Anthropology: A Continental Perspective

By Christoph Wulf, Deirdre Winter, Elizabeth Hamilton and 2 more

Originally published in German, Christoph Wulf’s Anthropology sets its sights on a topic as ambitious as its title suggests: anthropology itself. Arguing for an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to anthropology that incorporates science, philosophy, history, and many other disciplines, Wulf examines—with breathtaking scope—all the ways that anthropology has been understood and practiced around the globe and through the years.
 
Seeking a central way to understand anthropology in the midst of many different approaches to the discipline, Wulf concentrates on the human body. An emblem of society, culture, and time, the body is also the result of many mimetic processes—the active acquisition of cultural knowledge. By examining the role of the body in the performance of rituals, gestures, language, and other forms of imagination, he offers a bold new look at how culture is produced, handed down, and transformed. Drawing such examinations into a comprehensive and sophisticated assessment of the discipline as a whole, Anthropology looks squarely at the mystery of humankind and the ways we have attempted to understand it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Apr 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9780226925080

Book preview

CHRISTOPH WULF is professor of anthropology and philosophy of education and director and cofounder of the Interdisciplinary Center for Historical Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of over one hundred books and has been translated extensively in numerous languages.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2013 by Christoph Wulf

All rights reserved. Published 2013.

Printed in the United States of America

Originally published as Anthropologie: Geschichte Kultur Philosophie.

© Rowohlt, 2004

22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13      1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92506-6 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92507-3 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92508-0 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wulf, Christoph, 1944–

[Anthropologie. English]

Anthropology: a continental perspective / Christoph Wulf; translated by Deirdre Winter, Elizabeth Hamilton, Margitta and Richard J. Rouse.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-92506-6 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-226-92507-3 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-226-92508-0 (e-book)

1. Anthropology—Philosophy.   2. Anthropology—History.   I. Title.

GN33.W8513 2013

301.01—dc23                                2012023057

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Anthropology

A Continental Perspective

CHRISTOPH WULF

TRANSLATED BY DEIRDRE WINTER,

ELIZABETH HAMILTON,

MARGITTA AND RICHARD J. ROUSE

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

For Rosemarie, Katharina, and Alexander

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PARADIGMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY

1. Evolution—Hominization—Anthropology

2. Philosophical Anthropology

3. Anthropology in the Historical Sciences: Historical Anthropology

4. Cultural Anthropology

5. Historical Cultural Anthropology

CORE ISSUES OF ANTHROPOLOGY

6. The Body as a Challenge

7. The Mimetic Basis of Cultural Learning

8. Theories and Practices of the Performative

9. The Rediscovery of Rituals

10. Language—The Antinomy between the Universal and the Particular

11. Images and Imagination

12. Death and Recollection of Birth

Future Prospects: Single Discipline and Transdisciplinary Research

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Preface

This book is intended as a contribution to the heated discussion on the self-definition of anthropology that has been ongoing in the United States in recent years. To this end, I shall develop the broad outlines of a concept of a historical and cultural anthropology that does not, by definition, distinguish between societies and cultures of varying degrees of development. Today it no longer seems meaningful to limit anthropology or ethnology to the study of so-called primitive peoples, preindustrial and pre-state societies, tribal societies, simple societies, underdeveloped, primitive, scriptless, or non-European-American societies. I proceed from the assumption that all human societies and cultures have equal status. However, there are and must be different areas of specialization within anthropology. The American four-field approach,¹ for example, focuses on four different areas whose coherence and current commensurateness have now once more become the subject of lively debate.

The frame of reference of my investigation is the development of anthropological thought in Europe and particularly in Germany over the last century. This is where I have carried out the historical, ethnographic, and philosophical studies that have contributed to this book. In this work I have been inspired by the epistemological traditions of several disciplines, most importantly history, ethnology, and philosophy, but also sociology, psychology, and literary studies. My aim in this book is to develop a few of the principles and perspectives of anthropology, comparing and contrasting them with those that emerge from research on evolution, philosophical anthropology in Germany, historical anthropology in France, and cultural anthropology in the United States and Europe, while also drawing on my own research.²

As the influence of normative anthropologies has waned, anthropological research has begun to pay more attention to the body with its natality and mortality,³ which is both the product and the agent of its own socialization and enculturation. The lived human body is the result of multifarious mimetic processes that include not merely imitation, but an active acquisition of cultural knowledge.⁴ In these mimetic processes culture is produced, handed down, and transformed. Here the performativity of the body, how it is staged and enacted, plays an important role.⁵ Performativity is of particular significance for language processes, cultural performances, and aesthetics.⁶ If rituals are perceived and interpreted only as texts, they lack a dimension that is associated with their material and bodily aspects. This led me to focus on the performative side of ritual acts in a large research project entitled Berlin Study on Rituals and Gestures, in which I examined these aspects in detail, taking a close look at how rituals and ritualization contribute to the performative formation of communities and how they shape educational processes and promote learning. In these investigations, the material nature and sensory capacities of the body played a major role. The results revealed that human corporeality is shaped by language and imagination, which have been two of the main focuses of my research.⁷

