Taboo

Abstract

PROF. HUTTON WEBSTER is well known from his earlier books on "Primitive Secret Societies" and on "Rest Days". His new book, on "Taboo", collects together from ethnographical literature a mass of data concerning the ritual prohibitions found in what are commonly called 'primitive societies'. His aim, as stated by himself, is "to show how important a place taboos hold in the cultural evolution of mankind". The author's definition is as follows: "Taboos form a specific series of thou-shalt-nots. They are not to be confused (as in popular usage) with social conventions and regulations of a negative sort, conventions and regulations without an obvious utility. They are to be distinguished from restrictions resting on the vague notion of unluckiness which attaches to certain acts or things or times, restrictions found in the lower culture and, under the attenuated form of a survival, lingering among ourselves. More important still, there are innumerable prohibitions, both animistic and non-animistic in character, which must likewise be excluded from the conception of taboo if this is to possess any scientific validity and retain a place in ethnological theory. Taboos are prohibitions which, when violated, produce automatically in the offender a state of ritual disability —'taboo sickness'—only relieved, when relief is possible, by a ceremony of purification". Taboo A Sociological Study. By Dr. Hutton Webster. Pp. xii + 393. (Stanford University, Calif.: Stanford University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1942.) 24s. net.