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Diagrams in Anthropology: Lines

and Interactions

Tristan Partridge

[1]

Diagramming is the procedure of abstraction when it is not concerned with reducing the

world to an aggregate of objects but, quite the opposite, when it is attending to their

genesis extracting the relational-qualitative arc of one occasion of experience and

systematically depositing it in the world for the next occasion to find the activity of

formation appearing stilled (Massumi 2011: 14, 99).

The ongoing use of diagrams in anthropology has its roots in the emergence of the

discipline itself. Ever since the work of Malinowski and a number of notable

predecessors, diagrams (along with maps) have become a customary feature of

ethnographic monographs with some more standardised and familiar than others. A

two-dimensional, often schematic, arrangement of lines drawn to show the organisation,

appearance, arrangement, mechanisms or interactions within an area or action of

HeitorMarcador de texto procedure of abstraction

HeitorMarcador de textoit is not concerned with reducing theworld to an aggregate of objects



analysis, the diagram has appeared in many different forms.This introductory review

focuses first on two particular kinds: those used to convey information regarding kinship,

and those depicting different forms of exchange.

Critiques and Challenges

Compared with other practices that rely on the visualisation of ideas and data, and which

also operate within an interdisciplinary context, diagrams in anthropology have received

less critical scrutiny than, for example, cartography and visual research methods.

Photography and film within Visual Anthropology have become established forms of

both presentation, and of method. They also provide objects of analysis in and of

themselves. Interrogating the pitfalls and potential of their display via digital media has

led to the development of hypermedia anthropology (Pink 2006: xi) enabling novel

combinations of the visual, aural and textual. For some, this counteracts a previous

rejection of the visual, sensory and applied that coincided with social and cultural

anthropology establishing itself as a scientific discipline a rejection of the subjectivity

of photography and film in favour of adopting visual metaphors such as diagrams, grids

and maps to synthesise and objectify knowledge (Pink 2006: 8; Grimshaw 2001:

67).Framed this way, diagrams lack the sensory transmission that multimedia forms of

presentation seek, in part, to address.

Another critique questions the decontextualisinglinearity (Ingold 2000: 140) of

diagrams. In this light, the kinship diagram, for example, is seen as a chart that can be

taken in at a glance and scanned indifferently from any point in any direction, thus

presenting the complete network of kinship relations over several generations as a

totality present in simultaneity (Bourdieu 1977: 38, at Ingold 2007: 111). For Ingold, such

a snapshot resembles the sterile austerity of an electrical circuit board a schematic

devoid of human inspiration even adopting the technical convention of drawing a

hump where unconnected lines cross one another, echoing the circuit drawing of

electrical engineers (Barnes 1967: 122; Ingold 2007: 111).

HeitorMarcador de textodiagrams in anthropology have receivedless critical scrutiny than, for example, cartography and visual research methods.

HeitorMarcador de textoThey also provide objects of analysis in and ofthemselves

HeitorMarcador de textohypermedia anthropology (Pink 2006: xi)

HeitorMarcador de texto.Framed this way, diagrams lack the sensory transmission that multimedia forms ofpresentation seek, in part, to address

HeitorMarcador de texto critique

HeitorMarcador de textothe decontextualisinglinearity (Ingold 2000: 140) ofdiagrams

HeitorMarcador de texto(Bourdieu 1977: 38, at Ingold 2007: 111)



[2]

(Leach 1961, at Ingold 2007 112: Kinship Diagram as Circuit Board): The lines of the

kinship chart join up, they connect, but they are not lifelines or even storylines. It seems

that what modern thought has done to place fixing it to spatial locations it has also

done to people, wrapping their lives into temporal moments (Ingold 2007: 3).

However, given their innate reliance on the visualisation of data, diagrams also appear

to have much to offer the development of forms of ethnographic presentation that

challenge, or augment, an exclusive reliance on text. Relationships between the two vary

greatly, and critical approaches to cartography raise questions that are equally

applicable to diagrams. For example, the idea that they conceal as much as, if not far

more than, they reveal, and that any sense of accuracy comes at the cost of minimising

complexities inherent in the lives and locales of research. Recognising that maps, as

representations, are necessarily selective (Turnbull 2000: 101) leads many, among them

Monmonier (1991), to emphasise how all maps tell lies.

