the forest of symbols aspects of ndembu ritual

The best essay in here was 'Muchona the Hornet,' a portrait of the anthropologist's favorite informant, previously published in In the Company of Man.

The point is: it is not, or not primarily, a failure of intelligence, it’s that you can know an awful lot about something without understanding the first thing about it. Turner parenthetically wonders, ‘(What kind of structure, one is prompted to ask, is this: forced abstract or reinforced concrete?)’, but the question ought to be, ‘What has any of this to do with witchcraft ?’ The explanation-if that is what it is-in terms of social structure does absolutely nothing to explain why it is precisely witch beliefs that are supposed to help in this way.Īnd this is what anthropological and psychological ‘explanations’ generally look like: lacking any direct grasp of the phenomenon in view, or even willingness to attempt any such thing given what they take to be its patent irrationality or (if they are condescending enough) pseudo-rationality, they simply substitute another on which they feel they have a theoretical handle and then publish themselves into a career in defence of this transparent bait-and-switch. Turner (1967) reports Marwick (1952) via Douglas (1963): ‘When Cewa social relations become intolerably strained, witch beliefs help to “dissolve relations that have become redundant” they “blast down the dilapidated parts of the social structure, and clear the rubble in preparation for new ones.”’

The forest of symbols aspects of ndembu ritual