3Qva1Za bLe LigZtt

Anthropological Reflections

on Philosophical Topics

Gli f ford Seertz

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

P R I N C E T O N A N D O X F O R D

Copyright ü 2000 by Princeron Universiry Prexs

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Paperback ISBN 0-691-08956-6

The Library of Congress has camloged che dorh ediuon of chis book m follows

Geerrz, Cliffurd.

Available l ighr : anrhropological reflecrions un philosophical copies / Clifford

Geerrz.

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Arricles previously puhhshed chiefly 1983-1999.

Includes bbliographical referentes and ind,

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4

N

N

For

Joan Scott,

filbert U i rschman,

and michael Walzer

colleagues

Cotiitelits

l0r-eface

iqcknowiedgtnents xv

1. Passage and Accident: A Life of Leaming 3

Overture 3- The Bubhle 3Changingthe Subject 11 - Wtg¢ngTime 19

II. Thinking as a Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of Anthropological

Fieldwork in the New States 21

III. Anti Anti-Relativism 42

IV.. The Uses of Diversity 68

V. The State of the Art S9Waddling la 89 - Culture War

Deep Hanging Out 107

History and Anthropology 118

"Local Knowledge" and Its Limiu 133

VI. The Strange Estrangement : Charles Taylor and the

Natural Sciences 143

97

VII. The Legacy of Thomas Kuhn : The Right Text at the

Right Time 160v ii

VIII. The Pincli of Desriny : Religion as Experience , Meaning,Idenrity, Power o;

/C. hnbalancing Act: Jemme Brunei', Cultural Psychology 187

X. Culture, Mind, Brain / Brain, Mind, Culture 203

XI. The World in Pieees: Culture an,l Politics at the Endof rhe Century - i ti

The Wurli1 in Pirres 1 l i;

What Is u Countn if It ]s Nor a Nailon? 2,31

What Is a Culnoe tf Ir 1s Nut a Consensus? 246

265

Vlreface

As befits two disciplines, neither of which is clearly defined and

both of which address themselves to the whole of human life and

thought, anrhropology and philosophy are more than a little sus-

picious of one another. The anxiery that comes with a combination

of a diffuse and miscellaneous academic identity and an ambition to

connect just about everything with everything else and get, thereby,

to the bottom of things leaves both of them unsure as to which of

them should be doing what. It is not that their borders overlap, it is

that they have no borders anyone can, with any assurance, draw. lt

is not thar their intereses diverge, it is that nothing, apparenely, isalien to either of them.

Beyond their normally oblique and implicit competition for the

last word and the first, the two fields share a number of other char-

acteristics that trouble their relations with one another and make

cooperation between them unnecessarily difficult. Most especially,

both of them are porous and imperiled, fragile and under siege.

They find themselves, [hese days, repeatedly invaded and imposed

upon by interlopers claiming to do their job in a more effective

manner [han they themselves, trapped in inertial rigidities, are ableto do it.

For philosophy Chis is an old story. Its history consists of one

after another of its protectorates and principalities-mathematics,

physics, biology, psychology, latterly even logic and epistemology-

breaking away to become independent, self-goveming special sci-

ences. For anrhropology, rhis conrraction of imperium under separa-

tist pressure is more recen[ and less orderly, but it is no less severe.

ü - ^ardcu Ts

ix

l laeincu c,inve.1 out, hUm rhe ou,l-ninereenth cantor- on, a special

place ior irsdi .s risa ,wda o ^ulturc.' (hit complex whole includ-

ing .. helief., moral,. au,tm> acgoirecl by mar as a

memhi of ,ocia tv. u n,ny hn^l^ r-.oiou, cookcd-up ind )ohnny-

come laielc disciplines, xmidiseiplines, and marching socieries (gender

snidics, ,cience studíc,, ju,, i Huidi( , medra sni.líes, etlmic studies,

posteoloniul .ru.lrc I„c<ei; ,rnui^ed. rhe final inxilr, as —cultural

,ou.Le>'l.. eroardine int. lisa sI,re it ha< ,o puin,takingly, in,¡ so

b.nn-cly, cleared ami wecdcd and b,-,un to work. Whedier as an

ancient ;ind honored holding comp,my whose holdings, and honor,

are slowly slipping awav or as an intellectual high adventure spoiled

by poachers, parvenus, and hangers-,in, rhe sense of dispersal and

dissolution, of "end-ism," prosas by rhe day. Not a particularly felici-

tous sitnation for generous interaction and rhe combining of forces.

Yet, the attempt ro so interacr and so combine remains well

worth making. Not only are die fears exaggerated and rhe suspicions

ungrounded (ncither leld is about a, go away quite yet, and they

ara les, opposed in cither style or remper than their louder cham-

pions like ro imagine), but rhe stirred up and rrackless postmodern

seas they are now rodead alike passing through makes them, more

and more, in active peed of one anorher. The end is nor nigh, or

anywhere near, for eidier enterprise. But aimlessness, a baffled wan-

dering in search of direction and rarionale, is.

My own interest in effecring a connection, or strengthening

one, or, thinking of Montaignc or Montesquieu, perhaps reviving

one, stems flor froni any interest in altering my professional identity,

with w.vhich 1 am as comforrable as could be expected alter fifty years

struggling ti) establish ir, flor in widening 4 out ro some sort of

higher-orden thinkerwithour-portfolie. 1 am an ethnographer, and a

writer about ethnogmphy, trom beginning ro end; and 1 don't do

systenu. But it prohably is related, somehow or other, to rhe fact

thar, as 1 explain in the opening chapter, 1 started out "in philoso-

phy" but gave it up, afrer an indecendy short time, to ground my

rhought more directh, as 1 thought, in rhe wodd's variety. The sorrs

of issues 1 aras concerned with risco, ind which 1 wanted to pursue

empiricilly rather than ordy concepmallp-[he role of ideas in

beh,nior, rhe meaning ol meaning, rhe judgment of judgmcnt-

persist, broadened and reformulated, and 1 trust substantialized, in

my work on Javanese religion, Balinese states, and Moroccan ba-

zaars, on modernization, on Islam, on kinship, on law, on art, and

on ethnicity. And it is these concerns and issues that are reflected, a

bit more explicitly, in rhe 'redections" hete assembled.

Paradoxically, relating che sort of work 1 do-ferreting out rhe

singularities of orher peoples' ways-of-life-to that phílosophers, or

at least rhe sor of philosophen who interest me, do-examining

rhe reach and structure ot human experience, and rhe point of it

all-is in many ways easier today than it was in rhe late forties

when 1 imagined myself headed for a philosopher's career. This is,

in my view, mainly a result of rhe fact thar rhere has been, since

then, a major shift in the way in which philosophers, or the bulk of

them anyway, conceive their vocation, and that shift has been in a

direction particularly congenial to rhose, like myself, who believe

that rhe answers to out most general questions-why? how? what?

whither?-to rhe degree they have answers, are to be found in che

fine detall of lived life.

The main figure making Chis shift possible, if nor causing it, is,

again in my view, that posthumous and mind-clearing insurrection-

ist, "The Later Wittgenstein." The appearance in 1953, two years

alter his death, of Philosophical Investigarions, and thé transformation

of what had been but rumors out of Oxbridge roto an apparently

endlessly generative text, had an enormous impact upon my sense of

what 1 was about and what 1 hoped to accomplish, as did rhe flow of

"Remarks," "Occasions," "Notebooks," and "Zettel" that followed it

out of che Nachlass over che next decades. In Chis 1 was hardly alone

among people working in rhe human sciences trying ro find their

way out of their stoppered fly-bottles. But 1 was surely one of che

more thoroughly preadapted to receive the message. If it is true, as

has been argued, that rhe writers we are willing ro call master are

rhose who seem co us finally to be saying what we feel we have long

had on the tip of our tongue but have been ourselves quite unable

to express, rhose who put roto words what are for us only inchoate

motions, rendencies, and impulses of mind, then 1 am more than

happy to acknowledge Wittgenstein as my master. Or one of rhem,

anyway. That he would return rhe favor and acknowledge me as his

Vrefacc -- xi

pupil is, of course, more rhan uulikely; he did not much like to

think that he was agreed wirh or urnlersrood.

However rhat may he, his turack opon the idea of a private

language, which hrought rhought our of as grotto in nce head into

the public square where onc could look at it, his notion of a lan-

guage gane, which pnroidcd a new way of looking at it once it

arrived rhere-as a set of practices-and his proposal of "forras of

¡[fe" as (to quote onc eonuncntaa^r) rhe "complex of natural and

cultural circumstances which ore preupposed in ... any particular

understanding of the world," seem aunost custom designed to enable

the son of anthropological stndy 1, and others of my ilk, do. They

were, of course, along wirh their icc,)mpaniments and corollaries-

"following a rule," "don'r look for the meaning, look for the use," "a

whole cloud of philosophi condensed finto a drop of grammar," "say-

ing and showing," "fanrily resemblance," "a picture held us captive,"

"secing-as," "stand not quite rhere," "back to the rough ground,"

"aspecr blindness," "my spade is temed"-not so designed, but they

viere part of a merciless, upending critique of philosophy. But it was

a critique of philosophy that rather nanowed the gap between it

and going abour in the world trying to discover how in the midst of

talk people-groups of people, individual people, people as a

whole---put a distinct and variegared voice together.

The way in which nci: gap was narrowed, or perhaps only lo-

cated and desscribed, is suggested by whar, for a working anthropolo-

gisr, is the most ínviring of rhe rags jusr usted: "Rack to the rough

ground!" "We have got," Wittgenstein virote, "on to slippery ice

where rhere is no friccion aud so in a certain sense conditions are

ideal, hut aleo, just because of tirat, we are unable to walk. We want

ro walk: so we need frictionBack to dhe rough ground!" (PI, 107).

The notion that anthropology (rhough, of course, not only anthro-

pology) is exploring the rough grouud on which ir is possible for

rhought, Wittgenstein's or anyone else's, to gain traction is for me

not only a compelling idea in irself; it is rhe idea, unfocused and

unformulared, that led mc to migrare finto the fieid, in borh senses

of "field," in the first place. Wearicd of slipping about on Kantian,

Hegelian, or Cartesian icctlnws, 1 wanted to walk.

Or walkabout. In moving across places and peoples, restlessly

seeking out contrasts and constancies for whatever insight they

inight provide into any enigma that might appear, one produces less

a position, a sready, accumulating view on a fixed budget of issues,

than a series of positionings-assorted arguments to assorted ends.

This leaves a great deal of blur and uncertainry in place; perhaps

most of it. But in this, roo, we are following Wittgenstein: One

mighr ask, he writes, `is a blurred concepr a concept at all?'-Is an

indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is ir even always

an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't

the indistinct one exacrly what we need?" (PI, 71).

Whether it is or it isn't, and whomever rhe "we" might be, what

follows below is a diverse and only partially ordered set of commen-

taries, examples, critiques, ruminations, assessments, and inquines

having to do with matrers and persons-"relativism," "mmd,"

"knowledge" "selthood," Taylor, Rorty, Kuhn, James-at least argua-

bly "philosophical." After a more or less introductory opening chap-

ter reviewing the vagranr advance of my professional career, pre-

pared for rhe American Council of Leamed Society's "A Life of

Learning" series, the next three chapters address moral anxieties

that have arisen in carrying out fieldwork, certain sorts of so-called

antirelativist arguments recently popular in anthropology, and a cri-

tique of some defenses of cultural parochialism in moral philosophy.

Chapter V, "The State of Art," collects five extemporary pieces on

present moral and epistemological controversies in and around an-

thropology. That is followed by more systematic considerations of

the work of Charles Taylor, Thomas Kuhn, Jerome Bruner, and

Willlam james, prepared for symposia in their honor. Chapter X,

"Culture, Mind, Brain ... ," is yet one more consideration of rhe

(possible) relations between whar (supposedly) goes on in our heads

and what (apparently) goes un in rhe world. And, finally, "The

World in Pieces" is concemed wirh rhe questions raised for political

theory by rhe recent upsurge in "ethnic conflicr."

As for acknowledgments, which usually appear at abour chis

point, 1 have, by now, so many people te) thank that 1 am unwilling

te) risk leaving someone out by essaying a liso, anyway, most of them

Tynjarr 1veface

hato beca rh:mked 1,clul . 1 ht%e,, insteadi, simply dedicated the

ook th my co-conspiran,n In the S hIloI of Social Science ar the

Insrlnire tor Advaneed >tudt, rchere nwsr eventhing in it hrst was

^critrcn and .111au11edl, reavri t e' utd ted ucussed, and where we have

mgether ereared a place and in attitude worth detending. To pre-

ven[ Jeep reading, he them on my,'ne clse, they are usted in order

of rheir disranec dUwn the cnrnih1r irOll, nry ofhce.

Princcron

August 1999

.fi chnowledgmevtts -77

Chapter 1: Given as the Charles Homer Haskins Lecture of the

American Council of Learned Societies, Philadelphia, 1999.

Chapter II: Copyright © 1968 by the Antioch Review, Inc. First

appeared in the Antioch Review, Vol. 28, No. 2. Reprinted by per-

mission of the Editors.

Chapter 111: Given as the Distinguished Lecture, annual meeting of

the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 1983; origi-

nally published in The American Anthropologist 86(2): 263-278,

1984. Reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological

Association.

Chapter IV: Given as the Tanner Lecture in Human Values, Uni-

versity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1985; originally published in Tan-

ner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 7, Salt Lake City: University of

Utah Press, 1986, pp. 253-275.

Chapter V: Sections originally published in, respectively, Times Lit-

erary Supplement, June 5, 1985; The New York Review of Books, No-

vember 30, 1995; The New York Review of Books, October 22, 1998;

New Literary History 21 (1990): 321-335; The Yale Journal of Criti-

cism 5 (1993): 129-135. Reprinted with permission from The New

York Review of Books. Copyright © 1995-8 NYREV, Inc.

Chapter VI: Originally published in James Tully and Daniel M.Weinstock, eds., Philosophy ¡Ti an Age of Pluralism, Cambridge: Cam-

£U

Bit, l:^re^are

bridge University Press, 1995, pp. 83-95. Reprinred with the per-

mission of Cambridge Univcrsitys Pies.

Chaprer VII: Originally published in Commop Knowedge, 6,1 (1997): 1-5.

Chaprer VIII: Given as die William James Lecture, Harvard Divin-

iry School, 1998; originally puhlished in Raritan: A Quarterly Re-view, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Winrer 1999): 1-19. Reprinred by permission.

Chapter IX: Forthcoming in D. Bakhurst and S. Shanker, eds., Lan-guage, Cu lture, Self: The Philosophirnl Psychology of Jerorne Bruner,London: Sage Publications. A parí was originally published in TheNew York Review of Bouks, April 10, 1997.

Chaprer X: Previously unpuhlished. Given at the inaugural sympo-

sium, Fernand de Saussurc Foundatiun, Archamps/Geneva, 1999.

Chaprer XI: Given as Anual Lecture in Modera Philosophy, Insti-

tut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, 1995; originallypublished (in English) in FOCAAL 23 (1998): 91-117.

.7qvailab?e Light

Arlanirledq 111 rn tr

Z9assage an d )q cci deiit:

f^ £i fe of ^ectl^rtivlg

Overture

It is a shaking business to stand up in public toward the end of an

improvised life and call it leamed. 1 didn't realize, when 1 started

out, alter an isolate childhood, to see what might be going on else-

where in the world, that there would be a final exam. 1 suppose that

what 1 have been doing all [hese years is piling up leaming. But, at

the time, it seemed to me that I was trying to figure out whar to do

next, and hold off a reckoning: reviewing the situation, scouting out

the possibilities, evading the consequences, thinking through the

thing again. You don't arrive at many conclusions that way, or not

any that you hold to for very long, so summing it all up before God

and Everybody is a bit of a humbug. A lot of people don't quite

know where they are going, 1 suppose; but 1 don 't even know, for

certain, where 1 have been. But all right already. I've tried virtually

every other literary gente at one time or another. 1 might as well try

Bildungsroman.

2he Bubble

1 have, in any case, learned at leas[ one thing in the course ofpatching together a scholarly career: it al¡ depends on the timing. 1entered the academic world at whar has to have been the best time

3

to enter it in che whnlc course of irs history; at least in che United

States, possibly iltogethcr. When 1 emerged from the U.S. Navy in

1946, having heen narrowly saved by The Bomh from being obliged

to invade Japan, che grear boom in American higher educacion was

just getring underway, and 1 have ridden che wave all the way

hrough, creso after creo, unril roday, when it seems at last, like me,

to he tinally subsidiug. 1 w.1s cwenty. 1 wanted to get away from

California, where 1 liad an excess of relatives but no family. 1

wanted to be a novelist, preferahly famous. And, mosc fatefully, 1had che G.I. Bill.

Or, more exactly, ue had he G.1. Bill: millions of us. As has

heen tnany times rcraile I nc^re was even a television special un

che suhject a year or ao ago, 11n,1 there is a hook abouc it called, notinappropriately, When Dreanu Corro True-che flood of determinedveterans, nearly two ami a halt nlillion of us, onto college campuses

in che half decade inunediately following 1945 altered, suddenly and

forever, che whole Pace of higher educacion in chis country. We were

older, we had heen through something out classmates and out

ceachers, for che most parí, had not, we were in a hurry, and we

were wildly uninteresred in che rices and masquerades of under-

graduace life. Many of us were married; most of the rest of us, myself

included, soon would be. Perhaps nlosc importantly, we cransformed

che class, the ethnic, che religious, and even to some degree the

racial composition of che nacional student body. And at length, as

che wave moved through che giaduate schools, we transformed the

proiessoriate loo. Berween 1950 in,¡ 1g7o, che number of doctoralesawarded annually inereased five-fold, from about six thousand a year

to abour thirty thousand. (111 1940 it had heen three thousand. No

wonder che sixcies happened!) That was perhaps not what William

Randolph Hearsi und che American Legion, who mobilized popular

support for che Bill, precisely liad in mind. But oven at che time, we

knew wc were che vanguurd oí something large and consequential:che degrecing of America.

Having grown up rural in che Greac Depression, 1 had not sup-

posed 1 would he going to college, so that when che possibility sud-

denly presenred icself, 1 had no idea how to respond to it. After

drifcing around San Francisco mosc of che summer "readjusting" my-

(iiairtrr 1

self to a civilian existente, also at che government's expense, 1 asked

a high school English teacher, an old-style leftist and waterfront

agitator who had first suggested co me that 1 might become a

writer-like Steinbeck, say, or Jack London-what 1 should do. He

said (approximately): "You should go to Antioch College. It has a

system where you work half che time and study half che time." Thac

sounded promising, so 1 sent in an application he happened to have

around, was accepted within a week or two, and went confidently

off to see what was cooking, happening, or going down in southem

Ohio. (As 1 say, chis was another time. 1 am not sure 1 even knew

chas application were sometimes rejected, and 1 had no plan B.

Had 1 been turned down, 1 probably would have gone to work for

che telephone company, tried to write in che evenings, forgotten

che whole thing, and we should all have heen spared che present

occasion.)

Antioch, between 1946 and 1950, was, at first glance, the very

model of chal most deeply American, and to my mind most thor-

oughly admirable, of educational insticutions-che small, small

town, vaguely Christian, even more vaguely populist, liberal arts

college. With fewer than a thousand students, only about half of

them on campus ar a time (che other half were off working some-

where, in Chicago, New York, Detroit, and che like), seventy-five or

eighty live-in, on-call, faculty members, and wedged in between che

woods and che railroad tracks in Yellow Springs, Ohio (population

2,500), it looked, all lattice arbors and brick chimneys, as though

ic had been set up on an MGM back lot for Judy and Mickey,

or perhaps Harold Lloyd, to play out che passage from home-

fumbling at sex, attempting alcohol, driving abcut in open cars,

conning fuddled professors, trying en outrageous selves. There was

some of chal, but che place was a good deal more serious, not to say

grave, than either its looks or its location suggested. Utopian, exper-

imental, nonconformist, painfully earnest, desperately intense, and

filled with political radicals and aeschecic free spirits (or were they

aesthetic radicals and political free spirits?), it was countercultural

before its time-a casi of mind and presentation that che influx of

GI's, unwilling to cake anything from anybody under any circum-

stances ever again, powerfully reinforced.

Passagc and liccident c9. 5

Let loase in this dieorderly (c1, 1 ,>f moralizad seif-fashioning (rhe

reigning erho.c ot rhe i,1.ice >ca, S ioakcr, thac most interior of iron

Cages; rhe reeigning attituJe, e>vish, i1l iron, impatience, atad auto-

critique; rhe mmhinati^m, i uri r nois) introspection, passing ca-

rious), I s'm,ply mok just abatir c,rre course chal in any way looked

as th,,ugh it might incerer me, come in handv, or do my character

come ooJ, which is d-le Jetiniriun, 1 xippuse e rtainly ir was An-

tioclt'1-ot a liberal eduauian. As 1 wanred to be a writer, 1 thought,

abnwdli; ol course, that 1 aIwidd majar in English. But 1 found even

that constraining, and so savicched to philosophy, toward whose re-

quirements virtually any class 1 happened into-musicology, for ex-

ample, or fiscal policy-could be counred. As for rhe "work" side of

rhe "work-srudy" program, and rhe alarming question it raised-

what sort of business cnteprise has a slot for an apprentice lit-

rérateur?1 thought, even more ahsurdly, that 1 should get finto

journalism as an enabling oceupation, somerhing to support me un-

til 1 found my voice; a norion quickly put ro res[ by a stint as a

copy-boy on the, then as now, crazed and heggarly New York Post.

The result of all Chis searching, sampling, and staying loose (though,

as 1 noted, 1 did manage to ger married in che course of it all) was

that, when 1 carne ro graduare, 1 had no more sense of what 1 might

do to ger on in che world [han 1 had had when 1 entered. 1 was still

readjuscing.

But, as Antioch, fui oil as bent toward moral strenuousness and

che pracrical life, was neither a seminary nor a trade school, that

was hardly the point. What one was supposed co obtain there, and

what 1 certainly did obrain, was a feeling for what Hopkins called

"all things counter, original, spare, strange"-for rhe irregularity of

what happens, and rhe rarity of what lasts. This was, after all, "the

ignoble fifties," when, rhe story has it, the public square was empty,

everyone was absorbed in wirchhunts and selfish pursuits, and all

was gray upon gray, when it wasn't suburban technicolor. But that is

not how 1 remember tt. How 1 remenber it is as a time of Jamesian

intensity, a time when, given rhe sense that everything could disap-

pear in a thermonuclear momear, becoming someone upon whom

nothing was los[ was a tir more urgen[ matter ehan laying plans and

(a Chapter 1

arranging amhirions. One mighr be los[ or helpless, or racked with

onrological anxiery; bur one could tn,, at Ieasc, uot to he obtuse.

However thac may he, as che place was, alas, graduating me, it

was necessary ro depart and go elsewhere. The question was: wherc,

elsewhere? Wirh nothing substancial in sighr in the way of a job

(none of the people 1 had worked for wanted ever ro see me again),

1 thought ir expedient to rake shelter in graduare schuol, and my

wife, Hildred, anorher displaced English major unprepared for "rhe

real world," thought she mighr do so as well. But, once again, 1

didn't know how to go about accomplishing Chis, and as 1 had used

up my G.I. Bill, 1 was-we were-again without resources. So 1

replayed my '46 scenario and asked anorher unstandard academic, a

charismatic, disenchanted philosophy professor named George Gei-

ger, who had been Lou Gehrig's backup on che Columbia baseball

team and John Dewey's las[ graduare student, what 1 should do. He

said (also approximately): "Don't go into philosophy; it has fallen into

the hands of Thomists and technicians. You should try anthropology."

As Antioch had no courses in that subject, 1 had shown no

interesr in ir, and neither of us knew anything much about what it

consisted of, this was a somewhat startling proposal. Geiger, it tran-

spired, had been in contact with Clyde Kluckhohn, a professor of

anthropology at Harvard who was engaged with some colleagues in

developing an experimental , interdisciplinary department there

called "Social Relations," in which cultural anthropology was con-

joined not with archaeology and physical anthropology as was, and

unfortunately still is, normally the case, but with psychology and

sociology. That, he said, would be just che place for me.

Perhaps. 1 had no particular argument against ir . But what

clinched che matcer was that (chis is che part you may have some

trouble believing) che American Council of Learned Societies had

just insrituted an also experimental first-year graduare fellowship

program. The fellowships were to be awarded, one per institution,

by a selected faculty member at a liberal arts college to his or her

most promising student. Geiger (or "Mr. Geiger," as 1 still must call

him, though he died las[ year at ninety-four, teaching practically to

che end, beautifully unreconciled tu time or fashion) was rhe Coun-

fyassage nr>,i fÍccidi

cil's man ar Antioch. He rhought me, he said, no more unpromising

dan anyone else around, so if 1 wanred rhe fcllowship 1 could have

ir. As che stipend was unusually generous for rhe times, indeed, for

any times, it could support both myself and Hildred not just for one

year bur for two. So we applied ro SocRel (and, again, nowhere

clse), were admitted, and, ,after another strange sunrmer in San

Francisco, trying ro pick up pieces that would have been better left

dropped, wenr off ro Camhridge (Mass.) to become vocationalized.

1 Nave written eisewhere, in ,another exercise in this sort of

crafred candor and puhlic self-conceahnenr, about the enormous,

unfocuscd, almost millenarian exhilaration that attended rhe social

relations deparrment in tic r95os, and what we who were there

then were pleased to call its Project-che construction of "A Com-

mon Language for che Social Sciences." Bliss was it in that dawn;

bur rhe golden age was, as is che case wirh che asserrive and che

nonconforming, as well as wirh rh, exciting, in academia, all-too-

brief. Founded in 1946 as a garhering of fugitives from tradicional

deparmrents made resdess wirh routinism by che derangements of

rhe war, che social relations dep; rtmenr begun to lose its air by the

r96os, when rebellionsness rook less inrramural directions, and it

was dissolved, wirh apparently onl}, residual regrer and not much

ceremony, in 1970. But at full throrrle, ir was a wild and crazy ride,

if you cared for thar sori of rhing and could contrive not to fall offar che sharper rurns.

My stay in rhe deparrment was, in une sense, quite brief-two

hectic years in residence !earning rhe attitude; one, no less hectic,

un che staff, transmirring the artitude ("stand back, the Science is

starring!") to orhers. But in another sensc, as 1 was in and out of che

place for a decade, wriring a thesis, pursuing research projects,

smdying for orals ("How do dicy break horses arnong che Black-foot?"), it was quite long. Afrcr a ycar being broughr up to speed,

nor only in anthropology, bur in sociology, social psychology, clini-

cal psychology, and staristics, hy che Jominant figures in those fields

(Kluckhohn, Talcott Parsons, Gordon Allport, Henry Murray, Fred-

erick Mosteller, and Sanwcl Sroufter), another checking out whar

the other insurrecrionisrs ahrnrt rhe place were plotring (Jerome

Bruner, Alex Inkeles, David Schncider, ( ;corge Homans, Barrington

Moore, Eron Vogt, Pitrim Sorokin ... ), 1 found myself, along wirhmy wife, facing that most brutal and inescapable-then, anyway;things have slipped a bit since-fact of the anthropological life:fieldwork.

And once again, 1 caught che wave. An interdisciplinary re-

search team, handsomely funded by che Ford Foundation in the

open-handed way that foundation funded ambitious, off-beat en-

terprises in its heroic, early days before its namesake's namesake

discovered what was happening, was being organized under the

combined, if rather uncertain, auspices of the social relations de-

parrment, the even more newly formed, more obscurely funded, and

more mysteriously intended Center for International Studies at MIT

and Gadjah Mada, che revolutionary university serting up shop in a

sultan's palace in just-independent Indonesia-a grand consortium

of che visionary, che ominous, and che inchoate. The team was com-

posed of two psychologists, a historian, a sociologist, and five an-

thropologists, al¡ of them Harvard graduare students. They were to

go to central Java to carry out, in cooperation wirh a matching

group from Gadjah Mada, a long-terco intensive study of a small,

upcountry town. Hildred and 1, who had hardly begun to think

seriously, amid all out rushing to catch up on things, about where

we might do fieldwork, were asked one aftemoon by che team's fac-

ulty director (who, in che event, deserted rhe enrerprise, myste-

riously claiming illness) whether we would consider joining che

project-she, to study family lile, 1, to study religion. As improbably

and as casually as we had become anthropologists, and just about asinnocently, we became Indonesianisrs.

And so it goes: the rest is postscript, che working out of a hap-

penstance fase. Two and a half years living wirh a railroad laborer's

family in Java's volcano-ringed rice bowl, che Brantas River plain,

while che country raced, via free eeections, toward cold war convul-

sion and impassive killing fields. Return to Cambridge to write a

thesis on Javanese religious life under che direction of Cora DuBois,

an eminent Southeast Asianist who had been appoinred while 1 was

away as the first woman professor in che departmenr (and che sec-

ond, 1 think, in all of Harvard). Return to Indonesia, this time to

Bali and Sumatra and further political melodrama, culminating in

S C 1apterj hassage ciad J- cciderat ea 9

i, v"11 and civil rvar. A crur recuher.uing ar che netdy founded Cen-

ter htr Advanced Snidy in 111, Bch.ls'loral Sciences, wirh the líkess of

Thomas Kuhn, Mecer F,'nc,, R,,nutn Jakobson, W.V.O. Quine, Ed-

wanl Jhils, C?eorpe Alilhr, Ranal.i C;o.ue, Aleltord Spiro, David Ap-

ter, Fred Eggan, and Jo>cph Cireenberg. A year at Berkeley, as the

sixties ignired. Ten ar Chicago, as rhey blew up part of the time

teaching, parí of the time direcnnc che Commitree for che Compar-

.rnc^ Snidy ot New Natium, i nn ii disciplinare research project on

the posrcolonial ,tares of Asia in,] .Africa, parr of the rime off in an

aneient walled rocen in the 'ulorocean Middle Atlas, studying ba-

zaars, mosques, olive growing, and oral poetry and supervising stu-

dents' doctoral research. And finally (as 1 am seventy-rhree, and

unretired, ir surely musr be finally), nearly rhirry years at the Insti-

tute for Advanced Srudy in Princeton, struggling m keep an uncon-

ventional School of Social Science going in the face of-how shall

1 pus it'.-a cerraja institucional rinrorousness and self-conceit. And

all of tus, in the same fono and che same rhythm shas 1 have by

now, 1 am sure, wearied you wirh to the point uf skepticism: a mo-

menr of confusion tmd uucerrainty of direction, an unlooked for

opportuniry dropped carelessly at my feet, a change of place, task,

self, and intellectual ambiente. A charmed life, in a charmed time.

An errant career, mercurial, various, free, instructive, and flor all

that badly paid.The question is: Is such a life and such a career available now?

In che Age of Adjuncrs? When graduare students refer to them-

selves as "the pre-unemployed"? When few of rhem are willing to go

off for years in che hush and live on raro (or even che equivalen in

che Bronx or Bavaria), and che few who are willing find funding

scarce for such irrelevante? Has the bubble burst? The wave run

out?

lr is difficult ro be cerraja. The tnatter js sub judice, and aging

scholars, like aging parents and retired arhletes, tend to see the

present as che past devirali-cd, all loss and faithlessness and failing

away. But rhere does seem to be a fair amount of malaise about, a

cense shas things are tight and growing tighrer, an academic under-

class is forming, and it is probable nor altogether wise just now to

cake unnecessary chances, strjke new directions, or offend the

powers. Tenure is harder to ger (1 understand it mkes rwo hooks

now, ami God knows how mane lerrers, many of which 1 have, alas,

to write), and the process has hecome so extended as to exhaust the

energies and dampen the ambirions of rhose caught up in it. Teach-

ing loads are heavier; students are less well prepared; administrators,

imagining themselves CEOs, are absorbed wirh efficiency and the

bottom line. Scholarship is thinned and merchandized, and flung

finto hyperspace. As 1 say, 1 do nor know how much of chis js accu-

tate, or, to the degree that it is accurare, how much ir represents but

a passing condition, soon ro right itself; how much an inevitable

retrenchment from an abnotmal, unsustainable high, the smoothing

of a blip; how much a sea-change, an alteration , rich and srrange, in

the structure of chances and possibilities. All 1 know is that, up

until just a few years ago, 1 blithely, and perhaps a bit fatuously, used

to tell students and younger colleagues who asked how to get anead

in out odd occupation that they should stay loose, Cake risks, resist

the cleared path, avoid careerism , go their own way, and that if they

did so, if they kept at it and remained alert, optimistic, and loyal to

the truth, my experience was that they could ger away wirh morder,

could do as they wish, have a valuable life, and nonetheless prosper.

1 dor t do that any more.

G tanging the Subject

Everyone knows what cultural anthropology is about: ir's about cul-

ture. The trouble is that no one is quite sure what culture js. Not

only is it an essentially contested concept, like democracy, religion,

simplicity, or social justice; it is a multiply defined one, multiply

employed, ineradicably imprecise. It is fugitive, unsteady, encyclope-

dic, and normatively charged, and there are those, especially those

for whom only the really real is really real, who think it vacuous

altogether, or even dangerous, and would ban it from the serious

discourse of serious persons. An unlikely idea, it would seem, around

which to try to build a science. Almost as bad as master.

Coming loto anthropology from a humanities background, and

especially from one in literature and philosophy, 1 saw the concept

of culture Iooming immediately large, both as a way loto the myster-

1t ) - f=iiapter 1 Passoge and ncciderut - 1 1

ies uf che field and as i mearas for gerting oneself thoroughly los[ in

rhem. When 1 arrived nt Harvard, Kluckhohn was engaged, along

with che rhen dean of che discipline, recently retired from Berkeley,

Alfred Kroeber, in preparing whar rhey hoped would be a definitive,

message-from-hcadquarcers conrpilation of the various definitions of

°culture" appearing in che literature from Arnold and Tylor forward,

of which they found 171, sorrahle roto thirteen categories, and 1,

suppusedly at honre ansong elevared concepts, was conscripted co

read over whar they Fiad done md suggesr changes, clarifications,

reconsiderarions, and so co, 1 can'r say thac chis exercise led, for me

or for che profession generally, toa significan[ reduction of semantic

anxiety, or ro a decline in che hirthrate of new definitions; rather

che upposite, in fact. But ir did plunge me, brutally and without

muela in che way of guille ur warning, roto che heatt of whar 1 would

later ¡caro co call my field'5 prohl ematic.

The vicissitudes oí "culture" (the mor, not che chose-there is

no chose), che Fardes nver iIs mc:ming, irs use, and irs explanatory

worth, were in facr onlp heginning. In irs ups and downs, irs drift

toward and away from cl,uicv and popularity over the next half-

cenniry, can be seco brrh anrhropolegy's lumbering, arrhythmic une

of march and my own. By che 195os, che eloquence, energy, breadth

uf interesr, and sheer hrilliancc of such wrirers as Kroeber and

Kluckhohn, Ruth Benedict, Robert Redfeld, Ralph Linton, Geof-

frey Gorer, Eranz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Edward Sapir, and,

mosr specmcularly, Murgaret Mead-who was everywhere, in che

press, ar lecterns, before congressional committees, heading projects,

founding commirrees, launching crusades, advising philanthropists,

guiding che perplexed, md, nor leasr, pointing out to her colleagues

wherein rhey were mistaken-made die anthropological idea of cul-

ture ar once available to, well, che culture, and so diffuse and all-

embracing as to seem likc an ail-seasons explanation for anything

human beings ntight conrrive co do, imagine, say, be, or believe.

Everyone knew char rhe Kwakiutl were megalomanic, che Dobu

paranoid, che Zuni poised, rhe Germons auchoritarian, che Russians

violent, che Americans practical nnd optimistic, che Samoans laid-

back, che Navaho prudencial, che Tepotzlanos either unshakably

1 a _ ('rapte, I

unified or hopelessly divided (rhere were two anthropologists who

studied rhem, one che student of che other), and che lapanese

shame-driven; and everyone knew they were that way because their

culture (each one had one, and none had more [han one) maderhem so. We were condemned, it seemed, to working with a logic

and a language in which concept, cause, form, and outcome had chesame name.

1 took it as my task, rhen-though in fact no one actually as-

signed it to me, and 1 am not sure to whar degree it was a conscious

decision-to cut che idea of culture down ro size, ro tum it into a

less expansive affair. (1 was, admittedly, hardly alone in chis ambi-

tion. Discontent with haze and handwaving was endemic in my

generation .) lt seemed urgen[, it still seems urgenc, to make "cul-

ture" finto a delimited notion, one with a determínate application, a

definite sense, and a specified use-che at leas[ somewhat focused

subject of ara at leas[ somewhat focused science.

This proved hard te do. Leaving aside che question of whar ir

Cakes to count as a science, and whether anthropology has any hope

of ever qualifying as one, a question thar has always seemed facci-

tious to me-cal] it a study if it pleases you, a pursuit, an inquiry-

che intellectual materials necessary to such an effort were simply

not available or, if available, unrecognized as such. That che effortwas malle, again not just by myself, but by a wide range of quite

differently minded, chal is, differently dissatisfied, people, and that

it had a certain degree of success, is a sign not only that somereceived ideas of "culture"-rhat it is learned behavior, that it issuperorganic , that it shapes out lives as a cake-mold shapes a cakeor gravity our movements , that it evolves as HegePs absolute

evolves, under che direction of ingenerate laws toward a perfected

integrity-had begun to lose their force and persuasion . Ir is also asign rhat an abundante of new, more effective varieties of whar

Coleridge called speculative instruments were coming to hand. It

tumed out to be, almost entirely, tools made elsewhere, in philoso-

phy, linguistics, semiotics, history, psychology, sociology, and the

cognitive sciences, as well as ro sonre degree in biology and litera-

ture, that enabled anthropologists, as time went on, to produce less

'assage and Mccident -n 1 3

panoptical, and lcss inental, iccount, of culture and its workings.

Wc needed, it seca cd, more ticm ene idea, or a hundred and sev-

entV-oree s crsions of rhe >ame idea.

It ws, in anv case, „irh such in accumulation of prolcptic wor-

rics and semi-notion drat 1 Jeparie 1, aher less [han a year of prepa-

ration, and nnist of thar linguistic, ro Java in 1952, to locate and

describe, perhaps cven n, o fu as ro explaín, something called

gion" in a remete 3M I natal xuhJotrict five hundred miles south-

said,c.ur of Jakarta.:Ag1 hace retailed elsewhere the pracrical

difficulties involved in rhis, which were enormous (1 danm near

died, for one thing), bur largely overcome. The importan[ point, so

fin- as the development of my take en things is concerned, is that

field rescarch, far from sorring things out, scrambled them further.

What in a Harvard classroom had been a methodological dilemma,

a conundrum to puzzle over, was, in a bend-in-the-road Javanese

town, trcmbling in rhe midst of convulsive change, an immediate

predicarnent, a world ro engage. Perplexing as it was, "Life Among

the Javans" was rather more rhan a riddle, and it took rather more

[han categories and definitions, and rather more also than classroom

cleverness and a way with words, to find enes way around in it.

What made the "Modjokuto Project," as we decided to call it in

rhe usual, unavailing efforr to disguise identities ("Modjokuto'

mean "Middletown," a conceit 1 was dubious of then and Nave

grown no fonder of since), particulady disruptive of accepted phras-

ings and standard procedures was that it was, if not the first, surely

une of che earliest and mosr self-conscious efforts on rhe part of

anthropologists to take on nor a tribal group, an island settlement, a

disappeared society, a relic people, nor even a set-off, bounded small

community of herders or peasants, but a whole, ancient and in-

homogeneous, urbanized, literato, and politically active sociery-a

civilization, no less-and te do so not in some reconstructed,

smoothed-out "erhnographical present" in which everything could

be fitred to everything else in jusr-so timelessness, bur in all its

ragged presente and historicity. A folly perhaps; but if so, it is one

rhat has been succeeded by a stream of others that has rendered a

vision of culture designed for rhe (supposedly) seclusive Hopi, pri-

mordial Aborigines, or casrmvay Pygmics futile and obsolete. What-

ever Java was, or Indonesia, or Modjokuro, or later, whcn 1 got

these, Morocco, it wasn't "a totaliry oí bchavior parterres ... lodged

in ]a] group;" to quite one of [hose lapidary definitions from the

Kroeber-Kluckhohn volume.

The years in Modjokuro, borh then and later as 1 kept retum-

ing, struggling te keep up with things, rumed out not to consist of

locating bits of Javanese culture deemed "religious," marking rhem

off from other bits called, no more helpfully, "secular," and subject-

ing che whole tu functional analysis: "Rcligion" holds socicty to-

gether, sustains values, maintains morale, keeps public conduct in

order, mystifies power, rationalizes inequality, justifies unjust deserts,

and so on-rhe reigning paradigm, then and since. It turned out to

be a matter of gaining a degree of familiarity (orle never gets more

than that) with the symbolic contrivances by means of which indi-

viduals imagined themselves as persons, as actors, sufferers, knowers,

judges, as, to introduce the exposing phrase, participants in a form

of life. It was these contrivances, carriers of meaning and bestowers

of significante (communal feasts, shadowplays, Friday prayers, mar-

riage closings, political rallies, mystical disciplines, popular dramas,

court dances, exorcisms, Ramadan, rice plantings, burials, folk tales,

inheritance laws), that enabled che imaginings and acrualized them,

that rendered them public, discussable, and, most consequentially,

susceptible of being critiqued and fought over, on occasion revised.

What had begun as a survey of (this has to be in quores) "the role

of ritual and belief in society," a sort of comparativo mechanics,

changed as the plot thickened and 1 was caught up in ir, into a

study of a particular instante of meaning-making and the complex-

ities that attended it.

There is no need to go further here with the substance of eitherthe study or the experience. 1 wrote a seven-hundred-page thesis(Professor DuBois was appalled), squashed down to a foer-hundred-page book, retailing the outcome. The point is the lessons, and thelessons were:

1. Anthropology, at least of the sort 1 profess and practico, in-

volves a seriously divided life. The skills needed in che class-

room or at the desk and those needed in the field are quite

1-{ C6apter 1 Jasage and jq cdd¿lit = 15

different. Success in che onc serting_ does nos insure success inrhe other. And rice versa.

2. The study of other peoples' cultures (and of one's own as

well, bus shas brin gs up other issues) involves discovering who

rhey rhink rhey are, whm rhey rhink rhey are doing, and to

what end rhey rhink rhey are doing it, something a good real

less straightfonvard rhan the ordinary canon of Notes and

Queries ethnography, or for rhar master che glossy impression-

isrn of pop art "cultural studies," would suggest.

3. To discover who people rhink rhey are, what rhey rhink

rhey are doing, and to what end rhey rhink rhey are doing it,

it is necessary ro gain a working familiariry with the trames of

meaning wirhin which rhey enacr therr lives. This does nos in-

volve feeling anyonc clse's feclings, or thinking anyone else's

rhoughts, simple impossihiliries. Nor does it involve going na-

rive, an impractical idea, inevirably bogas. Ir involves leaming

how, as a heing from elsewhere with a world of one's own, tolive with thcm.

Again, che resr is postscripc Over che nexo forry years, or nearly

so, 1 spent more rhan ten in che tield, developing and specifying chis

approach to che study ot eulrore, and che other thirty (1 have nos

done very much teaclring, at least since 1 moved to che Institute)

attempting ti) communicure in ch,umss in princ.

Thcre is, in any caw, ipparently something to the idea of Zeit-

geisc, or al leasr to chut oí mental conragion. One thinks one is set-

ting hravely off in an uni^recedented direction and then looks up to

fiad all sorts of people cine has never even heard of headed che same

way. The linguistic tuco, che henneneutical turn, che cognitive rev-

olution, che afrershocks of ncc Wittgenstein and Heidegger earth-

quakes, nce constructivism of Thomas Kuhn and Nelson Goodman,

Benjamin, Foucault, Gofbuan, Lévi-Srrauss, Suzanne Langer, Ken-

nerh Burke, development, in grammar, semantics, and che theory of

narrative, and latrerly in ncural napping and che somaticization of

emotion all suddenly mide a contera with meaning-making an ac-

cepcable preoccupation ter a scholar ro have. These various depar-

nnes anca novelties dicl nos, )t e„urce, altogether comporr, to por it

mildly; nor have they proved of equal usefulness. But they provided

the ambiente, and, again , the speculative insemments, to make che

existente of someone who saw human beings as, quoting myself

paraphrasing Max Weber, "suspended in webs of meaning they

themselves have spun" a good deal easier. For all my determination

to go my own way, and my conviction that 1 had, 1 was, all of a

sudden, an odd man in.

Afrer Java there was Bali, where 1 tried to show that kinship,

village form, che eraditional state, calendars, law, and, most infa-

mously, the cockfight could be read as texts, or, to quiet the literal-

minded, "text-analogues"-enacted statements of, in another ex-

posing phrase, particular ways of being in che world. Then there was

Morocco and a similar approach ro marabouts, city design, social

identity, monarchy, and the arabesque exchanges of che cycling

market. At Chicago, where 1 had by then begun to teach and agi-

tare, a more general movement, stumbling and far from unified, in

these directions got underway and started tú spread. Some, both

there and elsewhere, called Chis development, at once theoretical

and methodological, "symbolic anthropology." But 1, regarding che

whole thing as an essentially hermeneutic enterprise , a bringing to

light and definition, nos a metaphrase or a decoding, and uncom-

fortable with che mysterian, cabalistic overtones of "symbol," pre-

ferred "interprerive anthropology." In any case, "symbolic" or "inter-

pretive" (some even preferred "semiotic"), a budget of terms, some

mine, some other people's, some reworked from earlier uses, beganto emerge, around which a revised conception of what 1, at least,

still called "culture" could be built "thick description," "model-of/

model-for," "sign system," "episremé," "echos," "paradigm," " criteria,"

"horizon," "trame," "world," "language games," "interpretant," "sinn-

zusamenhang," "trope," "sjuzer," "experience-near," "illocutionary,"

"discursive formation," "defamiliarization," "competente/perfor-

mance," "fictió," "family resemblance," "heteroglossia," and, of course,

in several of its innumerable, permutable senses, "structure." The sum

toward meaning, however denominated and however expressed,

changed both ehe subject pursued and the subject pursuing it.

Not chas all Chis happened without che usual quota of fear andloathing. Afrer che tucos, there carne che wars: che culture wars, chescience wars, che value wars, che history wars, che gender wars, che

Iti (h„pier 1 1Passage and )fccident 1 7

svurs „f rhe paleo, ,nJ ihe ,,sr,es. Except when driven beyond dis-

tracti,m, or Illail,ci,d seitis sim 1 l,,ck ihc wir to eonmiit, 1, myself,

am shs o( polemie: 1 Ictce (he anmh snitt to tiloso who Lewis

h,unic1 so tnsely .lismi.a 1 herw ns more inrerested in rhemsehes

tiran thcir work. Pat a, t he i,mhct.ittire roce .md rhetoric wirh it, 1

fsund mvsclt lit the mi,l.lle „t htosclinc, debates, ofren enough rhe

hemu=e,l toco, ot diem k sii,1 1 s.» ii over iich excired questions

a; sshsrher rhe real i, rnliv m.,l .m,1 rhe rroe retily tuve. Is knowledge

po lisie Is [¡le 1,110,1 a mauer ut opinlon., Ohjeenvity asham? Disin-

rere^tcdness had faith', 1 ese ription domination? Is ir power, pelf, atad

polirical agendas al' une wai dosvn' Berween oid debenrure holders,

crving that rhe sky is falling because relativists have taken factuality

awuy, and advanced penonaliries, eiurtering thelandscape with slo-

gans, stlvations, and ,mango devices, as well as a great deal of unre-

quired writing, rhesc last ye.us in tilo human sciences have been, to

say die leasr, tal[ of produerism values. Wharever is happening to rhe

American mind, it cerrainly isn't elosing.

Is it, then, Ilving apart' In irs anthropological precincts there

seem to he, at rhe momenr, a curious iot of people who think so.

On all sides one kears lamenrs and lamentations about rhe lost

unity of rhe tield, abour insufficienr respect for rhe elders of rhe

Cribe, abour the lack of an agreed agenda, a disrinct identiry, and a

common purpose, abour whar fashion and controversy are doing to

mannerly discourse. For my parí, 1 can only say, realizing that 1 am

somerimes held responsible-rhe vogue word is "complicit"-for

rhe fact borh that rhings have gone much roo far and that they

havcn'r gone nearly far enour+,h, that 1 remain calm and unfazed; not

so much ahoye rhe Paule, as heside it, skeptical of irs very assump-

rions. The unicy, pile identiry, and rhe agreemenr were never there

in thc fiar place, and rhe idea pilar they were is rhe kind of fotk

belief ro which anthropologists, of all people, ought to be resistant.

And as for flor going lar enough, rebelliousness is an overpraised

virtuc; ir is importanr ro say somerhing and not just rhreaten to say

somerhing, and there are horror rhings to do with even a defective

inhcritance rhan trash ir.

So where am 1 now, as rhe millennimn approaches me, scythe in

hand? Wcll, 1 ani not going, hack into rhe ficid anymore, at least flor

tor extended stays. 1 spent mv sixtieds birrhday crouched over a slir-

trench lamine in "Modjokuto° (well, flor rhe rchole day, Por you

know whar 1 tncan), wondering whar in hell 1 was doing tliere ar m\

ge, with my bowels. 1 enjovcd helslwork immenscly (yes, i know,

not al¡ rhe rime), and pile experience of it did more to nourish my

,Jul, and indeed to creare ir, than rhe academy ever did. Bur when

ir's over, ir's over. 1 keep wriring; 1'\e Len ar it roo long ro stop,

and anyway 1 llave a couple of rhings 1 still haven'r sud. As for

anthropolugy, when 1 look ar whar at leasr some of rhe best among

rhe oncoming generatiofls are doing or wanr ro do, in tire face of al¡

rhe difficulties they face in doing ir and rhe ideological static that

surrounds almost all adventurous scholarship in the humanities atad

social sciences these days, 1 am, to choose my words carefully, san-

guine enough of mínd. As long as someone struggles somewhere, as

rhe barde cry from my own Wobbly youth had it, no voice is wholly

lost. There is a story abour Samuel Beckett that captures my mood

as 1 close out an improbable career. Beckett was walking with a

friend across rhe lawn of Trinity College, Dublin, one warm and

sunny April morning. The friend said, ah, isn't it now a fine and

glorious day, to which Beckett readily assented; it was, indeed, a fine

and glorious day. "A day like this," rhe friend wenton, "makes you

glad you were ever born." And Beckett said: "Oh, 1 wouldn't go so

far as that."

Waiting Time

In his direct and plainspoken contribution to Chis series of fablings

and auto-obituaries a couple of years ago, so different in tone and

aspiration to my own, rhe cliometrical economic historian, Robert

Fogel, concludes by saying that he is working these days on "rhe

possibility of creating life-cycle intergenerational data sets" that will

permit him and his research team ro "study rhe impact of socio-

economic and biomedical stress early in life on the rafe of onset of

chronic disease, on the capaciry to work at middle and late ages,

and on `wairing time' until death." (He is, 1 hear from other sources,

now weighing rat placentas toward that end.) 1 am not certain-

uncharacterisrically, Professor Fogel neglects to give his cutting

rl (1iiltrit,,. / ?0ussage artd fcddent

points-whether 1 still qualify for rhe 'late ages" or nos. But in any

case, the 'waiting time" category ("Gogo: 1 can't go on like Chis.

Didi: Thar's what yeti think.") and the onset of disabling diseases-

Felix Randall, the farrier's, "fatal Tour disorders / fleshed there, all

contended"-cannor he very lar away; and as eirher White te-

marked to Thurber or Thurher remarked to White, the claw of theold seapuss gens us all ni tire crid.

1 am, as 1 imagine you can icll from what 1've heen saying, and

the speed ar which 1 have heen saying it, nos terribly good at wait-

ing, and 1 will prohahly rum out nos to handle it at all well. As my

fricnds and co-conspirators age and depart whatSrevens called"this

vast inelegance," and 1, myself, stiffen and grow uncited, 1 shall

surely he tempted Lo inrervene and set things right yes once more,

But rhat, douhtless, will preve unavailing, and quite possibly comic.

Nothing so ¡11-hefits a sdrolarly lile as rhe struggle nos to leave it,

and-Frost, this time, nor Hupkins-"no metnory of having starred /

can keep rhe end from being hani.' But for the moment, 1 am pleased

to have heen given the chance ro contrive my own fable and plead my

own case before the necrologisrs ger arme. No one should take what 1

have heen doing here as anyrhin, more than that.

20 - (' hnpter 1

Thinking as a Morral fict: &thical

Il imensions o f .inthropological

Fieldwolrh in the ?ew States

When 1 try to sum up what, ahoye all else, 1 have learned from

grappling with the sprawling prolixities of John Dewey's work, what

1 come up with is the succinct and chilling doctrine that thought is

conduct and is to be morally judged as such. It is not the notion

that thinking is a serious master that seems to be distinctive of this

last of the New England philosophers; al¡ intellecruals regard mental

productions with some esteem. lt is rhe argument that rhe reason

thinking is serious is that ir is a social act, and that one is therefore

responsible for it as for any other social act. Perhaps even more so,

for, in the long run, it is the most consequential of social acts.

In short, Dewey brings thinking out into the public world where

ethical judgment can get at it. To some, Chis seems to debase it

terribly, to sum it into a thing, a weapon, a possession or something

equally ordinary. Revolutionary moralists-for that, finally, amid all

his awarkwardness of expression, is what Dewey was-are never

much liked, particularly by those, in this case practitioners of the

intellectual trades, whom they so severely call to account. They are

almost always attacked, as he has been, as undermining established

practices and corrupting rhe young. Yet, for better or worse, they

ussually have their effect: rhe practices, if nos undermined, are at

21

lean hukcn: the c,n(h, it 11, 1 y„noip.ted, are it leas[ disquieted.

Broce 1)etcev, it has been inurh lacre ditnculr te reganl thinking a.s

att ahaenti,m from .ietmn, ti ti-in, a, an alternative m eonnnit-

matr, ini che intellerre,l Lie .1> .^ luid >f secular monasticism,

excuscd tiom aecounaibilüc l' its sensitivity co cite Good.

Nowhure has dais 1)c, i) tire ti u, [han in the social sciences. As

ihcse <eicice, h.tve dcv cl,thr 1 tcclinically, the Ltucstion oi thcir

m„rai status has hec:,mc ine ,,isingl-,- hres.sing. Yer, from Deweyian

p„int „t vicia mosr et cite J,h.nes einuihated hy chis concern have

been somewhat lacking in p,iint, for they rarely have been hased on

any cireumstantial examinar ion of whar such research is asa form of

conduct. Humanisrs cry that rhe social scientists are barbarizing the

world and grabbing off al¡ tire grants, social scientists that they are

saving it-or anyway are going co shortly, if only their grants are

increased. But rhe moral .lualirv of rhe experience of working social

scientists, che ethical lile they lead while pursuing their inquines, is

virtually never dismssed except in rhe mosr general terms. This

should he a searching inN esri ation uf a central aspect of modem

consciousness. Unfortunately, ir has descended roto an exchange of

familiar opinions between cultural g.tme wardens, like Jacques Bar-

zun, and scientistic fundamentalists, like B. E Skinner, concerning

the terrible or wonderful effects the systematic study of human life

has had, is having, or is going to hace sooner [han we think.

Yet, the impacr of the social sciences upon the character of out

lives will finally be detennined more by what sort of moral experi-

ence they turn out tu embody than H their merely technical effects

or by how much money thev are permitted to spend. As thought is

conduct, the results of thought inevirably reflect the quality of the

kind of human situation in which they were obtained. The methods

and theories of social science are not being produced by computers

bur by raen and women; and, for che mosr part, by men and women

operaring nor in laborarories ¡,lit in the lame social world to which

pite methods apply and tira theories pertain. It ts this which gives

the whole enterprise la special character. Most social scientific re-

search invoives direct, intimare, and more or less disturbing en-

counters widi the immediate details of contemporary lile, encoun-

n,,,,'i,.r II

ters of a sort which can hardly hele bar atiecr the sensihilitie, rf elle

persons who practice it. And, as any discipline is whar cite persons

tvho practice it make it, [hese sensihihties hecome as enilredded in

la constitution as do those of in age in its culture An assessment of

ti-te moral implieations of the scientific study of human lile which is

going ro consist of more rhan elegant sneers or mindless celebra-

tions must begin with an inspectinn of social scientific research as a

eariery of moral experience.

Tú propose, alter such a preamble, my own experience as a ht

suhject for review may seem to suggest a certain pretentiousness.

Certainly che risk of attitudinizing is not to be lightly dismissed.

Discussing one's moral perceptions in public is always an invitation

to cant and, what is worse, to entertain the conception that there is

something especially noble about having been refined enough sim-

ply to have had them. Even the confirmed self-hacer prides himself,

as Nietzsche once pointed out, on his moral sensitivity in discerning

so acutely whar a wretch he is.Yet, if 1 do propose to discuss here a few of che ethical dimen-

sions of my own research experience, it is not because 1 consider

them unique or special. Rather, 1 suspect them of being common to

the point of universality among those engaged in similar work, and

therefore representative of something more than themselves or my-

self. Even more important, as my work has had to do with the New

States of Asia and Africa (or, more precisely, with two of them,

Indonesia and Morocco), and with the general problem of the mod-

emization of tradicional societies, it is perhaps particularly apposite

to an assessment of social research as a form of conduce and the

implications to be drawn for social science as a moral force. What-

ever else one may say of such inquiry, one can hardly clama that it is

focused un trivial issues or abstracted from human concerns.

It is not, of course, the only sort of work social scientists are

doing, nor even che only sort anthropologists are doing. Other in-

sights would be derived, other lessons drawn, from inspecting other

sorts; and a general evaluation of the impacr of social science ora out

culture will have to take account of them all. lt is to contribute

toward putting the debate over the moral status of social science on

lliit,hin,; as u 10tacil flrt °- 23

finner ground, and flor ro propose my own experiences or my own

¡inc of work as canonical, rhat rhe following scattered and neces-

sarily somewhat person,d reflecrion.s are directed

One of rhe more disquicting conclusions to which thinking about

die new states and their problems has led me is that such thinking

is racher more effecrive in exposing the problems rhan it is in un-

covering solutions for thcm. There is a diagnostic and a remedial

sido to our scientific concern with rhese societies, and the diagnos-

tic seems, in the vete namre of rhe case, to proceed infinicely faster

rhan rhe remedial. Thcrefore, one result uf very extended, very

rhorough, periods of careto) rescarch is usually a much keener real-

ization rhat rhe new srares are indced in something of a fix. The

emotion chis sor[ of rew,ud for patient labors produces is rather like

chal 1 imagine Charlie Brown to feel when, in one "Peanuts" strip,

Lucy says to him: "Yen know whar rhe rrouble with you is Charlie

Brown? The rrouble with you is you're you." Afrer a panel of word-

less appreciarion of rhe cogenev of chis observation, Charlie asks:

"Well, whatever can i do ahour rhad" and Lucy replies: "1 don't giveadvice. 1 just point out rhe rocas of the problem."

The roots of the problem in rhe new states are rather deep, and

social research ofren serves little more than to demonstrare just how

deep they are. When it comes ro giving advice, what has been dis-

covered usually seems to be more useful in pointing out ways in

which rhe present unbearable siruarion could be worsened (and

probably will be) rather than vvays in which it might be amelio-

rated. Francis Bacon's aphorism seems ro me distinctly less axiom-

atic by the day: Knowledge-at leasr the sort of knowledge 1 have

been able to dtg up-docs nor ahvays come to very much in theway of power.

All Chis is nor a mete attack of sentimental pessimism on my

parr; ir is a srubbornk objective aspect of social research in the new

stares. In evidence of chis asserrion, let me discuss for a moment a

problem which is fundamental, not only in Indonesia and Morocco,

2 -4 - CI:al,tr: 11

where I have encountered ir, but in virtually all ehe new states:agrarian reforin.

This problem appears in quite different, even conrrasting, forros

in Indonesia and Morocco, for reasons which are at once ecological,

economic, historical, and cultural. But, in either place, to analyze it

sysrematically is not only to appreciate for the first time just how

great a problem it really is, bur to uncover rhe facrors which make it

so recalcitran[; and these factors tum out to be very similar in ehe

two places. In particular, there is in both situations a radical short-

run incompatibiliry between the two economic goals which to-

gether comprise what agrarian reform in rhe long run consists of:

technological progress and improved social welfare. Less abstractly,

a radical mercase in agricultura) production and a significan[ reduc-

tion of rural un- (or under-) employment seem for the moment tobe directly contradictory ambitions.

In Indonesia, and particularly in its Javanese heartland where

(ca. ig6o) che population densities run up to over 1,500 per square

mile, chis contradiction expresses itself in terms of an extraordi-

narily labor-intensive, bur, on rhe whole, highly productive mode of

exploitation. The countless third- and quarter-acre rice terraces

which blanket Java, Bali, and certain regions of Sumatra and rhe

Celebes are worked almost as rhough rhey were gardens-or, per-

haps more exactly, greenhouse tardes. Virtually everything is done

by hand. Very simple (and very ingenious) tools are used. Hordes of

laborers drawn from the enormous rural population work with ex-treme tare and thoroughness.

Whether you want to cal) rhese workers "underemployed" or

not depends on definirions. Cerrainly, most of them make some

contribution to rhe high per acre ourput; with equal certainty, rhey

would be better employed elsewhere if there were an elsewhere to

employ thern and if there were mechanized means at hand to ac-

complish their agricultural tasks. There are nor, however. And it is

here that ehe rub comes: technological progress of any serious scope

(i.e., aside from marginal changes like increased fertilizing and im-

proved seed selection) means rhe massive displacement of rural la-

bor, and chis is unthinkable under present conditions. As a Dutch

TVtinhing as a oral ict n a 25

ea^nomist once rem,tk,d. r\ t1) modem techrn^logy the agricultural

work of JaNa coald l,e dn nc 'VI th 1c pcreen[ of the p resent work

toree, bar thdr woukl ICOVU 1110 ,uller 9o percent warning.

.Ar ti ir, por ir, somame v1 hn rumembea vehat hecame of Mal-

thus dite forebodin^^ nmccmúr,q Europc always appears to say, "In,

dusrriali_arion'" Bar h^1w i, indusrri.ili-.uion to be financed in a

ctswirrv lrhere 1he hu,w pe *.hits irself consueles rhe averwhelming

hulk of 1chu, it pnLduecs„ind 1ch,u expous exisr largely go roward

securing rhe suhslstenee u( rhe urb.u, maSsed.' And Irow, even if ir

can be financed, can it possihlo he of such a scope (and in [hese

days oí automarlon, of such a sort) to absorb more rhan a minute

fraction uf the labor a trae agrictdtural revolution in Java would

release?

In essence, faced with a choice hetween maintaining employ-

ntenr and increasing prodacrion per worker, rhe Javanese peasant

"chooses" (an abssurdly volunraristic word to use in Chis context) to

maintain employmenr regardless of rhe leve¡ of welfare. In fact, he

has heen making rhar "choice" ar r irtually every juncture for at

leasr a hundred vears. Ir is hand ro seo whar elsc he could Nave done

under rhe circumstances or whar elsc he can do now.

Admitredly, rhe situation is nor as unrelievedly black as all Chis.

1 simplify for argumenr and emphasis. There are some things (im-

proved educacional levels, awakened popular aspiration, new seeds)

to be enrered en rhe other sirle of rhe ledger. But it is hardly cheery.

There is tire close connecrion hetween rhe labor-absorbing technol-

ogy and rhe intricare village social system. There is rhe thorough

inrerlocking of rhe proceses ot land parcelizarion, multiple crop-

ping, and share renancy which nrakcs each of them rhar much more

difficult to reverse. There is the even-increasing emphasis on subsis-

tenee crups and rhe consequent decline of animal husbandry and

mixed farming. Wherever you tara, tire arteries are hardened.

The Moroccan situation presenrs on rhe surface a quite different

picture, kit nor, when closely examined, a very much brighrer one.

Though che population is yrol^ing with alarming rapidity, irs sheet

bulk is flor yet the towering problem it is in Indonesia. Rather [han

a highly labor-inrensive, but highly productive, exploimtion pat-

tern, [hete is a split hcnreen largo-cale (ofien very largo-scale-

2,500 acres and more) modern farmers and ven small-scale four-

and five-acre naditional dirt farmers. The tirst are highly mecha-

nized and, for rhe most parí, quite producrive. The second flor only

are nor mechanizcd, but rhe leve¡ of rheir tradirional rechnology is,

unlike rhar of Java, very low. Since thev are working marginal Lands

in whar is at best (again in contrast to Java) an extremely difficult

ecological setting, they are signally unproductive. A sratistical epit-

ome, oven if it is only ipl,roximire, eommunica tes rhe situaron

wirh sufficient bmmlity: ahout one-hall of i percent of rhe rural

population-some 5,000 large farmers-cultivares (1965) about 7

percent of tire country's land, connibutes about 15 percent of irs

total agricultural product, and accounts for about 6o percent of irs

agricultural (30 percent of total) export income.

The image is thus classic and clear. And so is rhe dilemma it

presents. On the one hand, a conrinuation of large-scale, well-to-do

farmers alongside impoverished, small-scale ones is, over and aboye

irs social injustice, flor one that is likely ro endure very long in the

postcolonial world, and indeed has now already begun to be altered.

On the other, a disappearance of such farmers and rheir replace-

ment by small peasants rhreatens, at least initially and perhaps for a

very long time, a fall in agricultural output and foreign exchange

eamings which a country approaching a demographic crisis at full

gallop and plagued by the usual balance-of-payments problems can-

not very well regard with equanimity.

As in a situation like the Indonesian, the first response is to

think of industrialization, so in a situation of this sor[ it is to think

of ¡and reform. But though land reform can remove rhe large

farmers, it cannot in irself make good modem farmers out of poor

tradirional ones. In fact, as it tends, given popular pressures, to in-

volve extensive parcelization and consequent decapitalization of rhe

large farms, it amounts tu a step in the Indonesian direcrion of

choosing higher levels of rural employment over economic rational-

ization. This sor[ of "choice" is, for all irs welfare artractions, a most

dubious one, given a physical setting where advanced techniques

are necessary nor just tú preven[ rhe decline of outpur but to avoid

a progressive deterioration of rhe environmenr to levels for all in-

tents and purposes irreversible.

?b -- (`luyder II i 'Thiaakiuy as a Illoral Hct - 27

Bur so, equally, is in reverse dubious: rhe maintenance of an

enclave of prosperous farmers (or as is now increasingly che case,

highly mechanized, elite-ron sedte fanns) in rhe midst of an expand-

ing mass of improverished rural proletarians. In Indonesia, the

Marxisrs have ¡leen somewhat hard pus to locate their familiar class

enemies so as to pin rhe Llano fbr peasant poverty on them; kulaks

are in short supply. Bur in Murocco, their arguments have more

than a surface plausibility. The Moroccan situation is revolutionary

enough. The only problem is rh.a ir is difficulr to see how rhe revo-

lution could load to anvthing hut declining levels of living and a

wholesale morrgaging of futuro possibilities to some quite short-run,

and quite marginal, galas for a vnall percentage of che present rural

populadon. The caleularion is, admittedly, extremely rough, bus if,

as has heen estimated, 6o percenr of the rural population owns no

)and and the large farmers own ,tbout two million acres, then redis-

tributing their Lands in, san, ten- jure parcels would reduce che prop-

enviess popularion by about 3 percenr-che annual rate of demo-graphic mercase.

Again, che situtation is actu,tlly neither so thoroughly bleak nor

so simple. A more balanced discussion would have to mention che

serious efforts being tnade co raise rhe rechnological leve) of peasant

agriucilture, che relatively high degree of realism of Moroccan gov-

ernmenml policies, and su forth. But tny point here is merely that,

in Morocco as in Indonesia, rhe task of aligning the need for main-

taining and increasing q gricultaral production and the need for

mainraining and increasing agricultura) employment is an extraordi-

narily difficulr one. The rwin giras of genuine agrarian reform-

technological progress and improved social welfare-pull very

strongly againsr one another; and the more deeply one goes roto the

problem, the more apparent chis unpleasant fact becomes.

But my intent here is flor to preach despair, a despair I do flor

in fact feel, hut to suggest somcthing of whar che moral situation

emhodied in che son of work 1 Jo is like. The imbalance between

an ability to fin,] out whar rhe trouble is, or at ¡casi something of

whar che trouble is, and an abiliry to find out whar might he done

to alleviate it is nor confined, in new state research, to the arca of

agrarian reform; it is pervasive. In education, one comes up against

che clash between the need to maintain "standards" and the need to

expand opportunities; in politics, against the clash between the

need for racional leadership and effective organization and che need

to involve the masses in the governmental process and to protect

individual liberty; in religion, against the clash between the need to

prevent spiritual exhaustion and che need to avoid the petrification

of obsolete actitudes. And so on. Like che problem of aligning pro-

duction and employment, these dilemmas are hardly unique to the

new states. But they are, in general, graver, more pressing, and less

tractable there. To continue rhe medical image, che sort of moral

atmosphere in which sorneone occupationally committed ro think-

ing about the new states finds himself often seems to me not en-

tirely incomparable to thar of the cancer surgeon who spends most

of his efforr delicately exposing severe pathologies he is not equippedto do anyrhing about.

All this is, however, on a rather impersonal, merely professional

level; and one meets it, more or less well, by conjuring up rhe usual

vocacional stoicism. However ineffective a scientific approach to so-cial problems may be, it is more effective rhan che available alterna-

tives: cultivating one's garden, thrashing about wildly in the dark, or

lighting candles to the Madonna. But there is another moral pecu-

liarity of fieldwork experience in che new states which is rather

more difficult to neutralize because, so much more personal, it

strikes rather closer to home. It is difficult to formulare it very well

for someone who has non experienced it, or even, for that master,

for oneself. 1 shall tryto communicare it in terms of a notion of a

special sort of irony-"anrhropological irony."

Irony rests, of course, on a perception of the way in which real-

ity derides merely human views of it, reduces grand actitudes and

large hopes to self-mockery. The common forms of it are familiar

enough. In dramatic irony, deflation results from the contrast be-

tween what the character perceives the situation to be and what the

audience knows it to be; in historical irony, from che inconsistency

between the intentions of sovereign personages and the natural out-

hapir, /f Thiaking as a •Wloral Act O 29

C')[1111 el ncritui., prucec,lim_ tr,nn tlw,c inteneions. Lirenuy irony

resrs on i Inonlentan e,my,,nrec ,^f audtar mi rea,ler againsr che

smpiLiiricr .in^l scf-,lccepti.ni: t rbc ceerc^lay wodd; Socratic, or

pe^lagi}gteel, inmc reo un inielleetual .ó,xntbling in onler to par-

ody inrellecrual pretension.

But ihe sor[ nf irom' ,chieh at c,ilu in anthropological íield-

work, d,ou{h na les effcctive in punruirini; illusien, is not quite

like anl of tlicscc It i, 11,11 dr1111 .it1, becau^e it i, double-edged: che

actor see through che audieneL as 1le,iric es che mdience through

che actor. Ir is not hiscorical, berause it is acausal: it is not that

one's actions produce, through thc infernal logic of events, results

che reverse of what was iniended by diem (though chis sometimes

happens roo), bur chut one's prediccions of what other people will

do, one's social expectations, are constantly surprised by what, inde-

pendendy oí une's own hehavior, thev actually do. It is not literary,

because not only are che parries not in league, but they are in differ-

ent moral universes. And it is not Socmtic, because it is not intel-

lectual prerension which is parodied, but che mere communication

of though[-and not by intellectual dissembling, bur by an all-too-

earnest, almost grim, effort at understanding.

In fieldwork, che manifescation of serious misapprehensions as

to what the sicuarion is almost always begins on che informants' side

of che encounter, though, unfortunately for che investigator's self-

esteem, ir doesn't end there. The first indications, having to do with

blunt demands for material help and personal services, though al-

ways tricky te) handle, are fairly easily adjusced to. They never disap-

pear, and they never tease co tcntpc che anthropologist roto the easy

(and useless) trinkets-and-beads way out of establishing relation-

ships with che nativos or of quiecingg guilc over being a prince

among paupers. But they loen hecome rourine, and after awhile one

even develops a certain resignation totvard che idea oí being viewed,

even by one's most reliable friends, as much as a source of income as

a person. One of che psychological fringe benefits of anthropological

research-at leasr 1 think its a benetit-is that ir teaches you how

it feels to be thoughr of asa tool and uscd as an object, and how to

endure it.

Much more difficult to come tu cerros with, however, is unother

very closely related sor[ of collision between the way 1 typically set

rhings and rhe way most of my informants do; more difficult, be-

cause it concerns not jusr rhe imrnediate content of che relationship

becween us but che broader meaning of chut content, ics symbolic

overtones. For all bu[ completely tradicional informants (and one

finds very few of [hose anymore), 1 represen[ an exemphfication, a

walking display case, oí the sor[ of life-chances they thetnselves will

soon have, or if nor themsclves, then surely their children. As my

earlier remarks abour problems and solurions indicare, 1 am rather

less certain about Chis than they are, and che result, from che point

of view of my own reactions, is what 1 think of as "che couching

faith problem." Ic is not altogether comfortable to live among peo-

ple who feel themselves suddenly heir to vas[ possibilities they

surely have every right to possess but will in all likelihood not get.

