American Sociological Association (Essay)

DEVIANCE ACROSS CULTURES ~

i. Robert Heiner

Plymouth State University

New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

2008

't;N",'fflItho:'Ji;>'t_'''''~ir.1'';;IF;lli''''Jl'-';r_ 1j,.7,

THE NORMAL AND THE PATHOLOGICAL EMILE DURKHEIM

In one of the most classic statements about crime and deviance in the history of sociology, Durkheim asserts that since crime occurs in all societies through­ out history, then it must be seen as normal and not as a sign of an unhealthy society. Because societies allow and encourage a certain diversity of thought, we are all different and that differentness accounts for both deviance and innov­ ation. If it were not for that differentness, there would be no crime and there would be no social change; societies would remain absolutely stagnant---a con­ dition that is not only undesirable but also impossible.

To rephrase Durkheim, crime is the price that we pay for afree society. This is not to say that the more crime the better. Indeed Durkheim does acknowledge that rising crime rates are cause for concern.

I ~

Crime is present not only in the majority of societies of one particular species but in all societies of all ty-pes. There is no society that is not confronted with the problem of criminality. Its form changes; the acts thus characterized are not the same everywhere; but, everywhere and always, there have been men

t f who have behaved in such a way as to draw upon themselves penal repres­

sion. If, in proportion as societies pass from the lower to the higher types, the rate of criminality, Le., the relation between the yearly number of crimes and ~.

I;, the population, tended to decline, it might be believed that crime, while still normal, is tending to lose this character of normality. But we have no reason to believe that such a regression is substantiated.

Many facts would seem rather to indicate a movement in the opposite direction. From the beginning of the [nineteenth] century, statistics enable us to follow the course of criminality. It has everywhere increased. In France the increase is nearly 300 per cent. There is, then, no phenomenon that presents more indisputably all the symptoms of normality, since it appears closely connected with the conditions of all collective life. To make of crime a form of social morbidity would be to admit that morbidity is not something acci­ dental, but, on the contrary, that in certain cases it grows out of the funda­ mental constitution of the living organism; it would result in wiping out all distinction between the physiological and the pathological. No doubt it is possible that crime itself will have abnormal forms, as, for example, when its rate is unusually high. This excess is indeed, undoubtedly morbid in nature. What is normal, simply, is the existence of criminality, provided that it attains and does not exceed, for each social type, a certain level, which it is perhaps not impossible to fix in conformity with the preceding rules. 1

3

4 5 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

Here we are, then, in the presence of a conclusion in appearance quite para­ doxical. Let us make no mistake. To classify crime among the phenomena of normal sociology is not to say merely that it is an inevitable, although regret­ table phenomenon, due to the incorrigible wickedness of men; it is to affirm that it is a factor in public health, an integral part of all healthy societies. This result is, at first glance, surprising enough to have puzzled even ourselves for a long time. Once this first surprise has been overcome, however, it is not difficult to find reasons explaining this normality and at the same time confirming it.

In the first place crime is normal because a society exempt from it is utterly impossible. Crime, we have shown elsewhere, consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments. In a society in which criminal acts are no longer committed, the sentiments they offend would have to be found without exception in all individual consciousnesses, and they must be found to exist with the same degree as sentiments contrary to them. Assuming that this condition could actually be realized, crime would not thereby disappear; it would only change its form, for the very cause which would thus dry up the sources of criminality would immediately open up new ones.

Indeed, for the collective sentiments which are protected by the penal law of a people at a specified moment of its history to take possession of the pub­ lic conscience or for them to acquire a stronger hold where they have an insufficient grip, they must acquire an intensity greater than that which they had hitherto had. The community as a whole must experience them more vividly, for it can acquire from no other source the greater force necessary to control these individuals who formerly were the most refractory. For mur­ derers to disappear, the horror of bloodshed must become greater in those social strata from which murderers are recruited; but, first it must become greater throughout the entire society. Moreover, the very absence of crime would directly contribute to produce this horror; because any sentiment seems much more respectable when it is always and uniformly respected.

One easily overlooks the consideration that these strong states of the common consciousness cannot be thus reinforced without reinforcing at the same time the more feeble states, whose violation previously gave birth to mere infraction of convention-since the weaker ones are only the prolonga­ tion, the attenuated form, of the stronger. Thus robbery and simple bad taste injure the same single altruistic sentiment, the respect for that which is another's. However, this same sentiment is less grievously offended by bad taste than by robbery; and since, in addition, the average consciousness has not sufficient intensity to react keenly to the bad taste, it is treated with greater tolerance. That is why the person guilty of bad taste is merely blamed, whereas the thief is punished. But, if this sentiment grows stronger, to the point of silencing in all consciousnesses the inclination which disposes man to steal, he will become more sensitive to the offenses which, until then, touched him but lightly. He will react against them, then, with more energy; they will be the object of greater opprobrium, which will transform certain of

The Normal and the Pathological

them from the simple moral faults that they were and give them the quality of crimes. For example, improper contracts, or contracts improperly executed, which only incur public blame or civil damages, will become offenses in law.

Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals. Crimes, properly so called, will there be unknown; but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousnesses. If, then, this society has the power to judge and punish, it will define these acts as criminal and will treat them as such. For the same reason, the perfect and upright man judges his small­ est failings with a severity that the majority reserve for acts more truly in the nature of an offense. Formerly, acts of violence against persons were more frequent than they are today, because respect for individual dignity was less strong. As this has increased, these crimes have become more rare; and also, many acts violating this sentiment have been introduced into the penal law which were not included there in primitive times.2

In order to exhaust all the hypotheses logically possible, it will perhaps be asked why this unanimity does not extend to all collective sentiments with­ out exception. Why should not even the most feeble sentiment gather enough energy to prevent all dissent? The moral consciousness of the society would be present in its entirety in all the individuals, with a vitality sufficient to prevent all acts offending it-the purely conventional faults as well as the crimes. But a uniformity so universal and absolute is utterly impossible; for the immediate physical milieu in which each one of us is placed, the hereditary antecedents, and the social influences vary from one individual to the next, and consequently diversify consciousnesses. It is impossible for all to be alike, if only because each one has his own organism and that these organisms occupy different areas in space. That is why, even among the lower peoples, where individual originality is very little developed, it never­ theless does exist.

Thus, since there cannot be a society in which the individuals do not dif­ fer more or less from the collective type, it is also inevitable that, among these divergences, there are some with a criminal character. What confers this char­ acter upon them is not the intrinsic quality of a given act but that definition which the collective conscience lends them. If the collective conscience is stronger, if it has enough authority practically to suppress these divergences, it will also be more sensitive, more exacting; and, reacting against the slight­ est deviations with the energy it otherwise displays only against more con­ siderable infractions, it will attribute to them the same gravity as formerly to crimes. In other words, it will designate them as criminal.

Crime is, then, necessary; it is bound up with fundamental conditions of all social life, and by that very fact it is useful, because these conditions of which it is part are themselves indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law.

Indeed, it is no longer possible today to dispute the fact that law and morality vary from one social type to the next, nor that they change within the

6 7 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

same type if the conditions of life are modified. But, in order that these trans­ formations may be possible, the collective sentiments at the basis of morality must not be hostile to change, and consequently must have but moderate energy. If they were too strong, they would no longer be plastic. Every pattern is an obstacle to new patterns, to the extent that the first pattern is inflexible. The better a structure is articulated, the more it offers a healthy resistance to all modification; and this is equally true of functional, as of anatomical, organ­ ization. If there were no crimes, this condition could not have been fulfilled; for such a hypothesis presupposes that collective sentiments have arrived at a degree of intensity unexampled in history. Nothing is good indefinitely and to an unlimited extent. The authority which the moral conscience enjoys must not be excessive; otherwise no one would dare criticize it, and it would too easily congeal into an immutable form. To make progress, individual origin­ ality must be able to express itself. In order that the originality of the idealist whose dreams transcend his century may find expression, it is necessary that the originality of the criminal, who is below the level of his time, shall also be possible. One does not occur without the other.

Nor is this all. Aside from this indirect utility, it happens that crime itself plays a useful role in this evolution. Crime implies not only that the way remains open to necessary changes but that in certain cases it directly pre­ pares these changes. Where crime exists, collective sentiments are sufficiently flexible to take on a new form, and crime sometimes helps to determine the form they will take. How many times, indeed, it is only an anticipation of future morality-a step toward what will be! According to Athenian law, Socrates was a criminal, and his condemnation was no more than just. However, his crime, namely, the independence of his thought, rendered a service not only to humanity but to his country. It served to prepare a new morality and faith which the Athenians needed, since the traditions by which they had lived until then were no longer in harmony with the current condi­ tions of life. Nor is the case of Socrates unique; it is reproduced periodically in history. It would never have been possible to establish the freedom of thought we now enjoy if the regulations prohibiting it had not been violated before being solemnly abrogated. At that time, however, the violation was a crime, since it was an offense against sentiments still very keen in the aver­ age conscience. And yet this crime was useful as a prelude to reforms which daily became more necessary. Liberal philosophy had as its precursors the heretics of all kinds who were justly punished by secular authorities during the entire course of the Middle Ages and until the eve of modern times.

From this point of view the fundamental facts of criminality present them­ selves to us in an entirely new light. Contrary to current ideas, the criminal no longer seems a totally unsociable being, a sort of parasitic element, a strange and unassimilable body, introduced into the midst of society.3 On the contrary, he plays a definite role in social life. Crime, for its part, must no longer be conceived as an evil that cannot be too much suppressed. There is no occasion for self-congratulation when the crime rate drops noticeably

On the Sociology of Deviance

below the average level, for we may be certain that this apparent progress is associated with some social disorder. Thus, the number of assault cases never falls so low as in times of want.4 With the drop in the crime rate, and as a reaction to it, comes a revision, or the need of a revision in the theory of pun­ ishment. If, indeed, crime is a disease, its punishment is its remedy and can­ not be otherwise conceived; thus, all the discussions it arouses bear on the point of determining what the punishment must be in order to fulfil this role of remedy. If crime is not pathological at all, the object of punishment cannot be to cure it, and its true function must be sought elsewhere.

NOTES

1. From the fact that crime is a phenomenon of normal sociology, it does not follow that the criminal is an individual normally constituted from the biological and psychological points of view. The two questions are independent of each other. This independence will be better understood when we have shown, later on, the difference between psychological and sociological facts.

2. Calumny, insults, slander, fraud, etc.

3. We have ourselves committed the error of speaking thus of the criminal, because of a failure to apply our rule (Divis,ion du travail social, pp. 395-96).

4. Although crime is a fact of normal SOciology, it does not follow that we must not abhor it. Pain itself has nothing desirable about it; the individual dislikes it as society does crime, and yet it is a function of normal physiology. Not only is it necessarily derived from the very con­ stitution of every living organism, but it plays a useful role in life, for which reason it cannot be replaced. It would, then, be a singular distortion of our thought to present it as an apology for crime. We would not even think of protesting against such an interpretation, did we not know to what strange accusations and misunderstandings one exposes oneself when one undertakes to study moral facts objectively and to speak of them in a different language from that of the layman.

ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEVIANCE KAI T. ERIKSON

Flowing from Durkheim's assertion that deviance is universal and functional, below Erikson speculates about the necessary role performed by deviants in the community. According to Erikson, the deviant helps the community establish its moral boundaries and, therefore, its identity as a community. An under­ standing of this process helps us to understand why the coverage of crime and

8 9 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

deviance constitutes such a large proportion of the daily news in ours and other societies. It also helps us to understand one of the great paradoxes in the soci­ ology of social control; that is, do we really believe that we can take society's deviants, force them into extremely deviant environments (e.g., a prison or a mental hospital), and expect them to come out less deviant?

Human actors are sorted into various kinds of collectivity, ranging from rela­ tively small units such as the nuclear family to relatively large ones such as a nation or culture. One of the most stubborn difficulties in the study of devi­ ation is that the problem is defined differently at each one of these levels: behavior that is considered unseemly within the context of a single family may be entirely acceptable to the community in general, while behavior that attracts severe censure from the members of the community may go altogether unnoticed elsewhere in the culture. People in society, then, must learn to deal separately with deviance at each one of these levels and to distinguish among them in his own daily activity. A man may disinherit his son for con­ duct that violates old family traditions or ostracize a neighbor for conduct that violates some local custom, but he is not expected to employ either of these standards when he serves as a juror in a court of law. In each of the three situations he is required to use a different set of criteria to decide whether or not the behavior in question exceeds tolerable limits.

In the next few pages we shall be talking about deviant behavior in social units called "communities," but the use of this term does not mean that the argument applies only at that level of organization. In theory, at least, the argument being made here should fit all kinds of human collectivity­ families as well as whole cultures, small groups as well as nations-and the term "community" is only being used in this context because it seems particularly convenient.1

The people of a community spend most of their lives in close contact with one another, sharing a common sphere of experience which makes them feel that they belong to a special "kind" and live in a special "place." In the for­ mal language of sociology, this means that communities are boundary main­ taining: each has a specific territory in the world as a whole, not only in the sense that it occupies a defined region of geographical space but also in the sense that it takes over a particular niche in what might be called cultural space and develops its own "ethos" or "way" within that compass. Both of these dimensions of group space, the geographical and the cultural, set the community apart as a special place and provide an important point of reference for its members.

When one describes any system as boundary maintaining, one is saying that it controls the fluctuation of its consistent parts so that the whole retains a limited range of activity, a given pattern of constancy and stability, within the larger environment. A human community can b~ said to maintain bound­ aries, then, in the sense that its members tend to confine themselves to a particular radius of activity and to regard any conduct which drifts outside

On the Sociology of Deviance

that radius as somehow inappropriate or immoral. Thus the group retains a kind of cultural integrity, a voluntary restriction on its own potential for expansion, beyond that which is strictly required for accommodation to the environment. Human behavior can vary over an enormous range, but each community draws a symbolic set of parentheses around a certain segment of that range and limits its own activities within that narrower zone. These parentheses, so to speak, are the community's boundaries.

People who live together in communities cannot relate to one another in any coherent way or even acquire a sense of' their own stature as group members unless they learn something about the boundaries of the territory they occupy in social space, if only because they need to sense what lies beyond the margins of the group before they can appreciate the special qual­ ity of the experience which takes place within it. Yet how do people learn about the boundaries of their community? And how do they convey this information to the generations which replace them?

