Rondeau for the morning

A Rondeau

(The rondeau consists of three stanzas, a quintet (5 lines), a quatrain (4 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). The first phrase of the first line usually sets the refrain (R), but sometimes the refrain can be the whole of the first line. For improvization, the last stanza has an alternating lines of 11 syllables instead of a normal 10.)

           Early One Morning

Early one morning I run by river

I see an old man hairs white as silver

With his wrinkled hands he rubs his red eye

 All he has is a tree to keep him dry

He turns and those eyes they make me shiver

I feel cold colder than those old fever

“Be a man”, whispers a passing weaver

I look him back don't tell me if I cry

Early one morning.

A drunk I am rotting with my liver

I open the coat, a gift from Jennifer

And as I give him I ask myself why

Pain is only understood by painful eye

The answer I know I will get never

Early one morning.

An Old Story: The Monkey Sings the Blues

THE MONKEY SINGS THE BLUES

         A long time ago, even before men first landed on Mars, there was a huge forest in the area which is now Philadelphia. The forest was rife with strange animals and exotic birds that no human beings had ever seen. Actually, there were no human beings in both continents of the New World at that time. The ancestors of what would later be called humans were few and still fighting over females in remote parts of Eastern Africa. 

         Meanwhile, the life line of the forest that I was describing above was the river Delaware that flew through it. Of course it was not called Delaware then. It was called Yongjhun Pa, which translates somewhat as "River of Tears".

        Thousands of species of fish, crabs and freshwater dolphins made their home in the river Delaware. There were also some crocodiles of different shapes and sizes. In the tall reeds on the bank lived red macaques that lived on the delicious apples that grew there. The macaques were very intelligent and had developed an advanced empire that extended down from the Leigh Valley to what is now southern New Jersey.

        Away from the hustle and bustle of the macaque empire, in Reedland in northern Pennsylvania, lived a sage monkey who spent most of his time admiring the beauty of the Delaware and enjoying the gift of nature he received in the form of deliciously blessed apples. Sometimes, he used to meditate for days on the top of a reed which had developed a strange glow due to heavenly grace that emanated from the monkey.

       One bright day in June, as the monkey was trying to eat an apple after two days of inspired meditation, the apple suddenly slipped from the monkey's hand and fell down in Yongjhun Pa. A lazy crocodile that was enjoying the warm sun saw the apple falling and swam to catch it in his mouth. The sage monkey, full of compassion, offered some more apples to the crocodile. The crocodile had never eaten something as delicious as the blessed apple, and readily accepted the offer.

    That day onward, every day the monkey would share some apples with the crocodile, and soon they became best of friends. They would talk all day about their lives and experiences, and the crocodile loved hearing the wonderful words that came out of the mouth of the sage monkey. The monkey would eagerly listen to the crocodile and his wonderful description of the world underneath the water, which he had no idea about until he met his new friend.

          Time went by. The leaves started to fall, and the monkey started to store the apples for the winter. The water was slowly getting colder on the surface, and the crocodile  would not come out of the water in cold cloudy days. On those days, both would miss each other and would wait as eagerly for the sun to appear as the young ladies who wait for their sweethearts before they elope away secretly from their homes.

        The longest of those days fell one October when the crocodile did not appear on the bank for a whole week. After seven days that appeared like centuries for both of them, the crocodile finally emerged, and you can guess how happy both of them felt. They talked till late evening, and when the crocodile departed, with tears in his eyes, the monkey gave him a dozen apples from his storage.

         With twelve apples hold firmly in between his one hundred and twenty five teeth, the crocodile dived down into the cold water and swam towards his home. When he finally reached there, his wife, like all other wives, greeted him with a mocking smile and warm complains about the household. At dinner time, Mr. and Mrs. Croc ate the apples that their friend had presented. When Mrs. Croc took the bite of an apple she almost cried in pleasure. Her tongue had never tasted anything like that before. It was as if all the water running through the streams of heaven was melting right inside her mouth. However, all her evil (or logical) mind could think was how tasty the heart of the monkey would be that fed everyday on those delicious apples. It was like love in first bite. She was helpless.

               Every night from then on, she dreamed of biting the sweet heart of the monkey, and before she got insane, she finally confessed her lust to her husband. The crocodile refused, and almost bite off her tail in aggression. However after days of nagging, the crocodile, like all husbands, finally gave up. Mrs. Croc felt like summer in Amazon when Mr. Croc with head on his tail, promised to bring the monkey in the Halloween.

