1. Symbols as Survivals--Frazer

Introduction to Section 1

Now you have completed the Introduction and Overview to Symbols and Society, you are ready for Section One. I  introduce Frazer's theory that prehistoric magical beliefs live on in the contemporary world. These beliefs live on in the form of symbols. By the end of the section, you should be able to say what Frazer's theory about symbols can tell us about being a human; what questions Frazer's theory raises; what the strengths and weaknesses of his theory are; and, finally where Frazer sits in the history of anthropology.

First, watch this presentation.

Now listen to this lecture on Frazer. It introduces the idea of symbols as survivals; in other words that symbols are survivals of our ancestors' beliefs. Frazer's basic point is that prehistoric rituals which relied on homeopathic and contagious magic have survived, as symbols, past their used-by-date and right into modern times.

You can also use my lecture notes, if they help.

Now you can go ahead and read the following short chapters from Frazer's epic: The Golden Bough.

1. King of the Wood (you can skip from “I begin by setting forth” down eight paragraphs and resume at “Reviewing the evidence as a whole”);
 2. Priestly Kings; 
3. Sympathetic Magic; 
61 The Myth of Balder; 
68. The Golden Bough; 
69. Farewell to Nemi.

Next, I recommend you read my blog post; it highlights ritual elements in an Australian and New Zealand celebration called "Anzac Day". Anzac Day is akin to Remembrance Day in Canada or Veterans Day in the USA. We will analyze the symbols of Anzac Day at times during this unit.

Understanding Frazer: Evolution / Human Progress

For Frazer, human thought had developed from magic, to science, to religion; our intellectual history could be seen as a ‘web’: 

woven of three different threads—the black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white thread of science… Could we then survey the web of thought from the beginning, we should probably perceive it to be at first a chequer of black and white, a patchwork of true and false notions, hardly tinged as yet by the red thread of religion. But carry your eye farther along the fabric and you will remark that, while the black and white chequer still runs through it, there rests on the middle portion of the web, where religion has entered most deeply into its texture, a dark crimson stain, which shades off insensibly into a lighter tint as the white thread of science is woven more and more into the tissue. To a web thus chequered and stained, thus shot with threads of diverse hues, but gradually changing colour the farther it is unrolled, the state of modern thought, with all its divergent aims and conflicting tendencies, may be compared. 

So we have moved from the red realm of religion into the white realm of science.

Understanding Frazer: Mistletoe as the Golden Bough

According to Frazer, our ancestors believed mistletoe had magical powers--it contained the life-force of, and the ability to kill or preserve. What it could kill or preserve was the sun, the god, or the king. In ancient times, these were the same thing: the king was also a god, who was the sun.

Personal crest of King Louis XIV, the Sun King.

Frazer provides many examples. But the one case he focuses on more than any other is the Golden Bough which kills the King of the Wood. Basically, in back in Roman times, there was a forest outside of Rome at a place called Nemi. At Nemi, a man called the King of the Wood 'ruled' over this forest/wood. But he could be killed and replaced by a slave. The slave would use the 'golden bough' from a tree. Now the slave was King, until another slave came and killed How to explain this 'strange' custom?

Balder struck down by mistltoe.

The other example he focuses on is a Norse story about a god named Balder. Nothing could kill him except mistletoe. Frazer thinks that what happened in the forest outside Rome back in Roman times is essentially similar to the story about Balder. This how he explains it all at the end of his monumental work:

In this concluding part of The Golden Bough I have discussed the problem which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood...kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to institute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse god Balder, who...perished by a stroke of mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or in heaven could wound him. On the theory here suggested both Balder and the King of the Wood...had deposited their lives or souls for safety [in mistletoe.... This] furnishes me with a pretext for discussing not only the general question of the external soul in popular superstition, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire played a part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the [the Rites of Nemi a.k.a. the King of the Wood]. Thus...what is true of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself....

