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

Chapter Two 60 Cuhure and Practical ReasonTwo Paradigms of Anthropological Theory61(p. 509). Thus thought is recognition, and the mind a vehicle by whichnature is realized as culture.Morgan's further explication of the gens (clan) as a growth upon thebasis of the punaluan family and a codification ofits advantages carriesto ahigher power exactly the same conception. As matrilineal, the originalgens represents the natural working out of the punaluan family overtime-given the impossibility of ascertaining paternity under the existingmarital conditions. The social concept of descent is once more an awarenessof relationships already prevailing (p. 442). (Later in Morgan'sscheme descent will become patrilineal, under the influence of the growthof "property"-Morgan's general term for the possession of strategic"wealth"-which is the juncture at which economic interest, or the effectivedeployment ofgrowing means ofsubsistence, takes over from biologicaladvantage as the practical determinant of social form.) Just like thepunaluan family, whose function in this respect it duplicates andgeneralizes, the gens worked its way into acceptance by the "advantages itconferred"-namely, the improved stock that must result from the rule ofexogamy:It was evidently a primary object of the organization to isolate a moietyof the descendants of a supposed founder, and prevent their intermarriagefor reasons of kin.... The gens, originating probably in theingenuity of a small band of savages, must have soon proved its utilityin the production of superior men. Its nearly universal prevalence inthe ancient world is the highest evidence of the advantages it conferred.[Ibid., pp. 73-74; cf. also pp. 68, 389,442]In turn, the Turanian kinship system reflects the organization on thebasis of punalua and the gens. By its distinction between parallel andcross-kin, it puts into words the differences already established in fact.Turanian kinship is no more than the faithful articulation of the socialdistinctions developed by natural selection.The theory can be summarized as follows: Men early developed certainpractices, forms of behavior such as the exclusion of own brothers andsisters from group sexual unions, which proved naturally useful and advantageous.The advantages were appreciated and the behaviors formulated asmodes of organization-for example, punaluan family, the gens-whichwere in turn subject to secondary reflection or codification in kinshipterminology. The general line of force in the argument, the orientation 0/logical effect, is from natural constraint to behavioral practice, and frombehavioral practice to cultural institution:1. circumstance-practice-organization and codification (institution).To understand any given segment in the chain of effect, it is referred tothe reason in the segment preceding: as codification expresses organization,so the institutional structure as a whole is referred to practice andpractice to experience in the world-such that the total sequence representsthe sedimentation within culture of the logic of nature (adaptiveadvantage). 2But then, Morgan's theory is appropriate to a nonhuman culture--orelse to a noncultural humanity. For just as thought is the recognition of anexternal significance, so the words of men are not the concept of externalrealities but the sign. Consisting merely of the capacity to act rationallyupon experience, the intelligence Morgan understands as human is notdifferent in kind from that of other mammalian species-especially thebeaver. In his famous monograph The American Beaver and His Works(1868), Morgan argued vigorously for the commonality of "the thinking. principle" in man and beast. The beaver's mental qualities, he wrote, are"essentially the same as those displayed by the human mind" (p. 252).The difference between these qualities and human thought, "and, inferentially,between the principles they respectively represent, is one of degreeand not of kind" (ibid.). The specific resemblance consists in the ability tomake "a rational use" of perceptions conveyed by the senses, to actpragmatically on experience. Hence, for Morgan the source ofsignificancethat is materialized in the species' productions, whether it be the house ofAfrican or beaver, lies in nature itself. Morgan returned repeatedly toanimal psychology, always concerned to show "that all species, includingthe human, receive immediate guidance/rom nature" (Resek 1960, p. 51;emphasis mine).3 His theory of knowledge was thus characterized by the2. More generally, since economic interest takes over from biological advantage in laterstages of Morgan's scheme, the base logic could be characterized simply as "practicaladvantage." From an ecological perspective, however, the difference is only betweenmodalities of adaptive advantage. (Indeed, one metaphor running from early man throughpatriarchial herders and capitalism is improvement of the stock.)3. Resek, Morgan's most penetrating biographer, makes a nice connection between therationality attributed to animals and Morgan's own anthropological epistemology. Distrustfulof both instinct and imagination, Morgan's long work on social evolution leftuntouched the history of ideas, even as-supreme rationalist-he could consider thiswork itself untouched by ideology. Morgan "never doubted that his thoughts were truereflections of reality. That he was wealthy, at times in dissent, a Whig, had little if anybearingon what he saw at the base of the Rocky Mountains or in an Aztec pueblo. Hewould have cast out the notion that subjective, irrational or l\ubconscious factors made