6. Revision: Evaluating Theories & Critical Thinking

Welcome to Section 6 of Symbols & Society. In the past five sections, you have learned about the most influential thinkers in the Anthropological study of symbols. Each of these theorists takes a different approach; not one is accepted as right. Most anthropologists would be highly critical, for different reasons, of each theorist.

Thus, the primary goal this week is to revise the theories and develop an ability to evaluate them. That ability to evaluate them could be called "critical thinking". To develop this ability it is crucial that you realize you're not being asked to accept any of the theories. You are being asked to recognize, apply, evaluate, and maybe even create with them.

What we've learned and we're going

Before I go any further, let's revise what we've covered so far in the course and consider what we will cover in the coming weeks. You can do this by listening to Podcasts 19 & 20 entitled The Symbols of Christmas in my series, The Audible Anthropologist. In these short podcasts, I apply different theories to the same symbols--the symbols of Christmas.

An even better way to revise would be to read Elms' analysis of the fairy-tale, 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears". The reading covers the origins and evolution, psychoanalytical, and structuralist approaches to symbols. It will also help you revise and evaluate the theories. Finally, Berg reflects upon and weighs up different theories. This is a skill you will also need to understand the world from an anthropological perspective.

History of Anthropology 

You might not have noticed this, but in the first five weeks of this course we have covered the major schools which defined the modern discipline of anthropology from its beginnings (c1870) through till the 1960s.

1. Origins and Evolution: Frazer, Tylor (1870s-1910s). 
2. Functionalism in sociology (Durkheim 1900s) & anthropology (Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown etc. 1919-1960). 
3.  Psychoanalysis: Freud, Jung etc (1900s-2000s).
4. Structural Anthropology 1960s-1970s: Levi-Strauss, Needham.

Religious Studies

There's more good news. What you have covered so far are some fundamental thinkers in Religious Studies. If you decide to move into this field, you already have a head start. Other classic authors you might analyze include Kant, William James, Peter Berger, and Mircea Eliade. But what you have already covered is quite an achievement in itself. But more important than plotting the history of anthropology and the major theories in Religious Studies, is an ability to evaluate theories (think critically).

Theories are limited

So now you have a variety of anthropological concepts and theories (tools) in mind (kit)!  You are developing an anthropological toolkit. What do you do with your theories and concepts? How should you think about your toolkit and put it to use?

In 'hard' science, no-one seriously questions for example Newton's Laws. In anthropology. it's the opposite; no-one seriously and wholeheartedly accepts any theory. We are sometimes called the "yes...but..." discipline. In other words, "Yes, Durkheim was correct in some regards, but..." and then the anthropologist explains why Durkheim was mostly wrong!

Theories are more about different questions

Because of this you could say that different theories are not about providing different answers to the same questions. Rather theories provide different questions, and answering these different questions provides unique insights. The attitude of the anthropologist is not "hey, here's a theory that answers all our questions"; but rather "what if we looked at the world using this theory? What would it tell us..

Evaluating  & Using Theories

Another way to approach this is to think of a theory as a kitchen tool, say a knife. At chef school, you are only asked to use knives, sharpen knives; know which knives are more appropriate for different tasks. You're not necessarily going to fall in love with all knives. Same with studying anthropology at uni. You're only being asked to be able to use theories; adjust them to your needs; know which theories are more applicable to explain what you're looking at. You're not being asked to fall in love with the theories.

Maybe this presentation will better explain what I'm getting at:

Please feel free to use my slides.

Critical Thinking

You've probably heard the phrase "critical thinking". To some students "critical" sounds negative (too much like hating). To others "critical thinking" just sounds pretentious or even silly. But all it really means is an ability to consider things analytically. That ability comes from the theoretical awareness you develop in this course (and other undergrad courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences). In fact, the theories of symbols you've looked at so far--Frazer, Durkheim, Freud, Jung, & Levi-Strauss--apply to all kinds of different things, even politics, economics, and marriage. If you can look at social and cultural things in your own life; see how the various theories might apply; weigh up the pros and cons of applying each concept, then you are thinking critically. The social and cultural 'things' we are doing in this course is looking at symbols and stories. 

