REVIEW ARTICLE: Maurice Godelier in the Company of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Emmanuelle Loyer

ABSTRACT

This article takes the occasion of the publication of two lengthy volumes about the life and work of Claude Lévi-Strauss to assess certain elements of Maurice Godelier’s Marxist encounter with structuralism. While providing an overall view of each book, and the way they speak to each other, I also explore particular dimensions of Godelier’s engagement with Lévi-Strauss, including in relation to Godelier’s attempt to introduce psychoanalysis into his Marxist-structuralist equations. Four broad themes are addressed: the horizontal and vertical dimensions of kinship as alliance and descent; domination and the so-called ‘exchange of women’; Godelier’s limited appeal to Freud, especially in relation to his near occlusion of Lacan; and Godelier’s ‘suspicious’ humanist relationship to sacred belief as ideological illusion. This last matter leads to a concluding section which, drawing on Loyer’s biography, contrasts Godelier’s version of late Enlightenment humanism with what was arguably the more radically expanded humanism of the mature Lévi-Strauss.     

Transforming history and myth: On the mutuality and separation of shared narratives in Eastern Tibet

Questioning the distinction between ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ societies, and an implied separation between myth and history, anthropologists have increasingly urged for an understanding of both myth and history as equally valid modes of shared social consciousness. This article takes up this point of view by referring to a written history of Lhagang, a town in Eastern Tibet; a history that appears to have the transformative content and oral circulation of myth. Using Lévi‐Strauss’ structural analysis of myth and Santos‐Granero's concept of topograms to demonstrate the mythemes that derive from the written history and circulate among Lhagang Tibetans, the article argues that, within the political and cultural context of Lhagang, myth and history shift in and out of indigenous categories even while being categorically distinct.     

Vavilov's concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants: its genesis and its influence on the study of agricultural origins

N. I. Vavilov first published his concept of centres of origin of cultivated plants in 1926. For over fifty years it profoundly influenced thinking about the origins and spread of agriculture by bitanists, geograhers, anthropologists and archaeologists. The genesis of the concept and its exposition by Vavilov is examined, and its influence on the ideas of such scholars as C. O. Sauer, I. H. Burkill, C. D. Darlington, A. I. Kuptsov, R. Porteres, J. R. Harlan and J. G. Hawkes is traced. It is concluded that Vavilov's concept, which for so long conditioned ideas about the origins of agriculature, has now outlived its usefulness in thet field sof study.     

Early Ethnographic Film in Britain: A Reflection on the Work of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

A brief history points up the relative scarcity of ethnographic film made by British anthropologists in the 20th century. The reasons for this were the difficulty and expense of filmmaking until recent years, and a theoretical disinterest in filmmaking, leading to a limited opportunity to capture visually the last tribal worlds. The importance of Fürer-Haimendorf's collection of films thus stands out. The conditions which made his work in India, the North-East Frontier and Nepal possible are discussed, with an outline of his filming and written ethnographies. Why was he interested in film? Fürer-Haimendorf's technical ability with film and photography combined with an emotional sensibility are key. Not fully a man of his time, he avoided the abstract and anti-materialist phase in anthropological theory. An interview with Fürer-Haimendorf and his views on film are presented; and we see that the role of Betty Fürer-Haimendorf was crucial. We conclude with a brief consideration of his attitudes and, in his later life, the role of the BBC and the professionalization of anthropological filmmaking.     

L.S. Vygotsky and the Theater

The article presents the analysis of L.S. Vygotsky's works dedicated to the theater arts and is organized according Vygotsky's different life and work stages. Meanwhile special attention is paid to the Gomel period during which a large number of reviews were written by Vygotsky and published in “Nash ponedel'nik” and “Polesskaia pravda” newspapers. Biographical facts are widely used in this analysis and help to clarify Vygotsky's interest in art. It is shown that even at the beginning of his oeuvre, he was interested not only in a range of problems in art, but also psychological problems related to art perception and creativeness. Vygotsky's usage of structural concept ideas about the peculiar properties of literary text composition are also explored. Vygotsky analyzes the socio-psychological mechanisms of theatrical art effect. Furthermore, those areas which are widely used by Vygotsky in determining the characteristics of cast reincarnation are examined. Special emphasis is placed on the different elements of the actor techniques (speech, movement, emotional expression, acting personality and etc.). Materials are widely used in this study and help identify the socio-cultural context that defined Vygotsky's values at different stages of his work, related to his drama criticism and his formation as a professional psychologist.     

