Symbols

1
Symbols

• 8.11.2006

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Animal symbolicum

• Ernst Cassirer Essay on Man (1944)
• Animals
• Perceive their world by instincts
• Humans
• Create their own universe of symbolic meaning
• gt symbolism
• essential characteristic of human culture
• Basis of language, history, science, art, myth
  and religion
• Language
• The most important kind of symbolization
• Rise of symbolic communication
• Radical transformation of human life
• Not just a broader reality, but a new dimension
  of reality

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Symbolic anthropology

• Focus shift in anthropology
• 1960s and 1970s gt Reaction to structuralism and
  Marxism
• culture a system of symbols
• gt Anthropologists new role
• decoding / interpretation of (key) symbols
• gt understanding of meaning
• Firth
• anthropologists particularly credited to study
  the disjunction
• a gap between the statement and action
• Tikopia
• A man rubbing a wooden pole with coconut oil and
  claiming it to be a body washed with power

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Symbolic anthropology

• More characteristic of American anthropology
• The founding texts
• Turner
• Schism and Continuity in an African Society
  (1957)
• Schneider
• American Kinship A Cultural Account (1968)
• Geertz
• Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
• All at the University of Chicago around 1970
• Influence on British anthropology
• Leach
• Douglas

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Anthropology of religion

• Geertz Religion as a cultural system (1973)
• Probably most influential definition of religion
  in anthropology
• gt a system of symbols
• Symbols
• anything that serve as a vehicles for a
  conception/meaning
• Religious symbols
• induce certain psychological dispositions
• gt gives meaning to human existence
• unique and universal function
• gt synthesizes peoples ethos and worldview
• creates order from chaos

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Critique of symbolic anthropology

• The problematic of meaning
• Whose is the alleged meaning of the symbol?
• the ethnographer's?
• the informants?
• Essentialism
• Symbols have an essential shared meaning
• Keesing Kwaio Religion (1982)
• "ritual symbols, like other cultural symbols,
  evoke meanings, which may depend on who
  individuals are, what they have experienced, and
  what they know"
• meanings are not shared but ideological and
  politically manipulated

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Discussion topics

• Generally on symbols and symbolization
• Symbol vs sign
• Universalism vs particularism
• Hierarchy of symbols (Ortner)
• Anthropological approaches to symbols
• psychological, cognitive, structuralist,
  social-structuralist
• Douglas on natural symbols
• Turner on use of symbols in rituals
• Debates on hair symbolism
• Berg, Leach, Hallpike, (Obeyesekere, Synnott)

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Readings

• Ortner, S. 1973. On Key Symbols. In American
  Anthropologist 75 1338-1346. (Reprinted in
  Lambek Lessa and Vogt)
• Hallpike, C. 1969. Social Hair. In Man 4 256-64.
  (Reprinted in Lessa and Vogt)

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Symbol vs sign

• Belong to different universes of discourse
• Cassirer, Leach
• sign
• belongs to the physical world
• expresses a relationship that is metonymic
• connection between the sign and the signified
• natural, intrinsic
• symbol
• belongs to the world of meaning
• expresses a relationship that is metaphorical
• connection between the symbol and the signified
• artificial

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Symbol sign

• Symbol is a kind of a sign
• Peirce
• Firth
• Peirce What Is a Sign? (1894)
• Three kinds of signs
• Likenesses or icons
• Indications or indices
• Symbols or general signs

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Symbol sign

• Firth Symbols Public and Private (1973)
• Four kinds of signs
• 1) index
• directly related to what is signified
• part to whole
• particular to general
• Eg. footprint of a lion
• 2) signal
• the dynamic aspect of an index
• Eg. voice of a lion

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Symbol sign

• 3) icon
• a sign with a sensory-likeness relationship
• Eg. statue of a lion
• 4) symbol
• a complex series of associations
• no direct relationship between the sign and the
  signified
• Eg. Lion is a symbol of bravery

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Symbols universal or culturally particular?

• Particularist approach
• no universal meaning to any single motif
• symbols and what they signal are culturally
  constructed
• Eg. Leach Culture and Communication (1976)
• one cultures symbolic analogy is another
  cultures puzzle (LessaVogt)

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Symbols universal or culturally particular?

