Abstract
Rituals that induce pain or instill fear occur in the majority of boys’ adolescent initiation ceremonies. They have been accounted for in several ways: as resolving a psychological conflict, as expressing dominance over juniors, as promoting male bonding, and as preparation for participation in war. This cross-cultural study examines these harsh rituals and concludes that they are a form of adult male control over adolescent boys and unmarried (sub-adult) youths. They occur in societies in which control over young males is an important social issue and other means of control are lacking. We also examine a subset of harsh rituals, those that include circumcision and other genital operations, and discuss the cultural features, particularly marriage practices, that are significantly associated with these operations.
Keywords
Adolescent initiation ceremonies move individuals from the social stage of childhood to the social stage of adolescence. In an earlier study (Schlegel & Barry, 1979) using a worldwide sample of 186 preindustrial societies (Murdock & White, 1969), we found that only a minority had adolescent initiation ceremonies for boys: 63 out of 182 with information, or 35%. Of those 63, two thirds (42) conducted harsh ceremonies that hurt or frighten the initiates, while one third (21) conducted mild ceremonies that do not (Table 1). Twenty societies with harsh ceremonies perform genital operations on initiates. These are listed in Table 1.
Societies With Adolescent Initiation Ceremonies for Boys.
Note. The serial number and name are shown for 63 societies with an adolescent initiation ceremony for boys. The rituals are divided into types: mild, harsh without a genital operation, and harsh with a genital operation. Harsh procedures consist of those that inflict pain, instill considerable fear, or perform a genital operation (with or without additional pain or fear).
These boys’ initiation ceremonies did not inflict pain but instilled considerable fear.
Most previous studies of adolescent boys’ ceremonies consider those that inflict pain and instill fear, ignoring the less dramatic, milder ceremonies. Both mild and harsh ceremonies mark the transition out of childhood into adolescence, putting boys on the first step toward social manhood. Both mild and harsh ceremonies include symbolic acts that emphasize male gender, and a number of them also include specific teachings and taboos associated with maleness (Schlegel & Barry, 1979). Yet, the way the initiates experience the ceremonies, the motivation of the men who organize them, and the effects on the men and already initiated boys who conduct them differ greatly between mild and harsh ceremonies.
There are two initial questions: why a minority of cultures conduct ceremonies while most do not, and of those that conduct them, why some (the majority) hurt or frighten the initiates. We look for the social or cultural features that cause men to feel that harsh ceremonies are necessary, and what sets these societies apart from those that have only mild ones or those that have no ceremonies at all but find other ways of acknowledging boys’ transition into adolescence.
This study does not touch on symbolic analyses of the ceremonies or how they fit in to the larger ceremonial systems or sets of beliefs of the cultures that hold them, as does Turner (1962), for example. Cultures differ in the ways men explain the need to expose their boys to pain and fear, and the boys themselves do not question these cultural assumptions after they have successfully completed the initiation process. The belief that the suffering is beneficial to the initiates justifies the infliction of pain and fear.
In the next section, we summarize our previous comparative studies of adolescent initiation ceremonies (Schlegel & Barry, 1979, 1980) as background to this more detailed examination, and we show the regional distribution of harsh ceremonies. This is followed by a brief discussion of submitting to hazing as costly signaling (Irons, 2001), and how this concept does or does not apply to boys’ initiation ceremonies.
Adolescent Initiation Ceremonies
In earlier examinations of adolescent initiation ceremonies, it was often assumed that “puberty ceremonies,” as they were usually called, moved the initiate from child to adult social status. A cross-cultural study of adolescent socialization (Schlegel & Barry, 1991) found that initiation ceremonies held around the age of puberty and early biological adolescence (Bogin, 1999) mark the transition from childhood into the intermediate stage of social adolescence, a universal social stage preceding adulthood. The duration, character, and content of that stage are culturally defined. Transition ceremonies pertinent only to a particular aspect of social life may also occur at this time. The Jewish bar (and now bat) mitzvah and Christian confirmation apply only to the religious sphere of life, as does the Hindu upanayana, a ceremony of spiritual rebirth for adolescent boys of the three upper varnas (caste categories): Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vaisya (Tyler, 1973).
All societies in the sample that conduct adolescent ceremonies hold them for girls only, boys only, or both sexes separately. Boys are initiated mainly in societies that practice incipient agriculture (52%). Of the pastoralists and societies that practice extensive agriculture without the plow or other advanced technologies, 36% initiate boys. Thus, these ceremonies occur primarily in societies at the middle range of cultural complexity.
Where the responsibility for organizing and conducting many community activities falls on the entire cohort of adult men, boys are usually initiated in groups rather than singly. An important civic responsibility for all able-bodied men in small-scale traditional societies is offense and defense, that is, warfare. Other activities may also involve all or most men of the community, such as ritual organization, community trading expeditions, and community management of collective resources such as land or fishing grounds. Initiated boys become junior members of the male cohort.
Community-based ceremonies are absent in the most complex societies, those with advanced subsistence techniques and, often, urban centers. They are generally not found in the state-level societies of Eurasia, where class, guild, professional army, religious cult or sodality, and other social entities fulfill the responsibilities undertaken by gender-based groups in smaller scale societies. If complex traditional societies have initiation ceremonies, they are most likely to involve single initiates or two or three boys initiated together for convenience. An example of this is the assumption of the “manly” toga (toga virilis
Whether or not there is an initiation ceremony, the transition into a new age stage results in new activities and may be outwardly marked by the assumption of new kinds of dress, hair style, activities, and even speech patterns (Schlegel & Barry, 1991, 2015).
