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Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties Author(S): Sherry B Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties Author(s): Sherry B. Ortner Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 126-166 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/178524 . Accessed: 14/02/2014 12:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Studies in Society and History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:09:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties SHERRY B. ORTNER University of Michigan Every year, aroundthe time of the meetings of the AmericanAnthropological Association, the New YorkTimes asks a Big Name anthropologistto contrib- ute an op-ed piece on the state of the field. These pieces tend to take a rather gloomy view. A few years ago, for example, Marvin Harrissuggested that anthropologywas being taken over by mystics, religious fanatics, and Cal- ifornia cultists; that the meetings were dominatedby panels on shamanism, witchcraft,and "abnormalphenomena"; and that "scientific papersbased on empirical studies" had been willfully excluded from the program (Harris 1978). More recently, in a more sober tone, Eric Wolf suggestedthat the field of anthropologyis coming apart. The sub-fields (and sub-sub-fields)are in- creasingly pursuingtheir specialized interests, losing contact with each other and with the whole. There is no longer a shared discourse, a shared set of terms to which all practitionersaddress themselves, a sharedlanguage we all, however idiosyncratically, speak (Wolf 1980). The state of affairs does seem much as Wolf describes it. The field appears to be a thing of shreds and patches, of individualsand small coteries pursuing disjunctive investigations and talking mainly to themselves. We do not even hear stirringarguments any more. Although anthropologywas never actually unified in the sense of adopting a single sharedparadigm, there was at least a period when there were a few large categories of theoreticalaffiliation, a set of identifiable camps or schools, and a few simple epithets one could hurl at This essay contains much of my own intellectual history. There will be no more appropriate context in which to thank my teachers, Frederica de Laguna, Clifford Geertz, and David Schneiderfor having turnedme, for betteror for worse, into an anthropologist.In addition,I wish to thankthe following friends and colleagues for helpful contributionsto the developmentof this essay: Nancy Chodorow, Salvatore Cucchiari, James Fernandez, Raymond Grew, Keith Hart, Raymond Kelly, David Kertzer, Robert Paul, Paul Rabinow, Joyce Riegelhaupt,Anton Weiler, and HarrietWhitehead. Parts of this work were presentedat the Departmentof Anthropology, Princeton University; the Departmentof Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm; the Social Science History Seminar(founded and coordinatedby Charlesand Louise Tilly), Univer- sity of Michigan;the HumanitiesSeminar, StanfordUniversity; and the Seminaron Theory and Methods in ComparativeStudies (coordinatedby Neil Smelser) at the University of California, Berkeley. I received valuable comments and reactions in all of these contexts. 0010-4175/84/1709-0100 $2.50 ? 1984 Society for ComparativeStudy of Society and History 126 This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:09:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THEORY IN ANTHROPOLOGY SINCE THE SIXTIES 127 one's opponents. Now there appears to be an apathy of spirit even at this level. We no longer call each other names. We are no longer sure of how the sides are to be drawn up, and of where we would place ourselves if we could identify the sides. Yet as anthropologistswe can recognize in all of this the classic symptoms of liminality-confusion of categories, expressions of chaos and antistruc- ture. And we know that such disordermay be the breeding groundfor a new and perhapsbetter order. Indeed, if one scrutinizesthe presentmore closely, one may even discern within it the shape of the new order to come. That is" what I propose to do in this article. I will argue that a new key symbol of theoretical orientation is emerging, which may be labeled "practice" (or "action" or "praxis"). This is neither a theory nor a method in itself, but rather, as I said, a symbol, in the name of which a variety of theories and methods are being developed. In order to understandthe significance of this trend, however, we must go back at least twenty years and see where we startedfrom, and how we got to where we are now. Before launching this enterprise, however, it is importantto specify its nature. This essay will be primarily concerned with the relations between various theoretical schools or approaches, both within periods of time, and across time. No single approachwill be exhaustively outlined or discussed in itself; rather,various themes or dimensions of each will be highlightedinsofar as they relate to the largertrends of thoughtwith which I am concerned.Every anthropologistwill probablyfind his or her favorite school oversimplified, if not outrightdistorted, insofar as I have choosen to emphasizefeatures that do not correspondto what are normallytaken, among the practitioners,to be its most importanttheoretical features. Thus readers seeking more exhaustive discussions of particularapproaches, and/or discussions pursuedfrom a point of view more interior to the approaches, will have to seek elsewhere. The concern here, again, is with elucidating relations. THE SIXTIES: SYMBOL, NATURE, STRUCTURE Although there is always some arbitrarinessin choosing a startingpoint for any historical discussion, I have decided to begin in the early 1960s. For one thing, that is when I started in the field, and since I generally assume the importanceof seeing any system, at least in part, from the actor's point of view, I might as well unite theory and practicefrom the outset. It is thus fully acknowledgedthat this discussion proceeds not from some hypotheticalexter- nal point, but from the perspective of this particularactor moving through anthropologybetween 1960 and the present. But actors always wish to claim universalityfor theirparticular experiences and interpretations.I would further suggest then that, in some relatively objective sense, there was in fact a majorset of revolutionsin anthropological theory, beginning in the early sixties. Indeed it appearsthat such revisionist This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:09:23 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 128 SHERRY B. ORTNER upheaval was characteristicof many other fields in that era. In literarycrit- icism, for example, by the 1960's a volatilemixture of linguistics,psychoanalysis and semiotics,struc- turalism,Marxist theory and reception aesthetics had begun to replacethe older moral humanism.The literarytext tendedto move towardsthe statusof phenomenon:a socio-psycho-culturo-linguisticandideological event, arising from the offered compe- tenciesof language,the availabletaxonomies of narrativeorder, the permutationsof genre,the sociologicaloptions of structuralformation, the ideologicalconstraints of the infra-structure.. [There was a] broad and contentious revisionist perception (Bradbury1981:137). In anthropologyat the close of the fifties, the theoretical bricoleur's kit consisted of three major, and somewhatexhausted, paradigms-British struc- tural-functionalism(descended from A. R. Radcliffe-Brownand Bronislaw Malinowski), Americancultural and psychoculturalanthropology (descended from MargaretMead, Ruth Benedict, et al.), and Americanevolutionist an- thropology (centered around Leslie White and Julian Steward, and having strong affiliations with archaeology). Yet it was also during the fifties that certain actors and cohorts central to our story were trainedin each of these areas. They emerged at the beginning of the sixties with aggressive ideas about how to strengthenthe paradigmsof their mentorsand ancestors, as well as with, apparently,much more combative stances vis-a-vis the otherschools. It was this combination of new ideas and intellectual aggressiveness that launched the three movements with which this account begins: symbolic anthropology, culturalecology, and structuralism. SymbolicAnthropology "Symbolic anthropology" as a label was never used by any of its main proponentsin the formativeperiod-say, 1963-66. Ratherit was a shorthand tag (probablyinvented by the opposition), an umbrellafor a numberof rather diverse trends. Two of its major variantsappear to have been independently invented, one by Clifford Geertz and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, and the other by Victor Turner at Cornell.' The importantdif- ferences between the Geertzians and the Turneriansare probably not fully appreciated by those outside the symbolic anthropology scene. Whereas
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