Wykad 5

Sex and temperament in three primitive societies (1963)

Meads 1931-1933 work among three New Guinea societies living within a one-hundred-mile radius of each other: gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh, the fierce cannibalistic Mundugumor, and the graceful headhunters of Tchambuli. [The Arapesh]

Unlike the gentle and cooperative arapesh, male and female

The mundugumor women are believed to be just as violent, just as aggressive, just as jealous woman can put up a very good fight and a husband who wishes to beat his wife takes care to arm himself with a crocodile jaw and to be sure she is not armed. (1963:210) The tchambuli Women had the real power, controlling fishing and the most important manufacturers

Cultural studies 5
National character Structuralism of Levi-Strauss Kinship and Dissent

Personality and national character Personality: a distinct way a person thinks, feels and behaves a product of enculturation as
experienced by individuals, each with his or her genetic make-up

A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action
(Patterns of Culture 46)

Emphasis on child-rearing practices and education as factors responsible for such

characteristics

National character studies During and after World War II culture at a distance studies use of newspapers, books, photographs, interviews with
expatriates, childhood memories

Recurrent themes and values

Representatives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Geoffrey Gorer, Weston Labarre

Why should we study the national character of the Japanese?

Conventions of war which Western nations had come to accept as facts of human nature obviously did not exist for the Japanese. It made a major problem in the nature of the enemy. We had to understand their behavior in order to cope with it.

Geoffrey Gorer: Japanese character structure and propaganda (1942) How come the Japanese were so brutal and sadistic during WWII as opposed to the
gentleness of family life in Japan

Causes in toilet training practices Hypothesis: repressed rage Japanese infants had to control their sphincters (zwieracz),
before they acquired neurological and muscural development

As adults the Japanese expressed their rage through ruthlessness in war

This hypothesis was tested and found to be a myth.

The chrysanthemum and the sword (1946) -Ruth Benedict

During World War IIS, Benedict worked for the Office of War Information (OWI);

Dangers of the national character studies

Neither Gorer nor Benedict spoke, read, or wrote Japanese Dangers of generalizing fails to account for cultural complexity insufficient evidence small samples of informants simplistic psychologizing theories subjective

And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942) The American People: A Study in National Character (1948)

Kinship systems and descent

Claude Levi-Strausss structuralism Exogamy and endogamy

Incest Taboo Residence Patterns

Structuralism - Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) There are parallels between language and certain aspects of culture such as kinship,
exchange and myths. They are all a form of communication analogous to language For all their variety, these exchanges follow a small set of basic forms or deep structures that reflect a universal grammar of culture

Culture as surface representation of deep structures

Culture beliefs, sentiments, norms, values, attitudes and meanings are a surface representation of deep structures that have been affected by a groups physical and special environment as well as history Human thought structured into contrastive pairs of polar opposites (light/dark; good/evil; raw/cooked) The self/others contrastive pair necessary for communication and culture depends on it

Structural anthropology and kinship Memberds of a discent group trace their connections back to a common ancestor through
a chain of parant-child links

A kinship system is the single most important social institution

FUNCTIONS OF THE KIN GROUP In many societies kin groups take care of ones livelihood, ones career, ones marr iage, ones protection, ones identity. In stateless societies, the kind group usually forms the basis for political stability the promotion of political interests.

All kinship systems are elaborations on four fundamental kin relationships 1. 2. 3. 4.

Brother-sister Husband-wife Father-son Mothers brother-mothers son

The kinship atom is fundamental to kinship and the human society as such.

Mothers brother is key to kinship atom but it is only one relationship in a structure within a system.

Kin systems: patrilineal and matrilineal

The avunculate: a relationship between a young man Ego and his mothers brother

Ways of reckoning kin: descent groups

1. In the patrilinear system Ego and his father are in a formal relationship: respect and authority 2. A special bond between Ego and mothers brother is a remnant of a matrilinear system (India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sumatra, Tibet, South China, Africa, Aboriginal North America) In both systems transmission of resources from parents to children is unilinear

Ways of reckoning heritage: cognatic

In Europe and North America, kin on both sides are equally important Both mothers and fathers relatives of both genders are our relatives

The nayar people of the Malabar coast, southern India the matrilinear system
Among the Nayars (Nair a Hindu upper-class caste), stable nuclear families do not exist, and the man has no rights in his children only in his sisters children. According to custom, the marriage is broken off after only a few days

Matrifocality among the nayar

In addition to being matrilineal, this kind of arrangements can be described as matrifocal. This is not a kinship term, but rather a description of a household type. It entails, simply and literally, that the mother is the focal point. The term is used about households where the father for some reason is peripheral; where the marriage

Residence patterns
1. PARTILOCAL: predominant role for men is subsistence, if they own property that can be accumulated; societies that rely on animal husbandry or intensive agriculture; the wifes family is losing her potential and her offspring; pride-price is common as a form of compensation

2. MATRILOCAL: the husband joins the wifes family where womens role in predominant in subsistence (horticultural societies) 1. AMBILOCAL: the couple can join the grooms or the brides family (best resources, need of labor) 2. NEOLOCAL: a married couple forms a household in an independent location then intervention of kin would be an interference. All human societies prohibits sexual relations between close blood kin: parents and children and siblings Consanguineal kin relationships

Kinship group and exchange of women 1. Kinship systems are about the exchange of women, defining the categories of
potential spouses and prohibited mates 2. Exchange of women between kin groups is an effect of reciprocity, a fundamental structure of the human mind 1. Marcel Mauss theory of reciprocity: gift giving, receiving and reciprocating dominates social intercourse a. Gift giving congers upon its participants a special relationship of trust, solidarity, and mutual aid b. Gift exchanging may also be the idiom of competition and rivalry

Gift exchange and incest taboo

To Mausss theory of reciprocity, Levi-Strauss adds that: A. Marriages a basic form of gift exchange, in which women are the most precious gifts B. Incest taboo insures that such exchanges take place between families and between groups imposes the social aim of exogamy and alliance upon the biological events of sex and procreation (Rubin 36). The very formation of society occurs when man gives his sister away to another man

The existence of incest taboos in universal but the content of their prohibitions variable
1. Instinctive horror of incest (yet violations of incest taboo prove to the contrary: 10-14 % of U.S. children under 18 involved in incestuous relationship) 2. Psychoanalytic explanations: the son desires the mother, rivalry with the father, suppression of feelings (the Oedipus complex and identification with the father; likewise, the daughter desires the father (the Electra complex), rivalry with the mother, identification with the mother

3. Undesirable genes eliminated (hereditary disease) 4. Preference for genetic diversity: without that a species cannot adapt biologically to a changed environment

Why some societies condone or even favor certain kinds of incest?

Closely related to incest prohibitions in endogamy, marriage within a particular group (cousins, in-laws) Exogamy, marriage outside the group Levi-Strauss: intermarriage creates bonds of friendship and alliances with other groups, and share culture with the strengthened marriage ties Yehudi Cohen: promote trade relations, ensure

Ancient Egypt (3100-332 BC), the Inca and Hawai: obligatory sister-brother marriage Royal family believed to be semidivine Keep from marrying the mortals Kinship and inheritance
Kinship is connected to inheritance and succession; transmission of resources from one generation to another Primogeniture When the eldest son receives a larger part of the inheritance than the siblings (England, Colonial America) Ulimogeniture when the priority is given to the youngest son