Nor does che fact that you seem in cheir eyes to have already

been gifted with such a heritage (as, in fact, though not to che

degree they usually imagine, you actually have) case che situation

any. You are placed, willy-nilly, in a moral posture somewhat com-

parable to that of che bourgeois informing che poor to be patient,

Rome wasn't built in a day. One does not actually proffer Chis sor[ of

homily; at leasc not more [han once. But che posture is inherent in

the situation, irrespective of what one does, thinks, feels, or wishes,

by virtue of che fact that che anthropologist is a member, however

marginal, of the world's more privileged classes; and yet, unless he

(she) is either incredibly naive or wildly self-deceiving (or, as some-

times happens, both), he can hardly bring himself to believe that

che informanc, or che informant's children, are on che immediate

verge of joining him as members of chis transculmral elite. It is Chis

radical asymmetry in view of what the informant's (and beyond

him, his country's) life-chances really are, especially when it is com-

bined with an agreement on what rhey should be, which colors the

fieldwork situation with that very special moral [one 1 think of as

ironic.

It is ironic in che first place because che social institutions of

which che anthropologist is supposedly such an exemplary product,

'Ti inkng as a Uiorzi1 dr. =- 3 1

and which he (she) conseyuently values rather highly, do not seem

to be the royal roads co well-being for his informants that they were

for hita: he is a display case for goods which are, despite their sur-

face resemblances to local products, not actually available en do-

mestie markets. This is espeeialh° noticeable with respect to educa-

cion wherc the touching faith prohlem appears in its most acute

forro. The notion dtat sch,u^ls are nmgic wands which will in them-

telves transform che life-chances of a Moroccan or Indonesian child

finto those of an American, a Prench, or a Dutch child is wide-

spread. For a small minoriry of che already well-positioned it can

and loes. But for the great majority ir can but change completely

nneducated children inca slightll educated ones. This is, in itself,

no mean achievement. The rapid spread of popular education is one

of the more encouragjng phenomcna on the generally unencourag-

ing new siete scene, and if it demands illusions to sustain it then we

shail Nave tu huye rhe illu;iuns. But for people with grander ideas,

ideas srimulated by rhe manic oprimism of radical nationalism, Chis

sort of marginal advanee is very much nor what they have in mind.

Similar confusions of hoyes for possibiliries center around civil ser-

vice employtnent, uwnership of machines, and residence in large

cines; and with respect ro che country as a whole, around economic

planning, popular suffrage. and rhird-force diplomacy. These institu-

riuns and instrumenralities have their place in any genuine attempt

at s„e al reconstrucrion; indeed, such reconstruction is, in all likeli-

hood, impossible without theta, But they are not rhe miracle work-

ers d ey are reputed to be. The so-called revolution of rising expec-

tations shows a fair promise of culminating in a revolution of rising

disappointments, a fact which che anthropologist, who will be after

all going home to suburbia in a year or so, can permit himself to see

rather more clearly tiran his all-too-engagé informants. They, at

hest, can allow rhemselves, uneasily and hall-consciously, only tosuspect ir.

Such a sense chas one sees che relationship between oneself and

one's informants wirh an unlouded eye would be more comforting,

however, wete ir not for anorher twist tu che whole situation which

puts chis supposed fact ni rather serious doubt. For, if the anthro-

pologisr is indeed largely irrelevanr to che informants' faces and gov-

1- Gi oprer 11

emed by interests which, save in che most glancing of ways, do not

touch theirs, en what grounds has one the right to expect theta to

accept and help one? One is placed, in Chis sort of work, among

necessitous people hoping for radical improvemenrs in their condi-

tions of life that do not seem exactly imminent; moreover, one is a

type benefactor of just che sort of improvements they are looking

for, also obliged to ask theta for charity-and what is almost worse,

having theta give it. This ought to be a humbling, thus elevating,

experience; but most often it is simply a disorienting one. All che

familiar rationalizations having te do with science, progress, philan-

thropy, enlightenmenr, and selfless purity of dedication ring false,

and une is left, ethically disarmed, to grapple with a human rela-

tionship which must be justified over and over again in the mosr

immediare of termo. Morally, one is back on a barter leve]; one's

currency is unnegotiable, one's credirs have all dissolved. The only

thing une really has to give in order to avoid mendicancy (or-not

to neglect che trinkets-and-beads approach-bribery) is oneself.

This is an alarming thought; and the inicial response to it is rhe

appearance of a passionate wish te) become personally valuable to

one's informants-Le., a friend-in order tu maintain self-respect.

The notion thar one has been marvelously successful in doing Chis is

the investigator's side of the touching faith coin: une believes in

cross-cultural communion (one calls it "rapport") as one's subjects

believe in tomorrow. It is no wonder that so many anthropologists

leave the field seeing tears in che eyes of their informants ehar, I feelquite sure, are not really rhere.

1 do nor wish to be misunderstood here. No more than 1 feel

thar significan social progress in the new states is impossible do 1

feel that genuine human contact across cultural barriers is impossi-

ble. Had I not seen a certain amount of che first and experienced,

now and then, a measure of che second, my work would have been

insupportable. What 1 am pointing tú, in either case, is an enor-

mous pressure en both the investigator and the subjects te regard

these goals as near when they are in fact far, assured when they are

merely wished for, and achieved when they are at best approxi-

mated. This pressure springs from che inherent moral asymmetry of

che fieldwork situation. It is eherefore nor wholly avoidable but is

Th inhing as a flora l Act fD 33

Iart Ul1he cthlcilly imhiOli,'k il Foeter ci that 5111mrion as suelo.

In ,i wty which ís in nn <,,ti,, r t`.cn ti Clou,, rhe relationship hetween

an .uathn,pcdcc;;ist and .in 'cric oto [lit 1-es: el ot p.rrtiul tictions

h.tlt>cen-thrc,ocio

So Loe as tbey rem.iin calo h.n-ti,il liui.au (rhus partid n-urhs)

und bar hall seca-thnui,h lthtc ivilt -ohüurcdl, rhe relationship

Amere ,e, viril enou,,h- Thv rn, hnrpr c ,i,t r, >usmined hc lile sci-

emihc s-alce ot tirc data Km- ,.n hcred. urd perhaps by a cermin

relief in lucrcls discorcnn, thal tLc rack i, flor altogether Sisyphcan

aíter all. A, for lile intcmuinr, hi, crr her inrerest is kept alive hy a

whole series of seecndary ain :.i cense nt being in essential collab-

orator in in important, if bur dimly understood, enterprise; a pride

in one's osen culturc and in ncc expernress of one's knowledge of it;

a chance ro express privare ideas and opinions (and retail gossip) to

a neutral outsider; as rvell, again, us :t certain amounr of direet or

indirecr material benefir of one sort or auother. And so on-rhe

rewarding elements are dittcient for almost each informant. But if

rhe implicir agreement to reg,ud one anorher, in lile face of come

very serious indications to rhe contrary, as members of the same

cultural universo breaks down, neme oí" diese more matter-of-faca

incentives can keep the relationship going very long. It either grad-

ually expires in an atmosphere oi futility, bnredom, and generalized

disappoinnnenr or, much less otten, coliapses suddenly roto a mu-

tual cense of having been deceived, used, and rejected. When this

happens the anthropologi.st sees a loss of rapport: one has been

jilted. The informara sees a revelation of had faith: one has been

humiliarcd. And thev are chut up once lucre in their separate, inter-

nally coherent, uncommunicating candis.

Let inc give an cxanrple. AV/hen 1 was in Java, one of my better

infarmanrs was a young clerk in his eurly rhirties, who, though he

had been born in rhe snrall country nrwa 1 was studving and had

lived there all his lile, had largor aspiratiuns; he wanted to be a

svritet. In fuer, he was one. While 1 vas there he virote and pro-

duced a play', based on his sisrer's recenr divorce, in which, partly for

verisimilitude bur rather more for revenge (her unfortunate ex-hus-

hand still lived in the tocan), the sisrer placed herself. The plot

omounred t) a sort of J avanese Doll's House: an educated girl (she

had been ro junior high schoul) wishes lo escape the bounds of die

traditional wife role; her husband retuscs to permir her ro do so, so

che walks out co 11,111-excepr thar, arr being an improvement on

lile, in rhe play che ahoot,, him instead. Acide from this eurious

work, he wrote a large number of nrher (unpublished) stoties and

(unprcduced) plays, most of which took their general pudines from

traditional tales in which he was, for all his surface nvrdernism, very

much interested and ven knowledgeahle. His work wirh nic liad

mainly ti) do with such marerialsmyrhs, legends, spells, etc-and

he was a good informant industrious, intelligent, accurate, enthusi-

asric. We got along quite well until an odd incident having to do

with my typewriter occurred, after which he refused even to greet

me in che street, much less to work with me.

He had been borrowing the typewriter now and again lo type

his works up in huna-and-peck fashion, preparing a sort of manu-

script edition of them. As time went on, he borrowed it more and

more, until he seemed to have it most of rhe time, which, as 1 had

no other, was inconvenienr. 1 decided, rherefore, to try lo hring rhe

borrowing down ro more moderare levels. One day, when he dis-

parched, as usual, his little hrother te borrow rhe machine for an

aftemoon, 1 sena back a note saying that 1 was sorry bur I needed ir:

for some work of my own. This was the first time 1 had issued such a

refusal. Within ten minutes, the younger hrother was back carrying

a note which, nor mentioning rhe typewriter or my refusal at all,

merely said thar my informant, owing to a pressing engagement,

would be unable (also for rhe firsr time) to make rhe scheduled

appointment we had for rhe following day. He would try, however,

ro make the next one, three days hence if he could. 1 inrerpreted

Chis, quite correcdy, as a lit for my mt, and, fearful as ever of a loss

of rapport, 1 made what was a stupid and, so far as our relationship

was concerned, fatal error. Instead of jusr letting the incident pass, 1

answered rhe note, saying 1 was sorry he would be unable lo make

our appointment, 1 hoped 1 had nor affronted him in any way, and 1

could spare rhe typewrirer after all as 1 was going ro go out roto rhe

paddies instead. Three hours later, back carne rhe younger brother,

rhe typewriter, and a very long (typewritten) note, the burden of

which was that: (r) uf course he had nor been affronted, after all ir

(-linpl,' II 1 Thinki- 1 as a fffora l lri 35

was ?ny typewriter; (2) he was very sorry, bur it now temed out that

not only would he he unahle ro make our next appointment, bur

the press of his lacrar; work unforrunately made it intpossible for

hiin ro fiad rhe time to come any more at all. 1 made some feeble

efforts to repair rhe siruation-rendered even more feeble by my

sense of having hehaved like an ass-hut it was too late. He went

back to copying his works in longhand and 1 found a new infor-

mant-a hospital worker, who, practicing a certain amount of ama-

teur medicine among his q eighbors, was more interested in my drug

supply than my typewriter-ro work wirh on mythic materials.

A mere quibble, ridiculously overblown? A comical misunder-

standing aggravated by abnormally thin skins and stupid errors of

tacs? Certainly. But why did such a molehill hecome such a moun-

tain? Why did we hace such dithculty wirh so simple a matter as

borrowing and lending a typewriter? Because, of course, it was not a

typewriter-or, at leasr, nor only a typewriter-which was being

horrowed and lent, hut a complex of claims and concessions only

dimly recogni:ed. Borrowing, ir, rrmy informanr was, tacitly, asserting

his demand ro be taken seriously as an intellectual, a "writer"-i.e.,

a peer; lending it, 1 was, tacitly, gnnting that demand. Lending it, I

was, tacitly, interprering otir relarionship as one of personal friend-

ship-i.e., admirting meselt ro rhe inner circle of his moral commu-

niry; borrowing it, hc was, still racirly, accepting rhat interpretation.

We both knew, 1 am sure, that rhesc agreemenrs could be only par-

cial: we were nor really collcagucs and not really comrades. But

while our relationship persisted, they were at least parcial, were to

some degree real, which giren ¡he facts of the situarion-that he

was as far from being an inglorious Milton as 1 was from being a

Javanese-was ssomerhing ot an accomplishmenr. But when 1 re-

fused rhe use of the synrbol of our unspoken pact to regard, by a

kind of mutual suspension of dislclief, our two cultural worlds as

one, his suspicion, always lingering, that 1 did not Cake his "work" as

seriously as 1 took my own, hroke finto consciousness. When he in

tum refused to come to our nexr appointment, my fear, also always

there, that he saw me as but an inconsequent stranger to whom he

was atmched by only che naost opportunistic of considerations,

O Cdagrtee II

broke finto mine. Its true anatomy apparently exposed, che relation-

ship collapsed in bittemess and disappointment.

Such an end to anthropologist-informant relarionships is hardly

typical: usually the sense of heing members, however temporarily,

insecurely, and incompletely, of a single moral community can be

maintained even in the face of the wider social realities which press

in at almost every moment to deny it. It is this fiction-fiction, not

falsehood-rhat lies at the heart of successful anthropological field

research; and, because it is never completely convincing for any of

che participante, it renders such research, considered as a form of

conduct, continuously ironic. To recognize the moral tension, the

ethical ambiguity, implicit in the encounter of anthropologist and

informant, and to still be able to dissipate it through one's actions

and one's attitudes, is what encounter demands of both parties if it

is to be authentic, if it is to acmally happen. And tu discover that is

te discover also something very complicated and nor altogether

clear about che nature of sincerity and insincerity, genuineness and

hypocrisy, honesty and self-deception. Fieldwork is an educational

experience all around. What is difficult is to decide what has beenleamed.

There are, of course, many more ethical dimensions of fieldwork

than the two 1 hace been able to discuss here: che imbalance be-

tween the ability to uncover problems and the power to solve them,

and che inherent moral tension between investigator and subject.

Nor, as che fact that 1 hace been able to discuss rhem perhaps indi-

cated, are these two necessarily che most profound. But even the

mere revelation that they, and others like them, exist may contrib-

ute toward dispelling a few popular illusions about what, as conducr,

social science is. In particular, che widespread notion that social

scientific research consists of an attempt to discover hidden wires

wirh which to manipulare cardboard persons should have some

doubt cast upon it. It is not just that the wires do not exist and the

persons are nor cardboard; it is that che whole enterprise is directed

7dtinking as a floral {Ict €`. 37.

n,n rue.ud thu intpos,ihlc tu:i: „I r,avr.'iIinc histnr^ hw roward che

,mil ywxut te onc ot widenurn_ lile rol, leawn In it.

hc faihr.c tu "-r riu nor oi¡Ir on thc par[ nt [hose [vilo

are hu,rile t^, ,ocFal set axc ,a1 principl^' lo hac principie 1, a deeper

yuestion), hut on (he par[ Or ol itt mosr ardenr epologists

which Iras rendcred nutth ot tito di,cusion over its moral status

poinrh,,. TI le fact i, rhar soaal eicnee i, neirher a sinister ntrack

upan ,sur cintura, nor chi tnv.in, of it. tina) .]eliverance; It i, merely

parí of that calcare. Froto nc^ poinr of eiew of moral philosophy, che

central quesrion to ask ahour social science is nor rice one which

would-be Pbttonic Guardiana from either sine are forever asking:

Will it sink us or save us? Ir will, alnntst certainly, do neirher. The

central quesrion to ask is, What does ir tell us abour the values by

which we-all of us-in fact live.' The nced is to pul social science

flor ¡ti nce dock, which lb where our culture beiongs, bur on che

witness Brand.

Wherher, when chis is done, ir will curo out ro be a wiuress for

the prosecurion or che defensa lb, 1 suppose, an open question. But it

is clear thar its tesrimonv will, like thar of any witness, be more

pertinenr ro certain matters tiran in orhers. In particular, such an

inquiry should clarify what sor[ of social behavior scientific thinking

about human affairs is, and should do so in a way ¡ti which philo-

sophical analyses of ethical terms, che logic of personal decision or

che sources of moral aurhoriry-in themselves, all useful endeavors-

cannot. Even any glancing exantinarion of a few fragments of any

own experience offers ssomc leads in chis direction-in exposing

what "derachment," "relativism," "scienrific mechad," and che like

mean flor as shibboleths and slogans bur as concrete acta performed

by particular persons in specitic social contesrs. Discussing rhem as

such, as aspects af a métier, tni11 nor pul an en,¡ ro dispute, hur ir

may hele te make ir profitable.The nature of scienrific derachment-disinrerestedness, if one

can still use chal term-is u good example. The popular stereotype

of che white-coated laboratory reehnician, as anrisepric emorionally

as sartorially, is bur che expression of a general notion thar such

derachment consists in a kind of neuroric affecdessness ¡)lit ro use.

Like a eunuch 'ur 'a hanen, a seientist i, a functionary with a useful

defeco, and, like , eunuch, eoirespondingly dangcrous hecause of an

insensibility ro suhcerebral (ofren callen °human") concerns_ 1 don't

know much ahour what goes on in lahorarories; hur in anthropologi-

cal fieldwork, derachment i, neirher a natural gifr nor a manufac-

tured ralcnr. Ir is a parcial achievement lahoriously carned and pre-

cariously mainrained. What lirtle disinterestedness one manages ro

atrain comes nor from failint ti, Nave emotion, or neglecring ro

perceive the m in orhers, nor ver from sealing oneself roto a moral

vacumn. It comes from a personal subjection to a vocacional erhic.

This is, 1 realize, flor an original discovery. What needs explana-

tion is why so many people are so terribly cager ro deny it and to

insist instead that, at leas[ while practicing, social scientists are un-

moved by moral concern altogether-nor disinterested, bur uninrer-

ested. With respect to outside critics, perhaps academic vested

interesas will explain che bulk of the cases, and ignorance carefully

preserved mosr of che res[. Bur when che same protestations are

made by many social scientists themselves-' l don 't give advice, 1

just point out nce roors of che problem"-it is perhaps necessary to

look a lirtle deeper, to che difficulties inherent in susmining a scien-

tific erhic not just at a writing desk or un a lecture platform, but in

che very midst of everyday social situations, to che difficulties of

being at one and che same time an involved actor and a detached

observer.

The outstanding characteristie of anthropological fieldwork as a

forro of conduct is rhat it does not permit any significanr separarion

of che occupational and extra-occupational spheres of one's life. On

che contrary, it forces Chis fusion. One roas[ find unes friends among

one's informants and one's informants among unes friends; one

must regard ideas, actitudes, and values as so many cultural facas and

continue to act in'terms of [hose which define unes own commit-

ments; one musa see sociery as an object and experience it as a

subject, Everything anyone says, everything anyone does, even che

mere physical setting, has both tu form che substance of one's per-

sonal exisrence and to be taken as gris[ for one's analytical mill. At

home, che anthropologist goas comfortably off to che office to ply a

trade like everyone else. In che field, che anthropologist has to lcarn

te) live and think at the same time.

-- (in^ptrr 11 1 Tliinl:ing as a iil ora l Mi - 3q

As 1 have suggested, dais learning process can advance only sofar, even under che hest oí conditions , which anyhow never obtain.The anthropologisr inevitably remains more alien than he desiresand less cerebral [han he imagines. But ir does enforce, day in andday out, che efforr ro advance ir, ro combine two fundamental ori-entations toward realiry-rhe engaged and rhe analytic- into a sin-gle arriende . It ts Chis atrimde , nor moral blankness , which we calldetachment or disinrerestedness . And wharever small degree oí itone manages ro arrain comes nor hy adopting an I-am-a-cameraideology or by enfolding oneself in layers of methodological armor,

but simply hy trying to do, in such an equivocal situation , che scien-tific work one has come to do. And as rhe abiliry to look at personsand events ( and ar oneself) rvirh in eve at once cold and concernedis one of che surest sigas of maturity in eirher an individual or apeople, Chis sor[ oí research experience has rather deeper, and ratherdifferent, moral implicarions for our culture [han [hose usuallyproposed.

A professional commirment to view human affairs analyrically isnor in opposition ro a personal commirment ro view them in terms

oí a particular moral perspectiva Thc professional erhic rests en thepersonal and draws its srrength from it; we force ourselves to see outoí a conviction rhar blindnc ,s-or illusion-cripples virtue as ircripples people . Derachmeur comes nor from a failure to care, butfrom a kind of caring re,ilienr enough to withstand an enormoustension herween moral reaction and scientific observation , a tensionwhich only grows as moral perception deepens and scientific under-standing advances . Thc fight roto sdcnrism, or , on che other side,roto suhjectivism , is but a siga rhar che rension cannot any longerbe borne, chut nene has failed and a choice has been made tosuppress either one's humaniry or enes rationality . These are theparhologies oí science , nor ir, norm.

In Chis lighr, che famous value relativism oí anthropology is norche moral Pyrrhonism it Iras often been accused oí being, but an

expression oí fairh rhat ro arrempt ro see human behavior in rerms

oí rhe forces which animare it is an essential element in under-standing it , and rhar ro judge without understanding constitutes anoffcnse againsr moraliry. Value, are indeed values, and facts, alas,

indeed facts. But ro engage in that style oí thinking called social

scientific is to attempt to transcend the logical gap that separatesthem by a partem oí conduct , which, enfolding them roto a unitaryexperience , rationally connects rhem. The call for che applicationof "the scientific method" to che investigation of human affairs is acali for a direct confronration oí that divorce between sense andsensibility which has been rightly diagnosed to be che malady oí outage and to che ending oí which John Dewey 's lifework, imperfectlike any other, was uncondirionally dedicated.

,o - (17(4p tes 11 ` ainking as a Mural f ct -c^ 41

[]n(I ^^Ilt1 1 ^P,«I 11'ISM

A scholar can hardly be herter emploved rhan in destroying a fear.

Thc one 1 want to go nfrer is cultural relativism. Not rhe thing

itsclf, which 1 rhink nercly diere, like Transyhvania, but the dread

of it, which 1 rhink unfotunled. ti is unfounded because rhe moral

ami intellecrual consequences tirar are conunonly supposed to flow

from relativism-subjecrivism, nihilism, incoherence, Machiavel-

lianism, ethical idiocy, csrheric hlindness, and so on-do not in fact

do so and rhe promised rewards of escaping its clutches, mostly hav-

ing m do wirh pasteurizad knowledge, are illusory.

To be more specific, 1 want not to defend relativism, which is

a drained term anyway, yesterday's barde cry, bur ro attack anti-

relativism, which seems to me hroadly oo rhe rise and ro represent a

srreamlined version of ara anrique misrake. Whatever cultural rela-

tivism may be or originally have been (and there is not one of its

cdtics in a hundred who has gor that right), ir serves these days

largely as a specrer tú scare us away from certain wat's of thinking

and toward othcrs. And, as tlu wav s uf thinking away from which

we are heing driven scein to me ro be more cogent rhan those to-

ward which we are heing propelled, and ro tic at rhe heart of the

anthropological heritage, 1 would like ro do something abour this.

Casring our demons is a praxis we should practice as well as study.

My through-thc-looking-gl.iss [irle is intended to suggest such

ara eftort to counter a viere rather rhan to defend the viere ti clamas

ro he counter to. The analog} 1 had in mirad in choosing it-a

ogical one, 1 trust ir wi11 he undcrai,>d, not in any wa} a subsran-

ttve one is what, ar the height of rhe i old war days (you teniem-

her them) reas called "anti anti-cotnmunism." Those of us who

rrrenuously opposed rhe obseesion, as we saw ir, wirh the Red Men-

ace were thus denominated by rhose who, as they saw ir, regarded

rhe Menace as the primary fact of contemporary political lile, with

the insinuador-wildly incorrect in rhe vast majority of cases-

that, by rhe law of rhe double negarive, we had come seo ter affec-

tion for rhe Soviet Union.

Again, 1 mean to use this analogy in a formal sense; 1 don'[

think relativists are like communists, anti-relativists are like anti-

communists, and that anyone (well ... hardly anyone) is behaving

like Senator McCarthy. One could construct a similar parallelism

using the abortion controversy. Those of os who are opposed to

increased legal restrictions on abortion are not, I take it, pro-

abortion, in the sense that we rhink abortion a wonderful thing and

hold that the greater rhe abortion rare the greater the well-being of

society; we are "anti anti-abortionisrs" for quite other reasons 1 need

not rehearse. In this frame, rhe double negative simply doesn't work

in the usual way; and therein lies its rhetorical attractions. Ir en-

ables one tu reject something without thereby committing oneself

to what it rejects. And this is precisely what 1 want tú do with anti-

relativism.

So lumbering an approach to the marter, explaining and excus-

ing itself as it goes, is necessary because, as rhe philosopher-anthro-

pologist John Ladd has remarked, "all the common definitions of

... relativism are framed by opponents of relativism ... they are

absolutist definitions.' (Ladd, whose immediate focos is Edward

Westermarck's famous book, is speaking of "ethical relativism" in

particular, but rhe point is general: for "cognitive relativism" rhink

uf Israel Schefer's attack on Thomas Kuhn; for "aesthetic relativ-

ism," Wayne Booth's en Stanley Fish.)t And, as Ladd also says, rhe

result of this is that relativism, or anything that at all looks like

relativism under such hostile definitions, is identified wirh nihilism.'

To suggest that "hard rock" foundations for cognitive, esthetic, or

moral judgments may not, in fact, be available, or anyway that

those one is heing offered are dubious, is tu find oneself accused of

Reti Ííutrhelgtü isui -- -3

1e

dishelieving in che existente of che physical world, thinking pushpin

as good as poetry, regarding Hitler as just a fellow wirh unstandard

Listes, eleven, as 1 myself liave reccncly been-God save che mark-

11 [having1 no politics ar all.` The notion that someone who does nor

hold your views holds che reciproca) of them, or simply hasn't got

any, has, whatever irs comlorrs ter [hose afraid reality is going to go

away unless we helieve ver) hará in ir, nor conduced to much in the

way of clariry in rhe anri-relativist discussion, but merely to far too

many people spending far coo much time describing at length what it

is they do nor maincain rhan seems in any way profitable.

Al¡ Chis is of relevante to anduopology hecause, of course, it is

by way of che idea of relarivicm, grandly ¡11-defined, that it has most

discurbed che general inrelleccual pcace. From our eadiest days,

even when cheo'y in anthropology-evolutionary, diffusionist, or

elementargedankenisch--was anything but relacivistic, rhe message

thar we have been thoughr ro have for che wider world has been

that, as they see tliings differenrly and do them ocherwise in Alaska

or che D'Entrecasteaux, our confidente in our own seeings and do-

ings and our resolve to hring others around co sharing them are

rarher poorly based. This p,inr, roo, is commonly ill-understood. Ir

has noc been anthropological thcory, such as it is, that has made out

held seem to be a massive argumenr against absolucism in thoughr,

[nor ls, and estheric judgtnenG it has been anthropological data:

customs, Irania, living floors, and lexicons. The notion that it was

Boas, Benedict, and Melville Herskovits, wirh a European assist

from Westermarck, who infected our field wirh the relativist virus,

and Kroeber, Kluckhohn, ind Redheld, wirh a similar assist from

Lévi-Srrauss, who have lahored to rid us of ir, is but anocher of the

mychs that bedevil chis whole discussion. Alter all, Montaigne could

draw relacivistic, or relaris isric-looking, conclusions from che fact,

as hc heard it, [fiar rhe Caribs Mido'[ orear breeches; he did flor have

ro read Paneros of Calcine. Even earlier on, Herodotus, contemplat-

ing "certain Indians of che cace called Callatians," among whom

men were said to eac rheir fachers, carne, as one would think hemight, te) similar views.

The relativist bent, or more accurately che relativist bent an-

rhropology so ofren induces in rhose who have much craffic wirh its

marerials, is rhus in soine cense inrplicit in che field as such; in

44 í""-Laplcr III

cultural anthropology perhaps particularly, but in much of archaeol-

ogy, anthropological linguistics, and physical anthropology as well.

One cannot read roo long abouc Nayar matriliny, Azrec sacrifice, che

Hopi verb, or che convolutions of che hominid transition and flor

begin at leasr to consider che possibility rhat, to quote Montaigne

again, "each man calls barbarism whatever is nor his own praccice ...

for we have no other criterion of reason [han che example and idea of

the opinions and customs of che country we live in."c That notion,

whatever its problems, and however more delicately expressed, is flor

likely to go entirely away unless anthropology does.

lt is to chis fact, progressively discovered co be one as out enter-

prise has advanced and out findings grown more circumstantial, that

boch relativists and anri-relativiscs have, according to their sensi-

bilities, reacted. The realization that news from elsewhere abouc

ghost marriage, ritual destruction of properry, initiatory fellatio,

royal immolation, and nonchalant adolescent sex naturally inclines

che mind to an "other beasts other mores" view of rhings has led to

arguments, outraged, desperate, and exultant by tucos, designed to

persuade us either to resist that inclination in the narre of reason,

or to embrace it en che same grounds. What looks like a debate

abouc the broader implications of anthropologicalreseareh is reallya debate abouc how co live wirh nhem.

Once this fact is grasped, and "relativism" and "anri-relativism"

are seen as general responses co che way in which what Kroeber

once called che centrifugal impulse of anthropology-distanc places,

distanc times, distanc species ... distanc grammars-affeccs our

sense of rhings, che whole discussion comes rarher better finto focus.

The supposed conflict between Benedict's and Herskovits's Cali for

tolerante and che uncoterant passion wirh which they called for it

curns out flor to be che simple contradiction so many amateur logi-

cians have held ir ro be, but the expression of a perception, caused

by thinking a lot about Zunis and Dahomeys, rhat, che world being

so full of a number of rhings, rushing co judgment is more than

a mistake, it's a crime. Similarly, Kroeber's and Kluckhohn's pan-

cultural verities-Kroeber's were mostly abouc messy creatural mat-

ters like delirium and menstruation, Kluckhohn's about messy social

ones like lying and killing within che in-group-tuco out nor to be

just rhe arbitrary, personal obsessions they so much look like, bu[

{fati }inti-Relatiuis r 45

Ihe eshrc..i,m „t a nurh y;lHcr conrarn. eau>ed be thinking a loo

about ,n,throp,^s tn genera 1, th n d . ooierhine isn't uuchored every-

lellere nothinc can be ancbOre .uiyichere. Theory here-if that is

ivinn ihc,c e ri)esr Ihly ice- as i, h.,ic wc nwsr look ar chinga it we

are to be aecounted deeenr be called-is rarher more an

exchange ot wanünes rhui m ,in.ikucal debate. Wc are being of-

tered a chotee of wurrie>_

\Vl.ar rhe relttlr mil ed, 501111 u, r,, tyunt about is proyin-

ialisni- rhe dan;,er dr,u our pereci'tioos will be dulled, our iorelleers

constriere 1, and our syuti^alloes narroived be the overlearned and

oven-alued aeceptances ot our,^wn soe'ele, What rhe anti-relativlsts,

self-declared, want us to seong about, and worry about and worry

abour, as though our very souls depended opon it, is a kind of spiritual

entropy, a heat death ot rhe mirad, in which everything is as signifi-

can[, thus as insigniñcant, :u everything clse: anything goes, te each

his own, you pays your momee and you cakes your choice,1 know what

1 hke, not in rhe south, roui comprendre, c'est tour pardonner.

As 1 hace already suggcsted, 1 utyself find provincialism alto-

gether rhe more real concern si tar as what actually goes en in rhe

world. (Though even thcre, the thing can he overdone: "You might

as well fall dat en your Pace," one of Thurber's marvelous "morals"

goes, "as lean too far over baekward.") The image of vas[ numhers

of anthropology readers running around in so cosmopolitan a frame

of mind as to have no views as te sehat is and ist t true, or good, or

beautiful, seems to me largely a tantasp. There may he some genuine

nihilista out there, along Rodeo Drive or around Times Square, bur 1

doubt vete many have beconie sueh as a result of an excessive ssensi-

riviry- te the claims of other tintures; and at leas[ most of the people

1 meet, real, and read abour, and indecd 1 myself, are all-too-

commlrted ti) something or otber, usually parochial. "'Tos rhe eye of

childhood that fears a painted devil": anti-relativism has largely

concocted rhe anxiery it lives Prom.

But surely 1 exaggerate ? Surely :inri-relitivists , secure in rhe knowl-

edge thar ratrling gourds tormo[ tatue thunder and rhat eating peo-

4Cl t burla MII

ple is wrong, cannot be so excitable'. Listen, rhen, ni Williani Gass,

novelisr, philosopher, précievcx, and pop-eyed observer ot .mrhro-

pologrsrs ways:

Anthropologists or flor, wc all used to call them "natives"

those little, distan[, jungle and island people-and we carne te

recognize rhe unscientific snobhery- in rhat. Even our more re-

spectable journals could show diem habed withour otfense, be-

cause their pendulous or pointcd breaste viere as inhuman to us

as rhe udder of a cow. Shortly we carne ro our censes and had

thein dress. We grew te disociar otir own point of time, our local

cerrainties, and embraced relativism, alrhough it is one of rhe

scabbier whores; and we went on ro endorse a hice equality

among cultures, each of which was carrying out os task of co-

alescing, conversing, and structuring some society. A large sense

of superioriry was one of rhe white man's burdens, and that

weight, released, was replaced by an equally heavy sense of guilt.

No more [han we might expect a surgeon te say "Dead and

good riddance" would an anthropologist exclaim, stepping from

the culture just surveyed as one might shed a set of working

clothes, "What a lousy way te live!" Because, even if rhe natives

were impoverished, covered with dust and sores; even if they had

been trodden en by stronger feet till they were flat as a path;

even if they were rapidly dying off; still, the observer could re-

mark how frequently they smiled, or how infrequently their chil-

dren fought, or how serene they were. We can envy rhe Zuni

rheir peaceful ways and the Navaho their "happy heart."

Ir was amazing how mollified we were to find chao there

was some functional point ro food rabcos, infibulation, or clit-

oridectomy; and if we still felt morally squeamish about human

sacrifice or headhunting, it is clear we were still squeezed finto a

narrow modern European point of view, and had no sympathy,

and didñ t-couldñ t-understand. Yet when we encountered

certain adolescente among indolent summery seaside trihes who

were allowed tu screw without taboo, we wondered whether

Chis enabled them te avoid rhe stresses of our own youth, and

we secretly hoped ir hadn't.

{inri luti- ^elahrism

Some anthropclogi.,ts have untied rhe moral point of

view, so sacred to Eliot and Arnold and Emerson, from every

mooring (science and art also (loar away on rhe stream of

Becorning), callmg any belicf in objective knowledge "funda-

mentalism," as if ir were rhe sanee as benighted Biblical literal-

ism; and arguing for rhe total mutability of man and the

complete soctology of whar under such circumstances could no

longer he considered knowledg( bus only doxa, or "opinion."`

This overheated vision oí "rhe anrhropological point of view,"

rising out of rhe mists of caricatuied arguments ¡11-grasped to start

with (ir is one of Gass's ideas rhat Mary Douglas is some sor[ of skeptic,

and Benedicr's satire, cannier rhan his, has escaped hin altogether),

leaves os wirh a fair lor ro answer for. But even from within the

profession, rhe charges, though lesa originally expressed, as befits a

proper science, are hardly less grave. Relativism ("[T]he position that

al[ assessments are assessments relative ro some standard or other, and

standards derive from cultures"), 1. C. Jarvie rernarks,

has rhese objectionable consequences: namelv, thar by limiting

crirical assessmcnt of human works ir disarms us, dehumanises

us, leaves us unable ro enser roto communicative interaction;

thar is to say, unable ro criticize cross-culturally, cross-sub-

culturally; ultimares, relativism leaves no room for criticism at

all.... [B]ehind relativism nihilism looms.'

More in front, scarecrow and leper's bell, it sounds like, thanhehind: certainly norte of us, clorhed and in our right minds, will

rus) to embrace a view thar so dehumanizes us as to tender us in-

capable of communicating wirh an}body. The heights to which this

beware of rhe scahby whore who will cut off your critica¡ powers

sor[ of thing can aspire is indicated, ro give one las[ example, by

Paul Johnson's ferocious hook on rhe history of tire world since

1917, Modem Times, which, opening with a chapter called "A Rela-

tivisric World" (Hugh Thomas's review of the book in the TLS was

more aptly enrirled "The Interno af Relativissm"), accounis for the

whole modems disastcr--Lcniu and Hitler, Amin, Bokassa, Sukarno,

Copnvr Ill

Mao, Nasser, and Hammarskjóld, Structuralism, rhe New Deal, the

Holocaust, both world wars, 1968, inflation, Shinto militarism,

OPEC, and the independence of India-as outcomes of something

called "the relativist heresy." a "A great trio of German imaginative

scholars," Nietzsche, Marx, and (with a powerful assist-our contri-

bution-from Frazer) Freud, destroyed the nineteenth century mor-

ally as Einstein, banishing absolute motion, destroyed it cognitively,

and Joyce, banishing absolute narrative, destroyed it esthetically:

Marx described a world in which rhe central dynamic was eco-

nomic interest. To Freud rhe principal thrust was sexual....

Nietzsche, rhe third of the trio, was also an atheist ... [and

he] saw [rhe death of God] as ... an historical event, which

would have dramatic consequences.... Among the advanced

races, the decline and ultimately the collapse of the religious

impulse would leave a huge vacuum. The history of modem

times is in great part rhe history of how that vacuum [has] been

filled. Nietzsche rightly perceived that the most likely candi-

date would be what he called "The Will to Power." ... In

place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology. Those

who had once filled the ranks of rhe totalitarian clergy would

become totalitarian politicians.... The end of the old order,

with an unguided world adrift in a relativisric universe, was a

summons to such gangster statesmen to emerge. They were nos

slow to make their appearance.9

After this there is perhaps norhing much else to say, except

perhaps what George Stocking says, summarizing others-"cultural

relativism, which had burtressed che attack against racialism, [can]

be perceived as a sort of neo-racialism justifying the backward

teehno-eeonomic status of once colonized peoples." Or what Li-

onel Tiger says, summarizing himself: "che feminist argument [for

"rhe social non-necessity ... of rhe laws insrimted by patriarchy"]

reflects the cultural relativism that has long characterized those so-

cial sciences which rejected locating human behavior in biological

processes."" Mindless tolerance, mindless intolerance; ideological

promiscuity, ideological monomania; egalitarian hypocrisy, egalirar-

/j>rti fint±-Jielutiuisin T. 4q

i:m >hnhl aki<m ill Ih sc ir„m thc ^nme intirmity. Like Welfare,

The Media, he 13ourgcci-ic, rThe Ruling Circle5, Cultural Reln-

tivi<m Curses cvcnthine h.i..

.Authmpolcoist,, Hviny lucir vade and in uny svay retlective

abour it, cculil, tor all their Dial sota of pnn-lneialisnr, hardly remain

unafTecred bv die huni ci hhilaschhiad disquiet risine everywhere

annanl dmui. (I hace nor eses nientioned che herce. debates

urcngur en bt thc rea i _¡l at I,iucai and mural theory, che appear-

ance cf lee aastnicrionisi lavnirs calici.m, libe spread of nontoun-

dationalist moods in mceiphoic. unJ cpistemclug^, and che rejec-

tíon of whiggcry and mcdtcJ-ism in che hlsrory of science.) The

fear thar our emphasis on dilicience, diversiry, oddiry, diseontinuity,

incommensurability, uníyuenc , and so nn-what William Empson

called "the glgan-/-tic q iarhrapological circos rlotiously/[Holding]

upen all its hooths"-miyht cnd Icavmg us with little more to say

than rhat else\vhere rhings are odirnvíse and culture is as culture

docs has grown more an,l mere intene." So intense, in fact, rhat it

has led us off in some ill-nmlamili,ir directions 6t an attempt, ill-

conceived, so 1 think, io still it.One could ground Chis lasa proposirion in a fair number of

places in contemporary anrhropolo+^ical thought and research-

from Harrisonian "Everyrhing Thar Rises Must Converge" material-

ism to Popperian "crear Divide" evolutionism. ("We Have Science

... or Literacy, or Inrertheoreric Competition, or che Cartesian

Conceprion of Knoseledge ... but They Nave Nor." )" But 1 want

ro concentrare here on rwo uf central importance, or anyway popu-

lariry, righr now: che attempt ro rcinstare a context-independent

concepr of "Human Naauc" as a huloark against relativism, and che

attempt to reinstale, siutilitrly, a similar one of that orher old friend,

"The Human Mind."

Again, it is necessanv ro be clear so as not to be accused, under

che "if vou don't believe in my God ycu musr believe in my Devil"

assumption 1 menrioned carlier, of irguing for absurd positions-

radical, culture-is-all historieism, or primitive, che-brain-is-a-black-

board empineism-which nc one of any seriousnes holds, and

quite possihly, a momeo!ary enthasiasm hure and chere asile, ever

has held. The issue Is rnn whether laman bcings are biological or-

ganismo seith inrrinsic chariici eristica. Men ean't fly ani pigeons

culi ralle. Nor is it whether thev show cummonaliries in mental

functioning wherever we fiad them. Papuans envy, Ahorii;ines

dream. Thc 'usue is, what are 've io malee of rhese undisputed facas

as we go about explicaring ritual, analy-ing ecosystenis, interpreting

fossil sequences, or comparmg, languages.

These two moves toward restoring culture-free conceptions of whar

we amount to as basic, sticker-price homo and essential, no additíves

sapiens cake a number of quite disparate forms, not in much agree-

ment beyond their general tenor, naturalist in the one case, racio-

nalist in the other. On che naturalist sirle chere is, of course, socio-

biology, evolutionary psychology, and orher hyper-adaptationist

orientations. But chere are also perspecrives growing out of psycho-

analysis, ecology, neurology, display-and-imprint ethology, some

kinds of developmental theory, and sonre kinds of Marxism. On the

rarionalist side diere is, of course, ehe new intellectualism one asso-

ciates with strucruralism and other hyper-logicist orientations. But

there are also perspectives growing out of generative linguistics, ex-

perimental psychology, artificial inrelligence research, ploy and

counterploy microsociology, some kinds of developmental theory,

and some kinds of Marxism. Attempts ro banish che specter of rela-

tivism whether by sliding down The Great Chain of Being or edg-

ing up it-the dog beneath che skin, a mind for all cultures-do

not comprise a single enterprise, massive and coordinare, but a loose

and immiscible crowd of them, each pressing irs own cause and in

irs own direction. The sin may he one, but che salvations are many.

1t is for chis reason, too, rhar an attack, such as mine, upon che

efforts to draw context-independenr concepts of "Human Nature"

or "The Human Mind" from biological, psychological, linguistic, or

for that matter cultural (HRAF and all that) inquiries should not be

misraken for an attack upon those inquiries as research progtams.

Whether or not sociobiology is, as 1 think, a degenerative research

program destined to expire in irs own confusions, and neuroscience

a progressive one (to use Imre Lakatos's useful epithets) on che

hila! Srutl-1?eldtieisui re- J f

verge of extraordinary achievemenrs, anthropologists will be well-

advised to atrend ro, with various shades of mixed, maybe, maybe

nor, verdicts for atrucruralism, gcnerarive grammar, ethology, Al,

psychoanalysis, ecology, microsociology, Marxism, or developmental

psychology in berween, is quite beside che poinr." It is nor, or any-

way flor here, che vuli,lity of rhe ciences, real or would-be, that is

ar issue. What concern, mne, and sho,ikl concern us all, are che axes

ruar, with an inca°asing dcnrminarion bordering on che evangeli-

cal, are heing busily grournl with rheir assistance.

As a way inri, all Chis on time naruralist side we can look for a

mouunt ar a general discos,ion widely accepted-rhough, as it con-

sists largely of pronouncements, it is difficult to understand why-as

a balanced and moderare sraromear of che possition: Mary Midgeley'sBeasr and Man, Pie Roors of Humnn Nature. In che Pilgrim's Prog-ress, "once 1 was blind hur now 1 sce" tonaliries that have become

characreristic of such disnmrses in recent years, Midgeley writes:

1 first enrered rhis jungle myselt some time ago, by slipping out

over time wall of (he tiny arid garden cultivated at that time un-

der rhe narre of British Moral Philosophy. 1 did so in an at-

tempr ro think abour human nurure and che problem of evil.

The evils in rhe world, I rhought are real. That they are so is

neither a fancy imposed on us hy our own culture, nor one cre-

ated bv our will and imposed on time world. Such suggestions

are bad faith. What we abominare is flor opcional. Culture cer-

tainly varíes che deraiIs, out then we can criticize out culture.

What smndard [note time singular] do we use for Chis? What is

ihe underlying strucrure uf human nature which culture is de-

signed to complete and express' In chis Cangle of question 1

found some clearings being worked by Freudian and )ungian

psychologists, on principies that seemed to offer hope but were

nor quite clear to me. Other arcas were heing mapped by an-

thropologists, who seemed ro have some interese in my prob-

lem, out who were inclined ... ro say that what human beings

had in common was flor in che ciad very important. thar che

key to all che mysteries [lay] in culture. This seemed to me

shallow.... 1 [finallcf carne upan another clearing, Chis time an

expansion of che borders of tradicional zoology, made by people

[Lorenz, Trnbergen, Eibes-Eibesfeldt, Desmond Morris] studying

che natures of other species. They had done much work on che

question of what such a nature was-recent work in the rradi-

tion of Darwin, and indeed of Aristode, bearing direcrly on

problems in which Aristotle was already inrerested, out which

have become peculiarly pressing roday."

The assumprions with which Chis declaration of consciente is

riddled-tlaat fancies imposed on us by cultural judgments (rhat rhe

poor are w1 orthless? that Blacks are subhuman? that women are irra-

cional?); are inadequately substancial to ground real evil; that culture

is icing', biology, cake; that we have no choice as to what we shall

hace (hippies? bosses? eggheads? ... relativists?); thar difference is

shallo*, likeness, Jeep; thar Lorenz is a straighrforward fellow and

Freud li mysterious one-may perhaps be left to perish of their own

weight. One garden has been out exchanged for another. The jungle

remaids several walls away.

More important is what sort of garden Chis "Darwin meets Aris-

totle" ¿Pe is. What sort of abominations are going to become unop-

rional? What sort of faces unnatural?

Well, mutual admiration societies, sadism, ingratitude, monot-

ony, and the shunning of cripples, among other things-at least

when they are carried to excess:

Grasping Chis point ["that what is natural is never just a condi-

tion or activity ... but a certain level of that condition or ac-

tiviry proporcionare to che rest of one's life"] makes it possible

to cure a difficulry abour such concepts as natural which has

made many people think them unusable. Besides rheir strong

sense, which recommends something, they have a weak sense,

which does nor. In the weak sense, sadism is natural. This just

means that it occurs; we should recognize it.... But in a

strong and perfectly good sense, we may call sadistic behavior

unnatural-meaning rhat a policy based on chis natural im-

pulse, and extended through somebody's life inro organized ac-

tivity, is, as [Bishop] Butler said, "contrary to the whole

consritution of human nature." ... That consenting adules

CJhaprer 111 1 }latí ^nti-^elatñ.'sm 53

,houlJ hirc cach rthcr in bcLl I, iat Ill ,emes mural; thai

sd^^u,ltutche, sh^nliJ hull,, chllJrcn hn rhrirsexual gratihca-

tinn is not. There i, >.uuet hinp tt ron;¿ tr'ith chis activity hcyond

che actuul injun ih.rt it indict> ... Fs:uupies ot ibis yn>ng

hm^ of nnrrawralnes, ,in he tounJ which do nor invoive

oncer penple as t icims: t,n in,r.tnce, extreme nareissism, sui-

ciJc, ahsc,•itcrn^s. iucr,i, in, csau.ive munial admiration so-

clctie>. "li i. an unnaw ti .üc' tr. -a^, iocaning that irs cerner

has hecn mi>placcd. Furnc^r e\ 11111,1c', which d0 imOke t ic-

rimi=ing others, u-e raiu acd agrrcssion, che shunning of crip_

pies, ingratitude, vinJicnc^ucss, parricida All [hese rhings are

nitral in rhar there are wcll-ki 'vn impulses toward thenr

which are parís oí binan narure.... But redirected aggression

and so on can properiv he called irnnatural when we rhink of

namre in che fuller cense, not ju,r as an assembly of parís, but

as an organized whole. Thcy are parts which will ruin che

chape tu chat whole if they are allowcJ in any cense to cake

ir ovei. "

Acide from che fact rhar ir legitimare ono of che more popular

sophisms of inrellectual debate nowadays, asserting che strong form

of an argunrent and defending che weak one (sadism is natural as

long as you don'[ hice ioo Jeep), chis licle gamo of concept juggling

(natural may he unnarural when we think of nature "in che fuller

sense") displays che basic thesis of all such Human Namre argu-

ments: virme (cognicive, esdhetic, and moral alike) is co vice as

titness is ro disorder, normaliry ti) abnormality, well-being ro sick-

ness. The task for man, as for his lungs or bis rhyroid, is ro function

pmperly. Shunning cripples can be dangerous to your health.

Or as Srephen Salkever, a polirical scicntisr and follower of

Midgeley's, purs it:

Perhaps che besr developed moJel or analogue for an adequate

funcrionalist social scien,, is that provided by medicine. Por the

physician, physical icanires of an individual organism hecome in-

telligible in che light ot a basic concepcion of rhe prohlems con-

fronting chis self-direcred physical sysrem and in che light of a

general sense of healthy or wdl-funcrioning smre of che organism

5o ( iltq]ttlr III

relative to those prohlems. To understand a patienc is co under-

stand him or her as being more ta less healthy relative to come

stahle and objectn e standard of physical well-being, che kind of

standard che Greeks called aren=. This word is now ordinarily

translated "virtue," but in che polirical philosophy of Plato and

Aristutle ir refers simply ro che characteristic or definitive excel-

Ience of che subjecr of any functional anah-sis.'t

Again, one can look alurost anywhere within anthropology

[hese days and find an example of che revival of chis "it all comes

down tu" (genes, species being, cerebral architecture, psycho-sexual

conscicucion . . . ) casi of mind. Shake almost any Cree and a sclfish

altruist or a biogeneric structuralist is likely to fall out.

But it is better, 1 think, or ar leas[ less disingenuous, to have for

an instance neither a sitring dock nor a self-destruccing artifact.

And so leí me examine, very briefly, che views, most especially che

recen[ views, of one of out mosc experienced ethnographers and

influential rheorists, as well as one of our most formidable polemi-

cists: Melford Spiro. Purer cases, less shaded and less circumspect,

and thus all che better to appall you with, could be found. But in

Spiro we are at leas[ not dealing with some marginal phenome-

non-a Morris or an Ardrey-easily dismissed as an enthusiast or a

popularizer, but with a major figure at, or very near, che cerner of

che discipline.Spiro's more important recen[ forays into "down deep" in che

Horno anthropology-his rediscovery of che Freudian family ro-

mance, first in his own material on che kibbutz and then in Mal-

inowski's en che Trobriands-are well-known and will be, 1 daresay,

as convincing or unconvincing to their readers as psychoanalytic

theory of a rather orthodox sor[ is in general. But my concern is,

again, less with rhar [han with che Here Comes Everyman anti-

relativism he develops on che basis of it. And to get a sense for that,

an article of his summarizing his advance from past confusions to

present clarines will serve quite well. Called "Culture and Human

Namre," it catches a mood and a drift of attitude much more widely

spread than its rather beleaguered, no longer avant-garde theoreti-

cal perspective.a

JIulI ^i^tl-ReltrtjL9_Q4t - 35

{J

611

Spiro's paper is, as 1 mmntioned, again casi in rhe "when a child

1 spake as a child but now rhar 1 am ros, 1 have put away childish

things" gente so prorninent in rhe anti-relativist literature generally.

(Indecd, it mighr berter huye been rirled, as another southem Cali-

fornia-hased anthropol(>gist-apparcndy relarivism seems a clear

and present danger our rhar way-called che record of his deliv-

erance, "Confessions of a Former Cultural Relativis[.")19

Spiro begins his apolgtia with rhe admission rhar when he carne

finto anrhropology in rhe early rggob he was preadapted by a Marx-

ist hack^,mmld and roo many counes in Brirish philosophy to a

radically environmentalisr view of man, one rhar assumed a tabulaTaso view of mind, a social Jeterminisr view of behavior, and a cul-

tural relativist view of, well . , culture, and rhen traces his field

trip history as a didacric, parahle for our times, narrative of how he

cante nor just ro abandon diese ideas bur to replace them by their

opposires. In Ifaluk, he discovered rhar a people who showed very

little social aggression could yet be plagued by hostile feelings. In

Israel, he Jiscovered rhar chilLren "raised in [rhe] totally communal

and cooperative system" of rhe kibburz and socialized ro be mild,

loving, and noncompetitiv e neverdicless resented arrempts to get

them ro share goods and rvhen ohliged to do so grew resistan[ and

hosrile. And in Bumaa, he discovered rhar a belief in the imperma-

nence of sencient existente, Buddhisr nirvana and nonattachmenr,

did not result in n diminisheJ inreresr in rhe immediare mate-rialities of daily life.

In short, [iny field studies] convinced me rhar many motiva-

rional dispositions are culturally invariant land] many cognitive

orientations [are so] as weil. These invariant dispositions and

orientations stem ...from pan-human biological and cultural

consrants, and rhey comprise rhar universal human nature

which, rogether with received antbropological opinion, 1 had

formerly rejected as yer another erhnocentric bias."

Whether or not a portrait of peoples from Micronesia ro che

Middle Fasr as angrv mz'ralners des iously pursuing hedonic interesas

will altogerher srill rhe suspicion rhar some erhnocentric bias yet

clings ro Spiro's view of universal human nature remains to be seen.

Whar doesn't remain to be seen, because he is quite explicir aboutthem, are rhe kinds of ideas, noxious producís of a noxious relarivism,such a recourse ro medical functionalism is designed ro cure us of:

[The] concept of cultural relarivism ... was enlisted to do bat-

tle against racist notions in general, and the notion of primi-

tive mentality, in particular.... [But] cultural relarivism was

also used, at leas[ by some anthropologists, to perpetuare a kind

of inverted racism. That is, it was used as a powerful tool of

cultural critictsm, with the consequenr derogation of Western

culture and of rhe mentality which it produced. Espousing rhe

philosophy of primitivism ... rhe image of primitive man was

used . . . as a vehicle for rhe pursuit of personal utopian quests,

and/or as a fulcrum ro express personal discontent with West-

ern man and Western society. The strategies adopted took var-

tous forms, of which the following are fairly representative. (i)

Atrempts to abolish privare property, or inequality, or aggres-

sion in Western societies have a reasonably realistic chance of

success since such states of affairs may be found in many primi-

tive societies. (2) Compared ro at leas[ some primitives, West-

em man is uniquely competitive, warlike, intolerant of

deviance, sexis[, and so on. (3) Paranoia is not necessarily an

iliness, because paranoid thinking is instimtionalized in certain

primitive societies; homosexuality is not deviant because homo-

sexuals are rhe cultural cynosures of some primitive societies;

monogamy is not viable because polygamy is rhe most frequentform of marriage in primitive societies."

Aside from adding a few more items to the lis[, which promises

to be infinite, of unopcional abominations, ir is the introduction of

che idea of "deviance," conceived as a departure from an inbuilt

norm, like an arrhythmic heartbeat, not as a statistical oddity, like

fraternal polyandry, rhar is rhe really critical move amid al¡ Chis

huffing and puffing about "inverted racism," "utopian quesrs," and

"rhe philosophy of primitivism." For it is through that idea, The

Lawgiver's Friend, that Midgeley's transition between rhe natural

natural (aggression, inequaliry) and rhe unnatural natural (paranoia,

homosexuality) gens made. Once that camel's nose has been pushed

5(5 (' hu pter 111 1 ñnfi )1lti - elatiuisae -s. 57

insi.le, ihe test-ti11 . ihc och, 1, n,n„ue docto e tviug all its

,r h,,,c mud, tnnihh I'erh.tp> be more clearly een from

Rohcn C,iy,crt„:l> e,nnp.u,i„u pieee I in Che _same cnluute,

he Stu.lr of 1)evanee, ALur,ina! alar or Everyntan After a

useful, r.uherecleerie. rc,ie¢ 't d,e seiiy ddesianee in anrhropol-

,,gc. ; . eilel t„c. ,n. inc uJrn, Medir bis own quite inter-

estin_ o:,,rk tvith :Ames ir.ut remrda:e- ami Afric.i inancxuab,

Ldgert„ t,,,, e,nuc,, rat'neo -uJJenly a0 i eiatter cf lacr a corroan

lighr óulb gaing an te nc^ c,melusion rhar what is needed to make

smch rexarch genniaeli pn,Juctice i, a cantext-independent con-

ception of human netuire-ene in which "genericalls, encoded

potentials for behavior that we all sharc" are seen to "underlie

jour universal] propensirv for LIcvianee" Man's "instinct" for self-

preservation, his Fligh[)flght mech.mism, and bis intolerance of

boredom are instanced; and, in an argunient 1, in my innocence,

had thoueehr gane Ítem undvopology, along with euhemerism and

primitiva promiscuiry, ít p sugge red rhar, if all goas well en the

science sirle, we may, in time, be able ro judge nor just individuals

but entire societies as deviant, inadequare, failed, unnatural:

More inrportant still is our inability to test any proposition

abatir the relative ade;1uaey of a socicty. Our relativistic tradi-

tion in anthropology has heen slow ro yield to the idea that

uhere could he such a rhing as a deviant socicty, ene that is

contrary to human naturc ... Yer rhe idea of a deviant society

is central ro the alienation rradition in sociologv and other

fields ami it poses a challenge for anthropological theory. Be-

cause we know so liude abatí human naturc ... we cannot say

wherher, much les, how, am socicty has failed.... Neverthe-

less, a glance at any urban newspapcr's stories of rising rates of

homicide, suicide, rape nnd other violen[ crinies should suffice

to suggesr that rhe gaestinn is relevant nor only bar theory, huí

for quesrions of survival in the m,,dern wodd."

With dais [he eircle clases; tbe 1,01 slams. The fear uf relativ-

ism, raised ar every turn like come nie meric obsession, has led to a

position in which cultural dicersity, across space and ayer time,

amounts to a series of expresstono, ,nne salub ous, somc nor, of a

serded, underlying realiry, ihe essential matare of man, and anthro-

pology aniounts to an artempt t„ see through the hace of those

ssviceping, sehemarie,expressions ro ncL subsranee of rhat reahty. A

and content-hungry concept, conformable ro jusr about any chape

rhat comes along, Wilsonian, Loren:ian, Ereudian, Marxian, Ben-

thamite, Arisrotelian (`ene of rhe central features of 1Inman Na-

ture," sume anonymous genios is supposed to have remarked, "is a

separare judiciary") becomcs nce ground upen which the under-

standing of human conduct, homicide, suicide, rape ... the deroga-

tren of Western culture, comes dehnitively to rest. Some gods from

some machines cost, perhaps, rather more than they come to.

1 -7

About that other conjuration "The Human Mind," held up as a

protective cross against the relativist Dracula, 1 can be somewhat

more succinct; for rhe general pattern, if nor rhe substantial detail,

is very much the same. There is the saíne effort to promote a privi-

leged language of "real" explanation ("nature's own vocabulary," as

Richard Rorry, attacking the notion as scientistic fantasy, has put

it); and the same wild dissensus as to just which language-Shan-

non's? Saussure's? Piaget's?-that in fact is.'^ There is the same ten-

dency to see diversity as surface and universality as depth. And

there is the same desire to represent enes interpretations nor as

constructions brought to their objects-societies, cultures, lan-

guages-in ata effort, somehow, somewhat to comprehend them, huí

as quiddities of such objects forced upan our thought.

There are, of course, differences as well. The return of Human

Nature as a regulative idea has been mainly srimulated by advances

in genetics and evolutionary theory, that of the Human Mind by

unes in linguistics, computer science, and cognitive psychology. The

inclinarion of the formen is to see moral relativism as rhe suurce of

all out ills, that of the latter is to pin rhe blame on conceptual

relativism. And a partiality for the trapes and images of therapeuric

discourse (health and illness, normal and abnormal, function and

disfunetion) en rhe ene side is matched by a penchant for those of

k ttH /1;di-ldda[irisat 3Q

episremological discoursc (kno,vled,e and opinion, fact and illusion,

truth .md falsity) on the other. Bur they hardly count, these differ-

onces, against rhe common impulse to final analysis, we have now

arrived in Science, expkmarion. Wiring your theories inro some-

thing called the Structure of Reason is as effective a way to insulate

rhem from history and culture as building them roto something

calle) the Constitution of Man.

So far as anthropology as such is concerned, however, there is

another difference, more or les, groving out of these, which, while

also (you should excuse rhe expresion) more relative [han radical,

does acr to drive che avo sor t, of discussions in soinewhat divergent,

oven contrary, directions, n:nnely, rhar where the Human Nature

tack leads to bringing hack one of our classical conceptions inro the

center of our attention-"social deviance"-che Human Mind tack

leads tu bringing hack ,inotlicr-"rriínitive (sauvage, prímary, pre-

literato) drought." The anii-relativisr anxieties rhar gather in the

one discourse arouni rhe enigmas uf conduce, gather in che orher

around rhose of belief.

More exacrly, drey gadrer round "irracional" (or "mystical,"

"prelogicul," "affective," ot, harticui.irly nowadays, "noncognitive")

heliefs. Where it has buen such unncrving practices as headhunting,

slavery, casre, and foodhindinp which have sent anthropologists tal-

lying ro rhe granel o!d bromar of Human Nature under che impres-

sion that only thus axdd raking a tnoral distance from them be

jusrificd, it has been such unlikely conceptions as witchcraft sub-

smnce, animal rutelaries, goJ-kings, and (ti) foreshadow an example

1 will be gerting to in a uroment) a dragon with a golden hearr and

a horn at the nape of its neck which have sent rhem tallying to that

of che Human Mind under rhe impresion that only thus could

adopting an empirical skepticism with respect to them be defended.

It is not so much how the orher half hehaves that is so disquieting,

but-what is really rather worse-how ir thinks.

There are, again, a fairly large number of such rationalist or

neo-rationalist perspectivas in anthropology of varying degrees of

puriry, cogencv, coherence, and popularity, not wholly consonant

one with anorher. Sume invoke formal constancies, usually called

cognitive universals; some, developmental constancies, usually

called cognitive surges; some, operational constancies, usually called

cognitive processes. Some are stmcturalist, some are Jungian, some

are Piagetian, some look to che lates[ news from MIT, Bell Labs, or

Camegie-Mellon. All are after something steadfast: Reality reached,

Reason saved from drowning.

What they share, thus, is not merely an interest in our mental

functioning. Like an interest in our biological makeup, that is un-

controversially A Good Thing, both in irself and for the analysis of

cultura; and if not all che supposed discoveries in what is coming ro

be called, in an aspiring sorr of way, "cognitive science" turn out in

the event genuinely to be such, some doubrless will, and will alter

significantly not only how we think about how we think hut how

we think about what we think. What, beyond that, they share, from

Claude Lévi-Strauss to Rodney Needham, something of a dismnce,

and what is not so uncontroversially heneficent, is a foundationalist

view of Mind. That is, a view which sees ir-like "The Means of

Production" or "Social Structure" or "Exchange" or "Energy" or

"Culture" or "Symbol" in other, bottom-fine, the-buck-stops-here

approaches to social theory (and of course like "Human Nature")-

as che sovereign term of explanation, the light that shines in che

relativist darkness.

That it is rhe fear of relativism, the anti-hero wirh a thousand

faces, rhar provides a good parí of the impetus to neo-rationalism, as

it does to neo-naturalism, and serves as its major justification, can

be conveniently seen from the excellent collection of anti-relativist

exhortations-plus one unbuttoned relativist piece marvelously de-

signed to drive the others to che required level of outrage-edited

by Martin Hollis and Sirven Lukes, Rationa&ry and Relativism.u A

produce of che so-called rationality debate that Evans-Pritchard's

chicken stories, among orher things, seem to have induced inro

British social science and a fair parí of British philosophy ("Are

there absolute rruths that can be gradually approached over time

through rational processes? Or are all modes and systems of thought

equally valid if viewed from wirhin their own internally consisten

frames of reference?"), the book more or less covers che Reason in

Danger! waterfront.'° "The temptations of relativism are perennial

and pervasive," the editors' introduction opens, like some Crom-

6U Cüapteo 111 1 Anti finti-i?elativisto

ssrlli,m Cali t„ che b,tn-i rafe, [I he] rrunnixt I=arh lo leLa IN 1,111

O paced wuh plausiFle c,mte,„i^m,_"

The,hree .utth „t i. _i^t^ m tic, L.dlecrion all respund wirh en-

': rbi.e„>_ic, u, [roui nurse ves. Frnesr Gellner

urgues rime dte cae[ cha, .nher he,q,le Jo not beliece tchar sve, the

Children ^tf Galilem beiier e .,I atar hese rrality is par together is no

orguencnt u_,airor dte Gicr th.t o;h.n etc beliece i, nor rhe correo,

",)rnc Trae AnJ r, odurl_ rccn Hinnlas-ans,

sede, to hin[ I,t he ernninp :tneun,l, he ehinks it almas[ certain ruar ir

ís. Rohin 1 lonon argees tor u "roeniti^ e eommon dore," a culturally

universal, onl} triviallie earianr, "prinran theory" of the world as

filled wi[h middle-sieed, en,Iurnu ohjecr>, interrelated in tercos of a

push-pulí" concept of causaliat five spatial dichotomies (left/right,

aboye/helosv, etc.), a temporal erichontm} (before/ar [he same time/

after) and evo eategoncal distinctions (human/nonhuman, self/

orher), die extstence of sahich insures thar 'Relativism is bound to

fail whilst Universalism mal, s,nnc dad, succeed, m

Rut it ís Dan Spenccr, surer of his rationalist ground (Jerry

Fodor,, computational view of mental representations) [han either

of rhere, and wirh a One Tme Vision of his own ("rhere is no such

rhing asa non-literal fact"), wh,t deselops che most vigorous atrack.'`

Relativism, though nutrvelously mischievous (it makes 'ethnogra-

phy .. , inexplicable, and psychology imnrensely difficult'), is flor

even an indefensible position, ir really doesn't qualify as a position

ar all. lis ideas are semi-ideas, irs bclicfs semi-beliefs, its propositions

semi-propositions. Like rhe gold-hearted dragon with che horn at

rhe base of his neck that ocie of his elderly Dorze informants inno-

cently, or perhaps nor quite so innocently, invired hico to track

down and kilt (wary, of nonliteral facts, he declined), such "relativist

ogan," as peoples ,)f dittercnt cultures five in diffcrent worlds" are

nor, in fact, factual bclicfs. The} are hall-formed and indeterminate

representations, mental stopgaps, rhat resale when, less circumspect

[han computers, we try tn process more information ,han our inher-

ent conceptual capacitics pennit. Useful, sometimes, as place

holder, until we can gel our cognitis e powers up to speed, occa-

sionally fan to roy wirh while sce are waiting, even once in a while

-()urce, of ;uggestion in [genuine] creadse rhenking," they are nor,

riese academic dragan:, swith plasric hearts and no hora ae all, coar-

tas even dteir champions take as trae, lar thee do not really tenJer-

stand, nor can thej what thev mean. Thee are hanJ-tcaeing^

more elaborare or less-of a, in du end, eantormist, taórpratt on 1,

ueisleading, "hermenemico-psychedelic," selt-serving sort:

The hect evidence against tela!iv ism is ... che ver' ucris ice of

anrhropalogúts, scheIe the b^st ev idence for retal i v1,111 li,l in

ehc writings of anthropolagi,ts.... In retracing their sreps [in

thcir works], anthropologists rransferm ¡lit,, unfathomable gaps

che shallow and irregular cultural boundaries they had nor

found so difficulr to cross [in the field], thereby protecting their

own sense of identiry, and providing their philosophical and lay

audience with just whaz they want ro hear."

In short, whether in che form of hearty common sense (never

mind about hver gazing and poison oradles, we have alter all got

things more or less right), wistful ecumenicalism (despite the varia-

rions in more developed explanatory schemes, juju or genetics, at

base everyone has more or less ehc same conception of whar che

world is like), or aggressive sciencism (there are things which are

really ideas, such as "propositional actitudes" and "representational

beliefs," and there are things that only look like ideas, such as

"there's a dragon down the road" and "peoples of different cultures

five in different worlds"), the resurrection of the Human Mind as

che still point of che tuming world defuses che threat of cultural

relativism by disarming che force of cultural diversity. As wirh "Hu-

man Nature," che deconstruction of otherness is che price of truth.

Perhaps, but ir is nor whaz either rhe history of anrhropology, the

materials it has assembled, or the ideals that have animated it would

suggest; nor is it only relativists who tell theer audiences what they

would like to hear. There are some dragons-"tigers in red

weather"-that descree to be looked into.

Looking finto dragons, flor domesticaring or abominating them, nor

drowning them in vais of theory, is what anthropology has been all

6'g

í^uti ^nü-22elahrism - h3C,2 (heq,rrr III

about. At ¡casi, that is whar it has been all abour, as 1, no nihilist,

no subjecrivisr, and possessc,l, ass you can see, of sorne strong views

as to whar is real and whar is nor, whar is commendable and whar is

nor, whar is reasonable .md s^ hat is nor, understand it. We have,

wirh no linde success, sought to keep rhe world off balance; pulling

out rugs, upsetring tea rabies, scrring off firecrackers. It has been rhe

office ot orhers to reassure; ours to unsettle. Australopithecenes,

Tricksters, Clicks, Megaliths-wc homck rhe anomalous, peddle rhestrange. Merchants of asronishmenr.

We have, no douhr, on oec,ision moved roo far in chis ditection

and transformed idiosyncrasies finto puzzles, puzzles finto mysteries,

and mysteries finto humbug. But such an affection for whar doesn't

fin and won't comporr, realiry ,tur of place, has connecred us ro rhe

leading theme of rhe cultural hisrnrp of "Modera Times." For rhar

history has indeed consisred nf one held of thought after another

having to discover how ro live on without rhe certainties rhat

launched ir. Brute fuer, natural law, necessary truth, transcendent

beauty, immanent authority, unique revelation, even rhe in-here self

facing u he our-there world have all come under such heavy attack as

ro seem by now lost simplicities of a less srrenuous past. But science,

law, philosophy, art, polirical theory, religion, and rhe stubborn in-

sisrences of common sense hace contrived nonetheless to conrinue.

It has nor proved necessary to revive rhe simplicities.

It is, so 1 think, precisehy dte derennination not ro cling to what

once worked well enough and gor us ro where we are and now

doesn't quite work well enough and gcrs us finto recurrent stalemates

rhar makes a science move. A, long as diere was nothing around

inuch faster than a maradaon runner, Aristotle's physics worked well

enough, Eleatic paradoxes notwithstanding. So long as technical in-

strumentation could gel us hur a short way down and a certain way

out from our sense-delivered world, Newton's mechanics worked

well enough, action-at-a-disra¡ice perplexities norwirhstanding. It

was nor relarivism-Sex, rhe Dialecric and rhe Dearh of God-that

did in absolute morion, Euclidean spaee, and universal causation. Ir

was wayward phenomena, wave packcrs and orbital leaps, before

which rhey were helpless. Nor was ir Relarivism-Hermeneurico-

64 - (?i„ii.tet 111

Psychedelic Subjectivism-rhat did in (to the degree they have

been done in) rhe Cartesian cogito, the Whig view of history, and

"rhe moral noint of view so sacred to Eliot and Amold and Emer-

son." It was odd actualities-infant berrorhals and nonillusionist

paintings-that embarrassed their categories.

In this move away from old triumphs become complacencies,

one-time breakthroughs transformed tu roadblocks, anthropology

has played, in our day, a vanguard role. We have been rhe first to

insist on a number of rhings: rhar rhe world does flor divide finto rhe

pious and the supersririous; rhar there are sculptures in jungles and

paintings in deserts; rhar political order is possible without central-

ized power and principled justice without codified rules; rhat rhe

norms of reason were not fixed in Greece, the evolution of morality

nor consummated in England. Most important, we were rhe first to

insist rhar we see rhe lives of orhers through tenses of out own

grinding and that they look back on ours through ones of their own.

That Chis led some to think rhe sky was falling, solipsism was upon

os, and intellect, judgment, even rhe sheet possibility of communi-

cation had all fled is flor surprising. The repositioning of horizons

and rhe decentering of perspectíves has had that effect before. The

Cardinal Bellarmines you have always wirh you; and as someone has

remarked of rhe Polynesians, it takes a certain kind of mirad to sail

out of the sight of land in an outrigger canoe.

But rhar is, at least at out best and te rhe degree rhar we have

been able, what we have been doing. And it would be, 1 think, a

large pity if, now rhar the distances we have established and rhe

elsewheres ve have located are beginning to bite, to change our

sense of sense and our perception of perception, we should turra

back to old songs and older stories in rhe hope rhar somehow only

rhe superficial need alter and rhar we shan't fall off rhe edge of rhe

world. The objection to anti-relativism is non rhar it rejects an ir's-

all-how-you-look-at-it approach to knowledge or a when-in-Rome

approach to morality, but that it imagines rhar they can only be

defeated by placing morality beyond culture and knowledge beyond

hoth. This, speaking of things which must needs be so, is no longer

possible. If we wanted home truths, we should have stayed at honre.

JInri.,gnti-I?elativis,u -7-., 65

/ 11,i1,r1- 11,1.1. "ihe I' .^ ..i a-.duu^i n.' , hora,, A1' :i n1, urce T.- 11,111

,n Ilc i.I 1 SSnhs, Aa' Pral - 1 ., lace,. 1 111'1111, 11 i4 (196'2). 1 55-

VV- Bo, rl„ "rA N,,c or q ,,. ib: I n,! Inhmq Tn11r Dcnxx lar i c Crifiusnr,,,

}r'rfrias c U9a3 ): 195-•,4.

