From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: communities
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 01 Oct 92 04:40:56 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents
Reply-To: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au


In article <BvEnnq.7xs@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com writes:

 > >Longer answer: Your questions make sense to us because they are framed
 > >within our rules of logic, grammar and syntax, and address issues we
 > >are concerned about within the framework of our own expectations. It
 > >is far more complex than that, but I trust you will get my drift.
 > >
 > >They do not make any sense at all, for example, to Aboriginal people
 > >here in Australia. In their own culture such questions do not even
 > >represent the curiosity of a child; they are simply gobbledegook,
 > 
 >   I don't understand this answer.   Why does it matter whether the 
 >   aboriginals (not just in Australia, but anywhere) understand or
 >   appreciate these questions?  I think what matters is whether
 >   anthropologists studying their culture can frame and maybe even
 >   answer such questions.   

You are asking THEM (whoever they are) the questions, aren't you? Don't
your questions have to make sense to them so they can frame their answers,
which will in turn make sense to you? Let me expand on this further below
since it is a central issue, perhaps developing into another thread if
readers are interested in following it. If it is too complicated at
this point, on the other hand, we can let it go; please bear with me
for now.

 >   It may be the case that after studying many human cultures the 
 >   field of anthropolgy has begun to notice enough common patterns,
 >   principles, methods, problems, or whatever to give these things
 >   names or labels and make them suitable subjects for study.  If 
 >   not then the whole concept of an "ology" for us "anthro's" is 
 >   called into question!  But I don't see why there is any need for 
 >   the subjects of the research to concern themselves with these
 >   things any more than I need to study linguistics in order to
 >   speak or write.          
 > 
 >   Or maybe it's entirely possible that framing questions like this
 >   is beyond the state of the art for anthropology, or that anthopology
 >   does not quite deserve the moniker "science" just yet.   If this
 >   is the case then someone should just say so.

Very much longer answer:

The "state of the art for anthropology" advanced through this matter
of framing questions long ago. Current concerns rather address the
ownership of knowledge, which is power. Bitter debate circulates, since
it ultimately addresses the very nature of knowledge and the substance
of anthropology as an academic discipline. This debate is of the same
order is those in advanced theoretical Physics on the nature of matter,
where we are concerned with the nature of human thought and how it
influences what humans do, how they do it, what reasons they give for
doing it, and so on.

Does not quite deserve the moniker "science" just yet????

We, along with History, Philosophy and Religion, INFORM Science, and
always did. Science represents a mere subculture developed to carry out a
particular clearly defined role on behalf of the culture which spawned it,
funds it, decides its priorities, and limits its scope. The Aboriginal
Dreaming, by comparison, represents a major world culture at least
40,000 years old, spawning its own sub-cultural activities which arise
to meet the contingencies of the centuries and decline again.

Chinese Culture as such is at least 5,000 years old, itself arising
explicitly from an extremely ancient culture of similarly vast scope
as The Dreaming. There is already exchange between Australia and China
on these ancient origins.

Peter, I am sorry if you are disappointed, but Western Science is
very much in its infancy. A babe at its mother's breast and often
behaving as irrationally as one would expect an infant does; so
stubborn, inquisitive, destructive, nowhere near yet realising its
own potential for good. As you can see even from the net, it is a
constant job to keep it on some sort of coherent track. There is no
question that this is the case, and the work being down now merely
concerns itself with how Science might be further informed as it
begins to mature and bear fruit. That is, it is only a matter of
where else the tree needs to be pruned as it grows.

Well, back to a practical example you can pick up fairly readily.

Let me cite a case where, as a post-graduate student, a now professor
with a chair in particular studies received a significant corpus of
knowledge from certain elders, from which he wrote up a thesis for
which he was awarded an M.A. degree. He then went to Canada where he
was eventually awarded a PhD on the basis of the same knowledge, and
as I understand lectured widely throughout the U.S. with several books
published in his name.

Finally, back here in Australia he became an adviser to governments,
with his own chair as a full Professor of Anthropology, and able to
afford a large house in the University neighbourhood. Not bad for a
working class boy who had "worked his way through the ranks".

In the meantime, those whose knowledge was being used to make this
fortune remained impoverished, dependent on social welfare and
suffering all the deprivations of such extreme dislocation and
poverty. If their knowledge is of such interest and importance, how is
it that they have not been awarded the academic degrees, and been made
welcome on the lecture circuit . . . and so on?

Anthropologists already have knowledge of their own as members of
their own culture and society, while anthropological knowledge is
always only second hand. What standing has it, then? What are the
legal questions associated with its receipt by a third party?

The wider ethical question arises from the manner in which those whose
knowledge it is are ignored and impoverished while the anthropologist
is enriched? Does a software outlet take all the credit for the
material it handles, or does a large part of the remuneration and
credit go back to those who wrote it?

Knowledge should be freely shared? People spend years of their lives
studying and developing their own knowledge base and culture, to
achieve an appropriate quality to their environment which will enable
them to prosper.

