Beyond Boundaries Understanding Translation and Anthropological Discourse Exploration in Anthropology
Beyond Boundaries Understanding Translation and Anthropological Discourse Exploration in Anthropology
Beyond Boundaries Understanding Translation and Anthropological Discourse Exploration in Anthropology
Beyond Boundaries
Understanding, Translation and
Anthropological Discourse
Edited by
Gisli P6lsson
BERG
Oxford / Providence
Many generations ago Aba, the good spirit above, created many
men, all Choctaw, who spoke the language of the Choctaw and
understood one another. . . One day all came together and, looking
upward, wondered what the clouds and the blue expanse above
might be. They continued to wonder and talk among themselves and
at last determined to endeavour to reach the sky. So they brought
many rocks and began building a mound that was to have touched
the heavens. That night, however, the wind blew strong from above
and the rocks fell from the mound . . . . The men were not killed, but
when daylight came and they made their way from beneath the
rocks and began to speak to one another, all were astounded as well
as alarmed - they spoke various languages and could not
understand one another. Some continued henceforth to speak the
oriental tongue, the language of the Choctaw, and from these sprung
the Choctaw tribe. The others who could not understand this
language, began to fight among themselves. Finally they separated.
An American Indian version of the Biblical story o the Tower of Babel
(S. Thompson, Tales of the NortF! American Indians)
Contents
List of Plates and Figures
Preface
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
100
6.
7.
8.
162
Contents
viii
.9.
10.
184
210
References
231
Index
249
259
7
87
94
104
Preface
xii
Preface
G~SLIPALSSON
Reykjavik, March 1992
Chapter 1
Introduction: beyond boundaries
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one-sided
appropriation of otherness, the 'Orientalism' identified by Said
(1978, 1989), was not a recognised, legitimate subject on the
agenda of Stone Age assemblies; Orientalism, Said mphasises
(1989:211), is a mode of representation 'erected in the thick of art
imperial conquest'.2 Quite possibly, the advent of writing and
literacy marked a critical shift with respect to accounts of the
outlandish. At any rate, the authority and significance of such
accounts were greatly enhanced by new means of recording and
preserving them - when they became parts of state ideologies. In
Europe during the Middle Ages, which some scholars refer to as
'an age of ink' (Averintsev, see Gurwich 1988:227), the desire to
experience both difference and the crossing of boundaries
became institutionaIised in the literary genre of the travel
account. The medieval world-view contained the category of
Homo viator, a person who ventures on some kind of pilgrimage
into distant lands, for personal pleasure or to save his sod, who
then returned with extraordinary stories of anomalous beings,
erotic adventures and dangerous events (see Todorov 1984). The
copper engraving America (see Plate 1.1), showing the Florentine
discoverer Amerigo Vespucci in the Caribbean, nicely illustrates
the medieval fascination with the savage and exotic. As pictured
here, the male, civilised European, with his ship and other
symbols of power, embarks on a mystery tour into nature,
encountering naked women, cannibals and anomalous creatures.
The gulf between the gentleman and the savage could hardly be
greater. For the medieval mind, the boundary between 'them'
and 'us' was a dividing line between culture and nature.
From the medieval era onwards, 'western' culture has
remained preoccupied with a radical distinction between 'them'
and 'us'. Such a distinction was not d y underlined in the genre
of the fabulous travel account. Oft-en,particularly during the
nineteenth century, it surfaced in semi-ethnographic novels
2. The Orientalist thesis is not without crit~cs.Thus Flguelra argues (1991: 5 ) : 'The
politics of Onentallsm arh~karilyWrs a text with &am culhrrd practjw; it "colonizFsW
a
text from the past by means of present-age discourse. . I question the vmle mmpulaion to
view the West's w h o n of the East soldy in terms of pfessron, power, and control.'
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10
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12
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level of the source text and its author or . . . the translator regards the
target culture as greater and effectively colonizes the source text.
17
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contexts and under different guises, depending on theoretical
and historical concerns. For American anthropologists, the
metaphor of cultural translation has been a particularly
compelling one. Not only has the concept of 'culture' been of
central importance to them, linguistic models and metaphors
have generally been regarded as highly relevant and useful for
analyses of cultural phenomena. The cultural determinism
inspired by Boas and the linguistic determinism of Sapir and
Whorf, therefore, have much in common. Sapir and Whorf, as
Feleppa notes (1988: 56), regarded the 'linguist's translation
problem (and the ethnographer's problem generally) as one of
"calibrating" radically different conceptual schemes of reference'.
Similar ideas are evident in French structuralist anthropology.
L6vi-Strauss (1963) applies the phonetic method, borrowed from
the rigorous linguistics of Jakobson, to analyses of ethnographic
details, including kinship systems. For him, radically different
cultural systems are transformations of one another.
More surprisingly perhaps - given the difference in theoretical
developments, in particular the primary concern with the social
rather than the cultural - British anthropologists have also found
the notion of cultural translation appealing. Significantly, a
collection of essays published in honour of Evans-Pritchard was
entitled The Translation of Culture (Beidelman 1971). It opens with
a quote from Evans-Pritchard's Theories of Primitive Religion,
which suggests that the 'semantic difficulties in translation' are
the 'major problem' with which anthropologists are confronted.
Asad points out (1986) that while the idea of cultural translation
may not have been unanimously accepted by all the founders of
the British school of social anthropology, it was nevertheless an
important one. Asad's claim, however, that Malinowski never
thought of his work in terms of the translation of cultures is not
altogether correct. In his early essay on 'The problem of meaning
in primitive languages', Malinowski refers time and again to
issues of translation.3 While the essay is largely concerned with
the problems of translating primitive languages, at times
3. Malinowski points out, with reference to his Trobriand ethnography, that native
conceptions are often foreign to European vocabulary and that direct translation is therefore
impossible: 'Such words can only be translated into English, not by giving their imaginary
equivalent . . . but by explaining the meaning of each of them through an exact Ethnographic
account of the sociology, culture and tradition of that native community' (1923: 456). 'The
ethnographer', Malinowski goes on, 'has to convey . . . [the] deep yet subtle difference of
language and of the mental attitude which lies behind it, and is expressed through it' (ibid.:457).
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20
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Introduction: B q o n d Boundaries
21
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emphasises that the work of what he calls the 'culture-shock
prevention industry' are generally poor, more a h to the early
works of missionaries than to serious anthropology.5 And giving
in to demands for political engagement and action-research, the
innocent demand of the 1970s for 'relevance', could eventually
lead to theoretical stagnation and sterility.
Yet placing oneself in the role of the detached 'observer' and
treating other cultures as mere museum pieces for academic and
theoretical consumption is both irresponsible and unrealistic,
given the fact that observations are inevitably situated in a
particular historical and political context. As Said emphasises,
'there is no vantage outside the actuality of relationships between
cultures, between unequal imperial and non-imperial powers,
between different Others, a vantage that might allow one the
epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating and
interpreting free of the encumbering interests, emotions, and
engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves' (1989:
216-17). Similarly, Hart (1990) contends that anthropologists
must be more conscious about both their role in the past and
their social responsibility in the future, 'swimming into the
human current'. Deshen wonders why, in a century troubled by
violence and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale,
anthropologists have largely avoided addressing the urgent
issues of their times, issues of peace and war. While some recent
introductory textbooks do mention such issues and the number
of anthropological publications on warfare has grown rapidly
from the 1960s onwards (see Ferguson and Farragher 1988),
generally anthropologists have occupied a muted position in the
political discourse of the twentieth century. This mutedness,
Deshen suggests, echoing the critique of Habermas (1989) of
neoconservatism, poses intriguing questions for future
historians of anthropological knowledge and practice. The thrust
of his article, however, concerns the modern Israeli debate on
Arab-Jewish relations and the Middle Eastern conflict. This is a
highly polarised discourse, so much so that one can speak of two
5. The differences between the approaches of missionaries and anthropologists have,
however, not always been that clear. Interestingly, when the publication of the journal
Practical Anthropology ceased in 1972, a new journal Missiology: An International Review was
established, continuing the editorial policy of the former (see Mandelbaurn 1989: 49).
Hanson (1979) has much to say about the parallels between the predicaments of the
missionary and the anthropologist. For an interesting anthropological study of missionary
work, see Hvalkof and Aaby (1981).
23
Cultural dyslexia
If we take the textual metaphor seriously, presenting culture as
text, anthropology becomes a study of reading. For
psychologists, the successful reading of a written text, a highly
complex mental operation, is a research topic in its own right.
The failure to read, or the state of 'dyslexia', broadly defined as
reading maldevelopment in normal people not resulting from a
defect of the senses, is an issue that also has bothered
psychologists. Positivist anthropology, as we have seen, has
emphasised the successes of cultural reading, as has the model
of autonomous linguistics; whatever their 'surface' differences,
languages (or cultures) are similar in structure and, therefore,
translatable. Recently, however, a mixed group of
anthropologists who identify themselves with a series of labels including 'interpretive', 'reflexive' and 'post-modern' - have
drawn attention to the difficulties and failures of translation
more than to the successes - focusing on what may be called
'cultural dyslexia', the inability to read the alien, cultural worlds
of other people.6 At a time when some of the walls of the real
world, which effectively separated people in the past, are
crumbling, notably the Iron Curtain, some modern social
theorists lead one to believe that cultural barriers are
insurmountable and that people live in fundamentally different
worlds. They remain sceptical of the translator's enterprise,
6. The labels of the 'interpretive', 'reflexive' and 'post-modem', it is often pointed out,
are fairly elusive ones and it is difficult, therefore, to generalise about those who use them to
refer to their own practice. The notion of the 'post-modem' has been particularly hard to
define, as the extensive literature on the subject demonstrates; see, for instance,
Postmodernism (special issue of Theory, Culture and Society 1988,5 (2-3)).
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emphasising, like Quine (1960), the inevitable difficulties of
radical translation.
Several of the contributors to the present volume adopt a
critical stance with respect to the idea of impossibility of
ethnographic translation. Wikan's approach, partially inspired
by her Balinese informants, emphasises the 'power of
resonance', an emotive-cognitive capacity that allows
ethnographers to understand other people, to go 'beyond
words'. The ability to make sense empathically of ethnographic
experience, even in the absence of working knowledge of the
local language, Wikan suggests, derives from fundamental
similarities in human experience. The Balinese 'reached out' to
her as a fellow human. On its own the reference to intuition, gutreactions and emotional experience - whether it be Wikan's
notion of 'resonance', Edelman's notion of 'spinal knowledge',
or Palsson's idea of 'finding one's sea legs' - may not satisfy the
public demands of the scientific community. After all, some may
argue, ethnographers have to be able to reason about emotions,
to demonstrate to their colleagues, by means of words and
arguments, that they have 'really' understood. Such an
argument, however, reflects a highly western notion of
understanding and communication, which deprivileges somatic
signals vis-a-vis the intellect, a notion that has increasingly come
under attack, and by students of texts and translation as well as
anthropologists (see, for instance, Robinson 1991).
Whereas Wikan is concerned with societies usually regarded
as rather different from that of her own, Abrahamian is working
at home - with a 'text that is "written" in the mother tongue', as
he puts it - and so are Edelman and Palsson. Abrahamian
discusses the problems of doing fieldwork in Armenia during
the stormy political events of 1988 and 1989. For him these
events are like an ancient 'festival', although this description is
not to minimise their seriousness. Just as the festival negates the
logic of 'ordinary' life by accommodating it within itself,
'ordinary' life negates the logic of the festival by accommodating
playfulness and the carnivalesque. This kind of analysis derives
its strength from a vigorous Soviet scholarship on the
subversiveness of medieval popular culture (see Gurevich 1988).
