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Anthropology is hard.
Anyway, there's always a question, to me, of how conscious the average person is of the "deep inner meaning" of rites - and if they're not conscious of it, is it really there? For the most part, the anthropologist is a foreigner, and even when he's not, they're better educated than the people he's studying. And so, he's not a part of the community, and looks at things they do every day from an analytical point of view.
I'm sure we do things - being afraid (but, and this is another problem, it's often less "afraid" than "aware of the fact that it is a noteworthy event") of black cats, perhaps - that a foreign anthropologist might think were terrible meaningful and important, but I would say, Oh, I just do it because I always have.
That doesn't necessarily make the custom invalid (although that is a very infelicitous phrase), but I don't think that one should base the idea of the current society on the rites practiced.
(This made even less sense than I usually do, because I have no idea what I'm talking about!)
Anyway, there's always a question, to me, of how conscious the average person is of the "deep inner meaning" of rites - and if they're not conscious of it, is it really there? For the most part, the anthropologist is a foreigner, and even when he's not, they're better educated than the people he's studying. And so, he's not a part of the community, and looks at things they do every day from an analytical point of view.
I'm sure we do things - being afraid (but, and this is another problem, it's often less "afraid" than "aware of the fact that it is a noteworthy event") of black cats, perhaps - that a foreign anthropologist might think were terrible meaningful and important, but I would say, Oh, I just do it because I always have.
That doesn't necessarily make the custom invalid (although that is a very infelicitous phrase), but I don't think that one should base the idea of the current society on the rites practiced.
(This made even less sense than I usually do, because I have no idea what I'm talking about!)