Chapter XI

MATERIALISM, FUNCTIONALISM and ECOLOGISM

The Paradigmatic Triumvirate and the Triumphant Paradigm of the "System"

by Hugh M. Lewis

The future of western society lies in its ability to create social forms that will make explicit distinctions between classes and segments of society, so that these distinctions do not come of themselves as implicit racism, discrimination, corruption, crises, riots, necessary 'cheating' and 'finagling' and so on. The future of anthropology lies in its ability to exorcise 'difference' and make it conscious and explicit, both with regard to its subject matter and to itself. Especially in America, we have an 'anthropology of fact and fiction' focusing explicitly on factual consistency, knowledge and professional brotherhood, but full of implicit and furtive differences, rivalries, jealousies and quite unprofessional ambitions that are the more destructive (and politically vicious) for being unspoken. It is a fact producing 'industry' that suffers the dialectic as history, polemic and factional squabble, living a cultic succession of jargons, bandwagons and 'heads' of the department or the discipline 'setting up' its own surreptitious revolutions and cataclysms by projecting optimistic and unrealistic 'programs' for concerted action. (Roy Wagner 1981: 158)

This paper outlines:

1. A succinct definition of the conceptual schema of 'band/tribe/chiefdom/state as an evolutionary sequence.

2. Theories accounting for the rise in social complexity of chiefdoms and states.

3. A concise definition of Cultural Materialism.

4. A concise definition of the Emic/Etic distinction.

5. Examples of Cultural Ecology and Ecological Anthropology as related 'modes of explanation' combining dimensions of materialism and functionalism in understanding cultural 'systems' in interrelationship with the environment.

6. Maring Ritual Cycles as an example of ecological systems theory.

7. Functionalism as a general theoretical orientation.

Anthropology is not homogenous orthodoxy or a 'unified' paradigm of science ('paradigm' itself is poorly defined in Thomas Kuhn's work which contains several quite different usages and implicit definitions of the key term, and anthropology has been variously described as 'unparadigmatic', 'semi-paradigmatic' and 'quasi-paradigmatic'--all depending upon the point of view of the interpreter. Therefore it must be noted that in the definition of the preceding concepts, there can be no satisfactory single sense of significance for any key concept for the field of anthropology as a whole. The question of 'what is the significance' to the field of 'anthropology' automatically preconditions an 'absolutist' answer. The significances of any certain anthropological concept are multiple and variable, depending upon the point of view of the particular anthropologist, with greater salience for some than for others. While it is quite pretentious and presumptuous to speak for the 'field' as a unified whole, it is nevertheless possible to identify the general salience of concepts for certain orientations and 'schools'. When defining such concepts as cultural materialism, functionalism, Maring Ritual Cycles, Emic/Etic and evolutionary sequences such as 'band/tribe/chiefdom/ state' it is useful to discuss their greatest significance relative to the schools of orientations which regularly use and promote them as part of their respective 'paradigms' as well as to touch upon the possible 'counter significances' of such concepts to other orientations in which they are less relevant or useful.

In keeping with the traditional spirit of philology, it is inappropriate to critique the science and paradigmatics of American anthropology without first proffering a hermeneutic appreciation of its various terms and significations within context of their reading and historicity. A hermeneutic excoriation necessarily precludes a critical deconstruction and situates the reading and interpretation of such tasks within a non-arbitrary and systematic framework of understanding. Orienting concepts and general ideas surrounding them have a culture historical provenience in relation to other concepts and ideas, and have a 'stratigraphy' of embeddedness in an ontological history of language and human consciousness which need to be discovered by dialectical and dialogical distanciation of its 'surplus meaning' before its relative significance to its authors and interpreters can be precisely evaluated in reference to a 'science of human reality'.

It is worth speculating whether the common ground of 'materialism', 'ecologism' and 'functionalism', in terms of shared implicit presuppositions and explicit statements and methodologies, as a synchronic/diachronic 'systems' science, actually evidences the emergence of a comprehensive 'proto-paradigm' which will confer 'puzzle solving' unity to the 'field of anthropology' or whether they are not actually another necessary but reductionist set of descriptive analytical categories of mind space elevated to the status of generality, and biased by a transparent rhetoric rooted in a culture historical ground in which values of materialism, utilitarian norms of functionalism and problems of ecology are predominant. Is 'systems' science the final solution to the problems of social science, is it in fact related a 'world system' of global ecocide, technological modernization, MAD Inc., and overpopulation, or is it but another knot in Gregory Bateson's handkerchief, like 'structure', serves to obfuscate more than explain, a sign post reading 'no trespassing' rather than a directional marker pointing to the unknown regions of mind beyond. I suggest that the reality is somewhere in between. Both answers are partially correct, but neither alone is completely sufficient to address the problematics of human reality. As limited models, materialism, functionalism, ecology, 'systems science' and paradigmatics have heuristic uses and general purpose, but when promoted to the level of orienting paradigms and world views they cease being sound scientific practice and become instead vulgar ideology. With one foot always in the sciences, anthropology must always be partially but incompletely paradigmatic. But its other foot must be kept firmly planted in the humanities to maintain a 'non-paradigmatic' sense of proportion and balance. To neglect either is an act of prejudice.

The questions which the book raises are ecological: how do things interact? Is there some sort of natural selection which determines the survival of some ideas and the extinction or death of others? What sort of economics limits the multiplicity of ideas in a given region of mind? What are the necessary conditions for stability (or survival) of such systems or sub-systems? (Gregory Bateson 1972)

The conceptual complex of 'paradigmatism, materialism, functionalism and ecologism' as related 'modes of explanation' can be construed as constituting a complex received 'mode of information' which enjoys academic predominance, characterized by certain common denominators, organizational metaphors, cognitive styles, professional nomos and para-professional ethos, and given premises of 'scientificity' which both reflects and is reflected by a globally predominant 'mode of production/consumption' and a trans-culturally hegemonic 'mode of being/becoming' and 'mode of believing/behaving'. This argument derives from the 'logico empirical' extension of ecological, materialist and functionalist orientations--the 'ideological function of the emic superstructure'--as well as from a hermeneutic interpretation and critical deconstruction. Even in Marvin Harris own terminology and etic epistemology, cultural materialism and its 'etic behavioral modes' constitute in and of themselves, an 'emic mental map' not subject to analysis by etic operational public procedures.

Hermeneutical recognition and recovery of the historicity of such 'modes of information' is a prerequisite procedure in clearly separating the relevance of world views. The interests of a genuine science of anthropology are better served by hermeneutical distanciation and dialectical counterpoint than by pseudo-paradigmatic promotion, categorical prescription, conceptual reification, over determined intellectual and methodological commitments, academic authoritarianism, classroom and corridor consensus seeking, departmental status questing and rumor controlling. Science progresses inspite of, and not because of 'paradigmatic normalization'.

1. 'Band/tribe/chiefdom/state'. Julian Steward elaborated an evolutionary approach based upon his 'cultural ecology' orientation, positing different levels of 'socio-cultural integration'--distinguishing structural complexity not just quantitatively but "different degrees of complexity entail fundamentally different forms of integration and adaptation." (E. Hatch 1973: 118) Morton Fried employed a sequential model of 'egalitarian/rank/stratified/state' and Elman Service applied the categories of 'band/tribe/chiefdom/state'. This model has been widely adopted as a heuristically indispensable scheme of nomothetic cross-cultural classification of societies covering a wide span of variation.

Bands are marked as having informal leadership, reciprocity, egalitarianism, kinship organization, hunter gathering subsistence with seasonal encampments fluctuating from micro-to macro-band polities occupying regions of low population densities (50-500). Tribes have calendrical rites, sodalities, big man politics, balanced reciprocity, egalitarianism with achieved social rank, lineage based social organization, horticultural and herding adaptation, semi-sedentary village occupation with low population densities and polity size between 100 and 2500. Chiefdoms and states are stratified with ascribed status and redistributive and market economies with religious specialists, structural centralization, intensive agricultural and pastoralism and two or more levels of structural hierarchy. Chiefdoms have moderate density, with a polity size between one and twenty five thousand. States feature greater hierarchy, multi-tiered stratification, regional and interregional integration, and densities of population ranging into the millions.

As a 'universal' evolutionary scheme, it is both unilineal and multilineal, general and specific. It combines a sequential evolutionary framework with a systemic taxonomic framework of cultural adaptation, useful in spatio-temporal synthesis of synchronic and diachronic dimensions, describing simultaneously cross-cultural differences in the 'frozen' present, and a developmental succession inferred from a 'fossilized' past. As a taxonomy, it implies immanent, inevitable and purposive development and integration--'progress' and as an evolutionary sequence it implies 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'--the particular growth of a group necessarily replicates general socio-cultural evolution. As a hierarchical scale of relations ranging from simplicity to complexity, it is necessarily coarse--omitting myriad particulars, ignoring many differences between groups, whether modern, historical or pre-historical, in-between groups straddling or moving back and forth between categories, regional differences, etc. It overemphasizes a stadial model of discontinuous development of sometimes spurious qualitative distinctions, ignoring within group differences and between group similarities, and continuous variation quantitatively defined. It infers the past from the present.

2. Categorization of chiefdoms and states focuses upon the problem of explaining structural changes causing socio-cultural complexity, and provides a comparative framework for evolutionary studies based on information and stratification. Criticism stresses the lack of continuous quantitative scale of transformation instead of emphasis upon qualitative distinctions linked to decision making apparatus. Movement from simple rank order societies with a single hierarchical strata to multi-tiered, highly stratified states with multiple overlapping status hierarchies is not always precisely definable or clearly evident in ethnographic or archaeological records, especially when complex chiefdoms may be distinguished qualitatively from stratified precursors of states, and reasons given for such development are many and varied.

Defined as a 'centralized polity organizing a regional population in the thousands or tens of thousands' (Earle, Current Anthropology Vol. 30, #1: 84-8) Chiefdoms as a broad category encompasses a diverse range of groupings divided analytically in terms of scale of complexity/development, mode of finance (staple/wealth), structure (group oriented/individualizing), specific history, theocratic/militaristic, stratified/ranked, paramouncies, etc. they are distinguished from big man polities as intermediate, stratified but stateless societies.

Chiefdoms are characterized by inter-village scale of integration interrelating increase of polity size, population density, political complexity and 'productivity', the scale of redistribution networks, decision making problems and increased centrally channeled energy flow. A continuum of population concentration ranges from hamlets about centers to urban conglomerations. Scale of integration is associated with centralization of decision making and control/coordination functions. As a polity scale increases, the amount of decision making at any critical node increases beyond any individual's capacity, requiring an expansion of the decision making hierarchy.

Chiefdoms are characterized by centralization--chiefs are central directors and chiefly hierarchies are set apart by specialized leadership which remains internally functionally undifferentiated, constituting highly generalized leadership systems in which different levels have similar duties. Centrality is reflected by settlement hierarchy, monumental architecture, burial goods, etc., in the archaeological record. Any lower level authority is potentially independent and the delegation of power is potentially complete, imposing an upper limit to the physical size of chiefdoms. Regional organization tends to be inherently unstable--'peer polity' relations between equivalent sized groups are marked by intense competition while smaller sized polities become subservient to larger ones in 'core periphery' extraction/exploitation relations. Territorial competition due to population increase puts a premium on centrality as 'only the strong (the centrally organized) survive'. Intense warfare favors regional chiefdoms whose domination eventuates in pacification and regulation of warfare.

Stratification is another characteristic of chiefdoms--'Bosses do it to gain power' by controlling a redistributive economy, by differential access or ownership of productive resources and/or exchange wealth, by control over energy flows and labor. Social stratification depends upon mobilization of surpluses to finance emerging elites and associated institutions. Progressive centralization of energy flows are linked to competitive dynamics, encouraging advantages of elites and fostering a 'maximizing economic ethic'. Aggregation of population accompanying intensification simplifies labor control. Control of manufacture of productive technology, of distribution of prestige goods, of craft specialists, of manufacture and trade of weapons as well as the chiefly role in wealth exchange, the distribution of wealth to create obligation and as a store of value, have been cited as examples of control, as well as status rivalry, alliance formation, and exchange of esoteric knowledge between elites. Leadership in warfare is a common function of chiefs--deriving control from conquest, pillage, plunder and protection. The force of a strong warrior is a mechanism of control.

Ten interrelated and basic mechanisms of control have been cited: 1) Giving (inflicting debt) feasting and prestations. 2) Improving the infrastructure of subsistence production. 3) Encouraging circumscription. 4) Applying force. 5) Forging external ties and alliances. 6) Expanding the base of dependent populations. 7) Seizing control of existing principles of legitimacy (natural and supernatural). 8) Creating and appropriating new principles of legitimacy. 9) Seizing control of internal wealth production and distribution. 10) Seizing control of external wealth procurement. (Earle, Feb. 1989: 85)

Chiefdoms are also characterized by generalized community economies--the foundations of an economically centralized organization of resources, or 'redistributive economy'. Productive intensification creates management problems. Chiefs become 'tribal bankers' with storage, distribution, risk handling, balancing staple production in which redistribution is seen as a system of finance is regarded as a means of mobilizing staple goods/wealth to provide public feasts or feeding chiefly attendants, reinforcing status and control. Surplus is based on labor, productivity and markets.

There are two materialist-functionalist perspectives--managerial-cybernetic theories stressing system serving functions, information processing, decision making, redistribution, coordination. Control theories stress the exploitative, self serving inequality of stratification. Understanding the evolution of chiefdoms is based upon balancing of interests between dependent polities and elites, between centralizing tendencies and fragmenting tendencies. Control over labor is ideologically reinforced by elite values of respectability and paternalism. Stability of systems is derived from the balancing of interests, power, monopoly and ideology--symbols mediate conflict, articulate structural relationships and naturalize political authority.

Different environments lead to different developmental trajectories of social complexity--nine environmental conditions have been noted: 1) natural productivity and potential for intensification. 2) Regional population density. 3) Existence of external markets. 4) Natural circumscription. 5) Concentration of productive resources. 6) Proximity to needed nonfood resources. 7) Proximity to avenues of trade and communication. 8) Social circumscription. 9) Structural preconditions of hierarchy.

Development of chiefdoms from simpler, egalitarian polities is analytically separable, but related to the question of how and why states emerged. Two types of model are distinguishable--prime mover models in which a single driving 'cause' accounts for the emergence of state organization, based upon 'linear causality' and synthetic 'multi-variate' models combining different explanations into a 'systems' approach involving 'circular causality' between a series of necessary variables within complex feedback interrelationships.

Prime mover theories are frequently 'necessary' but rarely 'sufficient' of and by themselves to explain state origins. Environmental/social circumscription models posits a local area surrounded by wasteland or bounded by a cultural boundary leading to population growth, productive intensification and structural involution. Increasing population intensifies competition for limited resources and warfare, culminating in state organization to effect corporation, mutual defense, to maintain peace and allocate resources. No theory has yet adequately explained how population originally increases inspite of population control mechanisms. Karl Wittfogel's 'hydraulic' managerial irrigation theory posits that the need to construct and maintain large scale irrigation systems necessitates establishment of a body of rulers and officials, resulting in state formation. Irrigation is not universal in state societies, but commonly associated with them. Trade and symbiosis entails that local resource scarcity requires long distance trade networks, stimulating organization for coordination, co-option, control and protection of such activities. This is related to symbiosis in which centralized polities arise in central 'places' straddling regional zones of environmental diversity. Cooperation and competition within and between groups occurring at all social levels. Religion and the appropriation of aesthetic/religious symbols are not adequate prime mover explanations, although ritual religious legitimation and appropriation of dominant symbols has probably always been an important mechanism in augmentation and implementation of authority. It is not clear whether warfare is a cause or consequence of state formation or both. "No rigorous test has shown whether warfare results in or results from the state--or stems from some third factor, responsible for both." Warfare figures in other models, and as a corollary of long distance raiding and conquest, is related to trade relations. The need for organized defense from raiders, pirates, robbers or conquerors and the need to organize such activities may be related to the need for state organization.

A state is defined as a hierarchy of bureaucratic, political economic control via administration. Higher order decisions are about lower order decisions rather than about any particular problems. Third order or more decision making--correcting, coordinating corrections, and coordinations--accompanied by specialization into 'observing, summarizing, message carrying, data storing and actual decision making functions' characterize states in terms of cybernetic, system serving structural functioning. This pattern is reflected by a settlement hierarchy, dominated by a large regional center. This cybernetic approach is a 'multi-variate' model stipulating multiple variable changes: 1) Addictive relations exceeding information capacity. 2) Channel capacity optimizing behavior leading to the gradual emergence of a managerial class of administrative specialists, hindering further fragmentation or breakdown of polity organization, preceded by other variable changes. 3) Interaction between variables stimulating further development.

Multi-variate models are less parsimonious but have greater consistency and strength of description/explanation. They focus either on managerial-information processes or on stratification and control. Socio-environmental stresses select for certain mechanisms which lead to social segregation and centralization. Normally higher order controls only regulate output of lower order sub-systems and not the variables kept in range by the latter. Various processes of linearization--higher order controls bypassing lower order ones; promotion--the rise of an institution from its place in the control hierarchy to a higher level, from special function to general purpose; and hyper-integration--the inter-linking of institutional controls between levels and areas of specialization, respond to socio-environmental stresses and eventuate in evolutionary changes, but also lead to 'systemic pathologies' which create further stresses, entailing still greater centralization and segregation. Systemic pathologies include 'usurpation'--elevation of the purpose of one's own sub-system to a position of preeminence in a more inclusive system; meddling--'to subject directly to a higher order control the variables ordinarily regulated by lower order controls; and 'hyper-coherence'--the loss of lower order autonomy by being coupled too tightly to lateral or vertical positions, until change in any one position will result in changes throughout the system.

3. Cultural materialism posits a 'universal structure of socio-cultural systems' based on biological/psychological 'constants of human nature', distinctions between thought and behavior and etic and emic. A tripartite scheme divides culture into infrastructure of "etic behavioral modes of production/reproduction, social structure with etic behavioral domestic/political economies 'maintaining secure and orderly behavioral relationships among its constituent groups and other societies" (Harris 1981: 50-1) and behavioral superstructure. This scheme is arranged in a pyramidal hierarchy of relations. Associated with each level are corresponding 'emic' mental components collapsed into the 'mental and emic superstructure'--"the conscious and unconscious cognitive goals, categories, rules, plans, values, philosophy and beliefs about behavior elicited from the participants or inferred by the observer." (page 54)

Infrastructural determinism, the principle that infrastructural relations probabilistically determines the structure, which in turn probabilistically determines the etic and emic superstructure, 'strategically' prioritizes research interests focusing on "etic and behavioral conditions and processes over emic and mental conditions and processes and of infrastructural over structural and super structural conditions and processes." (page 56) Infrastructure is the primary interface between nature and culture--structure and super structure are characterized by increasing remoteness from this interface. Theories about culture incorporate lawful regularities occurring in nature--people cannot change these laws, only seeks a balance with them. All societies must cope with problems of production and population. Research strategies chart the selection of preexisting behavioral 'mazeways'.

The tripartite structure constitutes a socio-cultural system--change in one component generates changes in the others. There are first order negative feedback system maintaining functions (structural and super structural) and second order 'deviation amplification' system destroying changes at the infrastructural level leading to 'system wide' changes. Relative remoteness of structure and super structure make changes occurring at these levels less and least likely to produce such changes in the whole system. Changes in all three will increase the likelihood of systemic change. "…in the long run and in the largest number of cases, etic behavioral infrastructure determines the nature of structure and superstructure.

Long term local/regional population leads to environmental over exploitation and degradation which then becomes used more intensively. "They turn to resources they previously ignored, which requires them to spend more labor in acquiring energy and materials which leads them to develop new technologies to harvest and process resources. Intensification ensues, leading to new social arrangements eventuating in a new culture'. (Peoples and Bailey 1988: 97) In sum, population growth leads to environmental degradation, which leads to intensification, which leads to new social arrangements which leads to new culture.

As a general theoretical, cultural materialism has been used widely among anthropologists and archaeologists who wish to understand a culture's material relationships with the natural environment and to explain how socio-cultural transformations arise from relationships. Its tripartite scheme provides a general, analytical classification framework for cross-cultural comparison.

4.The etic/emic distinction is most highly significant to cultural materialists, though the model was originally derived from the linguistic distinction between phonetic sounds and phonemic meanings. It is an epistemological dichotomization of reality upon which cultural materialism is premised--"there are two fundamentally distinct kinds of socio-cultural entities, events, and relationships." (Harris)--privileging 'etic' behavioral observation objectively oriented to physical reality over 'emic' mental understandings metaphysically constituted in subjective experience. This is extended operationally to fieldwork contexts to distinguish between the behavioral etics and mental emics of the observer of the observer and the participant. "If behavioral events are described in terms of categories and relationships that arise from the observer's strategic criteria of similarity, difference and significance they are etic; if they are described in terms of criteria elicited from an informant they are emic…" (page 340) Participant's actions constitute 'etic behavioral streams of events' which are etically recorded (versus mentally described) by observational operational procedures. "When the description is responsive to the observer's categories of time, place, weights and measure, actor types, numbers of people present, body motion and environmental effects, they are etic." (page 341) Methodological operationalization of research procedures in a systematic way is critical to the etic approach--"Cultural materialism shares with other scientific strategies an epistemological which seeks to restrict fields of inquiry to events, entities, and relationships that are knowable by means of explicit, logico-empirical, inductive-deductive, quantifiable public procedures or 'operations' subject to replication by independent observers…it is sheer obscurantism to promote the further expansion of unoperationalized terms." (page 329)

Etic descriptions, observations, explanations are cross-culturally valid, hence generalizable and universal in relevance. Emics are relative to one language or culture at a time. Operationally defined, etics constitutes a 'meta-language' of general commensurability, much as 'phonetic description' describes a 'phonetic alphabet' for all languages. Etics supposes all human languages are mutually translatable in a direct way. "This means that for every utterance in a foreign language, there is an analogue in one's own…The locus of the cognitive reality of the translation remains inside the observer's head…of course, in any component translation, we again assume that there is a close correspondence between the observer's surface meaning and the native speaker's surface meaning…" (page 346)

"The difference between etic meanings and emic meanings is the difference between the first level surface meaning of a human utterance and its total psychological significance for speaker and hearer respectively…" (page 345) "Etic language involves the identification of speech arts and communication events." (1979: 42) Communication serves a vital function in coordinating infrastructure, structure and super structure--it does not belong exclusively to any one division. It is 'neither an exclusively behavioral or mental phenomena.'

5. The cultural ecology of Julian Steward focuses on cultural adaptation to environment--culture is the primary means of human adaptation. It elaborates upon the principle of environmental limitations of culture, focusing on the culture 'core' of economic subsistence strategies and how these influence cultural integration. That culture is mostly adapted and generally integrated go hand in hand--integrated 'bundles of cultural traits' are consistently adaptive under selective environmental constraints. Different cultures will be similarly adapted and similarly integrated in similar environments. Simpler societies are more amenable to an ecological approach than more complex ones, "because a society with a sophisticated technology enjoys a greater freedom from environmental limitations and hence a wider range of latitude." (Elvin Hatch 1973: 120) It can be remarked that this formulation closely resembles cultural materialism in focusing upon environmental adaptation as determinative of cultural integration.

R. Netting's study of the Kofyar of Nigeria demonstrates the eco-systemic relationships between natural resources, technology and a "limited range of cultural features in a pre-literate agricultural society." (Netting 1968: 225) The Kofyar are terrace hill farmers who cultivate intensively cereal staples on small acre sized plots, supplementing production with shifting cultivation. Their region has dependable rainfall, mineral rich soils and is a "spectacularly rugged area that effectively shielded them from Hausa-Fulani and Jukun imperial armies and slave raiders." (page 227) They have developed a sophisticated agricultural system which buffers them from recurrent periods of famine--practicing annual manuring, crop rotation, alternating a wide variety of crops with different seasons, exploiting different micro-environments. A fairly high population density is supported. Their food producing economy involves an ecosystem interrelating several aspects of their 'hillbilly' culture. Dispersed settlement patterns with households inhabiting discrete clusters of huts in the center of homestead fields allows inhabitants to diligently tend their fields, minimizing transportation problems, protecting crops from insects and predators, allowing regular tending and weeding. Critically absent are defensive warfare or specialized commodity markets--there is a lack of inducement toward an increased 'nucleation'. A nuclear family is most adaptive in the intensive farming of homestead plots in which production is related directly to land area and is not affected by greater labor inputs. There is a lack of a rigid division of labor in both farming and domestic tasks. Increasing population produces fissioning and the formation of new households on new plots. Large labor groups may be temporarily mobilized by lineage on a territorial basis--patrilineages are localized in one or more adjoining neighborhoods--or by voluntary means. Village self sufficiency and non-arable land between villages foster independence and the lack of wider traditional political integration. Land is owned by the person who homesteads it. Land is valued for its productiveness. It is not subdivided upon inheritance, but is passed on to a son who remains and works it--other sons move off to establish new homesteads or to lease other lands. Leasing reallocates land to shifting demands and unequal distribution of resources. Land sale is a lineage affair. Boundary and inheritance disputes increase in proportion to land scarcity. Conscientious work and careful husbandry are internalized, personal values. They have a practical, unemotional attitude to farming that is fostered by the dependability of their practices. Communal ceremonies are irregular and held only in the event of a natural disaster. Their virtues are thrift, industry and frugality. Autonomy is highly valued as a matter of economic utility and self sufficiency.

Cultural ecology is oriented towards the practical integration of culture achieved through adaptation--"the compelling interest of ecological analysis is in its revelation of meaningful order and pattern uniting a wide range of human activities with the ecosystem, showing both their purpose and their integration." (Netting 1968) This approach is distinguished from Roy Rappaport's "ecological anthropology"--"…ontological distinctiveness and special laws governing operation do not necessarily imply functional autonomy." (Rappaport 1971: 241-2) "To say that cultural processes are governed by laws of their own is not to say that culture does not play a role in yet larger systems subject to yet more general laws, larger systems that include, in addition to human culture bearers, other species and non-living things." "While the questions are asked about cultural phenomena they are answered in terms of the effects of culturally informed behavior on biological systems: organisms, populations and ecosystems." (page 243)

K. Flannery's application of systems theory in early Mesoamerica--a transition period from food collecting to sedentary agriculture between 5000 and 1500 BC--is an example of the 'ecological anthropology' approach demonstrating adaptation to whole environmental zones and to even particular kinds of plant and animal species, rather than to particular environments. It was a system characterized by 'similar adaptation to similar ranges of food resources' crosscutting 'dissimilar environmental zones' rather than 'similar adaptation to similar environments' as hypothesized by cultural ecology. Gradual changes in a series of procurement systems that are regulated by seasonality of food resources and scheduling of food getting activities. Seasonality and scheduling tends to prevent over exploitation of any single resource and promotes by opportunistic diversification strategies a systemic status quo, counteracting environmental deviations which may lead to either starvation or more effective adaptive strategies. Though there was slow continual evolution of implements of the procurement systems, it was a 'sufficient' system with little pressure for change or intensification of any 'subsystem'. Evidence suggest scheduling priorities went to plant seasonality--macro-band activities focusing on short intense gathering activities in competition with other animals. Hunting was confined to micro-band activities at the peak of the 'deer season'. These procurement systems were first order negative feedback systems--year round macro-bands were impossible to support and population increases were therefore counteracted--maintaining the stability of the entire system. Gradual development of Maize, in conjunction with beans as a 'wild grass procurement system' 'kicked' the system into a second level 'deviation amplification' process, leading to the hybridization, back crossing and domestication of corn into a more dependable procurement system requiring aggregation of population, rescheduling of hunting and collecting activities, and sedentarism. This procurement system grew steadily at the expense of and in competition with all other procurement systems.

A common theme of materialist approaches is "the way a human population acquires life sustaining materials and energy is the most important influences on other aspects of its way of life. The harnessing of nature's resources influences the patterned relations individuals will have with one another, the kinds of groups they will form and ultimately the cultural norms, values, categories, world views, etc." (Peoples and Bailey 1989: 96) This statement mirrors the cultural ecology of the Kafyar. All three approaches, materialism, functionalism and ecology imply the notion of 'adaptation'--a normative conception of 'equilibrium'. Systems approaches see this equilibrium maintaining function to be the primary purpose of 'structure'. "It leads us to ask whether behavior undertaken with respect to social, economic, political, or religious conventions contributes to or threatens the survival and well being of the actors and whether this behavior maintains or degrades the ecological systems in which it occurs." (Rappaport 1971: 243) Early Mesoamerican procurement systems demonstrate this equilibrium maintaining function. Functional integration is the purpose of adaptation. Cultural materialism asserts that the tripartite structure of culture forms a socio-cultural system--a change in any one of the system's components usually leads to changes in other components. This is the logic of the system. "In this regard, cultural materialism is compatible with all those varieties of functionalism employing an organismic analogy to convey an appreciation of the interdependencies among the 'cells' and 'organs' of the social 'body'. (Harris 1981: 71) Cultural materialism also postulates a bio-psychological component relating it to functionalism and ecologism. There are four bio-psychological 'constants'--1) nutrition, 2) behavior, 3) sexual behavior and 4) the need for love and affection. These are construed as the motive basis for socio-cultural integration or structural adaptation. Rappaport also states that "the distinctive characteristic of ecological anthropology is not simply that it takes environmental factors into consideration in its attempts to elucidate cultural phenomena but that it gives biological meaning to the key terms--adaptation, homeostasis, adequate functioning, survival--of its formulations. All these approaches view culture as 'systemic' in functional integration, as 'structures' following basic regularities which, when elucidated, explain the 'purposes' of culture in functional integration and adaptive equilibrium. Implicitly, all three are 'synchronic' in terms of shared 'structural space' whose history is characterized by cyclical, recursive time--'dynamic equilibrium'--rather than in an open ended dialectical sense. Thus all three approaches share a similar shortcoming--to inadequately explain why changes happen in the first place, what brought the system into being, and what leads to its transformations. In claiming universal relevance, these approaches fail to address real history 'in the making' in a detailed picture of 'people doing things'. Concomitant with this is the implicit notion of cultural 'polities' as material, on the ground, spatially boundable entities, or 'things' within particular environmental settings, significantly separated from extraneous, outside influences. This conflicts with notions of culture as processual, as symbolic and ideational, a human praxis, and of regional and global spheres of interaction.

There are important difference between these approaches as well. Steward's cultural ecology was 'unitarian' in looking for practical patterns of cultural integration--materialist and ecological approaches are explicitly 'utilitarian' in stressing the purposive 'functioning' of socio-cultural systems. Materialism differs from functionalism in emphasizing 'infrastructural determinism' versus 'social structural determinism' or White's notion of 'cultural determinism'--that cultures determine individual adaptations. "Cultural materialism unlike classical structural functionalism holds that changes in the etic and behavioral modes of production and reproduction are more likely to reproduce deviation throughout the domestic, political and ideological sectors than vice versa…" (Harris 1980: 58) Materialist approaches differ from cultural ecological approaches by recognizing the influence of more than just technology and environment--they taken into account human population increases.

6. Maring ritual cycles, of the Tsembaga Maring in the New Guinea Highlands, has become the textbook example of an ecological system approach, demonstrating clearly the role that cultural 'cognized models' play in relation to environmental adaptation. "Indeed the operation of these cycles helps to maintain an undegraded biotic and physical environment, distributes local surpluses of pig throughout a region in the form of pork, and assures people high quality protein when they are most in need of it. The ritual cycles also limit warfare to frequencies that do not endanger the survival of the regional population but which allow occasional redispersion of people over land and land among people, thus, perhaps, tending to correct discrepancies between the population densities of different local groups. Yet other functions…inhere in these cycles." (Rappaport 1971: 525) Spirits are divided into two orders--one associated with warfare, the other with fertility. Inauguration of a phase of warfare leads to a separation of these two orders, bringing into place a number of strict taboos. Cessation of warfare signals the beginning of reintegration of the universe--a sacred 'rumbin' plant is planted in the village, some of the taboos are successively lifted, and there is a pig slaughter. A debt is owed to the spirits of the victorious which can only be gradually repaid--a new round of warfare cannot be initiated until all debt is repaid through a long period during which the pig herds increase in population, entailing increasing investment of labor and land to maintain, a burden falling primarily upon the women. Women begin complaining of their task and roaming pigs multiply disputes between pig owners and garden keepers. Pig overpopulation becomes a nuisance until a consensus is reached that there are enough pigs to repay the ancestors. It takes from six to twenty years to reach this point. A series of rituals begin--taboos on taking marsupials is lifted and for one to two months they are hunted, until a pandanus fruit ripens, at which point the sacred rumbin tree is uprooted and a year long 'kaiko' festival begins, culminating the entire ritual cycle. Final ritual ceremonies involving lifting of more taboos and more pig slaughters, signaling the reintegration of the cosmos and the removal of debt to the spirits. The Maring are then free to reinitiate another round of warfare.

"On the basis of this illustration, it may be suggested that the relationship of the cognized model to the operational model is similar to that of the 'memory' of an automated control device to the physical system it regulates. It is in terms of the understandings included in the cognized model that the ritual cycle is undertaken, but the ritual cycle in fact regulates material relations in the local ecological system and in the regional system. The operation of the entire cycle is cybernetic. In response to signals from the ecosystem (e.g. complaints of women concerning the burdens of pig husbandry) ritual actions are undertaken with respect to supernaturals (there are sufficient beasts to repay them and sacrifices are made) but these actions have corrective effects upon the ecosystem (the pig population is reduced and women's labor in pig husbandry is reduced)." (page 261)

7. Functionalism has been handed down as the main approach of British social anthropology. Bio-psychological functionalism posits a functional and mechanical model of social order informed by the psychological and biological determinism. "Malinowski has explained that he is the inventor of functionalism…His definition of it is clear: it is the theory or doctrine that every feature of culture of any people past or present is to be explained by reference to seven biological needs of individual human beings…" (R. Radcliffe-Brown 1949: 320) Basic human needs lead to 'derived' social needs which give form to 'cultural imperatives which give rise to basic social 'institutions'. Radcliffe-Brown gave us the jural model of functional social 'structure'--the arrangement or organization of the basic components of the social system. People occupy positions, positions are grouped by particular rules or norms, forming classes or institutions which determine the proper roles of interaction for the sake of social organization. "Social phenomena constitute a distinct class of natural phenomena. They are all, in one way or another, connected with the existence of social structures, either being implied in or resulting from them. Social structures are just as real as are individual organisms." (Adam Kuper 1977: 27) For Raymond Firth, social structure is formal and social organization is functional--an effort to maintain equilibrium on the basis of organization principle inspite of contingencies of historical happenstance and human needs, in the name of the formal and the service of the functional. For Firth, the sense of social order housekeeper maintaining some proverbial sense of domestic social order and tranquillity. Ward Goodenough extended the model of social structure to an 'ethno-methodological' framework in which people became a determined finite range of possible structural relationships within a broad, cross cutting matrix of social structural relations.

Structural functionalism starts with the needs of society--the function of a particular socio cultural element is the contribution it makes to the persistence of social structure. Social structure refers to the enduring pattern of relationships between individuals and groups--behavior that is orderly and predictable. Social structure exists in a normally steady state of functional equilibrium--every part has its purpose and every purpose its part. Change may be eufunctional or dysfunctional--conflict is construed as aberrant--regulation of conflict is a primary purpose in the maintenance of the 'steady state of orderly relations between individuals and groups.' The significance of functionalism to all anthropologists has been that it has set the normative standard of ethnological explanation/description of social system and 'structural organization'--a mechanical model of a self contained, self perpetuating social order and an ethnological 'baseline' from which all other theories of social structure and organization can safely depart without fear of being lost in the sea of social anarchy and chaos. It is an ideal model of a mechanical, synchronic social space with organismic function.

The common ground between materialist, functionalist and ecological approaches as 'modes of explanation' provides the basis for a similar kind of critique of these orientations. Theory and praxis are never really separated. An interest in ecology stems from and leads into an ecological involvement. Behind such orientations, especially as they inform programs for action, are implicit statements about values, beliefs, priorities, concerns which are embedded in greater levels of orientation and involvement. This relationship to history is inescapable and denial of it is only to commit a deceit of ideological promotion.

Functionalism with its rigorous commitment to empiricism, can never be much more than a description that does not transcend the facts on which it is based. Defenders of the faith frequently state something like: "But you can't deny that societies function and that it is of paramount importance to their survival." Of course, but this is precisely why it is useless as explanation--it is as trivial as it is true. To explain all behavior as functional (or dysfunctional) because it must ultimately ensure survival is to turn effect and consequence into cause. And since we have no test (i.e., we don’t know very much about how societies functioned that didn't survive) it is spurious cause at best. (J. Faris 1988: 162)

"Historically speaking functional analysis is a modification of teleological explanation, i.e., of explanation not be reference to cause which 'bring about the event in question but by reference to ends which determine its course." (Carl Hempel 1965: 303) Functionalism has no necessary criteria of relevance--sorting out primary from secondary, core from periphery, or ultimate causes like human nature, needs, psychology, does not have 'explanatory relevance' of answering 'why' not in systemic relations to other 'functions', but in relation to things outside of or before the system, without reduction to 'pan human pre-dispositions' or psychology. "Or we get the familiar tautologies--the function of something is to do what it does; or the somewhat more complex circularity--witchcraft exists channel anxieties, produced by structural disharmonies, brought about by anxieties, produced by witchcraft…" (Faris 1988: 164)

To the extent that it can be said that the common ground between materialist, functionalist and ecologist orientations is a 'systems' science approach, the critique of functionalism can be extended to a critique of 'systems theory' as a whole--whether materialism, ecologist or functionalist.

Structures not apparent at an empirical level are still construed as real and can nevertheless be discovered--ontological and theoretical structures therefore are isomorphic, they are 'objects to be constructed'. No science can take its objects as given, but must be constructed by theoretical praxis. Social science as 'science' depends upon theories which "do not attempt to give the phenomena of experience the form of reason but seek to explain objects not given in experience, objects constituted in knowledge." (Hirst 1975: 7) Any approach committed to the conventionally self evident and therefore necessarily represents certain elements of understanding as 'given' must "denegate the central role of scientific practice, of experimentation and of explicit theoretical construction and argument, in the production of scientific knowledge." (Hirst and Hindness 1975: 2)

Viewed in this light the limitations of systems analysis become clear, and its critique becomes something other than simply "an initiation right of passage into sociological adulthood." (Martins 1974: 247) If we accept the system analysis relies on a theoretical structure which can describe how a 'given' system is maintained, but not how it is transformed, then it follows that this theoretical structure is not isomorphic with the ontological structure. On this reading it must be an inadequate representation of the mechanisms which maintain this system in the first place, because it has settled on the 'given' appearance of things and not on the relations "latent in things themselves" (Goddard 1972: 62). This interpretation underscores the particular legitimating function of systems analysis: it protects the ontological structures from criticism by excluding them from analysis. (Allen 1975: 19) Change is therefore circumscribed and does not penetrate the structure, and this rationalization of the permanent present has been described as an "ideology of universal harmonies" (Amin 1974: 6), one which finds distinctive expression in orthodox location theory where "static equilibrium is the rule and the aim." (Massey 1973: 34) (Derek Gregory 1978: 41-42)

Systems theory suffers a variety of 'descriptivism' which takes the place of relevant explanation. World systems theory promotes a kind of historical descriptivism based upon a system model reflecting a modern system of core-periphery relations--arguing from the present into the past. The orienting question is 'how did the world system come into place?' Applying historical dialectics based on Marxian theory, it searches out the transition from 'feudal modes of production to capitalist modes of production' and such a transition becomes a critical problematic of its discourse. Yet the systems model cannot explain such a transition except in reference to itself and its constructs. The question is never asked if there is such a thing as a 'feudal mode of production' or a 'capitalist mode of production' and whether they may be historically general or universal in relevance. The purpose of the past is used to 'explain' the present by use of its descriptive terminology, and it is not considered whether the past may have actually had its own purposes with out possible pre-understanding of the future predicaments of the 'present'. Scientific ideology or scientism, is promoted paradigmatically and is not religious, but secular in its value orientation. But it remains a self fulfilling prophecy aiming at reiterating the present, in the future and rewriting the past in the present.

One common problem of practice I have noted among world systems theorists, ecologists and materialists who are bent upon empirically validating their 'system' is the difficulty they have of bringing its structure down to ground, to an empirical level of analysis without becoming overloaded by trivial detailed 'data' which lack any criteria of differential relevance. Translating 'systems' into 'real terms' leads to 'systemic overload' and mental paralysis.

We must ask whether our 'systems science' however 'cybernetic' does not have a legitimating function for a 'world system' in which EuroAmerican culture has achieved imperial political economic predominance and hegemony. It is a system which is not perfect or without contradictions. Ecologism came into being during an era that America was committing ecocide in Indochina. Materialism came into preeminence when the American economy began showing military industrial stagnation. Functionalism has remained implicit in our neo-economic imperialism and political-economic 'encapsulation' of the entire world. We live in a world beset by global militarism, a deteriorating global ecology, global overpopulation exceeding carrying capacity, global pollution, global impoverishment and global over development. Whatever evolutionists may say, the history of world system is still in the making. To claim that anthropology as a 'systems science of disinterested inquiry' has its privilege of claiming academic immunity, esoteric triviality and historical irrelevance is to promote a paradigm which is not scientific but ideological.

In speaking of a sense of order, or 'structure' or 'system', whether formal, functional, deep, generative, architectonic, etc., do we really mean something different from 'sense' itself, or sense/nonsense or 'meaning/ameaning' whether symbolic, psychological, affective, behavioral, idiomatic, or, as Gregory Bateson put it, are we merely 'tying knots in our handkerchief' such that 'these terms will forever stand, not as fences hiding the unknown from future investigators, but rather signposts which reads: 'UNEXPLORED BEYOND THIS POINT'. Language, spoken or textual, can obfuscate as well as clarify. Anthropological professionalese can draw blinding boundaries as well ad enlighten. 'Structure' and 'system' may only be a convenient substitute for our own ignorance.

It is upon theoretical issues involved in the evolutionary interrelationships between nature and culture that general anthropology teeter-totters as a 'paradigmatic' science of human reality in both praxis and theory. How anthropology will come to define itself paradigmatically as a 'science' will be determined by how and it succeeds or fails to answer this most central question.

The key theoretical issue is whether or not an evolutionary frame of mind is a necessary or sufficient form of explanation for the interrelationships between nature and culture. If not, then what might it be? This issue constitutes one of the principle horizons of our scientific knowledge.

Evolutionary theory is not the actual origin itself, but constitutes a way of modeling our minds about change. evolution moves toward an 'ecological' frame of mind "as a new way of thinking about these ideas and aggregates of ideas called mind." (Bateson 1972) Roy Rappaport associates ecological order with the term Logos--the 'rational relation of things to one another', 'the general sense of order or measure.' Ecological mind is in this sense of order, 'holistic'. "Logos, in sum, in the thought of Heraclitus and his followers, designated the principle through which the cosmos is generated, ordered, united, and maintained, or even the ordered, united, evolving cosmos itself." (Rappaport 1984: 309) "The logos is therefore the common principle making possible understanding between man and the world and also between men." (Kleinkrecht 1967: 81 in Rappaport 1984: 310)

An ecological frame of mind about evolutionary theory leads to a metalogical dialogue about this problematic topic such that 'the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject.' Metalogic is beyond the scope of the structure of our logic, a metaphysics of that logica, which defines our ecological frame of mind, structured as it is by the apperceptive awareness of our own evolution. The metalogic of our dialectical comprehension of the logos of nature is itself a reflections of that logos, and our 'coming to terms' with it we call 'science'. We are, as far as we know, the only creatures to have evolved a capacity for reflexively comprehending both the logos of nature and of our own being.

Our science is systemic, as 'natural systems theory' meaning approximation or modeling of physical, biological and human patterning . nature is universal--there can be no going beyond it. But our science is finite and limited. We can go beyond it.

Irreversible change is the logos of nature, its only unchanging absolute. In reference to universal change I refer to the 'natural continuum'. Change, defined as alteration, modification, mutation, transformation, metamorphosis, variation, differentiation, revolution, implies disorganization, decay, disorder, chaos, entropy. When constrained by some kind of 'redundancy' (i.e. cybernetic information) change is no longer fortuitous chance, randomness, but becomes patterned, system, ordered, predictable, recursive, restrained, relevant, meaningful. As natural systems theory, our science implies a quest for informational systems of the patterning of natural phenomena in relationship to the principle of universal change.

Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g. a sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog or a culture) shall be said to contain 'redundancy' or 'pattern' if the aggregate can be divided in any way to a 'slash mark' such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on the other side of the slash mark contains information or has meaning about what is on the other side…(Gregory Bateson 1972: 130-2)

There are three informational levels in natural systems. The most basic is the physical level. A subsystem of the first is the biological level. The third is the subsystem of the second level and is the human level. Each subsequent subsystem comprises a different order of organizational complexity of information. Understanding of the information of the subsequent order of complexity cannot be sufficiently reduced to the terms of the previous, lower orders, though understanding of the previous orders is prerequisite to the complete understanding of the next higher levels.

…In such a hierarchy of determination, physical and chemical laws stand as absolutely necessary for the explanation of biological phenomena, but they are equally and absolutely insufficient.

The same kind of hierarchical relationship holds for culture vis-à-vis biology (and by implication, physics and chemistry). Culture is biology plus the symbolic faculty…

…In human behavior, we are not dealing with a multifactorial or over determined system in which several considerations of different order and nature enter in certain determinable proportions: a compound of 10% biology, 5% physics, 3% chemistry, 0.7% geology, 0.3% the action of heavenly bodies and 81% the symbolic logic. All the organic and inorganic constraints are in some sense 100% involved in the sense that cultural life must conform to natural laws. But a law of nature stands to a fact of culture only as a limit of form, a constant to a difference, and a matrix to a practice. It will never be possible to explain cultural properties of any such fact by referring it to underlying contents of a different order. (M. Sahlins 1976: 65-6)

It follows that infrastructural determinism is a necessary but insufficient scientifical explanation of social structure or superstructure and that functional determinism is also equally insufficient. Symbols, emics and mental events have an ecology of their own, and ecology of culture, with its own explanations, to which ecology, function and infrastructure are reductionistic. "We have to deal with a hierarchical relation between culture and nature. Like Hegel's cunning of Reason, the wisdom of cultural process consists in putting to the service of its own intentions natural systems which have their own reasons." (Sahlins 1976: 65)