Anthropology and Social Theory CULTURE, POWER,

AND THE

ACTING SUBJECT

Sherry B. Ortner

DUKE UNIVERSITY P R E S UUHIIAM BNB LONDON 2006

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"Identicis: The Hidden tif= a l C W b u m 1 ofAnrhmpdogiur lk rch (19981:

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FOR TIM AND GWEN

M'ith low as alwoyr

r Updating Practice Theory

W hen practice thmrycameon the scene in the late 1970s.

the theoretical landscape was dominated by three ', > major paradigms: interpretive or "symbolic" anthropology,

launched by the work of Clifford Geertz Marxist political.;> -, - . -.-

economy, ... ~~~ whoseleading practitioner was pmba ly Er~c Wolf; 4 and some form brother of ~rench structuralis$, launched by

Claude L&<-Strauss, but by that time beginning to be re-

placed by \ariouspostst~cturalisms.

All of there represented - important moves beyond an ear-

""lier hegemonic functionalism. Where functionalists asked, - _ __ how do t h k hang together!, Geertz asked, what do they

mean? M'bere functionalists viewed social systems as largely

benign and tending toward stability, Marxists emphasized the

exp1oitatit.e nature of capitalism and other social formations,

which provoks ongoing movements for de tab i i i t ion and

change. ~ n d where Functionalists asked about the practical

Function of institutions, W-Strauss showed that both prac-

tical institutions, Like kinship, and seemingly impractical

ones, Like myth, operated according to an underlying logic or

"structure."

t At one level thee were very different enterprises, and to

some degree were opposed to each other. But from another I

point of ria*. _ they a l l _ had one thing ~ ._ in common: - they were

f :: ..\ , , , r 6 , essential14 &unes of , " c o n s t f ? i Human behavior was

I 4 , " shaped, molded, ordered, and defined by external s o d and , ., i " cullural forces and formations: by culture, by mental struc-

t , l lr$. I,y c:ll~ilali$ni. 0 1 couru, structural <onslrai~il$ 01 various kindsole leal

and are not being denied. Indeed I will argue later that some critiques 111 l l ~ r

culture concept have lost the important element of constraint in that concept.

But a purely constraint-&+theory, without attention to either human

agency or to the processes that produce and reproduce those constraints-

social practices-was coming to seem increasingly problpmatic.

In sociology (less in anthropology) an early challenge to this constraint

perspective was mounted in theworkcfErvingGotlinan (1959,1967) andother

practitioners of so-called interadionism. But interactionism in turn was too -- -. . . ~. ~ -.-

extreme, setting aside virtually all structural constraints and focusing on the . .

microsociology of interpersonal interaction. Interactionism never achieved - .. anything like the influence ofthe other schools, but it staked out and occupied

J the space of the opposition, and kept alive a version of the so-called struc-

turelagency opposition. p-:~ ..,. . h h - . ractlce t eory ok up the challenge ofovercoming this opposition. Three

key works came o.ut.w~thin a very short space oftime in the late 1970s andearly \ . .

1980s: Pierre ourdieu's Ohtlme of a n~eory of Practice (1978). Anthony ~ i d ~ b > . . - . . . dens's CentralProbkms in Social Theory: Aq'on, Structure, and Cor~tradicrion in

Social Analysis (1979), and Marshqll ~ahlins'; IHistoricnl Metaphors and Mph-

ical Hcalities: Structure in the Early fjl;r;ry of the Sandwich Islar~ds Kingdom

(1981). Each in its own way set out to conceptualize the articularions between ~~ ~ ~~ . ~ ~

j the practices of social actors "on the ground" and the big "structures" and

pR.kr ,Oe f :"systems" thatboth constrain th~se~ract icesand yetare ultimately susceptibl$ . I \ . _ - ~

. . ~ ~ . . I i to being transformed by them.They accomplished this by arguinp, in different

