Interpretivism, Perspectivism, and Feminism: Three Ways of Looking Through a Glass Darkly

During the 1970's Clifford Geertz ushered an era of introspection in anthropology that was unparalleled. Since that time there has been, in cultural anthropology, a distinct desire to understand not only the semantic content of culture of, but to also to appreciate the role of reflexivity in the course of representation. The goal of anthropology became less of an exercise in purporting to have the objective truth or reality of cultural phenomenon. Instead, anthropology became aware of the fact that ethnographic representations of "cultures" were just that--representations. By way of metaphor, "the anthropological lens" became an important term for conveying how anthropology simple provided a particular way of viewing cultural phenomena. By extension it became more obvious that individual anthropologist as well as those who they represented viewed such phenomena through particular, though not mutually exclusive, perspectives. This set of readings aims for provide an introduction to these issues and how they have influenced anthropological thought today.


Interpretivism


Shankman, Paul (1984). The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz. Current Anthropology. 25.3: 261-280.

Martin, Michael (1993). Geertz and the Interpretive Approach in Anthropology. Synthese. 97.3, 269-286.

Keesing, Roger (1987). Anthropology as Interpretive Quest. Current Anthropology. 28.2, 161-176.

Perspectivism


Latour, Bruno (2009, April). Perspectivism: 'Type' or 'bomb'? Anthropology Today. 25.2: 1-2.

Narayan, Kirin (1993). How Native Is a "Native" Anthropologist? American Anthropologist. 95.3: 671-686.

Viverios de Castro, Eduardo (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 4.3: 469-488.

Feminism


Abu-Lughod, Lila (1992). "Writing Against Culture." In Richard G. Fox, ed. Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 137-162.

Ortner, Sherry (1997). "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture." In Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 21-42.

Strathern, Marilyn (1980). "No nature, no culture: the Hagen case." In Carol P. MacCormack & Marilyn Strathern, ed. Nature, culture and gender. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 174-222.

Rosaldo, M.Z. (1980). The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding. Signs. 5.3: 389-417.

Mascia-Less, Frances, et al. (1989). The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective. Signs. 15.1, 7-33.

Morris, Rosalind C. (1995). All Make Up: Performance Theory and the New Anthropology of Sex and Gender. Annual Review of Anthropology. 24, 567-592.

Society, Classification, and Kin: Three Steps Toward a Typology of Culture?

After discussing the debates and problematics of culture it is probably worth looking into the other foundational assumptions that social anthropology has held to throughout its tenure. As outlined in the sociology of Durkheim, Mauss, and by the early British diffusionist and structural-functionalists alike the most essential aspects of any "cultural system" are found in the structural elements that make up the group that employs such cultural systems. The three most of important of these are first, society as it the conceptual apparatus in which the social sciences have traditionally used to refer to groups of people that adhere to some type of sociality. Second is classification, as it is the process by which individuals and societies are able to differentiate the various aspects and characteristics of their society. Third is kinship, as it was considered the primary (and universal) form of social classification, organization, and structure.

The propose of this post and reading group isn't necessarily to provide an introduction to how these concepts have been utilized, or to question the validity of the social anthropology's lexicon, instead it meant to help students understand the integral role that these concepts play in historical and contemporary anthropology today. Although concepts like classification and kinship may be out of vogue in terms of research projects, they continue to be foundational in the articulation of anthropology's reflexive evaluation of itself.

Society

Murphy, Michael D. (n.d.) Social Structure, ANTH 436: Some Definitions of Society. http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/defsociety.htm

Wagner, Roy (1974). "Are There Social Groups in the New Guinea Highlands?" In Murray J. Leaf, ed. Frontiers of Anthropology. New York, NY: D. Van Norstrand, 95-122.

Wolf, Eric (1988). Inventing Society. American Ethnologist. 15.4: 752-761.

Questioning Society

Ingold, Tim et al. (1996). "The concept of society is theoretically obsolete." In Time Ingold, ed. Key Debates in Anthropology. London, UK: Routledge, 55-98.

Godlier, Maurice (2009). "What is a Society." In In and Out of the West: Reconstructing Anthropology, trans. Nora Scott. Charlottesville: VA: University of Virginia Press, 138-157.

Classification

Bloor, David, et al. (1982). Durkheim and Mauss Revisited: Classification and the Sociology of Knowledge. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 14.4: 267-331.

Allen, N.J. (2000). Chapters 5 & 6 of Categories and Classifications. New York, NY: Berghahn, 91-116.

Ellen, Roy (2005). "Anthropological Studies in Classification." In The Categorical Impulse. New York, NY: Berghahn, 31-37.

Keck, Frederic (2009). "The limits of classification: Claude Levi-Strauss and Mary Douglas." In Boris Wiseman, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Levi-Strauss. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 139-155.

Symbolic Classification

Needham, Rodney (1979). Symbolic Classification. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Conclusion to Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 466-484.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko (1981). Phases in human perception/conception/symbolization processes: cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification. American Ethnologist. 8.3: 451-467.

Introduction to Kinship Terminology

Murphy, Michael D. (n.d.). A Kinship Glossary: Symbols, Terms, and Concepts. http://web.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/kinship.htm

Trautmann, Thomas R. (2001). The whole history of kinship terms in three chapters: Before Morgan, Morgan, and after Morgan. Anthropological Theory. 1.2: 268-287.

Bloch, Maurice (1971). The moral and tactical meaning of kinship terms. Man. 6.1: 79-87.

Kinship Today

Peletz, Michael G. (1995). Kinship studies in late twentieth-century anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology. 24: 343-372.

Bamberger, Joan (2009). What We Talk About When We Talk About Kinship. Anthropological Quarterly. 82.4: 1043-1048.

Carsten, Janet (2001). "Substantivism, Antisubstantivism, and Anti-antisubstantivism." In Ed. Sarah Franklin & Susan McKinnon, ed. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 29-53.

Godelier, Maurice (2009). "No Society Has Ever Been Based on the Family or on Kinship." In In and Out of the West: Reconstructing Anthropology, trans. Nora Scott. Charlottesvile, VA: University of Virgina Press, 62-79.

Gender, Sex and Kinship

Butler, Judith (2002). Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual? differences. 13.1: 14-44.

Strong, Thomas (2002). Kinship between Judith Butler and anthropology? A review essay. Ethnos. 67.3: 401-418.

(Godelier among Baruya men in New Guinea)

Kultur, Lebenswelt, und Verstehen: German for the Anthropologist [Updated]

If you haven't guessed it yet this post of article for our reading group is about "culture." I chose the german references to kultur (culture), lebenswelt (Shutz and Habermas' "lifeworld"), and verstehen (Weber's "understanding" or "interpretation") because since the time of Franz Boas and Max Weber american anthropology has been heavily influenced by german philosophy of the social sciences like no other tradition. Because of the prominence and trendiness of most french influences on anthropology, the german roots of cultural anthropology are often overlooked. Although this post isn't particularly about those germanic roots, any discussion of how we interpret the conceptual vocabulary of "culture" and its attendent ideas is essentially tied to a genealogy of how these terms were first utilized by some the founders of our discipline. For Joylin Namie's class The History of Anthropological Thought some of us read Adams' The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology which outlines the intellectual milieu that gave birth to anthropology. An even more in depth account of the birth of anthropology within the germanic philosophical tradition can be found in Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Many contemporary anthropologist, like Talal Asad, have called for greater reflexivity in looking at the historical development of anthropology as a colonial and enlightenment project. One avenue for examining the genealogies of anthropology is by critically investigating how the term "culture" came to be, how is its defined by various schools of thought, and how is it utilized to explain micro or macro social phenomenon.


The first three readings by Roger Keessing and David Schneider provide an introduction into how theories of "culture" operate and how they had been defined during the Seventies but through the Eighties. The second article by Keesing is kind of a reevaluation of his first article on culture. Written fifteen years later, he reconsiders the arguments presented in the original article and provides insights into more recent developments.

Jonathan Friedman's chapter on "The Emergence of the Culture Concept," is an excellent introduction to the genealogy of the term. His article could be considered as a short primer on how to think about culture without falling into the pitfalls of romantic german nationalism. Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture is generally considered the primer treatment of the term and has remained so for several decades. I've provided long chapter excerpts from his book so the reading might be a little heavy, but it is worth it. By examining how the concept of "culture" operates within the anthropological tradition, Wagner gets to the heart of what it is that anthropologists do and why they are doing it.


Equally important to delineating the semantics behind "culture" is the attempt more narrowly define its parameters and how it can be identified by anthropologists.  Sahlins article "Two or Three Things I Know about Culture" is a very good example of such a discussion. He argues that when we are identifying "culture" we should paying attention to the structural composition of society. He also argues for that just because the traditions that make up a "culture" may be relatively recent "inventions" doesn't mean that they are any less authentic, for culture is in of itself inventive. Urban's article "A Method for Measuring the Movement of Culture" is very interesting and recent article on the movement of cultural artifacts that are produced and maintained through discourse practices. He proposes a theory for how such artifacts are given and produce meaning within the cultural realm.


One of the more recent developments in anthropology today has been the move away from the term "culture" towards a more philosophically defined term of "ontology." This may be considered ironic due to the long and complicated history that the "ontology" has experienced, particularly in the germanic philosophical tradition. However, the term has been used extensively as of late by anthropologist from Michael W. Scott to Michael Jackson. The series of debates that Manchester's Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory held on the topic, edited by Vankateson is an excellent introduction. Perhaps one of the most famous advocates for a "social ontology is John Searle. I first heard of John Searle when he came to UVSC several years ago. I was not impressed but his theories do command attention. Many, if not most, anthropologist would disagree immensely with his philosophy of society. However, Searle, has chosen to directly engage with anthropology by both critiquing its production of knowledge and incorporating some of its ideas into his own theory. You can listen to John Searle's podcast of his lectures at the University of California, Berkeley on Social Philosophy here. I have to warn you that I've listen to the whole class and he is quite dry and dogmatic. Still, I think that paying attention to his philosophy of society is well worth the effort because it fine tunes and brings into focus what exactly it is that we are doing and not doing as a discipline.

Introductions to Theories of Culture

Keesing, Roger M. (1974). Theories of Culture. Annual Review of Anthropology. 3: 73-97.

Keesing, Roger M. (1990). Theories of Culture Revisited. Canberra Anthropology. 13.2: 46-60.

Schneider, David (1976). "Notes toward a Theory of Culture." In Keith H. Basso & Henry A. Selby. Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquergue, NM: SAR & University of New Mexico Press, 197-220.

Genealogies of "Culture"

Friedman, Jonathan (1994). "The Emergence of the Culture Concept," Excerpt from Cultural Identity and Global Process. London, UK: Sage.

Wagner, Roy (1981). Excerpts from The Invention of Culture. Rev. ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

How Culture Operates

Sahlins, Marshall (1999). Two or Three Things I know about Culture. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 5.3: 399-421.

Sahlins, Marshall (2000). "Sentimental Pessimism" and Ethnographic Experience; or, Why Culture Is Not a Disappearing Subject." In Lorraine Daston, ed. Biographies of Scientific Objects. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 158-202.

Urban, Greg (2010). A Method for Measuring the Motion of Culture. American Anthropologist. 112.1:122-139.

Is Ontology the New "Culture"

Venkatesan, Soumhya, et al. (2010). Ontology is Just Another Word for Culture. Critique of Anthropology. 30.2: 152-200.

Searle, John, et al. (2006) Social ontology: Some basic principles. Anthropological Theory. 6.1: 5-125.

The (Un)Making of the Anthropological Canon

For our third meeting of the reading group we will be focusing on the history of anthropological theory. We will first start off with a discussion of Sherry Ortner's seminal "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," which incidentally is usually required reading in the course History of Anthropological Thought at UVU. Ortner's article will be accompanied by Ward Goodenough's "Anthropology in the 20th Century and Beyond." These two texts will act as primers for the historical overview of anthropological traditions that were central in the 20th century. However, there is a marked criticism of Ortner's, and by extension, Goodenough's articles in how they are utilized within the anthropological community to reify the roles of certain traditions and schools to the detriment of others. Arjun Appadurai's "Anthropology in Theory: Center and Periphery" is the first article to bring some of these criticisms to bare. In addition to Appadurai's text Robert Cardoso de Oliveria's "Peripheral Anthropologies 'Versus' Central Anthropologies" and Eduardo Restrepo and Arturo Escobar's "Other Anthropologies and Anthropology Otherwise" offer an even more impassioned plea to bring anthropology out of the hegemonic influence of the American and British academy.

Although the focus on central traditions is problematic, it isn't the only relevant issue at stake, especially for a reading directed on the "history" of anthropological theory. To reevaluate the content of such traditions it is helpful to review June Nash's "When Isms Become Wasism." Which offers a plea for the consideration of the practicality of anthropological theory as practiced in the field, the academy, and the public. Bruce Knauft's articulates the pragmatics of "middle anthropology" much like the practicality that Nash advocates. Lastly, Jane Guyers "'On Possibility': A Response to "How Is Anthropology Going" is a great article that addresses many of the concerns that David Graeber and others have brought up about "vanguardism" and other problems anthropology has in conveying its subject. Guyer's article, however, do more than just that. It is also a draft for where she argues anthropology is ultimately headed and where it should be headed.


As a little side noted I thought I'd include links to two recent articles from a volume of Michigan Discussions in Anthropology devoted to "grad student socialization." Eli Thorkelson's article on the "systems" course taught to first year grad students in Chicago offers a passionate critique of the project of Chicago pedagogy. Danylin Rutherford, Thorkelson's instructor for the course, offers a response that is also worth considering. I think that these two articles represent a very serious issue that gets to the core of the previous readings. "Why do we read what we do, and why do we read them that way?"


Core Texts on the History of Anthropological Thought During the 20th Century:


Ortner, Sherry (1984). Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties. Comparatives Studies in Society and History. 26.1: 126-166.


Goodenough, Ward H. (2002). Anthropology in the 20th Century and Beyond. American Anthropologist. 104.2: 423-440.


Challenging the Core-Periphery Divide:


Appadurai, Arjun (1986). Anthropology in Theory: Center and Periphery. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 28.2: 356-361.


de Oliveria, Roberto Cardoso (2000). Peripheral Anthropologies "Versus" Central Anthropologies. Journal of Latin American Anthropology. 4.2-5.1: 10-30.


Restrepo, Eduardo & Escobar, Arturo (2005). "Other Anthropologies and Anthropology Otherwise": Steps Toward a World Anthropologies Framework. Critique of Anthropology. 25.2: 99-129.


Reevaluating Theory's Relevance:


Nash, June (1997). When "Isms" Become "Wasms": Structural functionalism, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. Critique of Anthropology. 17.1: 11-32.


Knauft, Bruce (2006). Anthropology in the middle. Anthropological Theory. 6.4: 407-430.


Guyer, Jane. (2009) On "Possibility": A Response to "How is Anthropology Going". Anthropological Theory. 9.4: 355–370.


Theory, the Academy and Critical Pedagogy:


Thorkelson, Eli (2010). The Limits of Theory: Idealism, Distinction and Critical Pedagogy in Chicago Anthropology. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology. 18: 324–377


Rutherford, Danilyn (2010). In Defense of Ambivalence. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology. 18: 378-386.

some odd theory...give it a chance!

Hey guys,

So I took some time to read this text called, "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" by David Graeber and even spent went to a couple meetings with an anarchist reading group/new organization where we had some discussions about the text. Funny thing was is that I was the only individual there that studies anthropology. Not that we should be vanguardist of the theories and practices of anthropology and unwilling to share them with any school of thought who would appreciate to integrate those things in their own theory and practice, but it sure would be nice to get a few more anthropologists involved outside the realm of academia. This is not to infringe on everyones ability/basic human right to choose, and to choose what sort of an outlet anthropology will be in their life.

Hopefully as anthropology starts and is realizing that it must integrate with other practices/studies in order to survive as a relevant force in our world so do other organizations and practices realize that vanguardism and elitism should be diminished from humanity in order to make necessary paradigm shifts in theory and human rights. I suppose it would be very very wonderful to completely eliminate the facade of dualism and observe, appreciate, and embrace the integration of theories and practices coming from many different outlets.

What I'm trying to say is, give this abstract theory a chance or at least a read. It will even clear up for most people the true theory/practice of anarchism (direct democracy, consensus, mutuality, elimination of hierarchy, etc.). If you don't agree with it then take away the good theory you have learned and integrate it into your personal repertoire. After all, that's what we do everyday isn't it?

Read:

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber

Have further questions or discussion? Contact me at erikwritesagain@gmail.com or visit:

http://utahcountyanarchists.blogspot.com/

Reading Capital...sort of.

Hi everyone,


As many of you may know understanding the influence that Karl Marx has had on anthropology is often essential in grasping many of the directions that anthropology has gone through the last hundred years. However, Marx can also be very intimidating by both reputation and sheer breadth of his work. Even after taking Pierre Lamarche's class on Marx a few years ago I've continued to struggle with how to best approach Marx. I thought that I'd share a few free resources that I've discovered through the years that have been a great help to me.

No.1 Hans Ehrbar's Annotations to Das Kapital and other works by Marx are free, scholarly, and comprehensive evaluations of the entire text of volume 1 of Capital (english and german). Ehrbar is an economist at the University of Utah who approaches the text from a heavily economic and structural perspective, but he still helps elucidate some of the general philosophical and social theories postulated in the text.

No. 2 Marxist.org is the most comprehensive collection of Marx's other writings, those of his interlocutors, and his most significant commentators. Of particular interest to anthropologists is The German Ideology, Engles' The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,  and Althusser's Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,

No. 3 David Harvey's lectures on Capital are incredibly helpful. Harvey is one of the foremost commentators on Marx today and has been lecturing on Capital every year for about 40 years. His erudite explanations of Marx are straight to the point and avoid intimidating jargon. His companion volume to the lectures is also an incredibly useful resource. As part of his lecture series Classical Social Theorists for anthropology undergraduates at Cambridge, Alan Macfarlane has a great lecture on Marx from an anthropological perspective. You can view the view of it here.

No. 4 Harry Cleaver's Reading Capital Politically is considered one of the best contemporary introductions to Marx. Cleaver was a mentor of Pierre at the University of Texas, Austin and is able to  make some of the most important parts of Marx's theories accessible, up-to-date, and relevant today. You can download the second edition for free here.

No. 5. Antonio Negri's Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse deeply influenced Cleaver's analysis of Capital and Negri is currently viewed as one of most significant post-marxist commentators today. Along with Michael Hardt, Negri wrote Empire (its free) which is considered a manifesto for the 21st century. Pierre will be publishing a edited volume entitled Reading Negri this fall.

Hopefully this has been a help to you. Let me know if the guide is helpful or how you think we can best approach Marx and his influence on anthropological theory today.

Readings for the Last Week of May

Welcome to the Summer Reading Group's guide for the last week of May readings. After reviewing the readings from our first meeting you may notice that there are some fundamental tensions between the british "social" and american "cultural" anthropological traditions. Some of these tensions are explicit carry overs from what Rivers, Malinowski, and Radcliff-Brown brought to the forefront of british social anthropology, and how that conflicted with the research program of Boas and his students. Some of the most significant points of tension and distinction between the two traditions stem from debates concerning the comparability of cultures, the utilization of generalization in social theory, and relativity of "cultural" experience. In order to better understand the root questions of anthropology this reading group session is dedicated to investigating these issues of comparability, generalization, and relativity further.


The first set of readings in Group 2A are selected to give a broad overview of the current state of these debates.

Group 2A: Comparison, Generalizability, and Relativity

Fox, Richard G. (2002). "The study of historical transformation in American anthropology." In Andre Gingrich & Richard G. Fox, ed. Anthropology, by Comparison. London, UK: Routledge, 167-184.

Strathern, Andrew (1995). Universals and Particulars: Some Current Contests in Anthropology. Ethnos. 23:2, 173-186.

Brown, Matthew (2008). Cultural Relativism 2.0. Current Anthropology. 49:3, 363-383.

(variables of relativity)

Group 2B: Comparison, Generalizability, and Relativity

Boas, Franz (1896). The Limits of the Comparative Method of Anthropology. Science. 4.104, 901-908.

Ingold, Tim et al. (1996). “Social Anthropology is a generalizing science or it is nothing.” In Tim Ingold, ed. Key Debates in Anthropology. London, UK: Routledge, 17-54.

Geertz, Clifford (1986) Anti Anti-Relativism. American Anthropologist. 86:2, 263-278.

Tresch, John (2001). On Going Native: Thomas Kuhn and Anthropoological Method. Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 31:3, 302-322.

Latour, Bruno (1993). “Relativism.” Selections from We Were Never Modern.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 91-129.

(from Bruno Latour's We Were Never Modern)

P.S. If you like to join us then please let us know what will be a good time for you to come. It sounds like a consensus has emerged that it will be best to meet on either Friday evening after 6pm or Saturday afternoon to evening time. Let us know what you'd prefer and we can hammer out the details of the meeting before the end of the week.