Objectivity, Culture and Knowledge

How to 'explain a culture'? Maybe to base the explanation on one's ideas of what (our or their) culture is.. Then, wouldn't this inevitably lead to the conclusion that we prioritize some cultural aspects over some others? or that we consider some aspects as 'cultural' while other as 'natural'?

The whole concept of culture seems to be wide enough to approach it from all perspectives, therefore the need to develop Areas of Knowledge (Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Human Sciences, Arts, etc.). Geertz suggested that "man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun", and that culture were those webs.. Every time we study the world, we carry out an interpretative exercise from the part of the net we are standing, always looking for meaning.

Maybe there is no such a thing as total objectivity, but (individual or group) interpretations of reality. The process of making sense of the world could be the way in which knowledge is ‘created’, while the meanings stand for the justifications needed. An analysis from the knower's perspective is supposed to ‘dissect’ the whole process, reflecting upon the ways of knowing (sense perception, language, emotion, and reason), in order to appreciate the changing character of knowledge and reformulate one’s process as a knower.

Gender Equality in...

Today, during the English lesson at Tallinn University, we were discussing this article http://news.err.ee/culture/e6460d0b-b689-49e9-b30f-ce4b6d373b01 Besides language issues, we tried to consider a bit other scenarios (besides the labour one, focus of the article) in which gender equality was an issue.. Such an interesting activity! Students started appealing to their experiences, referring to how at school in Estonia (the context matters little, maybe, but the ideas of the world we share are certainly spread through the educational systems) girls get less attention than boys, but they idea that the former are more intelligent than the latter is widely generalized! Boys in blue, girls in pink; boys with car toys, girls with dolls.. "Don't cry, be a man!" is someting commonly heard in my beloved Colombia.. but it is also common here.. Women are supposed to be raised soft and delicate, sentimental and vulnerable, sweet and tender... Men, on the contrary, are supposed to grow tough and clever, always ready with a solution, and never hesitating.. never allowed to express his feelings, at least not in an emotional way..
When people talk about gender equality, they refer mostly to labour opportunities, salary gaps between men and women, and the "natural" limitations of genders (i.e. pregnancy)   Nevertheless, the ways in which gender equality is conceptualised reach very confortable situations.. are we talking about men talking more responsibilities at home.. cleaning the dishes or playing with children? Or women paying for dinner, driving the family car, or teaching the boys to ride a bike? Culturally we raise our children to cope with certain roles.. some more critical than others!
This, I would like to point out, is just a reflection, intended to become the starting point for discussion.. the word is to you :)

Nice picture for reflection..

Sauna (1st part)

Hi everyone!

This is the first post of a series of post on the topic of Sauna. In fact, all the escerpts are taken from an essay due to a course on religious anthropology. Although I hope that the vocabulary is not complocated but rather friendly and inviting to comment.

So, here it is...

Cheers!

Sauna..

The original Sauna, found in many countries, and especially common in Finland and Estonia, was closer to what nowadays is known as “smoke sauna”. In fact, it is said that the name Sauna is a derivative of the word savuna, literally "in smoke". 

Sauna and its process of sweating in order to clean and heal people’s bodies and minds have been present in the world for several years, approximately for 6 or 7 thousand years, as it is evidenced in rock paintings showing people throwing water on stones. Later on, both Greeks and Romans used hot baths to draw out bad temper and as a social way to gather and relax (Wagemakers & Moore, 1999). Some scientists even say that the so-called “Father of Medicine”, Hippocrates, recommended bath procedures to the majority of his patients. In the same way of thought, Smoley, in 1992, suggested that ‘sweating cleanses the body of toxic elements and boosts the immune system’ (Smoley, 1992). In that sense, not only is sauna useful in physical terms, but it is also associated to the agricultural habits of Northerners in which, after a journey of hard work in the cold winter, a “communal warmth, beyond just physical heat” became the basis of social organisation and feeling of community. (Kaldera, 2005)

In the past, the sauna was a separate structure from the main house; however, during the 1940s, a new trend started to spread along the “sauna regions”: it was built inside of a structure that was detached from the main house. Later on, during the 1970s, the construction tended to be built inside of the main structure.

From the outside, the usual sauna looks like a box with a chimney and has no windows, so the heat inside will not escape. There is also a little terrace with some benches to sit between the visits to the sauna. In the old times, the door was shorter than a usual door, in order to have the sauna-goers stoop to come in as a way to show reverence for the ancestors. Inside, the structure is divided into two rooms: the stove room, where people sit during the sauna, and a changing area with showers. In case there is not a shower, the sauna visitor will have a dip into the closest river or lake or, in winter time, roll onto the snow.