This is not simply because the quest for an accurate or precise and comprehensive

representation of reality raises impossible questions regarding what counts as detail

and information on one hand and what constitutes the infinite, remaining particulars on

the other, but is because in the cartographic world, all is still and silent as opposed to

the world of our experience that is suspended in movement (Ingold 2000: 242).

Crucially, for the types of diagram under consideration here, this cartographic or

diagrammatic world threatens to conceptualise social relations as static social facts

rather than as dynamic phenomena, offering a particularly empty conception of social

life (Kertcher 2006) and envisaging these relations without space to query how they

HeitorMarcador de texto(Leach 1961, at Ingold 2007 112: Kinship Diagram as Circuit Board)

HeitorMarcador de textohey conceal as much as, if not farmore than, they reveal, and that any sense of accuracy comes at the cost of minimisingcomplexities inherent in the lives and locales of research

HeitorMarcador de textocritical approaches to cartography

HeitorMarcador de textothe types of diagram under consideration here, this cartographic ordiagrammatic world threatens to conceptualise social relations as static social factsrather than as dynamic phenomena,



persist or diminish over time (Suitor et al 1997). As we shall see, however, questions

around how diagrams are used in anthropology are as numerous as the forms they

adopt. Maps of places can be used for guiding and informing our interaction with the

world. Diagrams of human relations of different kinds tend not to share such an explicit

purpose, however. The role of an exchange diagram, for example what we might

decide it is for depends very much on the ethnographic material that accompanies it,

and which generated it in the first place. In what follows, I present various examples

drawn from the anthropological to begin exploring some of these issues and relations.

Kinship

Bourdieu questioned the origins and meanings of familiar graphic representations of

kinship, recommending a social history of the genealogical tool (Bourdieu 1977: 38,

207) a task which Mary Bouquet addresses by highlighting affinities between

European iconographical tradition in sacred, secular and scientific family trees and the

conceptual field around the anthropological kinship diagram (Bouquet 1996: 45, 59). As

elsewhere, these traditions and influences are seen as coalescing and finding form

within the work of W. H. R. Rivers and his visualisation of kinship in the genealogical

diagram (ibid.).

[3]

(Rivers 1910: 1 The Genealogical Method (Kurkas genealogical diagram)

Rivers is usually credited with developing the genealogical method within

anthropological inquiry. In his words, this was to involve the means of both obtaining

information and of demonstrating the truth of this information. In this, diagrams were

seen as crucial devices in the presentation of facts, and as a way to guarantee the

HeitorMarcador de textoquestionsaround how diagrams are used in anthropology are as numerous as the forms theyadop

HeitorMarcador de textoMaps

HeitorMarcador de textoused for guiding and informing

HeitorMarcador de textoDiagrams

HeitorMarcador de textotend not to share such an explicitpurpose,

HeitorMarcador de textoBourdieu

HeitorMarcador de textorecommending a social history of the genealogical tool (Bourdieu 1977: 38,207)

HeitorMarcador de texto Mary Bouquet

HeitorMarcador de textoRivers 1910

HeitorMarcador de textodeveloping the genealogical method

HeitorMarcador de textoobtaininginformation

HeitorMarcador de textodemonstrating the truth of this information.

HeitorMarcador de textocrucial devices in the presentation of facts,



accuracy and completeness [of those facts] (Rivers 1910: 11). This was a staunchly

positivistic approach (Stocking 1992: 34) and explicitly sought to establish the emergent

discipline of ethnology on a level with other sciences by demonstrating the facts of

social organisation in such a way as to carry conviction to the reader with as much

definiteness as is possible in any biological science (Rivers 1910: 12). Visual

representations thus became an argument for the credibility of the scientists inferences

(Gifford-Gonzalez 1993: 26, at Bouquet 1996: 45). Kinship diagrams were not his

invention, however: Morgans diagrams of consanguinity in his Systems of

Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871) were also based on historical

models of the family tree.

[4]

(Left) One of Morgans (1871) diagrams of consanguinity.

(Right) This Dance Diagram by Charles Seligman (1910: 156 WHR Rivers colleague

and part of the Torres Strait Expedition) prefigures the symbols used today in kinship

diagrams with circles in outline (women) or shaded (men), to distinguish between people

of different genders.

