Social and Cultural Anthropology

Cultural and social anthropology are distinguishable if not entirely seperated intellectual or academic traditions. The use of the terms "cultural" and "social" to draw the distinction became common in the 1930s, but the divergence arose earlier, most directly from the differences between the studies advocated by Franz BOAS (1858 1942) in the United States from the 1890s, and the new directions anthropology had begun to take in England around that time at the initiative of R. R. Marrett (1866 1943), C. G. Seligman (1873 1940), W. H. R. RIVERS (1864 1922), and Alfred Haddon (1855 1940).

		Today the two terms do not denote a precise division of approaches and for this reason some anthropologists have dispensed with the distinction (e.g., R. Barrett 1984: 2). For many others, however, the difference remains important, at least as a shorthand way of characterizing ethnographic styles. Definitional issues: The rubric "cultural anthropology" is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in spirit, oriented to the ways in which culture affects individual experience, or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. "Social anthropology" is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewhat secondary to the main issues of social scientific inquiry. National and international influences: Cultural anthropology continues to be the dominant tradition in the United States; social anthropology in Britain and the Commonwealth. The two traditions do not, however, correspond precisely with this division. The British anthropologist Edward TYLOR (1832 1917) is more clearly a forerunner of cultural anthropology, and the American anthropologist Lewis Henry MORGAN (1818 81) become a central figure in British social anthropology. Other anthropologists Bronislaw MALINOWSKI (1884 1942), for example defy simple categorization. Malinowski, with Trobriand Islanders. Malinowski is cosidered to be one of the pioneers to make fieldwork as integrated part of doing anthropology. Moreover, the genealogy of these traditions only partially reflects their national character. Social anthropology drew from nineteenth-century British theorists such as Henry Sumner MAINE (1822 88), William Robertson SMITH (1846 94), and J. F. McLennan (1827 81), but also from such important figures as J. J. Bachofen (1815 87), who was Swiss, Carl Starcke (1858 1926), who was Danish, Edward Westermarck (1862 1939), who was Finnish, Arnold van GENNEP (1873 1957), who was Dutch, and above all from Emile DURKHEIM (1858 1917) and other French ethnologists of the Année sociologique circle, including Marcel MAUSS (1872 1950) and Robert HERTZ (1882 1915). Cultural anthropology at the beginning of the century looked as much to the tradition of such German historical geographers as Karl Ritter (1779 1859) and Adolf Bastian (1826 1905) as it did to the contributions of Morgan, Henry Schoolcraft (1793 1864), and the fieldworkers associated with the Bureau of American Ethnology under the directorship of John Wesley Powell (1834 1902). The usage:Social anthropology has been more strongly associated with the contributions of A. R. RADCLIFFE-BROWN (1881 1955) than with those of Frazer. In 1923, Radcliffe-Brown distinguished between ethnology as "the attempt to reconstruct the history of culture" and social anthropology as "the study that seeks to formulate the general laws that underlie the phenomena of culture" (1958: 8, 25). He illustrated his idea of ethnology by citing the work of BOAS and Boas's students. Radcliffe-Brown's emphasis on typology and rigorous abstraction also entered into the connotation of "social anthropology," if not into the practice of all social anthropologists. "Cultural anthropology" is a more diffuse term. Boas himself did not place his studies under this heading, referring to his approach simply as "anthropology." Some of his students, however, noted the lack of a term to distinguish investigations of culture per se from physical anthropology, and, to a lesser extent, from ARCHAEOLOGY and LINGUISTICS. These students, including Clark Wissler (1870 1947), Alfred KROEBER (1876 1960), Robert LOWIE (1883 1957), Paul Radin (1883 1959), and Edward SAPIR (1884 1939), were clear about the focus on "CULTURE," but did not settle on a single nomenclature until the late 1930s. Sapir (1916) early on referred to "cultural anthropology" in its current sense. But the term did not immediately stick. In his 1929 textbook, Introduction to social anthropology, Wissler, for example, defined his field as "social anthropology" because: our concern will be with the social life of man, rather than with his anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Sometimes we speak of this social life as civilization, but in social anthropology, the term culture is preferred; and culture, when used in this technical sense, includes all the group activities, or conventionalized habits, of a tribe or a community. (pp. 11 12) Paul Radin's (1932) textbook, Social anthropology, continued this usage. The term "cultural anthropology" appears to have gained prominence first from the title of Lowie's (1934) text, An introduction to cultural anthropology, in which he declared: "The general goal of anthropological study is to understand the whole of culture in all periods and ages, and to see each humblest fragment in relation to that totality" (pp. 384 5). Lowie nonetheless remained rather circumspect about the term, acknowledging in 1936 that the discipline "has been variously ticketed 'culture history,' 'ethnography,' 'ethnology,' or 'cultural anthropology,"' (1960: 391). In any case, by the end of the 1930s, American anthropologists whose studies focused on culture and whose work was largely informed by Boas's teachings generally called themselves cultural anthropologists. Aims and Scopes of Social-Cultural Anthropology: Social Cultural Anthropology (SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY), often simply referred to as cultural anthropology, stands as a critical and distinctive field within the broader spectrum of social sciences. It is defined by its holistic, comparative, and cross-cultural approach to the study of humanity, focusing specifically on human societies, their organizational structures, and the expressive, symbolic, and material dimensions of culture. The discipline is unique in its unwavering commitment to viewing the world through the eyes of its inhabitants, relying on deep, long-term personal engagement to achieve its analytical goals. The vitality of Social Cultural Anthropology lies in the intricate relationship between its Aims—the profound, overarching intellectual and social goals it seeks to achieve—and its Scopes—the rigorous, defining methodologies and areas of investigation it employs to meet those goals. This piece offers a comprehensive exploration of these two foundational elements, emphasizing the discipline’s crucial role in documenting, understanding, and addressing the complexities of the human condition across the global landSocial-Cultural Anthropologype. Part I: The Core Aims of Social Cultural Anthropology The aims of Social Cultural Anthropology are ambitious, seeking nothing less than a complete, nuanced understanding of human social life in all its manifestations. These goals extend from fundamental academic inquiry to direct engagement with contemporary global issues. 1. The Pursuit of Understanding Social-Cultural Diversity The primary, guiding aim of SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY is to systematically document and understand the vast array of human social and cultural forms. Unlike sociology, which often focuses on modern, industrialized societies, anthropology dedicates itself to studying all human groups, regardless of size, location, or complexity. This aim is rooted in the principle of cultural relativism, which mandates that a culture must be understood on its own terms, without external judgment or ethnocentric bias. This pursuit involves: Challenging Ethnocentrism: SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY actively works to decenter the researcher’s own cultural assumptions, using cross-cultural comparison to highlight that one's own way of life is merely one variation among many. This promotes global empathy and critical self-reflection. Contextualizing Behavior: The goal is to move beyond superficial descriptions of customs to understand the deeper logic, historical context, and symbolic meaning underpinning social practices, from complex rituals to everyday interactions. The Holistic View: SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY aims for a holistic understanding, meaning it strives to integrate all aspects of a culture—economic, political, religious, familial—into a single, coherent analytical framework, recognizing that no single part can be fully understood in isolation. The comprehensive understanding derived from this focus on diversity serves as a vital intellectual corrective, demonstrating the boundless capacity of human beings to create meaning and structure the world in fundamentally different, yet equally logical, ways. 2. Creating a Comprehensive Database for Human Difference Beyond simply understanding a single society, SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY aims to create a cumulative, comparative intellectual resource—a vast, ever-expanding "database" of human experience, behavior, and organization. This is achieved through the production of ethnographies which, when amassed, provide the necessary comparative data for developing robust theories of human nature, society, and culture. This database serves several critical functions: Testing Universal Theories: By drawing on data from diverse societies, anthropologists can test grand social theories (e.g., theories of social stratification, the origin of the state, or religious belief) to see if they hold true outside of the Western context in which they often originate. If a theory cannot explain the social structure of a foraging society in the Arctic or a horticultural community in the Amazon, it is deemed incomplete or culturally specific. Documenting Endangered Knowledge: As globalization and cultural homogenization accelerate, the discipline aims to record the unique knowledge systems, languages, and cultural practices of marginalized or vanishing communities. This documentation is crucial for future generations of scholars and for the preservation of humanity’s cultural heritage. Identifying Patterns and Laws: By comparing human difference, anthropologists also search for underlying universals—the fundamental social needs, cognitive structures, or recurring patterns (like the incest taboo or the necessity of social cooperation) that define the human species across all cultures and historical epochs. 