Our first reading for the course comes from the most distinguished anthropologist of the past century - Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose profound influence changed not only how western scholars looked at indigenous peoples, but how we understand society, through his innovations in structuralist thought.
Lévi-Strauss did his early ethnographic among Amazonian Indians in Brazil, and in Tristes Tropiques he does more than give an account of their customs and social organization: he consults his own experience to question how one culture can observe and understand another, very different one.
You are reading excerpts from the beginning and end of the book. (Find them at the MyCorcoran Course page.) After you've thought them over, please post a comment selecting a passage or a point from your reading and explaining what it means, and how it might affect your own attempts to understand indigenous peoples and how the western world has viewed them.
You might consider your own previous background and interest in the topic. Do you come from indigenous background? Do you have a strong previous interest in or experience with indigenous groups and cultures? Do you feel you've been influenced by popular images? Please don't neglect to focus your comment on your response to Lévi-Strauss, however. If you read other participants' comments before completing your own, feel free to consider them in your response.
Please post by 9 am on Wednesday, September 7, so everyone has a chance to read it before class. Your response should be about 250 words, or one double-spaced printed page. In addition to posting on the blog, please bring a copy to submit in class, email to bwelt@corcoran.org. Include your name, the course number and title (AS2000D Humanities I), and the date on your copy. Please.
Greg Vita
ReplyDeleteAS2000D-Humanities 1
9/5/2011
“The first thing we see as we travel the earth is our own filth thrown at mankind”, is said by Levi-Strauss in the readings selected from Tristes Tropiques. The readings seem to all focus on the aspect of what people consider to be a primitive or savage culture, and how the ideas people have are generally wrong or biased. Levi-Strauss also expresses his views on anthropology and the characteristics that generally anthropologist express. Strauss talks about the changes that civilization has brought to the world and explains how because of the past their cannot be a new “new world”. In other words society and culture has grown into a somewhat of a monoculture.
There are similarities in all human cultures even though people tend to not always recognize them. One example is how almost every society in the world, past or present, treats the deceased with respect. Although the customs may be very different the idea of death is celebrated in a way in almost every culture. Some cultures systematically try to isolate the dead from the living with burial or cremation, but there are others who resort to cannibalism which in a way is taking in the deceased and their worldly possessions. Either way the dead are being celebrated. Another similarity in many cultures that Strauss touches upon is that of marrying in ones class system which in a way creates different levels of society within a society. Although this doesn't always apply in some cultures this system of inner class marriage perpetuates itself keeping different levels of class within certain societies.
Reading selections from Tristes Tropiques, it becomes evident that Claude Levi-Strauss mourns the lost chance to observe indigenous cultures in its purest form. As he puts it, “Journeys…will never again yield up their treasures untarnished.” While he wishes he had the chance to view these societies before they had any contact with Western civilization, he also knows that he may be open to new interpretations because of the explorers who came before him. Levi-Strauss thinks the previous explorers’ interpretations of the civilizations may have been incorrect, but those observations still give him the opportunity to view the societies through a more educated lens. He has a broader perspective and an opportunity to compare indigenous customs because of these explorers. He is able to discount previous explorers’ opinion of indigenous people as savages because he understands that their culture and customs have value to them. Even if Levi-Strauss does not fully understand the customs, he has an appreciation for their meaning to the indigenous people. I was left with the impression that Levi-Strauss found that the natives’ religious views are more open and fully aware then some of western civilization’s more rigid views on life and death. The dead, the wounded, the living, all things in existence, are considered equal and reliant on each other in some manner. “In a sense, nature in this destructive form is seen as being human. It operates through a special category of souls, which depends directly on it and not on society.” This is something that is recognized in some form in almost every culture, but overtime the practices of western civilizations have created a separation between the living and the dead, a superiority or conquering of nature. Overall, Levi-Strauss views himself as different from explorers who have come before him and western civilization in general, because he does not wish to conquer or convert the cultures he is exposed to. Rather he wants to observe them as they are for his own enlightenment. He appreciates that these culture are more in touch with their place in the universe and being a part of the whole, as opposed to western civilization’s seeming need to conquer and get rid of individuality.
ReplyDeleteAlthough at times it was quite hard keeping up with his writing, after a while, his feelings started to show. " I wished I had lived in the days of real journeys,..." (Strauss 43) Claude Levi-Strauss seemed to have a disgust for modern society and it's imposing nature onto indigenous cultures. Tearing down forests, pillaging the land for natural resources, and anything that could turn a profit. Primitive cultures were also seen as savages over and over again mostly by people who spent days, sometimes hours, with a tribe and it was enough time to make an educated opinion to report to the world. Claude thought this was ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteThe hard part in keeping up with his writings is the blatant run-ons. Almost as if he is trying to drill a point in from an 'I'm more educated than you' standpoint. The truth behind the words almost started to drift away into a second rate category, behind the mocking of modern society.
In relation to today's times, I find it pairs very well with someone who is always unhappy with where they are. An American who hates America because we do something worse than another country. Then the person from that country complains about how America is better. These are blanket statements and hold little weight outside of a coffee table argument. Through my brief research online, that was talked about briefly in class, some people hold the opinion that disrupting these savage cultures is not justified while others feel it the utmost of importance. Who is right? Well there really isn't a write person, only a subjective view based off of personal experiences and those read in a book.
