Beth A. Conklin > Quotes

“European medicinal cannibalism depersonalized and objectified the human being whose body parts were eaten. Along with this went the desocialization and individualization of the meaning of eating human substance. This kind of cannibalism served no larger communal or religious purposes; its sole objective was to enhance the well-being of the individual eater. Human body parts were commercial commodities, bought and sold for profit.”
― Beth A. Conklin, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society

“Instead, psychoanalytic models have tended to rely mostly on analyses of the fantasies and aberrant behavior of people in western societies, where cannibalism is stigmatized and anyone who practices it is seriously deviant.”
― Beth A. Conklin, Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society