La psychose hallucinatoire chronique doit-elle disparaître ? Une revue historique

At the beginning of the 19th century, while the semiology of hallucinations was being identified for the first time (Esquirol, 1817; Baillarger, 1856), a number of French alienists isolated partial delusions which are characterized by disorders of perception: “folie sensoriale” (Lélut, 1836), “monomanie sensoriale” (Aubanel, Calmeil, 1839), “délire des sensations” (Michéa, 1851). Others authors pointed that hallucinations were the main symptom of monomanias and mystic delusions (Brierre de Boismont, 1845; Baillarger, 1856). In 1882, Magnan introduces the concept of chronic delusion. But as most studies of the time were focused on degeneracy, it was not until the end of the century that persecutory delusions of a hallucinatory nature were distinguished from those of a “reasoning” or “combinatory” nature (Falret, 1878; Mendel, 1883; Sérieux, 1890). Between 1892 and 1900, J. Séglas, physician of the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, was able to differentiate between hallucinatory patients with sensory and motor dysfunctions, in analogy with aphasias. The latter, also called “persécutés-possédés”, present delusions of being controlled and thought broadcasting (depersonalization). On the other hand, Chronic Hallucinatory Psychosis (CHP) was used initially to identify patients suffering from hallucinations without delusion or hallucinosis (Séglas and Cotard, 1908; Dide and Gassiot, 1910). In 1911 and then 1913, G. Ballet first used the term in its present French meaning to refer to Séglas’ patients with persecutory delusions of a hallucinatory nature. Séglas’ pupils then describe “influence psychosis” (Lévy-Darras, 1914; Ceillier, 1924), less famous nowadays than the “psychosis based on mental automatism” (G. de Clérambault, 1920-1926). In the 1930s, students of H. Claude at Sainte-Anne hospital criticize the concept of CHP (Ey, Nodet), because of the prevalence of delusional ideas on perceptive disorders. After 1945, most semiology of hallucinations is integrated into the “first rank symptoms” of schizophrenia by K. Schneider. Although it has not been retained by DSM-IV and ICD-10, French CHP could be integrated as a syndromic form into late-onset schizophrenia.     

Horse versus machine: battles in the betting shop

Changes in regulation and taxation during the past decade have had a profound effect on the experience of betting in dedicated shops in the United Kingdom. This article explores how betting shop customers and staff in London have responded to the introduction of gambling machines depicting roulette and other casino‐type games in an environment that was traditionally dedicated to betting on horse and dog racing. The rise of machine gambling has been presented as a transition from ‘social’ to ‘asocial’ forms of gambling by researchers working in the UK, Las Vegas, and Australia. Traditional bettors and betting shop staff also present betting and machine play as discrete and value them differently. I show that while some of the experiential qualities of machine play observed elsewhere have been replicated in shops, the differences between traditional betting and machine play are overstated, for structural reasons. Traditional bettors and staff are interested in distinguishing their activities from those of newcomers. Responses to new gambling media in betting shops are socially, as well as experientially, mediated, a crucial insight for the wider study of gambling and gambling regulation.

Résumé

L'évolution de la réglementation et de la taxation des paris a eu depuis une dizaine d'année de profonds effets sur l'expérience des parieurs dans les officines du Royaume‐Uni. Le présent article étudie la réaction des clients et du personnel de bureaux de paris londoniens à l'apparition des machines proposant des jeux de roulette et autres jeux de casino dans un environnement traditionnellement dévolu aux paris sur les courses de chevaux et de chiens. Au Royaume‐Uni, à Las Vegas et en Australie, des chercheurs ont présenté l'essor des machines de jeux comme le passage de formes de jeu « sociales »à d'autres « asociales ». Les parieurs traditionnels et les employés des bureaux de paris considèrent eux aussi les paris et les jeux sur machines comme deux activités distinctes et de valeur différente. L'auteure montre ici qu'une partie des qualités de l'expérience du jeu sur machines observées ailleurs se retrouvent dans les bureaux de paris, mais que les auteurs ont exagéré les différences entre paris traditionnels et jeux sur machines, pour des raisons structurelles. Les parieurs traditionnels et les employés ont intérêt à distinguer leurs activités de celles des nouveaux venus. La réponse aux nouveaux modes de jeu dans les bureaux de paris, médiée socialement mais aussi par l'expérience, est très instructive pour l'étude plus large des jeux de paris et de leur réglementation.     

