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heim's approach to religion as a system of ideas and values that could be studied objectively presents a far more sympathetic perspective than had developed in England. In fact, Durkheim and Mauss singled out divination as a core area for research as early as 1903: |
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There is nothing more natural, moreover, than the relation thus expressed between divination and the classification of things. Every divinatory rite, however simple it may be, rests on a pre-existing sympathy between certain beings, and on a traditionally admitted kinship between a certain sign and a certain future event. Further, a divinatory rite is generally not isolated; it is part of an organized whole. The science of the diviners, therefore, does not form isolated groups of things, but binds these groups to each other. At the basis of a system of divination there is thus, at least implicitly, a system of classification. (1967:77) |
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The tragic loss of Durkheim and most of his students during and shortly after World War I greatly disrupted the development of French ethnology. Still, it is curious that Griaule and his colleagues did not emphasize Dogon divination more than they did, especially given Griaule's concern with "typical" modes of knowledge (Clifford 1983). Although both Griaule (1937) and Paulme (1937) wrote on divination and one of the group's major publications, The Pale Fox, is named after the divining agent itself, Dogon divination never performed the organizing function for their research that it could have. As Douglas notes, "The technique [of divination] was well demonstrated, but only by the use of hypothetical examples. They neither knew how the Dogon used it to solve their dominant preoccupations, nor how to use it to solve their own problems as investigators" (1979:137).
4 Nevertheless, major studies of divination systems were published by Trautmann (1940), Maupoil (1943), and Delachaux (1946). More recently, important research has been pursued by Retel-Laurentin (1969) and Adler and Zempléni (1972) (see Devisch 1985). |
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Surprisingly, the broad theoretical orientation of American cultural anthropologists did not encourage consideration of divination; their studies of traditional religions barely touch the topic. Evans-Pritchard suggests that Americans ignored religious systems because they were primarily concerned with the emotions of religious activity (1965:3839).5 An intellectual atmosphere similar to that which stifled divination study in England evidently predominated in the United States, as illustrated by Lessa and Vogt's characterization of divination as mere coin flippinga description they have left unchanged since the first edition of their anthology over thirty years ago (1979:333). Little work was done by American anthropologists on the topic until Bascom began to publish his lifelong research on the Ifa divination system of the Yoruba (1941). Although Bascom avoided theoretical pronouncements, the extent of his work surely indicated the value of studying divination systems. Gebauer (1964), Moore (1979), Park (1967), Fernandez (1967), and Bohannan (1975) published significant analytical studies, but a cohesive body of research never developed. Fernandez's afterword to this volume offers an honest self-appraisal of the attitudes toward divination held at that time.6 Even with the development of ethno-science, such epistemologies as manifest in divination sys- |
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