IB Anthropology
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Stratification by gender is a culture practice based on cultural values,
not biological factors. Discuss in relation to 2 ethnographies.
Social stratification is a system which exists in most societies, and
distinguishes between individuals and/or groups according to their socially-defined
attributes, and gives them different statuses according to these attributes.
This system is so widespread because humans invariably show variation,
with some being better skilled at certain things than others, and these
differences lead to people becoming more or less ‘useful’ to society. What
this essay will look at is the ways in which gender division is treated
in two different societies; the Kwaio of the Soloman Islands, and the Yanomamo
of South America. The reasons for this stratification will be explored,
and conclusions will try to be drawn about whether it is biological factors
or cultural values which determine the stratification.
One ethnography is that of the Kwaio of the Solomon Islands. In this
society, women are excluded from all sacred rituals, and are generally
viewed as inferior to men. Their inferiority is based on the view that
the Kwaio have of women’s bodies being potentially polluting. The Kwaio
believe that the urination, defecation, menstruation and process of childbirth
in women are polluting agents which can cause negative effects on the men
and the extremely important sacred rituals. The organization of this society
revolves entirely around this notion of pollution; their settlements are
organised so that the domestic dwellings are in the center, but there is
a scared men’s house in the north, from which women are banned, and a polluted
women’s area from which men are banned. When a woman is menstruating
or giving birth, she must retire to the polluted area, away from any male
members of the society.
What this division results in is the praising of the male members of
the society. Only they are considered superior enough to communicate with
the adolo (ancestral ghosts), and only they may perform any scared rituals.
The question this raises is whether or not this stratification by gender
is in truth based on biological factors. Although processes such as menstruation
are biological, the Kwaio have no real evidence that women’s biological
processes are polluting. One could therefore argue that it is in fact cultural
values which are operating within this society; as the Kwaio have imposed
their cultural values onto the biological factors of women. This is probably
because this gives the Kwaio men a reason for viewing women as inferior.
It is interesting that menstruation and childbirth, the two processes which
men are physically unable to perform, are viewed as the most polluting.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that “Men envy women because
they can give birth and sustain life”. It seems as if this statement applies
to the Kwaio; because the men in this society cannot experience these processes,
they have turned them into negative qualities which enhance their superiority
instead of making them seem inferior.
Within the Yanomamo society of South America, there exists a clear male-female
division within the social organization of the community. This society
is male dominated, with females regarded as inferior. This is evident in
the way in which the female and male children are raised; female children
begin to help with the household chores and baby-sit their younger siblings
long before male children even begin to think about such things. Most girls
are promised to men for marriage long before they reach puberty, and, once
they are married, their status, as well as their quality of life, does
not improve significantly. The husbands of these women frequently scold
and beat their wives, and expect their wives to be willing and able to
carry out tasks such as preparing the evening meal as soon as they return
to their homes.
It could be assumed that since there seems to be no biological reason
for there being such a division in the status of women and men, that this
stratification is due to the cultural values of the Yanomamo. As women
are given tasks such as the collecting of firewood and household chores,
it is clear that they are viewed as being physically capable of performing
most tasks, so this biological difference is ruled out. There seems to
be no view of women having negative biological factors such as in the case
of the Kwaio society, so it would seem as if it is the Yanomamo’s culture
which has developed as viewing men as superior not for their biological
differences to women, but for another, or a combination of other, reasons.
It is virtually always the case in societies that one sex is viewed as
superior to the other, and the reasoning behind the men being superior
in Yanomamo society is probably linked to their being those who hunt and
therefore are the main providers within the society.
In both the societies examined in this essay, it has been the male gender
which is the superior gender in society. The lack of real evidence for
biological factors being responsible for this stratification has led to
the conclusion being drawn that it is in fact cultural values which govern
the division, even though these may be masked as being due to biological
factors. What has not been mentioned so far is that these cultural values
include the attitude of the women in these societies towards the social
stratification. The fact that the women in both of these societies have
not taken a stand against their inferiority further supports the theory
that cultural values are responsible- it is certainly not the female biological
make-up which prevents these women for trying to make a difference, but
instead their culture.
The Kwaio
- Tasks that men perform are almost always given more value and prestige,
even if women’s duties consist of most of the subsistence.
- Women accept their positions.
- Refrainement from sex probably occurs in this society and probably
serve as a sort of supernatural birth control.
Q1) What does the spatial layout of the Kwaio settlement symbolise in
terms of their cosmology?
Woman are polluting; by keeping them separate during the times at which
they can pollute (i.e. eating, urinating, childbirth etc), men are put
up on a pedestal, only they can communicate with the adolo. Sacred rituals
are performed with only one gender. By separating their houses, women can
move out when they are polluting, and men can perform their sacred rituals.
Cosmology- An ideological system that explains the order and meaning
of the universe and people’s places within it.
Q2) In what ways do polluting taboos operate?
The polluting taboos within the Kwaio society are probably in existence
because they give the men in the society a reason to view women as inferior.
Menstruation and childbirth, which only females can experience, are seen
as the most polluting of all since they are something which men can’t experience,
and so can therefore twist around to make it seem as if they were negative
qualities. It gives the males a reason for their superiority, and also
a cause for blame during unexplainable illness, death or misfortune.
The World View of the Kalobari (fishing people in swampy delta, Nigeria)
Pg 306 (Horton 1962)
- Complicated system of cosmological beliefs
- 3 orders of existence postulated as lying behind the ‘place of the
people’ (the observable world of human beings and things)
- First level; world of spirits. Everything, living or object, has a
spirit.
- When a person dies or object is broken, spirit and physical form have
been separated.
- 3 categories of free spirits; ancestral spirits, village heroes, water
people.
- A personal creator exists, who lays the design for everyone’s life
- ‘Great Creator’ of the world; destiny
- Beliefs are never called into question; it is always something else
which has interfered. The world is filled with accidents.
- 3 levels: Spirits- personal creator- Great Creator
Religion in Gopalpur
- Gods and their works are a continuous part of present reality in Gopalpur.
Gods attend and take part in almost every ceremony. Sometimes a pries,
sometimes even a perfectly ordinary person, begins to tremble. His arms
shake uncontrollably; his legs move violently in response to the drumming.
Sometimes the affected person screams and falls to the ground. The face
goes rigid. Suddenly, the body is still and the voice of one of the gods
speaks through his mouth. The god may make predictions, answer questions
or give orders concerning the manner in which a particular ceremony is
to be conducted.
- The order of god is, in many ways, parallel to the order of men. There
are high gods, bearing such names as Shiva, who are worshipped by vegetarian
priests. These gods, concerned with the higher-ranking jatis, are generally
beneficent. Hanumantha and Bhimarayya are specifically charged with protecting
villages, arranging successful marriages, and ensuring that married couples
bear children. In a general way, these gods resemble the higher-ranking
government officials. They are generally kindly but it is difficult to
obtain an interview with them.
- Worship of the high gods requires that all members of the community
participate, and that their manner be joyful and friendly. At such times,
the quarrels between the two parties are forgotten, and no-one is turned
away from any man’s door with an empty stomach.
- Below the male gods are non-vegetarian goddesses. The function of
these goddesses is to protect the village from particular disasters, from
flood and smallpox, from cholera and skin disease. When people are sinful,
failing to perform appropriate sacrifices or violating the moral code,
one of the goddesses approaches God and asks permission to punish the village-
“The mother punishes the child after getting the father’s permission”.
- If there is an epidemic of smallpox or cholera, the village is purified,
and offerings are made to an appropriate goddess. The priests of the goddesses
are drawn from the lower-ranking jatis; they need not be paid much money.
The expense of worshipping a goddess stems from the fact that a goddess
is not said to be satisfied with vegetarian offerings, but must have meat
and beer.
- Often, when there is sickness in the family, an appeal is made to
one of the gods or goddesses. If the sick person recovers, offerings are
made to the deity considered responsible.
- When a man dies, God consults his records and determines whether the
dead man has spent his life helping ot injuring others. Those who have
done bad things to others are sent to the Underworld (good club! J), where
they suffer hideous tortures. They are later reborn in the stomachs of
dogs, donkeys or worms. People who lead good lives are reborn as men. If
their previous lives were very good, they become great kings and sit on
thrones. A really perfect man can be considered to be an earthly reincarnation
of one of the gods.
- Sometimes, although evidently not within living memory, an individual
dies without completing the things that were to be accomplished during
his life on earth, or perhaps it is that an individual dies still hungry
for sex, or food, or some other gratification. When this happens, the individual
is likely to return from his/her grave and attack living people. Such attacks
are most frequently made upon those who go outside in the dark of the moon
without a lantern. Although there have been no recent attacks. It is said
that the spirits enter into living men and make them behave in strange
ways. When such things happen, the victim is beaten with a whip or with
sandals until the spirit becomes uncomfortable and promises to leave.
Sometimes the departure of the spirit is accelerated by offering him a
chicken or a goat.
- With the possible exception of these attacks by ghosts and spirits,
which occur rarely if at all, everything that happens to a man is determined
by his behaviour in his former life as well as his present life.
- Everyone in Gopalpur is aware that there is a way to avoid committing
sins and to avoid the unfortunate consequences of being born in this age
of misery and mismanagement. The way out consists of foregoing all earthly
desires and becoming an ascetic. An ascetic is required to abandon his
family, to live on fruits and milk, and to wander from place to place.
- The major form of religious activity in Gopalpur is the religious
ceremony in which men make gifts of food to the gods and, as a consequence,
make gifts of food to other men.
- Representatives of virtually every jati in Gopalpur have a special
role to play in each of the calendrical ceremonies. All must co-operate
if the crops are to be good, and if the life of the village is to be happy.
Sisters and daughters, the women whose daughters are ‘potential wives’
of men in Gopalpur, are invited to the more important calendrical ceremonies.
Every effort is made to remind them that Gopalpur is happy village.
- In Gopalpur, gods and men strive for harmony and work toward a peaceful,
happy world where there is no sin. The individual man attempts to extend
ever outward his circle of kinsmen and his circle of friends. Bonds of
territoriality and of common descent are stretched to include the villages
of an entire region and to develop a common set of concepts and ways of
acting affecting millions of people. Inevitably, these bonds, stretched
out across many miles affecting many people, snap. It is the task of the
gods and the gaudas to restore order.
Magic
The difference between ritual and magic:
Ritual- stereotyped, repetitive behaviour, either religious or non-religious,
that uses symbols to communicate meaning.
