Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles

291 Pages·1978·8.06 MB·English

by  Judith Hoch-Smith

WJmen in Ritual
and Symbolic Roles
Women in Ritual
and Symbolic Roles
Edited by
JUDITH HOCH-SMITH
Florida International University, Miami
and
ANITA SPRING
University of Florida, GainesviUe
PLENUM PRESS . NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Women in ritual and symbolic roles.
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Women and religion-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Women {in religion, folk-lore,
etc.}-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Sex role- Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Hoch
Smith, Judith. II. Spring, Anita.
BL458.W65 301.41'2 77-17448
ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2402-7 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2400-3
001: 10.1007/978-1-4684-2400-3
© 1978 Plenum Press, New York
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface
This volume of essays grew out of a symposium organized by Judith
Hoch-Smith and Anita Spring for the 1974 American Anthropological
Association meetings in Mexico City. The two-part symposium was enti
tled "Women in Ritual and Symbolic Systems: I. Midwives, Madonnas,
and Mediums; ll. Prostitutes, Witches, and Androgynes." The sym
posium participants were asked to explore theological, ritual, and sym
bolic aspects-both positive and negative-of the feminine cultural do
main, using ethnographic materials with which they were familiar. The
resulting papers have been revised, edited, and gathered together in
Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles.
The theoretical importance of these papers for the study of women's
participation in culture and society rests on the assumption that reli
gious ideas are paramount forces in social life, that relationships be
tween the sexes, the nature of female sexuality, and the social and cul
tural roles of women are in large part defined by religious ideas. That
this proposition remains valid long after religion itself has ceased to be a
living truth in the lives of many people can be seen from the tenacious
ness of Judeo-Christian ideas about women in the contemporary West
ern world. Both the expansion of life options for women and the creation
of more positive cultural images of the female are intimately related to
changes in the myt ho-symbolic portraits that people carry around in
their heads. These portraits are almost exclusively constructed from
mythological and religious conceptions inherent in all facets of culture.
We feel that the focus of this collection on female religious repre
sentation and participation is unique to anthropological literature, which
has for the most part considered only images and roles of men in reli
gious expression. Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles provides a cross
cultural perspective on women and religion, and some feeling for how
these roles and images shape and determine the participation of women
in social life .
v
vi
PREFACE
We would like to thank Bernd Lambert, James Fernandez, Frances
Henry, and Lucille Newman for offering valuable comments and criti
cisms of the papers when they were first read in Mexico City. We would
like to thank Randy Kandel and Patricia Schmidt for reading and com
menting on the introduction. Hyla Bassel Carey and Paulette Cohen at
Plenum Publishing Corporation offered excellent critique and guidance
throughout the preparation of the volume, and for their assistance we
are grateful.
Judith Hoch-Smith
Miami
Anita Spring
Gainesville
Contributors
LORNA RHODES AMARASINGHAM received her Ph.D. in anthropology
from Cornell University. She has taught anthropology at the University
of Kentucky and Brandeis University, and has lectured at the Harvard
Medical School. She has done field research in Sri Lanka and at the
Laboratory in Social Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Her major
areas of interest are symbolic anthropology, medical and psychological
anthropology, oriental religion and philosophy, and South Asian
ethnography. She has authored several articles on Sinhalese society.
Among these is "Kuveni's Revenge: Images of Women in a Sinhalese
Myth" in Modern Ceylon Studies. She is currently conducting follow-up
research in Sri Lanka.
MARIGENE ARNOLD received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the Uni
versity of Florida. She is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at
Kalamazoo College, Michigan, and serves on the Women's Studies Ad
visory Board of the Great Lakes College Association. Past field work
includes research on the status and role of women in the Mexican village
of CajitiWm. She is involved in interdisciplinary teaching and a major
area of interest is anthropology and education.
RUTH ANN BORKER received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the Univer
sity of California, Berkeley. She is Assistant Professor of Anthropology
and Women's Studies at Cornell University. She did field research in
Edinburgh, Scotland, on religious communication and expressive
strategies in three evangelical churches. Her main areas of interest are
religion and symbolism, the anthropology of women, the ethnography
of communication, and the study of complex societies. Publications
include "Perfonning with Words," a review of Explorations in the Eth
nography of Speaking, edited by Bauman and Sherzer, in Reviews in
Anthropology.
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CONTRIBUTORS
PATRICIA JANE CLECKNER received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Cor
nell University, after having conducted research on heroin addicts and
rehabilitation programs in New York City. She continued research
among polydrug users in Florida as Director of Ethnography at the
Center for Theoretical Social Research on Drug Abuse at the University
of Miami. Currently, as Director of Research at Up Front, Inc., a drug
information center in Miami, she is studying drug information dissemi
nation and the social basis of functional drug use. She has published
numberous articles on the cultural aspects of drug use in the U.S., which
include "Blowing Some Lines: Intracultural Variation among Miami
Cocaine Users" inJournal of Psychedelic Drugs, and "Cognitive and Ritual
Aspects of Drug Use among Black Urban Males" in Drugs, Ritual and
Altered States of Consciousness, edited by B. du Toit.
MOLLY C. DOUGHERTY received her Ph.D. in anthropology and a Mas
ter's degree in Nursing from the University of Florida, where she is now
