Abstract
This paper reveals that the perspective of dual societies enables an appreciation of everyday practices responding to neoliberalism and globalism and social relationships, activating those practices, which form the foundation of social unity. The term 'dual societies' is borrowed from J.H. BOEKE's Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies. Using that term, the author reconceptualizes and describes the perspective of dual societies to represent the perspective of Claude LEVI-STRAUSS, who describes the "criterion of authenticity" as follows. "After modernization, humans have lived simultaneously and dually in two societies-authentic society and inauthentic society-existing differently therein." Though there are many arguments against globalism and neoliberalism, they are limited to discussions of a particularity that is comparable and replaceable. Antonio NEGRI and Michael HARDT cite one example in their book, Empire, in which they argue about the production of locality in globalism. Their discussion goes so far as to criticize the production of particularity that still supports the globalism of generality on the axis of the dichotomy between generality and particularity. In their argument, however, they do not discuss singularity. The idea of singularity overlaps with the view of Gilles DELEUZE, who argued for the opposition of repetition to generality, and who showed that the perspective of incomparable or irreplaceable singularity is distinguishable from particularity. That singularity, as well as repetition, is located on the axis of universality-singularity, not on an axis of generality-particularity, on which generality and exchange are located. Each axis corresponds to the inauthentic society or authentic society in the theory of criterion of authenticity discussed by LEVI-STRAUSS. In authentic society and inauthentic society, media, such as currencies or administrative organizations, appear qualitatively different. When the authentic society is subsumed under inauthentic society and the media of the latter perpetuates into the former, the authentic society modifies generalized media into ones with other qualities, without generality. Many anthropologists have described practices that alter generalized media into modification. One good example is the ethnography of the Nuer society described by Sharon E. HUTCHINSON, who conceptualizes it as cattle-ified money. Another example is J. PARRY and M. BLOCH'S Money and the Morality of Exchange, which describes the practices of domesticating money. Re-examining the endeavors of anthropologists from the perspective of dual societies, it becomes clear that the practices described in the ethnographies maintain the boundary between authentic society and inauthentic society, creating dual societies. Thus, the perspective of dual societies enables the interpretation of diverse practices to respond to neoliberalism and/or globalism. For strategic countermeasures against neoliberalism, it is not enough to reform the systems in inauthentic societies. More important are the everyday practices carried out in authentic society, such as non-identical repetition. Moreover, the repetitive practices are enabled and accommodated within asocial unity. That unity is based on human relationships in which persons are wholly, personally, and concretely understood by each other.
