description Roy Rappaport Overview
Roy Rappaport (1926–1997) was an American ecological anthropologist whose 1968 monograph *Pigs for the Ancestors* examined the ritual cycle of the Maring people in highland New Guinea. He argued that ritual practices regulating pig slaughter, warfare, and planting functioned as mechanisms of ecological regulation, helping maintain a balance between human population, swine numbers, and local resources. The work became a foundational text in cultural ecology and systems-theory approaches within anthropology, though later scholars revised several of his quantitative claims.
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Roy Rappaport ranks #33 of 191 in the Anthropologist ranking, behind Lewis Henry Morgan, ahead of Nancy Scheper-Hughes.
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What is Roy Rappaport's Pigs for the Ancestors about?
*Pigs for the Ancestors* (1968) examined the ritual cycle of the Maring people in highland Papua New Guinea, focusing on the kaiko — a multi-year festival culminating in the mass slaughter of pigs. Rappaport argued that the ritual functioned as a homeostatic mechanism regulating the relationship between pig populations, human warfare, and ecological balance in the region.
What was the controversy around Rappaport's ecological approach to ritual?
Rappaport developed a neo-functional theory that ritual serves as a mechanism for maintaining ecological and social equilibrium. Critics, including cultural anthropologists who conducted follow-up fieldwork among the Maring, challenged aspects of his original ecological model, arguing it underplayed meaning, historical change, and the role of individual agency.
What changed in the revised edition of Pigs for the Ancestors?
Rappaport published a substantially revised and expanded edition in 1984, sixteen years after the original. The revision addressed criticisms from scholars who had conducted subsequent research among the Maring and offered corrections to his original ecological data and interpretations.
What is Rappaport's Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity?
Published posthumously in 1999, the book expanded Rappaport's theory of ritual into a comprehensive account of the role of ritual and religion in human evolution and social order. It integrated his earlier ecological work with broader arguments about the adaptive functions of liturgical order, sanctity, and the relationship between language and ritual.
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