Naven is an ethnography and theoretical work that aims to explain and subsequently generalize one particular ceremony of the Iatmul people in New Guinea. Bateson describes the actual practice of naven in great detail, as well as the kinship premises and structures that are behind it. Based on a relationship between the wau (mother's brother) and the laua (mother's son or daughter), performances including dressing up as a member of the opposite sex and certain sexual representations are engaged to celebrate the laua's achievements at various points in his/her life. While a patrilineal culture, this ceremony emphasizes the connection of the child to his/her mother's kinship group. Bateson does not only describe the ceremony of naven, but instead he tried to explain it through various possible theories. Using a variety of concepts borrowed and expanded upon especially from the field pyschology/psychiatry, Bateson develops in a self-conscious way some possible explanations for what he noticeable considers bizarre behavior. He, for example, emphasizes the naven to celebrate a successful "homicide", while in fact he never observed such an event. Curiously, Bateson never draws any parallel with situations in which "homicide" is celebrated in our own culture , mainly in times of war or political/criminal executions (for example when Osama bin Laden was killed). The book argues that it is a response to the functional school of anthropology of Malinowski. Bateson aims to develop a methodology for structural anthropology, which he defines as "a collective term for the coherent 'logical' scheme which may be constructed by the scientist, fitting together the various premises of the culture" (p. 25). In his analysis, Bateson aims to categorize different elements of cultural practice to include ethos, structure, eidos and sociology. In the epilogue, Bateson himself does not seem convinced by his own theoretical analysis and attempts to bring contemporary theory to explain is previous thoughts, which he does in an equally convoluted way.
Evans-Pritchard,
E. E. (1940/1969). The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and
Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. New York/Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
This book outlines a study of the political, ecological and material conditions of a group of peoples known as the Nuer, which are composed of numerous tribes and other divisions located in present day Southern Sudan. On the very first line of the text, Evans-Pritchard indicates that the study, of which the ethnographic research was conducted over a period of about 1 year, was "undertaken at the request of, and was mainly financed by, the Government of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan" (preface). In fact, that colonial government is felt throughout the text, although its implications and influence on the culture studied is little discussed and less critiqued by Evans-Pritchard himself. The stated goal of the text is to outline the political institutions of the Nuer (for exactly what purpose--for anthropological knowledge, the emerging popular sciences of "exotic" peoples, and/or to help the colonial government understand for the purposes of control--is not quite clear). In order to explain the political institutions, Evans-Pritchard describes in great detail the Nuer's material conditions (i.e. their socio-economy of cattle and to a lesser degree other livestock), their interactions within their particular oecology, their concepts of time and space and their lineage/age-set systems. He goes into great detail regarding what happens when a misdeed is done, e.g. the giving of blood-price and the foundations of feuds. He argues that the Nuer have no law and are functionally controlled anarchy, where there is no power or chief system that can enforce compensation or retribution of "crimes" done. Interestingly, he indicated early on in the book that he will not talk about the world of women, since he does not see their lives and interactions as political. Also, in the introduction, he gave some detail into his trials of doing ethnography in this community, which contrasts it to the Azande.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1976). Witchcraft, Oracles, and the Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
First published in 1937, but based off of ethnographic research done in the 1920s, Evans-Pritchard outlines in great detail the behaviors, practices and beliefs behind the Azande's ideas about witchcraft, oracles and magic. This abridged version focuses almost exclusively on the cultural elements of the Azande as directly associated with their mystical beliefs. Evans-Pritchard claims that his goal is to present this material through the "intellectual consistency of Zande notions" (p. 222). While engaged primarily in a descriptive analysis, Evans-Pritchard also shows how practices have changed since the arrival of Europeans and how beliefs around witchcraft, oracles and magic are connected with the power of princes and kings and how they reflect moral values of the Azande people. While stating many times that he does not belief that all of witchcraft as the Azande people know it is real, he nevertheless represents it as a valid and important cultural practice and belief. Even so, on a few occasion, Evan-Pritchard has difficulty explaining why the magic of the Azande appears work. This book (perhaps due to it abridged nature) stands-out as distinct as it does not go into great detail about other elements of Zande culture and society. It extracts only the elements that can help explain witchcraft as observed and understood by his informants.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922/2010). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Oxford, UK: Benediction Classics.
