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-====== Week 5—Doing being, embodying structure, and the practice of social norms ======
+~~DECKJS~~
-===== Week 5—Doing being, embodying structure, and the practice of social norms =====
+====== Doing being, embodying structure, and the practice of social norms ======
+===== Doing being, embodying structure, and the practice of social norms =====
+Ryan Schram\\
+ANTH 2700: Key debates in anthropology\\
+ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au\\
+Social Sciences Building 410 (A02)\\
+Week of March 24, 2025 (Week 5)
+Slides available at https://anthro.rschram.org/2700/2025/5
 **Main reading:** Prentice (2015)
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 **Other reading:** Ortner (2006); Ortner (1984); Bourdieu (1990)
-//Homo duplex// has never been the only option.
+===== What is this thing called agency? =====
-If Durkheim’s premise, like Saussure’s, is that each individual person is a split subject (a member of //homo duplex//), the Marx’s concept of the human subject is that the individual is //homo faber// (the making, laboring, productive subject). It is through the interaction with the material world to obtain and exploit its resources that a person realizes themselves as a being, and in cooperation with others to get food and valuable things that societies form. Wolf and the Comaroffs use the idea of //homo faber// and a materialist theory of social life to argue against the Durkheimian social subject and the idea of societies as discrete totalities.
+Do you have **agency**?
-What if you had a social system, and nobody came?
+Where does this word apply for you? Where do you see yourself as an **agent**?
-Any social order ultimately needs people to actually perform the actions that make society possible.
+Where do you see other people as agents or as bearers of agency?
-Another tradition of thought starts with this problem. It rejects the idea that the social subject is split. Instead it argues that the most important thing about the human subject is that it is always thinking, and societies are people as individuals thinking together. Moreover, in this tradition, explanations of society should come from the bottom up, starting with how things look from the individual subject’s first-person point of view, and not from the top down as Durkheim wants.
+**What is the opposite of agency?**
-  * Durkheim represents what we may call methodological holism.
+Talk amongst yourselves about this for one minute.
-    * We are only interested in the hive mind, not the other, separate part of a subject’s mind where they experience the world as an individual.
-    * We look only at the whole system as an integrated totality, just as Saussure says language needs to be seen as a closed economy of signs.
-  * The alternative(([[https://anthro.rschram.org/max_weber|Max Weber]] is an important thinker who represents this alternative although I will not talk about him a lot in class.)) is methodological individualism.
-    * Social life, and whole societies, are the outcome of many different social actions, performed ultimately by individuals who choose to act, and make choices based on what these actions mean to them subjectively.
-Anthropology may have drawn a lot of inspiration from Durkheimian and Saussurean holism, but many people have said we need to also look at individuals’ actions from the bottom up too, because holism gives us an incomplete picture.
+===== Agency means many things =====
-This has come up again and again in anthropology. Ortner (1984) provides a classic paper with a quick and dirty history of this debate. Today, thanks to Ortner in fact, the idea of studying //practice// is a shorthand for this general skepticism about holism. This is argument for seeing societies as they are lived and actually carried out, and that means also seeing society from the perspective of its subjects.
+The entry for **agency, n.** in the //Oxford English Dictionary// is a mile long (see “Agency, n.” 2024).
-But the idea of practice is not so simple. Yes, people do have agency. Anybody can do whatever they want. Social rules aren’t actually objective things. We just act //as if// they are. (Remember //as if//, ANTH 1002 students? Good times.) Yet, if you think about it, what good is agency? We can all declare ourselves an independant country right now (Cohen and Gershon 2024). Did it work? No. So there has to be a more complex account of the role of agency. People don’t pick their parents, and they don’t pick their societies.
