Why I wish we lived in Apache Junction

We don't live in Apache Junction, although we live near there in a place that considers Apache Junction to be, well, a hick town. Can you imagine a more historic and romantic name than Apache Junction?  It actually must be, according to my calculations, located on a prehistoric path, perhaps a Hohokam trade route.  I can imagine the people moving back and forth, the petroglyphs that must mark the path, the events that happened, and the items being traded.  

Many of the streets in Apache Junction have historical names (e.g., Remington, Thunderbird, Wells Fargo, Concho, Tomahawk, Wickiup Rd., Conestoga Road, Wagon Wheel Road, Vaquero, Chaparral, Cortez, Cochise, Pima, De Soto, Raindance, Teepee) or biological name (e.g., Ocotillo, Palo Verde, Saguaro, Grease Wood, Iron Wood, Manzanita, Smoketree, Cactus Wren).  The streets offer history lessons or point out what you should know if you want to  understand this area and its history.  It will help you realize what a fascinating place Apache Junction is.

There used to be a large number of rock and gem stores, which I love to visit, and a bunch of funky antique stores. It was a wonderful place and one of the most wonderful places was Buckhorn Baths. 

\https://www.facebook.com/ApacheTrail/posts/this-1944-image-shows-buckhorn-baths-on-apache-trail-and-recker-road-before-they/1585762284838854 /

If you are interested in prehistoric paths, this is a good article to get you started.

https://www.ajpl.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Arch-20171114.pdf

 

Abuelas, Nanas, Grandmothers

It seems that grandmothers have become popular again, credited with promoting the fitness of their descendants. I don't disagree with that premise. I do disagree with several points.

1.  If the children, when they get old, replicate the cultural/behavioral  strategies of the grandmother, then it becomes an ancestral strategy. I am sure that evolutionary biologists look at it generation by generation, but if  you look at it in terms of everyone the grandmother influences, it seems clear that her influence is copied across generations and at any point in time she is, what the Mongolians would say, the one who founds a lineage, perhaps even a lineage going back as far as Genghis Khan. However, no matter how often I repeat myself, my words fall on deaf ears. We cannot escape from kin selection/inclusive fitness. I have to wonder if it is the sole means of explaining cooperation (other than reciprocal altruism - which has tough requirement and thus is tough to test) even in other species. However, I leave that for future generations to solve.

2.  I also agree that when a mother has more than one child she needs  a strategy to get them to cooperate with her and with one another.  Part of that strategy may involve having the grandmother teach them those skills while the mother tends to breast feeding, foraging, preparing food, keeping her husband happy - all cultural practices that she had been taught by her mother and grandmother. That teaching may have been explicit - "Do this!", or it may have been implicit, perhaps described in a story, or it may have been taught by modeling behavior. The how is less important than the result. 

3. The grandmother did more than teach her daughter (as a child) to find nutritious roots. That was only one thing she might have done, but even that she learned from her mother, who learned it from her mother. To try to make this clear, girls learn certain skills by watching their mothers. They learn other skills - probably social skills - from their grandmothers. 

Education and its discontents

 

Education and its discontents (and contents)

Once upon a time, at least in my imagination, the buildings in which teaching and learning  occurred were designed to be beautiful and to last for centuries. The ideas taught in those buildings centered on logic, education, and the virtues and vices of humanity.

Today, institutions of higher learning are more "institutional" - not designed or built to last forever or inspire the viewer with their beauty. However, although they have lost the beauty element, they continue to teach what we call the humanities. Now it is left to community colleges to teach many of the skills such as plumbing and construction and car repair. 

When I studied drawing long ago in a university, the worst insult you could get from your professor was that your drawing was beautiful. Beautiful meant trite, unimaginative, pattern. If by mistake you did draw something "beautiful" you were asked to take a pencil, pen, knife, or eraser  and slash lines through your mistake.

When I studied literature in a university, our interpretations had to be, if not the interpretation of the professor (which was not always made clear), then a summary of the interpretation of some other scholar with whom the professor agreed. Despite the fact that any narrative can probably have a million possible interpretations, your interpretation if not repetitive was seen a faulty. Has it always been that way, even when the university campus was built to be beautiful and to last generations? Did the students of Socrates have to copy what Socrates said. Apparently so, as that is why we know about his thinking, just as that is the way we know what Confucius and many others have taught. 

However, what concerns me here is  the loss of beauty, which one might mourn as one mourns the loss of one's belief in the goodness of humankind. My real interest here is copying. We are a species know for copying. A first question is how did we get from beauty to practicality?  Did funding inspire the change?  Further, we may copy the virtues listed above or we may join others in rejecting them. By copying I do not mean plagiarism, although that is rampant, but the fact that many faculty and students seem to be expected to copy the ideas, words, postures...of those they accepted as role and thought models when they were graduate students. Where in this picture are the original thinkers, the ones who having learned the accepted models of thought, begin to forge their own way?  More importantly, where in the humanities are the original thinkers - not just those who change a few words or describe the thoughts using academic terms. 

The Liberal Arts include the sciences, which depend on hypotheses that are testable, not on how they fit with prior thinking (that that is there to some significant extent), but  on the falsifiability and strength of their hypotheses. Evolutionary biology is trying to lure the humanities into its realm. I have to wonder though, as despite the fact that they are  using - or reciting - modern Darwinian theory as a base -  they often propose non-testable hypotheses that are, however worded in complex academic terms -- terms not defined either in the paper or dictionaries. Further, to what extent are mistakes made and, worse yet, copied generation after generation? Do interesting hypotheses, albeit nontestable, ever correct themselves or does "science" continue along a path that takes humanities scholars ever more deeply into convoluted errors of thinking.

Don't get me wrong, copying is not necessarily a negative thing. Copying helps a students get As and helps us be seen as members of any particular community. Shibboleths.  As one example, young women who copy sorority girls are modeling behaviors known to be successful in attracting wealthy husbands. There are many possibly examples, but perhaps I am too skeptical. Can one be too skeptical when one lives in a social group created by humans?  

Blaming the victim

Many people in the US today seem to be professional victims. They are very good at it and have even raised it to an art form. These people have no responsibility for what occurs to them. It is fate, historical issues, poverty, disgusting people, or nasty white (or other) men who are to blame.

It is probably a good bet that all of our ancestors suffered. That is a given. We have been on earth as Homo sapiens for some 100,000-300,000 years. One can guess that at least one and probably many of our ancestors suffered at the hands of others. 

This brings us to the topic of blaming the victim. If a young and attractive woman, against the advice of her mother and friends, wears a tiny skirt and low cut blouse and wanders into a strange ghetto at night, does she have to accept any of the responsibility for being raped?

According to Wikipedia,

• Victim-blaming consists of holding victims of crimes or other misfortunes wholly or partly responsible for what has happened to them.

