Table Of ContentInternational Library of Anthropology
Routledge & Kegan Paul
Editor: Adam Kuper, University of Leiden
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Process and form in social life
Selected essays of Fredrik Barth:
Volume I
Routledge & Kegall Paul
London, BosI"n and HCllley
Process and fonn in social life
First publishedin 1981
by RUUl/edge & Kegan PaulLtd
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©Fredrik Barth 1981
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British LibraryCataloguingin PublicationData
Barth, Fredrik
ScJected essaysufFredrik Barth. - (International
library ufanthrupulogy). Vol. I: Prucessandfonn
in sociallife
I. t:thnulogy
I. Series
306 GN325 80-41283
ISBN 9710007205
Contents
Introduction I
I Anthropological modelsand social reality 14
2 Models ofsocial organization I
Introduction 32
Theanalyticalimportanceoftransaction 33
3 Models ofsocialorganization II
Processesofintegratiun in cllioire 48
4 Models ofsocial organization III
Theprublem ofcomparison 61
5 'Models' reconsidered 76
6 On the studyofsocial change 105
7 Analytical dimensions in the comparison of
social organizations I19
8 Descent and marriage reconsidered 138
9 Economic spheres in Darfur 157
10 Competition and symbiosisin orth East Baluchistan 179
11 Ageneral perspective on nomad-sedentary relations in
the Middle East 187
12 Ethnic groupsand boundaries 198
Notes 228
Bibliography 232
Index 239
Introduction
These essays were written during the period 1955-72 (,'xeept fur
chapter 5. Volume I and chapter 7. Volume II. which were especially
prepared for this collection). as steps in my own development as an
anthropologist. They are panly my response to thc thoug.hts of other
anthropologists: but mainly they arc my response - aided and en
cumbered by such thoughts - to various glimpscs inlO the realities of
other people's lives and social relations that I have obtained through
fieldwork. As I understand my own work, in other words. my intdlce
lUal biography would focus mainly on the various fieldwork I have
done, and not on the books I have read or the SdlllOls where I have
studied and taught. The major results of such fieldwork have heen
presented in a succession of monographs (see Bibliography). whkh
contain my main anthropological contributions. both substantive and
analytical. In the lectures and anicles republished here. I sought 10
extract some of the more general positions and understanding.s at
which I had arrived, prescnting them together with smaller fragments
of data which I judged particularly enlightening for my analytical
argument.
Argument, polemical or otherwise, is central to moSI of the essays;
and they inevitably address issues as these appeared to me:1I a particu·
lar time. One might tJlink that they therefore echo old battles long
forgotten. If they were to be written loday, they would have been
designed somewhat differently in responsc to contemporary debates
and arenas. But I regard their essential thrust and content as still
current and vatid, since I find thai the viewpoints Ihey contain are
productive for my continuing work and have only been incompletely
utilized and accepted by otJlers, and that the views Ichallenge are such
as persist or reappear in only slightly varying fonns in the thinking of
anthropological colleagues. For these reasons, though the Ihemes and
issues that engage me today are partly different (see Bibliography), it
is also true to say that I'stand for' viewsasargued in these texts.
2 /nrrodUClion
TIle essays may be usefully juxtaposed, since they are related as
developments of a few fundamental themes and so supplement one
another. But I do not imagine that they add up to a complete and
unified theory of culture and/or society. On the contrary, they were
intended to enter into the wider corpus of social anthropology to
innuence and modify its development on a few fronts and thereby
to contribute 10 the collective endeavour that is our discipline, rather
than erect a personal memorial or a sectarian Grand Theory. In other
words, although my work has sometimes been interpreted this way, I
have never wished tojoin or delineate any particular '-ism' in anthropo
logical analysis.
