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Theories in anthropology and ‘anthropological theory’

Roy E llen University of Kent at Canterbury

What makes a theory ‘anthropological’ beyond it being a theory that anthropologists use? Assuming a framework that understands anthropology in its broadest sense, this article invites us to remind ourselves what theories are actually supposed to do. Distinguishing theories in terms of the scale of presumption in their claims, it argues for a pyramid of nested levels of explanation. As we move from the base to the tip of the pyramid, so our explanations and interpretation of data must become increasingly simple to accommodate the forms of measurement that each level demands. Given this model, how can evolutionary theories based on individual behaviour geared to immediate survival and reproduction be reconciled with theories that best explain the uncertainties of ‘emergent systems’, or that consider how individual actions are in turn constrained by the systems of which they are part? It is concluded that anthropology has always acquired its vitality by being critically ‘conjunctural’, and must be ultimately and necessarily a strategic cross-disciplinary theoretical compromise.

The meanings we associate with the word ‘theory’ are wonderfully various. Creationists say of evolution that it is ‘only a theory’, meaning that it is not entirely believable. Undergraduates often complain that there is ‘too much theory’, meaning that they find it difficult and would much prefer ethnography. A colleague, attending a bricklaying evening class in the 980s, found it amusing that the instructor should, after half an hour of trowelling cement, call his class to the chalkboard for what he called ‘theory’. This involved pointing to diagrams distinguishing ‘English bond’ from ‘Flemish bond’. It was theory – in the sense of ‘the naming of parts’ – rather than physical practice. Amongst my doctoral student contemporaries in late 960s London were those who felt inadequate because they ‘did not have a theory’, and others who paraded their theories around like totems: you were a Marxist or a structuralist, or you might have your cake and eat it too and be a structural Marxist. I was always uncomfortable with such posturing, and with the idea that there was somehow a mix-and-match market-place of ideas in which you might acquire the right aesthetic and ideological combination. Theories, it would seem, serve many purposes, and certainly do more than help us make sense of truculent data: they define us as scientists, scholars, researchers, and individuals, and in terms of the perceived quality of our work. In my view, theory

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should not be something that constrains and terrorizes, but rather something that serves and liberates us.

It is not my intention to reproduce here another history of theories in anthropology, or to rank theories in any particular order, or to claim supremacy of one over any other. There is no shortage of textbooks, introductions to theory, histories, and collections of annotated readings; nor do I have in mind books on theory that argue and advance a particular theoretical project above all others. Rather, I want to discuss theorizing, to ask what we mean by ‘anthropological theory’ in relation to the theories anthropologists use. I shall try to achieve this objective within a discourse that understands anthropol- ogy broadly, in both its biological and social science senses. But let us first briefly examine perceptions of theory between 965 and 2007, a period sufficiently long to permit the identification of some significant fault lines.

Folk representations of theory Lucy Mair ( 969), in a review of Marvin Harris’s The rise of anthropological theory ( 969), peremptorily castigated his approach by questioning the integrity of the anthro- pological theory that had arisen. Harris’s ‘immense’ book, you will recall, is indeed a magnum opus of all anthropological theories that have existed since the Enlightenment, from the perspective of cultural materialism, each theory being measured as a success or failure against the ideal omega point of what Jonathan Friedman ( 974: 444) was later to describe as Harris’s ‘vulgar materialist’ goal. In a curious way this simplistic and selective approach allows Harris to offer us a ‘unilinear’ account of the evolution of theory, and although there are differences of emphasis and order, the standard histories of anthropological theory between, let us say, 850 and 970 are generally presented in this way. On the whole, one lesson we have learned from the new histories of the subject initiated by Stocking ( 968) is that retrospective attempts by ‘presentist’ anthropologists to periodize intellectual history as so many successive and mutually exclusive para- digms (evolutionism, followed by diffusionism, followed by functionalism, etc.) are fairly unconvincing when subjected to close inspection.

