Home » History » Anthropology » "Culture" or "How I Spotted Cannibals"

"Culture" or "How I Spotted Cannibals"

© Valerie Borey

I sometimes hesitate to talk about culture, as everyone seems to have a different idea of what it is. “Oh, you study culture?” people say, imagining me and a group of wildly decorated cannibals standing around the pot as if it were the local water-cooler. Actually, even those with fairly sophisticated ideas of the concept often don’t realize that culture can fit into a split second, cracking open the world into a rich spectrum of practices and beliefs. If there is one message you take away from this, it is that culture is everything, defining every moment of human existence from conception to the afterlife.

And, if you must know, I have seen cannibals – in the Malay governed portion of Borneo known as Sarawak, a little over ten years ago. Only, they weren’t the kind of cannibals you’re thinking about. And at the time, they weren’t to my knowledge practicing cannibals, as cannibalism had been banned in that area since the 1940’s. They were aging guys in tattoos and tee shirts who had transformed the practice into the promotional carrot of area adventure travel and tourism.

This brings me to one of the core components of culture, which is that culture changes. One of the reasons why the concept of culture is so elusive is that it cannot exist in fixed form, but rather leaps from moment to moment like a flailing sea-bass in the glistening hands of a fisherman, who, though his legs brace against the rolling waves, cannot steady himself against the movement. Iban cannibalism had come and gone by the time I got to Sarawak and this time I took the role of predatory headhunter, being thenceforth qualified to say that I had seen a cannibal at such and such a time and place.

To that fact speaks the idea that culture is at the very base of what organizes nature, for not only could it command for a period the consumption of human flesh, but it also could dictate to me in which direction my eyes should be cast and that my attention be drawn to the visual particulars of the moment. Culture reined in tightly the beating of my heart and the narrowing of my pupils, caused a synaptic impulse to be sent then as now.

Culture created this physiological response because it is symbolic. That is to say that seeing the cannibal provoked a series of cultural understandings, identifying the cannibal to me as something standing in the place of the exotic, the primal, the savage. While I had seen aging men in tee shirts and tattoos before, I had seen none that boasted the consumption of human material and this made all the difference. It was my culturally inspired fascination with primal man, stripped to the bestial core of humanity that caused me to gaze at them in wonder.

The copyright of the article "Culture" or "How I Spotted Cannibals" in Anthropology is owned by . Permission to republish "Culture" or "How I Spotted Cannibals" in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.