The life history is often a memorial to an informant-become-(distant-)friend, a commemoration of a field experience, and an expiation for abstraction and depersonalisation - for ruthless departure. It is seen as "portraying" or "illustrating" culture or some aspect of it. To have value as such it must be truthful and come from a "typical" individual - one, at least, who can be socially located..
The life history is the result of a self-constituting negotiation. It is the product, at least from the subject's point of view, of an arbitrary and peculiar demans from another - the anthropologist. Although, at some level, the anthropologist's demand is always a response to the informant. They are asked to review their life and possibly even expose themselves. They may not understand the anthropologist's demand and may searh for an "equivalent" model in their culture, one that the anthropologist searching for a life story may reject. Foucault (198) says that since the Middle Ages we in the West have become "a singularly confessing society". As members of such, we may demand something very alien to the people we study, and we, despite ourselves, "torture" them to that end.
When we analyse a life story, we are analysing a text, not social reality, and this text is itself the product of a complex collaboration
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Ethnography as Learning by Whitaker
A constructionist position is one which assumes that all human meaning and knowledge is constructed in some way by people themselves. Marcus and Fischer presuppose this in their book not only because it is the position held for the most part (though often unreflectively) by interpretivist school of anthropology from which the "critiques" they were considering issued, but because it is consistent with the deflationary claims of their project.
It is undeniable that one of the clubs with which Western imperialists most liked to thump impudent anticolonial challengers was their "epistemological privilege" - the claim, that is, that Western scientific objectivity provided descriptions of the world (including the social world) that were beyond challenge except in their own terms. However, stated so vaguely, Marcus and Fischer's constructionist stance left them open, on the one hand, to misinterpretation and, on the other, to outright attack.
The only way ethnography can avoid the twin evils of "positivism" (read epistemological privilege) and "imperialism" is to engage in a "poetics" that "evokes" rather than describes.
We experience critical ethnography open to the suspicion, on the one hand, that all representation is repressive and, on the other, that being political and critical at the same time may be incoherent. My own feeling is that anthropologists make their work both less readable and less clearly political out of a background of fear that one or both of these suspicions may be right.
It is undeniable that one of the clubs with which Western imperialists most liked to thump impudent anticolonial challengers was their "epistemological privilege" - the claim, that is, that Western scientific objectivity provided descriptions of the world (including the social world) that were beyond challenge except in their own terms. However, stated so vaguely, Marcus and Fischer's constructionist stance left them open, on the one hand, to misinterpretation and, on the other, to outright attack.
The only way ethnography can avoid the twin evils of "positivism" (read epistemological privilege) and "imperialism" is to engage in a "poetics" that "evokes" rather than describes.
We experience critical ethnography open to the suspicion, on the one hand, that all representation is repressive and, on the other, that being political and critical at the same time may be incoherent. My own feeling is that anthropologists make their work both less readable and less clearly political out of a background of fear that one or both of these suspicions may be right.
Between Biography and Ethnography
by Michael D Jackson
- One read about "the" Trobriand Islanders as tho a people living in the same place, participating in the same economy, and having roughly similar view about boat building or begetting... and only changed their ways of thinking and acting when the outside world forced itself upon them.
- Anthropologists like Raymond Firth showed that structure does not preclude the exercise choice in the organisation of everyday life
- Few anthropologists reflected on what "we" might have in common with "them", or how "they" might differ amongst themselves.
- Exoticising terms served mainly to distance the rational subject - the anthropologist - from the supposedly irrational other - the object of his/her observations
- societies differ not in their essences but in the ways in which they manage universally identical existential issues; variations on ubiquitous themes that are grounded in the evolutionary history of our species
- Hannah Arendt: human beings are distinctive but none is absolutely other, for we share the same capacity for interacting and communicating with one another, based on a common evolutionary heritage and vague perception of a common humanity
- to make a person other, one arrogates Being entirely to oneself, and makes of the other a mere object of one's actions, one's judgment, one's compassion or one's theorising
- focus on differences; advent of structuralism and sociobiology brought universals back into vogue
A suggestion for a way in which the antinomy between the particular and the universal
- Sartre's "singular universal" + Michael Herzfeld's "ethnographic biography
= individual lives and cultural circumstances are neither ontologised, nor polarised, but seen as mutually arising and contrapuntal aspects of our continually shifting sense of ourselves as being both uniquely a "you" or a "me" and members of a class or a culture, as in "We, the Tikopia"
- Winnicott: culture is a "common pool ... into which indiciduals and groups of people may contribute, and from which we may all draw if we have somewhere to put what we find."
- figurative language is a way of retrospectively and selectively acknowledging those experiences of a relationship that have confirmed a moral ideal
- William James: "Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process; the process of verifying itself."
- Accordingly, "natural" symbols such as blood and bone, or "moral" terms such as amity and love are not axioms; they are what we talk about when we talk about life. They are ways we express our sense of depth, intensity and binding power of what emerges in the course of any intimate relationship that weathers life's vicissitudes over time. In truth, what we call moral bonds are often habits we have formed by living with others; but the virtue we assign to familiar routines and our attachment to significant others is largely a way of dignifying relationships that simple grew - possessing a life and inertia that was greater than the work we actively put into them.
- Although, at any given moment, we have a fair idea as to who we are and what we have become, we tend to be blind to who we are for others and to the many unknown forces that may bear upon our fate.
- Accused of sorcery, this alternative form of power suddenly presents itself to Noah as another way of seeing himself - an analogue as Sartre calls it, because this new identity is initially mere potentiality, an object that is still absent and irreal. In beginning to imagine he might actively become the person that he has been accused of being, he turns a stigmatising identification to his own advantage, liberates himself from the humiliating position of existing in his brother's shadow, and acquires powers that, while marginal, nonetheless have a legitimate place in the social order
The "struggle for being": the largely pre-reflective and amorphous desire, yearning or will to be present-in-the-world, not as an object that simply suffers the actions of others but as an acting subject whose existence is recognised by others, and makes a difference to their existence
- In Kalauna (PNG), every lineage possess its own corpus of myths (neinya). These myths enable their custodians to simultaneously express and legitimise both collective values and personal preoccupations. When Young first sat down with Iyahalina and asked for "the story" of his life, not a single autobiographic detail was discerned from the soliloquy: seemingly a sequence of familiar myths interspersed with details about Iyahalina's duties as a "ritual expert". Men like Iyahalina both introject the dramatic structure of the myth and project their personal preoccupations into it.
- the Kodi of Sumba (Eastern Indonesia) give oblique expression to their biographies through valued personal possessions. That objects are surrogates for people, metaphors for social relationships, and serve as objective correlatives of subjective moods and states, may, Hoskins suggests, have a lot to do with the fact that in Kodi ritual life, objects often substitute for persons.
It is our Eurocentric bias that leads us to foreground and publicise what is, in the cultures we study, often kept in the background and unspoken. But the aim of anthropology is not to represent the other solely from his or her own point of view, but rather to problematise all points of view, including the ethnographer's, and show that every dominant leitmotif in any culture coexists with sub-dominant themes that, on certain occasions, or in certain persons, come into focus.
Rather than simplify the general conditions governing the possibility of a particular human relationship, or risk reducing the complexities of lived relationships to determinate causes, cultural rules, or classificatory categories, one seeks to explore the experiences that transpire in the transitional spaces of intersubjectivity - experiences that often confound our formal descriptions and overflow our conceptual frameworks. Whereas the classical empiricist approaches human bonds with an eye to underlying patterns and explanatory principles, the radical empiricist shares with the creative writer a fascination for the mysterious, emergent, and conflicted character of all human relationships.
One can invoke no hierarchy of values that implies that the life of one of these individuals can be set unequivocally above the others. Life confounds reason and is refractory to explanation. Our relationship with ourselves burs into relationships with significant others.
Luria's approach to neuropsychology was informed by the conviction "that even the most elemental functions of brain and mind were not wholly biological in nature but conditioned by the experiences, the interactions, the culture, of the individual." All human beings, in all societies, experience existence as a struggle between limitations and expectations.
To understand in depth and detail what transpires within intersubjectivity we draw upon work by social scientists, psychologists and ethologists to be sure, but it is to the work of artists, fiction writers, and biographers that we turn for techniques that help us do greatest justice to lived experience. In venturing beyond the borders of orthodox science, we may be accused of departing from empirical truth or worse, of pure invention and wild surmise. But there may be middle ground, where anecdote and biography enrich rather than invalidate our work.
By locating oneself in the borderland between conventional certainties and vigorous innovation, a writer may be taken to task for playing fast and loose with the facts - as Melville was - when, in fact, truth itself is mercurial in this domain where what rings true to experience or works in practice may be scientifically unproven, and what is empirically true falls short of what we ned to believe if we are to live.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Identity and Ecology in Arctic Siberia: The Number One Reindeer Brigade
by David G. Anderson (2000)
he argues that Tsarist and Soviet state ethnographers did not comprehend the complex relationship between Evenki, tundra and reindeer which focused on 'knowing' how to seize opportunities offered by animals and lands which are 'aware' of the activities of hunters and herders. According to Anderson, Evenki herders believe that non-verbal demonstration of such knowledge 'entitles' Evenki hunters/herders (tundraviki) to use the land
- the terms 'identity' and 'ecology' in the title suggest a broad sense of being and doing
- throughout the book Anderson tacks back and forth between the ethnographer's and the native's analyses of the places, people, practices, and culture of Evenkis in the lower Yensei Valley
- he argues that the concept of 'belonging' is close to vernacular Evenki approaches to identity. the local categories of 'knowing' and 'belonging' are juxtaposed with state categories of economy and ethnicity throughout the book.- the tundra and the nonhuman persons inhabiting it are not generous; hunting is not receiving gifts but taking opportunities that are created by the knowing human person
- 1992-3, Khantaika state farm, Taimyr Peninsula, northern Siberia
- following local recommendations, he joined the Number One brigade of herders to learn 'how people came to "know reindeer"'. This brigade was reqputed to be the 'most Evenki' not only in terms of official ethnicity of the individuals but in their pragmatics of living in the tundra. Anderson came to understand Evenki ways of "knowing" the hard way - through observation, participation, and quiet (or not so quiet) criticism and correction
- while the land is populated with people, animals and spirits, all requiring respect and providing oppostunities for the taking, the state has imposed political
- Soviet ethnographers attempted to distinguish northern Siberian aboriginal groups in terms of origin, culture, and territory. These distinctions became the basis of bounded territories and nationalities during the 1930s, as traditional occupations were adapted to the institutional framework of collective and state farms
- a kollektive was an occupational group whose members shared formal training with colleagues
- in 1969 Soviet officials resettled Mountain Evenkis and Dolgans at Khantaika in order to increase the efficiency of the state farm. The assumption of key management positions by Dolgans was resented by resident Evenkis
- mapping ethnic identity nto specially designated districts provides a discrete and homogenised set of identities that contradict the complex and shifting use of identities by real people
- Soviet institutions strongly influenced the identities of Evenkis who came to see themselves as 'belonging' to the state farm, a kollektive, and a nationality. An inflation in the importance of nationality and people's daily lives and their own construction of reality occurred as a result.
