BOOK REVIEWS

Culture and Anomie: EthnographicImagination in the Nineteenth Cen­tury, by Christopher Herbert. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1991. ISBN0-226-32738-8 cloth, ISBN 0-226­32739-6 paper, ix + 364 pp, notes,bibliography, index. Cloth, US$48.00;paper, us$16.9S.

Culture-as an assertion of a whole­ness or interconnectivity among theinstitutionalized ways of thinking andacting in society-is the central, defin­ing concept of anthropology. In practi­cal terms, it is the intellectual searchwarrant that allows the anthropologistto enter and ransack the domains ofpsychology, economics, and everyother social science and to range freelyin philosophy, law, and art, appro­priating theory, method, and substan­tive findings at will. Naturally, such apowerful writ has also found heavy usein a number of other fields, as well asin everyday discourse.

Despite its importance in modernthought, Christopher Herbert argues inCulture and Anomie, culture is aninherently unstable concept fraughtwith irresolvable logical difficulties.Many, perhaps most, anthropologiststoday would agree that there are seri­ous problems in this area of theory,and the literature amply demonstratesthat debates about the most fundamen­tal assumptions of the culture thesishave continued without resolutionsince the beginnings of the discipline.Arguably, the instability of its key con­cept imparts a restless-in fact anomic-character to the whole field ofanthropology, but the idea of culture issimply too useful to give up. If we can'tclarify it, we can try to understand its

origins and history, which might atleast help to explain why and how itresists clarification. In this book, Her­bert offers a fascinating, if necessarilypartial, account of the nineteenth­century origins of the concept of cul­ture, and the historical, literary-rhetor­ical perspective he brings to theanalysis yields valuable insights.

Herbert argues that the idea of cul­ture, together with the research meth­odology of fieldwork and participantobservation, did not originate withcertain specific key figures in the his­tory of anthropology-Tylor, Mali­nowski, and others-as anthropolo­gists would like to believe. Using amodel of the origin of innovations inscience proposed by Ludwig Fleck, aprecursor of Thomas Kuhn in the phi­losophy of science, Herbert argues thatthe concept of culture, as a self-referen­tial system of meanings that closelygoverns the details of life in a society,actually existed in a "larval stage" inVictorian evangelical theology andhomiletics. The culture thesis repre­sents a rejection of and reaction againstVictorian ideas and values, but it wasalso profoundly shaped by them.

For Herbert, the science of culturestarts from the doctrine of original sin,which postulates that humans possessan inherent animalistic drive for thegratification of desires that know nolimits or restraints. John Wesley, theinfluential nineteenth-century religiousreformer and preacher, held that thisfact of bestial human nature leads to allkinds of depravity and otherwiseunfortunate excesses unless counteredby a personal regime-possiblethrough God's grace-of strict modera­tion in every detail of life. As the dis-

THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· SPRING 1993

course of untrammeled desire unfoldsduring the nineteenth century, how­ever, the necessary restraining force ofGod comes to be replaced by civiliza­tion and social rules-conceived asforming a system-and it is the uncivi­lized savage, not the impious English­man, who is seen as bestial and out ofcontrol. This formulation in turn givesway, in the writings of rebellious Vic­torian intellectuals, to the contraryidea that the primitive human condi­tion is one of total control by customand precedent, and only when rigidtraditional constraints are broken areprogress and innovation possible. Thisline of thought simultaneously attacksthe rigid hypocrisy of Victorian values-which need to be broken free of­and supports the dominion of modernsocieties over "savage" ones-whichalso need to be freed of unthinkingtraditionalism. But the danger ofmodernity is that as normal social con­trols break down, aimless, insatiabledesire takes hold of the individual. Bythe end of the century, the lust andgluttony of original sin-terrible butnot without a certain evil attraction­have become transmuted into the inef­fectual, pitiable disorder of anomie.Herbert shows that the broad based,continuous debate in Western thoughtabout human nature and unlimiteddesire is important in understandingnot only prototypical figures in sociol­ogy like Durkheim but also contempo­rary writers such as Roland Barthes.

The idea of a closed, self-referentialsystem of meaning that governs allaspects of social life is essential to thedoctrinal transmutation of original sinto culture, and the system notion canbe seen as developing in the writings

and debates of the classical politicaleconomists. Herbert examines theworks of such writers as Adam Smith,Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill, andshows how the unstable but centralidea of value in economics is equivalentto the unstable but central idea of cul­ture in anthropology. From this systemperspective, the work of the early polit­ical economists is seen as prefiguringand preparing the intellectual groundfor Saussure's work in structural lin­guistics, which has been influential inthe evolution of the modern cultureconcept.

Even the specific method of socialanthropology-immersionary field­work and participant observation inthe language and other activities of thestudy culture-have important Victo­rian roots that are obscured by "offi­cial" accounts of the origins of thediscipline. Herbert's discussion of theearly ethnographic accounts of mis­sionaries to the South Pacific, such asThomas Williams in Fiji and WilliamEllis in Tahiti, as well as the fascinatingwork of Henry Mayhew among theLondon poor, provides valuableinsights into the current discussion ofthe ethnographic process in anthropol­ogy. For example, the note of unmerci­ful and relentless self-criticism in thepostmodern critique of ethnographyechoes the evangelical self-flagellatoryposture with regard to original sin.