Wikipedia then provides two examples:

• For example: a motorist who leaves a car unlocked with the keys in the ignition may seem partly responsible if another party steals the car. Or persons who use verbal abuse may count as partly responsible if they suffer a physical assault.
• In the context of rape, this concept refers to popular attitudes that behaviour such as flirting or wearing sexually provocative clothing may encourage rape: that such actions resemble leaving one's car with the keys in the ignition or provoking an assault by "winding up" the assailant. In extreme cases people may accuse victims of "asking for it" by not behaving demurely.

This theory, Wikipedia goes on to write, "depends on the view that a prospective victim should know and acknowledge either human nature or other facts of life when making decisions. Thus persons may appear blameworthy if they act recklessly or with negligence. Laws acknowledge this concept in some areas, for example when a driver ignores the rules of the road.

Health Promoters

I was thinking today about lay health promoters. They go by various names - indigenous health worker, lay health workers, community health workers, etc. - however, all share the common role of serving communities that are underserved and that have populations that differ from the majority of professional providers - either in language/culture, race/ethnicity or SES. Having worked in those communities for many years I have been a strong proponent of those programs. However, I also realize that there are many requirements if such programs are to work. The promoter needs to be a member of the community he/she will serve, they need to be carefully selected and they need to be property trained, with continuing education required. And the programs need to be well funded and supported by the entity with which they are affiliated. 

This morning I was reading A Tzeltal Maya Community by Robert Harman. On page 219 I read:

 "The Indianist Institute has clinics which are well equipped and staffed by full-time salaried physicians or promoters. However, the Institute has no way to compel individuals to follow its recommendations on health related matters. This problem became clear when I spoke with members of the community about an Institute-sponsored puppet theatre in which characters act out humorous roles that delight the audience. The purpose of the puppet theater is to instruct viewers to employ Western medical practices and beliefs in order to promote better health. Beliefs in witchcraft and other 'superstitions' are ridiculed by the puppets, but, while the viewers recalled that they enjoyed the performance, they did not remember the import of the health topic messages. As a result of the puppet theater and other education many of the Indians have adopted the term microbios ('microbes') into their vocabulary, but none appear to associate with the word meanings that resemble those of the western world."

This account then goes on to describe the life of the promoter, who, it admits,  save lives and alleviate suffering. On page 220, the life of the promoter is described:

"The same promoter believes that people get sick frequently from winds and microbes, which have the effect of drying up the body. He uses his affluence to support three wives, polygamy being a traditional symbol of wealth and prestige in Maya society. He tells patients to avoid 'hot' foods on the day they receive an injection with the rationale that it would interact unfavorably with the 'hot' medicine. He speaks with conviction about the clairvoyances of a local shaman and about the peopling of Oxchuc by distant ancestors as recorded in the kawaltik, a sacred book which is actually a legal document written by a Spanish administrator in 1674."

The first example, of the puppet performances is interesting. The people in the audience reacted to the plays as if they were forms of entertainment, not as forms of education - in other words, the plays - which are enacted stories -did not "teach" them about health. Needless to say, they did not incorporate what they did not learn into their behavior. 

It is clear that storytelling - in puppet play format - doesn't necessarily educate - doesn't necessarily change behavior (the aim of education being to change behavior). It might be true that puppet theatre in the past has always been about entertainment and that is what members of the audience expected to see and responded to as such.  However, it is equally true - or seems to be true - that we are influenced even by plays, stories, movies, etc. that entertain us. If we are influenced we are more likely to change our behavior to the models presented. It would be interested to see if even if the members of the audience couldn't recite the message they were likely to change their behavior. The author didn't ask that question.

In the second example, one question  is - does his increased prestige - having three wives - help him influence people?  Is a hierarchy important in influencing others? A third question is whether the fact that the promoter is paid make him less likely to be seen as a member of the community. He was a member when he was poor - does he continue to be seen as one? 

I could go on, but this is long enough. Perhaps I will continue this theme on another day. 

By chance, when I was trying to find this blog on the internet, I ran into a review that Chris Knight wrote about my book.  Needless to say, as I have met him and seen his arrogance (perhaps the arrogance is deserved - I am merely commenting on his behavior) he makes it "painfully obvious" (his words) that the book, basically, is foolish, poorly conceptualized. His dismissal of my book, however. was based on  his misunderstanding of my argument. 

As social relationships evolved around a mother, I argue she could have been the one to have originated culture, perhaps by braiding her child's hair (as braids are seen in the so called Venus figurines) or perhaps she could have provided some other form of decoration. Art, in other words. Over time, the decoration, if replicated by the next generations, would come to identify those who are kin due to shared descent from a common ancestor. The mother, also would have been the one to establish rules of behavior, as having more than one child makes it necessary to influence the behavior of siblings. Her life would be hell if she didn't establish rules. Those rules were taught by modeling behavior - acting like what she wanted to see - and through stories or myths. 

I don't say that art and rules of behavior (behavior codes as they came to be called) were always the province of females. I only say that is how it could have started. Over time if her children copied what she had done, and her children's children copied what she had done, on down through time, what we would end up with would be large numbers of individuals dressed similarly - we used to call this tribal and clan decoration.  

Kin selection theory implies that we need to identify those with whom we cooperate. Without that identification there is no reason to suspect we will differentially cooperate. Kin selection, however, only can account for a small number of kin, those with whom we predictably share genes. What I am arguing, is that humans cooperate with those they identify as kin, often through body decoration or through kin names. Knight ignores those points

His argument, which differs from mine, can help  explain his disdain for my argument - To begin, I didn't cite him. For an arrogant person, that is unforgivable and I actually thought about him and what he would say as I wrote the book.

According to a review written by Bradden, E. (2017). Chris Knight's theory of human origins: an abridged account. https://libcom.org/library/chris-knight%E2%80%99s-theory-human-origins-abridged-account 

Knight locates the origins of culture in the female solidarity that emerges to regulate sexual and marital relations. Women resist male domination by subordinating short-term sexual goals to longer-term economic goals. It is this female strategy (with help from male kin) that explains the origins of the ‘own-kill’ rule, the incest taboo and the elementary structures of kinship.

In explaining the origins of female solidarity, Knight places particular significances on women’s ability to synchronise their menstrual cycles. Menstrual bleeding poses a major problem for females in that males will seek to bond with females who show visible signs of their fertility. According to Knight females and their male relatives bond together to resist predatory males. Females adopt a strategy in which they in effect ‘cheat’ by all appearing to menstruate at the same time. This can be achieved by painting themselves with surrogate ‘menstrual’ blood.

Non-human primates signal ‘no’ to sex by displaying lack of arousal or interest. However, if females are to signal ‘no’ to sex, deliberate measures must be taken: human females must reverse the normal body-language displays indicating ‘yes’. Thus instead of signalling ‘right species, right sex, right time’ the human female must signal ‘wrong species, wrong sex, wrong time’. In signalling ‘no’ to sex females set up a communal counter-reality. According to Knight the origins of culture are to be located in this female strategy of saying ‘no’ to sex.

