ANTH245 2007-09-24

← Go to Main Page

Business

• Responses ...

Recap

The transformational process

• Review the basic idea of how the linear order is translated into a structural pattern
  • A primary and unmediable opposition is posited and successively replaced by more mediable categories, e.g.

0. LIEF : DEATH → ???
1. LIFE : DEATH :: FARMING : WARFARE 
2. FARMING : WARFARE → HUNTING
3. HUNTING replaces WARFARE
4. FARMING : HUNTING :: HERBIVORES : CARNIVORES
5. HERBIVORES : CARNIVORES → SCAVENGERS (e.g. Raven, Coyote)
6. ERGO, Ravens symbolize overcoming the opposition between life and death 

• A logic of symbols
  • Animals are good to think with
  • Compare to dialectic
  • Compare to chiasmus

The canonical formula of myth

• Explain what the formula means (unpack it into three transforms)
  • x(a) : y(b) :: x(b) : a^-1(y)

0. x(a) : y(b)
1. x(b) : y(a)    REVERSAL of arguments (a,b)
2. x(b) : a(y)    REVERSAL of function and argument (a,y)
3. x(b) : 1/a(y)  INVERSION of function a(y)

• Example?
• Briefly mention Mosko's work

Who is communicating with whom?

• Describe the process as a two-stage operation
  • Story is received and parsed for consciousness consumption
  • Generates a second story, which is parsed for unconscious consumption
• The big question -- In the case of the second process, who communicates with whom?

Segue

The Computer as symbol and as tool

• Taking Levi-Strauss' references to the computer seriously

Computing and the Database

• All of L-S's references to cybernetics and computing are really references to computing
• Databases represent structure
• Databases represent (logical) possibility

Colby

General Inquirer System

• The IBM 7090
  • 32K addressable memory / $3M (in 1960s dollars!)
  • See also this and this.
• Current system
  • EXERCISE:
    • Pick an essay and dump it in
    • Discuss results

The Process

• Text + Thesaurus (Dictionary) + Rules
• Word counts
• Correlations

Text

• 9,000 stories
• 5 culture areas
• Translated into English

Dictionary

• Three categories
  1. Hi freq && polysemous
  2. Med freq && polysemous
  3. Monosemous
• Mapped to themes
  • Based on Clyde Kluckhon's categories
  • Binary
  • Later called "conceptual domains"

Rules

• Actually a SQL join ...
• leftover words become "feedback data"

Results

• Exkimo = Traval/Place, Perception
• Kwaikiutl = Travel/Place
• Egypt = Social Power
• India = Affective/Rational
• China = Affective/Rational

Observations

• Note role of feedback
• Flattening of stories unless filtered ahead of time
  • E.g. bimodal results may be the result of conflating two story types

Cultural Patterns

• Discuss the model
• "Culture Models"
  • These mediate human communication and interaction
• Patterns and Templates
  • Encoding/Decoding
• PUT ON BOARD
  • Mimics method

Comparisons

• L-S
  • Same premises, different units and rules
    • Premises: structure = elements + rules
    • Units: mythemes vs. words that signify conceptual domains
• Rappaport
  • Compare culture patterns and schema to R's sacred propositions
• Bateson
  • Patterns

Selby

The ETHNOGRAPH

• QDA software
• Instead of myths, field notes and transcriptions of discourse
• A kind of data mining
• http://www.qualisresearch.com/default.htm

The Method: Noticing, Collecting, Thinking

• Iterative and Progressive -- i.e.cybernetic (an index of the pervasiveness of the ideology)
• Recursive (self-referential?)
• Holographic (part/whole)

Noticing

• Two levels: patterns and codes
• Patterns are recorded (and selected)
• Codes are discerned in the patterns

Collecting

• Puzzle analogy --> See L-S on the camshaft
• Assemble the codes into a larger framework
  • e.g. L-S's matrices ...

Thinking

• Thinking about the larger framework (e.g. L-S's canonical formula of myth)
• Understanding the "holes"
• Left-brain

Questions

• What is the status of the codes?
  • Heuristic vs. Objective status of the codes
• What is the status of the interpretation?

Tobin and the HRAF

The HRAF

• http://pulproxy.princeton.edu/connect
• Murdock's World Atlas

The OWC

• See book
• Compare to Colby, Selby ...
• BECOMING REFLEXIVE NOW ...

Why the controversy?

• The status of "codes"
• Violence to texts