitchell, W. E., 298n, 358n use of native language of, 109-110
between cousins, 237, 249-250 Mobility, 330-331 Natural selection, 60-61
economic exchange and, 250-252 Modal personality Navajo Indians
explanation of, 227, 233-234 data on, 144-145 language of, 121
family and, 239 explanation of, 143-144, 148 leadership among, 347
forms of, 239-242 Modernization witchcraft among, 402, 404
group, 242 explanation of, 445, 467 Nayar people
levirate and sororate custom and, 241, process of, 467-468 consanguine families among, 238, 239,
242 realities surrounding, 475-476 269
mating vs., 227, 238-239 resistance to, 492-493 household groups among, 235
same-sex, 234, 252-253 Shuar Indians and, 470-471 sexual activity among, 233-234
serial monogamy and, 242-243 Skolt Lapps and, 468-470 Nazis, 456
sexual access and, 232-234 in underdeveloped world, 475 Neanderthals, 84-86, 89, 121
Marsella, J., 493n Moholy-Nagy, H., 332n Negative reciprocity, 207
Marshall, M., 16n Moiety, 303 Negotiation, 367
Martin, Emily, 231, 232n Monaghan, Leila, 115 Neolocal residence, 275
Mason, J. A., 209n Money, 217 Nesbitt, L. M., 201
Mating, 227, 238-239 Monogamy. See also Marriage New England, 446
Matriarchy, 420-421 explanation of, 238-240 Nielsen-March, C., 86n
Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, 249-250 serial, 242-243 Nietschmann, B., 465n
Matrilineal descent Monroe, James, 500 Nightmare witches, 402
explanation of, 289, 294-295 Montagnais people, 173 Nomadism, 157
Hopi Indians and, 295-297 Moran, B. K., 149n Nonindustrial cities
Matriloca) residence, 274 Morey, Marline Sanipass, 301 Aztec, 185-188
May, Elaine, 264 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 309 intensive agriculture and, 183, 185
Maya people Mormonism, 409, 463 modern, 188-189
age division of labor among, 199 Morphemes, 100 Nonindustrial societies
during Classic period, 25-26 Motif, 423 child labor in, 199
cooperative labor among, 200 Mousterian tools, 86 economies of, 193
cultural diffusion and, 451 Multinational corporations, 485-488, land control in, 202
extended families among, 217, 272, 274 490-492 Nonverbal communication. See Kinesics
gender stratification among, 331-332 Mundurucu people, 268, 317 Normal personality, 148-154
Maybury-Lewis, David, 54, 498 Murdock, George Peter, 23, 297n Northern Ute Tribe, 109-110
Mbuti people Murray, Gerald F., 459n Nuclear families
food foraging among, 167, 168, 174 Music explanation of, 239, 269-271
residence patterns among, 274 culture and, 426-427 industrialization and, 261
McCarthy, Joseph, 430 explanation of, 427-429 overview of, 260
McFarlane, Len, 87 as identifier, 429-430 problems of, 278-280, 283
McKenna, J. J., 1In Native American, 452 in United States, 262-265
1-7 INDEX

Nuer people, 349-350 Phonology Proto-Indo-European, 107, 108

Nyanga people, 422 explanation of, 99-100 Puerto Ricans, 150, 494
group differences and, 108-109 Purdum, Elizabeth D., 54
Oakland School Board (California), 115— Phratry, 303 Putnam, Fredric Ward, 25
118 Physical anthropology, 8-10
O’Barr, W. M., 105n Pibloktoq, 153 Queen Elizabeth II, 398
Obier, R. S., 252n Pictorial arts Questionnaire surveys, 26-27
O’Connell, J. E, 168n, 199n overview of, 431-432 QWERTY keyboard, 449-450
Oedipus complex, 235 Southern African rock art and, 432-440
Offiong, D., 400n Pitt, D., 490 Race, 42
Oklahoma City bombing, 366 Planner, Stuart, 167n, 212n, 216 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 45, 302n, 359
Okonjo, K., 356n Pledge of Allegiance, 375 Radovcic, J., 86n
Oldowan tools, 78, 80. See also Tools Pluralistic societies, 40-41 Rajasthan, 330-331
Omaha system, 311 Podolefsky, A., 459n Ramphele, Mamphela, 8
O’Mahoney, K., 201n Poetry Rappaport, Roy A., 29, 158n
Open-class societies, 331 Bedouins and, 424-425 Rathje, William, 14n