Abrahamian suggests there are structural similarities between
ethnography and shamanistic dealings with the sacred world;
both involve a 'journey' to another world, a somewhat
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31
33
34
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Living discourse
Summarising some of the arguments developed above, we may
distingush three modes of anthropological representation, each of
which is characterised by particular relations of ethnographic
production (see Figure 1.2). One approach, that of the colonisers or
Orientalists, typically employs the vocabulary of universalism and
superiority. The fractured discourse of such power-laden
encounters is nicely analysed in Scott's work (1990) on domination,
public accounts and 'hidden transcripts'. Another approach
emphasises relativism and submissiveness, underlining the
difficulties of reading the 'texts' of other cultures - the state of
cultural dyslexia. While at first glance the reduction of all
difference to culture and text suggests a reversal of the relations of
ethnographic production characteristic of the colonial mode (the
apparent replacing of dominance with submission), on closer
inspection the colonialist and the textualist turn out to have much
in common. In the latter's view, the modem savage is a victim of
culture, a museum piece for the privileged scrutiny of
anthropologists. Stretching the limits of a discourse already
saturated with labels, we may say that just as colonialism was
replaced with neo-colonialism, with new relations of dependency,
Orientalism was replaced with neo-Orientalist ethnography. Both
approaches - Orientalism and neo-Orientalism, colonising people
and relativising their world - assume asymmetric power relations.
: /\
Symmetry
continuity
Asymmetry
discontinuity
LIVING DISCOURSE
(post-Orientalism)
COLONISATION
(Orientalism)
Domination
universalism
TEXTUALISATION
(neo-Orientalism)
'Submission'
relativism
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societies they reportedly describe; they often provide much
information on ethnographers as well, on their 'receptor' society,
and their relationshps to the 'source'.
As we have seen, the anthropological notions of the cultural
translator and the discontinuous world, implicit in the
comparative enterprise, have been both persistent and powerful.
Recent developments in social theory, however, suggest that we
rethink the issue of translation, of going beyond boundaries.
Wolf argues that ethnographers have always been 'in a world of
sociocultural billiard balls, coursing on a global billiard table'
(1982: 17). The characteristics of the modem world system - the
exponential increase in cultural flow and the sudden breakdown
of 'insurmountable' cultural and political 'walls', in particular
the end of the Cold War - also suggest that anthropologists
revise their image of the discontinuous world, breaking up the
boundaries of their cherished tribes and villages. The issue of
national and cultural boundaries within the global context has
been extensively studied in some fields of scholarship, especially
political science; one commentator describes the field of
international relations as 'a succession of transient fads' (Young
1986: 104). Anthropology may have some fads of its own, but
they have little to do with global interactions. With some notable
exceptions (including Tala1 Asad and Eric Wolf), anthropologists
have avoided the international context, faithful as they tend to
be to all kinds of microcosms.
The futuristic image of the global village need not, however,
be a particularly realistic one. We should not underestimate the
human capacity for reinforcing existing barriers, inventing new
ones, or reinventing those of the past; after all, over the last years
we have witnessed recurring 'territorial' conflicts, not least in
Eastern Europe and the Middle East. And, no doubt, Saddam
Hussein and the Gulf War have brought about a sudden revival
of folk Orientalism, in the Orient as well as the West. Nor should
one conclude that the global village is necessarily a 'better'
world than its predecessor. The erosion of boundaries, some
people argue, simply means more boring sameness, greater
exploitation and an increasing gap between North and South in
terms of standards of living. As Kuper (1988: 240) points out, the
modern image of the global village may be just as much a
transformation of our image of our own society as the earlier
image of primitive society. But while we may well keep Kuper's
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Acknowledgements
A short version of this Introduction was presented to a panel on
'Understanding anthropologists' understanding' at the meeting
of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago in
November 1991. I thank the audience for their comments, in
particular Bruce Mannheim (University of Michigan) who acted
as chairperson and discussant. I also wish to thank Anne Brydon
(University of Winnipeg), E. Paul Durrenberger (University of
Iowa) and Gu6ny Gugbjornd6ttir (University of Iceland) for their
extensive and thoughtful suggestions regarding some of the
ideas developed here. Needless to say, the responsibility for any
errors made here must rest with me.
Chapter 2
Mediations in the global ecumene
Ulf Hannerz
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Images of translation
It is sometimes suggested that anthropologists should bring
their insights and expertise in translation to the task of making a
viable cultural order. We may be tempted to engage in pleasant
daydreaming here about a heroic and virtuous role for the
anthropologist as a master interpreter, negotiator and adviser
within the division of cultural labour. While at times daydreams
may turn out to be constructive visions and they may be good as
escapes, I think we may also do well to engage in some more
realistic appraisal of where anthropologists fit into the global
ecumene and to what degree we must reconstruct our
understandings of culture.
The idea of anthropology as cultural translation is then itself
one which can serve as food for thought. I suspect it began
almost as an off-the-cuff metaphor, a rough approximation of
what especially ethnography is about, useful not least in telling
non-anthropologists about it; it is worth reminding ourselves
4. For a recent use of the ecumene concept in anthropology, see Kopytoff (1987). I find
the notion of the global ecumene attractive both because it connects to an anthropological
tradition in culture history and because it does not have to carry the full load of assumptions
which may have come to be associated with the concept of 'world system'.
45
here that the pieces by which Evans-Pritchard (1951: 61) and his
Oxford colleague Lienhardt (1954: 97) did much to put the idea
into circulation, both originated as talks on the BBC. That is, they
were already translating anthropology. Since then, the notion
has been more widely adopted, but also debated. For there are
ambiguities around it, relating to the idea of translation itself as
a linguistic practice, as well as to the comparability of
anthropology to this practice.
Perhaps we have two main ideas of the translator's role, when
we think of translation in its ordinary sense. In one of them, a
language is taken to be a rather standardised phenomenon, in
two ways; each speaker of any one language uses it in much the
same way, and any two languages relate to the world of
meanings in much the same way. Here the translator should be
like the ideal civil servant: conscientious, impartial, abiding by
universal rules. We do not expect him to be original or creative,
only reliable and preferably quick. We are perhaps most likely to
find such translators inserted into the working life of
international organisations, where, of course, the languages
being translated tend already to have been standardised
according to some common norm; there is seldom any funny
business about pelicans being half-brothers here.
The other kind of translator is a lone wolf rather than an
organisation man, somebody engaged in a labour of love.
Translators in this category are acutely aware that they are
translating, not so much a language as an idiolect, the very
special way that one individual uses and even makes u p
meanings and means of expression. To this kind of translator we
may be more willing to grant originality, even sometimes to the
extent of claiming, perhaps with mixed feelings about the
morality of it, that the translation is superior to the original. We
also allow him more time; no simultaneity here but years,
perhaps decades, of efforts between original and completed
translation. Here, too, the translation is an end-result, to be
responded to in aesthetic and intellectual terms both as a
reflection of the original and as a work in its own right. The
work of the bureaucratic translator, on the other hand, is
instrumental. It facilitates further action and interaction.
There is, no doubt, rather more in the second kind of
translator's work that we sympathise with as anthropologists:
the loneliness, the puzzling over the original, the sense of
47
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were in the hands of two occupational groups anthropologists, as it were, doing fairly general-purpose
translations in one direction, and missionaries (their presence
mostly concealed in the ethnographies) largely special-purpose
translations in the other. Understanding between cultures has
become, for many people, an issue that is recurrently faced as
one goes about one's everyday life. And it is faced in a great
many ways: routine or innovative, piecemeal or large-scale,
institutionalised or improvised, unsuccessful or at times
possibly successful, if sometimes only in the shape of working
misunderstandings.
One necessary ingredient in making anthropology contribute
realistically to an understanding of the contemporary world,
consequently, might be to look not only in front of us, first, at
whatever we take to be an 'other' culture, and then over the
shoulder, at an audience at home, but also sideways, at the
various other people also situated at the interfaces between
cultures and engaged in making the global ecumene. There are
journalists and film-makers there, tourists and tour guides,
social workers, jurists, business consultants. Some people
become involved only occasionally and rather peripherally.
Others have found a sufficient number of curious or concerned
people on one or both sides of some discontinuity to provide a
niche for a more orderly practice of cultural brokerage in the
strict sense. If we have already sensed that the single although
complicated concept of translation is not quite sufficient to cover
what anthropologists do, we should not try to extend it to all
these other kinds of cultural traffic as well. Perhaps we can think
instead of some term of less particular connotations to refer to
that entire family of varieties of cultural management in which
people engage as they find themselves somewhat
problematically positioned at points of relative discontinuity in
the distribution of meaning or meaningful form, but without
sharp discontinuity of interaction. The term I will use here is
mediation; of which ethnography is thus one kind, and
translation in the ordinary sense another.5
5. What I have in mind here, I should emphasise, is cultural mediation, not mediation
in social conflicts.
49
Uncertain units
50
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However, this does not work; not in the global ecumene. Let
me remind you, by way of exemplification, of Salman Rushdie
and his novel The Satanic Verses. Probably the Rushdie affair was
the first really global literary event; the kind of incident one can
use to tease out some of the main tendencies in the
contemporary cultural organisation of the world.6 But I do not
want to go into the Rushdie affair as such here, although I will
refer to it again. Here I am concerned with the book itself. The
very particular mixture of dream world and reality in The Satanic
Verses can be seen in large part as a confessional statement on
the part of a boy from Bombay, from a Muslim family, who has
become a Londoner, an apostate and a cosmopolitan. Perhaps
the concoction is altogether enjoyable only to someone who
knows something of Islam without being a believer, somebody
who finds his way around Bombay at least in outline, who has
some insight into Indian popular culture, and who also knows
something about the life of immigrants in London in the
Thatcher era. And of course, this someone also has to be quite
knowledgeable about, a n d interested in, all the formal
possibilities of a literary work. I do not think it is easy to
delineate that social network in which this writer is included
along with his willing and competent readers, that network in
which communication flows readily without disruption.
Culture here evidently becomes rather more like the language
with which our second translator works; an idiolect, a personal
perspective, where it is uncertain what one person shares with
the next. But in fact any linguistic imagery, at least of the
commonsense type employed by non-linguists, may be
insufficient here; it tends to hide what may be great variation at
the level of personal orders of meaning, and in some modes of
expression, behind a preoccupation with the intrinsic tendency
towards relative uniformity within one particular mode of
communication. People can become quite idiosyncratically
placed at different crossroads of personal experience and
cultural flow. And when we insist on going beyond the personal
perspective to cultures as again somehow collective, carried
within some set of social relationships, we must realise that the
units are increasingly to be understood as organisations of
6. For comments on the Rushdie affair in its global context, see e.g. Akhtar (1989),
Jussawalla (1989), van der Veer (1989), Fischer and Abedi (1990)and Ruthven (1990).
51
Mediation interests
As discontinuities are normalised, now and again, our
relationships with one another turn out to be relationships with
an Other; or if I feel reasonably sure that I satisfactorily
understand someone else, I may be equally convinced that I will
have to intervene to help that someone understand somebody
else again, whose perspective and characteristic forms of
expression I am somewhat familiar with. As mediations, or at
least the need for mediations, are just about everywhere,
everybody may have to be a mediator from time to time.
