Killing infants and the aged in nonindustrial societies: Removing the liminal

Abstract

In nonindustrial societies defective babies and decrepit old people are killed occasionally as an adaptive response to short term changes in environmental and economic conditions. This is not murder. Analysis of the Human Relations Area Files demonstrates that such individuals are viewed as liminal, in ritual transition, and as nonhuman outsiders. They then may be killed justifiably. In other words, under certain circumstances, newborns and old people (and perhaps others) are defined through ritual process as not complete social persons and are killed. © 1988.