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Rules and Meanings MARY DOUGLAS MARY DOUGLAS: COLLECTED WORKS VOLUME I The Lele of the Kasai VOLUME II Purity and Danger VOLUME III Natural Symbols VOLUME IV Rules and Meanings VOLUME V Implicit Meanings VOLUME VI The World of Goods VOLUME VII Edward Evans-Pritchard VOLUME VIII Essays in the Sociology of Perception VOLUME IX Food in the Social Order VOLUME X Constructive Drinking VOLUME XI Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences VOLUME XII Risk and Blame MARY DOUGLAS COLLECTED WORKS VOLUME IV RULES AND MEANINGS The Anthropology of Everyday Knowledge O~.'tLE~Q ~ - tr1 . ~ . ,.>. §< !t.{, 6,,0 " 4c FratlG\~ London and New York First published in 1973 by Routledge This edition published 2003 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN Simultaneously published in the GSA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint olthe Taylor & Francis Group Transferred to Digital Pnntmg 2007 The selection :l~ Mary Douglas 1973 Typeset in Times by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any tonn or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any intonnation storage or retrieval system, without pennission in writing from the publishers. Britil'h Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record tor this book is available from the British Library Library o/,Congress Cataloging in Publication Data ISBN 0 415 28397 3 (set) ISBN 0415 291070 (volume IV) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of thi; reprint but point~ out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent Contents Introduction 9 Part One Tacit Conventions 15 1 L. Wittgenstein (1921) Understanding Depends on Tacit Conventions 17 2 A. Schutz (1953 and 1954) The Frame of Unquestioned Constructs 18 3 H. Garfinkel (1967) Background Expectancies 21 4 E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1937) For Example, Witchcraft 24 Part Two The Log ical Basis of Constructed Real ity 27 5 L. Wittgenstein (1921) The World is Constructed on a Logical Scaffolding 29 6 E. Durkheim and M. Mauss (1903) The Social Genesis ofLogical Operations 32 7 E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1949) 'Where the Women are, the Cattle are not' 38 8 J. C. Faris (1968) 'Occasions' and' Non-Occasions' 45 9 E. Husserl (1929 and 1907) The Essence of Redness 60 10 G. Lienhardt (1961) Configurations of Colour Structure the Diverse Field of Experience 65 Part Three Orientations in Time and Space 71 11 E. Husser! (1905) Lived Experiences of Time 73 12 E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1940) Time is not a Continuum 75 13 J. A. Roth (1963) Benchmarks 82 14 H. {}arfinkel (1967) Time Structures the Biography and Prospects of a Situation 87 15 J. Cage (1968) Musical Time and Other Time 90 16 M. L. J. Abercrombie (1971) Face to Face 92 17 L. Marshall (1960) Each Side of the Fire 95 18 P. Bourdieu (1971) The Berber House 98 19 P. {}idal (1971) Eight Hours or Three Minutes 111 Part Four Physical Nature Assigned to Classes and Held to Them by Rules 113 20 Mr Justice Ormrod (1971) Sex 115 21 R. Hertz (1909) The Hands 118 22 F. Steiner (1956) The Head 125 23 Mrs Humphry (1897) The Laugh 126 24 S. J. Tambiah (1969) Classification o/Animals in Thailand 127 25 R. Bulmer (1967) Why the Cassowary is not a Bird 167 Part Five The limits of Knowledge 195 26 E. Husserl (1907) The Possibility 0/ Cognition 197 27 L. Wittgenstein (1921) The Limits 0/ my Language mean the Limits 0/ my World 201 28 B. Bernstein (1971) The Limits of my Language are Social 203 Part Six Interpenetration of Meanings 207 29 D. R. Venables and R. E. Clifford (1957) Academic Dress 209 30 T. Wolfe (1968) Shiny Black Shoes 212 31 L. Wittgenstein (1938) Wittgenstein's Tailor 213 32 Anon (1872) Etiquette: Dinner Party 216 33 L. G. Allen (1915) Etiquette: Table 219 34 A. Fortescue and J. O'Connell (1943) Etiquette: Altar 221 Part Seven Provinces of Meaning 225 35 A. Schutz (1945) Multiple Realities 227 36 E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1937) Social Principles 0/ Selection 232 37 C. W. M. Hart and A. R. Pilling (1960) Rules Ensure Correspondence between Provinces: The Judicial Contest 235 38 H. Hesse (1943) Insulation Makes the Finite Province Trivial: The Glass Bead Game 240 39 Saint Francis (1959) Techniques for Breaking the Claims of Socially Selected Meanings: Brother Masseo's Path-Finding 245 40 J. Cage (1968) Indeterminacy 247 Part Eight Formal Correspondences 249 41 L. Wittgenstein (1921) Pictorial Form 251 42 S. M. Salim (1962) Disorder Depicts Dishonour 253 43 A. Segal (1971) Breach of One Rule Breaches the System of Rules 257 44 R. Vailland (1957) The Racketeer in Life and in Play 266 45 M. A. K. Halliday (1969) The Syntax EnWlciates the Theme 279 Further Reading 295 Acknowledgements 303 Author Index 305 Subject