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Chapter Two 72 Cuhure and Practical ReasonTwo Paradigms of Anthropological Theory73in speech. But the continuity of custom is always vulnerable to disruption,if only by the comparison with other ways or in the socialization of theyoung. Custom, therefore, becomes an object ofcontemplation as well as asource thereof, and to a conventional reason which remains unexpressedwe give a conventional expression which seems only reasonable. Thecultural logic reappears then in mystified form-as ideology. No longer asa principle ofclassification but in satisfaction of a demand for justification.No longer, then, as arbitrary in relation to an objective reality but asmotivated by the cultural reality.The implications of this understanding for the anthropological projectare still unresolved; in some respects they are not yet realized. On onehand, how much of what we take as essential institutions and beliefs shouldbe analyzed as folk etymology? Conversely, it no longer seems possible toshare Boas's optimism concerning anthropological categories, that bysome sustained positivist operation opposite to the formation of the ideasand customs to which they refer, they could indeed be "derived from,consistent with, and in a sense internal to, the phenomena themselves"(Stocking 1974, p. 4). In any event, the commentary on Morgan'srationalist analysis implied by the notion of secondary consciousnesswould not be difficult to develop. If "the origin of customs of primitiveman must not be looked for in rational processes," as Boas wrote (1965[1938], p. 215), still the origin of certain rational processes might belooked for in custom. The reasonableness of institutions, and above alltheir utility, is the principled way we explain ourselves to ourselves. Rationalityis our rationalization. Boas gives the telling example of the incesttabu, which once we were content to ascribe to religious reasons, but now"a utilitarian concept, the fear of unhealthy offspring owing to the intermarriageof close relatives, is brought forward as the reason for our feelings"(1965 [1938], p. 208).'5The point is that when we render the conventional as the useful, it also15. The famous case is the origin of table manners: "The example of table manners givesal~ a fairly good instance of secondary explanation. It is not customary to bring thekmfe to the mouth, and very readily the feeling arises, that the knife is not used in thismanner because in eating thus one would easily cut the lips. The lateness of the inventionof the fork, and the fact that in many countries dull knives are used and that asimilar danger exists of pricking the tongue or the lips with the sharp-pointed steel fork·which is commonly used in Europe, show readily that this explanation is only a secondaryrationalistic attempt to explain a custom that otherwise would remain unexplained"(Boas 1965 (1938), p. 65).becomes for us "natural," in the double sense of inherent in nature andnormal in culture. Hence. Morgan, who made of this contradiction anethnological theory-the status of which might be then described as theappropriation of the meaningful realities of other peoples' lives by thesecondary rationalizations of our own.Anthropological Varieties of Practical ReasonFirst announced in the work of Morgan and Boas, the founding disagreementover the nature of the anthropological object continues to assert itselfeven today across all manner ofother theoretical controversies. This is notto underestimate the portent of such famous antinomies as "history/science," "culture/society," "diachrony/synchrony." But if these oppositionssucceeded in generating a development from one theoretical momentto the next, it was only to reproduce at each stage the unresolved contradictionat the base. In the upshot, the later perspectives which appear to marktheoretical ruptures find themselves internally at odds along the same linesthat separate the Morganian view from the Boasian. One functionalism isthis way distinguished from another, as also one historicism from another,and a moiety of functionalists or evolutionists finds an unlikely ally in thetribe of the other. Is it so paradoxical to group certain theoretical emphasesof Levi-Strauss and Leslie White? (see below, p. 103) The agreement onprinciples between the archevolutionist Morgan and the archfunctionalistMalinowski is much more complete.Malinowski and "Neofunctionalism"Even more explicitly than Morgan, Malinowski considered culture theinstrumental realization of biological necessities: constructed out of practicalaction and interest, as guided by a kind of superrationality-to whichlanguage offers only the interest of a technical support (cf. Leach 1957).We must take our stand, Malinowski wrote, on two axioms: "First andforemost, that every culture must satisfy the biological system of needs,such as those dictated by metabolism, reproduction, the physiological conditionsof temperature." And second, "that every cultural achievementthat implies the use of artifacts and symbolism is an instrumental enhancementof human anatomy, and refers directly or indirectly to the satisfactionof a bodily need" (Malinowski 1960 [1944], p. 171). To borrow a phrasefrom the French sociologist Baudrillard, it is as if culture were a sustainedmetaphor on the biological functions of digestion. In the last analysis,
