La reproducción digital de este material es para fines de investigación y docencia de los cursosacadémicos que im parte El Colegio de Michoacán (COLM1CH), conforme a lo establecido en: Lev Federal de Derechos de Autor. Título VI De ias Limitaciones deí Derecho de Autor y de ios Derechos Conexos, Capítulo II De ia Limitación a ios Derechos Patrimoniales, Artículo 148 Apartado III: Reproducción de partes de ia obra, para ia crítica e investigación científica, literaria o artística. and Political Economy William Roseberry » RUTGERS NEW U N I V E R S IT Y PRESS BRUNSWICK AND LONDON BIBLIOTECA LWS GONZA .ANTHROPOLOGIES AND HISTORIES Essays in Culture. History. and the anthropologist most often em braced is Professor Geertz. the title o f this essay.C H A P T E R O N E Balinese Cockfights and the Seduction of Anthropology Few anthropologists in recent years have enjoyed wider in fluence in the social sciences than Clifford Geertz. and social historians interested in p op ular cul tu re an d mentalités have tu rn e d increasingly to anthropology. he is able to attract scholars from a variety o f disciplines. G eertz’s position at the Institute for Advanced Study has allowed him to transcend the disciplinary and subdisciplinary involution that characterizes anthropology and o th e r social sciences. A n u m b e r o f factors can be addu ced to account for this trend. for there is a sense in which anthropologists— and other social scientists— have been seduced by G eertz’s writings on culture. But the title is intended to suggest an o th e r aspect o f G eertz’s work as well. Thus. In the first place. political scientists. in part. His cultural essays can be read with profit by introd uc tory students o r g rad u ate students in advanced seminars. . Sociologists. Second. Geertz is an excellent e th n o g rap h er who writes with an eloquence and sophistication uncom m on for the social sciences. At the Institute. adopting an antidisciplinary m ood an d focus that is rare in cu rren t academic prac tice. A nd his descriptions o f life in Bali or Java or Morocco call to mind one o f the aspects o f anthropology that has always been so seductive: the lure o f distant places an d oth er modes o f being. concentrating on symbols that carry and com m unicate m e an ings to social actors who have created them. ” (ibid. th o u g h G eertz takes his lead from Ricoeur rath er than Lévi-Strauss. We m ust now question w hether he has realized this promise. I take culture to be those webs . we shall concentrate on his essay on Balinese cockfights. “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” begins with an account o f the G eertzes’ difficulties when first arriving in the field. . This essay com pares G eertz’s claims fo r him self in “Thick Description” with one o f his own pieces o f description. For exam ple: “Believing. their response to a police raid on a cockfight. and their final acceptance. It was noted earlier that G eertz seems to be w orking with a concept o f culture as socially constituted an d socially constituting. calls fo r an exercise in interpretation. Or: “culture consists o f socially established structures o f m eaning in term s o f which people do such things as signal conspiracies an d join them o r perceive insults and answer them . . o f course. Instead. “D eep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. T h e last quote comes from the wellknown essay. T h e essay then moves into a description o f the cockfight itself. including . ” (1973b: 5). themselves ensembles. that m an is an animal suspended in webs o f significance he him self has spun. Because Geertz’s ethnographic work is volum inous.1 G eertz’s essay is at once an attem pt to show that cultural products can be treated as texts and an attem pt to interp ret one such text. he places his definitions in a m ore elegant an d elusive prose. which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders o f those to whom they p ro p erly belong” (1973c: 452).: 13). given that response. . Geertz in te rp re tation m ust be sum m arized before we can ask some questions o f it. . at no point does he say w hat he m eans as clearly and rigorously as does H arris. Or: “T h e culture o f a people is an ensem ble o f texts. Unfortunately. an d the aims o f this chapter are modest. by the villagers. T h e m e tap h o r of the text is. with Max Weber. T h e reference to culture as a text. given G eertz’s project. a favor ite o f the practitioners o f both structuralism and h e rm e n e u tics.” to which m ore attention is devoted here. H e begins with Jerem y B en th am ’s notion o f d eep play. h e then counters: It is in large part because the marginal disutility o f loss is so great at the higher levels o f betting that to engage in such betting is to lay o n e ’s public self. the cockfight relates to the status hierarchy in an o th er sense— no longer as a status-based organization o f . As an art form. on the line. A lthough he has not yet re fe rre d to the cockfight as a text. the pro ced ures associated with cockfights and wagers. that access o f significance m ore than compensates for the econom ic costs involved. To explore this. and so on.” or. o r games in