I'm Nick Herriman, anthropologist at La Trobe University. "Symbols & Society" introduces how anthropologists think about symbols. Anthropologists have asked: Where do symbols emerge from? How do they work? What do they mean at deeper levels? Attempting to answer these and similar questions, we can also understand ourselves better.
Showing posts with label symbolic anthropology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label symbolic anthropology. Show all posts
When I was about 14 years old, I was hanging out at my uncle and auntie's house. A bloke grabbed a big cockroach and chased me with it. I shrieked!
I had a pet mouse which I used to hold when I was a boy. But when I was older and living in my student hovel, a mouse ran across the floor near my feet. I jumped up and almost hopped up on a sofa.
The same insect in one culture makes people scream in disgust; in another culture it's dinner. A mouse that is caged was fine for me; a mouse that is free to run inside and out made me jump.
Pork is a delicacy in many cultures, but in others it is filthy. Why?
Mary Douglas's "Abominations of Leviticus" argues that filth is culturally specific. Different cultures create unique symbolic orders. These symbolic orders divide up the world into different categories. No symbolic order is perfect; certain objects or things transgress or defy these orders. Such objects are liable to be thought of as disgusting and filthy.
Inside your hotel bathroom you find a little green plant sprouting from the mold. Do you find this clean or filthy?
Frogs
Let's take the example of frogsEnglish speakers divide the world into:
marine animals and
land animals.
You can eat marine animals (fish) and you can eat land animals (chickens). But animals like frogs spend their entire life going from the water to land and back again. As a result they don't fit into our categories of land and marine animals. We view them with disgust.
But frogs are also associated with supernatural power. For instance, we imagine witches would put frog legs in their cauldron
Cows and other ruminants
Before we get going with he next example, you might want to know a little about ruminants and their rumination.
Ruminants = animals with 4 stomach compartments (cows etc.)
Ruminants include cows, goats, sheep, giraffes, & camels. I think of them as animals which chew on grass, vomit it up and eat it again. This process is called "rumination" or "chewing the cud". What distinguishes ruminants is their 4 stomach compartments.
he first of these 4 compartments is called the "rumen". This word can help you remember "ruminant"
Rumination
And now behold! The magnificence and excitement that is rumination:
I know you could probably watch that all day, but, once you have regained your composure, it's time to move on to another fascinating aspect of biology. My feet have a heel, arch, and toes. My cat has paws. A cow, by contrast, has a hoof (foot) which looks like it's made of two bits:
You can call this a "cloven hoof". Confident of this you are ready to move on and read Douglas.
One connection is crucial to point out here. We associate filth with supernatural power.
Critical thinking
How can we situate Douglas's theory? Anthropologists sometimes call Douglas's approach in "The Abominations of Leviticus" 'soft' structuralism. Why 'soft'.
In one sense she's a structuralist. She argues that filth only makes sense in relation to an entire system of symbols.
But she differs from Levi-Strauss's 'hard' structuralism in that she doesn't make hard-and-fast binaries and strict rules that apply to all cultures. She also describes meanings with more nuance and attention to how local people understand symbols; this makes her closer to the interpretive style of symbolic anthropology.
Summary
According to Douglas, our systems of ordering or classifying the world seem natural to us. In other cultures, different systems of ordering or classifying the world seem natural to them. This indicates that that the systems of ordering imposed upon the world. And they are imposed differently in different cultures. This has a morose implication; we can never access reality directly, only via culturally specific ways of ordering the world. Evidence of this emerges in the gaps. In all these different cultural systems, there are gaps or left-overs in-between categories. From these gaps, disgusting (and powerful) things emerge! The Section 11 take-home message? What doesn't fit into a culture's symbolic system counts as filth.
Further study: The Abject and Filth
Kristeva's idea of the abject (something lying outside the symbolic order) can be usefully combined to Douglas's idea of filth.
