Symbolic Dimensions in Cultural Anthropology [and Comments and Reply] Author(s): Mark Kline Taylor, Mario Bunge, Atwood

D. Gaines, Yvon Gauthier, Marvin Harris, H. Dieter Heinen, I. C. Jarvie, Robert Layton, Bob Scholte, Anthony Stellato and Steven Webster Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1985), pp. 167-185 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743131 . Accessed: 04/12/2013 06:31
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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

Vol. 26, No. 2, April 1985

? 1985 by The Wenner-Gren FoundationforAnthropological Research,all rights reserved 0011-3204/85/2602-0003$2 00

Symbolic Dimensions in Cultural

Anthropology'
byMark Kline Taylor

Veryslowlyand veryreluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that mostof the principles thatwe have advanced to orderour data bear littleresemblance in kind to the systems of theory developedin the olderphysical and biologicalsciences.Theyhave farmorein common withthe equally complex,but oftenunverified and unverifiable, systems outsidethe realm of science which we know as mythology or perhapsphilosophy or even theology.
GEORGE PETER MURDOCK

Anthropologist Murdock at once strikesthe keynoteof this essay and is its foil.As keynoter, he suggests thatanthropology, while seekingto be "scientific," rideson principles that have a markedresemblance to philosophy, mythology, or even theology (Murdock 1971:18). This essay may be viewed as a response to Murdock'sconcern about "mythology" and "theolin thatit deals witha "symbolic ogy"in his discipline dimension" discernible in portionsof Westernculturalanthropology-a dimensionin which symbol,image, metaphor,and Murdockis also foil,however, because he envisions a future for a true "scientific"anthropologyin which assumed "unverified and unverifiable" realmsare controlled or eliminated. This essay's portrayal in culof a symbolic dimension turalanthropology to the contrary, thatcultural presupposes, anthropological enterprises accruemeaningand are guidedby invoking symbols thatare neither ofanthropologtheproducts ical research alone norsubjectsimply to thelogicofempirical verification. lives fromits symbols.Two conAnthropology
sometimes myth play meaningful roles.

of MarvinHartemporary anthropological enterprises-those ris and Claude Levi-Strauss-may be studiedfrom thisviewpoint. They serve as cases withinwhich to reflect on the of symbolsin the diversehermeneutical function of exercises anthropological inquiry. Here, first, is a discussionof the role of symbolsin an anto thehermeneutical thropological enterprise according theory of Paul Ricoeur. The second sectionoffers a portrait of the enterprises of Levi-Straussand Harris; the finalsectiondisplays Levi-Strauss'snotion of a "world of reciprocity" and Harris's notionof "nature"as images thatfunction symboliand comprehensive fundamental visions of cally to nurture humanexistence. SYMBOLS IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS Scholte(1969, 1978, 1980) has been notablypersistent in articulatinganthropology's symbolic dimension. Along with and Geertz,he has pointed out thatsuchexplorations Stocking involve self-critical analysis of anthropological theoryand an "ethnology practice, ofethnology" or "ethnography ofmodern thought" (Scholte 1980:53; Stocking1968:91-109; Geertz 1983:153). CitingtheworksofThomas Kuhn and Leszek Kolakowski, Scholte(1980:74) calls forcarefulscrutiny of the ways philosophical tendenciesand "quasi-metaphysical commitments" in all anthropologists' participate paradigms. He challenges the easy confidence that factsand data are simplycollectedand proposesinstead a context-sensitive This notionof facticity. notion suggests thatcultural anthropology's frequent claimsto objectivity presupposea prereflexive oftennurtured totality symbolically: "anthropological are themselves paradigms symbolic forms.They createand posit specific realities;theyare not isomorphic withreality. The anthropologic is nota gift of God but a function of paradigmatic context" (p. 76). the dominant in an anthropologist's Studying texts symbols is a way to beginadverting to thecontext-specific character of work and also to the prereflexive it anthropologists' totalities may presuppose.Why this is so requiresthat we say, in a preliminary way, what symbols are. In a first and mostgeneral sense,theword"symbols" can be used-as Ricoeuruses it in the fieldof poetics-to mean the privileged imagesthatdominatean author'stexts.These may be the dominant or imagesof a poem or a schoolof literature "thepersistent whicha wholeculture within figures recognizes
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1 A draft ofthispaperwas originally presented to the"Religion and theModernWorld"Symposium in the (The ThirdAnnualSymposium Humanities,sponsoredby The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio) on May 12, 1983.

TAYLOR is Assistant Professor ofTheology at PrincetonTheologicalSeminary (Princeton, N.J. 08540,U.S.A.). Bornin 1951, he was educated at Seattle Pacific College (B.A., 1973), Union TheologicalSeminary in Virginia(D.Min., 1977), and the of Chicago (Ph.D., 1982). His researchinterests University are philosophy of religion, theology, and cross-cultural hermeneutics. He has published"Levi-Strauss:Evolving a Mythabout Myths" (ReligiousStudies Review 9:97-105), "Truthand a Phenomenology of Tradition"(JournalofReligion 64:221-28), and Religious Dimensionsin CulturalAnthropology (Macon: MercerUniversity Press,in press).The present paper was submitted in finalform 29 VI 84. MARK KLINE

Vol. 26 * No. 2 * April 1985

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itself, or even thegreatarchetypal imageswhichhumanity as a whole-ignoringculturaldifferences-celebrates."2 This first markofsymbols is onlya minimal one. A secondis their invented or constructed character. are notreflecSymbols tionsin subjects of thingsoutsidethembut the creations of interpreters interacting with and embeddedin complexesof perceptions and experiences.In Cassirer's (1953:75) terms, "The fundamental conceptsof each science,the instruments withwhichit propounds its questionsand formulates its solutions,are regardedno longeras passive imagesof something givenbutas symbols createdbytheintellect itself." If I experimentherewiththenotionthatanthropologists' enterprises are I meannotthatanthropologists symbolic, mirror their worldin symbolsbut that theycreate,build, re-present, and nurture thatworldby symbols. The third and final mark,forthepurposeofthisessay,is the most significant I will offerof Levione for the portraits Strauss's and Harris's work. Symbols' special character in their function as "surplusof signification." For exemerges in a poem by Hopkins signifies ample, morning morethan a meteorological phenomenonseen on the horizon. For the Hawaiian, the sea signifies more than the span of waters viewedfrom shore.Integral to symbols' abil"surplus"is their ityto move interpreters, through their linguistic qualities,into a very broad vision of experienceas a whole. The tensive powerofa text's forexample,is a linguistic metaphors, quality involvingreaders, symbolically, in nonlinguistic apprehensions of a totality (Ricoeur 1976:45-69). Symbols,in this thirdsense, give rise to an encompassing and enveloping visionof the worldand a preferred "mode of being-in-the-world" (Ricoeur 1976:87-88). Thinkingnurtured is not,forRicoeur,onlya tendency bysymbols of"archaic"or "primitive" peoples; it may also be embeddedin the explanations of theoreticians in our own cultureswho studytexts, It is a kindofexpansivethinking action,and history. he often calls "understanding" If a scholarly (Verstehen). enterprisewithits explanatory data, theories, concepts,and techniques fortesting-is a symbolic one, thenwe may discernin it textual imagesthatsignalan interpreter's graspofa wholeworld. thrive in whatRicoeurterms Symbols a "non-methodic" realm of theinquirer's "understanding."3 They nurture apprehensions of "belongingto the whole of what is" (Ricoeur 1967a:335; 1978:44).Discerning a symbolic dimension involvesdiscerning themoment of "understanding" a scholar'sinquiry. attending This moment of "understanding" is not easily discerned in contemporary inquiries.It oftenlies implicitin the methods and explanations of the social scientist. It is necessary, therefore,to followRicoeur'stheory farther as he describeshow is relatedto anothermoment, "understanding" "explanation" (Erkliren).Ricoeurdiscussesthesetwomoments as distinctive ideals forthestudyofhumanthought and action.The distincis a German one, set in the contextof tion, traditionally, WilhelmDilthey'sanalysisof the difference betweenGeistesand Naturwissenschaften, wissenschaften between sciences dealingwith"spiritual" and thosedealingwith"physiactivity cal nature" (Gadamer 1975:5-8, 499n). Ricoeursetsforth these ideals by reference to theirdistinctive epistemological and ontologicalimplications (Ricoeur 1976:72-73; 1978:149-66).4
2 Symbols hereoccurin texts but are notlimited to them.Placement in a textmay be but one manifestation of the symbols' function fora wholeculture ofwhichthetextis a part.Hence, historical analysisor "ideology critique" mayexploresymbols thatdominate a textin order to discern their culture-encompassing meanings. In Scholte's (1980:6168) terms, textualsymbols may be studiedin "the social domain." 3 "The rich ambiguity of the word understanding is that it designates a momentin the theory of method,the one we call the nonmethodicpole, and the apprehension,at a level other than the scientific, ofourbelonging to thewholeofwhatis" (Ricoeur1978:165). 4 Ricoeur is not alone in setting these two notionsin relationto characterize human inquiry.Von Wright(1971:2-4) treatsthe two

Epistemologically, inquirers guided by the Geisteswisideal seek to "understand"other subjects and senschaften minds. Presuming a similarity betweenthemselves and their subject matter allows them to rely for understanding on analogies between theirown and others'experiences.They view empathy or intuition, the transference of inquiring subof underjects intoothers'psychic lives,as thebasic principle standing(Ricoeur 1976:73; Parsons 1949:481). Ontologically, inquirers pursuing thisideal often focuson "mind"or the"inof mind (Von Wright1971:102-8). The otherswho tentions" are inquired about are expressionsof Geist. This does not mean thatinquirers hereare necessarily committed to a common "AbsoluteSpirit"in Hegel's sense. Rather,theymay follow Dilthey, who, after Hegel, arguedthathumansas individuals or groups express Geiste instead of Absolute Spirit (Ricoeur1979:87).5 Epistemologically, inquirersguided by the Naturwissenideal seek to "explain"the thoughts schaften and actionsthat are theirsubject matter.Looking to the naturalsciencesfor models,theyobserveexternal facts,submithypotheses to empirical verification, cover facts with generallaws, and construct to encompasslaws in a systematic theories whole. They mayalso employanalogiesfrom their experience, but analogy mustbe checkedand testedin the lightof empiricalstudies, observation, and the generallaws and theories derivedfrom them.Ontologically, thisideal focuson "nainquirers pursuing ture."Nature often becomesthe "commonhorizon"forfacts, laws and theories, hypothesesand verifications (Ricoeur 1976:72).Inquirers studyothers whosebeingis partofa world made up of complexelements functionally or causallyrelated (Parsons 1949:481-82). The personsand groupsstudiedact and thinkaccordingto laws like those of naturalsciencebecause theyare part of nature. Ricoeurgoes on to pointto the dialecticalrelation between thesetwo ideals: humaninquiry moves(1) from understanding as a guess about the whole (2) to explanation as a moment of and structuring one's guesses and (3) back to undertesting as comprehension.6 standing In thefirst moment ofthedialectic,thereis intuitive understanding.This is a necessarymomentbut one that Ricoeur characterizes as a "naive grasping." Howeverpreliminary, itis forthe totality productive of meaning,drawingintoa whole the manyparticulars of the inquirer's subjectmatter.This is the "guess" about the whole (Ricoeur 1976:75-80). Explanation, constituting the second moment, unfolds ranges of propositions and meaningsabout that which has been guessed. Explanationexploresthe whole that has been or intuited merely designated by understanding. It ordersthe wholeand fills it out, identifying and relating itspartsin "sysin an effort tems"or "structures," to "verify" or "validate"the guess (pp. 78-79).7
ideals as "two main traditions" in science,the philosophy of science, and the history of ideas, explanationbeing a "Galilean" way of reto the contributions ferring of naturalscientists and forms of"positivism" which would, with various qualifications, includethe philosophies of Comte, Mill, and Hume and understanding being an "Aristotelian" way refusing to see the "pattern set by the naturalsciences as the sole and supremeideal fora rationalunderstanding of reality." Relatingthe exercises ofErklirento thoseof Verstehen is of coursea long-standing problemthat cannotbe exploredin fullhere. For examinations of Verstehen in its diverserelations to humanand social sciencemethods, see Dallmayrand McCarthy (1977)and Boutin (1974). 5 Stocking(1974:10-11) shows how the plural term"Geiste" was associatedwithspecific historical periodsor cultural traditions. 6 My summary of thisdialecticcomesmainlyfrom Ricoeur'sInterpretationTheory (1976) but also from other sources cited below (Ricoeur1978, 1979). 7 The important role played by explanationshould not be overlooked. In Ricoeur'sdialectic,thoughunderstanding envelopsexplanation,it also requiresthe latter'scontribution (Ricoeur1976:75-79).
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of their mutualinterdependence. without discussion it is often of Verstehen In thissection,I presumethe dialecticalrelation that the Verstehen and Erklarendiscussedabove and consider accompanies and envelops Levi-Strauss'sand Harris's ata scienceof anthropology. tempts to formulate anand Harrishave each made comprehensive Levi-Strauss provideexcellent and, therefore, contributions thropological and thedialecticofunderstanding whichto study cases within challenging cases in that explanation.They are also especially of explanation,"displaying they are both "anthropologists suspias scienceand cultivating to anthropology commitment of understanding."" cion of claims made by "anthropologists committed are notunambiguously Whiletheseanthropologists ideals of explanation,Levi-Strauss's to Naturwissenschaften and Harris's"culturalmaterialism" "structural anthropology" as a "science" are both foundedon a view of anthropology usingthe conceptualtoolsof explanation. analysis of myths In the final volume of his structural (1981:153),forexample, Levi-Straussclaims to be preparing that, like any other anthropology" the way for a "scientific LEVI-STRAUSS AND HARRIS: TWO forthepurpose science,"shouldbe able to set up experiments ANTHROPOLOGISTS OF EXPLANATION on thebasis ofcertain ofverifying itshypotheses and deducing, unknownproperties of the real guidingprinciples,hitherto in culturalanthropology, then,focuses This studyof symbols occurin whatwill necessarily world,in otherwordsto predict in the anthropological explanaon the understanding implicit certain experimental conditions."Partiallybecause of this tionsofLevi-Strauss and Harris.This is notto imposean alien have deof understanding" "anthropologists commitment, method.To on culturalanthropological theory hermeneutical scribedLevi-Straussas "the academic anthropologist-aforhave discussedprobthecontrary, themselves anthropologists discipline amongtheGeisteswissenschaf- malist, reductionistand scientificrelativist" (Diamond, their lemsoflocating of Scholte,and Wolf 1975:872). He is the "naturalscientist (Stocking1974:1-20; Watsonten and Naturwissenschaften (Diastructure fundamental man" in pursuitof humanity's and Franke and Watson 1975). At times, both Verstehen 12 9At mond 1969:402). method. are advocatedas aimsofanthropological Erkldren as a Harris formulates his culturalmaterialism as Similarly, accentone ideal over another, othertimes,anthropologists based on a "pan-human scienceofsociety" "scienceofculture," anEvans-Pritchard (1951:77-85) choseto do whenportraying grounds"(Harris 1979: xii, 170): "the "logicaland evidentiary as an artand not as "interpretive" or "bestregarded thropology . .. is theachievement ofa scientific of anthropology finalaim ofanthropology as a natural science." Recent "reinventors" evoand convergent of the causes of the divergent knowledge of pressthe claims of what mightbe called an "anthropology of systems, whichconsist trajectories ofsociocultural lutionary the need to attendto personaland stressing understanding," Comofbehavioras well as thoughts." behaviorand products issuethiscall to soReinventors often socialpreunderstanding. he to the Naturwissenschaften ideal foranthropology, mitted as science called scientistic colleagueswho view anthropology that by his fellowanthropologists rejectssuggestions 10 Wherebothideals are affirmed, explicitly towardexplanation. driving from thenaturalsciencesas one be distinguished anthropology forHarrisremains oftheGeisteswissenschaften. Anthropology
Tracy (1981:244 n. 18) retainsRicoeur's understanding/explanation gives a more criticalrole to the dialecticbut, I thinkappropriately, explanatory moment. For Tracy, explanationnot only "develops" it. understanding but also "challengesand corrects" 8 Theoriesother than Ricoeur'salso notethesymbol's special tie to Cassirer(1953:73-85), understanding. an intuited and comprehensive fromthe forexample,stressedthat a symbolderivesits significance thatin a manner it represents. Geertz(1966:4, 12wholeofexperience as reaching toward"conthefunction of symbols 24) also underscores ofa general Turner(1969:3-25; 1975:159orderofexistence." ceptions "surplusof 78) developshis analogue to Ricoeur'snotionof symbols' in histheory ofsymbols. " Schneider ofthe"multivocality signification" to define structure: two functions of a symbolic (1977:16-17) specifies between and distinction theworld"through a processofdiscrimination a "valuesense, to articulate objectsin it" and, in a moreexistential in whichpeople can finda place forthemselves." These two structure functions resonatewith Ricoeur's claim that a symbol's"surplusof of a worldand the enviincludesbothan apprehension signification" mode of being-in-that-world. sioningof a preferred 9 Both are advocated,forexample,in Mead's (1964:230)attempt to in thehumanities locateanthropology as well as in thesciencesand in in spiteof and "scientific" Berreman's (1966) call to be both"insightful" tendencies to pursueone ideal at the other'sexpense. An10 A range of positions may be foundin Hymes'sReinventing thropology (1969). Scholte'sworkin thatvolumeshouldbe compared since its "reinvention" (Scholte withhis laterarticleon anthropology in anthropology" persist efforts towarda "liberation 1980). Continuing From Colonialismand textssuch as The Politics of Anthropology: Sexismtowarda Viewfrom Below (Huizer and Mannheim1979). For of explanation," see Kaplan from "anthropologists vigorous responses and the Geisteswis(1974) and Leach (1974). The ideals of Verstehen Vol. 26 * No. 2 * April 1985 senschaften, whichthereinventors value in cultural anthropology, rein thewake ofthepublication ceivednotableattention ofMalinowski's (1966) diary. That diaryportrayed the ways in whichthisrenowned fieldworker's pursuitof "the native's point of view" bore marks of Europeanethnocentrism and clearpersonalbias. It has beencitedas a watershedmarkingthe "emergence of self-consciousness in ethnography"and a "subjectivization" of the discipline(Nash and Wintrob 1972). For otherdiscussionsof the effect of Malinowski'sdiary,see Hsu (1979) and Geertz(1967). " Because theyboth self-consciously portray theiranthropologies largely in terms of theideal ofErkliren,myintention hereis to show in their how one mightmove fromexplanationto understanding thought. Whileitmaybe equallyimportant, theaim ofthisessayis not to tracethe movement from understanding to explanation. 12 Many anthropologists see verylittle thatis "scientific" or "empirical" in Levi-Strauss'sstructuralism. His ethnographies, particularly on theBororoand Nambikwara,have beenseriously challenged (Price 1982). Leach (1970:11-14) sums up some of the typicalreactionsto Levi-Straussas fieldworker. There is warrant,however,fortreating in the the structuralist Levi-Straussas an advocate of anthropology ofexplanation, Naturwissenschaften mode. On structuralism as a form see also Ricoeur(1979:95-96). Concerning intent to abLevi-Strauss's of his own stain fromthe Verstehen ideal of reflecting on conditions in formulating see TheRaw and theCooked thought his structuralism, (1969b:10-11). Ricoeur(1963a:24) has referred to this approachas a "Kantismwithouta transcendental his subject," thereby expressing with structuralist that proceedsunmindful disagreement explanation of the understanding thatenvelopsit. 169