While this thread now tangential to your immediate purpose may best
be picked up under another heading, you still need to be fully aware
of these matters before you enter the field. The attrition rate is
extremely high . . .

As well as Geertz, "Works & Lives" (thanks Cameron), you might
like to read Taussig, "Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man" and
Clifford, "The Predicament of Culture". There is also Foucault, "The
Archaeology of Knowledge & "The Order of Things", as well as Bourdieu,
"Outline of a Theory of Practice". There are the French Marxists, The
Frankfurt School, the Chigaco School, Oxford and Cambridge Universities
as well as Manchester and Sussex . . . so many others.

And then there is Bateson, Goffman, Garfinckle, George Herbert Mead,
R.D. Laing . . .

There are literally hundreds of threads of argument, and it is impossible
to know in advance which you decide to pick up as you go along, and
especially how your thesis will end up being framed.

I still think your purpose would be far better served by going through
the basics first. Get your nose into the literature, and then follow
it (your nose, that is . . .).

If, on the other hand as it now occurs to me, you intend to carry out
a study somewhat more in the line of Sociology, the ethics and esoterics
of Anthropology will not help you at all. An excellent basic text is
Ritzer "Sociological Theory" although you also need some grounding
anyway in research methods. Please do not ask for a list of references
on this, they are abundant and your librarian can help you.

 > >That can be very hard for us clever Westerners to swallow, especially
 > >after having been accepted as a PhD candidate, when the informant one
 > >has been referred to as the famous and powerful leader of a substantial
 > >school of intellectuals, who has held up a $500 million project for
 > >the past ten years, appears as a unwashed beggar sitting in the dust,
 > >with an equally unwashed child sitting in his lap demanding all the
 > >attention.
 > 
 >    I'm really sorry, but I have no idea what this part refers to.

Perhaps not at this stage. When you are out there by yourself suffering
from an extreme bout of culture shock (which is NOT a joke), please
ring me and I will explain it again. You will probably needs some more
comforting by then anyway.

 > >I do not want to sound elitist, but some people are simply not cut
 > >out to be anthropologists. The existential stress experienced in
 > >facing the *other* can be extremely traumatic, and I would not with
 > >hindsight inflict that on others without counselling them first.
 > >
 > >Well, that may be a little away from your original idea, Peter, but
 > >you are beginning to ask questions about how other people's lives are
 > >to be probed, and it is appropriate that you be both encouraged and
 > >cautioned if you wish to do any real justice to your research, and
 > >make it useful.
 > 
 >   I'm not really asking *how* their lives should be probed -- I'm
 >   assuming, naively perhaps, that the field of anthropology has
 >   already worked out some practical methodology.  I'm merely
 >   asking *whether* a certain topic, i.e., "community" as general
 >   human phenomenon, has ever been studied, and if so, where I can
 >   read about it.

Longish answer:

You should be asking *how*. That is what you NEED to know. There
is no such person as "the field of anthropology" who has "already
worked out some practical methodology". What you are doing here is
reifying an abstraction, and then anthropomorphosing it to fit your
present mindframe. I have done the same above with respect to Science,
and my comment here is not a criticism; but it is important to be
aware of your own poetics in articulating your ideas on the matter
and use them constructively. In practice, however, the field is far
too complex to even consider a global unified theory, whereas many
anthropologists each have their own methodology specific to the
particular community they work with.

Another example: Apart from my association with China, my primary work
is in Aboriginal Australia with a meta-interest in Oriental Esoterica,
since it is of such value HERE, in understanding how THESE people think
in order to frame valid questions, and to make sense of their answers
in terms which are comprehensible to Westerners with an interest here,
and vice versa. It probably does not make any sense at all to, say,
an American anthropologist working in the Detroit Auto Industry, with
the view to writing up an ethnographic survey for the Pentagon.

Again: So very many American post-graduates have already arrived
here full of their own theories they want to "test on Aborigines"
as representative of "Stone Age Man", only to find themselves totally
lost for anything to say about the people here at all. Struck dumb.
There are two choices; either start all over again to rework the
theory under supervision from local people and risk questions being
raised back home on the basis of the application for which funding
was granted in the first place, or simply go back home and try again
with a different culture.

Aboriginal people, apart from having retained in large part the sheer
existential power of their cultural integrity, have been dealing with
anthropologists for over 100 years now. The poor post-grad is a babe
lost in the woods, and we can only help where we can . . .

For all that there are basic understandings, however, with which you
need to become familiar if you wish to proceed. I guess if you have now
reached the point at which you no longer *understand* anything I have
said at all, you have made quite some progress since now you *begin to
know* what you may need to follow up as you proceed so you don't get
lost completely.

I only somewhat apologise that this response has become so lengthy;
you may not be aware of just how much you are asking of us and I do
think it is important for the others reading the group, just what on
the surface appears to be a fairly straightforward set of questions
can lead to in anthropology. Please print it out for future reference.

You might finally like to get your nose into the work of Malinowski
and Boas, and of Mead and her critics . . .

Landmark anthropology!



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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