Welcome to Section 9 of Symbols & Society. The title of the reading is "Religion as a Cultural System", but I think it should be "Religion is a Set of Symbols". Geertz tells us that symbols provide a model of how the world and universe are made up. Symbols also provide a model for how to live. What is the difference between models of- and models for-? When do they come together? Why should we care?
The Geertz text we read this week can equally be considered a theory of religion or a theory of symbols. By way of background, if you're interested in seeing the text as a theory of religion, you might want to watch the following:
Now I'll try to summarise the theory in 150 words or less: Humans are born without sufficient survival instincts. We need culture to survive; agriculture; horticulture; fishing; herding and so on. Culture is outside of our heads when we are born; we need to get it in. Culture takes the form of symbols and we get it in through symbols. There are two kinds of symbols 'Models of' show you the way the world is. 'Models for' tell you how to behave in the world. Outside of religion, these are separate. They come together in religious rituals like
Baptism. Model of = baptism of Christ; model for = how to behave now you're born again.
Christmas. Model of = Mary, Joseph & Christ; model for = your family is & should be holy like there's is. The nativity scene is really real, and that is what your family should be like.
This is a photo of an evacuation plan. It tells you what to do in a fire. It is, therefore, a "model for". It is not used in a ritual, therefore, it is not associated with the religious perspective.
Geertz's Perspectives
Religion is a part of culture. So religion is also constructed out of symbols. But religions is characterized by a certain attitude towards the world, which is distinct from other attitudes within a culture. Geertz identifies four attitudes or "perspectives" as he calls them:
Common sense perspective. According to a common sense perspective, you don’t go for a swim in a flooding river, because you might drown. You drink water if you're thirsty. You water plants. This perspective is based on an unquestioning acceptance of reality as it appears to the five senses. Geertz characterises this as a kind of naive realism.
From the current scientific perspective, water is the liquid phase of a bond between an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms
Scientific perspective. According to the scientific perspective, reality isn’t as it appears. For example, 99% of the H2) molecule, and thus water itself is space. But water doesn’t appear as space.
Renoir's aesthetic perspective of water
Aesthetic perspective. Different aesthetic perspectives can be seen when you compare how Turner, Renoir, or Hokusai paint water. It's how we see the world with 'artistic' eyes.
Hokusai's aesthetic perspective of water.
Religious perspective. According to the religious perspective, reality is merely an illusion. There is another order; you can’t experiment, you can’t see it, but appears as super important; really real. Of course, you can drown in water, but, aside from the obvious depriving the body of oxygen, what is really happening when you drown? For example, if you think of meeting the love of your in such terms as “it was fate”, “it was meant to be”. For example, Jeff Buckley [90s musician] died swimming in the Mississippi. People, even atheists, of my generation say things like "his music lives on", "fate took him" etc.. And maybe that same water is used baptize people so that they can be born again. That's what the water is really about, from a religious perspective. The religious perspective is always about purpose and meaning; it's not necessarily about afterlife, spirits, God etc.
These Baptists can perceive water from common sense, scientific, and aesthetic perspective. To some extent, these are distractions from what is really real; a miraculous power in the water to absolve sins and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to enable you to be reborn.
Applying Geertz: Australian secular religion
I grew up steeped in contemporary Australian religion of professed atheism. I couldn't understand how anyone could be so naive as to believe in God. As far as I could discern, it was like believing in Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and other make-believe characters that make us feel good. I even got to the point that I was convinced that believing in God was a collective delusion bordering on madness. I wasn't so much scared of a universe without a God; I was scared of a world where many people could indulge in such a fantasy!
When I studied philosophy at Uni, I was shocked to learn that perfectly good arguments pointed to the existence of God. That still wasn't enough. Deep down, I felt the believers were mistaken. That changed after reading Geertz.
Geertz allowed me to see a different perspective that 'religious people' took. They see everyday reality as merely an illusion. They believed that what was really happening lay behind the deceptive surfaces of appearances. Then, as 'religious' began to appear less crazy to me, I began to see myself as religious.