Some people, however, are more mediators than others. They
engage systematically with different kinds of discontinuities,
and do so for different purposes, with different interests in
mind. The tribal members of the Kafanchan Mixed Court, for
example, turned out to be of one kind here, and not the one the
colonial government had intended; as the Resident of the
province had it, they were more barristers for members of their
ethnic groups than assessors, drawing impartially on their
expertise on tribal cultures. Mediation, that is, as they defined
their task, entailed accounting for modes of action within the
frame of another culture than that which was the court standard,
in terms beneficial to those individuals whose conduct was
questioned. As another kind of people, using other cultures as a
resource within the global ecumene, we have those who at one
time or other during the twentieth century have seen more or
less their own Utopias realised somewhere else, and who speak
of the cultures in question, consequently, to further their own
political interests at home. Such Utopias may be South American
Indian tribes for western anarchists, or the United States for
post-Maoist Chinese. Lincoln Steffens, the American muckraker,
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There are many question marks to confront here; and then
things become more complicated still, as we take into account
the different indigenous theories concerning the qualities of
symbolic modes, and the discontinuities between them.
Remember the Muslim judge in Kafanchan and his outrage at
the cavalier treatment of written law by the tribal members of
the Mixed Court. Or consider, although not quite in the same
vein, the Rushdie affair. Ruthven (1990: 131ff), a British
commentator on Muslim reactions to The Satanic Verses, has
proposed that a difference of assumptions concerning the
written word was centrally involved here. Those great many
Muslims who certainly never read Rushdie's book, but who
heard the rumours of it and were incensed, Ruthven argues,
were people with an understanding of the power of words, and
not least sacred words, rooted in oral cultures. To take materials
from their world, treat it with the playfulness, mockery and
intellectual distance characteristic of post-modernist print
culture, and then turn it back to them, is a matter of playing with
cultural dynamite. Yet one more way of being a cultural
mediator, evidently, is to be a provocateur.lo
To conclude: perhaps a spectre is haunting the world as the
twentieth century is coming to a close, a spectre of cultural
expansionism from centre to periphery resulting in large-scale
loss of meanings and meaningful forms. Some might indeed see
this not as a threat but as a promise. Cultural diversity has
disadvantages as well as advantages. But the idea of the global
ecumene is not in itself a scenario of homogenisation. Even those
who recognise the power of the centre over the periphery draw
different conclusions as to its implications for culture, and from
this we may conclude that there are contradictory tendencies
(see Hannerz 1989b). So far at least, and for the foreseeable
future, the shift from the global mosaic to the global ecumene as
a root metaphor for anthropology is a matter of drawing our
attention to the fact that discontinuities have become
increasingly relative, and that consequently, mediations are
going on almost everywhere (see Stefansson,this volume). They
are, in fact, forever taking on new shapes, as new culture, and
10. This is not to say that Ruthven's argument here would be a sufficient analysis of the
Rushdie affair; it may be contestable in itself, and the controversy has a great many local and
other refractions in various communities, audiences and interest groups which would
require other interpretations.
57
Chapter 3
Doves, hawks and anthropology:
the Israeli debate on Middle Eastern
settlement proposals
Shlomo Deshen
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Shlomo Deshen
Short of attempting to offer all the references, I mention some basic publications: Lustick
(1988) provides a useful bibliographic introduction; Liebman and Don-Yehiya (1984) give a
basic overview from a political science perspective; Krausz (1985) and Kimmerling (1989)
contain collections of fine s~ciologicalstudies; Deshen (1982) provides an anthropologicallyoriented overview that leads to t h e present analysis.
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Shlomo Deshen
'
,5
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Shlomo Deshen
their dogmatic left-wing colleagues, because for them the value
of liberating the whole ancestral territory is a serious issue, not
an inherently repelling position. We have now arrived at an
important point in the analysis. There is more affinity between
the pragmatic dovish and the orthodox positions than there is
between the latter and the ideological dovish position. Before
finally proceeding to the important practical recommendation
that flows from this analysis, and which is the main point of the
discussion, an aside must be made to introduce a pertinent facet
of rabbinical Judaism. Ever since its formation in antiquity, and
into our times, Judaism as a religio-legal system has been
positively receptive of pragmatic considerations.7 Thus,
rabbinical principles of decision-taking include considerations,
that a particular course of action might lead to 'mortal danger',
'enmity', or 'great material loss'. Such considerations are
religiously and legally legitimate in various particular contexts.
It is important to note that those are not considerations that the
rabbinical system incorporates out of external overpowering
duress; rather, they are internal to the system.
Thus to cite a classical example, when a person is permitted,
upon rabbinical discretion based on considerations such as the
aforementioned, to perform an action that is normally prohibited
on the Sabbath, that person is viewed as having nevertheless
sanctified the Sabbath. Moreover, refraining from engaging in an
action on the Sabbath under such conditions is considered sinful.
Transposing this facet of traditional Judaism onto the political
problem at hand we are led to a second important point.
Namely, the pragmatic dovish position is more attuned to the
orthodox one, not only because the cost of a non-violent
settlement is broadly similar for both, but also because
pragmatic considerations are considered in the rabbinical
tradition as inherently reasonable and legitimate.
We arrive at the following conclusion. The prevailing debate
between doves and hawks in Israel is bound to be inconclusive,
because the discourse is formulated in the strident terms of
contrasting world-views. The orthodox consider their opponents
7. The literature on Jewish religion in general is voluminous. For an excellent balanced
account that spells out the role of pragmatic considerations in a particular area of Jewish
practice, see Katz (1989).
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Acknowledgement
I am thankful to friends and colleagues who criticised the thesis
of this paper and commented in writing, particularly Aviezer
Ravitzky, Ya'aqov Shavit, Moshe Shokeid and Dafna Yizraeli.
Chapter 4
Foreign myths and sagas in Japan:
the academics and the cartoonists
Halld6r Stefhnsson
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I
1
Manga (or the somewhat more pompous gekiga) is the term the
Japanese use for the products of their cartoon industry.4 A
typical manga is normally published as a 200-300 page thick,
loosely bound paperback in large format. It is printed in black
and white on recycled paper of poor quality in stark contrast to
the conspicuously colourful, shiny cover. Each volume
commonly contains several stories, different genres sometimes
being mixed together. The more successful of these monthly or
bi-monthly manga publications can reach astronomical sales of
2 4 million copies, and many of these are later re-edited and
published in a smaller hardcover edition. There are piles of
manga available to customers in public places all over Japan, in
coffee houses, at the dentist's, at the barber's, in the laundries,
etc. Anywhere the Japanese can be found waiting there is likely
to be a great supply of manga at hand for distraction. In Japan it
is a common sight to see people standing upright packed in
groups in libraries reading manga for hours. There is even a
special term for such behaviour. It is called 'tachiyomi' ('standreading'). Sociologists in Japan have estimated (Pons 1988: 428)
that Japanese youngsters commonly absorb as many as forty
volumes of manga every week. And yet, this age-group does not
4. One conspicuous characteristic of the Japanese Manga - as opposed, for example, to
their American counterpart - is their authors' strict monopoly over their own creations.
Manga characters are normally created by individual Japanese cartoonists who then continue
to draw them all along, even after having had the success of turning them into a best-selling
gold mine. Of course, there are cases in Japan of cartoonists teaming up with story-writers,
and successful masters of the trade using the talent and hand-power of debuting neophytes,
but a Japanese cartoon is always, from the beginning to the end, in principle if not in
practice, created by an individual artist, and strongly identified with him or her by the fans.
In Japan, there is no question of a cartoon character 'outliving' its author. A Japanese manga
lives and dies with its author.
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i
I
Plate 4.1. The American vision of Thor and Loki. (From 'The mighty
THOR')
Hallddr Stefinsson
without the possibility of satisfaction' (Eco 1976: 24-5).5 But
curiously enough, these cannot be the psychodynamics
animating the Japanese manga. There, the super-hero of the
western tradition is definitely not a common character offered
for identification to their readers. The Japanese hero is rather
prone to be of the nihilistic kind, the loser, or the victim. It has
even been held that the Japanese are much more attracted by
'idols' than by 'heroes1.6This may help explain why Thor - in his
crudest form of a 'positive hero', as a blond, blue-eyed mountain
of muscles engaged in one brief, but more or less self-contained
eschatological battle in every issue ad infinitum - did not appeal
to the understanding and the sensibilities of Japanese authors of
cartoons. Then there was a second major obstacle to Thor's
leaping the Pacific. It consisted of a lack of introduction to the
deeper and wider cultural background that the American Thor
had sprung from as a modern-day hero, without which the
Japanese authors could not possibly relate to the subject in their
own personal way.
All this changed during the late 1960s, and all through the
1970s, when many of the Icelandic sagas and both the poetic and
prose Edda were all translated into Japanese. This material, now
within reach on the shelves of bookshops all over Japan, was
bound to fall under the eyes of the omnivorous cartoonist, out
hunting for material to fill his or her pages. In the following, I
will briefly introduce the work of two representative cartoonists
who have dealt with the subject. The former, Ishionomori
Shotaro, who is also one of the most established masters in the
field, is the first Japanese cartoonist known to have included his
vision of the North and its cultural tradition in his cartoons. The
latter, Azumi Ryo, is a relatively unknown author.
A cartoon-stoy for boys: the Edda as Japanese science fiction
More than twenty years ago, when Ishinomori started his career
as a cartoonist, he came up with a fairly conventional idea for a
cartoon story, but he developed it skilfully and originally. He
created his CYBORG 009, a series of adventures about a
5. 'Exigence de puissance que le citadin ordinaire nourrit sans pouvoir les satisfaire.'
6. Umezu Kazuo, a Japanese cartoonist quoted by Ian Buruma in The Asian Wall Street
Journal, 20 March 1980.
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Halld6r Stefansson
The story proper then opens with the eight heroes gathering
for a new expedition to accomplish a secret mission. They all fly
off together to Iceland, that mysterious place on the edge of the
inhabited world. The band of heroes then disembarks in the
middle of the wilderness. At first, there is no sign of life. They
are greeted by nothing but threatening mountains as they
struggle against a violent snowstorm. The expedition proceeds,
and the snowstorm changes into a thick fog. The ensuing story
consists of series of escalating battles which the members of the
team are drawn into against the intrigues and attacks of
monsters and robots all bearing the names of divinities from the
ancient Nordic pantheon. This encounter with the world of
boreal monstrosities is then finally brought to an end with a
'grandiose finale', a total war destroying all the 'Nordic gods',
and as in the original Edda, it is called Ragnarrok, 'Doom of the
Gods'. Yggdrasill, the World Tree, is shaken to its roots, and
finally blown up in a gigantic atomic explosion revealing that a
time-machine mounted by a mad scientist had been concealed
within it. The madman had travelled back from the future,
halting in Iceland where he had set up his camp dressing it in
the gown of the ancient mythology of the region.
A cartoon-stoy for girls: a Viking saga of patricide and love
Azumi Ryo is the pseudonym of one of the Japanese authors
who write cartoon stories for girls. She has specialised in Nordic
mythology and the Icelandic sagas, and has published, since
1986, two of her major works inspired by that literary tradition.
