Anthropology of the Night Cross-Disciplinary Investigations

Author(s): Jacques Galinier, Aurore Monod Becquelin, Guy Bordin, Laurent Fontaine,
Francine Fourmaux, Juliette Roullet Ponce, Piero Salzarulo, Philippe Simonnot, Michèle
Therrien and Iole Zilli
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 51, No. 6 (December 2010), pp. 819-847
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/653691
Accessed: 16-08-2017 14:26 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, The University of Chicago

Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current
Anthropology

This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010 819

Anthropology of the Night

Cross-Disciplinary Investigations1

by Jacques Galinier, Aurore Monod Becquelin, Guy Bordin,

Laurent Fontaine, Francine Fourmaux, Juliette Roullet Ponce,
Piero Salzarulo, Philippe Simonnot, Michèle Therrien, and Iole Zilli

The goal of this paper is to introduce a new field of anthropological research: the night. In meetings
of psychophysiologists and anthropologists, persistent questions reveal an amazing theoretical and
methodological gap in research on the nocturnal segment of the 24-hour day-night cycle, or nych-
themeron. Thus, a more general question has taken shape: Is the night something that should or
could be studied by anthropologists? If so, what methods should be used to study it? In particular,
how can we reconcile a psychophysiological study of factors common to all humans with the holistic
anthropological approach to the phenomenon of “the night,” highlighting its cultural differences?
We think that before answering such questions, it is necessary to describe field studies of nighttime
activities in which beliefs, discourse, behavior, and ritual objects of the night are differently oriented
than during the day. Far from searching for similarities in fieldwork and problematics, a great variety
of contrastive situations was considered. As a whole, the examples demonstrated that the night is a
cultural construct as sleep and that their analysis demands specific tools. “Nocturnity” refers to
transformations, induced by internal and external physical changes experienced by the human body,
and their cultural interpretations.

French abstract: L’objectif de cet article est d’ouvrir un nouveau champ de recherche anthropologique
sur «la nuit». Dû aux hasards de rencontres entre psychophysiologistes et anthropologues, un ensemble
de questions insistantes des uns aux autres a mis en lumière l’extraordinaire creux théorique et
méthodologique laissé par le versant nocturne du nycthémère. Dès lors la question était: la nuit
peut-elle être un véritable objet anthropologique? Quelle(s) méthode(s) pour l’étudier? En particulier,
comment agencer les facteurs décrits par la psychophysiologie pour tous les humains et l’appréhension
holiste du phénomène «nocturnité» par l’anthropologie qui en souligne ses différences culturelles?
Nous avons pensé qu’avant de répondre à ces questions il fallait décrire des terrains qui ont une
spécificité parce qu’ils se déroulent la nuit, et qui révèlent croyances, paroles, comportements, para-
phernalia différents de ceux qui sont manifestés le jour. Loin de rechercher une homogénéité dans
les problématiques et les terrains, nous avons abordé au contraire les situations les plus diverses et
les plus opposées. Toutes nous ont enseigné que la nuit est culturellement formatée, que la part du
sommeil lui-même est différemment gérée et conçue et que l’analyse requiert des outils spécifiques.
Le caractère de nocturnité implique une idée de transformation, induite par les changements qui
affectent les données physiques—expérimentées par les humains—extérieures et internes au corps
mais surtout par leur interprétation culturelle.

Jacques Galinier and Aurore Monod Becquelin are Research Di-
rectors at the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative
at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS; Maison de
l’Archéologie et de l’Ethnologie, 21, Allée de l’Université, 92023 Nan-
terre, France [jacques.galinier@mae.u-paris10.fr]). Guy Bordin is a
Researcher at the Centre d’Étude et de Recherche sur les Littératures
et les Oralités du Monde at the Institut National des Langues et
Civilisations Orientales (2 rue de Lille, 75343 Paris Cedex 07, France).
Laurent Fontaine is a Researcher at the Centre d’Enseignement et
de Recherche en Ethnologie Amérindienne at CNRS (7 rue Guy
Môquet, 94801 Villejuif Cedex, France). Francine Fourmaux is a
Researcher at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Urbaine at CNRS (27
rue Paul Bert, 94204, Ivry-sur-Seine, Cedex, France). Juliette Roullet
Ponce is an Editing Assistant (146 rue du Chemin Vert, 75011 Paris,
France). Piero Salzarulo is a Professor and Iole Zilli is a Researcher
in the Dipartimento di Psicologia, Universita degli Studi di Firenze
(Via San Niccoló 93, 50125, Firenze, Italy). Philippe Simonnot is a
1. Translated from French by Richard Crabtree.

䉷 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2010/5106-0007$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/653691

This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 820
What hath night to do with sleep? (John Milton)
Night time has remained a terra incognita of peripheral
concern, the forgotten half of the human experience. (Roger
Ekirch)
The law is not the same at morning and at night. (George
Herbert)
Is the Night an Anthropological Object?
Our investigation into the realm of the night began with this
observation: entire sections of human social life are over-
looked by anthropologists. It appears that anthropology has
not yet been able to overcome the common assumption that
the psychophysiological constraints of sleep cause a halt in
thought and action, a general slowing down of life’s rhythms,
a decrease in energy expenditure, a collective “parenthesiza-
tion” of society’s activities in daytime, and even a kind of
partial death, analogous to the seasonal cycles of plants. The
idea of “nature’s death” underlies many a mythology of the
Old and the New Worlds. In Western thought, especially
among the ancient Greeks, the night/death association goes
with a kind of terror of shadow; in Homer’s works, the night
is seen as a “daily death” (Moreux 1967:268). For Aristotle,
in the wake of Hesiod’s speculations, the night emerges from
a primitive being, a kind of absolute, vertiginous void (Ar-
istotle 2002). In modern times, however, the concept of night
has been rehabilitated by a philosophical tradition that flour-
ished during the Sturm und Drang period with Herder and
Goethe, then with Novalis and Schopenhauer, and even in
Heidegger’s phenomenology (Seitter 1999). Bronfen (2008)
pointed out that psychoanalysis was the first discipline that
drew systematically from nocturnal mental processes to ex-
plain psychic phenomena (Bronfen 2008).
The night is approached in an ad hoc manner by different
disciplines and different methodologies. For psychophysiol-
ogists, the object “night” is mostly linked to sleep (and to
dreaming); for economists, the night is a focal point for ex-
penditure relating primarily to security and protection. For
urban ethnologists and geographers (see Bureau 1997), it is
a matter of defining the transformations and developments
induced by public activities qualified as “nocturnal” and their
penetration into the diurnal world.2 Other disciplines, such
Researcher at the Atelier de l’Economie Contemporaine (162 Route
de la Plage, 76111 Vattetot-sur-Mer, France). Michèle Therrien is a
Professor at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orien-
tales (2 rue de Lille, 75343 Paris Cedex 07, France). This paper was
submitted 6 III 07 and accepted 20 V 09.
2. In Joachim Schlör’s ethnosociological study, the night life of
cities like Paris, London, and Berlin is compared by examining lit-
erature and police reports (Schlör 1991). See also Delon and Baruch
(2002). As for the ecology of the night, it emphasizes the lighting
modes in relation to social life.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
as comparative literature and history, have taken much more
interest in the night (Ménager 2005; Verdon 1994). In the
medieval world, darkness plays an important symbolic role
as a metaphor of pagan obscurantism—deviancy, monstrosity,
diabolism. But this approach does not adopt a holistic per-
spective that would relate each of these cultural aspects to a
worldview—Christian, in this case. For anthropology, it in-
volves the whole of human activity between sunset and sun-
rise, keeping to the strict astronomical definition.
Anthropology has so far reduced night to a dimension of
time. However, many societies very closely connect the spatial
and temporal dimensions. The spatiotemporal domains of the
night have their own specific properties distinct from daytime
spaces. The parameters of widespread cosmological beliefs
about the day-night cycle, including the character and status
of the beings believed to inhabit the world of darkness, are
indeed of a spatiotemporal nature (Steger and Brunt 2003b).
A blind spot of anthropology is that the functions common
to all humans, such as eating, procreating, or dying, constitute
the substance of anthropology (rites of commensality, kinship
systems, funeral rituals), and yet, curiously, the vital function
of sleep has never been introduced, even though sleep dep-
rivation proves to be lethal for animals and human beings
alike. To quote a famous Lichtenberg aphorism, “Our entire
history is only the history of waking men.” As Ekirch pointed
out, “Whereas our daily lives are animated, volatile and highly
differentiated, sleep seems, by contrast, passive, monotonous
and uneventful” (Ekirch 2005:262). No one has yet produced
a history of sleeping men. In traditional ethnography, the
night only appears as a backdrop in the narration of ritual
experiences. And yet, when those taking part in a ritual are
subjected to grueling sleep deprivation to help them to hear
the voices of ancestors or to see “visions” of other worlds, it
is clear that the indigenous experts, by deliberately modifying
the sleep cycles of the participants, provide them with access
to altered states of consciousness and to a singular relationship
with space and time that is inaccessible during the state of
wakefulness. Therefore, night is often only mentioned in re-
lation to ritual operations, attracting the observer’s attention
through their contents without considering the rituals in the
context of the 24-hour day-night cycle, or nychthemeron.
Anthropologists have never provided themselves with ap-
propriate measuring tools to tackle the subject of sleep. In
the study of human societies, the trend has been that sleep
is not influenced by culture; however, more discriminating
studies have shown that certain aspects of sleep are indeed
shaped by culture. Some recent studies have attempted to
describe national ways and customs, such as Brigitte Steger’s
monograph on sleeping habits in Japan and their shaping by
social codes (Steger 2004). Research on dreams appears not
to escape the same assumption that dreams take place when
social life slows down, echoing the sleeper’s immobility even
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
though the mind’s activity during dreams reveals particularly
rich unconscious thought.3
Although we do indeed have available information about
beliefs and representations of the night, there is no body of
work dedicated to the subject. Our aim is not to create such
a corpus; we only want to show that the issue must be ap-
proached through different vantage points, each of which
gives a complementary status to the object “night.” The ques-
tion is, Should we consider the anthropology of the night as
a “new frontier” in the discipline? Does this new subject re-
quire a special methodology?4 One major theme is what hap-
pens to the human body during the night; as will be seen in
the examples given farther on, it includes conceptions of the
person, through both intra- and extracorporeal elements,
sources and levels of energy, physical activity, and movement
and motion, including involuntary movement during sleep.
A second theme is nocturnal space-time and its distortion. A
new framework must take into account spatial units—trans-
lated into terms of the night according to properties attributed
to places (private, public, secret, forbidden)—and also tem-
poral units that expand or contract through nocturnal ex-
perience and perception (apparitions, visions, dreams) or due
to special characteristics (e.g., sentences for criminal acts com-
mitted at night).
As a starting point, we adopt a simple definition of an-
thropology drawn from experience. By observing the customs
and beliefs of ethnic groups of various shapes and sizes, an-
thropology examines how phenomena are perceived in the
physical and social environments and how adjustments are
made to both visible and invisible realities. Beyond represen-
tations, anthropology also studies cognition, including learn-
ing and the transmission of knowledge. Because of the unique
character of the night, special terminology, analytic methods,
and interpretations must be developed if the night is to be-
come anthropologically visible.
Also, we must assume that anthropology by its very nature
is holistic and seeks to embrace diverse cultures. This has led
us to seek the extremes of the cultural continuum, ranging
from the Inuit of Nunavut to a dance troupe in a Parisian
cabaret. Presenting such cases also enables us to show how
the night offers a variety of representations and behaviors in
different parts of the world. This universalistic premise led
us to seek legitimacy for our hypotheses within psychophys-
3. There is now abundant documentation of this, although it is rather
unequally distributed geographically. Some societies lend themselves
more easily to this exercise; just as others are “potlatch” or “kula” so-
cieties, these can be described as “dream societies,” such as the Mojave
Indians of Arizona (Devereux 1951) and the population of Alor in In-
donesia (Du Bois 1961:45–46).
4. In his work Night, Alvarez (1995) brings together scientific data
from laboratory studies on sleep and the cultural interpretation of dreams,
along with his personal memories, but he does not related these data to
other disciplines. The papers collected by Schnepel and Ben-Ari (2005)
present the beginning of a reflection that inaugurates the anthropology
of the night.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
821
iology, so we accordingly brought together disciplines and
areas of research that rarely have the opportunity to meet.5
But this endeavor has met with real difficulties. Throughout
the discussions of the research group “Anthropology of the
Night,” misunderstandings arose concerning the development
of methodologies suitable for our respective areas. On the one
hand, ethnographic findings remain extremely disparate and
barely usable. On the other hand, what anthropology expects
from psychophysiology—namely, a kind of repertory of pa-
rameters entailing for all human societies the same intangible
requirements regarding sleep, motility, and perception—does
not belong to that science. Although psychophysiologists sus-
pect that cultural variation may have an influence on their
clinical findings, they do not have the means to define, elu-
cidate, and measure cultural parameters. Our essay attempts
to explore these two disciplines, each with its own require-
ments, with a view to developing new methodologies.
Research in psychophysiology highlights the variability of
perception and physiological reactions during the night. First,
on the physiological level, environmental conditions appear
to play a more powerful role than might have been expected
in the different ways societies experience them (relating to
climate, seasons, population density). Second, on the cultural
level, the way the human body reacts physiologically to noc-
turnal life appears, conversely, to have an impact on the way
representations are construed and actions are ordered in the
dark (as domestic customs regarding food and sleep, etc.).
Then questions confronting anthropology are raised by stud-
ies of the psychophysiology of sleep. How do societies adapt
to environmental conditions and seasonal variations, to un-
avoidable physiological constraints, and to flexibility in the
individual and collective management of sleep? Besides, the
anthropological approach should take into account genetic
characteristics of some populations that could lead to changes
in physiological features of sleep and in the propensity to fall
asleep. However, in this respect, research on humans in an
anthropological perspective is rare. Genetic characteristics
could favor pathological alterations of sleep. An example is
the prevalence of the antigene HLA-DR2 in narcoleptic pa-
5. This heterogeneous group of authors comprises two types of par-
ticipants: regular members of the research group “Anthropology of the
Night” (CNRS–Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) and re-
searchers who were asked for field data or document analyses. Data
proceed from different sources: Inuit of the Eastern Canadian Arctic
(Bordin: fieldwork, some published articles), Otomi and Mazahua (Gal-
inier: fieldwork, most of data published, book in preparation), Yucuna
(data provided by Fontaine: published material and original data), Trumai
(Monod Becquelin: some published elements, not specifically on night),
Tzeltal (documentation by Roullet: fieldwork and book in preparation),
Tzeltal and Tzotzil (Mothré: fieldwork and unpublished material). Some
additional information was provided on Inuit by Therrien and on Tzeltal
by Monod Becquelin from unpublished fieldnotes. The European fields
cover the city and cabarets in Paris (Fourmaux: thesis) and the courts
(Simonnot: original paper). The laboratory research has been carried out
at the Department of Psychology, University of Florence (Salzarulo and
Zilli).
 822
tients.6 The prevalence of HLA-DR2 and narcolepsy is higher
in some populations (see, e.g., Jouvet and Gessain 1997 on
Basari, an African population, and Mignot and Tafti 1998 on
HLA-DR2 genetic prevalence in Japan). How much influence
do social norms and cognitive styles of individual societies
have on the perception and conceptualization of sleep and
night? Anthropologists can provide examples of factors that
may entail modifications of sleep-wake rhythms and related
physiological activities. Daytime activities and rules for night
can be important factors and can provide good examples of
how “culture” could interfere with sleep.
The inevitable questions are then (1) To what extent is
sleep, this major occupation of the night, influenced by the
variations in cultures? and (2) To what extent are our inves-
tigations mapped by neurological and physiological con-
straints? The laboratory is the place where experiments are
conducted but also the place where the questions that define
and delimit experiments are drawn up. We therefore judged
it useful to borrow the elements most apt for transposition.
Questionnaires have proved difficult to use. In the psychology
department of the University of Florence, Toselli, Farneti, and
Salzarulo (1998) built precise questionnaires on habits and
beliefs relating to sleep. A similar protocol was used in a study
of the indigenous Mayan people for a comparative survey.
Preliminary results suggest conclusions in several areas, in-
cluding the transposition of Western-style questionnaires to
other cultures and possible adaptations that avoid distorting
the intention of the survey or the results themselves.7
On a behavioral level, cosleeping and parental attitudes
toward the sleep of children arise out of beliefs about prenatal
existence, bedtime routines, and sleep-related regimes of life
and activity. This is another theme of crucial importance, with
significant consequences for the rituals accompanying child-
6. HLA p Human Leucocyte Antigene.
7. The problems we met in transposing into the Mayan context a basic
questionnaire about night and sleep habits used by our psychophysiologist
colleagues highlight how deeply even the simplest analytical categories
are embedded. What appeared to be a straightforward, objective data-
gathering exercise turned out to be irrelevant, or socially inappropriate,
when put to Tzeltal women, even once the questionnaire was purged of
locally inexistent practices and enriched with elements already identified
as central in Mayan communities (such as people’s spiritual status, animal
alter ego). The particulars of an interviewee (e.g., name, age) are a simple
matter of referencing the questionnaires in the Western context, whereas
in the Tzeltal setting, this raises complicated issues: a name refers to a
complex lineage system that reveals critical information about the in-
dividual’s position within the community, and therefore a name is never
casually revealed. Other questions were simply irrelevant in the Mayan
context: the age of first pregnancy is generally not recorded, and neither
are morning and evening bedtimes (“When it is time to make tortillas,”
“When I am tired”). Other questions, such as about sexuality, pregnancy,
and nursing, involve different combinations of intrapersonal and intra-
community relationships entailing different levels of willingness to share.
On the other hand, some of these questions, such as alimentary prohi-
bitions and prescriptions, elicited great enthusiasm among the inter-
viewees. In the context of a much more explicitly close-knit community,
the intricacy of the different components of the self and cosmology
strongly shape the responses of the interviewees.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
birth, couvade (a postnatal practice performed by fathers),
and neonatal practices.
The purposes of this essay therefore are twofold: to present
the state of the art of anthropological thinking about the night
and to lay out bases for cross-disciplinary discussion by out-
lining the expectations of each discipline. Research prospects
are indicated, based on the analysis of both existing and un-
published findings by the project members. We will use ex-
amples from European and Amerindian communities to show
similarities and differences in how spatiotemporal reality is
perceived over the course of the 24-hour period. The impact
of these examples lies in the number of different questions
they raise, which one sole example could never do.
Sleeping in the Night
Most of the people all over the world sleep at night. Features
of night sleep are well known consisting of a sequence of
physiological activities (Keitman 1963). Some features,
namely, the duration of the sleep episode and the dynamics
of some activities, can be modulated by external factors. Yet
there are limits to sleep changes: the sleep-wake rhythm and
the episode’s duration are more easily modified than are basic
physiological components of sleep.
Fragmentation of Sleep
In Western countries, where sleep has usually been studied,
“ideal” sleep consists of an episode lasting 7–8 hours (see fig.