4 I l 1 1 . 1 no,,. I lunu,nivr, , o h:ü>ur. l I , ]i, k, ti,," „t Trutb md Se-

ri0o,uus< ur Amcntan Cu r.,r ii An1 h y ,d,^!c" m N. Haan ct al., cds., Social

5. Nl. Je Nlonmign, Les Gssa 'e Slidrel de Montaikme, P Villery, ed.,

Parir: Liniversitaircr de Franco, 1970 p. 205 Sue T. Todoror-, "Montaigne.

6s',1ys in Reading," in G. Dnous, rd., 1'ale Frendt Stttdres, vol. 64, New Haven:

Yale Unnersiry Press, 1983, I'P 111-114, irir a general discussion of Mon-

raiGne's relativism similar to orine.

6. \V Gas.., "Culmre, SeR, md St71e," S-;rnnu'a Scholar 2 (1981): 54-68.

7. 1. Jnrvie, "Rat,onali>m ond Relariv'sm," BTitlSh Jou,nal of SocioIogY 34

(0183): 45, 46.8. P. J„hnson, Madrn, Traes, Nea Y1rrk, Harper & Row, 1983; for

T homas's recio", "The Interno „t Rolariv aro,l Times Literary 8uppleinenr, July

8, p. 178.

9, Johnsun, Moderan Times, P. 0 .

1o. G. Smcking, "Aftenv,ard: A \'icsc flan, che Cenrer," Ethnos 47 (1982):

176.

11. L. Tiger and J. Sepher, AX'omen in tire Kihbutz, New York: l larcourt

Braco-Jovanav,eh, 1975, P 1612. Quoted, ro oppruire purposes, in C. Kluekhohn, "Education, Values

and Anrhrupolugieal Relari viry," in C. Kluckhohn, ed., Culture and Belmvior,

New York: Free Press, 1962.

13. For 'u iterialis,n, sce 8t. Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theon,

New York: Cruweli, 1968; tor "seience" and "l he Big Dirch," E. Gelhzer, Spee-

tades and Prediea,nenr, CamhnJge: Cambridgc- Universiry Press, 1979; for "m-

rerrheorerie urmpeririou," R. Honro, "Trad,n,m amad Moderniry Revisired," ¡ir

M. Hollis and S. Lukes, eds., Itation<duy and Relarirism, Cambridgc MIT Press,

1982, pp. 201-26o; for °rhe Carresian Conccption of Knowledge," S. Lukes,

"Relarivisni in la Place," in Hollis and Lukes, eds., ibid., Pp. 261-305, cf. B.

Williams, Desearles: The Project of Pu,, Ingrrirp, Harmondsworrh, England: Pen-

guin, 1978; lor Popper, from whom ali [hese blessings flow, K. Popper, Conjec-

rotes and RLJutarions: Tha Gruuth uf Sciauife Knowledgc, London: Rourledge

and Kcgan Paul, 1963, and K. I'oppcr. Objectire Knowledge: An Evoludonary

Approa:h, Oxturd: Clarendun Press, 19;2.

14. For " prugressicr ' and "degencrarrve " rescnrcb progrnun, sce L Lakaw,,

The Al cho la[,tp>) 1 Caentijic Rc_ 1r-i:, Ganrhridgv: Camhri ee L nirersrnv I'ress,

1976.15. M. Slidi, lec, Seas[ and ALno The IL :,o uj 1101„1. V,gilr.. Ithaca:

Cornell Universiry Press, 1978, pp. sir-xv halles in original -16. Ibid., PP. 79-So; iralies in original. The "mononmy" example ,ccurs

in a foomore ("Monoronv is irself an ahnormal extreme")-11. S. Salkever, "Beyond lnmgpretation: Ploman Agcncc anal che Sloc-

enh Wilderness;' in Harm et al., ed,.. Suciai Science, p. zro.18. NI. Spiru, "Culrure in,) Honran Nar,ue;' in G. Spindlar ed., D w

Makng of Psychological Anrhrapologo, Berkeley: Univenir} ot California Press,

1978, PP. 330-36o.19. H. Baggish, "Confessions of a Former Cultural Relarivisr," in E. An-

geloni, ed., Anthropology 83/84, Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin Publishing, 1983.

Por anorher troubled discourse on "che relativism problem" from rhar pan of

che world ["1 ser out what 1 think a reasonable point of view to fill che parcial

void left by erhical relativism, which by rhe 198os seems more often ro be

repudiared [han upheld"), see E. Harch, Culture and Moraüry: The Relarivity of

Values in Anrhropolog7, New York: Columbia Universiry Press, 1983, yuotation

at p. 12.

20. Spiro, "Culrure and Human Nature," PP. 349-350.

21. Ibid., P. 336.

22. R. Edgerron, "The Study of Deviance, Marginal Man or Everyman?"

in Spindler, ed., The Making of Psychological Anthropology, pp. 444-471.

23. Ibid., p. 470.24. R. Rorry, "Method and Moraliry," in Haan et al., eds., Social Science,

pp. 155-176; cf. R. Rorry, Philosophy and rhe Mirror of Nature, Princeton:

Prineeton University Press, 1979.

25. There are also some more moderare, split-the-difference pieces, by lan

Hacking, Charles Taylor, and Lukes, bur only the firsr of these seems genuinely

free of cooked-up alanns.26. The parenrherical 4uorations are from the book jacket, which for

once reflects rhe conrents.27. Hollis and Lukes, eds., Rationaliry and Relauvism, p. i.

28. E. Gellner, in ibid.

29. R. Horron, in ibid.30. D. Sperber, "Apparently Irracional Beltefs," in ¡bid., pp. 149-180-

31. Ibid., p. r8o.

C;O -.- ( iq,Irr 10 1 f1nti f7 11 t1 - 1 felatiiis

IvThe Uses o f 'Divelrsity

Anthropology, my frohliche AVissenschafr, has been fatally involved

oven the whole course of ir, history (a long one, if you stars it with

Herodotus; rather short, if y(1u start it with Tylor) with the vast

variety of ways in which nien and women have tried to live their

lives. Ar sume points, ir has sought te) deal with that variety by

capturing it in some universulizing raes of theory: evolutionary

stages, pan-human ideas or practices, or transcendental forms (struc-

tures, archctypes, subterranc,,n1 grammars). At others, n has stressed

parriculariry, idíosynerassy, incommensurability-cabbages and kings.

But recenrle ir has found itsclf laced with something new: the possi-

bilir v that the variety is rapidl} softening finto a paler, and narrower,

spectrum. We may he Paced tvirh a world in which there simply

aren'[ inc more hcadhunrcrs, marrilinealists, or people who predict

the wcather from nce cntFails of a pig. Diffcrence will doubtless

remain-the French will nevar ear salted butter. But the good old

days of widow buming and cannibalism are gone forever.

In itsclf, asa professionul issue, d,is process of the softening of

cultural contrasr (assuming ir is real) is perhaps nos so dismrbing.

Anthropologists will simple Lave to leam to make something of

subtier differences, and rheir wrirings may grow more shrewd if less

spectacular. But it railes a hroader issuc, moral, aestheric, and cogni-

tive ¡ti once, rhat is much more troubling, and that lies at rhe ceo-

ter of much current discusshiii ahout h,me it is thar values are to be

OS

justified: what 1 will call, just to have something that sticks in themirad, The Future of Ethnocentrism.

I shall come back to some of those more general discussions

after a bit, for it is toward them that my overall concem is directed;

but as a way into the problem 1 want to begin with the presentation

of an argument, unusual 1 think and more than a little disconcert-

ing, which che French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss develops

at the beginning of his recent collection of essays, contentiously

entitled (contentiously, at leas[, for an anthropologist) The Viewfrom Afar-Le regard éloigné.'

Lévi-Snauss's argument arose in che first place in response to a

UNESCO invitation to deliver a public lecture to open The Inter-

national Year to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, which,

in case you missed it, was 1971. 1 was chosen," he writes,

because twenty years earlier 1 had written [a pamphlet called]

"Race and History" for UNESCO [in which] 1 had stated a few

basic truths.... [In] 1971, 1 soon realized that UNESCO ex-

pected me [simply] to repeat ehem. But twenty years earlier, in

order to serve the intemational institutions, which 1 felr 1 had

to support more than 1 do today, 1 had somewhat overstated my

point in the conclusion to "Race and History." Because of my

age perhaps, and certainly because of reflections inspired by the

present state of the world, 1 was now disgusted by Chis obliging-

ness and was convinced shas, if 1 was to be useful to UNESCO

and fulfill my commitment honestly, 1 should have to speak incomplete frankness.'

As usual, that tumed out nos to be altogether a good idea, and

something of a farce followed. Members of the UNESCO staff were

dismayed that "I had challenged a catechism [the acceptance of

which] had allowed them to move from modest jobs in developing

countries to sanctified positions as executives in an intemational

institution.` The then director general of UNESCO, another deter-

minad Frenchman, unexpectedly took the floor so as to reduce Lévi-

1he Uses of 'Diversity 6g

Sir:w>s', tima to peak an,l rhe- nirrc 11111 tc itake thc "improving„

excioicns thar hui hccn I t„ bim. Lé i-Srnws, incm'rigihle,

real bis corita test, ap^,.ircuhIv it hi! h -pc,d, in Che time lefr.

AII thai pida, at n,mnal d.n ar tlic LA'. rhe problem wirh Uvi-

Srruuas's talk wa., thai in it ' 1 nc1 c1IcL .m.iinst rhe abuse of language

bv which people ten,¡ mora an,l mora tu confuse racism ... wirh

arrirudr, i irat are normal, aval IL^aititcarc. anl ni any case, unas

iblc°-rhar i,, dtou^,h he iic, ,..1 a.i!1 ü Ciar, cdu^ocenrrism.'

Ethn,ccenrrissm. I L.i-lir.u araui- in that piocc, "Race and

Cultura," in,], somewhat mara icchnicalh in anorher, The An-

hropuloglst and the Human Cnnditi,m," wrirren about a decade

further on, is not only noi in ir,clf a Fiad rhing, bur, ir leasr so long

as it does not get out of hand, rarher a good one. Loyalty to a

certain set of valucs inevirahiy malees people "partially or rotally

insensitive to orher valucs" ro which other people, equally paro-

chial, are eyually loyal."'Ir is nat at all invidious to place one way

of life or rhought aboye all othars or ro feel little drawn to other

valucs." Such `relativa incommunicability" loes not authorize any_

une to operes or destroy the values rcjeated ot those who carry

them. But, absenr that, "it is nor ar all repugnant":

Ir may- even be the erice to he paid so that rhe systems of

values oí each spirirual hunily ir each comnumiry are preserved

and find within themselves the resources necessary for their re-

newal. If ... human socieries exhibir a cerrain optimal diver-

sity beyond which they cannor go, bur below which they can

no longer deseend without Jangeí, we must recognize rhat, to a

large extenr, Chis tliversitp resalo tront rhe desire of each cul-

tura ro resist rhe culturas surruunding ir, ro distinguish itself

from them-in short ro he trsalf. Cultures are nor unaware of

une anorher, rhey cven bom1e from one another on occasion;

bur, in order nor to perish, thay nnnr in other connections re-

moin somewhat impermeable towanl onc anorher.'

Ir is thus nor only an illusion tlmt humanity can wholly free

itself from erhnocenrrism, "or even rhac it will cate to do so"; it

would flor he a good rhing ir ir cid do so. Such a "freedom" would

leca to a world "whose cultores , all pnssionatelc tonel of onc an-

other, would aspire only ro cclebrate cae another , ni such contusion

rhac each would lose rm7 ottmcrion it could hace 11 )r rhe orhers and

irs own reason lar exisring."

Distance lends , if nor enchantment , anvway inditietence, and

thus integrity . In the past , when so - called prunitive cultures were

only very mar ,gimtlh' inaolved wirh one another referring to

hemselves as "The True Ones," "The Good Ches," or just "The

Human Beings ," and dismissing rhose across the river or over the

ridge as "earth monkeys" or " louse eggs," that is, nor , or nor fully,

human-cultural integrity was readily maintained . A "profound in-

difference to other cultures was ... a guarantee that they could

exist in their own manner and on their own tercos ."' Now, when

such a situation clearly no longer obtains, and everyone , increas-

ingly crowded on a small planet, is deeply interested in everyone

else, and in everyone else's business, the possibility of the loss of

such integrity, because of the loss of such indifference , looms. Eth-

nocentrism can perhaps never entirely disappear, being "consub-

srantial with our species ," bur it can grow dangerously weak, leaving

us prey to a sort of moral entropy:

We are doubtless deluding ourselves with a dream when we

think that equality and fraternity will some day reign among

human beings without compromising their diversity. However,

if humanity is not resigned tu becoming the sterile consumer of

values that it managed to create in the past ... capable only of

giving birth to bastard works, ro gross and puerile inventions,

[then] it rnust learn once again that all true creation implies a

certain deafness ro che appeal of other values, even going so far

as to reject them if not denying them altogether. For one can-

not fully enjoy the orher, identify wirh him, and ver at rhe

same time remain different. When integral conununication

with rhe other is achieved completely, it sooner or later spells

Boom for both his and my creativity. The great creative eras

were those in which communication had become adequate for

mutual stimulation by remote partners, yet was not so frequent

76,e Uses of /)irersiitr 7 i

or so rapid as Co endanger che indispensable obstacles between

individuals and groups or co reduce diem to rhe point where

overly facile exchanges mighr equali:c and nullify their diversity.'

Wharever one thinks of all rhis, or however surprised one is to

hear it coming from an antliropologist, it cerrainly strikes a contem-porary chord. The atrracc ons of "deafness ro che appeal of other

values" and of a relax-and-enj„y-it approach ro one's imprissonrnent

in one's own cultural tradition are increasingly celebrated in recen[

social thought. Unable to embrace eirher relativism or absolutistn-

the first because it disahles judgment, the second because it removes

ir from history-our philosophers, historians, and social scientists

turn toward che sor[ oi rvc-are-we and they-are-they imperméabiliré

Lévi-Scrauss recommends. Whether one regards Chis as arrogance

made easy, prejudice jusrihed, r as tic splendid, here-stand-1 hon-

esty oí Flannery O'Connor's "when in Rome do as you done in

Milledgeville," it elearly puts the que [ion of The Future of Ethno-

centrism-and of cultural Jiversity-m rarher a new light. Is draw-

ing back, distancing eisewhere, The V'iew from Afar, really the way

to escape che desperate tolerance of UNESCO cosmopoliranism? Is

che alternative to moral entropy moral narcissism?

The (orces making for a warmer view of cultural self-centeredness

over the last rwenty-five or rhirry years are multiple. There are

[hose "srate of rhe world" ntatrers to which Lévi-Strauss alludes, and

most especially che failure of most Third World countries to live up

ro che dhousand-flowers hopos for rhem current just before and just

after rheir independence struggles. Amin, Bokassa, Pol Pot, Kho-

meini at che extremes, Marcos, Mobwo, Sukarno, and Mrs. Gandhi

less extravagantly, have put something of a chill on che notion that

[here are worlds elsewhere to which our own compares clearly ill.

There is rhe successive unmasking of rhe Marxisr utopias-the So-

viet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam. And [here is rhe weakening of

rhe Decline of che West pessimism induced by world war, world

72 f h„pter 1V

depression, and che loss of empire. But [here is also, and 1 think not

least importan[, the rise in awareness that universal consensus-

trans-nacional, trans-cultural, even trans-class-on normative mat-

ters is not in che offing. Everyone-Sikhs, Socialists, Positivists, che

Irish-is not going to come around ro a common opinion concem-

ing what is decent and what is not, what is just and what is not,

whar is beautiful and what is not, what is reasonable and what is

nop not soon, perhaps not ever.

If one abandons (and of course not everyone, perhaps not oven

most everyone, has) che idea that che world is moving toward essen-

tial agreement on fundamental matters, or even, as with Lévi-

Strauss, that it should, then che appeal of relax-and-enjoy-¡t ethno-

centrism naturally grows. If our values cannot be disentangled from

our history and our institutions and nobody else's can be disen-

tangled from rheirs, then [here would seem to be nothing for it but

to follow Emerson and stand on our own feet and speak with our

own voice. 9 pope ro suggest," Richard Rorry writes in a recen[

piece (marvelously entitled "Postmodernisr Bourgeois Liberalism"),

"how [we postmodemist bourgeois liberals] mighr convince our soci-

cry that loyalty ro itself is loyalry enough ... that it need be re-

sponsible only co its own traditions."10 Whar an anthropologist in

search of "che consisten[ laws underlying che observable diversity of

beliefs and institutions"" arrives at from che side of rarionalism and

high science, a philosopher, persuaded that "there is no `ground' for

[our] loyalties and convictions save che fact that che beliefs and

desires and emotions which burness ehem overlap [hose of lots of

other members of che group with which we identify for purposes of

moral and political deliberarion" arrives at from che side of pragma-

tism and prudencial ethics."

The similarity is even greater despite che very different starting

points from which [hese two savants depart (Kantianism without a

transcendental subject, Hegelianism without an absolute spirit), and

the even more different ends toward which they tend (a trim world

of transposable forms, a disheveled one of coincident discourses),

because Rorry, roo, regards invidious distinctions between groups as

not only natural bur essential to moral reasoning:

The Uses of Diversity 73

( I h c F nntunah_cLl 1 l c , u 1: i n u,.,lo,ur of IKanrianj .intrinsic hu-

m.ut. l i g n i t o " i. thc toar" u n ive 1_nitc ot ., grnup witli which

a 1,erson Idenritte- hvneli. N:oi„n. „r churdres or muvcments

ie, on rlus v,cw, ;htn,nc hi^t,ric, cs.unpies flor hecause rhey

redccr rut> cnnuratiug tr.,ni ,i hiy;hcr s„urce, but hecause of con-

rrast-eth^a coraparlson tsith tconc cnnuuuniries. Persons

have Jo iiiIV for us a, irten,or lununcs^enee, hui hecause rhey

share in such ontraa-eli^^i - Ir i, n con,llary af rhis viese that

ihe moral jusrificai ian „f the insriu,r,om and practices oí unes

groul of du amtcmi„tala h,xuwoisie-is mostly a tnat-

ter of historial narr tivice (mCluding scenarios about what is

likelv ro happen in ccrrain future contingencies), rather than of

philosophical nieta-narratives. The principal backup for histo-

riography is flor philosophy hit rhe arrs. which serve to de-

velop and modify a group's elf-imago by, for example,

aporheosizing irs herpes, diaholizing its enenties, mounting dia-

logues among its uumhers, ind refocusing its attention.'t

Now, as a member oí borh rhese intellectual traditions myself,

of the scientific study of cultural diversity hy profession and of post-

modern bourgeois liberalism by general persuasion, my own view, to

get round now to thar, is dtat in easp surrender ro rhe comforts of

merely being ourselves, culrivating deafness and maximizing grati-

mde for not having been horn a Vandal or un 1k, will be fatal to

borh. An anthmpology so afraid of desrroying cultural integrity and

creativity, our own and everyone else's, by drawing near to other

people, engaging rhem, seeking ro gcup them in thcir immediacy

and their ditference, is desunid ro perish of an inanition for which

no ntanipulations of objecrivixd data sets can compensare. Any

moral philosophy so afraid of hecomim„ enrangled in witless relariv-

ism or transcendental dogmarism thar ir can rhink of nothing better

to do wirh other ways of going at life theta te) make rhem look worse

than our own is destined meren te) conduce (as someone has said of

rhe ^^ritings of V. S. Nalpuul, perhaps our leading adept ir con-

structing such "conrrasr-cffccts") tosear.l making che world safe for

condcscension. Trying to save ruco disciplines frota themselves at

Lince may seem likc hubds . But when one has double eiti_enships

une has double chiigations.

Their different demeanors in,¡ their differenr hohhv-horses not-

rvirhsranding (and 1 tontees myself verv much closer to Rorty's

messy populism than lo Lév'i-Strauss's ftstidious mandarinism-in

irself, perhaps, bur a cultural bias of my own), these two versions ot

to-each-bis-own moraliry rest, in parí anyway, on a common view of

cultural diversity: namely, that its main importante is thar it pro-

vides os with, te) use a formula of Bernard Williams's, altematives to

us as opposed ro altematives for us. Other beliefs, values, ways of

going on, are seen as beliefs we would have believed, values we

would have held, ways we would have gone on, had we been bom

in sume other place or some other time than that in which we

actually were.

So, indeed, we would have. But such a view seems to make borh

rather more and rather less of rhe fati of cultural diversity than it

should. Rather more, because it suggests that to have had a different

life than one has in fact had is a practical option one has somehow

to make one's mind up about (should 1 have been a Bororo? am 1

not fortunate not ro have been a Hittite?); rather less, hecause it

obscures the power of such diversity, when personally addressed, to

transform our sense of what it is for a human being, Bororo, Hittite,

Structuralist, or Postmodem Bourgeois Liberal, to believe, to value,

or to go on: what it is like, as Arthur Danto has remarked, echoing

Thomas Nagel's famous question about rhe bar, "to think rhe world

is flat, that 1 look irresistible in my Poiret frocks, that rhe Reverend

Jim Jones would have saved me ehrough his love, that animals have

no feeling or that flowers do-or rhat punk is where it's at."" The

trouble wirh ethnocentrism is not that ir commirs us co our own

commitments. We are, by definirion, so committed, as we are to

having our own headaches. The trouble with ethnocentrism is thar

it impedes os from discovering at what sort of angle, like Forsrer's

Cavafy, we stand to the world; what sort of bar we really are.

por! ÍY' 1 The 1 'ses of '7irersit. 7-- 75

This view-thar rhe puzzles mised by rhe fact of cultural diver-

sity have more ro do wirh our capacity to feel our way into alien

sensibilities, modes of rhouthr (punk rock and Poiret frocks) we do

flor possess, and are nor likely to, rhan they do wirh whether we can

escape preferring our own preferentes-has a number of implica-

tions which holle ill for a we-are-we nnd they-are-they approach to

things cultural. The firsr of ncese, and possibly rhe most importan[,

is rhat rhose puzzles arise nct merely at rhe boundaries of our soci-

ety, where we would expect rhem under such an approach, bus, so

to speak, ar rhe boundaries of ourschves. Foreignness does flor srart

at dre water'.s erige but at rhe skin's. The sort of idea that both

anthropologists since Malinowski in,¡ philosophers since Witrgen-

stein are likely to entertain thar, say, Shi'ís, being other, present a

prohIem, hut, say, soccer fans, being parí of es, do nor, or ar leas[

nor of rhe same sor[, is merely wrong. The social world does nor

divide ar its joints roto perspicuous wie's with whom we can empa-

thize, however much we differ wirh rhem, and enigtnatical they's,

wirh whom we cannot, however much we defend te) rhe dearh theirrighr ro differ from us. The wugs begin long before Caíais.

Both recenr anrhropology of rhe From rhe Native's Point of

View sor[ (which 1 pracrice) and recen[ philosophy of the Forros of

Life sor[ (to which 1 adhere) have hect made ro conspire, or to

seem to conspire, in obscurin;,, rhis fact by a chronic misapplicarion

of their most powerful and mosr importanr idea: che idea that mean-ing is social[y construcred.

The perception rhat mcaning, i q rhe form of interpretablesigns-sounds, images, feclimgs, artifacts, gestures-comes to exist

only within language gamos, crnnmuniriess of discourse, intersubjec-

rive systems of referente, ways of worldmaking; rhat it arises within

rhe frame of concrete social interaction in which somerhing is a

somerhing for a you and a me, and flor in some secret grorro in rhe

head; and rhat it is through and rhrough historical, hammered out

in rhe flow of evenrs, is read ro imply (as, in my opinion, nei-

rher Malinowski nor Wirteentrein-nor for that master Kuhn or

Foucault meant ir to inrply) that human communities are, or

should be, semantic monads, ncarly windowless. We are, says Lévi-

Srrauss, passengers in rhe trains which are our cultures, each mov-

75 Ehapter [V

ing en its own track, at its own speed, and in its own direction. The

nains rolling alongside, going in similar direction and at speeds nor

roo different from our own are at leas[ reasonably visible to us as we

look out from our compartments. But trains en an oblique or paral-

lel track which are going in an opposed direction are non "[We]

perceive only a vague, fleeting, barely identifiable image, usually just

a momentary blur in our visual field, supplying no information

about itself and merely irritating us because it interrupts our placid

contemplation of rhe landscape which serves as rhe backdrop to our

daydreaming"" Rorty is more cautious and less poetic, and 1 sense

less interested in other people's trains, so concemed is he where his

own is going, bus he speaks of a more or less accidental "overlap" of

belief systems between "rich North American bourgeois" commu-

nities and others that "[we] need to talk wirh" as enabling "what-

ever conversation between nations may still be possible."1° The

grounding of feeling, thought, and judgment in a forro of life-

which indeed is rhe only place, in my view, as it is in Rorty's, thar

they can be grounded-is taken te mean that the limits of my

world are rhe limits of my language, which is nor exactly what theman said.

What he said, of course, was that the limits of my language are

che limits of my world, which implies nor that rhe reach of our

minds, of what we can say, think, appreciate, and judge, is trapped

within rhe borders of our sociery, our country, our class, or our time,

bus that rhe reach of our minds, the range of signs we can manage

somehow to interpret, is wha[ defines rhe intellectual, emocional,

and moral space within which we live. The greater that is, che

greater we can make it become by trying ro understand wha[ flat

earthers or rhe Reverend Jim Jones (or lks or Vandals) are all about,

whar it is like to be rhem, rhe clearer we become te ourselves, both

in tercos of wha[ we see in others that seems remote and what we

see that seems reminiscent, wha[ attractive and wha[ repellent,

wha[ sensible and what quite mad; oppositions that do nor align in

any simple way, for there are some things quite appealing ahout

bats, some quite repugnant about ethnographers.

It is, Danro says in that same article 1 quoted a moment ago,

"the gaps between me and [hose who think differently rhan 1-

T11e 1 ses of l)ioersity ' 77

acóich i ^ i „ ,.n e ervou . uol 1 11 Im,idc tlt,tie ,egryared by ditfer-

enec, ul 'eTM cin,,n., .cy. 1 11 1 1 1 "11 arnI ev en r.Lue--lrharl

^lelnte die rr.ti 1,.1i11,111 i tl.^ -ell. lt I, rhe aw iometricE. as he

.iLo :.av•. or neaih tal oren h,liee or teO and sehar

orhers d,,, th.tt make ir p,,. iblc t„ hilare schere Lee mm are in the

tcorld, how it lee¡, t„ bc thete, ini reboce we naiglu ur miela nor

o anr t ;,^_ To alealre th^,>e ,.ap^ uud tho>c ,u'yuunetnes by relegar-

l', .t re.ilm of reprc.,iblc or i,nar-able rlillereoce, mere un-

likene,s, t,hiclt is tsóat cthn„^-cutrisnt .htc, val is designed to do

(UNESCO universalism ,>bsaucs choro Lícl-Srmuss is quite right

abour chic-by deny log dtcir reality ,dtoge per), is to cut os off

frum such knowledge and sudr possihilir}: rhe possihiliry oí quite

1iterally, and quite rhoroughly, changing our minds.

Thc history of any people separately and all peoples together, and

indeed of each penon individually, has Leen a history of such a

changing of minds, usually sloot ly, somerimes more rapidly; or if rhe

idealist round of rhar disturhs lou (ir ought nor, it is nor idealist,

and ir denles neirher rhe natural pressures oí faca nor rhe material

limits of Nvill), of sigas systems, symbolic forms, cultural traditions.

Such changes have flor necess.uily peen for rhe better, perhaps nor

oven normally. Nor have they led to a convergence oí views, bur

rather co a mingling of them. What, back in pis blessed Neolithic,

was indeed once something at least rather like Lévi-Strauss's world

of integral societies in disrann comnwnication has turned finto

something rather more like Danto's postmodern one oí clashing

sensibilities in inevadable contacr. Like nostalgia, diversity is flor

whar it used ro be; and rhe sealing of lives finto separare railway

carriages ro produce cultural renewal or rhe spacing oí them out

wirh contras t-effec ts ro free up moral energies are romantical

dreams, flor undangerous.

The general tendency rhar 1 reinerkcd in opening for the cul-

tural spectnun to hecome paler and acure continuous without he-

coming less discriminare (indeed, it is prohably becoming more dis-

criminare as symbolic forros splir an,l proliferare), alters nor just its

bcaring on tuoral irgmnenr bar rhe cb.uacrer of such argument it-

self. We huye become used ro tilo idea that scienritic conceprs

change with changos in rhe sorts ,Lf concerns to cvh10h se cntist,

address themxhcs-chut one docs flor ncel rhe calculas ro deter-

mine rhe velocity of a charior or quintal energies te) explain che

sving oí a pendulum. But we are rather less aware that rhe sume

thing is true of rhe speculative insrruments of moral reasoning. Idea,

which suffice for Lévi-Strauss's magnificent differences do nor for

Danto's troubling isymnterries; and it is rhe latter wirh which we

find ourselves increasingly faced.

More eoncretely, moral issues sremming from cultural diversity

(which are, oí course, far from heing all rhe moral issues there are)

that used to arise, when they arose at all, mainly between soci-

eties-rhe "customs contrary to reason and morals" sort oí thing on

which imperialism fed-now increasingly arise within them. Social

and cultural boundaries coincide less and less closely-there are

Japanese in Brazil, Turks on the Main, and West Indian meets East

in che streets oí Birmingham-a shuffling process which has oí

course been going on for quite some time (Belgium, Canada, Leb-

anon, South Africa-and the Caesars' Rome was flor all that homo-

geneous), bur which is, by now, approaching extreme and near uni-

versal proportions. The day when rhe American city was rhe main

model oí cultural fragmentation and ethnic tumbling is quite gone;

rhe Paris oí nos ancétres les gaulois is getting to be about as polygot,

and as polychrome, as Manhattan, and Paris may yet have a North

African mayor (or so, anyway, many oí les gaulois fear) before New

York has a Hispanic one.This rising within rhe body of a society, inside che boundaries oí

a "we," oí wrenching moral issues centered around cultural diversity,

and the implications ir has for our general problem, "the future oí

ethnocentrism," can perhaps be made rather more vivid with an

example; nor a made-up, science-fiction one abour water on anti-

worlds or people whose memories interchange while they are asleep,

oí which philosophers have recently grown rather too fond, in my

opinion, bur a real one, or ar leasr one represented to me as real by

rhe anthropologisr who told it to me: The Case of rhe Drunken

Indian and rhe Kidney Machine.

( 1,iu(rr 1 1` 1 r e f'sns (,f (Dircrsital 7C)

The case is simple, howev er knotted its resolution. The extreme

shortage, due to their great expense, of artificial kidney machines

led, naturally enough, ro the establishment a few years ago of a

queuing prucess for access ro them by patients needing dialysis in a

govermnent medical program in rhe southwestern United States di-

rected, also narurally enough, by young, idealistic doctors from

major medical schools, largely norrheastern. For che treatment to be

effecrive, at least over an extended periud of time, strict discipline

as to diet and other matrers is necessary on the part of the patients.

As a public enterprise, goa erned by anridiscrimination codes, and

anyway, as 1 say, morally motivated, queuing was organized in terms

not of rhe power ti) pap bar simply severiry of need and order of

applicatiun, a policy which Icd, with the usual rwists of practicallogic, tú che prohlem of the drunkcn Indian.

The Indian, after gaining acces ro the scarce machine, refused,

tu the great cunsternation of rhe doctors, to stop, or even control,

his drinking, which was prrdigiuus. 11 is position, under some sor[ of

principie like that of Flannerv O'Connor's 1 menrioned carlier of

remaining oneself whatever orhers might wish to make of you, was:

1 am indeed a drunken Indian, 1 have been one for quite some time,

and I inrend to go on being one for as long as you can keep me

alive by hooking me up tu chis damn machine of yours. The doc-

tors, whose values were rather different, regarded the Indian as

blocking access to rhe machine by orhers on the queue, in no less

desperate straits, who could, us they saw it, make better use of its

benefits-a young, middle-class rypr, say, rather like themselves,

destined for college and, who knows, medical school. As the Indian

was alteady on the machine by the time the problem became visible

they could not quite bring themselves (nor, 1 suppose, would they

have been permitted) to cake him oft it; but they were very deeply

upset-at [casi as upset as rhe Indian, who was disciplined enough

to show up promptly for all bis appoinnnents, was resolute-and

surely would llave devised ,orne reasun, ostensibly medical, to dis-

place hico trom his pusirion in rhe queue had they seen in time

what was coming. He continuad un rhe machine, and they contin-

uad distraught, for se•eral years until, proud, as 1 imagine him,

80 .. f'hal,ier IV

grateful (though not to the doctors) to have had a somewhat ex-tended life in which to drink, and quite unapologetic, he died.

Now, the point of this little fable in real time is nor to show

how insensitive doctors can be (they were not insensitive, and they

had a case), or how adrift Indians have became (he was not adrift,

he knew exactly where he was); nor to suggest that either the doc-

tors' values (that is, approximately, ours), the Indian's (that is, ap-

proximately, not-ours), or some trans-parte judgment drawn from

philosophy or anthropology and issued forth by one of Ronald

Dworkin's herculean judges, should have prevailed. It was a hard

case and it ended in a hard way; but 1 cannot see that either more

ethnocentrism, more relativism, or more neutrality would have

made things any better (though more imagination might have).

The point of the fable-Fin not sure it properly has a moral-is

that it is this sort of thing, nor the distant tribe, enfolded upon itself

in coherent difference (the Azande or the Ik that fascinate philoso-

phers only slightly less than science fiction fantasies do, perhaps

because they can be made into sublunary Martians and regarded

accordingly), that best represent, if somewhat melodramatically, che

general form that value conflict arising out of cultural diversitytakes nuwadays.

The antagonists hete, if that's what they were, were not repre-

sentatives of turned-in social totalities meeting haphazardly along

the edges of their beliefs. Indians holding late at hay with alcohol

are as much a part of contemporary America as are doctors correct-

ing it with machines. (If you want to see just how, at least so far as

the Indians are concemed-1 assume you know about doctors-you

can read james Welch's shaking novel, Winter in rhe Blood, where

the contrast effects come out rather oddly.) If there was any failure

here, and, to be fair, it is difficult at a distante to tell precisely how

much there was, it was a failure to grasp, en either side, what it was

to be en the other, and thus what it was to be en one's own. No

one, at least so it seems, learned very much in this episode about

either themselves or about anyone else, and nothing at all, beyond

che banalities of disgust and bitterness, about the character of their

encounter. It is not the inability of those involved to abandon their

The Uses uf lDiversity e. 81

Jn, 1eti,A0 ¡ti,¡ .nlopt tlic , i a. of oihen rhat ntake, rhis little tale<ccut so uncrlv dcpt<"im_ N 'h it IFUI l.tck r,t a Juiuc orporat<^i

moral 11 The Greue^1 ( 1. Yf Ue 1)itterenee l'rinciple hieh

,nnil.l .eem, u .1 marro ¡ t t . ', t, t:. ^t,r iitrcrent re,ult, hure) rowhich r„ appeal It is rheir u,.iLtliry ecce to umuCI e, amid rhennxetc of iitterence. ho„V 0n: ntiuht ger round ara all-roo-genuino

nwr.il .ornunctn. Tlte ,chnly rhinr, 1, ,k place in rhe darle.

What tenis Yo ralee place in dte .larle-[he only things of which "a

cercan dcafness to rhe q ppea1 of orher s°alues" or a "comparison

wirh worse communities" eoneeption of human dignity would seem

ro allow-is eirher rhe upplictriun of force ro secure conformiry to

rhe values oí rhose who) prsses> the force; a vaeuous tolerante that,

engaginr, norhing, chango; n irhing; or, as hure, where rhe force is

unavailable and rhe rolenuue unnecesary, a drihbling out to an

ambiguous end.

Ir is surely rhe case that ti ere are instantes where there are, in

fact, rhe practical altermtrives. Tliere doesn't seem much to do

ahout rhe Reverend ]unes, once he is in full cry, bur physically to

stop hito before he hands out rhe Koul-Aid. If people rhink punk

rock is where ir's ar, then, at Icasr so long as they don't play ir in

rhe suhwap, it's rheir cars und rheir funeral. And it is difficult (some

bars are batrier rhan others) ro know just how une ought to proceed

wirh someone who holds rhan th,wers hace feelings and that animals

do not. Paternalism, indifference, even superciliousness, are not al-

ways unuseful atrirudes no rake ti) value differences, even ro ones

more eonscyurntial rhan those. The problem is to know when they

are useful and diversity can safely he lefr te) its connoisseurs, and

when, as 1 rhink la more ofren rhe case, and increasingly so, they are

not and it cannot, and somediing more is needed: an imaginative

enrry inro (and adntirrance of) in alien turra of mind.

In out socieq, rhe connoiseur par excellence of alíen turras of

mind has Leen rhe erhnographer (rhe historian roo, ro a degree, and

in a ditterent way rhe noveli;t, bur 1 wanr lo get back on my own

resen-ation), dramati_ing o.ldnc,>, extnlling diversity, and hreathing

hroadnundcdnes. Wlratever ditferenees in merhod or dmorv hace

separared ti,, we hace Leen alike in rhan: professionally /,hsessed

wirh worlds elsewhere and wirh making rheut eomprehensihle firsr

ro ourselves and then, rhrough conceptual devices not u dlfferent

nora [hose of historian and lirerary ones not so different troto rhose

of novelisrs, ro out readers. And o long as rhose worlds really were

elsewhere, where Malinowski found rhem and Lévi-Srrauss remem-

bcrs rhem, this teas, th„ugh difhculr enough as a praerieal rasé rela-

tivcly unproblematical as in analytical ene. We could rhink about

"primitives" ("savages," "narices," ... ) as we rhoughr abour Mar-

tians-as possible ways of feeling, reasoning, judging, and behaving,

of going on, discontinuous wirh out own, alternatives ro us. Now

rhat those worlds and rhose alien turras of mind are mosrly not

really elsewhere, bur alternatives for us, hard nearby, intant "gaps

berween me and rhose who think differently than 1," a certain read-

justment in both oto rhetorical habits and out sense of mission

would seem co be called for.

The uses of cultural diversity, of its study, its description, its

analysis, and its comprehension, he less along [he lines of sorting

ourselves out from others and others from ourselves so as to defend

group integriry and susrain group loyalty rhan along rhe lines of

defining rhe terrain reason must cross if its modest rewards are to be

reached and realized. This terrain is uneven, full of sudden faults

and dangerous passages where accidents can and do happen, and

crossing it, or trying te, does little or nothing ro smooth ir out tú a

level, safe, unbroken plain, bur simply makes visible its clefts and

contours. If out peremptory doctors and out intransigent Indian (or

Rorty's "rich North American[a]" and "[rhose we] need to talk

wirh") are to confront oneanother in a less destructive way (and ir

is far from certain-rhe clefts are real-that they actually can) they

must explore rhe characrer of rhe space between them.

It is they thenrselves who musr finally do chis; there is no substi-tute for local knowledge here, nor for courage eirher. But maps andcharts may still be useful, and rabies, tales, pictures, and descrip-rions, even theories, if they attend ro rhe actual, as well. The uses ofethnography are mainly ancillary, bur rhey are nonetheless real; likerhe compiling of dictionaries or rhe grinding of lenses, ir is, or

,<1_) (:Wi't,r IV 1 The 1 Sí' uf 'l^ tur5dp - 8.)

would be, an enabling discipline. An,l what it enahles, when tt does

so, is a working contacr wirh a varianr subjecrivity. Ir places particu-

lar we's amone particular ti ev'5, and thee', arnong we's, where all, as

1 have been saving, alead, are, howevcr uneasily. It is rhe greatenemy of ethnocenrrisni, of conhning people Lo cultural planets

where rhe only ideas they nccd to conjure wirh are `[hose around

here,'' not hecause it assumes people are all alike, but hecause it

knows how profoundly thev are not and how unable ver ro disregard

one anonccr. Whatever once w.rs possihle and wharever may now be

longed for, rhe sovereignt y ot the familiar impoverishes everyone; to

the degree it has a furure, ours is dark. Ir is not that we trust love

one another or die (it that is rhe case-Blacks and Afrikaners,

Arahs and Jews, Tamils and Singhalew-we are 1 think doomed). It

is that we must know one another, and live wirh thar knowledge, or

cnd marooned in a Beckerr-world of colliding soliloquy.

The joh of echnography, or one oí them anyway, is indeed to

provide, like rhe arrs and history, narrarives and scenarios ro refocus

our attention; not, however, ores th,rr tender os acceptable to our-

selves hy representing orhers as ganccred roto worlds we don'[ want

and can'[ artive at, but ones which nrake us visible to ourselves by

representing us and evervone e(se as casi roto the inidst of a world

full of irrenwvable strangeneses we cin't keep clear of.

Unril fairly recendy (rh(, nmtter now is changing, in parí at

leas[ hecause of ethnography's impacr, bur mostly because rhe world

is changing) erhnograph,' was trirly well alone in Chis, for history

did in fact spend much of ir, time comforting our self-esteem and

supporting our cense rhat we viere getting somewhere by aporheosiz-

ing our heroes end diaholi_ing our encintes, or wirh keening over

vanished greatness; rhe social comnient of novelisrs was for rhe

most parí infernal--one part of Western consciousness holding a

mirror, Trollope-flat or L^osruevsky-tunal, up to another; and eventravel writing, which ar leas[ q rrcnded to exotic surfaces (jungles,camels, bazears, temples) mostly employed them to demonstrate rhe

resilience of received virtucs in trying circumstances-rhe English-

man remaining calor rhe Frenchmon rational, rhe American inno-

cenr. Now, when it is nor so alone and rhe strangenesses it has to

leal wirh are growing more oblique and more shaded, less easily set

b-F - 'óupCrr I )

off as wild anomalies-men who think themselves descended from

wallabies or who are convinced they can be murdered wirh a side-

long glance-its task, locating [hose strangenesses and describing

their shapes, may be in some ways more difficult; but it is hardly less

necessary. Imagining difference (which of course does not mean

making it up, but making ir evident) remains a science of which we

all have need.

But my purpose here is not to defend rhe prerogatives of a home-

spun Wissenschafr whose paren[ en the study of cultural diversiry, if

it ever had one, has long since expired. My purpose is to suggest

that we have come ro such a point in rhe moral history of rhe world

(a history itself of course anything but moral) that we are obliged to

think about such diversiry rather differently [han we had been used

Lo thinking about it. If it is in fact getting to be rhe case that rather

[han being sorted into framed units, social spaces with definite edges

to them, seriously disparate approaches to life are becoming scram-

bled together in ill-defined expanses, social spaces whose edges are

unfixed, irregular, and difficult to locate, rhe quesrion of how to deal

wirh rhe puzzles of judgment to which such disparities give rise

Cakes on a rather different aspect. Confronting landscapes and still

lifes is one thing; panoramas and collages quite another.

That it is rhe latter we [hese days confront, that we are living

more and more in rhe midst of an enormous collage, seems every-

where apparent. It is nor just the evening news where assassinarions

in India, bombings in Lebanon, coups in Africa, and shoorings in

Central America are set amid local disasters hardly more legible and

followed on by grave discussions of Japanese ways of business, Per-

sian forms of passion, or Arab styles of negotiation. Ir is also

an enormous explosion of translation, good, bad, and indifferent,

from and to languages-Tamil, Indonesian, Hebrew, and Urdu-

previously regarded as marginal and recondite; the migmrion of cui-

sines, costumes, fumishings and decor (caftans in San Francisco,

Colonel Sanders in Jogjakarta, barstools in Kyoto); the appearance

of gamelan themes in avant-garde jazz, Indio mychs in Latino

TIte Uses of Diver

ur.rg.r_ine inrage, in Ah.Gm liar most oti all, it is

h,n rhe l,r nson .ve cnc^,unter in ihe qr,cn,rocere is as likely, or

neurlt, t,i cuna fnrin h, 11 1 .1 Itero A 1' in the f„rst ofhee trom

Al,eri.i .n from rhe :Aucei no in rhe bank trom Potnha} la troni

Lir erpool. Even rural sertin,r;,, whcre nlikeness is likely to he more

ennenchc.h are nor inanime, Llexican farmers in rhe Southwest,

k'ictnmuc,c Inhcnncn .i rne clic Cal! in

thc Nli we r.

1 necd flor co on inulril ieine cynml,les. Vou can all drink of

unes of vour osen oun of vo or osen trafhckings with your osen sur

roundings. Aot all dü, discuüy is equally amsequenrial (Jogja

cooking sed! sur\'ive fin,,crlickin'-good); equally ímmediate (you

don't need ro grasp che rcligious beliefs of rhe finan sebo sells you

postage sramps); nor does it ale sreni from cultural contrast of a

clear-cur sort. But tirar the world is coming at each of its local

points tu look more like u Kust.riti ba_aar than like in English gen-

rlemen's club (to roscaste seitir ni my mind-perhaps because 1

hace neser been in cither ,irte ot rhem-are rhe polar cases) seems

sharreringly clear. Ethnoceritrisni of either rhe loase eggs or rhe

here-but-for-rhe-grace-ot-aihu sort inay or may flor be coincident

with rhe human species; but it is now quite difficult for most of os to

knoiv jusr where, in che y;rand nssemblage of juxtaposed difference,

lo center ir. Les mifieux are all mistes. They don't make Urnwelte like

they used to do.

Our response tú this, so ir seems to me, commanding fact is, so

it also seems lo me, one of rhe major moral challenges we these days

face, ingredienr in virnially al1 rhe orhers we face, from nuclear

disarmamenr to the equirabie ,listribution of rhe world's resources,

and in hadng ir counaels ot indisc iminare tolerante, which are any-

way nor genuinely mcanr, and, niy rarget Rece, of surrender, proud,

cheerful, defensive, or resigned, ti) the pleasures of invidious com-

parison serie us equally Radie; though rhe larrer is perhaps rhe more

dangerous hecause rhe more likely ro he tollowed. The image of a

world full of people so pussionardl fond of each other's tritures that

they aspire only co celebrare ocie another does flor seem to me a

clear and presenr danger, rhe iniage of one full of people happily

apoduosi_'uig decir hoces and diaboli_ing rherr enemies alas loes. It

sti(r - f iwrirr W

is not necessary ro choose, indecd it n necessary nor rn choose,

iserween cosniopuliranlsm withour conrent and parochi.ilisut wirh-

out tears. Neither arre ot use for living in a collage.To lime in a collage orle musr in rhe hr,t place render omeself

capable of sorting out its elemcnts, determining shas rhey are

(which usually imolves determining where they come from and

schat they amounred tú when rhev were rhere) and hose, pracücally--,

rhey relate to one another, withour ar rhe saíne time blurring ^rne's

osen cense of orles raen location and one's osen tdenrirv wirhin ir.

Less figuratively, "understanding" in che cense of comprehension,

perception, and insighr needs ro he distinguished from "understand-

ing" in rhe sense of agreement of opinion, uníos of sentimenr, or

commonality of commitmenr; rhe je vous al co-mpris that DeGaulle

uttered from rhe je vous al compris the pieds noirs heard. We must

learn to grasp what we cannot embrace.The difficulty in this is enormous, as it has always been. Com-

prehending that which is, in some manner of form, alíen te) us and

likely to remain so, withour either smoothing it over with vacant

murmurs of common humanity, disarming it with to-each-his-own

indifferentism, or disnissing it as charming, lovely even, bar incon-

sequent, is a skill we have arduously to learn, and having learnt it,

ahvays very imperfectly, to work conrinuously lo keep alive; it is nor

a connatural capacity, like depth perception or rhe sense of balance,

upon which we can complacentiy rely.It is in Chis, strengthening rhe power of our imaginations to

grasp what is in front of us, thar che uses of diversity, and of rhe

srudy of diversity, líe. If we have (as 1 admit 1 have) more than a

sentimental sympathy with rhat refractory American Indian, it is

flor because we hold his vieses. Alcoholism is indeed an evil, and

kidney machines are ill-applied te irs victims. Our sympathy derives

from our knowledge of rhe degree ro which he has earned his views

and rhe bitter sense thar is therefore in rhem, our comprehension of

rhe terrible road over which he has had to rravel ro arrive at them

and of what it is-ethnocentrism and rhe crines it legitimates-

that has made it so terrible. If we wish to be able capaciously tu

judge, as of course we must, we need tú make ourselves able capaci-

ously to see. And for that, what we have already seen-rhe insides

The Uses of J)mersily

of our raihvay comparnnents; rhe shining historical examples of ournations, our churchcs, arad our movements- is, as engrossing as theone muy be and as dazzling as rho uther, simply not enough.

dotes

1. C. Lévi-Strauss, Thc Vicio [ruin Ajar, traes. J. Neugroschel and P. Hoss,New York: Basic Books, 1985.

2. ]bol., p. xi.3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., p. xii.5. Ibid.6. Ibid., p, xiii.

Ibid.8. Ibid, P. 79. Ibid., p. 23.

i o. Richard Rortp, 'Posnnodemisr R urgeois Liberal ism," Journal of Philos-ophy So (1983): 583-589; ir 585.

1 T. Lévi-Strauss, The Viena [ruin Afar, e. 35.12. Rorty, "Posrmodemisr Ro, rgcois Liberalism," p. 586.13. Ibid, pp. 586-587.

14. Arrhur Danro, "Mirad as 1 eling; Form as presente; Langer as Philoso-phcr," lournal of Philos(,ph'e 81 (t g84): 641-647.

1 5. Lévi-Scrauss, The )roen Afar, p. 1o.

16. Rorry, "Posrmodernist Bouracuis I-iberalism," p . 588.r7. Danro, 'Mirad ae Feep 647 .

88 Cbmpter ft

i5n

714e Sta.te of tite ilrt

\Vaddling In

Orce of the advantages of anthropology as a scholarly enterprise is

that no one, including its practitioners, quite knows exactly what it

ts. People who watch baboons copulate, people who rewrite myths

in algebraic formulas, people who dig up Pleistocene skeletons, peo-

pie who work out decimal point correlations between toilet training

practices and theories of disease, people who decode Maya hiero-

glyphics, and people who classify kinship systems finto typologies in

which our own comes out as "Eskimo" all call themselves anthro-

pologists. So do people who analyze African drum rhythms, arrange

the whole of human history into evolutionary phases culminating in

Communist China or the ecology movement, or reflect largely en

the nature of human nature. Works entitled (1 choose a few at ran-

dom) Medusas Hair, The Headman and I, The Red Lamp of Incesy

Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process, Do Kamo, Knowledge and Pas-sion, American School Language, Circumstantial Deliveries, and The

Devil and Commodity Fetishism all present themselves as anthro-

pological, as does the work of a man which came, unbidden, finto

my hands a few years ago whose theory it is that the Macedonians

derive originally from Scotland on the grounds that they play thebagpipe.

There are a number of results of all this, aside from a lot of fine

examples of a person's reach exceeding a person's grasp; but surely

the most important is a permanent identity crisis. Anthropologists

8g

in used 1,1 brin;' LakeJ..,tJ i.k1[ rheuuehe,, ll,m vhat dice do

Jttfca ttoro tehar a Lismri,u,, pst chologist, or e political

scicntist tnJ tic h lee 11 1 a-a,lc inswcr, saco ruar ir most

crrm'cile J„e:. liflcnts t, aetinr thc G2IJ run from im,ntd.mr "social

club' at"Untent' ('\Ve ue til ,omchovc rhu lame sort of people; we

think tic ,,une úvr ot t,: pl:tin-111,111 instinitional onus ("any-

one trainerl ]ti an uuhrol-„I^tur Jup,irt na-nt i, MI anth ropuloglst")_

Rut non, ^,t rhen, .ceros rc.;lb s,tnsf.ict:,ru It e.m'i hc tbat we studv

"tribal" tr "pnmitiac^ peopic., heoaisc br MM rhe irajoriry of us

dnn't, and anvway we're n„r so cure an} more what, if inythin,,, a

"tribu" or a "primirive" is. It eatt'r be th.tt we study "orher societies,"

hecause nutre and more ot u, tu k, out osen, including rhe increas-

ing proportion of us-Sri Lank,ins, Nigerians, Japanese-who be-

long ro such "orher socicties." It can't he that we study "culture,"

`forros of life," or the "nadve's poro[ of viese," because, in these

hermencutieal-aemioticil days, sebo Joesn't?

There is nothing pardcularl novel in rhe state of affairs. It has

been ,[round since rhe heginnimg of rhe field, whenever that seas

(Rivers? Tylor' 1lerder? Hcn)dotus?), and ir will doubtlcss be around

at its end, if ir has one. Rut ir iras taken on in recenr years a certain

sharpness and given rice toa certain auxiety not easily warded off

with "It goes with the rerritory" ittinidc,. A chronic vexation, the

sort that prods, has Recome acure; rhe sort that unnerves.

The initial difficulty in describing anthropology as a coherent

enterprise is that it consists, roas[ especially in rhe United States,

but ro a significant extent elseahere in the world as we11, of a col-

lection of quite differently conceived sciences rather accidentally

thrown togerher hecause thcy ill dual somehow or orher with (to

quote anoncer, earlier, title, which 1 ,upposr would now be thought

sexist) Mmt and His 1Corks. Atebaeulogv (except classical, which

has kepr ira horders potroII l), phcsical anthropology, cultural (or

social) anthrupology, .md anthropological linguistics have formed a

kind of gathering-of-fugitivos eott ortium whose rationale has always

been as obseure as ira righrncss has Len affirmed. The "Tour Ficlds"

ideology, proclaimed in aJJresse, and enshrined in departrnents, has

heló togcrher an uneenrered ,li,cil,line of disparate visions, ill-

connecteJ reaearehes, and imprubahle .tllies: a triumph, and a genu-

ino one, tof hte orer lame.

One can do only so much, howevcr, wirh sentiment, habit,

and broad appeals to the advantages of breadth. As dte various

otra-anthropological sciences upan which the various intra-

anrhropologlcal unes depend ad,ance technically, logic begins ro

have its revenge. Especially in the cases of physical anthropology

and linguistica, rhe drift awac froin rhe old alliance has been

tuarked. In the first, developments in genetics, neurology, and ethol-

ogy have up-ended rhe old head-measuring approach to thing.s and

led more and more students interested in human evolution to tlrínk

they might as well be in a biological discipline and he done with it.

In the second, the advent of generative grammar has led to the

construction of a new eonsortium wirh psychology, computer

studies, and orher high-tech enterprises impressively entirled "Cog-

nitive Science." Even archaeology, enmeshed in paleoecology, bio-

geography, and systems theory, has grown rather more autonomous

and may start, one of these days, to call itself something more ambi-

tious. It puts one in mind, all this coming apart at the seams, of

departed universes: philology, natural hisrory, political economy, the

Habsburg Empire. Inner differences are starting to tell.

Nevertheless, it is not Chis centrifugal movement, powerful as ir

has become, thar is the main cause of the present sense of unease.

History, philosophy, lirerary criricism, and even latterly psychology

have experienced similar intemal diversification, for similar reasons,

and yet managed to maintain at least some general identity. The

anthropology holding company will doubtless hold, if barely, for a

while longer, if only because people interested in the human animal

who don 't cace for sociobiology, or people interested in language

who are unenamored of transformational grammar, can find a home

there, sale from the imperialisms of entomologists and logicians.

The most shaking problems are arising in the branch of the disci-

pline which is still the largest, rhe most visible, and the one most

usually taken by the world at large as distinguishing ir (ir is also rhe

one to which 1 myself belong): social-cultural, socioculrural-

anthropology. If there is trouble in the marches, there is even more

in the capital.

The first of the difficulties here, the most felt and rhe most

commented upon, but 1 doubt the most important, is the "disappear-

ing subject" problem. Whether "Primirives" ever should hace been

t)f t (I!,q•(r: 1.' 1 7},e State of the fir( () i

called such in rhe first place, or whether rhere were, even by the

ninereenrh centurv, ver, mane realli "untouched" peoples in rhe

world, rhere are surely hardiy q n, groups now deserving of suchchanicterizations. Highland New Guinea, Amazonia, maybe some

pares of rhe Arctic or rhe Kaluhari, are about the only places one

can even find candidares tur (ro invokc some other obsolescenr

reune ot art) "inract," "simple," "elemcnrary," "sauvage" societies;

and they, ro rhe degree ihey cxist as such, are rapidly being incorpo-

rated, as American ladran,, Austral jan Aborigines, and African

Nilotes were before thcm, inro soinehody or other's larger plans.

"Primitivos," even of rhe s,rrr rhar malle Boas, Mead, Malinowski, or

Evans-Pritchard famons, are a bir et a wasting asset. The oven

rvhelming proporrion of social anthn^pologists are nor [hese days

aíling away te) uneharted irles or jungle paradises, but throwing

themselves inro the mide[ of such formidable world-historical enti-bes as India, Japan, Eg}'pr, Grcece, or Brazil.

Ir is nor, however, tire disahpcararice of a subject matter sup-

posedly unique as such rhar has proved so shaking to rhe founda-

tions of social anthropology, hur another privarion rhe involvement

with societies Icss casraway has brought on: rhe loss of research iso-

larion. Those people wirh pierced poses or body rattoos, or who

huried rheir dead in trces, muy never have been rhe solitaries ve

rock them to he, but que were. The anrhropologists who went off to

rhe Trlcusi, tire tundra, or Tikopia did ir al l: economice, politics,

laso, religion; psychology and land tenure, dance and kinship; how

children were raised, L oses baile, seals hunted, srories told. There

was no one oler around, savr cecasionally and ar a eollegial dis-

tance, another anthropologisr; or if rhere was-a missionary, a

trader, a district officer, Paul Gauguin-he or she was menrally

pushed asido. Small worlds, perhaps, bur pretty well our oyster.

This is all no longer. AVhen one goes te) Nigeria, Mexico,

China, or in my own case Indonesia and Morocco, one encounters

nor just "natives" and mud hurs, hur economists calculating Gini

coefficienrs, polirical seientists scaling arriendes, historians collating

documente, psychologists running experiments, sociologists count-

ing houses, heads, or occuparions. Lawyers, literary critics, archi-

rects, even philosophers, no jonger comen[ to "draw rhe cork out of

ry,

an old conundmm/And warch rhe paradoxes fizz," are getting roto

rhe act. Walking barefoot through rhe Whole of Culture is realiy no

longer an option, and rhe anthropologist who fries it is in grave

danger of being descended upon in prinr by an outraged textualist

or a maddened demographer. We are now, clearly, some sor[ of spe-

cial science, or at leas[ had better become one soon. The only ques-

tion is, now that "Man" is a bit much as an answer, of what?

The response ro Chis tearing question has been less to answer it

[han to reemphasize rhe "method" considered, at leas[ since Mal-

inowski, to be rhe alpha and omega uf social anthropology-

ethnographic fieldwork. What ve do thhat others don't, or only

occasionally and flor so well, is (this vision has it) to talk tú rhe

man in the paddy or rhe woman in rhe bazaar, largely free-forro, in a

one thing leads to another and everything leads to everything else

manner, in rhe vernacular and for extended periods of rime, all the

while observing, from very close up, how rhey behave. The special-

ness of "what anthropologises do," their holistic, humanistic, mostly

qualitative, strongly artisanal approach te social research, is (so we

nave taught ourselves to argue) rhe heart of rhe matter. Nigeria may

nor be a tribe, nor Italy an island; but a craft learnr among tribes or

developed on islands can yet uncover dimensions of being rhar are

hidden from such stricter and better organized types as economisrs,

historian, exegeres, and political theorists.

The curious thing about Chis effort to define ourselves in tercos

of a particular style of research, colloquial and offhand, entrenched

in a particular set of skills, improvisatory and personal, rather rhan

in tercos of what we study, what theories we espouse, or what find-

ings we hope to find, is rhar it has been more effective outside rhe

profession rhan it has been within it.

The prestige of anthropology, or anyway sociocultural anthro-

pology, has never been higher in history, philosophy, literary criti-

cism, theology, law, or political science, even to a degree in (rhe

hard cases) sociology, psychology, and economics, rhan it is right

now. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Victor Tumer, Mary Douglas, Eric Wolf,

Marshall Sahlins, Edmund Leach, Louis Dumont, Melford Spiro, Er-

nest Gellner, Marvin Harris, Jack Goody, Pierre Bourdieu, myself

(to essay a lis[ 1 shall doubtless live ro regret) are cited everywhere,

The State of tire flirt °' Q3

he ccr t , Jv, ro all s,,rr> ^,1 I'w p — , - . The .,:tnthroi,nlr,gic,rl porspec-

rive° is, >o tare r, tho aohcr,i 11 11 i, concerned, acto nuweh

"in; .uiJ, thcn i limo .1011 ilir w11 11 rhe Iargonoors call iis "oUt-

leiei s .1,1111, uiythitn_ 1,111 i 00111,W_ AVilhiu ti le discipline, boro-

ever, Ihe rrmrsphcre i. Ies> ui>hcat. Te vera identihcation of "rhe

tieldwark c:or of mirad" .o rhe thing rhar osados u, differenr and

ju,tihrd our cvislence 111. o sc^,rl.l II,r>Ie i eth,aÍoingical has only

intrmihed c^nuem a; tr, irs>eienutie re^pecrahihq rm rho one hand

and irs moral legitinrace ^m Ihr nhcr. I'ultiug so tirano ofonc's eggs

in a homo-mane haskor ismduces a conato nervousness, rising at

timos ro somerhing ocre ncu ro panic.

The svorry ora rhe scionce sldc has nostly tú do wirh the ques-

tion oí whether researches which rely so heavily ora rhe personal

factor-rhis invesrigator, in rhis time; rhar informant, of rhar

place-can ever be suthcienrly "objective," "sysremaric," "reproduc-

ible," "cumulativo," "predicrive," "precise," or "testable" as ro yield

more rhar a collecrion of likci - s(orics, lnipressionism, intuirionism,

suhjecrivism, icsrheticism, and perhaps ahoyo all rhe substitution of

rheroric tor evidente, and sivIe lar argumenr, seem clear and pres-

ent dangers; rhar mosr dreaded arate, paradigmlessness, a permanent

affliction. What sort of scientists are rhey whose main technique is

sociahiliry and whose maro instrumcnt is ehemselves? What can we

expecr from rhem hut charged prosa and pretty theories?

As anrhropology has moved ro cake its place as a discipline

among others, a new forro oí an old, all-roo-familiar debate, Geisr-

wissenschafren vs. Narerrwisseruchafren, has broken out afresh, and in

an especially vinrlent and Icgraded forro-déjá vu all over again.

Waddling in at rhis late date, q s Forster once said of India, to find

its seas among che narions, anrhropology has found irself increas-

ingly divided herween thosc sobo would exrend and develop irs re-

ceived rradirion-one which rejeets rhe historicist/scientist dichot-

omy in rhe tirsr place and, wirh Weber, Tocqueville, Burekhardt,

Peirce, or Montesquieu, drenms of a scicace hurnaine-and those,

afraid uf heing sent away bonm rhe rabio as improperly dressed, who

would transfornr rhe held finto sr,mc son of social physics, complete

wirh laves, fonnalisms, and apodlcric proofs.

¡ti rhis srruggle, svhich break our everywhere ti nn acadenric ap-

poinrments in s la>sv place; ro MM-ccci "reevaluation," of classic

vorks, and which is growing extraordinarily bitter, rho iparadigm

hunters have most of rhe cards, at lc.isr in rho United Si tres. vehere,

pronouncing ilieniselves "mainsvcam," rhey dominare rhe tunda g

sources, rhe professional organizations, joumals, and research insriru-

tions, and are nieely preadapted to rho horrom-lino menrahty, now

pervading our public lile. Cornfonj's camest young meo tarad, naw,

svotnen) determinad to get all rhe money there is going are everywhere

now, even if rhe money that is going dorso r come to all that much.

Yer even those en rhe (polirically) weaker side, those more in-

clined to a free-style view of things, are afflicted wirh rheir own

variety of failure of nerve, save that it is less methodological than

moral. They are not much concemed about whether "me anthro-

pologist, you native" research is rigorous than about whether it is

decent. About that, however, rhey are very concerned.

The trouble begins wirh uneasy reflections on the involvement

of anthropological research wirh colonial regimes during rhe heyday

of Western imperialism and wirh irs aftershadows now; reflections

ehemselves broughr on by accusations, from Third World intellec-

tuals, about che field's compliciry in rhe division of humanity roto

those who know and decide and rhosse who are known and are de-

cided for, that are especially disturbing to scholars who have so long

regarded ehemselves as the native's friend, and still think rhey un-

derstand him better than anyone else, including perhaps himself.

But it hardly ends rhere. Driven en by che enormous engines of

postmodem self-doubt-Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Gramssci, Sartre,

Foucaulr, Derrida, most recently Bakhtin-the anxiety spreads roto

a more general worry abour rhe representation of "The Other" (in-

evitably capitalized, inevitably singular) in ethnographic discourse

as such. Is not rhe whole enterprise but domination carried on by

other mean: "Hegemony," "monologue," "vouloir-savoir," "mauvaise

foi," "orienralisni"? "Who are we to speak for rhem?"

This is hardly a question that can sirnply be dismissed, as it so

often has been by hardened fieldworkers, as rhe grumbling of café or

gas-station anthropologists; bur one could wish it were being mer

71ie State of tlne Hit C)5

with less breasrbeating and lashing out at supposed failures of mind

and characier on rhe parí of hourgeois social scientists, and more

attemprs acrually to ans^er it. There have buen sume sueh at-

temprs, hesirant and rarher gesrural, bur ar ¡casi as often hypo-

chondria has passed for self-examinarinn, and "Down with Us!" (for

rhe malcontents are, afrer all, bourgeois too) for critique. The

changing siruation of rhe cihnographer, intellectual and moral

alike, hrought on by die movemenr ot anthropology from the mar-

gins of rhe inodetn world row,ud irs center, is as poorly addressed by

crying havoc as it is by crying science. Mere malaise is as evasive asmere rigor, and rarher more te!f-serviag.

Yet, and yer, all inav he foi, if not rhe best, anyway rhe better.

The Outsider view of anthropology asa powerful regenerative force

in social and humane studies, now rhar it is ar long laso becoming so

fully a parí of them rarher iban a minor anrusemenr off to the side,

may be eloser ro the mark than rhe Insider view that che passage

from South Sea obscuriry to worldly celebriry is simply exposing

anthropology's lack of interna! coherente, its methodological soft-

ness, and its political hypocrisy, as well as perhaps its practical irrel-

evance. The necd co think through, lo deferid, and to extend an

approach to social research that rakes scriously che proposition that

in understanding "orhers," uncapirtdized and plural, it is useful to go

among rhem as they go autong themsclves, ad hoc and groping, is

producing an extraordinary ferment. Ir is not perhaps entirely sur-

prising that such ferment looks 1hreatening to some of those caught

in che middle oí ir-as Randall jantll says somewhere, rhe trouble

wirh golden ages is that rhe people in diem go abour complaining

that everything looks yellow. What i.s surprising is how promising,even salvarional, it often looks ro others.

The conjunction of eulanal popularity and professional disquiet

rhar now characrerizes anthropology is neither a paradox nor a sign

rhae a fad is being perperrated. lt is an indication that "rhe anthro-

pological way of looking things," as wcll as (what are more or less

rhe same rhing) "rhe andvopological way of finding out things" and

°rhe anthropological way of writing abour things," do have some-

rhing ro offer che late nventieth centurv-and not only in social

qn Lltoptrr V

studies-not available elsewhere, and that it is full in rhe throes ofdetermining what exactly that is.

The expectations on the one side may be roo high-in the first

flush of structuralism they undoubtedly were-and the worries en the

other roo overdrawn. Nevertheless, pulled in opposed directions by

technical advances in allied disciplines, divided within itself along

accidental ¡11-drawn lines, besieged from one side by resurgent scien-

tism and from the other by an advanced form of hand-wringing, and

progressively deprived of its original subject master, its research isola-

tion, and its master-of-all-I-survey authoriry, rhe field seems not only

to stay reasonably intact bur, what is more important, to extend rhe

sway of rhe casi of mind that defines ir ove[ wider and wider arcas of

contemporary thought. We have turned out tú be rarher good at

waddling in. In our confusion is our strength.

Gulture War

Anthropology is a conflicted discipline, perperually in search of

ways to escape its condition, perpetually failing to find rhem. Com-

mitted, sine its beginnings, to a global view of human ¡¡fe-social,

cultural, biological, and historical at once-it keeps falling finto its

parís, complaining abour the fati, and trying desperately, and unsuc-

cessfully, ro project some sort of new uniry to replace the uniry it

imagines itself once to have had, bur now, through rhe faithlessness

of present practirioners, to have mindlessly cast away. The watch-

word is "holism," cried out at professional meetings and in general

calls to arras (of which there are a very large number) in profes-

sional journals and monographs. The reality, in che research actu-

ally done and rhe works acrually published, is enormous diversity.

And argument, endless argument. The tensions among rhe ma-

jo[ subdivisions of rhe field-physical anthropology, archaeology,

linguistic anthropology, and cultural (or social) anrhropology-

have been reasonably well managed by the usual mechanisms of

differentiation and specialization, in which each subfield has be-

come a fairly autonomous discipline. This has not happened with-

out plaintive invocations of ancestral polymaths-there were giants

The etate of rhe Mi

ir. ih,,se dais -,chn xq 1•„-, dl, .6,1 ' rI', np," bar the tissures

wiilun ur: uir.i nnth^ p -.L,yc 111, 1 le hcan ,,1 rho discii,line,

pr,n c,l uiera.isin^'Ie ^^r,num, nt ,^..J i>e i„ cuntuin. Thc,livixion

juro .h.uple oi-po e .cho.,.e thoucht -jure overill ,ipyroaches

n,ncciacd not as nuth,^d010alea ultcnuuivo bur a> ,lug-in wodd

, iews, ua, r.¿lirio., m,l po inc,l p„ icunin s-has grnvn ro thc point

oliere CL„hcs irc mur, , emni,n, ban c,'nclusion, an,l thc possihiliry

oi:1 gcncr.il C,,n9enxis on inrth ]]e lundamcnral secm. rem,ne. The

M11111111nt h,m,l> phis hring> „n, ¿cid thc .eu e o(L rss n a,nsiderahle,

and cloubdess hrarttelt; hur ir j, y cn likcly misplaced. Anrhropology

generdly, inri cultural anthropol„tn- ín particular, draws U1 ae greater

parí of its viraliry from rhe conuo\ersies that animara ir. Ir is not

much destined for secured p,siti,los and settled issues.

The recent debate, much celebrated in rhe intellectual press

and oa rhe academic circuji, hctwcea Gananath Oheyesekere and

Marshall Sahlins, two of rhe senior and most combar-ready figures in

rhe field, i; ayer how 've are ro undersrand che dearh of rhar Pacific

Colunibus, Captain lames Cook, ir rhe hands of rhe Hawaiians in

x779.' (Columbus "discosered" Amcrlca while looking for India;

Cook, three cenruries late[, "discovered" rhe Sandwich Islands-

and before rhem, encounrered Australia and New Zealand-while

looking for rhe Norehwest Pass.ige.) Angry, cloquent, and uncom-

promising-as well as, ora occasiun, bitrerly funny-rhey push into

view some of rhe most central and most divisive issues in anrhro-

pological study. Afrer one reads these nvo having at one another up,

down, and sideways for fivc hundred lapel-grabbing pages or so,

whatever happened to Cook, and why, seeins a good dual less impor-

tan[, and probahly less dcrenuinable, than the quesrions rhey raise

ahout how it is ve are ro go abour making sense of rhe acrs and

emorions of distan[ peoples in remoce rimes. Whar does "knewing"

about "others" properly consist in? ls ir posible.' Is ir good?

Ar rhe risk of a cerraln degrce ot oversimplificarion (bur not

much: ncither of [hese warriors is given ro shaped views), we can

say rhar SahIins is a rhonnighgoing adcocate of rhe view rhar there

are distincr culrures, each ,vith a "tnril cultural sysrem of hurnan

action," and thar rhey are ro be undeusrood along structuralist lines.

Oheyesckere is q rhoroughgoing ad,ocue of rho vicw rhar people's

acrions and beliets have particular, practical functions in rheir limes

q n,i rhar [hose functions and helicf., should be understood ¿long

psychologieal lines.

Sahlins's original irgument, which has changed tarde, ir al all,

since he flrst set it forth two decades ago, is rhar Cook srumbled

curo rhe beach in Hawah (rhar is, rhe "big island" of Hawai'i

proper) ar rhe tinte of a great, tour-month-long ceremnny called rhe

Makahiki celehraring rhe annual rehirth of sature, in which the

central event was rhe arrival taran his honre aboye rhe sea ot rhe

god Lono, symbolized in a giant rapa cloth and birdskin image pa-

raded clockwise about rhe island for a month.

The Hawaiians divided the lunar year into two periods. One

was rhe Makahiki time when peace, the indigenous Kuali'l priests,

and the fertility god, Lono, shaped their existence, and the king was

immobilized. During the test of rhe year, after Lono, his birdskin

image tumed backward, had left again, came a time of warfare when

rhe immigrant Nahulu priests and the virility god, Ku, were domi-

nant, and rhe king was active. Cook, who arrived from rhe right

direction and in rhe right manner, was taken by the Hawaiians, or

at leas[ by the various priests involved, to be Lono come in the

flesh, and he was consecrated as such by means of elaborare rites in

rhe great temple of the island.

