The Anthropology of CannibalismLaurence Goldman Bloomsbury Academic, 30. 10. 1999 - Počet stran: 168 Using new case data from South American, Australian, and Papua New Guinean societies, the authors explore how cultural ideas for humanity are reflected in seemingly universal understandings of our potential for anthropophagy. Whether or not a society actually practices cannibalism, these conceptions are often articulated at the level of folklore and myth, where flesh-eating is imbued with symbolic meanings centered on ideas about regeneration after death, the equivalence between human flesh and food, and the morality of social exchange in and between groups. Thus, cannibalism emerges at once as a resource for political agendas that perpetuate ethnic stereotypes of exotic others; a cultural practice capable of expressing violent suppression as well as transforming death into a life-sustaining process; and a theme whose horrific potentiality engenders baleful monsters and myths for public delectation as well as child control. |