Showing papers in "Anthropological Theory in 2002"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine and critically evaluate Bourdieu's critique of phenomenology as presented in his Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and The Logic of practice (1990).
Abstract: This article sets out to examine and critically evaluate Bourdieu's critique of phenomenology as presented in his Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and The Logic of Practice (1990). Since it is not possible to properly understand Bourdieu's critique without situating it within the context of his broader theoretical orientation, the article begins with an exploration of some of the key concepts underpinning his version of practice theory. Of particular importance for this article are his notions of habitus, body hexis and doxa. Having reviewed these central constructs, the article turns to discuss Bourdieu's critique of phenomenology. Following this, some of the problems with his critique are examined in light of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz. The article concludes with two points: a brief discussion of how Bourdieu's project, while at times richly nuanced, can itself be criticized for being an overly deterministic rendering of human thought, feeling and behavior; and a call for anthrop...
189 citations
TL;DR: In the second edition of Eade and Sallnow's volume as discussed by the authors, the authors suggest some of the reasons for the growth in pilgrimage studies and propose some future theoretical areas of interest, highlighting important but largely implicit areas of theoretical overlap between the communitas and contention paradigms.
Abstract: Anthropological study of pilgrimage has increased in recent years, and much work has been dominated by one of two theoretical paradigms. The older, Turnerian depiction of anti-structure and communitas has been influential but appears to be contradicted by Eade and Sallnow's more recent emphasis on the sacred as `contested' at the great (Christian) pilgrimage sites. Reflecting on the newly published second edition of Eade and Sallnow's volume, this article suggests some of the reasons for the growth in pilgrimage studies and proposes some future theoretical areas of interest. In the process, it seeks to highlight important but largely implicit areas of theoretical overlap between the communitas and `contestation' paradigms.
167 citations
TL;DR: The authors suggests that the current discourses of globalization in anthropology, cultural studies and post-colonial studies are expressions and elaborations on a specific socially positioned perspective that has become a contender for a new ideological representation of the world.
Abstract: This article suggests that the current discourses of globalization in anthropology, cultural studies and post-colonial studies are expressions and elaborations on a specific socially positioned perspective that has become a contender for a new ideological representation of the world. It is important to recognize that this representation is not so much the result of research but an immediate expression of a particular experience, one that began, in fact, outside of academia. This discourse, which is strongly evolutionist, is contrasted to a global systemic perspective in which globalization is a specific historical phase of such systems, a phenomenon that has occurred previously, most recently at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century when it produced analogous discourses on the global.This article suggests that the current discourses of globalization in anthropology, cultural studies and post-colonial studies are expressions and elaborations on a specific socially positioned perspective that has become a contender for a new ideological representation of the world. It is important to recognize that this representation is not so much the result of research but an immediate expression of a particular experience, one that began, in fact, outside of academia. This discourse, which is strongly evolutionist, is contrasted to a global systemic perspective in which globalization is a specific historical phase of such systems, a phenomenon that has occurred previously, most recently at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century when it produced analogous discourses on the global. (Less)
104 citations
TL;DR: Theoretical units can be either theoretical or descriptional as discussed by the authors, and their utility for a specific analytical purpose must be tested, and theoretical units must be defined intensionally, through explicit listing of their diagnostic attributes.
Abstract: Understanding the epistemological nature of archaeological units, or types, is critical to archaeological research. Two aspects of units underpin the issue. First, ideational units must not be conflated with empirical units. Ideational units are units of measurement; empirical units are the things being measured. Ideational units can be either theoretical or descriptional. Theoretical units, as their name implies, are derived from a theoretical basis, and their utility for a specific analytical purpose must be tested. Descriptional units are not derived from theory and are not attached to an analytical purpose, although they may serve the purpose of communication. Second, theoretical units must be defined intensionally, through explicit listing of their diagnostic attributes. Most extant archaeological units have been extensionally derived from the specimens included in a unit, and often comprise descriptive as well as definitive attributes, without distinction between the two. The conflation of theoretic...
