My Final Explanation

I've read modern psychology books, modern and dated anthropological accounts, and plenty of online reasearch to try to get a grasp on the difficult to comprehend act of cannibalism. I've tried to bridge the inevitable cultural bias that impedes my understanding of cannibalism by trying to step into the Maori's shoes and I think I have succeeded.

The law of sympathic magic (that to an extent we believe that we absorb the qualities of what we eat) seemed at first a completely Western way to view cannibalism but I think that it certainly influenced the act becoming a socially acceptable form of utu. It coincides with Animatism and the idea that mana can be manipulated--in the case of the Māori this manipulation would have to coincide with complex laws of tapu. The biggest hurdle in understanding cannibalism was getting past my own Western moral standards (or the idea that there are universal moral standards) and understanding that the Māorii developed the practice in isolation. Utu is often translated into revenge, and I think this is the epitome of Westerners applying their own moral logic onto Māori culture. Utu is more accurately the idea of redemption for the sake of the balance.

I will give an example that tries to explain cannibalism in a way that a Westerner might understand. If a member of another tribe comes into the chieftain's tent and murders him he has severely violated tapu. The mana must be balanced and for the tribe whose chieftain was slain, cannibalizing the murderer is a way of re-balancing mana and getting redemption. If the murderers tribe saw the murderer as breaking their own laws of tapu, the cannibalism will be looked at as just. But if they see the act as violating their tapu they might respond in kind by cannibalizing or killing the members of the other tribe who cannibalized the murderer. This is why the Māori were so often in and out of tribal warfare. Anger is not the motivating force. The atmosphere of constant tribal warfare constantly reinforced the use of cannibalism as a form of utu and made it a socially acceptable act among tribes.

Cannibalism--Cultural versus religous roots

Understanding Maori notions of tapu and utu have enlightened me as to why they were motivated to cannibalize although it has done little to explain how the practice originated as a punishment. It makes sense that they would have grave punishments for violation of tapu, but how do we explain the origin of those punishments? My first thought was that it was rooted in the Maori's complex web of religious figures and deities--not some law of sympathetic magic. There certainly is cannibalism in Maori folklore but there didn't seem to be anything significant or universal that would cause cannibalism to be so widely practiced. I thought that perhaps there would be some deity or character in Maori religion that engaged in cannibalism or did something to suggest it was appropriate but most of their deities were symbolic--a god for the fish, the sun, the water, the wind, etc.

When I think about deviating behavior that is accepting in American society it seems obvious why it is accepted. Jon Krakauer wrote a book called Under the Banner of Heaven where he goes into Mormon Fundamentalist Sects that committed terrible atrocities and makes the interesting point that the American legal system asserts that all people who are religious are insane--the only difference being that they assert that only when they have committed a deviating act and only in the presence of religious beliefs. When I ask myself why religous beliefs make deviating acts acceptable the only answer I can think of is that it is part of our culture. Some things simply evolve as social norms and it happens collectively in a passive way--there is no specific reason. Perhaps cannibalism evolved in a similar way, with its easy acceptance into Maori culture influenced by religion, but not caused by it.

Culture and Religion- Western Ignorance

The notion that the Māori engaged in cannibalistic behavior because of some cultural belief akin to the law of sympathetic magic seems like a stretch. I'm only now understanding the real difficulties of an anthropologist. Our cultural perspective is ingrained into us in a way that is almost hard to fathom.

Many of the European explorers like Tasman and Cook had terrible misunderstandings with the Māori that led to brutal acts of cannibalism. The most notorious example would be the French explorer Marion De Fresne whose crew became quite friendly with the Māori they encountered until a few of the crew members were invited to a meeting with the tribe where they were treacherously slaughtered and eaten. From a European perspective this does indeed seem like treachery. They had good relations and traded often and as far as Fresne's crew was concerned they had done nothing to instigate the attack. That's the problem-- The Europeans were completely ignorant of Māori cultural beliefs and at that time had no way of really finding anything out because of language barriers. These barriers are what led to cannibalistic behavior between the two groups.