To begin with, the only material found in a society for marking boundaries is the behavior of its members--or rather, the networks of interaction which link these members together in regular social relations. And the interactions which do the most effective job of locating and publicizing the group's outer edges would seem to be those which take place between deviant persons on the one side and official ag~nts of the community on the other. The deviant is a person whose activities have moved outside the margins of the group, and when the community calls him to account for that vagrancy it is making a statement about the nature and placement of its boundaries. It is declaring how much variability and diversity can be tolerated within the group before it begins to lose its distinctive shape, its unique identity. Now there may be other moments in the life of the group which perform a similar service: wars, for instance, can publicize a group's boundaries by draWing attention to the line separating the group from an adversary, and certain kinds of religious ritual, dance ceremony, and other traditional pageantry can dramatize the difference between "we" and "they" by portraying a symbolic encounter between the two. But on the whole, members of a community inform one another about the placement of their boundaries by participating in the con­ frontations which occur when persons who venture out to the edges of the group are met by policing agents whose special business it is to guard the cultural integrity of the community. Whether these confrontations take the form of criminal trials, excommunication hearings, courts-martial, or even psychiatric case conferences, they act as boundary-maintaining devices in the sense that they demonstrate to whatever audience is concerned where the line is drawn between behavior that belongs in the special universe of the group and behavior that does not. In general, this kind of information is not easily relayed by the straightforward use of language. Most readers of this paragraph, for instance, have a fairly clear idea of the line separating theft from more legitimate forms of commerce, but few of them have ever seen a published statute describing these differences. More likely than not, our

10 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

information on the subject has been drawn from publicized instances in which the relevant laws were applied-and for that matter, the law itself is largely a collection of past cases and decisions, a synthesis of the various con­ frontations which have occurred in the life of the legal order.

It may be important to note in this connection that confrontations between deviant offenders and the agents of control have always attracted a good deal of public attention. In our own past, the trial and punishment of offenders were staged in the market place and afforded the crowd a chance to partici­ pate in a direct, active way. Today, of course, we no longer parade deviants in the town square or expose them to the carnival atmosphere of Tyburn, but it is interesting that the "reform" which brought about this change in penal practice coincided almost exactly with the development of newspapers as a medium of mass information. Perhaps this is no more than an accident of history, but it is nonetheless true that newspapers (and now radio and tele­ vision) offer much the same kind of entertainment as public hangings or a Sunday visit to the local gaol. A considerable portion of what we call "news" is devoted to reports about deviant behavior and its consequences, and it is no simple matter to explain why these items should be considered news­ worthy or why they should command the extraordinary attention they do. Perhaps they appeal to a number of psychological perversities among the mass audience, as commentators have suggested, but at the same time they constitute one of our main sources 'of information about the normative out­ lines of society. In a figurative sense, at least, morality and immorality meet at the public scaffold, and it is during this meeting that the line between them is drawn.

Boundaries are never a fixed property of any community. They are always shifting as the people of the group find new ways to define the outer limits of their universe, new ways to position themselves on the larger cultural map. Sometimes changes occur within the structure of the group which require its members to make a new survey of their territory-a change of leadership, a shift of mood. Sometimes changes occur in the surrounding environment, altering the background against which the people of the group have measured their own uniqueness. And always, new generations are moving in to take their turn guarding old institutions and need to be informed about the contours of the world they are inheriting. Thus single encounters between the deviant and his community are only fragments of an ongoing social process. Like an article of common law, boundaries remain a meaningful point of reference only so long as they are repeatedly tested by persons on the fringes of the group and repeatedly defended by persons chosen to represent the group's inner morality. Each time the community moves to censure some act of deviation, then, and convenes a formal cere­ mony to deal with the responsible offender, it sharpens the authority of the violated norm and restates where the boundaries of the group are located.

For these reasons, deviant behavior is not a simple kind of leakage which occurs when the machinery of society is in poor working order, but may be,

~, [ t

~ f' f.~ 1: t: ~ i\'

k I;'

! f:

~~

~. ~.

[, fi:

J ~

On the Sociology of Deviance 11

in controlled quantities, an important condition for preserving the stability of social life. Deviant forms of behavior, by marking the outer edges of group life, give the inner structure its special character and thus supply the frame­ work within which the people of the group develop an orderly sense of their own cultural identity. Perhaps this is what Aldous Huxley had in mind when he wrote:

Now tidiness is undeniably good-but a good of which it is easily possible to have too much and at too high a price.... The good life can only be lived in a soci­ ety in which tidiness is preached and practiced, but not too fanatically, and where efficiency is always haloed, as it were, by a tolerated margin of mess.2

This raises a delicate theoretical issue. If we grant that human groups often derive benefit from deviant behavior, can we then assume that they are organized in such a way as to promote this resource? Can we assume, in other words, that forces operate in the social structure to recruit offenders and to commit them to long periods of service in the deviant ranks? This is not a question which can be answered with our present store of empirical data, but one observation can be made which gives the question an interest­ ing perspective--namely, that deviant forms of conduct often seem to derive nourishment from the very agencies devised to inhibit them. Indeed, the agencies built by society for preventing deviance are often so poorly equipped for the task thaf we might well ask why this is regarded as their "real" function in the first place.

It is by now a thoroughly familiar argument that many of the institutions designed to discourage deviant behavior actually operate in such a way as to perpetuate it. For one thing, prisons, hospitals, and other similar agencies provide aid and shelter to large numbers of deviant persons, sometimes giving them a certain advantage in the competition for social resources. But beyond this, such institutions gather marginal people into tightly segregated groups, give them an opportunity to teach one another the skills and atti­ tudes of a deviant career, and even provoke them into using these skills by reinforcing their sense of alienation from the rest of society.3 Nor is this observation a modern one:

The misery suffered in gaols is not half their evilj they are filled with every sort of corruption that poverty and wickedness can generatej with all the shameless and profligate enormities that can be produced by the impudence of ignominy, the range of want, and the malignity of despair. In a prison the check of the public eye is removedj and the power of the law is spent. There are few fears, there are no blushes. The lewd inflame the more modestj the audacious harden the timid. Everyone fortifies himself as he can against his own remaining sensibility; endeavoring to practice on others the arts that are practiced on himselfj and to gain the applause of his worst associates by imitating their manners.4

These lines, written almost two centuries ago, are a harsh indictment of prisons, but many of the conditions they describe continue to be reported in even the most modern studies of prison life. Looking at the matter from a

I 12 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

long-range historical perspective, it is fair to conclude that prisons have done a conspicuously poor job of reforming the convicts placed in their custody; but the very consistency of this failure may have a peculiar logic of its own. Perhaps we find it difficult to change the worst of our penal practices because we expect the prison to harden the inmate's commitment to deviant forms of behavior and draw him more deeply into the deviant ranks. On the whole, we are a people who do not really expect deviants to change very much as they are processed through the control agencies we provide for them, and we are often reluctant to devote much of the community's resources to the job of rehabilitation. In this sense, the prison which graduates long rows of accom­ plished criminals (or, for that matter, the state asylum which stores its most severe cases away in some back ward) may do serious violence to the aims of its founders; but it does very little violence to the expectations of the popu­ lation it serves.

These expectations, moreover, are found in every corner of society and constitute an important part of the climate in which we deal with deviant forms of behavior.

To begin with, the community's decision to bring deviant sanctions against one of its members is not a simple act of censure. It is an intricate rite of transition, at once moving the individual out of his ordinary place in soci­ ety and transferring him into a special deviant position.s The ceremonies which mark this change of status, generally, have a number of related phases. They supply a formal stage on which the deviant and his community can confront one another (as in the criminal trial); they make an announcement about the nature of his deviancy (a verdict or diagnosis, for example); and they place him in a particular role which is thought to neutralize the harm­ ful effects of his misconduct (like the role of prisoner or patient). These com­ mitment ceremonies tend to be occasions of wide public interest and ordinarily take place in a highly dramatic setting.6 Perhaps the most obvious example of a commitment ceremony is the criminal trial, with its elaborate formality and exaggerated ritual, but more modest equivalents can be found wherever procedures are set up to judge whether or not someone is legitim­ ately deviant.

An important feature of these ceremonies in our own culture is that they are almost irreversible. Most provisional roles conferred by society, those of the student or conscripted soldier, for example, include some kind of ter­ minal ceremony to mark the individual's movement back out of the role once its temporary advantages have been exhausted. But the roles allotted the deviant seldom make allowance for this type of passage. He is ushered into the deviant position by a decisive and often dramatic ceremony, yet is retired from it with scarcely a word of public notice. And as a result, the deviant often returns home with no proper license to resume a normal life in the community. Nothing has happened to cancel out the stigmas imposed upon him by earlier commitment ceremonies; nothing has happened to revoke the verdict or diagnosis pronounced upon him at that time. It should not be

\ On the Sociology of Deviance 13

surprising, then, that the people of the community are apt to greet the return­

I ing deviant with a considerable degree of apprehension and distrust, for in a very real sense they are not at all sure who he is.

A circularity is thus set into motion which has all the earmarks of a "self­ fulfilling prophesy," to use Merton's fine phrase. On the one hand, it seems

I quite obvious that the community's apprehensions help reduce whatever chances the deviant might otherwise have had for a successful return home. t

I ~. Yet at the same time, everyday experience seems to show that these suspi­

cions are wholly reasonable, for it is a well-known and highly publicized fact that many if not most ex-convicts return to crime after leaVing prison and that large numbers of mental patients require further treatment after an ini­ tial hospitalization. The common feeling that deviant persons never really change, then, may derive from a faulty premise; but the feeling is expressed so frequently and with such conviction that it eventually creates the facts which later "prove" it to be correct. If the returning deviant encounters this circularity often enough, it is quite understandable that he, too, may begin to wonder whether he has fully graduated from the deviant role, and he may respond to the uncertainty by resuming some kind of deviant activity. In many respects, this may be the only way for the individual and his commu­ nity to agree what kind of person he is.

Moreover this prophesy}s found in the official policies of even the most responsible agencies of control. Police departments could not operate with any real effectiveness if they did not regard ex-convicts as a ready pool of suspects to be tapped in the event of trouble, and psychiatric clinics could not do a successful job in the community if they were not always alert to the pos­ sibility of former patients suffering relapses. Thus the prophesy gains cur­ rency at many levels within the social order, not only in the poorly informed attitudes of the community at large, but in the best informed theories of most control agencies as well.

In one form or another this problem has been recognized in the West for many hundreds of years, and this simple fact has a curious implication. For if our culture has supported a steady flow of deviation throughout long periods of historical change, the rules which apply to any kind of evolutionary thinking would suggest that strong forces must be at work to keep the flow intact-and this because it contributes in some important way to the survival of the culture as a whole. This does not furnish us with sufficient warrant to declare that deviance is "functional" (in any of the many senses of that term), but it should certainly make us wary of the assumption so often made in sociological circles that any well-structured society is somehow designed to prevent deviant behavior from occurring.?

It might be then argued that we need new metaphors to carry our think­ ing about deviance onto a different plane. On the whole, American sociolo­ gists have devoted most of their attention to those forces in society which seem to assert a centralizing influence on human behavior, gathering people together into tight clusters called "groups" and bringing them under the

14 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

jurisdiction of governing principles called "norms" or "standards." The questions which sociologists have traditionally asked of their data, then, are addressed to the uniformities rather than the divergencies of social life: how is it that people learn to think in similar ways, to accept the same group moralities, to move by the same rhythms of behavior, to see life with the same eyes? How is it, in short, that cultures accomplish the incredible alchemy of making unity out of diversity, harmony out of conflict, order out of confusion? Somehow we often act as if the differences between people can be taken for granted, being too natural to require comment, but that the symmetry which human groups manage to achieve must be explained by referring to the molding influence of the social structure.

But variety, too, is a product of the social structure. It is certainly remark­ able that members of a culture come to look so much alike; but it is also remarkable that out of all this sameness a people can develop a complex div­ ision of labor, move off into diverging career lines, scatter across the surface of the territory they share in common, and create so many differences of tem­ per, ideology, fashion, and mood. Perhaps we can conclude, then, that two separate yet often competing currents are found in any society: those forces which promote a high degree of conformity among the people of the com­ munity so that they know what to expect from one another, and those forces which encourage a certain degree of diversity so that people can be deployed across the range of group space to survey its potential, measure its capacity, and, in the case of those we call deviants, patrol its boundaries. In such a scheme, the deviant would appear as a natural product of group differenti­ ation. He is not a bit of debris spun out by faulty social machinery, but a relevant figure in the community's overall division of labor.

NOTES

1. In fact, the first statement of the general notion presented here was concerned with the study of small groups. See Robert A. Dentler and Kai T. Erikson, "The Functions of Deviance in Groups," Social Problems, VII (Fall 1959), pp. 98-107.

2. Aldous Huxley, Prisons: The "Carceri" Etchings by Piranesi (London: The Trianon Press, 1949), p. 13.

3. For a good description of this process in the modem prison, see Gresham Sykes, The Society of Captiues (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958). For discussions of similar problems in two different kinds of mental hospital, see Erving Goffman, Asylums (New York: Babbs-Merrill, 1962) and Kai T. Erikson, "Patient Role and Social Uncertainty: A Dilemma of the Mentally III," Psychiatry, XX (August 1957), pp. 263-274.

4. Written by "a celebrated" but not otherwise identified author (perhaps Henry Fielding) and quoted in John Howard, The State of the Prisons, London, 1777 (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1929), p. 10.

5. The classic description of this process as it applies to the medical patient is found in Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, IlJ.: The Free Press, 1951).

~

I ~ f

t ~

~ ~

f f

Social Structure and Anomie 15

6. See Harold Garfinkel, "Successful Degradation Ceremonies," American Journal of Sociology, LXI (January 1956), pp. 42D-424.

7. Albert K. Cohen, for example, speaking for a dominant strain in sociological thinking, takes the question quite for granted: "It would seem that the control of deviant behavior is, by definition, a culture goal." See "The Study of Social Disorganization and Deviant Behavior" in Merton et al., Sociology Today (New York: Basic Books, 1959), p. 465.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ANOMIE ROBERT K. MERTON

In one of the most often-cited works in the American sociology of deviance, Merton asserts that much of the crime and deviance in our society stems from the extraordinarily strong emphasis our culture places on the goal offinancial success. The strong beliefthat Americans hold in the existence of"equal oppor­ tunity for all" implies t~at the goal of success is equally available and those who do not achieve it have only themselves to blame. Yet the problem is that there is not equal opportunity and that millions ofAmericans are set up to fail. The result can be frustration, hostility, anomie, and crime.

While other countries may have higher rates of poverty, the correlation between crime and poverty is not as strong in those societies because the emphasis on financial success and the belief in equal opportunity are not as strong; therefore, the frustration engendered by poverty is not as keen in those countries as it is in the United States.