Applying theories: Alice in Wonderland

Alice & the Queen

So I assume that you can remember and recognize the theories we have covered. But do you have the skills to apply your theories? Let's consider Alice in Wonderland. This famous story starts when a young girl, Alice who is with her sister. She sees a rabbit and follows him into his hole, and falls a long way down into another world. She encounters a variety of talking animals including the Cheshire Cat; a lazy but scary cat who keeps disappearing and reappearing. Alice joins a crazy Tea Party, and then meets the Queen of Hearts who orders that various animals be decapitated--"Off with her head!". Eventually, the Queen of Hearts decides that Alice too must suffer to cruel fate: Off with her head. But Alice claims the Queen and Her court are merely playing cards. Then Alice wakes up from her dream.

How could we apply the various theories to this story? Maybe:

1. Frazer: this is a remnant of ancient beliefs in which a young underling (Alice) overcomes and supplants the ruler (Queen of Hearts). 
2. Durkheim: the details of the story don't matter; what matters is parents read this story to children and this brings families together.
3. Freud: the story is about the maturation of a young girl into pubescence and replacing the rule of the her mother in her family.
4. Jung: the story actually relates to having two mothers the good (Alice's real mother) and the evil (the Queen of Hearts in Alice's dream).
5. Levi-Strauss: the story expresses conundrums about the human-animal relationship. Humans become 'animals' (Alice falls down a rabbit hole) and 'animals' become humans (all the animals in the parallel universe have human qualities"

Of these various explanations, only my application of Levi-Strauss seems convincing to me. What about you? I'm sure you can apply the theories in your own way. Maybe you be creative and can come up with more convincing results. But at undergraduate level, you should be able to at least analyze and evaluate the different theories.

Applying theories: Oedipus

 Now would be a good time to take stock and see if you can do this. Two of the greatest thinkers--Freud and Levi-Strauss--analyzed the myth of Oedipus. Consider what Freud had to say about the myth:

Oedipus Rex is capable of moving a modern reader or playgoer no less powerfully than it moved the contemporary Greeks… the only possible explanation is… the peculiar nature of the material by which this conflict is revealed. There must be a voice within us which is prepared to acknowledge the compelling power of fate in the Oedipus... His fate moves us only because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us before our birth the very curse which rested upon him… we were all destined to direct our first sexual impulses toward our mothers, and our first impulses of hatred and violence toward our fathers; our dreams convince us that we were. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and wedded his mother Jocasta, is nothing more or less than a wish-fulfilment- the fulfilment of the wish of our childhood. But we, more fortunate than he, in so far as we have not become psychoneurotics, have since our childhood succeeded in withdrawing our sexual impulses from our mothers, and in forgetting our jealousy of our fathers. We recoil from the person for whom this primitive wish of our childhood has been fulfilled with all the force of the repression which these wishes have undergone in our minds since childhood. …we who, since the years of our childhood, have grown so wise and so powerful in our own estimation. Like Oedipus, we live in ignorance of the desires that offend morality, the desires that nature has forced upon us and after their unveiling we may well prefer to avert our gaze from the scenes of our childhood … The dream of having sexual intercourse with one's mother was as common then as it is today with many people, who tell it with indignation and astonishment. As may well be imagined, it is the key to the tragedy and the complement to the dream of the death of the father. The Oedipus fable is the reaction of phantasy to these two typical dreams, and just as such a dream, when occurring to an adult, is experienced with feelings of aversion, so the content of the fable must include terror and self- chastisement. (“The Interpretation of Dreams”, Sigmund Freud (1900))

Your first job is to recognize the difference? How is Freud's analysis differ to Levi-Strauss's? We've considered Freud and Levi-Strauss, but can you identify the differences in the ways Frazer, Durkheim, or Jung might analyze the Oedipus myth?

