Review: Five Books in Symbolic Anthropology Author(s): Suzanne Hanchett Reviewed work(s): Symbols: Public and Private by Raymond

Firth African Apostles: Ritual and Conversion in the Church of John Maranke by Bennetta Jules-Rosette Symbol and Politics in Communal Ideology: Cases and Questions by Sally Falk Moore ; Barbara G. Myerhoff Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 613-621 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/677018 Accessed: 01/12/2010 13:05
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Five Books in Symbolic Anthropology

Symbols: Public and Private. Raymond Firth. London: George Allen and Unwin; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973. 469 pp. $16.50 (cloth), $4.95 (paper). African Apostles: Ritual and Conversion in the Church of John Maranke. Bennetta Jules-Rosette. Symbol, Myth, and Ritual Series. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. 302 pp. $17.50 (cloth). Symbol and Politics in Communal Ideology: Cases and Questions. Sally Falk Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, eds. Symbol, Myth, and Ritual Series. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. 245 pp. $14.50 (cloth), $4.95 (paper). Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Victor Turner. Symbol, Myth, and Ritual Series. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. 309 pp. $16.50 (cloth). Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. Fredrik Barth. New Haven: Yale University Press; Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975. 292 pp. $12.50 (cloth).
SUZANNE HANCHETT

Barnard College, Columbia University

In recent years, the field of anthropology has witnessed a revival of interest in things ideological. This revival represents a confluence of several lines of 20th-century theory, especially "cognitive" or semantic studies, structuralism, and social anthropology. Relating to both symbolic expression and social action, these five books are experimental in various modes. Thus, what has come to be called "symbolic anthropology" is as much social anthropology and the sociology of knowledge as it is the study of language and expressive systems. (Structuralism has had little influence on this group of books, as I shall discuss below.) Although they deal with a familiar set of questions, the five books seek answers in some unusual ways, most of them focusing on hitherto unappreciated sources of insight. For example, Firth does this by an interdisciplinary review of the "symbol" concept which does not shy away from such humanistic disciplines as the philosophy of art or romanticism. Turner reminds us of the significance of Florian Znaniecki's work. Jules-Rosette takes the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz as her intellectual guide, converts wholeheartedly to the religion she is studying, and openly challenges the worth of empiricist notions of objectivity. Barth tries to work as atheoretically as he can, in hopes of taking a fresh view of some New Guinea age-grade rituals. And Turner, Moore and Myerhoff, and contributors to their volume tackle questions of social history with a vigor reminiscent of anthropology in the 1930s and 1940s. Before discussing the group as a whole, I shall present a summary review of each of the five books. Firth's Symbols: Public and Private begins with an intelligible but almost encyclopedic account of the history of studies on symbolism. He covers many disciplines (among them, theology, philosophy of art, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and ethnology) as he 613

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reviews the writings of 19th-century writers on this subject, including German and French writings as well as English ones. And he provides neat summaries of many of the approaches he mentions. His review chapters should be required reading for all who venture to do research in this area, since they do much to counteract the tendency to view recent developments as new just because they are recent. His review of 20th-century writing on symbolism is narrower and less insightful than his 19th-century study. But he thoroughly discusses the significance of social anthropologists such as Audrey Richards, S. F. Nadel, and Monica Wilson, as well as that of the generally acclaimed Victor Turner and Mary Douglas. He also commends Franz Boas on his study of designs in primitive art. The second part of Firth's Symbols is a series of five essays on specific symbolic phenomena: food, hair, gestures, flags, and exchange. He concludes with a general statement on the ways in which symbols organize personal experience of social life. The substantive essays are thorough and general. They are consistently sociological in their approach, although the question of personal ("private") experience is a recurrent theme. In my opinion the most original and inspired essay is the one on food in Tikopia, where he urges us to agree that ". . . strictly speaking there are no symbolic objects- there are only symbolic relationships," and goes on to discuss Tikopia use of food, language of food, and distinctions between "symbolic" and "pragmatic" food. Firth defines the anthropological point of view as being "humanistic," in the sense of concentrating on humans rather than on their products alone, a necessary point to make when speaking to an interdisciplinary audience. He stresses that anthropologists should be empirical. And he reveals some irritation at the "romantic" tone of some symbolic studies, this tone conveying the mystical and esoteric suggestion that symbolic studies in anthropology are for the initiated only (pp. 195-196). He stresses that we are more adequately trained to deal with the context of symbolic phenomena than with the content, although he works on both levels himself. He identifies one question as particularly urgent, both theoretically and morally: ".. should 'symbolic anthropology' be an academic study devoted to elucidation of meanings as a tribute to knowledge, or should it be more bluntly involved in unravelling the knots in social problems and contributing to change in society, or at least to an understanding of change?" (p. 197). The rest of this book provides his own answer: it is, and should be, both. Turner's Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors elaborates on the major themes of his earlier works, especially The Ritual Process and his political studies. In his continuing effort to enliven anthropological models of human social life, and to focus on historical change processes, he wishes to ally himself with those he designates as the "liminal figures" (activators of transitions) of history--artists, visionaries, revolutionaries, and also pilgrims. To this end he seeks inspiration from a variety of thinkers, some within the bounds of anthropology and sociology, and others far afield. In the latter group we find the poet William Blake, frequently cited in this book; the philosopher Confucius; and scores of other thinkers. This book is similar in purpose to Robert Murphy's The Dialectics of Social Life. But where Murphy would cite LUvi-Strauss or Hegel in speaking of such matters as "experiencing unity while knowing it by means of contrasts" (Turner, p. 287), Turner directs our attention, rather, to the devotional poetry of South India's medieval Viraiaiva movement as interpreted by the spirited poet and linguist, A. K. Ramanujan. Turner, then, is more comfortable with both mystics and mysteries than Firth is (cf. Turner, p. 239, on mysticism). But their goals as social anthropologists are more similar than different, as Turner's recent comments in the Annual Review of Anthropology emphasize (Turner 1975:145 ff.). Turner uses historical materials together with other data in developing his "processual"

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(his preferred term) approach to social life. The historical materials are presented not as historical essays per se, but rather to demonstrate the usefulness of his key "field," and "metaphor." Two basic historical studies deal with concepts--"drama," Thomas Becket and with Miguel Hidalgo. The first focuses on the early stages of the conflict between Becket and his beloved enemy King Henry II of England in 1163-64. Turner uses a series of events to demonstrate that the phase development of such a conflict can be understood as a sort of patterned "drama." He also stresses the importance of metaphors (which he also calls "root paradigms") as Becket began to assume a martyr's role: "When a great man's back is against the wall, he siezes roots [metaphors] not straws" (p. 71). Becket himself became a "dominant symbol" in time through his combination of opposing themes: "The intriguing feature of Becket's end [his murder] was that while formally it was a lamb's fate, psychologically it was a lion's" (p. 89). Turner's second historical essay focuses on the legendary Father Miguel Hidalgo, leader of the abortive "Indepencia" revolt against Spanish royalists in early 19th-century Mexico. Turner uses this political struggle to demonstrate the value of "field" and other concepts by applying Kurt Lewin's field notion and recent network-study techniques to the study of interaction among the various social forces involved in the revolt. For example, he defines which "action sets" and which overlapping "social fields"--militia, church, voluntary associations, and so on-were relevant to various members of the cast of characters. He distinguishes the "arena" for each phase of the conflict. And he tries to account for self-sacrifice and idealism by stressing that "values" may differ greatly from "interests" on such occasions. His comments on the 20th-century myth of Hidalgo present useful views on the tendency to think historically, and to use history as myth in political action. Eric Wolf has made similar observations while commenting on the ways in which 20th-century Chinese revolutionaries used stories of earlier peasant rebels for inspiration and for role models (Wolf 1969). In the course of the Hidalgo essay, Turner presents some interesting side comments on why game theory is not relevant to such situations of "dissensus," briefly, that everyone has to be playing the same game for a game theory model to be useful. After digressing