of the structure of an institution,

of the structure of an institution, appropriately elaborated, was perfectly suited to
the structure of an activity. By taking inventory of all a community’s activities that
involved more than one person and seeing how they were structurally interrelated
(e.g., involving the same standing groups), it would be possible then to posit any
change and game out its structural effects. Retrospective analyses of changes in the
availability of traditional outrigger sailing canoes in Kiribati (the Gilbert Islands)
(Goodenough 1963a, pp. 337–43; 1963b) and the introduction of outboard motors
in Kapingamarangi in Micronesia (Lieber 1994) illustrated the utility of this ap-
proach. Looking at a community’s cultural organization of activities proved very
useful also, in describing the political organization of a stateless society (Chowning
& Goodenough 1966). The social organization of that community’s many activi-
ties followed one or another of a very few designs. Lines of authority were clearly
revealed in these designs.
A long-standing concern of anthropologists has been the search for cultural
universals. In thinking about what, in practice, we treated as cross-cultural cate-
gories for comparative purposes, I saw that these were not, in themselves, specific
to any given culture as a part of its emic makeup. In emic terms the categories
of one culture were not exactly the same as those of any other. For comparative
purposes we map these emic categories into functional types. Thus we map partic-
ular emic categories of containers into bowls, jars, etc., or particular emic criteria
for residence choices in marriage into patrilocal, matrilocal, etc. Then we say that
containers are cultural universals, instead of saying that in all cultures there are
things that people use as containers, recognizing that the universal is a functional
category rather than an emic cultural one. The common denominator of cultures is
thus to be seen as composed of functional categories, such as shelter, food quest,
food preparation, socialization of children, treatment of illness, disposal of the
dead, religion, and so on (Goodenough 1981b). The
Outline of Cultural Materials
gives a detailed list of categories that are largely of this kind (Murdock et al. 1967).
Seeing religion as a functional category struck me as having important the-
oretical implications. Definitions of religion have always centered on belief in
supernatural or spirit beings. Atheists were presumably without religion, yet the
great salvation-promising movement of the twentieth century was atheistic com-
munism. People were converted to it as to other visionary religions. Salvation is,
of course, the achievement of an ideal state of being, whether in life or after death ,
a transformation of self whether through individual endeavor or through collective
effort to transform society. When we stop to look at what the concerns are that
people are addressing through prayer, ritual, magic, etc., we find that they have
to do with the state of their selves and the selves of others who matter to them,
including the state of the groups with which people identify themselves. What is
addressed is the maintenance of selves as people wish them to be, the repair of
damage to selves (as from pollution and illness) and the enhancement of selves (as
with rites of passage and rites to earn merit). These rites may be elaborate or they
may be as simple as avoiding stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk or carrying
a rabbit’s foot. Our folk wisdom recognizes this when we speak of people doing
their morning exercises religiously or making a religion of their business. A cus-
tomary practice that is readily abandoned in favor of another lacks religious value
for people. Their selves are not threatened by it. The greater the emotional distress,
exhibited by the suggestion that a custom be abandoned, the greater the religious
(i.e., self-maintaining) value it has for those who are distressed. The equivalent of
children’s security blankets are legion. Horace Minor recognized this years ago
with his much-cited article “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (1956).
Looked at functionally in this way, the ethnographic description of a people’s
religious life requires examining all of their institutions and customary practices
with an eye to how they function religiously, if at all, and for whom. This is no
different from what we must do when describing a people’s economic life or their
political life. The same institution may function economically, politically, and reli-
giously. I followed this approach to describing a people’s religious life in my recent
book on pre-Christian religious tradition in Chuuk (Goodenough 2002). I was able
to do this because of the availability of psychological test materials that provided
a profile of the major concerns that were generated by the way people experienced
themselves in the framework of Chuuk’s social culture (Gladwin & Sarason 1953).
In recent years I have become interested in looking at how genetically pro-
grammed behavioral tendencies from our animal heritage are manifested in the
complex symbolic world stemming from language and culture in which we hu-
mans exist. A surprise to me in this regard was the realization that the bristling
response we call moral outrage is the human equivalent of what ethologists refer
to as the territorial response (Lorenz 1963; Ardrey 1966, p. 3). Among humans,
the rights, privileges, and immunities they have in their various social identity rela-
tionships are symbolic territories. Trespass on these territories evokes the bristling
umbrage of the animal territorial response (Goodenough 1997b). In this regard, it
is evident in the ethnographic record that there is no human society whose culture
of interpersonal relationships does not involve the definition of kinds of social
identities and kinds of possible inter-identity relationships. These relationships
are organized in terms of what are formalized in jural relationships as the com-
plementary conceptual pairs, right versus duty, no right versus privilege, power
versus liability, and no power versus immunity (Hohfeld 1919), as was observed
years ago by Hoebel (1954). Of these, right and duty are fundamental, the other
concepts being derivable from them.
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2003.32:1-12. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
Access provided by 202.67.43.39 on 07/03/15. For personal use only.
9 Aug 2003 18:52 AR AR196-AN32-01.tex AR196-AN32-01.sgm LaTeX2e(2002/01/18)
P1: GCE
10
GOODENOUGH
Rights and duties are affected by what among the four universal interactive
modes described by Fiske (1991) is appropriate to the context of a social inter-
action. These modes are communal sharing; authority ranking or priority ranking
(the cultural ordering of dominance); equality matching (everyone getting or owing
exactly the same); and market pricing (negotiation and contractual arrangement).
All but equality matching appear to be present in rudimentary form in chimpanzee