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Cultura: a visão dos antropólogos
Adam Kuper argues in Culture: The Anthropologists' Account that his discipline's turn toward cultural explanation over the past few decades has reduced contemporary social theory to a politically dangerous idealism. Just as Marx accused Hegelian philosophers of believing that a drowning man could save himself by abandoning the idea of gravity, Kuper contends that contemporary anthropologists have attempted to "wish away ... political and economic forces, social institutions, and biological processes." In other words, these academics explain culture on its own terms without reference to other, more material, aspects of life. Kuper's work is a rehearsal of the big question: Are the forces that animate our lives better understood as ideas or material forces? Marx answered this question in order to change things; Kuper in order to rebuke his fellow academics.
Kuper appraises the most important anthropologists of the latter half of the 20th century, treating them as the heirs of Talcott Parsons's program of explaining social and cultural life as a set of interacting systems. Clifford Geertz's attempt to collapse social systems within systems of culture emerges as the work of a traditional connoisseur of religion and high art. David Schneider appears as a father-haunted academic who deconstructed biology and kinship relationships because he had not come to terms with his own family. Marshall Sahlins's work is counted as a failed, if brave, experiment in combining materialist and cultural explanations. James Clifford and Renato Rosaldo become obscurantist academic survivors in the struggle for tenure.
So what is Kuper's answer to the big question? Anthropologists, he concludes, must explain culture with reference to material forces, and the heirs to Talcott Parsons have botched the job. In fact, they have contributed to the creation of a world in which idealistic relativism destroys attempts at good communication between people. Kuper further argues that this state of academic affairs is consistent with the way racists and corporate boards like to keep things. However, he does not actually show how the academic ideas are systematically related to those structures of domination to which he alludes. Marx showed how ideas were related to their material conditions--that is why he continues to be counted as a revolutionary and a great thinker, and why Kuper will be counted only as an academic. --James Highfill
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First published May 15, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 3, 2023
An intelligent book that makes you think more deeply about words and concepts that are widely used in modern political conversation. On a second reading, it was even more fascinating than the first time I read it.
Kuper is skeptical of the academic approach to culture, a concept that he demonstrates is nebulous and hard to define. His skepticism is based in his experience growing up in South Africa, where he says that the concepts of culture and cultural differences were used as a justification for apartheid.
He goes through the history and conflict of French universal "civilization," with its science, progress, and global human rights, and German national "culture," and its idea that indigenous communities should resist colonization and global hegomony. He then proceeds through the history of twentieth century American anthropology, and the shift of the study of "culture" from the humanities to the new social sciences. This is not the most interesting part, but it does raise doubts about the quality of these anthropological studies and theories. He ends with a critical exploration of the post-modern, post-Marxist culture studies emerging in universities in the late 1980s, questioning whether these theories are logically coherent and possibly hindering the pursuit of knowledge.
This book raises lots of really interesting and relevant questions. The beginning and the end (on the history of the culture idea and on post-modernism) are the best parts and well worth its price.
Kuper is skeptical of the academic approach to culture, a concept that he demonstrates is nebulous and hard to define. His skepticism is based in his experience growing up in South Africa, where he says that the concepts of culture and cultural differences were used as a justification for apartheid.
He goes through the history and conflict of French universal "civilization," with its science, progress, and global human rights, and German national "culture," and its idea that indigenous communities should resist colonization and global hegomony. He then proceeds through the history of twentieth century American anthropology, and the shift of the study of "culture" from the humanities to the new social sciences. This is not the most interesting part, but it does raise doubts about the quality of these anthropological studies and theories. He ends with a critical exploration of the post-modern, post-Marxist culture studies emerging in universities in the late 1980s, questioning whether these theories are logically coherent and possibly hindering the pursuit of knowledge.
This book raises lots of really interesting and relevant questions. The beginning and the end (on the history of the culture idea and on post-modernism) are the best parts and well worth its price.
September 20, 2019
الثقافة: التفسير الأنثروبولوجي - آدم كوبر
يعالج الأنثروبولوجي البريطاني آدم كوبر في سبعة فصول فكهة مفهوم الثقافة منطلقا في الفصل الأول من تاريخ تشكله، وعلاقته بمفهوم "الحضارة"، لدى الأنثروبولوجيين الأوروبيين في القرن العشرين. ليدرس في كل فصل من الفصول الأربعة التالية تاريخ نظرية الثقافة في الولايات المتحدة، وخاصة مع تالكوت بارسونز، كليفورد جيرتز، ديفيد شنايدر ومارشال سالينز.