.I 'w&s, for t h e p q r a t h e r than oppositional relationship between the

structural constraints of society and culture on the one hand and the "prac-

tices"-the new term was important-of social actors on the other. They

argued as well that "~bje.nivistn perspectives (like Wolf's political economy)

and "subjectivist" perspectives (like Geertz's interpretive anthropology) were

not opposed ways of doing social science but represented ':riioment.if (Bour- --- dieu 1978:3) in a larger project of attempting to understand the dialectics of

social life. These works were, in short, enormously important in at least

beginning to .~... lay out . the ~ mechanisms by which theseeming co_nxadictjap-

that "history . makes . ., people, . but people make history" (Ortner 2003:277)- is not only not a contradiction, but is perhaps the proroundest truth of

. . ~~

social ijfe,'~

I'\II ;,I ~ I I I I P I w < $ I ~ B , plat 11, r 111ro1y oflr~ccl ~ - I I I I I B I ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ 1 1 ~ ~ 1 1 ~ 01 ~ I O I ,

1~111s I I U I I I I ~ I C I lwc-11 111.1~1ti11g t l ~ c l~cld, M J I I I C ~ . I ~ ~ I I ~ Ij.t<k to I U I I ~ I ~ ~ I I V ~ ~ I S I I ~ , ~ ~ ~

SOIIIZ HCII(.I I I I C ~ by IIIC nrw s c l ~ ~ n ~ l s of theory of the '60s and '70s. It restored

tllr actor to the social prucess without losing sight of the larger structures that

constrain (but also enable) social action. It "grounded" cultural precesses- . ~. . . discourses, representations, what we used to call 'symbol sntemsv-in the

sociii&%&af people "on the ground." Its conception of ~ o s e grounded .~ ~ , .- - -- ---

~ o c i a l ~ ~ a ~ o n s in turn was (to varying degrees) Marxist andlor Weberian, . -- ~ _ rather than functionalist. opening up the space for questions of pow<r and

Y' inequality with which 1 and many others had become increasingly concerned

in the 1970s.

From that period on, practice theory became the general frame within

which I would cast my work Yet for all the invaluable ways in which it

potentially liberated the field from the old oppositions, it in tum-how could -.--

things be othenvise?-had some significant limitations. Thus almost from the -~ - ~

outset 1 found myself tinkering with the framework, drawing on other major

changes inside and outside of anthropology. This essay is in many ways a

history of that tinkering. It involves pulling in a great deal of work by others

but emphasizes the ways in which 1 usedboth practice theory itself and those

other bodies of work within my own writings, including both earlier writings

and the essays in this book

There were !hree major areas in which significant new work was going on, ~ ... ~~~ , . . .. . ..

and which I saw as offering major correctives for and improvements to the /--~ ',,

basic practice theory framework The first,has what I will call "the power LA *,.,' . .,...-. * ., ...~..

shift,":associated with the work of James Scott, Michel Foucault, Raymond ~-

Williams, and others, and linked in various ways with work in critical ~ ~ d i e ~ , ,. -. .-

of colonialism, gender, race, and e t h n i c i q f ~ e ~ d a s what Terrence McDonald ..,*-

(1996) called "the historic turn:' a broad movement to hiitoricize workin the . .~ ... .. .

social sciences and thus to move beyond the static frameworks that had ''-

practice theory from functionalism.

ere was what l will call the reinterpretation(s) of culture. It is - main focus of the present volume. As I have explored the

ilnplications of the power shift (especially in Ortner 1996) and have taken the

llistoric turn (cspeciaially in Ortner 1989,1999,2003) in earlierworks,I will only

hriefly review them here, although they remain vitally important to the works

in lhih V I I I U I I I C ns wcll. 1h1t 111~. rritiqllcs and ~ctl~rorimtions of culture in the

lb,~st x v c a :!I clc~.~lrh I C I I I . I ~ I I I,) ljc C X ~ I I I I I I C ~ , I I I I C ~ ~ I ! I < > I I I', ~ ~ I I V ~ I I I ~ I I ~ I I I I ? I @ I

ticc (and power and history).

Early Expansions

In more or less the same period in which practice theory came on the scene,

there emerged an important body of work rethinking questions o i "power." -. ...