3. Exploring Societal Problems, Policy, and Politics (Micro and Macro) A highly relevant aim of contemporary Social Cultural Anthropology is to apply its deep understanding of cultural systems to analyze, critique, and propose solutions for pressing social problems and policy issues. This is often categorized as Applied Anthropology. The focus operates on two interconnected levels: Level Focus Area Example Application Micro Level (Local) Community disputes, local governance, health behavior, program implementation. Analyzing why a public health initiative (like a vaccination campaign) is failing in a specific village by studying local leaders, belief systems, and communication networks. Macro Level (Global/State) National and international policy, development aid, climate change, human rights, global market integration. Studying the socio-economic impact of a new global trade policy on marginalized farmers, or analyzing the effectiveness of international aid organizations’ strategies. Anthropologists bring an essential, ground-up perspective that often reveals the unintended cultural consequences of top-down policy design. Their aim is to ensure that policies—whether governmental or organizational—are culturally appropriate, locally feasible, and ultimately beneficial to the communities they are intended to serve, bridging the gap between bureaucratic intent and lived reality. 4. Systemic Study of Specific Aspects of Human Society and Culture The holistic aim is achieved by systematically compartmentalizing and intensely studying the various interdependent domains that constitute human life. The ultimate goal is to understand how these domains—economy, politics, religion, family—interact and mutually influence each other within a given cultural system. The key domains of study include: Economy and Livelihood: Studying production, distribution, and consumption beyond market systems, including reciprocal exchange, gift economies, and subsistence patterns (foraging, horticulture, pastoralism). Analyzing the cultural meanings attached to labor, wealth, poverty, and material possessions. Politics, Power, and Law: Investigating political organization across the spectrum, from acephalous (leaderless) societies to state structures. Examining how power is exercised, contested, and legitimized, focusing on local-level conflict resolution, customary law, and resistance movements. Religion, Beliefs, and Rituals: Analyzing symbolic systems, cosmology, myths, and the function of rituals (e.g., rites of passage, healing ceremonies) in maintaining social cohesion and individual meaning. Studying the phenomenon of religious change, conversion, and fundamentalism. Family, Marriage, and Kinship: Exploring the diverse forms of family (nuclear, extended) and marriage (monogamy, polygyny, polyandry). Documenting kinship systems (descent rules, terminology), which often form the fundamental structure of non-Western societies and dictate social rights and obligations. Cognition, Human Knowledge Systems, and Customs: Focusing on how people categorize and understand the world (ethnoscience), including indigenous knowledge systems related to medicine, ecology, and astronomy. Studying collective custom and tradition as transmitted knowledge and social capital. Part II: The Defining Scopes and Methodologies The unique power of Social Cultural Anthropology to achieve its aims stems directly from its specialized methodologies—the scope of its investigative practices. These scopes distinguish it fundamentally from other social science disciplines and are based on immersion, personal experience, and deep qualitative analysis. 1. The Immersion: Intense, Long-Term Fieldwork and Ethnography The paramount scope of SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY is fieldwork—a prolonged period of intensive, on-site engagement within the community or setting being studied. This commitment to deep immersion is the discipline's signature mark, providing data far richer than short-term surveys or interviews could yield. Long-Term Commitment: Fieldwork typically lasts a minimum of one year, often extending to two or more years, and is frequently revisited throughout an anthropologist's career. This duration is essential for observing seasonal cycles, significant life events (births, deaths, marriages), and the slow, deep currents of social change. Multisited Fieldwork: In an increasingly interconnected world, the scope of fieldwork has expanded beyond single, isolated communities. Anthropologists now often follow people, objects, ideas, and policies across multiple geographic and cultural sites (e.g., following a migration route from a village to a city, or tracking a commodity from production to consumption). Ethnography as Product and Process: Ethnography is the written product of fieldwork—a comprehensive, descriptive, and analytic account of a particular society or cultural phenomenon. Crucially, it also defines the process of research itself: living in the culture, learning the language, and absorbing the tacit, unspoken rules of behavior. This scope ensures that anthropological knowledge is grounded in direct, lived experience, granting the researcher access to the complexities and contradictions of cultural life that are inaccessible through quantitative data alone. 2. The Primary Tool: Participant Observation Participant observation is the core methodological technique within the scope of anthropological fieldwork. It is a dual, dialectical process that requires the anthropologist to simultaneously engage and detach, to become both an actor and a spectator in the cultural drama. Participation: The anthropologist actively engages in the daily life of the community—working, eating, celebrating, mourning, and conversing—to build rapport and gain an "insider’s" perspective. This participation is vital for understanding the subtle, non-verbal cues and emotional meanings that shape social interaction. Observation: Simultaneously, the anthropologist maintains a systematic, detached, and critical observational stance, recording behaviors, conversations, and events in detailed field notes. The goal is to move from the emic perspective (the insider's view, how people explain their own culture) to the etic perspective (the outsider's analytical framework, how the anthropologist explains the culture using disciplinary concepts). The scope of participant observation is designed to bridge the chasm between what people say they do (ideal culture) and what they actually do (real culture), allowing the anthropologist to uncover the social norms and power dynamics that may be invisible even to the cultural participants themselves. 3. Methodological Integration: Learning from Other Social Sciences While fiercely protective of its signature qualitative methods, Social Cultural Anthropology's scope is increasingly interdisciplinary. To address complex modern phenomena like globalization, climate migration, and digital culture, the discipline actively incorporates and adapts methodologies from its sister social sciences, leading to a richer, mixed-methods approach. This integration includes: Quantitative Techniques (from Sociology/Economics): While traditionally qualitative, SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY now routinely uses quantitative tools such as surveys, statistical analysis, social network mapping, and archival data analysis to provide necessary breadth and generalizability to its detailed qualitative findings. This hybridization allows for a more robust analysis of large-Social-Cultural Anthropologyle trends. Historical and Archival Research (from History): To understand the contemporary condition of a society, anthropologists must trace the historical processes—colonialism, post-colonial shifts, global wars, industrialization—that shaped it. The scope now includes extensive work in national archives, colonial records, and oral history to provide necessary temporal depth. Critical Theory (from Philosophy/Literary Studies): SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY frequently engages with theoretical frameworks from the humanities, such as post-structuralism, post-colonial theory, and critical race theory, to analyze issues of representation, power, and identity, ensuring its interpretations remain reflexive and politically astute. Digital and Visual Methods: The scope is expanding to include the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping for ecological analysis, video and photographic documentation (Visual Anthropology), and the study of online communities and social media platforms (Digital Anthropology) as new sites of social and cultural expression. This open methodological scope ensures that the discipline remains relevant, capable of addressing multifaceted problems by drawing on the strongest analytical tools available, while maintaining the centrality of the deep cultural context provided by fieldwork. Conclusion: The Holistic Imperative The aims and scopes of Social Cultural Anthropology are intrinsically linked, forming a cohesive strategy for the study of humankind. The ultimate aim of understanding the social logic of human difference and applying that knowledge to contemporary challenges is entirely dependent on the scope defined by intense, long-term fieldwork, participant observation, and the holistic synthesis of qualitative and increasingly, quantitative data. In a world defined by rapid change, intensifying global interconnectedness, and persistent conflict, the anthropological mandate—to seek out the insider's view, to give voice to the marginalized, and to use cross-cultural comparison to challenge deep-seated biases—is more vital than ever. SOCIAL-CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY is not merely a descriptive endeavor; it is a critical, comparative science dedicated to exploring the full problems and prospects of society and culture, equipping practitioners and policymakers with the profound cultural literacy necessary to navigate the complex, diverse, and shared future of humanity.   Source:Barfield, T. (Ed.).(1997) The Dictionary of Anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell publications. Blogger's comment: I find this dictionary exceptionally helpful for students to build up initial concepts in anthropology along with list of references to work out later. However, currently the book is not available in markets but one can always go to library. Video log: https://youtu.be/ltAn7z35Jtc Links: http://anthropology.ac.uk/Teach-yourself/ Social anthropology: an alternative introduction. Read the first chapter "theoretical underpinnings" Click here Anthropology, by Robert Marett. To find the book click here