Religious rituals usually involve spiritual beings, and some beneficial
result is desired. It is usually they, no the person performing the ritual,
who are thought of as able to bring about their outcome. Magic, in contrast
to religious ritual, is designed to bring about some desired practical
result without the intervention of spirits. A magician attempts to take
directs control over some part of nature or of other people.
Frazer considered magic to have more in common with science than with
religion. Instead of relying on spirits to grant what people wish, the
magician attempts, like the scientist, to manipulate the laws of nature
to achieve the desired result.
Frazer proposed that people first enter a magic stage, seeking to manipulate
objects and events without the help of spirits. When their attempts inevitably
failed, they turned in hope to spirits to provide them with the things
they desired, and the age of religion was born. Much later, sceptical individuals
realised that religion could not provide all the answers they needed, and
this led to the birth of science.
He distinguished between 2 types of magic, imitative (or homeopathic)
magic, where one imitates the desired effect and it happens.
E.g. Th Azande prick the stalks of bananas with the teeth of crocodiles,
hoping that the fruits will be as abundant as crocodiles’ teeth.
Then, there is contagious magic- one obtains some object that was once
in contact with someone (e.g. clothing) and does something to it in the
belief that this action will affect the person with whom the object was
once in contact.
Cross culturally, it is common for the hair or nail clippings removed
from an individual as part of the separation phase of a rite of passage
to be carefully hidden lest some enemy get hold of them and burn them in
a ritual of contagious magic designed to injure those from whom they were
cut.
Rite of passage- a ritual marking a culturally significant change in
an individual’s life cycle, such as birth, puberty, marriage, old age and
death.
Witchcraft
Witches ‘originate’ from the inquisition- 16th century. They were defined
as non-believers in God. Women were most commonly accused of being witches.
Malinowski
To prove that ‘primitive’ people could distinguish between fact and
fiction, between technology and magic, Malinowski explained how complex
were the technical skills for activities such as gardening, sailing, fishing
that Trobrianders controlled. According to Malinowski, when Trobrianders
fish in the lagoon, the men never resort to fishing magic because the waters
there are relatively calm. But when they take their canoes into the
open seas, they turn to magic as protection from the hazards of strong
winds and rainstorms. It is only when confronted by situations they can’t
control, because their pragmatic skills are inoperable, that Trobrianders,
out of psychological stress, turn from technology to magic.
Gmelch observed the use of superstition in baseball. He discovered a
whole series of rituals, taboos, and sacred objects that together form
a complex of ‘pitcher magic’; tugging one’s cap between pitches, touching
the resin bag after each bad pitch etc.
He demonstrated that Malinowski was right- in baseball, magic is most
prevalent in situations of chance and uncertainty.
Magic Vs. Religion
Magic- A pseudo- scientific agent automatically bringing about desired
end (i.e. a ‘scientific’ performance to control certain aspects of nature
over which we have no control).
Religion- Worship of and subjugation to divine beings / relationship
with cosmos / extension of human relationships beyond the human sphere.
According to Frazer (“The Golden Bough” 1911-15), magic developed into
religion.
Typology of Magic
Sympathetic (Law Of Sympathy) : Homeopathic/ Imitative magic (Law of
Similarity) Contagious magic
(Law of Contact)
Law of Sympathy (Sympathetic Magic)- Sir James Frazer’s explanation
for the logic underlying magic, sorcery, and shamanism. He thought that
tribal peoples believed that anything ever connected with a person, such
as hair or blood, could be manipulated to influence that person. Things
act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy (e.g. Pre-enactment
of childbirth in Somalia with a smile).
Law of participation- the assumption that a thing can participate
in or be part of two or more things at once. Identified by Levy-Bruhl as
the principle underlying his concept of prelogical thought.
Magic can de divided into the theoretical (magic as a pseudo-science)
and the practical (magic as a pseudo-art)
Practical magic: Positive magic- (sorcery / charms) “Do this in order
for x to happen”
Negative magic- (taboos) “Don’t do this or x will
happen”
The Masai use visual magic; pole on top of house- so will look up and
not see the house.
Malinowski- magic supplies primitive man with a number of ready-made
ritual arts which enable him to use practical techniques to bridge the
gaps to impossible tasks.
How does magical thinking differ from Western Scientific thinking?
‘Magical Thinking’ reflects a kind of model of a universe far more
deterministic than ours, a universe where things do not just happen by
chance or accident. In such a universe, death, illness and crop failure
call for explanation
Magic, then, represents human attempts to manipulate chains of cause
and effect between events that to us are unrelated, in ways to us that
are irrational.
How is magic a psychological adaptation?
Some forms of magic, like the widespread New Guinea custom of men sticking
reeds up their nostrils to induce bleeding- in symbolic imitation of menstruation-
are physiologically harmful and sometimes cause fatal haemorrhaging . But
all are deeply meaningful to those who enact these practices. Further,
even though such practices may or may not be in themselves medically efficacious,
they may nevertheless have a benefit physiological effect owing to neurological
and immunological responses that are regulated by these emotions.
Applying the concept of magic to ethnographies
Trobrianders-
- For unmarried young people, each decorative element is carefully chosen
to catch the eye of a possible lover, as each use of magic is calculated
to ‘make someone want to sleep with you’.
- Missionaries tried to persuade villagers that magic and sorcery had
no basis in rational thought.
- Almost every death that occurs is believed to be the result of sorcery
effected by a specialist who chants magic spells into the victim’s betel
nut or tobacco.
- People known to possess powerful magic, including sorcery, are buried
face-down to prevent their dreaded malevolent spirits from escaping the
grave, as this spirit can being illness and death to survivors. The spirit
can only linger for a few days, so the grave must be guarded by someone
who also possess powerful magic.
- Adults and children alike fear little in their daily activities except
sorcery. The most powerful magic spells for sorcery are known by only a
handful of men. Many, but by no means all, are chiefs. Others must seek
out one of these men and ask him to perform his craft. - A few women also
learn the spells.
- Some women (and a few men) are thought to be ‘flying witches’, individuals
who have the ability to leave their bodies while asleep. In an invisible
state they attack someone by destroying a vital organ, and only another
flying witch can recite spells that will counter the attack and cure the
patient. Therefore, a flying witch can be good or evil, and villagers take
great care when they associate with anyone believed to have these powers.
- Even the strongest traditional sorcery works slowly; the deadly poisons
believed to be in betel or tobacco can be countered if an afflicted person
gains the help of a curing specialist.
- Important chiefs must demonstrate that they know formidable kinds
of magic spells that successfully give them control over villager’s lives
and the growing cycle of yams.
- The spells that are most talked about because they are the most dangerous
are those for sorcery and those that control the weather. These traditional
spells are the property of certain matrilineages and known only by a few
men. Not all chiefs own sorcery spells, but since they usually have more
wealth than ordinary men, they pay those who know the magic to accomplish
their wishes.
- Although chiefs walk with the authority that control over sorcery
gives them, they themselves are not immune to its effects.
Yanomamo-
- In some villages a variety of magical plants are cultivated. Most
are associated with casting spells on others, spells that are often non-malevolent
as in the case of ‘female charms’. Tiny packets of dusty powder, wrapped
in leaves, are used by men to ‘seduce’ young women. The charm is forced
against the woman’s nose and mouth. When she breathes the charm, she swoons
and has an insatiable desire for sex- so say both the men and the women.
The women also cultivate magical plants in some villages that allegedly
cause the men to become tranquil and sedate.
- In some villages, people allegedly cultivate an especially malevolent
plant that can be blown on enemies at a great distance, or sprinkled on
unwary male visitors while they sleep. A particularly feared class of these
is called ‘oka’ and is said to be blown through tubes at enemies, causing
them to sicken and die.
- All Yanomamo groups are convinced that unaccountable deaths in their
own village are the result of the use of harmful magic and charms directed
at them by enemy groups.
- Almost all deaths other than those obviously caused by human or animal
intervention are attributed to harmful magic. The Yanomamo suffer a high
infant mortality rate, and they attribute this to sent harmful spirits
who steal their souls. Thus, in every village, the shamans spend many hours
attempting to cure sick children and sick adults, driving out the malevolent
forces that have caused their illnesses, and in turn, sending their own
spirits and charms against the children in distant villages for revenge.
Gopalpur-
- The villagers believe that gods and goddesses are responsible for
protecting villages, arranging successful, fertile marriages etc and that
everything that happens to a person is determined by behaviour in a former
life as well as behaviour in the present.
Myth
Myth- a story describing the origins of the world, some natural phenomenon,
or some aspect of culture, which contains at least one physically or humanly
impossible event or situation. Myths are often acted out in ritual and
encapsulate a culture’s cosmology and cosmogony and provide justification
for culturally prescribed behaviour.
Keesing: “myths are accounts about how the world came to be the way
it is, about a super-ordinary realm of events before or behind the experienced
natural world; they are accounts that are believed to be true and in some
sense sacred.
Malinowski (1925): His sociological interpretation of Trobriand myths;
he said they made sense not by themselves for psychoanalysis, but only
as living social events in context of real political relations. They were
needed; they served a social function (in the functionalist view).
E.g. Trobriand origin myths explains and validates brother/sister taboo;
local emergence leading to local sub-clans; others legitimise food taboos,
rank and precedence. (i.e. mythological charter validating present social
relations).
Levi-Strauss (1969-1974): disagrees; he says realm of myth helps people
transpose symbolically the contradictions of existence which worry them;
like death, the origin of the first man, and the first mate etc.
Edmund Leach (1974): Problem of avoiding incest if man and woman were
created equal (see Chagnon Pg104)
Ardener (1972): symbolic associations between women and the world of
nature
Ortner (1974): women marginal: both cultural and natural beings; symbolically
associated with the moon, blood, darkness, nature etc.
Needham (1978): Myths- timeless stories that describe the origin of
something- the world, a natural phenomenon or some aspect of culture and
‘confronts us with at least one event or situation which is physically
or humanly impossible’ (e.g. the immaculate conception)
Some rituals are the dramatic re-enactments of myths.
Myth In Yanomamo society:
- Yanomamo consider themselves to be ‘real’ humans, whereas foreigners
are degenerate copies of real humans. In one of their myths, there was
a great flood and many drowned. Some floated off on logs, and now came
back speaking ‘crooked’ Yanomamo (foreigners). A spirit fished them out
off the water downstream, made them come to life again, and sent them back
‘home’.
- Man: Yanomamo dwells on a layer of Hei Ka Misi created by the falling
of another layer called hedu from above. There were original humans (Nobabdabo)
who were part spirit and part human and part animal, When they did, they
turned into spirits. Yanomamo men tell the stories of these myths to the
locals whilst tripping on hallucinogens.
- Much of Yanomamo life revolves around sex: humour, fighting, insulting
etc.
