1. Revision lecture 2

2. Lectures 9-10 Temporal locations

3. Other models of time Seasonal view of time (agriculturalists)
Tidal view of time (fishermen)
Flower time (Australian aborigines)
Fruit season
Dark-light season (Arctic dark night seasons)

4. What is life like without a clock?
“Oecological cycle” (Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer)
Diurnal rhythms of the sun
Alternations of the season
Livestock rhythms

5. Algerian peasants (Pierre Bourdieu): “when the sky is a little red”, “the time of the first prayer”, “when the sun touches the earth”
Length of time: time to cook an egg, time to cook a locust
To tell a year in the past: the year in which there was a plague, the year in which there was snow for many days.

6. Calendars Marking of days, weeks, months, years
Help to situate ourselves in the world and history
2007 AD (Anno Domini, in the year of Our Lord). Variation: CE (Common Era)
Jewish calendar: in 2000 AD, Jewish calendar showed 5760 years since the world began.
Chinese calendar is lunar – 4698.

7. Meanings and values attributed to time are context-dependant
Think of the examples where social characteristics (e.g. age, class, etc) can affect how the time is spent.

8. Time is Money
The transition to mature industrial society entailed a severe restructuring of working habits
Clocks to discipline workers. Regimentation
Work is timed according to the clock.
The time belongs to the employer.
Time is money
Work and home become antinomes (opposites)

9. Cultural notions of time
Carol Delaney in her description of Turkish village: notion of šimdi (now)
When the time is ripe.

10. Notions of time Task-oriented OR ecological (oecological)
Industrial OR clock time

11. Task-oriented or ecological notion of time
Orientation to fulfilling a task
“The daily timepiece is the cattle clock, the round of pastoral tasks” (Evans-Pritchard)
Ecological time-reckoning: time of the year that corresponds to the natural phenomenon. E.g. month when the ice melts, month of the pollen, month of cutting the grass

12. Is time structural for the hunters and pastoralists?
Yes, because the activities are co-operative, they are coordinated and conceptualised collaterally.
Another reason for co-ordination of activities is biological. E.g. summer and winter pastures, moving reindeer accordingly.

13. It is not time that tells the herders what activities to carry out, but by the activities the time can be predicted.
Notion of ‘time is ripe’ and ‘right moment’

14. The Nuer and the time
“The Nuer have no expression equivalent to ‘time’ in our language, and they cannot, therefore, as we can, speak of time as though it were something actual, which passes, can be wasted, can be saved, and so forth. I do not think that they ever experience the same feeling of fighting against the time or of having to coordinate activities with an abstract passage of time because their points of reference are mainly the activities themselves, which are generally of a leisurely character. Events follow a logical order, but they are not controlled by an abstract system, their being no autonomous points of reference to which activities have to conform with precision. Nuer are fortunate” (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 103).

15. Why do we not keep time by task-orientation?
We have a different perception and relation to time.
Time for us is not a medium in which life is lived, but a commodity to be used.

16. Industrial time keeping or clock time
Industrial revolution has changed our perception of time.
Railway workers – a clear example of industrial time keeping

17. But does that mean that we have lost entirely the feeling for the task-oriented time keeping?
E.g.: “After I have done the assignment I will have a cup of coffee” as opposed to “At 1 o’clock I will have a cup of coffee”.

18. Task-oriented time keeping in industrial societies
Does task oriented time keeping exist only in pre-industrial societies?
According to Ingold, housewives and children keep time by task orientation.
“The mother of young children has an imperfect sense of time…she has not yet altogether moved out of the conventions of ‘pre-industrial’ society” (Thompson 1967: 79).

19. No task-oriented time keeping at work place then?
Has task-orientation been banished from the workplace?
From Kemnitzer’s arguments it follows that even locomotive drivers have a sense of task-orientated time keeping (in Ingold 2000: ).
Not only operation of the railroad system is not that ‘intense time-conscious’ due to computer programming and radio communication.
“Another sense of time which lies in the ability to integrate time, distance, and subjective estimates about weight, slope and speed in making decisions about the movement of cars and engines in switching” (Kemnitzer in Ingold 2000: 335).