The Māori have a much different notion of space than the Europeans. It is Māori tradition to have some sort of religious or cultural justification or connotation for territorial claims (including those within the tribe, like the chiefs living space). The space is referred to as being either Tapu or Noa. Something that is tapu is restricted because it is sacred. The Māori believe that the world is full of mana, or spritual essence, and that certain places and people have more of it. Only people of high rank (or no one at all) can access these places. If a place is noa it is common. If tapu places are polluted they can become noa and for that reason noa often has a negative connotation. The European's notion of space is very individualistic and based on legal laws--similar to laws of tapu in the way that they organize the land into different parts that different people can access but different in the rationale behind it. A violation of tapu is the main reason for conflict in Māori culture and is reprimanded in various ways, the most extreme punishment being cannibalism! In order to maintain a balance in such a delicate system, the tribes developed a debit and credit system of utu-- the balance or conservation of mana-- which from a European perspective would look more like revenge. If a tribe violates another tribes tapu they might respond by eating the individual who violated tapu. The tribe the individual belonged to, depending on his status in the tribe and actions, would either see the killing as a violation of tapu and respond in kind or see it as a just kill that caused balance. The anger associated with the Western equivalent of utu, revenge, is not necessarily present when a tribe cannibalizes.

It turns out that Fresne's crew had chopped down trees from a forest that was tapu to the Māori which is why they resorted to cannibalism. It might have seemed like treachery because the crew members were led to believe everything was alright, but in the Māori's mind everything was alright. They were simply fulfilling their duties to balance the situation. Both the Europeans and the Māori suffered from this misunderstanding.

The law of sympathetic magic

It's hard to know the extent to which our modern notions of cannibalism are based on a biased Western viewpoint. It was actually while I was researching a topic of emotional psychology that I came across what seemed like a rational explanation of cannibalistic behavior.

I was reading The Handbook of Emotion's when I came across an article by Paul Rozin on the nature of disgust. Something caught my eye. Rozin gave criteria for things that would universally elicit disgust for all humans. One of his criteria for eliciting 'interpersonal' disgust was an envelope violation--a breaking of the skin or 'envelope'. I personally have trouble keeping my eyes on the screen when a gory scene in a horror movie comes on so this seems to be true. I couldn't possibly imagine the violence and butchery (inevitable if the meat is to be consumed) that must occur when one engages in cannibalism. Does this elicit disgust in the Māori and if it does, then why do they do it? These are the questions going through my mind as I'm reading Paul Rozin's article. He talks about a phenomenon he calls the 'law of sympathetic magic'. It's the idea that humans unconsciously think that when they eat the properties of what they eat will transfer to them. Think of how disgusted you would be to eat a perfectly sterile cockroach, even if you knew it was sterile. The law usually has negative connotations but it also has positive ones in which you gain some desirable essence from what you eat.

Could this be why the Māori engaged in cannibalism? In order for me to accept this explanation there would have to be cultural proof to back the idea up. Most of the accounts of cannibalism were between two Māori tribes, and occasionally Europeans.It seemed like an entirely aggressive act and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of non-aggressive endocannibalism. If the law of sympathetic magic was an active belief of the Māori I would assume they would also want the desirable essences of their own deceased--people they would have had more exposure to and more certainty as to the quality of their character. But at the same time, it shouldn't be overlooked that there are often taboos and religious beliefs that would deter endocannibalism in many pacific island cultures.


But to what extent is this based on actual knowledge of Maori culture and religion? It seems plausible-- it almost, in fact, seems like the basis for part of the definitions of endo/exo cannibalism. It could, however, be a completely Western Analysis of the behavior which extenuates the degree of awareness the Maori had on the 'effects' of their own cultural practice. The notion that an envelope violation would cause universal disgust almost completely rules out the idea of cannibalism. It certainly is possible that Rozin's criteria for eliciting disgust are not as universal as he would like to think. Maybe the law of sympathetic magic is an effect of cannibalism, but i wouldn't go so far as to so it is the sole motivation for the act. Perhaps in inter-tribal warfare cannibalism had the effect of terrifying a tribes enemies and making the tribe look strong, but that doesn't mean we can make the assumption that Māori cannibalism originated for that reason without further understanding their culture and religion. It's important to understand the inevitable bias in a Western explanation of a phenomenon that originated devoid of Western influences.