HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY PART 2

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HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY PART 2
Roy Rappaport's Pigs for the Ancestors
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Neo-Evolutionism and Cultural Ecology

• A major theoretical shift occurred in American
  anthropology in the late 1940s and 1950s
• antievolutionary perspective of the Boasian
  school competes with the new and more
  sophisticated evolutionary approaches
• similarities between cultures could be explained
  by parallel adaptations to similar natural
  environments
• not all societies passed through similar stages
  of cultural development i.e. unilineal models of
  evolution were too sweeping.

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Julian Haynes Steward 1902 - 1972

• central figure in the introduction of ecological
  concepts into social and cultural anthropology
• cultural ecology
• Multilinear Evolution

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Cultural Ecology
Cultural Ecology is the study of the processes
by which a society adapts to its environment.
Its principle problem is to determine whether
these adaptations initiate internal social
transformations of evolutionary change 1968
Cross-cultural parallels in social patterns could
be explained as adaptations to similar
environments
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3 basic steps for a cultural ecological
investigation

1. Analysis of the relationship between the material
   culture and the natural resources
2. the behaviour patterns involved in the
   exploitation of a particular area by means of a
   particular technology must be analyzed
3. how behaviour patterns entailed in exploiting the
   environment affect other aspects of culture

This three step approach identifies the cultural
core the constellation of features which are
most closely related to subsistence activities
and economic arrangements
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• Cultures with similar core features belong to the
  same culture type
• culture types can be arranged into a hierarchy by
  complexity
• Stewards original ranking was family,
  multifamily and state-level societies - later
  refined into band, tribe, chiefdom, and state.

Shoshone Women with large baskets for carrying
gear and collecting wild foods, flat baskets for
preparing seeds and nuts. In the Great Basin
Desert circa 1868.
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Band ? Tribe ? Chiefdom ? Ag. State ?
Industrial State
Hallmarks of Difference
-Centralized
-Decentralized
Band -H/G -mobile
-kinship -egalitarian
Tribe -Hort./pastoralist -Complex kinship
-Headman -warfare

• Chiefdom
• Intermediate b/w tribe
• and bureaucratic govts.
• -1 (or gt1) descent group
• gains dominance
• -hierarchical ? social strata
• - 1,000s ? 10,000s

Ag. States -bureaucratic govt -dense
populations (urban) -food surpluses
-many economic roles
-writing systems
-public works (labor)
-10,000s ? Million(s)
Chief any individual who held leadership role
in a non-western, stateless society
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Materialism versus Idealism 2 opposite
philosophical approaches, underlying 2
corresponding opposed theoretical tendencies in
anthropological theory

• MATERIALISTS -- social and cultural phenomena
  analyzed broadly as natural systems and in terms
  of their material conditions
• e.g. how particular social and cultural systems
  relate to their environment i.e. how they
  transform it, extract energy from it, distribute
  the captured energy among their members,
• in this analysis, the members own mental
  concepts and ideas are treated as dependent
  variables that is, they are passive reflections
  in human consciousness of material processes, and
  not autonomous causal forces in their own right

IDEALISTS --- human cultures are shaped primarily
by processes of shared human consciousness,
ideation, and imagination processes which
cannot be reduced to purely material causes
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Marvin Harris 1927-2001
1979 Cultural Materialism The Struggle for a
Science of Culture

• culture a system of energy-transfer between
  nature and human populations (use of standard
  energy measures calories, horse-power)
• cultures viewed as systems of energy transfer and
  redistribution

• By focusing on observable, measurable phenomena,
  cultural materialism presents an etic approach

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• Basic Premise
• Cultural Materialism is "...based on the simple
  premise that human social life is a response to
  the practical problems of earthly existence..."

• that a society's mode of production (technology
  and work patterns, especially in regard to food)
  and mode of reproduction (population level and
  growth) in interaction with the natural
  environment has profound effects on sociocultural
  stability and change and thus on social
  institutions.

• A good deal of Harris' work, therefore, is
  concerned with explaining cultural systems
  (norms, ideologies, values, beliefs) and
  widespread social institutions and practices
  through the use of population, production, and
  ecological variables.

