Where did anthropology go?: or the need for 'human nature'

I was recently asked the question: “Where did anthropology go? ” by a psycholinguist from a famous American university. She was commenting on the fact that she had tried to establish contact with the anthropology department of her institution, hoping that she would find somebody who would contribute to a discussion of her main research interest: the relation of words to concepts. She had assumed that the socio- cultural anthropologists would have general theories or, at least, ask general questions, about the way children’s upbringing in different cultures and environments would constrain, or not constrain, how children represented the material and the social world. She was hoping for information about exotic societies in order to gain a broader cross-cultural perspective. She was hoping that her enquiry about a topic that is inevitable in any discussion about culture would be equally central to the three disciplines of psychology, linguistics and anthropology, and would therefore be an ideal ground for constructive co-operation, that is, one where the different parties could articulate and challenge the theories on which their different disciplines are built. In fact she found that nobody was interested in working with her, but what surprised her most was the hostility she perceived, caused, not only by the suggestion that cultural social anthropologists were interested in simple exotic societies, but even more by the idea that they might be interested in formulating and answering general questions about the nature of the human species and that, therefore, their work could be compatible with disciplines such as hers. The lack of any generalising theoretical framework within which her research interest might find a place is not surprising when we look at what kind of thing is done in many university departments under the label social or cultural anthropology. Take for example the interests listed on the web site of th

Anthropology is an odd subject: studying from the outside and from the inside

This essay considers the contribution that social and cultural anthropology can make to other disciplines. This contribution is of two sorts. First, anthropology offers a glimpse of what society may have been like for most of human history when the state and its invading presence are absent. Such knowledge cannot be obtained directly but studying communities where the state is remote does give a flavor of what such life is like. Second, anthropology has developed a method of studying others through participation. This method is apparently deceptively straightforward but, nonetheless, it has profound theoretical implications. It is based on the recognition that we can only know those people who at first seem different by sharing what is implicitly involved as they go about their normal life

Durkheimian anthropology and religion: going in and out of each other’s bodies

This is a reprint of Bloch, Maurice. 2007. “Durkheimian anthropology and religion: Going in and out of each other's bodies.” In Religion, anthropology, and cognitive science, edited by Harvey Whitehouse and James Laidlaw, 63–88. Ritual studies monograph series. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press

The causal cognition of wrong doing: incest, intentionality, and morality

The paper concerns the role of intentionality in reasoning about wrong doing. Anthropologists have claimed that, in certain non-Western societies, people ignore whether an act of wrong doing is committed intentionally or accidentally. To examine this proposition, we look at the case of Madagascar. We start by analyzing how Malagasy people respond to incest, and we find that in this case they do not seem to take intentionality into account: catastrophic consequences follow even if those who commit incest are not aware that they are related as kin; punishment befalls on innocent people; and the whole community is responsible for repairing the damage. However, by looking at how people reason about other types of wrong doing, we show that the role of intentionality is well understood, and that in fact this is so even in the case of incest. We therefore argue that, when people contemplate incest and its consequences, they simultaneously consider two quite different issues: the issue of intentionality and blame, and the much more troubling and dumbfounding issue of what society would be like if incest were to be permitted. This entails such a fundamental attack on kinship and on the very basis of society that issues of intentionality and blame become irrelevant. Using the insights we derive from this Malagasy case study, we re-examine the results of Haidt’s psychological experiment on moral dumbfoundedness, which uses a story about incest between siblings as one of its test scenarios. We suggest that the dumbfoundedness that was documented among North American students may be explained by the same kind of complexity that we found in Madagascar. In light of this, we discuss the methodological limitations of experimental protocols, which are unable to grasp multiple levels of response. We also note the limitations of anthropological methods and the benefits of closer cross-disciplinary collaboration

