SAN3 Psychological Anthropology - Yael Navaro PDF

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Lecture notes on SAN3 lecture 17 "Psychological Anthropology", delivered by Dr Yael Navaro for the MPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge....

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SAN3: Psychological Anthropology - Yael Navaro Interest in psychology as demarcating american cultural anthropology vs British social anthropology Culture and personality school - ‘the early school of thought’ - the subfield of psychological anthropology Edward Sapir (linguist american) - US anthropologist ● Applied idea of Gashtaht (unified entities) to his analysis of language - culture and personality. ● 1934: argued that the more fully one tries to understand a culture the more it take son the characteristics of a personality organization. (Presented at the time, we will complicate and critique these terms alter) ● Culture made to assume the appearance of closed system of ‘behaviour’ ● Proposes focus of ethnography on childhood development ● Influenced works of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead (culture and personality studies) ○ Benedict ‘Patterns of Culture’ 1934 ■ Argued that cultural whole determines the nature of its parts ■ Coins ‘cultural patterns’ and ‘patterns of culture’ ■ Study the patterns that informa no influence patterns of daily life in distinct cultures ● Applied this to Kwa Kyoto potlatch in NW coast America ● From such ethnographic examples, she derived the idea of a ‘cultural personality type’ ● Her student (Mead) followed on this thought. Such genealogy can be traced back to Franz Boas (father of American cultural anthropology). ○ Mead: Study culture and personality through ‘dominant cultural figurations’ - see Coming of Age in Samoa. Also studied New Guinea and Manus Islands. ○ Both Benedict and Mead works has comparisons in cultures studied. Primary reference point as ‘Western self’ - taken as a constant against which difference is theorised. ■ Attend to the point that Mead and Benedict’s work (and others in the genealogy) is a contrasting type of comparison ■ Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and Sword to contrast Japanese with Americans. Didn’t do fieldwork in states, but still compared Japanese patterns of culture against it. ● Problematically, B also worked of the American War Debt during WW2. ● M studied Dalstons in Samoa - being a teenager as not a problem period as it is in American puberty ● Interaction between psychological aspects of individual and the overarching culture. ○ This holds onto a notion of the individual which has since been problematised -

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use ‘personality’ to describe this. ○ Develop the notion of culture at the same time ○ Different socialisation practices as resulting in different personality ‘types’ Influence of Freudian psychoanalysis (30s/40s) on the anthropology of that period ○ Behaviour of social learning theory ○ Franz Boas the grand figure in this narrative. ■ German/Jewish background, Prof at Columbia, trained Benedict, Zora, ■ Boas’ students formulate founding principles of American cultural anthropology. ● Attributed foundational ideas of the anthro use of theorizing and notions of culture. ● Influence seen in Geertzian interpretive and symbolic anthro, and beyond in other American anthropologies. ■ Boas emphasize plurality of cultures, in distinction from one another. ■ Primary object of analysis as a ‘culture’ on level ground with others (in critique of evolutionism anthro that preceded his cultural anthropology). ● His imagination of the world as a multiplicity of cultures that were holistic from within, but were different from one another. Role of anthro as comparing them. ● Compare to Ontological Turn’s notions of ‘multinaturalism’ (Viveiros de Castro). ● Not multiculturalism (this term comes later), but a multiplicity of cultures ● Culturally relativist approach ● Difference between notion of plurality of cultures (Boaz) and Ontological Turn notion of ‘multiple natures’ (not multiple cultures). Not cultures views on one natures, but multiple natures. ● Boazian school is multiple cultures (assuming an underlying one nature). ○ Grown out of German romantic nationalism ○ Culture as ‘the genius of the people’ ■ Influenced by German philosopher Hegel. Boasian idea of culture: pluralistic, relativistic alternative to scientifically racist, evolutionary theory in anthro that preceded it. ○ But emphasis on internal coherence of peoples in one culture, This has inflections of the nationalism of the time. ○ How ideas of culture and nation have influenced each other: Jonathan Spencer article. George Stocking (historian of anthropology) on Boas Notion of culture as a whole/pattern is the paradoxical seed on nationalism exclusionary paradigms ○ Critically approach this culture/personality types. What is assumed in this imaginary of patterns of culture? 20thC cultural anthropology, problematic notion of culture.

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Benedict’s definition of culture: 1943: ‘for culture, is the sociological term for learning behaviour. Behaviour which in man is not given at birth… must be learnt from growing people in each new generation’ ○ B’s use of terms demarcates a differentiation of the [project of anthro from biology. Anti-racist to carve out space that is different from biological and scientific racism of that period. By saying culture has nothing to do with biology. ○ ‘The degree to which human genes are dependent on this learned behaviour is man’s great claim to superiority…. [as] the culture-bearing animal’ ■ HUman v animal through culture. This has since been contested - recent studies of relationality between humans and nonhumans; ■ B says culture as what defines difference in human v animal. Culture as not ingrained, but dependant upon socialisation. ● Children learn from adults through their development ○ Sums up culture and personality school ○ B = cultures are ways of living. Psychological types: ‘cultural configurations’ perceived as integral and patterned holes. ○ This approach draws attention to the ethos of a particular culture (‘moral tone’)

