PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY

Landscape Terms, Place Names, and the Question of Formal Ontology

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DEFINITIONEthnophysiography is a newly-defined

science that seeks to understand and compare the meanings of terms that people from different cultures use to refer to the landscape and its components. Ethnophysiography is motivated by a number of fundamental questions.

For example:

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DEFINITIONWhen people look at a natural landscape,

do they see it as filled up with features (objects) such as hill, lakes, and woodlands?

Or do they simply see it as a continuous landscape?

Perhaps they take an intermediate conceptualization, seeing scattered features over a continuous landscape field?

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DEFINITIONNext, for people who see natural geographic

features or objects, are the features determined by the type of landscape?

Does everyone see about the same numbers of features, in the same places, with about the same boundaries, and grouped into the same kinds?

Or does the identification, delimitation, and classification of landscape features vary across cultures, landscape, languages, or individuals?

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DEFINITIONThird, there are the issues of naming. What things (entities, regions, objects, features,

places) in the landscape are available (cognitively) to be named and talked about?

Of those things, which get common names (that is, things that are considered to belong to kinds) (always, sometimes, never), and which get proper (individual) names (always, sometimes, never).

From David Mark & Andrew Turk, “Ethnophysiography”. Paper presented at Workshop on Spatial and Geographic Ontologies, 23 September, 2003: p. 2.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY AS METHODPerhaps the best way to think of

ethnophysiography is as a method, which uses resources from several disciplines.

But to what end?

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY AS METHOD The desired outcome may be to construct knowledge.

This knowledge might be about particulars, that is, about how specific cultures represent landscape in their imaginative universe.

The knowledge might be about commonalities. That is, one might be trying to make an argument about what is shared in cultural representations of landscape.

The knowledge might be directed at demonstrating that there is a unified sub-structure to language. Given the variability of language in most situations, one might suppose that charting the diverse representations of landscape will give evidence of an invariant universal. It is worth noting that this might just as well be an assumption as a possible outcome.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY AS METHODThe desired outcome may be to create a matrix of

interoperability. In other words, one may want to find an ontology robust enough to be able to contain the diverse representations of landscape in one matrix. That matrix would potentially enable localized translations, that is, translations between two language games, based on a set of equivalences in either objects or relations.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY AS METHODThe desired outcome may be universal

translatability. This is a step beyond interoperability. It supposes that we could understand a cultural system and its use of landscape terms, and then have a master list which would correlate some across cultural borders and also point out the gaps or discontinuities.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY METHODOLOGY Framing Questions to Generate Data Data Gathering Connecting Meaning with Expression Framing Expressions as Objects

(Ontology) Applying the Ontology: GIS

FRAMING QUESTIONS TO GENERATE DATAThe questions here are not just the ones

used with the participants in a culture, but the ones used by the researchers to establish the method.

FRAMING QUESTIONS: EMIC & ETICInside/OutsideSpecifically, what is the difference

between emic/etic knowledge in this case? Are we looking for knowledge that is recognizable to the meaning-structures of participants, or knowledge that is meaningful to someone outside of the group?

FRAMING QUESTIONS: EMIC & ETICExample from structuralism: Ask someone

inside a group why they engage in a meaningful practice (e.g., getting married). Then, ask someone outside the group why someone inside the group engages in that practice.

A phenomenologist will hone in on the experience of engaging in the practice, while a structuralist will focus on how the practice fits into a web of meaning within the culture.

FRAMING QUESTIONS: EMIC & ETICThe first is interested in an emic

account, the second in an etic account. Is one account “true” and the other

“false? And, if both are true, how do they relate

to each other? Can the content of one be relevant in the other?

In this method, they must be related, because we start with the first and end up with the second.

DATA GATHERINGOnce a mode of questioning has been

established, data can be gathered. “Data”, though, is a term more oriented to the eventual outcome of the method than to the starting point.

Perth

Yindjibarndi countryFIELDWORK IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Yindjibarndi Study

NORTHERN EDGE OF YINDJIBARNDI COUNTRY

YINDJIBARNDI COUNTRY

YINDJIBARNDI COUNTRY - JINDAWARRINA

South-Western edge of Yindjibarndi country

YINDJIBARNDI STUDY: METHODS Since 2002 the main method utilized is

interviews with speakers of the language.