- nationalities and kollektives were associated with different levels of kul'tura, a combination of 'refined high culture' and physical amenities
- Evenki tundraviki are seen as lacking kul'tura, especially by young Evenki women who prefer the amenities of the settlement to life with a reindeer brigade on the tundra. Consequently, many young reindeer-breeders are unmarried.
- when Anderson was in Khantaika, heavy metal pollution from Noril'sk (a mining-smelting centre) had forced reindeer-breeders to drive their herds to areas beyond state farm boundaries. This pollution was also believed to cause increasingly erratic behvaiour among huge herds of wild reindeer in Taimyr.
- attempts by the post-Soviet state to privatise the Khantaika state farm were resisted because native producers felt that a consolidated territory was necessary for their future 'as a nation'.
- Evenki 'nationalists' felt that Evenkis were collectively entitled to control state farm territory. This created tension between Dolgans and Evenkis which worsened as salaries went unpaid, and as goods and services became scarce.
- in 1998, the Khantaika farm was heavily in debt and lacked markets for its products. Appeals for state assistance on the basis of the formerly privileged status of Evenkis and Dolgans as 'sparse nationalities' were no longer effective wih a state committed to private ownership and the free market
- Anderson suggests that Evenkis, Dolgans and other Northern aboriginal groups could 'advertise their sense of entitlement' by mounting an international appeal to save 'wild' environments, endangered species, and endangered aboriginal peoples. However, his work seems to suggest that the tensions between Khantaika Evenkis and Dolgans precludes any sort of political alliance, thus limiting the chances for success of such an appeal
Monday, 17 May 2010
Ethnicity, in Southeast Asia
(from Wilder and King)
Nagata (1975) indicates that the term 'ethnicity' is often misused and ambiguous and sometimes equated with 'primordialism'. In the work of Geertz, for example, 'plural groups' are described in terms of basic loyalties stemming ties of kinship, descent, race and place of origin. The problem in concentrating on the 'basic givens' of identity is that, as Dentan indicates, they translate too easily into a notion of ethinicity which sees ethnic groups as static, homogeneous, exclusive and bounded, and as carrying their own sets of cultural views and practices. On the contrary, when we study ethnicity we are concerned with the social and cultural processes and factors which give rise to similarity and difference, and the ways in which groupings of people construct, maintain and transform their social and cultural identities.
Boundaries are created for the purposes of social interaction and avoidance. It is in this connection that Lehman (1967), for example, sees ethnic identities or categories as rather like 'roles' which people adopt and play out, and Barth proposes that ethnic groups can be conceptualised as an 'organisational type' which involves social processes of 'exclusion' and 'incorporation' and the choice by the actors themselves of these socio-cultural features which are deemed to be significant for purposes of identity and boundary construction. Shared ethinicity is not only premised on biological self-perpetuation but also on membership of a shared field of interaction and communication based on shared values and behaviour.
In examining the relationships between ideas of identity and social relationships some anthropologists have also made the distinction between and 'ethnic category' (as the conceptual dimension of identity by which individuals assign themselves and are assigned by others to a particular unit within a classification system of units) and 'ethnic group' (as pertaining to the dimension of social interation and communication) (Rousseau 1990).
Ethnic identity is first and foremost a matter of self-identification, and it is premised on assumed common origins; people of the same ethnic category claim that they share the same roots, and that their identity is a basic 'given'; it is fixed and in this respect it closely resembles the anthropological category 'kinship'. As with kinship, ethnicity commands primary loyalty; descent is claimed from common ancestors and frequently uses biological justification including shared 'blood' or other kinds of natural imagery. Often in Southeast Asia, when people are asked to identify themselves, they provide the most direct kind of identification, which is both natural and cultural, that they are 'a man', 'a woman' or a 'person': they and their kind are 'human' and physically share 'human-ness', with the implication that 'other people' different from them are in some sense less than human.
Origins can also be expressed in terms of shared physical or territorial space or real or presumed birth place. People might claim a common geographical origin, that they came to their current residence from 'uphill' or 'across the sea' or from a named location. The criterion of place is also often associated with a particular habitat and ecology so that individuals might identify themselves or be identified by others as hill or sea people, or as gardeners or fishermen. Indeed, Barth argues that ecological circumtances 'mark and exaggerate differences (1969), and often give rise to the development of complementary and interdependent trading and other relationships.
Ethnicity is obviously expressed as a product of the past, evoking common origins, social linkages and shared cultural values and traits like language and religion. However, the historical dimension for identity also demonstrates that rather than identities being constant and immutable they frequently change and can be acquired. Rather than focusing on the contents of identities, argues Barth, one should examine the mechanisms of boundary maintenance and how boundaries are not only crossed but transcended. Ethnicity is relative, and ethnic categories and groups do not exist in isolation one from another.
In examining the relationships between ideas of identity and social relationships some anthropologists have also made the distinction between and 'ethnic category' (as the conceptual dimension of identity by which individuals assign themselves and are assigned by others to a particular unit within a classification system of units) and 'ethnic group' (as pertaining to the dimension of social interation and communication) (Rousseau 1990).
Ethnic identity is first and foremost a matter of self-identification, and it is premised on assumed common origins; people of the same ethnic category claim that they share the same roots, and that their identity is a basic 'given'; it is fixed and in this respect it closely resembles the anthropological category 'kinship'. As with kinship, ethnicity commands primary loyalty; descent is claimed from common ancestors and frequently uses biological justification including shared 'blood' or other kinds of natural imagery. Often in Southeast Asia, when people are asked to identify themselves, they provide the most direct kind of identification, which is both natural and cultural, that they are 'a man', 'a woman' or a 'person': they and their kind are 'human' and physically share 'human-ness', with the implication that 'other people' different from them are in some sense less than human.
Origins can also be expressed in terms of shared physical or territorial space or real or presumed birth place. People might claim a common geographical origin, that they came to their current residence from 'uphill' or 'across the sea' or from a named location. The criterion of place is also often associated with a particular habitat and ecology so that individuals might identify themselves or be identified by others as hill or sea people, or as gardeners or fishermen. Indeed, Barth argues that ecological circumtances 'mark and exaggerate differences (1969), and often give rise to the development of complementary and interdependent trading and other relationships.
Ethnicity is obviously expressed as a product of the past, evoking common origins, social linkages and shared cultural values and traits like language and religion. However, the historical dimension for identity also demonstrates that rather than identities being constant and immutable they frequently change and can be acquired. Rather than focusing on the contents of identities, argues Barth, one should examine the mechanisms of boundary maintenance and how boundaries are not only crossed but transcended. Ethnicity is relative, and ethnic categories and groups do not exist in isolation one from another.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Moral Economies, Occult Economies
What does economics have to do with rationality?
from Das Kapital, volume one, chapter one, section four - Marx (1867)
There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
It may be the case that objects that were called 'fetishes' may now be labelled 'power objects'
- why do things with low use value have great market value? e.g. gold
- Smith - invisible hand of the market: it is self-governing
- once objects have become alienated from their producer, they produce social relations of their own
Gambling as a moral economy issue
- in America, casinos are only found in the state of Nevada
- whereas there are bookmakers on every high street in England
Other examples of moral economy issues
- women selling their ova
- Islamic prohibition on interest
- transnational adoption
Zombie planattions in Cameroon
- emerging elites have made wealth through imported witchcraft
- witches eat the soul of people who have died and are then enslaved on plantations (akin to slavery?)
Ralph Austen (1970s) The Moral Economy of Witchcraft
- zero-sum: a situation in which a participant's loss or gain is exactly balanced by the loss and gains of the other participant(s), i.e. a person can win if another loses
- witchcraft (as in the case of Cameroon above) was not borne from remnants of colonialism but a consequence of capitalism, for it was believed that a person could only be exceptionally successful if they employed witchcraft. Thus greed was a marker of a person being a witch.
- in Melanesia, greed and success is regarded as inhuman, so entrepreneurs will be brought down by witchcraft/robbery to bring them back into line because they had risen above their rivals and connections. This makes wealth impossible to achieve.
Ok Tedi river in PNG
- not much smaller than Amazon and was the most valuable water source for life in the region was destroyed by mining
- the mountain, where ancestral spirits were believed to reside, was also abolished
- the mining company was then regarded as witches
from Das Kapital, volume one, chapter one, section four - Marx (1867)
There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
It may be the case that objects that were called 'fetishes' may now be labelled 'power objects'
- why do things with low use value have great market value? e.g. gold
- Smith - invisible hand of the market: it is self-governing
- once objects have become alienated from their producer, they produce social relations of their own
Gambling as a moral economy issue
- in America, casinos are only found in the state of Nevada
- whereas there are bookmakers on every high street in England
Other examples of moral economy issues
- women selling their ova
- Islamic prohibition on interest
- transnational adoption
Zombie planattions in Cameroon
- emerging elites have made wealth through imported witchcraft
- witches eat the soul of people who have died and are then enslaved on plantations (akin to slavery?)
Ralph Austen (1970s) The Moral Economy of Witchcraft
- zero-sum: a situation in which a participant's loss or gain is exactly balanced by the loss and gains of the other participant(s), i.e. a person can win if another loses
- witchcraft (as in the case of Cameroon above) was not borne from remnants of colonialism but a consequence of capitalism, for it was believed that a person could only be exceptionally successful if they employed witchcraft. Thus greed was a marker of a person being a witch.
- in Melanesia, greed and success is regarded as inhuman, so entrepreneurs will be brought down by witchcraft/robbery to bring them back into line because they had risen above their rivals and connections. This makes wealth impossible to achieve.
