Some muddles in the models

Previous article FreeSome muddles in the models or, how the system really works1David M. SCHNEIDERDavid M. SCHNEIDERUniversity of ChicagoUniversity of ChicagoPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMorePart one. AllianceI. The phrase 'alliance theory' and its opposition to what has been called 'descent theory' was first suggested by Dumont (1961a).Alliance theory, with roots clearly in Durkheim and Mauss, has specifically arisen out of Lévi-Strauss's Structures élémentaires ... (1949) and has been developed by Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Leach, and Needham. Descent theory also has its roots in Durkheim and Mauss, but its development has been through Radcliffe-Brown to Fortes, Goody, Gough, Gluckman, and, in certain respects, Firth.This is an oversimplified picture, of course, but one which provides a reasonable beginning. It would oversimplify matters, too, but also be useful to point out, that where Durkheim tried to bridge the gap between positivism and idealism and ended up as an idealist in the remnants of some positivist clothing, Needham's version of alliance theory is, if anything, squarely on the side of the idealists. Lévi-Strauss and Dumont, on the other hand, go with Hegel (Murphy 1963). Descent theory has moved in the direction of positivism; some of its misunderstandings stem from its positivist premises; and the direction which the younger descent theory people (Goody, Gough) have taken seems to me to be consistent with this view.The dilemma of positivism is exemplified by a statement of Lévi-Strauss. Replying to Maybury-Lewis's criticisms, Lévi-Strauss says:'... Mr. M. L. remains, to some extent, the prisoner of the naturalistic misconceptions which have so long pervaded the British school ... he is still a structuralist in Radcliffe-Brown's terms, namely, he believes the structure to lie at the level of empirical reality, and to be a part of it. Therefore, when he is presented a structural model which departs from empirical reality, he feels cheated in some devious way. To him, social [25] jstructure is like a kind ofjigsaw puzzle, and everything is achieved when one has discovered how the pieces fit together. But, if the pieces have been arbitrarily cut, there is no structure at all. On the other hand, if, as is sometimes done, the pieces were automatically cut in different shapes by a mechanical saw, the movements of which are regularly modified by a cam- shaft, the structure of the puzzle exists, not at the empirical level (since there are many ways of recognizing the pieces which fit together); its key lies in the mathematical formula expressing the shape of the cams and their speed of rotation; something very remote from the puzzle as it appears to the player, although it "explains" the puzzle in the one and only intelligible way' (Lévi-Strauss, 1960, p. 52).The contrast may be put more specifically. To a degree, both alliance and descent theory are concerned with social structure. But, for descent theory, social structure is considered one or another variant of the concept of (a) concrete relations or groupings, socially defined, which (b) endure over time. To Radcliffe-Brown, social structure is the network of 'actual social relations'; for Evans-Pritchard in discussing the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940) it is the enduring social groups, the concrete lineages.3For alliance theory, the problem is not what the concrete patterns of social relations actually are, although these are not neglected; it is not the actual organization of any specific group like a lineage. It is, instead, that construct or model which is fabricated by the anthropologist and which is presumed to have, as its concrete expression, the norms for social relations and the rules governing the constitution of social groups and their inter-relations (Lévi-Strauss, 1953).Alliance theory grows out of (1) Durkheim's distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity; (2) his notion of collective representations and specifically his and Mauss's insistence that the fundamental socio-cultural categories of the culture itself must be understood in its own terms; and (3) out of Mauss's ideas that are expressed in his essay, The Gift. This is perhaps the minimal and most immediately relevant set of ideas. others more derivative or tangential are involved, but need not detain us at this point. [26]First, organic solidarity is essentially a state of affairs in which functionally differentiated parts are each non-viable parts but, when joined together, become a single, coherent, and viable 'organism'. Functional differentiation is in turn based on two kinds of condition. One is that the parts have different roles which get those things done which need to be done if the whole is to survive. The other is that for the parts to work properly they must be oriented toward common goals. if the goals of one part are disparate from the goals of the other, then the parts will not make up a single, coherent, viable whole. This second feature may be considered to be most intimately related to 'coherence'. Each part by itself means nothing; the parts together make an integrated and viable unit. The simplest example is of two unilineal lineages, each being able to provide for its essential needs in all ways except one: the rule of exogamy requires that marriage partners come from outside the group. These two lineages, both having a common aim — to provide for wives — exchange wives. The two lineages together, then, make up one viable and coherent society. That they may also exchange differentiated economic products only elaborates and reinforces their differentiation and interdependence.The simplest form of differentiation centers on the definition of opposed but interrelated parts. Again, exogamy is the pertinent example. From the point of view of either of the two lineages, one 'needs' wives, the other 'has