The contrast with the work of the aforementioned Ishinomori
Shotaro could not be sharper. Ishinomori made use of Nordic
mythology for reconstructing a perfectly hostile world into
which he then sent his easily identifiable heroes from the outside
on a fantastic expedition. Azumi Ryo attempts to situate her
fictional stories within the world of the Nordic literary tradition
itself, trying to give the impression that her heroes are
'naturally' generated out of that environment. She creates the
dramatic effect of her own 'sagas' out of 'real' historical themes
borrowed from the past of the Nordic peoples. The general
background is the so-called Viking-age, of the Nordic conquest
of parts of the ancient and the new world, the unification of
Norway into a single kingdom, the colonisation of Iceland and,
most of all, the radical social and cultural impact of the
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Conclusions
Writing the descriptive part of this paper required adopting a
different perspective from the one conventionally applied in
anthropological practice. I have attempted to find out what
happened to elements of my own culture when they were
'filtered' down in Japan for mass consumption in popular
culture through different levels and genres of re-creative efforts
by professional agents, transmitters of the alien culture. Tracing
what happens to elements of one's own culture when they travel
abroad results in a reversal of the habitual roles in the praxis of
anthropology. What has been depicted in this paper is how some
products of the culture incorporated in the person of the
anthropologist are studied, interpreted, and processed by
foreign specialists.8
8. This is not without recalling some of the more radical recent criticism levelled against
the conventional praxis of anthropology (see, for example, Fabian 1983; Clifford and Marcus
1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986; Kuper 1988).Could anthropology itself be understood as the
ultimate instance of cultural borrowing? Anthropology has developed as an academic field
in the western world engaged in the construction of the category of Other as distinct from
Self. For that purpose it has developed forms of discourses (schools) and a methodology,
validating its knowledge about the Other. The descriptive efforts in the ethnographic
present can be seen as striving to 'reflect' the world of the Other as it 'appears', and the
academic labour at home excelling in 'recreating' it as it 'is' according to Self's own
conventions of scientific methodology and discursive practices. From this perspective, the
anthropological praxis consists on the one hand in collecting 'texts' in the field, and on the
other in 'rewriting' them at home. Lkvi-Strauss, for one, has described anthropological
discourse as being 'a myth upon a myth' (Lhvi-Strauss1963: 6).
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Chapter 5
The anthropologist as shaman:
interpreting recent political events
in Armenia
Levon H. Abrahamian
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Levon Abrahamian
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L m n Abrahnwin~
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the place for mass festivals. The fact that the people refused to
transfer their meetings to the outskirts of Yerevan, as the
authorities had suggested, says something about the centripetal
force reflected in the planning of many cities of the world. Led
by this principle, Alexander Tamanian, the architect of the
general layout of Yerevan, sited a large square in the centre of
the town. Evidently, it was not by chance that the people's
festival took place just where, according to an earlier proposal,
the architect intended to erect the House of the People, where
the 'people-onlooker' were to watch the festival demonstrations
of the 'people-performer'. In other words, according to
Tamanian, the opposition 'performers/spectators' was to
disappear at this very place, where it eventually disappeared
during the days of our festival. This is also one of the main
features of the 'archaic' festival.
The connection between the Armenian words hraparak
('square') and hraparakaynut'yun ('glasnost') is so close that one
can look at the first and so judge the second. Thus one could find
out much about glasnost in the country simply by watching the
events in Theatre Square. A certain spatial code, then, a specific
language of description, accompanied the political one.
Strangely enough, the uneven progress of glasnost seemed to be
reflected in the events in the square. Take, for example, the
blocking off of the square and gaps in the 'wall' surrounding it.
From time to time, for unknown reasons, the people were
allowed into the square through a side entrance, just as glasnost
sometimes found its way through the wall of totalitarian
prohibitions. There are parallels as well in the attempts to
relocate the meetings from the centre to the outskirts and in the
fluctuations in the strength of the blockade - the variation in the
nature and degree of military involvement, the army, special
troops, different types of armoured cars, etc. Thus, we can see
how some specific auxiliary translation seems to work in parallel
to our process of translation.
The etymological code - another language, which provides a
parallel translation - also provides a test of our main translation.
Thus the stem glas also shows the festive character of the
political events referred to by the Russian word glasnost. Glas is
the old Russian for 'voice'; that is, it implies a listener, a dialogue
- a question which presupposes an answer. It doesn't have the
independence and abstractness of the 'word' in the concept
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Levon Abrahamian
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Levon Abrahamian
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1. The main part of this chapter was written in January 1989, just after the earthquake
and during the repression. Reaction (the state of emergency) began at practically the same
moment (24 November 1988) the people in Theatre Square joyfully greeted the unofficial
Parliament session, which took place at the same square, in the Opera House. It was claimed
to be invalid and illegal by officials. But nearly two years later (on 9 October 1990) this
'round temple of the people's spirit' was restored once again, when the new Parliament of
Armenia (which is the first one to be elected, really and not fictitiously as in the past) passed
a resolution considering the November session and its decisions to be legitimate and true.
Chapter 6
Household words: attention, agency
and the ethnography of fishing
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A sea of difference
While discourses are situated in time and space and one would
not expect to find exact parallels in different temporal and social
Gisli Palsson
contexts, the radical claim, informed by 'substantivism' and
'historical particularism', that there are as many discourses as
there are societies and contexts allows no comparison
whatsoever. To engage in ethnographic comparison, moving
from local context to a larger one, is to involve oneself in global
discourse, in the 'long conversation' of humanity across ages
and continents. Moving from Icelandic issues to the global
context, focusing on notions of agency, gender and social honour
in the ethnographic record, we may distinguish between four
kinds of production systems - allowing for two modes of
circulation (production for use versus production for exchange)
and two modes of access to resources (systems where fishing
territories are non-ownable versus ones where areas of the sea
are subject to relations of property). Such a scheme may help us
to understand the variability in the ethnography.
In one kind of system resources are non-ownable and
production is focused on use values. Such systems may be
represented by societies of hunters, gatherers and fishers. Given
the ceiling on production and the emphasis on use values in
these societies, the domestic mode of production, differences
among individual producers are unlikely to be emphasised.
Among the Dobe !Kung in the Kalahari, for instance, the news of
a successful kill is typically met with indifference, even hostility.
While men are encouraged to hunt, the successful hunter is
expected to be modest and to understate the size of his kill.
There may be short-term differences in hunting success, but they
tend to be levelled out by joking, insults and gossip. Huntergatherer society, then, is characterised by an egalitarian ethos sharing and generalised reciprocity. Lee (1988: 267) defines this
ethos as 'primitive communism'. If each producer expects to
succeed and differences among producers are suppressed, as is
typically the case among hunter-gatherer-fishers, one can
reasonably expect to find passive notions of human labour.
Examples of such modelling abound in the literature. In general,
the animals are said to be offered to humans. Humans, animals
and spirits are said to engage in a complex series of transactions;
see, for instance, Tanner (1979: 139) on the model of the
Mistassini Cree. The hunting and killing of animals,
consequently, does not simply involve the application of human
skills and energy upon the animate world, but rather a dialogue
or exchange which is often patterned after human relationships.
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Gisli Palsson
social distinctions, justifying the privileged access of particular
groups to the resource-base in 'ideological' terms.
The third category pertains to market economies with open
access to fishing territories. In this case, unlike those previously
mentioned, there is no ceiling on production targets. Labour is a
commodity, accredited with a particular force or 'power'. As we
have seen, Icelandic skippers have fought each other for
decades, competing for necessary facilities, equipment and crew.
Where this is the case, differences in fishing ability have to be
explained. Models of production not only emphasise the
generative power of human labour, differential success is
conceived in personal, psychological terms. In the western state
of Oregon, where catches declined as a result of more boats
fishing the same stocks, many fishermen emphasised that this
'affected each fisherman differently because of . . . different
degrees of fishing success' (Smith 1974: 375-6). The most
successful skippers (the 'highliners'), it was argued, continued to
be successful while others experienced reduction in income.
The fourth category i n the model represents market
economies where the resource-base is subject to rules of
ownership. Many fisheries have seen spectacular developments
during the last years. Fishing territories are appropriated by
regional or national authorities which divide the total allowable
catch for a season among producers, often the owners of boats.
Production is being subject to an intricate, institutionalised
apparatus which limits the scope for free competition between
boat-owning fishermen-entrepreneurs. Many kinds of quotasystems and licensing schemes are being introduced in different
parts of the world in an attempt to put a ceiling on production.
This kind of production system fosters a notion of homeostatic
fisheries. At the same time, folk discourse is likely to pay less
attention than before to individual differences in catching-power
and to emphasise instead the role of capital and equipment in
the production process. While the implications of scientific
management for production discourse have rarely been explored
by anthropologists, some recent studies indicate potential
conflicts and changes in folk models of success. Miller and Van
Maanen (1979) suggest, for instance, that the prevailing ethos of
fishermen in Massachusetts in the east coast state of the United
States - summarised in the slogan 'Boats don't fish, people do!' negates the rationality of the quota system instituted by the
Engendered discourse
Notions of gender do not remain immune to transformations of
production systems. As the emphasis within production
discourse changes from the passive to the active, from the
medium to the agent, discourse sometimes becomes heavily
'gendered', establishing a particular stress on the male/female
boundary. Women tend to be presented as unproductive, less
active than men. Cole (1988) provides an interesting description
of such a conceptual change in a Portuguese fishing village.
Early in this century, during the period of the Portuguese
maritime household economy, women participated in a number
of activities which gave them autonomy and authority. Women
were defined as productive workers (frabalhadeiras). Later,
however, with increased wage employment and consumption of
manufactured goods, women lost their economic independence.
The woman's role was redefined as that of consumer and
housewife (dona de casa). A comparable redefinition of women's
roles has been observed for many fishing communities in other
parts of the world.
Some anthropologists have attempted to account for genderspecific notions of production and agency arguing that women,
being closer (or generally seen to be closer) to nature than men,
tend to be socially invisible (see Ortner 1974). While such a
generalisation may have some merit, it hardly applies to the
peasant economy of Icelanders. If anything, women were closer
to the cultural end of Ortner's continuum than the natural one. In
Icelandic peasant society female mutedness did not exist in the
sense that women no less than men participated in the discourse
of the 'inside', the realm of culture as opposed to nature. But
while women were insiders in the peasant economy, they were
not excluded from fishing in the realm of the 'outside'. Both men
and women participated in fishing. Even though women's roles
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Conclusions
Students of natural discourse inevitably face the 'problem of
reference', or how to relate discourses to the world of which they
are a part. The nature of the connection between the symbolic and
the real is an age-old topic in western discourse. Plato's dialogue
the Cratylus discusses the problem in terms of the relation
between names and things. Cratylus offers a natural theory of
names, arguing that 'everything has a right name of its own,
which comes by nature', and that 'there is a kind of inherent
correctness in names, which is the same for all men, both Greeks
and barbarians' (in Harris 1988: 9). Cratylus' opponent
Hermogenes disagrees, asserting that names are entirely arbitrary,
being a matter of convention and habit. Most anthropologists
would probably agree that folk models are a matter of convention.
But if that is the case, how do we account for them?
According to the cultural determinism of Sahlins, culture is
'an order that enjoys by its own properties as a symbolic system,
a fundamental autonomy' (1976: 57). In such an approach,
culture is seen to be reproduced by one generation after another
independent of context - as a reified phenomenon independent
of the social, something pre-existing to be 'lived' or 'practised'
by the producers in the course of their everyday life. Reality is
constituted by meaning. Similarly, in the interpretive approach
of Holy (1987: 5-6) social phenomena 'do not exist
independently of the cultural meanings which people use to
account for them and hence constitute them'. French
superstructuralists, including Althusser and Baudrillard, carry
this tradition to its extreme, deliberately inverting the basesuperstructure model. Humans are seen to submit themselves as
servants to the forces of language and culture. Not only is the
category of nature invested with meaning; nature itself is
regarded as a cultural construct. The analysis presented above
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139
Acknowledgements
The main arguments developed here are to a considerable extent
presented in Palsson 1991, particularly chapter 3, and some
passages of the present text have been directly reproduced from
the latter work. I thank Manchester University Press for granting
permission to use this material.
Chapter 7
Acting cool and being safe:
the definition of skill in a Swedish
railway yard
Birgitta Edelman
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Birgitta Edelman
143
My perspective is more limited. I discuss the differences that are represented by SJ and the
shunters respectively.