Knight argues that this account of the origins of culture is reflected in myth and ritual, illustrating this with reference to numerous myths and ritual practises in traditional societies. One example is male initiaton ritual in Aboriginal Australia, which is associated with the myth of the ‘rainbow snake’. Knight argues that such initiation rites reflect and perpetuate a situation in which women have become subordinated to men, men having appropriated the ritual power that originally belonged to women. In these rites, boys had to have their flesh cut to allow the blood to flow. Where ‘male menstruation’ became the rule, women’s menstruation became feared as a threat to male supremacy. Female menstruation became seen as polluting while male menstruation was seen as positive, magical and conducive to good hunting luck.

Here are several criticisms: First, the evidence on menstrual synchronization is still under debate as methodological flaws were identified in the initial studies. It is now often argued that  synchronization actually does not occur. That said, he seems to be saying that males recognize that menstruating females cannot be impregnated and leave them alone. So, females paint themselves red (or parts of their bodies red) to keep males away - menstrual blood signaling no sex, wrong species, wrong time. It is not clear how that decoration would communicate wrong species or wrong sex. It would seem to clearly indicate right sex but wrong time.  Ignoring that, his argument seems like a fairy tale that presents a non-testable hypothesis. He is to be commended, however, for raising some important points. First, females in other species communicate when they are ovulating - through behavior, smell or body changes. Human females hide their ovulation. Females in ten primate species, several bat species, the elephant shrew and one mouse species menstruate. Other females do not. It would be very interesting to understand the behavior of those females during menstruation. 

Another interesting point he raises is how ovulating human females might have discouraged males who did not interest them, given male superior strength.  That is a good question. I would argue that rules of behavior specified who could marry whom - marriages were probably arranged fairly early in human history based on genetic analyses. Another rule would have told family members to protect reproductive age females. I remember one of my anthro professors telling the class that if a female were alone she would be raped. She knew it and would just lie down. Perhaps that is apocryphal, but I sure can remember talking to females who spoke about the importance of  self-protection. 

It also is true that in my book I don't confront the question of how males came to dominate culture. I did argue that males  were influenced by their mothers. Even warriors dying on the battle field cry out for their mothers.  Mothers have a lifelong influence. The influence a potential mate has may end with copulation. My assumption, which is not in the book is that females develop and cooperatively share things like art, weaving, dyeing cloth, gardening and males adopt those things and as they are more competitive, turn them into grandiose schemes. To end this, my main argument - art is used to identify kin or those cooperating as if they were kin - is testable and I can think of some interesting scenarios that would threaten my proposal. That is the way science is supposed to be. 

 

I do wish I knew how to make this more attractive, not intellectually, but aesthetically. However, I don't, so that is that.

I am reading a book on the history of recent epidemics. It is fascinating. We are one interacting world with bacteria and viruses - at times our friends, at times our enemies. It reminded me of an article I just read on trees. it is quite popular now to talk and write about tree communication. They communicate underground, through chemicals released from their roots. Those chemical warn surrounding species of various things and trees share important chemicals, even with trees of different species. All the communication seems to be aimed at improving the lot of surrounding trees. One has to wonder, however, if any trickery is going on. Nature is red in tooth and claw, competition for scarce resources is rife. Time and research will tell.

 

Storytelling

It has been said, as many things are said - with bravado but not much thought

That storytelling has disappeared or is of no more use, 

as my daughter, Blair, and I discussed this morning.

She jumped into the discussion. 

I knew if I were only quiet, 

She would enlighten me.

She was indignant. Of course storytelling was not dead.

We were surrounded by storytellers, they filled our lives

and our minds, sometime with chatter, at times with wisdom

Storytellers can be found on Ted Talks, YouTube, Facebook, in a movie or video

or opera. 

Parents read stories to their children

Religious leaders tell stories to explain doctrine

Teachers create stories to help students learn

Our healers tell stories, just as shamans once did, and perhaps still do

Their stories explain why we got sick and how to get well

Parents tell stories to socialize their children

Religious leaders use stories to encourage us to behave in appropriate ways. 

Lawyers are not known to publicly refer to themselves as storytellers, 

yet they realize that the lawyer who tells the most captivating story will win the trial. 

They weave the evidence into stories to try to lead the jury to exonerate or convict.

Perhaps the actual question is how storytelling has changed over time, even though we 

are surrounded by stories

Storytelling used to be a personal relationship, with eye contact, vocalizations, body language, and discussion

It was, as my daughter said, a performance, a social performance

 

 

Storytelling: Textiles 

As the use of the phrase “spinning a yarn” suggests, an association has long been made between weaving and storytelling. The word spinning was often found regularly in ancient Hindu texts including the Vedas, as Puntambekar and Varadachari (1926) described in their book Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving.

When the poet sings his invocation to Agni, he asks of the gods “to spin out the ancient thread”. The continuity of life itself and of the human race is compared to the continuity of a well-spun thread. ‘As fathers they have set their heritage on earth, their offspring, as a thread continuously spun out.’

It has been argued that all forms of art tell stories. Included among those forms of art are weavings. Weavers in the Andes, Silverman writes, “are modern scribes who use thread as opposed to pen and ink, to produce motifs in a true pictoric dictionary” (1993, 14). In Oaxaca, Mexico woven cloth is said to be a language used to tell stories.

The earliest evidence of weaving dates back some 27,000 years. Thaat earliest evidence  was found in impressions of weaving made on clay. Further, clay was used to create small “Venus figurines”, or small clay statuettes, that are wearing a large number of woven objects: skirts and belts, as well as hats, headbands and necklaces.

A prehistoric society in which some of the world's finest weavers lived was on the coast of Peru. Between 800 BCE and 100 BCE the Paracas people traded locally grown cotton for wool from  llamas and alpacas that were being raised by people in the Andes. 

They carefully spun the cotton and wood into fine thread and yarn. First, a cloth was woven out of plain cotton.  Brightly colored wool threads were used to decorate the fabric with embroidery depictions of costumed dancers, plants, double headed birds, pampas cats, llamas, fish, serpents, llamas carrying loads of vegetables, serpents, plants, mystical creatures including shamans who are part human and part eagle and who can fly through the air.  In one claw they hold severed human heads and the other claw held the knife that was used to cut off the head. 

The weaving woven in Paracas weavers has been found in tombs. Mummified bodies of the dead were wrapped in finely woven and skillfully and brightly embroidered mantles or shrouds. Even today, thousands of years later, the colors remain bright and the skill is obvious. The complexity of the weaving and the beauty of the embroidery communicated the social status, wealth, and social affiliation of the deceased. Two thousand years later those weavings can tell us stories about the Paracas people. They are telling us stories about their lives and concerns. 