of the dialectic,explanation has led to In the thirdmoment ofa possiblewholeworldand "understanding" comprehensive world" (p. 80). Departing "mode of being-in-the a preferred makesit possibleforinterprefrom a naive guess,explanation "boundarysituations" the fundamental tersto "comprehend" Exof human being-in-the-world. conflicts" and "existential betweenthetwo stagesof a mediation planationis, therefore, theway (p. 75). Ricoeur(1978:165)summarizes understanding in his hermeneutical "Undertheory: thesemoments interplay precedes,accompanies,closes and thusenvelopsexstanding anadevelopsunderstanding explanation planation.In return, " lytically. relatedto explanation, dialectically It is thisunderstanding, that is the third mark of the symbol. Symbols in an ansimplydomiare neither therefore, enterprise, thropologist's nant images of their texts nor simply creative inventions Their distinctivecharacter of interpreting anthropologists. thatacto the understanding mostclearlyin relation emerges explanation.8 companiesand envelopsanthropological

Taylor: SYMBOLIC DIMENSIONS

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a scienceofculture which,though havinga uniquesetofcrossculturalepistemological problems,can be modeled afterthe naturalsciences(p. 316; 1964a:3). Though both are "anthropologists of explanation"in these modesofpursuing senses,their theexplanatory ideal are markedlydifferent. Levi-Strauss "explains"thesociocultural lifeof others largelyin termsof dominant mentalstructures, Harris 13 in terms oftechnoeconomic and environmental determinants. Beforeidentifying themoments of"understanding" integral to " we these different formsof anthropological "explanation, need to examine portraits of the two anthropologists' enterprises. These enterprises are interpretive processesthat take place in both intercultural and intracultural realms.Interculturally, theyseekto explainsociocultural lifebymoving across culturalboundariesto confront others.At the same time,intraculturally, theyarticulateand explain theirplaces within theirown culturaltradition.14 Alongtheway of his development from thefieldwork ofthe 1930sthrough thefinalvolumeof his Introduction to theScience ofMythology (1971), Levi-Strauss's intercultural studies underwent a major shift. Though at first attracted by theempirical richnessof American anthropologist Robert Lowie's fieldwork and relying experiences on the vast body of AngloAmericandata available to him at the New York School of Social Research and elsewhere,Levi-Strausslater began to ofAmerican questionmanyof theempiricist culassumptions turaland British social anthropology. Explanationsdependent observations wereincreasingly uponfieldwork subordinated to explanations by structural analysis.His own fieldwork experito him as it was, thus was viewed less as ence, important "data" and more as a set of "images" to be related to the "ocean" of imagesresulting from otherethnographers' reporting (Levi-Strauss1978:333-34; 1950:li-lii).Levi-Strauss practiceswhatClifford (1981:553)has called "ethnographic surrealism," accordingto whichethnology is like an ocean in which theethnologist swingsa net to catchsome fish.Levi-Strauss's intercultural his "goingout" amongothers, interpretation, became a task of combining ethnographic images-firstin kinwhole displayed ship and thenin mythology-ina structured in his own textsand patterned afterrules of transformation largelydevelopedby structural linguistics. By "goingout" in thisway, Levi-Strausshoped to effect a structural reduction enablinghimalso to "go below" to thebasic "mentalpatterns" or "elemental structures" ofa humanite' ge'ne'rale (1978:389-93; 1969a:100-101; 1966:247-48). In theintracultural realm,Levi-Strauss's conversaprimary tion partneris Rousseau (Levi-Strauss 1978:390). This intracultural conversation is woven throughout his intercultural analyses. Rousseau's notionof pitie'("compassion"or "idenis the human mind's placementin relationto the tification") entireworld of beingsand things,a state of "totalization" in whichall thingsare embracedin a whole. Pitie' is what pervades Levi-Strauss'sintercultural search for a whole world builtup structurally fromimages of kinshipand myths.But pitie'is also Levi-Strauss's fundamental notionforintegrating several other important figuresand disciplinesof his own

such as Freud, Durkheim, Western tradition, Mauss, Gestalt and Marx.15 structural theory, linguistics, Harris's intercultural interpretations displayan ever more of sociocultural to explicitordering phenomenaby reference and ecological pressureswithin given technoenvironmental communities. Reference to material is themeans infrastructure wherebyHarris seeks to explain the motiveslyingbehind a numberof classifications in his fieldwork, he has encountered forexample,the dichotomy of "town" and "country" among Brazil's urban mountain communitiesand the categories "white,""black," and "mixed" in the Brazilians' calculus of racial identity (Harris 1956:2 78-90; 1964b:2 1-28). Reference to the infrastructural level, Harris argues, is what cultural anthropology requiresifit is to becomea "scienceof culture." Harristherefore prescribes a "strong dose ofoperationalism" to facilitateeffortsto "explain socioculturaldifferences and in terms similarities" of different communities' infrastructural conditions. Pursuitof thiskindofinquiry enablescultural anto be a "transcultural thropology of scientific obcommunity "16 servers. In the intracultural realm, Harris appropriateswhat he views as Marx's "basic research strategy": explaining ideology and social organizationas adaptive responsesto conditions at a sociocultural operating system's "techno-economic base." This appropriation seeks to rid Marx of what Harristakes to be an unverifiable Hegelian dialecticand an unscientific subjection of infrastructural principlesto a political activism (1968:240-41; 1979:55-76, 143-47). Harris proceedsto interpretand evaluatehis own Western culture's philosophical and culturetheories, anthropological judging all inadequate that do notacknowledge a scienceofculture builton Marxianinfrastructural principles. social sciencetheories are Contemporary also criticized in thislight(1979:117-342).'7 These portraits ofLevi-Strauss's and Harris'santhropologies show an important unity pervading boththeintercultural and intracultural realms.In Levi-Strauss's case, the two interpretiverealmsreinforce one another fora singleinterpretive task: the displayof "elementary structures" or a humanite' ge'ne'rale made possiblenotby an exhaustive ofall empirical knowledge sociocultural particulars but by thestructuralist's modelof the relations of a total world of the images presented by ethnogforHarris,thetwointerpretive raphers. Similarly, realmsreinforce one another in a commonanthropological the enterprise: of sociocultural explanation similarities and differences by referenceto infrastructural principles identified and formulated by a transcultural of scientific community observers. TWO SYMBOLS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL "UNDERSTANDING" On the basis of the preceding of Levi-Strauss's and portraits Harris'swork, we may discernin theirtextsthe imagesthat function as symbols to sustainthe moments of understanding thatenvelop,ground,and accompanytheirexplanations.
15 For a discussionof the diverse"intellectual influences" on LeviStrauss,see Rossi (1974:7-30). 16 The mostsustaineddefense of thesethemesis foundin Cultural Materialism(1979). 17 The intracultural interpretations discernible in Harris'stext might provideoccasion forsociohistorical and sociopolitical analysisof his own context of inquiry and thusperhapsforan "ideology critique" of his enterprise. Such analysismight focuson thecontext ofresearch for Harris,and otheryounganthropologists, working underthedirection of Charles Wagley in the "ten minutesto midnight" atmosphere of Latin America'sacute problems(see Wagley 1964:27-29 and Harris 1956:174-76, 288). In thiscontext one can observea striking convergenceofanthropology, and ecologicalstudies politics, (Wagley1952:715, 80-81). This essay, however,focuseson the textsratherthan moving"behindthe texts"to theirsociocultural context.

13 These two modes of explanationare contemporary representatives of what Sahlins (1976:55-125) helpfullydescribes as "two paradigms ofanthropological theory." FromthetimesofLewis Henry Morgan and Franz Boas, anthropology has featured two dominant logicsas its"endemicopposition": one moving from naturalconstraint to behaviorto thought ("ecology"),the othergivingthought a more determinative role as mediating natureand culture ("structuralism"). 14 These two realms are an application to anthropological hermeneutics of a distinction made by Habermas (1968:176-91) forhermeneutics generally. Habermas speaks of a "horizontal level," interpretationof foreigncultures,and a "vertical level," interpretive appropriation of one's own traditions.