Chapter Two 74 Culture and Practical ReasonTwo Paradigms of Anthropological Theory75culture is referable to practical-organic utility. Simple or complex, it is "avast apparatus, partly material, partly human and partly spiritual, by whichman is able to cope with the concrete, specific problems that face him"(Malinowski 1960 [1944], p. 36).It would merely rehearse the commonplace to make a point-for-pointconcordance of the Morganian text with the Malinowskian. Because he isso explicit, Malinowski becomes much more interesting for certain theoreticalimplications of the praxis argument which are only hinted in Morgan,although truly contained there and in many subsequent versions, up to themost recent "neofunctionalist" ecology. I discuss several of these implications,which might be summarily entitled "the ethnographic hubris,""diminishing returns to functionalist explanation," "terror," "ecologyfetishism, " •'utilitarian dualism," and •'the disappearance of culture."The first has to do with the particular subject/object relation involved inMalinowski's pragmatic emphasis, one that contrasts radically with aBoasian relativism.The overriding sense of Malinowski's project was to reduce all manner ofseemingly bizarre customs, from the Australian Intichiuma to Trobriandtotemism, to practical (read biological) values. Clearly Malinowski wasguided by a peculiar sympathy for the aborigines (cf. Jarvie 1969, pp.2-3). He would show that the reason underlying "the apparently senselessantics of what we then called 'savages'" (Richards 1957, p. 18) wassomething any European could understand: material advantage. It was infact an inversion of Boasian relativism, if informed by the same toleration.Underneath, the Intichiuma is profitable; so the Australian aborigine is ourbrother:From the first ... an interest in the usefulness of the apprently senselessantics of what we then called "savages" was paramount in[Malinowski's] work. His first published article set out to show that theIntichiuma ceremonies of Australian aborigines, with their wilddances, their painted bodies and their symbolically carved shields, actuallyperformed a function in their economic life .... After his field tripto the Trobriands he published his first major article on the economiclife of the islanders, which showed the same determination to provethat what seemed to the European to be useless ceremonial exchangesof goods actually played an important part in their economic organization.[Richards 1957, p. 18jl616. As Malinowski's project is popularly described: from the bizarre to the bazaar. Leach'sanicle (1957) on Malinowski's epistemology has an excellent analysis of this processThere is more to this than the obvious implication that if the interpretationproves acceptable to the European, it suggests more about him thanabout the "savages"-most generally that the anthropologist's "etic" ishis own society's "emic." Something is to be said about the subject/objectrelation implied by the compulsion to make a practical "sense" out of anexotic custom that is both intricate and not prima facie a matter of practicalnecessity. It raises the anthropologist to the divinity of a constituting subject,from whom emanates the design of the culture. Rather than submithimself to the comprehension of a structure with an independent and authenticexistence, he understands that structure by his comprehension of itspurpose-and so makes its existence depend on him.For Malinowski it was an announced point of ethnographic method "tograsp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision ofhis world" (1950 [1922], p. 25). This was a fundamental tenet of his"radical empiricism," as Leach calls it. But clearly there is a contradictionbetween such empiricism and the compulsion to resolve strange customs toutilitarian notions. "Empiricism" must then consist of the radical applicationof a theory, that is, of practical interest and personal calculation,which holds that the apparently peculiar ways the people are acting have noparticular claims, in their own terms, on our attention. Kroeber onceasked, obviously with Malinowski in mind: "Why does a Yurok not eat ina canoe while it floats on the ocean?" To such questions "there is noobvious answer of the sort of answer there is to why an arrow is featheredor what use a fish net has" (Kroeber 1948, p. 307). Malinowski, thiscriticism implied, refuses to concede to any opacity in the cultural system,let alone attempt to understand its inherent logic. Whole areas of culturethus escape a functionalist explication, since they make no apparent practicalsense. Leach points this out for witchcraft: "It is in accord withMalinowski's dogma that reasonableness is natural to mankind that witchcraftbeliefs-being neither sensible nor rational-were never effectivelyincorporated into the Functionalist scheme" (Leach 1957, pp. 128-29; cf.Nadel 1957).There were many other domains of Trobriand life-kinship, magic,polity-of which Malinowski left an incomplete and unsystematic accountof "making sense." Malinowski wrote: "as a maller of fact, we shall be able to showth~t so~e realities which seem very strange at first sight (cannibalism, couvade, mummification,etc.] are essentially cognate to very universal and fundamentally humancultural elements; and this very recognition will admit of the explanation that is thedescription in familiar terms of exotic customs" (1960 [1944], p. 41).' ,
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