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Example Indias sacred cow

• a firmly-established culture complex of ideas
  and practices linked to Hinduism, based on the
  cultural premise of the sacred status of cattle
  as symbols of holiness
• cattle are kept and cows dominate the physical
  landscape, even in densely populated urban
  neighborhoods

Delhi's 14 million residents share the streets
with an estimated 40,000 cows
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• Respect for animal life has been a central theme
  in Hindu life.
• Some trace the cow's sacred status back to Lord
  Krishna, one of the faith's most important
  figures. He is said to have appeared 5,000 years
  ago as a cowherd, and is often described as "the
  child who protects the cows.

• Another of Krishna's holy names, Govinda, means
  "one who brings satisfaction to the cows.
• Other scriptures identify the cow as the "mother"
  of all civilization, its milk nurturing the
  population.

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Idealist interpretation
A distinctive complex of ideas and practices
which grew up and became institutionalized,
following an inner symbolic logic which
requires to be understood in (emic) cultural
terms. The practices follow from the ideas
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• cattle provide milk, butter, traction, and dung
  (fuel) but the meat is not consumed
  (inefficient use of resources, by Western
  standards)
• why is beef taboo for a Hindu, whereas in Canada
  and the U.S.A. and most of the Western world is
  it considered to be a very honorific and
  delicious food
• it is inadequate to say Hindus dont consume beef
  because their religion prohibits it.
• This is no explanation, you must also ask, why
  Hinduism has this kind of reverence for cattle
  but Islam, Judaism, and Christianity do not

Materialist Objection
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Materialist interpretation

• A cultural complex adapted to a specific
  ecological setting characterized by plow
  agriculture and vast populations
• require oxen (castrated male cattle) to draw
  plows in chronic short supply

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• Cows also convert marginally useful resources
  (garbage, odd patches of grass) into useful
  resources (milk, butter, dung)
• the ideology grew up to support the practice,
  which was ecologically necessary to sustain the
  vast population

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• Materialists place the stress on the priority of
  the material factors (functions) over the
  ideological factors.
• do not deny that an ideology of the sacred cow
  emerged and flourished
• but take the position that the ideology is the
  dependent variable (the effect), while the
  overall ecological adaptation is the independent
  variable (the cause)

• folk models usually reverse the sequence of
  causation and hence folk models are rarely
  adequate accounts of any situation

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Critique

• can we be so dismissive of the informants emic
  viewpoint if culture is rooted in values and
  meanings held by individuals?
• What does it say about individual free will and
  purpose
• oversimplification via reduction
• Is it ethnocentric?
• Postmodernists view science is itself a
  culturally determined phenomenon that is affected
  by class, race and other structural variables
• Do all food taboos have functional explanations
  are such explanations intrinsically more
  satisfying than symbolic ones

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• Symbolic or Interpretive Anthropology
• 1960s 1970s general reevaluation of cultural
  anthropology as a scientific enterprise
• From function to meaning
• from materialist theories to idealist theories
• shift toward issues of culture and interpretation
  and away from grand theories
• increased emphasis on the way in which individual
  actions creatively shape culture

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• A common Hindu and Buddhist symbol of good luck
  and success the swastika has been around for
  thousands of years.
• Its discovery at Troy and ancient Germanic sites
  revived an interest in N. America in the early
  part of the 20th century
• Like the horseshoe "lucky penny" and the heart
  with an arrow through it, in this 1907 postcard
  sold in US drugstores.
• Appropriated by the Nazis in 1920s

Coke watch fob 1925
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• Most symbolicists would agree on these two
  points
• culture is, fundamentally, a symbolic system and
  so analysis of cultural symbols provides the
  natural point of entry into a cultural universe
• If culture is symbolic then it follows that it is
  used to create and convey meanings since that is
  the purpose of symbols.