Then, for his own reasons, bur again in accidental accordance

with rhe calendar governing rhe Makahiki, he departed to the hori-

zon from which he had come. Shortly after he set sail, however, a

sprung mast Torced him to return to the beach for repairs. This out-

uf-pattem move was interpreted by the Hawaiians as a cosmological

disordering, one that presaged, if it were allowed to go forward, a

social and political upheaval-a "structural crisis when all che so-

cial relations ... change rheir signs." It led, rather quickly, to

Cook's messy end: he was stabbed and clubbed to dearh amid hun-

dreds of swarming Hawaiians afrer he carne irritably ashore, firing

his pisto¡ impulsively about. Consecrared as a god by arriving in rhe

right way at rhe right time, he was killed as a god-sacrificed to

keep che strucrure intact and unreversed-because he rerurned to

Hawaii in the wrong way at the wrong time: a historical accident

caught up in a cultural form.

,)S -- ( ü,iptrr C' The Stat(, of rhe Aa - qL)

To all of this highly carpenrered and uspiciously seamless argu-

ment, Ohcyesekere gives a resounding "no!"-atore apparently for

moral and political reasons thun for empirical ones. It is, he says,

detncaning to the Hawaiiuns (ani to hiin, personally, as "a Sri Lankan

nativo and an anthropologist ivorking in an American university"), in

that ir depiccs theni as childish, 1rration l savages so intoxicated with

their signs and portenrs as to he incapnble of seeing what is before

cliciroyes, a mas like any orlo, in,¡ incrpahle of reacting to him with

simple practicality and ordinary common sense.

Sahlins's account is said ro be ethnncenrric in that it foists upon

che 1l,nvaiians the EuroJperur norion tliat the technological superi-

ority of Europeans leads naantished primitives, when first encounter-

ing them, [o regará them as supernatural heings. And-chis is what

really smarts, especially ro omenne like Sahlins, who, like almost

al! anchropologis , Ohevesekere inc1utiled, sees himself as a tribune

for his subjects, therr public Icfender in a world that has pushed

them asido as hapless and negligible-Sahlins's argument is said to

be neo-imperialisr: an arrempt to silence che "real voices" of che

1 iwaiians, and, indeed, ,d f "narives'' in general, and replace chem

with che voices of the very re lple who firsr conquered theta, then

exploiced thcm, and now, in rhe scholarly, book-writing phase of

the great oppression known as ailonialisin, occlude chem.

Abour Sahlins's account md its claims ro he based on fact, Ob-eycsekere writes,

1 yuestion this "fact," which 1 show was created in the Euro-

pean imaginarion of the eighteendi century and alter and was

based on antecedent "myth models" pertaining tú the redoubt-

able explorer cum civilizar who is a god ro the "natives." To

put it bluntly, 1 doubt thac che nativos created theit Europeas

god; the Europeans created hin for chem. This "European god"

is a myth of conqucst, iniperialism, in,¡ civilization-a triad

that cannot be easily separated.

The ensuing papar war herween che two anthropologists can be

followed hoth in Obeyesekere's ranihling, beat-che-snake-with-

whatever-scick-is-handy brief for che prosecution (he invokes Sr¡

Lankan terrorism, Cortés amos,, che A-tecs, Heart of Darkness, and

something called "symbolic psychomimesis") and in Sahlins's more

smoothed and pertinacious "and-another-thing" case for the de-

fense. (A third of Sahlins's book consists of seventeen appendices of

spectacular particularity, including "Priests and Genealogies," "Ca-

lendrical Politics," "Atua in the Marquesas and Elsewhere," "Ka-

makau's Gods," "Lono at Hikiau.") On both sides there is a great

outpouring of facts, supposed facts, and possible facts that touches

on virtually everything that is known, or ehought to be known,

about Cook's misadventure and the conditions surrounding it.

Sahlins has something of a natural advantage in this data sling-

ing, because, as a longstanding Oceanist of great repute, he has writ-

ten extensively on Polynesian ethnohistory generally and that of

Hawaii particularly. Obeyesekere's work has been almosr entirely

coneemed with Sri Lanka, and he has built up his knowledge of

the subject at hand by means of three or four years of reading to

a purpose as well as by undertaking a brief "pilgrimage to Hawai'i

to check my version against that of scholars of Hawai'ian historyand cultura."

But sine both scholars are relying en essentially the same lim-

ited corpus of primary materials-ships' logs, sailors' joumals,

written-down oral histories; missionary accounts, some drawings and

engravings, some letters-chis is not, in itself, a decisivo difference.

It is jusr one that puts more of a burden of proof on Obeyesekere-

whose way with arguments tends to be rather relaxed methodologi-

cally-than he seems to appreciate. (1 find it awfully hard ro ac-

cept," "one could as easily argue," "it ... seems reasonable to

assume," "it is hard to believe," "1 find Chis account ... extremely

plausible," and other such appeals to the supposed obviousness of

the very things that are in dispute puntuare his text from begin-

ning to end.) If this were the college debate it sometimes sounds

like,'Sahlins, wittier, more focused, and better informed, would winhands down.

But it is not such a debate. Despite the scientistic rhetoric on

both sides about the "search for truth," and the crafted and rather

unnecessary scholarly insults (Obeyesekere says, apropos of nothing,

that Sahlins lacks "deep ethical concem," while Sahlins says, ap-

ropos of that, that Obeyesekere is a literary "terrorist"), and the

1

1 ()0 huW< 1 1' 1 The State of rhe Avt 1 o 1

endIe" panti tino dctul ih.u o,!% i lawy"er n,uhl Iove, the

nmrreo ehat divide theni >re esa, ut In utere ytiestion: ut taet.

f:^cn tccrt thct ablr n. Motee a Ir.,tc lila I-Iatr,iüan, rCearded Cook,

anJ he tl:^m-and the Itr, u.a roan[ >l1 rar apart ora th,u a, they

prercnddtec would still he ni tot,il „pp,^,ition tcirh respect tu just

about eycn'thinr! of inypunanre lo ,nihntpology. Whar divides

ncLm, an.l t gaiJ par[ o1 th, I r,ic,^i^ n tcith them, is their under-

n Ir (111111111 '1111, n^e-. ttiui i^ i>, whar produces it, wharmaintain, it, anJ h„w Jeeply t ,,,c,. For S,drli u, it n substance; for

Obeyesekere, ir is sudace.

Over the pata rwenty-hve years or so, rhe post-cverything era (post-

modernism, atructuralisnt, colonialism, posirivistu), the attempt to

porrmy 'ñow the 'nativos' think" (or dtought), or even what they

are doing when tltey do what nccy do, has come ¡ti for a good leal

of moral, political, and philosophieol utack. The mere claim "to

know betrer," which it would scera any anthropologist would have

at least implicitiy tu make, seeems lit leasr faíndy tilegitimate. Te} say

somedring about the fnnas of life of 1awaiians (or anyhody else)

that H.nvaiians do not themselves say operas one tu the charle that

une is writing out other peoples' consciousness for them, sctipting

their souls. The days of simple "die Dangs beiieve, the Dangs don't

believe" anthropology seetu truly over.

The reactions ro this suite of iffairs-what Sahlins in one of his

most recent essays calis "Goodhye m Tristes Tropes"-have been

various, wotried, and more [han a little disatranged.' Postmodemists

have yuestioned whether ordered accounts of other ways of heing in

rhe world--accounts that ,tffer monological, comprehensive, and

all-roo-coherent explanarions-,ae eredible at all, and whether we

are not so imprisoned in out otro moles of thought and perception

as tu be incapable of grasping, much less crediting, [hose of others.

The poGticaliy driven scholars, intense and unhesitant, sure of their

gtound, Raye called for anthropologieal work that advances the for-

tunes of rhe peoples dexrihed, e liarever those fottuncs are taken to

be, and for deliberare subvcr>i,m of the power inequalities between

/

"the Wesr and rhe Rest." There Raye been demanda for rhe "eon-

texrualization" of particular Gt-MIes in the "modero ('capirolist,'

`hourgcois,, 'utiCirarian') wodd sy-stem,' as opposed ro isolating them

Lis, in'another ot Sahüns's punning tiple,, "islands of hlsturv." There

have been demands for the resroration of a histotical dimension to

"primitive" or "simple" cultures, so often portrayed as "cold " un-

changing crystalline sttuctures-1111111,111 still-lifes. And there havc

been picas for a reemphasis ora homely, panhuman common chara

teristics (we oil teason, we all suffer, we oil Cive in a wodd indif-

ferent to out hopes), as against sharp and incommensurabie con-

trasts in logic and sensibility between one people and another.

All these themes run through che quarrel between Obeyesekere

and Sahlins, appearing and reappearing in different form in different

connections-in intense debates over whether nineteenth-century

Hawaüan accounts of their customs and traditions are usahle for

reconstruccing che historicai past or are too infected by the Chris-

tianizing prejudices of the missionaties who recorded them tu be

trusted; over whether Cook and his associates had learned enough

Hawaüan to understand what che Hawaiians wete saying tu them;

and over whether the structuralist approach has to assume the beliefs

of the Hawaiians tu have been uniform throughout the entire popula-

tion, whose members are stereotypically presented, Obeyesekere

charges, "as if [the Hawaiians] were acting out a cultural schema

without reflection." But in the end the argumenta, opposed on every

point, divide inte a stark and simple, almost Manichaean, contrast.

For Obeyesekere, the Hawaiians are "pragmatic," "calcularing,"

"strategizing" rationalists; rather like ourselves, indeed rather like

everybody, save perhaps Sahlins, they "reflectively assess the impü-

carions of a problem in terms of practical criteria." For Sahlins, they

are distinet others, existing within a distinctive "schema," a "total

cultural system ef human action," "another cosmology," thoroughly

discontinuous with "modem, bourgeois rationality," governed by a

logic "that [has] the quality of noc seeming necessary for us yet

being sufficient for them." "Different cultures," he says, "different

rationalities."

Obeyesekere's "practical, rationality," says Sahlins (he also callsit "pidgin anthropology" and "pop nativism"), shows that the util-

U^_ (J:uhter h Tire Stute uf tlie Ílrt I o3

irarian, instrumentalist "phdosophy of Hohbes, Locke, Helvétius &

Co. is still roo much wirh us." Sahlins's "srructural theory of his-

tory," says Obeyesekere (he calis it "reified," "superorganic," "rigid,"

and "pseudohistorical"), shows that what is still roo much wirh os is

che irrationalist model of primirive mentaliry-Lévy-Bruhl, Lévi-

Strauss, Tzvetan Todorov's group-think Aztecs, and che Freud of

Torero and Taboo, who thought children, savages, and psychoticswere of a piece.

What is at stake here is thus a quescion thar has haunted an-

thropologists for over a hundred years and haunts us even more now

that we vvork in a decolonized world: What are we to make of cul-

tural pmctices that seem to us odd and illogical? How odd are they?

How illogical' In what precisely does reason he? This is a quesrion

to be asked flor only ahour eighrcenth-century Hawaiians, parading

noisily abour wirh birdskin imagos, taking a coconut free ("a man

with his head in rhe ground and his tesricles in rhe air") to be the

body ot a god, and enfolding cheir lives in so elaborare a skein of

sacraliry and prohibirion-rhe notorious tabu-that they some-

times can harely move. Ir is n) be asked as well abour eighteench-

cenrury Englishmen, sailors and navigators, wandering womanless

abour rhe oceans in search of discovcries-arcadias, curiosities, an-

chorages, delicaciess, and che Northwesr Passage-and of rhe inquis-

irive, aggressive society, rhe knowledge-is-glory world that, hoping,

ultimately, tor a temporal salvation, sent rhe Englishmen there.°

The Huwatians and che Enlighrenment navigators are far away

from us now in borh rime and space. Ar least that is true of che

Hawaiian who lived in che Ku and Lono rhythm of exisrence. (Ka-

mehameha 11 more or Iess cnded rhat rhythm wirh his famous bon-

fire of che vanities in che nineteenth century, a real reversal of signs;

and what he didn't finish off hy eating wirh women and throwing

icons juro che sea, Christianiry, sugar cine, and che sreamship did.)

And it is also true of rhe navigators who torced their way inro chal

rhythm of exisrence, bold, unknowing, and hellbent upon improve-

ment. Wc look back at [hese two "peoples," and at cheir legendary

"first contad" encounrer, rhroug^h rhe bazo of che modem order of

life (or, now rhar che Euro-American empires and che "East-West"

world divide have weakened ,x dis,yiprared, that of che postmodern

order). We look back on chem, moreover, from out particular posi-

tions within that order. We make of chem what we can, given who

we are or have become. There is nothing fatal in Chis, either

to truth or faimess. But it is inevitable, and foolish to pretendotherwise.

To cheir great credit, neither Obeyesekere nor Sahlins pretends

otherwise. Both cheir personal positions and their professional agen-

das are upfronc and visible. Obeyesekere argues that, as an authencic

"native" (or "postnative"?), directly caught up in the current travails

of an ex-colony wracked wirh induced violence, he is both immu-

nized against Wescem self-deceptions and especially well-situated to

see the eighteenth-century Pacific, both white and colored, as it

really was. He dedicares his book to a murdered Sr¡ Lankan taxi

driver, who used to drive him abour Colombo, as a memorial to "rhe

thousands who have been killed all over che world ... ordinary

people, whose families haven't even been given a chance to moum."

He wrires that "it is precisely out of [my] existencial predicaments

that my interest in Cook [and his 'ire' over Sahlins and his work]developed and flowered."

In response, Sahlins wonders, as well he might, how he and

Cook have become "somehow responsible for che tragedy of Ob-

eyesekere's friend," and whether che enlisting of such a tragedy in

the service of a scholarly dispute is altogether appropriare. He says

that, white and Westem as he may be, he is rather less encumbered

with ethnocentric prejudices than someone who, explicating "early

Hawaiian concepts of White men by Sri Lankan beliefs and his own

experience ... gets farther and farther from che Hawaiian and

closer and closer to rhe native Westem folklore of divine vs. hu-man, spiritual vs. material."

The ultimare victims ... are che Hawaiian people. Western

empirical good sense replaces cheir own view ef things, leav-

ing chem wirh a fictional history and a pidgin ethnogra-

phy.... Tradicional rituals are ... dissolved; social cleavages

on which Hawaiian history rurned ... are effaced.... Hawai-

ian people appear en stage as che dupes of European ideology.

Deprived ... of agency and culture, cheir history is reduced co

i O^ H1,4 rtcs ^'1 `Í-he Mate n{ tke Art ^, 105

1 CI.t>si; urc .rninolcs-nc. 1I,^c livrd atol the suftcred-and

rhrn rhov dicd.

Ir i, rhle 1u1 11 ' us revois 11 ,.nr.^n^ndcJ .uad injured 'nativo sub-

jcct' as Enliehtcnmcnt noivcr,,,list cid ncu 1e111OVe1I and ironieal

"stranger ,d'ser'cr' as rel,u1Y,1rae hi,rr,ric ist-Arar gires this debate

jis extm„rdinorv 1, ¡Vil,,, In,]. in che cnJ, threurcns ro toro it from a

srircii tor m eLr.irc I i<r ini„ I riv.uc ^prrrrel. }tren if, following

t)bcycsc kere, arar is a,nxi,ns ^r nc, necesite of taking full accounr

of nce fact chut what wc knuw „t "fiar contacr" Hawaii comes ro us

sifted through thc pcrspcctivc „f [hele who have rold us about it,

and thar no one anywhere has cver lived a world wholly removed

from practical conteras, rhe reducrion of that Hawaii to so much

"Europeas mythmaking" still secros more a producr of unlocused

resenrment-ideological "ire"-than of evidente, reflection, and

"common sense.°

Ami oven it, following Sahlins, „rae sees thc danger of losing

forever rhe Jeep particularitios of vanished peoples in vanished

times by nuning them roto gcncralized rcasoners driven by practical

concerns, and recognizes chut [hoce are more ways to silente others

than are irnagined in postcolonial revisionism, there are still prob-

lems. The enclosure oí such parricularities in sharp-edged forms

firred righdy rogether like pitees in a picture puzzle still risks the

charge of ethnographical jiggery and excessive cleverness.

Full of certainties and accusarions, thoroughly consumed with

scoring points, Obeyesekere and Sahlins have, for all that, together

mamtged to pose, in a v,ay rhey could never have done separately,

fundamental rheorerical questisms; Luid they have raised crirical

methodol„gical issucs with respcct ro the delicate business of

orher-knowing." (^uesrions and issucs on which 1 perhaps should

ar chis point come clcan and ai 111111, tor my parr, 1 find Sahlins,

[he structuralist glitrer surmunding hls analyses asido, inarkedly the

more persuasivo. His descripto Las are more circumssranrial, his por-

trayal of both rhe Hawaiians and rhe British more deeply penetrat-

ing, and bis grasp of the moral and political issucs involved surer,

less prey ro rhe confusing noisrs of nce confused presenr.)

Whether thev have raised the levcl of anthropological disputa-

ti„n, in [he long ron a more importanr marter for a tield in which

there rcally are no answers ro be round in the back ot the book,

dcpends on whether [hose rvhu QJm0 afrer them-alrcady a gather-

ing company oa each side-can susmin their inrensiry while con-

raining their impulse to take offense and argue for victorv; whether

dzey can, amid nurrured cantor and piyued honor, keep the conver-

cation going.

lDeep Kanyung Uul

All the human sciences are promiscuous, inconstant, and ill-

defined; but cultural anthropology abuses the privilege. Consider:

Firsr, Pierre Clastres. A thirty-year-old graduate student in the

berceau of Structuralism, Claude Lévi-Strauss's laboratoire anrhropolo-

gique, he sets off from Paris in the early sixties for a remote corner of

Paraguay. There, in a hardly inhabited region of srrange forests and

stranger animals-jaguars, coatis, vultures, peccaries, Cree snakes,

howler monkeys-he lives for a year with a hundred oí so "savage"

Indians (as, approvingly, indeed somewhat in awe, he calls them),

who abandon their aged, paint their bodies in bowed stripes and

bent rectangles, practice polyandry, eat their dead, and beat tnen-

archeal girls with tapir penises so as to make them, like the long

nosed tapir, insanely arden[.

The book he publishes upon his retum he calls, with deliberate,

almost anachronistic, premodem fatness, as though it were a re-

cently discovered missionary diary from an eighteenth-century Je-

suit, Chronique des indiens Guayaki.' Worshipfully translated by the

American novelist Paul Auster ("It is, 1 believe, nearly impossible

not to love Chis book")-and belaredly published in the United

States a quarter-century later-the work is, in form at least, old-

style ethnographical to a fault. Ir gives a life-cycle description of

"rhe Guayaki," beginning with birth, proceeding through ritual ini-

tiation, marriage, hunting, and warfare, to illness, death, funerals,

and, afrer rhe funerals, cannibalism. There are the classic sor[

of carefully posed, aesthetical photographs: near-naked natives star-

1 OCr ` (ioq, lrr 1' 9 Tire 'tate of tilo {7rt - / 07

tng blankly inro cameras. There are rhe pen and pencil museum

sketches-hand axes, baskeis, tire drills, mosquito fans, feather

holders-thar une hardly ,ces in monographs anymore. And despite

occasional Tristes Tropiques lyricism, about the rounds of the forest

or the colors of the atternoon, the prose sryle is straightforward and

concrete. This happened, and ihar. They helieve this, they do that.

Only the musing, threnodic tlrst-person voice, breaking every now

and again into moral ruge, sug,iests that There may be more going on

rhan mere reporting of disrann oddirle,.

Second, James Clifford. Trained as an intellectual historian at

Harvard in the early sevenries, bur self-con verted, first to anthropol-

ogy and then to cultural studics (he now teaches in the History of

Consciousness Program lit rhe Universiry )t California, Santa Cruz),

he is, at fifry-two, rather more along toward the Middle of the Jour-

ney rhan Clastres was when he took off for Paraguay; but they are of

rhe lame academic generation-the one the counterculture made.

Clifford wanders abour in rhe nineties. diffident and inquisitive, not

among castaway "nativos," or indeed any "peoples" at all, hur among

what he calls 'contad zona,'-erhnological exhibitions, tourist

sites, art-show seminars, museum con,ultancies, cultural studies con-

ferences, rravelers' hotels. He visirs Freud's archaeologically en-

hanced London home. He pulses rhreugh the hyped and hybridized

Honolulu of professionul e, nventions. Pro Bowl football fans, and

sunken battleships on Chinc,e Newt Year, just as Desert Storm

erupts in the Persian Gulf. 1le reminisces about his youth as a

"where erhnic," son of a Columbia academic, ridin' the subways

through folk-long New York. He meditares opon history, domina-tion, and "global dynamics" before a Russian stockade from the

18205, reconstructed as a mtdriculrural heritage parle in `post-modern' California."

The book assemhling diese excursions and stop-ins inro a fablefor our times he calls Routes, with rhe pun en "roots" heavily in-tended, te) which he adds rhe carefully contemporizing subritle,Traael and Translation in the Late Tu'entieth Centra).' Here, though

the first person voice again appears daroughout, rather more asser-

rive and tar more self-referring, theta is no continuous, building

narririve, erhnographic or ano orher. There is, instead, an unor-

1 OR -- (1:.tpte,- r

dered series of "personal explorations," designed to depict neither

"natives, in villages " nor "pura traditions and discrete cultural dif-

ferences," but rather "people going places," "hybrid environments,""travelling cultures."7

The prose is various and indirect. Sometimes ir is "acadernic,"

that is, abstract and argumentative, sometimes it is "experimental,"

that is, inward and impressionistic; always, it is discursive, backing

and filling, giving with one hand and taking away with the other,

ruming aside to pursue a notion, retracing sreps to get back to the

subject. The pieces run from three or four pages to forty or fifry. The

photographs are either reproduced catalogue illustrations-illustra-

tions of illustrations-or amateur, unfocused snapshots, taken en

the fly by Clifford as he goas. There are no descriptions of anyone

marrying, fighting, worshiping, declaiming, dying, or mourning; no

accuunts of how children are raised or demons placated. And

where, save for a passage from Montaigne, Clastres has but a single

citation in his whole book, and that a paraphrase summary of some

pagel in a clerical history of che conquest of Paraguay, Clifford has

literally hundreds, sometimes a dozen a page, running from Mikhail

Bakhtin, Stuart Hall, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, and

Fredric Jameson to Malinowski, Mead, Rushdie, Gauguin, Amitav

Ghosh, Michel de Certeau, and Adrienne Rich-mosr of them

more atmospheric than substantive. He calls all this-"wrirren un-

der the sign of ambivalence ... in medias res ... manifesely unfin-

ished"-a collage.' Like Joseph Cornell's inagical boxes, "enclosed

beauty of chance encounters-a feather, ball bearings, Lauren Ba-

call," or like those déclassé Parisian horels, "places of collection, jux-

taposition, passionate encounter" from which the Surrealists

launched their "strange and wonderful urban voyages," Routes "as-

serts a relationship among heterogeneous elements in a meaningful

ensemble, . . . struggle[s] to sustain a certain hope, and a luciduncertainry." v

In sum: (1) A romantical pilgrim en a self-testing Quest, con-

fronting the Ultimate Other clown deep in the jungle. ("1 had really

arrived among savages," Clastres wrires. "The enormous gap ... be-

tween us ... made ir seem impossible for us ever to understand one

another." )10 (2) A reserved, middle-distance spectator moving un-

?he State o( the 14rt - IOq

ca,1k th:„,r la , 1', t111, 1111. 1, ,ll „f nri t 1 , , , , (" V'i,,lu in tic ero^^dcd

,hect- >Innkr Innu !,,,,J .Itn,0 nuuun;t c,aufC nncn ,md w,nnen

!nn 11111111 , slul „, ,ir, 1, l nnvcr^itc ,al 11.ncui1 j a__ ensem-

ble, .all-A,1,111 n. lit sino niota,m (,in Iragij

iuildin,, ilapit Jes.")' Thec h.arJls see;u lo Pelona to rhe vitae uni-

a crse, nurh Ies, to Ih.c ,mrc i ,„fe„iun.

And c e 1 , dresc nec ,V„rlJ Jccriher, acorld-!naaginers, warld-

comlIrer,, J l t t e I , I i i l r 1 1 m , . i ! ] ! t u l ammittc,l, and hardly, if

.u .111..ue of oue ,,nothur tr Llstrc, dicd, 11t !orty-thrcc, in a 1977

ear crosh, nvo veara betore Clifford hagan publishing; Clifford, for

all his interest in French q nthn,lx,logy, nacer so much as anudes to

Cierres), manage, hetwccn rhem, to frama, in its starkest tercos, rhe

most critical issue facing culrural andvopology in these, post-

colonial, postpositivist, post-everyrhing times. This is the value, rhe

feasibiliry, rhe legitimacy, and rhus ncC future of localized, long

terco, cloe-in, vernacular dcld research-what Clifford ar one point

lightly calls "Jeep hanging out," and Clastres exalts on almost every

pago ("1 had )nly to look ahour me at rhe daily life: even with a

minimum of attention 1 could uhvuys discover something new").`

Without a master theorv, withour a set-apara subject matter,

and, now that al[ rhe nativos are cirizens and rhe printirives minor-

ities, without oven a seriad and undisputed professional niche, cul-

rural anthropology is more depcndent for its identity, as authority,

and its claim to attention on a particular research practice than is

virtually any other science, social or natural. If fieldwork goas, or

anyway so it is feared on rhe one hand and hoped on the other, the

discipline goes with it.

Clasr es's reinare , unread , able "saciaos :" enclosed in a world ofhunr-

ing, violence, ordeal, and demoniacal animals-"the forest 's fatal

memplao "-are. asa marrar o( fact, a good deal les, pristine than

might ar (irst appear." They are actually refugees , displaced by rhe

Paraguay govemment evo and a hall years carller to a state-aun

trading post at rhe erige a iba foresr-dispirired , deculturated,

"paciiied." Thrnvn tngerber r1-re with tormer enemies ( with whom

rhey conduele m alnn„ t parodie "pera paca'), still wandering now

and again ¡oro rhe foresr t, huna, and casually overseen by a Para-

guayan "protector,' who is ramer more sympathetie tu Ibero than

ni,),,t of his comparto'rs, who ntcani rhem a, carde, rhey tic, Pv rhe

time Clasrres arrices, clearly and precipirously dying our.

By rhe rime he leaves, rhey are down from their original hun-

dred plus tú at besa seventy-five. Five years later, though he never

goes back ro visir ncem during a visir ro Paraguay ("1 haya nor had

ncu hearr m. Whar could 1 possihly hnd rhere?" ), rhey are fewer

rhan thirty." By rhe time of his own death rhey are gone alto-

gerher-"eaten away by illness and tuberculosis, killed by lack of

proper care, by lack of everything." They were, he says, in a haunt-

ing image, like unclaimed objects, lefa luggage. "Hopelessly forced to

leave their prehistory, they had Peen thrown inro a history rhat had

nothing to do with rhem except to destroy them."

The whole (colonial) enterprise that began in rhe fifteenth

century is now coming to an end; an entire continent will soon

be rid of its first inhabitants, and Chis parí of the globe will

truly be able to proclaim itself a "New World." "So many cides

razed, so many nations exterminared, so many peoples cut

down by rhe sword, and rhe richest and most beautiful parí of

rhe world overrhrown for rhe sabe of pearls and pepperl Me-

chanical victories." So Montaigne hailed the conquest of

America by Westem Civilization."

On the oasis of some offhand, and extremely dubious, as well as

extremely old-fashioned, physical anthropology, Clastres regards the

Guayaki as, in all probability, remnants of rhe earliest human inhab-

itants of the crea, perhaps of rhe entire continent. Though their

skin color ranges from "che lndian's classical copper, though less

pronounced, to white-not rhe European's pinkish white, out a

dull, grayish white, like the gray skin of a sick person," he calls

rhem, as rhe Paraguayans do, and rhe Spaniards did before them,

"white lndians." And so rhey see themselves: when an unusually

dark, thus cursed, child is born, its grandmother is obliged ro stran-

gle it.Whatever their color, most of these "original" Guayaki were

either killed off or assimilated in the course of a war of conquest by

rhe later-arriving, intensely miliraristic, 'Suongoloid" Tupi-Guarani,

I•y

1 1 O - ( (' 1 1 l,e Si,te uf tite iirL

still rhe main Indian group in i he aren. The few who escaped simple

annihilation ahandoned rhe culrivarion they long liad practiced and

fled roto che forests to hecomc noinadic hunters-driven roto im-

poverishment, exile, and cultural regression, not, as elsewhere on

che conrinent, by Europeans, who only began ro have ar rhem in

the seventeenth century, but Pv orher Indians. Thus, the Guayaki,

che tirst of che first inhabicanu, ,'re nor just "savages." They are che

savages' sas°agesfading tutee, oí die socially elemental:

[The Guarani] cannot accepr differences; unable to suppress

these differences rhey rry ro indude rhem in a familiar code, in

a reassuring ser of symhols. For [rhe Guarani] rhe Guayaki do

nor belong to a different culture, because there can be no suchthing as differences between r ultures: rhey are outside che rules,beyond common sense and ahoye rhe law-they are Savages.

Even che gods are againsr rhem. Every civilization . . . hasirs pagans.f°

It n, chis, "Savagery," rhat is, la civilisation sauvage, and its fatethat most concerns Clastres, and in Chis he is a quite orthodox

Strucruralist, though he never uses che rerm or applies irs contrived

vocabulary. Like his mentor, whose heir he was supposed to have

been, he contrasts those socieries (Lévi-Stratss calls ehem "hot")

caught up in a relendess, unending process of historical change and

chose (Lévi-Strauss calls rhem "colé") which have refused, ada-

mantly and entirely, ro hecomc pare of that process, resisted it, and

sought, with at bese rhe most tempocaro of successes, te) keep their

cultures static, free, commurr.il, 1111,1 nndeformed.

"There are no gnnwmps." soineone (acmally, it was that paladín

of la civilisation civilisée, .André Malraux, as Clastres knows and

assumes his readers will know] virote recently. This is a strange

retnark ro make in our civilization, which prides irself on being

che epitome of adulthood. But for Chis very reason, it might

well he rruc, at leasr tor cric wodd. For once we step outside

our own houndaries, whacever is nue for us in Europe no

longer applies. We ourselve may never become adults, but that

does nor mean ehere are no gnnvn-ups elsewhere. The question

is: Where is che visible frontier of our culture, at what stage

along che road do we reach the limit of our domain, where do

different things exist and new meanings begin? This is nor a

rhetorical question, for we are able co situare the answer in a

definite time and place.... The answer carne at the end of che

fifteenth century, when Christopher Columbus discovered che

people from beyond--rhe savages of America.

In che Islands, in Montezuma'.s Mexico, and on che shores

of Brazil, che white men crossed the absolute limit of their

world for che first tinte, a limit they immediately identified as

che dividing fine between civilization and barbarity.... The

Indians represented all that was alien to che West. They were

che Other, and che West did nor hesitare co annihilate

rhem.... They were all inhabirants of a world that was no

longer meant for rhem: the Eskimos, che Bushmen, the Austra-

lians. It is probably roo early to gauge che most importan con-

sequences of Chis meeting. It was fatal for che Indians; but by

some snange twist of fate, it might also tum out to be the

cause of the unexpected death of our own history, the history

of che world in irs present form.°

It is to record, in as fine and circumstantial a detail as possible

(ehough it is sometimes unclear whecher he is describing something

he has seen, something he has only heard about, or something he

thinks must be che case), che beliefs and practices that were Gua-

yaki life-rhe jaguar myths and che life-stage ordeals, che inconclu-

sive, undirected wars and che powerless, ephemeral nature of leader-

ship-that Clastres writes his book. More exactly, he writes it to

expose to us, who can never ourselves encounter these savage

grownups as he has, che logic of that lile and-cannibalism, infan-

ticide, tapir penises, and all-its moral beauty:

For myself, 1 most of all want to remember che [Guayaki's] pi-

ety, the gravity of their presente in che world of things and che

world of beings. To underscore their exemplary faithfulness to a

very ancient knowledge that our own savage violence has

squandered in a single instanr.... Is it absurd ro shoot arrows

over che new moon when it slides among che Crees? Not for the

1

1

1 12 - ('ha ter ^I The cela te o( che í^rt ^ 1 13

1 :11: rhe}- knecc 1h o drr- m, ,ir oas ilive am.l tbat irs ap-

pe.mure m rhe ,kv o:niki m.ikc thc iwomen] bleed tnensmial

lu,^.i, cchich vv,i> ... I ,^J iack rt^r rhe hunters. Thoy took re_

erogo, o'r dsc worl.l '. n^a inrrt, and axi awst deferid yoer-

selt.... 1 4,r many Lar roe [thee] renaciousiy nraintained theit

furrice ¡ir,] timid lit, a, norutds in rbe secret life of che foreet.

flor rhi, shclrcr cca> s,, d,ued, und ir wa: llke n s.icrilege.'.

lit rny case, acrileue, eonyucsc or rhe modera mania for

change and prestes, rhey h.rd no choice There vas nothing to

be done.. . There was deuth in thcir souls.... 6verything was

over."'.

Although Clifford shares Clastres's fierce hostility to (in Clifford's

more fashionable, if less cloquent, phr.isings) "globalism,'' "empires,l,

'Western hegemony," "rnmpanr neolibemlism," .. commodification,"

"che ongoing power imbalances of contact relarions," "casta and

class hierarchics," and, of course, "raeism," and shares, as well, his

syrnpathy for the "domimtred," rhe "exoticized," che 'exploired,"

and the "marginalized," he most definirely loes flor share Clastres's

belief in total immersion in rhe simple and the distanr as the royal

road ro recovering les faenes élémentaires de la vie sociale. Instead, he

sees his mission to be ene of "deliver[ing] a sharp critique of [the]

classic quest-"exoticist, anthropological, orientalist"-for revela-

tory "cultural tvpes, villagers, or natives," "condensed epitome[s] of

social wholes." Which is, of course, precisely whar Clastres was try-

ing with such passion to do: to set to the hotmm of things by exam-

ining a handful of bartered and po verles, lefr-luggage [ndians up

close and personal.

Clifford, who is nor nuich interested in the hortom of things,

says he wanrs only co displace cvhar he calis "che fieldwork hab-

irus"-"en ungendered, unraced, sexrc^lly inactive subject [interact-

ing] inrensively (on hennencutic)scientiiic levels at che very least)

with irs inrerlocuters"-from it, pusirion as che defining characteris-

tic of "real anrhropology" and "real antlvopologists." He wanrs ti)

undercur rhe `licensim, tuuctitm" ot going finto jungles, to decon-

srrucr che "normari"e power" of living among people who shoot

arrows ar rhe moon. But he has, clearly, a rather larger, more radical

aire in mind, than rhis familiar, tiresome sloganizing suggcsts. He's

out to ser anrhropology free of its hrsr-wordd parochiahsm, Its eunn-

protnised past, and its ep temological illusions-to propel ir, and

forcefully, "in postexoricist and posrcolonial directions."

Intensiva heldwork does flor produce privileged or complete un-

derstandings. Nor loes che cultural knowledge of indigenou,

authorities, of "insiders." We are differently situated as dwellers

and travelers in our cleared "fields" of knowledge. [s rhis multi-

pliciry of locations merely another symptom of postmodern

fragmentation? Can it be collectively fashioned finto something

more substancial? Can anrhropology be reinvented as a forum

for variously routed fieldworks-a site where different contex-

mal knowledges engase in critical dialogue and respectful po-

lemic? Can anrhropology fosrer a critique of cultural dominance

which extends ro its own prorocols of research? The answer is

unclear: powerful, newly flexible, centralizing forces remain."

Clifford's wanderings through musemns, exhibitions, tourist traps,

heritage parks, and the like are less casual, and less innocent, than

they look. They are designed ro accelerate a rerouting, and "reroor-

ing," of anrhropological research: to tum it away from static, high-

resolution, Clastres-like descriptions of chis or that people, in rhis or

chal place, living in this or that way; to cura it toward loose-limbed,

"decentered" accounts of peoples, ways of life, and cultural produces

in motion-traveling, mixing, improvising, colliding, struggling for

expression and domination. Such spaces, events, sites, or sertings are

what he means, borrowing a term from Mary Louise Pratt's smdy of

colonial travel writing, Imperial Eyes, by "contact zones."`'

A contact zone is, in Pratt's words (which Clifford quotes), "che

space in which peoples geographically and historically separated

come finto contact with each other and establish ongoing relations,

usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and in-

tractable conflict." Ir emphasizes, she says, "how subjects are consti-

tured in their relations to each other"; stresses "copresence, interac-

tion, interlocking understandings and practices ... within radically

asymmetrical relations of power." To view che sort of institutions

11 4 i';!aq'f1r y' 1 'Tire Srate of the I4rt ' 1 I5

wich which Clifierd is concerned, places of cultural display and

commemoration, from this perspectivo is to regard them as political

arenas-"power-charged set(s) uf exchanges, of push and P1111." In

such arenas, consequential collages, real-lile magic boxes, Clifford'sdrifting, Ireestyle anrhropolog finds its "held."

Among rhe pieces assembled in Roures, most of which seem

horoughly ephemeral, rbis is perhapt best demonstrated in che one

called "Fuer Norrhwest Cuasi Muscunrs," a cumparison not just of

che museums as such, rwo nacional and majorirarian, two tribal and

oppositional, bur of rheir conrrasrin;t approaches to che collection

and display of Indian iitificis, and, oven more effectively, in rhe

essay called "Fort Ros Medirarion," a highly original, powerful, if

omewhar serpentina, portrayul of rhe North Pacific-Siberia,

Alaska, and che Pacific Co,ur as "a regional conract :one" "Rus-

sian Amenca was an exremion uf Siberia." "At Fort Ross . `Wesr-

era hisrory arrees froni che wrong di ection "'

But rhroughour oven in ihe lea s i sohsrmtial, rhrowaway pieces,and despica his genree1, nofi inc tonto" persona, rhe mural serious-

ness oí CIifford's work, bis personal concern for che human future

and che place of che dispossessed vvirhin it, displays irself as in-

rensely, as clearly, and as rnvemitringly as, in his more mano a mano,

prophetical voice, Clastres .loes:

At Fort Ross, 1 hopo ro ¿;Iinipse my own hisrory in relation to

others in a regional conract zone.... Located un che rim of

the Pacific, my homo nf ci0hroen sears, the forr's nineteenth

century stories, seca li-wu in uncerrain fin-de-siécle, may pro-

vide just enough "deprh" io make sonso of a future, some possi-

blc fuaires.... Histors i, thought from different places within

an unfinished global dvnamic. Whorc are we in Chis process? Is

ir toa late to recogni:e 'bur" diversa paths inro and rhrough

modernice? Or roo carli'.... All al once, che millennium feels

likc a heginning

So: dra^cing ncar versus s,in; ing hiele, confidenr enpiricism versus"lucid uncertünry," rhe i^nmrdiucics A ihe local versus che refrac-

tions of che uncentered, insular (and doomed) stabiliry versus global

(and encouraging) commotion. These may be a bit crude as bina-

rles; and in such matters there are no pure rypes. But, for adepts of

rhe special, che singular, che different, and the concrete-that is,

among others, anthropologists-rhey do rarher capture che question

here: How are we now ro practice our rrade?

The ready way of dealing with all Chis would be to see Clastres

as che nostalgic voice of a disappeared, exhausted past, professional

no less than actual-like Lévi-Strauss's famous characterization of

che tropics, out of date-and ro see Clifford as a man wich che

future in his bones, designing an anrhropology for an oncoming age

of global interconnecrion, movement, instability, hybridity, and dis-

persed, anti-hegemonical politics. But rhat will hardly do. The

choice is nor between regretring rhe past and embracing che future.

Nor is it between che anthropologist as hero and as rhe very model

of postmodem major general. It is between, on the one hand, sus-

taining a research tradition upon which a discipline, "sofr" and half-

formed perhaps bur morally essential, has been built and, on che

other, "displacing," "reworking," "renegoriaring," "reimagining," or

"reinventing" that tradition, in favor of a more "multiply centered,"

"pluralistic," "dialogical" approach, one which sees poking loto the

lives of people who are nor in a posirion to poke loto yours as

something of a colonial relic.

There is very litrle in what che partisans of an anrhropology in

which fieldwork plays a much reduced or transformed role-an ac-

tive and growing group of which Clifford is only one of che more

prominent members-have so far done thar would suggest rhey rep-

resen rhe wave of che future." ft is true that Clastres's Rousseauian

primirivism, che view that "savages" are radically different from us,

more authentic than us, morally superior to us, and need only ro be

protecred, presumably by us, from our greed and cruelry, is, some

New Age enthusiasts aside, nor much in favor these days. (Clastres

wrore another hook before his death, Sociery Against che State, in

which he developed some of che ideas set forrh in the Chronicle in

more explic_it, nor to say polemical, terms, bur has nor peen much

noticed.)a Even those working desperately to protect peoples like

che Guayaki againsr Western exploitation are nor trying ro freeze

rheir cultures in time or preserve rheir societies in aspic; rhey are

I I P ( ó , g d m Y 1 'T ire State of che nit 1 I 7

Ircing n, t;ivc thcm a c U, in 111, 11 awn, sureh u n ti id ir iotial, fu-

turo. Bur vchether rhe o] i ^,t mi.l,lle-duralee, r,alk-through re-

=caich l.littord patri«- _itt<i rcc„iniu^n,l, 15 q n adsance On rhe

dorein .I uec ,loe>-n ".n r I]Htr> r.trrieLi Liar wirh such dcvotmn

is tar froto lear.

Kuures, ,shich ClitforJ ^^ i; :ur ^stcnsion of hi, earlier, much

praiscd .ind mach pillorie.l, f _ Yrc^itruman[ of Cultora (a strongee

lea de<u'o rc..md bcttcr ,ondea rhan Honres, as a nratter ot

faca), socias tu show t hesiuuti, stuttcring (1uality (wlrat can 1 say?

how can 1 say tt? with uvhat righr d) 1 do so?.) not wholly artribut

able ro its exploratory, unhnishe,l nanire.`' Clastres, whatever his

orthodoxy and his straight ahead temperament, knew where he was

going, and he got diere. Clilford, isharever his originality and his

openness tú experimenr, sceu, srallcd, unsteady, fumbling for direc-

tion. It is, perhaps, rather roo carly to exchange roots for routes.

FI(stotty antl f/nthrojut)ugij

One hears a fair amounr there days, some of it hopeful , much of itskeptical, and almost oil of ir nervous , about the supposed impact ofAnthropology, rhe Science , opon History, the Discipline . Papers inlearned journais survey rhe problem wirh a certain useiess judicious-

ness: en the one hand, yes ; on the otlicr , no; you should sup withthe devil wirh a long spoon . Arricles in the public press dramatize itas the latest news froto rhe academic fron q " hot" deparnnents and"cold"; are dates out of date ? Outraged traditionalists ( there seemste be no other kind) write hooks saving it mearas the end of politicalhistory as we have known tt, and thus of reason , freedotn, footnotes,and civilizarion . Symposia ate convened, classes taught , talles given,

to try ro son rhe matter out. There seems to he a quarrel going on.

But a shouting in rhe street , ir's rather hand te malee out just what it

is about.

Une of rhe things ir may he about is Space and Time. There

seem ro he sume historians , rheir anthropological educations having

ended wirh Malinowski or begun with Lévi-Straus , who think that

anthropologists , mindles of change or hostile to it, present static

pictures of immobile societies scattered abatir in remote corners of

rhe inhabired world, and some anthropolugists, whose idea oí his-

tory is roughly that of Barbara Tuchman, who think that what his-

torians do is tcll admonitory, and-then, and-then stories about onc

or anorher episode in Wesrern Cis°ili_adon: "trae noceLd' (in Paul

Veyne's phrase), designed te get Lis to facc-or outface-faca.

Another thing the quarrel may be about is Big and Litde. Thc

penchant of historian, for htoad sweeps of rhought and action, the

Rise of Capitalism, rhe Decline ol Romc, and ot anthropologists

for studies of smail, well-bounded communities, the Tewa World

(which?), rhe People of Alor (who?), leads te historians accusing

anrhropologisrs of nuancemanship, of wallowing in the details of

rhe obscure and unimportant, and te anrhropologists accusing histo-

rians of schematicism, of being out of touch wirh rhe immediacies

and intricacies, "the feel," as they like te put it, considering them-

selves te have it, of actual life. Muralists and miniaturista, they have

a certain difficulty seeing what rhe other sees in contained perfec-

tions or in grand designs.Or perhaps it is about High and Low, Dead and Living, Written

and Oral, Particular and General, Description and Explanation, or

Art and Science. History is threatened (one hears it said) by rhe

anthropological stress en che mundane, rhe ordinary, the everyday,

which turras it away froto the powers that really move the world-

Kings, Thinkers, Ideologies, Prices, Classes, and Revolutions-and

toward bottom-up obsessions with charivaris, dowries, cat massacres,

cock fights, and millers' tales that move only readers, and them to

relarivism. The stody of living societies, it is held, leads to presen-

tism, snapshots of the past as ourselves when young ("The World

We Have Lost," "The Fall of Public Man"), as well as to the illegiri-

mate reading of contemporaries as ancestors (kula exchanges in

Homeric Greece, ritual kingship in Versailles). Anthropologists

complain that che historian's reliance en written documents leaves

as prey te elitist accounts and literary conventionalisms. Historians

complain that the anthropologist's reliance on oral testimony leaves

as prey to invenred tradition and rhe frailties of memory. Historians

are supposed te be swept up in "the thrill of learning singular

things," anthropologisrs in rhe delights of system building, rhe one

swamping the acting individual in the onrush of surface events, the

1 1 S f li,q,frr j, a 711e Stute of ti re Art OTO. 1 19

orher dissolving individuality altogerher in rhe Jeep structures of

collective existence Sociologt, Veync says, meaning by this any ef-

fort to discern constan[ principies in human life, is a science of

which che hrsr linc has not beca writren and never will be. History,

Lévi-Strauss says, meaning hi rhis any attempr ro understand such

life sequenrially, is an cxcellcnr carca so long as one eventually getsout of it.

If this is whar rhe ar wncnt is really abour, Chis merhodological

rhrashing around amid ncc grand dichoromies of Western meta-

physics, Berng and Becoming rcvisircd, ir is hardly worth pursuing.

It has lacen quite some time nov since the stereotypes of the histo-

rian as mtrnkind's memorialist or rhe anthropologist as the explorer

of rhe elemenrary forros nf tire cienunml have liad very much pur-

chase. Examples (Ni cach Joubt Icss reurain; bar in both iields the real

acdon (and rhe real divide) i, elseo:here. There is as much that

separares, say, Michel Foucault anJ Lawrence Smne, Carl Schorske

and Richard Cobb, as connecn them; as much that connects, say,

Keith Thomas and Mary Ihruglas, Femand Braudel and Eric Wolf,as separares theta.

The centrifugal moyentent-anv rime but now, any place but

here-rhat still marks both enterprises, rheir concern with whar has

recently come ro he called, wirh posunode n capital lerters and post-

srructuralist shudder quor s, "The Oil ter," assures a certain elective

afhnity benveen them. Trying to under^rand peopie quite differently

placed than ourselves, encased in diffcrent material conditions,

driven bv different ambitions, pose=sed of different notions as Lo

whar life is all abour, poses very similar problems, whether rhe condi-

tions, ambitions, and nutirms he those of rhe Hanseatic League, the

Solomon lslands, the Count-dulce of Olivares, or the Children of

Sanchez. Dealing with a world elsewhere comes to much rhe same

thing when elsewhere is long ¡wo as when it is far awav.

Yet, as rhe irreversibitiry ot rhe sloean that is commonly used to

express Chis view, L. P. Hartlev's "the past is anorher country" (an-

other country is quite dchnirely not nce past), shows, the question is

rather more complex; the eyuivalence of cultural distance between,

say, us and the Franks an, us and nce Nigerians is a good deal less

[han perfecr, particularly us [here may he, these days, a Nigerian

120 Clirgder f'

living around the cerner. Indeed, not even the "us," "the Self' that

is seeking that comprehension of "the Other," is exactly the same

thing here, and it is that, 1 think, which accounts both for rhe

interest of hisrorians and anthropologists in one another's work and

for rhe misgivings rhat arise when that interest is pursued. "We"

means something different, and so does "they," to those looking

hack than it does tu those looking sideways, a problem hardiy eased

when, as is increasingly the case, one fries tú do both.

The main difference is that when "we" look back, "rhe Other"

appears to us as ancestral. It is what somehow led on, however va-

grantly, ro the way we live now. But when we look sideways that is

not the case. China's bureaucracy, pragmatism, or science may re-

mind os forcibly of our owm; but it really is another country, in a

way even Homeric Greece, with adulterous gods, personal wars, and

declamatory deaths-which remind us mainly of how our minds

nave changed-is not. To the historical imagination, "we" is a junc-

ture in a cultural genealogy, and "here" is heritage. To the anthro-

pological imagination, "we" is an entry in a cultural gazetteer, and"here" is home.

These at leas[ have been rhe professional ideals, and until fairly

recently reasonable approximations of the actualities as well. What

has progressively undermined them, both as ideals and as actualities,

and stirred up all che anguish is not mere intellectual confusion, a

weakening of disciplinary loyalty, or a decline of scholarship. Nor,

for rhe most parí, has "rrendiness," that voluminous sin academic

Tories attribute to anything that suggests to them thar they mighr

think thoughts orher than those they have already thought, played

much of a role. What has undermined them has beca a change in

rhe ecology of learning that has driven hisrorians and anthropolo-

gists, like so many migrant geese, on to one another's territories: a

collapse of rhe natural dispersion of feeding grounds thar left France

to the one and Samoa to rhe orher.

This can be seen, [hese days, on all sides: in che greater atten-

tion by Western hisrorians ro non-Western history, and not only of

Egypt, China, India, and Japan, but of rhe Congo, the Iroquois, and

Madagascar, as auronomous developments, not mere episodes in rhe

expansion of Europe; in anthropological concern with English vil-

Tke cátate of rhe Íl4t ``' 121

1

lagos, I rcnch nrarkcrs , Rus,ue) c, llccüvc,, ,r American high schoOls,

,ir),¡ tvtth ntin„rities in 11l thcnt; in 'rtács of che evoluti,m uf

col„uiil arhirc^ tare in InJi.i , n.h,n,.! i, tr Notrh Africa as repre-

SenLltlOR ot power ; in an.ih-u. ,1 th, o.inst uction ol i cense of tire

post ( or xensrs lit it) in thc Caribhcan, ihe Him ; tiayas, Sri Lanka, or

rho Hn,aüan Islands. Amcrican unrhruoologisrs writc tire history of

Finan wurs, English hisrori .in, ,vaca du erimograph^ of Roncan cm-

peror eulrs. Book called The 1ll.1. r r,d =Anthr^tpoktgti uf Early :vlodern

alv (hv a hisntrian ) .r fsLln, ls ^rf 1 ii;n» ( hy an anth opologist),

Europe and rice Peoplu u irhutu Histora ( hc an anthropulogist ) or Prim-

itive Rebels ( by a histori an), secm quite normal. So loes one called

Anthropologie der Erkennmis , 'hose subject is the intellectual evolu-

tion of Western science. " L-veryh , xly seems to be tninding everybody

clse's business.

As usual, what such sIiifts in the direction of interest come topractically can be more seetircly grasped by looking at some work in

fact going on-real geese, really feeding. In tire human sciences,

merhodological discussions conducted in tercos of general positions

and abstracted principies are largo ly boodess . A few possible excep-

tions possihly apart ( perhaps Durkheim , perhaps Collingwood), such

discussions mainly lead ro intramural bickering about the proper

way lo do things and the dreynliul results (" relativism ," "reduction-

ism," "positivisa1 ," "nihilism") thar ensue when, perversely or in ig-

norance, they aren't done rhat way TI-te significant methodoiogical

works in hoth history and anthropology-The King's Two Bodies,

The Making of che English lyrinking Ckass , or The Structure of Scientific

Revohttions; The Social Organization of dte Western Pueblos, Trade and

Markets in tire Early Empires , or The Forest of Symbols-tend at che

same tizne ro he significnnt enipirical works , which is perhaps one of

che deeper characreristics tlrat, .cross ,vhatever divides of aim and

copio, mosr connects tire neo tic lis.1 shall cake as niy crises in point, then, rwo moderately sized

bodies of work . The firs[ is rizar o í a smali, fairly definabie clutch of

social historians who , incolving themselves wirh anthropological

ideas md an rhropological nraterials , huye found theinselves drawn

more and atore deepi^ ' finto rho darknesses that plague rhar disci-

pline. The econd is rhar ,t ,i ron ter lamer nutnber oí historians and

anthropologists, who, having discovered an interest in common

they did not know rhey had, have produced a series of unstandard

«ritings suffused wirh uncertain debate The one, which 1 shall refer

to as che Melbourne Group, mainiv hcumse its pntmgonists are froto

Melbourne and form a group, provide, a nice progression of exam-

pies of che conrinuum berween anrhropologized history and hisrori-

cized anthropologv; che orher, which 1 shall refer to as che Svmbolic

Construction of che State, because rhar lb what its wrnnglers are

wrangling about, provides a well-hounded instante of what happens

when historians and anthropologists explicitly try to coordinare

their efforts wirh respect to a copio eraditional to them both. These

are buz samples, parcial and quite arbitrary, and schematicized at

that, of what is going on right now in looking backwardflooking

sideways sorts of study. But they do reveal something of the promise

offered, rhe difficulties encountered, and che achievements already

in place.

The members of che Melbourne Group with whom 1 wili be con-

cerned (there are apparenriy some others, whose work 1 do not

know) are Rhys Isaac, whose The Transformation of Virginia is a study

of the vicissitudes of colonial culture on che way to che revolution;

Inga Clendinnen, whose Ambivalent Conquests is an analysis of the

encounrer of Spanish and Indian forros of life in the Yucatan penin-

sula during the middle of the sixteenth century; and Greg Dening,

whose Islands and Beaches seeks to trace the destrucrion of Mar-

quesan society under che impact of Western intrusions finto it after

the 17705.J1 Three places, three times, one problem: che disequil-

ibrarion of established ways of being in che world.

This paradigm, if that is what it is, is most bluntly apparent in

Isaac's book, because he divides his work finto two more or less equal

halves, one static, one dynamic. The first, called "Traditional Ways

of Life," presents the outlines of planter-dominated culture up to

around 1750 or 1760 in a synchronic, snapshot manner-a social

order not without interior strains or endogenous directions of

change, buz essentially in balance. The second, called "Movements

1 2 p (ha o r )E 1 The State of tlte Ílri 2. 1 23

and Events," traces rhe Jisruprion of ihis settied order by the ap-

pearance of elements-most esp<dally evangelical Christianity and,

teward 1776, American narionalism-that its simple hierarchies

could nor contain. An image, thus, of a social cosmos-Planter

Life, 1111,1 al[ thar went wirh ir (country houses, horse yaces, court

day, patriarch slavery, formal d;incing, and rhe muster field)-com-

ing apart along rhe fissures induccd in it by "stern faced [Northern]

preachers," New Lights and others, exciting the populace and "fac-

tious [Southern] repubhcans," Patrick 1-lenry and others, haranguing

rhe elite: "IThe] great men [set] up fine brick courthouses and

churches as enthlems of the rulo thev sought to exercise and of rhe

divinity legitimizing rhat rulo ... Wihhin hall a century of its appar-

ent consolidation the system [was] ovcttumed.,,;i

This picture of rhe ragged Force, of History shattering rhe crys-

tal Parrerns of Culture, consensos first. dissensus alter, makes possi-

hle a quite striightforward aapproach rnward sorting rhe gazetteer

from rhe genealogy as truuecvorks for placing a distant society in

relation to enes own. The firsi goes in rhe first parí, constructing

rhe iurage, rhe second goes in rhe second, accounting for its eran-

sience. Anthropology gets ncc tahleau, History gens the drama; An-

thropology the fortns, History the causes.

Ar lcast parrly our of rhe sane impulse-rhe desire to distin-

guish rhe events that Irise from difierences in outlook from rhe

differences in ourlook rhat Irise trom events-Clendinnen, roo, di-

vides her book finto more or Ie,, equal, dialectical halves. But in her

case rhe division is not hetwcen what iu moved and whar moves it;

ir is between two peoples, one a cultural scouting party a long way

from home, one a cultural fortress deeply ira sito, locked in an en-

ceunter ncither of them can really undersrand.

The two parís of her bo,rk are thus called simply "Spaniards" and

"Indians," and rhe sane sort of disrribution, though rather less radical,

of historical narrative tú r1 te one half and etlmographic portraimre tú

the other Cakes place. Flete, ho^^ cver, rhe order is reversed; the drama

comes hefore the tablean, rhe disruption hetore whar was disrupted. In

the first, "Spanish" section, the historical actors-"explorers," "con-

querors," "setders," "missionatics"-are set out and their exploits,

and exploitations, chroniclcd, as are Cite conflicts among rhem, rhe

crisis through which their enterprises passed, rhe mental world within

which they operated, and the final outcome, rhe consolidation of

Spanish power. In rhe second, "Indian" section, an image of Mayan

society and the passions that animated it-stoicism, cosmography,

human sacrifice-is delicately reconstructed out of whar is admittedly

a fragile and fragmenrary native record.

The story rhe book has to tell (or the picture it has to present)

is consequently nor one of a consensual social order forced into

disarray by the entrante ente its public stages of obstreperous men

with contrarious ideas, but of a profound cultural discontinuity be-

tween intruder and intruded upon, a discontinuiry that grows only

more profound as their relations intensify. Familiariry breeds incom-

prehension: to rhe Spanish, possessed of "thar extraordinary Euro-

pean conviction of their right ro appropriate rhe world," the Maya

appear less and less reachable che closer they come to rhem; to the

Maya, "rhe objects and victims of Spanish world-making," the

Spanish appear less and less assimilable che more they become en-

trenched. Everything ends in a terrible, and blood-drenched "hall of

mirrers"-clerical floggings and folk crucifixions: "The product of

the miserable confusion which besets men when they do nor under-

stand the speech of others, and find ir easier to make of rhem famil-

iar monsters than to acknowledge them to be different." rr An An-

thropological tragedy with a Historical plot.

Dening, too, divides his book in half, putting what hisrorians

would call the story in the one part and whar anthrepologists would

call the analysis in the other. Only he does it, so to speak, length-

wise. To each substantive chapter en one or another phase in the

16o-year European-Marquesan encounter ("Ships and Men," "Beach-

combers," "Priests and Prophets," "Captains and Kings"), he ap-

pends a topically oriented interchapter called a "Reflection" ("On

Model and Metaphor," "On Rites of Passage," "On Boundaries,"

"On Religious Change," "On Dominante," "On Civilizing"), which

sets forth a more or less systemaric array of ideas for interpreting

whar has just been related. The Textual movement here is less be-

tween whar was and what happened to it, as in Isaac, or between

incommensurable sensibilities, as in Clendinnen, as between alter-

native styles of rendering such matters-cultural mutation and cul-

12-1 i i,p(r, i' 1 `Ilre State o[ the Art f . 12,5

tur,tl nu<e.mnecrion ceneralk nuelliotble. Though he srarted as a

hLtanan .mJ endCJ a, i e 1i:ic t,,"k a Juetonue in .mthropol-

or^c alomo rhe w0av, inJ he itt un enteri>tue somewhat

eecentne tu hoth ite]J ihv ato n^, nc puo It, of a ".üscourse on

u olear IanJ.,,

Ir is silent hecause, unlike die A'iruinia Plantees , echoes of

who_se ourlonk pcour tcJ_is, d'arly as .ocia) claims and ancestral

tanruie., oribe Miyan InJC-u^ ^ecmenr, of whose cirju-ation con-

tinuo as tolk rrajition hcne.itli rhe 1liHpanic pesonaliry of modero

Mexlco, rhe Marqucsan, as Marquc; an,s, súnply are no more:

"Deadt [carrded rhem] off .. . bef)re thry liad rhe time or rhe will te

make any cultural adaptation to rheir changed environment'OJ

There are people living in rhe Marquesas , of course , at leasr some of

rhem physical descendants of ehose who lived here before rhe Cap-

tains, Priescs, and Beachcomhers arrived; bus they are "dispos-

sessed," decir hisrory rupturei , rhemselves rurned into generalized,

indefinire " Pacific Islanders":

Everybody's pass is dead, [rhe Europeans' and che Marquesans']

together. Events happen only once. Actions are gane with their

doing. Only rhe hisrory of rhe pase has some permanence, in

rhe ways consciousness gets preserved in writing or in memory

or in che presumptions of every social acr. But for [rhe Mar-

quesansj even their hisrory is dead. AII rhe hisrory rhar is left

to theni ... binds rhem te rhose wltose intrusion en rheir

Land caused rhem to dic. Events, acrions, institurions, roles be-

conre hisrory lw heing rransl.ued inro words. In [rhe Mar-

quesans'] case, [hese are [rhe Europeans'] words in their

descriprion of rhe Land. Even [rhe Marquesans'] own words

abou[ their leves, collecred in legends or even in dicrionaries,

cannor escape rhis fundamental reabry. There is not a legend or

a genealogy rhar has surcived rhar vas non collecred many

years after [rhe Europeans'] inrrusion. They belong ti) rhe time

of their writing down."

The behindhand collectors, rhe appropriating writers-down,

were, rhese being "primirives," nrainly anthropologists, rhough a few

originals, like rhar ex1,ansive beachcomber Herman Melville, were

also envolved. The classic ethnographers of rhe place, [hose from

whoin we know inost oí whatever we know abouc Marquesan soci-

ery in rhar illo rempore, "che ethnographic presenr"-Karl von

Steinem, E.S.C. Handy, Ralph Linton-all carne to rhe islands well

after rhe Western mariners, traders, missionaries, and vagabonds

liad done their civilizing, or decivilizing, work. (Handy's The Native

Culture in che Marquesas, upon which "virtually every model of [in-

Jigenous Marqucsan society rhar] llave peen consnucted" ere founded,

was published )nly in 1923.) The result is rhac "Marqucsan Cul-

rure" has becotne a Western reality, no longer a Marquesas ose.

[A]t ose time [die Marquesans'] legends, their genealogies, rhe

very continuiry of their living culture kepí them conscious of

their past, rold rhem rhe way their world should be. They were

dispossessed even of [hese. Like their material artefacts, their

customs and their ways were transformed inro [European] cul-

tural artefacts. Their living culture died and was resurrected as

a curiosity and a problem abou[ such rhings as cannibalism or

polyandry.... All [their] words, [their] consciousness, [their]

knowledge, were extracted from [rhe islands] and pus in rhe ser-

vice non of continuiry or identity for rhe [Marquesans], bu[ of

entertainment, education and edification for rhe Outsiders. The

[Marquesans'] lives ceased tu be parí of their discourse with

themselves [which, unlike that of rhe Virginians and che

Mayans was of course wholly unwritren] and became instead

parí of [European] discourse.'t

We have moved (logically, nor chronologically-Dening's book

is the radies[ of rhe three, Clendinnen's rhe most recen[) from An-

thropology as rhe state of affairs upon which History acts, through

Anthropology as the jungle through which History stumbles, to An-

thropology as rhe grave in which History is buried.

Taken together, [hese three works suggesr rhat the conjoining of

History and Anthropology is non a master of fusing two academic

fields inro a new Something-or-Other, hut of redefining rhem in

terms of one another by managing their relations within rhe bounds

of a particular srudy: textual ractics. That sorting things into what

moves and whar moves it, what victimizes and what is victimized,

1 'ft - (1i,ildvrYt 11 The State of the A t - 127

or what happened and what we can ay ahout what happened, will

not, in the en,¡, really do, is hardly ncc point. In the end, nothing

will really do, and believin; orhern°ise icill but hring forth monsters.

lt is in efforts such as rhere, ami in orhers employing other rhythms

and other Iistinction,, thar whar, hesldc polemic and mimicry, this

kind of work has to offer (sor leaut, 1 suspect, a critique of both

fields) will be discovered.

My second example of hisron-andvopolog^ relarions ¡ti acrion is of

a rarher differenr sota-na a delibec,te tacking between variant

moles of discourse, but an uninrendal, almost happensmnce con-

vergente ot theta upon ., common c u cera: rhe enmeshmenr of

mcaning in poseer. Since :u leasr nc( time Burckhardt called che

Renaissance state "a work of art." K:maxowicz began to talk about

"medieval political theohigv," „r Bagehot noted that Britana was

ruled by "an elderly seidovP and cn uncntployed youth," historian

have become more and more interesad in the role of symbolic

forros in che developmeni rnni opeuiti,m the construction, if you

will-of che stare. And lince ,ii least che rime Frazer began tú ralk

abour roval iuunolation, [liude ahoer sacred centers, or Evans-

Pritchard ahour divise kins on ncL upper Nile, anthropoiogists

have become so as wc11. An od,l refcnnce now and then aside, the

two interesas developed mine nr les, independently until rather re-

cently, tvhen they began, seith some toree, to break in upon one

another. The results Lave Leen as ame would expect: a bursr of

work, a higger bursr of üucsrion>.

The bursr of work is ahparenc on both sides. A classical histo-

rian has written on che celebradon of Roman emperors in the

Creek tosen of Asia Minora a m,)dein historian has written on Vic-

toria',, Diantond Jubiles There have Leen studies on che meaning of

Consranrine's coronation, on imperial tuncrals in Rome, ora "modelss

of nilership in French roya( eemennn,ial," on 'rituals of che early

modem popes" and someonc bus bn.ughc Kantorowicz forward to

Elizahethan times in a work called The Queen's Two Bodies."

Oía che other, the anthropological, hand, where 1 have myself

been a witting, or half-witting, conspirator with my work on "che

theatre state" in Java and Bali, there have been studies of the ritual

royal bath in Madagascar, a book on Le roi ivre, ou ('Origine de l'érat,'tanother on "the ritual conexa of [contemporary] British royalty," in

which Princess Di, Elizabeth's handbag ("perhaps the most intriguing

roya( accessory"), fox hunting, and che Emir of Qatar all figure, as

well as more standard ethnographies of che histrionics of sovereignty

in Chad, Nepal, Malaysia, and Hawaii. Roya( marriage, royal death,

roya( tombs, and royal succession have all come in for rhe sort of

attention that used to be reserved for kinship terminology, as have

regicide, deposition, and whatever che technical term may be for

royal incest. A recent, quite parcial, bibliographic review liscs over

fifty titles, from "The Queen Mother in Africa" to "The Stranger

King, Dumézil among rhe Fijians" in rhe lasa ten years alone, and

"symbolic domination" has become, even if no one is entirely certain

jusr what it mean, a standard term of ara and invective.

Ir is frota rhe interplay of the two linos of thoughr as they have

discovered one another that the bursr of questions has come. Most

of chis interplay remaíns citational in nature; historians of Renais-

sanee Italy mentioning ethnographers of Central Africa, ethnogra-

phers of Southeast Asia mentioning historians of Renaissance

France. But recently rhere have been some more intimate conjunc-

tions in che forro of symposia collecrions containing both sorts of

scudy and serting them off against one another in che intereses of

some more general overview. In two of the best of these, Rices ofPower: Symbols, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages, emerging

from che Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton a coupleof years ago, and Rituals of Royalty, Power and Ceremonial in Tradi-tional Societies, emerging from che Past and Present group in Britain

lasa year, the problems that have arrived with che advances are asapparent as they are unresolved."

The most vexed of these, and the most fundamental, is simply:

How much does che s),mbolic apparams through which state power

forros and presenrs irself, what we are used ro calling as trappings,

as though it were so much gaud and decoration, really matter? To do

The State of nce {fu 120,

Ibis son ,^( ^rork at .aII im.,, sr, ihr ah.utdonnunt ot a "smoke and

hlu^ minor_," vaca o( Ihu i^s,iv, and oI (¡le simpler tornas ot reduc-

umiau-m itin ccoo:.^ 1I•C, -t n.u 10111, bioloei cd-chut go w irh it.

The ,i' ias u( 11,m el and thc <iii Lun,e oi iI are not so ea;i11 pried

apuro Thc Wirard nt C)= )r hose Mane Battalions has che Pope

seon't do, uad neirher ,+ill muIterin^,^ abour swindlec and mystifiea-

Iiun,. Rur the lucsti,m 11, m,thele,s renrdms, and indeed gro^t's more

ix !I lted, .i, t„ ,clr.u jieeuseiv, uad hose impurtant, rhe etiecrs oi

dresc roval budus and L,rd1y t,:1in h-ttlclg>, nnyjctic effigies and impe-

rial p n reses (or, tor rh,u nratrer, television summits and congres-

sional impcachment hearings), are. How are they come by? How are

they not? What son of toree loes spectacle Nave?

Sean Wilentz, in tire introduction tú che Princeron volume, fo-

cuses che issue as having ro do with "rhe limitations ... of symbolic

interpreration ... che limas of verstehen in any scholarly

enterprise":

If ... all political orders are governed by master ficrions [as an-

thropologisrs have claimed1, is there any point in trying to find

oto wherc historical rhetoric and historical reality diverge? Can

historian of che symbolic even speak of objective "reality" ex-

cept as it was perceived by those bcing studied, and thereby

rransformed luto yer another fiction? Once we respect political

mystifications as borh inevitable and worthy of study in their

own righc-once we abandon crude and arrogant explanations

of che origins of "false consciousness" and vaunt che study of

perceprion and experience-is there any eonvincing way to

connect rhem to rhe social and material charaeteristics of any

hierarchical order without lapsing loro one forre or another of

mechanistic funcrional¡snu? Some historians [he cites E. P.

Thompson, Eugene Genovese, and Felix Gilbert] insist that ir

is sstill possible-indeed imperative-ro make these connec-

tions, and they warn of the risc of in "anthropologized" ideal-

ism, disrespeceful of hisrorical contexts, in which a new fetish

of elegant presenmtlon replaces che old fetish of sociological

abstraction and cumbersome prole. Orhers [he cites Natalie

Davis, Carlo Ginsburg, and Bernard Cohn] respond that such

fears, although justihed, need nut block the historical study of

perception and political culture in ways influenced h} che

anthropologisrs' ínsights °'

Cumbersome Prose and Elegant Presentation :rside, dite crinies

that they doubtless are, the general anxiery that if meaning is roo

much attended to, rcality will tend to disappear (meaning by

°meaning" fuere ideas and by "rcality" munitions and thc lash), does

haunt this sort of work. Tire anthropological destre to lee how

things fit together sus uneasily with the historical desire to see how

they are brought abour, and the old, nineteenth-century insults,

"1dealistl" "empiriclstl" get trotted out for one more turn around the

track. "A world wholly demystified is a world wholly depoliticised,1

an anthropologist contributor feels called upon to proclaim, as

though it were some sor[ of revelation;91 "power is, after all, some-

thing more than che manipulation of images,"42 a historian contribu-

tor is moved to assure us, as though there were people around who

thought otherwise.

This question-how can we bring the articulations of power

and the conditions of it finto some comprehensible relation?-

continues to trouble the discussions, in some ways even more inter-

nally torn, in che Past and Present collection.

David Cannadine, who introduces the volume with an essay

that seems to change direction with every paragraph, sees the prob-

1em as arising from the combination of a general recognition, on the

pare of both anthropologisrs and historian, thar "che whole notion

of power as a narrow, separare and discreet [sic] category [is] in-

appropriate ... the idea that splendour and spectacie is bur ...

window-dressing ... ill-conceived," with che absence in either field

of anything in che way of a more adequate conception. "If conven-

tional notions of power seem to be unsatisfactory, whar if anything

may be better put in their place?" We need, he says, and his con-

tributors for che most part follow hico, to ask such questions as:

"Why exactly is it that ceremonies impress?" "[W]hat are the build-

ing bricks from which [such ceremonies] are actually constructed?

"[D]oes ceremonial convert systems of belief abour celestial hier-

archies into statements of fact about earthly hierarchies ... [or]

I jo -- ( i^iglrrr )r hee State of tite lrt 131

does ceremonial convert st.,temenr oí fact about power ora earth

finto statements of bel jet ohour power in heaven?" "Why ... do

sume societies seem to need mere ceremonial than others?" "How

does potnp appear ro rhe abenntcd or the dispossessed?" "What is

rhe connecrion between rhe overthruw of royalty and the over-

throw of tituals?' "Why ,loes some pageanrry take root and `work,'

and some dwindle and die?"

Except for rhe fact thar rhe problent may lie less in a toa narrow

concepto ni of power than in a tuo simple conception of meaning, a

philosophical mistake not a definirional one, these are indeed the sort

of yuestions this odd coupling ofscmiorical anthropologists and insti-

tutional historiaras has casr up..And if navigating in strange waters

doesn't induce fears of going ovcrboard so intense as co inhibit motion

altogethet; some of thent m.ry even corte CO he, in some degree, and

however rephrased ro make rhem Iess tlat-footed, answered.

Certainly they secin likely te go on being asked..A recent book

(by an anthropologisr, but ir could thesc days he as casily by a histo-

rian) on Ritual, Polirics, and Pouvi- discusses, among other things,

Ronald Re, gan'ss visir te Birbure, rhe funeral rites for Indira Gandhi,

the arms control meetings between Soviet atad American leaders, the

cannihal rites of rhe A:tec snuc, the inauguration of American presi-denrs, a parade of Ku Klux Klan ntembers in rhe 1940s, rhe activities

of contemporary termrist group,, rhe "l-icaling" ceremonies of seven-

teenth-century Frencb and British kings, and May Day march-bys in

Moscote` Whar looked like a nice linle prohlem now looks like a

nice little mess-which is perhaps what one should expect when the

two most multifarious enterprises in the human sciences, however

opporrunistically, however nervously, combine forces.

The recent surge of anrhntpoltt,^isrs' in,erest not just in the pasr (we

llave tlways peen interested in 11,:u). but in historians' ways of mak-

ing present sense of ir, and of historians' interese not just in cultural

strangeness (Herodotus luid that), but in anthropologists' ways of

bringing it near, is no mere fashion; it will survive the enthusiasms

it generates, the fears it induces, and tbe confusions it causes. What

it will load te, in surviving, is distincrly less clear.

