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These will be social systems in which the image of the body is used in different ways to reflect and enhance each person’s experience of society. According to one, the body will tend to be conceived as an organ of communication. The major preoccupations will be with its functioning effectively; the relation of head to subordinate members will be a model of the central control system, the favourite metaphors of statecraft will harp upon the flow of blood in the arteries, sustenance and restoration of strength.

These units must have been extremely cohesive, the basis for economic aid in crises and for revenge and moral control. The largest organized unit of Navaho kinship was a group of local matrilineal kinsmen who actually co-operated and assisted one another on a day to day and year to year basis…. A man might lose his accumulated wealth through a bad winter or a dry summer. Hence an ethic of sharing was general, with primary dependency on matrilineal kin but secondary dependence on many other kinsmen as well, including affines.

There is some analogy 2 Away from ritual in this to the usage of zoologists. For example, when an animal is said to make a ritual attack the zoologist means that a sequence of movements is initiated which, if completed normally, would end in aggression; the function of the animal ritual is communication, for when the other animal receives the signal, it changes its behaviour into ritual submission, thus inhibiting and checking the sequence of aggressive actions. This seems to be a perfectly legitimate way of distinguishing between symbolic and other behaviour in animals.