Symbolic Anthropology (Anthropology)

This dissertation interprets and explains the cultural symbols used by the Azande in rituals concerning babies and rituals concerning mourners. The formal apparatus used in the analysis contributes to a general theory of cultural meaning. Understanding the logic of analogy aids the anthropological investigation of cultural meaning systems. Formal theories of analogy are evaluated, compared, modified and applied to field data. The theories considered are those of Klein,  Durrenburger and Morrison, Hesse, and Lorrain. Lorrain's theory is found to have models equivalent to models of each of the other theories. Lorrain's theory is also the most suitable to cultural meanings that relate semantically diverse domains. Thus Lorrain's theory is used in the analysis of ritual data. The data was collected in Southern Sudan in 1983-1985 during nineteen months of participant-observation among the Azande. The process of mourning and the process for a baby to enter Zande society are both accomplished through series of rituals. Each ritual affects a change in the condition of the baby or mourner, placing the person in transition in a new stage with a set of secular powers enabling relationships to people in various social categories. The ritual process begins with the disruption of a structural equivalence which is then replaced through ritual action. The transformation of conceptual structures in the two sequences is similar. Other similarities between the two sequences are the changes in secular powers of the person in transition. The person in transition is socially powerless when the original structural equivalence is disrupted. Powers are gradually bestowed on the baby or mourner. The fact of gradual bestowal of secular power is related to the nature of the liminal period. In the Azande case it is a period of contradictory attributes, such as Douglas anticipates, rather than a period lacking attributes, as Turner has claimed.

From the perspective of evolution and semiotics, Homo techno may be artistically imaged a a new "species" that is capable of makin increasingly powerful and sophisticated tools due to an increasingly creative adoption of purely symbolic sign systems.  At the heart of this image, however, reigns a perplexing confusion about meaning that is characterized in the founding myth for the concept of Original Sin.  The symbolic systems used to make our tools place us in situations where we spontaneously abduct religious meanings.  When that abduction figures in selfish motivations, the result is a religious conviction that further alienates the person from what otherwise would be the natural meaning of religious representations.

Che Gevara as a commercial brend

Некоммерческих символов не бывает. Как не бывает коммерции без символов — концентратов обмена — информационного, товарного, телесного. При этом самыми дорогими в коммерческом отношении являются торговые марки самых массовых продуктов. Если ваш продукт «кока-кола», то вы — обладатель самой дорогой торговой марки. А если ваш продукт — революция или массовое движение? Можно ли сравнивать серп и молот, силуэт Ленина, Маркса или Че Гевары с вензелем «кока-колы»?

In various cultural and religious contexts, from West Asia to Southeast Asia, we come across a number of quite similar creation myths in which a peacock, seated on a cosmic tree, plays a central part. For the Yezidis, a sect of Sufi origins that has moved away from Islam, the Peacock Angel, who is the most glorious of the angels, is the master of the created world. This belief may be related to early Muslim cosmologies involving the Muhammadan Light (Nur Muhammad), which in some narratives had the shape of a peacock and participated in creation. In a different set of myths, the peacock and the Tree of Certainty (shajarat al-yaqīn) play a role in Adam and Eve's fall and expulsion from Paradise. The central myth of the South Indian Hindu cult of the god Murugan also involves a tree and a peacock. The myth is enacted in the annual ritual of Thaipusam, like the Nur Muhammad myth is still enacted annually in  the  Maulid  festival  of  Cikoang  in  South  Sulawesi.  Images of the  peacock, originating from South India, have moved across cultural and religious boundaries and have been adopted as representing the different communities’ peacock myths.

O presente livro é fruto de cinco anos de pesquisas durante minha graduação em Psicologia. Trata de um livro de pesquisa científica, com bolsa da Fapesp. O livro visa o estudo dos símbolos religiosos e sua relação com a Maçonaria, bem como, fazer uma análise, através da História e da Psicologia, e de outras ciências humanas, para compreender os motivos da existência da crença popular de que a Ordem maçônica seja uma espécie de culto diabólico. O mesmo pode ser adquirido no site da editora: www.editoramultifoco.com.br . Estará disponível a partir de 28/09.