1), but it appears that this continuous way of sleeping could
be relatively recent (Ekirch 2005).8 To anthropologists, often
not used to lying in their hammocks or camp beds for 7 or
8 hours running when in the field, one observation imme-
diately springs to mind: “nights” seem less continuous than
in their home countries. Among the Amerindians, from north
to south, it is rare not to be interrupted during the night by
one or another of the members of the household, for nobody
seems to feel the slightest need to preserve a space free of
noise, light, and activity. Bordin (2008), for one, shows that
the sleeping schedule among the Inuit varies considerably with
the latitude and the season but also among individuals. Are
these cultural adjustments of sleep related to physiological
phenomena? We will not decide between the hypotheses con-
cerning the continuous versus discontinuous character of
sleep in the history of mankind, which is still a debated issue
(see Wehr 1991, 1996).
Physiologists have investigated the architecture and char-
8. Carlo Guinzburg (1989) and the examples given by Verdon (1994),
later taken up by Ekirch, paint a medieval sleep more fragmented than
ours and interspersed with many and varied activities. “Until the close
of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experi-
enced two major intervals of sleep bridged by up to an hour or more
of quiet wakefulness” (Ekirch 2005:300). Le Roy Ladurie, who describes
daily life in a southern French village, Montaillou, during the fourteenth
century, mentions the first sleep separated from the second by a period
of activity (Le Roy Ladurie 1975).
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
Figure 1. Hypnogram of 25-year-old subject. Stages 1–4 p non-REM
sleep. Time is in hours.
acteristics of sleep by means of instruments that reveal that
brain and body activities change across the sleep episode and
that the sleep episode is not homogeneous. Moreover, since
1953, we have known that there are two basic states, rapid
eye movement (REM) and non–rapid eye movement
(NREM), the definitions of which take into account not only
brain activity but also motor and neurovegetative activities.
Sleep is clearly quite a complex and organized phenomenon.
This organization is expressed at three different levels: the
state (REM and NREM), the cycle consisting of a sequence
of REM and NREM, and the sleep episode, which is made
up of several bouts of both REM and NREM states. NREM-
REM cycles follow each other four to five times across the
sleep episode.
Physical Environment
While the impact of personal concerns or social interactions
on sleep is fairly well acknowledged in the clinical domain,
objective demonstration mainly concerns the physical envi-
ronment. The variables of heat, light, and noise are factors
that influence the quality of sleep. The question, How is one’s
sleep affected by one’s environment? is a line of research to
which ethnography could provide a certain number of an-
swers. Indeed, field data express the behavioral modifications
relating to seasonal variations associated with climatic con-
ditions; connected activities play a role in the differentiated
management of sleep. Drought (for the Amazonians) induces
substantial changes in life rhythms: the rainy season is more
propitious to the continuity of sleep than the dry season,
during which the extreme coolness, ritual necessities, and the
considerably longer transport times due to low waters require
an increase in activity that eats into a large part of the night
(Monod Becquelin 1975). For Inuit, the bright nights of late
spring are favorable for traveling and hunting, so sleep is often
deferred until the morning or full daytime (Bordin 2008). In
our modern cities, sleep is most often organized by imper-
atives that now depend less on light or warmth. Heating,
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
823
electricity, and the regulation of noise have modified the more
“natural” rhythms that could, until recently, be found in the
countryside: “early to bed and early to rise.” Many authors
have worked on the urban characteristics of sleep and cir-
cadian rhythms, usually defined as a “24-h society” (Moore-
Ede 1993). We can see such difference among peoples who
have themselves changed their “style of night.” The Trumai,
an Amerindian population of the Upper Xingu in Brazil, be-
fore getting to know a certain modernity—in terms of elec-
tricity, clock time—would stay awake longer two or three
times a night and would take advantage of those breaks to
go out of the house, urinate, chat, smoke the indigenous
tobacco, court the secluded young girls, stoke up a dying fire,
or go fishing. When they came into contact with watches, a
few hours of electricity provided by generators, and beds in-
stead of hammocks, their night became more continuous, and
they do not bustle in and out anymore (Monod Becquelin,
Guirardello, and de Vienne 2008).
The factors that modify, induce, or prevent sleep, though
difficult to measure, have been studied in the laboratory, but
no ethnographic studies have been undertaken with the aim
of describing precisely the time or mode of sleeping, with the
exception of practices for inducing infants to sleep.9 Anthro-
pologists know more, on the other hand, about the conditions
of forced wakefulness. This usually involves factors such as
the consumption of certain hallucinogens and tobacco and
conditioning in the form of fasting or preparatory rituals.
What Happens to the Body during Sleep?
While sleep is characterized by the absence of voluntary move-
ments, there are several episodes of activity that involve both
9. Young Trumai mothers blow on the top of their babies’ heads, and
among the Inuit, the head massage simulating the delousing practiced
in former times favors “night words” and the onset of sleep. The function
of these practices is not solely related to sleep; they also express concerns
about protection and/or growth.
 824
global and local motility. The body moves and changes po-
sition when the brain shifts from one cycle to the next. Small
movements of the fingers and facial muscles are present dur-
ing the REM phase, as well as the particular type of muscle
activity linked to eye movements.10
Temperature. Under “standard” conditions, there is a close
association between sleep and biological rhythms: sleep onset
occurs when the core body temperature curve is decreasing,
and waking up occurs when it is increasing. A model proposed
by Feinberg (1974) and completed by Borbély (1982) shows
the importance of the length of prior wakefulness for sleep
duration and characteristics. The habitual decreasing trend
across the sleep episode of a particular type of brain activity
(slow wave activity) changes according to the duration of
prior wakefulness, producing something called the S process.
It is the interaction between the time course of the S process
and the circadian rhythm of temperature that gives sleep its
actual characteristics (Daan, Beersma, and Borbély 1984).
Research has also investigated the effects on sleep structure
of environmental temperature deviations from thermoneu-
trality: numerous long-lasting awakenings within the sleep
episode and in reduced amounts of REM sleep and slow-wave
sleep (SWS) (Haskell et al. 1978; Karacan et al. 1978; Muzet,
Libert, and Candas 1984). Furthermore, a low ambient tem-
perature seems to affect sleep patterns to a larger extent than
a high one (Haskell et al. 1981). Moreover, there is evidence
that ambient temperature also affects the subjective estimation
of sleep (Libert et al. 1991). If we know sleep characteristics
quite well (in terms of process and organization) in a stable
Western environment or in an experimental changed envi-
ronment in the laboratory, there are few studies that show
what happens in a “natural” changed environment with the
same parameters, especially with different climatic conditions.
Little is known, however, about autochthonous sleep in equa-
torial or polar areas, either quantitatively or qualitatively.
Noise. Depending on the intensity, duration, novelty, and
emotional loading of the noise stimulus, sleep can be either
“lightened” or interrupted for varying lengths of time, inter-
acting with the mechanisms of sleep induction or mainte-
nance, acting at different levels of physiological integration.
In some cases, it is just the brain activity that is disturbed for
a short time, while in other cases, individual neurovegetative
functions, such as the cardiac rhythm, are modified. Noise-
related awakening means that the process of sleep has been
greatly disturbed; this is more likely if the noise occurs when
the subject is in REM sleep or in stage 2 of NREM sleep.
Although noise exposure and uncomfortable ambient tem-
peratures show similar disruptive effects on sleep, studies
10. Regarding the different ways for measuring the endogenous human
circadian period, e.g., constant routine, purification, etc., there is abun-
dant literature. See esp. Aschoff (1965; Aschoff, Gerecke, and Wever 1967;
Czeisler et al. 1981, 1986, 1989; Duffy and Dijk 2002).
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
comparing these two types of factors (Libert et al. 1991) sug-
gest that high temperature affects sleep to a greater extent
than noise, in agreement with subjective evaluations. This is
the case among Inuit, for whom more discomfort is caused
by a high ambient temperature—a healthy body should be
dry and cool (Therrien 1995)—than by noise.11 On the con-
trary, among the Maya, noise that is out of the ordinary
appears to be a more important factor than heat in the in-
terruption of sleep and it may be seen as signaling a super-
natural event. Since the introduction of televisions, radios,
and alarm clocks in the Mexican Mayan Highlands, it is com-
mon to hear these devices blaring out unexpectedly in the
middle of the night without anyone appearing to be affected.
But the least rustling in the garden, the slightest footfall on
the path, will wake up the sleeper and cause agitation in the
household (Roullet 1999). We need to look more carefully
into the types of noises capable of interrupting sleep. Here
again, a comparative exploration of cultural beliefs and re-
actions relating to nocturnal noise exposure is required.
Light. Habitually, sleep-wake rhythm follows environmental
light-dark alternation.12 A study by Wehr (1991) performed
in the laboratory found, after the alteration of the photoperiod
(10 hours of light and 14 hours of darkness) for 4 weeks,
changes in the length of the sleep episode and its precise
location while its internal structure is not deeply modified.
Psychophysiological research (Buguet, Rivolier, and Jouvet
1987) has not shown any specific alterations of sleep structure;
basic sleep states are conserved, with only their proportions
possibly changing (Wehr 1996). Czeisler et al. (1986, 1989)
induced a reset of circadian rhythms by means of bright light
exposure: an early morning administration induced a phase
advance, whereas evening administration produced a phase
delay. The role of the light-dark cycle in entraining biological
rhythms has been highlighted by studies that suppressed the
alternation between light and dark. An experiment with a
constant dim light condition lasting 21 days (Middleton,
Arendt, and Stone 1996) showed that subjects developed a
sleep-wake rhythm longer than 24 hours.13
An interesting experimental approach in natural conditions
was performed by Steel et al. (1995). These authors found
free-running sleep-wake cycles longer than 24 hours and in-
ternal desynchronization in subjects who lived in an Arctic
research camp; the natural environment permitted isolation
11. Indeed, the threshold of tolerance to familiar noises is extremely
high (snowbikes, television or radio, group conversations, children shout-
ing and playing).
12. On the topic of rural versus urban influences on sleep (including
the effects of electricity), a special issue of Biological Rhythm Research is
devoted to the ecological significance of biological rhythms and clocks
(Bekinschtein et al. 2004).
13. Observations made by Martin du Pan (1974) have shown that
babies kept in a continuously lighted environment for 2 months develop
sleep rhythms randomly located in the 24-hour period. The same infants,
when put in a dark (night)–light (day) alternated environment, had sleep
episodes located at night.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
under constant daylight and at the same time ensured that
the study had high ecological validity. A clear modification
of sleep-wake rhythms was found by a Japanese group (Usui
et al. 2000) in a recent sleep log–based study in the Antarctic.
The results show unusual sleep onset and waking up times:
sleep is poorly synchronized to the 24-hour cycle, and the
number of daytime sleep episodes increases. Some clinical
approaches have evoked symptoms such as difficulty in falling
asleep and sleep interruptions presented by Westerners living
for a certain time in the Antarctic. These have been collectively
called polar insomnia (Bogoslovskii and Letter 1974). A crit-
ical review of this concept based on ethnolinguistic Inuktitut
can be found in Bordin’s study (2008). The interest in these
observations is also related to the long-time exposure to a
“special” environment, such as that habitually experienced by
populations living above the Arctic Circle. Few studies provide
relevant information about these people. What is the result
of dysfunction or adaptation in a Western group put in other
conditions than their own? Is it similar or different in people
living permanently in the same type of conditions?
Time-Free Environment. Biological rhythms, including sleep-
wake alternation, are driven by an endogenous circadian clock
and synchronized by environmental periodic changes. The
role of external cues in entraining the biological rhythms has
been ascertained by experimental work from the 1960s. A
fundamental contribution to this topic was provided by Jür-
gen Aschoff and his colleagues (Aschoff 1965; Aschoff, Ge-
recke, and Wever 1967), who conducted their experiments in
a bunker, isolating human subjects for a long period (about
1 month) from the natural cyclic changes in sunlight and
from other time cues (such as knowledge of the time, social
contacts, etc.).14 Subjects under isolation showed a longer
sleep-wake rhythm periodicity than that observed under lab-
oratory conditions (about 25 hours, free-running sleep-wake
rhythm). It was also observed that the majority of subjects
develop a different relationship between sleep-wake phases
and core body temperature rhythms: sleep begins close to the
minimum temperature value (i.e., much later than in the
usual environment) but ceases, as usual, when the tempera-
ture curve is rising, with a consequent reduction in sleep
duration. Moreover, a dissociation between core body tem-
perature and sleep-wake rhythms, called internal desynchron-
ization, could be observed in a substantial number of subjects.
Subsequently, it has been emphasized that the feeding and
rest activity schedule also can act as an environmental syn-
chronizer (Czeisler et al. 1981).15
14. For a review, see Lavie 2001.
15. Studies attempting to reveal endogenous rhythms devoted special
attention to diminishing rhythmic changes in environmental conditions
and to restricting subjects’ routine behavior as well, i.e., food intake,
sleep, etc. In order to rule out the influence of exogenous components,
daily routine protocols were applied (for a review, see Duffy and Dijk
2002). These procedures commonly require subjects to remain awake,
keep their physical activity levels low, and keep to a well-controlled feed-
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
825
Each of these parameters should be subjected to parallel
studies investigating the questions specific to research into
sleep in relation to the night. Whether we look at the frag-
mentation of nocturnal sleep or the relationship with noise,
light, and temperature, we shall soon see that all these data
are the results of representations, constraints, and cultural
manipulations that need to be elucidated. That is why our
project runs in tropical, equatorial, and Arctic regions and
Western and “exotic” populations, with and without electric
light, urban noises, and so forth. Without knowing the basic
psychophysiological facts concerning sleep, any inquiry about
night regulation and related beliefs would be meaningless. As
regards physiological data on sleep states and durations, there
are instruments (such as wrist actigraphs) that are not overly
intrusive and that seem promising for the gathering of com-
parative data among the ethnographic or indigenous popu-
lations and utilizable by psychophysiologists.
Sleep, Dreams, Memory: Fieldwork and Cross-Disciplinary
Confrontations
What we know about sleep is based on specific laboratory
survey protocols. Should we not envisage sleep as one of the
constituent elements of the object “night,” culturally adapt-
able, within certain limits that should be explored in each
case? One reason we should is that in most societies, sleep is
linked with dreams and dreams with knowledge and memory.
Can night activity be centered on the idea of “visions” re-
counted in narratives of travel, combat, or announcements
as omens?16 Or on the idea of the imaginary world subjected
to the necessary deconstruction of the diurnal world before
the return of morning? One of the Mayan theories about sleep
and dreaming, as for many other Amerindian populations,
considers that the traveling soul communicates images of the
landscapes and situations it encounters to the sleeping body,
thus setting the rhythm of the body’s nocturnal activity (Ted-
lock 1987a). Among the Inuit, the shadow component of the
person leaves the body during sleep and travels through space,
in particular to the land of the dead, and this engenders
dreams.
The relations that exist between diurnal knowledge and
nocturnal mental activity remain enigmatic: apart from
dreams and their interpretation, in every society and culture,
there are hypotheses concerning the relations between the
nocturnal activity of the mind and knowledge, and the modes
of its acquisition, conservation, or transformation during the
night. Much specific knowledge is only considered valid be-
cause it has been acquired during the night. What is “noc-
turnal knowledge,” and what is the epistemic value attributed
ing schedule across the 24 hours; room temperature, lighting, and hu-
midity are kept constant.
16. Studies of dreams suggest that the very concept of activity may
have to be reconsidered by anthropologists (Bourguignon 1972; Glow-
czewski 1999; Guinzburg 1989; Kracke 1979, 1987; Orobitg 1998; Perrin
1992; Poirier 1994; Shulman and Stroumsa 1999; Tedlock 1987a).
 826
to its nature and transmission? As far back as ancient Greece,
this question was at the heart of Artemidorus’s Oneirocriticon
(1975).
If there are cultural ways of reasoning in relation to the
night, then we must take these events into consideration, and
we must find an “added value” to set this approach apart
from standard research studies. “Nocturnal” tools must be
forged in the same way as terms more familiar to anthro-
pologists such as “cross-cousins” or “predation.” We could
introduce first the expression “nocturnity” and bring together
under this term all the events and actions that display the
modalities of nocturnal activities: drunkenness, fear, isolation,
sickness, fainting, visions, healing, and certain types of pos-
session. Step by step, this will lead us to develop an ethno-
graphic approach to nocturnity. As regards the integrity of
the person: Is the bodily envelope more fragile during noc-
turnal episodes? Is this a question of greater vulnerability to
external aggression? From the point of view of self-perception,
can we consider—in the style of Goffman’s (1959) theory,
but in reverse—that the withdrawal from public sphere to
private sphere is synonymous with a transformation of the
social roles played in diurnal exhibition? And how should we
take these boundaries into account? The difficulties inherent
in this approach are considerable: quite apart from the prob-
lems connected with the study of sleep, and those connected
with the researcher’s need for rest, the basic fieldwork on real
sleep in natural environments is still largely missing.
Each example presented here serves to clarify one element
of the whole, depending not only on the geographical and
cultural situation of the object but also on the methodological
orientation of the researcher engaged in the survey. When we
use the term “field,” we are referring to a multiplicity of
contexts requiring cross-disciplinary definitions. Is the labo-
ratory a field in the same way as is an Amerindian village?
On what grounds can we claim to be adopting an experi-
mental approach? This raises the problem of different types
of observation, the question of the measurement of these data,
and the application of the comparative method. We do not
yet know whether all societies throughout the world share the
same set of physical and cognitive mechanisms of control,
adaptation, and perception of sleep and its relationship to
night.
The “night” ethnographer finds himself or herself faced
with four sets of data: (1) physical and climatic data, such as
records of temperatures, sunrise and sunset, and lunar phases;
(2) results of direct observation, which does have serious
limits: such as the observer who must, at some time or an-
other, go to sleep and restricted access to certain areas; (3)
experimental data, in collaboration with physiologists, con-
sisting in precise actimeter records of phases of waking and
sleep, in different seasons and situations; and (4) the “words”
collected from interviews, dialogues, and narrations of dreams
that play a fundamental role because of the limits just men-
tioned.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
Stories of the Night
Myths about the creation of the night (usually, as opposed
to the day) are not only common but are primary and fun-
damental in most, if not all, cultures. We do not propose,
like James Frazer or Mircea Eliade did, to analyze extensive
sets of myths—in this case, those relating to the origin of the
night—but to focus on a single myth, analyzed for this pur-
pose, in order to extract a few questions that a cursory reading
raises.17
A Myth about the Origins of the Night
As an example of an origin myth, we present the main features
of the Yucunas’ frame of reference with regard to the night
in the myth of the Karipú Lakená (the four demiurges). We
briefly relate this myth to the Yucuna organization of noc-
turnal life and conclude with an ethnographic description of
the powers and the senses that the night is believed to
awaken.18
After having created the world, the Karipú Lakená receive
the Night from Tapúrina, the Lord of Dreams. When they go
to see this Lord, the heroes ask for “this thing” to “measure
the time,” in other words, to avoid “eating at no matter what
time the food.” Tapúrina warns them that the night might
“prevail” and “destroy” no matter who, “expose them to
evils,” and make people older. As always, Lajmuchı́ (the youn-
gest and most mischievous of the four brothers) is not con-
vinced and says that “under [the influence] of the night, we
could get rid of illnesses and reorganize the world after some-
one’s death.” The Lord no longer refuses the brothers’ request,
and it establishes the new conditions of existence in this world.