Ceremonies With Harsh Rituals
Although cases of ceremonies with fear or pain appear in several world regions, they are disproportionately found in sub-Saharan Africa, including eight cases that Murdock and White (1969) placed in the region they called “Circum-Mediterranean,” the Circum-Pacific, and indigenous South America. Fear, other than the expected anxiety surrounding anticipated pain, is induced by various kinds of threats of harm, whether from initiators or from supernatural figures. Painful procedures other than genital operations include beating, scarifying, and forcing the nose to bleed. An emotional tone that induces fear in the initiates is common in the dramatic rituals of Africa. Within the Circum-Pacific, the Melanesian Islands, aboriginal Australia, and New Guinea stand out as regions of especially dramatic, painful, and fear-inducing ceremonies, described in the extensive literature on them (e.g., Herdt, 1982b).
Not all peoples in Africa or the Circum-Pacific hold initiation ceremonies for boys. The Trobriand Islanders, who live off the coast of Papua New Guinea, are among those who do not (Malinowski, 1932), as are the Nyakyusa of Tanzania (M. Wilson, 1963). The 119 societies in the sample that do not hold initiation ceremonies for boys are listed in Schlegel and Barry (1979, Table 1).
Genital operations occur in half of the societies in the sample that inflict pain in initiation, all of them in Africa or the Circum-Pacific. The operations in Africa are most often circumcision, while those in the Circum-Pacific, including island Southeast Asia, may be circumcision or superincision, where the prepuce is slit but not removed. These procedures can lead to serious illness or death if they become infected and are therefore dangerous as well as painful. Societies with mild rituals only are widely distributed, found in Africa, Southeast Asia, North Asia, the Pacific, and indigenous North and South America. The concentration of genital operations at adolescence in two world regions suggests that there are individual features, or a combination of features, present in some cultures of these regions that motivate adult men to perform painful procedures on the genitals of adolescent boys. We discuss this in a later section.
The data for this study come from a cross-cultural code on adolescent initiation ceremonies (Schlegel & Barry, 1979). Ceremonies were coded absent in 119 societies and present in 63. The coders of the cultures in the sample retrieved the data on these ceremonies and their attributes from the ethnographic descriptions. The definitions of the variables and the coded information are reported in Schlegel and Barry (1979). The attributes related to physical pain are manipulations or activities that are not painful (n = 21), pain other than genital operations (n = 20), genital operations (n = 13), and genital operations plus other pain (n = 7). Two societies, Ibo and Orokaiva, do not inflict pain but instill considerable fear, with such devices as masked figures that threaten the boys or warnings of supernatural beings attempting to harm them. Ceremonies that inflict pain, plus the two ceremonies that deliberately instill fear but inflict no pain, are coded as having harsh rituals. Ceremonies missing these features are considered mild.
The analyses presented here treat two major categories of boys’ initiation ceremonies: 21 without painful or fearful procedures (mild rituals) and 42 with one or both of those procedures (harsh rituals). Some of the analyses contrast mild with harsh rituals to show the cultural features that predict the likelihood of either type. In other analyses, the societies with harsh rituals are divided into two groups: 22 without a genital operation and 20 with an operation. The three categories are then treated as an ordinal scale. Genital operations target a part of the body that has uniquely high sexual and emotional valence. In most of the ethnographic descriptions of ceremonies with genital operations, the social atmosphere is one of great tension and fear. Ceremonies are not limited to simple circumcision but comprise a set of rituals that may be painful and are fearful and otherwise very disturbing to the initiates, such as forcing them to ingest noxious substances.
There are societies, however, in which the ceremony consists of just the genital operation and is not otherwise frightening or painful. We discuss later one case in the sample, Java. We do not intend to minimize the anxiety that the boy might feel, but such ceremonies contrast markedly with those in which the genital operation is accompanied by other traumatic experiences.
Statistical analyses of the data used a set of programs (SPSS, a component of IBM Corporation) adapted to personal computers (Wagner, 2015). The statistical tests were chi-square for four-celled tables and tests for linear relationships when either variable contained three or more categories. Significance, measured by the more stringent two-tailed criterion, was established at p < .05.
Harsh Rituals as Hazing
Hazing subjects target individuals to pain and fear in controlled settings, and it may occur in the initiation ceremonies of fraternal sodalities and other institutions that restrict membership. Where group membership is voluntary, hazing tests the seriousness of the applicants for admission and their commitment to the group. Having successfully endured the rigors of the initiation, the new initiates tend to value the group and their membership in it more than if the initiation had not inflicted physical or mental suffering (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Gerard & Mathewson, 1966). This may be due to pride in having overcome hardship and gained the approval of other members. In its more severe forms, hazing tests the fortitude of the initiates and is a device for weeding out those deemed to be physically or psychologically unfit for membership. In this way, submitting voluntarily to hazing affirms the commitment of initiates when other forms of costly signaling (Irons, 2001), such as the payment of significant amounts of goods, are not possible or relevant.
When group membership is not voluntary, however, hazing cannot be considered a form of costly signaling on the part of the hazed, in this case, the initiated boys. Although they may willingly take this step toward adulthood and feel superior to uninitiated younger boys, the pain and fear they suffer are imposed on them. Although there is the danger of fatality, the usual outcome of adolescent initiation hazing is to survive intact; if that were not the case, a community would soon kill off or maim many of its young males. Merely surviving non-voluntary hazing does not indicate anything about the quality of the individual (fitness costly signaling). In another form of costly signaling, fathers signal to other men that they are willing to put their sons in possible danger, thus indicating loyalty to their peers in a potentially costly way (social costly signaling). We address that question later, when we discuss genital operations as painful rituals.
Hazing differs from ordeals, in which prospective initiates (and already initiated boys and men renewing their vows) prove their sincerity by successfully completing individual tests of physical, cognitive, or emotional strength. The suffering is self-inflicted, not directly inflicted by others although it is others who require it. This study looks only at initiation ceremonies, those that include at least one initiator and one initiate; it does not include solitary ordeals such as the Plains Indian vision quest or the Australian Aboriginal walk-about.
Previous Comparative Studies of Harsh Rituals
Resolving an Emotional Conflict
The path-breaking study of male adolescent initiation ceremonies by Whiting, Kluckhohn, and Anthony (1958) has been a source on which later studies have directly or indirectly drawn. Like those studies, this one is indebted to Whiting and his collaborators for having established the comparative approach to initiation ceremonies.
