The Past as a Scarce Resource Author(s): Arjun Appadurai Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 201-219 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2801395 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 11:46 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]. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Man. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 216.165.95.66 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:46:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE PAST AS A SCARCE RESOURCE ARJUN APPADURAI Universityof Pennsylvania The assumptionthat the past is an infiniteand plasticsymbolic resource, wholly susceptible to contemporarypurposes, is widespreadin contemporaryanthropology. It is partlyrooted in Malinowski's conceptionof mythas social charterand partlyin Durkheim'sformulation con- cerningthe cross-culturalrelativity of fundamentalcategories of humanthought. This articleis a critiqueof this assumption,and suggeststhe existenceof culturallyvariable sets of norms whose functionis to regulatethe inherentdebatability of the past. Such norms,which vary substantivelyfrom culture to culture,are neverthelessfrom a formalpoint of view subjectto certainuniversal constraints. An examplefrom south India is thebasis forthis argument, which also has implicationsfor the theoretical analysis of social change. There exists a widespreadthough tacit assumption that the past is a limitless and plastic symbolic resource,infinitely susceptible to the whims of con- temporary interest and the distortionsof contemporaryideology. The principalthesis of thisarticle is thatthis assumption is false,and thatto correct it entailsa new view of thecultural limits of thepast as a symbolicresource. The anthropologicalassumption that the past is a boundless canvas for contemporaryembroidery representsthe confluenceof two historically distinctlines of argument.The first,inspired by Malinowski,simply derives fromobservation of the rhetoricalinvocation of the past (as 'charter')in con- temporarysocial organisation,and thetacit conclusion that such chartershave no inherentlimits, except those of expediency.The second, inspiredby Durkheim (I954), carried through by Evans-Pritchard(I940), Hallowell (I937) and Lee (I959) and mostrecently revived by Geertz(I966), makesa subtlerand further-reachingrelativist case. In thislatter view, conceptsof time (and indeed the perceptionof durationitself) are fundamentalcultural vari- ables. The joint consequenceof thesetwo argumentsis to renderthe past a boundless resourcein particularcultures, as well as infinitelyvariable cross- culturally.My argumentis principallydirected at thefirst view, derivedfrom Malinowski. The second view cannotbe falsifiedin principle,but I shallargue thatthere do appear to be some generalconstraints which limit any collective use of thepast. Cross-culturallimits In a recentMalinowski lecture,Maurice Bloch (I977) has criticisedClifford Geertzfor exaggerating the extent to whichparticular cultures might perceive Man(N.S.) i6, 20I-I9 This content downloaded from 216.165.95.66 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:46:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 202 ARJUNAPPADURAI durationitself in drasticallydifferent ways. The problemof whetherduration is a universallyrecognised aspect of temporalprocesses is not my central concern. My concernis ratherwith 'pasts' in Malinowski'ssense of charters: collectivelyheld, publiclyexpressed and ideologicallycharged versions of the past, which are likelyto varywithin the groups that form a society.Yet there is an importantpoint of agreementbetween Bloch and Geertzwhich impinges on my argument. Bloch concedes thatGeertz is rightin arguingthat the Balinese have two kinds of past: a 'ritualised'past which denies duration,and a non-ritual, mundane past, concernedwith such pragmaticactivities as agricultureand politics, in which durationis universallyrecognised. Bloch's quarrelwith Geertz concernsonly the weightto be given to thesetwo kindsof past. The troublewith this dichotomy is thatboth are conceivedas beingbeyond debate. The ritualpast is entirelyshared and the non-ritualpast is a brutepragmatic given. There is, however, a thirdkind of past whose essentialpurpose is to debateother pasts. It generallypartakes of both ritualand everydaykinds of discourse and indeed makes it possible for people to pass fromone to the other. It too has a culturalform, in each society,even if durationis a uni- versally recognised datum of socio-biological reality. Nor, like Geertz's version of the Balinese view of time, is it wholly a culture-relative phenomenon. It comprisesantagonistic pasts that are themselvessubject to a sharednormative framework, and in an Indianexample I describeone suchset of niorms.That such pastsare subjectto disagreementand debateis, of course, hardly a novel point. As Leach (I965) has pointedout, Malinowskihimself observed that even in stable and well-balancedsocieties, opposing factions would be likelyto generatedifferent myths, a pointthat was laterforcefully madeby Fortes (I 945) andFirth (I930-3I). Inhis own classic analysis ofpolitics in highlandBurma, Leach makesthis argument with a strikingseries of examples of variationson myths which supportedvarying political interests. In his famous phrase, mythand ritualis a language of argument,not a chorusof harmony.The main significanceof thisinsight, from Leach's pointof view, was its furtherproof that the thenreigning assumptions of integration,equi- libriumand consistencyin relationto small-scalesocieties were in drasticneed of revision. My own argument,following Leach, takesfor granted that dis- course concerningthe past between social groups is an aspect of politics, involving competition,opposition and debate. But the centralquestion with which I am concernedis: how is suchdebate culturally organised? This latter questionhas not so farreceived explicit attention from anthropologists. To treatdebate concerningthe past as an aspectof politicsis, of course,not the same as to explain the sociology of competitionand dominancein any given politicalcontext. The ethnographicportion of thisarticle deals largely with antagonismsbetween organised interests in a southIndian temple, but its purpose is not to account for the sociology of factionalismin the standard sense. The argumentis, rather,concerned with what Cohen and Comaroff (I976) have recentlycalled 'the managementof meaning'.By thisthey mean the competitiveprocess by which values are defined,images of transactions contrived,and interpretationsof a situationsuccessfully imposed by one party This content downloaded from 216.165.95.66 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:46:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ARJUN APPADURAI 203 on others. Cohen and Comaroffmake a forcefulargument that analysis of those transactionsthat involve competition over themanagement of meanings should precede analysisof those substantiveand intrinsicvalues over which the competitionis apparentlytaking place. My own concernwith the past in the politicsof a southIndian temple extends Cohen and Comaroff'sinsight in one importantregard. Rather than taking for granted that political competi- tion over the meaningof transactionsis constrainedonly by itssocial context, I propose thatthere is a definablecultural framework with which such debates concerningmeaning must take place. The bulkof thisarticle is concernedwith the ethnographicdescription of one such framework.But the priorquestion is: are such setsof norms(whose functionis to regulatethe inherent debatability of the past) entirelyculture-relative or do theyoperate within universal con- straints? I propose thatalthough there might be infinitesubstantive variation concern- ing such normsabout thepast, there is a minimalset offormal constraints on all such sets of norms. These formalconstraints can be seen as four minimal dimensionsconcerning which all culturesmust make some substantivepro- vision. i. Authority:this dimension involves some culturalconsensus as to thekinds of source,origin or guarantorof 'pasts'which are required for their credibility. 2. Continuity:involves some culturalconsensus as to thenature of thelinkage with the source of authoritywhich is requiredfor the minimal credibility of a 'past.' 3. Depth: involves culturalconsensus as to the relativevalues of different time-depthsin themutual evaluation of 'pasts'in a givensociety. 4. Interdependence:implies the necessity of some conventionabout how closely any past must be interdependentwith other'pasts' to ensureminimal credi- bility. Substantive conventions concerningeach of these dimensions can, of course, vary both cross-culturallyand intra-culturally.Thus, while prophetic dreamscan be a sourcefor the authority of chartersin northAmerica, they do not have thisstatus in Hindu India. Similarly,the substantive norms concern- ing continuityin Africancultural systems can be verydifferent for aetiological myths (in which significantbreaks in the link betweenpast and presentare permissible)and