SLFK 212, February 17, 2004
Douglas review
Four types of pollution dangers
External
Transgression of internal lines
Margins
Contradictions
External - you come in contact with something from the outside and bad things happen
In terms of body politic - outside forces are a threat
So you have Iron Curtain
You still need visa
And border police and extra nasty
In terms of body human
All sorts of nasty things can get inside you and make you sick
US - the body symbolism used to be sexual
Aliens would kidnap and rape US women in movies
Now more ambiguous and can get in through other orifices
Alien is through mouth
Black oil in X-files is through eyes
Russian and Ukrainian - more emphasis on mouth than on sex
Devils get into your bread (and then into you) if you don't make a cross over dough
Bosom serpent ideas - no sit on ground
With collapse of USSR - special powers attributed to American foods
Either extra good - Snickers, Mars Ice Cream
Or extra bad - Bushovye nozhki
Also ideas that US will get in and "harvest" the former USSR
Organs from comatose patients
From children, either adopted or taken for medical treatment in US
From Russian women taken as "brides" to the west
Transgression of internal lines - you do something you shouldn't do - or fail to do something you should
This is the sort of thing that is not legislated, cannot be enforced
You fail to go to college - your economic future is ruined
For Slavs - there are SO many of these that examples are almost pointless
And I gave lots of examples last time and will give more
Margin - the power of the point of transition
Whether it is concrete - like the power of the doorway to help affect a cure
Doorways, gateways used in ritual - weddings included
You do certain stuff at doorways, gateways to make sure the marriage will work, the deceased won't come back, etc.
Margins can be abstract - marriage is the margin between
Single and adult status
Between childhood and adulthood
As such, is very dangerous to the couple
All sorts of things can go wrong
Already gave examples of pins, veiling, etc.
Veiling done in US also
A pregnant woman is in a marginal state
And so lots of pregnancy taboos
Quick other dangers - new dad touches hands of midwife - becomes impotent
As concrete margins are marked - meaning that they are powerful
And can be used for good (cure of Volodia) or harm (separation from person)
Same with people in the margin
But here there is another dimension
People in the margin are powerful (bride can bring end to drought)
They are vulnerable (groom evil-eyed; pins in clothing to protect)
US example - students are in the margin between childhood and adulthood
They are looked up to, expected to champion social and political causes
They are looked down up - they lower your real estate value when they move in
The contradictions inherent in any construct created by humans (like society) we already looked at - this the is the contradiction danger
Quick reminder - no sew on Friday if you are pregnant
But pressure to work and heavy physical labor up until delivery
Contemporary example - Soviet era
How pollution works
Pollution is post hoc ergo proto hoc
If something (bad) occurred, you look for a cause
And pollution beliefs provide one
In other cultures - if husband got sick, must be wife committed adultery
Among Russians and Ukrainians - kid with cleft palate means dad was chopping wood on Friday
Kid with nasty diaper rash means mom left diapers out after dark
Pollution beliefs actually help establish order by offering an explanation
It also identifies an AGENT with whom you can interact
Either forcefully and exercise control
Or avoidance
Or supplication, appeal
Sick infant tells you that mom has been bad - then you can beat her
Or confine her during her next pregnancy
Sick kid tells you that neighbor evil-eyed your kid (the egg in the glass method)
You can counteract the evil eye with prayer, or by feeding egg to the dogs
You can ask neighbor for reparations
You can be really nice to the neighbor so s/he will not hurt other children
You can make kid stay away from neighbor in the future
Note parallel between this idea of agent and the stuff we did with place spirits
These also provide an agent for anything from strange noises in the house
To SIDS
To cattle having problems
Even blaming self is actually a good way to exercise control
If you say "I myself was at fault" for the bad thing that happened
I left diapers out (analogous to I did not honor domovoi properly)
Then you can say "I can change by behavior and avoid a bad event in the future"
If it is someone else who is the cause - you may or may not be able to convince him or her not to do it again
If it is coincidence - then you have no control
Cannot prevent from happening in the future
Cannot even predict - because it is coincidence, not a cause-and-effect situation
Prediction helps because it can tell you where to be wary, what to avoid
American rape accusation parallels - blame woman assigns control to woman
Can, in a sense, be comforting
Imply that she can protect self in the future
Pollution used for social harmony and control
To enforce, esp. when things are ambiguous
Where there is no direct enforcement - like arrest and jail time
You keep people in line by pollution beliefs
Examples:
Don't make faces or your face will freeze like that
Don't swallow your gum
Don't play with yourself
Don't pick your nose
Contrast this to: you do X and I will spank you
Or: you do X and I will make you kneel in the corner
You can threaten people that, if you are bad during pregnancy, you will have a sick kid
This done in US also
Keep mom from drinking and smoking; make her eat right, exercise
Other threats of the pollution type - stretching it further away:
If you don't go to college, you'll never get a decent job, etc.