The main body of the sauna is the heater. Some people insist on that it is better to have two heaters: “one electrical for everyday use and the other a real wood heater for holidays and the ritual sauna of the weekends.”[1] Another important part of the physical arrangement of a sauna is the stones as the steam (or leil in Estonian language) comes from the contact of the water with them. Some sauna experts recommend to collect them ceremonially and charged them with good energy, while others suggest not to use river stones, since they tend to break with the change of temperature. Additionally, the water is recommended to be natural spring water, since rain water is considered to too flat – some actually say that the best water is rainwater -and seawater create acid rain in the sauna. Moreover, the perfect atmosphere for the sauna is a moody one in order to create a shadowy environment ideal for relaxation.

Finally, one of the questions I first had when doing my research with the sauna-club had to do with the location of the sauna. Some people say that the sauna should be built facing west in order to provide a view on the sun-set. It is also important that it is located in a peaceful setting since “relaxation after the sauna is an important part of the full sauna experience” (Joronen, 2002)

In next posts, I will share some more information on sauna and sauna culture. Topics such as the "elements of sauna", "sauna habits and its alternative uses", "what is ritual in religious anthropology", "sauna rituals", and concluding remarks will be open to comments. I hope this is as interesting to you as it is to me :)

All the best and see you around,

C.

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[1] http://www.cankar.org/sauna/index.html

Being an Author and Anthropology

According to Foucault, “the (…) author’s name is not simply an element in a discourse; it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function.” (Foucault 1969: 107) and adds up that “although, since the eighteen century, the author has played the role of the regulator of the fictive, a role quite characteristic of our era of industrial and bourgeois society, of individualism and private property, still, given the historical modifications that are taking place, it does not seem necessary that the author function remain constant in form, complexity, and even in existence.” (Foucault 1969: 119)

Besides, for Foucault, the author is a function using language to relate the author, the message, and the others. Both, anthropologists and natives are authors; in that way, do authors have the right to tell the story in behalf of “the others”? According to Nelson, “the product of ethnography —our texts—receives close scrutiny, while the process of ethnography— our fieldwork—is rarely examined. (Nelson 1997: 120) She also asserts that “our writing techniques are politicized, our research techniques are also politicized, only more so.” (Nelson 1997: 121) and concludes by stating that “face-to-face exchange between the ethnographer and her respondent is politically constituted, if not because of social difference (i.e., class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, age, education, etc.), then simply because of the dominant role the researcher plays in guiding the exchange. (Nelson 1997: 121)

As a matter of fact, in Taussig’s work, informants are presented as “M”, “P”, a neighbour, the shop worker, a buyer or an former public servant. What Taussig does in the text is to play with this logic: he melts his voice with those he interviews, while contrasting the discourse from each one of his informants (p. 113). According to Briggs, he is disengaging from the research to “collect ‘voices’ much like an archaeologist collects artefacts” (Briggs 1986:123). Interviews, according to my reading of his work, are presented in the book as a first-hand understanding of the situation perceived by the inhabitants. Many times it is not his voice telling the story, it is the voice of members of the community, nostalgic of old times o horrified by the current situation; however, sometimes these accounts are coloured sporadic opinions from the author. Taussig is doing what Guber affirmed when quoting Jacobson, that is to make a “description (which is) neither the natives’ world, nor how the world seems to be for them, but an interpretative conclusion made by the researcher.” (Guber 2001: 15) Another example of Guber’s remarks is the analysis Taussig makes on the “death lists” (p. 74) as he infers, according to the different kinds of lists published in the town and those mentioned in them, that it is about “class warfare”. Although there is no reference to literature on the topic, this is not only his interpretation as he makes his observations based on what he perceives and what the informants tell him.

