Jean Bazin Questions of Meaning

Anthropological Theory
http://ant.sagepub.com
Questions of Meaning
Jean Bazin
Anthropological Theory 2003; 3; 416
DOI: 10.1177/146349960334002
The online version of this article can be found at:

http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/4/416
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Anthropological Theory can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://ant.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/3/4/416
Downloaded from http://ant.sagepub.com at Templeman Lib/The Librarian on January 12, 2010

87S 02 Bazin(2) (ad/t) 10/11/03 12:26 pm Page 416
Anthropological Theory
Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
Vol 3(4): 416–434
[1463-4996(200312)3:4;416–434;038654]
Prefatory Note on Jean Bazin,

the author of ‘Questions of meaning’
Jonathan Friedman
Lund University
Jean Bazin, Directeur d’études at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, died
suddenly of a heart attack in his office on 12 December 2001. He had just come back
from lunch following a seminar that was, as usual, heavily attended. Bazin did not publish
a great number of books, but his articles, some of them quite long, are the expression of
a powerfully analytical mind that was engaged in a kind of anthropology that is not often
associated with France. Not a structuralist, nor a structural Marxist, Bazin was an anthro-
pologist of social action. His background as a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieur,
where he did a doctoral degree in philosophy under the direction of Althusser before
embarking on a career in anthropology as a student of Georges Balandier, enabled him
to bring to bear the stringency of Wittgenstein on issues of ethnography in ways that
many might find frightening. This student of structural Marxism embarked on a radi-
cally empirical and methodological approach that was completely foreign to that of his
teacher. Those who take fieldwork for given, as something intellectually unproblematic,
find in Bazin’s work much to learn. His research in West Africa, both ethnographic and
historical, bears testimony to a mind always questioning accepted realities and concen-
trated on the rich detail of social and political action. In several long articles on the
African kingdom of Ségou, he developed ideas that are of central importance for the
rethinking of political structures. The result of his detailed examination of the historical
materials in the original language was that the very conception of society needed to be
rethought in this particular context, where the categories of kingship and statehood/
chiefdom were taken for granted. His analysis of the dynamics of the social processes of
reproduction revealed a set of activities, slave-taking by warrior aristocrats, merchant
traders and a kingship in a larger arena of trade, where there was a total lack of internal
relations that could be associated with the concept of society. In all of his work he engaged
in critical analysis and demystification or deconstruction of blindly accepted categories,
an analysis that was always informed by the highest standards of rational thinking that
are so often lacking in contemporary social science. His critique of Clastres’ celebrated
work on the ‘anti-state’ is a decisive example of his capacity to scrutinize the conceptual
problems of anthropology. He was perhaps at his most impressive in seminars where his
rhetorical abilities, combining irony and logic, were much appreciated, if not feared.
This article was part of a forum on ‘Thick Description’ in the journal Enquête.
Another of the articles from that issue, one by Vincent Descombes, was also published
in Anthropological Theory (2[4] December, 2002). The thrust of these articles is to
416
FRIEDMAN Prefatory Note
scrutinize some of the generally accepted notions concerning ethnography propounded

by Geertz. The latter’s understanding of Ryle’s notion of thick description is thoroughly
criticized by Descombes, an analytical philosopher who is one of a group of French
philosophers that has taken questions of epistemology seriously. Bazin focuses on the
relation between act and meaning in Geertz’ work and demonstrates, using a combi-
nation of philosophical and ethnographic arguments, that the separation of act and
meaning is an artificial misconstrual of ethnographic reality. A wink is not a twitch of
the eye, but not because the latter is purely physical while the former is informed by
meaning, i.e. an informing of a physical act by an externalized interpretation. On the
contrary, the wink is just as much a single phenomenon as the twitch. It is completely
different even if the motion of the eyelid is similar. It is only from the observer’s position
that the interpretation of the act can be separated from the act, but this separation does
not correctly map the actual occurrence of the wink. This provides the initial conditions
for a sophisticated analysis of the nature of social action in which interpretative meaning
is properly located as a reflexive relation to immediate acts, while the latter are non-inter-
pretive, though rule-governed, phenomena. Executing a prisoner of war or crossing a
street are specific, even culturally specific acts, but they are not organized in terms of
meaning as such, as an autonomous set of propositions about the world that contain a
specific order of practice. It must at least be conceded that goal oriented behavior, inten-
tionality, cannot be reduced to interpretive schemes.
If winking and executing the condemned person are part of the overall group of
actions familiar to me, I know at once what they are doing and do not need to proceed
to an interpretation. (Bazin, p. 426)
This argument amounts to a strict control of ethnographic reporting, a concerted effort

to dissociate the act from its interpretation. Of course people may well have interpre-
tations of their actions, e.g. I killed him because I was jealous, because he was unclean,
but the information contained in such interpretations is not necessary in order to describe
the actions involved. Bazin here is arguing for the necessity of separating the different
ways in which meaning is constituted in the social world, and the necessity of not conflat-
ing them simply because they are simultaneous. In other words, life is not a text, not a
surface of activity with an underlying scheme of meaning, but a multiplicity of actions
structured by different if simultaneously present logics. This makes fieldwork more than
a simple reading of the other over his shoulder, as Geertz would have it. Life is not a text,
but there are plenty of texts in life. What is wrong here is not the use of the text metaphor
as such, but its generalization to the entirety of social life, flattening out the social world
into a one-dimensional representation in which ethnography is reduced to reading.
Jean Bazin was an anthropologist whose desire for understanding was never tied down
by the received canons of theory and analysis. For this he should be a guiding light for
coming generations in an academic world in which clientilism has become dominant
and where there is all too much fear of non-inclusion in the circle of those who are repre-
sentatives of the canon.
417
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)
Questions of meaning
Jean Bazin
Translated from the French by Henry Smith,

University of New Hampshire, USA
Abstract
This article argues that the common distinction between action and meaning that is
often used in anthropological discussions of culture and its analysis is based on serious
confusions regarding the nature of social action. The latter are exemplified in Geertz’
misinterpretation of the work of Ryle on thick description, one that divides behavior
into meaningless and meaningful and assumes that the latter is different from the
former in that it contains a component that is missing in the former. This assumes
that behavior and meaning are two separate phenomena, but they are not. The
intentionality of action is an immediate aspect of action and not something that can
be interpreted in terms of a code or paradigm, i.e. a separate interpretative domain.
Interpretative discourse is not the underlying meaning of action, but an action in its
own right, with its own internal rules, just as is all action. Anthropology then need
not, as certain anthropologists (e.g. Sperber, Le savoir des anthropologues, 1982) have
argued, be condemned to remain a knowledge of cultures.
Key Words
action • culture • Geertz • interpretation • meaning • Ryle • Sperber • symbol • thick
description
If anthropology continues to define itself as a knowledge of cultures – and this is still a