20. In a sense, clock time is alien to us as it is to the Nuer; the only difference is that we have to contend with it. If we differ from the Nuer, then, it is not because they have a task-orientation and we do not. The difference is rather that we are forced to accommodate this orientation – so fundamental to our personal and social identity, to our knowledge of place and people, and to the practice of our everyday skills…” (Ingold 2000: 338).

21. Important readings:
Bourdieu, P The attitude of the Algerian peasant toward time. In: J.Pitt-Rivers (ed.). Mediterranean Countrymen. Paris: Mouton and Co, pp
Delaney, Carol Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology. Malden: Blackwells, pp
Evans-Pritchard, E.E The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Chapter 3, ‘Time and space’. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp
Ingold, T The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, dwelling and skill. Chapter 17,’ Time and experience in the household and the workplace’. London: Routledge, pp

22. Lectures 11-12 Perceiving the world

23. Vision and sight
Vision and sight are the ways of orienting in the world
These are primary sources
Assumption that in all societies the world is perceived by the way of the sense of sight.

24. Visualism
Visual bias in modern western societies is sometimes called ‘visualism’ or ‘ocularcentrism’
Everyday idioms: ‘I see what you mean’, ‘far-sighted’, ‘perspective’, etc.
Visualism goes back a long way in the history of thought.
Aristotle: ranking of senses. The lowest were taste and touch – ‘animal’ senses. Smell, hearing and sight were regarded ‘human’ senses. Sight was the highest of senses, according to Aristotle.

25. BUT:
Every culture has its own sensory model based on the relative importance it gives to the different senses. The sensory model is expressed in the language, beliefs, and customs of a culture.

26. Two ethnographic studies:
In many non-western societies, the sense of sight is not privileged over the other senses.
Paul Stoller’s ethnography of the Songhay people, in Niger, West Africa
Alfred Gell’s study of the Umeda of Papua New Guinea

27. The Songhay people
Two musical instruments: a single-stringed violin and a gourd drum
Instruments are played at the spirit-possession ceremonies
Noises are produced by the instruments. Spirits are believed to exist as the sounds, not separate beings that produce sounds.
In sorcery: the sound heals or damages the person.

28. The Umeda people
The environment is dense and virtually unbroken forest.
Therefore vision is not the primary sense. Instead hearing and sense of smell are more significant.
The world is apprehended dynamically.

29. Concept of ‘presence’ for Umeda:
Audible but invisible object is entirely ‘present’
Hiding implies concealment of auditory clues

30. Not only animals and plants but also landscape features such as mountains, ridges, knolls, and pools are grasped in the first place as movements rather than static forms.

31. Vision and hearing
With vision , it is as though we stand outside the world
Vision sets up a distance between the spectator and the object seen
With hearing we are immersed within the world
Sound penetrates the individual and creates a sense of communication and participation
Thus ‘auditory’ culture is a ‘culture of sympathy’, according to Gell.
Stoller states: “sound penetrates the individual and creates a sense of communication and participation”

32. Inuit hunter is heavily dependent on his powers of vision
Inuit hunter is heavily dependent on his powers of vision. But does he imagine himself standing outside the world, looking from it afar? Inuit are immersed in a dynamic environment where they are participants rather than observers.
At home try to spend some time with your eyes blind-folded (in the safe environment). And after a while you will realise how much other senses: tactile, olfactory, and taste are significant in perceiving the world around us.

33. Vision with qualities of hearing
French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty on vision: visual space as both ‘surrounding’ and ‘passing through’ the perceiver
In order to convey the sense of what he means by vision, Merleau-Ponty has occasional recourse to auditory metaphor. “Quality, light, colour, depth”, he writes, “are there only because they awaken an echo in our body and because the body welcomes them”.

34. If hearing is a mode of participatory engagement with the environment, it is not because it is opposed in this regard to vision, but because we ‘hear’ with the eyes as well as the ears.
It is very incorporation of vision into the process of auditory perception that transforms passive hearing into active listening.
But converse applies too: it is the incorporation of audition into the process of visual perception that coverts passive spectating into active looking or watching.