The four heroes choose a small nut, which contains a two-
meal period of darkness.19 The Lord advises them always to
prevent the night from dominating them, by sleeping only
after midnight, “when everything is silent,” to avoid being
disturbed by enemy spirits, very active before this time. They
are also forbidden from stopping on the way home to open
the nut. But halfway home, Lajmuchı́ opens the nut a little.
During this primordial night, the Karipú Lakená change into
or bring forth various animals (squirrels, tinamous, crickets,
parakeets, lizards, snakes), which explains why these animals
appear at certain times during the night. When the brothers
return home, they open the nut completely, to terminate the
“regulation” of the night. Nevertheless, they fail to protect
humans against all the harmful effects of the night. Many
17. In most myths, all over the world, it is from an obscure chaos
that day and night are separated.
18. For other versions and episodes of this myth, see Fontaine (2008);
Jacopin (1977, 1988); Schackt (1994); Schauer (1975); Van der Hammen
(1991). The text published in Yucuna by Schauer deals precisely with the
night. Our summary is based on a version (5 hours long) narrated by
Milciades Yucuna and recorded by Fontaine, entirely transcribed and
translated into French, for forthcoming publication.
19. Traditionally, the two daily Yucuna meals are served at the begin-
ning and at the end of the night.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
beings, surprised by the sudden darkness provoked by Laj-
muchı́, turn themselves into monsters (Fontaine 2008).
Night, sleep, time schedule, ecological calendar, rituals, sex-
uality, metamorphoses, and correlated specific injunctions,
behavioral as well as ritual, including the transmission of
knowledge: many nocturnal themes are found here. Recount-
ing such a myth, the narrator is reminding the listeners of
their own ontology and therefore of their obligations as set
down by the all-powerful beings of mythology which govern
nocturnal activities: (1) The night must be spent at home, in
relative safety. At night, all walks or pauses in the forest are
to be avoided. (2) Meals are to be taken preferably at the start
and the end of the night, enabling the rest of the time to be
organized for other tasks. (3) Men must share coca and learn
to stay awake as long as possible to protect their homes from
any attack. (4) The transmission of knowledge (mythology,
songs, shamanism) belongs exclusively to the night period,
on condition of staying awake and sharing coca. (5) The
shamans are chiefly responsible for ensuring protection. After
midnight, when the others have gone to bed, they deliver long
incantations to forestall dangers, treat their patients, and “re-
order” the world.
Such an organization of nocturnal activities protects the
community against the supposed dangers of weak night vision
while fully exploiting the other senses. (1) Taste and smell are
given prominence in the meals served in the half-light, with-
out forgetting the spiritual foods of men, coca and tobacco.
(2) The sense of hearing is constantly tested, both through
the importance attached to the spoken word and through
moments of silence. The hearing of shamans is held to be so
highly developed that there is no need for any speech: they
can detect the slightest thought or “internal language.” (3)
Touch is also stimulated because this sense makes it possible
to identify objects and subjects. Tactile signals are extremely
frequent when social relations take place in the darkness.
While most people allow themselves to be dominated by
the night—by falling asleep—the shamans control the dark-
ness and exploit its effects to the maximum. It is believed
that at night, nonhuman beings are willing, under certain
conditions, to communicate with humans: the shamans can
share specific sensibilities with these beings. Yukuna them-
selves connect by the emphasis laid on the senses, the met-
abolic and physiological transformations that occur during
night and sleep to the alteration of sensation and perception
in nocturnal experiences.
Night Words
Night words are categorized by the time of night when they
occur. Many ethnographies describe the importance of night
words.
The first category is the recitation that is linked to a par-
ticular moment in time. In the song cycles of the Javari, for
example, in important Amazonian intertribal ceremonials
(Upper Xingu, Brazil), the ritual songs are strictly arranged
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
827
according to the stars and the cries of the animals mentioned
in the songs (Basso 1985; Monod Becquelin 1975): the songs
of the night are performed according to when certain birds
begin their songs. For narrations, the Inuit favor the time of
the winter solstice, the darkest period of the year. The nar-
rations’ power was called on to overcome winter food short-
ages, to encourage the return of the sun, and to revive fer-
tility.20
In some cases, when a ritual or song is recited depends on
the power attributed to the words: words are linked to the
danger they represent when pronouncing names that attract
outside beings, either summoned or uninvited. In northern
Amerindian cultures, there are prohibitions linked to the ef-
ficacy of the mythic word (Graham 1995; Radin 1969).
Words exchanged at night are not necessarily of an intimate
nature. In Amazonia, in the communal house where 60–80
people live, although subtle arrangements such as the ori-
entation of hammocks and the placing of each family’s fire
create private territories as effectively as walls might, the in-
timacy of sexual intercourse, for example, is much better re-
spected in the plantation or during bathing than within a
dark and enclosed space.
But night words are also the ones referring to the night,
not only recommendations to children or comments offered
to ethnologists but also those that convey something of the
night, be it experiences, visions, tales of dreams, or old-time
myths.
Among Amerindians, the dream reigns to such an extent
that it is universally connected with power, but its force and
effectiveness are largely derived from a rich nocturnal source:
the dreams of great shamans, healers, and chiefs. There can
be no question of exploring the actual contents of this world
of dream words but only of pinpointing its imperious pres-
ence, expressed through its effects on daily life. Night, sleep,
dream: this is the Amerindian trilogy of power and the sacred
whose threads we must untangle.21
The study of dream narrations shows singular features that
belong only to this type of narration or to specifically related
ones. For the Xavante, a Gê tribe from Brazil (Graham 1986,
1994, 1995), dream narration varies according to gender and
stage in the life cycle (the old men combine these dream
20. Today, distracted by television or card games, Inuit admit that they
tend to transmit their oral history during the daytime and no longer at
night. Yet nothing is considered more favorable to sleep than stories: an
excellent tale teller sends his listeners to sleep and in doing so turns the
tale into something of a dream. Some Inuit say that loss of dream nar-
ration is a cause of suicide.
21. Report on night events, and especially narration of dreams, is often
different from the day events report and has been approached from
different viewpoints, depending on whether the researchers attached more
importance to the actual contents, to underlying structures of the script,
to the semiology, or to yet other aspects: psychoanalytical (Bruce 1979;
Devereux 1951; Freud 1900; Róheim 1979 [1952]), psychophysiological
(Jouvet 1992), memorial (Johnson and Mandler 1980; Kintsch and van
Dijk 1975), cultural (Bastide 1972; Caillois and Von Gruenebaum 1967;
O’Nell 1976; Tedlock 1987a).
 828
stories with myths). Dreams are often associated with myths,
but they can also be combined with songs and dances, as
among the Temiar of Malaysia (Roseman 1991). Do the three
forms of dream narration found among the Sambia of Mel-
anesia depend uniquely on the types of social situation in-
dicated (Herdt 1987)? These communicative contexts during
which the dreams are shared are indispensable for under-
standing the transition that is so delicate, even in enunciation,
between the “science of day” and that of the night. The con-
straints imposed on Tzotzil narrations vary from the pre-
scriptive and inevitable (Laughlin 1976) to the secret or un-
speakable. The process of narration of nocturnal events
generally makes considerable use of grammatical, rhetorical,
lexical, and prosodic tools such as mediatives, assonances,
homonymy, metaphors, images, and associations. It is sig-
nificant to know whether the speaker is narrating, reciting,
or chanting or whether dream segments are being “piled up,”
as in the case of the Australian dream narration reported by
Glowczeski (1999), where the text takes the form of a top-
ographical description without order or chronology as is
found in daily life. In Cuzco Quechua, dream and myth bring
into play a particular temporal marker, the suffix -sqa, which
connotes narrative events not directly experienced by the
speaker in a normal state (Itier 2004). In Kagwahiv Parintin-
tin, there is a specific tense for dream recital (Kracke 1979).
The Quiché, on the contrary, employ transitive verbs to in-
dicate—through use of the obligatory ergative with transi-
tives—that the dreamer is acting within his dream; in addi-
tion, the use of the citative indicates a freed soul, detached
from the individual subject experiencing the dream, unless
the dream is very positive, in which case the citative is no
longer used. The Zuni use verbal forms that make explicit
the psychological and ontological orientations of the dream
(Tedlock 1987b). It is clear from this that the status of truth
and the epistemic judgment of knowledge—direct or indi-
rect—cannot be disassociated from detailed research in re-
lation to nocturnal realities. There are thus many examples
of the variety of influences on the language exerted by night
words or words referring to the night.
The Shadows of the Mayan Night
In the Mesoamerican and Andean areas, the violence of co-
lonial history has confined indigenous knowledge and prac-
tices to the hidden recesses of the night, to the point where
it has become the favored place for the expression of a dom-
inated culture. The specificity of nocturnal practices among
the Tzeltal of the Chiapas Highlands (Mexico) lies in the
process of adaptation of the nocturnal experience not only
with the worldview and the local conceptions of the person
but also with the political transformations of the native com-
munities.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
Two Nocturnal Visions: Tenejapa and Bachajón
Although the two villages from which the data are drawn,
Tenejapa and Bachajón, belong to the same Maya-Tzeltal cul-
tural area, they present significant differences in terms of
geographical situation, colonial and postcolonial history, so-
cial organization, and even cosmological beliefs. In particular,
night representations form two very different patterns in these
two ethnically and linguistically homogeneous communities.
For each village, we have focused on one of the subjects raised
most spontaneously during interviews about the night with
different interlocutors.
In Tenejapa the observer notices the apparent ease with
which both adults and children speak of the night, of dreams
and of the dangers associated with them. In addition to
dreams, the nocturnal experiences most often narrated are
encounters with supernatural and malevolent beings. The ar-
chetype of these entities is the ijk’al or “black man,” a small,
hairy, and aggressive being who steals women and goods from
the men of the village.
The stories of ijk’al, whether they are presented as recent,
proven facts or as past events whose truth status remains
ambiguous, all follow the same template. During the night,
the wandering soul of the sleeper or of a conscious person is
attacked by an ijk’al; the person loses consciousness and wakes
up, if the victim is a man, in an isolated spot—most often a
cave—robbed of all the goods he had with him, ill, and some-
times projected into another space-time. In the case of a
woman, she is sexually assaulted and is held captive in the
depths of the earth, where the ijk’al are believed to live. She
manages to escape years after the abduction and returns to
the village to tell of her misadventure. In both cases, the
villagers organize punitive expeditions against the community
of ijk’al.
L., a young woman, describes her grandfather’s and his
companion’s unlucky encounter: “They saw something
move, but they could not see what it was. It was dark and
misty. They started walking again, but someone, or some
animal, was following them. Then, at the next crossroads,
they were attacked. The ijk’al stole my grandfather’s and his
companion’s goods. My grandfather saw an ijk’al; it even
spoke to him in Spanish. It was small: they can jump into
trees. They ran off into the mountain. Then my grandfather
fell ill.” (J. Roullet, personal communication)
Unlike in the folk tales, the feeling of temporal and affective
closeness (one of the protagonists being a member of the
speaker’s family) adds a new dimension: the character of the
ijk’al, a nocturnal icon, is invested with great emotion. He is
the object of all fears and provides not only a way to examine
all the events of daily life (theft, loss, conflicts) but also a
figure on which to unload one’s distress.
The Tenejapanecos conceive the night not only as a place
of social activity and exchange, in which it appears that a
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
whole set of problems specific to community life can be
shaped and examined (social norms/magic vengeance/rela-
tions with the outside world), but also as a space for revi-
talizing collective memory.
In Bachajón, apart from a few elders and ritual specialists,
hardly anyone seems to share the same discourse on nocturnal
events. To a far greater extent than among the Tenejapa, the
night is associated with pukuj, that is to say, extremely violent
emotions and acts that may be the consequence either of
diurnal or nocturnal events (attacks, suspicious movements,
or noises, a drunk wandering down the road, the threat of
an attack by wild animals) or of the states they engender
(sickness/death) and the practices of power associated with
these states (witchcraft and shamanic healing). Here, we pre-
sent the chain of events that followed the recital of a dream
by one of the members of a family.
P. and X. are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, respec-
tively. Their relationship, of a hierarchical nature, is often
conflictual.
One morning, P. turned up on the doorstep and told her
daughter-in-law, with ceremony and emotion, that “she had
seen her in a dream, dressed like a mestiza and wearing
outrageous make-up.” In the dream, P. reproached X. for
her appearance, but her stepdaughter laughed in her face.
P. returned to her house without further comment. Her
daughter-in-law did not appear to be affected by what she
had just heard: she offered her some tortillas, as she did
every morning. During the morning, however, this dream
was recounted to all the members of the family: they all
mentioned the possible threat of a misfortune to come. X.
appeared to become more and more worried and distracted.
Her mother-in-law, P., seemed to be very affected, for she
believed that the dream announced a serious problem for
the family.
At the end of the day, emotions were running high: with
the men home, this bad dream was once more evoked. P.,
feeling slightly dizzy, thought that she was suffering from a
k’exlal (sickness of shame), following the recital of her
dream, and asked her grandson to perform a ritual to ap-
pease it. The sequence of events quickly unfolded: one by
one, her daughter-in-law, one of her granddaughters, and
the wife of her grandson all felt the same symptoms and
were in turn treated. Everyone went to bed feeling nervous.
Noises in the coffee field next to the house in the middle
of the night added extra weight to the anguished atmo-
sphere: the young men went to check that no intruders,
human or monster, had penetrated into the safe haven of
the sitio. This tension persisted during several days and
nights, affecting all the family members, whose dreams, noc-
turnal doings, and meetings were examined in greater detail
than usual. (J. Roullet, fieldnote)
The night in Bachajón is a space-time whose specific char-
acteristics affect diurnal organization, with unpredictable con-
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
829
sequences. This possible incursion of the night and its dangers
into the diurnal world is a source of great anxiety. The dream,
which is basically, for the Tzeltal, a transcription of the noc-
turnal activities of certain spiritual components of the person
and their exchanges with nonhuman entities, eludes human
“control.” It should be noted that individuals suffer from
“shame” after the occurrence of such an incident: does this
mean that nocturnal events, in their apparent “chaos,” enable
individuals to grasp, reflectively and under cover of nocturnal
metamorphosis, a deeper problematic about the nature of the
person and his or her place within a community? Are beings
constantly subjected to cosmic forces? It is likely that the night
will prove to be a favorable frame for exploring Tzeltal con-
ceptions of the person and his relations with the world and
surrounding individuals.
Certainly, the Tenejapa night is worrying and often threat-
ening. But it appears to be a relatively well-defined cultural
item, enshrined in narratives that have become veritable ref-
erences. The Bachajón example tends to highlight the inter-
weaving into daily Tzeltal life of disturbing, intimate noctur-
nal events that often remain without answer and that have a
significant impact both emotionally (distress, panic, illness)
and socially (the undermining of shared values, threats of
witchcraft, settling of old scores), giving impetus to a complex
system of power struggles, not only between humans—on
both an inter-ethnic and intra-individual level—but also be-
tween humans and nonhumans.
In Tenejapa, the emphasis is put on stereotyped visions of
nocturnal dangers. In Bachajón, the night is also culturally
both very well-defined and invested, but little structure is
imposed on narrations. “Nocturnity” changes the nature of
events and endows them with a different function from that
which they would have in normal diurnal life, according to
the sociological context of the community.
The example of the Otomi deepens the theme of nocturnity
as a general frame that encompass all aspects of the native
culture, as a basic reference for thought and action.
The Otomi Night: “The House of
Darkness”
To the Mexican Otomi, the image of the night encapsulates
all of the representations about the body, society, and the
world. The sixteenth-century cosmographer Thevet remarked:
“The Popoloca worship the sun as the Otomi worship the
moon.”22 Still today, the metaphor ngu besui (house of dark-
22. The Otomi are one of the most long-settled populations of central
Mexico. Despite the scarcity of pre-Hispanic sources concerning their
material culture and religion, there is no doubt that they played a con-
siderable role in the construction of the Aztec empire, in which they
were the serfs and mercenaries, and in the elaboration of Mesoamerican
cosmologies. Colonization had a very different impact from one Otomi
region to another, and evangelism led to complex forms of adaptation
or compartmentalization between the old shamanic religion and Ca-
tholicism. The population that interests us here is located in the south
 830
ness) refers to a dark universe as an image of a house. Actually,
night is the indispensable backdrop for examining questions
pertinent to their ontology: Who am I? What is the difference
between a human, an animal, and a plant? The reality of the
“outside world” is a constant preoccupation of our interloc-
utors. Not one nighttime walk or pilgrimage goes by without
this insistent question being asked: Who is there? Is it a table
companion? An ancestor? A jaguar (species that disappeared
two generations ago)? There could be no reply to this set of
questions without the idea of intense activity during the night,
between the evening twilight and the dawn twilight. Not only
are the events that take place during this time recorded, obey-
ing a scenario known to everyone, but their characteristics
suffice to explain phenomena that are incomprehensible by
day. Chief among these is the principle of metamorphosis,
with all it implies: reversal of categories and genders, destruc-
tion and reconstruction, changes of scale, acoustic or cenes-
thesic modifications. The Otomi recognize two types of per-
ception: that of the daytime, when they do not confuse a
stone with an ancestor or a tree with a jaguar; and another,
that of the night, whether they are awake, sleeping, or dream-
ing, when another type of consciousness and feeling takes
over.23 The key to the system is the nahual, which can be
defined as both the animal double and the metamorphosed
man. But this process of transformation requires the expen-
diture of a certain quantum of energy. For this reason, nzahki
(force) plays a fundamental role at this moment.24 The fact
that the components of the psychic apparatus (considered a
material element of the body) become extremely plastic and
unstable at night explains the particular power of this phys-
icalist doctrine: (1) The laws of nature apply to all living
beings, whether they are animal, vegetable, or human. The
ı́dolos, the anthropomorphic representations of nocturnal en-
tities, cover all three kingdoms. (2) The boundaries of the
body are not psychic boundaries but only “skins,” in other
words, places where entities that have come from elsewhere
mark their presence. The consequence of this association/
dissociation is that the mind possesses the same property of
ubiquity, whence also the instability of the effects during the
of the Huasteca, in the foothills and highlands of the eastern Sierra Madre.
It is considered a sanctuary of rituals of pre-Hispanic origin, and one of
the last societies, with their Tepehua and Nahua neighbors of Veracruz,
to represent their pantheon of divinities in the form of cutout paper
figures called ı́dolos (Dow 1986a; Galinier 2004 [1997]).
23. This is as opposed to the Amazonians, for whom there appears
to be a doubt, both day and night, about the exact nature of the entity
encountered.
24. The central opposition between diurnal and nocturnal is between
closing and opening, completeness and incompleteness, interconnection
and dismemberment. At night, the body can empty itself not only of its
substances but also of its attributes, including its thought contents. The
soul detaches itself from its bodily support and migrates toward other
territories, “real” or psychic, as representations can be exchanged between
different people because they all come from tözâ, the “Old Bag,” a sort
of envelope that is both chthonic (therefore, nocturnal) and intracor-
poreal.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
night, swinging between moments of uncontrolled violence,
passivity, and affliction. The subject immediately finds himself
subordinated to external forces.25 If one postulates the exis-
tence of a theory of nocturnal knowledge, this is very much
a shared theory and not simply the knowledge of experts like
the shaman. However, the shaman is clearly the only person
who can cut out these figures that are so many agencies of
the world of darkness and that must imperatively be thrown
into the bush (Dow 1986a, 1986b). The representation of
bodily mutilation is a particularly intriguing aspect of the
iconography of nocturnal psychic life. A large number of the
paper figures have bodies without heads, arms, or legs. These
characteristics are the proof that all these entities have un-
dergone a sacrificial process, bringing about a change in their
status. Night is the indispensable setting for this transition.
