When brothers share a wife pdf

Confi rming Pages

APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY An Introductory Reader

TENTH EDITION

Aaron Podolefsky Buffalo State University (SUNY)

Peter J. Brown Emory University

Scott M. Lacy Fairfi eld University

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd ipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd i 18/10/11 3:49 PM18/10/11 3:49 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTORY READER, TENTH EDITION

Published by McGraw-Hill, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Previous editions © 2009, 2007, and 2003. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.

Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to cus- tomers outside the United States.

This book is printed on recycled, acid-free paper containing 10% postconsumer waste.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 QDB/QDB 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-0-07-811704-6 MHID 0-07-811704-6

Vice President & Editor-in-Chief: Michael Ryan Vice President of Specialized Publishing: Janice M. Roerig-Blong Editorial Director: William Glass Senior Sponsoring Editor: Debra B. Hash Marketing Manager: Patrick Brown Project Manager: Melissa M. Leick Design Coordinator: Margarite Reynolds Cover Designer: Studio Montage, St. Louis, Missouri Cover Image: Royalty-Free/CORBIS Buyer: Sherry L. Kane Media Project Manager: Sridevi Palani Compositor: Laserwords Private Limited Typeface: 10/12 PalatinoLTStd-Roman Printer: Quad/Graphics

All credits appearing on page or at the end of the book are considered to be an extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Applying anthropology : an introductory reader / [edited by] Aaron Podolefsky, Peter J. Brown, Scott M. Lacy.—10th ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-07-811704-6 (alk. paper) 1. Applied anthropology. 2. Anthropology. I. Podolefsky, Aaron. II. Brown, Peter J. III. Title. GN397.5.A67 2012 301—dc23

2011036666

www.mhhe.com

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd iipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd ii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

There are things I couldn’t have known when Peter and I began developing the ideas for this book during the late 1980s. I could not predict its growth and development nor how grateful

I now am that the numerous editions have brought enlightenment to so many students over the years. In a similar way, my sons—young boys at the time—were also works in

progress and at the start of their own lives. Looking back I refl ect with great joy, pride, and satisfaction as I have watched these young boys blossom into men of character and wisdom.

This book is dedicated to my sons, Noah and Isaac, who have grown to be men since our fi rst edition eighteen years ago.

—Aaron Podolefsky

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd iiipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd iii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd ivpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd iv 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

v

Contents

Theme Finder for Chapters xiii

To the Student xv

To the Instructor xvii

Introduction: Understanding Humans and Human Problems 1

PART I Biological Anthropology 3

HUMAN EVOLUTION

1 Teaching Theories: The Evolution-Creation Controversy 6 Robert Root-Bernstein and Donald L. McEachron (The American Biology Teacher, 1982) Through a comparison of evolution and creationism, this article examines the logic of scientifi c inquiry and the characteristics of scientifi c theory. Scientifi c theories are testable and correctable, which is why they lead to new and useful knowledge.

2 Re-reading Root-Bernstein and McEachron in Cobb County, Georgia: A Year Past and Present 15 Benjamin Z. Freed (Article written especially for Applying Anthropology) Cultural confl icts about evolution and creationism have centered on the American classroom. This selection describes recent debates and legal skirmishes about teaching evolution in public schools.

3 Great Mysteries of Human Evolution 21 Carl Zimmer (Discover, 2003) Despite the extraordinary number of hominid fossils discovered in the past thirty years, many questions remain open about human origins and evolution. This article asks eight basic questions about what is fundamentally human.

4 A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled 27 Ann Gibbons (Science, 2009) In a 5 million-year-old forensic “cold case,” anthropologists have discovered the skeletal remains of some of our earliest human ancestors in Africa. Paleontology, genetics, and the virtual reconstruction of fossils have revealed exciting new details about lives and physiology of our earliest human ancestors.

PRIMATOLOGY

5 What Are Friends For? 32 Barbara Smuts (Natural History, 1987) “Friendship” between adult males and females is an important part of the society of olive baboons of Kenya. These mutually benefi cial, long-term relationships are usually based on female choice and are only indirectly related to sex. Observations of nonhuman primates make anthropologists rethink the origin and nature of human sociality.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd vpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd v 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

vi CONTENTS

6 Mothers and Others 38 Sarah Blaff er Hrdy (Delivered as a Tanner Lecture on Human Values) Based on observations of other primates and hunter-gatherers, a new way of thinking about our species challenges long-held beliefs and has implications for child rearing and gender roles, the importance of kin groups and neighbors, and the practices and policies of our day-care systems.

7 Apes, Hominids, and the Roots of Religion 45 Barbara J. King Can modern apes teach us about human religious life? Recent primatology research suggests that empathy, compassion, and shared emotional experiences were not only evolutionarily advantageous behaviors for our primate ancestors, but they may help us mark the origins of human religious practices.

HUMAN BIOLOGY

8 How Race Becomes Biology: Embodiment of Social Inequality 49 Clarence C. Gravlee Many contemporary ideas about the relationship between race and health are based on three fundamental mistakes: that race equals human biological variation, that biology equals genetics, and that race is a myth. Health inequalities between socially defi ned groups are the enduring result of stress in reaction to racist social interactions and discrimination, which can also cause low birth weight babies and chronic adult diseases.

9 Ancient Bodies, Modern Customs, and Our Health 64 Elizabeth D. Whitaker Biological anthropologists believe that our long evolutionary history has shaped our bodies and therefore strongly infl uences our health. Infant sleeping and breast-feeding patterns are linked to health issues like birth spacing, allergies, diarrhea, and dehydration, as well as increased risk of breast cancer and sudden infant death syndrome.

10 Ancient Genes and Modern Health 74 S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner (The Leakey Foundation) Many of the serious health problems confronting us today may be the result of an incongruity between our genetic heritage as descendants of hunter-gatherers and our current diet and lifestyle. The study of Paleolithic people may be the key to a healthy life.

11 The Tall and the Short of It 78 Barry Bogin (Discover, 1998) A biological anthropologist discusses changes in the average height of populations as an example of human plasticity in the context of changing nutrition in childhood. Our environment is shaped by culture, and it affects our outward biological characteristics or phenotype.

12 Identifying Victims after a Disaster 82 Dick Gould (Anthropology News, 2005) Forensic anthropology has taken on an important role both in the American public imagination and on the front lines of disaster relief efforts. This selection discusses how archaeology and forensic anthropology have increasingly played a part in the identifi cation of victims of human and natural disasters.

PART II Archaeology 85

13 Dawn of a New Stone Age in Eye Surgery 88 Payson D. Sheets (Archaeology: Discovering Our Past, 1993) An anthropologist applies his knowledge of the stone toolmaking technology of ancient Maya to the manufacture of surgical scalpels; his obsidian blades are more than 200 times sharper than the surgical steel scalpels currently in use.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd vipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd vi 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

CONTENTS vii

14 Feminine Knowledge and Skill Reconsidered: Women and Flaked Stone Tools 91 Kathryn Weedman Arthur (American Anthropologist, 2010) The idea of the naturally inclined male provider (and his dependent female) is a modern mythology that tells us more about contemporary gender constructs than it does the continuity of a prehistoric patriarchy. Experimental archaeology collaborations with present-day female foragers who make sophisticated stone tools contradict prevailing theories of the dependent and domestic foraging women.

15 The Secrets of Ancient Tiwanaku Are Benefi ting Today’s Bolivia 106 Baird Straughan (Smithsonian, 1991) Archaeologists working at Tiwanaku discover an ingenious agricultural system used by the Inca that has led to signifi cant increases in crop yields and the quality of life of present-day residents.

16 Disease and Death at Dr. Dickson’s Mounds 112 Alan H. Goodman and George J. Armelagos (Natural History, 1985) The intensifi cation of maize agriculture among prehistoric Native Americans of the Mississippian period, combined with their involvement in a trading network, led to a drastic decline in their health.

17 Uncovering America’s Pyramid Builders 117 Karen Wright (Discover, 2004) An earthen mound in Illinois once served as the foundation of a 5,000-square-foot temple bigger than any of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza. This mound, now known as Monks Mound, sat at the center of a thriving civilization that disappeared approximately 700 years ago.

18 Battle of the Bones 121 Robson Bonnichsen and Alan L. Schneider (The Sciences, 2000) How does one weigh the importance of new, and possibly revolutionary, knowledge about the prehistory of North America against the rights of some Native Americans to rebury the bones of those they believe to be their ancestors? The authors examine this contemporary controversy.

19 The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology 127 Charles E. Orser Jr. (American Anthropologist, 1998) People in the United States may sometimes misinterpret race by confusing it with ethnicity and class. Historical archaeology can help us better understand race as a social construction. This selection demonstrates how material dimensions of racial categorization reveal the dynamic nature of racial identify and class distinctions.

20 Archaeology and Vanua Development in Fiji 136 Andrew Crosby (World Archaeology, 2002) While it may seem strange to non-anthropologists, indigenous mythologies and creation stories contain hints and explanations that guide the scientifi c discovery and analysis of archaeological artifacts. Archaeologists who collaborate with indigenous populations fi nd ways to produce and integrate scientifi c knowledge with the values, priorities, and subjective points of view of indigenous populations.