Rivers argued that the systematic presentation of genealogical facts offered a way to

get beneath the skin of human beings to the relations that people were born into and

developed throughout their lifetime, admiring how once people had been identified in a

genealogical diagram they became real personages although I had never seen them

(Rivers 1968: 105, at Bouquet 1996: 45). This reflects both the concrete method of

questioning in order to learn personal names and terms known by informants, and also

the weight given to the abstract system of relations underlying those names an

HeitorMarcador de textoVisualrepresentations thus became an argument for the credibility of the scientists inferences(Gifford-Gonzalez 1993: 26, at Bouquet 1996: 45)

HeitorMarcador de textoRivers

HeitorMarcador de texto a way toget beneath the skin of human beings to the relations that people were born into anddeveloped throughout their lifetime, admiring how once people had been identified in agenealogical diagram they became real personages although I had never seen them(Rivers 1968: 105, at Bouquet 1996: 45)



abstract order that was itself reconcretized (visualized) in the genealogical diagram

(Bouquet 1996: 45). Rivers diagrams led to the conventionalisation of inverting the tree

of family trees, placing its roots at the top (Bouquet 1995: 423; 1996), and thus

erasing the image of the tree as a living, growing entity, branching out along its many

boughs and shoots, and [replacing] it with an abstract, dendritic geometry of points and

lines, in which every point represents a person, and every line a genealogical

connection (Ingold 2000: 135).

This inversion had lasting effects.The stories that people tell about themselves and the

information gleaned from them by systematic forensic inquiry (Bouquet 1993: 140) that

Rivers described continued to influence the systematic collection of genealogical data

methods that in 1967 Barnes acknowledged could scarcely be improved (Barnes 1967:

106, at Ingold 2007: 110). Bouquet also suggests that visualising kinship in the

genealogical diagram reflects the limits of a specific ideological consciousness,

[marking] the conceptual points beyond which that consciousness cannot go, and

between which it is condemned to oscillate (Jameson, in Clifford 1988: 223) (Bouquet

1996: 44). Their presence persists (Bouquet 1996: 44) and genealogical diagrams are

established as images for use on the edge of the text (Stoller 1994: 96) each

(diagram and text) expanding on the explanatory reach of the other.

Diagram as Method and Delivery

To recognise this is to emphasise how the diagram is a possibility of fact it is not the

fact itself (Deleuze 2004: 110). That is, genealogical diagrams are contemporary

models for social relations (Barnard & Good 1984: 9), portraying the inter-relationships

of real or imaginary individuals (ibid. p.8). The significance of these diagrams is not

established until the nature of those relationships between the individuals portrayed is

clarified (Bouquet 1996: 45). Malinowski recognised the visual clout and direct efficacy

of the reduction of data within visual forms, whilst at the same time elaborating on the

kinds of details and observations that are necessary in establishing the relationships

portrayed how to flesh out the bones of the genealogical diagram: The method of

reducing information, if possible, into charts or synoptic tables ought to be extended to

the study of practically all aspects of native life. All types of economic transactions may

be studied by following up connected, actual cases, and putting them into a synoptic

chart. Also, systems of magic, connected series of ceremonies, types of legal acts a

table ought to be drawn up of all the gifts and presents customary in a given society, a

table including the sociological, ceremonial, and economic definition of every item

Besides this, of course, the genealogical census of every community, studied more in

detail, extensive maps, plans and diagrams, illustrating ownership in garden land,

hunting and fishing privileges, etc., serve as the more fundamental documents of

HeitorMarcador de textoerasing the image of the tree as a living, growing entity, branching out along its manyboughs and shoots, and [replacing] it with an abstract, dendritic geometry of points andlines, in which every point represents a person, and every line a genealogicalconnection (Ingold 2000: 135)

HeitorMarcador de texto Bouquet also suggests that visualising kinship in thegenealogical diagram reflects the limits of a specific ideological consciousness,[marking] the conceptual points beyond which that consciousness cannot go, andbetween which it is condemned to oscillate (Jameson, in Clifford 1988: 223)

HeitorMarcador de textoTo recognise this is to emphasise how the diagram is a possibility of fact it is not thefact itself (Deleuze 2004: 110)

HeitorMarcador de textogenealogical diagrams are contemporarymodels for social relations (Barnard & Good 1984: 9)

HeitorMarcador de texto synopticchar



ethnographic research (Malinowski 1922: 11).

[5]

(Left) Malinowskis use of diagrams extended to documenting canoe types and

construction (1922: 83/top; 85/bottom). (Right) He also used diagrams in his linguistic

work (here from 1948: 261), on the phatic (or performative) use of language (Gellner

1998: 148).