If you play too many video games, you'll never get into college
Adult expression of pollution beliefs is often the urban legends that I told you about
And they very often deal with contradictory behavior
And it is often expressed in terms of body problems
Like making self beautiful
Or being a working mom and cooking for the family
A bit more on body as symbol
Carving up the body under certain circumstances
Tattoos, piercings, etc.
To mark self as different - liminal or anomalous
To mark a point of transition in a life
System at war with self - in a sense we already did
As in the pregnancy stuff - pressure to have kid
At war with fear of stranger which wife certainly is and to an extent the child is also
American - pressure to engage in sexual activity and not to
Pressure to succeed financially, and not be ostentatious about it
How Bill Gates dresses
Food and diet control - contradicts biology - desire to eat
Contradicts constant attention to food
Contradicts eat X for a healthy heart, beautiful complexion
Resolution - union of opposites - often precisely in ritual
Douglas gives two extreme examples
Pangolin - a creature which is considered monstrous = inedible
Is ritually consumed by a special group and gives them special powers
The Dinka spearmaster - has self killed and by choosing death, overcomes the randomness and unpredictability of death
Russian - evidence of a practice similar to the Dinka one in the past
Done in the not-too-distance past by Old Believers
Far less extreme ones
The Russian and Ukrainian tsyganshchina
You don't have to work
You can steal - food and gates
You can cross-dress
American - virtually any holiday where you are supposed to eat yourself silly
Kids on Halloween - get to talk to strangers and to eat exactly what they are discouraged from eating under normal circumstances
Bachelor party before wedding
So, ritual sets up a special, circumscribed situation
Limited in time and space
Labeled dangerous; you don't do it just right and all sorts of things can happen
People going through ritual are anomalous, are liminars
They are dangerous to others
They are susceptible to dangers
But they can also be creative and beneficial
All dancing with bride at American wedding
Ritual gives you a way to resolve a contradictory situation
Like taking a stranger into your house and making that person the keeper of your family line
Both future and past
Who takes care of graves?
Lets you articulate social contradictions
Like the fact that you fear strangers, yet have exogamous marriage
Functions of a ritual:
1) Draw the lines
2) Facilitate the crossing of the lines - helps you through the danger of the margin
Ritual is VERY structured by definition
And this helps get you through the anomaly of being in a marginal state
3) Articulate cultural issues - resolution of contradictions
What ritual does - esp. life cycle ritual
1) Helps draw the lines - growing up is continuous - how do you know when you are and child and when you become an adult?