There persists a notable tendency in SOciological theory to attribute the malfunctioning of social structure primarily to those of man's imperious bio­ logical drives which are not adequately restrained by social control. In this view, the social order is solely a device for "impulse management" and the "social processing" of tensions. These impulses which break through social control, be it noted, are held to be biologically derived. Nonconformity is assumed to be rooted in original nature.! Conformity is by implication the result of a utilitarian calculus or unreasoned conditioning. This point of view, whatever its other deficiencies, clearly begs one question. It provides no basis for determining the nonbiological conditions which induce deviations from prescribed patterns of conduct. In this paper, it will be suggested that certain phases of social structure generate the circumstances in which infringement of social codes constitutes a "normal" response.2

The conceptual scheme to be outlined is designed to provide a coherent, systematic approach to the study of socio-cultural sources of deviate

L

16 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

behavior. Our primary aim lies in discovering how some social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in non­ conformist rather than conformist conduct. The many ramifications of the scheme cannot all be discussed; the problems mentioned outnumber those explicitly treated.

Among the elements of social and cultural structure, two are important for our purposes. These are analytically separable although they merge impercept­ ibly in concrete situations. The first consists of culturally defined goals, pur­ poses, and interests. It comprises a frame of aspirational reference. These goals are more or less integrated and involve varying degrees of prestige and senti­ ment. They constitute a basic, but not the exclusive, component of what Linton aptly has called "designs for group living." Some of these cultural aspirations are related to the original drives of man, but they are not determined by them. The second phase of the social structure defines, regulates, and controls the acceptable modes of achieving these goals. Every social group invariably couples its scale of desired ends with moral or institutional regulation of permissible and required procedures for attaining these ends. These regulatory norms and moral imperatives do not necessarily coincide with technical or efficiency norms. Many procedures which from the standpoint of particular individuals would be most efficient in securing desired values, e.g., illicit oil­ stock schemes, theft, fraud, are ruled out of the institutional area of permitted conduct. The choice of expedients is limited by the institutional norms.

To say that these two elements, culture goals and institutional norms, operate jointly is not to say that the ranges of alternative behaviors and aims bear some constant relation to one another. The emphasis upon certain goals may vary independently of the degree of emphasis upon institutional means. There may develop a disproportionate, at times, a virtually exclusive, stress upon the value of specific goals, involving relatively slight concern with the institutionally appropriate modes of attaining these goals. The limiting case in this direction is reached when the range of alternative procedures is limited only by technical rather than institutional considerations. Any and all devices which promise attainment of the all important goal would be per­ mitted in this hypothetical polar case.3 This constitutes one type of cultural malintegration. A second polar type is found in groups where activities ori­ ginally conceived as instrumental are transmuted into ends in themselves. The original purposes are forgotten, and ritualistic adherence to institutionally prescribed conduct becomes virtually obsessive.4 Stability is largely ensured while change is flouted. The range of alternative behaviors is severely lim­ ited. There develops a tradition-bound, sacred society characterized by neo­ phobia. The occupational psychosis of the bureaucrat may be cited as a case in point. Finally, there are the intermediate types of groups where a balance between culture goals and institutional means is maintained. These are the significantly integrated and relatively stable, though changing, groups.

An effective equilibrium between the two phases of the social structure is maintained as long as satisfactions accrue to individuals who conform to

I i Sodal Structure and Anomie 17

both constraints, viz., satisfactions from the achievement of the goals and satisfactions emerging directly from the institutionally canalized modes of

I ~ striving to attain these ends. Success, in such equilibrated cases, is twofold.

Success is reckoned in terms of the product and in terms of the process, in terms of the outcome and in terms of activities. Continuing satisfactions must derive from sheer participation in a competitive order as well as from eclips­ ing one's competitors if the order itself is to be sustained. The occasional sacrifices involved in institutionalized conduct must be compensated by socialized rewards. The distribution of statuses and roles through competi­ tion must be so organized that positive incentives for conformity to roles and

"adherence to status obligations are provided for every position within the distributive order. Aberrant conduct, therefore, may be viewed as a symptom of dissociation between culturally defined aspirations and socially structured means.

Of the types of groups which result from the independent variation of the two phases of the social structure, we shall be primarily concerned with the first, namely, that involving a disproportionate accent on goals. This state­ ment must be recast in a proper perspective. In no group is there an absence of regulatory codes governing conduct, yet groups do vary in the degree to which these folkways, mores, and institutional controls are effectively inte­ grated with the more diffuse goals which are part of the culture matrix. Emotional convictions may cluster about the complex of socially acclaimed ends, meanwhile shifting their support from the culturally defined imple­ mentation of these ends. As we shall see, certain aspects of the social struc­ ture may generate countermores and antisocial behavior precisely because of differential emphases on goals and regulations. In the extreme case, the latter may be so vitiated by the goal-emphasis that the range of behavior is limited only by considerations of technical expediency. The sole significant question then becomes, which available means is most efficient in netting the socially approved value.s The technically most feasible procedure, whether legitimate or not, is preferred to the institutionally prescribed conduct. As this process continues, the integration of the society becomes tenuous and anomie ensues.

Thus, in competitive athletics, when the aim of victory is shorn of its insti­ tutional trappings and success in contests becomes construed as "winning the game" rather than "winning through circumscribed modes of activity," a premium is implicitly set upon the use of illegitimate but technically efficient means. The star of the opposing football team is surreptitiously slugged; the wrestler furtively incapacitates his opponent through ingenious but illicit techniques; university alumni covertly subsidize "students" whose talents are largely confined to the athletic field. The emphasis on the goal has so attenuated the satisfactions deriving from sheer participation in the competi­ tive activity that these satisfactions are virtually confined to a successful outcome. Through the same process, tension generated by the desire to win in a poker game is relieved by successfully dealing oneself four aces, or,

18 EXPlAINING DEVIANCE i when the cult of success has become completely dominant, by sagaciously shuffling the cards in a game of solitaire. The faint twinge of uneasiness in the last instance and the surreptitious nature of public delicts indicate clearly that the institutional rules of the game are known to those who evade them, but that the emotional supports of these rules are largely vitiated by cultural exaggeration of the success-goa1.6 They are microcosmic images of the social macrocosm.

Of course, this process is not restricted to the realm of sport. The process whereby exaltation of the end generates a literal demoralization, Le., a deinsti­ tutionalization, of the means is one which characterizes many7 groups in which the two phases of the social structure are not highly integrated. The extreme emphasis upon the accumulation of wealth as a symbol of success

8

in our own society militates against the completely effective control of insti­ tutionally regulated modes of acquiring of fortune. 9 Fraud, corruption, vice, crime, in short, the entire catalogue of proscribed behavior, becomes increas­ ingly common when the emphasis on the culturally induced success-goal becomes divorced from a coordinated institutional emphasis. This observa­ tion is of crucial theoretical importance in examining the doctrine that antisocial behavior most frequently derives from biological drives breaking through the restraints imposed by society. The difference is one between a strictly utilitarian interpretation which conceives man's ends as random and an analysis which finds these ends deriving from the basic values of the culture. lO

Our analysis can scarcely stop at this juncture. We must turn to other aspects of the social structure if we are to deal with the social genesis of the varying rates and types of deviate behavior characteristic of different soci­ eties. Thus far, we have sketched three ideal types of social orders constituted by distinctive patterns of relations between culture ends and means. Turning from these types of culture patterning, we find five logically possible, alterna­ tive modes of adjustment or adaptation by individuals within the culture­ bearing society or group.u These are schematically presented in the following table, where (+) signifies "acceptance," (-) signifies "elimination," and (:2:) signifies "rejection and substitution of new goals and standards."

Our discussion of the relation between these alternative responses and other phases of the social structure must be prefaced by the observation that

INSTITUTIONALMODES OF ADAPTATION CULTURE GOALS MEANS

+1. Conformity + II Innovation +

- +III. Ritualism IV. Retreatism

V. Rebellion12 :!: :!:

Social Structure and Anomie 19

persons may shift from one alternative to another as they engage in different social activities. These categories refer to role adjustments in specific situ­ ations, not to personality in toto. To treat the development of this process in various spheres of conduct would introduce a complexity unmanageable within the confines of this paper. For this reason, we shall be concerned pri­ marily with economic activity in the broad sense, "the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" in our competitive society, wherein wealth has taken on a highly symbolic cast. Our task is to search out some of the factors which exert pressure upon individuals to engage in certain of these logically possible alternative responses. This choice, as we shall see, is far from random.

In every society, Adaptation I (conformity to both culture goals and means) is the most common and widely diffused. Were this not so, the sta­ bility and continuity of the society could not be maintained. The mesh of expectancies which constitutes every social order is sustained by the modal behavior of its members falling within the first category. Conventional role behavior oriented toward the basic values of the group is the rule rather than the exception. It is this fact alone which permits us to speak of a human aggregate as comprising a group or society.

Conversely, Adaptation IV (rejection of goals and means) is the least com­ mon. Persons who "adjust" (or maladjust) in this fashion are, strictly speak­ ing, in the society but not of it. Sociologically, these constitute the true "aliens." Not sharing the common frame of orientation, they can be included within the societal population merely in a fictional sense. In this category are some of the activities of psychotics, psychoneurotics, chronic autists, pariahs, outcasts, vagrants, vagabonds, tramps, chronic drunkards, and drug addicts.J3 These have relinquished, in certain spheres of activity, the cultur­ ally defined goals, involving complete aim-inhibition in the polar case, and their adjustments are not in accord with institutional norms. This is not to say that in some cases the source of their behavioral adjustments is not in part the very social structure which they have in effect repudiated nor that their very existence within a social area does not constitute a problem for the socialized population.

This mode of adjustment occurs, as far as structural sources are concerned, when both the culture goals and institutionalized procedures have been assimilated thoroughly by the individual and imbued with affect and high positive value, but where those institutionalized procedures which promise a measure of successful attainment of the goals are not available to the indi­ vidual. In such instances, there results a two-fold mental conflict insofar as the moral obligation for adopting institutional means conflicts with the pres­ sure to resort to illegitimate means (which may attain the goal) and inasmuch as the individual is shut off from means which are both legitimate and effect­ ive. The competitive order is maintained, but the frustrated and handi­ capped individual who cannot cope with this order drops out. Defeatism, quietism, and resignation are manifested in escape mechanisms which

20 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

ultimately lead the individual to "escape" from the requirements of the soci­ ety. It is an expedient which arises from continued failure to attain the goal by legitimate measures and from an inability to adopt the illegitimate route because of internalized prohibitions and institutionalized compulsives, dur­ ing which process the supreme value of the success-goal has as yet not been renounced. The conflict is resolved by eliminating both precipitating elements, the goals and means. The escape is complete, the conflict is eliminated, and the individual is associated.

Be it noted that where frustration derives from the inaccessibility of effective institutional means for attaining economic or any other type of highly valued "success," that Adaptations II, III, and V (innovation, ritualism, and rebellion) are also possible. The result will be determined by the particular personality, and thus, the particular cultural background, involved. Inadequate socializa­ tion will result in the innovation response whereby the conflict and frustration are eliminated by relinquishing the institutional means and retaining the success-aspiration; an extreme assimilation of institutional demands will lead to ritualism wherein the goal is dropped as beyond one's reach but conformity to the mores persists; and rebellion occurs when emancipation from the reign­ ing standards, due to frustration or to marginalist perspectives, leads to the attempt to introduce a "new social order."

Our major concern is with the illegitimacy adjustment. This involves the use of conventionally proscribed but frequently effective means of attaining at least the simulacrum of culturally defined success-wealth, power, and the like. As we have seen, this adjustment occurs when the individual has assim­ ilated the cultural emphasis on success without equally internalizing the morally prescribed norms governing means for its attainment. The question arises, Which phases of our social structure predispose toward this mode of adjustment? We may examine a concrete instance, effectively analyzed by Lohman,14 which provides a clue to the answer. Lohman has shown that spe­ cialized areas of vice in the near north side of Chicago constitute a "normal" response to a situation where the cultural emphasis upon pecuniary success has been absorbed, but where there is little access to conventional and legit­ imate means for attaining such success. The conventional occupational opportunities of persons in this area are almost completely limited to man­ uallabor. Given our cultural stigmatization of manual labor, and its correlate, the prestige of white collar work, it is clear that the result is a strain toward innovational practices. The limitation of opportunity to unskilled labor and the resultant low income cannot compete in terms of conventional standards of achievement with the high income from organized vice.

For our purposes, this situation involves two important features. First, such antisocial behavior is in a sense "called forth" by certain conventional values of the culture and by the class structure involving differential access to the approved opportunities for legitimate, prestige-bearing pursuit of the culture goals. The lack of high integration between the means-and-end elements of the cultural pattern and the particular class structure combine to

Social Structure and Anomie 21

favor a heightened frequency of antisocial conduct in such groups. The sec­ ond consideration is of equal significance. Recourse to the first of the alter­ native responses, legitimate effort, is limited by the fact that actual advance toward desired success-symbols through conventional channels is, despite our persisting open-class ideology,15 relatively rare and difficult for those handicapped by little formal education and few economic resources. The dominant pressure of group standards of success is, therefore, on the gradual attenuation of legitimate, but by and large ineffective, strivings and the increasing use of illegitimate, but more or less effective, expedients of vice and crime. The cultural demands made on persons in this situation are

. incompatible. On the one hand, they are asked to orient their conduct toward the prospect of accumulating wealth and on the other, they are largely denied effective opportunities to do so institutionally. The consequences of such structural inconsistency are psychopathological personality, and/or anti­ social conduct, and/or revolutionary activities. The equilibrium between culturally designated means and ends becomes highly unstable with the progressive emphasis on attaining the prestige-laden ends by any means whatsoever. Within this context, Capone represents the triumph of amoral intelligence over morally prescribed "failure," when the channels of vertical mobility are closed or narrowed 16 in a society which places a high premium on economic affluence and social as~ent for all its members.17

This last qualification is of primary importance. It suggests that other phases of the social structure besides the extreme emphasis on pecuniary suc­ cess must be considered if we are to understand the social sources of antisocial behaVior. A high frequency of deviate behavior is not generated simply by "lack of opportunity" or by this exaggerated pecuniary emphasis. A compara­ tively rigidified class structure, a feudalistic or caste order, may limit such opportunities far beyond the point which obtains in our society today. It is only when a system of cultural values extols, Virtually above all else, certain common symbols of success for the population at large while its social structure rigorously restricts or completely eliminates access to approved modes of acquiring these symbols for a considerable part of the same population that anti­ social behavior ensues on a considerable scale. In other words, our egalitarian ideology denies by implication the existence of noncompeting groups and individuals in the pursuit of pecuniary success. The same body of success­ symbols is held to be desirable for all. These goals are held to transcend class lines, not to be bounded by them, yet the actual social organization is such that there exist class differentials in the accessibility of these common success­ symbols. Frustration and thwarted aspiration lead to the search for avenues of escape from a culturally induced intolerable situation; or unrelieved ambi­ tion may eventuate in illicit attempts to acquire the dominant values.18 The American stress on pecuniary success and ambitiousness for all thus invites exaggerated anxieties, hostilities, neuroses, and antisocial behaVior.

