ET VILDNIS AF TABUER: Jagten på en kulinarisk struktur

Abstract

John Liep: A Wilderness of Taboos: The

Quest for a Culinary Structure

Recent anthropological research in

Melanesia has focused on the construction of

the person, theories of conception and

procreation, and flows of substances through

social relations and persons. There will often

be a correspondence between substances

such as sperm and biood, bodily parts such as

bone and flesh, and contrasting foods that are

gendered. An asymmetric constitution of the

person and a clear structuration of food

prestations between affinal sides may exist.

A study of these themes on Rossel Island,

Papua New Guinea yielded frustrating

results. No clear idea of contrasting, gendered

body aspects was found. Further, a large

number of food taboos for menstruating,

pregnant and lactating women was

distributed in clusters that were amenable to

various logics of interpretation without any

total structural logic appearing. This

negative result is explained by the absence of

any sustained practice of asymmetric

marriage and corresponding complementary

prestations between affines, which would

reproduce an ordering asymmetric structure

of the person and of the universe of foods.