History of Anthropological Thought - Functionalism and Marxist Anthropology - Essay Example

History of Anthropological Thought - Functionalism and Marxist Anthropology Anthropologists have explored and considered religion and society for years. These two basics have been the focal point of various ethnographies and articles written by a variety of anthropologists. Ideas of the supernatural and witchcraft are both reasonable and have a social meaning in the context of community in which they take place. Comprehending the social meaning in the social context of magic and witchcraft is based on understanding the meaning of the supernatural and witchcraft. An outstanding British anthropologist Edward Evans- Pritchard researched a tribe of African (Southern Sudan) people called Azande. In accordance with his theory witchcraft and magic have dissimilar implication in Zande society and they have been distinguished. The word ‘mangu’ means ‘witchcraft’ and to some extent witchcraft and sorcery are alike. Both have general purposes, but their practices are different. Witchcraft was said to be a ‘psychic power which often inherited, it can be activated if the owner became angry or jealous, and this power are normally unconscious as well as limited to those with the substance in their body. Sorcery is skill, which can be learnt by anyone and can be passed on through study. This skill also knows as “black magic” which can be defines as evil use of medicines’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1937, p.42). Both are used for destructive private ends against the lives and possessions of law-abiding people. The centre of this book is the three oracles of the Azande in the Sudan. These being in order of decreasing significance: the poison oracle, the termite oracle, and the rubbing board oracle. Amongst the Azande, witchcraft is viewed as a main hazard. They are sure that witchcraft can be inherited and that a person can be a mage, making others harm, without understanding her or his impact. Anthropologists have had long disagreement concerning the nature and importance of beliefs in witchcraft and magic and, in particular, concerning rationality of the witchcraft beliefs. Evans-Prichard underlines that they are rational since they are very utilitarian, they are the mighty mechanism of social top og hierarchy. Evans-Pritchard provides a sociological model of such beliefs, he proves that they are what the chief needs to maintain submission and keep people in constant fear. That is the importance of such beliefs for the whole community ; without them the structure if community itself will be destroyed, and community would parish to the extent of values and culture. In addition, beliefs are important since they explain to them many things and give the image of person who is ‘omnipotent’ and who can help in any trouble as well as make a great harm. Michael Taussig in his ‘Devil and the commodity fetishism’ offers an expanded ethnographic research of commodity fetishism that demonstrates how the values of market economy reform local modes of life. Taussig discovers the social sense of the devil used as a symbol in the rustic communities of Columbia and Bolivia. He displays how this representation, contrasted against the embodiment of the saint, is connected to commodity fetishism. Evans-Prichard, however, states that witchcraft is evil from the beginning up to the end and shows the impact of this statement on Zande people’s consciousness and outlook. Taussig’s study contains more economical sense, since he uses personification (devil an embodiment of capitalism), while Evans-Prichard examines social and cultural meaning of primitive beliefs. According to Evans-Pritchard, witchcraft has first of all social meaning since it serves for satisfaction specific demands. Those who are gifted in witchcraft are considered powerful but dangerous, so they are always treated suspiciously. Commodity fetishism symbolizes the historical situation of the people who integrate it as a cultural practice: in the conditions of the Columbian and Bolivian communities that Taussig highlights, it means an intensive capitalist expansion to which the members of these communities were exposed after the Spanish invasion. Local inhabitants and tin mine workers used the representation of the devil as a symbolic tool that weakened the tension between two otherwise unsuited ways of objectifying human conditions: the precapitalist way of production that emerged from the sense that organic unity is sustained by people and goods that they produce; and the capitalist way of production in which the economics of commodity marketing make people submit to goods that they fabricate. ‘The devil signifies the evils of capitalism, and folktales about devils were developed as a way for plantation workers and tin miners to make sense of the harsh realities of their everyday lives as subjugated to the market economy’ (Taussig, 1980, p.38). Taussig’s target in his work is to direct readers from the industrialized world to consider the exotic concepts and customs that are connected with the market organization of human relationships, in particular the socio-economic system that observes the vital features of