> > Sadly, perhaps, I was raised by a Geertzian anthropologist. This is
> > Geertz'
> > expression of, I believe, the contemporary anthropological position on
> > immutables:
> >
>
> I don't know if I should be simplistic about this, or more complex... Okay,
> I'll try both:
>
> (1) Simplistic: 2 + 2 = 4. There's nothing anthropological about that.
> Every
> culture eventually... immutably developed that.
And the substantive meaning of that for each culture is the same such that it reverberates in primarily the same way? That's equivalent, it seems to me, to saying that all societies - since they have binary oppositions - treat, engage and utilize those oppositions in the same manner and to the same effect. At what point does this end? One male + one female (sometimes) = baby. Every culture, immutably, has that... therefore sex, gender and sexuality are the same everywhere at all times?
>
> (2) Simplistic: Basic emotions. Neither is there anything anthropological
> about that. Every culture shows aspects of "envy", "attachment", "hatred",
> "sorrow", "totem", "taboo" etc.
Have you read Geertz on the extraordinarily diverse meanings, and consequences, of "incest"? Did you know that there are societies where menstruating women hunt large game along with men - a supposed universal taboo? Are you really saying that the physiological expressions; the breadth, scope and character of the communication and expression; the conscious and unconscious social responses; and the patterns of interaction and resolution associated with the phenomena you just listed are meaningfully the same across class/ethnic/racial groups in the US, much less cross-culturally and across history? To be inordinately vulgar, and simplistic, if you are right then I am incapable of understanding why my (stereotypically) NYC-area training in "Fuck you!"... "No, Fuck YOU!" - followed by separation and forgetfullness (most of the time) played so badly in the Monterey Bay area, where people offended or ticked off at you are (stereotypically) non-confrontation but, behind your back, stab you in the back - something you only find out 6 months later when called onto the carpet by the grad director.
>
>
> (3) Complex: Whatever happened to our civilisation we show very specific
> traits that travel right through. I named some of them in the last
> proposition but I'll give one that we certainly created, and without any
> recourse to Reason: Love. That's a weird one. Its sort of like: "Totem" +
> "Attachment" if we want to be terribly immutable.
>
Really? LOVE? Do you mean romantic love? Do you mean carnal love? Do you mean the love of a/your child? Do you mean tragic love? Do you mean, "the bloom is off but my love is deeper" love? Do you mean love of place or country? Do you mean love of God? Do you mean God's love? Do you mean Protestant or Catholic or Islamic or Bhuddist or fill-in-the-blank love? Do you mean love before second wave feminism, when 95% of all women were (and knew they were) dependent on "their man" - whether or not they loved him, or love after second wave feminism, as more and more women have struggled towards equal education, training, employment and independence (and everyone knows that 50% of all marriages in the US end in divorce), or love after third wave feminism where the the politics of second wave feminism is (seen by second wave feminists) undermined by the beneficiaries of second wave success?
Geertz isn't saying that there aren't meta-terms that we use, he's just saying that, in the face of the diversity of human social practice, those terms have no substantive transhistorical/universal meaning.
BTW: Given your position, who decides, how and alongside who else what is immutable and universal and what's emergent and situated? Who gets a voice, who doesn't? Has power, ethnocentrism and scientism (where class and patriarchy have, I think played their part) had a role in our understanding of universals?
Lastly, given that this is the LBO list, if the argument is that the immutables - immutable as they are - exist in the same form, with the same content, as before then what's so bad about modern society if we're really no different than anyone else and/or our forebears? Or is this a base-superstructure kind of argument where our collectively genuine, immutable and universal humanity is still in there and all we need to do is throw off the confusing ideological overlay forced on us by modern capitalism and return ourselves, go back to, our true essence?
Sorry, a little, difficult morning getting the boys off to school/day care.