Your next job is to analyze the differences. I'll give you an example:

Durheim's theory is of little applicability to Oedipus Rex. From Durkheim's theory we understand that certain sacred myths create solidarity within a moral community. It is possible, even likely, Oedipus Rex held that function in Ancient Greece. But Oedipus Rex is hardly a sacred myth in contemporary Australia. It is rarely told. Even when Sophocles' version it is put on stage, it fails to drawslarge crowds. Those people who attend the theater tend to consider themselves a 'cut above', superior to, the ordinary person. If anything the myth, or at least its performance as a play, points to social divisions rather than solidarity. However, does not necessarily count against Durhkeim's theory. Durhkeim was only interested in sacred myths; Oedipus Rex certainly is certainly not sacred in contemporary Australia. Other  forms of analysis might prove move fruitful.
Levi's Strauss's notion of structuralism unlocks aspects of Oedipus Rex. Levis-Strauss sees cultural phenoemena (myths, paintings etc.) as composed of constituent parts--we could call this 'binaries'. Simple instances include left vs right, up vs down, straight vs curvy etc. For Levi-Straus two sets of binaries are active in the Oedipus Rex myth. These are distant vs close family realations and of-the-earth vs not-of-the-earth....

So, if I were writing an undergraduate essay, I would continue down that path.

Applying theories: Life of Jesus

Here's another test. There are many Christian anthropologists, and you might be Christian too. If you are, what I'm going to do is request that you leave aside the question of whether Jesus Christ is the son of God. Can you look at His life as a story? How would the various theorists explain the story of Christ? 

Life of Jesus

Chipping away?

Are our theories getting better with time? Maybe we are slowly chipping away at a rock edifice, making it into what will one day be a  beautiful, all-encompassing theory of humankind.

Other optimists think (hope?) that the process is more like a 'dialectic'; meaning someone puts forward a theory, someone else counters it; then out of the opposition emerges a better theory.

Sometimes I feel pessimistic: the theories are merely a product of the time and place in which they are made. Perhaps, like Marxism, they also perhaps help shape history. But maybe they don't really tell us about the reality of human life, if there is one.

Theories and Humanities

But, as a professional anthropologist, that's not for me to worry about. I can leave it to the philosophers. We don't expect a chef to sit in the kitchen corner, staring pensively at his knife, wondering if the knife is correct. We hope our carpenter hasn't locked himself in the cabinet, paralyzed by melancholy, and the limitations of the hammer.

More seriously, the way we use theories in anthropology is different to, say, in chemistry, as far as I know, that subject. For better or worse, we don't test theories empirically or try to falsify them. Rather we think, "What if theory x is correct? What could it explain? What wouldn't it explain?".  I don't study astronomy or cosmology, but my guess is that some of the theories there are not empirically testable either. Astronomers or cosmologists say, "we can't test that there was a Big Bang, but if we assume that there was one, what will it explain? What won't it explain?".

Summary

So where are we up to now? After five weeks, you:

 *have read five of the most profound thinkers in the social sciences

*are familiar with four fundamental approaches in anthropology and sociology; namely Origins and Evolution, Functionalism, Psychoanalysis, and Structuralism.

*have a sense of the history of anthropology from the 1880s to the 1950s. 

What you have achieved is much more than just a basis for understanding anthropology or symbols; the concepts and approaches you have considered resound in other disciplines. Most of all you are hopefully developing your ability to think critically.

Next week 

In the second half of the course, the scholars we consider are thought of specifically as anthropologists. And the aspect of their research we study relates specifically to symbols. Yet, in spite of this apparent narrowing of our focus, I find the insight and understanding we can derive from their work just as illuminating. We start next week with one of the great anthropologists, Eric Wolf, analyzing the Virgin of Guadalupe.

But for now, the main point: Anthropologists base their discipline on the idea that there is more than one way to look at every problem we consider: no one theory is right, but student anthropologists must at least be able to apply and evaluate the theories.