Welcome to the final section of Symbols and Society. In this conclusion, I consider the limitations of what we have studied in this subject. I also introduce other directions to pursue in your journey into anthropology.
Summary of the course
By now you are probably developing your own sense of the history of the social sciences and anthropology. After all, in this subject, you have covered some of the major thinkers in social theory (Durkheim, Freud, Jung, Levi-Strauss, Geertz) and in anthropology (Frazer, Ortner, Wolf etc.). I would now like to suggest what do with your developing knowledge. How can you use these theories like a scholar?
To start with think of the theories as 'explaining tools'. The more tools you have, the more chance you can get the job of explaining done. By doing this course you have learned to use some of the most important explaining tools so far available anthropologists studying symbols. These explaining tools are so powerful that their use is not limited to just analyzing symbols. They are also used for analyzing religion and culture more broadly. Nevertheless, we have used the tools specifically to explain symbols in "Symbols and Society". Seeing as humans are unique in the way we use symbols; if we can understand symbols better, we might be able to understand some of the unique aspects of human life.
You need to be able to evaluate the pros and cons of each explaining tools. It's not necessarily easy to compare the theories. This is because the different theorists look at different kinds of symbols. Freud wouldn't have been too interested in Ortner's key symbol such as the body as a machine, for example. Nevertheless, you need at least to be able to evaluate the pros and cons for using any of the theories to analyze a particular symbol.
Because each theory of symbols has pros and cons, none is perfect. At the very least, I hope you've been able to identify the theories about symbols that you had before you started this subject, and that now you can compare the your old theories with the new theories you've learned.
Making this more challenging, new theories rarely emerge to provide a different answer to the same old question. Rather they purport to provide a new answer to a new question. One way to think of this is, effectively:
Possibly, I'm putting getting this the wrong way around, because, let's face it, all these theorists already had their answers to their own questions ready! Irrespective, they are posing different questions and providing different analyses.
That said, ways to interweave these theories present themselves. If we analyzed the Virgin of Guadalupe we could easily interweave Durkheim's sacred symbols, Wolf's multivocal, Geertz's deeply meaningful models of, and Ortner's key symbol of the summarising variety! Wolf also pointed to a Freudian Oedipal interpretation of the Virgin. Being able to combine theories indifferent ways is part of your developing scholarly/analytical thought.
The next step is to analyze what all the theories constitute together. Together they form part of the sub-discipline of Anthropology we call "Anthropology of Symbols". As a subdiscipline, the Anthropology of Symbols sits beside Kinship, Political Anthropology, Economic Anthropology etc. In other words, it is one of the classical subdisciplines of Anthropology. You also need to be able to analyze at this sub-discipline.
To start with think of the theories as 'explaining tools'. The more tools you have, the more chance you can get the job of explaining done. By doing this course you have learned to use some of the most important explaining tools so far available anthropologists studying symbols. These explaining tools are so powerful that their use is not limited to just analyzing symbols. They are also used for analyzing religion and culture more broadly. Nevertheless, we have used the tools specifically to explain symbols in "Symbols and Society". Seeing as humans are unique in the way we use symbols; if we can understand symbols better, we might be able to understand some of the unique aspects of human life.
You need to be able to evaluate the pros and cons of each explaining tools. It's not necessarily easy to compare the theories. This is because the different theorists look at different kinds of symbols. Freud wouldn't have been too interested in Ortner's key symbol such as the body as a machine, for example. Nevertheless, you need at least to be able to evaluate the pros and cons for using any of the theories to analyze a particular symbol.
Because each theory of symbols has pros and cons, none is perfect. At the very least, I hope you've been able to identify the theories about symbols that you had before you started this subject, and that now you can compare the your old theories with the new theories you've learned.
Making this more challenging, new theories rarely emerge to provide a different answer to the same old question. Rather they purport to provide a new answer to a new question. One way to think of this is, effectively:
- Frazer asked, "where do symbols like the kissing under the mistletoe come from?".
- Durkheim asked, "what function do symbols play in society?"
- Freud asked, "why do we make slip up and mistakes in ways that indicate unconscious traumas?"
- Jung asked, "how come all these famous symbols have a similar form?"
- Levi-Straus pondered, "how come there is an underlying structure to myths, painting, social structures?"
- Wolf asked, "how do different groups/classes find the same symbol meaningful in different ways"
- Turner asked, "how do symbols connect up with other symbols; how do people explain the symbols in their lives; how are symbols actually used in ritual?"
- Geertz asked, "how do symbols make life meaningful for us?"
- Ortner asked, "what are the central symbols in a culture? how come some are worshipped, others not? How do the non-worshipped ones fit in?"