These included such diverse works as Raymond Williams's Marxism a r~d Liter-

ature (lgn), Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality Part I(1979). and James

Scott's Weapons of the Wenk (1985). These converged in various ways with the

florescence of critical studies in gender, race, ethnicity, and colonialism. Sincc

1 had been actively working in the arenaof feminist anthropology, and specifi-

cally in those years with questions of "male dominance," it w a virtually

/ inevitabie that I would become aware of the relative weakness of practice --. ~ ~ . . .

theory onthis issue. Practice theory did not ignore power, of course, but .\.- ., . .. . . . . . neither did it make it central to the theoretical framework in the w-ays that

ieemed called for by this type of critical work on inequality and domination.

In retrospect it secms to me that my work on gender inequalit)' \\.as push-

ing me toward somekind of practice theory approach in the first place. On the

one hand I wanted to understand the cultural construction of gender relations

in more or less the classic Geertzian way. In fact, in the introduction to Sexual

Mennings (1981), Harriet Whitehead and 1 adapted Geertz's famour phrase

and wrote that the book wasconcerned with "gender as a cultural system." But

we went on to say that we were interested in more than the logic and \\.orkings -.. ,~

of the gender system, that we wanted to understand, as it were, wt.ere it was .. . . .- . . . . . .. . . . , . . . - .~ .

coming from. Put in other words, we wanted to understand the ways in which - .- - %- . . such systems were "grounded" in various kinds of social relations, and, 1

would now say, social practices.

My own article in that volume, called "Gender and Sexuality in Hierarchi-

cal Societies" (1981), involved inventing a kind of practice theory approach

withour knowing exactly what 1 was doing. 1 had not yet read any practice

theorQbut looking back at that paper, 1 realize I was groping toward a

method that would help me solve some of the puzzles of unequal, and some-

times violently unequal, gender relations in a range of Polynesian societies.

For example, I was interested in the treatment of daughters of chiers, who

were IIII lllet~rle 11al11l rlalbtlralrly l , r * ~ ~ ~ l i h ~ l R I I ~ ~ ,111 lltr ~ ~ I I I ~ I I I ~ I I I ' I krill I , , , , I ~ I

v r l y l i ~ ~ l l \ ? 8 t I r # l l l ~ ! ~ ~ ~ ~ l l r t ~ ~ . 1 inp,llrc~ 1h:ll thc5c ,;it15 werc pawrls in an clabratc

< I I I I I I I ~ I I R ~ I I I I ~ . (i~:, I wu ld IIOW call i t ) 01 male preaige. The idea was that. once

one tigured out the game-that is, thc configuration of practices involving the

players in question, its underlying logic, and its cultural goal-the punling

elements would make sense. I will not spend time summarizing the inter-

pretation. The point here is simply that my work in a particular arPna of

power relations-gender-was pushing me toward some kind of a practice

theory framework, which involved an analytic device that I later (1996a) came -

to cali "(serious) games?)

The early practice theorists did not, as 1 said earlier, ignore issues of power.

They dealt with it in various ways. At issue in part is the relative weight given

to power as organized into the cultural or institutional order (which ~ l d d e n g i... calls 'domination"), and 'power" as an actual social relation of real on-the-

ground acton (which Giddens calls "power"). Both are important, but a A,,; :.,,, strong emphasis on structural power tends ironically to move away from the

, : , . , question of real practices. We see this most clearly in Outline ofa Theory of

~ ~ . . Pracrice. Social relations of power and inequality, especially patriarchal rela-

tions, are central to the book. But they are never explored as specific forma-

tions of power, involving specific ideologies and practices. Rather, Bourdieu .

devotes most of his intellectual efforts to the elaboration of the notion of __-- . .. &a&&, a deeply buried structure that shapes people's dispositions to act

such ways that they wind up accepting the dominance of others, or of "the

system." without being made to do so. Sahlins tends to follow a similar pat-

tern. W i l e he describes practices of interpersonal power in the Hawaiian

case, he tends to give a much greater mle to impersonal forms of constraint,

built into the structures of asymmetry that ran through every relationship in

that hierarchically organized society. Giddensappears somewhat different. He

has a useful discussion of what he calls "the dialectic of control" (1979:145 ff).

in which he argues that systems of control can never work perfectly, because

those being controlled have both agency and understanding and thus can

always find ways to evade or resist. His arpuments fit well with those of James

Scott, one of the power theorists to be discussed below. The difference is \ perhaps that for Giddens power is just one of many modalities of practice, 1 (Y'

while for Scott and the other power theorists it is absolutely central to the !

framework.