The causal cognition of wrong doing: incest, intentionality, and morality

The paper concerns the role of intentionality in reasoning about wrong doing. Anthropologists have claimed that, in certain non-Western societies, people ignore whether an act of wrong doing is committed intentionally or accidentally. To examine this proposition, we look at the case of Madagascar. We start by analyzing how Malagasy people respond to incest, and we find that in this case they do not seem to take intentionality into account: catastrophic consequences follow even if those who commit incest are not aware that they are related as kin; punishment befalls on innocent people; and the whole community is responsible for repairing the damage. However, by looking at how people reason about other types of wrong doing, we show that the role of intentionality is well understood, and that in fact this is so even in the case of incest. We therefore argue that, when people contemplate incest and its consequences, they simultaneously consider two quite different issues: the issue of intentionality and blame, and the much more troubling and dumbfounding issue of what society would be like if incest were to be permitted. This entails such a fundamental attack on kinship and on the very basis of society that issues of intentionality and blame become irrelevant. Using the insights we derive from this Malagasy case study, we re-examine the results of Haidt’s psychological experiment on moral dumbfoundedness, which uses a story about incest between siblings as one of its test scenarios. We suggest that the dumbfoundedness that was documented among North American students may be explained by the same kind of complexity that we found in Madagascar. In light of this, we discuss the methodological limitations of experimental protocols, which are unable to grasp multiple levels of response. We also note the limitations of anthropological methods and the benefits of closer cross-disciplinary collaboration

Interview with Maurice Bloch

Professor Maurice Bloch visited Finland in March 2014 as the keynote speaker of the interdisciplinary symposium 'Ritual Intimacy – Ritual Publicity' organized by the Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. In connection to his visit he granted an interview to Suomen Antropologi, in which he discusses some of the central points of his ritual theory and shares his views on past, present and future directions in the study of ritual

La double nature du social: une conversation sur le temps, le transcendantal, la vie, etc. [entretien avec Maurice Bloch]

Can a theory emerge from the thousand ways of being born again by ethnographic research? Is rebirth a specifically human phenomenon? Can we experience rebirth in the absence of ritual? These are the types of questions Maurice Bloch discusses in the interview. He has come across these issues on several occasions during his career and has developed the theory that is the only species with a transcendental approach to the social, that is, with a capacity to construct roles and imaginary communities

Por qué la religión no es nada especial, pero es central

En este trabajo propongo que explicar la religión en términos evolutivos es una empresa engañosa, porque la religión es una parte indisoluble de un aspecto único de la organización social humana. La investigación teórica y empírica debería centrarse en lo que diferencia la socialidad humana de la de otros primates, es decir, el hecho de que los miembros de la sociedad a menudo actúan entre sí en términos de roles y grupos esencializados. Estos tienen una existencia fenomenológica que no se basa en un monitoreo empírico cotidiano, sino en estados y comunidades imaginarias, como clanes o naciones. La base neurológica de este tipo de relaciones sociales, que incluye la religión, dependerá, por tanto, del desarrollo de la imaginación. Se sugiere que tal desarrollo de la imaginación ocurrió aproximadamente en la época de la “revolución” del Paleolítico Superior

Interactions of CO2 with Formation Waters, Oil and Minerals and CO2 storage at the Weyburn IEA EOR site, Saskatchewan, Canada

The Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada, is hosted in Mississippian carbonates and has been subject to injection of CO2 since 2000. A detailed mineralogy study was completed as the basis for modeling of mineral storage of injected CO2. Combining the mineralogy with kinetic reaction path models and water chemistry allows estimates of mineral storage of CO2 over 50 years of injection. These results, combined with estimates of pore volume, solubility of CO2 in oil and saline formation waters, and the initial and final pore volume saturation with respect to oil, saline water and gas/supercritical fluid allow an estimate of CO2 stored in saline water, oil and minerals over 50 years of CO2 injection. Most injected CO2 is stored in oil (6.5•106 to 1.3•107 tonnes), followed closely by storage in supercritical CO2 (7.2•106 tonnes) with saline formation water (1.5 - 2•106 tonnes) and mineral storage (2 - 6•105 tonnes) being the smallest sinks. If the mineral dawsonite forms, as modeling suggests, the majority of CO2 dissolved in oil and salineformation water will be redistributed into minerals over a period of approximately 5000 years. The composition of produced fluids from a baseline sampling program, when compared to produced fluids taken three years after injection commenced, suggest that dawsonite is increasingly stable as pH decreases due to CO2 injection. The results suggest that hydrocarbon reservoirs that contain low gravity oil and little or no initial gas saturation prior to CO2 injection, may store the majority of injected CO2 solubilized in oil, making such reservoirs the preferred targets for combined enhanced oil recovery-CO2 storage projects