Malinowski, along with Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard, and Fortes (among others)

sought to understand the basis for the orderly functioning of small-scale, effectively

state-less societies, and kinship was seen as constituting the basis and structure for

social continuity in these settings (Carsten 2004: 10). Latter work was dominated by

avowedly ahistorical studies of African unilineal kinship systems, treating the lineage as

bounded units, and developing a complex typology to describe the functioning of these

systems, involving maximal and minimal lineages and sublineages (Carsten 2004:

11).

Evans-Pritchard adapted the visual metaphor of the tree to account for such notions of

scale in the inter-relationships between Nuer clans and lineages. He also made attempts

to represent Nuer descriptions and depictions of these inter-relationships.



[6]

Evans-Pritchards (1940) diagrammatic lineage trees of the Jinaca (196/l) and

Gaatgankiir (197/r).

In these attempts, Evans-Pritchard explicitly states that it was only the analyst (or we)

who insisted on this visual metaphor, highlighting something of its limitations and biases:

[the Nuer] do not present [lineages] the way we figure them as a series of bifurcations of

descent, as a tree of descent, or as a series of triangles of ascent, but as a number of

lines running at angles from a common point they see [the system] as actual relations

between groups of kinsmen within local communities rather than as a tree of descent, for

the persons after whom the lineages are called do not all proceed from a single

individual (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 202).

[7]

(Left) Evans-Pritchards (1940: 201) outline of a Nuer system of lineage, compared with

HeitorMarcador de textoit was only the analyst (or we)who insisted on this visual metaphor, highlighting something of its limitations and biases:[the Nuer] do not present [lineages] the way we figure them as a series of bifurcations ofdescent, as a tree of descent, or as a series of triangles of ascent, but as a number oflines running at angles from a common point they see [the system] as actual relationsbetween groups of kinsmen within local communities rather than as a tree of descent, forthe persons after whom the lineages are called do not all proceed from a singleindividual (Evans-Pritchard 1940: 202).



(Right) how the Nuer themselves figure a lineage system (1940: 202).

During this era of kinship studies in Britain, largely preoccupied with the analysis of

descent groups (Carsten 2004: 12), such projects in France followed a route influenced

by Lvi-Strausss The Elementary Structures of Kinship with an emphasis instead on

social rules, the generation of exchange, and marriage (ibid.). The once-raging debates

between adherents of alliance or descent theories do not need to be repeated here.

For current purposes, I focus on how the established symbolic formulae of kinship

diagrams have been adapted for use in different ethnographic works, and how the

diagram has been modified to focus analytical attention on different aspects of social

life. Kinship diagrams do not always fit the static model they imply: its not always the

intention for each triangle and circle [to represent] one real man or woman since they

may be used to be used to represent fictive genealogies of imaginary persons (Barnard

& Good 1984:7). Even when the correlation between diagram symbols and living

individuals is more direct, kinship diagrams have been diversely adapted, and

constructed so as to bring out certain structural features that the work seeks to draw

attention to (Bouquet 1996: 60).

Munn (1986: 39) highlights interhamlet kinship relations in a Gawan neighbourhood.

HeitorMarcador de texto Lvi-Strausss The Elementary Structures of Kinship

HeitorMarcador de texto I focus on how the established symbolic formulae of kinshipdiagrams have been adapted for use in different ethnographic works, and how thediagram has been modified to focus analytical attention on different aspects of sociallife



Relationality and Decentering

The different variations on kinship diagrams above share in common a recognisable

linearity. Reflections on these conventions question their impact on reinforcing particular

notions of relationality, and subsequent effects on ideas around alterity and the

individual. In the above examples, the passage of time (in peoples lives) has a

directional, generational thrust that can be depicted (across the page) accordingly. For

Ingold, this trend reinforces anthropological habits of insisting that the way people in

modern Western societies comprehend the passage of history, generations and time is

essentially linear, which casts anything that is not immediately recognisable in an

opposing category: alterity, we are told, is non-linear (Ingold 2007: 3) and this, in turn,

equates the march of progress with the increasing domination of an unruly and

therefore non-linear nature (Ingold 2007: 155).

