Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Valerio Valeri

Reviewed work(s):
Sacrifice by M. F. Bourdillon ; Meyer Fortes
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 923-924
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/676522
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 GENERA L / THEORETICA L
by then the missionarywas "regardednot simply
as a religious eccentric with misplaced zeal, but
as a representative of Victorian English values"
(p. 335).
At first glance, the "misplaced zeal" of these
early missionaries, their upward strivings, their
elaborate terminology and fondness for doc-
trinal dispute, and their self-imposed exile to
alien lands, might seem absurdly quaint and
light years away from contemporaryexperience.
General/Theoretical
Sacrifice. M. F. Bourdillon and Meyer Fortes,
eds. New York: Academic Press, 1980. 148 pp.
$18.00 (cloth).
Valerio Valeri
University of Chicago
This book results from a meeting between an-
thropologists and Christian theologians, which
took place in 1979 under the auspices of the
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Bri-
tain and Ireland.
Fortes begins by sharply contrasting the an-
thropological approach which, he says, is objec-
tive and value free, to the theological one,
which does not question the reality of super-
natural powers or of their intervention in
human experience. From this point of view, the
theologian is more an object of analysis for the
anthropologist than a partner in a dialogue. For
the anthropologist, the "true purpose" of
sacrifice is constituted by its social and psycho-
logical functions. To him, what the ritual
means to the actor is all the more illusorysince it
seems to appear as real as "any technical action
in relation to the actor's material world"(p. ix).
By identifying "objective"with "functional"and
"subjective" with "signification," Fortes im-
plicitly equates the study of the latter to the
reflective state of belief, in other words, to
theology. No scope is left for an objective, pro-
perly anthropological, study of meaning. It is in
these dubious terms that an accommodation be-
tween anthropological and theological ap-
proaches has been made in this book.
On the problem of sacrifice proper the
volume offers contributions to the exegesis of
particular sacrificial systems and contributions
to the general theory of sacrifice.
In his introduction, Bourdillon attempts to
923
Yet, in studying Gunson's book, and reflecting
on my own experience as a South Seas anthro-
pologist, I could not help but think of our
peculiar profession. What will social historians
of a century and a half hence make of our zeal
for social science truths, our life style of diligent
study punctuated by bouts of self-imposed isola-
tion in cherished field settings, our class struggle
as academics, and our complex jargon and pen-
chant for hairsplitting?
review the various types of sacrifice and the
theories put forward to account for the
phenomenon. Its usefulness is reduced by the
fact that much has been left out. Arbitrarily,
the problem of first-fruit offerings is not
treated. Important theories, such as those of de
Maistre, Girard, Loisy, van der Leeuw,
Gusdorf, Schmidt, Jensen, Meuli, Lanternari,
and others are not mentioned.
More theoretical contributions to the under-
standing of sacrifice are offered by Fortes and
Beattie.
Fortes reiterates his view that the relationship
established or mobilized by sacrifice is modeled
on "the submissive filial dependence ideally ex-
pected of offspring in relation to parents" (p.
xiv) and is in fact its transformation. Sacrifice is
a defense against the threat represented by this
dependence and against all the experiences of
helplessness that come to be associated with it.
By feeding the gods, the dependent worshippers
become "the dominant quasi-paternal sus-
tainers of the divinity'sexistence" (p. xvi). But is
this mutual dependence of divinity and wor-
shippers the consequence of a defense or the
positively sought end of sacrifice? Does not
Fortes confuse a mechanism that sustains, at the
psychological level, the system of values em-
bodied in belief, with the cause of belief and its
corresponding practice?
Beattie bases his essay on the widely accepted
postulate that in sacrifice the victim is trans-
formed into a symbol of the donor. This re-
quires some comment. It seems that in native
consciousness the victim is conceived more as a
substitute than as a symbol. From the observer's
point of view, however, the victim can substitute
for the sacrifier because it has symbolic connec-
tions with him. Thus the symbolic relationship
can have an unconscious, objective reality. This
924 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
emphasizes, contra Fortes and Bourdillon, the
fact that meaning cannot be reduced to its sub-
jective aspect only. If it is so, however, we must
also admit--this time contra Beattie--that the
symbolic connection between victim and sacri-
fier preexists the ritual act and is exploited by it
more than it is created by it. Sacrifice trans-
forms the victim into a substitute, rather than
into a symbol.
