The term and concept of taboo is derived from a Micronesian native word, first reported by Captain James Cook (1728–1779) in his accounts of his voyages to the Pacific. Taboo refers to a cultural custom or rule that designates certain actions, things, animals, or places as dangerous, forbidden, or impure, and forces individuals or the whole society to avoid them. There are two biggest distinctions between taboos and other rules and laws that forbid certain actions. The first is that the danger that things forbidden by the taboos bring is not clearly apparent, i.e., it is not clear to an outside observer why forbidden things bring bad luck or negative outcomes, as is the case with forbidding murder, theft, or other crimes. The second is that transgression of taboo rules brings negative consequences not by negative actions of other people, but by supernatural (magical or religious) punishment. Infraction of some taboos can bring negative consequences to the whole society, while breaking other taboos punishes only the individual who commits that offence. Consequences from breaking taboos can vary from the hardest – death, injury, or sickness – to milder forms of the perpetrator being designated as contaminated or impure. In the latter case, performing a cleansing ritual can undue the contamination.

                     Examples of Taboos across the World

One of the most notable and widespread taboos is the incest taboo, which prohibits sexual and marital relations between close cousins. In most societies, dietary taboos prohibit the eating of certain animals. For example, the Old Testament prohibits the eating of shellfish, Muslims are prohibited from eating pork, while Hindus are prohibited from consuming cows.

Professions that entail danger and risk (sailors and miners) or are based on chances (athletes, fishermen, and gamblers) employ specific taboos to secure success or avoid disasters. Minors refuse to work on days that their hands and feet are cold, sailors in the past refused to allow women on board ships, and male athletes avoid having sex before matches.  

In many cultures, things related to death, such as specific words, numbers, or flowers, are forbidden from use in ordinary circumstances. Menstruating women are taboo in many cultures, i.e., they have to isolate themselves from other members of the society, in more extreme cases, or are forbidden to go to certain places (especially holy places such as temples or churches) or from doing specific actions.

         Theoretical Explanations for the Creation of Taboos

William Graham Sumner, in his Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1906), argues that when a particular correct pattern of behavior acquires the authority of fact (truth), in a particular society, then it becomes part of "mores". Mores are coercive and constraining social norms that include philosophical and ethical teachings, beliefs, codes, and standards of the good life. Social norms (mores) formulate rules and boundaries of behavior. Every individual is subject to the "legitimacy" of social conventions from birth. Mores regulate the social, political, and religious behaviors of people. Social conventions usually contain "taboos", forbidden behaviors that have been proven to be harmful by historical experience. Social norms coerce individuals, so a person who does not respect them is expelled from society. In this way, mores perform the function of social selection. Different societies have different folkways of life, that is, different customs, rules, taboos, and conventions, so it is necessary to apply ethnographic research to determine specific customs for each particular society.

James George Frazer, in his The Golden Bough, defines taboos as “negative magic”, i.e., instead of creating supernatural influence, as is done with positive magic, taboos instead command avoiding creating supernatural influence.  

Émile Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), viewed taboos as necessary “interdictions” that separate the realm of sacred and the profane. To understand religion, Durkheim explored what he considered to be the most primitive and simplest form of religious life, and that is the totemistic religion of Australian Aborigines. Australian Aborigines lived in societies that were divided into several clans, each of which was relatively independent, but the rule of exogamy applied when marrying, so each spouse had to be a member of another clan. Each clan was characterized by great cooperation and solidarity, and that solidarity was symbolized by a specific totem. Totems were certain plants or animals from the environment in which the clan lived, and it was believed that the whole clan came from that plant or animal and was named after it, so there was a ritual avoidance of that totem. Totems were imbued with a mysterious and sacred force or principle (known as mana) and were therefore a source of moral rules (taboos) and principles. Totems were the most sacred objects in religious rituals, as visible manifestations of the totemic principle and god, but they also symbolized the whole society and its unity.

In the book Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913), Sigmund Freud explores the myth (that he invented) about the killing and eating of the violent father in the primal horde. Freud starts with Darwin's theory that states that in early primitive human societies, a single alpha male possessed a harem of females, with all other males prohibited from forming relations with those females. Freud makes an assumption that in a single event in a distant human past, the band of brothers that was expelled from the group by their alpha-male father, returned and killed and ate him. Brothers both feared and respected the father. After the act of murdering and eating the father, the sons went into a state of remorse and guilt, and they gave up having sexual relations with the women belonging to the deceased father; in that way, they created a new symbolic order, and that is the order of the law. The respect and remorse that the brothers felt toward their father, according to Freud, is the symbolic origin of the Oedipus complex and totemism. Even more, this hypothetical singular event represents the true origins of human society and of all religions, as an effect of collective guilt and ambivalence regarding the killing of the father figure (the true original sin).

Claude Lévi-Strauss sees the kinship system and marriage are cultural phenomena based on the prohibition (taboo) of incest, and the interdiction of sexual behavior is not a natural phenomenon. He argues that the incest taboo, as a negative prohibition, leads to a positive rule of reciprocal exchange of women between kinship groups, hence strengthening social cohesion and alliances.