This nocturnal body serves to display, but upside-down and
during the nighttime, all the characteristics of the human
being. Thus, the Otomi reject a closed view of the individual,
the subject simply transmitting knowledge from the night
world, the world down below, “on the other side,” which the
shamans can make explicit in their therapeutic practices. At
night, the body is totally open to the world and can be dis-
membered, sacrificed, and put together again, in a word, to-
tally ensnared in the feminine and maternal su, “that which
terrifies” but which allows the birth of the living through an
act of sacrifice, in the “Old Bag,” the place where individual
representations disappear. It is also significant that Old Bag
plays a part in the Carnival, in a human form that speaks in
an obscene manner; from whence comes the idea of a sexual
dimension to this nocturnal sacrifice.26 Tözâ is therefore the
most spectacular expression of what may be an ethnic un-
conscious, encompassing men and nature. For the Otomi, we
could sum up this doctrine in a chiasmus: either the world
is a macro-human space or man is a universe in miniature
(a belief strengthened by the fact that it is said of a pregnant
woman’s stomach that “it contains a village,” with its pop-
ulation of dwarfs). This idea brings us back to the maternal
as nocturnal container and to the cultural model we evoked.
In that way, Otomi offer us a system of thought based on a
hierarchical ordering of levels of knowledge and cultural vis-
ibility. The nocturnal (lunar) metaphor encapsulates a set of
features that mark all the processes of inversion and re-
constitution of genders, of dissociation, of changes in scale,
and of the polarization of opposites. The understanding of
25. This constant accounts for the huge quantity of iconographic sup-
ports used to “visualize” the night world, in the form of the cutout figures,
the ı́dolos, who represent “Lord-Spaces” (of the bush, caves, wells, rivers,
etc.), as if the whole space of the night were constellated with these
anthropomorphic markers that are potentially active. So it is this whole
network of nocturnal communication that is activated and on the basis
of which we can reconsider the concepts of perception, memory, belief,
certainty, proof, and skepticism.
26. He wears a mask with nocturnal characteristics: it is black with
white stripes and has a protuberant nose. In his hand he brandishes a
black club with a spiral pattern, evoking the nocturnal circling of the
devil around the world.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
diurnal phenomena is literally deduced from what happens
during the nocturnal space-time, in particular, the principle
of the swallowing up of the masculine (diurnal) in the fem-
inine (nocturnal).
Darkness and Light of the Inuit Night
Many Westerners, when the Inuit night, or night in the Arctic
regions, is evoked, tend to think of the Arctic night, which
is a seasonal and not a daily phenomenon. Although this
phenomenon does exist and increases as the latitude rises, it
has generated, such as it is, many stereotypes enclosed in a
radically binary view of the high-latitude environment: the
Arctic night versus the midnight sun, winter versus summer.
As far as they are concerned, the Inuit experience a succession
of states marked by the changes in astronomical, climatic, and
biological conditions whose continuity they emphasize by
strongly marking the natural and social cycles.
Winter Is Not a Long Night
The Arctic night is astronomically a night, being the time
between sunset and sunrise, but it lasts longer than 24 hours.
Western representations commonly refer to it as a “long con-
tinuous night,” the obvious implication being that in the win-
ter the inhabitants of the Arctic live permanently “in the
night,” a night that is, moreover, supposed to be terrifying,
pathogenic, and anxiogenic. The Inuit, however, have a dif-
ferent representation, and they say so. Beyond the facts of
heavenly mechanics, the night does in fact return at each
nychthemeron of the year, including north of the Arctic Cir-
cle. There is no “Arctic night” as such for the Inuit. There is
in the winter, in the regions concerned, a period of darkness,
referred to, in the northern part of Baffin Island, as tauvigjuaq,
literally, “the long period of lightless days.”
In spite of the real difficulties it entails for some aspects
of daily life, the tauvigjuaq darkness eventually fades out and
disappears; therefore, it must be endured, pending the return
of light, as it is known that the perpetual darkness of pri-
mordial times is no more. Besides, the darkness is not uniform
over night and day; it may even prove useful and even in-
dispensable in some situations, as Ross (1835:268) observed
in his days among the Natsilingmiut: “[That] which gave us
pleasure [the Sun’s return] had no such effect on the Esqui-
maux, to whom the night of this region is their day . . . since
it is far more value to them in hunting the cunning and
cautious seals. [They] always return home when the day
broke, complaining of the light as their ennemy.”
Dichotomy between Darkness and Night
The Arctic setting of the Inuit territories constitutes a unique
framework for the alternance of day (ulluq) and night (un-
nuaq), of light (qaumajuq) and darkness (taaq), and all the
more so as the latitude rises. Thus night and darkness are
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
831
dissociated, even though they fall into phase again at regular
intervals in some regions or seasons. Sometimes darkness in-
vades the day, sometimes the light floods the night: taarnirmik
unnuangujjutiqanngimmat “the night does not have darkness
as its cause,” and ulluujjutiqanngimmingmat qaumajutuin-
narmik “the day does not have only light as cause,” says a
speaker from Mittimatalik (Bordin 2005b).27 The linguistic
forms use the morpheme -jjuti (cause, grounds), expressing
unequivocally that darkness and light are not (the only) in-
dications of the arrival of the night or the day.
In the southernmost regions, such as Nunavik (Arctic Que-
bec), the distinctive physical phenomena of the high latitudes
do not exist, and every night contains a period of darkness,
more or less long and deep, but always present; here, unnuaq
denotes all nights. In the high latitudes, unnuaq is then used
exclusively for the dark night. In the north of Baffin Island,
there is a specific term, unnuattak, to designate the bright
nights of spring (Bordin 2002): despite the sunlight, it is not
the day, whence the use of the lexeme unnua-, showing that
this is a nocturnal episode but that this is not the “ordinary”
dark night, whence the correction by means of a morpheme,
-ttak, “being like.” Hence, the night is not defined solely by
darkness; it is characterized by a number of elements that
pertain to more or less normative frames, whether physio-
logical, social, or physical. The night is a knowledge acquired
from infancy; it is denoted by a bodily sensation; it is bounded
by a series of environmental markers; it is the time supposedly
devoted to sleep.
Night and Sleep
In this study, one fundamental question concerns the relation
between night and sleep. To understand this relation in this
society, we cannot ignore what we might call a “theory” of
sleep, on the one hand, and seasonal variations in individual
and collective experience on the other, particularly above the
Arctic Circle. On the whole, sleep is not valued by the Inuit,
who have never really sought to enhance its status. Sleeping
too long, for example, was and still is frowned upon because
it is detrimental to the success of the hunt. Those who slept
too long ran the risk of shortening their lives. Currently, the
elders lament what they call their “baby sleepers,” their 20–
40-year-old sons and daughters. In the context of today’s
partitioned homes, going to sleep means, for some, finding
themselves alone in a bed, or even in a room, which is never
appreciated, whence the practice of leaving the door open or
the light on all night. Sleeping also brings the danger that the
invisible component of the person might leave the body to
go wandering and might not return to the body in time, with
potentially disastrous consequences. Sleeping is also the fear
of undergoing a form of sleep paralysis (aqtuqsinniq), a par-
27. The field surveys were conducted during winter 2002–2003 and
summers 2005 and 2006 in the community of Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet)
in the north of Baffin Island (Nunavut, Canada) at latitude 72⬚42
N. See
Bordin (2008b).
 832
asomnia common among the Inuit that is contemplated with
genuine apprehension, especially by those who have no one
by their side (Kolb and Law 2001). The bright nights of spring
and summer are “extraordinary” (a specific word is used to
denote them) and beneficial, for they enable people to do
things that are difficult or impossible during dark nights:
freedom of movement appears to be limitless, until tiredness
brings on sleep. This night without darkness is even consid-
ered more favorable than the day. So sleep is often put off
until the early hours.
In winter, it is the dark days that are “abnormal” (and for
which there is also a specific term). But unlike the nights of
spring, these dark days are nonbeneficial, as they greatly limit
outdoor activities. Traveling and hunting are difficult during
this period, which is also the moment of the great celebrations
and long nights of festivity. Once again, sleep is often put off
until the early hours. Although we may be oversimplifying a
little, it is as if sleep, which is little valued, is postponed during
“abnormal” periods of the nychthemeron in order to take
maximum advantage of the bright nights of spring and to
suffer as little as possible from the dark days of midwinter.
Since the dramatic changes of the nineteenth and especially
the twentieth centuries (Christianization, habitation in more
permanent settlement, introduction of the market economy,
schooling), Inuit have adopted the general temporal frame-
work of Western societies without abandoning their less re-
strictive conception of time (Bordin 2005a). Part-time con-
tracts and seasonal jobs are numerous. While hunting game,
these people lose all notion of time and practically forget sleep.
The heart of the dark winter is another period of several weeks
when time is “turned upside-down”; in Mittimatalik during
the end-of-year festivities, hundreds of people congregate ev-
ery night in the community festival hall to play and dance
until the early hours. It is perhaps only during the time around
the equinoxes, in other words, the periods when the alter-
nations between day and night and between light and darkness
concur, that there is any more significant correlation between
sleep and the night.28
Night, a Subjective Reality
Many Inuit, and not only the older ones, give little or no
credit to excessive generalizations or to supposedly objective
descriptions, regardless of the subject (see, e.g,. Collignon
2006). Discourse on the night is no exception, and it favors
the use of “I” and “we,” for this is above all a matter of
reporting personal or collective experiences that enrich the
shared knowledge. When a group of Inuit talk about the night,
calling on several criteria to define it, this is not under the
pretext of objectivity but as a narrative basis for their own
experience. Consequently, although every day is accompanied
28. People still visit each other during the evening and the night with-
out any concern for the time. In many schools and adult training centers,
penalty points are given for repeated lateness or absenteeism.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
by a night, each person can only talk about his own night.
It emerges as an intellectual exercise and a strongly individual
experience not without repercussions on the management of
time among a society that now lives, at least partly, with the
constraints of the clock.
Finally, we find it interesting that in Inuktitut, the term
unnuijuq (from unnuaq, night) designates specifically seal
hunting at their breathing holes at night. Here we observe
the special role attributed to the intrusion of wakefulness—
with its cynegetic, active, long-lasting, and voluntary con-
notations—into the heart of rest. The attribution of a “noc-
turnal” term to an identical and essential activity that is per-
formed by day, seal hunting, is one of the results of the
transformation produced by the position in the nychthemeral
cycle.
The Parisian Light: Transfiguration or
Fake?
We now explore the question of whether the set of actions
on and by the dancers in Paris cabarets is intended to create
a portion of day through the transfiguration of the night or
to create a particular night. This piece of transfigured night/
light—in terms of space, time, and activity—is achieved
through the fabrication of “nocturnal” bodies, paradoxical in
that they belong both to the day and the night, in other words,
to neither one nor the other (Fourmaux 2001).29
Canonically, cabaret shows are performed during the period
outside the daytime. This time lag, which has been labeled
“social asynchrony” (Lallemant 2003), is the feature most of-
ten focused on by sociologists of time and work organization,
who include it among the new characteristics of work in
Western societies (e.g., flexibility, job insecurity). But those
who study performing arts professionals in France (Menger
1994) neglect the question of the night. With the exception
of the works of Gwiazdzinski (2002, 2005), Delattre (2000),
and Deleuil (1994), research into the urban world has only
considered the night as a contextual variable with influence
on social relations (Jarvin 1999 on juvenile festive sociability;
Cauquelin 1977 on intimate interacquaintance and anonym-
ity). Consequently, the question of the relations between the
show and the social organization of sleep and wakefulness
and between the show and the practices and representations
of the night in the industrialized urban world remains open.
Through the systematic evocation of emblematic tokens, the
revue show presents itself as a compendium of stereotypes
about the city. Is it also a discourse on the night?
The different uses of light (shadow shows, projectors, col-
ors) are not specific to variety shows. On the stage as in the
city, they spotlight and enhance buildings and spaces; they
establish a boundary (the footlights, the row of spots that
light the performers) between the stage and the auditorium
29. The survey was conducted among women dancers in Paris variety
theaters during the 1990s.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
and between the stage and the backstage area; they mark and
structure time through breaks and progressions; and they em-
phasize the rhythm of the music (stroboscopes). They set an
emotionally expressive tone (through the use of colors). They
dress the female body, which constitutes the central element
of this type of show, the main thread running through this
condensed night, by highlighting certain parts of it and am-
plifying movements.30
Although night, nudity, and the erotic suggestiveness of the
choreography may appear to be the expression of an intimate
relationship particularly licensed at night, it is the contrary.
It is through actions on the body that the social and cultural
dimension of nocturnity appears to be produced and dis-
played, creating a “hyperdiurnal” nocturnal body, born from
a nocturnal aesthetic of excess. These preparations take place
in several stages: warming up, applying make-up, and putting
on the costumes and finery.31 The manager of the Crazy Horse
explains: “My girls are dressed by the lighting.” Moreover, in
the play of light that divides the bodies into exposed and
hidden parts, the design of these different ornaments makes
visible and emphasizes parts of the body that are usually
hidden (breasts, buttocks) by concealing the other parts. The
materials they use, feathers, sequins, lamé, and tulle, are lu-
minous, sparkling, and light. Because of frequent absences
among the dancers (for days off, but also for reasons of phys-
ical incapacity: accidents are frequent), replacements are com-
mon. As a consequence, each costume is numbered. The loss
of personal name is accompanied by the use of the chore-
ographer’s name (“the Blue Bell girls”) or the name of the
cabaret itself (“the girls of the Folies”). The dancers become
anonymous beings, unrecognizable and all alike (“Even my
boyfriend didn’t recognize me the first few times he saw the
show”). The creation and use of these specific bodies is there-
fore only conceivable, or at least practiced, within the cir-
cumscribed framework of an ephemeral repetition that is re-
newed every evening.
The setting, this artificial niche, would appear to be a prod-
uct of the Parisian night, a reproduction of it, a hyperbola,
an enclave, and—a hypothesis that needs to be tested—it
shows or reminds the audience that the “real” night, that
30. For cabaret dancers, working at night is one of the identifying
markers of the status and function of performing artist by which they
define themselves. The variety show is, according to their testimony, a
specifically nocturnal activity. Depending on the cabaret, there may be
one sole performance each night, lasting until midnight, or several suc-
cessive shows, lasting until two or even three o’clock in the morning.
This results in considerable differences in the daily rhythm of the dancers.
While those who work in the first type of cabaret have the rest of the
night, those in the second type cannot make use of their days and cannot
socialize with people other than those who also work at night. As a result,
endogamy among these “show people” is marked.
31. Here, the classic distinction between finery and costume is re-
versed. The dancers are adorned with all sorts of accessories (feathers,
jewels, queues—long feather hair ornaments hanging from head to feet),
but in the way of actual clothes, they most often wear nothing more
than a G-string and sometimes a bra.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
833
which is outside, in the town, is only accessible under other
conditions, for other individuals. At the same time, daylight
is being reproduced, but in the form of a false image of daily
life, a cruel and excessive imitation. The creation of hyper-
diurnal objects torn from the surrounding night appears to
have indistinctness as its objective: the young women are not
identifiable by name, sight, voice, or touch. This is a para-
doxical movement, contrary to the night—so much light,
noise, heat, taste (because there is so much food)—yet cre-
ating the same atmosphere of nondifferentiation. In this con-
struction, we can observe the play of opposition with the
cultural markers of “good sleep” (moderation in all these
aspects).32 The exceeding of limits flouts the supposed spec-
ificity of the light of day, which makes everything visible and
distinct; one can be dazzled by too much brightness, and the
reality that therefore appears is much more indistinct than
that in moonless nights.
The Law: Thieves in the Night
In our investigation, a variety of societies have been used as
a background to elucidate the norms that frame and conduct
nocturnal activities and events. The same concerns, however,
are also found in the history of Western ideas, particularly in
the philosophy of law; the following examples illustrate their
developments since Roman times. In the Western world, the
night has indeed drawn special attention on the part of the
lawmakers, since it was recognized as a setting to which the
rules provided for daytime did not apply.
In ancient Roman law, a thief who was discovered after the
act was sentenced to pay double damages. If he was caught
red-handed, he lost his freedom. But if he was caught stealing
in the night, he could be killed. What is the explanation for
this rising scale of punishments, when the crime is the same
in all three cases? What we have here is a refinement in the
search for the proportionality of sentences.33 In their attempts
to do away with “draconian” laws, the creators of Roman law
sought a more and more sophisticated scale, the highest aim
of justice being to weigh merit and fault as accurately as
possible and to reestablish the balance between merit and
fault on the one side and reward or punishment on the other.
How is this gradation of punishments from daytime theft to
nocturnal theft justified? The sentence of double damages is
understandable: first, the thief is obliged to return what he
took, and second, he himself must pay damages to the victim
for the harm caused by stealing his possessions—damages that
32. There is moderation in all these aspects except for taste, unless
one draws an analogy between taste and smell, as the heavy scent of
certain flowers must be kept away from sleeping quarters.
33. Dracon, when he was asked why he imposed the same death pen-
alty on those convicted of idleness, those who had stolen fruit or veg-
etables, by day or night, and those who had committed sacrilege or
homicide, replied that he considered the lesser crimes to deserve it, and
he had found no greater punishment for the more serious offenses (Solon
22 in Plutarch’s Lives; Plutarch 1937).
 834
are evaluated in a very arbitrary manner. But why should the
thief in the night deserve death, even if he is unarmed and
when he may have done no more than pilfer an apple from
the orchard? Equally strange measures can be found in many
traditional societies: the punishment is harsher when the of-
fender is caught red-handed than when he is caught afterward
(Diamond 1971:78). From this to being permitted to kill the
night thief caught in the act there is just one step, a step that
has doubtless been taken many times. These curiosities are
generally explained in terms of psychological considerations:
the thirst for vengeance of the victim or his family is blunted
by the passage of time. Being caught red-handed, especially
at night, exposes the thief to the victim’s first impetuous
feelings of anger. Apparently, therefore, it was the voice of
the wronged party that dictated the provisions of ancient law
(von Jhering 1880). There is a good deal of truth in these
explanations, but we believe they overlook the essential di-
mension that gives what we might call the “nocturnal econ-
omy” all its specificity.
There is no economy without a definition of property
rights, which may be individual, domestic, tribal, or collective.
Whether or not one can carry out a trade in things is sec-
ondary. One must first know whether these things belong to
someone or to nobody (res nullius in Roman law) and, in the
former case, who the owner is. Now the definition of property
rights, far from being free, is itself costly, although this cost
is generally hidden. The night brings this cost to light, if we
can put it that way. From an economic point of view, the
property right that applies to an asset of whatever kind is the
capacity of the holder of this right to consume the services,
the revenue, produced by this asset (e.g., the rent from a
building) directly, or to consume them indirectly, by means
of exchange. As an asset has several qualities, the property
right applies to all of them, provided that they can be defined.