Emile Durkheim

INTRODUCTION

Émile Durkheim (1858–1916) was the founder of theoretically grounded empirical sociology in France. He acknowledged the opacity of the social world and identified the ways in which an excessive reliance on experience tended to lead to a misrepresentation of its nature. He developed his own unique form of “scientific rationalism” in order to discover and clearly present its inherent properties, modes of existence, and forms of organization.

THE PERSON

Durkheim was born in a small town in Alsace-Lorraine, in a family of modest means; his mother supplemented their family income with her embroidery shop. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were rabbis, but Émile decided while still a schoolboy that this was not to be his vocation. After attending his local school, he went to Paris to study and at his third attempt, gained admittance to the École Normale Supérieure. While he found the style of education there too humanistic and literary, he gained immensely from working with the historian Fustel de Coulanges and with the neo-Kantian philosopher Émile Boutroux. At that time, and indeed subsequently, he was also strongly influenced by Charles Renouvier, another neo-Kantian philosopher. In 1885, he visited Germany for a year, and then on his return, he taught philosophy for a short time in the Lycée de Troyes. In 1887, Durkheim was appointed to a post as chargé de cours of social science and pedagogy at the Faculty of Letters at Bordeaux, where he stayed for 15 years. In 1902, he returned to Paris and was appointed as chargé de cours in the Science of Education at the Sorbonne. While he was made a Professor of Education in 1906, it was only in 1913 that he was given the title of Professor of Education and Sociology.

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES: The study of Social facts

Durkheim was a positivist. In his work on The Rules of Sociological Method ([1895] 1982), the French sociologist Durkheim defined social facts as ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that were external to individuals and exercised a constraint over them. Although the concept of social facts is closely identified with Durkheim, it is also relevant to the understanding of

any type of social theory that treats society as an objective reality apart from its individual members. In general, it can

be distinguished from theoretical paradigms that place a greater emphasis on social action or individual definitions of reality.