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featuresboth a Levi-Strauss'sand Harris's understanding ofspecific cultural and a fusion oftemtranscendence horizons poral ones. Interculturally, Levi-Strauss and Harrisreach beyond theirown culturalhorizonsinto the horizonsof others they study. They "guess," and so invoke, a whole which groundsthistranscendence and which also makes it possible cultural for them to compare peoples of markedlydifferent preshorizons. Intraculturally, theystrive fora fusionoftheir ent horizonwith the past that is mediatedto themby their explanations traditions.'8 They conduct their intercultural while in dialogue with theirown culture'spast. Amid this horizons whichtemporal dialoguetheyinvokea whole within are preare fused. The symbolsI set forth below, therefore, undersented as giving rise to this sort of anthropological standing. The major image recurring writthroughout Levi-Strauss's This ings is containedin his phrase "world of reciprocity." notion is symbolicaccording to the three marks specified above: it is dominant his corpusof texts,it is crethroughout the understanding enveloping ativelyposited,and it nurtures his anthropological enterprise. This imagedominates bothhisintercultural and hisintracultural interpretations. In The Elementary of KinStructures he a hostofcomplexkinship practices, ship,working through posits a world of reciprocalexchange(1969a:490) that gives and to their"externally features kinship formulae co-existent" which social life"ceaselesslybends itself"(pp. 454, 490-91, 497). A worldof reciprocity is what Levi-Strausstakes to lie interofappearances"thathe confronts behindthe"confusion imagebeculturally (1978:333). This "world"is thedominant and hindhis variousstudiesofdailytrade,marriage practices, in myths; of codes he discerns warfare; behindthe reciprocity to relatein one reciprocal whole the and behindhis attempts Bororoand the Ge, the myths of NorthAmericaand South America, Tupi-Kawahibchiefly songsand Europe'sGregorian and India (pp. 35, 359; 1969:209).The "worldof chant,Oxford reciprocity," variouslytermedby him "world of objectified or the"eternal or "humanite' and universal thought" ge'ne'rale" mostof his writings. model,"is an image thatdominates the image is also dominant.Accordingto Intraculturally, notonlydo diverse "ceaselessly Levi-Strauss, cultural practices bend themselves" to this"worldof reciprocity" thathe posits, but so also do anthropologists and ethnologists in theWestern tradition. understands thehistory of ethnological Levi-Strauss in theWest as a progressive theory rediscovery of whatin the pasthad alreadybeendiscerned byRousseau. Thereis in LeviStrauss'sown anthropology of anthropology and in his history thisfusion of past and present horizons.Rousseau had clearly seen thevisionof a "worldof reciprocity" in whichsystems of in whichall things are in a stateof exchangeuniteall things, "totalization," of "originalidentification" (pitie').Contemporaryanthropologists are luredin their workby thisvisionof a whole world. The "world of reciprocity," accordingto Levias it beckoned Strauss,beckonscontemporary anthropologists horizonsis Rousseau. The union of temporal,intracultural evidentespeciallywhen Levi-Strauss insists thatRousseau, le plus ethnographe des philosophes, "conceived,willed and announced this very ethnography which did not yet exist" (1978:392; 1976a:34). This dominant is creatively imageofLevi-Strauss's writings posited,"partlyas an act of faith"(1969a:490). It is an "indevice"orienting theanthropologist towarda whole terpretive thatis givenbefore themanypartsthathe setsin somesortof
18 Relying on Gadamer's(1975:267-74)philosophical hermeneutics, I ain suggesting thatan anthropologist's workin other cultures (whatI have called an "intercultural" work)is at thesame timetheappropriationin the present of a past tradition within whichtheanthropologist stands.

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relation (p. 100),nottheproduct ofhis explanatory enterprise. To be sure,Levi-Strauss is notcontent withpositing thisworld as an "act of faith";he commitshimself to the exercisesof structuralist explanationin order to work out the world of in whichcodes reciprocally objectified thought play. But this effort should not obscurewhat Levi-Strausshimself stresses: the "worldof reciprocity" is an interpretive device creatively posited by the anthropologist. It is a "philosopher's presentiment" to whichis joined an "experimental studyofthefacts" (p. 490). The "world of reciprocity" signals a whole that is presupposed,guessed, and invokedby him as the condition grounding his monumental search forthe architecture of the humanmindin the studyof mythology. The image "worldof reciprocity" nurtures in Levi-Strauss's a comprehensive explanatory enterprise understanding. It is dominantand creatively positedfora purpose:to re-present thewholethatgivesunity to his anthropological enterprise. It is thisimageabove all thatmakespossiblehistranscendence of cultural horizons and fusion of past and presenthorizons withinhis own tradition. The "worldof reciprocity" is an image thatre-presents, in Ricoeur'ssense,thenon-methodic moment of Verstehen. This is a moment in which,forall his claimedsensitivity to cultural and temporal particularity, Levi-Strauss presumes a prereflexive totality thataccompaniesand envelopshis anthropological The image bringsto his analysesthe viewpoint explanations. his drive for an "eternaland universalmodel" that fosters towardwhichall social practicesand mythological structures In Levi-Strauss's bend themselves. the ceaselessly cosmology, wholenessof this prereflexive even when his totality persists structuralist elaborationof the whole causes it to vanish into nonbeing,as he claims it does at the end of his four-volume ofmyth. Even then,itis thewholeness ofthisworldthat study matters. The world of reciprocity does not disintegrate. the law of exchangeto the Rather,its partscohere,following out. The totality reduces pointwheretheycancel one another to a fundamental betweenbeingand nonbeing and opposition thengracefully flowers and fadesintononbeing (1981:693-95). The non-methodic character of thistextualimage is signaled in line with whenhe sets his symbolically nurtured Verstehen the spiritof Buddhism'sfounding thinker (1978:410):
What else, indeed, have I learned . . . apart froma few scraps of wisdomwhich,whenlaid end to end, coincidewiththemeditation of thesage at thefootofthetree?Everyeffort to understand the destroys object studiedin favorof another. .. untilwe reach the one lasting the pointat whichthedistinction and the betweenmeaning presence, whichwe began. absenceofmeaning disappears:thesame pointfrom

a prealso signalsforLevi-Strauss The "worldof reciprocity" ferred mode of being-in-the-world, accordingto Ricoeurthe feature of comprehensive nurotherimportant understanding turedby symbols.The worldre-presented by thissymbolnot intercultural and only groundsLevi-Strauss'scomprehensive intracultural knowledgebut also impliesan ethicforjudging the present qualityof humanexistence (1978:392):
modelof The studyof thesesavages . . . helps us build a theoretical humansociety, whichdoes not correspond to any observablereality, between but withthe aid of whichwe may succeed in distinguishing in man'spresent nature and in and whatis artificial whatis primordial ofa statewhichno longer obtaining good knowledge exists,whichhas but neverexistin thefuture, and will probably perhapsneverexisted, in order essential to have a soundconception ofwhichitis nevertheless state. to pass valid judgmenton our present

ofall beingsand things in the"worldofreciprocity" The unity is the basis, claims Levi-Strauss,fora "truehumanism" and for him as humanity's functions "principlefor all collective wisdom and action" (1976a:42, 271-74). There is a "cosmic
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base of which past statusas a miningcenter,the subsistence forms generates "urban"superstructural (1956:281).Similarly, in Brazil are dealt puzzling practicesof racial classification "local habitat"-the into the community's withby reference I see . . . a kind of wisdomwhichsavage races practicedspontanein theconfrastructural base forclass and racial designations andthe ofwhich, realmadously rejection bythe modern world, isthe sensus of a speech community (1964a:158). Harris develops ness.... What wear and tear,what uselessirritation we could spare The NatureofCultreatise in his epistemological if we agreed ourselves to acceptthetrueconditions of ourhuman thisposition of infrastructural and realize we are notin a position to free experience that ourselves turalThings(1964a) and in his restatement these in CulturalMaterialism(1979). Throughout principles itspatterns from and rhythm! completely intercultural studies,"nature"dominates.Infrastructural patBecause the West has spurned this rhythm, says Levito founda can be trusted ofproduction and reproduction terns suffer keen remorseover theirculStrauss, anthropologists cannotbe made cross-cultural, panhumansciencebecausethey of the environment ture'sexploitation and of Third World, to appear and disappear. They are grounded in nature indigenouspeoples. Borrowingtermsfromothertraditions' (1979:56, 58). languages,Levi-Strauss can even refer to thisethnocentric exIntraculturally, Harris invokes"nature"and its infrastrucploitation as a moralfailure sin."'19 turalprinciples thatis humanity's "original to interpret thehistory ofhis own anthropologThe essence of the anthropologist's vocationis to "atone" for ical tradition. He appeals to "nature" and itslawfulregularities this "originalsin," to go out amidstthe waningpeoples and to explainthe gradualemergence of culturalmaterialism. Acthus to redeemthe whole (1978:389-92). In such language, cordingly, cultural materialist research strategy is itself a result Levi-Straussworksout the moral implications of his symbol ofwidespread The forces of"nainfrastructural developments. "worldof reciprocity" and in so doingarticulates thepreferred ture,"in interface withculture, make probableacademics'atmode ofbeing-in-the-world intrinsic to the Verstehen envelopto the technoeconomic tending and technoenvironmental base ing his structuralist explanations. of theirexistence.Infrastructural pressures directmoneysfor The major image functioning as symbolin Harris'sworkis researchtowardthe generalmedical sciences,biology,nutri"nature." This notionis again symbolicin the threesenses and agronomy. It is "nature,"at base, that tion,demography, in thisessay. beingemployed prompts"the contemporary premiumupon scientism," thus We maydo well to pause hereto reflect on this briefly desigmaking"the expansionof culturalecologicalresearchalmost nation of "nature"as symbol. Such a designation presumes inevitable" (1968:655). Harris'sinterpretations of past culture that "nature"is not simplyan idea or conceptof a reality theories (from JohnLocke to JulianSteward)reston his invohumanpersonand mind,something subexcluding potentially cation of this image. Harris himself is aware of the way his duable and exploitable.Cross-cultural studiesof humaninvocultural materialist,intercultural theorydovetails with his cationoftheword"nature"suggest to and thatit is susceptible intracultural approach to history.In fact, as he says, "the often and invention dependent upon humanconstruction (Telpresent-day polemical point alone makes historical lenbachand Kimura 1979:177-85). The notionof "nature"as understanding possible"(1968:216). and inventedaspect of the symbolstressesthe constructed Harris'simage of "nature"is creatively positedby him. It term.Writing fromthe perspective of a history of the term, is an interpretive device, not merely the product of his Errol Harriswrites(1979:9): philosopher anthropologicalresearch. However much his explanatory or give evidenceforthe powersof Apartfrom man'sthought and self-reflective consciousness there methodsdevelop, refine, It is hisownself-determining wouldbe no idea ofNature. and free nature,the notionretainsits characteras presupposedand himawareofhisworld that andhisrelation to it. So thought makes constructed. Harrishimself thisat points, acknowledges viewhis whatever ideaofNature science itis man's ownscience, generates, inghisown cultural materialist strategy as analogousto a Kuhownconstruction, hisownjudgment oftheworld andtheinterpreta- nian paradigmof"overarching setsofessentially metaphysical ofhisownexperience. tion, self-made, assumptions" (1979:23).To be sure,trueto theideals ofErkaiithe important task of comparNature, then,is not simplya reality given,an "already-out- ren,Harrisdoes not relinquish ing and evaluatingstrategies and theirmetaphysical assumpthere,now real" set of forcesto which a social scientist can tions. This commitment to comparisonof researchstrategies refer. The possibility confidently beingsuggested here,in this and his vigorousarguments for the primacyof his cultural analysisof Harris's culturalmaterialism, is that "nature"is materialist strategy, however,do not mean thathis use of the also an image invoked by an anthropological to interpreter image "nature"is freefromsymbolic creativity. for cross-cultural inperform significant symbolicfunctions in Harris's culturalmaterialism "Nature" functions to requiry. present a comprehensive understanding. In otherwords,this This imagedominates Harris'stexts.Interculturally, Harris image possessesthatsurplusof signification thatwe call Verrepeatedly invokes"nature,"thelawfulregularities ofthemaoccurring image that is terialworld,in orderto groundhis transcendence of different stehen.It is not simplya frequently creatively posited by him; it is one that re-presents a comculturalhorizons.Humans are everywhere on this dependent prehensive perspective that allows the transcendence of culmaterialworld,and it is to infrastructural principles thatanshould referif they wish to speak coherently tural horizons, in generalizationsabout contexts in the thropologists Americas, Europe, Brazil, India, Mozambique, and elseabout human sociocultural in difexistenceas encountered ferent horizons ofhis own contexts(1979:56-58). Anthropology, with this infra- where,and thefusionof past and present The symbol in his writings, tradition. "nature"makes present structural reference point,becomesan operationalized cultural momentof accompanying and enscience that is ecological,technoenvironmental, and techno- then, the non-methodic economicin character. velopingunderstanding. In Harris'scase, thiscomprehensive The problems Verstehen includesan encountered by Harrisin his earliestethnogvision of a preferred mode of being-in-theespeciallystriking raphiesare resolvedby him through infrastructural analyses world. Harris defendshis culturalmaterialism not only as thatsuggest just how dominant is the image of "nature."Do science for academic anthropolopanhuman operationalized the people of a small village in the isolated Brazilian highgistsbut also as good fortheworld.Whiledisclaiming utopian "urban"features? country possessstrangely Then, Harristells aspirations, he presents his culturalmaterialism as a perspecus, thisambiguity can be resolvedby reference to thevillage's tive thatnot onlycan save contemporary social sciencefrom "mystification" and "obscurantism" (1979: xii) but also can il19 For further analysis,see Taylor (1983). lui4nine the causes of humanexploitation and suffering. in the world of reciprocity rhythm" which otherculturesreWestern spectbutwhichhas been neglected culture bymodern (1978:123):
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witha moral Harris'sculturalmaterialism, then,is infused vision.This is particularly evidentwhenhe places his science of culture in relation to the moral problems or current "pathologies"of our time (1974:226). This medical science metaphor is especiallyrevealing.War, class conflict, poverty, sexism,pollution,indeed "all the otherweird drivingforces of our competitivecapitalist economy" (Harris 1974:227; exterhumansfrom 1979:285)are as so manydiseasesafflicting nal infrastructural conditions.War, forexample, as a social thatwe may is not instinct but rather "pathology," something on the"cultural and ecological prevent soberreflection through restraints"that increase its probability. Expanding the thatthecurrent era does notsuffer metaphor, Harriscontends from an "overdoseofobjectivity" (1974:226).Quite to theconis needed, and Harris therefore trary,more objectivity predose of operationalism" scribesa "strong (1979:15). This visionof a preferred mode of being-in-the-world, presumed by and accompanying his culturalmaterialism, has a in his comparisons function significant of cultural materialism with alternativeresearchstrategies.A moral polemic permeates those evaluations. For Harris, a science of culture based on the regularities of naturein infrastructure best provides the condition formoraljudgmentbecause "theabsolute precondition forany kind of moraljudgmentis our abilityto identify who did what to whom, when, where, and how" (1979:324).Invokinga moralsensibility in his readers,Harris proceedsto claim that an alternative strategy such as strucforexample,"mocksthe hungry turalism, livingand dead by thestruggle forsubsistence transforming intoa gameofmental imagery. The idea thatcookingis primarily a languageis food forthought only among those who have neverhad to worry about havingenoughto eat" (1979:189). Similarly, "dialectical materialism," by perpetuating a beliefin a historical dialectic thatpromises to benefit exploitedclasses, onlydeceivesthem and providesnew exploitative ideologyfortotalitarian elites (p. 158). The grammarians and ethnoscientists of "cognitive idealism" are enchanted with rules, codes, and structures which,likeso muchinstitutionalized social scienceofthe"Parsonians,"tendtowarda conservatism thatacceptsthe system "as givenand seeks to accountforits stability" (pp. 284-85). "Structural Marxism" offendsmoral sensibility, in Harris's because itsfailure reading, to define "exploitation" meansthat it cannotidentify who is exploiting whom(pp. 236-37). "Obscurantism," which denigrates objective method in its of subjectivity, glorification shouldbe abhorrent to the moral sensibilitiesof even its own advocates, for without an sciencethatcogently operationalized discerns "who does what to whom,when,where,and how," theirown worstfearsofa and nuclearconfrontation are police-military state,retreatism, morelikelyto become reality (p. 326). The offenses to a moralvisioncaused by failure to embrace an operationalized culturalmaterialism are especiallystriking to Harris in the "epistemological anarchism"of Paul Feyin erabend,who argues(1963:33) foran "aesthetic judgment" social science;"flexibility, even sloppinessin semantical mattersis a prerequisite ofscientific notonly Harristries progress." to identify in thisposition "logicalcontradictions" but to show thatit has dire consequencesforhumankind (p.23): It cannot bea matter oftaste whether you believe ordo not believe that is a nmenace, pollution thattheunderdeveloped nations are getting that themulti-nationals poorer, arepromoting an arms race, that war is instinctual, thatwomen and blacks are inferior, or that thegreen revolution isa hoax.LetFeyerabend stand before the ovens ofDachau orthe ditch atMylai andsaythat ourscientific understanding ofsociocultural is ultimately systems nothing butan "aesthetic judgment." Harris pits his operationalized science against this aesthetic judgment, claiming thatit is culturalmaterialism thathas potential to heal a "pathological" world.Without cultural materialism and its commitment to objectivity, humannatureis deVol. 26 No. 2 April 1985

