David M. Schneider

Rethinking Culture: A Project for Current Anthropologists [and Comments and Reply]

Culture as a concept has not been fully examined by the profession for some time. This article is a challenge to carry out this examination. It begins by discussing problems in the use of the concept and then goes on to suggest a new way of looking at culture: as a cultural pool, analogous to the gene pool (both culture and genes being forms of storing and retrieving information), from which each individual, each dyad, each group draws its particular body of culture; and as information coded twice, once in the brain and once externally, in language, stone, writing, repetitive behavior, and social institutions. It examines the implications of this view of culture for ethnography, comparative studies, and the study of evolution.

Schneider on Schneider : the conversion of the Jews and other anthropological stories

To listen to David M. Schneider is to hear the voice of American anthropology. To listen at length is to hear much of the discipline’s history, from the realities of postwar practice and theory to Schneider’s own influence on the development of symbolic and interpretive anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s. Schneider on Schneider offers readers this rare opportunity, and with it an engrossing introduction into a world of intellectual rigor, personal charm, and wit. In this work, based on conversations with Richard Handler, Schneider tells the story of his days devoted to anthropology—as a student of Clyde Kluckhohn and Talcott Parsons and as a writer and teacher whose work on kinship and culture theory revolutionized the discipline. With a master’s sense of the telling anecdote, he describes his education at Cornell, Yale, and Harvard, his fieldwork on the Micronesian island of Yap and among the Mescalero Apache, and his years teaching at the London School of Economics, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Musing on the current state and the future of anthropology, Schneider’s cast of characters reads like a who’s who of postwar social science. His reflections on anthropological field research and academic politics address some of the most pressing ethical and epistemological issues facing scholars today, while yielding tales of unexpected amusement. With its humor and irony, its wealth of information and searching questions about the state of anthropology, Schneider on Schneider not only provides an important resource for the history of twentieth-century social science, but also brings to life the entertaining voice of an engaging storyteller.

Virgin Births and Sterile Debates: Anthropology and the New Reproductive Technologies

Embryo research in Britain has been controversial and the 1984 Warnock report on human fertilization and embryology has been in the center of the battle over the legality of embryo research. Research is permitted under Parliamentary decision as of April 23 1990. The issue arouses feelings and thoughts about the nature of motherhood paternity biological inheritance the integrity of the family and the naturalness of birth and adds to the already difficulty struggles over sexuality reproduction gender relations and the family. Reproductive technologies raise questions 1) about the ethics and practicality of embryo experimentation 2) that challenge the structure of parenthood 3) about the feminist perspective on female reproductive capacity and male-dominated medical professions and 4) about anthropological concerns with marriage parenthood childbirth kinship and cultural patterns. Studies are cited which reflect an anthropological perspective on the impact of reproductive technologies on kinship and family structure. In vitro fertilization began in 1978 with the birth of Louise Brown. In 1984 the Warnock committee made recommendations that human embryo research 1) must be considered ethically acceptable and subject to stringent controls 2) subject to licensing up to the 14th day after fertilization 3) be monitored by a new independent statutory body 4) surrogacy be subject to criminal penalties when provided through surrogacy services by agencies or individual health professionals. Proposals for legislation based on 2 white papers were developed. The proposed Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill of 1990 established a statutory licensing body and either a ban on embryo research or authorization for limited research up to 14 days. Only the 2nd part of the Bill was approved. Embryo research is supported by medical and scientific establishments and justified as providing potential health benefits. Opposition to the bill included fear of criminal prosecution and religious belief about the protection of human life from conception. Scientific objections referred to violations of medical ethics and the Hippocratic oath. Feminists objected to the loss of identity to women. Artificial insemination raised issues about social parenthood and biological procreation and surrogacy raised ones about family integrity and social order. The legal issue of freezing embryos was dealt with in the Commission report. Many institutions in society have a vested interest in controlling reproduction and the repercussions of the new reproductive technologies challenge basic ideas.

Some muddles in the models: or, how the system really works

Part one. Alliance I. The phrase ̳alliance theory‘ and its opposition to what has been called ̳descent theory‘ was first suggested by Dumont (1961a). Alliance theory, with roots clearly in Durkheim and Mauss, has specifically arisen out of Levi-Strauss‘s Structures élémentaires . . . (1949) and has been developed by Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Leach, and Needham. Descent theory also has its roots in Durkheim and Mauss, but its development has been through Radcliffe-Brown to Fortes, Goody, Gough, Gluckman, and, in certain respects, Firth.

Ancient Society and Morgan's Kinship Theory 100 Years After [and Comments and Reply]

The synchronic, antievolutionary approach to kinship has made it impossible to grasp its nature and define it adequately. Understanding of the phenomenon is tobe found in the implications of Morgans distinction between the classificatory and descriptive systems of kinship. These systems are based respectively on the tribal and family organizations, each giving rise to a different notion of kinship: one as recognition of common identity in a material substance, the other as the relationships established by common descent. These notions are irreconcilable and hence unamentable to a single definition, although one develops dialectically out of the other. In the evolutionary process whereby the family develops within the tribal organization, the family notion of kinship, developing concomitantly, butts against the classificatory system stemming from the tribal organization and modifies it according to the specific conditions of each tribe, giving rise to the great variety of kinship systems observed. As the family asserts itself, it overthrows the classificatory system, replacing it by the descriptive system. The tribal notion of kinship, though surviving in popular imagination, gives way to the modern concept of kinship as consisting of purely genealogical relationships. The present interpretation rejects the postulated primacy of the nuclear family and the implied development of the classificatory system posteriorly to the descriptive, of clan structure posteriorly to the family, of unilineal descent posteriorly to bilateral descent, etc. The insurmountable theoretical difficulties which such developments entail are noted, and historical evidence is produced of the opposite evolutionary trend, which not only accounts for the particularities of the classificatory and descriptive systems, but also sheds light on the origin of the classificatory system and the notion of kinship itself. Lastly, Morgans inconsistencies respecting the opposition between tribe and family, on which rests his discovery of the distinction between the classificatory and descriptive systems, are accounted for and shown to explain some of his major errors.

Robert C. Suggs. Marquesan Sexual Behavior. Pp. xviii, 251. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966.

The theme runs clearly through Gordon’s work and explains a lot. Before World War II, &dquo;except for the maraboutiste leaders and the Communist Party, each party (Messali’s, Abbas’, Ben Badis’) held views which were an amalgam in different proportions of the modern Western and of the Islamic-Arab.... The tension between the ’modern’ and the ’Islamic’ characterizes the Algerian drama to this day (p. 33).... If only to counteract the French superimposition, Algerians tend to identify their Revolution, culturally, with the Arabic Nahda, the ’awakening’ (or arising) that began in the nineteenth century. [p. 177] ... It was with a self-contradictory commitment to both [the] Evian [Accords] and [the] Tripoli [Programme] that the new Algerian nation was to face its destiny [p. 79] .... Two ideological tendencies are evident in the Programme which might or might not be contradictory-one is Marxist and the other is Moslem.... If these