NAME RITUALS AND ACTS OF FEELING AMONG

THE KAYAP (MEBENGOKRE)

William H. Fisher
College of William & Mary
This article analyses great name rituals among the G-speaking Kayap (Mebengokre) of central
Brazil. Ritual organization compels a temporal and spatial co-ordination of exchanges between
diverse categories of relations so that nuclear family ties are differentiated. As the fundamental
site of this process of differentiation, the House undergoes various transformations in its organization during the ceremonial period and its centrality in Kayap social thought derives from
this, rather than from the attribution of an enduring corporate identity. Analysis of Kayap ritual
allows us to extend Rappaports ideas about the relation between the invariant and variant messages in ritual, since the production of sentiment is a central task of ritual activity and such
sentiments are necessary for the reproduction of formal order in ritual.

Ritual form and performance carry meanings about commitment to a certain order,
and the temporal qualities of that order are at least partly established through ritual
itself. In this article I argue that Rappaports (1999) ideas about the ritual production of temporal orders, prefigured in part by Wagners (1977) notion of kinship as
analogic flow, help us to understand ceremonial name transmission among the
G-speaking Kayap (Mebengokre) peoples of central Brazil. Ceremonially confirmed names, also known as great names, index the simultaneous co-ordination
of relationship among different relatives that ritual orchestrates.1 For the Kayap,
sentiments of longing and happiness are a self-evident result of this process, and
such sentiments are attributed both to relations within an extended family and to
a performing community as a whole. In this article I contend that great names do
not represent titles or the non-material patrimony of corporate groups (Lea 1992;
Verswijver 1983) but are tokens or indexical symbols that refer to the production
and differentiation of relationships through time.2 While names do accord access to
positions of social prestige (Bamberger 1974), the interest of the congregation of
participants lies in their own experience of ritual. Unlike common names, great
names that are the focus of ritual participate in the condition of their own transmission and, in doing so, transcend ties of kinship.

Ethnographic context
The Brazilian Kayap (or Mebengokre) are perhaps best known as a noteworthy
example of an Amazonian people who have managed, despite their marginal status
within a nation-state, to project themselves forcefully onto the national and inter Royal Anthropological Institute 2003.
J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 9, 117-135

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national political scene. Their impact has not been limited to challenging specific
development projects, such as hydroelectric, road, and nuclear storage facility construction, but has also influenced the ways in which conservation and development
issues have been framed (cf. Conklin & Graham 1995; Fisher 1994). The Kayap
occupy several large indigenous reserves and more than a dozen villages, each of
which is politically autonomous, although individuals hold ties of kinship with
inhabitants of other villages.The Kayap share a number of features with other Gspeaking peoples of central Brazil: a matri-uxorical residence pattern, an idealized
circular village plan, and differentiation between public and private realms, this being
particularly notable in the contrast between the central village plaza and the domestic households ringing the village perimeter. The public arena features a diversity
of institutional forms, commonly including mens clubs, ceremonial moieties, age
organizations, and ritual societies. Womens participation in this arena may be
restricted or linked to that of their spouses, although this is not always the case. The
diversity of institutional forms beyond the household may be contrasted with striking similarities regarding notions of personhood, the trajectory of life cycle development, and the foundational place of age and gender complementarity in creating
the basic conditions for sociality among G-speaking peoples, as well as the nonG speaking Bororo (cf. J.C. Crocker 1985; Viertler 1976). Bodily practices and
imagery point to similar ideas about the complex formation of social persons, based,
on the one hand, on ties of filiation and, on the other, on ties that exclude these
relations (W. Crocker 1990; Da Matta 1982; Melatti 1979). Carneiro da Cunha
(1993: 86) suggests that G institutional diversity overlays a family resemblance
based on common residence arrangements and a dualist outlook underlying the
organization of the cosmos, society, and personhood.
Focusing specifically on the Kayap, Verswijver (1983) and Lea (1992) rightly
place matri-uxorilocal residence segments composed of extended families at the
centre of thinking about great name transmission. These residences tend to retain
their relative position vis--vis one another and with respect to the suns path
through the sky. Lea, in a series of works (1986; 1992; 1995; 1996), has made the
case that domestic clusters should be treated as Houses, following Lvi-Strausss
proposed terminology (1984: 189 ff.), since they comprise corporations holding an
estate composed of a distinctive stock of names, ornaments, and ritual and nonritual prerogatives. The right to use these is transmitted during the sort of name
ceremonies that are the focus of this article. It may be incorrect to think of an
estate in symbolic terms, according to Lea (1992: 149), since names and ceremonial wealth appear to be actual parts of the essence of ancestors that connect the
living with the dead, as if the essence of each House were transmitted along a vast
genetic-like thread (Lea 1995: 209).
Great names are transmitted from senior mentors to their junior protgs of
the same sex in eligible kinship categories, along with ceremonial wealth, known
as nekrtch or nekrx. Most transmission is from relations closely associated with the
recipients parents, that is, ingt (MF, FF, MB, MBS) or kwatyi (MM, FM, FZ) to
tabdjwy` (CS, ZS for males; CD, BD for females), but parents themselves are forbidden to pass their own names to their offspring. Irrespective of the sharing of
a name, the ingt-tabdjwy` and kwatyi-tabdjwy` relationship ideally should be a caring
one in which the mentor acts in ways identified with the social persona and interests of his or her junior.3 Seniors may be called on to discipline their juniors in
some cases. In others, mentors identify themselves with their protgs by volun-

