Author(s): David Turner, John Morton and Warren Shapiro
Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp. 521-526 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802706 . Accessed: 18/06/2014 22:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Man. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CORRESPONDENCE 521 Skar, H.O. & F. Salomon (eds). 1987. Natives and neighbors in South America: anthropological essays (Etnol. Stud. 38). Go5teborg: Etnografiska Museum. Denial of death: affirmation of life Warren Shapiro's article 'Ritual kinship, ritual in- corporation and the denial of death' (Man (N.S.) 23, 275-97) is, to my mind, itself an attempt to escape the clutches of the Grim Reaper. Shapiro is trying to save what is probably the most inapplicable of all paradigms forAboriginal studies, extensionistkinship theory, from the undertaker who would finally lay it to rest. This is not 'alliance theorists' as he suggests but the very data on which his essay is founded, namely 'spint-finding', 'totemic clans' and 'pseudo- procreation'. The attempt is, it is to be hoped, one ofthe last gasps ofthe Euro-American imperialisation of Australian Aboriginal studies. The claim that Scheffler's Australian kin classfication and Heath's The language of kinship in Aboriginal Aus- tralia are 'a landmark, not only in the time-honoured study of Aboriginal kinship but also in certain other areas of anthropological theory' (p. 275), and that the validity of extensionist assumptions with regard to Aboriginal studies is now 'settled' would startle many Australiamsts. I have in mind T. G.H. Strehlow (who would turn over in his grave at the prospect), Kenneth Maddock and Robert Tonkinson, to name but three. The problem, it seems to me, is that Abongines deny material determination of social relations and 'culture' at every turn, while the extensionist para- digm requires it; Aborigines operate within an alter-oriented universe of pre-established institu- tional ties focused on Land in which E/ego is pre-situated in a positive relation to 'other' while the extensionist paradigm, as the term implies, insists that 'kinship' relations proceed from an E/ego-centre (or a socio-centre the principle is the same) outward in a pragmatic way to incorporate wider and wider circles of 'classificatory' kin. Extensionists began the modification oftheir para- digm by positing that the genealogical relations at issue here could be real or 'culturally-posited' (Schef- fler 1972: 113). This caveat was introduced to cover the possibility that other peoples may have very different conceptions of conception from ourselves, the presumption being that were they to learn the 'true' facts of the case they would adjust their think- ing accordingly. Now they move a step further, trailing after the now-established, but awkward from the paradigm's point ofview, 'fact' that 'spirit-matter' and the like constituted a distinct order of reality separate from 'kinship'. But instead of seeing this order as dissolving 'kinship', Shapiro situates it over and above 'kinship' as an autonomous domain oper- ating according to certain laws whose identity he fails to define (p. 280). To obfuscate his purpose Shapiro invents an enemy, those dastardly 'affiance theorists' (not named) who presumably fall to acknowledge both 'kinship' or 'spintuality'. These theonsts he lumps together with the 'cultural materialhsts' and the per- petrators of ideas of the 'patrilocal band'. I am sure Levi-Strauss would be surprised indeed to find him- selfin bed with Marvin Harris. The irony, of course, is that it is the 'alfiance theonsts' who pointed out the distinction between 'genealogy' and 'category' in Australian and other societies (see Needham 1966: 28-9). Even in his treatment of the level of the 'spiritual' Shapiro exhibits the same imperialising tendency. He not only insists that Aboriginal cosmology, by denying maternity, 'must therefore demgrate women, or, more specifically, the female reproduc- tive tract', but also that 'both Chnstian and Aboriginal theorists denigrate men as co-conspirators in the act of bodily procreations' (p. 276). In my view, in the transcendence of kinshlp to determina- tion of human relations by supra-natural Forms, Aboriginal people elevate both men and women (despite culturally fabricated lllusions of inequality) to the status of the possible in the human condition (Turner 1985/87; 1989). Finally, to say that Aboriginal people 'incorporate' is but another projection. The new-born is not in- corporated into the cult-lodge of the 'spirit-finder' or the 'father' or whomever, but, in my expenence, is already and always there and, through birth, simply finds his/her way back into the matenal world after a sojourn in another of the same order if different substance. Initiation and other ceremonies merely cement the connexion that rebirth in matenal form implies. This is not so much a denial of death as an affirmation of rebirth. There seems to be a lot of scurrying going on at the moment to save old paradigms from the onslaught of the 'discovery' of Aboriginal spintual reality (see, for instance, Testart's attempted appropnation to Marxism in Current Anthropology (29/1). A similar effort may well occur in aliiance theory too. What is required, however, is a break from all these 'isms' of ours. David Turner University of Toronto Maddock, Kenneth 1972. The Australian aborigines: a portrait of their society. London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press. Needham, Rodney 1966. Age, category and descent. Bijdr Taal-, Land- Volkenk. 