Closed Systems and Open Minds

The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology

Thomas Szasz, Max Gluckman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780202308593
• eBook ISBN: 9781351527828
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social anthropologists have done in the last fifty years, is the study and comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life with emphasis on the role of custom. When a social anthropologist's research leads him into any field, which belongs to other disciplines, what line should he adopt? What use may he make of the results that other scholars have already achieved? Must he knowingly make naive assumptions concerning events, which they have regarded as complex? In each of the fascinating essays which in turn form the core of this book - V. W. Turner's on symbols in Ndembu ritual; F.G. Bailey's on disputes which occurred in two Orissa villages; A. L. Epstein's on urban communities in Africa; T. Lupton's and S. Cunnison's on the relationship between behaviour in three Manchester workshops and certain events which happened outside; and W. Watson's on social mobility and social class in a coalmining Scottish burgh-several social anthropologists attempt to answer these questions by discussing the problems of method that they have encountered in their own recent research; and in the searching discussion which sum up the results. To analyze one first has to circumscribe one's field, and then simplify within the area of circumscription. Both circumscription and simplification may involve procedures of absorbing, abridging, and making naive assumptions. The contributors draw attention to the attempt to distinguish between psychical facts (emotions, thoughts, etc.) and psychological, which we believe should apply only to statements within the science of psychology, and not to be used by the former. They similarly distinguish between social facts and sociological or social-anthropological statements. ""Psychological"" and ""sociological"" are so well established in common parlance as adjectives to categorize facts that attempts to specialize them as hopeless.

I Ely Devons & Max Devons

INTRODUCTION

Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social anthropologists have done during the last fifty years, is the study and comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life with emphasis on the role of custom. Initially, anthropologists studied island and other small tribal communities in India, Australia, the South Seas, and North America, but even when they moved to the larger tribes and nations of Africa they were still dealing with relatively isolated, and in a sense complete, societies. Later, they began to study rural communities and villages in Europe, America, and Asia, and factories and sets of relations such as those of peer-groups of adolescents in cities: here they were clearly dealing with subsystems or domains which are contained in larger social systems. During these years, political and economic developments also began to reduce the isolation of tribal communities, particularly as their members were drawn into towns and industrial employment, where anthropologists followed them. The task of isolating a field of study became increasingly difficult.

In analysing the data they collected, anthropologists separated into several distinct disciplines out of the former general subject called “anthropology,” which studied not only the social life, customs, and tools of tribes but also the physical constitution of man. From this general anthropology have emerged physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, psychological anthropology,¹ and social anthropology, each increasingly associating itself with those biological, behavioural, and social sciences, whose problems and modes of interpretation are most akin to its own. We shall in future refer to social anthropologists among these as “anthropologists” only, unless the context requires us to distinguish them from other anthropologists.

Social anthropologists have found that their interpretations have much in common with the interpretations of sociologists, many of whom derive from a different tradition, so that Firth has defined social anthropology as “micro-sociology,”² the “concentrated observation of small-unit behaviour. . . .” Yet the analysis of a social anthropologist is different from that of a sociometrician, or a sociologist or social psychologist studying a small group. Firth gives the distinguishing characteristics of social anthropology as its intensive, detailed, and systematic observation of people in group relations, its attempt to look at all aspects of the group’s life, and its comparative emphasis. For the time being, we state baldly that we think an interest in custom is the attribute, derived from its tradition, which social anthropology distinctively applies to the study of small social fields; we shall refine this definition in our conclusion.³ Here we have said enough to stress that not only does the social anthropologist have to isolate his field out of the complex reality he observes, as any scientist has to do, but he also has to determine what he can do with his techniques and modes of analysis as against what can be done with those of other kinds of anthropologists, and of sociologists, political scientists, economists, psychologists, physiologists, ecologists, and other scholars who are studying the same material.

