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Primordialism and `Primary Factors'

The search for primordialism leads one into many thickets, and one I hope to avoid is the concern of an earlier generation of anthropologists (cf. Needham 1978) about what Needham called `primary factors', i.e. what aspects there exist about culture, or even of human beings, that might be termed universal or primary. If it could be determined what structures, or organizational systems, or ideas even that all cultures displayed or possessed, one could perhaps justify the primordialism, the attachment, the bond that certain primordial features had for various peoples. But in today's approach to the same questions, it is typical to deny the primordial, to see everything as a social construct, and therefore the embarrassing persistence in some cultures, of attachments that social anthropologists now want to see as anything but primordial, leads to puzzling conclusions. Some would even deny the primacy of emotion, or at least of affect, which makes us wonder why anyone would harbor strong feelings toward language, or kinship, or religion, or territory, when surely these emotions and feelings are all just social constructs, perhaps just the artifact of the analysis?

To summarize thus far: we need to distinguish between factors (phenomena, proclivities, constraints, determinants) that the anthropologist seeks to isolate as primary (primordial) among the cultures of the world, and the things (phenomena, proclivities, attachments, etc.) that peoples themselves call prim/ary/ordial (such as religion, language, race, gender, blood lines, whatever) especially as these are felt (by peoples) be essential to their ethnicity, their sense of peoplehood, their basic group identity, which tends to be transmitted generationally.

For Geertz, primordial attachments derive from the ``assumed givens" of social existence--region, kin, sharing of religion, language, social practice. But the sentimental nature of these attachments is embarrassing for the social scientist--the attachment is `romantic' and thus inappropriate to the objectives of social science. From a discussion of the subjective romantic, one can quickly degenerate into crude statements about cultural determinism, leading to stereotypical assessments of national character, superior vs. inferior, and so on.

I would add that these factors are also impossible to quantify and quantificatory social science has shied away from them, almost as if they would contaminate the purity of their scientific analysis. As Stack (1986:2) puts it the term ``lacks rigor, explanatory power, and predictive value of structural analyses of behavior." Thus, the primordial explanation explains everything and nothing, and ignores other factors. But as Geertz continues,

``The general strength of such primordial bonds, and the types of them that are important, differ from person to person, from society to society, and from time to time. But for virtually every person, in every society, at almost all times, some attachments seem to flow more from a sense of natural--some would say spiritual--affinity than from social interaction."

Here we are truly in trouble: spiritual affinity?

``These congruities of blood speech, custom [etc.] are seen to have ineffable and ...overpowering coerciveness." (Geertz 1973:259)

Thus, the bonds of personal affection, consanguinity, practical necessity, common interest, or incurred obligation are important, but more important are the unaccountable absolute import attributed to the very tie itself. The ties are felt to be like some kind of magnetism, or some kind of magic; they are irresistible, ineffable, intangible; they exist at some higher plane, perhaps on a spiritual plane; they are non-rational, or even irrational. And they can be counted on to stir up deeper sentiments than any `common interest' kind of practical bond. Unleashed, they may lead to civil war (Sri Lanka), or genocide (Nazi Germany, Ruanda, Cambodia).



 
next up previous
Next: Who are the Primordialists? Up: Language, Primordialism and Sentiment Previous: Introduction
Harold Schiffman
12/3/1998