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ETHNOSCIENCE VS. CULTURAL : A STUDY IN FALSE OPPOSITIONS' Katherine Newman Department of of California Berkeley, California

The complex and sometimes bitter debate be- grammar of behavior for particular social systems. tween proponents of "idealism" and advocates of Just as linguistic grammars provide rules for the "materialism" has long been with us in Anthropol- production of acceptable utterances, so a cultural ogy. The conflict between these two perspectives grammar guides the social actor in the production centers on theoretical and political differences too and interpretation of socially appropriate behavior. numerous to detail. However, an examination of a The cultural grammar itself, the cognitive rules particular instance of this general debate may shed which were thought to underlie social interaction, some light on the sorts of issues involved. Specifi- was to be the focus of the so-called New Ethnog- cally, this paper attempts to analyze the basis of raphy. Moreover, this new orientation toward cul- the dispute between the two subdisciplines of ture was intended to replace, rather than merely Anthropology known as ethnoscience and cultural complement, what the early ethnoscientists felt materialism, which represent the idealist and were the inadequate and unscientific definitions materialist respectively. At varying used by more traditional . points in time, both ethnoscientists and cultural "Classical" ethnoscience had a distinctively materialists proclaimed their theoretical and meth- progammatic quality about it. "Transcultural odological contributions as the foundation of Studies in Cognition," the special publication of a "new" anthropology, thus rejecting as inadequate the American dedicated entirely to what had come before (Sturtevant 1964; Harris , announced to the field 1968, 1975; Goodenough 1970; Kottak 1975). that the new approach was the wave of the future: However, a closer examination of the differences Ethnoscience shows promise as the New Eth- between cultural materialism and ethnoscience nography required to advance the whole of suggests that to view them as competing . (Sturtevant 1964: 101) is to create an unjustified and false dichotomy. The insistence that be studied as a cognitive It may be useful to approach the dispute be- grammar evoked criticisms from all sides. Anthro- tween cultural materialists and ethnoscientists pologists schooled in the of participant- from the vantage point of the following three ques- observation argued that people seldom follow the tions: 1) What is the proper domain of study for "cultural rules" imparted to anthropologists during Anthropology? 2) In what way does the analysis . The whole point of the fieldwork em- of this domain contribute to an understanding of phasis was to reveal "what was really going on," causality in social ? and 3) What are the something which the native of the culture was appropriate methods for the investigation of this thought not to be fully aware of (Rappaport 1967; domain? Cultural materialists and ethnoscientists Vayda and Rappaport 1968). Thus, some individ- offer very different answers to each of these ques- uals attacked the major premise of ethnoscience, tions. However, I shall argue that their differences, namely, that the native is the most reliable author- while profound, are theoretically compatible. ity where underlying rules of behavior are con- Classical ethnoscience, as it was developed by cerned. individuals such as Frake, Goodenough, Conklin, Adherents of the humanistic, wholistic view of Sturtevant and others, had as its major focus the anthropology complained that the new view of discovery and description of culture. This is not culture was devoid of the essential spirit of the a particularly -shattering proposal since the discipline, which is its concern with the ex- study of culture has always been a major concern perience and all of its problems: within anthropology. However, the early ethno- . . . I think . . . that much of the current scientists had developed a new, though certainly effort . . . has the effect of sacrificing the in- not unanticipated, sense of what culture was. They sight into the nature of proposed that culture be regarded as a shared which is the ultimate aim of all . 4 5

It results in astoundingly pallid, sterile, and pology to the question of causality in social evolu- fragmentary ethnography. It is effectively a tion, we may find the root of the cultural mater- retreat to method without sufficient reference ialists' misinterpretation of the ethnoscientific to goals. [Berreman 1966] quest. The key word to consider is causality. We However, the most vehement critics of early generally expect theories of social change and ethnoscience were the cultural materialists, led by evolution to provide more than just a sequence of the well-known Columbia anthropologist, Marvin historical stages in the development of or Harris. The cultural materalists' critique focused on culture areas. Evolutionary theories also must the issue of the proper domain of study for anthro- attempt to supply an explanation for the under- pology. Harris did not deny that cognitive systems lying causal mechanisms