wives to give'. The definitions are plus and minus, have and have not, and so on. These are essentially opposed elements, defined in terms of their polar qualities. Just what particular form this differentiation will take in any society is an empirical question. Yet it is implied, i think, that all societies operate in fundamentally this way: at every point of differentiation, there is at rock-bottom a polar, opposite kind of differentiating definition which in any particular case may be elaborated into gradients, subdivided into qualities, but basically, and in some sense 'originally', the elements are oppositional, unitary, and polar. (Lévi-Strauss, 1945, 1949, 1955, 1962, 1963; Needham 1958a, 1960d.)There remains always the substantive problem: how is this particular social structure differentiated? What are its constituent parts? How are they interrelated? Here the idealistic [27] foundation of the theory becomes apparent. On the one hand, as a fundamental category of human mentality, dualism is expressed in a wide variety of particular social forms; on the other hand, it is the particular ideational categories, as these are consciously or unconsciously conceived by the members of the society itself, which play a role in regulating their action.For example, in a matrilateral cross-cousin marriage system, where a 'positive marriage rule' (Dumont's phrase (Dumont, 1961); a prescriptive system in Needham's terms) obtains, the system is conceived of, from the point of view of any given lineage in that system, as one which is made up of dual relations — 'we' versus 'they' as wife-givers to wife-takers; 'they' versus 'we' as wife-takers to wife-givers. The system as a system is triadic; yet the conceptualization of the system from the point of view of the given lineage is dyadic (Lévi-Strauss, 1949, 1956; Needham, 1958a, 1960d, 1962a.)But one must go further; in any society having a positive marriage rule, that class of persons who are potential wives is categorized in some particular way. To call this, for instance, MoBrDa is to commit the error of imposing our way of thinking on their system when these may (though they may not) be radically different. It is thus necessary to find out how theyconceptualize their system, what their categories of social objects and actors are, how they are constituted and how they are conceived to behave.This raises a core problem: symbolism. In alliance theory, it is held that a given structural relationship in a very important sense cannot be seen or observed as such. It is, instead, 'expressed' in a wide variety of different ways, and the 'expressions' of the relationship tend to be reiterative, though seldom identical from one form of expression to another. The problem in analyzing social structure is thus to search out the various forms of expression in order to comprehend the basic relationship which is structurally operative, but no particular form of it, no particular expression of it, can be taken as 'it' (Lévi-Strauss, 1960).The contrast here with Radcliffe-Brown's, Murdock's, and similar conceptions is very clear. For Murdock, it is the concrete fact of where specific people actually reside which, bringing them [28] in proximity with one another, creates unilineal descent groups (Murdock, 1949). For the intellectualist, where they live, how they are brought into proximity with one another, and how the unilineal descent group is organized are all equally symbols of, or expressions of, the same inherent structural principle. Where residence rules cause or determine descent groups for Murdock, it is structural principles which account for both residence rules and descent groups for alliance theorists (Lévi-Strauss, 1960, p. 54; see Murphy, 1963, in this connection).II. Lévi-Strauss, Needham, and George Homans are all psychological reductionists - each in his own way, of course.Lévi-Strauss is quite emphatic that 'sentiments' and 'emotion' explain very little, if anything. His discussion of 'anxiety' as an explanation (either in Malinowski's or Freud's terms) is, however, the only discussion provided in any detail in his book Totemism. Here he rests his case on Radcliffe-Brown's 'turn about' argument, namely, that it is not because people feel anxiety that they make magic, but that they feel anxiety because they make magic. Further, he adds an apparent empirical exception to Malinowski's supposed 'rule', saying, 'The empirical relationship postulated by Malinowski is thus not verified' (Lévi-Strauss, 1963, p. 67). He bases this on the case of the Ngindo beekeepers, but he does not cite Kroeber's earlier example of the Eskimo (Kroeber, 1948, pp. 603-604).But for the rest, his position against sentiment, emotion, or anxiety remains an assertion. 'Contrary to what Freud maintained, social constraints, whether positive or negative, cannot be explained, either in their origin or in their persistence, as the effects of impulses or emotions which appear again and again, with the same characteristics and during the course of centuries and millennia, in different individuals. For if the recurrence of the sentiments explained the persistence of customs, the origin of the customs ought to coincide with the origin of the appearance of the sentiments, and Freud's thesis would be unchanged even if the parricidal impulse corresponded to a typical situation instead of to a historical event. [29]We do not know, and never shall know, anything about the first origin of beliefs and customs the roots of which plunge into a distant past but, as far as the present is concerned, it is certain that social behavior is not produced spontaneously by each individual, under the influence of emotions of the moment. Men do not act, as members of a group, in accordance with what each feels as an individual; each man feels as a function of the way in which he is permitted or obliged to act' (Lévi-Strauss, 1963, pp. 69-70).Lévi-Strauss sharply dissociates himself from Durkheim's position. '... in the last analysis Durkheim derives social phenomena as well from affectivity. His theory of totemism starts with an urge, and ends with a recourse to sentiment' (ibid., pp. 70-71). 