Renato Rosaldo
Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage
Ilongot People
•
Ilongot: a people of the Philippines,
averaging 3,500 people in 1993
•
Practicing hunting and subsistence
agriculture (also called horticulture),
requiring very simple technology
•
Stateless society
Area in green
indicates
Ilongot’s
location
Kinship (general definition)
•
Kinship:
a relation between two or more
people based on either common ancestry
(descent), or marriage (affinity), or
adoption
Ilongot Kinship
•
Social organization
: based on kinship:
the largest kinship unit is the
bertan
and is
based on descent from a common
ancestor
•
Matrilocality
: after marriage the couple
moves with (or close to) the bride’s family
of origin. This practice is typically linked to
women’s higher status in society, and this
is indeed the case among the Ilongot
Interpreting Headhunting
•
The Ilongot once practiced headhunting, a
practice that drew lots of attention to this
people.
•
Renato Rosaldo dedicated much of his
professional life studying the Ilongot and
the institution of headhunting.
•
In the following slides, the instructor
summarizes some of Rosaldo’s findings
and their larger implication for
anthropology (including the impact of
culturally constructed emotions on this
practice)
Headhunting
•
The practice of cutting off human heads
•
“As a ritual of revenge and grief over a
deceased relative, the Ilongot of the
Philippines sever human heads” (Chiseri-
Strater and Sustein 1997: 7).
Stepping out of a culture
•
As seen in Miner’s description of the
Nacirema: Understanding requires
stepping out of a culture (that is, making
the familiar unfamiliar) to create some
distance and be able to gain a more
objective perspective
Additional Insights
•
This week we will see that in addition to
distance and objectivity, more subjective
experiences can also be used to enhance
cross-cultural understanding
•
As you will see in the slides that follow and
from your own reading of Rosaldo,
Rosaldo’s own personal experiences
enhanced his ability to make sense of
Ilongot headhunting
Subjectivity
•