The fragmentation and deterritorialization of contemporary anthropology hold considerable potential for the development of new modes of anthropological reflection and research. They also provide an opportunity to free ourselves from outdated traditions of our discipline and to redefine the horizons of anthropology. In this redefinition, the perspectives that are emerging from globalization are becoming increasingly important. Among other things, they have engendered criticism of the neoliberal economic trends that are marginalizing the social market economy and of the associated tendency for many societies to become more and more alike.⁸ Today, giving anthropology a global orientation means to open it up for research in all societies and cultures of the world and to address the issue of what will be the most important conditions of human life in the future.

Anthropology is a decentralized, polycentric science in which problems of representation, interpretation, the construction of deconstruction, and thus also methodological diversity are of central importance. Two contradictory developmental trends clash with each other, one of which is oriented toward a uniformizing globalization, while the other points toward the limits of this development and stresses the conditions of cultural diversity. This contradiction is reflected in anthropology by the increasing tensions between more universal statements on human beings and statements that emphasize historical and cultural diversity. If we understand anthropology as a unitas multiplex—that is, as a science that brings together a multiplicity of individual disciplines—we are aware that the epistemological and paradigmatic differences in the science of the human being cannot be removed but are inherent in it. Anthropological research must therefore proceed from the assumption that its standpoints are relative without dissolving them in arbitrariness and randomness. In my view, the question also arises as to whether and how it is bound by values and its social and ethical responsibility. I see my own research as embedded within the values of human rights, but I would not deny that human rights are also partly time- and culture-bound and therefore also open to discussion.

In view of the fragmentation of the academic disciplines, the task of an anthropology, as I conceptualize it, must be to contribute to understanding between persons and the process of improving understanding between individuals and peoples in the different parts of the world. An anthropology that assumes this task cannot, by definition, develop a systematic approach to the investigation of human societies and cultures—too broad are the variety and diversity of the disciplines and paradigms that have relevance for this research and can and must contribute to an interpretation of humanity. Such a systematic approach would be so abstract that it would be at risk of becoming devoid of all content. I would therefore like to present a contribution to anthropology that takes into account the historical and cultural context (and does not, of course, claim to cover the entire field of possible research).

Although my research is oriented mainly toward continental Europe and Germany in particular, the principles and perspectives of historical cultural anthropology apply as well to other societies and cultures, as evidenced by my research over the last few years. In one of my research projects on the subject of family happiness, three German-Japanese teams examined how families stage and perform Christmas (in Germany) and New Year (in Japan). We identified the historical and cultural conditions for family happiness in both countries and also a number of transcultural elements that families use to express and display feelings of belonging, well-being, and shared happiness.⁹ The studies I carried out with Axel Michaels, Images of the Body in India, Emotions in Rituals and Performances, and Exploring the Senses: Emotions, Performativity, and Ritual, also revealed what Indian and Western cultures have in common and what makes them different in these domains.¹⁰ The results of these studies show that in non-European cultures as well, historicity and culturality are central dimensions of anthropological research. Through focusing on these dimensions, this research is making an important contribution to human beings’ understanding of themselves in the twenty-first century.

In what follows I present an outline of selected aspects of anthropology that cannot claim to be complete and will require further explanation and specification. Now that the abstract anthropological norm that centered mainly on the ideas, images, values, and norms of European-American culture has ceased to be binding, anthropology constitutes an attempt to conduct research on human phenomena in the conditions of a globalized world. As a result of this development, anthropological research is no longer fundamentally restricted to certain defined cultural areas or individual epochs. The aim of anthropological research is to contribute to a better understanding and better explanations of human phenomena and problems in our globalized world and thus also to a better understanding between people. The lively debates on the historical involvement of sections of anthropology in colonialism and racism, the problem of representation, and the extent to which the other can speak back are evidence of efforts to broaden the horizons of anthropology and open it up for new tasks.

There is a dual historicity and culturality in anthropology that arises from the historicity and culturality of the different perspectives of anthropological researchers and from the historical and cultural character of the contents and subjects of the research. The historicity and culturality of the anthropologists themselves form the background against which the phenomena and structures that came into being in a different time or culture are perceived and investigated. New research questions and methodologies develop in a reciprocal relationship as researchers reflect upon this dual historicity and culturality. In anthropological research it is important to think of historicity and culturality as belonging together and not, for instance, to play culturality off against historicity. As early as in the work of Franz Boas, who was familiar with the German historical tradition, we can find important ideas pointing in this direction, which have, however, hardly been pursued to date.¹¹

The approach to anthropology that I present here employs both diachronic and synchronic methods to investigate human societies and cultures. In addition to anthropological issues and the hermeneutic and text-critical methods from the historical sciences that are applied diachronically, field research with its numerous qualitative and quantitative methods still plays an important role as a method of synchronous anthropological research. The interpretative and reflexive methods, in particular, offer the possibility of lending expression to the individual and subjective perspectives.