The anthropology which J met in the 1950s was, however, in my
judgment seriously crippled by an inattention to fundamental aspects
of people's lives. Most particularly, I felt the need to acknowledge the
place of the individual, and the discongruity between varying interests
and various levels of collectivity. Much of my writing in the ensuing
years has consequently focused on the task ofdevelopinga perspective
on the subjective and goal-pursuing actor. This has entailed taking up
the questions of what place considerations of value and utility have in
canalizing the behaviour of persons; the variation exhibited in be
haviour and the factors generating this variation; and what it is that
propels and constrainsindividual actors and thusshapes their behaviour
and Iheir lives. I believe that a conceptual apparatus which can treat
these topics and integrale Ihem wilh other major anthropological
concepts is an indispensable component in any theoretical system
for social anthropology. All the essays collected here relate, in one
way or another, 10 this theme.
There are several alternative vocabularies with which to discuss the
circumstances and consequencesofthese aspects ofintentionality, goal·
orientation, and rationality. I do not think that social anthropology
should adopt any particular one ofthem and thereby thecustom-made
epistemology which it enlails. We who study the different epistemo
logies and differing praxis of different cultural traditionsshould rather
engage aclively to design our own procedures and positions with
respect to such fundamental questions. To do so we need to be aware
of the formulations and debates that are current in other disciplines,
but not fight shy of assuming the arrogance needed to reshape them
according to our own needs. That we have so far done this only little
and weakly is no reason nol toembrace it asa programme.
My own position on these central issues ofepistemology and theory
Introduction 3
is only occasionally taken up in an explicit way in these essays, but
is given a brief presentation in chapter I, I hold that we must a.:know
ledge that most of the phenomena we study are shaped by human .:on
sciousness and purpose. Since social acts are tllus not simply 'caused'
but 'intended', we must consider these intentions and understandings
of actors if we wish to capture the esscntial contexts of acts. I see
little possibility, and no desirability, in defining our object ofstudy so
as to eliminate by exclusion this subjectivity of human actors. Where
I seem 10 part ways with most of the transcendental philosophies, and
with anthropological colleagues who tend to follow them, is in Clll
phasizing the need to understand behaviour Sil1lll/ranevlIs!v in two,
differently constituted, contexts. O!!e is the semiotic onc, where
strings of events are shaped by actors so as to embody meanings and
transmit messages and thus rel1ect the rules and constraints ofcodifica
tion. But the same events also enter into the material world of causes
and effects, both because acts have consequences and because persons
must relate to others who also cause things to happen. This latter con
text forces actors 10consider the instrumentality ofacts, in ways which
rel1ect both the constraintsofknowledge and value, and the pragmatics
of cooperation and competition. Fi!lilly, I see a dialectic - albeit
between entities on conceptually distinct macro- and micro-Ievels
between these codes values, and knowlcdge on tile one hand and
human acts on the other. Not only do the former provide premises
I
and constraints for particular acts, but acts also affect codes, values
. and knowledge by increments and so can change and modify their
own preconditions.
Within this comprehensive perspective, most of my discussion In
the period covered by these essays has focused on actors' stratcgies
of instrumentality and the aggregate social consequences of such
strategies. In quite another connection, Bateson (1972: 490-3) has
characterized as a fundamental epistemologica1 fallacy the Western
tendency to th.ink and act in terms of the wrong units: in terms of
separate individua1s rather than systems of interacting persons and
objects, or in terms ofhuman groupsand populations rather than these
in interaction with their environment. Systems theory has taught us
(recently) instead to follow the pathwaysalongwhich information and
effects now, and see these whole circuits or loops as the unit - not
the severed chunks which we produce by cutting across these conncc
tions of interrelationship. I contend, however. that this fallacy is not
limited to Western thought, but is prevalent in many contexts in many
4 lnrroducrion
other cultures as well. In such cases the logic by which actors operate
predicated by their subjective understanding of the situation and
their own interests in it - is often at odds with the aggregate system of
interdependencies within which they are acting. In societies with less
powerful technologies this is not as ecologically suicidal as it may be
in our case, but it is certainly pervasively consequential in shaping
society and culture. The focus in the following essayson the strategies
of actors provides a methodology for exploring the consequences of
such egocentric epistemologies on the part of actors, inherent as I see
it in the inescapable directedness of consciousness towards 'something'
distinguished from the subject who is exercising the consciousness
(Slagslad, 1976;Skjervheim, 1959).
