THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF ANTHROPOLOGY

187 Pages·2012·3.97 MB·English

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF ANTHROPOLOGY:
THE BRAZILIAN CASE
Mariza G.S. Peirano
1981
A thesis presented by Mariza Gomes e Souza
Peirano to the Department of Anthropology in
partia/ fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of
Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, June, 1981.
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknow ledgments
Chapter 1: Anthropology in Context
A. The reversibility of anthropological knowledge
B. Theoretical approach
C. Plan of the dissertation
Chapter 2: Historical Setting: Social Sciences in the 1930's
A. Education and national identity
B. Politics and education in São Paulo
C. The early universities' experience
D. Social sciences and the thrust of nationality
Chapter 3: The Anthropology that Did Not Take Hold: Florestan
Fernandes on the Tupinambá
A. The New Theoretical Tendencies
B. The Tupinambá
C. Frorn lndians to Blacks
D. From universalisrn to holisrn
Chapter 4: Indians and Territorial lntegration
A. The classification of lndian groups
B. Contact as inter-ethnic friction
C. Frorn lndians to the expansion frontiers
D. The recovery of the lndian
Chapter 5: Carnival and Literature: Two Symbols of Nationhood
A. Carnival and nationhood
B. Candido -- the hidden anthropologist
C. The search for the universal
Chapter 6: Anthropology and the Ideology of Nationhood
A. Universalism and holism in anthropology
B. State ideology and nation-building in Brazil
C. Final conclusions
References Cited
Note: Translations are my own whenever the sources are not in English.
Acknowledgments
I wrote this dissertation on anthropology in Brazil to examine in a deeper way the
significance of being a Brazilian and an anthropologist. I tried to take advantage of my distance
from Brazil in arder to reflect on it. At the sarne time, I wanted to look at anthropology in
general from my Brazilian viewpoint.
I here want to thank those who supported and encouraged this exercise. First of all, I
am grateful to David Maybury-Lewis, my thesis advisor, for asking difficult and challenging
questions, but especially for the confidence he showed in my ability to answer them. I could not
have had a greater reward than his growing interest as I wrote the different chapters.
Stanley Tambiah has been an intellectual inspiration ever since my years in Brazil and
his scholarly example further contributed towards my disposition to introspection. Iam grateful
for his constant interest and for his insightful comments.
My indebtedness to Michael Fischer, my toughest and most encouraging critic, is
immense. His intellectual vitality and firm guidance were decisive influences throughout the
whole project, and one day I hope to have more answers to h is many questions.
It was in George Stocking's seminar that I first thought about this topic, and I am
grateful to him for welcoming my unorthodox questions. Among my professors, I also want to
thank Nur Yalman, Akos Ostor, and Vincent Crapanzano.
The 'Busch-Batsu; the group of fellow thesis writers who started meeting during the
summer of 1979, provided weekly support. I want to thank James Ito-Adler, Rafiq Keshavjee,
Catherine Lutz and Emily Mclntire for reading and commenting on different drafts of this
study. Catherine Lutz accepted the job of making my English more readable, and her style
greatly improved the original version.
I am grateful to Monique Djokic for constant encouragement and criticism. This study
owes much to our endless debates on the nature of anthropology, to a point that it is difficult to
distinguish many of my ideas from hers. I owe thanks to Luiz Antonio de Castro Santos, with
whom I became aware of n1y appreciation for Brazilian social thought, and whose enthusiasm
for this project was so gratifying. Peter Silverwood-Cope helped sharpen my understanding of
what it means to be an anthropologist and Iam grateful for his support and encouragement.
I want to lhank Elisa Pereira Reis, Eustáquio Reis, Joaquim de Andrade, Leslie Blach
man, David Gouverneur, Monica de Vasconcelos, Oscar Grauer, and Rogério Werneck, who
were lhe wonderful companions of last year. I am grateful beyond words to Suzanne Repetto
for her warm and generous support.