- Douglas asked, "if symbols make imperfect models of the world, what do we do with the things that don't fit in to our models?"
Possibly, I'm putting getting this the wrong way around, because, let's face it, all these theorists already had their answers to their own questions ready! Irrespective, they are posing different questions and providing different analyses.
That said, ways to interweave these theories present themselves. If we analyzed the Virgin of Guadalupe we could easily interweave Durkheim's sacred symbols, Wolf's multivocal, Geertz's deeply meaningful models of, and Ortner's key symbol of the summarising variety! Wolf also pointed to a Freudian Oedipal interpretation of the Virgin. Being able to combine theories indifferent ways is part of your developing scholarly/analytical thought.
The next step is to analyze what all the theories constitute together. Together they form part of the sub-discipline of Anthropology we call "Anthropology of Symbols". As a subdiscipline, the Anthropology of Symbols sits beside Kinship, Political Anthropology, Economic Anthropology etc. In other words, it is one of the classical subdisciplines of Anthropology. You also need to be able to analyze at this sub-discipline.
The decline of the Anthropology of Symbols
To repeat anthropology of symbols is a field of study within anthropology. Symbolic anthropology (which is a particular approach to anthropology particularly associated with Geertz and called 'culturalist' or 'interpretive') was merely one approach to the study of symbols in anthropology. But with the decline of Symbolic Anthropology, the Anthropology of Symbols went out of fashion too. After the 1970s, anthropology lost interest in symbols. You can probably gather, if you have followed this course from start to finish, that I think this is a great loss! So what happened?
Limitations of the anthropology of symbols
If nothing else, the critical thinking you've developed during the course of this subject, should cause you to call into question the entire validity of anthropological approaches to symbols. This presentation covers some of the more obvious reasons to be sceptical about the Anthropology of Symbols.
Turn to emotions
One critique of the Anthropology of Symbols relates to emotions. The critique, as first expounded by Rosaldo in "Grief and a Headhunter's Rage:, holds that focusing on meaning overlooks the significance of emotion. Of course, Geertz and Durkheim make reference to emotions in the context of rituals; they said that the emotions make the meanings seem more profound and real. But Rosaldo and then a whole new sub-discipline, the Anthropology of Emotions, came to take precedence over symbols.
Turn to the body
Another critique relates to the body. Anthropologists began to see the body as more significant in cultural life than symbols. This was in part thanks to theories of embodiment (derived from the philosophers Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger). It was also partly due to the work of anthropologist Bourdieu who, drawing on Mauss's idea of Techniques of the Body, came to see habitus (the culturally- and class-specific ways in which our body operates in space) as crucial in understanding human life.
Ortner: Marxism rose and Culturalism fell
Ortner (2016) has another explanation. (Remember studied Ortner's Key Symbols approach in Section 10.) According to Ortner's history, in the 1960s, interpretive anthropology, which Ortner calls the 'culturalist' wing was associated with Geertz. This was pitted against a Marxist wing. The Marxist was associated with Wolf, who, after writing The Virgin of Guadalupe" became increasingly materialist in outlook. The Marxist wing evolved in the 1970s into new critiques of anthropology:
in the 1960s and 1970s American anthropology was dominated by a split between a “culturalist” wing, led by Clifford Geertz (e.g., 1973) and his students, and a Marxist or materialist wing.... From the point of view of the culturalists, the work of the political economy scholars was reductionist: people’s motives were reduced to simplistic “interests,” and people’s lives were seen as reflexes of mechanical forces. From the point of view of the materialists, on the other hand, the work of the culturalists...ignored the harsh realities of power that drove so much of human history. The culturalist perspective prevailed through much of the 1960s and 1970s, at least in the United States. At the same time, and partly overlapping with the Marxist/political economy approach, new critiques were taking shape that also insisted on the importance of taking questions of power, inequality, domination, and exploitation into account. . The practitioners of these new kinds of work ... all agreed, at least implicitly, that anthropology had to start paying attention to issues of power and inequality, and in the long run, starting somewhere in the 1980s, they came to prevail.Is this how it happened? What do you think?
Final words
Speaking personally, teaching this subject is a wild conceptual ride for me. The world appears radically different through each of the various perspectives we have studied. Considering the theories together, I feel amazed by the extraordinary power of our species to create symbols. Immersed in symbols make me not only human but also part of a specific society and culture. Yet the theories shatter the simple confidence I had that my understanding of the world, but reflects the world as it is. They suggest that what is meaningful to me emerges not out of the world but something else. It could be that meaning emerges the thought of our ancient ancestors, maybe our infantile trauma or universal archetypes, deep structures or cultural systems. Symbols, and thus the way I make sense of the world, are ordered according to principles that emerge from culture and society, and not from the world itself.