- Men are considered superior to women. Men were created via Moonblood.
One of the ancestors shot Moon in the belly, his blood fell to the Earth
and changed to men, who were inherently fierce. Thicker blood created more
ferocious men and thinner blood less ferocious men.
- Women came from a fruit called ‘Wabu’. While picking vines, one man
noticed a fruit with eyes, tossed it on the floor and it became a woman
with a large vagina. She eventually caught the men’s attention with her
large and hairy vagina, and they all copulated with her and produced many
daughters, and everyone slept with the daughters too.
- Jaguar myths- A theme that repetitiously appears in Yanomamo myths
is about Man’s relationship to Jaguar. In mortal form, the jaguar is an
awesome and much-feared beast, for he can and does kill and eat men. He
is as good a hunter as the Yanomamo are and is one of the few animals of
the forest that hunts and kills men- as the Yanomamo themselves do.
- The Yanomamo see great distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’.
An animal captured in the wild is ‘of the forest’, but once brought into
the village, it is ‘of the village’ and somehow different, for it is then
part of culture. Jaguar is an ambiguous creature to the Yanomamo, for he
combines several human capacities while at the same time he is ‘natural’.
Yanomamo are somewhat jealous of him. But in their stories about him, he
is consistently portrayed as a stupid brute, constantly being outwitted
by man, and constantly subjected to the most scathing, ridiculous, and
offensive treatments at the hands of Man.
Myth in Trobriand Society
- The origin stories that document the first ancestors- usually a brother
and sister- who founded the hamlet and garden lands that each matrilineage
claims are not perceived as myths of primordial or legendary times. In
the minds of the Trobrianders, the stories recount the actions of real
people who made decisions that continue to affect the affairs of each successive
generation. Among all the ancestors who established matrilineages, only
some of them came to Kiriwina with extensive food taboos and certain shell
body decorations; these, from the beginning, ranked them as chiefly
lineages and separated them from the commoner matrilineages, whose ancestors
came without elaborate sumptuary rules. Whether expressed as taboos or
prescriptions, these sumptuary rules sharply isolate the chief and define
him and other members of his matrilineage as different kinds of social
persons.
- Each founding brother and sister did not arrive alone. Other sibling
sets identified with other matrilineages in the same and other clans often
came from the same place together. The lineage ancestors who came together
continued to be allies, and today these same alliances continue. In the
case of chiefly lineages, however, those who came with them as commoners
worked for them by raising their pigs and growing betel nuts and coconut
palm trees. From time to time, the chiefs rewarded them with stone axe-blades
or shell valuables.
- The ancestress and her brother emerged from the underworld from ‘a
hole’. In that underworld, in the days before life on earth, people lived
as they do now. The ancestral brother and sister brought up with them scared
objects and knowledge, skills and crafts, and the magic that distinguish
this group from others. According to Malinowski, this myth can only be
understood in the rich context of Trobriand life and cultural meaning.
Brother and sister emerged because they represent the 2 essential elements
of a subclan; a husband did not emerge because he is, in terms of the subclan,
an irrelevant outsider. The ancestral pair lived in separate houses because
the relationship of brother and sister is marked by sharp taboos.
This myth validates the rights of the subclan to the territory and encapsulates
the magic and skills that make them sociologically and ritually unique.
- Other origin myths known by all Trobrianders relate the emergence
of the four clans, legitimising their food taboos, but, more particularly.
Matters of rank and precedence. Finally, other local myths deals with the
relative rank, position, and dispersion of high-ranking sub-clans beyond
the point of original emergence. Such myths, Malinowski says, validate
the political structure and provide a mythological charter to justify and
reinforce present social relations. Pulling Trobriand myths out of this
social context, we would not understand them.
- Levi-Strauss disagrees with the above paragraph. Levi-Strauss is seeking
to explicate the universal workings of the human mind by looking at varied
cultural forms as artefacts. The realm of myht is crucial in this
enterprise because here human thought has its widest freedom. Levi-Strauss
argues that peoples everywhere are plagued intellectually by the contradictions
of existence- by death; by man’s dual character, as part of nature yet
transformed by culture; by dichotomies of spirit and body; by the
contradictions of descent from a first man (where did a non-incestuous
first mate come from?); and so on. The realm of myth is used above all
to tinker endlessly with these contradictions, by transposing them symbolically.
Myth in Gopalpur Society
- The most important deities in the Gopalpur region are Hanumantha and
Bhima, different manifestations of the same violent, untamed god. Hamunmantha
is the monkey-like god who helped Rama, the hero of Ramayana, to rescue
his wife, Sita. It is recorded that Hanumantha entered the capital city
of Ceyoln and set fire to it by tying a torch to his tail. Bhima was the
largest and most warlike of the 5 Pandava brothers, the heroes of another
epic, the Mahabharata. Surrounded by a rugged and forbidding countryside
with such gods as models, the people of the Gopalpur region have maintained
a way of life relatively unaffected by the distant cities.
Beneficial vs destructive diffusion
Beneficial- the introduction of computers into Intuit Eskimo Culture
in the 1980s.
The Inuit of Canada’s Northwest territories whose lives retain elements
of their recent gathering-and-hunting past, readily incorporate new ideas
they consider helpful into their lives. In the mid-1980s, their regional
council, made up of representatives from 14 isolated Inuit communities,
decided to use computers to store information on the game that hunters
brought home to their remote hamlets. If one hamlet found itself with plenty
of caribou meat but few seal, it could easily locate a hamlet with an excess
of seal, and trade one kind of meat for the other. Both the hardware and
software had to be user-friendly, since many Inuit had little formal education
and not all of them spoke English. The Apple Macintosh, which uses images
rather than words to execute commands, and a software program made up of
lines and circles of the Inuit alphabet was written. Ultimately, even the
remotest Inuit villages will be able to communicate easily with one another
and the outside world.
Destructive- the putting in of a water pump in a village well in rural
India in 1987.
A solar-powered water pump, installed on a village well, freed local
women from the time-consuming task of drawing water by hand, but the women
found they were spending much less time chatting with one another around
the well. The easily availability of water attracted unwanted wanderers
from outside the village, moreover, local boys whose job it had been to
draw water from the well, had nothing to do and soon turned to petty crime.
Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and poor widened: the rich, who owned
land, used the pump for irrigation, but the poor had no land to irrigate.
The new pump was definitely a mixed blessing. Eventually, women of the
village intentionally broke it so they could once more gather around the
well that had been the centre of their social lives.
Impact of the west on small scale societies, leading to:
1) decimation (e.g. by disease, ethnocide, genocide)
2) Armed resistance
3) Colonialism and its changes in social order
4) Syncretism (open or hidden)
5) Enslavement
6) Harking back to the past
7) Milinarium movements (e.g. cargo cults)
8) Adaptation
The role of the anthropologist
- Development anthropology- efforts by anthropologists to improve the
well-being of people in the ‘developing’ countries in areas such as health
care, education, and agriculture.
- Development anthropology is part of a broad field called international
development, a comprehensive term for a broad range of efforts- on the
part of indigenous people, specialists of many kinds, and institutions-
to improve human welfare, particularly in developing countries. The institutions
involved include world bodies like the various agencies and programs of
the United Nations, national governments, and to public and private agencies.
All of them employ experts of many kinds, including social scientists,
physicians, teachers, and agronomists, to undertake international development
projects.
A guiding premise of international development today is that both its
broader scientific aims and its narrower practical goals are best achieved
at the invitation of and with the full co-operation of the communities
that are its intended beneficiaries. Another basic premise is that development
projects should be sustainable; their intended beneficiaries should be
able to continue to achieve the desired results after development assistance
ends. These two premises may seem obvious enough, but they were often lacking
in development projects in the past. Both were arrived at after trial and
error.
- Two guiding premises are that development projects should be:
a) at the invitation of and with the co-operation of the community
themselves.
b) Sustainable.
- The ‘top-down’ approach was an early approach to development assistance.
It was called the ‘top-down’ approach because donations and assistance
were imposed by outsiders without the full participation of the local people
they were intended to benefit- proved ineffective and unsustainable.
- Anthropologists’ best opportunity to be of service may lie in helping
governments, international agencies, and private charitable organisations
to better understand the cultures of the people whose needs they wish to
address. Development efforts affect different cultures and different social
groups in different ways; what works for one culture or group may not be
suitable for all. A development project might raise the standard of living
of one group of people (e.g. men), but lower it for another group (e.g.
women). An anthropologist knowledgeable about the ethnographic details
of a particular culture, and aware of it as a holistic entity, is ideally
placed to point out to governments and aid organisations how certain changes,
while benefiting some, may at the same time make the lives of others even
more difficult
-A second way in which anthropologists can involve themselves in world
problems is through advocacy: using their influence and expertise to defend
a cause.
One of anthropology’s best-known advocates is David Maybury-Lewis,
whose fieldwork among the Shavante of Brazil convinced him that this society
needed and wanted help in retaining its cultural identity and defending
its interests against government-sanctioned encroachments on their land
by big business. In 1972, Maybury-Lewis founded a non-profit organisation
called ‘Cultural Survival’, to encourage tribal peoples’ participation
in national market economies, to secure their land rights, and to fund
projects designed and carried out by the people themselves. Cultural survival
also keeps people informed about tribal groups and ethnic minorities by
publishing information that results from its research.
- The Kayapo of Brazil have adopted contradictory attitudes towards
the environment that has harboured them for generations, the mahogany-rich
rainforests. In 1988, the Kayapo brought together over 600 tribes to oppose
a World-Bank financed project to build a dam that would drastically alter
the local environment by flooding almost 500 square miles of rainforest.
The environmentalists chose to ignore the earlier Kayapo record of dealings
with lumber interests, and hailed them as heroes. Six years later, however,
it developed that local Kayapo chiefs had been making illegal deals with
loggers that brought them money and an array of Western gadgets, as well
as destruction to the rainforest.
Etic perspective- the anthropological use of the concepts meaningful
to the anthropologist to understand a culture.
Emic perspective- the anthropological use of the concepts meaningful
to the members of a society to understand their culture.
The pros and cons of anthropologists become advocates (i.e. speak up
for societies who can’t defend themselves) for those societies which are
considered to be under threat?
Advantages
- If advocates were in a situation where they were defending
a foreign society to their own society, they would probably have more ‘power’
in terms of convincing the opposition to hear their arguments and having
an influence on their ideas than if a member of the society was defending
it.
- Anthropologists would probably be more able to explain certain
aspects of the society better because he himself had to understand the
society at first and would be more able to see the difficulties of some
ideas, and the ways in which he could explain them so they were more understandable
to a foreign audience.
