| Chapter 1: | Myth and Theory |
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Chapter 1
MYTH AND THEORY
1.1. THE MEANING OF MYTH
The term myth is used throughout this book, and while I hold that it is a very useful term for capturing something of the importance of the range of material I am dealing with, the word is somewhat problematic. It is necessary, therefore, from the outset to be clear about what I mean by the term myth, which has been taken at different times and by different people to mean differing things.8 To avoid any confusion, I shall therefore begin via negativa and say what I do not wish my use of the term myth to imply. It is perhaps most important to stress that I am not using the term myth in the common pejorative sense of something that is not true. This understanding of myth not only fails to appreciate the wealth of academic literature on myth, but is also guilty of sustaining an ethnocentric division between true Western scientific thought and false non-Western folk reasoning (Ingold 2000, 373–419). Nor do I believe that myth is a sort of primitive therapy or something necessarily concerning supernatural beings.9 Furthermore, I would distance my understanding