ANTH245 2007-09-24
From Dickinson College Wiki
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
- Current system
- EXERCISE:
- Pick an essay and dump it in
- Discuss results
- EXERCISE:
The Process
- Text + Thesaurus (Dictionary) + Rules
- Word counts
- Correlations
Text
- 9,000 stories
- 5 culture areas
- Translated into English
Dictionary
- Three categories
- Hi freq && polysemous
- Med freq && polysemous
- 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
- Same premises, different units and rules
- 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
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 ...
What is a computer?
Why the controversy?
- The status of "codes"
- Violence to texts