I,i f^l,apler ^P

Almost cerminly, however, it won't lead much further than it

already has either to the amalgamation of the two fields into some

new third thing or to one of them swallowing up che other. That

heing the case, a good deal of the anxiety ora either hand concern-

ing the dissipation of proper scholarly character (usually referred to,

limply, as "rigor"), and the defensive polemics ir gives rise to, are, to

say the least, misplaced. Most particularly, the concern on rhe His-

tory side (which seems the grearer, perhaps because there are more

Personages there) thar trafficking with anthropologists will lead to

soul loss is, given the enormous discrepancy in the sise of the two

fields, to say nothing of their cultural weight, ludicrous. Any con-

junction, whether as a mixture of discourses or as a convergence of

attention, is bound ro be an elephant and rabbit stew ("take one

elephant, one rabbit ... "), about which the elephant need not

unduly worry as to its savor coming through. As for the rabbit, it isused to such arrangements.

If work of the originality, force, and fine subversiveness as that 1

Nave reviewed, and an enormous loe, reaching out from all parís of

both fields toward al¡ parís of the other, that 1 have not, is to pros-

per (to get through a discussion like this without mentioning rhe

Annales, structuralism, Marxism, The Life and Death of rhe Senecas,or Philippe Ariés is a bit of a tour de force in itself), a sharper

sensitivity to rhe conditions-practical, cultural, political, institu-

tional-under which it is taking place would seem to be necessary.

The meeting, collusively or otherwise, of a scholarly tradition, vast,

venerable, and culturally central, closely connected te rhe West's

effort to construct its collective self, and a much smaller, much

younger, culturally rather marginal one, closely connected to the

West's effort to extend its reach, has a structure of its own. In the

end, it may be in a deeper understanding of the "and" in the "His-tory and Anrhropology" aecouplement that progress lies. Take tare ofthe conjunctions and the nouns will Cake care of themselves.

"Local Knowledcge" and 1ts Lirnits: Sovne Obiter Dictaa. "Local" clearly is a "relative " term. In the Solar System, Earth

is local (as has been brought honre , in good anthropological manner,by leaving it at least temporarily to look back at it from rhe Moon

The Sfate of tia qit 1 jj

and nncur .^rhit>1; in thr ll.,l.m, nc^ S.^lu Syst e'n is Iocl (^/nyager

,h,ndJ he!r, ,sith tharl; :urd in dl.c Lniccr,e, nce Galaxy is local (ahieb cncrgt hhv icisr, nce

partido v:L)rld or --h. o: r!i, th^ u„rld. It's ncc parricle, a

[bread oí vapor in a lou,l . i dmplct,, [11,1r', local.

2. Tino nc, ^tppcottion, it ,'•e unlst have one (and 1 ant nos

persuud"l an opposl[i.tn m t 'r aph^,.i[ian h what ww need or

a u,ht to ,, int, ranc^r [han ,M-, toicu: of parri^ulai ity ), is nos

onc b^uveen "local" kn,rwlc,] c .mJ "unncrsal," bus herweeu one

sort of local knowledge (say, ncurology) and another (say, ethnogra-

phy). As all polirics, however c,,nsequential, is local, so, however

ambitious, is all understanding. No onc knows everyrhing, hecause

there is no everything co know.

3. The failure to seo Chis shining truth by people otherwise ap-

parently racional is che resol[, in part, of an endeinic confusion in

che social (or human) sciences (or scicntists) among: (a) universals

("everybudy has," co quote a falso, or ar leas[ a highly misleading

example, "rhe incest taboo"); (b) geno-ralzzarions, which may be prob-

abilistic, have exceptions or contradictions wirhout fataliry, or may

he mere cereris paribus, "as a rulo" approximations that are instru-

mentally useful ("Horticultural socieries are more peaceful [han pas-

toral unes"-hui consider che Maya, regard the Lapps); and (c)

laves. (Ir is hard to produce an example-"group marriage to ma-

triliny co patriliny"-in cultural anthropology, or indeed anywhere

in the human sciences, that is nos laughable or outmoded. Perhaps

a proposal from a few years back [har cultural traits diffuse-that is,

migrare across che globo-on an average of plus or minus two miles

a year conveys some of rhe comic effect involved.)

q. My own view, merely to give ir, because in a short compass 1

can hardly defend it, is that eirher: (a) most (conceivably all) uni-

versals are so general as to he wirhout intellecrual force or interest,

are large banaliries lacking eirher circumstancialiry or surprise, pre-

cision or revelation, and rhus are of precious little use ("People ev-

erywhere nave views abour differences herveen the sexes"; "All so-

cieries have systems of social ranking"; "Powerlessness tends co

corrupt, absoluto powerlessness tenis to corrupt absolutely'"-this

last, svhich is of course my rransformation, exemplifies another char-

acteriscic of manv universals: like reversible raincoats, they can be

wom eirher way); or (h) ir universal, do nave soase degree of non-

rriviality, circumstantiality, and originaliry, ir thev actually assert

somerhing interesring enough to be wnong (rhe ubiquity of che

Oedipus complex, rhe funetional necessicv for psyches and socieries

of mourning customs, rhe solidaricv-mcking force of rhe gift), they

are ill-hased. We are ethnographically acquainted rvich onle a very

small proportion of rhe socieries i har nave existed; of those, only ,in

even stnaller proportion have buen systematically studied, and those

that have bcen sysretnatically studied have nos heen studied evenly or

comprehensively. We mayor may nos know something about Oedipus

notions in the Trobriands or Sri Lanka; 1 don'[ know that anyone has

even thought to look inco che master for rhe Havasupai-or, if

perchance (I haven't checked) someone has, then the Montenegrins,

che Incas, or the Kabyles. There is a tremendous unevenness, as well

as a tremendous instabiliry, in anthropological attention. Norhing

gets studied everywhere or for very long. Until not long ago, there

wasn't much of use on the kinship system of the Navajo, though

kinship is one of our most obsessively investigated subjects and che

Navajo are one of our most thoroughly researched groups.

This is not remediable-nos by setting up Notes-and-Queries-

type schedules, standardized research training programs, or what-

ever. Nor should we, in my view, try thus ro remedy it. The search

for universals leads away from what in fact has proved genuinely

productive, at leas[ in ethnography (I don'[ think only in ethnogra-

phy, bus 1 will les others argue che other cases)-that is, particular

"intellecrual" obsessions (Malinowski's about exchange, Lévi-

Strauss's about animal symbolism, Evans-Pritchard's about divina-

tion)-toward a thin, implausible, and largely uninstructive com-

prehensiveness. If you want a good rule-of-thumb generalization

from anthropology, 1 would suggest rhe following: Any sentence

that begins, "All socieries have . . . " is eirher baseless or banal.

5. Generalities of che "non in che South" sort can, of course, be

had and can, of course, be useful; bus more as heuriscic starting

points for deeper-going local inquines [han as bankable conclusions

fit for textbooks. ("Funeral rices are a good thing ro look finto if you

are incerested in a people's conceptions of che self." "In Southeasr

llar State of rhe j9 ir = 1,95

Asia, status differentiarion temas to hc unusually impormnt, gender

contrast rather less so; in North Africa, conrrariwise," "Child raising

practices have a lot to do wirh odult pcrsonality.") Most of the more

valuable of these are conceptuad gencr,tlitius of a proof-of-the-pud-

ding sort: if they really ger you somewhcre, fine; if nor, rhe hell with

rhem. Linguistic ones, back in favor of late, in pare as a result of the

Chomskyan revolurion (or, as 1 think, counterrevolurion, bus lee

that pass for the prejudice ir is), reni ro he [ike Chis: nounfverb

disrinctions, markedness regulariries, etc. They do indeed seem to

have hroad applications, rhough claiming they are universally appli-

cable is either dogmatical, raurologic 1, or a regress to the vacuities

1 discusscd jusr ahoye. As surface sigas nf more deeply-lying matrers,

however, they are che shule (ir is hopea) ahoye rhe oil field.

AIl Chis is non rhe same ns saying thar che search for broad

generalities is rhe obvious oí bese way to go, rhough there is

admitrediv something about anthropology-its up-from-rhe-ape,

study-of-man sweep, perhaps-liar seems to encourage tt. Tío put

rhe master another way, oven the generalizations of so-called cogni-

tive anthropology-the cthnoborany work, Berlin and Kay's color

work (often inisread, pcrhaps cien he its authors, in "universals"

tercos)-are surely to some dcgnr eo,enopohtan in nature, rhough

how cosmopolitan is nor ahvavs olear. Reading rhem finto rhe world

in a ''reali.sr" nianner, as parr ,it thc acry turniture of things, is an-

orher marrer, one 1 also e fina it ger finto here sine te say ehar 1

think n a dubions propos+uou Spwcs are "real so far as they

are, precisely in rhe way thu (so lar a,, it is) "power is.

6. As for laws, 1 have ailreadv suggisred rhar 1 can t think of any

serious candidatos in my beld wirh which to tontead. One of rhe

most irriraring things in niy field is people who say you're nor doing

`real science" if you don't come up ,cirh laves, thereby suggesting

that they rhemselves haya done su, without actually telling you

what diese laves are. On rho aire occ.isions thev do tell you-two

miles a year, cannihalism and prorein shoitage-the situarion is

worse. Scientisin, and here 1 wifl ralk ,cf rhe human sciences oyeran,

is mosrly just bluff. Ir's one diing to call tlie spirits from rhe misty

Jeep, quite another to make rhem come when you do call rhem.

But it is nor just impostura that's involved: rhe utopianism induced

by a misconceived view of pre-twentieth-century physics (rhe world

before Maxwell) that was imported roto rhe human sciences has led

nor to the gafes of paradigm-land, bus to a great deal of wasted

motion and high proclamation.

7. So much for negatives. What are the virtues of a "local

knowledge" sort of rack?

a. Limirs. The rirle of chis discussion seems to assume that the

existente of limits is a counterargument to something. (Why isn't it

called "'Universal Knowledge' and lis Limirs"? Possibly because to

do so would raise rhe possibilíty that, being universal, it hasn't got

any, and therefore isn't knowledge.) To my limired mind, direct and

open acknowledgment of limits-chis observer, in Chis time, at thar

place-is one of rhe things thar most recommends chis whole style

of doing research. Recognition of rhe fact that we are al¡ what Re-

nato Rosaldo has called "positioned (or situated) observers" is one

of its most attractive, most empowering features. The renunciation

of the authority that comes from "views frota nowhere" ("I've seen

reality and it's real") is flor a loss, it's a gain, and che stance of "well,

1, a middle-class, mid-twentieth-century American, more or less

standard, male, went out to this place, talked to some people 1 could

ger to talk to me, and think things are sort of rather this way wirh

them there" is not a retreat, it's an advance. Ir's unthrilling perhaps,

but it has (something in short supply in rhe human sciences) a

certain candor. (Views from nowhere can be imaginatively con-

structed, of course. If rhey are done well they can be, and in rhe

natural sciences have been, immensely useful. But thus consrructed,

they are in fact a particular variety of view from somewhere-che

philosopher's study, rhe theorist's computen)

b. Circumsrantlaliry. We can at least say something (nor of

course that we always do) wirh some concreteness to it. 1 have

never been able to undersrand why such comments as "your conclu-

sions, such as rhey are, only cover two million people [Bali], or

fifteen million [Morocco], or sixty-five million, Dava], and only over

some years or centuries," are supposed to be criticisms. Of course,

one can be wrong, and probably, as often as nor, one is. But "just" or

"merely" trying to figure out Japan, China, Zaire, or the Central

Eskimo (or better, some aspect of their life along some chunk of

1 ,i0 (°lmyfer )r 1 The SLate of t at e {jrt f 1,37

their would lino) i, n„r chau; cd lit er, Icen if ir looks less impressive

Chal explanatiom, theoric, ot whanwt which have as rheir object

"Hi:tois ' Sncierc," " h1,io." "\\io i ni ," or sume uther grana and

eltisice ui,per-e.rc ent itc.

c. Di course, cony erts;m is buth posible ama necessary, and it is

what 1 q nd orhers uf my peooaaon spend rnosr of out rime doing:

se'einq p:trtictilar thin_> tguina thc l ck round ot orher particular

thine,_ .Ieepeninq thao tl:, p.utic .teto uf horh. hecuuse onc has

locatcd, one hope,, come .nre rl dt crunsa onc has something gen-

uine ro compare. Wh,rcever sintilaritic, onc mighr fin,¡, even if they

Cake che torro of contrasrs ... or incomparabilities ... are also gen-

uino, racher rhan abstraer eateg,tries superimposed on passive "data,"

delivered tú che mina by "God," "reality," or "nature." (Otherwise,

Sanrayana's conunenr rhat people compare when they can'c get ro

che roor of che master becoures all co, true.) Theory, which is also

both possible and necessary, grows our of particular circumsrances

and, however abstraer, is validated l,c irs power to order rhem in

rheir full parciculariry, flor by srripping that particularity away. God

mav nor be in rhe derails, Huir "(he w,>rld"-"everything rhar is che

case"-surely is.

S. Bar che crirical issie involved in che local versus universal

tension in che "human sciences" (,in,] 1 have already indicated my

discomfort with that veas oí putring things-"versus" should be left

to prize fighrs, elections, sears, and che law courts) is: Whac do we

want from rhose "sciences" Whac does, or should, "science" mean

here? There is nor much point in arguing abou[ whether co involve

ourselves with marters inextricable from "chis time or cha[ place," or

ro look post such marters to ask how everything, evervwhere, always

is, unless we are clear abour Whar cae expect to gain by taking one

rack or che other. The dispute, which secros ro he ahouc che worth

of different paths to an agreed desrinarion, is really abour che worth

of alternative destinations, however arriced at. We are divided less

by merhod-one uses what avails-rhan by what we are up to.

The contras[ here es tantiliar, bus nor less importan[ for thac

between rhose who believe that che task of che human sciences

(though they are more likely ro call rhem "behavioral") is to dis-

cover facrs, set rhem roto proposirionil structures, deduce laves, pre-

dict outcomes, and rationally manage social life, and rhose who be-

lieve thac che aun of rhose sciences (though sometimes chey will

flor agree to call them "sc roncos") is to clarify what on carril is

going on atnong various people at various rimes and Iraca come

conclusions abou[ constraints, causes, hopes, and possibilities-rhe

practicalities of lile.

Whether che first view is, as sume people have raid, a bit likc

,vanting co know where you will dio so as never te, go near che

place, or che second, as ochers have said, is like hlowing our the

candle and cursing che darkness, is perhaps less importan[ (though

it is hardly unimporrant) rhan which enterprise we in fact see our-

selves as pursuing. If advances in che technical, fine-tuning control

of social lile (Bentham's dream, Foucault's nightmare) is what you

are after, then universality talk is, 1 guess, che talk to talk. If you are

after refinemenrs in our abiliry ro live lives that make some sense to

os and of which cae can on balance approve (Montaigne's skeptical

hope, Weber's desperate one)-moral skills, nor manipulative ones-

chen something less vaulcing would seem to be called for.

Those of us who take che second view (a growing number, 1

think, now that che ideologies of disincamate knowing have been

somewhat shaken) have, of course, much to make clear and even

more to make persuasive. But we are working ora it and need nor be

unduly worried, except perhaps politically, abour measuring up to

standards emerging from che first one, fishing for other fish, perhaps

inedible, in other seas, perhaps unpopulated. Whar Stephen Toul-

min has called "the recovery of practical philosophy" has irs own

agenda and irs own ideas abou[ how to advance it. Whac he lists as

"rhe retum te) che oral" (he really means to rhetoric, utterances,

speech acts, discourse, narrative, conversation, and language

games-nor che literally oral, but che linguistically so), to "rhe par-

ticular," to "rhe local," and co "rhe timely," is a movement nor a

doctrine and, like any movement, needs achievement nor dicta to

sustain ir. Whar we need (to give a dictum) are nor contemporary

reenactments of old debates nomothetic and ideographic, erklaren

and verstehen, but demonstrations, on ehe one side or che ocher, of

either an effective technology for controlling che overall directions

of modem social life or che development and inculcation of more

The Stote of the I rL 1 39

delicare skilis for navigating out way through it, svhatever directions

it Cakes. And when it come, to rhnt, 1 am icasonably eonfident both

as to yvhich is the more Je.,in,ir and the more likely actually to

occtir.

Who knows the river berro (to aJopt an muge 1 saw in a re-

view of some hooks on Heidegger rhe other day), the hydrologist or

the swimmer? Put that way, it c learh depends on what you mean by

"knows," ani, as 1 have aireado raid, schat it is yoty pope te) accom-

plish. Par as which sor ot kuosvledee we most need, want, and

mighr ti) some degrce conccícahly ger, in the human sciences any-

way, the local varíen'-the sort Che swinimer has, or, swimming,

mighr develop-can at the s'erv leaxt hold its own against thc gen-

eral variety--the son tire hpJnslssgisi has, or claints method will

one dav sean provide. Ir is noi, aparo, a master of the shape of ourthought, sur of its voearism.

1 don't know if tisis is an adequate "response to Che critica¡

ciarlas of universality and aut toril " against work which emerges

from "historical point(s) in time or ... geographical point(s) in

space" (as Che charge to Chis Jiscussion puts it), or even what would

count as "adequate" here. But, like all 'local knowledge," it is sub-

stantive, somebody's, ami will J1, for the utoment.

t1titt's

1 Gananath Obeycsekcre, Tía Apothcosis of Copuda Cook: EuropeanMythmaking, Princetun: Princetun Universoy Press, 1992; Marshall Sahlins,

Hora "Natives" Think, About Capturo Cook, lor Esample, Chicago: Universiry ofChicago Press, 1gq,,

2. The simplest and unmr .,. a-srbk of Sahlrns's ulany starcnlenrb of hisvicws lb probahly 1rstorical Metaphors and 1lvthical Realr6cs: Strocture in CheEarly Hotary of Che SanduW, 1.5L ,ls Kig7Hotu, Ann Arbor: Universiry of Michi-gan Press, 198,, later expanded in .1 chaprer of his Islnnds of History, Chicago:Universiry of Chicago Press, 1985. 1 ,r Ohecesekeres ubre general views, seehis The ACork of Culture: 5rmbuhc Trnufornmtron iu Psychoan(ilysis ami Anthro-pology, Chicago: Universiry- of Chicago Presa, 1990.

3 `Goodbyc ro Tristes Trapes: Eihnography in tire Cunrext of ModemWorld Hatory," Thr Journnl of Modeni Untan 65 11993): 1-25.

4. Ne,rher author has ven' much tr' sae ohaur Chis, rhough Ohcycsekerepronliscs us a psychoanalytic bIograpby of C,ok, relaring Cook's conception of

I4() - (.'hopte,. j1

himself as a Prospero "domesticating a savage land" when he is acmally a Kurtz

who "becomes Che very savage he despises" m his "complex sexualiry," where

perhaps more will he offered. For an extensive examinarion of tire cultural

envimnmenr (Wordsworth's Cambridge) hora which one explorer-discovereremerged, a young astronomer killed in a manner rather similar to Cook, hur onOahu and Chirreen years later, see Greg Dening, The Death of William Gooch: AHistory's Anthropology, Honolulu: Universiry of Hawaü Press, 1995.

5. P. Clastres, Chronicle of Che Guayaki Indians, tr. Paul Ausrer, New York:Zote Books, x998. (Originally published as Chroniques des indica Guayaki,Paris: Plon, 1972.)

6. J. Clifford, Roures Travel and Translation in Che Late Twenrieth Century,Cambridge: Harvard Universiry Press, 1997.

7. Ibid., op. 21, 5, 2 17.

8. Ibid., pp. 10, 12.9. Ibid., pp. 18, 12.

10. Clastres, Chronidz, pp. 91-92,i 1. Clifford, Roures, p. 241.12. Ihid., p. 56 and note 2; Clastres, Chronicle, p13. Clastres, Chronicle, p. 276.14. Ibid., P. 345.

a5. Ibid., PP. 345-346.16. Ibid., p. 15, iralics in original.

17. ¡bid., pp. 141-142.

18. Ibid., P. 348.

19. Ibid., P. 346.

20. Clifford, Roures, p. 91.

3 5

21. M. L. Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcuhuradon, London:Routledge, 1992.

22. ¡bid., pp. 6-7.23. Clifford, Routes, pp. 302, 304, 303.

24. Ibid., PP. 343-344.

25. Por a general view of Chis school of thought, see Clifford and Marcus,eds., Writing Culture: The Poeúcs and Polirics of Ethnography, Berkeley: Univer-

siry of Califomia Press, 1886. The emerging field of "cultural studies," wirh

which Clifford has become increasingly involved, provides even clearer exam-ples of Chis sort of nonimmersive, hit-and-mn ethnography.

26. Clastres, Society Against rhe State: The Leader as Servant and the HumanUses of Power among rhe Indians of the Americas, New York: Urizen Books,1977.

27. J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture, Cambridge: Harvard UniversiryPress, 1988.

28. P. Burke, The Hisrorical Anrhropologt' of Early Modem Irak, Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; E. R. Wolf, Europe and the People

The State of the ari ?2 1 1+1

u ithn, t 1 1 berke l e } ' Cale,: u i Chlil.mu Pasa L. J. Hohsh.,o n,, Prim-

irird ReF , xu;liez m hei, F... lk,u.,, ,tnant h, hr Nineidaid, and

Twenuet, l ,,subes, Ne Y- rk ,mecer. ,v6;, S. Elkana, Anthru(s,logie der

i:rkemu I,.u,kl u,', ,n, ALw ^I nI'

versirs I ir '957; L I TI, •n,i•. n Lhd AL,kn, ,f che En,C nl 0.Crkn,g Clan,

New Yr rl. mro¡;e, , yb, I. > P l n 71,e S !1 'mr of Sc m,hr Revohaions,

C:hic,,p 1, n,ccniry o1 1 d—,U,.. Prr--, 1002: I- hpgan, The SO -ml Cirgnnigation

e, al.. un'..I l „de _u,. s L,s. Glencoe, 11k: Free Press; V.

Turner, The Fures, nJ Sym1,4,, (haca: C 1,rnell Univcrsiry Pass, 1967.30. E. óaae, The Trw,sjbnnr non of 6lrginin, 1740-1790, Chapel Hill:

Universit; of North Carolina ['re's, 1y82: I. Clendinnen, Ambivalent Con-

qucsts: Mana and Spaniard in Yuouan, 1517-1570, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versicv ?res,, 1987; G. Denin9, lsi ,nds arel Beaches, Discourses on a Silent Land:

Marquesas 1774-188o, Melbourne: Melhoame Unlvers,ty Press, r98o.

31 . Isaac, The Tranifnnnatiun (, Virginia, p. ix.

32. Clendinnen, An,bivrdent Conquess, pp. XI, 128, 188.

33. Dening, Iskmd, and Broches, P. 287.

34. Ibid, p. 273.35 See E. S. C. Hand, The .A:,vi,e C abure in che Marquesas, Honolulu:

Universiryy, of Hawaü Press, 1123- Thc junte is from Dening, Islands and

Beaches, p. 279.

36. Dening, lskmds and Br°nehes, P. 329.37. M. Axron, The Qucen's Ten [Radies: Drama and che Elizabethan Succes-

sion, London. Royal Hisrodeal Sodery, 1977.

38. L. de Heusch, The D„mken Ring, or, The Qrigin of che State, Bloom-

ingron: Indiana Universiry- Pros, 1y88.

39. S, AVilenrz, ed, Rices of Power: Svmbok, Ritual and Politics smce che

Middle Ages, Philadelphia: Un icersiru' oí Pennsylvania Press, 1985; Cannadine

and S. Price, eds-, Rituafs of Royalty, Power and Ceremonial in Tradicional Soc,-

cttes, Cambridge: Cambridge lUniversity Press, ,987.40. S. Wilenrz, "lnrroducra,n" in \r/llena, ej., Rices of Power, PP. 7-8.41. C. Geerr_, "Cencers, Kinps, and Charisma: Refections en che Sym-

bolics ot Pt"ver,'' in ibid., P. 30.42. J. H. Elliort, "Power and I'nrgaganda ni che Spain of PhiCip IV" in

¡bid., P. 147.

43. D, Cannadine, "Inrmducrion," in Cannadine sud Price, edi., Rituals

of Rmalcr, p. 15.44 D. 1. Kcrner, Riumis, Politiü, m,d 1' arr, New Heven: Yale Universicy

Preas, ,988.

Ihe Stlrange Estiscmgemeti7t:

Charles Zaylov- and the

VI atulral Scievlces

In che opening paragraphs of che introduction of his Philosophical

Papers, Charles Taylor confesses himself to be in che grip of an ob-

session.' He is, he says, a hedgehog, a monomaniac endlessly polem-

icizing against a single idea-"che ambition to model che study of

man on the natural sciences." He calls this idea many things, most

ofren "naturalism" or "che naturalistic world view," and he sees it

virtually everywhere in the human sciences. The invasion of those

sciences by alien and inappropriate modes of thought has conduced

toward che destruction of cheir distinctiveness, cheir autonomy,

cheir effectiveness, and cheir relevance. Driven on by che enormous

(and "understandable") prestige of the natural sciences in our cul-

ture, we have continually been led into a false conception of what it

is to explain human behavior.

The purpose of chis polernic, aside from che desire to rid che

human sciences of some "cerribly implausible," "sterile," "hlind,"

"half-baked" and "disastrous," enterprises'-Skinnerian behavior-

ism, computer-engine psychology, truth-condicional semantics, and

primacy-of-righc political cheory-is to clear a space in [hose sci-

ences for "hermeneutic" or "incerpretivist" approaches to explana-

tion. Interpretation, che "attempr to make sense uf an object of

1 4? - f 6al,lrr^i 1 [ 43

study" in some way "contused, incomplete, cloudy ... contradictory

... unclear,` is ara irremovable pan of any would-be science of

humana affairs. And it is preci,ely that which "che natural science

model,' with its passion (ir At,"errfreiheir, predictability, and bruce

faces-defensible enough in its proper domain-effectively blocks.

Those who, like myself, fin,l che argument that che human sci-

ences are most usefully conceived as etforts tu tender various mat-

ters on eheir tate sirange and puzzling (religious beliefs, political

practicas, selfdefinitions) 'to longer o, iccoutired for,` ro be alto-

gether persuasive, and Taylor's deveh'pmenc of it magisterial, may

nonetheless fiad themsekes di,rurbe, ro notice after a while that

tire "opposing ideal" to which chis view is heing so resolurely con-

trasted, ,natural science," is so schenrarically imagined. We are con-

fronred not with an articulated description of a living institution,

one with a grear deal of history, a vast amount of interna¡ diversity,

and an open fume, bur wirh a stereorype and a scarecrow-a

Gorgon's head that turras agency, significante, and mind ro stone.

Taylnr's referentes to "natural science," though extremely nu-

merous, appearing in almas[ every esay in Philosophical Papers, are,hoth there and elsewhere in hi., work, marked by ovo characteris-

tics: the}' are virtually rever circumsamtial, in the sense of describ-

ing actual examples of work in physics, chemisrry, physiology, or

whatever in a more than glancing fashion, and rhey are virtually al¡

to che opening stages of the scientific revolution-Galileo, Bacon,

Descartes, Newton, Boyle-not to anvthing in any way remotely

contentperary. Like so nano of nce "Orhers" that we construcc [hese

days to haunt us with rheir shcer alteriry, The Japanese, The Mus-lims, or L'age classique, his countercase Lo che interpretively oriented

human sciences is generically characierized and temporally frozen.A foil for all seasons.

One can see che reasons for this. The conception of what it is

to he "truly scientific" in che human ciences has indeed normally

been both rigid and anachronitic, as well as deeply uninformed

abour che realities ot the "real sciences" whose virmes are to be

imponed into [hese "sefter," 1 weakrr," "less matute" enterprises.

Taylor is nut wrong to think t har rhe 5kinncrian version of behav-

iorisna or the Fodorian vcr.,i,nt „f copniris-isut are less extensions of

a proven approach to explanation into new fields [han parodies of

it. Nor is he wrong to think that the rejection of such parodies, and

others like ehem, does not condemn che human sciences to a the-

world-is-what-I-say-it-is "Humpry Dumpty subjectivism,"' incapable

of either framing an honest hypothesis or confronting one with gen-

uine evidence. Yet, it may be that the creation of an outand-out,

fixed and uncrossable gulf between the natural and human sciences

is both toa high and unnecessary a price to pay to keep such mud-

dlements at hay. It is obstructive at once of either's progress.

The notion of such a gulf, a dichotomy as opposed te a mere

difference (which latter no one clothed and in their right mind

would want to deny), traces, of course, back ro che Geisteeswissen-schaften versus Naturwissenschaften, verstehen versus erklaren concep-tualization under which, with Dilthey, modero hermeneutics got

definitively under way, and which, with Heidegger and Gadamer,

Ricoeur and Haberinas, "is very strong in the later twentieth cen-

tury."' And there can be little doubt (at leas[, 1 don'[ have any) that

Chis to-each-its-own view of things did yeoman service in defending

the integrity and vitality of the human sciences-sociology, history,

anthropology, political science, less so psychology, less so yet eco-

nomics-under che enormous pressures exerted upan them in the

heyday of positivism, logical or otherwise. Without it, Taylor's worst

nightmares mighe well have come trae and we would all be socio-

biologisrs, racional-choice theorists, or covering-law axiomatizers.

The issue is whether so radically phrased a distinction is any longer

a good idea, now that che point has been made, and nade again,

that che human sciences, being about humans, pose particular prob-

lems and demand particular solutions, and that the idea of a "social

physics" seems a quaint fantasy of times gane by. Are either che

human or che natural sciences well served by it? Is the conversation

across che corpus callosum of our culture inhibited, or prevented, by

Chis sort of commissural surgery? Is such surgery to the disadvantage

of both, reductive to half-brained reasoning? Is an eternal meth-

odological civil war, che Hermeneuts versus the Naturalists, in any-one's interest?

The questions are, of course, rhetorical-nor to say, tenden-

tious. The homogenization of natural science, both over rime and

1 -+4 -- (it,tp(er Pf 1 The Sr,at,ae Sstraugeiaenl 14,^

cross tields, a> a col le l nthar, .rn "opposing ideal" permanenrly.

ser ott tren other Cona: et houeht, .^^ Richard Rorn- has put it, "by

a ^pecial methoJ [;m,lI i >i•« il rel.ui,,n tú realiry, is exrremely

ditticult t„ dctend whcn „nc ha,k< at rirhu its history or its mternal

sarierv ,cith any degrec .f cirauuscnnialiry The danger of taking

nhjecti Cist reducdonism a,. Che incvirahle cutcome oí looking co che

natural sientes ter snmulation te cororructing explanarions of hu-

tnan hchuvior i, cery Brear tt itl,wc a riclier und more differentiated

plcture ot upar dte\ are (und Che plural is essenrral here), have

been, and seem on rheir way teward hecoming rhan Taylor has so

far recognired. So also is Che possibly even greater danger of isolat-

ing those sciences themselves in such an outmoded sense of rheir

aim and essence (as well as an exaggerated sense of rheir own

worth), beyond che reach of hermeneutic self-awareness. The ten-

dency roward oversimplificarion Taylor so rightly deplores seems co

thrive, in hoth Che hunran and Che natural sciences, precisely co che

degree thar che inrellectual traffic henveen rhem is obstructed by

artificial nocions of primordial sepamteness.

Borh sorrs of schematization of che natural sciences, that which sees

them as being without a history, or anvway as having a history con-

sisting only in Che developmenc tú greater and greater levels of com-

plexiry of an epistemological paradigm luid down in che seven-

teenrh century, and that which sees them as an only pragmatically

differenriaced mass basically defined by rheir adherente co that para-

digm, are essential to Che notion rhat thev form a closed off world,

sufficienr unto itself. Without either, and certainly without borh,

such a notion seems disrinahv less obvtous.

The view citar Che history of natural science consists in che

mere developmenc from a once-and-for-all foundational act ("[The]

great shifr in cosmology which occurred in Che seventeenth century,

from a pierure of a world-order hascd on Che ideas co one of Che

universe u mechanisnt, yvas che t„unding ohjectification, the source

and inspiration for rhe eoncinuing developmenc of a disengaged

modera consciousness"`) noc onh neglects hoth historiographical

works, of which Thomas Kuhn's ís prohably Che most tamous, stress-

ing ruptores, wanderings, and discontinuities in che advance of

chose sciences and Che complieations citar llave peen torced on Che

idea of "disengaged consciousness" by quantum-level dheoriza-

tions-Heisenberg, Copenhagen, and Schródinger's cat.10 It more

importantly leaves out a fact which Gyorgy Markus, speaking ti "a

second scientific revolution" which occurred during rhe second half

of che nineteenth century, has poinred out: Che characteristic fea-

tures of Che natural sciences, which Taylor Cakes lo be so destructive

when imported roto psychology and politics, are flor a direct-line

projection roto out times of Renaissance and Enlightenment ideas

but a much more recent, and quite radical, transformation of them.

"Natural science as che cultural genre which we know ... is Che

product of a nineteenth-century developmenc in which [lis] cogni-

tive struccure, institutional organization, cultural forros of objec-

tivity and ... global social function have changed together." The

world before Maxwell is, in facr, not a very good model of "natural-

ism" as now understood. It was a stage in a project (or, more accu-

rately, an assemblage of projects) still going on.

And as it is still going on, and not, so it looks from che outside,

becoming all chal consensual in its self-understandings, it may.

transform itself again; unless history really is over, it almost cer-

tainly will do so. There are, in fact, more rhan a few sigas that it is

already in the process of doing so. The emergente of biology (not

just genetics and microbiology, but embryology, immunology, and

neurophysiology) to the point where it threatens the status of

physics as che archetype of scientific enquiry; the epistemological

and ontological problems besetting physics itself ("don't ask how it

can be that way, it can't be that way"); Che increasing difficulty of

"big," that is expensive, science in isolating itself from public seru-

tiny, as well as Che increasing tenuousness of praccical spin-off argu-

ments for funding much of it; Che return of cosmology as a general

cultural concem, the appearance of experimental mathematics, the

growrh of computer-mediated "sciences of complexity" (negative

entropy, fractals, and srrange attractors)-all these matters, and

?he StLORge ^strarrgen at - 147

others, suggest tirar rhe withdrawal of rhe natural sciences over the

lasr '20 years or so from cunnecrions wirh any discourse but their

own is not rhe permanenr condirion of things."

It may not be rhe permanenr condition of things (Lo tny mind,

it almost certainly is not) because, alongside the enonnous gains in

cognirive power that have aceamplished tt, there have been consid-

erable cosa as we1l, cosa by now severe enough to imperil rhe

gains. The most serious of nc^sc is, as Markus points out, precisely

rhe extreme narrowing ot rhe cultural significanee of the natural

sciences rhat Taylor, amicus ro keep theta away from interfering

wirh our conceprualizarirnt ot human affairs, sectas so derermined

te) reinforce:

Seventeenth-to-eighteenth eenniry "natural philosophy" still

haJ a urarkedly mulrifuncticnal character and was in general

successfully communicatai ro suci,lly and culturally divergent

groups of addressees. Et en du,se works which represented the

most furmidahle difheulrics nf undersmndino, like Newton's

Principia, qulekly became nor o1,1\ objects of widely read "popu-

Iarizations," but also exercise,I a Jeep influence upon ... other,

alreadl culmrally .. _ sep-irared tortas of discourse: theological,

properly philosophical and ev-en litcrary ones. In their nun,

[hese discusssions occurring in °alien" genres seriously influenced

thar more narrowl}' scienrihc impact of rhe works eoneerned,

ano rvere usually regar.lei as hav(nl a direct bearing upon the

qucstion of their tntth.... It i, unly wíth rhe Jeep transforma-

tion of rhe whole organi_ariunul tramework of natural scientific

acrivities ... rhar rhe audicnce's speeializatíon and profession-

alization became es abl^hed during Jrc nineteenth eenrury .. .

simulranecusly with the prnfesslonnlLarion of rhe scientlst

authors role itself. It is in thls proee.s thar rhe république des

savanrs of rhe eighrecndr cenrury, still loosely uniting scientists,

philosophers, publicisrs and culrivated amateurs, has been trans-

forured ínto a muldnide of separited research communities com-

prising rhe profession,rl speciaiists in rhe given arca and now

posited as rhe sole puHie for rhe relevan[ scientific

objec6hcations.

This historical process in which the monofunctional char-

acter of the eontemporary natural sciences has first been

formed, at the same time meant a progressive narrowing of rheir

cultural siognificance.... When the cultural closure of natural

scientific discourse upon itself becomes a fact ... the divorce

of natural scientific inquiry from general culture and cultivation

is also inevitable.... [Ir] is now posited as having no signifi-

cante whatsoever for orienting men's conduct in the world they

live in, or their understanding of this lived world irself. Ten-

bruck aptly fonnulated it: rhe view of nature provided by rhe

sciences is no more a world-view."

This is perhaps a bit overstated, even for rhe nineteenth cen-

rury, when the "world view" transactions berween rhe sciences tech-

nically defined and the general movement of "culture and cultiva-

tion" were not altogether attenuated, as witness the "ringing

grooves of change" anxieties of a Tennyson or the heat death of the

universe resonations of a Kelvin. And, in any case, Chis image of

disconnection again applies rarher more to the physical sciences

than it does to the biological; the role that Newton, and Newtonia-

nism, played in rhe eighteenth century, Darwin, and Darwinism,

played in rhe nineteenth. But the general drift is clear enough. The

same historical movement that dissolved "the république des savanrs"

moto "a multitude of separated research communities" produced as

well the cultural disengagement of the natural sciences, rhe cultural

entrenchment of the human ones which Taylor opposes to ir, and

rhe increasing awkwardness of the rclations between them.

If the awkwardness is tu be relieved (relieved only, hardly re-

moved) and the natural sciences reinvolved in rhe self-reflective

conversation of humankind, it cannot be by reversing history. The

days of the république des savancs, ro the extent they ever existed, are

over and unrecoverable. The unavailability of the technical interior

of particle physics, neurophysiology, statistical mechanics, or rhe

mathematics of turbulence (and of whatever succeeds them) to any-

one beyond the research communities professionally involved wirh

the matters they address is by now but a fact of life. The whole issue

needs to be approached in some other way, one which rather than

14y - (liupler lsi 1 Tite Strartge Fstvangement - 1 4 9

h„lan_I11c ihc iniclluctu..l ,c,ntJ int,o 1 atoad diyunttio q sccks tu

ti cr,iut in nbscured d11,1 11'1,H

Thc bcginninu ot such i mtraminc w,uld semi te) involve taking

acriousl' rhe inrige (and rh,- rc.dire) „! t Llore usemblage tf differ-

cntly focused. turben cl(-inc,hd, mnLl val iably ,,vcrlaphing re-

search comnnnities in budi rhe human ami rhe natural sciences

econontics, emhryolo;A, i,trm,nuy, anrhropology-and rhe aban-

donmear rherewirh of rhe Tayhn-Dildrey conception oí rwo conti-

nental enrerprises, cae drh en by rhe ideal oí a disengaged con-

sciousness looking out w+irh cognitive assurance upon an absolute

world of ascertainable fuer, rhe orher driven by rhat of an engaged

self struggling uncertainly wirh sigars and expressions to make read-

able sense of inrentional action. Whar one has, it seems, is rather

more an archipelago, among rhe islands oí which, large, small and

in berween, rhe relarions are compiex and ramified, the possible

orderings very asear te) endlcss. Such questions as (ro quote Rorty

aguja) "'whar method is common te) paleonrology and particle

physics?' or `what relation to realiry is shared by ropology and enro-

mology?"' are hardly more usefid rhan (my inventions, nos Rorty's),

"is sociology closer to physics rhan ro lirerary criticism?" or "is polio

¡cal science more hermeneutic rhan microbiology, chemistry more

explanaron' rhan psychology"' We need to ser ourselves free to make

such connections and disconnections berween fields oí enquiry as

seem appropriare and productiva, nos te) prejudge what may be

learned from whar, what may rmfflc with what, or whar musr always

and evervwhere inevitably come-"reducrive naruralism"-from at-

temptss to breach supposedly unbreachahle methodological liases.

There is rodead some evidence from within the natural sciences

themselves that rhe continental imuge of them as an undivided

bloc, unired in rheir comminnent ro Galilean procedures, disen-

gaged consciousness and rhe vicw from nowhere, is coming under a

certain amount of pressure. In a chapter of his Bright Aír, Brilliant

Fire: On the Master of Mind called "I'utring rhe Mind Back inro

Nature," du neurophysiologist and inununologist Gerald Edelman

150 «hapter DI

rounds almost like Taylor in his hedgehog resistance te) rhe domina-

tion of such presumptions and preconceptions in bis nwn field of

enquire, rhe development and ovolution of rhe human brain:

[As] Whitehead duly noted, rhe mind was pur back taro namre

[from which physics had removed it] with rhe risa oí physiology

ami physiological psychology in rhe latter pare oí rhe nine-

teenth century. Wc huye luid an embarrassing time knowing

what to do with it ever since. just as there is something special

about relativity and quantum mechanics, rhere is something

special about rhe problems raised by rhese physiological devel-

opments. Are observers themselves "things" like rhe rest of rhe

objects in rheir world? How do we account for rhe curious abil-

ity oí observers ... to refer to things oí the world when things

themselves can never so refer? When we ourselves observe ob-

servers, this property oí intentionality is unavoidable. Keeping

in liase with physics, should we declare an embargo on all rhe

psychological traits we talk about in everyday life: conscious-

ness, thought, beliefs, desires? Should we adopt rhe elaborare

sanitary regimes oí behaviourism? ... Either we deny the exis-

tence oí what we experience before we "become scientists" (for

example, our own awareness ), or we declare rhat science (read

"physical science" ) cannot deal with such matters."

Nor is it only vis-á-vis "behaviorism" that Edelman, che natural

scientist , sounds like Taylor, rhe human scientist , railing against

sterile, blind and disastrous models oí analysis drawn from cele-

brated bus inappropriate places, bus with respect to computer-anal-

ogy cognitive psychology-Al and all that-as well. He even uses

rhe same terco of abuse for it:

The term "objectivism" has been used ro characterize a view oí

the world thar appears at first sight to be both scientifically and

commonsensically unexceptionable.... Objectivism assumes

... that the world has a definite structure made oí entities,

properties, and rheir interrelationships.... The world is ar-

ranged in such a way shas it can be completely modelled by

... set-theoretical models....

The 8trange tcsh-angernent c.^ 151

Because of che singular and well-defined correspondence

between set-cheorecical symbols and things as defined by classi-

cal categorisation, one can, in chi, view, assume that logical re-

arions becween things in cite world exist objectively. Thus, this

s}'scem of svmbols is supposed ro represent reality, and mental

representations must eirher he trae or false insofar as they mir-

ror reality correctly or incorrectly... .

The ... development of cite rompurer ... reinforced che

ideas of efficiency and rigor and che deductive favor chal .. .

already characterised much of physical science. The "neac" de-

ductive formal hackground oí compucers, che link with mathe-

maticol physics, and che success oí che hand sciences looked

endlessly extensible. . . .

The computacional or representationalist view is a God's-

eye view of narure. Ir is imposing and it appears to permit a

vely-looking map herween che mind and narure. Such a map

is only lovely, howcver, as long as une looks away from che is-

suc of how rhe mind acruallg revrals irself in human beings

with bodies. When applied ro rhe mind in sito [that is, in the

brain], rhis [objecrivist] view hecomes untenable.u

lr is, no doubt, casier ro see cite inadequacies of a sheerly oppo-

sitionalisr "grear divide" formularios of rhe relations becween the

°human' and rhe "natural" sciences in work like Edelman's, con-

cerned wirh the developmenr and hmctioning of out nervous sys-

cem, and indeed perhaps in biology, gencrally, rhan in work on, say,

pitase transitions or angular momentunr, where God's-eye views

would seetn less problenu cical and representarionalist mirrorings

more in order. But, even if they are (semething that itself becomes

at least questionable as "things" like wave functions and nonlocality

find rheir way roto physical rheory), che loss of detail such an overly

contrasrive view produces ubseures orher ways of mapping out the

landscape of knowledge, orher ways of tying cogecher, or separating

out, the disciplinary islands of empirical enquiry. "If you don'r know

Russian," che mathemacical physicist Pavid Ruelle has written, "all

books in thac language will look very much che same co you."

Similarly, unless you have rhe apixopriate rmining, you will no-

tice lirtle difference becween che various fields uf theoretical

152 -- ('luyder P1

physics: in al¡ cases what you see are abstmse texts with pomp-

ous Greek words, interspersed with formulas and technical

symbols. Yet difieren arcas of physics have very different fla-

vors. Take for instance special relativiry. It is a beautiful sub-

ject, but it no longer has mystery for us; we feel that we know

about it all we ever wanted co know. Statistical mechanics, by

conrrast, retains its awesome secrets: everything points to che

fact chas we understand only a small parí of what there is to

understand."

Leaving aside the particular judgment here (which 1 am, of

course, incompecent to assess, as 1 am che strengths or weaknesses of

Edelman's neurology), che disaggregation of "che natural sciences"

would indeed seem essential co che sorc uf non-Taylorian, but also

nonreductive non-"naturalistic" vision another mathematical physi-

cist, Richard Feynman, in a passage Edelman uses as an epigraph to

his book, has of che general project of human understanding:

Which end is nearer to God; if 1 may use a religious inemphor.

Beauty and hope, or che fundamental laws? 1 think that ... we

have to look at ... che whole structural interconnection of the

thing; and that all the sciences, and not just che sciences but

all che efforts of intellectual kinds are an endeavour to see che

connecrions of che hierarchies, to connect beauty tu history, to

connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology co che

working of che brain, che brain to the neural impulse, che neu-

ral impulse to the chemistry, and so forch, up and down, boch

ways.... And 1 do not chink eirher end is nearer to God.`

But it is not just from the natural science side, indeed ir is not even

mainly from thar side, that che challenges to strongly binary images

of "che whole structural interconnection of che thing" are coming,

but precisely from che hermeneucic, intentionalist, agent-centered,

language-entranced side that Taylor is, as 1 am also, so determined

te defend against runaway objectivism. The historical, social, cul-

tural, and psychological investigation of che sciences as such-what

The Struuge bstwautgcneent 15,3

has come t11 he knowcn in ^uuunai a^ setenee srudles"-has nor

onlc <_rotrn exrremely rai,i,ili in rh, par nrenry year, or so bur has

hegun ro redraiv clic lin," iiiin, Ni arku.' "multitude ot separated

rescireh r„nununitie>" iii i.i,ne c .,w,, ehangenil, anil partie-

ulanzed ooiv. Looking ar ",clamo, tnnn ir interpre ti, ist perspective

has in irsell begun co .hspl,ice, ,r .n th, very least complicate, che

Dilthcyan picare that ha, a, 11,n, held u, eaptive."

r )t a l l rhe sort, of tnxk tito u o, ott under rhe general rubrie of

thc huurun seienr,^a, th,1 th, Jc,utr thcutsel e, to clarifying [he

forros of lite lived nut (no cake ,inc real exumples) in conneetion

wich linean accelerarors, ncuruendoerin„Iogical lates, [he denronstra-

tion room,, of rhe Royal Soeietc, astronomical ohservations, marine

biology field srations, or che planning annmittees of NASA, are che

leas[ likely to conceive their tasé as limired to making out the inter-

suhjective wudds of persons. Mochines, objecrs, rools, artifaets, in-

smmnients are too close at hand ti) be raken as external to what is

going on; so much apparatus, free of meaning. These mere " things"

have co be incorporated roto che story, and when they are che story

cakes on a heteroclite forro-honran agents and nonhuman ones

bound together in inrerpretivisr narrarives.

Tire construction of such narrarives, ones which enfold che sup-

posedly inuntscible worlds of culture and nature, human action and

physical process, intentionality and mechanism, has been slow in

coming, even in science studies, where they would seem unavoidable.

("Oh sonr les Mounier des machines, les Lévinas des Béces, les

Ricoeur des fans?" críes perhaps che mosr strenuous advocate of such

enfolding, che anthropologisr of science, Bnmo Latour.)'0 These issues

were avoided, or, more aceurtccly, never arrived ar, by che inicial

sorcies in science studies, chen called rhe sociology of science and

associated most prominendy wirh che narre of Robert Merton, which

confined themselves co "exretnalisr" issues, such as che social setting

of science, che reward svstcm driving ir, and mosc especially che cul-

tural norms governing ic. ' lnccm.tlist" issues, [hose having to do wich

che content and praccice of science as such, were Iefh beyond che

range of enquiry. Lacer ieork, more intluenced by che sociology of

knowledge, accempred co address clic operadons uf science more di-

recrly, studying such manen us tlie ecolution of cheoretical disputes

i ,4 - (I:;,tt,, tal

.md rhe replicarion of experiniencs, bur in no less objectivist cerms-

"standing on social things" (usually smmned up rather vaguely as "in-

teresas") "in order co explain natural things." lt is only quite recendy

thar in incerprerivist tack, one chac atcempts to see science as rhe

consilienc interplav of chought and things, has begun to cake hold.1'

As they are quite recen[, such interprecivist approaches are both

ill formed and variable, uncertain opening probes in an apparently

endless and, at leas[ for che momenr, ill-marked enquiry. There are

analyses of rhe rheroric ot scientitic discourse, oral and written:

there are descriprions of human and nonhuman agents as coacrive

nodes in ramifying networks of meaning and power; there are eth-

nographic, and echnomethodological, studies of "facr construction"

and "accounting procedures"; there are investigations of research

planning, instrument construcrion, and laboratory practice. But,

however undeveloped, they all approach science nor as opaque so-

cial precipitare bur as meaningful social action: "We have never

peen interested in giving a social explanation of anything ... we

want to explain society, of which ... things, facas and artefacts, are

major components,'e' This hardly seems the objectivist, agentless

"naturalism" of which Taylor is so rightly wary. Different as they are,

rhe natural sciences and che human may nor be so radically other,

their intellectual congress nor so inevitably barren.

Sciences, physical, biological, human, or whatever, change nor only

in their content or their social impar[ (though they do, of course,

do that, and massively), bur in their character as a form of life, a

way of being in che world, a meaningful system of human action, a

particular story about how rhings stand. Like all such ways, forros,

systems, stories-still life, say, or criminal law-they are con-

structed in time (and, despite their reach for universality, to an im-

portan[ degree in space as well), and thus any image of them rhac

remains stable over their entire course and across their whole range

of activities and concems is bound ro turra roto an obscuring myth.

Such a myth indeed exists, and, as Taylor has demonstrated, has had

destructive effects opon attempts by [hose who have bought roto ir

llne Strunge f-.iteanyemeret = 155

to explain polirics, language, selthood and mind. But it has also had,

as he seems not very clearly to rcalize no less baneful effects en, to

horrow Woolgar's horrowing of Davidson's slogan, the very idea ofscience itself`'

Taylor's resistance ro rhe inttusiun of "rhe natural science

mudel" into rhe human sciences secui, in fact to accept his oppo-

nents' view that there is such a model, unitary, well-defined, and

historically immobile, governing conremporary enquiries into rhings

and materialities in the firsr place; che problem is, merely, to confine

it ro its proper sphere, Smrs, rocks, kidneys, and wavicles, and keep

ir well awny fronr matters where "mucre ring" matters.'4 This division

of the realin, which reminds une of aothing so much as the way

sorne nineteenth-century divinos (an:l sume pious physicists) at-

rempred to "solve" the rcligion venus science issue-"you can haverhe mechanisms, ove will keep rhe nmanings"-is supposed to ensure

that ideas will not trespass whcre they don't belong. What it in fact

ensures is symmetrical complacency andj che deflation of issues.

There are, as virmally everyone is ir lcase dimly aovare, massive

transformations now in mociun in the studies conventionally

grouped under the rather baggy category (does mathernarics belong?does psychopharmacology'.) of rhe natural sciences, transformationssocial, rechnical, and epistemol,'gical al once, which make not only

the seventeenth-century imago uf thcnt, hur rhe late nineteenth

and early twentieth unes as well, clumsy, thin, and inexact. The

price of kceping rhe human scicnces radically separated from such

studies is keeping such studies radicalk separated from the humanssciences-left to the merey of rheir own devices.

Such devices are not enough. The outcome of this artificial and

unnecessary estrangement is, ni once, clic perpetuation within the

variou.s natural sciences of ounnoded self-conceptions, global stories

that falsify rheir actual practice, tbe "stcrile," "half-baked," and "im-

plausihle" imitations that those ounnodcd conceptions and false sto-

ries induce in human scientists iquorant of what in fact, physics,

chemistry, physiology, and the like come ti) as meaningful action,

and, perhaps worst of all, rhe producrian „f various sorts of New

Age irrationalisms-Zen phi sics, Maliarishi cosmology, parapsy-

chology-supposed to unir everythin, and anything at some

1iigher, or deeper or widcr level.`

Fighting off the "naturalization" of the human sciences is a nec-

essary enterprise, to which Taylor has powerfully contributed; and

ove must be grateful to him for rhe dauntlessness of his efforts in

that regard, and for their precision. Possessed himself of some dusty

formulas, he has, to out general loss, not so contributed to the no

less necessary enterprise of reconnecting the natural sciences to

their human roots, and thus of fighting off rheir naturalization. It is

an enormous pity that some of the most consequential develop-

ments of conremporary culture are taking place beyond the atten-

tion of one of that culture's profoundest students.

flotes

1. The "Introduction" is repeated, with slightly different pagination, invoiume 2. The rhemes in Taylor's work 1 discuss here run rhroughout thewhole of it, from Explanation of Behavior, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1964, to Sources of che Self, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989 , but forsimpliciry 1 shall confine direct cirations te Philosophical Papers, Cambridge:Cambridge Universiry Press, 1985, 2 vols.

2. Taylor, Philosophical Papers, c 1, 2: 21, r 187, 1: 247, and 2: 92.3. Ibid., r: 15.q. Ibid., x: 17.5. Ibid., i: 117.

6. Ibid., i: 1t.

7. ]bid., 1: 45, z: 15. As Taylor recognizes, che genealogy of this notion isborh deep and wide in Western thought and in its modem version is perhapsas ofren dated from Vaco as Dilrhey, its defining exemplar as often seen te beWeber as Gadamer. For a subtle and detailed tracing of rhe contrast as it hasworked irself out from the ancient world forward, sometimes as a difference,sometimes as a dichotomy, sometimes as a mere unclariry, under the originalGreek distincrion (they seem to have invented chis roo) of nomos and physis,

see Donald Kelley's impormnt srudy, The Human Mensure, Social Thought in cheWestern Legal Tradition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

8. Richard Rorty, "Is Natural Science a Natural Kind'.," in his Philosophi-cal Papers, Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press, 1991 , 1: 46. Rorty is, ofcourse, as 1 am, quesrioning such a view.

9. Taylor, Philosophical Papers, 1: 5.1o. Thomas Kuhn, The Srructure of Sciendfic Revolutions, and ed., Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. For an accessible discussion of "quan-tum weirdness ," see Heinz Pagels , The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as cheLanguage of Nature, New York: Bantum, 1983. The absence from Taylor's majorstudy of "the making of the modem identity," Sources of che Self, of any signifi-

1 50 f'lmlder 21 1 Th e Strauiye fshangex^erlt ?n 15]

c.mr di,U:. : 1 nt ,laccloluutcnn m ; , -,,.,I r!e, 1 N as such i,, aiven rhis trae-

,cn: haré huid 1nrh ,t a Lord

u1 ,r ,roto.

11 Ch r Marku U 6c I> I .5 I I unununcs t Natural Sci-

onw' 8en, Ircliminu, has S ntc m 50) vr r 31987) 5'S1; guora-

ri,rm ar 42. 4; (en,hhd,:• ,n cr,uin., 1.

12. Thc "1,d[ ask" qwu:ai, n 1,.,- I'uen uiributed tu Ridranl Fecnuuu,,

hut i hico nV c1rar:a11 for u. ja 'r lix -io,n ,3 tome ,t rho nwr,crs mennuned,

;ee, :i a, 11,111- E'gels, Tha í:i1.5 it : .k, sY elsu The Drcam, of Reman: Tire

Computar [md the Rice of dr Sdbuds u¡ Congllexity, New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1985, and Petfeer $^mniea'a l ke S,,arh Jor the Beginning of Time, New

York: Banaun, ,986.

13. Markus, "Why 1s There So 1lermeneuries of Natural Sciences'.," pp.

26, 27, 28, 20; references enitre 1, top.iragn,phcJ, emphases original.

14. Rono, "b Natural Seience a Namnd Kind?," p. 47.15. Gerald NI. Edehnan, Bright din, Brilliant Fire: On the Mauer of the

Mind, New York: Basac Books, 1992, p. , 1,16. 1bid., pp. 230, 231, 232; emphasis original. For Taylor's ven similar

animadversioas againsr "machina nmdelled explanadons of human perfor-mance,', see has essay, "Cognirive I'soeludogo," Plrilosophical Papers, 1: 187-212;on "objeerivis,u," "Thcories of Mean ing," 1: 248-292. For a relared artack on"obj ectivisni" ni neurology, thare callad "dragmm making," see Israel Rosen-feld, The 8rrmrge, Familiar and Forgocen: An Anatomy of Consciousness, New

York: Knopf 1992.17. David Ruelle, Chance and Chaos, Prmceron: Princeton Universiry

Press, rp91, p. 122. The norion uf "npprupnute rraining" necessary tu appreca-

ate rhe differences Ruelle, in a hook clesigncd afrer all for an audience thar

doesn't llave ir, wishes us ro appreciate raiher more raises a question, and in a

guilel-protecri' e fonn, [han answen it. Translation exists, and commenrary loo

(Ruelle's heing'a fine example) 1 don'r know Russian, and rhus miss much; Sur

Dusroersky fines nor look rhe nene ro Inc as Tulsroy.

[8. Cired in Edelman, Bright Sir, Brdlimu Fire, p. vii. The lasr line sug-gests rhat "hierarchy" may nor be rhe bcsr figure, earher, for rracing out such a

meshwork ot eannecrions.19. For a briol general revicw, see Sreve Woolgar, Science, the Very Idea,

Chicheater: Ellis Honvood, [958; tor a e urrem collecrion of debates and posa-

tions in Chis erearively disorgani:ed, usctully conrharlve feld, see Andrew Pick-

ering, ed., Science as Practice and Qdnne', Chioagu: Unaversit of Chicago Press,

1992; fui- a susrained study, erosvng dNc honran-natural division wath some-

rhing of a vcngeance, see Sreven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviarhan and the

Air Pump: Habbes, Boyle, and the Espoimenud Life, Princeron: Princeron Uni-

versity Press, 1985.

20. Bruno Latour, Nous n'arons )nmais fíe' modemes: Essai d andrropologíe

symémque, Paris: La Découvertc, 1991, p, r86. Thi_ is Larour', mosr general,

.rnd mosr provocativo, starement d pusitiun; for [llore derailed dúcrusion, see

his Sc ente ¡Ti Action: 11ow ti, Foliuu Seienriss asad Fngineers through 5ocien,

Cambridge: Harvard Universiry Press, 1987; fer a specifie applicarion, The Pas-

teurization of France, Cambridge liar ard Univeniry Press, 1988.

zr. The quoration is from H M. Ceilins and Sirven Yearley, 'journey

finto Space,'a polemic againsr Larour, ni Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and

Cultura, la. 384. For rhe Merton approach, seo has The Soc,ology uf Science:

Theoretical and Empirical Investiganons, Chicago: Universiry of Chicago Press,

1973. For rhe sociology of (scientific) knowledge approach (SSK), somerames

referred ro as "rhe srrong program," sce Barry Barnes, Interesa asad the Growrh of

Knowledge, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. 1 borrow the limpid, if

antique, rerm "consilient" (which seems tu me an improvement over, or any-

way a useful supplement te, rhe aestherical "coherenr' as applied ro texes, the

formalistic "consisrenr" as applied ro beliefs, rhe functionalist "inregmred" as

applied ro institurions, or rhe psychologisric "artuned" as applied to persons)

from lan Hacking, "The Self-Vindicarion of the Laboratory Scrences," in Pick-

ering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture, pp. 29-64, a searching examinarion

of the course it celebrares. For an extended discussion, cf. has Representing and

Intervening, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. (Since Chas note

was written, che sociobiologast E. O. Wilson has introduced elle word in a quite

differenr sense, torally opposed to mine. See E. O. Wilson, Consilience: the

Uniry of Knowledge, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998. The terna is origlnally due

ro William Whewell, whose use comports with my and Hacking's sense, not

wirh Wilson's.)22. Michel Callon and Bruno Larour, in Pickering, ed., Science as Practice

and Culture, p. 348. They continue: "Our general ... principie is ... not ro

altemate between natural realism and social realissm Sur to obrain narure and

sociery as twin results of another activiry, one rhat is more interesting for us.We call it nerwork building, or collecrive rhings, or quasl-objects, or trials offorce; and others call it skill, forms of life, material practice" (referentes

eliminared).23. Woolgar, Science. Cf. Donald Davidson, "On che Very Idea of a Con-

ceptual Scheme," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Asso-

ciation 47 (1973-74): 5-20.24. Taylor, Philosophical Papers, 1: 197.25. For some interesting comments en this latrer, see Jeremy Bemstein,

Quantum Profiles, Princeton: Princeton Universiry Press, 1991, esp. pp. vi¡-

vi'¡, 77-84.

1 5' Ciirgdrr VI 1 'Tire Strarrge Cstranyeraent -- 1 50

Tilo £erac, o f 7hofvas uhn:

`rho Pight ? xt

at tilo '1'1g h t `rile

The death of Thomas Kuhn-"Tom" to all who knew him, and

considering his principled rotosa) ro play the role of the intellectual

celebriry he clearly was, an exn iordinar)' number of people did-

secros, like his professional life in general, on the wat, to heing seen,

in rhere d,i}s of pomos and cultire wars, as bur another appendix,foomote, or afrerrhoughr to his T7ie Structure of Scientific Revolutions,written in the fifties and published in 1962.' Despire rhe fact that

he produced a numbcr of orher imponant works, including the at

leasr as original and rarher more oaretui The Essential Tension (1977)

and the meticulously researched Bfnck-hody Theory and the QuantumDiscontinuiry, 1894-1912 (1978),' whose repid reception by the

physics community, jealous as always of its origin myths, much

pained him, it was Strucnrre, as he himself always referred to it, that

defined him both in rhe world's eves and, reactively, in his own. He

lived, anguishcd and passionare, in its shadow for nearly thirty-five

years. His obituaries, which acre numerous, concentrated altnost

exclusively on ir, including a peculiarly unpleasant one, obtuse and

disingenuous, in the London Eamunlist. which ended with a taste-

less wirricism about his nndergoing a paradigm shift. And as, in the

very last days of his barde ir irh long c.mcer, he finally brought his

N)

long-awaited, ofr-previewed, second pass at its subjecr, how the sci-

ences change, near enough to completion to be released for publica-

tion, his reputation will be fueled by it for many years ahead.

The question then arises: why has Structure had such an enor-

mous impact? Why has everyone, from particle physicists and phi-

losophers to sociologists, historians, literary crirics, and political

theorists, not ro speak of publicists, popularizers, and counterculture

know-nothings, found in ir something either to tum excitedly to-

ward their own ends or to react, equally excitedly, against? It can't

just be that the book is bold, innovative, incisive, and marvelously

well written. It is all that, and in addition scholarly and deeply felt.

But rhere are other books, within the history of science and outside

of it, with such virtues. Excellence and significance, however real,

assure neither fame nor consequence-how many people, after all,

have attended to Suzanne Langer's Feeling and Form? In some myste-

rious and uncertain way, mysterious and uncertain even to Kuhn,

who never ceased to be amazed, puzzled, and seriously troubled

about his book's reception, Srruceure was the right text at the right

time.

From about the 19206 (and especially after Karl Mannheim's

Ideologie und Utopie was published in r929), what carne to be called

"the Sociology of Knowledge" was applied ro one fieid of intellec-

tual activity after anorher. Religion, history, philosophy, economics,

art, lirerature, law, political thought, even sociology irself, were sub-

jected to a forro of analysis that sought to expose their connections

to the social context within which rhey existed, that saw them as

human constructions, historically evolved, culturally located, and

collectively produced. Some of this was crude and deterministic,

Marxist reductionism or Hegelian historicism. Some of it was subtle

and hesitant, a circumstantial tracing of local developments, a qual-

ified suggestion of specific relationships. But, crude or subtle, head-

long or tentative, it was, a few exceptions that remained exceptions

aside, not applied to whar had become rhe most prestigious, the

most forbidding, and, by midcentury, the most consequential intel-

lecrual activiry of all-the natural sciences.

Set apart in a self-propelled world of thought, physics, chemis-

try, rhe earth sciences, even biology, remained unsoiled with soci-

The Legaay of Thomas Kuhn I b I

Ology, or :U)vWay with the >ccioLcpc ,f knoscledge. What history

chute w,,, was mostly praent tonel fimo,,,' monumental and whiggish

to a t:utlr, :t Ocre c,f landln.uk teisicvcinents leadinu, one on ro rhe

uext, rooard tauh, espian.tt icm, 111,1 thc preseni conduion of

things. What sociologv there wi,, M,u Weber's or Robert Merton's,

remained largel}' "exrcrnilicr," eunccrneJ vith che social effects of

science, (he inaiunional nnrn> whldr govcm it, or the social origin

of scientisrs. So-called intenralioi nrancrs whs ind how che theo-

ries and practices of seienri^rs cake Lile torras they do, excite che

interest rhey do, and dceclop che swav rhey do-were beyond its

reach, explicable, if lit all, by thc energies of reason, che mysteries of

genius, or che simple narure ot rhings impressing rhemselves un che

qualified mind.

It was chis apparendy unquestionable, supposedly uncrossable

Iine separating science as a forra of intellectual acrivity, a way of

knowing, from science as a social phenomenon, a way of acting,

that Kuhn in Struccure first questioned and then crossed. He was, of

course, nor che only une to do so. Such diverse figures as Norwood

Russell Hanson, Michael Polanyi, Paul Feyerabend, Mary Hesse,

Infle Lakaros, and larer un Michel Foucault and lan Hacking, some

of rhem critics of some of Kuhn's particular arguments, sume of

thenr rivals, some of checo simply un trajectories of their own,

crossed it as well from the fifries on. But, more [han any of these,

Kuhn, and Structure, cleared che path and, because it is nor always

either prudent or comfortable to be out in front in a raiding party,

drew che fire of che Old Believers. Because che book, originally de-

signed as a maverick entry in Neurath, Carnap, and Morris's posici-

vist-inspired Internacional Encyclopedia of Unified Science, was so

sehemaric, sweeping, confident, and uneompromising, ir ser, by it-

self, che tercos of debate. It hecame che very image of che study of

science as a worldly enterprise; hecame, to coro a phrase, irs domi-

nanc paradigm, ripe for imitation, extension, disdain, or overthrow.

Ir is unnecessary hete, and rmyway impossible, te) review again

che hundreds of argumenn, for and against, tire theses that Structure

advanced: that scientific change is discontinuous, altemating be-

tween long periods of "normal" srability and short bursts of "revolu-

tionary" upheaval; that "normal" scientific reseacch is governed by

established exemplars, the famous paradigms, that preseni models to

the relevan[ comniunity for puzzle-solving; chal such paradigms are

1, incommensurable," and chal scientists operating under different

paradigms grasp one another's views but parrially at bes[; that "the-

ory choice," che movement from one paradigm tu anocher, is hetter

described as a matter of a gestalt-shift intellectual "conversion" [han

as a gradual, point-by-poinr confrontation of che abandoned view

with che embraced one; and that rhe degree co which paradigms

have crystallized in a science is a measure of irs maturity, irs ' hard-

ness" or "softness," as well as irs distante and difference from non-

scientific enterprises. Sume of [hese formulations Kuhn himself

modified in a series of appendices, restatements, replies, and "second

thoughts." Many he ehought were distorted and misunderstood, in-

deed misused, by his critics and his supporters alike. A few, most

especially che claim that scientific change does flor consist in a re-

lentless approach co a waiting truth but in che rollings and pitchings

of disciplinary communities, he maintained against all attacks from

all quarters.Ir was, in fact, chis las[ and most far-reaching of irs propositions,

that made Struccure itself revolutionary-a call tú arras for [hose

who saw science as the las[ bastion of epistemic privilege or a sin

against reason for those who saw it as che royal road to the really

real. Whether or nor cheoretical discontinuities are as prominent in

ocher fields as they supposedly are in physics; wherher or nor gestalt

shifts and incommensurability are che norm in theory change or are

ever ehoroughgoing; wherher theory and generalized statement,

conceptual sehemes and world views, are really che heart of the

matter in che first place-all [hese can be left to be fought out in

che very sort uf study Srructure instantes and calls for. What remains

as Kuhn's legacy, what enrages his mosc intransigent opponents and

befuddles his most uneritical followers, is his passionate insistente

that che hiscory of science is che history of che growth and replace-

ment of self-recruicing, normacively defined, variously direcced, and

often sharply competitive scientific communities. Or, to quoce

Structure at last, rarher [han merely alluding to it: `Both normal

science and revolutions are ... community-based activities. To dis-

cover and analyze checo, one musr first unravel che changing com-

munity structure of che sciences over time. A paradigm govems ...

flor a subjecc matter but rarher a group of praccitioners. Any study

102 -- CIrq,ler PII 1 'Tito Cegacy of Thomas Kulni 5^ 1 63

oí paradignt-directed or ot paradigm-shartering research musr begin

by locating the responsible group or groups,"'

With chis hilo emplacelile nt of "rhe sciences" in rhe world

where agendas are pursued anal cartera mude, where alliances are

formed and doctrines developed, rhe world oí group efforts, group

clashes, and group annmimu'nrs-the world, in short, we all oí us

live in-Strucrw-e opened [he door ro rhe eruption of the sociology

oí knowledge roto rhe study ot rhose sciences about as wide as it

could be opened. As rhe sociology oí knowledge was, in the nature

of rhe case, itself ridden wirh debate, division, and variety oí view

(as well as, in some oí its more cxubernnt practitioners, a contrarian

tone designed to set establishment recrh on edge), irs engagement

wirh rhe sciences was, and remains, more fraught [han it had been

wirh literarure, history, or polirical thoughr, reminiscent, in fact, oí

irs scuffles, prolonged and venomous, wirh religion. Once launched,

however, chis applicarion of rhe categories, reasonings, procedures,

and purposes characrensric of die human sciences to the practices

of rhe sciences tendentiously called `real," cannot now be reversed

by even rhe nrost desperare of counrermeasures. Despite cries oí

"subjecrivism," `5rrationalism," "mol, psychology," and, oí course,

rhe favored execration of rhe entrenched [hese days, "relativism,"

all oí which have been repearedly launched against Srructure (and

againsr "Kuhn," who has beca aceused, by people from whom one

world expect a rather higher level oí ugmnent, of disbelieving in

rhe existente of an externa! ^rorld), irs agenda, wharever che fase oí

irs parricular assertions, is boro ro ata}. The subjection of rhe sci-

ences to rhe atrentions, sustained and superficial, informed and ig-

noranr, oí historians, sociologisn, anthropologists, economists, even

of science writers and English professors, unwilling to stop at rhe

horders oí disciplinary authority or to cower before the solemnities

oí Nobel laureares, grows apace. This particular genie, once out oí

rhe hottle, can'r be stufded back in, however frightening or ill-

behaved he (she?) may be-or ro whom.

Thar Kuhn was imperfecrly ovare oí how unruly the genie

would rurn out CO he, and how largo, when he published Strucrure isplain enough. The great outhurst of sociohistorical science studies,

Edinburgh, Paris. Bielefeld, Boston, Jetusalem, San Diego, and so

on, as well as rhe great outhurst of jeromiads againsr them, largely

16^ = (havi,r 1,II

postdated what Kuhn himself characterized in irs opening pages as

but a reflective essay abour some things that had been bothering

him sine his drifting days in graduare school and in rhe Harvard

Society oí Fellows. The causes oí al[ chis critique and countercri-

tique, which soon spread co non- (or would-be) scientific fields as

well, are various, ill-understood, and much discussed. The changing

place oí rhe sciences (and scientists) in contemporary culture, rhe

moral concerns arising from their military applicarions, and their

increasing distante from general intelligibility have all been ad-

vanced. So have rhe growing skepricism about rhe possibility oí

value-neutral inquiry, the deepening ambivalence toward rapid

technological change, and rhe university explosiona oí the late six-

ties. For others, rhe end of modemity, New Age mysticism, femi-

nism, deconstruction, the decline of Westem hegemony, the politics

of research funding, or some combination of these, is rhe culprit.

Though Kuhn was cognizant of most oí these issues, he was

not himself so much concerned wirh them as he was wirh under-

standing how science got from Aristotle to Newton, from Newton

to Maxwell, and from Maxwell to Einstein, and, given the world's

contingencies, what rhe reasons for irs improbable success in doing

so might be. "The Bomb" debate aside, to which, so far as 1 know,

he never publicly addressed himself, rhose reasons were hardly

prominent, much less central, in che worried but still composed

world oí che late fifties and early sixties. They became so indepen-

dently after rhe appearance oí Srrucrure, and were rhen polemicallyattached to it by irs unexpected, and unintended, mass audience-

positively, as a demystificarion oí scientific authority, irs re-enclo-sure in time and society; negatively, as a revolt againsr it, a repu-

diation of objectivity, detachment, logic, and rruth. He had prayedfor raro and gor a flood.

