An Introduction to an edited volume such as this might reasonably be expected to signal a complete synthesis of the volume contentsâa whole new theoretical departure. This case is a little different. For one thing, the terrain covered by theories of culture is disconcertingly vastâwell beyond the expertise of any one small group of scholars such as the three co-authors of this Introduction and Conclusion. More importantly, a synthesis of this developing theory would be premature. If this is so, why not wait awhile, until the pudding has set, before putting together a volume such as this? It is because psychological anthropologists have offered some promising, challenging, if distinct, proposals for theories of culture, each seeming to go off in its own direction. It is time to push for a rapprochement among these theoretical strands, to force the issue a bit, to nudge the enterprise along. It has been a good while since the theoretical contributions of contemporary psychological anthropology to our thinking about culture have been treated to such an effortâperhaps since DâAndradeâs now-classic 1995 volume, the Development of Cognitive Anthropology, appeared, and even longer, a good three decades, after publication of the 1987 collection edited by Richard Shweder and Robert LeVine and entitled Culture Theory (Shweder and LeVine 1987). So, such an assessment is timely. Our caveat is this: If the ultimate goal is a synthesis that would incorporate each contribution herein into one grand theory, it is too early for that. Instead, this volume offers a snapshot of present time theoretical developments in progressâand of collegial interchange in pursuit of these.
What This Volume Is (and Is Not)
This last disclaimer should not be read to mean that this collection is in any way superficial or aimless. Rather, like all scientific endeavors most of the time, this one is in mid-stream, where these chapters catch it. Moreover, what has emerged so far, and what the Introduction will raise and the Conclusion will endeavor to consolidate, are real accomplishments, already, in the areas of culture theory demarcated herein. Here are the main such areas. The first of these is in beginning to specify institutional attributes of culture, and the constraints that led to these institutions , both in complex societies like our own and in other organizationally less complex ones. This effort, while unfinishedâindeed, barely begunâpoints the way to the kinds of institutional structures and human proclivities we should be exploring to identify further such attributes and constraints. The second of these accomplishments and further directions lies in delineating the psychological processes, both cognitive and more generally embodiedâincluding but hardly limited to psychodynamic onesâby which cultural understandings are internalized (our definition of which term is to come). Finally, a third signal contribution of this volume is in the adaptation of ethnographic approaches for studying both these processes. Indeed, it should become apparent in the course of what follows that psychological anthropology is among the most fruitful and important of all the conceptual forays into culture theory in the social sciences today. This success is attributable in large part to psychological anthropologistsâ willingness to go in whatever interdisciplinary direction seems necessary, and in particular to entertain useful approaches from psychology, biology, and neuroscience, combining insights from these fields with long-standing ethnographic methods from the parent discipline of cultural anthropology .
We say a few words about what this volume is, beginning with what it is not. It is not a compendium, nor is it intended to be. Therefore, it does not address, and the contributors do not hold themselves responsible for, every prominent issue in our subdiscipline of psychological anthropology, nor in cultural anthropology . There are volumes and volumes, articles and articles, devoted to such issues as mental health, morality and ethics, and ethnography and related methods. Indeed, this volume editor herself has also edited an entire other volume (Quinn 2005) on methods for recovering culture from interviews and other discourse. Also deserving mention, DâAndrade (2008) and Strauss (Strauss and Friedman 2018) have both written about cultural values , he reporting on his cross-cultural study of values in three societies, she co-authoring a book about the values and morality that motivate political activism. This qualification, that this volume does not address every possible anthropological subject, does not mean that it never touches upon topics of broad anthropological interest. We take up these topics as they become relevant. For example, Strauss considers the implicit attitudes and explicit beliefs her interviewees hold about race, ethnicity, class, gender, and much more. Paul addresses a range of social organizational adaptations to the male tendency toward violent competitivenessâa topic related to both gender and power if there ever was one. Sirota worked on the UCLA/Sloan Center on Everyday Lives of Families study directed by linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs , from which comes the discourse Sirota analyzes in her chapter; Sirota regards language socialization as central to the approach taken up in her chapter. Chapin has published one of the most stellar recent ethnographies of childhood (Chapin 2014), material that her chapter in this volume reworks. But these far-flung topics are not the primary concerns of this volume. Culture theory is. In this sense, the volume is narrow, and intentionally so. The chapters herein provide a serious look at several promising new lines of advance in this theory.
