Taboo (book)
Encyclopedia
Taboo is a monograph
based on a series of lectures by Franz Steiner
, now considered to be a classic in the field of social anthropology
. The volume was published posthumously, edited by Steiner's student Laura Bohannan, and the first edition, brought out by Cohen & West in 1956, contained a preface by his mentor
E. E. Evans-Pritchard. The lectures analyze one of the great problematic terms of modern ethnography
, that of taboo
, derived from the Polynesia
n word tapu, adopted by Western scholars to refer to a generic set of ritual inhibitions governing what was thought to be primitive society or the ‘savage mind’.
, such as taboo, totemism
, joking relationship and avoidance
create for the modern scholar a dilemma
. Because these words are used very broadly, they are, he maintains, too inexact in their denotation
to mean anything, and therefore we must either abandon them as too vague or imprecise, or otherwise retain them at the considerable risk of creating or maintaining fundamental misunderstandings. Steiner’s basic thesis is that,
It was therefore the generalized application of a specific indigenous term to encompass phenomena from other societies that Steiner found deeply problematical. He took particular note of J.G. Frazer's idea that taboo was,
The customs that lie behind taboo represent neither a single institution nor a sociological problem. The word was used to describe many distinct practices, such as one’s right over objects, a royal minister’s power to select what crops were to be sown and farmed, and the relations of supreme chiefs to petty dignitaries ‘in terms of delegated interdiction rather than delegated authority’. The essential function of taboos was, in Steiner's view, that of narrowing down and localizing danger.
Steiner’s own definition of taboo is incomplete. Indeed the title is somewhat misleading since there is little positive information about taboo, as Steiner essentially devoted most of his exposition to a critical survey of the methodology
employed by writers on the topic since the time of Captain Cook
down to his time. His untimely death did not allow him to provide a complete elaboration of his own theory, and the elliptic summary of his approach towards the end of the book is rather obscure im that it is there defined as “an element of all those situations in which attitudes to values are expressed in terms of danger behaviour”. That certain defined situations are imbued with danger is not in itself the product of some intrinsic relations between the organism, its state of mind, and the environment, but rather as often as not such dangerous situation are, for Steiner, so defined purely as a consequence of sociological
processes. He emphasizes the primacy of taboos as performing a function in the maintenance of social structure
s over subjective attitudes that might be considered the cause of taboos themselves.
Taboo, for Steiner, is concerned with four things, (1) with social mechanisms of obedience having ritual
significance (2) specific restrictive behaviour in situations that are deemed dangerous (3) with the protection of individuals exposed to such danger, and (4) the protection of society at large from those of its members who are both endangered by taboo violations and therefore, in turn, dangerous. Hence Steiner’s general definition that ‘taboo is an element of all those situations in which attitudes to values are expressed in terms of danger behaviour’
In the first three chapters, Steiner describes taboo in Polynesia, surveying how Captain James Cook first used the term on his third voyage to the area, and the way in which it was gradually incorporated into European languages, together with a ‘brilliant, if brief’ examination of the relation between power, mana
, taboo, and noa. He argues that, from the outset, the Polynesian usage of the term was contaminated by refraction through a false European dichotomy, that split the notion of taboo into two distinct categories, of the ‘forbidden
' and the 'sacred
, whereas in Polynesia they were two inseparable aspects of the one concept, though mutually exclusive.
Steiner then surveys, in successive chapters, the way the adopted concept of taboo became a "Victorian problem”. Steiner observed acutely that it took a Protestant (Cook) to first observe the problem of taboo, whereas, by contrast, Spanish
explorers, as Catholic
s, were never sufficiently ‘bemused’ to think it worthy of mention. He then remarks on the irony
of the fact that the ‘invention’ of the problem of taboo was an achievement of Victorian society
, which he defined as “one of the most taboo-minded and taboo-ridden societies on record”. He cites among the armchair theorizers
of that period responsible for creating the interpretation of taboo as a general feature of primitive society, W. Robertson Smith, Sir James Frazer, and R.R.Marett
, the last-named being responsible for the idea that tabu was negative mana
. Steiner himself had a thorough background in Semitic languages
, and therefore his chapters on Robertson Smith, who applied the concept to Semitic cultures
, have been regarded of ‘outstanding importance’.