In their cross-cultural study of these ceremonies, Whiting et al. (1958) proposed that one function of hazing and genital operations is “to break an excessively strong dependence upon the mother and to ensure identification with adult males and acceptance of the male role” (p. 696). Hazing and genital operations are the mechanisms by which an attachment to the mother and rivalry with the father for her attention are extinguished. The precipitating factors for this attachment and rivalry are the strong emotional bond between mother and son due to mother–child co-sleeping and a long post-partum sex taboo, causing the mother to form an excessive attachment between herself and her son. They hypothesized that this results in the boy’s Oedipal conflict, which the harsh rituals resolve.
Whiting et al. (1958) defined initiation ceremonies as ceremonies that include harsh rituals, plus one case of seclusion only. Thus, their study did not include the ceremonies we have identified as mild. The hypothesis was tested using a selected sample of 56 traditional societies. This study was sharply criticized by Norbeck, Walker, and Cohen (1962) both on their coding of the ethnographic data 2 and on the psychoanalytic theory that underlay the hypothesis.
In a revision of Whiting et al. (1958), Burton and Whiting (1961) dropped the Oedipal aspect of the theory and proposed that harsh rituals broke identification with the mother, the result of long mother–infant co-sleeping in patrilocal societies. This revision postulates that the ceremony brings about a change in self-identity, from identity with the mother to identity with the males of the community. The studies by Whiting and his collaborators focus on the psychological needs of the adolescent boy.
Redirection of Identification
Cohen (1964), in his study of boys’ initiation ceremonies, proposed that boys traumatized and denied the comfort of their families are forced to identify emotionally with their initiators. This redirects their identification from the family to the male cohort. We point out that because the initiators include their fathers, uncles, and older brothers and cousins, it is likely that initiates already identify emotionally with at least some initiated males. Initiated males may identify themselves as members of a male-centered social group and loosen their social dependence on their family members, but this does not necessarily mean that their emotional attachment to parents and some other kin is necessarily diminished. It seems more likely that attachment to the male cohort will be partial and dependent on the situation, and it will compete with rather than replace attachment to the family in the never-ending push and pull between private interests and public concerns.
Fulfilling the Need for Male Solidarity
The most detailed comparative study of adolescent initiation ceremonies is by Young (1965). Unlike earlier comparative studies, it considers the range of ceremonies, from those we call mild (Stage 3 in his scale of dramatic sex-role recognition) to those we call harsh (Stage 4). It recognizes that dramatic ceremonies occur where there is strong male solidarity, a concept similar to our recognition of the male cohort as a civic unit. His explanation for Stage 4 rituals is that they are dramatizations of the change in social identity of the initiates as the male solidarity group opens up to new members. However, we wonder why such a dramatization requires hurting and frightening young adolescents.
In a test of Burton and Whiting (1961), Young (1965) finds that the combination of mother–child sleeping and patrilocal residence is highly associated with male solidarity. His evidence shows that solidarity is a better predictor than mother–child sleeping and patrilocal residence, separately or together. He proposes that solidarity, not the domestic arrangement, is the driving force behind harsh rituals.
Young’s (1965) study identifies the need for male solidarity as a cause of the harsh ceremonies. We postulate, rather, that male solidarity already characterizes the male cohort; but it may not characterize the cohort of boys before they undergo initiation. As Table 2 shows, same-sex bonding among initiates increases from mild ceremonies (column 1) to those with only pain or fear (column 2) to those with genital operations (column 3). However, the distribution of cases in column 3, ceremonies with genital operations, versus columns 1 and 2, ceremonies without these operations, implies that genital operations, which in most cases severely traumatized boys, may create a new identity, as fellow-sufferers, when the boys were not already strongly bonded.
Initiation Ceremony and Same-Sex Bonding.
Note. The association of types of initiation ceremony for adolescent boys with presence or absence of same-sex bonding as a consequence of the ceremony. Linear chi-square = 7.24, p = .007. Gen. Op. (3) vs. Mild (1) plus Pain or Fear (2), chi-square = 6.88, p = .008.
Harsh Rituals as Preparation for War
In a cross-cultural study, Sosis, Kress, and Boster (2007) found that warfare frequency is the most significant predictor of costly rituals, that is, those that are painful. They argue that costly rituals (Irons, 2001) signal commitment and promote solidarity, necessary for success in combat. Their sample included but was not restricted to adolescent ceremonies. Although, as we discussed earlier, pain and fear are not costly signaling on the part of the initiates, we considered the relation of warfare to harsh rituals.
Harsh initiation rituals might be seen as hardening boys to prepare them for combat; they could be thought of as analogous to boot camp, where there is intense preparation for battle through physical hardening and learning military skills. In boot camp, however, the soldiers-in-training are actively doing something. In harsh initiation rituals, painful things are being done to the initiate. Boys growing up in societies with frequent warfare are already socialized for future participation in battle, hearing war stories and observing the warriors and the rituals that precede combat. We suggest that ordeals, where the initiate is actively undergoing self-inflicted hardship, may be in part preparation for combat, but we do not perceive initiation rituals as having this self-hardening component.
Nevertheless, we tested warfare frequency as a predictor of harsh rituals, using the measure of warfare in Ember and Ember (1992). We found no significant association at the .05 level between harsh rituals and high frequency of either overall or external warfare. The association between harsh rituals and frequency of internal warfare is short of significance but shows a trend: p = .059. This is not surprising, as the small-scale societies most likely to have harsh rituals are also those most likely to engage in combat with neighboring communities within the same society, with which they compete for resources. This is similar to Ember and Ember’s (2010) findings when they tested the relation of warfare to boys’ initiation ceremonies, using the Whiting definition of the ceremony (i.e., harsh rituals). They found no significant relation between harsh rituals and either internal war frequency or overall war frequency. They did propose, however, that by reinforcing solidarity, harsh rituals might contribute to the effectiveness of the fighting unit.