British Social Anthro (same period): Where and how B soc anth positioned itself in questions of psychology. Demaractes American cultural anth vs B Socanth ● Psychology at the centre of the demarcation. Legacy continues to this day. American Cultural Anth - persistent study of psychological phenomena. Whereas B socanth, the social/society (Durkheimian/ Levi-Straussian influences) radically separated from psychology. ● Radcliffe-Brown refers to culture (as used by american anthros) as a ‘vague abstraction’ ○ B in 30s/40s - ‘culturalists’ is derogatory reference to American cultural anthros. ○ UK develop the study of ‘social structure’ rather than ‘culture’ ○ Culture for British anthros was considered ornamentalist. Argues that what needed to be studied was what underlied culture; ‘the social structure’. This was where anthros should be studying. ○ Psychoanalysis’ capacity to influence anthropology - positionality in American and Britain of this was radically different. ■ British social antho interested in psychoanalysis: Malinowski ● Engaged with Freudian psychoanalysis in 20s to argue that in Matrilineal soc of trobriand islands = maternal uncle taking central role of life of child rather than father. ○ M was viciously attacked by Freud's follower Ernest Jones (psychoanalytic school). Thus argument closed before it was started by gatekeeping psychoanalysts. ■ => long term hostility to psychoanalytic ideas in social anthropology. Critiques of Mary DOuglas and Edmund LEach show this, ■ Leach argued psychoanaly and antho had separate

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subject matter and methodologies that should not be confused. L central to elaborating the difference of anthropology from psychoanalysis. Creating distinct academic disciplines. This v different from American position. Tambiah biography of Edmund Leach, which notes this historical gatekeeping move by Leach through ref his essay Magical Hair - Leach rejection of psychoanalysis in favor of a social-structural logic. Leach’s article in Stephen Hugh-Jones and Laidlaw’s book. Puts social anthro in engagement and critique of psychoanalytic work of Doctor Verve - p.195 ‘For the psychoanalyst sex comes first. Therefore in the hindu context, the head represents the palace and the represents itself. The Atnrhopologst repudiates this cause-and-effect interpretation. God i.s society comes first… both represent the power of God.’ ○ With this statement he differentiates the project of psychoanalysis from anthropology. The study of religion as centred in anthropo - God or reps of God as emblems for study of society. Psychoanalysts as attending to sex and sexuality. ○ Also differentiates between (gatekeeping move), public and private rituals: ■ ‘Public ritual behaviour asserts something about the social status of the actor. Private ritual behaviour asserts something about the psychological state of the actor. We have no grounds for assuming, as does Dr Verve, that the actors in public rituals are in a psychological condition….’ ■ ‘It would seem that the anthropological evidence which concerns public symbols has no bearing on if public symbolism is universal…’ ■ Herein Leach is not yet clearly demarcating difference, but is putting himself in active conversation with psychoanalysis. His work in 50s/60s more clearly differentiates between study of personal symbols and public rituals. Public rituals as study of anthro analysis. ● See Laidlaw and HUmphrey on archetypes of ritual for a Leachian analysis. ■ P.196 (these quotations are all from Hugh-ones and Laidlaw’s book on the Essential Leach). Tambiah biography of leach notes that 1962 paper Leach translated psychoanalytic insights into social structuralist concerns. Psychoanalysis identified with AMerican culture and personality studies. Hostility to psychoanalysis became part of general shoticlty to psychology explanations for British Social Anthropology. Study of so-called ‘psychological worlds’ intertwined with study of cultures. Legacy in American Cult anthro of studying the emotions. Observable through to symbolic/interpretive anthro of Clifford Geertz. Interest in relativity in Writing Culture movement, and in studies of subjectivity and anthro studies of the emoticons ○ 80s anthros working in this legacy turned to=emotion into anthro object of analysis. How can this be an object of analysis? ■ Questioning positionality of the anthro vis-a-vis his/her interlocutors.

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Question assumptions around objectivity. Seeing dev of interesting reflexivity (writing culture debate) whereas in British socanth still an interest in ‘detachment’ as an approach to anthro projects. ● Antho of Emotions (80s) ○ Catherine Lutz Unnatural EMotions ■ Defined period of interest in the study of emotions in American Cult Anth. Palace din lineage of culture and personality school - interest in studying psychological domain. Emotions focused as the project of cultural anthropology. Interest in study of language (ref back to Edward Sapir). ■ Language, psychology, culture in a project studying emotions in 1980s American Anthro ■ Geertz drawing attention to making ethnographic manuscripts as a text, thus cultures as texts. (moving anthro towards humanities rather than science) ● Interest in language, narrative, textuality ● FOllowing Geertz 80s, influence of Foucault. The ways in which linguistic turn/ post-structuralist turn has influenced anthro. ○ Michelle Rosaldo Benedict and Mead as cultural/ personality school on one hand (founding mothers). Lead to work of Lutz, Abu Gohd, Rosaldo. Culture as a discourse - assemblage of power and knowledge. Culture as embedded in power relations through work of Foucault. Language embedded in power. ○ Move from theorising culture to theorising discourse. (said by Abu lughod) 1980s studies of emotions from U.S - building on cultural relativism of Boasians/ culture and personality school. But anthro had shifted towards post-structuralism through the linguistic term (work of Foucault, Derrida). Attend to constructed aspects of lived experience. Social constructivism. Studying emotions as ‘discursive’ or embedded in language. Emotions as culturally constructed, and relatively constituted. Extend to which anthros view emotions as an object of ethnographic query. More emoticons culturalism, the further they were from psychology. Rosaldo’s ‘emotion words’, Lutz differentiation from micronesian and western approaches to emotion through attention to discourse. Essentialist approach to notion of culture, despite move towards social constructivism Emotions as part of distinct and different ;cultural worlds’ wherein culture was read a s texts. In height of hermeneutics tradition.

What was the role of the emotions as an anthro category of analysis in developing culture in 1980s (particularly American Anthro)? What was lost in British social anthro works How can 1980s work on emotions be assessed and critiqued for turning emotions into objects -

has this essentialism the study of culture?...