This theoretical analysis may go far toward explaining the varying correl­ ations between crime and poverty.19 Poverty is not an isolated variable. It is

22 EXPLAINING DEVIANCE

one in a complex of interdependent social and cultural variables. When viewed in such a context, it represents quite different states of affairs. Poverty as such, and consequent limitation of opportunity, are not sufficient to induce a conspicuously high rate of criminal behavior. Even the often mentioned "poverty in the midst of plenty" will not necessarily lead to this result. Only insofar as poverty and associated disadvantages in competition for the cul­ ture values approved for all members of the society are linked with the assimilation of a cultural emphasis on monetary accumulation as a symbol of success is antisocial conduct a "normal" outcome. Thus, poverty is less highly correlated with crime in southeastern Europe than in the United States. The possibilities of vertical mobility in these European areas would seem to be fewer than in this country, so that neither poverty per se nor its association with limited opportunity is sufficient to account for the varying correlations. It is only when the full configuration is considered, poverty, lim­ ited opportunity, and a commonly shared system of success-symbols, that we can explain the higher association between poverty and crime in our society than in others where rigidified class structure is coupled with differential class symbols ofachievement.

In societies such as our own, then, the pressure of prestige-bearing success tends to eliminate the effective social constraint over means employed to this end. "The-end-justifies-the-means" doctrine becomes a guiding tenet for action when the cultural structure unduly exalts the end and the social organ­ ization unduly limits possible recourse to approved means. Otherwise put, this notion and associated behavior reflect a lack of cultural coordination. In international relations, the effects of this lack of integration are notoriously apparent. An emphasis upon national power is not readily coordinated with an inept organization of legitimate, i.e., internationally defined and accepted, means for attaining this goal. The result is a tendency toward the abrogation of international law, treaties become scraps of paper, "undeclared warfare" serves as a technical evasion, the bombing of civilian populations is rational­ ized,20 just as the same societal situation induces the same sway of illegit­ imacy among individuals.

The social order we have described necessarily produces this "strain toward dissolution." The pressure of such an order is upon outdoing one's competitors. The choice of means within the ambit of institutional control will persist as long as the sentiments supporting a competitive system, i.e., deriving from the possibility of outranking competitors and hence enjoying the favorable response of others, are distributed throughout the entire system of activities and are not confined merely to the final result. A stable social structure demands a balanced distribution of affect among its various seg­ ments. When there occurs a shift of emphasis from the satisfactions deriving from competition itself to almost exclusive concern with successful competi­ tion, the resultant stress leads to the breakdown of the regulatory structure.21

With the resulting attenuation of the institutional imperatives, there occurs an approximation of the situation erroneously held by utilitarians to be

Social Structure and Anomie

typical of society generally wherein calculations of advantage and fear of punishment are the sole regulating agencies. In such situations, as Hobbes observed, force and fraud come to constitute the sole virtues in view of their relative efficiency in attaining goals-which were for him, of course, not culturally derived.

It should be apparent that the foregoing discussion is not pitched on a moralistic plane. Whatever the sentiments of the writer or reader concerning the ethical desirability of coordinating the means-and-goals phases of the social structure, one must agree that lack of such coordination leads to anomie. Insofar as one of the most general functions of social organization is to provide a basis for calculability and regularity of behavior, it is increas­ ingly limited in effectiveness as these elements of the structure become dissociated. At the extreme, predictability virtually disappears and what may be properly termed cultural chaos or anomie intervenes. This statement, being brief, is also incomplete. It has not included an exhaustive treatment of the various structural elements which predispose toward one rather than another of the alternative responses open to individuals; it has neglected, but not denied the relevance of, the factors determining the specific incidence of these responses; it has not enumerated the various concrete responses which are constituted by combinations of specific values of the analytical variables; it has omitted, or included mlly by implication, any consideration of the social functions performed by illicit responses; it has not tested the full explanatory power of the analytical scheme by examining a large number of group varia­ tions in the frequency of deviate and conformist behavior; it has not ade­ quately dealt with rebellious conduct which seeks to refashion the social framework radically; it has not examined the relevance of cultural conflict for an analysis of culture-goal and institutional-means malintegration. It is suggested that these and related problems may be profitably analyzed by this scheme.

NOTES

1. E.g., Ernest Jones, Social Aspects of Psychoanalysis, 28, London, 1924. If the Freudian notion is a variety of the "original sin" dogma, then the interpretation advanced in this paper may be called the doctrine of "socially derived sin."

2. "Normal" in the sense of a culturally oriented, if not approved, response. This statement does not deny the relevance of biological and personality differences which may be signifi­ cantly involved in the incidence of deviate conduct. Our focus of interest is the social and cul­ tural matrix; hence we abstract from other factors. It is in this sense, I take it, that James S. Plant speaks of the "normal reaction of normal people to abnormal conditions." See his Personality and the Cultural Pattern, 248, New York, 1937.

3. Contemporary American culture has been said to tend in this direction. See Andre Siegfried, America Comes ofAge, 26-37, New York, 1927. The alleged extreme(?) emphasis on the goals of monetary success and material prosperity leads to dominant concern with technological and social instruments designed to produce the desired result, inasmuch as institutional

.'!t~'~?~"':'V'i d(.,';~";Jjl.:'llo',,,,~:·.-"

THE COCHON AND THE HOMBRE-HOMBRE IN NICARAGUA

ROGER N. LANCASTER

In the United States, conceptions of sexual orientation are dichotomized. That is, Americans tend to view sexuality in an either-or mode: either you're heterosexual or you're homosexual. If you are homosexual, then you are not heterosexual, and vice versa. If you enjoy sexual relations with the same sex, then you are homosexual and not heterosexual. Many other cultures (and some subcultures within the United States) do not force their members to fit into such mutually exclusive categories. That is, they permit a person to engage in homoerotic behavior without compromising his or her heterosexual status. However, there are rules that such a person must follow in order to maintain their status as "normal." The following article describes the situation in Nicaragua.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF SEXUAL PRACTICES

The coch6n, at first glance, might be interpreted as a Nicaraguan "folk cat­ egory." The noun itself appears in both masculine (el coch6n) and feminine (la cochon, la cochona) genders; either case typically refers to a male. The term is loosely translated as "queer" or "faggot" by English-speaking visitors; edu­ cated Nicaraguans, if they are fluent in international terminologies, are apt to translate the term in a similar (but more polite) fashion, giving "gay" or "homosexual" as its English equivalents. It becomes clear on closer inspec­ tion, however, that the term differs markedly from its Anglo-American coun­ terparts of whatever shade. (And therein lies the danger of treating it as a folk category, which suggests that it is simply the rural version of some larger cosmopolitan concept.) In the first place, the term is not always as derogatory as the slanderous English versions are. Of course, it can be derogatory, and it almost always is. However, it can also be neutral and descriptive. I have even heard it employed in a particular sort of praising manner by ordinary Nicaraguan men: for instance, "We must go to Carnaval this year and see the cochones. The cochones there are very, very beautiful."l

Second, and more important, the term marks and delimits a set of sexual practices that partially overlaps but is clearly not identical to our own notion of the homosexual. The term specifies only certain practices in certain con­ texts. Some acts that we would describe as homosexual bear neither stigma

89

90 SEX AND SEXUALITY

nor an accompanying identity of any special sort whatsoever; others clearly mark their practitioner as a coch6n.

If homosexuality in the United States is most characteristically regarded as an oral phenomenon, Nicaraguan homosexual practice is understood in terms of an anal emphasis. The lexicon of male insult clearly reflects this anal emphasis in Nicaraguan culture, even as the North American lexicon gener­ ally reflects an oral orientation. Cocksucker is the most common sexually explicit pejorative in the United States. Although equivalents to this term are sometimes used in Nicaragua, men there are more likely to be insulted in ref­ erence to anal intercourse. The dominant assumptions of everyday discourse, too, reflect the assumption of privileged, primary, and defining routes of intercourse in each case. That is, in Anglo-American culture, orality defines the homosexual; whatever else he might or might not do, a gay man is under­ stood as someone who engages in oral intercourse with other men. In Nicaragua, anal intercourse defines the coch6n; whatever else he might or might not do, a coch6n is tacitly understood as someone who engages in anal intercourse with other men. But more is involved here than a mere shifting of the dominant sites of erotic practice or a casting of stigma with reference to different body parts. With the exception of a few well-defined contexts (e.g., prisons) where the rule may be suspended, homosexual activity of any sort defines the Anglo-American homosexual. In Nicaragua, by contrast, it is the passive role in anal intercourse that defines the coch6n. Oral or manual practices receive scant social attention; everyday speech does not treat them in great detail, and non-anal practices appear far less significant in the reper­ toire of actually practiced homosexual activities.

The term coch6n itself appears to indicate the nature of that status and role. None of my informants was certain about the origin of the term; it is Nica, a word peculiar to the Nicaraguan dialect of Spanish. Moreover, one encoun­ ters different pronunciations in various neighborhoods, classes, and regions, so there can really be no agreed spelling of the word: I have heard it rendered cuch6n, cuIch6n, and even coIch6n. 2 The last suggests a possible origin of the word: coIch6n means "mattress." As one of my informants suggested when prompted to speculate on the origin of the word, "You get on top of him like a mattress."

In neighboring Honduras, the point is made with even greater linguistic precision. There, "passive" partners in anal intercourse are known as cuIeros, from the term wIo, meaning "ass," with the standard ending -era. A zapatero is a man who works with shoes (zapatos); a culero is a man whose sexual activity and identity are defined as anal. As in Nicaragua, the act of insertion carries with it no special identity, much less stigma.

"You get on top of him like a mattress" summarizes the nature of the coch6n's status as well as any phrase could, but it also points to the question, Who gets on top of him like a mattress? The answer is, Not only other cochones. Indeed, relationships between cochones seem relatively rare and, when they occur, are generally short-term. It is' typically a noncoch6n male

The Coch6n and the Hombre-Hombre in Nicaragua 91

who plays the active role in sexual intercourse: a machista or an hombre­ hombre, a "manly man." Both terms designate a "masculine man" in the popu­ lar lexicon; cochones frequently use either term to designate potential sexual partners. Relationships of this type, between cochones and hombres-hom­ bres, may be of any number of varieties: one-time-only affairs; purchased sex, with the purchase running in either direction (although most typically it is the coch6n who pays); protracted relationships running weeks or months; or full-scale emotional commitments lasting years.

The last sort is preferred but carries its own type of difficulties, its own particular sadness. As one of my informants related, "I once had a lover for five continuous years. He was a sergeant in the military, an hombre-hombre. During this period of time he had at least fifteen girlfriends, but I was his only male lover. He visited me and we made love almost every day. You have asked me if there is love and romance in these relations; yes, there is. He was very romantic, very tender, and very jealous. But he is married now and I rarely see him."

... In spite of my research strategy, and in settings as diverse as the market­ place and the school, I did meet and interview a number of men classified as cochones.3 In our discussions, many of them told me that they were really comfortable only in the anal-passive position. Others alternate between active and passive roles, d.epending on whether they are having relations with an hombre-hombre (almost always passive) or with another coch6n (passive or active). Some reported practicing oral sex, though not as fre­ quently as anal intercourse. Several of my noncoch6n informants denied hav­ ing any knowledge of oral techniques. Nicaraguans in general express revulsion at the idea of oral intercourse, whether heterosexual or homosex­ ual. "Oral sexual relations? What's that?" was a common response to my queries about varied sexual positions in heterosexual intercourse. "Me disgusta" (That's disgusting) was the typical response to my descriptions of cunnilingus and fellatio. A series of (not necessarily sexual) aversions and prohibitions concerning the mouth seems to be involved here. The mouth is seen as the primary route of contamination, the major path whereby illness enters the body, and sex is quintessentially sucio (dirty). This conception is socialized into children from infancy onward. Parents are always scolding their small children for putting things in their mouths. This oral prohibition curbs the possibilities of oral intercourse.

The resultant anal emphasis suggests a significant constraint on the nature of homoerotic practices. Unlike oral intercourse, which may lend itself to reciprocal sexual practices, anal intercourse invariably produces an active partner and a passive partner. It already speaks the language of "actiVity" and "passivity/' as it were.4 If oral intercourse suggests the possibility of an equal sign between partners, anal intercourse in rigidly defined contexts most likely produces an unequal relationship: a "masculine" and a "fem­ inine" partner, as seen in the context of a highly gendered ordering of the world. But this anal emphasis is not merely a negative restraint on the

92 SEX AND SEXUALITY

independent variable (homosexuality); positively, it produces a whole field of practices and relations.

THE SPECIFIC ROUTES OF STIGMA

There is clearly stigma in Nicaraguan homosexual practice, but it is not a stigma of the sort that clings equally to both partners. Only the anal-passive coch6n is stigmatized. His partner, the active hombre-hombre, is not stigma­ tized at all; moreover, no clear category exists in the popular language to classify him. For all purposes, he is just a normal Nicaraguan male. The term heterosexual is inappropriate here. First, neither it nor any equivalent of it appears in the popular language. Second, it is not really the issue. One is either a coch6n or one is not. If one is not, it scarcely matters that one sleeps with cochones, regularly or irregularly. Indeed, a man can gain status among his peers as a Vigorous machista by sleeping with cochones in much the same manner that one gains prestige by sleeping with many women. I once heard a Nicaraguan youth of nineteen boast to his younger friends: "I am very sexu­ ally experienced. I have had a lot of women, especially when I was in the army, over on the Atlantic coast. I have done everything. I have even done it with cochones." No one in the group thought this a damning confession, and all present were impressed with their friend's sexual experience and prowess. This sort of sexual boasting is not unusual in male drinking talk.

For that matter, desire is not at issue here, and it is irrelevant to what degree one is attracted sexually to members of one's own sex, as long as that attraction does not compromise one's masculinity, defined as activity. What matters is the manner in which one is attracted to other males. It is expected that one would naturally be aroused by the idea of anally penetrating another male. (In neighboring Honduras, it is sometimes said that to become a man, one must sleep with a culero and two women.)

This is not to say that active homosexual pursuits are encouraged or even approved in all social contexts. Like adultery and heterosexual promiscuity, the active role in homosexual intercourse is seen as an infraction. That is, from the point of view of civil-religious authority, and from the point of view of women, it is indeed a "sin" (pecado or mal). But like its equivalent forms of adultery and promiscuity, the sodomizing act is a relatively minor sin. And in male-male social relations, any number of peccadillos (heavy drinking, promiscuity, the active role in same-sex intercourse) become status markers of male honor.

