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Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. by Renato Rosaldo

Review by: Thomas GibsonMan, New Series, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1990), pp. 172-173Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2804152 .

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172 BOOK REVIEWSreplaced by maize-which though giving higheryields s essdrought-resistant.he landscapehas thuschanged drastically,lthoughthere has been sometreeplanting-of Meha, Grevilleaand fruit rees-mainlyby people in the salaried professions.Theauthors iscuss he ncreasedproductionofcharcoal,a recent nnovationwhich has accelerated hedeple-tion offorest esources.Hunting in Mbeere has allbut disappeared.One of themost profoundfactorsof social change n Mbeere has been the and reformmeasures, which have led to the privatisation fland-a tense, onflict-riddenrocesswhlch has hadprofound ocial consequences,not the eastofwhlchare thegrowingrural nequalities.One survey heyreportndicated hat hetop5percent.ofhouseholdsnow owned 24 percent. of the and,averagingmorethan20 ha. each. This confirmshe studies f DianaHunt andJackGlazier thatdevelopment nMbeerehas largelybenefitedthose at the top end of thesocio-economic scale-particularly those with off-farmncomes.Rileyand Brokensha's econdconcern s to outlineMbeere ethnobotany-to outlne theperceptions ftheMbeere towards heplantworld,as well as theirfolk classificationsnd theway in which plantsareused inMbeere culture.The second chapter f vol-ume 1 is devoted to this purpose, and gives aninteresting ccount of the various plant usages: asbuildingmaterials,uel, ood, fibre,medicineand forritualpurposes. Volume 2 gives an annotatedde-scriptionof the uses of Mbeere plants-the plantsbeing listed lphabetically ccordingto theirvema-cular Ki-Mbeere) names.Two points finterestmergefrom his iscussion.Firstly,hey tress hatMbeere folk axonomieshavea markedutilitarian ias-although notdenying heintellectual imension o Mbeere plantclassification(p. 206). ButRiley and Brokenshafocus heirwholeaccounton thefolk enerics many fwhlchembracemore than one botanical genus). There is thusnodiscussion t all on life-formategories, n whetherintermediate unctional ategories xist,on the rea-sonswhy botanicallydistinct pecies are placed bytheMbeere undera singletaxon. The meaningsofthegeneric erms re neverspecified.And althoughlisting he plantspecies under the vernacular ermmaybe seen as indicatingtheirorder', t does tendto obscure the fact hatmanyplantshave synonymsthat ndicate theirvaried functions.It also seems curiousthat ungi re notmentionedin the text,althoughmushrooms are an importantitemof food in mostAfrican ountries.Could thisbe due to theAnglo-AmericanmycophobiaofwhichLevi-Strausswrote?

Secondly, lthoughRiley and Brokenshanotetheritualmportance f plants n theboys' circumcisionrites, nd in relation o the sacredgrovesowned byparticular lans,they tress hat heMbeere did notreveal the same rich and complex symbolism hatTurner ndicated mongthe Ndembu. They putthisdown to variationsn symbolic laboration hatmayexist between cultures,and to the fact that the

Mbeere have lost' so much oftheir raditional eliefs(p. 190). They also note that compared with othereast African ocieties, medlcinal plants form pre-dominantly ay and secular activity, nd thatthereare few professionalsnd little itual onnected withtraditional ealng (p. 176).Riley and Brokensha's third oncern unites thesetwo otherprimary oncerns-and this consists f aplea to governments nd development agencies totake into account, in the making of developmentplans, ocal perceptions and knowledge. They de-plore the policyofdevelopmentfrom bove, and itscorollary-ignoring indigenous knowledge andlike such researchers s Robert Chambers and PaulRichards, tresshe salienceofethnoscience, nd theneed forthe greater articipation f ocal people indecision-making nd action concerningtheirowndevelopment. Although Riley and Brokensha ac-knowledge that the Mbeere are going throughaperiod ofprofound ocialchangeand faceformidableecological and social problems, heydo not see thefuture s entirely leak.The studyends (rather oddly, I thought)withextracts rom he diaryof an old colonial, ColonelMeinertzhagen,whose life nd sentiments ereverydifferentromthose of the Mbeere, whose ethno-science is well portrayedn thls tudy.BRLANMoRRisGoldsmithsollege,ondon

ROSALDO, RENATO. Culture nd truth: heremakingof socialanalysis.xii, 253 pp. Boston: BeaconPress,1989. $21.95Accordingtothisbook socialanalysis as undergonea major transformationn the ast few decades. As aresult here has been a redefinition oth of what itmeans to be a knowing subject n the social sciences,and of what constitutes n appropriateobject ofknowledge.Rosaldo's basic arguments that llknowingsub-jects are necessarily situated by their own lifeexperiences nrelation otheir bjectsofstudy. ut-ting heoryntopractice, eweaves his own personalexperiencesof bereavement,courtship nd father-hood into his text. Rather than viewing suchsubjectivitys a hindrance o knowledge,he arguesthat hemultiple ersonal dentities f the researchercan be put to work to elicita much richerrangeofknowledge than the old heroic masculine ideal ofWeber's detached observer.Along with a new wayofenvisioning ubjectivity new rangeofobjectsofstudyhas emerged,particularlyn the cross-culturalunderstanding fhuman emotionsand of multicul-turalism oth n societies nd in individuals. nwhathe calls he culturally iversifyingations' he objectofanalysismustbe neither authentic raditional ul-tures'nor the process of culturalhomogenisation,but the developmentof ncreasinglyomplex partialand multiplecultural dentities, s individuals earnto move back and forth etween differentulturalcontexts.