If we look at theorizing since the 960s we get a rather different picture, which no doubt would have much depressed Harris. The post- 960s at first led to a theory boom in the social sciences and the humanities, a diversification of theorizing, and the feeling that theorizing was perhaps the highest form of intellectual activity known to human- ity. The Theoretical Archaeology group was founded in 977, a response to the alleged atheoreticality of the subject in the mid- 960s, and in an attempt to resemble and emulate socio-cultural anthropology, which its founders cited approvingly. But this turn, as Bruce Trigger has observed, tended to reproduce the fragmentation and sec- tarianism of socio-cultural theories, with theorists ‘trapped in separate, non- communicating discourses’ (2006 [ 996]: 484; cf. Hodder 999: 2), and in retrospect seems to have been more about polemical attention-seeking and the deliberate cult of heretical dogma than about the serious testing of ideas. In both anthropology and archaeology there was a veritable smorgasbord of theory, much of it undigested, leading Shelly Ortner ( 984: 26), echoing Lowie ( 920: 33), to characterize it as ‘a thing of shreds and patches’. It was heady stuff, and despite everything, this anarchy of ideas with its conflicting ideological certitudes seemed to reflect a genuine frustration with the poverty of thought in their respective subjects.

The most obvious and epistemologically far-reaching development in this crisis of contradictory theorizing, discrediting and undermining the ‘stable’ paradigms, and

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leading to a ‘loss of vision’ was, some would say, the failure of the ‘social science project’ itself, of the positivist laws-and-causes ‘social physics’ kind. This was achieved partly through postmodern critique, particularly simplistic science versus anti-science claims in which science became a ‘metanarrative’ to be treated with incredulity and theory with scepticism (Reyna 200 : 0 and fn. ). Many have been persuaded to avoid theory altogether, or at least to disguise it in an ‘ethnography as theory’ or ‘praxis’ approach. But it was also a virtually inevitable outcome of the internal contradictions of a search for a grand ‘natural science of society’. It is much easier to see with hindsight how postmodernism and the crisis of representation resulted in a reformulation of anthro- pological practices, the repudiation of grand theory, a redefinition of the notion of theory, and the ‘retreat into’ ethnography, and even a retreat from the project of anthropology altogether; but as Henrietta Moore observes, this contest ‘between those who claimed ethnography to be fiction and those who claimed it to be science’ ( 999: 6) caricatured the careful and grounded way in which many anthropologists were trying to theorize at the time.

There are a number of observations we can make about these developments, which we might group into two apparently contradictory trends: one (anti-theory, and anti- science) moving away from positivist and science-based ideas of theory altogether, and a second (pro-theory, but not necessarily pro-‘science’ in the narrow sense) that laments its neglect. In terms of the first, the retreat into ethnography, although at its worst self-referential, obscure, and irrelevant, has at least moved the theorizing to a different level of understanding and interpretation, and forced us to think seriously about qualitative research practices and writing. Grand theory, with one major excep- tion – Darwinism in its various manifestations – is unfashionable, while since Ortner’s ( 984) influential overview, theories have themselves become more composite, partial, and eclectic, one might almost say ‘vaguer’. There is every reason to celebrate diversi- fication, but what some people characterize as ‘theoretical change’, especially over the last forty years, has in fact been more like shifting ‘concept metaphors’ with huge grey areas of overlap and ambiguity between different paradigms. For Moore, the purpose of a concept metaphor is to ‘maintain ambiguity and a productive tension between uni- versal claims and specific historical contexts’ (2004: 7 ), for example ‘global’, ‘gender’, ‘self ’, ‘body’, or (in science) ‘mind’, ‘meme’, ‘nature’. These are more tentative ‘pre- theoretical commitments’, a kind of conceptual shorthand, stimulating thought; they ‘act as a descriptive gloss or posit causal forces that remain unexamined [and] are essentially suffering … from under-theorization’ (2004: 80). One could well argue that what counts as theory in the humanities and social sciences has been of precisely this kind. Think, for example, of what we mean by ‘the theory of art’.