 

Storytelling: Performances, ceremonies, celebrations, and rituals

When we combine our storytelling with the other arts, we refer to that event using words like performance, ceremony, celebration or ritual. These words are used interchangable and their meanings can be confusing. Sometimes it is possible to distinguish the meaning of terms by looking at their etymology, or origin. 

Possibly the oldest of these terms is the word ceremony, which possibly was of Etruscan origin (8-3 century BCE). It came to English from the Medieval Latin word ceremonia, which referred to sacredness or holiness. 

The word ritual is a proto-European word that possibly came from Sanscrit (c. 1500-500 BCE), it came into usage around 1560 CE and made reference to a religious observance.

The next oldest word is celebration. Its root came from the Latin word celebrationem, which means numerous in attendance, possibly for a sacred event. 

As these three terms have the oldest origins and make reference to gatherings that are of a religious nature, it suggest that the earliest use of storytelling, when combined with the other arts, was a serious event, rather than merely a social or enjoyable event.  

Performance is the youngest of these words. It appeared in English during the late 15^th century to refer to public entertainment. While the meaning of words can and does change over time, the word performance continues to be used in the same sense today. Operas and plays are performances. These events are held at certain times and certain places. The audience, except in the case of slapstick, typically sits quietly and its only participation is to, perhaps, quietly laugh or sigh, and certainly to applaud.

Rituals, ceremonies and celebrations also are typically scheduled on certain dates, at certain times. These events all are patterned, meaning they have recurring features, including starting with some sort of greeting or introduction and typically people in the audience participate in some way. These three words were, as stated before, used at least at one time to refer to a religious event. Although we used the term celebration to refer to sacred occasions, such as the Celebration of Mass, the term also is often used to refer to an event like a birthday party. Celebrations like birthday parties are patterned. They typically start with a welcome and the placing of the gifts in a pile. People then move to view the birthday cake. They then play games, then sing a happy birthday song, light the candles, then blow thee out, and then cut the cake and open gifts. The audience may cheer, shout or boo. Jokes might be told. The story told is about the birthday boy or girl. The art consists of the song, the decorations, perhaps crepe paper streamers, the gaily wrapped gifts. and the "best cloths' that participants often wear. 

Rituals and ceremonies are more serious events than celebrations. They are held in a place said to be special, such as an auditorium, or sacred, such as a mosque. Confucius felt that rituals transformed man from an individualistic ego into one characterized by strong kinship ties, generosity, diligence, earnestness, filial piety, fraternal duty, loyalty and sincerity.A graduation is referred to as a ceremony. It follows a pattern of steps, beginning when Pomp and Circumstance is played and the university marshall enters the room carrying a mace. The mace, which is about three feet tall and golden, is a symbol of governing authority. Then faculty and students file in and take their seats at the front of the room, before the stage. there is a welcome, some presentations are given, and the school song might be sung. A story will be told about the graduates, their future, and what they can contribute to their academic and society. The ceremony ends when diplomas have been awarded and then there is a recessional. Perhaps graduates will toss their caps into the air..the audience cheers.  The art consists of the caps and grown, the gonfaons, or banners carried to represent each college. A graduation party is celebration.  

A ritual typically is considered to be the most serious type of event, one that in some way - a song, a prayer, a blessing - invokes the supernatural. If a graduation mass is held, it is a ritual. If an invocation, or opening prayer, is recited at a graduation it becomes more like a ritual. A wedding, if no reference is made to religio u , or faith or the supernatural, is a celebration. If held in a church or other sacred place and the event is conducted by a minister or rabbi, it is a ritual. A wedding reception is a celebration.   

The type of art used with stories that are part of ceremonies differs from the art and stories used in rituals. Of the two, rituals are more patterned and special or sacred objects often are used and the story of their sacredness is described. Rituals also can involve reading from a sacred text and prayer, which is an appeal or attempt to call upon a supernatural entity. The stories told also can relate the importance of the event itself, the history of the sacred place and the sacred objects used, the miracles that have occurred and the deeds of the heroic or saintly individuals involved.  

Drums have played and in some cases continue to play an important role in ceremonies and rituals performed in many parts of the world. The sound of the drum, for some people, is said to be sacred. The Igbu of Nigeria use different types of drums play during the Eke Celebration. Participants arrive in decorated war canoes playing the egume drum. As they near the royal place the ufie, the king’s talking drum, calls to them, telling the stories of his great deeds. Each participant then stands, dances and recalls his own ancestors’ heroic deeds (Jackson 1968; see also Calame-Griaule 1986). “These drummers, Rattray (1916:134) writes, “are trained from childhood, and must not only be experts in drumming, but also have learned the traditions and genealogies of all the kings, and the folklore of the tribe as contained in the proverbs. “

A good description of a ritual comes from the istory of St. Thomas Becket, who was Archbishop of Canterbury during the Middle Ages. When his opinions clashed with those of King Henry II, he was killed by four of Henry’s knights while he knelt in prayer at the altar. In 1173 he was declared a saint after more than 700 miracles had been recorded as occurring at his tomb. For centuries, thousands of pilgrims traveled great distances to reach his Shrine. Today, pilgrims follow the Pilgrims Way for fifteen days (153) miles, from Winchester to the shrine at Canterbury. When they arrive they tour the cathedral singing hymns and stopping to pray at places connected with Becket’s life and death. His miracles are portrayed in beautiful stained glass windows. One shows the healing of Petronella of Polesworth, a nun who suffered from leprosy. She is shown bathing her feet in holy water while sitting on the tomb of St Thomas. At each window the relevant story of his life was recited

to be continued

 

Stories of heroes and villains.

Stories, for centuries, have described heroes, generally focusing on men who took risks and perhaps sacrificed their lives for the benefits of others. In the past, heroes were presented as models for correct social behavior, generally for males. Females were taught quite different things and rewarded for certain behaviors (but that story is for another day. During the initiation rituals performed by the Aboriginal people, the boys were told a series of short stories about the ancestral heroes who lived in the Dreamtime. These stories taught tribal history and, Elkin (1964:156) writes and “instilled into the minds of the younger men present, for most do today what the great heroes did in the dream time”. The Bemba of Zambia tell stories about heroes and villains as they can illustrate the consequences of behavior; the good are rewarded and the bad are punished. As each generation listened to the triumphs and tragedies of their heroic ancestors, their behavior changed. Courageous acts of sacrifice became goals for the young to emulate, while the derision heaped upon selfish characters would arise in their minds as powerful obstacles whenever circumstances tempted them to shrug off their obligations to others.