This delimitation entails costs of description, measurement,
and supervision: “enclosure costs,” one might call them, by
analogy to a farmer enclosing his fields. These costs must be
weighed against the advantages drawn from the operation of
defining the property right. For an object of little value, few
resources will be spent on its protection.
In practice, as the perfect definition has a prohibitive cost,
property rights are never perfectly delimited. The same is true
for transactions. Because not all the qualities of a good can
be measured economically, a transaction does not involve all
its qualities, but only certain among them, especially those
that can easily be measured. Kant expressed this idea well. To
the question of how far the right of taking possession of the
soil extends (although land is not the hardest thing to delimit),
the philosopher replied, “So far as the ability to have it under
one’s power extends; that is, as far as he who wishes to ap-
propriate it can defend it.” It is as if the soil were to say, “If
you cannot protect me, neither can you defend me” (Kant
1993:141). This naturally leads us to raise another question:
What would the soil say if it could speak at night? On this
basis, it is true that the definition of property rights is more
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
difficult and therefore more expensive at night and that there
are goods that are not worth enough to be protected in the
darkness—and for the purposes of discouraging thieves, sen-
tences will be more severe for those who act at night. Not
only do we have to spend more money to protect our goods
because of the night, but we must also implement stricter
sentences, which, if expressed in longer prison terms, increase
still further the expenditure imposed on us by the night.
Another particular element that needs to be considered is
the cost of proof. This brings into play what we might call
the presumption of ownership, which figures among the pro-
legomena to the presumption of innocence and is founded
on the same reasoning. “I must return something that I have
received from someone, because I presume that he is the
genuine owner, and it is only in the event that I do not wish
to give him back this object that I, myself, must prove the
contrary.” This presumption is based not on moral principles
but on purely practical considerations (just like the pre-
sumption of innocence). If each time I use an object belonging
to me, anyone could challenge my right of ownership over
that object, obliging me to demonstrate urbi et orbi that the
object is indeed mine, then all activity would become im-
possible, whence the saying “possession is nine-tenths of the
law” and all the regulations governing immovable goods. But
at dusk, when the day is drawing to a close, the presumption
of ownership is much less obvious, and the same is true for
the presumption of innocence. In the case of theft, it is up
to the victim to prove that the thief is a thief. The burden of
proof lies with the person who has been robbed because the
thief is presumed to be the owner of the object stolen, which
amounts to saying that he is presumed innocent. But the
burden of proof is necessarily costly. This clarifies the logic
underlying the principle of in flagrante delicto. In this case,
the burden of proof is reduced to zero, and one can apply
without any qualms the most severe sentence of capital pun-
ishment. In a context of high costs of information, and there-
fore of proof, the more time goes by, the harder it is to find
the proof. Reducing the severity of the sentence as time passes
is a means of reducing, on average, the price paid by an
innocent person in the event of an error of justice (Posner
1981:201). As for the night thief, if he is not arrested on the
spot, the cost of proof quickly rises to such a prohibitive level
that we very often resign ourselves to the idea of leaving him
at large. He who is caught in the act pays with his life for
those who get away scot-free.
We could thus introduce an economics of the night that
would start by listing not only the additional costs imposed
by the disappearance of the sun every 24 hours but also the
activities devoted to reducing these costs and the technological
advances they continually generate. At the same time, we
could shed light on the behavior of those who live by night,
not only night thieves and other criminals, but also police
officers on the night beat and manufacturers of house lights,
street lights, alarms, night vision equipment, etc. This expen-
diture could be compared with what the night contributes:
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
the darkness that facilitates our rest and that we have no need
to produce; the reduction in activity that it imposes every
day; other people becoming, as if by miracle, quiet—a spon-
taneous norm that one cannot transgress without being con-
sidered antisocial. Finally, this would lead us to study the
economic necessity of restorative sleep and to see whether
this represents a human invariant through the ages—sleep
during which our vigilance necessarily slackens, with poten-
tially dangerous consequences for us: even the most powerful
of tyrants is obliged to share his power, if only with the person
who guards his bedroom, the aptly named “bodyguard” who
has the life of his lord in his hands and, at night, may dispose
of it at his will.
Conclusion
Our roundabout trip has strengthened a strong cultural com-
ponent in the domain of the perception, understanding, ac-
tivities, and representations of the nocturnal segment of the
nychthemeron. The night contains all sorts of figures and
movements that remain inexplicable when considered only
from a daytime perspective.
There remain two points that have not been covered in
detail: the transition between the day and the night and the
phenomenon of interference, deliberate or involuntary, of the
night in the day or the day in the night.34 Regarding the first
point, it should be borne in mind that each society negotiates
the twilight transitions to construct the thresholds enabling
them to enter and exit what may seem to us to be obvious:
“night” on the one hand and “day” on the other. Conse-
quently, specific cultural constraints are imposed the world
over to monitor the elasticity or porosity of these space-times,
according to “a metaphysics of frontiers.” These include, in
particular, the rituals involving the body and its rhythms
(dance, song, trance) and the use of substances to delay the
onset of sleep (psychoactive drugs), for reasons arising out
of collective obligations (work, ritual activity, war, etc.) or
individual constraints (creation, sexual relations, etc.). Then
again, drugs also can be used to bring sleep.
The varied interventions performed on this period of tran-
sition range from learning to stay awake and injunctions im-
posed on children to acts of a persecutory or military nature
such as sleep deprivation as a means of torture and everything
that comes within the domain of individual violence or that
brings the night into play as one of the parameters of political
action. Many societies invent the means—gestural, acoustic,
pharmacological—to defer sleep during rituals. Among the
Inuit, in spring/summer, it is common practice to go without
sleep for up to 48 hours, while hunting game or because of
circumstances that favor the continuation of activities; sleep
may then be regarded as an obstacle (Bordin 2005a). The
Indians of the Upper Xingu, who sing and dance all night
34. One of the most obvious manifestations concerns the practices of
sleep inhibition and therefore of wakefulness.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
835
long during the dry season, use techniques for resisting sleep
such as the nocturnal narration of myths, the performing of
songs and series of calls and shouts, and the use of tobacco
(Basso 1985; Monod Becquelin 1975).
The second point, on which we hardly touched, concerns
the “intrusions” of the day into the night and vice versa. One
example of this hold of the night over the day is provided by
cultures in which the narration of dreams is obligatory and
has serious repercussions on the events of the day. It is worth
noting that among the Inuit, certain elders explain the gravity
of the current social situation, especially the high suicide rate
among young people, partly by the disappearance of the cus-
tom of sharing dreams (Bordin 2009; Laugrand 2001). Among
the Tzotzil Maya, where “The dream is the measure of man,”
and a man who does not dream is mad or stupid, Laughlin
(1966) relates the consequences, in the form of several days,
if not weeks, of collective work by the community, imposed
by the interpretation of a little boy’s dream. Here, manifestly,
the day is the child of the night, and the collective tasks are
the effects of an individual dream.
Mothré (2006) shows, in the Maya Highlands, that demons,
despite being canonical markers of the night, can also appear
in the daytime. This signifies that the sun does not provide
homogeneous protection in terms of either the duration of
its presence in the sky or the extent of the territory on which
it shines. How can the sun be physically present in the sky
and yet absent from its protective function, and how can the
nocturnal exist in broad daylight? If the case of the dark or
“lost” days of the period of the year’s renewal, often coinciding
with the carnival, are well documented as an invasion of the
forces of the night—of the “old times”—in the year, little
analysis has been made of intromissions of night defined as
the days “without name” or “which don’t exist” (Bricker 1986;
Guiteras-Holmes 1965; Villa Rojas 1968) into the day. Mid-
night and midday, although opposed, are both marked by the
same danger. Midday for humans coincides with midnight
for the pukuj: when the sun reaches its zenith, it traces a
vertical axis that cuts through the horizontal layers of the
universe and brings them into contact with each other.35 So
we are dealing with a double movement: the “diurnization”
of the night and the “nocturnalization” of certain activities.
To occupy the space-time of the night, certain rules must be
applied, such as increasing the amount of lighting, intensifying
activity, or singing to fill the dark sky with sounds and noises
35. In addition, the fact that the sun “has a break,” as the Tzeltal
expression puts it (Köhler 1995 [1977]:105), blurs the frontiers between
day and night because it is the sun’s movement, its course through the
sky, that delimits day and night. At its zenith it is inactive, and instead
of warming, it burns; midday and midnight are therefore equally dan-
gerous, and the vital warmth loses its virtues. As for rainy days, during
which the clouds allow the ijk’al to travel without being seen because
the sun does not light up the territory properly, they illustrate the same
idea as that related to the territory, a space that does not receive the sun
homogeneously. Obstacles that come between the protective sun and the
protected human reduce the effectiveness of its protection, for its presence
is then “incomplete,” as if there were gaps in it (Mothré 2006).
 836
that do not copy the day but instead produce a different image
of it, often overemphasizing its characteristics.
In brief, this cross-disciplinary investigation has led us to
reverse some of our presuppositions and to reconsider eth-
nographic materials from diverse perspectives. The object
“night” was set down, right from the start, as one of the two
great spatiotemporal frameworks of individual and social life,
whatever the society under examination: there remains the
paradox that the construction of the object is still more a
question of emic than etic, of the observed and not of the
observer. All the findings show the importance of cosmologic
speculations, norms of action, and ethical concerns and of
all those psychic defenses that demonstrate that, all over the
planet, the night is indeed a legitimate object of investigation
except in the anthropologists’ community. This may be be-
cause the “anthropology of the night” can only be a multi-
and cross-disciplinary study, which makes it all the more dif-
ficult to invent alternative methodologies. We have attempted
simply to present a few lines of thought on the subject, while
being quite aware of the limitations of our endeavor. To elab-
orate such methodologies, we need to take two constraints
into account: we lack the field materials for developing a well-
reasoned comparison, both in the laboratory and on the site,
but at the same time, we also lack the general concepts, the
tools, that could be ranked alongside those that constitute the
key areas of anthropological analysis, such as “corporate
groups,” “referential practice,” or “agency.” That is why we
think it necessary to create new concepts, such as that of
nocturnity, to designate, as a first step, spatiotemporal, phys-
ical, and psychic states proceeding from what each culture
defines as “the night.” We are therefore obliged to proceed
on both levels simultaneously: accumulation of data on one
side, creation of concepts on the other. Generally speaking,
postmodern societies appear to be silent on the subject of
their cosmology, leading some observers to the hasty conclu-
sion that they have been swept away by acculturation and
globalization. We assume that nocturnal representations open
the way to a “black box” that speaks of danger, sacrifice,
exchange of substance, and rupture but also union and re-
composition. Within the mute core of a ritual we will redis-
cover the origin of a fundamental dynamic: to bring about
the birth and death of the day, the birth and death of the
night. Finally, the cross-disciplinary perspective guiding our
research into the night has brought to light the various con-
straints, on individual and collective levels, with which human
societies are confronted and how they deal with them: in
particular, specific organization of space, enabling the body,
during sleep, to be placed in a stable, protected environment
or, on the contrary, to be prepared for activities that cannot
be performed during the diurnal segment of the nychthem-
eron. We have not sought to infer a mechanical order of
causalities between the adjustment of biological rhythms and
the cultural configuration of nocturnal time, either for phases
of rest or for professional and ritualized activities. This would
take us far beyond the scope of our investigation. Our primary
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
goal has been to highlight the difficulties inherent in studying
the object “night,” so that we may at last tackle “the other
half of the world.”
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to anonymous referees for a most careful
reading, fine-grained comments, and considerable biblio-
graphical indications. We are very grateful for their generous
and precise interest; any failing can be imputed only to our-
selves.
Comments
Richard Chenhall
Centre for Health and Society, Melbourne School of Popu-
lation Health, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Aus-
tralia (r.chenhall@unimelb.edu.au). 6 XI 09
Galinier and colleagues present an enticing field of study, one
that has received little direct attention by anthropologists. For
anthropologists, the night has generally been a realm where
special things happen, for example, ritual, ceremony, and fes-
tivals. Conducting fieldwork during such events presents some
of us with various methodological challenges. I am reminded
of Alfred Gell’s work on the Ida ceremony among the Umeda
people in the West Sepik (Gell 1975). Lasting for two days
and two nights, participants (including the anthropologist)
must not fall asleep; to do so would threaten the natural and
social environment. This establishes a grueling task for the
anthropologist, who would no doubt be keen not to fall asleep
throughout this momentous ceremony. At other times, the
night becomes a kind of refuge for the anthropologist, a time
to relax with or retreat from informants. In Argonauts of the
Western Pacific, Malinowski leaves his companions for his tent
after a day of fieldwork, slightly annoyed that he could un-
derstand only part of their conversation, stating, “I could not
sleep because of the endless chatter” (1922:146). Galinier and
colleagues give us some important insights into how anthro-
pologists are attempting to map the night, beyond explana-
tions of the odd ritual event or from some information
gleaned from informants the morning after (see also Mu-
sharbash 2008).
Understanding the night as a theoretical construct is an
important undertaking. We could define the night as that
period that separates all sunsets from all dawns. However, this
definition does not clearly differentiate the different kinds of
nights around the world; nor does it say very much about
how humans experience and understand the night. The de-
scriptions provided by Galinier and colleagues of those people
living in our polar regions testifies to the variability of what
we might think are objective facts about the night (amount
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
of light, specific periods of time, and so on). Definitions of
sleep are similarly problematic, and previous research has
demonstrated that sleep is understood and experienced in a
multitude of ways across and within cultures (see Steger and
Brunt 2003b; Williams 2005; Williams and Crossley 2008).
While Galinier and colleagues discuss a range of activities
in their description of “nocturnity” (activities that occur at
night), our understanding of the night as a theoretical cate-
gory needs to be pursued further. Sleep can happen at night,
but not necessarily; certain types of myths and stories are told
by people at night, but not universally. So what kind of models
can we use to distinguish an anthropology of the night? We
can use the distinction that people themselves use. We can
try to differentiate the kinds of activities that occur at different
times of the day and note whether they align with specific
biological and natural events. This all leads to a construction
of the night that can only be viewed when comparing it to a
definition of the day. Such differentiation will always be cul-
turally construed by people in specific ways in specific places,
revealing something about their lived experience of the world.
The importance of the juxtaposition of the day and night
was discussed by Foucault in his discussion of the mid-
seventeenth-century tragedy dramatist Jean Racine in The
Birth of the Clinic:
Every day in Racine’s theatre, is overhung by a night, which
it brings, so to speak, to light, the night of Troy and its
massacres, the night of Nero’s desires, Titus’s Roman night,
Athalie’s night. These are the greatest stretches of night,
realms of darkness which haunt the day without yielding
an hour, and disappear only in the new night of death. And
these fantastic nights, in their turn, are haunted by a light
which forms a kind of internal reflection of the day: the
burning of Troy, the torches of the Paretorians, the pale light
of the dream. In classical tragedy, day and night are arranged
like a pair of mirrors, endlessly reflect each other, and afford
that simple couple a sudden profundity which envelopes in
a single movement of all man’s life and death (Foucault
1989:104).
In this description, night and day are viewed as a pair of
mirrors, out of which grow reflection and truth of the other.
In this structuralist interpretation, with an homage to Claude
Levi-Strauss, the night and the day are but reflections of our
efforts to think about and create our world.
Michelle Daveluy
13-15 HM Tory, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
T6G 2H4, Canada (michelle.daveluy@ualberta.ca). 9 XI 09
The proposal to study nocturnity, the nocturnal economy,
and knowledge that is associated with night activities aptly
brings to the fore portions of human life that anthropology
should routinely take into account. “Anthropology of the
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
837
Night” speaks to the fact that we rarely do this and shows
that when anthropology actually addresses the conduct of
activities in the dark, it sometimes misrepresents reality (as
in the example of a season mistakenly interpreted as a long
night in the circumpolar north).
The multidisciplinary approach adopted by Galinier et al.
(over)emphasizes a clinical analysis of sleep. In fact, the role
of sleep in nocturnity should be further assessed by comparing
it with cases where sleeping during the daytime is usual (e.g.,
in the form of naps or siestas). In all likelihood, significant
sleep-related activities happen both during the day and night.
Through comparison, the status of nocturnity could be as-
certained and its usefulness convincingly demonstrated. Oth-
erwise the concept risks falling into (remaining in, rather) the
geographical trap that easily explains particularities associated
with the night and, more specifically, its length through the
year in certain parts of the world. Indeed, it is worth con-
sidering how siestas are constitutive of the busy nightlife of
urban settings. For example, napping during the day partly
sustains the nocturnal way of life that a city like Barcelona is
well known for (evening walks on the Rambla, late dinners
compared with North American standards, the attendance of
shows that continue well into the night). The fact that traffic
jams related to commuting home to nap during the day are
sometimes presented as an economical hindrance requiring
redress illustrates how diurnal sleep is a privilege in our con-
temporary world. Convivial and artistic activities held at night
compete with productivity during the day, hence the suggested
control of sleep patterns that leads us to consider the siesta
as an anachronistic remnant of a less productive way of life.
Indeed, as argued in “Anthropology of the Night,” there is
no need to restrict nocturnity to sleep activities. The authors
point to the existing anthropological literature on forced
wakefulness as an induced state. In my opinion, this is a
continuation of the discussion of sleep since induced wake-
fulness is in reality a lack of sleep. There are a number of less
exotic cases that would yield as fruitful an analysis. I am
thinking of sleep deprivation as experienced by parents of
newborns. These parents often openly comment on their sit-
uation, which is not induced yet is unavoidable for a certain
period of time and undoubtedly is universal for adults in-
volved in perinatal care. Is nocturnity helpful in understand-
ing what is at stake in such a case of unavoidable wakefulness?
I think so because it provides means to include human ac-
tivities that are meaningful only in the night perspective. The
fact that newborns keep their parents awake during the day
is of limited interest to both anthropologists and parents since
the day is associated with wakefulness.
For a shift of perspective to truly occur (from the day to
the night), anthropologists must pay attention to activities
that are usually and repetitively conducted in the dark. In
that sense, “Anthropology of the Night” can foreground un-
derstudied groups of individuals like night workers in hos-
pitals or operations that run continuously in so many in-
dustrial plants. The case of the Parisian cabaret workers is
 838
interesting in this regard. However, it is important to stay
away from a romantic representation of night life that would
focus on illegal or illicit activities. It is legitimate life in the
dark that is understudied. Besides, illegitimate activities are
certainly not restricted to the night.
Two important contributions of a night perspective are to
counter widespread ideas about life in the dark: (1) that it is
void of activities and (2) that it is silent. Early accounts of
the role of speech in the dark date as far back as Malinowski
(1922) describing safely reaching an island while navigating
a lagoon at night. “Anthropology of the Night” addresses the
noises of the dark—those that trigger reactions while others
are ignored. This is an efficient approach to capture hierar-
chies of relevance. At sea, while conducting the ethnography
of communication among crew members, I was waking up
to sounds that I became able to decipher after a relatively
short period of time onboard. It became clear to me that a
proper assessment of sailing required paying attention to the
night as well. The information I obtained in the process is
invaluable. In the program proposed by Galinier et al., val-
uable results are also likely to emerge from work done on
narrations of dreams. The fact that people may talk about
their dreams during the day does not spare us from the ne-
cessity of conducting the anthropology of the night as well.