35. Nelson: The Koyukon people live in a world that watches and hears.
The trees are invested with spirits that can hear as well as see.
Among the Yupik Eskimos, there is a similar awareness that people are constantly under the watchful eye of spirits. The cosmos ‘ella’ is conceived as an immense eye, but one that can hear too. It could also smell.

36. Writing has fundamentally altered our conception of the world
We are used to see a printed word behind the spoken word.
When we listen to speech, we readily imagine it to be written down. So we hear the spoken words as if looking at them on paper.
But for people in oral cultures words are the sounds

37. “Sight isolates, sound incorporates
“Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer…Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time…When I hear, however, I gather sound from every directions at once: I am at the centre of my auditory world, which envelopes me, establishing me at a kind of core of sensation and existence…You can immerse yourself in hearing, in sound. There is no way to immerse yourself in sight.”

38. Key readings:
Gell, A The language of the forest: landscape and phonological iconism in Umeda. In: Hirsch, E. and M.O’Hanlon (eds.). The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford: Clarendon, pp
Stoller, P The Taste of Ethnographic Things: the Senses in Anthropology. Chapter 6, ‘Sound in Songhay possession’. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp

39. Lectures Language

40. Edward Sapir, a famous American linguist:
“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached (Sapir 1949: 69).
This idea might be startling for you, for most of us are brought up believing that the ‘real world’ is quite separate and distinct from language;

41. English
‘English ‘ world
Russian
Spanish
‘Russian’ world
World
‘Spanish’ world
‘Hopi’ world
Hopi

42. Adamic or naïve view of language
LANGUAGE reflects WORLD
WORDS are THINGS
This idea may be startling to you, for most of us are brought up believing that the ‘real world’ is quite separate and distinct from language; we simply assume that language merely reflects that world. Language, in that view, presumes a kind of transparency or direct connection between words and things. This commonsense assumption has been called the ‘Adamic’ view of language because that is how the biblical Adam in Genesis went around giving names to things.
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field (Genesis 2: 19-20).
In this ‘Adamic’ view of language, names or words are like labels hung onto things (whether those ‘things’ are concrete objects or feelings). In addition, words are assumed to refer to things, thus all we need to do is to point to something and we will get the name for it. This view is reinforced because it appears to us that that is the way babies learn language.

43. Theories of language
Ferdinand de Saussure ( ): “language is a system of interdependent terms in which value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others”.
Saussure was the first to realise that ‘languge is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presewnce of the others’. It must be a system, otherwise our speaking would make no sense. However, the system as a whole is not accessible; it does not exist someplace, instead we muct infer it from individual acts of speaking. It is the job of the linguist or analyst to make the system more explicit. By analogy, this is how some people have come to think about culture. Culture, like language, does not exist someplace, but must be inferred from non-verbal behaviour as well as speech, otherwise social life would be incomprehensible.

44. Language as a symbolic system
Each of us inherits a language; we learn it as babies.
“No society, in fact, knows or has ever known language other than a product inherited from proceeding generations” (Saussure 1959: 71).
Language – social invention and a social institution – no one person invented it. (Compare: Esperanto, computer languages).
Each of us inherits a language; we learn it as babies, which is why native language is often called our ‘mother tongue’. “No society, in fact, knows or has ever known language other than as a product inherited from proceeding generations” (Saussure 1959: 71). It is through and through a social invention and a social institution – no one person invented it. An artificial language such as Esperanto has not been fully adopted by any society, and if it were put into circulation it would be ‘transmitted accoriding to laws which have nothing in common with those of its logical creation…It would be borne along, willy-nilly, by the current that engulfs all languages”. Computer languages are also artificial languages, they are not at all like natural languages, because their signification is fixed.

