Raymond Firth (1901–2002)

The Author brings frequent illustration from his anthropology in Tikopia, however, his investigation of Symbolic Usage is applicable humans generally. He clearly addresses the academic controversies among anthropologies and develops a theory of Symbols. For this purpose, he analyses meaning-making as a process, and analytically distinguishes Private Symbols and Public Reactions.

In the second half of the book, he analyses the Symbolism of food, hair, the body in greeting and parting, national flags, and giving and getting. In the meaning-making process, individuals behave as persons but within collectives. He says: "Unlike some of my colleagues, I argue that important problems of interpretation and clues to understanding lie in analysis of such intricate conjunction between the individual and the collective symbolization." [403] Most of his examples bear on issues of status. Life in society can be grasped "only in symbolic forms". For actions to be effective, socially viable and personally meaningful, the symbolic forms must be understood.

Broadly speaking, food exchanges symbolize basic social relationships; mode of wearing hair makes a statement about personality and attitude toward authority; flag display symbolizes communal political identity; greeting patterns expose views of relative social position.

Anthropologists debate over why humans felt constrained to invent symbols with religious attributes such as "unobservabless", omnipresence, or spiritual sanctity. Firth clearly receives "belief" data, including Christianity, Islam, and other "truths", as worthy of investigation, using description, sorting (ordering), and even logical analysis of implications. [406] He exemplifies his approach with a dive into the question of the "ethnicity of Jesus", challenging the assumption by many Christians and Moslems, that a literal, or metaphoric, or symbolic Jesus, could be both colored and real. Firth argues that the highest emotional loading is shared "with a real participation in the thing symbolized". [411]… (más)

I would highly recommend this book to anyone curious about the topic as it makes a quick read of a subject that touches each and every one of us. You will certainly learn to appreciate the basic principles laid out within this book and it will put your own existence on this Earth into much better perspective, once you appreciate the bigger picture that is the whole Human race of which you are a small part of. I wish I had come across this book years ago as it would have given me a clear picture of a subject I have always struggled to relate to. Once you understand more primitive cultures it is easy to understand how we came so quickly to the complex society we barely relate to today and struggle to survive in.

Raymond Firth was a very far-sighted man for his time. He travelled the planet and witnessed first hand many political and social environments such as the Segregation system in the US and Apartheid in South Africa. The first chapter 'Racial Traits and Mental Differences' comments on these issues heavily.
The book was designed to educate the common man who, in the UK, may not have fully grasped what these oppressive regimes entailed or why they existed in the first place, especially if living in a relatively liberal country like England which, at that time was far more progressive than America or South Africa.

The second chapter 'Man and Nature' has a very nautical theme focusing on Canoe building techniques throughout the South Sea islands to demonstrate how primitive human communities came up with varying inventive solutions to solve the same problem depending on what materials were available to them on individual islands which may have had diverse and unique natural resources available to the boat builders. This demonstrates that high intelligence and problem solving are not unique to any one social group but exist across the board regardless of race. A rather obvious statement perhaps, but this chapter rebukes the misconception that tribal cultures are less advanced than civilised western communities.

Chapter three 'Work and Wealth of Primitive Communities' attempts to equate the value tribes from around the world have for certain groups of objects such as shells, coconuts and cattle etc. which are bartered within the community; and the status and spiritual value they also hold for these individual tokens of wealth - which reaches far beyond how we in the civilised world guard money as purely a means to an end.

Chapter four 'Principles of Social Structure' was very interesting as it focused on the family and the different definitions of the term throughout the world. It covered social groups, kinship, clans, casts, sex division (male and female roles), monogamy, marriage dowries, paternity, extended sexual relationships within marriage (including polygamy), inheritance law; and, patrilineal and matrilineal societies.… (más)