Disadvantages
- In some cases, the society would probably feel insulted and
that their pride and dignity was threatened if a foreign person defended
their culture/society as they believe it is up to them to defend themselves.
This aspect becomes even greater when we consider the fact that the anthropologist
may explain something which he himself has not fully understood, or has
misunderstood, and would therefore be wrongly describing this society to
others.
- Anthropologists can also ‘expose’ societies that don’t want
to be exposed when defending them.
Development versus Dependency theory
- How does Frank’s ‘dependency theory’ differ from the traditional ‘development
theory’?
The conventional view of the undeveloped countries denies them a history:
‘To classify these countries as ‘traditional societies’ implies either
that the underdeveloped countries have no history or that it is unimportant.’
(Griffin 1969)
But it is increasingly clear that the history of the post-colonial
countries has been crucially important in shaping their present underdevelopment.
The most influential proponent of the thesis that European expansion and
colonialism created the underdevelopment of these countries has been Andre
Gubder Frank. Frank’s thesis is that underdevelopment is not basically
a consequence of traditionalism. Rather, he argues that underdevelopment
in Latin America-and by extension, parts of Africa and Asia- has been systematically
created by colonist exploitation. Frank has documented ‘the development
of underdevelopment’ in Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba.
- What explanations are given in Paul Silletoe’s article for the failure
of development?
- Conspiracy theories that suggest ‘development’ is all a multi-national
capitalist scheme to enslave the world, saddling many Third World countries
today with international debts crippling economic growth.
- Donors missing overseas assistance for flagrant strategic political
ends, notably during the Cold War to support and reward allies, but continuing
up to present times by tying aid to trade.
- The neo-Malthusian argument that relentless population growth is
wiping out any technological gains, despite the fact that yield statistics
demonstrates that the world produces enough food to feed us all.
- What was wrong with the ‘top-down’ approach?
It is widely agreed that the ‘top-down’ approach which many agencies
took to development was partly to blame. Th e assumption that experts,
notably economists, can diagnose problems and devise plans for governments
to implement to improve people’s lives is questioned. The arrogance, the
ignorance of the needs and aspirations of the poor, did great damage.
- What does he mean by the ‘participatory’ approach?
Agencies consulting more closely with their ‘target beneficiaries’-
i.e. involve the poor themselves in problem identification and decision-making
process, rather than trying to impose outsider-devised interventions on
them.
- How does indigenous knowledge differ from scientific knowledge?
Indigenous knowledge- what ‘ordinary’ folk know. This is local in geographical
extent and cultural context. It is fragmentarily distributed, exists nowhere
as a totality. Although more widely shared locally than specialised scientific
knowledge, no one person, institution, or authority encompasses it all.
- Look at the example of the pumpkin vines in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, blights such as bacterial wilt, and fungal disease occasionally
attack the profitable pumpkin crops. People attribute this to the ‘evil
eye’, and it is common to see inverted earthenware pots, painted black
with white circles, hung up to protect the crop.
A role for indigenous knowledge research remains in the solution, to
inform and perhaps correct externally-derived adaptive technical interventions.
Such research can further understanding of the homestead system, where
Pumpkin vines are customarily grown in a spreading tangle off the
ground over bamboo frames. Although this is more of a piecemeal ‘happening’
than a planned cultivation, such practices, built up through experience
over many generations, may hinder the spread of disease.
Indigenous knowledge research may also facilitate collaborative communication
of scientific findings, since people are more likely to respond to recommendations
if they match their own perceptions of their needs, for example, if they
are expressed in an ‘evil eye’ idiom.
- Why did the Flood Action Plan have bad consequences for the poor ‘Jele’
caste.
The spending of many billions in development assistance-funding scientific
advances and associated technological interventions goes hand-in-hand with
increased poverty. It bolsters the power of the wealthy elites who occupy
positions interfacing with the international community. The poor are excluded
and further lose control over their own lives. One clear link in Bangladesh
is such that technological advances may increase the value of resources,
attracting the wealthy and powerful who then seek to control them. Resources
held in common which give uncertain or poor returns and are uneconomically
labour-intensive are not attractive propositions. The poor often rely on
such common land and water bodies to eke out their meagre livelihoods.
If the wealthy evict them, following a scientifically informed intervention
that increases productive capacity, the consequences can be dire.
The Flood Action Plan, for example, a multi-billion dollar engineering
project of embankments and sluices intended to control monsoon flooding,
has also made it more feasible to control what have traditionally been
common water-fisheries. When combined with development-assisted fish-stocking
programmes, these become highly productive resources and poor jele caste
Hindu fisherman find access restricted. Before the 1970s, the untouchable
jele caste was almost exclusively involved in fishing, and fishermen followed
traditional access customs.
-How does the ‘Green Revolution’ often work against the interests of
the poor?
- Green revolution- Dramatic increases in agricultural production from
genetically engineered hybrid grains that produce high yields in return
for high inputs of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
- ELDCs are importing three times more cereals from EMDCs because the
green revolution has made these ELDCs increasingly dependant on foreign
grain imports although the revolution was supposed to promote self-sufficiency.
- Need for petrochemical fertilisers, mechanised farming, irrigation
etc. Therefore except where the country transforming its agriculture is
self-sufficient in oil, fertiliser manufacture and industrial capacity
to produce tractors and other machinery. The Green revolution creates markets
for the industrial countries and plunges under-developed countries into
deeper and deeper dependency.
- Consequences for rural populations- radical transformation in the
agrarian class structure, The costs favour the large land-owner and relatively
prosperous peasant farmer. Widens the gap between the rich and the poor.
The poor are forced to sell their land to the expanding capitalist farmers
and join the labour force. This causes rural depopulation as poor people
seek jobs elsewhere; e.g. Pakistan, Thailand, Mexico, India, Philippines.
- How did the development discussions make conflict worse in one Bangladeshi
village?
The Bangladesh projects have followed established participatory approaches,
striving to empower while facilitating technology transfer. Further, the
scientists have adopted a problem-centred approach, generating a range
of potential options from which ‘beneficiaries’ might choose.
In one Bangladeshi village, the discussions catalysed conflict between
stakeholder groups rather than facilitating progressive change. The rich
landowners expected their poor and landless clients to go along with whatever
they mooted, as usual. The wealthy saw the project as an opportunity to
speed up this slow natural process to their advantage. When they were encouraged
to speak out at segregated stakeholder sessions, the poor, particularly
those who relied heavily on fishing, predictably opposed the suggestions
which would deprive them of a common resource. A village leader, addressing
a meeting, warned everyone against collaborating with the project and talked
of protecting the ‘beel’, as it was part of a British plot to retake colonial
control of Bengal. More worryingly, the landowners forbade people to fish
over their land over the lake. In another display of power, following elections,
landowners refused to enter into sharecropping arrangements with poor member
of their villages or employ them as day labourers, effectively depriving
local people of an important source of income, by entering into arrangements
with persons from elsewhere.
- How can anthropologists help in this dilemma?
We need to urge development agencies to debate more openly the wisdom
of ethics of interfering socially in other communities, imposing Western-informed
notions of good governance, human rights and natural justice. We need to
promote this kind of open debate or else the rich will continue to become
richer, and the poor poorer. One of our consistent exports to egalitarian
tribal societies around the world has been poverty. We should not allow
politicians, to whom these issues are so familiar, to spin them away.
Applying Concepts of cultural and social change to ethnographies
Yanomamo
- Many of the changes that are occurring among the Yanomamo are the
result of the increasing Catholic mission activities at their several main
posts of Ocamo, Mavaca and Platanal and the extension of their influence
to more and more neighbouring villages. Those Yanomamo villages away but
relatively close to these centres are now becoming severely tied to and
dependant on the mission posts. The missionaries have started schools and
economic ‘co-operatives’ in some of these outlying villages, sending Yanomamo
teachers that they have trained as their agents of acculturation.
- As the distance from the mission posts increases, contact diminishes
and becomes more irregular, especially if the villages are not on or near
navigable rivers via which the missionaries, and the Yanomamo agents they
train, normally travel.
- The policy of the Catholics has been to ‘reduce’ as many of the widely-separated,
isolated Yanomamo villages as they can to living at as few, large, easily
reachable villages as possible. Many of the recent villages moves in the
area of Kaobawa’s village resulted from this policy: More and more villages
are moving closer to the missions, or factions of larger villages are splitting
away from the main group to do this. As this trend continues, mission villages
are becoming larger and larger. Coupled with this trend toward larger,
more concentrated villages is the gradual decrease in the total number
of Yanomamo villages.
- The 1987 Brazilian Gold Rush- What began in 1987 developed into a
catastrophe of enormous proportions. The catastrophic changes were the
consequences of a gold rush on the Brazilian side of the border that simmered
for many years and then exploded in 1987. Diseases brought by Brazilian
gold miners then spread from one village to another, even to remote Venezuelan
villages near the border, either because the Yanomamo there began visiting
the mining area and brought home the sicknesses or because some Brazilian
miners illegally crossed into Venezuela and brought the diseases with them.
- As the gold fever intensified, the miners demanded that if they couldn’t
be there, then the missionaries and other ‘foreigners’ shouldn’t be there
either. The government buckled under the pressure and ordered the missionaries,
anthropologists, and others sympathetic to the Yanomamo to leave the area.
The miners then invaded the area in force- soon reaching approximately
40,000 in number.
- Soon after, a group of miners clashed with a group of Yanomamo near
Mucajai, killing four of them with guns and desecrating their bodies. One
miner was also killed by the Yanomamo.
- The miners used destructive hydraulic pumps that sucked the river
bottoms of their gold-bearing ore, passed it through troughs into which
the toxic mercury compounds were added to extract the gold from the mud,
and let the poisoned residue flow freely back into the rivers. They occasionally
raped Yanomamo women, and shot their men and children.
- Massacre at Hashimo-Teri- In 1993, a group of Brazilian gold miners
attacked and massacred 17 members of the village of Hashimo-Teri near the
headwaters of the Orinoco River.
- In 1985 there was an acceleration of village fissioning to the point
that some Yanomamo families were living in separate, square nuclear family
houses. There appear to be two reasons why the larger villages are chronically
fissioning into increasing smaller sub-groups. One of these reasons is
that warfare is diminishing and is less and less a worry to those who live
at the mission posts. The Yanomamo at the missions now have increasing
access to shotguns and ammunition, which reduces the probability they will
be raided by enemies who only have bows and arrows.