which "push" social existed, nor did he suggest that these systems were evolution in a certain direction. not involved in the production of . Harris maintained that ethnoscience, as an out- What the cultural materialists did balk at was the growth of idealism, was particularly incapable of apparent exclusion of non-cognitive, and especially providing an adequate theory of techno-economic non-linguistic, : technological development, and social evolution. In fact, in The Rise of An- the organization of production, and other material thropological Theory, Harris suggested that enthno- constraints on the content of cognitive codes. They was an anthropological descendant of the argued that whether or not such basic economic classical idealism of Hegel, who proposed a theory facts were part of "culture," these facts certainly of evolution based upon the unfolding of reason should be included in any ethnography. Perhaps (Harris: 1968; Hegel: 1956). On Harris' first point more importantly, cultural materialists insisted I would certainly have to agree; ethnoscience, like that the examination of the "substructural" com- all other subdisciplines interested in the "native ponents of social systems had to take priority in ," is not well suited for (or, for that any causal understanding of social evolution. matter, particularly interested in) providing evi- Here I come to the crux of the matter insofar as dence for causal mechanisms of social evolution. the initial question is concerned. According to the In fact, during the early days of ethnoscience, classical ethnoscientists, the subject matter of scarcely any attention was paid to the whole issue Anthropology was particular native semantic sys- of evolution. tems. Cultural materialists, on the other hand, pro- On the second point, however, I must disagree posed that anthropology return to its original 19th with Harris. Hegel and his descendants century focus on evolutionism, the "science of in the idealist tradition did have a theory of social " (Harris 1968). This renaissance of interest evolution which saw the development of reason as in the topic of social evolution was to be under- the guiding force behind change. Ethnoscience taken from a particular point of view, namely, a does not now, and never did to my , par- neo-Marxian perspective which strongly empha- take of this theory of evolution. Nowhere in the sized economic imperatives as the driving force of cognitive anthropology do we see a behind social change. Thus, at the very outset, theory of causality in social change, and certainly ethnoscience and cultural materialism took entirely not a theory which could be construed as being in different stands on the question of what anthropol- opposition to a materialist one. Harris, and other ogy was all about. Each was equally adamant about critics of the ethnoscientific movement, assumed the importance of reorienting the field around its that because ethnoscience and the idealist tradition own particular interests. This insistence on a uni- have certain common interests, they overlap in all lateral "program" for anthropology won both of their theoretical assumptions. This simply is not subdisciplines substantial criticism from colleagues the case. As I pointed out earlier, the classical outside either orientation. However, for the pres- ethnoscientists were not concerned with the topic ent purposes it will be argued that these two pro- of evolutionism. posals were only contradictory in the sense that Precisely the reverse is true of contemporary the total amount of resources expended in the ethnoscience. Native systems of classification rep- pursuit of anthropological knowledge is finite, and resent one of the primary source materials for the therefore, choosing one strategy over another may study of cognitive culture. As the data base on result in downplaying the of other theoretical these systems of classification grew, it became clear alternatives. However, this point aside, I would that there were identifiable regularities in the argue that the programs of ethnoscience and cul- formal structure of many semantic domains in tural materialism easily could be taken as comple- unrelated . The done by mentary- individuals such as Brent Berlin, Paul Kay, and If we proceed to the second question, namely, others, in such areas as folk biology and color lexi- the relevance of the subject matter of anthro- cons, marked the end of the classical period in eth- 4 6 noscience and the beginning of the comparative/ ethnoscientists spend little time concentrating on evolutionary era (Berlin 1972); Berlin and Kay the sorts of topics of primary concern to Harris, 1969; Kay 1975). The orientation of these cogni- Kottak and others in the materialist "school." tive anthropologists is almost exclusively evolution- However, ethnoscience has not developed an alter- ary in nature. However, it is crucial to the argument native to the materialist theories of social change, presented here that we understand the present nor does it show any signs of moving in that direc- status of this universalistic-evolutionary trend in tion. ethnoscience. What Berlin, Kay and their associates What cognitive anthropology can contribute to have uncovered are