Some Muddles in the Models: Or, How the System Really Works1
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2011 | HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1 (1): 451–492 | R e p r i n t | Some muddles in the models: or, how the system really works1 David M. SCHNEIDER, University of Chicago Part one. Alliance I. The phrase ‗alliance theory‘ and its opposition to what has been called ‗descent theory‘ was first suggested by Dumont (1961a). Alliance theory, with roots clearly in Durkheim and Mauss, has specifically arisen out of Levi-Strauss‘s Structures élémentaires . (1949) and has been developed by Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Leach, and Needham. Descent theory also has its roots in Durkheim and Mauss, but its development has been through Radcliffe-Brown to Fortes, Goody, Gough, Gluckman, and, in certain respects, Firth. Publisher‘s note: This is a reprint of D. M. Schneider. 1965. ―Some muddles in the models: or, ‗how the system really works‘.‖ In The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, edited by M. Banton, 25-86. ASA Monographs 1, London: Tavistock Publications; New York: Frederick A. Preager. We are very grateful to the ASA for granting us the right to reprint it. We remind the reader that we retain the style of the original, and indicate in the text the original page numbers in square brackets. 1 Since its presentation to the Cambridge Conference, I have added Sections XVII, XVIII, and XIX, clarified minor portions of the argument, and profited from the suggestions of Paul W. Friedrich, F. K. Lehman, Melford Spiro, Richard F. Salisbury, and Fred Eggan. Professor Claude Lévi-Strauss made some helpful suggestions, which led me to delete some of the material from the earlier draft which was incorrect or unclear. In particular, he pointed out that I had misunderstood him if I regarded him as an ‗idealist‘ in the sense of treating ideas as such as fundamental to social life. Rather, if I understand his position correctly now, he regards himself as an ‗intellectualist‘ in the sense that both ideas and action derive from qualities of mind, and that neither action nor ideas has any particular priority. Murphy (1963) has described this most accurately, I think. I had hoped to revise and greatly expand Section II, discussing in detail the problems raised by Homans‘s and Lévi-Strauss‘s psychological reductionism and their emphasis on the actor‘s view of the system as distinct from the observer's view. But all of this proved another very long essay for which space was not provided here. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © David M. Schneider. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online) 452 | David M. SCHNEIDER This is an oversimplified picture, of course, but one which provides a reasonable beginning. It would oversimplify matters, too, but also be useful to point out, that where Durkheim tried to bridge the gap between positivism and idealism and ended up as an idealist in the remnants of some positivist clothing, Needham‘s version of alliance theory is, if anything, squarely on the side of the idealists. Lévi-Strauss and Dumont, on the other hand, go with Hegel (Murphy 1963). Descent theory has moved in the direction of positivism; some of its misunderstandings stem from its positivist premises; and the direction which the younger descent theory people (Goody, Gough) have taken seems to me to be consistent with this view. The dilemma of positivism is exemplified by a statement of Lévi-Strauss. Replying to Maybury-Lewis‘s criticisms, Lévi-Strauss says: ‗. Mr. M. L. remains, to some extent, the prisoner of the naturalistic misconceptions which have so long pervaded the British school . he is still a structuralist in Radcliffe-Brown‘s terms, namely, he believes the structure to lie at the level of empirical reality, and to be a part of it. Therefore, when he is presented a structural model which departs from empirical reality, he feels cheated in some devious way. To him, social [25] ]structure is like a kind of jigsaw puzzle, and everything is achieved when one has discovered how the pieces fit together. But, if the pieces have been arbitrarily cut, there is no structure at all. On the other hand, if, as is sometimes done, the pieces were automatically cut in different shapes by a mechanical saw, the movements of which are regularly modified by a cam- shaft, the structure of the puzzle exists, not at the empirical level (since there are many ways of recognizing the pieces which fit together); its key lies in the mathematical formula expressing the shape of the cams and their speed of rotation; something very remote from the puzzle as it appears to the player, although it ―explains‖ the puzzle in the one and only intelligible way‘ (Lévi-Strauss, 1960, p. 52). The contrast may be put more specifically. To a degree, both alliance and descent theory are concerned with social structure. But, for descent theory, social structure is considered one or another