widely held view, even if this type of exercise could profitably be abandoned for the very
trendy ‘cultural studies’ phenomenon – it is because the discipline is ailing from an old
philosophical bent.1 A philosopheme is a sort of virus of the intellect of which philosophy
should, in theory, rid us. One could call this the solipsism of common sense:2 am I not
the best situated to know that I have a sore foot or what I am thinking about? Whereas
you-who-are-not-me must content yourself with an interpretation of the outward signs
of my pain, with my objectively observable behavior (I limp, I complain. . .) or with
whatever thoughts I choose to share with you. These are signs, which are always suscep-
tible to being deceptive (I can feign pain or lie to you), whereas I myself know very well,
with absolute certainty, that I am in pain or what I am thinking about.
From the so-called chasm that separates me from others (other than myself ), we move
readily to the one that separates us from ‘the others’ (other than ourselves), those who we
often call the Other (the capital letter being without doubt intended to magnify the depth
of the chasm). The ‘cultural difference’ is one of the modalities of otherness, that is to say,
the relationship by virtue of which the other (the one who bears a lower-case letter)
appears to me other than myself: just like others in relation to me – but as a result of a
collective, not individual, mental barrier – the cultural Other is so radically separated
418
BAZIN Questions of meaning
from us that one must unfurl riches of interpretation in order to discern what he (the
Papuan, the Balinese) may well be thinking, to understand the enigmatic meaning of what
is going on within himself, in his heart of hearts, in the shelter of his culture-which-is-
not-mine, in his most everyday deeds.
The origin of this philosopheme is a theory of meaning which is as old as philosophy:
the meaning of a statement is the representation (or the idea) that corresponds to it in
the mind of the one making the statement. It is clear that if I am convinced that the
meaning of your statement is the mental image that you associate it with in the innermost
recesses of your conscience, I have nothing more to do, in order to try to understand this
meaning, than to ask you politely to provide me with a second statement which would
be the interpretive commentary on the first one, and so forth and so on. For how could
I know better than you, short of being able to put myself in your place, what you mean?
The same goes for what you are doing insofar as one considers that the intent of an
act (what you wish to do) is, like the meaning of a statement (what you wish to say),
the mental image that is associated with it – by virtue of the principle that if what I do
has a meaning, I am obviously the best situated to convey it. Therefore the most sensible
thing to do is to ask the ‘Other’ (the Papuan, the Balinese) if he would be willing to
state clearly for me the meaning of what he is doing. By what right could I state it in
his stead without even consulting him or taking into account his very well informed
view of himself, as if I know it better than he? (Certain grave sins are already looming
on the horizon: ‘ethnocentrism’, the ‘politically incorrect’, domination by the West. . .)
A strange science then, this ‘anthropology’ – and even a little suspect. What would
zoology be if mice were to get mixed up in it? Likewise for geology if flints had their
say? Dan Sperber had already warned us some time ago:
All the plans of scientific anthropology come up against a major obstacle: it is imposs-
ible to describe a cultural phenomenon well, an election, a mass or a soccer match,
for example, without taking into account the idea going through the head of those
participating therein; in point of fact, one doesn’t observe ideas, one understands
them intuitively; one doesn’t describe them, one interprets them.3
What we humans do would thus fall into two spheres, one external, the other internal:
our behavior on the one hand, the meaning we assign to it on the other. Behavior belongs
to the domain of the observable, that of facts (physical as well as social), and these facts
make up the whole of that which can be described. On the other hand, the meaning of
this behavior – the ideas, the representations, the values that are inwardly connected to
it (the ‘symbolic’) – would exist only in the mind (the hypothesis of a ‘collective mental-
ity’, however strange it may be, is inherent in all usage of the notion of culture4). In
order to have access to it, one must pass through the mediation of signs (for example,
words, sentences, gestures, speeches, writings), that which presumes an interpretation.
To take up anew the words of Max Weber, the behavior of human beings, as opposed
to that of mice, has by nature to be understandable. It does not, therefore, suffice to
observe what humans do – they do not do just anything, their behavior is clearly rather
well organized, one finds therein regularity and coherence – and in order to possibly give
a description of their behavior one must, in addition, by means of another process called
‘interpretation’, understand the meaning of what they do.5
419
Such is not the case for mice.6 Observation will teach us all that we can know about
mice. The life of mice – which is itself relatively well organized – can then be described
in full: nothing remains to be understood. Whereas even if one observes human beings
in action, one does not really know what they are doing as long as one has not under-
stood the meaning of what they’re doing.
This quality – comprehensibility – serves as the foundation of man’s knowledge. It
marks the boundary of the human being’s domain, as not everything that is human is
comprehensible. For example, if you do two things at once (such as catching your train
and sneezing), only one-half of your behavior can be found to be understandable. When
you sneeze, you are on the side of mice. Sneezing undoubtedly has a cause but no
meaning. And when you run, is it necessary to distinguish between the movement of
running and the action of running in order to catch one’s train? I believe so. First of all,
mice also run, but they never run to catch their train and one presumes that they neither
intend to nor plan on doing so. Furthermore, I see clearly that you are running and I
presume that you are doing it for a reason. But for all that, it is still not necessarily
obvious to me that you are heading to catch your train.
When I depict what human beings are doing, at a given point I inevitably come up
against a limitation beyond which it becomes impossible for description to be accurate.
Once this threshold has been crossed, I am constrained to cease describing and to begin
interpreting. This threshold marks the entry into the ‘cultural’. Description ceases to be
pertinent as soon as there are at least two cultures, that of the observer and that of the
one being observed, just as comprehension ceases the moment the interlocutors speak
two different languages: a translation is necessary.
In a way that is at least inaugural, if not fundamental, C. Geertz, in the opening pages
of The Interpretation of Cultures,7 makes use of an example borrowed from Gilbert Ryle
in order to answer the question, ‘What is doing ethnography?’ Two persons contract
their right eyelid but one (A) is affected by a twitch while the other (B) is winking at
somebody (X). Taken as such, a movement of the eyelid is but a movement of the eyelid.
It is a phenomenon of the physical world. From the point of view of the one who is in
the position of pure observer, the twitch cannot be distinguished from the wink. The
fact that B’s eye movement has, in addition, a meaning, is not accessible to the observer8
for B is conveying a message to X according to a socially established code: we have already
passed into the ‘cultural’. An interpretation is thus called for in order to know that B is
winking (and more precisely, to know that C is pretending to wink, that D is practic-
ing winking . . .). I cannot know what B is actually doing if I do not grasp the meaning
of his behavior (his beckoning to X). In other words, A’s behavior is not comprehensi-
ble; it falls within the province of physiology, just as that of mice belongs to zoology. B’s
behavior is comprehensible and must therefore be understood by an appropriate
interpretation. Here one assumes that there is a wink when B assigns this meaning to
the movement of his eyelid – hidden from the regard of every potential observer (but
not from X . . .), he links this meaning (this intention or subjective ‘aim’) to his gesture.
It is thanks to this ‘liaison’ that his behavior (contracting his eyelid) becomes an action
(winking).9 Knowing what D is doing is therefore to interpret the movement of his
eyelid as winking to X, that is to say, I see the representation that B is making with his
act as being a wink directed at X.
The meaning of the apologue is clear. If, just by watching my nearby neighbor,
420
‘another’, I do not understand what he is doing, because I do not understand what he

