Roy A. Rappaport

Risk and the Human Environment

This article is concerned with the nature of what federal legislation calls “the human environment” as a preliminary to understanding impacts upon it and risks to it. After discussing the features that distinguish human systems from others, emphasizing nonmetrical aspects of their sociocultural characteristics, eighteen points concerning risks and impacts are made. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible place in the human environment of what Stephen Toulmin calls “post-modern science and risk analysis.”

Liturgies and Lies

This essay is concerned with the lie in evolution and the evolution of the lie. Lie will lead to liturgy and to sanctity, and we shall be concerned as much with them as with lying. Ordinary lies and their relationship to sanctity will be considered first, and then we shall proceed to the rituals in which sanctity is grounded and out of which it may have emerged, attending largely to liturgical form and performance and touching only lightly on what their symbols may represent. Discussion of ritual and sanctity will make it possible to identify forms bearing a family resemblance to ordinary lies. I designate them vedic lies, lies of oppression, diabolic lies and idolatry.

Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People

Examines the religious behavior among the natives of New Guinea, discusses the economic and ecological factors affecting their culture, and discusses the effectiveness of functional analysis.