78 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that narrated experience has been the key ingredient in the emergence of tourism as a modern industry and that tourists seek to harness it into their narration, in turn, are compelled to commodify and sell potential narratable memories to travelers.
Abstract: This article argues that narratized experience has been the key ingredient in the emergence of tourism as a modern industry. Starting with published travelers' reports, narrative has shaped and structured touristic experience and, in turn, the narratized memories of travelers have stirred the desire for touristic exploits of one generation after another. Clarifying the non-industrial nature of the tourism `industry', the article explores the `aura' of the tourist experience, the ways in which tourists seek to harness it into their narration, and how tourism providers, in turn, are compelled to commodify and sell potential narratable memories to travelers.
66 citations
TL;DR: The field of sociology must be entirely redefine as discussed by the authors, and the field of social sciences must be completely re-defined, as a system, both differenciated and able to control itself.
Abstract: Succeeding to the philosophy of law, sociology organized itself no longer around the absolute State but around society itself, conceived as a system, both differenciated and able to control itself. The concepts of institution and socialization formed the core of a large number of analyses which were both theoretical and empirical. But this `classical' view disintegrated itself both because markets eliminated a large part of institutional controls of change and because new social movements, from the 1980's on, rejected this society-centered view of social life. More recently, only the critical approach within this so-called functionalist approach survived actively, interpreting all social categories as instruments serving a domination which is more and more internalized. The most radical wing of the women's movement gave the most elaborate expression of this trend. But it necessarily exhausts itself by its entirely critical and self-destructive point of view.The field of sociology must be entirely redefine...
56 citations
TL;DR: Giddens, 1990 as mentioned in this paper uses ethnographic examples from Papua New Guinea to look at how trust relations, the trust of people in anonymous others (experts), symbolic tokens (money), and abstract systems (technical knowledge), are affected by modernity.
Abstract: Current ideas of alternative or multiple modernities promise to overcome Eurocentric assumptions about personhood and culture as well as gross binary oppositions between global and local, the West and the Rest. They rightly direct attention to the complex imbrication and dialectical refashioning of indigenous and exogenous practices, that is, to contingent social processes with unpredictable outcomes. Does pluralizing Modernity then serve primarily to designate hybrid possibilities and historical particularities? Or can the idea of plural modernities be specified so as to make it useful for purposes of comparative ethnography? This article understands modernity to entail contests over faceless commitments, that is, the trust of people in anonymous others (experts), symbolic tokens (money), and abstract systems (technical knowledge) (Giddens, 1990). It uses ethnographic examples from Papua New Guinea to look at how trust relations — basic to the extended time—space distanciation associated with modernity —...
48 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of negative reciprocity is proposed as a necessary and substantive aspect of the general concept of reciprocity, which is useful only when conceived simultaneously in its negative and positive forms as they are articulated in historical processes.
Abstract: This article proposes the concept of negative reciprocity as a necessary and substantive aspect of the general concept of reciprocity. We contend that the concept of reciprocity is useful only when conceived simultaneously in its negative and positive forms as they are articulated in historical processes. If treated in all its complexity the concept of reciprocity might help us to understand the ambivalence often present in social relationships. Reference to a moral domain is the central tenet that differentiates reciprocity from exchange. Reciprocity is based on a shared morality in its positive form and on the break, transformation or suspension of the moral order in its negative form. We base our discussion on the ethnographic account of the social relations that supported circulation of resources in the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, a comparative perspective indicates that the negative reciprocity pervading Auschwitz's social relations is an extreme example of a broader category of human inte...
47 citations
TL;DR: The present is a substantial and relatively unproblematic aspect of the human world, produced and reproduced in language, institutionalized here-and-now, in the physical environment, and in the co-presence of embodied human individuals as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: To have personal and collective pasts and to posit individual and collective futures are aspects of what it means to be human. Our past is who we have been, and the future is fundamental to imagining who we will become. However, in order to have either past or future we need a stable present, the space of our everyday lives. In contrast to one understanding of time, I want to suggest that `the present' is a substantial and relatively unproblematic aspect of the human world, produced and reproduced in language, in the institutionalized here-and-now, in the physical environment, and in the co-presence of embodied human individuals. Since these are also deeply implicated in identification, time and identification are probably best conceptualized together, the one a key to understanding the other. This further suggests that, since identification is arguably a diagnostic characteristic of `human being' and `human nature', the well-worn distinction between `social/cultural time' and `natural time' is problematic.