Many anthropological research projects are inter- or transdisciplinary and multi- or transcultural. Because of their transdisciplinary nature, many studies transcend the limits of traditional disciplines and yield new insight by examining new research questions and objects of research, using new procedures and looking at things from new perspectives. The attempt to include multi- or transcultural aspects in anthropological research is also leading to the development of new research questions and perspectives that play important roles, particularly within the context of international anthropological research networks.

One new challenge that anthropologists have long failed to address is how to define the relationship between general insights and specific insights relating to human beings as individuals and human beings in general. While in archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology it is permissible to make universal statements about human beings and the human race, in historical and cultural anthropological approaches the emphasis is more on being able to use hermeneutic methods to make complex statements on particular historico-cultural phenomena. These approaches are oriented toward the investigation and assurance of cultural diversity. However, even when we are concerned with cultural diversity, the question still arises as to what is common to all human beings. In these times of globalization it is becoming increasingly important for anthropology to investigate the relationship between similarities and differences among human beings, cultures, and historical epochs. In this context the question as to the role of comparison in both diachronic and synchronic research in anthropology has taken on a significance that we urgently need to clarify.

In my view, the aim of anthropological research is not to reduce but to increase the complexity of our knowledge about human beings. This requires interpretation, reflection, and self-criticism, and an ongoing, philosophically inspired critique of anthropology that must include an examination of the fundamental limits of human self-interpretation. In analogy to a definition of God in theology, there is thus talk of the homo absconditus. This term expresses the notion that anthropological insights and findings can only grasp the human condition in part, that is, from various different perspectives and thus incompletely. Anthropological research and discovery is location-related and subject to historical and cultural change. Its starting point is a willingness to wonder or marvel that the world is as it is and not otherwise. Marveling (thaumazein) is the beginning of fascination with the mystery of the world and curiosity about the possibilities of anthropological knowledge.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the many colleagues and friends without whose help I would have been unable to develop my concept of a historical and cultural anthropology. A full list of those who have assisted would be impossibly long because there are so many I have worked with over the years who have given me inspiration in my work. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues and friends in the Interdisciplinary Center for Historical Anthropology, in the Collaborative Research Center Cultures of the Performative, in the Cluster of Excellence Languages of Emotion, and in three graduate schools, Die Bildung des Körpers, InterArts, and Languages of Emotion, at Freie Universität Berlin. I would also like to express my appreciation to my colleagues on the Educational Anthropology Commission, which was set up as part of the German Society for Educational Research. Three of my colleagues deserve particular mention: Dietmar Kamper, who helped to establish the research projects in historical anthropology in Berlin; Gunter Gebauer, with whom I worked for many years on the historical, cultural, and social bases of mimetic processes; and Jörg Zirfas, who worked with me on the future trends of anthropology and educational anthropology.

I am also grateful to all my colleagues at numerous universities in Germany, Europe, the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Africa with whom I have worked for many years and who have inspired me with a number of important ideas. In particular, I would like to mention Axel Michaels (Heidelberg); Shoko Suzuki (Kyoto); Yasuo Imai (Tokyo); Bingjun Wang, Hongjie Chen, and Zhikun Zhang (Beijing); Sundar Sarukkai (Manipal); Padma Sarangapani (Mumbai); Susan Visvanathan (New Delhi); Norval Baitello (São Paulo); Fathi Triki (Tunis); Jacques Poulain and Jacky Beillerot (Paris); Alain and Christiane Montandon (Clermont-Ferrand); and Goulnara Khaidarova and Valerij Savchuk (St. Petersburg). All of them helped me to carry out numerous exploratory studies on key anthropological subjects. I am also indebted to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and their evaluators, who have continued to support my anthropological research.

I would like to thank the many undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and postdoctoral students with whom I have worked at Freie Universität Berlin and worldwide who have repeatedly challenged me to reconsider and refine my thoughts and research. Without them and the discussions they provoked, I would not have been able to write this book.

Finally, I would like to thank the translators, Deirdre Winter, Elizabeth Hamilton, and Margitta and Richard J. Rouse, for their commitment; Dr. Michael Sonntag for his very helpful editing of the text and preparation of the index; Melanie Hillerkus for assistance with the editing; David Brent and the reviewers for their very valuable suggestions and comments.

Christoph Wulf

Berlin, Spring 2012

Introduction

Issues of anthropology play an important role in nearly all branches of science, the arts, and the humanities. Currently, scholars in many disciplines of the humanities and social and natural sciences, as well as literature and cultural studies are discussing what is regarded as a key turning point in anthropology. Expectations regarding this new direction differ widely: in some cases scholars are uncovering new problems and new questions, while in others they are applying fragmentary knowledge to larger problems and contexts. Another aim is to find new points of reference—a matter of vital importance in a time of normative uncertainty. Concepts of what constitutes anthropology differ as widely as opinions on how we should understand anthropology. In this book I make some suggestions about how to address these issues.