intends to do (or what his ‘doing’ ‘means’), this ignorance becomes clearly unfathomable
when the cultural difference of ‘Others’ is added to it. As for doing ethnography, it is
not only observing what human beings do – that would be to take them for mice – but
understanding the meaning of what they do, taking into account a universe of meaning
which is profoundly foreign to us. Ethnographic data could only be representations of
representations, constructions of constructions. . . .10
The epistemological threshold, which separates corporal movement as pure physical
phenomena (or physiological if there is a twitch) from gesture (signaling), sets apart
‘technical actions’ in Edmund Leach, such as cooking oneself an egg, digging a hole.
These are ‘expressive actions’ which include both acts of speech and certain behaviors –
(such as wearing a uniform, being seated under a canopy, wearing a wedding ring . . .11).
The former actions alter the physical state of the world: they say nothing, they have no
meaning, they are not comprehensible, one can easily give descriptive reports of them
(as of that physical state itself ), whereas the latter ‘say something about the state of the
world’. For example, that one is a soldier, that he is the king, that one is married . . . It
is thus imperative, in order to understand the meaning of these physical descriptions, to
be able to ‘decode’ them, that is to say, to render an interpretation of them according to
their customary use in another culture. To be sure, remarks Leach, we normally do not
realize that there exists an equally profound difference between cooking oneself an egg
and wearing a wedding band: ‘It’s only when we are in the company of strangers that
we suddenly become aware that, as all customary behaviors (and not only the acts of
speech) convey information, we cannot understand what is happening before knowing
the code.’12
Likewise, says Max Weber, if I see a man who is shouldering a rifle and taking aim, I
know right away what he is doing.13 (If you do not know, I could give you a descrip-
tion of what he is doing). On the other hand, knowing why he is raising his rifle and
taking aim – is he at war, is he taking revenge for an affront or is he participating in a
firing squad? – would be a matter of ‘comprehension by interpretation’ of the meaning
of his act.14 Raising one’s rifle, cocking it, aiming, and firing are technical acts which,
because they have certain effects on physical reality (they kill), are of the same order as
physical reality, whereas avenging oneself, executing a condemned person or waging war
are activities implying that one recognizes certain values (honor, justice, love of country
. . .). Weberian knowledge aspires to an understanding of meaning because it is funda-
mentally a knowledge of ‘culture’, that is to say of diverse ways in which, in reference to
values, human beings give meaning to their world.15
This is rather strange discourse. This foundation of a knowledge of man, like all foun-
dations, takes on the form of a myth. The main character, the social scientist, is at first
detached from everything, firmly ensconced in pure ‘objectivity’, no longer under-
standing anything of what he knows (there are only contracting eyelids, rifles being
raised . . .). Then, fortunately for him, he rediscovers, by the twists and turns of interpre-
tation, what he already knew. Let us reflect upon this type of basic armchair adventure
which is methodical doubt: Descartes himself also, through his window, watches those
whom he knows to be men passing by. ‘However, what do I see from this window, if not
hats and coats which can cover specters or would-be men who only move about mind-
lessly?’16 But when he is able to assure us, in the end, that these men are not robots, is
421
he teaching us something? In any case, it is not news for those who encounter these
people in the ordinary circumstances of life – there would be no point in learning from
them that they never behave as machines.17
In reality, it is very difficult for the one who does not practice epistemological doubt
to imagine a similarly plausible situation where things would not happen in this way: I
would observe human beings as a naturalist observes mice. Then I would say that, in
certain cases (but not when they sneeze and are twitching); the meaning of their behavior
still escapes me, that I need to look for it through an interpretation. In what circum-
stances could I say with some certainty, ‘It is as if I were observing mice except for the
fact that, since it is a question of human beings, I have to understand what they are
doing?’
It would be necessary to invent a science fiction scenario: non-human intelligent
beings, having come from a faraway asteroid, would, upon observing us, take us for mice.
Then, for lack of being able to explain the significant regularities of our behavior by
means of an objective determinism (genetic program, setting . . .), they would say to
themselves: ‘After all, although they are perhaps like us and they themselves know what
they are doing, unlike these beings, like mice, we who are scientists are the only ones
capable of understanding what they are doing.’
Of course, I can meditate before the soothing spectacle of an aquarium and tell myself:
in assuming that these fish are men, there would be some meaning (and not only a cause)
to all those apparently random movements. But in fact, if they were human, I would
already be on the other side of the glass, in their midst, in their presence, even in their
company, and I would not ask this question. I would be a witness and (possibly the
object or the partner) of their actions, not the one observing their behavior. Admittedly,
I would not necessarily be capable, for all that, of telling you exactly what they are doing,
of giving you an accurate description of their behavior, but I would know that they are
doing something.
In fact, we are not observing human behaviors of which it would be necessary, in
addition, to look for the meaning. We are witnesses to actions.
It is sufficient that the winking scene be not only an example for an Oxford philoso-
pher but also a real-life situation in order to see at what point the version which Geertz
gives of it lacks plausibility. In all the cases where I would effectively be a witness to what
is transpiring (and not just an observer of eyelid contractions), I would know or, at the
very least, could know that a wink was exchanged without needing an ‘interpretation’.
For example, I would catch sight of B ostensibly turning his head towards X and the
latter would assume the knowing look of one who understood the message. For a wink
(likewise a gesture or a word) is a relationship of B to X perceptible by a third party (me),
and possibly seen if one finds oneself in a position to perceive it. This is not what is
taking place in B’s head. A wink is not the idea or the intention of winking. The intent
to wink is not yet a wink. It is quite possible that B’s action (gesturing to X) passes un-
noticed by all (if done in an especially discreet manner), that no descriptive report of
the type ‘B gestured to X’ be therefore given of said gesture, but that correctly assumes
that the action is describable.
Likewise, assuming that I am actually a witness to the scene of an execution and not
in the process of establishing the foundations of human knowledge, how could I know
that this man is taking aim without knowing, at the same time, that he is doing it with
422
others, on the orders of an officer, in order to shoot a condemned person? Might what
Weber calls the meaning (or the ‘complex of meaning’18) of his act be simply the
continuation of my description, the enlargement of raising one’s rifle in the overall situ-
ation? Of course, unlike the murderer who takes his revenge, the soldier obeys a legiti-
mate order in reference to a given institutional or legal framework. But executing a
condemned person is none the less exactly what he is doing, not the meaning of what
he is doing. Something akin to a meaning to be interpreted is set apart only for one who
arbitrarily isolates the gesture of taking aim, just as a sentence taken out of its context
needs an interpretation.
Of course, one could make use of a technical device, which allows for the extraction of
the eyelid’s movements from the situation in which they are observed. In that case, I would
not be witnessing the scene directly. I would be examining two sequences filmed in close-
up from the eye of A and from the eye of B (just as one could assume that I have in hand
an instant snapshot of the preceding gesture of one of the soldiers from the firing squad
taken through the telephoto lens). It is in such conditions that it would actually be neces-
sary to interpret. As pictured by Wittgenstein, one asks someone to take on an angry look,
then one hides his face in such a way that only his eyes are visible. ‘You’ll be surprised
to note how much their expression now lends itself to numerous interpretations.’19
In order to take away from the gesture that B makes to X in my presence its charac-
ter of observable and describable action, it would be necessary that a device – for
example, a photographic lens – place the subjects in an experimental situation, to trans-
form them momentarily into mice. When a human is the object of an experiment, all
that is action on his part – and not a reaction to stimuli – becomes either more or less
a bothersome artifact or an additional, external condition (for example, the fact that he
consents for a moment to play the role of subject of an experiment). But from the
absence of a perceptible difference between the two blinks of the eyelid which this tech-
nical device could engender, there would result (as Geertz believes) nothing other than
that winking is something that, in itself, escapes the movie camera (like all description).
A film director would have no more trouble showing us a wink (for example, by setting
up two back-to-back shots: one of B’s gesture, the other of X’s compliant smile) than
any other interaction.
A ‘knowledge of man’ should begin by restoring experience in its own right.
I don’t know that my foot hurts. I’m even the only one not to know it; on the contrary,
it’s you who possibly knows it. I myself do not know it; I hurt, that’s all. I can know
what someone else is thinking, not what I’m thinking. It is correct to say, I know what
you are thinking about, but not to say, I know what I’m thinking.20 And you know what
I am thinking about or that my foot hurts with a degree of certainty which is not the
same as for a mathematical proposition but which is not without value provided that
you have studied me up close or that you have kept company with me for a long time.
In order to know it, you make use of clues or symptoms, you do not interpret my
behavior as if my words and my gestures formed a sort of obscure or barely legible text
which you would have to decipher word by word. It is as if one said that an emotion
cannot be seen because it is completely internal; one is thus reduced to interpreting its
signs. And yet what is happening is not that one sees facial contortions and that one
‘concludes (like the doctor making his diagnosis) that there is joy, sadness or boredom.
One immediately describes the face as sad . . .’.21
423
One could only say that describing sadness on a face is a more complex process than
other descriptions. (‘He is one-eyed’, ‘He has a gash on his left cheek . . .’). The differ-
ence between the twitch and the wink is not, as Geertz believes, between a behavior
without and a behavior with meaning, but between two levels of description. In order
to describe what A is doing, Ryle tells us, it suffices to say that he is contracting his right
eyelid. But in B’s case, one must say that he is contracting his eyelid to send a signal.
And yet B is not doing two things – contracting his eyelid and sending a signal, just as
a soldier is not doing three things – raising his rifle, obeying an order and shooting a
condemned person. They are doing only one thing, but one describes what they are
doing by combining (or superimposing) two or several action verbs: this is a ‘thick’ 22
description of two or more layers. But if it is true that one does not describe a twitch
and a wink in the same way, it does not follow that they therefore belong to two different
levels of reality of which one would be external (the domain of the observable), and the
other ‘internal’ (the domain of the interpretable). A twitch is a symptom and a wink a
signal. One calls for a diagnosis whereas the other has to be understood. If the message
is not understood, B’s action has failed (whereas A continues to have a twitch, be there
a diagnosis or not). But a symptom and a signal are equally describable phenomena.
I am therefore a witness to human actions (not, barring exceptions, an observer of
behaviors) and to two things in one: either I know what people are doing or I do not
and, in that instance, I must learn it.
If I know what they are doing, I can recognize what they are doing. Knowing what
humans are doing is not a particular mental state (for example, an empathetic feeling
which would afford me intuition of the meaning which they give to their actions); it is
being able to give an accurate description of their actions to a third party, but not necess-
arily a complete one. I can say, for example, with some certainty: they are sneezing, they
are running to catch their train, they are exchanging winks, they are playing soccer and
so on.
It is true that I can, at least ideally, cut myself off from all familiar actions which are
taking place around me and behave resolutely as a strict neutral observer of events,
reduced to their temporal and spatial coordinates. For example, meticulously describing
(or else recording by a system of video cameras) all the observable movements of human
beings, at a given hour, in the hall of Gare Saint-Lazare, as Georges Perec enjoys doing
at Place Saint Aulpice.23 And you who are running to catch your train find yourselves,
for a moment, in my visual field. But in reality, it is not true that I am observing, in this
way, raw behaviors not yet ‘interpreted’, as if I were observing graphic signs laid out on
this page only without reading them. In reality I know that certain people are waiting
for somebody, that others are going to catch their train, others the subway, on their way
to work, to the movies and so on. I know that what they are doing takes place within
the limits of an easily imaginable series of ordinary, plausible actions; so well, I might
add, that any extraordinary behavior would be noticed right away, would be news. What
I am missing is enough information to be able to tell who does exactly what. This is
information I could obtain by interrogating people or by having them followed . . . and
then I would know what each one is doing.
I know what they are doing insofar as the world of their action is familiar to me: I
myself also act in a world where such actions are plausible, predictable, habitual,
expected, well known and so on. If I act in a world where contracting one’s right eyelid
424
is not one of the possible means of sending a signal to someone, I do not understand
what it is to wink; in this case it is clear that I will not be able to recognize that B is
winking. It might also be that I now understand what it is to raise one’s rifle but do not
know what it is to execute a condemned person. I might be acting in a world where one
only raises one’s rifle in order to hunt rabbits and where any execution other than
hanging is unimaginable. It is only in such a case that it would be plausible for me to
limit my description to the sole gesture of taking aim. After having described the
movement of raising one’s rifle, I would stop for lack of understanding the rest. One
could, however, easily teach me that here, instead of hanging them, one shoots the
condemned like rabbits. My description of the scene could have also remained incom-
plete for want of information. I could not tell you the name of the condemned person,
the size of the rabbit, exactly which war it was all about, if one kills his wife’s or his sister’s
lover out of revenge. I would have needed to undertake an additional inquiry. What I
will be missing, in all these instances, is not the meaning of what they are doing but the
ability to say what they are doing, to give a more or less accurate description of their
actions. But I have no right to state the ‘meaning of what they are doing’ as long as I