The book concludes with two chapters, one on Sigmund Freud
and William Wundt, and the other on Arnold Van Gennep
and Radcliffe-Brown
, who was one of Steiner’s teachers, and also a section on Margaret Mead
.
According to Joseph Politella, Steiner, in equating taboo with the Hebraic concept of qadosh
('separated unto God'), makes an inference
that taboos of this kind may 'have been originally inspired by awe
of the supernatural
, and that they were intended to restrain men from the use of that of which the Divine power or powers were jealous. Politella would therefore interpret Steiner’s position as marked by a certain duality
, in which taboo was at times imposed by charisma
tic kings and priests on objects, and yet, at times, emerged from social life as restrictive sanctions. This distinction, he argued, can be seen in Steiner’s approach, which discriminates on the one hand between taboos at a lower level as powers exercised by rulers and priest-kings in antiquity
, that invest and proscribe certain objects as sacred property, and, on the other, taboos that, more commonly, function as restrictions which derive their power from the sanctions of social life.
. ‘(p)erhaps the fairest estimate of this book is to regard it as prolegomena to a great study of taboo which will, unhappily, not now be written by Franz Steiner’. Assessments of his style however vary. For Fred Cottrell, it was ‘very lucid and witty’. For Katherine Luomela, the book was ‘highly organized, closely reasoned, and tightly written’, though his ‘sentences are really so jammed with content as to make for rather slow and heavy going (reading) and often raise doubt as to one’s comprehension of his meaning’. S.G. F. Brandon, noting Evans-Pritchard’s remark on the way Steiner’s omnivorous erudition and fanatical search for comprehensiveness slowed the publication of his research, thought it, ‘not an easy book to read, partly owing to that obscurity of expression which so often marks the writing of a scholar in a language of which he has an apparent command but which is not his native tongue.’ But it was precisely the compactness of his thought which endowed the work with peculiar value, for ‘in its analysis it is most thorough and no tacit assumption nor loose logic in argument is allowed to pass unexamined’. Joseph Politella, to the contrary, regarded the work as a ‘brilliant exposition, along historical and sociological lines, of the custom of taboo’. In Norman Snaith’s judgement, a proper appreciation of the book could not ignore the tragedy of Steiner’s personal life, as a victim of Nazi
tyranny. In this sense, his criticisms of both Robertson Smith and Frazer as thinkers whose ideas were thoroughly embedded in the values of the period they themselves lived and worked in may be applied as a criterion, mutatis mutandis
, to Steiner’s own work. ‘A naturally acute and critical mind has been sharpened to a razor-edge by his privations. This is why his criticisms are so severe, and occasionally super-punctilious. Cora DuBois characterized Steiner’s ‘critical reasoning’ as ‘subtle and involuted, at times to the point of obscurity, and the critical mood is predominantly captious’, but affirmed that, ‘(n)evertheless, these lectures are of a high intellectual order and occasionally possess passages of literary merit’.
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
based on a series of lectures by Franz Steiner
Franz Baermann Steiner
Franz Baermann Steiner was an ethnologist, polymath, essayist, aphorist, and poet...
, now considered to be a classic in the field of social anthropology
Social anthropology
Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...
. The volume was published posthumously, edited by Steiner's student Laura Bohannan, and the first edition, brought out by Cohen & West in 1956, contained a preface by his mentor
Mentor
In Greek mythology, Mentor was the son of Alcimus or Anchialus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.When Athena visited Telemachus she...
E. E. Evans-Pritchard. The lectures analyze one of the great problematic terms of modern ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, that of taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
, derived from the Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
n word tapu, adopted by Western scholars to refer to a generic set of ritual inhibitions governing what was thought to be primitive society or the ‘savage mind’.
Structure of the Book
In his opening remarks Steiner argues that key terms within the discipline of anthropologyAnthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, such as taboo, totemism
Totemism
Totemism is a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant...