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graded. Only with that objectivity, as Harris stresses on the final page ofCultural Materialism, are we seton a pathleading to bothtruth and love (p. 341). SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Drawingpredominantly from Ricoeur'shermeneutical theory, I have presentedsymbolicdimensionsas realms of "understanding"in anthropological discourse.The symbolsI have considered hereare not onlyimagesthatare dominant in the texts ofanthropologists or are creatively posited bythem.They are also, more importantly, images that nurture an "understanding"that is a non-methodic in anthropological moment explanation. Ricoeur'shermeneutical theory may servereflection on anthropological knowledgein that it gives place to both anthropology's practiceof rigorous explanatory methodand its necessary acknowledgmentthat even the most rigorous methodsare mediated by truthsdisclosed in personal and sociocultural preunderstanding. Ricoeur's hermeneutics does not suggest pitting hermeneutical understanding againstwhat is often called a "positivist"commitment to explanatory method. Rather, bothorientations receivea place in a theory of interpretation involving "the whole processthatencompasses explanationand understanding" (Ricoeur 1976:74). On the basis of Ricoeur'sdialecticof understanding and explanation, it has been possible to focus on understanding in the anof Levi-Straussand Harris,two vigorouspropothropologies nentsof explanatory method. In Levi-Strauss's and Harris'scases, "worldof reciprocity" and "nature"are two imagesthatsymbolically nurture an enIn summation Verstehen. we may compassingand unifying in their identify twomajorfeatures ofthisunderstanding texts. First,on the level of the intellectual coherence of theirtexts, this Verstehen betweenthe intercultural providescontinuity and intracultural realmsof theirinterpretations. In the intercultural realmthereis a transcendence ofcultural boundaries, in the intracultural realma fusionof temporal with horizons, the resultthat theiranthropological explanationsdisclose a concernwitha fundamental and comprehensive visionof human existence.Second, on a moral level, this Verstehen includes reference to modes of being-in-the-world that LeviStrauss and Harris prefer and occasionallypress upon their readers.Levi-Strauss his structuralism as one way for presents the totalizing to attaina "truehumanism," the anthropologist ofwhichla pense'e rhythm sauvagehas often alreadydiscerned in the cosmos. Harris presentshis culturalmaterialism as a scienceof culturewarranted of his by the moral imperatives era. Discernment ofsymbolic dimensions ofVerstehen maybe an initialstep toward further reflection on the matricesout of which diverseexplanationsare formulated in and presented the anthropological literature. To focuson thesesymbolic dimensions is, however,to take up thisreflection in a particular withan angleofvisionwide way-to approachthesematrices that pervades the interculenoughto glimpsethe Verstehen turaland intracultural processesand the advocatedmodes of in their thatanthropologists being-in-the-world bringtogether texts. on symbolically nurtured our reflecBy focusing Verstehen, tionson thematrices thatgenerate and sustainanthropological explanationmay help preventseveral possible reductionist ofanthropological either as a matter readings explanation: only ofaccumulating and reporting intercultural the data, as simply reflection of the particular worldin whichthe anthropologist has been nurtured, or as the working out of the anthropologist'sown set of moral sensibilities. Reflection on Verstehen
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explanationis a suggeststhat the matrixof anthropological intraculintercultural processes, multifaceted moment uniting as well. moralsensibilities turalprocesses,and interpreters' is not ofunderstanding, This moment, a symbolic dimension
the realm of "mythology . . . or even theology" that Murdock

statusofcross-cultural lamented as threatening the"scientific" ofhowever,wherein symbols, explanation. It is a dimension, the cosmologies of "other"peoples, ten studiedas nurturing "to establish powerful, peralso function fortheanthropologist . . . by formoods and motivations vasive and long-lasting and clothmulating conceptions ofa generalorderofexistence thatthe ing theseconceptions withsuch an aura of factuality moods and motivationsseem uniquely realistic" (Geertz 1966:4).

and speciesevolution. pothesesabout individualdevelopment into two totally disjoint fields: It also cuts anthropology and neoanthropology. paleoanthropology is based approachto anthropology In brief, thehermeneutic and processes,on the one betweenreal things on a confusion hand, and theideas and wordswe createin orderto describe them,on the other.Anyonewho adopts that and understand of thana student makerrather approachis boundto be a myth thana studiesrather hencea subjectof anthropological myth, (see Bunge 1983fora characterization anthropologist scientific of science).

ofPsychiatry, and Department ofAnthropology Department Case WesternReserve Universityand Medical School, Cleveland,Ohio 44106, U.S.A. 16 x 84 Comments to what may now be Taylor's articleis a usefulcontribution ironicthat ofscience.It is onlyslightly called theanthropology by MARIO BUNGE CitingScholte,Stockthe sciencehe studiesis anthropology. Foundationsand PhilosophyofScience Unit,McGill UniBerreman's [1966]"ethnography ing,and Geertz(butomitting versity, Montreal,Que., Canada H3A 1W7. 9 x 84 exand scientific and ideas regarding insight of ethnography" of Taylor'spaper is a specimenof what may be called "humanRicoeur'sworkon therelationship and employing planation) anthropology. This schoolconistic,"as opposed to scientific, and explanation,Taylor suggestsit is insight/understanding data collection the historicist or Geisteswissenschaf- appropriate to considernot onlyethnographic tinues,in anthropology, ago by philosophers who ten movement initiateda century but also the developmentand perpetuationof theoretical as culturally and personally polycan be understood empathically (by claimedthathumanaffairs paradigmsin anthropology A recent variantof He argues,rightly, thatthe "comprehenbut notexplainedscientifically. semousenterprises. Verstehen) are as a merger ofthe to by specific theoretical paradigms thisschoolis hermeneutics, whichoriginated referred sive realities" realities. of independent not reflections with pheconstructs, symbolic old tradition of text(in particularBible) criticism and Harrisas representatives apon Levi-Strauss nomenology, an idealisticphilosophy.The hermeneutic Taylorfocuses in Erkit involvesthe " Both are rooted glossocentric: proachto anthropology is strictly ofkindsof"sciencesofanthropology. and to the ideals of a Naturwissenschaft thanfaberor sapiens. There thesisthatman is loquensrather larenand committed are a numberof problems withthisview. distinct "'modes"(actually, levels)ofexplaevidencemarkedly whilethe ofmentalstructures, or the interpretation of texts,applies First, hermeneutics, nation;one "explains"in terms determiotherrootsabout fortechnoenvironmental/ecological only to texts,which happen not to be the staple of the anin is supposedto studyreal peoplein real The latter thropologist. nants.Taylor shows how the two paradigmsare grounded or booksthathis subjectsmay liferather thanthemanuscripts thoughdedicated to Erkldren,and are symbolic Verstehen, can claim to do herproduce.The onlyway an anthropologist withdominantsymbols(mindand nature)thatunite systems intra-and intercultural human actions,feelings, and meneutic analysisis by treating theirformulators' preunderstandings, ideas as iftheywerephrasesin a language-which is ofcourse and personal moral philosophies.Thus the understanding, the way Levi-Strausstreatsthem.But, since humansare not similarand sharesome elemenparadigmsare fundamentally or herof exclusivelyspeakers, this amounts to a gross distortion tal features with seeminglyopposed interpretive anthropology. reality. meneutic approachesin contemporary Taylor's analysis,thoughwell done, may have limitedapapproach populates the world Secondly,the hermeneutic withimages,symbols, of the self-reflexive thatare often onlyin the It may be seen in the context and metaphors plicability. author'shead. Whereordinary thatincreaseas the disciplineages. In some ways, humanssee a riveras good to tendencies dive intoor fishin, the hermeneutic anthropologist may wish his workis easierin thathe focuseson now fadingand someto see an animatebeingor an obscuresymbol thanon forit. It is true, in anthropology rather whateccentric grandtraditions ofcourse,thatsome primitives do treatcertain physical things sciences that believe their discoursesreferto an empirical as animatebeings-i.e., theyare animists-but and processes world,such as theeconomic,medical,and biologicalsciences. thisdoes not entail that those who studythemmustbelieve readersmay Thus, while his case is good foranthropology, such myths, let alone make them. Scientists are supposed to An allied but perhaps takeit to be restricted to thatdiscipline. describeand explainmyths, not make them. task is the analysis of biomedicine,with its more difficult tendsto read his Thirdly,the "humanistic" anthropologist paradigm. Some of my work ("Verstehen") biophysiological own myths intothetextsofhis colleagues.Thus Taylorwrites and that of others in medical anthropology (Gaines 1979, that"themajor image functioning as symbol in Harris'swork Gaines and Hahn 1982,Hahn and Gaines 1984)is thediscernis 'nature.'" This is confusing naturewith"nature,"thething and the mentof the interpretive natureof biomedicaltheories withan idea ofit. WhenHarrisinvokesnaturehe refers to the cultural basis of clinical practice. Outside of medical annoncultural someoftheputatively partof theworld,notto one of themanypossible "hard"sciencesshouldlikethropology, as ideas of nature. When he discusseshuman reproduction, wise be investigated. For example,theapplicationofTaylor's from different or myth sincethey to an objecproMarxisms, making,he refers trading approachto theMarxism(or,better, tive biologicalprocessunder social constraints. He does not liferate indicatinga loose grasp on a putatively constantly, mistakereproduction about it. forany of the myths economicreality) appearingin all of the social sciempirical, since"humanistic" anthropology seversall theties ence disciplines Fourthly, would make his pointsmorewidelygermane. to the anIn sum, his work appears a useful contribution of the sciencesof man with biology,it can make no use of enbiologyto explain human affairs.This deprivesit of a rich is therewith thropology of science and that field'sfuture sourceof information as well as of an opportunity to testhyhanced.
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byYVONGAUTHIER Department of Philosophy,University of Montreal, C.P. 6138, Montreal,Que., Canada H3C 3J7. 4 Ix 84 Symbols have a lifeoftheir own. Theyalso have a logicoftheir own;thecombinatorial natureofthatinternal logicofsymbolic constructions shouldbe stressed. Levi-Strauss prefers thelanto thelanguageof constructions, guage of structures but he is fullyaware of the combinatorial characterof the structural relationships thatconstitute a "worldof reciprocity." Harris, on theotherside, insists upon an idea ofnaturewhichhas the combinatorial of a lawlikeuniverse.However,maattributes terialism here is but a different asword forthe ontological ofa naturalistic sumptions thathas,scientific anthropology pretensions.Both Levi-Straussand Harris have overlookedthe crucialrole of language. The notionof mindor spirit in Levi-Strauss and theidea of naturein Harrisare metaphysical presuppositions thatshould be criticized moredeftly thanthe Verstehen phenomenologists do. Neitherregularity of naturenor the dynamicforceof the human mind is a sufficient explanationforculturalphenomena, and an "objective"scienceneedsepistemological foundationswithmoreformal A combinatorial constraints. of theory language and symbolicconstructions would dispense with metaphysics and would emphasizetheinnerlogicof symbolic interactionswithout recourse to any "behind-the-scenes" agent.The veryidea of a creativelinguistic agent,beyondits and combinatorial purelylinguistic qualities,is not part of a theorywhich regardslanguage itselfas littlemore than a device. Language is some (finite) set of signsstenographic signalsand symbolsbeing subsetsof thatfinite set-with an set of rules or combinations, equally finite the set of which thepowerset ofthesame finite constitutes set. The production of meaninghere is combinatorial and does not possess the features of infinite It is obvious that Chomskyan generation. such a theory can onlybe alluded to here,but the important thesole building material ofan pointis thatlanguageremains science once the idea of human nature,the anthropological idea of natureitself,or even the idea of man have become in themetaphysical exhibits singular museum ofanthropology.

