Expressive culture

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Expressive culture

• The most superstructural feature of culture is
  expressive behavior.
• Expressive culture comprises visual arts, music,
  dance, games, folklore, and ritual.

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Art and superstructure

• Expressive culture clearly appeals to the
  emotional needs of producers and consumers.
• But expressive culture is the most
  superstructural feature of culture.
• If sex roles, for example, or mental illness have
  some biological basis, there is no argument for
  it with expressive behavior, other than the
  capacity for abstract expression itself.

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• The emotional component, however, is plastic
  Where does the emotional component of art come
  from?
• Is it a random event? Is it rule driven?
• If it is rule driven, then superstructure, at
  some level of time, and to some degree, reflects
  structural and infrastructural components of
  society.

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Culture and culture

• Music, dance, visual art, and games and folklore
  all are driven by the structural and
  infrastructural parts of society to some degree
  at the macro level.

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Body art is universal

• Body art is universal and, in addition to simple
  adornment, may be used to denote sex differences,
  rank, occupation, ethnicity, or religion
• Body decorations or modifications, attachments,
  and clothing are used in many societies as sexual
  attractors ears, neck, lips, tattoos, beards

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The most ancient art

• Ancient cave art of the Magdalenian, Perigoridan,
  and Azilian
• Lascaux France
• Ekain Spain

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Rice and Patterson

• Patricia Rice and Ann Patterson examined the
  animal bones in 90 caves where late Paleolithic
  art is found
• Most common bones bovines, horse, reindeer,
  ibex, deer, mammoth
• Most common paintings reindeer, horse, bovines,
  deer, ibex, mammoth

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Fear and loving in the Paleolithic

• For the number of portrayals and the percentage
  of bone matter, r.41.
• But larger species (mammoth, horse, bison) are
  overportrayed.
• The correlation between species weight and bone
  prevalence is r.76
• 19 experts ranked species for danger in hunting.
  For average ranked danger and species weight,
  r.96

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Primitive art

• In light of everything youve learned this
  semester, what can be said of the term primitive
  art?
• Many Western artists incorporated so-called
  primitive elements in their work Stravinsky,
  Picasso, Gaugin, Chavez

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Fischers hypothesis

• Egalitarian societies have art based on
  repetition of simple elements and plenty of empty
  space.
• The art of stratified societies combines elements
  into complex designs and tends toward a more
  baroque style.

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Art and practicality

• Art is part of everyday life in most societies,
  as is religion, kinship, economics, and politics.
• Why is modern Western art valued for originality
  and obscurity of meaning?
• Harris mass production, capitalism, and
  commercialization has led to individ-ualistic,
  secular art as part of our everyday life.

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Ancient Greek vase art

• Ancient Greek society went from egalitarian to
  highly stratified between 1000 BCE and 450 BCE
  and the vases became crowded and complex, with
  enclosed art.
• Dressler and Robbins 1975

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Meaning and folklore

• If a mythology gives prominence to evil
  grandmothers, then people say in that society,
  grandmothers are evil and the myths reflect
  reality. But if there is conflict between myth
  and observed behavior, then clever people talk
  about myth expressing repressed feelings, or
  whatever (Claude Levi-Strauss 1967203).

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Universal themes in folklore

• Clyde Kluckhohn five recurrent themes in
  folklore around the world
• catastrophe (mostly floods)
• slaying of monsters
• Incest
• sibling rivalry
• castration.
• These universal themes are not equally likely to
  be found in any given place.

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• Alex Cohen, for example, found that unprovoked
  aggression is associated with unpredictable food
  shortages and that in societies with such
  shortages, natural catastrophes are not likely to
  be mentioned. 

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Music and structural correlates

• Alan Lomax studied folk song style around the
  world, using a corpus of 3,500 songs.
• He found a relationship between social complexity
  and stylistic elements of music, just as Fischer
  did with art.

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Lomaxs study of music

• For example, wordiness and clarity of enunciation
  is associated with stratified societies.
• These societies depend on wordiness for job
  performance and for maintaining a highly diverse
  occupational structure.
• Lomaxs hypothesis complex instruction is
  expressed in complex songs.