, joking relationship and avoidance
Australian Aboriginal avoidance practices
Australian Aboriginal avoidance practices refers to those relationships in traditional Aboriginal society where certain people were required to avoid others in their family or clan. These customs are still active in many parts of Australia, to a greater or lesser extent.Avoidance relationships are...
create for the modern scholar a dilemma
Dilemma
A dilemma |proposition]]") is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is practically acceptable. One in this position has been traditionally described as "being on the horns of a dilemma", neither horn being comfortable...
. Because these words are used very broadly, they are, he maintains, too inexact in their denotation
Denotation
This word has distinct meanings in other fields: see denotation . For the opposite of Denotation see Connotation.*In logic, linguistics and semiotics, the denotation of a word or phrase is a part of its meaning; however, the part referred to varies by context:** In grammar and literary theory, the...
to mean anything, and therefore we must either abandon them as too vague or imprecise, or otherwise retain them at the considerable risk of creating or maintaining fundamental misunderstandings. Steiner’s basic thesis is that,
‘The word has been used in situations differing markedly from those in which it was derived by many who were either ignorant of or disregarded the varieties of usage it had in Polynesia; and that it has been redefined to suit the thought systems of the users.'
It was therefore the generalized application of a specific indigenous term to encompass phenomena from other societies that Steiner found deeply problematical. He took particular note of J.G. Frazer's idea that taboo was,
’the name given to a series of religious prohibitions which attained its fullest development in Polynesia, but of which under different names, traces can be discovered in most parts of the world.'
The customs that lie behind taboo represent neither a single institution nor a sociological problem. The word was used to describe many distinct practices, such as one’s right over objects, a royal minister’s power to select what crops were to be sown and farmed, and the relations of supreme chiefs to petty dignitaries ‘in terms of delegated interdiction rather than delegated authority’. The essential function of taboos was, in Steiner's view, that of narrowing down and localizing danger.
Steiner’s own definition of taboo is incomplete. Indeed the title is somewhat misleading since there is little positive information about taboo, as Steiner essentially devoted most of his exposition to a critical survey of the methodology
Methodology
Methodology is generally a guideline for solving a problem, with specificcomponents such as phases, tasks, methods, techniques and tools . It can be defined also as follows:...
employed by writers on the topic since the time of Captain Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
down to his time. His untimely death did not allow him to provide a complete elaboration of his own theory, and the elliptic summary of his approach towards the end of the book is rather obscure im that it is there defined as “an element of all those situations in which attitudes to values are expressed in terms of danger behaviour”. That certain defined situations are imbued with danger is not in itself the product of some intrinsic relations between the organism, its state of mind, and the environment, but rather as often as not such dangerous situation are, for Steiner, so defined purely as a consequence of sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
processes. He emphasizes the primacy of taboos as performing a function in the maintenance of social structure
Social structure
Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
s over subjective attitudes that might be considered the cause of taboos themselves.
Taboo, for Steiner, is concerned with four things, (1) with social mechanisms of obedience having ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
significance (2) specific restrictive behaviour in situations that are deemed dangerous (3) with the protection of individuals exposed to such danger, and (4) the protection of society at large from those of its members who are both endangered by taboo violations and therefore, in turn, dangerous. Hence Steiner’s general definition that ‘taboo is an element of all those situations in which attitudes to values are expressed in terms of danger behaviour’
In the first three chapters, Steiner describes taboo in Polynesia, surveying how Captain James Cook first used the term on his third voyage to the area, and the way in which it was gradually incorporated into European languages, together with a ‘brilliant, if brief’ examination of the relation between power, mana
Mana
Mana is an indigenous Pacific islander concept of an impersonal force or quality that resides in people, animals, and inanimate objects. The word is a cognate in many Oceanic languages, including Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian....
, taboo, and noa. He argues that, from the outset, the Polynesian usage of the term was contaminated by refraction through a false European dichotomy, that split the notion of taboo into two distinct categories, of the ‘forbidden
Prohibition (disambiguation)
Prohibition refers to the act of prohibiting a certain substance or act.Prohibition may refer to:*Prohibition of alcohol - periods in several countries during which the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or illegal** Prohibition in the United...
