Download Culture and Comparison

Culture and Comparison
We start this topic with a reflection about travelling.
Reflection: Think about yourself as a traveller, especially when you are
travelling to get away from it all, deliberately seeking an escape from the
dullness of a world in which so much is as we expect it to be. What are
the differences, perhaps absurd little details, which can enchant you
because of their unexpectedness?
As well as being fascinated by such differences as the angle of the
landscape and the design of road signs, we constitute the people we
encounter as "other" different from us. This raises issues both for
travellers and, especially, for anthropologists.
Claude Levi-Straus wrote Tristes Tropiques as an autobiographical account
of being an anthropologist. He seems to have experienced anthropology
as an almost appallingly lonely vocation, one in which he was always the
outsider. One, which he finds while he is travelling, and experiencing a
sense of 'otherness'. Here are two of his observations:
"While remaining human himself, the anthropologist tries to study and
judge mankind from a point of view sufficiently lofty and remote to allow
him to disregard the particular circumstances of a given society or
civilisation".
"There is no way out of the dilemma: either the anthropologist adheres to
the norms of his own group and other groups inspire him no more than a
fleeting curiosity which is never quite devoid of disapproval, or he is
capable of giving himself wholeheartedly to these other groups and his
objectivity is vitiated by the fact that, intentionally or not, he has had to
withhold himself from at least one society in order to devote himself to
all" (p354).
What does it mean to be 'human' in this context?
Eriksen's chapter 2 looks at this issue form a different angle than LeviStrauss as in the end he reminds us that anthropologists have their own
culture. Eriksen stresses the centrality of fieldwork to anthropology. We
are most often dealing with the phenomena themselves, rather than
abstract models. There are ethical issues involved in using other peoples'
lives as our object of study (and this will even apply to you as you carry
out the tasks for this course). We can never gain perfect access to
peoples' lives, and not only for reasons of privacy. We are kept at a
distance by language or by the status of those we ask to help us.
Eriksen has some useful things to say about the point of fieldwork.
Anthropologists need to be able to connect a local reality (whether from
their own fieldwork or from someone else's) to a comparative conceptual
framework. It is worth noticing Godfrey Lienhardt's recipe for elephant
and rabbit stew at the bottom of page 18!
The study of culture (and the comparative analysis of cultures) is one of
the major contributions of anthropology to Social Sciences.
Culture is a key concept in anthropology. It usually refers to learned,
accumulated experience. ‘Culture, -say Japanese Culture- refers to those
socially transmitted patterns for behaviour characteristic of a particular
social group’ (Keesing 1981).
Culture, however, is not a clear-cut concept. The idea of culture, like the
idea of the 'unconscious' in psychology, is used by everybody and it is
used for all sorts of events. These two concepts have an immensely
popular appeal. People seem to know about them, to use them to discuss
everything, even very different things (i.e. the culture of Islam, the youth
culture, the culture of ants).
People do not question what Culture may be, it is just a word we 'feel' we
know about it. Anthropologists argue that we are so familiar with the
term, that we take it for granted. Culture does not always mean the
same, and cannot be applied to all situations alike. Furthermore, there is
not one single definition of culture or cultures. In fact, each definition of
culture, help us comprehend a concept that it is, by nature, ambiguous
and complex. However, much of the anthropologists work is about
discussing, thinking and analysing culture.
Definitions of Culture
That complex whole
which includes
knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom,
and any other
capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a
member of society.
(Tylor 1871)
The mass of learned
and transmitted
motor reactions,
habits, techniques,
ideas, and values—
and the behaviour
they induce. (Kroeber
1948)
[All the] historically
created designs for living,
explicit and implicit,
rational, irrational, and
non-rational, which exist
at any given time as
potential guides for the
behaviour of man.
(Kluckhohn and Kelly
1945)
Patterns, explicit and
implicit, of and for
behaviour acquired and
transmitted by symbols,
constituting the
distinctive achievement
of human groups,
including their
embodiments in
artefacts. (Kroeber and
Kluckhohn 1952)
The sum total of
knowledge, attitudes
and habitual
behaviour patterns
shared and
transmitted by the
members of a
particular society.