122, 1-35. Relmng, P. (ed.) 1972. Kinship in the Morgan Centennial Year. Washington. Strehlow, T.G.H. 1971. Songs of Central Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Scheffler, Harold W. 1972. Systems of kin classification. In Reining 1972. Testart, Alain 1988. Some major problems in the social anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Curr. Anthrop. 1, 1-31. This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 522 CORRESPONDENCE Tonkinson, Robert 1978. The MardudjaraAborigines: living the dream in Australia's desert. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Turner, David H. 1985/87. Life before genesis: a conclusion. New York: Peter Lang. 1989. Return to Eden: a journey through the Promised Landscape ofAmagalyuagba. New York: Peter Lang. In his article (Man (N.S.) 23,275-97) Warren Shapi- ro explores the role of death in social reproduction among Australian Aborigines. In an earlier article, 'The effectiveness oftotemism' (Man (N.S.) 22,453- 74), I explored a similar theme, and I have since expanded on that theme elsewhere (1987; in press). So discordant are the conclusions drawn by Shapiro and myself from our forays into key areas of Abo- riginal ethnography that I feel bound to call attention to what I regard as some serious flaws in his argu- ments. Central to Shapiro's article is the idea, borrowed from Ernest Becker, that all men seek immortality through the denial of death. In the Aboriginal case it is said that the inescapable fate of death is 'an intolerable state of affairs' giving rise to 'desperate fantasy' (283) and 'death-denying edifices' (291) in the shape of ritual lodges which ensure that mortal humans become immortal ancestors destined ever to renew themselves. There is no doubt that Aborigines stress an ideal of permanence in respect of their ancestral beings and cult lodges, but how far can we attribute this to a denial of death? I find no direct evidence for this proposition in Shapiro's article, though I can cite evidence that suggests the contrary. For example, the usual Aboriginal practice of expunging a person's name from discourse is surely enough to suggest that, generally, Aborigines affirm death. As one of T.G.H. Strehlow's informants once said, in opposition to Christian doctrine: 'All of us die and are annihilated for ever; and there is no resurrection for us' (1947: 45). A second central point in Shapiro's article is that there is a fundamental split between female corpo- reality and male spirituality. 'Aboriginal cosmology ... gives temporal and ontological dominance to the spiritual over the bodily, to pseudo-procreation [in male ritual] over procreation; ... it must therefore denigrate women, or, more specifically, the female reproductive tract' (276). '[F]emales are more bodily than males, who for their part are more spiritual than their sisters' (277). 'Because women are more pro- foundly involved in the process of "natural" procreation ... their role in folk ontology has a de- cidedly negative valence. At best their sexuality is seen as providing only the all-too-mortal raw ma- terial upon which pseudo-procreative fantasy acts' (285). Shapiro knows such views are contestable, though he relegates contrary evidence to the status of ex- ception (277). Yet the evidence in favour is not produced at all. That various aspects of cult life are dominated by men is not in doubt, but it is ques- tionable to assume thereby that women's roles in pregnancy, birth and child-rearing are not commen- surate with the spiritualresponsibilities ofmen. How, for example, would Shapiro's scheme be able to account for the common spiritual tie of siblings born from, and raised by, one mother, whose personal spirit fosters the welfare of those brothers and sisters (Carl Strehlow 1908: 57)? Clearly, there is no dis- missive 'misogyny' here. Looking at the matter from a different direction, Shapiro says that men are normally patrifihiated to the ritual lodges of their genitors, regardless of con- ception identity. He finds this apparently 'surprising' (280), because of the strong recognition it gives to physical paternity, and thus to corporeality. Shapiro is, of course, correct to emphasise the importance of bodily procreation here, but his surprise is condi- tioned by the spuriously aligned dualisms between, on the one hand, body and spirit, and women and men on the other. There is no evidence that such aligned dualisms exist, and it is beyond me how anyone familiar with the use ofthe body in Australian initiation rites (circumcision, subincision, scarifica- tion, etc.) can