著者

浜本 満

出版者

九州大学大学院人間環境学研究院教育学部門

雑誌

大学院教育学研究紀要 (ISSN:13451677)

巻号頁・発行日

no.9, pp.53-70, 2006

---

Anthropological writings abound in allusions to belief. Ethnographers have been accustomed to say, for example, that people of such and such place firmly believe that most of their misfortunes are caused by witchcraft of envious neighbors, or that they believe in the supreme God who controls rainfall, etc. Such descriptions have often been considered problematic, to say the least. For, as many critics argue, if the term "belief" is related to some inner state of a believer, it would be enormously difficult to infer other people's belief, particularly if they are culturally different, when you have no means of access directly to the inside of someone's mind. In this article I will show this kind of criticism is based on inappropriate assumptions about the very concept of belief, and thus is totally unfounded. As Needham's famous book "Belief, Language, and Experience" shows, this criticism might well have devastating effects on anthropological research. I will argue that the word 'believe' as well as other related concepts does not refer to any specific inner state of mind, but is related to two axes of binary estimation of the belief-object: an axis of trustworthiness (true/false distinction in reference to a proposition will be shown to be just another case of trustworthiness), and an axis of possibilities of conflicting judgment in shared discursive space (space of communication). Belief (and/or knowledge) is not simply a matter of intellectual concern, but is directly pertinent to social subject's pragmatic engagement with the world seen as a kind of a gamble-space.

著者

浜本 満

出版者

日本文化人類学会

雑誌

民族學研究 (ISSN:00215023)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.58, no.1, pp.1-28, 1993-06-30

---

ケニアのコーストプロビンス,クワレ州に住むドゥルマの人々の間では,ムラムロ,ムブルガという2種の占いの形態が知られている。本稿の目的は,ムブルガの語りのテキストの検討をおこない,もう一方の占いムラムロとの違いを明らかにするとともに,両者の語りのありかたの違いが占いによる問題解決の様式のいかなる違いに対応しているのかを考えることにある。ムラムロでは相談内容が相談者自身によって前もって伝えられるのに対して,ムブルガでは相談者は自分からは相談内容をあかさず,占い師にそれを手探りで語らせることになる。このムブルガにおける占い師による問題の「再記述」が,問題状況にいかなる変容をもたらし相談者に何を与えることになるのか。これは,実際のテキストを分析することによってのみ答えるのとができる問いである。ムブルガにおける占い師の語り,手探りでおこなう「再記述」がどのようなイディオムにしたがって組織され,そこに登場させられる妖術や憑依霊などのエージェントが,この語りの中でどのような役割を演じているかを検討することによって,ムブルガにおける説明のモードの特徴が明らかになる。

著者

浜本 満

出版者

九州大学大学院人間環境学研究院教育学部門

雑誌

大学院教育学研究紀要 (ISSN:13451677)

巻号頁・発行日

no.20, pp.1-22, 2018

---

In this paper I start retracing the history of anthropological approaches to incest taboo, though I regard the so-called incest problem as a kind of pseudo problem. Incest Taboo was first given an exaggerated theoretical importance in the context of 19th century evolutionist anthropology, as a key institution which enabled human society to depart from pristine promiscuity, and has been considered to be a sole institution found universally all over the world, despite frequent indications that it is actually not that universal. What might be truly universal is the tendency to be found among other mammals and primates to avoid inbreeding, and not incest prohibition itself. There even exist societies which lack a rule to forbid incest as such (although such societies actually show almost no cases of incest), and even among many societies with some rule of incest prohibition, contents of the rule, attitudes towards its transgression, kinds of punishment (from death penalty and ostracism to more lenient forms including mild admonishment and ridicule, as far as the total absence of any punishment) widely vary for each society. However, the universal tendency to evade inbreeding and those rules of prohibition were often confused, and as a result, the fiction of the universality of the prohibition has largely remained intact. It follows the very question how to explain the universal Inset Taboo was the empty question in which the object to be explained was actually absent. Westermarck's hypothesis, which explains the universal tendency of avoiding inbreeding, that close association in early childhood later develops an aversion to their sexual relations, took the limelight again in the latter half of the 20th century, and as the evidence accumulates to prove it, new waves of argument to attempt to explain the universality of the incest prohibition by this "Westermarck effect" have become popular, both in anthropology and other related fields. I would like to show how and why these new attempt to explain incest taboo will turn out to be a failure, and through its examination and refutation, I hope I could throw new light on the nature of rules, what is their proper function, what human mental capacity to be required in order to understand and live by rules.