Ok Tedi river in PNG
- not much smaller than Amazon and was the most valuable water source for life in the region was destroyed by mining
- the mountain, where ancestral spirits were believed to reside, was also abolished
- the mining company was then regarded as witches
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Food and religion
(notes from Everyone Eats, by E. N. Anderson and I'm tempted to buy my own copy to slip doodles and recipes into)
Robertson Smitth's studies (1894) of food sharing as the classic, basic religious act among ancient and modern Near Eastern peoples were among the earliest works to discuss this in scientific detail. His work led, in part, to Emile Durkhiem's studies of religion as "collective representation" of the social group. Durkheim showed that - whatever truth, awe, reverence, or mystical experience individuals may find in religion - the real basis of religion is society. Religion was, for Durkheim, the way a society could hold itself together and "sell" its ethics and standards to the rising generation. To accomplish its goals, a social group embraces everyone in the powerfully emotional activities of ritual, ceremony, and celebration. Inevitably, such intense and all-involving action involves food. Food is a basic and universal human concern. It is central to religion - as symbol, as subject of prayers, as marker of sharing and unsharing, and as communion.
In the first important book that was explicitly about "anthropology", Immanuel Kant spoke of the principles of aggregation and differentiation. People when they classify the world, tend to treat "similar" things as if they were the same (aggregation) and to treat things perceived as even slightly different as tho they were utterly separate (differentiation). Religion usually does this: one is a member of the Holy Faith aor one is not. Typically, aggregation and differentiation are stronger and more emotionally intense in religion than in other human activities (tho political ideology and ethnicity have sometimes taken pride ofplace in the last century or so). Food is almost always a marker. The sharers eat together at ritual meals. Often, they go farther, and define that their congregation by shared rules. The group that prays together stays together - especially if its members share religious feasts.
Taboos
Taboos are found in most societies. Technically, we distinguish taboo (a religious law) from simple avoidance. American Christians have no real taboos, except in some sects (such as Seventh Day Adventists) that observe Old Testament rules. Bur Americans have many avoidances, including insects, dogs, and horses.
This avoidance of horsemeat (Harris 1985) is, in fact, a religious taboo that has had its status lost by the people forgetting. The horse sacrifice was the greatest and most important sacrificial rite in ancient European religion, and recent converts tended to backslide, so Pope Gregory the Great explicitly banned horse eating by Catholics in the early Middle Ages. The modern eating of horses by the French is a new custom, arising from desperation during sieges of the 19th century.
Certain insects are explicitly said to be good food. Countless nutritionists have counseled eating them. They are an excellent, cheap source of nutrients, widely eaten around the world. Yet, most English-language books on food insects concentrate on the shock value rather than the nutritional value. Anthropologists hate this exoticism-as-shock books. They appear to ridicule behaviour that is actually more sensible anintelligent than that of the intended readership.
Taboos are often used as rules for sharing. Among the Inuit and many other hunters, adult women get one part of the game animal, girls get another part, the hunter gets yet another, other adult males get still another (see Boas 1888 and Rasmussen 1927). In Polynesia, chiefs impose sacred taboos to prevent overfishing (a fish species is tabooed until its population recovers from heavy fishing), protect fruit so that it may ripen, and save leaf crops from destructive overharvesting. In many places, scarce but well-liked food is "sacred" to the people who make the rules! Chickens and eggs go to the senior men in much of East Africa. Sometimes there is symbolism here: the top of a fish's head is sacred to the chief in some Pacific Northwest groups, and in southeast Asia the head of the sacrificial buffalo goes to the local headman. Sometimes purity is a factor. The highest, most sacred Hindu castes and Buddhist religious devotees must avoid all bloodshed, and thus all meat. Eating meat necessarily involves bloodshed, even if one does not do one's own butchering, and is thus contaminating and violent.
Most ink has been spilled on the pig taboo in Judaism, Isla, Hinduism, and several minor religions. It is known that the pig was not banned because it carries diseases, contrary to the myth still occasionally found in the popular press. A theory started by Carleton Coon and recently upheld by Marvin Harris maintains that the pig was banned because it is not a bad long-term economic risk in the Middle East. For one thing, it is not an "all-purpose animal"; it is not a source of milk, wool or traction power. It is also said that they are difficult to herd and do poorly in the region's conditions, but this is not true for wild pigs roamed the less desrt parts of the Middle East and keeping pigs was common amongst neighbouring religious groups and so successfully practised. A theory proposed by Paul Diener and Eugene Robkin was that the state wished to divert grain from pig feeding to state coffers, but this is unlikely as pigs were often fed acorns and garbage. Mary Douglas showed that the animals tabooed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are mostly anomolous - in the case of pigs they are cloven hoofed but do not chew cud, and anomolous animals (that seem to violate category boundaries) tend to be upheld as either taboo or sacred in most religions. (UNFINISHED)
Robertson Smitth's studies (1894) of food sharing as the classic, basic religious act among ancient and modern Near Eastern peoples were among the earliest works to discuss this in scientific detail. His work led, in part, to Emile Durkhiem's studies of religion as "collective representation" of the social group. Durkheim showed that - whatever truth, awe, reverence, or mystical experience individuals may find in religion - the real basis of religion is society. Religion was, for Durkheim, the way a society could hold itself together and "sell" its ethics and standards to the rising generation. To accomplish its goals, a social group embraces everyone in the powerfully emotional activities of ritual, ceremony, and celebration. Inevitably, such intense and all-involving action involves food. Food is a basic and universal human concern. It is central to religion - as symbol, as subject of prayers, as marker of sharing and unsharing, and as communion.
In the first important book that was explicitly about "anthropology", Immanuel Kant spoke of the principles of aggregation and differentiation. People when they classify the world, tend to treat "similar" things as if they were the same (aggregation) and to treat things perceived as even slightly different as tho they were utterly separate (differentiation). Religion usually does this: one is a member of the Holy Faith aor one is not. Typically, aggregation and differentiation are stronger and more emotionally intense in religion than in other human activities (tho political ideology and ethnicity have sometimes taken pride ofplace in the last century or so). Food is almost always a marker. The sharers eat together at ritual meals. Often, they go farther, and define that their congregation by shared rules. The group that prays together stays together - especially if its members share religious feasts.
Taboos
Taboos are found in most societies. Technically, we distinguish taboo (a religious law) from simple avoidance. American Christians have no real taboos, except in some sects (such as Seventh Day Adventists) that observe Old Testament rules. Bur Americans have many avoidances, including insects, dogs, and horses.
This avoidance of horsemeat (Harris 1985) is, in fact, a religious taboo that has had its status lost by the people forgetting. The horse sacrifice was the greatest and most important sacrificial rite in ancient European religion, and recent converts tended to backslide, so Pope Gregory the Great explicitly banned horse eating by Catholics in the early Middle Ages. The modern eating of horses by the French is a new custom, arising from desperation during sieges of the 19th century.
Certain insects are explicitly said to be good food. Countless nutritionists have counseled eating them. They are an excellent, cheap source of nutrients, widely eaten around the world. Yet, most English-language books on food insects concentrate on the shock value rather than the nutritional value. Anthropologists hate this exoticism-as-shock books. They appear to ridicule behaviour that is actually more sensible anintelligent than that of the intended readership.
Taboos are often used as rules for sharing. Among the Inuit and many other hunters, adult women get one part of the game animal, girls get another part, the hunter gets yet another, other adult males get still another (see Boas 1888 and Rasmussen 1927). In Polynesia, chiefs impose sacred taboos to prevent overfishing (a fish species is tabooed until its population recovers from heavy fishing), protect fruit so that it may ripen, and save leaf crops from destructive overharvesting. In many places, scarce but well-liked food is "sacred" to the people who make the rules! Chickens and eggs go to the senior men in much of East Africa. Sometimes there is symbolism here: the top of a fish's head is sacred to the chief in some Pacific Northwest groups, and in southeast Asia the head of the sacrificial buffalo goes to the local headman. Sometimes purity is a factor. The highest, most sacred Hindu castes and Buddhist religious devotees must avoid all bloodshed, and thus all meat. Eating meat necessarily involves bloodshed, even if one does not do one's own butchering, and is thus contaminating and violent.
Most ink has been spilled on the pig taboo in Judaism, Isla, Hinduism, and several minor religions. It is known that the pig was not banned because it carries diseases, contrary to the myth still occasionally found in the popular press. A theory started by Carleton Coon and recently upheld by Marvin Harris maintains that the pig was banned because it is not a bad long-term economic risk in the Middle East. For one thing, it is not an "all-purpose animal"; it is not a source of milk, wool or traction power. It is also said that they are difficult to herd and do poorly in the region's conditions, but this is not true for wild pigs roamed the less desrt parts of the Middle East and keeping pigs was common amongst neighbouring religious groups and so successfully practised. A theory proposed by Paul Diener and Eugene Robkin was that the state wished to divert grain from pig feeding to state coffers, but this is unlikely as pigs were often fed acorns and garbage. Mary Douglas showed that the animals tabooed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are mostly anomolous - in the case of pigs they are cloven hoofed but do not chew cud, and anomolous animals (that seem to violate category boundaries) tend to be upheld as either taboo or sacred in most religions. (UNFINISHED)
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Religious Movements and Modernities
'reverse anthropology' is when the anthropologist aims to see the worlds and the events that occur from the point of view of the people indigenous to the area
have you heard of a TV series called Meet the Natives?
it follows the adventures of a group of Venuatan tribesman as they experience Britain by living with three families in different social standings (i.e. each family is of a different class background) and hope to bring back to their tribe a message from Prince Philip (who they believe is the son of their god)
- arguably there is potential for this exercise to corrupt their culture
- ..especially as Prince Phikip is not known for his tact, and a slip of the tongue may have dire effects on their customs
Millennial movement
- key aspect: rejection to present order, may urge return to a past or may involve a rejection of tradition
- "a broad variety of social movements that have in common an aspiration to reform or to overturn the social order with supernatural assistance”
Worsley (1957: 251)
- radical break urged by prophet leads to moral renewal
- the love of one's cult brethren
- new forms of sexual ties
- abandonment of stealing, lying, cheating, theft..
