Anthropological paradigms
It is commonplace in many academic fields to distinguish between a 'theory' and a 'theoretical perspective'. By a theoretical perspective, we usually mean a grand theory, what is sometimes called a theoretical framework or a broad way of looking at the world. In anthropology we sometimes call such a thing a cosmology if it is attributed to a 'traditional' culture, or a paradigm if it is attributed to Western scientists.
The notion of a 'paradigm'
The theoretical perspective, cosmology, or paradigm defines the major issues with which a theorist is concerned. The principle is the same whether one is a member of a traditional culture, an anthropologist, or a natural scientist. In the philosophy of science itself there are differences of opinion as to the precise nature of scientific thinking, the process of gaining scientific knowledge, and the existential status of that knowledge. We shall leave the philosophers to their own debates (at least until chapter 7, where their debates impinge upon anthropology), but one philosopher deserves mention here. This is Thomas Kuhn, whose book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970 [1962]) has been influential in helping social scientists to understand their own fields, even though its subject matter is confined to the physical and natural sciences. According to Kuhn, paradigms are large theories which contain within them smaller theories. When smaller theories no longer make sense of the world, then a crisis occurs. At least in the natural sciences (if not quite to the same extent in the social sciences), such a crisis eventually results in either the overthrow of a paradigm or incorporation of it, as a special case, into a newer and larger one.
Consider, as Kuhn does, the difference between Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics. In Newtonian physics, one takes as the starting point the idea of a fixed point of reference for everything in the universe. In an Einsteinian framework, everything (time, space, etc.) is relative to everything else. In Newtonian physics magnetism and electricity are considered separate phenomena and can be explained separately, but in Einsteinian physics magnetism is explained as a necessary part of electricity. Neither Newton's explanation of magnetism nor Einstein's is necessarily either true or false in absolute terms. Rather, they derive their meanings within the larger theoretical frameworks. Einstein's paradigm is 'better' only because it explains some phenomena that Newtonian physics cannot.
There is some dispute about whether or not anthropology can really be considered a science in the sense that physics is, but most would agree that anthropology at least bears some relation to physics in having a single overarching framework (in this case, the understanding of humankind), and within this, more specific paradigms (such as functionalism and structuralism). Within our paradigms we have the particular facts and explanations which make up any given anthropological study. Anthropology goes through 'revolutions' or 'paradigm shifts' from time to time, although the nature of ours may be different from those in the natural sciences. For anthropology, fashion, as much as explanatory value, has its part to play.
Diachronic, synchronic, and interactive perspectives
Within anthropology, it is useful to think in terms of both a set of competing theoretical perspectives within any given framework, and a hierarchy of theoretical levels. Take evolutionism and diffusionism, for example. Evolutionism is an anthropological perspective which emphasizes the growing complexity of culture through time. Diffusionism is a perspective which emphasizes the transmission of ideas from one place to another. They compete because they offer different explanations of the same thing: how cultures change. Yet both are really part of the same grand theory: the theory of social change.
Sometimes the larger perspective which embraces both evolutionism and diffusionism is called the diachronic one (indicating the relation of things through time). Its opposite is the synchronic perspective (indicating the relation of things together in the same time). Synchronic approaches include functionalism, structuralism, interpretivism, and other ones which try to explain the workings of particular cultures without reference to time. A third large grouping of anthropological theories is what might be termed the interactive perspective. This perspective or, more accurately, set of perspectives, has both diachronic and synchronic aspects. Its adherents reject the static nature of most synchronic analysis, and reject also the simplistic historical assumptions of the classical evolutionist and
Table 1.1. Diachronic, synchronic, and interactive perspectives
DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVES evolutionism diffusionism
Marxism (in some respects) culture-area approaches (in some respects)
SYNCHRONIC PERSPECTIVES
relativism (including 'culture and personality')
structuralism
cognitive approaches culture-area approaches (in most respects) functionalism (in some respects) interpretivism (in some respects)
INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVES transactionalism processualism feminism poststructuralism postmodernism functionalism (in some respects) interpretivism (in some respects) Marxism (in some respects)
diffusionist traditions. Proponents of interactive approaches include those who study cyclical social processes, or cause-and-effect relations between culture and environment.
Table 1.1 illustrates a classification of some of the main anthropological approaches according to their placing in these larger paradigmatic groupings. The details will have to wait until later chapters. The important point for now is that anthropology is constructed of a hierarchy of theoretical levels, though assignment of specific approaches to the larger levels is not always clear-cut. The various 'isms' which make these up form different ways of understanding our subject matter. Anthropologists debate both within their narrower perspectives (e.g., one evolutionist against another about either the cause or the chronology of evolution) and within larger perspectives (e.g., evolutionists versus diffusionists, or those favouring diachronic approaches against those favouring synchronic approaches).
