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1002:4.2.2 [2019/10/29 02:39] – [Two contradictions] Ryan Schram (admin) | 1002:4.2.2 [Unknown date] (current) – removed - external edit (Unknown date) 127.0.0.1 | ||
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- | ~~DECKJS~~ | ||
- | # The politics of the corpse | ||
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- | ## The politics of the corpse | ||
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- | Ryan Schram | ||
- | ANTH 1002: Anthropology in the world | ||
- | Module 4, Week 2, Lecture 2 | ||
- | Social Sciences Building (A02), Room 410 | ||
- | ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au | ||
- | October 30, 2019 | ||
- | Available at http:// | ||
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- | ## Two contradictions | ||
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- | On Monday we discussed a basic paradox that all societies face: People are mortal, but societies are immortal. When a person dies, society as a whole has to act in order to go on. | ||
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- | * There is a fundamental contradiction in all societies between the social totality and the material world. | ||
- | * In Merina society, this is also an **ideological** contradiction. Burial in ancestral tombs creates a picture of a perfect society, but one also that only exists when people are dead and become ancestors. This perfect picture **masks** reality. | ||
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- | ## Like looking in a mirror | ||
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- | In Portland, Oregon, an anthropology professor goes to the coffee shop, and conducts some impromptu ethnographic fieldwork. She hears: | ||
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- | > I wonder what it is like to have a culture. | ||
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- | ## Today, Auhelawa has two cultural scripts for death | ||
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- | When I carried out fieldwork in Auhelawa, many people told me that their mortuary practices were *kastam* (custom, tradition), and a lot of people wished they would just go away. | ||
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- | * *Masele* (light, as opposed to darkness, *guguyou*) is the way people talk about the present in contrast to the past, a framework learned from Christianity. | ||
- | * *Bwabwale* and feasts are *kastam*, so they are *guguyou*; Many people wanted there to be a *masele* way to mourn. | ||
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- | ## Two other contradictions | ||
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- | * Contradictions between values, or dilemmas between two equally important ideas. | ||
- | * Individual health versus individual choice | ||
- | * Contradictions that emerge in history, when societies interact and influence each other. | ||
- | * Societies are total systems, yet no society exists in isolation, and at any moment people occupy an intersection of multiple systems. | ||
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- | ## Nostalgia | ||
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- | Long's informants in the US and Japan are " | ||
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- | * There is no right way to die. | ||
- | * As members of their society, their function is to make a choice about how they want to die. | ||
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- | ### The medical script | ||
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- | * One option is to trust doctors as scientific experts to make decisions | ||
- | * Yet to do this is to define death as bad in opposition to life. | ||
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- | ### The revivalist script | ||
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- | * Another way people resolve this is to look to an idealized version of other cultures, whom they imagine find authentic meaning in death. | ||
- | * For them, other people' | ||
- | * Yet, as a " | ||
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- | ## Modernism | ||
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- | In their own way, Auhelawa people were also " | ||
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- | ### The masele script | ||
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- | * As Christians, they are equal to every other Christian, no matter who they are or where they come from. | ||
- | * Yet to do Christianity, | ||
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- | ### The kastam script | ||
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- | * Kastam is valuable because it is unique to Auhelawa, and a source of pride and identity | ||
- | * Yet in order to be this kind of value, it can never change. And it has changed because cultures are always changing. | ||
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- | ## Cultural scripts are never one-person shows | ||
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- | If social life is like the script of a play, and people play the roles in the script, then any cultural script needs to be shared. | ||
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- | As Long also argues, no single script is complete. People need to recruit other people to play the other parts in their script. | ||
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- | Yet other people have their own scripts, and will be looking for you to play a role in their script. | ||
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- | ## Quiz: You can go home again | ||
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- | A few weeks ago, we discussed migration. At the time I said that many people operate with an assumption that their migration is circular (and contrary to the standard narrative of migration in the US, e.g. *An American Tail* and *An American Tail II: Fievel Goes West*). | ||
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- | When migrants die away from home, they may be repatriated to their homelands to be buried. So in a sense their migration is circular. In spite of their untimely death, their migratory journey still functions within an overall social system. When people' | ||
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- | Go to Canvas and take *Quiz 21: You can go home again*. | ||
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- | The code will be announced in class. | ||
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- | ## Reference | ||
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- | Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1978 (1762). On the Social Contract, with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy. Edited by Roger D. Masters. Translated by Judith R. Masters. New York: St. Martin’s Press. http:// | ||
1002/4.2.2.1572341963.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/10/29 02:39 by Ryan Schram (admin)