Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of eating members of one's own species and usually refers to humans eating other humans (sometimes called anthropophagy). Cannibalism has been attributed to many different tribes and races in the past, but the degree to which it has actually occurred and been socially sanctioned is an extremely controversial topic in anthropology. Some anthropologists argue that cannibalism has been almost non-existent and view claims of cannibalism with extreme skepticism, while others argue that the practice was common in pre-state societies.

'Cannibalism' as cultural libel

Numerous groups, peoples, and cultures are accused of killing and eating human beings.

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See Blood libel.

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Unsubstantiated reports of cannibalism disproportionately relate cases of cannibalism among cultures that are already otherwise despised, feared, or are little known. In antiquity, Greek reports of anthropophagy were related to distant, non-Hellenic barbarians, or else relegated in myth to the 'primitive' chthonic world that preceded the coming of the Olympian gods. In 1994, printed booklets reported that in a Yugoslavian concentration camp of Manjaca the Bosnian refugees were forced to eat each other's bodies. The reports were false.

Related Topics:
Anthropophagy - Barbarians - Myth - Concentration camp - Manjaca - Bosnian refugees

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William Arens, author of The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (New York : Oxford University Press, 1979; ISBN 0195027930), downplays the truth of reports of cannibalism and argues that the description by one group of people of another people as cannibals is an ideological and rhetorical device to establish moral superiority over them. Arens bases most of his thesis on ridiculing the accuracy of Hans Staden's pedo of being prisoner among the Tupi. How could Staden have understood the Tupi? The English translation available to Arens was incomplete. In "La Mia Prigionia tra i Cannibali, 1553-1555, (Longanesi & C, Milan, 1970) the text gives the Tupi phrase then the translation as does the original German text. Arens thesis is based on an incomplete text. Staden was a fluent speaker of Tupi and Tupimani. Arens says there is no single eyewitness account of cannibalism.

Related Topics:
William Arens - Hans Staden - Tupi

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Arens also writes,

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"Anthropologists have made no serious attempt to disabuse the public of the widespread notion of the ubiquity of anthropophagists. … in the deft hands and fertile imaginations of anthropologists, former or contemporary anthropophagists have multiplied with the advance of civilization and fieldwork in formerly unstudied culture areas. …The existence of man-eating peoples just beyond the pale of civilization is a common ethnographic suggestion."

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Conversely, Michel de Montaigne's essay "Of cannibals" introduced a new multicultural note in European civilization. Montaigne wrote that "one calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to." By using a title like that and describing a fair indigean society, Montaigne may wished to provoke a surprise in the reader of his Essays.

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Similarly, Japanese scholars (e.g. Kuwabara Jitsuzo) branded the Chinese culture as cannibalistic in certain propagandistic works- which served as ideological justification for the assumed superiority of the Japanese during World War II.

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