Taylor:SYMBOLIC

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knowledge), creatorof untestable or shamanistic charismatic, thequestionofmethod.UntilTaylorspecifies he cannotignore a complex"text,"I symbolfrom how one distillsa dominant to believehim when he concludesthat"nafeelno obligation In fact,I materialism. ofcultural symbol ture"is thedominant can readilyproduceabundantevidencethatit is not. Even a is "text"showsthat"nature" oftherelevant inspection cursory neverused alone but is always partof an eticbehavioralconcompojunction,as in the demo-techno-econo-environmental or the titlesCulture,Man and Nature nentsof infrastructure what and Culture,People, Nature. What rulesof knowledge, materiofcultural canonsof truth, endow Taylor'sdistillation with wordforsymbols) (an old-fashioned alism'sbasic themes and theoretical than the epistemological greaterauthenticity If Taylorwishesto go statedin the"text"? explicitly principles I should be glad to answer beyondthoseexplicitstatements, the questionsand to submitto the teststhat we requireof when we wish to probetheirpsyches.Renativeparticipants for thestruggle from Taylorcannotremovehimself grettably, syma scienceof culture.His effort to dispenseeven-handed an Olympian thegodsbutnotthe bolismfrom perchmayedify below. mortals byH. DIETER HEINEN AparInstitutoVenezolanode Investigaciones Cientificas, tado 1827, Caracas 1010A, Venezuela.16 Ix 84 and schoolsofepistemology, In myopinion, themajorWestern in general,have run theircourse. perhaps even philosophy and its Neither and itsvariantsnorphenomenology positivism (see Adornoet al. 1969) have been sisterfocushermeneutics of able to overcomethe schismexposed by the nominalism but the "natural"sciences lem peculiarto theirsubdiscipline, publicconsciousness are in thesame boat-a facthiddenfrom behaviorof some of theirmoreignorant onlyby the strutting have notyet and quantumphysics Relativity theory members. and probacommonframework intoa coherent been brought open to the bly neverwill be. There are two major attitudes social sciencestoday:the anarchiciconoclasmof Feyerabend
and his followers (Feyerabend 1975, 1978, 1981; Duerr 1981) Duns Scotus (1266-1308), the Magister Sutilis (see also Lonergan 1957:371-74). To many anthropologists this seems a prob-

Department ofAnthropology, University ofFlorida, Gainesville, Fla. 32611, U.S.A. 19 x 84 I wish to thankTaylor forthe generoushumanism thatpervades his attempt to identify the dominant symbolof cultural materialism. But it is not possible to ignorethe factthathis conception of anthropology differs fundamentally frommine and thathis interpretation ofcultural materialism is incorrect. I have challenged mycolleaguesto producea better and more testable integrated corpusofparsimonious yetbroad-scope theories underthe auspices of an explicitset of epistemological and theoreticalprinciplesfor explaining the evolution of sociocultural differences and similarities (Harris 1979). Taylor's articleignoresthis challenge. As a symbolist and hermeneutician, Taylorwishesto remain serenely above theproblem of evaluating alternativeexplanationsof sociocultural phenomena.In identifying the respective modes-of-being-inthe-world of culturalmaterialism and structuralism, Taylor makes no claim thatsuch knowledgewill help to resolvethe viewsofcausality conflicting embodiedin their differradically ent sets of theories. At best,therefore, I could onlysay of his articlethatit is redundant: I am alreadysufficiently aware of the ways my modes-of-being-in-the-world differ fromLeviStrauss's. However,I cannotavoid registering an additional objection. If Taylorwishesto be takenseriously as a scientific symbolist (as opposed to being taken seriouslyas an artistic, literary, Vol.26 *No. 2 April1985

by MARVIN HARRIS

and others. would inGiven thisstate of affairs, Taylor'scontribution one-ten years ago. Fifteen deed have been an interesting years ago it was George Dalton who restagedan economic Europe as debatethathad alreadytakenplace in 19th-century without the Methodenstreit leading to any results.Now it is theturnof Verstehen, as put forward by Paul Ricoeurwithout Edmund Max Weber,Alfred Schiutz, so much as mentioning Husserl (see Ricoeur 1967b), or the neo-Kantiansexcept of the Baden school. Dilthey,the weakestmember and GeisteswissenschafThere are no Naturwissenschaften accordtenas such. Each scienceuses a wide rangeofmethods at hand, and all wantto arriveat explanaing to theproblem to predict it is easier,however, thanto tions.In somesituations explain. One can easily predict(given mass, velocity,etc.) will land. Once it has come to rest,you wherea bodyin flight history, witnessinformation, need Verstehen, circumstances, neverwillbe and yourexplanation and a wide rangeoffactors, complete. But why call one procedurescience and not the even la body of knowledge, other?Science is any systematic ciencia mistica.
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in the work of Ibn Khaldfin (1958 [1377]), Vico (1978 [1725])

ofscholarssuch as Bourdieu(1972, and thecautioussearching withthe to combineKantian elements 1979), who are trying "praxis"conceptthatis associatedwithMarx but has its roots

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Here are a few additional fine points: Rousseau's (1962 [1762])pitie is interpreted by Taylorin too broad a way. It is equal to plain English "pity": "telle est la forcede la pitie ontencorepeinea naturelle, que les moeursles plus deprav6es detruir, puisqu'onvoit tous les jours dans nos spectacless'at-

la clemence,l'humanite, sinon la qu'est-ceque la generosite, pitieappliquee aux faibles"(p. 59). Insteadof havingMarx explainedto himby Harris,Taylor I fully himself. shouldhave read up on Marxianconcepts agree with Harris's diagnosisof our current ills, but "the technoas the moving economicbase" is not what Marx understood as to repeatthe ofhistory. Marx was notso simpleminded force but had a Roman adage primum vivere,deindephilosophari, theforces ofproducnotion oftheinterrelation between precise ofproduction tion(Produktivkrifte) and therelations (Produktionsverhaltnisse). This in turnimpliesa predictive powerof from one modeofproduction to theexact processof transition feudalism to capitalism. This is what"critianother, e.g., from cal anthropology" (i.e., Marxian theory applied to anthropolreaderbyKahn and thesedays(see therecent ogy)is discussing 1978 article Llobera, 1981, in whichBob Scholte'sinteresting is included). A discussion shouldnotbe based on Sahlins of"reciprocity" (1965, 1972). The work to look at ranges fromThurnwald (1932) to Pryor(1977) and should include,at the veryleast, Gouldner(1960), Homans (1958), Blau (1964), and Belshaw (1965). In spite of my harshcriticism, I thinkTaylor'sexerciseis in throwing on theanthropological worthwhile, especially light shamans.But, as my and two of its mostpowerful subculture used to say when asked if he liked a particular grandfather but please, don'tdo it again." dish: "It was excellent,

tendriret pleurer, aux malheurs d'un infortune . . . en effet,

Department of Philosophy,York University, Downsview, Ont., Canada M3J 1P3. 9 x 84 My criticisms of the symbolicmode in anthropology (Jarvie 1976) have always been directedagainstthe attribution of a "surplusof signification" to the results rather thanagainstthe results themselves. It therefore comesas no surprise to me that Taylor,stalking the supposedly structuralist or cultural materialist discourseof anthropologists, finds it heavywithimages and metaphors that lend themselves to symbolicinterpretation.Theirdiscourse embodiesa visionoftheworldand ofthe natureof anthropology. A fewlocal criticisms first: Taylorrefers to Ricoeur'shaving a "theory" ofsymbols in his papernothing butarticulates at all a theory resembling even in the loosest construction of that wordand, moreover, no clear problem to whichsuch a theory stand as solution.Again, in his comments might on Ricoeur, Taylorallowsthata symbol is variousthings, including a "surplus ofsignification." For example,theuse oftheword"morning"(or perhapstheimageofmorning-Tayloris notclear)in a poemsignifies morethana meteorological (does he notmean astronomical?)phenomenon. In belletristiclanguage this would say thatthereare overtones to theword"morning" that the poet is deliberately invoking through theappropriate syntacticaland semantic placement ofthewordin theflowofthe poem's primarymeaning. Taylor's formulation ("surplus") seems to suppose that thereis some state of signification in whichthereis no surplus,thatthereare words(thereare cerno images)thatstandin a one-to-one tainly relation to things. This supposition is highly questionable.Perhapscertainvery elaboratepropernames,namesso elaboratethatonlyone person could be so named, would fit.But, notoriously, proper names, brand names, productnames, the names of famous people can be used as figures of literary artjust because they
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by I. C. JARVIE

a surplusmoreover thatis not carrya surplusof signification, An examplewould be thename "Napoalwaysundercontrol. leon." To those brought up in the English-speaking world it has overtonesquite different to those it gets in the Frenchspeaking world; the pairs positive/negative, righteous/ are some of the bullying, strong/dictatorial, glorious/fatuous contrasts. oflanguagethatwhat Indeed, it is a generalfeature is denotedis not the same as what is connotedand that all language, even thatstripped down forthepurposesofscience, mathematics, and the law, has "surplusof signification." There is, however,a broaderobjectionto Taylor's enterprise. His hidden agenda is to demonstrate that everyone, is in the idealistcamp. Levi-Strauss, who thought willy-nilly, of himselfas revealingstructures of the human mind, and to explainculture Harris,trying as an adaptivesurvivalmechto anism, have theirmetaphorsand symbolsdeconstructed show that theyare (also?) engaged in poetic and moralistic exercises.Withoutdenying thatthereare poeticor moralistic to defend theidea aspectsto what theydo, I wish strenuously thatthereis a scientific thatcannotbe approprianthropology ated by idealism. Perhaps thiscan mostreadilybe begun by countering Taylor's suggestion that Harris's conceptof "nature"is a construct thatcomes fromthe lifeof human beings and therefore cannot precedeor extendbeyondthe world of humanbeings. is invalid,although it is possiblethatincauThis argument tious formulations by Harris leave him vulnerable.Harris's To thisend he finds is to explaincultural formations. problem it convenient to dividehis explanation intoexogenous and envariablesare nature's laws dogenousvariables.The exogenous and particular initialconditions. To counter idealistreductions of thispostulateof nature,all Harrisneed do is show thatthe idealist adds nothingto, and takes away nothingfrom,his The idealistcan reply, ofcourse,thatwhathe is explanations. in is understanding interested and not explanation. To thisin turn those interestedin a science of anthropology must thatthe vague notionof "understanding" is the counterargue sourceofmuchoftheidealistdrift 1972:chap. 2; 1984). (Jarvie Understandingas an aim serves the needs of alienated of academe and is even so described Hegelianisedintellectuals by Ricoeur in such metaphorsas reachingout, connection, moment.Understanding is for Ricoeur and enlightenment, a sense of being connectedto things, Taylor restoring and it to start obviously appeals mostto thosewho feeldisconnected with. Taylor's symbolhunting, then,workson his own text, his idealistworldview and moralising. revealing None ofthese italicised metaphors bears on the scientificquestions of whether a proposed orHarexplanation (by,e.g., Levi-Strauss ris)is valid, has been tested,and has passed the tests.

byROBERT LAYTON Department ofAnthropology, University ofDurham,43 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, England. 11 Ix 84 Taylor appears to be reactingagainst the once fashionable setsup hypotheses at randomand tests conceptthata scientist themwithoutmotiveor priorassumption.But what Taylor calls the "symbols"guiding the work of Harris and LeviStraussare surely better termed paradigms (Kuhn 1962). Symbols do not existin isolation;theyexistin structured relationships with othersymbols.A paradigmmay be definedas a structured set of propositions which focusesattention on the flowofeventsexperienced, certain ofreleidentifying patterns vance and connection betweenthem(see also Ardener1980). of data Paradigmsare not Bad Things. Selectiverecording with objective fromthe flow of events is not incompatible recording in thechosenfieldofstudy.Taylorrelieson Ricoeur to characterise threestagesin thedevelopment of"humanenquiry,"from preliminary insight through testing to finalcomCURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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Taylor: SYMBOLIC DIMENSIONS prehension.I suggest that he overlooks anotheraspect of Ricoeur'sdistinction betweenunderstanding and explanation tent)is predictable, Harris thatthe environment imposesunthat offers further insightinto the work of Levi-Straussand Harris. avoidable constraints on human action(but not how cultures will adapt). Harris's positionresemblesGodelier's(1975:19Ricoeurcontrasted language,as a timeless system of related in history, 21) assertion thatthereare no genuinealternatives signs,with discourse,which is realized by speakersthrough althoughGodelieris equivocal on this point,concedingthat timeand whichis aboutsomething. He sought to overcome the may "no general history exists"(p. 6). An analogywithbiology problemsuffered by sociologyof penetrating a speaker'ssubbe helpful.Biology has establisheda scientific basis forexjective intentions, arguingthat recordedtextswere cutfree plaining thestructure ofgenetic systems and, through ecology, from the speaker'sintention and revealeda possibleworld(a oftheenvironment forexplaining theeffects sysupon genetic culture?):"We speak about the 'world' of [Classical] Greece, not to designateany morewhat were the situations forthose is thefuture of tems.What biology does notattempt to predict who livedthem,butto designate thenon-situational references evolution: whatlifeforms ofyears mayexiston Earthmillions in thefuture. This dependson therandomprocessofmutation whichoutlivetheeffacement ofthefirst and willhenceforth be offered in the content generating future variety of geneticsystems. as possible modes of being" (1979:79). Ricoeur suggestedthatrecorded "texts"of social actioncould be analysed Taylor offers a retrospective understanding of why Leviin the same fashion.He criticised Levi-Strauss'smethodof Straussand Harris chose to workwithparticular paradigms, or studying myth as one whichprovidedexplanationof the sysbut paradigmsare not true or false; theyare appropriate inappropriate modes of reconstructing relationships between tematic relationsbetween componentsof a mythbut not not insight data. understanding, intothe possibleworldof the narrator's culturaltradition (p. 96). This readingof Ricoeurprompts the question,whyshould by BOB SCHOLTE Levi-Straussconfine himself to the level of explanation? The Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, Universiteit van is thatexplanation of theway in whichthe answer,I suggest, The Amsterdam, Sarphatistraat 106A,1018 GV Amsterdam, allows prediction.This is parts of a systemare interrelated 5 x 84 Netherlands. in the sense the termhas forphilosophers "prediction" of science. That is, it can but does notnecessarily byTaylor'suse ofsomeofmyessaysas a thefuture ThoughI am flattered predict I have two misgivings. structure of events.If understanding dependson texts,howsourceofinspiration forhis own effort, Futureeventscannot First,the Wissensanthropologie thatI have triedto articulate ever, it mustbe gained retrospectively. be understood. Thereis another thatTayreason,not(to myknowledge) overtheyearshas alwaysmade theideology critique proposedby Ricoeur,thatthisshouldbe so. Discourseis relaa centralfocus. I do not denythat lor relegatesto footnotes tivelyunpredictable. Althoughthe structure of grammaris "culturalanthropological enterprises accrue meaningand are it generates predictable, an almostinfinite number of possible guidedby invoking symbols," but I further insist thata subsestatements. Were it not to some degree unpredictable, disis necessary: thesymbolic dimension must quentradicalization course would not yield information; it would be redundant at all timesbe relatedto its pragmatic use and abuse. In other textsmustbe squarelyplaced within unwords, anthropological (Cherry1957:37, 182, 245-47). The reasonfordiscourse's in a blindlyrandom theirsociocultural, and politicalcontexts. predictability is not that it is generated historical, Symbols fashionbut that in discoursewe see the creativity conmay indeed be constitutive of realityas Taylor rightly of human in action. This, I believe, is essentially culturalthought the tends,but the additionaland crucialethno-logical questionis reason Evans-Pritchard what on whose behalf and at whose exargued, as Taylor notes, that social "Who constitutes shouldbe regarded not as one ofthehumanities, pense?"(Scholte1981:97). Once we ask such a question,Tayanthropology as a science:it should be concerned withunderstanding, not totalities" become concretehistoricalprolor's "prereflexive the prediction (1950:120).Although Evans-Pritchard or specific normative choices. regarded cesses, actual vested interests, structure of the structure of They resembleGouldner's"domain assumptions" (Gouldner of languageas an exemplification culture(p. 122), he argued that history 1970) or Habermas's Erkenntnisinteresse (Habermas 1968) must be taken into account. Anthropology rather textual"privileged thanthemerely images"ofRicoeur. should not treatman as "an automaof laws in terms Such context-sensitive available for ton,"shouldnothope to discover "sociological analysesare, incidently, whichhis actions,ideas and beliefs can be explainedand in the bothHarris and Levi-Strauss.Paul and Rabinow (1976) have in theseterms,and thereare lightof whichtheycan be plannedand controlled" (p. 123). analysedHarris's anthropology I suggest, has several such radical critiquesof Levi-Strauss's however,thatthisdoes notmean explanation structuralism, no place in anthropology. One might explaintherulesoffoot- e.g., Bourdieu and Passeron (1967), Diamond (1974), Furet ball to an alien, althoughto understand footballone would (1967), Lefebvre(1971), Schaff(1972), or Scholte(1974). need to know its place in modernWesternculture.To what The wissensanthropologische is important dimension notbeextent is football predictable?The outcome of individual cause one cannotdo without it (Taylordoes) butbecause to do matches is not,because theydependultimately on thecreative so leaves the analysisof a givenauthor's"advocacyof a prein putting skillsofplayers the and unthegametogether. ferred mode ofbeing-in-the-world" Nonetheless, unanthropological rulesthey shouldabide byare eminently Werethis predictable. critical.If we ask insteadwhat boththegenesisand theresult notso thereferee ofthemoralvisionsin questionare, we are also led to consider would be out ofa job, and thegamewouldbe to play. impossible theirethno-logic and actual moralpraxis. Ricoeur'smodel of language and discoursesuffers froma I do nothave thespace to deal withtheethno-logical dimenweaknesswhen applied to social structure it to and social interac- sion here. The references above will have to do. Suffice in tion. Words are neutralsigns in a way that transactions add thatwe shouldbe morecareful thanTaylorappearsto be in tangible in assessing Levi-Strauss's"appropriation" itemscan of Rousseau or goods and servicesare not. Transactions ordestroy Harris's"appropriation" ofMarx,forin bothcases, itis exactly themselves (as Marx showed)perpetuate, transform, thestructure ofthesystem thatgenerates them.Thus even the thatis, intellectual-historical that:appropriation, imperialism in thelong term. see of structure becomesuncertain prediction (forHarris,see Paul and Rabinow 1976; forLevi-Strauss, The works of Levi-Strauss and Harris can usefullybe Amselle1979or Derrida 1967). Harrisand Levi-Strauss do not viewed as efforts to establishin what realms, and to what "conduct their intercultural explanationswhile in dialogue extent, humanbehaviour is predictable. Levi-Strauss has demthe with theirown culturalpast." Rather,theyunderstand onstrated thatthestructure ofhumanthought past presentistically, in termsof what theywant to hear, and (butnotitscon-