ويدرس الفصل السادس ما يسمى بأنثروبولوجيا ما بعد الحداثة، التي تأسست على نقد العلاقة التي نسجتها الانثروبولوجيا بالأيديولوجيا الاستعمارية التي فضحها خاصة كتابا الاستشراق والثقافة والإمبريالية لإدوارد سعيد. فيما يجول الفصل الأخير في مفاهيم التعددية والتنوع الثقافي والهوية والاختلاف وما إليها. ليخلص آدم كوبر في نهاية تطوافه إلى أن "هناك اعتراض أخلاقي على نظرية الثقافة، إذ أنها تنزع إلى جذب الانتباه بعيدا عن الأمور التي نشترك فيها بدلا من تشجيعنا على الاتصال عبر الحدود الوطنية، والعرقية، والدينية، والإقدام على تجاوزها."
وعلى مدى الكتاب، يجادل كوبر بأسلوب عميق وممتع للغاية - عكسته الترجمة نسبيا - ضد استعمال لفظة الثقافة، ناصحا المهتمين بالتعبير عن أفكارهم مباشرة دون الاستعانة بهكذا مفهوم موارب.
يصعب للغاية تلخيص كتاب كهذا يحتوي كمّا هائلا من الأفكار والجدالات والمفاهيم شديدة التعالق.. لتبقى القراءة الثانية للكتاب ضرورة لذيذة وملحّة.
للتحميل: goo.gl/T3h7Wm
يعالج الأنثروبولوجي البريطاني آدم كوبر في سبعة فصول فكهة مفهوم الثقافة منطلقا في الفصل الأول من تاريخ تشكله، وعلاقته بمفهوم "الحضارة"، لدى الأنثروبولوجيين الأوروبيين في القرن العشرين. ليدرس في كل فصل من الفصول الأربعة التالية تاريخ نظرية الثقافة في الولايات المتحدة، وخاصة مع تالكوت بارسونز، كليفورد جيرتز، ديفيد شنايدر ومارشال سالينز.
ويدرس الفصل السادس ما يسمى بأنثروبولوجيا ما بعد الحداثة، التي تأسست على نقد العلاقة التي نسجتها الانثروبولوجيا بالأيديولوجيا الاستعمارية التي فضحها خاصة كتابا الاستشراق والثقافة والإمبريالية لإدوارد سعيد. فيما يجول الفصل الأخير في مفاهيم التعددية والتنوع الثقافي والهوية والاختلاف وما إليها. ليخلص آدم كوبر في نهاية تطوافه إلى أن "هناك اعتراض أخلاقي على نظرية الثقافة، إذ أنها تنزع إلى جذب الانتباه بعيدا عن الأمور التي نشترك فيها بدلا من تشجيعنا على الاتصال عبر الحدود الوطنية، والعرقية، والدينية، والإقدام على تجاوزها."
وعلى مدى الكتاب، يجادل كوبر بأسلوب عميق وممتع للغاية - عكسته الترجمة نسبيا - ضد استعمال لفظة الثقافة، ناصحا المهتمين بالتعبير عن أفكارهم مباشرة دون الاستعانة بهكذا مفهوم موارب.
يصعب للغاية تلخيص كتاب كهذا يحتوي كمّا هائلا من الأفكار والجدالات والمفاهيم شديدة التعالق.. لتبقى القراءة الثانية للكتاب ضرورة لذيذة وملحّة.
للتحميل: goo.gl/T3h7Wm
April 6, 2009
On the one hand, I found this a useful history of recent anthropological thought. And I was very glad that the author bothered to tell the reader where he was coming from because I found myself deeply disturbed and quite opposed to many of his positions and points and Kuper's location helped me to understand why. I thought his representation of Geertz was surprisingly negative, especially given how frequently he later appealed to ideas that Geertz talked about (although, later, he did not credit Geertz). I thought his explanation of Sahlins was similarly limited.
The biggest problem, though, was that I just strongly disagreed with his conflation of identity with essence and culture with a contradictory political agenda. I found myself repeatedly writing in the margins, "yes, but you've missed the main point!"
Nevertheless, I do feel I have gained something by reading it (in the same uncomfortable way as when I read Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane).
The biggest problem, though, was that I just strongly disagreed with his conflation of identity with essence and culture with a contradictory political agenda. I found myself repeatedly writing in the margins, "yes, but you've missed the main point!"
Nevertheless, I do feel I have gained something by reading it (in the same uncomfortable way as when I read Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane).