21 Around the Mall and Beyond 148 Michael Kernan (Smithsonian, 1995) What does your garbage reveal about you? The recent construction of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, unearthed the refuse of previous generations, allowing archaeologists a unique peek into the past.

22 “Clean Your Plate. There Are People Starving in Africa!”: The Application of Archaeology and Ethnography to America’s Food Loss Issues 151 Timothy W. Jones Food waste is a growing problem in industrial countries like the United States. In this selection, an archaeologist looks at patterns of food loss as revealed not just by talking to producers and consumers, but also by looking at their garbage.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd viipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd vii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

viii CONTENTS

PART III Linguistic Anthropology 157

23 From Heofonum to Heavens 159 Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (Science, 2004) Languages evolve to fi t the needs and lives of the people who use them. This selection explores how computer modeling helps linguists see the infl uence of children, migration, and nationalism on linguistic evolution throughout the history of humankind.

24 “To Give up on Words”: Silence in Western Apache Culture 163 Keith H. Basso (Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 1970) Cross-cultural communication involves more than differences in language and gesture. This sociolinguistic analysis explores the role of silence in Apache society in particular situational contexts. There are social rules that dictate when talking is appropriate, and these rules vary across cultures.

25 Village of the Deaf: In a Bedouin Town, a Language Is Born 173 Margalit Fox (Discover, 2007) This selection describes the evolution of language through an analysis of the development of Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. This unique sign language was created in a remote Israeli village where an inherited form of deafness has created an incidence of deafness approximately forty times that of the general population.

26 Shifting Norms of Linguistic and Cultural Respect: Hybrid Sociolinguistic Zulu Identities 177 Stephanie Inge Rudwick The idea of respecting your elders is not complicated, but translating that relatively universal idea into practice is another matter.

27 Lost in Translation 187 Lera Boroditsky (The Wall Street Journal, 2010) Anthropologists have been thinking for decades about the relationship between how we speak and how we think. Recent collaborations between sociolinguists and other researchers explains that what we see, how we understand, and what we remember may be the result of the language we speak.

28 Talk in the Intimate Relationship: His and Hers 190 Deborah Tannen Within a given culture, conversations rely on unspoken understandings about tone of voice, visual cues, silence, and a variety of other subtle conventions. A sociolinguistic analysis of male–female conversation reveals that contrasting communication styles may be to blame when marriages and long-term male–female relationships fail.

PART IV Cultural Anthropology 197

FIELDWORK

29 Body Ritual among the Nacirema 200 Horace Miner (American Anthropologist, 1956) The examination and analysis of the rituals of this tribe shed light on the meaning of culture and help us refl ect on our own way of life.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd viiipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd viii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

CONTENTS ix

30 Shakespeare in the Bush 204 Laura Bohannan (Natural History, 1966) Laura Bohannan fi nds great diffi culty in communicating the dramatic themes (and basic story line) of Hamlet to the Tiv of Nigeria. Assumptions about human motivations, morality, and the nature of reality are embedded in a cultural context and limit the possible understanding of the story. Great art does not necessarily transcend cultural boundaries.

31 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari 210 Richard Borshay Lee (Natural History, 1969) When the !Kung San make fun of an ox that the anthropologist wants to give the group for a Christmas feast, Richard Lee learns about the important value of reciprocity in a food foraging band.

FAMILY & KINSHIP

32 Our Babies, Ourselves 215 Meredith F. Small (Natural History, 1997) Cross-cultural research on parenting and child development demonstrates a wide variety of parenting styles, particularly in regard to baby care. All these variations produce culturally competent adults. Parenting variations make sense given the diversity of social contexts as well as differences in cultural values.

33 How Many Fathers Are Best for a Child? 222 Meredith F. Small (Discover, 2003) Kinship is a central topic of anthropological research, as anthropologists examine how people use culture to create variations in understandings of human biology. This selection considers the Barí of South America, whose children have one mother and several fathers.

34 When Brothers Share a Wife 226 Melvyn C. Goldstein (Natural History, 1987) Fraternal polyandry, a rare form of plural marriage, has both benefi ts and costs for the people of Tibet. Given the economy and ecology of this area, the practice of polyandry has adaptive functions.

35 How Families Work: Love, Labor and Mediated Oppositions in American Domestic Ritual 231 Mark Auslander Recent studies show that in comparison with workers in all other industrial countries, Ameri- cans spend more hours at work and receive less paid vacation and sick time. Domestic rituals like weddings and holiday celebrations are one way that middle-class Americans mediate heavy work demands with family life.

GENDER & SEXUALITY

36 “Strange Country This”: An Introduction to North American Gender Diversity 249 Will Roscoe (Changing Ones, 1998) Unlike contemporary terms like gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender, the term two-spirit represents people whose societies respectfully understand them as both male and female. This selection describes the two-spirit tradition in Native North America, including how two-spirit people differed from region to region and tribe to tribe.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd ixpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd ix 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

x CONTENTS

37 Tricking and Tripping: Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 257 Claire E. Sterk (2000) An anthropologist who works at a school of public health describes the fi eldwork methods she used to study women’s health and sexual behavior among prostitutes in New York City and Atlanta. Gaining access, establishing rapport, and leaving the fi eld create both methodological and emotional challenges.

38 Law, Custom, and Crimes against Women: The Problem of Dowry Death in India 265 John van Willigen and V. C. Channa (Human Organization, 1991) Dowry-related violence against women in northern India is a serious and perplexing problem, diffi cult to explain with an anthropological functionalist approach. Economic transformations have negatively affected the status of women and have intensifi ed economic pressures on families to provide a dowry at the marriage of daughters.

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY & GLOBAL HEALTH

39 Culture and the Evolution of Obesity 276 Peter J. Brown (Human Nature, 1991) Why do people get fat? Is it cultural or is it in our genes—or, as with most things, is it some of each? This selection provides a cross-cultural and evolutionary analysis of how both biological and cultural factors in obesity evolved.

40 Pocahontas Goes to the Clinic: Popular Culture as Lingua Franca in a Cultural Borderland 287 Cheryl Mattingly (American Anthropologist, 2006) Establishing effective communication and understanding between patients and caregivers is complicated by ethnic divisions, differences in language, and racial/ethnic stereotyping. Nonetheless, creative clinicians have found ways to bridge these differences through the use of global icons like Disney characters and Spider Man.

41 Culture, Poverty, and HIV Transmission: The Case of Rural Haiti 297 Paul Farmer (Infections and Inequalities, 1999) Diseases are sometimes blamed on their stigmatized victims. Anthropologists describe and explain patterns of transmission of HIV in the global AIDS pandemic. Social and political circumstances beyond their control put poor Haitians at high risk for HIV infection.

42 Circumcision, Pluralism, and Dilemmas of Cultural Relativism 310 Corinne A. Kratz There are a variety of cultural practices throughout the world that involve surgical genital modifi cation, and some of these carry risks of medical complications. Female circumcision practices in Africa have been targeted for elimination by a variety of international groups for nearly a century. Understanding how this practice is interpreted by people in different cultural contexts is the key to understanding the current controversy.

WORK, BUSINESS, & ECONOMY

43 Confl ict and Confl uence in Advertising Meetings 322 Robert J. Morais (Human Organization, 2007) Anthropology can help businesses reach consumers and develop successful new products, but it can also help business executives and account managers understand and improve their relationships with employees, clients, and each other.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd x 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

CONTENTS xi

44 Just Another Job?: The Commodifi cation of Domestic Labor 334 Bridget Anderson Millions of people from poor countries travel across land and sea seeking work in wealthier countries. Globalization creates challenges for transnational migrants as they try to support their own families by performing diffi cult and sometimes demeaning work in the homes of strangers.

LAW, CONFLICT, & WAR

45 Contemporary Warfare in the New Guinea Highlands 340 Aaron Podolefsky (Ethnology, 1984) Intertribal warfare fl ares up in the highlands of Papua New Guinea even after decades of relative peace. To understand why, anthropologists focus on changes in the local economic system that have, in turn, changed marriage patterns.

46 The Kpelle Moot 349 James L. Gibbs, Jr. (Africa, 1963) The informal moot, a method of resolving disputes among the Kpelle of Liberia, is signifi cantly different from our court system. It emphasizes the mending of social relations between the dis- puting parties; the process of the hearing is therapeutic. The moot is a useful alternative model for settling disputes in our own society.

47 Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones 357 David Rohde (The New York Times, 2007) In hopes of helping U.S. soldiers better understand the cultural landscape in Iraq and Afghanistan, a $41 million military project places anthropologists in combat zones to advise and help develop counterinsurgency operations.

GLOBALIZATION & CULTURE CHANGE

48 Moral Fibers of Farmer Cooperatives: Creating Poverty and Wealth with Cotton in Southern Mali 360 Scott M. Lacy (2008) Development offi cials promote cotton production as a means to combat endemic poverty in rural Malian communities, but cotton farming can create poverty as well. When world cotton prices are high, cotton-producing countries like Mali may reap fi nancial benefi ts, but when prices fall, small-scale cotton farmers pay the price.

