Despite religious sanctions against the slaughter of cattle, bovine age, sex, and species ratios in all India and Kerala are systematically adjusted to demographic, technological, economic, and environmental conditions. While it is not denied that the apotheosis of cattle has influenced the management of India's bovine stocks, religious beliefs cannot account for the most important regional and local variations in the utilization of these animals.

In 1958-59 and in 1977-78, we undertook holistic ethnographic studies of a village in northern India. Profound technoenvironmental change occurred in the 18-year period between the two studies. With regard to cattle, the principal change was a shift from bullock power to machinery. This provided the basis for a test of the two principal positions that have been taken in the sacred-cow controversy: (1) technoenvironmental determinism, which denies that religious belief is an independent determinant of Indian cattle demography, and (2) the position that religious belief is one of a number of factors that affect the demography of Indian cattle. Our data demonstrate that belief in the sanctity of the cow significantly influences the demography of cattle in this village. In an attempt to evaluate the sacred-cow controversy, we note two characteristics of its history: First, it appears to reflect a tendency to dismiss obvious explanations in favor of unexpected ones. Second, the lack of relevant field data for deciding the issue suggests a general decline in holistic ethnographic studies. We argue that our article illustrates the usefulness of analytical holistic ethnography.

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussion and CriticismOn Explanations of the Islamic Pig ProhibitionLubos Kropacek, Paul Diener, and Eugene E. RobkinLubos Kropacek, Paul Diener, and Eugene E. RobkinPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 20, Number 1Mar., 1979 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/202229 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1979 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Contrary to Marvin Harris's hypothesis, desiccation and population increase in India following 1000 B.C. are highly unlikely to have been the origin of the Hindu ban on cow slaughter and beef eating. In many places in present-day India,"wild" and stray cattle are serious problem to farmers. The sacred-cow concept contributes to a significant waste of beef and inefficiency in cattle breeding. Homes for old cows are basically religious institutions that divert funds from other needs of the nation. Indian cattle to compete with man for food, and most experts believe that there are significant numbers of surplus cows in terms of available feed and bullock-replacement needs. Such surplus cows make economic contributions, but religious belief, expressed in social and political action, cannot be over-looked as a factor contributing to their survival. As John Bennett has noted, the technoenvironmental model used by Harris seems unsuited to use for India. Especially deficient is Harris's ignoring of religion as a sociopolitical force and his tendency to eulogize the fuctioning cattle economy and over-look its failure and its threats to the environment.

The misinterpretations, logical lapses, empirical errors, and theoretical shortcomings of Harris' ecological theories concerning the origins of food taboos in political societies are considerable, yet his work has been lauded by laymen and scientists alike. We conclude that his speculations meet widespread ideological needs in the contemporary West; if present cultural forms in post-colonial societies are in fact adaptive, if change results from nature rather than conflict, if transcendent ecological science can unlock the secrets of society, if progress is truly “gradual and practical”, then perhaps the fears that devil the contemporary scene are unwarranted and a technical, environmental solution possible. As Bronowski warns, however, “The quality of life... must not be fixed to mean what happens to be agreeable to the kind of men that we are now — conservatives who like to play at being conservationists... The danger of this phony naturalism... is that it points the young away from the true ills of the state, to those lesser targets that the chamber of commerce can shoot at, too” 159]. The origins of India's sacred cattle, while far from fully explained, are clear in outline. So, too, are the white elephants left over from the imperial, feudal, colonial and neocolonial past. These are the conditions of hunger, crowding, illness, exploitation, and ecological devolution within which Harris finds evidence of “positive functioned and probably adaptive” traits and institutions. Less well recognized is the red herring of naive cultural ecology, whose focus on a world that never was distracts us both from what actually was, and what could be. Yet, in the full flush of his acceptance by those who manage resources and prestige in corporate America, Harris asserts that the cultural materialist, “lacks only time, money and staff to prove this theory; given sufficient resources we could develop intersubjectively valid and culture-free descriptions of cultural things” [160]. This task is chimerical and dangerous; knowledge that attempts to be “culture free” is inevitably inhuman. Truth is a constituted reality, emerging through dialectical dialogue; it, too, is a product of struggle and conflict. No “ethic” and elitist social “scientist” can provide us with a transcendent road to its acquisition. But then, the biologists whom Harris and other reductive materialists seek to emulate, know this: Without a priori preferences, we would scarcely be human; and good science, as Darwin noted so often, collects data to test ideas. Science has long recognized the tyranny of prior preference, and has constructed safeguards in requirements of uniform procedure and replication of experiments. Gross flouting of procedure and conscious fraud may often be detected, but unconscious finagling by sincere seekers of objectivity may be refractory. The culprit in this tale is a naive belief that pure objectivity can be attained by human beings rooted in cultural traditions of shared belief — and a consequent failure of self-examination. One may argue that lying with statistics is easier than fudging an experiment and that a direct intersection with contemporary politics makes for a more passionate a priori, but I think that most scientists pursue their private battles with as much ardor and as much at stake. I propose no cure for the problem of finagling... The only palliations I know are vigilance and scrutiny [161].