Ortner’s early work focused on Sherpa symbolism. Influenced
by Geertz’s ideas, Ortner argued that symbolic systems serve as
“a guide, or program, or plan for human action in relation to
certain irreducible and recurrent themes or problems of the human condition as conceptualized in particular cultures”
(1973b:49–50). Geertz had argued that symbolic systems were simultaneously “models of” social existence at a given historical
moment and also “models for” appropriate action (Ortner
1975:134–135). In her article “Sherpa Purity,” Ortner argued that
the array of polluting items and behaviors in Sherpa culture
(dirt, sexual intercourse, adultery, birth, illness, death, “bad
smells” and “dirty food,” crowds, and lower castes, to list a
few)—reflects a larger, more coherent symbolic system
(1973b:50–58). Humans are fallen gods, the Sherpas believe; humanity’s initial purity was destroyed by contamination with polluting things. The Sherpa symbolic system is delineated by three
conceptual nodes—“spiritual,” “physical,” and “demonic”—
represented by gods, domestic animals, and demons. The Sherpa
symbolic strategy is to avoid animal-like or demonlike things
and behaviors. Since the gods are “totally incorporeal, wholly
spiritual, and wholly blissful” (Ortner 1973b:58), the search for
purity requires the rejection of the physical, the earthy, and the
demonic. Therefore all human excretions—feces, urine, semen,
blood, mucus—are polluting because they are animal-like, except for tears, which are only shed by humans. Rather than a reflection of social order as Durkheim (chapter 4) or Douglas
(chapter 20) argue or of deep structures as Lévi-Strauss (chapter
17) might contend, Ortner views “a system of symbols . . . as encoding a program for action vis-à-vis certain problems of the human condition” (1973b:55). In Sherpa culture a central paradox
is the fact of bodily existence and the incorporeity of divinity:
humans have bodies, gods do not, so how can a human become
godlike? The answer, Ortner argues, is provided by the symbolic
system: avoid natural and polluting things. Thus the Sherpa
symbolic system is both a “model of” a specific conception of reality and a “model for” human action.
In the same volume of American Anthropologist, Ortner
(1973a) published another article, a programmatic overview of
“key symbols”—phrases, behaviors, signs, or entire events that
seem pivotal for understanding another culture. Ortner notes
that anthropologists distinguish key symbols from other, less
fundamental symbols in several ways. Informants may state that
the symbol is important, expressing interest in or avoiding it.
The symbol may occur in different circumstances or be surrounded by elaborated explanations, cultural practices, or prohibitions. A society may have multiple key symbols. A partial list
of American key symbols might include the American flag, the
Statue of Liberty, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., the
“rags-to-riches” story, the family home, and so on. One could
distinguish these from “non-key” symbols—a STOP sign or the
cartoon convention of a lightbulb over someone’s head signifying an idea, for example—because these latter symbols do not
provide a profound entry into the heart of American culture. An
account of the significance of Martin Luther King Jr., for example, requires a depth of explanation (e.g., regarding the history
of slavery and discrimination, the civil rights struggle, violence
in the United States, and the tragedy of martyrdom) that the
STOP sign does not.
Key symbols can be organized along a continuum between
summarizing symbols and elaborating symbols. Summarizing symbols bring together disparate meanings in “an emotionally powerful and relatively undifferentiated way” (Ortner 1973a:1339).
Elaborating symbols sort out “complex and undifferentiated feelings and ideas, making them comprehensible to oneself, communicable to others, and translatable into orderly action” (Ortner
1973a:1340). Thus, if the American flag, as a summarizing symbol,
brings together “a conglomerate of ideas” (Ortner 1973a:1340)
about patriotism, democracy, freedom, and national superiority,
then the Horatio Alger “rags-to-riches” story serves as an elaborating symbol, outlining a course of action—energetic, hard work
to gain wealth and power and thus climb from one’s original sta-
tus. Elaborating symbols may be root metaphors or key scenarios.
Root metaphors—life is a race, society is like an organism, and so
on—serve “to sort out experience, to place it in cultural categories,
and to help us think about how it all hangs together” (Ortner
1973a:1341). Key scenarios “both formulate appropriate goals and
suggest effective action for achieving them; which formulate, in
other words, key cultural strategies” (Ortner 1973a:1341).
“Sherpa Purity” and “On Key Symbols” are very different
articles, and yet they overlap at an important point: in both articles, Ortner views symbolic systems as the basis for action. Symbols are not reflections of deep structures or social orders but
provide statements about and models for cultural actions. Ortner is interested in how key scenarios provide a rationale and
route for cultural behavior. Her explanations stay very close to
the action; not surprisingly, Ortner will become a sympathetic
(though not uncritical) advocate of a theory of practice, drawing
on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu (see chapter 23).
These articles are also relevant to Ortner’s early feminist anthropological writings. For example, in “Sherpa Purity” she discusses the sources of pollution and they are generally linked to
two domains—nature and women. The natural realm is polluting, which, Ortner observes, makes sense in Sherpa culture as
the physical is rejected in the search for purity. But the female
realm is also polluting. Menstruation and childbirth are polluting. Sexual intercourse is polluting, although it “weakens” men
more than women. If sexual intercourse is polluting, sex between Sherpas and lower caste Nepalis is even more polluting,
but it is more contaminating for a Sherpa woman to have sex
with a lower caste male than for a Sherpa man to have sex with
a lower caste woman. Although not the major theme in “Sherpa
Purity,” Ortner alludes to the gendered imbalances of purity and
pollution, an issue central to her feminist anthropology