45. The sign, the signified and the signifier (Ferdinand de Saussure)
The signifier (sound)
The signified
(concept, idea)
The Sign
(word)
[TRI:]
A perennial plant
TREE

46. A sign, a word, gets its meaning only in relation to or in contrast with other signs in a system of signs.
father
mother
uncle
aunt
sister
brother
A sign -- for instance, a word -- gets its meaning only in relation to or in contrast with other signs in a system of signs.
In general, the signifier and the signified are the components of the sign, itself formed by the associative link between the signifier and signified. Even with these two components, however, signs can exist only in opposition to other signs. That is, signs are created by their value relationships with other signs. The contrasts that form between signs of the same nature in a network of relationships is how signs derive their meaning. As the translator of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, Roy Harris, puts it:
"The essential feature of Saussure's linguistic sign is that, being intrinsically arbitrary, it can be identified only by contrast with coexisting signs of the same nature, which together constitute a structured system"
"The essential feature of Saussure's linguistic sign is that, being intrinsically arbitrary, it can be identified only by contrast with coexisting signs of the same nature, which together constitute a structured system"

47. Language is not just a system, it is a completely symbolic system.
There is no necessary connection between a sound/word and the concept signified. Different languages have different words for the same concepts.
That means that the relation is arbitrary and symbolic.
Each word represents a concept.
Rather than representing or reflecting the world, each language represents a conceptual scheme.
Words unite ‘not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image’ (Saussure 1959: 66).
Language is not just a system, it is a completely symbolic system. There is no necessary connection between a sound (word) and the concept signified’. Different languages have different words for the same concepts. This means that the relation is arbitrary and symbolic; each word represents a concept. Each word represents a concept. Rather than representing or reflecting the world, each language represents a conceptual scheme. The origins of language lie in the misty past and may never be known; but what has become clear is that the capacity for symbolic thought was a major ingridient in the transformation of homo sapiens from its hominid ancestors. Humans are symbol-making creatures. We did not arrive at a fully complete, large-brained, and erect human body, and then create language and culture, they were an essential part of our physical evolution.
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief language appears to have developed not for practical reasons – not so humans could bring things to their hand and mouth – but ‘to bring things into their minds’.
Thinking is done with concepts or ideas. But ideas do not exist ready made before words – the words and the concepts coincide. Words unite ‘not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image’ (Saussure 1959: 66). Not only does this challenge our commonsense belief that words mean things, but it should also remind us that words are composed not of letters but of sounds. A word, or sign in Saussure’s language, is like a sheet of paper. One side is the sound and the other the concept.

48. Words are defined by other words.
The meaning of the particular sign does not exist by itself but emerges only in relation to all the other signs, not the external word.
Words are defined by other words.
Meaning, therefore, is a function of an environment of signs.
Example: afraid, fear, terrified, and dread. The relation is one of intensity.
However, and maybe more important, the meaning of that particular sign does not exist by itself but emerges only in relation to all the other signs, not the external word. Words are defined by other words; that is what a dictionary does. Meaning, therefore, is a function of an environment of signs, according to Saussure. To get an idea of what Saussure meant, think about the nuances and differences between the words afraid, fear, terrified and dread. We can distinguish between a present fear, in different degrees (afraid, terrified), and an anticipated fear (dread). The relation between afraid and the other two is one of intensity and that would be removed if there was no word afraid; the meaning would have to be divided between the other two. Think also of words for edibility – appetizing, tasty, delicious, juicy, luscious, succulent. They mutually condition each other and have slight variations in meaning that would be absent if we had only one word. The issue here is that each word evokes and is conditioned by the range of synonyms and antonyms.

49. Language, culture and reality
Assumption: we all see the same things
YET: we see what we are trained to see, what we are socialised to see.
Benjamin Whorf: explosion of empty gasoline barrels.
What was the cause: fumes or the language?
In English there is no word to describe ambiguous condition of empty but not empty.
We assume everyone sees the same things, that perception is, itself, the apparatus that permits us to see. Yet, we see what we are trained to see, what we are socialised to see. Each of us is born into a pcrticular culture and languager, aas wll as inot a particular family, birth order, sex, class, ethnic group, and religion. They tell us what is there, what to look for, how to look for, etc…language and culture is what mediates between us and the world or ‘reality’, perception is not direct but is always mediated.
The situation described by Whorf is as follows: if we see gasoline barrels with sign on them ‘empty barrels’ and put a lit match close to them they will explode. The immediate cause of the explosion, of course, would be the gasoline fumes that remained in the barrel.But it could be argued that the cause of explosion was the English language. The barrels were empty of their owriginal content and so belonged under the empty sign. Yet they were not empty of everything, the fumes were still present. English has no word – no signle term that can convey such situation. Containers in English are either empty or they are not; there is no word describing the ambiguouis situation of being empty and yet not being empty. There ios not a term in the langiuage for ‘empty but not quite’ or ‘empty of original contents but with something left over’.

50. Whorf-Sapir hypothesis
“The background linguistic system (grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas…We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds”.
This example has been sited by Benjamin Lee Whorf to illustrate his revolutionary theory he had about language. His idea was further developed and shared by Edward Sapir, cultural anthropologist and linguist in Yale University. The idea that language influences a person’s view of the world is generally known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The clearest statement of this idea has been expressed as: “The background linguistic system (in other words, grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas…We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds”.

51. The Hopi language
The Hopi language differs dramatically from Standard Average European language (SAE)
Tenses: English has three major tenses.
People can only experience present. Past and future are abstractions
But Westerners think of them as real, because their language forces them to do so.
Hopis perception of time: lack of tenses and resulting attitude towards it.
These ideas developed from Whorf’s study of the Hopi language. He discovered that it differs dramatically from languages of the Indo-European family such as English or French (SAE- Standard Average European), particularly in its expression of the concept of time. English and its related languages have three major tenses – past, prsent and future – plus the fancier compound tenses. Having these tenses, Whorf argued, encourages English- speakers to think of time as so many ducks in a row. Time past is made up of uniform units of time – days, weeks, months, years. This division of time is essentially artificial, Whorf said, since people can only experience the present. Past and future are only abstractions, but Westerners think of them as real because their language virtually forces them to do so. This view of time has given rise to the fondness in Western cultures for diaries records, annals, histories, clocks, calendars, wages paid by the hour or day, and elaborate timetables for the use of future time. Time is continually quantified. If Westerners set out to build a house they establish a deadline; the work will be completed at a specified time in the future.
Hopis do not behave that way; when they start to weave a mat they are not concerned about when it will be completed. They work on it hard, then quit, then begin again; the finished product may take weeks. This casual progress is not laziness but a result of the Hopi’s view of time – one symptom of the fact that their language does not have the past, prsent, and future tenses. Instead it possesses two modes pof thought: the objective, that is, things that exist now, and the subjective, things that can be thought about and therefore belong to a state of becoming. Things do not become interms of future measured off in days, wees, and months. Each ting that is becoming has it own individual life rhythms, growing or declining or changing in much the same manner as a plant grows, according to its inner nature. The essence of Hopi life, therefore, Whorf said, is preparing in the present so that those things that are capable of becoming can in fact come to pass. Thus weaving a mat is preparing a mat to become a mat; it will reach that state when its nature so ordains – whenever that will be.

52. It is not possible to test Whorf-Sapir hypothesis.
Possible solution: to look at the problem developmentally: in the development of a child what comes first, thought or language?
Melissa Bowerman: linguistic and cognitive development proceed in parallel, each guiding and supporting the other.
The major problem with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that it is virtually impossible to test. How can we begin to investigate the relation between language and thought when we have no immediate access to the thought of another person but through language? For most of us, for most of the time, thought and language are so inextricably intertwined that any attempt to figure out the relation between them seems doomed to fail.
One possible solution to the dilemma is to lokk at the problem developmentally. That is, we could ask: in the development of the child, which comes first, thought or language? Is language acquisition a necessary precondition for cognitive development? Is so- if the child needs language to think with – then we would have some support for the Sapir-Whorf thesis, namely that the way we think will depend on the language we have acquired. Yet it could be, quite to the contrary, that cogntive development precedes and guides the development of linguistic competence. According to this contrary view, the child would first build up a repertoire of basic concepts through its direct dealings with the environment. Language would subsequently encode concepts that the child has already formulated independently of language. Learning to talk would simply be a matter of translating from one system, of concepts, to another system, of words.
Some of the most interesting work from this developmental perspective has been carried out by Melissa Bowerman. She argues that both theoretical alternatives – that language acquisition precedes and governs cognitive development, and that cognitive development preceds and guides language development – are too simple. The develoment of linguistic competence is no more a matter of mapping cognitive categories onto language than is cognitive development a matter of mapping linguistic categories onto thought. Rather, according to Bowerman, linguistic and cognitive development proceed in parallel, each guiding and supporting the other. Language does not determine thought, not does thought determine language, but language and thought most certainly interact.

