ANTH245 2007-09-10

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ANTH 245: Lecture for SEPT 10 2007

SESSION 1: Rappaport on the Ritual Cycle of the Tsembaga and What it Does

Business

1. Readings to be posted on Blackboard
2. Blogging can take place after the class

Review of Bateson

The Social Context

1. Relationships exist at a "wider" level
2. The social context of a message is part of the code
3. e.g. Who is saying this? Can they be trusted?
4. Confers validity to the message

"Purposive Mind" and "Greater Mind"

1. The unconscious mind is the location of "codes"
   • Purposive Mind perceives messages
2. The unconscious mind connects the "purposive mind" to the Greater Mind
   • The purposeive mind normally perceives "arcs" within wider circuits

Communication and Schismogenesis

1. Complementary vs Symmetrical interaction
2. The difference is in the code
   1. Complementary entails mutual understanding
   2. Put another way, synchronized codes with a shared social map

Overview of Cybernetic Theory

Implications

1. All communication involves control
   1. Decoding
   2. Learning
   3. Evolution
2. Blurred distinction between between meaning and causality
3. The code is in the message

Rappaport

Background: the Anthropology of Religion

1. Functionalism -- explaining irrationality
   • Given that the beliefs are not true, and the the actions are not practical, what is going on?
   • Marxist, Freudian, Nietzschian, etc. responses
   • Weber and "verstehen"
   • Durkheim and the superorganic
2. Rappaport's "cultural materialism"
   • Religion is both practical and rational, even though intellectually, from the point of view of "cognitive models" alone, it is non-sensical
   • Ecology is the broadest horizon of interpretation (Rappaport's religion, by his own admission)
3. Definition of religious ritual

... the prescribed performance of conventionalized acts manifestly directed toward the involvement of nonempirical or supernatural agencies in the affairs of the actors. 

... part of the behavioral repertoire employed by an aggregate of organisms in adjusting to its environment.

The Tsembaga of New Guinea

1. Geographic context
   1. New Guinea
   2. Simbai and Jimi Valleys
   3. Heavily forested area
   4. Occupy a space of 3.2 sq mi
   5. 2000 ft -- 7,200 ft above sea level
2. Social and cultural facts
   1. Maring speaking
   2. 1 of 20 groups in the area
   3. ~200 in 1963
   4. unmissionized
   5. 5 patrilineal clans
   6. acephalic
3. Subsistence
   1. "bush-fallowing horticulturalists"
      • A type of subsistence agriculture in which land is cultivated for a period of time and then left uncultivated for several years so that its fertility will be restored.
   2. Energy ratios
   3. Nutrition
   4. Carrying capacity
   5. Pigs

When there are too many pigs

1. Pigs = humans in taro consumption
2. People must work to support pigs when their numbers grow to a certain level
3. Produces sanitation problems as well
4. Produces conflicts among neighbors

Pigs, stress and sacrifice

1. Pigs are only killed in ritual contexts, i.e. as sacrifices
2. Ritual contexts are triggered by stress
3. We know that medically, protein helps fight stress
4. Consumers of pigs are the most stressed
5. Stress, however, is not part of the cognitive model
   • The cognitive model focuses on sacrifice and the ancestors

The ritual cycle

1. Warfare
   • May last several weeks
   • Certain taboos observed
2. Planting of the rumbim
   • Declaration of truce
   • May last 5-10 years
   • Still time of "bamp ku" (fighting stones)
   • Wholesale slaughter of pigs (all but young)
   • Some taboos lifted; others added
   • Period of debt to allies
   • Pigs and poeple are complementary
3. The kaiko
   • Unplanting of the rumbim
   • Triggered when pigs and people become symmetrical and competitive
     • pigs/wives > 5
   • Planting of territory stakes
   • Pig sacrifices
   • Lasts 1 year
4. Sacrifice

• [Image of the cycle]
• [Create a version of the diagram as a cybernetic system, complete with homeostat and transducer]

Rappaport's Rules

1. If one of a pair of antagonistic groups is able to uproot its rumbim before its opponents can plant their rumbim, [then] it may occupy the latter's territory
2. A man becomes a member of a territorial group by participating with it in the planting of rumbuim [may want to phrase as an if/then]
3. If pair of antagonistic groups proceeds through two ritual cycles without resumption of hostilities, [then] their enmity may be terminated

SESSION 3

Back to Bateson

1. Control hierarchies are levels of "Greater Mind"
2. The sacred as a context of trust
3. Purposive mind and cognitive models