(Đây là bản thảo của bài viết đăng trên Tạp chí Khoa học xã hội (TPHCM) số 5(189)-2014) Từ những năm 60-70 của thế kỷ XX, việc tìm hiểu văn hóa của các cộng đồng người thông qua biểu tượng trở nên phổ biến trong lĩnh vực nhân học văn hóa (McGee & Warms 2008:482). Cách tiếp cận biểu tượng dựa trên giả định cho rằng hành động của con người có mang ý nghĩa và phân tích ý nghĩa là trọng tâm của nhân học. Do xem văn hóa là một hiện tượng tinh thần nên các nhà nhân học biểu tượng phản bác quan niệm nghiên cứu văn hóa dựa theo mô hình toán học hoặc logic học của các nhà dân tộc phân loại học hay các nhà nhân học nhận thức (McGee & Warms 2008:482). Và tiếp cận biểu tượng cũng là một sự phản ứng với thuyết lựa chọn duy lý cũng như thuyết duy vật (Lương Văn Hy 2011) vốn phổ biến ở nhiều ngành trong những thế kỷ trước đó. Cách tiếp cận biểu tượng gồm nhiều khuynh hướng, trong đó hai hướng phân tích nổi trội là khuynh hướng diễn giải và khuynh hướng tiếp cận cấu trúc chức năng (McGee & Warms 2008:482; Ortner 1984:128). 1. KHUYNH HƯỚNG DIỄN GIẢI Đại diện cho khuynh hướng diễn giải trong cách tiếp cận biểu tượng là Clifford Geertz (1926-2006). Theo tinh thần chung của cách tiếp cận này, Geertz xem việc khảo sát ý nghĩa là trọng tâm của những công trình nghiên cứu văn hóa. Luận điểm quan trọng của ông là xem văn hóa như " một tập hợp các bản văn ". Trong tiểu luận Đam mê cờ bạc – Những ghi chép về chọi gà ở Bali (Deep play: Notes in the Balinese Cockfight), Geertz viết rằng: " Nếu người nào đó xem đá gà, hay bất kỳ cấu trúc biểu tượng ổn định chung nào như là phương tiện cho việc " nói điều nào đó về thứ gì đó " (dẫn lại câu ngạn ngữ nổi tiếng của Aristotle), thì người đó đối mặt với một vấn đề không phải trong guồng máy xã hội mà là ngữ nghĩa xã hội. Đối với nhà nhân học vốn có sự quan tâm đến các nguyên tắc xã hội được công thức hóa, thì vấn đề không phải là khuyến khích hay khen ngợi đá gà, mà là người đó có thể học được gì về những nguyên tắc từ việc khảo sát văn hóa như là một sự tập hợp các bản văn? " (1973c:448) 1. Văn hóa – vấn đề ngữ nghĩa xã hội mà Geertz đề cập – có liên quan chặt chẽ đến biểu tượng. Với ông, biểu tượng là phương tiện thể hiện và trao truyền văn hóa, nói khác đi là thể hiện và trao truyền những khuôn mẫu của ý nghĩa (pattern of meanings). Nhờ vào phương tiện này, con người có thể giao tiếp với nhau, ghi nhớ và phát triển kiến thức của mình về cuộc sống, đồng thời hình thành những thái độ trước cuộc sống (1973b:89). Geertz không chú ý nhiều đến việc phân loại hay hệ thống hóa các loại biểu tượng khác nhau. Ông cũng không nhấn mạnh đến sự 1 Tạm dịch từ nguyên văn: If one takes the cockfight, or any other collectively sustained symbolic structure, as a means of " saying something of something " (to invoke a famous Aristotelian tag), then one is faced with a problem not in social mechanics but social semantics. For the anthropologist, whose concern is with formulating sociological principles, not with promoting or appreciating cockfights, the question is, what does one learn about such principles from examining culture as an assemblage of texts?

