Page 46 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

RETHINKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURE

On the other hand, it is quite true that Malinowski’s functionalist theories
were criticized by anthropologists themselves. The most harrowing critique
can be found in Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Totemisme, aujourd’hui (1962a) and La
pensée sauvage (1962b). Lévi-Strauss argued against the disqualification of
thought in archaic societies. The ‘savage’ was quite capable of sophisticated and
legitimate thinking. For Lévi-Strauss, all human languages can express the
intricacies of abstractions; primitive classificatory systems are as sophisticated
as the theoretical enterprise of modern science; their dissimilarity should
be accounted as a result of a diverse interest and intention, without being
considered a symptom or a judgment of greater or lesser intellectual
achievement.
The logic of the modern engineer had to be distinct from primitive think-
ing’s bricolage. The achievements of primitive thought and science vary as a
result of how each culture approaches nature. The primitive mind pursues a
strategy leveled at perception and imagination; science aims at reaching nature
through the grasping of its structure, moving away from what is given to the
senses. The bricoleur manipulates nature, handles what is at his or her disposal.
The outcome of scientific inquiry is different. Nature is not a limit, nor a
hedge, but an object to be treated in an altogether distinct light. As a product of
scientific thought, the engineer is immersed in a world of concepts; his or her
goal is to transcend natural events, trying to capture them conceptually, thus
providing a discernment of their structure.
In Lévi-Strauss’s terms, culture had a positive stand in itself, not to be
reduced to a mere transformation of biological drives or needs. Culture could
never be ‘an immense metaphor for reproduction and digestion’ (Lévi-Strauss
1988: 28), as Malinowski hastily suggested.
Social life followed models that were different from organic and biological
interpretations. Nature and culture belonged to dissimilar realms. The way to
interpret culture should be in strictly cultural terms. Thus, the appropriate inter-
pretation of culture should be inspired, although cautiously, by linguistics. Lévi-
Strauss’s claims endorsed a sociocentric, and therefore a strictly conventionalist,
discernment of culture and social life.
However, Lévi-Strauss’s idea of culture kept much of what Malinowski
defined as the traits of cultural experience. Culture was distinctively local and
singular. It was an autonomous whole, prior to any behavior in a social group.
Culture was a departure from our biological order. The duality of orders – one
natural, the other cultural – in a state of mutual exclusion was clearly visible in
both Malinowski’s and Lévi-Strauss’s notion of culture.

Nature, culture

The roots of the anthropological dogma separating nature and culture may be
found in the intellectual legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78). Indeed,
anthropologists with methodological concerns have already acknowledged

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