ABSTRACT
Anthropologists find the incest taboo wherever they find societies. Sigmund Freud sought its origin in the emotions of individuals; so severe a prohibition could have been set up only to counter a correspondingly intense desire. In Papua-New Guinea, the people whom anthropologist Gilbert Herdt named Sambia live without rulers in autonomous compounds. The transactions characterizing the three kinds of society that Lindenbaum distinguishes are doubled up and undermined by festive, celebratory proceedings, just as in the hub cities of advanced capitalism the casino is next to the stock market; indeed, the casino is in the stock market. In medical laboratories, in the rain forest, and in isolated stations in Antarctica, minds are devoted to unlockng the secrets of plague-bearing viruses, of intricate ecosystems within ecosystems, of the ozone shield, of the formation of the solar system five billion years ago, and of the final apocalypse of the universe a trillion light-years from now.