According to Durkheim, social facts are general to the whole society and have a distinctively collective character. They constitute the distinctive subject matter of sociology. They are often embodied in social institutions, such as religions, kinship structures, or legal codes. These institutions are the primary focus of sociology as a science. Durkheim stated that the sociologist should treat such social facts as things. The sociologist must study these social facts as realities in their own right, with their own objective laws of organization, apart from the representation of these facts in the individual’s consciousness. In

Durkheim’s view, if society does not exist as a distinct level of reality, then sociology has no subject matter. The social

and the psychological are distinguished as different and independent levels of analysis. For Durkheim and his followers,

this meant examining both the social substratum, or distribution of groups in space, as well as the collective representations

or collective psychology shared by most members of society.

Rules:

Consider social facts as things

. . . . Social phenomena must be considered in themselves, detached from the conscious beings who form their own mental representations of them. They must be studied from the outside, as external things, because it is in this guise that they present themselves to us. . . .

At the moment when a new order of phenomena become the object of a science, they are already represented in the mind, not only through definite images, but also by some sort of crudely formed concepts. Before the first rudiments of physics and chemistry were known, men already had notions about physical and chemical phenomena which went beyond pure perception; such notions, for example, can be found intermingled with all religions. This is because reflection comes before science, which uses it more methodically. Man cannot live among things without developing ideas about them, according to which he regulates his behaviour. But, because these notions are closer to us and more within our grasp than the realities to which they correspond, we naturally tend to substitute them for the realities and even make them the subject of our speculation. Instead of observing, describing and comparing things, we are content to consider our ideas, and to analyse and compare them. Instead of creating a science concerned with realities, we merely carry out an ideological analysis. Certainly this analysis does not

Readings from emile durkheim 50 necessarily exclude all observation. One can appeal to the facts in order to confirm these

notions or the conclusions that are drawn. But the facts intervene only secondarily, as examples or confirmatory proofs: they are not the object of the science, which proceeds from ideas to things, not from things to ideas.[…]

All preconceptions must be systematically avoided.

Any scientific investigation is concerned with a specific group of phenomena that fall under the same definition. The first step of the sociologist must therefore be to define the things he is dealing with, so that we know, and he knows, what his subject matter is. This is the first and most necessary condition of any proof and verification; a theory can only be checked if one can recognize the facts of which it provides an account. Furthermore, since this initial definition determines the precise subject matter of science, whether or Readings from emile durkheim not this subject matter is a thing will depend on the way in which the definition is formulated.

In order to be objective, the definition must clearly express the phenomena as a function, not of an idea of the mind, but of their inherent properties.[…]

Therefore,

The subject matter of research should never be anything other than a group of phenomena that have previously been defined according to certain external characteristics, and all phenomena which fit this definition must be included.

But sense experiences can easily be subjective. Hence it is a rule in the natural sciences to discard sense data that are too subjectively dependent on the observer, retaining only those that present a suffi-cient degree of objectivity. Thus the physicist

substitutes for the vague impressions of temperature or electricity the visual representations of the thermometer or the voltmeter. The sociologist must take the same precautions.[…] In principle, one might say that social facts are more likely to be

objectively represented the more completely separated they are from their individual manifestations.[…]

We can then formulate the three following rules:

1 A social fact is normal for a given social type, viewed at a given phase of its development, when it occurs in the average society of that species, considered at the corresponding phase of its evolution.

2 The results of the preceding method can be verified by demonstrating that the general character of the phenomenon is related to the general conditions of collective life in the social type under consideration.

3 This verification is necessary when this fact relates to a social species which has not yet gone through its complete evolution.

Durkheim also distinguished between the normal and the pathological within the sphere of social facts. Phenomena such as crime and suicide are normal for a society if they correspond to its type of social organization and level of development. For example, crime is normal in a society that also prizes individual innovation, and no progress would be possible without the actions of those great criminals who represent in their individual person the new cultural tendencies and provide a focus for new outlets for emerging currents of public opinion.

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY

Durkheim's purpose inTheDivisionofLabor inSociety (1893, translated1984) was to show that the increasingrate of occupational specialization in Western societies is a social fact which can be explained, both causally and functionally, by followingthe principles just described. Beginningwith the functional explanation, Durkheimpointedout that, whilewe like thosewho resemble us, we arealsodrawn toward thosewhoaredifferent. But ifdifference is thusasmucha source ofmutual attraction as likeness, only certain kinds of differences attract, i.e. wherewe seek in otherswhat we lack in ourselves. Associations are formed wherever there is such a true exchange of services ± in short, wherever there is a division of labor. Durkheimthus argued that the economic services rendered by the division of labor are trivial by comparison with its moral effect. The true function of the division of labor is that feelingof solidarity in two or more persons which it creates, renderingpossible societies which, without it, would not exist.

To determine the extent towhichmodern societies depend upon this kind of solidarity, Durkheimclassified different types of lawaccordingto the sanctions associatedwiththem: repressive sanctions (characteristicof criminal law) consist of some loss or sufferinginflicted on the agent; restitutive sanctions (characteristic of civil, commercial, procedural, administrative, and constitutional law) consist only of ``the re-establishment of troubled relations to their normal state'' (Durkheim, 1984, p. 69). Durkheim was thus able to define two types of solidarity. The first was mechanical solidarity, that type of solidarity characterized by the repressive sanctions imposed upon crimes. Since all crimes have one element in common ± i.e. they shock sentiments which, ``for a given social system, are found in all healthy consciences'' ± Durkheim was led directly to his important concept of the conscience collective: ``the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average citizens of the same society'' (Durkheim, 1984, p. 79).Durkheimendowed the conscience collectivewithquite distinctive characteristics: it forms a determinate systemwith its own life; it is ``diffuse'' in each society and lacks a ``specific organ''; it is independent of the particular conditions in which individuals find themselves; it is the same in different locations, classes, and occupations; it connects successive generations rather than changing from one to another; and it is different from individual consciences, despite the fact that it can be realized only through them.

