Culture as collective character or pattern

1. Intellectual background

1.1. Cultural relativism (Franz Boas)

1.2. Psychoanalysis: Freudian theory
-Early phase of personal growth is important to maturity of individual
-The early stage of personal growth is particularly characterized by libido
-Oral stage-->anal stage-phallic stage-->Oedipus complex
-Cultural critique of psychoanalysis

1.3. Gestalt psychology

- Thinking and problem solving are characterized by appropriate substantive organization, restructuring, and centering of the given ('insight') in the direction of the desired solution.

- In memory, structures based on associative connections are elaborated and differentiated according to a tendency for optimal organization.

- Cognitions which an individual cannot integrate lead to an experience of dissonance and to cognitive processes directed at reducing this dissonance.

- In a supra-individual whole such as a group, there is a tendency toward specific relationships in the interaction of strengths and needs.

Source: Society for Gestalt Theory

1.4. Cognitive anthropology: theory of cultural schemata
-Cognition is derived from association
-The schemata in our mind are formed and hardened in the process of socialization
-Cognitive elements become associated with emotion and motivation
-Example: "Mother goes with food and father goes with job/money"


2. From cultural traits to cultural pattern

2.1. Early anthropologists were obsessed with collecting cultural traits as "butterfly collection"

"awakens in a bed built on a pattern which originated in the Near East but which was modified in northern Europe before it was transmitted to America. He throws back covers made from cotton, domesticated in India, or linen, domesticated in the Near East, or silk, the use of which was discovered in China. All of these materials have been spun and woven by processes invented in the Near East...He takes off his pajamas, a garment invented in India, and washes with soap invented by the ancient Gauls. He then shaves, a masochistic rite which seems to have derived from either Sumer or ancient Egypt. Before going out for breakfast he glances through the window, made of glass invented in Egypt, and if it is raining puts on overshoes made of rubber discovered by Central American Indians and takes an umbrella, invented in southeastern Asia...On his way to breakfast he stops to buy a paper paying for it with coins, an ancient Lydian invention...His plate is made of form of pottery invented in China. His knife is of steel, an alloy first made in southern India, his fork a medieval Italian invention, and his spoon a derivative of a Roman original...After his fruit (African watermelon) and first coffee (an Abyssinian plant)...he may have the egg of a species of bird domesticated in Indo-China, or thin strips of flesh of an animal domesticated in Eastern Asia which have been salted and smoked by a process developed in Northern Europe... While smoking (an American Indian habit) he reads the new of the day, imprinted in characters invented by the ancient Semites upon a material invented in China by a process invented in Germany. As he absorbs the accounts of foreign troubles, he will, if he is a good conservative citizen, thank a Hebrew deity in an Indo-European language that he is 100 percent American." (Ralph Linton)

2.2. Ruth Benedict: What is the relationship between individual and cultural traits? (Patterns of Culture)

2.3. Human beings have, possess and control cultures

2.4. Cultures have, possess and control human beings

2.5. Personality:
-People participate in culture through perceptions, conceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes

Personality "is a more or less enduring organization of forces within the individual associated with a complex of fairly consistent attitutdes, values, and modes of perception which account in part for the individual's consistency of behavior." (Barnouw 1985)

Barnouw, V. 1985. Culture and Personality, 4th ed. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.

2.6. Example I: The Kwakiutl and The Zuni
2.6.1. The Kwakiutl:
-Foragers inhabiting a rich environment and organized as chiefdom
-Dionysian: Striving to escape limitations, achieve excess and adventurous

2.6.2. The Zuni:
-Agriculturalist living in established village
-Apollonian: Noncompetitive, gentle and peace-loving

2.7. Example II: Preschool education
-Values and ranking of values
-Mode of interaction
-

3. National character

3.1. Example I: Ruth Benedict's The Chrysenthemum and the Sword (菊花與劍／刀 1946)

-Historical background: the Second World War

-The duality of Japanese character: elegance and delicacy (chrysanthemum) vs. cruelty and discipline

-The importance of hierarchy in Japanese thinking

-Two kinds of obligations or "debt": gimu (義務) and giri(義理)

-Culture of shame

-Learning and Cultivation

Ryang, Sonia. 2002. Chrysanthemum's strange life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan. Asian Anthropology vol. 1, 87-116.

Åke Daun. 1998. "Describing a National Culture - is it at all Possible?" Ethnologia Scandinavica, Vol. 28, p. 5-19.

3.2. Example II: The Subject of "Chinese culture" in Hong Kong

4. Personality and social institutions

4.1. Example I: The (Sub)culture of poverty (Oscar Lewis)

4.1.1. Oscar Lewis conducted fieldwork in Latin America

4.1.2. The poor is characterized by low income, unemployment, unskilled occupation, little saving, ... ...

4.1.3. The culture of poverty is marked by a set of values and feelings:
-Marginality
-Insecurity
-Fatalism
-Desperation
-Aggression
-Distrust of government

4.1.4. Culture of poverty, capitalism and class politics
-The poor is economically and politically disempowered by modern capitalism
-Participation in trade union and political party empowers the poor to get out of the culture of poverty

5. Critique of the paradigm of "collective character"

5.1. Overgeneralization of particular cultural traits and ignoring internal variations

5.2. De-historicization and de-contextualization

5.3. Ethnocentrism
-Culture=Collective character=individual personality?
-Individual is assumed to be an independent container of psychological characteristics or dynamics-- a psychological assumption

Reading for next week
"Statement on Race" by American Anthropological Association

Culture as institution, part II

1. The revolution in social anthropology
1.1. Method: the paradigm of participant observation
1.2. Theory: from cultural classification to Institutional process
1.3. Ethnographic realism: “I had been there!

2. Functionalism-->Structural functionalism
2.1. Malinowski's functionalism has a stronger orientation toward the individual actor, and greater suitability for studies of social change.
2.2. Structural functionalism makes a clear distinction between two societies or historical period defined by their institutional characteristics respectively (Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard ).

3. Two basic premises:
3.1. In a society, institutions are structurally corresponding with one another.
3.2. The institutions constitute an equilibrium– social system

4. Example: Water Goddess in Bali
4.1. Religious institution (water goddess temple)
4.2. Irrigation
4.3. Agricultural economy
4.4. Peasant community

5. Example: Talcott Parson's AGIL

Adaptation (economy)	Goal-Attainment (government)
Integration (courts, political party, etc.)	Latency (school, family, etc.)

Peasant society

Adaptation (farming)	Goal-Attainment (village agencies)
Integration (clan)	Latency (family)

6. Example: witchcraft
6.1. Nupe and Gwari are two neighboring communities in Nigeria. They shared a lot of geographical, political, kinship features.

6.2. Nupe: accusations of witchcraft
Accusations of witchcraft à women (old and wealthy)
Victim = (young) men

6.3. Gwari: accusations of witchcraft
Accusations of witchcraft-->men and women
Victims = men and women

6.4. An integrated system
-Social hierarchy
-Religious practice
-Gender hierarchy

6.5. Women’s increasing income causes dis-equilibrium among socio-cultural institutions.

6.7. Religious practices (accusing women of witchcraft ) :
-Restoring the balance among institutions.
-Maintaining the androcentric hierarchy

7. Example: political apathy in Hong Kong
7.1. Prosperous free economy
7.2. Political apathy
7.3. Immigrant families
7.4. Colonial-administrative government

8. Critique of (structural) functionalism
8.1. Example: Social inequality is a necessary institution to motivate people to perform its most important roles.
-High level of inequality does not necessarily ensure that those with scarce talents will work to benefit the whole society. No one knows to what extent one institution is functional to others or the whole system.
-Social inequality is not "designed" for satisfying needs but caused by inheritance of wealth, prestige and power.

8.2. A-historical approach

8.3. Function is a reason or a consequence?

8.4. Ethnocentrism:
Is a “culture with institutions functionally integrated or interdependent” only an intellectual fabrication rather than an objective fact existing “out there”?

Culture as institution, part I

1. Bronislaw Malinowski

1.1. His “field”: New Guinea as a colony under various European colonial power (1914)

1.2. He focused on the internal operation of the native society.

2. ¨“Untouched and unknown” people: an authentic culture

2.1. He settled in the Trobriands, whose inhabitants exemplifying “the ways and manners of Oceania as it flourished for ages, unknown and untouched by Europeans.”

2.2. “The most favorable moment for ethnographic work”

3. ¨William Rivers

3.1. “The mollifying influences of the official and the missionary”

3.2. “Friendly and peaceful reception”

3.3. The colonial situation?


4. The construction of an ethnographic object

4.1. Malinowski makes the colonial background invisible

4.2. An authentic culture and society of Trobrianders

5. Decontextualization

5.1. ¨The temporal dimensions of a place and a tribal group were compressed into a single moment ambiguously situated outside the flow of time.

5.2. ¨Ethnographic “present” (colonial present), an imagined “past” (a pre-colonial past)

6. What is “institution”?

6.1. Critique of the notion of “Primitive communism” (ethnocentrism): do the primitive people follow customs blindly?

6.2. The primitive people, like all kinds of human beings, follow customs for satisfying needs:
–Biological needs
–Psychological needs
–Social needs

Basic needs(individual)	Direct responses
Nutrition	Food Supply system
Reproduction	Marriage and family
Bodily comforts	Domicile and dress
Safety	Protection and defense
Relaxation	Systems of play and repose
Movement	Set activities and systems of communication
Growth	Training and apprenticeship

Social needs	Responses to instrumental needs
Renewal of cultural apparatus	Economies
Charters of behavior and their sanctions	Social control
Renewal of personnel	Education
Organization of force and complusion	Political organization

6. Example A: Kula Ring
6.1. An exchange system among the people of the Trobriand Islands of southeast Melanesia, in which permanent contractual partners trade traditional valuables following an established ceremonial pattern and trade route.

Soulava: necklace
Mwali: armshell

6.2. Functionalist analysis of Kula Ring

¨Friendship: A pattern of peaceful contact and communication,
¨Exchange of utilitarian items in the course of kula expeditions,
¨Reinforcing the status and authority distinctions.

7. Example B: Religion
*What is the function of worshipping ancestor or gods?
–Maintaining family solidarity?
–Explaining unfortunate events?
–Protection?

8. What is institution?
8.1.Definition: Structure of social relations or organized system of purposeful activities

8.2. Five elements of institution
Charter: a myth or history or formal agreement
Personnel: people who are involved in the relationship
Norms: Rules that people follow
Material apparatus: tools and materials used in a set of activities
Function: performed by those activities to fulfill some needs

9. Functionalist critique of “the rules of custom”
9.1. "Primitive people" are not cultural dopes "ruled" by custom.
9.2. They are as rational as modern people although they differ in their norms, needs and institution.

10. Malinowski’s contribution
10.1. Revolution of social anthropology
10.2. Investigating the internal mechanism of the natives’ society or culture.
10.3. Seeing the others as ordinary but complex as the modern people.

*Functionalist theory of socio-economic inequality
It is argued that inequality is an institution for recruiting the most able individuals into the most socially valuable roles. Do you agree?

Next week:
Please read Monaghan and Just 2000, chapter 3;
王銘銘2005第二章

Are African-Americans natural athletes?

The overrepresentation of African-Americans in some sports such as basket ball, track and field, boxing, etc.

1. Critique of biological determinism
1.1. Why haven't we used biological factors to explain the performance of other racial groups?
1.2. African-Americans are especially successful in a few sports
1.3. Various immigrants had performed well at some particular sports and at particular time.

2. Cultural explanation
2.1. Sports offers African-American men opportunities and fantasy to overcome racial discrimination.
2.2. How did black people overcome it by performing well at particular sports?
2.2.1. Their performance in some sports can be evaluated quantitatively.
2.2.2. They perform well in:
-small groups
-sports requiring rare skills
-sports requiring more cooperation than competition
-inexpensive sports
-sports not requiring expensive private coaching
2.3. African-American suffer from less prejudice and discrimination in athletics than in most lucrative careers

3. Implication
3.1. New racism: Black people are superior to white people in terms of physical features while white people are superior to black people in terms of intellectual abilities and other virtues.
3.2. Don't fabricate falso hope

What is culture?

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1. Colonialism and Anthropology
1.1. Anthropology developed from the process of colonization殖民化
1.2. Anthropologists were usually the white people, i.e. the colonizers
1.3. The unequal power relation between the colonizers and the colonized.
1.4. Anthropologists relied on the colonial power
1.5. The early anthropologists were “armchair” scholars. They relied on the records written by missionaries and colonial officials.
1.6. Since the late nineteenth century, anthropologists began to go to their “fields”（田野） themselves, but still with the assistance of the colonial administrations.

2. Why did the (white) people need the term “culture”?

“In his disposition he [the Bushman] is lively and cheerful; in his person active. His talents are far above mediocrity; and averse to idleness, they are seldom without employment. Confined generally to their hovels by day, for fear of being surprised by the farmers, they sometimes dance on moonlight nights from setting to the rising of the sun …. The small circular trodden places around their huts indicated their fondness for this amusement. His cheerfulness is the more extraordinary as the morsel he procures to support existence is earned with danger and fatigue. He neither cultivates the ground nor breeds cattle; and his country yields few natural productions that serve for food. The bulbs of the iris, and a few gramineous roots of a bitter and pungent taste, are all that the vegetable kingdom affords him. By the search of these the whole surface of the plains near the horde was scratched.” (John Barrow. 1801. An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa in the Years 1797 and 1798, London, Cadell and Davies, pp. 283-4; quoted from Mary Louise Pratt. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 63)

2.1. Busman in South Africa… …
John Barrow used “he” to refer to Bushmen in general -- homogenized subject.

“In his disposition he [the Bushman] is lively and cheerful; in his person active. His talents are far above mediocrity; and averse to idleness, they are seldom without employment.”

2.2. Bushman’s way of life (culture) was represented in present tense – making a claim to “reality” out there.

“His cheerfulness is the more extraordinary as the morsel he procures to support existence is earned with danger and fatigue.”

2.3. All behavior was viewed as the inherent traits of Bushman’s tradition. Its historical background is invisible.

“Confined generally to their hovels by day, for fear of being surprised by the farmers, they sometimes dance on moonlight nights from setting to the rising of the sun ….”
Who “confines” them?

2.4. “He neither cultivates the ground nor breeds cattle; and his country yields few natural productions that serve for food.”

If they are “averse idleness”. Why don’t they cultivate the ground or breed cattle?

2.5. It covered up the relationship between the colonial self and the others – other-ization and exotic-ization.

It ignored the fact that eighteen century Bushman communities were threatened by the white people’s occupation. Their fear and danger were coded as a custom of hiding all day and dancing at night.

2.6. In the colonial period, the idea of “culture” was a technique of:
-Defining the others
-Stereotyping the others
-Decontextualizing the others
-Hiding the self

3. Socio-cultural Darwinism
3.1. The early idea of culture was a technique of classifying races into different category or stage according to the degree of civilization.

3.2. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-81)

Savagery

-Bushman (Older)
-Tasmanian (Middle)
-Eskimos (Late)

Barbarian
-Ancient Greek (Middle)
-Mexican natives (Later)

Civilization
-Tibetan
-Anglo-Saxon in the Middle Ages
-Chinese

Cultured man
-Modern westerners

4. Critique of ethnocentrism(種族中心論) and modern-centrism（現代中心論）
4.1. Ethnocentrism: Tendency to define, interpret and evaluate other cultures in one’s own.

