1997 Volume 61 Issue 4 Pages 616-642
Essentialist writing is being criticized by those who hold the viewpoint that cultures are "objectified". According to some writers, "objectification" means to make culture into "a thing" which is operative for a conscious end. This concept is well applied to the analysis of nationalist ideology or the discourse of traditionalist movements. The construction of culture in this sense is regarded as parallel to the subjective construction of a nation or ethnicity. This cultural "objectification" is well termed as "operational objectification". However, the term "objectification" was originally used by Roy Wagner in a different way. Anthropologists in the field objectify or invent culture in order to adapt themselves to the new circumstances of meanings and behavioral norms. This is the process of objectification as a cultural principle. There is also a general principle that social and cultural change occurs as a result of the dialectical relation between convention and invention. Accordingly, culture should be understood as being originally dynamic in the sense that it always changes while it continues at the same time. The difference between "operational objectification" and "objectification as a cultural principle" reflects on respective historical views. The former stands in the perspective of the historical discontinuation of culture, the latter in the historical continuation of culture. The former attaches ultimate values and importance to the present, perceiving that the past merely contributes to the conscious and largely political purpose of the present, while the latter regards the present only as a temporal point in passing from the past to the future. Admitting that the discourse produced by particular subjects of a society is operationally objectified, the aspects of the life and practice of the majority of society is left unstudied. These aspects are continually innovated as time progresses. Marshall Sahlins has analyzed the contact between the Hawaiians and Captain Cook. Sahlins does not see the indigenous Hawaiian society as monolithic. Rather, he admits that there existed various subjects in the society, and that the dominant subjects among them, such as the priests, took advantage of their interpretation of Captain Cook as the ancient god Lono in order to gain power and legitimacy. Nicholas Thomas also sees externality as a dominant part of the cultural constitution of indigenous societies. One of his main theses is that self-representation is oppositional or reactive. Thomas regards kerekere, the Fijian term for a popular kind of gift exchange, as a custom objectified and invented in the historical process of contact between Western agents and native Fijians. The idealized social attributes of Fijian customary life represented by the word kerekere are the inverse of those attributed to Fijian Indians and probably the Westerners as well. The oppositional characterization of Fijians as communalist is a form of "reactionary objectification". This concept stemmed from inter-ethnic rivalry. Thomas' main interest here is operational objectification and characterization as an ideological reaction. Interestingly, on this point, Sahlins puts it the other way round, arguing that the failure of white men to participate in kerekere led Fijians to construct themselves as selfish rather than that the selfishness of white men led Fijians to construct themselves as generous. Thomas also argues that various indigenous systems used to exist in terms of circulation based on reciprocal relations. After the contact with Europeans, goods such as muskets (guns) and whale teeth were introduced to the indigenous societies. These goods were appropriated and recontextualized in the indigenous societies, and treated as inalienable valuables with prestigious connotation. With such an account,
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