Here, specifically, are the sort of questions which the social anthropologist must consider. The most striking objects in a social field are the actions, the thoughts, and the feelings of individuals, within a cultural and historical tradition in a physical environment on which they operate through material objects. Clearly the biological endowment of individuals and their personalities, both in general and in their particular variations, have important effects within the social field: and the anthropologist has to study these effects. Need he concern himself with the complex interdependencies which produce these effects, or with the theories that have been advanced to explain these interdependencies? In analysing a social field⁴ one has to write about the thoughts, the feelings, the purposes, and the motives of individuals; and all social anthropologists speak of incumbents of social roles loving, hating, pursuing ambitions. Presumably they know that many learned studies have been concerned to define these emotions, and to discuss their relation to one another. Should the anthropologist become involved in these studies? How sophisticated does his knowledge of psychological and psycho-analytical theories have to be, if his anthropological analysis is not to go astray? Can he afford to be “naïve”—“artless”—about what he knows to be complex, and treat it as simple, crude, or gross, while he gets on with his own job?

Problems for decision thus arise when the anthropologist’s work touches on individuals, clearly the subject of psychological analysis. Similar problems arise when we consider the wider physical and biological environment within which men live: geographical position, topography, climate, soil and other resources, flora and fauna, endemic and epidemic diseases, all have important effects on social life. Must the anthropologist delineate accurately the interrelations between these phenomena, and study climatological and ecological and other systems? Or can he again take these phenomena, for his purposes, as simple, though he knows them to be complex?

The anthropologist may want to study a particular group, or set of relationships, or domain of activities, which is only part of a larger or more complex social field. How far is it possible to isolate these areas of the field for significant study? In this situation, the incumbents of roles in the social relations studied may occupy other roles in a whole series of other relations. Must all be studied, to understand one? Since wider social systems and smaller areas of relations have long histories, far longer than the period which an anthropological study investigates, how do we decide when to cut short our exploration of the past? The culture of a group studied may be part of a far wider culture, as an Indian village is of Hinduism, or a Bedouin tribe of Islam, or a factory and a school of England: can we fruitfully study the small group, in isolation from the whole? And what does the study of a small group tell us about the larger system of which it is part?

These are some of the problems which the anthropologist may meet in trying to isolate one aspect of reality for his own analysis from the aspects of reality studied by other disciplines, or in trying to close off his own field of analysis from the rest of reality. In this book we are trying to clarify the problems which inevitably arise because it is possible to study only a limited number of events, in a limited way, at one time.

We considered that it would not be fruitful to expound this discussion in abstract terms, since abstract exposition of many methodological problems either has made them appear more intractable than they are in practice, or has concealed difficulties within general formulae. It seemed more fruitful for a number of social anthropologists, dealing with specific problems, to set out explicitly what they thought and did when they came to the limits of their competence—i.e., how and why they decided they must follow or need not follow the facts, and pursue or not pursue their analyses, beyond a certain point; what difference they considered it would make to their own work if events outside their area of observation were different from the view they take on these events; how relevant it would be to their own analyses if different and possibly contradictory interpretations of those other events were made by scholars in other disciplines; and what limits their competence and assumptions placed on their analyses. Not every author discusses these issues explicitly. But the problems are present in all the essays.

In our first planning of this book we treated the various issues as coming under one general head: the problem of whether we had to be sophisticated or could afford to be naïve, about both the events and the aspects of interrelationship which bordered our field and method of study. We called this “the limits of naïvety.” But early in our discussions we realised that we were dealing with several closely interrelated issues. First, any social scientist has to confine what he studies within certain limits: he cannot include the whole of complex reality. This limitation is vital if his study is to be manageable. The limitation can be of various kinds—a limitation in time, in space, or in the aspect of phenomena which is studied. With the limitation goes simplification, which also seems necessary in order to isolate what appear to be the essential features of the problem under examination. Within the field thus delimited and isolated the social scientist assumes that there is a system of interrelations which can be considered separately from the rest of reality. Such systems are, so to speak, “closed.” Whether closure in a particular way is fruitful or not must always be open to question, and the issue will usually be affected by the particular problems and questions that are being investigated. As well as using a “closed system,” the social scientist has to make assumptions about aspects of the phenomena which are studied by other specialists. These assumptions are often, and, we argue, advisedly, “naïve.”