Orangutans drama and, 425-426 Rebellion
intellectual abilities of, 69-73 Poinar, H. N., 86n consequences of, 465-466
language experiments with, 70-73, 119— Pokotylo, David, 87 explanation of, 464-465
120 Polanyi, Karl, 204 precipitators of, 465
Organization. See Common-interest Political organization Reciprocity
associations; Political organization age-grade, 350-351 balanced, 206-207
Ortiz, Alfonso, 295n, 382 association, 351 explanation of, 204-205
band, 344-346 generalized, 205-206
Pàabo, S., 86n centralized, 351-355 negative, 207
Paleolithic, 78 explanation of, 343, 344 in nonindustrial societies, 193
Pantheons, 386 external affairs and, 370-373 Redistribution
Papago people, 176 externalized controls in, 359-364 explanation of, 209-211
Papua, New Guinea, 212-215 internalized controls in, 358-359 in nonindustrial societies, 193
Parades, J. Anthony, 54 kinship, 349-350 Reina, R. E., 451n
Paralanguage, 105-106 leadership and gender in, 356-359 Reischauer, Edwin, 32
Parallel evolution, 163 legitimacy issues and, 373-374 Reiter, R., 137n
Parker, Richard, 231, 232n modernization and, 468 Religion
Parkinson’s disease, 505 religion and politics and, 374-375 anthropological approach to, 384-385
Participant observation, 14, 15 social control through law in, 364-369 cultural change and, 407-409
Pastner, S., 493n tribal, 346-349 explanation of, 381, 384
Pastoralism, 157 uncentralized, 344-351 functions of, 381, 382, 404-406
of Bakhtiari, 181-183 Pollution modernization and, 468
explanation of, 180-181 control of, 506-508 overview of, 382-384
Pataxo Indians, 471 in developing world, 505-506 relationship between politics and, 374-
Paternity, 234 overview of, 504-505 375
Patrilateral parallel-cousin marriage, 249 Polyandrous families science and, 382-384
Patrilineal descent explanation of, 239 Religious fundamentalism
in China, 290-294 problems of, 276-277 resurgence in, 383
explanation of, 289, 290 Polyandry, 241-242 violence and, 405
Patrilocal residence, 272-274 Polygraph test, 369 Religious practice
Patterns of affect, 131 Polygynous families, 239 food use and, 42-43
Patterns o f Culture (Benedict), 145 Polygyny overview of, 385
Pelto, P. J., 468n economic basis of, 241 religious specialists and, 391-395
Penicillin, 448 explanation of, 240 rituals and ceremonies of, 395-398
Penobscot Indians in United States, 240-241 supernatural beings and powers and,
behavioral environment of, 130-131, Polytheism, 386 386-391, 398-404
143, 145 Pope, G., 82n Replacement reproduction, 508
myths of, 406 Population growth Residence
supernatural beliefs of, 387, 388, 390 control of, 508-510 ambilocal, 274
Pentatonic scales, 427, 428 world hunger and, 502-503 avunculocal, 275-276
Pequot Indians, 456, 457 Poseidon, 286 matrilocal, 274
Perception, 128-129 Pospisil, Leopold, 44, 348-349, 366n neolocal, 275
Personality Potlatches, 211, 212 patrilocal, 272-274
child-rearing practices and, 139, 143. See Pottery vessels, 447-448 Resources
also Child-rearing practices Poverty, 281, 282 labor as, 196-201
combined dependence/independence Powell, John Wesley, 25 land as, 201-202
training and, 142 Power, M. W., 29n, 163n, 419n leveling mechanisms and, 203-204
culture and, 125 Preindustrial cities, 188-189 technology as, 202-203
dependence training and, 138-141 Priests/priestesses, 391 Revitalization movements
development of, 136-138 Primary innovation, 447, 448 explanation of, 407-409
explanation of, 136 Primate Order, 60 as reaction to forcible change, 462-464
group, 142-148. See also Group Primates. See also specific primates Revolution
personality adaptation in, 61-64 consequences of, 465-466
independence training and, 141-142 cultural behavior among, 43 explanation of, 464-465
normal and abnormal, 148-154 intellectual abilities of, 68-73 precipitators of, 465