I r t lnr it1111 10 ~ I I O \ P I I ' I W ~ I I ~ I C O I I S I S R I I ~ W I ~ I I ittry 11,141 111 111lr1. MY rhnice

i of theorists hcre-l:oucault, Scott, and Williams- Inay i~lq?c.b~ W I I ~ I W I I ~ I I 11111

zling. At the very least the reader might be wondtring why I list no il~eorisls (11

gender, racial, or colonial domination. I can only say that these three ligures

offer the most general tools for examining any form of domination and

inequality, including those of gender, race, and colonialism. Thus Foucault has

played a major role in the work of one of the most influential theorists of

feminism, Judith Butler (e.g., 1997), and in the work of the towering figure in

(post)colonial studies, Edward Said (e.g., 1978). Scott's work has generated a

virtual industry of studiesof 'resistance" of all sorts, induding especially slave

and peasant resistance movements. Raymond Wfiams is the founding ances-

tor ofthat vast school ofscholarshipcalled "cultural studies." which hasgener-

ated important work on the power relations of gender, race. class, and youth.

The three theorists can be placed along a spectrum that is defined by one of

the central problematics of studies of power: the question of the pervasiveness -

or invasiveness of power. At one end we havej~oucauT$ho has argued that .. . -

>, : : power is socially ubiquitous, suffused through every aspect of the social sys-

, , , , - I , .~ ~

,: , , tem, and psychologically deeply invasive. There is no "outside" of power. At .I. I ' , .

~ ~ 1 " ' ti the other end we have la who takes the position that, while there is . r , , . I ? c ' ,..." certainly a great deal of y,:.., power in play in social life, it is much less mentally I r l , , . r . .

.',:, ' , ~ I . .,. / invasive than others have arguec@Ie proposes (1990) that dominated people ; 9;,' . . - . , , , understand very well what is going on, and even have explicit traditions- j . : % i, : . .. "hidden transcripts"-of critique and resistance. If they do not actively resist, , , !

I I , 1 , . , - it is only because they are held back by-ce sheer political and economic power !,

. ,

c ,, of the dominating group. F i ~il l iar&lgn) takes a kind of intermediate i ./.' position, seeing actors as to some egree in the grip of 'hegemonies:' but

picking up Gramsci's argument to the effect that llegemonies are never total

. and absolute, in several senses. They are never total in a historical sense, , ,,. ' ''7. r:

, . because in the flow of history, while one may talk of hegemonic formation(s) ' '

in the present, there are always also remnants of past ("residual") hegemonies , , . . ~ . , : . , ! . . , , . and the beginnings'of future ("emergent") ones. And hegemonies are also *li . -

, never total in the psychological sense, because people always have at least

some degree of "penetration*' (if not virtually full awareness, as Scott would

argue) into the conditions of their domination.

All ofthese perspectives are useful for particular purposes, and I have used

all of them in one context or another. But I have forl~ld the Gramsci-derived

rroliorl ~ ~ l l ~ r & ~ m < ~ n l r r a5 rtnln~ly t111111i1llin~ h111 nevel ~ I I I I I I I I P I T 01 I O I P I 11) IK lllc lnnsl l~hrlul in lily varlt*l~% ~ I l ~ l l l l l l b 111 illjc~ I lllotr ~ I I W C I illlu 81 ~ ~ l i ~ c l l c c

