Politics and Violence in the Yanomamo culture
While killing can be an act of revenge in Yanomamo culture and Western culture, in the Yanomamo culture, killing is a normal part of their community. Once someone from the village is dead, an act of revenge occurs through raids and will continue constantly until someone stops or possibly till everyone is dead. In contrast within Western culture, people who kill are sent to prison for a certain amount of time if found guilty. The process of killing within the Yanomamo population starts off with a death from their village. Once rage inflicts within the tribe, a raid party is created with about 10-20 men involved with the goal to kill the main offender. Some raids may not due to the distance of the village that was planned to be raided, other people may drop out of the raid, but will be given a reputation of a coward, putting themself in a position of being weak and for their wife to be the target for sexual attention. If a raid happens and goes as planned, the raiders are known as unokai and must perform a ritual called unokaimou, a ritual that cleanses the men from a supernatural harm. With the title as an unokai, their social status increases, making it easier for them to find mates and reproduce. In a way, becoming an unokai helps you gain respect of the people as someone who is loyal to their village. As a non-unokai, you would have a hard time finding a possible mate without having this status, which comes to the conclusion on why men choose to become an unokai despite the danger and challenges that come with the title. As a unokai, there's a possibility of becoming a leader of your village or a headman if your patrilineal descent line is in the path of headman. As leaders or the headman, you are seen to be protectors of the village, organize successful raids, and create peaceful alliances with other villages nearby. Revenge killings through kinship can be difficult as deaths within your own kin are expected to avenge one another. If a close kin from the original village were to die in the hands of someone from a man's current village, the man may choose to leave his family to enact revenge with his original village, or remain in his current residence filled with hatred for the unokai who participated in his close kin's death. As I mentioned earlier, unokais are more likely to get married and reproduce than non-unokais, so revenge killings are a way to show your strength and bravery, while raising your social status within the village. These kinds of laws are created now so we prevent many families and communities going through the hardships of grief that may lead to the cycle of revenge, and to create peace among the communities.
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ReplyDeleteZyra, it makes it very difficult to review and score your work when it is all clumped together into one giant paragraph. You risk losing points if I can't parse out a particular response from the mountain of text. It is to your advantage to take the time to format your post correctly.
ReplyDelete1. (3/5) - "killing is a normal part of their community"
I think this needs a bit more exploration. I would challenge the idea that this is unique to the Yanomamo culture. We have murders in this country every day and it barely earns a mention in the news.
I would also suggest recognizing that, just like us, the Yanomamo recognize a difference between killing for personal gain vs. killing as punishment. Our culture practices the death penalty, correct? Isn't that similar to the revenge killing system? It just requires a lot more steps to get there in Western cultures. Both cultures have systems of justice that punish selfish behavior. They systems just achieve this in different ways.
2. (4/5) - Okay on this. Do women play any role in this process?
3. (9/10) - Overall, good, but what might be the reason why a man might opt to NOT be a unokais? What benefit might they gain?
4.
Political structure (2/4): You describe how political leaders influence the practice, but how does the practice determine who is the political leader? The causal relationship goes both ways. Why is someone chosen as leader? Can you gain political power by taking part in killings? Can a non-unokais become leader?
Social status/organization (2/4): You reference social status earlier in the post but not in the section addressing prompt #4. This gets to the issue of lack of formatting. Some credit for earlier comments but it needed to be addressed here.
Kinship (2/4): You explain how kinship influences the unokais system, but what about the other way around? How does the unokais system impact a person's kinship system? This system of killings works to give high status unokais a larger system of kin, through marriage, tying the population together.
Marriage and reproduction (4/4): Okay. Note that women can also improve their reproductive success by marrying a successful unokais warrior, increasing their protection against illegal raids and improving access to resources for themselves and their children.
5. (6/10) - "These kinds of laws are created now so we prevent many families and communities going through the hardships of grief that may lead to the cycle of revenge"
Is that really why we have these laws? Or is it to deter these behaviors? And this doesn't really answer the question in the prompt: If killing is recognized to be socially/morally bad, why do we need laws against it? Shouldn't people just not kill? The point here is to recognize that there is killing in all cultures, including both the Yanomamo and Western societies. Both cultures have systems of dealing with it. But the question remains... why do people kill if this behavior is so universally recognized as "bad"?
Both Western cultures and the Yanomamo have laws against these behaviors, not because they are bad but because people may gain some benefit from engaging in those laws to the detriment of those around them.
We are creatures of biology, regardless of how "civilized" we might want to think we are. Killing can benefit an organism if they gain resources or a mate or defend their offspring in the process, correct? So that benefit is still there in humans, whether we like it or not. Killing is an instinctive, biological reaction to a threat of some sort, to our lives, to our family (genes) or to our resources, but it can also be a strategy to advance your survival, such as (for example) killing off a rival. Understand that this isn't excusing the behavior. It just explains it. But we need laws against this behavior, not because no one wants to do it but because sometimes people can benefit from this behavior... i.e., they DO want to kill because it benefits them. Laws protect us from selfish actions of others, acting to their own benefit and the harm of others.