             So finally on October 31, Mr. Croc invited the monkey for dinner. The poor monkey who failed out of love to smell the pungent smoke of conspiracy, readily accepted the invitation. Thus riding on the crocodile's back, the monkey went deep into Delaware to the Croc's Villa at 423 Alligator Avenue.

(At this point I suggest you to click the play button on the video below, and continue reading the passages below with the song playing in background!!!)

             Mrs. Croc was pacing back and forth in the porch when her husband drove home with the monkey behind. With a crooked smile that monkey failed to decipher, the lady crocodile invited them into the house. After a small gossip, three of them sat around the dining table for the dinner. The monkey could not help but admire the Crocs for delicious shrimp from the Reefland and clampburgers from Mc. Dolphin's that he ate after so long.

             Then they sat in front of a fireplace (for it was almost November and the water had already started being chilly), and drank some French wine fermented by the river Rhine.When the monkey, just before the clock struck twelve, finally asked his hosts to leave, Mrs. Croc, who had already grown restless by now, with a grin told the monkey that the dinner was not over yet. The puzzled monkey looked at his friend for some clue, not at all anticipating the net that his friend had trapped him in. When finally the lady pronounced her plan for the late night monkey-heart party, the monkey could not believe his ears. He felt like in haze. It was worse than the trip of reed-weeds  that he had smoked behind the big brown apricot tree, listening to Purple Haze in his IPod as a teenager. The monkey with eyes that would have melted the devil's soul looked at his friend with some hope. The crocodile looked away as if he had not heard even a word. For a moment or two everyone was quiet except Mr. Dylan who was singing Just Like a Woman in the gramophone. 

Then the monkey suddenly laughed. It was a wild laugh, and the crocs had already thought the monkey had gone crazy, when he finally told that he had left his heart hanging on a hanger in his closet up the tree.

"Had you told me earlier,", the monkey said flaunting a Vanilla Dutch on his hand ,"I would have bought it with me."

Mrs. Croc, who was sharpening her claws, put down her sharpener and ordered her husband to drive the monkey home so that he could bring back his heart. Before getting in the kitchen to turn the gas on, she cried out to the departing friends, "Don't forget to bring the fish oil from the Riverfront. We will fry the heart."

        It was almost morning when the crocodile with the monkey on his back drove through Highway No.69 in full throttle to Reedland.  When the GPS machine finally announced that they had reached the destination, the monkey got out of the croc's back, and climbed up the nearest tree. After reaching the topmost branch, he cried down to the croc, "Oh the foolish one! How naive of you to believe that someone could hang his heart in his closet. I have been a fool to make a friend with a fool like you, and I thank God that I have been finally released. Don't ever show me your wicked face again."

         So this is how the wise monkey got rid of his evil friend who disappeared down the Yongjhun Pa to his furious wife in the Croc's Villa at 423 Aliigator Avenue. The wise monkey, whose statue still stands in a crossroad in Philadelphia, meanwhile went into his room, opened his closet and fixed his heart back into his chest.

Is True Anthropology Even Possible?

Perhaps Karl Marx was right in asserting that conflict is the main driving force in the social mechanism. At least the discipline of socio-cultural anthropology has been driven by this quintessential conflict between the self (the anthropologist) and the other (the subjects of anthropological enquiry). Though the distance between the two has gradually declined, and in recent decades more emphasis has been given in dissolving the boundary between the studied and the student, the inherent nature of bias in human beings, including the anthropologist, makes such complete dissolution of the self practically impossible. There are anthropologists who argue against loosing such distinction between the self and the other, and who believe that such a loss would reduce objectivity and scientific understanding of human nature. However, as a foreign student of anthropology raised in the western academic tradition but still an outsider to its cultural biases, I believe that the proper way to do social anthropology is being as subjective as possible.

The social science, with its multiple and irreplaceable variables, cannot be objectively studied like natural sciences, and for this reason, it should not succumb to mechanical approaches of hard core science. Of course, the methods of scientific inquiry will assist in gaining some knowledge, but without fuller understanding and full emersion which can only be personally and subjectively achieved, the sociocultural anthropology will remain devoid of the essence of the culture being studied. Therefore, in an ideal world, I argue that the best way to do the proper ethnography of a culture is when it is done by an anthropologist who belongs to that culture. Given the western dominance in the anthropological academia, this is currently impossible to do and such an idea would perhaps be never viable. However, my point is that as we reach towards more subjectivity, we would be closer towards doing proper anthropology.

