Premium
Separateness as a Relation: The Iconicity, Univocality and Creativity of Korowai Mother‐In‐Law Avoidance[Note . My fifteen months of fieldwork with Korowai speakers ...]
Author(s) -
STASCH RUPERT
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.00152
Subject(s) - obligation , relation (database) , character (mathematics) , register (sociolinguistics) , iconicity , sociology , psychology , law , accommodation , social psychology , epistemology , philosophy , linguistics , political science , mathematics , computer science , geometry , database , neuroscience
A Korowai mother‐in‐law and son‐in‐law avoid seeing and touching each other, sharing food, speaking of each other in the singular, and uttering each other's names. I argue that these different avoided actions are understood as analogous forms of contact and impingement, and that the avoidances embody a qualitatively distinctive vision of social existence, according to which separateness, obligation, and uncertainty can be conjoined as positive bases of social connection. Avoidance practices epitomize and shape the broader institutional character of affinity as a relation of contingent accommodation and obligation. Korowai register these aspects of avoidance practice explicitly in their ideas about the consequences of transgression, and in their creative adjustment of the degrees of avoidance that they uphold.