Dualism in Modern Western Concepts of Nature and ‘Natural Things’
Anthropological Legacies
1.
Claude Levi-Strauss: a.
Highlighted the idea that all human thought was structured by oppositions. b.
Reality was a continuum which language broke up into separate units. c.
Hence, we come to know the world through language, which stresses certain categories rather than others. d.
Key symbols in a culture will be defined through oppositions. e.
One of the most important oppositions was that between nature and culture, thought of as a universal opposition. i.
For example, in The Raw and the Cooked, Levi-Strauss analyzed
Amazonian myths of origin, in which he found that the underlying and unconscious opposition between nature and culture was thematically expressed through an opposition between raw and cooked food, with fire being the medium through which this opposition was overcome.
2.
Sherry Ortner, Is Male to Female as Nature is to Culture? a.
Argued that ALL human societies differentiate between male and female and nature and culture. b.
Further, that in ALL human societies, women are seen as being closer to nature through the fact that they give birth to children, menstruate and nurse children. Men, on the other hand, were viewed as being closer to culture, due to the fact that they did not give birth.
3.
Rethinking the Universality of Oppositions Between Nature and Culture a.
Foucault: analyzed the rise of sciences, especially medicine, biology, anatomy and physiology, showing how the Scientific Revolution introduced a dualistic mode of thought, in which nature became separate from culture and from religion. b.
This is referred to as the philosophy of naturalism: the idea that nature is separate from human intention, that it has laws and properties of its own, and that these laws can be discovered through the application of the scientific method. c.
Anthropologists such as Marilyn Strathern, Carol MacCormack and Jane
Goodale found that small-scale societies do not tend:
1.
to view nature and culture as separate and opposed.
2.
nor they do not view culture as superior to nature.
3.
nor do they associate males with culture and females with nature.

a.
In the Kaulong example from Papua New Guinea, nature encloses culture, which is seen concentrically, not hierarchically.
4.
Bloch and Bloch: The Importance of Nature in the French Enlightenment a.
The Enlightenment period is important to anthropologists because from it emerged many of the founding ideas of our discipline. b.
It was a period inspired by advances in natural sciences and by the belief that the methods of the natural sciences could be applied to studying societies. c.
Enlightenment philosophers commonly used the concept(s) associated with nature to support their arguments about the need for a new type of society or a new form of government. d.
Hobbes in England: argued that man in the state of nature was avaricious and competitive, living in a potential state of ‘war of all against all’, hence requiring a strong, central government. e.
Rousseau in France: argued the opposite: that man in the state of nature was essentially good and peaceful, and that he experienced a balance between his needs and his wants. It was society that produced greed and avarice, particularly the institution of private property. (noble savage theory). Used examples from travellers’ accounts of Amerindians to support his claims. f.
Both Hobbes and Rousseau, despite their differences, saw ‘nature’ as a hypothetical state from which it was possible to derive inferences about how humanity existed without or prior to culture. g.
They initiated a great divide in European thought, that between nature and nurture: is it human nature that produces human inequality and other problems, or is it culture?
5.
The Meanings of Nature in the French Enlightenment a.
The Enlightenment was a period when the notion of opposition between nature and society, culture or education suddenly gained great prominence. b.
Yet the concept of nature was multivocal; it referred to a range of ideas and phenomena that were thought to be interlinked and which were often used interchangeably: i.
In the first, the state of nature refers to a chronologically pre-social state, i.e. an imagined state before society or culture existed. ii.
In the second, nature refers to the internal processes of the human body, especially instincts and emotions, but also reproductive processes. iii.
Nature is taken to mean the universal physical order which implies the co-existence of human nature and the external world of plants, animals and the countryside. iv.
The way of life of primitive peoples whether real, imaginary or a mixture of the two.

6.
Gender, Nature and Culture in the Enlightenment a.
Despite Rousseau’s radical calls for changes in French society to be brought more in alignment with man’s natural predispositions, he and others had very different ideas when it came to women. b.
Rousseau, Diderot, La Maittre and other philosophers thought that women were ‘naturally’ and ‘essentially’ different than men due to their biological functions. c.
Women were associated with childbirth and lactation; this was their primary function that explained their different ‘natures’. d.
By ‘nature’, they were more emotional and inconstant than men, since this was needed for child-rearing. e.
They were therefore not suited to intellectual pursuits or to politics. f.
Separate types of education should be imparted to young girls and young boys. g.
Supported by the emerging sciences of physiology and anatomy, which identified a series of biological differences between men and women. h.
‘Other cultures’, particularly small-scale hfgs and subsistence societies, were similarly seen as closer to nature than to culture.
7.
Conclusion: This period witnessed the introduction of sets of dualistic categories that were to become influential in western thought and worldview: i.
Between Nature and Culture: e.g. the nature/nurture debate. ii.
Between universal Nature and multiple cultures. iii.
Between men and women now seen as biologically, or ‘naturally’ very different. iv.
Between modern, scientific culture and others, glossed as
‘primitives’. v.
Between human beings and animals (Descartes: believed that animals were very different than human beings because they could not speak; language was the great dividing line between humans and animals, allowing for the formation of reason.) vi.
Between mind (culture) and body (nature); due to the rising influence of western medicine. Disease was seen to be caused mainly by ‘natural’, i.e. physical dysfunctions. vii.
Hence, Levi-Strauss’ and Ortner’s ideas of the universality of an opposition between nature and culture, and male and female, may not be true, but is rather a product of western thought.
8.
Contrast: Medieval thought and the Great Chain of Being: a.
Every existing thing in the universe had its place in a divinely ordered hierarchical order. b.
Envisioned as a chain differentiated according to the relative presence of spirit and matter. c.
The less spirit and the more matter it contained, the lower down the scale it was.

i.
At the bottom were rocks, minerals, and the four elements. ii.
Farther up were vegetative elements: trees, flowers, shrubs, etc. iii.
Then came animate beings, first animals and then humans. iv.
Humans were also graded according to classes, genders, and estates, with the pope and kings being highest in the human class. v.
Angels and god was the highest class. d.
In this system, all were interdependent, and hierarchically ordered. e.
Hence, nature and culture were not so separated, but were seen as parts of a whole.
Cronon: The Image of the Frontier and Our Ideas of Wilderness

Before the nineteenth century, wilderness was not thought of favourably: it was seen as a deserted, barren, desolate, infertile, a place where a person could be lost in confusion and despair.

Late 19 th century, nature came to mean 2 different things in North American society:
1.
Sublime: older and more pervasive cultural construct: part of the romantic movement inherited from Europe: places of such beauty that one had more chance than elsewhere to glimpse the face of God. Most often found in those vast, powerful landscapes where one could not help feeling insignificant, e.g. mountaintops, chasms, waterfalls, rainbows, sunsets; e.g. first American parks,
Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Rainier. Stimulated by romantic poets from England and France, e.g. Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’. a.
Also romantic attraction of primitivism, dating back at least to Rousseau, the belief that the best antidote to the ills of modern civilization was a return to a simpler form of living. This was embodied in the notion of the: o Frontier: particularly N American: European immigrants, in moving to the unsettled lands of the frontier, shed the trappings of ci lization, rediscovered primitive racial energies, reinvented direct democratic institutions, and reinfused themselves with a vigor independence and creativity that were the source of American national character.
Other Ways of Classifying and Relating to Nature: Australian Totemism
• The fundamental feature of totemism is that clan members believe that they have a common essence because of the fact that they share the same name that is taken from a plant or animal species.
– Totems are tattooed on members and engraved into sacred objects, called churingas . It is these artistic manifestations that are considered the most sacred.
– Negative interdictions: clan members are forbidden to kill or eat totems, except at special rituals.
– Clan members are also considered sacred in that role, but less sacred than the representations of totems or the totemic species itslef.
– There are also interdictions against marrying within one’s own clan, i.e. with a person who shared the same totemic ancestor. This was equivalent to incest.

Totemism is a Cosmology and a System of Classification
•
Totemism classifies and divides both the social and the natural worlds into named groups that are defined by the essence of the totem, e.g. the Walker, or the Raider.
•
It is not only a logical classification, but also a moral classification, since it is associated with ideas about what is sacred and what is profane.
•
It is also connected to society and reflects social divisions, both in terms of descent and marriage.
•
The totems, the clan system and the clan members are all manifestations of this impersonal force that exists beyond individuals.
•
Latour: totemism is an example of a society in which there is no differentiation between nature and culture.
•
Rather, the principle of classification is different, i.e. by the essences of totems.
•
Non-dualistic, or monistic relation to nature, rather than dualistic.