Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m42fx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T09:33:19.365Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Sociocentric modal states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2009

Geoffrey Samuel
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, New South Wales
Get access

Summary

The treatment of the Ndembu in chapter 7 was not intended to imply that the Ndembu are a ‘typical’ society, or even a typical small-scale, preliterate, low technology society. Its purpose was simply to demonstrate that the MMF provides a convenient and practicable language for describing at least some aspects of one human society. At the same time I introduced the theme of societal mechanisms for creating and maintaining modal states, along with a number of related issues. In this chapter I shall follow up some of these issues further through shorter discussions of several other societies.

To begin with, let us return to the Ndembu analysis. Note the way in which the multimodal framework, when applied to the Ndembu material, groups together the ‘individual’, ‘group’ and ‘societal’ aspects of Ndembu rituals and their symbolism. It is not coincidental that this grouping appears to make so much sense when applied to the Ndembu data. It corresponds to what Turner himself was doing in his classic studies. Turner, in his writings of the 1960s, was struggling against the nature of the categories available to him at that time. His works represent a significant attempt to fit together what those categories separate.

This, it seems to me, is the point of Turner's emphasis on the ‘bipolar’ nature of Ndembu ritual symbols, a theme explored at length in his writings of the early 1960s.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mind, Body and Culture
Anthropology and the Biological Interface
, pp. 93 - 105
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Sociocentric modal states
  • Geoffrey Samuel, University of Newcastle, New South Wales
  • Book: Mind, Body and Culture
  • Online publication: 04 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521010.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Sociocentric modal states
  • Geoffrey Samuel, University of Newcastle, New South Wales
  • Book: Mind, Body and Culture
  • Online publication: 04 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521010.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Sociocentric modal states
  • Geoffrey Samuel, University of Newcastle, New South Wales
  • Book: Mind, Body and Culture
  • Online publication: 04 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521010.009
Available formats
×