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tarily subjecting themselves to the ordeals (leg-scraping with piranha teeth or burns)
to which their protgs are involuntarily or voluntarily subjected.
Names circulate through space and time, often returning, in the case of male
names, to the natal house of the donor who has gone to live uxorilocally (Lea
1986). Names transmitted from MM to DD also remain attached to residents of the
same house. All researchers since Bambergers pioneering account agree that the
ideal, although not necessarily the most common arrangement, is for brothers and
sisters to pass their names to one anothers children.
When transmitted privately, without the obligations of ceremony, names may have
the same form as great names but are thought to be falsely given (Bamberger 1974:
365). Whether falsely given or not, great names consist of one of seven prefixes
Bep, Tkk, Pnh, Kk, Nhk, Ire, Bekwy`nh, and Ngrenh (often written Ngrei
in the works of different authors) and of an additional suffix that can be a noun,
a verb, or an adjective. Such names are thought to exist as a limited stock, and are
confirmed in separate ceremonies associated with their respective prefixes (with the
exception of Tkk and Nhk, held jointly, and three or four catch-all ceremonies
during which names of any prefix may be confirmed) (Lea 1992: 132-3;Verswijver
1982: 43). Bep and Tkk are used by males while the other names are female, with
the exception of Kk, used by both males and females.
The assumption that names originated in mythical times and have subsequently
been retransmitted permits an unknown person from another village possessing
a known great name to be integrated easily into an existing network of kinship
relations upon their arrival. Contemporary villagers who are related to eponymous
persons, living or dead, serve as potential relatives to the newcomer. Conferral of
a great name upon adoption into the group equally facilitates integration into a
network of kin. However, only ritual confirmation distinguishes properly and falsely
given great names. Although they may be outwardly identical, only great names
reference a history of the community, because their bearers have been ceremonially honoured, while others, not so honoured in ceremony, are associated with a
pedigree known only by a limited circle of kin. The entire class of naming
ceremonies is termed me-rr-mx according to Verswijver (1982: 44), as are people
who receive ritually confirmed names (also known as me rr mx or me mtch).4
Non-recipients or common folks are called me-k-tbm, literally raw-skinned
(Banner 1978: 109).
In this article I suggest that great names reference a social order continually
in creation. The combination of symbolic and self-referential information transmitted in ritual is an indispensable facet of the creation of this order. Name ceremonies compel a flow of analogical relatedness (Wagner 1977), and we can point
to at least two significant reasons why ritual confirmation of names is not primarily concerned with assigning people to corporate groups. First, only a restricted
minority of Kayap ever receive ceremonially confirmed great names. In the
village where Lea studied, just over a third of the female population and a slightly
higher proportion of the men could be considered beautiful (in other words,
endowed with legitimate great names) (Lea 1992: 139). Secondly, in keeping with
this non-obligatory aspect, ritual confirmation makes no difference to a persons
ability to be inserted into a network of kinship relations. A persons kinship position is not altered, should his or her great name fail to be ceremonially confirmed.
It is unthinkable for a Kayap to be reclassified under another name if social expectations go unmet. In short, the picture advanced in the literature that the Kayap

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are a society composed of a totality of corporate groups to which only a portion

of its members are inducted continues to be puzzling. Nevertheless, it seems clear
that any understanding of great names must be found within the context of the
ceremony during which they are confirmed, thereby making them great.

Great name ceremonies

Although these vary with the specific ceremony, the ornaments that may be used
are specifically defined, as are the order of the proceedings, the sequence of dances,
positions of the dancers, and point of origin within the village at which the dance
sequence originates and ends.Wealth and names transmitted in ceremony must have
been the previous object of legitimate ceremonial transmission. A number of masks
used in different ceremonies are thought to incarnate, rather than represent, spirits
of animal beings (Banner 1978: 111).
Participation of formal friends signals that ceremonies are life crisis rituals. Inherited from ones father, the formal friend appears in ceremonies marking birth,
birth of a first child, and death. Significantly, there is no stress on an invariant set
of verbal utterances that comprise the liturgy of ritual. The only illocutionary acts
whose enunciation by the proper authority in the proper context brings a condition into being appear to be limited to the mentors pronunciation of a childs
great names while the latter is seated in their natal house in the presence of the
parents and formal friends after the climactic dance and feast.
While the songs performed for each ceremony have a basis in tradition, new
lyrics are added on every occasion, while others may be omitted. Elders are mostly
responsible for these creative additions, and they lead rehearsals during which those
who will constitute the ritual congregation master the lyrics and melody to be sung
on the occasion of the ritual climax.Verswijver (1982: 52) describes how the second
phase of the naming ritual called womens paint begins when the female singers
have learned the new music thoroughly, at which point they move their singing
place to the centre of the village and occupy the mens house. Songs are not only
part of a liturgical script which a congregation must perform, but are also the means
whereby a group of persons can constitute itself as a ritual congregation over
time. What makes songs appropriate for ritual performance is that they have been
rehearsed in practice sessions during which the ritual sponsors offer food and drink.
Singing does not take place under the direction of the ritual sponsor. Rather,
singers consisting of the body of adult men or women (depending on which ceremony is being performed) who are neither parents nor co-parents of the child
assemble so that ritual sponsors are compelled to provide payments of food, if they
want the rehearsals to continue in a consistent manner until the songs are learned
and the ritual climax can take place. The cohesiveness of the ritual performance is
produced over time and is an index of unified sentiment; thus no coercion of any
kind may be used to force participation. Participants are motivated by both food
and esprit de corps, and it is often the grousing of the participants that puts pressure
on sponsors to augment their provisioning of rehearsals.
Name ceremonies are non-calendrical rituals, although specific ceremonies are
usually associated with the rainy or dry season. However, the liturgical order celebrated in Kayap name rituals does not refer to events external to that order.5
The ritual itself provides the grounds for its recurrence because only those who

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possess ceremonially confirmed names may legitimately pass these along to

name-receivers.
Rappaport notes that non-calendrical liturgical orders do not merely point to a
process but, by imposing the conditions for the recurrence of that process, actually
regulate it. An appropriate starting-point for analysing Kayap name ceremonials
is thus, What is the social or natural process regulated by ritual? It should be clear
that to emphasize the regulative property of non-calendrical ritual does not exclude
the possibility of understanding its constitutive or performative aspects as well, as
will be clear below.
As with most non-calendrical rituals, the trigger setting off the celebration is a
social observation of some sort. The presence of a child with an unconfirmed great
name, or a relative who desires to bestow a name on a child, are by themselves insufficient to begin ritual activity. A good deal of work is involved, and the parents
of the child to be honoured must recruit relatives among the childs classificatory
parents to help with the gardening, food preparation, and even transporting of heavy
loads during the hunt. The productive activity of the group of parents and classificatory parents must be substantially increased in order to feed the entire village
during the ritual climax and during the long series of rehearsals in the months
leading up to the climax. The ability to produce sufficient food and also the extensive raw materials needed for the ritual ornaments depends on the village location,
the time of year, and other factors that may be beyond the control of participants,
such as the early onset of the rainy season.The first requirement is thus a favourable
circumstance for producing ornaments and food in sufficient quantity. At various
times during the ritual, the childs real parents remain outside the action and are
substituted for by classificatory parents. The second requirement is, therefore, that
parents are able to recruit others for labour that, in principle, will be reciprocated
at a later time during ceremonies to honour in their turn the children of classificatory parents. Despite the fact that festival sponsorship brings with it an honourable
status as parent of a beautiful child, it is not uncommon for outside pressure to be
brought to bear to encourage parents to sponsor ceremonies.
The pressure takes various forms but the underlying issue revolves around the
emergence of a village-wide consensus that a ritual is desirable. Elderly men in the
plaza centre animatedly proclaim the need to listen and learn from village elders,
attend to their hunger by procuring meat, and generally reverse the decline in
toughness and energy that has taken hold of younger people. No less fiery may be
the exhortations of elderly women speaking from the patio of their houses, or even
from within, the sound seemingly issuing through the walls.Villagers may lobby for
a ritual that will furnish them with fun and excitement and help alleviate the sadness
that pervades the village. Meanwhile, those relatives in a position to give names to
honoured children, whose requests are felt to have great moral force, may ask parents
to undertake ceremonial sponsorship. Thus the ceremony is not triggered by any
one factor neither by the need to socialize a being of undefined social status
(although this is desirable) nor by the parents desire to augment their own prestige (although this must play a part in the motivation of parents).
There is a window of a few years during which youngsters may be honoured
between the time they can walk well and the onset of pubescence.6 The option to
honour several children during the same ceremony is commonly chosen, and samesex siblings often jointly sponsor ceremonies in which a child of each is honoured.
The several catch-all ceremonies, during which any beautiful name may be

