Natural Symbols by Mary Douglas - Book Report/Review Example

MARY DOUGLAS’ NATURAL SYMBOLS - AN ANALYSIS Mary Douglas (1921-2007), a British social anthropologist, is widely recognized for her book “Natural Symbols” and the culture theory. “Natural Symbols” gives a vivid description of the human culture in terms of natural cues and bodily symbols. According to Douglas, natural symbols are an important determinant of the nature of social and religious rituals practiced by all cultures worldwide. These natural symbols could be derived from “blood, breath or excrement” and each one of them has a social meaning and implication. Using these bodily symbols, the choices, preferences and perceptions of every culture can be studied. According to Mary Douglas, the way a person treats his/her body explains his/her perception of the society. The hierarchies existing in a society are very much similar to how a human treats his various organs. She explains: According to one, the body will tend to be conceived as an organ of communication. The major preoccupations will be with its functioning effectively; the relation of head to subordinate members will be a model of the central control system, the favorite metaphors of statecraft will harp upon the flow of blood in the arteries, sustenance and the restoration of strength. According to another, though the body will also be seen as a vehicle of life, it will be vulnerable in different ways. The dangers to it will come… from failure to control the quality of what it absorbs through the orifices; fear of poisoning, protection of boundaries, aversion to bodily waste products and medical theory that enjoins frequent purging. Another again will be very practical about the possible uses of bodily rejects, very cool about recycling waste matter and about the pay-off from such practices. The distinction between the life within the body and the body that carries it will hold no interest. In the control, areas of these society controversies about spirit and matter will scarcely arise. But at the other end of the spectrum … a different attitude will be seen. Here the body is not primarily the vehicle of life, for life will be seen as purely spiritual and the body as irrelevant matter. Here we can locate millennial tendencies from our early history to the present day. For these people society appears as a system that does not work. (Douglas 1996, 16-17) The Body, Religion and Anthropology In her book, Douglas explains how the ritualistic patterns of a culture can be derived through their body symbolism. This book examines religion from an anthropological perspective, explaining the ritualistic and socialistic norms existent in all cultures. Thus, in order to understand a culture truly, a thorough study of the natural symbols occurring in the society is mandatory. Sarah Coakley writes in Religion and the body: Anthropologists have long been interested in ideas about the body. Thus, in the nineteenth-century anthropology, the centrality of the notion of ‘race’ involved detailed studies of the bodies of ‘primitives’. European imperialism made possible, and evolutionary theories of progress encouraged and fed on, the detailed description and classification of types of European and non- European bodies.1 As is evident, the body forms an important element of all anthropological studies that aim at a proper analysis of a given culture. According to Coakley, by the end of the nineteenth century, studies focusing on the “symbolic aspects of the body in primitive cultures” became increasingly prevalent. It was believed that such a study would tell us “something profound of the human mind”2. Mary Douglas is not the only one to have elaborated on the significance of bodily symbols in anthropology. Many other works, like those of Benthall and Pohemus, Blacking etc. have brought out the importance of the “Anthropology of the Body”. However, Douglas’ work remains the most popular in terms of both its academic value and interesting notions. Harries (1993) interprets natural symbols as follows, By natural symbols, I understand symbols that can be derived simply from an analysis of being in the world. They are not tied to a particular culture or region, although, inevitably, different cultures will appropriate them differently (Harries, 1993, p. 53). Social Structure and Natural Symbols in Cultures Mary Douglas explains the social structure in the form of a “Grid and Group”. This can be explained based on how the structure of society is based on the understanding of the human body and the cosmos. According to Douglas, both the cosmos and the body are societal symbols that can be used to decipher the society as a whole. The grid and group theory projected by Douglas explains society on the basis of two variables, namely the grid and the group. The grid signifies the roles played by the human being in the society, such as gender roles and age roles. It is evident that the society is based on a two dimensional module, according to the kind of grid and group occurring in it. A culture can be distinguished based on these two variables, which may be weak or strong. For example, a certain culture may have people with weak group and a strong grid, or a strong group and a weak grid, or a weak group and grid or vice versa. Therefore, the distinction of a society based on these two variables gives four types of societies. The four types of societies can be explained as follows: The weak group-weak grid type of society is the one where the bonds between groups are weak and where people’s lives are controlled by “impersonal (natural or bureaucratic) forces”3. Examples of such societies can be observed among “pygmies, university students and the urban proletariat”4. In these kinds of societies, the lives are controlled by mere chance and there is an absence of rituals or religion, as the society doesn’t find a need to cultivate them. In case of the strong group-weak grid type of society, the bonds of loyalty among groups are strong, but there is a weak grid. These societies tend to have exotic rituals, especially to ward off anything they perceive as evil for the society. Douglas gives the example of witches being warded off by rituals in such societies. There is a strong competition between two groups and the general mentality is like ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ in such societies. The people