Richard J. Parmentier

Signs in society : studies in semiotic anthropology

Acknowledgments Introduction Part I Foundations of Peircean Semiotics 1 Peirce Divested for Nonintimates Sign, Object, and Interpretant Symbols and Legisigns Language and Logic The Trichotomies Scientific Knowledge and Cultural Belief 2 PeirceOs Concept of Semiotic Mediation The Fundamental Model of Semiotic Mediation Semiotic Mediation and the Correlates of the Sign Thirdness as Mediation Sign as Medium of Communication Part II Signs in Ethnographic Context 3 Transactional Symbolism in Belauan Mortuary Rites Responses to Death Initial Funeral Transactions Burial Practices Final Transactions Conclusion 4 The Political Function of Reported Speech Authoritative Speech Ethnographic Context NgiraklangOs Speech to the Council Metapragmatic Elements in the Speech Textual Pragmatics Part III Comparative Perspectives on Complex Semiotic Processes 5 Tropical Semiotics Levels of Semiosis Collectivizing and Differentiating Sybolization Convention and Innateness Obviational Exchange Tropes and Narrative Foi Cultural Semiotics 6 The Semiotic Regimentation of Social Life Social Action and Semiotic Text Content and Type in Ritual Performativity Institutional Regimentation of Touristic Experience Ideological Regimentation in Advertising Part IV Social Theory and Social Action 7 Comparison, Pragmatic, and Interpretation Models and Strategies of Comparison Comparative Philosophy of Religion as a Discipline Comparison and Interpretation as Practical Reason Directions for Future Research 8 Naturalization of Convention Arbitrariness and Motivation Naturalization in Social Theory Naturalization and Conventionalization in Social Reality Conclusion Notes References Index

The history of the Pacific Islands : kingdoms of the reefs

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Representing Transcendence: The Semiosis of Real Presence

The double function of representation as “standing for” and “making present again” is explored in two case studies of ancient Egyptian cult statues and medieval Christian eucharistic transubstantiation. The experience of the “real presence” of the transcendent accomplished by ritual action is, in both cases, mediated by regimenting metasemiotic texts that proclaim and justify sacramental ontologies of transcendent realities that provide, in turn, models for their very representability in perceptible semiotic mediators. The concept of the “circle of semiosis” is proposed as a counter to scholarly efforts to anchor the variability of solutions to the paradox of representing the nonrepresentable in terms of their positioning relative to an “axial breakthrough” or to analyze metasemiotic texts as being primarily post hoc interpretations of universal psychological tendencies to see beyond the here and now.

Troubles with trichotomies: Reflections on the utility of Peirce's sign trichotomies for social analysis

Abstract This essay assesses the potentials and limitations of using Peirces trichotomies of sign classes for social analysis, first, by examining selective applications of the model that rely primarily on the Icon-Index-Symbol division and, second, by exploring several extensions that move beyond a strict interpretation of Peirce. While process and complexity are shown to be not as productive as hoped, metasemiotic metaphors of replication are examined as the key to the creative power of indexicality

Semiotic degeneracy of social life: Prolegomenon to a human science of semiosis

Abstract This paper explores Peirces method of semiotic exemplification by a careful examination of his thinking about the relationship between interpretation and replication, the subdivision of signs into genuine and degenerate classes, and the role of logically necessary systems of representation in guiding the growth of scientific knowledge. Examples of Peirces forays into topics usually treated within the social sciences and humanities demonstrate both the imperialism and the delimitation of his semiotic method.

Haole-ing in the wind : On the rhetoric of identity anthropology

What I do as an anthropologist is to understand culture, or a culture; and such understanding must surely be through the prism of my own cultural subjectivity. Yet the dialogue I carry on is not with the culture: it is an understanding about culture that I carry out in dialogical form with my colleagues from where it spills over into modern life and thought, influencing that life in a variety of ways. This spill, this overflow has affected the discourse of the intelligentsia in probably every modern city in the world today. While it cannot provide the energy, the blindness, and the passion that religious and political fundamentalisms give to their adherents, it has at least that potential to influence a vision of a more humane world order (Obeyesekere 1990b: 274). Material forces and circumstances always lead a double life in human societies; they are at once physical and meaningful. Without ceasing to be objectively compelling, they are endowed with the symbolic values of a certain cultural field. Reciprocally then, without ceasing to be symbolic, cultural categories and relationships are endowed with materiality... It is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves that our pretended rationalist discourse is pronounced in a particular cultural dialect. Western capitalism in its totality is a truly exotic cultural scheme, as bizarre as any other, marked by the subsumption of material rationality in a vast order of symbolic relationships. We are too much misled by the apparent pragmatism of production and commerce. This whole cultural organization of our economy remains invisible, mystified as the pecuniary rationality by which its arbitrary values are realized (Sahlins 1994b: 384).

The “Savvy Interpreter”: Performance and Interpretation in Pindar’s Victory Odes

Pindar’s epinikia challenge their original audiences to play the role of the “savvy interpreters” of these complex choral praise poems. Their interpretive skillfulness enables them to overcome obstacles purposively set by the poet. The ideal interpretation, an “entextualized” and overarching “metapragmatic interpretant,” is not static since these odes invite their hearers to vicariously travel alongside the deictically calibrated narrative ego and, equipped with insight drawn from interwoven exemplary myths and gnomic maxims, to insure that momentary praise for victors leads to their widespread if not immortal “glory” (kleos). The central argument of the article is that the odes develop an extended analogy between athletic prowess/victory and poetic excellence/performance that links the generation of kleos with the potential for recontextualized reperformances. This semiotically mediated “pragmatic” process is originally modelled by the poetic ego and then sequentially constructed and enacted/performed by savvy interpreters, including later readers.

Representation, Symbol, and Semiosis: Signs of a Scholarly Collaboration

In focusing on “semiosis,” or sign process, the journal Signs and Society was established to advance through multidisciplinary research the theoretical work of Peirce, the founder of “semiotics,” and Saussure, the founder of “semiology.” This essay provides a brief “representation” of the history of the collaborative relationship between the Semiosis Research Center at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University, a relationship that is itself a kind of “symbol” entextualized in the pages of Signs and Society.

After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888-1951

Prologue - Tylor and the reformation of anthropology centre and periphery - armchair anthropology, missionary ethnography and evolutionary theory animism, totemism and christianity - a pair of heterodox Scottish evolutionists from the armchair to the field - the Darwinian zoologist as ethnographer the Frazerian moment - evolutionary anthropology in disarray the revival of diffusionist ethnology from fieldwork to functionalism -Malinowski and the emergence of British social anthropology from cultural psychology to social structure - Radcliffe-Brown and the delimitation of social anthropology anthropological institutions, colonial interests and the first cohorts of social anthropologists epilogue - moment and tradition in the history of British social anthropology.

Affinities and Extremes: Crisscrossing the Bittersweet Ethnology of East Indies History, Hindu-Balinese Culture, and Indo-European Allure

Examining representations of Balinese culture in complex contexts of Indonesias colonial history, Hindu ritual practice as opposed to Islam, and comparative Indo-European hierarchies, Boon offers a powerful critique of doctrinal approaches to culture, religion, literature, politics, and the history of ideas and disciplines.