briefly to give tribute to Griaule and his colleagues in a descriptive, diffusionist essay on Dogon art and cosmology, he presents three final chapters on his now-familiar notions of "communitas" and "anti-structure." These chapters are too complex to be summarized in a short review. They deal with pilgrimages, religious symbols of communitas, and "metaphors of anti-structure" in religious culture. The chapter on pilgrimage is the central chapter of the book. It represents the study out of which some of the other chapters developed. Like the studies which follow it, the pilgrimage essay explores themes of de-structuring and restructuring social relationships in historical transitions. He argues that pilgrimage networks have functioned to unify regions in a sort of "mystical nationalism" before these regions became nations. He describes the pilgrimage experience as one of "communitas," capturing his impressions of the pilgrim mood from autobiographies, his own observations in Europe and in Mexico, some review of medieval and other historical sources, and miscellaneous other data. He uses the term "field" here too, in a variety of evocative senses, shifting from electrical magnetic-field images, to "fields" of common religious belief, to sets of social ties, to organizations, and so on--in brief, following the common English usage of the word "field." Turner's pilgrimage study is easily faulted, since it is not based on anthropological field observations to any large extent (the most interesting direct observations were made in Mexico). Nor has he included the substantial case material available from India on this subject. He relies, rather, on autobiography for the most direct testaments about the

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pilgrim's experience. And it could be argued that shopkeepers along the way and other humble participants tend not to write books about their pilgrimages, whereas the already prominent may do so - as Malcolm X, for one, did. With all these reservations, however, Turner's historical hypothesis may still have a lot to say for it. For those who write autobiographies may also be opinion leaders and high-prestige figures in their home regions (e.g., the Moslem pilgrim returned from Mecca). They may also be international traders and transmitters of ideas over vast regions, in short, the types of figures who are likely to influence social change processes, especially political changes such as the formation of nation-states. Dramas as a whole is discursive, rambling, and suggestive--in fact, it is too much so. Turner is attempting an ambitious synthesis of humanistic and anthropological methods. But the book is too full of digressions and undeveloped hypotheses. These give it a wild, overgrown quality. Nonetheless, there is a freedom about Turner's Dramas which suggests many ways in which anthropological insights can be broadly applied--and, conversely, ways in which anthropologists can use historical and literary materials. In Symbol and Politics, Moore and Myerhoff have gathered together an integrated set of essays on the roles of communal ideology in face-to-face communities. The six communities discussed are of various types - planned or traditional, stable or ephemeral. All six share a commitment to ideals of communal harmony. Though not a direct contributor, Max Gluckman is an important background figure in this volume. His observations relating ritual processes and political processes and his methods of analyzing case material (Gluckman 1965) inform several of the articles in this volume. This is particularly true of Moore's essay on fraternal strife among the Chagga of Kilimanjaro; Terence M. Evens' article, "Stigma, Ostracism, and Expulsion in an Israeli Kibbutz"; and Jay Abarbanel's "The Dilemma of Economic Competition in an Israeli Moshav." Moore suggests that some legal processes in connection with long-range factional conflict in multiplex (Gluckman's term) communities should be regarded as "rituals of transformation" in situations. Evens presents the observation that a transsecting of networks in a face-to-face community will result in "diffusion" of power rather than in its concentration--a point also developed by Gluckman. Evens' approach to the ostracism process is more psychoanalytic than Gluckman's approach to any subject ever was. But when Evens describes the ostracism of a stigmatized individual from a kibbutz community as a sort of human sacrifice to the ideal of the kibbutz as a "community of saints," Gluckman's ritualistic approach again comes to mind. Abarbanel uses Gluckman's "extended case method" in presenting the situation of an Israeli moshav cooperative under pressure from the government to adjust milk production. But as carefully as he studies the rhetoric and the strategies of competing members of the cooperative, Abarbanel's view could have benefited from an application of Gluckman's insights on situations of cross-cutting interests typical of face-to-face (multiplex) communities. The other two substantive essays show the influence of Victor Turner more than of Max Gluckman. Myerhoff and Turkle play on