On the other hand, and in spite of the ‘true’ character that this ‘first-hand strategy’ prints on the text, to my viewpoint such character has its cons. Quoting Charles Briggs’s words, “interview techniques (...) are tied to relationships of power and control. The same patterns of inequality emerge from the relationship between controlling and subordinate groups within societies, between ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ societies, and between interviewers and interviewees.” (Briggs 1986:123) However, James Clifford asserts that “one increasingly common way to manifest the collaborative production of ethnographic knowledge is to quote regularly and at length from informants.” (Clifford 1983:13)

Furthermore, it is important to mention something that goes beyond the reference to the interviewees and the author’s interpretations of their accounts confronted with the reality perceived through participant observation. This is a very human vision of reality; through the diary Taussig asked himself what the purpose of his work was, he even writes about his own life (p. 126), feelings and fears while doing fieldwork, not as a scientist analyzing something, but as a person with contradictions, fears and expectations. In a way, he is following Nelson’s remarks on the importance for an anthropologist to make “his life public in order to gain validity of his own research” (Nelson 1997: 122). Notwithstanding, it is opposed to what Foucault stated when he wrote that “as a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing” (Foucault 1969: 103).

Finally, a very interesting aspect that called my attention is that, with the exception of some comments on Colombian sociologists and anthropologists’ works in the conflict environment, all along the text only few references to studies on violence made by other scholars are presented as a way to back up what Taussig is concluding. According to Foucault, “One defines a proposition’s theoretical validity in relation to the work of the founders.” (Foucault 1969: 116) In the case of Taussig, his comments are validated, not according to other scholars, but according to his own participant observation. However, in some cases the references to other researches can give more value and make the bases of one’s work more valid. For instance, when Taussig defines Limpieza he elicits the different meanings of the word from cleaning in old times (ritual cleaning of mind and body as indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities understand it) to cleaning in modern times (“means to wipe out and kill defenceless people, much the same as a ‘purge’ of the unclean” (Taussig 2003: xiii). He could have cited, for instance, the work by Blok when referring to the ethnic violence in the Balkans as “not only physical harm and destruction, but also social and cultural destruction, ethnic cleansing involves the legitimation and construction of an object defined as polluting that has to be purged” (Blok 2000: 32). 

An Overview of the Relevance of Philosophical Anthropology in Cultural Studies

It has been suggested that cultural studies are in fact an interdisciplinary field in which history, arts, and communication play a major role (Böhme et al, 2002). The argument of this essay is that those aspects also make part of the way how individual conceptualisations and perceptions are formed, while influencing the way how individuals interact in social and cultural environments. This is in fact the main argument behind ‘Philosophical Anthropology’. In this essay, first a review how different approaches have been useful in the statement of such a field of study will take place; then, an overview of its methods and relevance in social sciences will follow; finally, a few examples of some philosophical debates will be considered in the light of this paradigm.

To start with, the Greek philosophers were interested finding the essence of human nature, as well as in theological and psychological issues. Those interests allowed the first conceptualisations of mind, life, and animation. Later, the sophists allocated the focus of philosophical research on man; however, those studies never actually translated into a “science of man”, but rather developed into agnosticism, relativism, and scepticism (Kerferd, 1981). Eventually, Socrates argued that science should develop and guide the philosophy of man; while Plato defined man as a spiritual and thinking soul, and divided the human mind into three constitutive parts: an intellective part (reason), a spirited part (emotion), and an appetitive part (basic impulses) (Benson, 2006). Further, Aristotle argued that the human body was composed of the mind (shape) and body (matter), the mind was unique to each man, and was vegetative, sensitive, and rational at the same time (Cohen, 2008). Afterwards, Christianism explained the existence of the soul in terms of a divine creation, individual freedom, and its immortality; while Descartes, in the sixteenth century, suggested a relation between mind and body, but with independent faculties (Keeling, 1934). Since that moment, philosophical science experienced several divisions, and the studies on consciousness prevailed in the development of modern philosophy, placing ‘thinking’ as the essence of the mind, and giving birth to Rationalism and Empiricism; whereas the former deals with the spirit; the latter focused on the senses; making even bigger the gap that separated mind and body (Allen, 2002).

During the Enlightenment, ‘anthropological interests’ were developed and encouraged, mostly oriented towards social and individual process in the real world. The French Revolution intended to promote the establishment of a new educational, cultural, and social system; however, it had to face serious challenges, such as the pressure from the Christian elite and religious institutions. During those years, Rousseau suggested that man was innately good but society corrupted him (Rousseau, 1984); by asserting so, Rousseau addressed the prevalent discourses that had placed rationality as the motor of human practices, and allocated a major role on society and internal processes – product of social interaction and experience - that motivated individual behaviour.