• Universalist approach
• Certain themes are predominant
• Eg. right over left
• Eg. colors red, white and black
• The reasons
• Turner gt bodily processes
• Freud gt childhood experiences
• Jung gt archetypes
• Hertz gt sun worship

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Archetypes

• primordial images / innate prototypes for ideas
  
• reflect basic patterns or universal themes
• common to everyone
• present in the unconscious
• Jung
• forms of images of a collective nature which
  occur practically all over the earth as
  constituents of myths and ideas and at the same
  time as autochtonous, individual products of
  unconscious origin
• Even complicated archetypal images can be
  spontaneously reproduced without any possible
  direct tradition.

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Archetypes

• Jung
• Self (coherent whole, unified consciousness)
• Shadow shadow aspect (part of unconscious
  disagreeing w/ conscious)
• Anima (female inner personality in men)
• Animus (male inner personality in women)
• dot or point
• establishes identity / "self"
• dot surrounded by one or more circles
• most ancient human symbol
• recurring motif in the monuments of all
  civilizations

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Robert Hertz

• The Pre-Eminence of the Right Hand A Study in
  Religious Polarity (1909)
• republished in Needhams Right and Left Essays
  on Dual Symbolic Classification (1973)
• Every social hierarchy claims to be founded on
  the nature of things. It thus accords itself
  eternity it escapes change and the attacks of
  innovators.
• Different values attributed to hands
• Eg. Maoris
• Right side the side of life/strength/male/sacre
  d
• Left side the side of death/weakness/female/pro
  fane
• Priority of right over left hand cross-culturally
  universal
• right hand
• rectitude, dexterity, juridical norm, life, male,
  sacred
• left hand
• ugly, bad, death, evil, female, profane

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Robert Hertz

• Hertzs explanation sunworship
• Sacred buildings facing sunrise east
• Right south full sunlight
• Left north darkness
• gt right vs left light vs darkness heat vs
  cold

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Symbols hierarchy

• Some symbols more crucial than others
• Schneider core symbols
• Turner dominant symbols
• Ortner key symbols
• Wolf master symbols

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Wolf

• The Virgin of Guadalupe A Mexican National
  Symbol (1958)
• Virgen de Guadalupe
• a master symbol

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Ortner

• Two ways of determining a key symbol
• 1)
• analyzing the social system for its elements,
  values, etc.
• finding in the culture a figure or an image
• Eg. Schneider
• conjugal sexual intercourse (US)
• Eg. Benedict
• Chrysanthemum and Sword (Japan)

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Ortner

• 2)
• looking for the key symbol in situ
• interpreting its meaning
• the natives talk a lot about it
• the natives are not indifferent to it
• it comes up in many contexts
• greater cultural elaboration surrounding it
• greater cultural restrictions related with it

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Ortner

• Summarizing vs elaborating symbols
• Overlapping categories
• Summarizing symbols
• sum up, express, and represent what the system
  means
• Eg. flag, cross, Harley Davidson

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Ortner

• Elaborating symbols
• concepts to think with
• create order
• 1) root metaphors
• Dharma wheel (Tibet)
• living organism
• Eg. Caste system in India
• 2) key scenarios
• Horatio Alger myth (US)

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Anthropology of symbols

• Various approaches to symbols
• Interpretive / semiotic approach
• Geertz
• Psychological
• Freud, Jung
• Cognitive
• Sperber
• Structuralist
• Leach, Lévi-Strauss
• Social-structuralist
• Douglas, Turner

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Psychological approach to symbols

• Symbols are of an unconscious nature
• Jung
• archetypal forms
• Freud
• The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
• manifest vs latent content of a dream
• dream-elements are symbolic of unconscious
  repressed desires (sexual)

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Cognitive approach to symbols

• Dan Sperber Rethinking Symbolism (1975)
• Symbolism as a cognitive mechanism
• Symbolic interpretation
• not a matter of decoding but improvisation
• attempt to find meaning in problematical
  situations
• Two operations of symbolic mechanism
• Focalisation identifying the problematical
  element
• Evocation scanning our knowledge for something
  that fits
• Eg. "The husband of my aunt is single
• Focalisation internal contradiction in the
  sentence
• Evocation we look for a symbolic meaning of
  single

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Structuralist approach to symbols

• Main focus
• Underlying patterns within a symbol system
• Symbols
• studied with respect to their place in the
  "system"
• not as an integral part of understanding the
  system
• Eg. Lévi-Strauss, Leach

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Social-structuralist approach to symbols

• Douglas
• Relationship of symbols to social categories
• Turner
• processual symbology
• how symbols acquire their meaning
• how symbols trigger social action
• symbols as "operators in the social process"

