GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
1
The Manuel d’Etnographie –MdE-(1947) and the Notes
and Queries on Anthropology – N&Q-(1929) on the UCL
intranet.
Two fundamental concepts of the social sciences: material culture and
the couple technique/technology.
Guido Frison, UCL Department of Anthropology
Skip the present
Introduction
↓
Go to
N&Q and MdE
Contents.
§1§2-
Two seminal anthropological texts on technique/technology and
material culture. The main aim of the present work.
Different anthropological approaches to the relations that man has
with nature (from ca. 1871 to the beginnings of the 1940s).
§3-
The N&Q and the MdE as a case of theoretical incompatibility and
practical convergence.
§4-
Why N&Q? And why the fifth edition (1929)?
§5-
Technique and technology and the role of “things” in Mauss’
analysis.
§6-
Some historical observations on the idea of material culture.
§7-
Beckmann’s & Marx’s technology and the first foundation of the
modern concept of technology.
-
Cited Literature.
Criticisms and
observations are
welcomed.
If you find any kind
of error, please, mail
the author
g.frison@ucl.ac.uk
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
2
§1- Two seminal anthropological texts on technique/technology and
material culture. The main aim of the present work.
Since its modern beginnings, the anthropological discourse described and
classified the enormous variety of the artifacts and the production processes of
illiterate cultures, and later of literate modern ones. This gigantic scientific
undertaking largely overcomes in precision, depth of analysis and reliability
the
description of arts and crafts of the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des
sciences, des arts et des métiers by Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784) & Jean le Rond
d’Alembert (1717–1783)1.
We
publish on the UCL intranet two major anthropological texts from two
different traditions with the aim of comparing their contents, discussing their
underlying categories and to make available to scholars two important records of
the evolution of the concepts of material culture, technique and technology. The
texts are the following:
i)
Part III from the Notes and Queries on Anthropology (fifth edition 1929,
henceforth N&Q) devoted to Material Culture.
ii) Part IV of the Manuel d’Ethnographie (1947), henceforth MdE, by Marcel Mauss
(1872– 1950) which is entitled Technologie (technology).
1 In the present work anthropology is used in the current meaning as
an overarching term that
encompasses ethnography, ethnology and physical anthropology. But this was not always the
case in the period we treat. For an introduction to Encyclopédie’s descriptions of arts and crafts
see Picon 1992, Pannabecker 1998.
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
3
§ 2- Different anthropological approaches to the relations that man has with
nature (from ca. 1871 to the beginnings of the 1940s).
Material culture, materielle Kultur, technique, technology, Kulturbesitz, materielle
Kulturbesitz, arts, industries and the couple technique/technology are more or less
different terms, ideas, notions
and
concepts, which had been
coined in the
history of anthropology to describe the relationships that man has with nature.
Some of them were used as components for creating other concepts (e.g. culture
area, culture pattern), which however are not treated in the present work. Within
the terms mentioned above, only the concept technology is consistently used in
other disciplines (economics, sociology and history).
One of the aims of the present Introduction is to permit a comparison between
these terms and to evaluate whether they were synonymous in the time interval
from 1871 until the beginning of the 1940s, that is, from about the publication of
Primitive Culture by Edward B. Tylor (1832 –1917) and the first edition of N&Q
(1874), until the moment in which Marcel Mauss (1872 –1950) ended his lectures
on technology.
§ 2.1- Some considerations on the meanings of technology.
A preliminary note concerning the term technology is however necessary: a large
deal of literature had already shown that the meaning of this term depends on
the subject’s mother tongue. Although an opening definition is often required in
anthropological inquiry, we state neither an old nor a new definition, which will
likely only lengthen the long list of definitions already proposed by the literature2.
2 “The Greek τέχνη, commonly translated as “art”, “craft” or “skill”, has behind it the IndoEuropean stem tekhn- meaning probably woodwork” or “carpentry” and is akin to the Greek
téktōn and Sanskrit tákṣan, meaning a “carpenter” or “builder”, and the Sanskrit tákṣati, “he
forms”, “constructs”, or “builds”. One could compare also the Hittite takkss-, “to join” or “to build“
and the Latin texere, “to weave”, hence figuratively “to construct” and tegere, “to cover”, hence to
put a roof onto” (Mitcham 1979, p.172; see also the indispensable book by Seibicke 1968).
Although the common stem, the meanings of technology, Technologie, technologie are remarkably
different in different languages and disciplines. Jean-Claude Beaune recapitulates forty six
definitions of technology (1980, p. 253-263). For some authors, technology refers to the generic
activity of the genus Homo of producing and using means of labour (White 1940, p.2 and Singer
1954-1978), or is synonymous with the term art (see for example Eamon 1983, 1994). For an
overview of the modern meanings of technology see Morère 1966, Guillerme & Sebestik [1968]
2007, Sebestik 1983, Guillerme 1984. For a large bibliographic note on philosophy and history of
technology see Mitcham 1979, p.189-201 and for the entrance of the new term technology into the
American parlance see Schatzberg 2006.
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4
However,
for
the
reader’s
sake
we wish
to
underline
some
necessary
epistemological and historical implications for evaluating the various meanings of
the term technology in anthropological literature.
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
(1717 –1768)
Johann Beckmann
(1739-1811)
The starting point is that every society produces and consumes art for aesthetic,
religious, magic and political reasons: usually the production of art items does
not involve any kind of art history. Giorgio Vasari’s Vite de' più eccellenti pittori,
scultori e architettori italiani - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects (first edition 1550)- is commonly evaluated as the actual beginning of
art history in Western thought. One of the necessary determinants of Vasari’s
biographies was that some kinds of artisans (painter, sculptor and architect) had
already climbed the social stratifications and came to be considered as artists,
more or less in the modern meaning (Kristeller 1951, p. 513-15). However, the
first author who integrated biographical data into a unitary discourse on (ancient)
art was Johann Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst der Alterthums -History of
Ancient Art- published in 1764 ( Kristeller 1951, 1952, Shiner 2001).
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
5
In a similar manner, the use and production of instruments, machines are
elements of the anthropological concept of culture, and are common factors of
any society, however an oral discourse on production is not an obvious social
activity, neither is the social activity of writing essays on the production process
and/or the instruments/products intervening in the production or on productive
arts and crafts. In fact a systematic, “scientific”, and therefore descriptive
discourse on arts and the commodities entering and exiting the production
process began in the late German Enlightenment with Johann Beckmann’s
Anleitung zur Technologie –Introduction to technology-(1777), which should be
considered as a description of production as the production of use values.
One of the necessary preconditions of Beckmann’s foundation was certainly the
publication of the Encyclopédie
and the foundation of the modern concept of
production, as a production of wealth, which was created in the period between
François Quesnay’s Tableau Économique (1758-9;
see Kuczynski & Meek 1972)
and the Wealth of Nation by Adam Smith (1776).
According
to
Beckmann
and
the
technological
tradition of the 19th century, technology is the social
process of transmitting knowledge on some productive
processes
by means of
written
records
and is
sociologically intertwined with the history of writing
and successively with the print culture. The analysis
of
the
social
mechanisms
which
transmit
technological knowledge is part of the history and
sociology of technology.
For most part of his history,
which
goes back to
some mid-second millennium B.C. Mesopotamia clay
tablets (see Oppenheim 1988 and
Shortland 2007),
the history of technology is likely to be connected to the social phenomena of
production and
enhancement of
prestige of the ruling classes. Technological
literature prior to Beckmann (or prehistory of technology) was mainly of a
prescriptive kind and used the common language for describing their objects. In
the mid eighteenth century, and after Beckmann’s works, a large body of
literature concerning the procedure to classify and describe industries and
“material items” was published. A typical manifestation of the technological
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
6
literature is therefore its meta-linguistic side, or concern on how to classify and
describe productive processes.