Symbols are important cultural expressions that may be circulated through both time and space as groups appropriate, modify, and ascribe new meanings to them within a larger context of cultural appropriation and invented tradition. I explore this process by looking at the construction of religious folk histories and how they related to the use of symbols by different groups of Celtic Neo-Pagan or " Ethnopagan " traditions in the United States and Britain. Data from print and electronic sources are analyzed to determine how these Ethnopagans appropriate, reinterpret, inflate, and conflate ancient Celtic and other European symbols, as well as recently invented symbols, into their ethnoreligious folk histories and repertoires. This process, including the appropriation of Celtic identity, is discussed in terms of its potential role in the construction, marking, legitimization, and validation of these ethnoreligious traditions and identities.

Since Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's classic study on Basic Color Terms, the universal chromatic trio of white, red, and black became a matter of scholarly interest. This article examines uses of this chromatic trio to depict ideal womanhood in European fairy tales. Chrétien de Troyes wrote that the sight of three drops of blood on snow reminds Perceval of his sweetheart; seven centuries later, the Grimms presented a queen wishing for a tricolor daughter after looking at three drops of blood on the snow. This image is tenacious in the fairy-tale realm, and the time seems ripe for addressing it.

Airports serve as gateways to cities or countries. They are symbolic buildings, the first and last impressions and experiences for visitors. In their early days, airports evoked modernity and impressiveness. Then, during a period of frequent hijacking in the 1960s, they transformed into places of security. Later on, they manifested into “non-places,” as Marc Auge observed, as their super-modernity deprived them of those qualities that created and defined the identity of a place or its relation to the city or country it was introducing. Today, successful airport architecture balances between the global and local character representations in their design features. Airport architecture often leans toward localization when airports are part of a nation-building process, and when they ascribe to regional character and culture, they become city portrayers.
This thesis explores how an airport can architecturally represent its city, region, culture, nation and metropolitan or national character as opposed to imparting a global, generic, non-place image on the arriving passenger. The research comprises two main points. First, it examines, from an architectural point of view, the consequences of the Iraqi government’s shutting down of the Kurdistan region airports as a punishment for the Kurdistan referendum. Then reviews representations of regional character in airports by investigating literature and airport design precedents, thus establishing background and criteria to study the case study of Sulaymaniyah International Airport in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. It also analyzes the efficiency of the airport’s performance and tackles its architectural design problems.

Уже на ранних этапах своего развития человечество особо выделяло коршуна и грифа среди других представителей рода пернатых. Им отводилось важное место в образно-знаковом осмыслении темы жизни и смерти. В Древнем Египте поклонялись и грифу, и коршуну.

В своей бакалаврской работе я попытался описать роль стрельбы из лука в культурной и социально-политической жизни маньчжуров, народа, правившего Китаем на протяжении двух с половиной веков.

Основное внимание уделено:
1) Символическому значению лука у маньчжуров и родственных им народов.
2) Роли лука в маньчжурском языке.
3) Роли стрельбы из лука в политической идеологии и национальной идентичности маньчжуров.

Основные источники - Дацин Личао Шилу и Маньвэнь Лаодан, главные теоретики, на работы которых опирается работа - Эллиотт,  Геллнер, Лакофф и Хобсбаум.

Особая благодарность Питеру Деккеру и Константину Тертицкому.

The fourth known pre-Columbian Maya codex—the only one discovered in the 20th century—was found by looters in the mid-1960s. First exhibited in New York in 1971, what has come to be known as the Grolier Codex is half of a hybrid-style 20-page, 104-year Mesoamerican divinatory Venus Almanac. With new radiocarbon dates that place it in the 13th century CE, it is likely to be the oldest surviving book on paper from the Americas as well as the only ancient Maya codex now residing in Mexico. Although most Mayanists have accepted it as authentic, based in part on the author’s 40 years of research,* it remains an unacknowledged Mexican national treasure as it has never been officially recognized except in the State of Chiapas. Mesoamerican Venus Almanacs were widely used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to regulate practices of sacred warfare and ritual sacrifice, the goal of which was to obtain captives whose blood was shed to invoke the personified forces of rain and fertility. The Grolier Codex offers unique images of 10 of the 20 manifestations of Venus (named in the Maya Dresden Codex), greatly enriching our knowledge of these traditions documented in four other pre-Columbian codices as well as numerous archaeological and ethnohistoric sources. This article is a summary of the talk given on November 7, 2014 to the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington DC and includes a brief history of accounts of the discovery of the Grolier Codex and allegedly associated artifacts; photographic history; outlines the author’s comprehensive program of research, including several new scientific discoveries leading to an interpretation of the Codex—based on the Dresden Codex and other sources; and offers a new Latinized name that recognizes that the “Codex Mayano-Mexicanus” is an authentic ancient book deriving from the Maya culture and now properly residing in Mexico.