49 Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?: Anthropological Refl ections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others 368 Lila Abu-Lughod (American Anthropologist, 2002) One of the rationales used for war in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, was the liberation of Afghani women from the oppression of strict Muslim orthodoxy. Western ethnocentrism of that rationale has obscured more complex historical and political dimensions of violence in Afghanistan.

50 The Price of Progress 375 John H. Bodley (Victims of Progress, 1999) Economic development, sometimes called “progress,” can bring about ununtended social and medical consequences, especially for marginalized tribal peoples. New disease burdens, ecological degradation, and increased discrimination are among the hidden costs of economic change for many people.

Glossary G1

Index I1

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xi 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xiipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

xiii

Th em

e Fi

nd er

fo r

C ha

pt er

s

D en

ot es

th em

e pr

es en

t i n

ch ap

te r

29 30

31 32

33 34

35 36

37 38

39 40

41 42

43 44

45 46

47 48

49 50

co nf

lic t

ec on

om ic

s &

b us

in es

s en

vi ro

nm en

t ev

ol ut

io n

fo od

& a

gr ic

ul tu

re ge

nd er

& s

ex ua

lit y

ge ne

tic s

gl ob

al iz

at io

n he

al th

& m

ed ic

in e

hu m

an ri

gh ts

ki ns

hi p

& fa

m ily

la ng

ua ge

po lit

ic al

o rg

an iz

at io

n po

ve rt

y pr

im at

es ra

ce &

c la

ss re

lig io

n &

ri tu

al te

ch no

lo gy

28 Ch

ap te

r N um

be r

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8

9 10

11 12

13 14

15 16

17 18

19 20

21 22

23 24

25 26

27

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xiiipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xiii 18/10/11 3:49 PM18/10/11 3:49 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xivpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xiv 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

xv

An introductory course in any discipline is full of new terminology, concepts, and facts. Sometimes stu- dents forget that these new ideas and vocabulary are actually intellectual tools that can be put to work for analyzing and solving problems. In preparing this book, we have selected readings that will show you how anthropological concepts, discoveries, and meth- ods can be applied in today’s world.

The study of anthropology can help you view the world in a completely different way than you ever have before. You can come to appreciate the great diversity of human cultures and the interrelatedness of economic, sociopolitical, and religious systems. An- thropology can give you a broad perspective on hu- manity and help you understand other people’s beliefs and customs. In doing so, it can help you become a better citizen in an increasingly global society. But your motivation need not be completely altruistic—there are many examples in this book of how cross-cultural awareness can improve performances in business, negotiations, and clinical medicine.

The fascinating side of anthropology seems obvi- ous to most educated people, but there is also a lesser- known practical side of the discipline. The readings we have selected demonstrate that practical, applied side. Many of the articles depict anthropological ideas and research methods in action—as they are used to understand and solve practical problems. We have included articles on anthropologists working outside the aca demic setting to show how they are applying anthropology. We believe that the fundamental lessons of anthropology can be applied to many careers and all areas of human endeavor.

To benefi t from the study of anthropology, you need to study effectively. Over the years, we have found that students often read assignments without planning, and this actually makes studying less ef- fi cient. Before you read a selection, spend a few mo- ments skimming it to get an idea of what it is about, where it is going, and what you should look for. This kind of preliminary reading is a poor idea for mystery novels but is essential for academic assignments. With- out this preparation, the article may be come a hodge- podge of facts and fi gures; details may be meaningless because you have missed the big picture. By planning

your reading, you can see how the details are relevant to the central themes of an article.

To help you plan your reading, at the beginning of each article we have included questions and a list of glossary terms. Looking at these questions in ad- vance, you may gain an idea of what is to come and why the article is important. This will help make the time you spend reading more fruitful. Most of the questions highlight the central themes of the selection or draw your attention to interesting details. Some of the questions, however, do not have straightforward answers —they are food for thought and topics for debate. Some of the selections refer directly to current discussions of HIV, migration, obesity, gender diversity, and drug use. Our idea is to challenge you to think about how anthropology can be applied to your own life and education.

These articles have been selected with you, the student, in mind. We hope they convey our excitement about the anthropological adventure, and we trust that you will fi nd them both enjoyable and thought- provoking.

“Applied anthropology” most often refers to a situation in which a client hires an anthropologist to do research that will help the client resolve a particular problem. Some applied anthropologists run their own research companies that bid and win research contracts from clients and funding agencies; other applied an- thropologists work directly for corporations. Applied anthropologists write their reports specifi cally for their clients. A good place to fi nd out about applied anthro- pology is at the society for applied anthropology’s Web site, www.sfaa.net. There are many master’s degree programs in this fi eld. You may also run across the term “public anthropology” in your studies. This refers to anthropological research and writing that engages im- portant public issues (like many of those addressed in this book) and whose audience is the lay educated pub- lic. As “public scholars,” anthropologists want to com- municate their perspective on contemporary issues and infl uence public opinion and policy. A good place to fi nd out what is happening in public anthropology is through the Web site of the American Anthropological Association (www.aaanet.org) or the Public Anthropo- logy Web site (www.publicanthropology.org).

To the Student

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xvpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xv 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

xvi TO THE STUDENT

If you are interested in reading more about applied anthropology, there are several excellent books avail- able, such as Applied Anthropology: A Practical Guide, by Erve Chambers; Applied Anthropology: An Introduction, by John van Willigen; Anthropological Praxis: Trans- lating Knowledge into Action, by Robert M. Wulff and Shirley J. Fiske; Applied Anthropology in Amer- ica, by Elizabeth M. Eddy and William L. Partridge; and Making Our Research Useful, by John van Willigen, Barbara Rylko-Bauer, and Anne McElroy.

If you are interested in medical matters, you may want to consult Understanding and Applying Medical Anthro- pology, by Peter J. Brown, or Anthropology and Public Health, by Robert Hahn. You may also want to look at the journals Human Organization and Practicing An- thropology, both of which are published by the Society for Applied Anthropology. The National Association of Practicing Anthropologists (NAPA) also publishes interesting works on specifi c fi elds such as medical anthropology.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xvipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xvi 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

xvii

To the Instructor

Introductory anthropology has become an established part of the college curriculum, and through this course our profession communicates with a large and diverse undergraduate audience. Members of that audience differ in experience, academic concentration, and ca- reer aspirations. For those students considering anthro- pology as a major, we need to provide (among other things) a vision of the future, a view of anthropological work to be done in the public domain as well as within academia. For them, we need to provide some answers to the question, what can I do with a degree in anthro- pology? For students majoring in other areas, such as business, engineering, or psychology, we need to ad- dress the question, how can anthropological insights or research methods help me understand and solve human problems? If we can provide such a service, we increase the likelihood that students will fi nd cre- ative solutions to the professional problems that await them, and we brighten the future for our anthropology majors by underscoring the usefulness of an anthro- pological perspective in attempts to solve the practical problems of today’s world.

Over the years we have found that many introduc- tory texts do little more than include a chapter on applied anthropology at the end of the book. This sug- gests, at least to students, that most of anthro pology has no relevance to their lives. Such treatment also implies that the application of anthropological knowl- edge is a tangent or afterthought—at best an additional subject area, such as kinship or politics.

We disagree. We believe that the applications of anthropology cut across and infuse all the discipline’s subfi elds. This book is a collection of articles that pro- vide examples of both basic and applied research in all four fi elds of anthropology.

One of our primary goals is to demonstrate some of the ways our discipline is used outside the academic arena. We want anthropology to be seen as a fi eld that is intellectually compelling as well as relevant to the real world. Like the public at large, students seem well aware that the subject matter of anthropol- ogy is fasci nating, but they seem unaware of both the fundamental questions of humanity addressed by an- thropologists and the practical applications of the fi eld. Increased public awareness of the practical contribu- tions of anthropo logy is a goal that we share with many

in the profession. In fact, this is a major long-term goal of the American Anthropological Association.

Since we fi rst started editing these readers in 1989, the general fi eld of anthropology has changed in precisely this direction of emphasizing public rel- evance. “Public anthropology” refers to anthropologi- cal research and writing that engages important public issues (like many of those addressed in this book) and whose audience is the lay educated public. Our disci- pline has a long history in this regard, as in the work of Franz Boas on racial discrimination and Margaret Mead’s famous articles in Redbook magazine. As “public scholars,” anthropologists must communicate their perspective on contemporary issues and infl uence pub- lic opinion and policy. In this age of globalization and increased cultural intolerance often linked to religious fundamentalism, the basic messages of public anthro- pology are more important than ever. Being an effec- tive public anthropologist is just being a great teacher in a larger classroom. A good place to fi nd out what is happening in public anthropology is through the Web site of the American Anthropological Association (www.aaanet.org) or the Public Anthropology Web site (www.publicanthropology.org).

Although people distinguish between basic and applied research, much of anthropology falls into a gray area, having elements of both. Many selections in this book fall into that gray zone—they are brief ethno- graphic accounts that contain important implications for understanding and resolving problems. We could have included a large number of articles exempli- fying strictly applied research—an evaluation re port of agency performance, for example. Although this sort of research is fascinating and challenging to do, it is usually not exciting for students to read. We have selected articles that we believe are fascinating for stu- dents and convey the dual nature (basic/ applied) of social science research. We think that it is not the schol- arly writing style that is most important, but rather the content of the research as a way to get students to think and to challenge their own assumptions about the world.