The mistletoe which kills Balder contains the same life force which gives Balder life; the same applies to the King of the Wood. Can you think of a similar case of something which give the hero power yet is also deadly to the hero? There is at least one famous example in popular culture

Understanding Frazer: Killing Shilluk Kings

Now another exercise. Read Section 24, Chapter 2 of the Golden Bough. Or you can read my summary if you're time poor. This introduces the idea of the divine monarchs or god-kings. Especially this question: Kings are divine in some societies, so why are they killed? What is Frazer's answer?

Shilluk King also a God

Divine monarchs have fascinated anthropologists. If you're interested in more about this topic, one of the biggest stars of anthropology Dave Graeber has written about them.  I've also summarized some of his writing in another blog.

Understanding Frazer: Summary

So if I had to provide a clunky summary of what we know about Frazer from this week's materials it would be this. Frazer says:

    Our human ancestors believed that the sun was in danger of dying. Every year, as they saw it dying, they had to bring it back to life. They believed they had the magical power to do this. They used a kind of sympathetic magic (call it homeopathic magic) to bring the sun back to life. One way to bring the sun back to life magically was to make bonfires.
     Our human ancestors also noticed that mistletoe springs to life just as the sun is 'dying'. They thought mistletoe was the key or source of the suns power. It was the magical object in which the power to revive (and also kill) the sun was kept.
        Thousands of years later, humans developed religion and kings. They believed that their kings were gods and vice versa. Royal subjects believed that their well-being depended on the god-king. If the god-king was ill, so was the realm, and vice versa.
    It was crucial that the god-king not be allowed to age and lose virility, else the lands would all become infertile, given the magical-religious connection between the god-king and his realm. Therefore, god-kings needed to be killed before they become elderly.
  We can see examples of that belief  in the Myth of Balder and Rites of Nemi.

What Frazer, I think, is hinting at in all this, is that the Christian belief in Jesus Christ as the "King of Kings" who was resurrected is an example of this ancestral belief.

For the purposes of this subject, you don't really need to remember who Balder was, what the mistletoe did etc. The take-home message is: ancestral beliefs survive as symbols in current rituals and stories.

Evaluating Frazer: Ethnographical Critique

Now you have an understanding of Frazer's theory, let's evaluate that theory. We'll start with Malinowski. Malinowski is credited with pioneering a methodological approach—participant observation. He outlines this method in the chapter “Introduction: The Subject, Method and Scope of This Enquiry” from his Argonauts of the Western Pacific.  In the following quotation, he critiques the idea that, for example, hanging up mistletoe is merely a survival, a cultural leftover, from the past.

In the passage we’ll look at, Malinowski is dealing with rituals. Rituals, for our purposes, symbols in action; meaning put into motion. It's the difference for example,  between bowing to somebody or bending over to stretch your legs, and between drinking a toast to someone and just drinking because you're thirsty. So to recap, Malinowski is critiquing treating rituals--symbols in action--as survivals.

Now let’s read the passage:

Much has been said and written about survival. Yet the survival character of an act is expressed in nothing so well as in the concomitant behaviour, in the way in which it is carried out. Take any example from our own culture, whether it be the pomp and pageantry of a state ceremony, or a picturesque custom kept up by street urchins, its “outline” will not tell you whether the rite flourishes still with full vigour in the hearts of those who perform it or assist at the performance or whether they regard it as almost a dead thing, kept alive for tradition’s sake. But observe and fix the data of their behaviour, and at once the degree of vitality of the act will become clear. There is no doubt, from all points of sociological, or psychological analysis, and in any question of theory, the manner and type of behaviour observed in the performance of an act is of the highest importance. Indeed behaviour is a fact, a relevant fact, and one that can be recorded. And foolish indeed and short-sighted would be the man of  science who would pass by a whole class of phenomena, ready to be garnered, and leave them to waste, even though he did not see at the moment to what theoretical use they might be put!