          *See <http://umd.academia.edu/JohnBCarlson>.

Also utilized as part of the November 7, 2014 talk are TWO 1983 historical STUDY GUIDE documents which can be viewed at the following academia.edu links:

• GROLIER CODEX Page Study Guide: Pages 1-9 and Reconstructed Page 10/11 (1983): 

https://www.academia.edu/7911420/GROLIER_CODEX_Page_Study_Guide_Pages_1-9_and_Reconstructed_Page_10_11

• GROLIER CODEX Comparative Study Guide (1983): Grolier pages 1-9 and reconstructed page 10/11 with Maya Dresden Codex Venus Almanac page numbers 48/1 – 50/2 with Venus Station and Directional Associations; Names (on Dresden Rows 17 & 22) of the associated Venus Impersonators; and Initial (1983) interpretations of the Grolier Codex scenes & iconographic interpretations. Over the three decades since 1983, some of the glyphic and iconographic interpretations have changed, as discussed in the presentation. The details are in press:

https://www.academia.edu/9208071/GROLIER_CODEX_Comparative_Study_Guide_1983_

*****

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

The 1960s witnessed the emergence of symbolic anthropology, a theoretical paradigm that called attention to the importance of symbols, meaning, and interpretation in the study of culture. By challenging the hitherto popular grand theories and arguing for the use of literary-based devices in cultural analysis, symbolic anthropology became an important force in the revisionist movement that was taking place in the discipline at the time. Within this paradigm, two major schools of thought dominated in these years. The British school was concerned with how symbols serve as mechanisms for the maintenance of society, as illustrated in the work of Victor Turner and Mary Douglas. The American school was concerned with the study of culture as a symbolic system independent of societal conditions, as exemplified in the work of Clifford Geertz. Geertz’s most enduring contribution was the concept of “thick description” which anticipated postmodernist thinking in anthropology. In this paper, Geertz’s brand of interpretivism is thoroughly examined—first through the elaboration of his stance on cultural theory, and second through an assessment of his ethnographic fieldwork—with the intention of critically appraising the substantive underpinnings of symbolic anthropology, specifically its American stripe.

Keywords: American symbolic anthropology, thick description, Balinese cockfight, postmodernism

The fourth known pre-Columbian Maya codex, the only one discovered in the twentieth century, was found by looters in the mid-1960s. First exhibited in New York in 1971, what has come to be known as the  Grolier Codex is half of a 20-page, 104-year divinatory hybrid-style Mesoamerican Venus Almanac, probably the physically oldest surviving pre-Columbian book, and with new radiocarbon dates that place it in the thirteenth century CE. It is likely to be the oldest surviving book on paper from the Americas as well as the only ancient Maya codex now residing in Mexico. Although most Mayanists have accepted it as authentic, based in part on the author’s 40 years of research, it remains an unacknowledged Mexican national treasure, as it has never been officially recognized. Mesoamerican Venus Almanacs were widely used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to regulate practices of sacred warfare, the goal of which was to obtain captives for sacrifice, their blood shed to invoke the personified forces of rain and fertility. The  Codex offers unique images of 10 of the 20 manifestations of Venus, greatly enriching our knowledge of these traditions. The present study offers a brief history of accounts of the discovery of the Codex and allegedly associated artifacts; presents a documented photographic history; outlines the author’s comprehensive program of research, including several new scientific discoveries; and offers a new Latinized name that recognizes that the Codex Mayano-Mexicanus is an authentic ancient book deriving from the Maya culture and now properly residing in Mexico.