Anthropological research is oriented by certain basic human values. These include being against ethnocen- trism, racism, and ignorance. Anthropology is about understanding and appreciating human similarities

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xviipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xvii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

xviii TO THE INSTRUCTOR

and differences. Such an understanding can lead students to new attitudes—such as tolerance for cultural differences, commitment to human equality, steward- ship of the environment, appreciation of the past, and personal dedication to the continued and honest pursuit of knowledge.

Any student who completes an introductory course in anthropology should learn that anthropolog- ical work, in its broadest sense, may include (or at least contribute to) international business, epidemi ology, program evaluation, social impact studies, confl ict resolution, organizational analysis, market re search, and nutrition research, even though their introduc tory anthropology texts make no mention of those fi elds. The selections in this book should help students un- derstand why anthropology is important in today’s world and also make the course more memorable and meaningful.

FEATURES OF THIS EDITION

• To spark student discussion and thinking about controversial issues and issues of public policy, we have included selections dealing with con- temporary topics like globalization, HIV/AIDS, racism, cell phones, gender diversity, migration, obesity, intelligent design, and the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. These selections are clearly anthropological in perspective and approach. When students are able to relate the concepts and examples of anthropology to current debates, they recognize the value of their education.

• We chose readings that complement typical courses in introductory anthropology. The se- quence of articles follows the organization of standard anthropology textbooks, grouped under headings with terms such as kinship, gender, mar- riage, and confl ict, rather than headings based on areas of applied anthropology like medical an- thropology or the anthropology of development. At the same time, we include headings such as globalization and health and medicine, refl ecting growth and development in the anthropological discipline and purview. Had we meant this book as a reader on applied anthropology, our organization would have been different. Although this book could be used by stu- dents in upper-level courses on applied anthropol- ogy (as earlier editions have been), those students are not our intended audience. For this reason, we

have not provided extensive discussion of the his- tory or defi nition of applied anthropology.

• For students interested in pursuing applied an- thropology on their own, there are a number of fi ne books. These include Applied Anthropology: A Practical Guide, by Erve Chambers; Applied An- thropology: An Introduction, by John van Willigen; Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action, by Robert M. Wulff and Shirley J. Fiske; Applied Anthropology in America, by Elizabeth M. Eddy and William L. Partridge; and Making Our Research Useful, by John van Willigen, Barbara Rylko-Bauer, and Anne McElroy. Students inter- ested in medical matters may want to consult Un- derstanding and Applying Medical Anthropology, by Peter J. Brown, or Anthropology and Public Health by Robert Hahn.

• To emphasize how anthropology can be put to work in different settings, we include examples of anthropologists whose careers involve applying anthropology outside the university setting.

• To help students better understand the subject matter, we include a number of pedagogical aids: introductions, a list of glossary terms, and guid- ing questions for each article; a world map that pinpoints the locations of places and peoples dis- cussed in the articles; and, for easy reference, an extensive glossary and index.

• A Theme Finder follows the table of contents to help instructors and students identify critical cross-chapter themes, including gender, environ- ment, globalization, human rights, poverty, race and class, and technology.

NEW TO THIS EDITION

In this edition, we continue to juxtapose “classic” an- thropological articles with selections that highlight contemporary issues and cutting-edge methodologies. One such juxtaposition is the enduring issue of the bio- logical theory of evolution as opposed to creationism, which has been reborn as “intelligent design.” Because the corpus of fossil evidence for human evolution has become so large and ever more complex for under- graduates, we added a new chapter that explains how paleontology, genetics, and the digital scanning and virtual reconstruction of fossils have revealed exciting new details about lives and physiology of our earliest human ancestors.

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xviiipod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xviii 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

TO THE INSTRUCTOR xix

There are eleven new articles that refer to con- temporary social issues such as the changing cultural norms of patriarchy and respecting elders in South Africa. The new selections also deal with hot-button issues such as the indigenous control of archaeological research and artifacts, and the sociolinguistic roots of male–female confl ict.

To bring more balance to our representation of the four-fi eld approach of American anthropology, we slightly increased our coverage of linguistic anthropol- ogy and archaeology. We also organized the biological anthropology section into three subsections to clearly distinguish chapters that focus on human evolution, primatology, and human biology.

We uphold our enduring commitment to the criti- cal discussion of race as a salient topic for introductory anthropology. We added a new biological anthropol- ogy selection that separates fact from fi ction in terms of the relationship between race and biology, but we placed nearly all of the other articles about race within the cultural anthropology section because race is a cultural construction, not a biological fact. In this re- gard, students need to understand that whiteness, as a cultural construction, brings with it certain privileges despite progress since the emergence of the civil rights

movement. Racism, sexism, homophobia, severe eco- nomic inequality, and intolerance for cultural differ- ences are continuing problems of our society; as such, anthropology and its four subfi elds provide essential perspectives for cross-cultural understanding.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the following reviewers of this edition for their helpful comments and suggestions: Jason Antro- sio, Hartwick College; Mary Theresa Bonhage-Freund, Alma College; John Coggeshall, Clemson University; Garrett Cook, Baylor University; Christa Craven, Col- lege of Wooster; Amy DeWys, Henry Ford Community College; Julie Ernstein, Northwestern State University; Lynne Goldstein, Michigan State University; P. Nick Kardulias, College of Wooster; Jennifer Price, Foothill College; Kendall Thu, Northern Illinois University; and LuAnn Wandsnider, University of Nebraska– Lincoln.

Aaron Podolefsky Peter J. Brown Scott M. Lacy

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xixpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xix 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

pod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xxpod17046_fm_i-xx.indd xx 13/10/11 5:35 PM13/10/11 5:35 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

210

An economy is a social system for the production, ex- change, and consumption of goods and services. Using this defi nition, anthropologists believe that all human societies have economies and that economic systems can work without money and markets.

People in food-foraging societies, like the !Kung San described in this selection, have received much at- tention by anthropologists. To a large degree, this is because they represent (at least by analogy) the original lifestyle of our ancestors. A major discovery of research on food foragers is that their life is not “nasty, brutish, and short.” In fact, the food forager’s diet might be an ideal one for people living in industrialized societies.

In the hunter-gatherer economy, anthropologists have discovered that the exchange of goods is based on rules of gift giving or reciprocity. In this selection, Rich- ard Lee tells of his surprise at the !Kung San’s lack of ap- preciation of a Christmas gift. As we have al ready seen, a group’s customs and rules about appropriate social behavior can refl ect important cultural values. When people act in unexpected ways, anthropologists see this as an opportunity to better understand their culture and world view. That is the case in this selection.

All people give gifts to each other, but there are rules and obligations about those gifts. In our own society, there are rules about the polite way to receive a present. We are supposed to act appreciative (even if

we hate the gift) because the gift is less important than the social relationship at stake. The !Kung break those rules, but in the process, Richard Lee discovers that there are important cultural messages behind their “impoliteness.”

As you read this selection, ask yourself the following questions:

■ Why did Richard Lee feel obligated to give a valuable gift to the !Kung at Christmas? Why did they think he was a miser?

■ Why did the !Kung people’s insults about the impending gift bother the anthropologist so much? Were the people treating him in a special way?

■ What does Lee mean by saying, “There are no totally generous acts?” Do you agree?

■ What are some cultural rules about gift giving in our own society?

The following terms discussed in this selection are included in the Glossary at the back of the book:

cultural values hunter-gatherers economy reciprocal gift egalitarian society

31 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari

Richard Borshay Lee

Lee, Richard Borshay. “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” from Natural History (Dec. 1969):14–22, 60–64; copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc. 1969. Reprinted with permission.

The !Kung Bushmen’s knowledge of Christmas is thirdhand. The London Missionary Society brought the holiday to the southern Tswana tribes in the early nineteenth century. Later, native catechists spread the idea far and wide among the Bantu-speaking pasto- ralists, even in the remotest corners of the Kalahari Desert. The Bushmen’s idea of the Christmas story, stripped to its essentials, is “praise the birth of white man’s god-chief:” what keeps their interest in the holi- day high is the Tswana-Herero custom of slaughtering

an ox for his Bushmen neighbors as an annual good- will gesture. Since the 1930s, part of the Bushmen’s annual round of activities has included a December congregation at the cattle posts for trading, marriage brokering, and several days of trance dance feasting at which the local Tswana headman is host.

As a social anthropologist working with !Kung Bushmen, I found that the Christmas ox custom suited my purposes. I had come to the Kalahari to study the hunting and gathering subsistence economy of the !Kung, and to accomplish this it was essential not to provide them with food, share my own food, or inter- fere in any way with their food-gathering activities. While liberal handouts of tobacco and medical supplies

pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 210pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 210 14/10/11 9:32 PM14/10/11 9:32 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

EATING CHRISTMAS IN THE KALAHARI 211

were appreciated, they were scarcely adequate to erase the glaring disparity in wealth between the anthro- pologist, who maintained a two-month inventory of canned goods, and the Bushmen, who rarely had a day’s supply of food on hand. My approach, while paying off in terms of data, left me open to frequent accusations of stinginess and hardheartedness. By their lights, I was a miser.