This classic text in anthropology is not only a hefty tome of the practice of Kula in the islands cultures of Eastern New Guinea, but it also establish some of the basic principles of ethnographic research in the field of anthropology. Malinowski begins his work with outlining the basic requirements of ethnography, which do not include interpretation of cultures that would be completely foreign the the people being studied. Malinowski claims that ethnography must explain the ways that cultures produce meaning within the context of their own understandings, not as something abstract and artificial from the people themselves. He argued that ethnographers must live with the people that she/he is studying. He writes: "Find out the typical ways of thinking and feeling, corresponding to the institutions and culture of a given community, and formulate the results in the most convincing manner" (p. 23). The importance of understanding and giving appropriate value to the belief systems of the people an ethnographer studies in paramount to scientific research. He writes: "This goals is, briefly, to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world" (p. 25). The rest of the lengthy text outlines in great detail the Kula system of "trading" in the islands off of the coast of the New Guinea. Malinowski goes into particular detail about the tribes located on the Trobriand Islands, where he did the majority of his ethnographic work. From this context, and from shorter term research on other participating island, Malinowski outlines a part of the complex institution of Kula, a system of ceremonial gift-giving and trade deeply "rooted in myth, back by traditional law, and surrounded with magical rites" (p. 85). Malinowski describes Kulu as: "A big, inter-tribal relationship, uniting with definite social bonds a vast area and great numbers of people, binding them with definite ties of reciprocal obligations, making them follow minute rules and observations in a concerted manner--the Kulu is a sociological mechanism of surprising size and complexity, considering the level of culture on which we find it" (p. 510). Only two items are traded in the Kulu exchange: arm-shell and necklaces, together known as vaygu'a. Each item is given to Kulu partners in a particular direction: arm-shells are received only from Kulu-partners coming from the North and East, and necklaces from the South and West. As the most important system of trade and perhaps in the society as a whole, Kulu demonstrates how gift-giving forms the basis of a society where generosity is seen as a cardinal virtue and as a way of displaying wealth and prestige as "the fundamental impulse to display, to share, to bestow" (p. 175). In fact, this work is seen as one of the foundational texts around the study of complex systems of gift-giving in anthropology. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this study for me was his critique of the "economic nature of primitive man" as often argued in economics and other social sciences. This idea consists in the idea that "primitive" man's economic sense leads him to work at the absolute minimum and only for the direct needs of himself and his kin. This principle, on the flip side, argued that primitive man engages in a type of communism, where no ownership exists. Both of the arguments are wrong because they do not exist in actual human societies when cultures are ethnographically studied. Malinowski understands that often these representations are intended as thought-experiments, and not as ethnographic data or fact. Yet, he finds it problematic that economic models are used which are based on clearly misleading and non-factual ideas. This has also been a difficulty for me when reading Rousseau's or Locke's thoughts of man in the state of nature, which often drew upon folk wisdom of native and indigenous peoples in the Americas and Pacific.
Mead, Margaret (1935/2001). Sex and temperament in three primitive societies. New York: Harper Perennial.
This fascinating comparative study of three cultures in New Guinea aimed to demonstrate in great detail the different attitudes, attributes and meanings that specific cultures give to gendered temperaments and characters. Mead states in her pithy introduction that her goal was to demonstrate that the sex-differentiated temperaments and characteristics that our culture often attributes to nature--ex. men are naturally more aggressive and sexually-oriented and women are more passive, emotional and material--are in fact cultural inventions not based on nature but on culturally specific education and practice. Mead shows this through in-depth ethnography of three different, but closely situated tribes in New Guinea. The Arapesh were characterized by passive, material, unaggressive, and responsive personalities for both men and women. In this society, both men and women were expected to participate in child rearing and aggressive, overly sexual personalities were suppressed. Instead, as an interesting contrast, the Mundugumor considered the personalities of violent and aggressive men and women to be ideal. Finally, the Tchambuli provided contrast to our own society. Where the Tchambuli were a patrilineal society legally speaking, the women were in charge in practice as they produced all the income and formed the backbone of all relationships. In this case, some of the temperamental features that contemporary American society attributes to men are instead attributed to women (such as being "dominant, impersonal, and the managing partner, (and) the man less responsible and the emotionally dependent person" (p. 262)). Mead points out that the diversity in personalities and temperaments is quite vast in the human spectrum and that it is mostly up to culture to dictate which characteristics are considered desirable and which arbitrary categories of people (based on age, sex, caste, skin-color) are designated with these characteristics. In each culture that she studied, she describes both the cultural ideal of temperament and the deviation from that ideal. This demonstrates how exceptions (or aberrations) to the ideal in each society demonstrates how differences in temperaments and personalities always exist both in males and females, and it is the work of the culture of mold the majority of children (but not all) into the cultural ideal of being a male or female. In the end, she argues that cultural conditioning has a much stronger role in created sex-differences than any natural or genetic feature does. This book, I think, is exceedingly important in its methodology of comparative ethnography. She shows that it is only through the study of other cultures that we can break through the veil that our own society gives us regarding what is "natural" and what is cultural. While fascinating, my main critique of the text is that she does not discuss in any self-conscious way her methodology and her experience as an outsider studying the "other". I would have liked to have known how she got her information considering how definitive she seemed about her data.
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