Arjun Appadurai looks at two distinct but related topics, 'culture' and 'social interaction'. In common, everyday usage, we assume 'social interaction' to be nothing more than the daily actions and experiences that we come across everyday. Similarly, the term 'culture' is often perceived as an extension of the 'society' and hence of 'social interaction'.
Noted American anthropologist Clifford Geertz differentiates between the two, saying “Culture is an ordered system of meanings and symbols in terms of which social interaction takes place”. In other words, Culture is akin to a large, social construct, not unlike a web(picturing a enormous spider web with multiple spiders may help here) where each strand has a distinct meaning on its own, and interacts with its connecting strands to form a more complex meaning. It is a “fabric of meaning” through which human actions and experiences can be interpretted. Social Interaction is then nothing but the form that human actions/experiences take(in the web visualisations, these are the movements and interactions of the spiders with each other and with the strands of the web itself).
Furthur, Geertz goes on to talk about how these two concepts are integrated by themselves. He says that Culture has 'logico-meaningful integration', that is, each aspect of the cultural fabric has a meaning that is logical in its source and value, even when isolated. Similarly, Social Interaction has 'causal functional integration', that is all the components of Social Interaction(human actions/experiences) have a manner of causality to them. They are the means to an end.(The components are likened to cells of the same tissue, whic unite to form functional organs which in turn form an organ system and form the living organism as the end).
The works of British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner were in the field of symbolic and interpretive anthropology. He said that the disruption of the 'normal pattern' of existence(in this case, our ordinary daily lives) brings certain fundamental aspects of social interaction and culture that are normally overlooked or hidden, into prominence. It is in this aspect that Appadurai studies the region of South India, with special emphasis on worship and conflict, and on caste related social interaction. He studies in particular, the Sri Partasarati Svami Temple in Mylapore, Chennai. He explores the “disharmonic fit” between Culture and Social Interaction.
One other term brought into prominence by Geertz and Turner is “thick description”. With regard to Social Interactions, a 'thick description' of a human behavior is one that explains not just the behavior, but its context as well, such that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider. It is the specific, circumstantial and dense description generated in the narrow spatial confines of social interaction. The chief difference between Ethnography and Ethnohistory is that the latter contains 'thick descriptions' from one or multiple historical viewpoints.
In "Interpretation of Cultures," Geertz writes:
ReplyDelete"Looking at the ordinary in places where it takes unaccustomed forms brings out not, as has so often been claimed, the arbitrariness of human behavior (there is nothing especially arbitrary about taking sheep theft for insolence in Morocco), but the degree to which its meaning varies according to the pattern of life by which it is informed. Understanding a people's culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity. (The more I manage to follow what the Moroccans are up to, the more logical, and the more singular, they seem.) It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity."
"Thick description" for him is therefore an attempt to reduce puzzlement towards the way a "remote" people assign meaning to what they do and how they interact.
"Thick descriptions" can be used to understand the milieu in which the Parthasarathy temple was built. Triplicane is one of those areas in Chennai which is still submerged in the practices of Tamil culture, as it were a century ago - even though modifications have been introduced over time. On a visit to Triplicane a year ago, I noticed a lot of "face readers", "palmists" and astrologers. A lot of Brahmin households, joint families, 'kolams' and individual houses (as opposed to apartments). Triplicane also has a lot of 'shatrams', wedding halls, and other institutional manifestations of the Tamil cultural practices. However, Triplicane is not an 'agraharam'. Instead, this area is known for the practice of communities of different sects (not caste) living in row-houses, namely, "Ondikudithanam". A lot of people from other religions also reside in this area. It is known to have a relatively high percentage of Muslims residing here. However, during major festivals in the Parthasarathy and the Ellamman Temple (another remarkable temple in this area), people of different cultural backgrounds come together.
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