suggest that the body itself is not the bearer of spiritual qualities. It is simply not enough to try to avoid the problems by saying that 'men, because of their pseudo-procreative commitment, are deemed to be relatively-though not absolute- ly-noncarnal' (281). Shapiro also calls attention to 'the separation of humanity from animality ... in Aboriginal thought', which has been obscured by 'a century of flim-flam on "totemism"'. Animals, he suggests, are 'socialised' in Australian totemism: humans are not 'animalised' (284). Animals, because they are not morally or- ganised, stand in complete opposition to humanity and 'provide metaphorical derogation for foreign people' (284): they are 'absolute outsiders' (285). I find this reduction of 'a century of flim-flam on totemism' quite extraordinary. This may not be the time to renovate Levy-Bruhl, but if animals really are 'absolute outsiders', just how are we to account for such classic totemic statements as 'I am a kanga- roo'? Have Aboriginal informants been saying all these years that they are only 'outsiders'? Clearly not, because such statements are about one's inner or hidden identity. 'I am a kangaroo' means nothing if it is not a profession of one's own identity, and the statement thus 'animalises' humanity. The question of morality in such a context is much more complex than Shapiro would have us believe. (See, for example, Strehlow's [1947: 1-46] now long-standing analysis, which makes clear that men identify with totemic beings precisely because such heroes are in some fundamental sense amoral.) These three areas are not the only problematic ones in Shapiro's article, but they are sufficient to call in question the general drift of his discussion. Given the problems, what are we to make of his central thesis that ritual incorporation into lodges counteracts 'the minimisation of the self' in This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CORRESPONDENCE 523 Aboriginal and anthropological realities (see ab- stract)? Everything hinges here on the way Shapiro constructs his key terms 'fetishisation' and 'pseudo- procreation'. 'Fetishisation' comes from Becker and is tied to 'the psychoanalytic notion of "transference"' (276). The gist of the argument is that in the fetishisation of cult objects, the landscape and ritual lodges, men overcome their morbid fear of death by investing themselves in 'eternal bodies' (287). Thus the trans- ference takes effect by the projection ofthe 'self into enduring objects (cf Munn 1970), which thereafter embody an immortal 'self 'a definition of oneself in terms of a posited Enduring Object' (291). Yet, that the dissolution of the self is premissed on the 'definition of oneself in an object is in question. It appears, in fact, that the dissolution of the self may be absolute: one dies and that is all there is to itfrom the point of view of the self But since it is undeniable that Aborigines proj ect somethinginto their 'Enduring Objects', what could this 'something' be? Freudian theory is not really concerned with 'multiple selves': it is primarily concerned with the growth of the self (the ego) out of a situation where there is no sef (the, id). But psychoanalysis is also concerned with the opposite process-the deflation ofthe self (death) and the return to a state ofnon-self This latter process is mediated by the super-ego, an agency set up against the ego or 'self. It was precisely the construction and maintenance of the super-ego that I showed in my own article in Man to be critical in the understanding of the male cult. Put simply, I suggest that totemic lodges are not about construct- ing 'Enduring Objects' carrying immortal 'selves': they are precisely what Aborigines say they are-en- during forms which are 'not their idea' because they come from others (mythical beings) (cf. Myers 1986). We should, I think, listen hard to Aborigines when they say that they truly become mythical creatures in their cult activities, because the notion at least makes more sense than the contradictory idea that 'the dissolution of the self leads to 'the definition of oneself (291). Rather, the dissolution of the self occurs in ritual when men become other than them- selves: it is this otherwhich is projected into 'Enduring Objects'. If we find this non-lineal conception difficult (steeped as we may be in the ideas of 'personal creativity' and 'the autonomy of the ego'), that is insufficient reason for doubting its truth. Aborigines employ totemic metaphors not only to derngrate others, but to celebrate the fact that they are others. They employ these metaphors consistently in rela- tion to the body, although totemic spirituality differs in accordance with sex and age. As Shapiro says, both men and women have both spirits and bodies, but there is no evidence of quantitative inequality. Rather, it is simply a question of the way in which body and spirit are articulated in each case and of how these articulations are geared towards reproduc- tion. Thus construed, even the once useful notion of 'pseudo-procreation' has