During the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant referred to the concrete and sensitive aspects of human kind, arguing that men are firstly sensitive than moral beings. In his dissertations, Kant suggested also that there were certain questions that regulated human behaviour and thoughts, and that some disciplines would, in turn, answer those questions. The issues referred to had to do with the aspects of reality that were accessible to human understanding (Metaphysics), the dilemmas and choices that were to be made (Moral), the concerns regarding superior beings and spiritual growth (Religion), and human nature as a social and cultural being (Anthropology). Furthermore, all those questions were related to each other and to the mind-soul discussion, since without them no ethics, liberty, or immortality would ever be possible (Buber et al, 2002). By the end of that century, Hegel (1894), based on Kant’s remarks, suggested that the term dialectics was composed of three stages: the thesis or an exposition of ideas (abstract ideas), an antithesis or the opportunity to contradict or invalidate the thesis (negative ideas), and a synthesis o the resolution of the tension (concrete ideas). For Hegel, what is abstract needs trial, and then the experience takes place in order to prove – or disqualify - a certain position. Furthermore, he proposed the term sublation to characterise the negation of a negation; in this sense, something exists only in relation to something else, and the negation of the negation of something is itself: “something becomes an other, this other is itself somewhat; therefore, it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum” (Hegel, 1894: 95).

In fact, Hegel developed the main concepts of Idealism, which asserts that reality is based on the mind, and that human beings construct their world on the basis of their perception and consciousness. From the conception of Idealism several other philosophical trends developed, either to support or criticise it. Let us analyse some of them. Firstly, Sǿren Kierkegaard criticised Hegelian ideals for they were abstracted from his (Hegel’s) everyday behaviour (Allen, 2002), and claimed that the Christian life was the only one that presented certain coherence between the ideals and the ways of living. Secondly, Positivism, developed by Auguste Comte, can be considered as sympathetic to Hegelian dialectics, which asserts that the only valid knowledge was the product of sense experimentation. Thirdly, Materialism asserted that matter was the only thing that could be proven to exist, implicitly denying any kind of metaphysical claims. Indeed, Marxist Materialism claimed that, on the one hand, social relations account for the material base of the real world and set the bases for the creation of ideologies; and, on the other hand, that everyday human beings ought to produce their economic sustainability in order to cover their needs through physical labour and productive activities (Borodulina, 1972). Finally, Vitalism claimed that living entities were different from non-living things since the former contain a ‘vital spirit’, which is a concept depicted more in detail by Descartes’ ‘automata’ bodies and Bergson’s ‘élan vital’ (Driesch, 1914: 38). Overall, all these perspectives continue having certain validity and are fundamental components of the anthropological knowledge. Let us now concentrate on the different kinds of knowledge.

Types of Knowledge

Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic knowledge is very useful for this dissertation. On the one hand, analytic knowledge is understood as the one that is based on logic justifications in relation to certain aspects of human nature and a priori judgments, for instance what is done in medicine, economics, and arts, among others; on the other hand, synthetic knowledge conceives the human being as a complete being and justifies its assertions on the basis of factual evidence and a posteriori judgments, as in the case of history, anthropology, experimental psychology and philosophical anthropology (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009). Let us analyse some of the disciplines that deal with synthetic knowledge and justifications more in detail. The first one, anthropology, studies human beings considering dynamic cultural and social interrelations in all their experiences, and is based on empirical research (established methods, theories and techniques) and immersion within the studied communities. The second one, experimental scientific psychology, is composed by three different scientific disciplines: experimental sciences (studying the properties and objects that are delimited by phenomenological or accidental conditions), philosophical sciences (studying the general principles of knowledge), and theological sciences (studying the relations between religious dogmas and earthy conditions). The third one, philosophical anthropology, studies the man, but differs from experimental psychology in the sense that it focuses on the essence human nature in the context of their daily relations and habits (Lemos, 2007).

Philosophical Anthropology

Regarding cultural issues, Cannadine (1981) suggested that “even in countries as superficially similar as Britain, France and the United States, there are fundamental differences in chronology, in technical developments and in general attitudes [...] the history of dying, of death, of grief, of mourning, of bereavement, of funerals and of cemeteries are all distinct subjects, the relationship between which is at best complex and at worst obscure [...] any attempt to trace the evolution over time of an emotion like grief, or even to generalize about such an emotion at a given time in a given society, is an extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible task [...] the history of death is at least as complicated as the history of life” (1981: 242). Nevertheless this approach neglects the issue of how people interpret and internalise the cultural paradigms is not tackled. Accordingly, Helmholtz (1925) argued that “the process of our comprehension with respect o natural phenomena is that we try to find general notions and laws of nature. Laws of nature are merely generic notions for the changes in nature. That is why when we cannot trace natural phenomena to law the very possibility of comprehending such phenomena ceases” (Helmholtz, 1925: 76), to which Cassirer suggested that “scientists know that there are still very large fields of phenomena which it has not yet been found possible to reduce to strict laws and to exact numerical rules” (Cassirer, 1962: 220) and that “in language, in religion, in art, in science, man can do no more than build up his own universe – a symbolic universe that enables him to understand and interpret, to articulate and organize, to synthetize and universalize his human experience” (ibid: 221) In this regard, ‘Anthropology’ has been considered as a biological discipline that refers to the treatment, observation, quantification, and description of several aspects of social and cultural interactions in human relations. Its relation with ‘Philosophy’ lays in the understanding of internal processes of the mind in the development of social and cultural identification and interactions in both the natural and the inner world (Fisher, 2009).