53. Key readings:
De Saussure, F Course in general linguistics. Part 1, Chapter 1, ‘Nature of the linguistic sign’. New York: Philosophical Library, pp
Delaney, Carol Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology. Malden: Blackwells, pp
Hall, E. and M. Hall The sounds of silence. In: Spradley, J and W.D. McCurdy (eds.). Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Longman, pp
Thomson, D The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: worlds shaped by words. In: Spradley, J. and D.W. McCurdy (eds.). Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Longman, pp
Whorf, B.L The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language’. Reprinted in: Duranti, A Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp

54. Lectures Knowledge

55. Everyday Knowledge
Versus
Scientific Knowledge

56. Tim Ingold and Terhi Kurttila’s article (2000):
Two understandings of knowledge: one in the modernist frameworks of the state apparatus and the other in the everyday life of local people

57. Thus, everyday knowledge of the environment people inhabit is:
Contextual.
Essentially practical rather than theoretical. ‘Knowing how’ rather than ‘knowing that’.
Multisensory awareness of the weather is crucial to spatial orientation and to the coordination of activity.
Personal. 2

58. Local knowledge is not that different from scientific knowledge.
Argue against modernist vision of knowledge. Knowledge is local because it is in the heads of local people. But: knowledge is local because it inheres in the activity of inhabiting the land.
Modernist vision: traditional knowledge is linked to genealogical model that is passed down from predecessors. But: traditional knowledge is passed through the experience of participation.
Modernist view: science and traditional knowledge are opposed. But: the weather is no less real than the climate recorded by scientists. Each knowledge grows out of engagement.

59. Bourdieu “Language and Symbolic Power”
Questions how we came to frame everyday practices as homogenous and autonomous knowledge
No reflection on social, historical and political conditions of the process
Twentieth century scholarship treats knowledge as something neutral
If we want to know how indigenous knowledge proliferated, we need to concern ourselves with the social conditions under which such knowledge becomes defined, produced, reproduced, and distributed

60. Paul Nadasdy: The Politics of TEK
The initial idea was: to collect and document traditional ecological knowledge and integrate it with scientific knowledge of the environment.
But little success to integrate traditional and scientific knowledge. Why?

61. Traditional knowledge
Qualitative
Intuitive
Holistic
Oral
Scientific knowledge
Quantitative
Analytical
Reductionist
Literate

62. What are the reasons then?
TEK became a politically expedient thing
Terms like ‘sustainable development’, ‘ecological crisis’ do not have analogues in Native American languages. Institutionalising such official language will set bad precedents of redefining Native cultures through Western cultures. Morrow and Hensel: term ‘traditional’.
Knowledge. Traditional knowledge is for aboriginal people is a way of life.

63. 4. Compartmentalisation of TEK
4. Compartmentalisation of TEK. Western science is compartmentalised: social science, natural science, pure science, applied etc. Forestry expert, water expert, mining expert. But knowledge in the bush has to be holistic, not separated.
5. Distillation of TEK. Knowledge has to be converted into numbers and should be expressed numerically.

64. What constitutes knowledge?
“Knowledge in hunting societies is encoded at critical points in a belief system, sustained over centuries, that conceptualises animals and humans as sharing a common world and their connections as mutually sustaining. When it becomes incorporated into a Western framework, it is reconstituted to formalize relationships between people and becomes embedded in hierarchy and inequality…Knowledge is not amenable to direct questions, nor can it be easily formulated as a set of rules. It must be demonstrated so that others can see how it is used in practice. Such knowledge is a relational concept, more like a verb than a noun, more process than product, and it can easily be construed as a written, formally encoded, reified product” (Cruikshank 1998: 69-70).

65. “Knowing is a concept which is not codified but is demonstrated by example” (Anderson 2000: 117).
A person performing his/her knowledge competently earns respect and gains status.
In learning process – usurpation of tasks is humiliating, but also removes opportunity to demonstrate knowledge.