34 citations
TL;DR: The impressive work of Norbert Elias displays little knowledge of ''other cultures' nor of anthropology in general as discussed by the authors. But it does promote a comparative method along the lines of Marx and Weber, and this served to encourage such studies in the social sciences, methods which had been rejected by many anthropologists in the 20th century.
Abstract: The impressive work of Norbert Elias displays little knowledge of `other cultures' nor of anthropology in general. But it does promote a comparative method along the lines of Marx and Weber, and this served to encourage such studies in the social sciences, methods which had been rejected by many anthropologists in the 20th century. Elias was interested not only in comparison but in long-term historical change and in what he called `sociogenesis'. The civilizing process is described as having its genesis in the European Renaissance with the increased part played by the state and the disappearance of feudal structures. It is argued that he arbitrarily selects certain aspects of manners, neglects the growth (or continuation) of violence and fails to take account of the `conscience collective' operating in simpler societies, let alone developments in other post-Bronze Age societies. Manners he treats largely in psychological terms of the advance of the highly generalized notion of self-restraint, in which he ...
31 citations
TL;DR: It is concluded that neither Rushton's use of the theory nor the data that he has assembled could possibly test any meaningful hypotheses concerning human evolution and/or the distribution of genetic variation relating to reproductive strategies or `intelligence', however defined.
Abstract: The last decade of the 20th century experienced a resurgence of genetically based theories of racial hierarchy regarding intelligence and morality. Most notably was Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve (1994), that claimed genetic causality for long-standing racial differences in IQ. In addition, it raised the time worn argument that the over-reproduction of genetically deficient individuals within our population would lead to a serious decline in average American intelligence. These authors provided no specific rationale for why these genetic differences should exist between human `races'. Instead, they relied heavily on the work of Canadian psychologist J. Philipe Rushton (in The Bell Curve, 1994, Appendix 5: 642—3). Rushton has advanced a specific evolutionary genetic rationale for how gene frequencies are differentiated between the `races' relative to intelligence. He claims that human racial differences result from natural selection for particular reproductive strategies in the various racial group...
TL;DR: This paper developed a cognitive theory of acculturation that focuses research on cultures within-subjects (within immigrants) in contrast to the traditional focus on comparison between cultural groups (between subjects).
Abstract: Cross-culturally comparable `units of culture' may be found in the experience of immigrants for whom certain experiential domains of meaning from the `first culture' are brought into comparison and contrast with corresponding domains in the `second culture'. The notion of domains is here developed out of `semantic domain' from cognitive anthropology, `cognitive domain' from cognitive linguistics, and `discourse domain' from second language acquisition. The clue to such domains is immigrants' coming to greater second language fluency in some areas of experience and less in other areas (communicative and cultural competence). These distinctions are used to develop a cognitive theory of acculturation that focuses research on cultures within-subjects (within immigrants) in contrast to the traditional focus on comparison between cultural groups (between subjects). This article is speculative and derives from work in cognitive anthropology, ethnographic report, studies of second language acquisition, and psycho...
TL;DR: The authors argue that the "crisis of representation" claimed in these works is a misrepresentation of the core intentions and efforts of the anthropological enterprise, and argue for an anthropology grounded in life, not literature.
Abstract: In the 1980s, the publication of three works, `Ethnographies as Texts', Writing Culture, and Anthropology as Cultural Critique, signaled the arrival of a significantly literary project claimed as a critique of anthropology, widely reviewed and discussed at the time (both pro and con). These works have continued to have a major impact on anthropological practice, particularly in the United States. In this article, I return to these `early works' in the literary project, as well as to Geertz's `Thick Description', which I see as seminal to their production. I argue that the `crisis of representation' claimed in these works is a misrepresentation of the core intentions and efforts of the anthropological enterprise. The perspective presented here is one in which the focus on representation is seen as having encumbered rather than enlightened the work of anthropologists, and argues for an anthropology grounded in life, not literature.
TL;DR: This paper argued that persons and communities which perceive themselves as displaced construct their ''authentic' identities in terms not of some sort of originary culture but with defensive reference to experiences in exile which they consider antagonistic.
Abstract: This article uses case studies of the 6th-century BCE return of the Babylonian exiles to Judea and of the 19th century elaboration by Theodor Herzl of the project of Zionism as means of examining the wider issue of the relation of identity to the experience of exile. It argues that persons and communities which perceive themselves as displaced construct their `authentic' identities in terms not of some sort of originary culture but with defensive reference to experiences in exile which they consider antagonistic. `Identity' is a mobilization of some elements of a cultural repertoire against a threatening other and that antagonism — although nominally to be purged when the full identity it impedes is realized — remains fundamental to identity. As a result, I contend, exiles who return to their `homelands' must, if they are to there find the identities the idea of return promises, `discover' suitable surrogates for the antagonists they have left behind.
TL;DR: This article argued that the anthropologist has no access to ''thin descriptions'' and has to deal with conflicting views and interpretations given by the participants of ''social discourses'' and had to address a permanent ''confusion of tongues''.
Abstract: When we maintain that an anthropologist offers `thick descriptions' of the life of people, do we mean that it is in any way descriptive? Or, instead, that it is purely interpretative, like the creative reading of a text by a literary critic? According to Gilbert Ryle, who invented the term, a `thick description' is just a `thin description' made complex by the addition of adverbial information. According to Clifford Geertz, the anthropologist has no access to `thin descriptions', he deals with conflicting views and interpretations given by the participants of `social discourses' and has to address a permanent `confusion of tongues'. Contemporary use of this term appears to rest upon a hidden conflict between two philosophies of anthropology.
TL;DR: Anthropologists have long considered culture to be a defining attribute of humanity and have repeatedly asserted that great apes also possess culture as discussed by the authors, however, primatologists have resisted this claim.
Abstract: Anthropologists have long considered culture to be a defining attribute of humanity. Over the last decade, however, primatologists have repeatedly asserted that great apes also possess culture. Whe...
TL;DR: Kierkegaard argued that the scientific method was inappropriate for understanding human experience; the natural science of the physical world and the social philosophy of the human condition must, he felt, be clearly differentiated if one hoped to take account of the richness, the inwardness and the individuality of human experience as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Kierkegaard argued that the scientific method was inappropriate for gaining an understanding of human experience; the natural science of the physical world and the social philosophy of the human condition must, he felt, be clearly differentiated if one hoped to take account of the richness, the inwardness and the individuality of human experience. This article takes Kierkegaard's stance against a certain kind of scientism as the starting point for a discussion of the nature of scientific knowledge and an elaboration on the place of the individual agent in the social-scientific accounting of that agent's behaviour. Aspects of Kierkegaard's argument are first introduced, followed by the pointing up of some of its more contemporary anthropological resonances. Criticisms of a Kierkegaardian position are next mooted, such as might be made from the `scientific' standpoints of Ernest Gellner and Karl Popper. From this triangulation the article offers some conclusions on the kind of truth sufficient for a persona...
TL;DR: Hardt and Negri as discussed by the authors published Empire in 2000 and one reviewer on the back cover, in a quotation from the centrist journal Foreign Affairs, called the text ''a sweeping neo-Marxist vision''.
Abstract: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri published Empire in 2000. A year later it had gone through its seventh printing. One reviewer on the book's back cover, in a quotation from the centrist journal Foreign Affairs, called the text `a sweeping neo-Marxist vision'. A second back cover reviewer from the leftist New Left Review proclaimed it had `visionary intensity'. Unfortunately, I do not `get' the `vision thing', though I do appreciate that Empire does make some claims that will be treasured by reactionaries. I find my lack of vision disturbing because, like the authors, I am of the left, and would prefer to strengthen Marxist tradition. Probably my lack of vision results from the fact that I am a simpleton, who did not `get' it because you could not get it. Permit a few paragraphs outlining the views of a simpleton, which will guide analysis of imperial visionary claims.