- devotion to the interests of community
Types of movements
- messianic - return to lead the people
- acculturation - response to disruptions of colonial domination
- nativistic - revive endangered aspect of culture
- revitalisation - reconstructive and theraprutic functions of movement
Cargo cults
- prophet receives message from ancestors of promised cargo or of cargo intended for them being hijacked by others
- such messages tend to bring social harmony and consensus amongst the people, as this is said to ensure the arrival of the cargo
- the John Frum movement (in Vanuatu) caused some followers to reject Christian and Western practices, and revitalise native dances, use of kava (recreational drink), pre-colonial residence patterns
- Paliau movement on Munu Island: replacement of tradition with European manners
Strategies
"A prophet announces the immanent end of the world in a cataclysm which will destroy everything... then the ancestors will return, or God, or some other liberating power, will appear... bringing all the goods the people desire... and ushering a reign of eternal bliss (Worsley 1957: 11)
- mass gatherings, arifield constructions, raising of flag pole, burial or washing, and dancing
John Frum movement
- John Frum has not been identified but it is strongly believed (amongst non-natives) that in the 1930s Americans arriving on the island introduced themselves as 'John, from...'
- the 300, 000 American soldiers inhabiting Vanuatu Island during 1940s kept the religion from dying out
- it is believed that 'John Frum' had told them that America would save them
- British and French colonial powers had imprisoned many of the indigenous people but the Americans freed them, let them join the army and gave them uniforms so that they felt included
Explanation: psychological and social function
- deals with emotions of relative deprivation and general confusion: it is reassuring, provides some hope/security
- transforms local systems of knowledge
- re-establishes people's dignity
- provides explanation for inequality
- galvanises; creates large groups to resist and rise againstoppression
- provides language of political process
Emergent of Melanesian culture
- borne from intensity of paranoid ethos
- cosmological association between spiritual and material power
- mythical ritual beliefs in annual return of the deceased
- importance of competitive exchange in political relations with neighbours
- weak indigenous institutions to deal with invasion and dominations
New religious movements
1. shift in usage ('cargo' and 'cult' became problematic in the 1970s) to 'nativistic', 'adjustment', 'protonationalist', 'micronationalist', and 'local protest'
2. study of new religions emerged in Japan following religious innovations after World War II
Revitalisation thesis (Wallace 1956)
- highlights the reconctructive and socially therapeutic functions of a religious movement
- notes the deliberate efforts of participants to remake their world
- insists on tracing the processes involved in the emergencce and decline/routinisation of each movement
- also highlights the emergence of a prophet as of crucial importance to every revitalisation movement (sort of leader figure?)
- importance of parent-like supernatural figure
Revitalisation process in 5 steps
- steady state
- period of individual state
- period of cultural distortion
- period of revitalisation
- new steady state
Prince Philip movement
- revitalisation movement or prophetic? how do we categorise this movement?
- to what extent is Prince Philip divine?
- confidence through Kastom now reversed in their engagement with UK (reverse anth.)
- exchange of gifts with Prince Philip suggests aspects of equality: not messianic in a traditional sense
Monday, 3 May 2010
Benedict Anderson (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
Perhaps a more bourgeois account (in comparison to Gellner) - he was a communist until the 1960s, then a Marxist
- similar to Gellner but without focus on industrialisation
- similar to Gellner but without focus on industrialisation
"[A nation] is an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign"
- imagined in the sense that no one member knows all or has even interacted with most other members, yet they will use 'we' when speaking of the "community" to which they believe they belong; imagination is flexible (over time sub-groups included and excluded change over time, e.g. suspect terrorist organisations)
- other imagined communities: class and caste system, professions (share jargon, goals)
- limited membership - political, physical, legal/bureaucratic borders..
- community implies sharing of sentiment and ideology
- French citizens swear allegiance to France, so a crime committed against the president wouldn't be regarded as treason as he does not embody 'France' but is merely a political figure
- religious formulation: tomb of unknown soldiers, anonymity symbolises the act and people en masse
- print capitalism - by 18th C mass printing productions (books and newspapers); for success, an audience is demanded, so writings required to be in national language, not local dialects; accessibility
-- with print becoming more affordable and literacy increasing, the language of the ruling class becomes the least viable for communicating with the populace; newspapers provide current news; however idioms cannot be translated
- imagined in the sense that no one member knows all or has even interacted with most other members, yet they will use 'we' when speaking of the "community" to which they believe they belong; imagination is flexible (over time sub-groups included and excluded change over time, e.g. suspect terrorist organisations)
- other imagined communities: class and caste system, professions (share jargon, goals)
- limited membership - political, physical, legal/bureaucratic borders..
- community implies sharing of sentiment and ideology
- French citizens swear allegiance to France, so a crime committed against the president wouldn't be regarded as treason as he does not embody 'France' but is merely a political figure
- religious formulation: tomb of unknown soldiers, anonymity symbolises the act and people en masse
- print capitalism - by 18th C mass printing productions (books and newspapers); for success, an audience is demanded, so writings required to be in national language, not local dialects; accessibility
-- with print becoming more affordable and literacy increasing, the language of the ruling class becomes the least viable for communicating with the populace; newspapers provide current news; however idioms cannot be translated
Nationalism born in the colonies
- Americans paid taxes to the English but it didn't bring them any benefits - solidarity from mass outrage; revolts against the aristocracy
- mentions Islamic community but does not often discuss it as it is an exception to the rule? (classical Arabic is still used, unlike Latin which died with the rise of print capitalism)
Creole nationalism
- solidarity of the indigenous against the empire, local nationalism, colonies with a sense of identity separate to empire
-- Australian aborigines create a "nation" in rejection of colonialism as a Western concept
-- no taxation without representation - Boston Tea Party
- outrage then gets exported to the countries of the ruling powers
- rulers must acknowledge and seem to adhere to the peoples, official nationalism, ruling class must also take to nationalism of the majority - Saxe-Coburg to become Windsor
Colonial nationalism
- make a standard language - e.g. Malay/Bahasa
- transport, infrastructure
- army
- judiciary
- standardised measures
- census and maps
- museums showcase the people's history
Religious formulation of nationalism, cont'd
- nationalism as a secular religion
- national community predated by religion
- nation's set of beliefs shared
- no worship but structures founded on religion
-- standing to show respect for the position of monarch
Ascription and self-ascription
Nationalism
An example of showing national pride:
the scene at Rick's bar - in the film Casablanca - where the Germans begin singing their national anthem, then are drowned out by the French singing theirs; note the focus on a woman picking up a guitar and another singing very emotionally
the scene at Rick's bar - in the film Casablanca - where the Germans begin singing their national anthem, then are drowned out by the French singing theirs; note the focus on a woman picking up a guitar and another singing very emotionally
Nationalism as a good thing:
- giving their life to save their comrades or country, nation
Nationalism as a bad thing:
- ethnic cleansing, genocide
- "racism", inequality
- Rwanda - hutus vs tootsis
- Sri Lanka - Tamil vs Sinhalese
- giving their life to save their comrades or country, nation
Nationalism as a bad thing:
- ethnic cleansing, genocide
- "racism", inequality
- Rwanda - hutus vs tootsis
- Sri Lanka - Tamil vs Sinhalese
'we' - first person speech including anonymous persons presumed to be similar because they share a national identity: peculiar?
- 'you' and 'they' - observable terms
- "we have the greatest literature in the world", but the speaker is neither a contributor to the literature nor an owner of it
National identity depending on:
- 'you' and 'they' - observable terms
- "we have the greatest literature in the world", but the speaker is neither a contributor to the literature nor an owner of it
National identity depending on:
- which passport you hold or to which gov't your taxes are paid to
- situation: e.g.
- situation: e.g.
-- a British person in Britain from Kent would not associate with a person from Manchester if their shared interests were minimal but they are more likely to mix when abroad because it is comforting, easier to be with people that speak the same language, say, or compare the customs of the foreign culture to one they both share
-- outside Congo, a person from Congo would say they were Congolese but within Congo they would associate/define themselves by subgroups
Hobsbawm
- ethnicity as a historical pedigree for nationalism, with social sentiment
- nationalism as a political program, at least in origin
Jenkins: primordial vs instrumentalist
- primordialist: (Clifford Geertz) ineffable definition of identity seen by language, physical appearance - historically rooted
-- the ethinicity of these people have always been despite the state not forming until colonists drew borders
- instrumentalist: (Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries - territory mapped on to concepts) situation dependent
-- outside Congo, a person from Congo would say they were Congolese but within Congo they would associate/define themselves by subgroups
Hobsbawm
- ethnicity as a historical pedigree for nationalism, with social sentiment
- nationalism as a political program, at least in origin
Jenkins: primordial vs instrumentalist
- primordialist: (Clifford Geertz) ineffable definition of identity seen by language, physical appearance - historically rooted
-- the ethinicity of these people have always been despite the state not forming until colonists drew borders
- instrumentalist: (Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries - territory mapped on to concepts) situation dependent
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Here are some photos.
Hello Yusuf.
Maybe you'd like to share this with Rika..
One day we should travel by train together, like the one we took in Geneva. Or we could learn to be gymnasts and fight like ninjas.
I installed Stumbleupon to Firefox yesterday and one of the things it showed me is a way for you to put together your own fireworks show and I thought you might like to try it cos I think you used to play things like this, but I don't know if you'd still like it. I tried it last night and it's alright, I suppose. Not as cool as these drawings some guy did on pavements using just chalk though.
Also, you're studying about the ancient Greeks, right? Well, maybe this might be useful cos it seems to hold information on a lot of myths, which I think is pretty fascinating.
I think you'd enjoy Stumbleupon in your free time too. All you have to do is install it, sign up, tick all the boxes of things that interest you and whenever you click on the button it's added to your web browser it'll bring up a page according to your interests that other people with the same interests have said they liked.
Anyway, reason I've put together this post for you is to show you a photo of a rabbit I took, cos I'd promised you on the phone that I'd show you since you're not here.
It's really small, can you see it? It's smaller than your '32' hat. Whenever I go up to campus I check the clear area around this tree to see if there are any rabbits cos I think they live in the holes at the bottom of it and on the day I had my camera (the day after I called you and told you about the small bunny) I was disappointed cos I couldn't see one, but when I looked back as I walked away I spotted this one. They're pretty well camouflaged.
On the way to campus that day I also saw a white cat in the foresty area opposite the flat. You can't tell from this photo very well, cos I couldn't zoom i enough, but I can tell you because I've seen it in our garden before. It has little ears like a teddy bear (and so we call it a polar bear) and a rather thick and short (thicker than shorter than you'd expect on a cat anyway) tail. When I saw it in our garden it was looking away and at first I thought it was a ferret.