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theygenerate reductive about the"Other"accordmonologues ingly. This bringsme to mysecond misgiving. Tayloris noteven remotely critical.Not only does he bypass ideologycritique (which would have helped), but he doesn't even ask what, merely on the basis of his own symbolicanalysis,the actual resultor concrete moral praxiswould be of Harris'sor LeviStrauss's"preferred mode of being-in-the-world." I don'twantto spendmuchtimeon Harrisfrom thiscritical pointof view, since Paul and Rabinow have alreadydone so more than adequately. Sufficeit to point out that Harris's oeuvre "is at base an attemptto nullify the anthropological concern with the symboliclife of the species" (Paul and Rabinow 1976:124).WhatI find moresurprising is thatTaylor doesn'teven singleout Levi-Strauss'sreductionism. Ricoeur, Taylor'smajortheoretical source,is unequivocalin hiscritique ofstructuralism on thispoint(see Ricoeur1963b,1964, 1967c, 1969). In his debate withL6vi-Strauss (1970), he summarizes as follows(p. 74):
as faras youare concerned there is no "message":notin thecybernetic, but in the kerygmatic sense;you despairof meaning;but you console yourself withthethought that,ifmenhave nothing to say,at leastthey say it so well that theirdiscourseis amenable to structuralism. You retainmeaning,the admirablesyntactical arrangement of a discourse whichhas nothing to say.

Not onlyhave others voiced similarmisgivings (mostrecently Fabian 1980:86and Tedlock 1983:335),buttheconcrete consequencesforL6vi-Strauss's apparent"preferred modeof beingin-the-world" are devastating. If I may cite myself (1974:430; see also 1979),
Structuralist in a silentvoid-the "zero degree"of praxisterminates scientific discourse.The sentientmen and women who inhabitthe anthropological universe no longer live in thecosmological edifice that Levi-Straussbuilt. To understandthe activitiesand aspirationsof concretehuman beings, we are asked to transform and to dissolve themintoa digitalpas de deux of a cybernetic danse macabre.Structuralistdiscourseprofesses to be a poetic celebration of an organic a funeral orationgivingcosmiccomfort universe,but it resembles to thosemisguided humanists who refuse to see theobjectivenecessity for a scientific crematory.

In sum, reflexive analysessuch as Taylor'sare fineas faras theygo, but theydo not go farenough.A genuine"ethnology ofethnology" dialecticaland critical requires analysesas well. They would notdetractfrom but enhanceit. Taylor'seffort

Department of Anthropology, American Universityin Cairo, P.O. Box 2511, Cairo, Egypt. 13 Ix 84 Taylor's hermeneutics seriouslyunderestimates epistemological difficulties in cultural understanding and overlooks itscritical potential. At thesame time,his articlepresents us withan to indicate opportunity epistemological problems on theway to the development of a criticalsocial science. Taylorproposesthatanthropology is thestudy ofman'sselfin and throughsymbols.He sees symbolsin understanding Heideggerianhermeneutical-ontological terms:they are primordial,"prereflexive" comprehensions of "the fundamental situations' and 'existential 'boundary conflicts' ofhumanbeingin-the-world." Anthropology cannot,therefore, transcend its in symbol-mediated rootedness ontological But understanding. sincein thisview symbols are apprehensions of universalhuman existentialia, our comprehension of symbols would seem to be guaranteed as well. ontologically Taylor'sview ofunderstanding reliesheavily upon Ricoeur's theory of textualinterpretation, and he arguesthattheactual practice ofeventhoseanthropologists who (he says)claimto be doing positivescience conforms to the Ricoeurianmodel of
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by ANTHONY STELLATO

interpretation. Interestingly, Ricoeurhimself has pointed out a numberof the infelicities in textualmetaphors of culture.He has argued(1971, 1976)thattheillocutionary and perlocutionor absent in ary dimensionsof speech are underrepresented texts,and he has statedthatthe text(sensustricto) is "mute" for the interpreter, who does not seek understanding of its author's intended meaning or ofthecircumstances ofthetext's production. Taylor'suse ofa textualmetaphor in his own text connotes a one-sided view oftheethnographic encounter. Such in his treatment a view is also suggested ofLevi-Strauss's and Harris's work: the posited sources of theirsymbolicunderin the "intracultural" standingsare located overwhelmingly realm and seem to owe verylittleto the othersthe ethnographers may have encountered in thefield.It is therefore unclear to me how Taylor's hermeneutics would methodically the disposition to listenthatwould seem prerequisite buttress to a fusion ofintercultural horizons. I suggest thatTaylordoes not appreciate the need for methodology here because his of symbolism theory suppliesforhiman ontological guarantee of comprehension. Taylor's view of symbolismis not likely to attractanthropologists who recognizea historical dimension to human existenceand are concernedwith issues of power and structuralreproduction. have been known Symbolsof "humanity" to "nurture" the "visions" of agentsengaged in the work of otherswhom Taylor destroying, oppressing,and distorting is that wouldconsider to be or have beenhuman.The problem "man" misunderstands himself and his worldin and through of alienation,the symbolstoo. In dialecticalunderstandings alienated do the work of their own subjection,and their semiosesare integrally constitutive of thatwork;furthermore thisworkalso sustainsindirectly the production of the dominant semioses.It followsthatbringing semiotic distortions of social practiceto consciousness can undermine the disclosed practice.It is precisely because semiosisis integral to social thatcritiquecan emancipate and thatnoncritical organization to sustaining approachescan contribute alienating practices. Having identified two difficulties-the hermeneutical problem of theOtherand thecritical ofdialecticalalienaproblem I would now like to tions-in Taylor'sexistent hermeneutics, consider themethodological issuesthesetwoproblems pose for of a criticalhermeneutics. the development Criticalhermeneutics endorses Gadamer'snotion ofthehermeneutical ofaliencircle;italso adheresto a dialectical notion ation.But theattempt to integrate thesetwotraditions encountersa seriousproblem in theform ofmethod ofan antinomy. It seemsthatthetwo traditions Herpull in oppositedirections. meneutic makesinterpretation The sosensitivity problematic. cial conditions of ethnographic workrequirethatthe ethnog"What is myeffect on the raphershould ask him-or herself, sceneofwhichI have becomea partand whichis thesiteofall my observations? Have I fullyunderstood the Other'smeaning?" Levi-Strauss(1976b:436) expressedthis hermeneutical in his reflection on a first problem compellingly encounter with an "alien" community: "I had onlyto succeedin guessing what in theywerelike forthemto be deprivedoftheirstrangeness: whichcase, I might just as well have stayedin myvillage.Or their I could if,as was thecase here,theyretained strangeness, make no use ofit, sinceI was incapableofeven grasping what it consisted of."Awarenessofthepitfalls ofinterpretation may maketheboldestcritic ofideology shrink from thathe claiming has graspeda meaningof a discourseor institution whichis different fromor even contrary to the understandings of the actorswho inhabitit and who have identified and explainedit to him. But on the other hand he knows that the web of is seamless-it does not trace out the site of an signifiers alienating discourseor practice;on thecontrary, it is precisely theworkofan alienating semiosis to present thesubjectwitha senseofunified, intentionally directed experience whileinsertinghimin thesiteofa contradiction. So theethnographer who
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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finds privileges the subjectivepole of the actors' experience alienating semioses. himself in dangerof privileging Clearlythe solve nor dissolve thisantinomy. I can neither of social strucdimension notionthatsemiosisis a constitutive forsocial science logic of explanation turerequiresa different one Taylor haslogical-positivist than the turn-of-the-century putforth tilydishesout. Nor am I convincedby theargument that alienated practiceis actually by some criticaltheorists and so can be explainedas such. In his becomeinertactivity deduction recent work,Habermas has posed a transcendental of practicalreason as a basis fora critical of the conditions but it remainsto be seen ifsuch transcendental social theory, forthatmatter) foundation, (oranytranscendental foundations a methodology to guideand valiwill be capable of providing date concrete interpretive work. by STEVEN WEBSTER Universityof Auckland, Department of Anthropology, Auckland,New Zealand. 8 Ix 84 I can bestpay myrespects ofsymbolism to Taylor'sdiscussion in anthropological discourseby revealingwhat appears to be in his own preunderstanding" the "personaland sociocultural at thistime As does Taylor,I feelit is important commentary. to examine the preunderstandings of our own professional mode of discourse,which have usually been invisibleto us. Whereasmanyof us since Marcus and Cushman(1983) have the as texts, Taylorhereapproaches approachedethnographies of anthropological theory. textuality stops shortof exposingthe innocent Taylor's commentary rather scientism and Harris'stexts, predeep in Levi-Strauss's thiswiththeir "symbolically ferring (withRicoeur)to reconcile I thinka more resolutely historical apnurtured Verstehen." proach can suggesta lot more. The symbolsof resignation nurtured here in Murdock'stextcan also be seen as belated to reconcile naturaland moral echoesof Boas's futile struggle sciences. This perhaps stillbornAmerican drama in turn the much more developed melancholy echoes, provincially, thatTaylor tracesfromL6vi-Straussback to Rousseau. But whereasRousseau'snoblesavage was theobjectofan innocent to thenaswas limited disillusionment pitie whoseromanticist cent industrialworld, L6vi-Strauss'sangst is postcolonial, or (as Taylor of sin, atonement, redemption, couchedin terms also notes)a totalisedworld which is relievedto vanish into does This ethereally balanced "worldofreciprocity" nonbeing. but is better traced anthropologists iAdeedlure contemporary to Mauss, whoseimageofreconciliation borethepathosofthe 1983),notthatof thehopeful post-WorldWar I era (Clifford as Lukacs was difference, generalwill. This crucialrhetorical thefirst to pointout withregardto the novel,is thatbetween and an earlierstruggling bourgeoisieand a later entrenched which is expressedin resignedone. This is the resignation frankidealism in the maturedbourgeoistraditionof L6viemin Murdock'sembattled American Straussbut petulantly lost. whereinnocencehas been muchmorerecently piricism, Also fromthis more historical pointof view, Harris's and L6vi-Strauss's forms ofexplanation can be seenas two sidesof different." Whereasthe the same coin, not at all "markedly Harris'sNature latter's is an abstract "scienceoftheconcrete," materiof CulturalThingsindeliblyexposes his evolutionist alism as a very similarformof philosophicalidealism. The and Harris is ambitof the idealismcommonto L6vi-Strauss of fetishism still that exposed by Marx in the 19th-century ecoeither historical commodities and wages, whichmystified as mereideas. objectivity nomicideas as naturalor historical of social changeis obscuredby HarThe historical objectivity and, when so firmly materialist evolutionism ris'smultilinear Popmoralisms, simplyreproduces backed by well-meaning of social planningin the per's methodological individualism reformist faith of boththeories open society.The bureaucratic Vol.26 *No. 2 *April1985

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in theirtroubledreduction is implicit of history to evolution, howevercompetitively individualist or multilinear. I think I can fairly claimthatthisabstraction from historical context is the"personal and sociocultural preunderstanding" of Taylor's writing, as well as that of L6vi-Strauss and Harris. This "transcendance of specific culturalhorizons and . . . fusion of temporal of a specific ones" is itself one form historical developmentconcurrentwith industrialisation that Gross (1981) calls the "spatialisation of time." This "fusion"bears marksnot of Gadamer's tenseand contradiction-ridden (i.e., dialectical) historicalhermeneutics but rather of Dilthey's positivist hermeneutics. Geertzand Ricoeurappear to be Taylor'smentors here.Taylorrevealsthemanycontradictions implicitin therhetorical conventions ofLevi-Strauss and Harris, apparently onlyforthesake ofrestoring their fullmeaning.He seemsquite content ofan articulate withthesymmetry oscillationbetweenNaturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, Erkliren and Verstehen, as thoughit were a melancholy but eternalverity of theconditionhumaine.But the 19th-century ofthisoscillation in positivism and romanticism is clear, origin and behindthatthepreunderstanding ofindustrial instrumental rationality and its irrational alter ego. Perhaps, as Marx said in the Grundrisse, "the bourgeoisviewpointhas never advanced beyond the antithesisbetween itselfand the roand thelatter willaccompany it as itslegitimantic viewpoint, mate antithesis up to its blessedend." Ricoeur'sphilosophic method is suggestive ofMauss's yearning forreconciliation, thelatter's own interwar foreboding replaced by the 1960s spiritof detenteand its semiotic secular " Otherhistorically faith of a "secondnaivete. specific symbols which seem to nurturethe preunderstanding which Taylor inheritsfrom Ricoeur are the methodically open Jamesian pragmatism of guess and verification, and endevelopment and the historically indivelopment, accompanying bourgeois vidualismof an existentially This anxiousbeing-in-the-world. is the same historical formof dialecticalmethodology which Geertz derived fromDiltheyvia Ricoeur. Its orbit remains Since historically idealistwhether structuralist or empiricist. therevolutions and depression whichset thesceneforDilthey and Durkheim,thispreunderstanding has been eithermelanaestheticin its preoccupations, correcholy or exuberantly uncerspondingto the economicera. The widelyproclaimed taintyof the '70s seems indeed to have led to a transitional in the studyof anthropological aesthetic texts.If melancholy indeed"anthropology itssymbols" in thisresolutely lives from detachedway,one hopesitis passingon therealfoodofhistory ifnotto itsreaders at leastto itshostsin thefield, and listeners at home.

