From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Ethnobiological Classification
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 02:51:01 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Nov16.164728.7481@ils.nwu.edu> pautler@ils.nwu.edu writes:

 > But the Aboriginals do have something like a noun-word for dogs, for example,
 > don't they?  They refer to individual dogs they've never seen before as dogs,
 > right?  The relevant Rosch claim here would be that there is more
 > cross-cultural agreement on the membership of basic-level categories, like
 > dogs, than on superordinate (animals) or subordinate (dingoes) categories.
 > Rosch doesn't claim that categorizations are culture-independent, much less
 > a priori.

Sorry, but the animal is not named and classified, but described and
related to. One of my Aboriginal brothers (one of my students now
working for the Western Australian Museum as a research officer on
Aboriginal Heritage matters), for example, is dingo dreaming, which
makes the animal my brother. I refer to him as dingo as I do the
animal, and I have the same set of social obligation to those animals
as I do to him since we are all of the same sibling set.

That such a situation may not make sense to you, or may be classified
by you among "religious beliefs", would merely reinforce my argument
that your categories evaporate outside your own cultural context. The
immediate difficulty I have is in validating the model in English, and
I would expect you to keep that in mind as you interpret my words.

 > A culturally-specific emphasis on relationships is interesting, and I'd like
 > to see more on that from you here.  But you, Rosch, and I agree that
 > Aboriginal brains work very much the same as our European brains do when
 > it comes to categorization, don't we?

No, I do not agree. I shall not attempt to argue, however, that human
brains do not share the same capacity since we know already that
Aboriginality is not race specific. Nor will I attempt to invoke an
argument about evolution of human "capacity for culture".

The differences as far as the quantitive research is currently able to
reveal is that the European culture imposes a world-view comprising
logically categorised entities onto a linear time-frame, so developing
the "left brain" functions in children, while the Australian culture
imposes a visual-spatial map onto a cyclic time-frame, so developing
the "right-brain" functions. Dr Judith Kearens, of the Psychology
Department at the University of Western Australia, has been doing a
lot of work in this area among school age children in attempting to
unravel the learning difficulties Aboriginal children experience in
European schools. I know that she is a little uncomfortable with my
own thesis, but then there are so few other white people who have
grown up among Aboriginal people it can be tested against.

Suffice that I have widespread and spontaneous agreement from the
Aboriginal side that the European world-view is fundamentally different
and incompatible with theirs, and I have yet to see Europeans alone in
the bush with Aboriginal people, away from their own cultural support
mechanisms, who do not suffer severe physical illness from the extent
of the culture shock they experience.

The greater practical problem lies in managing the interface between
the two cultures, at what people working there call "the coal face".

 > BTW, if you continue to post as you have for the past week, I'll strongly
 >

This sentence was cut off and you might like to resend it that I can
respond.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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