- In this area, shotguns were originally obtained from the Missionaries
or employees of the mission, but in recent years many have entered the
area from Brazil via a long trading network involving several isolated,
intermediate villages in the headwaters of the Mavaca and in the Siapa
River basin. Even more recently some shotguns have come via the S.U.Y.A.O.
co-operatives , which began stocking them in about 1989 but soon withdrew
them after it was learned they were being used in killings.
- In addition to the military security that shotguns provide, there
is a second reason for fissioning into smaller communities or single-family
households. This has to do with material possessions like machetes, cooking
pots, axes, clothing, flash-lights etc. and what it now takes to obtain
them: hard work, selling labour.
- Initially the missionaries generously gave these exotic items away,
usually freely or, at least, with trivial reciprocity required. Then the
missionaries began preferentially giving them just the more important men
or members of their families to encourage their co-operation.
- Large numbers of Yanomamo, sometimes whole communities, are moving
to the mission in order to be closer to the source of material goods.
- The process of ‘peasantisation’ is starting here. The community is
becoming less and less self-sufficient in an economic sense, and is increasingly
comprised of non- or distantly related people. As this happens, new social
problems are appearing, especially the widespread occurrence of theft-
both among the Yanomamo themselves and especially from foreigners who visit
these places.
- Education and growing awareness of the outside world- The children
of Bisaasi-Teri, including those in Kaobawa’s village, now regularly attend
school at the Mission and follow an academic year like that found all over
Venezuela. They even have an equivalent of a school-bus system- a very
large dugout canoe that goes to each of the 12 ‘villages’ each morning
to pick the school-children up and returns them the same way in the afternoon.
- Fluency in Spanish is developing is developing at a rapid pace at
Mission locations, as well as the ability to read and write both Yanomamo
and Spanish.
- The newest factor in this complex situation is the designation of
the Venezuelan Amazonas as a new state in 1992. It is no longer federal
territory. Coupled with this important political change is the parallel
process in Venezuela of ‘decentralising’ the national government, which
means giving state governments more control over what happens locally.
Increasing secularisation of this area also means increasing interest in
the development of this area. The resources logically available to the
State government of Venezuela’s Amazon area fall into just a few logical
categories: Mineral wealth. Eco-Tourism. Federal subsidies. Whichever route
is followed, the Yanomamo will become increasingly exposed to our kind
of world and will be incorporated into it.
Symbolism
A symbol is something human beings use to stand for something else (Needham).
Animals, as well as humans, have been said to use symbols, e.g. sign
language, computer keys in apes. But they do not use it naturally, it is
taught. They use signs, not symbols.
Humans are often described as the only species able to use symbols.
Examples: The Kwaio (purity and sacredness)
The Trobrianders (clan totems)
Symbols can be used to separate the ‘them’ and ‘us’- use of lags, uniforms,
etc. SEE YANOMAMO PG 101.
4 properties of symbols:
- Can be an object, a series of words (e.g. a pledge),
an action (a salute).
- To use a symbol is to communicate something (attitude, feeling, abstract
idea)
- Symbols are arbitrary
- Meaning of symbol is not necessarily immediate
Example of the ‘evil eye; in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Parts of
Africa, South Asia etc. The way of preventing it is to wear a blue bead.
Sacred vs Profane-
Normal dictionary definitions:
Sacred- Made holy by religious association / connected with religion
/ used for a religious purpose.
Profane- Not belonging to what is scared or biblical.
The symbolic and social meanings- of Space
Arrangements of space make important symbolic statements about social
groupings and social relationships. Among the Nookta of the Pacific coast
of Canada, each of the large plank houses in the winter village in which
the Nookta lived in the nineteenth century represented a social group.
The floor plan of the house was divided into spaces that were ranked with
respect to one another. The place of honour in the house was occupied by
the owner, who was the highest-ranking person in the house and held the
highest title, and his family. This was the left corner of the rear of
the house. The next most important man and his family occupied the right
rear corner of the house; the third most important man and his family occupied
the left front corner of the house; the fourth most important man and his
family were in the right-hand corner; the least important titled man lived
with his family on the left-hand side of the house. Untitled commoners
and their families lived in the remaining spaces along the sides of the
house. Each location had its own hearth. Each nuclear family in the Nookta
house was ranked with respect to the others, and this rank was symbolised
by the location of each family’s hearth and its living space in relation
to the others. It is like a seating plan according to seniority.
See diagram below.
In a peasant village in North-eastern Thailand, space in a house is
divided to symbolise not rank, but rules about marriage and sex. The sleeping
room is the most sacred part of the house. First cousins, with whom sexual
relations and marriage are not permitted, may enter the room but may not
sleep there. More distant relatives, whom one may marry, are not allowed
to enter the sleeping room and must remain in the guestroom. S J Tambiah
(1969), who analysed the Thai material, also relates categories of animals
and their edibility to relatives whom you may and may not marry. First
cousins, whom you cannot marry, are equivalent to your own buffalo, oxen
and pigs, who live under the house. You may not eat them and must give
them to other people. More distant relatives, whom you can marry, are equivalent
to other people’s domestic animals, which you can eat. The same logic that
connects edible and inedible animals with marriageable and unmarriageable
relatives is also found in Thai society. Since social space symbolises
degree of social relationship, and edibility also signifies social relationships,
then the meaning of social space is also related to edibility.
See diagram below.
The way in which people use social space reflects their social relationships
and their ethnic identity. Early immigrants to America from Europe brought
with them a communal style of living which they retained until late in
the eighteenth-century. Historical records and archaeological findings
document a group-orientated existence, in which one room was used for eating,
entertaining guests, and sleeping. People ate stews from a communal pot,
shared drinking cups, and used a common pit toilet. With the development
of ideas about individualism, people soon began to shift to use the individual
cups and plates; the eating of meals which included meat, starch and vegetables;
served on separate plates; and the use of individual chamber pots. They
began to build their houses with separate rooms to entertain guests- living
rooms, separate bedrooms for sleeping, separate work areas- kitchen laundry
room, and separate bathrooms.
In Mexico, the meaning and organisation of domestic space is strikingly
different. Houses are organised around a patio, or courtyard. Rooms for
sleeping, dressing talking when the weather is harsh, cooking, and storage
open onto the patio, where all kinds of domestic activities, such as socialising,
child play, bathing, and doing laundry, take place. Individuals do not
have separate bedrooms. Children often sleep with parents and same-sex
siblings share a bed, emphasising familial interdependence. Rooms in Mexican
houses are locations for multiple activities which, in contrast, are rigidly
separated in the United States.
The households of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles represent a transition
between Mexican and American usages. According to Pader, they ‘blur the
lines between the U.S. coding system, with its emphasis on greater bodily
privacy and the individual, and the Mexican system, with its emphasis on
sharing and close daily interconnection.’ As Mexican-American children
mature, they change their ideas about family, become more individuated,
and desire their own beds and bedrooms.
Gypsies, who are found in every major American city, have retained important
elements of their own culture, including their beliefs about pollution,
extended families which form households, and ideas about space utilisation.
When the Gypsies of Richmond, California, move into a house previously
occupied by non-Gypsies, it must first be ritually cleansed of the polluting
effects of these non-Gypsies by a thorough cleaning with disinfectants
and the burning of incense. Then the inner walls are torn down and
the doors removed to create communal living space which is divided by hanging
drapes. One space is devoted to palm reading, the major source of
income, the other space being used for a living area for the extended family
that will live there. The head of one Gypsy family moved into what had
formerly been a bar and dance club in order to house the 28 members
of his family and the many guests they entertained (Sutherland, 1968).
Case Studies:
Pg 314- Sacredness and Pollution among the Kwaio (Keesing 1980)
Poverty
Contribution by anthropologists to issues such as poverty-
Development anthropology- efforts by anthropologists to improve the
well-being of people in the ‘developing’ countries, in areas such as healthcare,
education and agriculture.
Migration into urban areas is common as peasants search for better economic
status. But most fail, Also, families loosen, religion declines in importance,
interpersonal relationships become increasingly impersonal etc etc. For
some urban immigrants, poverty and social isolation can precipitate a sense
of hopelessness that prevents them from seizing whatever political, economic
and educational opportunities may exist. (example- Comas; a shantytown
in Peru).
In many cities, immigrants have banded together to form self-help groups
called ‘voluntary associations’- political, recreational, religious or
occupational organisations through which individuals co-operate to achieve
specific goals. Example- Nigeria’s “tribal unions” which provide
social activity, financial support for jobless members, and help in times
of illness or death. The movement of peasants to cities causes shanty towns
(link to geo).
A universally acceptable definition of poverty, one that does not rest
on standards that apply only to some cultures, is almost impossible to
provide. One reason is because many people around the world conduct at
least part of their lives without using money. Some grow their own food;
others barter for goods and services. Thus, using dollars to categorise
either individuals or whole nations as rich or poor, while helpful in some
contexts, is inadequate in others, and in some cases may be ethnocentric
as well.
Thus, poverty can not be adequately defined, cross-culturally, as the
lack of particular material objects or of money. Instead it must be defined
in terms of whatever is needed for adequate living in a particular cultural
context. If, whatever their cultural setting, people lack any of the things
they consider necessities in the context of their individual setting- and
especially if they also lack the means to obtain those- then they can be
considered impoverished. Poverty is a state of want rather than scarcity.
Oscar Lewis coined the expression ‘culture of poverty’ for the ideas
and behaviour poor people in some capitalist societies develop as they
adapt to urban circumstances. Among the characteristics of the culture
of poverty are a lack of involvement in the institutions of the wider society
(except for the armed services, courts, prisons, and welfare organisations);
financial circumstances that include a shortage of cash, lack of savings,
borrowing, and pawning ; inadequate education and virtual illiteracy, mistrust
of the police and government; social relationships that include early experience
with sex, widespread illegitimacy, wife abandonment, and mother-centred
families and a lack of privacy.
There are at least two different views of urban poverty. The first is
that urban poor develop their own unique adaptation, fundamentally different
from the larger society’s way of doing things. The second is that the urban
poor share many values of the larger society around them; their adaptation
is different only because they lack the education and income to conform.
Functionalism
Functionalism is a system used by cultures which concentrates on and
emphasises the functional interactions of cultures and societies, i.e.
why and how certain rituals, daily chores etc. are performed within societies.
It makes ‘law-like’ generalisations which are employed to explain and predict
social phenomena.
The first main idea is that each culture or society can be viewed as
a system that consists of many similar elements that function either separately
or together. It is also believed that if one of these elements was altered
or removed, then this would affect the other elements and the system as
a whole.