The origins of this paradigm can be traced to the development of Phenomenology and Existentialism. Indeed, both schools of thought promoted the study of human nature in particular social contexts (Agassi, 1977: 28), making the motivation for philosophical anthropologists the understanding of human nature in context of the nature of things (Scheler, 1982). Fisher (2008) offers us a differentiation between the terms “philosophical anthropology” (as a sub-discipline) and “Philosophical Anthropology” (as a paradigm). The distinction lays in the fact that while the former intending to collect and systematize the different views on “man” in philosophy; the latter focuses on a comprehensive approach to all aspects of human nature, such as natural, social, and cultural contexts. This latest approach is the one analysed in this dissertation, and refers to the understanding of human beings in the light of philosophical theories; in which the complete being (mind and body) is considered from the perspective of the inherent human characteristics or anthroposophy (Steiner, 1986). Accordingly, Philosophical Anthropology intends to reach the ‘vital human reality’ through the understanding of man’s behaviour in social contexts and his participation in the creation of values and moral standings. To put it in other words, the process of self-identification of the mind is complemented by an external influence; that is the living world (Fisher, 2009).

On the other hand, Philosophical Anthropology takes into account the crisis of self-reflectivity. This issue of self-reflectivity does not only refer to Hegel’s (1874) acknowledgement of the gap between the self and its representations, the challenges of multiple identities, the crisis of modern subjectivity, and the separation of life and subjectivity, but also the way how anthropologists – and philosophical anthropologists – reflect and represent themselves and their subjects of study. In History, Rüsen (2004) asserted the value of considering ethnocentrism in historical accounts for “a reflection about the made or logic of historical sense generation in historical studies. We need a growing awareness of the presupposed or underlying sense criteria of historical thinking […] such a high level of reflexivity will enable historians to observe themselves whether they directly or indirectly thematize otherness while presenting the history of their own people. Within such a new awareness one has to check the extent of recognition or at least the willingness to give the others a voice of their own” (Rüsen, 2004: 72). Additionally, he suggests that “one of the most important fields of applying a non-ethnocentric way of historical thinking to historical studies in intercultural comparison” (ibid: 73). However, this position does not take into account the repercussions of cultural relativism and the major role that the individual mind plays in the understanding and internalisation of cultural traits, not to mention the way how the story is told.

In this regard, Salazar (2006) suggested that there has been a tendency among anthropologists to consider as unproblematic ‘objective statements’ that reveal ‘the truth’ about certain people and their culture. In his view, anthropology constantly compares one culture in the light of some another; making it the only way to reach the truth the acceptance of the fact that scientific analysis of a culture in which subjects do not reflect critically about themselves or their culture is nothing but a second-level understanding of it. Accordingly, Roth (1989) asked us what could be considered as a reliable representation of experiences and cultures remote from one’s own (Roth, 1989). This point is, in fact, very similar to Rabinow’s (1977) characterization of ethnographies as “doubly mediated” (Rabinow, 1977:119) by anthropologists’ preconceptions and those of their subjects of study.

The method of Philosophical Anthropology could be regarded as very close to the conceptualisation of thick descriptions offered by Clifford Geertz (1973); focusing on the complexities of human nature and interactions, but always taking into account the internal mechanisms of the mind that play a role in the establishment and consolidation of cultural and social relations and performances. Indeed, the concept of ‘intersubjectivity’ is fundamental in this theoretical basis for it accounts for the study of how people with different opinions and experiences, reach common interpretations and shared meanings, and put in evidence shared divergent conceptualisations (Kowalczyk, 1991: 57). In any case, the human mind and its particularities are considered as primordial components in the theoretical contextualisation of this philosophical paradigm in relation to the biological and cultural aspects of human beings (Weiss, 2000). In other words, the Philosophical Anthropological approach focuses on life, not on the material world, although it has been acknowledged that the importance of ‘inanimate objects’ lays in its possibility to “throw animate objects into relief” (Fisher, 2009: 155). This would be the case of literature, ideology, or mass media. Accordingly, the philosophical anthropologist does not concentrate on ‘intuitive’ conceptualizations (élan vital or the speculative existential principle), but rather on empirical life.