The Christmas ox was to be my way of saying thank you for the cooperation of the past year; and since it was to be our last Christmas in the fi eld, I deter- mined to slaughter the largest, meatiest ox that money could buy, insuring that the feast and trance dance would be a success.

Through December I kept my eyes open at the wells as the cattle were brought down for watering. Several animals were offered, but none had quite the grossness that I had in mind. Then, ten days before the holiday, a Herero friend led an ox of astonishing size and mass up to our camp. It was solid black, stood fi ve feet high at the shoulder, had a fi ve-foot span of horns, and must have weighed 1,200 pounds on the hoof. Food consumption calculations are my specialty, and I quickly fi gured that bones and viscera aside, there was enough meat — at least four pounds — for every man, woman, and child of the 150 Bushmen in the vicinity of /ai/ai who were expected at the feast.

Having found the right animal at last, I paid the Herero £20 ($56) and asked him to keep the beast with his herd until Christmas day. The next morning word spread among the people that the big solid black one was the ox chosen by /ontah (my Bushman name; it means, roughly, “whitey”) for the Christmas feast. That afternoon I received the fi rst delegation. Ben!a, an outspoken sixty-year-old mother of fi ve, came to the point slowly.

“Where were you planning to eat Christmas?” “Right here at /ai/ai,” I replied. “Alone or with others?” “I expect to invite all the people to eat Christmas

with me.” “Eat what?” “I have purchased Yehave’s black ox, and I am

going to slaughter and cook it.” “That’s what we were told at the well but refused

to believe it until we heard it from yourself.” “Well, it’s the black one,” I replied expansively,

although wondering what she was driving at. “Oh, no!” Ben!a groaned, turning to her group.

“They were right.” Turning back to me she asked, “Do you expect us to eat that bag of bones?”

“Bag of bones! It’s the biggest ox at /ai/ai.” “Big, yes, but old. And thin. Everybody knows

there’s no meat on that old ox. What did you expect to eat off of it, the horns?”

Everybody chuckled at Ben!a’s one-liner as they walked away, but all I could manage was a weak grin.

That evening it was the turn of the young men. They came to sit at our evening fi re. /gaugo, about my age, spoke to me man-to-man.

“/ontah, you have always been square with us,” he lied. “What has happened to change your heart? That sack of guts and bones of Yehave’s will hardly feed one camp, let alone all the Bushmen around /ai/ai.” And he proceeded to enumerate the seven camps in the /ai/ ai vicinity, family by family. “Perhaps you have forgot- ten that we are not few, but many. Or are you too blind to tell the difference between a proper cow and an old wreck? That ox is thin to the point of death.”

“Look, you guys,” I retorted, “that is a beautiful animal, and I’m sure you will eat it with pleasure at Christmas.”

“Of course we will eat it: it’s food. But it won’t fi ll us up to the point where we will have enough strength to dance. We will eat and go home to bed with stom- achs rumbling.”

That night as we turned in, I asked my wife, Nancy, “What did you think of the black ox?”

“It looked enormous to me. Why?” “Well, about eight different people have told me I

got gypped; that the ox is nothing but bones.” “What’s the angle?” Nancy asked. “Did they have

a better one to sell?” “No, they just said that it was going to be a grim

Christmas because there won’t be enough meat to go around. Maybe I’ll get an independent judge to look at the beast in the morning.”

Bright and early, Halingisi, a Tswana cattle owner, appeared at our camp. But before I could ask him to give me his opinion on Yehave’s black ox, he gave me the eye signal that indicated a confi dential chat. We left the camp and sat down.

“/ontah, I’m surprised at you; you’ve lived here for three years and still haven’t learned anything about cattle.”

“But what else can a person do but choose the big- gest, strongest animal one can fi nd?” I retorted.

“Look, just because an animal is big doesn’t mean that it has plenty of meat on it. The black one was a beauty when it was younger, but now it is thin to the point of death.”

“Well I’ve already bought it. What can I do at this stage?”

“Bought it already? I thought you were just considering it. Well, you’ll have to kill it and serve it, I suppose. But don’t expect much of a dance to follow.”

My spirits dropped rapidly. I could believe that Ben!a and /gaugo just might be putting me on about the black ox, but Halingisi seemed to be an impartial

pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 211pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 211 14/10/11 9:32 PM14/10/11 9:32 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

212 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

critic. I went around that day feeling as though I had bought a lemon of a used car.

In the afternoon it was Tomazo’s turn. Tomazo is a fi ne hunter, a top trance performer . . . and one of my most reliable informants. He approached the subject of the Christmas cow as part of my continuing Bushman education.

“My friend, the way it is with us Bushmen,” he began, “is that we love meat. And even more than that, we love fat. When we hunt we always search for the fat ones, the ones dripping with layers of white fat: fat that turns into a clear, thick oil in the cooking pot, fat that slides down your gullet, fi lls your stomach and gives you a roaring diarrhea,” he rhapsodized.

“So, feeling as we do,” he continued, “it gives us pain to be served such a scrawny thing as Yehave’s black ox. It is big, yes, and no doubt its giant bones are good for soup, but fat is what we really crave and so we will eat Christmas this year with a heavy heart.”

The prospect of a gloomy Christmas now had me worried, so I asked Tomazo what I could do about it.

“Look for a fat one, a young one . . . smaller, but fat. Fat enough to make us //gom (evacuate the bow- els), then we will be happy.”

My suspicions were aroused when Tomazo said that he happened to know a young, fat, barren cow that the owner was willing to part with. Was Tomazo working on commission, I wondered? But I dispelled this unworthy thought when we approached the Her- ero owner of the cow in question and found that he had decided not to sell.

The scrawny wreck of a Christmas ox now became the talk of the /ai/ai water hole and was the fi rst news told to the outlying groups as they began to come in from the bush for the feast. What fi nally convinced me that real trouble might be brewing was the visit from u!au, an old conservative with a reputation for fi erce- ness. His nickname meant spear and referred to an in- cident thirty years ago in which he had speared a man to death. He had an intense manner; fi xing me with his eyes, he said in clipped tones:

“I have only just heard about the black ox today, or else I would have come earlier. /ontah, do you hon- estly think you can serve meat like that to people and avoid a fi ght?” He paused, letting the implications sink in. “I don’t mean fi ght you, /ontah; you are a white man. I mean a fi ght between Bushmen. There are many fi erce ones here, and with such a small quantity of meat to distribute, how can you give everybody a fair share? Someone is sure to accuse another of taking too much or hogging all the choice pieces. Then you will see what happens when some go hungry while others eat.”

The possibility of at least a serious argument struck me as all too real. I had witnessed the tension that surrounds the distribution of meat from a kudu or

gemsbok kill, and had documented many arguments that sprang up from a real or imagined slight in meat distribution. The owners of a kill may spend up to two hours arranging and rearranging the piles of meat under the gaze of a circle of recipients before handing them out. And I knew that the Christmas feast at /ai/ ai would be bringing together groups that had feuded in the past.

Convinced now of the gravity of the situation, I went in earnest to search for a second cow; but all my inquiries failed to turn one up.

The Christmas feast was evidently going to be a disaster, and the incessant complaints about the mea- gerness of the ox had already taken the fun out of it for me. Moreover, I was getting bored with the wise- cracks, and after losing my temper a few times, I re- solved to serve the beast anyway. If the meat fell short, the hell with it. In the Bushmen idiom, I announced to all who would listen:

“I am a poor man and blind. If I have chosen one that is too old and too thin, we will eat it anyway and see if there is enough meat there to quiet the rumbling of our stomachs.”

On hearing this speech, Ben!a offered me a rare word of comfort. “It’s thin,” she said philosophically, “but the bones will make a good soup.”

At dawn Christmas morning, instinct told me to turn over the butchering and cooking to a friend and take off with Nancy to spend Christmas alone in the bush. But curiosity kept me from retreating. I wanted to see what such a scrawny ox looked like on butcher- ing, and if there was going to be a fi ght, I wanted to catch every word of it. Anthropologists are incurable that way.

The great beast was driven up to our dancing ground, and a shot in the forehead dropped it in its tracks. Then, freshly cut branches were heaped around the fallen carcass to receive the meat. Ten men volunteered to help with the cutting. I asked /gaugo to make the breast bone cut. This cut, which begins the butchering process for most large game, offers easy access for removal of the viscera. But it allows the hunter to spot-check the amount of fat on an ani- mal. A fat game animal carries a white layer up to an inch thick on the chest, while in a thin one, the knife will quickly cut to the bone. All eyes fi xed on his hand as /gaugo, dwarfed by the great carcass, knelt to the breast. The fi rst cut opened a pool of solid white in the black skin. The second and third cut widened and deepened the creamy white. Still no bone. It was pure fat; it must have been two inches thick.

“Hey /gau,” I burst out, “that ox is loaded with fat. What’s this about the ox being too thin to bother eating? Are you out of your mind?”

pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 212pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 212 14/10/11 9:32 PM14/10/11 9:32 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

EATING CHRISTMAS IN THE KALAHARI 213

“Fat?” /gau shot back. “You call that fat? This wreck is thin, sick, dead!” And he broke out laughing. So did everyone else. They rolled on the ground, para- lyzed with laughter. Everybody laughed except me; I was thinking.