Detective stories are a unique type of hero story that, written in French and English, made their sudden appearance during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. By 1901, they had become so popular that the famous art critic, theologian and philosopher, G. K. Chesterton, published a paper to explain their popularity, explaining that these stories were “a perfectly legitimate form of art”, one that confirmed beliefs that there were absolutes in life – rules that universally held – and when one ignored or violated those absolutes there would be serious consequences in life. As such, detective stories could be agents for societal good. He also wrote his own mysteries, one of which, Father Brown, describes the father in a small town in England who uses his understanding of religion to solve local crimes. These books more recently have been described as preachy and moralistic, in contrast to the more popular stories of Sherlock Holmes, a flawed hero who was led at times by his passions, but capable of using calm reason to solve crimes. Since the early 20^th century the number of detective stories has proliferated; today, they are one of the most widespread narrative forms today. And while the detectives who become heroes tend to be moral people, working for justice, the books are not explicitly moral tales. However, their influence may certainly be in that direction. The moral message is more subtle now. 

The storytellers of today

Although some claim that no one tells stories anymore, that is not true. We have many storytellers among us today. Children continue to hear their parents tell them bedtime stories that teach them about perseverance (The Little Engine that Could) or honesty (Pinocchio). There are, however, storytellers for adults. Our doctors and nurses tell us stories so we can understand our problem and its treatment. Our prophets, priests, and  and rabbis tell stories to help us understand doctrine. Our professors and teachers, the ones whose lectures interest us the most, are storytellers. From them we can and do, painlessly, learn a great deal.  We hear stories in operas and radio broadcasts. We hear stories from salespeople trying to convince us that their products are best and those who build the most elaborate stories are trying to sell snake oil to naive buyers are selling snake. Perhaps surprisingly to some, our newscasters, lawyers, politicians and scientists all are or can be storytellers.

Lawyers, who are known to be articulate, do not refer to themselves as storytellers. All lawyers, however, realize that the lawyer who tells the most captivating story will win. Lawyers weave together lines of evidence with legal precedent and create interesting stories that will lead the jury to exonerate or convict.

Politicians, too, are storytellers and some are very good storytellers. Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln both recognized the power of Stories. Church, during the second world war used stories to remind the people of Great Britain of their heroic history, of the strength they had shown in time of crises, of the bravery of their soldiers and the moral value of the people. In doing so, he was successful in convincing them to persist in their battle with the Nazis. Lincoln, during America's Civil war energized his people and was able to preserve the Union by appealing to the best in each person. 

The ancestors of journalists were news carriers, or criers, who carried information from one geographic area to another and one people to another. They were trusted to provide, in a plainspoken manner, accurate information of use in decision making. Today, our journalists walk a fine line between two roles, news carrying and storytelling. They need to provide facts, but must do so in an intriguing way so that they can keep their jobs and can attract and keep an audience.At time,as Marchese (2020: 43) explains, they cross the line.

We used to have news and we had entertainment. Now these categories are totally intertwined – to the extent that it’s not far-fetched to say that we just have categories of entertainment.

Historically, few scientific discoveries were shared with the public; Darwin provided an interesting exception. He used a quasi-lyrical style to write the Origin of Species. His writing style was interesting and easy to understand and his theory came to convince many nonscientists. Today, science is advancing more rapidly than ever before and many of the discoveries scientists are making can have a serious impact on all our lives. To make sure that the public is aware of their discoveries, scientists have begun using a storytelling format, not only with the public, but with politicians and funding agencies. 

Most of the example we provided above are drawn from the "good" storytellers. However, as example of the the snake oil salesman makes clear, we can be duped, deluded, confused, or cheated by storytellers,not only snake oil salesmen, but even those who seem to be legitimate  journalists, scientists, politicians and teachers. Stories - those told not just to entertain - are mechanisms to convince us of some point - the little engine persevered and was successful, the ants taught the grasshopper an important lessons (though it isn't always clear why they were so altruistic), politicians can use stories to fill their own pockets and incite wars. Stories, when well told, draw and hold the attention of the listeners. We listen to stories differently than we listen to other forms of speech and it may be possible that hearing a story activates important sensory areas in the cortex of the brain, making it possible for listeners to actually visualize what they are hearing and the outcome of that visualization - the snake oil cures you! .

 

Art, stories and rituals

Traditional oral art genres can be distinguished from ordinary speech by a unique architecture that involves the use of such things as fictive details, arresting images, mnemonic devices, alliteration, and metaphor and simile. These features make the oral arts, and the messages they contain, more attractive, in the sense that they attract and hold attention, and thus more effective in influencing social behavior in the directions outlined in the narrative. Here, I discuss rituals and the connections they have with the oral arts and describe the key elements of rituals, including the incorporation of the arts -- dance, music, stories, costumes and masks -- and the acts of gifts, feasting, and sacrifice. These elements make the oral art and its message even more attractive, more memorable, and more influential. I will end this post with a discussion of simple and complex rituals and how they might be used to build and repair the social relationships that have been of fundamental importance to humans.

 

Discussions of rituals, for decades, have linked them to stories. Lord Raglan (1955:454), for example, claims that for many scholars, a myth was “simply a narrative associated with a rite.” Segal (2009:366), who writes that myth “does not stand by itself but is tied to ritual,” would agree. Early discussions of the connection between myth and ritual often centered on whether ritual was created first and myth followed, or vice versa (Davis, 1974). William Robertson Smith (1894) for example, argued that myths were derived from rituals and this was implied in an anonymous paper published in Science in 1888, which attributes the origin of myth to rituals associated with ancestor worship. As we will never answer the question of the primacy of ritual, we turn to a question that may be answerable – Why do myths and rituals so often occur together and why do they seem to be, as Malinowski (1926) argues, intricately interdependent?

 

While this entire series of posts will focus on the characteristics of myth and the intertwining of myth and ritual, to begin the discussion of the interrelationships, the claim is often made that the connection between stories, usually referred to as myths, and ritual occurs because, as Hocart (1933:223) explains, “Knowledge of the myth is essential, because it has to be recited at the ritual.” The story explains the ritual, as Raglan (1955:454) describes:

Consider the pilgrimage to Canterbury, which resulted from the murder of Becket. As the pilgrims performed the ritual of touring the cathedral and singing hymns or praying at spots connected with Becket’s life and death, the story of these was recited.

This connection between myths and rituals, Bennett, Wolin, & McAvity (1988) explain, makes them mutually reinforcing. Tomorrow - or one of these days - I will describe the characteristics of rituals. 

once upon a time, long long ago...

 

           Our stories carry with them the whispers of voices from our distant past, from the long-lost stories our distant ancestors once told. Those stories, which held the listeners attention until long after the evening fires turned to glowing coals, were so memorable that listeners, years late, repeated them to their children who repeated them to theirs, until, finally, the practice of telling stories came down to us. The stories we tell and read today have much in common with those ancient stories. Our stories’ structure is built on the one they developed. The emotions described in their stories - fear, excitement, love, hate, jealousy, loss – fill the pages of our stories, and our stories continue to address many of the same themes – faith, conflict, reconciliation, and love. As the years and centuries passed, they left their mark not only on the content of our stories, but on storytellers and listeners.