The participants were requested to discuss the landscape features displayed in a set of 40 photos (like previous images).

Each photo showed a landscape scene, and they were chosen (and ordered) to display a good cross-section of landscape features.

The sessions were audio taped and the researchers took notes.

Ned CheedyRoebourne, June 18

2006

35

TS & AS DS and others CC and others Researchers’ Notes 35 [1:15:45]

TS: I know this river! DS: Are we u p to 35? TS: Yeah , 35. TS: This is somewhere up in the Kingbree [??] place. It's where Brendan has his stones [??] there . Is it? DM: I thin k this is Dawson Creek. It's on the main road to Millstream . Its close to the road. TS: [laughs] TS: It’s a wundu. Thunggaawarna wundu. Sandy river. AS: Wundu thunggawarna . TS: Thunggaawarna wundu. DM: We stopped for o ur lunch there. …

Oh, that's a _____. AT: That's on the way to Millstream too. Where about that? AT: it’ s a place they call Dawson Creek. That's that… where yo u go to … [some background talk missed] AT: What woul d you call this one? See all those leaves. Al l the things laid on the ground. Barrangarli1. Barrangarli bungga2. AT: And t his whole thing coming down? [33:09 ] Thungga warna. Wundu. Wundu. Wundu thunggawarna. AT: And t his edge of him there? Word fo r one? Barlu, barlu. [consensus]

[1:08:50] AT: Th irty-five. [some Yindjibarndi ta k] ED: This is pretty. ED: Mmmm . Maygan. Maygan . FV: That's no t a maygan, that's a wilu3 ED: Wilu. Wilu ngarli. Wundu-a. [followed by a Yindjibarndi wor d DMM could not discern] CC: That's a biyungga4. ED: Biyu. Dry riverbe d, dry wundu. [1:09:23] [camera opens] Biyu. AT: Biyu. ED: Biyu wundu. "Biyu" is dry. FV: Biyungga wundu ana? Wilu. CC: That's a wilu. …

wundu from all three Thunggaawarna (sandy place) from two

1 Anderson: barra = ingestible leaf 2 Anderson: bungga = fall 3 Anderson: wilu = "blackheart tree" (Eucalyptus vi trix) 4 Anderson: biyu = "dry"; -ngga = locative , "at".

Footnotes: 1 Anderson: barra = ingestible leaf 2 Anderson: bungga = fall 3 Anderson: wilu = "blackheart tree" (Eucalyptus vitrix) 4 Anderson: biyu = "dry"; -ngga = locative, "at".

YINDJIBARNDI STUDY – SOME RESULTSTerms for convex landscape features do not

match up

mountain

hill

marnda

bargu

burbaa

Yindjibarndi Study – Water Features

A permanent pool called “Nangarnyungu”at Jindawarrina

There are no permanent or even seasonal rivers or creeks in Yindjibarndi country

Larger watercourses have running water in them only after cyclones

Permanent sources of water include permanent pools along the channel of the Fortescue River, as well as some permanent small springs, and soaks (where water can be obtained by digging)

Water in Yindjibarndi country

Yindjibarndi has two terms for fluvial channels:

Garga - roughly equivalent to "gully"

WUNDU - USUALLY TRANSLATED AS "RIVER"

YINDJIBARNDI HAS TWO MAIN WORDS FOR WATER FLOW IN NATURE:

MANGGURDU FOR FLOOD, STRONG FLOW

yijirdi for shallow, narrow flow of water

Here flowing into a yinda (permanent pool)

THARDARRthardarr is the Yindjibarndi word for “An area of cliff where water sometimes falls, whether there is water or not.”

When water is flowing, the water is manggurdu or yijirdi

DISCUSSION OF TERMS FOR WATER FEATURES The channel and the water seem to be separate

entities. In Yindjibarndi permanent and temporary water

features are considered to be different kinds of features.

English, in contrast, treats permanence of water bodies and water courses as an attribute, and expresses it via adjectives like "temporary", "seasonal", "intermittent", or "ephemeral“.