The other main idea, the Malinowskian view, is that all of the
aspects, such as rituals, ceremonies etc. of a society or culture are performed
because they are required to fulfil the biological and/or psychological
needs of the individuals of that society. For example, hunting and gathering
is performed in some cultures to fulfil the biological need of eating for
the individuals of that society.
The theory of cultural relativism can be used to explain why the functionalist
theory is applied to certain societies- the activities that they perform
are done so because they are regarded as important and necessary according
to the different values of each society. If we combine these two ideas,
we are able to see that both the Functionalist and cultural relativist
theories centred around the fact that the people of societies perform their
activities and behave in the ways that they do because these actions and
thoughts correspond and are considered to be right and acceptable in terms
of the values of the society.
Functionalism says that:
- All elements within a society interconnect and work together
- If one dynamic is changed, it will alter the whole of society
- Society will change to accommodate this change.
- Everything has a specific function in society
- Society will always function in harmony, as it will accommodate change,
by changing itself.
Problems with Functionalism
- Not all elements within a society interconnect.
- Because it argues that society itself changes to accommodate new
dynamics, it fails to provide an explanation for wars and conflicts that
may arise in particular societies.
- It disregards the immediate causes and motivations which are necessary
in order to give rise to a phenomenon (i.e. some behaviours and phenomenon
can not be accounted for, even by those individuals themselves who perform
that behaviour, like mental illness or criminal behaviour, what function
do they serve?)
Case Study-
Malinowski and Functionalism
Malinowski studied the Trobrianders of New Guinea between 1914-1918.
He rejected the idea of remaining apart from their daily lives, and
instead chose to carry out the participant observation method. He closely
observed the activities going on around him and listened carefully to anecdotes,
local gossip etc, so that he would be able to provide much fuller accounts
of Trobriand life than if he had relied on formal questioning.
He was impressed with the fact that the customs, ideas, artefacts and
language of the islanders all served their biological and psychological
needs, and soon learned that the seemingly useless customs and rituals
(e.g. boat-building and seafaring) did the same. His idea that aspects
of culture are functional in that they fulfil the biological and psychological
(or other) needs of human beings is known as ‘Functionalism’. He
argued that the existence of customs, social institutions or social relations
should be interpreted in terms of their function: that is to say, in terms
of their contribution to the satisfaction of ‘needs’ (both primary physiological
and emotional needs and also secondary or social needs).
One of the rituals performed by the Trobriands was the ‘kula ring’,
a recurrent exchange of valuable gifts between the different people of
the various Trobriand Islands chain. This ritual involved members of the
society making dangerous voyages across the seas in canoes in order to
frequently exchange these gifts. Although from an outsider’s point of view
this process would have seemed pointless, Malinowski learned that it did
fit into the idea of functionalism as this ritual was considered very important,
worthwhile and sacred because it fulfilled the islanders’ social and psychological
needs- it allowed them to feel a sense of power and prestige.
There were many rituals that were performed before the canoes left the
islands, and these also served to control various emotions and psychological
needs, such as anxiety, which the islanders faced before setting off on
such journeys. As the Trobrianders were relatively behind the Western World
in terms of technology, rituals such as the ones performed before the kula
served to bring about a sense of security and power, thus helping to overcome
feelings of powerlessness and tension.
Another example of functionalism in this society was the tradition that
involved the chief of the Trobrianders receiving very large amounts of
foods and other tribute from the villagers whom lived in the area under
his reign. The chief was also the sub-owner of many of the agricultural
foodstuffs that these villagers owned, and claimed many supplies of these
which he was obliged, by custom, to re-distribute at a later stage in the
form of payments for various public services performed by the villagers
at his command. This meant that the villagers were in fact consuming the
products of their own labour, except this was done after the wealth went
through the chief and thus emphasised and reinforced his control and made
his wealth an instrument of political power in their society.
Ethnicity / Ethnic Groups
Ethnicity- the identification of individuals with particular ethnic
groups
Ethnic groups are usually limited to minorities; groups that are smaller
than the dominant group in their society. The composition of an ethnic
group, different life-styles or different levels of income or education
may distinguish individuals within the same ethnic group from one another.
Ethnic groups- groups whose members share cultural traditions and values
and a common language, and who distinguish themselves from other groups
(Barth). And are seen by others as different. Often wear clothes as a symbol
of difference, but are integrated into the wider community.
Ethnic groups share common cultural norms, values, identities, patterns
of behaviour, and language. Their members recognise themselves as a separate
group and are so recognised by others. They may / may not be politicised.
Ethnic identity may be seen as based on ‘primordial’ sentiment; i.e. sentiments
which are seen as going back to ancient times and which tie group members
to one another emotionally despite persistent attempts to assimilate them.
Sometimes the distinction between ethnic groups involves more than cultural
differences. Race and racial classifications are involved when physical
appearance is also a basis for making distinctions individuals or groups.
Though many people tend to think of a ‘race’ as a scientific concept
based on biological systems of classification, it is in reality a cultural
construct whose definition and form differ from society to society. For
example, in Brazil, colour of complexion is but one element in the conceptualisation
of status and group, while in the southern part of the United States an
individual was categorised as white or African-American on the basis of
complexion colour alone.
Religion may be one of the factors which serve to distinguish one ethnic
group from another. When the occurs, the ethnic conflict is heightened
and intensified. Each side finds support in the moral authority of its
own religion for continuing the conflict and its violent action against
those whom it characterises as infidels or heretics. Ethnic differences
may also be class differences. In some societies, the underclass is a separate
ethnic or racial group, and ethnic conflict may be explained as class conflict.
In other approaches, ethnic identification is seen as completely situational.
In Europe, ethnic groups were often also territorially defined and wanted
political autonomy.
Sometimes the distinction between ethnic groups involves more than cultural
differences. Racial classifications, religion and class may be factors.
So ethnic conflict may be based on any of these.
There may be many ethnic groups in one country or even in one city;
e.g. Madagascar, which has some 18 different ethnic groups. (Polyethnic-
made up of different ethnic groups).
In such societies, ethnicity is a means of social classification. People
use it to anticipate, to evaluate- and sometimes to try and understand
the behaviour of others.
Unfortunately, ethnicity can attract discrimination against members
of ethnic groups, especially for urban ethnic minorities. The concept
of ethnicity has proven useful to domestic government agencies and international
organisations trying to assist ethnic minorities in polyethnic societies
to advance themselves. Rather than treating the inhabitants of a developing
country as culturally homogenous, for instance, most international aid
agencies now try to take into account the values, institutions, and customs
of various ethnic groups, targeting relief or aid to their particular needs.
Ways people show that they are proud of their ethnic group:
- Behaving in a distinctive manner
- Living near one another
- Attending special functions
- Performing traditional rituals
- Wearing distinctive clothing
The Korean community of New Malden
- There are about 24,000 South Koreans in Britain, of whom 20,000 live
in London and Surrey.
- There are signs of burgeoning Korean enterprise everywhere in New
Malden: Korean restaurants, travel agents, supermarkets, opticians, hairdressers-
even a Korean college where Koreans at British schools can keep up with
the Korean curriculum.
- There is a growing tendency for the Koreans to find London, and in
particular New Malden, so attractive that they decide never to return home,
mostly because of the high quality of the education.
- Emigration restrictions were only eased in 1989, partly as a result
of the Seoul Olympics the previous year. Since then, the number of Koreans
in London has soared. They like it because it’s ‘a free country’.
- Integration is not so easy. Korean students who come to London to
improve their English can find that they spend three hours a day doing
a course at Oxford Circus, speaking a small amount of broken English to
other foreigners- but never get to know any English people.
- There are about 30 Korean Protestant Churches in London, one Korean
RC church, and one Korean Buddhist Temple, as well as Korean Saturday schools
in Chessington and North Ealing.
The Jewish community of Stamford Hill
- The men are instantly recognisable from their beards, black hats
and long, black coats.
- These Jewish groups seem to create self-imposed ghettos and seek
to maintain the kind of life which existed in the shetl of Eastern Europe.
They speak Yiddish as well as English, and religious duties and practice
are at the centre of their lives.
- The children are educated at private schools, of which at least 25
are scattered across Stamford Hill. These are named after towns and rabbinical
dynasties in Poland, Russia, Romania and Hungary. Boys and girls are educated
separately.
- Many members of the community have 10 or 12 children and it is estimated
that, including children, it now numbers 16,000 in Stamford Hill with all
its members living within walking distance of their small, informal synagogues,
where they pray three times a day.
- They look on children as blessings. God will provide. What is special
about this community is its commitment to the religious way of life, not
letting go of a way of life which has existed for over 3,000 years.
- They do not allow the children to have the influence of the television
and the media.
The Vice Lords: A study of Black Ghetto Culture
This study by Lincoln Keiser in the 1960s of a minority or sub-culture
in contemporary American society (Chicago) was the first case study to
report on an urban sub-group. This case study was carried out in the tradition
of the participant observer. Keiser’s main goal was to demonstrate the
systematic nature of Vice Lords social life.
Similarities with other gangs of similar age and composition irrespective
of ethnic identification that operate in depressed areas of American cities:
1) Delinquent / criminal / violent way of life seen as desirable
2) Such behaviour provides status for organisations and members where
other means of gaining status are blocked.
3) These patterns of behaviour can be understood as instrumental adaptations
for survival in a desperate environment.
Preface by Keiser:
The Vice Lord Nation is a large confederation of street corner groups
whose home is the streets, alleys, and gangways of Chicago’s major Black
Ghettos.
I chose the Vice Lords for two reasons:
1) They were reputed to be one of the largest and best-organised delinquent
gangs in Chicago.
2) By chance established friendship with a member.
First part of research: 1964-65; solely work with informants
Second part of research: 1966-67; after social anthropology graduate
training. Did field research with one sub-group of the Vice Lords (The
City Lords)- royalties were offered to be shared in return for their co-operation.
To make sense of the wide behavioural variations I used Clifford Geertz’s
definitions of culture and social system: “One of the more useful ways
of distinguishing between culture and social system is to see culture as
an ordered system of meaning and symbols in terms of which social interaction
takes place and to see social system as the pattern of interaction itself.
On the one level there is the framework of beliefs, expressive symbols
and values in terms of which individuals define their world; on the other
there is the ongoing process of interactive behaviour whose persistent
form we call social structure. Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms
of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their actions.
Social structure is the form that action takes, the actual existing network
of social relations.” These abstractions help the anthropologist organise
his observations. Own interpretation biased by own point of view.
The Vice Lords
- Why have many anthropologists and sociologists in the past thought
that the research techniques used to study small-scale societies could
not be used effectively in a modern, urban setting.