Philistines, 386 sexual activity among, 229, 232 Revolutionary, 464
Phonemes, 99-100 Prins, Harald, 301, 302 Reynolds, V, 43n
 INDEX 1-8

Rhythms, 428 AIDS and, 230-232 Somali people, 349

Rice, P. C, 32n, 86n among chimpanzees, 65 Sororate, 242
Rites of intensification among Trobriand Islanders, 228-229 South Africa
education and, 406 control of, 229-230, 232 apartheid in, 500-502
explanation of, 397-398 endogamy and exogamy and, 237-238 social stratification in, 327, 328, 333, 334
Rites of passage incest taboos and, 235-237 Space, 39
explanation of, 395-397 societies and, 53 Specialization, 201
of Tesa religion, 382 Shamanism Speck, E G., 130n
Ritual cannibalism, 298, 397 function of, 391-393 Spiritists, 150
Rituals importance, 394-395 Spirits, ancestral, 387-388
food to celebrate, 42-43 rock art and, 437-439 Spouse choice, 243-244
magic and, 398-400 Shapiro, H., 390n Spuhler, J. N., 229n
rites of intensification and, 397-398 Sharer, R. J., 88n Stacey, J., 242n, 261n, 281
rites of passage and, 382, 395-397 Shaw, Dennis, 31-32 Standard of living, 22
Robertson, Pat, 463 Sheets, Payson D., 88 Stannard, D. E., 446n
Robinson, George Augustus, 456 Sherente people, 332 States
Rock art Shorto, R., 383n explanation of, 353-354
political power and, 438-439 Shoshone Indians, 164, 169 nations vs., 354-355
Southern African, 432-434 Shostak, M., 393n Stereoscopic color vision, 63
trance and, 434-437 Shuar Indians, 470-471 Stevenson, Matilda Coxe, 7
Role differentiation, 328 Sickle-cell anemia, 159, 160 Steward, Julian H., 163n, 165
Roman Catholic Church, 260-261 Signals, 96 Stewart, D., 368n
Rorschach test, 144 Silent trade, 207-208 Stiles, D., 168n
Rosa, A. E, 112n Silk, J. B., 242n, 277n Stokoe, W. C., 96n, 120n
Rosaldo, M. Z., 254n, 261n, 271n Singer, P., 69n, 120n Stoler, M., 421n
Roscoe, Paul, 27 Single-parent families. See Female-headed Stratified society, 325
Roscoe, Will, 134-135 households Straughan, B., 184n
Rumbaugh, Duane, 69 Skeleton, 63-64 Structural differentiation, 467-468
Rural Development (Chambers), 26 Skepticism, 22-23 Structural-functionalist school, 45
Russian Federation, 41 Skolt Lapps, 468-470 Structural violence
Rwanda, 334-336 Slash-and-burn horticulture culture of discontent as, 510-511
explanation of, 159, 176 explanation of, 502
Sahlins, Marshall, 349, 349n Mekranoti Kayapo Indians and, pollution as, 504-508
Salem witch trials, 400 176-179 population control as, 508-510
San, 137 warfare and, 371, 372 world hunger as, 502-504
Sanctions Small, M. R, 170n Subcultures
among Bedouins, 361-362 Snow, Clyde C., 9, 10 Amish people as, 38-40
explanation of, 359 Snowmobiles, 469-470 development of, 40
types of, 359-360 Social class explanation of, 38
Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 23, I97n, 299, explanation of, 326 Sudanese system, 311
421n function of, 336 Supernatural beings
Sandinista Revolution, 464 manifestation of, 328-330 ancestral spirits as, 387-388
Sangree, W H , 320n role differentiation and, 328 animism and, 388
Sapir, Edward, 100, 111 Social control explanation of, 386
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 111-112 in Bedouin society, 360-362 gods and goddesses as, 386-387
Schizophrenia explanation of, 358-359 Supernatural beliefs, 390-391
explanation of, 152-153 externalized, 359-360 Swazi people
Windigo and, 153-154 internalized, 358-359 government of, 355
Schlegel, A., 297n laws as, 364-369 modern medicine vs. traditional beliefs
Schneider, H. K., 204n witchcraft and, 363-364 in, 403
Schurtz, Heinrich, 322-323 Social density, 169 Swidden farming, 176. See also Slash-and-
Science Social-impact assessment, 325-326 burn horticulture
anthropology and, 22-24 Social stratification Switzerland, 494, 498