'Actually, impulses and emotions explain nothing: they are always results, either of the power of the body or of the impotence of the mind. In both cases they are consequences, never causes. The latter can be sought only in the organism, which is the exclusive concern of biology, or in the intellect, which is the sole way offered to psychology, and to anthropology as well' (Lévi-Strauss, 1963. pp. 70-71).And so the intellect, cognition, how people think and not their emotions are the explanatory conditions for social phenomena. But notice how close is the pattern to that which is explicitly repudiated when phrased in terms of sentiment. 'The advent of culture thus coincides with the birth of the intellect. Furthermore, the opposition between the continuous and the discontinuous, which seems irreducible on the biological plane because it is expressed by the seriality of individuals within the species, and in the heterogeniety of the species among each other, is surmounted in culture, which is based on the aptitude of man to perfect himself ...' (ibid., p. 100).Origins, in other words, are not recoverable if we try to locate their emotional beginnings, but they are recoverable if we consider them to be in the intellect. This, it would seem, is because [30] the intellect is the source, the beginning and the continuing source. '... Bergson and Rousseau ... have succeeded in getting right to the psychological foundations of exotic institutions ... by a process of internalization, i.e., by trying on themselves modes of thought taken from elsewhere or simply imagined. They thus demonstrate that every human mind is a locus of virtual experience where what goes on in the minds of men, however remote they may be, can be investigated' (ibid., p. 103).The mathematical formula expressing the shape of the cams and their speed of rotation now assumes the form of the human intellect. It is the inventiveness of the human intellect, the rules of operation of the human mind, the fundamental qualities of mind which are the explanations. 'It is certainly the case that one consequence of modern structuralism (not, however, clearly enunciated) ought to be to rescue associational psychology from the discredit into which it has fallen. Associationism had the great merit of sketching the contours of this elementary logic, which is like the least common denominator of all thought, and its only failure was not to recognize that it was an original logic, a direct expression of the structure of the mind (and behind the mind, probably, of the brain), and not an inert product of the action of the environment on an amorphous consciousness.' (ibid., p. 90).Except for minor embellishments, Lévi-Strauss has returned to the position at the turn of this century which Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, Boas, and Kroeber held. This is simply the position that culture, custom, belief, or social constraints are products of the human mind, understandable only when the laws of the human mind are known.It is disconcerting, therefore, to follow the discussion of Totemism (Lévi-Strauss, 1963), which seems to review the history of our understanding of that phenomenon. It moves with care from the illusion of an entity shattered by Boas and Goldenweiser's cold analysis, on to Elkin's fumbling with too many broken pieces, and then on through to functionalism's confusions until it reaches the climax in Chapter 4, 'Toward the Intellect'. [31]Toward the intellect, away from emotion and sentiment, using structural linguistics as the vehicle to ride to the rescue of associational psychology! But one suddenly notices that the intellect toward which one is headed is in one case fresh from the eighteenth century, and in the other from the earliest past of the twentieth; that the confusions of functionalism are all historically later developments; that the devastation of the entity called totemism by Goldenweiser, following directions clearly stated by Boas, comes after the very time and the very position to which Lévi-Strauss has returned by such a circuitous route. It was Boas, of course, who first wrote The mind of primitive man, in 1911, and Kroeber who insisted that kinship terms could be understood only as linguistic and psychological phenomena in 1917, just as it is Lévi-Strauss in 1962 who says that totemism is understandable as a product of the human mind.One can only that the of mind into and 'emotion' is the of the same of which have Homans up the psychology is not really too far from structural linguistics and Lévi-Strauss's and Lévi-Strauss have on the same each from his own very different each away from the other with more each any to the position. Homans a of Lévi-Strauss following the course of both as psychological In certain very ideas form the core of all cross-cousin marriage the first is the that cross-cousin marriage is an The that different cross-cousin marriage rules with different rules of descent form different kinds of so for instance, cross-cousin marriage a very different kind of from The of the different forms of rule for the kind of which is the and this one at least to marriage in on the of these and on the system really p. The of of the analysis from and and the of the different forms of cross-cousin be Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Leach, and Needham have done is to set these in the of a theory of and to from that certain specific and specifically useful well as ideas which were not first such specific to be taken up here is that the relationship between in a society cross-cousin marriage is one of the of this is the of just what is by is a of interrelated ideas at work of course, there is the notion of organic that is, the of differentiated parts no one of