I ran back to the tent and burst in just as Nancy was getting up. “Hey, the black ox. It’s fat as hell! They were kidding about it being too thin to eat. It was a joke or something. A put-on. Everyone is really de- lighted with it.”

“Some joke,” my wife replied. “It was so funny that you were ready to pack up and leave /ai/ai.”

If it had indeed been a joke, it had been an extraor- dinarily convincing one, and tinged, I thought, with more than a touch of malice as many jokes are. Nev- ertheless, that it was a joke lifted my spirits consider- ably, and I returned to the butchering site where the shape of the ox was rapidly disappearing under the axes and knives of the butchers. The atmosphere had become festive. Grinning broadly, their arms covered with blood well past the elbow, men packed chunks of meat into the big cast-iron cooking pots, fi fty pounds to the load, and muttered and chuckled all the while about the thinness and worthlessness of the animal and /ontah’s poor judgment.

We danced and ate that ox two days and two nights; we cooked and distributed fourteen potfuls of meat and no one went home hungry and no fi ghts broke out.

But the “joke” stayed in my mind. I had a growing feeling that something important had happened in my relationship with the Bushmen and that the clue lay in the meaning of the joke. Several days later, when most of the people had dispersed back to the bush camps, I raised the question with Hakekgose, a Tswana man who had grown up among the !Kung, married a !Kung girl, and who probably knows the culture better than any other non-Bushman.

“With us whites,” I began, “Christmas is supposed to be the day of friendship and brotherly love. What I can’t fi gure out is why the Bushmen went to such lengths to criticize and belittle the ox I had bought for the feast. The animal was perfectly good and their jokes and wisecracks practically ruined the holiday for me.”

“So it really did bother you,” said Hakekgose. “Well, that’s the way they always talk. When I take my rifl e and go hunting with them, if I miss, they laugh at me for the rest of the day. But even if I hit and bring one down, it’s no better. To them, the kill is always too small or too old or too thin; and as we sit down on the kill site to cook and eat the liver, they keep grum- bling, even with their mouths full of meat. They say things like, ‘Oh, this is awful! What a worthless ani- mal! Whatever made me think that this Tswana rascal could hunt!’”

“Is this the way outsiders are treated?” I asked. “No, it is their custom; they talk that way to each

other too. Go and ask them.” /gaugo had been one of the most enthusiastic in

making me feel bad about the merit of the Christmas ox. I sought him out fi rst.

“Why did you tell me the black ox was worthless, when you could see that it was loaded with fat and meat?”

“It is our way,” he said smiling. “We always like to fool people about that. Say there is a Bushman who has been hunting. He must not come home and announce like a braggart, ‘I have killed a big one in the bush!’ He must fi rst sit down in silence until I or someone else comes up to his fi re and asks, ‘What did you see today?’ He replies quietly, ‘Ah, I’m no good for hunt- ing. I saw nothing at all (pause) just a little tiny one.’ Then I smile to myself,” /gaugo continued, “because I know he has killed something big.

“In the morning we make up a party of four or fi ve people to cut up and carry the meat back to the camp. When we arrive at the kill we examine it and cry out, ‘You mean to say you have dragged us all the way out here in order to make us cart home your pile of bones? Oh, if I had known it was this thin I wouldn’t have come.’ Another one pipes up, ‘People, to think I gave up a nice day in the shade for this. At home we may be hungry but at least we have nice cool water to drink.’ If the horns are big, someone says, ‘Did you think that somehow you were going to boil down the horns for soup?’

“To all this you must respond in kind. ‘I agree,’ you say, ‘this one is not worth the effort; let’s just cook the liver for strength and leave the rest for the hyenas. It is not too late to hunt today and even a duiker or steenbok would be better than this mess.’

“Then you set to work nevertheless; butcher the animal, carry the meat back to the camp and everyone eats,”/gaugo concluded.

Things were beginning to make sense. Next, I went to Tomazo. He corroborated/gaugo’s story of the obliga- tory insults over a kill and added a few details of his own.

“But,” I asked, “why insult a man after he has gone to all that trouble to track and kill an animal and when he is going to share the meat with you so that your children will have something to eat?”

“Arrogance,” was his cryptic answer. “Arrogance?” “Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes

to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.”

pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 213pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 213 14/10/11 9:32 PM14/10/11 9:32 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

214 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

“But why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked Tomazo with some heat.

“Because you never asked me,” said Tomazo, echoing the refrain that has come to haunt every fi eld ethnographer.

The pieces now fell into place. I had known for a long time that in situations of social confl ict with Bushmen I held all the cards. I was the only source of tobacco in a thousand square miles, and I was not incapable of cutting an individual off for noncoopera- tion. Though my boycott never lasted longer than a few days, it was an indication of my strength. People resented my presence at the water hole, yet simulta- neously dreaded my leaving. In short I was a perfect target for the charge of arrogance and for the Bushman tactic of enforcing humility.

I had been taught an object lesson by the Bushmen; it had come from an unexpected corner and had hurt me in a vulnerable area. For the big black ox was to be the one totally generous, unstinting act of my year at /ai/ai and I was quite unprepared for the reaction I received.

As I read it, their message was this: There are no totally generous acts. All “acts” have an element of cal- culation. One black ox slaughtered at Christmas does not wipe out a year of careful manipulation of gifts given to serve your own ends. After all, to kill an ani- mal and share the meat with people is really no more than the Bushmen do for each other every day and with far less fanfare.

In the end, I had to admire how the Bushmen had played out the farce — collectively straight-faced to the end. Curiously, the episode reminded me of the Good Soldier Schweik and his marvelous encounters with authority. Like Schweik, the Bushmen had retained a thoroughgoing skepticism of good intentions. Was it this independence of spirit, I wondered, that had kept them culturally viable in the face of generations of contact with more powerful societies, both black and white? The thought that the Bushmen were alive and well in the Ka- lahari was strangely comforting. Perhaps, armed with that independence and with their superb knowledge of their environment, they might yet survive the future.

pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 214pod17046_ch31_210-214.indd 214 14/10/11 9:32 PM14/10/11 9:32 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

226

Marriage is a social institution that formalizes certain aspects of the relationship between males and females. It is an institution that evokes in us deep-seated emo- tions about questions of right and wrong, good and evil, and traditional versus modern. Within families, arguments may occur about what is appropriate pre- marital behavior, what is a proper marriage ceremony, and how long a marriage should last. Although these arguments may be traumatic for parents and their offspring, from a cross-cultural perspective, they generally involve minor deviations from the cultural norms. In contrast, anthropology textbooks describe an amazing variety of marriage systems that fulfi ll both biological and social functions. This selection will show just how different things could be.

Social institutions are geared to operate within and adapt to the larger social and ecological environment. This was the case in the earlier selections on gender roles and family planning; the organization of the fam- ily must also be adapted to the ecology. For example, the nuclear family is more adapted to a highly mobile society than is an extended family unit that includes grandparents and others. As society increasingly focuses on technical education, career specialization, and therefore geographic mobility for employment

Eager to reach home, Dorje drives his yaks hard over the 17,000-foot mountain pass, stopping only once to rest. He and his two older brothers, Pema and Sonam, are jointly marrying a woman from the next village in a few weeks, and he has to help with the preparations.

Dorje, Pema, and Sonam are Tibetans living in Limi, a 200-square-mile area in the northwest corner of Nepal, across the border from Tibet. The form of marriage they are about to enter — fraternal polyandry in anthropo- logical parlance — is one of the world’s rarest forms of marriage but is not uncommon in Tibetan society, where it has been practiced from time immemorial. For many

purposes, a system has evolved that emphasizes the nuclear family over the extended family. In a similar way, fraternal polyandry in Tibet, as described in this selection, can meet the social, demographic, and eco- logical needs of its region.

As you read this selection, ask yourself the following questions:

■ What is meant by the term fraternal polyandry? ■ Is this the only form of marriage allowed in Tibet? ■ How do husbands and wives feel about the

sexual aspects of sharing a spouse? ■ Why would Tibetans choose fraternal polyandry? ■ How is the function of fraternal polyandry like

that of nineteenth-century primogeniture in England?

The following terms discussed in this selection are included in the Glossary at the back of the book:

arable land nuclear family corvée population pressure fraternal polyandry primogeniture monogamy

Tibetan social strata, it traditionally represented the ideal form of marriage and family.

The mechanics of fraternal polyandry are simple. Two, three, four, or more brothers jointly take a wife, who leaves her home to come and live with them. Traditionally, marriage was arranged by parents, with children, particularly females, having little or no say. This is changing somewhat nowadays, but it is still unusual for children to marry without their parents’ consent. Marriage ceremonies vary by income and re- gion and range from all the brothers sitting together as grooms to only the eldest one formally doing so. The age of the brothers plays an important role in determin- ing this: very young brothers almost never participate in actual marriage ceremonies, although they typically join the marriage when they reach their midteens.