*****
This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Η εργασία αυτή αφορά τον «πολιτισμό», μία κεντρική αναλυτική κατηγορία της ανθρωπολογίας αλλά  και μια καθιερωμένη έννοια του σύγχρονου τρόπου ζωής, που αποτελεί σήμερα ένα δυναμικό πεδίο αμφισβήτησης, αντιπαράθεσης, διεκδίκησης και ιδιοποίησης στον χώρο των κοινωνικών επιστημών, διότι ο πολιτισμός, ως έννοια και ως πρακτική, διαπερνά όλες τις εκφάνσεις της ζωής μας: προσωπικές και κοινωνικές σχέσεις, περιβάλλον, τεχνολογία, τέχνες, πολιτική, επιστήμη. Εξάλλου ο πολιτισμός δεν αναφέρεται μόνο στα ποικίλα έργα των ανθρώπων αλλά αναδεικνύει τις δράσεις και τις διαδικασίες με τις οποίες οι άνθρωποι δημιουργούν και νοηματοδοτούν τα έργα τους σ’ έναν συγκεκριμένο χώρο και χρόνο.    Έτσι οι χρήσεις του όρου στο πεδίο των κοινωνικών επιστημών, και ειδικά στο πλαίσιο των πολιτισμικών σπουδών, αποκτούν διάφορες εννοιολογήσεις ανάλογα με τα ιστορικά και κοινωνικά συμφραζόμενα, έχουν όμως πάντοτε έναν έντονο διεπιστημονικό χαρακτήρα, αφού άλλωστε και η ίδια η ανθρωπολογία σήμερα δεν είναι ένα ομοιογενές πεδίο έρευνας αλλά έχει κατακερματισθεί σε ένα πλήθος νέων ειδικεύσεων και αντικειμένων .

By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realisation of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as the world — as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness.

The allegorical representation of the Five Senses was formed as a kind of iconography in the Middle Ages, however this subject got the peak of its popularity at the Late Renaissance / Early Baroque epoch. The senses were represented as sitting female figures with attributes. Some of the painters, mostly belonging to Antwerp school, combined the allegory with other subjects like Biblical scenes, the Greek gods or architectural orders. In the first half of XVII century the allegory was infiltrated as a motive into still life paintings and the scenes with “Merry companies”. The same time the iconology of the senses was spited into two types to represent the proper and improper use of abilities for perception.
The earliest illustration to the parable of wise and foolish virgins is from Rossano Gospels of VI century. The iconographic canon for this subject was finally shaped to X–XI centuries: the virgins were represented as two standing groups, with their lamps up or down. Such compositions were typical for the portals of Gothic cathedrals and miniatures. The new trend appeared in XVI century when the virgins started to be represented as sitting ones, with some of attributes for the Senses. Such combination of the virgins with the Senses was especially typical for the painters and engravers who got their training or work in Antwerp, so the taste for combining two different subjects in a piece of work is one of the features of this local school.

The following article is a detailed attempt to go beyond the visual representation of a circular brooch. This jewelry handicraft comes from the Aurès mountains of North Africa. Geographically, the  mountain range stretches in the easternmost part of the Atlas mountains, close to the Tunisian border. Located in the southeastern part of Algeria, these mountains separate the Mediterranean side of the country from the Sahara. This is the home of the Chaoui Berbers, who have managed to preserve their ancestral art and culture in a relative seclusion. The circular brooch presented here looks identical to those found among the Algerian Kabyles1 or other Berber tribes from Morocco. It is estimated to date back to the 19th century or perhaps beginning of 20th century. After describing thoroughly the motifs and the components of the brooch, the author tries to give a symbolic significance to its design in relation to its past and its traditional inspiration. By comparing the patterns with previous research done on Moroccan Berber rugs, this type of brooch appears to play the role of a typical amulet for married women and relates a sort of sexual significance meant to initiate future mothers-to-be within their environment as well as within a more universal dimension. The study also raises a few questions pertaining to history and its connection to the Chaoui people in particular or to the ancestral Berber community in general.

This essay asks why wronged husbands should have been associated with the he-goat (as in cabrón) and the cuckoo (as in cuckold). It examines folk notions regarding procreation, sexual fluids, and transmissible horns. The discussion also probes the connection of horned beasts and the cuckoo with cyclic time, and their purported role as purveyors of fertility to wedded couples.

NOTE: A revised version of this paper may be found in my Archeology of Intangible Heritage (New York: Lang, 2008).