Taboo Mary Douglas

Taboo Mary Douglas Dne ofthe most dificult tasks anthropologists face in A TABOO (SOMETIMES SPELLED TABU) IS A BAN OR their study of non- Western cultures is isolating the prohibition; the word comes from the Polynesian bases for rules of right conduct. In thefollnunng languages where it means a religious restriction, article, Mary Douglas succinctly demonstrates that to break which would entail some automatic pun- unlike modem industrialized nations, which have ishment. As it is used in English, taboo has little to shared common experiences for centuries, primitive do with religion. In essence it generally implies a cultures have remained separated by distance and rule which has no meaning, or one which cannot [nnguage and have developed unique worldviews. be explained. Captain Cook noted in his log-book Pointing out, for example, that Westerners'sqaration that in Tahiti the women were never allowed to of the natural and the supernatural is peculiar to us, eat with the men, and as the men nevertheless en- Douglas explains how our reality and, therefore, our joyed female company he asked the reason for taboos are so diffment from thoseof the non-Westem this taboo. They always replied that they ob- world. served it because it was right. To the outsider the Douglas's functional analysis uf taboos shows taboo is irrational, to the believer its rightness that they underpin social structure euerywhere. needs no explaining. Though supernatural pun- Anthropologirts, studying tabws over extensive ishments may not be expected to follow, the ales periods of time, have learned that tabm systems are of any religion rate as taboos to outsiders. For ex- not static and forever inuiolate; on the contrary, they ample, the stria Jewish observance forbids the are dynamic elements of learned behavior that each faithful to make and refuel the firr, or light lamps generation absorbs. Taboos, as rules of behavior, nre or put them out during the Sabbath, and it also always part of a whole system and cnnnot be forbids them to ask a Gentile to perform any of understood outside their socinl context. Douglas's these acts. In his book A Soh Address, Chaim explanation oftaboos holds as much meaningfor us m Lewis, the son of poor Russian Jewish immigrants fhe understanding of ourselves as it does for our in London's Soho at the beginning of this cenhuy, understanding of rules of conduct in the non-Western desaibes his father's quandary every winter Sab- world. Whether considering the taboos surrounding a bath: he did not want to let the fire go out and he Polynesian chief's tnana or the changing sexual could not ask any favor outright. Somehow he taboos in the Western world, it is apparent that taboo had to call in a passerby and drop oblique hints systems functwn to maintain cultural systems. until the stranger understood what service was required. Taboos always tend to land their ob- servers in just such a ridiculous situation, whether it is a Catholic peasant of the Landes who abstains from meat on Friday, but eats teal (a bird whose fishy diet entitles it in their custom to be counted as fish), or a Maori hairdresser who after he had cut the chief's hair was not allowed to use his own hands even for feeding himself and had to be fed for a time like a baby In the last century, when the word gained cur- rency in European languages, taboo was understood to arise from aninfcrior mentality. It was Reprinted from Richard Cavendish, ed., Mnn,Myth, and argued that primitive tribes observed countless Magic (London. 1979).Vol. 20, pp. 2767-71, by pe-- taboos as part of their general ignorance about the sion of the author and BPCC/Phoebus Publishing. physical world. These rules, which seemed so to Europeans, were the result of false sri- ing is so basic to thwc who live by it that no piece- ence, leading to mistaken hygiene, and faulty medi- meal explanation can be given. A native cannot ex- cine. Essentially the taboo is a ban on touching or plain the meaning of a taboo because it forms part of eating or speaking or seeing. Its breach will unleash his own machinery of learning. The separate com- dangus, while keeping the rules would amount to partments which a taboo system constructs are the avoiding dangers and sickness. Since the native the framework or instnunent of understanding. To turn ory of taboo was concerned to keep certain classes of round and inspect that instrumenl may seem to be peopleand thingsapart lest misfortune befall, it was an advanced philosophic exercise, but it is necessary a theory about contagion. Our scholars of the last if we m to understand the subject. century contrasted this false, primitive fear of conta- The nineteenth-cenhuy scholars could not under- gion with our modern knowledge of disease. Our