著者

浜本 満 Hamamoto Mitsuru ハマモト ミツル

出版者

九州大学大学院人間環境学研究院教育学部門

雑誌

大学院教育学研究紀要 (ISSN:13451677)

巻号頁・発行日

no.12, pp.49-84[含 英語文要旨], 2009

---

It is well known that many traditional medical practitioners, such as so-called shamans and witchdoctors and medicine men, not only sometimes use tricks, but trickery even plays a central part of their practices. This has caused many anthropologists uneasiness. Doesn't this mean these healers are just frauds who take advantages of credulous backward people, which simply seems to support object of anthropological research? How could a certain central institution of a society just consist in fraud? This is why the anthropologists have tended to downplay trickery per se, regarding it, instead, as a kind of expressive act, paying more attention to what it says than what it does.What seems to us trickery here is the healers' mimetic production, production ofan appearance of something extraordinary is happening. An example is famous extraction therapies practiced in many societies, where a healer, using a piece of charcoal hidden in his palm or a piece of down soaked in blood and hidden in his mouth, pretends to suck out 'illness' from inside a patient's body. Of course nothing actually comes out of the patient's body, only produced is an appearance as if these objects comes out from within his body. Isn't it, then just a trick?In this paper I try to put this problem in a new perspective. Instead of seeing this type of practices in a trickery=lie=fraud versus reality=truth=honesty binary opposition, I first relocate them in a wider context of production of mimesis. Many so-called 'ritual' or ceremonial practices are know to contain some mimetic constructions, and both actors and audience often perfectly know what really is going on, and still there's no question of calling them fraud.Next I criticize Levi-Strauss' famous paper on this topic, 'The Sorcerer and His Magic' (Levi-Strauss 1972 (1958), which analyses how a skeptical young Kwakiutl man, while learning and practicing his 'fraudulent' healing techniques, came to be a self-confident shaman believing firmly effectiveness of his practice. Levi-Strauss' answer to the problem seems to be a sort of self-deception on the part of the practitioner. I will show this conclusion was only possible by Levi-Strauss's dubious manipulation of the original text.It will be shown, based on anthropological literature as well as my own field materials, those healers simply practice their healing technique as an effective art handed down (sometimes secretly) from their predecessors, and, as Levi-Strauss' text rightly remarks, they are simply confident of their efficacy.Then why so much mimesis? I will argue the healing practice itself is a composite construction of practitioners' points of view and the clients' viewpoints, formed in an imaginary space of supernatural agencies, and how it can cause mimetic features prevail in these practices without the practitioners themselves consciously intending it. It is a consequence of a kind of Darwinian algorism (not biological evaluation) working in this imaginary space.はじめに ミメシス 隠蔽 ケサリード ケサリードの懐疑とジョージ・ハント 施術の内と外 構造的要請そしての「見掛け」「見掛け」の生成 理論 トリックと信念 本物の条件

著者

浜本 満

出版者

日本文化人類学会

雑誌

民族學研究 (ISSN:24240508)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, no.3, pp.360-373, 1997-12-30 (Released:2018-03-27)

---

人類学者は, さまざまな実践をまちまちな理由に基づいて「呪術」に分類しているように見える。呪術というカテゴリーがなんらかの統一された研究対象を規定しているとは考えないほうがよいのかもしれない。本論は, 行為とその結果の結び付きについての知識の特殊な性格が, その知識を前提とした慣行を「呪術的」に見せているような場合について検討する。ケニア海岸地方のドゥルマにおいては, 水甕を夫が動かすことが, 妻に死をもたらす行為であるとして禁じられている。ここでの, 水甕を動かすことと妻の死との因果的な結び付きについての知識を構成している諸要素の関係を明らかにすることが本論の具体的な課題である。この知識の内部では, 妻と彼女が所属する屋敷との関係についての「隠喩的」な語り口の内部での必然性と, 水甕を動かすことと土器の壷をめぐるさまざまな慣行とのあいだの相対的有縁性が, 恣意的な規約性によって結び付いている。この種の規約性と因果性の配置は, 呪術と分類されがちな慣行が前提としている知識の特徴のーつである。従来の象徴論的な分析が, この配置についての誤認に基づいたものであることも示される。