Red - romance, beauty, respect, courage,
passionate love and unity White - unity,
loyalty, reverence, humility, Yellow - strong
feelings of pure joy, gladness, happiness and
friendship
If meanings are the end products of culture then
understanding culture requires understanding the
meanings of its creators and users
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Thick Description Toward and Interpretive Theory
of Culture
The concept of culture I espouseis essentially
a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that
man is an animal suspended in webs of
significance he himself has spun, I take cultures
to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be
therefore not an experimental science in search
of law, but an interpretive one in search of
meaning. (Geertz The Interpretation of Cultures
19735)
Clifford Geertz 1926-
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Geertz Interpretive Anthropology PREMISE man
is an animal suspended in webs of significance he
himself has spun and our name for those webs is
culture CONCLUSION the analysis of it
therefore is not an experimental science in
search of law but an interpretive one in search
of meaning
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Deep Play The Balinese Cockfight
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• It is not just cocks that are fighting but men
• Cocks are masculine symbols
• The word cock is used metaphorically to mean
  bachelor, lady-killer, tough guy etc

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• The Balinese cockfight, is fundamentally a
  dramatization of status concerns.
• nothing really happens at a cockfight.

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• The conflicts, alliances, wins and losses are all
  symbolic of things that happen elsewhere.
• In the cockfight all action is symbolic.
• The real causes lie elsewhere, presumably in
  material circumstances.

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Questions

• If cultural knowledge is inherently interpretive,
  how can we invalidate the truth of an
  interpretation since there are potentially as
  many true interpretations as there are members of
  a culture?
• I.e. If ethnography is interpretation how can we
  know that interpretation is correct.
• Most of us cannot go to Bali and check the
  interpretation
• if all such claims are equally valid, then the
  most anthropology can hope for is to create a
  rich documentary of multiple interpretations,
  none denied and none privileged.
• This means that it cannot be a science since it
  cannot generalize from truth statements or tests
  the statements against empirical data the nature
  of culture precludes this

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• Geertz triggered a profound rethinking of the
  anthropological enterprise
• forced anthropologists to become aware of the
  cultural contexts they interpret and the
  ethnographic texts they create.
• He also touched off a major debate about the
  fundamental nature of anthropology
• These issues arose against a backdrop of a
  changing world and world view
• As independence movements transformed former
  colonial subjects into new national citizens,
  intergroup conflicts intensified as power was
  reconfigured and new governments exerted their
  control

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THE DECOLONIZATION DISCOURSE

• For the first time, Anthropology directly
  criticized as the handmaid of colonialism...
• assisting in the pacification of peoples
• use of ethnographic information about them in
  their own subjugation
• providing justifications for the colonial system

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1978 Orientalism

• scathing analysis of Western scholarship on the
  Middle East
• this scholarship an ideological tool of
  domination
• the West creates a simplistic stereotype of the
  Orient and subsequent scholarship studies not the
  Orient but rather reaffirms the stereotype
• the other presented as timeless, changeless,
  essentialized (in contrast to Westerners concept
  of themselves as individuals in particular
  historical contexts)
• the power relationship between the constructing
  subject and constructed object ignored

Edward Saïd 1935-2003
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• ORIENTALISM
• ignores the variability of Middle Eastern society
  and substitutes a single mentality to stand for
  the Orient
• evidence selected to fit the schema and contrary
  evidence ignored
• the construction of an Other, not like
  ourselves, but fundamentally different

• The oriental of Western scholarship is
  constructed as exotic, driven by hidebound
  Tradition, thinks differently from ourselves,
  is envious of the West, but at the same time
  incapable of shuffling off the (sometimes rather
  charming) superstitions which make his society
  backward

Subtext they need our help to attain their full
potential
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• Postmodernism
• literally means after modernity
• An extremely diffuse concept
• Provided a major focus of debate and commentary
• Postmodernists challenge modernist assertions
• believe that objective neutral knowledge of
  another culture, or any aspect of the world is
  impossible

Yao initiation rite Malawi)
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Postmodernist view of Fieldwork

• Fieldwork crucial to creation of ethnographic
  texts.
• anthropologists can never be unbiased observers
  of all that goes on in culture
• Fieldworkers must of necessity be in specific
  places at specific times.
• As a result they see some things and not others

• The particular circumstances of fieldwork, the
  political context in which it occurs, the
  investigators preferences and predilections, and
  the people met by chance or design all condition
  the understanding of society that results.

