66-1848 SZWED, John F Ra Nc Is , 1936
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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 66-1848 SZWED, John Francis, 1936- PRIVATF CULTURES AND PUBLIC IMAGERY: INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS IN A NEWFOUND LAND PEASANT SOCIETY. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1963 Anthropology University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by JOHN FRANCIS SZWED 1966 PRIVATE CULTURES AND PUBLIC IMAGEETi INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS IN A NEWFOUNDLAND PEASANT SOCIETI DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By John Francis Sawed, B .S., B.S. in E d., M.A. The Ohio State University 1965 Approved by Adviser Department of Sociology Anthropology ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation—oonceming a Newfoundland parish—is the result of work supported by a Research Fellowship (1962-64) granted by the Institute of Social and Economic Research of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, under the direction of Dr. Ian R. Whitaker; now of the University of York. Field work was carried out between September, 1962 and August, 1963* and again during a month in the spring of 1964. At every stage of my work I was patiently guided by my adviser, Dr. Erika E. Bourguignon of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the Ohio State University, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge her generosity. For many occasions of insight and encouragement, I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Roger Krohn, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, McGill University. Nor can I fail to mention an intellectual debt (which will be apparent) to the writings of Professors George Foster, Ward Goodenough, and Anthony F.C. Wallace. I am pleased to be able to acknowledge—if not by name, then by sp irit—those people who have encouraged me, sometimes more than they thought, to pursue my own course. i i To the people of the parish (who unfortunately must remain nameless) aiding, consoling, and educating me throughout my stay among them and even now at a distance, I extend my gratitude and admiration. My wife must be credited with a rare sense of sharing and understanding that has made this work possible. The labor and results are as much hers as mine. It is to hor and my parents that this dissertation is dedicated. i i i VITA December 24, 1936 Born - Eutav, Alabama 195 8 ..................... B .S ., M arietta College, M arietta, Ohio 1959 ..................... B.S. in Ed., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1959-1961 . Research Assistant, Bureau of Educational Research and Service, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1960 ..................... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 196 0 -I961 . Research Assistant, Department of Motion Pictures, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1961-1962 . Teaching Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio S ta te U niversity, Columbus, Ohio 1962-1964 . Research Associate, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland 1964-1965 . Instructor in Anthropology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 1 9 6 5 ..................... Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania FIELDS OF SIUDT Major Field: Anthropology Studies in Anthropology. Professors Erika E. Bourguignon and Louanna Pettay Studies in Folklore. Professors Francis Utley and Claude Simpson Studies in linguistics. Professors Morton Bloomfield and Leonard Newark iv CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................... i i TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.............................................................. vi INTRODUCTION....................................................................................... 1 Chapter I. THE SETTING........................................................................ 16 I I . SOCIAL HIS TORY................................................................... 32 I I I . ECONOMIC L I F E ......................... 55 IV. THE FAMILY............................................................................ 83 V. SOCIAL RELATIONS............................................................... 116 VI. ASSOCTAHONAL L IF E ........................................................... 168 V II. INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS: THE ROLE OF THE MEDIATOR.................................................................. 207 V III. CONCLUSION............................................................................ 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................... 250 v ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Map of Newfoundland and the Codroy V alley .... 19 2. Godparent Choices ................................................................... 102 3. Godparent Choices within Parents' Kindreds .... 104 4. Conmon-Interest Associations and their Purposes . 202 5. Transactional Modes and the Distribution of Social and Natural Resources .................... 238 vi INTRODUCTION The word "peasant" has the power to evoke a plethora of responses among its users in the Western world. From an earlier usage, it reflects the nobility, Innocence, and divine nature of the pastoral, the unspoiled, the bucolic, the Arcadian. Cowper's "God made the country, and man made the town," best expresses the attitude of looking backward to an Imagined lost simplicity. Above all. It represents a Western fascination with things natural. On the other hand, among those concerned with "progress" and "change," "peasant" has all the pejorative connotation of back wardness that urbanity abhors. The peasant—churlish, superstitious, rustic bumpkin—is seen to move In a closed world in which economic growth is submerged under religious considerations, where communism and capitalism are judged by their relative promises of food and security, and where self-interest always transcends communal good. For men of action, the peas ant-"survival" is an economic "foot- dragger," an outdated nuisance. In anthropology, both conceptions appear simultaneously and oddly intermixed. A.L. Kroeber classically defined peasants as forming "a class segment of a larger population which usually contains urban centers. .," and as constituting "part-sodetles with part 1 2 cultures. Although Kroeber’s structural definition is skimpy, it provides the basis for a number of elaborations. Robert Redfleld, stressing the part cultural nature of peasantry, indi cated the relation between urban and rural manifestations of culture as differences of "great" and "little traditions." "The culture of a peasant cowanni ty is not autonomous. It is an aspect 2 or dimension of the civilisation of which it is a part." Eric 3 Wolf, stressing the occupational and ecological nature of peasants, limits them to subsistence-scale agriculturalists (lacking capitalisation of crops), and to those who own and control their own land. The peasant is consequently articulated to the larger so ciety a t economic points as sometime market producers, partially dependent on outside supplies from urban complexes. Both Wolf and Raymond Firth^ have been willing to allow peasant status only to those engaged in agricultural sub sistence activities, let George Foster seems closer to a mainstream position in emphasising the symbiotic spatial-temporal relationship to the more complex component o f the so ciety of which they are ll.L . Kroeber, Anthropology (N.I.: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 19*18), p. 2851 2Robert Redfleld, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 681 ^B.R. Wolf, "Types o f Latin American Peasantry: A Prelimi nary D iscussion," American Anthropologist. 57* 452-71, 1955- ^Raymond Firth, Elements of Social Organ!zation (London: Watts and Co., 195o), p. 87. 3 a p a rt, I .e . the p re -in d u s tria l market and admin istrative city.-5 [Peasant coommnities] represent the rural expression of large, class-structured, economically complex, pre-industrial civilisations, in which trade and commerce, and c r a f t sp e c ia liz a tio n are v e il developed, in vhich money is commonly used, and in vhich market disposition is the goal for a part of the producer's effo rts.® Although Foster develops an "ideal type," and consequently no society exactly fits it, he poses a model vhich seems to embrace accurately a large number of the world's societies vhich show similar characteristics. In addition to definitions that focus on the articulation of peasant groups with the larger society, others have stressed the internal organization of peasantry. Foster and J.M. Fitchen? have put considerable emphasis on volitional, contractual associations as of primary importance in peasant groups, as opposed to the importance of kinship relations in primitive societies. In addition, Fitchen points to the importance of the household unit and the community in the peasant group. These attempts at delineating internal organization are chiefly designed to separate primitive from peasant levels of society. ^George Foster, "Peasant Society and the Image of limited Good," American Anthropologist 67: 311. 1965. ^George Foster, "Interpersonal Relations in Peasant Society," Human Organization 19* 175* 1960-61. ?George Foster, "The Dyadic Contract: A Model for the Social Structure of a Mexican Peasant Village," American Anthropologist 63: 1173-92, 1961, and "The Dyadic Contract in Tzintzuntzan, H : Patron-Client Relationship," American Anthropologist 65: 1280-1295, 1963; J.M. Fitchen, "Peasantry as a S ocial Type," Symposium: Patterns of Land Utilization