newsletter' voi 13 no 9

CorrespondenceQuestions for a Time of Crisis

We are living in a time of crisis. The educa-tor sees a crisis of education, both financialand moral The minority leader sees a crisis ofmajority-minority relations; the trade union-ist, a crisis of unemployment and attacks onhis standard of living; the women's liberation-ist, a crisis in relations between the sexes.Each in his or her subjective manner is actual-ly minimizing the scope and gravity of what isa universal crisis the headlong rush into an-other horrendous worldwide depression.

We anthropologists who regard the profes-sion as a serious science must realize that weare potentially in an almost uniquely advan-tageous position to understand the nature ofthis man-destroying crisis, because we take asour subject matter the entire cultural develop-ment of man We know that the subiectiveside of any people's cultural life must at leastapproximate the objective requirements ofthe reproduction of their social life or thatparticular cultural adaptation becomes ex-tinct.

It would be the most crass kind of incon-sistency to fail to apply this anthropologicalinsight to our own culture. This means thatwe are not confined to the "native's" view ofour own society—bourgeois ideology. Thehegemonic bourgeois view of man held by allbut the smallest minority of we natives, insiststhat real human identity lies not in an individ-ual's actual relationship to the productiveactivity of the human race as a whole, butrather in fragmented parochially definedidentities—the autonomous individual, thetrade unionist, the anthropologist, the Black,the woman and so forth.

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The continued existence of our society (sofar) indicates that these identities correspondappropriately enough to actual social forcesand organs, but the anarchist (so-called "plu-ralist") notion that the real interests of soci-ety as a whole are served by an interplay oreven struggle between these local forces ismerely an appropriate (ideological) absurdity.The overall coherence of social practice isactually achieved in a more fundamental man-ner. That we are generally unaware of thisprocess is the first indication of its real na-ture—religion

Just as some Melanesian cultures appro-priately regulate their subjective activity for anecessary objective result through the reli-gious-symbol system of a pig feast ritual-cycle, our own social practice is universalizedthrough the religious notion of'private pro-perty and accumulation of 'profit. Sociallyproductive labor and capital as a whole is reli-giously and fetishistically regarded as discrete

private property. The 'unseen hand" of theworld market becomes our "fate." But thereality of the universe is a process of con-tinual evolution Once-appropriate ideologybecomes inappropriate and threatens to dragdown any society that cannot overthrow its"religious tyranny."

That the spontaneous 'radical" responsesspecific to anthropologists, trade unionists,Blacks, women's liberationists, and so forthare merely another form of worship ratherthan a freeing of social practice from itspresent religious-political (capitalist) restraintscan be indicated in the following way. Thesenior or tenured anthropologist in his or herprofessional attempts to protect his or herdepartment from the ravages of funding cut-back seen as a local or specific problem, ispropitiating the great unknown provider justas the cargo-cultist propitiates the "unknown"provider of miraculously appearing 'goods."That his "junior counterpart, the "radicalanthropologist, ' by attempting to demon-strate the "relevance" of hu professionalactivity, is engaged in the same process isperhaps more startling. That both cull theirarguments f rom economics professors,

engaged in the same form of worship, indi-cates the extent to which human activity ap-pears as an alien and unknown force to theactors!

The crisis facing every sector of our soci-ety and impinging upon every sort of 'iden-tity" is not specific to any of these ' sectors,nor are the solutions to be found in any ofthese self-identities in themselves.

Anthropology, then, must subsume ex-isting cultural conceptions of the presentcrisis under the objective viewpoint of thefuture. All real anthropologists must begin toask questions that will lead to the solutions ofthe problems that now face humanity as awhole. How, for example, is anarcho-plu-ralistic ethnic group politics (in part legiti-mized by the resurgence of racist theoriesin the universities!) appropriate to the presentcapitalist policy of diverting investment fundsaway from socially productive activity intospeculation and militarism? It is questions likethese that we must ask. At the coming annualmeeting we intend to suggest how these andother similar questions might be answered. Weinvite others to join us in this endeavor.

Robert DillonPolytechnic Inst of Brooklyn

Chuck Patson-MarklePhiladelphia

References tothe Sokagakkai Movement Needed

I am interested in obtaining social sciencedata on the Sokagakkai movement in theUnited States, known here as Nichiren Shoshuof America. I particularly need references totheses, dissertations or other unpublished re-search on this topic. I would like to hear fromsocial scientists, students or professionals,who are or have been engaged in fieldwork onthe Sokagakkai in the United States.

Vicki HolUappleWashington U, St Louis

Wishful Thinking?

John H McCullough, as evidence of howsilly it is to be a radical anthropologist,doubts that anthropology, or any anthro-pologist, can legitimately claim knowledgeof the means for benign treatment of the leastaspect of the least social-political disease fromwhich this, or any country, nation tribe,village or band suffers. Anthropology forover a century has claimed to be the study ofman and for much of that time has flauntedthe word 'holistic. One does not have to bea radical to recognize the insult in McCul-lough's contention for, if he is correct, wehave not only frittered away a century, butabdicated our claimed birthright.

If he is the same John H McCullough listedas on leave from Colorado during the pastyear, he claims to be a physical anthropolo-gist. I find it impossible to separate physicalanthropology from consideration of thepolitical nature of disease and nutrition and

Correspondence continued on p 9