to be questioned, be- cause men no more 'pseudo-procreate' than do women: both are involved in the employment of sexual and totemic metaphors to symbolise their respective responsibilities to reproduction. Although I find many other aspects of Shapiro's article problematic-in particular the sustained com- parison of Aboriginal and Catholic theologies and the assertion that ritual lodges have nothing at all to do with alliance (282)-I will refrainfrom comment- ing on them at length. Suffice it to say that it is hard to know why Aborigines spend so much time de- fining their territorial relations in terms of sacred sites, whose maintenance is guaranteed through re- production, if these sites have nothing to do with marriage alliances. Suffice it also to say that it is equally hard to know why Aborigines have bothered to resist the encroachments of mainstream Christian influence if the latter is so in tune with their indigen- ous conceptions. Like any other anthropologist, Shapiro is entided to project his own theological concerns about men's lives and descent onto Abo- riginal people, but only if that projection can be substantiated with evidence otherwise anthropo- logy will be reduced to the status of mission activity. I fear, however, that all Shapiro has managed to do is to introduce an alien totemism into Australia: his story tells of the journey of too many red herrings searching for an elusive 'Enduring Object'. But as Aborigines remind us, such objects have a life or death of their own, depending on whether they embody the truth. John Morton Macquarie University Berndt, R.M. (ed.) 1970. Australian anthropology: modem studies in the social anthropology of the Australian Aborigines. Perth: Univ. of Western Australia Press. Morton, John 1987. Singing subjects and sacred objects: more on Munn's 'transformation of subjects into objects' in CentralAustralian myth. Oceania 58, 100-18. in press. Singing subjects and sacred objects: a psychological interpretation of the 'transformation of subjects into objects' in Central Australian myth. Oceania. Munn, N.D. 1970. The transformation of subjects into objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara myth. In Berndt 1970. Myers, F.R. 1986. Pintupt country, Pintupi self sentiment, place, and politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Strehlow, Carl 1908. DieAranda- undLoritja-Stdmme in Zentral Australien. 2, Mythen, Sagen und Mdrchen des Loritja-Stdmmes, die totemistischen Vorstellungen und die Tjurunga der Aranda und Loritja. Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer. Strehlow, T.G.H. 1947. Aranda traditions. Melbourn: Univ. Press. The gravamen ofTurner's critique ofmy article (Man (N.S.) 23, 275-97), and some of Morton's remarks This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 524 CORRESPONDENCE as well, turn upon my assertion that a dichotomy of body and spirit, and a related cleft between kinship and pseudo-procreation, can be found not only in Christian theology but also in its Aboriginal counter- part. Morton makes the important point that Aborigines make ritual use ofthe body, which there- fore cannot be dichotomously related to spirit. This requires modification, though not abandonment of my original formulation. Following Rosaldo and Atkinson (1975: 70-1), I would now argue that spiri- tual value is indeed attached to the body-more specifically, to violation ofits boundaries-when that violation is seen to be undergone voluntarily, i.e. within one's control, and from the outside of the body, as in Aboriginal circumcision, subincision, scarification and tooth-evulsion. When, by contrast, violation is seen as beyond one's control and coming from inside the body, as with defecation, menstru- ation and birthinig, it is likely to be regarded as quintessentially anti-spiritual. These propositions deserve cross-cultural test, and are meant to counter Mary Douglas's Durkheimian analyses of body sym- bolism (Douglas 1966; 1970). Hence I agree with Morton that Aboriginal 'women's roles in pregnancy, birth and child-rearing are ... commensurate with the spiritual responsi- bilities of men': indeed, many of the latter are symbolic derivatives of the former (Beckett 1967; Hiatt 1971; Shapiro 1981: 67-8). But such meta- phorical equivalents should not be taken to indicate the absence of gender hierarchy based upon local notions of relative spirituality: some of the com- parative materials employed in my article make just this point. Similarly, I join Turner in insisting that incorporation' is a fantasy; indeed, it is one which is widely encountered in Aboriginal ritual life, espe- cially where men so mime women's reproductive career (see esp. Hiatt 1975). And Aboriginal thought does indeed posit ritual lodge affiliation both before 'initiation'-in fact before birth-and after death: the point is made at several places in my article (see also Shapiro in press). But I suggest that this thought also takes account of such contingencies as recalci- trant young men and disinterested bodily remains (Warner 1937: 435-42). To