Sambia Sexual Culture

Mainstream media

Sambia Sexual Culture received a mixed review from Glenn Petersen in Library Journal. Petersen credited Herdt with providing "a good deal of theoretical discussion of sexual identity in a cross-cultural framework", and with taking "great care to relativize the homosexual aspects" of the Sambia's ritual practices. However, he criticized Herdt for providing little "commentary on the matter of elders taking sexual advantage of children", noting that the issue was "a topic of considerable immediacy in contemporary America."^[3]

Scientific and academic journals

Sambia Sexual Culture received negative reviews from the anthropologist Jadran Mimica in the Australian Journal of Anthropology and the philosopher James Giles in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.^[4][5] The book was also reviewed by Alexandra A. Brewis in American Anthropologist,^[6] Andrew P. Lyons in Anthropologica,^[7] and Paul Sillitoe in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,^[8] and discussed by Nathaniel McConaghy in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.^[9]

Mimica considered Herdt's approach to Sambia culture biased. Though she complimented his discussions of topics such as the use of secret flutes in "Sambia man-making practices", the practice of nose-bleeding, "male fears of semen depletion", and "Sambia semen transactions", she found other parts of his work flawed, writing that while they contained interesting information, they were "limited by a naive mechanistic-functionalist conceptual framework dependent on uncritically accepted differentiations between 'biological', 'psychological', 'symbolic', 'cultural' and 'social' levels of human existence and ... such pseudo-Aristotelian notions as 'ultimate' and 'proximate' causes". She accused him of "prevarications and exaggerations about his methodology and data", and found his ideas about the Sambia incompletely worked out. She criticized his failure to make a systematic study of the Sambia language or to properly discuss this failure, and argued that despite his use of psychoanalysis and the influence of Foucault on his work, his framework was nevertheless basically "positivist". She considered him incorrect to describe Sambia culture in terms of categories such as the sacred, the profane, and the supernatural. She concluded that his book was "yet another volume in yet another series on the increasingly sterilised and sterilising academic topics of sexuality, gender, and culture."^[4]

Giles observed that Herdt's interpretation of Sambia sexual behavior contrasted with that of earlier Melanesian ethnographers, who saw the culturally prescribed homosexuality such as that found among the Sambia as being "institutionalized" or "ritualized" and therefore not "indicative of the participant’s actual sexual desires." He argued that Herdt's view that Sambia boys give up their homosexual desires and acquire heterosexual desires when they become young men suggests that male sexual desires can suddenly change because of cultural influences. According to Giles, Herdt's view conflicts with the conclusion, supported by Alan P. Bell, Martin S. Weinberg, and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith in Sexual Preference (1981) and John C. Gonsiorek and James D. Weinrich in Homosexuality: Research implications for public health policy (1991), that sexual orientation is "a basic part of the individual’s psychic constitution that is crystallized in early childhood." He questioned Herdt's view that Sambia culture determined the sexual desires of Sambia males, and accused Herdt of putting forward a biased interpretation that had "no basis" in his data. He wrote that, "Herdt’s claims about the sexual desires of the Sambia are founded almost exclusively on their sexual behavior and betray little concern for any nonsexual desires that might motivate the behavior." He argued that the Sambia's sexual rituals are coercive, and that this should "make us suspicious of claims that the homosexual activities performed during or as a result of the ritual in any way reflect the participant’s real sexual desires." He criticized Herdt's argument that the "bawdy enthusiasm" showed by Sambia boys who participate in the rituals shows that their behavior is motivated by erotic desire, noting that "child victims of adult or adolescent sexual abuse are often willing, and even enthusiastic, participants in the sexual acts that they are manipulated into performing". Though finding Herdt's book "packed with fascinating data and full of numerous insights", he concluded that Herdt failed to support his main conclusions about Sambia sexual culture.^[5]

McConaghy criticized Giles and defended Herdt.^[9]

Footnotes

Bibliography

Books

Journals