I had the rare priviledge to have as 'informants' some of the out-standing social
scientists in Brazil. I want to thank them for their willingness to go beyond lhe hierarchy of ou r
social positions and for their acceptance of the curiosity of an apprentice. To Antonio Candido,
Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira, Florestan Fernandes, and Darcy Ribeiro, my enorrnous gratitude
for sharing their experiences with me wilh such openness. I owe lhem, and Roberto da Matta
and Otávio Guilherme Velho as well, my apolOg)' for having made them the central examples
on which I draw, but Iam comfortable in lhe knowledge lhat lhey will have the opportunity to
correct my mistakes.
Luiz de Castro Faria spent much time teaching me about anlhropology in Brazil, and I
am grateful to him. I owe thanks also to Egon Schaden, Simon Schwartzman, and Roberto Kant
de Lima, for data which would otherwise have been difficult to obtain. I want to acknowledge
lhe influence of Julio Cezar Melatti's work on my own, however different our approaches may
be. Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira and Roberto da Malta were always encouraging.
Frorn rny parents I learned lhat creativity and discipline should not be mutually
exclusive. This study is an exercise in that direction, and I am grateful to thern for their
continuous support. Finally, and especially, I am grateful to my son Henrique, who saw me
lhrough lhis whole project, and whose impatience was the best stimulus I could have had.
CHAPTERONE
Anthropology in Context
... class-explanation of the social beliefs and ideais implicit
in sociological theory is no longer sufficient in the
twentieth century. ln this period we must also take account
of the development of national ideais transcending social
classes in order to understand the ideological aspects of
sociological theories.
Elias, 1978a: 241-2
It is often accepted that anthropological questions have changed over time. One can trace
developments in the study of kinshi.p, magic, religion, social organization, and symbolism, in both
the sequence of themes and the internal elaborations through which each of these themes went in
the past hundred years.
However accepted the idea of historical change in anthropology may be, and however
we may take for granted the variability over time of scientific problems in general, little attention
has been paid to the way in which anthropological problems vary across socio-cultural contexts.
The scientific reality of today is neither the scientific reality of yesterday nor will it be the
scientific reality of tomorrow, but does it not change also in different contexts? The assertion that
"Anthropology sees everything as culturally bound ... everything but itself"1
is a good statement of this state of affairs.
This study seeks to explore the variability of anthropological questions in different
socio-cultural contexts, using the Brazilian case as its object of inquiry. A compara tive approach is
'McGrane, 1976:162.
1
implicit, although other examples will only occasionally be brought into lhe text. I start from the
premise that 1) lhe anthropologist's thought is embedded in his own socio-cultural configuration
and 2) given that anlhropology's development coincided with the formation of lhe European
nation-states, the ideology of nationhood is a powerful parameter for the characterization of the
social sciences in any particular country.
The development of anlhropology may be of interest to both historians of science and
anthropologists themselves. Historians of anlhropology generally start with lhe idea lhat anthro
pology is a science, and their questions revolve around the kind of sdence anlhropology is and
how it has developed. Recent studies distinguish two approaches:2 one, which is called
"traditional", has as its main objective the classifying of the scientists of the past according to
whether, and to what extent, they had antecipated the present state of the discipline. The olher,
the "new historiography of the sciences", focuses on the intersection between history,
epistemology, and the sciences. The !alter approach questions whelher lhe history of science
should concentra te on the specific works lhemselves -- the theoretical and experimental problems
as defined by lhe scientific community - or whether it should also consider lhe influence of
technological, socio-economic, institutional and politicai factors. Also of interest to the "new
historiography" is the question of whether there is a continuous development of knowledge from
common sense to sdence, or whether science should be seen as an epistemological eruption in a
particular historical period3
Contrary to the general tendency among the historians of the discipline, anthropologists
generally ask different questions. Self-reflection is their main concern, and lhis sel-reflection
originates in large part from their own work. This is especially true for those dealing with
conceptual systems such as religion, symbolism, or language'. Herc lhe problem can be posed as
follows: if we study olher conceptual systems -- be they religion, mylhology, or rituais -- as
systems of knowledge, why not Iook at anthropology itseli with the sarne perspective?
This recent trend in lhe discipline tries to respond to the challenging proposition that
"prirnitive" beliefs cannot be understood by comparing lhem with science, as had been done in
lhe past. Rather, anthropological interpretation of "primitive" beliefs should serve as rnodels for
2Llobera, 1976.
