Taboo

by Franz Steiner

Scholars have been trying to explain taboo customs ever since Captain Cook discovered them in Polynesia over 200 years ago. The subject has been treated at length, but none of the theories has more than a limited validity, so numerous are the taboos recorded and so diverse the societies in which they occur.
This book contains chapters
· Taboo as a Victorian invention
· The complicated taboos in the Pentateuch
· Taboos in Polynesia
Originally published in 1956.

Genres: Anthropology

160 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2004

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A summary and comparison of the theories of taboo from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Much of it is outdated, but still a fascinating sociological, anthropological, and psychological look at taboos, rituals, totems, and ceremonies.

[Will Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a window into a world which has long passed. It's a small window on a very strange world of anthropologists and sociologists in the second half of the 19th and early part of the 20th century but it's fascinating to catch a glimpse of it. The book is part of a Pelican series (an imprint of Penguin) which must have been offered in the 1960's as an anthology style introduction to Anthropology but I found it fascinating given the depth it gets into on a very specific topic (Taboo) and the way in which that topic is so fundamental to so many different advances in thought (psychology, sociology, theology) during a pivotal moment for western thought. Who would have known that the topic of taboo, brilliantly revealed as something we thought came from Polynesian islanders but which Steiner reveals as fundamental to society and the monotheistic religions.

[Kevin K · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is more about 19th and early-20th century theories of taboo than taboo itself.
If you're looking for more information on taboo, the best short but comprehensive source I've found is:

The article "Taboo" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, XIth edition (1919) by Northcote W. Thomas, available online

Also, I haven't read it, but there is apparently an entire volume of Frazer's Golden Bough devoted to taboo: Volume 3 "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul"