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1999 Bookmatter AnIntroductionToSocialAnthropo

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1999 Bookmatter AnIntroductionToSocialAnthropo

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Randi Gardy
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An Introduction to Social Anthropology

Other People's Worlds


Also by Joy Hendry

Marriage in Changing Japan: Community and Society


Becoming Japanese: The World of the Pre-School Child
Understanding Japanese Society
Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other
Societies
Interpreting Japanese Society: Anthropological Approaches (editor)
An Anthropologist in Japan
An Introduction
to
Social Anthropology

Other People's Worlds

Joy Hendry
*
co Joy Hendry 1999

All rightsreserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of


this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licencepermitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, london W1POlP.
Anypersonwho does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liableto criminal prosecution and civil
claimsfor damages.

The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author


of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and PatentsAct 1988.

Published by
PAlGRAVE
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RGZ1 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, NewYork. N.Y. 10010
Companies and representativesthroughout the world
PAlGRAVE is the new globalacademic imprint of
St. Martin's PressllC Scholarly and Reference Division and
Palgrave Publishers ltd (formerly Macmillan Press ltd).
ISBN 978-0-333-74472-7 ISBN 978-1-349-27281-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27281-5

Thisbook is printed on paper suitable for recycling and


made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

A catalogue recordfor this book is available


from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4
07 06 05 04 03 02 01

Copy-edited and typeset by Povey-Edmondson


Tavistock and Rochdale
To my Mother,
who worried and waited
Contents

List of Figures and Maps x


List of Photographs xi
Acknowledgements Xlll

Introduction 1
A new encounter 1
What social anthropologists do 2
A history of social anthropology 7
The contemporary importance of social anthropology 11

1 Seeing the World 17


Souvenirs and handkerchiefs 17
Learning to classify 19
Life, death and burial alive 21
Cultural relativism and the anthropologists' bias 23
Changes in systems of classification: the issue of gender 29

2 Disgusting, Forbidden and Unthinkable 34


Some areas of observation 34
Taboo 35
Pollution 39
Purity and classification 40
Animal categories and verbal abuse 43

3 Gifts, Exchange and Reciprocity 47


The anthropologist's arrival 47
Gifts 48
The Indian gift 52
Exchange 53
Reciprocity 56
Objects inalienable, entangled and wrapped 59

Vll
Vlll Contents

4 The Ritual Round 65


Shoes and the empty ritual 65
Definitions of ritual 66
Rites of passage 68

5 Society: A Set of Symbols 82


What is a symbol? 82
Bodily symbols 84
Symbolizing relationships 89
Group symbols and their interpretation 91
Anthropological interpretation of symbolism 92

6 Beauty and Bounty, Treasure and Trophies 97


Seeing and value 97
Living art 98
Art for gaining access to 'seeing the world ' 102
Art and status: the status of art 103
Art and meaning 108
Aesthetics 110
Definitions of art 111

7 Cosmology I: Religion, Magic and Mythology 115


Religion, science and cosmology 115
Definitions and distinctions 116
Origins of religion 119
Explanations of religious phenomena 122
Cults : the persistence of religious movements 128

8 Cosmology II: Witchcraft, Shamanism and Syncretism 132


Indigenous categories of cosmology 132
Terminology 133
The roles of witchcraft and sorcery beliefs 135
Reactions and other theories of witchcraft 137
Possession and shamanism 140
Syncretism 142

9 Law, Order and Social Control 148


Rules and norms 148
Sanctions 151
Order and dispute 156
Contested norms and social control in a context 159
Contents lX

10 The Art of Politics 164


Political possibilities 164
Types of political system 166
Acquiring and achieving political power and status 177

11 Family, Kinship and Marriage 181


Varieties of kinship 181
Classifying kin relations 185
Unilineal descent groups 188
Kinship in a multicultural context : a case study 191
Marriage 195

12 Economics and the Environment 207


Drawing to a conclusion 207
Subsistence and survival 208
Property and land tenure 213
Market economics 214
Social views of the environment 217
Environmental influence in social life 222
Conclusion 224

Filmography 227
Index of Authors and Film-Makers 230
Index of Peoples and Places 233
General Index 236
World Map 249
List of Figures and Maps

Figures
1.1 English and Welsh colour classifications 27
3.1 Reciprocity and kinship residential sectors 58
10.1 A representation of the social and political organization of the
Nuer 174
10.2 The segmentary system 174
11 .1 A standard English family 186
11.2 Patrilineal and matrilineal descent 188
11.3 A unilineal descent group 189
11.4 Cross-cousins and parallel -cousins 191
11.5 Direct (sister) exchange 201
11.6 Matrilateral cross-cousin marriage 202