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Birgitta Edelman
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Birgitta Edelman
'Don't jump off at high speed. It's better to remain on the coach
than risk ones life.' 'Give a slow-signal before you jump, in the
long run you will ruin your knees if you go on like that.' Such
comments are familiar to every beginner. The new regulations
do not, of course, distinguish between old and new shunters. In
the statistics that form the basis for the new rules, only fatal
accidents are related to age and seniority.
Skill, then, is a very important concept for the shunters in
judging risk and danger while it is completely ignored by SJ in
the formulation of the regulations. It is not surprising that this
should be the case, but for this reason the safety regulations take
on an air of a 'beginner's manual' and can, therefore, be
neglected to a certain extent. The controversy between blaming
external factors versus individual judgement as the cause of
accidents is thereby increased. If someone falls and gets hurt
while jumping off the engine, the shunters are likely to blame
uncleared ice or pot-holes in the gravel while SJ rather will
explain the accident in terms of speeding or carelessness.4 This
will undoubtedly often be a good guess as the speed limit of 0.5
m/sec (half walking-speed) is easily transgressed.
Figure 7.1 illustrates some important shunting concepts. The
vertical line ending in point 'A' represents a continuum going
from the 'perfect' conditions in '0' to progressively more chaotic
external conditions. This includes everything from tools and
snow-clearing to falling cables and poisonous substances. At 'C'
we have the lack of knowledge that distinguishes the beginner,
the kabyl, from knowledgeable shunters whose knowledge is
engraved in the 'spinal marrow' (ryggrnargskansla).5The kabyl,
according to this view, would be the person who, for example,
tries to stop a rolling coach by putting gravel on the tracks. By
being enlightened, or by experiencing the effect of this action,
the person will presumably avoid doing it again. Finally, point
'B' stands for careless shunters; the ones who use tools for
purposes other than those which they are devised for, who
decide to go between buffers despite the speed being 'too high'
or the tracks being 'considerably bent', and the ones who kick
4. McKenna (1980: 180) writes in relation to the difficulty British railway workers had in
obtaining compensation for accidents up to the 1950s: 'For many years, accidents to railway
staff were attributed to acts of God or personal negligence.' In the case of SJ, however, no
economic gain is to be had by blaming the victim.
5. Kabyl is old railway argot meaning 'beginner'.
149
out the electric cable of a coach that is 'too close' to the electric
post.
To sum up, the security regulations of SJ delimit 'B' in
describing the proper uses of technology, the handling of the
trains, and all that belongs to the train traffic. It is more or less
assumed that the risks involved in 'C' will be eliminated.
Training in the correct handling thus involves a 'safety margin',
so that unexpected events are included in the work-process.
From the viewpoint of the railway company, 'B' has been the
problem. This has led to new regulations and a greater emphasis
in the education of newcomers on eliminating 'cowboy
attitudes'. For the shunters, the perspective is rather different. To
them, the balance between 'B' and 'C' describes the real skills of
the trade. They think it is their duty to teach the new ones to
work 'properly' and to rub out all the tendencies of idiosyncratic
Wild West fads that young men tend to develop after the initial
stupefaction. This is part of both the process of fitting into the
group and learning the ropes, and neither of these can be taught
through courses or regulations. Informal condemnation - jokes,
stories, ridicule or a shake of the head - are the shunters'
weapons against cowboy attitudes. It is, therefore, easy to
understand that shunters think there is a connection between the
first signs of sociability ('starting to talk') in the behaviour of
beginners and the promise that they are becoming saker.
Managers stress the importance of formal education, courses
and training. Their picture of the shunter's progress is one of
steady advances which can be pushed forward to a certain
extent. Shunters acknowledge the impact of formal training, but
only as an initial measure towards becoming a cool and
experienced worker. The everyday events and routines, repeated
endlessly over days, months and years, are even more important
as it is these that build up the necessary 'feeling in the spinal
marrow', and without which, knowledge and formal training
would be of little use. This ryggmargskansla transforms
pondering and hesitation into automatic and instinctive
behaviour. For shunters, the right attitude to work is something
that cannot be taught, only learnt through the process of fitting
into the crew and then slowly absorbing good judgement.
The fact that the correct attitude according to the shunters
comes from fitting in rather than from instructions can be
exemplified by their reactions to a film that is used in the
Birgitta Edelman
150
faulty material
deficient working conditions
bad judgement
carelessness
'cowboy-attitude'
ignorance
beginner (kabyl)
hyper-cautiousness
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Acknowledgements
This article is based on research for my doctoral dissertation. My
research has been made possible by a generous grant from the
Swedish Work-Environment Fund. I thank Tim Ingold for his
comments concerning the acquisition of skill and Kristina
Bohman for her patient attempts, both during and after my
fieldwork, to make me organise my observations and passing
fancies. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for the ideas
presented here.
Chapter 8
Interpreting and explaining cultural
representations1
Dan Sperber
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Dan Sperber
tale of Little Red Riding Hood, for instance. You might record or
transcribe the tale (or, rather, a particular version of it), that is,
produce an object that resembles the tale in the manner in which
a photograph or a sketch resembles a basket. You might also
describe the tale by stating, for instance: 'It is a tale found
throughout Europe, with one animal and several human
characters, etc.'
Yet, there would be something missing in these
representations of Little Red Riding Hood: the recording or the
transcription in themselves only represent an acoustic form,
while the description suggested tells us little more about the
content of the tale, which, after all, is the tale. All you need do,
one might argue, is describe the tale in greater detail. You might
state for instance: 'Little Red Riding Hood is a tale found
throughout Europe, which tells the story of a little girl sent by
her mother to take a basket of provisions to her grandmother.
On her way, she meets, etc.' You could, of course, in this manner
recapture the content of the tale as closely as you would wish,
but notice what would be happening then: instead of describing
the tale, you would be telling it all over again. You would be
producing an object that represents the tale, not by saying
something true about it, but by resembling it: in other words,
you would be producing yet another version of the tale.
Let us generalise: in order to represent the content of a
representation, we use another representation with similar
content. We do not describe the content of a representation, we
paraphrase it, we translate it, we summarise it, we expand on it,
in a nutshell, we interpret it.2 An interpretation is a representation
of a representation by virtue of a similarity of content. In this
sense, a public representation, the content of which resembles
that of the mental representation it serves to communicate, is an
interpretation of that mental representation. Conversely, the
mental representation resulting from the comprehension of a
public representation is an interpretation of it. The process of
communication can be factored into two processes of
interpretation: one from the mental to the public, the other from
the public to the mental.
Interpretations are just as ordinary in our mental life as are
descriptions; they are a form of representation produced and
2. On the distinction between interpretation and description, see Sperber (1985a, Ch. 1)
and Sperber and Wilson (1986, Ch. 4).
( 6 :8861)
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197
166
Dan Sperber
167
168
Dan Sperber
169
what she hears, and thus be genuinely able to translate it. She
must speculate, synthesise, reconceptualise. The interpretations
that the anthropologist constructs in her own mind or in her
notebooks are too complex and detailed to be of interest to her
future readers, and moreover they tend to be formulated in an
idiosyncratic jargon where native terms, technical terms used in
an ad hoc way, and personal metaphors mix freely. Later, writing
for readers who will spend a few hours on a study to which she
devoted years, the anthropologist must synthesise her own
syntheses, retranslate her own jargon, and, unavoidably, depart
even more from the details conveyed by her hosts. In order to be
more relevant, the anthropologist must be less faithful.
Moreover, similarity of content varies with the point of view
and the context. To say, for instance, that for the Txikao, the
human body 'anabolizes strong substances' is suggestive and
not misleading in the context of Menget's discussion: in that
context, the notion of anabolisation is taken quite
metaphorically. In other words, the resemblance between the
chemical notion of anabolisation and the Txikao notion it
interprets is seen as pertinent but quite restricted. On the other
hand, the same interpretive statement would be misleading in
the context of a comparative study of cultural views of the
chemistry of digestion, where consideration of relevance would
lead one to take the notion of anabolisation much more literally.
The intuitive and context-dependent character of
interpretation does not mean that all interpretations are equally
good or bad, but it does mean that our criteria of evaluation are
themselves partly intuitive and of limited intersubjective
validity. Some imaginable interpretations would be, by all
reckonings, quite bad (e.g. that the true content of the Holy
Trinity dogma is a recipe for chocolate mousse). But it may
happen that significantly different interpretations of the same
representation all seem plausible. The data interpreted by
Menget in an 'intellectualist' manner (i.e. as involved in an
attempt at explaining the world) might, for instance, be
approached with equal subtlety in a psychoanalytic vein.
Presented with both types of interpretations, readers would, no
doubt, choose according to their theoretical preferences.
Moreover, in doing so, they would act rationally. Here, however,
is the rub: if it is rational to prefer one particular interpretation
to another on the basis of prior theoretical preferences, then it is
170
Dan Sperber
171
Interpretive generalisations
Many anthropologists seem to think that a - if not the - right way
to arrive at theoretical hypotheses consists in taking the
interpretation of some particular phenomenon in a given culture
172
Dan Sperber
Structuralist explanations
Structuralist explanations attempt to show that the extreme
diversity of cultural representations results either from
variations on a small number of underlying themes, or from
various combinations of a finite repertory of elements, or from
regular transformations of underlying simple structures.
All varieties of structural analysis start from interpretive
generalisations, but then attempt to go beyond them. This
rooting of structural analysis in interpretive generalisation is
particularly manifest in the work of one of the founders of the
genre, Georges Dumezil (e.g. Dumezil 1968). Dumezil tried to
show that the myths and rituals of the Indo-Europeans are all
variations on the same underlying pattern: an image of social life
as constituted of three 'functions': sovereignty, war and
production. This tri-functional pattern is, of course, an
interpretive generalisation, but Dumkzil exploited it in a
properly structuralist way. He tried to show how this pattern
gave rise to different structural developments, according to the
type of cultural phenomena involved (pantheons, myths, epics,
rituals, etc.), and according to the particular culture. He did not
search for the explanation of this common pattern and varying
structural development in interpretation but rather in history,
building on the model of historical linguistics.
174
Dan Sperber
175
Hamlet
A male hero
A female hero
meets a terrifying
supra-human creature
meets a reassuring
infra-human creature
who is in fact
well-disposed
who is in fact
ill-disposed
etc.
etc.
176
Dan Sperber
Functionalist explanations
Showing that a cultural phenomenon has beneficial effects for
the social group is a favourite form of 'explanation' in
anthropology. Functional analyses differ according to the type of
beneficial effects (biological, psychological or sociological) they
stress. In the Marxist improved version of functional analysis
(see Bloch, 1983, for a review), contrary effects and dysfunctions
are taken into account in order to throw light on the dynamics of
society.
Functional analyses have been a great source of sociological
insight. However, they all fall under two objections, one wellknown and having to do with their explanatory power; the other
less common and having to do with their use of interpretations.
Might a description of the effects of a cultural phenomenon
provide an explanation of this phenomenon? Yes, but with two
qualifications: first, the effects of a phenomenon can never
explain its appearance; second, in order to explain how the
effects of the phenomenon cause it to develop or at least persist,
one must establish the existence of some feedback mechanism.
Let us suppose that a given cultural institution, for instance
the couvade, has beneficial effects for the groups that have
adopted it. For this to help explain the presence of some form of
couvade in so many cultures, it should be shown that these
beneficial effects significantly increase the chances of survival of
the cultural groups that are, so to speak, 'carriers' of the
institution. The onus of the proof would be, of course, on the
defenders of such a functional explanation.
In practice, most functionalists are content to show, often with
great ingeniousness, that the institutions they study have some
beneficial effects. The existence of an explanatory feedback
mechanism is hardly ever discussed, let alone established.