+==== II. Action, capacity to act. ====
-Reconciling holism and individualism as methodological perspectives is what Pierre Bourdieu sets out to do in his theory of social life as practices. He sees individual action as an important force in society, but he conceptualizes it in a new and counterintuitive way. He would argue that we embody society. We exist as social subject because we have a body, live in a body, and need to rely on social forces to learn how to use our bodies. This leads him to the idea of a //habitus//, and in anthropology today most conceptions of action and agency are based on a concept of a habitus. People act, and their actions have consequences because of how they have been trained to act. In that sense, agency is not free will or choice. It is part of an ongoing cycle between social forces and individual experiences. (And as we will see in future weeks, Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus is not the only one.)
+  * **II.4. Ability or capacity to act or exert power; active working or operation; action, activity.**
+    * For instance, //I know what we are supposed to do, but I can exercise **agency** to achieve what I think is best.//
+  * **II.5.a. Action or intervention producing a particular effect; means, instrumentality, mediation.**
+    * For example, //I just do what the policy says. The University accomplishes its aims through my **agency**.//
+===== You can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your historical conditions =====
+> Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. (Marx [1852] 1972, 595)
+> Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. (Marx [1852] 1972, 594)
+===== Squished under the weight of history’s heel =====
+Marx also says, **“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”** (Marx [1852] 1972, 595).
+That could be read in light of Durkheimian holism. Society—in the sense of a total system we see from the top down—then starts to sound like it’s a **boot on the face of the individual** historical actors in a society. Ouch!
+Maybe that is a little too pessimistic a view of how social forces determine the conditions in which individual actors operate and exercise agency.
+===== Two approaches to social explanation =====
+^**Methodological holism**^   ^**Methodological individualism**^
+|From the top down        |   |From the bottom up              |
+|Rules, norms, patterns   |   |Actions, projects, processes    |
+|Meaning is structural    |   |Meaning is intentional          |
+|Example: //langue//      |   |Example: //parole//             |
+* Nb. Although the //langue//–//parole// distinction for Saussure illustrates this difference in approaches, there can be holistic perspectives which are diachronic as well as synchronic.
+  * For instance, dialectical processes in history are diachronic but still concerned with a holistic perspective.
+  * We might say that methodological holism tends to be concerned with synchronic aspects of social life, but that’s not a defining quality.
+===== I know you didn’t just blink at me =====
+Clifford Geertz is a good example of methodological individualism (as is his student, Sherry Ortner). This is the influence of [[:max_weber|Weberian]] historical sociology on American cultural anthropology.
+Geertz would ask, //What’s the difference between a wink and a blink?// (Geertz 1973)
+  * For a structuralist, that’s easy: WINK [one eye closed]; BLINK [two eyes closed]. It’s a single **distinctive opposition** at the level of form which defines the boundary between two symbolic categories.
+  * Geertz replies that winking, unlike blinking or an eye twitch, requires thought and effort on the part of the winker. That’s why we notice it. The **intention of the winker** gives the winker’s action (winking) meaning.
+==== Back to square one? ====
+No. Both methodological individualism and methodological holism are important and neither one can simply be dismissed as wrong or bad:
+  * They both have pros and cons. They both make assumptions that should be examined skeptically.
+  * They are tools we can use for different specific problems of explanation. You use the right tool for the job. They aren’t dogmas.
+  * Even if you are strongly committed to one, you still need to be explain your ideas to people who are strongly committed to the other, and who reject //your// premises as naive and flawed.
+===== Agency and structure: Coexistence, not conflict =====
+Anthony Giddens takes stock of the two approaches. He argues that one of the central problems of social theory is **the relationship of structure to agency** (Giddens 1979).
+  * If we use simple ideas of these two terms, then we assume that every situation is defined by structure versus agency, like oil and water, always opposed.
+  * Giddens argues that we have to think about structure as something other than constraint and agency as something other than free will.
+    * Structure is the synchronic system that underlies experiences in diachronic time, the time in which agents act. It’s like a grammar that makes communication possible.
+    * Agency is action, but not all actions have effects, and many have unintended effects. (Even Geertz would agree.)