Nicaraguans exhibit no true horror of homosexuality in the North American style; their responses to the coch6n tend rather toward amusement or con­ tempt. The laughter of women often follows him down the street--discreet derision, perhaps, and behind his back, but the amusement of the community is ever present for the coch6n. For men, the coch6n is simultaneously an object of desire and reproach-but that opprobrium knows tacit limits, community

The Coch6n and the Hombre-Hombre in Nicaragua 93

bounds. A reasonably discreet coch6n--one who dresses conservatively and keeps his affairs relatively discreet-will rarely be harassed or ridiculed in public, although he may be the target of private jokes. If he is very discreet, his status may never even be publicly acknowledged in his presence, and his prac­ tices will occupy the ambiguous category of a public secret. ...

[T]he hombre-hombre's exemption from stigma is never entirely secure. He might find his honor tainted under certain circumstances. If an hombre­ hombre's sexual engagement with a coch6n comes to light, for example, and if the nature of that relationship is seen as compromising the former's strength and power-in other words, if he is seen as being emotionally vulnerable to another man-his own masculinity would be undermined, regardless of his physical role in intercourse, and he might well be enveloped within the coch6n's stigma. Or if the activo's attraction to men is perceived as being so great as to define a clear preference for men, and if this preference is understood to mitigate his social and sexual dominion over women, he would be seen as forgoing his masculine privileges and would undoubtedly be stigmatized. However, the Nicaraguan hombre-hombre retains the tools and strategies to ward off such stigma, both within and even through his sex­ ual relationships with other men, and his arsenal is not much less than that which is available to other men who are not sleeping with cochones.

This is a crucial point. TJ;lese kinds of circumstances are perhaps not excep­ tions at all but simply applications of the rules in their most general sense. Such rules apply not only to those men who engage in sexual intercourse with other men but also to men who have sex only with women. The sound of stigma is the clatter of a malicious gossip that targets others' vulnerabilities. Thus, if a man fails to maintain the upper hand in his relations with women, his demeanor might well be judged passive, and he may be stigmatized, by degrees, as a cabr6n (cuckold), maric6n (effeminate man), and cochOn. Whoever fails to maintain an aggresSively masculine front will be teased, ridiculed, and, ultimately, stigmatized. In this regard, accusations that one is a coch6n are bandied about in an almost random manner: as a jest between friends, as an incitement between rivals, as a violent insult between enemies. Cats that fail to catch mice, dogs that fail to bark, boys who fail to fight, and men who fail in their pursuit of a woman: all are reproached with the term. And sometimes, against all this background noise, the charge is leveled as an earnest accusation.

That is the peculiar and extravagant power of the stigmatizing category: like Nietzsche's "prison-house of language" (Jameson, 1972), it indeed confines those to whom it is most strictly applied; but ambiguously used, it conjures a terror that rules all men, all actions, all relationships.

NOTES

1. Called "the festival of disguises," Carnaval is a religious celebration held annually in thel large agricultural market town of Masaya. It marks the climax of a series of religious festivals

94 SEX AND SEXUALITY

in that town, and not the approach of Lent. An important presence among the elaborate masks and disguises of Camaval is that of the cochones, who don female attire and parade alongside other participants in the day's procession.

2. My spelling throughout conforms to the only spelling I have ever seen in print, in a Nuevo diario editorial (6 Dec. 1985).

3. I was not "out"-openly gay-in Erasmus Jimenez. At first, this strategy was to ensure that I could establish good relations with my informants, who, I imagined, would not approve. Later, it became problematic to me just how I would articulate my own understanding of my own sexuality to my informants-as this chapter demonstrates. Covertly, and through various circumlocutions, a few men from the neighborhood attempted to establish sexual liaisons with me; more generally, I encountered cochones in "neutral" and relatively "anonymous" settings such as the marketplace. In either case, for the most part these men assumed that I was an hom­ bre-hombre. If I described myself to them as homosexual or gay, their sexual interest was generally diminished greatly.

4. As Boswell observes (1989, 33-34), fellatio can be considered an "active" behavior; if anything, it is the fellated who is "passive."

REFERENCES

Boswell, John. 1989. "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories." In Duberman et a!., Hidden from History, 17-36. New York: NAL Books.

Jameson, Frederic, 1972. The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Aceount of Structuralism and Russian Formalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

~"',d" "»;~,,,~~,~,,-\..,1W/t.~'j}';;:;Iit,':~

WOMEN IN LESOTHO AND THE (WESTERN) CONSTRUCTION OF HOMOPHOBIA

K. L1MAKATSO KENDAll

The previous article and the one below both deal with the importance of lan­ guage in the social construction of deviant categories. A label is a word and without the word in one's vocabulary, one cannot affix the label. John Lofland referred to these words or labels as "pivotal categories," or concepts in our minds around which we organize our perceptions, Put figuratively, a pivotal category is a socket in our brains into which we plug our perceptions. No socket for deviance, no perceptions of deviance. In Lesotho, they do not have a salient category for lesbianism and when women engage in homoerotic behav­ ior, it is not considered "sex"; so women who engage in such behavior are not

Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 95

labeled lesbians. The author is reasonably concerned, however, that with globalization and the spread of Western beliefs around the world, today's "nor­ mal" Basotho women risk being tomorrow's "deviant" Basotho women.

Globalization could indeed cause radical shifts in the construction of deviant categories in countries throughout the world.

My search for lesbians in Lesotho began in 1992, when I arrived in that small, impoverished southern African country and went looking for my own kind. That was before the president of nearby Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, himself mission-educated, declared moral war on homosexuality and insisted that homosexuality was a "Western" phenomenon imported into Africa by the colonists.! When I left Lesotho two and a half years later, I had not found a single Mosoth02 who identified herself as a lesbian. However, I had found widespread, apparently normative erotic relationships among the Basotho women I knew, in conjunction with the absence of a concept of this behavior as "sexual" or as something that might have a name. I learned not to look for unconventionality or visible performance of sex role rejection as indicators of "queerness." Most Basotho women grow up in environments where it is impossible for them to learn about, purchase, or display symbols of gay visi­ bility, where passionate relationships between women are as conventional as (heterosexual) marriage, a,nd where women who love women usually per­ form also the roles of conventional wives and mothers. I have had to look again at how female sexualities express themselves, how privilege and les­ bianism intersect (or do not), and whether what women have together-in Lesotho or anywhere else-should be called "sex" at all. I have concluded that love between women is as native to southern Africa as the soil itself, but that homophobia, like Mugabe's Christianity, is a Western import.

BACKGROUND: LESOTHO AND ITS HISTORY

Surrounded on all sides by South Africa, Lesotho, with no natural resources except population, squirms in an ever-tightening vise. Only 10 percent of the land in Lesotho is arable, but 82 percent of its population of over two million is engaged in subsistence agriculture (Internet World Factbook 1995). Most Basotho have no source of cash income at all, while a few are wealthy even by U.S. standards. Under these circumstances "mean national income per household member" means little, but in 1994 it was [about $13 per month](Gay and Hall 1994:20). The conclusion of international experts is that Lesotho is experiencing a "permanent crisis" (Gay and Hall 1994:9) exacer­ bated by unemployment, population growth, decline in arable land, reduc­ tion in soil fertility, desertification, and hopelessness....

All women are legally "minors" in Lesotho under customary law. Under common law women are minors until the age of twenty-one, but they revert

96 SEX AND SEXUALITY

to minor status if they marry, attaining majority status only if single or wid­ owed (Gill 1992:5). Women cannot hold property; they have no custody rights in the case of divorce; they cannot inherit property if they have sons; they cannot borrow money, own or manage property or businesses, sign con­ tracts, buy and sell livestock, land, or "unnecessary" goods. Nor can a woman obtain a passport without a husband's or father's consent (Gill 1992:5). Although women do now vote, the franchise is one of the few areas in which women have gained legal rights since independence in 1966. A few well-educated middle-class women are fighting for greater equity. The Federation of Women Lawyers has "mounted an awareness campaign on the rights of women" and is trying to secure legal rights for women, but with three legal codes operative in Lesotho (customary law based on tradition and the chieftaincy, common law based on the Roman-Dutch system of South Africa, and constitutional law) the going is difficult, to say the least, for Basotho feminists (Thai 1996:17)... ~

[An] important aspect of the background of this study is that women in Lesotho endure physical abuse almost universally. Marriage is compulsory by custom, and divorce is very expensive; the divorce rate is only 1 percent for this reason (Gi1l1992:5). However, women manage up to 60 percent of the households on their own, in small part because of male migrant labor, but in larger part because of de facto separation and divorce occasioned by couples never having been married and then separating, by male abandonment, or by women leaving abusive mates (Gill 1992:21).

In the two years I lived in Lesotho, I met only one woman who said she had never been beaten by a husband or boyfriend, and she said she was the only woman she knew who had been so fortunate. According to precolonial tradition, a man claimed a woman as a wife by raping her, and this custom is still common in the mountain areas. One scholar notes the"apparent tol­ erance of a man's unbridled right to exploit women sexually" (Epprecht 1995:48). Men are conditioned to abuse women; women are conditioned to accept abuse. In this context, women often seek comfort, understanding, and support from other women. In addition, the homosocial nature of Basotho society, both before and after colonization, separates boys and girls from early childhood and conditions members of one gender group to regard members of the other gender group as a distinct "other." Thus, whatever her sexual desires and impulses may be, a Mosotho woman is likely to establish significant emotional bonds only with other women and with children and to become accustomed to expressing affection toward members of her own sex. Indeed, it is common all over Lesotho to see people of the same sex walking hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm, but it is so rare as to be remarkable to see pub­ lic displays of affection between males and females. In this context, it is not surprising that some women who experience sexual desire for other women find it easy to express that desire, and it is also not surprising that the lines between what is affection and what is sex or desire blur.

Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 97

PROBLEMATIZING THE AUTHOR

I cannot claim to have conducted an objective scientific study of Basotho women and sexuality, nor would I want to make such a claim. In every respect, what I see or understand of Basotho women's experience is filtered through my own range of perceptions and beliefs and is colored by my own experience of what is sexual, what is affectional, and what is possible between women. My experience as a lesbian shapes my interpretation of behavior I perceive as being "erotic" or "lesbianlike."3 My experience as a

" white working-class woman, who has made it into academe and thereby lost her class connections and identity, shapes my understanding of privilege and its relationship to "lesbianism" as a lifestyle. I have now been "out" for thirty-one years, but I prefer not to share a household with my partner and resent definitions of lesbianism that reify the tidy domestic arrangement that features two middle-class women under one roof, so popular in lesbian com­ munities in the U.s. My personal experience strongly influences my percep­ tion of the intersections of class privilege (or the lack of it) and sexual choices in Lesotho. My informants were all black women, Basotho friends, neigh­ bors, and acquaintances, mostly residents of the Roma Valley, an area of Lesotho steeped in and named for the Roman Catholic religion. Although many of the women with whom I discussed women's sexuality had migrated to the Roma Valley from the mountains and can tell about rural women's lives firsthand, nonetheless there is a distance and separation of their experi­ ences from those of the mountain women who have not migrated. The very fact that they were talking to a white woman about bodily functions set them apart from women in the mountains who have never done so. Their lenses, like mine, are unique, and not ideally representative, if indeed such a thing as ideal representativity exists. I speak Sesotho, but not fluently, and I am not an anthropologist. Much of what I have learned about women, class, and sexuality in Lesotho has come to me through lucky coincidences....

WOMEN IN LESOTHO

Probably the most important accident in my quest for lesbians in Lesotho was that on my arrival at the university I was housed at the guest house, where I befriended 'M'e Mpho Nthunya,the cleaning woman.4 I learned before long that 'M'e Mpho had actually, in a sense, married another woman (more about that later). When I asked her if she knew of any women-loving women in Lesotho, she was puzzled. "Many of us love each other," she said, laughing. Thinking she had misunderstood me, I said I meant not just affec­ tionate loving, but, well, I stammered, "Women who share the blankets with each other," that being the euphemism in Lesotho for having sex.

98 SEX AND SEXUALITY Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 99

'M'l' Mpho found that uproariously funny. "It's impossible for two women and Hite and on up to the present, these studies repeatedly show that les­

to share the blankets," she said. "You can't have sex unless somebody has a bians "have sex" less frequently than heterosexuals or gay men. Marilyn Frye

koai (penis)." This concise, simple observation led me to two different but (1992) cites one study by Blumstein and Schwartz that shows that "47% of

related trains of thought. lesbians in long-term relationships 'had sex' once a month or less, while

First, 'M'e Mpho's "impossible" brought to mind one of Greenberg's among heterosexual married couples only 15% had sex once a month or less"

remarks in The Construction of Homosexuality, to wit, "the kinds of sexual acts (110). Frye is amused by how the sexperts count how many times people

it is thought possible to perform, and the social identities that come to be have sex. She notes that the question "how many times" they "had sex" is a

attached to those who perform them, vary from one society to another" source of merriment for lesbians. For what constitutes "a time"? Frye con­

(1988:3, italics mine). Greenberg continues: tinues, "what 85% of long-term heterosexual married couples do more than

Homosexuality is not a conceptual category everywhere. To us, it connotes a sym­ once a month takes on the average eight minutes to do" (1992:110). In con­ metry between male-male and female-female relationships.... When used to trast, what lesbians do so much less frequently takes anything from half an characterize individuals, it implies that erotic attraction originates in a relatively hour to half a day to do and can take even longer if circumstances allow. Frye stable, more or less exclusive attribute of the individual. Usually it connotes an concludes: "My own view is that lesbian couples ... don't 'have sex' at all. By exclusive orientation: the homosexual is not also heterosexual; the heterosexual is the criteria that I'm betting most of the heterosexual people used in reporting not also homosexual. the frequency with which they have sex, lesbians don't have sex. There is no

Most non-Western societies make few of these assumptions. Distinctions of age, male partner whose orgasm and ejaculation can be the criterion for counting gender, and social status loom larger. The sexes are not necessarily conceived 'times'" (1992:113). symmetrically. (1988:484)

Or as 'M'e Mpho Nthunya put it: no koai, no sex. Diane Richardson writes Lesotho is one such non-Western society, and Basotho society has not con­ on a similar tack,

structed a social category "lesbian." Obviously in Lesotho the sexes are not How do you know you've had sex with a woman? Is it sex only if you have an conceived symmetrically. Nor is "exclusive orientation" economically feas­ orgasm? What if she comes and you don't? .. What if what you did wasn't geni­ible for most Basotho women. There is no tradition in Lesotho that permits tal, say you stroked each other and kissed and caressed, would you later say

or condones women or men remaining single; single persons are regarded as you'd had sex with that woman? And would she say the same? The answer, of anomalous and tragic. Thus women have no identity apart from that of the course, is that it depends; it would depend on how you and she interpreted what men to whom they are related; only comparatively wealthy divorced or wid­ happened. (1992:188) owed women could set up housekeeping alone or with each other. As in

Since among liberated Western lesbians it is difficult to determine when onemany other African societies, including that of Swahili·speaking people in has had "sex" with a woman, it is not at all surprising that in Roman Catholic Mombasa, Kenya, "a respectable adult is a married adult" (Shepherd circles in Lesotho, "sex" is impossible without a koai. Among Basotho people, 1987:243). However, there is much less wealth in Lesotho than in Mombasa. as among those surveyed in numerous studies in the U.s. and the u.K., sexThe lesbian unions Shepherd describes as common and "open" among mar­ is what men have-with women or with each other. The notion of "sex" or ried and formerly married Swahili-speaking women are based, as she notes, the "sex act" is so clearly defined by male sexual function that 'M'e Mphoon the constructions of rank and gender in that society, as well as upon the

, Nthunya's view of it should not surprise any of us. However, women inexistence of a considerable number of women with sufficient economic ,. Lesotho do, as 'M'l' Mpho said, love each other. And in expressing that love, power to support other women (1987:262-265). Even more important, they have something.