Throughout the book, Herbertundertakes to incite the reader againstthe idea of culture. Presumably this isnecessary because culture has becomesuch a powerful and taken-for-grantedpart of modern thought that somerough tactics are necessary to denatu­ralize it. The author adopts the rhetori-

BOOK REVIEWS

cal device of identifying the culturethesis with witchcraft, the supernatu­ral, and superstition. From this per­spective it appears to be hardly morethan a pseudoscience-and probablyan evil one at that. Herbert uses wordslike mystical, magical, fantastic, anduncanny to describe the supposed oper­ation of cultural processes, which arepresided over by "vampire-like spirits"and "ghosts." Interestingly, a numberof culture theorists have used similarlanguage-generally to dismiss rivalformulations-and Herbert is able tointensify his eerie analytic atmospherewith quotations from Herbert Spencer,Ruth Benedict, Levi-Strauss, and evenClifford Geertz, who alludes to the"dark sciences" that inform some non­Geertzian forms of anthropologicalinterpretation. In this rhetorical con­text, Adam Smith's familiar "invisiblehand" takes on a chilling new meaning.

In this line of attack, Herbert'spremise is that culture theorists deal­and even admit dealing-in abstractpatterns and relationships that have noobservable, physical reality. This prac­tice inherently contradicts anthropolo­gy's claim to being carefully empiricalin orientation and devoted to plainfacts and straightforward description.Worse, they speak of things that haveno positive meaning but only meaningin relation to one another in closed,self-referential systems, and this leadsto another irresolvable contradiction:relativism. If cultures are closed sys­tems, how can one compare them, ortalk about one using the language andconcepts of another?

Of course, as Herbert fully ac­knowledges, this whole entertainingand useful book relies on the concept

of culture in every detail of substanceand method. He says that Durkheimequates modern sociology with "spirit­ualism (the pseudoscience of communi­cating with the dead)" (r6). But whenHerbert defends his own methods ofintellectual history-in which the liter­ary, scientific, and philosophical textsof an era are treated as "indivisible"­as making possible a "sharpened senseof intimate contact with an earliermentality" (25), the phrase has aghoulishly Durkheimian ring to it.

Perhaps in order to appear consis­tent with his criticism of cultural sys­tems as "occult," "invisible," "supersti­tious," and so on, Herbert tends to usemechanical metaphors in his own invo­cations of culture. For example, hespeaks of the "cultural machinery" (34)of Victorian society. This sort of super­ficial consistency cannot really work,and the author reveals himself aswholly dependent on the concept he ishacking away at.

Wittgenstein remarks, at the end ofhis Tractatus, that the reader who hasgrasped the argument will recognizethat his book is nonsense by its owndefinition. Herbert's book poses asimilar problem for both writer andreader. It is a postmodernist, decon­structionist, reconstructionist writer'sdilemma: how do you cut away theground from beneath a truly pervasiveelement of social theory and still leaveyourself somewhere to stand and tocarry out the excavation from?Whereas Wittgenstein could argue thathis Tractatus represents a ladder thatthe reader must pull up after him, Her­bert knocks the ladder down first,leaving the reader and himself to levi­tate by the power of will and fine writ-

THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· SPRING 1993

ANDREW ARNO

University ofHawai'i at Manoa

A Naturalist in New Guinea, by BruceM. Beehler. Corrie Herring HooksSeries no. 17. Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1991. ISBN 0-292-75541-4,251 pp, illustrations, maps, bibliogra­phy, index. us$26.95.

ing to the higher state of knowledgerepresented by the book's conclusions.

The book is a pleasure to read, filledwith stimulating insights and impres­sive scholarship. It offers an explana­tion for the weaknesses and confusionsof the culture concept in social inquiry,but it cannot propose a replacementand reestablish the certainty it disturbs.Presumably this is the postmoderncondition.

Bruce M. Beehler, an ornithologist andbehavioral ecologist on the scientificstaff of the United States NationalMuseum (Smithsonian Institution) inWashington, DC, has written anaccount of tropical exploration thatfollows in the tradition of works byAlfred Russell Wallace, William Beebe,and George Schaller. With its lively,personalized narrative, color photo­graphs, and evocative line drawings, ANaturalist in New Guinea conveys asense of wonder that will appeal to awide readership of amateur naturalistsand explorers. Beehler's descriptions oflinkages between the mating systemsand feeding ecology of New Guineabirds, especially the diverse and exoti­cally ornamented birds of paradise,provide an introduction to his moretechnical writings on these subjects and

will interest professional ecologists andevolutionary biologists. Moreover, hisobservations of the state of nature inNew Guinea, now besieged by acceler­ating environmental change, may alertthe tropical conservation movement tofocus more attention on a paradise thatis not yet lost.

Since 1975, Beehler has visited NewGuinea eight times on extended scien­tific explorations in both political juris­dictions of this immense island: PapuaNew Guinea, the eastern half, with itsformer colonial and continuing ties toAustralia; and Irian laya, the westernhalf, once a Dutch territory and nowpart of Indonesia. His longest stay wastwenty-nine months, spent in researchon birds of paradise. In describingtreks (mainly on foot) to various studysites, he details the difficulties in get­ting from place to place in some of thesteepest and wettest country on earth,through all elevational zones in NewGuinea proper, and also to ruggedGoodenough Island off the southeast­ern coast in search of an avian mystery-a long-tailed black bird that, accord­ing to the local people, dances in thetreetops of the mountain forest. Hebelieves this may be a bird of paradiseas yet unknown to science. Beehler hasnot yet found the bird, but considershimself well-rewarded nonetheless. Inhis view, just being there "is worth allthe effort . . . the morning sun burn­ing in rays through the mist of themoss-laden forest; the deep maroonsunsets over the mountains." As a sci­entist, Beehler provides a perspectiveon the drama of discovering a newspecies: "Scientific advances do notusually come in a flash or as easily astaking a new species of bird from a net.

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