Barth - Other Knowledge and Other Ways of Knowing

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Other Knowledge and Other Ways of Knowing

Author(s): Fredrik BarthSource: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 65-68Published by: University of New Mexico

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OTHER KNOWLEDGEAND OTHER WAYS

OF

KNOWING1

Fredrik arth

Department

f

Anthropology,

moryUniversity,

tlanta,

A30322

WHEN

CULTURE

NTERS

iscoursesoutsideour

discipline-when,

s

Bohannan

says,

culture s loose

on

the streets-how is it used?

In

manyways

embar-

rassingly

ike

the uses we make of

it

inside our

discipline,

but with

greater

consequences.

Culture

s

used

selectively

for that which seems most

salient to the out-

sider,

namely

difference.This use

gives

a

truncatedaccountof what others

arethinking nddoing. t does notrepresent heirgroundsoraction,butonly

those

grounds

hat

are

contrastive,

pecial

for the

other,

and

not reasons

that would

hold

for us. t thus leads to

exoticizing,

but

more

importantly

o

mutilating

he other's

point

of view:

representing

t

only partially,

nd here-

fore

inadequately endering

ts

rationality

ndreasonableness.

Further,

n

personal

nteractionwheneverthe

thoughts

and actionsof an-

other are

interpreted

as

cultural,

hey

tend

to be turned nto

exemplars

of

exotic behavior.

Thereby

he item of behavior

n

question

s not situatedas a

link in a

chainof interaction etween

persons

(to

be

understood nd

udged

n

communicative, ocial,and moralcontexts);on the contrary,t is removed

from

he

interaction ndsituatedas a

collective,

stereotyped

eatureof

groups

and

contrasting

dentities.

This

depersonalizes

nd

impedes

the flow of ex-

change

andthe

process

of

convergence

Wikan 992)

n

the

interaction.

Thirdly,

culture

s

increasingly

sed in

public

debateto define an arena

for

contesting

discourses

on

identity.

Undercurrent

conditions,

uch dis-

courses

provide

an

extremely

ertilefield for

political

ntrepreneurship;

hey

allow

leaders

and

spokesmen

to claim that

they

are

speaking

on

behalf of

others;

they

allowthe

manipulation

f media

access;

and

they encourage

he

strategicconstruction fpolarizing ebates hat translate ntobattlesof influ-

ence. Such battles

create

hegemony

and reduce

options;

hey

disempower

followers

andreducethe

diversity

of voices.

Such effects

of the

concept

of cultureare

contrary

o

most

anthropologists'

intentions.What

might

hen

be our best countermoves?

We achieve

nothingby denying

he existence of

power

and

hegemony

n

the

world;

andwe turnourselves nto

hostages

of the undesireddiscourses

f

we

merely

ook

for faultlessvictimswho deserve

our

advocacy.

Our

strategy

must be to transcend nd

hus transform

he debate.

But no matter

how

often

and how

compellingly nthropologists

rrestreificationand

oppose homog-

enization,

hese selfsame

eaturesseem to

crop

up

again

and

again

n

anthro-

pologists'

own

unguarded peech

and

thought.

(Journal fAnthropological

esearch,

ol.

51, 1995)

65








66

JOURNAL

FANTHROPOLOGICAL

ESEARCH

We all

recognize

that culture has

many

modalities;

but

if

it is true that

human

hought

works with

prototypes,

hen

our

conceptualization

f

such

a

polymorphous ategoryas culture will be deeplyaffectedby the particular

prototype

we

use.

I

submit hat he

stubborn

implicities

hat

pursue

he term

arise from

he

prototype

t evokes:

roughly,

hat of

an

assemblage

of customs

as

an

integrated, ocally

shared

way

of

life.

This idea

of

culture as shared

devolves

into

an

assertionof its

ubiquity

n

a

population:

he

urge

to holism

induces

an

mage

of culturewith

geographical

ocusand

boundaries;

he embod-

imentof

culture

urns

physical

persons

and heir

behaviors nto

cultural

peci-

mens.

This

fails to

reinforce-to use Geertz'swords- the

anthropologist's

impulse

o

engage

himselfwith

his informants s

persons'

ather hanas ob-

jects (Geertz1973:20n.).Weclearlyneed to be morefastidiousnthe imag-

ery

we

use.

I

suggest

we need

to

finda

better

rototype

or

cultural

henomena,

one that does not so

readily

nduce hese distortions.

I

have

long argued

or a

perspective

hat

recognizesknowledge

s a

major

modality

of

culture

(Barth1975, 1987, 1993).

Using knowledge

referring

o

what

people

employ

to

interpret

and act on the world:

eelings

as well as

thoughts,

embodied

kills as well

as taxonomies nd otherverbal

models)

as

our

prototype

or culture allows us to constructrather differentmodelsof

cultureand nvites an

imagery

ess vulnerable o the

constructions

n

which

disempowering

iscoursesbuild.Hereare some of the main

points.

The

image

of cultureas

knowledge

abstracts t less and

points

to

people's

engagement

with

the

world,

hrough

action.It

acknowledges

he fact

of

glo-

bally

continuous

ariation,

ot

separable

nto

homogenized

nd

mutually

lien

cultures. t alertsus to

interchange

nd o flux.