Finally, Fisher (2009) proposed six aspects that make philosophical anthropology valuable in the study of human nature. The first aspect highlights the possibility to “take a sideways glance at the subject-object relation, to observe it at a remove” (Fisher, 2009: 156); or, in other words, the observation of the subject-object relation from the distance in order to consider it in relation with the being. The second aspect deals with the common perception being directed at ‘something’ in order to understand what the public common sense is and how it is developed. The third one states that the point of comparison is a hierarchical one that starts just below the human level and compares the human being with other living beings. The fourth one asserts that the level of organic life is the ‘circle of function’ or the ‘biocycle’ linking the organisms to the environment, being the main goal to analyse such relation [between the organism and its environment] from the distance. The fifth one suggest that an philosophical anthropological process of analysis compares contrastively “the various levels of organic life to reach the level of the human organism, its life form and living environment” (ibid: 157) where a break in the ‘biocycle’ of life is identified. Such break refers to a rupture of all the aspects that are characteristic in living beings such as movement, sensory organs, instinct, and impulse; nevertheless, such a gap is possible due to the separation of mind and organic body. Finally, the sixth aspect re-asserts the double character of man as a living body and a subjective subject in the world, allowing a de-centring process. Let us now consider how different philosophical and scientific postulates can be analysed from this perspective.

To start with, the characterisation of positive and negative liberty suggested by Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s could work as a very good example of analysis. Roughly speaking, positive liberty stands for the opportunity to “strive to fulfil one's potential”, while the negative liberty exemplifies freedom from coercion (Berlin, 1980). This, in turn, could be associated to Lotman’s (1990) argument that the concepts ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are used as universal instruments to describe any cultural manifestation, which implicitly acknowledges the relative concept of such an analysis. Nevertheless, Andrews (2003) highlighted how Lotman analysed the differences between literate and illiterate cultures and agreed with Kant in the sense that literate ones were culturally ‘mature’ in which human beings decide for themselves how to think and act (Andrews, 2003: 103). However, it has been argued that even in the most liberal societies man is not so free for there are contradictions between the expectation provided by social discourses and the available tools to achieve such expectations (Harris, 1979). This, in fact, motivates the individual mind to conceptualise differently any kind of situation according to their unique experiences. In this regard, Collingwood (1959) suggested that the study of the written or spoken statements of individuals do not consider the relevance of the meanings and the reasons for inner conceptualisation at a certain historical moment.

Furthermore, Crowder (2003), on the basis of Berlin’s theories, suggested that “value pluralism imposes on us choices that are demanding to a degree such that they can be made rationally only by autonomous agents; if pluralism is true, then the best lives, those informed by reasoned choices among the available options, will be characterised by personal autonomy” (Crowder, 2003: 17). In this case, there seems to be an omission of the ways how inanimate objects (literature, mass media, etc.) influence individual experiences and conceptualisations, which, in turn, mediate social interactions, putting in evidence the relative character of ‘personal autonomy’.

Finally, on the issue of how images can be used as historical evidence, Burke (2001) argued that art is often less realistic than it seems and “distorts social reality rather than reflecting it, so that historians who do not take into account of the variety of the intentions of painters or photographers (not to mention their patrons and clients) can be seriously misled” (Burke, 2001: 30). In fact, the challenge lies in that history is based not only of facts framed in a historical context, but also by people - even many people with different cultural and historical backgrounds have different accounts of history, which makes difficult to understand the degree to which mind conceptualisations – besides the aforementioned historical and cultural conditions – influence the telling of the story. In that sense, Burke’s very appropriate suggestion to analyse “the process of distortion [because it] is itself evidence of phenomena that many historians want to study: mentalities, ideologies, and identities. The material or literal image is good evidence of the mental and metaphorical ‘image’ of the self or the others” (ibid: 30), provided that “an image is necessarily explicit on issues that may be evaded more easily in texts” (ibid: 31).

