Like the Ghaku-Ghama, the Somalians are also a patrilineal society and see body as unnatural and in need of change for their society to work. Infibulation is standard practice to transform girls into real women as gender is only casually dependent upon sex, and also into respectful, pure people who deserve to be part of their family and start their own. The procedure isn’t a matter of choice; without it to the Somalis you are impure and of lesser moral worth. If we don’t study the body anthropologically how would we be able to comprehend just how important family membership is to some cultures? The bodily shape in this circumstance links the person to society.
Errington discusses an interesting point about how we are born unfinished. The basic body is seen as a starting point, we in the west see the body’s development through physical stages of puberty, but also through emotional growth as without human contact the basics of communication and social rules aren’t learnt. However, in other cultures such as the Bimin-Kuskusmin of New Guinea changes of the body reflect the progression of personhood, these changes aren’t the natural ones involved in growth. The initiation rights amongst these people see various harms being done to the body including enforced vomiting and flesh burning and various incisions. The changing of the body is vital for the forging of a new identity of an individual, once the initiation process is complete the individual can his moral career in society gaining responsibility and status. The changing of the body is therefore seen as a visible evidence of an inward and conceptual process. Furthermore, the memories of what their body has suffered also then serves as a physical reminder of the acquired masculinity and therefore just how much value it ought to mean to him. These initiation rituals are open to males, even though they are born with male bodies the belief is that it is made up of both male (agnatic) and female parts, the female are undesirable and must be removed. Therefore their ideas of what makes up the body also reflects what it meant be part of the male or female category in their culture. For other cultures the physiological make up of the body is again of great importance, but instead, like for the women of Somalia it is its external presentation which is used to reflect the type of person they are; the body is used as a canvas to reflect your stage of personhood.,
The body is important to study because it is universally seen as starting point of how to act. In the west your sex is given from the day you are born, we then act in a certain way to project what type of sex we are because without showing anatomical evidence is unacceptable. For the Bimin-Kuskusmin one is born genderless, however this still tells you how to act as it gives you something to aspire to. Gender isn’t for the Bimin-Kuskusmin, seen as natural. The body then is also important because even though our particular physiology because of our gender doesn’t physically stop us talking part in certain activates, it is still used to put people into categories of what they can and can not do. The interpretation of the body allows for a society to control who ought to be doing what.
Other cultures also see the external as the important was to recognise people’s genders. The Tehambuli for instance are men because they dress like them, their actions and external presentations are what define their gender. In that society then you can change gender all the time, this then transpires into having a pretty much equal society as having no division of categories mean no rules need to be assigned to each sex. This is important for anthropological study as it suggest that if we disregard the body, don’t let it effect how we design society then there can be equality within a culture and an encouraged idea people being valued on their individual merit.
As well as having wider social significance, the body is also used to shows signs about certain people. For example, an unbalanced body in the Sa’dan Troja is said to reflect illness or that they have committed an offence. Great faith then in some cultures is placed in the body for its use of showing truths about people. A further example of this is with the Hua of New Guinea where it is said that men can become pregnant, this is an illness contracted in various ways, one of them being by eating food prepared by menstruating women. As women are seen as harmful in their society (during the age of ovulation or barrenness in particular), then seeing that they can cause this illness reinforces that women are inferior and that their community should operate in a gender divided way. The body here then doesn’t just help organise the social hierarchy, it is used as an instrument of explaining why events like illness occur.
The body isn’t just necessary to understand the human organization of societies, it also tell us how cultures perceive the world around them. In the west we place great significance in our eyes, sight it how we make sense of the world, it is our index of truth. However for the Tzotzil, touch is the most importance sense, to touch an object is to understand it, they use a different part of their body to understand the world around them, it isn’t just a physical tool, it is used more for thought also. This shows that for some cultures there is a direct link between what the body means and how objects are interpreted, for others like the Tzotzil the body is still used for interpretation, but the body is part of the process for understanding things, heat is the basic force of the universe, it cant be felt without your body, so without using your body you have no perception of the world. The body had more than just meaning because of its form and function.
Studying the body and how it effect societies divisions through gender is important then, as there is little to be understood of their social hierarchy without it. As the Somalis have shown new biologys can be accepted, the body isn’t the ultimate tool in understanding as it can be changes, so understanding that societies aren’t jus determined by what their bodies reflect teach us as anthropologists to look for different ways that cultures are organised and appreciate that nothing can be taken as natural.
Errington points out an alternative benefit for the anthropologist who studies the meanings of the ‘the body’. Although we have seen that cross-culturally the interpretation of bodies and gender varies, the difference in male and female bodies in a purely visual way, does act as evidence for their being different categories of people, differences aren’t simply products of human consciousness. Different cultures will explain why, to what extent and what it means to them to use gender related categories in their society, but the visual difference of a male and female body does confirm the existence of difference. Bodies therefore “provide rich material for the classification and interpretation of human activities”, but can also be used by the western anthropologist to confirm basic notions of difference.
To conclude, Marriot (1796:109-110), suggests that “Society is determined by and perceived through the physical body”. This has been shown to be true as it used by various cultures, in various ways to help organise and direct their society, therefore as anthropologists, it is essential for the body to be understood to gain accurate insights into different peoples.
Tsintjilonis,D. 2000 ‘Death and the Sacrfice of Signs; “Measuring” the Dead in Tana Toraja’. Oceania 71: 1-17
Errington, S. 1990 ‘Recasting Sex, Gender, and Power: A theoretical and Regional Overview’. In J.Atkinson and S.Errington (eds), Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia. Stanford University Presss. Pages 11-37.
Meigs, A 1976 ‘Male pregnancy and the reduction of sexual opposition in a New Guinea Highlands society’. Ethnology 15: 393-407
Errington, S. 1990 ‘Recasting Sex, Gender, and Power: A theoretical and Regional Overview’. In J.Atkinson and S.Errington (eds), Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia. Stanford University Presss. Pages 11-37.
As cited in Errington, S. 1990 ‘Recasting Sex, Gender, and Power: A theoretical and Regional Overview’. In J.Atkinson and S.Errington (eds), Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia. Stanford University Presss. Pages 11-37.