The relatively simple life of a tribal village can perhaps be described
in purely verbal terms but the uniformities found in urban life can for
the most part be expressed only statistically. In the town few generalisations
of any validity can be obtained without the use of social survey techniques.
“When studying an entire primitive society in this way (using anthropological
methods) one can be fairly certain of having witnessed the full range of
behaviour that members of that society hold in high regard, given the relatively
constant constraints of the physical environment. However, when this methods
is applied to subcultures contained within a single society, it is apt
to lead to fallacious results.
- What are the general problems he shared with other anthropologists
trying to do fieldwork?
There is another important factor that is not directly related to the
urban setting as such. This derives from the racial situation in the United
States. I was a White working in a Black ghetto area, and this had definite
effects on my research. Then there is the problem of getting established.
This involves settling physically in the area; becoming adjusted to living
in an alien environment; and establishing the necessary social relationships
so that one can begin gathering data. Data gathering itself presents problems.
On one level this involves data-gathering techniques, but on another level
there is the problem of what out of the almost infinite array of human
behavioural aspects, one chooses to record in the first place.
The anthropologist is not always conscious of this orientation while
he is actively involved in field research, and thus he is not always aware
of how it is affecting what he records. The anthropologist’s emotional
reactions to the social and cultural setting in which he is working is
another source of problems. Having to interact in social situations
where one does not know the cultural significance of various actions places
a tremendous emotional strain on the individual, and affects his relationships
with the people he is studying. Also, although the anthropologists tries
to approach his work as dispassionately as possible, he is a human being,
and he reacts to situations in terms of his own values and ideas. How the
anthropologist handles these feelings is one of the most serious problems
of field research. Finally, after the research has been completed, there
is the problem of writing up the material into some kind of coherent account.
-How did he make his choice of area and topic?
In 1963, he had a part-time job as a waiter in the dining room of a
luxurious retirement home in Chicago. Through his job he got to know Jesse
and Al, who were dishwashers. They never became close friends, but they
did get to know each other well enough so that his presence did not interrupt
their normal conversations. They discussed the Cobras because Al had met
a girl from their gang. Keiser heard enough to make him aware that in the
world of fighting clubs, there was a highly interesting cultural and social
system in operation.
How does he explain the importance of ‘making friends out of strangers’
and how does this differ from social relationships in small-scale societies?
In small-scale societies there are few, if any strangers. Everyone
knows everyone else, and knows them in a variety of social contexts. There
are lines of potential social interaction laid out at birth among almost
anyone everyone, and individuals activate these at particular times. In
the city, most people are strangers, and making friends out of strangers
is an important and continual social process. Friends are made out of strangers
through the interaction that takes place in particular social contexts.
Keiser’s initial contact with Black fighting clubs was a result of a process
of making friends out of strangers that is an integral part of urban social
systems.
Why was the work-place the only area where Keiser could form a social
relationship with a Black?
In their society at the time he met Jesse and Al, Whites who formed
relationships with Blacks, usually, although not always, did so in the
context of a job. Middle-class Whites who formed relationships with lower-class
Blacks, almost always formed them in the job context. Racism limited the
kinds of jobs open to Blacks, and thus limited the kinds of jobs in which
I could have gotten to know ghetto-dwelling Blacks.
What questions was he curious to answer?
He had heard references made to a number of different gangs, He had
heard it said that people had ‘heart’ and ‘reps’. How did all this work?
What was the nature of the subgroups? How were they differentiated, and
how did they connect with one another? What were the social identities,
and how were they connected to one another? What were the social identities,
and how were they connected to form social roles? What were the beliefs,
concepts, and values which the members of the clubs held, and how did they
fit with the set of social groups and social identities? Basically, what
is the nature of this social and cultural system and how does it work?
How did he establish relationships with the members of the group?
No one, much less a White, can go into an area inhabited by a club
and initiate a research project. He approached this problem again
through means of a job. He was offered employment with the Social service
department, and handled cases of boys seventeen through twenty years old.
The court caseworker’s job consisted of counselling individuals referred
by the court; thus he became acquainted with the members of three groups.
How did his role as caseworker conflict with his role as anthropologist?
The Social Service Department was interested in learning about the
nature of fighting clubs, and he was given permission to question persons
referred to him by the court about features of club life. This posed problems.
His role as caseworker conflicted in some ways with his role as anthropologist.
As a caseworker conflicted in some ways with his role as anthropologist.
As a caseworker, his primary purpose was to help the people referred to
him make the kind of adjustment to the urban world that would prevent their
coming into conflict with the rules and enforcement agencies of predominantly
White, middle-class Chicago. This meant he was trying to change behaviour
in terms of his own value system. As an anthropologist, however, it was
crucial to try not to judge behaviour relative to his own values, much
less to change it. He was limited in his use of his ‘clients’ as anthropological
informants.
How did he establish contact outside the court context?
Because he was connected to the court, many boys were reluctant to
give information about their club. In spite of these difficulties, he was
able to gather some basic material. The people most willing to talk about
their group were the Vice Lords, and therefore, most of his information
was about that club.
While talking to a ‘client’ referred by the court, he was told about
a woman who had taught in a West Side School, and who had become close
friends with several Vice Lords. He contacted her, and she agrees to introduce
me to Sonny, one of the Vice Lords she knew. At the time he met Sonny,
he also met a Lord called Goliath. In the next year, Sonny, Goliath and
Keiser went to parties together, met in bars, and visited each other’s
homes. During this time , he also met a few other members of the club and
collected several life histories. It happened that he and Goliath got on
particularly well, and in the course of the year, became good friends.
How did he find a place to live? What were the advantages of living
on the North Side?
Finding an apartment proved more difficult than he had anticipated.
Most of the apartments in Lawndale are owned by White absentee landlords,
and they were highly suspicious of his motives for wanting to live in the
ghetto.
Goliath ruled out other available apartments because they afforded
too much opportunity for ambush attacks. Finally, after they were unable
to find anything suitable in the area around 15th St, they looked in the
North Side ghetto, and found an apartment there. But on the North Side
he was at least located in a Black neighbourhood; he was able to question
informants in surroundings that were relatively natural to them; and he
was able to give ‘sets’ (parties) for the Vice Lords that were not only
useful in gaining rapport, but which also gave him the opportunity to observe
behaviour in this important social context.
What things were harder and what things were easier than when he’d
one his fieldwork in a mountain village in Afghanistan?
Easier- He lived in an apartment that, although dingy, had hot and
cold running water, a bathroom, a stove and a refrigerator; he bought his
food in supermarkets and restaurants he was accustomed to using, and the
language spoken was generally similar to his own.
More difficult- Getting accustomed to living with the possibility of
robbery and ambush. Goliath took many precautions in choosing an apartment
that had a well-lighted entrance and hallways. They kept a pistol in the
apartment, along with several wooden clubs. Goliath always put a match
in the door jams before they left so that he could tell if anyone had forced
open the door while they were gone and might be hidden in the apartment
when they came back. At night he put boards and empty cans in front of
the windows so that if someone tried to break in, they would be awoken
by the noise. It took Keiser a while to get used to taking these
precautions without getting extremely nervous.
How did he use the standard methods of PO and interviewing informants?
PO consisted of observing behaviour while hanging out on the streets,
going to bars, attending parties, visiting friends and relatives, and simply
driving about the West Side with members of the club. As a participant
observer, he was involved in the first stages of one actual gang fight,
and was part of the preparations for another that never materialised. But
he could never fully participate in the life on the streets.
Some could accept Keiser, but others had such string antagonisms that
they were unable to be friends with him. They tolerated his presence, but
for the most part ignored him. Finally, there were some individuals who
could not control their hatred towards Whites, and in a few instances it
boiled into the open aimed at him. When this happened, he had to
simply walk away.
In what ways was he an outsider?
The history of Black-White hatred separated them. Cultural differences
also underlined their separateness. He dressed in casual clothes-Levis
and a sport shirt- but these were different from the clothes the Vice Lords
wore. He was not conversant in street-slang and he did not act properly
in certain social situations.
What problems did he have writing a diary and taping life stories?
Each evening he wrote as much of his observations as could be remembered.
It would have been best to have carried a small notebook with him so that
he could have taken notes on the spot. Initially he did this, but it made
most Vice Lords so uneasy for him to take out his notebook and write down
something that I decided to stop. Further, much of the social interaction
between Vice Lords that he observed occurred while individuals were riding
his car and could not be written in his notebook at the time. He
attempted to remember as much as possible, but at the end of the day he
always knew that much had been forgotten.
Interviews with informants were another source of data. He conducted
structured interviews and gathered life histories. A tape-recorder was
used to record this material. He was able to record highly detailed accounts
of interviews that he could not have written by hand. Transcribing the
tapes was the main difficulty.
How did he decide on the structure and what to include in certain topics?
In recording life histories he simply asked the informant to tell about
his life. The only questions asked were either those necessary to clarify
something he did not understand or those necessary to get further amplification
of an incident he felt was interesting and important. Structured interviews
were organised around particular topics. These were derived primarily from
his observations. If he thought something he had observed needed amplification,
he focused on this in a structured interview.
Why didn’t he look at ‘social network’?
Social life forms a system. When looking at social interaction as a
system, social anthropologists often employ the ideas of social groups,
and social roles in getting at patterns and regularities. It is much more
complicated than this, but what he has described is basic to what social
anthropologists do. In any case, it was this orientation that directed
his research; the questions that he asked and the data which he recorded
were dictated by it.
But he did not ask other important questions and collect other important
data. For example, he did not look at Vice Lord behaviour in terms of social
in terms of social network. After becoming acquainted with the network
idea, it was evident that certain aspects of Vice Lord life would have
made better sense if ordered in terms of the idea. He had not thought in
terms of social networks, however, and therefore had not collected the
necessary data.
What emotional reaction problems did he have?
On the streets of the ghetto, he did not know what was, and what was
not, potentially dangerous; and he did not understand the significance
of most actions and many words.
This feeling of helplessness was very difficult for him to handle.
In the early part of his research it often made him feel so nervous and
anxious that the events occurring around him seemed to merge in a blur
of meaningless action. He despaired of ever making any sense out of anything.
Vice Lords sensed his feelings and he could see it made some people uncomfortable.
This increased the difficulty of gaining the rapport necessary to carry
out successful research.
He also had emotional responses to events that stemmed from his own
value system. How to handle these responses was another difficulty. There
were certain aspects of Vice Lord life that he found particularly distasteful.
In the early part of his research, they made him upset and uneasy. Later,
at times he found himself getting angry. These reactions often made it
difficult for him to retain objectivity.
What problems did he have when writing up the data?
