37180836 Essay 15 Symbolic Anthropology PDF

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Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology

Justin Rego Anthropology 601 04/09/08

1 Symbolic and interpretive anthropology began in the 1960’s, reaching its full manifestation in the 1970’s, from the postprocessual paradigm. Symbolic anthropologists are largely concerned with rituals and meaning within culture; they have in common with ethnoscience the idea that culture is a mental projection, however reject the ethnoscientists assertion that these mental projections can be modeled as in linguistics; rather, they use tools drawn from “psychology, history and literature” in order to study the meaning of symbols in a culture. According to the symbolic anthropologists, “symbols are shared systems of meaning” and can only be understood in a particular historical and social context. Culture lies in the interpretation of events with which we construct out cultural reality (McGee and Warms 2008:482). Geertz, Turner and Douglas are all symbolic anthropologists, although each approaches the study of rituals and meaning from different perspectives. Geertz believes that symbols transmit meaning and affect how people think about the world. His analysis of a Balinese cockfight, using “thick description” describes how this social interaction creates and shares a system of meaning for the men of Bali (McGee and Warms 2008:482-483). For Turner, symbols are mechanisms for the maintenance of society; in this she is heavily influenced by Durkheim; she believes that symbols and rituals act to regulate social solidarity, which is maintained by rituals. However, unlike Geertz, she follows a “formal program” of symbolic analysis. However, some have criticized Geertz and Turner’s approach for being too descriptive; it is simply hard to draw upon their analysis in the development of a comprehensive theory of symbol. Douglas however, defies the assertion that theory building is not possible with symbolic anthropology. She attempts to

2 analyze “universal patterns of symbolism” focusing on beliefs about pollution and hygiene as expressed by religion. She is also influenced by Durkheim (McGee and Warms 2008:484), believing that symbols “create a unity in experience” and religious ideas about purity and pollution symbolize beliefs about the social order (McGee and Warms 2008:483). Each of these anthropologists, again, expresses a different view point about the study of symbolism. By a brief analysis of each essay, we can describe and understand their differing ideas about symbols and the interpretation of them. Douglas, in her essay External Boundaries, performs an analysis of symbols and rituals of pollution, focusing on India’s lowest caste. She believes that symbols are representations of the body; they are both complex systems, and bounded (Douglas 2008:485) and questions why “bodily refuse” become symbols of danger and power for certain cultural structures, such as India’s castes. She renounced all psychoanalytical explanations, stating (Douglas 2008:488) that “everything symbolizes the body and the body symbolizes everything”. She distinguishes four kinds of social pollution; danger from external boundaries; danger from transgressing internal lines; danger in margin of lines and danger from internal contradictions. In her example of the ritual beliefs of India’s castes regarding pollution, she notes that the castes themselves can be equated with the body. The highest caste prays, while the lowest removed the refuse from the system, such as by cleaning latrines, and performing other derided jobs (Douglas 2008:489). However, this lowest caste (the Coorgs), fears external contamination by pollution. Douglas believes these fears are symbolic of their low status in the community. Rituals express anxiety about bodily orifices; the sociological counterpart to these fears is the protection of the political and

3 cultural unity of the group. “Caste pollution represents” a symbolic system “based on the image of the body whose primary concern is the ordering of a social hierarchy” (Douglas 2008:490). For example, the upper caste fears sexual pollution, particularly of women; Douglas believes this is because women are the gateway into the caste via reproduction, and in order to maintain the purity of the caste sexual behavior must be regulated. This is done through ritual ideas of pollution (Douglas 2008:491). Thus, “the objective of rituals is to form social relations and give visible expression to them” (Douglas 2008:493). Turner, in his essay Symbols in Ndembu Ritual, studies the rituals of the Ndembu of Zambia. He believes that ritual is “prescribed formal behavior referencing beliefs in mystical beings or events” and defines symbols as “the smallest unit of ritual still retaining properties of ritual behavior” (Turner 2008:493). Symbols can be activities, objects, events or even relationships and are involved in social processes which must be studied as “distinct phases” of these social processes (Turner 2008:494) and are mechanisms for the maintenance of society (McGee and Warms 2008:483) in a Durkheimian sense. Turner defines several classes of rituals, which act in different ways to modulate social processes and conflict. The first class corrects deviations from “prescribed customary behavior; the second class anticipates conflicts, and includes “periodic rituals and life-crises rituals” (Turner 2008:508-509). Additionally, symbols, which make up rituals, can also be classes separately; they are of two types, dominant or instrumental. Dominant symbols are ends in and of themselves, while instrumental symbols are the means to the goal of the ritual (Turner 2008:509).