Perhaps a fitting metaphor, one that guides the co-authors of this Introduction, is that of a jigsaw puzzleâmaybe one of those thousand-piece ones. Each of the contributors to this volume has been intent on piecing together one part of the puzzleâmaybe the sky, or the foliage, or the snow, or the people in the forefront of the scene. We will consider plausible connections among these different partsâfinding out if and how pieces might fit together . And, just as importantly, what pieces might be missing. We tackle these goals in the Conclusion to this volume. To extend the metaphor even further, the Conclusion will also search for the puzzleâs straight-edged pieces and fit together as many of these as possible, working toward a common frame for all these separate efforts.
As we work on this puzzle, we accumulate a record of where psychological anthropology is today with regard to a theory of culture. We also provide a resulting projection of the issues and problems, arising from this version of contemporary culture theory, that psychological anthropology is poised to address next. Where it is today, in the words of one of this volumeâs reviewers, is âfull of vitality and promise.â And where it should go next is the topic at the volumeâs centerâwhat it is about. This coherence , what the chapters all have in common, may not be immediately obvious to the reader. Perhaps this is an instance of that hoary parable about the blind men feeling different parts of the elephant. Ultimately, though, there are common themes to be discovered, lying beneath the surface of its apparent diversity of interests. Hopefully, identification of these commonalities will inspire continued focused exchanges among psychological anthropologists, as well as between them and allied scholars. Leading to still further progress.
In our progress toward answering the question of where culture theory should be headed, we offer solutions to the theoretical limitations with respect to culture theory that today characterize much of the parent field of cultural anthropology . In anthropology today, culture as it is conceptualized is by-and-large devoid of any serious consideration of individualsâ experience-near cognitions, motivations, and emotions (cf. Levy and Hollan 1998). This explanatory deficiency is often accompanied by a radical cultural relativism âto be discussed further in the Conclusion. This cultural relativism inclines toward a studied disregard for explanations of any kind, including and perhaps most notably psychological onesâa specific inclination to which we also return in the Conclusion. 1 This stance evinces itself as well in misapprehension of the terms these cultural anthropologists themselves useâeven such psychologically loaded ones as âsubjectivityâ or âselfhoodââas being inherently a-psychological in their meaning. The inherent psychological meaning of such terms needs to be unpacked, not denied (a point to which, once again, we return in the Conclusion). 2
We offer this volume as a corrective to cultural anthropology âs difficulties in developing a thorough-going theory of culture, and, not unrelatedly, its relative neglect of things having to do with psychology, including psychological anthropology. We are not only alive and well and dynamic. We also have something worthwhile, even crucial, to contribute to culture theory. Anybody who cares about culture, whether their disciplinary affiliation is inside or outside of anthropology itself, will want to read this book and consider how to integrate its exciting offerings into their own thinking on this subject.
Backgrounds and Intimations of What Is to Come in the Volume
One interesting reflection of the diversity of viewpoint among we volume contributors is the minimal degree of overlap in the background literatures cited by each as the inspiration (either positive or critical) for their chapter. As a first step in characterizing the contributions to this volume, we start out with a brief acknowledgment of these different sources in which each of the various chapters is groundedâin the order in which they appear.
Roy DâAndrade begins his chapter with a critique of earlier failed attempts to resolve what he calls the âcategory problemââthat is, to distinguish between what is culture and what is social structure . Rather than offering his own solution to this enduring problem in anthropology, DâAndrade advocates an approach in which social structure and culture are bound up together, âmaking,â he says, âthe category problem disappear.â To this end, he adapts phenomenologists â idea of lifeworlds, a concept about which we will have quite a bit more to say in the Conclusion.
DâAndrade draws as well on evolutionary theoristsâ idea of niche construction , including contributions to this concept by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (2006). Volume contributor Robert Paul cites an entirely different aspect of Richerson and Boydâs workâthe main topic of their 2006 bookâsituating his own argument in their Dual Inheritance Theory . After these authors, Paul refers to the two kinds of inheritance as two different forms of information transmissionâgene...