Class 16: Analyzing Culture and Social Change PDF

CLASS 16 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Claude Levy Strauss and structuralism Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory Class 16: Analyzing...

CLASS 16 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Claude Levy Strauss and structuralism Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Claude Levy – Strauss (1908 – 2009) and the formulation of structuralism: Ø The „father“ of structuralism in anthropology / sociology, influenced by Durkheim and Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913) Ø Saussure - language has 2 levels: Ø Langue: language as a social institution, as a collective system with its own structure independent of individuals; Ø Parole: language as used by an individual user Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Claude Levy – Strauss (1908 – 2009) and the formulation of structuralism: Ø Saussure: language has 2 levels: Ø The synchronic study of language: grammar and structure of a language can be studied outside historical change Ø The diachronic study of language: from the perspective of historical change Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Claude Levy – Strauss (1908 – 2009) and the formulation of structuralism: Ø For Strauss, culture operates like a language with a structure: applied Saussure’s theory to myths, rituals and kinship structures Ø Synchronic analysis: determining the underlying structure of a culture or a cultural event makes possible to understand change within structure and of structure Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Ø Arnold van Gennep (1873 – 1957) Ø key figure of anthropology marginalised by Durkheim Ø Rediscovered by Victor Turner in the 1960s Ø Offered a processual theory of rites and culture, as opposed to the structuralism and functionalism implied in Durkheim’s theory of rites and culture Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Ø Gennep realized that a whole degree of rites can be classified as „rites of passage“ Ø Liminality refers to the threshold situation of the rites of passage. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Ø Rites of passage express a period of transformative transition for the individuals and society and have a tripartite structure: Ø 1. rites of separation from the community (the preliminal period): the community creates a setup of periods of isolation and deprivation for the initiands Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Ø Rites of passage express a period of transformative transition for the individuals and society and have a tripartite structure: Ø 2. rites of transition (the liminal period proper): the period of performance where the initiands return and have to “prove” themselves in front of the community Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Ø Rites of passage express a period of transformative transition for the individuals and society and have a tripartite structure: Ø 3. rites of incorporation (post-liminal period): the period in which the community celebrates the successful completion of the rites of passage and the newly acquired status of the individuals going through the liminal ordeal Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Rites of passage: Ø examples: weddings, student graduation ceremonies, passages to malehood, passages to motherhood, passages to adulthood in court societies etc. Ø All rites of passage are guided and controlled by strict rules enforced by masters of ceremony Ø Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Reminder - Emil Durkheim: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life – provides a theory of rites: religions: beliefs and rites Ø Durkheim claimed that rites can be defined by the belief expressed in the rite. This belief is the “totem”: nothing other than society itself. Ø Durkheim conceptually limited the transformative effects of rites, as he stressed the way in which rituals served to tie together individuals in mechanical social solidarity. Ø Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Focus not on belief, but on the form of rites Ø They impact at both the individual and collective levels. Ø We have both a process of differentiation and of undifferentiation: Ø Ø the individuals who are the subject of the rite undergo a process of undifferentiation as they are “annulled” as persons in the separation rituals Ø but ritual passages are clearly also crucial moments for a process of differentiation, of age groups, of genders, of status groups, and also of personalities. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and the discovery of liminality: Rites of Passage (1909): Ø Durkeim vs. van Gennep: Ø Durkheim established a framework of analysis positing ritual as a timeless consolidation of society Ø van Gennep proposed a more open-ended framework of analysis focusing on patterns, and positing transition as the central “fact of life”. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Arnold van Gennep and liminality – from cultural anthropology to social theory: applying liminality to large scale societies involves the shift from cultural anthropology to social theory Ø In this scenario, liminality has five different dimensions: Ø The dimensions take into consideration the various possible types of liminal experiences Ø Not all such experiences are demarcated with clearly recognizable and institutionalized transition rites Ø Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Liminality according to five dimensions: Ø 1. Types of subject of liminality: a) single individuals b) social groups (like cohorts, minorities) c) whole societies, entire populations, maybe even “civilizations” Ø 2. The temporal dimension of liminality: a) moments (sudden events) b) periods (weeks, months, or possibly years) c) epochs (decades, generations, maybe even centuries) Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø 3. The spatial dimension of liminality can relate to: a) specific places, thresholds (a doorway in a house, a line that separates the profane from sacred in a ritual, specific objects, parts of the human body) b) areas or zones (border areas between nations, monasteries, prisons, sea resorts, airports) c) “countries” or larger regions, continents (Mesopotamia, Medi-terranean; Ancient Palestine, in between Mesopotamia and Egypt). Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Liminality according to five dimensions Ø 4. scale of liminality: referring to the “degree” to which liminality is experienced; in other words, the intensiveness of the liminal moment or period. there are degrees of liminality and the degree depends on the extent to which the liminal experience can be weighed against persisting structures. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø 5. mode of occurrence: liminal experiences can be “controlled” (ex.: in rituals), or they are “contingent” - they can simply happen, without anyone planning it (ex.: natural disasters, sudden disappearance of beloved persons) Liminal experiences can also be “desired” - individuals can consciously search for a liminal position, standing outside normality (ex.: artists or writers). “forced” liminality: individuals / social groups may be thought of as liminal, even if they never “asked for” this position (ex.:: Rroma people). Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø liminality refers to the periods of transitions in any society; to the “between and betwixt”; the “inbetween”; to the out of the ordinary Ø it does not and cannot “explain” the transition of an event. Ø Liminality offers great insight into understanding the “anatomy” of social change, and more specifically of social crises like revolutions, wars etc. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø liminality says that there are situations in which there is no certainty concerning the outcome - that there is a transition and no determinism Ø it is a world of contingency where events and ideas, and “reality” itself, can be carried in different directions. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø liminality produces structure: Ø history is not a continuous stream of action governed by a structure that changes only slowly Ø Rather, there are historical moments at which structure is loose, and there are other moments at which structure takes on the quality of doxa, where it becomes frozen. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø liminality produces structure: Ø The liminal period is at one and the same time unstructured and highly structuring - it is an unstructured origin of structure and order Ø In a liminal period the most basic rules of behaviour are questioned, doubt and scepticism are radicalized Ø agency is pushed to the forefront and reorientations in modes of conduct and thought are produced within larger populations. Class 16: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø liminality produces structure: Ø the formative liminal experiences will feed the individual with a new structure and set of rules that will glide back to the level of the taken-forgranted. Ø Structure becomes the “lasting effect” of answers produced in extraordinary moments (in the liminal period) CLASS 16 – Analyzing culture and social change Ø Bibliography: Ø For Claude Levy Strauss and structuralism: Ø “Chapter 5” Ø Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies; Wiley-Blackwell (1996),by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, Kenneth Thompson (eds.) Ø For liminality: Ø Arnold van Gennep: Rites of passage (1909/1960) Ø Bjorn Thomassen: “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality”, International Political Anthropology, 2009: 2(1): 5-27.