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 of Julian Steward and Leslie White

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.

Julian Haynes Steward 1902 - 1972

central figure in the introduction of ecological concepts into social and cultural anthropology

“cultural ecology”

Multilinear Evolution

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

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 e.g.. Solitary hunter or group

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

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.

Cultures that shared similar core features belonged to the same culture type

Having identified these culture types Steward then compared and sorted them into a hierarchy arranged by complexity

Steward’s original ranking was family, multifamily and state-level societies

These categories were later refined by his followers into band, tribe chiefdom and state.

Band Tribe Chiefdom Ag. State Industrial State

Hallmarks of Difference:

Band: -H/G -mobile -kinship

-egalitarian

Tribe: -Hort./pastoralist -Complex kinship -Headman -warfare

Chiefdom:-Intermediate b/w tribeand bureaucratic gov’ts.

-1 (or >1) descent group gains dominance

-hierarchical social strata - 1,000’s 10,000’s

Chief: any individual who held leadership role in a non-western, stateless society

-Centralized -Decentralized

Ag. States:-bureaucratic gov’t -dense populations (urban) -food surpluses -many economic roles -writing systems -public works (labor) -10,000’s Million(s)

Cross-cultural parallels in social patterns could be explained as adaptations to similar environments

Steward proposed cultural parallels due to adaptation rather than historical diffusion or migration

i.e. Multilinear evolution focuses on the evolution of specific cultures without assuming that all cultures follow the same evolutionary process

 Avoids the twin traps of particularism and historicism.

• Particular societies are seen as the product of unique historical trajectories, while simultaneously recognizing that similarly-organized social groups in similar physical environments will often undergo similar evolutionary processes

Multilinear evolution

compared the development patterns in 5 independent centers of ancient civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica and the Andes

these centers showed parallels of form, function and sequence based on having developed in arid and semi-arid environments in which the economic basis was irrigation and flood-water agriculture

Agriculture produced f ood surpluses which allowed for non-subsistence activities and population growth

When population growth reached the limits of agricultural productivity competition over natural r esources intensified, warfare ensued, and political leadership shifted from temple priest to warrior king

As some communities prospered and others suffered, empires were forged that instituted string political controls over vast regions

Multilinear evolution

central theorist in the resuscitation of evolutionary theory in anthropology

Leslie White(1900–1978)

For White, the predominant themes of cultural evolution (as manifest in human history) were:

increasing energy-capture per capita

increasing complexity of material and social culture

increasing predictability and security of life

Hence, culture was, first and foremost, practical and useful

And this pointed the way to its scientific interpre-tation, which was utilitarian…

Cultures could be compared objectively in terms of energy-capture and complexity

MATERIALISTS hold that the proper way to make sense of human social and cultural phenomena is to analyze them 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, and dominate (encapsulate and absorb) one another

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

Materialism versus Idealism

2 opposite philosophical approaches, underlying 2 corresponding opposed theoretical tendencies in anthropological theory

IDEALISM — idealists hold that human cultures are shaped primarily by processes of shared human consciousness, ideation, and imagination — processes which cannot be reduced to purely material causes

Marvin Harris 1927-20011979 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 redistributionBy focusing on observable, measurable phenomena, cultural materialism presents an etic approach

Cultural Materialism is based on two key assumptions about societies. First, the various parts of society are interrelated. When one part of society changes, other parts must also change.

This means that an institution, such as the family cannot be looked at in isolation from the economic, political, or religious institutions of a society. When one part changes it has an effect on other parts of the system.

The second assumption of CM is that the foundation of the sociocultural system is the environment.

Environment

Like all living organisms, Humans must draw energy from their environment.

The environment is limited in terms of the amount of energy and raw material it contains.

The need to draw energy out of the environment in order to satisfy the biological needs of its people is the first and central task of any society

Therefore, each society must ultimately exist within the constraints imposed by its environment.

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.

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.

Throughout his books, Marvin Harris uses cultural materialist theories to explain a wide variety of cultural phenomenon

•food taboos,•Christianity, •male supremacy and •warfare.

• 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 of densely populated urban neighborhoods

Example: the “sacred cow” phenomenon in the Indian subcontinent:

cattle utilized as a source of milk, butter, traction, and dung (fuel) but the meat is not consumed (“inefficient” usage of resources, by Western standards)

Idealist interpretation: a distinctive complex of ideas which grew up and became institutionalized, following an inner “symbolic logic” which requires to be understood in (emic) cultural terms

set of related ideas, developed by Brahmans (priestly class), using the cow as a symbol for an entire social ethic involving ideas of purity, vegetarianism

the practices follow from the ideas

why for a Hindu is beef taboo, 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 don’t consume beef because their religion prohibits it.

This is no explanation, you also have to ask, why Hinduism has this kind of reverence for cattle but Islam, Judaism, and Christianity do not

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

also, cows 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

Materialists place the stress on the analytical 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

can we be so dismissive of the informant’s 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 and infrastructural variables

Do all food taboos have functional explanations; are such explanations intrinsically more satisfying than symbolic ones

Critique

CLAUDELÉVI-STRAUSS

1908 -

The way we segment things and impose structure on inherently formless phenomena (like space and time) reflect deeply held structure from our minds

L-S believes that the underlying logical processes that structure all human thought operate within different cultural contexts

Consequently, cultural phenomena eg. Kinship, myth, religon, are not identical but they are the products of an underlying universal pattern of thought.