In assessing the cause of harsh rituals, we ask what motivates adult men to plan ceremonies that include hurting and frightening young boys. Although previous studies have found cultural variables that predict the presence of harsh ceremonies, predictors are not necessarily causes. They may be consequences, as we believe strong male bonding is, in many cases, a consequence of the trauma of genital operations. Two or more variables may be correlated because they are part of a larger cultural complex (cf. Young, 1965): They co-occur but are not in a direct cause–effect relationship.
The Motivation for Conducting Harsh Rituals
The societies practicing harsh rituals in boys’ initiation ceremonies have characteristics that provide some clues as to the cause or causes of these harsh rituals. The societies generally practice incipient or extensive agriculture, herding, or fishing. These are labor-intensive subsistence techniques. As small-scale societies, they do not have access to either slave or wage labor and must rely on able-bodied family members to participate. Even where women do much of the day-to-day farming, as in many parts of Africa, or raise the small animals, as in New Guinea where women are responsible for pig-raising, heavy labor is done by men and boys. Sons are important in herding economies to manage animals and defend resources.
We agree with Keesing (1982), who proposed that harsh treatment during initiation expresses the authority that men have over younger males, not only during the initiation but more generally during their adolescence and youth. This authority is necessary if men are to appropriate their labor and generally keep them under social control. Adolescent boys and somewhat older youths not only go through this harsh form of submission when they are initiated, but they are also reminded of it as they participate in the initiation of their younger kin and neighbors.
Submission is encouraged through socialization for obedience, especially applied to adolescent boys who are beginning to loosen dependence on the family and move into the larger community (Schlegel & Barry, 1991). An earlier study by Barry, Child, and Bacon (1959) established the relation between obedience training and subsistence technique. We wondered whether harsh rituals were a form of obedience training—inflicting pain and instilling fear are time-honored techniques of social control and the imposition of authority. We tested the relation between harsh rituals and training for obedience in late childhood, prior to adolescence, and found a significant relationship (see Table 3) between this training and ceremonies with harsh rituals (columns 2 and 3). The data on obedience come from Barry, Josephson, Lauer, and Marshall (1976: Column Obedience, Later Boyhood [LB]). Within the group of societies that have initiation ceremonies, the statistically significant trend is for the percentage of societies with strong obedience training to increase, from those with mild ceremonies (column 2) to those with pain or fear (column 3) to those with genital operations (column 4). However, among those societies without initiation ceremonies, the number of those with strong versus weak obedience training is close to equal. This indicates that strong training for obedience is a response to multiple conditions and that harsh rituals are only one way of inducing submission to elders.
Initiation Ceremony and Obedience Training in Late Childhood.
Note. The association of three types of initiation ceremony for adolescent boys with strong or weak obedience training of older boys prior to adolescence. The correction for continuity was applied to the chi-square tests for ceremonies present versus ceremonies absent because scores of obedience training were dichotomized. Ceremony present (1-3) vs. ceremony absent (0), chi-square = .005, p = .94 Not Significant (NS). Ceremony present (1-3): linear chi-square = 6.97, p = .008.
Although it may be fairly easy to enforce obedience in young adolescents, it becomes more problematic when youths reach full physical development but are not yet socially recognized as adults. In most traditional societies, marriage either is the social act that confers adult status 3 or it follows soon after adult status is conferred in other ways. To delay adulthood well beyond full development is to risk disaffection among older youths.
One feature that delays marriage is polygyny, as marriageable girls become less available to youths because some are taken as secondary wives by older men (Kruger, Peterson, & Peterson, 2010). The pool of potential brides is especially depleted by general polygyny, when 20% or more men at any one time have more than one wife. Many of the societies in Africa and Melanesia practice some degree of polygyny, especially those in which women’s labor contributes significantly to household subsistence, as it does widely in those world regions (Schlegel & Barry, 1986).
We tested harsh rituals with form of family. The data on general polygyny, limited polygyny, and monogamy come from Murdock and Wilson (1972: column 8). Harsh rituals, which demonstrate the collective power of older men, are significantly more likely to occur in the initiation ceremonies of societies where general polygyny delays the entry of physically mature males into social adulthood (Table 4). Ceremonies with genital operations are especially strongly associated with general polygyny. We will examine this question in more detail when we discuss genital operations specifically.
Initiation Ceremony and Type of Marriage.
Note. The number of societies is shown in each of 12 categories. Three types of initiation ceremony for adolescent boys, along with no ceremony, are associated with three types of marriage: monogamy, limited polygyny, and general polygyny. Harsh (2 and 3) vs. none (0), linear chi-square = 8.03, p = .005. Harsh (2 and 3) vs. mild (1), linear chi-square = 5.38, p = .02 . Gen. Op. (3) vs. none (0), linear chi-square = 10.24, p = .001. Gen. Op. (3) vs. mild (1), linear chi-square = 7.98, p = .005.
Control Over Adolescent Boys
If boys’ ceremonies with harsh rituals are believed in many societies to be effective in controlling the behavior of adolescent boys and youths, why do not more societies have them? We suggest that these are absent because they are not needed. Either control over boys is not a critical social issue, or there are other institutions that exert control without the need to exhibit raw power in the form of a harsh ceremony.
In preindustrial societies, adolescent boys in general have more freedom than do girls, who are incorporated into adult female groups more than adolescent boys are incorporated into adult male groups. Boys are usually away from the groups of men or stay on the periphery unless they are working with men on a task or project (Schlegel & Barry, 1991).
Foraging societies tend to give adolescent boys greater freedom than do societies with other subsistence techniques. For most foragers, the boys are away practicing their hunting (and feeding themselves) while the adult men, the competent hunters, go out singly or in groups to provision their families. In some cases, as among the Kung Bushmen, the boys may sometimes accompany the hunters, but this is to train them and they are not expected to make major kills (Shostak, 1983). When boys’ labor does not contribute much to the family’s economic well-being and they are not around very much, there is no need for adult men to control them.
