Notes
- R. Firth, ‘Art and anthropology’, in J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp.15–39.
- Coote and Shelton, Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, p.6.
- A. Gell, ‘The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology’, in Coote and Shelton, Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, p.40.
- R. Layton, The Anthropology of Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p.1.
- J. Elkins, ‘Art history and images that are not art’, Art Bulletin, vol.77, no.4, December 1995, p.553. Though I both value and respect the work of Elkins in the field of visual culture his insistence on the difference between western and non-western art is based on contextual assumptions that do not necessarily hold. For example to distinguish western descriptions of art by ‘presence’ or ‘presentness’ is based upon assumptions about non-western art practices that are no more valid than those for western art, where ‘presentness’ is not an invariable condition of art consumption. For a summary of the way the concept of art has changed over time for cultures in the western and classical traditions see V. Burgin, The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernism, London: Macmillan, 1986, pp.140–48.
- P. Winch, ‘Understanding a primitive society’, in B. Wilson (ed.), Rationality, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970, p.99. There is no space here to discuss the limits and difficulties involved in forging such ‘bridgeheads of understanding’. For a discussion of these difficulties see S. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p.123.
- For the general ideas of Alfred Schutz that inform this section seex his Collected Papers 1: The Problem of Social Reality, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, especially ‘On multiple realities’, pp.207–59.
- I have not the space here to deal with the question of the ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’ having their basis in language use. This is considered more extensively by Winch in ‘Understanding a primitive society’, in Wilson (ed.), Rationality, pp.80–83.
- This section owes a great deal to Winch, in Wilson (ed.), Rationality, p.99 and Tam-biah's commentary on these ideas in Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion…, pp.121–22.
- Wilson (ed.), Rationality, p.102. See also the notion of ‘reflectiveness’ in P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958, pp.62–65.
- The debate between Alasdair Maclntyre and Peter Winch on these issues (published in Wilson [ed.], Rationality) has been neatly summarised and commented upon with his own insights by Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion…, pp.121–27. Donald Davidson is also useful in discussing the translation of cultures, see chapter 12, ‘Psychology and philosophy’, in his Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
- For example H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, London: Sheed and Ward, 1975, pp.219–25; and A. Schutz, Collected Papers I…, pp.10–11, 125–27, 150–203, 312–29, 347–56. See also M. Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954; M. Scheler, ‘Phenomenology and the theory of cognition’ in his Selected Philosophical Essays, Evanston: North Western University Press, 1973, pp.136–201; J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, London: Methuen, 1957; E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, particularly the Fifth Cartesian Meditation of 1929, pp.89–150.
- Cited in S. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion…, p. 58. For ‘perspicuous presentation’ see L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Rush Rees (ed.), Retford, Notts.: Brynmill Press, 1979, pp.8–9.
- Using the formula of Herbert Marcuse, the word culture ‘signifies the totality of social life in a given situation, in so far as both the areas of ideational reproduction (culture in the narrower sense, the “spiritual world”) and of material reproduction (“civilisation”) form a historically distinguishable and comprehensible unity’ (H. Marcuse, ‘The affirmative character of culture’, in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, Allahabad: Beacon Press, 1969, p.94.
- A. Danto, ‘Introduction’, Beyond the Brillo Box, New York: Noonday Press, 1992, p.5. I am aware that what might be utile to some is transcendental to others and vice versa. Utility is itself socially contingent.
- Many instances of what appear to be aesthetic consideration, not dissimilar to that of western practice, can be adduced from non-western societies. For example Adrian Gerbrands recalls that he brought a collection of wooden figures from the village of Atjametsj to Amanamkai in the Central Asmat region of Irian Jaya in 1961: ‘For days on end, there was a hustle and bustle caused by the village men who came to look at and admire the collection. Matjemos, one of the best carvers in Amanamkai, returned a number of times to study the statues. When 1 asked him which statue he liked most (“Akat awut?”), he pointed without any hesitation to the large twin statue of a man holding his wife in front of his chest’ (A. Gerbrands, ‘Atjametsj: unique collection of statues and shields’, in D. Smidt (ed.), Asmat Art: Woodcarvings of Southwest New Guinea, Leiden: Periplus and Rijksmusuem voor Volkenkunde, 1999, pp.122–23.
- E. Spitz, Image and Insight, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, p.60.
- W. Benjamin, Illuminations, New York: Schocken Books, 1969, p.222.
- M. Heidegger, Being and Time, New York: Harper, 1962, pp.312 ff.
- ‘Aesthetic’ has to do with the way artworks are perceived through the senses. It stands for sensuous perception. Most of the problems associated with the word ‘aesthetic’ come from its use in the appreciation of art, specifically in the designation of the beautiful and with principles of good taste. For an interesting discussion of cultural aesthetics see Howard Morphy's introduction to his chapter ‘From dull to brilliant: the aesthetics of spiritual power among the Yolngu’, in J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, pp.181–84.
- A. Danto, ‘The artworld’, Journal of Philosophy, 61, October 1964, pp.571–84.
- A. Danto, ‘Introduction’, Beyond the Brillo Box, p.5.
- R. Coldwater, ‘Art history and anthropology: Some comparisons of methodology’, in A. Forge (ed.), Primitive Art and Society, London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, pp.1–10.