ANTH245 2007-09-17: Difference between revisions
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can have added to the outcome of the greater revolutions, how little | can have added to the outcome of the greater revolutions, how little | ||
hastened their momentum." (Kroeber 1919:261) | hastened their momentum." (Kroeber 1919:261) | ||
=== Structuralism === | === Structuralism === | ||
Revision as of 14:33, 17 September 2007
ANTH 245: Lecture for SEPT 17 2007
Recap
Rappaport's second cybernetic loop
- Sacred propositions -> pragramatic proposition -> the System --> Ritual experience --> Sacred propositions
- Actually similar to this:
- EXPERIENCE --> RELIGION --> POLITICS --> ECONOMICS --> EXPERIENCE
Segue
Cognitive models
Actually looking at a pattern (myth)
Levi-Strauss
Background
Essay 1 (Structuralism)
>> See Levi-Strauss, 1951, "Language and the Analysis of Social Laws"
Wiener's pessimism
- Working from analysis of "time series" data under stable conditions
- e.g. anti-aircraft
- Famously found social science unfertile
The model of linguistics
- Historical linguistics
- Grimm's law
- Regular and unconscious
- Phonemes and perception ("sound blindness")
- Langue vs. Parole
Kroeber's Theory
- Culture as Language school
- Dresses, like sound patterns, follow regular shifts
- "The fact of regularity in social change is the primary inference
from our phenomena. The amplitude of the periodicities is of hardly less importance. Their very magnitude dwarfs the influence which any individual can possibly have exerted in an alteration of costume." (Kroeber 1919:260)
- "It is also evident how little even the intensest individual faculty
can have added to the outcome of the greater revolutions, how little hastened their momentum." (Kroeber 1919:261)
Structuralism
- The linguistic analogy
- Elements and rules
- Same as "code"
- Same "universal grammar" applied to language and other domains
The image of the computer
- Explained by reference to the computer (or database)
- Not the only time:
The day may come when all the available documentation on Australian tribes is transferred to punched cards and with the help of a computer their entire techno-economic, social and religious structures can be shown to be like a vast group of transformations.
The Savage Mind, p. 89.
- Other examples from our reading this week?
Kinship as a communication system
Comparing kinship and language
Essay 2 (Mythology)
>> See Levi-Strauss, 1955, "The Structural Study of Myth"
The method
Myth as vehicle for ontology
Themes
Myth as signal and message
- Message as ontology
- Code as method of interpretation
- Myth itself is a vehicle for ontology
The function of myth
- Compare to Rappaport
- L-S focuses on content, Rappaport sacred context
- L-S helps explain myths credibility -- it overcomes contradictions
- Compare to Bateson
- Patterns
- Who is communicating?
L-S's image of the computer
- Confuses cybernetics with computation
- Actually very interested in databases