Whatever his attitude toward rhe works, meta-works, and meta-

meta works that collected around Srructure after the late sixties-

and it was decidedly mixed-Kuhn found himself in rhe position of

having to stare his views over and over again in various sorts oí

forms and forums. Not that rhose views were unclear or anything

less [han direct and straightforward in their first expression. If any-

thing, they may have been a bit too clear. But they had to make

their way in a very different intellectual environment from rhe one

71te Leyacy o) Thomas Kuhn - 165

in which hice [cele ,crieinalk rcnlcJ. l l.n ing bogan ts a "11017111,1V

phvsiei>r and hecome a "n„rnh 111,t, MM (his case-centere l hisro-

rio :hpltc, Ir.irncj a1Taro IIk :!''In lame hrYant Conant, was as

anlccniional us his argument, ,een heterodox), Kuhn uas far from

conil^lrt.tbk with doctrine, tata yuc-uoned caber tic possihilirv of

genuino knocviedge J. dte rahn of genuino a.lvances in ht. Nor, for

all bis cmphasis on sncicllo,^ical atnsideradons in understanding

licor, drangc, teas he cs cr .incrhing les, tiran scornful )f the no-

r1011 rhat sude ananierlrions atfecr tic truth valué of theories of

how light propagares or pluners move.

Kuhn is nos rhe hrst person to boye accomplished, early on in a

career, something which upset a los ot apple carrs and who had then

to come to renns with its far-reaching implications, some more than

a bit unpalamble, as it becamc in irs rurn common wisdom. That is

surely trae of Gódel, who socias rather ro have wished his proof had

come our the other rvay anca spent a tair part of the rest of his life

trying tu establish rhe integrit, of reason by other means. And it

may have been trae of Einstein as well, disturbed by the cleavage in

physical theory introduced by his quantal conception of light, and

seeking thereafrer somehow to close it up again. Living through the

aftershocks oían earthquake one has played a major role in bringing

about can he as difficult, and as consequential, as producing the

original tremor. One needs both serene conviction and settled self-

irony ro be able co do it. The revolution that Kuhn (who had an

embroidered morro hanging in his house which said "God Save

This Paradigm") put in motion will be disturbing our certitudes, as

it disturbed his, for a ver, long time to come.

flotes

1, T. S. Kuhn, The Struenrrc ^,f Scimujeie Nerolnnons, Chicago: Universiryof Chicago Press, 1962.

z. T. S. Kuhn, The Fssenriul 7errsion, Chicago: Universiry of Chicago

Press, 1977; Kuhn, Blnch-bu;h Theon ciad ¿he ( uanncm Discontinuity, 1894-

1912, Chicago: Universin, of Chicago Press, 1978.

3. The Scructure af Seieuujte Renilu uons, pp. 179-18o.

The Z^illcl> O f Desti11y:

7eligion as Cxperience,

1eaning, Identity, iPowelr

When, in the lasr chapter of The Variecies of Religious Experience-

the one he uneasily calls "Conclusions" and immediately affixes

with a corrective postscript which he then promptly disavows-

William james comes to look back at what he hasbeen doing for

nearly five hundred close-set pages, he confesses himself somewhat

taken aback about how soulful it all has been. "In rereading my

manuscript, 1 am almost appalled at the amount of emotionality

which 1 find in it.... We have been literally bathed in sentiment.`

It has all been a master, he says, of "secret selves' and "palpitating

documents"-fragment autobiographies, recounting one or another

shaking and evanescent inward episode. "1 do flor know how long

chis state lasted, nor when I fell asleep," reads one such, "bus when 1

woke up in the morning I was we11."1 "Everything 1 did, and wher-

ever 1 went," reads a second, "1 was still in a storm..` "[Ir] seemed to

come over me in waves," reads yet a third, "to fan me like immense

wings.` And so on and so forth, page after confessional page. Reli-

gion, James says, with that proverblike concision he uses tú rescue

himself from the abundante of his own prose, is "the individual

pinch of destiny" as rhe individual feels it. "[The] recesses of feeling,

the darker, blinder srrata of character," he writes, "are the only

l bt1 ,„l,r,, . 1111

places in che world in ivhich we carch real fact in che making . .

directly perceive how evcnrs happen ... how work is done."s The

res[ is notarion: it stands to che rcaliry ot che rhing as a menu does

to a cocal, a painting of a hurtling locomorive does tu its energy and

creed, or perhaps, though he doesn't quite bring himself all che wayto saying chis, as science .loes co life.

This way of marking our 'religion" and "tire religious"-rhe

radical individualism ("If in Emerson viere Torced to be a Wesley, or

a Moody forced to be a Whitman, rhe total human consciousness of

che divine would suffer"°); rhe attraciion to che wilder shores of

sentimenr (''1 took [hese exrremer esamples as yielding che pro-

founder intonuacion"` ); and, ab^,s e all, rhe distrusc of schetnes and

schemas (James culis rheni, his own included, "pallid," "poverty-stricken," "bodiless," and "deati )---gives to Varieties, when we lookback at ir from wherever ir is ave are now, a curiously doubie aspect.

It seems at once aimost ultra-amreiuporuneous, as though it had

been written yesterday about New Age and Postmodern excite-

ments of one sorc or another, and quaintly remote, suffused with

period armosphere, like The osamians, "Self-Reliance," or Scienceand Health.

The cense of conrempornneiry is largely an illusion-rhe de-

rangemenrs of che las[ fin de siccle are quite different from [hose of

Chis, inri so aiso are out watys ot coping. Bur che perception shas

james', great book is, ¡ir a o npejorarive cense, if rhere is a nonpe-

jorative cense, dated, has rather more _uhstance. Wc see religion in

other tercos [han James did, nor hecaa,e we know more about it

tiran tic did (we don'r), or hecause wliat he discovered no longer

interesas us or seems imporranr (it does), or even hecause ir itself

has changed (ir has and ir hnsn't). We s ce it in other tercos hecause

che ground has shifred undcr unir teer; oc have other extremes to

examine, orher fines to foresrill. The pinch is still rhere, sharp and

nagging. Bur ir feels, for come reason, ,omehow different. Less prí-

vate, perhaps, or harder to loeare, more difftcult exactly co put one's

ftnger m; nos so surely a teli,ible indicaior or a revelatory sigo, not

so surely a metaphysical aehe.

For whac seems most ro disnince u, froni Jactes, co separase our

spiriruahcy, if rhar word can he mude to mean anything anymore,

save moral pretension, from his, is che word 1 carefully lefr out of his

glittering modo in adopting it for my fide: "individual"; "che indi-

vidual pinch of destiny." "Religion," or "religiousness," in his pages,

and in his world-cranscendentalist New England at che end of its

run-is a radically personal master, a privare, subjective, deep-

experience "faith-state" (as he calls it), adamantly resistan[ to che

growing claims of rhe public, che social, and che everyday "to be che

sole and ultimare dictators of what we may believe." 8 Growing in

James's day, as rhe United States began nos just to be powerful but

to feel itself so, such claims have, in ours, become alrogerher over-

whelming. Cordoning off a space for "religion" in a realm called

"experience"-"rhe darker, blinder strata of character"-seems,

somehow, no longer so reasonable and natural a thing to try co do.

There is just roo much one wants to call "religious," almost every-

thing it sometimes seems, going un outside che self.

When che phrase "religious struggle" appears, as it does so often

[hese days, in che media, in scholarly writing, even in churchly ha-

rangues and homilies, it tends nos co refer ro privare wresrlings with

inner demons. Dispatches from che battlements of che soul are

largely left to talle shows and che autobiographies of recovering ce-

lebrities. Nor does it refer very ofcen any longer to che effort, so

prominent at rhe las[ cenrury's mrn, when che churches seemed

deplete and shriveling and Mammon on the march. co prorect che

waning authority of religious conviction by removing it to an au-

tonomous realm beyond che reach of che bitch-goddess seductions

of secular life, Audcn's place of making where executives would

never want to [amper. These days, "religious struggle" mosrly refers

to quite outdoor occurrences, plein air proceedings in che public

square-alleyway encounters, high court holdings. Yugoslavia, Al-

geria, India, Ireland. Immigration policies, minority problems,

school curricula, sabbath observations, head scarves, abortion de-

bates. Riots, terrorism, fatwas, Auto Supreme Truth, Kach, Waco,

Santeria, che storming of che tolden Temple. Policical monks in Sri

Lanka, born-again power-brokers in che United States, warrior

saints in Afghanistan. Anglican Nobelist, Desmond Tutu, works to

get South Africans co confront their pasa Roman Nobelist, Carlos

Ximenes Belo, works to encourage East Timorese to resist their pres-

Thr •inch of ^estiny - 1 Óg

ent. Tbc 1)alai Lama haunt, ihe wor1,1, capiraLL ro kcep ihe Tiheran

,,¡ti,, ilive. Nudiintl p.irticuf trk priveire-covcrt perhaps, or surrep-

1ti iou>, hui hardk ptivo c- -ah,ur all rliv

In Jeme,'s time it ,cctuc,l thii rcli¿mm seas becoming more and

more a11,1ectis i-e,l; thai o roo, in rlre rete nature of ihe case, weak-

ening u, a social toree n, Lee,nnc a matter wholly of ihe hearr's

affecrinns. Secularist welcomc,l this supposed fati as che sigo of

progress, modemiry, und libera- of nmscience; believers were re-

signes ro ir as che necessar) Atice of rhose rhings. (James, charac-

teristically, was of both minds.) To boch, religion seemed to be grav-

itaring to its appropriare place, removed from ihe play of temporal

concerns. But rhat is not how rhings have in ihe event turned out.

The developments of che cenrury lince james gave his lectures-

two world wars, genocide, decolonization, dre spread of populism,

and che technological integration oí the world-have done less ro

drive faith inward toward the conuuorions of ihe soul than they

have co drive it outward reward those of the polity, the state, and

rhat complex argument we call culture.

"Experience," however ineradicable it may be from any dis-

course on faith that is responsive ro irs regenerative claims (a point

1 shall retum ro in the end, when 1 rry to recuperare James from my

own critique), no longer seems adequate to trame by itself our un-

derstanding of the passions and actions we want, under some de-

scriprion or other, ro call religious. Firmer, more determinare, more

tmnspersonal, extravert rerms-°Meaning," say, or "ldenrity," or

Power"-musa be deployed ro catch rhe tonalíties of devotion in

our rime. When, as 1 write, a Roman Catholic could conceivably

become ihe prime minisrer of India if the present Hinduist govern-

ment falls, Islam is, de facto anyway, ihe second religion of France,

biblical lireralists seek to undermine the legitimacy of the president

of the United States, Buddhist mystatgogues blow up Buddhist poliri-

cians in Colombo, liberation priests stir Mayan peasants to social

revolr, an Egyprian mullah runs a world-reforming sect from an

American prison, and South African witch finders dispense justice

in neighborhood shabeens, ro nalk of religion as (quoting James's

own italicized "Circumscriprion uf che Topic") "che teelings, acrs. and

experiences of individual men in their solirude, so far as chev apprehend

chernselves co stand in relruion to teharever thev mov consider ihe divino,"

would seem to pass over a very grear deal of what is going on in che

hearts and minds nf ihe pious nowadays.'

Nor is rhis merely a vocacional matter, che voice of ihe psychol-

ogisr fascinated with emocional depths againsr thar of the anrhro-

pologist dazzled by social .surfaces. James was not an individualist

hecause he was a psychologist; he was a psychologist hecause he was

an individualist It is this lasa, ihe norion that we believe, if we do

believe (or disbelieve, if we disbelievc) in solitude, standing alone

in relation to out destiny, out own privare pinch, thar needs perhaps

a certain reconsideration given ihe warrings and disorders which

surround os now.

"Meaning" in ihe upmarket cense of "ihe Meaning of Life" or "ihe

Meaning of Existente"-che "Meaning" of Suffering, or Evil, or

Chance, or Order-has been a staple of scholarly discussion of reli-

gion since anyway the eighteenth cenrury when such discussion be-

gan to be phrased in empirical rather than apologetical terms. But it

was only with Max Weber's attempt, ihe boldness of which still

astonishes, ro demonstrate that religious ideals and practical activ-

ities tumble forward together as they move through history, forming

in fact an impartible process, that "Meaning" began to be seen as

something more, or something other, than a set gloss applied to a

sertled reality.

When, with this recognition behind us, we look out now at our

media-ready world to rry to see what is, by some reasonable under-

standing of the term, "religious" about whar is going on there, we do

not see, as James did with his absorbed converts, ecstatic soliraries,

and sick souls, a bright fine between eternal concerns and rhose of

ihe day; we don't see much of a line at all. Arnold's long, withdraw-

ing roar of ihe sea of faith from ihe blanch'd shores of ordinary life

is, apparently, for the moment pretty well stilled; ihe fide is in, and

i 70 Er„rter 1v111 1 ` ite Viudr of Desting f 17 1

flooding. Meaning ( asutning ir ever teas really away , outside ofsouthern England ) is back. The unly problem is that it is very hardto fin+ure our what rhar mcacs.

Most everywhere ( Singapore perhaps is still excluded , though,even thcre , rhere are evangelist srirrin" ,), we sce religiously chargedconceptions of what everyrhing , evcry where is always all about pro-pelling themselves to the correr of cultural attention . From north-ern and western Africa , through the N Íiddle Easr and Central Asia,to South and Southeast Asiu, a vasr , ntodey collecrion of ideologies,movcments , parries, programs , isions, personalities , and conspir-

acies announcing rhemscl^es as authenrically Islamic have entered

the comperition for socieral hegenronyor, in some cases (Iran,Afghanistan , perhaps Sudan ), more or less ended it, On the Indiansubcontinenr , the place for which tito rvord "myriad" could havebeen invented , religious uationalisms , subnationalisms , and sub-subnarionalisms jockey in i "million mutinics now" scramble forsway, domination , and the righr ro prescribe rhe public morality.Yugoslavs , alike in everything but their memories , seize opon reli-

gious ditterences previously unstresed in order to justify theiropaque hatreds . The papacy gl<tbalizes , reaching out to shape secularsociery in Africa, Easrern Europe, and Hispanic America . Ortho-doxy revives to return Russia ro Russi ;onnes; pruphetic scripturalismrevives to return America to Americanness . There are, of course,places wherc religious views, reccive d or renovated , seem tu playlittle role in public affairs ( China , perhaps, or Rwanda-Burundi, alsoperhaps ). But there are more than enough where they play a promi-

nent une te) take that fact as a sign ot our times.

Reading Chis sign, unpacking its mcaning , or orherwise account-ing for ir, determining why ir is so and how it has become so, whatit tells us ahout how things stand with us these days, is, of course, adífferent thing altogether. Given rhe long and honored tradition inthe social sciences , one that even Weber teas apparently not power-ful enough to break, of looking everywhere for the explication of

religious developments but to [hose dcvelopmenrs themselves, there

has been over the lasr ovo or rhrre decades a great outpouring (theIranian revolution , in 1979, probahly marks the return of religion toan important place on our profesional agenda, though such matters

172 - (Imo(cr't)111

as Partition, the Kuaia Lumpur riots, Vatican II, Martin Luther

King, and the recrudescence of the Irish troubles should have

alerted us earlier) of theories and explanations invoking political

and economic, sociological and historical, in some cases even mass

psychological, "madding crowd," circumstances as che underlying

forces pushing, determining, causing, shaping, driving, stimulat-

ing-all those things "forces" do-religious developments. "Reli-

giun" is everybody's favorite dependent variable.

There is nothing in itself so very wrong with this. Despite che

encouragement it gives to the besetting sin of sociological study,

favorite-cause analysis ("it all comes down ro" ... the personalities

of leaders, the strains of modemization, historical memory, mass

poverty, che breakup of tradition, inequality, geopolitics, Western

imperialism ... ), it has led to suggestive intrepretations both of

particular cases and, less often, of the phenomenon in general.

There is little doubt that the Milosevics, Karadzics, Tudjmans, and

Izetbegovics, to say nothing of the homeboy subcontractors who

killed in their names, were, and are, manipulative personalities,

driven a good deal more by the vanities of earthly glory, ambition,

calculation, jealousy, and self-infatuation than they are by religious,

or even ethno-religious, enthusiasms. Equally, it is altogether clear

thar `political Islam," as ir has come, misleadingly, tu he called,

whether in the form of Algerian radicalism, Egyptian clericalism,

Pakistani militarism, Malaysian traditionalism, or the harassed and

scattered progressivist movements that somehow manage to persist

just about everywhere, feeds on stagnation and poverty and repre-

senta an effort en the part of Muslims finally to engage the demands

and energies of the modem world. And the rising fide of communal

conflict in India, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia is, in significant

part, surely a response to attempts to build strong, centralized, na-

cional states in those polyglot, polycultural, polyreligious countries.

All that is well and good. But at the same time Karadzic wuuld

not have been able to stir up fears of what he called, with blithe

anachronism, "The Turk" in Sarajevo or Tudjman to stir up Croats

against the large Serbian minority in Zagreb by plastering the town

with "God Protects Croatia" posters, if there wasn't something al-

ready there to be stirred up, even in those (then) cosmopolitan,

'111e 131n11 of 'Destimy a 173

nla;ed , anal ecncnllle " rul.n ^,la^^^ . AC^'ithout o widcly diffused

selsc 01111110 the Can, II, nr Karachi m lues of islam abusad and

neghcted_ Ihe Prot`llccy ^Illhu'ded . u1d the 1'rophct dblila ned,

nlnvcillenls IU resl ui 'e .1nJ t^'.Il ifv' 11, 'dihl confound irs enenlies,

wuuld Irme Illtle attractiun . !\ nd lnrh , lur worriee in all sorts of

gmuls , , 1( 1111 .,oro o+ si c s , u 1 .111 uf faith- .ul anthology oí

decori,vl>--ahoul politic -. dlc cntarcei sI,Iritual exclusion , repres-

sion, u1.1r;,^inali = ation, cien climinati , m, uare building world seem

unlikele, jlsr b• irscl t, w brin, m i colonia ral rige To leave rcligion

out of all rus, lave as a scnlt toro or índex of " underlying," "real"

dynamics , is not so much to stage tite play without the prince as

without dle plot. The wor1J docs ntIr run on believings alone. But it

hardly runs without thcm.

There is , however, a prohle n in 1nvoking, as 1 have just been

doing to catch your anention , examples in which mass violente is

involved-James's "extrculer cases ... yielding the profounder in-

( ,in uncertain principie, ni my view) . Reliance on such

notorious instances obscuras tha generality and pervasiveness, the

mere normalcy , of what is going on by confusing religious conten-

tion, which is marked , widespread, and intense enough, wirh reli-

gious fiuy, which is focused, generally sporadic , and often enough

the child of iccident . Not every place is Algeria or Sri Lanka, Bei-

rut or Vukovar, Kashmir or Ulster. Twenry million Muslims migrat-

ing to the European Union ovar the course of several decades have

causad considerable tension bit , so lar al least , only scattered bru-

tality. Christians , Hindus, and Muslims have existed in arm's-length

peace in indonesia for fifry years ( they have murdered one another

for ochar rcasons ), rhough thar play now at length be ending. Ethio-

pia, lince rhe and of, flor rhe emparar , and then the Dergue, seems,

more recently , Lo have mangad ito religious variety at least reasona-

biy well. The concentrar ion on violcnce-riots, assassinations. up-

risings, and civil war-ealuable in itself for understanding how such

rhings happen ami whar mighr be done ro hinder them from hap-pening, as wcll as for showing to what red halls our sightless souls

may stray , giras a misleading picture of religious conflict by repre-

senring it in as most pathologicll forros. There are profounder mat-

ters lit work than mere unrcason , io which, after all, all human

-- -- (crydrr DIII

enterprises are suhject, not just rhose concerned with the Meaning

of Everything.Among such profounder matters is surely what has come to

called "the search for identlry. As "identity politics," "identity

crises," "identity loss," "identity construction," the term °identity"

has doubtless of late Sean much abusad, pressed finto the service of

one cause or another, une rheory or another, one excuse or another.

Puf rhat in itself attests ro the facr rhat, for all the jargonizing and

slogan mongering, and for all the partís pris, something imporrant ts

afoot. Sornething, soniething rather general, ts happening ro the

ways in which people think about who they are, who others are,

how they wish to be portrayed, named, understood, and placed by

the world at large. "The presentation of self in everyday life," to

invoke Erving Goffman's famous phrase, has also become less of an

individual matter; less a personal project, more a collective, even a

political, one. There are, just about everywhere now, organized ef-

forts, sustained and assiduous, sometimes a good deal more than

that, to advance the worldly fortunes of one or another variety of

public selfhood. What we have here is a contest of kinds.

Again, not all these kinds are "religious," even under the most

extended sense of the term. When someone is asked "who," or more

precisely "what," he or she "is," the answer is as likely to be ethnic

("a Serb"), national ("an Australian"), supernational ("an Afri-

can"), linguistic ("a Francophone"), or even racial ("a White"), or

tribal ("a Navajo"), and all sorts of combinations oí these ("a Luo-

speaking Black Kenyan") as it is religious-"a Baptisr," "a Sikh," "a

Lubavitcher," "a Bahai," "a Mormon," "a Buddhist," or "a Rastafar-

ian." But, also again, not only are religious self- (and other-) iden-

tifications increasingly prominent in public square, "secular"

discourse, but some extraordinarily powerful ones, "Hindu," for ex-

ample, or "Shi'i," have taken on an aggressive world-political cur-

rency only rather recently.The question is, why have religious kinds, and the tensions be-

tween religious kinds, come to such prominente? Why have com-munities of faith become, in so many instantes, the axes aroundwhich the struggle for power-local power, national power, even tosome extent international power-swirls? There is, of course, no

The 1")inch of fbesting -. - 175

single answer to rhis question, nono lbar will fit rhe Unired States,

Turkey, Israel, Malaysia, Poni, Leban^'o, and South Africa equally

well, and rhe scramble of rhe o-callcd New (that ts, posr-Meiji)

Religions in japan is a phenomenon in ttself. But same tentative

suggestions and ohservarions may be ,tfered in rhe way of a preface

to exacrer and more comprehensivo discussions still ro be developed

of whar one can only call dhe religious refigurarion of power politics.

The first such observaiion is tica, as just noted, it is not only

religious idenrtties, but cthnic, linguisric, racial, and diffusely cul-

tural onus, rhat Nave grown in political saliente in the years since

decolonization shattered die uune-roer empires, and most especially

in rhe decade nr so since rhe ¡oil of rhe Wall, rhe collapse of the

Soviet Union, and rhe end of rho Cold War shatrered rhe grear

power relationships in place lince Teheran and Potsdam. The

strongly binary, not to say Manichacan, East-West alignment of in-

ternational power balances and rhe overmastering side-effects that

alignment had everywherc frum Zaire and Somalia to Chile and

Cuba, and wirhin status as well as berween them (think of rhe Phi-

lippines, think of Angola, think, alas, of Korea and Vietnam), has

largely dissolved, leasing just abatir ev eryone uncertain about what

nuw goe, wirh whar anal bar does n,'t-where rhe critical demar-

cations lit: and what ir is chut inakes them critical. This disassembly

of rhe pon-Wall world, its xcarter.uion finto parís and remainders,

has brought more particular, ami more particularistic, forras of col-lective self-represenrarion ro rhe tbre-and not just in Yugoslavia or

Czechoslovakia, for example, where the effect is clear and direct,

huí generally. A proliferar ion uf autonomous political entibes, as

unCike in their romper as rhoy are in dreir scale, "a world in pieces,"

as 1 call it below in chapter XI, encouragcs eircmnscribed, intensely

specific, intensely felt, pubhc iclentirics, at rhe same time as such

identities fracture in their iurra rhe received forros of political order

rhat artempr to contain thcm, nwst norahly rhese days rhe nation-

sram. The projection of religinusly dchned groupings and loyalties

onto all aspects of cullective tifo frutn [he family and neighborhood

outward u, thus, parí of t general nrocement very much largor than

ttsclb rhe replaceurent of a ,^odd tiled wirh a few very large,

ill-fitting, analogous hlucks bc on e iiled, no more evenly and no

1 o - ( 7,rttmt' 1,11/

less completely, with many smaller, more diversified, more irreg-

ular ones.

That, of course, is nowhere near rhe whole of it. Not only are

there counterforces at play (economic globalization is ritually in-

voked as one such, though the recen disarray un rhe Asian Rim,

the accelerating problems in Latin America, and the fumblings of

the European Union may begin ro make clear that interdependency

is very much flor the same thing as integrarion), but there is much

more going on than a mere hunkering down within castellated

identities. There is increased mobility: Turks in Bavaria, Filipinos in

Kuwait, Russians in Brighton Beach. Ir is not easy any longer to

avoid encountering people with orher sorrs of beliefs than those one

grew up with-not even in the American Midwest, where your doc-

tor may well he a Hindu, or in la France profonde, where your gar-

bage man is almost certain to be a Muslim.

Thus, religious distinctions not only become, in many places,

more fraughr; they have also become more immediate. In a foor-

loose world-whar good are roots, as Gertrude Stein once said, if

you can't Cake them with you?-simple, to-each-his-own physical

separation no longer works very well. We have a grear deal of diffi-

culty these days staying out of one another's way: witness British

confoundmenr in rhe Rushdie affair, witness American court cases

about child betrothal, animal sacrifice, municipal créches, or ritual

clitorodectomy. Differences of belief, sometimes quite radical ones,

are more and more often directly visible, directly encountered:

ready-to-hand for suspicion, worry, repugnance, and dispute. Or, 1

suppose, for tolerante and reconciliation, even for attraction and

conversion. Though that, right now, is not exactly common.

As I say, one could go on Chis way, listing possible contributing

factors to rhe prominence of religious identities in rhe dispersed,

semiordered, political structure that has, for rhe moment anyway,

replaced the magnificent simplicities of rhe Cold War. There is rhe

"everything else hasn't worked" argument: successive disillusion

wirh rhe ideological master narratives-liberalism, socialism, na-

tionalism-as frameworks for collective identity, especially in rhe

newer states, has lefr only religion as, so the slogan goes, "something

which hasn'r failed yet." There is the "evils of modernization" argu-

lile Vinch oí Destiny 177

ntent. rhe ^i, re a,l ol rhe medie, 1he nn.iaes nt ievelupmenr, eont-

r Bree, .m, c,^nswuvriwr , unl. in µucr.il , the moral conhisinn of

unurmt, aire lit, h.ne n,mv.. tpul,^ nm°aril more tunillar, more

Jeeplp ro,ne.l , rl„ser- t.,-6.,iuc den,u , J , nlues.

AnJ ort. But. (he , .rll.bti )t átese and similar notums asido

(:u,J tiec rentara tt,i rhe n,.,a t-.rcr unresearched suggestions ), there

is 1 more tundumcnral isue t„ he ,iJJre esi if we are to get a handle

on whul 11 haht,enm_ t., s1iriwal lile tt rhe end of whar some llave

e,llc 1, flor without ecidencc _ rhe w, rst eenrurv ceo And this re-

rurns u,, as 1 suppose ua, inevicable , to Jantes's coneern , if flor nec-

essaril y to hls way of formeluring ir: ta llar is going on, to quore hila

again, in the "recoses of feelni_, the darkei, blinder strata of charac-

ter" of those caught Lit' in religiously conceived and religiously ex-

pressed struggles for meaning , titr identin , and for power ? What has

becomc of °rhe pinch of destine," mm that it seems so much in rhe

world? "Expericnce ," pushed out the loor as a radically subjeetive,

ndisidualized "faith srare ," returns through rhe window as the com-

munal sensibilry of a religiousl y asserrive social actor.

Communal, yet personal. Rehgion without interiority, without some

"bathed in sentiment" sense thar belief matters, and matters terribly,

dial faith susmins, cures, comtorrs, redresses wrongs, improves for-

tune, secures rewards, explains, obligares, blesses, clarifies, recon-

elles, regenerares, redecros, or saves, io hardly worrhy of rhe name.

There is, of course, a Brear leal of sheer convenrionalisnt about.

Hypocrisv, sancrimonv, imposture, arad sel¡ serving-ro say nothing

oí svindle and simple nuttiness-we hace always with us. And

thcrc remeros, 1 suppose, the heunring question whether any faith,

however profound, is amwhere ncar nlequare ro its ends. But the

view, which seems tú undedie so muny analyses of religious expres-

sion ni rhese neo-Nietzsehcan, t„ll-t„ power days, that our driving

passions are purely anal simply political, or politicn-economic, and

rhar religion is but nra,k ini ntcsrihcation, an ideological cover-up

for thornughly secular, more or less seltuh amhitions, is just flor

plausible. People do nor bum e 1 htghnl mosque rhe} rase to be

sited on Lord Rama', birthplace, seek to revive pre-Columbian rit-

uals in Mayan pueblos, oppose Whe reaching of evolutiun in Texas

and Kansas, or wear headscarves in 1 ¿cole primaire simply on rhe

way to some pragmatical and exterior material end. Tu rework, and

perhaps misuse, Stanley Cavell's celebrated Witrgensreinian vide,

dtey mean whar rhey say.

The problem, howecer, is thar if rhe communtl Innensioas of

religious chango, rhe ones vou can (somerimes) real abolir in the

newspapers are underresearched, rhe personal ones, those you llave

(usually) to ralk tú living people in order to encounter, are barely

researched at all. We simply don't know very much about whar is

going on right now in James's shadow world of immense wings and

unfleeable storms. And as a result the Weberian interworking uf

religious convictions and practical actions, rhe impartibility of belief

and behavior, tends ro be lost sight of: rhe rwo get separated out

again, as "factors," "variables," "determinants," or whatnor. The

whole vast variery of personal experience, or, more carefully, repre-

sentations of personal experience, that james, on rhe one hand, so

exquisitely explored, and, on rhe other, so resolurely walled off from

those "dietarors of whar we may believe," the public, rhe social, and

rhe everyday, is not only isolared once more from rhe convolutions

oí history-it goes unremarked alrogether.

Or almosr. As an example, a small and preliminary example 1

can recount only schemarically here, of rhe sort of work rhat re-

mains tú be done in Chis area and rhe sort of understandings that

can be gained from it, 1 want to rum, to a recen study by a young

anthropologisr, Suzanne Brenner, of rhe reactions some, also young,

Javanese wornen displayed alter they suddenly adopted an emphatic

forra of "Islamic" dress, called alter che Arabio for tradicional

women's clothing, jilbab.'°

Indonesia in general, and Java in particular, have long been

religiously variegated to an extraordinary degree. After nearly a mil-

lennium of Indic influence, especially on Java, where large and pow-

erful Hindu, Buddhist, and Hindu-Buddhist states arose from che

fourrh century, it experienced, afrer 1300 or so, also mainly via

South Asia, a strong incursion of Islamic piety, Sufistic in rhe first

instante, and, as time passed and Middle Eastem connections de-

( h;girr ^'lil - The li inrh of Destiny r70

veloped via rhe pilgrirnage and othenvise, orthodox Sunni. Finally,

or at leas[ finally so far (who knows what is coming next?), after the

seventeenrh century, when thc Dutch arrived, it was suhjected to

Christian misssionizing, both by Catholics and by che various sorts

of Proresmnts rhat che Netherlands has always been so fertile

in producing. The result, by thc time of Independence in 1950,

was, agnin most parcicularly on Java, where 7o percent of che popu-

lation lives, che copresence ot iII [hese faiths, plus a scattering of

indigenous unes, differencially disrrihuted through a complex social

structure. Eighty or yo percenr naminally Muslim-or, as che Java-

nese tronically sae, nnulim statistik-the island was, in fact, a forestof beliefs.

In che late seventics, and gruwiny in force through che eighties

(che present situation, like so much in Indonesia right now, is

not enrirely clear), an intensiñed seriousness, amounting co a new

rtgori sm, pegan to appear among some of che more self-consciously

Muslim Javanese-'an Islam ¡e resurgence," as it has come ro be

called-srimulated to some degree hyy, che so-called recum of Islam

generally across che world, bur for che mosr parí honre-goown, incer-

nally driven, and localle focused. There Nave been a number of

expressions of chis heightened eriousness-the proliferation of new

devorional organizations, rhe expansion of religious educacion, che

publication of books, journals, magazines, and newspapers and che

appearance of a class of, ottten torelgn-educated, Islamic-minded ar-

risca, intellectuals, and poliricians associated with them, che critieal

reevaluation and reinterpretation of local rraditions from a Quranic

poinc of view, and so on. Bur one ot che most striking, and most

controversial, of such expressions has been che adoption by a grow-

ing numbec of young women, mosr especially educared young

women, of Middle Eascern-style clothing: a long, loose-fitting,

monochrome gown, reaching to che ankles, designed to conceal che

shape of che body, and a long, rvinding scarf, usually white, designed

to conceal che hair and neck.

Such dress (che aforementioned jilbab) was occasionally found

previously, especially among older, pious women, especially in che

countryside. But che adopcion of it hy younger, urban women-a

sharp contrasc to che form fitting, low-cuc blouse, tightly wrapped

sarong, and carefully arranged hair che Nast majority of Javanese

180 (,, ,r 1?1 jl

wornen traditionally affect-stirred opposition, suspicion, puzzle-

ment, and anger. Intended as a statement, it was taken as one. The

women found themselves criticized as "fanatics" or ' fundamental-

ists," often by their own families and their closest friends, some of

whom tried strenuously to dissuade them from making che change.

("Why didn't you bring your camel, coo?" one girl's encoged father

asked her.) They were gossiped about as self-righteous, hypocritical,

magically malignan[. They were sometimes discriminared against in

che job market, and Suharto's "New Order" state instituted dress

code regulations (or eried co, in che face of angry demonstrations)

designed co discourage them. Occasionally ehey were even physi-

cally attacked, stones thrown at them, their shawls toro from their

heads. The decision to wear che jilbab, Brenner says, was not one to

be made lightly:

The remarks that wornen made about che psychological and

practical obstacles to [adopting che jilbab] that ehey encoun-

tered indicated that it was a decision that required much soul-

searching, determination, and even stubborness on their parí.

[Wearing the jilbab] marks a woman as "different" in Java,

where norms of behavior are very strong and where defying

convention has immediate repercussions for an individuaPs rela-

tionships with others. Donning jilbab often leads co a marked

change in a young woman's social and personal identity as well

as to a potencial disruption of che social ties on which she has

hitherto relied."

Brenner interviewed twenty women who had made what she

calls che "conversion" to jilbab. Most were university students or

recen[ graduares in their twenties. All resided in che large central

Javanese court cities, Yogyakarta and Surakarta, where religious di-

versity, even syncretism, has always been particularly marked. Most

carne from middle- or lower-middle-class backgrounds. Many grew

up in religiously undutiful households. All were active in organiza-

cions and devotional groups connected with "che Islamic Resurgence."

"The women who spoke to me," Brenner writes,

were intelligent, strong-minded people who consciously and in-rellectually struggled with che contradictions of everyday lile

Tice Tdinch o( Destiny ^ 181

tn.i vyh„ liadl rheir usan. ht<hl^ ira ^:nral reasou t,i chuosing

thr un,res rico he l cho.on .ALr r u,uncn darse gro wear jilboh]

pnrtlc coi t reli ci,,,,^ , ,u,,,iun, t•,,,,ring Arar [,rj 'cu .1 re-

quirenent ... ol I.Luu. h [h, lo,wevcr, rheir narrarivess

exhihitr,l eertain cherna, tico ,horeed tia[ adherente co reli-

uinu< Joetrina o,,. n,,t i ae .n!c impertis.... Their motivations

. ^ccrc s,mulrinc,n;.k re,^„n,il, relieinu,, and political... .

[Fveuj the mu,t ,i,, cm„ti,tn.tliv laden storics ot cun-

version ro jilbab t^me,,inc,l rcidtin rhem elemenes of a larger

srory° rhar ene mpnsses the cunremporary Indonesian Islamic

movementl

Brenner has much ro sao ibout che connection of all Chis to

lndonesian political deveiohments, ro modernization, to che broader

movement co reinvigorarc Islam, to the revision of gender defini-

rions and expeecations, eni,¡ co che search for personal and collective

identity in a rapidly changing world. Bur for us, whac is most co che

point is che sort of ans«ers she gor ehen she started asking these

young women )ames-Gkc yuc,rions abour whac becoming a jilbab

wearer amounred ro personah\S whac it felt like, as something lived

chrough, undergone, "experienced." Intensified self-awarenesss, the

fear of dearh, che panoptic surveillance of God, a sense of rebirth, a

regaining of self-mastery, all the familiar inflections of che pinch of

destiny-who ato I? whac am 1 supposed co do? whac is to become

of me? rr^here does fimdiry lic?-appeared, as if on cue.

"Each of che women ... indicared rhat changing her clothing

in chis way" Brenner wrires, 'changed her feelings abour herself and

her actions."

For several women che decision ... liad heen precipitated by a

profound anxiety; thar anxicq, had then given way to a feeling

of relame calm and a sense of renewal afrer they had begun to

wear jilbab. The immediare cause of che anxiety ... had been

an ovcrwhelming fear of Jying and ... whac dearh might mean

for rhem if they liad failed t o fultill che requiremencs of Islam.

The new ar^areness of sin they had acquired had led rhem to a

Jeep discress ahout how theye might suffer in tire afterlife as a

consequence of rheir own sinning.... They experienced Jeep

confusion, self-douhr, and a cense of being ouc of control.

Donning jilbab alleviated their anxterics abour dearh and

[gave] rhem a new teeling of control over thcir futures in chis

life and the next.

And she quotes, from a popular magazine, che inspiracional

words of a young film actress, abour ra give hirch: "1 wa, terrified. 1

was really afraid 1 mis going co die. Because it 1 were to die, what

would he the price for all my Images of her pase, of heme

drunk, of wandering abour at night, of frequendng discochequcs, of

appearing nude on the screen, carne before her eyes. lc was, she said,

"as if [she] heard 'the whisper of heaven' at that moment.""

This may be more than a liarle formulaic, as indeed many, if noc

most, of James's accounts of spiritual renewal are, for we are again

dealing here noc wich experience simpliciter, whatever that might be,

but wich representatfons of ir offered co che self and others, to cales

abour it." And, as wich James's accounts, che tales recur and recur:

One day Naniek [one of Brenner's informants who resisted

pressures from friends to wear jilbab] was suddenly overcome

with che fear chal she would die even though she was noc ill.

She realized thar there were teachings of Islam thac she had

noc yet observed, including che requirement to wear jilbab....

She woke up in che night in terror, thinking, "What can 1 do?

I don't have any [Islamic] clothes."She confides in her brocher, who buys che material for her,

and a few days later (she recalled che exact date) she began to

wear jilbab. As soon as she accepted it, wearing Islamic clothing

became easy for her, and "che clothes just carne by themselves,"

even though she had little money. Her fears of dearh subsided.'°

And, yet another commentacor, writing in an Indonesian-

language mass markec book called Muslim Women Toward che Year

2000, designed apparently to insrruct such women in whac to feel,

invokes che rebirth imagery explicicly:

The most important ... quescion for a woman who is aware inchis day and age is "who am 1?" With that quescion, she fries tounderstand wich full awareness thar she cannot remain che way

i 82 -- ( 'oq'tsr j'III 1 Thr idi,m4, o['flestin) 183

she is now.... She ^vants o be self-derernrining.... She

wants to develop herselt. She alwavs aims to he reborn. In that

rehirth, she wanrs to he her own midwife."

Brenner has other tesrimony of che emocional cortejares of this

change of clothing which is a chango of che way of being in che

world: worries aboer living up ro che demands of che new dress,

inrensified concerns abour [amor transgressions, and che feeling of

being constantly under exacring moral urveillance, not just by God

and conscience but by everyone around, searching avidly for failings

and lapses. But perhaps enough has been said to make rhe point: in

whar we are pleased to call ihe real world, "meaning," "identiry,"

"power," and "experience" are bopelesslp entangled, mutually impli-

cative, and "religion" can no more be founded upon or reduced to

the las[, rhat is, "experience," rhan it can to any of the others. Ir isnot in solirude that faith is mide.

Other bcasrs, of course, other mores. The responses Brenner elicited

from rhese Javanese young women secking to become more Muslim

are hardly what one would get froin Indian Hindus, Burmese Bud-

dhisrs, French Catholics, or oven orher sorts of Muslims. In Mo-

rocco, whcre 1 also worked, che Indonesian responses would be seen

as unscriptural, sentimental, anrinomian, or worse. Men rather than

women, che aged rather rhan che young, uneducated peasants ratherrhan educated urbanices, Africrans, East Asians, Americans, Latins,

or Europeans rather rhan Southeast Asians would surely produce

quite different pictures-quite different because quite differently

constructed, in quite differenr situations, out of quite different ma-

terials. The moveinenr of religious identities and religious issues to-

ward che center of social, political, and oven economic life may be

widespread and growing, in horh scale and significance. But it is not

a untrary phenomenon ro be uniformly described. There are as

many varieties of "religious experience," or, again, expressions of

religious experience, as thcre evcr were. Perhaps more.

This retums us to [he question of James's usefulness to os now,

ro che double sense, 1 reinarked in beginning, that che Varieties

l84 Cóapter Y Ifl

seems at once dated and exemplary, suffused with a period atmos-

phere and a model of the sort of work that, like Brenner's, seems

cutting-edge, the next necessary thing. Ir is a cliché, but like many

clichés nonetheless true, that major thinkers, like major artists, are

both completely engulfed in their time-deeply situated, as we now

would say-and transcendent of those times, vividly alive in other

times, and that these two facts are internally connected. Cerrainly

Chis is true of James. The radically individualistic, subjectivistic,

"brute perceprion" concept of religion and religiousness, which his

location as heir to New England intuitionism and his own encoun-

ters with che pinch of destiny led him roto, was complemented by

che intense, marvelously observan[, almost pathologically sensitive

attention to che shades and subtleries of thought and emotion rhey

also led him into.

It is Chis last, circumstantial accounts of che personal inflections

of religious engagement that reach far beyond the personal roto che

conflicts and dileinmas of out age, that we need now. And for rhat

we need James, however other his age or his temper now may seem.

Or at leas[ we need che sor[ of inquiry he pioneered, che sor[ of

talents he possessed, and che sor[ of openness to che foreign and

unfamiliar, the particular and che incidental, yes, even che extreme

and che brainsick, he displayed.

We have had massive, continental shifts in religious sensibility

before whose impact en human life, we now see, was, despite their

raggedness, radical and profound, a vast remaking of judgment and

passion. It would be somerhing of a pity were we ro be living in che

midst of such a seismic event and not even know that it was going en.

dotes

1. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in HumanNature, New York: Modem Lihrary, 1929 [originally 1902], P. 476-

2, Ibid, p. 119; emphasis in original.3. Ibid., p. 171

4. Ibid., p. 250-

5. Ibid., P. 492.6. Ibid., p. 477.

7. Ibid., p. 476.

8. Ibid., p. 418.

711e íinclr of Desti;iy 185

i u - tc J s m ,e Sfuslim

(, 3-l A, thc inier-i 1w 111 , rk- 11 , a 1 1 u s, o. 1 1l,, familiar1 _, 1 11

\1],i1lIe 1 „n ...1 IIa.J 1 iiir . J,. 111 1,1 11 _,ncn i 1 f uh. "garnrent"

'1co11llt11, ,1,,,, 1 -.r t r .ec'! ]l u,nar waka- c Icor in ser init'ad hiornote.

1 ,ere, ., m.mer I ,lrink „f sones

if I .3',,11 1,111, .111,11,11, Goe, BI,n-

', I_ur 19,05 „n Jas ,, and

^ nrc„ nvss^, aud i,vliew,, lircnueñ

urk 1,, 1, r, ma .ir once 11 1 1 111111U1[ io,1 ot im, and a a,hemri.il advance

beyund it tire, intm' alía, Ceer1-, 71 h :eüm. oj Jara, Glene„e, III.: The Free

Press, ,960, and Geertz Ivlmn ( )'' u I: Rtli,^w n Demelapment in Morocco and

hrdmlesro, Ncw Haven: Yale Univer,irs' Pre,,, 1968. Fnr more recent observa-

tions, Cieerr:, Ajiei the Facr: Tre„ Countries, Four Cocados, One Anthropologist,

C.umhr,,lgc: Harvard Univers,re Pi,,, 1995. ('f.. S. Brenreer, The Domestication

of Desi,e: 111511,1, lR/ud1h, m,d ,41,danuv in 1,uz1 Princeton: Princeton Univer-

sity Pn'ss, 199$.

n. Bremter, "Reconsrrucimy Sdf,md S„cier3:"z. Ibid.

13. 16id.

14. ¡bol,

15. bar an extenslve dise ua,,lon und crirlyue of the idea oí "experience" as

an "inrducibl^' ground ot mr,min, and identlry, a "reliable lsource] oí knowl-

edge rhar comes from access ro die real;" in hiswrical analysis ("Experionce is

... nos ,he origin of our expl.uretion, bus llar szhich ese wanr tú explain"),

see ). Scott, "The Es' idence ( Bsperience," in J. Chandler er al., Questions of

Evidenee: Pruof, Practico, m,d P,rsuasiun acruss the Disciplines, Chicago: Univer-

siry of Chic,go Press, 1991, pp. 363-357.

16. Brenner, "Reeonsrruaing Selt ,nd Suc,er3'."

,7. Quoted in ibid.

1 11IUatolIcil1^ Rus: Je 1,011111

l31ruuelr's Cultural PSYC1,10/0yY

What does one say when one says "psychology": James, Wundt,

Bines, or Pavlov? Freud, Lashley, Skinner, or Vygotsky? Kohler,

Lewin, Lévy-Bruhl, Bateson? Chomsky or Piaget? Daniel Dennett or

Oliver Sacks? Herbert Simon? Since it got truly launched as a disci-

pline and a profession in the last half of the nineteenth century,

mainly by Germans, the self-proclaimed "science of the mind" has

nos just been troubled with a proliferarion of theories, methods,

argumenrs, and techniques. That was only to be expected. It has

also been driven in wildly different directions by wildly different

notions as to what it is, as we say, "about"-what sort of knowledge,

of what sort of reality, to whar sorr of end it is supposed to produce.

From the outside, at least, ir does not look like a single field, divided

into schools and specialties in the usual way. It looks like an assort-

menr of disparate and disconnected inquines classed together be-

cause rhey all make reference in some way or other to something or

other called "mental functioning." Dozens of characters in search of

a play.

From inside it doubtless looks a bit more ordered, if only be-

cause of rhe byzantine academic structure that has grown up around

it (the American Psychological Association has forty-nine divi-

sions), bus surely no less miscellaneous. The wide swings between

behaviorisr, psychometric, cognitivist, depth psychological, topo-

c q,i„ Dlll ¡87'

logical, developmentalisi , neur dogical, evolutionist , and culturalistconceptions of the subjecr hnee malle heing a psychologist an unset-ded occupation , subject not only to fashion , as are all the humansciences, but to sudden and frequent reversals of course . Paradigms,wholly new ways of going abour things, come along not by the cen-rury, hur by che decade ; somerimes, it almosr seems , by the month.It rakes either a preternarurally focused, dogmatical individual, whocan shur out any ideas bur hi, or her osen, or a mercurial , hopelesslyinquisitive one, who can keep dozens of rhem in play at once, toremain uprighr amidst this cambie of programs , promises, andproclamations.

There are , in psychology , a great m : my more of the resolved andimplacable , esprit de sysrén,e types (Pavlov, Freud , Skinner, Piaget,Chomsky) than there are of rhe apile and adaptable , esprit de finesseunes (James, Bateson , Sack,). Bar it is among che latter that JeromeBruner, autbor or coauthor of more rhan twenry books , and godknows huw many articles, un almosr as many subjects , clearly be-longs. In a breathless , lurching, yet s,tmehow deeply consecutivecareer spanning nearly sixty yeat-s, Bruner has brushed against al-

most every fine of thoughr in ps^chologv and transformed a numberof them.

Thar career pegan ar Harvard in che forties , during rhe heydayof hehaviorism , rat-running , the repetir.on of nonsense syllables, chediscrimination of sensory dilterences, and che measuremenr of gal-vanic responses . Bur, dissatisfied wirh che piling up of experimental"fmdings" on peripheral nrarter, (l is lira professional study involvedconditioning " helplessne ,s" in i rat i:nprisoned on an electrifiedgrill), he quickly joined che grutring hand of equally restless col-leagues, within psychology and wirh,asr , te) hecome one of cheleaders of che so-called Cognitive Revolurion.

By che late fifties, this rcvolution tras under way, and "bringing

che mind hack in" became che paule cry for a whole generation ofpsychologisrs , linguists, hrain modelers , erhnologisrs , and computerscientisrs , as well as a fcrv empiricnllp minded philosophers. Forthein, che primary objecrs oí stuav werc not stimulus srrengrhs andresponse patterns ; rhey werc mental actions-attending, thinking,

i 88 haprrr 1X

understanding, imagining, remembering, feeling, knowing. With a

like-minded colleague, Bruner launched a famous series of "New

Look" perception experiments to demonstrate che power of mental

selectivity in seeing, hearing, and recognizing something. Poorer

children see che same coin as larger than richer ones do; college

students are either very much slower ("defensive") or very much

quicker ("vigilant") to recognize threatening words than rhey are to

recognize unthreatening ones. With two of his students, he carried

out a landmark study of abstract reasoning. How do people, in fact,

rather than in logic, test their hypotheses? How do rhey decide

what is relevant to explanation and what is not? And in Ig6o, he

and che psycholinguist George Miller, another restless soul, founded

Harvard's interdisciplinary Center for Cognitive Studies, through

which virtually all of che leading figures in che field, established or

in the making, passed at one time or another and which ser off an

explosion of similar centers and similar work both hete and abroad.

"We cerrainly generated a point of view, even a fad or two," Bruner

wrote of his and his colleagues' work during chis period in his (as

it turras out, premature) 1983 autobiography, In Search of Mind.

"About ideas, how can one tell?"

After awhile, Bruner himself became disenchanted with the

Cognitive Revolution, or at least with what it had become. "Thar

revolution," he wrote at che beginning of his cggo Acrs of Meaning,

a "goodbye to all that" proclamation of a new direction,

was intended to bring "mind" back finto che human sciences af-

ter a long cold winter of objectivism.. 1 . [But it] has now been

diverted finto issues that are marginal to the impulse that

brought it inro being. Indeed, it has been technicalized in a

manner that even undermines chat original impulse. This is not

to say that te has failed: far from it, for cognitive science must

surely be among che leading growth shares on che academic

bourse. It may rather be that it has hecome diverted by success,

a success whose technological virtuosity has cosí dear. Some

critics ... even argue that che new cognitive science, che child

of che revolution, has gained its technical successes at che price

Imhalancing .Rct 189

L,f 1c1 1111111111 i-111 rhe ve1 naxeta td 1111111 it had suught ro

rearrablish in psvehalo-,c, utJ dhan It h i, dzerchp estnmged

mueh of pxveh5l 1111 trato ihe 511111 hum.m ^eienees and the

hum.lnilies.

In 5t ing rhe Ci.gnlrisr ke,„InrLut huut irselt, Jistaaeing it

frnut hi ph-ieeh leduet1,nntn thu br iut is hardware, mind is soft-

,vare , thtnl:ing is th, ', lt re ¡io,es'sin,1 dieicalisd uztounation on

he hanlwnre ), Hnmer hay ati.L,l, ovrr rhe lasa decade or Su, yer

anuther bunner heralding, ver an, ther dispensation : "Cultural Psy

chology." Whar now comes tu rhe center uf attenrion es rhe individ-

ual's engagemenr wirh estahlished systems of shared meaning, wirh

the beliefi, the values, aun] 1111 undersrandings uf those already in

place in suciery as tic or she is rhrown in among them . For Bruner,

rhe criticad " test trame " lar this poim of view, is education-rhe

tield ut practices wirhin which sueli engagement is, in the first in-

stance , effected . Rather rhan a 1,sychol5gy Arar sees rhe mind as a

progrmnnmhle mcchanisnt , we need onc that sees it as a social

achievemcnr . Educarion " is nor simply t technical business of welh

managcd information proce ing , nor oven simply a matter of apply-

ing `learning theuries' co the classroont or using the results of sub-

ject-cenrered ' achievemcnr festine.' Ir is a complex pursuit of fitting

a culture to the necds of its members luid their ways of knowing to

rhe needs of rhe culture."'

Bruner's concern wirh education and educacional policy dates from

the studies of mental development in infants and very young chil-

dren thar, in Bis growing resistance to machine cognitivistn, he be-

gan to carry out ni rhe raid- ixties, just-such are rhe workings of

the Zeirgeisr-as rhe Head Siam program was conring, with Great

Society fantare, grandly intn heing. Tliese studies led hico to an

"outside-ín'' view of such development, one which concerns itself

wirh "rhe kind of world needed ro makc it possible to use mind (or

heart!) etfeaively-what kinds ut symbol systems, what kinds of

accounts of the pass, wbat urrs and seicnces."s The unfolding oí the

eritical fearures of human rhlnking, joitir attention rsith others to

ohjects and actions, attrihution of hehcfs, desires, and emnrions to

others, graspinrg rhe general ignificance ot situations. a tense ol seif-

hood what Bruner calls 'rhe cnrrv tato meaning be iro very

early in the development process, prior not just tu formal schuoling

but to walking and rhe acquisition of language. "lnfants, tt turned

out, were mueh smarter, more cognirivcly proactive rather rhan re-

active, more arrenrive to rhe 'unmediate social would arnund ncem,

than had been previously suspected. Thev empharically did not in-

habit a wodd of `buzzing, bloomíng confusion': rhey seemed in

search of predictive stability from rhe very srart.`

The Head Start program hegan wirh a rather differenr, in some

ways complemenrary, in others contrastive, view of early develop-

ment based en a rather differenr set of scientific investigations:

those showing that laboratory animals raised in "impoverished envi-

ronments," ones with few challenges and reduced stimulation, did

less well than "normals" en such standard learning and prohletn-

solving tasks as mate running and food finding. Transferred, more

metaphorically than experimenrally, to schooling and ro school-

children, this led ro the so-called cultural deprivation hypothesis.

Children raised in an "impoverished" cultural environment, in the

ghetto or wherever, would, for rhan reason, do less well in school.

Hence che peed for corrective action to enrich their environment

early on, before che damage was done. Hence Head Stars.

Aside from the fact rhan the idea of correcting for "cultural de-

privation" depends en knowing what such deprivation consists in

(what it has most often been taken to consist in is departure from

rhe standards of an idealized, middle-class, "Ozzie and Harriet"

American culture), such an approach seems to assume that "cultural

enrichment" is a good co be provided to che deprived child by the

wider society, like a hot lunch or a smallpox injection. The child is

seen to be lacking something, nor to be seeking something; regarded

as receiving culture from elsewhere, nor as constructing it in siru out

of rhe materials and interacrions immediately to hand. Bruner was a

sometime advisor to Head Stars, and he is still a defender of its very

real successes and its posssibilities for extension and reform (it is,

afrer all, an "outside-in" program). But he argues that rhe results of

1 I») ( i: •t trr L\ 1 ltitbnluncntg í^ct 1 91

his sor[ ot research inm che mental development of children-

grown by now incoa field in itsclf, turning up more and more evi-

dence of che conceptual powers ot children-renders the "depriva-tion" approach obsolete. Secing oven the infant and che preschooler

as active agents bent en master, of a particular form of life, ondeveloping a workable way ot being in che world, demands a re-thinking of che entice eduwcioual process . It is noc so much a mas-ter of providing something che child hasn't got as enabling some-thing che child already has : che Jesire co make sense of self andothers, che drive co understand whar che devil is going on.

Por Bruner, che critica) enabhng factor , che rhing chal brings themind co focos , is culture-" che way of lile and thoughc that weconscruct , negotiare , insticutionalize , and finally (after it is all set-tled) end up calling 'realiry ' co comforc ourselves .` Any theory ofeducacion thar hopes to reform it, and diere hardly is any ocherkind, needs to trato its arcencion on the social production of mean-ing. The cerros upon which society and child-che °realiry" alreadythere and che scurcling intellccr thrust bodily roto it-engage oneanocher are in good pare worked out in che classroom, ac least theyare in our school - conscious societg . It is chere thar mentality is mosrdeliberately fashioned , subjecrivity mosr systematically produced,and intersubjectivity-che abingy co " read ocher minds"-mosrcarefully nurtured . Ac least in che favorable case, flor perhaps en-tirely common , che child, "leen as an epistemologist as well as alearner," moves roto an ongoing community of discoursing adulesand charcering children where "she ... gradually comes co appreci-ate thar she is acting noc direccly on 'che world' bus on beliefs sheholds ahora chal world.`

This sum toward conceni with che ways in which che under-standings abroad in che larger society are used by che schoolchild cofind his feet , co build up an inner sense of who he is, whac othersare up to, whac is likely co happen , whar can be done abour things,opens Bruner 's "cultural psychology " ro a hose of issues normallyaddressed by ocher disciplines-history, literamre , law, philosophy,linguistics , and mosr especially chal ocher hopelessly miscellaneousand inconseant science, anchropology . Such a psychology , ratherlike anchropology , has an ecleccic perspective and a vas[ ambitionbuilt direccly roto it. It seems co cake all experience for its object, to

t C)2 2- Chapter- IX

draw on all scholarship for its means. With so many doors co open,

and so many keys with which co open them, it would be folly co try

to open all of them at once. That way lies knowing less and less

abour more and more. The door Bruner, sensitive as always to che

practicalities of research, wants to open, not alcogether surprisingly,

given recen[ developmenrs in "discourse theory," "speech-act analy-

sis," "che interpretation of calcares," and "che hermeneutics of ev-

eryday life," is narrative.

Telling stories, abour ourselves and abour others, to ourselves

and to others, is "che mosr natural and che earliest way in which we

organize out experience and out knowledge.."tl But you would hardly

know it from standard educacional theory, trained as it is upon tests

and recipes:

It has been the convention of mosr schools co treat che are of

narrative-song, drama, fiction, theater, whatever-as more

"decoration" [han necessity, as something wich which to grace

leisure, somecimes even as something morally exemplary. De-

spite that. we frame che accounts of out cultural origins and

out mosr cherished beliefs in story form, and it is noc just che

"content" of chese stories thac grip us, bus therr narrative arti-

fice. Our immediate experience, whar happened yescerday or

che day before, is framed in che same storied way. Even more

striking, we represen[ our lives (to ourselves as well as co

others) in che form of narrative. It is noc surprising that psy-

choanalysts now recognize that personhood implicares narra-

tive, "neurosis" being a reflection of either an insufficient,

incomplete, or inappropriate scory abour oneself. Recall that

when Peter Pan asks Wendy to retum co Never Never Land

with him, he gives as his reason that she could teach che Lost

Boys there how to tell stories. If they knew how to tell them,

che Lost Boys might be able to grow up.'

Growing up among narratives, enes own, those of teachers,

schoolmates, parents, janitors, and various ocher sorts of whar Saul

Bellow erice mordantly referred to as "realiry instructors," is che

essential scene of educacion-"we live in a sea of stories." Leam-

ing how to swim in such a sea, how co consrruct stories, understand

stories, classify stories, check out stories, see through stories, and use

I»ibalanctng }fct € 193

storie, tu Gnd ,lit hoty ruin", ,c,,rk ,u „eh.tt rhey come to, is whar

rhe scho„I. 'and hevoni Ihe ,ch.l rhe r, h„le "culture of eduearion,"

i,, .ar has[, il ihout. Thc hcm „t thc nrarter whar rhe Icarner

Irarn, ,v h.aicvcr rhe icLLhcr t , 1le>, `that hum.in bcinp> make

serse „t rhe worW by telline st„ric, ah,iur tt-hr using rhe narrative

m,,,le tor c,msrrLin;, tc,tbn... -1 111, acre r,n,ls, "instnnnenr[s] of mind

un beh,tlf oi me.tning tn.ihim, "

Bruners most recetat tvork is, rlien, Jedicated te) tracing out the

implicarions of this view of narrative a5 "both a mole of thought

and an expression of a culture's world view.`I He has launched in-

quiries inro the teaching of science, ¡tiro 'folk pedagogy," into the

collabomrive nature of Icarning, and inro rhe child's construction of

"a rheory of mind" ro explain and undenrand orher minds. Autism

as the inability ro develop such a rheory, rhe formal features of

narrative, culture as praxis, and rhe approaches to educarion of

Vygotskp, Piaget, and Pierre Bourdiew, related to Bruner's but in

some tension with it, leve tll Ruin discussed, at least in passing. So

have recetar developmenrs in primntology, cross-cultural studies of

education, IQ testing, "merarognition" ("rhinking about one's

thinking"), relarivism, and ilic uses of ncurology. te is all rather on

rhe wing; a wondrous lot gocs by wondrously fast.

This is not ruar serious a titult, if ir is a faulr at all, in what is

still a series of forays designed ro open up a territory rather than tu

cuan and serle it. But ir Joes (cave even rhe sympathetic critic at a

bit of a losss as to where it all is going, whar "cultural psychology"

amounts to as a held among helds, a conrinuing enterprise wirh a

budget of issues and in agenda tor confronting theni. One can, of

course, gui something of a serse of dais by looking up Bruner's

dozcns opon luzcas of techo ical invesrigations or by hunting down

his even more numerous cin:dons to studies by colleagues on every-

rhing from "rhe child's undcrsranJing of nuniber" and "oral versions

of personal cxpericnce," to "hendir-cosr unelysis of pre-school edu-

carion" and "impaired recognition of emotion in facial expression

following bilateral damage (o rhe human amygdala."

But lince niosr of this "lireraturc," wrapped in sratisrics and en-

folded in protocols, is scatrered through professional journals and

disciplinary symposia, few besides specialisrs are likely to hnd rhe

patience tor such a task. Genuino rrearises, more summary, and thus

more accessible, synthesizing works, aurhored by students, cowork-

crs, and followers of Brunei, are beginning to appear in increasing

mmrihers, from which one can get a somewhar elearer picture of

wherc rhe whole enrerprise is ar rhe moment and whar progress it is

making." And in rhe final section of his most recent book, a section

called, with uncerrain surety, "Psychology's Next Chapter," Bruner

himself undertakes to lay out the direcrions in which cultural psy-

chology should move and to describe how it should relate itself to

other approaches ro "the study of mind."

As usual, Iris attitude is conciliatory, eclectic, energetic, up-beat

Can a cultural psychology ... simply stand apart from the kind

of biologically rooted, individually oriented, laboratory domi-

nated psychology that we have known in the past? Must rhe

more situated study of mind-in-culture, more interpretively an-

thropological in spirit, jettison all that we have leamed before?

Some writers . . . propose that our past was a mistake, a misun-

derstanding of what psychology is about.... [But] I would like

to urge an end to [an] "either-or" approach to the question of

what psychology should be in the fumre, whether it should be

entirely biological, exclusively computacional, or monopolisti-

cally cultural.

He wants to show how

psychology can, by devoting its attention to certain critical

topics ... illustrate the inreraction of biological, evolutionary,

individual psychological, and cultural insights in helping us

grasp the nature of human mental functioning. [The] "nexr

chapter" in psychology [will be] about "intersubjectiviry"-how

people come to know what others have in mind and how they

adjust accordingly ... a ser of copies ... central to any viable

conception of a cultural psychology. But it cannot be under-

srood without reference ro primate evolution, to neural func-

tioning, and tu the processing capacities of minds."

1,), (l.A 1 Itubalaucinp %lct ' l o5

This is all very well, rhe sort of halanced and reasonable ap-proach thar softens contrasts , dr arms enemies , skirts difficulties, andfinesses hard decisions. But rhere remains che sense that Bruner is

underesrimacing the explosiveness of his own ideas. To argue thatculture is socially and hisrorically construcred , that narrative is aprimar', in humans perhaps the primar', mode of knowing , that weassemble the selves we live in out of materials lying about in thesocierv around us and develop "a theory of mind" to comprehendthe selves of ochers, that we acr flor directíy on che world but onbeltefs we hold abour che wodd, that from birth on we are all ac-tive, impassioned "meaning makers" in search of plausible stories,and that "mind cannor in any sense be regarded as 'natural' ornaked, with culture choughr oí as an adJ-on"-such a view amountsto rather more than a midcourse correction .'° Taken al¡ in all, itamounts to adopting a position ihar can fairly be called radical, notto say subversive . lr seems very doubrful that such views , and ochersconnected with them-perspectivism , instrumentalism , eontextual-ism, antireductionism-can he ahsorhed finto rhe ongoing traditionsof psychological research (oc indeed fimo che human sciences gener-ally) wirhour causing a fair amount of noise and upheaval . If "cul-tural psychology " does gain ascendancy , or even serious marketshare, ir will disrurb a lot more chau pedagogy.

For it is in fact che case that noi only is cultural psychologyevolving mpidly , gathering force, and amassing evidente , bur so aswell are its two most importan [ rivals, or anyway alternatives-in-formation processing cognitivism and neurohiological reductionism.The introduction finto cognirivi ,m of disrrihutive parallel processing(which Bruner dismisses ar one poro[ as but a "veiled version" ofbehaviorist associationism ) and computer-mediated experimental-ism has given it something of a second wind. A technology - drivenspurr in hrain research , che exrension of evolutionary theory to ev-erything from nroraliry to consciousness , che emergente of a wholerange of post- Cartesian philosophies of mind, and perhaps most im-

portant che dawning of che agc uf che absolute gene, have done thesame for biologicm . In che face of all Chis, and of the moral andpractical issues at stake, courreous , ro-each-his -own dividing up ofche territory does not look ro be in che cards.

JQÓ -. Chiuptrr IX

"Psychology's next chapter" is more likely to be tumultuous

than irenic as computacional, biological, and cultural approaches

grow in power and sophisticacion sufficient enough to assure that

they will have transformative impacrs upon one another. The sim-

ple assertion that biology provides "constraints" upon culture, as it

does, and that compucationally based cognitive science is incompe-

tent co deal with "che messiness of meaning making," as it is, will

hardly suffice to resolve che deep-going issues that, by its very pres-

ence, cultural psychology is going to make unavoidable. Bringing so

large and misshapen a camel as anthropology finto psychology's tent

is going to do more to toss things around than to arrange them in

order. At che climax of what is surely one of che most extraordinary

and productive careers in che human sciences, a career of contin-

uous originality and tireless exploration, Bruner seems to be in che

midst of producing a more revolutionary revolution than even healtogether appreciates.

Within anthropology, che clariry, che relevante, che analytic power,

even che moral status of che concept of culture have been much

discussed in recent years, to no very certain conclusion save that if

it is not co be discarded as an imperialist relic, an ideological ma-

neuver, or a popular catchword, as its various critics variously sug-

gest, it must be seriously rerhought. Giving ir a central role in "psy-

chology's nexc chapter," as Bruner suggests, should do much to

encourage such rethinking, as well as to exrend similar questionings

to che no less embatcled concept of mind he wishes ro conjoin with

it. But it will hardly simplify things. To che abiding puzzles afflicting

psychology-nacure and nurture, top down and bottom up, reason

and passion, conscious and unconscious, competence and perfor-

mance, pcivacy and intersubjectiviry, experience and behavior,

leaming and forgetting-will he added a host of new ones: meaning

and action, social causaliry and personal intention, relacivism and

universalism, and, perhaps most fundamentally, difference and com-

monality. If anthropology is obsessed with anything, it is with how

much difference difference makes.

Imbalanciag ílct 1 Q7

Then is no siIni'le eran, 1,1 111 t, .lucsti,llr o lar 'as cultural

dillrancc, aro aOneerne.l UL „u,li >iuy,le in.wer, are otten enough

,icen, u,ualle cxtrcnx L In ibero t, merely (he ques-

tion itsel, .,>ked md nnnkud ut caere ut,r,uicc. Tu thioty so .ingu-

IarLin¡ ^i ,,elenco in nnonq uch drarmíncdly generalizing enes as

genes,,, hiiormo t lnn >Hud, ,IcccLLpntenral psychology, genera-

tive' erunm.u, neurohice, ,Ieci>i n thc,:n: and neo-Darwinism is ro

cuan rermintl e rifu,i,ni in 1 ion lar- rhe ,rudy ot mental actlvity-

already rcell-cnout;h ohscurod hy imperial programas, inimical world

views, and a proliferation ,t( procederes. What, in rhe days of Sartre,

we would Nave colled Bruner's "projeci" implies a good deal more

than adding "culture" (or "meaning," or "narrative") tú the mix-

another variable heard from. It iutplies as he himself has said, con-

fronting rhe world as a ficld of differences, "adjudicating rhe differ-

ent construals of reality that are inevitable in any diverse society.""

Or in any genuine inquiry. Trying m hring together, or perhaps

more carefully, to relate in a producrive manner, everything from

"p.sychic universals" and "story relling" ro "neural models" and "en-

culturated chimpanzees," from A/ygotsky, Goodman, and Bartlett tú

Edelman, Simon, and Premack (nor to speak of Geerrz and Lévi-

Srraussl) obviously involves .u much mobilizing differences as it

does disolving them, "adjudicating" conrrasts (nor, perhaps, alto-

gether rhe bes[ word), rarher [han overriding them or forcing them

finto some pallid, feel-good ecumenical whole. Ir may just be thar it

is sor the reconciliation of diverso approaches to rhe study of mirad

that is most immediately needed, a calming eclecricism, but the

effective playing of them off against one another. If rhat miraculous

cabbage, rhe brain itself, now appears to be more adequately under-

stood in tercos of separared proceses sinudtaneously active, then rhe

saíne may be true of the mirad wirh which biologizers so often con-

fuse tt. History, culture, rhe body, and ¡he workings of rhe physical

world indeed fix rhe characrer ot anyone's mental life-shape it,

stabili.e ir, dll it with conrenr. But they do so independentiy, par-

titiveli, concurrently, and difterentially. They do flor just disappear

finto a resultan[ like so many componen[ vecrors, or come together

in some nicely equilibrared fricii,mless concord.

Such q viere, rhar a usefril undertanding of how we manage to

rhink must he une in which svu,bnl¡e tonos, hisrorical traditions,

ICS -- f h^gtirr LY

cultural arrifacrs, neural cede,, environmental pressures, genetic in-

scriptions, and rhe like operare coactively, ofren enough even ago-

nistically, seems to be struggling rnward exacter expression in recen[

work, ar leas[ in parí stimulated by Bruner's own. Ande Clark's Be-

ing There is dedicated ro nothing less [han "purting brain, body and

world together again." William Frawley's Vygorsky arel Cognirive Sci-

ence seeks "to show that rhe human mirad is both a social construct

and a computacional device as opposed ro rifle or rhe orher."' So far

as culture ("the symbolic systems that individuals [use] in consrruct-

ing meaning") is concerned, what Clark calls "rhe image of mirad as

inextricably interwoven with body, world and action," and Frawley,

"the mirad in the world [and] che world ... in rhe mirad," makes it

impossible to regard it any longer as extemal and supplementary to

rhe resident powers of the human intellect, a tool or a prosthesis. it

is ingredient in those powers."The course of out understanding of mirad does not consist in a

determined march roward an omega point where everything finaily

falls happily together; it consists in che repeated deployment of dis-

tinct inquines in such a way thar, again and again, apparently with-

out end, they force deep-going reconsiderarions upan une another.

Constructing a powerful "cultural psychology" (or a powerful psy-

chological anthropology-not altogether the same thing) is less a

matter of hybridizing disciplines, putting hyphens between them,

[han it is of reciprocally disequilibrating them. At a time when

monomanic, theory-of-everything conceptions of mental function-

ing, stimulated by local developments in neurology, genetics, pri-

matology, literary theory, semiotics, systems theory, robotics, or

whatever have come increasingly into fashion, what seems ro be

needed is the development of strategies for enabling Bruner's "differ-

ent construals of [mental] reality" to confront, discompose, energize,

and deprovincialize one another, and rhus drive the enterprise errat-

ically onward. Everything that rises need not converge: it has only

to make rhe most of its incorrigible diversity.

The ways of doing this, of making disparate, even conflicting,views of what the mirad is, how it works, and how it is mosr profita-bly studied into useful correctives to one another's assurances, are,of course, themselves multiple-extremely difficult to devise, ex-tremely difficult te put in place once they are devised, extremely

futbalartciuuy Act -— i c79

susceptible, once thev are pur in place, ro bringing ora an academic

version of Hobbsean war. Again, so Lar as anthropology is con-

cerned, what most posirions it ro conrribute to such a task, and to

avoiding irs parhological carcomes, is nos irs particular findings

about African witchcrafr or Melanesian exchange, and certainly nos

any theories it may have developed al,out universal necessities andrhe ingenerate Iogic of social lite, bus iis long and intimare engage-

ment with cultural difference and wirh rhe concrete workings of

such difference in social life. Surve}'ing contrasts, tracing their im-

plications, and enabling thein somchow to speak ro general issues is,after all, irs merier,

lvlanaging difference, or it rhan rounds roo manipulative, navi-

gating it, is rhe hearr of the master. As with al¡ such enterprises,

there are e good many more wavs of gerting ir wrong rhan rhere are

of gerring it right, ami one of dsc mosr common ways of getting it

wrong is through convincing ourselves rhat we have gotten it

right-consciousness explained, how the mirad works, rhe engine of

reason, rhe last word. Whirehc,ul once remarked that we trust build

out systems and keep rhern opera; han, given his own passion for

complereness, certainty, and wholisric synthesis, he neglected to add

thar rhe tormer is a great deal easier to accomplish rhan rhe latter.

The hedgehog's disease and rhe fox's-premarure closure and the

obsessive Leer of it, tymg ti all up and lerting it all dangle-may be

equally obstructive of movement in tire human sciences. But, "in

nature," as rhe positivists used ro say, rhe one is encountered far

more frequendy rhan tire orher, especially in rhese days of high-tech

tunnel vision.