However, the Kung are coded as having harsh rituals, so it is instructive to see what these are. Shostak (1983) describes them as follows: A boy is likely to kill his first large animal between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. The culture recognizes this event as a milestone and performs two separate ceremonies to celebrate the killing of the first male and the first female animal. Small ritual tattoos are administered and additional small cuts are made to ensure, symbolically, the strength and success of the boy’s future as a hunter. (p. 84)
Although the procedures are undoubtedly somewhat painful, they are more like the tattooing that young people in many societies around the world endure as body ornament, rather than the harsh rituals of other African initiation ceremonies. One example is the Baka, foragers of the Congo (Peng, 2016), where women and girls tattoo one another, and sometimes boys and men, purely for ornamentation. Kung is a borderline case of initiation ceremony: Many foraging societies celebrate a boy’s first kill of a large animal with a feast given by the family in his honor, a festive occasion rather than a ceremonial event.
Foraging societies may subject adolescent boys to ordeals, as a way of gaining a spirit helper or connecting with spiritual power. Ordeals also test their fortitude, a trait for which male children are socialized in foraging societies (Barry et al., 1976). These ordeals may be repeated throughout a man’s life in some foraging cultures as a way of renewing his connection to spiritual power. These are not dramatizations of men’s power over boys and youths.
Control over male adolescents and youths becomes a social issue when boys have economic value, need special training for adult roles, or both. A variety of cultural institutions impose this control by sending boys and youths away from home for many of their waking hours, thus reducing the opportunity for parent–child conflict and social disturbance. These include fosterage and servitude or apprenticeship in other peoples’ homes, military or vocational training that puts young males under the authority of men with power over them, boarding schools, or employment that takes them away from the community, such as seamanship or apprenticeship on trading expeditions.
It is quite common for boys and youths to sleep apart from the family home, leaving after the evening meal to join their peers in the community men’s house or some other designated place. Dormitories for adolescents exist in many parts of Africa, southern Asia, and the Pacific (Schlegel & Barry, 1991).
More subtle control over young males comes in the form of obedience and compliance to obtain present or future rewards. We see this in the contrast between two Nigerian Ijo villages (not in the sample). Hollos and Leis (1986, 1989) found that adolescents in the more modernizing community were generally more compliant and deferential than those of the more traditional village. Because the opportunities for education and advancement were greater in the more modern community, and taking advantage of these opportunities required help from fathers or uncles, it is not surprising that adolescents tried to gain the goodwill of their older relatives, particularly because there was competition for these resources. Where compliance and deference are imposed by powerful authority figures and institutionally regulated or are self-imposed because of self-interest, harsh rituals are unnecessary.
The Timing of Harsh Rituals
Initiation generally takes place after puberty, during early or middle adolescence (from about age 12 or 13 to about age 15). The age of individuals may vary when large groups are initiated, as the community has to wait until there are enough boys to make all the preparation worthwhile. Adolescence is a good time to bring boys into the male cohort, whether or not through harsh rituals, as they are young enough to control and developed enough, or soon will be, to be useful to the men in their activities. It is also a time of high neural plasticity, facilitating a change in personal and social status (Han & Northoff, 2008).
As others have noted, initiation ceremonies mark a change of social identity, from social identity primarily with the family to a more complex social identity that includes identifying with the initiated boys and men; but can we assume that this is a change in gender identity from incomplete to complete male? Research on child development shows that children enter a new phase of biological development (Bogin, 1999) at around age 6 or 7. One new feature is adrenarche, when the secretions of the adrenal glands (a precursor to puberty) become marked. Campbell (2006) proposes that the hormonal consequences of adrenarche may be the biological trigger for important changes in children’s behavior, such as reduced fear of the unfamiliar and greater willingness to be involved with less familiar individuals. This is the time at which children around the world form same-sex peer groups (Rogoff, 2003; Weisner, 1996), a step in loosening the social and emotional dependence on the immediate family. By middle childhood, if not before, boys identify with other boys and as males. Initiation brings about a new kind of male identity, not male identity per se.
The neural plasticity of adolescence also facilitates intensive teaching of cultural beliefs and ideology, including the ideology of masculinity. If the ideal man is aggressive, subjecting boys to aggressive behavior by men is a vivid demonstration of that ideal. Research on laboratory animals shows that “levels of anxiety, aggressiveness, and stress response are significantly influenced by social experiences around puberty” (Sachser, Hennessy, & Kaiser, 2011, p. 1519). We suggest that rituals that inflict pain prepare boys for later aggressiveness as a masculine pose. Rituals that instill fear only may give rise to other later responses. If the fearful figures are those of supernatural beings, exposing them later as ordinary humans in costume may convey the message to fear the deities if they violate taboos but think of them as benevolent if they follow the rules.
Cognitive Reorganization
In a discussion of the painful and prolonged ceremonies of some New Guinea societies, Herdt (1982a) proposed that harsh rituals, and the teaching that accompanies them, force a cognitive reorganization, from attachment to and dependence on mothers and other women to denigration of them. He described cases of boys forcefully taken from the nurturing environment of their mothers’ dwellings to the community men’s house in which men spend most of their non-working time and may also sleep. In addition to the abrupt transition and the pain and fear they experience, boys are taught that women are dangerous. The initiation ceremony, emphasizing women’s pollution (cf. Langness, 1967, 1974) and the need to remove it, prepares the boys to denigrate women, particularly women of reproductive age, and give their primary allegiance to other males. According to Herdt (1982a), this cognitive reorientation leads to an emotional one: By learning that women are polluting and dangerous, they come to fear women and feel revulsion at female bodies and to realign their attachment from mothers and sisters to males.
