(PDF) Leach's Legacy

books LEACH’S LEGACY returning to England he contacted his long-time agrarian peoples of Southeast Asia, and has had A review of Edmund Leach: An friend Rosemary Upcott, asking to be intro- an enormous influence on generations of histo- anthropological life, by Stanley Tambiah duced to her husband Raymond Firth, who had rians, linguists, cultural geographers and ethno- (Cambridge University Press, 2002) trained under Bronislaw Malinowski. Firth graphers of this region and elsewhere. Leach introduced him to Malinowski, and Leach looked at the long-term economic and cultural Much has been published on Edmund Leach in signed up as a research student to participate in impact of the Chinese civilization on the hill recent years, not least The essential Edmund Malinowski’s renowned seminars at the tribes of mainland Southeast Asia, comparing it Leach in two volumes, edited by Hugh-Jones London School of Economics. Like many other to the influence of Indic-derived forms of polit- and Laidlaw (Yale University Press 2000). Here participants in these seminars, Leach under- ical organization reinforced by Hindu- I review the stimulating intellectual biography went an epiphany and became a dedicated Buddhist-Brahmanistic religious beliefs among by Stanley Tambiah of his mentor, which con- anthropologist. In particular, Malinowski’s the peoples in the agrarian valley civilizations. tains much historical detail, selected personal description of the sexual behaviour of the Leach draws on his oscillation model of the letters, ethnographic data, in-depth theoretical Trobrianders and his critique of Freud’s univer- Kachin to emphasize how these two categories analysis, and personal observations of the salistic conceptions of the Oedipal complex of hill and valley cultures are inextricably social, intellectual and political networks planted the seeds that led to Leach’s later reflec- bound together in wide-ranging, mutually among British social anthropologists. As tions on the interrelationship between myth, influential regional political and economic net- Tambiah emphasizes in his introduction, Leach symbol and the innate aspects of the human works. This was a significant conceptual inno- would not have endorsed an hagiographic psyche. vation which advanced critiques of bounded approach to his work, and this intellectual biog- *** linguistic, cultural and ethnic units that had raphy balances the positive aspects of Leach’s Tambiah describes Leach’s first ventures in been the axioms of linguistic and cultural contributions against the wrong turns in his ethnographic fieldwork in Burma in August studies in an earlier anthropological tradition. empirical and theoretical efforts. 1939, prior to the outbreak of the war. Like Tambiah emphasizes Leach’s conception of *** many early ethnographers, Leach had not indigenous models of how the state in Tambiah gives an account of Leach’s child- studied the language of the ethnic groups he Southeast Asia, coupled with somewhat arbi- hood and family roots in the bourgeois, endog- was researching. However, he quickly acquired trary political and military strategies, con- amously intermarried Victorian the Kachin language in Hpalang, where he did structed and generated frontiers between these textile-manufacturing families of 19th-century nine months of research in 1939-40. In ‘the communities, and suggests that this model has Lancashire, which fostered his ethnographic dreaded nightmarish experience’ still used as a influenced contemporary scholars. interests in kinship, class, politics and morality. cautionary tale in graduate seminars in method, *** Though as an adult Leach was to abandon his Leach lost his field notes and photographs In two richly detailed chapters, Tambiah con- mother’s Victorian ‘hard-boiled’ version of during the chaos of the Japanese invasion of siders Leach’s ethnographic research in Sri Christianity, the Biblical narratives he learned Burma. Remarkably, he reconstructed his notes Lanka that culminated in his monograph Pul from her would become an important source of from memory, and they became the basis for the Eliya. Tambiah’s insights go beyond the stan- interpretive materials during the structuralist classic description of the gumsa Kachin egali- dard assessment and critique of this work, as he phase of his career. Leach detested his early tarian community in Political systems of high- also reflects on the ethnography he has himself public education at Marlborough, but found land Burma. It is through the reading of this written about the contemporary ethnic-religious- Cambridge ‘a glorious experience’. His study theoretically innovative classic ethnography political problems of his home country. He of mathematics, supplemented by reading that most contemporary anthropologists were offers the familiar ethnographic in-joke about Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh and D.H. introduced to Leach’s work. Leach’s critical how Leach overcompensated for the loss of his Lawrence, and his thoughtful reflections on dissent from the static structural-functionalist ethnographic notes on the Kachin by including class injustice at Cambridge and the violence perspectives of Radcliffe-Brown, and his every detail of the history, ecological condi- and conflict resulting from the emergence of the attempt to develop a dialogue between empiri- tions, economy, social and kinship structures, fascist movement in Germany, were formative cism and rationalism, are detailed extensively political systems and religious beliefs in his influences on his later anthropological thought in this biography. analysis. His zealous empiricism led him to col- and his role as a public intellectual and com- In response to Gellner’s critique of Political lect detailed quantitative data to support his cri- mitted socialist in England. A personal letter systems as overwrought philosophical idealism, tique of the ‘mysticism’ of the reigning written by Leach to his father from Cambridge, Tambiah provides a subtle evaluation of the ‘realist-essentialist’ models of kinship and appended here, will resonate with many con- synthesis between idealism and empiricism in descent that were perpetuated by Fortes and temporary undergraduates as he confesses his this classic. He suggests that Leach’s structural others in the British (and North American) personal malaise and lack of direction in his and historical analysis of the Kachin parallels anthropological works of the time. engineering studies, and his concerns about the the later developments of Sahlins’ and Valeri’s Many anthropologists have criticized Pul political-economic catastrophes that appear on attempts to understand myth, symbol and prac- Eliya as a crude form of economic determinism the horizon in the Europe of the 1930s. tices in the native Hawaiian cultural frame- or a ‘Marxist-Wittfogellian’ vulgar materi- Accepting his responsibilities to his bour- work. In addition, Tambiah draws attention to alism. Acknowledging that Leach overstated geois family, after graduation Leach took a the comments of students of Leach such as his empiricist case (as he himself later position with a company with branches in Hong Jonathan Parry and Christopher Fuller, who admitted), Tambiah evaluates and corrects this Kong and the major Chinese cities. He devel- recognized that Leach was grappling with the misinterpretation through an in-depth discus- oped a passion for the culture and history of problems of representation, colonialism and sion of pre-Leachian ‘ideal models’ of land China and travelled extensively throughout the anthropology long before the dawn of post- tenure and kinship and the ‘actual transmission country collecting various styles of pottery and modernism. of land to descent groups’, set alongside other artefacts. On his travels he met a Mormon Tambiah moves on to analyse Leach’s syn- Leach’s discussion of the economic system and missionary who gave him an anthropological thetic historical essay of 1960, ‘The frontiers of the malleability of kinship and descent in his tour of the Yami, an aboriginal group on the Burma’, which discussed the interconnections monograph. Tambiah argues that the mono- island of Botel Tobago, off the coast of of Chinese and Indian culture and civilization graph attempted to transcend the polarizations Formosa. This brief tour stimulated Leach’s and the effects of these civilizations on ‘hill’ of the ideal and material as emphasized within budding interest in anthropology, and on tribe shifting cultivators and the ‘valley’ the Oxford structuralist camp. He also notes 22 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 21 NO 3, JUNE 2005 that Leach admitted to reading and rejecting the tory’, and ‘Melchisedech and the emperor’. empirical work. His famous proclamation that crude theory of the Asiatic mode of production Tambiah examines these essays and notes that ‘all ethnography is fiction’ stunned many tradi- based on some of Marx’s writings, which had Talmudic and Biblical scholars encourage their tional anthropologists, who believed that Leach influenced Wittfogel’s formulation of ‘the colleagues to read the structuralist accounts of had succumbed to a form of hyper-relativist hydraulic model’ during his own reflections on Leach, Mary Douglas and other anthropologists post-modernism prevalent during the 1980s. In his Sri Lankan data. In a concluding discussion to gain insight into their sacred traditions. In a careful assessment of these lectures, Tambiah of the contemporary interpretations of the land addition he suggests that, by analysing the sig- discusses the philosophical and political tenure, social and religious factors that have nificant role of women in the patriarchal bib- assumptions that underlie these statements influenced the indigenous Sri Lankan political lical tradition, Leach’s interpretations inspired about politics and ethnography, arguing that economy, Tambiah refers to his own later work later feminist readings of these religious texts. Leach was reacting to the simple-minded and to other Sri Lankan scholars to illustrate But he recognizes that many of Leach’s struc- notions of positivist scientific objectivity that how some of these indigenous interpretations turalist accounts of religious texts are weak and had been dominant in ethnographic research for have been harnessed to justify and motivate not underpinned by a reliable understanding of much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Leach also nationalist projects. an ethnographic social and cultural context. recognized the error of his political and military *** In a later chapter, however, Tambiah analyses entanglements in Burma, which he saw as prob- Tambiah discusses Leach’s engagement with the major philosophical differences between the lematic influences on his ethnographic efforts: structuralism, as pioneered by Saussure, Anglo-Saxon empiricist traditions of Leach and thus, he responded to the philosophical conver- Jakobsen, and Lévi-Strauss. Earlier in the 1950s the Cartesian rationalist tradition of Lévi- sations about epistemological reflexivity of the Leach had criticized the interpretation of kin- Strauss. Leach opposed the algebraic-based 1980s. Tambiah avers that Leach was not pro- ship and descent issues in Southeast Asia pro- matrix of kinship and family associated with not claiming the equivalence of ethnographic posed in The elementary structures of kinship. only Lévi-Strauss but also American anthropol- writing and literary fiction; rather, in a playful In 1963, however, he reviewed La pensée ogists such as Lounsbury, Goodenough and manner, he was simply acknowledging that sauvage and Le totémisme aujourd’hui in Man, Scheffler, who viewed kinship terms as reflec- ethnographers were frequently constructing and and enthusiastically endorsed some of the inno- tions of ‘real’ genealogical relationships based refashioning schemes and categories for the vative aspects of structuralism for use within on ‘Platonic invariant and universal psycholog- analysis of social and cultural experiences anthropology. Shortly thereafter, Leach adopted ical dispositions’. In the empiricist ethnographic within regions embedded in extremely complex some conceptual notions from Lévi-Strauss and tradition, Leach emphasized an on-the-ground global and political networks. information theory regarding binary opposi- understanding of how kinship, family and mar- Tambiah concludes with an account of tions and universally recurring thought riage relationships were transformed within the Leach’s retirement, though he continued to processes to produce classic essays such as everyday context of shifting political and eco- work almost to his death at the age of 79. ‘Genesis as myth’. nomic practices, and remained sceptical about *** Though he expressed doubts about particular the quest for an understanding of the collective Leach was ahead of his time. Since his death, aspects of the structuralist interpretations, Leach unconscious and invariant characteristics of the new instruments and new methods in the cogni- defended French anthropologists against critics human mind through the structuralist analysis of tive sciences are exercising their influence on like Mary Douglas. In a nuanced discussion of kinship, myth and culture. anthropology. Leach would surely have viewed the correspondence between Lévi-Strauss and *** these as a resource for examining his own Leach regarding the translation of the French Leach’s role as a public intellectual in Britain assumptions and philosophical commitments term ‘esprit’, Tambiah illustrates the major con- was exemplified in the celebrated BBC Reith regarding the human mind and culture. Such ceptual chasm between the two thinkers. In one lectures of 1967-68. In these six lectures Leach post-post-positivist anthropology may help to letter Lévi-Strauss suggests to Leach that his presented his global intellectual and political break down the barriers dividing the empiricist- translation of esprit as ‘spirit’ is too literal and it perspective, which he called ‘evolutionary nominalist from the rationalist-realist, a ought instead to be read ‘mind/brain.’ In this humanism’, exploring the interrelationships Kantian philosophical project that engaged same letter, Lévi-Strauss argues that ‘Raw between humans and the developing computers Leach during his entire career. nature is orderly and else there would be no of that era, and declaring that linguistic cate- Tambiah’s biography is a rich treatment of the physical science,’ and goes on to suggest that he gories provide frameworks for ethnicity and intellectual and political life of a significant is closer to 18th-century materialism than to nationalism that result in the dehumanization of thinker in anthropology, a scholar who continu- Hegel. Leach remained skeptical of this aspect the ‘other’. The final lecture emphasized the ally re-evaluated his assumptions and sought of the structuralist approach and had difficulties ‘humanist-ethical’ perspective promulgated by empirical evidence to substantiate his claims. In accepting the brain as a hard-wired, computer- Leach, which Tambiah views as an endorse- Tambiah’s words, he was an ‘inveterate experi- like device that directly mediated a natural ment of a Sartrean existentialism emphasizing menter’ who drew upon any theoretical innova- order. Later, these doubts would lead him to free choice and ethical responsibility. tion that enhanced our understanding of become dissatisfied with the socially and cultur- In a fascinating analysis of several lectures humanity. Like the indigenous people he ally decontextualized neo-Frazerian generalities from the 1980s, Tambiah makes clear that described in Burma or Sri Lanka, Leach was about myth and thought that became the staple Leach was highly attuned to contemporary pragmatically engaged in constructing innova- of many of Lévi-Strauss’ later works. Tambiah political and global concerns regarding ethno- tive schemes for analysing data and theory to offers his own interpretive remarks on how the graphic research. Leach expressed ontological address the large questions regarding the human major philosophers of science, linguists and difficulties with his ahistorical and problematic psyche and culture. I strongly recommend these sociologists have come to challenge Lévi- essentialist categories of ‘tribe’, shan, gumlao, thoughtful reflections on Leach’s intellectual Strauss’s metaphysical materialism. and gumsa in the borderlands areas of China development for anyone seriously concerned Tambiah also discusses Leach’s version of and Burma, acknowledging that Political sys- with past and future ethnographic and theoretical structuralism as applied to the Biblical tradition tems was written as a polemic against the devel- work within anthropology. Stanley Tambiah is to and religious art and architecture. Leach dis- opment of lineage theory. In a later lecture, be congratulated for yet another enduring and puted Ricoeur’s contention that structuralist Leach refers to his attempt to draw on native inspirational contribution to our discipline. z analysis could not be applied to the Biblical tra- categories and historical economic and political dition, emphasizing that the structuralist developments in much the same way that the Raymond Scupin method does not involve issues of historical structuralists, Sahlins and Valeri had done with Lindenwood University truth, but is rather a means of evaluating the Hawaiian materials.

narratives within the ‘total’ ethnographic con- In these essays and interviews Leach empha- text. Significant essays by Leach which use this sizes how the class background and political I would like to thank Pascal Boyer, John Bowen, Donald E. Brown, Susan Brownell, Clifford Geertz, Frederic K. approach include ‘The legitimacy of Solomon: affiliations of individual ethnographers must be Lehman (Chit Hlaing) and Richard O’Connor for their Some structural aspects of Old Testament his- considered when assessing the reliability of their comments on this review. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 21 NO 3, JUNE 2005 23