For Australian nationalists, the water around Anzac Cove isn't just any water.
From a really real perspective, it will forever contain the blood of young Australians and their sacrifice for us.
Following that, I had a reflective moment. I came to see my secular, atheist beliefs as deeply religious. I tried to express this latter perception in this brief opinion piece. It applies Geertz's ideas to Australian 'religion'. The piece seems irreverent and disrespectful to me now--I wish I had got the tone better. Because I think the Digger or the Battler is just as worthy of respect as the chishinga (Week 8) or the Virgin of Guadalupe (Week 7).
I think the interviewer thinks I 'beg the question'; I didn't manage to convince him!
Evaluating Geertz
We need to look at critiques of Geertz, for several reasons.
In teaching this subject, and in my thinking more generally, I have been heavily influenced by Geertz. To provide balance I need to give some air to opposing positions.
As Geertz remains the towering figure in the study of symbols within anthropology, the scholars who critique are also among the most influential anthropologists. To read critiques of Geertz is to gain understanding into other profound theoretical positions.
One of the aims of this unit is to develop your ability not just to understand and recognize different theories. Granted this is difficult in itself, but to think like an anthropologist you need to go further. You must be able to situate the theories historically and reflect upon them critically. For these three reasons, we focus on two critiques of Geertz.
Rosaldo's critique
Renato Rosaldo was doing fieldwork with his wife, also an eminent anthropologist, among headhunters in the Philippines. She died. He felt so much rage he could now understand the feeling of headhunters. This understanding enabled him to critique Geertz's theory. Please read the section entitled "How I Found Rage in Grief" in the "Grief and a Headhunter's Rage".
You might also want to listen to my interview with anthropologist, Monika Winarnita, and what she has to say about Rosaldo and Metcalf (who critiqued Rosaldo).
Asad's critique
Asad also famously critiqued Geertz's use of the term "religion" in Asad's "The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category". I have summarized Asad's argument in a blog. But, of course, it's much better to read Asad himself.
For Geertz, culture (and religion within it) is a system of symbols. These symbols are models of the universe and models for how to behave. ‘Models of’ and ‘Models for’ appear just like theories until you experience ritual. Ritual is crucial to bringing them together and making them seem uniquely real. The uniquely real (not necessarily the supernatural) is religion. This is why the atheist, sceptic etc is religious in Geertz’s sense; because she will go to family dinners, sports parties (Superbowl, Grand Final, FA Cup, World Series etc.) BBQs, Christmas Lunch, and find that this is really real.
Welcome to Section 8 of Symbols and Society. In Section 7, we considered Wolf's idea that a symbol can mean different things to different groups in a society.This week we turn to another Symbolic Anthropologist, who also takes an interpretive rather than structural approach.
Turner & rites of passage
Turner is well-known for his analysis of rites of passage. I've presented on rites of passage here:
This week I turn to a less-known, though equally important, aspect of his work.
Explaining, Using, & Positioning
In this section, we Turner’s analysis of the forked stick. Here are my notes on Turner. Turner shows how a symbol can create profound meanings, can form social bonds, and can help organise and order other symbols within a culture.
In this presentation I outline Turner's idea that we explain symbols; we put them to use in rituals; and we see the world through them:
Ndembu men are called by hungry spirits to join hunting clans. A man so afflicted, hunts animals to appease the spirit. When the man is successful in the hunt, he hangs some of the meat on a monument/shrine made out of a stick with a fork at its end. This shrine is called a "chishing'a" in Ndembu. The stick is driven into the soil so it stands upright. The hungry spirit can now eat the meat it craved. But this fork is much more than just an object to feed spirits. This forked stick symbolizes the slaughterous power of the hunting clans. (As I mentioned in the Introduction to this course, we can compare the symbolism to the violent potential of 'thugs' in gangsta rap.)