I feel that over time his writings will start to grow on me as an ideal representative of his field. For now though it is hard to get past his over-use of elaborate words. Almost as if preparing for a scrabble competition. Maybe I am just too uneducated to see past these things. There is one fact that I cannot rid myself of though, often when someone is exceedingly knowledgeable in his or her field, one of the most important traits is knowing how to share information so all who read it can understand.
From Brenda Montague:
ReplyDeleteI appreciated Claude Levi-Strauss' candid assessment of the anthropologist. He recognizes and comments on the various ways that we look at other cultures and seems to have a broad understanding of the complexity of the relationships there. As we visit to study other, we assess them, organize and categorize their foreign, odd, or enlightened behaviors according to our belief systems while detaching and devaluing our own mores and values as somehow less than because we're engaged in the seemingly nobler study of other more primitive cultures. He sees us as we are and is not ashamed or afraid to make note of it. He doesn't provide a solution, but the fact that he is aware of the problem and willing to point it out is refreshing.
To assume a superior noble savage attitude about other cultures - that somehow it is all wonderful, amazing, delightful, innocent, and decent, but somehow ruined by growth or external interference, except where the anthropologist is involved - is an argument that can't hold as our world expands. The mere fact of a visit by anthropologist changes the dynamic in the society that is studied. It is impossible to observe human beings, societies, relationships, in such a close way and not have any impact on them at all. The mere fact of questioning why a custom is performed is enough to cause question in the mind s of those questioned. The visual appearance of the visitor, while different from the culture observed, may be enough to make those observed question the validity or quality of their clothing, for example in comparison to the utility of the clothing of the visitor. How can you unsee pockets or sunglasses or a visor on a hat? How can you unlearn how to use a knife with an assist or a how a button and buttonhole work?
The bull-roar is a religious device made, used and seen, only by the men and not any women of Bororo. Women were supposed to be afraid of the bull-roar, and the spirits that the bull-roar brought to the village during use. Women were not even allowed do so much as look at these religious musical instruments, if they did see the devices, they may have got beaten to death.
ReplyDeleteThis also says that men also did most religious ceremonies in their own huts, suggesting that the females did not get to participate in most religious rituals, because men and women do not live together in the same huts. I do believe that the men may have used these bull-roars to keep the women away because of the harsh punishment that came to follow, if the women came within sight of these objects.
People that are from a “traditional” western culture view may find that these occurrences to be discrimination amongst the sexes and wrongful brutality against women. In a western religion, both men and women participate in the religious ceremonies and treated equally. Westerners may find that the Bororo’s religious rituals to be a little odd, because females are not included in the roaring of the bull-roars. Westerners may also be a little disturbed if they were to find out, the women would be killed if they looked at the devices for a religious ritual. Most women may agree that they are glad to not be a part of this indigenous religion, because they may think that they would be discriminated against.
Hodjat Tavakoli
ReplyDeleteAS2000D Humanities 1
Sep 7,2011
In Tristes Tropiques , Claude Levi Strauss touches a wide range of thoughts and aspects of indigenous people’s lives. He uses his experience while traveling to Brazilian tribes to write this book. Although the selected parts of the book was full of information and compression of religious and customs between the primitive and civilized societies, on chapter 23 “ The Living and the Dead” he mentions an notable contrast between worship at Bororo and other religious.
Strauss opens his discussion explaining a simple ritual object “bullroar” which is used at Bororo divine ceremonies. He argues the importance of a process during their worship which has no particular way to be practiced. He also gives the same example of easy going religious attitude like Buddhism that is attractive even for the non-believers, and then compares them with some serious worshiping manners in western countries which are also extremely grave in Eastern and medalist too, such as Islamic or Chinese rituals.
I think despite the particular beliefs in different cultures, those attitudes gives unity and special character to the societies which is not easy to compare. I also believe that today, according to the cultures’ background and folklore beliefs which structured by history, customs, or institutions, it’s not simple using terms; good or bad, ethical or unethical, mature or adolescent, and also civilized or savage.
Chris Poole
ReplyDeleteAS2000D
9/6/11
In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss says, “Journeys, those magic caskets full of dreamlike promises, will never again yield up their treasures untarnished.” This statement really impacted me and I think that it shows a particular sadness in Claude Levi-Strauss. It paints a bleak picture of the current state of mind in Western Civilization and of the very notion of exploration itself. I can very easily relate to the kind of modern person that Levi-Strauss is describing in his article; I, too, am a person who becomes completely engulfed by travel books and magazines at the store and who subsequently dreams of one day traveling to a foreign land and risking my life to discover piece of land that has yet to be touched by another human being. As humans, I think that we naturally seek to find new places, new ideas, and new people. It is the sharing of ideas and of discoveries that cause a society to grow and evolve into something more.
As with Levi-Strauss, I do however feel as though there is a responsible and irresponsible way to go about entering and exploring new civilizations and new worlds. Claude Levi-Strauss seems to follow the thought that much of the exploration of the past, and, unfortunately, the present, has been done without care or thought of how that society would be impacted for future generations. Obviously this is has proven to be detrimental to cultures and lands throughout history all across the world. This thought always leaves me in a crossroads of feeling confused about how far is okay to explore into un-contacted parts of the Earth. While growth and exploration is essential to the human spirit, the aftermath of such can be beyond damaging to others.