The key distinction in English is still vs flowing water. It seems that permanent water in Yindjibarndi is a

yinda, whether still or flowing. Thus there is a significant difference in

conceptualizations of water features between Yindjibarndi and English.

ROLE OF SPIRITUALITY

“WARLU LEFT PERMANENT WATER HERE FOR THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE” IF EACH YINDA HAS A SPIRIT (WARLU), HOW DOES THIS CONTRIBUTE TO ITS CONCEPTUALIZATIONBY YINDJIBARNDIPEOPLE?

Some General Conclusions from Yindjibarndi Study (1):

None of the Yindjibarndi terms for landscape features that we have examined in depth so far is exactly equivalent to one single term in English.

Yindjibarndi terms divide up sub-domains of geographic reality differently than do English terms.

YINDJIBARNDI PICTORIAL LANDSCAPE DICTIONARY

In late 2008 we completed a photo-illustrated Yindjibarndi landscape dictionary for community use.

Includes about 100 landscape terms: 49 basic (simple) landscape terms 49 additional terms that combine with some of

these to produce compound landscape terms

ISSUES IN DATA GATHERING1. Whole/parts (mereology) – where

do we start in our analysis of language in place? Do we start by describing details, and then developing a larger cultural knowledge out of that, or do we start with understanding a culture’s values and epistemology and then fit in the significant terms? After all, just because there are terms for landscape objects or experiences, doesn’t make them all equally significant.

ISSUES IN DATA GATHERING2. Just as most people regard landscape as equivalent

to land, and thus fail to see that our view of the land has been constructed through a long history of visual representation and technological innovation,

so too it is possible to regard the sum of landscape words and place names in a culture as equivalent to that culture’s knowledge about itself.

We can fail to see that despite our best efforts we may be unable to not bring assumptions about the ontologies of others to the “formal ontology” that ethnophysiography strives for.

CONNECTING MEANING WITH EXPRESSION

The phenomenological work involved in collecting data based in experience must be transformed into manipulable data based in structure.

This is an issue in most human sciences. How does it manifest itself when dealing

with place-terms?

CONNECTING MEANING WITH EXPRESSION1. What is lost in the translation? 2. What is gained in the translation?3. What are the philosophical

assumptions about both emic and etic perspectives?

FRAMING DATA (ONTOLOGY)An ontology in the information system

sense is part of the semantic web, that is, the WWW project which attempts to model relations among objects, to context, and to a whole, as opposed to attributes of discrete unrelated objects in a context-less domain.

Ontologies are an example of Tim Berner-Lee’s “Web 3.0”, or the semantic web.

ONTOLOGIESConsider the difference between an old-style Yahoo

search, a Google search, and what Google cannot search:

Yahoo: searched meta-data and content.Google: Does what Yahoo did, plus orders by

“Pageranks”, that is, user “feedback” in the form of links from other popular pages.

What Google doesn’t do: relate pages in a meaningful way, so that a search for the word “place” differentiates between casual and technical senses of the term.

ONTOLOGIESBased in OWL (Web Ontology Language) Library of projects:

http://protegewiki.stanford.edu/index.php/Protege_Ontology_Library

John Bateman’s Ontology Portal: http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/langpro/webspace/jb/info-pages/ontology/ontology-root.htm

Barry Smith’s Ontology Page: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/

DOLCE http://www.loa-cnr.it/DOLCE.html MUSIL http://musil.uni-muenster.de/

APPLYING THE ONTOLOGY (GIS)Once an ontology has been generated,

the final step to integration with GIS is relatively straightforward. However, it is not the end of the philosophical issues.

APPLYING THE ONTOLOGY (GIS)1. What does “useful” mean, and to

whom should the ontology be useful? 2. Is the goal of the implemented

ontology1. Representation of a system?2. Interoperability (translation across two

ontologies)?3. Universal translation of landscape

representations?

CENTRAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION

How can the phenomenological data-gathering techniques connect with and not undermine the structural ontologies?

How can an ontology, in the information science sense of the term, co-exist with a phenomenology?

WHERE IS MEANING?An initial approach: Let’s suppose the

question has to do with the location of meaning.

In phenomenology, meaning lies in experience.