Still, the anthropology of the night cannot replace the an-
thropology of the day. One complements the other, and if
long-term around-the-clock anthropology is not sustainable,
it is certainly possible and worthwhile for short, well-defined
portions of our fieldwork.
Roger Ekirch
Department of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, U.S.A.
(arekirch@vt.edu). 20 XI 09
“Anthropology of the Night” is less a conceptual breakthrough
than the latest addition to a growing body of research in the
social sciences and humanities devoted to nighttime and the
critical impact that darkness traditionally has had upon hu-
man behavior. As the authors acknowledge, not only have
historians plumbed the depths of nocturnal life, but so too
have sociologists and urban geographers. As for anthropol-
ogists, most field studies, to judge from those contained in
the Human Relations Area Files (http://www.libraries.iub.edu/
index.php?pageIdp2261), have been less attentive to night-
time as a subject in its own right, albeit with some notable
exceptions.
As befits an essay with eight authors and two editors, “An-
thropology of the Night” lacks a clear focus, though the central
purpose of this “roundabout trip” appears to be the explo-
ration of night as a new frontier in anthropology, one that
will likely require innovative methodologies, imaginative con-
cepts, and fresh fieldwork. By the paper’s conclusion, the
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
authors have been sufficiently chastened to stress instead that
their “primary goal has been to highlight the difficulties in-
herent in studying the object ‘night.’”
Some of those difficulties are self-inflicted. Rather than
offering a cogent, tightly argued analysis, much of the paper
is devoted to a series of disjointed topics, jumping, for ex-
ample, from the Otomi of Mexico to the Inuit of Nunavut
to modes of dancing within Parisian cabarets. More often
than not, the topics reflect the individual interests and re-
search of the authors, not all of whom agree, evidently, on
the association of night with the absence of sunlight. By con-
trast, sociologists, beginning in the early 1970s, have been
more rigorous in their own research, as have most historians.
While the authors pay lip service to both areas of study, calling
frequently for a cross-disciplinary approach to the night, they
have failed to mine several rich seams of published scholar-
ship, even within the ranks of their own discipline.
An example is their intriguing analysis of the harsher pen-
alties historically meted out in Western societies for crimes
against property committed after dark. The explanation for
such “strange measures,” the authors conclude, lies in the
increased cost incurred by victims at night in defending their
property rights, along with the heightened burden of iden-
tifying the offenders, should they be caught. Perhaps, but only
to a small degree. Early Europeans, according to historical
research, had a variety of reasons for punishing nocturnal
crimes, not just thefts, with particular severity. Not only did
the arrival of evening afford criminals greater seclusion but
it also hindered the ability of persons to defend themselves,
particularly if home asleep—or to come to the aid of their
neighbors. For the same reasons, only one deed, in the view
of the courts, merited lenience if committed at night—the
slaying of a domestic intruder—which by day constituted
homicide.
The paper’s central topic is sleep, described as night’s “ma-
jor occupation.” Less is said of evening as a time reserved for
labor, sociability, and personal reflection, despite considerable
evidence of high levels of nocturnal activity across both time
and space. In debunking the customary view of sleep as a
biological constant, the authors state their desire to study sleep
patterns in “tropical, equatorial, and Arctic regions and West-
ern and ‘exotic’ populations.” Strangely, they seem unaware
of the innovative work of Carol M. Worthman and Melissa
K. Melby, who in 2002 published a sweeping synthesis of
anthropological and clinical research exploring different pat-
terns of slumber throughout the developing world. Then, too,
historical evidence has established that the compressed, con-
solidated sleep of contemporary Western societies has been a
product of the last two centuries. Before the Industrial Rev-
olution and widespread reliance on artificial illumination, the
dominant form of slumber, arguably since time immemorial,
was segmented, by which individuals experienced two phases
of “first” and “second” sleep separated by a period of wake-
fulness. Non-Western peoples still exhibiting this form of
slumber, as late as the mid-twentieth century, included the
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
Tiv of central Nigeria, according to work completed in the
1950s by Paul Bohannon and Laura Bohannon (Bohannon
1953; Bohannon and Bohannon 1958).
Not that the “Anthropology of the Night” fails to advance
fresh lines of investigation, including the neglected signifi-
cance of biological rhythms in nocturnal research and the
need to explore the “intrusions” of night and day on one
another. More important, however, is the renewed attention
that the authors draw to a subject amply deserving of scholarly
scrutiny. The value of that task cannot be underscored
enough.
Katie Glaskin
Anthropology and Sociology, University of Western Austra-
lia (M257), 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia
6009, Australia (kglaskin@cyllene.uwa.edu.au). 6 XI 09
“The night” has not generally been a topical focus for an-
thropology. This paper adds to a recent body of literature
already beginning to address this gap, posing the night as a
worthy field of anthropological inquiry in its own right (e.g.,
see Schnepel and Ben-Ari 2005; Steger and Brunt 2003b).
This paper attempts two main things: first, to argue that
the night is a much-neglected, taken-for-granted sphere in
which a great deal of human activity occurs and that there is
a strong case to be made for foregrounding “nocturnity” (“all
the events and actions that display the modalities of nocturnal
activities”) within ethnography and analysis. It does this by
way of ethnographic examples taken from such disparate con-
texts as Amazonia, the Inuit of the Eastern Canadian Arctic,
the Parisian night, and the philosophy of Roman law. Second,
the authors approach this task through “cross-disciplinary
investigation.” The question that orients this research, at least
partly, is how to “reconcile a psychophysiological study of
factors common to all humans with the holistic anthropo-
logical approach to the phenomenon of ‘the night,’ highlight-
ing its cultural differences.” This is a laudable goal, albeit one
that requires considerable conceptual work, as in any attempts
to cross disciplines and integrate the results (e.g., Strauss and
Quinn 1997). The main issue here, then, concerns the con-
ceptual orientation of “night” as between the two disciplines
involved (psychophysiology and anthropology), a difficulty
also referred to in this paper. Herein, for me, lies its main
unresolved tension, largely manifest in the discussions of sleep
and night.
When the authors talk here about psychophysiology, they
usually talk about this in relation to sleep, rather than in
relation to “the night.” They specifically state that “for psy-
chophysiologists, the object ‘night’ is mostly linked to sleep
(and to dreaming),” and this sleep/dreaming/night conflation
is evident in the early sections of this paper that deal with
sleep and that are apparently contributed from this disciplin-
ary perspective. (Elsewhere, the authors clarify that sleep is
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
839
“one of the constituent elements of the object ‘night,’” but
the slippage still occurs.) While sleep is commonly associated
with night, “sleep” and “night” are not conceptually equiv-
alent (e.g., see Steger and Brunt’s [2003a:15–16] discussion
of monophasic, biphasic, and polyphasic sleep cultures), any
more than “sleep” and “dreaming” are, although the latter
are, of course, closely associated (e.g., Pace-Schott et al. 2003).
It is at this intersection of the two disciplinary approaches,
then, that things appear to fray conceptually.
Schnepel, whose project “Toward an Anthropology of the
Night” thematically and nominally parallels the project dis-
cussed in this contribution, sees “night” as a broad topic of
anthropological inquiry, breaking it down into nine subtopics
that include social, spatial, and perceptual dimensions of the
sleep experience; dreams; nocturnal activities including work,
recreation, and ritual; how “night” reflects aspects of my-
thology and ontology; and “the dialectic interdependency be-
tween day and night and the transitions between.”36 It is clear
from this, and from the ethnography in the contribution dis-
cussed here, that the topic of “night” has extraordinarily rich
potential as a topic of inquiry, as do the topics of sleep (e.g.,
see Steger and Brunt 2003b; Williams and Crossley 2008) and
dreams (e.g., Glaskin 2005; Lohmann 2003). Yet I think it is
important to be wary of conflating these. Night, sleep, and
dreams are clearly related: the relationship between them and
how they are conceptualized, though, is an issue that itself
requires ethnographic investigation, as does the interdepen-
dency between day and night. The authors argue that an-
thropology “has so far reduced night to a dimension of time,”
ignoring the spatiotemporal dimensions of night. Such state-
ments, however, very much depend on how “night” is itself
characterized (Musharbash’s [2008] discussion about Warlpiri
sleeping arrangements, e.g., clearly attends to social and spatial
dimensions of sleep).
As Heijnen has argued elsewhere, an “anthropology of the
night” is one that “should address light and darkness, day
and night, as cultural categories, whose relationships are sub-
ject to negotiation and thus always changing” (2005b:199).
The Inuit ethnography presented here strongly confirms this
view. One of the authors’ conclusions, too, is that “night” is
more of an emic than etic construction and needs to be un-
derstood as such. Given the enormous scope and potential
of this topic and all the possible subtopics that one could
include within it (such as those of sleep and dreams), there
are many challenges here for a comparative anthropology—
let alone a cross-disciplinary approach—to contend with (as
the authors also acknowledge), not least of which is the con-
ceptual category of “night” itself. For me, there is an evident
value to anthropology paying greater attention to the noc-
turnal aspects of human life. Just how these matters are con-
ceptualized and approached will no doubt provide for robust
and interesting discussions to follow.
36. http://www.ethnologie.uni-halle.de/forschung/projekte/
anthropology_of_the_night/ (accessed October 27, 2009).
 840
Adriënne Heijnen
Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, University
of Aarhus, Moesgaard, DK-8270 Højbjerg, Denmark
(adrienneheijnen@gmail.com). 23 XI 09
The objective of the paper “Anthropology of the Night” is to
address the enormous gap in theory and methodology that
the authors have observed in research on the night. The main
question they pose is whether the study of nighttime activity
should be established as a new field in anthropology. Their
answer is yes, and thus, the question raised is how this should
be accomplished. The authors propose an approach that in-
tegrates psychophysiology and anthropology.
The attention the authors wish to draw to activities that
unfold in societies during the night is fully justified. Indeed,
there have been few studies on conceptualizations of the night
and nighttime activity, and it is hard to deny that there is
something about the night that makes us behave, feel, and
think differently.37 However, as the empirical data presented
in this paper show, the night (as the day) covers a wide range
of activities, conceptualizations, and narratives and requires
a diversity of methods. The authors mention, on the one hand,
observable activities such as singing and dancing—in partic-
ular, cabaret. On the other hand, they point out that sleeping
and dreaming are major topics within the anthropology of
the night. In contrast to the former, the latter are activities
largely inaccessible by conventional anthropological research,
and they might require new approaches or redefinition (such
as from dreaming to dream sharing). Thus, one of the major
problems is how to define “the night” as a whole. While the
authors depart from the anthropological definition that the
night is the whole of human activity that exists between sunset
and sunrise, the wide range of topics the authors mention,
such as feeling isolated, withdrawing to the private sphere,
drunkenness, cabaret, feeling fear, sleeping, having visions,
and dreaming, might also take place during the day. Thus,
the descriptive definition of the night on the basis of specific
activities, which the authors put forward as the anthropolog-
ical definition, does not seem to be sufficient. As the authors
note, it is, rather, the dialectics of day and night, the trans-
formation of meaning when these activities are moving from
day to night, that bring us closer to an understanding of what
the night is about and what it generates.
While ethnographic analyses of sleep indeed are limited, a
well-established body of literature on the anthropology of
dreaming is available and will be further strengthened in the
near future with several major publications on their way.
Within the anthropology of dreaming (read: dream sharing),
37. This lack of studies and empirical material has already been ob-
served and addressed by Schnepel in 2005 (Schnepel 2005). However,
more studies are available on the night and the history of sleep than the
authors mention, e.g., the La nuit volume (no. 9, 2002) of Le portique:
revue de philosophie et de sciences humaines (http://leportique.revues.org/
index101.html) and Dibie (2000).
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
similar questions, both theoretical and methodological in na-
ture, as the authors of this paper pose here have been raised
and addressed. Questions like how to transcend the dichot-
omy of private-public life; how to work ethnographically with
phenomena such as dreams and visions that, according to a
Euroamerican point of view, are interpreted as experiences
from individual minds; and, thus, how to transcend the idea
that sleeping and dreaming are periods of social inactivity
have all been addressed within the anthropology of dreaming.
Also, the methodological question of how to access as eth-
nographer these intimate spheres and questions regarding the
epistemology of dreaming and visions, as well as bodily ex-
perience and emotion, are crucial issues within the anthro-
pology of dreaming (e.g., Ewing 1990; Goulet 1994; Graham
1994, 1995, 2000; Guédon 1994; Heijnen 2005a, 2005b, 2006,
2009; Hering 1947; Ingold 2000; Kracke 1987, 2003; Lohmann
2003; Mageo 2003; Parman 1991; Reynolds 1992; Schnepel
2001; Tedlock 1987a; Vitebsky 2007; Willerslev 2004). Even
though the paper “Anthropology of the Night” mentions sev-
eral theoretical contributions and ethnographic examples
from the anthropology of dreaming, the authors could have
been more ambitious in their objective by finding inspiration
in the theoretical and methodological developments within
this major (sub)field.
The objective of the authors to develop a cross-disciplinary
approach toward the night, bringing together the disciplines
of psychophysiology and anthropology, is challenging and
might generate new ways of understanding as well as new
contributions to general anthropological theory. Again de-
parting from the anthropology of dreaming, I suggest that
the dream experience itself bears the interpretive mold, con-
sisting of a mixture of cultural knowledge and personal ex-
perience that shapes the form, content, and even the meaning
of the dream. This shows perhaps best in the experiences of
those anthropologists who have studied dreams in societies
other than their own for long periods of time (Goulet 1994;
Heijnen 2005b, 2009; Perrin 1992). After a long period of
fieldwork, engaging with local conceptualization and practices
of dreaming and dream sharing, the ethnographer’s own ex-
perience of dreaming changes in content, recollection, and
meaning. Dream research within a laboratory setting often
does not recognize these cultural differences that influence
not only dream narratives but also dream content. To establish
a productive collaboration between these different ap-
proaches, each with its own scientific tradition, is one of the
biggest challenges we are faced with at the moment.
Brigitte Steger
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Cam-
bridge, Dowing College, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3
9DA, United Kingdom (bs382@cam.ac.uk). 12 XI 09
This article brings together several innovative miniature eth-
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
nographies in a variety of mainly Amerindian societies that
have consequences for wider discussion on the anthropology
of the night. Some of the ethnographies presented hint at
broader questions in the field, including the relationship be-
tween daytime and nighttime social order. A notable detail
found in a myth of the Yucuna in Colombia, Karipú Lakená,
is that the night was considered necessary to “reorganize the
world after someone’s death.” How does the observation that
the night restores social order relate to Joachim Schlör’s ob-
servation that in “comparison to the day, the [European ur-
ban] night is unstructured, less orderly, and thereby poten-
tially threatening” (Schlör 1991:61)? How do diurnal and
nocturnal social orders differ? A similar conundrum was faced
by New England preachers and theorists of the eighteenth
century. On the one hand, sleep meant the loss of rational
control, yet on the other hand, sleep also had the ability to
provide refreshment and ease to body and mind, which were
in this state “wonderfully united” (Cox 2008:56–57). Social
order can thus be both threatened and restored during or by
the night, or by sleep. What are the consequences?
A second ethnography highlights the need to question the
dichotomy between night/dark on the one hand and day/light
on the other. The excellent investigation of the perception of
the night for the Inuit in the Arctic region questions our
common assumption of the night as a period of darkness.
For the Inuit, night and darkness are dissociated: “Sometimes
darkness invades the day, sometimes the light floods the
night.” The night is characterized by a number of elements
that pertain to more or less normative frames, whether phys-
iological, social, or physical. In both the winter and the sum-
mer, sleep is put off until the early hours, and when work or
festivities require it, people stay awake for more than 24 hours.
What are the consequences for our understanding of the night
and of sleep?
The editors/authors mention the difficulties of bringing
together disciplines that rarely meet, psychophysiology and
anthropology. Indeed, the encounter is surprisingly and dis-
appointingly futile, largely because in the text the two dis-
ciplines hardly engage with each other. The compelling find-
ings in the ethnographies are poorly linked with the wider
theoretical questions asked from the outset or to earlier re-
search on sleep and the night, nor indeed do the editors
change their assumptions and theoretical conclusions when
ethnographic findings contradict them. Their assumption of
an astronomical definition of the night, that is, the period
from sunset to sunrise, is contradicted not only by the ex-
perience of the Inuit but also by the findings from the study
on the Parisian nights and others. Perhaps more problematic
is that they fail to take their own findings seriously: they write
that “for psychophysiologists, the object ‘night’ is mostly
linked to sleep” and then go on to discuss sleep, even though
the ethnographies presented clearly prove this assumption
wrong.
Even if this equation were valid, the editors do what they
criticize at the beginning: most studies of the night only take
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
841
temporal aspects into account. Thus, while the anthropolog-
ical parts of the text indeed deal with the night, other parts
explore sleep without giving an explanation of why an equa-
tion of sleep and night would be a useful assumption. Indeed,
the text confirms conclusions we drew in 2001 during a work-
shop titled “The Dark Side of Life”: “Despite the close links
between the topics, it has become evident that the research
practices of people dealing with either sleep or the night are
sometimes considerably different” (Steger and Brunt 2003a:
2). It is not apparent why only one methodology could ever
be adequate to investigate diverse questions and topics related
to the night. Moreover, although some of the ethnographies
in the text bring fresh, new insights into an understanding
of the night, the phenomenon of sleep is dealt with by ex-
ploring questions that in many cases have already been asked
and sometimes answered in a plethora of recent studies on
sleep, both in the natural sciences and medicine and in social
and cultural studies.
Despite such shortcomings, the article does bring one im-
portant point to our attention. Since the “dicentrism” in a
number of academic disciplines has now been acknowledged,
studies on both night and sleep, using different methodologies
and different perspectives, will first be necessary before de-
veloping and spreading an awareness of the nychthemeron.
As in the case of women/gender studies, which made it no
longer possible to disregard the notion of gender when study-
ing social behavior, the notion that human existence is influ-
enced by both diurnal and nocturnal conditions—as well as
liminal states in between—should no longer be ignored. Night
and day are not only temporal but also spatial notions; they
are different states and are characterized by different forms
of social order.
Pablo Wright
Departamento de Antropologı́a, Facultad de Filosofı́a y Let-
ras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Puán 450, Buenos Aires,
Argentina (pwright@filo.uba.ar). 3 XII 09
“Anthropology of the Night” is a stimulating work that ad-
dresses an ignored area of anthropological studies, that is, the
night as an object of inquiry. To do so, it develops a cross-
disciplinary approach including mainly anthropology, phys-
iology, and law. Conceptually, the paper is a breakthrough,
and it challenges anthropology’s traditional positive bias to-
ward culture, putting into dialogue also biology, ecology, and
philosophy to understand the night as an analytical unit in
which many events happen, social and biological, intertwined
in complex ways.