One rhing that is certain, if anyrhing is certain when one comes

to talk of such things as meaning, consciousness, thought, and feel-ing, is that borh psychology',s "nexr chapter" and anthropology's are

nos going to be orderly, wcll-fornied sorts of discourse, beginnings

and middles neatly connecred to ends. Neither isolating rival ap-

proaches to understanding minó and culture in fenced communities

("evolutionary psychology," .. syntbolic anthropology") nor fusing

them inro an inclusive whole ("cognitive science," "semiotics") is in

rhe long run, or even rhe medium, really workable-rhe one be-

cause it reines difference and cxalts ir, rhe orher because ir under-

estimares irs ubiquiry, irs ineradicabiliry, and irs force.

The reason shas rhe legalism "adjudication" may nos be rhe best

term to signal rhe altemative tú these ways of avoiding issues is thar

it suggests an "adjudicator," something (or someone) shas sorts

things out, shas reconciles approaches, ranks them, or chooses

among them. But whatever order emerges in either mirad or culture,

it is nos produced by some regnant central process or directive

structure; it is produced by rhe play of ... well, whatever ir is rhat

is, in rhe case, in play. The furure of cultural psychology depends en

rhe ability of irs practitioners tú capitalize on so turbulent and inel-

egant a situation-a situation in which rhe openness, responsive-

ness, adaptabiliry, inventiveness, and intellectual restlessness, to say

nothing of rhe optimism, shas have characterized Bruner's work

since its beginnings are peculiarly well-suited. His outlook and his

example secara likely to flourish, whoever it is who continues rhe

narrative, and whatever it is that it tums out to say.

flotes

1. J. Bruner, In Search of Mirad, Essays in Autobiography, New York: Harperand Row, 1983, p. 126.

a. J. Bruner, Acts of Meaning, Cambridge: Harvard Universiry Press, 1990,p. 1.

3. J. Bruner, The Culture of Education, Cambridge: Harvard Universiry

Press, 1996, p. 43.4. Ibid., p. 9.

5. Ibid., PP. 71-72.6. ¡bid., p. 87.7. Ibid., pp. 57, 49-

81 Ibid., p. 1211

9. Ibid., p. 40.

1o. Ibid., p. 147.11. Ibid., p. 130.12. Ibid., p. 41.13. Ibid., p. xiv.

14. Two such works have just now emerged: M. Cole, Cultural Psychology,A Once and Future Discipline, Cambridge: Harvard Universiry Press, 1996, andB. Shore, Culture in Mirad, Cognition, Culture, and the Problern of Meaning,

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Cole, a developmental psychologisr

moving toward social anthropology, traces rhe history of cross-cultural research

in psychology, in which he has himself played a major role, and develops aconceptual framework for rhe integrarion of anrhropological and psychological

200 I\ 1 )rnhalancing ñct < 201

Jrcdn1 oi:1 nocelhr utMi t zcicn-

it- AI, :Loa' tire. Va.eanJcr Lurct,

1 1 '11''1 co; ] 10\ M', rkM 11,1 m¢nitl%c psv.

:nntq, n' 1etvcl -in in, .!i„rt cl t, ah n, he culi, 'poconal" (rhar is,

ato-,enius,') nn!. "comcrti tul -itl ,t i,. <i.luual°1 mental nwdels ro inc

1,,„k '1 , .q'..t I .io,: m.m: r1) ti rhe}' cut checa und da

u,e c:nnr mether ven tul]: but t ev alter valuahlc account.s of rhe present

arare uf pl.tp. For onccr sudi xuunntn scorks, cytrally uadal fa- gerting a banda-

o1 selti e af rhe tic Id and ira hnuprc u, seo R A. Shweder, Tlunking through

Cultures, Ecpaditions in Culnsrdl ¡ 5ochnlo{r.', Canbridge: Harvard Universiry

Presa, 1991; j. Stigler, R. A. ShweJer, ir id O, Herdr, cds., Cultural Psychology:

The Chicago Sompo la on ( :uln ti, tu d 1 )et-olupaocnt, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versiry Presa, 1939; sud R. :A Shtvedcr an.I R- A. Levine, eds., Culture Theory:

Essavs on Mind, Seff and 8nv:rian, C.tmhridgc: Universiry° Presa, 1984.

15. Bruner, The Qdtun° of Edu..ulco, p. 160.

16. ¡bid, p. 171.

17. Bruner, Acto of Muanhtg. p. 95.

aS..A. Clark, Be[ng Therc: Pum, Braiu, Body, and World Together Again,

Cumhridge: MIT Presa, 1997; AX Fr<saeley, A Lgooko asad Cognitive Science: Lan-

guage und the Unification of the Social and Computacional Mind, Cambridge: Har-

vard Gniversin , Presa, 1997. For acknowlcdpmenrs of rhe stimulus of Bruner's

work, see, cK. Clark, p. 25; Frzwlcv, p. 223.

19. Bruner, Acts of Meaning, p. 1 t; Charle, Bcing There, p. xvii; Frawley,

Vygoaky und Cogaasnve Soence, p. 295. Par a constitutive as opposed to an add-

on vicw of die role of culrure in huntan evolurion, seo Clifford Geerez, "The

Impacr of che Concepr at culrure un ([le CTutcept of Ma t" sud "The Growth

of Culnac and rhe Evolurian of Mind," in The Interprerapon of Cultures, New

York: B.uic Books, 1973, IT 33-54, 55-83-

Cl4itldl'e. 1 ^1i11Ci. BraiY1' 1 )umi.

ti^bld, Cbflthlre

Between them, anthropology and psychology have chosen two of

the more improbable ohjects around which to try to build a positive

science: Culture and Mind, Kultur und Geist, Culture et Esprit. Both

are inheritances of defunct philosophies, both have checkered histo-

ries of ideological inflation and rhetorical abuse, both have broad

and multiple everyday usages that interfere with any effort to stabi-

lize their meaning or tum them roto natural kinds. They have been

repeatedly condemned as mystical or metaphysical, repeatedly ban-

ished from the disciplined precinets of serious inquiry, repeatedly

refused to go away.

When they are coupled, the difficulties do not merely add, they

explode. Either more or less complicated, equally implausible reduc-

tions of che one to the other or the other to the one are proposed

and elaborated, or some theoretically intricate system of interaction

Between them is described that leaves their separability unques-

tioned and their weight indeterminate. More recently, as che cogni-

tive sciences have developed, there has been a tendency to finesse

rhe terms more or less entirely, and talk instead of neural circuits

and computacional processing, programmable systems artifactually

instructed-a tactic which tonelera both the question of tire social

habitation of thought and that of che personal foundations of signif-

icance untouched and untouchable.

?(i _ - (iouarri ^, 1 203

So far as anthropology is concerned, rhese ¡11-framed or elided

doubled questions, che mental narure of culture, the cultural narure

of mind, have haunted it since irs inception. From Tylor's rumina-

rions on the cognitive insufficiencies of primitive religion in che

1870s, through Lévy-Bruhls on symparhetic participations and pre-

logical thought in the 19205, tu [hose of Lévi-Srrauss on bricolage,mythemes, and la pensée sauvagc in the t 96os, the issue of "primitive

menmlicy"-rhe negree ro which so-called natives Link otherwise

than the (also, so-called) civilized, ads=anced, racional, and scientific

do-has divided and scrambled ethnographical theory. Boas in TheMitin of Primitiva Man, Malinowski in Magic, Science, anzi Religion,and Douglas in Purihs and Danger llave al¡ wrestled with che same

angel: bringing, as they and rheir followers variously pur it, inner

and ourer, private and puhlic, personal and social, psychological and

hiscorical, experiential and hehavioral inro intelligible relationship.

But it is, pcrhaps, precisely this presumption-rhat what is at

issue and needs ro he determined is .some sor[ of hridging connec-

tion berween the world within che skull and che world outside of

ir-which hrings on che problem in the first place. Since Wittgen-

srein's denrolition of che ver, idea of a private language and ehe

consequenr socialization of speech and meaning, the location of

mind in che head and culture outside of it no longer seems to be but

so much obvious and incontrovertible caminan sense. What is in-

side che head is che brain, and some other biological stuff. What is

outside is cahbages, kings, and a numher of things. The cognitive

philosopher Andy Clark's subversive question, "Where does mind

stop and the rest of rhe world hegin?," is no more answerable than

its equally unnerving correlate, "Where does culture stop and cherest of the self begin?"'

Much of rhe recen[ work in what has come to be known as

"cultural psychology" has consisted of atremprs, some rather impres-

sive, some rather less so, all of rhem fumbling confusedly with the

macerials of several disciplines, to navigare around Chis double di-

lemma by reconceiving mentaliry and meaning in less border-draw-

ing, chis is [his, that is that, tenns. The very ticles of che studies inthis emerging genre-Culrurc in Mind, Actual Minds, PossibleWorlds, Thinking through Culivies, The Discursiva Mind, The Inner

Life: The Outer Mind, How institutions Think, Steps Toward an Ecol-

ogy of Mind, Ways of Worldmaking-suggest both its expansive reach

and its uncertain grasp.' "Putting," to quote Clark again, Chis time

from his title, "brain, body, and world together again" is a bit of task,

diffuse and ambitious. Bur ir is one which is, at length, now genu-

inely begun. Or, as che title of Michael Cole's recen[ survey of [his

motley subject, Cultural Psychology: The Once and Future Science,

suggests, rebegun.'

As is so often che case with necessary departures from familiar

procedures, che first step in chis effort te relate what inside-focused

psychologists have learned about how humans reason, feel, remem-

ber, imagine, and decide, to what outside-focused anthropologists

have learned about how meaning is construcced, learned, enacred,

and transformed, has been obvious for some time, but curiously diffi-

cult for either sor[ of inquirer to face up te. This is the abandon-

ment of che notion rhac che horno sapiens brain is capable of auton-

omous functioning, that it can operare effectively, or indeed can

operare at all, as an endogenously driven, concexr-independent sys-

tem. At leas[ since che circumstantial description of che incipienc,

prelinguistic stages of hominization (small skulls, erect stature, pur-

posed implements) began about a half century ago with che discov-

ery of prepithecanrhropine fossils and early Pleistocene sites, che

fact that brain and culture coevolved, mutually dependent the one

upon che other for rheir very realization, has made che conception

of human mental fimccioning as an incrinsically determined intra-

cerebral process, ornamented and extended, but hardly engendered

by cultural devices-language, rite, technology, reaching, and the

incest rabo-unsustainable. Our brains are not in a vat, but in our

bodies. Our minds are not in our bodies, but in che world. And as

for che world, it is not in our brains, our bodies, or our minds: they

are, along with gods, verbs, rocks, and politics, in it.

All Chis-the coevolution of body and culture, che functionallyincomplete character of che human nervous system, the ingredienteof meaning in thought and of thought in pracrice-suggests thatche way Tward an improved understanding of the biological, rhepsychological, and the sociocultural is not through arranging rheminro some sor[ of chain-of-being hierarchy srretching from che phys-

204 a C'hapter Y 1 culture, ¡U nid, 23rain c 205

1, 11 111,1 hi„In,11c11 te rhe ^ ` 1111,1 -em;,, ti,, c,ieh leve1 emergent

hela auJ lehendem up,nt ira l. witl, lu.k, re.luahle to) rte ene

uh il A,rc ir tt thnnrzh , nir, lh,n, as Jiseontinuous , s(,ver-

cian r:, ,hrie>, Cnel. ,t., n:l ,lit . I. acout > e^tcni.iily e;,nneeteti

("interi tced;' as rhe jame n lee iu) t,, ane anorher hy vague and

ad renca iota t, tac (. atar>, yu.unitie >. utJ causes , Cunst irurive of

ene _in,nLe^ ; red pn,ctlk a,n^i rea i, e. thev 11111,1 he treart,l as

.ueh-sis :emhl,:aKnt>. u„ I 1 s:l^, cl ,el^. nor ennrles; l.mds apes.

1Ut re.ilms.

That much perhaps 6 ar^eii ahle. Ceriainly, ir is inuch argued.

Miar seems les> arguahle is dr.,r u out undersnmding of the brain,

of i, ormation processing , of individual development, of social com-

muniecrion and colleetive heh,n sor, uf perception , emotion, fantasy,

memory , and concept tormation, ami of reference , sense, representa-

tion, alud discourse sevcr.illc adcanee in tome sort of wary and side-

long, comer-ot -the-oye att,utncss ot cine anorher, rhe po sssibility of

teducing all of them ti, ene of rhern, orring them inro sealed com-

partments , or bringing them inro a contprehensive , rheory-of-every-

rhing synrhesis , grows steadily'llore remoto . We are nor , apparently,

procee,ling toward some appointed and where it all comes together,

Babel is undonc , and Self lies down wirh Society.

On the contrary , seo are wimessing an increasingly rapid prolif-

eration, an onslaughr , actually, of whar Thomas Kuhn called disci-

plinary matrices- loose assemblages of techniques , vocabularios, as-

sumptions , instmurenrs , and exemplan achievements that, despite

their specificiries and originaliries , or even rheir grand incommen-

surahiliries , bear wirh inrensifying force and evolving precision upon

rhe speed , lile direction , ami rhe fine derail of one another's devel-

opment We have, and for the toresecable futura will continue to

hace, a more and more differenriared field of semi-independent,

mi-interactive discipline,, or disciplinary matrices ( al of research

communitics , sustaininp, eelehmting , critiquing, and extending

them ), devoted ro une or anorher approach ro rhe smdy of how we

rhink and whar we rhink with. And it is within such a field, dis-

peaed , disparare, and continuously changing, that we trust severally

learn to pursue flor a connnon projecr Sigmund Freud and Noam

Chomskv, Marshall Sahlins and E . O. Wilson, Gerald Edelman and

Patricia Cluirchland, Charles Taclor and Daniel 1)ennett, will never

come close enough re ene anorher to permit thar ro happen-hut a

hall-ordered, polycentric collecrion ot murually eondltionri oues.

That in mrn suggests rhat somcone sebo is, as 1 ant here, at-

tempting, flor ro report particular findings or evaluare particular

proposals, bur ro describe rhe general stare of play, is well advised to

try tú look s}noptiically at rhe oyeran ficld, stragyhng, irregular, and

resistant to summarv as ir is. We have in recenr vear, become in-

crcasingly usad ro dealing wirh distributiva, parually wnnected,

self-organizing, systems, especially in engincering and biolegy, and

in computar simulations of everything from ant hills and neuron

assemblies to embryonic development and object perception. But

we are still nor used to looking at disciplinary matrices, or rhe inter-

play of disciplinary matrices, in such a way. A field, once or futura,

like "cultural psychology," concerned with precisely such an inter-

play between dissimilar, impassioned, even jealous and uncongenial,

approaches to "how we nativas think," and between rho ardent par-

tisans driving them competitively forward, would seem well advised

ro become accustomed to doing so. lt is nor tightened coordination

or negligent, to-each-his-own difference-splitting thar we are going

ro find here. What we are going to find, and are finding, is exacting,

sharpening, deepening argument. And if you rhink things are turbu-

lent now, just watt.To make all Chis a bit more concrete, rather than merely pro-

grammatic and hortatory, let me Cake, in way of brief example, soma

recent discussions in anthropology, in psychology, and in neurology

of that most elusiva and miscellaneous particularity of our immedi-

ate life, the one Hume rhought reason was and ought to be every-

where rhe slave of, namely, "passioá'-"emotion," "feeling," "af-

fect," "attitude," "mood," "desire," "temper," "sentiment."

These words, too, define a space, nor an entity. They overlap,

differ, contrast, hang together only in oblique, family-resemblance

tercos-polythetically, as rhe phrasing goas; rhe problem is less to fix

rheir referents (something that is notoriously hard ro do-where is

"envy"? whar, "hemesickness"?) than ti) outline their reach and ap-

plicarion. 1 will stars with anthropology, nor only because 1 know

rhe material more exactly, bur hecause 1 have myself been somewhat

1 (.x1ture. ')lfittd, f3ruüz -^ 207

intplicated in the matrer-accused, in fact, of having "helped te

secure perinission for cultural-symholic anthropologists tu develop

an anthropology of self and feeling," apparently an unfortunate

thing.' Ir is nor my own work, howev er, which has been more advi-

sory in Chis regard than authorizing, a word in che ear, flor some sorr

uf benediction or license to practice, rhat 1 want to discuss here, but

that of che so-called culturalist, or symbolic-action, theorists of pas-sion and sentiment.

Such theorises (and, as rhey all are, and primarily, field re-searchers), of whom Michelle Rosaldo, Carherine Lutz, jean Briggs,

Richard Shweder, Robert Levy, and Anna Wierzbicka are, inter alia

and diversely, representativo examples, Cake an essentially semiotic

approach ro emotions-one which seas them in tercos of che signific

instruments and constructional pracrices through which they are

given shape, sense, and puhlic currency.s Words, images, gestures,

hody-marks, and terminologies, stor,es, rites, customs, harangues,

melodies, and conversations, are flor mere vehicles of feelings

lodged elsewhere, so many redections, symptoms, and transpirarions.

They are che locus and machinery of che thing irself.

"[IfJ we hope," Rosaldo writcs, wirh che groping awkwardness

this sorr of view tends ro produce, given che ingrained Cartesianism

of out psychological language, "ro leam how songs, or slighrs, or

killings, can srir human hearts we mur inform interpretation with a

grasp of che relarionship between expressive forros and feelings,

which themselves are culture-hound and which derive their signifi-

cance from their place within che life experiences of particular

people in particular societies." However resemblant their general

aspecr, and however useful ir inay be ro compare them, che ménis-

wrath of Achilles and che liger-rage of Rosaldo's Philippine head-

hunters draw their specihc suhstancc, she says, from "distinetive

contexrs and ... distinetive forro[s] of life." They are local "mode[s]

of apprehension mediatcd by [local] cultural forros and sociallogias.""

From chis general sorr of platform, inquiry can move in a num-

ber of directions, most of which haya been at least tentatively ex-

plored. There are "vocabulary of emotion" studies-, designed to ferret

out che cense of culturally specific reinas for feelings, attitudes, and

208 Ciiaptee X

casts of mind, as Rosaldo does for che llongot liget. (In fact, Chis

word is inadequately translated as "rage." Ir is closer to "energy" or

"life-force," but even they won't do. One needs, as one does for

rnénis in The Iliad, extended glosses, sample uses, contextual discrim-

inations, behavioral implications, alternare tercos.) A whole host of

anthropologists, myself included, have performed similar services forwords ethnocentrically, tendentiously, or merely lazily, translated

from one language or another finto English as those affective cliches

"guilt" and "shame." The culturological linguist, Anna Wierzbicka,

noting that Japanese words "such as enryo (roughly, 'interpersonal

restraint'), on (roughly, `debí of gratitudé ), and omoiyari (roughly,

'benefactive empathy') ... can lead us to che center of a whole

complex of cultural values and attitudes . . . revealing a whole net-

work of culture-specific . . . scripts," nor only demonstrates che fact

for Japanese, but for Russian (toska, "melancholy-cuco-yearning"),

for German (Heimatliebe, "leve of native place"), and for what she

calls "the grear Australian adjective," bloody. Others have carried

out comparable unpackings of Samoan chofe ("love or empathy ...

directed upward from status inferiors to status superiora"), Arabic

niya ("inrenr" ..... desire" ... guileless" ... "undiluted" ... "sin-

cere"), and Javanese rasa ("perception-feeling-taste-import-mean-ing") 7

Beyond such vocabulary-system studies, there has been a wide

range of other sorts of research designed to examine emotion mean-

ings and, so far as such a thing is possible, map che conceptual space

over which they extend. There are ethnomedical studies of indige-

nous concepts of disease, suffering, pain, cure, and well-being. There

are ethnometaphorical studies of figural regimes-spirit possession,

witchcraft, rices of passage-engraving feelings of ... well, to re-

verse the usual Tarskian procedure, "possession," "witchery," and

"passage." There are ethnopsychological studies of che importance

of different emotions in different societies, and the way in which

children leam how to feel them. And there are ethnoaesthetical

studies of myth, music, art, and che tone and temper of everyday

life. Each such study, or type of study, remains tentative and sugges-

tive-dificult tu pin down, hard to replicare. And some of them

confuse more things than they clarify. But in their bulk, their vari-

G` ulture, 1Nlind, irain 209

cri, th,^ nurse „I nrarrri,tl. igs,m tchich rhev toueh, md especially

rheir IM re >inc r d m,d ai,.lerc, rhe case for rhe cul-

niral nut,riuui,m 1 n"rnt.. i, n,c n least, tiairlv'ccll nade.

Uav: •cr rh,it t i bc, tl,c '11,11_ia ^u,t Jeceh,ped c1,111enge,

to adnindist. scmbulic-.teu,is thc„rie, ,j enwtion, feeling, and pas-

,i,nr Jo non, in f.tet, ante in tic ,in, nt Joubrs abour rheir empiri

cal .iduyu,ie os <uch, ,chich t' ifrcr tll, bur an intorprerive sud

only turncLr, and more ex.ut „h^ctt.rri^,n can resohc. 7hey come,

rarher, in rhe torm nf ac;:u,.tu,,n• „i a more tundamenral, more

deeply u5pplin„ oven fatal Jrti; ienet their suppased neglect ni "in-

tra-psychic" Jynamics and ruin rheir, also supposed, inattention to,

and inability ro deal with, auency, individuality, ami personal sub-

ectivity. Such accounrs, rhe pscchoanalyst Nancy Chodorow, who

is particularly exercised in rhis rcgard, writes,

are unrtble to conceiv e t-hearerically, oven as thcy describe eth-

nogtaphically, individual p,yeholocical proceses of personal

meaning creation.... [Thec] hyp,iss rhe idiosyncratic, diver-

gcnt ways in which emorion> docelop and are experienced... .

Wherc, wc ntighr inquire, d,,es rhe child gain rhe capacity,

ahiliry. or hahir oí "rcadin;;" cultural hodies in rhe first place if

not in some interna1 or ps^ehobiological parrs of its heing?'

As an analyst, and a fairly onhodox, Melanie Klein, Hans

Loewald, D. S. Winnicott nnc, Chodorow has a strongI\, down deep

in rhe unconscious, "inner lile" conception of how hallucinatory

infants become fanrasv drlven adults. Besides rhe cultural and rhe

biologicul, she says, diere is ''a third realni' which cannot be effec-

tively undersrou (quoting Rosaldo, ,cho, along with myself, is her

tnain target here) "with reterence to cultural scenarios and rhe asso-

ciations rhev evoke" or "cultural scenes associated with particular

entotions."

What is missing Ishe wrires] from rhe approach of doing things

,virh emotion wonls is m undcrsranding oí whar exists between

universal human insrineru,dity „r panhuman culture and uni-

versal cultural parrieul.uin, and how rhis in-between develops

q nd i, experienced in particular inmrpersonal and inrrapsychie

settings to which projecrion ami Inrrojection , transfcrence

and counter-transferenee, give personal meaning.. .. IThe]

psychological [isl a separare register, [it is] sui gencri,

But ir is nor just in Chis notoriouslc self-conndned and self-

engrossed discipline, about whose claims for imperium in,] ulrimacy,

rmd whose peremptorc wav of purting rhiugs, oven a sympatheric

onlooker may reasunably have some reservations, thar this strr of

eriticism arises. Anyone inrerested in individual develupment, from

Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky to Jerome Bruner and Rom Harré, is

likely to have similar concerns abour any conception of rhe passions

rhat does nor inquire finto rheir ontogenetic history. The issuc is nor

that cultural analyses of emotions fail to account, as Chodorow

seems to imply ("a separate register" ..... rhis in-berween" ... "su¡

generis"), for how it really, really feels for sorneone actually, inside,

in rheir heart of hearts, to have rhis one or that une. Put that way,

rhe question is unanswerable; like pain (or "pain"), ir feels as ir

feels. The issue is how, ménis, liget, wrath, or rage, toska or heimatliebe,

on, enryo, or omoiyari (dr, for that matter, hloody), they come to have

the force, rhe immediacy, and the consequence they have.

Again, recenr research, mostly by developmenral and compara-

tive psychologists (Bruner, Janet Astington, David Premack), but un

occasion by psychologically oriented linguists and anthropologists

(George Lakoff, Carol Feldman, William Frawley, Roy D'Andrade)

as well, has pushed forward with rhis matter with some rapidiry.10

Most notably, a seriously revised conception of the infant mind has

emerged-nor blooming, buzzing, confusion, flor ravenous fantasy

whirling helplessly about in blind desire, flor ingenemre algorirhms

churning out syntactic categories and ready-to-wear concepts, but

meaning making, meaning seeking, meaning preserving, meaning

using; in a word, Nelson Goodman's word, world-constructing."

Studies of rhe abiliry and inclination of children to build models of

society, of others, of nature, of self, of thought as such (and, of

course, of feeling), and to use them ro come to terms with whar is

going on round and about have proliferated and taken on a pracri-

cal edge. Studies of autism as a failure (for wharever reasons) on the

parr of a child to develop a workable dreory of "other mindss," of

Molture. 'iLiad. fimo) -u 2I I

realic y-imagining arad reality-instructing through narrative and sto-

rytelling, of self-constructitm and ,igency-attributton as a social en-

terprise, ami of subjecrivitc a, inrersuhjectively, thus contextually,

thus culturally, achieved are giving us a picture of how our minds

come ro he in which "doing rrings with emotion words" and "per-

sonal meaning creation" di, nor much look likc "separate registers."

"The development of the child's rhinking," Vygotsky, the godfather

of chis sort of work, wrote seventy years ago, "depends ora his mas-

tery of the social mearas of thinking.... The use of signs leads

humans to a specific structure of hehavior that breaks away from

biological development and creates new forros of a culturally basedpsychological process.""

Thus it is that feelings happen: "between a literal lesion and a

1iterary trope," as Richard Shweder has reinarked, "there is a lot of

room for a hroken heart." Bur, as he also remarks, "frayed nerves,

tired blood, splitting heads, and hroken hcarts [are] metonymies of

suffering; they give ... expression by means of body-parí metaphors

to forros of embodied suffering experience through che body parts

used to express them. . . . [Bur] splitting heads do noc split, broken

hearts do not break, tired hlood conrinues to circulare at che same

rafe, and frayed necees show no structural pathology."O

Other emocional state,, though, sometinies do; or at least in-

volve observable (and perceptible) defotmations in somatic pro-

cesses. The recourse to body-parí imagery to characterize not just

suffering, but emotion generally (if hcarts break wirh despair, they

burst with joy) reminds us thar, however they may be characterized,

and however one comes ro hace checo, feelings are felt. Faces flush

hot and redden or they drain col,1 and pile, stomachs churra or sink,

palms swear, hands tremble, hrearh shortens, jaws drop, to say noth-

ing of che complicated swellings and perturbations that eros brings

on. Even literal lesions, if they are somehody's lesions, in somebody's

brain, coloring somebody's life, and nor extra-cultural gods from a

cerebral machine, are worth looking at.

Neurologists hace, of course, long investigated che implicarions

for mental functioning of lesiuns locaied in one or another region of

the brain. Bur, until recenrly, rhe bulk of this work has had to do

with cognirive processing in die narrower, intellective sense-per-

ceptional, linguistic, memory, or morar defects and deficits; Wer-

212 (hauter

nicke failures to recognize, Broca failures to produce. Emotional al-

terations, perhaps because they are less definite in forro and more

difficult to measure (as well, perhaps, because they are not readily

characterized in deficiency terms) have, from William James to 01-

¡ver Sacks, been more phenomenologically reported, albeit bril-

lianrly, than somatically unpacked.

This, roo, has now begun to change, in example of which fact,

we may look, in hurried summary, at Antonio Damasío's Descartes'

Error: Emotion, Reason, and che Human Brain, only one of a number

of recent inquines into what has come to be called "the embodied

brain." Damasio reports there on his work en persons-named,

described, particularized, and culturally locared persons-with fron-

tal lobe injuries (a spike through the forehead, an excavated men-

ingioma, a stroke, a leucotomy), and the inferences that can be

drawn from their strugglings, their subjectivities, their personalities,

and their fates concerning the cale of feeling in che construction of

a human existente: "Feelings let us catch a glimpse of che organism

in full biological swing, a reflection of the mechanisms of life itself

as they go abour their business. Were it not for the possibility of

sensing body states ... there would be no suffering or bliss, no

longing or merey, no tragedy or glory in the human condition."

And no meaning. The presenting condition of his frontal

cases-a nineteenth-century New England railroad worker, a pro-

fessional accountant, a stockbroker, a man damaged at birth and

never recovered, a doten or so in all-is a certain affectlessness,

shallowness, detachment, and indecision, an irregularity of aim, an

inability to choose a course, foresee consequences, or leam from

mistakes, to follow convention, plan the future, respond appro-

priately to others; all this in the company of otherwise normal, even

superior, motor, linguistic, perceptual, and intellectual abilities.

This "Gage matrix," as Damasio calls ir afrer his type case, che

unfortunate railroad worker wirh a hule in his forebrain-a certain

Phineas P. Gage-is fundamenrally an affective disorder, an attenu-

ation of emocional capacity that cripples at once judgment, will,

and social sensitivity:

[Gage matriz] social behavior and decision-making defect [are]compatible with a normal social-knowledge base, and with pre-

Culture, 1Nlind, 13rain t' 213

HcrVei iighcr ,anlut neta, cI, :i, Bical hinefwn. such as con-

ccnt:,,n.1l maco n 1in.»iu: r.i>i, itirnti„n, b.cic \s',,¡kini;

nien,nty atol burlo rc,n„utn, ¡bar thec ano] :aeannpanieJ hy

.a a,lucii,m in cm„ti,maÍ 1,,xuyitc mol tceling.... [Ani Chis

rc,lurrlou] in enouon m, iceline Jnl non an innocent by-

sturoler test na the ,Ieten• ia; brha^ior.... [The] cold-

hl,:oaJcJnc.,, o)l ¡G a,-", ¡,.tti^ us'^ rcu"m:ng prevenrs Ithem] from

,assi^ ninu ,lüterciar galleo t,^ olittcn nt oi,ti,ms, an,l [nrakes their]

dcusi,m-making IanJscniu• h,q clcs;lc Ilat.... Ir ... 'Aso

[malees ti] t,o,: shitrv ti),] muustainoi for the time required to

make response seiecrions ... a subtle rather than basic defect

in working memoro [rh:u altersj the remainder of the reasoning

procesa required for a dccision r,: emerge."

Prona dais toundation, a p,traholical smdrome teaching a con-

ceptual lesson, Damasio goas ,m ro decelop an articulated theory of

the tvay emotion tunctions' iii our mental life-somatic markers,

recalled perceptions, dispositional hodv surtes, neural selves, and so

on-which we cantor, and necd not, follow out here (it is, in any

case, appropriarely rentarive); tuve, perhaps, to note that Francis

Bacon's laconical doctrine, "the intellecr of man is no dry light,"

receives new and puwcrful empirical upl,ort. "Emotions and feel-

ings [arel not intruders ¡ti rhe bastion of reason," Dainasio sucos up

his studies and his poinr of view, "thcy [are] enmeshed in its net-

works for worse arad fiar better." The postions-love, pain, and the

whole donan thing-can wreck our liyes. But so, and as completely,

can their los, ca absence.

So mucho then , for my minature case in instructive poinr: emotion

in culturc, mina , and brain . .. brain , mind, and culture . Ir is, 1

trust, at leasr Jimio apparent from these compacted , offhand ac-

counts of Jifferently imaggineJ and Jiticrenrly pursued approaches to

time srudy of feclin„ (though, 1 uIJ, :n t,cll, have taken learnmg or

memoro, or perhaps even 1 ra l (s), hoty a restless , carch-as-catch-

can mos=ement of arteution aun,, ananterpoised disciplinmry ma-

n9ces, an opportunistic sshift ot focus from one competing research

program and cominunity to another, can yield a serse of the general

Jirecrion of rhings in a dispetsed and distrihuted freid of scientific

inquiry-." Frontal assaults, massive driver toward conceptual uniry

and methodological agreement, nave their place-now and then,

and when the situation permirs. So does ever-deepening technical

specialiration, insule.ted, puridei, and border-parrolled faca-making,

without which no science, even a social Une, can advance. But they

in themseh,es do not, and will nor, produce the synoptlcal view of

what it is we are severally after-rhe end, as we say, in mind.

In the present instante, what we are looking for and how we

inust look for it (as well as what we may achieve for ourselves and

our lives in our looking) seems to me exactly, if tropologically, set

out in Richard Wilbur's compendious little poem called ... well,

called .. .

714;nd

Mind in its purest play is like some bar

That beats about in cavems all alone.

Contriving by a kind of senseless wit

Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;

Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,

And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar

In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has Chis simile a like perfection?

The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save

That in the very happiest intellection

A graceful error may correct the cave.`

¡lotes

1. Clark, A., Being There: Putring Brain, Body, and World Togerher Again,

Cambridge: MIT Press, 5997, P. 213.2. B. Shore, Culture in Miaul, Cognieion and the Probletn of Meaning, New

York: Oxford University Press, 1996; J. Bruner, Actual Minds, Posible Worlds,

C'ulto,re, iflind, Erni,a - 215

Camhridge: Harvard University Press, 1986; R. A. Shweder, Thinking throughCultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology, Camhridge: Harvard University

Press, 1999 R. Harté, The Discursivo Mind, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Pub-licarions, 1994; S. Toulmin, The hmcr Life: The Outer Mind, Worcester, Mass.:Clark University Pres, 1985; hl. Douglas, Hou Institutions Think, Syracuse:Syracuse University Press, 1986; G. Ruresnn, Steps muard an Ecology of Mind,Novato, Calif.: Chandler, 1972; N Goodman, Ways of Worldrnaking, NewYork: Hacketr, 1978.

3. M. Cole, Cultural Psychology: -Che Once and Future Science, Camhridge:Harvard Universiry Press, 1996.

4. N. J. Chodorow, The Pouer of Feeiings, Personal Meaning in Psycho-analysis, tender, and Cuhura, Nesv Haven: 1'.de University Press, 1999, p. 144,

5. M. Rosa Ido, Knouledtc and Passion, Camhridge: Camhridge UniversityPress, 1980; C. Lutz, Unnarural Emotiuns: Everyday Senriments on a Micronesian

Atoll and Their Challenge w Western Therrry, Chicago: University of ChicagoPres, 1988; J. L. Briggs, Never in An,q, Camhridge: Harvard University Press,

1970; Shweder, Thinking through Culnote; R. 1. Levy, Tahitians: Mind and Experi-ence in the Society Islands, Chicago: Universiry of Chicago Press, 1973; A.

Wierzhicka, Understanding Culncres through Their Keywords, Oxford: OxfordUniversity PI-es, 1997.

6. Rosaldo, Knowledge and Possion, p. 222.

7. Wierzhicka, Understanding Cultures, pp. 16-17, 157, 2,8; Shore, Cul-ture in Mind, Pp. 301-302; L. Rosen, Iiargainntg for Reality: The Construecion ofSocial Relarions in a Muslim Contmuniry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1984, P. 48; C. Geert2, The Religion ofJava, Glencoe, III., The Free Press, 1960,

pp. 238-241. For a succinct starenrent of this general approach, see, H. Geertz,

"The N/ocabulary of Emorion," Psychiarry 22 (1959):225-237.8. Chodorow, The Poner of Feelings, p. 161.9. Ibid., pp. 164, 166, 218.

1o. J. Bruney Acts of Meaning, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1990; J. W. Astingron, The Child's Discovery uf die Mind, Cambridge: HarvardUniversiry Press; 1993; D. Premack and G. AVoodnif, "Does the Chimpanzeellave a Theory of Mind," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1 (1978):515-526; O.Lakoff, AV'omen, Fire, and Dangerotu Things, Chicago: University of ChicagoPres, 1987; C. F. Feldman. The Deaelopmenr uf Adaptive lntelligence, San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1974; Frawley. W, Vygotsky and Cognitive Science, Languagea1d the Unificador of the Social and Camputa¢onal Mind, Cambridge: HarvardUniversiry Press, 1997; R. D'A1rirt;le, 'Cultural Cognition, "Foundadons ofCognitive Sciences, in M. 1. Poseer, e J, Camhridge: MIT Press, PP. 745-830.

11. Goodman, Ways of Work(making; cf. J. Bruner, The Culmre of Educa-tion, Cambridge: Harvard Universiry I'ress, 1996.

12. Quoted in Frawley, Vygoaky, p. 143.

13. Shweder, Thinking through Culncres, p 324.

14. A. R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the HuiríanBrain, New York: Purnam, 1994.

15. Ibid., p. xv.

16. Ibid., P. 51.

17. Ibid., p. xii.18. For a compelling discussion of schizophrenia in terms of cultural forms

of sensibility, see L. A. Sass, Madness and Modemism: Insanity in the Light ofModere Arr, Literature, and Thought, New York: Basic Books, 1992.

19. R. Wilbur, New and Colleaed Poems, New York: Harcourt Brace-Jovanovich, 1988, p. 240-

210 Chapter '. 1 Cultur-e, mirtd, Ptaim 217

'

1 . i1 17ii1cp,;:

C-t-i1(lnL, (111(1 l^olitics at the 6 ],i d

Of the (- Nlltlii-ii

To the numen' ot Edvonnl Shils

... with vvh,'in 1 .omerimea :igreed

The 1Worl in ^'^ieces

political theory, which presents irself as addressing universal and

abiding matters concerning power, obligation, justice, and govern-

ment in general and unconditioned tercos, the truth about things as

at bortom they always and cvervn hure necessarily are, is in fact, and

inevirably, a specitte response ro immediate circunstantes. blowever

cosmopolitan it may be in tutee[, ir is, like religion, lirerarure, his-

roriography, or law, driven and animated by the demands of the

momear: a golde to peiplesities particular, pressing, local, and at

hand.

This is eIcar enough fano its historv, especially now that that

history is al last coming n) he tvrirrcn, by Quentin Skinner, John

Pocock, md orhers, in realistic raen<as a story of the engage-

nienrs of inrellecrunls wirh rhe political siruations that he round

and about them, rarher [han in immaculare procession of doc-

trines moved along by the logic of ideo. It is, bv now, hardly unrec-

ognized rhat Plaro's political idealism or Arisrode's political moral-

ism had sainething to do with thcir reacrions to the vicisitudes of

rhe Greek eity ¡ate,, realism with bis involvement in

rhe maneuverings oí the Renaissance principalities, and I-lohbcs's

absolutism with his horror oí the ruges of popular dísorder in early

modern Europe. Similady for Rousseau and the passions of rhe En-

lightenmenr, for Burke and [hose of rhe reacrion to ir, for balance

of power realpoliaker atad nineteenth-cenmry nai ionalism and ím-

perialism, bar John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and the liberal rights

rheorists and the post-45 welfare srates oí North America and West,

em Europe, for Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and the so-called

communitarians and the failure of those stares to produce the life

envisaged. The motive tú general reflection about politics in general

is radically ungeneral. lt proceeds from a desire, a desperation even,

to make sense of the play of power and aspiration one finds swirling

about in Chis disrupred place, at thar disjointed time.Today, a decade after the fall of rhe Berlin Walt, it is clear that

we are once more in such a place, at such a time. The world we

have been living in since Teheran and Potsdam, indeed since Sedan

and Port Arthur-a world of compact powers and contending blocs,

the arrangements and rearrangements of macro-alliances-is no

more. What there is instead, and how we ought to go about think-

ing abour it, is, however, distinctly less clear.A much more pluralistic pattern of relationships among the

worlds's peoples seems tú be emerging, but its forro remains vague

and irregular, scrappy, ominously indeterminate. The collapse of the

Soviet Union and the fumblings oí the Russia which has succeeded

it (not the same one, even sparially, that preceded ir) have brought

in their wake a stream of obscure divisions and strange instabilities.

So have the rekindling of nationalist passions in Central and East-

em Europe, the crosshatched anxieties rhat rhe reunification of

Germany has stimulated in Western Europe, and the so-called

American Withdrawal: rhe declining abiliry (and rhe declining will-

ingness) of the United States to engage its power in distan[ parís of

the world-the Balkans or East Africa, the Maghreb or the South

China Sea. The growing domesric rensions in many countries aris-

ing from large-scale, culrurally discordant migrations, rhe appear-

2 1 N 1 'Tlrc Varld in Zdieces = 2 le)

ante of armed and impassioned religiopolirical movemenrs in var-

ious parts of rhe world, and rhe emergente of new centers of wealth

and power in rhe Middle Easr, in Larin America, and along rheAsían erige of rhe Pacific Rim h.tve bit added to the general senseof motion and uncerroinry . All nf riese developments , and othersinduced by rhem ( edmic civil wats, linguistic separarism , the "mul-ticulruralizarion " of international capital ), have nor produced asense of a new world order. Thep hoye produced a sense of disper-sion, of particularity , of complexity , m1,1 of uncenteredness. Thefearful symmerries of tire pnstwar era bo ye come unstuck , and we, itseems, are lefr wirh tire pieces.

AII large-scale , disconrinuous changes of this sorr, rhe sort thatscholars - and sratesmen like ro call "world hisrorical," to excuse rhefact that they did flor seo rhem coming , produce both new possi-bilities and novel dangers , unexpected gains, surprising losses. Thedisappearance , at leasr for rhe momear , of rhe thrcar of massivenuclear exchange , rhe freeing o f a vide range of people from greatpower dominarion, and rhe relaxation of rhe ideological rigidtties

and Torced choices of a bipolar world are positive developmentsfrom jusr abour anybody's point of vicw. The recent advances to-ward peace and civiliry , fragile as rhey are, in South Africa, berweenthe Israelis and rhe PLO , o', in a rarher different way, in NorthemIreland, probably could flor hoye occurred , and certainly nor soquickly, ii rhe distante berween local dispute and global confronta-

tion was still as short as ir was before rg8g. Nor, if it were, wouldAmericans even he thinking of negoriaring with Cubans , Russianswith Japanese , Seoul with Pyongyang , 13arak with Arafat.

On rhe other hand, rhe upheavals brought on by narionalistenmities previously held in check , if ar enormous human cosí, bypowerful aumcracies are hardly simply ro be welcomed as rhe bless-ings of liberty . Neither are rhe falterings of European integration,

now that rhe fear of Communism is relieved; rhe lessened ability ofworld powers to pressure client smres Lo behave themselves, nowthat the rewards of clienrship Lave lessened ; nor the multiplicationof candidates for regional dominarion , now that international poli-tics Nave grown less constrained by global srrategies . Superpowerarras reduction and nuclear prolferarion , political liberation and

220 _ «JojterXI

deepening parochialism, borderless capitalism and economic bucca-

neering: it is difficult to draw a definite balance.

But perhaps rhe most fateful change is, again, rhe pervasive rag-

gedness of rhe world with which, so suddenly, we now are faced.

The shattering of larger coherentes, or seeming such, roto smaller

ones, uncertainly connected one with another, has made relating

local realities with overarching ones, "the world around here" (to

adapt Hillary Pumam's lambent pirase) with the world overall, ex-

tremely difficult. lf rhe general is to be grasped at all, and new

unities uncovered, it must, it seems, be grasped flor directly, all at

once, but via instantes, differences, variations, particulars-piece-

meal, case by case. In a splintered world, we must address the

splinters.

And that is where theory, if there is to be any, comes in. In

particular, where does this falling apart into parts-let us cal! ir

"disassembly"-leave the great, integrative, totalizing concepts we

Nave so long been accustomed to using in organizing our ideas about

world politics, and particularly abour similarity and difference

among peoples, societies, states, and cultures: concepts like "tradi-

tion," .. identity," "religion," "ideology," "values," "nation," indeed

even "culture," "society," "state," or "people" thetnselves? Surely, we

are flor reduced, now that the stark opposition of "Easr" and "West"

has been exposed as the ethnocentric formula it always was (the

East is Moscow, rhe West is Washington, and every place else-

Havana, Tokyo, Belgrade, Paris, Cairo, Beijing, Johannesburg-is

derivatively located) to talking only about idiosyncratic details and

immediate concems, to thought-bites and the wandering attentions

of the evening news? Some general notions, new or reconditioned,

musst be constructed if we are to penetrare the dazzle of rhe new

heterogeneity and say something useful abour its forras and its

fu tu re.

There are, in fact, a fair number of proposals now being ad-vanced as to the direction that thinking about the emerging situa-tion ought to take: proposals about how to understand it, abour howto live with it, about how to correct it, or, for there are always ehose(especially in Europe, where historical pessimism is so often takenfor a mark of breeding and cultivation) who stoutly insist that noth-

The World in Dieces - 22 t

Ine , R1 rollo ch.irn_c: in hwn.rn .lit .w,, bccwsc nothtng cver

11 11 cs in ihc hunr n hca:i..;bout h„tr t,i Jcm' rhat it is actualh

cmrn,ing.

Íhc m,^sr hn,nuncn. ( or anvwny (he most

cclchratc,l. i,, in .u lea>t ,mc mranin,N It that tnanufactured and

pL, tc.m icrm, "i"^suu,,.hrn otEI." In chi. rices, thc searc11 for c anpre-

hcn>icr h.tricrn. lino, .unf ihan.l.rnc,l u, a talio of the anriqu-

atcd quc>, tor rhe crc nal, h, oal, Lhc c.,cnrial. and rho absolure.

Theru aro, so h i, sai,l, n„ itu o ter n.mradvrs, about "idemity," about

"rradition," ah,iut "culnire,' or abour anvthing clse. Theta are just

events, persons, and pa,sincr formulas, and ,hose inconsonant. We

must tontear ourseIves with ,livcrging tales in irreconcilable idiotas,

ami not uttcmpt to enGold rhem rara vvnopric visions. Such visions

(chis viston has ir) are nor to hc had. Trving Lo achieve them leads

only ti) illusion-to srereonpe, prejudice, resenrment, and conflict.

In full opposition ro chis ncurasthenical skepticism abour efforts

Lo pull things togerlier ¡ni,) cnunup.tsing accounts, ,,'anda recits

with a plot and a moral, checo are artempts flor to discard large-

scale, inregrative, and torali=ing concepts as vacuous and mislead-

ing, hur rather to replace them by cvcn more large-scale, integra-

tive, :md toralizing Daca-"civilizations," or whatever. Attempts te

rell stories even grander anal more dranratic are beginning to appear,

now that the older oncs i n c 'vearing out, stories of the clash of

uncommunicating socieries, conrradictory moralities, and incom-

mensurable world views. The Brear divisions among human kind

and the dominating source of conflicr [in the years immediately

ahead]," the American political scientist Samuel Huntington has

recendy proclaimed, "will be cultural," nor "primarily ideological or

primarily- economic.' 'The clash of civilizations," he says, "will

dominare global politics. The fault linos between civilizations

[Chrisrian and Islamic, Confucian anal Hindú, American and Japa-

nese, European and African] will he the battle fines of the future."

"The next world war, if there is une," as he apparently thinks alto-

gether likely, given ,hese massive aggregations of religion, cace, lo-

caliry, and language, "will he a war between civili:ations."

Faced wirh chis choice between disahused skepticism that leaves

us wirh little ro say, save that Iitfrrcnce is differenee and diere is no

getting around it, and operatic word-painimg thar conjures up even

more spectacular, war-ot-rhe-wodds collisions than rhose ree seem,

iust now, to hace so narrowly avolded (as well as wirh various other

implausible suggestions-that history Izas ended, that knowledge

claims are but bids for power thinly disguised, that ir all comes

down te uhe forrunes of genes), rhose ot us who are commirted te

sorting through concrete marta, su as ro develop circumstantial

comparisons-specihc inqutries in-,) speciba differences-nrap seem

naive, quixotical, disimularing, or behind the times. Bur d gutde-

lines for navigating in a splintered, disasembled world are te be

found, they will have to come from such parient, modest, close-in

work. Neither cool scenes nor hot scenarios will really do. Wc need

to fiad out how, rather exactly, the land lies.

But that, roo, is much more difficult now that the way in which

we have become accustomed to dividing up rhe cultural world-

into small blocks (Indonesia, say, in my own case, or Morocco),

grouped rato larger ones (Southeast Asia or North Africa) and

,hose roto yer larger ones (Asia, rhe Middle East, the Third World,

or whatever)-no longer works very well en any of lis levels. In-

tensely focused studies (of Javanese music or Moroccan poetry, Afri-

can kinship or Chinese bureaucracy, German law or English class

structure) are no longer adequate, or even intelligible, as enclosed,

free-standing inquines unrelated te one another, to their setting and

surroundings, or te the general developments of which they are a

parí. But at rhe same time, the unes along which such relationships

might be traced, such settings described, and such developments

defined are tangled, circuitous, and difficult te make out. The same

dissolution of settled groupings and familiar divisions that has ren-

dered the political world so angular and hand tú fathom has made

the analysis of culture, of how it is people see things, respond te

them, imagine them, judge them, deal wirh them, a far more awk-

ward enterprise than it was when we knew, or rather thought rhar

we knew, what went wirh whar and what did not.In cultural terms, as in political, "Europe," say or "Russia," or

"Viena" must be understood not as a unity of spirit and value, set

off against other such supposed unities-the Middle East, Africa,

Asia, Latin America, che United States, or London-but as a con-

( .^I The ll?orld in 'i:_2ieces = 223

glomerate of differences, Jeep, radical, and resistant tu summary.

And rhe same is trae of rhe various subparts we in one way or

another mark off within there conglomerares-Protestan[ and

Carholic, Islanaic and Orthodox; Scandinavian, Latín, Germanic,

Slavic; urban and rural, continental and insular, native and migran[.

The disassembly of the political world has of course flor caused this

heterogenetry. It is history, careening and wayward, and riven wirh

violente, that has done rhat Disassenahly has only malle the herero-

geneity patenta plain, imposible ro cocer over wirh enormous ideas,impossihle any longer nor to see.

What we need, ir seems, are nor enormous ideas, nor rhe aban-

donmenr of synthesizing norions alrogerher. What we need are ways

of thinking that are responsive to particulariries, co individualities,oddities, discontinuiries, contrasrs, and singularities, responsive ro

what Charles Taylor has called Jeep Iiversiry," a plurality of waysof belonging and heing, and that yes can draw from them-from

it-a sense of connectedncss, a connecredness that is neither com-

prehensive nor uniform, primal nor changeless, bus nonetheless real.'Taylor's concern, facing ideulogized separatism, rhe threatened de-

parrure of Quebec from Canada, is wirh political disassembly, wirh

rhe belonging, cirizensship sido of identiry in a splintered world:

What is a country if ir is not a nation? But rhe tnatrer is rhe lame

on rhe being, selfhood sido rhat is its mirrored and obverse face:What is a culture if it is nor a consensus?

A good deal of philosophical tuad social scientific thinking in Eu-

rope and rhe Unired States is currendy absorbed, not very effec-

tively, wirh both of [hese quesrions, ofren, indeed, in ways which

confuse them wirh one another, and wirh rhe far from identical and,

to my mind, rarher more awkward, flaccid, and overgeneralized, cer-

tainly overused, notion of "narionalism." The coexistente, in most

parts of the world, indeed in virtually all, of great cultural traditions,

rich, distinerive, and historically Jeep (civilizations in rhe proper,

flor rhe polemical, sense of che terco), wirh an endless progression of

differences within differences, divisions within divisions, jumbles

224 G2hrz1,ter .V.l

within jumbles, raises a question that cannot any longer be passed

off as idle or inconsequent: how is it, in so multifold a world, that

political, social, or cultural selfhood comes to be? If identity withour

unison is in fact the rule-in India or the United Stares, in Brazil

or Nigeria, in Belgium or Guyana, or even in Japan, that supposed

model of immanent like-mindedness and essentialized uniqueness-on what does ir rest?

Here, roo, however, rhe question is mal posée if it is inrerpreted

as a general one looking for an invariant answer-rhe problem,

again, in at leas[ much of the writing en "nationalism" (or, for rhat

master, on "ethniciry" as well) thar has become so popular in rhe

las[ few years. For there are nearly as many ways in which such

idenriries, fleeting or enduring, sweeping or intimare, cosmopoliran

or closed-in, amiable or bloody-minded, are pus together as there

are materials wirh which to pus them together and reasons for doing

so. American Indian, Israelí, Bolivian, Muslim, Basque, Tamil, Euro-

pean, Black, Australian, Gypsy, Ulsterman, Arab, Maroon, Mar-

onite, Hispanic, Flamand, Zulu, iordanian, Cyprior, Bavarian, and

Taiwanese-answers people sometimes give to rhe question,

whether self-asked or asked by others, as to who (or, perhaps, more

exactly, what) they are-simply do nor forro an orderly structure.

Nor a stable one. As the world becomes more thoroughly inter-

connected, economically and politically, as people move about in

unforeseen, only partially controllable, and increasingly massive,

ways, and as new fines are drawn and old ones erased, rhe catalogue

of available identifications expands, contracts, changes shape, ram-

ifies, involutes, and develops. A half century ago there were no

Beurs or Bangladeshis, bus there were Peranakans and Yugoslavians;

Italy did nor have a "Moroccan problem," Hong Kong did nor have

a Vietnamese one. (Nor Vancouver a Hong Kong one.) Even [hose

idenriries that persist, as both Austrians and Americans have cause

to know, as do Poles, Shi'is, Malays, and Erhiopians, alter in their

bonds, their content, and their inner meaning.

Political theorists rend to operare ar levels well ahoye this

thicket of eharacterizations, disrinctions, particularities, and label-

ings that makes up rhe who-is-what world of collective identiries, to

float musefully over it as though in a Montgolfier balloon-perhaps

Ihe World in Dieces 225

ter latir thai Je,, endim„ inca it icill c.qv.»e them re the sort of end-

les,, e,ntiictittg ictuil 111 11 "ti,'n ecernhclms nnrhtopelegists; per-

taps :,u, che tiiickct ,..nci 1 .ente „mteh,nc rel^ellent: enio-

ti, ânl, err.trure l), unu ornJ. ,L tn,emu>: pcrhap, be,ause it scenis

unceo1 or incidental, nieto sl,i,r, dCeOr and mysritic,itii)n. But if what

it c are in t aer hxed with i, , n re„^J-reoerhet dtssimilarides

Vari,ru,la 1r1 11 10,yJ, 1,11Mr th.m _dlei-:,-pire naden-.Unos gntuped

irte Pistes tiros] .uperhles. lth, m,0. ot th,ng that is visible trom a

ballo,m), diere is nothinuu Ilsr it hur al ger down te ceses, wharever

che cesr te genemlitg ccrrainty, ni intellectual equilibrium.

But, in tacr, rhe ceses nitre nor he se great as feared, and che

henelirs underesrimated: a n,letien fnim specifics is nor che only

form rhat [hesite Cakes. In rhe pros iuvuediately apead, as China

iu nbers awkwardly and unevenly into die internacional economy, as

Germany sccks to meros] •i halt cenrury of politicral division, as

Russia mes ni hnd sorne leorkable form in which to exist, as African

socieries rry ro conrain mulriple hatreds and intricare disrinctions,

as Japan, Iiscoveriiig or rediscocering irs ogro variousness, seeks to

define a place lar itself in a reglen 1110v n1, a half doren directions at

once, and as che United Srares, France, Mexico, or Algeria find

themselves ro test oro a good deal less commonality of mind tiran

rheir puhlic creeds proclaim rhem to have, approaches to politieal

analysis rhar engage such atraen In ¡he fullness of rheir partic-

ulariry are likely ro he more helpful to understanding [han [hose

that artempr to develop some overall, panoptical view.

It wotdd seem, in short, that i rumbo oí serious adjustments in

rhought must eccur if we, phjlo;ophers, anthropologists, historian,

or whoever, are going to have sonmdiilig useful co say about che

disassembled, or anyrvap Jisas mbling, world of restless idenities

and uncerrain connections. Firsr, ditference must he recognized, ex-

plicidy and candidly, nor ehscured with offhand talk abour che

Confucian Erhic or rhe Western Tradition, tire Larin Sensibiliry of

che Muslim Mind Ser, nor wirh ivispy mor-alizings about universal

values or dim hanalities about underhing oneness: Rosie O'Grady

and the Colencl's Lady. Secon,l. and more iniporranr, difference

must he seco flor as rhe negarien ot sin)ilarity, irs opposíte, its con-

rrary, and ir centradíetien. It rotos[ be seca as comprising ir: locat-

ing ir, concretizing it, givin,g it form. The blocs being gone, and

rheir hegemonie> rvith rhem, we aro tacing an era ot disperses] en-

tanglements, each distincrive. Whar uniry there is, and whar iden-

ríry, is going to have ro he negeriared, produced our of dítterence.

Whatever originality and disrinctiveness Malaysian and Chi-

nese torras of life in Sounccasi Asia trae have, ter example, or En-

glish, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish in Britain, Indio and Latino in Nica-

ragua or Guatemala, Muslim and Chrisrian in Nigeria, Muslim and

Hindu in India, Sinhalese and Tamil in Sr' Lanka, or Black and

White in South Africa-and they clearly have a very grua[ deal-it

arises out of che ways in which che variety of the practices which

make them up are positioned and composed. It is nor, to adapt

Wirrgenstein's famous image of a tope, a single thread which runs

all the way through them that defines rhem and makes rhem into

some kind of a whole. lt is che overlappings of differing rhreads,

intersecting, entwined, one raking up where another breaks off, all

of them posed in effective rensions with one another ro form a

composite body, a body locally disparate, globally integral. Teasing

out [hose rhreads, locating [hose intersections, entwinemenrs, con-

nectings, and tensions, probing rhe very compositeness of che com-

posite body, its Jeep diversity, is what the analysis of these sorts of

countries and socieries demands. There is no opposition between

fine grained work, uncovering variousness, and general characteriza-

tion, defining affiniries. The trick is to get them to illuminate one

another, and reveal thereby whar identity is. And what it is nor.

To do chis-to connect local landscapes, full of detall and inciden,

to che intricate ropographies within which they are set-demands

an alteration nor only in rhe way in which we conceive of identity

but of the way we write about it, the vocabulary we use to tender ir

visible and measure its force. Political theory, so often in out times

eirher synoptic musings about essentialized principies locked in a

Manichaean death struggle-collectivism and individualism, objec-

tivism and relativism, right and obligation, freedom and con-

straint-or ideological commitmenrs dressed up to look like ineluc-

'?(° ( 6utilcr AI 1 711e 1>,)r-1d 117 Pirres "- 227

Cable deductions from inescapablc premises, needs ro get a firmer

grip on Che hará particularities of Che present moment. But Che lan-

guagc wirhin which ir is casa, a language of summings up rather

[han of sortings out, scriously inhibits most of it from doing so. The

available gentes of description and assessment are ili-fitted ro a mul-

tiplex world, mixed, irregular, hifring, and discontinuous.

It would seem that something between, or perhaps combining

in some fashion or orher, philosophical reflections on Che self,

agency, will, and aurhenriciry (or Che questioning of rhese as ideo-

logical consrrucrions or mctaphysical illusions), historical tracings of

Che emergente of ethnicitic,, nations, states, and solidarities (or Che

imagining of rhese in Che political rituals and cultural teehnologies

of modem lile), and echnographical representations of myrhologies,

moralities, traditions, and world views (or, Che excoriation of [hese

as exoticizing, hegemonizing, neocolonialist reductions of a radically

othenvise, pur-upon orher) would semi to be needed. But it is not

very clear what thar would be. Someone atrempring, as 1 am here,

to confronr Che confused and conflicted picture presented by a

world no longer satisfacrorily describible as either a disrribution of

peoples or a sysrem of stares, a catalogue of cultures or a typology

of regimos, finds hale ro fall back upon in the received conceivingsof the human sciences.

My rack here, improvisarury, opportunisric, and casually redi-

rected as 1 go along, will be to focos in rurn on Che rwo questions 1

menrioned earlier as lending inro Che central interpretative issues

raised up by Che fractionation, rhe insrabiliry, and the uncentered-

ness of Che post-Wall world: Whar is a Country if it is not a Narion?

What is a Culture if ir is flor a Conscnsus? A few short years ago,

when Che chart of Che world looked reasonably consolidated and its

outlines more or less distinct, hoth of rhese questions would have

seemed confused or senseless, hecause rhere was little, if anything

seen to be separating the contrasted tercos. Countries were na-tions-Hungary, France, Egypt, Brazil. Cultures were shared ways oflife-Hungarian, French, Egyprian, Brazilian. To drive a wedge be-

tween Che tercos, and rhus between rhe questions themselves, to

disenrangle them froto une anorher and pursue rhenr separately,

would seem at bes[ a pointless underraking, and at worst a mischie-vous one.

228 fICÍ tea .X1

It may be mischievous, or at leas[ disequilibrating; but it is nor

pointless. There are very few countries any more, and perhaps there

never were, that even approximately coincide with culturally soli-

dary entibes; Japan, Norway, possibly Uruguay, if you forget rhe Ital-

ians, maybe New Zealand, if you forget rhe Maoris. State forms-

Mexican and German, Nigerian and Indian, Singaporean and Saudi

Arabian-are so enormously various as hardly to be collected under

a single term. The foundations of legitimacy of even immediate

neighbors, Che sorts of stories they tell themselves to account for

their existence and justify irs continuance-Israel and Jordan, Cam-

bodia and Vietnam, Greece and Turkey, Sudan and Ethiopia-are

contrastively phrased, scarcely translatable, in no way homologous.

The illusion of a world paved from end to end with repeating units

that is produced by rhe pictorial conventions of out political atlases,

polygon cutouts in a firted jigsaw, is just that-an illusion.

To take apart Che political and ehe cultural aspects of rhe disas-

sembled world, prior to relating them again to one anorher, at least

permits os to uncover something of Che maneuverings and cross-

actions involved in Che formation and interaction of collective per-

sonar, and some of Che conundrums such maneuverings and cross-

actions pose for the social orderings, che economies, Che polities,

and Che day-to-day lives, in which they take place. We know at

leas[ something-nor anywhere enough, but something-about

how differences in power, wealth, status, luck, and abiliry are, for

better or worse, composed in society, about how material interesas

are adjusted, reconciled, contained, or suppressed, and about how

ideological eonflicts are resolved or exacerbated, balanced or fought

out, how they are managed. But in ehe face of social struggles

phrased in tercos of selfhood, of inbred feeling and primordial loy-

altg of natural contrasts and immanent quiddities, we remain pretty

much at sea. They seem to come like storms and evaporare with

mere exhaustion or an unaccountable change in ehe weather, or

else, and more ofren, persist like chronic irritants, smoldering, half-

hidden, and merely lived (or died) with, not really understood, notreally resolved.

An improvement upon chis situation of mere witnessing, and

mere deploring, is nor easily come by. But surely the first move

toward improving ir is to look more carefully at just what, on Che

The World ra Pieces `-'> 229

eround afJ in place. c.,untne aunc la (or don't), as conectiva

.tetar:. An,l che k ti sedar ir 11 (l,) die ¡Cgree

rhar ir J„c<1 rh,u IILIL tics

Since 11)45, svc h.,ac ^, ue ' nn a >uu.unm in which there Acere

perhaps hit, Or K) geoecdlc rcaceni:ed caumrics, rhe rest oí the

world heme Ji,tribuicd 4m„ culai e>, hr reetonnea dependencies,

and tire like, to one in vchich hiere ti, acule twa hundred, and

,,hm,a cerwinhv more i,' Cavi.. The Iiiierence, ot caurse, is che

dca,lonicarion rcvolutinn dhar t,t,,k llore in Asia an,l .Africa, and te)

come extent in che PacitP .uri che Caribbean, in che hfties and

sixties, nooc reinforced Fc che brcakup „f che last oí die transcultural

empires (unless one considers China as such), the Soviet Union.

This revolution has been generally understood, both by irs leaders

and its theorisn, and by chope against whom they were rebelling, as

a liberation fronr foreign dominarion, and it seas, consequently,

rather yuickly and easily assimilared ro the nationalist movements

in Europe and Larin Anurica in tire nineteenrh century-as the

last wave of a global thrust rAvard self-detennination, the rule oí

like over like, che moderni:arion of governance, the unificarion oí

state and culture, or wharever. But ir seas, as has become increas-

ingly clcar as time has passed atad the more purely ideological ardors

hace cooled, something rather more profound than that. It was an

alteration, a rransformarion oven, ot ,xv whole sense of the rela-

rionships between histot^ , place, and political belonging.

The reali:ailon thac tic appearance of a host oí new countries,

large, paran, and medium sl:cd, in Asia and Africa was something

more than an imitative catching up on the parí of the "unde-

veloped," or "hack,vard," or 'rhud" world co che so-called nation

stare patrern construcred in Europa fronr rhe seventeenth rhrough

rhe nineteenrh centuries, d,ar 'ir Atas in many ways more of a chal-

lenge te) that partero chas ir c,as i reintorcement or a reincarnation

of it, has been rather slow in coining. The diffusionist notion thac

the modero world was tirada in norrhern and western Europa and

then seeped out like an oil slick to cocer tic rest of rhe world has

obscured tic facr (which should ahrea,ly huye been apparent from

developmcnts in che Unitcd Sta res and Latin America, leave acide

Liberia, ni llairi, nr Thailand, or tapan) rhar rather :han converging

'3U -- (li, tplr: A i

toward a single partem these entitics called countries were ordering

them.selves in novel ways, wavs that put Europeas conceptions, not

all that secure in any case, ot what a country is, and what iii basis

is, under increasing presura. The genuineli radical implications of

the decolonization process are ,nly )ust now coming to be recog-

nized. For better or for wordc, the dcnamics of Western nation

building are not heing replicated. Something elsc is going co.

To find out what that might be involves, on che one pide, an

understanding of terms like "nailon" "state," "people," and "soci-

cty," the worn coinage oí political analysis, that daes not reduce

them all to a caminan patrern, continuously reproduced, and, on

the other, an understanding oí terms like "identity" "rradition," "af-

filiation," and "coherente," che hardly less batrered vocabulary oí

cultural description, that does not reduce them all to uniformiry and

like-mindedness, to a categorical mold. It is this enterprise 1 will

take up, in a preliminary and exploratory manner, in the next two

sections in che hope oí illuminating the challenges and the imperil-

ments, the terrors and the possibilities, oí the world in pieces.

1Vtlat Is a Coantry if lt lis VIot a llation?

The words we use, these days, to refer to what we take to be che

elementary building blocks oí global political order-"nation,"

"state," "country," "society," "people"-have a disturbing ambiguity

built roto their range, intent, and definition. On che one hand, we

use them interchangeably, as though they were synonyms. "France"

or "Hungary," "China" or "Cambodia," "Mexico" or "Ethiopia,"

"Iras" or "Portugal" are all oí these at once-nations, surtes, coun-

tries, societies, and peoples. On the orher, we perceive them as lead-

ing us off, in their nuances and connotations, their resonances and

their inward meanings, in rather different directions: toward blood,

race, deseen, and the mysteries and mystifications oí biological

alikeness; toward political and civic loyalty and the indivisibiliries

of law, obediente, force, and govemmenq toward geographical ag-

gregation, territorial demarcation, and che sense oí origin, honre,

and habitat; toward interaction, companionship, and practicas asso-

ciation, che encounter of persons and che play oí interests; toward

The 1^^or]k in Meces -- 23

cultural, historical, linguistic, religious, or psychological affiniry-aquiddiry of spirit.

This ambiguity, persistent, stub1,orn, perhaps irremovable, has

troubled the history oí Europe and rhe Americas froin at least the

seventeenth century, and it now troubles, at least as relentlessly,

Asia and Africa as weil. The conception of che biological, the gov-

erimental, che territorial, dn- interactional, and the cultural asequivalenr and substitutable expressions oí the same reality, as fold-ing finto onc another and com-crging roward some overall sum, and

che sense that they so fold and converge only partially and incom-

pletely, that they refer back to different realities, represent different

sorts oí solidarities and affiliations, grow out of different imaginings,

different aspirations, and different Ecars, renders uncertain just what

it is that is mapped on rhe political map of che world. What do we

say when we say Mauritania? Slovakia' Bolivia? Australia?

If one browses through the relevant entries of the The OxfordEnglish Dictionary, one sets tris perplexity and its history, at least forEurope and for English (though 1 daresay about che same result

would be obtained by wandering similarly through the Grand Robertor che Deutsches Wórterbuch), laid out before one. For each oí thetenns there is a sort oí penumbral, ground bass nreaning specific to

it, surrounding it with a certain air and tonality, and what looks like

a deliberate attempt, indeed a despemte one, to suppress Chis and

force the word in roward a semanric coincidente with the others, to

produce, whether as country, people, society, state, or nation, a ge-

neric unit oí collective agency-bourrded, nameable, single, andconsistently defined; a historical self.

"Country," for example, said to come from the late Latin root

from which we also get "contra" and "counter," moves from a so-

called literal nreaning, "that which lies opposite or fronting the

view, the landscape spread out before one," through a series of defi-

nitions from the generalized "a tracr or expanse of land oí undefined

extent; a region, a district," through che tather more specific "tract

or distrtct having more or less definite limirs in relation to human

occupation, e.g. owned by the same lord or proprietor, or inhabited

by people of the same race, dialect, occupation, etc." and the "land

of a person's birth, citizenship, residente etc.," to the wholly com-

2,32 (.'lrapter \1

prehensive "the territory or land oí a nation; usually an independent

state or a region once independent [chis to deal with Scotland and

Ireland] and still distinct in yace, language, institutions, or historical

memories" and, in culmination, the fiar and simple "che people oí a

district or a state, the nation"-as in Macaulay's History of England,

"The people had no love for their country or their king," which

does not mean, 1 take it, that they disliked the landscape.'

"people," itself, follows a similar trajectory from a generalized

and indistinct "populace," "multitude," or "commonality," through

che rather more specific "persons in relation to a superior or some-

one tú whom they belong" and "the whole body of ... qualified

citizens as a source of power," to, again, the unitary collective, "a

body of persons composing a community, tribe, race, [folkl, or na-

tion` So does "state," which comes of course, from roots for rank

and standing, as in "estate" and "status," and mover semantically

through "realm" and "commonwealth" to the more focused "the

body of people occupying a defined territory and organized under a

sovereign government ... the territory occupied by such a body"

and thence to the fully integral "the supreme civil power and gov-

emment vested in a country or a nation." "T he state is properly,"

Matthew Amold wrote in Democracy," ... the nation in its collec-

tive and corporate capacity.`

The partem repeats with "society" ("association with one's fel-

low men"; "intercourse with persons"; "the aggregate of persons liv-

ing together in [an] orderly communiry"; "the system or mode of life

adopted by a body of individuals for the purpose oí harmonious co-existence"; "connexion ... union ... affinicy").' But it is with the

most radically consolidative terco in this series, and the most elu-

sive, "nation," that it comes to fullest expression, drawing all the

others toward it like some semiotic strange attractor.

"Nation," which comes ultimately from Latin nation-eco,

"breed," "stock," "race," in tum derived from nasci, "to be bom;"

has, or has had in che course of its evolution, a number of highly

particular applications, such as "a family, a kindred," "an Iris'h clan,"

"the native population of a town or city," "a ... class, kind, or tate

of persons," "a country, a kingdom," or "the whole people of a coun-

try ... as opposed to some smaller or narrower body within it," the

The World in Dieces tac 233

ucijoriPt a w}tich it h.i, hc n, r: capc1 inio che magisterial capaei-

auvtes> „i w1 1,11 h,i, be, -om, a, central Ti ioaning : " An extensive ag-

,Icsa ni langu.ige, ,tr hi,i„n i> n, i, rie t disrinct "ice '11 1,cople,

uxrally ,rsani_rd as .^ sepnr.itr h„litic11 tate and occupying a defi-

nice reirit nr." ("In cark e^.un;,les,' rhe Os)ord English Dierionarv

rema:-. iCIh.q,- uneas it,ali ith thu eIt rmous reaeh and pot-au-

1ev gtralite filo o, ntcepti tt ü11,1 hr 11)21 cakel ,m, "the racial idea is

ally srr0111,er rhan thv politcal; in re, cnr use che nocíon of polir-

ical unicy ... is more prominenc," and gines ovo quotations, rarher

opposed in just Chis tondenen, 1,1 compound che difhculty: Brights

pub-1111,1-plough populist "rhe sacian in every country dwells in che

cotmge," ami Tennyson:'s swor1-and-seepter hieratic "Lec os bury

che Great Duke [that is, Wellingmn] To che noise of che mourning

of Ti mighry nacion." )'

1 bring all chis up, n,x hecause 1 dtink words in rhetnselves

make che world go round (ihnugh, in fact, chey have a lot tu do

with its works and workings), or becau,e 1 think you can read politi-

cal hisrory off from che definitions in dicrionaries (though, in fact,

rhey are among rhe more sensitivo, and underused, detectors we

have for registering its suhsurface tremor,). 1 bring all chis up he-

cause 1 think rhe tension betwcen a convergent and a dispersive

conception of colleccive agenev, between che attempt to make the

terms for such agency identic and inrerchangeable and the attempt

to maincaia rheir differonces and separarions, refleccs, and indeed

drives, a good deal of what is guing un in che world those days as

well as what philosophcrs, amhropologists, journaliscs, and ideo-

logues have to say ahout telar is going on.