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Derek Freeman's examination of Iban agriculture in the late 1940s and early 1950s
(from Wilder and King)
Freeman carried out fieldwork in the Baleh region of interior Sarawak, Borneo. The basin of the Rejang river in Sarawak was a sparsely populated region mainly comprising primary forest when the Iban began to colonise it from the beginning of the 19th century, and he notes that the Iban had an 'insatiable appetite for fresh areas of virgin forest'. Given this ample supply of primary forest Iban practice was 'to exploit the stored-up fertility of virgin land by extracting from it two or three successive crops, and then move on to fresh fields'. Freeman is critical of this, saying that it is 'an entirely pernicious practiice', tho he recognises that this was in the context of ample supply of primary forest and the perception that it was 'an expendable resource'. It was also a rational use of the land in terms of the available labour supply, because the continuous clearing of virgin forest was very demanding of labour. and successive farming enhanced the chances of securing a good burn, because cleared secondary vegetation required a much shorter drying-out period prior to firing. Virgin land farmed for a second year also produced good yields and was not subject to much weed growth.
Freeman indicates that in these pioneer areas it was usual for each separate Iban family (bilek) to open a farm (umai) of 4-5 acres and the cultivate part of it for two years in succession. In favourable weather conditions virgin areas would yield harvests of 'exceptional abundance' and provide a surplus. The first clearing of land also established individual rights of ownership over it. In addition, the rainforest furnished raw materials for making mats and baskets, for thatching, for roof shingles, lighting and bark-linings. After a period of cultivation the family abandoned the site and moved on to open new land in the general vicinity of the longhouse, returning to the site to re-open it after a fallow period of 11-30 years. Nevertheless, if a family moved out of the district to a new area its rights in secondary forest lapsed and could then be taken up by any members of their kindred who remained behind.
In an extensive system of agriculture it was also necesary to construct subsidiary longhouses (dampa) near to the farms once it became difficult to reach lands which were distant from the main house. These smaller field-houses usually comprised 2-10 families who were farming in the same vicinity. Nevertheless, each bilek was an independent unit of ownership, production and consumption, and it cultivated its own fields, tho at certain stages of the agricultural cycle it would form along with other families small co-ops on the basis of a system of strictly reciprocal labour exchange.
An important feature of the traditional cultivation of hill rice (padi) is that it was also a religious undertaking, and the various stages and practices of agriculture were closely interwoven with ritual and ceremony 'based on an elaborate fertility cult'. The Iban believed that their rice possessed a soul and was watched over by rice spirits, and each family had strains of sacred rice (padi pun) said to be of supernatural origin, which were planted in the central part of the farm and fored the locus of various rutes which were performed to secure a plentiful harvest. The Iban treated their rice with great respect and were constantly vigilant in ensuring that, in both word and deed, they did not annoy or anger the rice spirits. Freeman argued that Iban rate of reaping could have been increased if sickles had been employed but 'such a method is ruled out because of the reverential attitude which the Iban adopt towards their padi': a more vigorous mode of harvesting might scare away rice spirits.
Traditionally, Iban agriculture did not use draught animals or ploughs; instead the dibble stick was used; clearing the forest and undergrowth was accomplished with axe, adze and fire; ash was used as a fertiliser with no artificial application; and reaping was with a small hand-knife (not a scythe).
The stages of shifting cultivation comprised clearing the undergrowth, felling large trees, firing the farm, reburning the remaining debris if the burn is incomplete, dibbling and sowing, weeding, guarding the farms against pests and animals, harvesting, carrying in the rice in baskets, threshing, winnoing, sorting, selecting suitable seed for the following year's sowing, and periodic pounding of rice when needed for eating. There was a relatively well-defined gender division of labour with men primarily reponsible for slashing and felling the forest, dibbling, and carrying in the rice, and the women for sowing, weeding, reaping, selecting seed, and processing and storing the rice, tho in certain operations like harvesting and weeding, this was not a hard-and-fast division. Freeman indicates that a family might possess up to 15 different varietiesof rice, so that the farm was arranged 'in a predetermined order' to facilitate harvesting and to ensure that there was no interruption in the path of the reapers so that the souls of the rice could follow and did not get lost.
The Iban also cultivate a range of catch-crops which were interspersed with the rice on the farm; some were sown in the same dibble hole as the rice; these secondary crops included mustard, cucumber, pumpkin, gourd, cassava, maize, chilli and pineapples.
Freeman demonstrates that the shifting cultivation of hill rice at that time was 'a highly uncertain undertaking', given the uncertainties of rainfall and temperture and the incidence of attacks by insects and animals, tho he points out that in Iban eyes these hazards were 'very largely the result of magical and supernatural forces'. Variations in yields between families and between different fields were also substantial. However, the introduction of rubber cultivation provided an important subsidiary source of income and served 'as a valuable safeguard against rice shortages'.
Freeman carried out fieldwork in the Baleh region of interior Sarawak, Borneo. The basin of the Rejang river in Sarawak was a sparsely populated region mainly comprising primary forest when the Iban began to colonise it from the beginning of the 19th century, and he notes that the Iban had an 'insatiable appetite for fresh areas of virgin forest'. Given this ample supply of primary forest Iban practice was 'to exploit the stored-up fertility of virgin land by extracting from it two or three successive crops, and then move on to fresh fields'. Freeman is critical of this, saying that it is 'an entirely pernicious practiice', tho he recognises that this was in the context of ample supply of primary forest and the perception that it was 'an expendable resource'. It was also a rational use of the land in terms of the available labour supply, because the continuous clearing of virgin forest was very demanding of labour. and successive farming enhanced the chances of securing a good burn, because cleared secondary vegetation required a much shorter drying-out period prior to firing. Virgin land farmed for a second year also produced good yields and was not subject to much weed growth.
Freeman indicates that in these pioneer areas it was usual for each separate Iban family (bilek) to open a farm (umai) of 4-5 acres and the cultivate part of it for two years in succession. In favourable weather conditions virgin areas would yield harvests of 'exceptional abundance' and provide a surplus. The first clearing of land also established individual rights of ownership over it. In addition, the rainforest furnished raw materials for making mats and baskets, for thatching, for roof shingles, lighting and bark-linings. After a period of cultivation the family abandoned the site and moved on to open new land in the general vicinity of the longhouse, returning to the site to re-open it after a fallow period of 11-30 years. Nevertheless, if a family moved out of the district to a new area its rights in secondary forest lapsed and could then be taken up by any members of their kindred who remained behind.
In an extensive system of agriculture it was also necesary to construct subsidiary longhouses (dampa) near to the farms once it became difficult to reach lands which were distant from the main house. These smaller field-houses usually comprised 2-10 families who were farming in the same vicinity. Nevertheless, each bilek was an independent unit of ownership, production and consumption, and it cultivated its own fields, tho at certain stages of the agricultural cycle it would form along with other families small co-ops on the basis of a system of strictly reciprocal labour exchange.
An important feature of the traditional cultivation of hill rice (padi) is that it was also a religious undertaking, and the various stages and practices of agriculture were closely interwoven with ritual and ceremony 'based on an elaborate fertility cult'. The Iban believed that their rice possessed a soul and was watched over by rice spirits, and each family had strains of sacred rice (padi pun) said to be of supernatural origin, which were planted in the central part of the farm and fored the locus of various rutes which were performed to secure a plentiful harvest. The Iban treated their rice with great respect and were constantly vigilant in ensuring that, in both word and deed, they did not annoy or anger the rice spirits. Freeman argued that Iban rate of reaping could have been increased if sickles had been employed but 'such a method is ruled out because of the reverential attitude which the Iban adopt towards their padi': a more vigorous mode of harvesting might scare away rice spirits.
Traditionally, Iban agriculture did not use draught animals or ploughs; instead the dibble stick was used; clearing the forest and undergrowth was accomplished with axe, adze and fire; ash was used as a fertiliser with no artificial application; and reaping was with a small hand-knife (not a scythe).
The stages of shifting cultivation comprised clearing the undergrowth, felling large trees, firing the farm, reburning the remaining debris if the burn is incomplete, dibbling and sowing, weeding, guarding the farms against pests and animals, harvesting, carrying in the rice in baskets, threshing, winnoing, sorting, selecting suitable seed for the following year's sowing, and periodic pounding of rice when needed for eating. There was a relatively well-defined gender division of labour with men primarily reponsible for slashing and felling the forest, dibbling, and carrying in the rice, and the women for sowing, weeding, reaping, selecting seed, and processing and storing the rice, tho in certain operations like harvesting and weeding, this was not a hard-and-fast division. Freeman indicates that a family might possess up to 15 different varietiesof rice, so that the farm was arranged 'in a predetermined order' to facilitate harvesting and to ensure that there was no interruption in the path of the reapers so that the souls of the rice could follow and did not get lost.
The Iban also cultivate a range of catch-crops which were interspersed with the rice on the farm; some were sown in the same dibble hole as the rice; these secondary crops included mustard, cucumber, pumpkin, gourd, cassava, maize, chilli and pineapples.
Freeman demonstrates that the shifting cultivation of hill rice at that time was 'a highly uncertain undertaking', given the uncertainties of rainfall and temperture and the incidence of attacks by insects and animals, tho he points out that in Iban eyes these hazards were 'very largely the result of magical and supernatural forces'. Variations in yields between families and between different fields were also substantial. However, the introduction of rubber cultivation provided an important subsidiary source of income and served 'as a valuable safeguard against rice shortages'.
Friday, 30 April 2010
Edmund Leach's study of the Kachin in Highland Burma in the late 1930s
(From Wilder and King)
In this time he paid some attention to their ecology as a limiting but not a determining factor of their social and political order. He (1954) argued that in general 'hill peoples can only be expected to yield a surplus under exceptional conditions of low population density and specially favourable terrain'. Among the Kachin, Leach distinguished three kinds of upland agriculture (taungya is the Burmese term for hill field):
Monsoon taungya
Firstly (slash and burn?) the vegetation is cleared, left to desiccate during the dry season and then burned. The burned debris provided an ash fertiliser of phosphates and potassium. The ground was dibbled and drilled among the ash and sown with a variety of crops , principally hill rice, with maize, millet and buckwheat, and in this region the opium poppy as a cash crop. Usually after a year's cultivation, the area was abandoned and allowed to lie fallow and recover (usu. for 12-15 years). Gradually secondary forest established itself, then it was farmed again. Leach says that if this cycle was followed 'then there is no deforestation and negligible soil loss'. This is an extensive agricultural system because at any one time there are substantial tracts of fallow land in various stages of regrowth as the fields are used in rotation. Leach notes that Kachin villages were usually small in size, scattered and close to their fields. Shifting cultivation therefore might be put under pressure with population growth. A shortening of the fallow period, esp on hill slopes prone to erosion, might not permit the land to recover sufficiently and the vegetation to provide cover to prevent soil leaching and to yield sufficient amounts of ash fertiliser when burned.