Durkheim thus introduced an idea which would assume increasingimportance in his laterwork ± the duality of human nature. Briefly, in each of us there are two consciences: one containingstates personal to each of us, representing and constitutingour individual personality; the other containingstates common toall, representingsociety, andwithoutwhichsocietywouldnot exist.Whenour conduct is determined by the first, we act out of self-interest; but when it is determined by the second, we act morally, in the interest of society. Thus the individual, by virtue of his resemblance to other individuals, is linked to the social order. This ismechanical solidarity, which, aswe have seen, ismanifested through repressive law; and the greater the number of repressive laws, the greater the number of social relations regulated by this type of solidarity. The nature of restitutive sanctions, however, indicates that there is adifferent type of social solidaritywhichcorresponds tocivil law; for the restitutive sanction is not punitive, vengeful, or expiatory at all, but consists only of a return of things to their previous, normal state. This is the type of solidarity that Durkheim called organic, i.e.wheremechanical solidaritypresumes that individuals resemble one another, organic solidarity presumes their difference; again, where mechanical solidarity is possible only in so far as the individual personality is submerged in the collectivity, organic solidarity becomes possible only in so far as each individual has a sphere of action peculiar to him. For organic solidarity to emerge, therefore, the conscience collective must leave untouched a part of the individual conscience, so that special functions, which the conscience collective itself cannot tolerate, may be established there; and themore this region of the individual conscience is extended, the stronger is thecohesionwhichresults from this particular kind of solidarity. Durkheim thus postulated two distinct types of social solidarity (mechanical and organic), each with its distinctive form of juridical rules (repressive and restitutive). Todetermine their relative importance in any given societal type, he simply compared the respective extent of the twokinds of rules. The preponderance of repressive rules over their restitutive counterparts, for example, should be just as great as the preponderance of the conscience collective over the division of labor; inversely, in so far as the individual personality and the specialization of tasks is developed, the relative proportion of the two types of lawought tobe reversed.On thebasisof these comparisons,Durkheimwas then able to argue that primitive societies are held together primarily by the conscience collective, while more advanced societies enjoy that type of solidarity associatedwith the division of labor.

DURKHEIM and SUICIDE

Durkheim defined ``suicide'' as any death which is the immediate or eventual result of a positive or negative act accomplished by the victim himself, when the victim knows that death will be the result of his act (regardless ofwhether or not death is his goal). This definitionwas subject to two immediate objections. The first was that such foreknowledge is a matter of degree, varying considerably from one person or situation to another. At what point, for example, does the death of a professional daredevil or that of amanneglectful of hishealthcease to be an ``accident'' and start to become ``suicide''? But for Durkheim, to ask this questionwas less to raise anobjection tohis definition than to correctly identify its greatest advantage: that it indicates the place of suicidewithinmoral life as a whole. Suicides, accordingtoDurkheim, do not constitute a wholly distinctive group of ``monstrous phenomena'' unrelated to other forms of behavior; on the contrary, they are related to other acts, both courageous and imprudent, by an unbroken series of intermediate cases. Suicides, in short, are simply an exaggerated form of common practices.

Durkheimacknowledged that there were two kinds of extrasocial causes sufficiently general to have a possible effect on the social suicide rate: individual psychological factors (race, heredity, insanity, neurasthenia, alcoholism, etc.) which, varying from country to country, might explain variations in the suicide rates for those societies; and those aspects of the external physical environment (climate, temperature, etc.) which might have the same effect. When neither psychology nor the environment seemed to explain much of the social suicide rate, Durkheimturned to ``states of the various social environments'' ± religious confessions, familial and political society, occupational groups, etc. across which the variations in suicide rates occurred, and within which their causes might be found.

The four types of suicide and related social facts

low Egoistic suicide

Integration

high Altruistic Suicide

low Anomic suicide

Regulation

high Fatalistic suicide

ELEMENTARY FORM OF RELIGIOUS LIFE

Durkheim's primary purpose in The Elementary Forms was to describe and explain the most primitive religion known toman, not for its own sake, but in order to better understand ``the religious nature of man'' (Durkheim, 1915, p. 13). As he had in Suicide, Durkheim began The Elementary Forms with the problemofdefininghis subjectmatter, includingarejectionof earlier attempts to

define religion as a belief in the ``mysterious,'' ``unknowable,'' ``supernatural,'' ``spiritual beings,'' etc.The difficulty with all suchattempts,Durkheimobserved, is that these ideas are frequently absent not only in primitive religions, but even in their more advanced counterparts. Emphasizingthat religion is less an indivisiblewhole thana complex systemof parts, and that magic though similar to religion in certain respects ± lacks a ``church,'' Durkheim arrived at his own definition: ``A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden±beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them'' (Durkheim, 1915, p. 62).

Durkheimthus considered totemism± theworship of animals and plants as the most elementary form of religion. The members of totemic clans consider themselves bound together by a special kindof kinship, basednot onblood, but on the mere fact that they share the same name. This name is taken from a determined species ofmaterial objects (an animal, less frequently a plant, and in

rare cases an inanimate object) with which the clan members are assumed to enjoy the same relations of kinship. But this ``totem'' is not simply a name; it is also anemblem,which is carved, engraved, or drawnuponother objects belonging to the clan, and evenupon the bodies of the clanmembers themselves. These designs seemtorenderotherwise commonobjects ``sacred,'' and their inscription upon the bodies of clanmembers indicates the approach of themost important religious ceremonies. Since the same religious sentiments aroused by these designs are aroused by the members of the totemic species themselves, clan members are forbidden to kill or eat the totemic animal or plant except at certain mystical feasts, and the violation of this interdiction is assumed to produce death instantaneously.

Links

http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/durkheie.pdf

Durkheim: life and work

Social facts

Further reading:

Emirbayer, M. (2003). Emile Durkheim: sociologist of modernity. Oxford: blackwell publishers

Thompson, K. (Ed.) (2004). Readings from Emile Durkheim. London: routledge

A brief class on Durkheim, bi-lingual, meant for my college students

Basic Theories

Theories Overviews

WHY DO WE NEED THEORIES?

This is one of the first and most pertinent questions an anthropologist should ask himself before reading the theories in details. Let me ask you, why do you study anthropology? The copybook answer is anthropology studies human beings. And I am by choice or by chance in to the discipline to study human beings. A more refined answer is "to study human beings from every possible angles is anthropology." The idea of ANGLES is important and often we tend to overlook. Whatever anthropology we do, no matter how fascinating it is we always need to explain a phenomenon from different dimensions. The dimensions that are available to us and the dimensions which we can generate and/or add to the existing dimensions. The research process starts with exploring dimensions and ends with dimensions. To understand social world from every possible angles we need to look in to the existing angles, and be aware of the lenses through which we can look into the social world. Theories is one such arena where you can earn an understanding of the existing angles. Lets look into the theories briefly.