3An example of the 11new historiography11 is Stocking's article on 11ldeas and Institutions in American
Anthropology", in which the author draws from both Shils' studies on the history of sociology and Kuhn's
concept of a scientific paradigm. See Stocking, 1971.
4Hallowell was one of the first to propose that the histoty of anthropology be 11an anthropological
problem11 See Hallowell, ]965.
•
2
understanding 11science115. Whether or not anthropology is i11 fact a science is not the main point
here; anthropology is one among severa! systems of knowledge, on a par with religion,
philosophy, and ar!'. The quest for scientificity is also dismissed and replaced by an increased
interest in the nature of anthropology vis-à-vis the totality of ideas and values common to a
society or current in a given social group. Those ideas and values are called either "ideology"7,
11Culture11s, or 11cosmo1ogy119 depending on the feahlres stressed.
,
This study shares the concern of the anthropologist more than of the historian of
science, and I adopt the concept of "ideology" emphasizing that the significant representantions
are basically those which relate to the nature and purpose of the politicai realm in nation states10.
With Dumont, I assume that any ideology is a social set of representations, and that whether any
particular representation in that set is judged as true or false, rational or traditional, scientific or
not, is irrelevant to the social nahlre of the idea or value11.
Before moving to the discussion of the main problem of this dissertation, it should be
noted that some articles have recently appeared which examine the state of anthropology in
different countries. Those articles, however, limit themselves to a description, evaluation or
commentary on research being carried out, with little or no analysis of the social and cultural
implications of the discipline".
A. Tlte reversibility of antltropological knowledge
5Barnes, 1969.
liSee Schneider, 1976; Geertz, 1973.
'Dumont, 1977:17.
'Schneider, 1976; Geertz, 1973:340.
9Tambiah, 1979.
'"Geertz, 1973:340. The emphasis on lhe politicai realm will be justified in the next chapters.
llDumont, 1977:17.
12See, for instance, Gellner, 1976, on Soviet anthropology; Goldberg, 1976 on Israel; Grottanelli, 1977 on
ltaly; Khare, 1977 on Soulh Asia; Koentjaraningrat's, 1977 on lndonesia; Magna relia and Turkdogn, 1965 on
Turkey; McCalL 1963 on Scandinavia; Mendez-Domingues, 1975 on Guatemala; and Barber, 1977 on France.
3
ln the process of self-reflection in which anthropologists have recently been engaged, the basic
assumptions of the discipline begin to be questioned. An important assumption, and one which
has even defined anthropology for many, relates to the encounter between the anthropologist and
the people he studies or, in other words, between the anthropologist and his "informants". The
problem is grounded in the various conceptions of the discipline -- as "translation"13,
11description1114, or 11interpretation111s, -- but the main issue here in whether 1) there can be
reversibility of anthropological knowledge, or whether 2) anthropology is uni-directional.
Lévi-Strauss' famous statement that "it comes to the sarne thing in the end ... if the
thought of the South American lndians takes shape under the action of mine, or mine under the
action of theirs"16 exemplifies the first position mentioned above. For Lévi-Strauss, anthropology
is bi-directional and opens upa channel of communication behveen the 11primitive11 and ourselves.
Other anthropologists have espoused the same view, and many regret the virtual monologue that
has been perpetuated in the discipline, in which "the only definitions of 'us' and 'them' have been
given by us"1'- If human beings are meaning-makers, this fact determines what general form a
science of social action must assume and, since we ali share a common humanity, 11the other11 and
"we" cannot be absolutely opposed to one another. Appeals are often made for "those cultures
which have been the objects of our inquiries to develop anthropological traditions of their own -
scrutinizing themselves in ways which are not justa pale reflection of our interest in them -- but
also that they will make us the object of their speculation"18
Louis Dumont takes on opposite stand. ln a polemical article, Dumont dismisses the
whole issue of the reversibility of anthropological knowledge. Since "there is no symmetry
behveen the modem pole where anthropology stands and the non-modern pole"19, it is impossible
to imagine a multiplicity of anthropologies corresponding to a multiplicity of cultures. There is
DCrick, 1976.
HSi1verstein, 1976.
t!;Geertz, 1973.
tliLévi-Strauss, 1962.
"Crick, 1976:167.
~"Crick, 1976:167.
t'JOumont,] 978:88.
4