religion and, 382-384 class and caste, 326-330 Sykes, B., 86n
Scientific approach, 24-29 development of, 332-334, 336-337 Symbolic indicators, 329
Scottish bagpipes, 429-430 explanation of, 315, 324-325 Symbols, 43, 96
Secondary innovation, 447 function of, 336-337 Syncretism, 461
Seeger, Pete, 430, 431 gender, 331-332 Syntax, 100
Segmentary lineage system, 349-350 mobility and, 330-331
Selassie, Tekle Haile, 461 Social structure, 36 Tales, 423-424
Self-awareness Social Structure (Murdock), 23 Tasmanians, 456
development of, 126-129 Societies Technology
environment and, 129-130 closed-class, 331 explanation of, 202
explanation of, 126 culture and, 36-37, 53 modernization and, 467, 468
Self-determination movements, 493 egalitarian, 325 overview of, 202-203
Seligman, C. G., 16 explanation of, 36 Tegreans, 201
Sense organs, 62-63 open-class, 331 Tenochtitlan, 185-188
Separation, 395 pluralistic, 40-41 Tewa Indians, 382
Serial monogamy, 242-243 sexually segregated, 198 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), 144,
Sexual differences, 132-136 stratified, 325 145
Sexually transmitted diseases, 230-232 Sociolinguistics, 114 Theories, 24
Sexual relations. See also Marriage; Mating Sociologists, 10-11 Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, 43, 43n
access rules and, 232-235 Solomon Islands, 406 Thorne, B., 254n, 261n
1-9 INDEX

Thornhill, Nancy, 236-237 Unilineal descent, 289-290 Warner, W. l.loyd, 20, 21

Thurow, T. C., I94n United States Wasson, Christina, 220
Tibet, 242 agriculture and, 503, 504 Wattenberg, B. J., 508n
Ticuna Indians, 474 arts in, 414 Wealth
Tiffany, S., 357n bilingualism and, 111 distribution of, 211-212, 215
Tiger, Jerome, 140 cultural control in, 373-374 redistribution of, 210-211
Tikal, 26 cultural pluralism in, 494 Weiner, Annette B., 194n, 195, 208n, 229
Tiriki people, 320-321 dispute resolution in, 368-369 Weismann, August, 24
Tiv people, 217 divorce in, 254 Weitzman, L. J., 243n
Tiwanaku, 184 health problems in, 505 Western Abenaki people, 28
Tobacco, 452 multinational corporations and, 486 We’wha, 134
Toilet craining, 146 music and civil rights and peace Wheels, 453
Tonality, 427 movements in, 430 Whelehan, P., 235n
Tools/toolmaking nuclear families in, 262-265 White, D. R., 24In
archiac Homo sapiens and, 86 polygyny in, 240-241 White, J. J., 32n
chimpanzee and, 67 religions and denominations in, 383 White, Leslie A., 43, 44
hominines and, 77-78 retreat from modernity in, 493 Whitehead, N. L., 346n, 371 n
homo erectus and, 81-82, 84 revitalization movements in, 463 White House Conference on Families
meat earing and, 77-78, 80-81 social stratification in, 327, 328, 333—334 (1980), 260
for modern surgeons, 88 state government and, 355 Whiting, Beatrice, 139, 142, 143n
Mousterian, 86 view of elderly in, 318-319 Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 111
Upper Paleolithic, 88-89 Upper Paleolithic peoples, 87-90 Wicca. See Witchcraft
Tory Islanders, 269 Urban IT, pope, 372 Wilcox, S. E., 96n, 120n
Totemism, 302 Urbanism, 157 Williams, A. M., 230, 232n
Trade Urbanization. See also Nonindustrial cities Williams, Jody, 359
explanation of, 207 cultural evolution and, 183, 185 Williamson, Rhonda Kay, 131, 132
Kula ring and, 208-209 modernization and, 467 Willigan, J. V., I50n
silent, 207-208 Ury, William L., 368 Wilson, R., 243n
Tradition, 468 Ute language, 109-110 Windigo, 153-154
Träger, G. L., 99n Witchcraft
Trance Van Allen, Judith, 357 control through, 363-364
Bushmen and, 434-435 Van Den Bergbe, Pierre, 346n, 355n, 456n, explanation of, 400
visual images during, 435-437 465, 497n, 498 functions of, 402-404
Transhumance, 183 Van Gennep, Arnold, 395 Ibibio, 401-402
Transition, 395 Van Willigen, J., 326n religion and, 398-400
Tribes Vayda, A. P., 158n in Salem, 400