EVOLUTIONISM

19^th Century Evolutionism:

The theory of Nineteenth-century Evolutionism claims that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution. The theorists identified the universal evolutional stages and classified different societies as savagery, barbarian and civilization. The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists collected data from missionaries and traders and they themselves rarely went to the societies that they were analyzing. They organized these second-hand data and applied the general theory to all societies. Since Western societies had the most advanced technology, they put the societies at the highest rank of civilization.

The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists had two main assumptions that form the theory. One was that human minds share similar characteristics all over the world. This means that all people and their societies will go through the same process of development. Another underlying assumption was that Western societies are superior to other societies in the world. This assumption was based on the fact that Western societies were dominant because of their military and economic power against technologically simple societies.

The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists contributed to anthropology by providing the first systematic methods for thinking about and explaining human societies. Their evolutionary theory is insightful with regard to the technological aspect of societies. There is a logical progression from using simple tools to developing complex technology. In this sense, complex societies are more “advanced” than simple societies. However, this judgment does not necessarily apply to other aspects of societies, such as kin systems, religions and childrearing customs.

Contemporary anthropologists view Nineteenth-century Evolutionism as too simplistic to explain the development of various societies. In general, the Nineteenth-century evolutionists relied on racist views of human development, which were popular at that time. For example, both Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Burnett Tylor believed that people in various societies have different levels of intelligence, which leads to societal differences. This view of intelligence is no longer valid in contemporary science. Nineteenth-century Evolutionism was strongly attacked by Historical Particularists for being speculative and ethnocentric at the early twentieth-century. At the same time, its materialist approaches and cross-cultural views influenced Marxist Anthropology and Neo-evolutionists.

DIFFUSIONISM

Diffusionism as an anthropological school of thought, was an attempt to understand the nature of culture in terms of the origin of culture traits and their spread from one society to another. Versions of diffusionist thought included the conviction that all cultures originated from one culture center (heliocentric diffusion); the more reasonable view that cultures originated from a limited number of culture centers (culture circles); and finally the notion that each society is influenced by others but that the process of diffusion is both contingent and arbitrary (Winthrop 1991:83-84).

Diffusion may be simply defined as the spread of a cultural item from its place of origin to other places (Titiev 1959:446). A more expanded definition depicts diffusion as the process by which discrete culture traits are transferred from one society to another, through migration, trade, war, or other contact (Winthrop 1991:82).

Diffusionist research originated in the middle of the nineteenth century as a means of understanding the nature of the distribution of human culture across the world. By that time scholars had begun to study not only advanced cultures, but also cultures of nonliterate people (Beals and Hoijer 1959:664). Studying these very diverse cultures created a major issue among scholars, which was how humans progressed from primeval conditions to superior states (Kuklick 1996:161). Among the major questions about this issue was whether human culture had evolved in a manner similar to biological evolution or whether culture spread from innovation centers by diffusion (Hugill 1996:343).

Two schools of thought emerged in response to these questions. The most extreme view was that there were a very limited number of locations, possibly only one, from which the most important culture traits diffused to the rest of the world. Evolutionism, on the other hand, proposed the "psychic unity of mankind", which argues that all human beings share psychological traits that make them equally likely to innovate. According to evolutionists, innovation in a culture, was considered to be continuous or at least triggered by variables that are relatively exogenous. This set the foundation for the idea that many inventions occurred independently of each other and that diffusion had little effect on cultural development (Hugill 1996:343).

During the 1920's the school of cultural geography at the University of California, Berkeley purposely separated innovation from diffusion and argued that innovation was relatively rare and that the process of diffusion was quite common. It generally avoided the trap of Eurocentric notion of the few hearths or one hearth origination of culture traits. The school of cultural geography combined idealism, environmentalism, and social structural explanations, which made the process of diffusion more feasible than the process of innovation (Hugill 1996:344).

Boas (1938) argued that although the independent invention of a culture trait can occur at the same time within widely separated societies where there is limited control of individual members, allowing them freedom to create a unique style, a link such as genetic relationship is still suspected. He felt this was especially true in socities where there were similar combinations of traits (Boas 1938:211). Boas emphasized that culture traits should not be viewed casually, but in terms of a relatively unique historical process that proceeds from the first introduction of a trait until its origin becomes obscure. He sought to understand culture traits in terms of two historical processes, diffusion and modification. Boas used these key concepts to explain culture and interpret the meaning of culture. He believed that the cultural inventory of a people was basically the cumulative result of diffusion. He viewed culture as consisting of countless loose threads, most of foreign origin, but which were woven together to fit into their new cultural context. Discrete elements become interrelated as time passes (Hatch 1973:57-58).

The American Lewis Henry Morgan infuriated his British contemporaries, when his research demonstrated that social change involved both independent invention and diffusion. He agreed with British sociocultural anthropologists that human progress was due to independent innovation, but his work on kinship terminology showed that diffusion occurred among geographically dispersed people (Kuklick 1996:161).

During the mid-twentieth century studies of acculturation and cultural patterning replaced diffusion as the focus of anthropological research. Ethnological research conducted among Native American tribes, even though influenced by the diffusionist school of thought, approached the study of culture traits with a more holistic interpretation. The concept of diffusion still has value in ethnological studies, but at best plays a secondary role in interpreting the processes of culture change (Winthrop 1991:84).

Recently there have been theoretical developments in anthropology among those seeking to explain contemporary processes of cultural globalization and transnational culture flows. This "anthropology of place" approach is not an attempt to polarize autonomous local cultures against the homogenizing movement of cultural globalization. Instead the emphasis of this line of research is to understand and explain how dominant cultural forms are "imposed, invented, reworked, and transformed." In order to do this, an ethnographic approach must be taken to study the inter-relations of culture, power, and place: place making, identity, and resistance. Anthropologists have long studied spatial units larger than "the local" (Gupta and Ferguson 1997:6-7).