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ratified, also provide further alternatives as regards the timing and performers
required for a proper ceremony. Verswijver (1982: 58) points out that each ceremony requires actors who are qualified to perform specific roles that they have
inherited as part of their own ceremonial wealth. The lack of a required performer
may therefore make a later ceremony impossible to perform correctly, thus exposing it to the charge of being illegitimate.There are various reasons why certain ceremonies are no longer held in different villages; Lea (1992: 137) mentions that some
ceremonies are no longer undertaken because there are no longer any residents
whose names may be authentically transmitted in them. The complex process
through which a consensus is reached on the desirability of performing a specific
ceremony for a specific child should inspire doubt that what is at stake is simply a
baptism or a rite of passage to change a childs status.
A further reason to distinguish Kayap naming ritual from a baptism is that it is
not uncommon for Kayap rituals to fail. Rituals are unsuccessful when they fail
to accomplish the conventional effect that they are supposed to cause. Although the
performance in question may have its defenders, any dispute in itself signals failure.
The consequences may be drastic, including the division of entire villages into new
autonomous units, a fairly common occurrence among the Kayap whose village
fissions often follow great name ceremonials. Less drastically, the legitimacy of the
great name carried by the child may be called into question, along with the accompanying prerogatives to display ceremonial wealth. This can give rise to competing
claims about the legitimate right to bear the same ornament or sing the same song.
Disputes of this type may be linked to conflicting pedigrees of the social mentor
and their protg, but may equally stem from the consensus that the confirming
ritual was not well performed. The latter ground for disputing the legitimacy of the
name forces us to clarify what is meant by well-performed ritual, since it is on the
character of the performance that the legitimacy of the name depends.
Here, we can again turn to Rappaports distinction between the canonical aspect
of the liturgical order, the more-or-less invariant sequence of acts and utterances,
and the variant aspects linked to the performance of participants. The main modality of significance in the latter case is indexical rather than symbolic,7 and it is with
regard to indexical signs perceived by participants that name rituals succeed or fail.
In other words, the efficaciousness of name transmission is directly related to the
performance of ritual participation enacting the liturgical order. We can recall
Rappaports point that participation in the creation of a ritual order entails that
the actor act in accordance with that order, whatever his or her personal beliefs.
However, for the Kayap, participation in the ritual should produce happiness and
harmony. If these are not the result of ritual, as happens not infrequently, then the
way is open to identify the parts of the performance that were insufficient. The
question goes beyond the correct enactment of a liturgy, or acts or utterances imprecisely reproduced. The feeling of happiness is, after all, experienced personally.
Kayap may judge the culminating feast insufficiently provisioned or the dancing
and singing lacking in sufficient enthusiasm to produce the feelings that ought to
result from ritual. In other words, an evaluation of the order invoked and created
by ritual is derived from feelings that Kayap attribute to the performance of ritual.
Sentiments or emotions are not only central to Kayap notions of sociality (cf.
Overing & Passes 2000) but point us towards an understanding of the process
indexed by name rituals. Unless we take into account both the symbolic and indexical representations on display during the ritual, we miss a large measure of the reason

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for Kayap social action and the significance of naming as part of a larger set of
relationship transformations enacted in ritual.

Circulating components of personhood

For the Kayap, ritual action represents a collective organization of the distinct
exchanges required to produce Kayap sociality. Through a consideration of the
temporality and ontology of distinct spheres of exchange, it is possible to delineate
the range of relationships actively involved in the validation of great name transmission and the way in which collective activities both complement and depend
upon the activities of kindred acting to transform their immediate relations through
naming. I have already mentioned the rehearsals that over time will produce the
singing and dancing that are necessary for the ritual climax. Recall that these are
undertaken in exchange for food. In connection with food production, too, there
is a similar mode of producing meaningful indices within the domestic domain.
Kayap emphasize that the ceremonial period has a distinct beginning and end point
(oinore, to lay down), and transactions based on these roles are limited to this period.
While the ritual terminus is marked by a single pass of dancers around the village
on the day following the climactic performance, the period in which Kayap say
they are in a ceremonial state typically lasts weeks if not months.
To understand what it means to be in a ritual, activities and relationships must
be contrasted with the non-ritual period. To make this contrast the first thing to
do is to delineate the universe of Kayap kinship in terms of basic relations which
rest on certain actions: first, the ingestion and circulation of or vital substance;
secondly, the circulation of knowledge, dances, ritual prerogatives and other cultural traditions known as kukradj; and, thirdly, the spirit essence or karon that,
while unique to each individual, is nevertheless the focus of certain actions by living groups of persons, as well as the conduit for communication with other spirit
essences, both human and non-human. Actions of kin help to ensure that the karon
is joined with a physical body shortly after birth and also that after death it is disassociated from this body and its kin group. The karon is responsible for dreams,
visions, memories, and certain powers over the animal and spirit world. For the purposes of the present analysis, it is sufficient to point out that , kukradj, and karon
move in and through persons according to different mechanisms over distinct time
periods. Bodily potencies and even experiences with karon, kukradj, and are held
to inhere in certain relationships.
Parents and children are thought to share a single , as do full siblings. I that
originates in grass may be ingested by an animal that in turn may be eaten by a
Kayap, along a food chain that is tapped constantly through daily activities. Within
the nuclear family, the extension of parental makes possible the fabrication of
children. The tie of gives rise to emotions of sadness when family members are
separated from one another. Sadness is not provoked by reflection on the absence
of a loved one but is an expression of the continued presence of a shared quality
of relatedness in the absence of the entire person.This is consistent with the reliance
on sentiment to gauge the effectiveness of ritual, since emotional states are indices
of social states. Persons with ties of must jointly observe responsibilities for one
anothers well-being. In elaborating on the relation between nuclear family ties,
Turner (1980: 117) states, this relation of biological participation lasts throughout