TL;DR: In this article, A.A. Hallowell challenged those involved in cross-cultural research to establish the categories used for making comparisons through an examination of how experience is endowed with meaning.
Abstract: A. Irving Hallowell challenged those involved in cross-cultural research to establish the categories used for making comparisons through an examination of how experience is endowed with meaning wit...
TL;DR: For instance, the authors pointed out that ethnology has had a marginal role in anthropology compared to ethnography, and that the inductive compara-tion of ethnology and ethnography is not a fair comparison.
Abstract: Sir Edward B. Tyler saw ethnology and ethnography as the twin pillars of cultural anthropology. Yet, ethnology has had a marginal role in anthropology compared to ethnography. The inductive compara...
TL;DR: Goody as discussed by the authors argued that he has got Elias wrong and, at the end of this essay, after trying to demonstrate some of the ways in which that is so, offered some thoughts on how an eminent scholar such as Goody can be so mistaken.
Abstract: As a former pupil of Norbert Elias and later a collaborator with him,2 I appreciate having been given this opportunity to reply to Jack Goody’s thought-provoking essay on ‘Elias and the Anthropological Tradition’. I have known Jack for some four or five years now and have long been an admirer of his work.3 I think, though, that he has got Elias wrong and, at the end of this essay, after trying to demonstrate some of the ways in which that is so, I shall offer some thoughts on how an eminent scholar such as Jack Goody can be so mistaken. In an attempt to avoid being seen as having misrepresented Professor Goody, I shall quote fairly liberally from his text. I shall similarly use quotations from Elias to enable readers to judge whether it is Jack Goody or I who is closer to a correct representation and interpretation of Elias. Early in his essay, Jack Goody recounts how he met Elias in Ghana in the early 1960s and formed an impression of him as ‘somewhat isolated from what went on around him’. He appeared, says Jack Goody, ‘the very opposite of an ethnographer’. Goody next proceeds to write:
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how this presumably salient element of Norwegian political culture developed as a part of the extraordinary continuity, characterizing both economic growth and the strengthening of a sense of political community, transcending the divisive effects of class differences.
Abstract: Political discourse in the Norwegian welfare state is characterized by the ambition to establish and secure universal welfare. In comparative terms, it has been quite successful in translating utopian goals to practical politics. The modernization of Norway, more so than most other western countries, has nourished a shared sense of politics as a collective activity and as the privileged tool for the realization of humanistic goals. The article attempts to show how this presumably salient element of Norwegian political culture developed as a part of the extraordinary continuity, characterizing both economic growth and the strengthening of a sense of political community, transcending the divisive effects of class differences. The contemporary version of local political discourse in Norway, while keeping the ambition of universal welfare very much alive, is faced with severe overload problems. Thus, local politicians, responsible as they are — both ideologically and institutionally — for providing welfare fo...
TL;DR: In this article, a Foucauldian analysis of the uneven relationships between local discourses and practices of discipline, and national institutional frameworks is presented. But the focus of the analysis is on the need for discipline and punishment in people's understandings of crime, authority, and the law, on the outer-city estates of Lower Shepton in Manchester, UK.
Abstract: In this article I focus on the prominent themes of a need for `discipline' and punishment in people's understandings of crime, authority, and the law, on the outer-city estates of Lower Shepton in Manchester, UK, drawing on my ethnography of the estates. I develop a Foucauldian analysis of the uneven relationships between local discourses and practices of `discipline', and `national' institutional frameworks — of legality, crime control and media — whilst avoiding the functionalist tendencies of recent studies employing the notion of governmentality. Using Fitzpatrick's formulation of the law as myth (1992), I show how disciplinarian strands in crime discourse, and their appeal to intact authority, provided a measure of symbolic resolution to some of the social conflicts and personal anxieties involved in the negotiation of everyday life on the estates, building consent for more punitive measures at the level of crime control policy in the process.