"No Pain No Gain". Zur Verbesserung sozialer Chancen durch das Ertragen von Schmerz

Anni Peller

Africa Spectrum, 2003, vol. 38, issue 2, 197-214

Abstract: In every community we can find the human body as an important medium, by which affiliations are defined. For this purpose quite often procedures are used which engrave the identity of an individual in an irreversible way on his body. These painful practices are culturally specific and that's why they are valued very differently. What participants themselves regard as normal and necessary, is from an ethic point of view often devaluated as absurd and mutilating. The present analysis asks by which circumstances and for what reasons pain is intentionally caused in cultural procedures and/or is at least accepted by the participants as a concomitant. These painful procedures include rites of passage, ritual beating and cosmetic operations. For this human behaviour exists a socio-biological explanation: bearing the pain increases the attractiveness of the individual. By obeying painful standards loyalty or maturity or beauty is expressed. Only by this means a normal social career is possible for the individual in her/his own society and/ or her/his chances on the market are improved. By the way of conclusion the evaluated comparison wants to show that it is exactly for these reasons that painful physical modifications are generally used and also tolerated by communities.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:afjour:v:38:y:2003:i:2:p:197-214

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/afrika-spectrum

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Africa Spectrum from Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andreas Mehler ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).