Sahlins, meanwhile, suggests that the partible dividual has become a regular figure of

kinship studies as well as a widely distributed icon of the pre-modern subject, perhaps

as a result of anthropologists staring too long at ego-centred, cum egocentric, kinship

diagrams (Sahlins 2011: 13). As such, we have learned to make the mistake of

rendering the relationships of kinship as the attributes of singular persons (ibid.). Not

only this, but also considering kin persons as the only kind of persons who are multiple,

divisible, and relationally constructed leads to a tendency to overlook the fact that more

familiar terms are also relational, among them employees, clients, teammates,

classmates , guests, customers and aliens: When aspects of the same person,

variously salient in different social contexts, they are instances of partibility. But they are

not instances of dividuality, since they do not entail the incorporation of others in the one

person (Sahlins 2011: 13).



[8]

Clockwise from bottom left: social structure and marriage rules within Aranda kinship

(Lvi-Strauss 1972 [1966]: 83); Ambryan kinship systems (Lvi-Strauss 1969, fig. 5),

cited by Gell 1998: 91; (Upper right) Figure 24 Relationships and Contexts (Rose

2000: 222); (Lower right) Figure 9 Yarralin marriage practices and identities cross-

cutting moieties and social categories (Rose 2000: 77).

Rhizomes

In her description of the Yarralin peoples world view, Rose (2000: 221) describes

individuals as shaped by their own personal angle of perception, the angle of their

matrilineal identity, and their various country angles which tie them into other species

and to the workings of the world (ibid.). The diagram drawn to reflect this resembles

Deleuze and Guattaris rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 18): a dense and tangled

cluster of interlaced threads or filaments, [where] any point in which can be connected to

any other (Ingold 2000: 134). As we have seen, the tree has become one of the most

potent images in the intellectual history of the Western world, not only used in

diagrammatical form to represent hierarchies of control and schemes of taxonomic



division but also, and above all, chains of genealogicalconnection (ibid.). The rhizome

model, by contrast, looks beyond the static and linear, arborescent and dendritic

imagery of the genealogical model to begin thinking about persons, relationships and

land in a world in movement, wherein every part or region enfolds, in its growth, its

relations with all the others (ibid.): a continually ravelling and unravellingrelational

manifold (Ingold 2000: 140).

Roses description of relationships and contexts based on Yarralin ideas about

wisdom, difference and interconnection includes the influence of (physical and

relational) positioning on perception, in a strikingly rhizomatic account: an angle of

perception is a boundary, and boundaries are both necessary and arbitrary. Necessity

lies in the fact that there are no relationships unless there are parts, and without

relationships there is only uniformity and chaos. Arbitrariness lies in the fact that since all

parts are ultimately interconnected, the particular boundary drawn at a given point is only

one of many possible boundaries. Each line in Figure 24 is both and boundary and a

relationship. Each node (A, B, C, etc) is both a context and an angle of vision, another

centre One particular human angle defines our world as it is because it is we who are

looking. Perception distorts, but wisdom lies in knowing that distortion is not

understanding (Rose 2000: 222).

Such developments and reflections take us beyond the more recognisable examples of

kinship diagrams, especially those focused on lineages and descent. As mentioned

above, Lvi-Strausss work on kinship shifted focus to the importance of marriage, and

of exchange more generally, in establishing and maintaining relations between groups,

rather than just individuals (Carsten 2004: 14). In this, he developed models for

elaborate, long-term exchange[s] involving the transfer of goods, services, and people

that cemented relations between groups (Carsten 2004: 14) making extensive use of

diagrams.



[9]

(Left) Lvi-Strauss (1969: 64) draws on Firth (1936) to highlight the astonishing

complexity of matrimonial exchanges in Tikopia (Solomon Islands), cementing relations

between specific groups of in-laws and binding each lineage (or kinship group) in a

system of directional exchanges.

(Lower right) Lvi-Strauss (1969: 35) focuses on the ceremonial distribution of meat in

Burma, emphasising the role played by kinship systems in determining the kinds and

quantities of meat received by different individuals, and the subsequent effects that

generosity expended in such feasts have on future marriage arrangements.

(Upper right) Robinson (in the volume Marriage in Tribal Societies, ed. Meyer Fortes

1962: 129) specifies not only the kinds of foodstuffs (re)distributed as marriage gifts and

the order of consent and expectation between specific members of the bride and

grooms families, but also the temporal order of the transfers, spread over a number of

days around the ceremony itself (1962: 130).