Grassland taungya
In these regions of Burma described by Leach, the climate has less considerably rainfall than the areas which receive monsoons, so instead of forests the land is covered by pine stands, scrub and grasslands. This environments made for difficulties in ensuring sufficient rain and heat for hill rice. Beans were a favoured crop on cleared grasslands, followed by various other crops such as maize, buckwheat, millet, wheat and barley, planted in rotation on the same patch of land. The fields were then left to revert to grasslands. The poorer prospects for food crops also resulted in the cultivation of cash crops such as tea and the opium poppy.
Irrigated rice terraces
These were constructed in areas 'when local population densities are great enough to create a serious shortage of land' and where communities were relatively fixed, often for military and political reasons to control trade routes. Nevertheless, these terraces required considerable effort and energy to construct and maintain, and wherever possible the Kachin preferred to practise shifting cultivation.
Thursday, 29 April 2010
Horticulture and Palm Harvesting in Southeast Asia
Ellen suggests that the availibility of wild sago may have limited horticultural development because there 'is little incentive to alter a landscape at some effort and adopt new and untried techniques when a living can be had by simply extraacting resources from an unmodified environment'. In his study of the Nuaulu of Seram, Ellen presents a detailed description and analysis of the combination of a hunting-gathering economy and a horticultural in which root tubers are cultivated by shifting agricultural methods (1978). For the Nuaulu sago gathering provides the most important source of staple food while gardens are planted with such tubers as taro, manioc and yams. Usually gardens are farmed for a year and then left fallow, tho crops such as manioc and fruits such as banana and papaya continue to be taken from the same plot in the second and third years. In some cases garden land is turned over for long-term cultivation of sago palms and cash crops such as cloves and coconuts, which Ellen term 'silviculture', and which results in land being taken out of the swidden-fallow cycle altogether and, in effect, used for permanent cultivation of tree or palm crops.
Ellen also indicates that lowland sago is vitally important in the Moluccas (mainly on the islands of Seram, Halmahera, Buru, Aru and Bacan), and has been the primary source of carbohydrate since at least the fifteenth century. It is a remarkably productive palm, has 'year-round availibility'. Vegetables can be intercropped with sago, and the palm also provides a source of liquor, firewood, medicines and raw material for utensls and other items. Usually along the Melanau (in Borneo) there was a gender division of labour with men clearing, cutting and rasping the palms to obtain the sago pith, and women, cleaning, processing and drying the flour, and making it into biscuits and other foodstuffs.
This cottage/home-based industry in Sarawak also used to provide flour for export, but rasping and processing subsequently became mechanised, factory-based and controlled by Chinese companies. It resulted in increasing unemployment in some of the sago districts and native sago producers became wage labourers for others, and tied into credit-debt relations with Chinese dealers. In the Moluccas, Ellen also draws attention to the importance of sago flour and biscuits in exchange netweorks, and from the 15th century its close relationships to clove production in that the areas which concentrated on spices for export needed to import sago to meet their basic food needs.
Ellen also indicates that lowland sago is vitally important in the Moluccas (mainly on the islands of Seram, Halmahera, Buru, Aru and Bacan), and has been the primary source of carbohydrate since at least the fifteenth century. It is a remarkably productive palm, has 'year-round availibility'. Vegetables can be intercropped with sago, and the palm also provides a source of liquor, firewood, medicines and raw material for utensls and other items. Usually along the Melanau (in Borneo) there was a gender division of labour with men clearing, cutting and rasping the palms to obtain the sago pith, and women, cleaning, processing and drying the flour, and making it into biscuits and other foodstuffs.
This cottage/home-based industry in Sarawak also used to provide flour for export, but rasping and processing subsequently became mechanised, factory-based and controlled by Chinese companies. It resulted in increasing unemployment in some of the sago districts and native sago producers became wage labourers for others, and tied into credit-debt relations with Chinese dealers. In the Moluccas, Ellen also draws attention to the importance of sago flour and biscuits in exchange netweorks, and from the 15th century its close relationships to clove production in that the areas which concentrated on spices for export needed to import sago to meet their basic food needs.
Hunting and Gathering in S-E. A.
(from Wilder and King)
As rainforests have been cleared and gov'ts aim to (re?)settle and modernise forest nomads, this form of ecological adjustment to the environment has been placed under severe pressure. Many nomads have, in contact with neighbouring farmers, settled down and adopted horticulture or rice agriculture, or have been resettled in gov't land schemes. So forest-based activities dependent on hunting, gathering and fishing are not as widespread to day as they were, say, 30 years ago.
Once agriculture or horticulture was introduced, a vital characteristic of those who remained as hunter-gatherers was that they have never been isolated populations, but have always lived in contact with agriculturalists with whom they have long-standing trade relations and are culturally related (Eder; King). Traditionally nomads were largely self-sufficient but through trade acquired such items as rice, cloth, iron, copper wire, salt, tobacco, beads, necklaces and bracelets, metal earrings, tattooing needles, ceramic jars and brass gongs. In return the hunter-gatherers supplied rattan, resins, wild rubber, medicinalplants, hornbail casques and feathers, beeswax, birds' nests, honey, bezoar stones, gold, antler horns, clouded leaopard skins and rinoceros horns, many of them for a wider Asian market.
Indeed, Hoffman argued that the explanation for nomadic life in Borneo lay in the specialisation in the commercial collecting and hunting of forest products. He went further by proposing that nomadic society arose specifically to service the Chinese market with luxury tropical goods, and to do so hunter-gatherers entered into relations with agriculturalists who served as intermediaries. For Hoffman trade was essential to the nomadic way of life. However, this rather one-sided view has been criticised by Rousseau and Sellato, who contend that, tho nomads trade, so do so more than others and they do not depend on agriculturalists for anything of importance. It was often difficult for the intermediaries to persuade nomads to collect produce because they were often too preoccupied with meeting their own subsistence needs.
Several recent studies have documented the process of sedentarization. Eder (1996), for example, in his work on the Batak, a foraging community of central Palawan in the Philippines, finds that they "no longer earn their subsistence exclusively by hunting and gathering. Rather, trade, shift cultivation, and wage labor have come to be important sources of cash and subsistence, reflecting growing articulation with lowland Philippine economy and society over the past one hundred years." Nevertheless, hunting-gathering still comprised a significant part of Batak economic activity in the 1980s, undertaken on a seasonal basis as other activities, particularly rice agriculture, permitted. For some part of the year the Batak resided in forest camps, tho their main residence was closer to their rice-field; the camps were also smaller in size and much more temporary than in the hunting-gathering past and the range of fauna and flora utilised much reduced. In this transitional phase from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture in which the Batak spread their energies over several activities, Eder argues that their part-time foraging 'is not as remunerative or successful as it once was'.
Borneo nomads traditionally occupied primary forest and formed settlements in caves, lean-tos and raised farm-houses near sources of drinking water. There were also variations in the degree of permanence of camps and settlements. Generally, population densities were very low and nomads were organised in bands from 30-40 people up to 15 or 200. These roamed separately over recognised territories, tho they did not move at random but in a cyclical fashion around a base-camp. From time to time nomads also migrated long distances to new territories.
Nomadic economy in Borneo was based on the felling of the inland sago palm and extracting flour from the edible pith which is eaten with sago and other palm shoots; it is calculated that a band of 25 people needed 20 palms per week for a normal diet, and that, given that a palm stand usually comprises 50 to 100 trees, of which about half are mature, bands would have to move to a new stand every week or two weeks. Other food comprised forest vegetables such as yams and mushrooms, ferns, honey, vegetable tallow, wild fruits like durian and rambutan, and animal protein from wild boar, deer, macaques, civets, squirrels, reptiles, jungle fowl and birds, as well as from fish, molluscs and crustaceans. Hunting of ground animals was undertaken by men using spears and dogs, or traps, while tree-dwelling creatures and birds were killed with poisoned darts from the blowpipe. Women usually gathered forest products near the camp.
As rainforests have been cleared and gov'ts aim to (re?)settle and modernise forest nomads, this form of ecological adjustment to the environment has been placed under severe pressure. Many nomads have, in contact with neighbouring farmers, settled down and adopted horticulture or rice agriculture, or have been resettled in gov't land schemes. So forest-based activities dependent on hunting, gathering and fishing are not as widespread to day as they were, say, 30 years ago.
Once agriculture or horticulture was introduced, a vital characteristic of those who remained as hunter-gatherers was that they have never been isolated populations, but have always lived in contact with agriculturalists with whom they have long-standing trade relations and are culturally related (Eder; King). Traditionally nomads were largely self-sufficient but through trade acquired such items as rice, cloth, iron, copper wire, salt, tobacco, beads, necklaces and bracelets, metal earrings, tattooing needles, ceramic jars and brass gongs. In return the hunter-gatherers supplied rattan, resins, wild rubber, medicinalplants, hornbail casques and feathers, beeswax, birds' nests, honey, bezoar stones, gold, antler horns, clouded leaopard skins and rinoceros horns, many of them for a wider Asian market.
Indeed, Hoffman argued that the explanation for nomadic life in Borneo lay in the specialisation in the commercial collecting and hunting of forest products. He went further by proposing that nomadic society arose specifically to service the Chinese market with luxury tropical goods, and to do so hunter-gatherers entered into relations with agriculturalists who served as intermediaries. For Hoffman trade was essential to the nomadic way of life. However, this rather one-sided view has been criticised by Rousseau and Sellato, who contend that, tho nomads trade, so do so more than others and they do not depend on agriculturalists for anything of importance. It was often difficult for the intermediaries to persuade nomads to collect produce because they were often too preoccupied with meeting their own subsistence needs.
Several recent studies have documented the process of sedentarization. Eder (1996), for example, in his work on the Batak, a foraging community of central Palawan in the Philippines, finds that they "no longer earn their subsistence exclusively by hunting and gathering. Rather, trade, shift cultivation, and wage labor have come to be important sources of cash and subsistence, reflecting growing articulation with lowland Philippine economy and society over the past one hundred years." Nevertheless, hunting-gathering still comprised a significant part of Batak economic activity in the 1980s, undertaken on a seasonal basis as other activities, particularly rice agriculture, permitted. For some part of the year the Batak resided in forest camps, tho their main residence was closer to their rice-field; the camps were also smaller in size and much more temporary than in the hunting-gathering past and the range of fauna and flora utilised much reduced. In this transitional phase from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture in which the Batak spread their energies over several activities, Eder argues that their part-time foraging 'is not as remunerative or successful as it once was'.