To sum up, it is important to consider the potentiality of this kind of approach in the study of social – and historical - events, whether from a historical or philosophical point of view in the sense that there is a consolidation of the understanding that human beings do not act only out of reason and culture, but also because of their emotions, passions, senses, etc, which in turn are developed through experience and its contact with the real world and inanimate objects. This is the degree of amplitude that Philosophical Anthropology offers to the study of the human being and its relations.

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On the Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians

This post is basically a short essay that was submitted for the Ethnography course at TLU in Spring 2008.

This essay intends to provide some reflections on Pierre Clastres’ book. This is a very valuable book not only because it is an excellent piece of ethnographic research in which natives’ birth, death and habits, among other aspects, are referred to without breaking the continuity of the narration, but also because it provides a human vision of a nomad community experiencing change produced by a growing and unwilling interaction with white society. I will first point out some aspects on the structure of the book and the story told. Later on, I will mention why, to my point of view, this paper is a wonderful reference to future ethnographers. Finally, I will state some personal reflections on the text and connections to Western society.

To start with, the text begins with the narration of the birth of a new Guayaki, the ritual that follows and the importance of having a future hunter in the community. In this part of the text, as in the rest of it, there are careful explanations of the vocabulary and the logic of the language connected with the rituals performed. An example could be the way how ‘being born’ in Guayaki language is said in the same way as ‘to fall’ (waa), and how the ritual follows the logic of the action connected to the relations derived from it: the baby is left on the ground as “fallen” and the upiaregi – the one who lifts up - is ‘lifting it up’. Unlike Bateson’s book, the author makes references to ritual but feels that no explanation of it from philosophical or sociological theory is needed as our explanation of “ritual” can actually be different from the Indians’ understanding. The question that comes out of this omission is: Is it possible that, in usual ethnographies, the anthropologist interprets the situations in a way that is not necessarily the one shared by the natives? To my view, Clastres preferred to let us analyze first-hand the situation form the Indians’ perspective.

Clastres’ work is almost like a novel, a piece of writing telling the story of an old culture – already extinguished – from a human point of view, giving hints to the future ethnographer without leaving aside the common reader. There are no footnotes about or references to complex sociological or philosophical theories in the text, neither there is a formal conclusion summing up the main arguments “exposed” by the author from the ‘assertive’ anthropological perspective. The Indians’ beliefs are told, not in the light of the author’s theoretical standing point, but from the Indian’s mentality. It gives a picture of a cosmology so different from our understanding and so profound, involving care for nature, their children and those around them. In fact, the writing makes the reader feel sympathy for the Indians and the struggles they have to live, in such a way that, at the end, Clastres plays with the way to tell the story and let us confront the ‘horror’ of finding the natives being cannibals, almost like the tragic event that changes the whole development of the story and the image that the reader has made of the culture.

The book is also a wonderful piece of training for future ethnographers. There are plenty of examples of its pedagogical value: he provides very interesting insights on the limitations of anthropological analysis, for instance when he states that “the responsibility for determining the meaning of the world limits how far an anthropologist can go: we cannot know everything, there is always something irreducible, something that refuses to be domesticated, and the Indians are still aware enough of their thoughts to be able to seal up what they want to keep enigmatic.” (1998: 47); or when he highlights the usefulness of learning the language in advance (1998: 77), the best ways to improve language skills (1998: 146), and asking futile questions that could –eventually- lead to great discoveries (1998: 319). The importance of having different informant in order to contrast the different natives’ discourse is an important piece in his analysis (1998: 203) and what authentic contact with practices – participant observation - as much the natives allowed him to (1998: 238). Of particular interest are his reflections on the way how the anthropologist can be a disruptor of the natives’ habits –i.e. silence as a way of communication or the reproaches he made to the child who didn’t want to walk- in the sake of science or because of human solidarity (1998: 97). Finally, there are some comments on the misery of ethnocentric vision when referring to the first analysis made by British anthropologists in the XIX century (1998: 68).

A special note has to be commented on the proposal to have ‘meno’ with one of the women in the community. He might have had his reasons not to accept – I wouldn’t have – but it is interesting to ask ourselves: Would it have changed the structure or the focus of his research if he had accepted? Would there have been any kind of moral dilemmas afterwards when he was ‘invited’ to be ‘the second’ husband of this woman? We will never know; however, it is sure that his opinion would have been very useful for the text written by Markowitz and Ashkenazi “Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist”[1].

