On June 12th this year all hell broke loose when the American Anthropological Association (AAA) decided to oppose the FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act). It generated lots of fervor amongst the blogosphere, specifically amongst me, afarensis, a…

Folks who I work with practice various forms of ‘double burial,’ in which present social disorder is traced back to the (bodily) discomfort of a recently buried relative.

Random comments.
1. “Double burial” is a long-established custom in southern China as well. It may, at times, become a source of negotiation and/or conflict, since the feng shui of the grave will, it is believed, have different effects on descendants in different lines.
2. The generic problem addressed by minghun marriages is the frequent lack of fit between ideal forms of kinship and marriage and demographic realities. In the Chinese case, any deceased individual who is not worshipped as an ancestor becomes a hungry ghost, who may then afflict relatives with misfortune until steps are taken to remedy the problem.
3. Similar issues may arise when individuals change lineages when reborn. A fairly common diagnosis of what’s wrong with an infant who constantly cries and seems unable to sleep at night is that his parents from a previous life are unwilling to let go.

Re Toby’s remark that,

It’s uncomfortable for Euroamerican liberals to try and understand the motivations of someone whose choices are strictly limited by a social structure (arranged marriages, say) – don’t they chafe under the yoke? Don’t they secretly want something else?

I note only that conflict between romantic desire and social obligation is a common plot device in Chinese and Japanese literature. The notion that those involved in arranged marriages have no reservations about them is, on the face of it, as unlikely as the notion that the parties most intimately involved must, ipso facto, rebel against them.

Speaking of psychiatry, well, of psychoanalysis, one of the texts I have recently revisited is Rubin’s truly amazing “The Traffick in Women,” which articulates in a speculative, prescient, and brilliant fashion most of what has been said about gender identity, inequality, and sexuality in the last 30 years — and the essay is really funny! Much of the current trendiness of Lacanian analysis in certain critical circles was anticipated by Rubin way-back-when.

I think the answer that anthropology generally offers is that people will do difficult things to maintain social order (and since our own order requires rather different kinds of maintenance, these choices seem peculiar at first blush). As for providing psychological insights into the individual experience of these difficulties, I’d say anthropology isn’t much better at that now than it was in 1938 when Sapir famously said it “need[ed] a psychiatrist”.