Denigration of women as a new orientation may be only partial and specific to the setting, even in the New Guinea societies where it has been well reported. Herdt (1981) contrasts the blatant misogyny Sambia men display when in groups with the more nuanced expressions of gender attitudes in actual behavior toward individual women. Tuzin (1982) describes the extreme denigration of women in the rituals and public behavior of Ilahita Arapesh men and how it differs from the domestic felicity of married couples. Denigration may not express a total cognitive reorganization; rather, it may be a set of ideas and emotions appropriate to certain settings, in this case, in male-centered public space, whereas intimacy and trust may be appropriate in the distinct private space of the home (Schlegel, 1990). It is likely that the two sets of emotions cannot be kept completely separate, however, and that the spillover between them leads to strong ambivalence—all the more reason to assert the inferiority of women when in the company of other men, as a collective affirmation of ideology.
Effects on the Initiators
In community-based ceremonies that include harsh rituals, men initiate each other’s sons. The sense of heightened tension that pervades these ceremonies, as detailed in many ethnographic descriptions of them, must be due not only to the fearfulness of the boys but also to the anxiety and watchfulness of the men whose sons are undergoing these rituals. Fathers must put their trust in their peers not to harm their child, a form of costly signaling (cf. Paige & Paige, 1981). Because most boys heal successfully and survive the ceremony, the relief felt by the fathers and other male kin of the initiates is likely to augment the affiliation they feel with the other initiators. When a boy dies, a common explanation is that “the spirits took him,” absolving the initiators of public blame. When the accompanying teachings include the denigration of women, the reiteration of such ideas not only reinforces them but also helps to assuage any ambivalence the initiators may feel.
The initiators in community-wide ceremonies include the already initiated adolescents and unmarried youths. Participating in the ceremony again as initiators allows the older brothers, cousins, and neighbors of the initiates to inflict pain and instill fear in the younger boys. Harsh rituals can therefore be viewed as a form of sanctioned bullying of younger boys, thus asserting dominance over them and reinforcing the hierarchy of age. Reliving the ceremony from the other side again conveys to the older boys and youths the collective power that adult men, who control the ceremony, have over them.
Ceremonies With Genital Operations
Almost half of the societies that inflict pain or induce fear in boys undergoing initiation include genital operations in their rituals. There is a large literature on the function and meaning of these operations. Reik (1931) proposed a psychoanalytic explanation of circumcision as a way of reducing castration anxiety by representing it in symbolic form. Although this theory has been long disregarded, we are not ready to disconnect entirely a symbolic relation between genital operations and castration, as we will discuss.
In this section, we compare ceremonies with or without genital operations and examine comparative studies of genital operations.
Paternal Confidence
C. G. Wilson (2008) proposed that male genital operations, not necessarily at adolescence, are designed to promote paternal confidence. He found that these operations are statistically associated with wives living separately from their husbands, such as in separate dwellings within a compound or in women’s quarters. His costly signaling hypothesis is that males submit to genital operations as a way for a man to reassure other men that if he commits adultery with another man’s wife, the intercourse is unlikely to result in pregnancy. His reasoning is that removing the foreskin impairs a man’s capacity for sperm competition by reducing penile sensitivity and thereby increasing the length of time necessary for ejaculation, making quick and furtive copulations less likely to result in insemination. In other words, genital operations may not reduce adultery attempts but they strengthen paternal confidence. However, Bossio, Pukall, and Steele (2016) found that circumcision did not reduce penile sensitivity.
Wilson’s hypothesis is based on the assumption, so far unproven, that genital operations reduce the likelihood of insemination. Preventing adultery in the first place seems a better way of increasing paternal confidence than taking the chance that it will not result in insemination.
Costly Signaling of Fathers
One explanation for genital operations that refers specifically to adolescent initiation ceremonies is offered by Paige and Paige (1981). They hypothesized that in societies with strong fraternal interest groups, that is, patrilineages, circumcision is a ritual attempt to solve the dilemma of fission. This is a dilemma because at some point a patrilineage fishions as sons marry and found sub-lineages, whose interests may diverge from the larger lineage. When the split occurs, there is a conflict of interest between loyalty to lineage members of the same and ascending generations and furthering one’s own and one’s children’s interests. An extreme form of commitment to the lineage would be to desist from founding a sub-lineage, such as by castrating one’s sons. That is not plausible, so circumcision is a partial solution by putting the son’s penis in danger, although it is highly likely to survive intact. This is a form of costly social signaling on the father’s part. We found no association between patrilineal descent (Murdock & Wilson, 1972: column 10) and either harsh rituals generally or genital operations specifically. However, this costly signaling interpretation is consonant with the emphasis on male solidarity if one considers that the signals go from the father to the male cohort rather than to the lineage. In other words, fathers are willing to put their sons at risk to prove their loyalty to the male cohort and their trust that the boys will not be harmed.
Warfare
As discussed earlier, we had found no association between harsh rituals and warfare frequency. Restricting the sample to societies with harsh rituals, neither external nor internal warfare predicted genital operations. Although harsh rituals may reinforce obedience to elders, which strengthens the cooperation of boys and youths in the various endeavors of the community’s male cohort, this sample provides no evidence that harsh rituals generally or genital operations specifically in adolescent initiation ceremonies are directly related to warfare. However, by reinforcing obedience, they may contribute to the effectiveness of fighting units where warriors coordinate their offense and defense. By reinforcing male solidarity, they may increase willingness of the warriors to expose themselves to danger. In these ways, the harsh rituals may have an indirect effect as a supporting feature rather than an independent factor, as Ember and Ember (2010) proposed.
Solidarity and Subordination
Two of the features significantly related to harsh rituals in general are even more strongly associated with genital operations, as demonstrated by ordinal distributions from no or mild rituals, to harsh rituals without genital operations, to harsh rituals with these operations. These features are same-sex bonding as a consequence of the ceremony and obedience training in later childhood.