In a structural system, meaning lies in the interaction of the components of the system.

ETHNOPHYSIOLOGY: MEANINGConsider: At the beginning of the method, the

goal is to capture the structure of meaning for a culture as seen in its landscape terms. Those terms might be generic, but the line between the generic and the proper may be fuzzy. And, in both cases, there may be narrative or mythic content, that expresses the collective meaning of a people for itself. Phenomenology (and its heir, hermeneutics) seems appropriate to this task.

ETHNOPHYSIOLOGY: MEANINGBut at the other end of the method,

meaning resides in the interrelations of objects within an ontology.

Just as in structuralism, the relations between objects matter. The objects themselves do not, nor does the person who is the source or subject of the objects within the ontology.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY: MEANINGThis might be seen as an inherent problem. We

might think that no ontology could ever really capture the lived meaning of a culture, when it comes to landscape, and no phenomenology could ever adequately provide the material necessary to build an ontology.

The locations of meaning are too far apart, and there is no reliable mechanism to move from one to the other.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY: MEANINGHow did we end up in this tension? In

part, because of limitations on apprehending or representing meaning inherent in both phenomenology and ontology.

PHENOMENOLOGY & MEANINGThe limitation of phenomenology, at least of

the Husserlian sort, is that there is an abiding question about whether experience really is the bedrock of meaning. Heidegger asks what comes before experience, and in another way, so does Deleuze.

So, do we really capture a culture’s dynamic self-creation by looking for the “universal” elements of experience? Does any of this tell us where new concepts come from?

ONTOLOGY AND MEANINGAnd ontology relies on the idea that meaning

comes in the interrelation of signifiers. Even if that is not taken in a Saussurean manner, there is still the question of whether there is any remainder after signification. In other words, does anything lie outside of the realm of signifiers?

Do we really capture a culture’s place-consciousness by capturing its words about place, along with their relations and contexts?

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHYSo, what is the answer? Several options:

1. The overall method fails – the beginning and ending cannot remain together. Phenomenologists will see what later thinkers do as missing the point of experience, while the later thinkers will regard phenomenologists as empiricists.

RECOVERING ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY2. Modified Ricoeur: Phenomenology and

ontology exist in dialectic. Phenomenology gives us a “pre-ontological” (in the philosophical sense) intuition, that then becomes textualized and obeys a set of external rules. Once that happens, the text is re-appropriated in a renewed sense of self.

In other words, phenomenology and ontology each make up for the limits of the other.

See: Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning

RECOVERING ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY3. Deleuze: The tension between forms

of knowledge about landscape is not a failure, but the opportunity to create new concepts adequate to the situation.

The cost: we give up on meaning as located either in experience or in ontology.

See: Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus and What Is Philosophy?

CAN ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DO WITHOUT MEANING?

It depends on what the purpose of ethnophysiography is.

If the purpose is to accurately represent the world, then meaning seems necessary, and we are back to the question of where it is located and how forms of meaning relate to each other.

CAN ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DO WITHOUT MEANING?

If, however, we resist seeing cultural groups as mute objects of inquiry, but rather as producers of fluid knowledge which responds to the conditions of its production, and their knowledge is every bit as legitimate as the attempts to represent them either emically or etically, then the question shifts, to:

Why does a (landscape) concept have currency for some group?

CAN ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DO WITHOUT MEANING?

This moves the issue from what a concept means to what it does and how it comes to be.

1. What do particular kinds of spatial differentiations make possible?

2. What forms of life are allowed/encouraged, and what forms are forbidden/restricted, by particular spatial orderings?

CAN ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHY DO WITHOUT MEANING?

Sidelining the question of meaning makes these other questions possible to ask. Both phenomenological investigation and the construction of ontologies are still possible.

We just remain agnostic as to which has the privileged location of meaning.

And that epoché (to use a term from Husserl) can make creativity possible.

ETHNOPHYSIOGRAPHYThe philosophical questions about

ethnophysiography, then, are: How is knowledge produced? How is knowledge related to concepts

about place? What makes those concepts live ones in a

culture, and what does it mean to be competent in that culture, both as an insider and as a scholar from the outside?