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duce via Shaw's phrase "the authorizing process," is critical. Steiner (1954) called attention to this issue long ago, but Park also understood the need to study divination in relation to all means of problem solving (1967:246). Certainly divination participates in general cultural norms, but as we saw in section III it is the articulator, not merely an articulation, of these norms. How divination validates cultural norms rather than simply corresponding to them is approached in this section. Horton (1967) and Jackson (1978) summarize how we have traditionally understood the maintenance of divination's credibility by the people involved, a matter still best illustrated by Evans-Pritchard's interrogation of the Zande poison oracle (1968). But as Shaw observes, previous analyses overemphasized the "facts" of divinatory diagnoses as a result of the positivist bias in anthropology. The processes of divination, not simply the product and its use, must be studied because "truth" may lie at different points in each divination system. It may depend on a fixed system of esoteric knowledge accessible only through divination, or it may be a function of social authority (which also determines who has access to the mechanism of knowing) or ancestral/spiritual validation, or it may result from the debate about the oracular message by the diviner and the client working in concert. In fact, it may simply be the efficacious result of the diagnosis for the client and/or afflicted individual. Whatever the actual system, there will be an authorizing process accepted by all concerned. |
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But these processes may not be easy for us to accept, especially if there are fundamental differences in cultural systems and cognitive approaches. For example, a radical difference from European and American individualism is the communal orientation inherent in African systems of divination, from the attribution of skill and insight to the ancestors to the goal of harmony for the group not just the afflicted individual. Indeed, throughout this volume we see that "truth" is in the action generated, the social reality reconstituted, and the resultant well-being of the people; it is not to be found in an abstract system or specific verifications of separate oracular pronouncements. As Jackson (1978) recommends, we should not perpetuate only idealized belief but should allow for the flexibility of interpretation and action which in reality we all exercise toward our own cultural systems. |
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See reference list at end of main introduction. |
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