If we take an etymological approach, we can describe anthropology as the study of a life-form characterized by its upright gait.¹ This concept of anthropology encompasses the universal and the particular aspects of historical and cultural diversity and is closely related to the development of society, science, and philosophy.

Anthropology, as a term used to designate an academic discipline, does not date back to antiquity; it is a neologism that expresses the new interest in humankind itself which arose between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It was first used as a book title by Galeazzo Capella in 1533 for a book divided into three parts: the first part discusses the worthiness and values of men, the second focuses on the charms of the female, and the third deals with the misery of the human condition.² The era in which Capella was writing saw a gradual movement away from the theological body of thought toward a focus on the individual. In Montaigne’s essays we find the subject becoming the center of anthropological reflection.³

In the course of the development of civil society and Enlightenment philosophy, anthropology became the study of human beings. While the aim of education is to promote the development of individuals,⁴ anthropology is committed to improving the conditions of human beings as a species.⁵ Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, published in 1798, distinguishes between physiological and pragmatic anthropology. Physiological anthropology studies the condition of being human as dictated by nature, whereas pragmatic anthropology is concerned with the civilization and cultivation of human beings. Pragmatic anthropology considers the extent to which humans have both the possibility and the obligation to take their existence and their future into their own hands.⁶ This distinction has become highly significant for the development of anthropology because it draws attention to the fact that in order to survive, human beings, unlike animals, are forced to lead their lives in various different historical and cultural environments and to design themselves. However, this distinction, which appears to be so plausible at first sight, is not really accurate, since what Kant referred to as physiological anthropology is not free of historical or cultural influence. It is thus not possible to draw a clear distinction between these two areas, which have been closely interlinked from the start.

Unlike Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt emphasized the historical and cultural character of anthropology, establishing an approach that has, via Franz Boas’s conceptualization of anthropology, had a great influence on the development of anthropology in the US.⁷ In Humboldt’s view, comparative anthropology should examine the historical and cultural characteristics of different societies. This should include the study of the differences between societies, cultures, and individuals as well as the search for an ideal of mankind from among the various disparities and eventualities of the human race. This requires scientific and historical hermeneutical procedures as well as philosophical reasoning and aesthetic judgment. Carrying out research in various eras and cultures creates a body of anthropological knowledge that contributes to an enhanced understanding of social and cultural developments. Humboldt saw the aim of anthropology as more than gaining knowledge for its own sake; he saw it as a way of initiating educational processes with the aim of improving human beings.

Radicalizing Humboldt’s thoughts, Nietzsche and Foucault called for an end to the search for a binding, abstract anthropological norm, thereby expanding anthropological issues and points of reference beyond the scope of European culture and history to include an ethnological perspective. Today’s anthropology attempts to relate the historicity and culturality of its concepts, viewpoints, and methods to the historicity and culturality of what is under investigation. Anthropology examines the findings of the human sciences and develops a critique of itself based on historical and cultural philosophy, thereby paving the way for the investigation of new questions and issues. At the heart of these efforts lies a restlessness of mind that cannot be stilled. Research in anthropology is not limited to certain cultural contexts or single epochs. Reflections on the integral historicity and culturality of the research enable the discipline to leave behind the Eurocentricity of the human sciences and to focus on the unresolved problems of the present and the future.

This aim implies skepticism toward all-encompassing and universal anthropological interpretations, such as those occasionally found in biological science, for example. Anthropology is not a single discipline. It touches on many different sciences and disciplines, including philosophy. It cannot be regarded as a closed field of research. It is the result of the interplay between different sciences. Depending on the issue to be examined, the range of disciplines involved can be very different. The object and subject of anthropology can encompass the entire field of human culture in different historical areas and cultures. Anthropology presupposes a plurality of cultures and assumes that cultures are not closed systems; rather, they are dynamic, able to permeate each other, and they have an indeterminate future.

Anthropology can be understood as an academic attitude toward examining issues relating to different times and cultures. This is why anthropological research can be found in many different disciplines, such as history, literature, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and the theory of education. However, the research frequently tends to transcend the boundaries of individual disciplines, thereby becoming transdisciplinary. This results in completely new scientific disciplines and issues that require new forms of scientific interaction and cooperation. Many different research methods are used in these processes. Historical-hermeneutical processes of text interpretation, qualitative social research methodologies, and philosophical reasoning are widely used, the latter being an approach that is difficult to categorize in terms of specific methodology. Some research makes use of artistic and literary materials, thereby transcending the traditional boundaries between science, literature, and art.⁸ A growing consciousness of the role of cultural traditions in the development of different research areas, subjects, and viewpoints has made the increasing trend toward crossing international cultural boundaries a central issue of anthropological research. In the light of globalization, this transnational approach to anthropology is becoming increasingly important. It provides the framework that nurtures a spirit of inquiry and a commitment to expanding our knowledge, which in turn lead to the development and testing of new research paradigms.

