I had written “Two people trying to understand the same social structure will understand it differently because of their assumptions.”

Rex wrote, in response: “cultural systems are sufficiently stable and coherent that they can be studied without giving into some sort of wishy-washy postmodernism on the one hand or vulgar positivism on the other. Culture isn’t as tangible as a bridge, but I still think it’s tangible enough—it’s telling, for instance, that refering to two interpretations of ‘the same’ social structure implies there is one ‘thing’ there.”

I guess I have a few things to say to this and I will try to put it as coherently as I can given the time of day and . .

OK, so there is one “thing” there according to the view of the, or several, anthropologists of what a “thing” is.

Bur . . . Western assumptions (and let’s say that most anthropologist are either “weestern” or “western based”) about A) what are “things” in the sense of what qualifies as a “thing” that is noteworthy and B) what the meanings of those things could be shape the reporting and analysis of this thing, thereby shaping that very thing that is being reported.

Let’s take the case of menstural taboos. We can say that’s a “thing” to a certain extent. At the surface level, two anthros will see the same thing: women in a special place away from men, women not cooking for men, women not entering a sweat lodge, etc.

But let’s go deeper. To the male, or patriarchically (is that even a word???) trained female anthropologist, this might seem to be a “thing” that debases women, makes them powerless and so forth.

To the person who listens to the women’s point of view (meaning the women who undergo the taboo), this “thing” might be something completely different: a thing that reaffirms the power of women’s “natural” purification process and men’s vulnerability.

An “outside” observer of my fieldwork might have found it sad, for me, that I wasn’t allowed to enter a sweatloge (well, they wouldn’t have known . . . I chose not to enter after I was told of the taboo). But I, having been informed by the women of the household where I lived, knew of the harm that I could cause men in the sweatlodge because of the power that my menstrual state represented.

Same “thing”? Or a different “thing” altogether?

Let’s look at another example: hunting.

Tons and tons of literature has been writing on hunter-gatherers, much of it looking at the sexual division of labour among H-G (or foraging) societies. In much of this literature, the process of hunting is taken as a straightforward “thing”.

Now, ethnographic accounts (that I can dig up in time) of Northern Canadian aboriginals (Inuit, Cree, etc), call that assessment of hunting as a straightforward “thing” into question. Although a man is likely to be the one who is doing the physical acts of tracking and killing, acts which are usually taken for granted as constituting hunting as such, the wife’s actions often is essential to the process. By having certain dreamns, sewing certain patterns or by chopping wood, the wife may contribute to her husband’s success at tracking and killing an animal. So . . . the process of hunting here involves much more than what would be apparent at a surface level.

So . . . when I talk about different anthropologists perceiving “things” or social structure or whatever, I am referring to the issue that one anthropologist might not question the straightforward assumptions about menstrual taboos and the hunting process while another might not only question it, but might actually go beyond what seems evident. Furthermore, all anthropologists are likely to miss something vital . . .because of the very assumptions that they have to start with.

As I mentioned in another thread, everyone has a bias. I’m not saying that this is good or bad; I’m saying that this is why it’s important to be clear about one’s identity and positionality when doing fieldwork and when writing an ethnography. That way, potential biases can be accounted for.

But I’m afraid that may fall into the “wishy-washy” PoMo to which Rex refers. But, hey, I’m the first to admit to having PoMo tendancies . . .I’m not ashamed. In fact, I think my ethnographic work is enriched by it. So I don’t consider it wishy washy . . .au contraire, it can give strength. But that’s another question of the interpretation of “what is a thing” and “what does that thing represent”.

Will get to the rest of Rex’s post later . . .

I respect your opinion.
I anyway am curious on a textimmanent analysis of the examples given, which I consider as two pieces of textual source, written by two anthropologists who are both member of an email list, answering independantly from one another to the same subject.

Rex is making a point that I actually agree with to some extent:

Culture isn’t as tangible as a bridge, but I still think it’s tangible enough—it’s telling, for instance, that refering to two interpretations of ‘the same’ social structure implies there is one ‘thing’ there.

However, I don’t see these examples as really providing an account of “social facts” as much as observable facts that could be described independently of any theory of society.

Apart from some of the “wabag, K50, etc.” stuff which we aren’t getting, to what extent are these descriptions “anthropological”?