orans 1968 review ferreira

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Totemism in India by John V. Ferreira

Review by: Martin OransAmerican Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Apr., 1968), pp. 397-398Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/671169 .

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Totemismin India. JOHN V. FERREIRA.New York:Oxford University Press, "1965" [1966]. viii, 304pp., bibliography, index, chapter notes and refer-ences. $4.65, Rs 17.50.Reviewedby MARTIN ORANSUniversity of California, Riverside

When I agreed to review ProfessorFerreira'sbook,Totemismin India, I had no idea that it emanatedfrom a tradition so fundamentally different than ourown. The author associates himself with the neo-culture-historical school of anthropology. I'm afraidthat in spite of the "neo," the approach is so funda-mentally different as to require a reviewer towrestle with the most basic assumptions of an en-tire tradition, not excluding differencesin objectives.To choose a particularly significant example, theauthor renders the following judgment of Radcliffe-Brown's treatment of totemism:In his proclivity, however, to interpret tend-encies as laws, Radcliffe-Brown confuses twodiffering areas of reality and thus perpetrates thefallacy of reductionism or the identification of thesocio-cultural with the natural, the more complexwith the less, the historical with the law governed[p. 36].

Though I am far from having a clear idea of whatdifferences Ferreira has in mind in distinguishinglaws from tendencies, it does seem to me that hissupport for the latter serves as a charter for theextremely nonscientific method of judging validitythat characterizes his entire tradition.Thus, for example, Ferreirastates:Psychologically speaking, the totemic phenome-non can be traced to two fundamental urges inhuman nature which are closely related to eachother-the urge towards complementarity and theurge towards dependence. That these urges arefundamental can be proved by a reference to twocurrent philosophies-Marxism and Existen-tialism.I feel it only necessary to add an exclamation pointor two after the author's period. Such pronounce-ments and the form of argument used to support

them belong to that non-verstehenpedantic tradi-tion of the humanities that has served so unfor-tunately to cast the whole humanistic tradition intodisrepute.In addition to basic psychological urges, theauthor invokes age-distribution arguments, hypo-thetical trait complexes, presumed evolutionarysequences, ad hocfunctional interpretations, linguis-tic and physical anthropological data-liberallymixed with the judgments of learned scholars-inan effort to sort out origins, primal urges, and whogot what from whom. The flavor of such "explana-tions" can be indicated by the following argumentpresented about the totemism of a Mundari-speakingtribe, the Birhor. The author's interpretation restsupon a hypothetical developmental schema oftotemism from "protototemic" (a little totemic) tofull-fledged "apical group totemism" (the wholecomplex); two declining stages of totemism termi-nate with "totemism in decline." The Birhor are saidto have the most highly developed form (apicalgroup totemism). On the basis of complex historicalconjectures and expert opinions (pro and con),making use simultaneously of all the kinds of "evi-dence" discussed above, the author concludes thatthe Mundari tribals came into India too late to haveproduced "apical group totemism"; since the Birhorhave it and the author suggests the other Mundaritribals do not, he arguesthat "their [the Birhor]pres-ent language and some other cultural elementswere borrowed from their Mundari-speaking neigh-bors in a relatively recent period of time" (p. 103).For those unfamiliar with the Mundari tribes, letme point out that if the Birhor were not originallyMundari, they must have borrowed almost every-thing from their Mundari neighbors. The nameBirhor means "forest people" in standard Santali;the "hor"(people) is cognate with the Santal's namefor themselves and the Ho term; Santali and Bir-hori (if such a distinction is even valid) are mutuallyintelligible; the so-called buru-bonga (hill) deityand ora-bonga house) deity mentioned by the authorare worshipped in identical fashion among theSantal; many clan names are cognate with a largenumber of other Mundari tribals, and even subclannames; the totemic practices that associate plantsand animals with certain social groups can bematched by exactly parallel practices among otherMundari groups. In short, despite enormous cul-tural similarity, the author concludes that theBirhor are "originally" a non-Mundari group, essen-tially because he affirms that they have too muchtotemism. If the Birhor do have somewhat more con-cern with animals and their relation to the super-natural and social units than other Mundari speakerscited, it might be due to the simple fact that theyare the only such group living almost entirely byhunting and gathering in a symbiotic relation withtheir settled agriculturalist neighbors!Rather than presenting other examples of suchtortured reasoning, let me only say that one atten-

Book Reviews 397to how much the respective writer has been obligedto extend or to narrowhis basic definition of shaman-ism. A final paper by Norland relates the McGillexperiments on the perception of reality to shaman-ism. All of this seems rather useless if one cannot atthe same time note that a definition of reality is aprimary cultural issue.By the reasoning of these authors, shamanism isthus a specific category. Yet "techniques of ecstasy"appear from Bali to the Sun Dance and can clearlybe found in contemporary Pentecostalism. But theauthors choose not to see it that way and so treat apotentially random phenomenon as though it werea discrete kind of social institution. The result canscarcely be expected to inform.

