2006. évi 1. szám - Jura - Pécsi Tudományegyetem

Kitti Maros: Research on peyotism from a legal anthropological aspect
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Kitti Maros
PhD student
Research on peyotism from a
legal anthropological
aspect
I. Abstract
While carrying out researches on legal cultures, I
have always strived for choosing interesting fields.
As a result of this, my field of interest has turned
to the cultures of the Far-East, to Japan, China and
India, whose charm is embedded in their exoticism:
extraordinary people, customs, religions, the magic,
different law systems and languages.
In the past year I came across the psycho-anthropological
works of an outstanding American
researcher, Joseph D. Calabrese, and a field that is
rather undiscovered within the boundaries of the
Hungarian jurisprudence. Thus the idea of unifying
the religious practice of peyote ingestion of the Native
American Indians and Legal Anthropology was
formed, and moreover, as the fruit of my research,
this publication was carried out.
First I want to point out the importance of the
investigations of the legal anthropologists: the resarch
on the problems of the etnic and the religious
minorities is significant from a legal standpoint, as
legal anthropology enlightens the social aspects of
various defects of legal practice.
In the second part of my paper I would like to
carry out a research on the ritual use of peyote, a
hallucinogenic drug employed by the members of
the Native American Church. This subject has been
discussed (and misunderstood) by several famous
scholars. My intention is to prove my hypothesis,
namely that none of these works have taken into
serious consideration the fact that the approach towards
ceremonial peyote custom must contain the
world conception of the homo religiosi, therefore
their conclusions remain void in regard of imparting
a connotative synopsis of the phenomenon and
misinterpret the therapeutic efficacy of the rite. The
most general goal of the ceremonies is therapeutic
by symbolically depicting the human life-span and
embodying this depiction in a symbolic context (the
changing of the moon and the dawning of the new
day). The potential therapeutic efficacy manifests in
the omniscience and omnipresence of the peyote that
functions outside the rituals, aiding the adherents
to resist excessive drinking. I think that the work
of Joseph Calabrese reflects on possibly the most
important characteristic features of the ritual peyote
use: imparting the decoding of its symbolic structure
enlightens a possible way of healing alcohol addicts
in the battle against excessive drinking.
1. A New Scientific Field:
Legal Anthropology
When setting forth the research, two questions
arose. The first one was what Legal Anthropology
is, since this discipline was rather unknown to me;
never before had I met it during the course of my
university studies and PhD years. And being a Hungarian
jurisprudent, it had set me to think whether
Hungarian legal anthropology exist. My concerns
were answered in “The Main Currents of Legal Anthropology”
by H. Szilágyi, István.
2. What Is Legal Anthropology
John Griffiths explains it as “the research of sociological
phenomena in different cultures or societies
primarily with the aid of comparative and microsociological
methods”.
As scholars agree upon the definition, the objective
of Legal Anthropology lies between the scope of
anthropology and jurisprudence. It is an interdisciplinary
field: concerning methodological issues, it adopts
the methods of anthropology, whereas regarding the
objective, it is closer to jurisprudence. In order to understand
this discipline, it is inevitable mention – as a
science within the framework of cultural anthropology
– ethnology that incorporates the comparison of different
nations based on material culture, religion and
social institutions. The three major differences between
anthropology and ethnology are the following: (1) the
anthropologist are evolutionists stating that societies
follow the same path of evolution, while ethnologists
claim the migration of cultures; (2) the anthropological
methods are of comparative nature whereas the
ethnological procedures are more descriptive; (3) the
anthropological field of research concentrates chiefly
on primitive cultures; the ethnologist focus on existing
traditional cultures outside of Europe. However, from
the beginning of the 1950’s, the anthropologists scope
of research also incorporates the study of modern cultures,
therefore the clear differentiation between these
disciplines diminished to the extent that their terms of
research methods – “ethnological research” and “field
work” – are synonyms nowadays.
In Anglo-Saxon territory, the juridical anthropology
was a part of social anthropology at the turn of
JURA 2006/1.