Exchange



There is a tension at the heart of anthropological diagrams of exchange concerning

attempts to represent movement (spatiotemporal change) and the effects of time

passing. Holbraad (2012: 101) asks why a line is appropriate for representing a

trajectory [of change] and how the inherent continuity of trajectories relates to the

momentum of movements and action. Is demarcating, visualising and representing the

continuity of plotted trajectories not a very faint way of expressing momentum (ibid.)?

He adds that tota simul representations on paper have to be economical since they

do not move in themselves, and hence they cannot really have a momentum, but argues

that this economy comes at a price: For the point about momentum is not only that it

renders motion both continuous and directional, but also that it does so as a matter of

necessity: momentum describes the inner compulsion of motion. The best way to

understand this, I think, is cinematic: imagine panning away from the birds-eye

perspective of diagrams, and placing the camera at the helm of a moving trajectory,

cockpit-style (Holbraad 2012: 101).

Flow

With kinship diagrams, their linearity directed the passage of time and the segregation

(or interaction) of generations. Attempts to visualise and represent exchange, however,

emphasise the movement of transfer relying on directional arrows to depict action and

change, often across both time and space. As the following examples illustrate, on the

more abstract level of economic theory, diagrams are apt devices for illustrating modes

and relations of trade and transfer operating at different scales in order to reflect

different flows (Appadurai 1996) of goods, labour, capital, value, commodities, people

and technologies.

[10]

(Left) Gudeman (2001: 6) diagrams the neoclassical economy, in the style of work that

deals explicitly with Economics, eg. (Right) Harvey (2003: 10) outlining the paths of

capital circulation (in capitalist society).



Building on diagrams of neoclassical economy (see above), Gudeman (2001: 7)

draws the Economy as a complex of practices and relationships that are constituted

within the two realms of market and community and the four value domains he terms

the base, social relationships, trade, and accumulation (Gudeman 2001:

5). In this diagram (below, left), he emphasises the difference between established

contemporary theories of value relativism through individual preference and its influence

on demand and supply, and his own that proposes a world of inconsistent, or

incommensurate, domains of value that are locally specified culture is thus made

and remade through contingent categories, such as home and work, body and the other,

weekdays and weekends, beauty and efficiency, or friendship and love. Different value

arenas make up economy (Gudeman 2001: 6-7).

[11]

(Left) Gudeman 2001: market, community and value domains. (Right) Gudeman &

Rivera (1990: 119, used here by Mayer 2002: 22) delineates the flow of expenditures

and leftovers within a specific (if unidentified) site the house (more on Sites of

exchange, below).

The economic diagram format suits cases where the directional flow of abstract goods

or entities is depicted in transfer or exchange with similarly abstract (or, rather,

generalized) actors. Gregorys work on gift economies makes extensive use of such

diagrams: at the initial level, distinguishing between the single, quantitative exchange

relation established between objects in commodity transfer, and gift exchange that

consists of two transactions [where] the transactors become mutually indebted to each

other the exchange relation is established between the transactors rather than the

objects (Gregory 1982: 46). The gist of these differences is summarized in two, simple

figures (3.1/2, below).



[12]

(Upper left) Gregory on Commodity exchange and Gift exchange (1982: 46).

(Bottom left) The standard conception of the general relations of production,

consumption, distribution and exchange within the broader economy is represented

diagrammatically by placing production (represented by firms) in opposition to

consumption (represented by households), in a relation mediated by exchange (the

product market) and distribution: households supply labour and demand consumption

goods; firms demand labour and supply consumption goods (Gregory 1982: 103).

(Right) The change a trois central to Mausss work on The Gift as developed by Sahlins

(1972: 159), emphasising the role of the second donee in the parable (Damren 2002:

86), and using a particular case (4.1) to elaborate on the consequences for our

understanding of gift exchange more broadly (4.2). In the former, the mauri that holds the

increase-power (hau) is placed in the forest by the priests (tohunga); the mauri causes

game birds to abound; accordingly, some of the captured birds should be ceremoniously

returned to the priests who placed the mauri; the consumption of these birds by the

priests in effect restores the fertility (hau) of the forest (hence the name of the ceremony,

whangai hau, nourishing hau (Sahlins 1972: 158). Thus, the meaning of hau one

disengages from the exchange of taonga is as secular as the exchange itself. If the

second gift is the hau of the first, then the hau of a good is its yield, just as the hau of a

forest is its productiveness if the point is neither spiritual nor reciprocity as such, if it is

rather that one mans gift should not be another mans capital, and therefore the fruits of

a gift ought to be passed back to the original holder, then the introduction of a third party

is necessary. It is necessary precisely to show a turnover: the gift has had issue; the

recipient has used it to advantage (Sahlins 1972: 160).



