Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Robert B. Edgerton

Author:Robert B. Edgerton [Edgerton, Robert B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: General, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Sociology, Popular Culture, Social & Cultural Studies
ISBN: 9781451602326
Google: EVZiccYcs2YC
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-05-19T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

From Discontent to Rebellion

Some populations have failed to survive or have lost their culture, language, or social institutions because they were not able to cope with the demands that their environments made on them. This failure to thrive is the most calamitous form of maladaptation, but it is not the only one. A few people in all societies, and many people in others, feel alienated, become depressed, or attempt suicide. Others withdraw from social life or emigrate, and it is not uncommon for people to protest or rebel. Some populations are deeply committed to the beliefs and practices that make up their cultural world, but others are less so, and some are profoundly dissatisfied with their lives. This is true not only in urbanized societies like our own but in small-scale, folk societies throughout the world. Beliefs or practices that leave a population seriously discontented or rebellious are, under most circumstances, maladaptive because they threaten the survival of that sociocultural system and endanger the physical and emotional wellbeing of the people in it.

How people feel about the established customs and institutions of their society can be a powerful indicator of how adequately that society and its culture serve their needs. But between blissful contentment and open rebellion lie many complexities and contradictions of human emotion and behavior. For example, women and men alike have gone to remarkable lengths to beautify themselves. They tattoo themselves over their entire bodies, cover themselves with scars, mutilate their genitals, and blacken their teeth, file them into points, and knock some of them out, among other things. These are only a few examples of painful practices that have been, and in some quarters still are, eagerly pursued in the quest for beauty. As painful as these practices are, few things done in the quest for beauty were more extreme than the Chinese practice of binding the feet of women. Young girls, some still in infancy, suffered excruciating pain because their feet were bandaged so tightly that normal growth could not occur. So tightly, in fact, were the toes folded under the foot that the bones were often broken. Accounts of the anguish these children suffered during the process of replacing blood- and pus-soaked bandages with new and still tighter ones are truly harrowing.1 The pain was so severe that the girls could not walk or even sleep, and they were too young to understand why they were being made to suffer. Eventually, the acute pain subsided, but for the rest of their lives these women were barely able to hobble, and some were carried everywhere in a sedan chair.

Chinese men have admired small feet in women since before Confucian times, but the practice of footbinding apparently did not begin until around 1100 A.D. It was at first confined to the Chinese elite, but it eventually spread throughout society, even including some peasants and the urban poor. The reasons for the origin and spread of footbinding were complex, but in addition to aesthetic considerations, Chinese

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