These two issues—limiting the field of study and making naïve assumptions outside one’s specialist field—are closely interrelated, and not all the contributors kept them separate, while each of the contributors has come across each issue to a varying degree in considering his own problems. In addition, as a group we were not clear about the issues when the essays were first prepared. Hence different contributors use the concepts of “naïvety” and of “closure” in different ways.

These problems also gave us a choice of titles for the book. In the end we decided on Closed Systems and Open Minds, which reflects our view on the first set of issues, but with the sub-title The Limits of Naïvety in Social Anthropology, which refers mainly to the second set.

As we worked out these two sets of issues, five distinct procedures emerged: circumscribing a field; incorporating complex facts without analysis; a bridging the conclusions of other sciences; making naïve assumptions about aspects of reality other than those under investigation; and simplifying events within the field under investigation. We shall analyse these procedures in our concluding commentary: to do so here might obscure the arguments of our colleagues’ essays, each of which stands in its own right.

We are sure that these essays, in which our colleagues explain how they decided that they had reached the appropriate limits of their own field and how they could, or could not, fruitfully stop their analyses at these limits, will be helpful to both practitioners and students of social science. We hope that our own attempt to examine the methodological problems involved, in which we were guided by the essays, will clarify the general issues. More specifically, the book may indicate what the field of “social anthropology” is.

We hope too—though, we fear, vainly—that the book may help to avoid some of the sterile dispute that is engendered when a critic complains that an author has not dealt with the critic’s problems, instead of his own, or when a critic complains that the author has made statements that are naïve in terms of some other specialism. For example, some psychologists criticise economics because of its simple and crude assumptions about human motivation; and some psychologists criticise social anthropology because it neglects the complexity of the structure of the personality. But the economist or anthropologist may be making these neglectful assumptions knowingly and deliberately. We argue that the issue is not whether the assumptions are crude, but rather whether they materially affect the analysis and conclusions of economist and anthropologist. Conversely, when one asks whether an anthropologist or economist is justified in criticising the work of a pyschologist because it ignores the complexity of culture and social structure, or of the economic system, the issue is similar: it is not whether the psychologist is making “silly” sociological or economic assumptions or is ignoring important social and economic aspects of reality, but whether the limitations of his study and the naïve assumptions he makes do, or do not, invalidate his analysis of the particular problem with which he is concerned. We argue to the opposite effect, that it is highly dangerous to trespass beyond the limits of one’s competence, and that to exercise this competence one must abstain from becoming involved in the problems of others.

If the aim of research is to analyse the several aspects of a complex situation, scientists from several disciplines may have to collaborate: this does not dispose of the necessity for each to delimit his own field of study, and to work with techniques, data, and concepts appropriate to analysis of that field. The process of combining the results of these several studies raises another complicated series of problems.

Experience of research and teaching has persuaded us to favour specialisation and keeping to one’s own last in the social sciences in order to develop theoretical understanding. We are not in this book concerned with the question of how to apply the understanding thus gained to the practical problems of dealing with social issues and policies. Whether specialisation, and its procedures of limiting a field of study and making naïve assumptions, are also appropriate in applying the social sciences is a different, and in our view probably an even more complex, issue than the one with which we attempt to deal.

1We thus refer to the cross-cultural study of personality.

2R. Firth, Elements of Social Organization [1951], pp. 17 ff.; and “The Future of Social Anthropology,” in Man, [1944], No. 8.

3See below, pp. 254-9.

4The concept of a field of social relations has been most clearly stated by M. Fortes in The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi [1945], Ch. XIII, and pp. 103, 137, 233, 245. See also Firth, Elements of Social Organization, pp. 10-28. Cf. in psychology K. Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science [1952].