In spite of the fact that diffusion has its roots in anthropology, archaeology, and cultural geography, modern research involving the process of diffusion has shifted from these areas to agriculture business studies, education (Rogers and Shoemaker 1971), economic geography (Brown 1981), history (McNeill 1963), political science, and rural sociology. In all of these areas, except history, research involves observing societies, how they can be influenced to innovate, and predicting the results of such innovation (Hugill 1996:343).

Diffusion is well documented in the business and industrial world. The creation of copyright and patent laws to protect individual innovations, point to the fact that borrowing ideas is a decidedly human practice. It is often easier to copy an invention, than to create a new invention. Japanese business historians have been very interested in the role diffusion has played in the industrial development of Japan. Business historians give credit to the role diffusion has played in the development of industrial societies in the U.S. and continental Europe. It is hard to justify the view that diffusion in preindustrial societies was any less prevalent than it is in the industrialized societies of today (Hugill 1996:344).

Acculturation Kroeber (1948) stated that acculturation comprises those changes in a culture brought about by another culture and will result in an increased similarity between the two cultures. This type of change may be reciprocal, however, very often the process is assymetrical and the result is the (usually partial) absorption of one culture into the other. Kroeber believed that acculturation is gradual rather than abrupt. He connected the process of diffusion with the process of acculturation by considering that diffusion contributes to acculturation and that acculturation necessarily involves diffusion. He did attempt to separate the two processes by stating that diffusion is a matter of what happens to the elements of a cultures; whereas acculturation is a process of what happens to a whole culture (Kroeber 1948:425).

Acculturation, then, is the process of systematic cultural change of a particular society carried out by an alien, dominant society (Winthrop 1991:82-83). This change is brought about under conditions of direct contact between individuals of each society (Winthrop 1991:3). Individuals of a foreign or minority culture learn the language, habits, and values of a standard or dominant culture by the cultural process of acculturation. The process by which these individuals enter the social positions, as well as aquire the political, economic, and educational standards of the dominant culture is called assimilation. These individuals, through the social process of assimilation, become integrated within the standard culture (Thompson 1996:112).

Milton Gordon (1964) proposed that assimilation can be described as a series of stages through which an individual must pass. These three stages are behavioral assimilation (acculturation), structural assimilation (social assimilation), and marital assimilation of the individuals of the minority society and individuals of the dominant society. Although this proposal has been criticized , it does indicate that there is a continuum through which individuals pass, beginning with acculturation and ending with complete assimilation (Thompson 1996: 113).

Complete assimilation is not the inevitable consequence of acculturation, because value systems of the minority or weaker culture are a part of the entire configuration of culture. It may not always be possible for the minority culture to take over the complete way of life of the majority culture. Often a period of transition follows where the minority society increasingly loses faith in its own traditional values, but is unable to adopt the values of the dominant culture. During this transition period there is a feeling of dysporia, in which individuals in the minority society exhibit feelings of insecurity and unhappiness (Titiev 1958:200).

Acculturation and assimilation have most often been studied in European immigrants coming to the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as minority groups already living in the United States. European "white ethnics" have experienced a higher rate of assimilation than nonwhite, non-European, and more recently immigrated groups. These studies have resulted in several important cross-cultural generalizations about the process of acculturation and assimilation (Thompson 1996:113).

According to Thompson (1996), these generalizations are as follows: First, dominant cultures coerce minorities and foreigners to acculturate and assimilate. This process is slowed down considerably when minorities are territorially or occupationally concentrated, such as in the case of large native minorities who often become ethnonationalistic. Second, acculturation must precede assimilation. Third, even though a minority may be acculturated, assimilation is not always the end result. Fourth, acculturation and assimilation serve to homogenize the minority group into the dominant group. The many factors facilitating or preventing this homogenization include the age of the individual, ethnic background, religious and political affiliations, and economic level (Thompson 1996:114).

 

Zoom class recording of Diffusionsim and Historical Particularism
 

HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM

Historical Particularism claims that each society has its own unique historical development and must be understood based on its own specific cultural context, especially its historical process. Historical Particularists criticized the theory of the Nineteenth-century Evolutionism as non-scientific and claimed themselves to be free from preconceived ideas. They collected a vast amount of first-hand cultural data by conducting ethnographic fieldwork. Based on these raw data, they described particular cultures instead of trying to establish general theories that apply to all societies.

The Historical Particularists valued fieldwork and history as critical methods of cultural analysis. At the same time, the anthropologists in this theoretical school had different views on the importance of individuals in a society. For example, Frantz Boas saw each individual as the basic component of a society. He gathered information from individual informants and considered such data valuable enough for cultural analysis. On the other hand, Alfred Kroeber did not see individuals as the fundamental elements of a society. He believed a society evolves according to its own internal laws that do not directly originate from its individuals. He named this cultural aspect superorganic and claimed that a society cannot be explained without considering this impersonal force.

Historical Particularism was a dominant theoretical trend in anthropology during the first half of the twentieth century. One of the achievements of the Historical Particularists was that they succeeded in excluding racism from anthropology. The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists explained cultural similarities and differences by classifying societies into superior and inferior categories. Historical Particualrists showed that this labeling is based on insufficient evidence and claimed that societies cannot be ranked by the value judgment of researchers.

FUNCTIONALISM

The theoretical school of Functionalism considers a culture as an interrelated whole, not a collection of isolated traits. The Functionalists examined how a particular cultural phase is interrelated with other aspects of the culture and how it affects the whole system of the society. The method of functionalism was based on fieldwork and direct observations of societies. The anthropologists were to describe various cultural institutions that make up a society, explain their social function, and show their contribution to the overall stability of a society. At the same time, this functionalism approach was criticized for not considering cultural changes of traditional societies. The theory of Functionalism emerged in the 1920s and then declined after World War II because of cultural changes caused by the war. Since the theory did not emphasize social transformations, it was replaced by other theories related to cultural changes. Even so, the basic idea of Functionalism has become part of a common sense for cultural analysis in anthropology. Anthropologists should consider interconnections of different cultural domains when they analyze cultures.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942, Poland-Britain-The United States)

Bronislaw Malinowski is credited with Functionalism, which explains a culture as an interrelated whole, not a collection of isolated traits. Based on his fieldwork in various areas of the world, particularly the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea, Malinowski established the theory of Functionalism. A culture is composed of many different elements, such as food acquisition, family relationships, and housing. Malinowski believed that all of these elements are connected and work together for one purpose, which is to meet the needs of individuals in the culture. In other words, culture exists to satisfy the basic biological, psychological, and social needs of individuals.