Exegesis
When Turner asked Ndembu hunters what the word "chishinga" means, the answer he gives is that the word "chishing'a" is closely related to the word "curse". And this is because hunters are cursed. Their friends and family will be jealous of their success. and jealousy). Similarly if an anthropologist asked a Crip in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s what the word "Crip" means, the Crip might explain that it is a political word, meaning "Community Revolution in Progress". Both of these examples are what Turner calls "exegetical meaning" of the symbols.
Operation
When Turner observed how Ndembu actually use the shrine, he noted what was done with the symbol and who did it. As he records, only hunters may cut a chishing'a. They prepare the shrine together (showing the unity of cult). Also the hunter takes his kill first to the shrine. Similarly our anthropologist in 1980s LA, might observed that only Crips have the right to make the "C" sign with their hands and fingers. Also this 'signing' can be part of gang dancing (the "Crip Walk"); tattooing (a Crip might tattoo the hand sign for "C" on his back); graffitti (the hand sign might be spray painted on a wall) etc. Both of these examples (hunters and their Chishing'a as well as Crips and their hand "C" hand sign) are instances of what Turner calls the "operational meaning" of the symbol.
Position
Turner also attended to the way the chishing'a as a symbol related to other symbols in Ndembu culture. He noted that it was situated in relation to major symbols of the landscape; of fertility; and of [masculine] virility. Similarly, my imaginary anthropologist doing fieldwork in 1980s LA might observe that the color blue is related to Crips, but also ties in with the L.A. Dodgers. So Crip members wore Dodgers sports gear and blue 'flags' (bandanas). These were worn hanging out of the pocket and were sacred in the sense that if our imaginary anthropologist pulled on one of these and blew his nose in one, he might find himself beaten or dead. The way these symbols (Chishing'a as well as the color blue) relates to other symbols in the larger constellation of signs is what Turner calls the "positional meaning".
Summary
So Turner saw symbols as being more than things which we attach meaning to. They are also things we talk about and explain (exegesis), that we use in rituals (operation), and that we make sense of the world through (position). These are the exegetical, operational, and positional ways of using symbols.
In Section 9, we return to question of the meaning we attach to symbols, through the theory of Clifford Geertz.
Welcome to Section 5 of Symbols and Society. In Section 4, we studied Jung's idea that all humans share unconscious archetypes; these take form as symbols and myths. This week we will study Levi-Strauss's idea of structuralism. Levi-Strauss argues that there is an innate structure to human thought processes. This structure involves several basic sets of binary oppositions. Symbols, folktales, kinship, food mores etc. from all around the world incorporate and express these binary oppositions (Elms 1977: 259). Here is the overview of this week:
Structure of harelips & twins stories
A good
introduction to structural analysis can be obtained by reading
Levi-Strauss's "Harelips and Twins" essay. If are time poor, please feel free to use my summary. Levi-Strauss sees that the hare (a kind of rabbit) is common feature in Indigenous American myths. The hare is usually a trickster and has super-powers. Levi-Strauss makes, for the first time, a connection between hares, people with hare-lips and twins. Twins embody contradictions (we could call these binaries) of good and bad, heaven and earth. Twins are actually a single body that divide into two in the womb. Any person with a hairlip was about split in two in the womb but didn't, therefore he/she embodies incredible opposite powers. Similarly any hare is animal that was about to split into but didn't, so any hare also embodies these opposite powers. So Levi-Strauss sees a symbol (the hare in Native Story) and it embodies dual characteristics of the culture. This also enables him to connect the hare with hare-lipped people and twins. This was supposed to be a great insight. It indicates that myths stories and symbols are actually manifestations of similar underlying structures which we are unaware of; these structures are usually organised in opposites (binaries).
Hopefully the above examples provide a basic idea about how Levi-Strauss's structuralism works. Now we have to take it another level of complexity by introducing paradigmatic (synchronic, the order of things in a story, meal, ritual, sentence etc.) and syntagmatic (diachronic, the replace-ability, compatibility, or 'swap-ability' of these elements).