Same-sex bonding
In most of the initiation ceremonies that include genital operations, especially those of Africa and Melanesia, other ritual features are also very harsh. These painful and fearful rituals are conducted in an atmosphere of heightened emotional tension. We agree with Herdt (1982a) that resulting trauma produces cognitive reorganization. The boys are helpless, hurt, and frightened. They have no alternative to subordinating themselves to their initiators (cf. Cohen, 1964). Once they have recovered physically and emotionally from the effects of the rituals, their pride in having gone through the trial successfully and the knowledge that they are now part of this select group, when compared with females and uninitiated boys, give them a strong sense of community. As we proposed earlier, this accounts for the fact that the ratio of cases with same-sex bonding present is highest for those with genital operations (Table 2).
Obedience training
In most cases, genital operations are the most traumatic of the harsh rituals and thus are the most extreme form of dominance display. The large majority of societies with genital operations train boys for submission (obedience) in the years preceding their initiation (Table 3).
Genital Operations and Marriage Practices
We asked what message is being conveyed when men force boys to undergo painful operations on the penis, an organ that is normally carefully protected. We propose that a genital operation is a very pointed warning to an adolescent boy that he is not to use his penis, now or in the future, against the interests of the adult men by attempting to seduce their wives. Genital operations serve as a threat: We can hurt your penis now, so just think what we can do if you misuse it against us—a warning, if only in symbolic form, of possible castration. In an atmosphere of fear and helplessness induced by harsh treatment by powerful figures, it is quite likely that the boys experience castration anxiety. It is possible that this anxiety affects the way initiated males feel about their own masculinity, carrying the effects of trauma in adolescence into later life (cf. Sachser et al., 2011, cited above, for the later effects of trauma in adolescence).
In this way, we propose, genital operations in adolescent ceremonies are an attempt to forestall adultery. The already initiated boys and older youths who participate in the ceremony also get this message and are reminded of the possible consequences if they try to seduce other men’s wives. By attempting to prevent adultery, men are trying to increase both their control over their wives and their paternal confidence (cf. Gaulin & Schlegel, 1980).
General polygyny
In our view, genital operations have their origin in the marriage practices of the culture. As already noted, where there is general polygyny, the supply of potential brides is reduced as a fairly large number of older men take second or third wives. These brides are about the same age as the older adolescent boys and youths. The youths are not only kept socially subordinate to adult men but are also denied legitimate sexual or romantic relations with attractive girls. Genital operations as initiation rituals are more likely to occur in societies practicing general polygyny (Table 4); however, a closer look at this issue reveals that general polygyny alone does not account for this likelihood. The likelihood is even stronger when general polygyny is combined with exogamy.
Exogamy
Temptation is even greater when the brides come from other communities (exogamy), making the young wives an attractive novelty to the bachelors. It is likely that the teenage brides also find the bachelors more desirable than their husbands, who are anywhere from 8 to 40 years older than they. These girls come in as strangers to men whom, for the most part, they do not know or know very well, and they are in the tense situation of having to adapt to their new home in a new community. Where their movements are not restricted and they can escape surveillance, it must be very tempting to engage in flirtation, or more, with attractive youths about their own age or only a little older.
We tested harsh rituals with exogamy (Murdock & Wilson, 1972: column 11). The findings make it clear that although societies with harsh rituals (columns 2 and 3) differ significantly from societies with no (1) or mild (2) rituals, the strongest contrast occurs between societies with genital operations (3) and those with no or mild rituals (Table 5). Although the novelty of an incoming bride may contribute to her attractiveness and the temptation to seduce her, we doubt that this is the only contribution to the high percentage of societies with genital operations that practice both general polygyny and exogamy. For a broader explanation, we look to the social settings of bachelors and brides.
Initiation Ceremony and General Polygyny Plus Exogamy.
Note. The number of societies is shown in each of 16 categories. Three types of initiation ceremony for adolescent boys, plus absence of a ceremony, are associated with four combinations of general polygyny and exogamous source of spouse: both customs, polygyny only, exogamy only, and neither custom. Harsh (2 and 3) vs. none (0), linear chi-square = 9.91, p = .002. Harsh (2 and 3) vs. mild (1), linear chi-square = 6.03, p = .014. Gen. Op. (3) vs. none (0), linear chi-square = 18.74, p < .001. Gen. Op. (3) vs. mild (1), linear chi-square = 12.69, p < .001.
General polygyny might lead youths to want to attempt adultery, but adultery attempts by a youth are likely to cause trouble between his father and the woman’s husband, and men do not take kindly to social problems created by their sons. When young wives caught in adultery come exclusively or frequently from the local community (endogamy or agamy, respectively), they cause trouble for their locally residing parents and brothers, who also do not take kindly to social problems created by their daughters and sisters. Young people of both sexes are thus constrained by larger social networks and institutions.
When the bride comes from another community, however, the youth may be constrained by kinship considerations, but the wife is not necessarily so constrained. If adultery is discovered, she may have the option of running home, or she may be able to rely on her male kin to come to her aid as they are not members of the husband’s local group. Unless the husband can provide secure surveillance of his multiple wives, as in the harems of Middle Eastern and Indian rulers and nobles, the possibility of a young wife’s adultery is always present.
Bridewealth
Where wives are not expensive to obtain, an adulterous wife can simply be sent back to her natal family. This can also happen in societies where men pay for wives, but then the wronged husband would have to demand the bridewealth back to pay for a replacement. It may be impossible to retrieve the goods, which by then may have been widely distributed to pay back the debts of the bride’s father. A husband may beat an adulterous wife, but he would be reluctant to kill or seriously injure such an expensive investment. Because bridewealth is associated with high female contribution to subsistence, in losing a wife, he would be losing important sources of labor, both his wife’s labor (Barry & Schlegel, 1982; Schlegel & Barry, 1986) and the labor of any children she might bear. Large payments of bridewealth increase the need to prevent adultery.
We tested type of ceremony and bridewealth. The data on bridewealth come from Schlegel and Eloul (1987). The results show that although societies with harsh ceremonies (columns 2 and 3) are significantly more likely to pay bridewealth than are societies without ceremonies, societies with genital operations (column 3) stand out as significantly more likely to pay bridewealth than are any other societies in the sample (Table 6). This association between bridewealth and genital operations supports the proposal that genital operations are expected to discourage adultery.