The path that that begin to lead people away from their ancestors and the stories they told began millennia ago. Our ancestors, carrying their stories and art with them, migrated out of Africa in small family groups and were able to settle in new places that were isolated from one another. At some point in prehistory, they became very successful in the sense that they had healthy children, who had healthy children, who had healthy children and, repeating this pattern, they, over time and across generations, increased in number. They, in other words, did, as it is written in Genesis 9:7: "As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it."\

Families now included not only parents and children, but grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, and even people more distantly related, beyond second and third cousins. These people formed themselves into larger, tightly integrated social groups and lived dispersed across a limited but shared geographic area and remained in regular contact and, with slight differences, told the same stories. We now use words like extended kinship, bands, clans, tribes or ethnic groups to refer to such collections of people.

Eventually, these extended families increased to the point that resources became scarce. Families were forced to begin migrating farther from their ancestral homes and the traditions they had cherished for millennia and the stories they once had told. Some of our ancestors, eventually, were drawn to urban centers in Mesopotamia; by 7,500 BC agriculture in the Fertile Crescent was able to provide a more reliable source of food for more people. Here they stayed. Once a wheat surplus was available, wealth was consolidated and hierarchies emerged. Unprecedented power was placed in the hands of a leader. Our ancestors now were living in crowded urban centers, some with up to 200,000 residents. They were surrounded by large numbers of strangers who bought with them their own distinct stories, art, and rituals. The social environment was transfigured from a small, insular one containing only close kin, all concerned with one’s well-being, into one in which individuals were surrounded by strangers who could be kind, helpful or, equally likely, self-interested, competitive, and, at times, lethal.

The art of storytelling begin to change; grandparents, once the storytellers, were, in some cases too old to travel and were not available. The ancient ancestral stories, if told at all, were no longer repeated as carefully as before or, if told, were likely to be highly modified. Social rules such as honor the elders begin to break down as elders often were no longer around to be honored or to remind others now to continue retelling their traditional stories.

Traditions

Once upon a time I sat in Emory Sekaquaptewa's office browsing through the Hopi dictionary. I saw a word, can't remember what it was, but what it referred to was traditions that could be discarded. That was interesting as the Hopi are one of the more traditional indigenous people in the US today. 

I define traditions as behavior that is transmitted from one generation of kin to the next over many generations. Didn't we talk about this before?  How does an idea or a belief get from one mind into another - it seems clear to me that is is via behavior - talk is a behavior by the way.

The traditions that I find interesting are those that we can find in the archaeological record and that we can continue to find in the historic or contemporary record. In other words, people have maintained the traditions over vast amounts of time. I was reading an article today that was written by Marie Sosressi. It is entitled From the origin of language to the diversification of languages: what archaeology and paleoanthropology say?

Language is interesting, as clearly language is a crucial requirement for storytelling.  Sosressi also looks at pigment use, burial practices, personal adornments, production of depictions and arving, musical traditions in the archaeological record and various anatomical features that would have made speech possible.  

The fact that humans continue to bury the dead, use personal adornments, paint, and make music indicates, at least to me, that these are - or at least once were - of vital importance to humans. The particular way we bury the dead or the uniqueness of the ornaments we use, while interesting (e.g., were the ornaments personal objects or were similar objects used by others, why do we wear ornaments - what is their function - and what prompts the persistence or the change),  what is more interesting is that we continue to do these things. Some of these behaviors - the behavior of using red ochre or wearing personal ornaments have been practiced for tens of thousands of years. It is not clear when language was necessary if, for nothing else, to teach the techniques to the next generation.  I always wonder about the acheulean handaxe which was produced for something like a million years. Some of these axes are beautiful. It always struck me that the producers must have had at least some rudimentary form of language. However, language is not my interest here, except as a behavior that has persisted, transmitted from one generation of kin to the next. What I find interesting are traditional behaviors. How were the techniques taught, which traditions were important (can we assume that if they persisted and are widespread that they were important and may continue to be important?),  what role did ancestors play (after all they were the ones who first created the traditions), what strategies helped promote their persistence across generations? We, in our own time, know how difficult it can be to get many of our children to comply with parental recommendations.  

It seems to me that biological anthropologists ignore traditions at their peril, as t fascinating information can be found in the study of traditions. Part of the problem is that despite the fact that evolution is about persistence - descent with modification - our theorists seem to be  focused on one generation and that generation's behavior.  Attention is paid to parental influence and sometimes people mention ancestors, while showing they know nothing about them. Some anthropologist even claim that traditions never existed, Given a focus on one generation or even one individual is would be a challenge to have to explain the careful transmission across generations of kin. Twenty generations down the line, why are the descendants continuing to replicate ancestral traditions?  Why rather than being self interest seving do they continue to practice traditions that can have high costs?  Do we either say traditions never existed, or that traditions don't have high costs, or should we say that we don't need to account for traditions, but should focus on now or on one period of time in the past?

Artes plasticas and emotion

Count Tolstoy wrote "The whole science of aesthetics fails to do what we might expect from it, being a mental activity calling itself a science; namely it does not define the qualities and laws of art. 

I carefully defined visual art following Dickie (1971:41), who wrote regarding classificatory definitions, that the definition needs to "specify the necessary and sufficient conditions needed for something to be a work of art. A necessary condition for being an X is a characteristic which any object must have in order to be an X. A sufficient condition of an X is a characteristic, which, if an object has that characteristic, it is an X."

As Socrates argued, if we examine a word's usage, we will find some element that is common to all examples of being, but not to other things, and then we will be able to isolate that element as the essence which the defines the category of things. 

I accept that art is human-made. I will discuss animal "art" at some point.Art arouses an emotion, referred to by some as the aesthetic emotion, meaning a unique emotion aroused only by making and viewing art. 

I carefully omitted the function of art when I defined it. As arouse emotion is a function I omitted it from my definition, writing that 

This definition, while appealing, has a number of problems. First, it fails to distinguish what art is from what art does (e.g., arouse an emotion). Further, it runs the risk of being tautological, inferring a mental state from the art and then using the mental state to explain art (Lewis-Williams 1982). In addition, although the emotion aroused by art is said to be pleasure, much of art is said to arouse grave feelings, or it may leave the viewer bewildered, confused, nonplussed, unsure of any emotional reaction (Anderson 1979). Indeed, art may not arouse any emotion; it may arouse “no aesthetic interest” (Brothwell 1976). Another issue, as McEvilley (1992: 161) noted, is that “one serous problem with a definition of art that stresses aesthetic or expressive qualities is that such a definition eliminates much of what has been called art for the last seventy years.”I recognize that the emotions associated with visual art and ritual can be profound. I also recognize, however, that not all viewers would have shared my response and that emotions are fleeting and difficult to articulate (Anderson 1979). Further, I don’t know what emotion the dancers were experiencing and I cannot tell you what thoughts or beliefs might have inspired their behavior. Are we really safe in assuming that all dancers share the same emotions, thoughts, and/or beliefs?