sequences in the encoding of the study of social change is an understanding of lexical items. They have been able to establish that the "emic" face of "etic" processes. Having accept- these developments in the lexicons of unrelated ed materialist explanations of social evolution, are followed with surprising regularity ethnoscience proceeds to discover what the conse- across a very large sample of the world's languages. quences of that process have been for semantic Clearly, this work is still at the descriptive level-no systems. Surely both aspects of the human experi- definitive theory is offered which would provide ence are essential to any comprehensive theory of the causal mechanisms underlying language evolu- change. tion in the domains investigated by these individu- While these theoretical issues have been raised als. Where tentative observations regarding theories repeatedly since the publication of The Rise of of change have been advanced, they have been Anthropological Theory (Harris 1968), perhaps the unquestionably materialist in character: most bitter argument between materialists and ethnoscientists has revolved around the issue of re- Consonant with our suggestion that the color search . Clearly, the methods employ- lexicon evolves in a specifiable order is the ed by the two subdisciplines are different, but additional observation that languages which again, I suggest, they are complementary. This possess few basic color terms . . . are invari- should come as no surprise, for as I have argued in ably spoken by peoples which exhibit relative- the preceding pages, proponents of the two "sides" ly primitive levels of economic and technolog- are interested in different, but certainly comple- ical development . . . On the other hand, issues. languages possessing rather full color lexicons mentary are characteristically spoken by the more The emphasis of the early ethnoscientists was at civilized of the world. [Berlin 1970: least as much methodological as it was substantive 14] or theoretical. In systematizing their theory of Perhaps the most telling evidence of a materialist culture, they found it imperative to develop re- theory of evolution in ethnoscience is to be found search approaches which could be replicated and in the work of Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven on the formalized into predictive statements in the tradi- effects of agricultural on native systems tion of classical scientific methodology. Lack of a of biological classification (Berlin 1972; Berlin, reliable methodology within traditional Breedlove, and Raven 1970). This research demon- anthropology was one of the key concerns of the strates that the lexicon for plant names undergoes founders of ethnoscience. Consequently, they certain identifiable linguistic changes when cultiva- placed a very strong emphasis on strict research tion is present. Specifically, Berlin and his col- designs which could be duplicated by other work- leagues show that the more significant (i.e., culti- ers in the field for comparative pruposes. This pre- vated or protected) a plant is, the more resistant occupation with rigorous data and analy- the lexical items representing the plant are to lin- sis served to place the issue methodology in the guistic change. What we have here is not so much a foreground (which is rarely the case in anthropol- completely developed theory of lexical change in ogy), where it was attacked rather vehemently by , but rather, a recognition of the im- Harris among others (Harris 1968). portant played by technology in lexical devel- We have already noted that cognitive anthro- opment and some empirical support for Berlin's pology, as a science of the "superstructure," took view that causal explanations for language evolu- as its major concern the structure and content of tion will probably be found "with some more cultural rules as they exist in the minds of native general, technologically based theory of cultural informants. One of the primary sources of infor- evolution." (Berlin 1972) mation about these cultural rules is the semantic In order for the materialist critique of ethno- categories present in the native language, for one science to stand, it would have to demonstrate that of the prerequisites to "acting appropriately" by the focus on the realm of ideas (e.g., semantic the native definition, is a grasp of the meanings of classification, linguistic categories, etc.) has led to words, and the capacity to structure those mean- an idealist theory of social evolution. It is true that ings into ordered categories. This shared knowledge 4 7

