Abstract
Altruism is the selfless concern for the well-being of others and is regarded as an admirable quality in most, if not all, cultures. One cross-culturally important area where it appears to occur abundantly is in the context of religious and secular rituals. Many of these are rites of passage associated with major life events, including birth, marriage, retirement, and death. Others involve aspects of religious devotion. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the altruistic qualities of one example of the Mesoamerican religious festival, or cargo, system wherein lay residents of rural communities sponsor and organize celebrations of saints in the Catholic pantheon. Altruism involves self-sacrifice in terms of time, money, or other resources with no expectation or anticipation of compensation or reward. The cargo system in San Rafael Tepatlaxco, Tlaxcala, Mexico, offers residents the opportunity to engage in such self-sacrifice. However, some individuals choose not to participate in the system while others use it to gain power and prestige. A third group participates, apparently with no personal goal other than the well-being of their neighbors in mind.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cancian, F. (1965). Economics and prestige in a Maya community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Carrasco, P. (1961). The ladder system in Mesoamerica. American Anthropologist, 63, 318–334.
Cason, T. N., Saijo, T., Yamato, T., & Yokotani, K. (2004). Non-excludable public goods experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 49, 81–102.
Chick, G. (1980). Concept and behavior in a Tlaxcalan religious officeholding system. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
Chick, G. (1981). Concept and behavior in a Tlaxcalan cargo hierarchy. Ethnology, 20, 217–228.
Chick, G. (1989). Expressive and instrumental components of participation in a Tlaxcalan cargo hierarchy. In R. Bolton (Ed.), The content of culture: Constants and variants. Studies in honor of John M. Roberts (pp. 441–454). New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.
Chick, G. (1991). Acculturation and community recreation in rural Mexico. Play and Culture, 4, 185–193.
Chick, G. (2002). Cultural consonance in a Mexican festival system. Field Methods, 14, 26–45.
Chick, G. (2004). Rites of passage. In G. Cross, G. Chick, & J. W. Loy (Eds.), Encyclopedia of recreation and leisure in America (Vol. 2, pp. 210–218). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Coe, M. K., & Palmer, C. T. (2013). Cross-cultural variation in altruism: Traditional parental manipulation and ancestor–descendant conflict. In D. A. Vakoch (Ed.), Altruism in cross-Âcultural perspective. New York: Springer.
Dewalt, B. R. (1975). Changes in the cargo systems of Mesoamerica. Anthropological Quarterly, 48, 87–105.
Gibbons, J. L. (2013). Guatemalan adolescents’ reports of helping in urban and rural Mayan communities. In D. A. Vakoch (Ed.), Altruism in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Springer.
Grönlund, H. (2013). Cultural values and volunteering: A cross-cultural perspective. In D. A. Vakoch (Ed.), Altruism in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Springer.
Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1–6.
Jefferson, T. (2005, orig. 1814). To Thomas Law Poplar Forest. The letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743–1826. The moral sense. From revolution to reconstruction... and what happened afterwards. Accessed February 12, 2005, from http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl230.htm.
Komorita, S. S., & Parkes, C. D. (1995). Interpersonal relations: Mixed-motive interaction. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 183–207.
Kurzban, R., & Houser, D. (2005). Experiments investigating cooperative types in humans: A complement to evolutionary theory and simulations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 102, 1803–1807.
Nash, M. (1958). Machine age Maya: The industrialization of a Guatemalan community. New York: Free Press.
Nutini, H. G. (1984). Ritual kinship: Ideological and structural integration of the compadrazgo system in rural Tlaxcala. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nutini, H. G., & White, D. R. (1977). Community variations and network structure in the social functions of compadrazgo in rural Tlaxcala. Ethnology, 16, 353–384.
Romney, K. A., Weller, S. C., & Batchelder, W. H. (1986). Culture as consensus: A theory of culture and informant accuracy. American Anthropologist, 88(2), 313–338.
Smith, S. W., Lapinski, M. K., Bresnahan, M. J., & Smith, S. L. (2013). Conceptual aspects of altruism in cross-cultural contexts. In D. A. Vakoch (Ed.), Altruism in cross-cultural perspective. New York: Springer.
van Gennep, A. (1960). The rites of passage (M. B. Vizedom & G. B. Caffee, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1909).
Acknowledgments
 This chapter is an adaptation of Chick (2008). Altruism in animal play and human ritual. World Cultures eJournal, 16(2). It is republished in this volume with permission.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chick, G. (2013). Altruism in Human Ritual. In: Vakoch, D. (eds) Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6952-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6952-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6951-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6952-0
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)