Phenomena such as night, sleep, dreaming, and the activ-
ities human societies undertake within these are analyzed. The
ethnographic scenario is interestingly mixed, with examples
from Inuit, Otomı́, Tezltzal, and Yucuna Amerindian peoples,
to French dancers in the Parisian night, to laboratories in
 842
which scientists investigate sleep behavior. As a new object of
intercultural inquiry, the authors present concepts and meth-
odologies for studying the night. The concept of nychthem-
eron, the 24-hour day-night cycle, is a robust framework in
which human activities are heterogeneously carried out. Our
way of sleeping, that is, the 8-hour ideal span, is a recent
cultural invention, the authors show us with historical data,
introducing a healthy sense of historical relativism to our
naturalized, capitalistically oriented practices to classify time
through abstract, homogeneous fractions. What Durkheim
and Mauss taught us, that time and space are, above all, social
classifications, is skillfully applied in this work. Curiously,
Irving Hallowell’s important contribution in this regard
(1955) is missing from their references.
Because ontology for us anthropologists is not an abstract
existential theory but a concrete, culturally bound notion of
what reality (and/or “the world”) is as a social fact, this work
is excellent for both defining and portraying empirical cases
of the night as an ontological realm in itself. The concept that
deals with its specific traits is “nocturnity,” which “refers to
transformations, induced by internal and external physical
changes experienced by the human body.” The paper enlight-
ens us with examples of these nocturnal “transformations.”
We witness here pilgrimages of bodies, ideas, and labor in
and out of social norms, onto the cultural horizons in which
they are meaningful. A strong contribution of this work is
that it sensitizes our analytical eye to this particular (i.e.,
nocturnal) social life that has its proper place and discourse.
In short, it seems that the night has its own Foucauldian
episteme: its limits located in that dynamic threshold that
separates it from the day. This paper gives us conceptual and
empirical tools to explore what is going on in our own eth-
nographic nights—and days, too, for comparison. The au-
thors mention that in different Amerindian societies there are
nocturnal ontologies as well as nocturnal knowledge: wisdom,
traditions, and words that can only be performed and/or
transmitted during the night. They represent knowledge, wo-
ven through the thread of metaphor and metonymy, that we
have to assess very seriously, when trying to understand these
social facts as symbolic action. Not only that, but in the night,
the body changes; so there are nocturnal bodies that have
different properties from their daylight counterparts. The
Otomi theory of nocturnal bodies is important not only as
an ethnographic case but also as a more general, comparative
philosophical trope. Yes, for them, during the night the body
“is totally open to the world,” which implies that it could be
“dismembered, sacrificed, and put together again.” Also, per-
ceptions, consciousness, and feelings have a different texture.
For the Tzeltal, night words differ in power, value, and wis-
dom from the daylight ones. On the other hand, dancers in
the Parisian night go through a process of bodily transfor-
mation to become “night beings” whose bodies symbolically
condense late capitalist views of city life, joy, erotism, and
leisure time.
To sum up, this paper urges us to think, as the Argentine
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
Toba people do (see Wright 2008), that night is a true cos-
mological realm “built” through a time-space duration. It is
also a social space for the fabrication of culture and society,
a place within which our consciousness, bodies, and actions
may change ontologically. I concur with the authors that more
studies on a “metaphysics of frontiers” between day and night
are needed, in which ritual procedures, operations on the
body, substances, and vital rhythms could show universal as
well as specific features. Field methodologies are to be crea-
tively designed to deal with nocturnal occurrences, a fact little
addressed by anthropologists. From now on, the night seems
to have reached a thematic visibility that I highly welcome,
for we urgently need more empirical and conceptual works
to explore this fascinating, yet neglected, side of our lives as
sociobiological beings.
Reply
We are particularly grateful to the readers who kindly agreed
to review this text, for enriching their commentaries with
bibliographical information, for pointing at directions yet
unexplored, and for clarifying, after their own experience,
concepts that we had failed to make sufficiently explicit. It is
a great pleasure to have one’s work discussed by researchers
of such diverse competences, with Racine and Foucault join-
ing in to guide us in our nocturnal venture.
A recurrent remark concerns the difficulty of cross-disci-
pline dialogue—at the beginning of our project, between eth-
nology and ethnolinguistics, and later with economy, urban
anthropology, psychophysiology of sleep, and law history. We
truly believe that, the more branches of learning that make
night their research object, each one using its own methods,
the better chance we will have of arriving at an efficient cross-
discipline. That difficulty will not be overcome until this ob-
jective is concretely achieved in the field. We will return to it
farther on.
A second remark on the text shared by many of our readers
concerns the diversity of the studies involved (whether in
progress or already completed) and the heterogeneity of the
materials: natives’ interviews and exegeses, texts, laboratory
studies, and analyses of Amerindian or Parisian rituals. We
wish to emphasize that the work presented is the result of
meetings and discussions held among our group indepen-
dently of our respective individual research. We neither could
nor would achieve a real consensus on one approach only;
the only consensus we are trying to reach is that of an in-
tegrated outlook, the only way to open the scope of our
respective disciplines. Our goal is to embrace the night, bring-
ing together law, ethnology, psychophysiology, sociology, or
history to work on one common project, yet remaining open,
like any other scientific project, to multiple approaches and
techniques of analysis.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
Regarding the obvious shortcomings of this work, of which
we have only pointed out a few, we chose to ignore the enor-
mous body of work on dreams, which have been addressed
from many perspectives and which would have led us too far
from our basic starting point: the night. We also had to cut
out from the various ethnographies in which we searched for
the night what we felt to be relevant with “nocturnity.” We
avoided making the night—whatever definition was assigned
to it in a first stage—the symmetrical opposite of the day; we
have thus exposed ourselves to being rightly criticized for
failing to envision it as part of a significant whole. Also lacking
in our landscape is memory, with the diverse yet fundamental
theories that relate it to sleep, and cultural conceptions of the
relationship between sleep and knowledge.
“Anthropology of the Night” is an abridged version of a
much larger work that had to be drastically reduced to meet
the standards of Current Anthropology. We thank the editors
for requesting from us that effort, which allowed us to present
our findings more concisely; this, however, was detrimental
to the presentation of our ethnographies, reduced to the status
of mere vignettes, although they had been based on disser-
tations or books, published or under way. In the same way,
we have left out all that pertained to the construction of sleep
frontiers (induction, retention, and resistance processes as well
as drowsiness), night frontiers (dusk, dawn, transitory peri-
ods), and dream frontiers like visions, which are regarded in
indigenous America as of the same nature as dreams. Simi-
larly, we were aware of many more publications, but having
no space to cite them all, we did not mention them.
Richard Chenhall, drawing from the paradigmatic example
of Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Malinowski 1922), un-
derlines the fact that ethnographic literature abounds in ref-
erences to the night that illustrate the difficulties faced by
researchers when forced by the context to adjust their methods
of inquiry to take into account the specifics of the interactions
between the actors and of the forms of space and time. These
are challenges for diurnal logics and understanding from
which the methodological consequences are but rarely drawn.
Chenhall reintroduces the space-time field debate in the “noc-
turnity” research, stressing that a minimalist definition, from
sunset to dawn, could only bear meager fruit, heuristically.
We only had suggested it as a first “label,” our purpose being
precisely to avoid using such a heavy term (appearing as it
does to refer to a universal need) and a definition that seems
“natural” instead of specific: this shows the importance of
further study probing the natives’ viewpoints that bring so-
lutions, each in its way, “all different, but all akin,” to con-
ceptualize the enigma of “nocturnity.” Like Pablo Wright,
Richard Chenhall rightly quotes Foucault’s Naissance de la
clinique to underline that philosophy also has a part to play
in this undertaking, along with literature or psychoanalysis.
We have ruled out this option that would entail the risk of
diluting the object at this stage of exploratory work.
The example of the siesta discussed by Michelle Daveluy,
along with her remarks on sleep deprivation and night work
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
843
with its consequences, is illustrative of what a truly holistic
approach could be, by the necessary interactions between neu-
rology of sleep, history of mental habits, work geography,
sociology of leisure time, affective psychology or even a cor-
porate perspective in the industrial world. Members of our
team at the University of Florence have indeed tackled the
theme (Salzarulo and Fagioli 1992); here, however, the pur-
pose has been to highlight “nocturnity,” avoiding binary cou-
plets such as day/night, light/darkness, sleep/awakeness, and
so on. Similarly, Daveluy rightly stresses the acoustic dimen-
sion of the night, which brings to mind some aspects scarcely
found as yet in available ethnographies, such as not merely
silence but also the analysis of the cultural perception of night
sounds and all the various prosodic and stylistic restraints on
night speech, a field to be explored in conjunction with our
colleagues in musicology and ethnolinguistics.
We readily agree with Roger Ekirch that this exploratory
work is one of many studies carried out on the night over
the past decades. If the work of historians and geographers
is only briefly mentioned, this is partly due to the composition
of our work team. Ekirch regrets that the conclusion high-
lights the difficulties of the task rather than defining new
frontiers. The omission of references could equally apply to
cognitive sciences, philosophy, or psychiatry, which have as
legitimate a claim in this debate. Answering the requirements
of historians and geographers concerning conceptual coher-
ence is more delicate: it would have meant remaining within
the boundaries of ethnology rather than taking the risks of
cross-disciplinarity. Historical research itself, however, is not
entirely beyond such criticism, in spite of its claim to encom-
pass all the areas of social life. Thus, in Geschichte der Nacht
(History of the night) Walter Seitter gives a detailed account
of both pagan and Christian beliefs about night, from the
ancient cult of the dead to the carnivals of demonic exorcisms
and sorcerers’ sabbaths, embracing the fields of poetry, mys-
ticism, and fine arts (Seitter 1999). We could, of course, have
reproduced this encyclopedic collection of data, had we cho-
sen to limit ourselves to the field of ethnology sensu stricto.
We confirm that the difficulties encountered in the dis-
cussions have provided us with directions for further reflec-
tions on our subject and that we, too, see the need for “fresh
fieldwork,” “imaginative concepts” and “innovative meth-
odologies,” as we point out problems, sometimes merely tech-
nical, like the use of actimeters to measure the sleeping phases
of the Trumai or the Yucuna Indians. Because our research
in this project relies on perspectives already examined in dif-
ferent disciplines, considerable effort was necessary to har-
monize individual studies that had been going in opposite
directions. It should also be kept in mind that each contrib-
utor had been engaged at the start of the project in his or
her own course of study and that “Anthropology of the Night”
has come to upset everyone’s routine, and that it was therefore
bound to bear the mark of these particular interests, perhaps
to the detriment of a more cogent collective reflection. This
being said, we must agree with the concern about “disjointed
 844
topics”: the challenge was precisely to take the concept of
anthropology sensu lato, considering that each society deserves
to be studied by a combination of disciplines: if we call on
psychophysiologists, it is because historians accounted for the
cultural template of sleeping habits. For instance, we wanted
to know the link, if any, between the polyphasic sleeping
culture of the Trumai and the episodes of the psychophysi-
ologist analysis of sleep. At the same time, we needed to show
that no activity in the world escapes the problem of “noc-
turnity.”
In this connection, Katie Glaskin is right in emphasizing
the “considerable conceptual work” involved in a cross-
disciplinary approach: it is an arduous task to bring together,
to reconcile, in the present state of knowledge, the universal
and the cultural factors; we are facing here one of the major
challenges of general anthropology. She underlines, as we did,
that the first concern of psychophysiologists is, unsurprisingly,
that of sleep, whereas our scope encompasses the night. We
are well aware of the need to find new ways to dialogue in
that field. Indeed, as Katie Glaskin’s discussion suggests, all
future intercultural research must continue to rest on the base
night/sleep/dreams (Worthman and Melby 2002). Our am-
bition has been also to tackle phenomena that may not fall
into this frame: it is all the more important to venture into
the “comparative anthropology” called for by our commen-
tator, which is exactly our objective.
Adrienne Heijnen recalls bibliographical references most
useful for the discussion and insists in her commentary on
the need to further research the night/day dialectics by ex-
tending the field of analysis beyond the mere activities be-
longing to either. She also points out an aporia that had
escaped our attention: the public/private dichotomy. This calls
for inquiries taking into account the local informants’ genre
problematics, the question of specific versus shared knowl-
edge, as well as the way it is rearranged and instrumentalized
on moving from day to night. Moreover, she questions the
capacity of ethnography to provide satisfactory answers and
inspiring models of analysis to address the issue of dreams
and visions, one of the most enigmatic aspects of “nocturnity,”
on which the findings of neuroscience are already quite prom-
ising for anthropology, particularly regarding the conscious/
unconscious dichotomy and its various “fictions” (Naccache
2006). Finally, she pinpoints a revolving question that was
raised from the start by our neurophysiologist colleagues and
has remained with us throughout our work—how to intro-
duce cultural difference as a variable in studies on sleep and
dreaming and to do it outside of a hospital setting. We may
all agree that this has been the main issue that has led us to
sit around the same table and consider undertaking this pro-
ject.
Brigitte Steger approaches the debate from a similar per-
spective. She rightly points to what we indicated more than
once: that the process of integrating all those disciplines has
only just begun—and that our ethnographic examples clearly
demonstrate the inadequacy of an astronomical definition of
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
the night, an inadequacy that the paper attempts to correct.
She also explains why, lacking actual cross-disciplinary co-
operation—that is, bringing together to work on the field
researchers from the different disciplines involved—we can
only claim an initial result, assuming it should be granted us:
to have everyone concerned agree that, within their own dis-
ciplines and using their specific research practices, “nocturn-
ity” can also be their object. At this stage, there are those who
want measurements or narratives, some who focus on the
language, others who focus on behaviors, some who favor
what is shared by cultures, others who favor what is different.
We reaffirm that the psychophysiology of sleep is essential to
the development of this project, yet we question its findings
in a laboratory setting and would want to bring it to this
study. The plethora of studies on sleep to which Steger refers
do not include, to our knowledge, any study that has brought
together on the same project anthropologists, physicians, and
neurophysiologists. The list of requirements to research the
night, which makes Schnepel declare that “there is no dis-
tinctive anthropology of the night,” concerns only ethnology.
Pablo Wright’s commentary is particularly inspiring, in that
he brings out new areas to be explored inside traditional
ethnology itself, which we might have left out by focusing
only on cross-discipline interactions. We concur with him to
consider the night as a “true cosmological realm,” and that
we still have much to learn about the “metaphysics of fron-
tiers” as they are understood in exotic societies, especially in
this Amerindian field, whose importance Wright underlines
for the renewal of contemporary anthroplogy, particularly for
the construction of local ontologies, and the way the concept
of person is refracted between nature and culture, day and
night, humans and animals, as attested in Amazonian per-
spectivism (Viveiros de Castro 2003). As it was found obvi-
ously impossible in this shortened report to include all the
ethnographies carried out among the team, our frustration
has led us to initiate a series of works dealing, precisely, with
“nocturnity,” like an opening of doors as yet hardly ajar.
—Jacques Galinier, Aurore Monod Becquelin,
and Guy Bordin
References Cited
Alvarez, A. 1995. Night: night life, night language, sleep and dreams.
New York: Norton.
Aristotle. 2002. Physique, vol. 1, bks. 1–4. Paris: Belles Lettres.
Artemidorus of Ephesus. 1975. La clef des songes. Translated from
the Greek Oneirocriticon and annotated by A. J. Festugière. Paris:
Vrin.
Aschoff, J. 1965. Circadian rhythms in man. Science 148:1427–1432.
Aschoff, J., U. Gerecke, and R. Wever. 1967. Desynchronization of
human circadian rhythms. Japanese Journal of Physiology 17(4):
450–457.
Basso, E. 1985. A musical view of the universe: Kalapalo myth and
ritual performances. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bastide, R. 1972. Le rêve, la transe et la folie. Paris: Flammarion.
Bekinschtein, T. A., A. Negro, A. P. Goldin, M. P. Fernandez, S.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
Rosenbaum, and D. A. Golombek. 2004. Seasonality in a Mapuche
native population. Biological Rhythm Research 35(1–2):145–152.
Bogoslovskii, M., and M. Letter. 1974. Polar insomnia on the Ant-
arctic continent. Lancet 1:503–504.
Bohannon, P. 1953. Concepts of time among the Tiv of Nigeria.
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9:251–262. [RE]
Bohannon, P., and L. Bohannon. 1958. Three source notebooks in Tiv
ethnography. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. [RE]
Borbély, A. A. 1982. A two-process model of sleep regulation. Human
Neurobiology 1:195–204.
Bordin, G. 2002. La nuit inuit: éléments de réflexion. Études/Inuit/
Studies 26(1):45–70.
———. 2005a. Phasages et déphasages: représentations du temps
chez les Inuit de l’Arctique oriental canadien. Globe: revue inter-
nationale d’études québécoises 8(1):99–133.
———. 2005b. Taarnirmik unnuangujjutiqanngimmat “Darkness is
not the cause of the night”: an Inuit perspective from Canadian
Eastern Arctic on the night. In Proceedings of the 14th International
Inuit Studies Conference, Calgary, Alberta, August 2004. Pp. 37–
46. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Arctic Institute of North America.
———. 2008. La nuit inuit: vécu et représentation de la nuit chez
les Inuit du nord de la Terre de Baffin (Nunavut, Arctique cana-
dien). PhD dissertation, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Dé-
fense.
———. 2009. Dream narration among Eastern Arctic Canadian In-
uit. Proceedings of the 15th International Inuit Studies Conference,
Paris, October 2006. Pp. 1–15. Paris: INALCO/CNRS. http://
www.inuitoralityconference.com.
Bourguignon, E. 1972. Dreams and altered states of consciousness
in anthropological research. In Psychological anthropology. F. L. K.
Hsu, ed. Pp. 403–434. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
Bricker, V. 1986. A grammar of Maya hieroglyphs. New Orleans: Tu-
lane University, Middle American Research Institute.
Bronfen, E. 2008. Tiefer als der Tag gedacht: eine Kulturgeschichte der
Nacht. Munich, Germany: Hanser.
Bruce, R. 1979. Lacandon dream: symbolism and interpretation. Mex-
ico City, Mexico: Ediciones Euroamericanas.
Buguet, A., J. Rivolier, and M. Jouvet. 1987. Human sleep patterns
in Antarctica. Sleep 10:374–382.
Bureau, L. 1997. Géographie de la nuit. Montreal, Quebec, Canada:
L’hexagone.
Caillois, R., and G. E. Von Grünebaum. 1967. Le rêve et les sociétés
humaines. Paris: Gallimard/NRF.
Cauquelin, A. 1977. La ville la nuit. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
Collignon, B. 2006. Knowing places: the Inuinnait, landscapes and the
environment. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: CCI.
Cox, R. 2008. The suburbs of eternity: on visionaries and miraculous
sleepers. In Worlds of sleep. L. Brunt and B. Steger, eds. Pp. 53–
103. Berlin: Frank & Timme. [BS]
Czeisler, C. A., J. S. Allan, S. H. Strogatz, J. M. Ronda, R. Sánchez,
C. D. Rı́os, W. O. Freitag, G. S. Richardson, and R. E. Kronauer.
1986. Bright light resets the human circadian pacemaker inde-
pendent of the timing of the sleep-wake cycle. Science 233:667–
671.
Czeisler, C. A., R. E. Kronauer, J. S. Allan, J. F. Duffy, M. E. Jewett,
E. N. Brown, and J. M. Ronda. 1989. Bright light induction of
strong (type 0) resetting of the human circadian pacemaker. Science
244:328–333.