Borneo nomads traditionally occupied primary forest and formed settlements in caves, lean-tos and raised farm-houses near sources of drinking water. There were also variations in the degree of permanence of camps and settlements. Generally, population densities were very low and nomads were organised in bands from 30-40 people up to 15 or 200. These roamed separately over recognised territories, tho they did not move at random but in a cyclical fashion around a base-camp. From time to time nomads also migrated long distances to new territories.
Nomadic economy in Borneo was based on the felling of the inland sago palm and extracting flour from the edible pith which is eaten with sago and other palm shoots; it is calculated that a band of 25 people needed 20 palms per week for a normal diet, and that, given that a palm stand usually comprises 50 to 100 trees, of which about half are mature, bands would have to move to a new stand every week or two weeks. Other food comprised forest vegetables such as yams and mushrooms, ferns, honey, vegetable tallow, wild fruits like durian and rambutan, and animal protein from wild boar, deer, macaques, civets, squirrels, reptiles, jungle fowl and birds, as well as from fish, molluscs and crustaceans. Hunting of ground animals was undertaken by men using spears and dogs, or traps, while tree-dwelling creatures and birds were killed with poisoned darts from the blowpipe. Women usually gathered forest products near the camp.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Self, Spirits and Authority
Belief in spirits and in viruses are equatable because neither can be seen but the effects can be felt
- the local has inspired global movements
- Joseph Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion; his novel The Hero With A Thousand Faces expounds the regular feature in many stories of a hero leading others to safety based on his subject areas
- visible tension between reductive, naturalising vs contextualising, and phenomenological approaches
- on this topic, Lambek says: 1. context is neceassary for contemporary experience to be mediated by past myth models and 2. individual intentions are externalised and given voice
Star Wars as a tale of shamanic journey
- Leia as the sould to be saved
- by the shaman apprentice that is Obi Wan
- who is aided by Chewbacca
A definition of spirit possession
from Boddy, J. (1994) "Spirit Posession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality" in Annual Review of Anth. 23: 407-34
"..commonly refers to the hold exerted over a human being by external forces or entities more powerful than she. These forces may be ancestors or divinities, ghosts of foreign origin, or entities both ontotlogically and ethnically alien"
- this denial of agency does not fit with Western notions of self-control
A definition of shamanism
- origin: Tunguistic (Siberian) word; meaning a mediator between the human world and the world of the spirits, between the living and the dead, and between animals and human society (D'Anglure 1996)
Historical development
- particular interest towards Siberian Shamanism by early romantic intellectuals opposed to scientific rationality, such as Diderot, Herder, Goethe
- regarded as the intermediary stage between magic and religion (late 19th century)
- French sociological school saw shamanism as having derived from totemism
Techniques of ecstasy
- ethnographically led psychological approaches
- Eliade (sociologist of myth) (1951) produced a comprehensive, historical account influenced by religious psychology
Contemporary literature
- mental states that shamonism constitutes
- ecstasy and !Kung dances release opium peptides which, when transferred to other people by sweat?, spreads/shares the experience
- psychologizing - mental illness, ASC, SSC
- neuropsychological - shamans and endorphins
- social psychological approaches: see Sikala
- shamanism as therapy - placebo, psychotherapeutic, metaphorical
Neo-shamanism
- from abnormal psychology to universal psychobiological capacities - 1960s popular understandings of consciousness
- oldest form of religion since hunter-gatherer subsistence method was predominant
- Harner (1990) The Way of the Shaman: Harner worked with the head-hunters in Ecuador and wanted to make their practise more acessible and better understood (see The Foundation for Shamanic Studies)
Persecution of shamans
- 17th century Swedish Lappland (Sami people), shaman's drums were confiscated
- Russian Orthodox Church had classified 'shamanic spirits' as maleficient daemons of lower rank
- then an enforced mass baptism was sanctioned by Peter the Great
- but this failed to eradicate the practice, esp as many people had traditionally turned to shamanic practitioners for advice, and choosing not to reject this custom kept the practices alive
Spirit Possession
- may be inherently pathological
- Lewis suggests that to declare being possessed may be instrumental, e.g. status-deprived individuals could use it as a guise for their (unconscious?) protests
- Crapanzano sees it as a creative idiom for articulatin a certain range of experiences..
- accroding to Obeyesekere cultural symbols inform individual exp/psychoanalytical processes
- Lambek puts forward the notion that each genre is coupled with its own interpretative conventions, e.g. spirit possession does not tend to be a welcomed activity in tales
Ethnography forces us to examine the descriptive power of spirit possession
- the declaration of interaction between a person and spirit(s) is contestable
- Tevolo (ritual of herbal medicine applied by a specialist) also describes/expounds inappropriate behaviour, but reality of spirits is not questioned
Lambek: from disease to discourse
- critique of naturalist paradigms; recolonising terrain for culture and cultural explanations
- trance vs possession
- violates our cultural distinctions
- possession as text that is the experience symbolically articulated
- ongoing, historically located process consituting self and objectivity
- we shouldn't try to theorise the events of spirit possession, but observe and analyalyse the context in which they occur
Amerindian shamanism as a critique of Western epistemology
- perspectivism - the ways humans, animals and spirits see both themselves and each other
- recognise the Amerindian profound cosmological inclusiveness of animals (ecosophic knowledge)
- constructivist viewpoint - the point of view creates the object
- Amerindian view - point of view creates the subject
from a clip of Medicine Men Go Wild
(medical anthropologist twins based at UCL)
- sure hallucinogens provoke creative thoughts and grand ideas, but these have never been shared/transmitted
- too fleeting to be properly explained or documented
Solopsism - philosophical idea that the self is all a person can be sure exists
- 'I think, therefore I am'
- Amerindian thought on the other hand - it exists, therefore it thinks
Shamanism and Episemology (see De Castro)
- 'Our traditional problem in the West is how to connect and universalize: individual substances are given, while relations have to be made. The Amerindian problem is how to separate and particularize: relations are given, while substances must be defined.'
- sluicing poisonous leaves into the river to asphyxiate the fish and make them easier to catch is a traditional fishing method of the Achuar
- fish poison is defined be cultural relativity, and is a substance that mixes nature and culture
- cultural relativity introduces culture into nature
- the local has inspired global movements
- Joseph Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion; his novel The Hero With A Thousand Faces expounds the regular feature in many stories of a hero leading others to safety based on his subject areas
- visible tension between reductive, naturalising vs contextualising, and phenomenological approaches
- on this topic, Lambek says: 1. context is neceassary for contemporary experience to be mediated by past myth models and 2. individual intentions are externalised and given voice
Star Wars as a tale of shamanic journey
- Leia as the sould to be saved
- by the shaman apprentice that is Obi Wan
- who is aided by Chewbacca
A definition of spirit possession
from Boddy, J. (1994) "Spirit Posession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality" in Annual Review of Anth. 23: 407-34
"..commonly refers to the hold exerted over a human being by external forces or entities more powerful than she. These forces may be ancestors or divinities, ghosts of foreign origin, or entities both ontotlogically and ethnically alien"
- this denial of agency does not fit with Western notions of self-control
A definition of shamanism
- origin: Tunguistic (Siberian) word; meaning a mediator between the human world and the world of the spirits, between the living and the dead, and between animals and human society (D'Anglure 1996)
Historical development
- particular interest towards Siberian Shamanism by early romantic intellectuals opposed to scientific rationality, such as Diderot, Herder, Goethe
- regarded as the intermediary stage between magic and religion (late 19th century)
- French sociological school saw shamanism as having derived from totemism
Techniques of ecstasy
- ethnographically led psychological approaches
- Eliade (sociologist of myth) (1951) produced a comprehensive, historical account influenced by religious psychology
Contemporary literature
- mental states that shamonism constitutes
- ecstasy and !Kung dances release opium peptides which, when transferred to other people by sweat?, spreads/shares the experience
- psychologizing - mental illness, ASC, SSC
- neuropsychological - shamans and endorphins
- social psychological approaches: see Sikala
- shamanism as therapy - placebo, psychotherapeutic, metaphorical
Neo-shamanism
- from abnormal psychology to universal psychobiological capacities - 1960s popular understandings of consciousness
- oldest form of religion since hunter-gatherer subsistence method was predominant
- Harner (1990) The Way of the Shaman: Harner worked with the head-hunters in Ecuador and wanted to make their practise more acessible and better understood (see The Foundation for Shamanic Studies)
Persecution of shamans
- 17th century Swedish Lappland (Sami people), shaman's drums were confiscated
- Russian Orthodox Church had classified 'shamanic spirits' as maleficient daemons of lower rank
- then an enforced mass baptism was sanctioned by Peter the Great
- but this failed to eradicate the practice, esp as many people had traditionally turned to shamanic practitioners for advice, and choosing not to reject this custom kept the practices alive
Spirit Possession
- may be inherently pathological
- Lewis suggests that to declare being possessed may be instrumental, e.g. status-deprived individuals could use it as a guise for their (unconscious?) protests
- Crapanzano sees it as a creative idiom for articulatin a certain range of experiences..
- accroding to Obeyesekere cultural symbols inform individual exp/psychoanalytical processes
- Lambek puts forward the notion that each genre is coupled with its own interpretative conventions, e.g. spirit possession does not tend to be a welcomed activity in tales
Ethnography forces us to examine the descriptive power of spirit possession
- the declaration of interaction between a person and spirit(s) is contestable
- Tevolo (ritual of herbal medicine applied by a specialist) also describes/expounds inappropriate behaviour, but reality of spirits is not questioned
Lambek: from disease to discourse
- critique of naturalist paradigms; recolonising terrain for culture and cultural explanations
- trance vs possession
- violates our cultural distinctions
- possession as text that is the experience symbolically articulated
- ongoing, historically located process consituting self and objectivity
- we shouldn't try to theorise the events of spirit possession, but observe and analyalyse the context in which they occur
Amerindian shamanism as a critique of Western epistemology
- perspectivism - the ways humans, animals and spirits see both themselves and each other
- recognise the Amerindian profound cosmological inclusiveness of animals (ecosophic knowledge)
- constructivist viewpoint - the point of view creates the object
- Amerindian view - point of view creates the subject
from a clip of Medicine Men Go Wild
(medical anthropologist twins based at UCL)
- sure hallucinogens provoke creative thoughts and grand ideas, but these have never been shared/transmitted
- too fleeting to be properly explained or documented
Solopsism - philosophical idea that the self is all a person can be sure exists
- 'I think, therefore I am'
- Amerindian thought on the other hand - it exists, therefore it thinks
Shamanism and Episemology (see De Castro)
- 'Our traditional problem in the West is how to connect and universalize: individual substances are given, while relations have to be made. The Amerindian problem is how to separate and particularize: relations are given, while substances must be defined.'