2 V. W. Turner

SYMBOLS IN NDEMBU RITUAL
[Written in 1957]

SOME PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS

Among the Ndembu of Northern Rhodesia, the importance ॅ-A of ritual in the lives of the villagers is striking. Hardly a week passes, in a small neighbourhood, without a ritual drum being heard in one or other of its villages.

By “ritual” I mean prescribed formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers. The symbol is the smallest unit of ritual which still retains the specific properties of ritual behaviour; it is the ultimate unit of specific structure in a ritual context. Since this essay is in the main a description and analysis of the structure and properties of symbols, it will be enough to state here, following the Concise Oxford Dictionary, that a “symbol” is a thing regarded by general consent as naturally typifying or representing or recalling something by possession of analogous qualities or by association in fact or thought. The symbols I observed in the field were, empirically, objects, activities, relationships, events, gestures, and spatial units in a ritual situation.

Following the advice and example of Professor Monica Wilson, I asked Ndembu specialists as well as laymen to interpret the symbols of their ritual. As a result, I obtained much exegetic material. I felt that it was methodologically important to keep observational and interpretative material distinct from one another. The reason for this will soon become apparent.

I found that I could not analyse ritual symbols without studying them in a time-series in relation to other “events.” For symbols are essentially involved in social process. I came to see performances of ritual as distinct phases in the social processes whereby groups became adjusted to internal changes and adapted to their external environment. From this standpoint the ritual symbol becomes a factor in social action, a positive force in an activity-field. The symbol becomes associated with human interests, purposes, ends, and means, whether these are explicitly formulated or have to be inferred from the observed behaviour. The structure and properties of a symbol become those of a dynamic entity, at least within its appropriate context of action.

STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES OF RITUAL SYMBOLS

The structure and properties of ritual symbols may be inferred from three classes of data:

(a) External form and observable characteristics.

(b) Interpretations offered

(1) by specialists

(2) by laymen.

(c) Significant contexts largely worked out by the anthropologist.

Here is an example. At Nkang’a, the girl’s puberty ritual, a novice is wrapped in a blanket and laid at the foot of a mudyi sapling. The mudyi tree (Diplorrhyncus mossambicensis) is conspicuous for its white latex, which exudes in milky beads if the thin bark is scratched. For Ndembu this is its most important observable characteristic. I therefore propose to call it “the milk-tree” henceforward. Most Ndembu women can attribute several meanings to this tree. In the first place, they say that the milk-tree is the “senior (mukulumpi)” tree of the ritual. Each kind of ritual has this “senior” or, as I will call it, “dominant” symbol. Such symbols fall into a special class which I will discuss more fully later. Here it is enough to state that dominant symbols are regarded not merely as means to the fulfilment of the avowed purposes of a given ritual but also and more importantly refer to values which are regarded as ends in themselves, i.e., to axiomatic values. Secondly, the women say with reference to its observable characteristics that the milk-tree stands for human breast-milk and also for the breasts which supply it. They relate this meaning to the fact that Nkang’a is performed when a girl’s breasts begin to ripen, not after her first menstruation, which is the subject of another and less elaborate ritual. The main theme of Nkang’a is indeed the tie of nurturance between mother and child, not the bond of birth. This theme of nurturance is expressed at Nkang’a in a number of supplementary symbols indicative of the act of feeding and of foodstuffs. In the third place, the women describe the milk-tree as “the tree of a mother and her child.” Here the reference has shifted ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Fmchapter
• Contents
• Closed Systems
• Dedication
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Symbols in Ndembu Ritual
• 3 Two Villages in Orissa (India)
• 4 Urban Communities in Africa
• 5 Workshop Behaviour
• 6 Social Mobility and Social Class in Industrial Communities
• 7 Conclusion: Modes and Consequences of Limiting a Field of Study
• Bibliography
• Index