As to the actual method of observing and recording in field-work these imponderabilia of actual life and of typical behaviour, there is no doubt that the personal equation of the observer comes in here more prominently, than in the collection of crystalised, ethnographic data. But here also the main endeavour must be to let facts speak for themselves. If in making a daily round of the village, certain small incidents, characteristic forms of taking food, of conversing, of doing work... are found occurring over and over again, they should be noted down at once....the Ethnographer ought to record carefully and precisely, one after the other, the actions of the actors and of the spectators. Forgetting for a moment that he knows and understands the structure of this ceremony, the main dogmatic ideas underlying it, he might try to find himself only in the midst of an assembly of human-beings, who behave seriously or jocularly, with earnest concentration or with bored frivolity, who are either in the same mood as he finds them every day, or else are screwed up to a high pitch of excitement, and so on and so on. With his attention constantly directed to this aspect of tribal life, with the constant endeavour to fix it, to express it in terms of actual fact, a good deal of reliable and expressive material finds its way into his notes. He will be able to “set” the act into its proper place in tribal life, that is to show whether it is exceptional or commonplace, one in which the natives behave ordinarily, or one in which their whole behaviour is transformed.

The preceding passage is a critique of the 'survivals' approach of Frazer. The approach that Frazer takes is most closely associated with which method? Why does Malinowski imply the 'survivals' approach is "foolish and shorts sighted"? What, according to Malinowski, is a better approach?

Evaluating Frazer: Functionalist Critique

Frazer felt that the symbols of magic are survivals of merely a case of mistaken belief that magic exists. Radcliffe-Brown, if a society is to continue, the sum of all the elements of that society must assist to keep its members alive. If the society has beliefs and practices don't keep its members alive, the society dies off. So the rituals and symbols that Frazer described must function to enable a society to continue existing.

Sir James [Frazer] accounted for the taboos of savage tribes as the application of beliefs arrived at by erroneous processes of reasoning…. My own view is that the…rites of savages exist and persist because they part of a mechanism by which an orderly society maintains itself (Radcliffe-Brown 1979 [1939], 56).

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown are pre-eminent figures in Functionalist anthropology. By contrasting their approach with the evolutionary approach of Frazer, we get a sense of the history of anthropology. We see over time anthropologists approached symbols asking different questions, initially, "what are the origins and evolution of this symbol?", then later "how does this symbol function?". This latter question is associated with Functionalism, which we study in Week 2. So if Frazer looks at a symbol and tries to trace its history, what does Radcliffe-Brown do when he looks at a symbol?

Evaluating Frazer: Post-modern Critique

Another critique of Frazer is described in the above presentation. A post-modern critique of Frazer would argue with the way Frazer posits the West as the most advanced society and other societies as relatively backward. Ranging backward from those which believe in science, to religion, to magic. As should be obvious from my Frazer presentation, the idea that the West is more advanced is problematic. Anthropologists use the word "teleology" to describe this Western-centred idea of progress.

Reflections

Outside of universities, Frazer's ideas about symbols are implicitly accepted, even by people who have never heard of him. Yet almost all contemporary anthropologists regard Frazer as problematic. I've outlined some reasons for this in my presentation. Another reason Frazer is largely discredited is that now we have modern archaeology as a discipline to discover and examine ancient material evidence. Although Frazer is enjoyable to read, his argument about prehistoric beliefs now seems to be based mostly on conjecture. And although Frazer initiated the modern discipline of anthropology, as we will see in the second half of the course, contemporary anthropologists prefer to analyze symbols based on the experience of participating in and observing the lives of people we study. They have adopted Malinowski's position, in other words. In brief, Frazer assumed that his culture was more advanced and Frazer did not undertake fieldwork. These facts undermine his credibility in the eyes of most contemporary anthropologists. Studying Frazer is nevertheless crucial, as the subsequent study of symbols in anthropology critically responds to the ideas put forward in The Golden Bough.

Final words

Frazer is one of the first modern anthropologists, so you now are familiar with starting point of our discipline. By this stage, you should have basic understanding of the discipline of anthropology. You should also understand Frazer's theory of symbols as survivals, being able to identify strengths and weaknesses in his theory of origins and evolution (especially as applied to symbols). As you go through the course, you should be able to situate his theory in relation to subsequent anthropological theories of symbols. To start developing that ability, please proceed with Section Two--Symbolizing Society.