Roy A. Rappaport
(1926-1997, United States)
Roy A. Rappaport was a cultural materialist who explained cultural phenomenon in terms of material factors among people and the surrounding natural environment. One of his famous books, Pigs for the Ancestors, was an example of his cultural materialistic approach. This book describes the role of a religious ceremony among Tsembaga, a community of horticulturalists in New Guinea. This community conducted a ritual, called kaiko, when they won new land from warfare. In the ceremony, the Tsembaga planted ritual trees on the border of new territory and slaughtered a large number of pigs for pork. The Tsembaga explained to Rapapport that they slaughter pigs in order to offer the pork to their ancestors, and they plant ritual trees in order to create a connection with ancestral souls on their new land. In addition to describing Tsembaga’s point of view, Rappaport calculated caloric exchanges among the community, the natural environment, and neighboring populations.
As a result of this calculation, Rappaport found that the kaiko ritual was articulated with the ecological relationship among people, pigs, local food supplies, and warfare. Warfare and the succeeding kaiko ritual occurred every couple of years and this cycle corresponds with the increasing pig population. In other words, the ritual kept the number of pigs within the capacity of the natural environment and prevented land degradation. At the same time, the kaiko ceremony distributed surplus wealth in the form of pork and facilitated trade among people.
Rappaport’s analysis on kaiko ritual is typical of cultural materialist point of view. In general, religious ceremonies are strictly cultural and can be explained in terms of values and other non-material concepts. However, Rappaport revealed how the kaiko ritual is interrelated with material aspects of the Tsembaga society and their surrounding natural environment.
Sources:
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Barfield, Thomas 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
- McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.