(Linton 1940)
The fabric of meaning
in terms of which
human beings
interpret their
experience and guide
their actions (Geertz
1957)
From the point of view of most people, culture is invisible much of the
time, over-whelmed by common sense and ordinariness. But
anthropologists, once they start focusing on other cultures, are faced with
the question, what is this all for? What do all these forms of "knowledge,
belief, art, morals custom and habits" do and how do they arise? The
question applies as much to us as to others, as soon as we stop taking
anything for granted.
Reflection
However we analyse them, individuals are socially constituted, defined by
the way others see them and by the categories of their culture. What do
naming customs demonstrate about personhood? In some cultures we
find more explicit social placing of individuals than we do in our own. A
person may seem to be one of a list of items being named. How could a
naming pattern emphasise the unity of the sibling group, or the
replenishment of a family over time? What symbolic connections do the
various parts of your own name make?
Eriksen points out the opposition always found between nature and
culture, and the two ways in which nature is perceived (pp. 36 - 37).
Culture necessarily sets up a relationship with nature, absorbing biological
necessities such as birth, death and the need to eat, clothing them in
cultural forms. These forms may be elaborate and wildly different across
the world, and anthropologists have approached them with a variety of
perspectives.
In order to contextualise this discussion about nature and culture,
anthropologists have often looked at the places where this division is more
apparent (birth and death). It is in the field of death studies and religion,
where anthropologists have found many keys to the understanding of
culture. Next we will introduce you to different ethnographic pieces about
death and religion. Read them out carefully, and think how your own
experiences can be analysed using the ideas these anthropologists
provide.
Death related beliefs and practices have long occupied a position of great
importance in anthropological study of religion, for their diversity across
cultures stands in sharp contrast to the universality of death itself. Loring
Danforth discusses death ritual in rural Greece. The author provides a
useful initial discussion of the approach (which he does not in fact adopt)
known as functionalism in relation to death ritual.
Before you read the extract, however, it is important to re-cap the
importance of the functionalist school in Anthropology for the study of
death and religion.
Functionalist views explain all social institutions as contributing to the
maintenance and stability of society.
The functional approach to religion had its origin in the work of Emile
Durkheim, a French sociologist, and was developed further in the work of
British social anthropologists. Functionalists, in their attempts to
demonstrate how a religious system serves to affirm and preserve the
social system by establishing equilibrium and maintaining social solidarity,
learned much from the analysis of death-related behaviour.
This functional approach to the study of death-related beliefs and
practices also characterized the writings of many British social
anthropologists. Radcliffe-Brown, strongly influenced by Durkheim and his
school, wrote in his study of the funeral customs of the Andaman
Islanders that a person's death "constitutes a partial destruction of the
social cohesion, the normal social life is disorganized, the social
equilibrium is disturbed. After the death the society has to organize itself
anew and reach a new condition of equilibrium" (1933:285).
This view, which has been widely accepted by social scientists and has
become almost commonplace in popular consciousness, was clearly
expressed by another British social anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski
(1954: 53):
'The ceremonial of death which ties the survivors to the body and
rivets them to the place of death, the beliefs in the existence of the
spirit, in its beneficent influences or malevolent intentions, in the
duties of a series of commemorative or sacrificial ceremonies - in all
this religion counteracts the centrifugal forces of fear, dismay,
demoralization, and provides the most powerful means of
reintegration of the group's shaken solidarity and of the
reestablishment of its morale.'
The functional approach to the study of religion and particularly to the
study of death rites has been severely criticized for its inability to deal
with social and cultural change. As Clifford Geertz (1973:142-143) and
others have convincingly argued, functionalism, with its emphasis on
balance, equilibrium, and stability, has failed to explain the dysfunctional
aspects of religious behaviour and its ability to contribute to the
transformation or disintegration of social and cultural systems. What is
needed is a more sophisticated approach that makes possible the full
appreciation of the role of religion in the creation, development, and
communication of systems of meaning. It is only in such a context that
the true significance of death-related activities can be understood.