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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Anthropology > The Kwaio

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• Tasks that men perform are almost always given more value and prestige, even if women"s duties consist of most of the subsistence.
• Women accept their positions.
• Refrainment from sex probably occurs in this society and probably serve as a sort of supernatural birth control.

Question 1

What does the spatial layout of the Kwaio settlement symbolise in terms of their cosmology? Woman are polluting; by keeping them separate during the times at which they can pollute (i.e. eating, urinating, childbirth etc), men are put up on a pedestal, only they can communicate with the adolo. Sacred rituals are performed with only one gender. By separating their houses, women can move out when they are polluting, and men can perform their sacred rituals.

Cosmology- An ideological system that explains the order and meaning of the universe and people"s places within it.

Question 2

In what ways do polluting taboos operate? The polluting taboos within the Kwaio society are probably in existence because they give the men in the society a reason to view women as inferior. Menstruation and childbirth, which only females can experience, are seen as the most polluting of all since they are something which men can"t experience, and so can therefore twist around to make it seem as if they were negative qualities. It gives the males a reason for their superiority, and also a cause for blame during unexplainable illness, death or misfortune.

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