A more serious issue here, however, is that emotions and mental processes probably exist because of the influence they have on behavior, particularly social behavior. An exclusive focus on art and emotion may lead us to ignore art’s social effects. The assumption that any emotions associated with a behavior implies that the behavior is necessarily adaptive can lead even scientific studies astray. Eating high fat foods can be pleasurable; eating many such meals could help promote an early death from chronic disease. While the scarcity of fat in our ancestors’ diet may have promoted our ancestors’ taste for fat, fats are no longer a dietary scarcity. Environments change, and behaviors that were once adaptive may no longer be adaptive. To turn to art, we may say art arouses emotions, but have to ask what art and in whom does it arouse emotion. We don't know whether or not emotion is universally experienced by viewing or making art. We cannot know if art evolved because of any possible emotions associated with it nor can we argue that even if emotions were associated with art in the ancestral past that such emotions are currently adaptive - could art lead us to behave in maladaptive ways?  

The point of this discussion is not that thoughts or emotion, or even the presumed aesthetic emotion, are irrelevant to visual art. In fact, we can assume that visual art attracts us because it interests us, presumably by provoking some emotion. However, even if we assume that art does arouse an emotion, we still do not know what elicits the emotion. Is it aroused by the color, pattern, form, technique, or the experiences associated with the art object? 

This said, today I was reading  a book entitled Ancient Art and Ritual, written by Jane Ellen Harrison (LL.D and D.lit). It was published in 1913. She wrote, in regard to music, that not everyone responds to music - that people can be tone deaf. However, if they do respond emotionally to the music it is a much more profound experience. I need to think about that a little bit. Any suggestions, please let me know. 

Other possible characteristics to possibly be discussed at another time are 

Symbols and meaning

creativity and individualism 

Food rituals

Today, I was reading an article  by Marin (2010) on ritual architecture in complex hunter-gatherer communities. I was surprised and pleased to find a section on food rituals that basically says food rituals - feasting activities - played a critical role in transegalitarian societies. food rituals typically involve the consumption of special or exotic foods. they often are done in special places and at special times and may also involve ceremonies - dance, music, etc. 

I have coauthored a paper on food rituals (see reference below) and have long thought that food rituals are of particular importance - they are ancient and practiced around the world. This led to me the question of what effect the loss of such rituals has had and whether or not that loss may play a role not only in the weakening of families but in our obesity epidemic.

We know that our ancestors began to ritualize behaviors associated with food procurement, preparation and consumption as far back as 20,000 years ago, around the time that our ancestors began to domesticate plants. It was at that time that they began making ground stone tools (e.g., mortars, pestles and milling stones). They also made pottery vessels that they used to prepare and to share food. The analysis of residues in vessels dating back to the Pleistocene, between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, in sites located in Japan suggests that these vessels were used for the preparation of marine products and terrestrial foods. By the Neolithic there is evidence that pottery was used to serve food and drinks to larger groups. Further, more attention was being paid to producing a better quality pottery. As Halstead points out, the care and skill lavished on Middle Neolithic pottery "underlines the social importance of hospitality." The use of finer pottery and the serving of food to larger groups also are strong suggestions that they were performing food rituals.

People around the world regularly perform food rituals. Some food rituals are simple - e.g., the evening meal - while others are more complex - e.g., a seder. They are characterized by the fact that they occur in special places (e.g., a dining room, a religious building) and at special times (which can include events like thanksgiving or an evening meal held at a certain time). They also can involve the use of special equipment in the preparation of the food (and remember the preparation was often a highly social event) and the use of special food serving items. Food rituals also include a predictable sequence, with some beginning with a prayer, and among the foods eaten (e.g., salad main course, desert). Finally, good manners are typically required. 

          In regard to obesity, the ritualization of any behavior not only results in the slowing down of the behavior, but food rituals help people restrain their consumption. Food rituals typically last longer and are more highly social than a non-ritualized meal. As Bossard and Boll argue, food rituals provide the mechanism through which important social ties are established and nurtured. Rituals also reinforce family identify, thus giving all family members a sense of belonging. Food rituals are powerful organizers of family life and they serve as strategies that promote the stability of the family in times of stress and change. In Africa, family rituals promote consensus building and assist in resolving conflict and rebuilding broken social relationships. In times of change, including migration, the continuation of family food rituals can help keep families strong.  

In China, family rituals are said to be key to Chinese culture. So important were family rituals that S. W. Williams would claim that family rituals had “an influence in the formation of Chinese character, in upholding good order, promoting industry, and cultivating habits of peace thrift…” In Aboriginal families in Australia, rituals have been found to strengthen family relationships and communication.The family, Demir writes is “the buffer institution in the society. During times of social change, family ensures the smooth functioning of this transformation process in the society. For this reason, the institution of family is of vital importance for every society.”

NOTE: all references provided on request or are listed in the Coe article below. 

Coe, K., Benitez, T., Tasevska, N., et al. (2018). The use of family rituals in eating behaviors in Hispanic mothers. Family and Community Health, 41(1): 28.

Morin, J. (2020). Ritual architecture in prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities: A potential example from Keatley Creek on the Canadian Plateau. American Antiquity, 73(3) 599-625. 

Visual art: The replicable unit

I remember once, in the dark of night, wrestling with the idea of  the transmission of ideas, which everyone seems to talk about and accept. However, truth to tell, can ideas be transmitted? Do they leap with abandon - or caution - from head to head? Do we all share a great consciousness from which we draw ideas in the dark of night or light of day? Did our mothers lower their foreheads to ours, when we were wee children sitting on their laps, so we could absorb their thoughts?

I thought not. Now that that issue is settled, a second and related issue is persistence, not only transmission from one individual to another, but from one generation of kin to the next. I assume the transmission, for a great many years - millenia - was between kin because our ancestors lived in small groups of kin. Although we may see little cultural persistence these days, it certainly was characteristic of the past. 

To quote M. G. Houston (1920: 2), “we are confronted with an extraordinary conservation or persistence of style, not only through the centuries, but through millenniums [sic].”  Boas (1955: 144, 169) referred to this continuity in style as “fixed type” or “fixity” of design and form. Despite Alexander’s lament that he is “not optimistic about the usefulness of searches for unalterable or ‘basic’ human social behaviors as a method for solving our problems” (1987: 9), the millennia that traditions have lasted suggest that humans often had fairly stable social strategies.

So, I have argued that the replicable unit, a unit that persisted across vast swaths of time, was the use of color, pattern, and or form used solely to attract attention to a body, object or message. Art is not a meme, if a meme is an idea. Art is a behavior - painting, sculpting, dancing singing, making music.... 

A third related question is does visual art have a function? Replication, particularly across generations, seems to imply a function. Don't we tend to copy things we observe that "work" - that have an effect we want to create? 