34 When Brothers Share a Wife

Melvyn C. Goldstein

Goldstein, Melvyn C. “When Brothers Share a Wife” from Natural History (March 1987):39-48; copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc. 1987. Reprinted with permission.

pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 226pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 226 12/10/11 9:56 PM12/10/11 9:56 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

WHEN BROTHERS SHARE A WIFE 227

The eldest brother is normally dominant in terms of authority, that is, in managing the household, but all the brothers share the work and participate as sexual partners. Tibetan males and females do not fi nd the sexual aspect of sharing a spouse the least bit unusual, repulsive, or scandalous, and the norm is for the wife to treat all the brothers the same.

Offspring are treated similarly. There is no attempt to link children biologically to particular brothers, and a brother shows no favoritism toward his child even if he knows he is the real father because, for example, his older brothers were away at the time the wife be- came pregnant. The children, in turn, consider all of the brothers as their fathers and treat them equally, even if they also know who is their real father. In some regions children use the term “father” for the eldest brother and “father’s brother” for the others, while in other areas they call all the brothers by one term, modi- fying this by the use of “elder” and “younger.”

Unlike our own society, where monogamy is the only form of marriage permitted, Tibetan society al- lows a variety of marriage types, including monog- amy, fraternal polyandry, and polygyny. Fraternal polyandry and monogamy are the most common forms of marriage, while polygyny typically occurs in cases where the fi rst wife is barren. The widespread practice of fraternal polyandry, therefore, is not the outcome of a law requiring brothers to marry jointly. There is choice, and in fact, divorce traditionally was relatively simple in Tibetan society. If a brother in a poly androus marriage became dissatisfi ed and wanted to sepa- rate, he simply left the main house and set up his own household. In such cases, all the children stayed in the main household with the remaining brother(s), even if the departing brother was known to be the real father of one or more of the children.

The Tibetans’ own explanation for choosing fra- ternal polyandry is materialistic. For example, when I asked Dorje why he decided to marry with his two brothers rather than take his own wife, he thought for a moment, then said it prevented the division of his fam- ily’s farm (and animals) and thus facilitated all of them achieving a higher standard of living. And when I later asked Dorje’s bride whether it wasn’t diffi cult for her to cope with three brothers as husbands, she laughed and echoed that rationale of avoiding fragmentation of the family land, adding that she expected to be better off economically, since she would have three husbands working for her and her children.

Exotic as it may seem to Westerners, Tibetan frater- nal polyandry is thus in many ways analogous to the way primogeniture functioned in nineteenth-century England. Primogeniture dictated that the eldest son inherited the family estate, while younger sons had to leave home and seek their own employment — for

example, in the military or the clergy. Primogeniture maintained family estates intact over generations by permitting only one heir per generation. Fraternal polyandry also accomplishes this but does so by keep- ing all the brothers together with just one wife so that there is only one set of heirs per generation.

While Tibetans believe that in this way fraternal polyandry reduces the risk of family fi ssion, monoga- mous marriages among brothers need not necessarily precipitate the division of the family estate: brothers could continue to live together, and the family land could continue to be worked jointly. When I asked Tibetans about this, however, they invariably re sponded that such joint families are unstable because each wife is primarily oriented to her own children and inter- ested in their success and well-being over that of the children of other wives. For example, if the youngest brother’s wife had three sons while the eldest brother’s wife had only one daughter, the wife of the youngest brother might begin to demand more resources for her children since, as males, they represent the future of the family. Thus, the children from different wives in the same generation are competing sets of heirs, and this makes such families inherently unstable. Tibetans perceive that confl ict will spread from the wives to their husbands and consider this likely to cause family fi ssion. Consequently, it is almost never done.

Although Tibetans see an economic advantage to fraternal polyandry, they do not value the sharing of a wife as an end in itself. On the contrary, they articu- late a number of problems inherent in the practice. For example, because authority is customarily exercised by the eldest brother, his younger male siblings have to subordinate themselves with little hope of chang- ing their status within the family. When these younger brothers are aggressive and individualistic, tensions and diffi culties often occur despite there being only one set of heirs.

In addition, tension and confl ict may arise in poly- androus families because of sexual favoritism. The bride normally sleeps with the eldest brother, and the two have the responsibility to see to it that the other males have opportunities for sexual access. Since the Tibetan subsistence economy requires males to travel a lot, the temporary absence of one or more brothers facilitates this, but there are also other rotation prac- tices. The cultural ideal unambiguously calls for the wife to show equal affection and sexuality to each of the brothers (and vice versa), but deviations from this ideal occur, especially when there is a sizable differ- ence in age between partners in the marriage.

Dorje’s family represents just such a potential situ- ation. He is fi fteen years old and his two older broth- ers are twenty-fi ve and twenty-two years old. The new bride is twenty-three years old, eight years Dorje’s

pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 227pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 227 12/10/11 9:56 PM12/10/11 9:56 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

228 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

senior. Sometimes such a bride fi nds the youngest husband immature and adolescent and does not treat him with equal affection; alternatively, she may fi nd his youth attractive and lavish special attention on him. Apart from this consideration, when a younger male like Dorje grows up, he may consider his wife “ancient” and prefer the company of a woman his own age or younger. Consequently, although men and women do not fi nd the idea of sharing a bride or a bridegroom repulsive, individual likes and dislikes can cause familial discord.

Two reasons have commonly been offered for the perpetuation of fraternal polyandry in Tibet: that Tibetans practice female infanticide and therefore have to marry polyandrously, owing to a shortage of females; and that Tibet, lying at extremely high al- titudes, is so barren and bleak that Tibetans would starve without resort to this mechanism. A Jesuit who lived in Tibet in the eighteenth century articulated this second view: “One reason for this most odious custom is the sterility of the soil, and the small amount of land that can be cultivated owing to the lack of water. The crops may suffi ce if the brothers all live together, but if

they form separate families they would be reduced to beggary.”

Both explanations are wrong, however. Not only has there never been institutionalized female infanti- cide in Tibet, but Tibetan society gives females con- siderable rights, including inheriting the family estate in the absence of brothers. In such cases, the woman takes a bridegroom who comes to live in her family and adopts her family’s name and identity. More- over, there is no demographic evidence of a shortage of females. In Limi, for example, there were (in 1974) sixty females and fi fty-three males in the fi fteen- to thirty-fi ve-year age category, and many adult females were unmarried.

The second reason is also incorrect. The climate in Tibet is extremely harsh, and ecological factors do play a major role perpetuating polyandry, but polyandry is not a means of preventing starvation. It is charac- teristic, not of the poorest segments of the society, but rather of the peasant landowning families.

In the old society, the landless poor could not re- alistically aspire to prosperity, but they did not fear starvation. There was a persistent labor shortage

Goldstein, Melvyn C. “When Brothers Share a Wife” from Natural History (March 1987):39-48. Illustration reprinted with permission of Joe LeMonnier.

Monogamy

Brothers take wives and divide their inherited land 3 brothers take 3 wives; each bears 3 sons

Generation 1

Polyandry

Brothers share a wife and work their inherited land together 3 brothers take 1 wife; she bears 3 sons

9 sons take 9 wives; each bears 3 sons

Generation 2

3 sons take 1 wife; she bears 3 sons

27 grandsons take 27 wives

Generation 3

3 grandsons take 1 wife

pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 228pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 228 12/10/11 9:56 PM12/10/11 9:56 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

WHEN BROTHERS SHARE A WIFE 229

throughout Tibet, and very poor families with little or no land and few animals could subsist through agri- cultural labor, tenant farming, craft occupations such as carpentry, or by working as servants. Although the per person family income could increase somewhat if brothers married polyandrously and pooled their wages, in the absence of inheritable land, the advan- tage of fraternal polyandry was not generally suffi cient to prevent them from setting up their own households. A more skilled or energetic younger brother could do as well or better alone, since he would completely con- trol his income and would not have to share it with his siblings. Consequently, while there was and is some polyandry among the poor, it is much less frequent and more prone to result in divorce and family fi ssion.

An alternative reason for the persistence of fra- ternal polyandry is that it reduces population growth (and thereby reduces the pressure on resources) by rel- egating some females to lifetime spinsterhood. Frater- nal polyandrous marriages in Limi (in 1974) averaged 2.35 men per woman, and not surprisingly, 31 percent of the females of child-bearing age (twenty to forty- nine) were unmarried. These spinsters either contin- ued to live at home, set up their own households, or worked as servants for other families. They could also become Buddhist nuns. Being unmarried is not syn- onymous with exclusion from the reproductive pool. Discreet extramarital relationships are tolerated, and actually half of the adult unmarried women in Limi had one or more children. They raised these children as single mothers, working for wages or weaving cloth and blankets for sale. As a group, however, the unmar- ried women had far fewer offspring than the married women, averaging only 0.7 children per woman, com- pared with 3.3 for married women, whether polyan- drous, monogamous, or polygynous. While polyandry helps regulate population, this function of polyandry is not consciously perceived by Tibetans and is not the reason they consistently choose it.

If neither a shortage of females nor the fear of starvation perpetuates fraternal polyandry, what mo- tivates brothers, particularly younger brothers, to opt for this system of marriage? From the perspective of the younger brother in a landholding family, the main incentive is the attainment or maintenance of the good life. With polyandry, he can expect a more secure and higher standard of living, with access not only to his family’s land and animals, but also to its inherited col- lection of clothes, jewelry, rugs, saddles, and horses. In addition, he will experience less work pressure and much greater security because all responsibility does not fall on one “father.” For Tibetan brothers, the question is whether to trade off the greater personal freedom inherent in monogamy for the real or poten- tial economic security, affl uence, and social prestige

associated with life in a larger, labor-rich polyandrous family.

