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Tigray and Guji) thought are not totally dissimilar. “Revolutionary” diviners serve Tigray disaffected with “normal” practitioners; they appear as spirit mediums among the Guji, replacing traditional “normal” diviners no longer effective in the changing Guji world. Like Arena (above), Packard looh anew at research on witchcraft and sorcery. The “usual” social determinants of witchcraft anthropol- ogists find need to be integrated with the in- tellectual and cultural history of the societies that gave rise to such beliefs. The Bashu of Zaire changed their concept of misfortune as their society changed. Female witches emerged as “a logical extension . . . of existing ideas about women and misfortune” (p. 261). Packard analyzes this as a restructuring of the old symbolic order brought about by change. Burton found that the Atuot, with affinities to the Nuer and Dinka, have different spiritual powers in their wet-season villages and their dry-season camps. Working only in Nuer dry- season camps, Evans-Pritchard may have miss- ed the fact that women are aseociated with the village setting and cattle with the camp. Still, from a polythetic viewpoint, Atuot religion in both places has the common feature of blood sacrifice, which is manifest in one way in the village to ensure healthy women, another way in the camp for healthy cows.

The rich ethnographic material presented and the issues r a k d and add-d in this volume are laudable. Some long-standing flaws in anthropological views of African belief system are rectified while advances in the understanding of systems of thought in general are made. In form and content this collection augurs well for this new series and for new ethnography!

Cmting Out Anger: Religion among the Taita of Kenya. Grace Gredys Hami . Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, 21. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. xiii + 193 pp. $19.95 (cloth).

Brian M. du Toit University of Florida

The research on which this book ia based was carried out between 1950 and 1952 in the Taita Hills of eastern Kenya. The material was

originally used in a 1955 Ph.D. dissertation on the Taita ritual system, and through the years a number of publications followed. This book is an analysis rather than a description of Taita religion and ritual which makes it at times fascinating and at times hard to read.

The book has six chapters in which Harris il- lustrates her belief that “Taita religion [is] a mode of acting in the world [rather than] a way of thinking about the world‘ (p. vii). These chapten explore: (1) an introduction to Taita ecology and social organization; (2) Butast, which is best translated as the domain of Taita religion; (3) ritual and moral career; (4) anger removal rites, which is really the realm of most involvement; (5) group welfare and Great Medi- cines; and (6) ritual elements and ritual ef- ficacy, moetly at the domestic level. Two te rm are essential to an understanding of the discus- sion, namely Butasi, religion which is a bound- ed domain within their total way of life; and Au- tasa, the verbal form to signify the basic religious act of spraying out mouthfuls of liquid. “In kutcrra the casting out of anger from per- formers’ hearts was signified and effected; also in kutcrra, the anger of other mystical agents was turned away and converted into beneficence. Taita religion was therefore the meam of restor- ing sere: peace, health and general well-being”

Some years ago Clyde Kluckhohn wrote a theoretical discussion of myths and rituala. In it he speakn of neurotic anxiety or a “type anxiety” which characterizes a particular group. For the Taita this surely must be anger and the threat of anger. Grace Ha+ has shown here how the anger “syndrome” affects every aspect of Taita daily living. People had to contemplate the anger of the Creator c a d by sorcerers (p. 40), the anger of the shades (p. 32), of the Great Figi (p. SS), of the lineage shrine ammblagm (p. 33), of Mlimu (p. 34). of the Bag (p. 34), of mystical agents (p. 49), and of parents (p. 53). All of chapter 4 deals with anger removal rites-“rites aimed at alleviating misfortune by restoring good feeling“ (p. 78). There were no rituals which united all Taita or which applied to the country as a whole. Kutasa applied basically to the individual and the nuclear fami- ly and at most to a group below the lineage level, namely the inheritance group descended from a common grandfather.

Anger removal rituals were aimed at such aspects as the outside, antisocial non-Taka associated with the heat of the dry, game-ridden bush. The ideal is the inside, social, Taita

(P. 28).