His anthropology centres on the search to uncover this pattern.

for Lévi-Strauss, the subject matter of anthropology is “Culture”, not “cultures (although the fact that there are cultures is useful as a method to investigate Culture)

He proposed that the proper study for anthropologists is not how people categorize the world (not the content of cultures) but the underlying patterns of human thought that produce those categories

compare dozens of variant versions of the ‘same’ basic narrative collected over a wide area — e.g. the origin of the sexes; the origin of initiation

look for basic structures, typically expressed as oppositions — upstream/downstream; sky/earth; dark/light

relate particular oppositions to wider and universal ones (e.g. nature/culture)

The important aspects of linguistics for LS were:

1. The shift of linguistic focus from conscious behaviour to unconscious structure• Most speakers of a language cannot articulate the

underlying rules that structure their use of phonemes and create meaningful communication yet all are able to use language to communicate

2. The idea of binary contrasts which was fundamental to structuralism

• words are built upon contrasts (binary oppositions) between phonemes rather than simply being groups of sounds. e.g. the minimal pair bat, pat…

3. The new focus on the relations between terms rather than on terms.

Linguistic Analogy

LS argued that women are a commodity that could be exchanged, and kinship systems are about the exchange of women

LS argued that one of the most important distinctions a human makes is between self and others.

Defining the categories of potential spouses and prohibited mates.

This natural binary distinction leads to the formation of the incest taboo, which necessitates choosing spouses from outside your family

In this way the binary distinction between kin and non-kin is resolved by the reciprocal exchange of women and formation of kin networks in primitive societies.

Primary Opposition is Nature versus CultureCulture appropriates matter from nature and reorganizes it…

Culture : Nature : : Raw : Cooked

binary oppositions are reflected in various cultural institutions

theories are often very abstract and untestable.

methods imprecise and dependent upon the observer

As it is primarily concerned with the structure of the human psyche, it does not address historical aspects or change in culture

a “psychic unity” of all human minds does not account for individual human action historically.

lack of concern with human individuality.

Critique

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

Most “symbolicists” would agree on these two points:

1. culture is, fundamentally, a symbolic system and so analysis of cultural symbols provides the natural point of entrée into a cultural universe

2. If culture is symbolic then it follows that it is used to create and convey meanings since that is the purpose of symbols.

If meanings are the end products of culture then understanding culture requires understanding the meanings of its creators and users

Victor Turner Scottish social anthropologist, 1920–1983

1950-54 fieldwork among the Ndembu of Zambia

but central career interest = symbolic anthropology

mainly concerned with ‘cultural’ symbols or (in his term) ‘ritual’ symbols

objects which have more or less generally shared meanings within a ‘culture’

•Milk Tree for Ndembu

•Cross for Christians

A `milk tree' growing in the compound of a Senior Chief in southern Zambia. Regarded as feminine by the inhabitants of the compound, the milk tree twines as a palpable dependent on its deciduous `masculine' host.

Many Bantu peoples strongly associated this tree with womanhood because of the thick white, milk-like sap which the live wood exudes when cut. `

A fresh cut in the milk tree showing the milky white sap that gives the tree its common name

Novicesdaubedwith clay

Last day ofmukanda: initiates don new clothes and dance in public for first time as men

A fresh, bright scarlet cut on a `blood tree' in Kangaba, Mali

marked that wood as masculine

Clifford Geertz 1926- 1950 Meets Margaret Mead and decides enrolls in anthropology at Harvard

1952-54 to Java as part of a research team with the explicit goal of improving economic growth

1973 The Interpretation of Cultures

Thick Description Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture

“The concept of culture I espouse…is 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 1973:5)

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”

THICK DESCRIPTION

A wink or a twitch

“between what Ryle calls the "thin description" of what the rehearser (parodist, winker, twitcher . . .) is doing (“rapidly contracting his right eyelids”) and The "thick description" of what he is doing ("practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinking a conspiracy is in motion") lies the object of ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpretedUnraveling and identifying those context and meanings requires “thick description:.

Geertz argues that this is precisely what ethnographic writing does

“...ethnography is thick description. What the ethnographer is in fact faced with — except when (as of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection — is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render...

Deep Play: The Balinese Cockfight

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

The Balinese cockfight, is fundamentally a dramatization of status concerns.

nothing really happens at a cockfight.

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.

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 or northern Morocco 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

Questions

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 is also touched off a major debate in 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

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

Edward Saïd

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

1978 Orientalism

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: he needs our help to attain his full potential

Postmodernismliterally 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

Postmodernist view of FieldworkFieldwork is crucial in the 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 investigator’s preferences and predilections, and the people met by chance or design all condition the understanding of society that results.

Postmodernist view of ethnographyWriting 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 author’s interpretations over competing alternatives

And examine the literary techniques used in the writing of ethnographies

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

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

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 curatorThe ‘whole’ represented by a few artifacts selected by the curator, usually with an eye to the predominantly Western aesthetics of the audience...

James Clifford

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

REFLEXIVITYWith what to replace objectivity?

Consensus solution: reflexivity — not the unintentional mirroring of the author’s 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 author’s 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

Renato Rosaldo, Ilongot headhunting, 1883–1974

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 victim’s 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

“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 Rosaldo’s death could he communicate it to the reader

Critiques of PostmodernismTaken 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

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

FRENCH ETHNOLOGIE

ECOLOGICAL ANTH. NEO-EVOLUTIONISM CULTURAL MATERIALISM C & P ETHNOSCIENCE-CUM--COGNITIVE

INTERPRETIVE

NEO-STRUCTURALISM (LEACH, GLUCKMAN, BARTH, BAILEY, STRATHERN)

MAUSS — LÉVI-STRAUSS: FRENCH STRUCTURALISM

Schools and analytical theories in abeyance

Main duality: Political Economy vs.

Interpretive &

Deconstructionist

approaches

BREAKDOWN OFNATIONAL SCHOOLS

AMERICAN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

DEVELOPMENT OFSPECIALIZATIONS

MODERN PERIOD POSTMODERN PERIOD