[13]

(Left) The Temporal the Dimension of Exchange: Gregory (1982: 48) responds directly to

the question of temporality in exchange: simple commodity exchange established a

relation of equality between heterogeneous things at a given point in time while gift

exchange establishes a relation of equality between homogenous things at different

points in time (Gregory 1982: 47). The earlier diagram is tabulated to illustrate this: A

and B exchange x and y. This is simultaneous exchange but it can be split up into two

parts that can be thought of as occurring at two different points in time. If this pair of

temporally separated transactions is reproduced at a further two points in time, but in the

reverse direction, the temporal outcomes of the debts thereby created will differ

depending on whether the debt was of the commodity or the gift variety (Gregory 1982:

47).

(Right) Roads of Gift-debt:the circulation of gifts of different rank and velocity create

roads of gift-debt that bind people together in complicated webs of gift-debt Gregory

(1982: 57-9). The two diagrams show the minor roads of exchange that formed the

outward and return sequences of exchange, respectively, and emphasise the importance

of timing: in both sequences C was a major injunction, whose gifts depended on the prior

receipt of goods and gifts from others, which in turn were dependent on the prior return of

offerings from still other parties (Gregory 1982: 59).

Sites of Exchange

Another broad category of anthropological exchange diagrams attends less to abstract

principles or temporality and instead focuses on the specific locales, or sites, of

exchange interactions. As such they more closely resemble maps/plans, but often also

contain or suggest particular forms of movement and/or interaction.



[14]

(Left) Gells (1999: 122) plan of the Dhorai market, and (Right) how people in the market

are put in their place in symmetrical and competitive (as opposed to hierarchical)

relations: in the outer zones relations are territorial and segmentary, with traders and

associates from a given locality all expected to be seated together (Gell 1999: 127).

Gells account of the Dhorai market (in Madhya Pradesh, central India) pictures the

market as a wheel: different groups of traders are able to sit and transact business in

particular areas according to social rank, and the goods they trade in are also ranked,

from the most prized (more central) to the less valuable (more peripheral) (Gell 1999:

121).

[15]

(Left) Duranti (1994: 50) publishes a page of fieldnote sketches later refined for print

(Right) where the organisation of spatial relations exerts a critical influence on the

political prestige of participants during a meeting held to distribute kava, and the

sequential serving of drinks makes and remakes social hierarchies (Duranti 1994: 70).



(Left) Sequences of affinal payments made for a canoe by individual recipients: each

payee makes his gift directly to the canoes builder (Munn 1986: 133).

(Right) This diagram (Gurven et al 2004: 33) models relationships of interaction, viz. the

path model of foraging and sharing partnerships, specifying sites in relation to forest

days and time spent away from home.

[16]

(Left) Gell (1999: 64) and an impossible figure to reflect the symbolic practices of

marriage and affinity, dependent on cross/sex unmediated and same/sex mediated

readings of gendered exchanges at the root of conflict between alliance theory and

feminist critiques (ibid.). This model derives from the fact that any Melanesian marriage

is both collective and individual unlike what might be a more familiar stipulation that



relations are either between individuals (interpersonal/private) or between collectivities

(corporate/public) (Gell 1999: 63). Since individual and society are not opposed, the

relationship between marriage (the union between specific spouses) and alliance

(affinal alliance linking collectivities such as clans) can be understood in terms of fractal

magnification/minimization: an approximate, but not exact, analogy between spouse-to-

spouse relations and affinal-group to affinal-group relations (ibid.)

(Right) Another Strathernogram from Gell (1999: 72) detailing the specific working and

feeding relations that constitute and support the dala: a matrilineal sub-clan described as

the enduring, self-reproducing, building-blocks of Trobriand society (1999: 70).

Routes

Malinowskis (1922: 63) famous map of the Kula ring an extensive form of exchange

carried out across a wide range of islands that form a closed circuit: in the direction of

the hands of a clock long necklaces of red shell, called soulava in the opposite

direction bracelets of white shell called mwali Each of these articles, as it travels in

its own direction on the closed circuit, meets on its way articles of the other class, and is

constantly being exchanged for them (1922: 64). We are told that every movement of

the Kula articles is fixed and regulated, that no one ever keeps any of the articles for

any length of time in his possession, and that transactions lead to permanent and

lifelong connections none of which is visualized around the text (Malinowski 1922:

62). Others (two examples follow) have subsequently revisited the Kula ring.