Initiation Ceremony and Bridewealth.
Note. The variable “Bridewealth” refers to substantial bridewealth and does not include token bridewealth, as the latter does not represent a significant investment on the part of the groom or his family. Harsh (2 and 3) vs. none (0), chi-square = 13.72, p < .001. Harsh (2 and 3) vs. mild (1), chi-square = 2.63, p = .11 NS. Gen. Op. (3) vs. none (0), chi-square = 21.40, p < .001. Gen. Op. (3) vs. mild (1), chi-square = 7.04, p = .008. Gen. Op. (3) vs. pain or fear (2), chi-square = 6.11, p = .013.
Although genital operations are an attempt to prevent adultery, they may not be very effective; in fact, their most important function may be to reassure the initiators that they are taking measures to protect their own interests. We should note that by adultery, we mean unregulated sexual access to a man’s wife. It is not adultery if the husband himself allows sexual access, as in cultures that include wife sharing or allow certain kin of the husband to have legitimate sexual relations with his wife. In such cases, the issue is controlling sexual access to the wife, not necessarily claiming exclusive access.
Java, a Deviant Case
Java is a complex literate society, and such societies tend not to have painful adolescent initiation rituals, if they have any such rituals at all. Java is an exception in the sample, as the main feature of a Javanese Muslim boy’s initiation is circumcision. As described by Geertz (1968), it is treated much the same way parents would treat a necessary but painful medical procedure that does not require anesthesia, such as lancing a boil or setting a simple break in a bone. The (usually single) initiate is surrounded by family members, including his mother, who support and console the boy and draw his attention to the feast and gifts that will reward his suffering. The emotional tone is one of love and care, not threat and danger. In these cases, the anticipatory anxiety, pain, and resulting soreness may be comparable with what many young virgin brides experience when the hymen is ruptured on their wedding night.
Circumcision is a prescribed Islamic ritual, which ideally should be performed by the 13th year of age. It can be readily adapted as a ritual of adolescent initiation, especially in societies that already had some kind of adolescent initiation ceremony. In the case of Java, it is possible that a ceremony already existed before the conversion to Islam, in the early 16th century, made circumcision a requirement (Reid, 1988). If so, judging from the nature of the ceremony as practiced today, adolescent initiation rituals were probably mild.
Conclusion
We asked under what conditions boys’ adolescent initiation ceremonies include rituals that frighten or hurt the initiates. Our answer, anticipated by others who have written about this (e.g., Keesing, 1982), is that these rituals exist to impose or reinforce the dominance of elders over their juniors. We found that they are statistically associated with both community organization and specific cultural practices related to marriage and child socialization.
Although genital operations are predicted by marriage and socialization practices, a confounding factor in some cases of circumcision is the Islamic requirement that boys be circumcised by age 13. In some cases, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, circumcision may have already existed before conversion to Islam. In others, upon conversion, this ritual could be added to an existing adolescent initiation ceremony of either the mild or harsh type. The addition of circumcision to a mild ceremony may have happened in Java and, if so, would account for the emotionally reassuring nature of the ceremony there, the polar opposite of the extremely harsh ceremonies of Africa and Melanesia that include genital operations.
Judaism is the other world religion besides Islam that requires circumcision, although this operation has been performed on infants rather than older children for more than 2,000 years. Marcus (2004) reports hints that this rite may have been performed at puberty in early Israelite culture, and it may predate the Bronze Age. It is possible that both Jewish and Muslim circumcision rituals had their origin in the prehistoric practices of Semitic peoples. If that is the case, then what began as an initiation rite was repurposed as a mark of religious identity. 4
We asked what functions harsh ceremonies served for the initiators. Planning and organizing a community-wide initiation ceremony require cooperation among the men and enhance the solidarity of the male cohort. If initiation rituals are very harsh, and especially if they involve genital operations, men have to trust one another not to kill or seriously injure their sons and grandsons. This shows their commitment to the male cohort (costly signaling), although not necessarily to the lineage (cf. Paige & Paige, 1981). Conducting the rituals and teaching the tribal lore that accompanies them reaffirm the initiators’ commitment to their ideology. If this ideology includes the denigration of women, such teachings also help to suppress any doubts men might have about its veracity.
The final question is as follows: What are the social and cultural conditions that motivate men to submit their young kin and neighbors to pain and fear as a means of social control? Why are harsh rituals believed to be necessary?
Where boys’ subordination is a social feature in traditional societies, harsh rituals do not occur if there are other means of ensuring subordination of adolescent and post-adolescent males. These means include the removal of adolescent boys from the family or the community and placing them where others will discipline them, the threat of withholding property or other resources controlled by adult men, putting youths into hierarchical institutions such as military training units, and requiring long periods of academic or vocational training where their advancement depends on both compliance and attainment of skill. When social control is imposed by such institutions, dramatic displays of power are unnecessary.
Pain, fear, and genital operations in initiation can in most cases be understood as serving the interests of the initiators, although the initiates may be proud of their new status and the fact that they endured the suffering that produced it. When conditions change, the ceremonies die out or, as in the case of circumcision, rites may be repurposed and their meaning and emotional tone changed. Harsh rituals are not needed to assert authority of men over boys when subordination of boys is not a critical issue, or there are other means of gaining compliance.
As a final note, we should remember that after the initiates have successfully gone through a painful and fearful initiation, the boys are now accepted as junior members of the male cohort. In future initiations, they will take part as initiators, not frightened children. If initiation includes the learning of new knowledge, they now partake in this important cultural knowledge expressed in ideology and symbolism. They are on the first step to culturally approved manhood.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank Carol Ember for her many helpful suggestions and Suzanne Frayser for reminding us that the ceremonies are not only responses to features of social organization but also serve as vehicles of ideology and symbolism within the cultural system.
Authors’ Note
This article is dedicated to the memory of Melvin Ember, who for many years was the editor of Cross-Cultural Research. We miss his fine scholarship and good-natured presence.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.