Culture And Culture: Analysis Of Taboo And A Culture

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Analysis of Taboo
Before the analysis of taboo as explained in the previous section, it is a very vital importance for us to recall that there is a very intimate relationship between taboo and a culture. Ralph Linton (1945) stated that culture completes the life of a society, most probably because it contains almost everything. Kroeber and Kluckhone (1952) further explained this statement, defining culture as a very complicated whole that include the fundamental parts of life such as knowledge, belief, art, moral, customs and any other habits shared within a particular society. Therefore, it is very fundamental for us to know that taboo itself is contributing as a part of culture.

Very often, all the aspects that built up the core of one’s …show more content…

Although, almost very frequently, people tempt to relate taboo and norms all the time, this is not always so. A taboo can originate from beliefs in supernatural forces such as magic, sorcery or witchcraft. There are rationals why people believe in unseen power that exist in vacuum, namely impersonal supernatural force. The potential of a supernatural force is not as de minimis as it seems to be. In fact, the reason why taboo and supernatural force could be related together is due to their capabilities to reduce anxiety, provide social control and emotional comfort, especially when people are facing crisis, regardless of its severity. Taoism Chinese particularly, are being faithful in universal force named ‘chi’. ‘Chi’ works in both micro and macro perspectives of the world but the operational principles underlying are no different. For instance, ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, two opposite forces that stay in conflict with one another. And for one to be in the state of perfect harmony, the individual has to resolve the conflicting force and gather them as one. This is the reason why, there are taboo that prevent and even restrict a family to organise or participate any form of celebrations in a fixed period after the funeral, as an evidence of one is sad over the lost of the deceased. This is due to the belief that celebrations are considered happiness while the death of a deceased is considered sadness. Hence, these two emotions are seen as conflicting with each other and is believed to bring disharmony and therefore, bad luck to an individual, as modelled with the principles of ‘yin’ and

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