Capuchin monkey tool use and Léon Croizat's ideas on the evolution of human behavior.

This note reviews Léon Croizat's ideas about the evolution of human behavior, based on his evaluation of the tool use capabilities of a capuchin monkey. Croizat theorized mainly on his orthogenetic view to explain such behavior. Interesting enough is the timeframe (1962) and context of his statement and the monkey's model used for such explanation. In this direction, some comments are provided considering the current knowledge of capuchin tool using and its potential implications for modeling hominid evolution.     

The “ethnographic surrealism” of Jean Rouch

Using James Clifford's notion of “ethnographic surrealism,” this paper focuses on the “surrealist” features of the film work of Jean Rouch. First, drawing extensively from an interview held with Rouch in May 1988, I outline the influence that the “ethnographic surrealism” of the 1930s had on Rouch. I then go on to discuss “surrealism” in Rouch's use of the camera, choice of subject matter, techniques of narration, and relationship to his subject. I conclude by demonstrating that Rouch's current work at the Cinémathèque Française and the Comité du Film Ethnographique offer excellent examples of his ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and thus extend the original spirit of “ethnographic surrealism” into the present.     

The Proverbial Bourdieu: Habitus and the Politics of Representation in the Ethnography of Kabylia

Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been centrally concerned with the relationship of ethnographic representation to political and historical context. Interestingly, the work of Pierre Bourdieu has largely escaped such contextualization, despite the significance of Bourdieu's ideas to anthropological theorizing. Today, many of Bourdieu's central concepts float free from the context out of which they arose—the Kabyle region of Algeria. This article addresses this omission by reading Bourdieu's early works against each other to reconstitute aspects of his methodology and fieldwork. Focusing on his choice to represent the Kabyles of his early work in prose, and those in his later work via proverbs, I suggest that key premises of Bourdieu's theory may not be supported by historical and ethnographic evidence. I consider how Bourdieu's position as a young social scientist grappling with ethnographic responsibilities in colonial wartime led him to privilege his interlocutors' accounts in some studies while expunging them from others. [Keywords: Bourdieu, represented speech, literacy, Algeria, Berbers]     

Corsets,Culture and Contingency: Reflections on Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock1

This article turns an anthropological sensitivity onto a literary text from its own society. It takes Joan Lindsay's novel ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ and ‘reads’ it in the light of ideas prominent in recent anthropological writings (the ideas of Lévi-Strauss are particularly used): it also articulates an interpretation by using notions current in modern literary and cultural analysis. The article points out that Lindsay's text has most commonly been interpreted as being about mysterious natural forces injurious to man. Whilst the text explores the disjunction between nature and culture, the article interprets the text as exploring the nature of cultural institutions and cultural processes.     

Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on "Race"

In response to Mukhopadhyay and Moses's call for biological and cultural anthropologists to reestablish a dialogue on race, anthropologists from the four major subfields join colleagues from two allied disciplines to address the possible ways in which the anthropological discourse on race can become more holistic and amenable to the urgent needs and interests of the public. This essay offers an overview of the current resurgence of race-focused scholarship in anthropology, as well as a framework for an intertextual reading of the articles featured in this theme forum. Anthropologists' current conversation on race and racism is built on a rich legacy, elements of which are still being uncovered in gender- and racecognizant explorations of the discipline's past Despite the considerable hiatus since the last major juncture of race-centered debate and research, that legacy has recently inspired a promising upsurge of critical analysis which, if mobilized effectively, may contribute to the subversion of the often subtle cultural and structural logics of contemporary racism, as well as clear the ground for a new culture for multiracial democracy. Toward this end, anthropologists and others interested in using anthropological tools must cultivate more richly nuanced analyses and intervention strategies informed by insights emerging from the cross-fertilization of ideas from the various subfields along with such fields as human genetics and ethnic studies. Anthropology's unique role in interrogating, theorizing, and potentially disrupting the dynamics of racism may be dependent on understanding the conceptual and methodological significance of strategic intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary interfaces.     

The medium of signs: nominalism, language and the philosophy of mind in the early thought of Dugald Stewart

In 1792 Dugald Stewart published Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. In its section on abstraction he declared himself to be a nominalist. Although a few scholars have made brief reference to this position, no sustained attention has been given to the central role that it played within Stewart's early philosophy of mind. It is therefore the purpose of this essay to unpack Stewart's nominalism and the intellectual context that fostered it. In the first three sections I aver that his nominalism emanated from his belief that objects of the mind--qualities, ideas and words--were signs that bore no necessary relation to the external objects that they were meant to represent. More specifically, it was these signs that were arranged into systems of thought by the 'operations of the mind'. The next three sections suggest that his treatment of words as signs most probably originated in his views on language and medicine and that his nominalistic philosophy of mind could also be extended to systems that sought to classify the natural world. I conclude by suggesting several avenues of enquiry that could be pursued by future scholars interested in excavating Stewart's thought.     