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life but is broken by death. The death of a persons child or siblings thus directly
diminishes his or her own biological being and energies. Recognition of shared
substance underlies the practice of angri, or food and behavioural restrictions. These
are observed during pregnancy, sickness, some rites of passage (such as name ceremonies), and after death all occasions during which the formation and dissolution of bonds of substance are of central importance.8
Kukradj or traditional knowledge is central to Kayap identity, ceremonial
decorations, and ideas regarding pollution and kinship. Such knowledge permits its
possessor to act to create personal potencies and abilities. Kukradj is a wide-ranging
combination of instrumental and esoteric knowledge how to cure illness, reproduce the acts and symbols of the ancients, and acquire the ability to jump high, for
example. What marks these seemingly disparate types of knowledge as kukradj is
that they permit one to create ones own qualities and define ones own relations
with other humans as well as with the non-human world.
Kayap believe that kukradj exists in peoples heads and will continue to exist
only if passed along in an unbroken chain. The definitive characteristic of kukradj
passed on in this fashion is that it will never become exhausted (ap ket). The
ceremonial wealth and great names transacted in name ceremonies are themselves
considered kukradj or enduring stuff . In this sense, kukradj, which serves to distinguish Kayap from all other peoples, is the inverse of , which is ephemeral, powerful and is a component of plants, animals, and humans. While kukradj is also
appropriated from sources external to the Kayap, it is the knowledge of how to
do and make things that enables the Kayap to persist as a distinct people. Without
their distinctive array of kukradj, Kayap would be like everyone else. Kukradj
conjoins individual volition and self-control with the collective manipulation of
biological and human organization to produce desired ends (cf. Cohn 2000: 175).
Such knowledge is not only desirable but may also involve substantial payments or
transfers of food and favours in return for its transmission.
The karon is an individual essence or soul. As with many other Native American
languages, the word can be translated as shadow. Unlike , karon are uniquely associated with individual persons and never disappear definitively (or, alternately, may
vanish when no longer remembered by the living, according to Lea [1996: 154]).
Karon, or spirits, beings almost (but not quite) devoid of , particularly the recently
departed, search about for their living relatives, especially for their families of shared
substance, and seek to escort their respective karon away with them. However dangerous the departed may be to the well-being of the living, the karon plays an active
role in daily affairs, being an essential aspect of a humans ability to interact with
others and the world around them. The reliance on dreams may not be as developed as among the Achuar (Descola 1996), but Kayap hunters also look to their
dreams to guide them on their outings. Dreams are caused by roaming karon.
Animals and at least some plants, such as the babassu palm, also possess karon. Since
karon communicate directly with other karon, inter-karon contact is part of a beings
intrinsic sensual interaction with the world.9
Karon appear in, and thereby constitute, dreams and memories. As with bonds of
substance, such appearances are the consequence of social relationships rather than
individual caprice friends, enemies, kin, and desired ones all appear. Contact with
karon may result in beneficial acquisitions: a cure, vision of where to find game,
or discovery of a new item of potential kukradj. Conversely, karon may also bring
illness. Attraction to useful karon or the warding-off of dangerous ones entails various

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stratagems. A persons karon may interact with karon of other persons. Although associated with individual bodies, karon are essential for communication with the world,
and are both dangerous and susceptible to social control and manipulation. Discussion of omens or dreams appears to focus on how people should act in response
to them, rather than on attempts to interpret their meaning.
When a family is overwhelmed by sadness at the death of a child, they may move
out of their house and destroy all of the dead persons possessions, in order to throw
the karon off their trail. Additionally, families may destroy, or divest themselves of,
items that do no more than recall the deceased.10 In fact, the only goods associated
with the dead that should be used by the living are items of ceremonial wealth
legitimately inherited in ceremony. Every other kind of possession is destroyed at
the owners death, including pets and garden plants as well as utensils, weapons, and
ornaments (Bamberger 1974: 368). The dead are always remembered during name
rituals, as I describe below, and the agents of these memories are the karon of the
dead themselves, rather than the living ritual participant.
The specific organization of relations during ritual channels the circulation of
, kukradj, and karon so as to segregate and align relations in accordance with the
configuration of ritual. In a seminal paper, Wagner suggests that kinship relations
are created by differentiation of relations sharing some common quality. Analysis
of the mode of relationship is of necessity diachronic and sequential: concern with
relationship as the analogical consequence of contrived differentiation (Wagner
1977: 626). For the Kayap, against a background of shared ties of substance
generated by activities of nuclear family members, as well as with a wider cosmological circulation of , differentiation aims to create a flow of relations according
to a principle antithetical to that of continuity based on links of substance. Naming
must be understood as part of a larger set of practices concerned with the differentiation of a pre-existing set of social relationships. The result is the differentiation of common substance itself a product of temporal processes produced by
relationships in a way that recreates all the relevant kinship distinctions in Kayap
life.
Processes of circulation inhering in different kinship relations may be very broadly
summarized as follows, once it is understood that these processes, and hence the
relationships, change over time. These different relationships include, first, relations
with those for whom we observe food and behavioural restrictions (parents, children resulting from sexual activity, and siblings who share );
secondly, those between
social mentors and protgs ingt or kwatyi and tabdjwy` respectively). In some
cases, mentors transmit names and ritual prerogatives to protgs but may act as
mentors even when this is not the case.Thirdly, there are classificatory parents (hereafter referred to as co-parents) of ones children with whom one co-operates on
the basis of reciprocity (for example, same-sex siblings and their spouses). In each
of these cases, the initiative for the relationship lies with the senior relative rather
than with the child, who appears as a reference towards whom others act in order
to refashion their own relations. These three kinds of relations imply two others as
well: the mentor-protg relationship entails a relationship with parents of our
protgs, and children of co-operating co-parents treat one another as siblings who
do not share ties of substance.
According to Rappaport (1999: 87), analogic refers to entities and processes
in which values can change through continuous imperceptible gradations.
While relations are created through time in this view, ritual has an essential role in

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imposing a frame in which before and after may be discerned. In the case of the
Kayap, and of the G more generally, ritual does more than digitally recode gradual
analogic changes. Kukradj, , and karon constitute relationships between persons, but
these persons are differently related among themselves. Ritual co-ordinates and contrasts different exchanges in a way that allows them to be indexed simultaneously.
While a name is bestowed on the child, this act invokes neither an ancestor-focused
calculation (as with descent) nor a calculation of relationship derived from ego (as
in the constitution of a kindred). Rather, relations among relations are co-ordinated
through the temporal binding of ritual itself. The axis of name transmission implies
other co-ordinate axes of relationship, and ritual makes the wider implications of
such interdependence clear by actually manifesting the interdependence necessary
for the recreation of sociality.

Ritual and food production and distribution

The domestic economy in non-ritual periods is ideally centred on co-operating
groups of sisters and their husbands who live uxorilocally. During name ceremonies,
relations within the household and the nuclear family are displaced, so that the
domestic and nuclear family division of labour, which is the normal pattern of food
and substance production, is switched off . In the alternative form organized by
ritual, food production and sharing that are normally based on nuclear family ties
are recast. Both parents and children are embedded in different sets of relationships,
analogous to but different from those that are normally responsible for the provision of basic nourishment.
Another term for name ceremonies, me-kire, refers to the ceremonial food
distributed to performers by ritual sponsors. A basic rule is that one should not
eat the kiere from ones own childs ceremony. However, parents of the ceremonially honoured child should also not use their own or anybody elses earth oven
for the duration of the ceremony. Ovens are associated with domestic residence,
and are used by co-operating women living together or adjacently. The ban on
touching the oven essentially places the childs mother outside this grouping for
the duration of the ritual. The overt reason for this has to do with the analogy
between the ritual and biological birth: during pregnancy very hot things should
be avoided.
However, the parental ban on the use of the oven also extends to eating together
with ones own children or own parents. Moreover, if the childs father is successful in procuring game during this period he must send it elsewhere rather than
consume it within the nuclear family. During the ceremonial period, nuclear family
relations of the honoured child should observe food restrictions (angri) as if the
child were sick and the group of substance at risk.
In contrast to the isolation of the birth parents, mentors, especially name-givers,
are encouraged and expected to eat together with their protgs (kt kwy` kre ).
The childs co-parents, who are enlisted by the parental sponsors, are responsible for
feeding the childs mentors who will sing and dance on their protgs behalf and
also help to feed all the ritual participants. Within the household, one sees a substitution in which mentors are identified with their protgs and classificatory
parents with birth parents. The house, normally a site of continuity based on ties

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127

of substance, is transformed into a site featuring relations concerned with the production of substance utterly independent of nuclear family ties.
Classificatory parents in a helper role are drawn not only from the childs
residence (that is, MZ and MZH) but also from the residences of FB and FBW.
Bamberger (1974: 368) notes that
like biological parents, parallel-sex siblings perform supportive roles in all phases of the ceremony, but they do not have special ritual assignments. In no instance, for example, does a bam
(father) or n (mother), either real or classificatory, bestow names, dance, or take part in the
actual ceremony for their kra (child).

What Bamberger considers the actual ceremony is best considered as the ceremonial climax since, as we have seen, the reorganization of the household during
the entire ceremonial period is no less central to the ritual significance than is the
dancing.
Name ceremony preparations include a ceremonial trek (ntomr), a forest excursion lasting from a few days to a few weeks to provide the meat consumed by
dancers during the festival climax. The trek may also be referred to as kamy-kra
djkire or brothers child ceremonial food. Here, the role of same-sex siblings (FBs)
seems to encompass all classificatory parents, including MZH and others who have
agreed to assist the sponsoring parents. The emphasis put on the co-operation of
brothers during the trek contrasts with the uxorilocal organization of households
in which a group of sisters, or co-mothers, attend jointly to food preparation.
As with domestic cooking arrangements during the ceremony, co-fathers should
shoulder the burden during the trek. The birth father is responsible for seeing that
a sufficient quantity of game has been assembled for the ceremonial feast, but he
does not carry game, which is left to others.
As mentors stand in for their protgs in certain situations, such as the ordeals
mentioned previously, in analogous fashion, classificatory parents stand-in
metaphorically for parents. A central feature of several phases of great name ceremonies is the differentiation of a group of siblings into mentors and parents with
respect to one anothers children. Ritual action makes possible a disaggregation
of a group of substance comprised by a group of siblings. Cross-sex siblings
become potential or actual name-givers and eat with children; same-sex siblings
become co-parents who furnish food to both. It is the transformation and differentiation of relations of substance and their consequent deployment as parental
substitutes in the domestic economy during long months preceding the ritual
climax that is the context for understanding classificatory parenthood. Classificatory
parents are contrasted with mentors and, in relation to the honoured child, both
mentors and classificatory parents play a part in the substitution of nuclear family
relations.
Bodily adornment used during name rituals also indicates that the process of differentiation between parents and their siblings has extended since the birth of the
child. At birth, parents and the new-borns siblings remain unpainted and both coparents and mentors use identical motifs (amityk and amikrre) proper to their gender.
In contrast, during name ceremonies, while classificatory parents persist in the use
of amityk and amikrre patterns, mentors and other dancers shift to another motif,
known as me kaktyk. Adult siblings no longer act primarily as siblings but as

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WILLIAM H. FISHER

co-parents and mentors, and the child is provisioned with food by co-parents who
identify the child with its mentors (that is, potentially their own siblings), while
parents send food which they have procured themselves elsewhere. The newly
differentiated nuclear family is created through the disaggregation, as well as the
aggregation, of substance ties.
The ceremonial climax is an occasion during which male or female dancers
honour their protgs and definitively pass on, or hand over, their ceremonial wealth
and ritual prerogatives. Far from being a spontaneous act, dancing with a protg
follows what is often years of deference by parents towards the mentor of their
child. In fact, while a mentor may bestow a name on his or her protg soon after
birth, he or she may eventually refrain from dancing with the child and conferring
on it the full array of ritual prerogatives and attire. In this case, while the child
would continue to use the name, it would not have been legitimately verified
ceremonially with its accompanying kukradj. Kayap say kukradj follows the
name, but it should be recognized that it does not do so automatically, being attendant on the social action that reconfigures the field of kin relations; mentors and
parents must forge a relationship with one another that is distinct from that of shared
ties of substance. Thus Lea (1992: 143) reports that men may threaten to refuse to
transmit their name to their sisters children if the sisters are stingy and never offer
them food. It is only over the course of years of offering food and deference to
the mentors advice that the relationship between a childs parent and mentor (that
is, their cross-siblings and parents) is gradually created.
The children honoured in naming ceremonies are beautiful because the name
that attaches to them is a token identifying a successful social transformation. Once
this transformation is effected, great names simultaneously represent identification
with social mentors as well as the requisite distance from them. The generic term
applied to all naming ceremonies, me rr mx, refers both to the break and to its
successful bridging. Rr in everyday usage means to cross over a physically differentiated space, such as from one branch to another (over air) or from one river
bank to another (through water). Turner (1980: 131) writes that dancing (and by
extension, the celebration of any ritual) is called flying , which is itself an apt
characterization of crossing over a physically differentiated space. Various authors
have translated me rr mx to mean to give once and for all (e.g. T. Turner:
pers. comm.), implying that the transformation of parent-child and sibling bonds
evidenced during ritual is irreversible.

Birth order, kin group differentiation and House organization

That Houses are fundamental sites of socially correct differentiation allows us to
understand why all children are not bestowed with beautiful names and why House
membership is not sufficient to enjoy the use of the patrimony associated with the
House. As described thus far, Houses are seen to be the site of differentiation during
name rituals from which birth parents, as creators of ties of substance, are removed.
In the remainder of this article, I seek to explain why Houses are indispensable for
recreating Kayap sociality.
Childbirth itself would seem to initiate the process of differentiation between kin
thus far described. However, food and behavioural taboos which benefit the child
apply with full force only to the first child. This child is referred to sometimes as

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129

the genuine child (kra kumren), although it is more usual to refer to the birth
order: kra kukam or lead child. The birth of the first child is particularly dangerous and delicate and is marked by an extra sequence of ritual that is not observed
for later offspring. Taboos and behavioural restrictions drop off progressively with
each subsequent child. Parents with many children in fact violate with impunity
the restraints that younger parents observe. For example, the explanation that firsttime parents should carefully keep fish bones collected together and slide them off
the eating surface at the base of a hardwood tree when finished was amended by
the cheerful commentary that folks with many children just throw the bones anywhere they want!
In sum, parents give great importance to the order in which their children
have been born and think about their offspring in terms of their position in a
sequence of births. Children who are lower in the birth order, however, do not lack
for affection, nor are they cherished less than first-borns. They join a unit that was
shaped with the birth of the first child and whose integrity has been safeguarded
by observances more carefully kept for their elder siblings. Younger children consider that they will be dependent throughout their life on the lead of their older
siblings in kinship matters. To be born last or next to last in the birth order is even
sometimes offered as a reason for relative weakness or diminished public prominence compared with elder siblings. I was born last (kutapore), may be all that
a man answers when asked why he never assumed a position of chief like his
brothers, for example.
Severity of food and behavioural restrictions for those leading the birth order
roughly parallels ritual in name confirmation ceremonies. If their parents are capable
of carrying off ceremonial sponsorship, first-born always inherit ritual ornaments
featured in certain ceremonies. Those born third or fourth often receive no ceremonially confirmed names or ornaments; it is said that they go around plain. Thus
the explanation for the transmission of ceremonially recognized names and ornaments must necessarily be part of a larger understanding of the character of kinship,
in which first-born children are recognized in ways that their siblings are not.
The reason for this has not been explained by current models of naming beyond
citing informants responses about the limited stock of names available, and the
amount of work required to stage a ceremony. However, the limited number of
great names and other previously uncontextualized ethnographic data make sense
when Houses are considered as sites of differentiation in which an analogic flow of
relationships is established. If we focus on the kinds of food and behavioural taboos
that characterize the formation of a new nuclear family, we also note that other
qualities besides substance or , namely the karon and kukradj, are equally necessary
to recreate proper social relations. Their circulation requires co-ordinated action by
a group of kin beyond the nuclear family. As we have already seen, the same acts
of differentiation that give rise to the new nuclear family also initiate a series of
other transactions that serve to differentiate new parents from their own parents and
siblings, as well as creating ties between mentors and protgs. Acts in this respect
are cumulative, slowly accumulated through time. Parents teach consideration for
their childs ngti and kwatyi at the same time as they show respect and deference
towards them, particularly in relation to acts regarding their child. Parents offer food
to their childs mentors. Mentors take various steps to identify themselves with their
protgs; they spend time with them away from their parents and otherwise nurture
an affectionate relationship with the youngsters.

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Sentiments, family and the community order

To understand the broader temporal binding of relations between the numerous relevant relations achieved by name ritual, we must return to the factors that may
falsify ritual and render great names illegitimate.The first factor, of course, concerns
disagreement over the right of mentors to bestow particular names and prerogatives
on their protgs. These sorts of disputes are inevitably about divergent versions of
past processes of kin differentiation. Arguments necessarily centre around who
was or was not a legitimate relative, and also acts performed or omitted that signalled social relationship. An inability to agree on the names and ceremonial wealth
that may be rightly transmitted necessarily entails interpretations of past social
relationships. Unlike disputes over descent, controversies centre around the correctness of previous processes of transmission (or kin group differentiation),
rather than group boundaries or membership, since the person with the right to a
privilege or name is never merely a member of a House, but one whose name or
privilege must have been ceremonially legitimated with proper ceremony.
The other fact that can falsify a ritual is a lack of feeling of happiness or satisfaction on the part of dancing and singing participants, many of whom are not kin
of the honoured child. Lea (1996: 155) stresses the fact that extreme harmony is
experienced during the ritual climax, and rituals are broken off if conflicts erupt
during the months-long periods when villages are in a ritual state. This harmony
is not simply the absence of discord, but consists of feelings of love and unity and
grows into what Turner (1980: 130) has glossed as beauty that results from the joint
actions of dancers and food providers and from the viewing of the display of the
ceremonial ornaments of all legitimate inheritors disposed in their correct places
around the village plaza during the ritual climax. At this point in the ceremony,
houses are occupied by the karon or souls of the dead. Residences undergo yet
another transformation from their normal matri-uxorilocal organization, for it seems
that karon invade the house of any relative, or even any other person, to whom they
feel attached. The effect of the songs sung, dances danced, and ceremonial wealth
displayed draws the dead to the village for the camaraderie of the ceremony and
proximity with the living whom they love and miss. As Lea (1995: 210) states, Even
the dead come to attend the ceremonies which is why the Houses are abandoned
to them by the living who camp out in the plaza (also Verswijver 1982: 51). The
living congregation who are not endowed with ceremonial wealth remain
in a circle in front of their respective houses, outside two inner circles of dancers. The children
who are to have their names confirmed occupy the innermost circle, furthest from the dead.
The close relatives of children and adolescents occupying inherited roles follow close behind,
smoking pipes [and puffing smoke] to ward off the dead. If a predecessor were to draw near to
his living successor, the latter would automatically die (Lea 1996: 153).

From the point of view of the ritual participants, the presence of the dead is
evidenced in the memories and longings that ritual performance evoke. During
ritual, names, ornaments, and songs reveal their beauty through their power to evoke
associations with the dead and in this capacity register the presence of karon and
the continued attachment that the living and dead feel for each other.
During non-ritual times, Kayap do what they can to avoid contact with spirits
of relatives, and it may be recalled that this extends to the destruction of all
material possessions associated with them.11 In contrast, ritual times demand the

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131

handling of ceremonial ornaments associated with the dead, and performance of

liturgies which bring them to mind. As people rehearse songs, prepare food and
ritual ornaments, or paint the performers, they often think of their lost relatives.
Older women keen and lament (cf. Graham 1995: 82-3 for interesting parallels
among the Xavante), while men look long faced and tearful. Because the dead
performed nearly identical liturgies, ritual performance prompts one to remember
specific people who were particularly attached to certain songs, dances, and ornaments. Memories are invasions of wandering karon who normally bring sadness
(which is dangerous) and continue to do so throughout the ceremonial period until
the ritual climax. The climax accomplishes what cannot be accomplished during
the non-ceremonial order, namely, the reintegration of individual memories of
belonging and love to produce feelings of well-being rather than sadness (Fisher
1998). In non-ritual times, the strong, ephemeral, and involuted ties based on
threaten to overwhelm and destabilize the ongoing order, to the point where the
living may be literally carried away to the land of the dead by their close relatives.
Sentiments of love and attachment self-evidently endure beyond the time-span of
the physical ties and interactions that forge them. However, the strong sense of
harmony and belonging that are thought to be a result of substance ties within the
nuclear family is created during ritual by the climactic performance. The performance of the liturgical order, consisting of displays of ceremonial wealth, singing,
and dancing, fuses the subjective feelings of individual belonging that are the fruit
of remembering the dead with participation in the co-ordinated actions of the living
to produce feelings of happiness and elation. If the feeling of sadness is the conventional expression of separation from loved family members, joy expresses their
reapproximation.
The rehearsals which create the liturgical chorus, the eating of food grown by
ritual sponsors, the gathering of raw materials to be painstakingly assembled into
dazzling ritual ornaments, the collective hunt producing massive amounts of meat,
all parallel the production of beautiful children to be honoured in ceremony.
Simultaneously, we see the reorganization of domestic space to displace nuclear
family relations initially within the ritual sponsors house, then during the ceremonial trek when men are absent from the dwellings, and finally during the ritual
climax when the entire community leaves their dwellings to occupy the plaza. The
simultaneous proximity and segregation of karon in Houses during the ritual climax
is a result of intricate ritual action over time that itself celebrates correct formation
and dissolution of nuclear family ties over time.The climax is as close as the Kayap
can come to a reintegration of former ties of substance, unmade through differentiation and death, by recasting them as social ties that are free from the ephemerality of substance. This is analogous to, and the inverse of, the substitution of the
parent-child tie for that of co-parents and mentors during the ritual period in which
the old elementary family is disintegrated in a delicate balancing of proximity and
segregation. The circulation and correct segregation of , karon, and kukradj make
this possible, yet turn out to be a realization of collective action rather than of individual families or kindred. The honoured children are not the only ones to show
their ceremonial wealth during ritual. To be beautiful, the ceremonial wealth of all
legitimate inheritors during the ceremony in question is shown simultaneously; the
beauty of an ornament lies in the fact that its form allows a more encompassing
form to be expressed. It is this display that simultaneously marks both the successful transmission of kukradj (ceremonial wealth plus names) to the honoured child

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WILLIAM H. FISHER

and the house occupation of the dead (karon). This simultaneity indexes the coordinated circulation of , karon, and kukradj within temporal binding of ritual
action.
Ritual conjoins the memory of family and deceased loved ones (the ones longed
for -ama) with the feelings of well-being felt by all participants. Friedrich (1991)
points out that mood may be employed as a trope. Happiness and experience of
beauty are not merely the products of a ritual successfully performed, but this mood
is itself thought to be an expression or index of a certain social state.12 While the
liturgical array of ceremonial wealth represents a timeless social order, the feelings
experienced during ritual index the ties of family and community.The modal trope
of happiness and elation functions to project the significance of individual feeling
onto a formal order. Symptoms of family ties happiness and harmony are conventional effects of ritual order because, among other things, ritual promotes the
mobilization of these sentiments. But it is the sentiments themselves that allow the
Kayap to make the analogy between family togetherness and community togetherness. There is no reference to an encompassing institution that symbolizes unity
as if we were all family. Rather, the formal liturgical order created in community
performance is the means by which people can give free rein to memory and thus
recover the closeness they feel with the non-living and with the living.

