WHY THE ANUFO DO NOT EAT FROGMEAT: THE IMPORTANCE OF TABOO-MAKING FOR DEVELOPMENT WORK

Abstract

TABOOS AND THE aetiological myths that occasionally accompany them, explaining them and claborating their social context, are more than repositories of the values and beliefs of a culture, or collections of colourful lore. Even more than proverbs, genealogies, idealized histories and other folklore, taboos and their explanatory myths, when taken in a total context, are strategies for living. One might say they are 'not good to eat' but good to live. However, since the constraints put upon communal behaviour by taboos are not perceived as being practical, economical, or instrumental in effecting a sound ecology, but are rather seen as part of the irrational genre of the magico-religious, they are seldom seriously explored by development theorists. It is the purpose of this paper to show that taboo-making has its own logic in promoting and balancing the total human environment within a cultural system, and that sometimes new taboos arise in response to serious imbalances within social and environmental structures. I will analyse the explanatory text accompanying a recent prohibition against the eating of frogmeat among the Anufo of Northern Ghana showing how the prohibition relates to recent changes in their society. But first I will briefly trace some inter-related anthropoligical ideas about myth, ritual and taboo.