66. Knowledge involves an interpersonal relationship with animals
Knowledge involves an interpersonal relationship with animals. Kwon (1993): hunters do not reveal their hunting intentions so that not to scare the animals.
Knowledge of hunting is also in skilled concealment of human qualities. “To learn to hunt you have to learn from a cunning fox” (Kwon 1993: 121).

67. Fundamental difference:
- Western tradition is preoccupied with analytic and theoretical ways of knowing, episteme, devaluing and misrepresenting practical and contextual knowledge.
-But: knowledge means engagement in a skilful act. Rosaldo (1987) example of the basketball game.

68. “Knowledge has to be demonstrated” (Cruikshank 1998:70)
This concept “is a relational concept, more like a verb than a noun, more a process than a product, and it cannot be easily construed as a written, formally encoded, reified product”. In hunting societies, Cruikshank states, knowledge has to be demonstrated, shown to the others.
Anderson (2000: 117) proposes the term 'knowing the land', where knowledge of the landscape goes beyond conventional map reading.

69. Key readings:
Ingold, T. and T.Kurttila Perceiving the environment in Finnish Lapland. In: Body and Society, 6 (3-4), pp
Nadasdy, P The politics of TEK: power and the “integration” of knowledge. In: Arctic Anthropology, 36 (1-2), pp
Anderson, D Identity and Ecology in Arctic Siberia: The Number One Brigade. Chapter 6 ‘Sentient ecology’. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp
Cruikshank, J The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory. Chapter 3. Yukon Arcadia: oral tradition, indigenous knowledge, and the fragmentation of meaning. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp
Argounova-Low, T (in press). Landscape as narrative, memory and knowledge. In: Jordan, P. (ed.). Landscape and Culture in the Siberian North. London: University College London Press.

70. Lectures 17-18 Religion. The ways we believe

71. Religion All societies have beliefs
Any set of attitudes, beliefs, practices as pertaining to supernatural power

72. Natural and the supernatural
Not all languages or cultures make such distinction.
Depends on how is natural and supernatural determined by a society. (E.g. illnesses)

73. In some societies: Religious is embedded in aspects of everyday life.
Difficult to separate religious from economic or political aspects
Such societies have no-full time priests, no purely religious activities.

74. Universality of religion
Religious beliefs are found in all contemporary societies. Signs of religious beliefs date back at least 60,000 years ago.
Herodotus (V BC) made fairly objective comparisons among the religions during his travels.

75. Reasons of origin of religion:
Religions are created by humans in response to certain universal needs or conditions:
- need for intellectual understanding
- reversion to childhood feelings
- anxiety and uncertainty
- need for community

76. The need to understand
Edward Tylor in Primitive Culture (1871): religion originated in people’s speculation about dreams, trances, and death.
Beliefs in souls was the earliest form of religion: animism. Humans developed religions in order to explain things.

77. Reversion to childhood feelings
Sigmund Freud’s theory of a dominating tyrannical man. Sons who killed and ate him later experienced remorse and guilt. Expressed this guilt by prohibiting the killing of a totem animal.
When adults feel out of control or in need, they may unconsciously revert to their infantile and childhood feelings. They may then look to gods or magic to do what they cannot do for themselves, just as they looked to their parents to take care of their needs.
Freud: humans would eventually outgrow the need for religion

78. Anxiety and uncertainty
Bronislaw Malinowski: people in all societies are faced with anxiety and uncertainty. Religion is born from the universal need to find comfort in inevitable times of stress.
Carl Jung, Erich Fromm and others viewed religion more positively than Freud: relieves anxiety and is therapeutic. Jung suggested that it helps to resolve their inner conflict and attain maturity.

79. The need for community:
Some social scientists believe that religion springs from society and serves social rather than psychological needs.
Social forces: public opinion, custom, law – seen as mysterious forces made people to believe in gods and spirits.
Emile Durkheim: religion arises out of the experience of living in social groups. Religious belief and practice affirm a person’s place in society, enhance feeling of community and provide confidence.

80. Durkheim: society is the object of worship
Durkheim explained totemism:nothing inherent in a lizard, rat, or any other animal that would make them sacred for aboriginal groups.
Totem therefore must be a symbol.
People are organised into clans. Totem is the focus of the clan’s religious rituals and symbolises both the clan and the clan’s spirits.