In conclusion, by using the term technology, it is safe to distinguish the following
semantic levels as the word may refer to:
i) The social process of ascription of a given meaning to a “thing” (technology1).
ii) A description of the morphological features of a “thing”. This is not, however,
the duty of technology, but of another discipline founded by Beckmann, that is,
the Commodity Science (Waarenkunde, see Beckmann, 1793-1800) (technology2).
iii) A oral or written discourse, which describes the production and the forms of
productive consumption of the “thing” (technology3).
iv) A type of meta-discourse concerning production: this is the case of the present
work when it considers how N&Q or the MdE classified and described material
items of anthropological interest (technology4).
The concept of technology, in the present restricted utilization, concerns only the
linguistic uses of types iii) and iv).
§ 2.2- Three anthropological ways of describing “things”.
At first glance, the description of the relation that man has with nature seems
impossible, because the study of nature is the object of the naturalistic sciences
and sociological methodology, especially the Durkheimian one, prevents the use
of naturalistic categories.
Nevertheless, considerations on the relationships of man with his environment
are a venerable and well respected kind of Western thought, since it comes from
the Hippocratic medical school (c. 460 BC– c. 370 BC). The topic is treated by
almost all anthropological schools and national traditions, therefore we will only
mention some of the authors commented by Mauss, starting with the works of
the American Bureau of Ethnography, founded in 1879 by John Wesley Powell
(1834 –1902)3. The American tradition continued through Franz Boas (Boas
3 The literature is large and therefore it may be sufficient to mention the 1896 Annual Report of
the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, of the year 1895 which includes the following
four papers by anthropologists of the American Bureau:
-Powell, W. John, 1896, “Relation of primitive peoples to environment, Illustrated by American
Examples”, p. 625-637.
Mason, T. Otis, 1896, “Influence of environment upon human industries or arts.”, p. 639-665.
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
7
1911, p. 30-75; 158-173, Stocking 1965), whose work promoted the development
of American anthropology in the first part of the twentieth century and in Clark
Wissler’s research on culture area (19222[19171], p. 370-374). In Germany,
Friedrich Ratzel’s works (1844-1904) inaugurated a new approach, which was
continued by the successive school of the Kulturkreise (culture circles) and
Kulturschichten (culture strata) by Fritz Graebner (1877-1934), and Bernhard
Ankermann (1859 –1943) or theory of culture circles (Kulturkreislehre). In France
Mauss introduced the concept of technomorphologie in the 1920s (Bert 2009a)4.
All this should deserve more attention, however in the present work we wish only
to analyse the small numbers of terms, ideas and conceptual tools, (material
culture, materielle Kultur -material culture-, technique, technology, Kulturbesitz,
materielle
Kulturbesitz,
-material
cultural
heritage-
arts,
industries,
technomorphologie and the couple technique/technology) elaborated by the
anthropological thought in order to cope with the “things” intervening in the
course of social actions. In particular we wish to consider whether and in which
way these terms, ideas or conceptual tools are sufficiently distinct and occupy
different semantic fields, or are interchangeable, and whether they mirror
sociological and/or naturalistic categories.
For this aim, we propose the following typology which tentatively accounts for the
various approaches used to describe the “things” intervening in the course of
social processes. The descriptions may concern:
i) the morphological features of the “thing” and its properties5.
ii) The process which produces the “thing” (processive or constructive description).
iii) How a given meaning is socially ascribed to a given “thing” 6.
Fewkes, J. Walter “The Tusayan Ritual: A study of the influence of Environment on Aboriginal
Cults.”, p. 683-700.
McGee, W. John, “The relation of Institutions to environment.”, p. 701-711.
4 Unlike Mauss’ theory of technique and Marx’s Technologie, ecological approaches to “material
culture” lead to a theory of accommodation or specialization of a given culture to a given niche,
and in such a way, they diminish the active role of man with respect to nature.
5
This is the case of the present Anglo-Saxon anthropological, economic and sociologic literature which often refers
to the “thing”, but also to its properties.
6 This is the case of the present dominant British school of material culture, which addresses
the problem of the social meaning ascription (see for example Tilley, 2001). But this topic is
chronologically beyond the limits of the present work. This school had the great merit of creating
in the 1980s-1990s a great shift on the anthropological study of material culture, with respect to
the typical content of the N&Q (1929) see Basu 2013.
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
8
The categories of our typology, although logically distinct, may be connected for
many reasons with other logical levels and are often overlapping to some
extent
in anthropological or technological descriptions.
First of all, constructive descriptions may be framed within meta-technological or
philosophical considerations. An example, is provided by Mauss who classified in
the MdE the entire set of techniques through
four categories, which are the
Cartesian product of two dichotomous parameters techniques times use, both
being distinguished into general and special. A second example is the notion of
body techniques (Mauss 1935), which is not only an anthropological concept, but
also a meta-technological category, as it permits to collect in the same whole the
descriptions of various techniques which are dispersed in N&Q. A third example
is provided by the materielle Kultur of the German anthropology at the turn of the
18th-19th century which was anchored to a philosophically founded category of
Technik7.
Secondly, both N&Q and MdE proclaim proper technological approaches to the
study material items or techniques8, nevertheless their descriptions are often
much alike to those of the science of commodity.
For example, the entire section devoted to material culture of N&Q recommends
descriptions of a constructive kind. However, only a thorough analysis of each
account permits an evaluation of the type of semantic level it actually
incorporates.
Let us consider, for example, the description of the heading
Weapons (N&Q 1929, p. 231- 244), which begins as follows:
“(1) All descriptions should be constructive-i.e., the description should
follow as far as possible the process of manufacture. (2) Outline
sketches with sections are of the greatest use when dealing with objects
of such infinite variety of form as weapons….” (op. cit. p. 231).
This is based on the binary oppositions of nature and culture and natural peoples (Naturvölker)
vs. natural peoples (Kulturvölker), that is the Europeans. In some authors, Technik was defined as
a kind of intellectual culture (geistige Kultur) to which materielle Kultur was opposed. On this
philosophical basis, the morphology of the “thing” and its geographical distribution were
described.
7
8 According to the most recommended procedure: ”in all cases your description should be
constructive.”(N&Q, p. 280). See also other passages concerning “Weapons” (p. 237, 240), or
“Pottery” : “The process of making the pots should be described in detail.”, or “If possible, the
different stages in the manufacture of a given type of vessel should be collected.”(p.250, 251).
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
9
The heading ends with the succeeding sentence:
“The materials and method of construction of any of these [fixed
defences] should be described fully; plans and sections, and elevations
should be given, and some idea of the localities where they are erected,
and their access to a water ……..may be described in terms of
HABITATIONS and EARTHWORKS, pp. 205, 368.” (p. 244).
However, the entire section of Weapons is actually a typological description of the
arms which are firstly classified into three classes [ i) weapons of offence; ii) selfacting weapons;
iii) weapons of offence] and each class is then further
distinguished into sub-classes etc.
Genuine technological considerations of constructive kind were already present in
the Prospectus (1750) and in the Discours préliminaire of the Encyclopédie9, whose
recommendations are not too far from those of the N&Q mentioned above.
Encyclopédie methodological aims read as follows:
“Here is the method which has been followed for each art. We have
treated: (1) its material, the places where the material is found, the
manner in which it is prepared, its good and bad qualities, its different
kinds, the operations through which one makes it pass (whether before
using it or while processing it); (2) the principal things that are made
from it, and the manner of making them. (3) We have presented the
name, the description, and the shape of the tools and machines, in
detached pieces and in assembled pieces, and the patterns of casts and
of other instruments whose interior design, profiles, etc., it is
appropriate to know. (4) We have explained and illustrated the
workmanship and the principal operation in one or several plates,
The descriptions of arts of the Encyclopédie, cannot be considered an anthropological work,
and this rationalizes why the human figures represented in the illustrations are anonymous
(Sewell,1986). Diderot's Prospectus was first published in 1750 and republished as part of the
Discours préliminaire (Preliminary discourse) by Jean le Rond d'Alembert introducing the first
volume of the Encyclopédie. See the following URLs, which were both accessed on February 2013:
The URL of the French text is: http://www.lexilogos.com/encyclopedie_diderot_alembert.htm
The English translation is available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/browse.html
9
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
10
where sometimes one sees only the hands of the artisan in action, and
sometimes the whole person of the artisan, working at the most
important production of his art. (5) We have collected and defined in the
most precise way possible the terms peculiar to the art.” (Encyclopédie
17 vol. 1751-72, vol.1, p xxxix)
Some headings of the Encyclopédie are momentous for the history of the social
sciences. For
example the articles Epingle (Pin) by Alexandre Deleyre (1755, V.,
p. 804-807) and Epinglier (Pin maker by Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, in the 1765
volume of plates) most likely became for
Adam Smith the cornerstone of the
confrontation between facts and theory on the
modern concept of division of
labour and opened a still living flow of discussion
(for a thorough scrutiny of
all the possible sources used by Smith see Peaucelle 2005, 2006). Nevertheless,
it remains difficult to ascertain which of the many descriptions of the arts spread
amongst the
seventeen volumes of the Encyclopédie may be actually considered
an example of fieldwork of the technological type within our restricted meaning10.
§ 2.3- Material culture and technology.
At the best of our knowledge the first use of the concept of materielle Kultur in
anthropological matter is given by Heinrich Schurtz’ s Urgeschichte der Kultur
(1900).
In the American anthropological literature, the simple phrase “material culture”
can be found at the beginning of 20th century in some reports of the Jesup
Expedition, edited by Franz Boas, whose anthropological paradigm superseded
the evolutionary approach of the former American Bureau of Anthropology, which
gave much room to autonomous technological studies in the anthropological
research.
See for example Proust 1957 who examines the procedure used by Diderot for writing many
headings of the Encyclopédie. According to Sewell 1986), the engravings portraying the arts do
not permit to understand the flow of the process of production.
10
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11
The term technology was introduced into the anthropological journals of the
American Bureau by his first director John Wesley Powell11; nevertheless it never
became a concept, and remained only a terminological technicality, which however,
was recommended around the 1910s by a Board of the University of London, as it
is witnessed by Haddon12. It was finally consecrated within the British
anthropological lexicon in the fourth edition of N&Q (1912), but it only lasted for
short time, as technology denoted the same large section which was successively
called material culture in the fifth edition of N&Q (1929).
On the other side of the Atlantic, the new meaning of technology that entered into
the American sociology and history of economics in the 20th century was the
English- American translation of the German Technik ( Schatzberg 2006), which
owed nothing to Beckmann, Marx and almost nothing to Powell and his Bureau
of Anthropology.
§ 2.4- Marx and Mauss and the processive approach to production.
Marx (1818 –1883) and Mauss, pursued a processive approach to production by
using different
and converging
conceptual tools. Marx adopted and modified
Beckmann’s Technologie (as a description of arts and crafts), and moved it into a
different context, with the aim of rationalizing the changes occurring in the
capitalist labour process. For the same goal, Marx elaborated a second, but
uncertain idea of technical "basis" (Basis, Unterlage, Grundlage) and "technical
condition" (technische Bedingung; see Frison 1988).
About seventy years after Marx’s Capital, Mauss elaborated an anthropological
concept of technique, which appears original and innovative with respect to the
sociological-philosophical discussion of German Technik13. In short, Mauss’
On technology of the Bureau see Powell 1899 and on the anthropological theme of invention see
Mason 1895.
11
In a classification proposed by the Board of studies in anthropology of the University of London
as a guide for the study and teaching of anthropology, technology is defined as “the comparative
study of arts and industries; their origin, development, and geographical distribution” (Haddon
1910, p. xiv). It is apparent that the old terminology of art and industry was still determining for
assessing the meaning of the new term technology, which hardly can be defined as a concept.
13 The discussion on Technik was mainly a German peculiarity; it ran from about Ernst Kapp
(1877, Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik- Principles of a philosophy of Technik-) to Martin
12
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12
technique denotes a set of organized movements of the social actor who believes
them to be both effective and traditional. But in order to evaluate whether the
act is actually of technical kind or magic or ritual, Mauss added a further etic
condition (see §5 of the present work for a larger discussion).
Given the concept of technique, Mauss defined technology as a discourse on
techniques.
Marx, Mauss and Beckmann share a similar processive approach to technology,
nevertheless, the difference between Mauss and Marx on the topic should not be
underestimated: in short, Marx did not state a consistent concept of technique
and Mauss had only a formal, but not a historical or sociological concept of
technology14.
§3- The N&Q and the MdE as a case of theoretical incompatibility and
practical convergence.
The categories of material culture and the couple technique/technology are today
framed
within a theoretical
and
non-congruent set of premises, subsidiary
theories, definitions and eventually operative concepts (for material culture see
Miller 1987, Tilley 1990, 2001 and for technology Lemonnier 1992). These
categories were theoretically treated after WW II by the British and French
schools of anthropology respectively. A thorough comparison between them is
difficult because they propose different epistemological approaches, have
dissimilar methods and use a diverse set of intermediate theories, although they
may treat the same class of objects.
They are perhaps complementary
paradigms, which aim to study artefacts; however, this point is beyond the scope
of the present introduction (for an initial comparison between today British and
French anthropologies on the topic, see Coupaye & Douny 2009).
Heidegger (1954, Die Frage nach der Technik- The Question Concerning Technik“, passing
through an anthropological text such as the Urgeschichte de Kultur (Origin [or Prehistory] of
Culture- by Heinrich Schurtz 1900).
“L'erreur de Karl Marx est d'avoir cru que l'économie conditionnait la technique - alors que c'est
l'inverse. ”, wrote Mauss (MdE, p. 30). This apodictic sentence cannot be ignored, but it is too
short to be commented upon.
14
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
13
Nevertheless, this was not the case in the period between 1929-1940 when the
fifth edition of
N&Q was published and the MdE was elaborated. The contents
of the N&Q and that of the MdE are more or less similar, although their
theoretical frames are unlike. The comparison between N&Q and MdE is
problematic because no theory of culture or theory of material culture can be
ascribed to Mauss, and no concept of technology can be ascribed to the N&Q. It is
a case of a change of paradigm, which resembles what happened to Voltaire,
when he moved from Paris to London. In that case, the French philosopher
realized that he changed from a space full of matter (that of Descartes) to the
empty space of the atomistic ideas of Newton and Boyle. But, are the differences
between these categories important?
Mauss himself was aware that his approach to ethnographic inquiry was not
congruent with Tylor’s concept of culture; however, he considered these
differences to be of little value and appreciated Tylor’s eclectic approach to
anthropological problems (Mauss, 1969 [1930], p. 457). Therefore, we limit
ourselves to signalling the theoretical points where Mauss and Tylor diverge, and
where Mauss and the English speaking anthropology deviate.
An appropriate starting point is [1913] Durkheim’ & Mauss’ paper, in which the
authors defined the concepts of civilization and
denotes the
second
social traits
culture, where
the first term
which are common to different societies, while the
signifies a kind of moral
milieu which makes specific
any given
society15. Successively, Mauss underlined how the term culture may be better
substituted by that of society (Mauss 1969[1930], p. 458) and further
distinguished the concepts of civilisation and culture: they denote completely
different social facts, which are respectively phénomènes internationaux (social
facts shared by different societies)
and phénomènes nationaux (social facts
which belong to a given society). In his 1934 last work on this issue, Mauss
specified the opposition of civilization vs. culture and stated that social general
phenomena may be classified into two classes, i.e.:
morphological and
physiological facts. These two categories, which were elaborated long before 1934,
are momentous for the present work, because the techniques are considered
physiological facts (Mauss 1969[1934]. A good example for evaluating the
See Mauss 1969 [1913], p. 453 and for a review of the Maussian notion of civilization
2009b.
15
Bert
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
14
difference between Mauss’ idea of civilization and the American concept of
material culture is given by Mauss’ review of Man and culture of Wissler (Wissler
1923; see Mauss 1924)16.
In short, the N&Q and the MdE incorporate contrasting categories, however they
converged towards a practical
agreement. Many good reasons rationalize the
convergence, first of all the role of material culture items within the field of
research of anthropology. For Edward Tylor and Henry Balfour17, as well as for
James Frazer, the authors of Kulturkreislehre and Marcel Mauss18, anthropology
was
a museum-based science too. Material culture items were considered as
pieces of evidence that could be collected by ethnographers, while the description
and study of the material items was the duty of the museum-based ethnologists.
These were successively required to collate various pieces of information into a
more abstract scheme (Balfour 1938, Larson 2007).
Secondly, other elements corroborate Mauss’ convergence toward the approach of
material culture typical of the N&Q, that is: Mauss’ eclectic methodology (Tarot,
1999, p. 476-7), his appreciation of Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford with his
peculiar evolutionary display of anthropological items (Petch 1998),
confidence about Powell’s technology, which he wished to
his naïve
connect with
the
mechanical technology of Franz Reuleaux (Mauss 1925, p.118), and above all,
the fact that he applied his concept of technique only to body techniques and not
to the “production of material items”.
The differences of categories between N&Q and MdE may explain why they
classify the same anthropological phenomena in slightly different ways, or why
they give different emphasis to the same class of facts. However, in the present
work, we wish to rationalize how the discordant agreement between N&Q and
“La définition du mot «culture» par M[onsieur] W[issler], est à peu près celle que nous
donnerions des phénomènes physiologiques de la société: “le mode de vie d'un peuple, comme
tout», ou, pour donner un exemple des américanismes employés: “this round of life in its entire
sweep of individual activities is the basic phenomenon... culture” (p. 2). Il est clair que nous ne
nous accorderons pas avec M. W. pour cet emploi superfétatoire de termes, de sciences, et de
réflexions.”, Mauss 1924, p. 296.
16
Balfour (1863- 1939) was president of the Royal Anthropological Institute curator of the PittRivers Museum from 1885 to 1939.
17
18
“L'enquête et la collection marcheront toujours de pair”(MdE, p.30)
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
15
MdE occurred. For this aim we do not need to excavate down to the philosophical
bedrock, but instead trough the history of anthropology and social sciences.
§ 4- Why N&Q? And why the fifth edition (1929)?
When considered together, the six editions of N&Q19
are no less outstanding
than the array of British scientists (for instance Charles Darwin20 and Francis
Galton) and eminent anthropologists who participated in its making, for example
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832 –1917) and
James Frazer (1854 -1941) amongst
many others21.
The various editions of N&Q represent a specific approach to fieldwork22. They are
considered to be a convenient source for tracing aspects of the history of social
The first edition (1874) was prepared by a committee appointed by the British Association for
the Advancement of Science (BAAS). The second (1892) was edited for the Council of the
Anthropological Institute ([R]AI) by John George Garson and Charles Hercules Read, who printed
the third edition too (BAAS 1899). The fourth edition (1912) was published for the BAAS by a
different group of writers (Freire-Marreco, Barbara W. (Barbara Whitchurch), Myres John
Linton). The fifth and the sixth editions were printed in 1929 (BAAS) and in 1951(RAI).
19
Charles Darwin published his Queries on the expression of human emotions many times and in
different versions in the period 1867-1874, before their publication in the first edition of N&Q
(1874). For Darwin this topic was an anthropological question and he put into effect an
anthropological enquiry. A research from an anthropologic standpoint of this inquiry is still
missing (see the various versions of the questionnaire at:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_QueriesaboutExpression.html;
accessed January 2013.
20
By denoting the number of the edition of N&Q in round brackets, we mention Charles Darwin
(I- III), the statistician and polymath Sir Francis Galton (I-III), the archaeologists Sir John
Lubbock (I-II) and Flinders Petrie (II-III), the founders of the science of anthropology (Edward
Burnett Tylor I-III, James Frazer II-III) and a long cohort of anthropologists: Pitt-Rivers (I-III),
W.H. R. Rivers (IV), Alfred Cord Haddon (II-V), Isaac Schapera (V), Robert Ranulph Marett (V).
Within the authors of the 6th edition, we mention Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Meyer Fortes, Edmund
Ronald Leach, Siegfried Frederick Nadel (Austrian born British anthropologist) and Cyril Daryll
Forde.
21
According to a commentator, N&Q “presents a list of queries that an investigator can take to the
field, present to his informants, and thereby produce a set of responses. His ethnographic record,
then, is a list of questions and answers. (The tradition in modern anthropology, however, is not to
make such a record public but to publish an essay about it.) The image of an ethnography we
have in mind also includes lists of queries and responses, but with this difference: both the
queries and their responses are to be discovered in the culture of the people being studied. The
problem is not simply to find answers to questions the ethnographer brings into the field, but also
to find the questions that go with the responses he observes after his arrival.” (Frake 1964).
22
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
16
anthropology (Coote 1987, p. 255) and they also record a substantial part of the
history of material culture’ s concept.
A shift in the description of the anthropological items
occurred in the fourth edition of N&Q (1912), which was
mainly
due
to
museum-orientated
anthropologists.
From the fourth edition onwards, N&Q aimed at the
academically trained field-worker (see the Preface
of
the N&Q, 1912). The section devoted to material culture
of the fifth edition (1929) is not particularly different
from the preceding (1912) and the succeeding (1951).
We consider the fifth edition of the N&Q, as it is
mentioned by Mauss MdE, 1989, p.11, 40). Denise
Paulme, the editor of the MdE, affirmed that Mauss was
inspired by the fifth edition of the N&Q (Preface to the third edition of the MdE,
Mauss 1989, p. iii). Actually, Mauss was an armchair anthropologist, an
omnivorous reader and the N&Q was an authoritative handbook, which was
impossible to be ignored (on Mauss’ own library see Bert 2012, p. 9-10, 78-98).
However the inspiration arising from the N&Q was likely to be of minor
importance, as the greatest determinant of the structure of MdE was the
Durkhemian paradigm, which was appropriately modified by the Fragment d'un
plan de sociologie générale descriptive (Mauss 1934, see also Tarot 1999, p. 473482). It is most likely that the N&Q was understood as a text including positive
information and it is safe to sustain that Mauss had a good knowledge of the fifth
edition of the N&Q.
Some authors underline the evolution of the six editions of the N&Q (Stocking
2001, p. 164-206), or the central role of the N&Q for the definition of the rules to
be used in anthropological fieldworks (Urry 1972; Coote 1987), or for museum
displays (Petch 2007; on predecessors of the N&Q see Urry 1984). Much excellent
literature explores the role of the anthropological museum before and after the
foundation of anthropology as a separate field of knowledge, but a comparative
analysis of the concepts of material culture and of the pair technique/technology
still remains to be made.
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
17
§5- Technique and technology and the role of “things” in Mauss’ analysis.
Mauss was completely aware of the role played by “things” in the running of the
various social actions: in the MdE he sustained:
“The whole series of lectures published in
this book starts off from the study of
material phenomena and ends up with the
study of
ideal phenomena. Thus the
chapter on law precedes this chapter on
religion Since it involves objects, persons
and objects - res, personae, actiones- law
still contains an element of the material.
Indeed,
mentalist
the
fundamental
sociology
is
to
mistake
forget
of
that
collective life involves objects, that some of its phenomena are material.
A philosophy that conceives of cognition [perhaps it would be better
“way of thinking” translator’s note] as something given in itself forgets
that it is given only in relation to material phenomena.”(Mauss, 2007, p.
159).
Marcel Mauss defined two connected concepts, that is technique in 1935 (Mauss
1935, p. 278), and
technology
in 1948 (Mauss 1969 [1948], p. 250, but this
work was already written in 1941).
The MdE collects his lectures of the period 1926-1939, however, the procedure
used by the editor (Mrs. Denise Paulme) is not apparent23. Both concepts were
The Manuel d’Ethnographie was edited by Denise Paulme on the basis of her own notes of the
lectures that Mauss gave for the Instructions d'Ethnographie descriptive, in the period between
1926 and 1939. Mrs. Paulme also used the notebooks of two students (Michel Leiris and Andrè
Schaeffner-personal communication 19-12-2012 of Mr. Jean Jamin and Mrs. Marianne Lernaire).
The editing procedure is not clear, however we know from Mrs. Paulme herself that Mauss placed
a special emphasis to technology in the lectures of the university year 1935/1936 (see
Avertissement of the first edition of the MdE, unfortunately omitted in the English translation,
Mauss 2007).
The text of the MdE was not revised by Mauss before its publication and therefore it is often
quite sketchy and lacks the finished literary form which is typical of his former contributions
to anthropology. Nevertheless, both the structure and the scope of Mauss’ lectures are apparent.
23
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
18
formulated by Mauss in his late phase of scientific research, which ends more or
less at the turn of 1944-1945 (Fournier 1994, p. 756-767).
It is worth nothing that Mauss had some knowledge of the terms technique and
technologie since the very beginning of his university studies, in the period 18911894, through the lectures of Alfred Espinas at Bordeaux University. Espinas was
the author of Les origines de la technologie (Espinas 1897), a book
which
collected papers already written in the period 1890-93 (see for example, Espinas
1890a, b).
Mauss positively estimated Les origines (Mauss, 1969 [1948], p. 252) had
friendly scientific relationships with his former university teacher (Fournier 1994,
p. 51-55), and still remembered Espinas’ lectures on this topic in his last paper
(Mauss 1969[1948], p. 252).
The notion of technique was defined combining emic and etic categories, that is,
as an act effective and traditional (emic categories) subjected to the problematic
etic condition of being an act of chemical, physical, or mechanical type (Mauss
1935, p. 278).
In his 1948 essay, Mauss refined his notion by adding the
specification that technique is a set of movements, actions, for the most part
manual (Mauss 1969[1948], p. 252).
Mauss was aware that the techniques for producing “things” are not separable
from other types of social acts, such as magic, ritual, or aesthetic activities from
an emic point of view, because these are all traditional and effective acts.
Notwithstanding its limits, Mauss’ notion of technique should be considered a
breakthrough with respect of the 19th-20th century German debate on Technik
Some authors believe that the bibliography at the footnotes and at the end of each section has
been modified by Mrs. Paulme (Cohen 1944, Fournier 1994, p. 601, n. 2). At the same time Mrs.
Paulme declared in her last speech that she had many troubles in establishing the references
mentioned by Mauss (Paulme 2004). As a matter of fact the opinions of the students who attended
Mauss’ lectures are contrasting (Fournier 1994, p. 603-605, Leroi-Gourhan 1982, p. 31-35).
The text of MdE has been published in four editions; we use the third one (1989). The
differences between them are due only to the different page size, and to the editing work of Mrs.
Paulme who added two Warnings ( to the first and second editions) and a Preface to the third
edition.
An electronic version of the French text is available at the following URLs (retrieved in February
2013):
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/mauss_marcel/manuel_ethnographie/manuel_ethnographi
e.html
or http://anthropomada.com/bibliotheque/manuel_ethnographie.pdf
The 1926 date ascribed to MdE in the electronic coverage is not corroborated by any evidence.
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
19
(for an overview see Maldonado 1979, Herf 1984, Rohkrämer 1999), but Mauss’
own dread of system building strongly limited the force of his innovative idea.
The meaning ascribed to technology appears to be the literary translation of the
two Greek terms that compose the word itself, that is, as a “discourse (logos) on
techniques” :
“It [technology] rightly claims to study all techniques, the entire
technical life of human kind since the origin until our
present
day”[Mauss 1969[1948] p.250]
This meaning does not mirror the modern evolution of the Latin word technologia
(Seibicke 1968), and is completely oblivious to the historical developments
introduced by Beckmann and Marx (see below next section). In fact Mauss
erroneously ascribed the origin of technology
to Franz Reuleaux (1829 – 1905) –
an eminent scholar of kinematics (Mauss 1969[1948] p. 251). As a consequence
of this conceptual weakness, Mauss was not able to consider that technology is
strictly connected to a specific form of domination due to a political obligation- in
the case of
Beckmann- or an economic obligation
in the case of a capitalist
society (Marx) (see section § 7).
In short, the MdE is a development of the Maussian paradigm on technique and
technology, which was opened by his 1935 paper on body techniques, but it did
not cope with the major change of the same paradigm, which was introduced by
André Leroi-Gourhan already in 1936 (Leroi-Gourhan 1936, Sophie de Baune
2011). This change was fully developed by Leroi-Gourhan in his 1943 and 1945
books, that is, outside the time range of the lectures collected in MdE24. As a
matter of fact, Leroi-Gourhan’ works (1943 & 1945) are the most cited sources of
the section technologie of the MdE. Denise Paulme was aware of the changes
introduced by Leroi-Gourhan’ s works into the topic of technology, and for that
reason she did not update the literature on technology mentioned in the MdE
(see Mauss 1989, Avertissement of the second edition p. I).
In conclusion, the MdE represents the transition moment between the traditional
description of material items of the N&Q (1929) and the new approach proposed
by André Leroi-Gourhan, whose Maussian inspiration is apparent.
24
See Leroi-Gourhan’ s criticisms to the MdE (Leroi-Gourhan 1948).
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
20
After WW II, the Maussian definition of technique was transformed into an
operative concept by a large number of French anthropologists (André LeroiGourhan, André-Georges Haudricourt (1987), and Pierre Lemonnier (1992) to
mention only a few) by means of the introduction of naturalistic categories into
the description of the technical act.
The emic & etic approach to technical act was implicitly opened by Mauss, but
actually developed by Leroi-Gourhan (1943, 1945) and is made particularly
apparent in the categories used by Lemonnier’s Elements for an anthropology of
technology (1992), because matter and energy are unambiguously naturalistic
parameters.
Today, the concept of chaîne opératoire is the heir of the initial Maussian idea of
technique and is an operative tool for the
analytical box of the archaeologist
and the anthropologist (Schlanger 2005).
§6- Some historical observations on the concept of material culture.
In the period 1840-1890, the description of material culture items went along
with the beginning of true anthropological collections and the foundation of the
early anthropological societies. This continued into the successive period, from
1890 to about the 1930s, characterized by the institution of university chairs for
teaching anthropology (Sturtevant 1969)25. Accounts of material culture of a given
culture considered their morphological features with great emphasis on typologies
and geographical distribution; the language used became increasingly specialized
but avoided descriptions which used naturalistic categories, with the exception of
the denomination of domesticated species.
Within this common context the history of the anthropological concept of
“material culture” varies in its relationship with different national scenarios
between which the conceptual and methodological exchanges were slow until the
unification, due to the rise of the American and German diffusionist schools and
the formation of British social anthropology.
This periodization reflects mainly the development of the American literature (Sturtevant 1969,
p. 621-22). The professionalization of British anthropology, for example, began later than in
America.
25
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
21
Edward Burnett Tylor
(1832-1917)
Alfred Louis
Kroeber
(1876 –1960)
Clyde Kay Maben Kluckhohn
(1905-1960)
§6.1- The Materielle Kultur.
The concept of materielle Kultur was sustained by a set of German authors, who,
being former pupils of the geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844 – 1904), were very
interested into “material items” available in the anthropological museums. We
mention only Heinrich Schurtz, Leo Frobenius, Karl Weule and the founders of
the Kulturkreislehre (Fritz Graebner
and Bernhard Ankermann; on German
anthropology at the turn of the century see Zimmerman 2011 and for a different
view Penny & Bunzl 2003).
The first systematic dissertation on materielle Kultur of the primitive people was
written by Heinrich Schurtz (1863-1903): his Urgeschichte der Kultur (1900, p.
298-469) preceded Anglo-Saxon literature on this topic26.
Heinrich Schurtz, head of the ethnographic department in the Museum für Natur,
Völker- und Handel Kunde (Museum of Natural history, Ethnography and History
of trade) in the city of Bremen in northern Germany, absorbed Ratzel’s
ideas on
diffusion of cultural traits. He, together with Leo Frobenius (1873–1938)27 and
The Urgeschichte has been highly evaluated by Heine-Geldern (1964, p. 412). Today Schurtz`s
mostly quoted work is Altersklassen und Männerbünde – Age-classes and Men’s unions- (1902),
because it introduced into the tool box of the anthropologist the concepts of age-classes clubs,
men's houses, and secret societies (On Schurtz see Ducks 1996).
26
Frobenius’ Der Ursprung der afrikanische Kulturen –The origin of African Cultures-(1898)
concerns cultural heritage (materielle Kulturbesitz, e.g.: shields, bows, knives, weapons, music
27
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
22
Edward Hahn (1856-1928),
represent the transition phase of the German-
speaking ethnology from its mid-19th century beginnings
Bastian (1826–1905)
to the diffusionist
influenced by Adolf
school of the beginning of the 20th
century (see, for example, Fritz Graebner’s Die Methode der Ethnologie- The
methods of Ethnology, 1911).
Schurtz’s notion of material culture originated within a discourse on the relation
of man with nature (Benutzung und Beherrschung der Naturkräfte – use and
domination of the natural forces- p. 298-309) determined by the
contrast
between geistige (spiritual or intellectual) and materielle Kultur (on the notion of
Technik see p.309-330).
The small booklet by Karl Weule Völkerkunde und Urgeschichte im 20.
Jahrhundert (1902)28 addresses mainly questions of methods: it follows the
opposition of material culture (materielle Kulturbesitz) versus mental culture
(geistige Kultur) as it contrasts ethnology and ethnography: the first deals more
especially with man's mental culture (morals, customs, religious, beliefs and
myths) and the latter considers the material culture of daily life (Weule, 1902,
p.6).
In the succeeding theory of culture circles (Kulturkreislehre), “natural peoples”
(Naturvölker) were recognized as having
culture and history. Nevertheless the
status of material culture items (materielle Kulture, materielle Kulturbesitz see
Gräbner 1905, Ankermann 1905) did not change much: the topic had fewer
connections with the notion of Technik, whose concept was replaced by specific
“techniques”
concerning,
for
example,
metal
(Metalltechnik)
or
iron
(Eisentechnik). The primacy of material items over texts was asserted by Gräbner
in his influential methodological essay (Gräbner 1911, p. 7-54). Nevertheless it
was insufficient to give an autonomous role to “material culture”, which
continued to be a subordinated element for the new goal of estimating the
instruments, habitations), its geographical distribution and successive modifications. This essay
which conceives culture as “organic beings”, precedes Schurtz`s Urgeschichte; both works are
museum-based and share the same concept of Kulturbesistz (for a review of the Ursprung by
L’année Sociologique see Hubert 1899).
The book, which consists only of 43 pages, was the entrance lecture at the Leipzig University.
Wuele (1864-1926) was lecturer of Ethnography and director of the Museum für Völkerkunde
(Ethnographical Museum) of Leipzig.
28
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
23
boundaries of culture areas and the social phenomena of invention or diffusion
from an original centre.
Mauss, in the technology section of the MdE, quoted all of the German authors
mentioned above, and most of their works were reviewed by L’Année sociologique.
Mauss was sympathetic with the notion of diffusion of “material objects” and their
corresponding producing techniques, but he disregarded the idea of material
culture. The Urgeschichte der Kultur was reviewed by Henri Hubert, a co-author
and close friend of Marcel Mauss in the L`Année sociologique (Hubert 1901): its
materielle Kultur section was considered a well-illustrated book on technology”29.
Here we have a good example of the central theme of the present work:
technology, material culture, Technik and Kulturbesitz, were thought about by
authors of different anthropological traditions in a syncretic way, that is as
referring to the same semantic field, which we can conventionally call technology2
or material culture in its denotative definition (see below).
A legitimate question arises: how much did the philosophical base of the concept
of materielle Kultur actually influence the description of material item?
Mauss was likely only interested in the systematic description of material items
and of what may be called today body techniques. Perhaps, the philosophical base
mentioned above may be considered as a kind of useless superstructure for the
description of material items, and most likely it represented a useful clue to
attract cultivated German
readers (on the kind of addressees of the German
museums of anthropology see Zimmermann 2001, chapter 8). However, the
dichotomy materielle Kulturbesitz and geistige Kultur transformed the unitary life
of man into a deadly museum-oriented science of material items. Often, the
ethnography of materielle Kulturbesitz, is similar to a Warenkunde instead of
being a likely description of the relations that man has with nature. However, this
was not an impediment to define the boundaries of culture areas.
Hubert (1901, p. 172): “On passe de là à l'économique puis à la civilisation matérielle; sous ce
titre nous avons presque un livre de technologie bien illustré, malheureusement encore trop
court; … "
29
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
24
§6.2- Technology and material culture in British Anthropology.
The paradigmatic concept of culture formulated by Tylor’s Primitive culture does
not involve that of material culture, a phrase barely used by Tylor 30, and does not
fit with the idea of material culture. Therefore it appears difficult to consider Tylor
as an ancestor of the study of this topic (Brown et al. 2000, p. 260). What today is
called material culture was considered by Tylor as something of a myth, or as an
object that should be classified in the same manner as a zoologist would describe
an animal.
Successively, material items were recommended to be described in a truly
technological way by some British and American authors ( we already mentioned
the recommendations of N&Q (1929); see also Murdock 1921 and Willey 1929).
Within the British anthropological tradition, the term technology was scarcely
used until about the turn of the 19th-20th century and that of material culture was
introduced about in the 1920s. For example, as early as in 1861, an
anthropological article concerning the Eskimos, called “material culture” with the
phrase manufacture of work of art (Belcher, 1861).
Circa forty years later, Alfred Cort Haddon (1855 –1940), noticed that a division
of the National Museum of Anthropology of the Smithsonian Institutions
(Washington D. C.), was called “ technology (mechanical phases)” and that Otis T.
Mason was well known for his writings on technology (Haddon 1902).
In 1909 Walther Roth, British physician and anthropologist, appointed “protector
of Australian Natives”, began to publish a four set of articles devoted to some
technological notes on the natives of British Guiana (Roth 1909), which ended in
1912. However, his very thick 1924 work (about 700 pages) had the meaningful
title
“An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana
Indians”, where
the term technology is not mentioned and the expression
material culture is used only three times ( Roth 1924).
Twelve years further, the British anthropology Marett (1936, p. 193-211)
considered that part of Tylor’s Anthropology devoted to “Arts of life” as material
“On the other, though in effect he [Tylor] applied “ “culture” to “material culture”, he did not
emphasize verbally that material object were “culture”. He barely used the term “material culture”
at all in Researches into the Early History of Mankind and Primitive Culture.” (Leupold 1980, p.
108) .
30
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
25
culture activities (1881, p. 182-205). However, the phrase itself of material culture
had been already used in the fifth edition of N&Q (1929), whose first heading is
called “Ritual in Technology” (N&Q 1929: 187). This fact may be considered a
further evidence of the fact that material culture and technology referred to the
same semantic field.
The absence of the concept of technology within the tool box of the classical
economist may rationalize why it was absent in the history of British
anthropology from James Cowles Prichard (1786 – 1848) to Edward Burnett Tylor
(1832 – 1917),
In 1935, the idea of technology was conceived by Malinowski with little
enthusiasm:
“As a sociologist, I have always had a certain amount of impatience with
the purely technological enthusiasms of the museum ethnologist. In a
way I do not want to move one inch from my intransigent position that
the study of technology alone and the fetishistic reverence for an object
of material culture is scientifically sterile. At the same time, I have come
to realise that technology is indispensable as a means of approach to
economic and sociological activities and to what might be called native
science.” (Malinowski, 2002[1935], vol. I, p. 460).
The influence of the fourth edition of N&Q (1912) on Malinowski’s first works is
well known (Urry 1972 p.52; Langham 1981, p.173; Stocking 1983, p. 96; Young
2002[1988], p. 25).
In comparison to the former three editions, the authors of N&Q (1912) changed
completely the description of “material items”, which were located under a section
called technology. The meaning of the term technology is apparent in a letter to
Seligman (20 September 1914), where Malinowski wrote:
“I find investigation and description of technical details (technology)
more difficult than anything else.” (Young 2002[1988], p.7)
In Coral Gardens (1935), technology denoted in most of the cases the “material
aspects of production activities”.
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
26
In conclusion, Malinowski’s quotations concern the study of museum-based
material culture items, and likely represent a record of the crisis of a museumoriented concept of technology.
The field of technology concerns the study of material items, as these are
conceived as the end products of the “practical techniques”. Technology in the
Maussian sense, studies every sort of “practical techniques” and this study is
sterile if is not processive or if the technical act is separated from the other kinds
of acts that the ethnographer observes. In this sense we share Malinowski’s
position on technology:
“A thorough grasp of how natives construct a yam-house would have
enabled me to judge why they construct it in that way, and to discuss
with them, as between equals, the scientific foundations of their
manual systems. It would also enabled me to assess more rapidly the
sociological implications of technological and structural details.“
Malinowski, (2002[1935], I, p. 460).
§6.3 Technology and material culture in American anthropology.
John Powell used the term technology in many Annual reports of the American
Bureau of Ethnology of the 19th century31, as the result of a classification
attempt of the various activities of the Natives studied by the Bureau. For this
aim Powell proposed not only technology, but also, esthetology, demonomy and
historics. The lifetime of the term technology was longer than the many shortliving words above mentioned (on technology’s notion of see Powell 1899). In
short, Powell’s technology does not mirror any of the problems typical of the
technological literature and, at the best of our knowledge; he never treated metatechnological considerations, with the exception of the museologic contrast that
opposed him to Franz Boas, which may be interpreted as technological topic
(Powell 1877).
31This
infrequent term is systematically used in the Annual Report of the Director of the Bureau:
see for example 1881(I, p xxxii); 1883 (II , p. xxv), 1884 (III, p xxix), 1886 (IV, p. xxix ; in many
cases of this Report the substantive technique and the adjective technical are used), 1887 (V, p xix)
etc. In a 1887 discussion which opposed Powell to Franz Boas, the director of the Bureau defined
technology as the science which includes all the arts of mankind ( Powell 1887 , p.614)
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
27
The first written record we found concerning the phrase itself of material culture,
within American anthropology is included in the report by the Russian
anthropologist Waldemar Bogoras of a publication of
the Jesup North Pacific
expedition, edited by Franz Boas as early as in 1904 (Bogoras 1904). A larger use
of the phrase material culture was once again attributable to Boas, who proposed
the seminal idea of organizing the great diversity of the world's cultures according
to geographical areas of similar cultures (Boas 1896). Successively the American
anthropologist and psychologist Clark Wissler used the concept of material culture
as early as 1910, with the idea that elements of culture formed a pattern (see
Wissler 1910, 1914) and, above all, in his well known The American Indian. An
introduction to Anthropology of the new World (19222 [19171]), in which he
introduced the concept of culture area.
Most of the papers considered material culture as a self-apparent term; sometimes
a definition was given as a list of cultural traits (denotative definition; see for
example the inventory by Wissler 1914)32, which covers a great deal of the
headings of the material culture section, as it is exemplified in the N&Q (1929).
“TOPICAL LIST OF DATA NEEDED TO CHARACTERIZE THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF
AN AMERICAN TRIBE
1. Food: a, methods of gathering and producing vegetable foods; b, hunting; c, fishing; d,
agriculture and domestication; e, methods of cooking; f, manufactured foods. (Details of
methods and appliances in every case.)
2. Shelter: details of structure for (a) seasonal types; (b) permanent types, and (c) temporary
shelters.
3. Transportation: methods and appliances for land and water.
4. Dress: materials and patterns; sex differences, a, headgear and hair dress; b, foot gear; c,
hand gear; d, body costume; e, over-costume.
5. Pottery: methods of manufacture, forms, uses, colors, technique of decoration.
6. Basketry, mats, and bags: materials, kinds of weave, forms, uses, technique of color and
decoration.
7. Weaving of twisted elements: materials, methods of twisting thread and cord, weaving
frames or looms, technique of dyeing and pattern-weaving, kinds and uses of products.
8. Work in skins: a, dressing, methods and tools; b, tailoring and sewing; c, technique of
bags and other objects; d, use of rawhide.
9. Weapons: bows, lances, clubs, knives, shields, armor, fortifications, etc.
10. Work in wood: a, methods of felling trees, making planks and all reducing processes; b,
shaping, bending and joining; c, drilling, sawing, smoothing, d, painting and polishing; e,
use of fire; f, tools; g, list of objects made of wood; h, technique of carving.
11. Work in stone: processes, forms, and uses.
12. Work in bone, ivory, and shell.
13. Work in metals.
14. Feather-work, quill technique, bead technique, and all special products not enumerated
above.” Wissler, 1914, p.448.
In his 1917 work, Wissler distinguished three main headings: Material tracts of culture
(Chapters I to VIII), the Fine arts (Chapter IX), and Social Traits ( Chapters X to XIII).
32
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
28
This manner of proposing a definition is not exceptional, because a definition is a
social act involving a specific social group of experts in a linguistic process of
specification of meaning, which undergoes modifications as inquiry proceeds
(Kaplan 1949). Tilley’s definition of material culture, which came much later, is
instead of an intensional type, because it refers to the concept of artefact (Tilley
2001), and specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for an “object” to be
identified as an example of material culture.
Franz Boas
(1858 –1942)
Waldemar Bogoras
(1865 -1936)
Clark Wissler
(1870 – 1947)
The epistemological role of the material item did not change greatly in the
succeeding German-speaking
school of the
Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten
(Gräbner 1911, p. 14-17;26-27) and in the social anthropology of Franz Boas &
Clark Wissler (see Mauss’ criticisms, Mauss 1969 [1930]).
The decline of the idea of material culture studies occurred in the period 19201940s and the most likely determinant was the subordinate role that this idea
had in the various anthropological theories (Mauss 1925, p. 118; Hutton 1944;
Sturtevant 1969, p. 624- 626; Heider 1969, p. 379-80).
We have no evidence on how the phrase of material culture entered into the
lexicon of the Boasian paradigm. A legitimate hypothesis is that it was a
translation from the German materielle Kultur. However Boas was a student of
Bastian and not of Ratzel.
In 1948, Kroeber accurately distinguished between culture and content of the
culture (tools, clothes etc.) and to this purpose he argued: "we may forget about
this distinction between material and nonmaterial culture, except as a literal
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
29
difference, that is sometimes of practical convenience to observe" (1948, p. 296).
However the concept of material culture was in the air in the 1920s-1930s, in fact
Kroeber & Kluckhorn collected many formal definitions of the concept of culture
including artefacts, which were proposed
by sociologists from 1928 onwards
(Kroeber & Kluckhorn 1952, p. 64-66).
§7- Beckmann’s & Marx’s technology, man, nature and the social actor
interested into technology.
The word technology is one of the many terms deriving from the Greek root τέχη,
that has a long history which was connected to the practical arts
only in a
marginal way33 (Seibicke 1968, Mitcham & Schatzberg 2006).
Johann Beckmann coined the modern meaning of the term technology with his
Anleitung zur Technologie34; the discipline of Technologie
universities of
Germany, Habsburgic territories,
was
taught in the
Italy (Padua ) and France
(Strasbourg and Paris-Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers),
and this
topic
generated a great body of literature. From a semantic point of view, Technologie
meant a discourse (logos) or description of the production process as it was given
We mention only two examples extracted from 19 th century anthropological journals. The first
concerns a review of a literary text devoted to Homer. Here the reviewer affirmed:” On evidence of
comparative philology he [the author] assumes the Pelasgians to have spoken much the same
language as the Hellenes, but they had some technology separate from the Hellenes and the
Italians.” (Clarke 1869, p. 323). Likely, technology means here the arts of language, that is
grammar.
The second quotation was made twenty years later and refers to an ideal scheme representing
the anthropological work of the Smithsonian Institute (Washington D.C.), where two sections of
the American museum are called “The exploitative industries.- (Exploitative technology.)” and
“The elaborative industries.-(Elaborative technology.)”(Wilson 1890, p. 512). Here technology refers
to tools and industries.
33
Just at the beginning of his work Beckmann defines the function of technology: “Technology is
the science which teaches how to treat (Verarbeitung) natural objects (Naturalien) or the
knowledge of crafts (Gewerbe). Instead in the workshops, it is only shown [that] one must follow
the instructions and the habits of the master in order to produce the commodity, [on the contrary]
technology provides in systematic order fundamental introduction[s] in finding the means to reach
this final goal on the basis of true principles and reliable experiences, and how to explain and to
utilize the phenomena which take place during the treatment" (Beckmann 1780, Einleitung § 12,
p. 17). A pdf document of the
Anleitung zur Technologie (2nd Edit., 1780) is available at the
following
address http://www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/Beckmannt /beckmannt _index.html
(accessed December 2012).
34
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
30
in the German territorial states.
Technologie did not refer to a specific tool,
machine or product as in today common English language.
Beckmann was an interpreter of the late absolutist and modern state, that is an
impersonal social subject, which wished to gain awareness of all the steps of the
production processes actually occurring within its borders.
Technological knowledge was an innovative aspect of the 18th century German
system of political obligation: Beckmann addressed his lectures and works
to
civil servants (cameralists) who acted upon the industrial relationships by means
of Polizeiordnungen (ordinance of Police to be promulgated) in order to increase
the Wohlfahrtsstaat (Welfare state). At the very beginning of the preface of the
Anleitung, Beckmann underlines the kind of social actors who are interested into
Technologie, that is those who “organize, plan, order, judge, rule, conserve,
improve or utilize" (Beckmann, 1780, Vorrede of the 1st ed.), while
for other
social actors this knowledge is useless.
Johann Beckmann
(1739-1811)
Jean-Baptiste Say
(1767 – 1832)
Karl Marx
(1818 –1883)
This observation is fundamental for solving the Maussian paradoxical concept of
technique, for which a technical act is at same time of etic and emic kind. Mauss
did not
perceive that technological knowledge involves only the subject who
exerts domination, and not the social actor who displays the technical act. For
that reason, technological knowledge always appears as a specific etic knowledge,
because the outsider is a given social actor (the cameralist, the entrepreneur or
the anthropologist), who adopts a naturalistic standpoint.
In the case of an
ethnographic inquiry, technological descriptions interest only the ethnographer
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
31
who distinguishes technical acts from other traditional and effective acts on the
base of the etic criterion of “being of chemical, physical type”.
In a few words, technology is a modern concept, but epistemologically it is
subordinated to that of production (of wealth).
The context of the Technologie
was peripheral with respect to the French-British debate which founded the
modern science of economics, as it was a specific German-speaking line of
thought which is called Cameralism35.
Technologie did not imply any concept of Technik36, a term and a concept
introduced into the economic debate by Schumpeter’s Theorie der wirtschaftlichen
Entwicklung (1911), which was translated into English as technology. But Technik
is not the heir of the former Technologie (Frison 1993b, 1998).
The idea and the term itself of Technologie
Classical Economics, because it was
never became an analytical tool of
inconsistent with the idea of production
(of wealth; on the genesis of the economic concept of production
see Cannan
1903, p. 35, Gilibert 1987).
Karl Marx, a late but not minor author of the classical school of economics,
enlarged the category of production by splitting it in two different kinds of
productions connected as the two sides of a coin, that is, the process of obtaining
exchange values and the labour process which produces use-values. For this
aim Marx used the category of Technologie, borrowed from Beckmann and his
German pupils (Yoshida 1983a, Marx 1982a) and appropriately modified it by
considering the British literature of Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure, Robert Willis,
a scholar of kinematics, and others (Marx 1982b, Yoshida 1983b; Moon 2003 ).
For an overall interpretation of Cameralism see Tribe 1988, Lindenfeld 1997, Wakefield 2009.
From a sociological point of view see Small, 1909 and as political phenomenon Maier 1966,
Brückner 1977, Schiera 1968, 19902. For Cameralism as an economic doctrine see Tribe 1988,
Brückner 1977. Backhaus& Wagner 1987, 2005 analyze the Cameralistic origins of continental
public finance and argue against the interpretation of Cameralism as a kind of Mercantilism. For
current studies on Beckmann, see Müller & Troitzsch 1992, Bayerl & Beckmann 1999, Meyer
1999a, Bayerl 2007. Meyer 1999 b gives a bibliographic overview of the author.
35
See Seibicke 1968, “Hauptprobleme der Geschichte der Wörter um Technik nach 1770“, p. 26828). For Seibicke, the term Technik had two fundamental meanings: Technik1 = the whole set of
the means of production – instruments and methods used in the production, and Technik2 = “Art
of doing”, rules and actions used for fulfilling a given goal (p. 276).
This does not mean that the classical school did not treat what today is called technical or
technological change, or that we cannot use some of the features of Beckmann’s Technologie for
sociological ends.
36
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
32
He then used the concept of Technologie
in connections with the following
questions:
i) The role of technology on the relationships between man and nature.
ii) The type of social actor of the capitalist society who is interested into
technology.
Concerning the first point, Marx
sustained that technology “discloses man‘s
mode of dealing with Nature”. The implicit anthropological consequence is that
without the technological knowledge, man is not aware of his relationship with
nature. The passage reads as follows:
“ Darwin has interested us in the history of Nature‘s Technology, i.e., in
the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve
as instruments of production for sustaining life. Does not the history of
the productive organs of man, of organs that are the material basis of
all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not such a
history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs
from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the
latter? Technology discloses man‘s mode of dealing with Nature, the
process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also
lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the
mental conceptions that flow from them.” 1990 [1887], p. 327.
An interesting corollary to this Marxian point, not
yet discussed by the
literature, is to determine the necessary and sufficient anthropological
conditions for which the man as social group becomes able to discover his
productive relationship with nature.
Concerning the second question, an appropriate starting point is
Jean-
Baptiste Say’s concept of entrepreneur. The duty of this social actor is to
combine the factors of production. For this reason he could be interested in
the technological description of the production process (on Say’s entrepreneur
see Koolman 1971, Steiner 1998).
Instead of the entrepreneur, Marx refers to the capitalist, as the
personification of the capital.
The social actor interested in technology is
dissolved and becomes the impersonal figure of the capital, although Marx
GF- Introduction: MdE and N&Q
33
was completely aware of the role of the capitalist discipline. Technology is
defined as the impersonal principle of modern industry:
"to resolve each process of production as considered in itself into its
constituent elements and without any regard to their possible execution
by the hand of man, created the new science of technology" (personal
translation, Marx 1990 [1887], p. 425) .
In conclusion, according to Marx, technology is a fairly modern knowledge which
describes the production process as a process of things.
The great merit of Marx is that he moved the concept of Beckmann’s Technologie
from a context determined by a political obligation to the modern context of the
capitalist production and to the obligation which connects the entrepreneur with
his workers (Frison 1993 a, b, 1998).
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