which can by itself be there is the notion that every social definition must in the of human and in the of society be in terms of and so there is the notion that structure not in the concrete constitution of any particular but in the or the construct which must be developed by the anthropologist in order to that yet the structural principles which are so to are and are expressed in the social the social the social rules of a particular society (Lévi-Strauss, there are two enduring structural of any society cross-cousin or having any 'positive marriage rule' marriage the rule of descent which a group into one that of the relationship between two or more such of which marriage is an theory that in the of social as they do from the inherent of human mentality, can be defined only in opposition to and in opposition to it is that a society with a positive marriage rule could in one related group of social Radcliffe-Brown p. in of kinship terms, this out Radcliffe-Brown that for the terms and which are to of are not terms for by In he that as a is to this and by that a society can only in socially defined by far as cross-cousin marriage are concerned, this problem of the necessary of a of alliance opposed to one of descent into both the of the system and the of the of such problem of on the of the of exchange as by Lévi-Strauss in that if marriage is one of and if exchange between differentiated parts is seen as the basic of not one one kind of but a of of various kinds will all and will all and the between the exchange of of and and so on are all understandable as part of the exchange system and are all equally fundamental expressions of the structural of expressions of be they and or are equally expressions of this structural principle. In this each the it is to in the of alliance theorists between marriage as an expression of and marriage as It is one to that marriage is one among many expressions of the structural of it is quite another to that marriage creates To go a and that both are is to into yet a and not at all In an marriage system, a prescriptive system with a positive marriage rule, the system is essentially the system is This is by both Lévi-Strauss and Needham, and seems to The for this is that from the point of view of any given lineage or there are only two or may to the of his of he see as elsewhere with prescriptive a of by which groups, qualities, and other ideas of the most disparate kinds are within one system of In would to the and of social and structure In of the fact that structurally there must be in the alliance system, the basic of society is not but given alliance group is and to another, but it is also and to another group in a different That is, alliance is not but The distinction to be is that between the system and its dyadic It is through this of that the social order with the pp. a that both and dyadic with dyadic Needham '... the of which a system, the same principles and even some of the same of terms as the which an system ... our is to see how a common of can with these different social key to this is that in of the structure of an system its fundamental is and that the fundamental of though defined, is also Here lies the basic between the two social and the structural feature with which the is in both cases may now these two as different but related means of social relations as well as other phenomena by the same of if this is the it is this of thought itself which our if we are to them in any 1960d, pp. must then, between dyadic and the first a system, and one of cross-cousin and the other an perhaps cross-cousin marriage in are from the system, that is, of by which groups, qualities, and other ideas of the most kinds are within one system of 1962, p. The system the social just what does this Needham it in this way: one is really with in such a society as this is a a system of categories, which both social and the That is, social organization is a part of a order and is by its 1962, p. other words, social is itself a order and is on no account to be with actual concrete groups, actual or actual relations between actual persons or The descent theory which from Radcliffe-Brown with actual concrete groups, actual relations between actual persons or with such a Needham's analysis on the that the system, if it at could not work very some of the in the exchange system have too many to of, and some not point is at the rules are for people to at the rules are in as one well that the structure of the system does not lie in the concrete constitution of any particular group, in any particular of and alliance groups may be to but the essential point is that the rules have not p. Needham social system is an this to descent groups which are also is no in an for substantive It would be an and of the notion of social system to so it with substantive that every ... would be to a do not that it is for a marriage to take within the in an system ...' the definition of alliance groups can be and that can be are well in the on such as the the on the other hand, that in of and of the rules of the alliance system to the same of social order between groups are to this But to no one has a to ...' One of the which in this is that it is not conceived of as which actually it is the social which descent concrete the which such For Needham's version of alliance theory, however is quite It is the social order as a the social system as a system of which is the concern of alliance theory is and explicitly as models of a social so for Lévi-Strauss Lévi-Strauss to for this same one may that the is the and in Lévi-Strauss of models with reality, of phenomena from disparate of in the same Lévi-Strauss's to to as cannot be for dual system and a of was trying to these with the aim of out if they could be with as — and to some — expressions of a reality, to be for at a level (Lévi-Strauss, 1960, p. again, in the same later i

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