Nyoro Symbolism and Nyoro Ethnography: A Rejoinder

Abstract

Opening ParagraphThis paper attempts to clarify a little further certain of the symbolic categories of the Banyoro of western Uganda, and at the same time to refocus attention on some of the methodological difficulties involved in the analysis of ethnographic material through the framework of the binary mode of symbolic classification. This entails some consideration of a recent contribution to this journal by Professor Rodney Needham, in which he attempts to rebut my detailed criticisms of his version of some aspects of Nyoro symbolism (Needham 1976; Beattie 1968; see also Needham 1967; 1973; and Beattie 1976: 232 n. 4). In doing so he repeats certain of his earlier misrepresentations, as well as introducing some new ones. He also asserts, of a number of my own—and some other—publications on Nyoro ritual and symbolism, to which I had drawn attention, that ‘they were either not relevant to [his] train of argument or, in general, were redundant to [his] primary sources’ (Needham 1976: 237). These assertions must be very briefly considered before I go on to deal with the further arguments he now advances.