The second trend, apparent from roughly the late 980s, has run counter to this. The retreat into ethnography, empiricism, and particularism suggested that both anthropol- ogy and archaeology were‘theory-lite’and lacking in appropriate rigour. It was this mood that led to the founding of the‘Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory’ in 987 (see Ingold 996), and a spate of books on theory around the same time. It also saw the appearance in 200 of a new journal, Anthropological Theory.While the kind of theorizing went far beyond conventional natural science models, and has often been hostile to it, in some respects the growth of science-based approaches can be seen as part of this reaction.

Thus, the trends here described for the last forty years paradoxically encouraged both the subversion and proliferation of theory. The problems of explicitly endorsing particular universal theories, plus post-postmodernist scepticism, also encouraged the

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retreat into ethnography (rather, please note, than empiricism). Indeed, there is prob- ably ‘no longer a single anthropology’, while the character of ‘the theoretical’ is itself in question. Theory has become rather ‘a diverse set of critical strategies which incorpo- rates within itself a critique of its own locations, positions and interests’ (Moore 999: 9, 8). Depending on your taste, this is either a brave new world of theoretical promis- cuity, the rejection of theory altogether, or something of an impasse.

What does theory do? Given these contradictory trends, a cornucopia of partly digested new ideas, and the rise of anti-theory, I think we need to remind ourselves what theories are actually supposed to do.1 Firstly, they provide us with a framework through which we can explain and interpret data, and they should do so parsimoniously. So, we might define theory as ‘a supposition or body of suppositions designed to explain phenomena or data’ (Ellen 984: 9), but it is also generally agreed that ‘theories’ are high in abstraction and scope when compared with other kinds of generalization that are low in abstrac- tion and scope, derived from observation and from which they are induced (Moore 999: 9 fn. ). Some theories will simply be concept metaphors, and we should have no problem with that. Most ‘theories’ in socio-cultural anthropology do not easily generate testable hypotheses or qualitative correlations, partly because past attempts to correlate have shown us how tricky this can be. So, if we correlate ‘matriliny’ with female status, we subsequently discover that matriliny is not a ‘thing’ and its borders are vague. It is this that warns us away from the dangers of simplistic quantification and measurement, and the more statistical manifestations of the wider comparativist enterprise, such as the Ethnographic atlas (e.g. Murdock 967).

Secondly, whatever form they take, different theories enable us to see the same data in an alternative way,and are intrinsically equal representations until tested against the data. They can be perfectly intuitive, but often they are at their most helpful when they are counter-intuitive, giving us an unexpected perspective on some familiar data, as in versions of the well-known upside-down map, or as in Samuel Butler’s aphorism that a chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg. Whether we select one theory or another – quantum mechanics or wave theory, exchange theory or reciprocal altruism – will determine the representation and interpretation of those facts, but – in conformity with thedoctrineof contradictorycertitudes–bothpositionsmightbesimultaneouslycorrect. Consider, for example, the well-known visual trick involving ambiguous figure-ground effects (Hilgard et al. 979: Fig. 4), in which, depending on the interpretation of the relationship between the same visual stimuli, a vase becomes two human faces staring at one another, or think of the disturbing graphic art of Maurits Escher. These are just more comically engaging versions of the Necker cube idea. Or, consider Paul Cohen’s simul- taneous proof and disproof of the Riemann hypothesis (Davis & Hersh 983), or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In the virtual world of contemporary mathematics, thingscanparadoxicallybesimultaneouslytrueandfalse,provenorunproven,depending on the method we use, something Edmund Leach ( 968: 78-9) had begun to explore in his provocative Reith lectures in 967,and whichreturnedtohaunthim in theyearspreceding his death (Tambiah 2002). So, theories are not mutually exclusive, nor absolute; only better, worse, or just different representations and explanations of our data.