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amciared with the coolness of the high peaks and the absence of anger. “Communities had to purge themselves of sorcerers, the embodiment of heat, anger. violence and treachery, and to be filled with peaceful, right-acting and loyal citizens” (p. 175).

Harris has presented a thorough study of EutaJi belief and ritual achieving the insider’s view by the frequent w of Taita words and phrases. This ia a useful study for students of religion, ritual, and healing. The book is in- teresting and well written but 1 come away from reading it with the feeling that it sure must be a strain to be a Taita.

Space, Time, and Culture among the Iraqw of Tanzania. Robert J . Thornton. Studies in An- thropology Series. New York: Academic Press, 1980. xxiv + 275 pp. n.p. (cloth).

John W. Burton Wheaton College

Readers of this account of the Iraqw of Tan- zania, more specifically an ethnographic presentation of their concepts of space and time, are likely to be convinced that these peo- ple evidence a marked concern with morpholog- ical metaphor. Iraqw project their image of social and cultural experience in space and in time. and it is that concern which figures as the pervading leitmotif of Thornton’a book. An the author indicates, the mential significance of space (a topic that is given an insightful theoret- ical overview early on in the book) in Iraqw morality, symboliim, and social organization, wad initially introduced to anthropologists by E. H. Winter in an essay titled “Territorial Groupings and Religion among the Iraqw” (in M. Banton, ed., Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Relrgron, 1966). Thornton develops this theme with what Morgan, Maine, and van Gennep wrote about land, property. and boundaria. Theoretically the Iraqw data offer a novel synthesis of that work. Yet this is hardly a comprehensive ethnography in the traditional sem. Little or nothing is mentioned about relationship terminology, kinship, economy, and the like.

Anthropologists familiar with east African ethnography have long recognized that Iraqw society in peculiar and somewhat of an enigma

when compared to neighboring communities. The Iraqw language is decidedly unrelated to others spoken in the region and linguists con- tinue to muse over the implications of that fact. Iraqw mamagc ia monogamous and neolocal in an area where patrilocality and polygamy are more common. Of similar note are the facts that descent and inheritance are of little importance in Iraqw social organization (p. 7), that they ex- press little interest in spiritual cults or notions of witchcraft, and that the “ire of the ancestors, so important an sanctions in many African societies, is largely irrelevant” (p. 5). Thus in some ways, the ethnographic context is analogous to that detailed by J. Stauder for the Majang (The Majangir, 1971). According to Thornton, the seeming distinctiveness of the Iraqw can be explained in part by their relative geographic isolation. “Who are the Iraqw?” is a query echoed by the question “Who lives in Iraqwland?” It is clear that a common idiom of space and boundaries is a primary definition of Iraqw identity.

In the attempt to apprehend their social organization, Thornton argues it is first necessary to underatand the Iraqw perception of space and time. This leads him to a consid- eration of primary rituals the Iraqw enact which are intended to purify, protect, and redefine the boundary of their social world and culture. The esMntial concept of space in implied by the term uyu, “the center of the social universe, sur- rounded on all sida by either friends or enemies” (p. 61). Thornton’s primary focus is on the ritual called masay which is performed at roughly yearly intervals and entails the physical marking of temtorial boundaries. and is fol- lowed by the sacrifice of a sheep by suffocation. Thornton acca in the rite a mixing of politics with symbolism as it entaila the complementary participation of junior and senior males. One is curious to know if women have any significant role to play in this or any other Iraqw rituals since he makes no mention of them in this con- text, nor does he say much at all about women’s roles and status in general. Thornton explains that suffocation is deemed the proper mode of immolation in the m u y since the “sealing up” of the animal, keeping its life force within the corpse, b analogous to sealing the boundaries of the Iraqw physical and cosmological world (p.

The complex k u e of lraqw history entails here a concurrent analyst of their notions of time and causality. “Their world is defined much more with respect to space, which is con-

100).