explanation of, 346-347 Veblen, Thorstein, 21 1 Wolf, E., 139n
Kapuku people and, 348-349 Verbal arts Wolf, M., 278n, 292n
leadership in, 347 legend and, 421-423 Wolfe, A. W., 49In
Trobriand Islanders miscellaneous, 424-426 Wolf Lie Down, 366
economy of, 194-196 myth and, 419-421 Wolpoff, M., 75n
exogamy and, 46 overview of, 418-419 Womack, M., 149n
introduction of cricket to, 461-462 tale and, 423-424 Women. See Females
marriage among, 237, 250 Verbal evaluation, 328 Woodward, Louise, 280
residence patterns among, 276 Violence. See also Crime Woolfson, Peter, 112
role of women and, 48-50 against native populations, 454-456, World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 493
sexual activity among, 228-229, 461- 471-475, 495-497 World Ethnographic Sample (Murdock), 23
462 religious fundamentalism and, 405 World Health Organization (WHO), 150, 230
specialization and, 201 structural, 504-512. See also Structural Worldviews, 371-372
Trukese study, 16-20 violence Wright, R. M., 47in
Truzzi, M., 21 In Vocal characterizes, 106 Wulff, R. M., 39n, llOn, 280n, 403n, 418n
Tscmbaga people, 158-159 Vocalizations, 106
Tunisia, 508 Vocal qualifiers, 106 Yahgan people, 253
Turkana people, 240 Vocal segregates, 106 Yalom, M., 254n, 261n
Turkmen Weaving Project, 499 Vogelman, Thomas C., 423n Yanagisako, S., 254n, 261n, 271n
Turnbull, Colin M., 141n, 319n, 402n Vogt, E. Z., 199n, 272n “Yankee City" (Warner), 20
Turner, T, 455 Voice qualities, 105n Yanomami people
Tutankhamen, 414-415 in Brazil and Venezuela, 354
Tutchone, 166 Wallace, Anthony F. C., 384, 408 violence against, 454-455, 474
Two-spirit institution, 148 Wallace, E., 162n
Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett, 23, 36, 237, 389 Wape people Zapatistas, 464, 497
belief in ancestral spirits of, 387 Zeus, 286
Ugandan people, 332 maintenance of order among, 358 Zinn, Howard, 488
Unarias Academy of Science, 407 War, 370-373 Zuni Indians, 145, 485-486
Unilateral descent. See Unilineal descent Warner, D., 176n Zut, J., 495n
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 LITERARY CREDITS
Original Study Feature: excerpt from “Two tales from the
Trukese taproom” by Mac Marshall from The H um bled
A nthropologist (1990) by Philip R. De Vita (Ed.), pp 12 -1 7 .
Copyright © Mac Marshall.
Excerpt from Rural D evelopm ent: Putting the Last First,
p. 51, by Robert Chambers. Copyright © 1983. Published by
Addison Wesley Longman, Essex, England.
Excerpt from interview with Laura Nader (December 1981)
© Coast Telecourses, Inc.
Excerpt from “A Light at the End of the Tunnel: Anthropo­
logical Contributions Towards Global Competence” by Den­
nis G. Shaw in A nthropology Newsletter, November, 1984.
Reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological
Association from American A nthropologist 58, 1956. Not for
further reproduction.
Original Study Feature: excerpt from “The Importance of
Trobriander Women” from The Trobrianders o f Papua N ew
Guinea by Annette Weiner, copyright © 1988 by Holt, Rine­
hart and Winston, Inc., reprinted by permission of the pub­
lisher.
Original Study Feature: excerpt form “Language and the
Orangutan: The Old ‘Person’ of the Forest” by H.L.W. Miles
in The G reat Ape Project, P. Cavalieri and P. Singer (Eds.),
pp. 4 5 -5 0 . Copyright © 1993 by Peter Singer and Paulo Cav­
alieri. Reprinted with permission by St. Martin’s Press, Inc.
Table 4.1 entitled “Phonetic Vowel Symbols (Sapir System)”
from Trager, George L., Language and Languages, p. 304.
Copyright © 1972 by George L. Trager. Reprinted by permis­
sion of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Excerpt from “Sexism” in The Politics o f Reality by Marilyn
Frye (Ed.), copyright © 1983 by Marilyn Frye. Published by
The Crossing Press: Freedom, CA.
