Gerda Wever-Rabehl's Blog
Posted by Gerda Wever-Rabehl
Earlier, Suite 101's Anthropology site featured a few articles on Hindu caste system, it's victims and our universal need to belong.
This week's article revisits that discussion, at least in part. Since those previous articles were published here, I have receive numerous emails in response. Since it appears that this is a popular topic, and I revisiting it seems worthwhile.
In revisiting then, I first focused on the question asked by Emile Durkheim toward the end of the nineteenth century: What hold societies together, or what is the nature of solidarity? In many cases, the social glue that keeps societies together is kinship. Many small and simple societies rely on kinship as the basis for the way they function. Shared blood is the glue that keeps these societies together. A good example of this ideology of kinship is the Hindu caste system. This system presents a fixed social order, in which kinship is determined by the link between marriage and social group. This is further linked with livelihood and the division of labour in the community and society at large, as well as with spiritual purity, which determines ones place in the social pecking order. Each person is born into a certain group and he or she marries within this group- not outside of it. He or she has a set way of making a living, also determined by the social group in which he or she is born. Ones place in the group is reinforced on a daily basis by all sorts of behaviors and restrictions thereof and further supported through an elaborate system of belief and ritual.
But what about our contemporary and complex modern societies- what is the social glue that keeps us together? Read this week's article to find out.
Posted by Gerda Wever-Rabehl
Given that it's Halloween soon, I got to thinking about witches. That whole witch-hunt, what was that really about? Somehow, I've got a hunch that it had a lot to do with sex.
Just think about those poor Church fathers. Frisky as hell, but no way to do anything about it. Some of 'm got so frisky that they were just about obsessed with women. They started to think up all these stories about witches having sex with Satan. The strangest stories started popping up, about witches having sex with satanic creatures with horns, big red tails and insatiable sexual appetites. Or stories of women who put long sticks between their legs, rub on a magic unguent and fly off to have sex with some evil spirited male goat.
Nobody at the time thought of these stories as evidencing a serious mental illness. Instead, millions of pious Christians bought it.
But you see what I think is that those frisky Chucrh fathers needed an outlet. These erotic stories about witches, Satan and sex did the job. The stories they came up with made erotic art and literature an OK thing in the eyes of the Church. It was, you could say, pornography produced, sanctified and glorified by the good old Church fathers themselves. But I don't think that's the whole story.
Fascinating? Click here to read more!
Posted by Gerda Wever-Rabehl
Contemporary witch hunts are, as I've argued in the articles on witches I've done so far, closely related to superstitions, poverty and natural disasters. Once you combine a steady faith in the supernatural with hunger, poverty, and unemployment, you'll undoubtedly get people to blame their unfavorable event on black magic. We just are fond of believing in the invisible, or, some might say, the irrational and in this week's article , I argue that we've believed in witches, ghosts, the devil, angels, and other invisible entities for so long and in so many different places that it has become part and parcel of the human psyche.
Sometimes this predisposition to believe in a mysterious and invisible reality has disturbingly consequences. Besides the fact that thousands of people continue to be killed because they are believed to have evil powers, in some regions, people associate AIDS and HIV with evil spirits. Rune Blix Hagen (2004) suggests for example, that at times, women are accused of being behind the AIDS epidemic. They are seen as dangerous witches who must be rendered harmless. Certain AIDS-infected men believe that evil spirits can be forced out by dipping their penises in the vaginal fluids of virgins. These ideas about witchcraft can result, says Rune Blix Hagen (2004), in the raping of young girls and the killing of older women. This phenomenon, part of larger incidents of witch-related violence, is a growing problem in some countries .
Rune Blix Hagen (2004) points out that the authorities of various African countries are trying to focus attention on peoples' tendency to relate AIDS with witchcraft. In a Malawi information campaign, for example, large road signs and posters have been erected with the message "AIDS is real... it is not witchcraft. Always use a condom and live" (Rune Blix Hagen (2004).
References
Rune Blix Hagen (2004). The Witch-hunts on African Sorcerers?by Rune Blix Hagen, Subject Librarian, University of Tromsø. Available online at http://www.ub.uit.no/fag/historie/africanwitches.htm
Posted by Gerda Wever-Rabehl
Last week, we had the bull balls, and this week, we have penis snatchers. What do they have in common? Nothing, nada, zip. The bull ball story meant to illustrate the connections between food and culture or, in other words, the connections between what we have learnt to see as edible and what not. This learning is, of course culturally constructed, and I tried to show this by telling the story of being served "swinging beef" in Southwestern Alberta, Canada. The penis snatchers have nothing whatsoever to do with this. October is witches month in the history department of Suite 101 (at least it was last time I heard) and in my first article on "witches", I explore contemporary witch-hunt. Yep, you read it correctly. Witch-hunts are not a thing of the past. In fact, some people suggest that thousands of people die each year as the result of violence related to witch-hunting in countries such as Cameroon, Kenya, Congo, Sierra Leone and South Africa. Now what do penis snatchers have to do with this? Well, while you might have thought that witch-hunting would be an activity exclusively aimed at women, this is not necessarily so. Supposedly, eight men in Accra, Ghana, were accused of using witchcraft to snatch penises. They allegedly planned to return them in return for cash." Turns out this was a bad move. The penis snatchers were attacked by mobs. Two snatchers died and six were seriously injured. The penises of all victims turned out to be just fine, but the victims had firmly believed that the sorcerers had the power to make their genitals shrink or disappear completely. So, there you have it. Two entirely different subjects connected by male genitalia. To read them both, click here , and then here.
See also this great article on penis snatching!
Do you have a funny story that illustrates one of the infinite weird and wonderful ways in which human beings express themselves? Pass 'm on! or post in our discussion forum.
Posted by Gerda Wever-Rabehl
In this week's article, I explore the connection between food and culture, or to be more precise, the connection between what we have learnt to see as edible and what not. This learning is, of course, culturally coloured.
To illustrate this point, I told the story of my recent road trip through parts of Western Canada Once I got to the prairies (Fort MacLeod in South-Western Alberta, Canada, to be precise), I was introduced to a local delicacy, "Prairie Oysters." Prairie Oysters are also known under a variety of other names (among my favorite names are cowboy caviar and even better, swinging beef). But however referred to, swinging beef, Rocky Mountains oysters, Montana tender-groins, cowboy caviar, swinging beef or calf fires, they are what they are: Bulls' Balls.
These are removed when the bull is still young with the idea to make the bull more obedient and easier to handle. Once cut off, they're given a rinse and peeled as if they were apples, then they are rolled around in flour and pepper, and off they go in the frying pan to be fried, deep-fried whole, cut into broad or thin slices, or marinated. Then: Bon appetite! Given that I myself have been a vegetarian my whole life, I declined the delicacy.
This story illustrates French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's point: "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are". And indeed, what and how we eat is an expression of how we see the world.
The story illustrates the intricate relation between the universal and the cultural. The people at the table there in Fort Macleod were devouring the "swinging beef." My reaction was something akin to disgust. Both the delight and disgust are feelings that have been shaped by the ways in which we come to understand food. The foods we react to with delight or disgust are certainly different. Yet both - disgust and delight - are universal reactions to food, shared by us all.
Do you have a disgusting or funny food story? Pass 'm on! or post in our discussion forum.