know nothing about the circumstances of their action.
I do not begin by observing the movement of the eyelid or the gesture of raising one’s
rifle in order to attempt, in the next breath, to understand the meaning of these behav-
iors. If winking and executing the condemned person are part of the overall group of
actions familiar to me, I know at once what they are doing and do not need to proceed
to an interpretation. One could say that I ‘understand’ what they are doing on the
condition that ‘comprehension’ does not designate, in this case, a particular activity; for
example, an effort to interpret,24 not a situation. Within the boundaries of this familiar
world, what others do is self-evident, the actions of one and the other respond to each
other, contradict each other, complement each other, confront each other; in short,
combine with each other in some way. Within these limits, the action to which I am a
witness is thus not comprehensible (to be interpreted), but effectively understood (I recog-
nize it, I can describe it to a third party).
On the other hand, if I understand that B is winking at C, this does not mean that I
thereby understand which message he is communicating to C. I know that a message
was sent, but since a wink is by definition a discreet message – even secret – between
two parties, I do not know what the message is; I can only attempt to guess at it. Besides,
for want of a prior agreement sufficiently explicit, C (the person addressed) may waver
between several possible interpretations of what B is trying to tell him. But in this case,
the fact that the content of the message demands an interpretation does not mean that
the action itself (transmitting a message by winking) demands one.25
Understanding an action, that is to say knowing what the other is doing (for example,
that he is waving), is not to understand a message, just as understanding what it is to
execute a condemned person is not ‘to understand’, to approve, to accept, to hold as my
own the values that legitimize this execution.
I can know that people are speaking to one another but understand nothing of what
they are saying to one another (I am too far away, I do not understand their language,
or some other reason). That they talk to one another is not the meaning of what they
do; it is simply what they do. For this type of action (but much less so for cooking oneself
an egg), it is easy to believe that the ‘meaning’ of what they are doing is the meaning of
425
what they are saying to one another. What they are saying to one another possibly
assumes an interpretation (for example, a translation or a decoding if it is coded), not
what they are doing. On what occasion would I need an interpretation in order to know
that these people are in the process of talking to one another? I understand this at once,
however ‘barbarian’ they may be. The fact remains that if I wish to give a more complete
account of what has taken place before my eyes (of the event which I have attended), it
would be necessary for me to be able to report what they said to one another.
Just as knowing that it is a wink is not to understand the meaning of the message so
discreetly transmitted, so understanding the meaning of a sentence (‘It is the king’, ‘I
am married’ . . .) is not of the same order as knowing what a canopy or a wedding ring
is. In one instance I need to have been trained in a system of signs (of a language), in
the other I need to have gotten a good description of a ceremony (a marriage, a court
reception). The sentence ‘I am married’ can be translated, but not wearing a wedding
ring (no more than cooking oneself an egg). I can only establish analogies and differ-
ences with other actions (other ways of getting married, of showing that one is married
and so on). And the fact that my interlocutor is able to explain to me that he is wearing
a wedding ring by the expression ‘I am married’ does not mean that wearing a wedding
ring is ‘expressive’. It is clear that if I do not know the custom of European marriage
and, in particular, the fact that an exchange of rings takes place therein, the fact of
wearing a wedding ring could not serve as a helpful clue for me. But I can observe or
have myself describe the ceremony. And this is true for a technical action as well, such
a cooking oneself an egg, which could be altogether as mysterious to an Eskimo as
reading the Critique of Pure Reason.26 But nothing prevents him from learning what it
is to cook eggs or to read Kant (nor, by the way, from learning to cook himself eggs or
to read Kant).
Here we are at the heart of a constitutive illusion of a knowledge of cultures. In every
situation where actions to which we are witnesses have to do with a world unfamiliar to
us – a type of situation in which anthropologists often find themselves and into which
they even ardently inquire – we tend to assume that what we are missing is not knowing
what people are doing (of being in a position to describe it), but rather understanding
the meaning of what they’re doing. We liken what they do – their interactions – to a
speech (or to a ‘text’) to which we do not have the key and of which we would have to
give an ‘interpretation’. We imagine that if we were in their place, in their head, thinking
their own thoughts, this meaning would be revealed to us. But if we were in their place,
we would not be posing this question of meaning: what they would be doing would be
self-evident. Insofar as what humans do appears strange (or unfamiliar) to us, we are
tempted to look for a hidden meaning there, an enigma to unravel. It seems to us that
in these mores, these rites or these objects of ‘others’, meaning manifests itself and is
missing at the same time. This appears to have a meaning – that which is familiar to us,
on the other hand, seems not to have a meaning: we understand it – or rather that could,
that should have a meaning. It is therefore necessary to interpret.
Imagine that I tell you that I saw a man, dressed in a particular way, holding a baby
over a basin, pouring a little water on its forehead, and so on. You will immediately tell
me, ‘It is a baptism.’ By thus giving you a raw description of their behavior, in actual fact
I am not accurately describing to you what they are doing; rather, I am showing you what
I understand them to be doing. This is proof of ignorance, not of ‘objectivity’. For them,
426
it is clear that this is a baptism and they are acting accordingly. If the priest suddenly
began drowning the child or cutting off his foreskin, they would not fail to cry out, ‘This
is no longer a baptism!’ But I who do not know what a baptism is, and therefore do not
know that it is a baptism which I am attending, am under the illusion that there is, on
the one hand, the observed behavior and, on the other, its meaning. For after having seen
them in action, I still must ask them to explain to me what they are doing. Yet they them-
selves are in no way preoccupied with giving the meaning ‘baptism’ to a behavior: all they
are doing is simply baptizing a child. It is like when, in an ethnographic film, a commen-
tary (voice-over or written) informs me as to what people are doing, but they themselves
need no commentary. The commentary does not reveal to me their thoughts, the
representations that they associate with their gestures; it still leaves me in the dark.
In the villages of the Segou region (in Mali) – at least those which are a good distance
from the ‘city pavement’ – a traveler who is the least bit alert might, for example, notice
that the front doors of certain houses are spattered with whitish streaks, occasionally
with some strands of down occasionally left stuck in a little blood. If he decides that it
is not bird droppings or a few accidental dirt marks left there out of carelessness, the
repetition of the same motif from house to house and from village to village will prompt
him to draw this conclusion, but a layout, a marking – in short, a ‘cultural phenom-
enon’ – he will likely ask himself: ‘What does that mean?’
He could have a similar attitude before a stone with strange-looking grooves (What
is this writing?) or a series of colored spots on a canvas (What does that represent?). We
