Ulysses - well, we do have our differences; I taught anthro for 30 years - and
certainly don't see a tribe as in any way non-stratified, for there can be and
usually are, hierarchies of hereditary authority in a large tribe. Indeed,
since a tribe is also a political entity, there HAVE to be clear lines of
authority and non-authority. You can't have 1,000 different voices in a
collective system.
Furthermore, 'culturally distinctive' is an ambiguous term and doesn't define,
per se, a 'tribe'. After all, it can define a clan, an ethnic group, a
religious group etc. And yes, I know all about the phatries and moieties and
these terms have no relevance to this discussion.
Of course a clan is a mode of political organization, as is a tribe, for any
organization of society establishes 'who has the authority to make decisions in
that group', be it a clan or tribe'...and that focus on who-has-authority
defines the political activities of the group. Is it the elders - all the
elders? Is it one hereditary family? Is it the men? The women? Is it one
subclan in the tribe?
You are misunderstanding the notion of tribalism in my analysis of Chinese
society. By tribalism I mean as differentiated from a civic societal
organization. A society organized within the tribal mode views interactions
between people to operate within a network of personal obligations akin to
those within a family. Guanxi, in the old Chinese ideology (Confucian) is the
visible method of establishing networks of personal obligations and
expectations. Therefore, you must interact with people on a personal level -
and you 'get things done' - within the network of bonded interactions. The
'gifts' are signs of the recognition, by both sides, of this bonded obligation.
This is not the same as corruption.
No-one is doubting that China is as a nation, operating politically and
economically as a state. BUT, it hasn't shaken its old infrastructure of local,
not national, agriculture - and that was politically and societally - tribal -
understanding tribal as meaning based around kin-networks of obligations and
expectations. I used to tell my students that it takes at least three
generations to change a societal ideology. Much of China is still agricultural
- and a large proportion of the population, even those in cities, remain
ideologically embedded in the 'old ways', and these are not Mao's ways, for he
ignored and indeed rejected the vast diversity of China, in its peoples,
dialects/languages, economic modes etc. You can't ignore this diversity by
trying to establish one size-fits-all in a geographic territory with such huge
ecological diversity.
Blood kinship or marriage is not the only method of establishing kin-based or
tribal networks. The very notion of loyalty to those with whom one interacts
need not be biological. In, for example, the smallest societal groups, bands,
the kin bonds are NOT necessarily biological or based on marriage.
It's the notion of personal loyalty and bonds that defines tribalism. The civic
mode, on the other hand, rejects interactions based only on personal bonds and
instead, inserts a mode of interaction based on the work-action (not the
persons involved). So, you treat the patient because of your obligation to your
profession. In the tribal society, you treat the patient because of your
obligation to the personal network and to the person. You can immediately see
that one mode functions in very large populations (civic) and the other, in
smaller populations.
The civic model developed to deal with very large populations; the tribal model
was dominant for most of human history - and functioned in smaller populations.
I don't see that this focus on 'getting things done for each other out of
personal interactions and loyalty' - which is the tribal mode - has anything to
do with a reaction to communism. And people in modern China (and India etc)
don't form relationships with bureaucrats to reduce the severity of life. They
BRIBE bureaucrats to get things done because the centralized communist system
has, all on its own, decentralized into local personalized power-blocs and
local powerful authorities immersed in nepotism. You have to deal with them by
the tribal method of acknowledging their personal existence and their power
rather than appealing to their civic duty. And the method of acknowledgment
is: bribes. That's the only term for it.
I don't see that defining guanxi as bribery has anything to do with
'reductionism'. Indeed, the old guanxi is not the same - and I think you are
making an error in trying to conflate the two. To have to resort to bribery to
get anything done in these dysfunctional bureaucracies is unethical, and for
you to suggest that it's merely 'a different culture with different morals'
seems to me to be cultural relativism at its worst.
What 'unilinear concepts of cultural evolution'? There's no such thing. But
there ARE clear cut normative modes of societal organization according to the
size of the population. And population sizes are directly related to the
economic modes..and the economy is directly related to the ecological realities
of the area, the biome. So, in a biome with rich soil, plenty of accessible
water, readily domesticated plants and animals - you can develop a large
population. In a biome with poor soil, water problems, climate problems, local
plant and animal problems - you can only sustain a small population. And, all
over the world, the modes of societal organization will be the same - even
though the people have never met - dependent on the size of the population.
