That different peoples in time and place have different abstract principles guiding their behavior does not contradict the point that all of those peoples have in common that they use abstract principles to guide their behavior, and that this they have in common with each other and different from all other species.
In other words, your point "..as to have effectively no common material content beyond your placement in an abstract category. " is off. That they are all systems of abstract principles is a _material_ and substantive commonality. I'm not placing different cultures in an abstract category. I'm saying that all cultures _are_ systems of abstract categories. Having a system of abstract categories is a material difference from not having a system of abstract categories.
^^^^^ Is the fear that we are not all that different from "mere animals"? Isn't the problem with that last phrase the word "mere" rather than the word "animals"?
CB: I have no fear that we are not that different from "mere animals". What's there to fear ? We are mere animals when it comes to living and dying, and the whole range of physiological , anatomical and biological characteristics. That's why I refer to humans as a species. That means we are mere animals. We have a unique characteristic that animals don't have. We have culture. That's both good and bad. For example, animals don't have war, which is culturally derived. Culture ain't all good. There are lots of cultural traits that make humans worse than animals in some sense.
Yes, the problem with the last phrase , which is yours not mine, is the word "mere". I don't say we are "mere" animals. I say we are animals with a unique characteristic, culture, which ain't all good.
The fact that we are animals underlies the validity of materialism. See _The German Ideology_
^^^^^
We now know that tool using apes engage in abstract and innovative problem solving and, per the discussion of sign language, can - and perhaps do w/o human contact - use symbolic representations.
^^^^^ CB: We "know" it "perhaps". Tool use is not culture. Abstract and innovative problem solving is not culture. Culture is the opposite of innovating. It is following "precedent" not making up something new or innovating. No, they don't use symbolic representations without human contact. All these primates using symbolic representations do so only after thorough and extensive human contact.
^^^^^
Now, you may be right to argue that these capacities may not be pivotal to organizing orang, chimp, gorilla or bonobo social relations... but I guess my question is, so what?
^^^^ CB: So what on this thread is that it's the whole argument. Humans have culture, abstract principles guiding behavior and orangatangs, gorillas , chimps and bonobons don't.
^^^^^
I categorically reject deep ecological, ecocentric and actor-neworked forms of leveling the differences between social subjects, animal species, floral communities and material objects, but I still I don't understand why it is important to establish hard and fast differentiations between human beings and other species, particularly because doing so has - at least historically - had a strong tendency to support the kinds of normatively-limited and elitist ethnocentric and anthropocentric projects just about all here oppose.
^^^^^^^ CB: It's important for anthropology because it's true, a fact, an empirical fact concerning the subject matter of anthropology , human beings and human society.
I don't agree that this central fact of anthro has had a tendency to support kinds of normatively-limited and elitist ethnocentric projects. In fact , the opposite is true. By finding the universal, culture, common to all peoples, we take an important step in opposing elitist ethnocentrism, racism, European imperialism and the like.
This is an important point. The point I'm making concerning the universality of culture among humans and its absence among primates is central and critical in the anthropological critique of racist theories. The racists would seize upon your blurring the distinction between primates and humans , and say "see there is no qualitative difference between Africans and apes."
As to anthropocentric projects, I don't oppose them. My only interest in ecology is that it warns us against dangers to the human species, including anthropogenic dangers to the human species.
^^^^^
Even if you are right that culture is the abstract universal differentia specifica, what have you now gained,
^^^^^ CB: You have "gained" a profound scientific fact on the order of importance of what Darwin discovered for biology. You have gained a fundamental refutation of racist theories. Get ahold of Kottak's textbook.
^^^^^
especially as Geertz noted with respect to Herskovitz, if culture has no material content in common across space and time?
^^^^^ CB: As I say, Geertz is making the point I made in my senior thesis. Geertz is "Mr. Meaning". Yes, "marriage" means something different in Bali than in the United States. But what Balinese and Americans have in common is having meaning. Chimps don't have meaning.
^^^^^
When teaching Marx, I always stress that his discussion of labor in the abstract is then NOT followed by a claim that labor in the abstract has any substantive meaning in the analysis of anything or any place in particular... that it is the particulars that matter, not the abstract category...
^^^^^^ CB: I think that is incorrect. Marx didn't put that paragraph in there as unrelated to anything he says about a particular place. It is important everywhere to distinguish that humans imagine and plan their labor ,and bees and spiders don't. That's an important aspect to know about the commonality of essence between ancient hunters and gatherers and modern steel workers. Marx is not an anti-essentialist , pace post-modernism.
^^^^^^
Part of my commitment to this position comes from a whole host of arguments, made by some anthropologists and science studies scholars, that human sociality evolved not only in relation to our biology - thumbs, standing erect, brain/sensory development/underdevelopment, monthly menses, etc. - but also coincident with our relations with mere animals and plant species... that the there has been a dialectic of biological, social, faunal, floral, ecological and cultural development where, unlike Marx's passage on labor - but quite like other passages he wrote on the active contribution "nature" makes to re/production - we, and our symbolic and representational consciousness have not been the only active, outcome-conditioning agents in the making of "culture" or "nature".
-A
^^^^^ CB: I think this last comment of yours contradicts your whole discussion on this thread to some extent , but ,no, only our symbolic consciousness makes or "is" our culture. Our genes make our nature, at least our bodily natures.
I don't call other animals and plants "mere". That's strawperson argument. I call them other species. Humans are animals. I'm the main one who points that out on this list.
That you put culture and nature in quotes is a result of the problems with your argument.