Writing up the data into some kind of coherent account involves at
least two problems. First, the anthropologist must decide to be included
in the work, and second, he must decide on the data to be included in the
work, and second, he must decide on the manner in which to organise and
present the data that is included. The first problem is often difficult
to solve because in writing an account it is necessary to describe living
people, many of whom are close friends. This is especially difficult when
the study may be read by members of the society in which it was carried
out.
Keiser believes that most anthropologists feel an obligation to write
nothing that could inure the people in the group in which they worked.
On the other hand, the anthropologist wants to write the best possible
account he can, and information that members of a society might not want
known might be important for understanding how particular social and cultural
systems work. If information was given in confidence, then the anthropologist
has the moral obligation to keep that confidence. In other instances, the
anthropologist may have information not given in confidence that people
still might not want others to know about. One obvious solution is to change
dates, names and places, but this is not always effective. Then, in Keiser’s
opinion, the particular information should not be included if it is really
injurious to the people involved. The difficulty comes in deciding whether
something is really injurious. I do not think that there is any simple,
clear-cut answer to this problem. The anthropologist must be as sensitive
as possible to the feelings and problems of the people he is describing,
and write his account accordingly.
In trying to solve the second problem, that of organisation and presentation,
his theoretical orientation was as important as it was in gathering data.
The theoretical orientation provided a framework on which he tried to construct
a coherent account. His main goal was to demonstrate the systematic
nature of Vice Lord social life. In order to do this, however, it was necessary
to take a cultural perspective as well, for aspects of culture related
to patterns of social interaction in important ways. I started with definitions
of the cultural and social systems. The social system was defined as the
ordered system of on-going social interaction; and the cultural system
as the ordered system of beliefs and values in terms of which social interaction
takes place.
See also Pg 460 in Keesing
Structuralism
Levi-Strauss analysed cultural phenomena such as languages, myths and
kinship systems to discover what ordered patterns, or structures, they
seemed to display. These, he suggested, could reveal the structure of the
human mind. He reasoned that behind the surface of individual cultures
there must exist natural properties (universals) common to us all. Levi-Strauss
focused his attention on the patterns or structures existing beneath the
customs and beliefs of all cultures.
One such pattern is called opposition. The entire world could be conceptualised
in this dualistic way. The reason people of all cultures tend to think
in terms of opposites us that to think, we must classify, which means we
must be able to distinguish between things.
In the industrialised world, the red light of a traffic signal means
‘stop’, and green means ‘go’. To Levi-Strauss, this is a mere external
of culture, devoid of any deeper significance. Much more meaningful is
how these facts convey information to drivers and pedestrians; through
the contrast or opposition between red and green, and the switching from
one colour to another. Red has a meaning only in relation to green. It
is the structure or pattern of opposites that provides the messages, not
the colours considered independently of each other.
Levi-Strauss likened people’s language to the ‘rules’ that govern society,
in that the governed are largely unconscious of what they know. He likened
speech-the use of sounds and rules, mainly in the form of sentences-to
the ideas and behaviour that result from the application of largely unconscious
social rules. Members of a society are much more likely to be conscious
of their actual ideas and behaviours than they are of the deeply structured
rules that make these ideas and behaviours possible, but the ideas and
behaviours of a given group of people can be understood if the unconscious
of the unconscious structures in their minds can be discovered.
- Levi-Strauss puts forward that culture is to be understood as a surface
phenomenon which reveals the universal human tendency to order and classify
experiences and dynamics.
- Seeks to understand the ‘deep structures’ in society.
- While the surface phenomenon may vary, the underlying ordering principles
are the same.
- Levi-Strauss has analysed kinship and marriage, myth and ritual
- He argues that the human brain universally forms ‘Binary Oppositions’.
Here, people and society forms oppositions and contrasts. For example,
the Yanomamo make a distinction between the things of the ‘jungle’ and
the ‘village’. Man is of the village and animals are of the village. Man
is of the village and animals are of the jungle. Moreover, in our society
we form a distinction between man and woman, right and left, and raw and
cooked.
- No term, therefore, is to be understood in isolation, but instead,
as part of a contrasting system built up from the brain’s elementary function
of contrast and opposition.
- He argues that myth and ritual serve to bridge these contradictions
(i.e. bridge social dichotomies).
Problems with structuralism-
- Structuralism tends to be static and ‘ahistorical’ (not examining
past events), thus not accounting for the way history effects the present.
- Poses a biological explanation for cultural, which sometimes ignores
‘social constructions’. ]
Authority and the Exercise of Power
Systems of social stratification
Sociologist Max Weber established possible connections among power,
prestige, and unequal access to resources. He suggested that social inequality
tends to develop in a society when:
- People have unequal access to whatever is considered valuable: natural
resources, labour, money, or (especially in non-western societies), intangibles
such as ritual knowledge.
- People are entitled to different degrees of prestige, depending on
criteria such as descent, wealth or race, or (more recently), education
or Westernisation.
- Some people enjoy more power, either physical or ideological (based
on ideas and charisma) than others.
-
Such differences are both causes and characteristics of stratified
societies.
Society ensures the appropriate behaviour of its members by rules about
social stratification, especially through status, role and prestige.
Social class- a group of people in a stratified society, such as elites
and commoners, who share a similar level of access to resources, power
and prestige.
Rank- a position in hierarchical system of social classification.
Ascribed status- the social status that one is born into, includes gender,
birth order, lineage, clan affiliation, and connection with elite ancestors.
Social stratification- a ranking of social statuses such that the individuals
of a society belong to different groups having differential access to resources,
power and prestige.
Status- the place that an individual occupies in the social structure
Role- a combination of the attitudes with a given status and the behaviour
that expressed them.
Prestige- social reputation based on a subjective evaluation of social
statuses relative to one another.
Class- a group defined by the amount of control it exerts over
factors of production. (Those with more control are the higher classes
and vice versa).
Class
Marx’s definition of class as an economic phenomenon assumes that in
creating their own wealth, the high-ranking classes will exploit the labour
of the low-ranking classes. Marx also suggested that conflict between different
classes, which has been going on through out human history, is inevitable.
Classes are like strata of a social structure. They are interlocking
‘pieces; within a social system defined according to their own economic
relationships. It is not that they are necessarily richer or poorer; but
that their function within a system of production is specialised. It is
specialised not in terms of what people actually do, rather, a class is
defined in terms of the relationship of people’s labour to their sources
of subsistence and to the means of production.
Caste
Caste- an endogamous, ranked, occupationally defined group- known as
‘Jati’ in India.
Caste is a special phenomenon fully developed only in India and Sri-Lanka.
Castes are not simply ranked social categories through in Hindu ideology
they are related to the idea fourfold division of society into ‘varna’-
a priestly class; rulers and warriors; landholders and merchants; cultivators
and menial. Local castes or ‘jatis’ are usually endogamous corporate groups.
Hindu cosmology and rules of purity and pollution prohibit eating and sexual
contact between higher and lower castes. These castes are hierarchically
ordered in a fixed rank order, associated with traditional occupations.
A person’s caste is fixed by birth (i.e. ascribed status) and it is unchanging.
But in practice a local caste hierarchy may correspond only very loosely
with the ideal.
In some societies, certain occupations are regarded as being so lowly
or degrading that only those of inferior social rank undertake them. Likewise,
prestigious jobs may be performed only be members of a superior rank.
For example, traditional Hindu society in India is divided into 4 ‘varnas’:
Class ranks- 1) Priestly (Brahman)
2) Warriors (Ksatriya)
3) Merchants and cultivators (Vaisya)
4) Craftsman, labourers, servants (Sudra)
Then come the Untouchables- so inferior, they’re considered outside
this ranking system altogether).
Well-defined sets of rights, duties and rules of conduct set the individual
varnas apart from each other and the untouchables.
Within each varna were numerous castes, hereditary social groups identified
with special rights duties, and prohibitions, each occupying a permanent
place in hierarchy of similar groups and each associated with a distinctive
occupation. Caste members inherited their membership patrilineally, and
were members for life. Castes were endogamous, required to marry someone
from the same caste, although from a different patrilineage. Each caste
occupied a permanent position in an overall hierarchy of castes, with each
(except for those at the top and bottom) ranked as superior as well as
inferior to at least one other.
Untouchables belonged to no caste. As a member of caste, only you and
other members of your caste would have had the right to perform the
traditional services ‘owned’ by your caste. Your occupation would have
been the one to which membership in your particular caste entitled you;
e.g. if you were a member of the Washerman caste, you would be a washerman.
You could not have accepted food from, or had sex with, a person of
any caste ranked below yours. You would probably have been prohibited from
eating certain foods forbidden to members of your caste.
The caste system had the important function of forcing people into
dependence on one another’s specialised services, thus promoting their
interaction and co-operation among the groups to which they belong, thereby
increasing the integration of the entire society.
Specialists in Indian culture disagree about whether the caste system
should be considered predominantly an economic or religious institution.
From an economic perspective, castes were occupational in nature, but the
hierarchical ordering of castes was reinforced by a religious concept.
At the core of Hinduism lies the notion of personal purity and pollution.
One way these were determined was by one’s varna; Brahmans were purer than
Sudras, and this kind of purity or pollution was unchangeable. But a person
could also be polluted by normal biological functions- eating, excretion,
sex, childbirth or death, and such pollution was thought to be contagious.
The ranking of castes was based on the degree of purity or pollution associated
with the job traditionally performed by members of a given caste.
Over the last half-century, the system has been considerably weakened,
first by Western influences and then by Indian law. The Indian government
has tried to raise the status of members of low-ranking castes by encouraging
them to change the occupations allocated to them by tradition, and this
has allowed many Indians to break out of the system.
In his account of life in the southern Indian village of Gopalpur, Beals
describes how missionaries converted many members of the village’s lower
castes to Christianity, a religion in which everyone is believed to be
equal in the sight of God. Among those converted were some members of the
lowly Leather Workers caste, whose job it was to dispose of the carcasses
of the animals that died in the village. One day, a water buffalo died
in Gopalpur, but the leatherworkers refused to remove it on the grounds
that they had rejected traditional ways and were no longer members of the
Leather workers caste. So the buffalo’s corpse lay rotting in its stall.
Eventually, no longer able to bear the stench, an angry committee of villagers
belonging to other castes tied the animal’s legs together, thrust a pole
through them, and carted the carcass to the edge of the village. Only a
generation before, this could not have happened, for non-Leather Workers
would never have polluted themselves by performing such a defiling job.
William and Charoltte Wiser, who studied social relations in the Indian
village of Karimpur between 1930 and 1960, found that much had changed
when they returned in 1970. “There are fewer caste restrictions than there
used to be”, clai