{That's my first year ecological anthro course...in part].
The article was flawed in its ignorance of Peircean pragmatics and its
ignorance of the difference between a tribal and civic mode of societal
organization - and - its ignorance that bribery, in a large population, is not
the same as semiotic signs of personal network obligations in a smaller
population and has nothing to do with Peircean pragmatics or indeed, any
philosophical theory of pragmatics.
Edwina
----- Original Message -----
From: U Pascal
Cc: Peirce List 1
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Re: NYTimes : From China, With Pragmatism
Edwina
I subscribe to the contemporary definitions of terms used by cultural
anthropologists.
Clan: a group that claims unilineal descent from the same ancestor, though
the actual genealogical path to that ancestor need not be
specified/specifiable. The ancestor often is thought of as a mythical being
called a totem.
Tribe: nonstratified, cultural distinctive kin-based society
note: yes, kin-relations include biological descent and perceived descent.
Though this degree of subjectivity is not flexible enough to accommodate your
doctor on the basis of giving him a gift.
A combination of clans is a phratry.
In the case that a tribe is composed of two clans each clan is termed a
moiety.
Segments of clans are termed lineages.
Clans are not forms or units of political organization. They exist in a
variety of forms of political organization, such as bands, tribes, chiefdoms
and states. Tribes are a form of political organization often based upon clan
lineage though they may be based upon cognatic descent groups as well.
There is no doubt that contemporary China is a state. The fact that there are
networks of reciprocity does not entail the society is tribal, as the form of
political organization is not based on a kinship or marriage. Giving gifts
cements social interaction. period. the interaction need not be ‘familial.’
Again, a Hongbao is not a dowry.
Over 680 million people live in China’s cities, which is over half of the
entire Chinese population and over double the population of the United States.
So I do not know what your claim that ‘China is still strongly in the grip of
its old agricultural mode of life’ is supposed to mean. I suppose I agree
insofar as what you mean is that China has a cultural history with some
continuities. Frankly, I do not see guanxi networks as a carry-over from
agrarian life as much as I see it as an adaptation on part of local agnatic
cadres to “civic” life under maoist dictatorship/managerial corporatism. If you
wish to judge local cadres for attempting to reduce the severity of life under
maoist communism by forming relationships with state bureaucrats there is
likely nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
The reduction of guanxi to bribery is very common western reaction. While
there indeed is overlap between guanxi gifts and bribery, guanxi can operate
within bureaucratic norms. In any case ‘bribery’ —as well as unilinear
conceptions of cultural evolution— are highly morally inflected categories to
impose on a culture. I do not see any scientific or analytical benefit to
imposing moralizing categorizes on any subject of research, especially on other
cultures with different moral frameworks than your own.
But all-in-all I agree that the article is fatally flawed in its attempt to
link the teaching of American Pragmatism in Chinese universities to
colloquially ‘pragmatic’ justifications for guanxi and hongbao.
---Ulysses
On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Phyllis,
Oh, I think I grokked the spirit with which you posted that, but it caught
me headed off to bed and I couldn't manage any response more articulate than
what I did. On third thought, I'll leave any public protest to those who have
the energy and/or haven't already tilted with the ever-indominable windmills of
mainscream press and popular understanding, whether it be about pragmatism or
anything else more complex than hockey scores.
Regards,
Jon
Phyllis Chiasson wrote:
Jon & List,
I didn't mean it was worth reading because it was a great treatise of
pragmatism, Peirce's or
otherwise, but because it wasn't and it was in the NY Times. I wonder if
there is a message here
for us-something like taking control of the way pragmatism is defined. I
think a piece like this
needs careful, objective analysis and refutation. I thought the comments
about social Darwinism
were especially important, considering how long it has held on as a
justification for the sort of
economic and social specialness we're encountering today. Gospel of greed
might be a good place
to start. Maybe we need to form a PAC for effectively communicating
Peirce's concepts the
masses.
Regards, Phyllis
Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes, thankfully a few of them saved me from total despair.
Jon
http://inquiryintoinquiry.com
On Jun 9, 2014, at 1:05 AM, Phyllis Chiasson <[email protected]> wrote:
Did you read the comments following the piece?
Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote:
good grief, what tripe ...
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