Literary Deductions

The fallacy of "deduction" was brought home for me in a very real way, as I sat down to write a paper for one of my classes. The class is one I would place in the realm of humanities, although I suppose one could make an argument that it serves a more scientific purpose.

As usual, I began with a thesis. The thesis is often the toughest part of the essay, tough to define, to measure, to conceive. And yet once I have it, the muse has struck. I have my work lain out before me like a plate of dessert -- fresh, fulfilling, sensually palpable.

Then the backbreaking work begins. I have a few quotes in my head, to start, some of which are probably the root of the thesis itself. I commandeer slivers of others' thoughts and compressions of the primary source(s). I add them to the batter. In the end, I have a fresh, sweet batch of essay, with a few source-derived chips speckled here and there amid the great, fragrant composite, swirled, marbled, pinwheeled theory which is the brunt of the opus.

True, the work is "substantiated" by evidence -- the evidence I meticulously selected as if I were shopping for fruit in a market or harvesting blueberries. (I truly hope I'm not an outlier here!)

Now, is this process not deduction at its most appalling? What if I had taken the text itself, read it, categorized it, carefully measured every aspect of it, and from these chunks, _maybe_ tried to make some orderly sense of it? Preposterous, non? As preposterous as proving anthropology could manifest itself in poetry? Or that culture is an empirical science? -- both of which are quite true, according to some folks.

La grande théorie really is inescapable. I shall never view a thesis in quite the same way!

What makes a meal a meal?

So I was wondering, what make a meal a meal? Is it the same for everyone? I mean, is there a structure to a meal that we all understand?

Personally I rarely eat dessert, at least not at home, yet I recognize that dessert is considered an expected part of a meal, at least at dinner. When I go to someone's house for dinner, or when I have people over, I expect to serve and be served dessert. Unless I go to my parents' house, where they also rarely eat dessert. Unless they have company or the meal is considered a "dinner" or dinner party or something like that.

So, in my family, we knowingly break a rule about the proper components of a specific meal (dinner), but only under certain circumstances (no other guests besides immediate family).

But, does the absence of dessert at my parents' house say something deeper about the nature of our relationship? I mean, since I grew up not eating dessert at home, I don't notice it so much, but there are other things that my mom does wrt breaking the rules of what counts as a meal. Does that mean she'd just rather have a "drinks-only" kind of relationship with her kids?

Oh, man -- have the psychoanalysts discovered Mary Douglas yet?!

new project

come check out a project that Daniel Hunninghake is working on (with me). he is exploring the ways that identity construction is mediated by, well, media. social media, that is.

here's a link to his blog, where you will also find links to the twitter feed and facebook fan page.

Sapir vs. Benedict

Does linguistic relativism shape psychology writ large?

First things first: Please refute this post. I'm not an expert, so feel free to share/respond.

I wanted to offer some linguist evidence. I tend to want to relate culture to linguistics, and I noticed a few interesting lingual elements of the specific cultures Benedict cites. I'm emphasizing both linguistic determinism and also relatively long and distinct histories (vis-a-vis Boas) of the cultures Benedict describes.

--
The Kwakiutl are a well-established subset of the Amerind language family (If you're not familiar with the broad distinctions between American languages, the three major language families -- Amerind, Na-Dene, and Eskimo-Aleut, respectively -- all represent major migrations into the Americas across the Bering Strait, thousands of years apart from one another). See page 379 of Language in the Americas.

Zuni, however, is presently reckoned a language isolate (see ethnologue) and was intensely studied by Edward Sapir. Greenberg includes Zuni in the Amerind family (like Kwakiutl), under the "Penutian" tree, and I generally tend to agree with him (they use the characteristic n-/m- pronouns). That said, the two languages (Kwakiutl and Zuni) have quite visible differences.

Another interesting aspect of the Southwest area is that it houses both Amerind families and Na-Dene families. The Navajo (who live in vicinity to the Zuni) come from a language family much newer to the Americas than do the Zuni. Arguably these later migrations (including the one which brought the Navajo) carried with them an influx of new cultural traits. The marked differences between cultures within the Southwest area may have much deeper roots than Benedict could have envisioned -- roots that extend into Siberia and beyond. In addition, the profound differences in the Zuni language which led Sapir to go so far as calling it an isolate (not related to _any_ other language) suggest a very long occupation in the Southwest and rather older culture (areally, at least).

The differences between these cultures' "personalities" are probably partly a result of rather different histories.... not just individual personality particulars and cultural reinforcement. And what is more, the great differences in the languages doubtless influence the "personae" of the culture. A stigma, positive or negative, is attached to a word by a culture and influences the "deviant"/normative status of the aspect of culture which it describes.

Look at the word "cataleptic" contrasted with "touched by God" -- the respective negative/positive language stigmas are obvious here and, indeed, alter our own ideas of the "signified" concept which these words describe (regardless that these words actually describe precisely the same thing).
"gross indecency" (the criminal charge which designated homosexuality) vs. "GLBT"
Etc.

A slight change in terminology has a profound effect on perceived deviance! Imagine the vast differences in culture entirely special lexica could facilitate. So... 'personality writ large' or linguistic determinism? Or both?

interesting book about Mead & Benedict

I haven't read this book yet, but it has been highly recommended by friends:

http://www.amazon.com/Intertwined-Lives-Margaret-Benedict-Circle/dp/0679776125/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252901069&sr=8-1

I have it, if anyone has spare time and wants to check it out. The book describes Mead's and Benedict's childhoods, marriages, and also (especially) their intimate relationship with one another (they were lovers).

If you're planning a report on Mead or Benedict, you should probably holler.

Emma

theoretical genealogies

Since I was an anthropology major in college, of course I had to take a theories course. I don't remember much about it. I remember a lot more about the theories courses I took in grad school. No surprise there, I guess. I was older, it was more recent, I had more grounding in anthropological literature by that time, and so on.

One thing that I did not ever think about, though, was what was the theoretical perspective of my profs in college. It just never came up. But it's important because as a student you will be exposed to the theories that your professors find convincing or important (in a theory class, one would hope you would be exposed even to the theories that the prof thinks are crap).

And this brings me to theoretical genealogies. Anthropology is still and all a relatively new discipline, and it is still possible to trace the genealogies of graduate departments based on where the faculty themselves were trained.

For example, I got my PhD from UVA. Many of the professors in that department were trained at U of Chicago, where Edward Sapir was on the faculty. (In fact, one of our professors emeritus was his son.) That should tell you that there are a few Boasian-leaning anthropologists out there training graduate students along the theoretical lines of Sapir. Kroeber and Lowie were at UC Berkeley, where Dr. MacKinnon received both her BA and PhD. What inferences can one make about her training as an anthropologist? She is first and foremost a biological anthropologist, but she also considers herself a broadly trained generalist. Like.... Kroeber and Boas!

Some of my other professors at UVA were Marxian, and others were symbolic anthropologists. Victor Turner was on the faculty (he died before I got there, but his wife still taught in the department). Dell Hymes was there, too.

As I struggle with ways to approach the teaching of this class, I wonder if it would be fun to trace the genealogies of the departments we come from and use that as a way to talk about theory.

what I'm wondering

In my zeal to cover as much of the history of anthropological theory from the 19th century to the present, am I overdoing it? In other words, does this class try to cover too much material? Is there a better way to approach the topic? I wonder if it would be better to cover fewer theories and make the links to current theory more explicit. I would love to hear thoughts about this -- I am always open to making changes to courses if what I'm doing is not working.

Well, almost always. It depends on the suggestion. I mean, we're not going to stop studying theory. That's the point of this class.

So tell me, can you think of a better (or different) way to understand anthropological theory?