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436 American Anthropologist [70, 1968Insofar as it has been possible to verify, the prac-tical information is accurate and useful. The excep-tions are almost entirely those items that have be-come outdated in even the short time since thebook's publication, notably price information.Anthropologists, especially those planning to workwith Brazilian Indians, may find the book of onlylimited usefulness, since it is weighted heavily to-ward political science and history, and much of thepractical advice is about how to reproduce U.S.urban middle-class living conditions in Braziliancities. This information may, however, be of use tothose interested in urban studies, as will the essay onpublic administration by Peter Bell. The chapter onthe Northeast by anthropologist Shepard Formanand that on Goias by geographer Paul Mandellshould stimulate the anthropologist interested in thepeasantry, the rural proletariat, and other social

groups of the Brazilian interior.The appearance of a nuts-and-bolts "how-to-do-it" book for U.S. researchers in Brazil shows justhow much of an industry this research has become,especially since Cuba turned socialist. Many edu-cated Brazilians are suspicious of this activity, asProfessor Levine notes. But he attributes this sus-picion to Brazilian "lack of information on NorthAmerican methods of education and research." Hemisses the point. The problem is neither that Brazil-ians do not read North American college catalogs,nor, as the crude propaganda of the Left would haveit, that all or most U.S. academics are spies, butrather a disparity in perspectives induced by therespective social positions of Brazilian intellectualsand U.S. researchers.The North American researcheris a product and arepresentative of a technologically powerful societywhose rulers have opted for Empire. The educatedBrazilian knows this, and he also knows that Brazilis an outpost, in most senses, of this Empire, whoseinfluence helps guarantee an institutional systemagainst the aspirations of the majority of Brazilians.The outlooks of the two groups can hardly be iden-tical. Where, whether, and how to tread in thissituation is a delicate question for the U.S. re-searcher,unfortunately treated with neither delicacynor depth in the present work. A pity, for it is farmore important than the availability of stainless-steel safety razors or the cost of soap flakes.It is the lone anthropological contribution to thisbook that touches most sensitively upon the humandimensions of research. Shepard Forman observes,"When people are begging for any kind of help, it isdifficult to . . . merely use them as statistics in adoctoral dissertation." Though the solutions heoffers seem mere palliatives to this reviewer, For-man's unresolved doubts are more congenial than acertain manipulative tendency evident in some of theother contributions.This tendency may result from a mere problem ofcommunication, for solemnity is the keynote of thisbook, which has all the warmth of a balance sheet.

This is a great injustice to a culture rich in humorand personalwarmth; the present work will leave thenewcomer to Brazilian studies quite unprepared foreither. A good exposure to Brazilian literature, bothhigh- and low-brow, should compensate for this lack.Whatever its defects, the Research Guide is ofsufficient value to have a guaranteed place in thebaggage of any U.S. academic headed for Brazil. It isto be hoped that it will be expanded and kept up-to-date in future editions.

Early Stone Tools. Produced in 1967 by the Uni-versity of California Extension Media Center,with FRANgOIS BORDES s consultant. 16 mm.,color, sound, running time 20 minutes. Rental$12.00; purchase $220.00 ($264.00 abroad).Available from University of California ExtensionMedia Center, 2223 Fulton Street, Berkeley,California 94720.Reviewed by F. CLARKHOWELLUniversity of ChicagoThis film intends to depict the stone tools of earlyman and to illustrate methods of producing them. Itunfortunately fails to do either really adequately.Professor Francois Bordes, noted prehistorian ofthe Laboratoire de Prehistoire, Universite de Bor-deaux, is capable of reproducingmost (probably all)of the classes and types of stone artifacts employedby Pleistocene peoples. Many feet of film were shotof Prof. Bordes fashioning such artifacts during amonth's visit in 1965 to the University of California(Berkeley). Only a small portion of that footage isincluded in this film. It does illustrate the making ofa chopping-tool, a cleaver and hand-axes (utilizingboth stone-on-stone, including anvil technique, andantler cylinder-hammer technique), Levallois corepreparation and final flake removal discoidal coretechnique (so-called Mousterian) and the fashioningof a few flake tools (Clactonian notch, denticulate,point, side-scraper). This is preceded by a brief illus-tration of the principal distinguishing character-istics of percussion-flaked stone and the terms ap-

plied to those features. These successive develop-ments and refinements in technology and in tooltypology are intermixed with illustrations of selectedparts of lithic assemblages, including Oldowan,Acheulian, and Mousterian examples. There is noillustration of the diversity of late Pleistocene lithicassemblages, or techniques employed in producingsuch artifacts. An attempt is made to relate the pro-gressive elaboration and refinement in techniquesand in implement type to biological evolution fromAustralopithecusto Homo erectusto earlier and later(e.g., Neanderthals) Homosapiens and the successfuloccupation of and adaptation to different environ-ments.It is manifestly impossible to accomplish any ofthese goals in a film of this length. In view of its con-tent the title of the film is misleading. The excellentillustrations of artifact manufacture are unfortu-

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orans 1968 review ferreira

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