Imagine, for instance, a functionalist, taking as her starting point
an interpretation of the couvade similar to that proposed by
Mary Douglas. She could easily enough argue that the couvade
strengthens family ties, in particular the ones between the father
178
Dan Sperber
179
Epidemiological models
We call 'cultural', I suggested, those representations that are
widely and durably distributed in a social group. If so, then
there is n o boundary, no threshold between cultural
representations and individual ones. Representations are more
or less widely and durably distributed and hence more or less
cultural. In such conditions, to explain the cultural character of
some representations amounts to answering the following
question: why are these representations more 'contagious' than
others, more successful in a given human population? And in
order to answer such a question, the distribution of all
representations must be considered.
The causal explanation of cultural facts amounts, therefore, to
a kind of epidemiology of representations. Comparing cultural
transmission and contagion is hardly new. The comparison can
be found, for instance, in the work of the French sociologist
Gabriel Tarde, or in that of the diffusionists at the beginning of
the twentieth century. It has recently been revived by biologists
such as Cavalli-Sforza (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981) or
180
Dan Sperber
181
182
Dan Sperber
183
Chapter 9
Beyond the words: the power of
resonance
Unni Wikan
185
186
Unni Wikan
His words echo those of a Balinese priest and healer who, upon
lecturing my husband on the stark differences between the
world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, concluded
with a bright smile: 'You see, completely different, exactly the
same!'
It is this sameness in the face of diversity which is my starting
point and ultimate concern. It is born not from conviction but by
the recalcitrant realisation of a confirmed cultural relativist that
the stance I earlier had embraced was not substantiated by my
own experience cross-culturally. Robert Paul has warned that
we should take care as social scientists not to build theories that
contradict our own experience of what being alive is like.2 This
essay is an exercise in that spirit. I begin with the Balinese theory
1. This may not be in line with Davidson's or Rorty's own intentions. I have read out of
Rorty not a theory of language and communication as such but some broader perspectives
that helped me identify a misplaced emphasis in much of the anthropology that I see. I am
encourgaged to find, after this was written, that Tambiah (1990) also finds in Davidson a
useful perspective on anthropological problems of translation, relativism, and the
commensurability of cultures. I have also been intrigued with Sperber and Wilson's theory
in Relevance (1986)and its convergence with my own perspective.
2. If this sounds overly self-referential it is because this does in fact represent my first
endeavour to bring aspects of my life as an anthropologist fully to bear on my ordinary life,
and vice versa. What is intended is self-critique, and reappraisal of certain aspects of
anthropological method and representation.
187
Convergence of tongues
I once went with a Muslim friend to a Hindu balian or traditional
healer. My friend was in great pain. Her family had long been
afflicted with a series of misfortunes. She had tried to alleviate
their suffering by seeking the help of healers - all Muslim, as she
told me - from all over Bali. When her efforts had proved in vain,
I persuaded her to come with me to this Hindu healer. He was a
man I understood her to hold in high esteem for she had initially
been the one to introduce me to him and quite enthusiastically.3
She had argued against it. It would be of no use. The balian
would treat her as if she were a Hindu, and prescribe remedies
consonant with his own religion. And she considered herself
with pride to be a fanatical Muslim (orang Islam fanatik), and was
also so highly respected by her community. When now she
agreed to accompany me, she stressed that it was only as my
friend, and to help me in my work. She would not bring up her
own problems with the balian.
When the balian saw my friend, his face lit up. He was so
glad she had come. Actually, he had been waiting for her. He
knew all about her problem which had triple causation. And
taking her in with his broad, infectious smile, he proceeded to
explain. There was black magic involved, and supernatural
spirits. But third, and most importantly, there was an oath which
her husband's ancestors had sworn to the gods to present
offerings in the Muslim holy place once they became prosperous
enough to go there. But they had not kept their promise, and this
constituted a grave sin in the eyes of the gods. That is why her
family had been so afflicted.
My heart sank as I listened. I was distraught to think how she
would now have her worst suspicions confirmed. This talk of
oath and ancestors and offerings in the Muslim holy place
reeked even to me of idolatry and ancestor worship. What must
she - a 'fanatical Muslim' - not feel and think!
3. Muslims and Hindus live interspersed in North Bali, with c. 8 per cent Muslims to
the c. 85 per cent Hindus. They intermingle, and consult each other's healers in misfortune
and illness, though the preference is to use one of one's own k i d . Some deny that they ever
consult one of the other religion (Wikan 1990, Chs 12 and 13).
188
Unni Wikan
Resonance
A long time afterwards, I was sitting with a group of men
pondering western views of knowledge compared to Balinese
epistemology. They belonged to a lontar society, an association
devoted to the study of sacred scriptures harbouring age-old
wisdom, and were all very learned: one was a philosopherpriest, another a poet and professor, a third a medical doctor,
etc. Now they were at pains to impart to me their visions of how
I must write - and think - if I was to convey to the world an
understanding of what Balinese are like. (They knew my book
was nearing its completion.) Their number one message was: I
189
5. Obeyesekare (personal communication) has pointed out that I seem to use 'heart' in
its literal western sense, whereas the crucial idea is simply that feeling and thought are
fused. Space prevents a closer scrutiny of the problem of 'heart'; and I regret that it has also
not been tackled adequately in my book (Wikan 1990).
6. It is easier to be selfish and greedy if one deafens oneself to one's 'heart'. Balinese say
of such people that they act 'as if thinking alone will do', or that they have 'a short string
(tali)'. In the long run the price will have to be paid along with the principle of karma pala,
though it need not be before the next generation.
1I
I
191
of the world to the self - for there are no such 'facts'. In Rorty's
words, 'The world does not speak. Only we do' (ibid.: 6).8
What we are offered, then, is a more adequate view of
language, adequate in the sense of fitting certain purposes
better; Davidson (1986) suggests we regard language not as a
medium, but more like a tool which works better or worse for
the tasks at hand. As Hobart (1985b) has observed, 'It is not a
question of what words mean, but what people do in using
them.'
To apply this to my experience in Bali: Part of the trouble I
had in fitting my perceptions of the world to the formulas I had
received by way of anthropological texts was not simply that the
vocabularies coined by Bateson, Belo, Mead and Geertz were
faulty or untrue but rather that they seemed unfit for the
purpose at hand, inadequate as tools, at least for me. By the use
of the language of theatricality, aestheticism and faceless social
personae I would not have been able ever to 'meet' Balinese.
Davidson suggests we think of words as ways of producing
effects rather than as having or conveying intrinsic meaning
(Rorty 1989: 15). Entailed is an advocacy of the pragmatics of
language and how we 'do things with words' (Austin 1975)
which could be frightening in its implications for anthropology.
There are at least two issues here: how we use language to
communicate with others 'out there1, in the field; and how we
use words to communicate an understanding to readers and
colleagues. In Davidson's theory both are fraught with effects indeed, the pragmatic and the 'meaningful' cannot and should
not be separated.
This is a view that resonates with Balinese perceptions of the
world and of knowledge. People expressed astonishment that
'we1, people of the West, could think of knowledge and
morality, or speech and action as separable - when these
converge. Why we end up confused seemed clear to the men
referred to above. The philosopher said: 'Westerners mistake
their feelings for thoughts, and so they misunderstand and
create disturbance. . .'. The others nodded their heads in
emphatic consent.
8. Cf. also Putnam: 'there are external facts, and we can say what they are. What we
cannot say - because it makes no sense - is what the facts are independent of all conceptual
choices' (1981:33).
193
194
U n n i Wikan
anger. It was only when he let their words resonate with himself
that he began to be in a position to understand. This might be
taken to mean that he took 'their' anger and 'his' anger to be 'the
same', but such an interpretation seems unjust (cf. Rosaldo 1989:
10). What the story teaches are the dangers of going to the
opposite extreme. To me it stands as one of the most persuasive
demonstrations ever of method in anthropology.
But what 'is' resonance? And how does one induce it?
Rosaldo stresses the point of applying one's life experience with
the realisation that this can be an asset, a resource, which will
enable one to grasp certain phenomena better. This seems in
harmony with a Balinese stance. Several aspects stand out from
what my scholar friends said: Resonance is what fosters
compassion and empathy; it enables appreciation; without
resonance, ideas and understandings will not spring alive. There
is an underlying appeal to shared experience here. Perhaps what
Shweder says: 'psychic unity is . . . that which makes us
imaginable to one another' (1991: 18), is in tune with Balinese
views.
Resonance thus seems akin to an attitude we might label
sympathy, empathy or understanding. Whether it is 'the same'
or 'different', I cannot say. Balinese see as critical that it entails
using one's feelings as well as and at once with one's thoughts.
Only this enables a p p r e c i a t i o n - which is more than just
understanding.9 So saying, they are making an argument.
I believe not much is gained by trying to pin 'resonance'
down further. Most of us intuitively know what it means. Words
by the celebrated Tibetologist Tucci spring to mind: 'Words are
symbols which can evoke living experiences which the word as
such can only suggest but not define' (1988: viii). What Sperber
and Wilson (1986) write of 'relevance' applies to 'resonance' as
well, and I take the liberty to replace my term for theirs in the
following text. Either term is:
a fuzzy term, used differently by different people, or by the same
people at different times. It does not have a translation in every
human language. There is no reason to think that a proper semantic
analysis of the English word ['resonance'] would also characterise a
concept of scientific psychology. (1989:119)
9. Shweder (1991:9) gives 'appreciation' as understanding and experience. I think this
would converge with Balinese views.
195
196
Unni Wikan
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198
Unni Wikan
199
Now if this seems a far cry from Bali, let us go back to the
Muslim woman with the Hindu balian. She may be seen to have
done just what Davidson suggests: evolve a passing theory even before we set off to the balian - so as not to be taken by
surprise. On this theory, she was able to tell me, more or less,
what was going to happen. And experience proved her right - as
far as the sheer 'facts' of the case go.
What she may have failed to consider was the divergence
between thinking out a scenario and living it in practice. Faced
with the balian's broad infectious smile, his expression of an
earnest concern for her, and his compassion, what became of a
fanatic Muslim's determination not to be taken in? Her passing
theory, I take, started to change. She must have begun to feel
that he truly willed her well, and that his efforts to reach her,
using his Hindu ways, yet came with a pledge of relevance to
her.13 He, who is expert in handling 'surprises', probably uses
communication to its fullest effect, and is skilled at fashioning
and refashioning passing theories.
Whatever happened between them, I cannot say. But it could
be considered a miracle of a kind, one of those daily miracles of
achieving mutual understanding which we easily forgo as a
matter of fact. Their theories converged. They were able to
communicate quite well, though, in a sense, speaking different
tongues: 'He says karma pala, I say taqir: it's all the same. . .'.
Enter the Hindu man: 'But Westerners do not understand
because they d o not use their feelings, and so they have no
resonance with the word. . .' Indeed, for the longest time I did
13. Sperber and Wilson speak of 'a tacit guarantee of relevance. . . .Ostensive behaviour
provides evidence of one's thoughts. It succeeds in doing so because it implies a guarantee
of relevance' (1986: 49-50).
200
Unni Wikan
201
202
Unni W i k n
Learning to attend
How can we build an anthropology which enables us to heed
better people's complaints, along with their joys? What concerns
me is much more than just field method: I am pleading for a
broader and simpler theory for seeing communication within
social relationships, putting what is unspoken and self-evident
to speakers into place before focussing on concepts and
discourse (Barth, in press). Thus my plea that we attend to the
concepts by which people feel and think about and handle the
tasks and tribulations of their individual existences, is meant not
as an invocation to attend to concepts per se, but to the shifting
aspects of being in the world and acting on those by which
concepts uniquely spring alive.