which the conse quences for losers are so devastating that participation in the games is irrational for all concerned. rivals. A nd though to a B entham ite this m ight seem merely to increase the irrational ity o f the enterprise that m uch further.: 443). Geertz moves toward an in terp retatio n o f the fight itself. Both are related to the hierarchical organization o f Bali nese society. As an atomistic inversion o f the way Balinese normally present th e m selves to themselves. a “status blood b ath ” (ibid.: 436). he be gins to re fe r to it as “an art fo rm ” (ibid. (1973c: 434) Geertz th e n looks to two aspects o f significance in the cock fight. through the m ed iu m o f o n e ’s cock. allusively and metaphorically. o th e r villages. as Geertz moves tow ard the second aspect of significance.a discussion o f the psychological identification o f m en and cocks. following Goffman. and so on. Geertz m entions the fo ur d e scent groups that organize factions in the village an d examines the rules involved in betting against the cocks owned by m em bers o f o th e r descent groups. And as (to follow Weber rather than Bentham ) the imposition o f m ean ing in life is the major and primary condition o f hum an exis tence. to the Balinese what it mainly increases is the m eaningfulness o f it all. H e first observes that the cockfight is a “simulation o f the social m atrix . Noting that the central wagers in Balinese cockfights seem to correspond to such a high stakes game. it “displays” fu n d am en tal passions in Balinese society that are hid den from view in o rd inary daily life and com portm ent. Prelim inaries ou t o f the way. A nd w hat they tell themselves they tell in a text that “consists o f a chicken hacking an o th er mindlessly to bits” (ibid.the cockfight bu t as a com m entary on the existence o f status differences in the first place. Such a reinterp retation is the task o f a w riter m ore fam iliar with Bali and Indonesia than is the present one. Rather. no at tem pt is m ade h e re to account for or explain the existence o f the cockfight. no fu n d am en tal reinterp retatio n o f the Bali nese cockfight is attem pted . Functionalism lives. we m ust ques tion w h eth er G eertz’s analysis has sociologically h andled the Balinese cockfight o r paid sufficient attention to its substance. we m ight briefly tu rn to th ree aspects o f Balinese society not included in the interpretation.’ an d say ing it to somebody. This essay simply points to a few elem ents present in G eertz’s essay b u t om itted from the interpretive exercise that should fo rm a p a rt o f a cultural an d sociological interpretation o f the cockfight. a story they tell themselves about themselves” (ibid.: 453). is at least to o pen up the possibility o f an analysis th a t attends to their substance rath er than to reductive form ulas professing to account for th e m ” (ibid. In a . A t both the social and individual level. T h e cockfight is “a Balinese re a d ing o f Balinese experience. But to reg ard such form s as ‘saying som ething o f som ething. T h e first has to do with the role o f women. In w hat follows. A lth ou gh Geertz m ight reg ard reference to these elem ents as a form o f functionalist reductionism . Keesing 1987). by pointing to o th e r aspects o f Balinese society a n d history with which the cockfight may be involved. A fter this basic interp retatio n o f the Balinese cockfight in terms o f status organization an d commentary.: 449).: 448). an d so does psychologism. Geertz closes with a discussion o f culture as an ensem ble o f texts. H e notes that their in terp reta tio n is difficult and that such an app roach is not “the only way that symbolic form s can be sociologically h a n dled. Accepting for a m o m ent that m etaphor. W hat they tell themselves is that be neath the external veneer o f collective calm an d grace lies a n o th e r nature. there is an o th er Bali an d a n o th e r sort o f Balinese. this essay calls into question the m e tap h o r o f culture as text (cf. A ccepting this criticism o f reductive formulas. poised. F urtherm ore. tail raised.2 Further.footnote early in the article. we learn that the cockfight was outlaw ed by the D utch and later by Indonesia. p ro u d cock. T h ey also suggest that the cockfight has gone th ro u g h a significant change in the past eighty years. before the early tw entieth century). Surely these m atters req u ire some interpretive attention. T h e cockfight. But sex cannot be subsum ed so simply within status. At the very least they suggest th at the cockfight is intimately related (though no t reducible) to political processes o f state form ation and colonialism.: 418). which were “staffed almost e n tirely by w om en. As with status differ ences. Aside from sexual differentiation and the connection with markets. “T rade has followed the cock for centuries in ru ral Bali. and that the cock fights were held on the same afternoo n as the m arket (1980: 199). in eternal challenge to large. Geertz notes that while th ere is little a p p a re n t public sexual differentiation in Bali. This a p p a re n t anomaly may make sense in term s o f G eertz’s interpretation.” were held in the m orning. 418. so with sexual differences. are the activities o f m en. serving as com m entaries on the public denial o f difference. T h e sexual exclusion becomes m ore interesting w hen we learn in an o th er footnote that the Balinese countryside was in teg rated by rotating m arket systems that would encom pass several villages an d that cockfights were held on m arket days n e a r the m arkets and were sometimes o rg a nized by petty m erchants. an d the sport has been one o f the main agencies o f the island’s m onetization” (ibid. and betting on the cockfight. that it is now held in semisecret in h id d e n corners o f the village. 424. in yet a n o th e r footnote in his m ore recent Negara. Geertz tells us that the traditional m arkets.: 432). the cock fight is one o f the few activities from which women are ex cluded (1973c: 417—418). G eertz also notes th ro u g h o u t the early p art o f the essay (1973c: 414. 425) that the cockfight was an im p o rtan t activity in precolonial Balinese states (that is. back taut. that if it is . feckless shapeless Java” (ibid. and that the Balinese re g a rd th e island as taking the shape o f a “small. that it was held in a ring in the center o f the village. that it was taxed and was a significant source o f public rev en u e . neck extended. we are dealing in p art with political com petition am o ng high-caste lords an d princes. In Negara. who is doing the acting. B ut lords are also com m unicating to their com m oners that the hierarchy is divinely ordained. C om parable in spirit to the potlatch. in this essay at least. we learn very little about caste and status as m aterial social process and the connection that process does or does not have with cockfighting. political. finally. Yet. Or. it is a text that is being written as p art o f a p ro fo u n d social. the crem ation is “conspicu ous consum ption. With so m uch maneuver.3 To see culture as an ensem ble o f texts o r an art form is to rem ove culture from the process o f its creation.a text. to break with the m etaphor.: 102). which is less an aspect om itted from the in terp retation th an one th at is not sufficiently explicated. A text is written. the cockfight tells the Balinese that such differences “are a m atter o f life an d d e a th ” an d a “p rofoundly serious business” (ibid. T h e cockfight has gone th ro u g h a process o f creation that cannot be sepa rated from Balinese history. Beyond the obvious fact th at it m eans d iffere n t things to d ifferent people or d iffer ent sorts o f people. fo r exam ple. an d cultural process. This is a key question. and with so many cultural “texts” relating to status. Geertz tu rns his attention to elaborate crem ation ceremonies and sees them as an “aggressive assertion o f status” (1980: 117). Status in Bali has to do with inherited caste but also with positions achieved in life th ro u g h various form s o f political m an eu v er— most clearly am ong lords but also am ong low-caste Sudras. T hese th re e problem s lead to a basic point.: 447).: 117) an d is one o f vari ous rituals th at elaborately tell the Balinese that “status is all” (ibid. H ere we confront the m ajor inade quacy o f the text as a m e tap h o r for culture. it is not w riting. In this case. This. we m ust ask who is (or are) doing the writing. brings us to the third point. the creating o f the cultural forms we interpret. it is not everyone’s text. Geertz refers to the cockfight as a “status bloodbath” an d tells us that as a com m entary on status.4 I f culture is a text. in the transform ation o f the cock . some attention should be paid to the d iffere n t messages o f these texts an d to their construc tion in the context o f status form ation as a historical process. Balinese style” (ibid. thought from think ing. to treat values as “glosses on p ro p erty relations” (Geertz 1973c: 449) or to “ru n on about the exploitation o f the masses” (1973b: 22). But there are reductions. W ithout a sense of . reference to the connections between culture and rela tions o f pow er a n d dom ination. Geertz correctly points to m eanings that persist beyond events. even within an apparently u n ifo rm text. Unfortunately. otherwise we are caught in yet an o th er o f anthro po log y’s antinomies. in part. R eferring to Ricoeur’s notion o f “inscription.fight after the arrival o f the Dutch. culture from behavior— implies for sociological interpre tation. (1983: 31) T h e re a d e r should not assume that I am calling for the red u c tion o f culture to action (see C h ap ter 2). T h e second aspect that is missing is a concept o f culture as m aterial social process. and on what the fixation o f m eaning from the flow o f events— history from what happened. T h e first is the presence o f social an d cultural differentiation. In a recent essay. as implied in the previous com ments on state an d status. symbols that outlast and transcend the intentions o f their creators. But neither should culture be separated from action. G eertz concludes: T h e great virtue o f the extension o f the notion o f text beyond things written on paper or carved into stone is that it trains attention on precisely this phenom enon: on how the inscrip tion o f action is brought about. Reference to differentiation is. T h e em phasis on cultural creation brings out two aspects of culture that are missing from G eertz’s work.” o r the separation in the text o f the said from the saying. Geertz has pointed to the separation o f the text from its creation as one o f the strengths o f the metaphor. what its vehicles are and how they work. the text as m e ta p h o r effects precisely this separation. Some m ight think that to refer to culture and pow er is to reduce culture to power. A nd the denial of such connections is but one o f many classical reductions in Am erican anthropology. an d then there are reductions. Williams suggests that cultural creation is itself a form o f m ate rial production. indeed requires. of course. cf. H e also pays attention to the socially constructed m eanings th a t inform action. idealist critiques th at share the ideational defi nition b u t deny the m aterial connection or. Yet Williams does not leave his analysis at this elem entary assertion. H e does this in part by means o f a revaluation o f the idea o f tradition. B ut the materialism invoked in this essay is far rem oved from the re d u c tive scientism th a t has come to dom inate materialism in A m eri can anthropology. th at the abstract distinction between material base an d ideal su p erstru ctu re dissolves in the face o f a material social process th ro u g h which both “m aterial” an d “ideal” are constantly created an d recreated. nonetheless. T h e process o f selection is political and is tied to relations o f d om in a tion and subordination. But both have rem oved culture from the process o f cultural cre ation a n d have th e refo re m ade possible the constant re p ro d u c tion o f an antinom y between the material an d the ideal. It treats culture an d o th e r aspects o f a p resum ed “su p e rstru c tu re ” simply as ideas. T h e re the similarity ends. Ind eed . 1980. 1982).culture as m aterial process or creation—as writing as well as what is w ritten— we once again have a conception o f culture as p ro d u ct b u t no t as p ro d u ctio n . defining it as a reflection u p o n an d selection from a people’s history (1961. what is n eed ed is som ething close to the “cultural m aterialism ” o f Raym ond Williams (1977. as in the case o f Geertz.5 T h e reference to culture as m aterial social process is not intend ed to take us back to the anthropological m aterialism o f Marvin Harris. m ust be materialist. wtfo notes th at the problem with mechanical m ate rialism is n o t th a t it is too materialist b u t th at it is not materialist enough. It th erefo re makes room for. the criti cism I have directed at Clifford Geertz is similar to the criticism I directed at M arvin H arris: both treat culture as p rod uct but not as production. In contrast. 1977). Rather. rem oved from th e social process by which the text is created. th a t reject the ideational definition in favor o f one that sees a socially constructed text that is. and the concept o f culture that em erges fro m that resolution. T h e resolution o f the antinomy. so that Williams can talk o f a dom in ant . they are not timeless. Taking a fo rm o f culture as a text. o r hegem ony. T h e question o f who is telling the tales a n d in what context therefore becomes im portant. in sho rt an d in part. they assume that the peasant women who are telling the tales fo rm a “peasant intelligentsia” that is trying to . It is. alter native m eanings. A lthough this do m in an t cu ltu re is related to an d supports an o rd e r o f inequal ity. as a selective tradition. disinheritance. the authors concentrate on fo u r “texts”— fo u r o f the G rim m ’s folk tales that deal with com m on them es o f inheritance.and earlynineteen th-century context in which they were collected. T hey also note that while the tales are traditional. a n d m igration. T herefo re. W h eth er such alternative versions are constructed dep ends u p o n the n a tu re o f the cultural and historical material available. Rebel 1988). it touches aspects o f the lived reality o r experience o f the do m inant and dom inated alike. as a selection from and interp retatio n o f a peo p le’s history. the authors take the first step tow ard an analysis o f text as writing. D om inant and em erg en t cultures are fo rm ed in a class-based social world. First. They then take two innovative methodological steps that are o f great im portance fo r the concept o f culture. Second.culture. T h e them es o f culture as m aterial social process and o f cul tural creation as (in part) political action are fu rth e r developed in an article by Peter Taylor and H e rm a n n Rebel (1981. then. and the possibilities an d obstacles presen ted in the political process. In a m asterful analysis o f culture in history. that is. T h e re are always relationships a n d m eanings th at are excluded. Rather. they place the tales in the late-eighteenth. Williams does no t view it simply as a ruling-class ideology im posed u p o n the dom inated. “m eaningful. the form and content o f the tales may change in the telling. Wil liams’s concept