Review

Author(s): Lisette Josephides

Review by: Lisette Josephides
Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 189-190
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2803066
Accessed: 27-06-2016 05:07 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Wiley are collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Man

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 05:07:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 05:07:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Igo BOOK REVIEWS
that each sex channels its energies to its own
creative realm, as an integral part, together
with food, of a system of 'energy exchange'.
(Women produce people; people expend energy
to grow food; food (taro) is produced by men;
people eat food to acquire energy; and so on.)
The same taboos that ensure the maintenance of
this balanced continuum which is responsible
for the prosperity of taro and children must,
however, militate against the fulfilment of per-
sonal desires, and in this way can be seen as
causing 'hunger'. In other words, though self-
interest is desired by each individual, it must be
sacrificed to the social good.
This well-constructed book moves per-
suasively from a very simple and oft-repeated
idea-that of the metaphoric usage of food and
famine as standing for control rather than dearth
-to explore a number of socio-political and
symbolic realms. It weaves myth with social
practice in an effective way, emphasising the
social uses of myths as charters for, rather than
explanations of action. I did, however, feel the
need for some additional data before I could
assess some of the author's more general claims.
It would have been helpful, for instance, if
men's 'double bind' situation-which the author
implies is a subjectively internallsed cultural
dilemma-had been supported by emic state-
ments. Similarly, more information on the sorts
of claims that patrilineages and matrilineages
had on people, as well as the sorts of privileges
they conferred, would have made it easier to
assess the claim that men feel they are indeed
losing their children to the matrilineage.
Although a stress is laid on the asymmetries of
affinal relations, the affinal category is undiffer-
entiated in terms of specific alliances. Who be-
comes unequal to whom when a marriage takes
place? How do marriages take place? There is a
fleeting mention of men losing their patrilineal
substance to matrilineages, but the implications
of this are not elaborated, nor is any theory of
substance discussed. This robs the 'compensa-
tion' argument of some persuasive force, but
more importantly it begs a prior question: why
the apparent assumption in the first place that
cultural meaning is constructed out of men's
perceived needs? (Men needing to escape affinal
obligations by creating taro children; men need-
ing to master women's sexuality.) Do women
as 'passengers' in patrilineages not have their
own dilemmas? In spite of the author's attemp-
ted demonstration that the shared cultural
values of 'control' lead to a balance, what comes
across as a final cultural outcome is control as a
male agency.
Notwithstanding these criticisms the book
makes very interesting reading and is a valuable
contribution to Melanesian ethnography, espe-
cially in the budding field of cultural construc-
tions of personal identities and gender distinc-
This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 05:07:26 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
tions. It is however unfortunate (and this
perhaps reflects the pressure on researchers to
make their findings 'relevant' for development-
related questions) that the author considered it
necessary to conclude with a homily appealing
to an unspecified category of agents (westerners
in general? anthropologists?) to 'act responsibly'
to ensure that these harmonies and balances
which are the end-product of food symbolism
should not be shattered by the displacement of
food by money, the harbinger of quite different
values born of different social arrangements.
This question is far too complex to dojustice to
in just a few paragraphs, and its contribution to
the general thrust of ideas here is by no means
unambivalent.
LISETTEJOSEPHIDES
London School of Economics
& Political Science
MAURIER, HENRI. Philosophie de I'Afrique Noire
(2nd edn) (Stud. Inst. Anthropos. 27). 318
pp., bibliogr. St Augustin: Anthropos Insti-
tut, 1985. DM 68.oo
This is a new edition of a book first published
some ten years ago. However, the bibliography
has not been updated and stops at 1973 and, so
far as I can judge, there are only minor altera-
tions from the original version. The author is a
philosopher who spent several years as a mis-
sionary in West Africa. His purpose is to lay
down the foundations of an objective set of
concepts which will account for a 'philosophy
of Africa'. This attempt, as the author claims, is
to be clearly distinguished from African phi-
losophy, as practised by a number of African
philosophers, and Western philosophy applied
to Africa. This endeavour implies the detection
of key concepts or categories which would help
to explain African behaviour and mode of
thought.
The first category, and the most important at
that, is the Relation defined as 'a vital and active
interaction between persons' and which the
author sees as more prominent in Africa than in
the Western world. The second category is Sub-
jectively defined as 'the overwhelming self grat-
ifying and securing place given to relations by
the person, according to traditional norms'. The
third is Tradition, 'the norm of right relations
bringing full blown existence (to the concerned
individual)'. The fourth, Corporality (bodyness)
is 'the relation itself, subjectively right and con-
form to tradition'. Translated otherwise, this
means that the body of African people reflects
the state of relations with others: if someone is
sick, there is a breach in some kind of relation.
The fifth category is Manipulation which, as its
name implies, is what people do with their set of
relations to get benefits from them. The last