Gudrun Dahl & Gemetchu Megerssa

Human activities which have an obvious utilitarian aspect often fall completely outside the interest of anthropologists occupied with systems of meaning. In his now classic work on the ritual life of the Basseri, Fredrik Barth notes (1961) that anthropologists of ten make the “unnecessary and naive assumption” that technical constraints impose particular restrictions on the form of an act and that its symbolic meaning must lie elsewhere. Barth’s observation still holds true to a large extent. He goes on to note that “there is no reason why the very forms of an act which reflect the technical imperatives may not also be vested with central and crucial meaning in a symbolic system of context.” Barth is concerned with the migration of the Basseri nomads as a pragmatic undertaking that nonetheless has great ritual significance for the participants. His argument may be extended to include many other subsistence tasks and activities which involve, despite their superficial plainness and technicality, the handling of substances with great symbolic value and acting out of central social values.