review of mary douglas missing persons.pdf

8/19/2019 Review of Mary Douglas Missing Persons.pdf

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ReviewAuthor(s): Susan ParmanReview by: Susan ParmanSource: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 99-100

Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3317973Accessed: 09-05-2015 02:59 UTC

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2/3

Missing

Persons:

A

Critique

of

Personhood in the Social Sciences. MARY

DOUGLAS

and

STEVEN NEY. Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1998; 223 pp.

Reviewed

by

SUSAN

PARMAN

California

State

University,

Fullerton

Missing persons

is

the

first

in

a series

of

books to

honor the

fertile mind of

Aaron

Wildavsky by

exam-

ining public

policy

issues

with

the aid of the

social

sciences.

Setting

out to address

the

issue

of

poverty

and

welfare,

Douglas

(an

anthropologist)

and

Ney

(a

political scientist)

stumble over

the tools of

their

ex-

amining

and end

up

trying

to flush out the

theory

of

the

person

that is

implicit

in

such discussions. Al-

though

the book fails as a

critique

of

personhood

n

the social

sciences,

it

succeeds as

a

wide-ranging,

reflective,

philosophical

discourse on

the

person

in

the Western

ntellectual tradition.

The

book fails as a

critique

of

personhood

in

the social sciences because

it is

neither

an

analysis

nor a

synthesis

of

what the different social

science

disciplines

have contributed

or

not contributed o the

theory

of

the

category

of

person

or the

category

of self. It does not

provide

a coherent

picture

of

how

different social science

disciplines approach

these

concepts;

it does

not

analyze

the

strengths

or

weaknesses

of

any

particular

theory.

The

study

of

the self that

once

belonged

to the domain of

philoso-

phers

or

psychologists

has now

become

a

central

concern

of

all

the

social/behavioral

sciences,

includ-

ing

anthropology.Anthropological

concern with the

self

is

rooted

in

the

ethnographic

enterprise

and

emic

analysis.

Efforts have been

made to

distinguish

between the

concept

of the self and

the

concept

of

personhood,efforts recently supersededby the emer-

gence

of

what

has

been

called

person-centered

th-

nography

that

subsumes the individual and

the self

in

descriptions

of culture from the

perspective

of

particular

individuals.

The authors could have fo-

cused on recent

developments

in

cultural

anthropol-

ogy

and

person-centered

thnography

as a

reflection

of the

shifts

in

intellectual currents

n

Westerncivili-

zation

that have affected all

the social/behavioral ci-

ences.

In this

way they

could have

accomplished

the

goals

implied

by

the

subtitle of their

book,

A

cri-

tique of

personhood

in the

social sciences.

What then does

the

book

do,

if

not this?

The

authors wander

far and

wide,

taking

from

Kant,

Mauss,

Durkheim,

Keynes,

Maslow,

Malthus,

Dar-

win, Marx,

and

Engels,

discussing

freedom,

con-

straint,

egalitarianism, globalization,

and

evolution.

The book

is

constructed

as if

a

series of

conversa-

tions

had taken

place

between

Douglas

and

Ney

in

the

context of

Wildavsky

but

only

the

concluding

thoughts

are

presented.

Their reflections

are

like

the

flashes

of

distant

mirrors across

a

fascinating

land-

scape

-

gemlike

but

scattered.

In

185

pages

they

pick up

ideas,

throw them back

and

forth,

and fol-

low

diverse intellectual trails

through

he

tangled

un-

derbrush

of

cross-disciplinary

ommunication.

They begin

with

the

paradoxes

of

poverty. They

discover

that

the common

thread

of

discussion of

different kinds

of

needs,

wants,

and

capabilities

(whether

the

hunter-gatherer

working

fifteen

hours

a

week or the middle-class child with fewer video

games

than his

peers)

is the

typological,

isolated,

non-social,

self-contained individual

-

the idea of

a

nonrelational definition

of a

person (p.

9).

The

social sciences have

the

potential

to

contributea

re-

lational

definition

of

personhood,

a

conception

of the

person

as

a

locus

of transactions.

The authors ex-

plore

implicit

conceptions

of

the

person

in

the West-

ern intellectual

tradition

which have

resulted

in

a

va-

riety

of

strategies

to

retain both

individual

identity

and

cultural

submersion

and

determinism,

both self

and society, such as separating he role-playingself

from

the

inner

self,

or the

person

of action from the

person

of

thought.

They point

to

philosophical

con-

tradictions

and

changing

premises.

The authors ask

why

Economic

Man

-

self-

ish

and

unmannered,

brutish as

Caliban,

naive as

Man

Friday

(in

short,

without social

attributes)

has

expanded

from a

small,

theoretical

niche to

become

an

all-embracing

mythological figure

(p.

23).

But

instead of

tracing

the

history

of Economic

Man,

Douglas

and

Ney

discuss

the

idea

of

microcosm

and

how

certain

reigning

ideas

prevent

alternative

deas

from

developing.