Reply
byMARK KLINE TAYLOR N. J., U.S.A. 26 XI 84 Princeton, I appreciatethe criticism in thesepages and findthis offered discussion another exampleof whywe who workoutsideprofessional need to learnfrom and anthropology anthropologists reflect withthem,and withother on thenatureof interpreters, I will groupthediversecomments anthropological experience. around threeissues: (1) how anthropology is to be placed in to thetasksofunderstanding and explanation, relationship (2) and their rolesin anthropolmymeansof identifying symbols ofapproachesto L6vi-Strauss's and ogy,and (3) thepossibility Harris'sworkthatare in tensionwithmyown. 1. Many ofthecritics seemto overlook myemphasison the dialectical relationship betweenunderstanding and explanation and the factthat anthropological interpretation involves
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intercultural and intracultural of explanationin anrealms of L6vi-Strauss'sand both. I am criticalof rigorous pursuits Harris'santhropological knowledge. thropology onlywhen and if theydenyor ignorethe dialectiHarrisinsiststhatI mustshow how one "distills" efforts. cally related Verstehen implicitin theirexplanatory a symbol from a complex"text,"say, thatof his CulturalMaterialism. Though hermeneutical approaches are well known for emMy approachwas not,however,to distillthesymbol phasizing Verstehen, it is, as I have said, Ricoeur's special "nature" from any one ofhis texts.Rather,a reviewofhis anthropolognot to pit hermeneutical contribution understanding against ical program,occurring across several texts,highlighted more"scientistic" commitments to explanatory method. the general features ofhis comprehensive Heinen is surelyright, therefore, when he says that"there and that understanding, understanding and its combinatorial or Geisteswissenschaften as such." are no Naturwissenschaften attributes providedthe contextforidentifying a dominantsymbol,"nature."I have Ricoeur'shermeneutics would stress thatpoint,and I precisely notsuggested, therefore, as Harristhinks, have attempted to show the unityof thesetwo "sciences"by that"nature" is used in theexplanatory alone. In fact,it would hardlybe identifiable theunderstanding methods seeking implicit apart fromits in an understanding context and Harris. While I knowthisis nothing of Levi-Strauss new thatconsistently mateprivileges rial conditions in explanations of sociocultural to Heinen, it seems not quite rightto say thatit would only life. Harrisdoes notoften have been interesting tenyearsago. As longas social scientists advertto thenotionof"nature"in his but whenhe does it playsan important writings, continueto presupposewhat Ulin (1984:xv)calls the "untenrole.That he may always use "nature"as part of an "etic behavioralconand explanation, the able dichotomy" betweenunderstanding junction"does not precludeits being a symbol."Nature" is implications of Ricoeur'shermeneutics need to be addressed. invokedat the base of thisetic behavioralconjunction In spiteofthespace I have devotedto thedialectical relation of to give to and groundhis epistemological authenticity and explanation,several of the critics'comunderstanding and theoretical principles.The most weighty In lightofthatdialecticit is ments presuppose thisdichotomy. things,forHarris, to which a as opposedto scientific social scientist incorrect to label myarticle humanistic may appeal are the "lawfulregularities of nature"(1979:56).His scienceofculture in (Bunge), to suggestthatI leave littleplace forexplanation givesstrategic to priority patterns of production and reproduction, anthropology (Layton), or to argue that I have overlooked which,he says, are in nature"(p. 58). "grounded to demonstrate "scientific "thateveryone, anthropology" willyTo say as I have that nature is a symbolthat creatively is in theidealistcamp" (Jarvie). It is truethatI have tried nilly, nurtures in anthropological Harris'sunderstanding to identify thatare is notto suggest, components explanation as Jarvie and Bunge fear,thatit is purely but with herto Harris'ssubjectivoftendismissed as idealist or antiscientific, attributable ity. There may i,ndeedbe "exogenous" factors(Jarvie)or meneutical approacheslike Ricoeur's,as well as Kuhn's(1962) contextual analyses of science, the dichotomiesidealism/ "things"distinctfromour ideas of them (Bunge) relatedto materialism, humanities/sciences, and understanding/explana- Harris'spersonalinvocation of thissymbol.A dialecticalview of understanding tion are inappropriate. It seems to me that criticsshould reand explanationallows for a world to be explainedeven-while and more spond less with suspicionof idealistreductionism thatthisworldis a symbolically stressing understood withdiscussion ofwhether or notthealleged"idealist"compoone. In fact,in myformulation ofthesecondmark I articulated nentsare present in anthropological explanations and whether ofthesymbol, theinvented orconstructed characterof symbols the rolestheyplay are as I have suggested. withprecisely thisin mind,writing of symbols notas pureconstructs of the symboloperative 2. Jarviedoes not see any theory butas "creations ofinterpreters interactingwithand embeddedin complexes here. I can only referhim to my commentary on the three ofperceptions and expe" Thereis herebothcreative riences. marksofthesymbol and maintain thatmyarticulation ofthose interpretation and a world of experience in thesenseofa coherent markscountsas a "theory" createdby and conditioning groupof thatinterpretation. Jarvie'sclaim that the argument used to identify and discuss my subject generalpropositions for"nature"as construct is invalidapplies onlyto an idealistreductionism matter.He is particularly thatthe thirdmarkof a concerned thatI have not itsfunction endorsed. as "surplusofsignification," symbol, impliessome The questionpersists, in which thereis no surplus.The term state of signification especiallyforHarris,of theworthof this distillation of symbolsfor resolving "surplus" depends not on any suppositionof a state of views of conflicting in which words stand in one-to-one relationto causality.Harris is rightin observing signification thatI do not claim to that some words signify, resolveconflicting thingsbut only on the supposition explanationsof sociocultural phenomena. invoke,connote a moreencompassing meaning thando others. Ultimately, here,I am dependent on the social scientists who Without presupposinga surplus-free state of signification, workin a disciplined way to understand sociocultural phenomena. But I doubtifsocial scientists in the symbolic Ricoeurcan distinguish a function therefore, and anthropologists willbe as effective "primary signification," by which termshave theirexpected as theymight be in thisregardwithout reflexively meanings (sea as expanse of waters), from a "secondary considering theconstructive, symbolic dimensions ofthetheoriesby whichtheylinguistically divisions signification" (sea as opposed to land and suggesting invokedivergent views of the wholeofwhatis. In other a cosmology). As I developed amonghumans,indeedinvoking words,whileitmaybe necessary for thisthirdmarkof the symbol, therefore, what was important sociocultural theorists to argue that some theoriesare manwas notthemerepresence dated by, say, "nature"or a "worldof reciprocity," ofsurplus butthatthesurplus was a thisis not in whichtheinvokers sufficient. ofa symcomprehensive understanding They mustalso attendto thesetotalities and suggest bol, in a "non-methodic" moment,signaled theirvisions of why theyinvoke them. Evaluating sociocultural theoriesof as a whole. This non-methodic experience comprehension does causality,then,becomessomething muchmorecomplexthan notnullify theoperations ofrigorous explanatory methods, but assessingthe adequacy of cross-culturally gatheredmaterials it does nurture, encompass,and accompanythose methods, or even beingexplicit about one's epistemological and theoreteven as theymay develop, test,and challengeit. ical principles.It becomes a matterof assessing the comGauthier's comments on symbols and on the"combinatorial" prehensive a sociocultural understanding theorist symbolically natureof theinternal logicof theirconstruction invokesto groundthatepistemology are especially and theory. This I have helpfulregardingmy linkingof symbolsto comprehensive alreadysuggested in asserting thatanthropological explanation moment" In his reading,symbols uniting interculunderstanding. have to be understood has to be viewed as a "multifaceted not only as discretetermsor ideas ("nature,""worldof recitural processes,intracultural processes,and the moral senprocity") but also as havinga combinatorial logic. I have atsibilities thatoften infuseboth. tempted to show thatthediscrete symbolic terms have particuUltimately, and I suspectthisdoes notappeal to Harris,this lar combinatorial attributes that are identifiable in both the focus on understanding introducesa non-methodic element
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explanationsof socioculturallife. Aninto anthropological similarto relimay have elements thropological explanations of a general gion as Geertzviews it in that theirconceptions are clothedwith"an aura offactuality" that orderofexistence "seemuniquely moodsand motivations makesanthropologists' thansomething then,rather realistic." Evaluationsand norms, out by decidingwhichtheories bestfitdata, tend we hammer to be something disclosedto us as we engage in conversation ofsymbolic thatsuffuse understanding aboutthediverseforms theohermeneutical ourtheories and data assessment. Another rist, H.-G. Gadamer, perhaps points to that on which we is always already should reflect: "Someone who understands assertsitself.... whichmeaning drawnintoan eventthrough In understanding we are drawnintoan eventand arrive,as it were,too late, ifwe want to know what we oughtto believe" character ofthedisclo(Gadamer1975:446).This nonmethodic but it does sure of normsdoes not mean the end of thinking, us a different kindofrationaleffort. Theoriesof demandfrom in the and analogy,as employed especially symbol, metaphor, worksof not only Ricoeur but also Tracy (1981) and others, dimensions appropriate to thenon-methodic maybe especially inthatpersistin the depthsof anthropological explanations as their sure voking "nature" (or "world of reciprocity") " "ground. This may strikeHarris as a "shamanistic"conceptionof but I note, as commentator Heinen's language anthropology, thatHarristoo maybe viewedas "shaman"by those suggests, Harris's who do notsharehis modeofsymbolic understanding. avowed stanceamong"the mortalsbelow" need not mean he to qualities he oftenattributes lacks some of the shamanistic others. 3. A numberof critics(Gaines, Heinen, Scholte,Stellato, Webster)in one way or anotheracknowledgethe need fora similar to theone I have advancedbutsuggest alternacritique tive approaches. the"eccentric, Gaines suggests attention away from shifting in anthropology" by Levi-Strauss represented grandtraditions and Harris towardthe more difficult challengeof discerning the"interpretive" character of biomedicine and the putatively and add thatit "hard"sciences.I can onlyapplaud thateffort of a hermeneutical approachto the pointsup theapplicability "objective biological processes"to which Bunge thinksherchalmeneutics has little to offer. Gaines'sworkis a significant "applies only to lenge to the assumptionthat hermeneutics methods texts."It is possibleto affirm biomedicalexplanatory in themtheir whilealso discerning understanding. interpretive onlygrand, As to whether Levi-Straussand Harris represent seem "nowfading" notall anthropologists traditions, eccentric, agreed on that point (cf. Magnarella 1982:138). Perhaps not as cultural would describethemselves many anthropologists in Harris's and Levi-Strauss's materialists or structuralists may still model some senses, but these two anthropologists consistent discussion approaches that influence theoretically in anthropology for and other fields.Theirworkis appropriate advocatesoftheideal of myprojectbecause theyare persistent in anthropology and not of understanding. explanation Layton would also draw fromRicoeur, but fromanother between"language"(a sysaspect of his work:thedistinction in sugtemof relatedsigns)and "discourse."Laytonis helpful that Levi-Strauss'sand Harris'sprimary focuson exgesting relations(whetherstructuralist or planations of systematic is due to their to allow forprediccultural attempt materialist) of Layton'sas stressing another tion. I view thisobservation oftheseanthropologists' commitments toErklaren. component we may discerna symbolic diThe questionremainswhether in theirpursuits mensionof understanding of systems thatallow prediction. critique Heinen expresses his preference fora morevigorous which I of Levi-Strauss'suse of Rousseau's notionof pitie', too broadly,and ofHarris'suse ofMarxian allegedly interpret Vol.26 *No. 2 *April1985