are generally very fond of interpretation, even if the propensity to assume or to imagine
that it must ‘make sense’ is not universally shared. For the ‘clairvoyants’ of all kinds (seers,
mediums, the paranoid), the world is brimming with messages to be deciphered. For
ethnologists, this is often the case as well.
However, in response to his request for meaning, the villagers will answer that what
he observed is the trace left by a sacrifice of family ancestors.27 They will explain to him
that during the annual feasts, the head of the household spreads a libation of millet gruel
on the outer side of the front door of the common family dwelling; sometimes he also
cuts the throat of a chicken against the bare wall. This is, they will explain to him what
one calls ka da son, literally ‘watering the doorstep’; and also ka shu son, literally ‘spraying
the dead’.
Might one say, thanks to this explanation, that he now understands the meaning of
these signs, as if he had just reconstructed a puzzle, resolved an enigma, had just under-
stood the message inscribed on a stone or what a painting depicts? But these markings
were not a sign or a symbol – for example, in a local handwriting, the notice
‘ENTRANCE’, the name of the house, or a commercial sign, the family coat of arms
and so on. They taught him an action (or at least a class of actions of the ‘ritual’ type in
this instance) and he now knows to which human intervention it is appropriate to report
what he saw. Leaving behind what he had observed, he learned to tell what these people
do, to record (in his journal, in the account he will give of his trip) a partial but accurate
description of what they do.
He could obviously complete it, could learn to distinguish the doors where they
carried out a bloody sacrifice (forbidden by Islam) from those where they only made a
libation of millet gruel (acceptable to Islam); the doors of the main houses (soba, ‘the
great house’) of a family where they sacrifice, from the doors of the satellite dwellings
427
where they do not sacrifice. That would take him a long way in the study of social prac-
tices (relationship with Islam, tactics of segmentation and claims of authority within the
bosom of the ancestral lineage and so on).
He will thus learn to behave as do those to whom this ritual is familiar, to cease asking
himself the question of the meaning of these markings – the day of the previous Tabaski,
the head of this household, upon ‘watering the doorstep’ intends to honor the dead, not
‘to signify’ whatever to just anybody – but to treat them as clues: apparently, he would
tell himself, the ‘old man’ of this family persists in his refusal to convert to Islam. For it
is, in fact, only those who upon openly viewing these markings – as does our traveler –
and who do not understand what it is, ask themselves the question about its meaning.
For others, it is a clue, a proof, a means of inquiry, not a sign to be interpreted. One
could say the same for a painting if there is one. It is entirely possible that if one asks
the painter the question about the meaning of his painting, he prefers not to answer the
question because he finds it to be inappropriate. On the other hand, he could explain
how he painted his painting, what influenced him, what emotion inspired him, which
principles he followed, what techniques he made use of, in short, giving us all at once a
description of his action, of the manner in which he painted it and of his painting. But
I could not say that therein lies the meaning of the painting.
I am therefore, along with Dan Sperber, the dutiful Persian and I study these peculiar
people who sometimes attend what they call a ‘soccer match’, sometimes what they call
a ‘mass’. On Saturday, when I observe from high up in the stands what is happening
around me and down below on the field, I am not, as Persian as I may be, in the process
of observing something analogous to the movement of mice placed in a labyrinth, all
the while telling myself that since those are apparently human beings down there, all
those movements (down below) and all this shouting (from the stands) must undoubt-
edly mean something.
I observe that they are not conducting themselves just any which way and, at the same
time, in different ways in each circumstance. What I am lacking is not the ‘meaning’ of
what they are doing, as if I were before an indecipherable message, but rather the ability
to describe what they are doing. For example, I could not report what is happening to a
third party, even less provide the commentary of the match on the radio. But this is an
ability that I can acquire. I know very little about it, but I know that all the shouting is
not the beginning of a civil war but support for each of the teams; that the 20 or so
unfortunate ones running after the ball on the field are not Christians being thrown to
the lions. In addition, I do not have to understand the meaning of what they are doing.
The more I learn of their behavior, the better I am able to describe what they are doing.
There is not an indescribable residue – the meaning – that would demand a special
process known as interpretation. There is simply everything I have not yet learned.
‘Not just any which way’ is the equivalent of ‘according to certain rules’. If these are
human beings and not mice, I know that they are acting according to rules, even if I do
not yet know which ones. Their actions are in accordance with different rules at the
stadium or at church and one of the rules they follow is precisely to take this difference
into account. They seemingly do not fail to act, in each instance, in a socially accept-
able way. Moreover, any serious deviation from the norm is immediately punished in
one way or another. I imagine that this would no longer be the case if I suddenly set
them down in a cricket match or at Friday’s Muslim hour of prayer. They would know
428
by analogy that here it is a game (a ballgame with two teams . . .) and there a rite, but
they would have to learn how to conduct themselves properly in both cases.
It is not that they explicitly follow certain rules, that their behavior means that they
refer to the rules at every turn; for example, that they constantly repeat the terms of the
rules. That can happen – if there is an argument, the official reminds the players of the
regulation, and I could read it for my information; or rather, when the fans come to
blows, somebody reminds them that it is only a game . . . But this is not normally the
case. However, if I attempt to describe what they are doing, I come up with terms of the
type ‘when the ball goes into the reds’ net, the blues’ fans scream with delight’, or ‘when
the priest raises the host, the people bow their heads’. These are terms, which are at once
prescriptive (what is appropriate to do; for example, inasmuch as I wish to learn to act
like them) and predictable (they will behave similarly next time). Whatever their syntac-
tic form may be, these terms express rules,28 they tell how these people act, that is to
say, which ways of acting are appropriate to the situation (as opposed to all those which
are not appropriate and which would not be ‘understood’). This is how they describe
their behavior.
From the fact that they act, except in certain instances, as one expects them to act, I
am not bound to conclude that they are in a particular and proper state of mind.
Moreover, it is likely that, at the stadium as at church, their ardor is not even unvary-
ing nor their emotions always the same. But it does not matter that certain people, at
the moment of the Eucharistic sacrifice, are still thinking about the goal narrowly missed
the day before, for I do not have to imagine that there is a notion of ‘wars’ or of ‘soccer’
going through their heads which would be the meaning of their behavior and of which
their gestures and movements would be the translation into acts, the external manifes-
tation. This would come back to saying, like Dan Sperber, that it is because they visu-
alize what a soccer match is or what a mass is that they are conducting themselves
properly. None the less, I understand very well that it is enough for me to learn their
ways of behaving in order to know how to conduct myself properly.29 It is certainly true