To finish this essay, I would like to point out some of the thoughts that came to my mind when reading this book. To start with, it is interesting to see how communities which seem to be so different are in reality so similar. Continuity and tradition was part of Guayaki life style: when questioned about the sequence of events in a ritual or the reasons behind being cannibals they Guayaki just answered “that’s the way we are” (1998: 187) or “we do as our ancestors did” (198: 330). Is it the same logic behind Sorority organisations and folklore rituals that we all share? Do we carry them out because we are conscious that there is always a logic reason behind our practices, or just because we were taught to do so? When I arrived to Estonia, many people laughed at the way how I hold the fork and the knife (fork on right hand and knife on left one) while Estonians do it the other way round. When asked about the reasons to hold in that particular way, the answered: that’s the way we were taught! Are we that different from these “uncivilized” communities? At the end, most of us tend to give the same arguments they do when questioned about our habits.

Interesting to point out is the relation between the two groups, the Atchei and the Iroiangi and their perception that the only thing the other could offer was ignorance. It seems to be very similar to the way how, for instance, Russian-speakers and Estonians in Estonia think of each other. The latter call the former as drunkards, while formers have the idea of the latter as slow and lazy. At the end, it has been argued that the similarities in opinions about the future of the country and the feelings of belonging to it between the members of these two communities are very alike (Daatland et al. 2000: 266). Another example of ethnocentrism could be the way how our Western society shares the understanding of beauty. To the Atchei, thinness is horrible and a sign of bad health, for them “especially like their women to be nice and round” (1998: 186), in our modern society we find planty of examples of the value given to thinness (i.e. anorexic models and the promotion of confusing messages sent through the media to teenage girls in the sake of consuming).

One of the most shocking parts of the text was when Clastres found out that the indigenous had lied and they were cannibals as they seized on the meat of dead people to counteract the lack of food available for the community and get some “nice fat” – even though it was a common practice in old times, it also found its reasons in the growing presence of white settlers in the forest areas and the impossibility to periodically find game to eat. In a certain aspect, the logic of abortion in Liberal communities and the cannibal practices of children by the Atchei are related in the sense that both justify them as the children don’t have Ianve or soul (Leaving aside the argument that women in our society have the right to choose what to do in the case of abortion). Furthermore, the prohibition of and punishment to cannibal practices, as well as abortion in our society, have their roots in the logic of Catholic religion and, in the case of cannibalism, its support to the conquest and colonisation in XVI century. At the end, cannibalism served as the perfect excuse to enslave the Indians and provide the new settlers with cheap –if not free-of-charge- labour force.

To my point of view, when we compare cannibalism to our market economy and the need “to fit in” through the consumption of goods, there is not much difference. In fact, cases have shown that contradictory social demands are behind the reasons of youth suicides, homelessness, intra-familiar violence, and so on. Is it not another way of cannibalism? “The ends justify the means” seems to fit perfectly in our “surviving” logic. Countries are invaded and innocents are murdered so some other countries can get access to resources and achieve their own benefit. Is it not another way of cannibalism? The fact is that it works for some, and that’s why it is an active part of our societal development.

Finally, I would like to point out something which is very crucial in the text. Clastres provided us with an overview of a community experiencing change because of increasing contact with white people. For instance, mirrors given to the Indians started to develop the –until that moment unknown- ‘desire to hoard’ (1998: 133) already promoting an unconscious consuming model of society, base of our social organisation. Further examples are the rejection from Chachugi to get the scars necessary for the ritual of transition from childhood to womanhood, and the complaint from the old members of the community “Near the Beeru, the Atchei have ceased to be Atchei. What sadness!” (1998: 191). The idea behind Clastres’ text is that we are witnessing the homogenisation of culture, in which models and patterns repeat, priorities are set and interests created. It seems that we are all performing the Atchei’s view of beeru who destroys everything on his path and gives no space to difference. What sadness!

Bibliography

Daatland, C. C & Svege, H. P. (2000). Russian-speakers in Estonia. In: Politics and Citizenship on the Eastern Baltic Seaboard. The Structuring of Democratic Politics from North-West Russia to Poland. Aarebrot, F & Knutsen, T (ed.). Kristiansand: Hoyskoleforlaget, pp. 254-275.

Clastres, P. (1998). Chronicles of the Guayaki Indians. New York: Zone Books

Markowitz, F. and M. Ashkenazi (1999). Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist. Illinois: University of Illinois Press

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[1] Markowitz, F. and M. Ashkenazi (1999). Sex, Sexuality, and the Anthropologist. Illinois: University of Illinois Press