Many scholars, some quite famous, do argue that art - any of the arts, has no function, that art merely exists or that it "exists for its own sake." One implication of Darwin’s theory is that behaviors we now regard as characteristic of our species, and that would include visual art, persisted precisely because they did have a function. As art is a universal and ancient cultural behavior, which has persisted despite costs that can be quite high, it quite possibly is an adaptation that, at least in the past, must have been important to humans.  As an aside, the cost of art involved not only learning the techniques and perfecting them, to the degree necessary, but also the actual time spend in the application of color or the modification of form. It also included the time spent acquiring the necessary resources, which could be quite arduous and which could involve facing danger. It is said that the Australians had to cross into enemy territory to get the pigments they needed.  

So, next time I will continue talking about art and make suggestions regarding its many functions. I really don't know why I am, after a hiatus of so many years, decades even, talking about art. For a long time it seemed that life held so many other challenges that needed to be addressed. 

Thinking of many  things:

This morning, at 3am when I woke up, many thoughts cluttered my mind when I tried to decide what to write. 

First, I thought about heroines - the strong women in tales of the past. I am perhaps one of the only woman in the US who mourns the loss of that work, the ownership of our own brand of heroism. That topic, however, would take a lot of time and research and I need to work on my book, work on the quilt I am making, and finish the mosaic I have done.

As an aside, making a quilt is a daunting activity. It is beyond my scope of comprension how they can make a quilt like a log cabin or whatever, and end up having enough fabric. If you go near to the end without enough what would  you do? They must be amazing planners with mathematical minds.

Second, the thought of writing about the origin of storytelling seemed intriguing - I am writing about it now for another project. We assume that humans could tell stories when, based on cranial volume, they had evolved a brain that was  big  and complex enough to do things like store vast amounts of information and had evolved other biological traits, like the hyoid bone, which would make made speech possible. What these probably mean is that we had language and there is no way to know for sure that stories were being told. It seems clear to me that the earliest evidence is found in cave art, which clearly seems to tell stories. Maybe someday. 

Third, I thought a bit about braces - straightening teeth. What is that communicating - affluence? meeting our own idea of what looks good? In many countries they are not as interesting in that expense and process. 

Fourth, though it doesn't seem like such a good idea in the light of day, i thought if might be interesting to write about recipes.  I was reading some messages about recipes for cooking game.  I thought of  

Recipes for Cooking Bambi and his Friends

Cooking Curious George with Carrots and Kale

Roasting Rudolph over an Open Fire, or 

Cooking with Jiminy Cricket 

Cooking Turtle in a Taurine: what to do with the turtle or won the race and collapsed from exhaustion. 

Or (because we now know trees communicate) Killing your tree's best friend: how to heal a broken heart.

Enough of this tomfoolery - hum, what word did we use for goofy girls? 

Pecking Orders, Hierarchies, Cabbages and Kings

A while back, it was probably over a year ago and thus the information in this post may be out of date, I listened to a lecture on dominance. Dominance is an interesting word. Basically it means have influence of power over another person. 

It seems to me that influence over and power over might be referring to two different things - a hierarchy versus a pecking order. Some people are interested in dominance/power. I am not really, it is sort of boring as so much has been written about it.  

Power refers to the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. The sentence used to explain power was -  "she had me under her power", which seems to suggest that to some degree the "powerful person" is using her "power" to serve her own interests. 

Influence, on the  other hand, refers to: the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. A synonym, on the other hand, seems to be less self-interested, but perhaps not.

Anyway, the deeper you try to figure this out, the more confusing it gets, as influence can be defined by power and power by influence. I, however, wonder if they are not quite different things and maybe the dictionaries are not precise enough.

Here is what I wrote, long about, about hierarchies, as nearly everyone agrees that the  these terms have something to do with rank - the person at the top of a hierarchy has influence or power over the person below. 

Anyway, here is how I tried to explain it: long ago

The Maternal Hierarchy

Mammals are distinguished by a ranked relationship; offspring are subordinate to, or dependent upon, a mother who guides, while offspring follow. The prolonged immaturity of human and primate offspring reflects not only their dependency, but also the mother’s responsibility. The survival of offspring depends fundamentally on this long-term ranked relationship. The first human hierarchy, or ranked relationship, was that between the mother and her child. Humans appear to respond to such hierarchies and form them often. This hierarchy, which is part of kinship systems in many parts of the world, not only  “provides the child with a blueprint for the parameters of most anticipated social interaction” but, as Tonkinson (1978: 12) described among the Mardujara of Australia, it allows children to learn “the norms of appropriate kinship behaviors…without over-coercion from adults.”

Mothers have seldom been seen as shedding light on human hierarchies, despite the fact that as early as 1651, Hobbes (1946:131) recognized that the first human ranked social relationship was that between a mother and her child. He wrote that “in the condition of mere nature, where there are no matrimonial laws…the right of dominion over the child depends on [the mother’s] will.” While Hobbes then ignored this ranked relationship, he implied that mothers used their influence to promote the survival of their offspring and to encourage their offspring to cooperate with her and with each other.

Although Hobbes used the word “dominion,” a more appropriate term to use when speaking of the mother-child relationship may be hierarchy (Steadman 1997). Hiero, the root of the word, is a Greek word meaning sacred or keeper of sacred things; archos means to rule or lead. Hierarchs were leaders of religious groups or societies and obligated not only to supernatural beings (often ancestors), but also to the people whose servant they were said to be. Hierarchy, rather than implying exploitation, may imply generosity, obligation, and even subordination (Santos Granero 1991: 229; van Baal 1981). A hierarch is defined by service, not merely by rights. Hierarchs, like ancestral mothers, are obligated to those who are older, one’s ancestors, and those who are younger, one’s descendants or metaphorical children.

The association of high rank and duty or obligation is not confined to hierarchs living in the classical world. According to Barrera Vásquez (1980: 343-344)

Maya hieroglyphic script talks about ‘lineage authority’ using the Yucatex Mayan term kuch, which refers to burden, such as a burden that is carried on a tumpline against one’s back, a burden of conscience, a responsibility, an obligation, or the authority of an office.

The higher ranked individual, in a hierarchy, is a servant to the lower ranked individuals. To paraphrase van Baal (1981: 114), the higher a person’s position in the hierarchy of power, the more is expected, the greater are the obligations.

The exploitation of subordinates, often assumed to be a privilege of rank, is true of a pecking order, not a hierarchy. A pecking order is distinguished from a hierarchy in that the individual at the top has dominance or rank, but no obligations to the one(s) at the bottom, just as the one at the bottom has no influence over the one at the top (Steadman 1997). Pecking orders are impersonal and competitive: hierarchies are personal and involve a vertical form of cooperation. Pecking orders do not imply cooperation in any form: accepting one’s fate because one has no choice, or knows that death would be the consequence of making a choice, is not a form of cooperation.