Showing papers in "Anthropological Quarterly in 1972"

Ownership and Political Ecology

Abstract: The studies presented in this symposium demonstrate how sophisticated anthropologists have become in following through the connective linkages in local ecosystems and in specifying the parameters of economic change. The Alps, of course, offer a magnificent laboratory to the ecological anthropologist interested in the ramifications, at any given time and over time, of microvariations in altitude, slope, soil, precipitation, temperature, wind, and in the incidence of sunshine and shade. The papers presented here document the importance of these variations on the distribution of men, animals and plants over the landscape, and on the specification and scheduling of work sites and work tasks. All the papers demonstrate how important it is, for any one household at any one time, to achieve a balance between unimpeded access to an effective combination of resources characterized by such heterogeneity, and the operation of the jural rules concerning who owns what. In fact, much of the data on cultural ecology in the Alps could be phrased as the outcome of a continuing game against a centrifugally organized environment by populations equipped with two sets of ambiguous and often contradictory rules. To survive in such an environment, a population must organize its resources into viable resource bundles, whatever the requirements of property and inheritance. It does so largely, to adopt the parlance used by Robert Netting in his paper, through the development of long-range strategies of expansion, intensification, and regulation. At the same time, the dynamics of ownership by individual households often run counter to these long-range strategies by favoring short-term realignments of resources according to another set of rules, the rules of property and succession to rights in property. The symposium papers take us a long way on the road towards a better understanding of the phenomena involved. Eschewing a static analysis of jural rights, they offer a processual view of ownership, in its varied ecological and social parameters. They thus also point the direction in which analysis must go, adumbrated perhaps most clearly in Berthoud's paper. The property connexion in complex societies is not merely an outcome of local or regional ecological processes. but a

Of Men and Meadows: Strategies of Alpine Land Use

Abstract: Mountain villages in southern Switzerland traditionally met their subsistence needs through mixed farming and herding within the environmental constraints imposed by altitude, topography, exposure to sun, and water availability. Community boundaries were clearly defined and historically stable. Exploitative technology varied little through time. This paper examines the strategies by which individuals and groups in one community adapted to circumscribed resources through processes of expansion, intensification, and regulation. Rights in land and water were increased through cooperation and the earnings from outside employment. Agriculture was rendered more productive by irrigation and manuring. Population growth was contained by restricting village citizenship, delaying marriage until a viable economic unit could be formed, and out-migration.

A Second Look at Limited Good

Abstract: Because of the controversy which has arisen since the original article on Limited Good was published in 1965, the author questions here whether or not it is a plausible model to explain peasant behavior and if he has made himself clear in describing it The nature of peasant behavior is not in dispute. Further clarification stresses that the model is not exclusive to peasant societies; that it is a model inferred from behavior; that it explains classic, not modernizing, peasant society; that peasant society is not a closed system; and that exceptions to the rule of Limited Good include religious prestige and intense emotional experiences. The author maintains that the cognitive orientation of Limited Good goes farther than any other model yet advanced to explain peasant behavior.

The process of deculturation- its dynamics among united states aged

Abstract: Through a process of conscious as well as unconscious conditioning the older American is gradually groomed for total cultural withdrawal. The dynamics of this process in many ways replicate- in reverse-the enculturative process of early childhood. Culture lag in adaptation to a changing life cycle has facilitated the cultureless position of the old. When you think about old age-and it is a subject studiously avoided

Cutting the Pie in the Swiss Alps

Abstract: Data from a French-speaking peasant village in the Swiss Alps are brought to bear on the concept of property--its ownership and transfer. The village has a mixed mountain agriculture as its traditional economic base, supplemented today by wage-labor and some market cropping. Accompanying this economic system is an ideology of household independence and self-sufficiency, as well as an inheritance system of strict partibility. But potential disruption from endless parcelling is prevented by aiz ideology that views property as a set of quanta, not as a continuously divisible, undifferentiated mass. This quantum view of property acts as an adaptive mechanism ensuring economic success and cultural continuity.

Dispute settlement and sanctity: an ethiopian example

Abstract: It is proposed in this paper that the sanctified decision, meaning the acceptance of a decision in faith, is an alternative to "negotiated" or "judicial" decisions and is the key to understanding the dispute settlement process in some societies. Settlement procedures, the most frequently occurring delicts, and sanctions as applied by the Sidamo of Ethiopia serve to illustrate the sanctity oriented type of society. Examination is also made of the process involved in a shift to the use of judicial power from resolution of disputes by sanctified procedures.

The andean rural proletarians

Abstract: The ethnography of the Andean zone of South America contains frequent, but often vague, references to "rural proletarians. " This paper seeks to bring together the basic areal literature and proposes the reinstatement of a standard definition for rural proletarians. A definition of such a broad social type, however, is insufficient without assessing the category's implicit pretense to denote a generic and distinctive social group. The evidence here suggests that with clear defining criteria the category can lay reasonable claim to such status. One further concludes that the Andean countryside is rapidly becoming the domain of the post-peasant. This seems to be a radial process, producing several sorts of new Andean ruralites. Among the more notable of these are the Andean rural prole tarians.

Changing economic emphasis in an alpine village

Abstract: Patterns of ownership and inheritance have grown less rigid in the last quarter century due to a decline in agriculture. Instead, new patterns have emerged as a result of modern economic practices and their changing emphasis on land and other property. As men move into the industrial work force they become less committed to communal labor tied in with the traditional agricultural economy. At the same time, a growing tourist industry has created new values among the younger generation toward land, and this change has been reflected in the construction of new houses for tourism and the extreme inflation of land prices within the village.

Modernization in the South of France: the Village and Beyond

Abstract: This essay describes the modernization process in a village in the South of France. Rapid demographic collapse and the transition from peasant polyculture to market-oriented monoculture conditioned major changes in the social structure of the village. Many of the institutions which once mediated social relations among villagers disappeared, while others were transformed to new ends. Occupational diversity was reduced, as was integration on the village level. Such changes had differential effects by age and by sex. The modernization process cannot be adequately understood when viewed from the perspective of the village alone; neither is it sufficient to speak of the differentiation and integration of the French nation-state. The interrelations of the local,, regional, national, and international arenas must be analyzed to delineate the social-structural changes which have occurred.

From Pleasantry to Capitalism: The Meaning of Ownership in the Swiss Alps

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to present some methodological principles derived from a concrete example, namely an Alpine community of the Swiss canton of Valais.' The knowledge of a relatively homogeneous social entity is subject to a greater distortion than a visibly stratified entity. In the first case, any difference, any inequality, or still any conflictual social form constitute very often dynamic situations which are ignored, or at best minimized by the use of a referential pattern, implicit or not, borrowed from the most stratified system. In this respect, the study of apparently undifferentiated European rural communities and that of so-called segmentary societies, almost always defined by privative or negative terms (e.g., stateless, marketless society, etc.), meet the same kind of difficulties. In both cases we are subjected to the delusion of the givenness which compels us to accept the apparent absence of any hierarchy and conflict. The analysis of a specific institution, the "communal judge," has allowed me to arrive at a knowledge of my concrete objective which goes beyond the misleading immediacy of this givenness. The office of judge is filled by a villager, appointed by his fellows; his essential function is to act as a conciliator for all civil cases among members of the community and between one of these and an outsider. These court cases are of methodological interest in that they provide relatively rigorous indices of social dynamics and structural transformation. Consequently my main objective is to outline a theory of the passage from one social form to another one. However, I want to avoid recourse to the oversimplistic dichotomy "tradition-modernity," and its

Process and Tradition in Cypriot Culture History: Time Theory in Anthropology

Abstract: In the following pages the author proposes a series of time-specific theoretical models as a means of interpreting and understanding the culture history of the Greek tradition on Cyprus. As a means of conceptualizing the roles of time itself as a significant variable in determining and explaining aspects of social structure, socio-cultural time is divided into three heuristic categories: (1) Synchronic Time (of perhaps a few years or less duration); (2) Diachronic or Short Historical Time, varying in length from a generation to a few hundred years: and (3) Long Historical Time of approximately a millennium or more in length. Employing this theoretical framework, a conscious attempt is made to delimit the different types of models and explanations appropriate to differing magnitudes of time within a specific historical sequence. It is concluded that the type of explanation of social and cultural behavior that is offered by an observer is directly related to the scale (length) of time considered.

Characteristics of Alpine Ethnography

Abstract: Most of the papers contributed to the symposium and reported on in this issue testify to the interest that North American anthropologists have been taking in Central European studies. It seems like a good time to reflect on the character of the approach that is being taken toward one segment of Central European ethnography, the Alpine region, by us and by some of our European colleagues, like Gerald Berthoud. My paper, which is in the nature of a discussion of the symposiasts' contributions, will also be devoted to pointing out directions that have been popular in Alpine studies, particularly as they show up in this symposium though I will also note one or two possible research topics that have been little exploited in this part of Europe. The symposiasts reiterate several themes which reveal the way Alpine ethnographers have tended to perceive communities in that region. Clearly anthropologists have given the bulk of their attention to the people who work the land, rather than to the increasing number of individuals engaged in service occupations or employed in factories and offices. No doubt such emphasis is largely due to the anthropologists' preference for rural cultures; despite recognizing a subfield of urban anthropology, we still frequently leave field study of the urban or actively urbanizing scene to sociologists. The choice of specializing on rural culture may be due to the greater ease of carrying on the personalized method of anthropology in comparatively small villages or rural communities.

Aspects of the Moral Compact of a Washo Shaman

Abstract: Analysis of the directives of a Washo shamanic compact indicates that the shaman was forbidden to reveal to others the moral content of the compact, from which the shaman derived his supernatural powers. Other Washo considered shamans to be figures of great moral ambiguity. Such conceptions of moral ambiguity were lodged in different cognitive levels of Washo society, in Washo tales, in Washo conceptions of supernatural beings, and in traditional Washo attitudes toward shamans. The uncertainty and hostility inherent in the ambiguous relationships between Washo shamans and Washo who were not shamans are related to the equalitarian ethos of traditional Washo society, where, however, shamans could increase their economic and political resources, relative to other Washo; and where the private nature of the shamanic compact sustained other Washo in their conception of the moral ambiguity of the shamanic role. This in turn provided Washo with the ideological means with which to control the activities of shamans, and to re-emphasize the values of equalitarianism in social relationships. Finally, the analytic dangers of deriving the ideological and moral imperatives of particular role categories from general cultural knowledge available about such roles is pointed out.

An Empirical Test of the Assimilation of a Migrant Group into an Urban Milieu

Abstract: Most anthropological formulations of the acculturation process are based on somewhat impressionistic recording of the adoption of traits. However, it is sometimes difficult to determine when certain features are assimilated in an acculturative situation and in what order they are adopted. A model using rigorously defined operational variables was used to define temporal sequences. It showed the differential acquisition of a host culture's traits by a group of Navajo migrants in a large Western United States city.