Original Study Feature: “The Ebonics Controversy: Can’t teach
a dog to be a cat? The dialogue on Ebonics” by L. Monaghan,
L. Hinton, & R. Kephart. Reprinted by permission of the
American Anthropological Association from A nthropology
N ewsletter 38:3, March 1997. Not for further reproduction.
Original Study Feature: “The Blessed Curse: Spirituality and
sexual difference as viewed by Euro-American and Native
American cultures,” by Rhonda K. Williamson from The Col­
lege N ews, 17(4). Reprinted by permission of the author.
Excerpt from “Being and Doing: A Cross-Cultural Examina­
tion of the Socialization of Males and Females” by Nancy
Chodorow in "Women in Sexist Society, V. Gormick and B. K.
Moran (eds.), p. 193. Copyright © 1971 by Basic Books, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a division of Harper­
Collins Publishers, Inc.
Original Study Feature: excerpt adapted from Amazon Jo u r­
ney, pp. 1 0 5 -1 1 2 , by D. Weiner, copyright © 1990. Adapted
by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
“Silent Trade,” excerpt from A Reader in General Anthropol­
ogy by Carleton S. Coon, copyright © 1948 by Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Inc., and renewed 1975 by Carleton S. Coon,
reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Original Study Feature: excerpt from “Horticulturists: Eco­
nomic Behavior in Tribes” by A. Johnson, reprinted from
E conom ic A nthropology edited by Stuart Palmer with the per­
mission of the publishers, Stanford University Press. Copyright
© 1989 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford
Junior University.
Original Study Feature: “Arranging a Marriage in India” by
Serena Nanda from The N aked Anthropologist, P. R. DeVita
(ed.), pp. 139 -1 4 3 . Reprinted by permission of the author.
Original Study Feature: excerpt from Brave New Families by
Judith Stacey, pp. 6 -1 1 . Copyright © 1990 by Judith Stacey.
Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a division of Harper­
Collins Publishers, Inc.
Original Study Feature: excerpt reprinted from Women and the
Family in Rural Taiwan by Margery Wolf, with the permission
of the publishers, Stanford University Press. Copyright © 1972
by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior Uni­
versity.
Original Study Feature: excerpt from “Genocide in Rwanda”
by A. deWaal in Anthropology Today, 10(3), pp. 1 -2 , June,
1994. Copyright © 1994 by the Royal Anthropological Insti­
tute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Original Study Feature: excerpt from Veiled Sentiment: Honor
and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, by Lila Abu-Lughod. Copy­
right © 1986 by the Regents of the University of California,
the University of California Press.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Original Study Fea­
ture: “Healing Among the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari,” excerpt
from Nisa: The Life and Words o f a IKlung Woman by Mar­
jorie Shostak, pp. 2 9 1 -2 9 3 , Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni­
versity Press. Copyright © 1981 by Marjorie Shostak.
Original Study Feature: excerpt adapted from “Myths, Muse­
ums, and South African Rock Art” by T.A. Dawson and
J.D . Lewis-Williams from South African Historical Journal,
pp. 5 2 -5 6 (November, 1993).
Original Study Feature: “Violence on Indian Day in Brazil
1997: Symbol of the past and future” by R.M. Wright from
Cultural Survival Quarterly, 21 (2), 4 7 -4 9 . Reprinted cour­
tesy of Cultural Survival, Inc. www.cs.org.
Original Study Feature: “Standardizing the Body: The Ques­
tion of Choice” adapted from “Controlling processes: Tracing
the Dynamics of Power” by L. Nader from Current Anthro­
pology, 3 8 -5 , (December 1997), pp. 715-717. Published
by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1997 by the
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All
rights reserved.

CASE STUDIES IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
S E R IE S E D IT O R S : G E O R G E A N D L O U IS E S P IN D L E R
AFRICA
BEATTIE / BUNYORO: AN AFRICAN KINGDOM
GOLDSCHMIDT / THE SEBEI: A STUDY IN
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L S I / THE DOBE JU/ ’HOANSI, 2/e
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CHANCE / CHINAS URBAN VILLAGERS, 2/e
DENTAN / THE SEMAI: A NONVIOLENT PEOPLE OF
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PRINS / THE MI’KMAQ
TRIGGER / THE HURON, 2/e
VIGIL / PERSONAS MEXICANAS
WILLIAMS / THE HUMAN DILEMMA: A DECADE
LATER IN BELMAR, 2/e
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BREWIS / LIVES ON THE LINE: WOMEN AND
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NOW, 2/e ' '..'■
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