Thirdly, theories imply methodology but are not quite the same thing. So one problem we face immediately at this level of abstraction is how we should separate the two, when unfortunately the terms ‘theory’ and ‘methodology’ are regularly used to

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mean different things to different people (Holzner 964: 425-6). In one sense, method- ology is the systematic study of the principles guiding (in this context) anthropological investigation and the ways in which theory finds its application. Thus, we speak of Marxist methodology, ethnomethodology, or even Darwinian methodology. It is both a branch of philosophy that analyses the principles and procedures of inquiry in a particular discipline, and also the system of methods used in a particular discipline (Moore 2004: 75). Unfortunately, through a process of conceptual slippage, methodol- ogy has also become synonymous for many with specific ‘methods’ or ‘techniques’; and in the context of anthropology methodology is sometimes reduced to participant- observation. I tried to distinguish the different senses of methodology in my 984 introduction to the first volume in the ASA Research Methods series, defining methods as a ‘general mode of yielding data’, such as interviewing or taking a life-history (Ellen 984: 9), but even then I was fighting a losing battle, partly because ‘methodology’ had become a required heading in research council grant application forms. I was therefore immensely gratified recently to come across a robust defence of the distinction between method and methodology, and therefore by implication between methodology and theory, in Pete Vayda’s characteristically vigorous epilogue to his own festschrift, appro- priately entitled Against the grain (2007). Methodology and method are, therefore, conceptually distinct, but implicationally mutual and pragmatically overlapping.

So, theory is an explanatory framework, a body of systematic suppositions derived from observation, some more susceptible to hypothesis-testing than others, generally one of several alternatives that can be used to gauge its explanatory utility, and implies a methodology but not a method. Moreover, the view on which this approach is founded – and which is fundamental to the view argued here – is also that theory cannot be reduced to a set of a priori assertions: it is something which has to be carefully selected in relation to the problem at hand, and just because its short-term novelty might have worn off is no reason to discard it completely. Good theory builds on the past, rather than mechanistically or rhetorically subverting it.

What is an anthropological theory? But if we can agree on what constitutes ‘theory’, we still need to ask: what is it that makes any theory anthropological? In one sense – both Foucauldian and teleological – it must be one that has been suggested or utilized by those we call anthropologists, and which has become part of the discourse of the subject as its disciplines and practices have emerged historically. True, at the end of the day we interact as anthropologists because of the problems we wish to explain, not because anthropology has some pre-existing claim to exist. Anthropological theories are clearly not unique to anthropology, and none of the characteristics often listed – culture, human origins, societal comparison, the ‘other’ – are the exclusive domain of anthropology. However, by the same token, anthropology has exported as well as imported ideas, as the proliferation of ‘ethnog- raphy’ throughout the social sciences indicates. The process of adoption and incorpo- ration has never been new. I profoundly disagree with the assertion that ‘anthropological theory’ cannot exist ‘because anthropology is both everything and nothing’ (Moore 999: 4), and want to insist that anthropology does have specific objects of inquiry that, while maybe not exclusive, combine in ways and with intellec- tual consequences that are different from other subjects.

But before we explore the characteristics that make anthropological theory necessary and distinctive, we must say something about what it is not. Historically, the idea of

