Entry Three

Chapter 2

The majority of the beginning of this chapter is used to describe all the characters in the Pygmy tribe, what they look like and who they are. From the description, it seems like Pygmies have a large emphasis on family, and almost everyone is related by blood or marriage (35-37). This relates to the BaMbuti’s way of creating meaning, in which a large portion of life’s meaning is found in family groups and in interaction with other people. This also relates to expression. The expression of who one is and what one is recognized to be is found in relation to other people.

“Both Manyalibo and his wife were great humorists, and they made use of the powers of ridicule to break up some of the more serious disputes, because there is nothing that upsets a pygmy more than being laughed at.”

                This is relevant to the conceptions of the BaMbuti. From their perceptions of people laughing, they have organized different categories of laughter, with the category of people laughing AT them as negative.

“The Pygmies express various degrees of illness by saying that someone is hot, with fever, ill, dead, completely or absolutely dead, and, finally, dead forever.”

                This is a good example of conceptions, and the perceptions of those conceptions, and the expression of them. The conceptions consist of different phases of illness that can be observed; the perceptions correlate different degrees of illness with varying degrees of closeness to death; and the classification put those perceptions into expression. Expression dictates how the correct responses to those different degrees of illness are to be expressed according to the cultural norms, in this case, through wailing.

The negroes’ funeral customs (42-44) (releasing the spirit, etc.) reflect their perceptions of the forest as evil and “a place for the spirits of the dead.” The BaMbuti’s laughter at these funeral customs reflects a contrast in worldview and perception with the negroes, since the BaMbuti worldview does not include spirits.

 “We’ve been in the village too long,” he said, “We should have gone back to the forest before; that is where we belong. Now we must go back, far away from the village and from the people of the village. It is a bad place.”  

                I put the word “bad” in bold because it is a cultural category of meaning and part of their framework of understanding.

 Brief Paragraph:

A Structuralist framework is relevant in this chapter. In order for the reader as an outsider to better understand the relevant cultures, particular cultural categories are explored: family groups, the meaning of laughter, different degrees of illness, the negro’s “place for the spirits”, and the village being a “bad” place.