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Postmodernist view of ethnography

• Writing ethnography is the primary means by which
  anthropologists convey their interpretations of
  other cultures
• Traditionally written as if the anthropologist
  was a neutral, omniscient observer
• Postmodernists claim that because the collection
  of anthropological data is subjective, it is not
  possible to analyze the data objectively.

• Postmodernists question the validity of the
  authors interpretations over competing
  alternatives
• And examine the literary techniques used in the
  writing of ethnographies

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• Throughout the history of anthropology
  anthropologists have claimed to be authorities on
  other cultures
• this claim fortified with emphasizing the
  mystique of fieldwork and by explaining other
  cultures to their audiences through written
  descriptions.
• The hermeneutic and deconstructionist approaches
  led many anthropologists to ask a variety of
  questions about the relationship between the
  ethnographic texts and the fieldwork experience
  upon which those texts are based.

• the filtering of exotic otherness through the
  constructions of social theory is exposed as a
  literary excursion disguised as scientific
  reportage

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• Ethnographies have traditionally followed some
  basic literary conventions
• rather than saying I am writing my
  interpretation of what the natives were doing
  authors claim to represent the native point of
  view.
• But the anthropologist chooses who speaks for the
  society and in his or her translation of the
  native language decides what words are presented
  to the audience.
• Writers also claim to describe completely other
  cultures or societies, even though
  anthropologists actually know only the part of a
  culture that they personally experience

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• Ethnographic authority was characteristic of the
  Modern it was the official narrative
  explaining the significance of the antecedent
  cultures out of which the National-State cultures
  of the Modern era were composed
• Its tools monographs, museums, and research
  institutes. example, at major museums like the
  American Museum of Natural History, authoritative
  accounts of Polynesian cultures are determined by
  the curator
• The whole represented by a few artifacts
  selected by the curator, usually with an eye to
  the predominantly Western aesthetics of the
  audience...

James Clifford
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Postmodernity in Anthropology therefore has
focused on 1. an examination of the power
relations according to which the Other has been
constructed 2. examinations of the rhetorical
devices and preoccupations of ethnographers
themselves
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REFLEXIVITY

• With what to replace objectivity?
• Consensus solution reflexivity not the
  unintentional mirroring of the authors culture
  in a descriptive work about the Other, but a
  self-aware reflexivity
• detailed disclosure of the terms and conditions
  of the fieldwork
• discussion of interpersonal relationships with
  informants that led to acquisition of the
  knowledge reported
• self-analysis of authors motives, agendas, and
  self-doubts
• the knowledge presented situated in terms of how
  the ethnographer collected it

reflexive ethnographies tend to read more like
diaries or autobiographies than the conventional
ethnographic genre
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• Renato Rosaldo, Ilongot headhunting, 18831974
• Ilongot explanation of headhunting
• He says that rage, born of grief, impels him to
  kill his fellow human beings. He claims he needs
  a place to carry his anger The act of severing
  and tossing away the victims head enables him,
  he says, to vent and, he hopes, to throw away the
  anger of his bereavement... To him grief, rage,
  and headhunting go together in a self-evident
  manner.

October 1981 Michelle loses footing on steep
trail, falls to her death...
LUZON, PHILIPPINES
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Immediately on finding her body I became
enraged. How could she abandon me? How could she
have been so stupid as to fall. I tried to cry. I
sobbed, but rage blocked the tears... This anger
in a number of forms, has swept over me on a
number of occasions since then, lasting hours and
even days at a time...
In other words, his own subjective experience
(and not any amount of reasoning) enabled him to
grasp the connection between grief and rage...
and only by alluding to the personal account of
Michelle Rosaldos death could he communicate it
to the reader
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• Critiques of Postmodernism
• Taken to its logical extreme postmodernism comes
  close to turning anthropology into a sub field of
  literature.
• If all writing is nothing more than
  interpretations of interpretations then
  ethnography is fiction
• And no conclusions can ultimately be reached
  about anything
• anthropology is a representational genre rather
  than a clearly bounded scientific domain

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