My perspective, and my production over the years, have been
shaped by the effort to introduce these considerations in opposition,
as an alternative or as a supplement, to conceptual habits that are
deeply entrenched in anthropological thinking and keep asserting
themselves in various guises and combinations. What I see as most
distinctive to my approach is perhaps most vividly expressed in contrast
to these other, in many ways more orthodox, perspectives.
The most dominant and most indispensable of them is sTructural
ism. ( believe it to be fundamental to the conceptualization of any
kind of complex reality. But the way it has been adapted toanthropo
logical materials has entailed a predominant focus on 'systems of
thought', even when avowedly speaking about the connections of
social interaction and people's relationship to their environment.
It has also focussed strongly on the macro-level of forms, institutions
and customs, ignoring the micro-level of the distribution and inter
connections of concrete acts and activities; or else it has confounded
the two as ifthe actsofindividualswere asimple homologue or 'expres
sion', of collective macro-structures. As a method, it has tended to
achieve clarity - indeed often brilliance - in the depiction of patterns
by a high degree of selectivity: by backgrounding and eliminating
variation and abstracting the norm, thereby ignoring increasingly
rnore of what seems to me real and vital in people's lives (on the opera
tion of backgrounding in the construction of shared understandings,
see Douglas, 1975: 3-4, and elsewhere). In these ways, structuralism
has developed in social anthropology in directions which ever reduce
our universe ofobservation. The culturally and humanly rich occasions
when people cOllie together in the creative act of shaping collective
understandings and cosmologies are reduced to texts, to be distilled
lnrroducrion 5
into a series of abstract binary oppos.itions: eating together is depicted
in the ciphers of conventional patterns of dishes: and the multiplex
phenomena ofbeingand changing identity become principles ofrecruil
ment. There are undeniable insights in these abslractil'l1s. but they
capture only very few sides to life: what is more. I mistrust them for
being flawed even wilhin their restricted focus. Thus. I expt'ct there is
usually a deeply systematic difference between people's reilective
generalizations about macro-features of tlteir world and society, and
their conceptualization of their socbl and physical environment seen
as an opportunity s.iluation for action. To search for the reflection
of tlle fonner in the cases and patterns of social behaviour is there
fore unduly simpListic. no matter how sophistic'lted the analysis of
these collective representatiuns may be. lllere is much perhaps pro
saic but truly illuminating groundwork III he done with a f:lr hroader
perspective and sense of the problem before one can hop(' to rcpresent
the premises of meaning for acts with such rigour and logic - if in
deed valid representations of tllese mailers can ever achieve such
simplicity.
The following essays try to do parts of tllis groundwork. In their
way, they may also go too far in seeking to achieve a degree of con
ceptual clarity by oversimplifying and obliterating parts of reality.
[ feel attracted bOtll to the 'thick description' ofGeertz (Geertz, 1973)
whereby the layers of meaning and context arc elaborately explored
and exhibited, and to a methodology of 'watching and wondering'
in the gentler tradition ofthe naturalist (Tinbergen, 1951). But Ishould
not let polemics against a narrow structuralism tempt me 10negale my
own basic ideal: the analytic virtues of seeking to construct tight and
simple models on limited premises. I expect such models to be par
ticularly illuminating, however, if they seek 10 identify and depicI
empirical processes rather than perfolln the arbitrary operaIions of
synthesizing and backgrounding. Thereby they should also avoid
the illusory timelessness of these other forms of structuralism, and
articulate with the irreversibility of praxis (cL Bourdieu, 1977) and
thus the realities of people's lives. Furthermore, hy insisting on events
and interaction as central features of our object of study, we are
compelled to confront a far broader and more diverse segment of
reality. And finally, the virtue of developing models more rigorously
and ruthlessly lies not in believing them to be the only and whole
Iruth, but in the occasion it provides to discover their implications,
and what they can and cannot do.
