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20 Kenneth M. Kensinger ACT.4 AMERICANA Vol. 5, No 1, 1997 21

References

Goffman, Erving
-1986 (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay 011 the Organization of Experience.
Boston: No11heastem University Press.
Goodcnough, Envin R.
INVENTING NATURE: Family, Sex and Gender in the
-1965, The Psychology of Religious Experiences. New York: Basic Books. Xang6 Cult of Recife, Brazil 1
Goodenough, Ward H.
-1989, "Cultural Anthropology: Science and Humanity," Crosscurrents 3:78-82.
Harner, Michael J., Ed.
-1973, Hallucinogens and Sha111anis111. New York: Oxford University Press
By Rita Laur{l Segato
Harris, Marvin
-1964, The Nature o/Cultural Things. New York: Random Hou�e.
Kensinger, Kenneth M. Introduction
-1994, "Toe Body Knows: Cashinahua Perspectives on Knowledge," Acta Americana Every human society or age has, manifestly, a nucleus of preoccupations or
Vol. 2, No 2:7-14. themes around which significant parts of their symbolic systems are
Pike, Kenncth L. constructed. Toe work of the anthropologist, as interpreter, consists in detecting
-1967, Language in Relation to a Unified The01y of the Structure of Human them, analytically exposing the way they are treated in the culture in question,
Behavior. The Hague: Mouton.
and illLUninating the fom1 in which they guide social interaction. As I will try to
Salzman, Philip Carl
-1988, ''Fads and Fashions in Anthropology," Anthropology Newsletter 29(5):1,32- demonstrate, in the Xangó cult ofNagó tradition, one of the recurrent motives
33. in the social organization and representations of its members is the systematic
effort to free the categories ofkinship, personality, gender and sexuality from
the biological and biogenetic determinants to which they are linked within the
dominant ideology of Brazilian society, as well as removing the institution of
IKenneth A,f Kensinger is Professor ofAnthropology Emeritus at Bennington Col/ege, marriage from the pivota! position which, according to this ideology, it occupies
Vennont, USA./ in the social structure. Both of these charactcristics of Xangó world-view, I
think, can be linked to the historical experience of slave society in Brazil, once
the human group which originated the cult emerged from it.
I became gradually aware ofthis theme through the spontaneous empha­
sis given by members themselves to certain aspects of their social life as well
as to characteristic passages of Xangó mythology and, particularly, by the
issues which turned u-p with greater frequency in their conversations. As I will
attempt to demonstrate, both the principie ofbiogenetic indetermination and the
conception of marriage and the family peculiar to this cult can be identified in
the following practices: 1) In the custom of attributing 'male-saints' and
'female-saints', indiscriminately, to men and women as personality types; 2) in
the treatment given by myths to the female and male roles performed by the
deities or orixas that fom1 the pantheon; 3) in the critica! vision ofthe members
concerning the rights derived from blood and biogenctic matemity; 4) in the
importance attributed to the fictitious ritual family, the 'family-of-saint', as well