Ritual puts you through a series of actions that demarcate childhood from adulthood
Helps both the initiate know and all of those around him or her know
Please note that high school sports are called girl's track, boy's basketball
When you are in college, it's the men's teams and the women's teams
Yet a 16 year-old high school student competes as a woman in ice-skating
Same in tennis
2) Facilitates the crossing of the lines
If boundary-crossing is anomalous and dangerous, ritual structures it
You know about boundaries and their dangers
Ritual leads you through, helps you accept your new position, status
And helps all those around you - helps them with the loss of you in your former position
say that of the child
And the acceptance of you in your new position - that of an adult
This is a change in the order of things and people dislike disorder
We just did how ritual resolves - and that is exactly what it does in a life
3) Ritual provides the opportunity for the articulation of a variety of cultural issues and for the upholding of cultural norms
Ambiguity toward children is resolved in the rituals concerning childbirth
Ambiguity toward getting a strange, new woman to come live in your house as your daughter-in-law is articulated during marriage
As in various expressions of conflict
It is resolved in that you treat her as if she dies from the point of view of her household of birth to be "reborn" in her household of marriage
At same time, you deal with tensions concerning relative status of the parents of the couple and the couple themselves - the sacrifice of the parents that I showed
And you get to deal with other pressures
Such as the enormous pressure to work all of the time: you get not to work for DAYS
Pressure to share mixed with pressure never to steal
Resolved in the day of thievery when you can steal other people's chickens
Extreme sex role segregation resolved in cross-dressing day
Russian initiation and courtship
Point of transition in the middle of life, most ambiguous
How do you tell when someone is grown-up enough to marry?
Can be physical marker
Can be a specific age - our version
Although we also have possession - car
Can be a test
We have test too - college
Although it can be argued that college is an extended ritual
Slavic - apparently used to be initiation tests
Physical maturity
Ability to do adult work, usually connected to crops like harvesting grain
This is what we know for sure - attested in various field recordings from late 19th century on
Stops with the end of WWII and the spreading of Soviet power, where Soviets try to control the behavior of the young
This is what many of the people I interview remember about their youth
And this is also in records from almost 100 years earlier
Lots of female initiative
A group of girls, like the ones in a district of the village, get together and hire a house
House usually belongs to a poorer person like a widow
Can be on outskirts of village - this preferred for privacy
They pay the person in kind
Meaning that they give the person some of the food they bring to their evening gatherings
They give some of the firewood
They usually give something beyond that - fiber in some form
Raw or already spun
Grain, root crops
They can provide work in a field the following summer
Or fence-mending
In return they get use of a house from Pokrov (Oct. 1) to Lent before Easter
Can be break at Christmas period and they can negotiate twice
Once Oct. - Dec. and once Jan. to Lent
Or negotiate for the whole winter season
Girls show up in the evening, after they finish chores at home
Spin, embroider - some sort of work to do with fiber and cloth
Boys show up
Boys tend to be responsible for firewood, oil for lamp
Girls responsible for food and they provide light evening meal
Boys can provide music, alcohol
After meal, the boys and girls talk and flirt
They play various games of the spin-the-bottle variety
Games that encourage pairing up and kissing
Lots of singing, with or without musical accompaniment
Boys tell stories and jokes - usually of the suggestive type
Afterwards, they spread out straw on the floor
Girls lie down and turn out the lights
Boys lie down next to the girls that they fancy
Supposed to ask permission during the games and flirting portion of the evening
Those who don't have someone to pair up with leave
Girls go home
Boys roam the neighborhood and pick fights with other boys who weren't invited to spend the night
The rejected boys can play pranks - the naked behind in the window
What goes on in the house with the lights out - lots of disagreement
Pregnant brides?
Certainly lots of talk about, even songs
Even the institution of the pokrytka
Others claim it is all quite innocent
Age when all this starts
15-16 for girls and 17-18 for boys
Ability to pay may be a criterion
Some talk that boys have to make a contribution of money or booze to join the boys' group
Similar payment demanded if a guy from another village or district wants to join a group that is not his own
Summer version
Meeting at village well
Crossroads
Some convenient gathering point
More of these, of course, then rented houses
People come at dusk - which is much later in the summer time
No light and no spinning or other work
Mostly singing, dancing
Snacks such as sunflower and pumpkin seeds
Donut method of seating boys and girls
You can hear these and people tend to wander from one to another
Magic to make one's own ulitsa/vulytsia the most attractive
Needle and thread in shoe
Boiled porridge buried
Couples who pair up here go to her komora (the root cellar) for the night
Boy's responsibility to sneak home before daybreak
Special occasions - feast days with better food and a bigger party
Fortune-telling
One of biggest occasions in St. Andrew's December 12.
Video