The demise of a binding anthropological norm has made it necessary to take a fresh look at the most important anthropological paradigms and try to locate their common ground as well as their differences. This has also given rise to a need to define the tasks and procedures of anthropology and to illustrate their importance for research in the humanities as well as the social and cultural sciences.

If the subject of anthropology is research on human beings in history, it seems only logical to include human evolution in the scope of the anthropological examination of the conundrum of humanity. However, human evolution can only be understood if it is viewed as an integral part of the history of life itself. The irreversibility of human evolution and of the history of life is also an aspect of anthropology; today, this process is seen as a consequence of the self-organization of material. In the same way that anthropology highlights the historical character of its research, evolutionary theory emphasizes the radical time-scale of nature and human evolution. Time and history are therefore central dimensions of evolution. Human evolution is a lengthy process of development that starts with early hominids and includes primordial humans and early humans en route to becoming modern human beings. This process is a multidimensional morphogenesis of interdependent ecological, genetic, cerebral, social, and cultural factors.

Integrating the study of evolution into anthropology raises issues concerning the relationships between all living things and beings and the long duration of human evolution. It also involves a quest to discover general laws of evolution. The central focus of philosophical anthropology, on the other hand, is the special character of human beings as derived from a comparison of humans and animals. According to Max Scheler, this character enables humans to be conscious of the objects around them and to have a concept of the world. Helmuth Plessner sees the uniqueness of humans in their ex-centricity. This term refers to our human capacity to step outside our own bodies by using our imagination. This makes it possible for us to see our bodies not only as something we are, but also as something we possess. For example, in terms of the way we feel and perceive our hands, we sense them as belonging to our bodies and also as organs that we can use as we wish. Arnold Gehlen’s anthropology also has the special nature of man as its centerpiece. Gehlen developed a theory of humans as deficient beings (Mängelwesen), building on the idea that the constitutive element of human existence is its insufficiency, which had been formulated by Herder one hundred years before. Humans are obliged to use individual and collective actions to overcome their inadequacies and insufficiencies, and this is the origin of culture, language, and institutions.

In the same way that evolutionary theory searches for a general understanding of life and human beings, philosophical anthropology looks to define the special nature of human beings by comparing them to animals. Scholars of philosophical anthropology often overlook the fact that the basis of their thinking is an abstract, generalized concept of the human being that cannot be found in the historical or cultural world, but it implies that humans could exist outside of their historical and cultural specifications. Historical and cultural anthropology oppose this abstract concept by insisting on the necessity of examining human life within its historical and cultural contexts, as it is precisely the different characteristics of these that make us human.

Since the study of anthropology was taken up in the French Annales School and in French research on the history of mentalities, historical writing has taken a new direction. This complements the new issues and the new methodological procedures used in the depiction and analysis of the history of events and the examination of structural and social history. Concentrating on anthropological issues brings into focus both historical structures of social reality and subjective moments of agency in social subjects; this focus is used for research on the basic conditions of human behavior. The studies carried out by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch in France are examples of the successful examination of anthropological issues in the field of history, in which historical knowledge arises from the disputed borders between events and narrative, reality and fiction, structural history and narrative historical writings. These works, which have since become classics of their genre, appeared at the same time as the works on philosophical anthropology and also link to the works of historians such as Fernand Braudel, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Philippe Ariès, Georges Duby, and Jacques LeGoff.

In Germany, anthropological issues are examined in cultural studies, educational studies, women’s and gender studies, and in the history of mentality, as well as in everyday history and microhistory. The scope of these studies encompasses case studies of actual life stories, local and regional history, the history of mentality, and historical cultural anthropology. Different mentalities permeate each other, forming new combinations. They devise actions appropriate to specific situations and provide orientation and decision-making aids for social behavior. They are specific to culture, class, and social group. Mentalities evolve in specific social conditions and structure social behavior in social subjects without giving it a determined, fixed form. They allow individuals to be different and to behave differently. They are subject to change and historical development. Understanding their fundamental historical and cultural nature enables us to grasp the universal openness of history.