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Douglas

• Purity and Danger (1966)
• pollution beliefs as metaphorical statements
  about the natural and social order
• Natural Symbols (1970)
• Concordance between symbolic patterns and social
  structure
• Bodily symbolism
• a reflection of social structure
• physical body is a microcosm of the social body
• obsession with bodies' orifices
• the need to maintain body's boundaries
• reflects the need to maintain the unity of the
  tribe

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Douglas

• Symbols
• salient in groups that possess rigid social
  boundaries
• diffuse in groups where social boundaries are
  weak
• Eg. Mbuti vs Hadza
• Mbuti
• fluid social life, in terms of both social
  categories and groups
• gt no conception of pollution
• Diffuse symbols
• Hadza
• a strongly marked sexual division
• gt men fear contact with menstrual blood
• Salient symbols
• gt concordance between the symbolism and the
  social structure

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Turner

• Various studies of Ndembu in Zambia
• Schism and Continuity in an African Society
  (1957)
• The Forest of Symbols Aspects of Ndembu Ritual
  (1967)
• Drums of Affliction A Study of Religious
  Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia (1968)
• gt Studies of ritual and ritual symbolism
• Symbol
• something that represents something else
• a storage unit
• the basic unit or molecule of ritual behavior

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Turner

• The property of condensation
• two classes of symbols
• referential symbols
• Eg. ordinary speech and writing, flags, signals
• condensation symbols
• condensed forms with emotional quality
• Multivocal/polysemic
• many meanings in a single form

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Turner

• Polarization of meaning
• Sensory pole of meaning
• referents of a natural or physiological character
• arouse desires or feelings
• Ideological, or normative, pole of meaning
• referents that refer to
• principles of social organization
• norms and values inherent in the social structure

35
Turner

• Three levels of meaning
• exegetical meaning
• the level of indigenous interpretation
• operational meaning
• how the symbol is utilized within the ritual
  context
• positional meaning
• determined by its relationship with other symbols

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Turner

• Eg. analysis of the nkanga
• girls puberty ceremony
• the initiate is wrapped in a blanket
• placed at the foot of a mudyi tree
• mudyi tree
• Diplorrhyncus mossambicensis
• milktree
• exudes white latex

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Turner

• The mudyi tree
• dominant symbol
• multivocal
• human milk
• the social tie between mother and child
• matrilineal kinship
• the unity and continuity of Ndembu society
• women as a group
• the novice
• gt expresses both social and organic phenomena

38
Turner

• Colour symbolism
• at the apex of the total symbolic system of the
  Ndembu is the colour triad, white-red-black
• the only colors for which the Ndembu have primary
  terms
• Other colors derivative or consist of a
  metaphorical phrase
• White (dominant)
• health, life, prosperity, purity, authority
• Black
• badness and evil, misfortune, disease, witchcraft
  and sorcery, sexual passion, darkness
• Red
• power, strength, menstrual blood, murder, hunting

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Turner

• cross-cultural analysis of color symbolism
• black, red and white
• frequent ritual significance
• Also yellow
• Eg. the four varnas/classes ( color)
• Explanation
• the emissions of the human body
• milk, urine, blood and excreta

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Hair symbolism

• Hair
• Central role in many rituals
• Eg. Cutting of hair in rites of passage
• Berg
• The Unconscious Significance of Hair (1951)
• genitals hair
• cutting of hair castration

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Hair symbolism

• Leach
• Magical Hair (1958)
• response to Berg
• Hair
• symbolizes ideal social categories
• long hair unrestrained sexuality
• short hair restricted sexuality
• close shaven hair celibacy
• related to social status
• Eg. Burmese hill tribes
• unmarried girls - short hair
• married women long hair

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Hair symbolism

• Hallpike
• Social Hair (1969)
• Critique of Berg and Leach
• Cutting hair not castration
• cutting hair in case of both sexes
• cutting of beard rituals rare
• Length of hair not symbol of sexuality
• Ascetics have long hair
• Soldiers have short hair

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Hair symbolism

• Hallpike
• Cutting of hair social control
• long hair
• being outside society
• ascetics, hippies, women
• cutting of hair
• reentering society
• living under a strict code of rules
• monks, school children, soldiers, neophytes
• Various examples from the Bible

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Hair symbolism

• Obeyesekere Medusas Hair (1984)
• Psychoanalytical study
• of matted snake-like hair of female ascetics in
  Sri Lanka
• Turns Leach upside down
• Matted hair a symbol of Gods penis
• Anthony Synnott The Body Social Symbolism, Self
  and Society (1993)
• Critique of Leach and Hallpike
• "one-on-one equations of symbols and meanings
• hair makes oppositional meanings
• Eg. meanings differentiating men and women