Index 311 Introduction This collection of Readings does not conform precisely to any particular model. it claims philosophical forebears for a course of anthropology that I like to teach. A few selections come from books that I would regard as essential reading. Most of them are chosen to illustrate and to extend the relevance and increase the impact of a message which is, by my showing, elusive and hard to assimilate. The course is sometimes labelled Cognitive Anthropology; Cognition; Religion and Morals; or Symbolism. Whatever the name, I regard it as an essential perspective for anthropology - a sinking of artesian wells, as it were. Apart from this programme, the subject easily dries up and appears as a series of barren controversies cut off from the rest of human knowledge and vulnerable to the blowing of every fashionable wind. This is how I see the reader and it would be right to warn that the book expounds more of what this editor believes ought to be accepted in anthropology than what is actually accepted. There is a recognizable epistemological viewpoint, working through European literature, philosophy, linguistics and sociology, which strikes some students as novel when they meet it. It is not novel. It is old. It is not trivial, but important. Its recent foundations were in anthropology at the turn of the century. A conversation started in Europe then between philosophers and social scientists. The speakers started from a common concern with problems of commitment, solidarity and alienation. They knew only too well that there can be rules without meaning. They also assumed that there can be no meaning without rules. They drove the study of meaning straight to the study of social relations. Formal analysis would reveal the formal properties of a communication system, as a vehicle o( meaning; the meanings conveyed would be uncovered only through social analysis. But once begun, this conversation, so hopeful of solving many epistemological problems, soon split up into the musings of diverse specialists. As a result, our knowledge of the social conventions which make understanding possible remains scarceJy advanced from that begin­ ning. If they had received each other's sayings, reflected and replied, our intellectual heritage would have been enriched. But the dialogue was broken off as the community of scholars was dispersed, either forcibly by the wars or voluntarily because they turned to speak more exclusively to their disciples. The selections offered here draw out of the sociological theory of knowledge a certain thread. The theme goes back to Hegel and Marx; that reality is socially constructed. Every thinking sociologist would Introduction 9 now agree it in principle. But how far dare they follow it? And what can be known about the kinds of reality that are construable? Somewhere along the line the conversation that began with 'Primitive Classification' in 1901-2 got wafted out of general earshot, though it never stopped altogether. Marcel Mauss mentioned the work of the Cambridge psycholo­ gists at the end of his lecture on Les Techniques du Corps (1935). Evans­ Pritchard used the notion of a social monitor of perception to make sense of the concept of collective conscience, and referred to the body of ideas developed in psychology through Head, Bartlett and Rivers (1934). But apart from Merleau Ponty's work, the theory of perception seemed to become thereafter mainly a concern of psychology, not of sociology. But what a pity that Merleau Ponty seems not to have read The Nuer and recognized there the parallel positive working out of his criticisms of contemporary philosophy. Other shared assumptions likewise became assigned to or appropriated by different disciplines. So when Malinowski pointed out that speech derives its meaning from the social context, the idea was hailed as profoundly original. What Wittgenstein was saying about the logical scaffolding on which reality is constructed had already become the background assumption of social anthropologists and was consistently used for interpreting their work through the 1940s and onwards. It is curious now to hear Levi­ Strauss a quarter of a century later announce his discovery that all thought has a logical basis. It is curious to hear more recent phenomenologists declare afresh that knowledge is socially constructed. Ethno-methodolo­ gists bring great delicacy to analysing how the process of social interaction constructs the typifications and recipes which make social reality. They are aware of how the dimensions oftime and space are socially constructed. But to take aboard the implication that the whole of physical nature must be endowed with its reality in the same way demands an imaginative effort which has been left to artists, novelists and poets.
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