Associate Professor of Nursing. She is the author of Becoming a Woman in
Rural Black Culture and several articles on health in rural communities.
Her major areas of interest are health of minorities, health behaviors in
community settings, women's health care, and population.
JUDITH HOCH-SMITH received her Ph.D. in anthropology from McGill
University. She is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Florida Inter
national University in Miami. She has carried out field research among
the Mistassini Cree of north-central Quebec and the Yoruba of south
western Nigeria. While in Nigeria her topic of research was modem,
vernacular Yoruba folk theater and its relationship to social change. She
has written articles on the folk theater, on Yoruba women, and on the
Yoruba trickster. Her interests include images of women in religion and
literature, African religion, meditation, self-healing, and natural diets.
DANIEL NATHAN MALTZ is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the
University of California at Berkeley. His field research was on religious
speech and religious meaning in the pentecostal churches in Edinburgh,
Scotland. His publications include "Primitive Time Reckoning as a Sym
bolic System" in the Cornell Journal of Social Relations, and "Introduction:
Processual Analysis of American Kinship" in Kroeber Anthropological Soci
ety Papers. Current research interests include variation in world reli
gions, anthropological perspectives on religious history, and an
thropological approaches to American and British society.
SUSAN MIDDLETON-KEIRN received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the
University of Florida. She is Associate Professor of Sociology and An
thropology at Jacksonville State University, Alabama. She spent more
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CONTRIBUTORS
than two years doing field research in two apartheid-created urban black
ghettos in the Republic of South Africa. She is the author of articles and
papers on black South African urban living and women's studies, in
cluding "Voluntary Associations among Urban African Women" in
Communications from the African Studies Center. Her major areas of inter
est are urban anthropology, applied anthropology, social structures and
theory, and network analysis.
BARBARA G. MYERHOFF received her Ph.D. in anthropology from
the University of California at Los Angeles. She is Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She has au
thored numerous books and articles, which include Peyote Hunt: The
Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians, a nominee for the National Book
Award. She is the coeditor ·of Symbol and Politics in Communal Ideology,
Secular Ritual: Forms and Meanings, and Lifes' Careers: Cross-Cultural
Studies of Growing Old. Her film, Number Our Days, on Jewish octogenar
ians in Southern California, won the Special Jury Award for Outstand
ing Achievement in the Twentieth International San Francisco Film Fes
tival, and the Public Broadcasting Corporation Special Interest Award in
1976 as well as an Academy Award for outstanding documentaries. She
has done field research among the Huichol Indians of Mexico and
among adolescents and the elderly in southern California. Her interests
are wide-ranging and include religion, symbolism, gerontology, youth
problems, and women's studies.
LOIS PAUL studied social science and psychiatric social work at the Uni
versity of Chicago. She was a Research Associate in Anthropology at
Stanford University and has taught anthropology in a program of
nurses' training at Massachusetts General Hospital. She did field re
search in Guatemala on child development and the role of women in the
Maya community of San Pedro la Laguna, and on various mental health
projects in the Greater Boston area. She is the author of ''The Mastery of
Work and the Mystery of Sex in a Guatemalan Village" in M. Rosaldo
and L. Lamphere, editors, Woman, Culture and Society and the coauthor
of several papers on the life cycle in Middle America and changing
marriage patterns. Ms. Paul died December 21, 1975.
RJV-ELLEN PRELL-FOLDES received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the
University of Chicag~. She is an instructor of anthropology at the Uni
versity of Minnesota. She has conducted research in an urban American
Jewish prayer community and has authored several papers on the sub
ject, including "The Service of the Heart: The Self in Jewish Prayer."
Her major areas of interest are reli.gion, urban anthropology, ritual,
myth and symbolism, and women in American culture.
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CONTRIBUTORS
ANITA SPRING received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Cornell Univer
sity. She has taught in the Women's Studies Program at Cornell and at
San Francisco State College. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of
Behavioral Studies and Anthropology at the University of Florida. Her
field work includes research among black families in San Francisco, the
Washo Indians of Nevada, and the Luvale of Zambia. Her main interests
are African studies, human sex roles, medical anthropology, and popu
lation. She is the author of An Indigenous Therapeutic Style and Its
II
Consequences for Natality" in J. Marshall and S. Polgar, editors, Cul
ture, Natality and Family Planning, as well as other articles on ritual,
women, and family life.
Contents
1. Introduction .......................................... 1
JUDITH HOCH-SMITH AND ANITA SPRING
1. Chaotic Female Sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Positive Female Images. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles. .... .... .. .... ...... 12
4. Conclusion............................................. 19
4.1. Women and Divinity ............................... 19
4.2. Women and Healing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3. Women as Witches ................................. 21
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
PART I
WOMEN AND DIVINITY
2. The Bride of Christ Is Filled with His Spirit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 27
DANIEL N. MALTZ
1. Introduction ........................................... 27
2. The Nature of Metaphor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 29
3. The Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 30
4. The Bride of Christ. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. 31
5. Conclusion............................................. 40
References ............................................... 43
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