October 4, 2024
في مقدمة الكتاب، يعالج آدم كوبر مسألة التعامل مع مفهوم الثقافة ومدلولها، لا سيما في السياقين الألماني والفرنسي في أوروبا. تعكس هذه المقدمة الفكرة الرئيسية للكتاب، حيث يستعرض كوبر الصراع المستمر بين التخصصات العلمية في تفسير ثقافة الشعوب. ويبرز في هذا السياق دور الأنثروبولوجيين في التصدي لهذا التفسير ومحاولة فهمه. كما يتناول الصراع الداخلي بين مدارس الأنثروبولوجيا المختلفة، وتأثير هذه الخلافات على أبحاثهم المتعلقة بأنماط الثقافة حول العالم. ويورد كوبر أمثلة عملية على هذه النزاعات، تأتي في شكل فصول متعددة ضمن الكتاب.
November 29, 2011
As Kuper states, “The core of this book is … an evaluation of what has been the central project in postwar American cultural anthropology” (x). More explicitly, in the first part of the book, he details the French and German ideals of culture that grew out of the Enlightenment. “Part Two: Experiments” looks at how Clifford Geertz, David Schneider, and Marshall Sahlins respectively have constructed anthropologies of culture in response to various intellectual influences. As he explains in the moving introduction, he lived through South Africa during the Apartheid when the very concept of culture was used to legitimize the most inhumane kinds of violence and racism imaginable. Because of this, Kuper is very much a skeptic when it comes to any kind of belief that use of the word “culture” communicates any objective, essential quality about people or the way they live their lives.
As I hinted at above, the argument starts in Europe, and migrates across the Atlantic Ocean. Kuper suggests that German intellectuals (Mannheim, Jaspers, and Mann more recently, but the concept dates back to Herder) believed in Kultur or Bildung – a kind of “cultured state by way of a process of education and spiritual development” which is “bounded in time and space and is coterminous with a national identity” (30). The French version of culture, with its haughty, transnational cosmopolitanism and materialism was perceived to be a direct threat to local distinctive cultures.
Kuper then goes on to detail Talcott Parson’s conception of culture as a tripartite endeavor between the psychologist, anthropologist, and sociologist, each of whom would understand culture as a semiological system of how we use symbols. He calls Geertz a Parsonian, and takes him to task for analyzing signs and symbols outside of social structure. He gives a detailed account of Geertz’s hermeneutical account of the Balinese cockfight in his book “The Interpretation of Cultures,” suggesting that Geertz’s lack of sociological concern in his anthropology leaves only an idealist approach to interpretation which is radically separated from social conditions.
David Schneider, the second anthropologist Kuper takes up, is known for his study of kinship relations. However, he completely divorced this pursuit from anything like an idea of “relationship” or “blood lines.” It should be noted that this is a fairly extreme version of relativism that not even many anthropologists adopt, and Kuper goes to lengths to point this out. Schneider makes the somewhat peculiar statement that “since it is perfectly possible to formulate … the cultural construct of ghosts without actually visually inspecting even a single specimen, this should be true across the board and without reference to the observability or non-observability of objects that may be presumed to be the referents of the cultural referents” (133). For Schneider, culture is wholly symbolic and arbitrary.
The best part of the chapter on Marshall Sahlins is Kuper’s retelling of Sahlins’ debate with Gananath Obeyesekere, the Princeton professor of anthropology. At the heart of the debate was the nature of rationality of “native peoples” (the debate specifically focused around Captain Cook and the Hawaiian Islands). Obeyesekere maintained that anything short of admitting that native people and Westerners think similarly is another way of saying that they are hopefully different, irrational, and uncivilized. Sahlins, however, holds that the rationality of native peoples is wholly and completely unknowable to those in the Occident. The closing chapters of the book are scathing rebukes of postmodernism, and especially its influence on the American anthropological tradition in the 1980s and 1990s, claiming that it has “a paralyzing effect on the discipline [of anthropology]” (223).
The twentieth century has certainly given the reader plenty of reasons to look askance at the very notion of culture. However, I am not sure that I am ready to completely do away with it as a powerful explanatory tool, no matter how diaphanous it may occasionally seem. I would definitely recommend the book for anyone interested in trends in twentieth-century American anthropology, and especially their intellectual genealogies. Whatever conclusions you have drawn about culture and what it means, I can guarantee you that this book will challenge them, and will do so thoughtfully.
As I hinted at above, the argument starts in Europe, and migrates across the Atlantic Ocean. Kuper suggests that German intellectuals (Mannheim, Jaspers, and Mann more recently, but the concept dates back to Herder) believed in Kultur or Bildung – a kind of “cultured state by way of a process of education and spiritual development” which is “bounded in time and space and is coterminous with a national identity” (30). The French version of culture, with its haughty, transnational cosmopolitanism and materialism was perceived to be a direct threat to local distinctive cultures.
Kuper then goes on to detail Talcott Parson’s conception of culture as a tripartite endeavor between the psychologist, anthropologist, and sociologist, each of whom would understand culture as a semiological system of how we use symbols. He calls Geertz a Parsonian, and takes him to task for analyzing signs and symbols outside of social structure. He gives a detailed account of Geertz’s hermeneutical account of the Balinese cockfight in his book “The Interpretation of Cultures,” suggesting that Geertz’s lack of sociological concern in his anthropology leaves only an idealist approach to interpretation which is radically separated from social conditions.
David Schneider, the second anthropologist Kuper takes up, is known for his study of kinship relations. However, he completely divorced this pursuit from anything like an idea of “relationship” or “blood lines.” It should be noted that this is a fairly extreme version of relativism that not even many anthropologists adopt, and Kuper goes to lengths to point this out. Schneider makes the somewhat peculiar statement that “since it is perfectly possible to formulate … the cultural construct of ghosts without actually visually inspecting even a single specimen, this should be true across the board and without reference to the observability or non-observability of objects that may be presumed to be the referents of the cultural referents” (133). For Schneider, culture is wholly symbolic and arbitrary.
The best part of the chapter on Marshall Sahlins is Kuper’s retelling of Sahlins’ debate with Gananath Obeyesekere, the Princeton professor of anthropology. At the heart of the debate was the nature of rationality of “native peoples” (the debate specifically focused around Captain Cook and the Hawaiian Islands). Obeyesekere maintained that anything short of admitting that native people and Westerners think similarly is another way of saying that they are hopefully different, irrational, and uncivilized. Sahlins, however, holds that the rationality of native peoples is wholly and completely unknowable to those in the Occident. The closing chapters of the book are scathing rebukes of postmodernism, and especially its influence on the American anthropological tradition in the 1980s and 1990s, claiming that it has “a paralyzing effect on the discipline [of anthropology]” (223).
The twentieth century has certainly given the reader plenty of reasons to look askance at the very notion of culture. However, I am not sure that I am ready to completely do away with it as a powerful explanatory tool, no matter how diaphanous it may occasionally seem. I would definitely recommend the book for anyone interested in trends in twentieth-century American anthropology, and especially their intellectual genealogies. Whatever conclusions you have drawn about culture and what it means, I can guarantee you that this book will challenge them, and will do so thoughtfully.
June 14, 2021
The purpose of Kuper's book is to offer an intellectual history of the concept of culture, especially its uses in postwar American cultural anthropology. The main bulk of the book is represented by five "essays" which deal with several key figures in American anthropology, who employed the concept of culture in their work. The essays successively deal with the sociology of Talcott Parsons (which influenced anthropologists), Clifford Geertz, David Schneider, Marshall Sahlins, and the last with authors connected to the celebrated and accursed Writing Culture. Each of the essays offers some biographical and historical background and a critical scrutiny of the authors' thought. What I welcome is that Kuper is an author who has the gift to present complicated things intelligibly in a clear prose. This makes the book extremely convenient for beginners in anthropology.
Besides, Kuper also follows a different line. He shows why the concept of culture may have problematic, even dangerous political consequences. This line is present in the introduction and the last chapter.
Unfortunately, the book has some flaws too. I find the first chapter (which offers the genealogy of the concept of culture in German, French and English thought) as too simplistic and occasionally confusing. The first chapter even made me think of putting the book away! The tendency to make things simple is to the detriment of latter chapters too. It is a reminder that Kuper excels at introducing, but a serious engagement with theories is to be looked for elsewhere. I also lamented the fact that Kuper did not devote an entire essay to some materialist author, preferably Marvin Harris, who would nicely complement Geertz, Schneider and Sahlins. This omission makes it look that the twentieth century American cultural anthropology was wholly idealist.
Besides, Kuper also follows a different line. He shows why the concept of culture may have problematic, even dangerous political consequences. This line is present in the introduction and the last chapter.
Unfortunately, the book has some flaws too. I find the first chapter (which offers the genealogy of the concept of culture in German, French and English thought) as too simplistic and occasionally confusing. The first chapter even made me think of putting the book away! The tendency to make things simple is to the detriment of latter chapters too. It is a reminder that Kuper excels at introducing, but a serious engagement with theories is to be looked for elsewhere. I also lamented the fact that Kuper did not devote an entire essay to some materialist author, preferably Marvin Harris, who would nicely complement Geertz, Schneider and Sahlins. This omission makes it look that the twentieth century American cultural anthropology was wholly idealist.
September 5, 2020
This must be the finest summary of cultural anthropology ever. If there’s better out there, the world is very lucky.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews