taboo

taboo, the prohibition of an action based on the belief that such behaviour is either too sacred and consecrated or too dangerous and accursed for ordinary individuals to undertake. The term taboo is of Polynesian origin and was first noted by Captain James Cook during his visit to Tonga in 1771; he introduced it into the English language, after which it achieved widespread currency. Although taboos are often associated with the Polynesian cultures of the South Pacific, they have proved to be present in virtually all societies past and present.

Generally, the prohibition that is inherent in a taboo includes the idea that its breach or defiance will be followed by some kind of trouble to the offender, such as lack of success in hunting or fishing, sickness, miscarriage, or death. In some cases proscription is the only way to avoid this danger; examples include rules against fishing or picking fruit at certain seasons and against walking or traveling in certain areas. Dietary restrictions are common, as are rules for the behaviour of people facing important life events such as parturition, marriage, death, and rites of passage.

In other cases, the danger represented by the taboo can be overcome through ritual. This is often the case for taboos meant to protect communities and individuals from beings or situations that are simultaneously so powerful as to be inherently dangerous and so common that they are essentially unavoidable. For example, many cultures require persons who have been in physical contact with the dead to engage in a ritual cleansing. Many cultures also circumscribe physical contact with a woman who is menstruating—or, less often, a woman who is pregnant—because she is the locus of extremely powerful reproductive forces. Perhaps the most familiar resolution to this taboo is the Jewish practice of bathing in a mikvah after menstruation and parturition.

Taboos that are meant to prevent the sacred from being defiled by the ordinary include those that prohibited ordinary people from touching the head—or even the shadow—of a Polynesian chief because doing so would compromise his mana, or sacred power. As the chief’s mana was important in maintaining the ritual security of the community, such actions were believed to place the entire population at risk.

There is broad agreement that the taboos current in any society tend to relate to objects and actions that are significant for the social order and that, as such, taboos belong to the general system of social control. Sigmund Freud provided perhaps the most ingenious explanation for the apparently irrational nature of taboos, positing that they were generated by ambivalent social attitudes and in effect represent forbidden actions for which there nevertheless exists a strong unconscious inclination. He directly applied this viewpoint to the most universal of all taboos, the incest taboo, which prohibits sexual relations between close relatives.

Other important researchers or theorists on the topic were William Robertson Smith, Sir James G. Frazer, and Wilhelm Wundt; important books have included Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913), Franz Baermann Steiner’s classic Taboo (1956), and Mary Douglas’s enduring Purity and Danger (1966).