Abstract

In a famous anthropological study, Robin Horton argues that a characteristic of traditional societies is what he calls the “closed predicament.” The latter characterizes a society or tradition (in Horton's article he is discussing intellectual or religious traditions such as magic and mythology that involve explanations of natural phenomena and disease) in which alternative conceptual schemes are not known, certain beliefs are treated as sacred or immutable, and there is a pervasive “anxiety” in the society about the stability of the conceptual schemes. If the society's practices and rituals are subjected to criticism they will erode. This “anxiety” is not fully conscious but is manifested, Horton hypothesizes, in such social mechanisms as “taboos.”