Additional important anthropological perspectives are provided by the field of cultural anthropology, or ethnology.⁹ This discipline does not view human beings as being behind (i.e., responsible for) the diversity of their historical and cultural characteristics but studies them within the context of these characteristics. Therefore it is not sufficient to identify body, language, or imagination as universal cultural entities; they must be examined in the context of different cultures. It is this diversity of culture that enables us to draw conclusions about humans. Comparing culturally different forms of expression results in new ideas and calls some areas of accepted thinking into question. Ethnological research into the heterogeneity of cultures yields important results for cultural anthropology. These findings have had a lasting effect on the understanding of what is different in our own cultures. New developments have resulted in an expanded concept of culture in which both the disparities and the shared characteristics of different cultures play an important role. The globalization of politics, economics, and culture is resulting in the overlapping, blending, and assimilation of features that are global, national, regional, and local. This creates a need for new ways of examining different cultures. The issue of understanding the limits of our comprehension of different cultures becomes central. The ethnographic methods developed in social and cultural anthropology on the basis of fieldwork and participant observation lead to forms of knowledge other than those gleaned from historical source interpretation and philosophical reasoning. They not only make us aware of what is different in other cultures but also what is different in our own culture. Therefore the application of the anthropological perspective to the cultures of the world broadens and deepens the scope of anthropological research.

In view of this situation in anthropology in Britain, North America, Germany, and France, I suggest that we try to connect lines of thought from these different mainstreams and, where possible, to develop them into an anthropology that adequately accounts for the historicity and culturality of the researchers and their objects of study. Philosophical reflection can then help to render the results of this research fruitful for our understanding and definition of human beings. I have attempted to achieve this in three large, interrelated anthropological research phases, each of which lasted more than ten years.

In the first phase my aim was to do diachronic research on a number of issues subsumed under the heading Logic and Passion that are of major importance for the understanding of European culture and difficult to capture within a single discipline.¹⁰ They include such topics as the soul, the sacred, beauty, love, time, and silence. In some of these studies, literary, sociological, and philosophical research played an important role; it was complemented by reflections on the historicity and culturality of anthropological research itself as well as its contribution to a better understanding of contemporary culture.¹¹ In the second phase I investigated the history and theory of mimesis and the mimetic bases of social and cultural action.¹² My aim was to show that cultural learning is to a great extent mimetic learning. It is not merely a process of imitation, but a creative process of appropriation and development that follows models. In the third phase, I examined the significance of rituals in childrearing and education, using ethnographic methods. The project focused on four fields of cultural learning: the family, school, peer groups, and the media.¹³ The large empirical studies that were carried out in this context made an important contribution to knowledge about the staging and performance of social action and behavior and about the performative creation of communities.¹⁴

In addition to this I carried out a cross-cultural study on the happiness of families in Japan and Germany. I also conducted three Indian-European studies on the body, the emotions, and the senses, as well as several investigations of the historical and cultural dimensions of human emotions in Germany, Russia, China, Brazil, and the Moslem world. The aim of these studies was to show how helpful the principles and perspectives of historical cultural anthropology are when researching non-European cultures.

In these three phases of research, I translated my concept of anthropology into a concrete form, which combined three different perspectives—the ethnographic, historical and philosophical perspectives—in a single approach. This anthropological research revealed the importance of the human body for our understanding and interpretation of ourselves as human beings, now that anthropology has to a great extent abandoned its normative stance.

Evolutionary research, philosophical anthropology, anthropology in the historical sciences, and cultural anthropology also place equal emphasis on the human body (see chapter 6). However, these paradigms are based on different understandings and concepts of the human body. The first deals with the human body as part of the history of life, the second with its special nature and different characteristics when compared to the bodies of animals. The two paradigms emphasize the characteristics of the body as formed by society, culture, space, and time. Although the basic conditions and needs of the human body remain the same, they are formed differently both historically and culturally. This applies, for example, to gender, relations between generations, nutrition, and clothing. Concepts of the body and the senses are shaped differently in different cultures and historical periods in relation to fellow humans and the environment. Such influences are central to the mimetic learning processes, with which human beings seek to understand their immediate and wider environments, and they also play an important part in the formation of communities through rituals. Investigating the performative arrangement of the body is essential for understanding the performative character of culture. Even language and imagination are performative and cannot be understood without considering their bodily origins. Ultimately, birth, death, and transience are also related to bodily conditions of human life.

The central role of the body in an anthropology that defines itself as historical and cultural is used as an initial point of reference in studying the significance of mimetic processes, in which humans creatively imitate the world around them, recreating it to aid their own understanding and acquiring it as their own in this way. Culture is created, communicated, and changed in mimetic processes (see chapter 7). No individual development is possible without reference to a past development. Mimetic processes occur in our aesthetic and social spheres. Mimetic learning is cultural learning and involves the body, its senses, and imagination.

Following on this analysis, I show how mimetic processes create different performative cultures, of which three aspects are important (see chapter 8). One involves the different forms of cultural performances of social aspects; the second relates to the performative character of speaking, which stems from the identity of utterances and actions (e.g., saying I do in a wedding ceremony); the third refers to the aesthetic, which is closely related to the staging and performance of the body. In contrast to a view of culture as text, a performative understanding of culture focuses on its character as a performative arrangement. The practical knowledge required for the performativity of actions is acquired in mimetic processes, in which ritual arrangements play an important part. These ideas take on concrete form when we consider the performative character of perception, media, and gender.

