Questions of Anthropology

385 Pages·2007·1.74 MB·English

by  Jonathan Parry

QUESTIONS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Managing Editor: Charles Stafford
The Monographs on Social Anthropology were
established in 1940 and aim to publish results of
modern anthropological research of primary interest
to specialists.
The continuation of the series was made possible
by a grant in aid from the Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research, and more recently by
a further grant from the Governors of the London
School of Economics and Political Science. Income
from sales is returned to a revolving fund to assist
further publications.
The Monographs are under the direction of an
Editorial Board associated with the Department of
Anthropology of the London School of Economics
and Political Science.
QUESTIONS OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
Edited by
RITA ASTUTI, JONATHAN PARRY AND
CHARLES STAFFORD
LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Volume 76
Oxford • New York
First published in 2007 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford, OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Rita Astuti, Jonathan Parry and Charles Stafford 2007
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Questions of anthropology / edited by Rita Astuti, Jonathan Parry, and
Charles Stafford.
p. cm. — (London School of Economics monographs on social
anthropology ; v. 76)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-749-6 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-749-1 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-748-9 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-748-3 (pbk.)
1. Anthropology—Philosophy. I. Astuti, Rita. II. Parry, Jonathan P.
III. Stafford, Charles.
GN33.Q84 2007
301.01—dc22
2007011919
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 184520 749 6 (Cloth)
978 184520 748 9 (Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
www.bergpublishers.com
CONTENTS
Preface Jonathan Parry vii
1 What does it mean to be alone? Catherine Allerton 1
2 How do we know who we are? Janet Carsten 29
3 What is going to happen next? Charles Stafford 55
4 Why, exactly, is the world as it is? Eva Keller 77
5 How does ritual matter? Fenella Cannell 105
6 What makes people work? Olivia Harris 137
7 What kind of sex makes people happy? Laura Rival 167
8 How do women give birth? Michael Lambek 197
9 What happens after death? Rita Astuti 227
10 How does genocide happen? Michael Stewart 249
11 Why are some people powerful? Luke Freeman 281
12 How do we know what is true? Christina Toren 307
Afterword: Questions of (‘Zafimaniry’) Anthropology
Jonathan Parry 337
Contributors 365
Index 367
v