argue thatsuch emphases on incorporative symbolism 'merely cement the con- nexion that rebirth in material form implies' is to play everyman's 'social scientist' (Shapiro 1971) and-what's worse-to miss the subtleties of other worlds which one claims to penetrate. But if the notion of 'incorporation' is to be ques- tioned on the grounds that, in Aboriginal theory, a human being 'simply finds his/her way back into the material world after a sojourn in another of ... dfferent substance' (emphases added)-if, in other words, Aboriginal thought posits two separate ontological realms-why is it an 'imperialisation' ofthat thought to recognise the distinction? Though it could be thicker, there is indeed evi- dence that Aboriginal thought distinguishes yet more widely between two realisms which are reasonably glossed as 'spirit' and 'body', or 'spiritual existence' and 'temporal existence', and that although kinship idioms figure in both realms, their primary denotata lie in the 'temporal' one. Thus in northeast Arnhem Land the term dawu ('story') covers both what I would render as 'myths' and what I would render as 'presumed historical events'. But these renderings are not only mine: informants often pointed out, after a particular narration, that the 'story' just told was not from 'the present age' (diyangu bala) but rather from wanggarr, bokmanangu ('the creative age') or-most frequently, in Aboriginal pidgin-'the Dreaming'. Although kin-terms are used with 'Dreaming' beings as both egos and alters, there is compelling evidence that 'temporal' connexions of a kinship order provide their focal referents (Shapiro 1981: 38-41). Using the pubhshed materials, Scheffler (1978: 524-31) has made a closely comparable case for the Walbiri of the Central Desert. Hence the tentative conclusion can be drawn that 'the Dreaming' is not-as Turner claims I claim-'an autonomous domain': it is derived from the 'temporal' domain, its kinship elements and their logical connexions. Comparable materials from Chris- tian thinking are presented in my article. Thus extensionist theory is by nio means inapplic- able to the Aboriginal data, among others; indeed, as I have argued elsewhere (Shapiro 1982), it comes far closer to unearthing an 'atom of kinship' which alliance theory, of which Turner (1980 and else- where) is so fond, has claimed but utterly failed to deliver. As such it has major significance for a theory of humanity: it argues for the time-honoured notion of the psychic unity of mankind (Lounsbury 1969), and for the related contention that human thought is partly independent of its social and cultural envi- ronments (Shapiro 1982:284). Contrary, then, to Turner's romantic image, Abo- riginal thought posits both 'ties focused on land' and ego-centred kinship relations. This is the contrast I pressed in my article between pseudo-procreation and procreation. Aboriginal pseudo-procreative the- ory is friendlier to the self-maintenance programmes of both male Aborigines and male anthropologists: hence the immense appeal of its alliance theory ren- ditions, despite their enormous empirical and logical deficiencies (Hiatt 1968; Scheffler 1973: 780-86; Shapiro 1979: 89-99: n.d.). But, outside of ritual activity and certainly in residential alignments and the politics of marriage, ego-centred relations are far more salient (Hiatt 1965; 1967; Meggitt 1962; Shapi- ro 1973; 1981). In the process of thus mangling the ethnographic materials, Turner also does injustice to the history of anthropological thought. Scholarly contest be- tween extensionists and alliance theorists is not my invention: it is a matter of published record for at least three decades. Homans and Schneider (1955) versus Needham (1962) began the games, at least in their modern guise, though I am sure Needham is able to find ancient antecedents. The pertinent lit- erature is so extensive, and so irrelevant to the main thrusts of my article, that I thought it unnecessary to supply a full combat-record. Turner partly fills the This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CORRESPONDENCE 525 gap by evoking Needham's hackneyed genea- logy/category opposition, the value of which has been given its due appreciation by Scheffler (1978: 13-36). Similarly, five pages of Marvin Harris's Cultural materialism (Harris 1979: 80-4) bear afairresemblance to Levi-Strauss's major kinship tome. There are the further considerations, to which I allude in my article, that neither Harris nor Levi-Strauss has shown much interest in human emotional life; and that thls ties them to a wide variety of other anthropologists and to what appear to be certain avoided grounds of anthropological inquiry (Epstein n.d.; Palgi & Ab- ramovitch 1984: 385). Morton's critique, by contrast, raised some re- markable interpretive issues. Statements in which Abongines seem to identify with an animal species- 'I am a kangaroo'-need to be analysed far more carefully than has been the case. I should guess that, at the very least, complete identification-'I am nothing but a kangaroo'-is out of the question. But