As I show in chapter 9, mimetic and performative processes also play an important role in the staging and performance of rituals. Their significance was long overlooked, particularly with regard to aiding in the success of transitions within or between institutions, enforcing order, and channeling potential violence, as well as forming communities. Rituals enable differences to be settled and provide continuity between the past, present, and future. They create communities and social behavior. Metaphorically speaking, they are windows that allow a glimpse into the structures of society and culture.

Language and symbolism play an important role in all of the processes described above. Our ability to speak arises from an innate capacity (see chapter 10) whose biological prerequisites are the language centers in the brain. All humans are born with the ability to form sentences. However, despite this general ability, humans only learn to speak in individual languages that are characterized by their own histories and cultures. The mimetic, ritualistic, and performative aspects of this process are significant. Language is an area where the findings of anthropology intersect and overlap with finite cultural aspects of anthropology. Speaking results from bodily articulation on occasions when it is needed, and the playful use of language develops in the context of historically and culturally diverse ways of life.

Since imagination plays a central role in the advancement of culture and society,¹⁵ I analyze its importance in the evolution of the human being in chapter 11. Imagination creates images that have their basis within the human body. Anybody wishing to understand the body in its historical and cultural forms can discover a great deal about it by examining the collective and individual images of human beings. The images arising from the imagination require a medium if they are to be visible to others. The materialization and execution of the images depends on the nature of the medium used. The role of media in the creation and development of individual images is one of the most important issues in anthropology. Equally important are the manner in which processes of exchange between collective and individual imaginaries are conducted and the way in which cultural change evolves from these processes. The increasing significance of images in the global network of contemporary cultures has further increased the importance of examining the anthropological implications of images.

The first images of humans to be made were death portraits or death masks, which were created by making an imprint of the face of the deceased. This imprint brings the deceased back as an image in the present. The image renders present what is absent, representing the deceased person in the community of the living. Whereas the body of every human being is transitory, all humans can be retained in the medium of an image. The grave offerings of the Neanderthals show that their imaginary was concerned with the subject of death and also that they believed in life after death. Concepts and rites of death differ according to culture and historical period (see chapter 12). In the European cultural context, Philippe Ariès differentiates between tamed death and the individual’s own death, the death of another person and death inverted into its opposite.¹⁶

Regardless of how one sees these attempts to identify differences in mentality and attitudes toward death, they undoubtedly show that death is one of the most important topics in anthropology. Given the central role of the body in anthropology, questions of birth and death cannot be avoided. They disconcert us and lead to an intensive contemplation of our history and culture. Just as every body is unique due to its biological conditions, and just as its socialization and culturalization will add further to its special nature, all human subjects experience their lives in their own specific ways and therefore also experience death in their own individual ways. While death and dying have long been among the central issues of the humanities and social sciences, procreation and birth, surprisingly, have thus far been accorded scant attention. Hannah Arendt was the first to note this deficit and called for an intensive and critical examination of the phenomenon of birth. Anthropology must conceive of birth and death as the two fundamental conditions of human life, each of which refers to the other. It must investigate how human beings in different cultures and epochs have dealt with birth and death as the enigmatic boundaries of life, and how they continue to do so.

The complexity and puzzling nature of human life is fundamental to anthropology. The more we know about human beings, the more we realize how much we don’t. This problem cannot be resolved in our time, culture, and society. This is clearly illustrated by looking back at history and examining other cultures. In anthropology, it is essential to remember that it is only possible to gain an insight into human life and ways of living if we view them as parts of a much greater whole. A critique of anthropology from the inside is therefore indispensable in the attempt to explore the complexity of human history and culture.

Paradigms of Anthropology

ONE

Evolution—Hominization—Anthropology

Today, anthropology includes aspects of research on evolution that have contributed to a fundamental change in our understanding of the world. The evolution of life and hominization are only a small part of the development of the universe. There are still many aspects of evolution that we are far from being able to explain. However, this very lack of conclusive answers makes it important to include these issues in our understanding of humanity. Biology, chemistry, and physics have shown that the cosmos as well as the earth and life upon it are in a constant process of development. The concept of irreversibility has therefore also assumed a special importance in the natural sciences. Ilya Prigogine, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1977, describes this development from being to becoming. First, irreversible processes are just as real as reversible processes and do not correspond to any approximations that we would have to impose on the laws that are reversible in time. Second, irreversible processes play a fundamental constructive role in the physical world; they form the basis for important coherent processes that are clearly manifested on a biological level. Third, irreversibility is deeply rooted in dynamics. According to Prigogine, one could say that irreversibility starts where the basic concepts of classical mechanics and quantum mechanics (such as trajectories or wave functions) cease to be observable.¹ This change in perspective led scientists to take into account the temporality and historicity of the processes they describe. This is another reason why today’s anthropology needs to take into consideration both historical and cultural dimensions. This perspective must also be applied to research on evolution and hominization.