humans, their labour, and their goods. Taussig shows that these ideas and habits exemplify how the relations of production and exchange, which ‘most of us who live in consumer societies have come to accept as natural’ (Taussig, 1980, p. 2), are showed as plainly unnatural, even as evil, from the viewpoint of other cultures. Evans-Prichard, conversely, shows the world of beliefs and stereotypes connected with religion; he demonstrates how people who possess witchcraft use their skill: they can bring up submission and fear in ‘lawful citizens’ and make them believe that they can live according to the specific scheme, in which moon, sun and rain are supernatural beings which can experience emotions and punish people for their misbehaviour. According to Evans-Pritchard, witchcraft is a means of subordinating people, according to Taussig, beliefs are strictly rational since gods are embodiment of human good and evil features and ideas. Even though Taussig’s opinion—that one should react to how white-collar mode of life at home may be distinguished from an exotic cultural viewpoint (that is, from a more proletarian position)—is important, I do not think that everybody in capitalist society unavoidably admits the human condition under capitalism as normal. Taussig writes as if there was no more than one form of capitalism, or one method of production in the capitalized world. Nevertheless, I consider there are many cultures contained by the capitalist world, and many models of production in one and the same consumer society. Thus, Taussig’s book is based on symbolism, for instance baptism represents conversion not to another confession, but to different ideology, which struggles with the devil. Evans-Pritchard’s ideas are less profound, but equally interesting, since he gives the descriptions of witchcraft practice (for example, witchcraft identification) and indicates connection between cultural and social. Problem of an individual who is the basic building block of the society was examined by many prominent scholars including E. Durkheim and K.Marx. Durkheim in his ‘Division of labour in society’ demonstrates that economists support the division of labour not only as needed, but as "the supreme law of human societies and the condition of their progress’’(Durkheim, 1979, p.380). Greater focus of productive forces and resources investment was considered to lead modern production, business, and agriculture to bigger division and specialization of occupations, and even a bigger interdependence amid the goods themselves. Durkheim indicates that this expanded beyond the financial world, taking on not only political, administrative, and judicial bodies, but aesthetic and scientific organizations as well. Even philosophy had been divided into a huge number of special disciplines, each of which had its own purpose, method, and theories. In ‘Division of labour in society’ Durkheim indicates the clear connection between the functional area of the parts of a human body and the point of that organism's evolutionary growth, signifying that this expanded the range of the division of labour so as to make its genesis contemporary with the origins of life itself. Certainly, this abolishes any "propensity in human nature" (Durkheim, 1979, p.387) as its probable cause, and implied that its conditions must be found in the vital properties of all organized substance. The division of labour in society was therefore no more than a specific form of a process of great generality. The bourgeoisie has through its use of the world market given an international quality to production and consumption in every state. Instead of the old wants, content with the manufacture of the country, we discover new desires, demanding for their satisfaction the products of remote lands and climes. The intellectual formations of individual nations turn into common possessions.... The bourgeoisie, by the speedy development of all means of production, by the enormously facilitated instruments of communication, takes all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.... It includes all nations, on pain of destruction, to accept the bourgeois style of production; it compels to set up what it calls civilisation into their centre, i.e., to turn into bourgeois themselves. This way, it builds a world after its own image.... This is a Marx’s picture of bourgeoisie’s expansion throughout the world. In their work ‘Bourgeois and proletarians’ (from the ‘Communist Manifest’) Marx and Engels underline the main features of these two classes and the outcomes of bourgeoisie’s ‘invasion’ into individual nations and creating international trading space. In their ‘Bourgeois and proletarians’ Marx and Engels demonstrate the relation between social development and exploitation among the classes. Proletarians are those who have nothing to loose, or working class, they were constantly exploited by the bourgeoisie, who have already accumulated lots of material property. Durkheim examines the social evolution from the point of division of labour, but not the class struggle, since he highlights division of labour in society as a natural process, while Marx and Engels show class struggle as a process imposed by the bourgeoisie, as they give an alternative of communism, which must destroy class disparity and create totally egalitarian system. So, it is easy to answer the question ‘which position has individual in the society according to Marx and Engels?’ Of course this is a person who is equal to others and who has to depend on others and work for common wealth. Individual is not to have his own wealth and property, all the property should be common. The contraposition of two classes is following: ‘In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed--a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market’ (Marx, Engels, 1982, p.10) According to Durkheim's point of view, the division of labour is considered to be a moral imperative, so that, in at least one of its aspects, the categorical obligation of the modern conscience had become: ‘Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function; on the other hand, quite aside from such maxims endorsing specialization, there were other maxims, no less prevalent which called attention to the dangers of over -specialization, and encouraged all men to realize similar ideals’ (Durkheim, 1979, p.188). The situation was thus one of moral conflict or antagonism, and it was this, which Durkheim tried first to explain and then to resolve. In Durkheim’s opinion, the division of labour develops both the proficiency of the worker and the productive power of society, and therefore its "function" would merely be to create and protect those economic, creative and technical advantages listed under the word "civilization." In Durkheim’s opinion, division of labour is important for both individual and society, since it brings economic advantages and civilization to the society and allows individual do what he is able to do, choose occupation and qualification. On the other hand, Durkheim states that division of the labour in society is a moral order; it is inescapable for an individual, so he has to realize that he should choose a socially useful occupation. On the other hand, if the average number of crimes and suicides is viewed as the "standard of morality," Durkheim argued, we must conclude that immorality develops all the areas of human activities and makes their progress more available. At its very best, therefore, civilization would be morally indifferent; and if its productions were the sole function of the division of labour, then it, too, would participate in this moral neutrality. In general, Durkheim is quite pessimistic concerning the position of individual in the society, since he thinks that an occupation chooses person, and individual often cannot choose what to do, since he simply has no choice. Durkheim’s study is typically capitalistic, since it shows harsh reality of the world of late 1880s- early 1890s with their social controversy and inequality. Durkheim states that some people are doomed to poverty, others just manage them and gain benefit from their property, and to some extent, division of labour is to satisfy growing demands of higher class. Creating his theory of division of labour force and underlining the aspects of social inequality, Durkheim does not provide any alternative models of the society, while Marx and Engels do. Their ideas of common welfare include distribution of bourgeois wealth among all the inhabitants of the country, free education , abolition of child labour, abolition of private property the rights for inheritance and equal obligation of all to work, and people should be able to choose the occupation. Marx and Engels tried to create a socio-economic model which would bring civilization for everyone, while Durkheim highlighted civilization as an advantage for particular classes. Also Durkheim shows correlation between the needs of society and division of the labour force. On the one hand it is the response to the growing needs, on the other hand the larger such division is becoming, the more these needs are increasing, so the division of labour force is constant process with no end. In order to describe the satisfaction of individual’s demands Durkheim created the "happiness hypothesis" which is close-knit with the pleasure, satisfaction with the results and earnings of one’s work. To increase the results of one’s work it is necessary to stimulate him, so with the larger division of labour force people should invent newer stimuli in order to meet the needs of developing world. Durkheim, as it has already been mentioned, views society as a large organism, which needs balance between all it’s parts and systems, so it is possible to say that individual is the cell which provides the balance working in accordance with its functions. Marx and Engels created progressive and revolutionary concept, which was the alternative to the existing model of society; they entitled individual with new rights and opportunities and gave him more economic freedom. Bibliography 1) Durkheim, E., The Division of Labor in Society, NY: 1979 2) Evans-Pritcard, E., Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic. Oxford, 1937 3) Marx, K., Engels, F., "Bourgeois and Proletarians," in The Communist Manifest, New York: Free Press, 1982 4) Taussig, M., The Devil and Commodity Fetishism. Oxford, 1980. Read More