The Hegemony of Objectivity

The main problem with the objective analysis of social phenomenon is the very fact that various social phenomena have different meanings in the social and personal context. Social activities as well as social facts, as Durkheim would call them (Durkheim 1895), cannot be studied without comprehending what these activities mean to the people who participate in them. However, as the field of anthropology developed, ethnographers were mostly interested in finding the universal facts and understanding the social structure, and therefore early anthropology lacked humanistic approach. The emphasis on objective and scientific analysis can be dated back to the Scientific Revolution in the 16^th century when scientists and philosophers showed how natural world was governed by simple mathematical relationships. Perhaps the development of Darwinism and evolutionary science was the main impetus that brought scientific enquiry in the analysis of culture. Arguably, culture is the primary mechanism by which human beings adapt to their environment. Since evolutionary biologists were seen as approaching to understand the natural laws that govern biology and evolution, anthropologists were also keen to approach objectively, hoping to find the universal natural laws that govern the social phenomena that drive collective evolution of the society. Herbert Spencer saw the close analogy between the evolution of biological organisms and that of the society. He saw “primitive” people like Bushmen as analogous to primitive animals like Protozoans, and the European society as the epitome of evolution (Spencer 1860:17-18).

Spencer further developed the concept that culture was superorganic, and that it exists independent of the existence of the people who follow it. Therefore, individual perspective was not at all important. The concept of superorganic was later adopted by Kroeber and then revisited by Leslie White. For Kroeber, a student of Boas, there were no cultural laws, but there were trends, and that people were simply the creatures of culture, and that they had no power to change the superorganic culture, but were only implementing changes for which the cultural time is ripe (Kroeber 1915). For other nineteenth century evolutionists, the culture almost had a teleological end, and that cultures, as superorganisms, were running in their own paces towards that end. For many of them, the West was forerunner in that race, and other cultures were far behind. E. B. Tylor believed that one could reconstruct earlier stages of cultural evolution by studying “survivals” (Tylor 1871). Both of them believed that human thinking around the world has the basic similarities and that there was a psychic unity of humandkind (Tylor 1871). It implied that despite some instances of creativity, individuals are basically the same, and the subjective understanding of their circumstances in the society has not much bearing in their unilinear evolutionary views.

Later in twentieth century, when cultural neo-evolutionism emerged, it was free of unilinear view of evolution, but yet anthropologists like Leslie White fully embraced Spencer’s concept of superorganic. For Leslie White, the scientific approach took the radical turn as he argued that he could calculate the cultural product of a society by using his mathematical formula based on his idea that evolution of culture is determined by the amount of the energy expended per capita per unit of time by a society and the technological means of its expenditure (White 1943). In this rigidly mathematical model, individual has very limited role, if any.  For cultural ecologist like Julian Steward and Marvin Harris, the environment and technology determined subsistence pattern, which in turn determined and sustained social structure (Steward 1955). Therefore, an objective study of the environment was more important than the subjective study of the people who adapt to that environment.

Anthropology has been deeply influenced by the sociological ideas of Emile Durkheim and other students of this school of thought including Marcel Mauss and Max Weber. Their ideas also influenced more objective approach towards ethnography. Durkeheim believed that social solidarity was the result of the force, lame collective, arising from the shared beliefs and values, which he termed collective representations. The collective consciousness thus originated in communal interactions and was superorganic since it was not contained within any individual organism. He believed that to study such non-material entity like collective consciousness, one has to study social facts, which he defined as the rules and principles that exist before the individual is born into a society, and which a person learns and observes as a member of the society (Durkheim 1895). Therefore, ethnography is supposed to be the objective analysis of social facts, which shape helpless individuals as they are raised in the society.

For Marcel Mauss, the allure to study what Durkheim called Total Social Phenomena, was very strong. He studied the nature of gifts in cultures and argued that studying something like potlatch would increase our knowledge based on realism, because these social facts are real and not abstract (Mauss 1925). These material expressions of Durkheim’s social facts, however, were interpreted not from the glasses of the people who participated in them but from the biased interpretations of an anthropologist alien to that culture.

            The hegemony of objectivity was further strengthened by the rise of French structuralism and the seminal works of structuralists, particularly Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi Strauss believed that social facts can only be properly understood by trying to find out the common structure in them. He believed that such analysis is the key in understanding the unconscious structure of the human mind and thought process. He argued that various social phenomena, for example, visibly disparate myths of a society, are always similar in deep unconscious level (Levi-Strauss 1952). The theoretical basis of such analysis was based on binary oppositions that exist everywhere in the culture. Every social structure could thus be reduced to the conflict between two binary extremes, and that many social facts were in fact an attempt to solidify and consolidate various social structures. Thus the objective analysis of structure was more important than subjective study of human beings who are mere place holders of that structure.

Challenging the Hegemony

Structuralism, however, was different than the previous theories prevalent in the society, because it gave some space for human capacity to shape the social structures. Michel Foucault argued that there is no universal truth, and that each society chooses and establishes its own set of episteme, and decides what is true and what is false, and what is reasonable and what is in the realm of unreason (Foucault, 1976 ). Since there was no universal truth, there was more focus on study of individual society than in finding universals. The structuralists put more emphasis on the influence of language in the understanding of social structure and in creating various worldviews. Derrida argued that since the words are not univocal, the language does not always have the same meaning. Since language acts as a filter through which absolute reality makes impression on human mind to create a twisted sense of reality, man is simply a creature of language. The subjective nature of language, first developed in the work of Whorf, implies that objective understanding of society is impossible because language creates reality as well as influences social structures. Benjamin Whorf, had already attempted to make the connection between language and behavior, and believed that individual psychology and not history was the key to anthropological study. For him linguistics was the bridge between the realms of psychology and anthropology (Whorf 1939).

This challenge to the hegemony of the objectivity in anthropological analysis, however, had started long before the advent of French Structuralism. Psychological functionalists like Bronslaw Malinowski, in the early twentieth century, had already argued that cultural institutions in fact functioned to meet the basic physical and psychological needs of people in a society (Malinowski 1922). His method involved extensive fieldwork, where he tried to dissect those functions of the institutions. Thus the focus now shifted from the social facts, to the functions they serve to individuals. Clearly, the same institution can provide different functions to different individuals. However, by basing his theory on physiological and psychological needs, Malinowski still implied that cultures perform universally similar functions.

            Even before Functionalism took hold of anthropological thinking, Franz Boas and the school of Historical Particularism he helped to create, already argued that social sciences were domains of our experience in which the concepts of quantity are not applicable (Boas 1920). He believed that to explain culture, one must examine it from three different perspectives: the environmental conditions under which they developed, psychological factors and historical connections. The social traits that are observed are the result of that culture’s historical and environmental circumstances which are unique and definitely subjective. He argued that though the activities of the individual are determined to a great extent by his social environment, individuals in turn influence the society in which he lives (Boas 1920:125).  His approach was thus more inductive than deductive and thus was closer to that ultimate subjective goal of anthropology.

This idea of subjective analysis was further developed by symbolic and interpretive anthropologists, particularly Clifford Geertz. Clifford saw culture as sets of texts to be read by anthropologists, but not as hidden stories to be explored (Geertz 1973). He believed that local people are as good at interpreting rituals and symbols as anyone. For him, culture exists between people, created by their social actions, and thus culture is a shared code of meanings that are publicly acted out in activities like the Balinese cockfight (Geertz 1973). His emphasis was documenting the social phenomenon in an emic way, and for him etic interpretations are secondary. His view is well documented in his style of writing, where he presents ethnography as a very personal story of understanding (and not the knowledge) of the society that he studies.

Yet many symbolist anthropologists continued to give their own biased interpretations of symbols. Victor Turner even argues that a more thorough insight is impossible without a contextual analysis by anthropologists, and the local people are unable to see the bigger picture that anthropologists are able to (Turner 1967). However, anthropologists like other people are shaped by their own culture, and I doubt they are well suited to give a neutral, insightful meaning free of biases. The final push to do the bias free anthropology acknowledging the subjective nature of culture and free of attempting to create objective universally understandable picture of society finally came with the radical ideas of Post-Modernism.

The End of the Hegemony

            The post-modernism not only brought new radical perspective in anthropology that was extremely skeptical of science, but also brought in new personal way of writing ethnography which bordered in the sphere of literary writing with its poignant style of story-telling from a very personal narrative. For example, the post-modernist ethnography of Bedouin women of Egypt has been written by Lila Abu-Lughod in a very subjective way, which involves the reader more than any other anthropological writing written in the previous era (Abu-Lughod 1995). Her study implies that cultural understanding can only be gained by personal emersion in the culture facilitated not only by the comprehension of language but also by emotional involvement in the subject. Renato Rosaldo’s ethnographical writing on the headhunting in Ilongot, for instance, is an emotional tour de force when considering the emotion his writing evokes (Rosaldo 1989).