Autonomy,Natality and Freedom: A Liberal Re‐examination of Habermas in the Enhancement Debate

Jurgen Habermas has argued that carrying out pre‐natal germline enhancements would be inimical to the future child's autonomy. In this article, I suggest that many of the objections that have been made against Habermas' arguments by liberals in the enhancement debate misconstrue his claims. To explain why, I begin by explaining how Habermas' view of personal autonomy confers particular importance to the agent's embodiment and social environment. In view of this, I explain that it is possible to draw two arguments against germline enhancements from Habermas' thought. I call these arguments ‘the argument from negative freedom’ and ‘the argument from natality’. Although I argue that many of the common liberal objections to Habermas are not applicable when his arguments are properly understood, I go on to suggest ways in which supporters of enhancement might appropriately respond to Habermas' arguments.     

Community, society, culture: three keys to understanding today's conflicted identities

The author redefines three major concepts used in the social sciences: tribe, society, and community. He begins with his discovery that the Baruya, a tribe in New Guinea with whom he lived and worked, were not a society a few centuries ago. This made him wonder: How is a new society made? The author shows that neither kinship relations nor economic relations are sufficient to forge a new society. What welded a certain number of Baruya kin groups into a society were their political‐religious relations, which enabled them to establish a form of sovereignty over a territory, its inhabitants, and its resources. He goes on to compare other examples of more or less recently formed societies, among which is Saudi Arabia, whose beginnings date from the end of the eighteenth century; and he then clarifies the difference between tribe, society, ethnic group, and community, showing that a tribe is a society, but an ethnic group is a community. His analysis elucidates some contemporary situations, since tribes still play an important role in Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, and so on.

Résumé

L'auteur redéfinit trois grands concepts utilisés dans les sciences sociales : tribu, société et communauté. Son point de départ est le fait que les Baruya, une tribu de Nouvelle‐Guinée avec laquelle il a vécu et travaillé, ne formaient pas une société il y a quelques siècles. Cette découverte l'a conduit à se demander comment une société voyait le jour. L'auteur montre que ni les liens de parenté ni les relations économiques ne sont suffisants pour donner naissance à une nouvelle société. Ce qui a soudé un certain nombre de groupes de parenté baruya en une société, ce sont leurs relations politiques et religieuses, qui leur ont permis d'établir une forme de souveraineté sur un territoire, ses habitants et ses ressources. L'auteur poursuit en comparant d'autres exemples de sociétés d'apparition plus ou moins récentes, par exemple l'Arabie Saoudite dont les débuts remontent à la fin du XVIII^e siècle. Il éclaircit ensuite la différence entre tribu, société, groupe ethnique et communauté, en montrant qu'une tribu est une société mais un groupe ethnique est une communauté. Son analyse fait la lumière sur certaines situations contemporaines, dans la mesure où les tribus jouent encore un rôle important en Irak, en Afghanistan, en Jordanie et ailleurs.     

The other face of Lyell: historical biogeography in his Principles of geology

Although some excellent articles about Lyell's work have been published, they do not explicitly deal with Lyell's biogeographical conceptions. The purpose of this paper is to analyse Lyell's biogeographical model in terms of its own internal structure. Lyell tried to explain the distribution of organisms by appealing to a real cause (climate). However, he was aware that environmental conditions were clearly insufficient to explain the existence of biogeographical regions. Lyell's adherence to ecological determinism generated strong tensions within his biogeographical model. He shifted from granting a secondary weight to dispersal to assigning it a major role. By doing so, Lyell was led into an evident contradiction. A permanent tension in Lyell's ideas was generated by the prevalent explanatory pattern of his time. The explanatory model based on laws did not produce satisfactory results in biology because it did not deal with historical processes. We may conclude that the knowledge of organic distribution interested Lyell as long as it could be explained by the uniformitarian principles of his geological system. The importance of the second volume of the Principles of geology lies in its ample and systematic argumentation about the geographical distribution of organisms. Lyell established, independently from any theory about organic change, the first version of dispersalist biogeography.     