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• By contrast, hunters and gatherers all know their
  roles and engage in song for its own sake and for
  the simple pleasure of singing.
• In other words, the music does not serve the
  purpose of validating social structural
  complexity.
• H/G songs are characterized by repetition of a
  few simple elements, by relaxed rendition tra
  la, tra la, etc.

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Lomaxs findings

• H/G societies have no leaders in song
• Intermediate societies (ranked leader, with no
  real power, like the Big Men societies of Papua
  and the Yanomami of the Amazon), have leaders who
  START songs, just as a Yanomami leader starts
  sweeping his village center and hopes that by
  example he can get others to follow (see Kottak).
• Highly stratified societies have soloists and
  leaders of songs virtuosos reflecting the
  structure of society in economic and political
  spheres of action.

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• Finally, Lomax found that counterpoint and
  polyphony are NOT the products of our so-called
  high culture, but of women in societies where
  women contribute at least half or more of the
  total food.
• Conversely, men sing most in societies that have
  low contribution by women for subsistence like
  the Eskimos.

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Barbara Ayres on music and structure

• In societies that use cradle boards and cradles
  for babies, there are either irregular or free
  rhythms.
• Where babies are carried in a sling or shawl,
  there are regular rhythms.
• Where infants are stressed before the age of two,
  there is wider tonal range and firmer accents and
  beats.
• Ayres, B. 1973. Effects of Infant Carrying
  Practices on Rhythm in Music. Ethos 1 387-404

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• Circumcision, severe toilet training,
  cauterization, cicatrization, piercing and
  shaping/binding procedures for infants all are
  associated with a particular kind of music
  expression.
• In societies that stress compliance, there is
  cohesive singing.
• Japanese games, song fests, are group events.
• Meals begin in Japan when everyone is at the
  table.  

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• Ayres found that harshness of voice tone and
  raspiness increases with assertiveness training
  for children.
• So, in societies with high assertiveness for
  women and with high food production by women (as
  in W. Africa and African American) you get more
  raspy, more assertive tonal qualities in song.
• Ayres, B. 1973. Effects of Infant Carrying
  Practices on Rhythm in Music. Ethos 1 387-404

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John Roberts study of games

• Games are standardized play. All societies have
  games, but differ in how much they engage in this
  activity and in the kind of games they play.

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Three kinds of games

• 1) physical skill boxing, racing, hockey
• 2) strategy chess, checkers, Go (Wei Chi/Baduk)
• 3) chance (dice, roulette)
• Combinations football, monopoly

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Sports and structure

• Sports is not immune to the principle of
  expressive culture being responsive to structural
  features of society.
• John Roberts found that in 43 societies tested,
  games of strategy are associated with more
  complex political organization.
• Note the symbolism of hierarchy expressed in
  chess and card decks.

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Team sports

• But team sports are a Native American invention.
• Greek sports at the Olympics were solitary.
• Before the 16th century, there were almost no
  team games in Europe except for rituals to
  separate winter from spring.

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Team sports are Native American

• Hockey originated in Eastern North America and
  was probably a local adaptation of the ancient
  ball game played from Arizona to El Salvador in
  Middle America.
• In these games, teams comprised 2-10 or 11 and
  the stakes were high jewels and clothing from
  the audience to the winner, betting going on in
  the audience, and even sacrifice of the loser.

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Ancient ball game and rubber

• In 1528, Hernan Cortez brought Aztec ball players
  to the court of Charles V.
• This was the introduction of the idea of team
  sports in Europe, according to Roberts research.
• It also eventually showed that vulcanized rubber
  was invented in Mexico 3600 years ago.

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Gambling

• Roberts also found that gambling is not
  universal.
• North America and Middle America have it
• Most of the peoples of South America did not have
  it
• East Africa has little gambling, but West Africa
  has lots of it.
• So far, there is no explanation for this
  distribution.

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Syncretism

• Across the world today, the most obvious feature
  of expressive culture is syncretism.
• This is part of globalization, but it may be very
  slow to occur in some areas of expressive culture
  and faster to occur in others.
• Music and food are particularly syncretic.

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Tourist art

• The other great movement in art today is tourist
  art.
• The alebrijes of Oaxaca
• African tourist art
• Tourist art in Africa is different from
  indigenous art

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Alebrijes
Encyclopedia of Mexico), Volume I. Compañía
Editora de Enciclopedia de México, S.A. de C.V.,
Mexico, 1987.