Czeisler, C. A., G. S. Richardson, J. C. Zimmerman, M. C. Moore-
Ede, and E. D. Weitzman. 1981. Entrainment of human circadian
rhythms by light-dark cycles: a reassessment. Photochemistry and
Photobiology 34:239–247.
Daan, S., D. G. M. Beersma, and A. A. Borbély. 1984. Timing of
human sleep: recovery process gated by a circadian pacemaker.
American Journal of Physiology 246(2):R161–R183.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
845
Delattre, S. 2000. Les douze heures noires: la nuit à Paris au XIXe
siècle. Paris: Albin Michel.
Deleuil, J.-M. 1994. Lyon la nuit: lieux, pratiques et images. Lyon,
France: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.
Delon, M., and D. Baruch. 1999. Paris le jour, Paris la nuit. M. Delon
and D. Baruch, eds. (N.-E. Rétif de la Bretonne, Les nuits de Paris.
L. S. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, le nouveau Paris.) Paris: Fixot.
Devereux, G. 1951. Reality and dream: psychotherapy of a Plains In-
dian. New York: International Universities Press.
Diamond, A. S. 1971. Primitive law past and present. Edinburgh,
United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.
Dibie, P. 2000. Ethnologie de la chambre à coucher. Paris: Éditions
Métailie. [AH]
Dow, J. 1986a. The shaman’s touch: Otomi Indian symbolic healing.
Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
———. 1986b. Universal aspects of symbolic healing: a theoretical
synthesis. American Anthropologist 88(1):56–69.
Du Bois, C. 1961. The people of Alor: a social-psychological study of
an East Indian island. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Duffy, J. F., and D. J. Dijk. 2002. Getting through to circadian os-
cillators: why use constant routines? Journal of Biological Rhythms
17(1):4–13.
Ekirch, A. R. 2005. At day’s close: night in times past. London: Norton.
Ewing, K. P. 1990. The dream of spiritual self-initiation and the
organization of self-representations among Pakistani Sufis. Amer-
ican Ethnologist 17(1):56–74. [AH]
Feinberg, I. 1974. Changes in sleep cycle patterns with age. Journal
of Psychiatric Research 10:283–306.
Fontaine, L. 2008. Récits des Indiens Yucuna d’Amazonie colombienne:
texte bilingue. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Foucault, M. 1989. The birth of the clinic. London: Routledge. [RC]
Fourmaux, F. 2001. Les Filles des Folies: ethnologie d’un music-hall
parisien: usages du corps dans un espace de prodigalité. PhD thesis,
Université de Paris X Nanterre.
Freud, S. 1900. The interpretation of dreams, vol. 4. Standard edition.
London: Imago.
Galinier, J. 2004 (1997). The world below: body and cosmos in Otomi
Indian ritual. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. English trans.
of La moitié du monde: corps et cosmos dans le rituel des Indiens
Otomi. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Gell, A. 1975. Metamorphosis of the cassowaries. London: Berg. [RC]
Glaskin, K. 2005. Innovation and ancestral revelation: the case of
dreams. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(2):297–
314. [KG]
Glowczewski, B. 1999. Les rêveurs du désert: peuple warlpiri
d’Australie. Paris: Actes Sud.
Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York:
Anchor, Doubleday.
Goulet, J.-G. 1994. Dreams and visions in other life-worlds. In Being
changed by cross-cultural encounters: the anthropology of extraor-
dinary experiences. D. E. Young and J.-G. Goulet, eds. Pp. 16–38.
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview. [AH]
Graham, L. R. 1986. Three modes of Shavante vocal expression:
wailing, collective singing, and political oratory. In Native South
American discourse. J. Sherzer and G. Urban, eds. Pp. 83–118.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
———. 1994. Dialogic dreams: creative selves coming into life in
the flow of time. American Ethnologist 21(4):723–745.
———. 1995. Performing dreams: discourses of immortality among
the Xavante of central Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press.
———. 2000. Dreams. Linguistic Anthropology 9(1–2):61–64. [AH]
Guédon, M. F. 1994. Dene ways and the ethnographer’s culture. In
Being changed by cross-cultural encounters: the anthropology of ex-
traordinary experience. D. E. Young and J.-G. Goulet, eds. Pp. 39–
70. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview. [AH]
 846
Guinzburg, C. 1989. Storia notturna: una decifracione del Sabba. To-
rino, Italy: Einaudi.
Guiteras-Holmes, C. 1965. Los peligros del alma: visión del mundo de
un tzotzil. Mexico City, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Gwiazdzinski, L. 2002. La ville 24 heures sur 24. La Tour d’Aigues,
France: Éditions de l’Aube.
———. 2005. La nuit, dernière frontière de la ville. La Tour d’Aigues,
France: Éditions de l’Aube.
Hallowell, A. I. 1955. Culture and experience. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press. [PW]
Haskell, E. H., J. W. Palca, J. M. Walker, R. J. Berger, and H. C.
Heller. 1978. The influence of effects of ambient temperature on
electrophysiological sleep in humans. Sleep Research 7:169.
———. 1981. Metabolism and thermoregulation during stages of
sleep in humans exposed to heat and cold. Journal of Applied
Physiology 51:948–954.
Heijnen, A. 2005a. Dream sharing in Iceland. PhD thesis, Faculty of
Humanities, University of Aarhus, Denmark. [AH]
———. 2005b. Dreams, darkness and hidden spheres: exploring the
anthropology of the night in Icelandic society. In “When darkness
comes . . .”: steps towards an anthropology of the night. B. Schnepel
and E. Ben-Ari, eds. Special issue, Paideuma 51:193–207. [KG,
AH]
———. 2006. Drømme (Dreams). Jordens Folk 2:3–6. [AH]
———. 2009. What dreams are made of. Informanten Spring:10–15.
[AH]
Herdt, G. 1987. Selfhood and discourse in Sambaia dreamsharing.
In Dreaming: anthropological and psychological interpretations. B.
Tedlock, ed. Pp. 55–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hering, J. 1947. Concerning image, idea, and dream: phenomeno-
logical notes in connection with Jean Paul Sartre’s book
L’imaginaire. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8(2):188–
205. [AH]
Ingold, T. 2000. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood,
dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. [AH]
Itier, C. 2004. La littérature orale quechua de la région de Cuzco-Pérou.
Paris: Karthala.
Jacopin, P. Y. 1977. Habitat et territoire Yucuna. Journal de la Société
des Américanistes 61:109–140.
———. 1988. On the syntactic structure of myth, or the Yukuna
invention of speech. Cultural Anthropology 3(2):131–158.
Jarvin, M. 1999. Regards anthropologiques sur les bars de nuit: espaces
et sociabilités. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Johnson, N., and J. M. Mandler. 1980. A tale of two structures:
underlying and surface forms in stories. Poetics 9:5–86.
Jouvet, M. 1992. Le sommeil et le rêve. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Jouvet, M., and M. Gessain. 1997. Le grenier des rêves: essai d’onirologie
diachronique. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Kant, E. 1993. Métaphysique des mæurs. Paris: Vrin.
Karacan, I., J. I. Thornby, A. M. Anch, R. L. Williams, and H. M.
Perkins. 1978. Effects of high ambient temperature on sleep in
young men. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine 49:855–
860.
Keitman, N. 1963. Sleep and wakefulness. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press.
Kintsch, W., and T. A. Van Dijk. 1975. Comment on se rappelle et
on résume des histoires. Langages 40:98–116.
Köhler, U. 1995 (1977). Chonbilal ch’ulelal: alma vendida. Mexico
City, Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Kolb, S., and S. Law, eds. 2001. Dreams and dream interpretation.
Inuit Perspectives on the 20th Century Series, vol. 3. Iqaluit, Nu-
navut, Canada: Nunavut Arctic College.
Kracke, W. H. 1979. Dreaming in Kagwahiv: dream beliefs and their
psychic uses in an Amazonian culture. Psychoanalytic Study of
Society 8:119–171.
———. 1987. Myths in dreams, thought in images: an Amazonian
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 6, December 2010
contribution to the psychoanalytic theory of primary process. In
Dreaming: psychological and anthropological interpretations. B. Ted-
lock, ed. Pp. 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2003. Beyond the mythologies: a shape of dreaming. In
Dream travelers: sleep experiences and culture in the western Pacific.
R. I. Lohmann, ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [AH]
Lallemant, M. 2003. Temps, travail et modes de vie. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.
Laughlin, R. M. 1966. Oficio de tinieblas: como el Zinacanteco adi-
vina sus sueños. In Los Zinacantecos. E. Z. Vogt, ed. Pp. 396–413.
Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Nacional Indigenista.
———. 1976. Of wonders wild and new: dreams from Zinacantan.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Laugrand, F. 2001. Des humains, des ancêtres et des esprits: ambiguı̈té
et hétéronomie du rêve chez les aı̂nés inuit de l’Arctique canadien.
Études/Inuit/Studies 25(1–2):73–100.
Lavie, P. 2001. Sleep-wake as a biological rhythm. Annual Review of
Psychology 52:277–303.
Le Roy Ladurie, E. 1975. Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324.
Paris: Gallimard.
Libert, J. P., V. Bach, L. C. Johnson, J. Ehrhart, G. Wittersheim, and
D. Keller. 1991. Relative and combined effects of heat and noise
exposure on sleep in humans. Sleep 14:24–31.
Lohmann, R. I., ed. 2003. Dream travelers: sleep experiences and culture
in the western Pacific. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [KG, AH]
Mageo, J. M. 2003. Dreaming and the self: new perspectives on sub-
jectivity, identity, and emotion. New York: State University of New
York Press. [AH]
Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the western Pacific. Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland.
Martin du Pan, R. 1974. Some applications of our knowledge of the
evolution of circadian rhythm in infants. In Chronobiology. L. E.
Schevening, G. F. Halberg, and J. E. Pauly, eds. Pp. 342–347. Tokyo:
Igaku Shan.
Ménager, D. 2005. La renaissance et la nuit. Paris: Droz.
Menger, P.-M. 1994. Étre artiste par intermittence: la flexibilité du
travail et le risque professionnel dans les arts du spectacle. Travail
et Emploi 60:4–22.
Middleton, B., J. Arendt, and B. M. Stone. 1996. Human circadian
rhythms in constant dim light (8 lux) with knowledge of clock
time. Journal of Sleep Research 5:69–76.
Mignot, E., and M. Tafti. 1998. Molecular genetics, circadian rhythms
and sleep. In Le sommeil normal et pathologique. M. Billiard, ed.
Pp. 66–85. Paris: Masson.
Monod Becquelin, A. 1975. Les aventures de soleil et lune et autres
mythes trumai. Paris: Selaf.
Monod Becquelin, A., R. Guirardello, and E. de Vienne. 2008. Work-
ing together: interface between researchers and the native people
in the Trumai case. In A world of many voices: lessons from doc-
umented endangered languages. D. Harrison, A. Dywer, and D.
Rood, eds. Pp. 43–66. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Moore-Ede, M. 1993. The twenty-four-hour society: understanding hu-
man limits in a world that never stops. Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley.
Moreux, B. 1967. La nuit, l’ombre et la mort chez Homère. Phoenix
21(4):237–272.
Mothré, E. 2006. Être ou ne pas être . . . “sous le regard des ancêtres”:
les ressorts dramatiques de l’existence du corps chez les Indiens
tzeltal et tzotzil des Hautes-Terres chiapanèques (sud du Mexique).
MA thesis, Université de Paris X Nanterre.
Musharbash, Y. 2008. Yuendumu everyday: contemporary life in remote
Aboriginal Australia. Canberra, Australia: Aboriginal Studies. [RC,
KG]
Muzet, A., J. P. Libert, and V. Candas. 1984. Ambient temperature
and human sleep. Experientia 40:425–429.
Galinier et al. Anthropology of the Night
Naccache, L. 2006. Le nouvel inconscient: Freud, Christophe Colomb
des neurosciences. Paris: Odile Jacob.
O’Nell, C. W. 1976. Dreams, culture and the individual. San Francisco:
Chandler & Sharp.
Orobitg, C. G. 1998. Les Pumé et leurs rêves: étude d’un groupe indien
des plaines du Vénézuela. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Éditions des
Archives Contemporaines.
Pace-Schott, E. F., M. Solms, M. Blagrove, and S. Harnard, eds. 2003.
Sleep and dreaming: scientific advances and considerations. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press. [KG]
Parman, S. 1991. Dream and culture: an anthropological study of the
Western intellectual tradition. New York: Praeger. [AH]
Perrin, M. 1992. Les praticiens du rêve. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.
Plutarch. 1937. In Les vies des hommes illustres, 2 vols. Paris: Galli-
mard.
Poirier, S. 1994. Rêver la culture. Anthropologie et Sociétés 18(2):5–
11.
Posner, R. A. 1981. The economics of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Radin, P. 1969. The trickster: study in American Indian mythology.
New York: Greenwood.
Reynolds, P. 1992. Dreams and the constitution of Self among the
Zezuru. In Dreaming, religion and society in Africa. M. C. Jedrej
and R. Shaw, eds. Pp. 21–36. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. [AH]
Róheim, G. 1979 (1952). The gates of the dream. New York: Inter-
national Universities Press.
Roseman, M. 1991. Healing sounds from the Malaysian rainforest:
Temiar music and medicine. Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Ross, Sir John. 1835. Relation du second voyage fait à la recherche
d’un passage au nord-ouest, et de sa résidence dans les régions arc-
tiques pendant les années 1829 à 1833: contenant le rapport du
capitaine Sir James Clarck Ross, et les observations relatives à la
découverte du pôle nord. Ouvrage traduit sous les yeux de l’auteur
par A. J. B. Defauconpret. Paris: Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour et
Lowell.
Roullet, J. 1999. Anthropologie de la nuit: état des lieux dans les hautes
terres maya. MA thesis, Université Paris X Nanterre.
Salzarulo, P., and L. Fagioli. 1992. Sleep-wake rhythms and sleep
structure in the first year of life. In Why we nap. C. Stampi, ed.
Pp. 29–38. Boston: Birkhauser.
Schackt, J. 1994. Nacimiento Yucuna: reconstructive ethnography in
Amazonia. PhD dissertation, Department and Museum of An-
thropology, Universitetet i Oslo.
Schauer, S. 1975. Paragraphs in Yucuna discourse. Bogotá, Colombia:
Instituto Lingüı́stico de Verano and Ministerio de Gobierno.
Schlör, J. 1991. Nachts in der großen Stadt: Paris, Berlin, London,
1840–1930. Munich, Germany: Artemis & Winkler. [English trans.:
Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London, 1840–1930. London:
Reaktion, 1998.]
Schnepel, B. 2001. Einleitung: kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven
in der Traumforschung. In Hundert Jahre “Die Traumdeutung”:
kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven in der Traumforschung. B.
Schnepel, ed. Pp. 7–31. Cologne: Köppe. [AH]
———. 2005. Introduction. In “When darkness comes . . .”: steps
towards an anthropology of the night. B. Schnepel and E. Ben-Ari,
eds. Special issue, Paideuma 51:153–164. [AH]
Schnepel, B., and E. Ben-Ari, eds. 2005. “When darkness comes . . .”:
steps towards an anthropology of the night. Special issue, Paideuma
51:153–261.
Seitter, W. 1999. Geschichte der Nacht. Berlin: Philo.
Shulman, D., and G. Stroumsa, eds. 1999. Dream cultures: explorations
in the comparative history of dreaming. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
This content downloaded from 194.214.29.29 on Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:26:59 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
847
Steel, G. D., M. Callaway, P. Suedfeld, and L. Palinkas. 1995. Human
sleep-wake cycles in the high Arctic: effects of unusual photope-
riodicity in a natural setting. Biological Rhythm Research 26:582–
592.
Steger, B. 2004. (Keine) Zeit zum Schlafen? kulturhistorische und
sozialanthropologische Erkundungen japanischer Schlafgewohn-
heiten. Munich, Germany: Lit-Verl.
Steger, B., and L. Brunt. 2003a. “Introduction: into the night and
the world of sleep.” In Night-time and sleep in Asia and the West:
exploring the dark side of life. B. Steger and L. Brunt, eds. Pp. 1–
23. London: Routledge. [KG, BS]
———, eds. 2003b. Night-time and sleep in Asia and the West: ex-
ploring the dark side of life. London: Routledge.
Strauss, C., and N. Quinn. 1997. A cognitive theory of cultural mean-
ing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [KG]
Tedlock, B. 1987a. Dreaming and dream research. In Dreaming: an-
thropological and psychological interpretations. B. Tedlock, ed. Pp.
1–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1987b. Zuni and Quiché dream sharing and interpreting,
dreaming. In Dreaming: anthropological and psychological interpre-
tations. B. Tedlock, ed. Pp. 105–131. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Therrien, M. 1995. Corps sain, corps malade chez les Inuit: une
tension entre l’intérieur et l’extérieur: entretiens avec Taamusi Qu-
maq. Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 25(1):71–84.
Toselli, M., P. Farneti, and P. Salzarulo. 1998. Maternal representation
and care of infant sleep. Early Development and Parenting 7:73–
78.
Usui, A., I. Obinata, Y. Ishizuka, T. Okado, H. Fukuzawa, and S.
Kanba. 2000. Seasonal changes in human sleep-wake rhythm in
Antarctica and Japan. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 54:361–
362.
Van der Hammen, M. C. 1991. El manejo del mundo. Bogotá, Co-
lombia: Tropenbos.
Verdon, J. 1994. La nuit au Moyen Âge. Paris: Perrin.
Villa Rojas, A. 1968. Los conceptos de espacio y tiempo entre los
grupos mayances contemporáneos. In Tiempo y realidad en el pen-
samiento Maya. M. León-Portilla, ed. Pp. 119–167. Mexico City,
Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autònoma de México.
Vitebsky, P. 2005. Reindeer people: living with animals and spirits in
Siberia. London: Harper Perennial. [AH]
Viveiros de Castro, E. 2003. A inconstância da alma selvagem. São
Paulo, Brazil: Cosac & Naify.
von Jhering, R. 1880–1882. L’esprit du droit romain dans les diverses
phases de son développement. Paris: A. Marescqaı̂né.
Wehr, T. A. 1991. The durations of human melatonin secretion and
sleep respond to changes in daylength (photoperiod). Journal of
Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 73:1276–1280.
———. 1996. A “clock for all seasons” in the human brain. Progress
in Brain Research 111:321–342.
Willerslev, R. 2004. Spirits as “ready to hand”: a phenomenological
analysis of Yukaghir spiritual knowledge and dreaming. Anthro-
pological Theory 4(4):395–418. [AH]
Williams, S. 2005. Sleep and society: ventures into the unknown. Lon-
don: Routledge. [RC]
Williams, S. J., and N. Crossley. 2008. Introduction: sleeping bodies.
Body and Society 14(4):1–13. [RC, KG]
Worthman, C. M., and M. K. Melby. 2002. Toward a comparative
developmental ecology of human sleep. Adolescent sleep patterns:
biological, social, and psychological influences. M. A. Carskadon, ed.
Pp. 69–117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, P. 2008. Ser-en-el-sueño: crónicas de historia y vida toba.
Buenos Aires: Biblos-Culturalia. [PW]