' and the 'sacred
Sacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
, whereas in Polynesia they were two inseparable aspects of the one concept, though mutually exclusive.
Steiner then surveys, in successive chapters, the way the adopted concept of taboo became a "Victorian problem”. Steiner observed acutely that it took a Protestant (Cook) to first observe the problem of taboo, whereas, by contrast, Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
explorers, as Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
s, were never sufficiently ‘bemused’ to think it worthy of mention. He then remarks on the irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
of the fact that the ‘invention’ of the problem of taboo was an achievement of Victorian society
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, which he defined as “one of the most taboo-minded and taboo-ridden societies on record”. He cites among the armchair theorizers
Armchair theorizing
Armchair theorizing is an unofficial term for the approach which economists are perceived to mostly use for coming up with a new economic theory....
of that period responsible for creating the interpretation of taboo as a general feature of primitive society, W. Robertson Smith, Sir James Frazer, and R.R.Marett
Robert Ranulph Marett
Robert Ranulph Marett was a British ethnologist from Jersey.Exponent of the British evolutionary school, he dealt with religious ethnology. In this field he modified the evolutionary scale of religion fixed by E. B. Tylor, which placed animism in the first place...
, the last-named being responsible for the idea that tabu was negative mana
Mana
Mana is an indigenous Pacific islander concept of an impersonal force or quality that resides in people, animals, and inanimate objects. The word is a cognate in many Oceanic languages, including Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian....
. Steiner himself had a thorough background in Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, and therefore his chapters on Robertson Smith, who applied the concept to Semitic cultures
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
, have been regarded of ‘outstanding importance’.
The book concludes with two chapters, one on Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and William Wundt, and the other on Arnold Van Gennep
Arnold van Gennep
Arnold van Gennep was a noted French ethnographer and folklorist.-Biography:He was born in Ludwigsburg, Kingdom of Württemberg...
and Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of Structural Functionalism.- Biography :...
, who was one of Steiner’s teachers, and also a section on Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
.
According to Joseph Politella, Steiner, in equating taboo with the Hebraic concept of qadosh
Q-D-Š
Q-D-Š is a common triconsonantal Semitic root form used in various ancient and modern languages since at least the 3rd millennium BCE. The meanings expressed by this root are "Holy", "Sacred", "Divine Power", "To Set Apart", and "Sanctuary"...
('separated unto God'), makes an inference
Inference
Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic.Human inference Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions...
that taboos of this kind may 'have been originally inspired by awe
Awe
Awe is an emotion comparable to wonder but less joyous, and more fearful or respectful. Awe is defined in Robert Plutchik's Wheel of emotions as a combination of surprise and fear...
of the supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
, and that they were intended to restrain men from the use of that of which the Divine power or powers were jealous. Politella would therefore interpret Steiner’s position as marked by a certain duality
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
, in which taboo was at times imposed by charisma
Charisma
The term charisma has two senses: 1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others, 2) a divinely conferred power or talent. For some theological usages the term is rendered charism, with a meaning the same as sense 2...
tic kings and priests on objects, and yet, at times, emerged from social life as restrictive sanctions. This distinction, he argued, can be seen in Steiner’s approach, which discriminates on the one hand between taboos at a lower level as powers exercised by rulers and priest-kings in antiquity
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
, that invest and proscribe certain objects as sacred property, and, on the other, taboos that, more commonly, function as restrictions which derive their power from the sanctions of social life.
Critical reception
Reviewers, from a variety of critical perspectives, are unanimous in noting that Steiner’s premature death was a loss to scholarship given the erudite trenchancy of his analytical acumen. Norman Snaith remarked that it was a tragedy, ‘that he died before his own thinking reached a constructive stage.’ For S. G. F. BrandonS. G. F. Brandon
Samuel George Frederick Brandon was a British priest and scholar of comparative religion. He became professor of comparative religion at the University of Manchester in 1951.-Biography:Brandon was a graduate of the University of Leeds...
