Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series) - Softcover

Lyons, Andrew P.; Lyons, Harriet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080328036X ISBN 13: 9780803280366

Verlag: University of Nebraska Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Irregular Connections traces the anthropological study of sex from the eighteenth century to the present, focusing primarily on social and cultural anthropology and the work done by researchers in North America and Great Britain. Andrew P. and Harriet D. Lyons argue that the sexuality of those whom anthropologists studied has been conscripted into Western discourses about sex, including debates about prostitution, homosexuality, divorce, premarital relations, and hierarchies of gender, class, and race.

 

Because sex is the most private of activities and often carries a high emotional charge, it is peculiarly difficult to investigate. At times, such as the late 1920s and the last decade of the twentieth century, sexuality has been a central concern of anthropologists and focal in their theoretical formulations. At other times the study of sexuality has been marginalized. The anthropology of sex has sometimes been one of the main faces that anthropology presented to the public, often causing resentment within the discipline.

 

Irregular Connections discusses several individuals who have played a significant role in the anthropological study of sexuality, including Sir Richard Burton, Havelock Ellis, Edward Westermarck, Bronislaw Malinowski, Margaret Mead, George Devereux, Robert Levy, Gilbert Herdt, Stephen O. Murray, and Esther Newton. Synthesizing a wealth of information from different anthropological traditions, the authors offer a seamless history of the anthropology of sex as it has been practiced and conceptualized in North America and Great Britain.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrew P. Lyons is an associate professor of anthropology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Harriet D. Lyons is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo.

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Irregular Connections

A History of Anthropology and SexualityBy Andrew P. Lyons Harriet D. Lyons

University of Nebraska Press

Copyright © 2004 University of Nebraska Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8036-6

Contents

List of Illustrations....................................................................xAcknowledgments..........................................................................xiSeries Editors' Introduction.............................................................xiiiIntroduction.............................................................................11. Three Images of Primitive Sexuality and the Definition of Species.....................202. Sex and the Refuge for Destitute Truth................................................513. Matriarchy, Marriage by Capture, and Other Fantasies..................................734. The Reconstruction of "Primitive Sexuality" at the Fin de Sicle......................1005. "Old Africa Hands"....................................................................1316. Malinowski as "Reluctant Sexologist"..................................................1557. Margaret Mead, the Future of Language, and Lost Opportunities.........................1858. The "Silence".........................................................................2169. Sex in Contemporary Anthropology......................................................277Conclusions and Unfinished Business......................................................324Notes....................................................................................333References Cited.........................................................................349Index....................................................................................385

Chapter One

Three Images of Primitive Sexuality and the Definition of Species

Three persistent images of primitive sexuality emerged in the 18th century. Each of them had political as well as scientific resonances. Each of them was linked to the fact of miscegenation through processes of affirmation or denial. The politics of miscegenation (and/or interracial copulation) appear to be linked to controversies concerning the definition of the biological concept of species.

It was at this time that an image of Polynesia emerged that has endured and is still resonant. Tahitians were said to occupy a paradise of natural luxury and sexual liberty. This positive image was not uncontested, particularly by Evangelical Christians. Nonetheless, it distinguished the Tahitians from other non-Western groups. Africans of both sexes were portrayed as lascivious and bestial. The Hottentot, often racially distinguished from the Negro, was viewed as the symbol of the worst form of sexual excess. The appearance and size of the genitals in sub-Saharan Africans and African Americans was the visible index of moral degeneration. The sexuality of South American Indians, Lapps, and Inuit was also depicted in negative fashion. It too was excessive. In contrast, some North American groups such as the Iroquois supposedly lacked sexual ardor. Given that this too was a departure from the European norm, such continence was also seen as unnatural. Underlying all three images was a notion of a natural, biological sexuality. Where and among whom it existed was another matter. If savagery might diminish or exaggerate it, civilization was said to repress it, for better or worse. The happy mean, according to some Enlightenment thinkers, was to be found in the newly discovered South Seas.

Roy Porter (1990) has drawn our attention to the significance of early writings about Tahiti. He discusses the eyewitness accounts of Samuel Wallis, Phillibert Commerson, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, and Georg Forster as well as Denis Diderot's philosophical commentary Le Supplment au voyage de Bougainville. Our examination of Diderot's Supplment reveals that there is continuity between some of the earliest portrayals of South Seas societies and the scientific monographs of 20th-century anthropology.

After Wallis's vessel arrived there in 1767, Tahiti was visited three more times in the next five years (by Bougainville and subsequently two voyages of Captain Cook). The various crews were entertained by scantily clad Tahitian ladies who exceeded contemporary European standards of beauty. The cost of this entertainment was cheap. Because there was no iron in Tahiti, nails were a welcome item of exchange. Tahitian males were not loath to share their daughters and even their wives with the European newcomers. Bougainville observed that in Tahiti there was an abundance of natural resources and that commonality in both property and sexual partners was part of the idyll. Banks indicated that both he and other members of Cook's 1769 crew amply enjoyed the sexual opportunities they were offered (Porter 1990).

There were dissenting opinions. Cook noted that Tahitian marriages were stable, stating that the women who presented themselves to the crew were from the lower orders of Tahitian society and were in every way comparable to the prostitutes who abounded in English port cities (Porter 1990). The equation of primitive women and prostitutes is one we shall discuss later. However, Cook's aim was to avoid exoticism by remarking that not all Tahitian women were comparable to prostitutes. For the same reason, he expressed his doubts that there could be common ownership of property in any society that relied on individual labor in horticulture. The Evangelical Forster, who was also an officer on Cook's ship, was distressed by the morality both of the Tahitians and of the European visitors who had taken advantage of them.

Diderot's Supplment relies on Bougainville's account rather than Cook's. It also relies a little on Plutarch and Plato, who may be presumed not to have visited Tahiti. It contains a dialogic commentary by two individuals, A and B, into which are inserted two set pieces. One consists of a speech supposedly made by a Tahitian elder bidding an angry adieu to the chef des brigands (Bougainville) and his crew (Diderot 1989:589-595), who have corrupted Tahitian innocence and communalism with Western notions of property and colonial territory:

We follow the pure instinct of Nature, and you have tried to erase its mark from our souls. Here everything belongs to all, and you have preached to us some unspeakable distinction between thine and mine. Our daughters and our wives are shared in common; you have partaken in this privilege with us and have begun to kindle unknown passions among them. We are free, and behold! you have buried the deed of our future slavery beneath our own land.... Were a Tahitian someday to disembark on your shores and were he to carve on one of your stones or on the bark of one of your trees, "This country belongs to the inhabitants of Tahiti," what would you think? (Diderot 1989:591, our translation)

The second set piece is an imagined dialogue between a Tahitian sage, Orou, and the ship's chaplain (aumnier) that concerns what we may call the cultural relativity of morals (Diderot 1989:599-613, 617-627). The chaplain is appalled by the offer of Orou's daughters and wife, although he is quickly drawn into a sexual relationship with the youngest daughter. His defense of Christian morals is undermined by Orou's defense of Tahitian alternatives. The incident ends with the semiconversion of the chaplain, whose...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Nebraska Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080328036X
• ISBN 13: 9780803280366
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande