Incentives to Work in Primitive Communities- Hsu

Hsu, Francis L.K.
1943     Incentives to Work in Primitive Communities. America Sociological Review 8(6): 638-642.

So, I'm behind... last week was crazy busy, and so this week I'm attempting to do two shorter articles. I’ve selected another Francis L.K. Hsu, of whom I’m becoming quite fond. This article is written nearly twenty years previous to the other one I’ve posted about, and I could see some of the seedlings of his later ideas. I was surprised at his use of ‘primitive’ in the article until I realized that this one is much older. I also assumed by the title that it was about an anthropologists motives to go do work in ‘primitive’ communities. It is not. It is about rural/ pre-literate/ non-industrial people’s motivations to do their work, and about the concept of self- interest.

            Apparently early on, there was the notion that ‘primitive’ people were generous, had no concept of property, always helped their neighbors out of some sort of altruism, and that the incentives to do economic work were inexorably tied to rituals, or feelings of community, and that they were not self-serving. I am guessing that this was linked to the ‘noble savage’ idea, but I’m not sure on that.
            He also points out that this is typically contrasted with the Euro-American community where commerce drives the markets, people sell what others buy regardless of their thoughts about it, and that people are friendly only in-so-much as it helps business.
            Hsu says that’s a load of crock. He calls the contrast between Europe and ‘primitive communities’ an “anthropological myth” at least in regards to ones incentives to work. He says that the contrast is really between rural and urban communities, and that ‘country-folk’ or those in small towns in England or France fall into the category with those in African villages. He notes that in London, if one were to refuse to go to work due to a spirit, they would be labeled a crazy person. However in the countryside, there are various levels of superstition and folk-knowledge still at work. Additionally he says that in a small town, the pharmacist may not sell a certain new product simply because he “doesn’t believe in them” despite the fact that he could be making money.
            Hsu talks about how in rural communities, people talk about how they help each other out often.  Typically, the help comes from some sort of extended relative, or a neighbor; and the help given and received is serious stuff, like lending a horse, digging graves, etc. Is this out of altruism? Not really. You help others out, because you don’t know when you will need a favor from them. There is a support network similar to insurance. You pay in with your help, and in your hour of need, you withdraw help from the community.
            “In all societies is found some kind of ownership of property, women, tools or magical practices” (640). Most things are done with the goal of gaining something for you, your family or the group you belong to. It just isn’t always money or something physical. Things are done out of self-interest, only the method varies, and who is included in ‘self’.
            Hsu says that self-interest is socially conditioned and that it is really two components. The first is individual interest. This oftentimes includes ones family. The other is common interest. He says that under this, there are the things that are beneficial for all members of the group, and then there is the limitation of an individual to act ‘selfishly’ in their pursuits because it would do harm to the group. “Nowhere is there a generosity as an abstract virtue, but in all it is a means to further self-interest” (641).  Reciprocity is a result of self-interest.
            He also talks about hopes and aspirations. They are also conditioned socially. An example he uses is among the Ngoni people. The poor do not desire fancy stuff because ones rank determines how much is ok for you to have. If a low ranking person had a ton of materials, they would be accused of witchcraft. Due to this, low ranking people do not scramble for material goods.
            Among the English and French laborers, he was told often by people that they knew people that were poorer than themselves and that they were more or less satisfied with what they had. Hsu discusses how people generally do not wish to dramatically increase their social standing. “He does not wish to take much more than his socially determined want (if he does, he is either a bandit or a revolutionary) but he is also not satisfied with much less than what he in is social situation ought to want…” (642). Ones standard of living is created by society. This is a powerful force of stability. When people to the bottom of the scale desire things from the top, usually a revolution of some kind is afoot.
            This was a short article, which had several good points. Those being that pre-literate/rural/non-industrial people the world over have the same motives to do work as fancy businessmen. They just go about it in a different way. The way in which they do this is determined by the class and culture to which they belong.
            Hsu says that further data is needed to complete the picture. What makes up and determines one concept of ‘self’ is of interest. The means by which self-interest is served varies as well; “money, food, women; or honour, patriotism, righteousness” and that these in extreme have a profound effect upon the economic system.
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In theory, I will post another article this week to make up for not doing one last week. So cross your fingers, and hope I'm not lazy!

Conceptualization of Time for Mandarin and English Speakers

Boroditsky, Lera

2001    Does Language Shape Thought? : Mandarin and English Speakers’ Conceptions of Time. Cognitive Psychology 43, 1-22

            In the introduction, we start with an explanation of the situation. It starts a long time ago (1956) when Whorf said that the language you grow up speaking shapes how you think about the world. This is an anthropological staple.  There have, however, been attempts to disprove this. For example, the Dani in New Guinnea have two color categories. If language shapes how we think, one can expect that the Dani would then have great difficulty conceptualizing any other scheme other than their two color system. Upon explanation of the English color system, they pick it up and understand it quickly.

            Additionally, in 1987 and 1996, Slobin said that the languages we speak are like the boxes that we are forced to fit abstract thought into. We think and feel in abstract, but to express it, we must obey the rules of syntax, grammar and vocabulary. So while we can understand things outside of your lingual constrictions, we can only convey it through our language.

            The specific topic of this article, is how the concept of Time is thought and talked about by English and Mandarin speakers. There are a few universals in the realm of time. For example, everyone knows, simply by observing the world that time happens in one direction. That is, we cannot move backwards in time, moments occur one at a time and that we can only be in one place and time at a time. Since these are all observable, they tend not to vary cross culturally. While things that are far more abstract, such as the direction of time and our movement through/around/upon it tend to vary a great deal cross-culturally.

            In English, time is generally conceptualized and talked about using front/back kinds of language. Up and down are used (your grandfather passes down heirlooms) but these are much more uncommon. Mandarin is the inverse: up/down are the commonly used phrases. Shang and xia are the pinyin for them. Their closest English translation is following/previous and earlier/later.

            So the question is, do the differences in how time is spoken of mean that the thought processes are different? Or are we all just prisoners to lingual tradition?

            In 2000, Boroditsky (the author of this article I’ve summarized), discussed how using metaphors about space lent itself to thinking about time. Spatial (space) information is also useful to the temporal (time) realm and that the metaphors for space have an effect on the conceptualization of time. Or rather, analogies used to talk about the physical space around us get used to discuss how time works. They then become habitual, and over time become the way people think and discuss time by default. For example, there really in reality IS NOT a timeline that all events are organized upon. But from an early age in school, I was made to create horizontal timelines to organize events, and learn that WWI came before WWII, but after the Spanish-American War. I did not learn that WWI came above WWII.

            Boroditsky created three experiments that were designed to test the hypothesis that the way we talk about time shapes how we think about time. If you want the specific details of the methodology (this is technically a psychology article), then go read it… I honestly just skimmed the methods in order to get back to theory.

Experiment 1 was created in order to test whether using spatial metaphors to discuss time can have short term and long term implications for how time is thought about. She took native Mandarin and English speakers (all Stanford students) and showed them pictures of things organized spatially and asked questions. Then they asked true/false questions about time. Half of them were to test immediate effect of metaphors and used a horizontal metaphor. The example she used was: March comes before April. The other half of the questions were about time and were metaphor-less. They also used temporal language such as earlier/later. The example being March comes earlier than April.

            The assumption is that if ones native language has a long term effect, then Mandarin speakers should be faster at answering temporal (time) questions after solving vertical spatial questions, while native English speakers should be the opposite. Additionally, this whole thing was conducted in English to see if it’s not just a language thing, but a thought thing. The Chinese answering would have to think for English.

            Both English and Mandarin speakers were affected differently by the pictures/questions about spatial organization. Both answered before/after (spatiotemporal) faster after horizontal pictures. This means that spatial knowledge is used to think about spatiotemporal metaphors. While the purely temporal lines of questions, earlier/later, the English speakers answered faster after horizontal questions and the Mandarin speakers answered faster after vertical.

            Experiment 2: designed to test native Mandarin-English bilinguals. These were people who grew up speaking Mandarin, but acquired English at a relatively early age, all at varying points of life. All had known English for at least ten years. Boroditsky was trying to see how the age at which they had learned English, and how long they had been speaking English affected the way they conceptualized time.

            All questions were earlier/later, and they were measuring the level of vertical bias. She found that there was more of a bias for those who learned English later in life, while those that learned it earlier, were more readily able to conceptualize time in the “English” way. She found no direct correlation in the duration which they had been speaking English. I suppose that the younger and more impressionable, the quicker you can adopt other modes of thinking.

            I must admit that at this point in the article, a few questions/comments/concerns popped into my head, which I will recount at the end.

            Experiment 3: designed to see if English speakers could be trained to think vertically. They were given a brief training: example cars were invented above fax machines. This test was to account for cultural factors outside of language, such as writing direction. If experiment one was purely language, it’s expected that after being trained/ surrounded by vertical thought, then the results that these English speakers got should mimic the Mandarin results. And that is exactly what ended up happening.

            She concludes that language DOES shape thought; at least in some aspects. With the Dani and color, color is a physical, observable thing in the world. Children learning to speak pick up object-reference terms first, as opposed to abstract concepts like time, or other not immediately observable things. We use spatial metaphors to allow ourselves to make concrete about of inherently non-concrete concepts. Language shapes our abstract thoughts.

            My personal thoughts: What if they were English speakers learning Mandarin? And as for the Mandarin speakers learning English, do the English habits replace the Mandarin habits? Or are they just doing the mental version of code-switching? I would like to see this re-conducted, but all in Mandarin.

Rethinking the Concept "Primitive"

Hsu, Francis L.K.
1964     Rethinking the Concept "Primitive". Current Anthropology 5(3):169-178.

While reading this article, it was important for me to keep in mind that it was written in 1964.  I feel that the problems Hsu presents in his paper have been solved, or at least do not seem to be an issue anymore. This could be because I'm younger and many these days are obsessed with political correctness. I almost never hear the primitive vs. civilized dichotomy bandied around, except for in reference to the history of anthropological thought. I do hear various ideas contrasted against the ideals of the west, and it was never with allusions to the western ideals being the superior ones (at least not in my anthropology courses, history, political science and geography on the other hand...)

Hsu begins by discussing the early history of Anthropological thought, and the evolution of the usage of ‘primitive’. Naturally, he goes through Taylor’s unilineal evolution of savagery, barbarism and civilization. He mentions Alexander Goldenweiser’s Early Civilization (1922:117-18) where he says that white man should be ashamed for having failed to either leave the ‘primitives’ alone, or to bring them up to his own level. That is such a ridiculous statement. Basically, the label of primitive has always had a negative connotation, it goes hand in hand with notions of inferiority, backwardness, lack of sophistication and simplicity; just to name a few.

Primitive vs. Civilized has been a theme in use for a very long time, though there have been other attempts to classify that do not have such a horrible connotation. Hsu discusses a few, such as Sapir’s genuine vs. spurious; Redfield’s folk vs. urban; and Herskovits’ non-literate vs. literate. Herskovits prefers that system of categorization because it has a specific data point connected to it. The others are much more subjective. It also is ‘colorless’ as he puts it. I suppose that means it sounds less offensive and racist.

As any logical and reasonable person can tell you, these labels are using a pretty large brush to paint the picture of humanity. They are seriously lacking in detail and specificity.  For example, there is more diversity among those that had been labeled ‘primitive’ than in the ‘civilized’ world.

Hsu did “a survey of 30 basic books in anthropology written during the last 10 years” and found that the term ‘primitive’ was still in wide use at the time (remember, 1964), and was incredibly vague, variable and imprecise. Mostly, the word was used in an inferior way. It has no intellectual or analytical advantage. He says that it lends nothing to our ability to theory build, and it is setting us back.

It is also illogical! He explains that in ‘civilized’ America, we have a simple kinship system, while those ‘primitive’ Aboriginals in Australia have perhaps the most complicated kinship structure in the world. He lists several other situations like this. He says another problem is that we like to look at ourselves with rose colored glasses. Anthropologists will discuss problems in other societies, but when asked about themselves, they say that the west is far too complex and has far too long of a history to get into. Mead’s work abroad is super famous, but how many times have I ever heard about And Keep Your Powder Dry (1942), which is about the United States? None that I can remember! (My apologies to any professors who may have mentioned it to me…)

Speaking of a long history, Hsu discusses how societies with long histories tended (prior to the 60s) to be ignored. It is a problem of methodology: too much to read. Hsu says suck it up! Get over it! We are not doing ourselves any favors by ignoring half of the planet.

Back in the day, Anthropologists could label any of the marginalized groups primitive, basically without any fear of repercussions. Those they wrote about either didn’t read English/ French/ German, they were in a place where they most likely could not get their hands on a copy, or they were not politically in a position to raise a stink. Fortunately the world has changed since then. When Hsu was writing this article, the situation had already changed quite a bit. In 1958, Herskovits wrote about the idea of cultural relativism (I apologize to Herskovits and everyone for not having the citation) which is basically the notion of not judging one society by the standards of another. This is pretty significant.

Basically, primitive vs. civilized is bad science. By labeling a group as primitive, we are setting ourselves to miss details. We have already stuck them into a box, so we will manipulate the date to fit the box. Hsu calls for a new system, and a flexibility too. Whatever we go with, it will not work 100% of the time, so we must be able to adapt.

Hsu concludes by warning us that if we keep using the primitive vs. civilized dichotomy, we will “block our paths to progress”.

A Lofty Goal

This is my attempt to prepair myself for Graduate School. At this moment in time, I feel that I am going to be eaten alive by my Professors. I have devised a plan that, while it may not actually prepair me, it will atleast make me feel more prepaired. And since we live in our minds, thats all that really matters, right.... right guys??? Since that previous statement is probably BS, lets just hope this works! But first, some 'splainin...

My name is Rachael, I am about to start Graduate School at Wichita State University, with the aim of getting my Masters in Cultural Anthropology. I <3 Anthropology! I flopped around as an Undergrad for 6 years. I had 3 majors before finally realizing I was born to do Anthro! I was an Art Major, a Secondary Education Major, first with a focus on English, then History/Social Studies.  For the Social Studies aspect, I had to take two Anthro classes, and now, I sit here 3 years later about to start Grad School. I am both excited, and nervous.

As an Undergrad, Grad students always had a cool air about them. They seemed so advanced and sage-like, in much the same way that as a 9th grader, the Seniors seemed so smart and big. But once I became a Senior myself, I felt the same as I did as a freshman, like I still had so much further to go, and so much to learn. I feel like I should know so much more than I do now. Which brings me to the entire point of this Blog...

My goal for this summer (among many other goals I have for myself, which I may or may not expand upon in this Blog) is to read atleast one academic article a week, and post my review/ highlights of. I also plan on reading a few other larger works, which include Myth and Meaning, Totemism (Both Levi-Strauss), and a few other Anthropology books. This will force me not only to read, but to comprehend, and then to retell it to others. I feel confident that I can do this, for I am also working on my organizing and scheduling skills this summer, of which this is a part of. I also am confident that in 10 weeks, when I start grad school, I will feel much better about it.

I welcome anyone else to join in my efforts, read the same article and post your comments, or read and review others, and post a link to yours in the comment thread! And they don't just have to be Anthro! Psychology, Sociology, whatever! Theres to much division in Academia these days!
So lets get to it!