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BOOK REVIEWS 173The book is divided into three parts.He beginsby criticising he 'classicalnorms' of ethnography,whlch treated cultures as integrated wholes like

monumental art works hung on the wall of a mu-seum. This approach has been replaced by a morefluidvision ofa worldmade up ofopen borders. nthe second part,he draws on Turner, Bourdieu,Thompson and others to argue for a more open-ended form of analysiswhich allows for uncertamnoutcomes and continuous nstabllitynsocial ife.Healso valorisesnarrative ormsof writing n whichmultiple visions of social realitymay be presentedwhich cannot be summarisednto a singleholisticvision. n the third arthe begins by analysing hreeChicano texts sexamples ffluidly hanging ulturalvalues and dentities nd goes on todevelopa critiqueofWeber's dealobserver ycontrastingtwith hosewho view social analysis s a form fcriticism imedat persuading he powerful o change theirwaysoratorganising ubordinate roups ochangetheir itu-ation. He concludes by developing the concept of'relationalknowledge', in which the native's nter-pretation f theanthropologist'sroject sgivenduerecognition, nd the relativityfthe nthropologist'sknowledge of the native s franklydmitted.In an epilogue,Rosaldo discusses heresponse oattempts o include non-Westernand non-classicaltexts n mandatory WesternCulture' courses. Thisbook is npartRosaldo's response othis ontroversyat Stanford. ndeed, thismay well prove itsmostvaluable contribution, ince it is written n a styleaccessible otheundergraduatend to the ayperson.Along with the advantagesof such a style go thedrawbacks, ncludingoccasional oversimplificationsof complex theoreticalarguments, nd ahistoncalcriticisms f those who wrote at the time of highimpenalism. Such authorsshould always be com-paredwith heir ontemporaries, otwith heirmore'enlightened'descendants. THOMASGIBSONUniversityfRochester

SARKAR, R.M. Regionat ults nd rural raditions:ninteractingattern fdivinitynd humanityn ruralBengal. x,351 pp.,plates, ables, ibliogr.NewDelhi: Inter-Indca ublhcations, 986. Rs.345DASGUPTA, SATADAL. Caste,kinship nd community:social ystem f Bengal aste. ii, 291 pp., illus.,tables, bibliogr. Madras: Universities Press,1986. Rs.125.00These monographs re regional tudiesby two Cal-cutta-tramnednthropologists: r Sarkar teaches inWest Bengal while ProfessorDasgupta has beenbased nCanada for hepast wodecades. Bothworksare based on extensivefieldworkcarried out in anumber of Bengali villages in the 1960s and 70s.Theyprovide plentifulthnographlc escription ututillse edectic and somewhat erratictheoreticalframeworks. arkar's syntax s in need of a goodcopy-editorwhile Dasgupta's book is well writtenand well produced.

Dasgupta concentrateson a local, endogamoussub-caste ofBagdis (a 'low' or 'scheduled' caste inWestBengal), while Sarkar tudies he folk'or vil-lage' deities ftenvillagecommunities cattered veran even wider area. Both tryto keep close to afunctional nd structural-functionalnentation,butthey give many useful details beyond their an-nounced frameworks. hls featuremakestheirworkof most immediatevalue to other anthropologistsworking nBengal.Neithermakesmuchuse ofmorerecent studies (be these Indian or foreign). Theycapitaliseon long-term nvolvementwith villagersin a region, the one based on the distribution f asmallcastegroup,the otheron thesimilarityfcultsand shrines n a number of multi-caste illages.Sarkarpresents lot of material n folkculture-distinguishing etween local and Sanskritic evels(renumrscentf great and littletraditions)but heprovides ittle iscussion fthese evels. The regionalfocus demonstrates he distribution f deities andfestivalsnrelation o castegroups.The correspond-ences area litdetoo neat,butthematerial resentedcomplicates he implified heoretical icture. arkarcallstheworshipatparticularhnnes regionalcults'and looks at the distribution f deities nd shrinesnrelationto caste, occupation, ritualspecialists ndsocial networks.Village deitieswork' as a 'bindingforcefor ..dissimilarocial segments' nd constitute'interacting atterns f thought' through worship(pp. 4-5). All this s not new but Sarkar pposes hIsapproach o more orthodox'ones, stressingndigen-ous popular, versus systematic religlon.Unfortunately e does not discuss actual worshlppractices nd ideologies to any extent,nor does herefer o vanations n the observance of ntuals. Theseventeen hrines f five deities electedseem to bethemostpopular ones,butSarkar oes not go further:why thesevlllages,deitiesand practices?Nor doeshe attempt o relatethe study o the restofBengal,let alone the rest of India. Thls would be under-standable if the local systemswere analysed to agreater xtent.But there s little discussionof in-digenous accounts, and specificntuals are given aperfunctoryreatment. he work does not leave arudimentaryunctional evel and the laterchaptersmerely laborate he integrating attern' hesiswithmore and more detail. The penultimate chaptermerely ddsnames,casteaffiliation, onetary on-tribution nd the ike to theprevious,more generalsociological nformation.Nevertheless,much important etail emerges nthecourse ofthe book: Brahmanandnon-Brahmanritualistsn the same festival,milk substituted ornce-liquor in some ceremonies,the prevalence ofpossession dances, animal sacrifices nd interactionamong deities,mediumship nd medicine,and pat-ternsoffinancing nd participation. hese featurescould be profitably omparedwith otherplaces inBengal.Dasgupta sets out his framework urely n termsof the functional ntegration f levels,the neatnessofwhlchhe more or less gnores n thepresentation