Swahili-speaking women, according to Shepherd, do have a concept of the Judith Gay (1985) documents the custom among boarding school girls in possibility of sexual activity between women. In Swahili the word for lesbian

Lesotho of forming same-sex couples composed of a slightly more "domin­is msagaji, which means "a grinder" and has obvious descriptive meanings ant" partner, called a "mummy;" and a slightly more "passive" partner calledfor at least one variety of lesbian sexual activity. Although I found no evi­

i" a "baby." The girls do not describe these relationships as sexual, although dence of any comparable use of words in the Sesotho language, what is more significant is that Basotho women define sexual activity in a way that makes :~they include kissing, body rUbbing, possessiveness and monogamy, the lesbianism linguistically inconceivable; it is not that "grinding" does not take ~i exchange of gifts and promises, and sometimes, genital contact (112). Gay

'f1; also describes the custom among Basotho girls of lengthening the labia place, but it is not considered "sexual." '{ The second train of thought 'M'e Mpho Nthunya's "impossible" led me to ~;'fIlinora, which is done "alone or in small groups" and "appears to provide

;~+;ropportunities for auto-eroticism and mutual stimulation among girls"is the great mass of scientific sex studies. From Kraft-Ebbing through Kinsey ti{1985:101). Certainly there are ample opportunities for Basotho women of

100 SEX AND SEXUALITY

various ages to touch each other, fondle each other, and enjoy each other physically. The fact that these activities are not considered to be "sexual" grants Basotho women the freedom to enjoy them without restraint, embar­ rassment, or the "identity crises" experienced by women in homophobic cul­ tures like those of the U.S. and Europe. Margaret Jackson writes convincingly that the valorization of heterosexuality and the "increasing sexualization of western women [by sexologists] which has taken place since the nineteenth century should not be seen as 'liberating' but rather as an attempt to eroticize women's oppression" (1987:58).

I have observed Basotho women-domestic workers, university students, and secretaries (but not university lecturers)-kissing each other on the mouth with great tenderness, exploring each other's mouths with tongues and this for periods of time of more than sixty seconds-as a "normal," even daily expression of affection. The longest kisses usually take place out of view of men and children, so I presume that Basotho women are aware of the eroti­ cism of these kisses and are protective of their intimacy, yet never have I heard any Mosotho woman describe these encounters as "sexual." When I called attention to this activity by naming it in speaking with a Mosotho professional researcher who was educated abroad, she told me, "Yes, in Lesotho, women like to kiss each other. And it's nothing except-." She seemed at a loss for words and did not finish the sentence but skipped, with some obvious ner­ vousness, to "Sometimes-I-I-I-don't like it myself, but sometimes I just do it."

It is difficult to discuss women's sexuality in Lesotho because of the social taboos (both precolonial and postcolonial) against talking about it. Even now, it is socially taboo in Lesotho for a woman who has borne children to discuss sex with girls or women who have not. (Fortunately for my research, I have borne children; a childless American colleague also doing research in Lesotho found it difficult to have discussions about sexuality with adult Basotho women.) My Basotho women friends would not dream of explaining men­ struation to their daughters; rather, they expect girls to learn the mysteries of their developing bodies and of sexual practices from other girls, perhaps a year or two older than themselves. Like everything else in Lesotho, this is changing-very slowly in more, remote rural areas and rather quickly in the towns. Sex education two or three generations ago took place in "initiation schools" for boys and girls, but these traditional schools were a major target of missionary disapproval and have now just about disappeared in all but the most remote areas. The taboo on talking about sex certainly hampered the efforts of family planning advocates to institute sex education during the 1970s. The Roman Catholic Church did little to change that, but as a result of concerted efforts of a number of nongovernmental agencies and of the Lesotho government itself, birth control information, drugs, and other preg­ nancy-prevention techniques are now widely available in health clinics. For the most part, the Church now seems to look the other way when women line up at the clinics for pills, IUDs, and injections to prevent pregnancy. More recently, government-sponsored AIDS education workers have been at

Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 101

pains to dispel dangerous myths kept alive by groups of prepubescent teenagers, to popularize the use of condoms, and to encourage young people to learn about and talk about "safe sex." Over time this may have profound and lasting affects on sexual behavior in Lesotho.

A number of difficulties remain. The Sesotho language was first written down by missionaries, who compiled the first Sesotho-English and Sesotho­ French dictionaries; not surprisingly, these dictionaries include few words to describe sexuality or sex acts. If there ever were words for "cunnilingus," "g-spot," or "Do you prefer clitoral or vaginal orgasm?" in Sesotho, they certainly did not make it into the written records of the language nor do translations of these terms appear in phrase books or dictionaries.

My attempts to "come out" to rural women and domestic workers were laughable; they could not understand what I was talking about, and if I per­ sisted, they only shook their heads in puzzlement. Despite this, I had some long conversations with Basotho women, especially older university stu­ dents and domestic workers, who formed my social cohort in Lesotho and who trusted me enough to describe their encounters in as much detail as I requested. From these I learned of fairly common instances of tribadism or rubbing, fondling, and cunnilingus between Basotho women, with and with­ out digital penetration. This they initially described as "loving each other," "staying together nicely," "holding each other," or "having a nice time together." But not as having sex. No koai, no sex.

Lillian Faderman's observation that"A narrower interpretation of what constitutes eroticism permitted a broader expression of erotic behavior [in the eighteenth century], since it was not considered inconsistent with virtue" (1981:191) makes sense here. If these long, sweet Basotho women's kisses or incidences of genital contact were defined as "sexual" in Lesotho, they could be subject to censure both by outside observers who seem to disapprove of sex generally (nuns, visiting teachers, traveling social workers) or by the very women who so enjoy them but seek to be morally upright and to do the right thing. If the mummy/baby relationships between boarding-school girls were defined as "sexual," they would no doubt be subject to the kind of repression "particular friendships" have suffered among nuns.

Since "sex" outside of marriage in Roman Catholic terms is a sin, then it is fortunate for women in this mostly Catholic country that what women do in Lesotho cannot possibly be sexual. No koai, no sex means that women's ways of expressing love, lust, passion, or joy in each other are neither immoral nor suspect. This may have been the point of view of the nineteenth-century missionaries who so energetically penetrated Lesotho and who must have found women-loving women there when they arrived. Judith Lorber writes, "Nineteenth-century women were supposed to be passionless but arousable by love of a man; therefore, two women together could not possibly be sexual" (1994:61).

'M'e Mpho Nthunya dictated her entire autobiography to me over the two years I lived in Lesotho, a book called Singing Away the Hunger: The

102 SEX AND SEXUALITY Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 103

Autobiography of an African Woman (1997). In it she describes, in addition to a to their grandmothers' lives. What remains are the affectionate relationships loving and affectionate (though compulsory) heterosexual marriage, a kind among girls and women, the public kissing and hand-holding, and the nor­ of marriage to a woman that included an erotic dimension. According to mativity of homosocial and homoerotic relationships among working-class Judith Gay (1985), these female marriages were common among women of or poor women.... Nthunya's generation. Gay writes, "elderly informants told me that special affective and gift exchange partnerships among girls and women existed 'in the old days' of their youth" (1985:101). HOMOPHOBIA

Nthunya describes how the woman she calls 'M'alineo chose her as her motsoalle (special friend) with a kiss. Nthunya writes: "It's like when a man

After an earlier version of this article was published in Lesotho, I received a chooses you for a wife, except when a man chooses, it's because he wants to , letter from a young professional woman with whom I had worked closely in share the blankets with you. The woman chooses you the same way, but she

writing workshops. She had read my article, came out to me in the letter, wants love only. When a woman loves another woman, you see, she can love observed that she had not deduced that I was a lesbian either, and confirmed,with her whole heart" (1997:69). "Life goes on in this place and like you said, we conform, smile and flirt withNthunya describes the process of their relationship, the desire that char­ the male homo sapims that we desperately wish to do without" (Anonymousacterized it, the kisses they shared, their hand-holding in church, their meet­ 1997). She concluded her letter, "You cannot imagine the confusion and lone­ings at the local cafe. And she describes the two ritual feasts observed by liness that drove me deeper into myself just Wishing all the time I was raisedthemselves and their husbands, recognizing their relationship. These feasts, in a different, freer society" (ibid.). This young Mosotho woman found the held one year apart, involved ritual presentation and Slaughter of sheep as information about motsoalle relationships an interesting bit of history, andwell as eating, drinking, dancing, singing, exchanges of gifts, and general yet clearly, homophobia has now intervened in the lives of professionalmerriment and validation of the commitment they made to each other by all women to such an extent that she feels she has no permission to express herthe people they knew. "It was like a wedding," Nthunya writes (1997:70). own sexuality.

This ritual, which she describes as taking place around 1958, was Widespread In examining the question of options or choices it may be useful to clarify and well-known in the mountains where she lived. She describes the after­

to what extent women in Lesotho have social or sexual options. Five years math of her feast this way: before Judith Gay wrote her article "Mummies and Babies," she wrote a

So in the morning there were still some people drinking outside and inside, jiving Ph.D. dissertation at Cambridge called "Basotho Women's Options: A Study and dancing and having a good time. of Marital Careers in Rural Lesotho" (1980). In that paper she examined the

Alexis [my husband] says to them, "Oh, you must go to your houses now. The lives of married women whose husbands are migrant workers and those joala [home-made beer] is finished." whose husbands remain at home, of widows, and of separated or divorced

They said, "We want meat." women. Gay does not even mention the possibility of single, independent He gave them the empty pot to show them the meat is all gone. But the ladies women living alone, or of lesbianism as an option for Basotho women.

who were drinking didn't care. They said, "We are not here to see you; we are Instead she states, "marriage is the principal means whereby these womencoming to see [your wife]." attain adult status and gain access to the productive resources and cash flows They sleep, they sing, they dance. Some of them are motsoalle of each other. which are essential to them and their dependents" (1980:299). She predicts (1997:71) with accuracy the likelihood of growing unemployment among men in

It would appear from Nthunya's story that long-term loving, intimate, and Lesotho and conjectures, "It is possible also that the resulting marital conflict erotic relationships between women were normative in rural Lesotho at that and economic difficulties will lead to increasing numbers of independent time and were publicly acknowledged and honored. Gay (1985) describes an women who become both heads of matrifocal families and links in matrilat­ occasion when she was discussing women's relationships with three older eral chains of women and children" (1980:312). That is certainly happening, women when a twenty-four-year-old daughter-in-law interrupted the dis­ and perhaps in another decade the lesbian option, as it is experienced in the cussion by clapping her hands. "Why are you clapping so?" asked the northern hemisphere (or the "West"), will have come to Lesotho. But its straightforward ninety-seven-year-old woman. "Haven't you ever fallen in shadow, homophobia, has already preceded it. love with another girl?" (1985:102). Both Nthunya's and Gay's accounts 'M'e Mpho Nthunya concludes the story of her "marriage" to 'M'e Malineo emphasize the fact that while such relationships were common and cultur­ as follows: "In the old days [note that here she refers to a period up to the late ally respected up to the 1950s, they no longer seem to exist, or at least young 1950s] celebrations of friendship were very beautiful-men friends and women of the 1980s and 1990s are unaware of this cultural activity so central women friends. Now this custom is gone. People now don't love like they did

104 SEX AND SEXUALITY

long ago" (1995:7). As Nthunya and I were preparing her autobiography for publication, I asked her if she could add something to the conclusion of that chapter, to perhaps explain why people do not love like they did long ago. She added the following: "Today the young girls only want men friends; they don't know how to choose women friends. Maybe these girls just want money. Women never have money, so young girls, who want money more than love, get AIDS from these men at the same time they get the money" (1996:72). Perhaps that is all there is to it, though I would have thought that women in the "old days" needed money too. And the young professional woman who came out to me via the mail, who does not need money as des­ perately as the girls in Nthunya's experience, experiences homophobia in what she describes as a "soul-destroying" way (Anonymous 1997).

I believe that one pressure leading toward the demise of the celebration of batsoalle5 is the increasing westernization of Lesotho and the arrival, at least in urban or semi-urban areas and in the middle class, of the social construc­ tion "homophobia" with and without its name. Gay noted in her study of les­ bianlike relationships in Lesotho that women who live "near the main road and the South African border" were "no longer involved in intimate female friendships" (1985:102). Living near a "main road" or a South African border would expose a woman to imported ("Western") ideas and values, as would formal education. Women in rural areas would be less likely to suffer the pollution of homophobia.

By scrutinizing homophobia as the "queer" thing it is, given examples of healthy lesbian activity in indigenous cultures in Lesotho and elsewhere, we might conclude that homophobia is an "unnatural" vice, that homophobia is far more likely to qualify as "un-African" ... than homosexuality, that homo­ phobia is the product of peculiar (Western or northern-hemisphere) cultures.

As Michel Foucault writes in his groundbreaking History of Sexuality, it is useful to view sexuality not as a drive, but "as an especially dense transfer point for relations of power" (1981:103). No koai, no sex. In that case the loving and egalitarian erotic friendships of Basotho women would not be "sexual" at all, which is exactly what Basotho women have been saying whenever anyone asked them. The freedom, enjoyment, and mutual respect of Basotho women's ways of loving each other, occurring in a context in which what women do together is not defined as "sexual" suggests a need to look freshly at the way Western constructions of sexuality and of homopho­ bia are used to limit and oppress women. Having a (sexualized) "lesbian option" may not be as liberating as many of us have thought.

NOTES

1. Mugabe was quoted in the South African newspaper Mail and Guardian declaring homosexuality "immoral," "repulsive," "an 'abhorrent' Western import" (p. 15, August 4-10, 1995).

Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia 105

2. Lesotho is the country; Sesotho is the language; one person from Lesotho is a Mosotho; two or more are Basotho.

3. If by "lesbian" we mean an identity that emerged in the twentieth century in certain Western cultures, then by definition the word cannot be applied to the Basotho situation. Some scholars are using the term "lesbianlike" to describe erotic and deeply affectional relationships among WOmen who do not have the option of identifying themselves as lesbian. See, among others, Vicinus (1994) and Jenness (1992).

4. 'M'e is the honorific Or Sesotho term of address for a mature woman. It literally means "mother" and is used with the woman's first name. It is an insult to speak of her without the honorific or to speak of her by her surname only. In submission to Western academic custom, I sometimes refer to 'M'e Mpho as "Nthunya" in this paper, but I would never address her in that form. One Mosotho woman said to me, "to speak of a grown woman without using 'M'e is the same as stripping off all her clothes."

5. Plural of motsoalle, special friend.

REFERENCES

Cleland, John. 1749. Fanny Hill. London: Fenton. Epprecht, Marc. 1995 '''Women's Conservatism' and the Politics of Gender in Late Colonial

Lesotho." Journal of African History 36:29-56. Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women

from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: William Morrow. Foucault, Michel. 1981. The History of Sexuality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Frye, Marilyn. 1992. Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism, 1976-1992. Freedom, CA: The Crossing

Press.

Gay, John and David Hall 1994. Poverty in Lesotho, 1994: A Mapping Exercise. Lesotho: Sechaba Consultants.

Gay, Judith. 1980. "Basotho Women's Options: A Study of Marital Careers in Rural Lesotho." Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge.

---. 1985. '''Mummies and Babies' and Friends and Lovers in Lesotho." Journal of Homosexuality 2 (3-4): 97-116.

Gill, Debby. 1992. Lesotho, a Gender Analysis: A Report Prepared for the Swedish International Development Authority. Lesotho: Sechaba Consultants.

Greenberg, David E. 1988. The Construction of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Internet World Factbook. 1996.: http\www\world.

Jackson, Margaret. 1987. '''Facts of Life' or the Eroticization of Women's Oppression? Sexology and the Social Construction of Heterosexuality." In Pat Caplan, ed., The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, pp. 52-81. London: Tavistock.

Jenness, Valerie. 1992. "Coming Out: Lesbian Identities and the Categorization Problem." In Ken Plummer, ed., Modern Homosexualities: Fragments of Lesbian and Gay Experience, pp. 65-74. London: Routledge.

Kendall [Kathryn]. 1993. "Ways of Looking at Agnes de Castro." In EBen Donkin and Susan Clement, eds., Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theatre as if Race and Gender Matter, pp. 107-120. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

---. 1990. "Finding the Good Parts: Sexuality in Women's Tragedies in the Time of Queen Anne." In Mary Ann Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, eds., Curtain Calls: An Anthology ofEssays on Eighteenth-Century Women in Theatre, pp. 165-176. Columbus: Ohio UniverSity Press.

---. 1986. "From Lesbian Heroine to Devoted Wife: Or, What the Stage Would ABow." Journal of Homosexuality 12 (3/4): 9-22.

106 SEX AND SEXUALITY

Lorber, Judith. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press. Nthunya. Mpho ·M'atsepo. 1995. '''M'alineo Chooses Me." In K. Limakatso Kendall, ed., Basali!

Stories by and about Basotho Women, pp. 4-7. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, ___. 1997. Sin{?ing Away the Hunger: Stories of a Life ill Lesotho. Ed. K. Limakatso Kendall.

Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1996. Reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University

Press. Richardson, Diane. 1992. "Constructing Lesbian Sexualities." In Ken Plummer, ed.. Modern

Homosexualities, pp, 187-199. London: Routledge. Shepherd, Gill. 1987. "Rank, Gender, and Homosexuality: Mombasa as a Key to Understanding

Sexual Options." In Pat Caplan, ed., The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, pp. 240-270.

London: Tavistock. Thai, BethueI. 1996. "Laws Tough on Basotho Women." Sowetan 17. Vieinus, Martha. 1994. "Lesbian History: All Theory and No Facts or All Facts and No Theory?"

Radical History Review 60:57-75,

~i$"A~~~'¥'~~·;:w;.:':fi,"'"

PARAPHILIAS ACROSS CULTURES DINESH BHUGRA

As with the previous articles, the layperson's belief that human sexuality is dictated by our genes is called into serious question by a cross-cultural examination of sexual behavior. Likewise, the belief that some paraphilas (or "perversions," as some see them) are caused by some dysfunction (or"sick­ ness") in society is also called into doubt by cross-cultural examination. It should come as no surprise that different cultures react differently to different sexual behaviors. That is, the behavior of the "audience" is culturally relative and so too is the nature of deviance.

Literature on the cultural relativity of sexual deviance is not hard to find. The following article, though, is somewhat unusual in the way it blends sociological, anthropological, and psychiatric perspectives.

INTRODUCTION

A range of "abnormal" sexual behaviors is observed and reported in the Western industrialized societies. Deviance is behavior that contravenes the norms of society. Such deviance can be defined by a number of parameters. Of these, statistical or psychopathological norms are two ways of defining abnormality or deviance. These norms usually combine the institutionalized

ParaphiIias Across Cultures 107

norms or laws and the internalized or shared norms. Deviation from these norms can sometimes be easily defined, as with excessive sexual desire or "nymphomaniac" behavior, and are sometimes difficult to define, as with cross-dressing on social occasions or for party going. It is obvious that such variations are dictated by societal norms.

Psychopathological norms are much more difficult to quantify because often sociological norms are being used and medical or diagnostic norms may well follow these. This is illustrated by the inclusion of homosexuality in the medical diagnostic categories-as societies have changed their atti­ tudes, physicians have followed suit and the diagnosis (except ego-dystonic) has been removed from the classificatory systems.

Sexual deviance is often used as a term for individuals whose sexual pref­ erences or mores do not fall into mainstream sexual behavior, However, this remains a pejorative term so that, by definition, a negative value is being expressed. Bancroft (1989) suggests using sexual minority behavior as a term. Paraphilia is the current preferred term in the psychiatric literature, and will be used in the present paper.

Gagnon and Simon (1967) classified sexual deviance as normal, subcul­ tural or individual deviance. Normal deviance includes behavior like mas­ turbation, oral sex and premarital intercourse which, while legally or socially proscribed in some parts of the world, is practiced by large numbers of people, thereby falling within the statistical norm. Subcultural deviance is associated with particular subcultures (for example, homosexual) and will include categories of fetishism, sadomasochism, transvestism and transsexu­ alism. These are often consensual behaviors, and their incidence is difficult to establish because individuals may not acknowledge these patterns and may well not seek help....

Sex and Societies by Bullough (1976) provides a classic account of sexual variance and society across different time periods, religions and geograph­ ical areas. He argues that male and female patterns of sexual orientation and behavior (i.e. sex roles) are attributable to acquired learning, therefore, to social and cultural factors. For example, Ford and Beach (1965) found that there was a wide variation in sexual behavior in people and cultures and, although there are many similarities, there existed diHerences too. For example, different societies have had widely different rules and attitudes about mas­ turbation but, regardless of whether the attitude was one of approval or con­ demnation, at least some adults in all or nearly all societies appear to have masturbated.

Homosexual behavior was not found to be predominant among adults in any of the societies studied, although some homosexual behavior took place in a significant proportion of the population. In many societies, homosexual­ ity was acceptable only in certain age groups and not others. In societies where women and men are not expected to be seen together or could appear in mixed company only under carefully controlled conditions, the need for companionship and entertainment was often served either by professional

108 SEX AND SEXUALITY

outcasts such as prostitutes or by men who acted the part of women. Some of these men-women were transvestites, others were homosexuals and, for others, the line was blurred. In addition, double standards often apply to the sexes. Men are encouraged to be promiscuous or, at least, expected to be so, whereas women are not expected to have any sexual desire at least till marriage and, even then, it may be subsumed. This is by no means a universal view.

Some societies, according to Bullough (1976), were sex-positive (that does not mean that they condoned promiscuity, only that their attitudes to sex are relatively free) and others sex-negative. These attitudes towards sex-related behavior were not static and often changed in response to religion and changing political climates. For example, early Hinduism was strongly sex­ positive because sex was seen as a mystic and magical activity. Contrary to prevalent beliefs elsewhere, the Hindus believed that women enjoyed sex much more than men and, in their sex manuals, considerable attention was devoted to other non-procreative purposes of sex, and a range of sexual behaviors was considered normal. The sexual act, according to various sex manuals, was to be seen as a refined form of combat. The male attacks, the woman resists and, amid the subtle interplay of advance, retreat, assault and defense, the desires are built up. However, the final result is a delightful vic­ tory for both parties. Women are said to be aroused by a show of strength and men by a show of resistance. At the height of passion, consciousness is enhanced by intensive stimulation, often through sadistic acts, because the senses have become so dulled to the unpleasantness of pain that they find sharp delight in it. During such a combat it is possible to bite, scratch, pull the hair of the partner and beat or slap with the palm of the hand, the back of the hand, the side of the hand, a half-open fist or a dosed fist on the shoul­ ders, back, bosom and buttocks (Kalyanamalla, 1964). Various types of nail marks and teeth marks are described with observations that certain kinds of marks on women are supposed to be responded to in return with only specific types of marks. These practices are discussed later when discussing various paraphilias. From such a liberal view of sex, sexual behavior and sex­ ual activity, where temples were constructed for celebration and worship of activity, things changed with the invasions of Muslim rulers. Hindu women went into purdah and the openness of sexual mores started to change dramatically; over the past few centuries India has become relatively conservative.

Similarly in China, although the world was seen in dualistic terms, this duality was not about the conflict between the spiritual and the material, rather it looked to the inherent unity of opposing forces with the individual. Sexual union of the male and female was iike the intermingling of heaven and earth-essential to achieVing harmony as well as a happy and healthy sex life. Several manuals described the secrets of intercourse, though most of them have been destroyed (Bullough, 1976). Of various sexual positions described, a few included a third party; thus polygamy or multi-partner

Paraphilias Across Cultures 109

sexual activity was acceptable. Males were expected to satisfy more than one wife without ejaculating. For this purpose, clear guidelines were given on the frequency of intercourse as well as its timing. Initially, women were seen as superior or equal to men, but gradually their status was lowered. Foreplay was encouraged and oral sex was permitted. Sexual intercourse with prosti­ tutes was accepted, although semen loss was not encouraged. Manipulation of sexual organs without orgasm was encouraged. Balls were placed inside the vagina to heighten the pleasures of sexual intercourse or masturbation. Special instruments, soaked mushrooms and other materials were also placed inside the vagina to achieve sexual pleasure.

Eunuchs fulfilled a valuable function in China, being allowed free access to the palaces and yet not being a threat because they were seen as incom­ plete men. They were also known to engage in homosexual activity, espe­ cially passive activity, because the anus was supposed to have a highly developed sense of touch which made the activity pleasurable. Women changing into men and men changing into women were described. It is dif­ ficult to say whether this change was anatomical or psychological. However, transvestitism was institutionalized on stage. From this relatively open and positive attitude to sexual variations in ancient China, the country has certainly become less positive today: for example, in the Chinese diagnostic system, homosexuality i~ still recorded as a mental illness....

Sex-negative societies are likely to encourage individuals to see sexual behavior as duty, secretive and something to be shunned or indulged in only for specific purposes.... Ford and Beach (1965) reported that, of 78 relatively primitive societies, 49 approved or tolerated homosexuality in some form. Of the total 190 societies studied, they observed that heterosexual coitus was the prevalent form of sexual behavior for the majority of adults in all human societies, but this is rarely the only sexual activity indulged in. Although the actual sexual position may be different in some societies, the initiation of sex­ ual intercourse in some cultures is encouraged to be by the female partner.

There are several societies in Ford and Beach's sample where couples indulge in a minimum of sexual foreplay. Kissing is a ubiquitous item in the sex play in most societies. However, there are some peoples among whom kissing is unknown and it is equated with a dirty practice of eating saliva and dirt. Thus it would appear that some cultures pay little attention to foreplay which includes kissing. There were at least some cultures where penetration was the key factor and no foreplay or afterplay was described. These were largely preliterate societies where obviously sexual behavior was for the pur­ poses of procreation only.

For nearly every human society, sexual intercourse is usually preceded by some degree of sensory stimulation and is often accompanied by stimulation, often visual or tactile. Visual stimulation is often of the individual partner, but sometimes this stimulation is related to a body part or part of clothing in achieving sexual excitement. Among societies where a minimum of such activity is carried out, it is possible that fetishistic sexual activity may well be

110 SEX AND SEXUALITY

lower. In the absence of concrete data, it is difficult to ascertain whether indi­ vidual fetishistic behaviors are affected by the proliferate nature of the soci­ ety or the socio-centrism of the individual. Within each culture and society there are variations too, both in pre-intercourse stimulation and foreplay. Some couples may well practice elaborate forms of genital manipulation, whereas others who may have bad feelings about sex or their partner may wish to skip the preliminaries. Breast stimulation and kissing as forms of sexual stimulation are more or less restricted to the human species, whereas preliminary stimulation of genital organs has more ancient phylogenetic origin (Ford & Beach, 1965).

The infliction of physical pain is often associated with sexual excitement, and this process is regular and characteristic in many human societies. In many cultures, individuals whose stereotype of intense lovemaking includes scratching, biting and pulling of the hair of the partner in sexual excitement are seen. There are also societies in which these forms of sexual stimulation are totally absent. Ford and Beach (1965) observe that societies which incorporate painful stimulation in the approved forms of foreplay also pro­ vide ample opportunity for individuals to develop and learn the facilitative effects of the resulting sensations. These behaviors are not indiscriminate but occur at certain times, in certain places and under certain circumscribed conditions. In most societies, sexual intercourse takes place in seclusion, although in some cultures it could be in public but not in front of children and not in places Where children might come across the copulating couple. Societies living in unpartitioned multiple dwellings are more likely to have outdoor sex.

Some societies will have sex only at night (irrespective of individuals' preferences) because to be seen copulating is a source of great shame and day time coitus is too risky. Only a few societies prefer sex only during the day because children conceived in darkness may be born blind.

SEXUAL ATIRACTION

There are few, if any, universal standards of sexual attractiveness. The phys­ ical characteristics which are regarded as sexually stimulating vary appre­ ciably from one society to another. In most societies, the physical beauty of the female receives more explicit consideration than that of the male. This may go some way towards explaining why men get turned on by objects. These selected female traits include plump body build, small ankles, elon­ gated labia majora, large clitoris or pendulous breasts.

In some societies, bestiality is tolerated (even though seen as unnatural, silly and disgusting, and inferior to normal sexual activity) in the absence of more appropriate sexual behavior. Such contact is often seen as inadequate and is sometimes allowed for teenage males. There are at least four societies

Paraphilias Across Cultures 111

in which animal contacts are practiced and do not meet with condemnation (Ford & Beach, 1965). Such a variation reflects the influence of learning and social channelization.