that I am still a long way from an explanation: I do not always applaud or kneel when
necessary, and perhaps they will correct my mistakes. But it is not because I do not clearly
visualize the meaning of all that or because I do not have in my consciousness the
representations that they have in the intimacy of their culture-which-is-not-mine. It is
simply that my training is far from complete.
In order to know what they are doing, I do not have to interpret the meaning of what
they are doing, beginning with their actions or their words. It would be better to say
that they are acting in a world where certain actions are sensible (acceptable, recognized,
plausible, expected) and others are not. And I can observe and make a note of that, just
as they can point it out to me if need be. One would like to catch us in the trap of a
dilemma: on the one hand, a pure ethnology (the observation of behaviors, as with
mice); on the other, a pure ideology (in the sense of ideologues), visualizing their
representations. But that does not hold up: insofar as their action conforms to certain
rules, it can be described. And we do indeed describe it.
‘They have an idea of what they are doing’ simply means that they can, if necessary,
explain what they are doing to a stranger like me who has just happened upon the
scene and who does not have the slightest idea of what they are doing. For example,
they explain to me that their shouts are a protest (there was no offside, and before my
429
incomprehension, they also explain to me what an ‘offside’ is). This being done, they do
not provide me with a description of their state of mind but rather of what they are
doing. If one does not know what a person is in the process of doing, one is all the more
tempted to decide that the meaning of what he is doing is what he ‘means’ by doing it
(the representation corresponding to his act), that if one asks him what he is doing, he
‘is capable of answering in most instances, and is sure that his answer is correct’.30
Describing an action, however, is to describe an entire world of which this action
realizes but one of the possibilities: it is not obvious that they are capable of doing it
even though they can help me whenever necessary by pointing out to me on each
occasion whether or not such a way of acting is appropriate to the situation. Meta-
phorically, one will say that they often act ‘out of instinct’ (out of the ‘sense of the game’,
Bourdieu would say), but without necessarily being able to draw a painting of the overall
picture of the ‘game’. It would be altogether imaginable for somebody to find his way
around in a city perfectly well, that is to say for him to choose, with complete confi-
dence, the shortest route leading from one point to another and yet be totally incapable
of drawing a map of it. The moment he tried it, he would only produce a completely
inaccurate picture. Paradoxically, it may therefore be that, in the end, I know better than
them about what they are actually doing, all the while being barely capable of acting as
they do, even clumsily and with numerous mistakes. Insofar as I manage to describe
what they are doing by continuing to study them, it is precisely because I am not in their
position. They themselves have no need of a description or a map in order to get their
bearings.31
But for a knowledge of cultures, describing what they are doing – which is still a never-
ending task (no description is exhaustive) – is but a kind of preliminary step in order to
finally arrive at the essential questions: what do they think about what they are doing,
what is the meaning, hidden in their collective thoughts, of what they are doing?
It is quite possible that, after having learned how the village residents sacrifice on their
doorstep, our traveler’s curiosity – especially if he has some ethnological ambition – is
not satisfied. He will also ask them for the meaning of this rite. They will then perhaps
quote him the formula for various wishes that the priest utters while proceeding. But if
he persists in his desire for interpretation, they will be ill at ease, for the most part; they
will answer him that they know nothing more, that here people act like that, that it is
their custom; in short, that it is not their problem and they will undoubtedly be right.
Better that he be content with that and tell himself: ‘these people honor their dead by
pouring millet gruel on the doorstep of their house whereas others place chrysanthe-
mums on their tombs’. But he will not be satisfied with this. He will finish by positing
some interpretive commentaries on what death, ancestors, life, gruel, the blood of
chickens are really all about. Or rather, by his interpreting what they do in various
circumstances (burial, birth, initiation and so on), he will provide a theory (of the
universe, of vital fluids, of the person’s entreaties . . .) that one will presume to be
inherent or implicit in what they do.
Admittedly, I could also ask these people what meaning soccer has in their life, what
idea of sport accompanies their passion for this game, what importance the Catholic
religion has for them, what vision of the world ‘underlies’ their Sunday observance. I can
also solicit from them not only information about what they do but interpretive
comments, assessments and value judgments as well. But explicating to a third party all
430
about soccer is not the same as attending a match, no more than commentating on the
radio is the same as playing a match. The latter is another action, not the meaning of
the former. Their discourse on sports or on religion also has its rules; it is not the same
according to situations such as being with family and encountering a foreigner. Not only
must I understand the meaning of their phrases, I must also learn to describe their utter-
ances.32 What they say is part and parcel of what they do. I can certainly be aware both
of what they do and of what they say about what they do, but I do not have the action
on the one hand and its meaning on the other.
Against this one might well posit the argument that the meaning of the mass and
people’s presence at the mass is still a question of belief. But about what do we wish to
speak? Of the state of mind in which each of them finds themselves when they pray or
receive communion, or of the Credo which they are supposed to know and recite? It
happens that a ritual involves, as one of its essential elements, the enunciation of the
corresponding belief: if I therefore wish to describe what they are doing, it is also neces-
sary that I understand what they are saying (for example, that I translate it). But that
does not mean that there are gestures on the one hand and the meaning of those gestures
on the other, only that uttering a phrase is indispensable to the fulfillment of the ritual.33
On the one hand, they perform ceremonies, on the other they possibly produce, if
necessary (or at least certain ones among them), theologies or cosmologies; they put their
kings under canopies and also produce theories of sovereignty. Still others, ethnologists
or historians, a continent removed or a few centuries later, construct for themselves a
concept of what their ideas must be or had to be; they reconstitute their ‘mentality’. But
the result of all this is not that these ceremonies would be the obvious expression, the
putting into action, of an ‘internal’ system of representations. At the most I can say that
these various activities – carrying out a ritual and working out a cosmology – are not
without a certain relationship, just as, in contemporary France, going to mass on a
regular basis has a certain relationship to putting one’s children in a ‘parochial school’.
But the fact that in a given world actions are coordinated, that combining one with the
other is considered to be sensible (other combinations being implausible, even sense-
less), does not imply that one is the meaning of the other.
It is true that a large part of anthropologists’ work is still a matter of interpretive
obstinacy or hermeneutical obsession. Dan Sperber’s diagnosis is well founded in this
regard, but his prognosis is not: there is no reason to assume that anthropology must be
thereby condemned to remain a knowledge of cultures.
Notes