Indeed,in che Europe Fenecen Napoleon and Hitler(to have a

rendentious narre for a tendentioes period), che mane coward che

subordination of che narran, ways of thinking about che "whac am 1

(or you, or we, or they) '" question ro rhan uf a comprehensive like-

ness of kind, difhcult ro specife, casy co feel, and impossible to eradi-

cate, has hcen a central dynamic of political hisrory; so mueh so

char ir has i equenriy been idenrified teith che very process of mod-

emicarion itsclL A relativcly brief, a> these ehings go, geograph-

ieally° highly locali:ed, and in any case quite incomplete process has

t

leen raken as a general paradigm for political development overall

and everywhere. Ir is chis, as 1 would call it prejudice, rhac, hrsr, che

anticolonial revolucions, from India's in che late fardes to Angola's

in che eariv sevenrles, and note che dnassembly of che bipolar world

(aspeccss, as a master of fact, of a single upheaval) have thrown finto

question.

So far as che anricolonial revolutien (which in lord vears has

quadrupled che number uf entitics culled countries, natioro, staces,

or peoples-distinct sociecies with names and addresses) is con-

cerned, ir has been, as 1 remarked previously, simply assimilaced,

whole and entire, to che European development, or what is chought

to have been the European development. Especially in its opening,

declamacory phases, che Bandung days of the Nkrumahs, Nehrus,

Hos, and Sukamos (and che Maos and che Ticos), it was seen as

"the last wave" of a worldwide movement toward, to quote Benedict

Anderson, che master-narrative theorist of all this, "nationness [as]

virtually inseparable from political consciousness."s More recently,

both che developments wichin those entities-Nigerian, Sr¡

Lankan, and Algerian decomposition, Cambodian terror, Sudanese

genocide, Yemeni civil war-and in rheir relationships with one

another, have complicated che picture more rhan a bit. And so far

as the disassembly of che bipolar world is concemed, the loss of a

sense of analogous elements packed finto a well-defined structure of

power and importante, has rendered che notion that che world is

composed of atomic nationalities, mighry and unmighty, sovereign

and subaltem, hard to articulare and harder to defend. Resisting che

coalescence of che dimensions of political communiry, keeping che

various fines of affinity that curo abstract populations roto public

actors separare and visible, seems suddenly, once again, conceptually

useful, morally imperacive, policically realistic.

In pursuit of chis aim, one could of course simply run serially and

routinely through che various pairs, people and society, society and

state, state and nation, and so on, and lay out some of che mischief

and misconceptions that result when they are kepí insufficiently

Ti,e Wer id ¡Ti Dieces 235

disrincr. To an extent this has already buen done, now and again

and rather unsystemarically, most especially for narion and state as

the hyphen in che nation-smre formula has begun at long las[ to be

looked upon with a more critica) eye and as Che principie of na-

cional self-decerminarion (any group should have a state that really

wanrs one; any group that has a state is per se a nation) has come tu

be seen for rhe wisp or idealiry, Tarnilnad and Kurdistan, Surinam

and Zaire, rhat it is. But 1 want to concentrare here on just one of

[hese pairs, country and nation, and especially un freeing Che first

from Che tentacles of Che larter. Their fusion, or confusion, which

amounts ro the submergence of che idea of country almost alto-

gether, nor only obscures whac is happening in Chis place or Chas. It

prevents us from seeing vcry cicariy how in fact out world nowadaysis pus together.

The easiest way to do chis is, of rourse, simply to oppose them

to one another. You can dama rhe one as "narionalism," something

(to quote from the las[ American ambassador ro integral Yugoslavia

in an otherwise perceptiva account of whac happened there) "by

nature uncivil, antidemocratic, and separatisr, hecause it empowers

one ethnic group over odhors," and paaise Che ocher as "patriotism,"

the decent and warming )ove of country-green valleys, sidewalk

cases, the cal) of the muezzin, Fuii ¡ti the mists, campos and piazzas,

the scenr of cloves. Or you can objucrify them as classing expres-

sions, irreconcilable sorts, Che one bad, the other okay, of "national-

istn" as such: "erhnic" vs, "civic," "ofhcial" vs. "popular," "divisive"

vs. "unificatory," "Habsburg" („r "Eastern") es. "Liberal" (or "West-

ern") or whatever.10 In either case, you get a manichaean picture

which sets jealous provincialism and sanguineous xenophobia on

the one side againsc honesc pride and relaxed self-confidence on theocher.

At some very general leve), that view from the hovering bal-

loon, Chis is plausible enough: the son of nationalism associated

with Hitler or Karadzic does seem in thoroughgoing contras[ to the

sort associated wich Gandhi or Lincoln. But again, when we de-

scend to cases, tu che ethnicism (if rhat's whac it is) of Israel or

Bangladesh, Hungary or Singapore, or Che patriotism (if that's whac

ir is) of Castro or Solzhenitsyn, Enoch Powell or Jean-Marie Le Pen,

23ú ('hnpter 1V]

things begin to grow rather less obvious. lf one Cakes, for exampie,

three countries beses right now, in ascending degrees of severity and

danger, by nation-phrased collective identities resistant to their era-

braceo Canada, Sr¡ Lanka, and (ex-) Yugoslavia, it is clear rhat the

relationships between "country" and "nation" are so different from

one to Che next as to be as impossible to fold finto a dichotomous

opposition as they are finto a promiscuous fusion. And if one

moves en then, to Burundi or Nigeria, Afghanistan or Indonesia,

Belgium or Che United States (1 leave aside Switzerland and

Lebanon as almost too amenable cases), matters get more various

yes There is, again, nothing for ir bus a sort of political, or poli-

tico-economic, ethnography which can trace out Che relationships

between particular countries and Che affinities and dissonances

they are almost everywhere-no, nos almost everywhere ... ev-erywhere-engaged with.

For, insofar as there is a distinction te be made between "coun-

try" and "nation," it lies nor in che civiliry and unassertiveness of

Che one and che passion and clamorousness of Che other, which is

anyway (China, France, Morocco, Argentina) nos aiways che case.

It lies in Che one as a political arena and Che other as a political

force: between a bordered, to some degree arbitrary, space within

which Che more immediace sorts of public struggle, Che sort we unre-

flectively call domestic (Che ordering of social encounters, che distri-bution of life chances, Che utilization of productive resources) are

supposed to be contained and regulated, brought finto line, as

against one of Che central energies driving those struggles, che sense

of whom one descends from, who one thinks, looks, talks, eats,

prays, or moves like, and feels, in result, empathically bound tocome whac may.

If we Cake, briefly and with no serious attempt co unpack their

histories, assess their prospects, or judge Che rights and wrongs of

things-a task 1 am, quite frankly, unprepared for-the three coun-

tries 1 just mentioned as undergoing varying degrees of nation-

phrased tension, Canada, Sri Lanka, and Che lingering shadow, nos

gone, noc present, that is Yugoslavia, Chis inrerplay between Che

terrain of politics and their complexion is quite apparent. The ar-

rangemenc and disarrangement of Che rifts and solidarities that lan-

The World in `Dieces 237

yilace, Jc,ccni, raer, reli-i„1), 111,1 ,,, un ,,iiulate rmj the aparees and

eice se I lijo which th,ue nl.^ 1)d s, lii.arirle, ore >„ arr:niged 'and

JI,u an`,J vol onli _Il(La 11 Ivh todo me cnc ro tire next, rhe.

pantiuIl.uluc, -.n sea N 1111 -e „ pl, oüccl tvhat, .n wc say, wjdl

perhaps loare tensan thun Lee culi-c, cakes place oa rhe graund. A

very latee couner^', ver} ílit, "Lh 'c ImI,d, a aman, impacted island

axnna athha te trom u candi cnr..tnJ..m irregular cumut ot nwun-

tain v.ilLeyU, closeJ 1.111:. hicI>CJ 1lyUI>, and narrawed carita,

cnroWdCJ roun.l svith je.,lau, nciyhhor;, pravjde icleational fumes,

specitic and distinctivc, lar thc flash of identities-historicized

places trae shapc with sou e latee clic structure of che clash.

Cavada, which has buen descrihed bv che sardonic Toronto press

lord, Contad Black, as "historically (... ) a collection of peaple

ivho were not Americana: French-Canadians abandoned by France

in 1763 atter che British militarv viaory; Brirish Empire Loyalists

who tled che Americio Revoludon; immigrants and fugitives from

Eutope and recently ochar places, including che United Scares;

Newfoundlanders who narrowly elecred to hecome a Canadian

provinee in 1949 after going bankrupt as an autonomous domin-

ion," plus, though he, perhaps charaeterisrically, forgecs to mention

them, a significant nmaber ot significantly differenc Amerindian

groups, is surely one country in which the difference between the

idearional space within which paGtics is framed and acress which it

mnges-ten million square kilometers between Detroit and che Ar-

tic Circle-and che collectioe identities that color those politics is

impossible ro miss.'' The sril wI-le theta, so often seco (at leas( by

outsiders) as a srraighdnrward master of French fierré and English

bloody-minde,lness, is in fact al muhisided, "deep diversiry" encoun-

ter played out over an inunense, inipertectly known, uncertainly

conceived, unevenly occupied, and unequally endowed rerrirory.

When perhaps yo percent of che population is concentrated within

rhree hundred kilonreters of clic U.S. border; When half che popula-

tion lives jo rhe Toronto to Montreal corridor alone and a quarter

of it lirves in Quebec, which j., more rhan So percent French speak-

ing; and When che othcr vine-ccalhs ot rhe country, che more or less

frecen norrh where che gteater paaponian ot che natural resources of

(: h ipl er' Í

rhe country are locaced, is so thinly populated as to Nave an Amer-

indian majority in most plices- merely ta scracch che surface of che

complexity here (a different sort of French minority in New Bruns-

wick; Inuit Eskimos in che Northsvesr Territorios; Ukrainians,

Asians-a rapidly expanding group-and yet more Indiana in che

west; Métis, French and Indian mixed-hlocds speaking a French and

Indian Creole, in che forested center; wa ll-co-teall English in New-

foundland)-you obviously haya a siruacion in which chota js a

good deal of room tor maneuver between parta and whole>, however

defined.

And che recent (though not only che recent) political history of

the country has consisted of a whole series of such maneuverings,

the majority of them abortive, or, tu date, incomplete, indefinite,

and of uncerfain future. There have been accempts to revise consti-

tucional arrangements, already among che most devolved in che

world (only hollowed-out Belgium or burnt-out Lebanon seem fur-

ther advanced), to devise new subunics of various sorrs (che Yukon

Council, Nunavut, che Métis Association), to adjust infernal bor-

ders, to redistribute resources among regions and subgroups, and

most especially to forestall, or, if rhat roo fails, to prepare for the

almost continuously threatened secession of Quebec. And all this

while trying, in a country essentially defined by a single border, to

maintain its integrity and self-direcrion vis-á-vis what its leaders

usually carefully refer ro as "our great neighbor to the south."

The result is at once fluid and oddly persistent-a chronic

"Whither Canada?" debate in which language, religion, ethnicity,

and regionalism seem continuously on che verge of altering che very

shape of che country, redrawing lis ouclines and eransforming che

topography of che political landscape whole and entire, while not,

so fiar anyway, managing actually to do so. How ic will all play out of

course remains to be seen. Will Quebec finally leave, half-leave ("a

sovereign state within a sovereign state"), or merely go on endlessly

chreatening to leave? Whatever it does, what will its relations with

che res( of Canada be, including, not unimportantly, with Indian

cribes within its borders (Algonkians and Inuits, they comprise che

majority in abour half che rerrirory claimed by it), with whom it is

already embroiled concerning control over natural resources on In-

711E W@lU 111 Ieces 230

dian lands? ("The meek nmv inherit rhe carth," as J. Paul Getty is

supposed ro have raid, "bur rhey can forget abour che mineral

rights.") Will che resentmenrs of che western provinces toward On-

tario, which by now provides hall rhe GDP (and in a Quebec-less

Canada would provide an overwhelining proportion), or [hose of

rhe English-speaking remnant in Montreal toward che French ma-

jority there, escalare roto new fissures? How will che great, open

norrh finally be organi:ed, especially as European Canadians beginto move there? And so en, and on.

And so roo with irs relationship to irs discomficing neighbor.

Block, hiinself a Quebec-borra Anglophone who, like so many of his

fellows (a hundred d,ousand since separatism goa underway in

1976) has moved toward more congenerous surroundings, even pro-

jects a scenario (called, 1 rrust ironic lly, "A More Perfect Union")

in which, if che bicultural srate dissolves, English Canada would

forra a federation with che United Stares, stabilizing rhe latter's

"complicated demography" ("Geopolitically, Anrerica would be al-

mosr boro again")-though it is unclear chat even he is able to

believe such a srory.` Whar i clear is rhat Canada as a country is

more a field of (culturally supposed) " 'breeds,' 'kinds' or'stocks' of

persons" [han it is one in itself-somerhing, of course, if anything

even more true of rhe United Scates, "voll," as Herder said sometime ago, "von so viel kleinen nutionen."

Sri Lanka, née Ceylon, is, jusu Co look at it, hardly reminiscent ofCanada. A tight lirtle island, not a sprawling continental expanse,

it is abour a hundred-fifrierh irs sizc It is a hundred times more

densely populated, with irs inhabirant, reasonably evenly distributed

over rhe whole rather [han packed in distinct concentrations set offfroin great emprinesses. Ir is a precipitare of a hundred and fifty

years of direct colonial rule and more [han a millennium of history,

not a collection of peopies rather accidenrally and rather recently

thrown together. And it is tropical, Asian, and bur weakly indus-

trialized. That the internal tensions threatening to dismantle it,

though, so far at leas[, much more severo, much more hace-filled,

and much more marked with violence, are, nonetheless, in some

ways, curiously resemblani of rhose threatening to dismantle Can-

240 `' (leapter 17

ada, gives some cause for reflection." Here, roo, rhe country is less

itself a purported "stock" or a "kind" [han an historicized terrain-a

milieu and a place within which such stocks or kinds josde and

maneuver, mutually consrructing themselves, their character, andtheir collective interesas.

What seems, to an outsider in any case, most striking abour Sri

Lanka in terms of the idenrity-group tensions that have wracked ir

for rhe last four decades or so is not rhe faca that rhey are more

starkly bipolar [han is rhe rule in such cases [hese days (only

Rwanda and Burundi, or perhaps Northem Ireland, seem to ap-

proach it in chis regard; Nigeria, Yugoslavia, India, Canada, and che

United States, multisided, wheels within wheels, are rather more

che norm), or even that rhey are so severe, so chronic, and so re-

sistan[ to difference splitting. What is most striking is that rhey

involve a clash between two groups, both of which feel themselves

ro be in sume way minorities, that rhey have arisco so recently as an

almosr direct result of che puzzlements of che "selP in "self-tale,"

and that rhey have taken place in a country that has been, in oher

respects, rather stable, progressive, and at leas[ moderarely successful

-slowed population growth, contained inflation, improved educa-

tion, a decena growth rate, and an infanr mortality rafe approaching

Chile's or South Korea's, a life expectancy matching Hungary's orArgentinas)

The two minorities situation is a result of the fact that che

twelve million or so Sinhalese, most of whom are Buddhists and

who speak an Indo-European language, are all of them there are in

che world, while che three million or so Tamils, most of whom are

Hindu and who speak a Dravidian language, are macched by chircy

or forty million (rhe number is, characteristically, disputed) more of

them jusr across che Palk Serait in southern India. Both, thus, can

easily see themselves as being swallowed up by the other: che Sin-

halese by Tamil expansionism, which has flared up periodically un-

der the banner of a free and unified Tamilnad; che Tamils by

Sinhala-only domination of Sri Lanka as such, a central [heme in

che political uproar thar independence, itself a sedare and undrama-

tic, almosr huis dos, affair-no war, no revolution, not even all thatmuch agitation-brought on.

Tf;e lk2oidd ;^^ Dieces 24 i

The c'reatiw^ of a axuun, nr m"re aüura[cly, 1 suppose, che

othei,tlic.nitm ot one whrrc t c,d,,nc liad been before, is whar ser Sri

Lanka t1 mi, il tr,tuhle, m iitetem nncicnt grievafices or

Iong-nurturcd bcdn. lictt, ''14' .an.l 101 a tew vean atter, a hicul-

tural Anelieird elite, cntrencb,J in eLLmbu, kepí matters pro-

cecdingg in a more ot 4,s orvc b: cc.n wat group tensions existed

acre dii tic an.l loen. kcl a iu cliccl' I•c multiple ditterentiations,

hli.hccl .tccnmma.l.ni„i,<, cl >-cai. inc Inyalties, and the practi-

cal intricacie, ot eceremlac lik. but hom che mid-tltties Chis delatare

and somcwhar artificial canuits csllapsed, replaced by a radical divi-

sion of ncu population inn, "Sinhala" and "Tamil" (or `Buddhist"

and "Hindu," or "Aryan" and °Dracidian") supercategories and an

ascending curve of suspicion, jcalousy, barred, and violente that has

nor ended ver, despite a series of Carrada-like constitucional pro-

posals, a conrinuing shuftlc of governments, and che reluctantly in-

vited assistance, now rermirraacd, of the Indian army.

Whar, in the space of t jets. short years, broughr all chis on-

the coming ro power ot Sinhelese demagogues and che rejection of

che English-speaking elite by che Sinhalese- and Tamil-speaking

masses alike; che impassioned language barde, srill unresolved, that

followed froni that; che rransformation of Buddhism from a quietist

religion inro a milimnr creed under che leadership of revivalist

monks and ayurvedic doctor; tbe growth of Tamil separatism, at-

traction toward south India, and niovement back and forth across

the Strair; che upsurge of infernal migration, religious segregation,

ethnic ingathering, and reciproca) terrorísm; che recrudescence of a

classical myrhology of religious, racial, and cominunal warfare,

Tamil conqucsts and Sinlralese explusions-can be here lefr acide.

The dotad- are obscure, in am case, and their weight more so.

Whar is impormnt is that, once again, thc bounds of a country,

celebrared and questioncd, hisroricelly puf together and historically

takeable-apart, provide che frame withln which identity conflicts

crysralli:e: che stage-hect, compact and congestive-on which,

perforce, rhey work themseives out, or, of cocase, do nor. It makes a

difference where things happen.

Ir certainly doe in nce Balkans. In turning very briefly tu Yugoslavia

(or as we noe- must say, wirh a Jying ball, ,.che formen Yugoslavia"),

it is flor wirh the intcntion of ,orting out what just abour everyone

else who has tried, even che skilled amd desperare Messrs. Vance

and Owen wirh their ten-ply resrructurarion oí Bosnia-Hercegovina,

has largely failed tu sor[ out. Nor can 1 address che terrible issues of

che nioraliry and policy ir has rhrown up for a world unprepared to

deal wirh them. 1 want only to conclude my short, illustrarive, and

quite arbirrary series (1 could as well Nave taken Belgiunt, Nigeria,

and Afghanistan; Brazil, Rwanda, and Czechoslovakia) of insrmct-

ing cases: cases in which che discrimination of a country as a histor-

icized place-a location, a nanre, and a rememberable pass-from

che affinitive, "who are we?" solidarities thar support or trouble it is

more helpful to reflection about a splintered world than is the fu-

sion of che two inro a one-size-fits-all, demonized "nationalism."

Yugoslavia (1 suppress "che former" henceforth, for che sake of style:

it is to be taken as read, in its fullest irony) provides a case in which

the sorts of rensions so far contained in Canada and at leas[, though

che word doesn't seem quite right given the levels of violente

involved, so far lived with in Sri Lanka, have, in a half-dozen

years, overwhelmed che country: literally disassembled it; left it in

pieces.a'The "virtue" (che word, of course, in che heaviest of shudder

quotes) of che Yugoslav case is that che country carne apart-that

is, was taken apart-if not precisely in slow motion at least with a

certain relentless, he who says "A" must say "B," deliberation in

which the stages of disintegration are distinct, sharp, dramatic, and

visible. There was Milosevic's speech in the capital of Kosovo on

che six-hundredrh anniversary of the famous lost battle against the

Turks, finally demonstrating to even the most Yugoslavian of

Yugoslavs (rhere were many srill left then, and far from powerless)

that che Serbian Question was back to stay. There was che almost

furtive departure, via the confused and hesitan ten-day war, of

Slovenia from che Federation in June of iggi, the coinciden[ decla-

ration of independence by Croacia, the recognition of both [hese

events by a reuniting Germany, getting back inro European politics

as an unfettered actor, and che outbreak of war in Croacia as Bel-

grade moved to support its Serbian enclaves that immediately fol-

lowed. There was the movement of che war to Bosnia-Herzegovina

after as declaration of independence in mid-iggz; the ¡11-fated

X42 -- f lrydrr A I 1 The ordd ira Meces 243

Vance-Oven cantonization plan in 1993-dismembering Bosnia in

order to save it; the fragilc and porous Sarajevo cease-fire, yet an-

other cantonization plan; rhe fearful ptospect of morder withour end

in 1994; and the tremhlinv, peace of rhe Dayton Accords. Each of

[hese events, as well asa hosr of others-the shelling of Dubrovnik,

the leveling of Vukovar, the siege oí Sarajevo, the reduction of

Mosrar-are phases of a single process the erasure of a country and

che attempt to redelineate Miar then is left. (The more recent

events in Kosovo are hut anoncwr chaprer in an unfinished-what is

to hecotne of Montenegro?--perhaps unfinishable, story.)

The country was, of course, never that firmly rooted; its history

was short, vertiginous, inrerrupred, and violen[. Assembled by the

Crear Powers after the Great War from sorne oí the linguistic, reli-

gioas, and tribal enclaves, thar had hecn excited by the Balkan

Wars and then left hehind hy rhe. Austrian Empire, it was plagued

from its birth by challenges ro its inregrity from hoth within and

without-Cruatian and idacedonian separatism, Hungarian and

Bulgarian irredentisms-and prissed from monarchy, to parliamen-

tarianism, ro Nazi occuparion, to Conimunist dictatorship, and back

to parliamentarianism in the space of some eighty years.

It seems rather a wonder rhat it took hold at al]. But, at least in

retrospect, it seems to have done so with considerable force, espe-

cially in che cities and rowns, and ir is not clear that its mental pull,

the idea it projected, a Norrh Balkan country with a multicultural

population, has altogether dislpaced set, whatever che practical fi-

nality of its disappearance. The war that destroyed ir went from

heing a Yugoslavian une, to heing a Serho-Croatian one, to heing a

Bosnian one-a succession of attcml,rs, of ascending brurality and

madness, ro replace whar had, almost accidentally, hecn lost: nei-

ther a stare nor a people, a socios, nor a nation, none of which it

had ever more than inchoarivels, been, but a country. Yugoslavia, or,

one las[ rime, 'the forma Yugoslavia," seems to be an almost pure

case of the noncoincidence, in meaning and in fact, of rhese so

often identified and interfhse,1 realitics, and, in a negarive way, the

weighr, che power, and rhe impoltance of the last.

"Zdnn,k, Grebo [Misha OIennc writcs of a friend of his, a law pro-

fessor at Sarajevo University .m.l u Girmer politician] is a Bosnian

who oozes humour and culture. His parents were Moslems from

Mostar but he had been brought up in Belgrade and he continued

to call himself a Yugoslav, even after he openly admitted that

Yugoslavia no longer existed. 'What else can 1 call myself?' he

mused, '1 can hardly start calling myself a Moslem or a Serb after all

[hese years.' Bosnia (and Sarejevo especially) had the highest per-

centage of people who designated themselves Yugoslavs in the na-

cional census. When Yugoslavia was submerged in rhe biood of its

own people, [hese Yugoslavs and che identity to which they still

clung, were washed away roto a river of poisoned history.""

The river of history need not, of course, have been so thoroughly

poisoned. Lebanon aside, perhaps Liberia, perhaps Sudan, it has not

been, so far anyway, in many countries, che overwheiming majoriry so

far as mere numbers go, intemally bese[ by cultural fault lines-Indo-

nesia, the United States, India, Egypt, Kenya, Guatemala, Malaysia,

Belgium. Canada still holds together, and if (as at che moment seems

unlikely) ir tucos out to he unable to do so, it should be able to

achieve che sor[ of velvet divorce that Czechoslovakia did, and before

that Singapore and Malaysia did. Sr¡ Lanka may yet contain irs ten-

sions within some sor[ of pliant and tractable constitucional strucrure

as South Africa, a few short years ago surely the country thoughr

leas[ likely to succeed in such an effort and to descend roto multi-

sided chaos, is at leas[ beginning to do. Even Yugoslavia might have

avoided che worst if, as Glenny suggests, "che European Communiry

and rhe United States [had guided] che inexperienced or opportunist

leaders toward an agreed breakup of che country," and if che horror is

not to spread to che southem Balkan, they will have to do so still»

Much depende upon how rhese things are managed.

We seem to be in need of a new variety of politics, a politics

which does not regard erhnic, religious, racial, linguistic, or regional

assertiveness as so much irrationality, archaic and ingenerate, tu be

suppressed or transcended, a madness decried or a darkness ignored,

but, like any other social prohlem-inequality say, or che abuse of

power-sees ir as a realiry to he faced, somehow dealr with, modu-

lated, brought to tercos.

24+ Chaptei Xi Í `Ibie Woe1d in Pieces -% 245

The developnunt iti uch .i poluieS, svhich eaill vary from place

ro p1 tee as niueb as thu situ.w.ni< ir tres do, depends oil a nutnber

^^( rhing, Ir dependo nt tin.Lne "ti[ the ,prings of idenriry-based

diffrmntiatinn and discord ti, rhi, cap or that. It depends on devel-

oping si le,s simplisticallc ^Icm^mi-ing. hlankly negative attitude to-

n as a relic ot s ivaoei . soase earlier srage of human exis-

reuec. It depend, on d,tprima the principies of liberalism and social

democnic^, srill our beso guiJr, tos l.m, c'ocemnunt, and public de-

portmenr, re, matters widt reseca tu which they Nave been too of-

ten dismissive, reactive, or incomprehending; philosophically blind.

But perhaps most important, ir depends on our constructing a

clearer, more circumstantial, less mechanical, stereotypic and

cliché-ridden conception of what it consists in, what it is. That is, it

depends on our gaining a better undersranding of what culture, the

frames of meaning within which people live and forro their convic-

tions, rheir selves, and their sulidariries, comes to as an ordering

force in human affairs.

And rhis, once more, menas a critique of conceptions which

reduce martes to uniformiry, to homogeneity, co like-mindedness-

to consensus. The vocabulary of cultural description and analysis,

needs also tú be opened up to divergence and multiplicity, to the

noncoincidence of kinds and caregories. No more than countries

can the identities that color them, Muslim or Buddhist, French or

Persian, Latin or Sinitic . Block or Whitc, be grasped as seamless

unities, unbroken wholes.

1V2liat Is a Cultut^e i( li Is 11ot a C',ottsensus?

There is a paradox, occasionally note,] out not very deeply reflected

upon, concerning the presenr state of sisar we so casually refer to as

"the world scene": it is grocving hoth more global and more divided,

more thoroughly interconnecred and more intricately partirioned, at

the same rime. Cosmopolitanism and parochialism are no longer

opposed; rhey are linked and reinforcing. As rhe ene increases, so

does the othcr.

The growth of technology, most ponla larly of communications

technology, has knit the world into a single web of information and

causality, such that, like the famous hutierfly beating its wings in the

Pacific and bringing on a storm in the Iherian Peninsula, a change of

conditions anyplace can induce disrurbances anyplace clse. We are all

ar the mere}' of American money managers speculating in Mexican

equities or British hankers in Singapore gambling on Tokyo deriva-

tives. Kobe earthquakes or Durch floods, Italian scandals or Saudi

production targets, Chinese arios sales or Colornbian drug snmgglings,

llave near instara impacts, diffuse and magnihed, far from their

sources. CNN hrings Bosnian slaughter, Somali starvation, or Rwan-

dan refugee camps finto the world's living rooms. Places normally

quite obscure, provincial, and self-absorbed-Grozny, Dili, Ayodhya,

or Cristobal de Las Casas; Kigali, Belfast, Monrovia, Tbilisi, Phnom

Penh, or Port-au-Prince-momentarily challenge the great merropo-

lises of the world for the world's attention. Capital is mobile and, as

there is hardly a people, flor even che Samoans, without a diaspora, so

is labor. There are Japanese companies in the United States, German

ones in Indonesia, American ones in Russia, Pakistani ones in Brit-

ain, Taiwanese ones in the Philippines. Turks and Kurds send money

home from Berlin, Maghrebians and Vietnamese from Paris, Zairis

and Tamils from Brussels, Palestinians and Filipinos from Kuwait City,

Somalis from Rome, Moroccans from Spain, Japanese from Brazil,

Mexicans from Los Angeles, a few Croats from Sweden, and just

about everyone from New York. All Chis vast connection and intri-

cate interdependence is sometimes referred to, after cultural studies

sloganeers, as "the global village," or, after World Bank ones, as

"borderless capitalism." But as it has neither solidarity nor tradition,

neither edge nor focus, and lacks all wholeness, it is a peor sort of

village. And as it is accompanied less by the loosening and reduction

of cultural demarcations than by their reworking and multiplication,

and, as 1 have pointed out aboye, often enough their intensification,

it is hardly borderless.Charting such demarcations, locating them and characterizing

the populations they isolate, or at least set off, is at best an arbitrarybusiness, inexactly accomplished. The discrimination of culturalbreaks and cultural continuities, the drawing of lines around sets ofindividuals as following a more or less identifiable form of life asagainst different sets of individuals following more or less differentforms of life-other voices in other rooms-is a good deal easier in

theory than it is in practice.

2-:( ( h,grter .X'l 1 ?h e Worla üa 3ieces t 247

Anthropology, one of sv hose vocarions, at leas[, is to loeate such

demore tinns, to discriminare stich breaks and describe such conti-

nuities, has fumbled with rhe issue from rhe beginning, and fumbles

wirh it still. Bur it is, nonethcless, nor to be evaded with dim ha-

naliries ahout rhe humanness ot humankind or underlying factors of

likeness and connnonaliry, if only because, "in sature," as rhe posi-

tivists used tú like ro say, people rhemselves make such contrasts

and draw such ]roes regará themselves, ar some times, for sume

purposes, as French sor English, 1 lindu nor Buddhist, Hutu flor

Tutsi, Latino nor Indio, Shi'i not Sunni, Hopi nor Navajo, Black

flor White, Orange nor Green. Wharever we might wish, or regard

as enlighrenmenr, rhe severalt\ of culture abides and proliferates,

even anúdst, indecd in response r,,, the powerfully connecring

forces oí modem manufacture, tinance, rravel, and trade. The more

things come together, rhe more they remain aparo rhe uniform

world is sor much closer rhar rhe clazsless society.

Anthropology's enekwardness in dealing with al¡ rhis, with rhe

cultural organizarion of ti),, m,alem urorld rhar ouglit, by righrs, to

be irs proper subjecr, is in 'tu it part rhe resulr of rhe difficulries ir

has experienced, oven rhe course of ir, vagrant and imvard history,

in discovering for itself hoov hcst to think about culture in rhe first

place. In the nineteenth Cent un' and wcell roto Chis one, culture was,before all else, raken ro be a universal property of human social life,rhe rechniyues, custnms, tradirions, and rechnologies-religion and

kinship, fine and language-rhar set it off from animal exisrence. Its

opponent tesn was narure, and if ir w,s to he divided inro sorts and

kinds, ir was in tercos oí die slistance one or anorher piece of it,

mononccism or individualisin, monogamy or rhe prorection of pri-

vate properry, had, supposedly, moved away from narure, irs progress

toward rhe lighr. Wirh rhe growrh, afrer rhe First World War, of

long-terco, parriciparory fieldwork wirh particular groups-a lot of it

on islands and Indian reservarions, irhere breaks and edges were

easier to discern and rhe norion that cverything fit together easier

to enterrain-rhe generical conception pegan to be set aside, as

diffuse and unwieldy, as well as self-serving, in favor of a configura-

tional one. Insread of jusr culture as such one had cultures-

bounded, cohereur, cohesive, and se!f-smnding: social organisms,

semiotical crystals, microworlds. Culture was what peoples had and

held in common, Greeks or Navajos, Maoris or Puerto Ricans, eachits own.u

After, however, che Second World War, when even putative so-

cial isolates, jungle people, desert people, island people, arctic people,

encapsulated people, grew fewer in number, and anthropologisrs

tumed their attention toward vaster, more mixed-up, iridescent ob-

jects, India, jipan, France, Brazil, Nigeria, rhe Soviet Union, che

United Stares, rhe configurational view became, in tuco, strained,

imprecise, unwieldly, and hará to credit. One mighr plausibly regard

rhe Nuer or rhe Amhara as an integral unir, at least if one blocked

off intemal variabilities asid extemal involvemenrs, as well as any-

thing very much in rhe way of larger history, but rhar was difficult to

do for Sudan or Ethiopia; for Africa, it was impossible, though a few

have tried ir. An Indonesian minoriry, such as the Chinese, a Moroc-

can one, such as rhe Jews, a Ugandan one, such as rhe Indians, or an

American one, such as rhe Blacks, mighr show a certain character

special to themselves, but rhey were hardly to be understood apart

from che srares and societies in which they were enclosed. Everything

was motley, porous, interdigitated, dispersed; rhe search for totality an

uncertain guide, a sense of closure unatrainable.

A picture of che world as dotred by discriminare cultures, dis-

continuous blocks of though[ and emotion-a sor[ of pointillist

view of its spiritual composition-is no less misleading than che

picture of it as tiled by repeating, reirerarive nation-stares, and for

the lame reason: rhe elements concemed, rhe dots or the tiles, are

neirher compact nor homogeneous, simple sor uniform. When you

look inro them, their solidiry dissolves, and you are left nor with a

catalogue of well-defined entibes to be arranged and classified, a

Mendelian rable of natural kinds, but with a Cangle of differences

and similarities only half sorred out What makes Serbs Serbs, Sin-

halese Sinhalese, or French Canadians French Canadians, or any-

body anybody, is that they and rhe res[ of the world have come, for

rhe inoment and tu a degree, for certain purposes and in certain

contexts, to view them as contrastive to what is around them.

Both the territorial compactness and rhe localized traditional-

ism that islands, Indian reservarions, jungles, highiand valleys,

24,5 - ("Iinp (er 11 1 `Tire World in 1 ieeeS -- 24g

1,.111, 1, .111,1 nci llke procidLU (.ir. :10vtrdv, ^uppnsedl} provided, for

oven t1-ir 'vas a Lit t a mvthl tnd thr usty pral, configurational, it

all ^^,^rs t„LLnce r, nnti^m ^(cr,in,tal iJrnin -Thc Areonaurs of ncc

fC'estern hacine, The Chere uic Wav. The Porest People, The

ólounmin Pcople, Thc 11c, rt I'uople-rhar such compactness and

lncaliration sti aulated veem more md more beside rhe point as we

ruin r,nc.inl rhe tragmeus nn,l trtgmeni.u i^nu ot rhe contemporary

world. The viese ot calrurc, i ^allore, rito culture, as a cotuensus on

tundamcnra ls-sliared cl mirpt i,ms, shared ice lings, shared values-

seems hnrdly viable in nce fase of so much dispersion and disassem-

bly; it is rhe faulrs and fissures thar secan ro mark out the landscape

of collective selfhood. Whatever it is rhar defines identity in border-

less capitalism and rhe global villagc it is non deep-going agreements

on deep-going matters, but somcthing more like the recurrence of

familiar divisions, persisting argumcnts, standing rhreats, rhe notion

rhar whatever else may happen, nce order of difference must be

somehow mainrained.

We do non know, really, hose to handle Chis, how ro deal with a

world rhar is neither divided at nce joints inro ingredient sections

nor a transcendent unityeamomic, say, or psychologieal-ob-

scured by surface contrasrs, thin and concocted, and best ser aside as

inessential disrractions. A scramhle of differences in a field of con-

nections presents us with a situarion in which the trames of pride

and rhose of barred, culture faairs and ethnic cleansing, survivance

and killing fields, sir sido by sidc and pass with frightening case from

rhe one to rhe other. Political rbcorics rhar both admir to this con-

dition and have rhe will to conñanr ir, to expose and interrogare

rhe order of difference, rather tiran perfecting classroom visions of

Hobbesian war or Kanrian concord, only barely exisr. Much de-

pende upon their growth and development: you can'r guide whar

you can't undersrand.

111 any case , if rhe elemcnmlism of anrha>pology , its focus on con-

nsos, typc, an.l commm^alirc eh,n has been called the cookie-

currer concept of culture [E id douhritll use in promoting such

?^u fl,iydrr .^l

growth and refinement, as cosmopolitanism, its determination to

look beyond rhe familiar, rhe receivcd, and rhe near at hand, is

perhaps more valuable. The resoluto undermining of al¡ sorts of ex-

ceprionalisms, American, Western, European, Christian, and all sort

oí exoticisms, rhe primitive, rhe idolatrous, rhe antipodean, the

quaint, forces comparison across rhe established realms uf relevance

and suitability-the considettng togerher of whar normally is non

considered considerable together. In connection with rhe develop-

ments of rhe past half century, and most especially rhe pass hall

doten years that is out subject here, such ungrammarical comparison

makes it possible to avoid che most pervasive misdescriprion of

those developments: rhar they are divided roto Western and non-

western varieties and that rhe non-western variety is essentially re-

capitulative, a rerun of history rhe West has passed through, and

more or less rriumphed over, rather than, as is in fact rhe case, rhe

edge of rhe new, premonitory and emblematic, of history to come.

This is parricularly clear if one tucos to the alterarions of the

political landscape in Asia, Africa, rhe Pacific, rhe Caribbean, and

certain parts of Latin America afrer 1945. The dissolution of rhe

great overseas empires-British, Dutch, Belgian, French, Por-

tuguese, in a somewhat different way American, German, Iralian,

and Japanese (even Australia, after all, had a Protectorate, even if rt

had to inherit it from the Germans a bit late in the game)-made

thoroughly plain rhar, despite rhe passionate solidarities of colonial

revolt, the collective identities that drove rhar revolt and rhar suf-

fuse rhe lives of the countries it created are ineradicably plural,

compound, inconstant, and contested. The contribution of rhe

Third World upheaval to the twentieth century's self-understanding

lies less in its mimicries of European nationalism (which were in

any case a good deal less intense in, say, Morocco, Uganda, Jordan,

or Malaysia, than they were in, say, Algeria, Zaire, India, or Indo-

nesia) than in its forcing into view rhe compositeness of culture

such nationalism denies. We may come in time to see Asia's and

Africa's political reconstruction as contributing more ro transform-

ing Euro-America's view of social selfhood than vice versa.

The reason for Chis is non that rhe nature of the countriesformed out of rhe collapse of colonial empire is radically different in

The World iw Preces 251

kind and consrrucrion from rh,it of rhose which cante inro being

carlier on in che West aher similar collapses of sirnilarly over-

stretched political, or poliricoculturil, imperia. It is that their

nature is more open co vicw, Iess shrouded in buried history; like

Bismarck's sausages, we huye seca diem marle. More recen[, as

weli as more rapidly and more deliberately established-countries

aforedrought-they have hecn born in che full lighr of history, che

accidents and happensmnces oi dieir f )rmation scill plain and show-

ing. The contingencies thar produced rhem, and thar virtually ev-

erywhere conrinue ro mainrain rhem, are flor only evidenr, they

are, in some ways, che mosc striking thing about rhem. France may

secm, ¡ti ferie by now, a natural given. Even Iraly may, or Denmark.ti is hará ti) think rhat of Angola or Bangladesh.

The cultural malee-up of rhe countries char emerged from the

wreckagcr of whac has come tu be calle], as though it were some sor[

of Enlighrenmenc experiment cnidocred for che edificacion of polit-

ical scientisrs, "che colonial projecr," is, of course, almost every-

where exrremely hecerogenuous, a collecrion of peoples, in many

cases almost haphazard-che horders are where che ins-atad-outs of

European politics happened ro place rhem. (Why are people who

live in Abidjan Ivoiriens, people who live in Accra, a couple hun-

dred miles along the same coas[, Ghanaians? Why is half of New

Guinea in Indonesia, hall in rhe PNG? Burma a separare country,

Bengal nor? Why are some Yonibas Nigerian, sorne Benin? Some

Thai Laotians? Some Afghans Pakistanis?) Language, religion, race,

and custom mece at al1 soirs of ancles, on all sorts of scales, atall sorrs of levels, impossible for even rhe nrosr passionate of nation-

alisrs to rationalize, obscure, or explain away as destined andinevitable.

Ir is nor, however, che simple facr of cultural hererogeneiry as

such, and che grear visibilicy o f ir, tirar is so insrructive, bus che

enormous variety of levels ar which such hererogeneiry exists and

has an effecr; so inany, indeed, that it is difficult to know how to

organizo a general picture, where co ]raw che fines and place che

foci. As soon as you look inro che derails of the master in any

particular instance, rhe more obs ious de narcarions, the unes you

can read abouc in che newspapcn (T,unils and Sinhalese, Shi'is and

Sunnis, Hurus and Tutsis, Malays and Chinese, East Indians and

Fijis) are almost overwhelmed by other demarcations, boch [hose

finer, more narrowly and exactly distinguishing, and those grosser,

more broadly and generally so. fi: is difficult to find a commonality

of outlook, forra of life, behavioral style, material expression ...

whatever ... that is nor either itself further partitioned inro

smaller, infolding ones, boxes within boxes, or taken up whole and

entire inro larger, incorporative ones, selves laid un top of selves.

There is, at leas[ in mosc cases, and 1 suspect in all, no point at

which one can say that Chis is where consensus either stops or starts.

It all depends on che frame of comparison, che background against

which idencity is seen, and che play of interest which engages and

animales ir.

Indonesia, a country 1 have myself studied up close, and over an

extended pertod of time (though mosc of it reraains beyond my

ken-encapsulated people and flung-out places, more heard about

[han known), demonstraces Chis difficult intricacy with particular

force.` The country is, of course, one of che mosc complicated, cul-

turally speaking, in che world, the produce of an incredible stream of

warring mind-sets-Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Indian, Chinese;

Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Muslim, Christian; Capicalist, Com-

munisc, Imperial Administrative-carried by means of those grear

world-historical agencies, long-disrance commodiry trade, religious

missionization, and colonial exploitation, inro a vas[, chousand-

island archipelago occupied mainly (though nor exclusively) by

Malayo-Polynesians, speaking hundreds of languages, following hun-

dreds of cults, and possessed of hundreds of moraliries, laws, cus-

toms, and arts; hundreds of senses, subtly different or grossly, rea-

sonably concordant or deeply opposed, of how life ought to go.

Articulating its spiritual anatomy, determining how in identiry

cerros it is pul together and, so far anyway, holds together, indeed

holds together surprisingly well given whac it has co contend with,

is a virtually impossible task. Bur it is one thac anybody who has

seriously to do with che place, either from within or without, is

inevitably constrained somehow to artempt.

The usual way this is done, also whether from within or with-

out, is by whac might be called (indeed, in my still rather classifica-

252 - i>hapi er XI 1 The World in ]doces 3` 253

cional, ciar dassir]ue, disrü^hnr, o oillcd) peoples and cultores"

cour;e. Tic s°arious crhnic el pi.ni-ethnic ^roups [he ]a^anese,

lije R.,nik rhe huci rhe 1<rhn^^c, rh, Uiline_e. ami so on clown

le nce ^m,ilier and more i^cn^,hrral cxamplcro, dije Bimans, the

Dveks, the .^,mboncsc, or crhnrccr .i« named, characterized by

sume conti,vration ot yu,ilit]es .•r orher, their subdivisions are out-

lined, nc,ir telaric>ns ie ,n, •cn,.thur ,IcGncd, rheir iposition within

nce whole .ra•>,c. itk piclds JHaln i cnnrillisr view, ot perhaps

hcuer here, given nce indexicil LIraractcr ot the ordering, a file card

view, ot nc^ cultural composirenc ot tlre country. it is seen asa set

of "peoples," varving in importante, size, and character, and held

within a crnnmon political and economic frame by an overarching

story, historical, ideological, religious, or whatever, rhat provides the

rationale for their being thus together, enclosed in a country. All

the levelss and dimensionc ot difterence and integration, save two-

the minimal consensual grouping cailed "a culture" or "an ethnic

group" and the maximal cae called "tite nation" or "the state"-

are occluded and washed out. Lnforrunately, che matters that in

the course of collective life acrually work ro align individuals in co-

operative enrerprises or tú divide them from one another in clash-

ing unes, che practices, che institutions, and the social occurrences

within which difference is encouncered and somehow dealt with,

are occluded and washed out with rhem. The file cards are assem-

bled, and the appropriare notations marle. But rhey are not cross-

indexed.

The fact is, however, that ir is precisely in che cross-indexing

thar the various identities rhe cards isolate are formed and play

against one anorher. They are not, these separared "cultures," or

"peoples," or "ethnic groups," so many lumps of sameness marked

out by che limits of consensos: rhey are various modes of involve-

ment in a collective life that takes place on a doten different levels,

on a doten different scales, and in a dozer different realms at once.

The making and dissolving oí village marriages and the governmen-

tal codificarion of family law, particular forms of worship and rhe

officialized role of religion in the state, local patterns of sociality

and overall approaches ro govemmem-rhese, and an enormous

number of similar intersections of outlonk, tyle, or disposition, are

rhe bases on which cultural complexity is ordered firmo at least

something of an irregular, rickety, and indefinite whole.

lt is not possible co ge miro the demils here-it iu harely possi-

ble to go tito che generalities; kit che cultural var'wusncss of Indo-

nesia (which, so far as 1 can see, is as vast as ever, desspite rhe

supposedly homogenizing effects of television, rock, and high late

capicalism) finds expression in che tonn )f struggles over the nature

of this whole. The way in which, and rhe degree to which, che

contrasting aspects of the overall conglomerare are te he repre-

sented in the formulation of Indonesian identity is rhe heart of rhe

matter. It is less consensos that is at issue than a viable way of doing

without it.So far as Indonesia is concemed, Chis has been achieved, to the

degree, very parcial, uneven, and incomplete, that it has been

achieved, by developing a form of cultural politics within which

sharply disparate conceptions of what sort of country che country

should be, can be represenred and blunted, celebrated and held in

check, recognized and covered over, at che same time; what has well

been called a working misunderscanding. It has not, of course, al-

ways worked. The 1965 massacres in Java, Bali, and parts of Suma-

tra, thousands dead, perhaps hundreds of thousands, was at base a

movement of this multisided struggle for che country's soul to the

level of violente. There have been ethnic revolts and religious ones,

back-country upheavals and urban riots; as well as, as in Easc Trmor

or West New Guinea, che bruce applicacion of state power-con-

sensus out of che barrel of a gun. But, so far, anyway, it has lumbered

along, like India or Nigeria, a bundle of parochialisms that some-

how adheres.The grand particularities of che Indonesian case, admittedly a

bit along toward the limit of things, aside, Chis overall picmre of

cultural identity as a field of differences confronting one anorher at

every level from the family, che village, rhe neighborhood, and che

region, to rhe countryside and beyond-no solidarity but that it is

sustained against jealous interna¡ divisions, no division but that it

sustains itself against ravenous incorporative solidarities-is, 1

think, very close to general in the modem world; there is nothing

"underdeveloped," "thi.rdworldish," or (that euphemism we have

25e .. (^h^^p(cr ..YJ The'Wn'ld in Pieus € 255

come lo use tu avoid saving "hackward") "tradicional" about ir. It

applies as fully lo a France he,et by tensions between civism laique

and an inrush oí Maghrebi tu immigrants who want tu cook with

cumin and wear headscanes in schnol, a Germany struggling lo

come Lo rerms with the presence oí Turks in a descent-defined

Heimatland, an Italy regionalized roto competing localisms only re-

inforced hy muderniq and neven dev elopment, or a United States

trying lo remember itself in a nmltiethnic, multiracial, tnulti-

eligious, muhilinguistic ... malticultural ... whirl, as it does Lo

such more brutally toro places as Liberia, Lehanon, Myanmar, Col-

ombia, or the Repuhlic of Soutli Africa. The European (and Ameri-

can) exceptionalism rhot secmcd, at leas[ ro Europeans (and Ameri-

cans) so plausible before t q8q-we have rhe nation-stare, and they

have not-has hecome increasmgly implausible since. Yugoslavia,

rhe formcr ex-, was, is, hoth rhe place where that idea seems to

have died and -"che hack porch oí Europe is buming"-its les[stand.

By rights, political theory shuuld he wh at 1 take it Aristotle wantedir tu be , a schnol for judgmcnr, not a replacement for ir-not amatrer of laying down che Iaw for thc less reflective lo follow(Ronald Drvorkin 's judges, John Rawls's policy makers, Robert

utiliity seekcrs), but a way of looking at the horrurs andconfusi, mns amidst which we all ;ve living that may he uf some heleto us in surviving and quictin ,yg rhem, perhaps even occasionally inheading them off. If su, it rhat is in fact its vocation , it needs lodevote a good deal mute ni irs attention to the particularities oíthings, lo what 's happening, to huw rnatters go. It necds to do this,not in order lo tum itself into a niuning commentary on how

awfully complicared everything is, an,l how intractable lo logicalordering. That can be left to history and anthropology, the complex-icareurs terribles of thc human scicnces. Ir needs to do ir in order toparricipute in die constructiun ot sihat is most needed now that theworld is redistrihuting itself intr , increasingly various frameworks oídifference , a practical politics rt cultunil cunciliarion.

25(i Chapier .A'1

Like any other politics, such politics will have lo be targeted,

tailored lo circumstances, lo times, and places, and personalities.

But, Like any other politics, it must develop, nonetheless, certain

communalities oí diagnosis, of strategy and direction, a certain unity

of intent. What it seeks in Diyabakar or Srinagar, it must seek as

well in Trois Rivieres or South Los Angeles. Algcrian kulturkampf

must be juxtaposed lo Irish; the velver divorce oí che Czechs and

che Slovaks, to that, some years earlier, but oddly reminiscent, oí

Malaya and Singapore; the double pulí, Germano/Latin, exerted

upon Belgium lo that, Graeco/Turanian, exerted upon Cyprus; the

marginalization oí America's Indians to that oí Australia's Aborig-

ines; the disassimilationism oí Brazil lo that oí che United States.

There is indeed a definable subject hete. The trick is to define it,

and having defined it, put it roto some sor[ oí order.

The central dynamic oí this subject seems, as 1 have been say-

ing, perhaps al] ton repetitively, to cunsist in two continuously op-

posing tendencies. On the one hand, there is the drive roward cre-

ating, or trying m creare, par sang droplets oí culture and politics;

the pointillist picture that both ethnic cleansing and rhe conver-

gent conception oí collective agency-"nation-ism"-aim lo pro-

duce. On che other, there is che drive toward creating, or trying lo

create, an intricate, multiply ordered structure oí difference within

which cultural tensions that are not about lo go away, or even te

moderare, can be placed and negotiated-contained in a country.

Such structures are, themselves, going to be different frum one such

country to another, the possibility oí constructing them variously

real. Positioning Muslims in France, Whites in South Africa, Arabs

in Israel, or Korcans in Japan are not altogether che same sor[ oí

thing. But if political theory is going lo be oí any relevance at all in

the splintered world, it will have lo have something cogen[ to say

about how, in rhe face oí rhe drive toward a destructive integrity,

such strucrures can be brought into being, how they can be sus-

tained, and how they can be made lo work.

This brings me te the final issue 1 want Lo address here, all ton

cursorily. This is rhe much discussed, but not much decided, capac-

ity oí liberalism (or more exactly, so that I am sorted with Isaiah

Berlin and Michael Walzer and not with Friedrich von Hayek and

The Urld in Jyieces -- 257

Rnhcn N^riek, social dcm^,cr.r.ic Ilh,r.dism) to rise tú this chal-

lcngc, ir, ahilüy to inc„hr it-cli in ti le rtncorous, explosive, atad

aireo cfloueh mur krnat, ; , lii H- ot calrural ditfereice; indeed, to

-suavice in it< presence. The- nvnnunncni ,t liberalism tú tate neu-

traliry in inartcrs ot pcrunal hclici, tu resolute individualista, íts

,tics ,m liberty, on proc luce, in,¡ n rhe universality of human

rights, and, ar Icor iti thc ion ion t:• sslrich 1 adhcte, its concern

wirh thc cyuimhlc di,rnhuu^ r ot litc chances i, raid to prevcnt it

either trota rccogni^ing thc force tnd durability of ties ot religion,

language, custout, local uy, rase, and descent in human affairs, or

from regarding the entry of such considerations finto civic life as

other han pathological-i,rimitivc, backward, regressive, and irra-

tional. 1 do flor think chis is rhe case. The development of a liberal-

ism with boda the courage and the capacity to engage itself with a

differenced world, one in which its principies are neither well un-

derstood flor widely held, in which indeed it is, in most places, a

minortty creed, alien and suspect, is not only possible, it is

necessary.

In rhe lasr few years, the yrars in which liberalism, of both the

economistic, market utopian and the political, civil society sorts,

has moved frota being ara ideological fortress for half the world to

being a moral proposal to the rwholc of it, rhe degree to which it is,

itself, a culturally specif c phenomenon, boro in the West and per

fected there, has become, paradoxically, much more apparent. The

very universalism to which it is committed and which it promotes,

irs cosmopolitan intenr, has brought ir finto open conflict both with

orher universalista, with similar intenr, most notably with that set

forth by a revenant Islam, and with a large number of altemative

visions of the good, the right, and rhe indubitable, Japanese, Indran,

African, Singaporean, to which it looks like just one more attempt

tu impose Western values on rbc rest of the world-the continua-

tion of colonialista by other mean,.

This fact, rhat the principie, tharanimare liberalism are not so

self-evidenr tu others, even scrious and reasonable others, as they

are to liberals, is evidenr the,c day, everywhere you look. In the

resistance ro a universal codo of human rights as inapplieable tu

poor countries henr en development and indeed a device, mischie-

vously contrived by the already rich, to hinder such developmenq

in rhe father-knows-best moralisnt of a Lee Kuan Yew, paddling tru-

ants, joumalists, and bumptious businessmen as insufficiently Con-

fucian, or a Suharto, opposing free trade unions, free newspapers,

and free elections as contrary re the spirir of Asian communalism;

and in a broad range of discourses praising ritual, hierarchy, whole-

ness, arel tribal wisdom, it is clcar that Locke, Montesyuieu, Jeffer-

son, and Mill are particular voices of a particular history, not equally

persuasive to all who hear theta or therr present-day champions.

Those who would eherefore, promote the cause for which these

names, and others more nearly contemporary-Dewey, Camus, Ber-

lin, Kuron, Taylor-in their various ways variably stand (for "liber-

alism," too, is neither compacr flor homogeneous, and it is certainly

unfinished), need tu recognize its culturally specific origins and itc

culturally specific character. They need ... ve need ... most espe-

cially, to recognize that in attempting tu advance ir more broadly in

the world, we will fiad ourselves confronting not just blindness and

irrationality, the passions of ignorance (those we know well enough

at honre), but competing conceptions of how matters should be ar-

ranged and people related to one another, actions judged and soci-

ety govemed, rhat have a weight and moment, a rationale, of their

own; something to be said for them. The issue is not one of "relativ-

ism," as it is often put by those who wish to insulate their beliefs

against the force of difference. It is a matter of understanding that

talking to others implies listening to them, and chal in listening to

them what one has to say is very unlikely, flor at the close of this

century, not in the opening of the next, to remain unshaken.

The argument rhat 1 set out at the beginning of this essay, that

political theory is not, or anyway ought not to be, intensely gener-

alizad reflection en intensely generalized matters, an imagining of

architecmres in which no one could live, but should be, rather, an

intellectual engagement, mobile, exact, and realistic, with present

problems presently clamorous applies with particular force to liber-

alism, given as it sometimes has been to a certain indifference to

the actuality of things, a certain raking of wish for accomplishment.

258 Chopos AI :TÍre Worid in Pieces -- 25Q

lt nwst he reconcerved, 111,11 i1,, irs parrisans must reconceive it, as a

view flor from nowheic hur from che special somewhere of (a cer-

tain sort of) Western political experience, a sratement (or, again, as

it i5 no more unified timo han expericnce has been, a set of srate-

ments reasonahly conson,rnt) -thont what we, who are che heirs of

that experience, think we have Icarned about how people with dif-

ferences can live among one another with come degree of comiry.

Faced with other heirs of odien experiences who have drawn other

lessons to orher purposes, we can hardly avoid either pressing our

oven with whadever conhdence wc still feel in them and subjecting

them to che risks of ninning up against riese others and coming out

lit least somewhat, perhaps a good deal more than somewhat,

banged about and in need of repair.

The prospect of a nev synrhesis-not ihat there ever really was

an old one-seems to mc quite remoce. The disagreements and dis-

junctions rvill remain, e\en if they Will nut remain the same dis-

agreements and disjunctions. Nor does che simple triumph of what

that thoroughly English, quite disabuscd, and inrransigenrly liberal,

E. M. Forster, who did not expeci it cidler, called love and che be-

loved repuhlic look like much :,f possibility. We seem condemned, at

least for the immediate funirc, and perhaps for a good while beyond

it, ro live ar hese in what sumcoue, thinking perhaps of Yugoslaviantrucos, Irish ceasefires, Alocan rccccrie operarions, and Mideasrern ne-goriations, has called a low-intensity peace-not che sort of environ-

nient in which liheralisnl has normaily fourished. But ir is che sort of

environment in which ir rvill boye to operare if it is to persisr and

have an effect, and to inaimain what seems to nme as deepest and

most central comminnene che amoral ohligation to hupe.

Hoies

1. S. Huntingron "The Cla.sh t,t Civilications," Foreign Affairs (Summer1993: 22-49, cf S. Hunringtnn, Th; CIash of Civilitations and che Remaking ofWurld Order, Nev, York: Simou and Schusler, 1996.

2. C. Taylor, 'Shared and 1)ivcrgenr Values," in his Reconciling rhe Soli-tudes: Essoys on Canadiae Fednr,disn and Nmionaiisn, Montreal and Kingston:McGill-Queen's Universiry Press, 1993, pp. 155-186.

2C7U Clirmter .A'1

3. The Compact Edition of che Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford

Universiry Press, 2971 11928], 1 :1078. For a more extensive and circumstan-

tial discussion of vocabulary change in che English case, 1500-1650, see L.

Greenfield, Nationalism. Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

siry Press 1992, PP. 31-44.

4. The Compacc Edirion of che Oxford English Dictionar-v, 2: 661-662.

5. Ibid., PP. 849-853.6. Ibid., pp. 359-360. AII the rerms reviewed here Nave, of course, allied

meanings non direcrly involved in che semantic field I am describing -"peo-ple" denotes human beings as opposed to animals, "country" denotes rural("rhe countryside") as opposed to urban, "society" denotes fashionable as in'high society,' etc.-which would peed to be taken finto account in a fullanalysis.

7. Ibid., 1: 30-31. The definitions given in The American Heritage Dictio-nary of che English Language (3rd ed., Boston: Houghmn-Mifflin, 1992, P. 1203)present che crysmllized, fully multiplex, modem consoiidarion: "1. A relatively

large group of people organized under a single, usually independent govem-menq a country. 2. The govemment of a sovereign state. 3. A people whoshare common customs, origins, history, and frequentiy language; a nationaliry.

4. A federarion or cribe ... 5. The territory occupied by such a federation orCribe."

8. See, for example, E. Gellner, Nacions and Narionalism, Oxford, OxfordUniversiry Press, 1983, hut rhe view it widespread.

9. B. Anderson, Imagmed Communities. Reflections on che Origin and Spreadof Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983, p. 123. Anderson's book it perhaps rhe

strongest sratement of che diffusionist, world-hisrorical view "by which thenation carne to be imagined, and once imagined, modelled, adapted and trans-formed" (p. 129), and, it mighr be added, in his view purified, in the indepen-dence movements of che fifries and sixties.

1o. W. Zimmerman, "Origins of a Catastrophe: Memoirs of rhe LastAmerican Ambassador te Yugoslavia," Foreign Affairs (March/April 1995): 7.For che "erhnic-civic" opposirion, see M. lgnatief, Blood and Belonging: Joumeys

finto che New Narionalisrn, New York: Farrar, Srraus and Giroux, 1993; for "offi-cial-popular," B. Anderson, Imagined Communities; for "divisive-unificatory,""Habsburg-Liberal," "eastern-wesrem"), E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

(The attempt ro draw che bad nationalism/good nationalism ¡inc berweenBalkan "anavisrñ" and West European "maturiry," now much reinforced by cheYugoslavian tragedy and rhe failures of che European Union in rhe face of it, it

parí of che European exceprionalren view of things 1 shall discuss furtherbelow.)

n. C. Black, "Canadas Continuing Idenriry Crisis," Foreign Affairs

(March/April 1995): 99-115, quomtion at p. 101. In che following I am espe-

cially indebted to an unpublished papen (1995) by Russel Barsh, associate pro-

tessol nt N.rtive American -wJ, n nc, Cnn,.rsirv ot Lerhbridgc, Albean,

"Re-uuaginiug Cavada Al','ricrn il I'copiea and Quebec Compering for Legit-

mrace .a Enmrgcnt Nati„n .md ,t alia, C Taylor, Reconeiling che Solitudes;

VI. Ign.Ut'f, HLiod mri h , " rr^mp. 19-. 14; 1-- R Han,ller, Vationalinn and tU

I'rditics g Crdcure Ti Qu<De,, Afu.li t L n:rama >I Wisconsin Press, 1988. Por

a review cel che constirution.'í etr,rn ni put Lanada 1n arder, see J. Tully,

S ncnrgz Multipficir-r C n tl.aimi:w n n m, ,\g...f Diversity, Cambridge: Cam-

bridge 1 1 irrrsirv Press, rooy. F, i t r a,rumpr m understand dar multiplicity

in ternas r,f a contrast hetu-een - m i ii' ind "culture," see D. Vemey,

Three C t.lrutions, Tu: e:.duncr. .a Nene. C'.r.tda's Pofin,ai Traditwns, Dur-

laam: Duke Universiry Ere,,, 1,, t. 1 ,1 Frenda Canadian views, J. Letoumeau,

Le question identaire co Canada Franmphune, Quebec: Pres Universiré Laval,

1997.

12 . C. Block, "Canada's Conrinuing Idenriry Crisis," pp. 112-114; the

figure for rhe ourward naigrarinn ot AIaglophunes from Quebec is from M. Ig-

natief, Bfood and Belonging, p. 171. Por Quebec, che (Cree) Indians, and che

developmenr of natural resourres, ihid, pp. 163-167, and Barash, "Re-inaagin-

ing Canada."

13. 1 depend here maro!! en nvo book- by S. J. Tambiah, Sri Lanka,

Erhnic Emincide criad rhe Disntandmg y Demoaaey> Chicago, 1986, and Bwddhism

Berrayed? Religion, Polittcs, and Vi,,;rnre in Sri latnka, Chicago: Universiry of

Chicago Press, 1992, and on W. 11, Wriggins, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New

Nation Princeton: Princeron Universiry Press, 1960. 1 briefly reviewed the ini-

cial phases of, as ir rhen Sras, Ceylon's erhnic conflicr in C. Geertz, "The

Inregrative Revolution, Primordial Senrinaena and Civil Politics in [he New

Srates," in C. Geerrz, ed., Oh Soderies atol New States, New York: The Free

Press, 1963, pp. 105-157, esp. pp. 121-123. My sraristics come from che aboye

works. and from World Der'elopment Report, 1992, The International Bank for

Reconstrucrion and Developmcnr, Oxford, 1992, and E. V. Daniel, Charred

Lullabies: Chapters in an Aumbiognophy of bSolence, Prnceton: Princeron Uni-

versiry Press, 1996.

14. World Developmcnr Repoer 1992, 1992, op. cit., cables 1, 26, 28. Rela-

tive ro some of irs neighhoa, Sri Lanka's advance has been somewhar less

impressive in recenr years, in para as a resol1 of irs communal rroubles which

Nave led ro a significanr diaspora ti) Europe, che Gulf, and rhe United Stares,

bur ir srill remadas reasonably etfectivc.15. There has been so miela in rhe aaorld press over rhe last severa! years,

as well as numerous book, art'eles, )¡id cona menraries, te say nothing of TV

foonge, that 1 need not cite somas here hrr what are in any case but gener-alized atad quite unaurhorirarive rernarks. 1 have relied heavily sin Misha

Glenny's delailed, insighttul The Fnll o( Yugos avía: The Third Balkan War, 2nd

ed., New York: Penguin, 1994, 111 kecp rhings straight factually and chronologi-cally. Zimmerman, "Origins oí a Canlatrophe," has also been useful in chis

202 G' lupter XI

regard. lgnatief, Blood arad Beionging, pp. 19-56, though it dcals only wirh

Croacia and Serbia, invokes rhe devastarion wirh great force, as docs, for Bos-

nia-Hercegovina, D. Riel, Slaugh rerhouse: Bosnia and che Failure of che West,

New York: Shuon and Schusrer 1995. whid, also addresses rhe pohcy issues

from a strongly inrcrventtomst smndpainr.

16. GlennN, Tire FaU uf Yugoslavia. V. 161.

17. Ibid., p. 236.18. There is, of course, a hisronv ut cultural configumtionabsm aside from

und prior m ethnngraplucal pmetiee sine, Malinowksi or sahomecer naost es-

peclally rhar eonnected wirh Hender, che Humboldu, and thc ocre-Kanr,ans,

which had in fact a shaping inapact on mrhropology; for a good recetar review,

see S. Fleischacker, The Erhics of Culture, Irhaca: Cornell Universiry Press,

1994, esp. chaprer 5.r9. For a discussion of Indonesia's ethnic and religious conaposirion, and

the way in which it is being addressed, see my After che Faca: Two Countries,Four Decades, One Anthropolog st, Cambridge: Harvard Universiry Press, 1995,esp. chapters 1-3. 1 have not tried ro include here che developments, most of

which reinforce mny argumenta, rhar nave followed upon che collapse of cherupiah, che resignarion of Suharro, The Separation of East Timor, and che

move, hesiranr and confused, back roward popular govemmenr. See, also, my

"'Erhnic Conflicr': Three Alrernative Ternas," Comnron K_nowledge 2, 3 (1992):

55-65-

Tia, `)ilorld la `^2ieccs -,- 203

Index

agency : collective, 234, 257; and culturaltheory of emorion, 210

agracian efotm , in new atares, 25-28Allporq Gordon, 8

American Cauncil of Leerned Societies, 7American Psychological Associetion, 187American Withdrawal, 219Anderson, B., 261x9anrhropologisr and othemess, 63-65; view

of informan", 30-37; as wrl[er-down,

126-127. See a$o fieldwork; Symbolic

Construaion of the Stare; rwmes ofindividuals

anrhropology: comparison in, 251; and cul-

tural psychology, 192-193, 197-201;

"Four Fields" ideology of, 90; "from chenarive's poinr of view," 76-78; and hú-tory, 118-123, 127-128,-132-133; and

issue of culmre and mind, 204, 207-211;'U, uniry" of, 18; permanent idenrirycrisis of, 89-91; mols of, 13-14; uniry

and diveriry in, 97-98. See also socialsciences

anrhropology, cognirive, 136anrhmpology, cultural, 90, 93-94; cennifir-

gal movement in, 91, 120; disappearingsubiecq problem of, 91-92; in disas-sembled world, 248-250; divisions in,97-98; lessons leamed by author, 15-16;loas of research isolarion in, 92-93;methodology of 93, 110; moral issues ot,95-97; problematic of, 12-16; and rela-tivism, 45; role of fieldwork in, 117-118;as social physics, 94-95, 145. 5ce alsofieldwork

anthropology, in[erprerive, 17

anrhropology, physical, 90-91, 97andvopology, paychological, 199aurhropology, symbolic, 17anticolonial revolucion, 230-231, 235; and

culm al heterogeneiry, 251-256Anrioch College, 5-7antireductionism, 196anrl-relarivism, 42-46; naruralisc approach,

51-59; ,verhe,ited presente ion of, 46-51; rationalist approady 59-63

Aprer, David, 10archaeology, 90-91, 97argument, moral: and scfcening of cultural

divasiry. 78-82Arnold, Matthew, 233Asringron, Janer, 211

asymmerry, moral: and cultural diversity,79-82; of fieldwork, 29-37

Auster, Paul, 107

Bacon, Francis, 214

Bagchot, Walrer, 128

Boli, author's fieldwork in, 9-10, 17Barzun, Jacques, 22Beckerr, Samuel, 19belief, irrffional," and anri-relativism,

60

Bello-, Saul, 193Benedicr, Ruth, 12, 44-45Bedin, Isaiah, 257biologism, 196Block Contad, 238, 240Boas, Franz, 12, 44

body-pare imagery, ro represen; emorion,212

Boorh, Wayne, 43

265

,tI a cr. in lodosas 255 re]igious , 174-178

a, calon,al Isaad m,1y of. 123-1 24

mm .rodio . 2J-'J9

\5m Hayek, Fnedrrch. 257

V-un Freincn,, Ked, 117

\R'a'cer, MlcharL 157

Weher, Max, 162, 171

Wekh, James, 81

West ermarck , Edward, 43-44Whitehead , Alfred Noah, 200Wicabicka, Arma , 208-209Wilbur, Richard, 215Wlentz , Sean, 130Williams, Bemard, 75Wilson, E. 0., 206

10 Witcgensrein , Ludwig, xi-xiiltm¢tee Wolf, Erir, 93, 120w Na- wunrcn , Javanesc, 179-184

world-cons[maing , 210-211

ith, 40- Yugoslavia, former, 173-174, 243-244; as"country" and "nation," 237-238, 242-245

roa Imm 46 150,251-155;

lonnunt ni hopo ter, 73

uu, n s : dcharcdemh of,

^necn Cul;e9e and, 5and crdmrc, 2 '_8-23k

-246

aa hppothesis, 191-192

-16; anthropology and cul-

197-201; aad con-_ 254-255; and country,an, ultures, 248-250; and

_nr, 192; and mind, 203-net e, 248_." ig, 247-248

ata t, 213-214?II

,,,,17-78"—1 cal: and relarivian, 44-46

0eg, - 1, 125-128

Z07t,,hc, 38-41

xial nd anfi-relativisn, 57-6022

rulo 1: difference of, 177-178,recognitian ot, 226; and227; understanding of,

145tg sc ecd" prohlem, 91-92

polar world, 218-224, 235ces, Kuhn's notion of,

and alternativas to us,

;cap 224, 238-239; wichin a

n ° 85-88, 177-178; soften-

'8-82. See alca

of mind , 197-201120, 204

9-184, 186n.10

early dcvelop 190-194,

Edehuen, GcraLl, liJ-152, 106

Edeerron , Rubor. 58

educanom author s , 4-9, and Brunos col-

nual psychology, 190-197 ', as examPle of

muching faith prohlem, 32educacional refonn , 192-194

Egk n, Fred, 10Einstein, Albert, 49, 166

Elude, Mircea, 118

emotion: culmmlist rheon' of, 208-211;

feeling of, 212 ; neurology and. 213-214;

semiotic approach to , 208; v,,cabulary of,

208-209Empson, Wllliam, 50ethniciry, 225ethnocentrism : author's views on. 74-75;

fumre of, 69, 72 , 86-88; Lévi-Strauss un,70-72; Obeyesekere and, 105-106; re-vival of, 72-74; Sahlins and, 100, 105-106; trouble with, 75-78

erhnographer, 82-85ethnography, 83-85Evana'Pritchard, Edward, 128"everything elle haen t worked" argument,

Fish, Sranley, 43Fod,,i. Jerra. 62Foed, Roberr, 19-20Fanter. E. M., 260Foses, Meyer ICFoucault, Michel, 120, l6'Prawlcy, Wllliam, 199, 211Fra:er, Sir James, 128Freud. Slgmand, 49, 206Rost, Roben, 20

Oadlah hieda (Indone.a)Gago marrix, 213-214Gass Wllliam, 47-48Geera, Clifford, 93, 208, 210. See alo field-

work, author'sGeeaz, Hildred, 7-9Geiger, George, 7-8Gellner, Ernest, 62, 93generalizatiore , 134-136Genovesa, Eugene, 130Getry, J. Paul, 240G.I. MI, 4Gilbert, Felix, 130Ginsburg, Cado, 130Glenny, Misha, 244-245

177 glohalization, economic, 177

"evils of modemization" argumenr, 177-178 global village, 247, 250

exceptionalism, European, 251, 256, Gódel, Kurt, 166175E

261n.10experience , and reliigion , 170-171, 178-

179, 182-184

favorire-cause analysls, and religion, 173feelings. See emorionFeldman, Carol, 211Feyerabend, Paul, 162Feynman, Rlchard, 153fieldwork: and concept of culture, 14-16; as

distinguishing merhodology, 93, 110; asfusión of personal and professionalspheres, 39-41; furure of, 110, 117-118;and los, of e,earch isolation, 92-93;moral asymmetry of, 29-37; role of de-

tachment in, 39-41fieldwork, author's: erhical dimensiom of

23-37; relintluishing of, 19; star in, 9;

typewrirer anecdote, 34-37. See also place

sanes"fieldwork habitas," Clifford's new of, 114-

115

rvmg,Goffman,

Goodntan, Nelson, 211Goody Jack, 93Gorer, Geoffrey, 12Grabo, Zdravko, 244-245

Greenberg, Joseph, 10Guayaki, the, 107-108, 110-114

Hacking, las, 162Handy, E. S. C., 127Hanson, Norwood Russell, 162Hanis, Maivir,, 93Hanley, L. P., 120Harvard: Cenrer for Cognitive Studies, 189;

Social Relarions depantnent, 7-9Hawaiians, and dearh of Cook, 98-107Hcad Start program, 190-192Herodotus, 44Herskovits, Melville, 44-45

Hesse, Mary, 162heterageneity, culmrals'atad anticolonsal

revolution, 251-256

dec 271 Index 267