Turner's "structure-antistructure" theme in their two essays. Myerhoffs "Organization and Ecstasy" presents the cycle of alternation between structure and antistructure for the Mexican Huichols' way of life as a relatively balanced and (she implies) healthy system. To the Huichol example she contrasts the lives of many in the self-styled "Woodstock Nation" - the "flower children" or "hippies" of America's recent history. In their attempts (she defines four modes) to maintain their communal vision as a way of life, she argues, the hippies are wasting the restructuring power that a vision can have. Her writing is elegant, and full of suggestive images. One of these is "the pilgrim of the highway on-ramp," a week-end hitch-hiker, whose "destination was not a place but a condition [of communitas]." As lively and

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fascinating as this article is, it too suffers from an imbalance, since Myerhoff presents this comparison of a whole culture (Huichol) and a subculture (Woodstock Nation) without any discussion of the ways in which the two are or are not comparable units. In "Symbol and Festival in the French Student Uprising (May-June 1968)," Sherry Roxanne Turkle describes the uprising as a "festival," an attempt "to restore poetry to life in modern industrial [society]." She rallies an interesting array of slogans, quotes from participants, and details of choreography (the barricade as a symbolic form of unity), to demonstrate that the uprising provided France with a much-needed "ritualized release from her rigid social institutions." Her comments on the role of intellectuals and philosophical debate in the events are lively, although she shunned her responsibility to provide some outside perspective when discussing structuralism, linguistics, and phenomenology, which were used as rhetorical issues. The article suffers from a lack of information about the historical consequences of the "festival," unless the metaphor of "festival" is itself a suggestion that there were no consequences of any import. If she is saying this, then she is begging a number of historical questions to which this book as a whole is addressed, questions of communitas as part of linear change, or as part of a regular alternation with structured interaction. Moore and Myerhoff present theoretical discussion in a prologue (jointly authored) and an epilogue (by Moore). These effect a good synthesis betweeen the ideas of Gluckman, Turner, Murphy, and others on questions of "ideology in action." This discussion presents normative models, plans, and the like as temporarily "regularizing" factors (pp. 219-221) in an inevitable and omnipresent process of "situationally specific adjustments and indeterminacies" characteristic of face-to-face communities. Moore distinguishes their model from Turner's in that they prefer to use his structureantistructure alternation to define normal social life, rather than limiting this usage to special relationships or contexts as Turner tends to do. Although Moore does not particularly favor Robert Murphy's "dialectics," she sounds more like Murphy than like Turner when she offers us the following paradox: a paradox. Every explicit attempt to fix social relationships or social symbols is by implica?. tion a recognition that they are mutable. . . . By dint of repetition [rituals, laws, rules, symbols, and categories] deny the passage of time, the nature of change, and the implicit extent of potential indeterminacy in social relations [p. 221]. African Apostles, by Jules-Rosette, is the most direct and personal book of this group of five, and the one which deals with certain methodological problems in greatest detail. It is a discussion of the author's experience with a Bapostolo Christian group, all converts, who originate from several Central African tribes. The sect was founded by John Maranke in Rhodesia in the 1930s and gradually spread through Malawi and Zaire, where the author did most of her work in 1969 and 1971-72. Jules-Rosette draws on her own experience as a convert to deepen our understanding of several aspects of intense religious and ritual experience. The book is neither subjective nor objective. Rather, the author tries to work in that middle ground between the outsider and the insider in sharing the feelings and thoughts of one "observing participant" as fully as she can. She compares herself (p. 58) correctly to Carlos Castaneda, who apprenticed himself to a Yaqui shaman. And she argues, following Alfred Schutz, that an observer with a purpose in mind may develop a better understanding of the perspective of an everyday actor than one who works as a "mere disinterested observer" (p. 60). She is especially insightful in matters of communication. And the book is interspersed with valuable comments on nonverbal expression, the ethnography of speaking, speech styles, ethnomusicology, trance, and the selection of alternate modes of expression to produce alternate types of spiritual/psychological/intellectual effects. She is particularly interested (and interesting) in the question of how a ceremony is felt to have thematic unity.