1 Another, shorter version of this article appeared in the journal Enquête. This text
stems from a lecture delivered at Laval University (Quebec City) in September 1994
and from a presentation in the framework of the Program of Interdisciplinary
Research, ‘Problems of Description and Practices of Proof ’ (EHESS) in February
1996.
2 In contrast to the absolute solipsism which, quite obviously, is lacking in common
sense.
3 D. Sperber (1982: 15)
4 It is to this hypothesis that Dan Sperber (1996: 50) attributes an acceptable mat-
erialistic status upon considering the ‘cultural representations’, that small proportion
431
of representations which form the subject of a ‘mental version in each of the members
of the group’, like ‘millions of mental representations relationally linked one to
another. These are representations (internal) of an individual with the power to affect
those of others by means of “public representations” (external)’ (Sperber, 1996: 88).
5 Human behavior, like all others, manifests a certain consistency. But that which is
‘peculiar to human behavior’ is so because this consistency allows itself ‘to be inter-
preted in understandable fashion (verständlich)’ (Weber, 1965: 327).
6 Psychopaths, small children and animals ‘are not accessible to our understanding’
(Weber, 1965: 328).
7 Geertz (1973: 5–7).
8 ‘The two movements are, as movements, identical: from an I-am-a-camera
“phenomenalistic” observation of them alone, one could not tell which was twitch
and which was wink, or indeed whether either or both was twitch or wink’ (Geertz,
1973: 5–7).
9 ‘One must call “action” a human behavior . . . when and as far as he or those who
act join to their action [or: link to it, verbinden] a subjective meaning’ (modified
translation, Weber, 1971: 4).
10 ‘What we call our data are really our constructions of other people’s constructions
of what they and their compatriots are up to’ (Geertz, 1973: 9).
11 Leach (1976: 9).
12 Leach (1976: 9, my translation).
13 This is what Weber calls ‘actual comprehension’ (das aktuelles Verstehen), which he
contrasts with ‘explanatory comprehension’ (das erklärendes Verstehen) which
proceeds from an interpretation: sociology is a science which has ‘to understand by
interpretation (deutend verstehen)’ (see Weber, 1971: 4, 7–8).
14 ‘We understand . . . the act of taking aim with a rifle not only in actuality but also in
its motivation . . . if we know that the person is engaging in this act whether it be to
execute someone by command, to fight enemies (rational form) or out of vengeance
(actual and consequently irrational form in this meaning)’ (Weber, 1971: 8).
15 Isambart (1986).
16 Descartes (1951[1641, 1647]: 281).
17 Wittgenstein (1953: 178).
18 ‘Sinnzusammenhang’ (cf. Wittgenstein, 1953).
19 See Wittgenstein (1971[1967]).
20 ‘An entire cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar,’ adds Wittgen-
stein (1953: 222).
21 Wittgenstein (1971[1967]: 225).
22 On this notion and on Ryle’s text, see Vincent Descombes’ article ‘A Confusion of
Tongues’ (2002). Geertz appropriates Ryle’s term, ‘thick description’, but turns its
meaning on its head: therefore by ‘thick description’ he means an impure descrip-
tion because it is heavily loaded with interpretation; in short, a pseudo-description.
It is his misinterpretation that is overlooked in the debate.
23 Perec (1982[1975]).
24 ‘If someone is brandishing a knife at me, I don’t say: “I interpret this sign as a threat” ’
(Wittgenstein, 1980[1969]: 56).
25 I would gladly believe that the interest that Geertz brings to this example is due to
432
this possible confusion between an action and a coded message, as if all the actions
of Moroccans or Balinese were messages for the ethnographer to ‘interpret’.
26 In 1883, during his sojourn with the Eskimos of Baffin Island, Boas was reading
Kant (Cole, 1983: 29).
27 Those of the Muslim calendar: Tabaski (or ‘feast of the sheep’), the end of Ramadan.
But the sacrifice can be repeated on other occasions: circumcision, marriage, the
beginning of the rainy season, instructions of a seer and so on.
28 Not laws. They are not of the type, if p, then q.
29 See Sperber (1996: 45): Certain representations play a causal role as model represen-
tations of actions to be followed. For example, during a marriage, a civil official of
the state gives a superior performance which the inferior performances of others
reiterate.
30 Wittgenstein (1966[1958]: 141).
31 See ‘our concept of instinct,’ adds Wittgenstein (1971[1967], modified translation).
32 We must distinguish the phrase (type) or the proposal (token) from the wording. The
wording reflects not a language but a situation, which must be described.
33 ‘That which is characteristic of the ritual action is not at all a conception, an
opinion, whether it happens to be right or wrong, although an opinion – a belief
– can itself also be ritual, can belong to the rite’ Wittgenstein (1982[1967]: 20,
modified translation).
References
Cole, D. (1983) ‘The Value of a Person Lies in his Herzensbildung’, in G.W.S.
Stocking, Jr. (ed.) Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Descartes, R. (1951[1641, 1647]) ‘Méditation seconde’ in Latin, Fr. trans. review by
Descartes, in Oeuvres et Lettres. Paris: Gallimard, La Pléaide.
Descombes, Vincent (2002) ‘A Confusion of Tongues’, Anthropological Theory 2(4):
433–46.
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretations of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Isambart, F.A. (1986) ‘Meaning, Comprehension and Value in Max Weber’, in Ethique
et pratiques symboliques, Notebook 3, Meaning and Comprehension. Paris:
EHESS-CNRS.
Leach, E. (1976) Culture and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Perec, G. (1982[1975]) Tentative d’epuisement d’un lieu parisien. Paris: C. Bourgois.
Sperber, D. (1982) Le savoir des anthropologues. Paris: Hermann.
Sperber, D. (1996) La Contagion des idées. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Weber, M. (1965[1913]) ‘Über einige Kategorie der Verstehenden Soziologie’, Fr.
trans. ‘Essai sur quelques catégories de la sociologie compréhensive’, in M. Weber,
Essais sur la théorie de la science. Paris: Plon.
Weber, M. (1971[1922]) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Fr. trans. Economie et société. Paris:
Plon.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophische Untersuchungen, II, IV (R. Rhees and G.E.M.
Anscombe eds and Eng. trans.) Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittengenstein, L. (1966[1958]) The Blue and Brown Books (R. Rhees ed.). Oxford:
Blackwell. Fr. trans., Le Cahier bleu et le Cahier brun. Paris: Gallimard.
433
Wittgenstein, L. (1971[1967]) Zettel (eds and Eng. trans. G.E.M. Anscombe and
G.H. von Wright). Oxford: Blackwell. Fr. trans., Fiches 224. Paris: Gallimard.
Wittgenstein, L. (1980[1969]) Philosophische Grammatik (ed.) R. Rhees. Oxford:
Blackwell. Fr. trans., Grammaire philosophique. Paris: Gallimard.
Wittgenstein, L. (1982[1967]) Bemerkungen über Frazer’s Golden Bough (R. Rhees ed.)
Synthèse, No. 17, Fr. trans. Remarques sur le Rameau d’or de Frazer. Lausanne: L’Age
d’Homme.
434

Jean Bazin Questions of Meaning

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jean Bazin Questions of Meaning

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Anthropological Theory

The online version of this article can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Downloaded from http://ant.sagepub.com at Templeman Lib/The Librarian on January 12, 2010

Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications

Prefatory Note on Jean Bazin,

FRIEDMAN Prefatory Note

scrutinize some of the generally accepted notions concerning ethnography propounded

This argument amounts to a strict control of ethnographic reporting, a concerted effort

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

Translated from the French by Henry Smith,

If anthropology continues to define itself as a knowledge of cultures – and this is still a

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

‘another’, I do not understand what he is doing, because I do not understand what he

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

BAZIN Questions of meaning

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 3(4)

You might also like