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On the Substantiality of Form: Interpreting Symbolic Expression in the Paradigm of Social Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Michael Korovkin  and
Guy Lanoue
Michael Korovkin
Affiliation:
University of Tuscia at Viterbo
Guy Lanoue
Affiliation:
University of Lecce
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Extract

The publication of Sir James Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy raised as many problems for anthropologists as it tried to solve: namely, why do symbols that stand for any social group become imbued with religious, ritual, social, and mystical significance, and how do these totemic conceptual systems relate to systems of action? More often than not, symbols of group unity—whatever the group—possess more than one dimension, and these dimensions are often hard to differentiate analytically and ethnographically. In the mainstream of anthropology symbols and their use have been deemed to reflect patterns of social organization. Within this paradigm the majority of authors treat the choice of symbol as either essentially arbitrary or deterministically compelled. We find that the old paradigm of symbol as a reflection of something essentially social—cultural inversion, as some authors would have it, or vaguely and vulgarly determined as others put it—is rather suspect.

Type
Cultural Power
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 1988 , pp. 613 - 648
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1988

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