even if the implied statement is something like 'I am, in some fundamental sense, a kangaroo', we still need to know whether an extant or an archetypical form is intended, for the two are usually seen quite chf- ferently. Thus in Radcliffe-Brown's classic analysis ofthe Eaglehawk/Crow moiety opposition in West- ern Australia (Radcliffe-Brown 1958: 114-15), Eaglehawk is WF to Crow; yet Aborigines surely know that male eaglehawks sire other eaglehawks, and that these mate with still others and not with crows. Similarly, I must assume that, in Central Aus- tralia, a distinction is made between non-human kangaroos, who mate with one another, and human 'kangaroos', who may not do so. Still, as I endnoted in my article (292), increase rites in Central Australia and elsewhere (Morton 1987a) call into question my argument that extant animals are outside the purview of ritual lodges, and Morton is right to bring this into bolder relief Strehlow's informant's comment (Strehlow 1947: 45) is indeed remarkable, but not for the reason Morton avers. Morton has elsewhere (1987b; in press) discussed Aranda notions of rebirth and 'Dreaming' reinstantiation, so I presume he is not here claimnng that the Aranda generally posit a finality to death. Rather, the comment has indeed to be considered 'in opposition to Christian doctrine'- and assertion of Abonginal identity in the face of interrogation by a Christian clergyman. A similar interpretation can readily be made of the more general rejection in Aboriginal Australia of Christian theology, even 'if the latter is ... in tune with ... indigenous conceptions'. I take it as granted that, despite the massive record of religious assimilation in the world, there are also innumerable cases of symbolic assertion of differences; and that neither Morton nor I can specify the conditions under which one or the other response will occur. Morton's interpretation as death-affirming the taboo on using the names of the recently dead re- quires far more support. I can make a perhaps equally plausible-and equally abbreviated-argument that this selfsame usage is death-denying, on the grounds that it suggests not that the deceased once existed but that he/she neverexisted. Compare Gorer (1976) on 'the pornography of death' in the modem West. Warren Shapiro Rutgers University Beckett, J. 1967 Marriage, circumcision and avoidance among the Maljangaba of northwest New South Wales. Mankind 6, 456-64. Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and danger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1970. Natural symbols. London: Cresset Press. Epstein, A.L. n.d. Anthropological paradigms and the image of man. Unpublished manuscript. Gorer, G. 1976. The pornography of death. In Schneidman 1970. Harris, M. 1979. Cultural materialism. New York: Random House. Hiatt, L.R. 1965. Kinship and conflict: a study of an Aboriginal community in northern Amhem Land. Canberra: Australian National Univ. Press. 1967. Authority and reciprocity in Australian Aboriginal mamage arrangements. Mankind 6, 468-75. 1968. Gidjingali marriage settlements. In Lee & DeVore 1968. 1971. Secret pseudo-procreation rites among the Australian Abongines. In Hiatt & Jayawardena 1971. Swallowing and regurgitation in Australian myth and rite. In Australian Aboriginal mythology. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. & Jayawardena 1971. Anthropology in Oceania. San Francisco: Chandler. Homans, G.C. & D.M. Schneider. 1955. Marriage, authority andfinal causes. Glencoe: Free Press. Honigmann, Jj. (ed.) 1973. Handbook of social and cultural anthropology. Chicago: Rand Macnally. Hook, S. (ed.) 1969. Language and philosophy. New York: Univ. Press. Lee, R.B. & I. DeVore (eds) 1968. Man the hunter. Chicago: Aldine. Lounsbury, F.G. 1969. Language and culture. In Hook 1969. Meggitt, MJ. 1962. Desert people: the Walbiri Aborigines of central Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Morton, J. 1987a. The effectiveness of totemism. Man(N.S.) 22, 453-74. 1987b. Singing subjects and sacred objects (pt I). Oceania 58, 100-18. in press. Singing subjects and sacred objects (pt II). Oceania. Needham, R. 1962. Structure and sentiment. Chicago: Univ. Press. Palgi, P. & H. Abramovitch 1984. Death: a cross-cultural perspective. Ann. Rev. Anthrop. 13, 385-417. This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 526 CORRESPONDENCE Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1958. Method in social anthropology. Chicago: Univ. Press. Rosaldo, M.Z. & J.M. Atkinson 1975. Man the hunter and woman. In Willis 1975. Scheffler, H.W. 1973. Kinship, descent and alliance. In Honigmann 1973. 1978. Australian kin classfication. Cambridge: Univ. Press. Schneidman, E. (ed.) 1976. Death: currentperspectives. Palo Alto: Mayfield. Shapiro, W. 1971. Structuralism versus sociology. Mankind 10, 64-66. 1973. Residential grouping in northeast Arnhem Land. Man (N.S.) 8, 365-83. 1979. Social organization in aboriginal Australia. Canberra: Australian National Univ. Press. 1981. Miwuyt marriage: the cultural anthropology of affinity in northeast Arnhem Land. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. 1982. The place of cognitive extensionism in the history of anthropological thought. J. Polynes. Soc. 91, 257-97. 1989. The theoretical importance of pseudo-procreative symbolism. The Psychoanalytic Study of Society (in press a). n.d. Of 'origins and essences': Aboriginal conception ideology and anthropological conceptions of Aboriginal 'local organization'. In essays in the generation and maintenance of the body in honour ofJohn Barnes. (ed.) W. Shapiro. In preparation. Strehlow, T.G.H. 1947. Aranda traditions. Melbourne: Univ. Press. Turner, D. 1980. Australian Aboriginal social organization. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Warner, W.L. 1937. A Black civilization. New York: Harper. Willis, R. (ed.) 1975. The interpretation of symbolism. London: Malaby Press. Towards an anthropology of technology For two main reasons, Pfaffenberger's paper (Man (N.S.) 23, 236-52) was a good surprise. First, to read about technology in an English-speaking an- thropological journal is a sort of an event; second, there's really nothing to disagree with in the author's theoretical views on the topic. Demonstrating that to consider technology as a given is a dead-end, and using key-words as 'choices', 'system' or 'knowl- edge and know-how' gives-to me-the right image of what technology is made from and why it is definitely a 'social construction'. Furthermore, by pointing at the 'interpenetration of technology with social forms and systems of meaning', and by raising the issue of the social dimension of both failed and successful technologies, Pfaffenberger evokes crucial questions for the contemporary ap- proach to technological systems. The bad news is that, even with the help of a computer search of Sociological Abstracts, a specialist can obviously miss basic writings on the subject, and be unaware of less fundamental but numerous pub- lications on research currently in progress. For some reason, it happens that pioneers in the field were French scholars and although they often published in their strange language, going through their work is still an inescapable preliminary to anthropological investigations on technology. As 'anthropologists [ ...] have been slow to detect the hidden influence of technological somnambulism and determinism', we had better stop periodicaliy reinventing the wheel, in order to accelerate our researches before the com- plete disappearance of traditional technologies. Thus, it is a pity that, quoting Mauss's Essai sur le don, Pfaffenberger omits this author's 'Les techniques du corps' (1934, easily accessible in English, 1979) which is the classical paper in the matter. Likewise, one cannot ignore either Leroi-Gourhan (1943; 1945; 1964; 1965) who, years ago, set the pace for both theoretical and methodological aspects of the study of homo technicus, Haudricourt (1962; 1964; 1988), whose ethnoscientific insights promoted the study of social representations of technology, or Gille (1978) who devoted hundreds of pages to demonstrate the impli- cations of the systemic side of technology throughout history. It is also to be remembered that research on the anthropology of technology is often-if not most- ly-carried out by historians and archaeologists who prove to pay more attention to the subject than eth- nologists, economists or philosophers. For example, one can greatly profit from J. Needham's work on China or from having a look at the current debate on 'style' and 'function' in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, not to mention fieldwork done by 'eth- noarchaeologists' or the theoretical views of the Cambridge so-called 'contextual archaeologists' (even though they are sometimes excessive; see comments by Yengoyan 1985). The Sri Lankan example itself is another good and well-documented demonstration that forces of pro- duction and social relations of production cannot be disconnected from each other. But it may not be the best illustration of Pfaffenberger's own theoretical framework: the literature being what it is, the an- thropology of technology has no longer to prove that material culture (by the way, why abandon this expression?) is a social production and is made of 'choices'. As the author himself suggested, it is now time to investigate how and where technological choices take place. This implies, of course, the study of 'technological knowledge' of societies, as well as social relations of production; but it also makes it necessary to pay the greatest attention to cultural aspects of physical actions and their impact on the material world. Strangely enough, the anthropology of technology cannot escape the most detailed ob- servation, description and analysis of technological behaviour! There, too, is social meaning. Last, taking the risk of appearing a little more chauvinistic, I cannot resist suggesting interested This content downloaded from 70.194.105.116 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 22:42:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions