by Kevin Walker
University of California, Berkeley
1992
The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss postulated that all human culture is reducable to subconscious mental structures -- binary oppositions that people, through their rituals, interactions, and symbols, mediate between. This theory might be applied to the field of anthropology itself. For a century, anthropologists have mediated between the oppositions of objective and subjective, reason and emotion. Today, anthropologists claim to practice a "post-paradigm" science, constructing an eclectic mix of theories and methodologies from anthropology's past, as well as from other fields as diverse as literary criticism and microbiology. This paper assesses the current state of the field, focusing specifically on American and European social/cultural anthropology. A comparison of two ethnographers, Levi-Strauss and Renato Rosaldo, will illustrate recent trends.
First, it is necessary to briefly review the field's past. An antecedent to ethnography was the writing of explorers, particularly those associated with the expanding empires of Spain, England and France. Spanish "conquistadores" and missionaries, for instance, provided Europe a first look at the New World through their careful -- though necessarily biased -- observations. Later writers such as Joseph Conrad also provided models for early ethnographers. Conrad, though he wrote fiction, raised important questions about colonialism, fascination with the "primitive," and the often ambiguous relation between good and evil. Bronislaw Malinowski, deemed the "father of ethnography," was influenced by Conrad. Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) established a paradigm of objective "participant observation" for a whole generation of ethnographers. Such "functional" accounts assumed that detailed descriptions of particular aspects of a culture could represent the whole culture. Related "realist" approaches focused on individual life histories, or stages of life (such as Margaret Mead's 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa).
Criticism of objectivity began with Franz Boas and his students (of which Mead was one) in the 1920s. They said that cultures should be judged on their own terms; that none was superior to another; and that cultures could not be compared until they were sufficiently described. Yet they still believed it was possible to describe a culture from a detatched, rational point of view.
Levi-Strauss was influenced by this group, and also by Conrad. In his 1955 Tristes Tropiques, he reflects back on his fieldwork in South America of fifteen years earlier. This is not an ethnography in a strict sense, since it includes digressions and ruminations on the author's own past, his culture, and his views on colonialism and modernization. Levi-Strauss's perspective is an eclectic mix. From Freud comes his belief in subconscious binary structures which guide human behavior and are manifested in cultural practices and symbols. From Marx comes a focus on relations of production and social class. And from geology comes the notion that cultures should be viewed not only in terms of space, but situated in time as well.1 Cultures change over time, he says, but also when they come into contact with other cultures. He sees that many cultures are affected by the West, and therefore he practices a "salvage ethnography" to preserve on paper, at least, what may not soon exist in a pure state. It is a paradox, he notes, that contact between two cultures spoils their "purity," but both can potentially benefit from the interaction.2
Levi-Strauss attempts to be objective in his observations, but unlike previous ethnographers, he is aware of the distortions his presence can cause, and of his role in constructing the culture under study through his use of language. A philosophical solution, he says, would look at both the subject matter and the form of the description. But such "mental gymnastics," he warns, can soon become a circular, purely verbal exercise. Therefore, he concludes, the ethnographer should not induldge in them.3
His own descriptions of the South American village of Kejara and its inhabitants, accordingly, are "objective" in character, and his strategy follows that of Kroeber and Lowie: he describes the village layout, the kinship, social structure, economic relations, tools and adornments, etc. But he also looks at the symbols used by the inhabitants, what these symbols mean to them, how they are manifested, and what subconscious structures they might flow from. Note, however, that he makes copious comparisons to his own culture. This is another paradox: these comarisons help the reader (and presumably also the writer) understand the people under study, but they are, perhaps, not valid by the "cultural relativity" criteria laid down by Boas et al.
Levi-Strauss anticipated many of the intellectual revolutions that would sweep the social sciences beginning in the late 1960's. There was a distinct shift in focus from descriptions of behavior and social structure to symbols, meanings and mentality. A new generation of ethnographers began to experiment with fieldwork and writing genres. The "classical" ethnographers, said the new generation, were not "objective" at all, since the very act of choosing some things to describe and not others is biased and distorting. Anthropology, they said, has served to objectify the peoples under study, to construct a certain reality which has justified colonial domination and marginalized the indigenous peoples.
The main new paradigm to emerge from this upheaval was interpretivism, developed by Clifford Geertz. He holds that culture is not locked in people's heads, but embodied in public symbols; these symbols, in turn, shape peoples actions, feelings and perceptions. All interpretations, Geertz says, are provisional, since they are made by historically, culturally situated individuals. A culture is like a "text," and can be "read" different ways. Attention is paid to how the "subjects" under study "read" their own "texts," and this requires the ethnographer to be attentive to the use of language. In this view, derived from Emile Durkheim, culture and society are seen as controlling mechanisms, like computer programs.
Faced with this new, politically-charged atmosphere, ethnographers have tried various methods to try to accurately "represent" the peoples they study. Responses have included "dialogic" approaches that incorporate informants directly into the ethnographies4; and emphasis on "practice," or human action and interaction.5 Marcus and Fisher say that the attention to the ethnographer's role has been exaggerated.6 Levi-Strauss would agree. Indeed, there is a "crisis of representation" filled with uncertainty about the means of describing social realities. Marcus and Fisher urge experimentation with the old genres, and not complete rejection. The focus, they say, should be on the subjects' conception of "personhood."
Renato Rosaldo takes up the challenge, and has tried to consider his subjects' points of view during his fieldwork among the Ilongot in the Philippines. Though his work was done in the 1960's and 70's, Rosaldo, (like Levi-Strauss), reanalyzes it with the benefit of hindsight, in Culture and Power. He views culture in both spatial and temporal terms, (again, like Levi-Strauss); but while Levi-Strauss and his "classical" forbears tended to view cultures as spatially distinct units, Rosaldo sees a culture as a busy intersection of heterogeneous elements and processes. He shifts the focus from cultural centers to boundaries.
Much of culture, he observes, is not based on stable structures (even subconscious ones), but is constantly changing; and change follows no orderly sequence. He compares a culture to an ongoing conversation, with individuals learning from, and contributing to, it. Not only does culture teach, but individuals' actions (free will) can alter their conditions of existence. (This also refutes Geertz's notion of culture as controlling mechanism.) Social analysis, according to Rosaldo, should tell what happened at a particular time and place, not try to uncover laws. Hence, ethnography is like a narrative.
But participants, he says, are too caught up in events to be accurate narrators; the ethnographer can provide a broader view, linking discrete events and placing them in context. Empathy should come easy for American ethnographers, Rosaldo says, since multiculturalism has "subverted" U.S. imperialism and entrenched itself here. The anthropological "other," he says, is just a bit more difficult to comprehend than the "others" the ethnographer encounters every day. Like cultures, individuals are intersections of multiple identities, he says.
This particular social reality stands in direct contrast to that of Levi-Strauss, who was raised in a fairly homogeneous culture of French elite academics, then sought extreme "otherness" on the other side of the world. The contrast between Rosaldo and Levi-Strauss is, aptly enough, a function of both space and time: upper-class France in the 1930's versus multicultural America in the 1970's and 80's. But the two ethnographers converge on some key points.
Levi-Strauss said that unconscious structures are manifested not in "rational," everyday activities, but in the most emotional events.7 Rosaldo similarly is drawn to emotion, and indeed, when confronted with his own traumas, he finds an underlying link with the Ilongot. Levi-Strauss would say that a certain mental structure is the link; others would argue for a direct biological similarity; but whatever, the fact is that this allows Rosaldo to find some empathy with his subjects.
Geertz called this "force," or affective intensity which reveals cultural depth. But Rosaldo breaks with both Levi-Strauss and Geertz when he argues that the Weberian vocational ethic on which they rely underestimates the possibilities of emotion as an analytical strategy. Whereas Geertz and Levi-Strauss would view emotional events from a "detatched" perspective, Rosaldo leans more toward the participant side of participant-observation. The process of knowing, he says, involves the whole self: cognitive, emotional and ethical. (Nancy Scheper-Hughes echoes this view.)