stand taboo because they worked within the separate hygiene protects from a real danger of contagion, compartments of their own taboo system. For them their taboos from imaginary danger. This was a com- religion, magic, hygiene, and medicine were as dis- fortably complacent distinction to draw, but hygiene tina as civilized and primitive; the problem of taboo does not correspond to all the rules which are called for them was only a problem about native thought. taboo. Some are as obviously part of primitive reli- But put in that form it was insoluble. We approach it gion in the same sense as Friday abstinence and Sab- nowadays as a problem in human learning. bath rest. European scholars therefore took care to First, discard the idea that we have anytlung like distinguish on the one hand between primitive a true, complete view of the world. Between what taboo with a mainly secular reference, and on the the scientists know and what we make of their other had ruler of maglr which infused the practice knowledge there is a synthesis which is our own uf orim~tive~vlieion. " Ihev made it even more diffi- rough-and-ready approximation of rules about how cult to understand the meaning of foreign taboos by we need to behave in the physical world. Second, importing a classification between true religion and discard the idea that there can ever be a final and primitive magic, and modern medicine and primi- correct world view. A gain in knowledge in one di- tive hygiene; and a very complicated web of defini- rection does not guarantee there will be no loss or tions was based on this misconception. distortion in another; the fullness of reality wdl always evade our comprehension. The reasons for this will become clear Learning is a filtering and orga- In the Eye of the Beholder nizing process. Faced with the same events, two people will not necessarily register two identical The difficulty in understanding primitive taboo patterns, and faced with a similar environment, two arose from the difficulty of understanding our own cultures will construe hyo different sets of natural taboos of hygiene and religion. The first mistake was constraints and regular sequences. Understanding is to suppose that ow idea of dirt connotes an objec- largely a classifylng job in which the dasslfylng tively real dass from which real dangers to health human mind is much freer than it supposes itself to may issue, and whose control depends on valid be. Thc events to be undt.rstood are unconsciously rules of hygiene. It is better to start by realizing that trimmed and filtered to fit the classification being dirt, like beauty, resides in the eye of the beholder. used. In this sense every culture constructs its own We must be prepared to put our own behavior universe. It attributes to its own world a set of pow- under &,he same microscope we apply to primitive ers to be harnessed and dangers to be avoided. Each tribes. If we find that they are busy hedging off this primitive culture, because of its isolation, has a area from that, stopping X from touching Y, prevent- unique world view. Modem industrial nations, being women from eating with men, and creating elab- cause and insofar as they share a common experi- orate scales of edibility and inedibility among the ence, share the same NIB about the powers and vegetable and animal worlds, we should realize that dangers aroused. This is a valid difference between we too are given to this ordering and classifylng ac- ''Us" and 'Them," their primitive taboos and ours. tivity No taboo can ever make sense by itself. A For all humans, primitive or not, the universe is a taboo is always part of a whole system of rules. It system of imputed rules. Using our own distinc- inorganic (~ncludingrocks, stars, rivers) and organic It could, for example, be so important to avoid step (vegetable and animal bodies, with rules governing ~inaover people's heads that thp vew architecture their growth, lifespan and death); secondly, human ka;mvul;ed 'the arrangements of the sleeping behavior; thirdly, the interaction between these two nmm.; shmv ~chan adaptahon m rhc Marqunnr 1he commoner's back or head a thw nor wthclut groups; fourthly, other intelligent beings whether its importance in certain contexts. But the real sig- incorporeal like gods, devils and ghosts or mixtures nificance of this aading seems to have been in the of human and divine or human and animal; and possibilities it p&videLfor cumulative effectsin as- lastly, the interaction behveen this fourth group and sociation with the rank system. The head of a chief the rest. was the most concentrated mana object of Polyne- The use of the word supematu~alhas been sian soci~ty,and was hedged mund with the most avoided.

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