Maps
12.1 A view of the world from the Southern hemisphere 224
World Map Peoples and places mentioned in this book 249

x
List of Photographs

0.1 Piping in the haggis on Burns Night 15


Ll A Japanese souvenir handkerchief 18
2.1 A pig sacrifice in East Nepal 37
3.1 Selling pots in the market in T excoco 55
3.2 A Japanese wrapping conundrum 61
4.1 Scottish dancing in England 79
5.1 A Wahgi man from the Highlands of New Guinea 87
6.1 An example of Dinka cattle 100
6.2 Details of a Kwoma ceremonial men's house, Sepik region,
New Guinea 104
6.3 A totem pole on display in the Pitt Rivers Museum,
Oxford 107
8.1 An example of syncretism in the Kathmandu Valley 146
9.1 The ruined house at Hampton Gay 153
10.1 'Slash and burn' cultivation in Surinam 170
ILl A Jain wedding, in northern India 199
12.1 Dividing up a whale in Indonesia 222

Xl
Acknowledgements

I must first of all acknowledge an enormous debt to the 'other people' whose
worlds I have been privileged to share. These include some who barely receive
a mention in the text, for I did not eventually choose to pursue further the
study of their worlds , but they undoubtedly influenced my initial discovery of
the subject. First, the various people of Morocco among whom I lived and
travelled in 1966-7 and the French family to whom I became attached on that
occasion and which has made me welcome ever since in Paris and les Alpes
Maritimes; secondly, the again various people I encountered while living in
French Canada in 1967-8, including a Canadian godfather who happened to
visit my father, his wartime friend, at the time I was born, and the staff and
pupils of Beth Jacob School in Outrement where I taught for the last two-
thirds of an academic year which included the Six Days War in Israel and
introduced me to the (female) world of a highly protected orthodox Jewish
community. In Mexico, where I lived and worked from 1968-70 and again in
1972, I discovered the subject of anthropology, which I pursued formally with
a period of fieldwork in Texcoco and the formerly Nahual community of San
Nicolas Tlaminca. Finally, I have shared in many worlds in Japan over the
years, but of these I have published: a farming community in Yame, Kyushu,
a seaside community in Tateyama, Chiba, and many friends and colleagues
in Tokyo and other university cities. To all these and many more casual
'other' acquaintances, I record a deep gratitude for allowing me to share their
lives.
More people than I can possibly list have influenced my understanding of
the subject I present here, and some may anyway feel that I have over-
simplified it in an attempt to make social anthropology accessible to anyone
who feels inclined to pick up the book. However, I must at the very least
mention my own first supervisor, Peter Riviere, whose words have undoubt-
edly appeared inadvertently in these pages, so firmly ingrained were some of
them in the recesses of my mind, and Rodney Needham, whose work on
symbolic classification clearly inspired the whole basis of the original lecture
course and therefore the approach of the book. I hope that neither will feel I
have moved so far from their original inspiration that they are totally
misrepresented.
For more practical help, with reading, suggestions and comments on the
student guide, which formed the original draft of the book, I am indebted to

Xlll
XIV Acknowledgements

Ross Bowden, Jeremy MacClancy, Howard Morphy and Mike O'Hanlon for
help with Chapter 6, Nazia Tenvir and Haroon Sarwar with Chapter 11, and,
more generally, to Renate Barber, Genevieve Bicknell, Annabel Black, Paul
Collinson, Martin Flatman, Ian Fowler, David Gellner, Clare Hall, Ren<f:
Hirschon, Tammy Kohn, Chris McDonaugh, Diana Martin, Lola Martinez,
Peter Parkes, Bob Parkin, Sue Pennington, Josephine Reynell, Peter Riviee
(againl), Alison Shaw, Cris Shore and Felicity Wood. Students over the years
have also added their helpful comments, and Peter Momtchiloff at Oxford
University Press kindly read and commented on a draft when he took on the
anthropology list. I must also acknowledge the incisive comments of several
anonymous readers, and thank them for some of the examples I have
incorporated into the final text.
Thanks, too, to various friends and colleagues for the generous loan of
their photographs, which are credited individually, but especially to the Pitt
Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, for allowing me, first, to publish my
snapshot of the totem pole, and secondly, to Michael O'Hanlon, the director,
and Jeremy Coote, curator, who have allowed me to use formerly published
photographs. For technical support, I would like to thank Bob Pomfret, who
prepared the prints of the photographs, Gerry Black, who made the diagrams
and world maps, and Bev Massingham and other Social Sciences secretarial
staff for general secretarial support.
Finally, I would like to thank my father and mother, whose pleasant but
unashamedly chauvinistic bickering about their respective origins in Scotland
and Yorkshire made me aware of cultural boundary-marking before I had any
idea what it was, and helped me to keep at bay the tendency to exoticise
anthropology long before it became politically important to do so.

JOY HENDRY

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