anthropologists

A detailed Summary of anthropologists

That the right hand is favoured for practical use by most members of the human race seems, from the evidence, to be undisputable. That much pan-cultural knowledge seems to legitimise this with specific forms and methods of suggesting superiority to the right hand also seems to be the case. It is this symbolic expression of the dexterity differential which holds the fascination of the discipline of Anthropology.

The right hand being pre-eminent is not a symbolic expression, but it can in the physical sense, be regarded as a global constant. It is the spoken or unspoken, ritual or practical ways in which people understand and percieve this which should be important, and whether this knowledge is furnished by societal construction or exists as a psychological response to the bodily condition of being right handed.

Hertz started this debate with his article 'On the pre-eminence of the right hand' one of only three articles he wrote before being killed in the first world war. In it he proposes to examine why human populations are over-whelmingly right handed, or place special emphasis on the right hand. He rejected that this was simply a reflection of the 'natural' physical state of the body, pointing out that in no other primate

Reporting from other ethnographies, we learn that for the Maori, the right is the side of life and left the side of death, the right represents the high upper world and sky, the left the underworld and death. Similarly, he feels, amongst the Wulwong of Australia there are certain activities which would hint at some values which correspond loosely to those found in the maori. During ritual periods of ceremonial drumming the men hold the stick in the right hand (which is called The Man) and with it strikes the stick in the left hand (The Woman) to produce the rhythm.

I would have to add here that it is not just primitive thought which can be seen to differentiate sides of the body according to Hertz' descriptions: in The Catholic faith, depictions of the last judgement always have the right hand of Christ pointing to heaven and the left to hell, as clear an association with sacred and profane as we can hope to find. His theory is not totally without exceptions though. In a paper delivered by M Grenat in 1938 French sociologists and anthropologists were told about the Chinese situation in which a marked differentiation exists between left and right, but it is not so easy to say whether the right hand is pre-eminent, even though it is the most commonly used for practical uses. Although 'the Chinese are obligatorily right-handed' (P44) the honourable side is the left, and both hands perform different tasks corresponding to the yin and yang, although it should be stressed that these are not seen in opposition to each other

3.) Men defend themselves with their right hand.

"Among the Maori the right is the sacred side, the seat of good and creative owers: the left is the profane side, possessing no virtue..." P 12.

Some common words found in the essay are:
, Rodney Needham, Wulwong Australia, Hertz P5, Hesiod Aristotle, Left Yang, Maori Maori, Indies Hertz, Ancient Greeks, Hertz Provides, symbolic expression, left hand, left eye left, left eye, hand pre-eminent, perform tasks, yin yang, honourable left, binary opposition, eye left,

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Category: Science