. I I I ~ I ~ W I ~ I I . 1i11 cxal~~plc, ill "Gc~bclcr Hcgctnonics" (19y6b) thc notion o l in-

complete hegemonies allo.r.ed me to move beyond a simplistic notion of

"universal male dominance:' not so much by hndiig "cases" of non-male

dominance but by reoognizing that male dominance always coexists with , (t,;l.h other patterns of gender mlations; what is important is the mix, and the , ,LL)

I ' relations between the elemen'&

Putting this all together in the introduction to Making Gender 1 began to

sketch out what I called a'feminist, minority, subaltern, etc., theory of prac-

tice," which focused in pan on questions of direct resistance, but more on

ways in which domination iwlfwas always rivenwith ambiguities, contradic- .. ~~ ~ ~ . .. .

tions, and lacunae. This means in turn that social reproduction is never total,

always imperfect, and vulnerable . . to the pressures and . instabilities ~~ inherent in ~ ~

any situation of unequal power. I brought thisview to bear on the relationship

between Sherpas and Western mountaineers ("sahib<') in Himalayan moun-

taineering (Life and Dearh on Mt. Everest, 1999). In that study I was able to

show "real" resistance: It is not well known in the outside world, for example,

that the supposedly happy iompliant Sherpas often went on strike on Hima-

layan expeditions. But I a lw explored a central contradiction in the Western

mountaineers' views of, and treatment of, the Sherpas. On the one hand the

Westerners were powerful (as white, as Western. as employers, and, in the

early years, asquasi-mili- leaders). On the other hand they often developed

a great deal of affection a d admiration for the Sherpas with whom they "'

worked. This contradiction was not lost upon the Sherpas, who were able to

exploit it often quite successfully, to bring about significant transformations

in the structure of the Sherpa-sahib relationship, and of Himalayan expedi-

tions in general, over the course of the twentieth cennuy.

In the end the two bodies of theory can be easily merged. The three

founding practice theorism can be interestingly seen to parallel the three

positions on the spectrum of the psychological "depth of power. Bourdieu is - . ~ . - . . . , .

most like Foucault, in that his notion of habitus is oneof adeeply internalized

structure, powerfully controlling and largely inaccessible to consciousness

(see also dc Certeau 1984). Giddens is more like Scott, emphasizing the ways

in which actors are at least partially "knowing subjects" (see, e.g., 1979:5) who

are ~ b l c to rcllect to somedegrceon their circumstancesand by implication to

I develop a certain level of critique and ~ossible resislancc. And I ~ n ~ l l y Sahlill*

is most like Wdliams. He subscribes to a notion of strong cultural h q c ~ ~ l c ~ ~ l l r s

but also allows for certain, shall we say, crack, in the structure, as for example

when he talks about how the gendered food taboos of eighteenth-century

Hawaiians "did not sit upon Hawaiian women with the force [they] had for

men" (1981:46), a small difference that would make a large difference in the

long run.

Looking at the relationship from the point of view of the pon,er theorist$

we can see that their integration with practice theory was already (

, . there. Thus, Foucault's interest in locating the production of power less in ,! I.! , ,J,:..; C ,', macro-institutions like the state and more in micro-interactions like the . . _ , , ... l a ,

, " ~ , , . p;ie~t-~eniten~ relationship, has obvious atlinitik with practice theory's in-

, , / . l

, . terest in looking at ground-level sources of larger formations. Scan's interest

in resistance is nothing other than a way of asking the question of how

(certain kinds of) practices lnay transform structures. And Raymond Wil-

liams argued that "hegemonies" had to be understood not as "structures"

external to individuals but 2s "the whole lived social process'' (1977:109),

which "has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. . . [and] also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged" f~gn:~lz)-which

has in short to be both practiced and resisted In a way one could say that all

I these new power theories were themselves varieties of practice theon. as well.

1 said earlier that the emergence of various theories of power was more or

less simultaneous with the emergence of early practice theory. The same is

true, interestingly, of "the historic turn." One rralivs in retrospect iust how

theoretically fertile that period during the late 1970s ~~ ~ ~~ and early 1980s ~ ~ ~ ~ . . was. We

turn then to the historic turn.

1 THE HISTORIC TURN \ . - I

My sense of the necessity to historicize practice theory came primarily out of

theoretical developments on this side of the Atlantic. Several varieties of

historic turn had taken shape in anthropolog~, including Marxist-inspired

historical "political economy," as in Eric Wolf's Europe and the Peopk witholrt

History (1981); certain forms of cultural histoq (e.g., Geertz's Negnra jlg8o));

and the early work on colonial history launched by Bernard Cohn (1980),

which would later become a major enterprise across many academic dirci-

plines. The historic turn(s) were enormously unpr t sn t b111 methodologi-

tally, In deml*l111111~ 111e i ~ a d ~ ~ ~ ~ , ~ ) a l l ~ nlntlc r~llwlrs ol e ~ l ~ n o ~ t q ) l ~ u atqusy,

011d h~~bala~~lrvrly, ill ~ r l b i s ~ ~ n ~ 1l1:1t tllr tri~rlilio~~:~l world ol nnthn>pdc~icrl -, - 7

,+ , - > . trl)jctts- "~ull~~res"-wcrc 1101 lin~clms and pristine objects, but m e them- ,dX7y ---

sclvcs product5 of the restless operation of both internal dynamics (mostly; I ,.

local power relations) and external forces (such as capitalism and colonial- : ism) over time.'

In the founding works of practice theory, Bourdieu had insisted on the

importance of time, not only in the unfolding of interactive practices and

their outcomes, but in giving meaning to those interactions. He gives (197%&

7) the famous example of the meanings produced by the manipulation of

temporality in gift giving. If thegift is reciprocated too quickly, this implie m

eagerness "to close the book" and end the relationship. If it is reciprocated

too slowly, it implies a low level of interest in the relationship, or even active

disrespect. Yet Bourdieu-nes rea!ly-tried towrite historical practice theory -.-z.--

- ~

(OK perhaps bettersaid;jpra&ce-theorized history to look at the ways in .~ . . \.-___^- which real histories. as both durations and events, are shaped by practices

within and against existing 'structures."

From my point of view, by contrast, practice theory was not only intrim

sically temporalized in the relatively small-scale sense dixussed by Bourdieu,

but that in effect it did its best work in the context of full-blown historical

analysis. Indeed in High Religion I said explicitly that "a theoyof .~ practice . is ~ a ,/ theory of history" (192). This is because the playing out of the effects of . - - - .. . - - - - . . culturally o r g a n i d practices is essentially processual and often very slow: the

construction of social sub~eas, often from childhood; the practices of life of

young people and adults; the articulation of those practices with lager events

in the world. often moving to a very different rhythm. Although one can form

hypotheses-guesses, more likely-about the long-term implications of pre- ent practice, their effects in terms of social reproduction and social transfor- k-.

mation are often not visible, nor interpretable, until some time aftu the fact.

Of the three founding practice theorists, only Marshall Sahlins proposed -/

an explicilly historical form of practice theory. He develops his theory within

the framework of a historical case, that of the encounter between Europea~ls

and native Hawaiians in the eighteenth century. He theorizes from this exam-

ple a number o&portant waysin which practices operate to affect t h e c o u r /,-,. . .

~~ ~

of history. Th st is that acts and objects have different mean-* h the ~ ~ .. .~ .~ . . . . ~.

"collective ay~llbolic sfl~rrne" (lgH1:69) and in the plans and intentions-the

NOTES

Introduction: Updating PracticeTheory

Thanks first toTi~nothyTayloylor for speedy, insightful, andextremely hdpful commentson

several drafts of this introduction. In addition I presented earlier versions of this intro-

duction, then tirled "Serious Garnn: to the Department of Anthmpologi at Stanford

Universiry and to theUCultures ofCapitalismn group a1 UCLA. In both cares I received "cry probing comments (that alw reinforced some quntions raised by one of the anonymous

press readers), and that caiaed me to change the direction of the -y substantially. 1 thank them aU.

I . Because ofthe longstanding his~orical opposition hetween "structure" and "agency"

in the social sciences, and the ways in which this opposition secms to function as a

deep structurein the Uui-Strausiansense, rhere was and continus to be a tendency

to view practice theory itselfasa kind ofcovcrt revival of theories that undeiernpha- size the real and derply redimented constraints under which peoplelive. I have been

opposing this view at least since my monograph on the founding of Sherpa monas-

teries, High Religion (1989:11-18) and can only say again that nothing a u l d be further from the truth. Indeed mon readers of(especially the early work o f ) Baur-

dieu and Giddens would argue that in the end both of these pioneers of practice

theory tended to w~remph~riustructuraI constraint, even as they viewed structures as producedthrough (never-free) social practicer.

2. Marshall Sahlins kindly sent me the manuscript of Hislorim1 Mefaphors. . . when 1

was writing that paper. At the time I read it mainly for 'data" It was only on a later rereading that I focused o n his theoretical framework and its resonances with other

practice theory work coming out in that era. I made the connections in Ortner 1984.

3. Scott casts his argument against an exaggerated version of Gramsci's position on hegemony. taking 'hegemonyp to be something that totally controls the minds ofthe

dominatrd pa-. 4. Most recently Wdliam H. Smell Jrls wry important Login ojHistory (zoos) has

provided a theorization o f 'events" that not only illuminates SaMins's 'possible Illmry ofhistory" (as Sahlins had called it), but provides a powerful theorization af 1111 rclslior,ship hcrween historical thinking and social dnd cultural theory much miom l,,,>,,,ll".

' 3 . 'llmr #lrnmrr lc, wllllll lhr !rbr<llr *II(IIIII It1 I\>IIc. (11 ' l d i l vltlen B pb~al deal #wrv l l l t lc

I~r~r~!tly, IUI rr;8sq,lr. tllr Nrw YcprA l i r n n r.~!, 0 11111111 111111 wllte 1111 $1#4s 111 A l n ~ r ~

ica. But a1 the lcvel of pl~pula~ corgutousl>rrs. "~lr>\ ' ' i\ v~rtt~*lly I I IBIIII I I I~J>I i(t,,l

untalkd about. See Ortner 2003. 6. Baurdieu later (loon) shifted andlor defended hir argunnrnts I < > r<vwr <lrl:trr.

Throughout this essay I refer primarily to the earlyworks in wh~rh his ba~ ic outlirtes

of a theoryof practice (to coin a phrase) were laid out: 1978 and &!go.

1. Reading America: Class and Culture

This paper was written while I was a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study

in Princeton, New jersey, supported by funds from the University of Michtgan and the

National Endowment for the Humanities. Arjun Appadurai, Nicholas B. Dirk, and Elliot Shore read the first drah on short notice and gave me extremely useful comments. Later

drafts were read by Nancy (Jlcdorow, Salvatore Cucchiari, Richard Fox. Abigail Stewart, and Peter van der Veer, all of whom provided excellent insights and sugcrtionr. There

was also very constructive and stimulating diwussion of the paper in the Thursday night

seminar of the Program in the Comparative Study of Social Transformations. which nourished and provoked me intellectually at the University of Michigan throughout the

late'8as and early '90s.

I . Ethnographic work by sociologistr began to diminish in the 195or, presumablycoin-

ciding with the achievement of hegemony ofquantitative research in that field. 2. Schneider and Smith's Ckrr D i e r e n w a n d S e r Roles in American KinrlzipandFamily

Structure (1973) is one of the rare anthropological works on America with "class" in

its title, but it is not a monograph. There arc also some older review articles by Goldschmidt (1-0, 1915). A review article by Raymond Smith on "Anthropological

Studies of Class" (1984) focuses largely on the study of third world societies.

3. Television sitcoms of both white and black lower-class families (such as All in tlte

Family and Sanford and Son) have long followed the tradition of reprewnting both groups as endearing ethnic othen.

4. It will be no surprire to the anthmpologiru that Lloyd Warner, whose work with Australian aborigines f ~ u s e d on kinship terms-that is, on native categoria of

social relationships-was essentially the founding father of the srcond-native category-approach.

5. It might beargued that "middleclass" is not adasr term at all, since it is not generally seen as part of a das, srrumre, that is, as a positional or relational category vis-a-vis

other classes. In ordinarydiscourx it seems simply to mean a general allegiance to the nation and to large, overarching valuer like freedom and individualism.

6. This is the so-called multiple domination position, i%.ith which I am in basic agree-

ment. One ofthe clearest statements ofthis position is to he found in Cohen OySz).

Another version isdevelopedinLadau andMouffe (1985). Feminist theory in general

also tends toward a multiple domination position; r e , far exan~plc, Sack3 (,guy).

7. There is a prohlem of tern~inology here. I h c tarriir fur lhe lcwc~ r t d of the rli~ra

S I ~ W turv arc 10 so111e cx~cnt r : ~ iztlly <#wIed, The ttr nt ' " w n t k l ~ ~ ~ I,!>\'' W I ~ I S Z I C , I

t l t i t l l y 10 rcler to whites. For black people onemore often -'lower dass." 1 will use

1111. tcrrns interchangeably for both.

8. There seems to have been more intmjectionin h e nineteenthcentury, when h e split

between the middle class and the working class war played out wirhin middle-class

gender relations (see Smith-Rorenberg 1986).

9. The authors also identify an important tthnographic category: 'nobody," as in, "Her? Oh, she's nobody," More work needs to bedone on nobodies-

10. In Wilir's account of the diwo- of the nonconformist (it., the most "hoody")

working-class lads, they claim this greater mud expericncr and knowledgeability

for themselves, and \\'illis think it is probably true that they have more active sex

i lives than the ear'oln. I I . I am indebted to Arjun Appadurai for puttingthere particular pieces together. Some

of my students have argued that this xxual-cum-dass division no longer applies,

bemuse even middle-class ki& are having a lot of sex in high school. Although 1

accept my students as valid informants the question needs to be investigated more closely. I suspect that the situation is similar ro that dewribed by !kkert in her high-

school study with respect to drugs: both middle-class and working-class kids do

! drugs, bul the useofdrugs plays an entirelydiHerent role in their rnpec t ivevbo l ic

economies (Eckert 1989). 12. The phrase is from Claude Evi-Straw (1966).

13. A little known but very interestinguample is Raymond Sokolov's1975 novel Native !

Intelligence.

14. This alx, suggests that they were wcialisth but Roth does not develop the political

contrasts in the story. 15. Another painful iron? with resport to hidden injuries of clars:while the middle class

endows the workingclass with aireeandimaginativesexudity,sociologisu tellus that

sex as actually practiced in the working class is just the opposite: reprcsred, unim- aginative, and-according to informants-kc+?ly unsatisfying (see Reiciche 1971).

1 / 2. Resistance and Ethnographic Refusat

1. An earlier andverydifferent version ofthisessaywas written for"TheHistoric'Ibrnn

Conference organized by Terrence McDonald for the Program in the Comparative Study of Socid Transformations (cssr) at the University of Michigan. The extraor- dinarily high level of insightfulness and helpfulness of cri~ical comments from my

colleagues in c s s ~ has by now k o m e dmost routine, and I wirh to thank them collectively here. In addition for close and dztailed readings of the ten, l wish to

thank Frederick Cooper. Fernando Coronil. Sicholas Dirks, Val Daniel, Gmff Eley,

Kay Grew, Roger Rouse. \Yilliam H. Sewell Ir.. Julie Skurski, Ann Stoler, and the excellent readers who reviewed rhis work when it war first published in Cor!8parative

Studies irj Society and History (373 [1995]: 173-93). 1 have incorporated many of their su~gt.rti,ms and know that 1 haw ignored some at my peril. finally, for valuable ~n~nwcot : . as well as ibr thc hcmii joh of oreartizing the confcrcnce, I wirh especially 111 111811h 'li.1 I(.II<C hl~ l l t ) r~ i~ ld ,