o f culture. as material social process. is tied to a process o f class form ation b u t is no t red u ced to that process.” B ut Williams also notes th at no o rd e r o f dom ination is total. cf. th e process o f class form ation and division. alternative values. but they are no t necessarily co n g ru en t with class divisions. family dissolution. alternative versions o f a people’s history are available as a potential challenge to the dom inant. A fter criticizing psychological in ter pretations. they ask who is telling the tales a n d in w hat context. an d w hat fo rm o f action is being called for. Nonetheless. and offer a re f uge for their fleeing brothers. Given this fram ework. and political inform ation at the same time that he engages in sophisti cated symbolic analysis. the autho rs have pro d u ced a cultural analysis that goes significantly fu rth e r th an does G eertz’s in his “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. is to move cultural analysis to a new level that rend ers the old antino mies o f m aterialism an d idealism irrelevant. irrigation system. suggest that the tales were at tem pts by peasant w om en to resp o n d to the disruption o f fam i lies and the d raftin g o f their disinherited sons. C ulture as text is rem oved fro m the historical process that shapes it an d that it in tu rn shapes. o f caste divisions.intervene in the social process. what is being talked about. be it a cockfight or a folk tale. who is talking. the authors then em bark on a detailed symbolic analysis o f the tales and. is clear from his conclu sion to Negara. T h a t G eertz sees all o f these as necessary for a cultural argum ent. not simply as socially constituted but also as socially constituting. His exam ination o f the th eater state in nineteenth-century Bali is an exam ple o f this: we find treatm ents o f political a n d social structure at ham let. A lthough all the elem ents are presented and connected in a fashion. m arry elsewhere. and tem ple levels. economic.6 It m ight be arg u ed that this is precisely what Geertz does. finally. T h a t is. the tales are com m entar ies on w hat is h a p p en in g to them an d their families that call for particular form s o f action to alter th e situation. move from the region. although it cannot yet be d em o n strated w heth er the process they suggest actually occurred.” To ask o f any cultural text. they are never fully joined. an d th at he sees his inclusion o f these elements as ren d erin g an “idealist” charge absurd. who is being talked to. W hen we are told that in Bali “culture came . Taylor and Rebel show that such a response is in accord with dem ograp hic evidence from lateeighteenth-century Hesse. and of the rituals of hierarchy. he is one o f the few a n th ro pologists who can provide detailed ecological. o f trade. As one o f o u r most able eth n o g rap h ers. This is a crucial methodological step in the construction o f a concept o f culture not simply as a p ro d u ct b u t also as production. T h e suggested response: inheriting dau g h ters should reno unce their in heri tance. an d praxis. w hat is do n e to them . (1973b: 18) In te rp re tatio n canno t be separated from what people say. then. it closes with yet another. they will continue to do som ething other than what the task at h a n d calls for. a rem oval o f culture from the wellings-up o f action. what they do. a ritual.from the top dow n . a person. an institution. . a society— takes us into the heart o f that o f which it is an interpretation. . but leads us instead som ew here else— into an admira tion o f its ow n elegance. calls for. B ut the image implies separation. from the whole vast business o f the world— is to divorce it from its applications and render it vacant. specific people say. in this time or that place.” an d it is a statem ent o f connec tion ra th e r th an separation. to the com parison of G eertz’s promise with his practice. W hen it does not do that. . T h e quotation re tu rn s us to the prom ising approach to culture ex pressed in “T hick D escription. A lthough this essay already contains m ore q u ota tions than it can easily bear. T h e passage establishes a standard for cultural in terp retatio n that is in accord with the premises of this essay. because culture cannot be so separated. A g o o d interpretation o f anything— a poem . while pow er welled u p from the bottom ” (1980: 85). or o f the beauties o f Euclidean order— it may have its intrinsic charms. what is d o n e to them . power. We re tu rn . . a history. interaction. As long as anthropologists are seduced by the intrin sic charm s o f a textual analysis th at takes such separation as a point o f honor. but it is som ething else than what the task at hand . o f its author’s cleverness. I f anthropological interpretation is constructing a reading o f what happens. then to divorce it from what happens— from what. T h a t it also serves as a standard in term s of which G eertz’s cultural analysis can be criticized should be apparent. what they do. the im age makes perfect sense given the analysis of state structure that precedes it. .
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