Cannibalism, as the customary consumption of human flesh in some other time or place, is a worldwide and time-honoured assumption. This pervasive, and in many ways appealing, characterization of others has also found its place in contemporary anthropology, which has tended to accept uncritically all reports of cannibalism in other cultures as ethnographic fact. This propensity has led to the development of a variety of categories for the conceptualization of the pattern and motivation for the purported behaviour. These have included the recognition of endocannibalism (eating one’s own kind) as opposed to exocannibalism (eating outsiders), and ritual in contrast to gustatory or nutritional cannibalism. Uncondoned survival cannibalism, under conditions of extreme privation, has also been noted. Yet, despite the uncounted allusions and the elaborate typologies, there is reason to treat any particular report of the practice with caution, and the entire intellectual complex with some scepticism.
This estimation is warranted for a number of reasons. Depending on time or place, written accounts of alleged cannibalism entered the historical record long after the cessation of the purported custom—often after the obliteration of the culture itself and the decimation of its population. Moreover, reporters were representatives of the very society that was then engaged in the subjugation and exploitation of the people in question. Those responsible for our contemporary impressions rarely took an unbiased view of the traditional culture, and at best relied upon informants who claimed that ‘others’, such as the nobility or priesthood, engaged in such reprehensible practices. Consequently, rather than reliably documenting a custom, between the early sixteenth and late nineteenth centuries the allegation of cannibalism in western literature often merely legitimized the conquest of foreign cultures by expansionist European states.
These suspect conditions could have been rectified by modern anthropologists actually resident among presumed cannibals in the remoter regions of the world. However, contemporary reports continue to be secondhand; indeed, no anthropologist has ever provided an account of cannibalism based on observation. While reasonable explanations are offered for these circumstances, for example, that the practice has been discontinued or is now hidden, the overall pattern continues to be one of circumstantial rather than direct evidence.
Thus, is it reasonable to assume that cannibalism ever occurred? The answer is yes, but neither as often nor in the context usually assumed. There is as indicated survival cannibalism, but also an antisocial or criminal variety and sometimes subcultural cannibalism practised by a deviant segment of the population (see Parry 1982). In rare instances, ‘inversion’ cannibalism has also occurred. The first three types are sporadically noted in every part of the world, where they are frowned upon by the majority. The final instance, of which there are a few accounts, involves rituals in which members of a society are constrained to act for the moment in ways prohibited under ordinary moral circumstances (Poole 1983). Such occasions of inversion underscore the basic rules of society by intentional violations but should not be construed as custom in the general sense. There is a simplistic and unwarranted tendency to label non-western societies with such restricted practices of any aforementioned type as cannibalistic. This suggests that the portrayal of others as man-eaters, rather than the deed itself, is the pervasive human trait.
W.Arens
State University of New York at Stony Brook
References
Parry, J. (1982) ‘Sacrificial death and the necrophagous ascetic’, in M.Bloch and J.Parry (eds) Death and the Regeneration of life, Cambridge, UK.
Poole, F.P. (1983) ‘Cannibals, tricksters and witches’, in D. Tuzin and P.Brown (eds) The Ethnography of Cannibalism, Washington, DC.
Further reading
Arens, W. (1979) The Man-Eating Myth, New York.
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