Evolution

The Evolution of Life

In terms of evolution, hominization was a late development. Evolution includes the origins and development of the universe,² the earth, life, and all its diversity. As far as we know to date, life evolved from nonliving material. This was dependent on certain preconditions whose basic structures can be experimentally simulated. From a mixture of inorganic compounds such as ammonia, methane, steam, and other gases, it is possible to create organic compounds with the aid of electrical sparks. While this does not create life forms, it does create the first building blocks of life. The probability that these building blocks will evolve to become the extremely complex molecular compounds of a primitive cell or any of its precursors is negligible. Manfred Eigen, who sees evolution as a game with few fixed rules and an open ending,³ demonstrated in an experiment that in certain circumstances, matter has the tendency to establish self-reproducing systems. When different material structures (molecules) are present, a selection process always takes place, and the linking of such molecular structures fulfills the basic prerequisites for life.⁴ According to the current state of knowledge, life evolves as a result of the self-organization of matter.⁵

Ultraviolet light breaks down steam into hydrogen, oxygen, and ozone and leads to the production of organic substances such as amino acids, fatty acids, and so forth. This prebiotic evolution results in the creation of carbon, which can form compounds with itself and is therefore necessary for living organisms.⁶ Molecular compounds are formed and lead to more complex systems that can already be described as life forms. The two most important chemical building blocks of life are created in this process: proteins as cell components,⁷ which consist of even smaller parts, the amino acids, and nucleic acids, which contain the programs of life and pass down genetic information from generation to generation.⁸ The decoding of the genetic code embodied in proteins and nucleic acids is necessary for the development of every single living organism. While the first life-forms on Earth appeared very early, for a long time they remained microorganisms. When they reproduce, microorganisms create copies of themselves; in this process, variants are created that allow natural selection to take effect. The advent of sexual reproduction led to the development of an enormous genetic variation and, with the aid of natural selection, the evolution of more complex forms of life.⁹

The Development of Life

The first life-forms were single cells that are comparable to bacteria and evolved to produce a great variety of species. The transition from single cells to multicellular organisms that can divide their tasks among different cells was a far-reaching change. There is still much to find out about how they develop. It is possible that multicellular organisms develop out of colonies of single cells. The earliest fossilized evidence of diverse multicellular creatures dates back seven hundred million years.

Whereas previously life-forms were only classified as either plants or animals, today life forms are assigned to one of five different categories or kingdoms:

• Prokaryotes or Monera (protozoa without a nucleus): blue-green algae, bacteria

• Protists (protozoa with a nucleus): golden algae, Sporozoa, flagellates

• Fungi: genuine slime fungi, Phycomycetes, sac fungi, bracket fungi

• Plantae: red algae, mosses, vascular plants (ferns, flowering plants) Animalia: sponges, flatworms, mollusks (cephalopods, mussels, snails), arthropods (millipedes, arachnids, crustaceans, insects), echinoderms, chordates (especially vertebrates).¹⁰

The life-forms of these five kingdoms nourish themselves in three different ways. Photosynthesis—the process of turning light into chemical energy—with assimilation of carbon dioxide and nutrition by inorganic substances; absorption of dissolved organic nutrients; and active intake of food by incorporation and the internal processing of (mainly) organic food.

The evolution of the vertebrates was a further step in the history of life on Earth. Their development provided a new building plan with many different subsections. Vertebrates are characterized by the arrangement of their bodies in a head, trunk, and tail and their wide distribution in all climatic zones on Earth. Vertebrates were originally aquatic creatures and first appeared around 450 million years ago. Their osseous internal skeletons and mandibular arches developed roughly 400 million years ago, and research has shown that mandibular arches were present in fish around 300 million years ago.

Life has only been present on land for around 400 million years. The first of these life-forms included algae and Psylophyta. Around 350 million years ago the land plants, often more than twenty meters high, formed the carboniferous forests. By this time, insects and arachnids had also evolved. Amphibians also emerged at this time. Reptiles evolved from the amphibians and then later evolved into birds and mammals.¹¹

Today there are approximately 1.5 million known species. The actual number is significantly greater than this and is estimated to be ten to fifteen times as many. Even this figure is comparatively low when we compare it with the total number of species that have existed since life appeared on Earth more than three billion years ago, which is estimated to be around one billion.

Of the species known today, 751,000 are insects (roughly half), 281,000 are other animals, 1,000 are viruses, 4,800 are Monera (bacteria and other similar cells), 69,000 are fungi, 26,000 are algae, 248,000 are higher plants, and 30,800 are protozoa.¹² According to the theory of evolution, all of these life forms are related to each other by degrees; that is, they have a common origin. Human beings comprise but one species within this colossal spectrum of life.¹³

The Process of Evolution

Evolutionary theory gives nature a temporality and a historicization, with an associated dynamization. Thus, development can no longer be seen as a static scale but as a phylogenetic tree with many branches, which helps us to see the relationships between species and to see how they drifted apart. It is no longer the similarities between living