For another example of structural analysis, let's turn to Levi-Strauss's analysis of the elements of cuisine.
Consider a BBQ (“barbie” in Australia; "braii" in South Africa). What is consumed
first? Second? Third? Maybe you start with potato chips (crisps); then it's cooked meat and salads; then afterwards you have cake, chocolate, or other sweet foods. This is the diachronic arrangement. (I don't want to confuse, but Levi-Strauss also calls this "paradigmatic relationship")
Now consider what is served together. For example, what goes
with tomato sauce? Sausages. Also meat goes with salad. Cream goes with cake. This is the synchronic arrangement. (Again, I don't want to confuse, but Levi-Strauss also calls this "paradigmatic relationship". If these new terms are confusing just ignore them for the meantime.)
Finally, all these 'elements' (potato chips, meat, salads, cake, chocolate, salad, cream) are called gustemes. (Because, for Levi-Strauss they are like phonemes in a sentence)
These are the basics of Levi-Strauss's analysis of 1950s meals in England and France:
Like language, it seems to me, the cuisine of a society may be analyzed into constituent elements, which in this case we might call “gustemes,” and which may be organized according to certain structures of opposition and correlation. We might then distinguish English cooking from French cooking by means of three oppositions: endogenous / exogenous (that is, national versus exotic ingredients); central/ peripheral (staple food versus its accompaniments) ; marked / not marked (that is, savory or bland). We should then be able to construct a chart, with + and — signs corresponding to the pertinent or nonpertinent character of each opposition in the system under consideration.
In other words, in English cuisine the main dishes of a meal are made from endogenous ingredients, prepared in a relatively bland fashion, and surrounded with more exotic accompaniments, in which all the differential values are strongly marked (for example, tea, fruitcake, orange marmalade, port wine). Conversely, in French cuisine the opposition endogenous / exogenous becomes very weak or disappears, and equally marked gustemes are combined together in a central as well as in a peripheral position.
... French cooking is diachronic (the same oppositions do not come into play in different parts of the meal). Thus French hors-d’oeuvres are built around the oppositions maximal transformation / minimal transformation of the type “ charcuterie” raw foods, which does not recur synchronically in subsequent dishes....There are, finally, certain incompatibilities which are consciously maintained by the social group and which possess a normative value: hot food / cold food; milky drink / alcoholic drink; fresh fruit / fermented fruit, etc.
Thanksgiving: Application of Levi-Strauss's Structuralism
OK
now let's see if you can apply this theory yourself. I spent a bit of
living in the US as a kid. I found about a special ritual meal on a
holiday called "Thanksgiving", occurring annually on the 4th Thursday of
November. As I recall this is what I was told about it:
Families
get together on this Fall (Autumn) evening to eat, traditionally,
Turkey, pumpkin and other dishes. Thanksgiving commemorates an occasion
when 'American Indians' (now called First Nations) shared a meal with
the European settlers (usually called Pilgrims). The food they shared
with the Pilgrims was Turkey and various other American vegetables and
fruits, so now every year we eat the same food.. Thanksgiving is a time
to give thanks to the Indians for sharing their land with us, and to
give thanks to God for this great land (i.e. USA).
Anyway,
that's what I was told, back in the 1980s. Since then I've heard the
ritual criticized for various reasons, but I'll leave those criticisms
aside for now. Let's just focus on what a structural analysis could say
about the following meal plan (i.e. menu!):
Think about such oppositions as sweet-sour; indigenous-exotic; main dish-sides; raw-cooked. Also keep in mind the difference between paradigmatic (synchronic) and syntagmatic (diachronic) elements. What
is the paradigmatic structure of the culinary elements ('gustemes') of
this Thanksgiving Meal? How about the syntagmatic structure? Remember,
in the ritual context, the main course and sides are served, on the
table, and eaten at the same time.
Get ready for reading...