- sluicing poisonous leaves into the river to asphyxiate the fish and make them easier to catch is a traditional fishing method of the Achuar
- fish poison is defined be cultural relativity, and is a substance that mixes nature and culture
- cultural relativity introduces culture into nature
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Place and Pilgrimage
These notes are framed like an essay to answer the question 'how do places become sacred? The structure:
- personally and ethnographically led answer
- sacred/profane dichotomy
- wisdom sits in places: how one learns from places; in different settings different ideas occur
- the case of tourism, the sacred journey
- the political dimension: tourist vs. pilgrim
- ethnographic example: El Rocio, Andalusia
- ultimate tourism; possible future research
Sacred places include
- locations with sentimental value - where you were most experimental or emotional
- home - where you were born, where you grew up, where you've spent most of your life, where your family live
- a palce in nature - beach, field, hills, river bank
- particular city, lane, café
Such places are constantly remembered and used as a point of reference as they are timeless and give perspective to situations.
Waikiki Beach, Hawaii
- supposedly the most famous beach in the world
- there are no coconuts on their coconut trees because they have all been emasculated to keep beach visitors safe
- this is symbolic of the separation/change of the beach from Hawaiian traditional life before mass tourism
- the beach used to be a place of recreation for the Hawaiian royalty and where fisherman would leave in their boats
How should a beach best be understood or appreciated (as space or place, like an ethnographic study)?
- historically, geographically, geologically.. in relation to other beaches
- virtually as an aesthetic experience distanecd from emotional responces
- pragmatically as an area to collect food, shelter materials or as a tourist destination
- politically: are locals allowed full access or has land be taken and made private property?
- phenomenologically - how is it experienced physically/bodily?
- experience as the instigator of knowledge?
- in terms of its particular relationship with certain people
Basso's study on the Apache in Arizona
- people are never alone in places because they carry the knowledge of other people with them
- "when places are actively sensed, the physical landscape becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving imagination, and where the mind may lead is anybody's guess" p.55
- Apache strongly associate land with a sense of themselves for the land stores wisdom
- story of 'old man owl': Basso overhears a conversation between t3 cattle herders and Talbot Paxton (who's been on a binge for the past three weeks) that confuses him
"So! You've returned from Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills!"
"So! You've smelled enough burning piss!"
Talbot replies, "For a while I couldn't see."
- eventually Basso finds out the story of Old Man Owl who runs up and down between two hills fruitlessly trying to burn down trees while the fires a re put out by a woman peeing from above, which he thinks is rain because he cannot see her
- there are many stories scattered about the landscape involving ancestors, past relatives and their activities
Tourism vs Pilgrimage
- conventional understanding: superficiality vs profundity (insight)
Tourism: The Sacred Journey, Graburn as key theorist, theoretical inspirations:
- Durkheim (1912): notion of the sacred-nonordinary experience
- Leach (1961): sacred-profane alternations characteristic of important periods of social life
- Mauss (1898): alternation between sacred and profane is key to understanding rituals of sacralisation (leaving the ordinary) that elevates participants. Marvellous things happen.
Tourism and Time
- tourism as the 'modern equivalent for secular societies to the annual and lifelong sequences of festivals for more traidional God-fearing societies' (Graburn 1989: 25)
- contrast between ordinary/compulsory state at home vs nonordinary/voluntary away from
Criticisms of The Sacred Journey
- is the idea of sacred being contested?
- is there something missing from our experience as either tourists or travellers?
- or the way we create an identity being connected to a place through being 'travellers'?
- are there no political issues?
- status of tourist and pilgrim depends on where you stand
Ethnographic case example of how pilgrims and tourists interact in the same place
- El Rocio - Andalusian pilgrimage in Spain (according to Crain)
- cult to the Virgin Mary, 13th century
- 78 brotherhoods converge on El Rocio, 7-8 days
- great festivities at the shrine: singing, dancing, eating, meeting old friends
- climax: appearance of the Virgin idol from the shrine
- great number of tourist spectators, pilgrims and film crews
- exotic Spain: popular for growing middle class (signifier of distinction) and transnational interest foreign traditions
How to keep the 'sacredness' under the threat of consumer capitalism
- 'outsiders' are labelled 'yupeez', even those who may be returnees from overseas and urbanites with properties in villages
- relates to label of 'yuppies' in America on Young Urban Professionals that were mostly hedonistic and materialistic because they wanted to show off their status/wealth
- emphasis on the pilgrimage as a religious ritual and should not be an acitivity where tourists are invited to spectate or take part
- people that do no participate in the proper way get teased
- focus is on the spiritual experience, and locals' connection with the land/region
Place, Pilgrimage and Power (Mines)
- tourism and pilgrimage are privileges often denied to many
- do we account for those that have no place at all or very little sense of belonging? e.g. homeless, orphans, seniors in retirement/nursing homes
-how do people fight to belong and have a claim on a place?
Ultimate and imaginary tourism
- other areas of possible: space travel, ultimate tourism (e.g. climbing great mountains)
- utopic imaginary worlds: LAN computer games, Second Life
- personally and ethnographically led answer
- sacred/profane dichotomy
- wisdom sits in places: how one learns from places; in different settings different ideas occur
- the case of tourism, the sacred journey
- the political dimension: tourist vs. pilgrim
- ethnographic example: El Rocio, Andalusia
- ultimate tourism; possible future research
Sacred places include
- locations with sentimental value - where you were most experimental or emotional
- home - where you were born, where you grew up, where you've spent most of your life, where your family live
- a palce in nature - beach, field, hills, river bank
- particular city, lane, café
Such places are constantly remembered and used as a point of reference as they are timeless and give perspective to situations.
Waikiki Beach, Hawaii
- supposedly the most famous beach in the world
- there are no coconuts on their coconut trees because they have all been emasculated to keep beach visitors safe
- this is symbolic of the separation/change of the beach from Hawaiian traditional life before mass tourism
- the beach used to be a place of recreation for the Hawaiian royalty and where fisherman would leave in their boats
How should a beach best be understood or appreciated (as space or place, like an ethnographic study)?
- historically, geographically, geologically.. in relation to other beaches
- virtually as an aesthetic experience distanecd from emotional responces
- pragmatically as an area to collect food, shelter materials or as a tourist destination
- politically: are locals allowed full access or has land be taken and made private property?
- phenomenologically - how is it experienced physically/bodily?
- experience as the instigator of knowledge?
- in terms of its particular relationship with certain people
Basso's study on the Apache in Arizona
- people are never alone in places because they carry the knowledge of other people with them
- "when places are actively sensed, the physical landscape becomes wedded to the landscape of the mind, to the roving imagination, and where the mind may lead is anybody's guess" p.55
- Apache strongly associate land with a sense of themselves for the land stores wisdom
- story of 'old man owl': Basso overhears a conversation between t3 cattle herders and Talbot Paxton (who's been on a binge for the past three weeks) that confuses him
"So! You've returned from Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills!"
"So! You've smelled enough burning piss!"
Talbot replies, "For a while I couldn't see."
- eventually Basso finds out the story of Old Man Owl who runs up and down between two hills fruitlessly trying to burn down trees while the fires a re put out by a woman peeing from above, which he thinks is rain because he cannot see her
- there are many stories scattered about the landscape involving ancestors, past relatives and their activities
Tourism vs Pilgrimage
- conventional understanding: superficiality vs profundity (insight)
Tourism: The Sacred Journey, Graburn as key theorist, theoretical inspirations:
- Durkheim (1912): notion of the sacred-nonordinary experience
- Leach (1961): sacred-profane alternations characteristic of important periods of social life
- Mauss (1898): alternation between sacred and profane is key to understanding rituals of sacralisation (leaving the ordinary) that elevates participants. Marvellous things happen.
Tourism and Time
- tourism as the 'modern equivalent for secular societies to the annual and lifelong sequences of festivals for more traidional God-fearing societies' (Graburn 1989: 25)
- contrast between ordinary/compulsory state at home vs nonordinary/voluntary away from
Criticisms of The Sacred Journey
- is the idea of sacred being contested?
- is there something missing from our experience as either tourists or travellers?
- or the way we create an identity being connected to a place through being 'travellers'?
- are there no political issues?
- status of tourist and pilgrim depends on where you stand
Ethnographic case example of how pilgrims and tourists interact in the same place
- El Rocio - Andalusian pilgrimage in Spain (according to Crain)
- cult to the Virgin Mary, 13th century
- 78 brotherhoods converge on El Rocio, 7-8 days
- great festivities at the shrine: singing, dancing, eating, meeting old friends
- climax: appearance of the Virgin idol from the shrine
- great number of tourist spectators, pilgrims and film crews
- exotic Spain: popular for growing middle class (signifier of distinction) and transnational interest foreign traditions
How to keep the 'sacredness' under the threat of consumer capitalism
- 'outsiders' are labelled 'yupeez', even those who may be returnees from overseas and urbanites with properties in villages
- relates to label of 'yuppies' in America on Young Urban Professionals that were mostly hedonistic and materialistic because they wanted to show off their status/wealth
- emphasis on the pilgrimage as a religious ritual and should not be an acitivity where tourists are invited to spectate or take part
- people that do no participate in the proper way get teased
- focus is on the spiritual experience, and locals' connection with the land/region
Place, Pilgrimage and Power (Mines)
- tourism and pilgrimage are privileges often denied to many
- do we account for those that have no place at all or very little sense of belonging? e.g. homeless, orphans, seniors in retirement/nursing homes
-how do people fight to belong and have a claim on a place?
Ultimate and imaginary tourism
- other areas of possible: space travel, ultimate tourism (e.g. climbing great mountains)
- utopic imaginary worlds: LAN computer games, Second Life
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