... Hertz accepts that there is a slight physiological advantage of the right hand, he denies that this is enough to explain the near-universal underdevelopment of the left hand, or why the right side is idealised. Dualistic thinking is so pervasive that if biological inequality did not exist, society would have had to invent it. The Nuer are an extreme example of a people who do not merely accept the natural advantage of the right hand, but elaborate it and raise it to an art. Nuer youth paralyse their left arm by pressing metal rings hard into its flesh and inflict pain upon it with the right hand for show (Evans-Pritchard, 1973: 96). This is their way of subordinating their bodies to the spiritual order, in which right symbolises the sacred and left symbolises the profane. Societies have developed diverse methods of subordinating the body to the collective moral order. The Kayapo ...

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