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The book has an unusually frank discussion of the techniques by which the ethnographer makes her observations, discussing the relative advantages and disadvantages of various data-collection processes. For example, she includes a few samples of tape transcripts (some including as many as five languages in group conversations!), using these as exercises in discourse-analysis or in the description of ritual events. I find this book lacking in two basic areas--in sociological background information, and in the limited perspective of the author as a phenomenologist-anthropologist. First, Jules-Rosette's information on the social life of this sect outside of ritual settings is scanty. Although she presents general information on some interesting new kinship rules formulated by the sect (Chapter 6), and on the history of the sect in relation to political events of Central Africa in recent years (Chapter 7), she gives almost no specific (quantitative) information on how the members of this group make their living. She mentions the existence of communal farming, for example, but does not indicate the extent to which various subdivisions of the sect are involved in this pattern or not. She seems to be more interested in affirming that sect members impose a spiritually guided reinterpretation on all of their mundane affairs. She tells us, for example, that she was constantly scrutinized after becoming a member. But she says little about what this meant in terms of her own living arrangements. Second, although her conversion approach may be justifiable in phenomenologist theory, it limited her in ways that are difficult to accept. She acknowledges that her experience in this sect was more restricted than it would have been for a man or for a sexually ambiguous female-outsider ethnographer, since she was taken in as a woman convert. She describes her limitations clearly by referring to Schutz's "notion of the social distribution of knowledge in terms of the extent, uses, and sources of access to the categories of common-sense understandings of a group or society" (p. 190). She would have us see her not as an incomplete participant, but rather as providing one of "various perspectives for participation" in a social setting (p. 46). I envy her the peace she has made with a chronic problem of ethnography, namely, the impossibility of being omnipresent in the field-study community. But I still find her too willing to accept the limitations which this sect placed upon her. And I am not convinced that her gains outweighed her losses in this study. Like Jules-Rosette, Barth received initiation into the religious order which he studied, and also like her, Barth offers many insights on the various ways in which participants know and express cultural systems in ritual settings. But Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea, a study of a seven-grade "communal cult performed by men" of the Faiwol language group in central New Guinea, is otherwise unlike JulesRosette's study, since Barth dwells little on his status or experience as a fifth-degree initiate, acknowledging frankly that there was no other way to study a mystery cult based on secrecy than to become some sort of member. The first 102 pages of Barth's book present details of the seven grades of ritual with a detail that is reminiscent of structuralist studies. But Barth disavows any connection with structuralist method in his introductory statement: Briefly, I argue that the meanings of these symbols do not arise from their interconnection in pattern and contrast. .. . The codes of ritual are thus not based on digital structures but on metaphor and analogy--a mode of codification which has very different properties as a communicative device, and entails very different procedures for analysis, from those of a digital code [p. 12]. He reiterates this nonstructuralist view in his interpretive discussion, where he emphasizes that he does "not want to assume the existence of a single, unified ritual code in which. . .messages are uniformly cast" (p. 157; emphasis in original).

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In subsequent discussion, Barth sorts out the elements of the seven rites in terms of what he calls "idiom clusters." He tries to remain true to semantic and cognitive categories as he understands them. And he sums up the developing series of cult symbols as more a "mystery" of growth, health, and fertility than a "theory" of them (p. 221). The visions which are key to understanding this mystery are permitted only to the fully initiated. And the book has several useful comments on the implications of this in terms of the sociology of knowledge. Given that there is a small population and a high death rate, the very continuity of this cult would have been in question if this book had not been written. He characterized Baktaman knowledge as . constantly communicated about yet poorly shared and precariously transmitted; creative and complex yet poorly systematized;moving and rich yet puzzled and groping in its thought and imagery (p. 222). He sees the message of the rites as constituted by the concrete symbols themselves, and by the many acts and operations associated with them. Ritual events "trigger messages" in Barth's cognitive and communication model of