[17]

Malinowskis (1922: 63) famous map of the Kula ring.



[18]

Hages (1977) undirected graph of the Kula Ring.

Hage (1977: 29) describes his diagram as an undirected graph of the Kula Ring it

follows Malinowskis descriptions and plots 18 points (each representing a Kula

community) at their approximate relative locations: Each point is enclosed by a broken

line roughly indicating the territorial extent of the Kula community as an island, a part of

an island or a group of islands as in Map V in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. The

unbroken lines represent trading relations between these communities (ibid.) adopting

this form to highlight how trade links may be of any physical distance but may not pass

through the territory of another Kula community (Hage 1977: 30).



[19]

(Left) Damons (2002: 108) map of locations within and around the Kula ring adopts

cartographic norms and scales, and focuses on the names of locations (as part of a

paper focusing on the production of fame within the systems exchanges).

(Right) An earlier map (from Herskovits landmark Economic Anthropology 1952: 200)

tracing historical trade routes for various commodities exchanged across the Australian

continent, with trade connections extending to the Torres Strait islands and Western

Papua.



[20]

Baruya trading partners (Godelier & Jablonko 1998).

Godelier and Jablonks (1998) diagram (above) combines elements of each category

outlined above: flows; sites; sequences (interactions); routes. The Baruya had trade links

with 12 other tribes; whose territories are located from 1/2 days walk to more than 3

days walk away journeys were made to exchange bark cloth, bows and arrows, stone

adzes or steel axes, feathers, shells, dogs, and pigs (ibid.). This account queries

standard notions of the operations within cashless economies: With such a diversity of

goods being exchanged, it might be difficult to find just the partner who had on hand the

item one wanted. The problem does not arise, however, because salt bars, like currency,

can be exchanged for all kinds of subsistence goods (e.g., bark cloth, stone adzes,

arrows) and all kinds of luxury goods (e.g. feathers, shells). Salt bars crisscross all these

distinctions. There is a known and accepted rate of exchange of salt bars for any given



1. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/massumi.png

2. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/ingold1.png

3. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/rivers.png

4. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/morgan-seligman.png

5. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/malinowski1.png

6. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/ep1.png

7. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/ep2.png

8. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/levi-strauss1.png

9. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/levi-strauss2.png

10. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gudeman.png

11. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gudeman-2.png

type of item with each other tribe. The partners in this exchange system are not trading in

order to make profit, but rather in order to fulfill their needs as individuals and as

members of their society. Nobody hoards salt bars, and nobody withholds goods in order

to create an artificial scarcity to force a rise in price. This trading system requires

regular, permanent, face-to-face relationships with people with whom one will continue to

deal for many years. Everyone knows the accepted rates of exchange (Godelier &

Jablonko 1998).

Directionality and Irreversibility

Questioning and expanding on the diverse use of diagrams in anthropology parallels

broader concerns within the discipline as a whole not least how we understand

attempts to create a moving picture of a world that doesnt stand still (Clifford 1997).

Bourdieu (1990) challenged the structuralist analysis of gift exchange and the idea of

some abstracted and synchronic law of reciprocity, highlighting instead the political

judgement of the agents involved as regards the timing of the giving of the initial gift and

then of the counter gift (Jedrej 2010: 692). This is to question structural analyses that

deal with a synchronic virtual reality and tends to privilege spatial relations and their

analogues in such forms as synoptic tables, diagrams (structures) and figures, and is

instead to deal with practice, which necessarily unfolds in time and has all the

properties which synchronic structures cannot take into account, such as directionality

and irreversibility (ibid.). There are works such as those on the concept of landscape

that explore and articulate the intersections of time, space and practice (Jedrej 2010:

692). As the above examples suggest, those same intersections urge further

examination and exploration through the use of diagrams in anthropology.



12. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gregory.png

13. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gregory2.png

14. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gell1.png

15. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/duranti.png

16. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gell2.png

17. http://anthropologyoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/malinowski-map1.png




Documents

Diagrams in Anthropology_ Lines and Interactions _ Life Off the Grid