In the book Purity and Danger (1966), Mary Douglas presents her theory of social order based on opposite categories of purity and impurity. She specifically focuses on “taboos” - things, beings, and practices to be avoided or scorned. Religious and other cultural beliefs proscribe beliefs of both pollution and cleanliness and place strict rules that, if followed, ensure moral and physical purity. Douglas rejects the evolutionary explanation that posits that cultures and societies go through evolutionary stages in which magical thinking is emblematic of the least developed stage, religious thinking in intermediary stages, and scientific thinking encompasses the highest evolutionary stage. In contrast to those theories, Douglas states that every society needs similar rules of purity to protect social rules and the integrity of the hierarchical social order. To achieve that, societies create specific taboos that reflect the social and cosmological classifications and protect social order. Objects and acts that are outside one category are deemed ‘matter out of place’, and thus are forbidden. Mental categories that culture imparts upon an individual are a reflection of social order and its categories. Analogously, the human body reflects the social body; hence, rules that prohibit bodily transgressions actually serve to protect from social transgressions. One part of the book, Purity and Danger, examines what she calls “the Abominations of Leviticus”, which refers to taboos and rules from the third book of the Old Testament – the Book of Leviticus. In Leviticus, there are dietary taboos on eating pigs, shellfish, and some wild animals; a ban on homosexual behavior, taboos regarding menstruation and leprosy, prohibition of mixing fibers of different origins in the same clothing, etc. All those prohibitions present the same kind of danger of crossing the boundaries of mental categories organized in a coherent system. Animals that are anatomically anomalous from their counterparts and escape distinct taxonomical definitions (pigs differ from other ungulates, and shellfish from fish) are forbidden because they break those mental boundaries.  

In Douglas’ subsequent book Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (1970), she expands on the ideas of the previous book and presents a universal theory that can be applied to relations between the human body and social body, in all societies. She starts by introducing the conceptual pair of ‘grid’ and ‘group’, as the basis of the symbolic system of classification of societies. The concept of grid refers to internal social borders, that is, to what degree is status of an individual in a society depends on social distinctions and divisions, like hierarchies, race, gender, or ethnicity. The concept of the group refers to external borders of society, that is, to what degree individuals are motivated by individualist goals or by the common good of the whole society. Cultures can vary in the intensity of both group and grid. A hierarchical society that avoids strangers would have a ‘high grid’ and ‘high group,’ while, on the other hand, an egalitarian society that welcomes strangers would have a ‘low grid’ and ‘low group.’ Societies that have a high intensity of both variables will have many taboos, while societies with low intensity in both variables will have few taboos. Societies where one variable is high, and the other variable is low, would have taboos related to the functioning of the variable that is high.

Marvin Harris, in books Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture (1974) and Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture (1985), studies food taboos in different societies, Harris shows that they are based on the ecological-technological reality in which a certain culture develops, while the emic explanations of the members of those cultures either try to explain the taboos as based on religion/magic or as rational behavior, therefore that certain food is bad or dirty to eat. From the beginning of his work in the anthropology of food, Marvin Harris tried to unravel the apparent illogicalities and irrationalities in the eating patterns of people in different cultures. He refused to believe that dietary patterns arose by chance or that they simply arose as a consequence of religious-magical taboos or obligations. Harris managed to find a rational explanation based on a materialistic approach to each food pattern in different cultures, which is primarily based on the study of climate, flora and fauna, food production systems (gathering and hunting or agriculture), and other real circumstances in which some society and culture develops.

His basic hypothesis is that when there is ambivalence about the usefulness of a food source, that is, when the relationship between the harmfulness and the usefulness of food is not clear, then taboos arise. This means that if there is a great biological need to use an animal as a food source, but at the same time, for the functioning of the infrastructure, this animal has a greater benefit being alive, then that animal will be prohibited. In fact, the more useful this animal is alive, the stricter the prohibition will be. "The strongest taboo is the one that admits no exceptions. The greater the temptation to violate the taboo, the stronger it has to be''. Harris also believes that a species will be hated depending on the residual usefulness or harmfulness of that species for human consumption.

Political economy is also essential to understanding Harris's anthropology of food. Since control over the production and consumption of food has been a source of power and wealth since the advent of agriculture, preferences and taboos present in one society will have different utility for different segments of the population. The production, advertising, and consumption of food and beverages in the developed countries of Europe and America provide the best example of how dietary patterns are put at the service of corporate profits, while more than a third of the population suffers from obesity.

References:

Battaile. Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1986, in French 1957);

Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997);

Douglas. Purity and Danger (1966),

• Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (1970)

Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).

Frazer. The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religion ( 1th ed. 2 vols.1890, 2th ed. 3 vols. 1900, 3th ed. 13 vols. 1906-1915, abridged ed. 1922);

Freud. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913)

Harris, M. The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig (1985);

Iwasaka, Michiko, and Barre Toelken. Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends (1994);

Kovalevsky. Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia; Being the Ichester Lectures for 1889-90 (2010);

Kropotkin. The State: Its Historic Role (1897);

     -     Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902);

Mullen, Patrick. I Heard the Old Fishermen Say: Folklore of the Texas Gulf Coast (1978);

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. Taboo (1939);

Steiner, F. Taboo (1956);

Sumner, William Graham. Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1906).