In a sense, Beattie's approach is diametrically
opposed to Fortes's. While the latter claims that
what happens in sacrifice is, to the sacrifier, as
real as a technical action, the former claims that
it is perceived as "symbolic. not 'real' " (p. 31):
hence, the legitimacy of substituting, not only
the victim for the sacrifier, but also an inferior
offering for a superior one (p. 31). However,
Beattie confuses the observer's and the actor's
perspective, by claiming that for the latter, as
for the former, only the signified matters in
sacrifice. But this is not so: the signifiers (the
victims) are not completely interchangeable,
since, beside their semantic value, they also
have a pragmatic one. A cucumber is not as val-
uable as an ox: the dimension of loss (if not that
of gain) must be accounted for in any interpre-
tation of sacrifice. It must also be pointed out
that the emphasis put on the victim as symbol of
the sacrifier obscures the fact that it is often
used as the icon of what is desired by him.
In his essay about Old Testament sacrifices,
Rogerson shows that they dealt with inadvertent
offenses alone, by removing the impurity ensu-
ing in the offender.
Sykes emphasizes that Christ's sacrifice is the
object of a bifocal view throughout the history
of Christianity: on the one hand, the death of
Christ is the God-ordained means of rectifying
man's relationship with God; on the other, it is
the freely chosen self-sacrifice of Christ. The
contradictory coexistence of a theocentric and
of an anthropocentric perspective explains
Christianity's powers of adaptation to very dif-
ferent circumstances.
In her study of the interpretation of the Mass
in three different convent settings, Campbell-
Jones offers a contemporary example of this
adaptive power. In a conservative convent, the
aspects of the Mass emphasized are the offering
of a gift and the metaphor of death; in a pro-
gressive convent, the idea of the communion
meal becomes dominant, while in a traditional
Franciscan convent consecration and making
contact with the divinity are the aspects fore-
grounded. The author sees these ideological dif-
ferences as reflections of the different social
[84, 1982]
structures of the convents. Thus, the first inter-
pretation of the Mass legitimizes a "hierarchical
power structure," the second, a "loosely struc-
tured group." This approach, however, dan-
gerously underplays the larger context which
mediates the relationship between the "social
structure" of a community and its ideological
correlates. Moreover, an approach that reduces
religious ideology to a reflection of the given
social structure underestimates the utopian ele-
ment in monastic (and, indeed, Christian)
ideology, the fact, recognized since Feuerbach,
that this ideology is the Ersatz of a desired order
as well.
In her essay on the nature of the offering in
Assamese Vaishnavism, Hayley describes a
devotional religion in which the god is a (non-
necessary) accessory to the sacrificial practice
and this, in its turn, is but the external vehicle
of a process primarily located inside the
sacrifier.
In fact, devotion comes close to a demystifi-
cation of religion: it "is oriented to the devotee
as the embodiment of a divine principle more
inclusive than the idea of god which it incor-
porates" (p. 122). And the divine itself coincides
in the end with a state of mind. This case once
again emphasizes the necessity to react against
the theistic bias of much Western interpretation
of sacrifice.
The Evolution of Love. Sydney L. W. Mellen.
San Francisco: Freeman, 1981. x + 312 pp.
$15.95 (cloth).
Lola Romanucci-Ross
University of California, San Diego
Proponents of evolutionary theory are in-
vited, in this volume, to consider an explanation
of love, related emotions, and their proveni-
ence. The author tries his hand at disentang-
ling environmental and genetic factors as we are
carried along from his views of heritages of
behavior from "our primate antecedents" to our
"programmed responses" through a "process
that was a groping one" (p. 3). For this book,
the concept of love is intended to include agape
as well as eros, that is, love between men and
women, parents and children, that "enigmatic"
love between individuals of the same sex, and
other ill-determined categories practiced by the
ancients, Greek and other.
The argument is somewhat as follows: from