203
204
Unni Wikan
They do, but only to an extent. And so karma pala can spring
alive even to me - given that I am prepared to understand.16 That
is what is required in the face of the prospect ahead: we might
have to shed our preconceptions of what understanding is. And
that is the main challenge I see my Balinese scholar friends
posing.
The concept of 'culture', of course, is crucial to our
endeavour. But I argue, as have others before me, that we are at
cross-purposes with ourselves in the concept of culture we
promulgate if we allow it to freeze difference and magnify it
beyond proportion (Keesing 1987a, in press; Abu-Lughod 1991;
Lock 1990; Spencer 1990; Ingold, this volume). A greater
awareness of the need for resonance can help us. I illustrate
below with a painful failure of my own from fieldwork in Bali.
17. Hobart observes, 'The agent's thoughts or feelings are seen as an active part of
knowledge, speculation and speech' (1985b 123), see also Wikan (1990 Ch 7)
1
I
206
Unni Wikan
207
208
LInni Wikan
209
Chapter 10
The art of translation in a
continuous world
Tim Ingold
211
Lowie (1937)
212
Tim Ingold
213
214
Tim lngold
215
Tim Ingold
216
HUMANS
/!\
Humanity
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -( - - - - - - - - -------- - - - - - - .
ELEPHANTS
(nature)
Animality
I
BEAVERS
I
I
I
I
I
'THE WEST'
217
West that reason has taken the upper hand in the direction of
human affairs. We would be advised to treat both these
arguments with equal caution. In particular, we should guard
against the temptation to insert a temporal distance between
ourselves and others, as though in the confrontation between
the two, past meets present. Humans, least of all so-called
'modern' humans, are not the only inhabitants of the
contemporary world, as they are sometimes inclined to think,
nor do supposedly traditional folk afford a window into the
earlier conditions of human life (cf. Fabian 1983: 25-35).
Anthropological fieldwork is not, as many of our predecessors
believed, a form of time travel.
Such warnings have been issued often enough. But they have
been phrased in terms of a concern to avoid the twin evils of
anthropocentrism and ethnocentrism. This is singularly
contradictory. For the project of overcoming these 'centrisms', of
using observation and reason to transcend the limited horizons
of species a n d culture, is none other than the project of
modernity. With regard specifically to the avoidance of
ethnocentrism, this invokes the ideas both that ordinary folk that is 'ethno-people', whether our own 'folks at home' or the
people we study - are locked into a particular ethos and
worldview, and that our scientific objective should be to
produce an account that recognises these understandings for
what they are, namely specific cultural constructions of reality.
And both these ideas, as we have seen, are central to the
western discourse on tradition and civilisation. To sign up for
the project of avoiding ethnocentrism is therefore to make an
unequivocal assertion of superiority over the run of ordinary
humans, patronisingly known as 'cultural members' or
'informants', and to do so in a strikingly western idiom. It is the
characteristically anthropological expression of the West's
symbolic appropriation of the rest. This brings me, at length, to
the subject of translation.
Figure 10.1
AUSTRALIAN
ABORIGINES
218
Tim Ingold
219
WESTERN
DISCOURSE
/L
u
C
CULTURE
CULTURE
#T
TI
I--am-,-
&@@)
Translation
BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
Figure 10.2
220
Tim Ingold
221
222
Tim Ingold
223
Tim Ingold
224
Figure 10.3
NATURE, OR
'THE WORLD OF REALITY'
225
226
Tim Ingold
227
228
Tim Ingold
229
Conclusion
Let me conclude by returning to the question of translation. To
construe the anthropological project in general as one of
translation is to assume a world of humanity already parcelled
up into discrete cultures, each having a distinctive essence and
credited with the power to 'construct' the experience of the
people living under its sway. To construe this project more
specifically as one of translation from 'other cultural' to 'western
cultural' understandings is to assume that 'western culture'
exists as an entity of a similar kind that can be ranged alongside
the others. Both assumptions have been shown to be false. On
the one hand, the idea that humans inhabit culturally
constructed worlds is part of a specifically western discourse; on
the other hand, that discourse places its practitioners including anthropologists - above culture.
This has led to strangely paradoxical results. Catherine Lutz,
for example, informs us that understanding the emotional lives of
230
Tim Ingold
I[
it
References
232
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Index
Abedi, M., 50 n.6
Abraham, S.Y., 59
Abrahamian, L.H. 3,13,20,24-6,28,
100,112,115,140
Abu-Lughod, L., 195 n.10,204
access, in fishing, 132
agency, 32,34,117,124,129-30,133,
137,139,204 n.16,230
Aktar, S., 50 n.6
Alexander the Great, 190-1,193
Alexander, P., 131
Althusser, L., 136
'America', 6-7
animality, v. humanity, see humanity
anthropocentrism, 217
anthropology
American, 18-20,211
British, 18,20-21,211
Soviet, 20,21
Appadurai, A., 203 n.15
Arab states, coalition of, 64
Arabs, 13,22,30,53,58-74 passim, 115
archaic, 1057,109,111-12,115
Ardener, E., 215
Arendt, H., 135
Arens, M., 60
Armenians, 100-16 passim
Asad, T., 8,17-18,31,38,52
Ashkenazim, 66,68
Atkinson, P., 2,29
attending, 123-4,195,202-3,220-23
'attentiveness' (athygli),124
attributional identity, 229
Austin, J.L., 138,192
Australian Aborigines, 110,2156
Azande, 46,54
Azerbaijanians, 111
Azumi, R., 88,90-1,95
Babel, 31
Bakhtin, M., 25,103,108
Balinese, 24,27,47,184-209 passim
Barnes, B., 225
Barth, F., 12,198,202
Bassnett, S., 1516,29
Batek, 5
Bateson, G., 184-5,191-2,197
Baudrillard, J., 136
Beattie, J., 211
Beidelman, T.O., 18
Belmonte, T., 207
Belo, J., 184-5,191-2,197
Ben-Rafael, E., 66
Bertalanffy, L. von, 224
Bhutanese, 198
bilingualism, 114
Bird-David, N., 5 n.l,137
Bistrup, R., 208
Bitterli, U., 31
Bloch, M., 19,177
Bloor, D., 225
Boas, F., 18-19
body, v. mind, see Cartesian dualism
body language, 55,154
see also language
Bohannan, L., 14,96
Bongie, C., 4,13
Boon, J.A., 227
boundaries
cultural, see cultural boundaries
bridging of, 11-12,33-4,204
ethnic, see ethnicity
linguistic, 15,26,32,199
metaphor of, 4
see also translation
Bourdieu, P., 33,139,154,206,223,226
Brenneis, D.L., 195
bridging, see cultural; boundaries
Bruner, E.M., 193
Buddhism, 197
Burch, E.S., 5 n.1
business, 53,58
see also commerce
Cairene, 200,203
capitalist production, 135
carnival, 20,24,103,105,115
Camthers, M., 207
Carroll, R., 31
Cartesian dualism, 220,224-5,230
cartoonists, see comics
categorisation, 221-3
Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., 179
Chamberlain, L., 1 6 1 7
Chambri, 37
chiefs, 79, 131
child development, 3P5,222
see also understanding
Index
Chinese, 11,51,59,208
Chipewyans, 131
Chomsky, N., 19 n.4
Christianity, 91
circulation, of goods, 130
civilisation, 8,41,210-13,217
v. tradition, 212-13
Clifford, J., 2,54 n.8,96 n.8,196
cognitive psychology, 35,180,183
Cohen, A., 227
Cohen, S.M., 68 n.6
Cold War, 9-14 passim, 20,38-9,58-9
Cole, S., 133
colonialist discourse, 4,17,36,120
Colson. E.. 196
comic books
Japanese, 13-14,7599 passim
western, 86-8
commensurability, 186 n.1
commerce, 29,43
Communist Party, 103
'comparative sociology', 10
comparison, anthropological, 21,33,
38,101,130,169,208,211
composure, see body language
contextualisation, 196
continuity, cultural, see cultural
coolness, in shunting, 140,143,146,
149
Cottrell, W.F., 159
couvade, 16673,174,177-9,181
cowboy attitudes, 149-51,156
Cratylus, 136
creolisation, 55
Crumrine, N.R., 113-14
cultural
boundaries, 1,5,10-12,15,23,
29-39,79,137,168,191,228
construction, 34,193,202,209,
217-19,221,224-6,229
continuity, 12,39,49,53,210,226,
230
critics, 27
see also culture
determinism, 136
discontinuities, 11,14,3&9,43,
46-56 passim, 193,197,199,218,
226-7
dyslexia, see dyslexia
management, 46
mediation, see mediation
mosaic, 32,39,46
relativism, see relativism
representations, see representations
theory, see culture theory
Index
global, 12-13,28,31,35,41,44,49,
53,56
Edelrnan, B., 3,17,2425,28,34,123,
140,167
education, see enskilment
'education of attention', 221
see also attending; learning
egalitarian models, 127
Egyptians, 202
Eldad, Y., 60-1
Ellen, R., 2
emics, v. etics, 20,2254
emotion theory, 209
emotions, see feeling; reason
empathy, see translation
enculturation, 220
engagement, 190,203,218,220-3
enskilrnent, 34,142,221
epidemiological models, 26,39,79%33
Errington, F.K., 37
Eskimos, 5,11,2154
essentialism, 14
Estonia, 111
ethnic groups, 42,51,103,207
see also cultural boundaries
ethnicity, 12,110,112,228
ethnocentrism, 217
ethnographic
authenticity, 27,138
authority, 1,14,47,196
order, 39
present, 21
production, relations of, 4,1417,
36-8
truth, 120
ethnography, 4,44,200
ethnoscience, 20
etics, see emics
etymological code, 107,113
Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 18,454
exotic, 27,76,203,204,207
exotism, 13,89,184
explanation
anthropological, 162
types of, 171
economic, 118,136
Fabian, J., 54 n.8,96 n.8,217
Fagan, B.M., 31
faithfulness, 26-7,16&9,172,179-80
see also ethnographic;
representations; translation
fantastic, 89
see also exotic
Farragher, L. E., 22
Featherstone, M., 13
fedayi movement, 108
feeling, 24,109-12,114,205,208,226,
229-30
v. thinking, 189,192,194,199,204
see also Cartesian dualism
Feldman, M.W., 179
Feleppa, R., 1,18
female, see gender; women