was thought to underly "grammatical" activities, complementary view of the basic concerns of the be they linguistic or interactive in some other field. These views both contribute to our under- sense. As the investigation of semantic standing of social evolution, the oldest of anthro- of native languages assumed prominence in ethno- pological problems, without contradicting each science, the methodology naturally focused upon other. Finally, as we would expect, each sub- the most efficient and rigorous ways of elucidating discipline adopts a different research strategy in this type of . Various methods of elici- an attempt to uncover fundamentally different tation, modeled loosely after techniques in field bodies of information. , were developed. They ranged from At the outset, it was suggested that the debate highly controlled elicitation techniques which between ethnoscience and cultural materialism is a minimized the influence of external environmental subset of a larger, longstanding controversy in /social influences on the informant ("White Anthropology. I think it is helpful to view the con- Room" ethnography), to the more naturalistic, flict in this context, and in this sense I would agree contextualized strategies which utilized the exter- with Harris that much of anthropological theory nal environment as a source of question frames since the mid-19th century has involved a certain ("Grass Hut" ethnography). However, the general amount of shadow boxing with the work of Marx thrust of all these efforts was the same: to uncover and his followers (Harris: 1969). At the same time, the basic cultural grammar, beginning with the however, it is important to recognize that in the semantic properties of the native language. case of ethnoscience vs. cultural materialism, the The methodology of cultural materialism could difficulty is more a matter of two fields talking past not have been farther removed from that of ethno- each other than it is one of fundamentally conflict- science. The materialists' interests in aggregate ing views on the driving forces behind social phenomena (e.g., production, economic change. Both subdisciplines accept the materialist- input/output, resource distribution and consump- oriented view of the primacy of -technology and tion, etc.) led to the use of research techniques of economy. "objective" measurement. By objective I mean, in While we may wish to claim priority of one sub- this case, the use of measurement systems which discipline over the other, given some sense of were not necessarily familiar to the native culture urgency for discovery or some recognition of the under investigation. Utilizing measurements of limited resources available for research in general, kilocalories, crop yields, and other indicators of we must admit that neither perspective invalidates aggregate economic/ecological activity, the cultural or contradicts the other. materialists have attempted to provide information on the productive forces which are seen to underlie , political alliance, activ- NOTES ity, and a host of other sub-systems (Rappaport 1967; Vayda and Rappaport 1968). 'This paper was originally presented at the annual It seems only fitting that the two subfields, meeting of the Kroeber Anthropological in with their divergent interests, would have develop- May 1976. ed different methodological approaches. It is in- conceivable that the methods of either side would have been applicable to the research topics of the other. However, both methodological approaches can coexist; as with all other research endeavors, the selection of a methodology should be governed by the type of information required. Proclaiming the superiority of one strategy over another makes sense only where the same data base is the object of concern. Insofar as ethnoscience and cultural materialism are concerned, it is rarely (if ever) the case that the same kind of data would be required. In this paper I have argued that to view ethno- science and cultural materialism as conflicting ap- proaches is to create an unnecessary and unjustified opposition. The contrasts between the two sub- disciplines of Anthropology are more a matter of interests and emphases than of irreconcilable dif- ferences. Each subdiscipline has a distinctive but 4 8

REFERENCES CITED Berlin, B. 1970 A Universalistic-Evolutionary Approach to Ethnographic Semantics. Bulletins of the American Anthropological Association 3: 19-31. Berlin, B. and P. Kay 1969 Basic Color Terms: Their Evolution and Universality. Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press. Berlin, B., D. Breedlove, and P. Raven 1970 Cultural Significance and Lexical Reten- tion in Tzeltal-Tzotzil Ethnobotany. In Meaning in Mayan Languages, M. Ed- mundson, Ed. The Hague: Mouton Press. Berreman, G. 1966 Anemic and Emetic Analyses in . 68: 346-354. Goodenough, W. 1970 Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology (Chapter 4). Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co. Harris, M. 1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory. : Thomas Crowell. 1975 "Cultural Materialism," a paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, San Fran- cisco. Hegel, G. 1956 The of History. New York: Dover. Kay, P. 1975 Synchronic Variation and Diachronic Change in Basic Color Terms. Language in Society 4: 257-270. Kottak, C. 1975 "Ethnoscience and ," a paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Associa- tion, San Francisco. Sturtevant, W. 1964 Studies in Ethnoscience. American An- thropologist 66: 99-124. Rappaport, R. 1967 Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Press. Vayda, A. and R. Rappaport 1968 Ecology, Cultural and Noncultural. In In- troduction to Cultural Anthropology: Essays in the Scope and Method of the Science of , J. Clifton, Ed. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Publishing Co.