. ‘(p)erhaps the fairest estimate of this book is to regard it as prolegomena to a great study of taboo which will, unhappily, not now be written by Franz Steiner’. Assessments of his style however vary. For Fred Cottrell, it was ‘very lucid and witty’. For Katherine Luomela, the book was ‘highly organized, closely reasoned, and tightly written’, though his ‘sentences are really so jammed with content as to make for rather slow and heavy going (reading) and often raise doubt as to one’s comprehension of his meaning’. S.G. F. Brandon, noting Evans-Pritchard’s remark on the way Steiner’s omnivorous erudition and fanatical search for comprehensiveness slowed the publication of his research, thought it, ‘not an easy book to read, partly owing to that obscurity of expression which so often marks the writing of a scholar in a language of which he has an apparent command but which is not his native tongue.’ But it was precisely the compactness of his thought which endowed the work with peculiar value, for ‘in its analysis it is most thorough and no tacit assumption nor loose logic in argument is allowed to pass unexamined’. Joseph Politella, to the contrary, regarded the work as a ‘brilliant exposition, along historical and sociological lines, of the custom of taboo’. In Norman Snaith’s judgement, a proper appreciation of the book could not ignore the tragedy of Steiner’s personal life, as a victim of Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
tyranny. In this sense, his criticisms of both Robertson Smith and Frazer as thinkers whose ideas were thoroughly embedded in the values of the period they themselves lived and worked in may be applied as a criterion, mutatis mutandis
Mutatis mutandis
Mutatis mutandis is a Latin phrase meaning "by changing those things which need to be changed" or more simply "the necessary changes having been made"....
, to Steiner’s own work. ‘A naturally acute and critical mind has been sharpened to a razor-edge by his privations. This is why his criticisms are so severe, and occasionally super-punctilious. Cora DuBois characterized Steiner’s ‘critical reasoning’ as ‘subtle and involuted, at times to the point of obscurity, and the critical mood is predominantly captious’, but affirmed that, ‘(n)evertheless, these lectures are of a high intellectual order and occasionally possess passages of literary merit’.
Errors, misprints, oversights
- Mana as in ‘mana and tapu’ on page 41 should read ‘noa and tapu’
- Mare/more are used for maraeMaraeA marae malae , malae , is a communal or sacred place which serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies...
- Atooi Island is identified as Atui, whereas it refers to KauaiKauaiKauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...
in the Hawaiian IslandsHawaiian IslandsThe Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...
. - The idea that commoners could give the names of important chiefs to their pet animals to prevent them from being killed is improbable, since the King would kill both the person and his pet for equating him with an animal
- S.G.F. Brandon wondered why Steiner failed to pay attention to the work of Rudolf OttoRudolf OttoRudolf Otto was an eminent German Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion.-Life:Born in Peine near Hanover, Otto attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and studied at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, where he wrote his dissertation on Martin Luther's...
, esp. his influential Idea of the Holy (1917). - S.G.F. Brandon argues that, curiously for someone with a background in Semitic philology, Steiner omitted analysing the ‘striking examples of taboo-peril in I SamuelBooks of SamuelThe Books of Samuel in the Jewish bible are part of the Former Prophets, , a theological history of the Israelites affirming and explaining the Torah under the guidance of the prophets.Samuel begins by telling how the prophet Samuel is chosen by...
VI.19, and Books of 11 SamuelSamuelSamuel is a leader of ancient Israel in the Books of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. He is also known as a prophet and is mentioned in the Qur'an....
VI, 6-7. However, Norman Snaith considered that his studies constituted ‘a definite help in the study of the holiness-taboo-uncleanness complex of LeviticusLeviticusThe Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah ....
.’
Endnotes
| i. | Noa means 'that which is unrestricted, free from tapu’ Taboo A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society... '. See Patrick Vinton Kirch, Roger Curtis Green, Hawaiki, ancestral Polynesia: an essay in historical anthropology, Cambridge University Press, 2001 pp. 239–40, p. 240 |
| iI. | For the 'invention of traditions' see Eric Hobsbawm Eric Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author... and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1983 |