Levi-Strauss's greatest essay is The Structural Study of Myth. It's a monster (figuratively and literally!) of an essay. When I first read it, this essay took me hours and hours to understand, and then it changed how I understood humans. In the essay, Levi-Strauss analyses Oedipus myth.
Before you read the essay helpful to brush up on the details of the entire myth/saga. This website should guide you through the larger Oedipus myth. It also relates elements directly to Levi-Strauss's structural analysis. In the same essay, Levi-Strauss also discusses Zuni myths--this website will help with those.
One more thing, we've got to change our terminology a bit. What Levi-Strauss called "diachronic" in his food analysis is now "syntagmatic"; both refer to the order of things, one after another. And what he called synchronic in his food analysis is now "paradigmatic"; these two terms refer to the relationship between elements at a single moment in a story or a meal.
If you're still struggling with the structural analysis of myth, you can turn to Leach, one of the towering figures of 20th century anthropology. In one of the chapters of his bookClaude Levi-Strauss, Leach took it upon himself to restate the entire argument of the "Structural Study of Myth". This indicates Leach was also a humble and generous man. It also indicates that Levi-Strauss is extremely important and difficult to read!
By now you should be able to understand this:
Reflections on Levi-Strauss
Levi-Strauss's analysis of the Oedipus myth clearly differs from Freud's analysis. But can you explain the underlying theories which give rise to such radically different interpretations? In spite of the differences, can you ascertain similarities?
Analysis of Levi-Strauss
But is Levi-Strauss right? Is he correct, in fact, correct to stress the role of opposites in cultures?
One way to respond to these questions is as follows: Anthropologists assume that the world is meaningless. Reality has no meaning, but for some reason (which Geertz goes into) we humans try to construct meaningful lives. In this regard, humans seem to be unique. Assuming that the world is random and not pre-organized meaningfully, Lévi-Strauss seeks to understand how we go about creating meaning. What patterns emerge when we look at human meaning-making? L-S comes up with this answer: one way that we make reality meaningful is through opposites. His writing is teeming with examples of opposites. My experience seems to confirm that opposites are a way of making meaning. Where I do fieldwork (East Java and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands), opposite such as day/night, raw/cooked, man/woman, black/white, inside/outside, good/bad are crucial in creating a meaningful life. Also (as far as I can remember— we’re going back as far as the 1980s here!!!) it seems to me that in places where I have lived (Australia, Japan, Russia, England, USA, Canada) these opposites were also fundamental. And the opposites produce meaning and behavior in different ways. Anyway, this evidence supports Levi-Strauss’s observations.
Another way to respond is that, since the time of Levi-Strauss, anthropologists have been less concerned with proving truths about the world and more with developing systems for interpreting the world. The emphasis (again using Geertz) is on interpretation rather than science. Whether that’s a good thing I’m unsure.
Summary of Levi-Strauss
Levi- Strauss's structuralism claimed to unlock underlying patterns in rituals, meals, sentences, clothing, and various other phenomena. These patterns were not the observed surface meaning. However, underlying the surface meaning, deep structures could be observes. Furthermore in these structures meaning did not emerge from single to but only in the relationship between various terms following models like A is to B as C is to D. These ideas have profound implications not only for anthropology but for scholars of folktales and mythology and in the burgeoning field that was to become the discipline of Cultural Studies. Later Levi Strauss thought tidy structures do you need biological qualities of humans and our minds, but that is for further study. For our purposes, it is sufficient that you understand Levi-Strauss's ideas:
that cultural phenomena can be reduced to basic units of meaning;
that these units of meaning are opposed like binary code;
that symbolism in the form of stories, rituals and so on express this code; and,
that this tells that our thought is encoded with meanings which are not immediately apparent to us.
If you are still a little unsure about this, rest assured we will revise it next in Section 6: Evaluating Theories & Critical Thinking. Bur for now, the take-home message: the meaning of symbols is structured according to basic underlying units of meaning.