The postmodernist view is unique because it tries to take away the anthropological obsession from “others” to the gaze on the “self”. Michel Foucault’s piece titled “The Incitement to Discourse”, in many aspects is his attempt to do an anthropological observation of the social phenomenon of his own society (Foucault 1976), which I have argued in the beginning as the only sure method to create absolute subjectivity on the subject.

The problem in dissolving the boundary between the self and the other

            Subjectivity in anthropology has the ultimate goal of dissolving the boundary between the self and the other. The goal is thus to observe social phenomenon from the native’s perspective. However, even within the society, what a social phenomenon like a ritual means to a person participating in it is certainly never the same. Thus it raises question ultimately of observing it in which native’s perspective. I would suggest that the answer ultimately should be the perspective of the anthropologist who is also native.

 In a more radical term, it implies that an anthropologist can do a proper study of no other culture but that of his own. Pushed to further extreme, it further implies that even if anthropology is done by the native, the native ethnographer will be unable to separate self and the other when he studies phenomenon in which he does not participate fully. If an ethnographer can only empathize and actually learn about culture only after going through and thus gaining understanding (not knowledge), then ethnography is not accessible to all anthropologists. That means, for example, a male native ethnographer is unable to study anything consequential about women and their rituals even in his own society. Also, what is the value of studying ethnography, if every ethnographer, even if he belongs to the same culture, each year can have different stories about the same people? Won’t it then be much like literature?  

I would argue, instead, that anthropology is literature. Literature and anthropology are both the mirrors of the society, and anthropology should be done in a way so that a more personal and accurate image of the social phenomenon can be produced.

Another issue that comes up with the above argument is what the role of history in anthropology is if anthropology is only about self. Certainly, a person is the product of the society in which he is raised, and the society itself is the product of the unique environment and history. Thus, although such personal approach to sociocultural anthropology would suggest a more synchronic study, it does not discount the value of diachronic approach. Thus while I believe that ethnography should more focus on synchrony, the diachronic approach will only help to enrich the proper understanding of the culture.

Conclusion

Through the essay, I argue that sociocultural anthropology should take more personal, synchronic and emic perspective in contrast to a detached, scientific, etic and diachronic approach. I am not saying that the other approaches are useless. The etic and historical observations certainly help in enriching our understanding of the culture. However, I believe that the thick and the crust of the anthropological study should involve the dissolution of the self into the others. Achieving that ultimate goal is only possible when all anthropology is done by the people who are the part of the culture that they study. Of course, this is a far-fetched, almost utopian goal (Marx's Communist Utopia, anyone?), which might never happen. 

Karl Marx was possibly right about the power of conflict. History of anthropological theory has been driven by the conflict between the binary opposites of the self and the others. However, it is time that we put that conflict into rest, and reconcile the anthropologist with his subjects, and thus the self with the others. I don’t think even Karl Marx would have minded that.

References

Boas, Franz (1920) “The Methods of Ethnology”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 121-128.

Conklin, Harold C. (1955) “Hanudo Color Categories”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 364-367.

Durkheim, Emile (1895) “What is a Social Fact”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 78-85.

Focoult, Michel (1976) “An Incitement to Discourse”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.

Geertz, Clifford (1973) “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 511-531.

Kroeber, A. L. (1915) “Eighteen Professions”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 129-134.

Levi-Strauss, Claude (1952) “Linguistics and Anthropology”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 326-337.

Lila Abu-Lughod (1995) “A Tale of Two Pregnancies”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 552-561.

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) “The Essentials of the Kula”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 163-178.

Mauss, Marcel (1925) “Excerpts from the Gift”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 90-102.

Morgan, Lewis Henry (1877) “Ethnical Periods”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 129-134.

Rosaldo, Renato (1989) “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 537-551.

Steward, Julian (1955) “The Patrilineal Band”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 248-264.

Spencer, Herbert (1860) “The Social Organism”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 11-27.

Turner, Victor (1967) “Symbols in Ndembu Ritual”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 493-510.

Tylor, Sir Edward Burneit (1871) “The Science of Culture”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 28-42.

White, Leslie (1943) “Energy and the Evolution of Culture”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 229-247.

Whore, Benjamin L. (1939) “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language”, in R. J. McGee and R.L. Warms, eds., Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill. Pp 141-158.