4 Thus, to explain symbols, Turner believes we must examine the context in which that symbol is used, namely the ritual context. These contexts determine what sort of ritual is performed. By using indigenous informants, the anthropologist can gain emic perspective on the meaning of these rituals to the people under study, while the anthropologists own etic analysis can garner further insights. The ritual is thus analyzed as a system of symbolic meanings with multiple layers depending on social contexts (Turner 2008:509). Geertz is perhaps the most famous of the post modernists; he has been called the grandfather of postprocessualism. He developed several accessible concepts which changed the way anthropologists thought about culture, social behavior and how humans construct knowledge and meaning, the main of which is “thick description”. Thick description is basically the observation that every social event has multiple layer of meaning, and like an onion, these layers of meaning must be peeled away in order to fully understand the meaning behind social events. In Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, Geertz examines a popular social event within Balinese society, the cockfight. His essay is a paragon of thick description. For Geertz, culture was a product of the mind, and did not exist in the Durkheimian sense of the superorganic. Because culture was of the mind, and culture equals meaning, meaning must be within the mind as well. Thus culture and everything that creates it is socially constructed and events only exist from the meanings we imbue it with. Rituals reinscribe social ties, thus everything within a ritual has a deep meaning reinstating the social order. However, some (Renner 1984:538) have criticized Geertz for failing to operationalize his methodology, or rather, for having no methodology at all!

5 Geertz says that anthropology is not its theories, but what anthropologists do. He finds that doing anthropology is a form of knowledge, and needs no methodology. However, this is at odds with many anthropologists conceptualization of a definition of anthropology; anthropologists need a methodology in order to validate their research. Alternatively, Renner’s opinion may be due to the division between postprocessualists and positivists which developed in the 1970’s and on. In the cockfight, only Balinese men are participants and cocks symbolize masculinity for them. The Balinese name for the cock, as in English, is also a metaphor for male genitalia (Geertz 2008:514). The cock fight is dominated by both core and peripheral betting. However, one does not bet on a cock in order to gain monetarily; rather betting is largely based on social and kinship ties. High bets are made by higher status people, while smaller bets are made by lower status people. The higher status central betters set the pace of the bets. The most sought after cock matches are those where the cocks are considered equal. Here the odds are practically even, and the fight is most interesting. This is the heart of the cockfight, the “deep play”, when the stakes are the least known, most interesting and at their highest (Geertz 2008:519). What is at stake is nothing more or less than a temporary loss or gain in status for the owner of the winning or losing cock. At the moment of victory or defeat, the social order is inverted. In the rigidly hierarchical structure of Balinese society, where upward and downward class mobility is non-existent, for a moment a status change is possible. By inverting the social system, the cockfight reinscribes is by relieving social tension. Ultimately, as Geertz states, the cockfight is a “story they tell themselves about themselves” (Geertz 2008:528).

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References Cited:

Douglas, Mary 2008 External Boundaries. In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, pp. 484-493. Mayfield Publishing Co., Mountain View, California. Geertz, Clifford 2008 Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, pp. 511531. Mayfield Publishing Co., Mountain View, California. McGee, R. Jon, and Richard L. Warms, editors 2008 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Mayfield Publishing Co., Mountain View, California. Renner, Egon 1984 On Geertz’s Interpretive Theoretical Paradigm. Current Anthropology, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 538-542 Turner, Victor 2008 Symbols in Ndembu Ritual. In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, pp. 493-510. Mayfield Publishing Co., Mountain View, California....