Similarly, adult masturbation is tolerated in some societies and encour­ aged in others, but the double standards in response to male and female mas­ turbation remain. The relative infrequency of adult masturbation in some societies is said to be the result of socialization (Ford & Beach, 1965). In soci­ eties which are restrictive in their attitudes to sex, teenagers may suppress their sexual desire but it is unlikely that no sexual activity takes place. Where boys are less carefully watched than girls, it appears that youths are able to

, circumvent the barriers. In semi-restrictive societies, formal prohibitions exist but are apparently not very serious, and are not enforced. Sexual experimen­ tation may take place in secrecy but without incurring punishment. Permissive societies have a permissive and tolerant attitude towards sex expression in childhood. Girls are expected to remain virgins until marriage in restrictive societies, whereas in the other two types, such expectations, if they exist at all, are not obvious. Actual sexual behavior develops somewhat more rapidly in certain societies than in others.

CULTURE AND BEHAVIOR

Intracultural and intercultural behaviors are affected to a degree by learning behaviors. With increasing globalization, industrialization and the spread of global media, very few societies and cultures have been left isolated. Attitudes of a society towards certain sexual activities and behaviors are key factors in the way individuals adopt and enjoy a passive or an active role in the sexual relationship. The emphasis on the feminine means that females are encouraged not to take the lead in sexual intercourse and to be passive; they are less likely to experience clear-cut sexual orgasm. Although some patterns of sexual behavior are reflexive incorporation of painful stimulation (sado­ masochistic activity), the culturally accepted patterns of precoital play and the type of response to such stimulation are strongly influenced by learning. In societies where sexual excitement is associated with the experience of being scratched or bitten, these feelings become eroticized, and it is possible that no or limited enjoyment occurs without such actions. Similar foreplay techniques in other cultures may not produce similar results.

PARAPHILIAS ACROSS CULTURES

The field of paraphilias across cultures is severely limited. Although a fetish is defined as a magical erotic or love icon, its existence across cultures is by no means confirmed in the sense that individuals can out-perform sexually

112 SEX AND SEXUALITY

in its presence. Of the four paraphilias to be considered here, fetishism is probably quite common, although the rates are derived from those who attend clinics. There is general agreement that fetishism is rare in women. The principal categories of sexual signal or stimulus have been considered by Bancroft (1989). These are a part of the body or an intimate extension of the body, e.g. a piece of clothing and a source of specific tactile stimulation. The determinants of fetishism are many, and social learning theory must be seen to play an important role. There is virtually no literature reporting fetishism from non-industrialized countries....

Bancroft (1989) argues a majority of fetishes can be understood as an extension of the loved one which acquires special importance if there are other factors or causes of anxiety blocking the development of a more appro­ priate sexual relationship. Under these circumstances it makes sense that, in societies where sexual love may have amorphous meaning and the individ­ ual's concept of the self is socio-centric rather than egocentric, the likelihood of being attracted to high heels, leather, rubber or boots may be low. In cases where fetishes are extremely bizarre and cannot be understood as extensions of the body, but are more likely to be associated with some neurological abnormality such as temporal lobe epilepsy, the stimulus may be random, and it is possible that cases may occur across cultures. As discussed, sado­ masochistic behavior is more likely to occur across cultures especially if it develops as part of sexual foreplay and individuals accept it.

Of the remaining two paraphilias, transvestism and transexualism are quite interesting. Cross-dressing occurs in most societies and throughout his­ tory, and is also less likely to be a true paraphilia. Bhugra and de Silva (1996) postulate that for uniforms to work as fetish or individuals to dress in uni­ forms for sexual performance can be a reflection of fashion or fantasy. The sexual significance of cross-dressing is incredibly complex. Bancroft (1989) divides this group into four types; the fetishistic transvestite, the transsexual, the double-role transvestite and the homosexual transvestite. The sexual rela­ tionships of cross-dressers vary accordingly.

In their cross-cultural study of the sexual thoughts of children, Goldman and Goldman (1982) found that 50% of boys and 9.5% of girls expressed aversion to their biological sex. This reaction peaked in adolescence, with 30% of 13-year-old boys in Australia and 20% in the USA expressing such feelings which, by contrast, were virtually absent in Sweden. Bancroft (1989) suggests that the more rigid the sex role stereotypes in a society, the greater the likelihood of this gender dysphoria. Thus, rigid expectations could pro­ duce anxiety and insecurity about gender identity, for which transsexual ideas would offer one method of coping. Consequently, Australia has a greater number of transsexuals seeking help than does Sweden. Similarly, Australian gay males see themselves as more strongly feminine than their counterparts in Sweden (Ross et aI., 1981; Ross, 1983).

The heterogeneity of sexual behavior and societies in which they suggests that males are more likely to have fetishistic tendencies and that the

Paraphilias Across Cultures 113

development of sexual identity is dictated by social and cultural factors, thereby prodUcing variation in rates of different fetishistic behaviors.

Several authors (Caplan, 1987; Herdt, 1990a, 1990b; Herdt & Stoller, 1990) have argued that intersexes may not be discomfited by issues of sex and gender identity. Yet across cultures this identity may not conform to that coinciding with the Western binary mode of gender assignment. Herdt (1990b), in contrast to the Western notion of binary gender (male vs. female), calls for a three-sex code system because some societies are more flexible about the fit between gender identity and gender classification and empha­ size the social context, ideology, socialization and gender development. Such an individual in this cultural milieu is neither a man nor a woman, nor a man wanting to be a woman (or vice versa) but belongs to a distinct third cat­ egory. Other similar categories based on social and cultural categories have been described (David & Whitten, 1987). Jacobs and Roberts (1989) suggest that (even) three genders may not be enough to capture the complexity of the ethnographic material. Different gender designations are reflected in some Latin American settings (Parker, 1991).

It must be emphasized that gender identity may not bear any relation to sexual arousal. Sexual identity, cross-dressing and sexual orientation are not on a direct continuum but discrete independent categories (Callender & Kochens, 1986). There r~main several problems in this classification and, as noted, the binary model is not necessarily applicable to many other societies.

CULTURE·BOUND SYNDROMES

Davis (1996) highlights the fact that these syndromes have implications for understanding fertility concerns and concerns with sexual performance in certain cultures and certain ethnic groups. She argues that there is a danger inherent in the psychiatric fascination with these exotic syndromes, through which clinicians and researchers alike reduce considerations of cultural sen­ sitivity and turn these sexual disorders into colorful high-profile conditions, overlooking the extent to which all the sexual disorders of DSM-IV are culture-bound.

Bhugra and Jacob (1997) describe the pitfalls inherent in this preoccupa­ tion. A better term may be culture-specific syndromes. These syndromes are more often than not associated with sexual disorders of desire and perform­ ance. The debate over whether these are universalist or relativist syndromes is by no means over, and another complication is the lack of a clear set of def­ initions or inclusion criteria. There is some evidence that dhat (or the semen­ \oss anxiety syndrome) symptoms do occur in different cultures, though the presentation for help is quite variable. Quite often, these syndromes also l;over underlying anxiety and mood disorders, and this overlay may color the physician's perceptions and methods of assessment as well.

114 SEX AND SEXUALITY

The cultural constructions of these symptoms and syndromes is of inter­ est to clinicians. Cultural constructionists insist that, to develop culturally sensitive understandings of human sexuality and sexual behavior, one must move beyond the simple assumptions and simplistic assessment of how select features of sexuality of other cultural and ethnic groups fit into or vary from that propounded by Western society as reflected by Western medicine (Davis, 1996). It would therefore make sense to move away from a classifica­ tory-based system to an emphasis on questioning and analyzing the con­ structions of these categories as culture-bound. Foucault (1978) argues for a reassessment of the nature and applicability of these categories across histor­ ical, ethnic and ethnographic tenets. Thus sexuality has to be viewed not as r a fixed or given biological or psychic entity-instead sexualities are con­

I ! stantly practiced, altered, modified and amended, as are the meanings and

categories attributed to them. Davis (1996) suggests that the critique of the ! concept of paraphilias is culture-bound and based on outdated constraints of

Western medicine. In Papua New Guinea, Herdt and Stoller (1990) found that man-boy sex was common and oral sex and swallowing of the semen were part of the rites of passage, and yet this concept does not reflect Western concepts of pedophilia. It has been argued that pedophilia is a Western culture-bound syndrome and reflects Western views of sex as an (egocentric) individual personal responsibility, with some emphasis on biological reduc­ tionism (Rubin, 1984), since Western sexualities are structured within an extremely punitive social framework, where an excess of significance is associated with differences in sexual acts and unfit forms of sexual desire (especially those that deviate from practices with reproductive potential). Similar arguments can be directed at the classificatory categories of sexual dysfunction and functions of sexual desire. More importantly, however, simi­ lar observations can he made about the treatment packages being made available based on Western (eurocentric) models.

Ik Davis (1996) argues that Kraft-Ebing was the person responsible for the

categorization of paraphilias (and also for their medicalization). The search for cultural relatiVity among these norms and values may well have done a disservice to patients and those seeking help. For "paraphiliac" sexual dis­ orders may not have a parallel in all countries (Kendell, 1991). Most standard paraphilias are unique to Western societies. They have been linked to the non-availability of sexual partners and the primacy of masturbatory behav­ ior (Meikle, 1982; Weatherford, 1986). However we know masturbatory behavior is almost universal-as is the lack of sexual partners up to a certain age-so how is it that they are so common in Western societies. Gebhard (1971) explains this as a result of living in complex societies where individ­ uals can evade social sanctions through anonymous behaviors. It is also likely that, as these activities are egocentric and individualistic, social sanctions are few and far between and, where they exist, are part of a legal framework.

Clinical studies of culture, ethnicity, race and paraphilias are rare. The critique of the categories of paraphilias is wide and comes from a variety of

Paraphilias Across Cultures 115

sources such as feminists (Irvine, 1990; Teifer, 1998), historians (D'Emilio & Freedman, 1989; Weeks, 1985), social scientists (Reiss, 1996; Puieroba, 1988), and members of sexual minorities (Ullerstam, 1966; Weeks, 1985)....

CONCLUSIONS

There is little doubt that paraphilias are, by and large, a Western culture­ specific syndrome, although transsexualism is more likely to be reported from other societies. However, this reporting depends upon the availability of certain services and how individuals use these services. The exact rates have to be established. It is highly unlikely that non-industrialized societies where sexual behavior is procreative will have many cases of paraphilias. Social, rather than biological, factors are more likely to playa key role in the etiology of paraphilias.

REFERENCES

Bancroft, J. (1989) Human SexUality and its Problems (Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone). Bughra D. & De Silva, P. (1996) Uniforms: fact, fashion, fantasy and fetish, Sexual and Marital

Therapy, 11, pp. 393-406.

Bhugra, D. & Jacob, K. S. (1997) Culture bound syndromes, in: D. Bughra & A. Munro (Eds), Troublesome Disguises (Oxford, Blackwell).

Bullough, V. 1. (1976) Sexual Variance in Society and History (Chicago, II, University of Chicago Press).

Callender, C. & Kochens, 1. (1986) Men and non men: male gender mixing statuses and homo­ sexuality, in: E. Blackwood (Ed.) Anthropology and Homosexual Behaviors (New York, Howarth).

Caplan, P. (Ed.) (1987) The Cultural Construction of Bisexuality (London, Tavistock). David, D. 1. & Whitten, R. G. (1987) The cross-cultured study of human sexuality, Annual

Review ofAnthropology, 16, pp. 69-98. Davis, D. L. (1996) Cultural sensitivity and the sexual disorders of DSM-N, in: J. E. Mezzich,

A. Kleinman, H. Fabraga & D. 1. Parson (Eds), Culture and Psychiatric Diagnosis (Washington, DC, APA Press).

D'Emilio, J. & Freedman, E. (1989) Intimate Matters (New York, Harper and Row). Ford, C. F. & Beach, F. (1965) Patterns of Sexual Behavior (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode). Foucault, M. (1978) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (New York, Pantheon). Gagnon, J. & Simon, W. (1967) Sexual Deviance (New York, Harper & Row). Gebhard, P. H. (1971) Human sexual behavior, in: H.S. Marshall & R. C. Suggs (Eds) Human

Sexual Behaviors (New York, Basic Books). Goldman, R. & Goldman, J. (1982) Children's Sexual Thinking (London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul).

Herdt, G. H. (1990a) Mistaken gender, American Anthropologist, 92, pp. 433-446. Herdt, G. H. (1990b) Development discontinuities and sexual orientation across cultures, in:

D. McWhirter (Ed.) HomosexualitylHeterosexuality (New York, Oxford University Press). Herdt, G. H. & Stoller, R. (1990) IntilrUlte Communications (New York, Columbia University

Press).

116 SEX AND SEXUALITY

Irvine, L. M. (1990) Disorders oJ Desire; Sex and Gender in Modem American Sexology (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press).

Jacobs, S. & Roberts, C. (1999) Sex, sexuality and variance, in: S. Morgan (Ed.) Gender and Anthropology (Washington, DC, APA Press).

KalyanamaJla (trans. T. Ray) (1964), Ananga Raga. (New York, Citadel Press). Kendell, R. (1991) Relationship between DSM-IV and ICD-lO, Journal oj Abnormal Psychology,

pp. 297-301. MeiIke, S. (1982) Culture and sexual deviation, in: I. AL-ISSA (Ed.) Culture and Psychopathology

(Baltimore, University Park Press). Parker, R. (1991) Bodies, Pleasures and Passions (Boston, Beacon Press). Puieroba, ]. (1988) Antropologia Sexual: Lectuaros de Antropologi Sexual (Madrid, Universidad

Nadonal de Education Distancia). Reiss, H. (1996) Journey into Sexuality (Englewood Cliffs, Nj, Prentice Hall). Ross, M. W., Walinder, L Lindstrom, B. & Thuwe, 1. (1981) Cross-cultural approaches to trans­

sexualism: a comparison between Sweden and Australia, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 63, pp.75-82.

Ross, M. W. (1983) Societal relationships and gender roles in homosexuals, Journal oj Sex Research, 19, pp. 273-288.

Rubin, G. (1984) Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality, in: C. Vance (Ed.) Pleasure and Danger (Boston, MA, Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Teifer, I. (1988) A feminist critique of the sexual dysfunction nomenclature, in: E. Cole (Ed.), Women and Sex Therapy (New York, Haworth).

UJlerstam, I. (1966) The Erotic Minorities (New York, Grove Press). Weatherford,]. M. (1986) Porn Row (New York, Arbor House). Weeks, J. (1985) Sexuality and its Discontents (London, Routledge).

_[:i

f 'i ·f;

j ~

~[ ~r

PART 4

Prostitution