Conclusion
Rappaport (1999) argues that, while ritual performance often excites great emotion,
if the ritual form is followed correctly, the feelings evinced by participants can deny
neither the formal order that is brought into being by ritual nor the fact of
participants conformity to that order, by virtue of their bringing it into being
through their own actions. Evidence from Kayap ritual suggests that when feelings themselves are held to be indices of order, they may actually participate in the
construction of the formal order of ritual. For the Kayap, among whom sentiments are symptoms of social states, disharmony can falsify the truth that is affirmed
in ritual. This is to say that the feelings of participants may impede the successful
realization of ritual in quite a different sense from the way in which a disgruntled
congregation can always prevent a service from taking place through desultory nonco-operation and foot-dragging. One can say that, for the Kayap, emotions themselves are reflections of what is held to be a canonical order. The two streams of
messages, the canonical and the self-referential, are not neatly separable, since felt
emotions reference the proper transformation and differentiation of relations
among relations on which the Kayap social order rests, as well as the state of the
performers.
As a reflection of this process, great names are more than pure symbols: they are
indexical symbols, best characterized as tokens. The occurrence of a token is an
event that in this case references the successful termination of a process of differentiation of a group of kin originating from a commonly shared substance. As an
event, a token occurs in a particular time and place. Rappaport (1999: 473-4) follows
Burks (1949: 674) in defining a type as a collection of all instances of a token and
thus without any specific location in time or space. Names indeed symbolize a timeless social form, recreated and reaffirmed anew during each ritual. In the case of
names, however, reference to a timeless social form does not exhaust the meaning

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133

associated with naming. As Rappaport (1999: 474) states, the full meaning of the
indexical symbol includes an indexical as well as a symbolic meaning. Names mark
a particular occasion, a particular coming-together of the community, and a particular alignment of the circulation of components of persons: , kukradj, and karon.
Although Houses are sites of discontinuity that are created in ritual, the meaning
of names as tokens presumes an eternal continuity of enduring form. In this sense,
while I would contest the idea that Houses are invested with the notion of lineal
continuity, they none the less are understood as repositories of continuities of form.
Of all the existential touchstones in the life of a Kayap, great name rituals are
acutely recalled. The ability of informants to remember specifics of rituals that had
taken place decades before was a key part of Verswijvers (1992) methodology in
reconstructing a chronological history of the western Kayap groups.
The property of indexicality also explains why Houses have no jural presence in
community affairs and why not all Kayap need to receive ceremonially confirmed
names. Names are made to pass over a divide. They do not represent the continuity through time of a gene-like essence belonging to House members, and Houses
are not corporations. Houses are sites of differentiation, and House occupants, as
kin, necessarily value the symbolic means available to them, names and ceremonial
wealth, by means of which proper forms of sociality may be created. Houses are
sites in which the changing relational qualities of personhood must be expressed,
and the qualities of persons occupying Houses must be shaped. Once the lead child
has been the focus of group restrictions, naming, and the co-ordinated actions of
kin, the necessary reshuffling of relations has already been signalled. Successive ceremonies in honour of additional children do not carry all the significance of the
lead childs ceremony. There are other facets of the ceremony that are significant
redistribution of food, reiteration of relationships between co-parents, the collective
well-being produced during ritual but beautiful or great names are an expression
of group transformation and appear to risk losing this significance if applied to all
children.
NOTES
It is impossible to mention all those who have heard me out on one or other of the ideas expressed
here. Stephen Hugh-Jones had the special insight to see the relevance of Roy Wagners work to my
own. The University of Braslia Department of Anthropology accorded me visiting status and heard
an earlier version of this article. Stephen Baines, J.C. Melatti, and Marcio Silva carefully read subsequent drafts. Maria de Ftima Rodrigues, Jack and Darcy Spence, and Katherine Yih helped mightily at different points during writing. The incisive commentaries by two anonymous readers for JRAI
gave me more to attend to than has proved possible in the present version.
1
In following common usage that takes ceremony to be a species of ritual, I use ceremony and
ritual interchangeably in this article.
2
Diverse ethnographers entertain very divergent views about the meaning of name rituals, while
appearing to be in general agreement regarding what transpires. While offering my own interpretation, I frequently cite the observations of other authors in order to highlight the areas of agreement
between us. I conducted fieldwork among the Bakaj Xikrin Kayap between 1984 and 1986 and
again in 1994 and 1995 for a total of some sixteen months.
3
Although the childs name originates with these relatives, their relationship encompasses more than
naming, and hence I depart from a common usage in the literature that glosses these relatives as namegivers and their reciprocal term as name-receiver.
4
This term is also used to refer to an infant submitted to certain rites of passage, notably the people
of the black bracelets rite (Verswijver 1982: 44).

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WILLIAM H. FISHER

5
I follow Rappaport for whom a liturgical order consists of a more-or-less invariant sequence of
formal acts and utterances of some duration repeated in specified contexts.
6
Bamberger (1974: 365) asserts that 8 years is too old, while Lea (1992: 134) holds that ceremonies
may be held until the onset of adolescence, and my observations parallel hers.
7
According to the classification of signs proposed by Peirce and adopted by Rappaport (1999: 155),
an index is a sign which is caused by, or is part of, or, possibly, in the extreme case is identical with,
that which it signifies.
8
Nuclear families are created by the forging of substance ties while simultaneously substituting new
relationships that reconstitute ties between siblings and parents of the former family of orientation,
but the observance of angri can extend beyond the nuclear family. The Mebengokre [Kayap] recognize the possibility of an individual having two or more genitors, but in practice it is uncommon
(Lea 2002: 106).
9
It would be relevant to discuss the role of shamans (wayang) and the perverse inversion between
the normal role of and karon in the exercise of shamanic power (cf. Fisher 2001: 130-1).
10
One family disposed of a highly prized stereo system when their child died because she had
enjoyed listening and dancing to its music.
11
Kayap distinguish between referencing the dead, that is, reciting names for genealogical charts
and longing for, or dreaming of, the dead.
12
I am tempted to go further and describe the modal trope in this case as a juxtaposition of moods,
the proximity and segregation of elation or sadness indexing not only the presence and separation of
the dead and the living but also representing the basic irresolvable tension that is necessarily created
by the requirements of sociality.

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Rituels doctroi de noms et les sentiments chez les Kayap

(Mebengokre)
Resum
Cet article analyse les grands rituels dits doctroi de noms au sein de la population Kayap de
langue G (Mebengokre) au Brsil Central. Lorganisation rituelle exerce une contrainte sur la
coordination temporelle et spatiale des changes entre diverses catgories de relations pour que
les liens des familles nuclaires soient diffrencis. En tant que site fondamental de ce processus
de diffrentiation, la Maison subit plusieurs transformations dans son organisation pendant la
priode du crmonial, et son rle central dans la pense sociale Kayap drive plutt de ceci
que de lidentit corporative durable qui lui est attribue. Lanalyse du rituel Kayap nous permet
de dvelopper les ides de Rappaport au sujet des relations entre les messages variables et invariables dans le rituel, car la production du sentiment est une tche centrale de lactivit rituelle
et de tels sentiments sont ncessaires la reproduction dun ordre formel dans le rituel.
Dept of Anthropology, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA. whfish@wm.edu