H.J. Muller's contributions to mutation research

H. J. Muller is best known for his Nobel Prize work on the induction of mutations by ionizing radiation. Geneticists are less familiar with his contributions to mutation and how he related the process of mutagenesis to the gene and distinguished gene mutations from other genetic and epigenetic events such as polyploidy, chromosome rearrangements, and position effects. The hallmark of Muller's contributions is his design of genetic stocks to solve genetic problems and allow experimentation to reveal new phenomena. In this review I relate Muller's personality to his teaching and research and present a history of Muller's ideas on mutation from his first days in Morgan's fly lab to his final thoughts on what became called “Muller's ratchet”, a term he did not get to enjoy because it was coined seven years after his death.     

Orientalism in the Documentary Representation of Culture

Structured around the idea that there is a non-linguistic and cross-cultural, possibly biological, basis on which the understanding of pictures rests, this essay looks at the ways whereby images in documentary films challenge the notion of cultural difference. Drawing on Said's Orientalism [1978] and its impact on the basic assumptions of anthropologists, the essay stresses Said's relevance to documentary film theorists, and discusses the work of visual anthropologists and filmmakers influenced by Merleau-Ponty's ideas about the phenomenology of perception. Discussion suggests that the kind of knowledge disclosed by revelatory films represents an important answer to one of the fundamental epistemological issues that Said does not take up in Orientalism, namely the question of the materialization of an “authentic human encounter” not subjugated to the dead book. The essay implies that we should have no objection in principle to the self/other dichotomy when it is used intelligently.     

How to capture the ‘wow’: R.R. Marett's notion of awe and the study of religion⋆

Current scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, including the study of religion, shows a marked appraisal of bodily sensations, emotions, and experiences as eminently social and politico‐aesthetic phenomena (rather than reducing them to a matter of mere individual psychology). How to grasp the genesis of shared perceptions and feelings, and even some kind of ‘wow’ effect, in relation to a posited ‘beyond’ has become a central issue for scholars of religion today. Placed against the horizon of the material turn in the study of religion, R.R. Marett's approach to religion as an ‘organic complex of thought, emotion, and behaviour’ and his concept of awe gain renewed topicality. Engaging with Marett's ideas in the context of broader debates about religious experience, in this article (which is based on my 2014 Marett lecture) I call attention to the surplus generated in the interplay of religious things and bodily sensations and explore its role in politics and aesthetics of religious world‐making. My central point is that Marett's work offers valuable resources for an approach to religion that neither takes for granted the existence of a god or transcendental force (as in ontological approaches), nor invests in unmasking it as an illusion (as in critiques of religion as irrational), but instead undertakes a close study of the standardized methods that yield the fabrication of some kind of excess that points to a ‘beyond’ and yet is grounded in the here and now.     

The status of transitions between cultivated fields and their boundaries: ecotones,ecoclines or edge effects?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the concepts of ecotones, ecoclines and edge effects have been discussed from a theoretical point of view. However, there have been very few experimental tests of these ideas, which are sometimes radically different. This study presents data from field experimental researches and determines the status of transitions between cereal fields and grazed grasslands. Five study sites were chosen in Southern France because they were included in agri-environmental schemes aimed at conserving arable weeds and dry grassland species. In total, 128 quadrats of 1 m² were sampled on replicated transects running through transition zones. There was no significant increase of species-richness but there were changes in the botanical composition from cereal fields to grassland. These experimental results confirmed the opinion of Van der Maarel, E. (1990. Ecotones and ecoclines are different. J. Veg. Sci. 1, 135–138) that an ecotone is poorer in species than the adjacent ecosystems, as only a few species can adapt to the typical environmental factors in this zone. The transition zones studied rather reflected an edge effect than a real ecotone following the definition of Odum, E.P. (1971. Fundamentals of Ecology, 3e éd. W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphie). In our case, when the transition zone between the two adjacent ecosystems is managed as a “constraint ecotone” following Vanpeene-Bruhier's, S. (1998. Transformations des paysages et dynamique de la biodiversité végétale. Les écotones, un concept clé pour l'étude des végétations post-culturales. L'exemple de la commune d'Aussois (Savoie). Thèse de Doctorat de l'ENGREF; CEMAGREF de Grenoble) definition, sheep grazing allowed the weed flora to colonise grassland boundaries via the gaps created by livestock trampling. These results are then discussed for the biological conservation of threatened arable weeds in agricultural landscapes.