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Page 1: The materialist mentality revisited

Human Studies 17: 449-459, 1995. © 1995 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The materialist mentality revisited*

BEREL DOV LERNER Tel Aviv University

Commenting on Sir James Frazer's (1890) classic study of primitive magic and religion, The Golden Bough, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1959: 5e) once wrote:

What narrowness of spiritual life we find in FrazerI And as a result: how impossible for him to understand a different way of life from the English one of his time! Frazer cannot imagine a priest who is not basically an English Parson of our times with all his stupidity and feebleness.

Many years after Wittgenstein penned his condemnation of Frazer's an- thropology of religion, a distinguished follower of his formulated a critique of the work of a man who was at that time perhaps the most prominent anthropologist writing in the English language. I am referring to Peter Winch's (1964) much-discussed essay, "Understanding a Primitive Society" (hereaf- ter UPS), in which he criticizes one of the central premises of Sir E. E. Evans-Pritchard's (hereafter referred to as E-P) (1937) ethnographic classic, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande.

The juxtaposing of these two instances of a philosopher criticizing an anthropologist is far from capricious. In a footnote, Winch (UPS: 320) states that Wittgenstein's comments on Frazer inspired his own interpretation of Africa's Azande society. Furthermore, Wittgenstein and Winch make similar complaints about the respective targets of their criticisms; both Frazer and E- P are accused of interpreting the mystical practices of other cultures as if their role were similar to that of science and technology in Western society. While Wittgenstein rejects Frazer's key thesis that the practitioners of primi- tive magic and ritual seek the kind of prediction and control of natural phe- nomena associated with modern science, Winch cri t icizes E-P for characterizing Zande mystical notions as false, a move which Winch (1964) claims unfairly assumes the universal applicability of epistemological crite-

*My thanks to Jacob Joshua Ross for his helpful advice, and to an anonymous reviewer for detailed and useful comments on an earlier version of this essay.

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ria associated with Western science• A great historical chasm separates these two instances of a philosopher

criticizing an anthropologist. Although Frazer had much broader acquaint- ance than did Wittgenstein (or most likely anyone else for that matter) with the ethnographic materials of his time, and was also the greater classicist, both Frazer and Wittgenstein were essentially "armchair" analysts of human cultural diversity. Neither had conducted anything resembling anthropologi- cal fieldwork. In contrast, E-P and Winch wrote in the wake of the revolution in anthropological method associated with the teachings of Bronislaw Malinowski (1922).1 According to this new thinking, participation in field work is a veritable rite of passage to be undergone by anyone wishing to assume the status of"social anthropologist." Furthermore, only someone who has been personally immersed in a radically foreign culture could hope to achieve the kind of open-mindedness and objectivity necessary for the proper interpretation of human societies. 2 While this scientific revolution may equally dismiss both Frazer and Wittgenstein as representatives of the old, benighted paradigm, it must discriminate between Winch, the academic philosopher, and E-P, the grand master of ethnographic fieldwork. What then are we to make of Winch's arm-chair assault on E-P's first-hand ethnographic report in the post-Malinowskian era?

In order to address this question, it is first necessary to consider the exact extent of Winch's disagreement with E-P. If Winch were merely making the skeptical philosopher's point that E-P was naive in calling Zande magic "false" and Western science "true," there would be no point to bringing in the issue of field work. Skeptical doctrines are often radical enough to endorse, in principle, an agnostic attitude towards any intellectual conflict what-so-ever, be it between wizards and scientists or between geographers and flat-earthers. A deep understanding of the details of any particular conflict is relatively unimportant for the application of the general skeptical position. If Winch were such a skeptic, he would be saying nothing about the validity of E-P's interpretation of Zande magic, oracles, etc. He would merely be chastising E-P for making philosophically infelicitous judgments regarding the truth and rationality of mystical beliefs and practices. The only anthropological cash value of such a skeptical exercise would be to require E-P (1937:475) to address the question "Why do the Azande disagree with our judgment of the futility of their magic?" instead of his actual question "Why [do the] Azande • . .not perceive the futility of their magic?"

In reality, Winch's disagreement with E-P is much deeper. E-P's rejection of Zande magic as futile points to his underlying assumption that the goal of magic is to produce useful, practical results. Rather than quarrel with E-P's estimation of the utility of Zande magic, Winch suggests that it was never intended to serve as a type of technology to begin with. Instead, he claims,

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the Azande notions of witchcraft constitute "a drama of resentments, evil- doing, revenge, expiation, in which there are ways of dealing (symbolically) with misfortunes and their disruptive effect on a man's relations with his fellows, with ways in which life can go on despite such disruptions." Simi- larly, he states that "magical rites constitute a form of expression in which these possibilities and dangers [for living] may be contemplated and reflected on." (UPS: 321). That E-P judges such practices futile (Winch would say) reveals a lack of understanding similar to that of someone who would con- demn as useless the practice of wishing a birthday celebrant "many happy returns." Of course such wishes do not actually prolong the life of their re- cipient; they are simply offered as a sign of friendship and good will.

Given the actual nature of Winch's criticism, it is clear that he disagrees profoundly with E-P's interpretation of Zande culture. He seems to be say- ing that E-P lived among the Azande, spoke their language, witnessed and participated in their ceremonies, befriended and interviewed many of them, and yet some how misunderstood the whole point of the practices which he was most keen to investigate. Furthermore, Winch claims to have uncovered this deep misunderstanding of Zande culture and offers up his own sugges- tions for more fruitful avenues of interpretation, all from the safety of his proverbial armchair. Poor Malinowski must be spinning in his grave!

In addition to the question of how Winch's lack of field experience might affect his ability to contribute to the understanding of Zande culture there remains the further issue of how Winch manages to defend his interpretation when all the empirical data he uses are borrowed from E-P's own writings. In the remainder of his essay, I will address these two issues, especially in the light of W.W. Sharrock and R.J. Anderson's (hereafter S&A) (1985) in- terpretation of Winch' s project.

In their essay "Magic Witchcraft and the Materialist Mentality" (1985) S&A develop a diagnosis of Winch's detractors which is essentially an ex- pansion ofWittgenstein's comment on Frazer's "narrowness of spiritual life." It is worth mentioning from the start that in their paper S&A (1985: 359) follow a policy which allows clarity to be sacrificed to good manners. Al- most all of their harsher accusations of "complete insensitivity and obtuse- ness" etc. are directed against Sir James Frazer, a safe target who is long dead and whose work has been roundly condemned by all parties involved, not least of all by E-P himself (see, for instance E-P, 1933). John Cook (1983), whose critique of Winch and Wittgenstein S&A take as "exemplary" of the conventional anti-Wittgenstein view, is at worst described as display- ing "the very mentality against which Winch and Wittgenstein are strug- gling." E-P, perhaps in acknowledgment of his great ethnographic achievement, seems to be allowed to remain above the fray. Be that as it may, Winch's article is largely a critique of statements found in E-P's Witchcraft,

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Oracles, etc. S&A cannot get around the fact that by maintaining Winch's position, they are implicitly rejecting that of E-E More disturbingly, S&A offer no reason to avoid the conclusion that the spiritual diagnosis of "nar- rowness," "insensitivity," etc. should not apply to E-P himself. This being said, we may go on to a detailed consideration of this spiritual diagnosis and its cure.

S&A wish to explain why so many people make (what is in their eyes) the mistake of thinking that the point of"primitive" magic is to achieve practical goals. They adopt Winch's view which they summarize as "that the material- istic attitude of science can see nothing in magic except its own empirical and instrumental preoccupations" (1985: 360), a somewhat harsh and cat- egorical distillation of the opening paragraphs of UPS. The only way to com- bat the blindness associated with the "materialist mentality" of their essay's title is to cultivate "a spiritual sensibility" (1985: 361) which will allow one to appreciate "the point" of primitive social practices. This sensibility, like musical or literary sensibilities, can only be developed in our fellow human beings by their "being given a great deal of guidance as to what to look for in the examples we invite them to inspect." I should point out that Winch him- self never makes this claim for the necessity of inculcating an appropriate "sensibility" in those who wish to understand primitive magic. Winch makes the much more modest point that if our only access to Zande mysticism is through comparison with one of our own Western modes of thought, we would do better to compare it with "Christian prayer," for example, than with modern science and technology (UPS 320). Be that as it may, S&A's claims for "spiritual sensibility" create several new difficulties. First of all, I would challenge S&A to explain how the Azande themselves gain this sensibility. Are Zande children invited to consider selected elements of their culture and offered "a great deal of guidance" regarding their significance? When does this training take place, and more importantly, is it really neces- sary? After all, the skill of linguistic communication, which is certainly the core paradigmatic example of a meaningful, rule-determined, social practice for both Wittgenstein and Winch, may be simply "picked up" by children lacking any adult guidance what-so-ever.

More specifically, one might ask how Winch himself gained his insight into Zande culture. Given S&A's notion of "sensibility," Winch's lack of personal acquaintance with theAzande is no longer simply a matter of enter- ing into the discussions of professional anthropologists without first estab- lishing credentials in fieldwork. All that Winch knows of Azande magic he learned from E-P's book. But since the whole point of Winch's article is that E-P seriously misunderstood the Azandes, his book could not have offered the proper sequence of examples "and great deal of guidance" required for the cultivation of the proper sensibility for understanding Zande magic. Thus

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Winch' s correction of E-P becomes a psychological impossibility. If we ac- cept S&A's account of sensibility, Winch's critique of E-P becomes a case of someone sawing off the very branch on which he sits.

S&A's description of the role of "sensibility" in the project of cultural interpretation is also puzzling. In response to those who believe that the eth- nographic evidence tells against Wittgenstein and Winch's non-materialist interpretation of primitive magic, S&A (1985: 361) make the strange claim that they (Winch and Wittgenstein) "wish to reject the notion that every [em- phasis in the original] problem can and must be resolved by the considera- tion of evidence." I would not dare venture an opinion as to what Wittgenstein really thought about this issue, as the majority of his corpus (including his Remarks on Frazer) consists of a vast quagmire of private notes and type- scripts never properly prepared for publication. Although Winch seems to believe that methodological issues in the social sciences may be addressed without consulting empirical evidence (Winch, 1992: 71-72), I find no rea- son to believe that he would exempt any aspect of his interpretation of the Azande from the requirement of having some evidential basis. In any event, S&A do seem to be making exactly this claim• They appear to be saying that there exist two mutually exclusive interpretations of Zande magic each of which explains all of the data (shades of Quine!), and that the correct choice between these interpretations can only be made by the exercise of the afore- mentioned "spiritual sensibility." Lest I be accused of misrepresenting their position, I had better quote S&A (1985: 361) rather extensively:

In any event, it is easy enough to show that what is at issue is not the scope or scale of the evidence, its appositeness and weight, but its interpretation •..all the further evidence which Cook calls upon does not begin to solve anything. All it does is provide yet another replication of the original prob- lem. Indeed, the evidence could just as easily be used in support of the emotivist [the term used by Cook to describe what he considers to be the position of Winch and Wittgenstein] position as against it.

I must confess that I find it difficult to accept the idea that ethnographic evidence has no part to play in resolving a dispute over the role of particular practices in a particular society. Perhaps a more careful review of what Winch et al see as the nature of the materialist misunderstanding of the Azande would be of some help. S&A present a restatement of W inch's views on this problem which is faithful to a fault. Ambiguities which remain partially con- cealed in Winch's own writings may be more easily spotted in S&A's article. In fact, it is possible to isolate there at least two distinguishable attitudes (I will spare the reader from a delineation of other attitudes hinted at by S&A) towards magic and its interpretation.

One statement of S&A's (1985:368-369) position (I will call it "position

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1") has it that "we and the primitives both have empirical knowledge of the course of nature, but whilst the knowledge of nature's regularities is much the same, the magic is different [emphasis in original].'3 According to this version, the Azande are perfectly capable of our type of instrumental, "ra- tional" thought. The materialist errs by assuming that magical beliefs belong to the instrumentalist realm of Azande thought. What, then, is the realm to which magic belongs? Something like the realm to which belong the super- stitions of our own culture, such as "touching wood," carrying rabbits feet and the like. Just as these compulsions are without any importance for the scientific views of those who perform them, so too magic has no bearing on the Azande's understanding of the natural world. While it is true that the Azande do entertain certain beliefs about their magic, these somehow do not form part of their view of the world, but rather "form part of the practice [of magic] itself' (p. 369). I suppose this would be similar to the status of our notion that breaking a mirror brings seven years bad luck. Even people who are troubled by such beliefs cannot offer a further explanation of why the bad luck lasts seven years rather than six or eight, etc.

Position 1 makes the Azande appear surprisingly similar to Westemers, differing only in regard to superstitious behavior which no one takes seri- ously anyway. If the issue between the Wittgensteinians and the materialists were really so simple, its hard to see why, as S&A claim, ethnographic evi- dence could not be brought to bear towards its resolution. In fact, S&A do present two such arguments from evidence, which have their source in Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer. One line of argument says that if people really depended on magic as they depend on materialist technologies, they would not feel the need to supplement magic with materialist technology (see Wittgenstein, 1979: 4). Yet, as in A&S's example, "People undertake magic to protect themselves on sea journeys, but still sail their craft to the best of their abilities" (p. 364); therefore, we can say that these people do not really depend upon magic to protect them. Unfortunately, the same line of reasoning could be used to defend a non-materialist interpretation of electric circuit-breakers and fuse-boxes. "People install automatic circuit-breakers in their homes, but still make sure that their electric wiring and appliances are as safe as possible"; therefore, we can say that they do not really depend on automatic circuit-breakers to protect them. All we have here is people hedg- ing their bets by taking all available precautions. A related argument has it that if people thought that they could depend on magic as they do on materi- alist technologies, they would apply them when their effect is most needed. Yet, state S&A, 7 "People do make rain ceremonies, but do so just before the rains are due and not in the depths of the dry season when they might be supposed to need them" (loc. cit.) (see alsoWittgenstein, 1979: 12). Of course it should be unnecessary to even point out that magic and ritual are used in

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response to desperate, even hopeless situations. As for the rain ceremony, it may be countered with an example from our own technology: "People do send up airplanes to seed the clouds with silver iodine, but do so only when clouds have already appeared in the sky, and not in the depths of the cloud- less dry season when they might be supposed to need rain." People will generally not apply a technology if the conditions for its success are not in evidence.

The second position (position 2) which may be found in S&A's article holds that the Azande' s world is informed by an entirely different metaphys- ics than that of the West. What they propose is no less than a full-blown conceptual relativism. Since we do not share a metaphysics with the Azande, we cannot possibly begin to disagree with them about facts which can only be defined in the context of a shared metaphysical position. We can no longer say, as did E-P, that the Azande were wrong to believe in the existence of witches, because "what external reality might be, as well as how to deal with it, are given within a metaphysics" (p. 371). 4 Worse yet, "the idea of testing a theory against an external reality is part of our metaphysics and completely absent from theAzande's" (loc. cit.).Add to this S&A's claim that the "Zande are not . . .per turbed by the prospect of inconsistency" (p. 369) 5 and I would heartily agree that one would require a rather incredibly developed "sensibil- ity" in order to understand what on earth the Azande were talking about. One is reminded of the kind of radically alien way of ordering reality discussed by Donald Davidson (1984: 183-198) in his classic paper "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." I should think he would say that if we were to encounter a people who neither checked their beliefs "against an external reality" nor were "perturbed by the prospect of inconsistency," we would never think of interpreting their utterances as language nor their behavior as purposeful action.

Regardless of the outlandishness of S&A's Zande metaphysics, I see no reason to think that the question of which metaphysics is held by a particular society is not suceptible to considerations of evidence. The source of confu- sion here is that we are used to the idea that metaphysical questions may be discussed in an empirical vaccum. One may compare Marx's metaphysics with that of Plato without performing a single experiment or making a single observation. However, the facts that the man Marx was a materialist and the man Plato an idealist are historical facts which can be proved from docu- ments and other evidence. So, too, it may be possible to construct a meta- physics which makes sense of the existence of witches without gathering any evidence. It is not possible to prove that a certain people living on the Nile- Congo divide actually live by this metaphysics without consulting the ethno- graphic evidence.

It almost goes without saying that position 1 directly contradicts position

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2. The Zande mystical beliefs which in position 1 were "part of the practice [of magic, etc.] itself," mere epiphenomena of ritual practices ("Wittgenstein's (1979: 369) claim that the practice could exist without them") have now in position 2 been promoted to the status of a full-blown metaphysics. How could the Zande "knowledge of nature's regularities . . . [be] . . . much the same" as our own if they do not even share with us the idea of testing beliefs against extemal reality? In the section explaining what I call position 2, S&A bring the example of the practice of Zande travellers to place a stone in a tree in order to keep the sun from setting before they reach their destination. If this had been mentioned in relation to position 1, we would expect S&A to write "of course after placing the stone in a tree they continue walking as quickly as possible, thus proving that they have no false beliefs about the sun's apparent motion." Instead, they write, "It is part of Azande metaphys- ics that time, the sun and clocks can be controlled" (p. 373). How do they know this? What would we think ofa Zande anthropologist who claimed that it is part of Western metaphysics that breaking a mirror brings seven years bad luck? Perhaps an additional dose of "sensibility" is required in order to know whether position 1 or position 2 applies to a particular bit of magic.

Consideration of the two positions I have cited has merely complicated S&A's case. Neither position appears unsusceptible to considerations of evi- dence. Worse yet, the evidence does not particularly favor either position over that of the "materialists." Even if it all comes down to the issue of "sensibility," none of the participants in this debate (excluding E-P himself) have spent enough time with the Azande to develop any intuitive sense or "sensibility" of which interpretation is correct. Perhaps S&A are fight and the ethnographic record may be read either way. One might still well wonder how Winch, S&A and various other Wittgensteinians have come to be so sure of their critique of the "materialists." I believe that the source of that confidence may be found in their basic adherence to a particular form of interpretive charity. 6

In their article "Wittgenstein and Comparative Sociology," S&A (together with J.A. Hughes) (1984) produce a list summarizing seven objections made by Wittgenstein to Frazer's The Golden Bough. Of the seven, five do not directly undermine Frazer's theses, rather they merely point to a broader horizon of interpretation than was apparently available to him. The remain- ing two involve interpretive charity. The charity I refer to is double-edged; it makes broad claims both about human behavior itself and about the project of interpreting human behavior. Thus objection number four warns that "To infer a set of beliefs from a set of practices is to run the risk of making the holders of those beliefs out to be unbelievably stupid" (1984: 270). In other words, it is a fact of human nature that people can only be so stupid. The idea that some society might be sufficiently stupid to believe, for instance, in the

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technological efficacy of magic contradicts this basic fact. On the other hand, objection number seven states that "the point of understanding a practice cannot be to find it to be stupid" (1984: 271). This would seem to constitute a kind of desideratum for the social sciences; it rejects as somehow deeply inappropriate an interpretation oftheAzande, for instance, which makes them out to be stupid in regard to their magic and witchcraft.

I reject both types of charity. As has been recently and amply documented by Edgerton (1992), human societies are perfectly capable of massively stu- pid and self-defeating behavior. It is certainly possible for a society to con- tinue its survival while embracing positively harmful technologies. I doubt the Azande have any magic as hopelessly ineffective and as out-right danger- ous as Western medicine was until well into the nineteenth century. 7 If it is believable that European doctors were capable of asserting the general thera- peutic value of bleeding, there is no danger of the "materialist" interpretation of magic making out the Azande to be "unbelievably stupid."

As for the notion that "the point of understanding a practice cannot be to find it to be stupid," this very principle seems to militate against S&A's own insistence on the importance of "sensibility." While developing the notion of sensibility, they mention the case of"someone [who] feels Jane Austen to be a nineteenth century Barbara Cartland" (p. 362) as an example of a lack of literary sensibility. What of someone who thinks Barbara Cartland to be a twentieth century Jane Austin? Surely such a judgment would like-wise be- speak a lack of literary sensibility. The point is that sensibility and unbridled charity can be opposing tendencies. A critic should have sufficient compre- hension of both the nineteenth century novel and the twentieth century mass- market romance to rateAustin as superior to Cartland. What ifAzande magic belongs in the Barbara Cartland range of religious practices, along with the faith of Wittgenstein's stupid and feeble English parson? E-P himself con- sidered the belief in witchcraft and magic to be incompatible with the devel- opment of certain religious ideas. 8 Might not Winch et al be trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, imposing the subtleties of Wittgensteinian phi- losophy of religion on a genuinely profane and mercenary magic? Perhaps a trip to Zandeland (to the extent that it still exists as E-P had known it) could shed more light on these questions.

Notes

1. The introduction to Malinowski (1922) contains his classic exposition of field-work technique. 2. In his editor's introduction, Freilich (1970: 19) offers a romantic account of the signifi- cance of field-work experience for a novice graduate student of anthropology:

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The student knows that this is a challenge he will have to face, a major rite de passage that will provide him with the opportunity to prove his ability, courage and tempermental suitability for the profession.. .Basic anthropological concepts-culture, community, family, values - for which he previously demanded operational definitions will become "understood." By living in a strange cultural tradition he will somehow learn what culture "really means" . . .By attempting to change his "raw" field notes into artistic and anthropologically meaningful essays, he will somehow learn to analyze and draw generalizations from ethnographic materials.

3. A similar notion is explicitly stated by Winch (1964: 320):

The Azande do, in the course of their practical affairs, apply something very like our technical concept [of causation].

4. Winch's own strongest statement of a conceptual relativist bent appears on page 100 of his Idea of a Social Science (1992):

[The] criteria of logic are not a direct gift of God, but arise out of, and are only intelli- gible in the context of, ways of living or modes of social life. It follows that one cannot apply criteria of logic to modes of social life as such. For instance, science is one such mode and religion !s another; and each has a criteria of intelligibility peculiar to itself.

5. Compare this with Winch's (1964: 312) categorical claim that "a set of beliefs and practices cannot make sense insofar as they involve contradictions." 6. The notion that Winch has forwarded a principle of interpretational charity is devel- oped extensively in Henderson (1987). 7. This example is from Jarvie and Agassi (1987: 389):

The African witch-doctor is almost innocuous, at times harmful, and seldom of use, except in very special cases. The doctor of the Age of Reason, on current assessment, was a real killer...Current assessment is that only after Pasteur and Lister did doctors start doing more good than harm.

8. Evans-Pritchard (1956: 316-317) states:

Witchcraft ideas play a very minor role [in Nuer religion], and magic a negligible one. Both are incompatible with a theocentric philosophy, for when both fortune and misfor- tune come from God they cannot also come from human powers, whether innate or learnt. This point is further developed in my forthcoming essay, "Understanding a (secu- lar) primative society."

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