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Πολιτισμός και πρακτικός λόγος
Το "Πολιτισμός και πρακτικός λόγος" αποτελεί θεωρητικό δοκίμιο αλλά και εθνογραφία της δυτικής κοινωνίας. Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του είναι αφιερωμένο στην επεξεργασία της έννοιας του πολιτισμού. Ο Sahlins ξαναγράφει την ιστορία της ανθρωπολογικής σκέψης ως ένα μακρύ αγώνα ανάμεσα στο "συμβολικό" και τον "πρακτικό λόγο". Στις σελίδες αυτού του βιβλίου, επίσης, παρουσιάζονται κριτικά οι συζητήσεις για την ευρετική εμβέλεια της μαρξιστικής θεωρίας και την εφαρμογή της στις λεγόμενες "πρωτόγονες" κοινωνίες, καθώς και το κατά πόσο είναι αναγκαία η ανάπτυξη δύο διακριτών θεωριών για την κάλυψη των ιδιαιτεροτήτων των καπιταλιστικών και προκαπιταλιστικών κοινωνιών. Στο πλαίσιο αυτής της ανάλυσης ο Sahlins προτείνει μια θεωρία του πολιτισμού απαλλαγμένη από τις δουλείες του πρακτικού λόγου, μια θεωρία που βασίζεται στον L. White χωρίς τον τεχνολογισμό του, στον E. Durkheim χωρίς τον κοινωνιοκεντρισμό του, στον K. Marx χωρίς τον οικονομισμό του και, ιδιαίτερα, στον C. Levi-Strauss χωρίς τον νατουραλισμό του. Στο δεύτερο μέρος του βιβλίου εφαρμόζει την πολιτισμική του θεωρία στη μελέτη των γαστρονομικών και ενδυματολογικών συνηθειών που επικρατούν στην "δυτική κοινωνία". Ο Sahlins δείχνει τον αυθαίρετο χαρακτήρα της "αστικής σκέψης" αφού δεν υπάρχει καμία σχέση λογικής αιτιότητας ανάμεσα στο πρακτικό συμφέρον και σε αυτές τις καταναλωτικές πρακτικές.
358 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
Marshall Sahlins
53 books153 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 - 5 of 5 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?
January 27, 2026
One of the worst reads I've ever had in anthropology: truly a shame to see an excellent marxist author fall in structuralist and idealistic nonsense.
Sahlins' concludes, after an intense reading of Lévi-Strauss and other charlatans, that marxism and marxian thought (!) is still bourgeois because it ignores the symbolic dimention, therefore marxism is utilitarian and functionalist.
All of those who have dwelled on 'Das Kapital' know, specially in the sections about money, metals and currency, that symbolic analysis was done pretty good in marxian thought (without mentioning exchange value, labour, salary, etc.).
In the same vein, those who have read the 'Manuscripts' of 1844 and the third volume of 'Das Kapital', know that Marx and Engels had considered nature as an important aspect in economic studies. One cannot read "utilitarian" terms on marxism when we have concepts like "social metabolism" and "metabolic rift". All marxists differ from the view of exploiting and annihilating nature precisely because we do not seek profit / are utilitarian.
Now the "functionalist" critique (if we can even call that). According to Sahlins, all the systems of thought that begin their analysis with the fact that humans need to satisfy their biological needs ignore the symbolic and cultural dimention, therefore all philosophies have been utilitarian. What a tautology, of course we know about the symbolic sphere, a proletarian in France eats bread and speaks weird while here in Mexico I eat a taco and drink beer; no shit our needs are satisfied according different discourses, symbols and cultural context. But here we are, Sahlins has discovered the black thread!
This book was made by the CIA and you can't convince me otherwise. Avoid at all costs.
Sahlins' concludes, after an intense reading of Lévi-Strauss and other charlatans, that marxism and marxian thought (!) is still bourgeois because it ignores the symbolic dimention, therefore marxism is utilitarian and functionalist.
All of those who have dwelled on 'Das Kapital' know, specially in the sections about money, metals and currency, that symbolic analysis was done pretty good in marxian thought (without mentioning exchange value, labour, salary, etc.).
In the same vein, those who have read the 'Manuscripts' of 1844 and the third volume of 'Das Kapital', know that Marx and Engels had considered nature as an important aspect in economic studies. One cannot read "utilitarian" terms on marxism when we have concepts like "social metabolism" and "metabolic rift". All marxists differ from the view of exploiting and annihilating nature precisely because we do not seek profit / are utilitarian.
Now the "functionalist" critique (if we can even call that). According to Sahlins, all the systems of thought that begin their analysis with the fact that humans need to satisfy their biological needs ignore the symbolic and cultural dimention, therefore all philosophies have been utilitarian. What a tautology, of course we know about the symbolic sphere, a proletarian in France eats bread and speaks weird while here in Mexico I eat a taco and drink beer; no shit our needs are satisfied according different discourses, symbols and cultural context. But here we are, Sahlins has discovered the black thread!
This book was made by the CIA and you can't convince me otherwise. Avoid at all costs.
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 - 5 of 5 reviews