This concurs with practice theory, which holds that meaning resides in actions, not theories, and focuses on how individuals live with their beliefs.8 Indeed, recent neurobiological research suggests that emotional states affect how people speak, perceive and remember, so they cannot be overlooked in social analysis.9
Levi-Strauss and Rosaldo would also concur on their views of colonialism. Levi-Strauss ruminates on the Conradian dilemma that the Spanish explorers recorded some valuable observations, while at the same time participating in the destruction of indigenous cultures. He compares this to the way more recent travellers have sought to herald "primitive" cultures in photographs, to "preserve the illusion of something that no longer exists."10 Similarly, Rosaldo speaks of "imperialist nostalgia" that people have for cultures they themselves have transformed. "Savage societites," he says, have been made into a reference point for defining modernity; then, there is a yearning for a "savage" past perceived to be more "pure".11
This brings us directly to the increasing politicization of anthropology. Mead is credited with starting this trend, since she turned her Samoa fieldwork into a critique of American society. Anthropology became an ally of liberalism in America, and by the early 1960's, it was viewed as a potential force for good; useful, for example in the Vietnam war just underway. Marcus and Fisher would like to see more critiques like Mead's.12 Rosaldo, too, emphasizes ethnography's usefulness for both empirical analysis and ethical judgements; he believes, with Scheper-Hughes, that cultures can be compared using one's own pre-cultural morals. Levi-Strauss would agree to some extent. But Scheper-Hughes carefully points out that "ethics" and "rationality" must not be collapsed into one, as many male critics (including Levi-Strauss) have done in the past. Her more "womanly" anthropology is concerned with human relationships and an overt statement of personal ethics.13
Michael Taussig approaches the political issue from another angle, but one which relates to both Rosaldo and Levi-Strauss. He looks at terror, as both a physiological state and social fact. It is the "mediator par excellence of cultural hegemony," he says, recalling Conrad's "fascination with the abomination".14 Taussig quotes Michel Foucault in stating his goal, which is: "seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which are in themselves neither true nor false."15 "Classical" ethnography would qualify as such a discourse, with its assumption of objectivity. Like Rosaldo, Taussig seeks not to discredit past "discourses," but rather to "displace" them by turning them against themselves.
This is, in effect, what Levi-Strauss has done in his examination of the writings of Spanish explorers.16 But while he concludes that they should simply be judged by their own standards ("relativity"), Rosaldo, Taussig, and Scheper-Hughes claim that judgement is possible on some underlying "ethical" level. Generally, Levi-Strauss would recognize the biases of certain discourses, but see some empirical value in them; Rosaldo et al would concentrate more on exposing the authors' biases and creating "counterdiscourses". Ironically, Tristes Tropiques, when translated in 1973, was adopted by the current, more political generation, to help form their critiques of objectivity. Yet many have ignored Levi-Strauss's plea not to engage in excessive circumspection, and they reject objectivity altogether.
A review of anthropology's past reveals many contradictions: in individuals, in paradigms, and in the field as a whole. Few anthropologists stand at the extreme oppositions of objectivity or subjectivity. But those pushing to the extremes of subjectivity, I believe, risk discrediting the entire field, for if anthropology is declared to have no basis in empiricism, it loses all claims of scientific validity. Levi-Strauss and Rosaldo serve to illustrate how objectivity and subjectivity, rationality and emotion, can serve various ends, and how anthropologists continue to find a happy medium between the two.
1. Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques, pp.56-58. (Tr. J&D Weightman. New York: Athenium, 1973)
2. Ibid., p.45.
3. Ibid., pp.51, 58.
4. See Marcus, George and Fisher, Michael. Anthropology as Cultural Critique, pp.69-73. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986)
5. See Ortner, Sherry B. "Anthropology Since the Sixties," pp.144-157. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1984.
6. Marcus and Fisher, p.42.
7. Levi-Strauss, p.55.
8. Ortner, p.151.
9. See, for example, the work of Mortimer Mishkin; reported in Patlak, Margie: "What is emotion for?" San Francisco Examiner, Mar. 10, 1991, pp.D16-15.
10. Levi-Strauss, p.39.
11. Rosaldo, ch.3.
12. Marcus and Fisher, pp.3-4.
13. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death Without Weeping, p.21. (pending publication, 1992)
14. Taussig, Michael. "Culture of Terror, Space of Death: Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture," p.242. Comparative Studies in Society and History 26, no.3 (July 1984).
15. Ibid., p.244.
16. Levi-Strauss, ch.8.