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whichI do notassess fortheir faithfulness to Marx. I concepts, am certain thatLevi-Strauss and Harriscan be criticized concerningthe ways they cite Rousseau and Marx and am Heinen'spast contributions to thepages of confident, knowing CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY (cf. Heinen 1975), that such a criin thisartitiquecan be convincingly performed. My program fordisplaying cle, however,calls primarily how Levi-Strauss and Harris utilizethesekey figures, and it is clear fromthis thatpitieis broadenedby Levi-Strauss perspective beyondits "plain English" use to connotea more fundamental psychic stateof "originalidentification" withothers(cf. Levi-Strauss thisbroad1962:243-44; 1976:37-38, 41; 1963:101).Whether to Rousseau's meaningis anotherquestion, ening is faithful we thatit is not. Similarly, and I suspectHeinen maybe right ofMarx,butto ofdiverseinterpretations might assess a variety do so would be out of place in a studyof the way Harris invokeshim. Heinen seemsto prefer "critical anthropology" 's readingof Marx, and several othercomments are informed by criticalpraxistheory. Stellatosuggests thatmysymbolic approachwill notattract "anthropologists who recognize a historical dimension to human existenceand are concernedwith issues of Scholtedevelopsthisobpowerand structural reproduction." jection mostforcefully, and Websteremployshis own "resolutely historicalapproach" to identifythe "personal and in myown article. sociocultural discernible preunderstanding" The fundamental objectionis articulated clearly by Scholte. He insists on a "radicalization"of my portraitof the anthat relatesthemto their thropologists' symbolicdimensions "pragmaticuse and abuse." It is not enoughforhim that I in myfootnotes suggest (2 and 17)thatthesymbolic dimensions may occasion analysesof anthropological knowledge drawing fromideologycritique and critical-praxis theory.Such approaches,I repeat,are bothpossibleand important foranalyzingthecontextuality ofanthropology, and whatI have termed the symbolicdimensionwould be enhancedby givingmore attention thanI have hereto critical or ethno-logical analyses. Scholtewantssomething morethanthis,however.He suggests thatthe prereflexive totalities thatI discernin Levi-Strauss's and Harris'ssymbolic need to be read as "conunderstanding crete historicalprocesses,actual vested interests, or specific normative choices." Though I respectScholte'sstudiesin the ofanthropology contextualization and agreewiththepositions he takesconcerning thepoliticalcrisesofour period,I see two problems withthissuggestion. First,it may lead to anotherform of reductionism. Scholte movestoo quicklyfrom preunderstanding disclosedin thetext to ethno-logical accessiblethrough preunderstanding analysis of socioculturalcontexts.Does his persistent emphasis on ethno-logic allow adequate attention meanto the distinctive iningsdisclosedin thelanguageand textsof anthropological Without presumingthat texts are unrelatedto terpreters? sociohistorical that an ancontexts, my effort acknowledges textualmeanings cannotbe emptied out intothe thropologist's meaningsderived by sociological and historical(or ethnological) reconstruction of theircontexts.Thus it has seemed acceptable to focus on the symbolicunderstanding suffusing Levi-Strauss's and Harris'stextualinterpretations, leavingin thefootnotes, forthemoment at least,thematters so valued by theorists. critical-praxis Related to thisproblemis a secondone. When insisting on the need to trace symbolic fromtextsto their understanding about our ethno-logical contexts,Scholte speaks confidently to identify "concrete moralpraxis,""concrete historical ability processes," "actual vestedinterests," or "actual results" (italics added). There seemsin thisconfidence an objectivism or naive realismthatis seducedby another "myth ofthegiven"(Sellars 1963)-only here,insteadof beingenchanted withgiven,out181

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there-now-real facts, Scholte speaks with puzzling ease of given (actual, concrete)contextsand processesor interests. Does not a criticalpraxis theory, and so also a "criticalanthropology," need to be reflexive about the way criticaltheoristsattendto otherpeople's actual and concreteworlds?If that is done, thencriticaltheory and ideologycritiquethemselves become symbolicenterprises. This by no means discredits them,but it does deprivethemofsomeoftheprivilege thatScholteseemsto claim forthem. If critical is itself theory a symbolic enterprise, is need there fora reflexive analysisof,say,the"emancipative interest" that underlies manyideology critics' on breaking helpful insistence down fact/value dichotomies and their important criticisms of colonialism and exploitation. Such an "emancipative interest" is of course evidentin Scholte'scomments here, as when he decriesLevi-Strauss's and Harris'simperialistic and reductive monologues about the"Other"or laments the"devastating ... concrete consequences"of Levi-Strauss's cosmicvision.What to is the place fromwhichScholtehurls remainsunattended thesecharges.Scholte,and others whosecritical have postures led themto portray Harris'scontext as "bourgeois rationality" (Paul and Rabinow 1976)or Levi-Strauss's as thatofthe"inauthentic Jew"(e.g., Diamond 1974),are often adept at identifying others'actual contexts without disclosing the symbolic dimensionsthat nurturetheir analyses and judgmentsabout or devastation. allegedexploitation Criticaltheorists maybe as nonreflexive about "actual historical processes" as Harrisoften seemsto be about his "nature." Such an approachmayalso involvecaricature ofthethought ofthosetheideology critic seeksto contextualize. Scholte,with Paul and Rabinow(1976:124),mayoverstate in sugthematter thatHarris'ssymbolic is an attempt to gesting understanding the anthropological lifeof "nullify concernwiththe symbolic thespecies."Rather, Harrissimply does notgrant symbolic systemsstrategic forexplaining sociocultural similarities priority and differences. Such priority he reservesto infrastructure, whereculture and natureinterface, thesymbolic though order, withsuperstructure infrastructogether generally, may affect turalchangeas a form of "feedback"(Harris 1979:70-72). it seems an overstatement to respond,as Scholte Similarly, cosmicvisionoftheeclipseofhumandoes, thatLevi-Strauss's ity necessitates devastatingconcreteconsequencesformoral praxisand thatI failto be even "remotely critical" in notseeing this. A morepatientreadingof Levi-Strauss's positionseems needed.The triumph of non-being thathe pondersin thefinal is not testimony to a danse macabre pages of Mythologiques thatinevitably undermines theconcrete and activiaspirations tiesofhumans.Scholte'sresponse hereis remito Levi-Strauss niscent ofthenotionthatBuddhism'sconceptofNirvana prohibitsits religious from experience beingethicalor capable of a social ethic. The flowering and eventualvanishgenerating ing of human culturesand structures envisionedby LeviStrauss (1981:693-94) may mean the ultimate eclipse of humankind but not of a moral praxis among thosewho still have being. Even forsome Christian the task of theologians, an ethicforhumanlifemay continue in spiteof, articulating perhapsbecause of,an acknowledgment that"as thebeginning was without us, so theend also will be without us" (Gustafson 1981:267-69). Levi-Strauss himself seems aware of the of his Buddhist-like significance for revaluing "entropology" thehumanand so completing theperson's freedom from bondage in whichMarxistcritiqueis also interested (Levi-Strauss 1978:412).I am not arguingherethatLevi-Strauss is right or that some vision of an eclipse of the human is necessary for human social emancipation. I am suggesting, however,that his symbolic understanding is not necessarily devastating to a moralpraxis. What I view as Scholte'spuzzlingconfidence about discerningLevi-Strauss's and Harris'sactualcontexts, and perhaps also his occasionaloverstatements, may partly be due to therecal182

citrant of criticaltheory antinomy that Stellatohelpfully discusses.It is difficult forthe"critical" to privilege ethnographer theactor'sexperience (here,thatoftheanthropologist as actor) withoutalso privileging what he takes to be that actor's "alienating semiosis." My concerns herehave beenthatScholte moves so quickly to disparage Harris's and Levi-Strauss's alienatingsemioses,through his contextual analyses,that he maynotdo justiceto theseanthropologists' pointsofview. It is true,given Stellato'santinomy, thatthe anthropological subject's Verstehen may be so privileged thatalienating perspectivesare notchallenged. This I suspectis Scholte's about worry mysymbolic approach. But how does an ideology critique do justice to the textual understanding in an anthropologist's pointof view? And can criticaltheorists acknowledgereflexivelythattheir interest in emancipating culture is itself a symbolicallynurtured one, not a supposedlymore"concrete, actual" one that is privilegedto go behind others' symbol systems? I detecta greater self-consciousness about the symbolically mediatedcharacterof praxis interests among some political and "liberationtheologians"than I do among some praxisoriented"liberationanthropologists." Taking many of their cues fromthe analyses of Benjamin, Adorno,and especially Habermas, thesethinkers (Peukert1984, Lamb 1982, Gutierrez 1973) nevertheless oftenacknowledge the roleof their linin constituting guisticand symbolicheritages theirsenses of I don'tmeanthatcritical justiceand oppression. theorists have to be theologians. Nor do I at all findacceptablethe suggestionsof anthropologists Leach (1974) and Kaplan (1974) that thepraxis-oriented "reinventors" ofanthropology be viewedas "radicalenthusiasts" on theorderoftheDiggers,theQuakers, and theMuggletonians. But I do notsee how critical theorists can evade acknowledging that theirfervent protests against alienationand theirconfident evaluationsof others' vestedinterestsare themselvesrooted in a non-methodic, symbolic understanding and thus do not occupy a privileged position without someargument thattheir visionshouldor,in symbolic factdoes, inform the restof us. Ricoeur,who by theway also arguesthatideology to his critiqueis an essentialcontribution hermeneutical approach, puts the problemin the formof a question:"how do we know thatthe interest in emancipation stands at the summitof the hierarchy of interests?" (Ricoeur 1973:162). withScholte,suggests thatmyapproachdoes not Webster, go far enough. It "stops short of exposing" the two anI am allegedly "innocent scientism." too content thropologists' with"thesymmetry ofan articulate oscillation" between explanationand understanding as if this were a "melancholy but eternalverity of the conditionhumaine."This kindof melanis one product choly,as Marx is said to have predicted, of the of industrial "preunderstanding instrumental and rationality its irrational alter ego." This "preunderstanding" is also expressed in Ricoeur's talk of the necessityof guess and verification and of envelopment and development. I appreciateWebster'sportrait of my own "personaland sociocultural It is perhaps helpfulin arpreunderstanding." whatthoseindebted to Ricoeur'scomprehensive ticulating herare up to, and I myself meneutics findit provocativeand illuminatingwhen consideringmy own project. I wonder, who escapes the allegedlymelancholy bethough, suspension tweentheneed bothto explainby way ofcritical methods and to understand through symbols.This may be morethanjust the"bourgeois" thinker's "blessedend." If I am right thateven in terms critics' ideology "explanations" ofidentified concrete, historical also involvea symbolic processes of "understanding" thentheytoo do not step outsidethe historical emancipation, orbitto whichWebsterassignsmanyof us. Websteralso seems to overlookthe fact that a dialectical view of understanding and explanation is not necessarily "oscillation"betweenthe two and henceneed notbe theresignaCURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

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is deficient. thathe implies aestheticism tionortheRomanticist that only "idealists"work out of Once we cease presuming we maystill understanding, ofsymbolic moments multifaceted themand of seekingevaluaset about the task of displaying of neutrality theprivileged to neither tionsof themthatresort of actual contexts norto the privileged explanations positivist claim to know. thatsome criticaltheorists vestedinterests of melanFinally,I note that Websterwritespejoratively as if theycan have littleto do with"the cholyand aesthetics Though I have argued thatto embrace real food of history." is nota melanand understanding thedialecticof explanation asWebster's I do notalso wishto endorse cholic"oscillation," place in a "resohas littlerightful thatmelancholy sumption whether it be Levilutely historical" preunderstanding, is notinimicalto hope or to Strauss'sor myown. Melancholy thatsuch"masters ofalienation laborin hope againsttheforces have of suspicion" as Freud, Marx, and theirinterpreters mayin factbe a Such melancholy raisedto our consciousness. of injusand complexrealities to thepersistent soberresponse our emancipativeefforts. tice and oppressionthat call forth in our preunderstanding necessarily elements Nor do aesthetic ofhistory. forces moreconcrete thesupposedly lead away from the need fora Geertz'sNegara, thoughit may underestimate remindsus "mechanicsof power," at least rightly historical that an aestheticexuberance,perhaps in its formsof drama not imand "pomp," has a powertoo and thatit is therefore properto speak of a "poeticsof power"(Geertz1980:13,123). visionhas to aesthetic This does notmean thatLevi-Strauss's a "poeticsof power,"but it be the one we choose to inform that because oftheimplication shouldnotbe ruledout simply cannot help pass on "the an aestheticexuberanceinevitably thatveryhuWe mightalso remember real food of history." from harshlabor conforemancipation uniting man workers, for bread but "for ditionsand unfairwages, demonstrated as well rosestoo" (Kornbluh1964:164,195-96). The aesthetic, need not be denied a possibleplace in a as the melancholic, and emancipahistorical that is resolutely preunderstanding tive.

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on International Social Workshop Science Writing

twenty social scientists will be A workshop forapproximately Saturday, August31, heldin or nearNairobifortendaysfrom social scientists from east1985. It is designedforAnglophone Africawho wish to submitpapersforpublicaernor southern primarily tionin international journals. It will deal, therefore, withthe canons of explanationand the technicalconventions ofpresentation whichcan make thedifference betweenacceptance and rejectionof a paper. It will also elucidatethe proediting,which are cesses of refereeing and after-acceptance often a mystery to authors. The leaders of the workshopare expectedto be CyrilBelshaw, Ph.D. (London), F.R.S.C., Editor of CURRENT ANProfessor of AnTHROPOLOGY; JohnOgbu, Ph.D. (Berkeley), of California, thropology, Faculty of Education, University Berkeley;and Barbara Metzger,Copy Editor,CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY.

bytheInternational FedThe workshop is jointly sponsored

and theInternational ofScientific Editors'Associations eration Sciences.In prinand Ethnological Union of Anthropological eight foranthropologists, ciple, twelveplaces will be reserved in other disciplines beingavailable to scholars plus anyunfilled and such as politicalscience, sociology,human geography, for basis, withdue respect first-served on a first-come, history, distribution. geographical Applicants should write C. S. Belshaw, CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY, 6303 N.W. Marine Drive, UBC Campus, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 2B2, enclosing a curriculum vitae. one unpubSuccessfulapplicantswill be asked to furnish lished paper to serve as a basis fordiscussion.It is also exwith a textbookfor adpected that they will be furnished vanced reading.Applicationis now beingmade forfinancial thiscannotbe aid to assistwithtravel,thoughat themoment guaranteed. Some applicantsmay wish to attendthe IFSEA Workshop whichwill take place in on AfricanEditingand Publishing, days. Requestsforinformation Nairobion thethreepreceding shouldbe addressedto Helen Van Houten, IDRC, P.O. Box 62084, Nairobi, Kenya.

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Wars: 1914-1945, articleson any subdisciplinary fieldof anthropology (includingapplied, archeological,biological,linguistic,and sociocultural), as well as articlesof generalanthropological interest. Topics maybe focussed biographically, institutionally, conceptually, methodologically, within one nationalanthropological tradition or bridging between them.Authorsare encouragedto considertopicsin relation to specific bodiesof documentary material as well as to generalhistorical and cultural trends (intellectual, aesthetic, political, economic, etc.),including theimpactofthewarsthatmarkthebeginning and end of the period. Althoughthe deadline forcompleted manuscripts will be August 31, 1985, potentialcontributors are encouragedto communicate with the editorabout their workbefore All communications submitting drafts. shouldbe addressedto: GeorgeW. Stocking, Jr.(HOA), Department of Anthropology, Universityof Chicago, 1126 E. 59th St., Chicago, Ill. 60637, U.S.A.

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