TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

One other substantial basis subsidizing cohesive bonds rests on the means of
communication, which are merely oral. Marshall McLuhan has pointed out that the
social bonds holding such societies together as a whole are principally the product of
speech, drum, and ear technologies 149 . As Walter Ong expresses, orality fosters
personality structures that are more communal and externalized, and less introspective
than those common among literates. That is because of the fact that, writing and reading
are solidarity activities that throw the psyche back on itself, while oral communication
unites people in groups. 150 Among traditional societies, the only way of transmission of
knowledge is face-to-face communication, which appears usually to be more than
knowledge transmission, but sentimental interaction as well. When a speaker is
addressing an audience, for example, the members of audience normally become a unity
useful to remind here that, Durkheim also sought the roots of suicide in modern societies in the collapse of
social orientation of individual in the social construction. See Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in
Sociology, trs., J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson, New York: Free Press, 1951. Charles Blondel, a
physiological psychologist, writes, in the footprints of Durkheim, again on the members of modern
societies, “The individual does not invent his religion, his morals, his aesthetics, his science, his language,
the patterns of his everyday behavior….his manner…and finally his thought or his conduct. All these he
receives ready-made, thanks to education, to instruction and language, from the society of which he is
part. These include, to be sure, conscious activities; but they are mental states whose most essential
characteristics are distinguishable from the purely individual states.” Cited in Maurice Halbwachs,
“Individual Consciousness and Collective Mind”, The American Journal of Sociology, vol.44, no.6, 1939,
pp. 814-815
Levi-Strauss, touches also upon this social backgrounds of sorcery, which is, indeed, the real source of
power that determines the efficacy if magic, and points out three complementary aspects, which firmly
constitute the belief in magic: the sorcerer’s belief, victim’s belief, and the group’s belief. (See Levi-
Strauss, Structural Anthropology, p. 168.) Levi-Strauss underlines that the power of the sorcerer comes
from the community’s belief in his power, which is so deed-rooted and so wide-spread in whole society
that nobody could be immune of it. (For broader analysis of Levi-Strauss’ ideas on shamanism and sorcery
see Jerome Neu, “Levi-Strauss on Shamanism”, Man, New Series, vol.10, no.2, 1975, pp. 285-292.) At
the cost of oversimplifying one can argue that magical thoughts are a category of collective thought. (See
S. J. Tambiah, “The Magical Power of Words”, Man, New Series, vol.3, no.2, 1968, p. 202.) It is this
point that makes it possible to be effective the magic. Since same patterns of thought and structures of
belief are deep-rooted in all individual minds, when a magician pretends to initiate superstitious powers
than psychic states of all individuals become ready to accept any kind of affect. Furthermore, The
inclination of all minds in same direction creates a synergy which fosters to take the introspective attitudes
of individuals to perceive supernatural beings, or to pretend as if perceived.
149
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1962, p. 8.
150
Walter J. Ong,, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, Routledge: London, 1989, p. 69.
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