81. Religious change as revitalisation
Cargo cults, nativistic movements, messianic movements, millenarian cults.
What may explain such cults? Important factor: existence of oppression. Relative deprivation. Times of stress.
People resort to magic in situation of chance, when they have limited control over the success of their activities.

82. Key readings:
Gmelch, G. Baseball magic In: Spradley, J. and D.W. McCurdy (eds.) Conformity and Conflict:Readings in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Longman, pp
Leavitt, S.C Cargo beliefs and religious experience. In: Spradley, J. and D.W.McCurdy (eds.) Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Longman, pp
Merrill, W.L God’s saviours in the Sierra Madre. In: Spradley, J. and D.W.McCurdy (eds.) Conformity and Conflict:Rreadings in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Longman, pp

83. Anthropology of Art Lectures 19-20

84. People express themselves creatively in dance, music, song, painting, sculpture, etc.
Hunters and gatherers have been painting and carving for thousands of years. Only recently, since they have entered the Western ‘art world’, these people became involved in the production of art.
Hunters and gatherers of the past were painting and carving, but they were not ‘producing art’.

85. Indeed, many native cultures are lacking the word for ‘art’ or ‘aesthetics’.
Perhaps because art in societies with relatively little specialisation, is often an integral part of religious, social and political life.
But even without the word people associate with aesthetic experience – sense of beauty, harmony, pleasure.

86. Several qualities of art
It expresses as well as communicates
It stimulates the sense, affects emotions, and evokes ideas.
It is produced in culturally patterned ways and styles.
It has cultural meaning.
Some people are better at it than the others. But in many societies people who do art are not full-time specialists.

87. In the 19th century , art was one of the concepts used to exclude people from civilization and to distance them from European culture.
However just as art could be used to distance ‘other’ people from civilised Europeans, it can be used as a rhetorical device to include them within a world culture.

88. Definition of art
“Those things are considered to be art which are made by human beings in any visual medium, where production requires a relatively high level of skill on the part of their maker, skill being measured when possible according to the standards traditionally used in the maker’s society” (Anderson 1979:11)
Art from Old French (ars) meaning skill.

89. What are some ideas about art in Western society?
Anything useful is not art. BUT: totem poles for practical use (to support the dwelling); beautifully embroidered boots or parkas are to keep people warm.
To be considered art, a work must be unique. An artist should be original. BUT: in some societies the ability to replicate a traditional pattern is more valued than originality.

90. Indigenous art and museums
How Western museums and art critics look at the visual art of native cultures? ‘By their things we shall know them’ remains one premise of representing indigenous art
‘Nameless’
‘Timeless’
Primitive art
Tourist art

91. Indigenous people should represent themselves, rather than be represented by others.
Anthropologists are no translators of culture.

92. Museums and indigenous art
Difference in interpretations of artefacts
For many indigenous people the museum artefacts are ways of relating to their history and ancestry
Should museums repatriate tribal masks and other items to the tribes where they originally belong?

93. Key readings:
Eyo, E Repatriation of cultural heritage: the African experience. In: Kaplan, F. (ed.). Museums and the Making of “Ourselves”: the Role of Objects in National Identity. London: Leicester University Press., pp
Myers, F. R Culture-making: performing aboriginality at the Asia Society Gallery. In: American Ethnologist, vol. 21, N 4, pp
Film “Cracks in the Mask”

94. Your exam: Your exam is on May 29, Tuesday. From 12-14.
The exam is held in Marischall College, Mitchell Hall. It is in the centre of the town, NOT in the campus.
You have to answer three questions. You have two hours.

95. Read the questions very carefully. Engage with each word.
Choose three questions.
Start with the most difficult one.
Make a structure of your essay.
Explain clearly what you are going to argue.
Start with the key concept.
Provide theoretical argumentation.
Give ethnographic examples.
Conclude.

96. Helpful phrases: “In this essay I intend to analyse/introduce…”
“Religion can be interpreted as…”
“According to X. in_____”
“In the words of X. …”
“As X. shows in …”
“G indicates(suggests, argues, demonstrates, implies, claims)…”