Their

scholarship

is

Kuhnian,

not

BOOK

REVIEWS

99

valuable

precisely

because

they

demand

neither full

assent nor

rejection.

They

are the best

part

of

this

invigorating study,

which

requires

careful considera-

tion

and

provokes

continuous

questioning.


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3/3

100

ANTHROPOLOGICAL

UARTERLY

archival.

The

authors

move

from

Economic Man

to

Durkheim's

Homo

duplex

(the

egoistic

individual vs.

the

socially

oriented

moral

conscience),

Maslow's

lower needs

and

higher

needs

(animal/spiritual),

ul-

turalneeds and the

development

of

socially

dictated

tastes.

The authors

argue

that

[i]f

the

theory

of

wants

and the

theory

of

society

are ever

to

meet,

the

inherent

sociality

of

the

person

has

to be restored

(p.

58).

They

argue

for

a

concept

of the whole

per-

son similar

to

Dennet's

model

of the

person

(p.

90)

and to Strathern's

discussion

of the Melanesian

con-

cept

of the

person

as

a

gift

or the

sum of transac-

tions

achieved

(pp.

8-9,

93).

They

do not discuss

symbolic

interactionism

or the

anthropological

itera-

ture on

social

constructions

of the self

but focus on

reconciling economic and public-policy models with

a

socially

contextualized

concept

of

personhood

as

represented

by

a

select set

of social

science

examples.

The authors

frequently

interweave

analogies

from

different

theoretical

and

disciplinary perspec-

tives.

For

example,

on

p.

97:

Theexercise

we are

about o

embark

pon

has

something

in

common

with certain

parables

n

political philosophy

that

ry

o confront

lural

octrines

f

justice:

or

example,

Bruce Ackerman's

1980)

script

for

a

spaceship

whose

captain pplied trictrules of dialogue ora liberal ociety

The authors seek

to find a common

ground

on

which to

apply

a common lever

to a

mutually

agreed

upon

definition

of

a

mutually recognizable problem

- which may explain their choice of analogies and

narratives,

and

perhaps

also their

level of

generality.

For

example:

In this schemeeach

city,

world,

or cultural

ype

is defined

in

opposition

o the others

and recruits

ts

supporters

r

loses

them

competitively.

t is no accident

hat

any

word

you may

choose

for

labeling

these

four

opposed

cultures

evokes

bias

. . . .

For

some,

complexity

s a bad

word,

market s

pejorative

or

others,

ect

is

dismissive,

atalist

s

derisive.

So

they

were

originally

named

A, B, C,

D,

after

the twodimensionsn which

he modelwas

constructed:

structure

in

the vertical

dimension)

nd

incorporation

in

the horizontal)p. 103).

Reaching

for common

ground,

exploring

parallels

and

gaps,

the authors

bounce

ideas

off each other

that

range

from household

management

to

religious

fundamentalism

to

good

words and

bad

words

in

Anglo-Saxon

sociology

(structuralism

and net-

works are

good,

institutions

and

routinization

are

bad

-

p.

159).

They

end

with a

brief

summary

and

a

warning

about

the

organization

of enclave

cultures

-

like

asterisks

around

one

of

many ongoing

and

intertwinedconversations.

Of

Revelation

and

Revolution,

Volume

2: The Dialectics

of

Modernity

on a South

African

Frontier.

JOHN

L.

COMAROFF

and

JEAN

COMAROFF.

Chicago

IL:

University

of

Chi-

cago

Press,

1997;

588

pp.

Reviewed

by

MEREDITH

MCKITTRICK

Georgetown

University

This is a

thoughtful,

and

thought-provoking,

equel

to the much-discussedOf revelationand revolution,

Volume

one:

Christianity,

colonialism,

and

con-

sciousness in South

Africa.

While

Volume

One dealt

primarily

with

the initial

encounter

between British

evangelists

and the Southern Tswana

of South

Af-

rica,

Volume Two

moves the

story along,

both

chronologically

and

thematically,

to

how,

over

the

course of

a

century,

the

encounter

reshaped

both

the

Southern Tswana

and the

British.

In the

process

the

Comaroffsmove

beyond

the realm

of

the

long

con-

versation to examine

changes

in

the

material

reali-

ties

and notions

of

production,

value,

dress,

architec-

ture, medicine, and

rights,

and the hybrid forms

which resulted.

But the

overarching

theme

of

Vol-

ume One runs through Volume Two as well: that

colonialism

is

best

conceptualized

as

a cultural

pro-

cess

rendered

through

the

everyday

and

the mun-

dane,

and that this

process

is

exemplified

in

the

civi-

lizing

project

of

the

missionaries.

As

with their

first

volume,

this one

is

packed

with

original,

occasionally

brilliant,

nsights.

While a

sense

of

chronology

occasionally

falls

victim

to the

authors'

determination

not

to

write

a

history

of

events

-

something

as

apocalyptic

(p.

210)

as

rinderpest

s

mentioned

only

sporadically,

in

Chap-

ters 3 and

4

-

the authors

deal

to

a

greater

extent

than before with the economic and political

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