A Critical Look at the Sambia

A detailed Summary of A Critical Look at the Sambia

In order to become a man in Sambia culture one must rid themselves of the pollutants associated with womanhood and take in the fluids that are necessary to becoming a man (Herdt). This rite of passage is based on the idea that women are pollution to men and when a boy becomes a man he must rid himself of the womanhood that has polluted his life so thoroughly (Herdt). Elders take him violently from his mother at age seven or eight and force bloodletting from the nose with sugar cane rid him of the female pollution because blood symbolizes womanhood (Herdt). Bloodletting is viewed as essential to "male growth" (Herdt 368) in Sambia culture. He bleeds out the female pollution he has received from his mother (Herdt). He then must ingest the fluids, which will make him a man. He does this by performing fellatio on the elders of the tribe and swallowing their semen (Herdt). By doing this, the boy gains semen himself and over time and repeated fellatio's becomes a man (Herdt). He is also taught to be a warrior and to be disgusted by women, distrustful of them and remain as distant as possible from them (Herdt). This very anti-female ritual exemplifies how women are treated in the Sambia culture. They are considered inferior and

Through Turner's writing one can infer that he believes that the Sambia men do not naturally hate woman and are not naturally disgusted by them. This misogynistic view may be learned through ritual motivations (Turner). In particular, through the rites of passage for the boys; both, what is done to the boys and, what they are told and taught. Rituals, especially rites of passage transform a person's social states (Turner). The Sambia use this knowledge on the boys of the society to create misogynist warriors. The violence with which they are stolen from there mothers and are forbidden to ever go back and see her and the intense trauma the boy endures in the first days of separation is supposed to "radically resocialize the boy" (Herdt 385). To play upon this trauma and detachment they introduce a "new male attachment figures" (Herdt 385), who takes the place of the missing parents and forms a strong long-lasting male bond. The nose bleeding is then inflicted violently to completely remove the boyhood identity, any femaleness, and the mother altogether (Herdt). Nose bleeding is an effective social control that conforms the boy to the norms and values of the male ritual cult including both a fear of woman and a feeling of superiority towards women (Herdt). Along with sexual repression, nose bleeding effectively instills a strong misogynistic attitude towards women and a fear of pollution and sperm depletion from women (Herdt). The ritual reinforces the culture's ideal social structure and reproduces it in the boys to continue in the next generation (Turner). The rites of passage the boys take part in, combined with the childhood conditioning of witnessing their father's treatment towards their mother perpetuates the cycle of male domination and female subordination as well as the view of women as pollutants (Herdt). As youths boys are attached to their mothers and spend most of their time with their mothers (Herdt), they do not have a negative view of women until they are taught by example from their fathers and lessons from the elders. The Sambia people do not innately from birth think that women are inferior. They learn and accept this social structure from the norms of the society surrounding them and the rituals they are forced to participate in (Turner). If the rite of passage for the Sambia boys did not exist they would not be instilled so deeply with a feeling of female inferiority and male superiority. The social structure of female subordination would not be solidified in the new generation and could start to break down.

The Sambia categorize their women as unclean, much like many other cultures categorize food as clean or unclean. From Mary Douglas's work one can infer that she would believe that the Sambia are just trying to culturally classify gender symbolically. According to Douglas that which doesn't fall under the heading clean is therefore unclean and treated as such (Douglas). Women may fall into the category unclean, this could be the reason that woman are inferior to men in the Sambian culture. As I said before the key reason why women are pollutants and a threat to Sambian males is menstrual fluid (Herdt). There are two reasons according to Mary Douglas's view that this cultural idea could exist creating a need to have a rite of passage to reinforce it (Douglas). The first source of why woman are viewed as pollutants to males is the symbolic associations that can be made with blood, menstruation, and menstrual fluid. Even though for wom

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Approximate Word count = 2363
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Foreign