Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

As mentioned before, Schutz has made a distinction
between constructs of first and second degree, where the
constructs of the first degree are constructions made by
the informants themselves and the constructs of the
second degree are constructions made by researchers
(Schutz 1970:273). “All the foregoing implies that a
good descriptive ethnography of symbolic forms must
go beyond the natives’ point of view and beyond the
surface reality of everyday understandings.
Consequently good ethnography must disturb, shock or
jolt us into an awareness that we did not have before”,
Obeyesekere argues, “(…) Thus good ethnography is an
ideal typical description that probes beneath the surface
reality through the use of nomological theory”
(Obeyesekere 1990:224-225). Again, following
Obeyesekere and his interpretation of Max Weber’s
“ideal types” (Weber 1949); “Models of the sort I
construct in this work are simplifications of the complex
empirical data and are never exactly replicated in reality.
They are…“ideal types”, constructs that re-present in
topographical form the world of empirical reality”
(Obeyesekere 2002:16). The ideal conditions postulated
by the model can serve as an understanding
exemplifying the complex conditions that occur in
empirical reality (ibid:130).
Methodologically speaking, is it possible to challenge
and criticise a model based on a particular empirical
material by using another set of empirical evidence?
Barth tries to answer this question. In anthropology (and
archaeology) one compares not only empirical
ethnography, but there are always two or more
descriptions involved in the comparisons. When
comparing anthropological accounts one is comparing
fictions and not the described objects themselves. As
long as anthropologists are unable to compare the
empirical objects of the study but only the descriptions
of these objects, or even only the representations of these
descriptions, the comparative method will be seriously
flawed. The comparative method should aim to move the
comparative operations closer to the empirical objects
we investigate rather than apply them to secondary or
tertiary materials (Barth 1999:79-80).
“Truth is not the bottom line: truth itself gets its life
from our criteria of rational acceptability, and these are
what we must look at if we wish to discover the values
which are really implicit in science” (Putnam 1981:308).
Theories bring new knowledge into being, which is what
a good theory should do; it is also what a bad theory
does, if the new knowledge is empirically or evidentially
unjustified (Obeyesekere 1992:57). A hypothesis
“has to be demonstrated; and the demonstration of the
hypothesis must be in terms of case studies…Others
can then use similar data to produce a
counterdemonstration that “invalidates” the previous
thesis. This strategy is true of ethnography in general:
it contains a procedure of disagreement through an act
of counterdemonstration that takes the place of
falsification in the experimental sciences. It is
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impossible to falsify an ethnographic or historical
description or hypothesis except through a detailed
presentation of counterevidence. Consequently it is not
a question of rejecting Popper out of hand but of
adopting his insights to tackle problems of validation
intrinsic to the human sciences” (Obeyesekere
1990:272).
Although Popper is excommunicated in social sciences,
it still worth listening to what he said. A method capable
of understanding the meaning of social events must go
far beyond causal explanation, Popper argues (Popper
1957:23). Tests of social and historical (or
archaeological) theories are carried out mentally, in our
imaginations (ibid:95) and there is no great difference
between explanation and testing, “agreement (…) is
taken as corroboration of the hypothesis (…) clear
disagreement is considered as refutation or falsification”
(ibid:133). There are, of course, numerous problems
with agreement-disagreement as criteria for verification
or falsification, because there is hardly ever clear
agreement or disagreement in a discourse.
Be that as it may, in this regard one may distinguish
between concepts and hypotheses. Concepts and
typologies are useful or non useful rather than true or
false, because it is basically an evaluation of their utility
in specific cases based on particular questions which
may lead us to accept or reject a concept or typology;
there are no independent tests for assessing concepts or
typologies. Hypotheses might, however, be tested,
accepted or rejected, and this practice requires
comparisons (Geddes 1999:196). Thus, scientifically,
comparative evidence has certain advantages but also
limitations. “Even the closest attention to the field of
variation will not allow you to deduce an explanation of
what has produced that variation, but…the observed
variation can be used as a provocation to search for one,
and a clearly described range of variability is well suited
for falsifying theories of what has produced that set of
forms” (Barth 1999:86). By “validity” we mean the
degree to which the account of something picks up the
processes, ideas, or relationships that are indeed there in
the world. Insisting on “validity” does not imply a
correspondence theory (that a true description maps oneto-one
onto the world), but only that some descriptions
are better than others” (Bowen & Petersen 1999:12).
Returning to Barth (1999) again, in comparative studies
it is the primary data one has to compare and not
secondary constructions or representations of the case
studies. Societies “contain their own interpretations”
(Geertz 1973:453). It is not only researchers who
interpret people’s worldviews, but everyone interprets
their own world and society, and therefore a hypothesis
“is not proved, and never can be, if by proving we mean
actually seeing it happen, or knowing someone who has
seen it. But proof does not consist in seeing: it consists
in providing so complete an explanation of the disjointed
evidences of our senses that no better alternative can be
thought of. Some day an alternative may be found; but in