405 Lecture Notes

Dr. Dorothy Wills ANT 405 Anthropology of Gender

Social Behavior and Social Ritual

Social behavior and relations refer to roles, relationships, and rules for interaction (the processual aspect of social organization and life).

- all societies have rules for appropriate behavior (you can find out by breaking them!)

- rules may be positive (prescriptive or preferential) or negative (prohibitions, proscriptions, and taboos)

- rules take into account the deed (action, word, even thought), the doer (man, woman, child, etc.), the context (when and where), the manner, whether others are present, and other factors

- some rules may be universal (e.g., incest taboo, no public defecation ... ), some common to many societies (e.g., politeness to elders, no intercourse with menstruating women ... ), some unique to one or a few societies (e.g., patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, couvade ... )

- rules derive from or are based on certain meanings and concepts, i.e., some things are marked or special, and must be treated or expressed differently, which is why we have rules for them

- this is where the belief system comes in

Ritual of social life helps regulate activities, along with morality, taboos, and the meaning system underlying the system of social distinctions and categorization.

- courting, greeting, other formal behavior highly rule-governed

- activities differentiated according to time of day, place, participants, etc.

- communication restrictions (intermediaries, manner of speech, naming, honorifics, euphemisms, diglossia ... )

- construction and orientation of homes and village; use of space

- ritual conduct most highly regulated of all behavior

- other areas of high control (taboos, etc.) include sex, relations between genders, eating, killing self, humans or animals, use of language, work and use of tools, dress, washing, urinating

- numbers, directions, places, times, colors, left/right, and many other symbolic orders enter into social ritual and the general meaning system