variant of the concept of (a) concrete relations or groupings, socially defined, which (b) endure over time. To Radcliffe-Brown, social structure is the network of ‗actual social relations‘; for Evans-Pritchard in discussing the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940) it is the enduring social groups, the concrete lineages.3 For alliance theory, the problem is not what the concrete patterns of social relations actually are, although these are not neglected; it is not the actual organization of any specific group like a lineage. It is, instead, that construct or 3 In fact, of course, Evans-Pritchard seems to have implied very strongly that it was the idea of the lineage quite as much as the actual groups; for it becomes apparent on close inspection that the lineages as actual groups are not nearly so enduring, nor so concrete, nor so strongly localized as might be inferred from a hasty reading of his monograph. 2011 | HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1 (1): 451–492 SOME MUDDLES IN THE MODELS | 453 model which is fabricated by the anthropologist and which is presumed to have, as its concrete expression, the norms for social relations and the rules governing the constitution of social groups and their inter-relations (Lévi-Strauss, 1953). Alliance theory grows out of (1) Durkheim‘s distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity; (2) his notion of collective representations and specifically his and Mauss‘s insistence that the fundamental socio-cultural categories of the culture itself must be understood in its own terms; and (3) out of Mauss‘s ideas that are expressed in his essay, The Gift. This is perhaps the minimal and most immediately relevant set of ideas. Others more derivative or tangential are involved, but need not detain us at this point. [26] First, organic solidarity is essentially a state of affairs in which functionally differentiated parts are each non-viable parts but, when joined together, become a single, coherent, and viable ‗organism‘. Functional differentiation is in turn based on two kinds of condition. One is that the parts have different roles which get those things done which need to be done if the whole is to survive. The other is that for the parts to work properly they must be oriented toward common goals. If the goals of one part are disparate from the goals of the other, then the parts will not make up a single, coherent, viable whole. This second feature may be considered to be most intimately related to ‗coherence‘. Each part by itself means nothing; the parts together make an integrated and viable unit. The simplest example is of two unilineal lineages, each being able to provide for its essential needs in all ways except one: the rule of exogamy requires that marriage partners come from outside the group. These two lineages, both having a common aim — to provide for wives — exchange wives. The two lineages together, then, make up one viable and coherent society. That they may also exchange differentiated economic products only elaborates and reinforces their differentiation and interdependence. The simplest form of differentiation centers on the definition of opposed but interrelated parts. Again, exogamy is the pertinent example. From the point of view of either of the two lineages, one ‗needs‘ wives, the other ‗has wives to give‘. The definitions are plus and minus, have and have not, and so on. These are essentially opposed elements, defined in terms of their polar qualities. Just what particular form this differentiation will take in any society is an empirical question. Yet it is implied, I think, that all societies operate in fundamentally this way: at every point of differentiation, there is at rock-bottom a polar, opposite kind of differentiating definition which in any particular case may be elaborated into gradients, subdivided into qualities, but basically, and in some sense ‗originally‘, the elements are oppositional, unitary, and polar. (Lévi-Strauss, 1945, 1949, 1955, 1962, 1963; Needham 1958a, 1960d.) There remains always the substantive problem: how is this particular social structure differentiated? What are its constituent parts? How are they interrelated? Here the idealistic [27] foundation of the theory becomes apparent. On the one hand, as a fundamental category of human mentality, dualism is expressed in a wide variety of particular social forms; on the other hand, it is the particular ideational categories, as these are consciously or unconsciously conceived by the members of the society itself, which play a role in regulating their action. For example, in a matrilateral cross-cousin marriage system, where a ‗positive marriage rule‘ (Dumont‘s phrase (Dumont, 1961); a prescriptive system in Needham‘s terms) obtains, the system is conceived of, from the point of view of any given lineage in that system, as one which is made up of dual relations — ‗we‘ 2011 | HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1 (1): 451–492 454 | David M.