in such societies tend to have “dualistic cosmologies (i.e. to see the cosmos as a battleground between a good and an evil power)”, and a “fear of contamination”, which is “the most potent bodily symbol” of such societies. The weak group-strong grid types of societies are those involved in “individualist capitalism”. In such societies, status is most often defined by wealth and possessions, and the society is structured based on an individual’s status. In such societies, the “universe is seen as generally amoral, but it rewards hard work and cleverness”5. In such societies, rituals are merely used to get ahead of others and the losers in such societies tend to “sink into a weak group, weak grid existence”. The fourth group, i.e. the strong group-strong grid, as seen in Catholic Europe, is the society in which people’s lives are controlled by authoritative forces, where ideas of morality take centre stage. These societies believe that “a good God or gods reward good, while demons and witches (if they exist) punish evil”. The body is believed to be the mediator of goodness and spirituality, and the society, like the body, is influenced strongly by religion, which is often perceived as magical and sacramental. These kinds of societies harbor dogmas and traditions like reincarnations, karmas, transubstantiations and sacrificial ceremonies. The body is considered as the mediator of God, and therefore symbolizes “society’s benevolent mediating role”. In the weak group-strong grid type of societies, the losers who tend to sink into the weak group-weak grid existence, as described above, integrate together to form a strong grid through collective action, resulting in a revolution to overthrow the higher hierarchies. They cherish fantasies of overthrowing the existing order, engaging in protests and mass gatherings. Such a formation of strong grids leads to revolutions in societies. All revolutions in history, including those who fought for independence and the overthrowing of autocracy and dictatorship come under this purview. Douglas writes that the formation of such a small minority of strong grids from the collective action of weak grids can be associated with the spirit, an “un-integrated minority” and the larger society can be associated with the body, the former extolled and the latter despised. Here, “alienated members of society are trapped in the bodily symbols of their alienation. Rather than reintegrating ‘body’ and ‘spirit’, they imagine that the latter can overthrow the former”6. Case Studies of Cultures and their Natural Symbols Douglas writes’ The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange of meanings between the two kinds of bodily experience so that each reinforces the categories of the other. As a result of this interaction the body itself is a highly restricted medium of expression. The forms it adopts in movement and repose express social pressures in manifold ways. The care that is given to it, in grooming, feeding and therapy, the theories about what it needs in the way of sleep and exercise, about the stages it should go through, the pains it can stand, its span of life, all the cultural categories in which it is perceived, must correlate closely with the categories in which society is seen in so far as these also draw upon the same culturally processed idea of the body. ( Douglas 1996, 69) Such an association between the body and the societal structure is observed in all cultures across the world. For example, on a closer study of the ancient Mayan sculpture obtained from Central America and Mexico, it can be observed that the human body was an important part of the Mayan iconography. Ceramics, stone reliefs, murals depicted the human body with great attention to their gestures, faces, hands and dress. The Mayan rulers in these sculptures face to their right and all of them hold objects in their right hand. Their subordinates face to their left hand and hold objects in their left hand. Furthermore, the defeated enemies in these sculptures are also shown to be left handed. Palka writes, “Throughout Maya history the left and right sides of the human body, left/right spatial orientation, and handedness have had important cultural and symbolic meanings”7. The Mayans considered the right hand as well as the right hand side of the body to be “pure, powerful, or super ordinate”8, while the left hand as well as the left hand side of the body was considered to be “weaker, lame, or subordinate”9. Such a division of society and the symbolism of hierarchy through the right and the left hand clearly indicate how natural symbols explain the structure of a society. Such a distinction between the right hand and the left hand is seen in many other cultures. Most notably, Indian kings differentiated their attendants and nobles based on their status. The king’s most cherished and most important nobles were made to sit at the king’s right hand side, while the sub ordinates sat at his left hand side. Furthermore, even now in India, the right hand-left hand prejudice still exists. The right hand is considered as pure and clean, while the left hand is considered as impure and unclean. Many other cultures are known to harbor such a prejudice. Meyer Fortes first explained the Tallensi of the Volta Region of Ghana in the colonial period10, as described in Natural Symbols. In their culture, each man had to follow stipulated rules on what and when he ate, how he groomed his hair, how he was buried or born. All the people were controlled by one another, including the chiefs and priests. “In this society piety is the order of the day, piety towards senior kinsmen and piety to the dead, even though the ancestors are seen as aggressive punishers. The only enemy is the rank outsider, bound by no ties of clanship”11. The organic system of the body can thus be analogized to the social system, which is uniform all over the world, and this is exactly what Douglas argued. The body is thus metaphorically implied to the societal hierarchy as a whole. Bibliography Coakley, Sarah. Religion and the body. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols. London: Routledge, 2002. Harries, Karsten. Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993. Palka, Joel W. "Left/Right Symbolism and the Body in Ancient Maya Iconography and Culture." Latin American Antiquity 13, no. 4 (December 2002): 419-443. Read More