Cultural invention

RITUAL, POWER AND GENDER - Explorations in the Ethnography of Vanuatu, Nepal and Ireland: Michael Allen; Sydney Studies in Society and Culture. Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 4753/23, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 600.

IN THIS collection of papers, spanning the years between 1972 and 1999, the author explores some of the complex ways in which ritual, power and gender intersect with and influence one another. The author was raised as a Protestant in the almost wholly Catholic Republic of Ireland. He had from an early age developed what can perhaps best be described as a somewhat cynical view of the immense import that his fellow citizens seemingly attached to their own religious beliefs and practices while at the same time denigrating those of others. Later, as an anthropologist, he discovered that the kind of powers sought for in the religious context were almost always represented in gender-specific terms, whether male, female or bisexual. With this background, the current work is a report of his extensive field work-based research in three quite different kinds of community - the small kinship-based Melanesian population of Ambae island in north Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), the predominantly urban and caste-structured Newars of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal and the Catholic citizens of the Republic of Ireland.

The book is divided into three sections. Part I covers the ritual and power in North Vanuatu. Chapter one deals with rank and leadership in Nduindui, in which the rituals are described in great detail. The author observes that all the rituals aim at protecting the group interests. The following chapters deal with matriarchal, secret societies, ritualised homosexuality, the hidden power of male rituals, and the male cults of Melanesia, which are the product of a long history of human agency resulting in constant transformation, innovation and invention.

Part II provides the reader with a detailed picture of Buddhism without monks, virgin worship in Kathmandu Valley, girls' pre- puberty rites, hierarchy in Newar society and pilgrimage in Newar region. Part III deals with explorations in Irish Catholicism. The first chapter discusses the role of the Virgin Mother of Christ in the Catholic church, various apparitions and Irish visionary cults. Also included are rather gruelling details of cases of illegitimate babies, abortions and infanticides. The second chapter explores the ways in which highly imaginative and emotional experiences of one or more visionaries get transformed into shared religious beliefs that have empowering consequences.

It is worth noting that cross-cultural comparative analyses of the kind that have been undertaken here and elsewhere are always perilous undertakings because, their execution is dependent on over-simplification of complex data, an over-reliance on either casual or functional explanations of the various correlations put forward, and a propensity to invoke essential type explanation of both cultural difference and cultural similarity. The task of anthropology, according to the author, is to develop a theoretical paradigm that may enable us to integrate a dynamic and processual perspective on culture with a comparative method that has the potential to comprehend both similarities and differences. In this compilation of papers, however, it seems that the author may have a hidden agenda, to expose ``a complex process of cultural invention, elaboration and reformulation'' with special reference to Ireland and its religion. Part III is full of insinuations, suggestions and interpretations that bespeak of a total lack of objectivity that a scientific study should possess. In this, the book fails in its self-appointed task that anthropology should perform, even according to the author.

GEORGINA PETER

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