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‘theory’, in social anthropology at least, and at least as conceived in the British tradition, has been a conundrum, since it has either sought to make a virtue of being a kind of comparative sociology (which makes it derivative of general social theory), or it defines its theory with respect to particular kinds of society or levels of organization (‘notori- ously ‘primitive’ society, but also ‘small-scale’, non-Western, etc.: Kuper 988). In the context of the wider sweep of intellectual history, this is a twentieth-century aberration, since anthropology clearly does not address a single geographical or ethnographic space, while we are all ‘others’ of some and many descriptions. Another possibility is that it defines itself in terms of its principal approach to obtaining empirical data: participant-observation or ‘ethnography’. I have already indicated my frustration at the way in which methodology has been downgraded to method, but here we find the opposite: a method upgraded to a theoretical approach, and at worst its reduction to the mere nuanced writing of ethnography. This has had the effect of subverting the possibility of generalization and comparison, and, as I suggested earlier, has been widely identified as a questionable deviation into an atheoretical stance, and even into caricature (Giddens 996). Fortunately, others have risen to the challenge this develop- ment has posed. For example, the relevant historical literature has been carefully reviewed by James Urry (2006), while Tim Ingold (2008) has robustly held the middle ground of a unified anthropology, separating it from its portrayal as merely the study of the distant ‘other’, and from those who seek to replace it with a version of cultural studies (Kapferer 2007). Moreover, the idea of comparing social and cultural forms is intrinsically problematic (Holy 987) since what we compare are generally second- order abstractions, often arising from contested ethnocentric and simplistic divisions of human socio-cultural diversity. Although we all slip into using the terms ‘culture’ and ‘society’ as if they were concrete units of analysis, a slippage shared by those as different in their theoretical predispositions as Kapferer and the cultural phylogenists, I hope we generally do so only as a rhetorical device, or as a kind of shorthand.

By contrast, there is a contemporary trend in British anthropology that has moved on from ‘the project of social anthropology’ to (re-)embrace a more integrated, holistic, and interdisciplinary conception of what anthropology is about, of which – until recently – Ingold (e.g. 992) has been perhaps the most vociferous prophet and exem- plar (see also Carrithers 992; Layton 997). This is now a pronounced shift, no longer a minority view, as reflected in the change of British Academy Section S3 from ‘Social Anthropology’ to ‘Anthropology’. For some, this trend towards a more encompassing anthropology stops short of an engagement with biology and is really a reconfiguring of ideas within the humanities and social sciences, perhaps to embrace psycho-analysis (as in the case of Henrietta Moore) or materiality (as in the case of Danny Miller); for others it is a change of name only, and the existing concerns of social anthropologists continue much as before. But it is difficult to see how something called anthropological theory, which presumably seeks to answer the large and central questions about human distinctiveness and diversity, can be properly anthropological without some engage- ment with (rather than submission to) the biological. For Ingold it is, indeed, a mus- cular engagement; for others it is more an acceptance to varying degrees of different versions of the Darwinian orthodoxy. A theory that claims to be anthropological must also work at a level that engages with and explains commonalities not only between humans, but also between humans and other phylogenetically related organisms, and which accounts for what is distinctive about humans in comparison to other species. I think it likely that as we move between levels of decreasing phylogenetic inclusiveness,

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so the appropriate theory changes, more or less in relation to the degree to which learning and cultural transmission permit greater extents of ‘niche construction’ through social and technical complexity, and thereby the emergence of socio-cultural systems sufficiently complex to support emergent properties independent of individual biological transmission.

The tension, whether between ‘interpretative anthropology’ and anthropological science, or between biological science and social science, constitutes one important (perhaps the most important) integral feature of any body of theory that claims to be anthropological in its widest and most fundamental sense. Another is that it addresses ‘culture’ in some form. As some anthropologists have already buried this concept, on the grounds that its identity is forever elusive and that it is just another way of talking about society, so general and vague as to explain nothing, this criterion might seem to be a major problem (Kuper 999). But although I reject as unhelpful the trend to use ‘culture’ to refer to anything that humans do (e.g. ‘business culture’, ‘culture of low expectations’, etc.), I would defend its conceptual distinctiveness and necessity for any understanding of human behaviour and its consequences. While it is true that culture is infinitely protean, proliferating, and diversifying, it is the stuff that makes us human, and why and how it should be so dominant in humans is still the most important question of anthropology. From a biological and evolutionary perspective, cultural learning and symbolic culture are evidently not present in all animal behaviours, and need therefore to be defined conceptually, explained, and even measured, just like any other phenomenon. As Sahlins has observed, the concept of culture – or something remarkably like it – will always re-invent itself: ‘There is no way “culture” can disappear as the principal object of anth

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