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8/19/2019 Review of Mary Douglas Missing Persons.pdf
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The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Anthropological Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
ReviewAuthor(s): Susan ParmanReview by: Susan ParmanSource: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 99-100
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3317973Accessed: 09-05-2015 02:59 UTC
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8/19/2019 Review of Mary Douglas Missing Persons.pdf
2/3
Missing
Persons:
A
Critique
of
Personhood in the Social Sciences. MARY
DOUGLAS
and
STEVEN NEY. Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1998; 223 pp.
Reviewed
by
SUSAN
PARMAN
California
State
University,
Fullerton
Missing persons
is
the
first
in
a series
of
books to
honor the
fertile mind of
Aaron
Wildavsky by
exam-
ining public
policy
issues
with
the aid of the
social
sciences.
Setting
out to address
the
issue
of
poverty
and
welfare,
Douglas
(an
anthropologist)
and
Ney
(a
political scientist)
stumble over
the tools of
their
ex-
amining
and end
up
trying
to flush out the
theory
of
the
person
that is
implicit
in
such discussions. Al-
though
the book fails as a
critique
of
personhood
n
the social
sciences,
it
succeeds as
a
wide-ranging,
reflective,
philosophical
discourse on
the
person
in
the Western
ntellectual tradition.
The
book fails as a
critique
of
personhood
in
the social sciences because
it is
neither
an
analysis
nor a
synthesis
of
what the different social
science
disciplines
have contributed
or
not contributed o the
theory
of
the
category
of
person
or the
category
of self. It does not
provide
a coherent
picture
of
how
different social science
disciplines approach
these
concepts;
it does
not
analyze
the
strengths
or
weaknesses
of
any
particular
theory.
The
study
of
the self that
once
belonged
to the domain of
philoso-
phers
or
psychologists
has now
become
a
central
concern
of
all
the
social/behavioral
sciences,
includ-
ing
anthropology.Anthropological
concern with the
self
is
rooted
in
the
ethnographic
enterprise
and
emic
analysis.
Efforts have been
made to
distinguish
between the
concept
of the self and
the
concept
of
personhood,efforts recently supersededby the emer-
gence
of
what
has
been
called
person-centered
th-
nography
that
subsumes the individual and
the self
in
descriptions
of culture from the
perspective
of
particular
individuals.
The authors could have fo-
cused on recent
developments
in
cultural
anthropol-
ogy
and
person-centered
thnography
as a
reflection
of the
shifts
in
intellectual currents
n
Westerncivili-
zation
that have affected all
the social/behavioral ci-
ences.
In this
way they
could have
accomplished
the
goals
implied
by
the
subtitle of their
book,
A
cri-
tique of
personhood
in the
social sciences.
What then does
the
book
do,
if
not this?
The
authors wander
far and
wide,
taking
from
Kant,
Mauss,
Durkheim,
Keynes,
Maslow,
Malthus,
Dar-
win, Marx,
and
Engels,
discussing
freedom,
con-
straint,
egalitarianism, globalization,
and
evolution.
The book
is
constructed
as if
a
series of
conversa-
tions
had taken
place
between
Douglas
and
Ney
in
the
context of
Wildavsky
but
only
the
concluding
thoughts
are
presented.
Their reflections
are
like
the
flashes
of
distant
mirrors across
a
fascinating
land-
scape
-
gemlike
but
scattered.
In
185
pages
they
pick up
ideas,
throw them back
and
forth,
and fol-
low
diverse intellectual trails
through
he
tangled
un-
derbrush
of
cross-disciplinary
ommunication.
They begin
with
the
paradoxes
of
poverty. They
discover
that
the common
thread
of
discussion of
different kinds
of
needs,
wants,
and
capabilities
(whether
the
hunter-gatherer
working
fifteen
hours
a
week or the middle-class child with fewer video
games
than his
peers)
is the
typological,
isolated,
non-social,
self-contained individual
-
the idea of
a
nonrelational definition
of a
person (p.
9).
The
social sciences have
the
potential
to
contributea
re-
lational
definition
of
personhood,
a
conception
of the
person
as
a
locus
of transactions.
The authors ex-
plore
implicit
conceptions
of
the
person
in
the West-
ern intellectual
tradition
which have
resulted
in
a
va-
riety
of
strategies
to
retain both
individual
identity
and
cultural
submersion
and
determinism,
both self
and society, such as separating he role-playingself
from
the
inner
self,
or the
person
of action from the
person
of
thought.
They point
to
philosophical
con-
tradictions
and
changing
premises.
The authors ask
why
Economic
Man
-
self-
ish
and
unmannered,
brutish as
Caliban,
naive as
Man
Friday
(in
short,
without social
attributes)
has
expanded
from a
small,
theoretical
niche to
become
an
all-embracing
mythological figure
(p.
23).
But
instead of
tracing
the
history
of Economic
Man,
Douglas
and
Ney
discuss
the
idea
of
microcosm
and
how
certain
reigning
ideas
prevent
alternative
deas
from
developing.
Their
scholarship
is
Kuhnian,
not
BOOK
REVIEWS
99
valuable
precisely
because
they
demand
neither full
assent nor
rejection.
They
are the best
part
of
this
invigorating study,
which
requires
careful considera-
tion
and
provokes
continuous
questioning.
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8/19/2019 Review of Mary Douglas Missing Persons.pdf
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100
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
UARTERLY
archival.
The
authors
move
from
Economic Man
to
Durkheim's
Homo
duplex
(the
egoistic
individual vs.
the
socially
oriented
moral
conscience),
Maslow's
lower needs
and
higher
needs
(animal/spiritual),
ul-
turalneeds and the
development
of
socially
dictated
tastes.
The authors
argue
that
[i]f
the
theory
of
wants
and the
theory
of
society
are ever
to
meet,
the
inherent
sociality
of
the
person
has
to be restored
(p.
58).
They
argue
for
a
concept
of the whole
per-
son similar
to
Dennet's
model
of the
person
(p.
90)
and to Strathern's
discussion
of the Melanesian
con-
cept
of the
person
as
a
gift
or the
sum of transac-
tions
achieved
(pp.
8-9,
93).
They
do not discuss
symbolic
interactionism
or the
anthropological
itera-
ture on
social
constructions
of the self
but focus on
reconciling economic and public-policy models with
a
socially
contextualized
concept
of
personhood
as
represented
by
a
select set
of social
science
examples.
The authors
frequently
interweave
analogies
from
different
theoretical
and
disciplinary perspec-
tives.
For
example,
on
p.
97:
Theexercise
we are
about o
embark
pon
has
something
in
common
with certain
parables
n
political philosophy
that
ry
o confront
lural
octrines
f
justice:
or
example,
Bruce Ackerman's
1980)
script
for
a
spaceship
whose
captain pplied trictrules of dialogue ora liberal ociety
The authors seek
to find a common
ground
on
which to
apply
a common lever
to a
mutually
agreed
upon
definition
of
a
mutually recognizable problem
- which may explain their choice of analogies and
narratives,
and
perhaps
also their
level of
generality.
For
example:
In this schemeeach
city,
world,
or cultural
ype
is defined
in
opposition
o the others
and recruits
ts
supporters
r
loses
them
competitively.
t is no accident
hat
any
word
you may
choose
for
labeling
these
four
opposed
cultures
evokes
bias
. . . .
For
some,
complexity
s a bad
word,
market s
pejorative
or
others,
ect
is
dismissive,
atalist
s
derisive.
So
they
were
originally
named
A, B, C,
D,
after
the twodimensionsn which
he modelwas
constructed:
structure
in
the vertical
dimension)
nd
incorporation
in
the horizontal)p. 103).
Reaching
for common
ground,
exploring
parallels
and
gaps,
the authors
bounce
ideas
off each other
that
range
from household
management
to
religious
fundamentalism
to
good
words and
bad
words
in
Anglo-Saxon
sociology
(structuralism
and net-
works are
good,
institutions
and
routinization
are
bad
-
p.
159).
They
end
with a
brief
summary
and
a
warning
about
the
organization
of enclave
cultures
-
like
asterisks
around
one
of
many ongoing
and
intertwinedconversations.
Of
Revelation
and
Revolution,
Volume
2: The Dialectics
of
Modernity
on a South
African
Frontier.
JOHN
L.
COMAROFF
and
JEAN
COMAROFF.
Chicago
IL:
University
of
Chi-
cago
Press,
1997;
588
pp.
Reviewed
by
MEREDITH
MCKITTRICK
Georgetown
University
This is a
thoughtful,
and
thought-provoking,
equel
to the much-discussedOf revelationand revolution,
Volume
one:
Christianity,
colonialism,
and
con-
sciousness in South
Africa.
While
Volume
One dealt
primarily
with
the initial
encounter
between British
evangelists
and the Southern Tswana
of South
Af-
rica,
Volume Two
moves the
story along,
both
chronologically
and
thematically,
to
how,
over
the
course of
a
century,
the
encounter
reshaped
both
the
Southern Tswana
and the
British.
In the
process
the
Comaroffsmove
beyond
the realm
of
the
long
con-
versation to examine
changes
in
the
material
reali-
ties
and notions
of
production,
value,
dress,
architec-
ture, medicine, and
rights,
and the hybrid forms
which resulted.
But the
overarching
theme
of
Vol-
ume One runs through Volume Two as well: that
colonialism
is
best
conceptualized
as
a cultural
pro-
cess
rendered
through
the
everyday
and
the mun-
dane,
and that this
process
is
exemplified
in
the
civi-
lizing
project
of
the
missionaries.
As
with their
first
volume,
this one
is
packed
with
original,
occasionally
brilliant,
nsights.
While a
sense
of
chronology
occasionally
falls
victim
to the
authors'
determination
not
to
write
a
history
of
events
-
something
as
apocalyptic
(p.
210)
as
rinderpest
s
mentioned
only
sporadically,
in
Chap-
ters 3 and
4
-
the authors
deal
to
a
greater
extent
than before with the economic and political
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