Ferguson, B.R., 22
festivals, 25,100,105-6,110,112,115
fiction, v. ethnography, 6,119-20
see also ethnograhic
fieldwork, 2-3,19-21,245,32,35,37,
101-2,118,121,128,185,197,202,
204-5,222-3
at home, 265,120-3,140-2,160
as a journey, 24-5,32,101-2,123
method, see method
as shamanism, 24,100-2,105
as time travel, 217
Figueira, D.M., 6 n.2
First World, see Westerners
Fischer, M.M.J., 50 n.6,96 n.8
fishing
ethnography of, 117,129-35
and gender, 13%
in Iceland, 117-29 passim
skill, see skill
skipper, see skipper
fishiness, see skill
Foucault, M., 5,39,119,137
Fourth World, 10,229
Freeman, D., 20
Friedman, J., 2,17
Friedman, M., 63
Fulani, 41
functionalism, 26,171,177-9
Galton's problem, 33
Gamst, F.C., 144 n.2,160 n.7
Gaza territories, 64
Geertz, C., 2,467,49,54 n.8,120,
184-5,191-2,197,208
Gellner, E., 5,21,33
Gemeinschaft, 98,228
gender, 29-30,34,43,105,130,133-7
and translation, 1&17
and work, 142
see also men; women
'genealogy', of knowledge, 137
Gesellschaft, 228
'getting one's sea legs' (sjbast), 122-3
Gewertz, D., 37
Gibson, J.J., 220-1
Index
Gillen, F., 106
glasnost, 103,1069,113
global, 3,13,38,99,130
commons, 12
ecumene, see ecumene
mosaic, 4 M , 56
village, 3,54
see also culture
Godelier, M., 118
Goffrnan, E., 123
Gorbachev, M., 113,115
Greeks, 11,117,136
Greenberg, Y.Z., 60
Gudeman, S., 3,37,137
Gulf War, 3,38
Gurevich, A., 6,24
Gush Emunim movement, 60,64
Gutt, E.A., 20
Habermas, J., 22,35,37
Hairapetian, V., 115
Hall, E., 55,58
Hamlet, 96,175
Hanks, W.F., 2
Hannerz, U., 3,ll-12,19,21,28,39,41,
43 n.2,56,58,99,210
Hanson, F.A., 22 n.5,138
Hardin, G., 138
Harkabi, Y., 59
Harris, P.R., 53
Harris, R., 19 n.4,30,136
Hart, K., 22
Haskell, T.L., 29
Hatch, E., 155 n.6
Hatim, B., 20
Hausa, 41
hawkish discourse, 58,68-74 passim
see also dovish discourse
Hazda, 5
Hearn, L., 7 6 7
Hebrew, 15
Heilman, S.C., 68 n.6
Herder, J.G. von, 15
hermeneutics, 17,26,115,181
Hermogenes, 136
Herskovits, M. J., 49
hierarchy, 126,129,137
Hinduism, 187-209 passim
Hiroshi, H., 84
Hirschfeld, L.A., 6
Hirschkop, K., 25
Hirschman, A.O., 29
Hobart, M., 192,196,205 n.17
Holland, D., 207
Hollis, M., 46,223
Index
Judeo-Christianity, 79
Jussawalla, F., 50 n.6
Kachins, 12
Kafanchan, 41-55 passim
Karabagh movement, 102-16 passim
karma pala, 188,193,195,204,209
Keesing, R.M., 20,27,195,204,206
Kemnitzer, L.S., 159
kibbutz, 62,65
Kimmerling, B., 60 n.1
Kleinman, A., 208
Kleinman, J., 208
Kluckhohn, C., 210
knowledge, 142,163,192
see also spinal knowledge
Kopytoff, I., 44 n.4
Koran, 15
Kristof, L.K.D., 11
Kroeber, A.L., 11,19,43-4,210
Kuhn, T.S., 39
!Kung, 5,130
Kuper, A., %9,38,96 n.8
Labour-Mapai Party, 62,67
Lakoff, G., 138
language, 12,15,18-19,27,32-3,454,
49,54,106,121,185,186 n.l,191-3,
198,200-6,222
contingency of, 191
private, 30
sign, 30-31,112
Larsen, T., 1
Leach, E.R., 5-6,12,31,47,178 n.5,
2257
learning, 152,220,222
see also enskilment
Lee, R., 130
Lefevere, A., 15-16,29
Levi-Strauss, C., 18,96 n.8,172,174,
176
Lewis, O., 20
Lienhardt, G., 45
Likud Party, 67
Limon, J.E., 2
linguistic models, 33,45,100,173
see also textualism
linguistic turn,29
linguistics, 4,23
Linton, R., 49
Lisu, 29-30
literacy, see written
literary translation, see translation
Little Red Riding Hood, 164,175,181
lived experience, 185,194
lndex
Moran, R.T., 53
Muslims, 4,56,187-209 passim
mutedness, 128,133-4
Myers, F., 195
mythology, 173-4
Nordic, 75-99 passim
see also sagas
Nader, L., 206
national consciousness, see
nationalism
nationalism, 13-14,103
native, 16,32,203 n.15
nature, 129,134,135,225
category of, 136,222
v. culture, see culture
Ne'eman, Y., 60
Neild, E., 16-17
neoconservatism, 22
neo-Orientalism, 36
see also Orientalism; textualism
New Guinea, 8
Nigerians, 44
non-state societies, 12
Norsemen, 14,89
Norway, 207
novels, see fiction
Nyakyusa, 109
objectivism, 25,120
observer, 22,25,27,32,39,123,223
Oikos, see 'household'
Omanis, 200
oral, see written
Orientalism, 6,13,16,36-8,98
Ortner, S.B., 20,133
Osarnu, T., 86
Other, category of, 4 1 4 passim, 22,27,
32-3,39,48,51,76,82,89,96 n.8,
168,212,218
outside, v. inside, 26,101,133-4,
21514,229
ownership, see property
Paine, R.B., 229
Palestinians, 62,68-71
Pilsson, G., 1,3,17,245,34,117,123,
126,134,140,171
'passing theories', 197
Paul, R., 136
peasant society, see household
economy
perception
direct, 220
indirect, 219
perestroika, 103,113-15
'phatic communion', 125
Plato, 136
Pletsch, C.E., 10,33
Pollack, D., 97
Pons, P., 83,86
Portuguese, 133
positivism, 19-20,23,25
post-modernism, 12,17,23,56,119,
215
post-Orientalism, 4,33,35,37
see also Orientalism
power, 15,129
practical reason, 187
pragmatics, 190 n.7,192,195,206
Prakash, G., 14
prestige, 125,127,139
primitive, 5-6,8-9,11,18,38,214,225
'primitive communism', 130
printing, 162
see also written
private 134-5
see also individual
language, see language
problem of reference, 136
production
discourse, 127-39 passim
systems of, 119,129-33
progress, 211-13
property, 130-2
public sphere, see private
see also private
Putnam, H., 192 1 ~ 8 , 2 0n.16
4
m e , W., 24
Quinn, N., 207
quota system, 128,132-3,137
Rabbi Kook, Z.Y., 60-1
radical translation, see translation,
railways, see shunting
rationality, 169,224-5
reason, 223
u. emotions, see feeling
Redfield, R., 20,49,119
relational identity, 229
relations of property, see property
relativism, 36,186,225
'relevance', 169,179,194,196-7,199
n.13,204
representations, 193
collective, 165
cultural, 162-3,168,173,179
faithfulness of, 162,168,
Index
see also faithfulness
genres of, 163
mental v. public, 162,164,170
'resonance', 17,24,123,184-209
passim, 221
rhetorics, 1,2,12,229
Ricoeur, P., 32
ritual, 101, 113,185,207
Rivera, A., 3,37,137
Riviere, P., 166
Robinson, D., 17,24,28,34
Rorty, R., 185,191-2,197-9,201
Rosaldo, R., 193-6
Rushdie, S., 50,56
Russians, 106
Ruthven, M., 50 n.6,56
Sacks, O., 203
safety, 140,143,146-51,155,160
sagas, Icelandic, 13-14
translation of, 14,7599 passim
Sahlins, M., 136
Said, E., 6,22,207 n.19
Sangren, P.S., 28
Sanjek, R., 2,215
Sanpei, S., 84
Sapir, E., 18
Sartre, J.P., 122
Saussure, F., 25
Schutz, A., 186
science fiction, 13
scientific management, 128,132
Scott, J.C., 36
Second World, 10-11
Second World War, 11
selfhood, see individual
semiotics, 112
Sephardim, 64,669
sex, 142,160
see also gender
shamanism, 24,10(n02
Shankman, P., 206
Sharabi, H., 14
Sharon, A., 60
Sharp, H.S., 131
Shas Party, 67
Shepherd, D., 25
Sherzer, J., 119
Shokeid, M., 67 n.5
shunt leader, 143-6 passim
shunting, 25,34,140-61 passim
skill, 140,145-52
see also skill
Shweder, R.A., 194,207,225
Simrnel, G., 29
255
skill, 49
definitions of, 140,142,156,165
differences in, 121,126,144
and learning, see education;
enskilment
redefinition of, 156
u. rules, 150
and speed, 147,155
and timing, 152,159-60
skipper, in fishing, 121,123-9,135,137
'skipper effect', 126
Smith, A., 135
Smith, C.L., 132
Smith, M.G., 49
Smith, P., 174 n.4
Smooha, S., 66
social
cognition, 34-5
distinctions, 5
progress, see progress
relations, 105,118-19
responsibility, 22
understanding, see understanding
see also society
society u. individual, 25,138,218
see also individual; public
source, v. target, see translation
Soviet Union, 3,52,111
spatial code, 110,113
Spencer, B., 106
Spencer, J., 120,204
Sperber, D., 3,17,25-6,30,55,119,
162,164 n.2,171,174 n.4,178 n.5,
180 n.6,186 n.l,190 n.7,193-6,199
11.13
'spinal knowledge', 17,148,149,161
Spiro, M.E., 27,204 n.16,207
Steam, G.E., 54
Stefhsson, H., 3,13-15,31,56,75
Steffens, L., 51
Steinberg, M., 59
Steiner, G., 15-16,54
Stocking, G.W., 2,212
Stradanus, J., 7, 16
strange, 8,101,207
see also strangers
strangers, 5,13,29
Strathem, M., 134,195 n.lO, 218
structuralism, 19,26,171,173-7
substantivism, 130
success, see skill; translation;
understanding
Suguwara, K., 77-82
superstructuralists, 136
Swedes, 424,140-61 passim
Index
Tamanian, A,, 107,110
Tambiah, S.J.,1,186 n.l,191,193,204
n.16
Taniguichi, Y., 77-83
Tannen, D., 29-30
Tanner, A., 130
Tarde, G., 179
target, v. source, see translation
team solidarity, 146,155,157,160
text, 28,46,54
as metaphor, 2,19
see also culture; translation; written
textualisation, 2,28,57,193-4
textualism, 4,17,28,34,37,54
Thai, 29-30
Third World, 10-11
Thomas, N., 14
thinking v. feeling, see Cartesian
dualism; feeling
three worlds scheme, 4,9-11,13
Tiv, 96
Todorov, T., 4,6
Torgovnick, M., 4
total institution, 123
tourists, 13,21,48
trade, see commerce
tradition, see civilisation,
tragedy of the commons, 138
training, 145,149
see also enskilrnent
translation, 14,14,17-29 passim, 38,
44-55 passim, 107,110,120,168,
1854,193,210,217-30 passim
empathic, 17,24,83
faithfulness of, 16,20,169
literary, 13-14,34,75-6,81,217
metaphor of, 1-4,17-20,32,39,
44-7,52,100-2,105,115
mistakes.. 17.80
,
as predator-prey relationship,
16-17
radical, 24
source, 15-16,38,120
studies, 26,28
success of, 18,23,25-6,48,76,79
target, 15-16,20,38,76
see also inversion; mediation;
understanding
translationese, 27
travel accounts, 6
Trobrianders, 18
Tucci, G., 194
Turner, V.W., 193
Turton, D., 21
Txikao, 165-70,175,181
Wikan,U.,3,12,17,24-5,27,3&1,
109, 123, 162, 184, 187 n.3, 189,
197-200,201 n.14,203-4,208,221
Wilson, B.R., 46
Wilson, D., 180 n.6, 164 n.2, 186 n.1,
190 n.7,193-6,199 n.13
Wilson, M., 109
Winch, P., 46
Wittgenstein, L., 19 n.4,3O-l
Wolf, E.R., 38,49
women, 6,114,127,129,145,202,207
n.18
see also gender
Woodbum, J.,33,228
work, 143,153,155
flow of, 159-61
organisation of, 143-6,158
world system, 38,39,43 n.2
Worsley, P.J., 8,190
written, v. oral, 6,56,81,97, 169, 182,200
Index
Yakamo, K. 76
Young, M.J., 2
Young, O.R., 38
Zionism, 61-3
Zvartnotz. 115-16
.
L
260