Knowledge

s not character-

izable

as difference:

ndeed,

he same or

similar

knowledge

s

obviously

used

and

reproduced

n

different ocal

populations

o

provide

grounds

for

their

thoughts

andactions.But there are

also

very

divergent

bodies of

knowledge

and different

ways

of

knowing

within

populations

s well as between them.

Thus

a focus on

knowledge

articulates ulture

n

a form hat makes t transi-

tive in the

interactionbetween

people,

because of its

potential

use to both

parties.Thereby,

othermodes

of

representation

ndotherandmore

dynamic

questions

come

to the fore when

we modelculture

n

such

modalities: aria-

tion,

positioning,

practice,

xchange,reproduction,

hange,creativity.

Such

conceptualizations

f culture

also allow

a

greater

openness

between

anthropological

nowledge

and

other cultural

knowledge,

an

openness

that

should

work

against

academic

egemony

n

our nteractions nd

n

our

concep-

tions.Thisopennessallowsus to engagemore ntimatelynthefieldsituation

with the ideas of

other

people,

not as

exemplars

of

culture,

but for their

in-

sights

into life. Some

anthropologists

ave been

strangely

esistant o

letting

native

concepts

illuminate our own

understanding

and have

preferred

to

merely

let it

provide

the meat of

our data. We need to

practice

a

greater

humility.

I

am not

saying

that native

informants should

be enrolled into

producing

our








OTHERKNOWLEDGE

AND OTHERWAYSOF KNOWING 67

anthropology-quite

he

contrary.Many

raditionsof

knowledge,anthropol-

ogy

among

hem,

have ratherelaborateand

particular

tructuresof conven-

tions, socialorganizations,ndcriteriaof validity. t is disingenuouso pre-

tend that a

nonprofessional

an

masterthem and

participate

esourcefully

n

them.

Indeed,

one of the

gains

we obtain

by reflecting

on

culture

as

knowl-

edge

is

a

greater

awarenessof

the

range

of

knowledge

and

nsights

we our-

selves as

persons

have

and use

whichare not

encompassedby

anthropology

but

are based on other

knowledge

andother

ways

of

knowing.

Greater

open-

ness

will

enlarge

our ensemble

of

knowledge

and

provide

us with further

n-

sights

withwhich o

fertilize

our

anthropology.

his

is what

I

hearUnni

Wikan

doing

when she uses Balinese ideas about

he need for

resonance

o

under-

standwhatpeoplearetrying o say(Wikan 990,1992),and hisis whatAnna

Lowenhaubt

sing

is

doing,

n

her different

way,

in

her encounter

with Uma

Adang

see,

especially,Tsing

1994).

I

am

urging

hatwe shouldnot seek a fictitious ultural

uthority

n

others-

we should

engage

them

in

an

interchange

f

knowledge

and

udgment.

That

also means

being

willing

o

critique

he

validity, nstrumentality,

nd

morality

of their

ideas

and actionsand to

being

thus criticized

ourselves. Ourrelativ-

ism shouldbe located

n the

humility

o

learn

and

to

engage

withinthe con-

texts of

knowledge

and

practice

hat

frameour

interactionwith

people-not

in bracketinghe other's ideasandbehavioro remove themfrommoral,ra-

tional,

andhuman

udgment, herebyundermining

he

honesty

of

our

engage-

ment with them.

Our

analysis

nd

comparison

hould urn o an

inspection

f the

differing

ri-

teria

of validity

n

different raditions f

knowledge

andthe

differentkinds

of

knowledge

hat are

produced y

embracing

hese

different riteria.Even

at

this

point,

we do

notneed

to

lose

the

transitivity

etween

anthropological

nowl-

edge

andother

knowledge:

we can

compare

he

respective

criteriaof

validity,

the kindsof

knowledge hey generate,

and he acts and

moralities

hey

under-

pin.Aboveall,we needbetterwaysofrepresentinghe materialswe havebeen

calling cultural -ways

hat

reveal

the diverse

processes

that

shape

cultural

manifestations

nd

distributions.

arefully

hinking hrough

owdifferent

inds

of

knowledge

are

constituted,

produced,

nd

used

may

provide

one such

way.

NOTE

1.

Originally

resented

n a

panel

on

Exploring

he

Cultural,

rganized y

Rob

Borofsley

at

the 1994 Annual

Meeting

of

the

American

Anthropological

ssociation.

REFERENCES CITED

Barth,E, 1975,

Ritualand

Knowledge mong

he Baktaman f New Guinea.

New

Haven,

Conn.:

Yale

University

Press.

Barth,

E, 1987,

Cosmologies

n

the

Making:

A

Generative

Approach

o

Cultural

Variation

n

InnerNew Guinea.

Cambridge, ng.:Cambridge

niversity

Press.








68

JOURNAL

F

ANTHROPOLOGICALESEARCH

Barth, E,

1993,

Balinese Worlds.

Chicago: University

of

Chicago

Press.

Geertz,

C., 1973,

The

Interpretation

of

Cultures. New York:Basic Books.

Tsing, A.L., 1994, From the Margins. CulturalAnthropology9(3):279-97.

Wikan, U.,

1990,

Managing

Turbulent

Hearts: A Balinese Formulafor

Living.

Chi-

cago: University

of

Chicago

Press.

Wikan, U., 1992,

Beyond

the

Words:The Power

of

Resonance.

American Ethnolo-

gist

19(3):460-82.






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Barth - Other Knowledge and Other Ways of Knowing