ritual, but he explicitly avoids seeing ritual as like language. Language, he argues, is structured on a digital principle, and is consequently "paradigmatic," i.e., composed of form classes (e.g., nouns) which are similar because similar permutations can be performed on them. Ritual, on the other hand, is an "analogic code"; and analogic codes do not allow for such permutations: rather, "every metaphor is a creative construct, every harmony of connotations and every item of imagery is an emergent addition to the structure of the code" (p. 227). The significance of this, according to Barth, is that in studying communication in an analogic code an anthropologist is concerned with what is said, with what has been created as a cultural tradition, and not with what can be said (in the sense that a linguist is concerned with devising paradigms and operations which will produce correct sentences). He is arguing, then, that ritual and other symbolic cultural statements are not "productive" systems in the sense that language is "productive"; rather, that they are relatively fixed products. If this is a general assertion, however, it is not valid for systems like folk Hinduism, in which much energy goes into the creation of new rituals. Nonetheless, this discussion of terms, paralleling that of Sperber's Rethinking Symbolism (1975) in some of its aspects, is a highly worthwhile exercise at this stage of development in "symbolic anthropology." There are two major problems with this study: one, in its research basis, and the other, in its atheoretical orientation. First, Barth lived among the Baktaman for only eight months, did not have linguistic fluency, and communicated little with women. (Though performed by men, the cult is not presented as a men's cult.) And though Barth may be one of the most versatile and experienced living ethnographers, these limitations cast doubt on his ability to adequately describe Baktaman words and thoughts on such a complex subject. Secondly, he retreats into an empiricist stance at the "discovery that the Baktaman have no exegetical tradition" (p. 226; emphasis in original). While this absence of native authorities ought to have forced him to take responsibility for his own interpretive models, it does not. Rather, he expresses his "strong suspicion. . . that the bodies of native explanation that we find in anthropological literature are often created as an artefact of the anthropologist's [fantasy?] activity" (p. 226). He claims that his understanding of Baktaman beliefs is based only on his own field records of statements and responses of individuals in ritual situations. This stance in relation to other students of ritual appears ingenous, to say the least, and unwarranted. In spite of these problems, the book has rich ethnographic material of a kind rarely found these days. And future students may well find buried treasure in this report, since it will lend itself to various modes of analysis beyond the one which the author presents.

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There are a few general reflections with which I shall conclude. These pertain, first, to political processes and ideological structure, and, second, to the notions of "symbol" and "metaphor." First, these books offer significant insights into the nature of rhetorical discourse, particularly, the talk that accompanies social/political action. These observers (especially Moore, Jules-Rosette, Evens, and Abarbanel) are sensitive to the ways that actors manipulate situations by what they say. This sensitivity leads to a general wariness about ideology itself- that is, as to whether ideology is an integrated as it is sometimes assumed to be. Several of the authors assert that ideology and symbol systems are not only not logical, they are not the same for all members of a society. This is because ideas of all sorts follow on social experience, and not vice versa. Firth and Barth raise this issue in relation to ritual or esthetic interpretation. Firth asks pointedly, when we seek to know the meanings of symbols, and we ask for native explanations, whose explanations should we use, given that opinions vary within any group? Barth states that not only do the Baktaman not try to explain their own symbolic systems, but each of the seven cult grades "know" and think differently about the same subjects. Such comments as these represent a negative reaction to Turner's previous ritual studies among the Ndembu, in which he relied heavily on a native philosopher in making his interpretations. These are also reactions to a commonly held view of structuralism. In Dramas, however, as in his 1975 Annual Review statement, Turner himself is very much with Firth as he observes that ideology cannot be unified or logical, since those who formulate it may be in conflict and "dissensus," rather than holding similar views on any given issue. Although Turner's statement in this form is extreme, in other places in Dramas he digresses to comment that idea/symbol systems may be either elaborated and coherent or not, depending on other factors (e.g., pp. 163-164). In its extreme form, however, the statement suggests that Turner wishes to modify his former association with structuralist method, insofar as structuralism is an effort to use formal models in analyzing symbolic experience. Moore's comments in the "Epilogue" to Symbol and Politics are the clearest of all these, since (a) she speaks more often in distinct categories than the others do - about norms, rules, rituals, and so on - rather than trying to talk about too many different kinds of phenomena at the same time, and (b) she also makes peace with the question of logical consistency by her view of ideology as both temporary and artificial, but also capable of serving in an ordering ("regularizing") capacity in social situations. This is not to say that the others do not distinguish among concepts. They do. Firth has repeated Charles Morris' effort to have us agree on what we mean by "symbol" and sign," offering his own definitions of these terms. He also distinguishes "metaphor," "allegory," and "metonym." It is impossible to say now whether his efforts at unification will succeed. But the notion of "metaphor" is of course already in use, especially in the books of Barth and Turner, and in the Moore and Myerhoff collection. This raises a second issue, namely, the view taken of "symbol" in this group of books. The subject is of course a vast one. And this group of authors is not jumping to any premature conclusions about what it is they are studying. Much of the work is well within the traditions of social and cultural anthropology, as Spiro observed some time ago (Spiro 1969), regardless of whether the subject is called "symbol," "culture," or "social structure. But the predominant usage of the term "symbol" (as that of "ideology") is distinctly nonsystemic in this group of books. That is, these authors discuss symbols as if they existed independently from other symbols, each one tied only to its complex set of referents. And these referents, in turn, can be interpreted equally well by a variety of approaches, it would seem. I agree with Leach (1970) that this is a step backward in the study of sym-

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bols, since it disregards the contributions which have been made in the analysis of patterns of relations among cultural symbols. Whatever happened to what Turner once called "positional meaning?" Barth's book, for instance, is full of color-contrasted ritual symbols. But he speaks only of the meanings of individual colors, and not of the contrasts utilized in specific ritual settings. These authors say in many ways that it is desirable to disregard structuralist method, now that anthropologists are addressing questions of the sociology of knowledge and of political change. Even Firth's book is weakest at the point where he tries to describe structuralism as an approach (p. 198), although he says vaguely that, "Even if at times it assumed the shape of an elitist anthropology, structuralism has had pervasive effects, and contributed indubitably a great deal to our understanding of symbolism" (pp. 198-199). Given that structuralism has pervaded his own study of Tikopia food symbolism and the writings of several of the other authors as well, why the reluctance to give it some kind of place in this field? In my view, these studies preclude a recognition of structuralist contributions only if structuralism is a rhetorical issue, as it was in Paris in 1968 (cf. Hanchett 1974). The conceptual status of "metaphor" is different from that of "symbol," since metaphors are by definition combinations of symbols, similar to myths in this way, and capable of being studied in some of the ways myths have been studied. As images with which we impose a mirror-like reflection on life situations and thereby give form to them that they might not otherwise have had, metaphors are congenial to anthropological studies. The concept of "metaphor" has the additional value of avoiding some of the essentialist interpretive dilemmas of the "symbol" concept as used in these five books. REFERENCESCITED Gluckman, Max 1965 Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society. Chicago: Aldine; New York: New American Library. Hanchett, Suzanne 1974 Reflections and Oppositions: on Structuralism. In Structural Approaches to South India Studies. Harry M. Buck and Glenn E. Yocum, eds. Pp. 5-16. Chambersburg, Pa.: Wilson Press. Leach, Edmund 1970 A Critique of Yalman's Interpretation of Sinhalese Girl's Puberty Ceremonial. In Echanges et communications: M6langes offerts AClaude Levi-Strauss Al'occasion de son 60ame anniversaire.Jean Pouillon et Pierre Maranda, eds. Pp. 819-828. The Hague: Mouton. Murphy, Robert F. 1971 The Dialectics of Social Life: Alarms and Excursions in Anthropological Theory. New York: Basic Books. Sperber, Dan 1975 Rethinking Symbolism. Alice L. Morton, trans. London: Cambridge University Press. (First publ. 1974, Le symbolisme en g~n~ral. Paris: Hermann.) Spiro, Melford E. 1969 Discussion. In Forms of Symbolic Action: Proceedings of the 1969 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society. Robert F. Spencer, ed. Pp. 208-214. (Distributed by the University of Washington Press.) Turner, Victor W. 1967 The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1975 Symbolic Studies. In Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 4. BernardJ. Siegel et al., eds. Pp. 145-161. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews Inc. Wolf, Eric R. 1969 Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper and Row.
Submitted 14 September 1977 Accepted 28 September 1977