PREFACE
Anthropologists are heirs to an intellectual tradition that has directly
and self-consciously attempted to address some of the central questions
arising from human existence and social experience. In its earliest
days, the enquiry focused, for example, on the extent to which human
behaviour is natural and innate, and the extent to which it is learned and
culturally constructed; on questions about the evolution of society, and
about the way in which the whole range of existing societies might be
related to each other in an evolutionary scheme of things. A generation
or so on, and though the questions might have somewhat narrowed
and had certainly changed in focus, much of their ambition remained.
What is the relationship between the way in which we understand the
natural world and the kind of society we live in? Is marriage, the family
or incest avoidance universal? From where do taboos come? What is
the significance of exchange in social life and how is order possible in
stateless societies?
This collection responds to a growing sense of unease, at least on
the part of some, that in our own day socio-cultural anthropology has
become increasingly narrowly focused, self-referential and abstruse.
In the process, the discipline has progressively lost sight of those large
general questions that had earlier inspired it, and about which ordinary
people all over the world are spontaneously curious. This has happened
at its peril since it is that curiosity that prompts many students to study it,
colleagues in neighbouring subjects to turn to it for insights, and at least
some outside academia to read it for interest and enlightenment.
The contributors to Questions of Anthropology were invited to start
from a general question that was raised by their own field research, but
one that also has wide human resonance. At least implicitly, this question
vii
PREFACE
was to be addressed in a comparative frame and in as non-technical and
accessible a manner as possible. Most of those that they have come up
with – ‘What happens after death?’; ‘What is going to happen next?’;
‘What makes people work?’ – are ones which most people in nearly all
human cultures must at some point in their lives have reflected on. Some
– ‘Why, exactly, is the world as it is?’; ‘How do we know what is true?’ –
may appear to be of a more philosophical character, and perhaps of a sort
calculated to encourage most ordinary people to heed Charlie Brown’s
advice: ‘No problem is too big or too complicated to be run away from.’
But in many cultures, many ignore that wisdom; in most there are some
who refuse to run and a majority who can relate to the question even if
they are too modest to suppose that they have an answer. It is true that by
the time we get to the question that Michael Stewart poses – ‘How does
genocide happen?’ – we are well outside the direct experience of most
human populations, though in the contemporary world not outside that
of a distressingly large number. And in the contemporary world, most are
at least aware of the phenomenon and likely to ask what everybody asks,
‘How can it happen?’ In short, each of the essays published here addresses
an issue of real importance to human beings generally, and regardless
of their culture; an issue for which it does not require a professional
training in anthropology to see the significance. Paradoxically, however,
these are also the kinds of issues that today professional anthropologists
seldom explicitly formulate or directly address.
One reason we think it important to make the attempt is that, while
most conventional introductions to the subject provide a broad survey
of the history and development of the field, outline its major theories
and summarise the findings of particular case studies, they often seem
to lose sight of the questions with which non-anthropologists come to
it and that give it excitement and promise. By putting these back at the
centre of the enquiry, we would like to try to recapture at least some of
that. The intention is not, of course, to attempt to provide a substitute for
these broad surveys, but rather a complement to them that might usefully
be read in conjunction.
With the exception of the Afterword, the papers collected here
were originally presented at a workshop held at the London School
of Economics in June 2005.1 This was immodestly entitled, ‘What is
anthropology? . . . and other “Zafimaniry” questions’, and was held in
honour of Maurice Bloch whose work has provided the direct inspiration
viii
PREFACE
for this volume (though he was at no stage directly involved in it and is
in no way responsible for its defects or for what some will undoubtedly
regard as its hubris).2 More about the background to this endeavour
is explained in the Afterword, which sets it in the context of Bloch’s
theoretical project as it has developed over the years. There are, however,
two preliminary points that require some brief explanation at the outset.
The first is the reference to ‘Zafimaniry questions’ in the workshop title
and in some of the papers that follow. The Zafimaniry are one of the two
Malagasy groups with whom Bloch has done intensive and prolonged
fieldwork. Though few of them have had much formal education, and a
good many are illiterate, Bloch has been at pains to point out in a couple
of recent publications (2000, 2005: ch.1) that they are often intensely
interested in, and spontaneously speculate about, anthropological
questions of a general theoretical sort – questions, for example, about
what aspects of human behaviour are learned and what is innate (‘Is
it natural for men to want more than one wife?’; ‘Do all people in all
cultures love their kinsmen equally?’); questions about the relationship
between language and culture, and about whether human beings are
fundamentally the same despite the fact that they speak very different
languages and have very different customs. In this, the Zafimaniry are
probably no different from people in any other society; and Bloch’s
message has been that it is to these fundamental questions that ordinary
people ask that anthropology must return if it is to rediscover its original
inspiration. It is in this spirit that we collectively came to refer to this
volume as a project in ‘Zafimaniry anthropology’ and to our questions as
‘Zafimaniry’ ones.
In nearly all of the essays that follow these are questions that con-
cern the anthropologist’s informants themselves; but in a few cases
their concern is implicit and inferred, rather than overt and explicitly
articulated. Cannell, for example, takes an issue – ‘How does ritual
matter?’ – that her Bicolano informants (in the central Philippines)
and her Mormon informants (in the United States) do not formulate in
quite those terms, but which is nevertheless clearly central to the way
in which they talk about religious experience. Lambek’s contribution
goes a good deal further in inferring the question (‘How do women give
birth?’) from the ‘mythopraxis’ of the Malagasy people he studied – that
is, from episodes in the mythic-history of Sakalava monarchs that are
acted out during healing rituals that centrally involve the possession
ix