4.2. Modern-centrism: Tendency to take the traits of modern society as universal, normal and the most advanced model for defining and evaluating other cultures.

4.3. Naturalization of time and temporalization of space

4.4. Cultural relativism as a critique of ethno-centrism:
All cultures are treated as of equal value.

4.5. Critique of biological or racial determinism

A contemporary question:

"Are African-Americans natural athletes?"

4.5. Example: Marriage

“Heterosexual and nuclear family is the normal and the most civilized marriage system.”

“Traditional marriage (such as arranged marriage, polygamy, polyandry, etc.) is uncivilized and even barbarian practice.”

4.5.1. All marriages practices are meaningful in their cultural system respectively.

4.5.2. Comparing and studying different cultures enable us to understand that marriage systems are different combinations of sexual behavior, love and law.

4.5.3. From the rituals, we learn about the cultural particularities(獨特性) and reflect upon something we see as natural:
-The close connection between sex, love and law (e.g. "Ghost marriage")
-The significance of law

5. What is culture?
5.1. Culture is NOT a biologically (or racially) transmitted and determined complex.

5.2. Culture is NOT a collective and ascribed heredity.

5.3. Edward Tylor: culture is an accumulation of human accomplishment

“Culture, or civilization … … is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” (Edward Tylor 1871)

5.4. Franz Boas: culture is a set of glasses.

“Culture embraces all the manifestations of social behaviour of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the product of human activities as determined by these habits.” (Franz Boas 1930)

5.5. The Use of "Culture": Margaret Mead’s Coming of age in Samoa

-Margaret Mead (1901-1978) is a follower and student of Franz Boas.
She spent half year in an island of South Pacific.

-“The age of maximum ease”
She found life in Samoa easy and casual for girls whose “adolescence” and “sex” were hardly noticed, monitored and cared about by adults. Living in extended families, their teenage years were free of stress and conflict.

-The American culture and the culture of Samoa were different in the social arrangements within young people were born and reared.
Example: In modern society, there exists a transitory period of personal growth called “adolescence”. In Samoa, only puberty.

Reading for next week

n

Please read:
王銘銘2005: 第二章
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1964. Crime and Custom in Savage Society, Paterson, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co.

Introduction

1. What is anthropology?

1.1. It is a broad field of inquiry covering almost all aspects of human life.

1.2. It is not its subject-matter makes anthropology distinct.

1.3. Its unique-ness is derived from its particular history.

1.4. It emerged out of the encounter between the West (colonists) and the "Others" (natives).

1.5. Anthropology is a set of knowledge generated from the colonial experience of westerners.

2. The sub-fields of anthropology

2.1. Physical anthropology
-It is concerned with the biological evolution of human beings, particularly the physical features of ancient people and other primates.

2.2. Archaeology
-It is the investigation of the human past by excavating and analyzing material remains.

2.3. Linguistic anthropology
-The study of human language and its relations with various social and cultural contexts.

2.4. Applied anthropology
-The application of anthropological knowlege to varied social problems.
-Example: forensic anthropologist and human right

2.5. Cultural anthropology/ Social anthropology
-The study of contemporary or historically recent human societies.
-It is an attempt to understand the diversity of culture.
-Field work and ethnography are the usual methods

3. The basic orientations of anthropology

3.1. Holism
-Understanding an aspect of a community by relating it to other aspects.
Example: Ancestral hall (-patriarchal family-clan organization-land inheritance system-political authority... ...)

3.2. Comparativism
-Studying a place or a custom by comparing it to others.
-Exploring the Other-->self-understanding
Example: The ways of eating sushi and sashimi in Hong Kong and Japan

3.3. Relativism
-No culture is inherently superior or inferior to any other.
Example: Cannibal tribe and headhunting tribe

4. The value of anthropology
-It provides plenty of knowlege about the complexity and diversity of human world.
-It corrects our cultural bias.
-It provides a useful method for understanding the "Others".