Malinowski is known for his psychological analysis. A classic example is his analysis on magic. In Trobriand Islands, magic was used for various purposes, such as to kill enemies and prevent being killed, to ease the birth of a child, to protect fishermen, and to ensure harvest. Malinowski hypothesized that magic is reliable in domains where there is a limited amount of scientific knowledge. Magic appears to work in these areas because people cannot handle situations with systematic knowledge. For example, the Trobriand Islanders did not practice magic when they fished inside a protected coral reef because they were able to predict catch and safety by weather and the conditions of the sea. In contrast, they did rely on magic when they went ocean fishing because it was difficult to predict unknown dangers and the amount of fish they might harvest. Based on this data, Malinowski argued that magic has a profound function in exerting human control over those dimensions that are otherwise outside of our element. The essential function of magic is to extend control over uncontrollable elements of nature and thereby reduce anxiety.

Malinowski is also known as a pioneer of fieldwork, which is intense and long-term research conducted among people in a particular community. He set criteria for fieldwork and brought this method to a fundamental element of the discipline. His criteria require anthropologists to actually live in communities and to acquire the language of the people among whom they are conducting their researches.

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955, Britain)

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown is credited with Structural Functionalism, which analyzes particular social systems in a wider context of many different societies. Radcliffe-Brown was concerned with what keeps societies from falling apart. He identified similar customs in different societies and compared them in order to discover the customs’ inherent functions. Through this comparative method, he attempted to explain underlying principles that preserve the structure of each society.

For example, Radcliffe-Brown analyzed exogamous moieties in aboriginal societies of Australia, Melanesia and America. An exogamous moiety is a custom in which a population is divided into two social divisions and a man of one group must marry a woman of another. Since these three different aboriginal societies had almost no contact in history, it is surprising that they shared the custom of exogamous moieties. How can this phenomenon be explained? Radcliffe-Brown found that the two social divisions of exogamous moieties within each culture were named after a pair of animals or birds which are similar, such as coyote and wild cat, or eaglehawk and crow. He argued that these animal pairs represent opposing characteristics of a society, for example, friendship and conflict, or solidarity and opposition. According to Radcliffe-Brown, those aboriginal societies incorporate the dual divisions in their kin systems in order to keep the balance between these opposing characteristics. This balance is important for the stability of the whole society.

Radcliffe-Brown successfully explained many aspects of family structures that other anthropologists viewed as primitive customs. His analysis of social structure and function encouraged anthropologists to look at how a particular custom plays a role in maintaining social stability. At the same time, his analysis was criticized for not considering historical changes of traditional societies, especially those caused by Western colonialism.

CULTURE AND PERSONALITY

The theory of Culture and Personality explained relationships between childrearing customs and human behaviors in different societies. There were two main themes in this theoretical school. One was about the relationship between culture and human nature. The other was about the correlation between culture and individual personality.

The theory of Culture and Personality was based on Boas’ cultural relativism and Freud’s psychoanalysis about early childhood. If we premise that all humans are hereditarily equal, why are people so unique from society to society? The theoretical school answered this question by using Freud’s psychoanalysis: the differences between people in various societies usually stem from cultural differences installed in childhood. In other words, the foundations of personality development are set in early childhood according to each society’s unique cultural traits. Based on this basis, the theoretical school of Culture and Personality researched childrearing in different societies and compared the results cross-culturally. They described distinctive characteristics of people in certain cultures and attributed these unique traits to the different methods of childrearing. The aim of this comparison was to show the correlation between childrearing practices and adult personality types.

The theory of Culture and Personality was on the cutting edge when it emerged in the early 20^th century. Its analysis of the correlation between childrearing customs and human behaviors was, at that time, a practical alternative to using racism explanations for analyzing different human behaviors.

NEO EVOLUTIONISM

The theory of Neoevolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process. The theory of cultural evolution was originally established in the 19^thcentury. However, this Nineteenth-century Evolutionism was dismissed by the Historical Particularists as unscientific in the early 20^th century. Therefore, the topic of cultural evolution had been avoided by many anthropologists until Neoevolutionism emerged in the 1930s. In other words, it was the Neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology.
The main difference between Neoevolutionism and Nineteenth-century Evolutionism is whether they are empirical or not. While Nineteenth-century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the new one relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution. The Neoevolutionary thoughts also gave some kind of common ground for cross-cultural analysis. Largely through their efforts, evolutionary theory was again generally accepted among anthropologists by the late 1960s.

THE SYMBOLIC AND INTERPRETATIVE SCHOOLS

The major focus of symbolic anthropology is studying the ways in which people understand and interpret their surroundings as well as the actions and utterances of the other members of their society. These interpretations form a shared cultural system of meaning, i.e., understandings shared, to varying degrees, among members of the same society. (Des Chene 1996:1274). Symbolic anthropology studies symbols and the processes (such as myth and ritual) by which humans assign meanings to these symbols in order to address fundamental questions about human social life (Spencer 1996:535). According to Geertz, man is in need of symbolic "sources of illumination" to orient himself with respect to the system of meaning that is any particular culture (1973a:45). This shows the interpretive approach to symbolic anthropology. Turner states that symbols instigate social action and are "determinable influences inclining persons and groups to action" (1967:36). This shows the symbolic approach to symbolic anthropology.
Symbolic anthropology views culture as an independent system of meaning deciphered by interpreting key symbols and rituals (Spencer 1996:535). There are two major premises governing symbolic anthropology. The first is that "beliefs, however unintelligible, become comprehensible when understood as part of a cultural system of meaning" (Des Chene 1996:1274). The second major premise is that actions are guided by interpretation, allowing symbolism to aid in interpreting ideal as well as material activities. Traditionally symbolic anthropology has focused on religion, cosmology, ritual activity, and expressive customs such as mythology and the performing arts (Des Chene 1996:1274). Symbolic anthropologists also study other forms of social organization that at first do not appear to be very symbolic, such as kinship and political organization. Studying these types of social forms allows researchers to study the role of symbols in the everyday life of a group of people (Des Chene 1996:1274).