Blood Symbolism: Thicker than water? (Special Topic 2)

It is quite common for newcomers to anthropology to believe that there is a scientific basis to their beliefs about blood. However, many of our beliefs about blood are not scientifically testable or provable through science. They belong to another domain of belief; a domain which we could call 'worldview' (following Sapir & Whorf), or 'religious' (following Geertz), or 'ideology' (following Marxists). Maybe I'll just call it 'symbolic' here.

So let's analyse our thinking about blood. Imagine I time travel back to the 1800s and meet a nobleman. He tells me that his blood is blue. I point out that in his last battle when he was struck by an arrow, red fluid splattered everywhere. He agrees that red blood was visible, but still contradicts me. The blue blood is an invisible quality. It might even be hidden within the red blood I saw. The blue blood is not a visible, scientific quality. It is what we might call word view, or religious belief, or ideology, or simply symbolic belief.

To take a contemporary example.  If I say I will stand up for and protect my mother, "because blood is thicker than water", I'm saying that we share the same blood and that blood is extremely important. However, scientifically speaking, her blood type is different to mine. So what is this blood we share? It is an imaginary substance which I care much more about than trivial issues like whether my mother is A and I'm AB. But this idea of sharing blood with my mother is culturally specific! As we will see below, the Alwad 'Ali Bedouins don't believe I share blood with my mother.


Indeed, blood has poignant symbolic meanings in many different cultures. In this advanced special topic, I start out be comparing a scientific and cultural understanding of blood in European, Bedouin, and Melanesian cultures. Then I look at the two kinds of blood among Awlad 'Ali Bedouins as providing a strong tie with male ancestors. This contrasts strong with Melanesian ideas which see blood as contaminating and feminine.  To make sense of this, I use a Geertzian analysis of symbols.

Blood symbolism in European cultures

Thicker than water

To analyse blood symbolism, we could start by considering "heart" and "blood" in European cultures. These body components have strong symbolic connotations. When we say, for example, "she plays piano with a lot of heart" we don't mean that she takes a lot of her cardiac muscle out of her chest and strikes the piano keys with it. Similarly, if I say "I have got bad blood with my teacher", I'm not literally referring to plasma and platelets. Yet some of us feel heartache and broken-hearted, literally, in the area of our cardiac muscle.

Scientifically speaking, of course, members of a family have different blood types--and that's just the start of it. And yet we feel as if, literally, our family members share the same blood.  This symbolic aspect of blood and heart is something we know and feel, strongly, but it's certainly not science rather it's culture. So when we say to our brother "blood is thicker than water" we are not talking about the blood  you can see using a microscope in a lab. Indeed, you'll never find the symbolic qualities of blood that way. And that's one thing that holds true of blood symbolism in all culture. So how is blood understood in different cultures?

Blood symbolism in Bedouin cultures

Blood symbolism among the Awlad 'Ali Bedouins

In Veiled Sentiments, Abu-Lughod describes life in a community of Awlad 'Ali  Bedouins. Her classic ethnography focuses on ghinnawas, deeply personal women's poems about love, longing, etc. If you're interested in more about the book please check out my summary of Chapter 1:

However, my interest lies in the book's description of symbolic aspects of blood. As Abu-Lughod explains it, the Alwad 'Ali Bedouins share some of European ideas about blood. Indeed, blood seems even more significant. Everything important aspect of identity and social life is tied up with blood:

key principles of social organization: geneaology and a tribal order based on the closeness of agnates (paternal relatives) and tied to a code of morality, that of honor and modesty...[These] principles define individuals' identities and the qualities of their relationships to others These principles are gathered up in the Alwad 'Ali notions of "blood" (40-41).

The Alwad 'Ali have two conceptions of blood. But before analyzing these two conceptions, we need to get a handle on how they understand family. This relates to the idea of patrilineality.

Patrlineal

For a description of patrlineality in Bedouin kinship see this superb blog: https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/marriage/marriage_3.htm

Alternatively, I attempt to describe it here, but please get a pen and paper for yourself

Finally, another way to understand patrilineal blood, think of 'traditional' surnames (second names) in England. My name is Nicholas Herriman, so "Herriman" is my surname. My father's father is a Herriman. My father, me, my siblings, my children, my brother's children, for example, all belong the same patrline. They are Herrimans. However, my sister's children, my aunt's children belong to their husband's patriline. They do not take the Herriman name. And, if we were Bedouins, we would not think that they were part of my family.

(There is one big problem with my analogy. In many European cultures the woman takes her husband's surname, as if she now belongs to her husband's people. Amongst the Bedouins, my sister belongs to my people, once and for all).

If you're still unclear on the concept of "patrilineal descent", please refer to a book on kinship; the standard undergraduate work, Schutsky, Manual for Kinship Analysis. In its glossary "PATRLINEAL DESCENT" is defined as "a system which affiliates ego with a group of kinsmen, all of whom are related to him through males"(92). The author provides more detail on pages 24-28.

