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Culture and Practical Reason
"The main thrust of this book is to deliver a major critique of materialist and rationalist explanations of social and cultural forms, but the in the process Sahlins has given us a much stronger statement of the centrality of symbols in human affairs than have many of our 'practicing' symbolic anthropologists. He demonstrates that symbols enter all phases of social those which we tend to regard as strictly pragmatic, or based on concerns with material need or advantage, as well as those which we tend to view as purely symbolic, such as ideology, ritual, myth, moral codes, and the like. . . ."—Robert McKinley, Reviews in Anthropology
259 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
Marshall Sahlins
52 books146 followersMarshall David Sahlins was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 30, 2015
Sahlins' Culture and Practical Reason is a tour de force in culture theory as it existed in the pre-postmodern days of functionalism and structuralism. Although the debate seems less urgent now, it is perhaps books like this one that did the most good in disabusing anthropologists of their collective false consciousness.
The work begins with a careful overview of the ideological underpinnings of functionalist explanations of cultural manifestations. What Sahlins finds lurking beneath the biologism of scientific anthropology is a fairly broad pattern of instrumental and utilitarian economics. By saying that primitive human cultures do what they do to satisfy bodily needs (like eating, mating, seeking shelter, wearing clothing, etc.), anthropologists reduce all cultural practices to a set of means to the ends of survival and human contentment. All aesthetic and arbitrary details of a culture are dismissed as noise in the system or as superficial overlays. Thus the purpose of inter-tribal gatherings is to stimulate the primitive economy, or a pig feast's purpose is to supply needed nitrogen to the bloodstream.
Structuralists commit the opposite sin of seeing all of culture as a semiotic code. For structuralists, culture is a language that people speak through their behavior. Although it is uncertain how material reality and physical needs can be satiated by a good thought, the emphasis in structuralism is clearly on how the patterning of reality through totem or symbol is isomorphic to the linguistic patternings of syntax or metonymy.
Marxists are more or less guilty of committing the crime of the functionalists, seeing all practices as the manifestation of economic necessity. Sahlins discusses this a lot and at depth, seeming to salvage the Marxist dialectic by noting how Marx would have it both ways. Culture is the result of praxis, the transformation of nature by man and for man. But culture is also the received practices of the past mixed with the potential ingenuity of the present or future historical actors. But in the last instance, Marxist ideas of culture subsist on a diet of historical materialism, where ideas change over time in the face of physical reality and not the other way around.
The final argument of Culture and Practical Reason makes the opposition between culture and praxis, between semiosis and utility, one where each term presupposes the other. Certainly, we must all survive, but there are many ways to satisfy human needs. Certain useful ways of meeting our needs are not considered although they would be easy to accomplish, while others that are hard to obtain become necessities. For example, horses and dogs are not eaten even though they are plentiful enough to be a cheap source of meat. Because these animals enter (in our culture!) into a human relationship with people (they have names, they are groomed by their owners), eating them would constitute cannibalism or sorts. With clothes, there is a semiotic code (perhaps fading in light of feminist advances) that men wear wool if they are rich and denim if they are not, while women wear silk if they are rich and cotton if they are not. Men are more likely to wear trousers, women much more likely to wear skirts. Men's clothes are angular, stiff, staid in color, while women's clothes are typically frillier, more colorful, softer. And so it goes. In our own huge tribe, we do things as much by custom or fashion as we do by the demands of nature and our bodies.
Sahlins closes out this great book with a closer look at his synthesis between culture (which can appear as arbitrary as the Saussurean sign) and practical reason (which any way you slice it amounts to saying that all people are economizing and calculating just like the bourgeois businessman).
As a final comment i would like to point out how Sahlins, in a pre-postmodern way, does structural analysis to the tools of anthropology itself. In so doing he liberates the concept of culture from the grid that encased it in a strictly instrumental logic. Would that someone could extend this denaturalizing and reflexive insight to the field of language as a whole. In that case, wouldn't universal grammar be another round of bourgeois wishful thinking?
The work begins with a careful overview of the ideological underpinnings of functionalist explanations of cultural manifestations. What Sahlins finds lurking beneath the biologism of scientific anthropology is a fairly broad pattern of instrumental and utilitarian economics. By saying that primitive human cultures do what they do to satisfy bodily needs (like eating, mating, seeking shelter, wearing clothing, etc.), anthropologists reduce all cultural practices to a set of means to the ends of survival and human contentment. All aesthetic and arbitrary details of a culture are dismissed as noise in the system or as superficial overlays. Thus the purpose of inter-tribal gatherings is to stimulate the primitive economy, or a pig feast's purpose is to supply needed nitrogen to the bloodstream.
Structuralists commit the opposite sin of seeing all of culture as a semiotic code. For structuralists, culture is a language that people speak through their behavior. Although it is uncertain how material reality and physical needs can be satiated by a good thought, the emphasis in structuralism is clearly on how the patterning of reality through totem or symbol is isomorphic to the linguistic patternings of syntax or metonymy.
Marxists are more or less guilty of committing the crime of the functionalists, seeing all practices as the manifestation of economic necessity. Sahlins discusses this a lot and at depth, seeming to salvage the Marxist dialectic by noting how Marx would have it both ways. Culture is the result of praxis, the transformation of nature by man and for man. But culture is also the received practices of the past mixed with the potential ingenuity of the present or future historical actors. But in the last instance, Marxist ideas of culture subsist on a diet of historical materialism, where ideas change over time in the face of physical reality and not the other way around.
The final argument of Culture and Practical Reason makes the opposition between culture and praxis, between semiosis and utility, one where each term presupposes the other. Certainly, we must all survive, but there are many ways to satisfy human needs. Certain useful ways of meeting our needs are not considered although they would be easy to accomplish, while others that are hard to obtain become necessities. For example, horses and dogs are not eaten even though they are plentiful enough to be a cheap source of meat. Because these animals enter (in our culture!) into a human relationship with people (they have names, they are groomed by their owners), eating them would constitute cannibalism or sorts. With clothes, there is a semiotic code (perhaps fading in light of feminist advances) that men wear wool if they are rich and denim if they are not, while women wear silk if they are rich and cotton if they are not. Men are more likely to wear trousers, women much more likely to wear skirts. Men's clothes are angular, stiff, staid in color, while women's clothes are typically frillier, more colorful, softer. And so it goes. In our own huge tribe, we do things as much by custom or fashion as we do by the demands of nature and our bodies.
Sahlins closes out this great book with a closer look at his synthesis between culture (which can appear as arbitrary as the Saussurean sign) and practical reason (which any way you slice it amounts to saying that all people are economizing and calculating just like the bourgeois businessman).
As a final comment i would like to point out how Sahlins, in a pre-postmodern way, does structural analysis to the tools of anthropology itself. In so doing he liberates the concept of culture from the grid that encased it in a strictly instrumental logic. Would that someone could extend this denaturalizing and reflexive insight to the field of language as a whole. In that case, wouldn't universal grammar be another round of bourgeois wishful thinking?
December 27, 2023
Eh o brabo, tem que respeitar
March 8, 2024
Certainly thought-provoking in parts, and well written there also. Presents culture as reflecting something of nature and the cumulation of human actions.
September 18, 2016
A good marxist read.
On the issues of culture and the symbolic in and through historical materialism. Thomas, you would like this. Alex, you've probably already read this
On the issues of culture and the symbolic in and through historical materialism. Thomas, you would like this. Alex, you've probably already read this
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews