ANTH245 2007-09-17

<< Go back to main page

ANTH 245: Lecture for SEPT 17 2007

>> See exhibits

Business

• Responses to the class are due by Thursday morning; i.e. do them Wednesday night ...
• Email will be fine ...

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

Levi-Strauss

Background

• One of the greatest anthropologists
• A major public figure
• Founded the anthropological version of structuralism

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?

Essay 2 (Mythology)

>> See Levi-Strauss, 1955, "The Structural Study of Myth"

How to reconcile the "meaning" with the L-S's interpretation?

• Tragedy of will vs. destiny

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