Once you're clear on patrilineal descent, we can move onto the two kinds of blood described by Abu-Lughod. 

Asl: Blood of pedigree

One is asl. Asl is the original blood that they share with the forebears who once lived in Arabia before moving to North Africa. All Awlad 'Ali Bedouins have this blood. It's their pedigree.

One analogy might be to the idea that all nobles and aristocrats in England have 'blue blood'. Their bodily substance was apparently distinct from that of commoners. If you say of a merchant community that "business is in their blood", that's a similar idea.

This "asl" is what makes the Bedouin men fearless and generous and Bedouin women modest and honourable. Lacking this asl, the Nile Egyptians, Christians and others will never attain the Bedouin's moral character.

Garaba: Blood of patrilineal kin

The other idea of blood is garaba. This is like the blood we talk of when we say "blood is thicker than water". It is the blood that we share with members of our family. One difference with Bedouins is that the the family or blood is understood to descend only down a male line. Put another way, this blood is patrlineal.

In this presentation, I summarize the sections of Veiled Sentiments, in which Abu-Lughod describes the two kinds of blood:

Blood symbolism in Melanesia

Melanesia has an astonishing variety of societies. If we consider just one part of Melanesia, the island of New Guinea, a great diversity presents itself. One general point of difference emerges: for the Bedouin blood is honourable (asl) and descends (garaba) down the male line; in New Guinea, blood is evil and contemptible and is passed down from the mother.

Poisonous Blood: Menstruating Men

 One theme that emerges in many of the New Guinea cultures is a fear or terror, among men, of blood as an evil, feminising force. The classic account of this comes from the island of Wogeo in Hogbin's, Island of Menstruating Men. I have summarised a few pages of this, in which Hogbin describes men cutting their penises in order to shed contaminating blood.

The Wogeo believe women have a deadly power over men. The touch of a menstruating woman can kill a man. So men blame women for all their problems, but women also blame men. Furthermore, Wogeo men and women wish remain separate as from each other as possible. The problem, as they see it, is that contact is unavoidable.

Sex should avoided before embarking on important ventures. Nevertheless, sex with spouses, not to mention adultery, is common. This is because, though enjoyable, sex is also dangerous

So cleansing from this contamination of contact is necessary. You cleanse yourselfe by menstruating. Menstruating is easy for women; men, by contrast, must periodically cut their penises. So, periodically, a Wogeo man:

goes to a lonely beach, and wades out till the water is up to his knees. He stands there with legs apart and...induces an erection. When ready he pushes back the foreskin and hacks the glans.

Blood and Semen

A chapter by Hauser-Schaublin on blood shows how in several mainland New Guinea societies blood is thought to be contaminating and associated with women. Semen (or sometimes grease) is associated with men. Both substances are necessary to create babies, but the semen provides the hard, durable elements of the body, like bones and teeth. Furthermore, this semen dates back to the ancestral father of the clan and is passed on down the male line. The blood of the women by contrast dies with her. Semen is perpetual; blood is temporal. This presentation provides an overview of the fist half of that chapter:

Summary

In various Melanesian, European, and Bedouin cultures blood is something that is passed down from one or both parents to children. Blood explains certain aspects or characteristics in children. But who passes down the blood, what characteristics are associated with this blood, and what implications result differ markedly between the cultures. 

Geertzian Analysis

Anthropology furnishes us with many other fascinating examples of the symbolism associated with blood. Using different anthropological theories provides with different insights. Let's consider Geertz's theory.

Geertz would say that this blood symbolism is 'really real'. It has nothing to do with scientific knowledge of the world. Rather it something that lies behind appearances. In other words, you could go back to the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, in 1700s France, and convince the nobility of our contemporary scientific understanding of blood types, plates, plasma, haemoglobin etc. But you would not be able to convince them that in a 'really real' sense (in the reality of the universe that lies behind the appearances of things) that their blood was really blue.

Similarly when I think of blood being thicker than water, I believe that in a true sense my kin (and I understand my kin in a typical Anglo-Australian way) share the same blood as me. Again, it's not the blood types, plates, plasma, haemoglobin understanding of blood. Instead it's something deeper, more profound.

Further Research

That's what Geertz might say. What about you? Which theory do you think would be most illuminating when considering the blood symbolism described above?

Bibliography

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Geertz, C 1966. 'Religion as a Cultural System', in M Banton (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, Tavistock Publications, London, pp. 1-46.

Hauser Schaublin, 1993. "Blood: Cultural effectivenes of biological conditions," in Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta Miller, Barbara Diane (Eds.). Blood. The cultural effectiveness of biological concepts, pp. 83-106.

Hogbin, I, 1996. The island of menstruating men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea, Waveland Press, Long Grove, IL.