Very broadly, the history of anthropology has involved transitions from diachronic perspectives to synchronic perspectives, and from synchronic perspectives to interactive perspectives. Early diachronic studies, especially in evolutionism, often concentrated on global but quite specific theoretical issues. For example, 'Which came first, patrilineal or matrilineal descent?' Behind this question was a set of notions about the relation between men and women, about the nature of marriage, about private property, and so on. Through such questions, quite grand theories were built up. These had great explanatory power, but they were vulnerable to refutation by careful counter-argument, often using contradicting ethnographic evidence.
For the synchronic approaches, which became prominent in the early twentieth century, it was often more difficult to find answers to that kind of theoretical question. 'Which is more culturally appropriate, patrilineal or matrilineal descent?' is rather less meaningful than 'Which came first?' The focus landed more on specific societies. Anthropologists began to study societies in great depth and to compare how each dealt with problems such as raising children, maintaining links between kinsfolk, and dealing with members of other kin groups. A debate did emerge on which was more important, descent (relations within a kin group) or alliance (relations between kin groups which intermarry). Yet overall, the emphasis in synchronic approaches has been on the understanding of societies one at a time, whether in respect of the function, the structure, or the meaning of specific customs.
Interactive approaches have concentrated on the mechanisms through which individuals seek to gain over other individuals, or simply the ways in which individuals define their social situation. For example, the question might arise: 'Are there any hidden features of matrilineal or pat-rilineal descent which might lead to the breakdown of groups based on such principles?' Or, 'What processes enable such groups to persist?' Or, 'How does an individual manoeuvre around the structural constraints imposed by descent groups?'
Thus anthropologists of diverse theoretical orientations try to tackle related, if not identical theoretical questions. The complex relation between such questions is one of the most interesting aspects of the discipline.
Society and culture
Another way to classify the paradigms of anthropology is according to their broad interest in either society (as a social unit) or culture (as a shared set of ideas, skills, and objects). The situation is slightly more complicated than the usual designations 'social anthropology' (the discipline as practised in the United Kingdom and some other countries) and 'cultural anthropology' (as practised in North America) imply. (See table 1.2.)
Table 1.2. Perspectives on society and on culture
PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIETY evolutionism functionalism structural-functionalism transactionalism processualism Marxism poststructuralism (in most respects) structuralism (in some respects) culture-area approaches (in some respects) feminism (in some respects)
PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE diffusionism relativism cognitive approaches interpretivism postmodernism culture-area approaches (in most respects) structuralism (in most respects) poststructuralism (in some respects) feminism (in some respects)
Basically, the earliest anthropological concerns were with the nature of society: how humans came to associate with each other, and how and why societies changed through time. When diachronic interests were overthrown, the concern was with how society is organized or functions. Functionalists, structural-functionalists and structuralists debated with each other over whether to emphasize relations between individuals, relations between social institutions, or relations between social categories which individuals occupy. Nevertheless, they largely agreed on a fundamental interest in the social over the cultural. The same is true of transactionalists, processualists and Marxists.
Diffusionism contained the seeds of cultural determinism. This was elevated to an extreme with the relativism of Franz Boas. Later, inter-pretivists on both sides of the Atlantic and the postmodernists of recent times all reacted against previous emphases on social structure and monolithic visions of social process. Society-oriented anthropologists and culture-oriented anthropologists (again, not quite the same thing as 'social' and 'cultural' anthropologists) seemed to be speaking different languages, or practising entirely different disciplines.
A few perspectives incorporated studies of both culture and society (as conceived by extremists on either side). Structuralism, in particular, had society-oriented concerns (such as marital alliance or the transition between statuses in ritual activities) and culture-oriented ones (such as certain aspects of symbolism). Feminism also had society-oriented interests (relations between men and women within a social and symbolic order) and cultural ones (the symbolic order itself). Culture-area or regional approaches have come from both cultural and social traditions, and likewise are not easy to classify as a whole.
In this book, chapters 2 (on precursors), 3 (evolutionism) and 4 (dif-fusionism and culture-area approaches) deal mainly with diachronic perspectives. Evolutionism has been largely concerned with society, and diffusionism more with culture. Chapters 5 (functionalism and struc-tural-functionalism) and 6 (action-centred, processual, and Marxist approaches) deal fundamentally with society, respectively from a relatively static point of view and a relatively dynamic point of view. Chapters 7 (relativism, etc.), 8 (structuralism), 9 (poststructuralist and feminist thought), and 10 (interpretivism and postmodernism) all deal mainly with culture (though, e.g., poststructuralism also has strong societal elements) . Thus the book is organized broadly around the historical transition from diachronic to synchronic to interactive approaches, and from an emphasis on society to an emphasis on culture.
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