The Fear and the Game: Women's Role to Maintain the Society

In The Interpretation of Cultures, anthropologist Clifford Geertz recounts his experiences in a Balinese village, describes the Balinese cockfights, and shows the cock as an extension of the male body in that male-dominated society. The absence of women in the play does say much about male sociality with Balinese culture, but it reveals little about the influence of women in that society. Curt Nimuendaju, in his The Eastern Timbira, explores more amusements and games like log races, among the tribes of all Northwestern and Central Ge. McKim Marriott’s “The Feast of Love” presents Holi and people’s festival of color in rural India. However, as Curt Nimuendaju and McKim Marriott have shown in their work on Brazilian and Indian tribes, respectively, females do often have an important role in produce social order. In both Nimuendaju and Marriott’s work, games suggest the importance of women and their significant power in maintaining society. In particular, the practices of the games show common fears experienced in the two societies: Brazilian tribes, with their fear of external forces and possible conquest, used women in their log races to help them prepare for war, while the Indians with their fear of internal conflicts and rebellion, made women the important subject of the Holi, in order to have them cast out inversion and reduce social tensions.      
As logs were characterized as female human beings, Brazilian log races helped tribesmen maintain physical strength, practice escaping enemies and protecting their tribe’s women. These log games were very popular among the Brazilian tribes, and were practiced in preparation for war and in the maintenance of the internal peace. Runners carried the logs in the prolonged relay races and were not allowed to stop or rest. According to Curt, Nimuendaju, logs borne by the runners during the race represented human beings: “Miniature logs…were characterized as to sex by their decoration and wax breasts,” and “it was a moral...