+    * Structure and agency are **two sides of the same coin**. We need to theorize the **duality of structure** as the foundation of social existence (Giddens 1979, 5). We can see each side, but //what is the coin itself?//
+  * When we redefine structure and agency, and see their relationship as the duality of structure, then we move into new territory. Social explanation is no longer about groups, norms, or even people.
+===== Pierre Bourdieu, master of the run-on sentence =====
+> The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu 1990, 53)
+===== To understand something, it helps to know what it is not =====
+Bourdieu’s //habitus// is not Mauss’s //habitus//.
+Like a good nephew, Mauss’s concept of a //habitus// is very Durkheimian: A //habitus// is a social fact.
+Specifically, a //habitus// is a “technique of the body” that one acquires as a norm (Mauss [1934] 1973).
+  * According to Mauss, men and women have different ways of making a fist and punching (Mauss [1934] 1973, 76). (I have the same questions you have.)
+    * A more familiar and persuasive example might be “man-spreading” versus sitting with crossed legs (Dunne 2016; Fitzsimmons 2014).
+  * American and French nurses’ ways of walking (Mauss [1934] 1973, 72).
+  * Japanese-Brazilian return migrants to Japan are immediately clocked as “//gaijin//” (foreigners) by Japanese nationals in public because of the return migrants’ distinctly Brazilian //habitus// on the Tokyo subway (Tsuda 2003, ix).
+===== Let’s pick the Bourdieusian habitus apart, clause by clause =====
+  * [Habitus is produced by]
+    * conditionings
+      * associated with a particular class of
+        * conditions
+          * of existence
+  * [Habitus is]
+    * a system
+      * of ~ dispositions
+        * durable
+        * transposable
+      * ~ structures
+        * structured
+        * [predisposed to function as] structuring
+  * [The “structuring structures” of the habitus are]
+    * principles which ~
+      * generate practice
+      * organize practice
+    * representations that ~
+      * can be objectively adapted to their outcomes
+        * without presupposing
+          * a conscious aiming at ends
+          * an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them [ends]
+===== References and further reading =====
+“Agency, n.” 2024. In //Oxford English Dictionary//. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1249589150.
-===== References =====
 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. “Structures, Habitus, Practices.” In //The Logic of Practice//, 52–65. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
-Cohen, Amy, and Ilana Gershon. 2024. “Prefigurative Neoliberalism: A Provisional Analysis of the Global Pseudolaw Movement.” Invited seminar, Ecole de Droit, Sciences Po, Paris, April 29. https://www.sciencespo.fr/ecole-droit/fr/evenements/prefigurative-neoliberalism-a-provisional-analysis-of-the-global-pseudolaw-movement/.
+Dunne, Carey. 2016. “Vintage Subway Etiquette Posters Reveal Manspreading Has Always Been Annoying.” //Hyperallergic// (blog). August 29, 2016. https://hyperallergic.com/319245/vintage-subway-etiquette-posters-reveal-manspreading-has-always-been-annoying/.
+Fitzsimmons, Emma G. 2014. “A Scourge Is Spreading. M.T.A.’s Cure? Dude, Close Your Legs.” //The New York Times//, December 20, 2014, sec. New York. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/nyregion/MTA-targets-manspreading-on-new-york-city-subways.html.
+Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Cultures.” In //The Interpretation of Cultures : Selected Essays//, 3–32. New York: Basic Books.
+Giddens, Anthony. 1979. //Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis//. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.
+Marx, Karl. (1852) 1972. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In //The Marx-Engels Reader//, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 594–617. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
+Mauss, Marcel. (1934) 1973. “Techniques of the Body.” //Economy and Society// 2 (1): 70–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147300000003.
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 Prentice, Rebecca. 2015. “‘Keeping Up with Style’: The Struggle for Skill.” In //Thiefing a Chance//, 111–42. Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155jp7p.10.
+Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2003. //Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective//. New York: Columbia University Press.