In Les Tristes Tropes anthropologist Claude Leví-Strauss develops the idea that there are two types of societies: those that practice cannibalism and those that don't. While the former consume dangerous individuals (like criminals, enemies and so on), the latter react towards them in the opposite, that is to say expulsive, manner: they throw them out of the social body (into a cell). I like his metaphorical playing on orality here very much, it sheds light on the issue in a very interesting way (and it is a very Freudian move as well, of course, but that was to be expected of Leví-Strauss).
Edited by Sheik, 06 August 2015 - 01:52 PM.