A brother thinking of separating from his polyan- drous marriage and taking his own wife would face various disadvantages. Although in the majority of Tibetan regions all brothers theoretically have rights to their family’s estate, in reality Tibetans are reluctant to divide their land into small fragments. Generally, a younger brother who insists on leaving the family will receive only a small plot of land, if that. Because of its power and wealth, the rest of the family usu- ally can block any attempt of the younger brother to increase his share of land through litigation. More- over, a younger brother may not even get a house and cannot expect to receive much above the minimum in terms of movable possessions, such as furniture, pots, and pans. Thus, a brother contemplating going it on his own must plan on achieving economic security and the good life not through inheritance but through his own work.

The obvious solution for younger brothers — - creating new fi elds from virgin land — is generally not a feasible option. Most Tibetan populations live at high altitudes (above 12,000 feet), where arable land is ex- tremely scarce. For example, in Dorje’s village, agri- culture ranges only from about 12,900 feet, the lowest point in the area, to 13,300 feet. Above that altitude, early frost and snow destroy the staple barley crop. Furthermore, because of the low rainfall caused by the Himalayan rain shadow, many areas in Tibet and north- ern Nepal that are within appropriate altitude range for agriculture have no reliable sources of irrigation. In the end, although there is plenty of unused land in such areas, most of it is either too high or too arid.

Even where unused land capable of being farmed exists, clearing the land and building the substantial terraces necessary for irrigation constitute a great un- dertaking. Each plot has to be completely dug out to a depth of two to two and a half feet so that the large rocks and boulders can be removed. At best, a man might be able to bring a few new fi elds under cultiva- tion in the fi rst years after separating from his brothers, but he could not expect to acquire substantial amounts of arable land this way.

In addition, because of the limited farmland, the Tibetan subsistence economy characteristically in cludes a strong emphasis on animal husbandry. Tibetan farm- ers regularly maintain cattle, yaks, goats, and sheep, grazing them in the areas too high for agriculture. These herds produce wool, milk, cheese, butter, meat, and skins. To obtain these resources, however, shepherds must accompany the animals on a daily basis. When fi rst setting up a monogamous household, a younger brother like Dorje would fi nd it diffi cult to both farm and manage animals.

pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 229pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 229 12/10/11 9:56 PM12/10/11 9:56 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

230 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

In traditional Tibetan society, there was an even more critical factor that operated to perpetuate fra- ternal polyandry — a form of hereditary servitude somewhat analogous to serfdom in Europe. Peasants were tied to large estates held by aristocrats, monas- teries, and the Lhasa government. They were allowed the use of some farmland to produce their own sub- sistence but were required to provide taxes in kind and corvée (free labor) to their lords. The corvée was a substantial hardship, since a peasant household was in many cases required to furnish the lord with one laborer daily for most of the year and more on specifi c occasions such as the harvest. This enforced labor, along with the lack of new land and the eco- logical pressure to pursue both agriculture and ani- mal husbandry, made polyandrous families particu- larly benefi cial. The polyandrous family allowed an internal division of adult labor, maximizing economic

advantage. For example, while the wife worked the family fi elds, one brother could perform the lord’s cor- vée, another could look after the animals, and a third could engage in trade.

Although social scientists often discount other people’s explanations of why they do things, in the case of Tibetan fraternal polyandry, such explanations are very close to the truth. The custom, however, is very sensitive to changes in its political and economic milieu and, not surprisingly, is in decline in most Tibetan areas. Made less important by the elimination of the traditional serf-based economy, it is disparaged by the dominant non-Tibetan leaders of India, China, and Nepal. New opportunities for economic and social mobility in these countries, such as the tourist trade and government employment, are also eroding the rationale for polyandry, and so it may vanish within the next generation.

pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 230pod17046_ch34_226-230.indd 230 12/10/11 9:56 PM12/10/11 9:56 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

265

Anthropologists fi nd many societies with unusual cus- toms, beliefs, and behaviors. Usually they discover, after careful study and refl ection, that these perform some useful function within the society, as discussed in Goldstein’s When Brothers Share a Wife. But is this always the case? Must we assume that simply because a custom exists it is healthy for the members of society? We think not, and the Christians who were fed to lions and the Aztec slaves who were sacrifi ced to a blood- thirsty god would most likely agree.

Times change; hunters and gatherers plant crops, tribal people rush headlong into peasantry, and small- scale farmers become urban wage earners. Traditions that helped maintain a healthy society in one context may become dysfunctional in another. For better or worse, traditions and beliefs run deep and are almost impossible to unlearn. It is the nature of culture to resist change.

As you will read, the practice of dousing a bride with kerosene and creating a human torch certainly indicates that the payment of dowry is a traditional practice gone awry. That said, what can be done? Laws, even those that carry serious penalties, are light ammunition against the armor of strongly held cul- tural beliefs. Governments will solve such problems only through public policy based on in-depth cultural understanding.

A 25-year-old woman was allegedly burnt to death by her husband and mother-in-law at their East Delhi home yes- terday. The housewife, Mrs. Sunita, stated before her death at the Jaya Prakash Narayana Hospital that members of her

As you read this selection, ask yourself the following questions:

■ What do you think the authors mean when they suggest that dowry death presents a problem for ethnologists because of ethnological theory’s functional cast?

■ Why does the institution of dowry make college education problematic for some young women?

■ What are the present-day approaches to solving the dowry death problem?

■ How can women’s access to production roles and property, delocalization of social control, and economic transformation affect the problem of dowry death?

■ Dowry-related violence in India is related to the economic value of women. What might be said about the relationship between the economic po- sition and the social status of women in America?

The following terms discussed in this selection are included in the Glossary at the back of the book:

caste ethnology cultural materialism peasants demography sex roles dowry

husband’s family had been harassing her for bringing inad- equate dowry.

The woman told the Shahdara subdivisional magistrate that during a quarrel over dowry at their Pratap Park house yesterday, her husband gripped her from behind while the mother-in-law poured kerosene over her clothes.

Her clothes were then set ablaze. The police have regis- tered a case against the victim’s husband, Suraj Prakash, and his mother.

—Times of India, February 19, 1988

38 Law, Custom,

and Crimes against Women The Problem of Dowry Death in India

John van Willigen and V. C. Channa

van Willigen, John & Channa, V.C. “Law, Custom, and Crimes against Women: The Problem of Dowry Death in India.” Repro- duced by permission of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) from Human Organization 50, no. 4 (1991):369–377.

pod17046_ch38_265-275.indd 265pod17046_ch38_265-275.indd 265 12/10/11 9:57 PM12/10/11 9:57 PM

J O H N S O N , O L I V I A 9 1 1 0

Confi rming Pages

266 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This routinely reported news story describes what in India is termed a “bride-burning” or “dowry death.” Such incidents are frequently reported in the newspa- pers of Delhi and other Indian cities. In addition, there are cases in which the evidence may be ambiguous, so that deaths of women by fi re may be recorded as kitchen accidents, suicides, or murders. Dowry violence takes a characteristic form. Following marriage and the requisite giving of dowry, the family of the groom makes additional demands for the payment of more cash or the provision of more goods. These demands are expressed in unremitting harassment of the bride, who is living in the household of her husband’s par- ents, culminating in the murder of the woman by members of her husband’s family or by her suicide. The woman is typically burned to death with kerosene, a fuel used in pressurized cook stoves, hence the use of the term “bride-burning” in public discourse.

Dowry death statistics appear frequently in the press and parliamentary debates. Parliamentary sources report the following fi gures for married women 16 to 30 years of age in Delhi: 452 deaths by burning for 1985; 478 for 1986 and 300 for the fi rst six months of 1987 (Bhatia 1988). There were 1,319 cases reported nationally in 1986 (Times of India, January 10, 1988). Police records do not match hospital records for third degree burn cases among younger married women; far more violence occurs than the crime reports indicate (Kumari 1988).

There is other violence against women related both directly and indirectly to the institution of dowry. For example, there are unmarried women who com- mit suicide so as to relieve their families of the bur- den of providing a dowry. A recent case that received national attention in the Indian press involved the triple suicide of three sisters in the industrial city of Kanpur. A photograph was widely published showing the three young women hanging from ceiling fans by their scarves. Their father, who earned about 4,000 Rs. [rupees] per month, was not able to negotiate marriage for his oldest daughter. The grooms were requesting approximately 100,000 Rs. Also linked to the dowry problem is selective female abortion made possible by amniocentesis. This issue was brought to national at- tention with a startling statistic reported out of a semi- nar held in Delhi in 1985. Of 3,000 abortions carried out after sex determination through amniocentesis, only one involved a male fetus. As a result of these devel- opments, the government of the state of Maharashtra banned sex determination tests except those carried out in government hospitals.

The phenomenon of dowry death presents a diffi - cult problem for the ethnologist. Ethnological theory, with its residual functionalist cast, still does not deal

effectively with the social costs of institutions of what might be arguably referred to as custom gone bad, re- sulting in a culturally constituted violence syndrome.