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Contextual Analysis and the Locus of the Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Julian Pitt-Rivers
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Extract

Radcliffe-Brown used to define social anthropology as ‘comparative sociology’, yet the school of thought that he engendered has not been much prone to comparison. Indeed, in their revulsion from the ‘comparative method’ of their evolutionist predecessors anthropologists of that tendency have largely avoided formal comparison and left to the “non-comparative” sociologists the duty of comparing. The definition nevertheless still has a certain validity if one recognises that an implied comparison lies behind every ethnographic description and that the anthropologist's comparative range–that is, the range of phenomena regarded as belonging to the class under consideration and therefore relevant to a potential comparison–is wider than the sociologist's, since it includes “other cultures” (i) and traditionally primitive ones, while sociology commonly, if not always, confines itself to civilised society and operates within the framework of the values of its national culture. Social anthropology's claim to be comparative rests upon its awareness of cultural differences and its recognition of their importance in determining the forms which social institutions can take.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 1967 , pp. 15 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1967

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References

(1) Indeed this aspect has appeared so fundamental to a recent author, Beattie, J. M. (Other Cultures, London 1964)Google Scholar, that he chose the phrase as the title of his introduction to the subject.

(2) “The anthropologist's study of complex societies receives its major justification from the fact that such societies are not as well organized and tightly knit as their spokesmen would on occasion like to make people believe”, Wolf, E. R., “Kinship, Friendship and Patron-client Relation in Complex Societies” in Banton, M. (ed.). The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London 1966).Google Scholar

(3) Take, for example, the word “society”: to sociologists its fundamental sense refers to the object of their study and “society” in the sense of High Society appears as a secondary usage. But to someone who belonged to Society but knew no sociology it would no doubt appear the other way round.

(4) The father in Oscar Lewis' well known compound autobiography, The Children of Sanchez: autobiography of a Mexican family (New York 1961).Google Scholar

(5) “Los Hijos de la Malinche”, in Paz, O., El Laberinto de la Soledad (Mexico 1950).Google Scholar

(6) The practice of using kinship terminology in this way is not confined to societies such as our own where pseudo-kin usage might be taken to reflect the decline of the utility of kinship in social relations. But such a use of kin terms is found in many primitive societies.

(7) Hence when asked to explain the institution of blood-brotherhood or ritual kinship the informant is frequently recorded as stating that blood-brothers are “like brothers” or that compadres are “members of the family”, but it becomes evident that they are so only with regard to the quality of feeling which, it is thought, should pertain between brothers or within the family and which is all too often missing in fact. When one looks at the rights and duties of the pseudo-kinsman rather than the sentiments he should inspire one finds that they are quite different from those of true kinsmen. The blood-brother can the more easily be loved as a brother because he is not one. For a discussion of this point see Pitt-Rivers, , “Pseudo-Kinship” in Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences (in press).Google Scholar

(8) Lounsbury, F. G., “A Formal Account of the Crow, and Omaha-Type Kinship Terminologies” in Goodenough, W. H. (ed.), Explorations in Cultural Anthropology (New York 1964), pp. 381 and 389Google Scholar, n. 24; and Lounsbury, , “Another View of the Trobriand Kinship Categories” in Hammel, E. A. (ed.), Formal Semantic Analysis (American Anthropologist Special Publication, 1965), col. LXVII, n° 5.Google Scholar

(9) By treating kinship terminology and kinship behaviour as two separate systems it was possible to argue (as Radcliffe-Brown and Krœber argued) whether one determined the other or not. But from the point of view of semantics this dichotomy is spurious. On the one hand a description of kinship behaviour as a system should surely include distinctions in the forms of address and reference, while on the other a description of the terminology which ignores context (and context includes the behaviour of those who are present) is incomplete from the point of view of semantics, as I have shown. Should one not hope for a study of kinship semantics which would combine terminology and behaviour within a single system rather than establish two separate systems, semantically incomplete parts of a single system of classification which utilises both linguistic and behavioural distinctions alternatively or in combination?

(10) In fact many forms of mental disease do not affect the patient's capacity to handle linguistic systems. The madman may express himself well enough and the verbal skill of paranoiacs is sometimes exceptional. It is not how he speaks but what he thinks which is faulty; his perception of reality, not how he expresses it. One can be behaviorally deranged without being linguistically so and vice versa; the system of communication suffers in either case, but not in the same way.

(11) Austin, J. L., Philosophical papers (Oxford 1961), p. 24.Google Scholar

(12) Goffman, E., Behavior in Public Places: notes on the social organization of gatherings (New York 1963), p. 12Google Scholar.

(13) I include in the term context, not only time and place, but the protagonists and the tenor of their behaviour (when, where, who, how) ignoring for my purposes such distinctions as e. g. Whiteley, W. H. (Social Anthropology, Meaning and Linguistics, Man, I (1966), 139–157)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes between social group and social context. The social significance of a context depends upon all these factors. The class-room is a different place the moment the teacher's back is turned.

(14) For a general discussion of the traditional stereotypes of the countryman in European literature see Baroja, Caro J., “The Country and the City: an examination of some ancient commonplaces” in Pitt-Rivers, J. (ed.), Mediterranean Countrymen (The Hague 1964).Google Scholar

(15) Pitt-Rivers, J., The People of the Sierra (London 1954), pp. 186 sqq.Google Scholar

(16) Even the Diccionario de la Lengua Española de la Real Academia (18th edition, 1956)Google Scholar, gives this impression. It remains to be added that the compadrazgo is a much more serious institution among rural rather than urban people and among the lower rather than the upper classes.

(17) The anthropologist's model is objective in the sense that it treats the whole of that which is studied as object; he himself stands outside his model. I do not wish to imply that the natives are incapable of objectivity in the ordinary sense. Cf. Pouillon, J., L'analyse des mythes, L'Homme, VI (1966), 100–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, specially p. 104: “L'indigène — et qui n'est pas indigène? — ne comprend pas le mythe qui le charme, non par incapacité intellectuelle, mais par position; c'est aussi par position que l'ethnologue, parce qu'il en recueille d'autres et ailleurs, peut le faire”.

(18) Pitt-Rivers, J., “Honour and Social Status” in Peristiany, J. G. (ed.), Honour and Shame: the values of Mediterranean society (London 1965).Google Scholar

* A draft of this paper was presented to the “Sociology and Anthropology Working Group” for the VIth World Congress of Sociology, Évian, september, 1966.