Culture and Practical Reason Two Paradigms of ... - Moodle

Chapter Two 116 Culture and Practical ReasonTwo Paradigms of Anthropological Theory117Durkheim formulated a sociological theory of symbolization, but not asymbolic theory of society 0 Society was not seen as constituted by thesymbolic process; rather, the reverse alone appeared true. What then of theunderpinning of the categories, society itself? The problem of its naturebecame particularly acute on the epistemological level, for Durkheim hadto face the question of how categories derived from a particular socialformation could prove adequate to understanding the world. The answer inone sense was highly satisfactory, as it reconciled (tout a coup) all theparadoxes of Durkheim's superorganicism-by combining them, as itwere, into a superparadox that future generations would have to wrestlewith. The answer to how categories modeled on society could apply tonature was that society itself was natural:But if the categories originally only translate social states, does itnot follow that they can be applied to the rest of nature only asmetaphors? ...But when we interpret a sociological theory of knowledge in thisway, we forget that even if society is a specific reality it is not anempire within an empire; it is a part of nature, and indeed its highestrepresentation. The social realm is a natural realm which differs fromthe others only by a greater complexity.... That is why ideas whichhave been elaborated on the model of social things can aid us in thinkingof another department of nature [note the exact inverse of Levi­Strauss's idea of "the so-called totemism"). It is at least true that ifthese ideas play the role of symbols when they are thus turned asidefrom their original signification, they are well-founded symbols. If asort of artificiality enters into them from the mere fact they are constructedconcepts, it is an artificiality which follows nature veryclosely and which is constantly approaching it still more closely.[Durkheim 1947 (1912), ppo 18-19JIt is not important to dwell on this recuperation of soci~ty by nature, orthe naturalization of the sign and the other contradictions to his own bestsociological understanding that Durkheim presents here. Suffice it to indicatecertain consequences of the distinction between social structure andwrote: "II semble manifeste au contraire, au point qu'on ose apeine Ie faire remarquer,que la simple existence de ceremonies ou de travaux reguliers, que la simple distinctiondes clans et des tribus et de leur place respective dans Ie camp, presupposent lescategories logiques et ne sont possibles que grace aI'intervention prealable des idees detemps, d'espace, de causalite" (1919, p. 155n). I should like to thank M. Mark Francil­Ion for drawing. my attention to this passage and work.mental concept as realized in a later anthropology. For the same incompleteappreciation of the symbol, that is, as merely the representation ofsocial realities, continues to haunt the structural-functionalism developedby Radcliffe-Brown and others on a Durkheimian base. 44 The "symbolic"has been for the most part taken in the secondary and derivative sense of anideal modality of the social fact, an articulate expression of society, havingthe function of support for relationships themselves formed by realpoliticalor real-economic processes. Thus incorporated in the receiveddualism, the symbolic order becomes the ideology of social relations ratherthan their quality. The same effect is given by the arbitrary differentiationof "culture" from "social system" in the British school, as if socialrelations were not also composed and organized by meaning. Indeed, to theextent that meaning is taken as the mere" cultural content" ofrelationshipswhose formal structure is the true concern, the symbolic is merely a variableor accidental condition of the anthropological object instead of itsdefining property. Even the most valuable work on the conceptualization of. nature, Mary Douglas's, for example, is inclined to trade off the semanticvalue of the categories for their social effects. More precisely, the onetends to be identified with the other-meaningful content with social value(in Radcliffe-Brown's sense)-by a tradition that "takes for granted thathuman thought serves human interests and therefore carries in itself at anygiven moment the social configurations of that time and place" (Douglas1973b, p. II). The effect is a one-sided view of meaning as social diacritics,and of the total cultural order as a utilitarian project.Acknowledging the epistemological doctrines ofThe Elementary Forms44. In a quasi- Whorfian way, Jameson accounts for the representational reflex in Anglo­American social science by the preference for the term "symbol" as opposed to theFrench use of "sign" and the corollary tendency to relate terms to other terms in asemiotic system whose principles ofdifferentiation would thus order objective reference.The difference of analytic predilections does seem real, even if the explanation is notentirely convincing (given normal French usage of signe): "the force of the Anglo­American terminology, of the word 'symbol,' was to direct our attention towards therelationship between words and their objects or referents in the real world. Indeed, thevery word 'symbol' implies that the relationship between word and thing is not anarbitrary one at all, that there is some basic fitness in the initial association 0 It follows thatfor such a viewpoint the most basic task of linguistic investigation consists in a one-toone,sentence-by-sentence search for referents 0 0 0 • Saussure, on the other hand, isdeflected by his very terminology from the whole question ofthe ultimate referents ofthelinguistic sign. The lines of flight of his system are lateral, from one sign to another,rather than frontal, from word to thing. a movement already absorbed and interiorized inthe sign itself as the movement from the signifier to the signified" (Jameson 1972, ppo31-32).