Europe 2

Slide1 : Paper S6(b) Ethnographic Areas: Europe, 2007-08 Issues in the Anthropology of Europe Lecture 2 The Other at Home: Patronage, Anthropology and the Mediterranean Plan of the lecture: Early beginnings Critiques Stereotypes (Download this powerpoint at www.candea.net/teaching.htm)


Slide2 : Introduction (Europe and the Mediterranean in 1190)


Slide3 : Introduction


Slide4 : The Mediterranean through “Patronage” Plan of the lecture: Early beginnings “Amoral familism” Structural functionalism Critiques Transactionalism Marxism Stereotypes Ours (anthropology as Orientalism) Theirs (the ethnography of stereotypes) Introduction


Slide5 : The Mediterranean through “Patronage” Plan of the lecture: Early beginnings “Amoral familism” Structural functionalism Critiques Transactionalism Marxism Stereotypes Ours (anthropology as Orientalism) Theirs (the ethnography of stereotypes) Introduction Gatekeeping concepts: Appadurai, A. 1986 “Theory in Anthropology: Center and Periphery” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 28, No. 2. (Apr., 1986), pp. 356-361. Hierarchy in India, honor-and-shame in the circum-mediterranean, filial piety in China


Slide6 : Banfield, E.C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. “The book is about a single village in southern Italy, the extreme backwardness of which is to be explained largely (but not entirely) by the inability of the villagers to act together for their common good, or indeed, for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family.” “the Montegranesi act as if they were following this rule: maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family, assume that all others will do likewise.” “amoral familism is not a normal state of culture” I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes “Amoral familism” Structural functionalism


Slide7 : Banfield, E.C. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. “Some readers may feel that amoral familism, or something very much akin to it, exists in every society, the American no less than the southern Italian. Our answer to this is that amoral familism is a pattern or syndrome; a society exhibiting some of the constituent elements of the syndrome is decisively different from one exhibiting all of them together. Moreover, the matter is one of degree: no matter how selfish or unscrupulous most of its members may be, a society is not amorally individualistic (or familistic) if there is somewhere in it a significant element of public spiritedness or even of “enlightened” self-interest” “Americans are used to the buzz of activity having as its purpose, at least in part, the advancement of community welfare” I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes “Amoral familism” Structural functionalism


Slide8 : Pitt-Rivers, J.A. 1954. The People of the Sierra. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. "Through the system of patronage, the will of the state is adapted to the social structure of the pueblo" "The tension between the state and the community is balanced in the system of patronage." And later, Campbell, J.K. 1964. Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press. I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes “Amoral familism” Structural functionalism


Slide9 : Boissevain, J. 1966. 'Patronage in Sicily'. Man. 1:1, 18-33 o “Every Sicilian sees himself to be isolated in a lawless and hostile world in which violence and bloodshed are still endemic” o “I see the system of patronage as part of a gigantic network in which all Sicilians have a place.” Boissevain, J. 1974. Friends of Friends. o “all of us have problems which we at least attempt to resolve via friends and friends-of-friends with whom we may even form temporary alliances. This basic form of social behaviour provides the central focus of this book." o "The assumption that man, in addition to being a moral being, also is out for himself, is useful for generating testable propositions and examining the kind of problems in which I am interested. Essentially, it is no more than a common sense model.” I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Transactionalism Marxism


Slide10 : Spencer 2006 Anthropology, Politics and the State “It was banal because, in the end, it all got to look very much the same. And if the game allows us to see University committees and Indian villages as but variants on a single theme of political strategizing, this may make the committees mildly more interesting, for a time at least, but only by making the villages a great deal less interesting, immediately.” I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Transactionalism Marxism


Slide11 : Gellner, E. and J. Waterbury 1977. (eds.) Patrons and Clients. London:Gerald Duckworth and co. Ltd. Gilsenan: "The sociologist, operating in part with his own functionalist model and in part with the conscious model of the societies he is studying, celebrates the integrative power of clientage. But in so doing he makes it impossible to study objectively both his own and others' ideologies and the structures of domination from which they were generated.” I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Transactionalism Marxism


Slide12 : Gellner, E. and J. Waterbury 1977. (eds.) Patrons and Clients. London:Gerald Duckworth and co. Ltd. Gellner: “Power in a well-centralised and law-abiding bureaucracy is not a form of patronage. In as far as bureaucrats are selected for their posts by fair and public criteria, are constrained to observe impartial rules, are accountable for what they do, and can be removed from their positions without undue difficulty and in accordance with recognised procedures, they are not really patrons, even if they do exercise much power. It is only to the extent to which some or all of these features are lacking, that bureaucracies also become, as indeed they often do, a form of patronage network” I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Transactionalism Marxism


Slide13 : Said, E.W. 2003. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Asad, T. 1973. 'Two European Images of Non-European Rule'. In Asad, T. (ed.) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. New York:Humanity Books I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Ours (anthropology as Orientalism) Theirs (the ethnography of stereotypes)


Slide14 : Pina Cabral, J. 1989. 'The Mediterranean as a Category of Regional Comparison: A Critical View'. Current Anthropology. 30:3, Jun., 1989 “Are the Andalusians more like Tunisians than like Gallegos? Are the Pisticcesi more like Libyans than like Piedmontesi? Are Greeks more like Egyptians than other Balkan peoples? My answer is that the notion of the Mediterranean Basin as a “culture area” is more useful as a means of distancing Anglo-American scholars from the populations they study than as a way of making sense of the cultural homogeneities and differences that characterise the region.” (this is in reference to, for instance, Gilmore, D. 1987. Honour and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean. Washington: American Anthropological Association.) I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Ours (anthropology as Orientalism) Theirs (the ethnography of stereotypes)


Slide15 : Sutton, D.E. 1998. Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg. Schneider, J. 1998. Italy's 'Southern Question' : Orientalism in One Country. Oxford: Berg. Herzfeld, M. 1992. The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McDonald, M.E. 2000. 'Accountability, Anthropology and the European Commission'. In Strathern, M. (ed.) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Audit and the Academy. London:Routledge I. Early beginnings -> II. Critiques -> III. Stereotypes Ours (anthropology as Orientalism) Theirs (the ethnography of stereotypes)